CA CAFR shows $600 billion tax surplus, 1% criminals cover-up, demand ‘austerity’

Carl Herman
Washintonsblog.com
Monday, May 28, 2012

Clint Richardson details California’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) to reveal $577 billion in Californian taxpayers’ investments. This public evidence makes Governor Brown’s claim of a ~$16 billion budget deficit with no option than “austerity” a criminal lie of omission. This is similar if the governor claimed the public checking account didn’t have enough money for our children’s schools while he covered-up a savings account with over 30 times the claimed shortage.

Clint notes on page 107 of California’s CAFR that the $6 billion annual interest cost and $164 billion in state debt are also cover-ups when contrasted with taxpayers’ investments. The criminal economic fraud of the 1% expands with cover-ups of the policy options to issue its own credit and money to directly pay for public goods and services.

These facts at the state level in California are repeated by the two main political parties’ “leadership” in all states (explore here). They also reveal the US national debt as similar criminal fraud. Here are three simple points to explain:

1. The US does not have a money supply; we have its Orwellian opposite as a debt supply. This is because the US leading banks won legal right through passage of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act to have private banks and the Fed create debt for what we use as money, and then charge the 99% for its use.
2. The policy choice of a debt supply compounded with interest causes ever-increasing aggregate debt that can never be repaid. It can’t be repaid because this is what we use for money. The US national debt now pushing $16 trillion has a gross annual interest payment over $400 billion a year; ~$4,000 per US family of $50,000 annual income (if your household earns $100,000, then your gross annual interest payment is ~$8,000 every year).
3. Monetary reform creates debt-free money that extinguishes the debt (details here), and allows government to become employer of last resort for infrastructure investment (hard and soft). This creates full-employment, optimal infrastructure, and falling prices because infrastructurehistorically creates more value to the economy than cost. Credit reform allows for public loans (interest directly pays for public goods/services) as another monetary tool for stable money supply (credit reform details here).

Read the entire article

Heroes And More......

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
May 28, 2012


"Every fallen soldier is a hero in my book..... but those sending them are the cowards...."
-Mark Matheny


Today is the day when we look back to remember those who have fallen in the horrors of war. Each man and woman who has put their life in danger to secure the blessings of liberty is a hero in my book.

Though the wars are now illegal, and used to fatten the military industrial complex, the soldiers are the ones who see the pain and anguish of the battle. The ones who make it back never truly leave the battlefield, for it remains in their memories.

For those who have not seen war, no documentary or testimony can ever bring the reality to them. Experience is the only real way of knowing.

It is shameful when media whores and gatekeepers attack the soldier who is on the field, simply fighting for the cause of Liberty, and family. War is sometimes necessary, and sometimes not -  but those who actually fight the battle, do so in order to keep us free. Those who send them most always do so in order to enslave, kill, steal and destroy.

One day war will come to an end, and true peace will reign in the earth. We will then beat our swords into plowshares, and the nations shall know war no more.

Until that time, men and women will continue to fall upon lonely battlefields.

Families will continue to mourn, and there will be those who fatten their coffers on the bodies of those heroes who sacrificed.

Henry Kissinger once said something to this effect...

"Soldiers are just dumb animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy", and while this may be partly true, it is only true because our nation has been educated in the ways of war, but in the ways of peace we have been ignorant.

I only know that my heart remembers the sacrifice of those fallen..... but more than that - it absolutely breaks for those who still have yet to fall.

Get our soldiers home!!! Lift up your voices and bring them home Now!!!!

I'm tired of seeing so many fallen Heroes....

Veteran Mark Matheny

Memorial Day: Among post-9/11 veterans, deepening antiwar sentiment

Gloria Goodale,CS Monitor
May 27, 2012

Despite the end of the Iraq war and the scheduled drawdown in Afghanistan, this Memorial Dayarrives against a backdrop of deepening – and some say more troublesome – antiwar sentiment among military veterans.

One of the most vivid and replayed images of protesters at the NATO summit last weekend inChicago was a group of some 40 vets lined up to toss their war medals over the chain link fence to protest what former naval officer Leah Bolger calls “the illegal wars of both NATO and America.”

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 33 percent of post-9/11 veterans say that neither the war in Iraq nor in Afghanistan “were worth the cost,” and this among a highly motivated cohort who chose to serve.

What this means, says retired US Army Col. Ann Wright, who resigned from a State Department post in 2006 over US policies in Iraq, is that there is a widening gap between the government, military policies, and the soldiers that carry them out.

