Why ONLY Little People Pay Taxes; How the richest Americans beat the IRS.

April 18, 2012 — craftledger

Source: http://motherjones.com

Why a janitor ends up with a higher tax rate than a millionaire, and seven more charts that show how the richest Americans beat the IRS.

Click here for more charts on America’s growing income gap.

“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes,” billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley famously (and allegedly) sniffed. She wasn’t entirely correct: The superrich do still pay taxes. The wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers pay 32 percent of all income tax collected by the federal government.

But the superrich don’t pay as much as they used to—and thanks to a combination of tax cuts and preferential tax policies, their tax obligations can be less demanding than the so-called little people’s. In fact, the very wealthiest Americans’ tax burden has been steadily dropping for years, even as they’ve enjoyed astounding income growth not seen by the vast majority of Americans.

Tax rates for the wealthy have fallen substantially since they peaked in the 1940s. During the past 30 years, they have been cut at a much faster rate than middle- and low-income taxpayers’.

Just how much of a windfall are tax cuts for the wealthy? The extension of the Bush tax cuts passed last year will provide $146,000 in annual tax savings, on average, to each of the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans.

The super rich get an additional boost from relatively low tax rates on capital gains. Income from long-term investments, which makes up a larger portion of wealthier taxpayers’ incomes than middle- and low-income taxpayers’, is taxed at lower rates than wages.

Payroll taxes (deductions for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance) are mostly paid by the bottom 90 percent of earners. When they’re factored in on top of income tax, the gap between the tax rates at the very top and everyone else shrinks even more—so much that the effective tax rate for people earning more than $370,000 is nearly the same as for those earning between $43,000 and $69,000 a year.

Payroll taxes now make up nearly as much of federal tax revenue as individual income tax. Meanwhile, revenues from corporate taxes have decreased significantly over the past 50 years.

Corporations exploit various loopholes and tax breaks to reduce their IRS bills—perhaps none more notoriously than General Electric. Though the corporate tax rate is 35%, GE has paid nothing near that for nearly a decade.

Leona Helmsley’s distaste for paying taxes eventually landed her in federal prison. But the rich have little need to break the law to avoid the tax collector. As Martin A. Sullivan of Tax.com recently calculated, a New York janitor making slightly more than $33,000 a year pays an effective tax rate of nearly 25%. And the effective tax rate for a resident of the Park Avenue building named after Helmsley, earning an average of $1.2 million annually? A cool 14.7%.

More Mother Jones charty goodness: 11 charts that explain America’s income gap; how the rich get richer; how the poor get poorer; and who owns Congress?
Sources

Share of taxes: Tax Policy Center

Top 400 taxpayers: IRS (PDF)

Falling tax rates: Remapping Debate

Bush tax cuts: Tax Policy Center (PDF)

Income vs. capital gains: IRS: Income tax rates (PDF); capital gains tax rates

Effective tax rates: Tax Policy Center

Source of tax revenues: Senate Joint Committee on Taxation (PDF)

GE taxes: ProPublica

Janitor vs. millionaire: Tax.com

Posted in Bad & Disgraceful News Stories and Views, Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, Business / Finance / Tech News, Economic News Stories, Fraud & Deception News, Government & Political News - Incl Cover-ups / Corruption, News Worthy To Tell Your Friends About, Only in The USA News Stories, WTF News Stories. Tags: , , , , . Comments Off

Obama betrays the left, African Americans; cheers continued expansion of drug war, criminalization of plant-based medicine Learn

April 17, 2012 — craftledger

Source: NaturalNews.

If you happen to need even more evidence that President Obama has gutted his campaign promises and betrayed not only the left but also African Americans who enthusiastically supported his election, he has just gone public with his support for the continued war on drugs. Keeping marijuana criminalized, it seems — and keeping more African Americans in prison — is a top priority for the Obama administration.

This means Obama supports the midnight DEA raids on our citizenry; the filling of prisons with small-time pot smokers; the disproportionately punitive sentences handed down to black men and women across America who aren’t really criminals at all… they merely suffer from a chemical addiction that would more rightly be considered a medical issue.

Nearly every country in Latin America has now openly and publicize recognized that the so-called “war on drugs” is a complete and total failure. But Obama thinks it’s just great! Fill the prisons! Prosecute more blacks! Buy more guns and night vision gear for the DEA! That’s what Obama’s America stands for, it seems.

“I personally and my administration’s position is that legalization is not the answer,” Obama said just hours before the meeting of Latin American leaders at the Convention Centre in Cartagena, Colombia, for the Americas Summit (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17716926). Meanwhile, Obama’s top Secret Service agents and military commanders were banging Colombian whores in the background, then refusing to pay them their $47 prostitution fee.  Obama had “no comment” on that particular issue.

Let’s get real about all this. Marijuana prohibition simply doesn’t work. At least not for reducing crime and drug addiction. Anyone who thinks prohibition works is completely delusional. But it does work for certain special interests. What are those special interests, anyway?

Who BENEFITS from the continued criminalization of marijuana?

If you really want to know why prohibition remains in place with marijuana, it’s simple to find out why. Just ask yourself “Who benefits?”

• The DEA. Without a drug “problem,” the DEA won’t get hundreds of millions of dollars worth of increases in operating budgets from the federal purse strings. If drugs were decriminalized, the DEA would have to be sharply downsized (which would be a great thing for liberty and safety but a terrible thing for the DEA honchos).

• Private prisons. Thanks to illegal agreements between prison operators and state governments, prisons can put prisoners to work at slave labor wages — just a few cents an hour — manufacturing goods that the corporate prison owners sell for pure profit. If you thought the Nike sweatshops in Asia were bad, go visit a prison in the USA some time and watch the slave labor taking place right here at home.

• Local police. The “drug war” is the excuse that local police departments use to receive more grant money for weapons, assault gear and now even armored assault vehicles to be used against the citizens. Without the drug war excuse, all this grant money disappears and these cops have to go back to actually serving the community instead of bashing in doors like a bunch of cocaine cowboys.

• The government drug runners! It’s now a well-known fact that the ATF, DEA and other government agencies are all heavily involved in running drugs across America. Just Google any of these terms if you want to check it out for yourself. The ATF is even engaged in money laundering through the globalist banks. This is why government crackdowns on drugs are highly selectively — drug raids are really just a way to eliminate the competition so that the biggest drug dealer of all — the government itself — can continue to rake in the maximum profits. Legalizing drugs would obviously cause street prices to collapse, sucking all the profits out of the government-run drug business.

• Local District Attorneys and prosecutors. Without the drug war to give them a juicy field of easy targets to prosecute, their careers would take a huge hit. It’s so much harder to arrest real criminals than to go after pot smokers and raw milk farmers, isn’t it? Gee, imagine the difficulty of actually fighting REAL crime for a change?

• Big Government. The entire government benefits from the continued criminalization of drugs. For starters, it establishes the outrageous precedent that government can outlaw a native plant — even a plant that has grown wild across North America for hundreds of years. This alone is an outrageous encroachment on fundamental human freedom. Beyond that, the government can always point to “drug violence” as another excuse to squash our freedoms and put in place a tyrannical police state. It’s all “for your own good,” of course. Isn’t it always?

