Reasons to Occupy Everything
Moderator: Super Moderators
Reasons to Occupy Everything
If you have them, post them here.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
This summer, the State Legislature and Governor of Louisiana passed a law that bans individuals and businesses from transacting in cash if they are considered a “secondhand dealer”. House Bill 195 of the 2011 Regular Session (Act 389) broadly defines a secondhand dealer to include “… Anyone, other than a non-profit entity, who buys, sells, trades in or otherwise acquires or disposes of junk or used or secondhand property more frequently than once per month from any other person, other than a non-profit entity, shall be deemed as being in the business of a secondhand dealer. ” The law then states that “A secondhand dealer shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property. Payment shall be made in the form of check, electronic transfers, or money order issued to the seller of the junk or used or secondhand property…” The broad scope of this definition can essentially encompass everyone; from your local flea market vendors and buyers to a housewife purchasing goods on ebay or craigslist, to a group of guys trading baseball cards, they could all be considered secondhand dealers. Lawmakers in Louisiana have effectively banned its citizens from freely using United States legal tender.
The law goes further to require secondhand dealers to turn over a valuable business asset, namely, their business’ proprietary client information. For every transaction a secondhand dealer must obtain the seller’s personal information such as their name, address, driver’s license number and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the goods were delivered. They must also make a detailed description of the item(s) purchased and submit this with the personal identification information of every transaction to the local policing authorities through electronic daily reports. If a seller cannot or refuses to produce to the secondhand dealer any of the required forms of identification, the secondhand dealer is prohibited from completing the transaction. - source
In the end, every single economic transaction - buying or selling - must be refereed (and taxes, fines, or permit fees must be collected) by the Complex itself. The business model requires it, and anything less would be too inefficient from a revenue angle.
This is a glimpse at the actual 'agenda' - when people will no longer stand for increases in taxes & cuts in programs, the model still calls for growth. You do the math.
JMHO
Last edited by SquidInk on 10-14-2011 07:04 PM, edited 1 time in total.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
Squid. Some of this has been pushed by the anti-barter crowd in government that sees no control over people bartering for goods and services.
Let's say you're an artist, and I need a drawing for an ad. You need an announcement or voice over for a commercial. As long as you and I think each are getting what we want, it's logical that you design my ad, I voice your commercial, and we're both happy.
However, the fed and states want us to pay 6.5% on the fair market value of the transaction. So whatever you and I charge for a job, we would have to pay this rate regardless of our expenses or what we think it's worth.
I had to close one of my accounts because my state was considering anything I traded on the service as "taxable income".
In reality, it shouldn't really be taxed. In barter you're eliminating a lot of the expense of business, so usually the net cost is lower. But the fed sees dollar signs.
Let's say you're an artist, and I need a drawing for an ad. You need an announcement or voice over for a commercial. As long as you and I think each are getting what we want, it's logical that you design my ad, I voice your commercial, and we're both happy.
However, the fed and states want us to pay 6.5% on the fair market value of the transaction. So whatever you and I charge for a job, we would have to pay this rate regardless of our expenses or what we think it's worth.
I had to close one of my accounts because my state was considering anything I traded on the service as "taxable income".
In reality, it shouldn't really be taxed. In barter you're eliminating a lot of the expense of business, so usually the net cost is lower. But the fed sees dollar signs.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
President Barack Obama authorized about 100 “combat-equipped U.S. forces,” including special operations personnel, to central Africa to help fight against Uganda’s renegade Lord’s Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony.
The troops are to “provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward” Kony’s removal “from the battlefield,” Obama said today in a letter to House and Senate leaders released by the White House. - source
Related:
"We have really attracted significant investors both abroad and local ones. They are all doing well," Joshua Tuhumwire, the commissioner in charge of geology department in the ministry of mineral development, said.
The revelations come shortly after an aerial survey report confirmed that Uganda is endowed with copper, iron ore, cobalt, tin, gold as well as platinum.- source
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
Diogenes wrote: The fed is now an extremely hungry alligator.
You bet they are. I would even go as far as to use the word addict. It just amazes me how at every turn they try to gouge the public, while protecting themselves. It's contempt multiplied by a factor of 1,000.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.
The corporations pay an average of an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of .8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.
The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.
The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.
[...]
Just this year, the Department of Justice revealed serious problems with the Paid Detail unit of the New Orleans Police Department. Now corruption probes are snowballing at NOPD, revealing cash payments to police in the Paid Detail and members of the department setting up limited liability corporations to run upwards of $250,000 in Paid Detail work billed to the city.
- source
The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.
[...]
