JoeWo Joe Wosik Blog

So the Republicans with the help of 10 Democrats passed legislation that will cut the taxes of people inheriting over $7 million.  This was supposed to be aimed at family farms and business.  The total taxes that these people will not pay will total $250 billion.  Before you click the link to see the answer….guess how many people this will affect.  After you guess how many people $250 billion will affect then you may click the link and see the answer.  The answer is located here

While the number of American multimillionaires rose last year, Americans continued to suffer from the Great Recession. The unemployment rate reached double digits, millions of Americans lost their homes, and wages for most workers stagnated. The United States is unique among industrialized countries in its enormous income inequality. Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that if income inequality continues to rise at the current rate, the income gap in the United States “will resemble that of Mexico by year 2043.”

Full story is located here

Story is here

If any single number captures the state of the American economy over the last decade, it is zero. That was the net gain in jobs between 1999 and 2009—nada, nil, zip. By painful contrast, from the 1940s through the 1990s, recessions came and went, but no decade ended without at least a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs.

Many people blame the great real estate bubble of recent years. The idea here is that once a bubble pops it can destroy more real-world business activity—and jobs—than it creates as it expands. There is some truth to this. But it doesn’t explain why, even when the real estate bubble was at its most inflated, so few jobs were created compared to the tech-stock bubble of the late ’90s. Between 2000 and 2007 American businesses created only seven million jobs, before the great recession destroyed more than that. In the ’90s prior to the dot-com bust, they created more than twenty-two million jobs.

Others point to the diffusion of new technologies that reduce the number of workers needed to produce and sell manufactured products like cars and services like airline reservations. But throughout economic history, even as new technologies like the assembly line and the personal computer destroyed large numbers of jobs, they also empowered people to create new and different ones, often in greater numbers. Yet others blame foreign competition and offshoring, and point to all the jobs lost to China, India, or Mexico. Here, too, there is some truth. But U.S. governments have been liberalizing our trade laws for decades; although this has radically changed the type of jobs available to American workers—shifting vast chunks of the U.S. manufacturing sector overseas, for instance—there is little evidence that this has resulted in any lasting decline in the number of jobs in America.

Story is here

Video is located here

How strange. When I arrive at the offices of Eric Hermann at hedge fund FH International, just outside New York City, the company’s corporate sign is unbolted from the wall and the suite number removed from the door.

But wait … I hear noises inside the office. Huh? I knock on the locked door and out steps the office building’s security manager.

“Guys, they don’t want to be interviewed. They don’t want to be seen. So we are going to have to ask you to leave the building.”

“And do you know why they took the sign off?”

His reply to our cameras, “I have no clue.”

But we do.

Mr. Hermann is the principle owner of a so-called “vulture fund” which attempted to seize more than $20 million from the war-wounded nation of Liberia.

Mr. Hermann is known in the finance business as a debt “vulture.” He and his associates buy up the debt of the poorest nations on the planet, usually for pennies on the dollar, then sue or use other means to squeeze the nations to pay ten times, even a hundred times, what the vulture fund paid for the debt.

The effect of Hermann’s financial maneuvers earns little applause in Liberia. In that African democracy, diplomat Winston Tubman tells us what he would say to vulture fund operators, “‘Do you know you are causing babies to die all over Liberia?’”

Video is located here

And Costa Rica has a far more powerful social healthcare system than has ever been discussed in the US Congress.  So hopefully we will see Rush leave our nation.  Story is here

Here is video showing him discussing his moving plans.

On a private conference call, a group of top Tea Party and conservative organizers offered a surprisingly frank description of their goal, according to a source on the call: Completely blocking any kind of bipartisan compromise, and completely preventing any type of health care reform bill at all from ever becoming law.

The source who got himself on the call was an organizer for the AFL-CIO, and AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale provided me with the organizer’s notes. It’s certain to be seized on by Dems to argue that organized Tea Party opposition to Obama has no constructive intentions and is fomenting public “concern” about Obama’s plan solely to prevent any reform from ever taking place. GOP officials would argue that they don’t share these goals.

The call consisted of representatives of top conservative groups, such as the American Liberty Alliance, the “Tea Party Patriots,” and RecessRally.com, the AFL-CIO’s notes say.

