John McCain: Compromised By Foreign Governments

See: http://www.newsweek.com/id/142658

John McCain has a staff composed of lobbyists for NON-US companies, including EADS. EADS is a French/British/German conglomerate with significant European security and military interests and European government oversight, management and ownership.

EADS is thoroughly and openly infiltrated by intelligence and military officials from several European nations. France's DGSE (equivalent to CIA) is notorious in their pursuit of "economic" intelligence. In this EADS partnership with Northrup and their "owning" of McCain they stand to reap a bounty of intelligence on US technologies and capabilities.

A good investigative journalist could probably find plenty of NON-US financing of John McCain's campaign through these and other lobbyists on his staff.

This relationship between EADS and McCain is SCANDALOUS. It demonstrates that John McCain is compromised by THE INTERESTS OF FOREIGN CORPORATIONS AND FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS and is a THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY.

IHT: Queen Elizabeth II visits the WShite House

The International Herald Tribune has always been my favorite and now they have finally nailed it:

The Queen at the Shite house.

How apropos... Especially after G.W. insulted her age.

Long live the IHT!

In case the link has been corrected, here is some screen shot goodness.

Virginia Tech and Your Right To Bear Arms

The Virginia Tech massacre demonstrates how clearly our antiquated notions of gun ownership need to be adjusted. It is amazing that it is easier to procure an assault rifle or semi-automatic high capacity pistol than it is to get a driver's license or a prescription for antibiotics in this society.

Our constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, but our firearms laws need to be updated. Already, we restrict our right to bear arms to those over 18 years of age; the precedent of moderation is there.

Congress needs to enact the legislation that will keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous people. Some considerations for this include:

1) While most states have a basic "permit" requirement to buy a firearm; there needs to be a Federal requirement for every firearms owner to hold and carry a "permit to own". Obtaining this permit should require completion of a course in firearms safety and handling, passing a test on the subject and a state and federal background check. Veterans and law enforcement professionals should be exempt from the course, but should be required to pass the test and background check.

2) If an individual would like a more advanced permit, such as a permit to carry a firearm, this should require additional training, testing and valid justification. The status should be reflected on the "permit to own".

3) Individuals taking certain medications known to have negative psychiatric side effects should be barred from holding a "permit to own" firearms. Prescribing medical professionals should be granted access to a national "permit to own" registry and should be required to tag those individuals for whom they have prescribed such medications and to un-tag them once they are no longer medicated.

4) Individuals with firearms permits should undergo periodic psychiatric evaluations by independent psychiatrists. If an evaluation reveals psychiatric conditions unsuitable for possession of firearms they should be barred from holding a "permit to own" firearms. Evaluating psychiatrists should be granted access to a national "permit to own" registry and should be required to tag those individuals who represent a psychiatric risk and to un-tag them if and when they are no longer considered a risk.

5) Individuals with a "permit to own" who do not store their firearms and ammunition with appropriate safeguards should be considered negligent in the event that their firearms are taken and used in the commission of a crime. Keeping firearms and ammunition in separate, approved and locked storage enclosures and safeguarding the keys or combinations to these enclosures should constitute appropriate safeguards.

6) Individuals with violent criminal records or who have demonstrated failure to responsibly handle or own firearms should have their "permit to own" permanently revoked.

With some simple changes our antiquated firearms laws can be adapted to modern society. The founding fathers did not intend for our society to become a gun crazy violent place; they intended for citizens like us to form armed militias in order to protect our towns and settlements from invasion by foreign or domestic governments. Yet, form an armed militia today and train with some men and you'll probably get a visit from the FBI and Homeland Security accusing you of running a "terrorist camp". Your rights as intentioned by our founding fathers have already been removed.

Every law abiding citizen that wishes to own firearms for sport or protection purposes should be permitted to exercise their right to do so. It should also be straightforward for most citizens to comply with these simple points; however, those with violent records or desires to perpetrate heinous acts or crimes must not be permitted to own or easily access firearms.

We need to exercise our right to bear arms responsibly. We need legislation that will determine which people in our society are allowed to exercise their right to bear arms - because "guns don't kill people - people do."

Do you want $3 to go to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund?

Wondering what to do about that "Do you want $3 to go to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund?" question on your income tax form?

You should check it. It will not affect your taxes and if everyone checked it, we'd all be better off.

Think about it. Those $3 will be spent here in the U.S.A! On ads, food, hotels and other good American businesses.

