Awaken slaves! - How The Private Central Bank Ponzi Scheme Trapped And Destroyed America

Once upon a time, in 1913, a corrupt Congress and a corrupt President transferred the money creation authority vested in the government by the Constitution to a private central bank. It was going to be called the Third Bank of the United States. Such a fundamental change to the nation's economy should have required a Constitutional Amendment. But earlier that same year, there had been a huge fight to ratify another Amendment, the 16th Amendment authorizing the income tax, and there is good reason to suspect that the 16th Amendment actually failed ratification even though the payers of that income tax were told otherwise.

"I think if you were to go back and and try to find and review the ratification of the 16th amendment, which was the internal revenue, the income tax, I think if you went back and examined that carefully, you would find that a sufficient number of states never ratified that amendment." - U.S. District Court Judge James C. Fox, Sullivan Vs. United States, 2003.

Getting yet another Amendment ratified against such opposition, or worse, having to cheat one through, would be extremely difficult.
Then there was a problem with the proposed name, "Third Bank of the United States", as it reminded people of the predations of the First and Second Bank of the United States.

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!" -- Andrew Jackson, shortly before ending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States. From the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834), according to Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels

Shortly after President Jackson (the only American President to actually pay off the National Debt) ended the Second Bank of the United States, there was an attempted assassination.
But I digress.
Faced with the possibility that a new Amendment to transfer money creation from the US Government to a privately owned bank might fail and fail badly, and with the name "Third Bank of the United States" already leading to opposition to the plan, the plotters did an end run around the Constitution, passing the federal Reserve act over Christmas vacation when the members of Congress opposed to the bill would be away. The name of the new bank was then changed to "The Federal Reserve." But, it is a private bank, no more "Federal" than Federal Express. From that moment on all currency would enter circulation as a loan at interest.

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit.We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson 1919

Ironically enough, this was the very system of banking the American Revolution was fought to free us from.

"The refusal of King George 3rd to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution." -- Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father

Starting in 1913, public schools stopped teaching about King George's Currency Act, which ordered the American colonies to conduct business only using bank notes borrowed at interest from the Bank of England, and since then American students are taught that the revolution was about Tea Parties and Stamp Acts, lest the more clever students wonder how we ended up back in the same banking system that led to the first revolution.
The Founding Fathers understood how dangerous such banking systems are, and I will try to teach you here what the public schools are forbidden to let you know. The Federal Reserve system is a deliberate trap, to enslave a population to unpayable debt in order to control and exploit them, and here is how it works.

Before any commerce can happen, currency must go into circulation. Someone has to borrow it from that private central bank. The borrower can be government, a business, another bank, or ordinary citizens using credit cards, car loans, or mortgages. For the purposes of clarity, we will use a single dollar to represent that initial borrowing from the central bank. For the purpose of this illustration, "borrower" refers collectively to the entire American nation.

That dollar now enters circulation, passing from the original borrower to others, as payment for labor, in exchange for raw materials, as taxes, and so forth. Round and round it goes, passing from hand to hand, yet it is still a note borrowed from the Central Bank and it is still accruing interest. That Central Bank note, or (in the United States) Federal Reserve Note, is not a unit of value, it is a unit of debt.

At some point, that dollar is repaid to the Central Bank. The Central Bank then demands the interest. In our case, a nickle. But there is a problem. That nickle doesn't exist and it never did. It is imaginary.

So now the borrower has to borrow another dollar, out of which he takes a nickle to pay for the interest on the first dollar.

The rest of that second borrowed dollar now goes into circulation, but this time, only 95 cents is in circulation to pass from borrower to vendor to employee to grocery store to government, then back to the Central Bank.

The borrower goes back to the Central Bank to repay that second dollar, but only has 95 cents, plus he owes that imaginary five cents interest as well, or ten cents.

Once more the borrower has to borrow a new dollar from the Central Bank, only this time he has to take a dime out of that new dollar to hand bank to the banker. The borrower walks out of the bank with only 90 cents to put into circulation, while still owing a whole dollar plus five cents interest.

The cycle keeps repeating over and over with each new loan having to return more and more back to the Central bank as accumulated interest.

With each cycle the Central Banks gets richer while there is less and less currency available for commerce. People have to tighten their belts. Works are let go. Sales slow down. "Austerity" is imposed.

Eventually, a point is reached where as much accumulated interest is owed as the money being borrowed. So the borrower now has to borrow twice as much from the Central Bank merely to have the same actual currency in circulation as when they started. The Central Bank system only operates as long as the borrower is willing to go deeper and deeper into debt, and debt slavery. This is what makes the Central Bank scheme a pyramid system. It works only so long as ever-larger new generations of borrowers can be found to allow new currency to enter circulation, out of which the interest on the older loans is paid. And of course, by design, the debt can never ever be paid off. Once that first paper note is loaned into circulation, total debt will always exceed total currency. The system is designed that way, to keep you in debt, to keep you a slave to the bankers.
This is the reason that every nation on Earth with such a Central Bank is now drowning in debt. The Federal Reserve, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, are all built on this same system. This is why nations that refuse such banking systems are made war on.

"Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war." -- Nathan Mayor Rothschild, angered at the refusal of Congress to renew the charter for the First Bank of the United States in 1811. Congress stood firm and Britain, goaded to "recolonize" America by the Bank of England, headed at the time by Lionel de Rothschild, launched the war of 1812."If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." -- The London Times responding to Lincoln's decision to issue government Greenbacks to finance the Civil War, rather that agree to private banker's loans at 30% interest. Following Lincoln's assassination, the Greenbacks were taken out of circulation.
On June 4, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110, which authorized the US Treasury to issue "United States Notes, backed by silver, so that the American people would not have to borrow federal Reserve Notes at interest. Five months later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas, the US Notes were taken out of circulation, and John J. McCloy, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and President of the World Bank, was named to the Warren Commission, presumably to make certain the financial dimensions behind the assassination were never made public.

And what did it cost the Central Banks to wield such power over nations? Paper and ink, or today a few keystrokes on a keyboard. In fact the practices of the Central Bank would be felonies under the United States Coinage Act of 1972, which declared debasement of the gold and silver-backed currency of the United States a death penalty offence.
The Central Bank knows that those pieces of paper with ink are worthless. But while the Central Bank can just create those paper notes out of thin air (legalized counterfeiting), you may not. In order to pay that ever-growing debt you have to do what you are told to do by those who have some of those pieces of paper to hand out tell you to do. Work long hours. Invade a foreign nation that refuses to have a Private Central Bank. Torture innocent people to death to find weapons of mass destruction that do not exist to justify a war. Compromise your morals and integrity. Perform sexual favors. Whatever the purveyors of those pieces of paper want, you must do. That paper note is your slave chain.
And that is what it is all about. Control. Rule by artificially created debt. No different from other hoaxes played by the rich on the poor, such as Rule by Divine Right, or Rule by Chattel Ownership of your Body (slavery). As a human civilization we have outgrown these hoaxes and realize they are illegitimate forms of governance. So too shall it be with Rule by Debt. Those previous systems only worked as long as the subjugated population believed that those systems were real; the way the world was supposed to be. When the people broke free of the slavery of belief, those forms of enslavement collapsed.
Modern banking is not a science. It is a religion, simply a set of arbitrary rules and assumptions that favor the masters of that belief system, which we are brain washed in school to think is something tangible and real.
We have outgrown Rule by Divine Right and recognize slavery as inherently wrong.
Now is the time for the next step in our societies evolution in which the money must serve the people, rather than the people serve the money.
Central Banks are a failed experiment. Look at the devastation of Europe, or your own home town and you will see it.
The common enemy of all humankind are Private Central Banks issuing the public currency as a loan at interest.
 

