Filed under: DEBT, Economic Collapse, economic crisis, Economy, federal spending, Great Depression, Income Tax, middle class, MSNBC, new zealand, obama, obama taxes, Paul Volcker, Senate, slavery, Taxpayers, tea party, US Economy, White House | Tags: The Other 95%
The Other 95% Thanks Obama For All The Taxes!
“The Other 95%” Group Crashes Tea Party
Networks Fail to Report on VAT Tax Since Volcker Call for Tax Increases
Business & Media Institute
April 15, 2010
As procrastinators rush to beat the April 15 tax deadline and thousands rally at Tea Parties to oppose out of control government spending, politicians and the national news media are mulling the possibility of a new European-style national sales tax.
On April 6, former Federal Reserve chairman and current White House economic adviser Paul Volcker revealed the Obama administration’s possible strategy to tame massive deficits with a value-added tax (VAT).
“Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax ‘was not as toxic an idea’ as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary,” Reuters reported.
“If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes,” Volcker added that day. In Europe, VAT taxes range from about 16 percent to 25 percent with an average of roughly 20 percent, according to Olivier Garret of Casey Research. Garrett, who grew up in France, called the VAT “a license to steal without people knowing it.”
A VAT is a consumption tax “levied along stages of production,” according to the Wall Street Journal. In contrast to Garret, Fortune called it an “extremely efficient, virtually fraud-free way to collect money.” But it is also a regressive tax that hits the poor and middle-class and would contradict Obama’s pledge to protect taxpayers.
Despite the huge news that the White House was leaving the door open to additional taxes that would hit the poor and middle class especially hard, the three broadcast networks haven’t mentioned a VAT tax at all since Volcker’s speech. In the previous three months, only NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” has even brought up the issue.
In contrast to the networks’ silence, Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network have brought up the VAT in more than a dozen programs since Volcker’s speech. But some print and online news media, including Reuter’s columnist Christopher Swann and Fortune’s Shawn Tully, actually promoted the idea of a VAT.
On Feb. 10, Tully wrote, “America is hurtling towards a fiscal trap that is forcing us into the only option we’ll have to restore budgetary sanity: A Value-Added Tax.”
CNN.com also supported VAT on April 13 suggesting the U.S. “can learn from New Zealand when it comes to taxes.” The article cited New Zealand as the “best” example of a VAT.
“So who does it best? Tax experts and economists point to New Zealand, where a 12.5 percent goods and services tax applies uniformly to nearly everything with very limited exceptions – only rent paid for a private home, charitable contributions and interest earned are exempted. (The government offers clear details, too, on its website.),” wrote CNN’s Dody Tsiantar.
But according to Dan Mitchell, a CATO Institute senior fellow and Business & Media Institute adviser, a value-added tax would be “an economy-killer.”
“Don’t get me wrong: The VAT – on top of all the other taxes Washington imposes – is a terrible idea. Imposing it would pretty well finish the transformation of our country into a European-style slow-growth nation. The right way to close Uncle Sam’s gaping deficits is to reverse the continued explosion of federal spending,” Mitchell wrote in a New York Post op-ed.
Mitchell explained that a VAT has the “virtues” of simplicity and less economic distortion, but ONLY if it were to replace the Internal Revenue code. That, however, is not what Volcker or Sen. Kent Conrad and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have suggested.
In Mitchell’s opinion, the end result would be a huge expansion of government, rather than deficit reduction.
Liberals Predict, Promote VAT Tax
Especially after Volcker’s comments, the mainstream media should have been examining value-added taxes, talking to tax experts and publicizing the fact that this sort of a tax would be yet another violation of Obama’s pledge to protect the middle-class from tax increases. But they weren’t.
In the past three months, a value-added tax has only been mentioned on one network program: NBC’s weekend talk show “The Chris Matthews Show.”
Matthews casually mentioned the options for reducing deficits on his April 4 program, saying, “You know, cutting deficits comes down to two decisions: you’ve got to raise taxes somewhere with a value-added tax or something, or you’re going to cut benefits. Neither one are pleasant for politicians.”
Guest David Ignatius of The Washington Post joined the discussion predicting that Obama would “build a case for a value-added tax, which gets us out of the – out of this mess.”
The tax was mentioned on CNN during a special called “I.O.U.S.A. Solutions” April 11. That special hosted by Christine Romans aired video clips from the documentary and then discussed the proposals with several panelists.
Panelist Maya MacGuineas, who was in the documentary, told viewers that even with necessary spending cuts there is no way to fix the deficit without raising taxes.
Robert D. Reischauer, former director of CBO and President of the Urban Institute, claimed in the video: “We’re going to have to look at consumption taxes like a value added tax or some form of national sales tax as a mechanism for maintaining some of the benefits that we are promised through our entitlement programs.”
But in the panel discussion that followed no one pointed out the flaws of VAT or mentioned any of the harm it could do to the American economy.
On April 8, the overwhelmingly liberal cable network MSNBC mentioned the problem liberals have with a VAT.
“There is a problem. A value-added tax tends to be regressive. There are ways to deal with that – one way is to provide an income tax credit to offset the regressivity at the bottom. That might sound like a radical liberal proposal, but it’s basically the same thing the national retail sales tax or FairTax people have been proposing,” Leonard Burman of Syracuse University told Ed Schultz.
Burman was correct about the regressive nature of a value-added tax, but not about its similarity to the FairTax.
FairTax proponents would like to see the entire federal taxation system replaced with a progressive national retail sales tax. It would include a “prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level.” The recent calls for a VAT have been for additional taxation, not reforming the confusing current system.
I Wanna Be Like Europe (or New Zealand)
Proponents of a VAT often lament that the U.S. is only developed nation that doesn’t have one.
That was Alice Rivlin’s argument for a VAT in the film I.O.U.S.A. Solutions. Rivlin, senior fellow for the liberal Brookings Institution, said “all the industrialized countries have a national sales tax of some sort.”
CNBC guest co-host Mark Olson, Corporate Risk Advisors co-chairman, praised the success of value-added taxes in Europe.
“A VAT makes a little bit more sense … But the value-added tax, I don’t think there’s a chance that’s gonna happen this year. But it’s gonna be something – it seems to work well in Europe.” Olson said on “Squawk Box” April 12.
In response, “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen groaned that “We’re turning into, we’re turning into” Europe.
Reuters economic columnist Christopher Swann supported the creation of a VAT tax. He called it a “money machine,” and said “America is alone among rich nations in not charging a VAT, and its continued unwillingness to do so will make it harder to cope with the fiscal challenges ahead.”
