Court Declares Stop and Frisk Policy of Fuhrer Bloomberg and NYPD Unconstitutional

A federal court declared the Stop and Frisk policies of NYPD and Fuhrer Bloomberg unconstitutional, here.

While it's a rare civil liberties victory from a court system that generally upholds the hideous and humiliating police powers of the state, Stop and Frisk also exposed the truly racist nature of the program. In the Nazified Big Apple, Fuhrer Bloomberg's policy to "stop and frisk" anybody for any reason came under fire from civil rights activists for justifiable reasons because the policy was blatantly racist and 90% of those who were stopped and frisked were folks of color according to CNN, here.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people in New York are stopped, questioned, frisked and searched, often without justification, under the "stop and frisk" policy. The vast majority of these people live in communities of color, and almost 90% are immediately released without arrest or even a summons.

Image Source: http://images2.dailykos.com/i/user/116919/stopandfriskchart.JPG

Even if the courts slow down the 'stop and frisk' policies, it still won't help those who are subjected to cavity searches and sexual assaults for routine traffic stops and it won't decrease the reach of the TSA's army of sexual predators that is expanding its operations beyond airports and to train stations and bus stations.

Even more horrifying, the Supreme Court upheld the right of law enforcement to perform cavity searches on everyone taken into custody and many folks are routinely taken into custody for traffic violations and other minor infractions. When it comes to human humiliation and degradation, Police State USA knows no boundaries, ethics or morality. The state exists to inspire absolute fear because fear breeds compliance as folks sacrifice their natural rights, dignity and cowardly capitulate to government and its goons. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld cavity searches.

Bend Over and Spread Em says the Supreme Court

Regarding the recent 5-4 SCOTUS decision to uphold strip searches, Supreme Court Justice Breyer describes a strip search in his dissent (joined by Kagan, Gingsberg and Sotomayor) as follows:

“‘..a visual inspection of the inmate’s naked body. This should include the inmate opening his mouth and moving his tongue up and down and from side to side, removing any dentures, running his hands through his hair, allowing his ears to be visually examined, lifting his arms to expose his arm pits, lifting his feet to examine the sole, spreading and/or lifting his testicles to expose the area behind them and bending over and/or spreading the cheeks of his buttocks to expose his anus. For females, the procedures are similar except females must in addition, squat to expose the vagina.’”

The Supreme Court has upheld the right of the police to do this to anybody for any reason who has the misfortune of ending up in police custody for any reason, including minor traffic violations. For obviously justifiable reasons, this outrageously insane Supreme Court decision has fired up anger among civil libertarians on all sides of the political ideological spectrum. Pure and simple, it's a rape, it's a sexual assault and it's designed to be as humiliating and degrading as possible. A nation where state sanctioned sexual assault is codified into the law of the land has debauched itself to a level reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the most ruthlessly oppressive totalitarian regimes ever to exist.

America, land of the free. BARF.... America is now more like Dr. StrangeGlove probing your every body orafice for maximum human degradation because that's what government does best.

When Was the Word "Taxes" Replaced with the Word "Revenues"?

Taxes used to be called precisely what they are - TAXES or the plunder forcibly extracted from citizens to fund government and all that government does. However, lately the word TAXES seems to have disappeared from the discourse and the hot new media term is REVENUES. Moreover, the raising of taxes (revenue) is now dubbed comprehensive tax reform by Democrats and progressives because the accurate and meaningful term "tax increase" tends to cause folks to angrily freak out. But heck, so long as the debate is camouflaged in deceptively benign terms like revenue and comprehensive tax reform, the folks just aren't deemed smart enough to notice the truth about what is really going on.

The Huffington Post  had a big blazing headline.

NO MORE REVENUE!

The headline links to an article complaining about how Sen. Mitch McConnell proclaimed that there will be no more new taxes.

Mitch McConnell On Future Debt Deals: 'The Tax Issue Is Finished'

There will be no more increases in tax revenues as part of any debt or deficit-reduction deal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared in several interviews on Sunday.

“[T]he tax issue is finished, over, completed,” said the Kentucky Republican, during an appearance on ABC’s "This Week."....

The comments represent a deep line in the sand as Congress and the White House approach the debates over replacing the $1 trillion in sequester-related cuts, the raising of the debt ceiling, and the passage of a continuing resolution to fund the government. And they foreshadow another major showdown between congressional Republicans and the administration.

The president has said that he will not make major entitlement reforms or spending cuts during those negotiations unless it is part of a balanced approach. On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi echoed that view.

“No, no, it is not,” she said, when asked by CBS’ Bob Schieffer if the revenue side was now taken care of. “I mean, the president had said originally he wanted $1.6 trillion in revenue, he took it down to 1.2 as a compromise in this legislation. We get $620 billion dollars, very significant, high-end tax, changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent, but that is not enough on the revenue side.”

The hope, among Democrats, is that another $600 billion in revenue may be raised through comprehensive tax reform.

