the big 5 stories:

#1 - Value Added Tax is on Obama's Table

The President is about to create a new tax, a Value Added Tax or VAT. VAT is similar to a national sales tax except that the increased priced is not added at the check out register but instead included into the retail price of the product. There is no readily easy way of determining what is the product's cost and what is the Value Added Tax.

Contrary to what some news outlets report, the Obama Administration has not ruled out imposing a Value Added Tax, as evident in the President's CNBC interview on Wednesday. White House Press Secretary denied a VAT was in consideration only for a counter statement by the Vice President who, later that day on The View, stated "a national sales," which is a euphemism for the Value Added Tax, is something that "the President is listening to."

The VAT is a highly regressive tax, meaning that it consumes a higher percentage of income the less money you make, and this is the double edge sword that is both promoting it AND decrying it. Some advocates on the right, like Bruce Bartlett, admire its regressive nation

"One important benefit of a VAT insofar as those with low incomes is concerned is that they would be contributing something to the general cost of government. Everyone benefits from things like national defense, and everyone ought to pay something for it. But as it is, 47% of those filing federal income tax returns have either a zero or negative tax liability; that is, they pay nothing but still get a tax "refund."

This may be the one tax that is Conservative-approved. Even Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly gush over VAT.

It should be noted, however, that Bartlett and his ilk often fail to include the fact that half of Americans pay a variety of fees, tolls, taxes, including FICA and local taxes, that consume a higher, overall tax burden from their net income than these taxes do on the more affluent.

And, again, the regressive nature of the VAT has its opponents as stated by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer,

"The whole idea is the VAT will replace other taxes, but it never does – when you add in a tax, the old taxes stay and the new tax starts," Sen. Schumer said. "At this time of recession, to be talking about any types of tax increases doesn't make sense."

The New York Senator may be an exception, however, as the fairly liberal nations of Europe are the model which the US will follow if it were to implement a VAT. Many EU countries have VATs that hover around a 20 percent tax to the price of most products.

Excluded from all of the discussions about the VAT is any talk of repealing the Income Tax. The media argue talks how VAT is better than the Income Tax as a selling point. This has possibly made that a repeal of the 16th Amendment is presupposed. It is not on Obama's table. So a national sales tax would become a new additional tax. Some may say that this violates Obama's campaign promise to not raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 a year. But the Administration is now saying that that pledge only meant the Income Tax. So a Value Added Tax is very much on Obama's table. Full Story

the big 5 stories:

#2 - The WellPoint Biz Model: Rescind Breast Cancer Coverage

Tens of thousands of women were dropped from their WellPoint health insurance plans as soon as they were diagnosed with breast cancer. Virtually all of the patients had paid their premiums and have never had any problems with payments. The disclosures come to light after a recent investigation by Reuters showed that another health insurance company, Assurant Health, similarly targeted HIV-positive policyholders for rescission. Full Story

#3 - No Taxes for General Electric

So-called "free" trade laws are coming into pay as General Electric (parent company of NBC-Universal) utilizes financial tricks that allow the mega company to claim a $408 million loss while actually earning a profit of almost $11 billion dollars. It has been noted that MSNBC has been rather favorable to the Obama administration as increasing pressure mounts to repeal "free" trade agreements. Full Story

#4 - GOP Chair: Blacks "Have No Reason" to Vote Republican

"You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," Republican National Chairman Michael Steele told 200 DePaul University students, "For the last 40-plus years we had a 'Southern Strategy' that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, 'Bubba' went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton." Full Story

#5 - Earth Day Has Sold Out

Today is the 40th Earth Day. The observance started out in an environmental movement that was viewed as anti-business. But today, not only is a "green" label trendy but global corporations and organizations are co-opting the environment message for profit. Full Story

also:

*New pro-war propaganda has Iran allying with Venezuela

*Pilot Program coming to you? TSA Joins NYPD in Subway Baggage Screening

*Thousand in Illinois march for more taxes

*The tea party's exaggerated importance

*Vanity Fair humor: New $100 bill is very Europie

the big story (late edition)

What, Waxman Worry?

