RAMAPO,NY – Federal authorities raided private Jewish schools and businesses in Rockland County to see if millions of federal dollars earmarked for education technology were misused.FBI agents conducted 22 separate search warrants at yeshivas and offices in the town of Ramapo on Wednesday afternoon, the Journal News reported. Agents were seen going in and out of a private business in Monsey, removing computer hard drives and documents.The investigators asked them to provide records of equipment allegedly bought through the federal government’s E-Rate program, which pays for technology in schools, the newspaper reported…more: Yeshivas Investigated
I just “discovered” Kris Anne Hall & Liberty First. You MUST GO HERE and listen to what this brilliant woman has to say regarding history, liberty and government.
Click to jump to Liberty First Podcast via Radio Free Redoubt / Podbean page
… Despite the Obama administration touting a budget deficit of “only” $680 billion in 2013, the GAO’s more accurate accounting shows a total government cost of $3.8 trillion on total revenue of $2.8 trillion.
In other words– the administration wasn’t exactly honest with the American people– the deficit was more like $1 trillion, not $680 billion.
But it gets worse.
The GAO added up ALL the US government’s assets in 2013. Aircraft carriers. The highway system. Land. Cash and financial assets. The total is $2.97 trillion. The liabilities, on the other hand, total $19.88 trillion. This includes the official public debt, plus all sorts of IOUs and loan guarantees.
This means the net EQUITY of the US government is -$16.9 trillion [poster note: yes negative folks. GE.]
Moreover, the US government’s cash position is a mere $206 billion… roughly 1.1% of its public debt. This isn’t enough to cover net interest payments for the next year.
Unlike a savvy investor who borrows cheap money to purchase productive assets, the US government borrows money to pay interest.
via Sovereign Man and H/T to ZeroHedge where we saw it first
Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Activist Post, consider the following…
“Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents. To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link. As you can see, this list covers most of the country…
1. Those that talk about “individual liberties”
2. Those that advocate for states’ rights
3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”
4. “The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule”
5. Those that are interested in “defeating the Communists”
6. Those that believe “that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations”
7. Anyone that holds a “political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable”
8. Anyone that possesses an “intolerance toward other religions”
9. Those that “take action to fight against the exploitation of the environment and/or animals”
10. “Anti-Gay”
11. “Anti-Immigrant”
12. “Anti-Muslim”
13. “The Patriot Movement”
14. “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians”
The police chief of a small Pennsylvania borough has been temporarily removed from his post, but his opponents are far from satisfied. Now residents of a sparsely populated former coal town are asking the feds to intervene in fear of an armed revolt.
Gilberton, Pennsylvania Police Chief Mark Kessler made international headlines last month when his personal, profanity laced YouTube videos went viral, in turn exposing the world to a lawman seemingly intent with defending his Second Amendment right by any means necessary.
Kessler uploaded a number of similar videos of himself screaming obscenities at the likes of Sec. Kerry and others, ending each episode by unloading dozens of automatic rounds in front of the camera. After repeated calls for official action, the city suspended him last week for using borough property for personal use. As he awaits the end of his suspension, though, his critics are asking for the…
‘Rev.’ Jeremiah Wright, of “G_d damn America” infamy, was Barack and Michelle Obama’s pastor for 20 years at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which is really a church of black liberation theology.
Barack “Barry” Soetoro Obama and the Reverend (?) Jeremiah Wright, black liberation theologian
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen claims that Rev. Wright ran what was essentially a matchmaking service for gay married black professional members of the church, particularly those with children. The matchmaking club was called the “Down Low Club” or DLC. (See my post of July 25, 2010, “Mom of Murdered Obama Gay Lover Speaks Up.”) Corruption appears to run in the Wright family. Continue reading →
…Still, it seems like an insane amount of pressure to apply, given the other types of crimes (of, say, the HSBC variety) where stiff sentences haven’t even been threatened, much less imposed…..
But in all of these cases, the government pursued maximum punishments and generally took zero-tolerance approaches to plea negotiations. These prosecutions reflected an obvious institutional terror of letting the public see the sausage-factory locked behind the closed doors not only of the state, but of banks and universities and other such institutional pillars of society. As Gibney pointed out in his movie, this is a Wizard of Oz moment, where we are being warned not to look behind the curtain….
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A federal judge has struck down a Missouri law exempting moral objectors from mandatory birth control coverage because it conflicts with an insurance requirement under President Barrack Obama’s health care law.
click for bio
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Audrey Fleissig cites a provision in the U.S. Constitution declaring that federal laws take precedence over contradictory state laws. But Fleissig emphasized that she was taking no position on the merits of the Obama administration policy, which requires insurers to cover contraception at no additional cost to women.