• Big Pharma and the hospital industry. Because recreational drugs are illegal, they’re often cut with dangerous chemicals that cause liver damage and kidney damage. This results in yet more repeat business for hospitals and the drug industry. If street drugs were legalized, they would be standardized and regulated, and adulteration of those products would be extremely rare. They would be safer to use, in other words, which is exactly what the pharmaceutical industry is dead set against. They only make money when people are damaged or sick from using street drugs concocted in somebody’s trailer.

Who LOSES from the drug war? You!

So we’ve covered the beneficiaries of the drug war, but who loses from it? You do, of course: Your liberties, freedoms, tax dollars and personal safety are all threatened by the existence of the war on drugs. Decriminalizing and regulating these drugs would have an enormously positive impact on you and your life.

If drugs were decriminalized, here’s what would happen:

• Drug gangs would vanish as their source of revenues (illegal drugs at black market prices) dry up.

• Drug-related crime would sharply fall.

• State revenues would skyrocket from the regulated sale of legalized marijuana.

• The corrupt prison industry would collapse to perhaps only 25% of its current size.

• Your personal safety and security would be greatly enhanced due to the lack of drug violence, shootings, home invasions and more.

• Mexican drug gangs would lose their power base, resulting in a sharp drop in crime along the border.

• Former “criminal” pot smokers would once again become taxpaying members of the workforce, contributing to the financial upkeep of society rather than draining it as prisoners.

• The happiness index across society would sharply rise.

Even the Red Cross says decriminalize marijuana

It’s all pure economics, my friends. Cause and effect. Legalize recreational drugs and you end the violence, the crime, the prison system overload and the entire underground market for the stuff.

It’s all so obvious that even the Red Cross has called for decriminalization (http://copssaylegalize.blogspot.com/2012/03/red-cross-calls-for-drug….).

At the same time, countless members of the FBI, DEA and active-duty police organizations are also openly calling for decriminalization (http://www.leap.cc/).

The rational argument for ending prohibition is further detailed at www.Norml.org

There are no rational reasons for keeping marijuana criminalized. There are only political reasons for doing so. That’s why Obama continues to support the irrational war on drugs — because it’s a political issue.

Obama, the betrayer of the political left

Obama, of course, is a teleprompter-reading puppet of the global elite. He does what they tell him to do, and right now they’re telling him to keep pushing Drug War propaganda because it’s a highly effective way to expand the police state and keep people living in fear while denying them access to plant-based medicine.

Obama, it turns out, has betrayed the left so many times I can hardly keep count: He supports the GMO industry, he signed the NDAA which expands secret arrests and secret Gitmo-style prisons, he’s an opponent of farm and food freedom  and he has proven himself to be nothing more than a big business operative who defends the status quo while preaching “hope and change” that he never delivers.

Obama has assaulted free speech, due process , medical freedom and parental rights. In doing so, he has betrayed many of the top priorities of the very people who once put him into office.

He wants to keep marijuana criminalized because that’s what the police state fascist system of corporate control wants.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the alternatives we’re given are going to be any better. This is not some pitch for Romney, for God’s sake. That guy is just as much of a corporate sellout as Obama (and Bush before him). Elections are created to present the illusion that the People have a choice when, in reality, all they’re voting for is which color of puppet they want to see on television while we’re all being imprisoned, exploited, enslaved and oppressed by a growing fascist state.

Care to guess which candidate would have decriminalized marijuana from the get-go? His name is Ron Paul, and the ideas of freedom and liberty that he espouses are the real answer for the future of our nation. 

Posted in Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, C.I.A - FBI & Secret Services Activities, Crime-Terrorism-Espionage-War-Conspiracies News Stories, Drugs & Alcohol News Stories, Environment News Stories, Fraud & Deception News, Government & Political News - Incl Cover-ups / Corruption, Health & Food News, Human Rights News Stories, Monsanto News Stories, News Worthy To Tell Your Friends About, Scary News News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

Antidepressants Could Cause Harm to Heart, Brain, and Bones

April 16, 2012 — craftledger

Source: Activist Post

Did you know that roughly 10% of the American population suffers from depression? It isn’t exactly a coincidence, with the FDA approving a wide variety of damaging foods and drugs that many millions of Americans consume each day. The FDA isn’t helping the population with their approval of the dozens of antidepressant medications on the market – it in fact is doing the exact opposite.

The beneficial results of antidepressants have been under the spotlight for quite some time in the health world, and the validity of giving them out like candy to patients in need of a quick and easy solution is under question as well; just how useful is medication for depression?

At best, the tangible results felt by patients are comparable to sugar pills. That is to say, the medication itself does virtually nothing to improve the mood of the patient directly. At worst, antidepressants cause decreased mental stability. Wanting to kill yourself or others around you are feelings which antidepressants have been shown to ignite.

There is even the possibility that while on these terrible drugs you can become even more vulnerable to more serious mental illnesses – all whilst other legitimate non-medication methods for treating depression are being tread underfoot by the FDA.

In more recent studies, there has been surfacing evidence that antidepressants cause arteries to thicken at a faster rate. Research specifically points to an increased thickness of the lining of the carotid artery by up to 5% in men, thereby increasing the risk of heart disease substantially by putting more pressure on the heart.

This occurs when taking either selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs, the primary form of antidepressants), as well as antidepressants that affect other chemicals in the brain. The evidence isn’t completely concrete, but it points towards the change of serotonin in the body caused by the medications.

Another study in women who have gone through menopause unveiled that women who take either variation of antidepressants were up to 45% more likely to suffer from life-threatening brain damage from a stroke. This same study also found that women’s death rates rose 32% more whilst on the drugs.

Other documented side effects are much more prominent, but certainly no less detrimental to your health. These include those suicidal/homicidal thoughts mentioned earlier, as well as an increased risk of diabetes, an increased possibility of stillbirth, lowered immune system support and reduced bone density — resulting in a higher risk of fractures, primarily in the spinal column.

There are also a few long-term risks with using these detrimental drugs: a conversion from unipolar depression to bipolar depression, and an overall cognitive decline in most users. If becoming bipolar unnecessarily does not steer you away from these, then the overall loss of your mental capacity should be enough to raise a warning flag.

Explore More:

  1. Antidepressants Cause Your Arteries to Thicken 400% More Than Aging
  2. Antidepressants Drastically Increase the Risk for Miscarriages
  3. Antidepressants Make You More Depressed and Trigger Suicidal Thoughts
  4. Antidepressants Proven to be Useless, Pushed on Public Anyway
  5. Antidepressants Increase Breast Cancer Risk
  6. Antidepressants Prescribed Without Psychiatric Diagnosis
Posted in Bad & Disgraceful News Stories and Views, Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, Drugs & Alcohol News Stories, Fraud & Deception News, Health & Food News, WTF News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

EPA Collusion in Monsanto Coverup – This IS Very Bad, Please TAKE ACTION to stop!

April 14, 2012 — craftledger

Source: OrganicConsumers.org

2,4-D and the dioxin pollution it creates are too dangerous to allow, period, but in the hands of bad actors like Monsanto and Dow Chemical the dangers increase exponentially. What’s the Environmental Protection Agency doing? Helping coverup the chemical companies’ crimes!