Congressman Henry Waxman of California, as Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, doesn't waste his time on the silly little issues of Wall Street corruption, the chemtrailing in his own district, or Gitmo. No, Mr. Waxman focuses on what matters most to Americans - tobacco use in Major League baseball

California Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman is determined to deal with the really big problem facing Americans, today: It’s major league ballplayers, who chew or dip tobacco during ball games.

And while Waxman may be one of the homeliest guys in congress (Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein, Levin, Specter, Frank, and Lieberman notwithstanding), the man is all raw courage.

Like a hard nosed middle linebacker, Waxman is tackling a problem of enormous proportions: It’s baseball players who honor the century old American tradition of playing ball with a chew in one one of their cheeks.

The prospect of dropping atomic bombs on the largely defenseless nation of Iran is too small a problem for the diligent Waxman to concern himself with, as was the greatest financial heist in recorded history, known as the banker bail-out bill, which Mr. Waxman merely voted for.

Vaccines that give our children autism is child’s play for Waxman; instead, he’s going after the really big game – our major league ball-players. As I’ve said, the man knows no fear.

Don’t talk to Waxman about Americans who have lost their homes, cars, savings, and jobs, those are problems best left to those without the courage of a Henry Waxman.

Leave it to lesser souls to tell us what our government has been spraying us with for over a decade. Chemtrails (Stratospheric Aerosol Geo-engineering) that, at least, contains toxic barium and aluminum, is a governmental secret that Waxman is far too important and busy to tell us about.

Read more...

*RELATED: Waxman Cancels Health Reform Hearing

earlier:

Tax Day
Why an Income Tax is Not Necessary
to Fund the U.S. Government

Can this statement possibly be true? In order to answer this question, Americans must first understand what is the source of the money that funds the government and where it goes. Contrary to the sound bites issued by the two mainstream political parties, the reality of how the system actually works will not only open your eyes, but hopefully stimulate the American people to demand that the thievery underway come to an end.

Where do your "income" tax dollars go?

The best place to look for an answer to this question would be a government report, so let's take just one at random:

President's Private Sector Survey On Cost Control
A Report to The President (Reagan)

January 15, 1984. Available from the Congressional Research Service.
The excerpt below can be found on page 12.

*"Importantly, any meaningful increases in taxes from personal income would have to come from lower and middle income families, as 90% of all personal taxable income is generated below the taxable income level of $35,000.

*Further, there isn't much more that can be extracted from high income brackets. If the Government took 100% of all taxable income beyond the $75,000 tax bracket not already taxed, it would get only $17 billion, and this confiscation, which would destroy productive enterprise, would only be sufficient to run the Government for several days.

*Resistance to additional income taxes would be even more widespread if people were aware that:

* With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Government contributions to transfer payments.

*In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their government."

So what we have is a central bank issuing worthless paper "money" that controls our economy, our lives and our future. This private banking cartel was unconstitutionally granted this power by a devious, scheming group of senators back in 1913. In essence what they did was place the American people into indentured servitude by forcing The People to pay usury on worthless fiat currency (paper money created out of nothing), not to fund the government, but to enrich the bankers and fund wars in which America should never be involved. This system exists not to fund the government, but to allow the U.S. Congress carte blanche power to continue funding unconstitutional agencies and programs by providing them with a bottomless source of worthless ink.

The National Debt and the Deficit

These two little bookkeeping items are not the same thing. Few Americans actually know the difference, but the difference is quite important. We continually hear members of Congress, president after president, and political pundits call for "reduction in the debt." But what does that really mean? Here's how it works in the most simplified way to fit into this document:

Let's say that for 2002, Congress and the President decide they want $1.7 trillion dollars to fund this bloated pig called our government. We know that 100% of all personal "income" taxes extorted by the IRS goes to the "Federal" Reserve Banking System and does not fund a single function of the government. So, let's take the people's blood and sweat off the table.

