Just Saying No

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Probably I ought not to commit this to print – much less the ‘Net. But I feel obliged.ear tag

Ok, here it is:

I haven’t renewed the cattle tags for some of my vehicles in several years now. I mean “renewing” the annual registration. That is to say, I have stopped paying the annual tributum the state demands of me in order to maintain my “privilege” to operate these vehicles on the roads I have already paid for.

I figure once is enough.

Especially since it’s many times more than once.

Each time I buy gas, I – like you – pay taxes, highly regressive (50 something cents in taxes on a gallon of fuel that costs $2 or so – tax inclusive – amounts to loan sharkery) which is my weekly contribution toward the costs of building/maintaining the roads.

I’ve also – like most of you –  paid the state title and sales taxes as well as personal property taxes in perpetuity – using whatever funds are left to me after paying federal and state income taxes. Plus the might-as-well-be-taxes (because mandatory and enforced at gunpoint, like taxes) extortion payments I have to make to the insurance mafia. Notwithstanding I’ve never filed a claim in almost 30 years of driving, nor had one filed against me.

Continue reading “Just Saying No”

Cashless Society – Tracking Gold – the Hunt for Loose Change

If the oligarchs actually attempt to create a cashless society, I think it would start a revolution. Eliminating cash is how the oligarchs want to add a fee to every transaction and to track everything you do so they can tax you. Think about how many mom and pop restaurants and retailers would be forced out of business. This would be the tipping point.

Think about the food stamp program. You used to get actual foodstamps. Bankers had nothing to do with the transactions between the recipient and the food store. Now the money is loaded onto a card and swiped at the POS. JP Morgan now collects billions from the downtrodden and retailers. They sell these ideas as efficiency, when it is nothing but a new method of rape and pillage.

Know your enemy.

 

1-FOREX

I do not see how it will be possible to eliminate physical money, for it would require Third World economies to adopt modern technology.More than half the world is not into technology. Moreover, there is still a reasonable segment of people within the industrialized world who are not into the technology age. Denmark will move to a near fully electronic money system come January 2016. Stores will not accept cash but there must be exceptions such as medical.Economic-Totalitarianism-Rogoff-Buiter

Such a transition urged by Rogoff and Buiter, the harbingers of Economic Totalitarianism,  merely illustrate how they live in a bubble and do not see that the entire world does not fit the way they live. That does not mean the major nations will not attempt such a scheme for they are desperate for cash. A friend applied for a mortgage. Every penny they were putting down as the down-payment had to be proved right down to a check for $400. What was it for and why did a relative give them $400. The questions were all related to what they are calling money laundering or in other words tracing every penny for tax purposes.

Electronic-Euro

Europe is looking at this move to electronic money because the banking system is infected with euro debt of member states lacking a single reserve debt system as exists outside in the USA, Canada, Britain, and Australia just to mention a few.So the design of the Euro is a fatal flaw and instead of correcting the design, they choose to become more authoritarian.

Continue reading “Cashless Society – Tracking Gold – the Hunt for Loose Change”

I’M THE TAXMAN

They keep turning the screw tighter and tighter.

Via Police State USA

Photographers face fines for taking pictures in National Forests

The government attempts to turn a right into a paid privilege.

A color landscape by Ansel Adams.

Free speech is under attack as the federal government is attempting to institute a permitting system for photography taken on so-called “public land” controlled by the U.S. Forest Service. Under the directive, professional photographers will be obligated to purchase a “special-use permit” for the privilege of shooting pictures inside tax-funded national forests.

In usual form, the restrictions are being manifested gradually — first targeting photographers who make their living off of shooting pictures. Under the proposed directive, commercial photographers will face fees of $30 to $800 per day to professionally document the beauty of the parks.

“We take your First Amendment rights very seriously,” paradoxically stated U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “The directive pertains to commercial photography and filming only.”

What the forest bureaucrat fails to acknowledge is that “commercial photography and filming” is inextricably tied to the First Amendment. The right to free speech does not end when the product holds value to another party. No distinction between casual and professional speech is made in the constitution.

By definition, commercial photography includes any image or movie that can potentially be sold to anyone else. That might include individuals shooting stock nature photography, magazine photographers, documentary filmmakers, or even theatrical productions. It could include professional landscape photographers like Ansel Adams or the tourist who takes a unique shot that gets the attention of a publisher.

Commercial photography is so broad in nature that restrictions on it have the potential to affect anyone with a camera. But the government dubiously assures us that commercial photography is the “only” field being restricted.

Public commenting on the policy has been extended to December 3, 2014. Readers are encouraged to submit a formal comment demanding that no aspects of photography be restricted and turned into a paid privilege.

Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet

Taxman!
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

Don’t ask me what I want it for (Aahh Mr. Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more (Aahh Mr. Heath)
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

And you’re working for no one but me
Taxman!

