Friday, June 11, 2010

Time for law abiding American citizens to stop paying taxes, start a new government? 10 of 13

David Degraw has written an outstanding comprehensive explanation of what’s really happening in the US economy. He’s given me permission to reprint it here. I also recommend his site "For Our Economy" for citizen grass-roots activism for economic justice.

Regarding the title of Americans starting a new government, I remind readers of the Declaration of Independence; our core American principles of government. The below links document that US political “leadership” is not even close to following our constitutional limitations and therefore are “leading” unlawfully. Americans with an oath to defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, should choose to either honor their oath or admit allegiance to the current fascist imposter of the greatness this nation is on paper and in our ideals.
Another excellent summary is economist James Galbraith’s recent expert testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee of what will become “emperor has no clothes” obvious: the US economy is a rigged casino. Here is my best pitch to explain and document the fraud. Here is my best explanation of the obvious solutions. Here are my comprehensive resources to understand the US oligarchy in all its unlawful infamy in unlawful wars, war lies, torture and indefinite detention (including against Americans), and our controlled economic demolition.
I’ll present David’s documentation and analysis in 13 segments; each with his introduction. Use the “previous” and “next” buttons under the title to navigate to the different segments. Please share broadly with the understanding that all our economic problems really exist on paper only. They are propagandized and managed frauds; solved almost instantly by an economic structure designed for the public good rather than designed for an oligarchy. I stake my professional reputation on the factual reality of these statements and prove their objective existence in the data in the above links.
I appreciate David Degraw’s leadership to research and communicate the facts, and help us all embrace the terrible truth of US fascism that We the People must expose and end in order to unleash humanity and build a brighter future for all of us.
Look and verify for yourself. Res ipsa loquitur.
Is It Time for Law Abiding American Citizens to Stop Paying Their Taxes and Start a New Government?
By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus Report
The evidence is now overwhelming. The United States government has facilitated the theft of trillions of dollars of national wealth and 99% of the US population no longer has political representation.
Now that I have your attention, I want to make it clear to you that I am being rational and serious when I ask this question: Is it time for law abiding American citizens to stop paying their taxes and start a new government?
Before you roll your eyes and dismiss me as some “extremist,” let me explain the situation to those who are unfamiliar with my past reports. In my report on the Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States, I lay out the case proving that our economy and tax system has become an organized criminal operation. I defy anyone who spends time researching and analyzing the facts and overwhelming evidence to support this claim to prove otherwise. I invite anyone who thinks I’m wrong to a debate on national television. I’m talking to you, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and President Obama!
I torturously spend 60 plus hours a week researching this and the torrent of devastating news and evidence is mounting by the minute. The staggering level of theft continues unabated. As I am watching this unfold, I am horrified thinking about the severe consequences that have only just begun to reap their toll. Our nation is being raped and pillaged. Our future is going up in flames and our government isn’t even making the slightest effort to put out the fire. In fact, they are purposely pouring gasoline all over it.
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that… the machine will be prevented from working at all.” – Mario Savio
So let me take a deep breath and back up for a minute… and explain the urgent gravity of our current crisis.
X: Ponzi Nation: Welcome to America, Sucker
And when it comes to the Ponzi US economy, the last people in are American taxpayers, you and I. As Andy Kroll correctly put it in his Tom’s Dispatch report, “Ponzi Nation: Welcome to America, Sucker.”
“Ours is now a Ponzi nation. There is a new mood in the land. Just how it will play out is unknown, but a sense of having been conned is still spreading — as if not just surprising numbers of investors, but the whole country had experienced the last days of a giant Ponzi scheme. With it goes a feeling that what we’ve been living through, even in “the best of times,” wasn’t an American dream, but pure nightmare. Welcome to America, sucker.”
Knowing now how the market has been rigged to loot taxpayers and honest investors, let’s view these recent news items:
“States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement…. states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk…. public pension funds are trying a wide range of investments: commodity futures, junk bonds, foreign stocks, deeply discounted mortgage-backed securities and margin investing. And some states that previously shunned hedge funds are trying them now.”
“The financial crisis has blown a hole in the rosy forecasts of pension funds that cover teachers, police officers and other government employees, casting into doubt as never before whether these public systems will be able to keep their promises to future generations of retirees.
The upheaval on Wall Street has deluged public pension systems with losses that government officials and consultants increasingly say are insurmountable unless pension managers fundamentally rethink how they pay out benefits or make money or both….
After losing about $1 trillion in the markets, state and local governments are facing a devil’s choice: Either slash retirement benefits or pursue high-return investments that come with high risk.”