Pentagon To "Temporarily" Fire 800,000 If No Cliff Deal; Chaos To Ensue

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Just in case the stakes in the final episode of the 2012 season of the "Fiscal Cliff" soap opera, and a 30 second advertising block was not selling for a record amount, here comes the Pentagon with a warning that it may fire almost 1 million civillians their services will be required but unpaid if there is no Cliff deal. From the WSJ: "Mandatory federal spending cuts designed to be prohibitively drastic will become a reality on Wednesday if negotiators remain unable to reach an agreement to avert the reductions. Illustrating the gravity of the cuts, the Pentagon plans to notify 800,000 civilian employees that they could be forced to take several weeks of unpaid leave in 2013 if a deal isn't struck, and other agencies are likely to follow suit. The cuts, which members of both parties have referred to as a "meat ax," are the product of a hastily designed 2011 law that required $110 billion in annual spending reductions over nine years to reduce the deficit. Their severity, representing close to 10% of annually appropriated spending, was intended to force Democrats and Republicans to come together on a broader package of deficit-reduction measures, which would replace the cuts. That effort failed, raising the prospect of the cuts' taking place."
It gets worse now that it turns out absolutely nobody is prepared for precisely the contingency America is now facing:
Complicating matters, the White House hasn't informed federal agencies or contractors of precisely how the cuts might be administered, leading to confusion about the potential impact. Several federal agencies referred questions about the cuts to the White House's Office of Management and Budget. OMB didn't respond to questions.

Economists expect UK to lose AAA credit rating

At least one of the three main credit ratings agencies expected to downgrade UK's status as experts predict tough 2013

George Osborne admitted that austerity would run for at least eight years until 2018. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Britain is expected to lose its AAA credit rating this year, dealing a blow to George Osborne's defence of deep spending cuts as the key to retaining Britain's status with global investors.
Many economists predict at least one of the three main credit ratings agencies – Moody's, Fitch or Standard & Poor's – will declare the UK a bigger lending risk in response to the chancellor's admission in the autumn statement that austerity will run for at least eight years, until 2018, rather than the original five.
Those same economists largely agree that in a world where most developed countries have found life tough going, there will be little impact on the UK's creditworthiness. Like the US and France, which have already seen their pride dented by a demotion to AA, the UK will still be a safe haven for foreign cash, and thereby enjoy relatively low interest rates.
But lower growth and bigger borrowing add up to a greater risk that the UK will find 2013 tougher than expected.
All the major forecasters have downgraded growth for the coming year, including the Treasury's own Office for Budget Responsibility. The OBR's most recent outlook put growth in 2013 at 1.2% – down from the previous prediction of 2%. Not until 2017 does the trend return to a point where unemployment comes down in any significant way.
Part of the downgrade in growth stems from expectations of lacklustre investment spending by business. Without investment in new equipment, the economy is likely to suffer over the longer term. Osborne has promised a rise in public investment this year, partly to make up the difference, but only enough to make up a quarter of the total he cut in 2010.
In budget terms 2013 will be characterised by social security cuts, which are due to take effect in earnest after an initial focus on tax rises (the increase in VAT to 20%) and job losses in the public sector (more than 700,000 so far).
Middle income families with at least one parent paying the higher tax rates will lose some or all of their child benefit. From April cuts in disability benefits and housing benefit will slice around £3bn from the social security bill. Tax credits will also be squeezed, with many people finding they are no longer eligible or suffering a cut in income.
The UK may be helped by a resurgence in global economic growth. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicted in its twice-yearly economic outlook that the global economy will expand 3.4% in 2013 – up on 2.9% in 2012. Unfortunately almost all this expansion in output will take place in the far east and Africa, where UK exports have declined to a trickle. The UK's biggest market, the EU, will remain in the doldrums and the US will expand, but without breaking sweat.
There was a time, back in the crisis days of 2009, when global summits sought to recalibrate the world economy and get it moving more quickly, particularly to create employment. The International Monetary Fund is among many major institutions to warn national governments that they are pursuing the type of austerity policies that lead to lower, not higher growth.
Russia is host to the G20 club of countries that rescued the world in 2008 but has since found little purpose. Russia, bogged down in the Syrian war and gas supply disputes eastern Europe, is not seen as capable of breaking the deadlock.
Britain will host the G8 in June. This meeting of the major economic powers has greater potential to make decisions, especially in respect of the banking system that brought the world to its knees. Tougher regulations are on the way and there are deep divisions over how fast to implement them. Go too quickly and regulators risk turning banks into zombies, unable to move or think for themselves. Slacken the regulatory knot, and they will lend recklessly again.
Yet it is the G20 that has taken the lead on banking regulation in an attempt to get developing country members to sign up. The trouble is that countries without big banks want financial institutions bound by strict rules while those with "systemically risky" banks are more ambivalent.
The UK, which has borrowed about 500% of its annual national income, mainly through reckless banks, is at the sharp end of this debate. And it is that debt that will continue to weigh on the economy.
Banks are cutting their losses at the expense of their ability to lend. The Bank of England is likely to print more money in 2013 to offset the effect through its quantitative easing programme, but it is unlikely to alter the current trajectory, where the UK is stuck on a path of low growth with London, buoyant on a wave of foreign money, increasingly divorced from the rest of the country.

In an Interview About Regulating Financial Markets Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Pays Homage to Keynes and Marx

By JG Vibes
theintelhub.com
December 31, 2012
The Rothschilds are one of the wealthiest of the ruling class bloodlines and share the biggest piece of the global tax and land plunder with the Merovingian bloodline, then with the Rockefellers following close behind.
The hierarchy of these families is still heavily debated, but many agree that these three specific bloodlines have significant global influence.