 

TAXING THE POOR & ELDERLY TO DEATH, TO PAY BLOATED GOVERNMENT UNION PENSIONS

The morons running the state capitol of Pennsylvania – Harrisburg – already had to file bankruptcy due to their incompetent management of city finances. Now the brain surgeons running the city of Scranton have decided that dramatically raising taxes and fees on the elderly, poor population of Scranton will solve their budget woes. The government pension obligations haven’t even really kicked in yet. The required pension payments for government workers will skyrocket in the next three years. The real unemployment rate in Scranton is north of 15%. Businesses have closed. The population has declined by 7.5% since 1990. It is a decaying, dying city with only the college supporting the few remaining residents. The government drones running Scranton and other towns across PA are delusional if they think they can raise taxes and fees on aging and unemployed people with no income to pay the bloated pensions of government workers. Math is hard for idiots. Scranton will declare bankruptcy. Book it Dano.

Scranton Residents Plead for Bankruptcy vs. Higher Taxes; Different Than Detroit

 

City officials in Scranton Pennsylvania have ignored pleas from residents pleading for bankruptcy.

Instead, the city raised property taxes and trash fees nearly 60% and tripled rental registration fees. The city’s school district, which faced a $4-million deficit, raised taxes 2.4%. The City Council, which in 2012 passed a 5% amusement tax on live entertainment, is now discussing a 10% drink tax.

As a result, taxpayer who can are fleeing the city.

The LA Times reports For Scranton residents, bankruptcy is an inviting option

When Detroit filed for bankruptcy, hundreds of residents took to the streets to protest what they saw as a drastic approach to fixing the city’s budget problems.

But in this hilly town of 76,000 in northeastern Pennsylvania, residents have a different view of Chapter 9: They want the city to declare bankruptcy. And soon.

“The silent majority would like to see bankruptcy,” said Bob “Ozzie” Quinn, president of the Scranton and Lackawanna County Taxpayers Assn. “Basically, it’s down to a point where people cannot afford to pay the taxes and are moving out of town.”

The City Council, which in 2012 passed a 5% amusement tax on live entertainment, is now discussing a 10% drink tax. The city’s parking authority is in receivership, and it recently privatized its parking meters: The company in charge upped rates and extended meter hours to 6 p.m., which bar owner Mert Gavin says has motivated workers to skip happy hour and head home to the suburbs straight after work.

“I am one of the last two bars that’s still downtown. Tink’s is gone. Whistle’s is gone, Banshee’s is gone, Molly Brannigan’s is gone,” said Gavin, who runs Mert’s. “Do they expect I’m going to bail the city of Scranton out myself?”

The taxes are especially egregious to some because so many of the city’s residents are elderly and living on fixed incomes. The median household income in Scranton is $37,000, and nearly one-fifth of residents live below the poverty line.

The city’s financial problems were accelerated by a 2011 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that found that the city owed its police and firefighters unions back pay — about $21 million. The settlement money became due in 2013, but the city bickered over how to come up with the funds for so long that Moody’s warned in November that Scranton faced the threat of default.

“It’s been nonstop. They raised the water fees, the electric, the gas,” said Richard Laytos, a Scranton native who moved back to the city to retire in 1997 after 44 years in New Jersey.

Gary Lewis, who once ran a blog, scrantonisbroke, that urged city leaders to consider bankruptcy, took a drastic step when they failed to do so: He moved out of the city where he’d spent his whole life.

“I did the math — realized how much it was costing me to live in the city,” said Lewis, who now lives in Indiana, where he says he makes $2,500 more a year because of lower taxes. “That’s the story of my generation. There’s a lot of kids like me, who grew up, went to college at Scranton, but they turn 22 and move out of the city, and they don’t move back because it’s not a financially attractive proposition.”

bankruptcy won’t solve the city’s financial woes, said John Judge, president of the local firefighters union. “It’s a horrible idea — you take local control out of the hands of policymakers, and put it in some judge’s hand,” he said.

Neither the city’s new mayor nor his predecessor, Chris Doherty, returned calls for comment, but former City Council President Janet Evans said she and Doherty had been determined to avoid bankruptcy.

“We are in a different situation than Detroit,” she said. “We were willing and able to do everything within the scope of our authority to continue the recovery of the city of Scranton until it sits once again on sound financial ground.”

My Thoughts

Officials in city hall are either complete financial-morons, beholden to the unions, or beholden to their own pension plans that would take a hit if the city declared bankruptcy.

I suspect a combination.

Different Than Detroit

“We are in a different situation than Detroit,” says former City Council President Janet Evans.

Indeed.

Detroit is better off.

In bankruptcy, Detroit has a chance to dump union contracts and onerous pension promises. Detroit may have hit bottom.

The economic-jackasses in Scranton are going to extract every ounce of blood they can from taxpayers, then eventually declare bankruptcy anyway.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com


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