Missouri House votes for Gold and Silver Tender
April 27, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
On Thursday, HB1637, the Missouri Sound Money Act passed the House, making Missouri one of two states with a sound money still alive in 2012. South Carolina is the other, and is scheduled to vote on their bill next week. The bill simply adds gold and silver as legal tender alongside Federal Reserve notes, giving the citizens of Missouri a choice in currency:
“The Missouri Sound Money Act of 2012 is established which changes the laws regarding legal tender as follows: (1) Specifies that gold and silver issued by the federal government is legal tender in Missouri;”
It was not smooth sailing in the Show Me State. A significant number of representatives attended a press conference at the Governor’s mansion when the morning vote was held. Thus, the opposition erupted in celebration when they unexpectedly defeated the bill by a single vote, after which the morning session was immediately adjourned.
All was not lost. Representative Paul Curtman, the bill’s sponsor, worked a strategy to have the bill reconsidered in the afternoon session. While highly unusual, House Majority Leader Tim Jones asked Democratic Imperial Representative Tim Meadows to reconsider the bill in the afternoon session in light of the fact many members who were absent in the morning would likely return. Meadows agreed, and in the afternoon session the bill passed 95-37.
“Credibility is everything and when it comes down to it, my credibility is on the line here this day” Meadows said.
Representative Curtman had the understatement of the day stating, “It was a strange day on the floor. In the end though, nobody had a viable argument as to why it should be defeated.” A strange day indeed. After the bill’s passage, a Democratic Representative who strongly opposed the motion to reconsider had to be physically removed from the House chamber as he confronted a fellow Democrat who aided in allowing the bill a second vote.
It was a bitter pill for the opposition to swallow. Jackson County Democratic Representative Mike Talboy showed how badly misunderstood the sound money legislation is, lamenting, “It’s embarrassing…. that we were actually having the debate over putting us back on the gold standard.”
Fact is, the “gold standard” has never been implemented in this nation, so there is no “going back” to it.
It’s the score at the end of the game that counts. By a count of 95-37, sound money is alive in Missouri. Now Republican Senator Chuck Purgason is expected to shepherd the bill through the Senate Ways and Means committee. With only four weeks left in the general session, it will be interesting to see if more drama is in store, or if the Senate understands the issue and will pass it quickly. Even then, it must be signed by Democrat Governor Jay Nixon, who when informed of the bill’s existence earlier in the year took a “no position” stance.
Stay tuned. It is unlikely the drama in Missouri is over.
ACTION STEPS
If you live in Missouri and support Constitutional, Sound Money – contact your Senator and tell them to support this bill. Firmly, but politely, press them to vote YES – both in Committee and in the Senate as a whole.
1. CLICK HERE for Missouri State Senator Contact Information
2. CLICK HERE for members of the Ways and Means Committee
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CLICK HERE – model legislation for use in your own state, the Constitutional Tender Act
CLICK HERE – to track the progress of similar legislation around the country
Doug Tjaden is in Strategic Business Development at SilverSaver.com by Mass Metal LLC. He is an avid proponent of helping states re-institute sound money through education and networking. Doug is also an author, pastor and father of five and is a speaker on economics, politics and religion. He is passionate about helping people understand history, and how it can help us identify trends in place which will soon affect our lives.
Whistleblower explains ABCs of money laundering
April 26, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
John Cruz will be our guest on the Jack Blood Show this morning April 26th 2012.
WND – Corsi
NEW YORK – A review of HSBC corporate accounts demonstrating a suspicious pattern of deposits and withdrawals illustrates how credit card transactions can be used in money laundering activity, according to a whistleblower who has provided WND with more than 1,000 pages of evidence against the global bank.
The evidence includes customer account ledgers for dozens of companies through which the financial institution was laundering money each month, charges John Cruz, a former relationship manager for the bank’s southern New York region.
“Studying the pattern of deposit and withdrawal activity in the suspect corporate accounts provides abundant evidence that bank employees at HSBC were directly involved manipulating fictitious corporate accounts in a money laundering scheme that extended to the highest levels of bank management and bank security,” Cruz said.
“The money laundering in the suspect accounts tended to start slowly and build rapidly, to the point where millions of dollars were being wired into and wired out of the accounts monthly.”
