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Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
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I agree with Banditthecat that brick and mortar businesses should not have to compete with a business that does not pay sales tax. Fairness has another benefit . . . there is less opportunity for black-market operations. Why? Because the more businesses that report sales, the easier it will be for the IRS to track down the scofflaws.
Hi Thom, FYI...humans are lots older than 165,000 years.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/23813443/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/o...
Oldest known human fossil found in Europe Piece of jawbone unearthed in Spain could be up to 1.3 million years old
Also, it is refreshing to see open-minded discussion of the Ica stones...does raise questions. BTW, I'm no fundimentalist Christian. http://livingdinos.com/2011/07/are-the-ica-stones-fake-skeptics-under-fire/
Let's tax the Wall (FRAUD) street stock, bond, options, futures contracts too. And the broker commissions on top of that. Commodity contracts should also be required to have at least 50% of their value be held in escrow by the treasury. Exotic derivatives should also be assessed reparation surcharges that are nonrefundable. Maybe this will curb greed and maniacal speculation to the point where we can deter weapons of financial mass destruction.
So KEN what is wrong with speaking German, Japanese, or Russian? I have a brother who speakes, reads, and writes Thai, and German. He has lived in Germany and Thailand for the past 31 years. I also have a sister that lives in Turkey and a lifelong friend that moved to Denmark after he declaired himself a Consciencious Objector and left the Army back in 2005. I keep in close communication with all of them, and find it interesting - but sad - how the world outside of the U.S.views us...Unanimously we are considered tyrant capitalist bullies. We have military bases in just about every country in the world, and if another Soverning Nation doesn't want to comply with "our brand" of capitalism then we set up a coup and destablize them. Yet if any country tries to do the same to another Soverning Nation, or us...Look out. But of course to you thats good. Your motto is "By any means necessary"..."The ends justify the means". You thrive on others fearing the U.S....It's manly! And nothing makes you sleep better than knowing bombs are being dropped on villages where there may be a few "suspected" terrorist, or there is an opposition; as for all those innocent bystandards, many of which are children, some the same age as you grand daughter...That's just collateral damage.
Here is something for your brain to suck on, it's a passage from a paper a friend of mine wrote after 9/11.
"I was greatly impressed to see that an act perpetraited by the enemy was ipso facto vicious and deceitful, where as the same act perpetraited by the United States was just and praiseworthy."
What is your sincere take on that Mr. KEN WARE?
Well you certainly don't come off parinoid and grumpy; in fact you seem quite pleasent and rational.
When I was a youngster and I would get to complaining about things that were unfair my dad would say; "Life isn't fair, get over it", well this certainly did not seem fair! Later on as an adult I suffered several tragic events that change my perspective of man and the "systems" we create. I went through years of hostle rage and anger before I came to the realization that the only thing I have control over is self. From that moment on I decided to srtive towards not being a victim, and being the change that I want to see in the world.
True life is still full of unfairness, and often it seems like mans quest is to eat his own...eventually devouring himself, but I try to lead by example and to empathise; understanding, as you point out, we are all in this together.
Yes the tragadies and experiences you speak of upset me too, I had to helplessly watch my own daughter (Krissy) die at the age of 8 from cancer and the lack of insurance and money that would have aloted her the treatments that would have saved her life...I felt caste aside by my own country and worthless as both a man and a father. It took years for me to gain back my motivation, enthusiasm, selfworth...my mojo if you will, but eventually with support from family and friends I did and I swore that I would never sell myself short of life and my wellbeing over events that are out of my control.
Fighting the good fight without bombs and bullets for humanity...for Krissy.
Enjoy this day.
namasté
It is time for those who are “the-connected-people,” to stop acting like elitists and step up and do what’s right. We only have one planet and country and this Paranoid & Grumpy Vietnam Vet & ex-medic is quite tired of it. What I feel about fairness is on You Tube here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNO96bf5TdI
Onward!
Thank you KEN WARE for taking the time to answer my questions - even though you're not feeling well - with your insightful tales regarding Viet Nam, Korea and WWII. I truely was interested to hear your perspective...and as I suspected it was right inline with the time, and completely absent of McCarthyism and the lies the U.S. government conjured up in order to gain support of the American people. You may recall a little man by the name Daniel Ellsberg and the stir he caused the U.S. government with a few documents...later known as The Pentagon Papers? Poor Nixion. Oh the humanity!!!
As I have mentioned in past posts, I have family who served in all three of the formentioned wars - as well as family and friends that are serving in the military today; most of them are now Consciencious Objectors...aka Unglorified War Heroes.
I much prefer to gain knowledge and understanding about past and present wars and military sanctions from those who - like yourself - have experienced it first hand; along with - as you suggest - "googling it". History is our one saving grace; it is one of the reasons that Thomas Jefferson was our countries smartest and greatest leader. Jefferson researched and studied the rise and fall of all the greatist Empires, Kingdoms, and Dynasties before his time, and, well to sum it up; heeded the warnings that history taught him.
