This plan [Second Five Year Plan], of L350 million as contrasted with the previous one of L85 million, was to be financed by large external loans, by foreign private investment and from internal taxes.

Today I had to get a few office supplies. I had to get my car, which thankfully I have, then drive 6 miles to a store to get a high lighter. As I was driving I was looking at the empty lots of died business, a torn down GM Plant, and nearly every business built on the main road with little behind it, and all one story buildings with lawns!

I thought of my 9 years living in Germany, that if I had to get something I would walk out of the apartment, and down the stairs the ground floor would be a store usually, and within a few blocks would be the post office, school, church, grocery store, and the list goes on. Things were built on top of each other, and there were no lawns because the stores were in a central location with apartments, and town houses above them.

I wonder what is the long term cost in America of this urban sprawl.
1. commute to work and to do your errands costing you the must of transporation, time and expenses.
2. The dependency on oil, and future production of green house gas emissions.
3. The city must pump, and line utilities out to the townships costing more expenses in taxes and infrastructure to allow this building out.
4. Business get to advertise and capitalize by being little pretty lawns with one story buildings right along the road that your paying to have build in your taxes to then drive on your expense on.

So why would looking at the long term image of building up and not building out not be thought of in the municipal planning? Yes business would spend more and would have more actions to conduct in the start but in the long run,
1. Taxes would be decreased
2. you might not have to drive to get a few items needed.
3. lower green house gas emissions
4. lower or eliminate commuting and congestion on the roads.
5. crazy thought but we talk about the urban centers become dead lets build up and see the jobs come back into the cities, and people able to shop, and invest locally

By Jim O’Neill Friday, November 27, 2009

“They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be.” —Lord Christopher Monckton November 23, 2009

In a recent article, Lord Monckton pointed out that, far from suffering from global warming, the planet has experienced “rapid and significant cooling” over the past nine years.

That bears repeating. Over the past nine years the world has experienced “rapid and significant cooling.” There has been no global warming—it is a Big Lie.

The whole “global warming” myth is a scam, a fraud, and most significantly, a crime.

Click the link below for more:

Climategate Criminals, and Getting Our Money Back.

What is it with politicians and not paying their taxes?

The Internal Revenue Service has filed a federal tax lien against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for nearly $80,000, public records show.

The lien was filed May 11 at the Los Angeles County recorder’s office for $79,064, according to a record in an electronic database that includes lien filings. The record does not indicate what property the lien was placed on, but it lists the debtor asArnold Schwarzenegger with the governor’s home address in Brentwood.

The lien was reported this morning by TMZ.com, which posted a copy of a lien document that says it is from the county recorder’s office. That document shows that Schwarzenegger owes $39,047.20 from 2004 and $40,016.80 from 2005. The document also lists a section of the IRS code that suggests the debt may be penalties for a failure to report certain business transactions.

Schwarzenegger’s spokesman, Aaron McLear, said in a statement that the “governor has paid his taxes in full and on time.”

“No one, including the IRS, has notified the governor of any issues whatsoever with his taxes,” McLear said. “We are contacting the IRS to determine ifthe document in question, which appears to be a penalty for missing info and not for unpaid taxes, is legitimate and if there is any discrepancy to resolve.”

Seems a little odd that the IRS would jump straight to filing a lien against Governor Schwarzenegger without ever having sent him a notification.  But then again, we are talking about the IRS.  Not exactly a model of efficiency and competency.

Regardless, shouldn’t the number of high-profile politicians and bureaucrats who have been caught over the last year or so with unpaid taxes be indicative of the dire need for tax reform?  If our tax code is so bloody complicated not even the affluent political class – not even many of the people involved with writing and enforcing the tax code – can follow it, why should the average citizen be expected to be able to follow it?

We need simpler taxation.  The problem is with a simpler tax code it’s easier for citizens to understand how much they’re paying in taxes.  And if citizens begin to understand how much they pay in taxes (instead of just focusing on their refunds) you’d see a whole lot more opposition to some of this government spending.

