What happened in Vegas...

... I actually kinda wish would have stayed in Vegas. It hurts to think about this one. It certainly puts my post about the Rockford Public School District's $18,000 conference at $1,285 a head in Chicago to shame...

The General Services Administration, the facilities managers of the US Government (buildings, leases, rentals, properties, etc.), is a group you'd expect to be pretty well versed on fiscal restraint and finding deals to be had. But, OH NO... Instead, they had their Western Regions Training Conference in Vegas, spending 2,783 taxpayer dollars a head for a total cost of $835,000. These 300 people were treated to:

• A mind reader - 3,200 taxpayer dollars
• A commemorative coin set in velvet boxes - 6,300 taxpayer dollars
• A training exercise to build a bicycle - 75,000 taxpayer dollars
• Canteens, key chains and t-shirts - 6,000 taxpayer dollars
• A clown (I'd love to know what he was paid)
• A comedian (ditto)
• Awards for a participant talent show held as an excuse to treat everyone to dinner
• Treating everyone to dinner (But let's be reasonable here. Even if they had to expense their own meals, they were still government employees expensing their meals to the taxpayers...)

Setting this kind of baby up costs money too:

• Airfare and lodging sending the planners on six trips to the venue to set it up - 147,000 taxpayer dollars (Because, you know, you can't set this sort of beauty up over the phone)
• A finder's fee to book this place that can't even remotely set up a conference - 12,000 taxpayer dollars

One of the worst parts? The news broke THIS WEEK about a conference that happened 18 months ago! That means the motherfuckers spending this kind of money as 'servants' of the public had a good solid run at just covering this up and making it go away. You gotta ask yourself, how much of this shit are they getting away with?

Luckily a hero from within the GSA reported this gross misappropriation of taxpayer dollars. Thank you, GSA Employee. Thank you.

So... What exactly were they being trained for again???

THIS is whyipaytaxes...

read more:GSA chief gone, but fallout continues in wake of lavish convention expense(cnn)

I first heard it:Obama Administration Tripped Up By GSA's Vegas Spending Scandal(npr)

NDAA - Natural Disposition to Apprehend Americans

Meh... Bad title... This whole post is just an excuse to re-post of a Facebook rant I wrote tonight. It has everything to do with this blog, in that our tax dollar supported government is doing shit that is most-certainly not in our best interest... This is far more political than I like to go with this blog, but at least I show that my intent is non-partisan (even though the hate is directed at the current president).

Straight to the rant:

A post and some responses led me to write an Obama is better than Bush comment on a friends wall. In it, I referred to wars and Bin Laden - easy pickin's for a Obama vs. Bush thread. However, with my bent on moderation and the necessity for more political parties and less polarization, I couldn't go out like that. So, I took a minute to articulate my main hate on Obama too. Having finally put words to a thought that has been bugging me for a few weeks, I thought I'd cut'n'paste 'n' share:
---
Why Obama should indeed be shown the door:

1.) He is the first president in the history of our great nation that signed a bill into law allowing the federal government to apprehend and detain any one of us as long as they want. The only requirement is that they claim the detention is based on suspicion of "terrorism or supporting terrorists." That he signed it 'reluctantly' is irrelevant. That the current administration may never use this power is irrelevant. That our government can abduct us and make us disappear is unacceptable.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/317046

2.) The federal government has equated cannabis use as terrorism in the past. In an ad ran by the Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Bush years, "Sharing a joint in your friend's back yard" was described as support of terrorism.
http://www.cannabis-marijuana.com/drugterrorist.html

Put 1 and 2 together and we are not that far away from the government rounding up pot heads and detaining them indefinitely, without charges, without the ability to defend themselves in the courts. While this is extreme and highly unlikely, Obama's signature on that bill make this a possibility. That some future administration, in even more polarized times may take up the mantle of ending the war on drugs once and for all, is a possibility that seems unimaginable today.