It seems fair to point out that these days the U.S. government doesn't need to be provoked by another soverning nation or 3rd world country in order to invade and occupy it...No??? Though I'm not so sure there ever has been a time when we ever have been provoked.
You may be right in saying that many Americans did not know of Viet Nam before the the U.S. got involved in that war...But our Government certainly did. Hmmm???curious...indeed!
As far as all your babble and low brow name calling goes; it just shows how ignorant you are as to who I am; though you are correct...I much prefer flowers over bombs and bullets, as do all of those I know who have experienced the hell and nonsense of war. And you'll never be able to pin me to any one political party and here is why...Left or Right and all their denominations have good ideas, but NONE are absolute in resolving our issues; especially when attempted through the act of war.
Draft Beer...Not me!
Arms Are For Hugging.
War Is Not The Answer.
Flower Power.
One final note; I am not naive...I suffer no fools or bullies...I will defend my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, however, so far the only threat I see is that of this government.
Anybody know the names of the two states that are not broke and have their own banks?
That's the kind of America I believe in.
Or maybe that's what America Should strive to be so it will survive if its not to late.
Wait a minute,isn't that what we did a couple of hundred years ago.
America will fight back or fall,commen sense.
hardy helping of sugar to make it go down easier, but it offers entertaining and completely accurate satire that places the stories in a humane and kind perspective. memory foam neck pillows
ther people standing in the back of the crowded room when Hilliary Clinton and Leon Panetta and Obama watched the video of the killing of Usama bin Laden. She's very short. kid bedroom furniture
st of the banks are drug money launderers and launderers of other illicit money anyway. It wouldn't surprise me if any one of them were part of a terrorist support network. I believe that most of them are financial terrorists anyway. memory foam pillows
with the views of the majority. The Senate is supposed to add some gravitas to legislative process. best memory foam mattress
President Obama to his second term, it was replaced with a Fox (no less) Sports talk station cheap memory foam mattress
The problem seems to be that the country is too big to care. That is what the banksters are betting on. Do we have the focus of attention to follow up on wrongdoing? Who is the policer, and what happens when their back is turned? How much power were they actually given to enforce law? It is a little like David and Goliath.
nachos - Sorry I did not answer your question yesterday on Vietnam and Korea. You may be too young to remember the full impact of the Cold War. In reality we and the Communists were in a type of war for fifty years were we did not fight each other directly, but instead we tried to stop the spread of Communism. The two countries had completely different political systems. The leaders of the Soviet Union stated on several occasions to the World that they will bury the United States and her allies. The theory that the United States government and her leaders believed in was called the Domino Theory. The basis of this theory was that if Vietnam fell to the Communists (China and Russia) it would spread to all the other countries in the East. At that time period the Soviet Union’s goal was to spread Communism across the entire World. With Cuba on our back door and if you recall we almost went to the level of nuclear war with the Soviets when Kennedy was President and the Russians were placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and could strike the U.S. and the Capital within 20 min., the Russians removed the missles when it came to actually getting into a war with the US., the government had already had one experience with the Soviets and wanted to stop their expansion thr threat threat to the U.S.
The Pentagon and Washington felt it necessary to stop the Communists from taking over S. Vietnam like they tried to do with S. Korea. We can sit back like a Sunday quarterback and call the game differently, but at the time the U.S. felt they had to stop the spread of Communism.
Whether you and others agree with this is up to you, but our primary reason for being in Vietnam was not to be the biggest power on the block, most Americans did not even know anything about Vietnam before we sent troops there. And for your information the Russians and the Chinese supplied all the military equipment and advisory personnel to North Vietnam to fight the South Vietnamese government so they could over throw the South's political and military leaders. The war was far more complicated than the explanation just gave you. Forty years later people on both sides of the argument still have different opinions on whether we should have been there. It is obvious what you and the Liberals think and it is clear on how I feel about the men and women who were involved with the War. Also smartass, the reason I did not respond to your question yesterday is that I was ill with the flu. Your assumption that I did not have an answer and therefore would not reply is typical of the people who see themselves as some type of superior intelligence, like DeAnneMarc and you who think they have all the answers! Ha, are you guys wrong as usual. Yes I do have the attitude of a military person who has tasted rhe combative side of humanity. If all Americans had the same attitude as you and the flower power kids we would be speaking German, Japanese (WWII) or Russian (Cold-vWar). Your type lacks the conviction that at times it is necessary that we have to go to war when it is necessary. I explained Vietnam to you, but why don't you simply Google the info about the Cold War and why we are a Democracy today and I use the word democracy loosely when it comes to the present situation we are in today. It is always easy for you flower waiving no combat at any cost liberals to put down what other heroes have done to keep this country safe. And just as a side comment, the reason why countries like the defunct Soviet Union as well as the other militarized countries that hate us from attacking us is simple fear of our military capabilities and the fact we will use them if provoked. My personal feeling is that men who have never served in the Military have no understanding of the U.S. Military and all men should have a mandatory obligation to serve at least two years in the military, as does Hartmann and he stated it last Thursday I Believe. K.W. If this comment is hard to follow it is because I came down with the flu on Sunday.