The moderator on the call, whose name could not immediately be determined, told listeners that bipartisan compromise on the Senate Finance Committee, where senators are holding talks, must be stopped at all costs, AFL-CIO’s notes say. The moderator called on members to pressure GOP Senators seeking compromise with Dems, like Chuck Grassley, Mike Enzi, and Olympia Snowe, to stop the negotiating.

The full story is located here

Thom Hartmann discussing the world with CSPAN’s Brian Lamb.  Video is located here

The IMF helps guide the world’s financial world of loans and grants between richer countries and poorer countries.  They now say they were wrong about their view of controlling these problems from back in the 80s and going forward they are going to do more of a bottom up propping up of very very small companies.  This goes hand in hand with what Alan Greenspan said about the view of Reaganomics and Bushanomics recently.  This simply reinforces the view that the Conservative world of economics based on tax breaks for the rich is flawed and that $1 in a poor person’s hand is $1 spent in a far more beneficial way for the local community and nation.

Sarah Palin admits she used to go from her childhood home  to Canada to receive health care.  Another reason why the concept of denying the “rest of the nation” health care is really perpetuated by people who are not telling the truth and are in the pockets of the health care industry.  For her to admit this and for her to decry nationalized health care as bad is just sickening…pardon the pun. How can a mother with a special needs child do this to other mothers with special needs children?  She says it is ironic that she used to go to great lengths to get health care from Canada while at the same time she says the Canadian concept is so bad and for us to adopt their concepts would include death panels. I just cannot get over the fact at how bad of a mother Sarah Palin is in that she brings her children into the spotlight and then she continues to support truly anti-child legislation.  And people support her???  Story is here

Here is the quote from CanadianPress

The vocal opponent of health care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” she said. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic.”

Also…

Due to her husband’s background Sarah has taken advantage of the Indian Healthcare System in Alaska which is government run meaning again…she denounces Socialized medicine and takes advantage of it at the same time.  Story is here

This is a pretty good bumper sticker for Sarah’s Presidential run.  Sticker is here

Unbelievable!

Religion or the perception of doing Godly things + Nationalism + fear – thought process = KKK

Religion- the ability to convince good people to do bad things for the sake of an invisible man in the clouds.

Nationalism- a false thought that because you live 1 foot to the left or the right of a line you are something more or less than another human being that does not occupy your same space.

Fear- generated by lack of knowledge of another person who is merely trying to survive just like you are doing.

Thought process- merely asking the questions “What if that was me” “What is that person looking for in his action” and understanding all people want the same things in this world.  We are all the same.

Video is located here

Mark Williams really does a poor job in this video of distancing himself from the fringe organizations which are glomming onto the Tea Party movement.  The lack of distancing themselves from such groups makes one wonder why the legitimate Tea Party groups are NOT distancing themselves from the racists and other fringe hate groups.  Several GOP leaders look to the Tea Party groups and by association the fringe radical groups for some momentum in powering their causes…and the GOP has yet to really distance itself from these fringe hate groups as well.  Ironic since the “fringe” groups associated with Liberals were those that voiced opposition against the wars the US was involved in.  It seems the left fringe groups turned out to be….correct.  Meanwhile the fringe groups on the right including the whole Militia movement and “Patriot” groups that were so vocal during the Clinton Administration of the 90s were quiet during the Cheney Administration as the concepts of the 4th Amendment and other Constitutional rights were removed from us all.  Video is located here

Here is a link to the report on the rise of hate groups

Some theists superstitiously mythologize weather events, natural disasters, and other such occurrences, claiming that they are messages from their god. This video looks at one example of this odd practice, i.e., the mythologizing of a tornado that hit the area where the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American was having its churchwide convention in Minneapolis on August 19, 2009. Apparently, there are people in the 21st century who have managed to convince themselves that a tornado in the American Midwest during a summer afternoon is a miraculous event. Video is here

This is nothing new but it needs to be kept alive in that Cheney and the Bush Administration were so thoroughly sure that one day they would be chopping up the Iraqi oil fields that they were doing this plenty before 9/11 ever got us into the war mentality.  The maps of the oil fields being chopped up and more is all located here

These are documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under a March 5, 2002 court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force. The documents contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents are dated March 2001. Click here to view the press release.