Instead of suggesting we emulate Europe, CNN.com highlighted New Zealand’s example calling it the “best.”
“In New Zealand, it [VAT] contributes about 25 percent to the government’s bottom line, and the Tax Policy Center in December projected that a 5 percent VAT tax here would generate over $3 trillion in revenue by 2019. That’s not enough to cover America’s huge debt obligations, of course, but it’s a start,” CNN said.
But conservative and libertarian tax experts like Dan Mitchell oppose following in the footsteps of Europe or New Zealand and warn that such a taxation plan will lead to bigger government, more spending and make it easier to raise taxes in the future.
Mitchell explained that “real-world evidence shows that VATs are strongly linked with both higher overall tax burdens and more government spending. In 1965, before the VAT swept across Europe, the average tax burden for advanced European economies (the EU-15) was 27.7 percent of economic output, versus 24.7 percent of GDP in the United States.”
Then Europe instituted VATs (and the European Union requires its member to impose VATs of at least 15 percent) and the tax burden of EU-15 nations rose to nearly 40 percent, compared to 28 percent in the U.S. According to Mitchell, government spending rose in Europe along with the VATs: from 30.1 percent of GDP to 47.1 percent of GDP.
Another CATO expert, Chris Edwards opposes adding to the tax burden and would prefer spending cuts. “I think America has prospered because the general level of taxation has been lower than Europe,” Edwards told CBSNews.com.
But even tax experts who “loathe” the idea of a VAT think the U.S. will head in that direction. Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, told CBSNews.com “I think it’s coming, in the next five to 10 years certainly.”
Filed under: halliburton, Income Tax, middle class, Military Industrial Complex, military spending, nation building, obamas war, occupation, Taxpayers, Troops, u.s. soldiers, US Economy, War On Terror
Tax Day 2010: 53% of your Tax Dollar goes to the Military
Examiner
April 13, 2010
Health care? Social Security? An economic stimulus bill? Wars? Bailing out Wall Street banks? Education? Our nation’s infrastructure? Each may be a good guess based on the issues that get attention in the mainstream media.
The correct answer may be that 53% of the federal tax being collected in 2010 has already been allocated for defense spending.
According to Philadelphia investigative journalist Dave Lindorff, writing for OpEdNews:
The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out military footing. Military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53.3% of total US federal spending.
That would mean the military’s share of the approximately $3 trillion 2011 budget is about $1.6 trillion.
On the other hand, anyone can find a handy fact sheet posted on the white house’s web site that puts the department of defense’s share of the budget at a “mere” $708 billion, seemingly bringing the cost down to about 24 cents on the tax dollar.
So, who’s telling the truth? The answer is that both are, depending on how one looks at federal budget allocations.
Just like banks, airlines or a sleazy car dealer, the pentagon and white house’s initial invoice does not include hidden costs and amenities, but the final bill does. One of those add-ons is called supplemental spending.
A war appropriations bill to supplementally finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for an additional $106 billion was signed by President Obama last year. The administration is already poised to ask congress for another $35 billion this year, which they will surely get. There are estimates that supplemental war funding could reach $300 billion by the end of 2010. You can view a cost of war counter here. If supplemental war spending is based on what was spent last year, that brings the defense portion of the check to $814 billion.
A closer look reveals that the 2011 defense budget also does not include: spending on veterans affairs – that means VA hospitals, benefits, etc., for any ex-military personnel that are no longer on active or reserve status. The bill for that is $60 billion. That $60 billion does not include any public funds spent on veterans or immediate family that collect public benefits, such as social security.
Homeland security, judging by the title, can be added to the defense part of the check for approximately another $4.3 billion, bringing the bill to approximately $878.3 billion. So can NASA, for another $19 billion, since their primary function is deploying military satellites. And the National Intelligence Program for another (classified) amount, estimated at about $75 billion. Even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gets billed separately at about $5 billion.
Without even considering the costs of foreign military aid to nations such as Israel, Pakistan, Egypt and Columbia, or the costs of purchasing services from private contractors such as Xe (formerly Blackwater) to provide security in occupied countries, or Halliburton to rebuild them, defense spending is already well over $900 billion. There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and not including Iraq and Afghanistan, approximately 255,000 service members stationed abroad. There are 116,000 in Europe and nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.
Like all government spending, of course, the defense portion has to be financed, so when money is borrowed from whomever or wherever to pay for the $900+ billion tab, add more interest to the approximately $250-400 billion in interest already owed through debt created by defense spending. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion.
Having trouble keeping up with your bill yet? That’s because it is designed that way. It gets even more complicated when you have to consider that Social Security expenditures are included in the overall budget, even though it is a trust that is raised and spent seperately from income taxes. What you pay by April 15, 2010 goes to the federal funds portion of the budget. That makes military spending seem smaller in comparison to overall government spending. That also easily puts the figure at about 53 percent.
No matter which figure you want to believe – the $1.6 trillion or the $708 billion, it may be enlightening to put that in two other perspectives.
One is that, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the U.S. accounted for 48% of global military spending in 2008, compared to 5% for Russia, 8% for China, and 20% for all our European allies combined.
The second is that, according to the non-profit National Priorities Project, less than half of the $708 billion estimate – $300 billion, could have paid for health care for 131,780,734 American children for a year, or for 53,872,201 students to receive Pell Grants of $5,550, or for the salaries and benefits of 4,911,552 elementary school teachers for that same year. Restoring roads and bridges in this country to the condition of past decades and keeping them in decent repair so that they do not fall apart would cost $166 billion a year for the next five years.
Tax day is almost here, and whether 24 cents of your hard-earned dollars, 53 cents, or something in between goes toward military spending, there may be a few things to think about. Do we really need to spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined on “defense?” Could investing our tax $’s to improve our country within our borders provide a better return of investment than occupying countries halfway around the world? If U.S. taxpayers knew how much they are paying for defense and the wars through direct taxes instead of bookkeeping fraud, how long would this continue?
Let’s not forget the human costs of war either…
Filed under: bankruptcy, DEBT, Economic Collapse, economic crisis, federal spending, Great Depression, greece, Income Tax, italy, middle class, Paul Volcker, pelosi, Senate, slavery, Taxpayers, tea party, US Economy, VAT, White House | Tags: tax strike
Spend It Now! A Huge New Tax Is Coming…
Daily Wealth
April 9, 2010
Everything you buy is about to become 20% more expensive…
I’m not kidding. The latest idea out of Washington is to pay for its insatiable appetite for spending with what’s called a “Value-Added Tax.”
