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POPSThe Value of Money George Washington was paid a salary of $25,000 a year from 1789 to 1797 as the first president of the United States. The current salary of the president has recently been doubled to $400,000, to go with a $50,000 expense account, a generous pension and several other benefits. Has the remuneration improved? Making a comparison using the CPI for 1790 shows that $25,000 corresponds to over $585,000 today, so the recent raise means current presidents have an equal command over consumer goods as the Father of the Country. When comparing Washington's salary to an unskilled worker, or the measure of average income, GDP per capita, then the comparable numbers are $11 and $24 million. Granted that would not put him in the ranks of the top 25 executives today that make over $200 million. It would, however, be many times more than any elected official in this country is paid today.
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POPSCorporate Welfare End the corporate welfare, close up the loopholes, subsidies, and the offshore enabling, and it might be feasible to lower corporate taxes to between 15 and 25 percent, on the record. Not that most don't pay this percent now...
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POPSCorporate Medicine Is Bad Medicine
71% of physicians believe managed care compromises patient care. 80% of Americans believe profit considerations compromise quality of care. The Health Care Finance Administration calculates that the United States would save enough money administering our health care system through a single payer to provide health care for the 44 million uninsured, while avoiding managed care and allowing free choice of providers. The result of this government-business agreement is that corporations make large profits, recipients get poorer care, for-profits appear to be able to offer services for less than the private sector, and politicians can claim they are saving money by "privatizing" (read "corporatizing"). This serves politicians and corporations, but people pay the price. The root ethical problem with corporate medicine is its abandonment of the ethos of traditional medicine, in which the needs of the patient are placed above the needs of the caregiver, in favor of an ethos of profit.
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POPSExcerpt From Fiat Money Inflation in France So much for the poorer people. Typical of those esteemed wealthy may be mentioned a manufacturer of hardware who, having retired from business in 1790 with 321,000 livres , found his property in 1796 worth 14,000 francs. For this general distress arising from the development and collapse of "fiat" money in France, there was, indeed, one exception. In Paris and a few of the other great cities, men like Tallien, of the heartless, debauched, luxurious, speculator, contractor and stock-gambler class, had risen above the ruins of the multitudes of smaller fortunes. Tallien, one of the worst demagogue "reformers," and a certain number of men like him, had been skillful enough to become millionaires, while their dupes, who had clamored for issues of paper money, had become paupers. The luxury and extravagance of the currency gamblers and their families form one of the most significant features in any picture of the social condition of that period.
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POPSFiat Money Inflation in France Notes: 1. Well-informed people will notice this "special request" edition was published only two years prior to the third affliction upon the American people and their currency of a "national bank", this time re-named the "Federal Reserve", and thus adding irony to the hoax by characterizing it as something other than a privately owned bank with an unlimited license to create money out of thin air by simply turning on the printing press (it's only significant asset) upon the agreement of 12 persons. # This work was plainly issued to discourage Congress from indulging the age-old fantasy of rulers that they can "control" the monetary unit in a responsible way. That no government has ever accomplished this does not dissuade elected dreamers from entertaining this fantasy. We took this work from a publicly available "text" source, obviously generated by word processing software and thus clutttered with unreadable special characters.
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POPS Buried Loot a Mystery for Authorities The money is always the same - decaying $100 bills from the 1970s and 1980s. It's the story that keeps changing: _It was an inheritance. _Somebody dug up a tree and there it was. _It was found in a suitcase buried in an alfalfa field. _A relative found a treasure map. (AP) Eric Walsh examines water damaged U.S. currency at the Mutilated Currency Division of the Treasury... Full Image No matter where it came from or who found it, that buried treasure stands to make someone rich. It could also send someone to jail. Felhaber is a customs broker, a middleman. His company, F.C. Felhaber & Co., is just minutes away from the bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Tens of billions of dollars of Mexican goods cross that bridge each year, aided by people such as Felhaber who navigate the customs bureaucracy. Customs brokers don't own the stuff that comes into the United States. They just make sure it gets here.