The series of Articles on HSBC already has caused fallout for this reporter and for WND, which saw one of the articles temporarily blocked when HSBC filed a complaint with an Internet provider that turned out to be unwarranted.
HSBC is reportedly under investigation by a U.S. Senate committee, and WND has provided material to federal investigators.
Exhibit 1 is a checking account record from a redacted HSBC account in which PayPal and American Express transactions play a prominent role. The two credit card-related companies, as WND has reported, have been implicated in the alleged HSBC international money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of billions of dollars.
As seen in Exhibit 1, the PayPal link into the account was established in the bank statement period that began July 25, 2008, and ended Aug. 26, 2008
Exhibit 1: PayPal established in suspicious HSBC corporate checking account
The checking account at the beginning of the statement period had a balance of only $500 and the first deposit from PayPal was $1.01 in total, followed the same day by two additional deposits, amounting to 15 cents each.
“The point of beginning this way was the have the first transactions be so small that no one in bank security would notice the transaction as important,” Cruz explained. “For the first 60 to 90 days, the criminals within the bank would proceed cautiously so the account would become established within the bank computer system without drawing unnecessary attention.”
Cruz also pointed out the initial PayPal deposits tended to be in small amounts because the goal of the money launderers was to make sure the PayPal transaction facility linked successfully to the account, as preparation for transferring large sums into the account through PayPal.
“After this initial 60 to 90 day period, the money launders were ready to go,” he said. “Now larger sums could be run through the account without suspicious activity reports being filed by bank computer system watchdogs.”
He noted the primary responsibility for filing suspicious activity reports with the relevant federal law enforcement authorities rested with the bank representative who opened the account.
“As long as the bank representative opening the account was in on the fraudulent scheme, tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time could be run through an account once it emerged from the 60 to 90 day initial period,” he said. “One branch could have hundreds of these fraudulent accounts opened simultaneously, with hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing through each of the hundreds of accounts on a daily basis.”
Cruz turned over to WND a tape recording he made of a conversation with a new HSBC bank manager upon coming into a branch that he had been assigned to manage. The bank manager admitted he was shocked to discover that of the 351 business accounts he examined in that particular HSBC branch, 267 accounts, more than 75 percent, were found to be fraudulent.
Exhibit 2 traces the HSBC corporate checking account under examination here from the statement period beginning Oct. 27, 2008, and ending Nov. 28, 2008, some three months after the statement period examined in Exhibit 1 above.
This statement seen in Exhibit 2 documents five deposits credited into the account, all from PayPal and all in even multiples of ten thousand dollars, intermixed with five online transfers out of the account. All were in even multiples of ten thousand dollars, such that the beginning balance of the account was $1 and the ending balance $32,001.
The PayPal deposit credits into the account do not list where the funds came from, other than to specify PayPal, and the transfers out of the account similarly went to unknown sources.
Exhibit 2: PayPal deposit activity in even $10,000 multiples
“PayPal was particularly suited to this pattern of suspicious money transfers because PayPal as a corporation exists to mask the accounts or credit card facilities from which a person pays into another account,” Cruz observed.
“PayPal’s stated goal is to protect innocent Internet buyers for identity theft and subsequent credit card fraud. But seen through he eyes of criminal money launders, PayPal provides a convenient service for hiding their identities and masking where suspicious deposit transfers originate.”
Exhibit 3 tracks the same corporate checking account though the statement period beginning on July 14, 2009, and ending on Aug. 14, 2009, roughly a year after the statement period reported above in Exhibit 1.
Now the sums being debited and credited into the account have grown by a factor of 10 or greater, and American Express appears as the destination of two payments from the account, one debited in the amount of $200,000 on July 23, 2009, and the second in the amount of $300,000 on Aug. 11, 2009.
That the account was being used primarily as a money-laundering conduit is evident from the beginning balance of $17,006.46 and an ending balance of $6.42, after hundreds of thousands of dollars were transferred in and out of the account throughout the statement period.
Exhibit 3: Account debits and credits in amounts of $100,000 and greater
“What Exhibit 3 really shows is that the money that is credited to the account is most likely money transferred in from other accounts, where the transfers here do not list PayPal because the transfers were most likely internal transfers among various HSBC accounts,” he noted.