If you don't check it those dollars may very well end up in Afghanistan, Iraq, or as aid to some other corrupt 3rd world nation which our oil barons are busy exploiting.

By checking it, you will also help propel campaign finance reform onto the national agenda. If this fund were sufficient, we could argue that it is the only financing allowed for Presidential campaigns.

Now wouldn't that be nice.

The Separation of Church, State and Corporations

Our country is built on freedom of choice - freedom of speech, freedom of worship and freedom of economy – the American dream.

To guarantee these freedoms the trinity of state, church and media must be kept separate and independent. This is a primary goal of our constitution. Increasingly, a fourth underlying presence has become more powerful than our forefathers could have imagined; it is Corporate America. And it is this power that is tying state, media and, to a lesser extent, the church together in a way that threatens the freedom of individual citizens.

We must insist on the separation of state, church, media AND business.

Since the late 1940s the CIA has worked to place agents in journalist roles to enable the publishing of credible disinformation in our media in order to deceive the Soviets. This corruption of truth in our media has opened the door to wider abuse. While the original intent was not to manipulate the American public, we are now subject to manipulation in the press orchestrated by powerful PR and advertising firms funded by government and corporate interests.

Compounding the problems in the media is the increasing and pervasive influence of corporate ownership of the media from one side and corporate sponsorship of politicians on the other. This leads to a media that, through the hands of fewer and fewer owner-editors, becomes a trumpet for corporate interests, who are the main purchasers of advertising, and their political pansies.

No media reform will be effective without reform of
(a) the manner in which political funding is conducted
(b) ownership and content laws in order to limit concentrations of ownership and their influence on media content and to provide protections for journalistic editors that document truth.
and
(c) reform and introduction of advertising law so that we legally differentiate advertising from propaganda and require each to be clearly identifiable as such and that we require final beneficiaries and all sources of funding be disclosed for any propaganda.

Ban The Bulb, a dumb idea?

Banning the bulb for CFLs is not such a bright idea. Finally a well thought out argument as to why: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/ban_the_bulb.html
Yep, those CFLs will not bring down peak demand, which means less KW used but the same infrastructure required. This means higher prices per KW. And there is an alarming amount of mercury in CFL bulbs, so they will create a toxic hazard in every household.

Of course, this well thought out argument comes from a light bulb fanatic and fails to propose a solution to the problem.

But the missing last paragraph should read:

THE SOLUTION is to ban incandescent and CFL bulbs over a fixed time period and transition to LED lighting. Ultimately, LED lighting will produce the best light at the lowest wattage. We must encourage investment and adoption of this technology today.

Don't forget to claim your War Tax Refund

Congress has authorized a refund of your Federal Telephone Excise Tax. This was originally a tax enacted to fund the Spanish-American war - it's about time to get rid of it.

The hitch is that your only chance to get it back is this year in your 2006 taxes.

"The telephone tax refund is a one-time payment available on your 2006 federal income tax return, designed to refund previously collected federal excise taxes on long-distance or bundled service. It is available to anyone who paid such taxes on landline, wireless, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service.

Several recent federal court decisions have held that the tax does not apply to long-distance service as it is billed today. The IRS is following these decisions and refunding the portion of the tax charged on long-distance calls. The IRS is also refunding taxes collected on telephone service under plans that do not differentiate between long distance and local calls including bundled service.

The telephone tax continues to apply to local-only service, and the IRS is not refunding taxes charged on local-only service.

The IRS will refund the taxes paid on long-distance or bundled service billed to taxpayers for the period after Feb. 28, 2003, and before Aug. 1, 2006. Taxpayers should request this refund when they file their 2006 tax returns.

In general, any individual, business or nonprofit organization that paid the tax for long distance or bundled service billed after Feb. 28, 2003, and before Aug. 1, 2006, is eligible to request the refund."

You can take the standard deduction, which goes up to $60 if you have 4 dependents. Or you can opt for the full audit option and deduct the exact amount which you were charged

The IRS has provided a line for this on the basic tax forms. Do not forget to claim your deduction this year. You'd be a nincompoop to pay more taxes than you have too.

Full details from the IRS!

The Best Place to Spend Your Tax Dollars

We all know that tax dollars spent locally have the most impact on our lives. So why do we spend such a huge portion of our tax dollars far away from home, even in foreign countries like Iraq.

It's because our politicians are far away from our homes. Politicians are more concerned with the corporations in their constituency than they are with the actual public expenditure in those areas. Imagine what a nice town you would live in if your tax dollars were used to improve your town rather than to build broken projects in Iraq.

