Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear. ~ General Douglas MacArthur
Who cleans up the mess when ignorant, greedy bankers rack up massive debt then go broke? The people of Iceland made a strong statement Saturday. The sins of big bankers and government regulators shouldn’t fall on the citizens. By a 93% to 2% margin, they voted down a proposal requiring them to cover bad debt incurred by one of the nation’s oldest and largest banks. Covering the debt would have cost Iceland’s 317,000 citizens around $17,000 each.
Iceland’s national referendum was the first opportunity for the people of any nation to vote directly on who pays when the financial elite fail.
As citizens voted, Iceland’s Prime Minister was dismissing the importance of the vote and promising to negotiate a payment scheme obligating citizen subsidies for bad debt created by Iceland’s beyond-bad bankers.
Unknown to most Americans, the United States is losing the ability to compete in global trade because of the little known foreign Value-Added Tax (VAT).
Foreign governments use this tax against United States producers as a means to prevent the importation and consumption of U.S. goods, while providing incentives for their countries to export their goods to the U.S. The foreign VAT was a subsidy created after World War II to speed up beneficial other countries’ recovery. However, it is still used today by 149 countries to exploit this advantageous position against American trade. We have not used it domestically to off set theirs as a benefit to ourselves.
The foreign VAT gives the companies of other nations and their exports the upper-hand by providing incentives in the form of rebates equal to the indirect tax on the exported product. For example, the VAT rate is 19 percent in Germany; therefore the Germans receive a 19 percent rebate from their government on each product exported to the U.S. This acts as a subsidy for a product while encouraging the exportation of products to the U.S. However, the VAT imposes a punishment on U.S. exports by placing a VAT equivalent to the Value Added Tax rate of the importing country. This means all U.S. exports that enter into Germany are taxed 19 percent on top of another 19 percent for the transportation fees of the goods into the country. The VAT destroys American industries’ ability to promote exports, while encouraging foreigners to sell their products to Americans – it must be amended or eliminated.
To the little boy’s mother, it was just a 6-year-old boy playing around.
But when Mason Jammer, a kindergarten student at Jefferson Elementary in Ionia, curled his fist into the shape of a gun Wednesday and pointed it at another student, school officials said it was no laughing matter.
They suspended Mason until Friday, saying the behavior made other students uncomfortable, said Erin Jammer, Mason’s mother.
School officials allege Mason had displayed this kind of behavior for several months, despite numerous warnings.
“I do think it’s too harsh for a six-year-old,” said Jammer, who was previously warned that if Mason continued the practice he would be suspended. “He’s six and he just likes to play.”
Jammer says her son isn’t violent, and there are other, more effective ways of teaching him not to make a gun with his hand.
“Maybe what you could do is take his recess away,” suggested Jammer, adding her son doesn’t have toy guns at home.
“He’s only six and he doesn’t understand any of this.”
Obama’s provision of $54 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry will cost Americans much more than the probable 50 percent default rate on the financing. While the federal government will backstop the profits of investors, don’t expect rate payers to be protected from the inevitable rate hikes.
Higher electric rates will begin to appear, not when plants begin operating, but often years if not decades before they come on line. Several states allow customers to be billed for expensive new nuclear plants in advance. Naturally, these are the states where the initial new, entirely untested, plants are proposed for construction. This arrangement further reduces investor exposure to risks such as cost overruns or rising interest rates that are imposed due to the downgrading of credit ratings for facilities with deteriorating economic prospects.
It should be noted that removal of risk exposure to investors results in the elimination of incentives for sound management. The legal requirement of ‘prudence,’ required of utility managers, becomes quite elastic once sunk costs are waiting to be recovered. Good money is thrown after bad. Rate payers, whose dollars are on the line, will have little to no oversight or input into the administration of their investment dollars.
In a battle that pits the ‘little guy’ against the ‘big guy,’ the Achuar, an Indigenous people from Peru have taken on Occidental Petroleum with the help of U.S. based group, Amazon Watch.