In February, Monsanto agreed to pay up to $93 million in a class-action lawsuit brought by the residents of Nitro, West Virginia, for dioxin exposure from accidents and pollution at an herbicide plant that operated in their town from 1929 to 2004.

That may seem like justice, but it is actually the result of Monsanto’s extraordinary efforts to hide the truth, evade criminal prosecution and avoid legal responsibility.

A brief criminal fraud investigation conducted (and quickly aborted) by the EPA revealed that Monsanto used a disaster at their Nitro, WV, plant to manufacture “evidence” that dioxin exposure produced a skin condition called chloracne, but was not responsible for neurological health effects or cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

These conclusions were repeatedly utilized by EPA and the Veterans Administration to deny help to citizens exposed to dioxin, if these persons did not exhibit chloracne.

The EPA knew the truth about Monsanto’s dioxin crimes, but it decided to hide it. Why? It would have affected us all. EPA’s brief criminal investigation of Monsanto included evidence that Monsanto knowingly contaminated Lysol with dioxin, even as the product was being marketed for cleaning babies’ toys.

Here are the details of this jaw-dropping and heart-breaking case of corporate criminality and EPA collusion.

According to Natural News:

  • In the town of Nitro, West Virginia, Monsanto operated a chemical plant from 1929 to 1995, making an herbicide that had dioxin as a by-product. The name dioxin refers to a group of highly toxic chemicals that have been linked to heart and liver disease, human reproductive disorders, and developmental problems. Dioxin persists in the environment and accumulates in the body, even in small amounts. In 2001, the U.S. government listed dioxin as a “known human carcinogen”.
  • In 1949, at the Nitro plant, a pressure valve blew on a container of this herbicide, producing a plume of vapor and white smoke that drifted out over the town. Residue coated the interior of buildings and those inside them with a fine black powder. Within days, workers experienced skin eruptions, and many were diagnosed with chloracne, a long lasting and disfiguring condition. Others felt intense pains in their chest, legs and trunk. A medical report from the time said the explosion “caused a systemic intoxication in the workers involving most major organ systems.” Doctors detected a strong odor coming from the patients they described as men “excreting a foreign chemical through their skins”.
  • Monsanto downplayed the incident, saying that the contaminant was “fairly slow acting” and only an irritant to the skin.
  • Meanwhile, the Nitro plant continued to produce herbicides, In the 1960′s it manufactured Agent Orange, the powerful herbicide used by the U.S. military to defoliate jungles during the Vietnam War, and which became the focus of lawsuits by veterans contending they had been harmed by exposure to the chemical. Agent Orange also created dioxin as a by-product.
  • At the Nitro plant, dioxin waste went into landfills, storm drains, streams, sewers, into bags with the herbicide, and then the waste was burned out into the air. Dioxin from the plant can still be found in nearby streams, rivers, and fish.

http://youtu.be/gWA_IBakjyo

According to Source Watch, in 1990, Cate Jenkins, a PhD chemist at EPA, became convinced that Monsanto had deliberately manipulated studies of worker victims of the Nitro disaster showing that dioxin was a human carcinogen.

Dr. Jenkins wrote a memorandum entitled “Newly Revealed Fraud by Monsanto in an Epidemiological Study Used by EPA to Assess Human Health Effects from Dioxins.” Read the memo at PureFood.org.

According to her memo:

  • Dr. Raymond Suskind at the University of Cincinnati was hired by Monsanto to study the workers at Monsanto’s Nitro, West Virginia plant. Dr. Suskind stated in published studies in question that chloracne, a skin condition was the prime indicator of high human dioxin exposures, and no other health effects would be observed in the absence of this condition. Unpublished studies by Suskind, however, indicate the fallacy of this statement. No workers except those having chloracne were ever examined by Suskind or included in his study. In other words, if no workers without chloracne were ever examined for other health effects, there is no basis for asserting that chloracne was “the hallmark of dioxin intoxication.”
  • These conclusions have been repeatedly utilized by EPA, the Veterans Administration, etc., to deny any causation by dioxin of health effects of exposed citizens, if these persons did not exhibit chloracne.
  • The results of Dr. Suskind’s studies also were diluted by the fact that the exposed group contained not only individuals having chloracne (a genuine, but not the only effect of dioxin exposure), but also all workers having any type of skin condition such as chemical rash. The workers could have had no or negligible dioxin exposures, but they were included in the study as part of the heavily exposed group. This fact was revealed only by the careful reading of the published Suskind study.
  • Further, Dr. Suskind utilized statistics on the skin conditions of workers compiled by a Monsanto clerical worker, without any independent verification.
  • Dr. Suskind also covered-up the documented neurological damage from dioxin exposures. At Workers Compensation hearings, Suskind denied that the workers experienced any neurological health effects. In the Kemner, et al. v. Monsanto proceedings, however, it was revealed that Suskind had in his possession at the time examinations of the workers by Monsanto’s physician, Dr. Nestman, documenting neurological health effects.
  • In his later published study, Dr. Suskind denied the continuing documented neurological health effects suffered by the workers, falsely stating that symptoms “had cleared.”
  • All of the Monsanto dioxin studies also suffer another fatal flaw. The purported “dioxin unexposed” control group was selected from other workers at the same Monsanto plant. An earlier court settlement revealed not only that these supposedly unexposed workers were exposed to dioxins, but also to other carcinogens. One of these carcinogens, para-amino biphenyl, was known by Monsanto to be a human carcinogen and it was also known that workers were heavily exposed.
  • Another Monsanto study involved independent medical examinations of surviving employees by Monsanto physicians. Several hundred former Monsanto employees were too ill to travel to participate in the study. Monsanto refused to use the attending physicians reports of the illness as part of their study, saying that it would introduce inconsistencies. Thus, any critically ill dioxin-exposed workers with cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma (associated with dioxin exposures), were conveniently excluded from the Monsanto study.
  • There are numerous other flaws in the Monsanto health studies. Each of these misrepresentations and falsifications always served to negate any conclusions of adverse health effects from dioxins.

Within days of learning that the Office of Enforcement had initiated a criminal investigation of Monsanto based on Jenkins’ allegations, her job duties were withdrawn without warning. She was not given any assignments from August 30, 1990 until she was reassigned on April 8, 1992 to a job which was primarily administrative or clerical.

According to a 1994 report on “EPA’s Phony Investigation of Monsanto,” by William Sanjour, Policy Analyst, US Environmental Protection Agency, published in Rachel’s Hazardous Waste News:

  • Dr. Jenkins filed a complaint with the Department of Labor claiming that she was being harassed for carrying out perfectly legal activities. The Labor Department investigated and found in Jenkins favor. The EPA appealed three times all the way up to the Secretary of Labor but each time the Department came down in favor of Jenkins finding that “None of the rationales [explaining her transfer] given by EPA … appear valid”.
  • In August of 1992, EPA quietly closed the criminal investigation without ever determining or even attempting to determine if the Monsanto studies were valid or invalid, let alone fraudulent. … There was no public announcement that the investigation was closed. Dr. Jenkins didn’t learn about it until fifteen months later. Yet Monsanto knew within a few days of EPA’s closing the case.

