Category: Spending


Film — Political Earth, Operation Paul Revere

 

Published on May 23, 2013

” An Operation Paul Revere entry, posted with permission.

Political Earth is a satirical mockumentary animation exploring the behavior of our world’s “political animals” — from the federal leviathan to the fat cats of wall street — all presented in the grand, sweeping, epic style of a BBC nature documentary. This series is narrated by renowned political animal expert and abstract concept DaVoice O’Reason.

original link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx5Wum…

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Brobarian…

———-


SEAN ELLIOT presents


A 
SCOOTER DOWNEY 
Film


p o l i t i c a l e a r t h 


A 
BROBARIAN BROTHERS 
Broduction

Animation
by

CJC ENTERTAINMENT


Music Provided by 
KENNETH LAMPL
JUAN IGLESIAS


Sound Recording by 
ANARCHY STUDIOS


Special Thanks to

ALEX JONES and the team at InfoWars for putting on this contest

and

MARQUETTE WILLIAMS for his continued support



Scooter Downey and Sean Elliot are the filmmakers behind the 2012 award winning film “It’s In The Blood” starring horror icon Lance Henriksen. Dread Central called the film “one of the finest and most unique independent horror films in recent memory” in its 4-star review.

Winner of the 2012 Shriekfest Film Festival and voted best horror film of 2012 by Planet of Terror, It’s In The Blood was an official selection in over forty film festivals in 2012. During that time, the film racked up 23 awards including 12 Grand Prize Awards. Monarch Home Entertainment released It’s In The Blood to DVD on April 23rd. The film is also now available on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, and a number of Cable On-Demand platforms (Netflix coming soon).


Official Site: http://www.itsinthebloodthemovie.com
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSg_Wt…

Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-In-

iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/movie/its-in-the-blo­­od/id573482896

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Its-In-The-Bloo… “

 

 

 

 

 

 

About these ads

 

Michelle Obama Vacation Maven

 

 

 

“ Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia are looking at an extended vacation on Martha’s Vineyard this summer, according to a report in The Boston Globe. The Globe might have something here – it’s almost a local Vineyard paper, after all.

According to The Globe the First Couple is looking at a house near Farm Neck, in Oak Bluffs, which they’ve visited in the past.  The particular house they’ve stayed in previously, Blue Heron Farm, “Up Island” in Chilmark, has since been sold. So that piece of real estate is probably out.

If Michelle and the kids do opt for a lengthy Vineyard stay it could become fodder for critics. First Family vacations are a fraught issue, as it’s easy to portray them as insensitive in some manner. The Vineyard is an expensive and exclusive area (as well as kind of Democratic – didn’t the Clintons go there?) so it’s likely that at some point some talk radio host will go after this plan as demeaning to US workers still suffering in a slowly recovering economy.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most Expensive Home Hits The Market At $190 Million

 

 

 

 

” There’s Versace’s former home, priced at $100 million, Steven Cohen’s $115 million apartment and a Manhattan penthouse listed at $125 million. But none of them hold a candle to Copper Beech Farm and its 50 acres of waterfront in Greenwich, CT, which recently hit the market at $190 million, becoming the most expensive listing in the U.S. (Click here or on the photo to go to a slideshow.)”

 

 

” While the house is impressive — public records measure it at 13,519 square feet with 12 bedrooms and 9 baths — it’s the spectacular land that pushes the price tag up to nearly $200 million. The home sits on 4,000 feet of coveted waterfront property on Long Island Sound, which doesn’t includes the additional access to two private islands in the Sound. The two parcels, one at 30 acres and one at 20, contain a grass tennis court, formal gardens, carriage house, apple orchard, two greenhouses and a 75-foot-long heated pool. Considering that a 75-acre Greenwich property nowhere near the water is listed at $32.5 million, the $190 million ask is a little more understandable.” 

 

 

” Thinking about financing a place like this? According to Zillow’s mortgage calculator and assuming a 20 percent down payment (which would be $38 million) on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, a monthly payment would be $687,734.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Renewable-Energy Subsidies And Electricity Generation

 

 

 

 

 

” This chart uses data from the US Energy Information Administration to compare federal investments in green energy and the share of green energy in electricity generation. 