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POPSHYPERINFLATION (read, watch, learn) In late 1923, Germany undertook a monetary reform creating a new unit of currency called the rentenmark. The German government promised that the new currency could be converted on demand into a bond having a certain value in gold. Proponents of the standard answer argue that the guarantee of convertibility is properly viewed as a promise to cease the rapid issue of money. An alternative view held by some economists is that not just monetary reform, but also fiscal reform, is needed to end a hyperinflation. According to this view a successful reform entails two believable commitments on the part of government. The first is a commitment to halt the rapid growth of paper money. The second is a commitment to bring the government's budget into balance. This second commitment is necessary for a successful reform because it removes, or at least lessens, the incentive for the government to resort to inflationary taxation.
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POPS YOU JUST GOT SCREWED and Nobody Will tell you! URGENT!! Made the Digg front page in less than 3 hrs. Thank goodness some people still care what is happening in this country! Meanwhile, last year, Freddie Mac paid chairman and CEO Richard Syron nearly $19.8 million in compensation, Fannie Mae pres. and CEO Daniel Mudd recieved $12.2 million, including a $2.2 million bonus!
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POPSYou Owe $455,000 * “People seem to think the government has money,” said former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. “The government doesn’t have any money“ * The United States Department of the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget published a report stating that the U.S. cannot grow our way out of the government’s liabilities, that the liabilities are quickly growing, and that failing to take drastic and immediate action would lead to very bad consequences (the report was written in 2006) * The International Monetary Fund - which oversees third-world economies - are so concerned about the solvency of the U.S. economy that they are conducting a complete audit of the whole US financial system If you owed $455,000, you might very well have to file for bankruptcy, unless you had some rich uncle who could bail you out. But if your uncle had bailed you out numerous times in the past and if you had consistently broke your promises to re-pay him - he’d probably cut you off
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POPSThe buck doesn't stop here; it just keeps falling Brought to you by our friends at the federal reserve. Imagine that "nutjob" republican who during the debates said he wanted to abolish the federal reserve, stop printing fiat money, and return the US to a sound monetary policy, what a kook, huh! Of course those words were greeted with laughter from McCain, Guiliani, and others! Now I see why...
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POPSIt's Not Yours, It's God's "It's not yours, it's God's, and you're not going to get it," Copeland says of his financial records. He has launched a website to publicize his crusade and has received support from several leading conservatives, including Paul Weyrich and Kenneth Blackwell. Incredible! And tax free!
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POPSMore "Free" Money! More economic proposals to come: Obama in his speech criticized his Republican rival, John McCain, for proposing to extend all of President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. But Obama himself has taken a page from Bush's playbook on taxes. Obama has pledged to keep the tax cuts in place for everyone except those making roughly $250,000 and up. He has also made proposals to cut taxes further for the middle class, some of which he reiterated in his speech: exempt seniors making less than $50,000 from having to pay income tax; give a tax credit worth up to $500 per working person ($1,000 per family) to offset the Social Security tax on the first $8,100 of earnings; and expand the earned income tax credit. To boost retirement savings, he has also proposed a 50% federal match on the first $1,000 of savings for families that earn under $75,000. ****Vote 4 Me, I'll give you more free money!
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POPSStart Hoarding Now? "I think for that reason, probably sometime in the next year or two, you're going to see the government trying to combat this, either through price controls on certain products, or through official government limitations on the number or the quantity of things that people can buy. All of this is coming, because the government is going to be focused on the symptoms and not the disease. They're going to focus on rising prices, whether it's for food or oil or whatever, and try to stop prices from rising, without understanding that they are rising because of all the money that they're creating." It's crazy how the government wants to interfere with prices. They're going to look at oil prices and food prices and say hey these prices are too high; we need to limit them with price ceilings. But now they look at house prices and say, oh no, house prices are not high enough, we need to stop them from falling."
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POPSGov't Regulating the Market Is Not The Answer "A Government Failure, not the market's". Who will correct this? Both Obama and McCain believe Government regulation is needed for when markets fail. Both are either ignorant of or compliant with the root causes. Thomas Jefferson was concise in his early warning to the American nation, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
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POPSCharity Begins at Home Clients Diebold and the American Association of Nude Recreation really rather stuck out for me in this article! WT#!?? This year, most of Senator McCain’s contributions were made to the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation. Nice of him to donate to his own charity, while he was also taking $23,000 in Social Security money, but I am sure he needed that extra government paycheck!