Why did Monsanto and the EPA go to such great lengths to hide the truth? It would have affected us all. EPA’s brief criminal investigation of Monsanto included evidence that Monsanto knowingly contaminated Lysol with dioxin, even as the product was being marketed for cleaning babies’ toys.

Dr. Jenkin’s memo also contained evidence that Lysol, a product made from Monsanto’s Santophen, was contaminated with dioxin with Monsanto’s knowledge. The manufacturer of Lysol was not told about the dioxin by Monsanto for fear of losing his business. Other companies using Santophen, who specifically asked about the presence of dioxin, were lied to by Monsanto.

This is just one example of why we can’t trust the EPA to stop Monsanto and Dow Chemical from poisoning us with dioxin.

TAKE ACTION: Call EPA’s Fail! Tell the EPA You Won’t Accept a Decision on 2,4-D Based on Dow Chemical’s Biased Studies!

TAKE ACTION: Tell USDA to Stop Agent Orange Corn!

To learn more about what’s wrong at the EPA, watch this video from the recent Occupy EPA protest:

http://youtu.be/0tcPC6q3bgU

 

Posted in Bad & Disgraceful News Stories and Views, WTF News Stories, News Worthy To Tell Your Friends About, Crime-Terrorism-Espionage-War-Conspiracies News Stories, Government & Political News - Incl Cover-ups / Corruption, Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, Fraud & Deception News, Environment News Stories, Monsanto News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

Baked goods sold in USA contain a carcinogen banned in Europe but allowed in the US! This IS bad!

April 13, 2012 — craftledger

Much of the flour sold in the United States has been treated with potassium bromate, which causes the flour to bulk up, strengthens the dough, and makes bread rise more rapidly. This decreases the time needed for baking (thereby reducing costs) and also allows the use of low quality flour that might otherwise be unsuitable for baking. There’s only one problem with this: Potassium bromate causes cancer.

Potassium bromate is so widely accepted as a carcinogen that it has been banned in the European Union, Canada and even in China. U.S. law only allows the chemical to be used as an ingredient in food because it was first approved by the FDA back in 1958, before modern anti-cancer legislation went into effect. The fact that the ingredient has actually received FDA approval makes it much more difficult for it to be subsequently banned.

Most potassium bromate breaks down during the baking process, but tests have confirmed that trace amounts can remain in finished baked goods. Unfortunately for the careful consumer, U.S. law does not require that potassium bromate be listed as a separate ingredient on food labels. This is yet another example of the government making sure that you don’t learn the truth about what’s in your food.

See astonishing videos about this subject at www.FoodInvestigations.com

The only reliable away to avoid this poisonous ingredient is to buy organic flours and baked goods. Products sold in California must carry a warning label if potassium bromate has been used.

Posted in Bad & Disgraceful News Stories and Views, Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, Health & Food News, Only in The USA News Stories, Scary News News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

USA: Thirteen Ways Government Tracks Us – This Is a REAL Worry! Only the people can stop this!!!!

April 9, 2012 — craftledger

So Much For America being the “Land Of The Free”  – MORE like the “Land Of The Paranoid Government”

The cost of running all these departments and systems must be ‘Mind Blowing’ – Pardon the pun!

“God Bless America” ? Nah! – “God, Please help all its people” YES!

Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.

April 09, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — Privacy is eroding fast as technology offers government increasing ways to track and spy on citizens. The Washington Post reported there are 3,984 federal, state and local organizations working on domestic counterterrorism. Most collect information on people in the US. (Source)

Here are thirteen examples of how some of the biggest government agencies and programs track people:

One. The National Security Agency (NSA) collects hundreds of millions of emails, texts and phone calls every day and has the ability to collect and sift through billions more. WIRED just reported NSA is building an immense new data center which will intercept, analyze and store even more electronic communications from satellites and cables across the nation and the world. Though NSA is not supposed to focus on US citizens, it does. (Source)

Two. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) has more than 1.5 billion government and private sector records about US citizens collected from commercial databases, government information, and criminal probes. (Source)

Three. The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times recently reported that cellphones of private individuals in the US are being tracked without warrants by state and local law enforcement all across the country. With more than 300 million cellphones in the US connected to more than 200,000 cell phone towers, cellphone tracking software can pinpoint the location of a phone and document the places the cellphone user visits over the course of a day, week, month or longer. (Source)

Four. More than 62 million people in the US have their fingerprints on file with the FBI, state and local governments. This system, called the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), shares information with 43 states and 5 federal agencies. This system conducts more than 168,000 checks each day. (Source)

Five. Over 126 million people have their fingerprints, photographs and biographical information accessible on the US Department of Homeland Security Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT). This system conducts about 250,000 biometric transactions each day. The goal of this system is to provide information for national security, law enforcement, immigration, intelligence and other Homeland Security Functions. (Source)

Six. More than 110 million people have their visas and more than 90 million have their photographs entered into the US Department of State Consular Consolidated Database (CCD). This system grows by adding about 35,000 people a day. This system serves as a gateway to the Department of State Facial Recognition system, IDENT and IAFSIS. (Source)

Seven. DNA profiles on more than 10 million people are available in the FBI coordinated Combined DNA index System (CODIS) National DNA Index. (Source)

Eight. Information on more than 2 million people is kept in the Intelligence Community Security Clearance Repository, commonly known as Scattered Castles. Most of the people in this database are employees of the Department of Defense (DOD) and other intelligence agencies. (Source)

Nine. The DOD also has an automated biometric identification system (ABIS) to support military operations overseas. This database incorporates fingerprint, palm print, face and iris matching on 6 million people and is adding 20,000 more people each day. (Source)

Ten. Information on over 740,000 people is included in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) of the National Counterterrorism Center. TIDE is the US government central repository of information on international terrorist identities. The government says that less than 2 percent of the people on file are US citizens or legal permanent residents. They were just given permission to keep their non-terrorism information on US citizens for a period of five years, up from 180 days. (Source)

Eleven. Tens of thousands of people are subjects of facial recognition software. The FBI has been working with North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles and other state and local law enforcement on facial recognition software in a project called “Face Mask.” For example, the FBI has provided thousands of photos and names to the North Carolina DMV which runs those against their photos of North Carolina drivers. The Maricopa Arizona County Sheriff’s Office alone records 9,000 biometric mug shots a month. (Source)

Twelve. The FBI operates the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (SAR) that collects and analyzes observations or reports of suspicious activities by local law enforcement. With over 160,000 suspicious activity files, SAR stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime but who are alleged to have acted suspiciously. (Source)

Thirteen. The FBI admits it has about 3,000 GPS tracking devices on cars of unsuspecting people in the US right now, even after the US Supreme Court decision authorizing these only after a warrant for probable cause has been issued. (Source)

The Future

The technology for tracking and identifying people is exploding as is the government appetite for it.

Soon, police everywhere will be equipped with handheld devices to collect fingerprint, face, iris and even DNA information on the spot and have it instantly sent to national databases for comparison and storage.