There can be no question that the Dems are bitterly complaining about how unhappy they are because they didn't get $1.6 trillion in new taxes.  Clearly, the crusade to plunder Americans of every cent they ever earned will continue unabated because the thought of reducing government spending is just too horrifying a thought for the confiscating totalitarian thugs who thrive on folks being forcibly impoverished by the government and reduced to pathetic beggars.

The Republican Party is Like an Ugly Peeling Wallpaper, Circa 1950....

The Republican Party resembles an ugly and peeling wallpaper, circa 1950's. While the Republican pundits are scratching their heads in disbelief over election losses, they all saying essentially the same thing: we are a great party, we have a great platform, we have a great message and we have a great plan to solve our problems. In other words, the Republican Party thinks that it's perfect just the way it is and, hilariously, their only problem is falling down when it comes to getting their message out. Romney Iowa strategist David Kochel said “First of all, we’ve got to improve our mechanics and our organization,” and “We got beat on data collection. Our polling was off. I thought that we spent way too much time in a defensive posture with our messaging.", here. Kochel also admitted that money was not a problem and the RNC/GOP machine had plenty of money “We certainly raised enough money. We don’t have to fix that,”.

The RNC has even launched a study to figure out why Romney lost and named the initiative the Growth and Opportunity Project.

RNC Launches New Initiative to Grow the Party and Win

The effort, known as the Growth and Opportunity Project, will be chaired by five GOP leaders and is charged by Priebus with initially reviewing past practices and also making critical recommendations for the future in these eight key areas: 1.) campaign mechanics and ground game; 2.) messaging; 3.) fundraising; 4.) demographic partners and allies; 5.) third party groups; 6.) campaign finance issues; 7.) presidential primaries; and 8.) lessons learned from Democratic campaign tactics.

The group will reach out to hundreds of individuals including RNC Members, grassroots activists, donors, elected officials, community leaders and other important partners to gain insight and help the Republican Party form a solid path going forward. These leaders will be involved in one or more of these critical areas.

The Growth and Opportunity Project is co-chaired by five prominent Republican leaders:

Henry Barbour, National Committeeman from Mississippi

Zori Fonalledas, National Committeewoman from Puerto Rico

Glenn McCall, National Committeeman from South Carolina

Sally Bradshaw, Veteran senior strategist in Florida and national politics

Ari Fleischer, Former White House Press Secretary

They will report their findings to Chairman Priebus and make recommendations for a long-term strategy for the future.

The Republican Party will be making a big play to win over Hispanic and African American voters.  However, it's a flawed strategy that is doomed to fail.  Hispanics and African American voters who aren't already diehard Democrat loyalists are liberty activists, constitutionalists and Ron Paul supporters who have no use whatsoever for the GOP or the Democrats.

Non-conservatives and liberals think they perfectly understand the Republican Party -  the Republican Party is nothing more than a party divided by radical Tea Party types and moderate Republicans in the mold of McCain or Romney.  Liberals tend to view the election triumph of the Democrats as a sign that America has taken a hard left turn so their incessant gloating is intensely festive.  CNN chirps in, here, "Listening to Republicans try to explain what went wrong in their worse-than-expected election thumping reveals a party struggling to define itself amid continuing change in the nation it seeks to lead."

The Republican Party can no longer define itself because it doesn't stand for anything except bigger government, bigger deficits, more wars, more corporate welfare and more bankster bailouts. Still, the GOP hopelessly clings to the spectacularly false legacy of Ronald Reagan as the real conservative Republican model while it searches endlessly for the reincarnation of the ghost of Reagan.  A lot has changed since the days of Reagan.  Blindly worshiping Reagan and Nixon as a gods will not bring back those good old days when the GOP racked up impressive victories.

1972: Nixon defeats McGovern 520 electoral votes to 17 electoral votes
1980: Reagan defeats Carter 489 electoral votes to 49 electoral votes
1984: Reagan defeats Mondale 525 electoral votes to 13 electoral votes

In many ways, the Republican Party is like a 3 legged stool.with 3 constituent legs - the social conservatives, the Rockefeller Republicans and  constitutional liberty activists.

1.  The social conservatives endorse big government and endless wars.

2.  The Rockefeller Republicans endorse big government and endless wars but are very uncomfortable the social issues which they don't care about.

3.  The constitutional liberty activists oppose big government, the damn wars, the trillion dollar a year foreign policy, the Federal Reserve and they really oppose the federal government meddling in the social issues because it's not a power specifically enumerated in the constitution.

What is killing the Republican Party is that the constitutional liberty activists will no longer hold their noses and vote Republican as they once did and this is a trend that surfaced in 2006 and was considerably magnified in 2008 when the Democrats took back the House of Representatives and won the presidency.

In fact, the liberty activists are so angry with the GOP that they are determined to guarantee its defeat by voting 3rd party for however long it takes for the liberty activists to takeover the GOP from the warmongers and fascists.  The Gary Johnson vote delivered critical swing states to Obama in 2012.

