Instant overview of all sectors of the economy on a single web site -- all the different taxes-- local, state and national revenue; demographics (births, deaths, employment, unemployment, federal employees, retirees, bankruptcies, assets per citizens, liability per tax payer, debt per family, etc. Click on the link at the bottom to see what is happening on all levels,
internal and international. There are further links that will take you to commodities, including precious metals, energy figures, breakdown of unfunded liabilities -- social security, prescription drugs, medicare; mortgages, auto sales and much more.
This is NOT a political attack, it is educational -- a view of economic statistics as they are gathered. It is like watching the thermometer, the weather radar, the tides, the waxing and waning of the moon.
$100 - The most counterfeited money denomination in the world. Keeps the world moving.
Ten Thousand Dollars
$10,000 - Enough for a great vacation or to buy a used car. Approximately one year of work for the average human on earth.
One Million Dollars
$1,000,000 - This represents 92 years of work for the average human on earth.
One Hundred Million Dollars
$100,000,000 - Fits nicely on an ISO / Military standard sized pallet.
One Billion Dollars
$1,000,000,000 - You will need some help when robbing the bank.
One Trillion Dollars
$1,000,000,000,000
When the U.S government speaks about a 1.7 trillion deficit, this is the volumes of cash its government borrowed in 2010 to run itself.
Keep in mind, these are double stacked pallets of $100 million dollars each in $100 dollar bills.
If you had spent $1 million a day since Jesus was born, you would have not spent $1 trillion by now.
But $700 billion is the amount certain banks got during bailout.
One Trillion Dollars
This is a comparison of $1,000,000,000,000 (a trillion) dollars to a standard size American football field and European Football field. That is a Boeing 747-400 transcontinental airliner in the picture, until recently the biggest passenger plane in the world.
15 Trillion Dollars
$15,000,000,000,000 is the amount shown in the diagram above. The U.S. national debt (credit bill) surpassed the 15 trillion two months before Christmas 2011.
114.5 Trillion Dollars
$114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities. To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world's tallest buildings. For scale, you can see the Statue of Liberty.
The 114.5 Trillion dollar super-skyscraper is the amount of money the U.S. Government knows it does not have to fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program, Social Security, Military and Civil Service pensions. It is the amount which will not be available to pay all its bills.
If you live in U.S., this is also your personal credit bill for which you are responsible, along with everyone else. to the citizens of the United States created their government to serve them, gave them the power under the Constitution to tax just enough to operate its duties, which are enumerated in the Constitution. This is what the government has done so gradually that we are suddenly facing the destruction from within of our economy because of this unfunded liability. What other nations have been unable to do to us, we are doing to ourselves. This not an attack on any person or party
Here is a picture showing the size of a billion dollars in 100 dollar bills, relative to a person. Those smaller stacks in front of the huge pallets of bills are 1000 dollars and 1 million dollars, again in 100 dollar bills.
During the earlier part of the Iraq war, seems the operation was “cash strapped” so to speak because they needed some money to throw around. But this is not the kind of cash strapped that you or I could just go the ATM machine a couple of times for. This was SERIOUS CASH STRAPPED.
So the U.S. government decided to send off some money to Iraq in some military cargo planes. Pallets and pallets of 100 dollar bills loaded up into c-130 Hercules transport planes. Now I don’t know if everyone has seen the size of a C-130 plane but it is HUGE! They put tanks and helicopters in these things, no problem.
The amount of cash sent over? Around 12 billion dollars in 100 dollar bills, 361 tons of 100 dollar bills for a total of 21 loaded C-130 planes of cash. The largest transfer of cash in the history of the United States by far!
Do you want to know something crazier? They don’t know where most of it went.
Poof… gone… disappeared. As Rep. Waxman asked in 2007:
“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?”
12 Billion dollars!
Let’s add up some numbers to show just how large 12 billion dollars can be.
How about we use the new deficit reduction bill and add up all the cuts to various agencies. I mean… it was so important to get these cuts in that the government basically shut down from doing anything else for weeks.
List of some cuts in the “Continuing Resolution Discretionary Budget Bill”
THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
The Department of Labor is set to lose $870 million for the rest of the fiscal year from job training and creation programs,community college curriculum for dislocated workers and a fund that aims to prepare workers for new green jobs.
THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
The Women, Infants and Children program – which provides food and infant formula to low-income families- would receive $504 million less than it did last year.
THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
The National Science Foundation would take a cut of $53 million which means it would fund 134 fewer grants to outside researchers than it did in fiscal year 2010. That cut would translate to a loss of NSF support for 1,500 researchers and support personal.
DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
The resolution would cut $942 million from the funds enacted in fiscal 2010 for the Community Development Fund, which includes block grants designed to help rehabilitate housing and invest in primarily low-income neighborhoods.
THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Ha Ha… made you look. You don’t think any cuts are going to come from here did you? The Defense Department would be allocated $513 billion, a $5 billion increase from 2010 levels.
Okay, what does that add up to? WHAT? We’re only 2.37 billion and that’s only 4 C-130 transport planes worth. We still got lots more to equal those 20 planes.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
$148 million would be cut from programs to help juveniles avoid the criminal justice system
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
The measure would cut about 15 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency budget, decimating a program that provides money to states to reduce water pollution for a total of 1.35 billion dollars
THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
The Department of the Interior could soon be prohibited from enforcing rules that protect animals such as wolves. Also a program that helps recover endangered species was slashed by $25 million, a 31 percent cut. And a wildlife grant that helps states manage at-risk species before they become endangered would be sliced by $28 million, also a 31 percent cut. Total of 53 million.
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Cuts of $16.5 million from programs developing technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants and $6.3 million from nuclear energy programs. Apparently those “Carbon Emission Free” nuclear plants take priority over…carbon emissions.
So that brings the total of the amount of cuts to 3.92 billion dollars. But still not even close to that Iraq cash flotilla of 12 billion
THE SECURITIES & EXCHANGE COMMISSION
This well oiled machine is not going to receive any cuts at all. The Securities and Exchange Commission would receive a 7 percent increase in its budget or 1.185 billion to the agency, an increase of $74 million above the 2010 levels.
What could they possibly need more money for? Certainly not for audit forms or criminal investigations. Keep up the good work, you eagle eyed guardians of the wealthy.
U.S. Iraq inspector general report that concluded this week that $6.6 billion in shrink-wrapped cash the U.S. government previously feared had gone missing in the chaotic early days of the Iraq occupation has in fact been safely accounted for.
"The mystery of $6 billion that seemed to go missing in the early days of the Iraq war has been resolved, according to a new report," CNN national security producer Charles Keyes reported Wednesday. "New evidence shows most of that money, $6.6 billion, did not go astray in that chaotic period, but ended up where it was supposed to be, under the control of the Iraqi government, according to a report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction or SIGIR."
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, had previously testified that as much as $6.6 billion of the $10 billion the United States shipped to Iraq had disappeared due to "weaknesses in [the Department of Defense's] financial and management controls," Keyes wrote, citing the bureaucratese from a previous SIGIR report.
The cash had in part been drawn from Iraq's own international assets, accrued during the pre-war, UN-run Oil for Food program. It was flown to Iraq in the wake of the U.S. 2003 invasion; the idea was that it would help pay for the Iraq reconstruction and development efforts under the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led occupation outfit that dissolved in 2004. The original idea was to store most of the money in accounts in the Central Bank of Iraq; U.S. occupation authorities also apparently stored a few hundred million in a vault at one of Saddam Hussein's palaces they used as their headquarters for various cash needs.
After the Coalition Provision Authority dissolved in 2004, however, it wasn't clear where the funds had gone, the previous SIGIR report said. But apparently, the money was properly transferred to accounts held at the Central Bank of Iraq, the new SIGIR report found.
"But the inspector general's new report says almost all the $6.6 billion was properly handed over to Iraq and its Central Bank," Keyes writes. "'SIGIR was able to account for the unexpected [Development Fund of Iraq] funds remaining in DFI accounts when the [Coalition Provisional Authority] dissolved in June 2004,' the new report says. 'Sufficient evidence exists showing that almost all of the remaining $6.6 billion remaining was transferred to actual and legal [Central Bank of Iraq] control.'"
This is not to say that the mystery of all the billions and billions the U.S. spent in Iraq has been entirely resolved. The SIGIR report says that inspectors are still trying to piece together the fate of some of the few hundred million that U.S. officials stowed at one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.
"While the bulk of the money was transferred to the Central Bank of Iraq, $217 million remained in a vault in a former presidential palace and was held by the U.S. Defense Department and most was doled out for a variety of projects and payrolls, the report says," Keyes reported. A February 2008 SIGIR audit found that $24.45 million of the $217 million stored at the palace vault remained, and was later turned over to Iraq.
The next SIGIR report on DoD spending on contracting projects in Iraq is expected in January 2012--after the formal withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from the country.
The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says.The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years.
