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"Those who want to "spread the wealth" almost invariably seek to concentrate the power."
– Dr. Thomas Sowell, professor of Economics
Our Ticking Debt Bomb…Schadenfreude
Despite having
the lowest approval rating on record ever, I’m continually amazed at how
Congress continues to bamboozle to public.
Our economic future is precarious at best and time is running out. Obama continues his expensive, tax payer
subsidized vacations. No other
president, even Eisenhower, has played as many rounds of golf as Obama…sort of
reminds me of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Despite Obama’s lip service to ‘rescuing’ the middle
class and restoring decent jobs, he seems to enjoy the despicable trait of Schadenfreude,
or glee found in other’s misery. He
uses our misery to justify his socialist programs, forgetting how a free
economy and country is supposed to work.
The Moment of
Truth Project, co-chaired by Erskine Bowles (remember him from the
commission on debt reduction which Obama ignored) has been on a mission with
his Campaign to Fix the Debt program
to spread the word on how serious our financial problem is along with an
arsenal of painful, but workable solutions designed to avert the pending
crisis.
According to Bowles, it will take some kind of crisis to
get our do-nothing Congress to act.
“I think at some
point the markets will look at our country and say, whoa, you guys have a
dysfunctional government, you’re addicted to debt, clearly the path you are on
is not sustainable over the long term and you have NO plan in place, nothing,
to deal with it.”
The organization offers a detailed remedy, many of which
mirror what I’ve written about since 1999 including a tax reform plan that
eliminates all tax deductions and credits in the short term (yes, even churches
and non-profits would pay something) and consolidating the tax code into three
individual rates, and one corporate rate which would include those foreign
corporation which pay zero US taxes.
There are many more points to the plan which merit
immediate consideration. Find more at:
Citizen Resources
You Can Use
Mandela, Harlem Shake Most Searched in 2013
Google has released a report of their top 10 global
trending searched of 2013. Nelson Mandela topped the list that also featured
serious topics like the Boston Marathon and North Korea. But the popular Harlem
Shake also made the list at number five.
Again, it would seem, few are interested in what is happening to our
country and the NUMBER ONE reason why I believe our chances of recovering our
nation are mighty slim!
According to Google, the top 10 trending searches of
2013 are:
- Nelson Mandela
- Paul Walker
- iPhone 5s
- Cory Monteith
- Harlem Shake
- Boston Marathon
- Royal Baby
- Samsung Galaxy s4
- PlayStation 4
- North Korea
Signs of the growth of the government aristocracy: is the difference between job growth in the private sector versus the government sector. Since the economic crisis in 2008, 41 of 50 states have seen losses in private sector jobs – not gains. The job gains that do get reported are primarily government jobs, and many jobs that aren't entirely funded by the government are contractor positions that receive most or all of their pay from the government. In many states, as much as one fifth of the population is reliant on the government for their paycheck... and that doesn't include people living on welfare.
A disparity between private sector and government pay is also forming. It used to be that if you held a government position, you'd expect to be paid less than you would in a comparable private sector position. That's no longer true. In an Ohio study, for example, researchers found that the average government employee earned nearly 45% more an hour in wages and benefits than the average private sector worker.
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Sending Cash
I have sent cash through the mail.
In fact, if you want to leave virtually no trace of money that you need to get to someone, the mail can be a much more private option than using wire services or sending checks or using credit cards or PayPal. Everything other than cash leaves a clear trail that, more and more, government officials can access without even troubling themselves to get a warrant. Here a few guidelines for safely sending cash through the mail.
1. Split large amounts up and mail it in several different envelopes.
2. Mail the envelopes from several locations.
Let's say that you need to repay a debt of $400 to a friend on the other side of the country, for example. Wrap four $100 bills in a magazine page or glossy ad from a newspaper. Mail it or buy a prepaid gift card (one of the few things left where your socialist slave number isn’t needed).
Human Microchipping Agenda
People are living very busy lives these days, working
extra hard to keep the roofs over their heads, the food on their tables. Those
are the lucky ones, or so are led to believe. Life in this particular
dog-eat-dog system can be stressful. We've been trained by...