Yet, the archaic Republican Party views itself as a party that can win elections just by firing up the intolerant social conservatives, beating the war drums for perpetual bankrupting wars and sprinkling some cold dead words like 'capitalism' in the toxic mix to camouflage the crony capitalist fascist economy.  Here's how the GOP view itself and its base.

The Republican game plan has finally failed.  In fact, it's a BIG fail but instead of embracing traditional Republican conservatism and the agenda of the constitutionalists and liberty activists, the Republican Party is absolutely determined to vigorously pursue the Democratic model of romancing the Free Shit Army while growing government, slashing civil liberties and pursing endless wars - all traditional Democrat ideals that dumped America into the statist cesspool without a life jacket.

Who got America into WW I, WW II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Balkan Wars? - all progressive liberal Democrats that were perennially obsessed with their divine right to rule over everybody and every nation.  Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Clinton were all hardcore warmongering statists, although Clinton's appetite for war was downright squeamish compared with the overt addiction to mass human genocide of the most intensely worshiped luminaries within the Democratic Party.

Interestingly, the anti-GOP establishment website, The American Conservative, posted a piece on the anti-war and anti-foreign interventionist roots of the Republican Party.

Why Conservatives Hate War

One of the odder aspects of present-day politics is the assumption that if you are antiwar you are on the left, and if you are conservative you are “pro-war.” Like labelling conservative states red and liberal states blue, this is an inversion of historical practice.

The opposition to America’s entry into both World Wars was largely led by conservatives. Senator Robert A. Taft, the standard-bearer of postwar conservatism, opposed war unless the United States itself was attacked. Even Bismarck, after he had fought and won the three wars he needed to unify Germany, was staunchly antiwar. He once described preventive war, like the one America is being pressured to wage on Iran, as “committing suicide for fear of being killed.”

Conservatives’ detestation of war has no “touchy-feely” origins. It springs from conservatism’s roots, its most fundamental beliefs and objectives. Conservatism seeks above all social and cultural continuity, and nothing endangers that more than war.

In the 20th century, war brought about social and cultural revolutions in the United States....

Russia’s involvement in World War I gave us Bolshevism. Germany’s defeat made Hitler possible. As the First World War shows, if a conflict is costly enough, the victors’ social order can suffer nearly as badly as that of the vanquished. Not only did the British Empire die in the mud of Flanders, but postwar Britain was a very different place from Edwardian Britain.

The plain fact is, conservatives loathe unpredictability. They also know that vast state expenditures and debts can destabilize a society, and no activity of the state is more expensive than war. America’s adventure in Iraq, driven in no small part by the quest for oil—which will now mostly go to China—has already cost a trillion dollars, with another trillion or two to come caring for crippled veterans. Even the peacetime cost of a large military can break a country, as it broke the Soviet Union. American conservatives used to be budget hawks, not warhawks.

Exactly how the Republican Party managed to transform itself from the party of peace and constitutionally limited government into the Big Spending Progressive War Party is open to considerable debate and speculation.   Somehow, the Republican Party became a wholly owned subsidiary of defense contractors, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, crony capitalism and the Banksters.

If the Republican Party thinks that it can romance the Democrats into voting Republican, the GOP is delusional beyond comprehension.  The DNC has a solid and historically documented monopoly on big government, endless wars and statism.

Maybe it's time to just seal the GOP's coffin because it's a party that is ideologically, socially and morally irrelevant, as well as indistinguishable from the Democratic Party.

When it Comes to Firearms, Stupid it as Stupid Does

Without the 2nd amendment, there can be no other rights because the most basic of natural rights is the right to defend oneself and family against violent predators and criminals.  Without the 2nd amendment and the right of citizens to own firearms, peaceful law abiding citizens become sitting ducks and victims.  When the government interferes with 2nd amendment rights, the government is effectively saying:  you have a duty to die, you have a duty to be raped, you have a duty to be violently assaulted, you have a duty to be robbed of your property and you DO NOT have the right to defend yourself, your family or you property because you, your family and your property are indeed public property for anybody to feast upon at will.

The Sandy Hook school massacre by a lunatic on the loose has resulted in massively mobilized opinions from all sides of the 2nd amendment debate.  One anti-2nd amendment columnist actually called for the repeal of the 2nd amendment and the execution of all owners of firearms who refuse to relinquish their guns.

Des Moines columnist calls for repeal of Second Amendment, death of gun owners

One New York newspaper released the names and locations of all firearm owners in New York’s Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties, here.  However, CBS is reporting that that Putnam County is refusing to release the names and locations of firearms owners, here.  Exactly what information has been released by counties that control firearms registration isn't exactly clear but what is clear is that some information has definitely been released to the public and plastered on websites.

It's really stupid as well as exceedingly dangerous to publish the names and addresses of firearm owners. One of two really nasty things will happen:

1. criminals will pass on entering an armed property and find a softer target - the unarmed.  Or,

2. criminals will outgun their potential armed victims because they already know what they have.