Our Republican candidates are busy debating the merits of lower taxes but fail to get to the root of the problem: where our taxes are spent. When Hilary Clinton spoke about government inefficiency, she failed to mention that the main cause behind this problem is the distance between the taxpayer and the government.

How can this be fixed? Quite simply, we need to get the people spending our taxes closer to us. State government needs to stand up to federal government and take back the authority vested in it.

If Louisiana was responsible for the Katrina rebuilding contracts, do you think they would have wasted the money on no-bid contracts for companies in Texas? If the Louisiana government spent the budget in Louisiana, even if it was as inefficient as the federal government, it would have resulted in more jobs and better economic stimulus in the areas hardest hit by the hurricane. Instead we watched the Louisiana governor take the fall while the federal government mismanaged the budgets.

Our governors need to mandate that ALL income taxes, both state and federal, be paid to the State tax authority directly.

Once the state has collected the tax monies and deducted all expenses for both state and federal funded projects, the federal government can be paid with a lump sum payment from the state to cover the tax expenditure related to OUT OF STATE expenses.

In addition to shifting the IRS and treasury jobs from Washington to local state jobs, this method of tax collection and payment would encourage states to require lean and efficient federal government and naturally reward those states that run an efficient government for their people.

There is no constitutional mandate that says the Federal Government must collect the taxes. So why do we let a bloated and distant force exert such control over our lives.

Keep our tax dollars close to home and make our country better. Let the federal government come to the states with open arms justifying their need for a check each year and let the states spend our hard earned taxes where they belong - in our own backyard.

Can the EPA live up to its name?

American industry continues to clamor for profits in the face of massive damage being done to our environment by their profiteering. Who will pay the cost?

George Bush actually attached conditions to the landmark Supreme Court ruling that the Environment Protection Agency is legally allowed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. His conditions are two:
1) That no regulation should slow the economy.
2) That we should not enact measures that will be offset by increasing emissions from China, India and other developing nations.

The first condition, may seem like a barrier, but it is actually a blessing in disguise. To address this, the EPA must begin to quantify the cost of inaction in human terms with health care dollars and in environmental terms with severe weather damage. In nearly every case, these costs will far exceed the cost of inaction with respect to raising our environmental standards. The difficulty will be the court cases that will challenge the studies that the EPA relies upon to make its regulation. Our legislative branch must encourage the judicial branch to reject such law suits and leave these arguments to the scientists.

The second condition is a preposterous statement: we are to let the actions of China, India and other developing nations dictate our environmental policy. This is wrong. We are America. We do not let third world countries tell us how to run our country. Congress must take Mr. Bush to action and pass legislation making adherence to EPA standards a requirement for our foreign trade partners to maintain their favored trade status. These countries need our trade dollars. Let's force them to invest some of those dollars in cleaner technologies.

Furthermore, the EPA must enact sweeping regulations that take into account environmental impacts at every step of the production chain.

For example, Biodiesel reduces emissions at the point of consumption; however, it greatly increases emissions at the point of production. This is because biofuels are NOT being sourced from sustainable sources. Due to the clearing and farming of palm oil for Biodiesel production in Asia for export to Europe, the production of Biodiesel releases 10 times the CO2 into our atmosphere than the production of conventional diesel fuel. While converting a few cars to run on old food oil is a great thing, planning to run an entire economy on palm oil and corn oil is a very bad idea indeed. In addition, we are using fields that would normally grow food to fuel our cars, yet millions do not have enough to eat. It is also an unethical idea. To learn more about this issue check out biofuelwatch.

For too long industry has been stripping the Earth and the atmosphere in the name of profit, disregarding the price that society will ultimately have to pay for these actions.

The EPA would be remiss not to regulate EVERY substance that affects our Environment. The EPA must live up to it's name. Protect the environment.

Protection must encompass each step of production in our economy. Because our economy is global, the EPA must be empowered to use the tools of global trade, such as import duties and favored trade status, to encourage and influence our trade partners to meet the same standards we set for ourselves.

The EPA needs to tools to force the consumer of the environment, either through the direct cost of complicity or the indirect cost of taxes and fines, to pay for the environmental resources that they have consumed to the detriment of us all.

Uncorrupted by the politics of business, the EPA would serve the noble purpose of preserving our biosphere for the enjoyment and health of this and all future generations.

Let us encourage our EPA civil servants to remember that they are serving us all in this noble cause. Please write your state and federal representatives and encourage them to empower the EPA.