Meglo - It does not take a genius to understand how derivatives work or are composed. The problem with derivatives was they used a mathematical formula that was difficult for the average financial manager to fully understand so they simple accepted that Wall St. was wiser and would not risk defrauding people and countries around the world, so they bought into the lies the Banksters spewed out and in almost all cases ended up with worthless investments that crippled communities in Sweden to Atlanta Ga. They (Wall St. salesmen and women) simple combined a small amount of good paper with worthless paper from the American Housing Investment Mortgages, that they knew were going to go bust because the people who were sold these homes/ mortgages based on interest rates that world increase after just a few years and Wall ST. knew all hell would break lose when the defaults on the mortgages began to pour in from people who could not afford the payments when they began to rise. Basically Wall ST. Banksters knew the derivatives were worthless, but were not concerned in the long term value of the derivatives because they got their commissions up front. A very simple scam from people who were only concerned with their immediate commissions on the sales of these poison derivatives and the year-end bonuses that were in the millions. People who actually did not have the income to pay for the increase in the payments when the interest rates climbed where coaxed into lying about their income and the deregulation of the Banking Industry helped to facilitate this whole financial time bomb. There are several scenarios of why the housing bubble burst, this is just one of the main reasons. This is a simple explanation of what happened. And the Banksters are at it again by buying up the contracts on financed vehicles and combining them with other paper and selling them as secured derivatives as they did with the house notes or mortgages.
Of course the so called regulators and the F.D.I.C. are making back room deals with these Wall St. crooks (Banksters) because they all come from the same universities and are looking forward when the time comes to leave their government jobs and will a well-paid ($1,000,000 a year) job on Wall St. from the crooks they helped! These crooks like the lobbyists are all part of a revolving door scenario where one hand washes the other. Nice work if you can get it!! All of our woes are because of the massive corruption and good ole boy thinking in Washington. K.W.
Here in the UK the poor pay more for everything, like peoole who can't afford to have quarterly fuel bills, well they have to have a " key" meter, which one used to have to pay to have put in situ in the first place,I don't know if they still charge, it wasn't untill I'd run up a massive bill (so called "economy 7' storage heaters are crap & expensive, when it gets really cold in the evening the heat has all gone! + I also have to pay more for my "normal" hours the17 hours between 6.30am GMT & 11.30pm GMT, its 7.30am to 11.30 pm in the "summer", however its been too cold to ev hitch the heating off completely since our last "real " summer back in 2006! & I wear full, covering my ears as well hat, & can't afford to have the hot water system on, I do have an electric shower, the most expensive sort to use, unless I shower in the middle of the night!, which I end up doing as for medical reason I have to shower more than "normal" Anyway there was no way I could pay the bill by the time they had bothered to send me one, & I then found out by accident that firstly they could put me on a "lower" tariff, & that I cold have it dedujcted fortnightly from my income support, my "estimated" fortnightly usage that is, & the arears would be capped each fortnight, untill I'd paid my debt off so I would have a longer time to repay but they do not actually TELL one about this, untill after you get into difficulty! I just wish that I could let the elderly, especially, & those with small children know about this, BEFORE they go down the "key" meter path, where if you run out of money, then no electric, plus to add insult to injury they charge about 3 times MORE per unit, & to top it off we pay tax on it!, so the poor pay more both in real terms & certainly as a proportion of their weekly income, a friend who is a teacher, & her husband an electrician, both working will find the electric has run out in the night, & have to go to a shop to top their "key" meter card up so that they can get ready for work, & when their children were younger get ready for school the only positive for them is that the shop was within walking distance, they still had to wait untill it opened though! We even had "key" meters for people who couldn't pay their water bills that was untill it was made illegal because they had cholera outbreaks in Scotland because people weren't able to flush their toilets, or wash their handsm yes people in the UK were actually without water to drink, make up baby milk, wash with etc...unbelieveable, but TRUE. It is also the people who live, (well the local working, who have the lowest paid jobs in the country & the local un-employed, not the rich who come here & buy up our housing pushing the house prices out of the reach of the local working population, who also bear the brunt of caring for the rich retirees who re-locate, without thinking realistically as to how they are going to cope when they can no longer drive, or walk up a steep road) in rural areas, especially where I live, when they up the tax on petrol & diesal for our cars, time & time again, it is the working rural, the lowest paid who bear the burden the heaviest, we don't have ANY Public transport in most of our villages, & certainly not transport that fits in with shift work, like nursing home workers have to work, & my ex - husband had to work, where they were the most productive papermill in the group, & yet the lowest paid! Inthe UK its the rich that pay the least taxes both in actual £s & and as a porportion of their actual income in both direct & indirect taxes it is totally insignificant compared to their income, go read what Jesus said about the the widow's mite. In the UK we already pay 20% tax on most items wherever we buy them from, inckuding on some "luxury" foodstuf like biscuits & women's sanitary wear, hardly something which I would call a luxury! Where the problem for us in Britain lies is that the massive internet companies like Amazon, so - called "Amazon UK" escape, quite legally from paying tax on their massive profits that they make out of people like me, who can't get to the shops.