It’s like a huge new national sales tax, on everything. In simple terms, the difference is that with a sales tax, the consumer pays it. With a “VAT,” the manufacturer pays it. The consumer won’t see it in the price on the shelf or on their receipt.
Politicians love this tax because it’s a stealth tax… You can’t see it when you buy something, but they still get their money. And unless you make your voice known, chances are excellent we’ll eventually have a Value-Added Tax here.
The thing is, making things 20% more expensive here and giving that money to politicians won’t save America. It’ll make us less competitive. For Exhibit A, consider the state of European governments right now…
Greece, for example, has a VAT of 21%. Its government is bankrupt. The Value-Added Tax didn’t save Greece.
Italy and Portugal have a VAT of 20%, and they’re only a little less bankrupt than Greece.
Astoundingly to me, the Value-Added Tax in France has now crept up to a full 50% of France’s government revenues. So how are things going in France with a Value-Added Tax?
France is unable to compete in the world. Unemployment is terminally high. The unemployment rate is now 10% in France. In 2005, the unemployment rate was 10%. And back in 2000, unemployment stood at 11%. Like I said, it’s terminal…
Clearly, the system is not working. So why is the U.S. government in such a hurry to adopt it?
The Wall Street Journal explained it yesterday: “Taxes on the rich can’t begin to finance the levels of new spending that the current government has unleashed… ”
And foreign governments have been less willing to buy our government bonds lately. So the government needs a new source of a lot of money.
At first, a Value-Added Tax will be offered up by politicians as a small tax – just a temporary fix to get us over the hump on our current budget woes. But we know how it will go… Like all taxes (and parasites), it will become permanent in our lives and it will steadily grow. Remember, the VAT in France is now 50% of government revenue.
All we can do right now is let our politicians know we’re against more taxes… because we know down in our toes that governments spend every dollar that comes in… and then some.
Think about it this way: When your child has overspent on the credit card, you don’t hand over a new card to spend on.
We don’t want to give our politicians a new credit card to ring up charges. Reject their request for another massive credit card, in the form of a Value-Added Tax.
Oh, the other thing you can do is make all your big purchases soon, before a Value-Added Tax comes along and adds 10%-20% to the price of everything you buy…
VAT attack: Beware: ‘Value-added tax’ is an economy-killer
New York Post
April 12, 2010
 Paul Volcker |
One of President Obama’s top economic advisers, former Fed chief Paul Volcker, suggested this week that it’s time for America to adopt a VAT, or value-added tax. The White House yesterday downplayed the idea — but it’s sure to resurface: It’s an inevitable consequence of a government that’s too big now and likely to grow even bigger thanks to Washington’s reckless spending spree.
Don’t get me wrong: The VAT — on top of all the other taxes Washington imposes — is a terrible idea. Imposing it would pretty well finish the transformation of our country into a European-style slow-growth nation. The right way to close Uncle Sam’s gaping deficits is to reverse the continued explosion of federal spending.
The VAT is a type of national sales tax, levied on the value-added at each stage of production. Consider a piece of furniture: The VAT would be imposed when the raw timber is sold, when the sawmill produces lumber, when the manufacturer builds a chair, a tax at the wholesaler level and then when a retailer sells the chair to a consumer.
To avoid double taxation, each seller along the way gets a credit for taxes paid at earlier stages of the production process. So the final tax to the consumer, at least in theory, is the same as a retail sales tax of the same amount.
The VAT has its virtues: As a single-rate, consumption-based system, much like the flat tax or national sales tax, it would introduce far fewer economic distortions than today’s income tax — and a heckuva lot less paperwork.
That would be a persuasive argument — if proponents wanted a VAT to replace the Internal Revenue code. But that’s not what’s intended by Volcker — or Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who’ve also been chatting up the VAT.
The politicians want a VAT, and they want to keep the income tax. (To be more accurate, they want a VAT and to raise other taxes as well.)
They want the cash, of course, so they can continue buying votes by spending other people’s money.
This decade already has seen a huge expansion of government. In the Bush years, federal spending rose from $1.8 trillion in 2001 to $3.5 trillion in the last Bush budget. Now President Obama is well on the way to doubling outlays yet again.
He has already saddled the economy with $800 billion of “stimulus” and a giant new health-care entitlement, and his proposals for next year will push the federal budget even higher.
Meanwhile, our aging population and the built-in growth in federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security has a dramatic expansion in the size of government set to occur automatically in coming decades.
Simply stated, there’s no way to finance all this new spending without an added broad-based tax. But this is exactly why we should vigorously resist a VAT.
Blocking a VAT may not be sufficient to control the size of government, but it’s necessary. Handing Washington a whole new source of revenue would be akin to giving keys to a liquor store to a bunch of alcoholics.
Chuck Norris: More Tyranny Plus More Taxes Equals More Protests
Filed under: american union, bernanke, bilderberg, Carbon Tax, Central Banks, CFR, DEBT, Dollar, Economic Collapse, economic crisis, economic depression, Economy, Europe, global economy, Great Depression, Greenback, imf, Income Tax, Inflation, jim tucker, manipulation, New World Order, North American Union, NWO, Paul Volcker, Stock Market, tax, UN, US Economy, van rompuy, VAT, world government
Bilderberg: Raise Taxes, Cut Services in U.S. and Europe
NoWorldSystem.com
April 11, 2010
The Bilderberg Group will meet in Sitges Spain on June 3-6 in efforts to advance their agenda for a new global economic system, they will agree to prolong the recession until 2011. The Bilderberg will discuss plans to level the living standards of Europeans and Americans with 3rd world countries so that we’re all poor together under their World Government Dictatorship.
Bilderberg watcher Jim Tucker discusses his inside information on the groups current agenda; they intend to make all “Europeans and Americans to pay higher income taxes because their plan to level the world so that 3rd world countries rather than living the European and American standard of living drops until we’re all poor together under their world government.” says Jim Tucker. “They manipulated the worldwide depression and now their exploiting it for their own selfish reasons, they intend to [prolong the recession] at least until 2011 for their own purposes, and now we have Bernanke (Bilderberg Member) telling a private group businessmen in Texas ‘it always seems easier putting them off until the day they cannot be put off any more’ he said that ‘we’ve got to raise taxes and cut services.'”.
UPDATE
This week, both past Bilderberg attendees Bernanke and Volcker called out for tax increases.