Launched in 2007 in the United States, an American judge had decided the case should be heard in Peru. The Achuar and Amazon Watch appealed that decision. Wednesday, the appeal was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California.
The Achuar launched it’s case against Occidental with Amazon Watch over the alleged pollution of the Amazonian rain forest in north-east Peru where the Achuar traditionally live. The Achuar charge that Occidental had consistently polluted the Corrientes River Basin for the past 30 years by releasing billions of barrels of untreated waste water into the ecosystem. Occidental is also accused of having abandoned unremediated toxic waste sites in the jungle, with the subsequent poisoning of the people living in the region with cadmium, and lead poisoning and numerous other health problems.
Gov. David Paterson of New York insisted this week that he wouldn’t heed calls for his resignation, despite his administration’s being roiled by two scandals. But no matter what he does, he is still entitled to his full pension once he retires. In fact, there is nothing any New York state employee can do that would cause them to lose a pension; not even a corruption conviction, being fired for embezzlement or a prison sentence.
A provision in the New York State Constitution, written in 1938 and approved by voters, protects pensions for state employees from being “diminished or impaired.” Here’s the wording:
After July first, nineteen hundred forty, membership in any pension or retirement system of the state or of a civil division thereof shall be a contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.
This means that politicians receive their pensions even after they become convicted felons, such as State Sens. Joseph Bruno ($8,007.11 monthly pension) and Guy Velella ($6,251 monthly pension). (Messages to the former senators have not been returned, but we’ll update you if we hear from them.) Pensions are determined essentially by averaging the largest three consecutive years of an employee’s salary.
If you don’t think the police in New York City need to be reined in, consider the way the cops and their agents are treating youngsters in the city’s schools.
In March 2009, a girl and a boy in the sixth grade at the Hunts Point School in the Bronx were fooling around and each drew a line on the other’s desk with an erasable marker. The teacher told them to erase the lines, and the kids went to get tissues. This blew up into a major offense when school safety officers became involved.
The safety officers, who have been accused in many instances of mistreating children, are peace officers assigned to the schools. They wear uniforms, work for the New York Police Department and have the power to detain, search, handcuff and arrest students. They do not carry guns.
In this case, the officers seized the two pupils and handcuffed them. Before long, an armed police officer showed up to question the youngsters. The girl asked for her mother and began to cry. Tears were no defense in the minds of the brave New York City law enforcers surrounding this errant child. They were determined to keep the city safe from sixth graders armed with Magic Markers.
Maryland’s SWAT transparency bill produces its first disturbing results
Cheye Calvo’s July 2008 encounter with a Prince George’s County, Maryland, SWAT team is now pretty well-known: After intercepting a package of marijuana at a delivery service warehouse, police completed the delivery, in disguise, to the address on the package. That address belonged to Calvo, who also happened to be the mayor of the small Prince George’s town of Berwyn Heights. When Calvo’s mother-in-law brought the package in from the porch, the SWAT team pounced, forcing their way into Calvo’s home. By the time the raid was over, Calvo and his mother-in-law had been handcuffed for hours, police realized they’d made a mistake, and Calvo’s two black Labradors lay dead on the floor from gunshot wounds.
As a result of this colossal yet not-unprecedented screw-up, plus Calvo’s notoriety and persistence, last year Maryland became the first state in the country to make every one of its police departments issue a report on how often and for what purpose they use their SWAT teams.The first reports from the legislation are in, and the results are disturbing.
The parents of a Kentuckiana seventh grade student say their young daughter was suspended from school for doing exactly what she’s been taught to do for years – to just say no to drugs.
The girl did not bring the prescription drug to her Jeffersonville, IN school, nor did she take it, but she admits that she touched it and in Greater Clark County Schools that is drug possession.
Rachael Greer said it happened on Feb. 23 during fifth period gym class at River Valley Middle School when a girl walked into the locker room with a bag of pills.
“She was talking to another girl and me about them and she put one in my hand and I was like, ‘I don’t want this,’ so I put it back in the bag and I went to gym class,” said Rachael.