Wind energy receives the lion’s share of renewable-energy grants. The industry has received nearly $30 billion in federal subsidies and cash grants over the past 35 years, and Washington has promised another $12 billion in subsidies in the next decade.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Friend Of The People

 

 

” One of the largest hospitality unions in the nation will protest President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary nominee on Thursday, the first day of her confirmation hearings.

UNITE HERE, which represents tens of thousands of hotel and restaurant workers, will gather in front of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago to demonstrate against Penny Pritzker, one of Obama’s largest campaign bundlers.”

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Bell: A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps

 

” Where do food stamps come from?” 

 

Cartoon by Glenn Foden

 

 

” They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually 80 percent food stamps and other government nutrition programs.

It has become the norm that Congress lumps billions—even trillions—of dollars in taxpayer-funded programs together into huge bills. This allows them to sneak in plenty of special-interest pork.”

 

 

 

Illustration by Glenn Foden

 

 

 

 

 

Tax-Exempt Obama Foundation Doesn’t Exist At Listed Addresses

 

 

” The “charity” run by President Barack Obama’s half-brother that was fast-tracked for IRS tax-exempt status is based at a Virginia UPS store, according to its website.

The organization’s IRS filings list another Virginia address that is actually a drug rehab center where the foundation does not appear ever to have been based.

The Barack H. Obama Foundation is run by Abon’go “Roy” Malik Obama, the half-brother of Barack Obama.

The address listed on the site barackhobamafoundation.org is 107 S. West St. #401, Alexandria, Va., which houses a UPS store on a street that includes a tailor, a Catholic Charities thrift shop and a Gold Works jewelry store.”

 

 

 

 

U.S. Gives 1/3 Of Puerto Rico Food Stamps

 

” The USDA does confirm, however, that an average of 1.37 million people received food stamps in Puerto Rico each month in fiscal year 2012. The island, which is a U.S. territory, has a population of 3.7 million, which means that 37% of Puerto Ricans get food stamps from Uncle Sam. Though the figure of 47.7 million in the U.S. shatters records, it still marks only 15.2% of the nation’s population of 313 million.”

 

 

 

 

ObamaCare Side-Effect: Fewer Hours, More Gov’t Aid

 

 

 

 

” ObamaCare was sold as a way to achieve several goals: affordable care, guaranteed coverage, protections against bankruptcy.

But before such promises have a chance of being realized, the health reform appears to be delivering something else: Germany-style work-sharing.

Economists hailed Germany’s work-sharing for reducing unemployment during the recession. ObamaCare may be having a similar effect. But there are differences that make the health reform’s labor side-effects much more questionable.

Over the past year, retailers have cut average weekly hours for nonsupervisory workers by 2%, the sharpest such decline in more than three decades. Meanwhile, rank-and-file employment is up 132,000, or 1%, over the same period.

Some 2.3 million workers might have their hours cut due to ObamaCare’s employer mandates, even if there’s no negative impact on total hours worked, a recent study from the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center estimated.

The other part of the equation involves more government benefits for those facing shorter hours. This will come starting in 2014 from ObamaCare health subsidies. Households working less may also get additional benefits, such as food stamps.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pelosi Can’t Thank Troops On Mother’s Day Because Of Sequestration

 

 

 

 

” The inimitable Nancy Pelosi has added yet another casualty of sequestration to the ridiculous list of “forced cuts” created by the Democrats in their continuing effort to blame Republicans for the budget impasse.

She can’t travel to Iraq on Mother’s Day to thank America’s moms and grandmothers for their service to our country:

“Every year for the past few years on Mother’s Day I’ve taken a delegation to Afghanistan – or Iraq – to say thank you to our moms – and by the way, our grandmothers – who are serving there – to also thank all of our troops for what they do to protect America’s families. I won’t be going this particular weekend because we don’t have – you know, under sequestration – we don’t have (inaudible).” “

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 Reasons Why The Federal Reserve Should Be Abolished

 


” If the American people truly understood how the Federal Reserve system works and what it has done to us, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately.  It is a system that was designed by international bankers for the benefit of international bankers, and it is systematically impoverishing the American people.  The Federal Reserve system is the primary reason why our currency has declined in value by well over 95 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger over the past 100 years. 

The Fed creates our “booms” and our “busts”, and they have done an absolutely miserable job of managing our economy.  But why do we need a bunch of unelected private bankers to manage our economy and print our money for us in the first place?  Wouldn’t our economy function much more efficiently if we allowed the free market to set interest rates?  And according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. 