Bloomberg News reports the newest surveillance products “can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices,” change the contents of written emails mid-transmission, and use voice recognition to scan phone networks. (Source)

The advanced technology of the war on terrorism, combined with deferential courts and legislators, have endangered both the right to privacy and the right of people to be free from government snooping and tracking. Only the people can stop this.

Posted in Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, C.I.A - FBI & Secret Services Activities, Crime-Terrorism-Espionage-War-Conspiracies News Stories, Human Rights News Stories, News Worthy To Tell Your Friends About, Only in The USA News Stories, WTF News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

USA – 10 Unbelievably Shitty Things America Does to Homeless People : “God Bless America – NOT”!

April 9, 2012 — craftledger

No population has their human and civil rights so casually and routinely trampled as do homeless Americans.

For decades, cities all over the country have worked to essentially criminalize homelessness, instituting measures that outlaw holding a sign, sleeping, sitting, lying (or weirdly, telling a lie in Orlando) if you live on the street.

Where the law does not mandate outright harassment, police come up with clever work-arounds, like destroying or confiscating tents, blankets and other property in raids of camps. A veteran I talked to, his eye bloody from when some teenagers beat him up to steal 60 cents, said police routinely extracted the poles from his tent and kept them so he couldn’t rebuild it. (Where are all the pissed-off libertarians and conservatives at such flagrant disrespect for private property?)

In the heady ’80s, Reagan slashed federal housing subsidies even as a tough economy threw more and more people out on the street. Instead of resolving itself through the magic of the markets, the homelessness problem increasingly fell to local governments.

“When the federal government created the homelessness crisis, local governments did not have the means of addressing the issue. So they use the police to manage homeless people’s presence,” Jennifer Fredienrich told AlterNet last year. At about the same time, the arrest-happy “broken windows theory,” which encourages law enforcement to bust people for “quality of life” crimes, offered ideological support for finding novel ways to legally harass people on the street.

Many of the policies end up being wildly counterproductive: a criminal record bars people from the very programs designed to get them off the street, while defending unconstitutional measures in court ends up costing cities money that could be used to fund homeless services.

Here is an incomplete list of laws, ordinances and law enforcement and government tactics that violate homeless people’s civil liberties.

1. Outlawing sitting down. People are allowed to exist in public, but sometimes the homeless make that civic rule inconvenient, like when their presence perturbs tourists or slows the spread of gentrification. One solution to this problem is the “sit-lie” law, a bizarrely authoritarian measure that bans sitting or resting in a public space. The law is clearly designed to empower police to chase homeless people out of nice neighborhoods, rather than protect cities from the blight of public sidewalk-sitting.

Cities around the country have passed ordinances of varying awfulness: some limit resting in certain areas during certain times of the day, while progressive bastion San Francisco voted in November 2010 to outlaw sitting or laying down on any city sidewalk. The measure was bankrolled by some of the richest people in the city, who poured so much money into the campaign that homelessness advocates were outmatched $280,000 to $7,802, reported SF Gate. (After the measure passed, Chris Roberts of the SF Appeal found that support for the law was strongest in the richer parts of the city with the fewest homeless.)

Supporters of sit-lie claim the law helps police deal with disruptive behavior like harassment and public drunkenness, and that getting people off the street will get them into shelters. Homelessness advocates counter that the disruptive behaviors associated with some homeless people are already against the law.

2. Denying people access to shelters. In November the Bloomberg administration tried to institute new rules that would force shelters to deny applicants who failed to prove they had no other housing options, like staying with relatives or friends (NYC’s overcrowded shelters being so appealing that people with access to housing are desperate to sneak in).

A State Supreme Court judge struck down the new measure in February, admonishing the mayor’s office for rushing through the plan without adequate public vetting. (Critics also argued the new rules would conflict with a New York consent decree that guarantees shelter to all homeless adults who ask for it.) Not easily discouraged from making the lives of poor people harder, Bloomberg fumed, “We’re going to do everything we can to have the ability to do it … Or let the judges explain to the public why they think that you should just have a right to walk in and say, ‘Whether I need services or not, you give it to me.’ I don’t think that’s what this country’s all about.”

Homeless families are not covered under the 1981 decree that guarantees shelter space to homeless single adults, so they’ve had to prove need to get a space at a shelter for years. The results have not been great. A report prepared by the New York city council cited a study showing that many homeless families who are turned away often end up reapplying, suggesting that their needs were not accurately assessed — and that they likely ended up sleeping on the street or in subways. NBC New York recently profiled a mother and two kids (6 and 10), who were sleeping in Penn Station after being turned away from the shelter three times.

In 2010 Bloomberg also tried to institute a policy charging homeless families rent if at least one member worked, at a rate that would have forced a family making $25,000 to pay $946 a month. (After major protest by homelessness advocates the policy changed so instead of flowing to the city the money would be funneled into savings accounts used to help families find housing.)

Patrick Markee, senior analyst for Coalition for the Homeless, tells AlterNet that the bigger problem is the Bloomberg administration’s ideologically driven policy to limit access to federal housing programs. In 2005 Bloomberg replaced federal housing subsidies with temporary assistance programs like Advantage, which subsidized housing for a limited time and only if at least one member of a family is employed. Rocky from the start, Advantage was killed in 2011 when the state withdrew funds.

A 2011 study by the Coalition for the Homeless found that the rate of homeless families in New York had exploded to a record 113, 533 people — 42,888 of them children — sleeping in shelters.

3. Making it illegal to give people food. Two weeks ago, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter announced a citywide ban on giving food to the hungry in public parks. Amidst outcry by homelessness advocates and religious and charity groups, Nutter insisted the policy is meant to draw unhoused people to indoor facilities where they might benefit from medical care and mental health services. Critics pointed out that the policy — rushed to go into effect in 29 days — may have more to do with planned renovation of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the construction of a new museum, as Isaiah Thompson reported in the Philadelphia City Paper.

Public feeding bans are not new, and they continue to crop up despite being routinely overturned by the courts. The city of Orlando, for one, is committed to wiping out the scourge of public food donation, embroiling itself in a five-year battle with Food Not Bombs that has cost the city more than $150,000.

A 2006 statute forced charity groups in Orlando to obtain special permits, only two of which were issued per year, and punished feeding more than 25 people with 60 days in jail or a $500 fine. A federal judge overturned the law in 2010, citing a litany of constitutional rights breached by the measure: freedom of speech, freedom of religion (one of the plaintiffs was a religious organization), freedom of assembly, and freedom of association. “Rather than address the problem of homelessness in these downtown neighborhoods directly, the City has instead decided to limit the expressive activity which attracts the homeless to these neighborhoods,” the judge said in his ruling.

Orlando officials took up the case again, pushing it further and further up the courts, until a panel of judges finally voted in favor of the city in 2010. The law got worldwide attention when Food Not Bombs activists continued to feed the hungry. Twelve people were arrested and Orlando’s mayor unhelpfully deemed the group “food terrorists,” reported the Florida Independent. “Why is it that in certain US cities feeding pigeons is OK, but giving a homeless child a handout is a $2,000 fine,” the National Coalition for the Homeless asked in a 2010 report on food bans (Dallas can fine churches $2,000 for distributing food in certain areas).