Bureaucracy is the collective organizational structure, procedures, protocols, and set of regulations in place to manage activity, usually in large organizations and government.it is represented by standardized procedure (rule-following) that guides the execution of most or all processes within the body;. A bureaucracy traditionally does not create policy but, rather, enacts it. Law, policy, and regulation normally originates from a leadership, which creates the bureaucracy to put them into practice. In reality, the interpretation and execution of policy, etc. can lead to informal influence. A bureaucracy is directly responsible to the leadership that creates it, such as a government executive or board of directors.As a matter of practicality, the bureaucracy is where the individual will interface with an organization such as a government etc., rather than directly with its leadership.

Midwest Voices: I suddenly realized how easy it might be to get “the bureaucracy” working for you. If there existed a “consensus” on what the greater good should be- and maybe even the means to get there (ends justifying the means) by the various ruling elites in this country (and/or world), then the few people willing to take a personal hit for justice might never get his or her message out due to the machinery of the bureaucracy working against them.

The bureaucracy doesn’t question orders or take the initiative to question assumptions. The bureaucracy obeys. And once the government bureaucracy gets moving in a certain direction it isn’t that easy to get it derailed- no matter how idiotic what they are doing seems. It is a self-licking ice cream cone, as some call it. Paradigms are not questioned nor directions changed- until maybe there’s a lot of embarrassing press and Congressional inquiries.

ClimateGate, challenging the “bureaucracy” and “the consensus” that the Global Warming Religionists have built up. And how the media is on board with the “consensus” and unwilling to question it.

Just like Health Care Reform.

Just Like ACORN.

Just Like Cap & Trade.

Just Like “terrorism”, a word a Liberal can’t even think let alone discuss.

The wheels of bureaucracy grind very slowly.

And when the media is in on it. It’s positively Orwellian.

IBD:  Here’s a dirty little secret about the New York Times: It likes to leak things. Important things. Things that change the course of the public conversation. From the Pentagon Papers to the ruined terrorist-surveillance programs of the Bush era, the Times has routinely found that secrecy is a danger and sunlight is a disinfectant.

Until now. A troublesome hacker recently released e-mails going to and from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, e-mails that exposed how the “scientific experts” cited so often by the media on global warming are guilty of crude political talk, attempts at censoring opponents and twisting scientific data to support their policy agenda.

The e-mails prove just how dishonest this left-wing global warming agenda truly is.

And now suddenly, the New York Times has found religion and won’t publish these private e-mails. Environmental reporter Andrew Revkin, who’s more global warming lobbyist than reporter, quoted — sparsely — from the e-mails, but declared that he would not post these texts on his “Dot Earth” blog on the Times Web site: “The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”

That rule didn’t apply to things like the disclosure of the Swift global bank monitoring program against terrorists.

Unlike our secret terror-fighting efforts, there is no grave matter of national security to protect here. There is only a danger of shredding the undeserved reputation of some global-warming alarmists as nonpartisan, nonideological, just-the-facts scientists with no preconceived environmentalist or statist agenda.

The networks also have ignored this emerging scandal with all the ignorance they could muster.

But in the seven days after the New York Times revealed the existence of an NSA program to monitor communications to terrorist cells abroad, the three networks ran a combined 23 stories about the program, more than one story, per network, per night.

How many have run stories on ClimateGate?

Virtually none, and the few, like CNN’s micro-mini blow-off is about what you get.

It doesn’t fit THEIR agenda.

Their bureaucracy.

Their “perceived wisdom”

Their “consensus”.

So it’s no big deal.

Charles Krauthammer:  The United States has the best health care in the world but, because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive.

The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.

Worse, they’re packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes — such as the 118 new boards, commissions and programs — is political expediency.

Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There isn’t even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.

The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency. Throw a dart at the Senate tome:

• You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.

• You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates that the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.

• Y ou’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — randomly picked — that will radically raise marginal income-tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.

The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool.