The anti-abortion group Campaign Life Missouri distributed an email Monday denouncing the ruling as “a radical departure from America’s tradition of religious freedom” and imploring people to contact Koster’s office in support of an appeal. Some backers of Missouri’s law said the court ruling could result in churches and other religious organizations having to accept insurance policies that include contraception coverage. Continue reading →
Judicial Watch today released additional excerpts from United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) videos revealing a compulsory “Cultural Sensitivity Training” program where diversity awareness trainer and self-described “citizen of the world” Samuel Betances tells USDA employees to repeat the chant “If we work for a federal agency, we’ve discriminated in the past.” Betances also suggested to USDA employees that the United States “took over what used to be Mexico” and stated that schools are only interested in educating middle class children…via Judicial Watch.
Well, this is frightening in all of its sterile and thoroughly restrained legal-ese. Posse comitatus anyone? Actually, as long as there is an Executive Order, the Constitution, judiciary, legislature and case law all no longer apply if I recall correctly. I.e.:
The following self-learning course from the U.S. Army Military Police School, which was formerly located at Fort McClellan, describes procedures for military police involvement in civil disturbance operations. The course makes it clear that temporary detention facilities in the event of a civil disturbance overloading local resources would be operated under existing military doctrine for internment facilities. The course cites U.S. Army FM 3-19.40 Internment/Resettlement Operations, which is now numbered FM 3-39.40 since its most recent revision in 2010, as the primary reference for the operation of these facilities…
“2. Application of Force.
a. General.
(1) Civil disturbance operations by federal forces will not be authorized until the President is advised by the highest officials of the state that the situation cannot be controlled with nonfederal resources available. The mission of the control force is to help restore law and order and to help maintain it until such time as state and local forces can control the situation without federal help. In performing this mission, the control force may have to actively participate, not only in subduing the disturbance, but also in helping to detain those responsible for it. Control force commanders are authorized and directed to provide such active participation, subject to restraints on the use of force...”
“For the early generations, it was an incredibly good deal,” said Andrew Biggs, a former deputy Social Security commissioner who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “The government gave you free money and getting free money is popular.”
If you retired in 1960, you could expect to get back seven times more in benefits than you paid in Social Security taxes, and more if you were a low-income worker, as long you made it to age 78 for men and 81 for women.
As recently as 1985, workers at every income level could retire and expect to get more in benefits than they paid in Social Security taxes, though they didn’t do quite as well as their parents and grandparents.
When President Obama endorsed going back to school shortly after he came into office, very few Americans understood what the full ramifications of this would be. Coupled with the fact that under Obama, the government has taken over the Student Loan industry, millions of Americans have become debt slaves to Uncle Sam.
And to deal with the 30% of student loan debtors who are delinquent in their payments, the government has moved towards stricter ways of getting its money back, and this now includes withholding Social Security payments to worthy recipients… see here
Since Jan. 1 of this year, according to congressional testimony presented Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, the Federal Aviation Administration has authorized 106 federal, state and local government “entities” to fly “unmanned aircraft systems,” also known as drones, within U.S. airspace.“
We are now on the edge of a new horizon: using unmanned aerial systems within the homeland,” House Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Michael McCaul R.-Texas said as he introduced the testimony…via CNSNews.com.
Last week supporters and opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act anxiously awaited the Supreme Court’s ruling on the law’s individual health insurance mandate. Imagine their surprise when the Court announced, in a majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, that there is no individual health insurance mandate.
Rather than a “penalty” imposed on anyone who “fails to comply” with the “requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage,” which is how the law itself describes the policy, Roberts perceived a “tax” that hinges on whether one follows the government’s totally nonmandatory guidelines regarding health insurance. This implausible relabeling of reality was Roberts’ desperate attempt to uphold the provision formerly known as a mandate without endorsing a boundless view of Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce. Instead he endorsed a boundless view of Congress’ tax power that could prove even more dangerous to liberty… via Reason.com.
IRS officials on background tell FOX Business the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on health reform gives the IRS even more powers than previously understood. The IRS now gets to know about a small business’s entire payroll, the level of their insurance coverage — and it gets to know the income of not just the primary breadwinner in your house, but your entire family’s income, in order to assess/collect the mandated tax.
Plus, it gets to share your personal info with all sorts of government agencies, insurance companies and employers.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “We expect even more lien and levy powers,” an IRS official says. Even the Taxpayer Advocate is deeply concerned. Continue reading →
Potential employers have to respond to the incentives and disincentives that exist in today’s world, and those do not favor conventional permanent employees. I know you’re hard-working, motivated, tech-savvy and willing to learn. The reason I can’t hire you has nothing to do with your work ethic or skills; it’s the high-cost Status Quo, and the many perverse consequences of maintaining a failing Status Quo.