Just this year, the Department of Justice revealed serious problems with the Paid Detail unit of the New Orleans Police Department. Now corruption probes are snowballing at NOPD, revealing cash payments to police in the Paid Detail and members of the department setting up limited liability corporations to run upwards of 0,000 in Paid Detail work billed to the city.
- source
What can I say? If people don't see a problem with this kind of thing, then it's over. Someone get the lights.
It's completely obvious that the collusion between government & big business is way out of hand. I could post these stories all day, and not even scratch the surface.
Last edited by SquidInk on 10-16-2011 10:47 AM, edited 1 time in total.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center in Washington, D.C., recently filed two Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain information about a new sensor array developed by the Department of Homeland Security that can detect “mal-intent”. The system revealed in the internal documents is known as Future Attribute Screening Technology or FAST.
FAST determines if a person intends to do harm by using a mal-intent algorithm that uses data from sensors that monitor a person’s physiological and behavioral changes. FAST is designed to detect anything from changes in body movement, body heat, eye movements, breathing patterns, voice pitch, and your prosody (the tone and rhythm in which you speak).- source
Mal-intent algorithms? These people are psychopaths. I wonder how far we'll let them run with the idea that 'terrorists are going to get us'. All the way to a techno-dystopian nightmare? Probably.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_bankingFractional-reserve banking is a type of banking whereby the bank retains only a fraction of the customer's deposits as reserves. The bank lends out most of the deposited funds, keeping only a fraction (called the reserve ratio) of the quantity of deposits as reserves of cash and coin in the bank's vaults or as deposits at the central bank. Some of the money lent out is subsequently deposited with another bank, increasing deposits at that second bank and allowing further lending. As most bank deposits are treated as money in their own right, fractional reserve banking increases the money supply, and banks are said to create money. Due to the prevalence of fractional reserve banking, the broad money supply of most countries is a multiple larger than the amount of base money created by the country's central bank. That multiple (called the money multiplier) is determined by the reserve requirement or other financial ratio requirements imposed by financial regulators, and by the excess reserves kept by commercial banks
People who keep secrets have something to hide. If the interpretation is founded on solid 'legal' ground, let's hear it.Julian Sanchez points us to the news that Savage and the NY Times have now sued the federal government for not revealing its interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, pointing out that if parts of the interpretation contain classified material, the Justice Department should black that out and reveal the rest, but simply refusing to reveal the interpretation entirely is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act. You can bet that the feds will do everything they can to get out of this lawsuit, just as they did with the various lawsuits concerning warrantless wiretapping. Here's hoping the court systems don't let them. No matter what you think of this administration (or the last one) and how it's handling the threat of terrorism, I'm curious how anyone can make the argument that the US government should not reveal how it interprets the very laws under which it's required to operate.
- source
I think we know why this is a 'secret' - and it's not because the 'evil doers' are going to get us if they publish the interpretation.
Of course, like everything else, this is just a single pixel in a tapestry of lies.
Here's another:
The Department of Homeland Security, which has expressed an interest in securing all information ever from U.S. citizens, is apparently concerned that releasing phone numbers for its Public Affairs department would result in a horrendous breach of privacy:
Some federal agencies post the office phone numbers of public affairs staff on their websites.
Not the Department of Homeland Security, which believes their release poses "a clearly unwarranted invasion" of employee privacy.
That was the department's response when it denied a Federal Times Freedom of Information Act request for the office phone numbers of its official spokesman. Personal privacy exemptions to FOIA are more commonly used to block disclosure of personnel or medical files.
This isn't an exception to the rule. Despite the clear wording of the 2009 directive, which instructed executive branch agencies not to withhold information just because they could, the end result has been an uneven distribution of compliance and stonewalling.- source
In-Your-Face secrecy - that's a good reason to occupy the halls of power. No?
Last edited by SquidInk on 10-17-2011 03:14 PM, edited 1 time in total.
For if it profit, none dare call it Treason.
Less we not forget if you change the definition, or interpretation of the law, then all that was illegal becomes legal. Goes hand in hand with "if you tell a lie enough times...."
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
-
Bobbi Snow
- Pirate
- Posts: 2366
- Joined: 01-20-2008 01:57 PM
It won't be long until - regardless of which Party's in, or who is President - we will have to account for every dollar of cash we take out of the bank. Then people will get SOOOOOO tired of having to keep books on where, when, and what they buy with their own cash, they'll just roll over and carry a government issued debit card. Those who don't - those who can and will live "off the grid" will be in violation of something... you can bet on that. And yet the Republicans are always screaming, "The SOCIALISTS ARE COMING! The SOCIALISTS ARE COMING!" I'll wager that if Rod and I live long enough to rue that future day, it will come a whole lot faster, the more Republicans we elect between now and then...
If you're still breathing, it's not too late!