These family lines can be traced back to the feudal nobility of the middle ages and they are still in control of the majority of the world’s attainable wealth.  They also own most of earths land surface and they continue to influence global policy in many ways.
The primary way that the Rothschild bloodline has maintained their control, is through monopolizing the money supplies of entire countries.  This allows them to covertly extract wealth from billions of people through their governments without them even realizing it.
If this were a bank robbery, the government could be seen acting as the get away driver.  Despite this obvious fact, many people are led to believe that the government is somehow interested or even capable of “regulating” the ruling class.
In reality, the ruling class uses the government to impose regulations that they themselves write, in order to benefit their own businesses, and stomp out upcoming competition that may threaten their dominance in the marketplace.
There is a misconception that families like the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds are advocates of “free market” policies, but both in practice and in rhetoric these families use their influence of the government to push forward communist and Keynesian measures which lead to a more controlled marketplace.
In a recent interview Sir Evelyn de Rothschild pays homage to John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx while calling for increased government regulation of financial markets, if such a thing were even possible at this point.
In the interview he said that:
“Inclusive capitalism is a difficult subject and I could speak for a long time on it.  But I think it’s a reflection on where capitalism was intended [to go].  Whether you’re talking about Karl Marx or John Maynard Keynes, capitalism today has changed and I think inclusive capitalism is about giving a broader opportunity for people to participate.”


Ironically he also spoke of the gap between “the haves and the have nots”, totally disregarding and overlooking the fact that the organizations that he supports and influences are directly responsible for this widening gap.
If you listened to some of the well crafted words that Rothschild puts forward in this interview, and in other appearances, you would be led to believe that him and his family are very concerned about the well being of the planet earth and those downtrodden people upon it.
However, a very different situation is presented when looking deeper into the policies that these people advocate and the history that they have of impoverishing whole civilizations with their monetary schemes.
The Federal Reserve is an example of a financial regulation, it is much more than that, but at its heart, it is a financial regulation.  It is an organization that not only regulates the currency and its value, but it also uses the government to force everyone in the country to use this particular currency, and no other.
As we saw with the liberty dollars, and the systems complete dismay with BitCoin, they will not accept any competition or threats to their monopoly.  These are the kind of monopoly creating regulations that the Rothschilds and others support.
People should be able to trade with whatever they want to, and if they were allowed to do so, this world would be a radically different place.  Not only would it be completely different, but families like the Rockefellers and Rothschilds would be out of business for good.

*****
Read more articles by this author HERE.
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer and reporter for The Intel Hub and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio. 
You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com

Number of Homeless Afghan, Iraq Vets Doubles

In an article published by the Army Times titled “Number of homeless Iraq, Afghan vets doubles,” the exponential increase in homeless veterans in the last two years is brought to light by the military’s media mouthpiece. The article states, “Through the end of September, 26,531 of [veterans] were living on the streets, at risk of losing their homes, staying in temporary housing or receiving federal vouchers to pay rent, the Department of Veterans Affairs reports.”
That is up from 10,500 in 2010 and the VA admits the numbers could be higher because they include only the homeless veterans that the department is aware of. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that the number is considerably higher.
This increase in Veteran homeless rate has occurred despite that President Obama Obama vowed in 2009 to end veteran homelessness by 2015.  As the fiscal cliff goes so do the veterans it seems.


Anne Murphy, a Salvation Army Homeless Veteran program director in Los Angeles, CA attributes the increase to our veterans today being, “younger, much more savvy and they don’t necessarily like to ask for help,” Murphy says. “But there are a lot of them out there.”
Sure a good explanation of the increase could be that those “whom have borne the battle” are returning home to one of the worst economic situations in history. This doesn’t explain the veterans being “more savvy,” as Mrs. Murphy claims, however.
Veterans face a world much different than the one they left from. One that resembles the land of their birth but one also, that because of their experiences, will never be the place that they remember from their childhood.

Government and Big Banks Joined Forces to Violently Crush Peaceful Protests

Mussolini Would Call It Fascism

The definition of fascism used by Mussolini is the “merger of state and corporate power“.
Government and the big banks are in a malignant, symbiotic relationship. And our economy now exhibits a merger of state and bank power.
Prominent economist Robert Kuttner said in 2009:

What we have is something perilously close to a dictatorship of the Fed and the Treasury, acting in the interests of Wall Street.

The government and banks use anti-terror laws to stifle dissent.
As Naomi Wolf reports, they joined efforts to violently crush the occupy protests:

The violent crackdown on Occupy last fall … was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
[A newly-released document] shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens. ….
Plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target ….
The FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”….
[The executive Director of The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund - the group which obtained the document] points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:
“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”
The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a “Bank Fraud Working Group” met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its “domestic terrorism” unit. The Anchorage, Alaska “terrorism task force” was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan “joint terrorism task force” was issuing a “counterterrorism preparedness alert” about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the “Bank Security Group” – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to “National Bad Bank Sit-in Day” (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state’s Occupy members’ details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its “joint terrorism task force” aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.

Eric Zuesse notes:

The FBI was organizing against the OWS movement even before it was known to the general public, and they kept on their campaign against it, until it was dead.
***
The FBI’s police-state snooping and tracking of Occupy Wall Street … had begun even before most Americans knew that there was any such movement for the FBI to snoop against.
In other words, the reason why Barack Obama’s “Justice” Department refuses to prosecute even a single one of the mega-bank executives who profited so enormously from having defrauded both mortgagees and the investors in mortgage-backed securities, and who were bailed out by future U.S. taxpayers whose government purchased those remaining “toxic assets” at 100 cents on the dollar, is clear: we live in a police state, and these elite crooks control it. This is not real democracy.
Voters were given a choice in November between a President like that but whose liberal rhetoric is condemnatory of “Wall Street,” versus a professional stripper of corporations, whose rhetoric was overtly supportive of Wall Street. And voters chose the former. But this nonetheless is a police state, not an authentic democracy.

Mussolini would recognize it as fascism.

'US Economy Will Collapse Like Greece'

Watch his link ....... http://shar.es/hPDjg  via @sharethis

Why we are on the brink of the greatest Depression of all time

By Wayne Allyn Root

Published August 23, 2012

FoxNews.com

Everywhere from FoxNews.com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pending doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Welcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years.
More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic and mindset of the average American.
I am a successful small businessman and a patriot who loves America and always sees its greatness. I am also an optimistic, positive thinker who always sees the glass half full.
But not this time.
This time we are in such deep trouble, the only solution is a radical restructuring of the politicians, the economy, and the way we view personal responsibility versus government handouts. If those changes don't come then we are facing a long decline and the eventual end of America.

The economy is crumbling. The situation is turning more hopeless by the hour. The more government gets involved, the worse it gets. Coincidence?