Bernanke said quote; “These choices are difficult, and it always seems easier to put them off — until the day they cannot be put off anymore.” “To avoid large and ultimately unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above,”. [Source]
Obama’s economic adviser Paul Volcker has promoted an economy killing tax called the ‘Value-Added Tax’ (VAT), on Tuesday he urged the U.S. should raise taxes to help bring deficits under control and add a new European-style VAT tax along with a carbon or other energy-related tax and raise existing taxes, here’s what he said; “If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes,”. [Source]
Prisonplanet.com
April 9, 2010
This year’s confab will focus around prolonging the global financial recession and creating more economic woe in order to provide the pretext for more regulation in pursuit of world economic governance, according to Jim Tucker’s sources.
“Bilderberg hopes to keep the global recession going for at least a year, according to an international financial consultant who deals personally with many of them. This is because, among several reasons, Bilderberg still hopes to create a global “treasury department” under the United Nations. Bilderberg first undertook this mission at its meeting last spring in Greece, but the effort was blocked by nationalists in Europe and the United States. “Nationalists” (a dirty word in Bilderberg) objected to surrendering sovereignty to the UN,” writes Tucker.
Tucker’s source highlighted a recent speech by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in which he called for a “new global monetary order.” As we have highlighted, such rhetoric has been abundant over the past year, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and EU President Herman Van Rompuy repeatedly echoing similar ideas.
As Bilderberg investigator Daniel Estulin revealed during last year’s Bilderberg meeting in Greece, elitists were planning to paint a false picture of economic recovery in order to sucker investors into ploughing their money back into the stock market, which is exactly what has happened with the Dow soaring back to just below the 11,000 level.
Estulin correctly predicted the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown as a result of what his sources inside Bilderberg told him the elite were planning based on what was said at their 2006 meeting in Canada and the 2007 conference in Turkey.
“Bilderberg’s ultimate goal remains unchanged,” writes Tucker. “Turn the UN into a world government with “nation-states” becoming merely geographic references. The European Union is to become a single political entity, followed by the “American Union” and, finally, the “Asian-Pacific Union.” The “American Union” is to include the entire Western Hemisphere, including Cuba and other offshore islands.”
Filed under: bank bailout, civil disobedience, civil liberties, civil rights, civil unrest, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, government bureaucracy, government control, human rights, Income Tax, insurance company bailout, main street, medical industrial complex, middle class, non compliance, Police State, Protest, strike, tax, tax strike, Taxpayers, tea party, US Constitution
Great American Tax Strike April 15-18th
Filed under: 1984, 9/11 Truth, Africa, aristocrats, Bank of England, Big Brother, bilderberg, Bohemian Grove, Britain, cashless society, Central Banks, Communism, Control Grid, cult, DEBT, depopulation, Dictatorship, Dissent, Economy, elite, Eugenics, famine, Fascism, Federal Reserve, freemasons, George Bush, global economy, global elite, global government, Goldman Sachs, Illuminati, Income Tax, internationalist, IRS, malthusian, malthusian catastrophe, manipulation market, market manipulation, masons, Media Manipulation, Military Industrial Complex, New World Order, NWO, oligarchy, One World Government, Oppression, orwell, Police State, Population Control, queen elizabeth, queen of england, rome, rothschild, ruling class, Secret Societies, slavery, Stock Market, Surveillance, tax, third world, toxic earth, toxic environment, toxicity, truth movement, u.s. economy, vatican, Wall Street, War On Terror, world government | Tags: Dr. Russell Blaylock
Fight The New World Order with Global Non Compliance
Filed under: Barack Obama, Communism, Congress, corporatism, Dictatorship, Economy, Empire, Fascism, fines, forced health insurance, government bureaucracy, government control, government regulation, health care, health care companies, health care insurance, health care mandate, health care reform, Healthcare, Income Tax, IRS, mandatory health care, mandatory health insurance, medical care, medical industrial complex, nanny state, Nazi, Neolibs, new taxes, obama, obama care, obama deception, obama fines, obamacare, obamacare fines, Oppression, Police State, Senate, tax, tax returns, Taxpayers, US Economy | Tags: tax returns
Proposed Legislation: IRS to Make Sure Americans Are Buying Health Insurance
cryptogon.com
January 4, 2010
Via: USA Today
Internal Revenue Service agents already try to catch tax cheats and moonshiners. Under the proposed health care legislation, they would get another assignment: checking to see whether Americans have health insurance.
The legislation would require most Americans to have health insurance and to prove it on their federal tax returns. Those who don’t would pay a penalty to the IRS.
That’s one of several key duties the IRS would assume under the bills that have been approved by the House of Representatives and Senate and will be merged by negotiators from both chambers.
The agency also would distribute as much as $140 billion a year in new government subsidies to help small employers and as many as 19 million lower-income people buy coverage.
Filed under: CBO, Congress, Credit Crisis, DEBT, debt clock, Dollar, dollar collapse, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Federal Reserve, George LeMieux, government control, government regulations, Great Depression, Greenback, health care, health care reform, Healthcare, House, hyperinflation, Income Tax, Inflation, medicare, national debt, Neolibs, obama care, obama deception, obama tax, obamacare, Senate, Stock Market, tax, Taxpayers, universal health care, US Economy, US Treasury, Wall Street
US public debt tops $12 trillion for first time ever
AFP
November 18, 2009
The US public debt topped 12 trillion dollars for the first time in history, Treasury officials disclosed Tuesday, moving past a key barrier that raised hackles in Congress.
Treasury data showed Monday’s outstanding debt at 12.031 trillion dollars, up from 11.999 trillion on Friday.
The ballooning debt reflects the massive deficit spending by the government in an effort to revive an ailing economy over more than one year.
The public debt topped 10 trillion dollars in September 2008.
The debt is quickly approaching the statutory limit of 12.104 trillion dollars, meaning Congress would have to raise the ceiling to prevent a shutdown of government operations.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Communism, Congress, Credit Crisis, DEBT, deflation, Dictatorship, Dollar, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, Fascism, global economy, Great Depression, Greenback, hyperinflation, Income Tax, Inflation, IRS, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, obama stimulus, socialism, Stock Market, tax, tax rebates, Taxpayers, US Economy, Wall Street | Tags: golf cart credit, golf cart rebate, golf cart stimulus, The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
$5,500 Golf Cart Tax Credit in Obama Stimulus Bill
Taxprof
October 22, 2009
We thought cash for clunkers was the ultimate waste of taxpayer money, but as usual we were too optimistic. Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama’s stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart. The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart.