The point is that a PayPal transfer to a fraudulent account only needs to show up once – the first time the money comes into the bank. After the money is in the bank, the PayPal-derived funds can be transferred into multiple other fraudulent accounts, without PayPal being listed a second time as the source of the funds transfer.”
Exhibit 4 documents the same corporate checking account for the period Nov. 29, 2008, through Dec. 24, 2008.
The point in Exhibit 4 is that the account began modestly in August 2008, as documented above in Exhibit 1, and grew to a point where by the end of 2008, $1.25 million was being wired into the account and $1.57 million was being debited from the account.
“Remember, just because an account starts small, doesn’t mean the account will end small,” Cruz emphasized. “The point is that the money-laundering criminals working within the bank know exactly how to game the system so as to stay below the radar of getting caught.”
He explained that an average person depositing more than $10,000 in cash into a bank account in person has to fill out official suspicious activity reports, but a corporate account in which tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are flowing through the account monthly avoids scrutiny as long as the bank officer establishing and managing the account within the bank reports the transactions as normal for the business involved.
“The same thing happens if you walk into a bank and make a series of deposits each calculated to be under $10,000,” he noted. “This is considered ‘structuring,’ again requiring suspicious activity reports to federal law enforcement that may conclude you broke up deposits to be under the $10,000 cash deposit limit to avoid having the deposits reported.”
Yet, he notes, a corporate checking account in which tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars are being run through the account at a time remains unsuspicious, as long as the bank reports the transactions as normal for the business involved.
Exhibit 4: Account activity in millions of dollars at year-end, 2008
Finally, Exhibit 5 details the account activity for the reporting period summarized above in Exhibit 5.
Again, the PayPal deposits are in multiple even increments of $10,000, matched by even-incremented debit transfers out of the account, such that the account balance at the end of the reporting period was $1.
Exhibit 5: Detail of account activity, reporting period seen in Exhibit 4
“The scheme alleged here argues that money is transferred into the bank and built up in many different accounts,” Cruz summarizes.
“It becomes a shell game that grows by leaps and bounds as money launderers become confident they have established patterns of account activity that can be accepted as normal for the accounts, even though no real business other than to transfer money into and out of the accounts is evident from the bank customer statements.”
Cruz points out that the 1,000 pages of customer records he brought out of HSBC provide evidence that the Social Security number stolen from one individual was used to create over 5,000 fraudulent accounts through which more than $800 million was transferred in-and-out over a six-month period, all without the knowledge of the person whose identity had been stolen.
“The suspicious activity I witnessed while employed at HSBC was shocking to me, both in the audacity to steal the identities of legitimate individuals to create the fraudulent accounts and in the staggering amount of money that was run through the accounts, once they were established,” Cruz concluded.
He was employed as a relationship manager at HSBC in Long Island, N.Y., from January 2008 to February 2010.
Cruz was fired for “poor job performance,” after, he claims, he refused to stop investigating, documenting and reporting suspicious activity he encountered almost daily in doing his job.
He has written a book-length account of his experience at HSBC, published in October 2011 under the title “World Banking, World Fraud: Using Your Identity.”
Previous stories:
Look who ‘has stolen IDs, fake tax returns’
Investment firm fires WND reporter for exposing scandal
Big bank retaliates against WND for exposé
PayPal, American Express implicated in bank fraud
See big bank money-laundering evidence
Banking giant accused of laundering billions
Texas students begin STAAR testing today (at a cost of 90 Million per Year)
April 24, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
People say they want healthcare, welfare, housing etc… Yet this is where your money goes. Staar tests are a product of the Eugenics driven United Nations social, education arm (International Institute for Educational Planning) UNESCO through “No Child left Alone er… Behind” – NCLB.
26 March 2012
AUSTIN — Students across Texas are beginning STAAR standardized tests this week.
Exams start Monday for the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness in English I and III writing.
On Tuesday, students take 4th grade writing exams; math exams for grades 5 and 8; and hold the first day of writing tests for seventh graders. Subsequent tests will follow throughout the week with Friday as a makeup day.
STAAR is replacing the much-maligned Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
Its scores had been set to count 15 percent of ninth graders final grades in core subjects. But the state decided to allow districts to defer that requirement for one year.
STAAR costs $90 million annually to administer, or $3 to $7 per test given. That’s slightly more than its predecessor cost.