Read more...

*VIDEO: Why we pay income tax



*RELATED: Tax Freedom Day - Taxpayers have finally earned enough to pay their taxes

*Zeitgeist - The Movie: Federal Reserve



*RELATED: The Grace Commission - 100% of Income Tax Goes to privately-owned Federal Reserve

CoOlDiGgY tech & media

Turning Web Retailers into Tax Snitches

Internet users accustomed to tax-free online shopping may soon be in for an unpleasant surprise: new laws that will force them to cough up more cash every year on April 15.

An increasing number of politicians, concerned with shrinking budgets and eyeing continuing growth in e-commerce, want to force out-of-state retailers like Amazon.com, Overstock.com, and Blue Nile to tattle to tax collectors about how much in sales taxes their customers have avoided paying.

At the moment, for instance, Amazon customers in California don't pay sales tax but are supposed to voluntarily write a check for the full amount on tax day--the concept is called a "use tax." Few people do. Tax collectors view it as a loophole that can be closed by requiring Amazon to share customer data with the government.

"This is Big Brother--it's the purchasing police," says Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, which counts eBay, Overstock.com, and Yahoo as members and says the proposals are probably unconstitutional.

Read more...

*Steve Jobs: Apps cannot have “Pad” in their names, we own that term!

*GM viruses offer hope of future where energy is unlimited

*Kids on YouTube: How much is too much?

*American Idol Music Director Rickey Minor To Replace Eubanks Tonight Show

*NINTENDO WII MADE ME NYMPHO!

*HBO Renews "Treme" After First Episode

CoOlDiGgY tech & media

ProPublica Becomes First Online Pulitzer Winner

ProPublica, in an historic first for online journalism, won a coveted Pulitzer Prize on Monday for investigative reporting about controversial deaths at a New Orleans medical center following Hurricane Katrina.

Read more...

*Twitter unveils plan to make money from advertising

*CNet Co-Founder Tops California’s List of Tax Infamy

*White House Science ‘Czar’ Tells Students: U.S. Can’t Expect to Be Number One in Science and Technology Forever

*Are regulators dropping the ball on biocrops?


*Kevin Eubanks retires as Jay Leno's sideman: Who should take over the gig?

*CNN: We're In 'Category Of One,' Only Non-Partisan News Network

*VIDEO: Android can guess bra size?

CoOlDiGgY news (late edition)

Reserve Reveals Bear Stearns Assets it Swallowed

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- After months of litigation and political scrutiny, the Federal Reserve yesterday ended a policy of secrecy over its Bear Stearns Cos. bailout.

In a 4:30 p.m. announcement in a week of congressional recess and religious holidays, the central bank released details of securities bought to aid Bear Stearns’s takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bloomberg News sued the Fed for that information.

The Fed’s vehicle known as Maiden Lane LLC has securities backed by mortgages from lenders including Washington Mutual Inc. and Countrywide Financial Corp., loans that were made with limited borrower documentation. More than $1 billion of them are backed by “jumbo” mortgages written by Thornburg Mortgage Inc., which now carry the lowest investment-grade rating. Jumbo loans were larger than government-sponsored mortgage buyers such as Fannie Mae could finance -- $417,000 at the time.

“The Fed absorbed that risk on its balance sheet and is now seen to be holding problematic, legacy assets,” said Vincent Reinhart, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington who was the central bank’s monetary- affairs director from 2001 to 2007. “There is both an impairment to its balance sheet and its reputation.”

The Bear Stearns deal marked a turning point in the financial crisis for the Fed. By putting taxpayers at risk in financing the rescue, the central bank was engaging in fiscal policy, normally the domain of Congress and the U.S. Treasury, said Marvin Goodfriend, a former Richmond Fed policy adviser who is now an economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.