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What is most annoying about this policy is the unavoidable fact that it is the customer who must pay these settlments, the corporate executives could care less. Elizabeth Warren should be strongly encouraged to persue her questioning of regulators who quite frankly, don't seem to understand who's side they are on. That being said, the public should educate themselves on who really pays ALL the costs of corporations doing business, the customer, which in most cases is ultimately the public.
I am frankly amazed that consumer advocates ignore this fact completely.
2950-10K ~ BTW The answer to you question about Palindromedary I posted yesterday.
"Palindromedary is a mythological animal, a camel, with a head on both ends. It is troubled by the arrows of indecision."
Like whether or not to get out of the tub!
In case you missed it.
2950-10K Wrote: "I agree, break up the banks and prosecute the crimes. In my opinion, only when jail time becomes part of the cost of doing business will things change."
I couldn't agree more! If we get caught with a pound of any illegal substance off we go... Why should we stand for banks or any other group of individuals stealing people's money without jail time. We fine them under the table? What? Sounds to me like the FDIC is simply taking their cut.
This isn't justice! It's one criminal robbing another!
2950-10K ~ You know what they say about too much of a good thing... I think everyone here is an intelligent and good citizen that merely needs to vent their frustrations with others that care. Most people in our lovely society simply don't care about anything that doesn't affect them directly. They're too busy having fun. They don't want to listen to us. Sometimes they tell us; other times they ridicule us. It's like that famous Bible quote:
Matthew 7:6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
Thoughtful, responsible citizen's need a forum to vent their thoughts. A cathartic experience. They need someone who cares, listens and responds. This blog provides us all with that venue of expression. However, as with any other good thing it must be in moderation.
As far as a "blog battle fatigue rule" I certainly agree. It can happen that individuals are overwhelmed or simply tired of endless and pointless bickering. I try to stay positive because talk about gloom and doom is depressing and non productive. Too often we forget that our representatives, as well as their masters are human too. They breath the same air, eat the same food, have family's, hopes, and dreams like we do. They also get sick and die like we do. They lose loved ones like we do. We sell them short too often.
Life is too short to wallow on the "Poor me," syndrome. Fear and hopelessness are self defeating emotions and all too often can burn people out. I don't blame anyone for wanting a break from constant dialog of despair. Don't worry. Remember the lesson of Mathew 7:6. I believe they will return in short order for the same reason they came here in the first place. Patients!
Could it be possible that the supportive interlocking of the FDIC with the banksters is simply monopoly capitalism in it's most flowering state?
I agree, break up the banks and prosecute the crimes. In my opinion, only when jail time becomes part of the cost of doing business will things change.
DAnneMarc: What do you think about what I think? I think Thom's blog has a "blog battle fatigue rule" that allows participants with this condition only one week away from the blog. So this means Aliceinwonderland and ken ware only have a few days of absence left, and where the heck is David Abbot? In all seriousness though I think anybody who cares enough to take the time to participate in this blog must be a pretty good citizen. We certainly don't have to agree all the time, but in general it appears to me that everyones moral compass is pointed in the same direction. So when we need to, just let it go, and fight on. We all have our bad days, hell I got so wound once that I misinterpreted Outback, I mean really blew it! So I think we all need to just hang in there.
Costco pays an average wage of $45,000 a year to it's employees compaired to Walmarts $17,000.00 per year per employee. Amazon prime members enjoy free shipping which if you frequently shop Amazon should off set taxes a bit.
Some online businesses already collect sales taxes. I have pre-paid cell phone that charges state sales tax for online additions of air time. I used to work for them. This is a nationwide company and charges state taxes for every state that has sales tax. The computer calculates sales taxes for the particular state by the area code on the phone number. So there are systems that can do this for any online business.
Also, if the online business is located in the same state you live in, and there's sales tax in that state, you may be charged. Example: Amazon is located in Seattle, WA. If I order something online from Spokane, WA I'm subject to state sales tax, just as if I walked into a store. If I order from an address in Oregon or Idaho, there's no tax added. It may be a state by state thing, but taxes are already attached to some online transactions.