03-16-12: TEA yet to decide how STAAR test will be graded
No Child Left Behind
On January 8, 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law by President George W. Bush. NCLB was a major piece of legislation that dramatically altered specific elements of education in the United States, particularly the role of the federal government in education.
One of the main goals of No Child Left Behind is to address the growing achievement gap in the United States between underprivileged students typically attending lower achieving schools and students attending higher achieving schools. NCLB has several main focuses:
- Accountability of progress through annual testing and funding
- State report cards of school progress
- Teacher Qualifications
- Reading and Literacy Programs.
Despite passing the Senate and the House with overwhelming majorities, 87-10 and 381-44, respectively, NCLB has proved to be highly controversial. Many argue against both its motives and effectiveness as “some educators and policy makers have questioned the feasibility and fairness of its goals and time frames.”58 Certainly, questions have arisen as to whether the legislation has actually worked to narrow the achievement gap, a corner stone aim of NCLB.
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| Image found at: http://www.hoover.org/research/ focusonissues/focus/11282221.html |
| The chart illustrates the conflicting viewpoints on NCLB. |
In 2007, the authors of an article in the journal Educational Research entitled “Gauging Growth: How to Judge No Child Left Behind” sought out to do just that. They measured test results by analyzing student performance, state data spanning from 1992-2006, and information from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The analysis found that the narrowing achievement gaps leading up to 2002 actually stopped after the passing of NCLB.59
Dr. Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley and one of the authors to “Gauging Growth” stated: “The slowing of achievement gains, even declines in reading, since 2002 suggests that state-led accountability efforts- well underway by the mid-1990s—packed more punch in raising student performance, compared with the flattening-out of scores during the “No Child” era.”60 The Obama administration has proposed a plan to revamp No Child Left Behind, citing the fact that each year, approximately 80,000 public schools in America fail to meet the standards outlined by the law.61
US International Education Policy
The United States also views education as a measure of foreign policy. For this reason, the US State Department oversees the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The work of the Bureau is to “foster mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries to promote friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations, as mandated by the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchanges Act of 1961.”62 This mission is accomplished through initiatives such as the Fulbright Program; the International Visitor Leadership Program; youth, sports, and cultural programs; and study opportunity for foreign students.
Annually, the US State Department, in conjunction with the US Department of Education, hosts an International Education Week (IEW). This is one way in which the United States’ seeks to “promote programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences in the United States.”63
At the 2008 IEW, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice spoke to the global role of education stating that “indeed educational institutions—primary and secondary schools, vocational schools, colleges and universities—have always played a key role in opening minds and creating global awareness, and have traditionally been the State Department’s strongest partners in shaping the citizen diplomat.” 64
The US recognizes education as a means of civil diplomacy in addition to the creation of 21st century employees. Programs such as IEW and others undertaken by the State Department illustrate the sophisticated coordination of the US to disseminate its culture through education, in addition to attract global scholars to its shores. All of this is as an effort to build and maintain a 21st century workforce and supremacy in the modern global economy.
Forbes: Stirring the Pot: Could Legalizing Marijuana Save the Economy?
April 21, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
On April 2, One L. Goh allegedly went on a shooting spree inside Oikos University in Oakland, California, killing seven students. That same day, federal agents were otherwise occupied, raiding a business less than a half a mile away. That business, Oaksterdam University, is a medical marijuana training school in a location where it is considered legal for state and local purposes.
There’s some sad irony here.
One is, of course, not directly related to the other. But you can’t help but look at the two events – on the same day, just blocks away from each other – and wonder about our priorities. The expenditure of resources – including those linked to public safety – for political purposes feels misguided and wasteful. And it takes away from bigger, more important matters, like keeping taxpayers safe.
A spokesperson from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was on hand for the raid but didn’t comment on the specifics. She didn’t need to. It is no secret that the IRS has been at the forefront of the efforts to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries – not because they haven’t been filing and paying taxes (they have) – as part of a targeted effort by federal agencies to shut down the medical marijuana industry.
The IRS has been involved with monitoring the marijuana trade for nearly a century: it was the taxation of marijuana in the 1930s which lead to the criminalization of the drug in the first place. Until recently, however, the IRS had not come out swinging against medical marijuana dispensaries – not until last year when directed by the current administration to do so, memorialized in a June 2011 Department of Justice Memo (downloads as a pdf).
