US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria
by Tony Cartalucci, Activist Post
Recently reported in “Brookings Announces Next Move in Syria: War,” it was stated that “by the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution’s own admission, the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan in Syria was merely a ploy to buy time to reorganize NATO’s ineffective terrorist proxies and provide them the pretext necessary for establishing NATO protected safe havens from which to carry out their terrorism from.” It was also examined in detail, how in 2007, US, Saudi, and Israeli officials admitted they were creating a militant front of extremists for the sole purpose of causing the destabilization of Syria we see today, and ultimately overthrowing the Syrian government.
It was noted how these extremist militants had direct ties to Al Qaeda.
Now it is fully admitted that weapons, cash, and logistical support is indeed being provided to terrorist forces in Syria by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf States.
The U.S. spends 1 Billion per day on war killing 500 on average on illegal wars since 2001
The US Spends $1 billion & Kills 500 Every Day Since 2001 in illegal Wars of Aggression
The Avengers has earned over $1 billion in ticket sales; this colossal amount of money communicates that the story inspires the hero in all of us. Americans can direct their heroism here:
Because of the tremendous sacrifices of all our families through two world wars, the US authored war law into treaty status; US “Supreme Law” in Article 6 of the US Constitution. War law is crystal-clear: a nation can never use its military in armed attack unless another nation’s government attacks first. This means the US armed attacks/wars on all current nations are unlawful Wars of Aggression, the worst crime a nation can commit.
Peer-reviewed professional and independent studies conclude that the US war-murders (direct and indirect) ~500/day since 2001. Shockingly, this is lower than the US annual war-murder average since WW2 of ~1,000 to 1,500/day (20-30 million total; 300-500,000/year since 1945).
Why “Fair” isn’t fair and why our government will abuse us with this term
Reporting From: Undisclosed location, United States
This concept of 'fair' seems to be dominating discussion of the US government's dismal fiscal condition. The talking heads say that it's 'fair' for wealthy Americans to pay higher taxes and bail the country out... or that everyone needs to pay his/her 'fair' share.
The whole logic is absurd: you do not 'fix' the country's fiscal imbalances by giving the idiots in charge even more resources to squander... it's like dumping gasoline on a forest fire. Somehow the debate seems to have missed this point.
This 'fair' nonsense is also very dangerous. Just ask any three-year old-- 'fair' is completely arbitrary. It's like a Wiki version morality... if enough people agree on it, it's fair.
In this case, 'fair' is defined in the sole discretion of those who are the direct beneficiaries of confiscating other people's money. But let's look at the numbers:
According to the IRS statistical database, the top 1% of income earners in the United States pays roughly 40% of all US individual income tax. They also get audited at least 5-times more than anyone else. Fair?
The other major complaint seems to be that the wealthy are 'abusing' capital gains rules in order to pay a 15% rate instead of a 35% rate. Duh. That's why they're wealthy, and stay wealthy... they don't WORK for a living, they OWN assets which are subject to capital gains.
It seems so bizarre that a country once regarded as the freest, most economically enviable in the world would treat its productive citizens with such hostility.
This is where Eduardo Saverin comes in. The Facebook co-founder, who finds himself a few billion dollars richer this week, recently renounced his US citizenship. And, to the intelligentsia, it's not 'fair'.
'Saverin needs to pay his fair share! He owes America more,' they whine, completely ignorant that the 30-year old is already forking over a $500+ million exit tax (which may end up in the billions).
Apparently it's not good enough that the company Saverin co-founded has created tens of thousands of jobs, spawned entire industries, and produced oodles of new millionaires. Oh yeah, it's also made things damn easy for the CIA, NSA, and FBI. You'd think Uncle Sam would pin a medal on his chest.
But no. Saverin left behind a lot of value and decided to move on to greener pastures in Singapore. Now the do-gooders in Congress are cooking up new legislation (the EX-PATRIOT Act) designed to permanently bar 'renunciants' like Saverin from re-entering the United States.
It's interesting that, rather than change their ways of doing business and introducing legislation that provides incentives for productive people to come here and stay here, they maintain policies that chase people away, and introduce new ones to lock the door after they're gone.