-

This time the results are going to be dramatically worse than 1929. This time we are facing The Greatest Depression ever.
Why? Because The Great Depression had NONE of the structural, economic, and social problems, nor the massive obligations we are now facing. Read the facts:
In 1929 America was not $16 trillion in debt, plus facing over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. That’s over $360,000 in debt per citizen.
In 1929, most of our states were not bankrupt, insolvent and dependent on federal government handouts to survive. One county (Cook County which includes Chicago, Illinois) now owes over $108 billion in debt (the biggest part of it in unfunded government employee pensions).
In 1929, we did not have 21 million government employees with bloated salaries, obscene pensions, and free health care for life. Today 1 out of 5 federal employees earn over $100,000.
Today, 77,000 federal employees earn more than the governors of their states.
Staggering numbers of federal government employees retire at a young age with $100,000 pensions for life.
Unfortunately on the state and local levels it’s even worse. There is now nearly $4 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities for state government employees.
Protected by their unions and the politicians they elect, government employees are bankrupting America. In Illinois there are retired government employees making over $425,000 per year.
No one could have imagined any of this in 1929. There is no possible way to pay these bills moving forward.
In 1929, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid didn’t exist. The federal government had no such obligations threatening to consume the entire federal budget within a few years.
In 1929, there was no such thing as welfare, food stamps, aid to dependent children, or English as a second language programs. American’s didn’t consider it the responsibility of government to pay for breakfast and lunch for school students -- let alone for illegal immigrants at school.
Who could have imagined back in 1929 that one seventh of America's population would be on food stamps…and the federal government would ADVERTISE to encourage even more Americans to sign up for food stamps and welfare.
Who could imagine back then that the federal government would team up with the President of Mexico to encourage Mexicans living illegally in America to sign up for food stamps?
Who could have imagined back then that the president would offer not just welfare, but waivers to allow any state to opt out of requiring work to receive welfare?
Back in 1929, who could have imagined 86 pregnant teenage girls all in one Memphis high school?
In 1929 we had families, moral codes, and churches to prevent this kind of tragedy. Do you actually believe this is just one abnormal high school? There must be record numbers of pregnant teens all over America. They have figured out that the choice is to either work a drab, depressing job paying minimum wage, or pump out babies and have government pay your bills for decades to come. But where will the money come from? This will overwhelm the system with generations of massive debt. This is a nightmare.
In 1929, legal immigrants wanted only to work. My grandparents, who came to this country from Russia and Germany, received no government benefits. They worked day and night to provide for their family and become American citizens. It was sink or swim. My grandmother Anna Root never took a penny in welfare, even when my grandfather died and left her with no job, no money, and 7 young children. So back in 1929 immigrants cost us very little.
Today we have millions of illegal immigrants and their children collecting billions of dollars in entitlements from U.S. taxpayers.
In one state (California) illegal aliens cost taxpayers over $10.5 billion annually just for education, health care and incarceration. Do you now understand why California is bankrupt and insolvent? This is spreading across the country.
More dysfunction? Today new studies show that almost 20% of American children under age 18 are obese and therefore prone to suffer pre-diabetes, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease.
Even worse, by 2020 experts predict that 52% of the adult population of America will have either pre-diabetes or diabetes.
Do you understand the cost of diabetes? This alone will overwhelm and bankrupt America's health care system.
In 1929 we had no federal disability program. Today almost 11 million Americans are on disability. There are more citizens on the disabled rolls than the population of 39 of our 50 states. This is far worse than the welfare or unemployment rolls- which have time limits. Disability is forever. The ratio of able-bodied workers to disabled in 1967 was 41 to 1. As of June 2012 it is now 16 to 1. It is impossible to pay this bill long term.
But wait...it gets worse. Now soldiers are in on the act. Are you aware 45% of returning vets are claiming "disability" -- a number that dwarfs all prior records in the history of warfare. No nation can afford this.
In 1929, we had an education system that was the envy of the world. Today our public schools are in shambles. We spend the most money in the world, and get among the worst results. The difference today? Teachers unions are in charge, instead of parents. Our students graduate with few skills, are qualified only for low paying manufacturing jobs that no longer exist -- they've been shipped to China and India. What will this workforce do for the rest of their lives? Live off the government dole? Who will pay for it?
In 1929 taxes were much lower. Forget the tax rates -- they were meaningless. In those days we had a cash economy, so most businesses paid little or no taxes. Sales and FICA taxes didn’t exist. Today the combined local, state, property, gas, sales, FICA and federal taxes are the highest burden in history.
Unconvinced?
When income taxes started in 1913, the average American was untouched. Only the richest 350,000 Americans paid a 2% income tax. Today the average American works until April 12th just to pay his or her taxes.
This stifles entrepreneurship and hinders the financial risk-taking necessary to create jobs and get out of a Great Depression.
New numbers just out for July back up my contention that disaster looms. Sales tax revenues plunged an alarming $539 million below expectations in California last month. The jobless rate rose in July in 9 out of 10 battleground states -- Iowa, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina all had higher unemployment (while Ohio held steady). They say bad news comes in threes. Well here's the worst news of all- the American Petroleum Institute reports that demand for oil in July was at the lowest level since 1995. These figures are alarming -- to say the least.
Do you get the picture? Our country is staring at the Greatest Depression ever. We face a  long slow decline towards the end of America -- unless we change paths and policy quickly.
The economy is crumbling. The situation is turning more hopeless by the hour. The more government gets involved, the worse it gets. Coincidence?
The solution is actually simple: dramatically cut the size, scope and power of government; cut spending; cut entitlements; cut taxes; cut government rules and regulations that smother, damage and destroy businesses, prevent startups, and kill jobs; reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; reform public employee pensions; stop the wars (we can no longer afford to police the world); end or reform the Fed; end bailouts and stimulus (ask Japan about the failures of repeated stimulus); end the Democratic obsession with green energy and high speed rail (ask Spain about the waste in those two programs); encourage oil and energy exploration; encourage job creation by small business and the private sector; term limit politicians; institute school choice; and back the dollar with a gold standard.
Or, like so many other great empires of history, America may never recover from this Greatest Depression of All Time.
Wayne Allyn Root is capitalist evangelist, entrepreneur, and Tea Party Libertarian Republican. He is a former Libertarian vice presidential nominee. He is the best-selling author of "The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts." For more, visit his website: www.ROOTforAmerica.com.

Republicans and Democrats Agree; Cut Aid to the Poor, Not Israel

Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch

HUMAN TARGETS — In a must-read investigation, geographer Joel Wainwright uncovers how the military and US intelligence agencies are becoming increasingly reliant on academic geographers and GIS systems to help them target drone strikes and other lethal operations in war zones;  LIFE INSIDE A YOGA SEX CULT: From forced sex with gurus to force-feeding and sadistic sex acts, Stewart J. Lawrence investigates the dark side of the tantric yoga craze; MUSIC CENSORSHIP: Lee Ballinger reprises the ugly history of music censorship campaigns, from Tipper Stickers to prosecutors targeting rap artists; JAPAN’S NEW MILITARISM: Tom Clifford reports from Beijing on the increasingly belligerent rhetoric of the new rightwing government led by Shinzo Abe; PRIVATIZING THE AIR: the last round of global warming talks in Doha was another huge triumph for the corporations, pushing more discredited neoliberal schemes like Emissions Trading System. Patrick Bond excavates through the rubble.