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POPSGet a Grip on Your Cash In 2006 dollars, the minimum wage was $9.50 before the 1971 breakdown of Bretton Woods. Today that dollar is worth $5.15. Congress congratulates itself for raising the minimum wage by mandate, but in reality it has lowered the minimum wage by allowing the Fed to devalue the dollar. We must consider how the growing inequalities created by our monetary system will lead to social discord. The dollar today is worth only four cents compared to the dollar in 1913, when the Federal Reserve started. This has profound consequences for our economy and our political stability. Government officials consistently claim that inflation is in check at barely 2%, but middle class Americans know that their purchasing power--especially when it comes to housing, energy, medical care, and school tuition-- is shrinking much faster than 2% each year.
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POPS Comprehensive Economic Revitalization Plan Here are a few of the plan's basics: Eliminate Taxes on Social Security Benefits. That money belongs to seniors, not the government. They paid into the system for a lifetime, and they should be free to spend every penny as they see fit. * Pass H.R. 192 to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the 1993 increase in taxes on Social Security benefits. # Eliminate Taxes on Tips.The single parents and working students who earn their income chiefly through tips deserve to keep all of their money. This tax on "estimated income" is unfair and should be ended. * Pass H.R. 3664 to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide that tips shall not be subject to income or employment taxes. Reduce Overseas Military Commitments. Our bases and troops should be on our soil. * It's time to stop subsidizing our trading partners in Europe, Japan and South Korea.
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POPSWhat's The Plan? I see many comments by Hillary, but no real plan, other than spend the money somewhere else! This does not solve the issue of our deflating dollar!
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POPSI.O.U. Thomas Jefferson lobbied vehemently against the central bank stating it was contrary to the Constitution.In 1826, the second bank's charter was soon to expire and presidential candidate Andrew Jackson campaigned strongly against a central bank, which was owned and operated by the international banking element. Here is Jackson's opinion of those bankers: "You are a den of vipers. I intend to wipe you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out...If people only understood the rank injustice of the money and banking system, there would be a revolution by morning." President Kennedy had printed $4 billion worth of non-interest bearing money, which meant he began to chop at the profits of the vultures. Interest free money means the national debt is eliminated and the power of the international banking element is broken. But he was murdered, as we all know. Kennedy wanted to abolish the Fed.
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POPSIf a Dollar Drops, Does Anybody Hear It? People do not seem to be listening, we are in trouble here, and continue to turn a blind eye to what is happening. Members of the CFR really do not care which candidate is elected, as long as they are a member of the CFR. Look it up, chances are the candidate you are supporting is "in", unless it is Ron Paul. Look further: By David Rockefeller’s own admission the CFR was created for one purpose. The design, manipulation and creation of a New World Order. A single government that controls planet earth. A planetary government run by powerful bankers." Remember, we have been warned: ”The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” – Thomas Jefferson
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POPSLife of A Billionaire He can make money whatever way he wants, I have no problem with people doing well for themselves...it is this part, "Meanwhile, his tax rate is lower than teachers, firemen, nurses, even his own cleaning staff!" that I take issue with.
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POPSHuckabee is Learning "If we don’t cut spending now, higher taxes and economic disaster will be in their future — and yours. In addition, the Federal Reserve, our central bank, fosters runaway debt by increasing the money supply — making each dollar in your pocket worth less.” These statements, along with his recent "abolish the IRS" talk, one has to take notice, I think he has learned a thing or two from Ron Paul. He just has to be careful, they will start censoring and slandering him if he keeps this up!
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POPSHow Super! This year, I am presenting a challenge to the various companies that pay megabucks for their 30 seconds of notoriety which by the next year, month, or even day will be all but forgotten by even those who did not leave the room to fetch another Millers from the fridge. Give the money to a more worthy cause! I don't care which one, take your pick, homelessness, cancer research, aids research, toys for tots, food banks, any of these would be a better cause than trying to gain the 30 second attention span of your average inebriated superbowl viewer. Make a PR blitz of it if you must, release the philanthropic act to all news and press related sources you wish, and you probably will gain more attention, and loyal customers than that 30 second blip on that one day of the year! This is my challenge to you, Pepsi, Coke, McDonalds, Ing, Chevy, Ford, and all of the others, you too, Nike, just do it!
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