Obama stepping up and telling the truth about climate change.  Video is here

Their motto is “Fair and Balanced” but a top blogger at Redstate.com says FOX News is in the pocket of the right wing.  Video is located here

The numbers show Obama’s popularity remains quite high.  Story is here

Griff Jenkins ran away from the questions that he regularly asks people.  Story is here

Beyond this rank hypocrisy — which is par for the course in Washington — the issue is whether the Republican Party is knowingly pushing a lie. There’s no doubt that the party’s leading lights have spoken falsely about the stimulus. But have they been deliberately lying? Recently, newly elected Sen. Scott Brown declared that the stimulus bill “didn’t create one new job.” Politifact.com, an independent fact-checking outfit, branded that remark a “pants on fire” lie.  Story is here

The income for the top 400 families has skyrocketed in the past decade.  Story is located here

Another look at the numbers is located here

The figures were published on the IRS web site in December of 2009, but received little notice because they were not announced. The report only became widely known when Tax Analysts, a news outlet for tax information, discovered the document and wrote about it on its web site, tax.com, on Thursday.

The report shows that the average income for the top-earning 400 families, denominated in 1990 dollars, grew from $17 million to $87 million, representing a five-fold increase in real terms. During this time, the percentage of the total national income that went to the top 400 families tripled, from .52 percent in 1992 to 1.59 in 2007.

The data shows that these families saw their incomes increase by 31 percent between 2006 and 2007 alone, while the average income of each family reached $345 million.

The amount of money earned by the group more than doubled from 2001, when its members earned on average $131.1 million. In 1993, the top 400 tax return filings amounted on average to $46 million. This means that there was an eight-fold nominal increase in the average earnings for this group between 1993 and 2007.

Meanwhile, the effective tax rate on this group—the amount actually paid in taxes—fell to 16.6 percent, the lowest figure on IRS records dating to 1992.

The top income earners received a total income of $138 billion in 2007. This figure is larger than the yearly output of most of the world’s countries, and is nearly as large as the GDP of Chile. Out of this amount, the group paid only $23 billion in taxes.

If the top 400 earners had been taxed in 2007 at the 1995 rate, they would have paid an additional $18.4 billion in taxes, enough to cover the entire 2010 budget shortfall of the state of California.

About three quarters of income for earners in this tax bracket came from capital gains, which were taxed at 15 percent, as opposed to income, which is taxed at a rate of 35 percent for the top bracket.

The top 400 families actually paid lower taxes compared to other high-income earners. In 2005, the Congressional Budget Office found that the top 1 percent as a whole paid a tax rate of 19.7 percent.

The median 20 percent of income earners paid a tax rate of 12.5 percent, including Social Security payments, which are negligible for the very rich.

The IRS report on the top 400 families was first regularly published by the Clinton administration, but the Bush administration shut down its release, according to the tax.com article by Cay Johnston, a tax law professor at Syracuse University. The Obama administration resumed publication of the figures, with the 2006 figures published about a year ago.

Johnston also noted, “At least three hedge fund managers made $3 billion in 2007.” He added, “Only 33 of the top 400 paid an effective tax rate of 30 percent to 35 percent, which is the maximum federal tax rate.”

The data further substantiates the highly publicized conclusions of economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, who found that two thirds of income increases between 2002 and 2007 went to the wealthiest 1 percent of society and that income for the top 1 percent grew 10 times faster than that of the bottom 90 percent. Piketty and Saez found that the top 1 percent of earners got a higher share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928.

The latest figures come amid constant calls by the White House and Congress to cut social programs in order to balance the budget. The federal government, we are told, has been bankrupted by the “profligacy” of social programs and the proportion of social resources allocated to the general population.

But the latest figures show that the opposite is true. It is the rich who have bankrupted the state, with the full assistance of the two big-business parties.

Bob Barr is occasionally sane.  This time he was.  His audience was not.  He was almost booed out of the room after saying water boarding is torture.  Video is here

Be careful with those Talking Points…they can be…POINTY…just like this guy’s head!  Video is here

It is on their website!!!!!!!!!!!

The John Birch Society is co-sponsoring the CPAC Convention!  Site is here

What is the John Birch Society about? They are about total racial radical lunacy!