What’s the basis for the crackdown? States are getting cheeky, it seems. And apparently, the feds don’t care for that very much.
Under federal law, marijuana is still classed as a Schedule I drug which means that it is not legal in any form, including for medical purposes. Despite popular belief, it cannot actually be prescribed (to get it in most states where it’s legal, you need a note, not a prescription, from a doctor). That hasn’t stopped states moving to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Sixteen states and D.C. have done so: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Twelve more have similar legislation pending: Alabama, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
States that have moved to legalize marijuana for medical reasons have done so for quite logical reasons: legalizing the drug (like nicotine and alcohol) means that it can be regulated. Regulations mean control. And control is directly linked to the almighty dollar.
The drug industry – both legal and illegal – is quite a lucrative market. Keeping it illegal, the argument goes, means that the most benefit flows to illegitimate members of society: dealers and cartels. On the other hand, taxpayers and government bear the burden of chasing those dragons as incarcerations for what are basically petty drug crimes continue to rise: $200 transaction can cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence.
It’s estimated that the legalization of marijuana (not just for medical purposes) could take as much as $10 billion away from the cartels and dealers. And that’s not limited to the Colombian or Mexican drug trades. Domestically grown marijuana is thought to be the second most profitable cash crop in the United States: only corn is considered to be more lucrative.
To think about the kind of impact that could have on our economy, you need only look to the U.S. beverage alcohol industry. Making alcohol legal again has paid off. Just last year, the industry generated $91 billion in wages and over 3.9 million jobs for U.S. workers. In 2008, alcohol contributed over $40 billion to state and local revenues; nearly half of that came from corporate, personal income, property and other taxes.
State and local governments aren’t stupid. They see those numbers as positives. Take San Jose, for example. According to the Sacramento Bee, taxing legal medical marijuana collectives brought the city $290,000 in the first month the tax was imposed. Annualized, that’s nearly $3.5 million.
At the same time, decriminalizing the use of marijuana could reduce the amount of resources that states and municipalities are now forced to spend on enforcement and incarcerations.
But not everyone is on board with the idea. Some worry that taxing medical marijuana (or any form of marijuana) will legitimize the drug. That, it’s argued, would open the floodgates to increased drug use, moving from marijuana to stronger drugs like heroin and cocaine – the whole “gateway drug” argument. The Coalition for a Drug Free California objects to taxing the drug on principle, noting that some studies cite the societal burden of the drug as higher than the potential value (downloads as a pdf); the same arguments have been made against alcohol and nicotine.
There are no easy answers. But if the federal government successfully puts an end to legal medical marijuana sales – and the revenue generated for states and municipalities – where will those dollars go? Underground? Street criminals? Mexican cartels? One thing is for sure: they’re not going away.
RELATED
Spain Bans Big Cash… Is the USA Far behind?
April 20, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
Spain Bans Cash Transactions Over 2,500 Euros … Spain has outlawed the use of cash in business transactions in excess 2,500 euros in order to crack down on the black market and tax evaders. The motivations behind the push for digital currencies is exposed as Spain heads down the road of the Greeks in combating their sovereign debt crisis. As the government scrambles for every tax dollar it can get its hands on, even though they already gave every Spaniard $23,000 Euros in debt last year alone (approximately $32,500), they are now banning all large cash business transactions. Why? So they can track the transactions and make sure that people and business are paying taxes. Being able to track the transactions is also aimed to combat the growing black market in Spain. – Alexander Higgins’ blog
Dominant Social Theme: This cash has gotta go. It’s evil.
Free-Market Analysis: They are not even making a pretense anymore that the West is run via market economies. As we have long predicted, the phony “sovereign debt” crisis in Europe is being used to justify all sorts of authoritarian measures.
It is government pols that gladly borrowed what European banks threw at them. And somehow the upshot earlier this week is that Spanish citizens now lose the right to conduct many transactions in cash.
Spectactularly, the reports such as this one, excerpted above, don’t even both to hide the real point. The Spanish government wants to ensure that it can “track transactions and make sure that people and businesses are paying taxes.”