4. Installing obstacles to prevent sleeping or sitting. Many cities have invested in their homeless torture infrastructure, spending thousands to install obstacles preventing the homeless from sleeping, standing, or sitting in parks, under bridges and next to public transportation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, Government & Political News - Incl Cover-ups / Corruption, Human Rights News Stories, News Worthy To Tell Your Friends About, Only in The USA News Stories, WTF News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , . Comments Off

FBI memo: agents can “bend or suspend the law and impinge upon the freedoms of others” – This is a REAL Worry!

March 31, 2012 — craftledger

So Much for the USA being the “Land Of The Free” !

God doesn’t need to bless America anymore – He (or She) , NEEDS TO SAVE IT from it’s own Government!

WHAT A SAD DISGRACE!

Source: Activist Post

It has now emerged that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally taught their agents that they were able to “bend or suspend the law and impinge upon the freedoms of others” in their quest to find alleged terrorists and criminals.

It gets even worse when we read that they claim they have “the ability to gather information on individuals which would normally be protected under the US Constitution through the use of FISA, Title 3 monitoring, NSL reports, etc.”

While the FBI’s extrajudicial assaults on the freedoms of Americans is nothing new, along with the federal government’s insane expansion of authority into unthinkable realms including the power to assassinate Americans at will, these discoveries are especially troubling.

According to Wired’s Danger Room, the FBI claims they simply didn’t mean it and since have removed the offending document from their counterterrorism training curriculum, characterizing it as an “imprecise” instruction.

This explanation is hardly surprising given that the Department of Defense made similar claims after it emerged that their training materials explicitly classified protesting as an act of “low-level terrorism.”

“Dismissing this statement as ‘imprecise’ is a rather unsatisfying response given the very precise lines Congress and the courts have repeatedly drawn between what is and is not permissible, even in counterterrorism cases, over the past decade,” Steve Vladeck, a national-security law professor at American University, said to Danger Room.

“It might technically be true that the FBI has certain authorities when conducting counterterrorism investigations that the Constitution otherwise forbids, but that’s good only so far as it goes,” he added.

However, I think that the lines drawn by Congress have been woefully incomplete, especially given the fact that it is unusual for one of our so-called representatives to actually stand up for our rights against an increasingly infringing federal government.

Even when they do, their efforts far too often fall short of the mark, as evidenced by Representative Landry’s attempt to amend the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 to protect Americans from indefinite detention.

As evidence of the fact that they really do not care about these “imprecise” instructions, the FBI has not taken a single disciplinary action against any instructor involved.

Furthermore, they did not even say that the agents who had been exposed to such ludicrous training materials would undergo re-training. This intensive six-month-long review of counterterrorism training materials conducted by the FBI did not even result in a review of any and all intelligence reports which would have been influenced by the “imprecise” training materials.

“This is not an effective way to protect the United States,” Senator Richard Durbin, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing the FBI, told Danger Room about the inappropriate FBI counterterrorism training.

“It’s stunning that these things could be said to members of our FBI in training. It will not make them more effective in their work and won’t make America safer.”

A letter send by Senator Durbin to Robert Mueller, the Director of the FBI, showed images from one of the FBI’s instructional materials which stated, “Under certain circumstances, the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.”

“Time and time again when that is done, it has not made us safer,” Senator Durbin added.

Some of the training materials aren’t so much disturbing as they are somewhat hilarious, like the “Establishing relationships” slide which tells agents: “Never attempt to shake hands with an Asian” and” “Never stare at an Asian.”

On another slide entitled “Control and Temper,” agents are told that the “Western Mind” (whatever that is) is “even keel” with “outbursts exceptional.”

However, when one is in the Arab World, agents are told that “Outbursts and lose [sic] of control expected” and “What’s wrong with frequent Jekyll and Hyde temper tantrums?”

Not only does this make little sense and expose the clear prejudice and ignorance amongst the FBI’s instructors, it also shows the naked cultural bias that has legitimized far too many illegitimate practices.

Indeed, the FBI simply manufactures terrorism in order to further strip us of our rights and hold on to their ludicrous powers.

Christopher Allen, a spokesperson for the FBI did not even attempt to dispute the authenticity of the documents, although he refused to share the full documents.

Allen also claimed that he was “unable to provide” any additional information as to their context, or even an estimate of how many FBI agents may have been exposed to the faulty materials.

In an attempt to lessen the impact of these materials, Allen claimed that “less than one percent contained factually inaccurate or imprecise information or used stereotypes.”

Allen’s claims aren’t helped by the fact that the FBI has previously taught their agents that all so-called “mainstream” Muslims are violent (which is a wholly ludicrous assertion), that Islam made Muslims want to carry out “genocide,” nor the overall glaring anti-Muslim bias present in agencies like the FBI.
The FBI’s claim that they can bend or suspend the law “under certain circumstances” include circumstances which are a bit confusing, to say the least.

“Title 3 monitoring” is typical law enforcement surveillance which requires a judge’s approval, while the issuance of National Security Letters (subpoenas for records which are issued by the FBI itself, and not judges) is, quite unfortunately, completely legal. imilarly, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is a legal way for agencies like the FBI to spy on Americans.

“This certainly does not read as if a lawyer wrote it,” Robert Chesney, a national-security expert at the University of Texas’ law school told Danger Room.

“Congress has given the FBI the authority to wiretap, collect business records, and gather other forms of information for intelligence purposes, subject to certain safeguards. It is a severe misstatement to refer to the exercise of these lawful authorities as ‘bending’ or ‘suspending’ the law; that mischaracterization runs the risk of both delegitimizing these lawful tools and, simultaneously, conveying to agents the mistaken impression that there might be some more general power to disobey the law during intelligence investigations,” he added.

While I think it is quite sad that the FBI has these authorities to begin with, it makes little sense for the FBI to teach their agents that they can bend or suspend the law unless, as Chesney points out it is done to give the “impression that there might be some more general power to disobey the law during intelligence investigations.”

Indeed, it seems quite obvious to me that this is the entire point. They want law enforcement to believe that they are above the law, which in many cases they are as they have been allowed to get away with murdering and brutally assaulting the elderly.

While the FBI has allegedly removed this offending document from their curriculum, it does nothing to help the fact that unknown numbers of agents have already been exposed to the material and actually believe it to be accurate.

Furthermore, the fact that the FBI has taken no steps to rectify the situation by retraining their agents tells quite a bit about where their priorities are.

Posted in C.I.A - FBI & Secret Services Activities, Government & Political News - Incl Cover-ups / Corruption, Only in The USA News Stories, WTF News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

USA – Hospital workers call police to seize newborn baby, throw mother out and assault her child with dangerous vaccines

March 31, 2012 — craftledger

More proof that life in the ‘Land of the Free’ – is getting out out control!

And maybe, there is now truth in the saying that “America is quickly becoming an Authoritarian Basket Case”

Another shocking case of tyrannical, overzealous social workers and hospital staff has unfolded in Pennsylvania, where a mom who just gave birth in an ambulance to a healthy baby girl was threatened by a government social worker and accused of not allowing her child to receive “medical treatment.” (A claim which is factually false.) In reality, the new mom, exhausting from giving birth in an ambulance, was merely asking questions and trying to determine how her newborn daughter was being treated by hospital staff.

