Tax Plan Education
Few things are as confusing or as political as taxes, especially Federal taxes. There are three types of taxes being discussed, and from my interviews with more than 100 people, I have found that almost no one understands the benefits, or shall we say, “the good” of each type. So tonight I want to approach each of them from all angles, so you can be an informed voter. I doubt you will get this from anyone else.
The Graduated Tax Plan
The 5th Amendment of the Constitution is commonly known as the amendment that protects you from self incrimination. Well, that is from everything except the 16th Amendment. When you sign your IRS Form 1040, you are incriminating yourself. There was a day when tax audits were random, because there were not enough people to audit all the returns.
With modern technology, it is now possible to check every last return for mistakes, omissions, and outright dishonesty. If a large enough error is found, then the IRS will ask to see your proof, and guess what? They can seize it without your permission. They can force any source, including your bank, doctor, or family member to provide it without your consent. Even if you are found to be correct, and IRS is wrong, you are forced to cover the costs to battle the IRS.
There are two main reasons why the taxpayer should be very afraid of this tax plan.
1. The IRS forces you to reveal all your sources of income.
2. The percentage of that income changes, depending upon your family size and the amount you earned in that tax year. A total income of $40 thousand pays a different percentage than someone earning $120 thousand.
The tax schedule is adjusted every year as a type of punishment for success. Oh, but don’t worry. There are 80 thousand pages of code so there is a loophole for everyone. After all, there are at least 89,500 IRS employees with an estimated budget of $11.2 billion. These are important numbers to keep in mind. Why is that necessary you ask? Because, there is hardly anyone filing a Form 1040 honestly. Taxpayers want to keep as much money as they can, and since they are the primary source of information for that income information, most taxpayers look for a loophole or a get out of jail card. The IRS has its police, prosecutors, and instant powers of attorney. The taxpayer has an accountant legal team to try to stay one step ahead of the IRS.
Of course, the most valuable “good” is the power to pit different classes of people against one another for vote manipulation. Millionaires and billionaires are evil, and the middle class is the evasive gold ring for politicians. In the past 7 years, the middle class has been turned into the working poor. 51% of the employed people earn less than $30 thousand per year. That means that according to the government’s own standards for the average priced home of $120 thousand, less than half the population can afford to own one. In other words, the working poor are generally renters. That is another loophole taken away. Rent is not deductible.
When we discover that workers who assemble Apple cell phones are paid 27 cents an hour, we think that is inhumane. That worker is provided food, clothing, and place to live. When you add those costs of living to what appear to be very small wages, that person actually earns slightly less than the working poor in America. Since they already work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with only a one month vacation annually, there is no path to get ahead by working two jobs. Most Americans have two jobs per year.
This is mostly due to the graduated tax plan taking so much from the incomes of the working poor, that there not enough to pursue happiness.
The Flat Tax
Another example of the graduated is the Flat Tax. The marketing plan for this idea is the rate of taxation is the same for everyone, no matter how much they earn. The “good” is that the simplicity of removing all the loopholes makes the tax code so simple that the entire multi-billion dollar industry made of IRS staff, tax attorneys, and armies of accountants to make sure none of the tens of thousands of regulations are broken. Of course, almost no one agrees on what the rate of taxation should be. Some say 10% and some say 17%. The downside is you still have to reveal how much you earn. Almost no one does that reporting exactly, and no one wants to reveal it, so the IRS still needs its own police and will retain the confiscatory powers that even the most hardened criminals fear.
If the government wants more money, or the votes of a certain class of people, then the rate will be adjusted. No one knows where it will stop. This form of taxation may not establish any relief at all, and still forces the taxpayer into a position of waving their 5th Amendment rights.
The Fair Tax
The Flat tax is not based on income. It does not require a social security number. It is based on how money is spent. Poor people spend very little. Wealthy people spend large amounts of money. I have always said that the problem is not higher taxes. The problem is that we need more taxpayers.
The Fair tax would collect money from at least twice as many people. The list of new taxpayers would include the following:
· The bankless millions
· Tourists
· Money earned through illegal activities
· People living on borrowed money
The good of this tax plan include:
· You retain your 5th Amendment rights
· You do not have to reveal your income amount or source of income to anyone
· 89,500 IRS agents can be reassigned to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse inside the agencies
· The US Treasury would have a windfall of increased revenue
· There would be an enormous boost to the economy, because the wage earners gross pay would add between 10% and 28% to their own bottom line.
· The extreme poverty people could carry a rider to their SNAP card that would allow long term payback of benefits received, making the benefit self-retiring.
September 11, 2012
Benghazi Attack
You will recall on Sunday, September 16th, 2012 here on X-Squared Radio with a world exclusive, I exposed the true cause of the attack on Benghazi, and how Hillary was involved. It was tragic. It was bloodthirsty. It was greed beyond measure as the US State Department followed through with its assassination of Kaddafi by Hillary Clinton. In a few short months, more than 20 thousand missiles, rockets, and grenades were gathered up by the CIA and prepared to be shipped to Turkey for distribution to Al Qaeda in Syria.
Until just a few months ago, the proof that this was happening was still a mystery. The reporters that made their way bravely to the front lines, took the photos, and did the local interviews brought us the remaining facts, and paid the price. The US State Department is still deeply involved in the coverup.