Again, I point out that we need more options because it is starting to feel like 1984 up in here. With republicans we're screwed, with democrats we're shafted. Either way, I'm not loving it, no matter how many times McDonalds tries to tell me otherwise.
---

After reviewing the cut'n'paste, I realized it is a bit centered on cannabis users. While some of the best people I know regularly use cannabis, I'm trying to illustrate the truly profound depth of this law. While it is easy to draw the connection to highlight the contrast between everyone's favorite pot head and people who support terrorists, I'm not just talking about hungry people that don't feel like getting off the couch to find food. The vagueness of the terrorism charges is intense and by being forbidden due process, the government cannot be held accountable. A sitting administration can round up its opposition, claim terrorism, and lock them up. Period. No review. No chance to call bullshit. Nothing. Gone for good with no avenue for recourse.

Not acceptable. We need to be far more pissed off about this than we are. Screw the 99% vs. 1%... The Patriot Act didn't even go this far. This is the kind of thing we expect from China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia. This is not what we expected the founding father's vision of freedom in our country to turn into.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Checks balanced

I'm having a hard time playing optimistic after that last post, but I caught a good story today too...

In spite of Citigroup's success in exchanging re-election donations for feigned ignorance at the executive branch, the judicial put a bitta smackdown on their asses today.

The SEC, who is appointed by representatives of the people to keep the stock market humming along for the good of the people made a deal with Citigroup. This deal was to close the books on their part in a massive toxic mortgage scam. The deal looks like this:
Citigroup sold $1 BILLION in bunk mortgages to its customers. Knowing they were bunk and unlikely to be re-paid, Citi bet against them.

The investors lost $700 MILLION.

Citi earned $160 MILLION. (Good to be 'in' on it!)

In exchange for this blatant disregard of both ethics and rules, the SEC was going to charge Citi with negligence and fine them $285 MILLION.

Negligence... Well, I guess they should've tried harder to not screw their own customers over.

Luckily, this plea deal from the Executive had to be checked over by the Judicial. And, apparently, Citi was unable to bri*ahem* lobby Federal Judge Jed "Not on My Watch" Rakoff into seeing this as a fair and reasonable punishment for a billion dollar scandal.

(Think maybe the fine was fair? Let me take a shot at illustrating this. When a man is arrested with a kilo of heroin, they don't just take 250 grams of it and tell him he is a *bad* man, that he should have a nice day, and if he is ever in need of a job he's always welcome at the station. No. They take ALL the heroin, everything the guy owns and throws him in jail for at least a significant portion of his life.)

Judge Rakoff decided he thought maybe a closer look was necessary. He said:
"The court concludes, regretfully, that the proposed Consent Judgment is neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest"
"Although this [settlement] would appear to be tantamount to an allegation of knowing and fraudulent intent... the SEC, for reasons of its own, chose to charge Citigroup only with negligence"

Now THAT is some good solid judgin'...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.
read more:Citigroup-SEC $285m toxic mortgage deal rejected(bbc)

Of the people, but not for the people

This is it, folks... We've lost control of our government.

You guys will remember this little thing we liked to call the TARP, right? Everybody got their britches in a bundle over the "unprecedented" amount of $700 BILLION to be loaned to Wall Street to ostensibly avoid worldwide economic collapse.. Nobody liked it, but at that time, Bush was the lamest of ducks with at least one foot out the door and something [supposedly] HAD to be done.

That the economy eventually collapsed in every realistic and measurable way is irrelevant, but I certainly had to bring it up.

Notice my use of the quotes around "unprecedented" in the paragraph above. I use these quotes because there was plenty of precedence. In fact, the very same banks we bailed out were already into us for a LOT more than $700 BILLION at that time!

Prior to the TARP, the Fed had already made loans to the banks at a total cost that amounted to $7.77 TRILLION! In your face, puny little $700 BILLION.

Bullet points. Too frustrated to make paragraphs:

Magnitude

• $7.7 TRILLION is more than half the value of everything our country produced that year
• Our 6 largest banks turned their share into $13 BILLION in profit
• Morgan Stanley alone borrowed enough ($107 BILLION) to pay off a tenth of nation's delinquent mortgages
• Bank of America took $91.4 BILLION of these secret loans while simultaneously taking $45 BILLION from the TARP funds
• Banks that were declared too big to fail grew even larger
  
• Our largest banks enjoyed more profits in the last 2.5 years than they did in the 8 years preceding the crisis
• All the while, they continue to spend MILLIONS lobbying to derail or weaken laws designed to keep them in check
  

Transparency

• The loans to the banks were undisclosed
  
• The profits earned by the banks were undisclosed
• Shareholders, the "owners" of the banks were not told (Where did the profits go?!?)
  