A social worker named Angelica Lopez-Heagy continued to threaten the mom, who persisted in asking polite questions to try to determine what she was being accused of. In response, the social worker demanded, “Since you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll just go and call the police and we can take custody of the baby.”

The social worker then demanded that the mom and dad sign a “safety plan” that would contractually bind them to whatever medical procedures the hospital tries to push on all newborns, including multiple vaccines. The term “safety plan” is really just a linguistic mind trick for the agenda of damaging newborns with vaccines so that they become repeat customers of the medical industry. Vaccines, as readers well know, routinely cause kidney damage, neurological damage and gastrointestinal damage, all of which produce huge long-term profits for hospitals, doctors and drug companies.

When the mom said she wanted her attorney to look over the document before she signed it, the nanny state social worker invoked her previous threat and called the police. The police then took custody (kidnapped) the daughter while hospital workers claimed the newborn was suffering from “illness or injury.” (Completely fabricated to justify their kidnapping.) Then they forcibly vaccinated the baby without her mother’s consent! This was all “approved” by the social worker, Lopez-Heagy.

Note that even though the hospital stole her baby away, if the baby ends up being vaccine damaged, the entire burden of long-term health care costs for that damage will fall squarely on the mother! In fact, the mom might even be accused of “child abuse” if the vaccine damage side effects in any way resemble physical abuse (which often happens, as vaccines can cause bruising, swelling and brain damage).

Hospital workers then proceeded to kidnap her daughter and kick the mom out of the hospital, taking “possession” of the newborn child and forcing the mom and husband to sleep in the Wal-Mart parking lot, only allowing her to re-enter the hospital every three hours to breastfeed

This is how parents are treated in America today: Like criminal dogs whose only function is to give birth to a new “litter” of victims for the state.

Read the full account of all the details of this incident at:
http://hslda.org/hs/state/pa/201203270.asp

Defended by the Home School Legal Defense Fund

The rights of parents are under constant assault across America these days, where insanity has now overruled rationality and government tyrants are running rampant over common sense.

The Home School Legal Defense Fund is defending this case. This organization is donation-supported, so please consider donating at:
http://hslda.org/hs/state/pa/201203270.asp

Most reasonable people would agree that parents have the right to ask basic questions about the medical care their children are receiving, but increasingly across U.S. hospitals, asking questions is perceived as a challenge to medical authority, and these power-hungry, ego-tripping social workers — who would feel right at home working for the TSA and reaching down your pants to intimidate you — then feel the need to make others suffer as an expression of their own power.

Increasingly, they call C.P.S. or the local police. They have children kidnapped and taken away. They force potentially deadly vaccines on children. And they even have police bring guns to hospitals to force children and teens to be injected with deadly chemotherapy agents against the wishes of their parents!

This is the new medical police state in America. Parents are routinely criminalized for simply acting like responsible parents, even while the state now routinely kidnaps infants and children and then subjects them to dangerous, even deadly medical procedures.

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USA; Battle over Farmers’ Rights Against Monsanto Continues to Brew – Good News For Us – Bad For Monsanto, I hope!

March 29, 2012 — craftledger

Source: Activist Post

Today, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, family farmers filed their Notice of Appeal to Judge Naomi Buchwald’s February 24th ruling dismissing Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association et al v. Monsanto. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will hear the farmers’ appeal, seeking to reinstate the case, which has received worldwide attention. The farmers are determined to move forward with their lawsuit challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically engineered seed technologies in order to continue their pursuit of Declaratory Judgment Act court protection from Monsanto’s claims of patent infringement should their crops become contaminated by Monsanto’s seed.

“Farmers have the right to protect themselves from being falsely accused of patent infringement by Monsanto before they are contaminated by Monsanto’s transgenic seed,” said Dan Ravicher, Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), a not-for-profit legal services organization based at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law that represents the plaintiffs. “Judge Buchwald erred by denying plaintiffs that right and they have now initiated the process of having her decision reversed.”

The original complaint in OSGATA et al v. Monsanto was filed on March 29, 2011. In July, Monsanto filed a motion to dismiss. Plaintiff lawyers at PUBPAT then filed a rebuttal brief on August 11, 2011. Judge Buchwald called for oral argument on the motion to dismiss, which was held in Manhattan on January 31, 2012. The judge’s dismissal ruling was issued February 24th and plaintiffs were given thirty days in which to file their Notice of Appeal.

“Farmers are under threat. Our right to farm the way we choose, and to grow pure organic seed and healthy food on our farms for our families and for our customers is under assault,” said Maine organic seed farmer Jim Gerritsen, President of lead Appellant OSGATA. “We are honor-bound to challenge an erroneous ruling which denies family farmers the protection the law says we deserve. We’re not asking for one penny from Monsanto. Ultimately, our fight is for justice and is waged to defend the right of the people to have access to good and safe food.”
The Plaintiff/Appellant group is comprised of individual family farmers, small and family-owned seed companies and agricultural organizations. They are all organic or committed to farming without using genetically engineered seeds, and have no desire to ever farm with Monsanto’s patented GMO technology. However, they are fearful that Monsanto seed will trespass onto their farms and that the resulting contamination of their crops will be viewed by Monsanto as illegal ‘possession’ resulting in patent infringement allegations. Monsanto’s harassment of family farmers is well known in farm country, the biotech seed and chemical giant has one of the most aggressive patent assertion agendas in U.S. history. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto admits to filing 144 lawsuits against America’s family farmers, while settling another 700 cases out of court for undisclosed amounts and imposing gag orders on farmers. The farmers’ fears were heightened when Monsanto refused to provide a legally binding covenant not to sue, signaling Monsanto’s intention to maintain their option to sue innocent family farmers in the future.

“America’s farmers deserve to be protected under the law from the unwanted genetic contamination of their crops by Monsanto’s flawed genetically engineered seed technology,” said David Murphy, founder and Executive Director of Food Democracy Now!, an Iowa-based national advocacy organization of more than 300,000 members. “These farmers have no desire to use Monsanto’s GMO seeds, yet they are forced into the untenable position of losing their right to farm in the manner in which they choose, face legal intimidation and the loss of economic livelihood, all because America’s legal system has failed to adequately protect them from the real threat of genetic trespass that is inherent as a result of Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds and the natural biological functions of cross pollination from wind, insects or animals.”