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Republicans and Democrats Agree

Cut Aid to the Poor, Not Israel

by MEDEA BENJAMIN And CHARLES DAVIS

With the U.S. economy in the tank and governments at all levels facing massive budget shortfalls, politicians left and right are seeking ways to curb spending. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to eliminate collective bargaining rights and the decent pay that goes with them. President Barack Obama’s budget includes halving the home-heating oil subsidy poor households depend on.

As Republicans and Democrats propose cuts in programs that actually benefit their increasingly impoverished constituents, though, they agree there’s one area of the budget that’s not to be touched: the annual $3 billion subsidy U.S. taxpayers provide to the Israeli military.

One of the biggest defenders of the handout is House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. "There will be no cuts to security assistance to the Jewish State of Israel," her chief of staff declared in a recent letter to House Republicans. The rest of the U.S. foreign aid budget, including assistance for Iraqi refugees and food aid to the world’s poorest people, is fair game. But the Florida congresswoman insists we must help Israel maintain its "Qualitative Military Edge."

And congressional Democrats have her back.

Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, for instance – a leading member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – has drafted a letter, cosigned by California Democrat Anna Eshoo, warning that the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia "have the potential to add to the very real security challenges faced by Israel." Reducing or "otherwise endangering aid to our ally" would be "unproductive," she adds, encouraging her colleagues to tell Obama they "strongly support … providing $3.075 billion in assistance to Israel." (For those shivering at home, that’s more assistance than Obama is proposing to offer Americans trying to keep their houses warm.)

This liberal appeal for Israeli military aid, meanwhile, is being sent out under the auspices of J Street, a group that positions itself as a left-leaning answer to AIPAC. But J Street staff we spoke with at their recent conference were hard-pressed to explain why U.S. taxpayers should fund a right-wing Israeli government that continues to build settlements and maintains an inhumane siege of Gaza.

So it’s left to folks like libertarian Congressman Ron Paul and his son, Kentucky Senator and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul, to call for ending aid to Israel. In a February 4 interview with ABC News, Rand Paul said of Israel, "I think that their per capita income is greater than probably three-fourths of the rest of the world. Should we be giving free money or welfare to a wealthy nation? I don’t think so."

Indeed, Israel has the 24th largest economy in the world, and ranks 15th among 169 nations on the UN Human Development Index, which makes it a "very highly developed" nation.

Yet what thanks did Senator Paul get for his call to save the U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars? A torrent of criticism, even from J Street, which called on Republicans – and their donors – "to repudiate his comments and ensure American leadership around the world is not threatened by this irresponsible proposal."

Paul’s fellowTea Partiers aren’t any better. Of the 87 freshmen House Republicans elected on platforms of cut-baby-cut, at least three-fourths have now signed a letter declaring that, "As Israel faces threats from escalating instability in Egypt" – where have we heard that line of argument before? – "security assistance to Israel … has never been more important." Subsidies are for militaries, you see, not poor people.

But even without U.S. funding, Israel would still spend $11 billion-plus on its military, more than all but 20 other nations in the world spend on their armed forced – and hundreds of millions of dollars more than the Islamic Republic of Iran, despite having just 1/10th the population. Throw in a couple – as in, couple hundred – little things called nuclear weapons, and, for better or worse, the Jewish state’s "Qualitative Military Advantage" isn’t going anywhere.

But you wouldn’t know that listening to the folks at J Street or to liberals like Jan Schakowsky, who hysterically cite the specter of Arab democracy to advocate billions in subsidies for a government that openly flouts international law. So much for their concern about human rights. And so much for being progressive. Indeed, with liberals like these, the Netanyahu government and its allies at AIPAC are likely asking themselves: who needs the Tea Party?

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange.

Charles Davis is a journalist.

Judge gives 'shock' probation release of $13 million mortgage fraud chief

FORT WORTH -- State District Judge George Gallagher has ordered the shock-probation release of a woman who has served less than two months of a 10-year sentence for a key role in a $13 million mortgage fraud scheme, prosecutors said Saturday.
Chekeelah Phelps, 48, of Grand Prairie, who allegedly made $1 million, was being held in jail late Saturday. She could be freed after the state verifies it has no further reason to hold her, according to the district attorney's office.
Judge-ordered shock probation allows a person convicted of a misdemeanor or a first-time felony to be released within 6 months of incarceration. The intent is to deter a person from criminal activity after experiencing life behind bars. -- Mitch Mitchell

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/12/29/4513565/judge-gives-shock-probation-release.html#my-headlines-default#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

Do Zionists Control Wall Street? The Shocking Facts!

Questcor Finds Profits, at $28,000 a Vial

Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

Christina Culver with her son Tyler, 6, at home in Colorado Springs this month. In 2007, Tyler was hospitalized when the price of Acthar soared.

By ANDREW POLLACK

THE doctor was dumbfounded: a drug that used to cost $50 was now selling for $28,000 for a 5-milliliter vial.

The physician, Dr. Ladislas Lazaro IV, remembered occasionally prescribing this anti-inflammatory, named H.P. Acthar Gel, for gout back in the early 1990s. Then the drug seemed to fade from view. Dr. Lazaro had all but forgotten about it, until a sales representative from a company called Questcor Pharmaceuticals appeared at his office and suggested that he try it for various rheumatologic conditions.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Lazaro, a rheumatologist in Lafayette, La., says of the price increase.

How the price of this drug rose so far, so fast is a story for these troubled times in American health care — a tale of aggressive marketing, questionable medicine and, not least, out-of-control costs. At the center of it is Questcor, which turned the once-obscure Acthar into a hugely profitable wonder drug and itself into one of Wall Street’s highest fliers.

At least until recently, that is. Now some doctors, insurance companies and investors are beginning to have doubts about whether the drug is really any better than much cheaper alternatives. Short-sellers have written scathing criticisms of the company, questioning its marketing tactics and predicting that its shareholders are highly vulnerable.

 That Acthar is even a potential blockbuster is a remarkable turn of events, considering that the drug was developed in the 1950s by a division of Armour & Company, the meatpacking company that once ruled the Union Stock Yards of Chicago. As in the 1950s, Acthar is still extracted from the pituitary glands of slaughtered pigs — essentially a byproduct of the meatpacking industry.

The most important use of Acthar has been to treat infantile spasms, also known as West syndrome, a rare, sometimes fatal epileptic disorder that generally strikes before the age of 1.

For several years, Questcor, which is based in Anaheim, lost money on Acthar because the drug’s market was so small. In 2007, it raised the price overnight, to more than $23,000 a vial, from $1,650, bringing the cost of a typical course of treatment for infantile spasms to above $100,000. It said it needed the high price to keep the drug on the market.

“We have this drug at a very high price right now because, really, our principal market is infantile spasms,” Don M. Bailey, Questcor’s chief executive, told analysts in 2009. “And we only have about 800 patients a year. It’s a very, very small — tiny — market.”