This golf-cart fiasco perfectly illustrates tax policy in the age of Obama, when politicians dole out credits and loopholes for everything from plug-in cars to fuel efficient appliances, home insulation and vitamins. Democrats then insist that to pay for these absurdities they have no choice but to raise tax rates on other things—like work and investment—that aren’t politically in vogue. If this keeps up, it’ll soon make more sense to retire and play golf than work for a living.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Communism, Congress, corpoatism, Dictatorship, Empire, excise tax, Fascism, fines, government bureaucrat, government control, government health care, government regulation, government takeover, health care, health care companies, health care insurance, health care mandate, health care reform, Healthcare, Income Tax, IRS, mandatory health care, mandatory health insurance, medicaid, medical care, medical industrial complex, medicare, nanny state, Nazi, nazi germany, Neolibs, obama, obama care, obama deception, obama fines, obamacare, obamacare fines, Oppression, Police State, Propaganda, public option, Senate, socialism, tax, Taxpayers, universal health care | Tags: JCT, Joint Committee on Taxation, Tom Barthold
Americans threatened with jail time, huge fines for refusing to buy health insurance
Mike Adams
Natural News
September 29, 2009
There’s a popular video circulating on the ‘net right now about how to escape handcuffs without using a key. Americans are watching the video to bone up on essential skills that will soon be needed for health care reform, it seems, since the new laws that are about to be put in place call for Americans to be arrested and thrown in jail if they refuse to buy health insurance.
This has now been confirmed by Tom Barthold, the Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. And it’s not merely about jail time; it’s also about the $25,000 fine that could be levied by the IRS against individuals who refuse to buy health insurance.
That this is even being considered just boggles the mind. If a person is too broke to afford health insurance right now, how are they supposed to be able to buy it after paying a $25,000 fine and spending a year in prison?
As Paul Craig Roberts brilliantly pointed out in a recent essay, this is like trying to solve the homeless problem by forcing homeless people to buy a home, then throwing them in prison when they can’t afford to.
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, Big Brother, Britain, car tax, Carbon Tax, Congress, Control Grid, Dictatorship, earl blumenauer, Echelon, Empire, Europe, european union, Fascism, global tax, gps, h.r. 3311, HR 3311, Income Tax, infrastructure, london, microchips, nanny state, Neolibs, Oppression, Oregon, orwell, Police State, portland, privacy rights, RFID, road tax, slavery, Spy, spy satellite, Surveillance, tax, Taxpayers, toll road, Toll Roads, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, US Constitution, US Treasury, Vehicle Miles Traveled tax
HR 3311: Vehicle Tracking Devices and Road Taxes
Noworldsystem.com
September 21, 2009
This is just one of many bills that is evidence that America is falling into an Orwellian police state, the eye of big government, tax slavery and despotism is becoming even more clear as the republic fades into the night.
Democratic Congressman Earl Blumenauer has introduced HR 3311, if passed the Senate would use $154 million of taxpayer money to fund the development of vehicle tracking devices and roadside RFID scanning devices that would record your everyday driving habits for the sake of creating a new taxation scheme and quite possibly help law enforcement penalize every mistake you make on the road. The money would also be used to research and study how to enforce this on a nationwide scale and how to present this scheme to the public as something necessary to fund failing infrastructures.
The bill will allow the US Treasury Department to establish this program which is called the “Road User Free Pilot Project” that was developed by Oregon legislators to impose a gas tax on Oregon motorists, the pilot program now studies the Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax instead, to better track and tax motorists. Within eighteen months of the HR 3311 passing the US Treasury would file an initial report outlining the best methods of adopting this new tax scheme on a nationwide scale.
Here’s what the bill’s sponsor, Congressman Blumenauer had to say about this insidious track and tax plan: “Oregon has successfully tested a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) fee, and it is time to expand and test the VMT program across the country,”!
Just imagine all vehicles in the United States fitted with this federal tracking device, why don’t they just shackle us all and tax every footstep we make while they are at it!?! This is completely un-constitutional and threatens the 4th amendment of the United States constitution, I doubt that anyone would actually accept something this Orwellian to be used against them.. but of course I’m sure if this bill passes all new vehicles would be secretly fitted with these devices without anyone knowing about it.
Here is what we know the device is capable of recording:
1. The device can calculate miles driven based on GPS data
2. The device can store the number of miles driven
3. The device can determine when the vehicle has left certain states
4. The device can store the states the vehicle entered
5. The device can determine what time a vehicle was being driven
6. The device can store the times the vehicle was driven
7. The device can produce all data stored since its last reading
This device must be receiving precise positional data as an input from its GPS unit. It must also have a clock set to the real time and date as an input. This means that the device is getting data on the exact position of the vehicle at any moment, and that the control software is only storing certain data-points based on this. This is an adequate privacy safeguard, right? Probably not.
Considering this is a tax device, it will very likely need to be updated to reflect changes in the tax law. The need for this capability is clear. One year, the zone around Portland might incur a tax at any time of day, the next year only during rush hour. Oregon’s program might spread to other states, so now the control software in the device has to start recording miles driven in those states as well. If this is the case, then the control software could one day be updated in nearly any way, including complete tracking of movement and speed.
The other thing to consider is that the readers for these devices will be readily available, since every gas station in the state will need one. Even if the software stays the same, there’s nothing stopping a rogue police department from getting its hands on a reader and using it to gather info on people. More likely, though, if these devices became pervasive, law enforcement would push to have readers of their own.
Imagine this scenario: You’re driving a car with one of these GPS devices at the leisurely clip of 60 MPH on the highway leading into Klamath Falls. Like all highways in Oregon, the limit is still 55 MPH. A cop catches you going over the limit and pulls you over. You go through the normal rigmarole with him, except this time he checks your GPS devices and finds out that you’ve exceeded 55 MPH in the state of Oregon 22 times since the device was last read. You leave this encounter with 22 speeding tickets instead of one.