Here is the JBS website

Rachel Maddow saw some other booths at CPAC.  Video is here

Several other similar groups are a part of CPAC.  Video and story here

Video is located here

There are so many dichotomies here!
John Ashcroft was the main defender of the Constitution for the US for a number of years.  He talks about Liberty and Freedom at the start of this speech and then he mentions elections bringing their desires to Washington and the freedom that makes this nation great.
The next guy is some talking head that completely dismisses everything John Ashcroft supposedly stood for and says “SADLY ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES”
Talking Head then says Mirandizing people according to the Constitution as the Bush Administration did is an awful thing.
Talking Head then introduces some person who is giving an award for defending the Constitution.  Apparently this person approves as well of denying the 4th Amendment from people.
Interesting mix of supporting the Constitution and opposing the Constitution which reminds me of religious zealots who support The Bible yet sweep some parts of The Bible under the rug.
So really these zealots are the same as those zealots.
Ironically they both wrap themselves in the flag and God and guns.
Unbelievable.

What happened when Obama didn’t have his TELEPROMPTER?

This happened.  Video is located here

OH that is a funny joke!!!!!

The quote below is from the website located here

All Tea Party members and “radical constitutionalists” need to take heed this man is not your friend and he is not one of us. Glenn Beck supported the Banker Bailout despite 95% of Americans being instinctively against it and he has repeatedly accused Ron Paul supporters and 9/11 Truthers of being terrorists despite there being absolutely no evidence of that being the case. He has also recently been repeatedly calling for the most socialist and oppressive tax scheme of all time in the form of Europe’s socialist VAT Tax, (a tax on every single exchange) which Beck says is needed to pay off the foreign bankers who own our illegitimate national debt.

Uh…NO!

Thousands of people are learning that money they squirreled away in health savings accounts is gone. Many thought the money was sitting safely in banks. But now it appears it was stolen.

Federal investigators have released few details, but all the cases have one thing in common: a Chicago company called Canopy Financial.

Now critics are questioning whether more government oversight is needed for the accounts.  Story is located here

Texas has been a hotbed of secessionist talk for a few years now.  Can we just make them go away?  This poll says we may just want to kick them out for stupidity.  Story is here

Here is another look at that story

The world of greed is too powerful.  The specter of someone becoming rich and having stuff is a strong pull.  The ideas of the past are too ingrained.  The concepts in this video are definitely the directions America should take and needs to take but will not take.  The corporate masters will not allow it.  Video is here highlighting the next speech President Obama should make but will not.

And the bankers are backing him.  This could be the first Corporate Candidate?  Video is located here

Bankers are crying about being called Fat Cats by Obama.  Video is located here

By 1974, Jude Wanniski had had enough. The Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out Social Security and Unemployment checks – both programs of the New Deal – as well as when their “big government” projects like roads, bridges, and highways were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. They kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for things, which didn’t seem to have much effect at all on working people (wages were steadily going up, in fact), and that made them seem like a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.  Story is here

Adjusted for inflation to 2009 dollars, the top 400 enjoyed a 27 percent increase in their income, or nine times the rate of increase for the bottom 90 percent, based on an earlier analysis of tax data published by Profs. Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, economists at the University of California at Berkeley who have been studying global income trends.

Since 1992, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have seen their incomes rise by 13 percent in 2009 dollars, compared with an increase of 399 percent for the top 400.  Story is located here.

The economy is finite.  The economy is like the game of Monopoly.  There is only so much money.  When so much money is concentrated in a group which pays less in taxes and as we have seen absolutely does NOT generate jobs then you truly can say concentrating wealth in their group is not a good thing for the nation as a whole.  The old adage is that if you make more you should pay more and you have greater responsibilities.  That adage has been turned on its head since Reagan when that adage was changed to those who make more owe less and those that make less owe more.

Despite saying how awful it was the Republicans are taking a lot of praise for the thing they voted against.  Video is here

The numbers of unemployed are heavily weighted towards those making less money.  Those with the least AGAIN get beaten the worst.  Story is located here

Can you trust national averages? As bad as the jobless data you hear are, you have not been told the whole truth. If you think the terrible impact of America’s Great Recession is shown by an official unemployment rate of about 10 percent, think again.