The sad truth is that it’s costly and risky to hire anyone to do anything, and “bankable projects” that might generate profit/require more labor are few and far between. The overhead costs for employees have skyrocketed. So even though the wages employees see on their paychecks have stagnated, the total compensation costs the employer pays have risen substantially.
Thirty years ago the overhead costs were considerably less, adjusted for inflation, and there weren’t billboards advertising a free trip to Cabo if you sued your employer. (I just saw an advert placed by a legal firm while riding a BART train that solicited employees to sue their employers, with the incentive being “freemoney” for a vacation to Cabo.) Continue reading →
At some point, the question must be asked: Is that useless degree worth it?? GE.
… According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, between 2007 and 2010, the percentage of people with a graduate degree who were on food stamps or were receiving another kind of federal aid more than doubled, reaching 360,000… In 2007, 9,776 people with PhD’s were receiving some kind of aid. In 2010, that number had more than tripled to 33,655. For people with master’s degrees, the number spiked from 101,683 to 293,029. Austin Nichols of the Urban Institute crunched those numbers for The Chronicle using census data…. via The Daily Caller.
Alternate Inflation Charts. The CPI chart … reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living…
Year in, year out, Washington bestows tuition aid on students and their families. Year in, year out, the cost of tuition surges, galloping well ahead of inflation. And year in, year out, politicians vie to outdo each other in promising still more public subsidies that will keep higher education within reach of all. Does it never occur to them that there might be a cause-and-effect relationship between the skyrocketing aid and the skyrocketing price of a college education? That all those grants and loans and tax credits aren’t containing the fire, but fanning it?
An entire way of life is rapidly dying right in front of our eyes. The family farm is being systematically wiped out of existence in America, and big agribusiness and the federal government both have blood all over their hands. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States has fallen from about 6.8 million in 1935 to only about 2 million today. That doesn’t mean that there is less farming going on. U.S. farms are producing more than ever. But what it does mean is that farming is increasingly becoming dominated by the big boys…
New Jersey USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) Farm Loan Chief Kevin Murphy reminds producers that FSA offers specially-targeted farm ownership and farm operating loans to Socially Disadvantaged (SDA) applicants.
“FSA targets a portion of its loan funds each year to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers,” said Murphy. “Farming and ranching is a capital intensive business and FSA is committed to helping producers start and maintain their agricultural operations.” In fiscal year 2011, New Jersey FSA obligated $2.17 million in direct and guaranteed loans to socially disadvantaged producers.
USDA defines socially disadvantaged applicants as a group whose members have been subjected to racial, ethnic, or gender prejudice because of their identity as members of the group without regard to their individual qualities. For farm loan program purposes, SDA groups are women, African Americans, American Indians and Alaskan Natives, Hispanics and Asians and Pacific Islanders. Continue reading →
Remember: You have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, when speaking with police. Do not consent to any searches. Keep your wits about you, be courteous. Ask if you are being detained or whether you are free to leave, then … and commit this to memory … shut the fuck up. If you are free to leave, leave. Perhaps be nice enough to give the officer / investigator the contact info for your attorney. Remember, the officer / investigator is just doing their job. See here…
BY JOHN R. EMSHWILLER AND GARY FIELDS, MONTEREY, Calif.—When federal prosecutors can’t muster enough evidence to bring charges against a person suspected of a crime, they can still use a controversial law to get a conviction anyway: They charge the person with lying.
The law against lying—known in legal circles simply as “1001”—makes it a crime to knowingly make a material false statement in matters of federal jurisdiction. Critics across the political spectrum argue that 1001, a widely used statute in the federal criminal code, is open to abuse. It is charged hundreds of times a year, according to court records and interviews with lawyers and legal …via WSJ.com.
The U.S. federal law allows recording of phone calls and other electronic communications with the consent of at least one party to the call. A majority of the states and territories have adopted wiretapping statutes based on the federal law, although most have also extended the law to cover in-person conversations. 38 states and the D.C. permit recording telephone conversations to which they are a party without informing the other parties that they are doing so.
12 states require, under most circumstances, the consent of all parties to a conversation. Those jurisdictions are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. It is illegal under all jurisdictions to record calls in which one is not a party.
A complete state-by-state set of regulations regarding telephone call recording may be obtained in the following report published by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: http://www.rcfp.org/taping/states.html
RAMAPO,NY – Federal authorities raided private Jewish schools and businesses in Rockland County to see if millions of federal dollars earmarked for education technology were misused.FBI agents conducted 22 separate search warrants at yeshivas and offices in the town of Ramapo on Wednesday afternoon, the Journal News reported. Agents were seen going in and out of a private business in Monsey, removing computer hard drives and documents.The investigators asked them to provide records of equipment allegedly bought through the federal government’s E-Rate program, which pays for technology in schools, the newspaper reported…more: Yeshivas Investigated
Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Activist Post, consider the following…
The Grey Enigma 