Read more...

*Everything You Need To Know About The Latest Jobs Figures

*Sharp Increase in March in Personal Bankruptcies

*Hiring Hot Spots: These companies have been expanding their workforces aggressively

*VIDEO: Congressman says New Health Care Law Trumps Constitution



*California probe clears ACORN of criminal activity

*Cops & CPS Seize Child From Parents For Mistrusting Government

*“We Are in a Cabal... Five or Six Players ... Own the Regulatory Apparatus. Everybody Is Afraid to Regulate Them"

*VIDEO: Officers Accused Of Using Taser On 10-Year-Old



*Second Mexican helicopter sighted in US airspace

*Great-grandmother given an electronic tag and curfew for selling a goldfish to a 14 year-old

*100 million Americans question or find fault with the official 9/11 story

earlier:

Census Project Adds to the Job Picture

200,000 new jobs will be announced today, half of those are temporary Census positions. Critics say that's a drop in the bucket.

When March employment figures are released Friday by the Department of Labor, analysts are expecting to see the biggest U.S. job gains in more than two years.

But perhaps half the 200,000 or so positions expected to be added to payrolls may be the byproduct of a government effort that has turned into a fortuitous job generator: the U.S. census.

The constitutionally mandated nationwide head count arrives this year at a crucial time -- after the start of the country's economic recovery, but before private-sector employers have created many jobs. That's a stroke of luck for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for failing to revive the labor market. And it's a windfall for the 700,000 temporary employees the census expects to hire, although most of the jobs will last only two to six weeks.

This year's census isn't just about counting heads, it's helping create jobs in an economy that needs them badly.

Read more...

*Banks, Debt Collectors Find Ideal Debtors: Working Poor

*For Unemployed, Tax Deadline Brings New Worries...

*...Health Care's Job Creation: up to 100,000 New IRS Agents


*2 million eager for health care on parents' plans

*Five Reasons the Democrats Are Not Running Scared - Yet

*US to impose new airline security measures

*Army chief reverses course, to uphold policy on gays

*Rhode Island looks to slow recovery


*Mexico drug gangs turn weapons on army

*Obama and China's Hu discuss nuclear Iran in phone call

*Vanishing Beaches: Southern California beach erosion is worst in a decade

*Thirteen Israeli air strikes hit Gaza Strip

*US Sues KBR On Security Costs

*One of the Metro bombers could be teen 'Black Widow' – report

the big story (late edition)

Recessions Are the New Normal

Also, "Buy & Hold" is a thing of the past

The classic "buy and hold" strategy for stocks is officially dead, according to Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, who sat down with Yahoo Tech Ticker recently. And, Achuthan said, investors should prepare themselves for even more frequent recessions. (We realize it's great news.)

Two big patterns moving like "big ol icebergs" will create more frequent recessions, Achuthan said. The first pattern, Achutan says, is the pace of each expansion after a recession actually gets weaker and weaker -- and this effect applies to GDP, sales and income. "On every count, the strength [of growth] weaker and weaker with each expansion," he added.

The second pattern is that volatility will be a fact of life. "We're going to see more boom and bust type cycles, I don't think it's going to be like the pre-Depression levels. It will be more like the cycles we saw in the 1970s, where we're going to have an expansion for a few years then another recession."

Read more...

earlier:

From Bowling Nights to Clowns
State Are Now Taxing Everything

It is a new era of Austerity for US as all manner of services are taxed to bring budgets into balance. With American manufacturing nearly extinct, how will state citizens react to new taxes on the nation's service-based economy? And how will business, especially small businesses - the leading employers, be able to hire?

“It’s hard enough doing what we do,” grumbled John Luke, a plumber in the Philadelphia suburbs. His services would, for the first time, come with an added tax if the governor has his way.