• Taxpayers, the people that have given the authority to the Fed to watch over our money were not told
• Congress, which was actively writing an overhaul to our financial regulatory system was not told
• These loans were provided with no protections or guarantees for the taxpayers
  

THEY LOANED OUR MONEY VALUED AT MORE THAN HALF OF EVERYTHING OUR COUNTRY CAN MAKE IN A YEAR TO PRIVATE COMPANIES WITHOUT EVER TELLING ANYONE! The Fed knew, the Bank Managers knew. Not even the owners of the banks knew!

THIS is whyipaytaxes.
read more:Wall Street Banks Earned Billions In Profits Off $7.7 Trillion In Secret Fed Loans Made During The Financial Crisis(tp)

Our support of major utility companies

Just an interesting graph to share...

Not only are these 13 fabulous companies NOT paying a dime in taxes, but they are actually receiving our tax dollars to support their operations.

I suppose... With only $4.8 billion in profits, they need our tax money more than the schools do...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.
Read more: You’re paying taxes, so why aren’t energy companies?(reuters)

It ain't tricklin' down folks!

According to the Congressional Budget Office, since 1979:
After-tax income increased by 275% for the wealthiest 1% of Americans
After-tax income increased by 18% for the poorest 20%

in 2005-2007, right before the Great Recession, the top 20% of the population earned more after-tax income than the entire bottom 80%...

The obvious case that some will make in light of these statistics is that they deserve it. They work harder, they make the right decisions.
Am I to believe that I am that much lazier and that much more ignorant?It feels like I work really hard every day; I'm certainly very tired at the end of a day...
I certainly don't see a 275% increase in my after-tax income ANYtime soon.

Maybe the wealth isn't trickling back down after all...

Don't get me wrong... I don't feel entitled to an increase in my income. If you think about it on a world wide scale, I live a pretty fantastic life full of wonderful toys and comforts beyond the wildest dreams of billions of people.

What drives me nuts is that a vast amount of the 'wealth' in this country has been pooled among 1% of Americans and they have turned our elections into a war of campaign donations while appointing themselves to positions of power so they can use tax payer's money to 'bail' each other 'out.'

They've even stopped paying a reasonable amount of taxes. Again, don't get me wrong, I'm a staunch opponent of high taxes for everyone and loathe big governments.

Alas, we all have to pay our share of taxes to keep the system going. It wasn't until GE paid absolutely $0 (ZERO) in taxes on $5.1 BILLION in profits in 2010 that I realized maybe, just maybe, not everyone was paying their share of taxes.

The statistics from our own government:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/124xx/doc12485/10-25-HouseholdIncome.pdf

Commonwealth corruption

A few weeks ago, I published a post about the Commonwealth Games in India. The focus of my post on the hiring of large langur monkeys to control the crowds of smaller monkeys that are pretty much a menace throughout Delhi. After all, the only thing we love more than stories about monkeys are the dang little monkeys themselves... Adorable!

At the introduction of that post, I linked to a slide show of horrors showing the athlete's quarters at the Commonwealth games. Overall, I was trying to make the point that India had not prepared for the games at all, in spite of the tax money that had gone into it.

Well... They found some of the money and arrests are being made. No big surprise, the money was being siphoned by corrupt officials who were handing contracts to friends, not construction companies...

THIS is whyindianspaytaxes.

read more: Two Delhi Commonwealth Games officials arrested(bbc)

Xe Blackwater

The folks at Blackwater, who changed their name to Xe to help their PR situation after their guards opened fire on a bunch of defenseless Iraqis in 2007, killing 17, are under review again.

Apparently, changing their name to Xe did not teach their guards that they are not above the law. Which is, of course, contrary to their training, so I'm not sure why they would see it any other way.