Either way, it's an invitation for more crime to be committed against the armed and unarmed. It's also a strategy to promote more crime and more gun violence. Interestingly, Fox News reported that ex-burglars disclosed how publishing firearm registration lists will actually make crime easier and safer.

Ex-Burglars Say Newspaper’s Gun Map Would’ve Made the Job Easier, Safer

Reformed crooks say the New York newspaper that published a map of names and addresses of gun owners did a great service – to their old cronies in the burglary trade.

The information published online by the Journal-News, a daily paper serving the New York suburbs of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, could be highly useful to thieves in two ways, former burglars told FoxNews.com. Crooks looking to avoid getting shot now know which targets are soft and those who need weapons know where they can steal them.

“That was the most asinine article I’ve ever seen,” said Walter T. Shaw, 65, a former burglar and jewel thief who the FBI blames for more than 3,000 break-ins that netted some $70 million in the 1960s and 1970s. “Having a list of who has a gun is like gold - why rob that house when you can hit the one next door, where there are no guns?

"What they did was insanity," added Shaw, author of "License to Steal," a book about his criminal career.

Among the criminal class, there is great rejoicing over the release of county firearms registrations. More horrifying is that criminals in jail are using this information to threaten and or intimidate the police and prison guards.

Inmates using newspaper's gun owner map to threaten guards, sheriff says

Law enforcement officials from a New York region where a local paper published a map identifying gun owners say prisoners are using the information to intimidate guards.

Rockland County Sheriff Louis Falco, who spoke at a news conference flanked by other county officials, said the Journal News' decision to post an online map of names and addresses of handgun owners Dec. 23 has put law enforcement officers in danger.

"They have inmates coming up to them and telling them exactly where they live. That's not acceptable to me," Falco said, according to Newsday....

"You have guys who work in New York City who live up here. Now their names and addresses are out there, too," he said adding that there are 8,000 active and retired NYPD officers currently living in Rockland County.

Local lawmakers also say that they intend to introduce legislation that prevents information about legal gun owners from being released to the public.

One of the best crime deterrents is the element of surprise as a criminal calculates the risk of his mission.  Is is victim armed, unarmed or easy?  For the criminals, it's all about getting what they want with minimal risk of being caught or injured by law enforcement or the victim.

As the government and the media continue to pursue polices that make crime easy and effectively a de facto legal right, the innocent victims of crime will escalate along with an exploding body count.  The hands of government and the media will be dripping in victim blood.

Oui, Oui, Bring Back the Guillotine? Depardieu Paid an 85% Tax Rate (not enough according to the French)

The last thing the world needs is another French Revolution because revolutions typically end quite badly, are very bloody and result in ruthless totalitarianism.  With the global economy tanking because of the scourge of statism, the warfare-welfare state, fascist crony capitalism and thieving central banksters who rob the people to cover their derivative gambling losses, the mood the people is one of anger as their standard of living continues to plummet.  The economic carnage is most pronounced in Europe and America where decades of  the statist 'command and control' economic system are taking its toll.

The French have been obsessed with their distorted vision of liberté, égalité, fraternité since the 1789 French Revolution, otherwise known as the Reign of Terror because social and political reformers literally canvassed French soil in search of enemies of the state to publicly behead. Death estimates vary on the French genocide of the their own French citizens but it's generally agreed that the blood flowed from the heads and necks of tens of thousands of unfortunate folks, most of whom were ritualistically slaughtered in the name of the Revolution and without trial or due process, except for some suspiciously sounding NDAA styled decree that could easily render anybody an enemy of the state with a rigged court.

The French are currently in an uproar over the choice of French actor Gerard Depardieu to pack up and leave France after the French socialists passed a 75% tax on the rich. However, the departing Depardieu further inflamed the French when it was disclosed that he was leaving France with a whopping inventory of his favorite French cheeses. The audacity of the tax dodging Depardieu to leave France with French cheese no less is an insult to all things French and an act of treason according to the socialist statist script.

The socialist French cheese minister reportedly even went live on TV to proclaim:

"We want our fromage back. We don't care how much Depardieu paid for it, he is a traitor to France and he owes us 75% of his income", according to The Daily Squib, a British tabloid, here.

It's entirely possible that the French cheese minister said no such thing but that's irrelevant because the statement is definitely the mood of the French - how dare Depardieu leave France, not pay taxes and abscond with French cheese that he bought and paid for with money that he legally earned.

It's the acute snub of the socialist regime that is fueling this outrageous debate.  After all, Francois Hollande won an election by campaigning on a promise to plunder the rich and he was duly elected by the folks in France.  While Hollande and his socialists pals who were swept into power in the 5/2012 election did in fact keep their promise to dramatically raise taxes the rich, a French court recently overturned the tax, here.