That scenario is possible with the hardware described in the device and minimal changes in the software. Only the good will of the Oregon state government is keeping it from being so. Should Oregonians really rely on that alone to protect their privacy? [Source]
Filed under: 2-party system, auto bailout, Barack Obama, Big Banks, cap-and-trade, Censorship, Communism, Congress, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Fascism, Federal Reserve, george soros, glenn beck, government bureaucrat, government control, government regulation, health care, health care reform, Healthcare, HR 3200, Income Tax, insurance companies, Kennedy health care bill, left right paradigm, Mainstream Media, media bias, media blackout, media censorship, medical industrial complex, medicare, Nancy Pelosi, nanny state, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, obama, obama care, obama deception, obamacare, Oppression, patriot movement, Propaganda, Protest, public option, Senate, socialism, tax, Taxpayers, tea party, Tim Geithner, universial health care, US Constitution, Washington D.C., White House | Tags: D.C., dc march, dc protest, DC tea party, dc teaparty
Mainstream Media Cover-Up Implodes As World Discovers Millions Marched In DC
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
September 13, 2009
The Gray Lady of Operation Mockingbird, the New York Times, reports today that “thousands” of patriots protested against Obamacare, cap and trade, the bankster bailout, and unchecked federal government power in the District of Criminals yesterday.
“The demonstrators numbered well into the tens of thousands, though the police declined to estimate the size of the crowd,” the newspaper reports, attempting to downplay the historical significance of the protest.
The New York Times says the police declined to estimate the crowd — or rather the corporate media declined to report it — because the number was around two million, the largest protest in the capitol’s history.
The protest out-numbered Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. That march was estimated at around 200,000 people.
ABC News did likewise, pegging the turnout in the thousands. “Thousands of conservative protesters from across the country converged on the Capitol Saturday morning to demonstrate against President Obama’s proposals for health care reform and voicing opposition to big government, what they say is over-the-top spending,” the corporate propaganda outlet claimed on Saturday.
Ditto the War Street Journal — excuse me, the Wall Street Journal — although they put the number at tens of thousands. The Journal admitted the obvious: “While some Republican officeholders were at the rally, not everybody there called themselves Republicans.”
NPR, the news service of Soros and the foundations, did the same parlor trick with the math, putting the number at tens of thousands. NPR contradicted itself, however, and reported that as “the demonstrators walked along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol, the line stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction. The crowd was so thick in places that it was difficult to move.”
As to be expected, the “progressives” (left cover bankster faction) attempted to portray two million patriotic Americans as racists. Think Soros, formerly known as Think Progress, posted a blog entry supposedly revealing racist placards at the event — in fact, none of the signs showed were racist — the worst the Soros operatives produced was a photo of a woman with a Confederate flag. The Soros clan said everybody at the event was white (as if they had examined the skin color of two million people).
It’s not going to work. The two million people who showed up to voice their outrage at a federal government out of control and in violation of the Constitution was but a small sampling of the millions of people across the country in opposition to Obama and the corporate-fascist agenda of his one-world masters.
If Obama and the Democrats ram the deathcare bill through the House by way of “reconciliation,” the opposition will redouble its numbers and once again take to the streets.
Judge Napolitano Interviews Glenn Beck – (9/1/4/2009)
9/12 demonstration a record DC turnout: National Park Service
American Thinker
September 13, 2009
The truth will out. Despite mainstream media attempts to characterize turnout as in the thousands, a spokesman for the National Park Service, Dan Bana, is quoted as saying “It is a record…. We believe it is the largest event held in Washington, D.C., ever.”
Democrats and their media acolytes may wish this weren’t so, and they may even employ the Ostrich Strategy, burying their collective heads in the sand, pretending that a major important political movement isn’t happening. But they only hasten their own demise in doing so.
Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit compares the littler left behind on 9/12 with the aftermath of the Obama inauguration. It is a startling contrast.
White House Says Health Care Protesters Not in Mainstream
Private health insurance lobbyist throws fundraiser for Nancy Pelosi: Report
Filed under: Argentina, Barack Obama, big bankers, Communism, Coup, Credit Crisis, DEBT, deflation, Dictatorship, Dollar, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, Fascism, FDR, Federal Reserve, global economy, global elite, global government, Globalism, Great Depression, Greenback, hyperinflation, imf, Income Tax, income taxes, Inflation, interest rate cuts, internationalist, internationalists, manipulated economy, national socialist, Nazi, Neolibs, New World Order, obama, obama deception, private banks, rate cut, socialism, Stock Market, tax, taxes, Taxpayers, US Economy, Wall Street, White House, World Bank
Barack Obama accused of making ‘Depression’ mistakes
London Telegraph
September 7, 2009
History repeating itself? President Obama has been accused by some economists of making the same mistakes policymakers in the US made in the Great Depression, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929.
His policies even have the potential to consign the US to a similar fate as Argentina, which suffered a painful and humiliating slide from first to Third World status last century, the paper says.
There are “troubling similarities” between the US President’s actions since taking office and those which in the 1930s sent the US and much of the world spiralling into the worst economic collapse in recorded history, says the new pamphlet, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.
In particular, the authors, economists Charles Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute, claim that the White House’s plans to pour hundreds of billions of dollars of cash into the economy will undermine it in the long run. They say that by employing deficit spending and increased state intervention President Obama will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the US economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years.
The study represents a challenge to the widely held view that Keynesian fiscal policies helped the US recover from the Depression which started in the early 1930s. The authors say: “[Franklin D Roosevelt’s] interventionist policies and draconian tax increases delayed full economic recovery by several years by exacerbating a climate of pessimistic expectations that drove down private capital formation and household consumption to unprecedented lows.”
Although the authors support the Federal Reserve’s moves to slash interest rates to just above zero and embark on quantitative easing, pumping cash directly into the system, they warn that greater intervention could set the US back further. Rowley says: “It is also not impossible that the US will experience the kind of economic collapse from first to Third World status experienced by Argentina under the national-socialist governance of Juan Peron.”
The paper, which recommends that the US return to a more laissez-faire economic system rather than intervening further in activity, has been endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, who said: “We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s’ Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.”
The authors of the pamphlet, Charles K. Rowley and Nathanael Smith, give their views.
Argentina’s Economic Collapse
Filed under: Barack Obama, despotism, Dictatorship, Empire, hypocrisy, Income Tax, Michelle Obama, Neolibs, obama, obama deception, oligarchy, tax, Taxpayers, White House | Tags: servant, servants
Michelle Obama And Her 26 Servants
Canada Free Press
August 17, 2009
Michelle Obama, as we reported on July 7, is not served by twenty-two attendants who stand by to cater to her every whim.
She is served by twenty-six attendants, including a hair dresser and make-up artist.
The annual cost to taxpayers for such unprecedented attention is approximately $1,750,000 without taking into account the expense of the lavish benefit packages afforded to every attendant.