Now, due to a host of complaints coming out of Afghanistan our senate has to yet again review and deal with Xe.

Worry not, Xe fans, as they are well protected by the Pentagon. A spokesman for the Pentagon decided he knew better than our senators and any investigation they might conduct. He explained that Xe cannot be cut off from receiving our taxpayer dollars because they are one of the few firms willing to work in Afghanistan. Why even bother to look into the complaints? What would you rather have, dead civilians or unemployed bodyguards? I certainly don't think we want these guys in the unemployment lines, people could get hurt!

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Tell me more about the TARP

Thank heavens... Our government has finally decided that it might be in their interest to look into why just a few of our officials were able to funnel $180 BILLION of taxpayer money into AIG. Apparently some documents have come to light that were not submitted to the TARP Auditor.

AIG needed this money because they decided early on to pay the face value on their policies long after it was discovered that the face values were fictitious numbers made up by people who were content to drive their employers out of business in exchange for bonuses.

AIG paid much of this money to the folks at Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs is the former employer of the few officials who funneled the $180 BILLION into AIG.

While I may be a bit taken aback by the fact that out of an entire country full of people, the only place we can find employees for the Fed and Treasury is Goldman, I'm not implying any dirty goings on. I don't know what happened and I don't know what decisions were made under duress, what decisions were about as wise as could be expected considering what they knew at the time and the tremendous pressures they faced.

I am a bit curious to know why those few officials did not provide all the information they had to the TARP auditor, why some documents are just coming to light now. Perhaps these documents were overlooked.

What I AM saying: Its a heck of a coincidence and it doesn't hurt to take a look at what really happened in the heat of the moment.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

I'm gonna sue [myself]

At least when Well Fargo sues itself, it has the common decency of hiring two different law firms to prosecute and defend itself.

This is not the case when the Kauai County Government in Hawaii decides to sue itself! Instead, they spend $250,000 dollars and have the county attorney represent both sides of the case against itself.

Here's the deal:
The local residents are being taxed out of their homes. Its not a matter of not keeping up with the mortgage, its a matter of property values being driven so high by out of state speculators that the residents can no longer afford the taxes on their long owned but newly valued homes. Which is fine by the county government, because that means they can pull in tax money from the out of towners and run record budgets as high as $123 MILLION! I mean, what county doesn't need to spend that kind of money on day to day operations?

So the residents, silly as it sounds, decided to pretend like they lived in a democracy. They got a measure on the ballot that caps the property taxes on any home that is owner-occupied. In spite of heavy lobbying by the county government and using the tax gains in a coordinated attack on the ballot measure, it passed by a 2 to 1 margin.

Rather than accepting defeat and trying to get by on tax revenues most counties only dream of, they decided their best course of action was to sue itself. This way, they could get the court to declare that the people of the county had no right to propose and vote on the ballot measure. The Hawaii Supreme Court agreed, saying that only the county government has a right to police itself, not the citizens.

Sometimes the articles I summarize do it better themselves:
Now, under Hawaii law, when government officials do not agree with the outcome of an election, they are free to concoct a friendly lawsuit, fund the litigation with taxpayer money, and ask a local court to strike the measure down.

THIS is whyhawaiianspaytaxes.

read more: HAWAII GOVERNMENT SUES ITSELF TO QUASH PROPERTY TAX RELIEF - AND WINS (flashreport.org)

In your face, Illinois

Apparently, New Jersey was getting tired of hearing quotes such as FBI Agent Robert Grant "If [Illinois] isn't the most corrupt state, it's certainly one hell of a competitor." So, today they rounded up and arrested 29 public officials in New Jersey, including 3 mayors, a deputy mayor, a couple of state legislators and a bunch of other public officials.

If I hadn't focused on the Illinois angle at the lead-in, I might have titled this post "The Jewish Mafia." Along with the 29 public officials, they also pulled in 15, lets classify them as 'Community Leaders', including several rabbis.

Now, I don't know the proper proportion of Jews to non-Jew involved, nor did I intend to insult those in the Mafia. Its just that my initial reaction of hearing about extortion and corruption in construction in New Jersey, my mind naturally drifted to the Sopranos.