So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?  Sadly, this is the way it works all over the globe today.  In fact, all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank.  But the truth is that there are much better alternatives.  We just need to get people educated.

The following are 11 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be abolished…

 

 

#2 The Federal Reserve Is Systematically Destroying The Value Of The U.S. Dollar

 

The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

If you do not believe this, just check out the inflation chart in this article.

The Federal Reserve systematically penalizes those that try to save their money.  Inflation is a tax, and the value of each one of our dollars goes down a little bit more every single day.

But over time, it really adds up.  In fact, the value of the U.S. dollar has fallen by 83 percent since 1970.

Anyone that goes to the grocery store on a regular basis knows how painful inflation can be.  The following is a list that shows how prices for many of the things that we buy on a regular basis absolutely skyrocketed between 2002 and 2012

Eggs: 73%

Coffee: 90%

Peanut Butter: 40%

Milk: 26%

A Loaf Of White Bread: 39%

Spaghetti And Macaroni: 44%

Orange Juice: 46%

Red Delicious Apples: 43%

Beer: 25%

Wine: 60%

Electricity: 42%

Margarine: 143%

Tomatoes: 22%

Turkey: 56%

Ground Beef: 61%

Chocolate Chip Cookies: 39%

Gasoline: 158%

Even the price of water has absolutely soared in recent years.  According to USA Today, water bills have actually tripled over the past 12 years in some areas of the country.

So how can the Federal Reserve get away with claiming that we are in a “low inflation” environment?

Well, what Ben Bernanke never tells you is that the way that the government calculates inflation has changed more than 20 times since 1978.

The truth is that the real rate of inflation is somewhere between five and ten percent right now, but you will never hear about this on the mainstream news.” 

 

 

Read them all

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do You Live In A High Beer Tax State ?

 

 

 

 

 

HT/Reason

 

Map Courtesy Of / Tax Foundation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBAMA SPENT $11.45 MILLION PER ‘GREEN JOB’ CREATED

 

 

” In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to create 5 million “green jobs” if elected president. However, an analysis by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) finds that since 2009, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) $26 billion loan program created just 2,298 permanent jobs, at a cost of $11.45 million per job created.

In his New York Times bestselling book Throw Them All Out, Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer revealed that 80% of Department of Energy loans went to companies owned by or connected to President Barack Obama’s top campaign fundraisers.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Connecticut Sees Number Of Background Check Requests Increase By 6,000% (Not A Typo, 6,000%)

 

 

 

 

” In CT you have to get a permit just to purchase a firearm.

In December state police, who are responsible for processing the background checks for those permits, had a fairly normal backlog of around 1,000 pending background checks.

Now, just over 4 months later, and following the Newtown shooting and the passage of extremely strict new gun laws, that backlog has grown to over 60,000, an increase of around 6,000%

There are several reasons for the massive increase. One, part of the new gun control package passed by CT last month included an “effective immediately” provisions which now requires a background check for rifle and shotgun sales as well as handguns.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boston One Fund Hits $29 Million, But Can’t Make Victims ‘Whole’

 

 

 

 

” The administrator of a fund for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings is warning that, although One Fund Boston is generously endowed, it doesn’t appear set to cover all the costs for those who were injured or lost loved ones in the tragedy.

Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney who is administering the account, met with victims Monday and Tuesday after releasing a draft proposal for how the funds should be distributed.

So far One Fund Boston has raised $29 million.

“I’ve learned over the years … [that] money is a pretty poor substitute for what you are going through,” Feinberg told scores of victims and family members who gathered for the hearing Monday night. “If you had a billion dollars you could not have enough money to deal with all of the problems that ought to be addressed by these attacks.” “

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday FA von Hayek

 

 

 

Wiki Bio

 

” Friedrich August Hayek ; 8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek and frequently known as F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian, later turned British,[1] economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism. In 1974, Hayek shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Gunnar Myrdal) for his “pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and … penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena”.[2]

Hayek is an economist[3] and major political thinker of the twentieth century.[4] Hayek’s account of how changing prices communicate information which enables individuals to coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics.[5] He also contributed to the fields of systems thinkingjurisprudenceneuroscience, and the history of ideas.[6]

Hayek served in World War I and said that his experience in the war and his desire to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war led him to his career. Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany, and became a British subject in 1938. He spent most of his academic life at the London School of Economics (LSE), the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg.