The Pentagon did not dispute the figures, but said it was reviewing arms deliveries procedures.
About $19.2bn has been spent by the US since 2003 on Iraqi security forces.
GAO, the investigative arm of the US Congress, said at least $2.8bn of this money was used to buy and deliver weapons and other equipment.
Correspondents say it is now feared many of the weapons are being used against US forces on the ground in Iraq.
Discrepancies
The GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005.
MISSING IN IRAQ
AK-47 rifles: 110,000
Pistols: 80,000
Body armour pieces: 135,000
Helmets: 115,000
During this period, security training was led by Gen David Petraeus, who now commands all US forces in Iraq.
The GAO reached the estimate - 111,000 missing AK-47s and 80,000 missing pistols - by comparing the property records of the Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq against records maintained by Gen Petraeus of the arms and equipment he ordered.
Deputy Assistant Defence Secretary Mark Kimmitt told AFP the Pentagon was "reviewing policies and procedures to ensure US-funded equipment reaches the intended Iraqi security forces under the Iraq program".
Weapons delay
The report comes as a political battle rages in Washington over the progress of the war in Iraq.
Gen Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are scheduled to report to Congress by mid-September on the success of efforts to halt sectarian violence and return Iraq to viable self-governance.
Meanwhile, at the end of July, the US Defence Department admitted that the US-led coalition in Iraq had failed to deliver nearly two-thirds of the equipment it promised to Iraq's army.
The Pentagon said only 14.5m of the nearly 40m items of equipment ordered by the Iraqi army had been provided.
The US military commander in charge of training in Iraq has asked for help in speeding up the transfer of equipment.
Iraq's ambassador to the US said the delays were hindering the fighting capacity of its armed forces.
http://www.trueworldhistory.info/ | A documentary on the privatisation of the Iraq war and the problems such policies have led to not least of all the creation of the militrary industrial complex.
I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I’m too old to track down terrorists. You can’t be older than 42 to join the military. They’ve got the whole thing ass-backwards. Instead of sending 18-year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn’t be able to join a military unit until you’re at least 35.
For starters: Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.
Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. ‘My back hurts! I can’t sleep, I’m tired and hungry’ We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while.
An 18-year-old doesn’t even like to get up before 10 a..m. Old guys always get up early to pee so what the hell. Besides, like I said, ‘I’m tired and can’t sleep and since I’m already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch.
If captured we couldn’t spill the beans because we’d forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.
Boot camp would be easier for old guys.. We’re used to getting screamed and yelled at and we’re used to soft food. We’ve also developed an appreciation for guns. We’ve been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling..
They could lighten up on the obstacle course however. I’ve been in combat and didn’t see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training.
Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too. I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet.
An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He’s still learning to shave, to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn’t figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.
These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm’s way..
Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple of million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them.
How about recruiting Women over 50 …..in menopause! You think Men have attitudes! Ohhhhhh my God!
If nothing else, put them on border patrol…. They’ll have it secured the first night!
Send this to all of your senior friends…it’s in big type so they can read it.
At least one vaccine that was used that caused these problems was the Swine Flu vaccine given in the US in 1976 for one of the earlier strains of "Swine Flu" in humans. Many people died or contracted Guillian-Barre syndrome from the vaccine, more than were impacted by the disease itself. The method of preparation of vaccines has been changed and improved greatly, so this type of response to the newer vaccines is no longer anticipated.
Speaker: Professor Michael Sandel
Discussants: Stephanie Flanders, Professor Julian Le Grand, Rt Revd Peter Selby
Chair: Ann Pettifor
Recorded on 23 May 2012 in St Paul's Cathedral, London.
Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?
Noted public philosopher and Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel will explore some of these pressing questions with responses from Stephanie Flanders, Professor Julian Le Grand and Bishop Peter Selby. St Paul's Cathedral is delighted to host a discussion on this vital topic within a sacred space in order to explore the intersection between faith, morality and markets and the power that money has in our lives. Questions and comments from the audience will be taken.
Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980. His recent book, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of our time. His new book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, has just been published. At Harvard, Sandel's courses include Ethics, Biotechnology, and the Future of Human Nature, Ethics, Economics, and Law, and Globalization and Its Critics. His undergraduate course, Justice, has enrolled over 15,000 students, and is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on public television. A recipient of the Harvard-Radcliffe Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, Sandel was recognised by the American Political Science Association in 2008 for a career of excellence in teaching. He has been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne (Paris), delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Oxford University, and in 2009 delivered the BBC Reith Lectures. In 2010, China Newsweek named him the "most influential foreign figure of the year" in China.