Get a load of this:
There were some tie ins with the construction boom in New Jersey, but everyone prefers to talk about their kidney trafficking. Yup. They'd get people on tough times to sell them a kidney for $10,000. They'd then turn around and sell it to desperately ill people for $160,000.
Not a bad margin...

[US Attorney Ralph] Marra said: "It seemed that everyone wanted a piece of the action. The corruption was widespread and pervasive. Corruption was a way of life for the accused."He said politicians had "willingly put themselves up for sale" and clergymen had "cloaked their extensive criminal activity behind a facade of rectitude".

Here's where your money is really going:
It took 300 FBI agents to round them up this morning. These are the arrests in a 10 year investigation. This is also the beginning of many many years of trials and prosecutorial costs, along with the costs involved in paying a judge to listen to it all in real slow motion. Trust me, these guys'll have some big time lawyers in their corner...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: US corruption probe nets dozens(bbc)

P.S. The most corrupt state? North Dakota. By far. (total number of convictions vs. total number of politicians)

Goldman Sachs

As Matt Taibbi runs through the evidence and coincidence of the apparent fact that Goldman Sachs has been at the forefront to profit from every bubble that has burst since the 20s he writes this paragraph (EA):

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

With so many people in positions of financial power having come through the rites of passage known as a job at Goldman Sachs, its hard to believe that its not just a big 'Good Ol' Boys' club. What better way to ensure free government handouts by putting your buddies in charge of the government?

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Matt Taibbi has long since entered my conscience as a potential Hunter Thompson of our time. Read the excerpted story from Rolling Stone.
The Great American Bubble Machine(rs)

Some more quotes, please read to see more evidence of a required career at Goldman to get a position of any power:

(One thing that has been noticed by just about everyone but the MSM)
Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. [...] The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets

a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds
In order to qualify for bailout monies, Goldman announced that it would convert from an investment bank to a bank-holding company, a move that allows it access not only to $10 billion in TARP funds, but to a whole galaxy of less conspicuous, publicly backed funding — most notably, lending from the discount window of the Federal Reserve. By the end of March, the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs — and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.
Converting to a bank-holding company has other benefits as well: Goldman's primary supervisor is now the New York Fed, whose chairman at the time of its announcement was Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs

the man now in charge of supervising Goldman — New York Fed president William Dudley — is yet another former Goldmanite.

Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites.

The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Moral hazards (Picking winners, choosing losers pt 4)

The CIT Group needs our help.
Being one of those companies that were allowed to change their status from a financial institution to a banking company in December to get their share of the TARP funds, CIT Group was awarded $2.33 BILLION. Which they've decided isn't enough and they must be given more.
'Cause, you know... If CIT Group fails, the world's economy will follow.
Right? That's still the official line, right?

Now lets flip that coin over.

The government may choose not to honor CGs request for another BILLION dollars. As a major lender to small and mid sized businesses, they don't have access to the lobbying teams the mega banks do, nor do they have conveniently placed ex-executives in the new government.
So, in spite of the Hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars given to AIG for backing up big name banks with their 'friends with benefits [in government]', our government now debates letting CIT Group go into bankruptcy over $1 BILLION. Because hey... Who needs small and mid sized businesses anyway?

Giving some banks free access to the Fed's printing press while busting chops over other banks seeking to grab up the money the others couldn't fit into their pockets on the way out...
Giving taxpayer dollars to anyone willing to call themselves a bank...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Oil for sale

Now that we've spent $683,942,908,585.08 (according to the zFacts ticker and links to the left at the top of this page at 2:22AM CST) on 'liberating' the Iraqis, its time they start reaping some of this fine Oil Money they been hearin' all about.

What do we get in return? Shoes thrown at us.

The Headline Reads:
Iraqi oil for sale in TV auction(bbc)
A goddamn auction between giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil for the rights to rape and pillage the land and oil reserves being aired on TV. This must be an exciting moment for them. (The Iraqis) (Well, the suits too...)