In 1984, he was appointed as a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II on the advice of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for his “services to the study of economics”.[7] He was the first recipient of the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prizein 1984.[8] He also received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from president George H. W. Bush.[9] In 2011, his articleThe Use of Knowledge in Society was selected as one of the top 20 articles published in the American Economic Review during its first 100 years.[10]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Concise Encyclopedia Of Economics:

 

” If any twentieth-century economist was a Renaissance man, it was Friedrich Hayek. He made fundamental contributions in political theory, psychology, and economics. In a field in which the relevance of ideas often is eclipsed by expansions on an initial theory, many of his contributions are so remarkable that people still read them more than fifty years after they were written. Many graduate economics students today, for example, study his articles from the 1930s and 1940s on economics and knowledge, deriving insights that some of their elders in the economics profession still do not totally understand. It would not be surprising if a substantial minority of economists still read and learn from his articles in the year 2050. In his book Commanding Heights, Daniel Yergin called Hayek the “preeminent” economist of the last half of the twentieth century.”

 

 

 

 

 

Further Reading

 

The Friedrich Hayek Quote Page

Biography of F. A. Hayek (1899-1992)Mises.org

Friedrich Hayek (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

F. A. Hayek | Libertarianism.org

BBC News – Masters of Money: Friedrich Hayek

F.A. Hayek - Encyclopedia Britannica

BBC News – Keynes v Hayek: Two economic giants go head to head

Friedrich von Hayek Nobel Prize Winner

VIDEOS

 

 

Bibliography

 

1920–1929

  • Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1929) [1]

1930–1939

  • Prices and Production (1931) [2]
  • Monetary Nationalism and International Stability (1937) [3]
  • Profits, Interest and Investment (1939) [4]

1940–1949

1950–1959

  • “The Transmission of the Ideals of Economic Freedom,” (1951) Full Article
  • John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their Friendship and Subsequent Marriage (1951) ISBN 978-0-678-06504-4
  • The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (1952) ISBN 978-0-913966-67-9
  • The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (1952) ISBN 978-0-226-32094-6
  • The Political Ideal of the Rule of Law (1955)

1960–1969

1970–1979

1980–1989

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Come To This: Solar Installer Now Suing The Government For More Money

 

 

 

 

 

” Last December, the Inspector General of the Treasury launched a probe of the three largest providers of solar panel installation companies that received funds from the much-vaunted 1603 Program — “Payments-In-Lieu-Of-Tax-Credits,” part of President Obama’s stimulus law meant to help the residential market make a switch to more renewable-energy use — as part of an ongoing investigation into whether the companies received excessive government grants via inflating their reported work costs.

One of the companies in question, SolarCity (several of whose executives and venture capital firm backers, you might remember, were generous Obama donors), is now countering with their own lawsuit against the federal government, demanding that they haven’t been paid enough money because their payouts were actually smaller than promised. From the WSJ:

The suit, filed quietly in February in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, comes as SolarCity and other industry players are defending solar-friendly government policies, and it could undermine the industry’s message that solar power will soon be viable without government help. …”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heritage Foundation Responds To Rubio Criticism Of Amnesty Cost Study

 

 

 

” The Heritage Foundation late Tuesday responded to Sen. Marco Rubio’s criticisms of a foundation study that shows the steep cost of providing a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.

Rubio, R-Fla., called the study “flawed” and suggested it maligned immigrants who are not highly educated. Rubio’s parents, who arrived from Cuba in the 1950′s without high school diplomas, are exactly the kind of immigrants the study recommends should not be allowed to enter the country.

“The folks described in the report are my family,” Rubio said.”

 

 

 

Heritage’s response:

 

 

“Sen. Rubio’s parents came here in 1956, almost a decade before the introduction of the Great Society programs that laid the foundation of the modern welfare state. Over the following four and a half decades, our government has added layer upon layer of government involvement in our lives, creating a dependency that undermines self-respect and self-reliance.

“That dependency has been devastating to our society; it has shattered communities, families and individuals. It is now threatening the American Dream. This is true for all—native and immigrant alike, legal or illegal. We do not blame immigrants for being entrapped by that system; we blame the people who created that system. We especially blame people who now seek to expand it.”