“We call on Turkish authorities to ensure that all individuals and organizations — including but not limited to the media — are free to voice a full range of opinions and criticism, in accordance with Turkey’s constitutional guarantees of media freedom and freedom of expression.”
Most troubling in the silencing of Shim, Dünbar, Gül, and now Özkök are the very real consequences the verity of their reports of the Erdoğan government’s complicity in arming and aiding the Islamic State could have in NATO operations in the region. Should their separate, same discoveries have merit — and considering Erdoğan’s swift and heavy-handed reaction, they likely do — Turkey’s agenda stands at cross purposes with the supposed coalition goal of stunting ISIS. Even Vice President Joe Bidenimplicated Turkish involvement in the ISIS arms trade, though he apologized and essentially recanted that claim shortly afterwards.
Shortly after Shim’s mysterious death, the Daily Mail revealed video of Turkish border police having friendly interactions with ISISfighters — apparently further evidence supporting the journalists’ claims. The U.S. and other allies of Turkey quickly reacted in solidarity with the recent downing of a Russian jet that apparently breached Turkish air space — but is it possible that alliance isn’t as committed to ending ISIS’ growth as it purports to be? Though mostly unstated by the media and State, it has been widely and critically rumoredU.S. involvement in the Syrian imbroglio has far more to do with deposing President Bashar al-Assad than leveling the burgeoning Islamic State.
In one of Shim’s final reports from her investigation, she revealed local Turkish populations near the Syrian border simply want an end to fighting. She disclosed many refugee camps in that border region were, in actuality, training camps for militants.
In interviews with local residents, it became clear Erdoğan’s stance on Assad — whom they claim the president used to call “our brother” — sharply reversed after consulting with U.S. officials.
According to Shim, locals stated, “We want Turkey and Syria to be friends again. We want the Syrian militants outside of Turkey’s territory.” She also explained locals “blame their government for the entire chaos taking place across the border [in Syria], calling their Prime Minister a ‘puppet of Israel and the United States.’”
Shim’s family is still waiting for information from the U.S. about her death. Judy Irish survived the deadly ‘accident,’ but so far has not come forward with any public statements about the incident. Press freedom in Turkey, meanwhile, has become a bit of an oxymoron.
Perhaps Voltaire said it best:
“To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?”
ISIS Financing
On the southern edge of Turkey, rolling brown pastoral hills slope gently to the Syrian border, with small towns like this one dotting the horizon. The calm on this side of the border, however, belies the scene on the other side.
Just across the border in northern Syria, the Islamic extremist group known as ISIS is fighting a full-tilt battle in its effort to capture and control new territory, part of its push to create a sprawling Islamic caliphate, or separate Islamic state, modeled on the first caliphate that spread across the region in the centuries following the death of the Prophet Muhammad around 640 AD.
As ISIS fighters expand their control, it is in the border region, in villages like Besaslan, where the Islamic State group can make some of the money it needs to finance its wars. Oil-smuggling operations involving millions of barrels have recently been uncovered.
The oil comes from wells and refineries that ISIS has taken over inside northern Iraq and northern Syria, and until very recently it was easy to smuggle it into this quiet part of southern Turkey. One reason is that cheap, smuggled oil is a much-prized commodity in Turkey, where oil is so expensive that it almost doesn't matter who is selling it, even if it's your enemy.
In Hatay, Turkey, just a half hour's drive away, gasoline costs roughly $7.50 per gallon.
Growing international alarm over ISIS expansion and the group's increasingly visible atrocities -- such as beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers, the videos of which are disseminated online -- have brought renewed pressure on ISIS and its funding methods on the borders.
U.S.-led coalition forces just a week ago attacked and destroyed many ISIS oil facilities, precisely to cut off the group's funding.
But the border smuggling is only one way that ISIS generates money.
The U.S. Treasury Department does not have hard figures that it can make public on the group's wealth but says it believes ISIS takes in millions of dollars a month.
Sources familiar with the subject say that ISIS' "burn' rate" -- how much the group spends -- is huge, including salaries, weapons and other expenses. For ISIS' oil sales, sources told CNN, the group probably makes between $1 million and $2 million per day, but probably on the lower end.
Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in Washington, D.C., calls ISIS "the best-financed group we've ever seen."
Opinion: Will U.S. strikes hurt ISIS' oil riches?
Levitt is a national expert on terrorism and its financing, working previously on intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Treasury and the FBI.
ISIS, Levitt says, is funded like no other traditional terrorist group in the past. Besides revenue from oil smuggling, the group receives money through donations from wealthy sympathizers in countries including Qatar and Kuwait.
But the group has another method of funding itself: through organized crime within the territories it has vanquished and now controls. The group, says Levitt, was born among crooks and thugs from a broken Iraq, and at its root it is a criminal enterprise.
"We shouldn't be surprised," says Levitt. "Remember, the Islamic State called ISIS is what used to be called the Islamic State of Iraq, and al Qaeda in Iraq, the Tawhid Network, the Zarqawi Network; it's all the same. And they were always primarily financed through domestic criminal activity within the borders of Iraq."
Levitt says ISIS operates as a massive organized crime group with virtually no law enforcement to rein it in -- and its long history has allowed it to set roots and develop over many years.
It means ISIS can demand money from people wherever it has established control. Want to do business in ISIS-controlled territory? You pay a tax. Want to move a truck down an ISIS-controlled highway? You pay a toll. Villagers in ISIS territory reportedly are charged and pay for just about everything.