According to Mail Online, Depardieu "paid taxes amounting to 85 per cent of his income" last year, here.  Depardieu is no tax absconder and has been paying confiscatory taxes for years and years.  The Mail Online article also states:

In an angry letter, published in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper, Mr Depardieu said he had been 'insulted' by France's Prime Minister Mr Ayrault who called him pathetic for wanting to leave France for Belgium to avoid the new 75 per cent top rate of tax.

Mr Depardieu wrote: 'I was born in 1948.

'I started working aged 14, as a printer, as a warehouseman, then as an actor, and I’ve always paid my taxes.'

Over 45 years, Depardieu said, he had paid 145 million euros in tax, and to this day employs 80 people.

Depardieu is just one of many industrious and hardworking folks who started his life from humble beginnings and achieved success.  That's his real crime.

Because of the French love affair with the guillotine, every now and then an article appears with a 'bring back the guillotine' theme.  In France, that's no laughing matter and giving the French any new guillotine ideas is definitely cringe worthy.  Fortunately,  most of the guillotine pieces are humorously or not so humorously focused on "bring back the guillotine" for the banksters.

Finally, what is more deeply disturbing than a fed up Frenchman exiting France with a pile of cheese is that this fiasco illuminates the profound troubles that are surfacing in western nations.

Taxes: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Fiscal Cliff Bill

Everybody is hysterical over the Obama endorsed senate fiscal cliff bill that passed the House on 1/1/13 in a 267-167 vote. The Democrats are unhappy because this bill will only raise $700 billion in new tax revenues instead of the $1.6 trillion that they sought. The Republicans are unhappy for a mixed bag of reasons because more House Republicans voted NO than voted YES. 85 House Republicans voted Yes but 151 voted NO. Conversely, 172 House Dems voted YES and only 16 voted NO.

As far as the federal debt ceiling is concerned, the outcomes of these media hyped up debates are always the same - there is no debt ceiling and it's borrow and print to infinity.  There is no debate on borrowing and spending.

To understand what passed, you first have to understand what was at stake here: the Bush Tax cuts (scheduled to expire on 12/31/12)and and Obama's stimulus that reduced the payroll withholding tax by 2%.

On the payroll tax, the workers really got screwed because they will immediate incur a 2% tax hike. The payroll tax hike has been dubbed the $40 a week tax on wage earners because that is, on average, the amount their paychecks will be immediately reduced.

Payroll tax hike to take $1,000 bite out of average worker’s annual pay

Before the 2010 deal, payroll taxes were 6.2 percent, deducted from the first $106,800 of workers’ paychecks. Inflation raised that ceiling to $110,100 in 2012.

But for the last two years, the payroll tax rate has been 4.2 percent.

Last December, the White House and Democrats staged a campaign to preserve the expiring payroll tax cut, asking individuals to detail what the average $40-per-paycheck tax hike would mean to them. Over the course of a year, that adds up to about $1,000 lost to taxes.

Obama and the Democrats really socked it to the poor and working class that they claim to love and represent, and with more than a little help from their Republican partners in crime.  Congress did absolutely NOTHING to keep the lower payroll tax and neither the Republicans or Democrats even fought to prevent this draconian taxes that definitely will be taking a big chunk out of the paychecks of the poor and middle class. The working poor and middle class will suffer the brunt of this 2% payroll tax hike because the earnings ceiling is now $110,000.  Rich folks or trust fund babies don't pay the payroll tax because it's a tax that only applies to wage earners and not unearned income.  Unearned income isn't subject to FICA or Medicare payroll taxes.  The year that John Kerry ran for president, his mega wealthy heiress ketchup queen wife paid an effective federal tax rate of about 12% on unearned income of over $5 million (mostly dividends and interest income).

Astoundingly, the Washington Post admitted that half of the new taxes will come from the payroll tax increase, in addition to being one of the largest tax hikes in US history.

Tuesday’s tax increase is the biggest in decades

....a little over half of the tax hike next year will come from the expiration of the payroll tax cut, which affects every American worker. That tax cut has been in place for two years, replacing a similar tax cut that was in effect in 2008 and 2009.

Because of the expiration of the payroll tax cut, all workers will pay 2 percent more in tax on their salary next year. A worker earning $50,000, for instance, would pay $1,000 more in taxes in 2013 than in 2011 or 2012.

Payroll taxes haven’t gone up since the late 1980s.....

What does Congress do with all those Social Security taxes it collects?  It doesn't save the money to pay Social Security benefits because Congress has actually plundered the Social Security Trust Fund over a period of decades to the tune of over $2.5 trillion bucks to fund wars, pork and other slop.  That's a side issue covered here: Yes My Fellow Americans, Congress Really Did Steal Your Social Security.

Moving on to the Bush tax cuts, they were really two tax cutting pieces of legislation.

Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA)
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (JGTRRA)

The Bush tax cuts were scheduled to sunset in 2010 but Obama extended them to 12/31/12 as part of a stimulus that also included the payroll tax cuts.