Of course, anyone who has visited Spain of late knows that the tax burden in Spain is onerous indeed, and is one reason that the truculent tribes that have co-existed uneasily with Madrid are again beginning to beat the drums of secession.
The taxes that the central government levies on small businesses especially are verging on punitive. But there are no apologies. The official position is one of unflinching demands.
It is surely part of a larger meme having to do with a “cashless” society. Just recently the UK Telegraph asked “Is mobile the way we’ll all be paying?” The answer, as can be expected, was a qualified yes, but issued in the predictable upbeat way.
The cashless society has been a much-mooted concept ever since consumer credit cards were widely introduced in the 1950s. Now it seems that “mobile money” is the new gold rush. The term – used to describe the way the mobile phone is used to pay for goods – yields no fewer than 126 million results on a Google search …
Market research firm Yankee Group believes that global mobile transactions will become a $1trillion market by 2015. While Berg Insight says there will be 894m worldwide users of mobile banking by the same year. Peter Ayliffe, chief executive of Visa Europe, who sits on the Monitise board, believes 50pc of all Visa transactions in Europe will be on a mobile device by 2020.
The top men are beginning to issue their predictions. The march to a cashless society has begun. Perhaps we owe Spain a debt of gratitude for revealing the REAL reason for a cashless society. It makes tax collecting so much easier.
But this is only part of the story. Taxes are certainly to be paid … but the RESULTS of tax payments and the government expenditures they give rise to are seemingly more questionable every day.
In Spain this is certainly evident. The REAL problem that Spain faces as its depression spirals out of control is the infrastructure that politicos built over the past decade. Every small town has bike paths, outdoor parks and other unnecessary public venues that will soon prove, well … unsupportable.
Gradually, the infrastructure sinks into disrepair, further exacerbating the loss of what was once gratifying. These expanding open sores in civic centers create additional dissonance. Spain has created public places everywhere with giddy exuberance. Soon it will be a kind of national “tragedy of the commons.”
There is not much discussion of this plight, however. Most of the conversation centers around putting young people to work. Up to 50 percent of Spanish youngsters are out of work or can’t find jobs and many of the rest live in fear that they will lose their positions.
There is now, in fact, starting to be a Diaspora of young people from Spain. Virtually all of South America speaks Spanish – and many countries are doing rather well. Argentina, especially, is attracting youngsters; Chile, too, presumably.
The cash ban is probably looked on by many in Spain as yet one more petty annoyance but these annoyances are piling up over time. When mixed in with the larger difficulty of the dysfunction of the Spanish economy, such issues can surely create an explosive situation. Here’s more from the article:
Those who violate the ban will face fines of 25% of the payment made in cash. The Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has announced on Wednesday that the plan to combat tax evasion on Friday approved the Cabinet prohibit the payment in cash transactions of over 2,500 euros and which at least involved a businessman professional.
During the control session the Government in the House of the Congress of Deputies and in response to a question about the tax amnesty made by the general coordinator of IU, Cayo Lara, the Prime Minister, has revealed that those who violate the ban will face fines of 25% of the payment made in cash.
The Government had already advanced the plan to combat fraud limitations include the use of cash for certain operations, although he had not yet specified which would place the threshold (yes at the time there was talk that it could be 1,000 euros for self-employed).
This measure aims to prevent the use of black money in commercial transactions and, in the case of companies, give them an obstacle to not resort to false invoices. The plan to combat fraud adopted on Friday, the Cabinet intends to raise up to 8.171 million euros in 2012.
Fed Release Absurdly Redacted – 513 pages / Meetings blacked out / 2008 Meltdown
April 19, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
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The Federal Reserve released 513 pages of previously unseen transcripts of policy meetings that took place between 2007 and 2010—and most of them are so heavily redacted that they elicit laughter.
Take the entry from March 10, 2008. It begins with these words.
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE: Good evening, everybody. I am sorry, once again, to have to call you together on short notice. We live in a very special time.
That sounds like the start to a very interesting meeting. Unfortunately, the remainder of that page is redacted. In fact, the next 31 pages are redacted. We’re left guessing what it was that led Bernanke to talk about living in a “very special time.”