The lesson here (especially for natural-born citizens) is this: simply by accident of birth, you are born with a lifelong obligation that you never signed up for to finance the corrupt misdealings of the political class. And if you choose to abandon this obligation, they will bar you from ever entering your homeland again.
Regardless of what the propaganda says, this is not how a free society treats people. It might look and feel like a representative democracy on the surface, but under the hood it's the modern day equivalent of feudal serfdom.
The land of the free has certainly fallen a long way.
The same Fed that piled up 16 Trillion in debt thought they should pay out $430 Million in bonuses…
The federal government paid at least $439 million in employee bonuses last year, down $43 million since new austerity restrictions were announced.
The largest merit awards went to senior executives in Washington and air traffic controllers, an Asbury Park Press investigation found. The highest award, $62,895, went to 16 employees from agriculture to NASA.
The $439 million in bonuses may be a staggering amount — enough to buy the former New Jersey Nets, valued at about $357 million by Forbes magazine — but it represents just 0.4 percent of the $105 billion in salaries for most of the government’s civilian employees. In 2010, at least $482 million was paid in bonuses, according to federal data.
“This is the same president that criticized the banks for distributing bonuses when they were under — some of them involuntarily — government support,” said Grant Cardone, of Los Angeles, a regular commentator for Fox Business News. “Federal employees are already overpaid and coddled with pensions and a variety of benefits.... How many roads could have been fixed or people put to work with this money?”
Read more: http://goo.gl/dM6b2
A true melting pot: Whites now account for less than 50% of the births
Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history.
Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration.
While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”
We are now the old Soviet Union: Want to renounce your U.S. citizenship… pay 30% of what you own!
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.
In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut this week. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap the benefit of tax savings by becoming a permanent resident of Singapore, which levies no capital gains taxes.
At a news conference this morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” – “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” – Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”
The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.
The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Tom Goodman, Saverin’s spokesman, told Bloomberg News in an email.
Last year 1,700 people renounced their U.S. citizenship. http://goo.gl/BLp5s
Mo Big Bro: UTAH SCHOOL FINED $15,000 FOR ACCIDENTALLY SELLING SODA DURING LUNCH
A Utah high school is learning the hard way that the government is serious about nudging students away from food it doesn’t want them to consume. Davis High School in the Salt Lake City area is having to fork over a whopping $15,000 in fines to the Feds because it accidentally sold soda through a vending machine during lunch.
Federal law requires the school to turn off its soda machines during the lunch period, which is 47 minutes a day. And Davis High school did turn off the machines in the lunch room. However, the school didn‘t realize that there was another machine in the school bookstore that wasn’t being turned off. And when the food police realized it, the school was hit with a $0.75 fine per student for the duration of the offense.
Now the school is going to have to cut money to fine arts programs to make up the cost.
KTVX-TV has the report:
But here’s where things really get nutty, so to speak. Davis High School Principal Dee Burton said that the law is disingenuous. For example, while students can’t buy soda, they can buy sugar-loaded sports drinks and even Snickers bars because they contain, you guessed it, nuts. In addition, students can buy soda earlier in the day before the machines get turned off and drink it during lunch.
And simple economics is at play, too. The ban isn’t forcing students to stop drinking or eating the sugar-laced food and drink. It’s just driving them to places where they can get it.
“The misconception is if we don’t let kids buy candy and pop, we drive them to the cafeteria, it doesn’t drive them to the cafeteria it drives them off campus,” Burton told KUTV.
One commenter on the KUTV website picked up on that.
“The principal is right, the kids will leave campus. What are you going to do? Close Walmart and Quick Trip for 47 minutes every day?” the commenter wrote.
Don’t give them any ideas.
http://goo.gl/vjUUC
Medicare’s beneficiary rate is already 1-to-1 and the system pays out 10 times more per person than it collects in taxes
That Which is Unsustainable Will Go Away: Medicare (May 16, 2012)
Medicare is an example of an unsustainable system that will go away in the decade ahead.
Here are the sobering facts about the number of workers and those drawing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid entitlements in the U.S. While the government claims to have a "trust fund" to pay for Social Security and Medicare, this is illusory propaganda. There are no funds set aside to pay these entitlements--they are "pay as you go" programs funded by current tax revenues. If the tax revenues don't cover the programs' expenses, the Treasury sells bonds, i.e. issues debt to pay the entitlements.