The Appellants in the suit represented by PUBPAT are: Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association; Organic Crop Improvement Association International, Inc. (OCIA); Food Democracy Now!; The Cornucopia Institute; Demeter Association, Inc.; Navdanya International; Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association; Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts Chapter, Inc.; Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont; Rural Vermont; Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association; Southeast Iowa Organic Association; Mendocino Organic Network (California); Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance; Canadian Organic Growers; Family Farmer Seed Cooperative; Sustainable Living Systems (Montana); Global Organic Alliance; Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund; Weston A. Price Foundation; Center for Food Safety; Beyond Pesticides; Northeast Organic Farming Association of Rhode Island; Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire; Northeast Organic Farming Association of Connecticut; Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York; Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance; Michael Fields Agricultural Institute (Wisconsin); Midwest Organic Dairy Producers Alliance; Florida Organic Growers; Peace River Organic Producers Association (Alberta and British Columbia); FEDCO Seeds, Inc. (Maine); Adaptive Seeds, LLC (Oregon); Sow True Seed (North Carolina); Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (Virginia); Mumm’s Sprouting Seeds (Saskatchewan); Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co., LLC (Missouri); Comstock, Ferre & Co. LLC (Connecticut); Seedkeepers, LLC (California); Siskiyou Seeds (Oregon); Countryside Organics (Virginia); Cuatro Puertas (New Mexico); Seed We Need (Montana), Wild Garden Seed (Oregon); Alba Ranch (Kansas); Wild Plum Farm (Montana); Gratitude Gardens (Washington); Richard Everett Farm, LLC (Nebraska); Philadelphia Community Farm, Inc. (Wisconsin); Genesis Farm (New Jersey); Chispas Farms, LLC (New Mexico); Midheaven Farms (Minnesota); Koskan Farms (South Dakota); California Cloverleaf Farms; North Outback Farm (North Dakota); Taylor Farms, Inc. (Utah); Ron Gargasz Organic Farms (Pennsylvania); Abundant Acres (Missouri); T & D Willey Farms (California); Quinella Ranch (Saskatchewan); Nature’s Way Farm, Ltd. (Alberta); Levke and Peter Eggers Farm (Alberta); Frey Vineyards, Ltd. (California); Bryce Stephens (Kansas); Chuck Noble (South Dakota); LaRhea Pepper (Texas); Paul Romero (New Mexico); Donald Wright Patterson, Jr. (Virginia); Common Good Farm; LLC (Nebraska); American Buffalo Company (Nebraska; Full Moon Farm, Inc. (Vermont); Radiance Dairy (Iowa); Brian L. Wickert (Wisconsin); Bruce Drinkman (Wisconsin); and Murray Bast (Ontario).

About OSGATA: The Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association is a not-for-profit agricultural organization made up of organic farmers, seed growers, seed businesses and supporters. OSGATA is committed to developing and protecting organic seed and it’s growers in order to ensure the organic community has access to excellent quality organic seed free of contaminants and adapted to the diverse needs of local organic agriculture. www.osgata.org 

You can support this article by voting on Reddit:  http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/rinrl/battle_over_farmers_rights_against_monsanto/

Posted in Boycott & Protest Worthy News Stories, Business / Finance / Tech News, Environment News Stories, Monsanto News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Comments Off

America; 10 Signs That The Country Is On The Verge Of A Horrible Municipal Debt Crisis

March 24, 2012 — craftledger

Source: The American Dream

Is America on the verge of a horrible municipal debt crisis? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. From coast to coast there are an increasing number of cities, towns and counties that are rapidly going broke. Financial analyst Meredith Whitney took a lot of heat when her prediction of a municipal bond crash in 2011 did not happen, but she was not fundamentally wrong in her analysis. A horrifying municipal debt crisis is starting to unfold right in front of our eyes.

It just did not happen as soon as she thought that it would. When most Americans think of our “debt problem”, they think of the federal government. But the truth is that we have hundreds and hundreds of smaller “debt problems” all across the country. In 2012, cities such as Stockton, California and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania have already defaulted and a whole bunch of other cities and towns are headed down the exact same path. Once we see the first major wave of municipal defaults, creditors will become much tighter with their money and that will cause even more municipalities to get into financial trouble. This crisis could start spinning out of control at any time.

The frightening thing is that all of this is happening at a time when we are supposed to be having an “economic recovery“.

So what will things look like when the economy gets even worse than this?

If hundreds of cities, towns and counties are barely able to keep their heads above water financially right now, what is going to happen when the next recession hits?

That is frightening to think about.

The following are 10 signs that America is on the verge of a horrible municipal debt crisis….

#1 Moody’s has downgraded Detroit’s debt again. The following is from the Detroit News….

The city received a downgrade to B2 from Ba3 for its $553.1 million in outstanding general obligation unlimited tax debt and also a downgrade to B3 from B1 for the $486.4 million in outstanding general obligation limited tax debt. Both ratings fell two points.

#2 The city of Indianapolis is facing an unprecedented 75 million dollar budget deficit in 2012. City officials are warning that there may soon not be enough money to keep the streetlights on.

#3 Suffolk County in New York has declared a “fiscal emergency” after discovering that it is projected to take on a total ofmore than 500 million dollars of additional debt by the end of 2013.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Economic News Stories, Only in The USA News Stories. Tags: , , , , , . Comments Off

The Ex-FBI Informant with a Change of Heart: ‘There Is No Real Hunt. It’s Fixed’

March 24, 2012 — craftledger

Source: The Guardian

Craig Monteilh describes how he pretended to be a radical Muslim in order to root out potential threats, shining a light on some of the bureau’s more ethically murky practices

March 21, 2012 “The Guardian” — Craig Monteilh says he did not balk when his FBI handlers gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting. Nor, at the time, did he shy away from recording their pillow talk.

“They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did,” Monteilh told the Guardian as he described his year as a confidential FBI informant sent on a secret mission to infiltrate southern Californian mosques.

It is an astonishing admission that goes that goes to the heart of the intelligence surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11. While police and FBI leaders have insisted they are acting to defend America from a terrorist attack, civil liberties groups have insisted they have repeatedly gone too far and treated an entire religious group as suspicious.

Monteilh was involved in one of the most controversial tactics: the use of “confidential informants” in so-called entrapment cases. This is when suspects carry out or plot fake terrorist “attacks” at the request or under the close supervision of an FBI undercover operation using secret informants. Often those informants have serious criminal records or are supplied with a financial motivation to net suspects.

In the case of the Newburgh Four – where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx – a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.

In the case of the Fort Dix Five, which involved a fake plan to attack a New Jersey military base, one informant’s criminal past included attempted murder, while another admitted in court at least two of the suspects later jailed for life had not known of any plot.

Such actions have led Muslim civil rights groups to wonder if their communities are being unfairly targeted in a spying game that is rigged against them. Monteilh says that is exactly what happens. “The way the FBI conducts their operations, It is all about entrapment … I know the game, I know the dynamics of it. It’s such a joke, a real joke. There is no real hunt. It’s fixed,” he said.

But Monteilh has regrets now about his involvement in a scheme called Operation Flex. Sitting in the kitchen of his modest home in Irvine, near Los Angeles, Monteilh said the FBI should publicly apologise for his fruitless quest to root out Islamic radicals in Orange County, though he does not hold out much hope that will happen. “They don’t have the humility to admit a mistake,” he said.

Monteilh’s story sounds like something out of a pulp thriller. Under the supervision of two FBI agents the muscle-bound fitness instructor created a fictitious French-Syrian altar ego, called Farouk Aziz. In this disguise in 2006 Monteilh started hanging around mosques in Orange County – the long stretch of suburbia south of LA – and pretended to convert to Islam.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Crime-Terrorism-Espionage-War-Conspiracies News Stories, Fraud & Deception News, Human Rights News Stories, Only in The USA News Stories, WTF News Stories. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Comments Off
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