Companies often charge stratospheric prices for drugs for rare diseases — known as orphan drugs — and Acthar’s price is not as high as some. Society generally tolerates those costs to encourage drug companies to develop crucial, possibly lifesaving drugs for these often neglected diseases.

But Questcor did almost no research or development to bring Acthar to market, merely buying the rights to the drug from its previous owner for $100,000 in 2001. And while the manufacturing of Acthar is complex, it accounts for only about 1 cent of every dollar that Questcor charges for the drug.

Moreover, the tiny “orphan” market soon became much bigger. Before long, Questcor began marketing the drug for multiple sclerosis, nephrotic syndrome and rheumatologic conditions, even though there is little evidence that Acthar is more effective for those other conditions than alternatives that are far cheaper. And the company did so without being required to prove that the drug actually works. That is because Acthar was approved for use in 1952, before the Food and Drug Administration required clinical trials to show a drug is effective for a particular disease. Acthar is essentially grandfathered in.

Today, only about 10 percent of the drug’s sales are for infantile spasms. The new uses, Mr. Bailey has told analysts, represent multibillion-dollar opportunities for Acthar and Questcor, its sole maker.

The results have been beyond even the company’s wildest dreams. Sales of Acthar, which accounts for essentially all of Questcor’s sales, totaled nearly $350 million in the first nine months this year, up 145 percent from the period a year earlier. In the same period, Questcor’s earnings per share nearly tripled, to $2.12. In the five years after the big Acthar price increase in August 2007, Questcor shares rose from around 60 cents to about $50, in one of the best performances of any stock in any industry.

But in September, the shares plummeted after Aetna, the big insurer, said it would no longer pay for Acthar, except to treat infantile spasms, because of lack of evidence the drug worked for other diseases. The stock now trades at $26.93.

Peter Wickersham, senior vice president for cost of care at Prime Therapeutics, a pharmacy benefits manager that has found the drug is possibly being overused, says the huge increase in Acthar’s price for patients “just invites the type of scrutiny that it’s received.”

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You’re Funding Your Own Destruction – Me? I’m done.

By Mark S. Masta (A Political Rennie)
Let’s start with the fact that the people who passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and President Wilson, who signed it into law, committed an act of treason.
Article I, Sect. 8, Cl. 5: Only Congress shall have the power . . . to coin Money, and regulate the value thereof.
What the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 did was abrogate that power of Congress to create Money to a privately owned, for profit central bank called the Federal Reserve Bank without a Constitutional Amendment.
The Fed creates money out of thin air at the moment it’s borrowed and then loans it to the government and other banks at interest.
Notice, they only create the debt, not the interest. All the US dollars in circulation represent only a debt created out of thin air.
In other words, if the American people paid off the entire debt there would be no money in circulation with which to carry on business but, we would still be in debt because we still owe the interest. The only way to pay any interest and get more money into the economy, with which to carry on business, is to borrow more money from the Fed.
Watch: The American Dream (FULL LENGTH) — END THE FED!!! (30:00)
Do you see the trap? The system is designed to create a debt that can never be paid because, we will always still owe the interest. Also read Awaken slaves! – How The Private Central Bank Ponzi Scheme Trapped And Destroyed America.
It’s called “Debt Slavery.”
So, how does our government spend this debt (that can never be repaid) that the people of America are supposed to be responsible for?
Well, let’s start with just the last ten years or so.
We have illegal, immoral wars of aggression that we went along with because they lied about why we had to fight these wars. The government is responsible for the deaths of well over a million innocent people in these wars that they wage in our name. Can you still believe they simply hate us for our freedoms? That’s costing us TRILLIONS of dollars and still counting.
They bailed out criminal bankers who knowingly engaged in fraudulent schemes that have resulted in the destruction of, not only the US economy but, that of the entire world, just to keep their bankster friends from going to jail. That’s costing us TENS of TRILLIONS of dollars and still counting.
Then there’s Israel. Always Israel. They give them BILLIONS of dollars every year and few Americans know that this is completely illegal according to the Symington Amendment of 1976 and the Glen Amendment of 1977. There’s no end in sight to that either.
They’re spending HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars to militarize, arm, and train our law enforcement agencies around the country to deal with the new domestic terrorist threat deemed by the government to now be us! (Remember how we used to call them Peace Officers before they began calling themselves Law Enforcement Officers?)
We’re also funding the tools needed by a president turned dictator who, on December 31, 2011, (literally under the cover of darkness, at 8:30 PM, while America was busy celebrating the new year) granted himself the power to assassinate any American citizen, on US soil, simply because he deemed them a terrorist suspect. No charges, no trial, no conviction, and all in secret. Couple those powers with those of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act (DHS) and we’re in for a rough ride.
Not to mention hundreds if not thousands of other schemes that are not authorized by the Constitution.
Now speaking for myself, I never asked for this debt, wanted this debt, nor authorized any of this debt which the government is using to engage in endless criminal activities and terrorize innocent people in countries who were never any threat to us. All of which they’re doing in my name.
By paying taxes to the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank I am telling the government and the world that I am complicit and consent to all these crimes.
I do not and will not consent to any of this!
As long as we keep paying taxes to the Feds they will keep loaning the government money which the government uses to continue these criminal enterprises.
As long as I’m paying taxes I’m funding our own destruction.
So, what can I do about it? The first thing is to reclaim my sovereignty and make legal notice that I do not owe these taxes and why.
I did this with a legal document known as a Commercial Affidavit.
This particular affidavit was specifically written to notify the IRS that I am a sovereign under Common Law jurisdiction, that I do not derive citizenship from the 14th Amendment and therefore I am not the property of the State and as such, I am not under it’s jurisdiction unless I consent. I do not.
From the front page of the document:
4.  An unrebutted AFFIDAVIT stands as TRUTH in Commerce.
5.  An unrebutted AFFIDAVIT becomes the judgement in Commerce.
The document gives thirty days from the time they receive it to send a rebuttal affidavit. If they do not, then they have acquiesced that everything in the document is true and from the date thirty days after they receive it, “the doctrine of ‘estoppel by acquiescence’ will prevail.”
The last year I paid taxes for was 2001. I haven’t heard from the IRS.
I purchased this document from an elderly gentleman in 2003 for $95.00. In 2009, after I had decided it had worked, I tried to contact him to see if he was still selling it since I hadn’t heard him advertise it for a few years. I wanted to see if he would let me give it away at no charge.
When I tried to e-mail him it bounced back and an attempt to call him got a recording that the phone was disconnected. I made every effort I could think of to contact him and failed. Since he was quite elderly I had to assume that he had passed on since I last talked to him in 2004.
I am not a tax attorney, consultant, accountant, or expert and do not claim to be such.
I wish to provide this document (link below) to others, free of charge, purely for educational and research purposes. If you make the conscious decision to use this document you do so at your own risk. I will tell you what the gentleman told me.
“There are no promises, no guarantees. All I can tell you is it worked for me.”
Black’s Law Dictionary, 9th Edition:
sovereign, (13c)  Page 1523
1. A person, body, or state vested with independent and supreme authority. 2. The ruler of an independent state.
Peace and Liberty,
A Political Rennie
IRS Affidavit with instructions