Economic inequality and the myth of Reagan trickle down logic are shown by new data from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. The report noted: “What has been missing from the public debate over the labor market crisis is an honest and detailed analysis of which American workers have been most adversely affected by the deep deterioration in labor markets.” The researchers found a correlation between household income and unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2009: Look carefully at these numbers and see how unemployment rises as income drops:

$150,000 or more, 3.2 percent

$100,000 to 149,999, 8 percent

$75,000 to $99,999, 5 percent

$60,000 to $75,000, 6.4 percent

$50,000 to $59,000, 7.8 percent

$40,000 to $49,000, 9 percent

$30,000 to $39,999, 12.2 percent

$20,000 to $29,999, 19.7 percent

$12,500 to $20,000, 19.1 percent

$12,499 or less, 30.8 percent

Wait; there is even more bad news. When underemployment is factored in — part time workers that want to work full time, and those who have stopped looking but want a job — the picture gets even worse. In the lowest group, the underemployment rate was 20.6 percent, compared with just 1.6 percent in the highest group. So the total in the lowest class is 51.4 percent (3.7 million people) compared to 4.8 percent in the wealthy class (530,000 people). Also consider that last November nearly 20 percent of all men between 25 and 54 did not have jobs, the highest figure since the labor bureau began counting in 1948.

Now you know why the constantly noted official jobless rate for the nation of 10 percent and 17 percent when underemployment is counted are a joke, or is it a purposeful deception, like a truth bubble?

To readers of this….I found this online and this COULD be the suicide note for the man that piloted the plane into the Austin Texas building this morning.

The registrar information for the site is as follows-

http://embeddedart.com/

Registrant:
Embedded Art
925 E Hwy 80
287
San Marcos, TX 78666
US

Domain name: EMBEDDEDART.COM

Administrative Contact:
Stack, Joe  
925 E Hwy 80
287
San Marcos, TX 78666
US
1.3215649879
Technical Contact:
Stack, Joe  
925 E Hwy 80
287
San Marcos, TX 78666
US
1.3215649879

Registration Service Provider:
Everyones Internet, 
http://www.ev1servers.net

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 16-Sep-2006.
Record expires on 05-Jun-2010.
Record created on 05-Jun-2003.

Registrar Domain Name Help Center:
http://domainhelp.tucows.com

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.T35.NET
NS2.T35.NET

Domain status: ok

———————————————————————————–

Below is the manifesto he may have left prior to his crashing into the building and prior to burning his home down.  The news on this drama can be easily found online as his name is Joe Stack and the plane crash occurred in Austin.  The manifesto written by him…not me…..is as follows copied directly from his site—-

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?”  The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time.  The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken.  Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it.  I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head.  Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy.  Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all.  We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers.  Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”.  I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood.  These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind.  Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?  Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies.  Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”.  It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system?  Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand.  Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand.  The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is.  If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

How did I get here?

My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s.  Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English.  Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions.  In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy.  We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God).  We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.

The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living.  However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.

That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0.  It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie.  It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.

Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through engineering school and still another five years of “paying my dues”), I felt I finally had to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.

On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father.  I realized this at a very young age.

The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker.  Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement.  Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement.  All she had was social security to live on.

In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time.  When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me).  I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me that I would be “healthier” eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread.  I couldn’t quite go there, but the impression was made.  I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.

Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ contract software engineer… and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.

For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).

SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.

(a) IN GENERAL – Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:

(d) EXCEPTION. – This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. – The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.

Note:

• “another person” is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.
• “taxpayer” is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.
• “individual”, “employee”, or “worker” is you.

Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not very complicated.  The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d).  Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave.  Twenty years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.

During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my ‘pocket change’, and at least 1000 hours of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting their time.  I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity.  This, only to discover that our efforts were being easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the windfall from the new declaration of their “freedom”.  Oh, and don’t forget, for all of the time I was spending on this, I was loosing income that I couldn’t bill clients.

After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise.  The best we could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they weren’t going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists).  This immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.

Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle.  If I had any sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.

Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks.  Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s.  Our leaders decided that they didn’t need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that.  The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco.  However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to “shore up” their windfall.  Again, I lost my retirement.

Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed.  Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare.  Our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long after that, ‘special’ facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months.  This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive.  Ironically, after what they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY!  After these events, there went my business but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.

By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change.  Bye to California, I’ll try Austin for a while.  So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done.  I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work.  The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.

To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which was a small IRA.  This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single dollar of income.  I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any income there was no need.  The sleazy government decided that they disagreed.  But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to due process because the time to file ran out.  Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice.

So now we come to the present.  After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again.  But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle.  After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake.

When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order.  I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting.  Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit.  By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented).  Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone.  The end result is… well, just look around.

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything.  Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”.  Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.

As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone.  The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government.  Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough).  In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand.  It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants.  I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after.  But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change.  I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less.  I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.  Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.  The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.

I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different.  I am finally ready to stop this insanity.  Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)

02/18/2010

President Obama has had a massive number of accomplishments after his first year in office.  Story is located here

The study showed about 28 percent of large foreign corporations, those with more than $250 million in assets, doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $372 billion in gross receipts, the senators said. About 25 percent of the largest U.S. companies paid no federal income taxes in 2005 despite $1.1 trillion in gross sales that year, they said.  Story is here

The numbers show January 2010 was hot…really hot.  Video is located here.

Story is located here

The US has long treated waterboarding as a war crime and has prosecuted Japanese soldiers for using it against US troops during World War II. And Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department prosecuted a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

But Cheney’s admissions back then, as well as those he made on Sunday, went unchallenged by Karl and others in the mainstream media. Indeed, the two major national newspapers–The New York Times and The Washington Post–characterized Cheney’s interview as a mere spat between the vice president and the Obama administration over the direction of the latter’s counterterrorism and national security policies.

The Times and Post did not report that Cheney’s comments about waterboarding and his enthusiastic support of torturing detainees amounted to an admission of war crimes given that the president has publicly stated that waterboarding is torture.

Ironically, in March 2003, after Iraqi troops captured several US soldiers and let them be interviewed on Iraqi TV, senior Bush administration officials expressed outrage over this violation of the Geneva Convention.

“If there is somebody captured,” President George W. Bush told reporters on March 23, 2003, “I expect those people to be treated humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”

Chart showing the loss of jobs and slowing of that loss from 2008-2010.  Chart located here

This from a friend-

You know…in a nearly literal way, you can say Colleen and I are getting shafted by WellPoint (who owns Anthem Blue Cross) so the quitting Senator Bayh can get really rich at our expense.  This is no exaggeration…read on:

Well, it turns out I was right in what I believed Anthem Blue Cross was up to…specifically, getting rid of folks in my age group…folks in their 50’s, but jacking up their rates so much, they will just quit because logically it makes no financial sense to pay for their excessive rates with they literally tripled our deductible at the same time.

I thought this MUST be their strategy last week.  Colleen and I are looking at all other health insurance plans.  We’ve been in contact with a wonderful insurance guy in Chico who, once I told him what I thought was going on…confirmed it.  He was actually quite surprised that I’d figured the whole scheme out.

So, the health insurance companies are forcing out all the people like Colleen and me, who have paid health insurance premiums for 22 years in our case.  This has been nearly all profit for them.  NOW, they are forcing out “50-somethings” before they have to start paying for the glut of aging baby boomers who will, certainly, start costing them money in the next two decades.

Any one with a preexisting condition is stuck…they can’t go anywhere.  Folks like Colleen and me can go somewhere else, because we have no pre-existing problems and all our blood work is absolutely super.  One friend of mine is stuck because years ago a local doctor put him on anti-depressants temporarily…that is considered a “pre-existing condition,” (which is ridiculous).

Anyway…the health insurance companies are banking on the Senate version of the health care reform…which, as we all know, is just a huge give away to the for-profit insurance companies.  They are counting on millions of folks HAVING to pay for health insurance that are currently without health insurance…OR are being forced out right now on purpose.

No matter what happens with health reform…whether it passes or not…the insurance industry wins big.

Senator Evan Bayh quit without informing the Democratic party in Indiana that he was doing so…thus making absolutely sure they could not have a primary.  The time that you had to have at least 4500 signatures to run in a primary was two hours and forty five minutes ago as I right this (noon today in Indiana).  He purposely shafted his own party.