Effectively, the Bush tax cuts lowered the top tax rate from 39.6% to 35%.  When the fight commenced over the tax rates as well as the income threshold for the restoration of the high tax rates, President Obama and Speaker Boehner were at loggerheads in the negotiations because Obama wanted taxes raised on all income over $250,000 while Boehner was willing to let the tax cuts expire on all income under $1,000,000.  While the Obama/Boehner negotiations fell apart, they were close - letting tax cuts expire for everyone under an income threshold of $400-500 a year.  Then Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell  tried to cut a deal and failed.  Finally, Vice President Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell struck a deal that was passed in the Senate 89-8.  The Biden/McConnell deal is the deal that passed in the House and set the income threshold at $450,000.

How crappy is the Biden/McConnell deal?  It doesn't include any spending cuts and Bloomberg is reporting that 77% of American households will pay higher taxes.

Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

The budget deal passed by the U.S. Senate today would raise taxes on 77.1 percent of U.S. households, mostly because of the expiration of a payroll tax cut, according to preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

More than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes. Among the households facing higher taxes, the average increase would be $1,635, the policy center said. A 2 percent payroll tax cut, enacted during the economic slowdown, is being allowed to expire as of yesterday.

A tax increase for 77% of American households is what Congress call the "American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012".

Can you stop laughing? But it gets worse. A trillion dollar Obamacare tax also hit the American people January 1, 2013.

$1 Trillion Obamacare Tax Hike Hitting on Jan. 1

On January 1, regardless of the outcome of fiscal cliff negotiations, Americans will be hit with a $1 trillion Obamacare tax hike.

Obamacare contains twenty new or higher taxes. Five of the taxes hit for the first time on January 1. In total, Americans face a net $1 trillion tax hike for the years 2013-2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The five major Obamacare taxes taking effect on January 1 are as follows:

The Obamacare Medical Device Tax... The Obamacare Flex Account Tax... The Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income: This is a new, 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income... The Obamacare “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deductions... The Obamacare Medicare Payroll Tax Hike...

Obamacare taxes are already causing health insurance costs to soar because: The Problem with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is that Nobody Can Afford It.  Obamacare is another direct hit on the middle class.

Is there anything good in the deal struck by Biden and McConnell? Actually, there is and especially on the estate tax front.

The Bush tax cuts had a $5 million dollar exemption on the estate tax before an estate tax rate of 35% kicked in. When the Bush tax cuts expired, the floor for the estate tax drops to $1 million and the tax rate jumps to 55%. The estate tax will have a devastating impact on small family businesses who simply don't have the cash to pay the tax.

What does this mean?

Are New Inheritance Tax Laws Really Aimed At The Rich? Or Is The Average Joe Getting Caught In The Cross Fire?

What Are The New Inheritance Taxes Going To Be?

Currently, there is a $5 million estate tax exemption, and only those who stand to inherit an estate that exceeds that amount have to pay a tax rate of 35%. In January, 2013, many liberals have been celebrating what they consider to be a fair tax on the rich person. What they don’t realize is that the$ 1 million exemption and 55% taxation for those whose estate exceeds 1 million, will affect many Americans who could hardly be considered as wealthy. In this day and age, it doesn’t take much for an estate to add up to a million dollars. If you consider house, 401(k), savings, and other investments and assets, many people will fall into the new tax category.

What Will Happen To The Average Small Farmer When The New Inheritance Tax Is Imposed

97% of farms, small ranches, and small businesses will be affected by this tax. The problem is, the recipients of the inheritance are small-time people who barely make enough each year to scrape by. Individuals like this will have no option but to come up with the 55% tax to give to Uncle Sam, or they will be forced to sell the family farm or business that has been in the family for generations. Most farmers don’t just have $500k just sitting around as a tax fee for a property worth 1 million dollars.

The new inheritance tax could represent the end of an era. The death of the “family farm” as we know it to be today. Even if you are not a farmer or a business owner, your inheritance may be at stake.

Fortunately, small businesses and farms who would have been hit the hardest by the estate tax escaped the tax collector's noose.  According to Politico "The estate tax will have a $10 million exemption per a couple with additional inheritance taxed at 40 percent", here.

Although the Democrats couldn't wait to sink their carnivorous fangs into those productive and entrepreneurial bourgeois that they hold in the highest contempt, the Democrats lost on this issue and probably because reasonably astute Dems understood that ballot box blowback would be potentially severe. A farmer really doesn't have anything of value except his dirt and small family farms and entrepreneurs aren't swimming in cash like trust fund babies.

Financial blogger Dan Mitchell summed it up best: Grading the Fiscal Cliff Deal: Terrible, but Could Be Worse.

I was expecting even worse, so this deal....almost seems like a relief.

Sort of like knowing that you were going to have your arm amputated, but then finding out that at least you’ll get some anesthetic. You’re not happy about the outcome, but you’re relieved that it won’t be as bad as you thought it would be.