Britain must carve out new trade role in world: CBI leader

LONDON, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Britain must carve out a new global trading role for itself as part of a new, rapidly-changing European Union (EU), John Cridland, director-general of the Conferderation of British Industry (CBI), urged on Monday.
In his New Year message, the business lobbying organization leader outlined the importance of securing a ground-breaking EU-U.S. free trade agreement to generate long-term British growth and boost the flat domestic economy.
While stressing the importance of developing trade with the United States and the EU, Cridland also called for continuing efforts in driving forward ongoing EU trade talks with India, Japan and rapidly growing economies.
In his message, he said a historic U.S. deal is vital to creating long-term, sustainable economic growth and job creation in Britain and the EU. It would eliminate tariffs, liberalize goods and services, harmonize regulation, promote investment and set benchmark standards for trade in the 21st century.
Britain could not afford to "miss out on opportunities to use the EU to help rebalance the economy towards exports and create new trade deals based on its world-class reputation - in particular in financial and professional services; pharmaceuticals; and creative industries."
The message comes as the CBI kickstarts a major project in the New Year to flesh out how the UK's global role should look in a new Europe. It will examine how the UK can remain a leading location to do business globally - expanding export markets particularly for high-growth small and medium-sized firms, without losing access to the Single Market. It will report in mid-2013.
"We need to recognize and adapt to the realities of the multi-speed Europe which is emerging. The fallout in the eurozone from the debt crisis is not just forcing through rapid political and financial integration. It is also forcing all countries to fundamentally rethink the EU's wider purpose and deal urgently with the sort of structural flaws Europe has ignored for decadesn," Cridland said.
"We need global trade deals to drive growth and create jobs, especially when the domestic economy is growing more slowly than required. Businesses don't want the baby thrown out with the bathwater - not with 50 percent of our exports heading to Europe."

First the Fiscal Cliff, Now the Dairy Cliff

You think going over the fiscal cliff might be a big deal? Wait until you get a dose of the dairy cliff.
Sad to say it but the arrival of 2013 may bring a doubling in the price of milk to as much as $6 to $8 a gallon, up from about $3.75. For this, you can thank Congress, which seems to have lost the ability to carry out its most basic functions, starting with passing legislation.
The source of the dairy cliff can be found in the failure of Congress to agree on a new farm bill, which is normally renewed every five years. Not this year, and the deadline for passing a new law expires Jan. 1.
The upshot is that the rules governing dairy price supports will revert to legislation adopted in 1949, forcing the government to purchase milk at elevated prices. With Washington soaking up milk, market prices would follow.
How does a law from 1949 lead to a doubling of milk prices? The law sets a floor for milk prices based on dairy production costs 63 years ago, when farms were much less efficient and mechanized than they are today. Add in adjustments for inflation and a few bells and whistles and out comes a formula that requires Washington to buy milk at roughly twice the current price. That works out to about $40 per hundredweight compared with $18.56 now.
Dairy farmers probably won't mind. But everyone else down the dairy food chain would be affected, from consumers to cheese, butter and yogurt makers, who probably will resort to buying more imported milk to keep their costs in check.
This could all be averted if Congress passed a new farm bill that included a minimum price floor, like the one in the legislation about to expire. In recent years, with commodity prices at or near record highs, this floor has been lower than market prices for milk. Farmers could make more by selling their goods on the open market, and the floor never kicked in.
The deadlock over the farm bill has dragged on for half a year. The Senate passed a bill that included $23 billion of cost savings during the next 10 years. The House version contained $35 billion in savings, though that version never came to a vote because of opposition from members who sought more savings, mainly from the food-stamp portion of the bill.
The threat of reverting to the 1949 law is supposed to work just like the fiscal cliff -- the combined $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts if Washington can't reach a budget deal before the new year. It seems neither has worked.
There is a lot not to like about the two proposed versions of the farm bill. A better alternative would be to end most government subsidies for the farm industry. But congressional inaction that leads to soaring milk prices is inexcusable.
(James Greiff is a member of Bloomberg View’s editorial board.)

US Secretary Of Agriculture On Rural America , Gun Control And Milk Prices To Double In 2013

watch this link ..... shar.es/hPibx  via @sharethis

Gas and oil giants have staff on the government payroll working in the energy department

• Firms like British Gas and npower have staff on secondment to Whitehall
• Green MP Caroline Lucas says companies will expect 'something in return'
• Officials insist it helps shape government police

The taxpayer is paying the wages of more than a dozen employees of energy giants to work for the government.
Staff from firms including British Gas and npower have been put on the state payroll to take up jobs in Whitehall.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change, headed by Lib Dem Ed Davey, admitted it has 23 employees on secondment from private sector companies, including oil giants Shell and ConocoPhillips.
The government defended the use of public money to pay staff from companies regulated by the ministry, but critics said the firms would expect ‘something in return’.
The pay deals were revealed in freedom of information requests made by Green MP Caroline Lucas.
It also emerged civil servants from DECC had been seconded to work for private energy firms.
Ms Lucas said: ‘Fossil fuel giants should have no place at the heart of government given that their current investment strategies run contrary to the need to build a low-carbon future that delivers both security and prosperity.

‘It's even more outrageous that taxpayers are footing the bill for some of these secondments, including from British Gas-owner Centrica, at a time when British Gas customers are struggling in the face of a 6% rise in their energy bills, and the company is expected to make £1.4bn profits after tax this year,’ she told The Guardian.
‘These corporations obviously don't lend out their employees without expecting something in return.’

Green MP Caroline Lucas , who obtained the data through freedom of information laws, said the private companies would want something in return

Controversially, the secondees decide for themselves whether there is a conflict of interest in their work.
The contract states: ‘It is a condition of the secondment that the secondee ensures to the best of their ability that in the course of their duties for Decc there will be no conflict of interest or perception of such.’