In this case, it’s easy to guess: very likely, the impending collapse of Bear Stearns and central bank preparations for a global liquidity crunch. The following day, the Fed announced the creation of the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), one of the first of many bailout facilities the Fed would launch to prop up the financial system. It also increased its swap lines with the ECB and the Swiss National Bank.
Let’s fast-forward to the meeting of Sept. 16, 2008, when Lehman Brothers was collapsing. Surely this would make for interesting reading—if it weren’t redacted to the point of being almost a blank slate.
It starts off:
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. Good morning, everybody. Sorry for the late beginning.
What follows is 15 pages of redacted material.
Finally, when we are allowed to peek back into the meeting, Bernanke says: “Anything else? All right. Do you want to call the roll on this one?”
The Federal Reserve has been releasing its transcripts on a five-year delay. It released these early, following a Freedom of Information Act request from MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show. And, apparently, decided to redact them very heavily.
Jon Stewart Explains the Fraud of the Federal Reserve… Well kinda
April 17, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
Print money? Or load ones and zeros into a bank to loan back out as debt.
A TV show segment is worth a million words. Stewart even mentions hyperinflation as a result of creating money out of thin air. Perhaps Stewart has finally gotten around to reading Murray Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money. (I…don’t think so—but I can dream, can’t I?)
Taxes Prompt More Americans to Renounce Citizenship
A year ago, in Action Comics, Superman declared plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship.
“‘Truth, justice, and the American way’ — it’s not enough anymore,” the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran.
Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman’s lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That’s a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It’s also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.
But not everyone’s motivations are as lofty as Superman’s. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons.
The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they’re living abroad. And just as Americans stateside must file tax returns each April — this year, the deadline is Tuesday — an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad brace for what they describe as an even tougher process of reporting their income and foreign accounts to the IRS. For them, the deadline is June.
‘Buffett Rule’ fails U.S. Senate vote in tax fight
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Republicans on Monday blocked President Barack Obama’s “Buffett Rule“ legislation, which would have put a 30% minimum tax on millionaires, in a debate that is likely to resonate through the November elections.
Democrats, as expected, failed to garner the 60 votes needed in the 100-member Senate to move forward to a full debate and vote on the bill aimed at squeezing more tax revenues out of the wealthy.
Obama and congressional Republicans are squaring off this week over tax hikes for millionaires and a competing Republican plan to give new tax cuts for businesses.
Tax (Extortion) Day Special: Shovel Ready in San Fran: $205,075 to ‘Translocate’ One Shrub from Path of Stimulus Project
April 14, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Economy
(CNSNews.com) — The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.
“In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge.
“The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.
The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.”
Prior to the discovery of this “wild” Franciscan manzanita, the plant had been considered extinct for as long as 62 years–extinct, that is, outside of people’s yards and botanical gardens.
Before that, the bush had grown in the “wild” in two cemeteries in San Francisco’s Richmond District as well as on Mount Davidson, a peak in the middle of San Francisco. The Department of Interior said that there had also been “unconfirmed sightings” of the shrub in the city’s Haight-Ashbury District—an area that became famous in the late 1960s as the epicenter of the psychedelic hippie movement.
The Haight-Ashbury population of the plant, the Interior Department said in the Federal Register, was believed to have been “lost to urbanization.”
On Oct. 16, 2009, Dr. Daniel Gluesenkamp, a botanist who was then the director of Habitat Protection and Restoration for Audubon Canyon Ranch, noticed the manzanita when he was driving along Doyle Drive (the highway leading to the Golden Gate Bride that is now under renovation). The manzanita had been previously hidden by other vegetation but was uncovered as the area was being cleared in preparation for road construction.
With help from a biologist from the Presidio Trust (which oversees the Presidio) and an ecologist from the National Park Service, Gluesenkamp’s discovery was determined to be a Franciscan manzanita.
Shortly thereafter, the Presidio Trust, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the California Department of Fish and Game developed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for saving this one bush from the highway project, for which ground had been broken in December 2009.
The agreement of Dec. 21, 2009 – Memorandum of Agreement Regarding Planning, Development, and Implementation of the Conservation Plan for Franciscan Manzanita – explains how, why, and when the bush would be moved and which agencies would be responsible for which aspects of the move. (MOA – Fran Man – 2009.pdf)
While the MOA did not detail all the costs for moving the bush, it did state that in addition to funding removal and transportation of the Franciscan manzanita, Caltrans agreed to transfer $79,470 to the Presidio Trust “to fund the establishment, nurturing, and monitoring of the Mother Plant in its new location for a period not to exceed ten (10) years following relocation and two (2) years for salvaged rooted layers and cuttings according to the activities outlined in the Conservation Plan.”