Passport Sleeves and Other Privacy Matters
Your passport probably has an RFID chip in it that can be used to track you. Your credit cards can be scanned by identity thieves while they are still in your wallet. Facial recognition software can identify you from Facebook photos in a database. Police now routinely track your movements using license plate scanners and keep the information for years. What privacy measures can you take to do something about all of these invasive new technologies? Here are a few examples.
Passport and Credit Card Security
United States passports issued since 2007 have an RFID chip inside. In addition to allowing tracking and information gathering by snoopy government officials, this chip allows criminals with an RFID reading device to get at any information stored in your passport chip. This is also true of many credit cards now. A criminal can walk past you in a store and read your card information without you ever knowing it happened--until there are a few thousand dollars in charges you didn't make on your statement.
It is illegal for you to disable the chip in a passport, by the way, but you can keep it (along with credit cards) in a security sleeve that blocks scanners from reading the chip. These sell for as little as $5 online. Another, even cheaper, alternative is to wrap passports or credit cards in aluminum foil.
Increasing government
surveillance is leaving us with less freedom to determine who we are and who we
want to be, Snowden told UK TV viewers…
Even C-Span is asking “Is the US Becoming a Police
State?”
EPIC – One of the
strongest voices protecting privacy rights in America
It’s no secret. We need your support to
continue our work to defend your privacy.
http://www.epic.org/donate/
continue our work to defend your privacy.
http://www.epic.org/donate/
Minimizing your digital trail…
TIPS to protect yourself from the prying eyes of thieves
and government (I’m being redundant) use these hints:
·
Go low-tech by using cash and pre-paid gift
cards (not debit cards)
·
Use pre-paid cell phones and buy them and
minutes with cash
·
Do not use Smart Phones
·
Do not carry multiple credit cards (best to
eliminate them entirely)
·
Drive an older car – 2010 or older as they have
fewer identifiers built-in
·
The government routinely snoops through
membership groups such as the NRA and social networking sites such as facebook
– avoid using them if you want to lower your profile.
·
Use a TIN (taxpayer identification number issued
by the IRS used, for instance, to open a bank account in trust for your minor
children, non-profit group, etc.) Your SSN has become a universal key to
identity theft thanks to the government and its un-Patriot Act.
·
Homeschool your children if possible
·
Leave blank questions from medical care
providers asking about guns you own.
·
The more professional licenses you have (real
estate, pilot, drivers, etc.) the more access you provide to thieves and
government agencies.
How
to Remove a Name From a Public Search
·
The easiest way to prevent anyone from accessing
your name and personal information over the Internet is to remove your name
from the residential listings of online phone book services while
simultaneously reducing your profile in online forums and social networking
sites. Doing so will not remove your name from local residential listings but
will protect your privacy online. A number of companies provide online listings
of names and telephone numbers. This information typically comes from the
listings in your local phone book. Companies that provide these services
include Google, AnyWho, Switchboard.com, Whitepages.com, Reverse Phone
Directory, Phonenumber.com, and Smartpages.com
Microsoft offers a
quick way to check for possible intrusions to your accounts with its services.
Readers
Money Saving, Planet Saving Tips
Get rid of cable. Our
contract with Verizon is up, and we are ditching cable and the two DVRs we rent
each month. We don't need to watch so much TV, and with the Apple TV, we can
stream just about anything we do want to watch. We're fans of the show
Elementary, and it's easy to stream the latest episode for free. Throw in an $8
a month Netflix subscription, and we have all of the TV we need.
Savings: $50/month; $600/year; $6,000/decade; $30,000/lifetime
Savings: $50/month; $600/year; $6,000/decade; $30,000/lifetime
New Bank Creates Currency from Plastic
Waste in the Ocean
Every day,
people contribute 13,000 to 15,000 pieces of plastic to the ocean, harming
hundreds of thousands of marine creatures and seabirds. David Katz hopes to
change that with The Plastic Bank, a new social enterprise he founded to
curtail ocean-polluting plastic by encouraging people to treat it as currency.
READ MORE »
READ MORE »
Related: Turning plastic into bluejeans…
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1 comment:
Thanks for the great articles and info.
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