Stephanie Flanders has been a reporter at the New York Times (2001); a speech writer and senior advisor to the US Treasury Secretary (1997-2001); a Financial Times leader-writer and columnist (1993-7); and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School. She became BBC economics editor in April 2008. She has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Harold Wincott Award for online journalism. She blogs at Stephanomics.
Julian Le Grand is the Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine, a Trustee of the Kings Fund, and a Founding Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences. He has an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex. In 2003-5 he was seconded to No 10 Downing St as a senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister. As well as his position at No 10, he has acted as an adviser to the President of the European Commission, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, the OECD, Her Majesty's Treasury and the UK Departments of Health and Work and Pensions.
Dr Peter Selby was Bishop of Worcester from 1997 until 2007 and in 2001 was also appointed to Bishop of Prisons, a post from which he also retired in September 2007. Dr Selby's interest in prisons is long-standing, and he is himself the son of refugees, and served for a time as the Chair of the Asylum Committee of the Refugee Council. His concern for prisons and the criminal justice system extends back to 1965 when he served as an interim chaplain at San Quentin, California, as part of his ministerial training.
Ann Pettifor is director of Policy Research in Macro-Economics (PriME), and a senior fellow of the New Economics Foundation. She is the author of The Coming First World Debt Crisis which was published in 2006
St Paul's Institute seeks to foster an informed Christian response to the most urgent ethical and spiritual issues of our times: financial integrity, economic justice, and the meaning of the common good.
JustShare is a coalition of churches and charities committed to global development and social justice.
Robert Burns - Auld Lang Syne
As sung by Dougie MacLean on the album Tribute.
"Auld Lang Syne" (Scotspronunciation: [ˈɔːl(d) lɑŋˈsəin]: note "s" rather than "z")[1]is aScotspoem written byRobert Burnsin 1788[2][3]and set to the tune of a traditional folk song (Roud# 6294). It is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world; its traditional use being to celebrate the start of theNew Yearat the stroke of midnight. By extension, it is also sung at funerals, graduations and as a farewell or ending to other occasions. The internationalBoy Scoutyouth movement, in many countries, uses it as a close tojamboreesand other functions.
The song's Scots title may be translated into English literally as "old long since", or more idiomatically, "long long ago",[4]"days gone by" or "old times". Consequently "Forauld lang syne", as it appears in the first line of the chorus, might be loosely translated as "for (the sake of) old times".
The phrase "Auld Lang Syne" is also used in similar poems byRobert Ayton(1570–1638),Allan Ramsay(1686–1757), and James Watson (1711) as well as olderfolk songspredating Burns.[5]Matthew Fittuses the phrase "In the days of auld lang syne" as the equivalent of "Once upon a time..." in his retelling offairy talesin the Scots language.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne* ?
CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
and surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.
CHORUS
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
and gie's a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.
Scotland's day of days, when Rabbie, beatifully assisted by Shenna Wellington, stole the entire show with his international and libertarian anthem " A Man's a Man for 'That'"
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that.
Our toils obscure an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an' a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man's a Man for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that;
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, an' a' that,
His ribband, star, an' a' that:
The man o' independent mind
He looks an' laughs at a' that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
wo police officers repeatedly pummeled a shirtless man in a Jewish youth center in Brooklyn after they roused him from sleeping and moved to arrest him, surveillance video released Sunday night shows. Cops showed up at the Aliya Institute on E. New York Ave. in Crown Heights on the evening of Oct. 8 after receiving a call about a fight between two men, a community source told the Daily News. But Zlamy Trappler, 24, a volunteer security guard at the center, said he called cops because he found the shirtless man drunk and sleeping in the lounge of the center, which provides services to young Jewish adults.
A surveillance video at a Jewish youth center in Crown Heights captured two NYPD officers brutally beating a shirtless man after he was seen resisting arrest.
The Daily News reports a security guard at the Aliya Institute found the man sleeping in the center's lounge last Monday. Zlamy Trappler, 24, said he suspected him of being drunk and called police.
According to the video, two officers, one male and one female, arrived at the scene and then approached the sleeping man, identified by CrownHeights.info as Ehud Halevi.
After Halevi appears to explain his situation to the officers, the male officer takes out his handcuffs. Halevi resists and the male officer begins to punch him in a sustained beating that lasts for a few minutes.
A source told CrownHeights.info Halevi had permission to stay at the center and had been doing so for the past month.
Trappler said, "I regret making the call. I should have let him sleep. It spiraled out of control."