But the Bureaucracy demands to be fed. And the Democrats want to gorge it on 1/6 of GDP of this country.

They believe it benefits them.

The Frankenstein’s Monster of Bureaucracy will be created by them and they will be Frankenstein.

They will still have the illusion of being in control of it.

Even after the creature breaks out and terrorize everyone it won’t be their fault.

And considering they were off by on Medicare cost projections. They  were 1/9 of the reality and it’s getting worse every day. Can you imagine what this going to look like in your kid’s life time??

God help us all.

(oh, sorry left wingers that was a right-wing extremist evil Christian moment)

Allah Akbar.

Feel better now

Try Nate Silver, a statistician and liberal-media favorite, recently named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. He says scientists in this exchange were unethical:

“Dr. Jones, talking candidly about sexing up a graph to make his conclusions more persuasive. This is not a good thing to do — I’d go so far as to call it unethical — and Jones deserves some of the loss of face that he will suffer.”

But then he adds the typical liberal disclaimer: “Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that happens all the time in both academia and the private sector — have you ever looked at the graphs in the annual report of a company which had a bad year? And it seems to happen all too often on both sides of the global warming debate.”

When conservatives are wrong, conservatives are wrong. When liberals are wrong, everyone does it, don’t you know?

It’s no big deal.

Nothing to see here.

Hey, did you remember Mark Foley? , wasn’t he just awful…

In another e-mail from Jones to Mann, the Washington Post reported, there’s talk of cutting skeptical scientists out of the official U.N. report: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” Jones writes. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

But you can’t take that literally, it was “out of context”. That’s not really what he said…

But Tea Bag Protests are all shills for Insurance Companies.

And anyone who denies the “consensus” on Global Warming must be a shill for the fossil fuels industry…

Fascinating, isn’t it folks.

This kind of censor-your-opponents activity ought to disgust a journalist who values openness and rigorous debate above all.

Every day the networks avoid this story, they’re saying they don’t really care about either of those values. In fact, they become willing accomplices in a cover-up of global proportions.

So what else aren’t they willing to tell you? Hmmmm….

That is, after they get over their obsession with the couple who crashed the State Dinner, that is.

After all, that is really big news.

And ClimateGate is not.

And the formation of massive new bureaucracies is not either.

Nor is massive tax increases in a recession.

And we all know that bureaucrats are vastly more tolerant, kind, flexible, efficient, and more willing to help you out in a real crisis.

Don’t worry, be happy.

“Hope and Change” is on it’s way.

  Even as the president prepares to fly to Copenhagen for the much ballyhooed climate change negotiations, the climategate scandal is gaining momentum in the United States as people scour the internet in search of the scandalous emails.

  This article states that climategate may have doomed the cap and trade legislation that is now pending in congress. I hope so, but I do not think that the we can rely on that prediction. The fact alone that Barack Obama is still flying to Copenhagen is proof enough to me that the liberals in congress are not taking climategate serious enough.

The cap and trade legislation was always going to be a difficult sell with the American people, and with the economy in the tank and with Obama ignoring the economy to fly halfway around the world to talk about climate change the people are getting restless. The American people are wondering why Barack Obama has put the Copenhagen trip and cap and trade above the economy in terms of priorities.

  And with the news that the climate change data has been rigged from the beginning people are beginning to wonder why Obama is wasting his time and our money flying over there to save the talks. This is part of the reason why we can not count on climategate to doom the cap and trade legislation. Barack Obama and the leadership in congress are ignoring this story; they are moving ahead as if nothing has happened.

  The latest polls on healthcare reform show that only 35% of the people agree with the healthcare reform bill being debated in congress yet they are pushing ahead with the legislation anyway. To hell with the American people; we know what is best for them and they are too stupid to understand we are doing this for their own good. That is the mantra of the liberal leadership in congress. And that is exactly what is happening on climategate also.