Little did American voters realize the call for “change” would result in the establishment of an Obama oligarchy.
Filed under: 1984, AARP, abortion, americorps, amnesty, Barack Obama, Big Brother, Communism, Control Grid, Dictatorship, doctors, Empire, eugenicist, Eugenics, euthanasia, Fascism, Genocide, government bureaucrat, government committee, government control, government regulation, health and environment, health care, health choices commissioner, Healthcare, healthcare rationing, Hitler, hospital care, House, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, Income Tax, medicaid, medical care, medical industrial complex, mentally disabled, nanny state, national id, Nazi, nazi germany, Neolibs, New World Order, NWO, obama, obama care, obamacare, Oppression, orwell, patients, Population Control, private insurance, ration, rationing, Ron Paul, Senate, senior citizens, socialism, special needs, special needs children, Surveillance, tax, Taxpayers
What’s In Health-Care Reform Bill Will SHOCK You
The Real Revo
July 29, 2009
Great Leader and Chairman Obama wants to ram his gargantuan health care bill down our throats before anyone realizes what’s in it. What doesn’t he want us to see? Some examples, from a quick inventory by Family Security Matters:
Pg. 22 of the HC Bill mandates the Government will audit books of all employers that self insure.
Pg. 30 Sec 123 of HC bill – a Government committee will decide what treatments/benefits a person may receive.
Pg. 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill – YOUR HEALTHCARE WILL BE RATIONED!
Pg. 42 of HC Bill – The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your health care benefits for you.
Pg. 50 Section 152 in HC bill – Health care will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise.
Pg. 58 HC Bill – Government will have real-time access to individual’s finances and a National ID Health-card will be issued!
Pg. 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 – Government will have direct access to your bank accounts for election funds transfer.
Pg. 65 Sec 164 is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions and community organizations (read: ACORN).
Pg. 72 Lines 8-14 – Government will create a health care exchange to bring private health care plans under Government control.
Pg. 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill – Government mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example – Translation for illegal aliens.
Pg. 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 – The Government will use groups, i.e. ACORN and Americorps, to sign up individuals for Government health care plan.
Pg. 85 Line 7 HC Bill – Specifics of Benefit Levels for Plans. AARP members – your Health care WILL be rationed.
Pg. 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill – Medicaid Eligible Individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.
Pg. 124 lines 24-25 HC Bill – No company can sue Government on price fixing. No “judicial review” against Government Monopoly.
Pg. 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill – Doctors/ AMA – The Government will tell YOU what you can earn.
Pg. 145 Line 15-17 HC Bill – An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE.
Pg. 126 Lines 22-25 HC Bill – Employers MUST pay for health care for part time employees AND their families.
Pg. 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill – Any NON-RESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay.)
Pg. 195 HC Bill – Officers and employees of the health care admin (the GOVERNMENT) will have access to ALL Americans’ finances and personal records.
Pg. 203 Line 14-15 HC Bill – “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax” Yes, it says that.
Pg. 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill – Government will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Elderly, very sick, low income, poor will be affected.
Pg. 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill – Doctors – doesn’t matter what specialty – will all be paid the same.
Pg. 253 Line 10-18 – Government sets value of Doctor’s time, professional judgment, etc. Literally, value of humans.
Pg. 265 Sec 1131 – Government mandates and controls productivity for private health care industries.
Pg. 317 L 13-20 – PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Government tells Doctors what/how much they can own.
Pg. 317-318 lines 21-25,1-3 – PROHIBITION on expansion – Government will mandate hospitals cannot expand.
Pg. 354 Sec 1177 – Government will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people!
Pg. 425 Lines 4-12 – Government mandates Advance Care Planning Consultations. Think Senior Citizens end of life (euthanasia)
Pg. 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3 – Government provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in how to die.
Pg. 427 Lines 15-24 – Government mandates program for orders for end of life. The Government has a say in how your life ends! ( euthanasia )
Pg. 429 Lines 10-12 – “advanced care consultation” may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from the Government to end a life!
Pg. 430, SEC. 1233, Lines 11-15, ADVANCE CARE PLANNING CONSULTATION: The Government will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life.
Pg. 472 Lines 14-17 – PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATION. 1 monthly payment to a community-based organization. (Like ACORN?)
There’s plenty more provisions here (scroll down). Also check out the actual bill (HR 3200).
Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will Eliminate Private Insurance
Health Care Bill Will Fund State Vaccine Teams to Conduct ‘Interventions’
Obama-Care Will Deny Health Care To Elderly, Very Sick And Poor People
Obama Health Bill Allows Government Real-time Access to Bank Accounts
Ron Paul: The Immorality of Taxpayer Funded Abortion
Ron Paul: Healthcare Plan Based on Economic Fantasy
Americans are Victims of Undeclared War that Makes Universal Healthcare Unaffordable
UK: Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections
Filed under: adam kokesh, audit the fed, bernanke, bloomberg, campaign for liberty, Credit Crisis, DEBT, deflation, Dollar, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, end the fed, Federal Reserve, global economy, gold, Great Depression, Greenback, hr 1207, hyperinflation, Income Tax, Inflation, IRS, private banks, Russia, silver, Stock Market, tax, taxes, truth movement, US Economy, Wall Street
Adam Kokesh on Russia Today: Audit the Fed!
Filed under: alan grayson, audit the fed, Barack Obama, bernanke, bloomberg, campaign for liberty, Credit Crisis, DEBT, deflation, Dollar, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, end the fed, fda, Federal Reserve, global economy, Great Depression, Greenback, hr 1207, hyperinflation, Income Tax, Inflation, IRS, Neolibs, obama, poll, private banks, Ron Paul, Stock Market, tarp, tax, taxes, truth movement, US Economy, Wall Street
Rasmussen Poll: 75% Favor Auditing The Fed
Rasmussen
July 29, 2009
So much for the ongoing secrecy of the nation’s independent central banking system. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Americans favor auditing the Federal Reserve and making the results available to the public.
Just nine percent (9%) of adults think that’s a bad idea and oppose it. Fifteen percent (15%) aren’t sure.
Over half the members of the House now support a bill giving the Government Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative agency, the authorization to audit the books of the Federal Reserve Board.
Support for the bill has grown now that the Obama administration is proposing to give the Fed greater economic regulatory powers. The Fed which sets U.S. monetary policy was created as an independent agency to keep it free of politically-motivated interference.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in a town forum filmed on Sunday which is airing this week on PBS stations said he is strongly opposed to the audit legislation. “I don’t think the American people want Congress running monetary policy,” he said. Howard Rich addressed this issue in a recent commentary and concluded it was important to locate the “trillions of dollars” the Fed has spent over the last year-and-a-half.