But let’s not delude ourselves. This deal is not good for the economy. It doesn’t do anything to cap the burden of government spending. It doesn’t reform entitlement programs.

And we may even lose the sequester, the provision that was included in the 2011 debt limit that would have slightly reduced the growth of government over the next 10 years.

What a dismal ending to 2012.

The Democrats didn't get all the tax increases they lusted for during this round of negotiations.  They wanted $1.6 trillion in new taxes on top of the $1 trillion in Obamacare taxes.   They ended up with $700 billion in new taxes plus the Obamacare taxes.

Nobody, Republican or Democrat, cut one cent in spending and in fact the deceptively titled American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 also contains typical big spending pork because absolutely nothing passes in congress without doling out taxpayer dollars to their crony capitalist pals who fill campaign coffers. ABC reported a few corporate welfare highlights.

‘Fiscal Cliff’ Deal Also Doles Out Millions for Hollywood, Railroads, Rum Producers

$430 million for Hollywood through “special expensing rules” to encourage TV and film production in the United States. Producers can expense up to $15 million of costs for their projects.

$331 million for railroads by allowing short-line and regional operators to claim a tax credit up to 50 percent of the cost to maintain tracks that they own or lease.

$222 million for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands through returned excise taxes collected by the federal government on rum produced in the islands and imported to the mainland.

$70 million for NASCAR by extending a “7-year cost recovery period for certain motorsports racing track facilities.”

$59 million for algae growers through tax credits

to encourage production of “cellulosic biofuel” at up to $1.01 per gallon.

$4 million for electric motorcycle makers by expanding an existing green-energy tax credit for buyers of plug-in vehicles to include electric motorbikes.

Moving along, the American Taxpayers Relief Act did offer some relief to tens of millions of middle class taxpayers who would have been ensnared in the Alternative Minimum Tax (ATM), a nasty piece of legislation that's been around since the 1960-70's as a measure to close tax loopholes for high income earners.  However, inflation has now pushed many middle class wage earners into the ATM so Congress has been patching the ATM for many years.

Finally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the American Taxpayers Relief Act will add $4 trillion to the $16 trillion pile of debt, here.  The CBO is notorious for underestimating the cost of everything and overestimating anticipated revenues.  Spending always escalates and reductions in spending never materialize.

FISCAL CLIFF DEAL: $1 IN SPENDING CUTS FOR EVERY $41 IN TAX INCREASES

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts....

In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes,” Americans for Tax Reform says of those two incidents. “The tax hikes went through, but the spending cuts did not materialize. President Reagan later said that signing onto this deal was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush agreed to $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. The tax hikes went through, and we are still paying them today. Not a single penny of the promised spending cuts actually happened. 

Meanwhile, Obama and the Democrats have vowed to continue their crusade to raise new taxes and new revenues, even if the entire US economy is nuked into impotency and America is blasted back to the Stone Age.  The Republicans have vowed to help the Democrats, so long as their precious and endless wars are protected from the budget scalpel.

But make no mistake.  At the end of the day, many folks will be paying higher taxes, 77% of American households to be precise according to Bloomberg.  The rich won't feel the pinch nearly as bad as the working class wage earners because for the working class the pinch turns into a big painful bite when these folks loose $40 bucks a week while struggling to house and feed their families in a statist run economy that sucks and offers them nothing in the way of job opportunities or upward mobility.

Occupy the Grassy Knoll: We Need a Million Man March on Dealey Plaza on 11/22/13

Image Source:  http://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1439193886

November 22, 1963 - A Day That Will Live in Infamy

The 50th anniversary of the murder of President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas will be November 22, 2013.

James Douglass, author of the extraordinary 'must read' book above, wrote on page 142:

We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy.  That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious.  The CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it.  

LewRockwell.com has covered the issue of JFK's murder over the years and recently posted a piece by a well known JFK researcher, John Judge.

A Call to Ocupy the Grassy Knoll in 2013

Few people know that Robert Kennedy believed his brother was murdered by a political conspiracy and told close associates that he would reopen the investigation if he was able to be elected into the White House. Even fewer people know that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was high on his list of possible running mates for the presidency in 1968. All these deaths served to kill public hope for social and political change and left the rising Military Industrial Intelligence Complex warned about by outgoing President Eisenhower in 1963, and a permanent war economy and Cold War and nuclear arsenal were left in place to grow, along with the power of the intelligence agencies and the national security and police state who were clearly suspect of playing a role in these murders.

Anticipating ever larger crowds on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination on November 22, 2013, the Coalition has applied for a legal permit in advance over the last three years, only to be told no permit can be issued more than a year in advance. Despite that rule, the Dallas Parks and Recreation Department informed me this year that a permit has been issued to the Sixth Floor Museum and the City of Dallas for the use of Dealey Plaza for the entire week from November 19-24, for exclusive use of the area and that no other permit can be issued for our event. The Director of the Sixth Floor Museum, Jessica Langford, has stated in the Dallas Morning News that they have no event planned for the Plaza, but they wanted to be “proactive” in preventing “a circus atmosphere” and the presentation of “conspiracy theories” in 2013. They also know quite well how many will be there listening. At one point she was asked what sort of an event they want to hold and she told the DMN reporter that she was not sure, “maybe a Moment of Silence”. This direct and content-based refusal of permit for the use of a public and historical site violates the protections of the First Amendment for free speech and expression.