  That is why the news of climategate won’t stop the cap and trade legislation in and of itself; that is why we have to apply the pressure to these people. The protests and angry emails haven’t stopped the liberal leadership from moving forward against the people’s will on the healthcare reform bill, but we have seen how much trouble Barack Obama has had getting a bill passed. With the majorities Obama enjoys in congress he should be able to pass whatever he wants, but he hasn’t been able to, and that is because some of the vulnerable politicians have to listen to us whether they want to or not. We have slowed the healthcare reform legislation down and it will be up to us to STOP the cap and trade bill now in congress.

  Cap and trade can be stopped, but it will be up to us to do it. We cannot let these politicians ignore the climategate story. We have to call, write, and email our senators and congressmen and demand an investigation into climategate. Because this goes beyond just cap and trade, as the article I linked to above also states; there could have been criminal activity on the part of the IPCC; did they falsify data to secure funds? On the surface it certainly appears as though they did.

  This is a serious matter and it needs to be addressed by congress. Cap and trade is based on this data and now we have irrefutable proof that the data has been rigged. The people responsible for manipulating this data to fit a political agenda need to be brought to justice; they are criminals and they have already cost the taxpayers millions– if not billions– of dollars.

  Climategate should doom cap and trade, especially in an economy that can’t afford to have legislation passed that would further cripple it. We have to make sure that our leadership does not ignore this story. We have to make them listen to us! Any politician who does not do anything to have this story investigated is an accessory after the fact to the climate change crime.

I can’t possibly be the only person getting sick of people having babies.

There are two types of people who truly annoy me lately.  Religious people and those making babies.

I can’t get mad at the folks in less educated and tribal parts of the world, where destitute women in poverty-ridden regions of our planet, often don’t have much of a choice in the matter.  They are baby making machines creating armies for Mao, Krishna, Allah or whatever it is Russians believe in this week.

But educated women in our enlightened liberal societies going “goo-goo” and “gaa-gaa” over babies is just plain stupid.

First and foremost, babies are a costly venture.  I don’t know what the exact figures are, but I am assuming that when you are feeding and cleaning an entirely new person, it costs you more money.

It would be fine if the costs were limited to just the baby makers.  But that’s never the case.

Perfectly good people who are not selfishly polluting the human gene pool with unnecessary images of themselves, have to pay higher taxes to put other peoples children through daycare, school, visits to clinics when they get sick or have “owies,” etc.

The most comical thing here is that breeders get tax breaks, while those consciously choosing not to burden the social system, have to make up for that revenue vacuum by paying more taxes.  This is truly unfair.

If a person chooses not to have children, they should have separate tax brackets based on income, at an overall lower rate than those burdening the social system with babies.  Pay for your own mistakes, breeders.

Second and finally for today, I keep hearing about this “miracle” of child birth.  Really?  Is it still a miracle?  After 2 million years of childbirth, and 7 billion people currently living on the planet, it’s ridiculous that there are individuals who still think they accomplished something when they had a baby.

Newsflash.  You accomplished something that horses, monkeys and stray dogs are also capable of doing.  You had sex. Then you had a baby. There is nothing special or miraculous about that.

You know when it stopped being a miracle?  When the second person was born ‘x’ million years ago.

You know what would be a miracle?  If people stopped having their own babies and made better human beings out of the millions of uncared for children already on the planet.

Today a prominent celebrity news site, TMZ, reported that one of the world’s most well known movie stars failed to pay his taxes in 2004 and 2005 and now owes the government nearly $80,000 in back taxes.  This celebrity also happens to be the governor of the state of California.

According to documents filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Arnold Schwarzenegger owes the IRS $39,047 from 2004 and $40,016 from 2005.

In total the Guv owes $79,064.00 … and as we all know, he’s definitely not saving the money for rainy day traffic violations.

An official at the L.A. County Recorder’s Office tells TMZ their system shows the lien is still active.

Calls to Arnold’s office have not been returned.

The story has since been confirmed by the Governor’s office and  the problem has been blamed on a “a minor paperwork tracking discrepancy.”