Social Security (SSA) has 61 million beneficiaries as of March 2012.
Medicare has 49 million beneficiaries as of November 2011.
Medicaid has over 50 million beneficiaries; another source puts the current number at 58 million.
Kaiser Family Foundation says roughly 7 million "dual-eligibles" who receive both Medicaid and Medicare, so let's use the data point of 50 million Medicaid-only recipients.
We can assume that most people drawing Medicare benefits also draw Social Security, while the 8+ million drawing disability from Social Security are also covered by Medicaid.
However you slice it, there are roughly 60 million people drawing Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and another 50 million Medicaid recipients for a total of 110 million people drawing significant entitlements.
As I have noted here many times, there are only 115 million full-time jobs in the U.S.
That means the ratio of workers to recipients of significant "pay as you go" entitlements is roughly 1-to-1: 115 million full-time workers and 110 million people drawing Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.
These programs consume the majority of the Federal budget. The Federal government spends around $3.7 trillion and collects around $2.6 trillion in taxes, so the basic deficit is $1.1 trillion. Off-balance sheet "supplemental appropriations" mean the real deficit is actually considerably higher.
Social Security costs $817 billion, Medicare and Medicaid costs total about $800 billion annually, and program outlays rise every year. The Pentagon/National Security budget is around $690 billion.
As I detailed in The Fraud at the Heart of Social Security (January 17, 2011), the program paid out $707 billion in 2010 and collected $631 billion in taxes, a $76 billion shortfall for 2010. The current program (2012) cost is $817 billion, a leap of $100 billion in a few short years as Baby Boomers flood into the program.
Of the roughly 150 million workers in the U.S., 38 million earn less than $10,000 per year, 50 million earn less that $15,000 a year and 61 million earn less than $20,000 annually. All these numbers are drawn directly from Social Security Administration payroll data.
100 million wage earners, or 2/3 the entire workforce, earn less than $40,000 per year.
Median pay in the U.S. is about $26,360 annually, while the average pay is about $40,000. Since the average American household takes in $63,091 per year, it seems the typical wage is roughly $30,000 a year.
The Medicare tax is 2.9% of wages, 1.45% each for employer and employee. If the typical worker makes $30,000 a year for 35 years, then lifetime earnings are about $1 million. If we take the $40,000/year average, then that rises to around $1.4 million in lifetime earnings. The 2.9% Medicare tax thus totals about $30,000 to $40,000 in lifetime contributions for the average worker.
Read more: http://goo.gl/Lto3r
Japanese Pension Fund Switches To Gold For First Time Ever
As US weak hands keep piling out of gold whether to make space for the Facebook IPO tomorrow, or just to load up on paper currencies in advance of central banks printing much more, two things have happened: China is now on its way to becoming the biggest source of gold demand, surpassing India, but more importantly as of hours ago, in a truly historic move, "Okayama Metal & Machinery has become the first Japanese pension fund to make public purchases of gold, in a sign of dwindling faith in paper currencies." Not our words: the FT's.
Mo Big Bro: OFFICERS SHUT DOWN MASS. ICE CREAM STAND INDEFINITELY
Dibs on the mint chip…
An ice cream stand in Great Brook Farm State Park, MA (of course), was shut down by state officials this weekend after it was discovered that the owner had made building improvements without the appropriate permits, lowellsun.com reports.
“Mark Duffy, who has operated the dairy farm at the state-owned park for 26 years and has a lease with the state to run the stand, said armed Environmental Police officers showed up at stand on Friday evening and stood guard throughout the weekend, turning away customers,” lowellsun.com’s Chris Camire reports.
And as if having the stand shutdown wasn’t bad enough, the park officials did it over Mother’s Day weekend.
“Edward Lambert, commissioner of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, said the stand was closed after it was discovered construction had been done without local or state permits,” Camire reports.
“The work, which expanded the stand, included construction on a barn built in 1910 that is adjacent to the stand,” the report adds.
Lambert’s excuse? He’s protecting the public until the state is positive the improvements are 100 percent safe.
“I like ice cream as much as anybody, so it pains us to even temporarily close what is an iconic property, but we have to make sure people eating ice cream there are safe,” said Lambert. http://goo.gl/7bDgj