Opponents of imposing taxes on services like funerals, legal advice, helicopter rides and dry cleaning argue that this push comes as businesses are barely clinging to life and can ill afford to see customers further put off by new taxes. This is especially true, they say, in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where some of the most sweeping proposals are being considered this spring.

But this is also a period of economic gloom for states. Pension funds are in the red, federal stimulus help will soon vanish, and revenues from traditional sources like income and property taxes are slumping ever lower, with few elected officials willing to risk voter wrath by raising them.

“This is born out of necessity,” said Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat. His proposed budget, being debated in Harrisburg, would tax services including accounting, advertising and data processing.

Read more...

the big story (weekend)

Health Care's True Lies
The Health Industry Bailout: Pushed by Dems, Inspired by GOP

It was truly a super Sunday for Obama supporters. The long-argued Health Care bill passed the House of Representatives and every member of the uninsured would now have the ability to get insurance. It was hailed as the most significant piece of legislation since the passage of Medicare. Lives would even be saved. Not true. There are four long years until the apparatus kicks in for wider health coverage. Even then the new law affects only an estimated 30 million of the 50 million uninsured.

It was truly a black Sunday for Obama opponents. The long-argued Health Care bill passed the House of Representatives and every member of the insured would now have to lose their insurance as government took over one-sixth of the US economy. It was hailed as the day socialism seize American medicine. Lives would be shortened via "death panels." Not true. What frightened tea party devotees into action sits more comfortably with bailout than Bolshevism. The health industry receives gets 30 million new customers.

The past week as been a tale of preaching to the choir, scaring the choir, or celebrating with the choir. But the members of Congress have mostly been lying to the choir. And cable news is more than complicit in creating a childish narrative of Republican versus Democrat. TV news became TV sitcom and real-life, especially in regards to the new Health Care law, does not make for tidy, 30 minute-long entertainment.

President Obama touted many of the pro-health reform cliches during his signing ceremony for the bill. But the one that had the most ability to soften public opinion was the promise of near-immediate coverage of children with pre-existing conditions. The President proclaimed:

"This year, tens of thousands of uninsured Americans with a preexisting condition and parents whose children have a preexisting condition will finally be able to purchase the coverage they need"

But the AP quickly reported that:

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday

And to further abuse the illusion of medical euphoria that any Obama supporter may have had ABC News reported this weekend that Houston Tracy has a pre-existing condition. Houston is a 12-day old newborn and his pre-existing condition applied to him at the moment of his birth. A shocking new precedent that the Hope of this legislation was to make a thing of the past, not the wave of the future.

A harsh reality for any Obama Democrat. But the so-called tea party as made numerous assumptions not grounded in fact. The group has decried the new law, calling it socialism and warning about the end of private insurance. But health industry stocks have risen the past week and during the anticipation of the bill's passage. The reason is because of the legal mandate for Americans to purchase privately-owned health insurance. The Obama administration, in a very pro-insurance move, negotiated this aspect and decided to forgo an actual government-run program via the so-called public option. This was a betrayal to progressives. All the while, the nation's only truly socialist-style system, the Veteran's Administration, was never in serious consideration as a model for reform.

Key insurance lobbyists guided and even penned much of the language in the new law, including the provision that the IRS enforce the new mandatory enrollment. The law, in effect, is an insurance company bailout. According to Time magazine, the health industry is not only excited about their rising stock values and 30 million new customers but they are eager to remind the public that they must buy the very product that many Obama supporters thought they were punishing. In a program called "Enroll America":

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry trade group, has agreed to sign on to a new, 50-state health care reform implementation effort, provisionally called Enroll America "We are participating in it," says AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach. "The goal is to get everyone covered."