The Governator will be termed out in 2010 and arguably the current state of California is in need of more change than our nation after President George W. Bush.  While the housing crisis, burst of the tech bubble, or highest rate of unemployment rate since before World War II cannot all be attributed to Arnold, his administration has done little to turn things around and create a long term strategy for the nation’s most populous state.

Budget crisis after budget crisis and the state annually more than $20 billion in the red? Arnold’s solution: furloughs (including the tax department) and ineffective taxes.  Yearly multi-million dollar fire disasters? Arnold’s solution: declare a state of emergency. A health care system bankrupting the state? Arnold’s solution: veto reforms.  Crumbling education system? Arnold’s solution: allow public education tuition to rise 32% in a single year.

Because a celebrity gossip website has more investigative journalism on the state’s first family than mainstream television or newspaper, many on the national scene have dismissed Arnold’s latest mistake.  But this is California; things are done differently.  California needs dramatic change- a solution unique to the complexity of the state’s political structure and the extremely diverse and ever changing population.  Unfortunately, the potential Democratic candidate(s) for governor in 2010 have failed yet to capture the hearts of progressive Californians.

The state needs Arnold out. Anything short of a (currently nonexistent) political savior cannot save the state.  It has been irreversibly damaged due to Arnold’s lack of long term planning.

By Emma Sandoe

We Build Solutions Inc.

With the new tax credit available for Canadians I thought I might have to jump on the band wagon. So far, 2 of my girlfriends have taken advantage of this credit and then I thought, well why shouldn’t I? They gave me a business card for We Build Solutions Inc. I spoke to one of the employees and he explained to me how they could help me. Basically, they would do everything for me as far as contacting contractors, finding resources and making sure that my vision comes to reality. I guess you could call them the middlemen or like a wedding planner’s role in helping to plan a wedding. However, this has to do with house renovations.

Well, I’m happy to say that they did a wonderful job with my bathroom reno. AMAZING!!! And I managed to stay on budget which is even more amazing.

Their office is based out of Vancouver. And I just wanted to rave about this company as they saved me time from googling random contractors from the internet.
Check out my before and after pics:

Before & After Washroom

The State Department has egg on its face — it backed the wrong horse in Honduras.

It backed a leftist President who tried to abrogate the Honduran Constitution, and the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the Army to depose him — so he went into exile but with public US State Department support for his return.

Then the leftist deposed President sneaked back into the country and into a friendly Embassy, hoping for a popular Chavez-type uprising, but his tree fell in the Embassy and no one heard it.

There will be a new election this next month, there is no leftist opposition because there is no leftist support, the US will have to recognize the newly elected Poresident, and the leftist previously US State Department supported idiot will remain in the embassy.

Nice work Obama State Department!

The United States government might have a bigger budget to work with — if one bodybuilding governor would pay the back taxes it appears he never got around to paying. According to documents filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Arnold Schwarzenegger owes the IRS $39,047 from 2004 and $40,016 from 2005.

In total the Guv owes $79,064.00 … and as we all know, he’s definitely not saving the money for rainy day traffic violations.

An official at the L.A. County Recorder’s Office tells TMZ their system shows the lien is still active.

Calls to Arnold’s office have not been returned.

[ARTICLE]

So the Republicans have released a list of 10 policies their 2010 candidates should adhere to. Let’s just cut to the chase and take a look.

“(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;”

Great! Or at least it WOULD be great if it were true. But Bush and the Republicans in congress spent more money than any President before him (and Obama is even worse). Republicans are NOT for smaller government. They only say they are when Democrats are in power. But time and time again, it’s Republicans who outspend Democrats. Don’t get me wrong, both sides are big government scumbags and I’ll never vote for either of them. But at least Democrats don’t pretend to be for smaller government. At least they’re honest about their scumbaggery. And I like how they call it the “Obama stimulus”. If I remember correctly, the first stimulus bill went through during Bush’s term. McCain pushed for it and voted for it. Have you forgotten already? He tried to cancel a live presidential election debate so he could go vote for it. It was a big deal. Man, Americans have short memories. And when the first stimulus Bill was voted down in the House (before it was later passed), Bush went ahead and authorized his own little bailout with an executive order. Look it up. Republicans ARE NOT for fiscal responsibility. They just want it to be THEM wasting all the money on big flashy programs rather than the democrats.