Aw fuck it.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Here's some fun quotes:
The US budget for Iraq in FY 2007 came to $4,988/Iraqi. This is triple Iraq's per-person GDP. It's like spending $121,000 per person ($484,000 per family of 4) in the US. Why not just bribe the whole country?

"If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem." — George W. Bush, Jan. 2001

What happened to kicking somebody's ass and taking their stuff? All the war, none of the spoils?

Picking winners; choosing losers (pt. 3)

I knew back in October that it was a bad sign when the federal government started deciding which banks would succeed (with bailouts) and which banks would be allowed to fail. It seemed even scarier when the fed began deciding which industries it would help through these tough times while ignoring the others. Now the Fed has let all this power go to its head as it begins picking and choosing which facilities will be closed or remain open...

When the new GM team (You've seen the commercials we're paying for: They're not going out of business, they're getting down to business.) decided that the Norton parts distribution center in Massachusetts needed to be closed. It is not clear why they decided this center should be closed, but I'll bet it was more than a dart being thrown at a map of GM facilities.

However, there is a small chain of relevant circumstances that far outweigh their professionally analyzed conclusions which GM forgot to consider:
1.) Rep. Barney Frank represents Norton, Mass.
2.) Rep. Barney Frank heads the Financial Services Committee
3.) The Financial Services Committee pretty much owns GM now.
4.) Rep. Barney 'NIMBY' Frank doesn't like closing facilities in his district.

So, under the guise of being environmentally concerned, he visited the government-installed CEO GM employees calls boss, Fritz 'The Puppet' Henderson. In this meeting he explained to 'The Puppet' that he was just a puppet and that while just about anyone in our government can have a tug at his strings, Barney is one of the few puppet masters holding the strings up. Then, he explained that closing the facility in his district would increase global warming because those parts would have to be shipped to New England from Philadelphia instead. Not entirely inaccurate, but lets assume that in its place, the Phillie facility gets closed instead. Will that not mean that the Eastern Great Lakes region would have to get theirs shipped from New England?

And, of course, the boss gets what the boss wants. GM no longer finds it necessary to close that facility as a part of its re-structuring.

The government exerts supreme power over its new puppets under the guise of environmentalism, proving that regardless of what they say, our government IS in the business of running the automotive industry...
Not long ago, I respected Barney Frank.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Can't believe I forgot...

So, a handful of weeks ago when the nation collectively got their panties in a bunch over a couple hundred MILLION dollars in bonuses to AIG execs, I totally forgot to point out the $4 BILLION Merrill Lynch gave in bonuses a month early (12/08) to avoid losing those bonuses as they went out of business.

tsk tsk tsk... We're such sheep! They got away with a whole bunch more money without much of a bitchin' at all. But when it became popular to bitch about things like this you suddenly have Barney "Don't like 'em? Tax 'em!" Frank demanding their heads...

Whatever. I guess that one was a freebie. Your welcome.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Bad Cops Gone Bad

I never realized, until recently, a pretty obvious use of some of lifes technical advances.

As we all know, there has never been a shortage of police ignorance. Many cops are simply people that couldn't elevate themselves into the position of power they crave any other way. They simply go to a laid back boot camp and suddenly a power over ANYONE has been bestowed along with a gun. Whats not to draw the ignorants?

What there WAS a shortage of until the last couple of decades were video cameras. Specifically, just about anyone and everyone having a camera and deciding to keep it rolling when they got pulled over or were about to experience any sort of interaction with the law.

Even more importantly was the shortage of methods for people to share these videos with each other al a YouTube.

In conclusion, do a few searches on YouTube with the keyword police and a mix of the following keywords: corruption, misconduct, arrogance, incompetence, etc. etc. The wealth of videos to watch will leave you both astounded and queasy. The fact that these guys have been given the right to take away your rights is absolutely amazing and a bit profound.
Don't get me wrong, cops provide a valuable service. I just don't know that mostly pretty poorly educated men should have quite so much power...

Special thanks to badphoenixcops.com for opening my eyes to this obviously rich source of angst against my government. (Not to mention a pretty entertaining read about a pretty darn corrupt police force)

Paying the salaries of incompetence...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.