Furthermore, Presidio Parkway Project spokesperson Molly Graham told CNSNews.com that the “hard removal”—n.b. actually digging up the plant, putting it on a truck, driving it somewhere else and replanting it–cost $100,000.
The MOA also stated that Caltrans agreed to “Transfer $25,605.00 to the Trust to fund the costs of reporting requirements of the initial 10-year period as outlined in the Conservation Plan.”
The $100,000 to pay for the “hard removal,” the $79,470 to pay for the “establishment, nurturing and monitoring” of the plant for a decade after its “hard removal,” and the $25,605 to cover the “reporting requirements” for the decade after the “hard removal,” equaled a total cost of $205,075 for “translocating” this manzanita bush.
But those were not the only costs incurred by taxpayers on behalf of the bush. According to the MOA, other costs included:
–“Contract for and provide funding not to exceed $7,025.00 for initial genetic or chromosomal testing of the Mother Plant by a qualified expert to be selected at Caltrans’ sole discretion.” (MOA – Fran Man – 2009.pdf)
–“Contract for and fund the input, guidance, and advice of a qualified Manzanita expert on an as-needed basis to support the tending of the Mother Plant for a period not to exceed five (5) years, provided that said expert selection, retention and replacement at any point after hiring rests in the sole discretion of Caltrans.”
“Provide funding not to exceed $5,000.00 to each of 3 botanical gardens (Strybing, UC, and Tilden) to nurture salvaged rooted layers and to monitor and report findings as outlined in the Conservation Plan.”
–“Provide funding not to exceed $1,500.00 for the long-term seed storage of 300 seeds collected around the Mother Plant in November 2009 as outlined in the Conservation Plan.”
The plant is now protected by a fence and its location is kept secret, in part because the Presidio Trust and the National Park Service fear that nature-lovers seeking to see the rare wild Manzanita might trample it to death.
“[A] single trampling event could result in damage or the death of the wild plant,” the Interior Department noted in the Federal Register for Sept. 8, 2011. “As noted …, the Presidio Trust and NPS have made continuous efforts not to reveal the location of Arctostaphylos franciscana. They are concerned that public knowledge of the A. franciscana location would attract large numbers of plant enthusiasts who may damage the A. franciscana and compact the soil.”
The project to replace the Doyle Drive approach to the Golden Gate Bridge with a new road called the Presidio Parkway has an estimated total cost of $1.045 billion. The project has received a number of federal grants, including two under President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. These included $83.28 million in stimulus funds awarded to the project on Dec. 24, 2009 (about a month before the manzanita bush was “translocated”) and $46 million awarded on Dec. 30, 2010.
In a Feb. 17, 2010 statement about stimulus money going to the project, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described herself as “a long-time supporter of the Presidio Parkway project.”
“This badly deteriorated structure is designated a Post Disaster Recovery Route and is the only route between the San Francisco peninsula and northern California counties,” Pelosi’s statement said of project. “Unfortunately, the current roadway is reaching the end of its useful life. The Federal Highway Administration ranks Doyle Drive as the fifth worst bridge in the nation and the worst in California for structural sufficiency.
Construction on the new Presidio Parkway began in late 2009 and is scheduled to be completed in 2013.”
In September 2011, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed naming the Franciscan manzanita an endangered species.
Had the plant been moved to a botanical garden it would have remained “extinct in the wild.” According to the MOA “Such translocation would essentially render the plant extinct in the wild (once again); it would be unlikely that the plant could be moved a second time once reintroduced populations are established; the seed from the mother plant would not be usable due to likely genetic contamination from other garden species of manzanitas.”
The plant is still considered wild according to the 2011 Federal Register entry because it has been moved to an undeveloped area of the Presidio and “is not receiving the level of protection, water, and nutrients that plants in a botanical garden may receive.”
One California nursery currently allows customer to purchase Franciscan manzanitas online for $15.98 per bush. Another sells them for $18.00 per bush.
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