“(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;”

Again, great!…if it were true. Sure “Obamacare” is going to be awful when it finally passes (and it WILL eventually pass), but so is “RomneyCare”. That’s right, Mitt Romney had his own little statist healthcare program as the governor of Massachusetts. Under his plan it was against the law to NOT have healthcare. No government sponsored healthcare, just a mandate that said you had to buy it yourself. So the democrats’ plan (government-run healthcare) is socialism and the republicans’ plan, (government-mandated private healthcare) is fascism. Whoopie. I can’t wait to vote on which party I want in office.

“(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;”

I actually can’t really comment on this. I oppose cap and trade as well but I haven’t taken the time to research what Republicans plan to do about energy reforms. But judging by their past records, I’d be willing to bet it’s just a different but equally bad option.

“(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;”

Unions. Ugh. I don’t like them but I also think that people have the right to associate with whomever they want and in whatever way they want…and that right extends to employers and business owners. They should be able to fire whoever they want for whatever reason they want. It’s their damn property.

“(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;”

At least they’re honest about this one. I disagree with them, but at least they’re not lying.

“(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;”

And this is the #1 reason that Republicans are bigger spenders than Democrats. They like war more….or do they? WWI, WWII, Korea, Clinton’s Yugoslavia nonsense; all started while democrats were in power. Both parties love their wars. Yes. Even Obama. On to Sudan! Save (bomb) Darfur!

“(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;”

Blah Blah Blah more warmongering.

“(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;”
Screw you Republicans! If you are religious, then marriage is a religious ceremony. If you’re not, marriage is a contract between two people. Neither of those areas are any of the government’s business. Legalize gay AND straight marriage!

“(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and”

Finally something I could agree on…if I knew they didn’t have a statist healthcare scheme of their own.

“(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.”

One more time, say it with me: GREAT!….if I knew it wasn’t a lie.

Look up H.R. 1022 sometime. It didn’t pass, thank goodness, but it was supposed to be another Clinton-style assault weapons ban but this time it was written and sponsored by Republicans. I will agree that more republicans seem to understand and support gun rights but don’t trust someone just because they have an (R) after their name. In fact, never trust ANY politician until you get to know them and their positions because, as we can see, they’re all liars and scumbags to the last….yes that includes YOUR pet politician.

As a citizen of the North Pole Santa is probably a little confused about who he should be paying his taxes to.

Sovereignty has never really been an issue in the past not least because there’s actually no land to speak of – the North Pole is a shifting piece of ice and only defined as an imaginary point where the lines of longitude cross.  Indeed back in 1920 when two Eskimos confessed to killing a member of the Peary expedition ten years previously, the case was dropped due to the inability of anyone to prove jurisdiction.

Canada and Denmark have the closest landmasses and just this week we saw Canada once again staking a claim for sovereignty over the North West Passage as well as some robust statements from various politicians over Canada’s rights to the Arctic interest.

Canada, of course, has some form here.  In 2000 they threatened to charge a pilot with ‘littering’ when he abandoned his plane due to engine failure near the North Pole.  He eventually returned to fix it and recovered the errant aircraft.  At the time no other countries sought to challenge Canada’s intent or legal right to do so.

Since then, however, things have changed and the catalyst is the potentially massive quantities of natural resources that sit below the ice pack.  Estimates vary but oil and gas reserves alone could be vast, albeit extremely expensive to recover.

Russia has regularly tested Canada’s patience with their military flights crossing into disputed Canadian territorial waters.  The odd US submarine pops up at the North Pole from time to time too, whilst the Russian navy went so far as to plant a flag on the sea bed at the North Pole.  I think it is fair to assume that this discussion is far from over.