ENERGY GIANTS WITH STAFF IN WHITEHALL

The 23 companies with employees seconded to the Department for Energy and Climate Change are:
Barclays
Carbon War Room
Centrica Energy
CES
ConocoPhillips (UK) Ltd
Durham University
Energypeople Ltd
Environment Agency
ESB
Jacobs Engineering UK
McGrigors LLP
Met Office
Mount Wellington Mine Ltd
National Grid
National Nuclear Laboratory
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
OFGEM
Pcubed
Rolls Royce
RWE
Shell
University College London

Joss Garman, political director of Greenpeace, said: ‘Centrica, Shell and RWE are corporations that make their huge profits from the fossil fuels that are warming our planet.
‘Nobody will believe that these vested interests are lending staff to Decc out of charity. To the contrary, they have a clear financial interest in putting their people into key positions where they can exert a malign influence that runs counter to the public interest.’
However, DECC insisted the secondees bring with them ‘knowledge and expertise’ which are ‘vital’ to government work.
‘DECC ensures that any secondee is bound by the professional Codes of Practice relevant to their industry or services provided.
‘It is normal for secondees to be paid directly by DECC or for their company to be refunded for their time spent working in DECC; this is standard practice across Government.
‘There are contractual measures in place to make sure that any employee seconded into DECC is not placed in a position where there could be a conflict of interest.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255251/Gas-oil-giants-staff-government-payroll.html#ixzz2GhbPR4sa
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Lou Dobbs, Dec. 10 2012

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
December 31, 2012
The middle class has quite a gift welcoming them as the calendar flips over to 2013.  Their payroll taxes are going to go up, their income taxes are going to go up, and approximately 28 million households are going to be hit with a huge, unexpected AMT tax bill on their 2012 earnings.  So happy New Year middle class!  You are about to be ripped to shreds.  In addition to the tax increases that I just mentioned, approximately two million unemployed Americans will instantly lose their extended unemployment benefits when 2013 begins, and new Obamacare tax hikes which will cost American taxpayers about a trillion dollars over the next decade will start to go into effect.  If Congress is not able to come to some sort of a deal, all middle class families in America will be sending thousands more dollars to Uncle Sam next year than they were previously.  And considering the fact that the middle class is already steadily shrinkingand that the U.S. economy is already in an advanced state of decline, that is not good news.  You would think that both major political parties would want to do something to keep the middle class from being hit with this kind of tax sledgehammer.  Unfortunately, at this point it appears that our “leaders” in Washington D.C. are incapable of getting anything done.  So get ready for much smaller paychecks and much larger tax bills.  What is coming is not going to be pleasant.
So what happened?
Weren’t the tax increases only supposed to be for the wealthy?
Well, that is what the politicians always promise, but it is always the middle class that ends up getting hit the hardest.
In this day and age, the big corporations and the ultra-wealthy are absolute masters at avoiding taxes.
For example, Facebook paid approximately $4.64 million in taxes on their entire foreign profits of $1.344 billion for 2011.
That comes out to a tax rate of about 0.3 percent.
Overall, the global elite have approximately 18 trillion dollarsparked in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.
Keep in mind that U.S. GDP for 2011 was only slightly above 15 trillion dollars.
So the global elite have an amount of money parked in offshore banks that is substantially larger than the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States each year.
According to one estimate, a third of all the wealth in the entire world is stationed in offshore banks.  Our politicians are playing checkers and the global elite are playing chess when it comes to taxes.  Our current system of taxation is irreversibly broken and should be entirely thrown out and replaced with something else.
And of course under our current system those that are poor don’t pay much in taxes because they are just trying to survive.
So who always ends up getting the painful end of the hammer?
The middle class does, and that really stinks.
Let us hope and pray that our politicians can come together and do something for the middle class.  In particular, we should all be screaming and yelling at our politicians about the Alternative Minimum Tax.  It was originally designed as a method to “tax the rich”, but unless Congress does something the middle class is about to be ripped to shreds by it.  The following is from a recent CNBC article about the AMT…

In a cruel epilogue to 2012, roughly 28 million families would owe the IRS $86 billion more than they anticipated for this year should the country plunge off the cliff, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Those families would face the “Alternative Minimum Tax,” which was introduced in 1969 to supposedly guarantee that wealthy Americans could not elude the taxman. But the AMT not only flopped, it was never indexed to inflation. So with each passing year, it seeps away from high society and into the wallets of Target and Wal-Mart shoppers. That sets up a disaster for April 15.

So how much money are we talking about?
According to that same article, many families are about to be socked by tax bills that will be absolutely huge…

On the whole, 98 percent of those with incomes between $200,000 to $500,000 would pay an additional $11,000 in AMT this year, according to the center’s estimates. About 88 percent of those with incomes of $100,000 to $200,000 would need to fork over another $3100, and even the majority of Americans with earnings between $75,000 and $100,000 would have an AMT liability.

Most of the tax increases that will be coming as a result of the fiscal cliff will be for 2013 earnings, but the AMT tax hike will apply to 2012 earnings.  So if you end up falling under the AMT, you better get ready to write a very large check to Uncle Sam in just a couple of months.
And the AMT is only just one of the very painful tax increases that American families will be facing.  If no deal is reached in Congress, every single middle class American taxpayer will be dealing with significantly higher taxes.
A recent ABC News report entitled “Fiscal Cliff: By The Numbers” detailed some of the other tax increases that you can expect in 2013…
So why don’t our politicians do something about all of this?
What are they fighting so bitterly about anyway?
Sadly, neither side is actually serious about substantially reducing the size of government deficits or about getting government spending under control.
During a recent interview on CNBC, Ron Paul explained that “they pretend they are fighting up there, but they really aren’t. They are arguing over power, spin, who looks good, who looks bad; all trying to preserve the system where they can spend what they want, take care of their friends and print money when they need it.”
Most in the mainstream media are making it sound like some kind of a “battle royal” is going on in Washington, but as Lou Dobbs recently pointed out, the U.S. national debt is going to end up in just about the same place no matter what happens.
According to Dobbs, if we “do nothing” the U.S. national debt will be approximately 25.8 trillion dollars in 2022.
If “Obama wins”, the U.S. national debt will be approximately 25.4 trillion dollars in 2022.
If “Boehner wins”, the U.S. national debt will be approximately 25.2 trillion dollars in 2022.
You can watch the entire analysis by Lou Dobbs right here…
So they are putting all of us through all of this torture even though nothing will really change in the long run no matter who wins?
What kind of a circus is this?
Meanwhile, the reckless spending continues.
Barack Obama has just issued a new executive order that ends the pay freeze for federal workers that had been in place.
So now all federal employees will be getting a nice hefty pay raise.
For example, Vice President Joe Biden brought in $225,521 this year.
Next year, he will make $231,900.
Not that our politicians really need the money.  Most members of Congress are millionaires anyway.  But if they can get us to pay for it, they might as well go for it, eh?
There are now close to half a million federal employees that bring homeat least $100,000 a year.  Plus, it is important to keep in mind that the benefits that federal employees get are absolutely outstanding, and it is close to impossible to actually fire a federal worker.
Life is good if you are working for Uncle Sam.
Meanwhile, our politicians seem determined to keep draining more blood out of the middle class.  Even if a “deal” is reached, we will still be hit by some categories of tax increases.  Let’s just hope and pray that we don’t get hit by all of the tax increases that are scheduled to go into effect.  That would be a financial disaster for millions of families.
So happy New Year middle class.  Your taxes are about to go through the roof and our politicians are too busy fighting with each other to do anything about it.
What else will 2013 bring?