 

 

 

 

Illustration By : ?

Does Anyone Know The Artist ?

Credit Where Due If Someone Can Provide A Link

 

 

 

 

 

Study Pegs Cost Of Immigration Bill’s Mass Legalization At $6.3 Trillion

 

 

” The comprehensive immigration overhaul being taken up in the Senate this week could cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion if 11 million illegal immigrants are granted legal status, according to a long-awaited estimate by the conservative Heritage Foundation. 

The cost would arise from illegal immigrants tapping into the government’s vast network of benefits and services, many of which are currently unavailable to them. This includes everything from standard benefits like Social Security and Medicare to dozens of welfare programs ranging from housing assistance to food stamps.

“No matter how you slice it, amnesty will add a tremendous amount of pressure on America’s already strained public purse,” Robert Rector, the Heritage scholar who prepared the report, said in a statement. 

On an annual basis, the report estimates the cost will be $106 billion after the interim phase is over. In the course of their lifetime, the report estimates that illegal immigrant households would receive an average of $592,000 in government benefits. “

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Stossel

 

WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE GET IT? Jobs and $ rush to states that make doing biz easier! 

More tonight at 10 PM on Fox News — with John Vargo.

Grocery Home Delivery May Be Greener Than Schlepping To The Store

 

 

Putting food on the grocery equivalent of a bus requires a lot less mileage than individual trips to the store.

 

 

 

” “It’s like a bus for groceries,” says Anne Goodchild, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Washington and a co-author of the study. “Overwhelmingly, it’s more efficient to be sharing a vehicle, even if it’s a little larger.”

Goodchild studies logistics and freight transportation. She also gets her groceries delivered. “As a working mother, it’s another trip I don’t have to make while my kids are awake,” she says. But, she admits, “I felt sort of lazy and indulgent to be ordering my groceries this way.”

By combining her knowledge of freight transport and data on commuter habits, Goodchild and her colleagues were able to calculate just how efficient it is to put the groceries on the “bus,” using neighborhoods in Seattle and randomly choosing households as potential customers. Pretty darned efficient, it turns out.

Home food delivery trucks, they found, produce 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than having the same households drive to the store. The variation is based on how close people live to the store, the number of people in the neighborhood getting food delivered and the efficiency of the truck’s route.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Schumer Admits ObamaCare ‘Partly’ To Blame For Rising Premiums

 

 

 

 

 

” It’s been a bad week for ObamaCare. First, Harry Reid agreed with the legislation’s principle author, Max Baucus, in his grim assessment and promptly jumped on the ObamaCare train wreck bandwagon.

Now, Chuck Schumer, of all people, has admitted that ObamaCare is “partly” to blame for rising health insurance premiums. Here’s Schumer speaking with an NBC local affiliate in New York:

SCHUMER: Our insurance department is empowered to protect families and we’re going to watch them like a hawk to make sure they do. Because if they don’t, these rates could go through the roof.

REPORTER: Is it because of ObamaCare?

SCHUMER: It’s in part because of ObamaCare but health care costs have been going up by double digits for years and years and years. The good news is in this bill there’s a way to stop it.”

 

 

 

 

 

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Enjoys 51% Rise In Profits

 

 

 

” Berkshire Hathaway, the investment firm led by Warren Buffett, has posted a 51pc rise in profits thanks to the performance of its insurance companies and the rising value of the businesses it owns stakes in.

Berkshire said net income rose to $4.89bn (£3.14bn) in the first quarter of its financial year on the back of revenues growing 15pc to $43.9bn.

The conglomerate controls almost 100 companies across insurance, utilities, clothing and consumer goods, but also holds stakes in some of the world’s biggest businesses, including Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and Tesco, which is Berkshire’s biggest holding outside the US.”

 

 

 

 

Despite Sequester, DOD Signs Contract For $59/Gallon Green Jet Fuel

 

 

 

 

” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently warned that sequestration would cause “suspension of important activities, curtailed training, and could result in furloughs of civilian personnel” but the spending cuts haven’t killed the green fuels program, as the Pentagon has continued purchasing renewable fuel at $59 per gallon

Conventional JP-8 jet fuel costs $3.73 a gallon, according to the Defense Logistics Agency.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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