How it will all be resolved or, indeed, if it ever will be resolved are difficult questions to answer.  Would a country actually be prepared to invade the North Pole? Would Canada or Denmark take military steps to defend such an act?  If the answer to either of these questions is actually no, then why bother debating or passing motions around sovereignty?

It’s a bit like hedging your bets – “we’ll keep posturing so no one forgets that we think it’s ours”.  Ultimately we suspect that words will not be enough but, with the price of oil and gas in particular relatively depressed at the moment,  this issue will be a news sub-plot for some time to come.

In the meantime perhaps Santa should just accrue his potential tax liability and make sure his records are accurate.  I guess at this time of year he probably has other things on his mind…

And they have filed a lien agains him…his office believes the problem is a info problem…and that the govenor has paid all taxes due the governmement…..

This article is from the New York Times and anyone (well, except those on the left) can easily see the biased so-called “reporting”. I’ll put a few excerpts here, and the link to make the entire article available.
Okay, here we go:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress enacted a law banning the government from providing funds to the group.

Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing various services related to affordable housing.

But the group has become a prime target for conservative critics, and on Oct. 1, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that included a provision that said no taxpayer funds — including funds authorized by previous legislation — could be “provided to” the group or its affiliates.

Founded in Arkansas in 1970, Acorn describes itself as the nation’s largest grass-roots community organizing group. It provides financial services to poor and middle-income families, conducts voter registration drives, and advocates for higher minimum wages and more affordable housing.

Conservatives have long complained about Acorn’s voter drives in poor neighborhoods, citing instances in which workers fraudulently registered imaginary voters like “Mickey Mouse.”

Criticism of the group escalated last September, when two conservative activists made public footage they had recorded using secret cameras of Acorn workers in several cities. The activists had posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking financial advice. Instead of raising objections, the Acorn employees counseled the couple on how to hide their illicit activities and avoid paying taxes.

Conservatives seized on the videos to further criticize the group, highlighting that the Obama campaign had paid an Acorn affiliate for get-out-the-vote efforts. Congress then enacted the ban on providing funds to it.

Of course the New York Times doesn’t mention the fact that the ‘conservative activists’ were requesting help to cover underage smuggling and prostitution of minors, or the recent uncovering of ACORN dumping thousands of incriminating documents, etc., etc.
The Obama cronies have figured out a way to get around stopping the tax-payer funding of Obama’s pet, ACORN.

Link here

* You can listen to a segment of the Slavoj Žižek essay on contemporary apocalypticism that will appear in our upcoming issue of Polygraph here. (via Verso)

* The headline reads, Cigar-Shaped “Mothership” Plunges Argentinian Town Into A Blackout.

* 15 Toys Not to Buy Your Child This Christmas. Of course, science proves you shouldn’t buy anyone gifts at all. (Both links via Neil.)

* Is the public option now too watered-down to fight for? Matt Yglesias and Steve Benen join Josh Marshall in thinking this over. I feel exactly how I did on Monday: the point is to pass anything so it can be improved without a filibuster.

* North Carolina in the news! Kay Hagan is the Senate’s 17th wealthiest senator (via), while Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina has gotten itself in big trouble for improper issue advocacy against the public option.

* Other politics quick hits: HIV travel ban finally lifted. The national GOP has money problems. They’re talking about a war tax. Despite what you may hear in the press, Obama is pretty good at this whole international diplomacy thing. And Dubai is collapsing; couldn’t have happened to a nicer country.

* The New York Times “100 Notable Books of 2009″ list is already out.

* ‘Are Fake Academic Conferences the New Nigerian Prince Scam?’

* Little-used geek measurements.

Sheppey (distance)
I have to include Douglas Adams’ co-creation (with John Lloyd) here — It’s from The Meaning of Liff, their dictionary of things there aren’t any words for yet. All the words in the dictionary are British place names (the Isle of Sheppey is off the Kent coast). One sheppey is the closest distance at which sheep are still picturesque, and is about seven-eighths of a mile.

* Thor, a Marvel comics character I’m still pretty sure has to be an elaborate joke, will redefine what a superhero movie can be.