To think he was #2 on the list to be Obama’s Vice President is just sad.  Senator Bayh quit by stating the Senate is broken and that nothing can get done…BUT he was one of the obstructionist Democrats making absolutely sure there would be NO PUBLIC OPTION, so that he and his family could profit hugely right now.  And he plans of becoming a lobbiest for WellPoint, based in his home town.  His wife is on the Board of Directors of WellPoint.  She had made between $125,000 and $250,000 on her WellPoint stock in just the past six weeks alone.  Because of the laws in Indiana, you don’t have to disclose how much stock you own in a company, if you’re on their board of directors…you just have to tell them “withing a half million dollars” how much your stock is worth.

Senator Bayh is just another slimy asshole Senator who gamed the whole health care reform deal as a Senator purely so he could personally make bucket loads of money for himself and his family…and he screwed the Democratic Party as a parting gift…What a jerk.

Just to put this boon to health insurance stocks in perspective:  according an Indianapolis Star article from June, Evan Bayh’s wife, Susan, “owns from $500,001 to $1 million in employee stock in WellPoint, the Indianapolis-based insurance giant on whose board she sits.”  That would mean that the value of her personal holdings in that one health insurance company alone, in the last six weeks alone (since Lieberman and her husband began menacing the public option), would have increased by a value of between $125,000 and $250,000.  As part of the bonanza of health care industry board positions she magically received since her husband became a Senator, Susan Bayh is given a quarter-million dollars each year in stocks and stock options from Wellpoint.

That’s just a microcosm for considering how well Obama’s so-called “special interests” have done as a result of this health care bill.

“Investors are seeing the Senate’s version of health care reform as a massive public subsidy for insurance companies — and as a result, are sending the sector’s stock prices shooting up, up, up. . . . Stripped of a government-run insurance plan, the bill would give tens of millions of Americans no option but to start paying hefty premiums to private companies.

The rise in stock prices has been particularly striking in the period since Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said on October 27 that he would filibuster a Senate health care reform bill if it included a public option . . .

Here’s a quick breakdown of major health insurance company stock performance from Oct. 27 to Friday’s market close:

* Coventry Health Care, Inc. is up 31.6 percent;

* CIGNA Corp. is up 29.1 percent;

* Aetna Inc. is up 27.1 percent;

* WellPoint, Inc. is up 26.6 percent;

* UnitedHealth Group Inc. is up 20.5 percent;

* And Humana Inc. is up 13.6 percent”

Why couldn’t that have happened to Glenn Beck?  Video is here

The US trade deficit in graphical goodness is located here.

The US trade deficit in charty specific goodness including the influence oil has on that imbalance is located here.

Private sector jobs created under Democratic Adminstrations simply outpace those made by Republican Administrations.  Chart is located here

This is EXACTLY what FOX News wants people to believe however they don’t want you to believe the Republicans could do it.  So the deal with normal people is viewing government as one monolith.  So when FOX brings up questions of government death panels and Fascism this is seen by those people as government regardless the party in control.  So this makes total sense that a Teabagger leader believes 9/11 was an inside job which means Bush was responsible.  Knowing this Glenn Beck immediately distanced himself from her…but he cannot.  Story is here

FOX News viewer arrested.  Video is here

Another video of this guy is located here

More on this guy is here

Another story on this guy here

TPM Muckraker has comments about this guy

LOOK!  It is a Democrat with a backbone. Where did she come from?  Story is here

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pinning the blame on Republicans for a lack of bipartisanship in Congress and plans to bypass them if they continue to oppose efforts to enact near-universal health care.

“A constitutional majority is 51 votes,” Pelosi said in an interview Tuesday with Roll Call. “If in fact the Republicans are going to say nothing can be done except by 60 percent, then maybe we all should be elected with 60 percent. It isn’t legitimate in terms of passing legislation.”

Pelosi has been wary of publicly giving advice to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or President Barack Obama, but it’s no secret that House Democrats have been increasingly frustrated at the dysfunction on the opposite side of the building.

“There is some unease when you talk about, well, what’s happening to the initiatives to help the American people?” Pelosi said. “Is there never anything that can be done without 60 votes?”

You die.  Simple.  You may also need insurance and you may wish to do things you don’t really want to.  Video is here

Photo is here. Simple