“Over 140 U.S. lenders folded in 2009 alone. To remedy the financial void left in their wake, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation wants public pension funds, which safeguard the retirement funds of millions, to buy in part or in whole the banks that couldn’t manage to keep their depositors’ funds…
Bloomberg News notes that pension funds in Oregon, New Jersey, California and New York may participate. The wire service also reported that firms being targeted for the plan control over $2 trillion in retirement funds.”
“Perhaps the biggest enemy is your 401(k) plan manager. Wolman and Colamosca say investors are making a huge mistake letting employers, Corporate America, Wall Street and politicians do your thinking for you. Why? Because they’re your enemy, they created and they control the 401(k) for their benefit, not yours. The fact is, 401(k) managers get rich off naïve investors.
How bad is it? A recent Forbes article, ‘Retirement Rip-Off,’ lambasted the industry. Using data from Dr. Mundell’s Center for Retirement Research at Boston College: ‘Even as 401(k) balances grow in size and importance, fees remain high and poorly disclosed.’ There are $2.9 trillion savings in 401(k)-type accounts. Fees on these 401(k)’s are estimated to exceed those of traditional pension funds by 1%. That means 401(k) savers are paying $29 billion in excess fees to the fund industry. And in a Bloomberg Markets report, retirement planning consultant Stephen Butler says, ‘Hidden fees of 1% can reduce a workers 401(k) returns by 15% over 30 years.’”
"What it all boils down to is that, in order to pay full benefits this year, Social Security will have to come up with an extra $29 billion to supplement the inadequate payroll tax revenue. Where will that money come from? It will have to come from increased taxes or from borrowed money. 'Wait a minute!' some readers will say. Hasn’t Social Security been receiving surplus revenue ever since the 1983 payroll tax hike? Isn’t there supposed to be approximately $2.5 trillion in the Social Security trust fund? The answer to both questions is yes. But there is a problem. Every dollar of that surplus Social Security revenue has already been spent by the government. Much of it went to fund wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rest has been spent on other government programs.
The American people were not supposed to find out about the great Social Security scam for another six years, and the government was hoping to continue to receive surplus money from the Social Security contributions of working Americans for at least that long. But the inevitable day of reckoning has come, six years sooner than anybody expected, because of the severe recession. And the government of the United States has been caught with its hand still in the empty Social Security cookie jar.
For more than a decade, I have been trying to expose the Social Security scam just like Harry Markopolos was trying to expose the Bernie Madoff scam. But nobody would listen…. If there was any doubt remaining, with regard to whether or not the trust fund contains any real assets, that doubt should have been removed by the following words in the 2009 Social Security Trustees Report:
‘Neither the redemption of trust fund bonds, nor interest paid on those bonds, provides any new net income to the Treasury, which must finance redemptions and interest payments through some combination of increased taxation, reductions in other government spending, or additional borrowing from the public.’
There is nothing ambiguous about the above words.”
“It’s not coming. It’s here, being incrementally rolled out, including painful structural adjustments - some legislated, others unavoidable like the possibility suggested in Jonathan Laing’s March 15 Bloomberg.com article, titled “The $2 Trillion Hole” in public-employee retirement plans….
Washington may impose higher taxes and devalue the dollar, but mostly expect benefit cuts, the idea being to end core ones including Medicare, Social Security, eventually Medicaid, plus others millions rely on but won’t get if tough measures are enacted. Expect them. Some are here. Others are coming through the same structural adjustments imposed on developing countries and just as painful and destructive….
Overall, the effects are devastating, including growing poverty, inequality, the destruction of the middle class and unions, hunger, homelessness, environmental harm, and police state measures to quell dissent - the essence of tyranny showing up in America and arriving at a fast clip.”
The IMF “Structural Adjustment Programs” (SAPs) that have devastated countries worldwide (correctly referenced above by Stephen Lendman) are the very programs that have been launched upon us, as I described in my report on the Economic Elite. We are already seeing the effects of this hostile takeover. I won’t recount all the horrific societal and economic statistics that I have reported on in detail in my report, “Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage,” but the economic attack on the United States has already resulted in the US having the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world, with a stunning 50 million citizens now living in poverty. It has also given us the highest inequality of wealth in our nation’s history. Step aside Robber Barons! America now has a much more powerful and depraved criminal class. Vi Ransel recently described the bailout-coup-structural-adjustment-program like this:
“This is the result of a deliberate strategy, one Washington has executed many, many times, though usually in ‘Third’ World nations, by using ‘Free’ Trade Agreements (FTAs) and its front groups, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. Purchased politicians plunge their countries into unsustainable debt. Under Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), national industries are sold to transnational corporations and privatized. Social programs are cut to the bone or eliminated altogether. Interest rates are ratcheted up and the economy collapses on itself like the World Trade Center while banks and corporate buzzards fight each other to pick the carcass clean.”
On a personal level, we have all been feeling the increased stress and early tightening effects on our own financial situations already. However, on the state and federal levels, we are just beginning to see the utter devastation that lies ahead of us.


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