* Black Friday LEGO nostalgia.

* Ah, that explains it: that badly timed Dollhouse ARG turns out to be the work of overzealous fans.

* Paging George Michael Bluth. (via)

The “One man, One vote” is as disastrous to  human liberty in the U.S. as it is in the U.N. with their “One Nation, One Vote.” At least the UN had to good sense to make two houses, and give the powerful nations the ability to thwart the propensity to redistribute every dime from the successful nations to the unsuccessful ones.

(Nations, like individuals, suffer primarily from self-inflicted wounds.)

With computers, we are technically capable of weighted votes wherein each vote is weighted to reflect the voter’s amount of taxes paid.

Those with the most to lose should have the most votes – and more importantly, those with everything to gain and NOTHING to lose should lose all of their voting influence.

Viewers of Judge Judy understand, although they may not initially agree.

Upon reflection, they may.

We have come a long way from Washington’s men having to wrap their feet in burlap because they did not have shoes for forced marches to position themselves to fight the Hessians. The Hessians had superior equipment and training. (They could fire four precise volleys a minute, compared to the “Rebels” ragged two!)

Today we have an entire Defense Department (DARPA) working with private company efficiency to assist universities and private concerns to give our fighting men an edge.

One of those edges they are working on is to make each unit in the military as self-sufficient as possible, diminishing the need to transport fuel.

Strangely enough, when DARPA decided to get into, for example, bio-fuels, they found the University of North Dakota was a decade ahead of anyone else, so DARPA has concentrated their cooperation there.

DARPA wants each individual soldier in the future to be able to recharge their military electronics (GPS, electronic rangefinder, personal video-surveillance over-the-hill capability, etc) on the spot with mini-solar chargers and even mini-solar wind turbines. Obviously, there is a civilian benefit to this effort toward distributed, individual-generated power.

(Some day, the South and Southwest will sell solar-generated electricity to the Northern states.)

DARPA, working with U. of North Dakota wants armies to be able to grow their own fuel, bio-mass or algae without having long supply lines and already they have replicated JP-8 jet fuel from bio-mass for the use in military jets.

DARPA is a great example of how government should work – and so is the group at U. of N. Dakota. At DARPA, scientists are selected from the best of the universities and private research centers, and employment is ONLY for three or four years – your termination date is stamped on your badge! There is no need for job-protection politics!

The guy who heads the N. Dakota research center with which DARPA now partners will not accept government money that is not generated through competitive bid, calls most government and university researchers “oxygen-suckers” and will not hire people who do not have at least one speeding ticket – because they are too risk-averse!

(My kind of guy!)

The problem with the American retirement system is that there truly is no American retirement system.

Think about it…

We have Pension plans (defined benefit plans) once thought to be the corner stone of a retirement plan (until they became too expensive to administer) and are now being phased out gradually.

Social Security (SSI) was invented to be a supplement to a pension but it has become the primary income source for most seniors and is severely underfunded.  Average SSI check is currently alittle over $1,100.  The current condition of SSI is so bad they put a warning on the front page of your annual SSI statement basically saying “hope you are not counting on us.”

Then we have a 401k plan (defined contribution plan) and IRAs which are supposed to supplement social security which was supposed to supplement a pension which was supposed to provide retirement income you couldn’t outlive.

Are you noticing that everything is supplementing everything else and nothing is primary?  In fact the one thing we do know about ourselves is that Americans spend too much, acquire excessive debt,  do not save and hope to retire in comfort.  Obviously something has to give and it has been our retirement. All of the plans  mentioned have failed the vast majority of Americans.   This is the dilemma facing the retirees of today and tomorrow.

Conventional wisdom (television, magazines, newspapers, etc…) tells you the answer to your retirement lies in the next bull market.  Unconventional wisdom tells you to see the “bull” in that type of thinking and that conventional wisdom has not worked and you need to find alternative methods of building wealth in today’s society.  After all if what you thought to be true was not true when would you want to know about it?

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