The new survey finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans in every demographic category – including age, gender, political affiliation, race and income – disagree with Bernanke and favor auditing the Fed to make its secretive deliberations public.
Gallup Poll: Americans turning against the Federal Reserve
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
July 28, 2009
As momentum builds for Ron Paul’s efforts to audit the Fed, a new Gallup poll shows that Americans are turning against the Federal Reserve, with just 30 per cent saying the agency is doing a good job.
35 per cent rate the job the Fed is doing as “only fair” and 22 per cent say it is doing a “poor” job.
The contrast compared with when the question was last asked in 2003 is clear. Six years ago, just 5 per cent thought the Fed was doing a “poor” job, while 53% thought it was doing a “good/excellent” job.
The Fed is bottom of the pile when compared to the ratings received by other agencies in the poll (we hesitate to call the Fed a “government agency” because it isn’t). The IRS and the FDA are the other two least popular agencies.
According to Gallup editor in chief Dr. Frank Newport, “Americans are blaming to some degree the actions or inactions of the Federal Reserve board” for the economic turmoil.
Increasing skepticism towards the role of the Federal Reserve arrives alongside efforts on behalf of Congressman Ron Paul to audit the Fed with his widely supported H.R.1207 bill.
The legislation would amend existing law to allow the Comptroller General to audit the Federal Reserve Board and its member banks.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke seems frightened to death at what might be revealed if the Federal Reserve were forced to open its books and has been busy scuttling around lying about the bill in order to try and shoot it down.
During an appearance on PBS NewsHour which will be aired later this week, Bernanke claims that the bill will hand Congress the power to run monetary policy in the United States.
However, as CBS News’ Declan McCullagh points out, it does nothing of the sort.
“This is an odd claim,” writes McCullagh. “If you read the bill (H.R.1207), it simply amends existing law to say “under regulations of the Comptroller General, the Comptroller General shall audit” the Federal Reserve Board and its member banks.”
Bernanke has proven that he will stoop to any level in order to try and sink the bill, which has the support of over half of the U.S. House of Representatives, even committing an act of economic terrorism last month when he threatened a collapse of the dollar and the entire financial system if the bill was passed.
One thing that an audit of the Fed might shed more light on is the destination of trillions of dollars in TARP funds, which the Federal Reserve refuses to disclose even after a lawsuit was filed by Bloomberg, as well as the destination of half a trillion dollars that was given to foreign banks.
During a hearing last week, Bernanke was confronted on the question of who received $500 million in credit swaps by Congressman Alan Grayson, to which Bernanke responded, “I don’t know.”
“Half a trillion dollars and you don’t know who got the money?” asked Grayson.
Filed under: 13th amendment, 2-party system, 2008 Election, 9/11, Barack Obama, Communism, Congress, Dictatorship, Draft, Empire, Fascism, House, Income Tax, John McCain, left right paradigm, Military, militia, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, obama, Senate, slavery, supreme court, tax, US Constitution | Tags: involintary servitude, mandatory national service, mandatory service, national service, selective service
Obama and McCain endorse National Slavery
Deprogram
September 12, 2008
Yesterday, at ground zero, John McCain and Barack Obama announced their cooperation and favorability for so-called “National Service” legislation. When the Democrats and Republicans agree on something, you know you’ve got something to worry about. You can read all about it.
But what is really behind this call for service? Moreover, why do we need a law to get people to voluntarily help out in their local communities? This is what those at nationalserviceact.org have to say about the legislation:
This website presents information for both voluntary and mandatory National Service. This begs the question of which type of National Service does ANSA prefer.
Neither.
There it is right there in the open: “National Service” does not imply voluntary participation. Of course, any normal reading of the 13th amendment would tell you this is simply illegal:
Amendment XIII
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Seems pretty obvious, involuntary servitude is illegal by the thirteenth amendment. But then again, we still have “Selective Service” and every male must involuntarily sign his life away to the State when he turns 18, so we can assume that the constitution doesn’t matter to these people.
Here is what the lawyers for the National Service Act have to say about the legality of their involuntary servitude:
Is mandatory National Service constitutional?
Yes.
The United States has practiced several forms of mandatory National Service throughout its history. The Militia Act of 1792 and the Selective Service System (a.k.a. the Draft) are the two most referenced examples. Probably the most commonly experienced form of mandatory service is jury duty. Also, it can be argued that paying taxes is a form of mandatory National Service.
One can reference dozens of US Supreme Court Cases that weighed individual rights versus civic obligations. The most prominent case on this matter is Butler v. Perry (1916). In this instance the Court ruled that the 13th Amendment does not apply to mandatory national service. For further information on the legal precedence of National Service click HERE
Apparently the 13th amendment only applies to individuals enslaving other individuals, slavery is ok and to be considered a good thing when it’s the State who is the slavedriver.
Read the entire FAQ on this soviet bill.
Update:
[Obama] said he would make federal assistance conditional on school districts establishing service programs and set the goal of 50 hours of service a year for middle and high school students.
For college students, Obama would set the goal at 100 hours of service a year and create a $4,000 annual tax credit for college students that would be tied to that level of service.
Filed under: Congress, Dictatorship, Empire, George Bush, Germany, House, Income Tax, IRS, Nazi, neocons, Russia, Senate, stalin, tax, Uncategorized | Tags: exit tax, expatriate
Nazi “exit tax” enacted in the United States
Mark Nestmann’s Blog
August 7, 2008
America now has officially joined the ranks of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia by enacting its first-ever “exit tax.” President George W. Bush signed the legislation–passed unanimously last month by both the House and Senate–into law yesterday, June 17.
You must pay the exit tax within 90 days of “expatriation”–giving up your U.S. citizenship or (in some cases) long term residence in the United States. Only a few hundred people do this each year, but Congress didn’t like the fact that severing all ties to the United States allows wealthy people to legally avoid all U.S. tax. For my take on the exit tax, click here and here.
The news isn’t all bad, though, particularly if you’re not wealthy enough to trigger the tax. In that case, you can bypass some of the complexities and hassles of the law the exit tax replaced. If you are wealthy enough to trigger the tax, though, the new law will definitely make life more difficult if you ever decide you want to take the only legal path to permanently end all U.S. tax obligations.
noworldsystem.com 