Other parts of the health industry, including drug companies and hospitals, are also expected to join the effort, which will focus on making sure as many uninsured Americans as possible get insurance under the law President Obama signed Tuesday

It may jog conservative memories to note that the very idea of the individual mandate to purchase insurance comes from likely 2012 Republican Presidential contender, Mitt Romney. Many of the controversial parts of the new health care law come directly from the health reform law Romney championed and signed into being during his tenure as Massachusetts governor. A law that passed with the vote of then-state legislature and now tea party darling, US Senator Scott Brown. To misquote John Kerry: Republicans were for ObamaCare before they were against it.

But some of the tea party grievances that the news media considered outlandish do have credence. The taxes are about to get steep. There is already a whopping 10 percent tax on the tanning industry as of July 1. Many other "sin taxes" are on the horizon with the justification that they keep health care cost low for the the private insurers. Everything from salt to soda taxes is currently being considered. The individual mandate itself is a new tax for the uninsured. All with the IRS in waiting.

Another pertinent tea party worry, "death panels," may well come to American shores. While end-of-life counseling can hardly be called a "death panel" the tea party-ers may want to look into beginning of life death panels. The United Kingdom, a long-time conservative cautionary tale against single-payer health care, is now rationing the care for premature babies. In the name of saving it's health system money, British doctors are not resuscitating preemies under 22 weeks old. A strict limit that recently applied to a baby 21 weeks and 5 days old.

Another strike against the potential quality of the new US system may come from the very people who legislated it. Both those on the right and the left may want to take note: lawmakers that are now celebrating health care reform are trying to avoid it themselves. Politico reports that new health care law may exempt top Congressional staffers from having to enroll.

It may not come as a surprise that in a recent poll the majority of Americans now want to repeal the new law of the land. But close study of numerous surveys find that the concerns about this bill do not fall into convenient liberal or conservative lines. All sides have their concerns as the competing narratives start to fray as public opinion gets more nuanced. Not good for bumper stickers and certainly not good for anyone who thinks they can predict the upcoming mid-term elections.

Both parties have made threats, promises and celebrations but neither has been fully honest.



*Bank of America, Wells Fargo might not pay federal taxes for 2009

*South Korean navy ship sinks near sea border with North

*Israel could use tactical nukes on Iran...

*...U.S. and Israel sign massive arms deal


*The McCain-Lieberman Police State Act?

*Past Decade Was Warmest on Record

*State by State: Who qualifies for free/reduced-price lunch

*Pupils suffer panic attacks after school stages fake shooting

*Police say gunfire that hit Cantor's office was random


*Treaty to cut US-Russia nukes

*Many in the Tea Party are Unemployed, on 'Welfare,' and Lots of Time to Kill

*View from the US: The 'special relationship' is a very British obsession

*Geely seals deal to buy Volvo from Ford

CoOlDiGgY news

Afghan War Symposium Experts: Things Are Bad

TAMPA — Almost nine years into the war in Afghanistan, there's still no guarantee of success or even much agreement on how to achieve it.

That was the often gloomy take of experts meeting Wednesday at the start of a three-day symposium on Afghanistan and Pakistan at the University of South Florida.

"I'm a pessimist about where we are now, where we've been and where we're going," said Thomas Johnson, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. "In April, Afghanistan will replace Vietnam as the longest U.S. conflict, and there's still debate about what the desired end state is."

Read more...

*US healthcare reform is boon for India outsourcing companies

*Toyota tops speed control complaints almost every year since 2004

*Jobless aid could halt after Congress fails to act

*Nation’s Largest Private Water Utility Joins Lawsuit Against Herbicide Maker



*What President Obama Didn't Say By Dennis Kucinich

*Cigarette taxes are gold rush for states

*Gov't unveils plan to shrink some home loans...

*...Q&A: Will foreclosure-prevention measures affect me?

*2,000 House staffers make six figures

*EU nations give Greece safety net

*Personal income falls in California for first time since Great Depression

*VIDEO: Al Gore and Mayor push council for massive energy rate increase. Promise 'lockbox' for tech that does not exist...

*...Los Angeles DWP now plans 37% rate hike instead of 28%