The City of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department were key players in covering up the JFK murder investigation, largely because Lyndon Johnson was an extremely powerful and ruthless.Texas senator with considerable control over everything in TX, including the Texas Democrat political machine, the police and LBJ also had deep ties to Texas billionaires and Wall Street.  Some researchers believe that LBJ was the mastermind behind JFK's assassination and researcher Phillip F. Nelson wrote a book documenting his investigation on this issue: LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination.  

Now the City of Dallas is denying a permit to the JFK organizers, truthers and researchers  for the week of November 19-24, 2013.

EconomicPolicyJournal.com has also followed the JFK murder and recently posted a most interesting piece that asserts that George H.W. Bush was on the ground at Dealey Plaza as a CIA operative carrying out the murder of a popular president.

The George H.W. Bush Photos that You Won't See

A few points to start out: NBC is not an impartial media outlet. George H.W. Bush is not a respectable, admirable man or a national hero. And "33" is not an insignificant number- It is quite relevant and meaningful, in some circles at least.

NBC is owned by General Electric, a "defense contractor and the 2nd largest company in world according to Forbes", which has received over $16 billion dollars in bailouts from American taxpayers. They build and sell engines for the F-16 fighter aircraft and Apache Block III helicopters. For them, war is literally a profit racket; so it makes sense that they would "honor" warmongers.

NBC news far from impartial- they shill for the military-industrial complex and in 2003, fired Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Peter Arnett after Arnett reported the truth from Iraq....

There are no photos of George H.W. Bush in Dallas on the morning of John F. Kennedy's assassination standing in front of the Texas Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, but the photos can be seen here. The photo of the FBI memo acknowledging that Bush was a CIA opeative at that time can be seen here: "FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote this memo 5 days after the assassination, naming George Bush as a CIA officer... "The substance of the forgoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. V.T. Forsyth of this Bureau."

Despite the well orchestrated government cover-up at all levels (Congress, LBJ, FBI, CIA, Dallas PD, Texas public officials), much truth has surfaced on JFK's murder and researchers continue to diligently pursue the truth despite the 1964 Warren Commission ordering that all non-published official material be sealed for 75 years (2039).  The public only got the government sanitized version of JFK's murder.  However, Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK stirred up an intense hornets nest and Congress passed the 1992 JFK Records Act that created the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), a committee that supposedly decides what records will be released. Although many records were released, it's generally believe that many critical records were not released and researchers continue to fight for the release of these records, here.

President Kennedy’s remains may have been laid to rest but his legacy and the quest for truth, justice and peace have not and continue to haunt us to this day. During JFK’s presidency, Vietnam combat deaths were 182 (16 in 1961, 53 in 1962 and 118 through 11/22/63). On 10/11/63, JFK issued National Security Action Memorandum 263 making it official that the US would withdraw from Vietnam. On November 21, 1963, JFK was given a list of the recent Vietnam casualties and he told his Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff  “After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. Vietnam is not worth another American life”. The next day, JFK was dead. Had President Kennedy not been murdered, there would be no Vietnam War Memorial with the names of 58,261 dead Americans from a senseless war he morally opposed and was committed to ending. Nor would there be millions of dead Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and others.

The Vietnam era is far from being consigned to the dustbin of history and in fact still lives on today in the very same US foreign policy that was responsible for the murder of President Kennedy. If anything, the evil forces that murdered President Kennedy are far more powerful and insidious today than they were in the 1963.

For this reason, President Kennedy’s soul and legacy will never rest until truth and justice prevail and neither will America, the American people and the Kennedy family. Indeed, truth and justice are what President Kennedy not only devoted his entire life too but also sacrificed his own life for in his courageous and relentless quest to save America and humanity from the scourges of murderous militarism gone mad.

It’s as if this injustice has inflicted an evil curse upon America from which we will never be able to recover our personal, family and national honor until truth and justice prevail. In many ways, the American people and the Kennedy family are forever and umbilically connected to that fateful day in Dallas on November 11, 1963.

Above all, it should be about what President Kennedy would want and anyone even remotely familiar with the works of this extraordinary man would categorically conclude that that President Kennedy would settle for nothing less than the truth because above all, he was truly a champion for truth and justice who abhorred the raw and absolute concentration of the very same secretive powers that murdered him.

But so long as that truth remains buried, the curse will follow all of us. If President Kennedy’s life meant anything to him, his family and the American people, it’s long overdue for all of us to honor his life and death with the truth because his scared soul can never rest in peace until he knows that his life had meaning and that his death fulfilled his destiny.