“Military personnel know America will always have a military, but there is growing concern over the way it is being used,” says the 29-year veteran, adding that an increasing list of concerns include “the use of torture, illegal detentions, and both soldiers and the public being lied to about the actual reasons for going into combat.”

Read the entire  article

Real federal deficit dwarfs official tally

USA Today
May 27, 2012


The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

A U.S. household's median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

Contrasting deficits

The federal government calculates the deficit in a way that makes the number smaller than if standard accounting rules were followed (in trillions).

Sources: USA TODAY research; Congressional Budget Office

Deficits are a major issue in this year's presidential campaign, but USA TODAY has calculated federal finances under accounting rules since 2004 and found no correlation between fluctuations in the deficit and which party ran Congress or the White House.

Key findings:

•Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That's $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.

•Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.

•Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.

"By law, the federal government can't tell the truth," says accountant Sheila Weinberg of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting.

Read the entire article

Foreign Agents Creep into U.S. & Canada Under Integration Scheme

The New American
May 27, 2012

Alex Newman
New American
May 27, 2012

As the so-called trilateral North American “integration” process marches onward toward an ever-closer union between the governments of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, national law enforcement agents are slowly creeping across borders through a variety of shadowy schemes. Going forward, that trend is set to accelerate, according to officials, who say government functionaries may soon be able to chase and arrest suspects outside of their own nations. But critics of the controversial plan are fighting back with increasing urgency.

U.S. and Canadian authorities have already spent millions of dollars on “pilot projects” seeking to blur national borders in the field of policing. Almost 150 so-called “cross-border” officers have been trained so far, according to a reportpublished this month byEmbassymagazine. Meanwhile, the Shiprider program — officially known as “Integrated Cross-border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations” — has been active since 2009, when high-ranking bureaucrats from the United States and Canada signed the agreement without even obtaining legislative approval.

“Shiprider removes the international maritime boundary as a barrier to law enforcement by enabling seamless continuity of enforcement and security operations across the border, facilitating cross-border surveillance and interdiction, and serving as both a force multiplier and, potentially, as a model for other U.S./Canadian cross-border (integrated) enforcement and security initiatives,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) says about the scheme on its website.

Under the highly controversial but little-known program, boats staffed by law-enforcement agents from both governments can scurry back and forth as if there was no border between the two nations. And in March, top Obama administration officials met with their Canadian counterparts to super-charge the unconstitutional process by signing even more “agreements” — again without consulting Congress, let alone ratifying a treaty.

“We will continue to work with Canada to further enhance information sharing and integrate our cross-border law enforcement operations, strengthening the national and economic security of both our nations,” claimed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after signing a deal to advance the process with Canadian officials. Her counterparts across the border issued similar statements following the meeting.

Disgraced Attorney General Eric Holder — currently being threatened with contempt of Congress charges for covering up and lying about the administration’s deadly “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal — also touted “integrated law enforcement” as a “key pillar” of what critics consider to be a subversive scheme. In a press release posted by the Canadian government following an agreement, the scandal-plagued Justice Department boss said he was “grateful” to his counterparts in Canada for their work to “strengthen the critical ties that bind our nations together.”

The Defense chiefs from the governments of Mexico, Canada, and the United States also met earlier this year and signed their own deals to integrate the three militaries and discuss ways to expand the use of the armed forces in continental law-enforcement operations. “We know that transnational threats require transnational responses,” the three claimed in a joint statement. “With this in mind, we have agreed to enhance our cooperation to support efforts to counter transnational criminal organizations and to respond to natural disasters in the hemisphere.”

Read the entire article

How the Media Manipulates Stories With Staged Photos

Liberty News Network
May 21, 2012

In this weekly video news update for May 21-27, 2012, JBS CEO Art Thompson discusses: how the media manipulates stories with photographs that are staged; and how they also are trying to create new conservative leaders for us.

 

Number of the Week: Half of U.S. Lives in Household Getting Benefits

Wall Street Journal
May 27, 2012

By Phil Izzo

49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.

Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recentCensus Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.

The increase in recent years is likely due in large part to the lingering effects of the recession. As of early 2011, 15% of people lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone enrolled in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits. Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely leading to more multigenerational households. But even without the effects of the recession, there would be a larger reliance on government.

The Census data show that 16% of the population lives in a household where at least one member receives Social Security and 15% receive or live with someone who gets Medicare. There is likely a lot of overlap, since Social Security and Medicare tend to go hand in hand, but those percentages also are likely to increase as the Baby Boom generation ages.

Read the entire article