VFDs Being Ripped Off By The State
Volunteer Fire Departments in Texas may be slighted financially again this year and the next by the state, as dedicated funds might be targeting other causes. These funds were established to mitigate the cause and spread of fires and to pay for specialized firefighting services.
As budgetary decisions are being completed, it appears that the majority of the Texas House and the Senate are leaning toward holding back these funds.
In his budget proposal for 2014 and 2015, Gov. Rick Perry is favoring re-appropriation of funds for things like strategic economic programs such as $35,000,000 for video game development, television shows,and films; $94,000,000 per year for temporary jobs, and $132,000,000 for emerging technology.
Nearly 80 percent of fire departments in Texas are volunteer. So why would the state decide to inhibit training and properly equipping VFDs when multifunctional approaches are required to contain and extinguish large fires? The funds are statutorily intended for VFDs to equip and train volunteer firefighters.
Firefighters play an important role in safety and put their lives at risk for their communities. They help with roadway accidents, disasters, and contribute indirectly economically in the realms of job creation, tourism, industrial development, rebuilding, and help alleviate the cost of hiring outside firefighting services.
The VFD Assistance Dedicated Account is replenished each August to the tune of $30,000,000 by property insurance companies, funded with taxpayers’ premiums, not as taxes. However, in 2012-13, the state only appropriated $7,000,000 per year to the VFDs, using the remainder of the money for other things. This year the number being discussed by the state legislature is $13.5 to $18.5 million per year. The estimated balance on Sept. 1, after $30,000,000 in premiums is deposited, is estimated at $91.9 million.
Opponents of the state’s short-changing local VFDs and the communities they serve claim that the extra money remaining in state coffers helps to make the state budget look balanced and is discretionary for spending elsewhere, when the money was collected from insurance companies, paid for by their customers, to assure quality services from volunteer fire departments, a giant rip-off by the state.
Many community VFD members conduct fund-raisers to help pay for upgrades to equipment, which goes beyond fighting fires, but it is necessary, especially when the state does not deliver intended funds.
A campaign to have the money rightfully allocated has been started and the public is urged to help by voicing outrage at state office holders for even considering the plunder of these dollars. To sign a petition, log onto www.signon.org/sign/reinstate-funding-for-1. It is emphasized that calling one’s state senators, legislators, the governor, and lieutenant governor could likewise be helpful. Find elected officials by logging on to: www.texastribune.org/directory.
–W. Leon Smith
Jack Frost Takes Bite Out Of Texas Wheat
Though ice loads during freezing weather can damage irrigation pivots, many producers will keep them running until it drops well below freezing, said Rick Auckerman, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agent for Deaf Smith County. The temperature was 32 degrees with 20 -25 mph northerly wind when this picture was taken. (Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service photo by Rick Auckerman)
COLLEGE STATION – The damage to the wheat crop in the Panhandle, Southern Plains and Rolling Plains regions from the last bout of freezing weather was not uniform, but losses were “significant,” according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agronomist.
Freezing weather this late is a rare phenomenon, Dr. Travis Miller, AgriLife Extension agronomist and Texas A&M University soil and crop sciences associate department head said. He noted that in his 35 years as an AgriLife Extension agronomist, he’s never seen freezes occur this late in the year.
Texas, Florida Bankers Sue Treasury, IRS
Challenge Foreign Deposit Reporting Requirement
AUSTIN – The Texas and Florida Bankers Associations filed suit recently against the Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging a new IRS regulation requiring that U.S. banks report to the IRS annually on interest payments made to non-resident aliens.
The IRS rule, which went into effect in January, requires banks to report the interest payments beginning in 2014 even though interest paid to non-resident aliens is not subject to federal taxation in the U.S.
The Texas and Florida Bankers Associations are seeking a declaratory judgment holding that the amendments are invalid since they were promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and Regulatory Flexibility Act, which require new regulations to be based on factual analysis and relevant benefits in relation to costs.
The complaint argues specifically that Treasury and the IRS failed to adequately consider the economic impact stemming from the significant outflow of bank deposits from the United States, which will (and already have) been the result of the new regulation.
Many foreign bank customers would rather withdraw their deposits and close their U.S. accounts than be subject to a rule requiring that their personal accounts and investments be reported to the IRS and shared with their home governments as is specifically planned under the new regulation.
Foreign account holders place money in U.S. banks for several reasons: fear about crime/security in their home countries; lack of trust in their governments or financial institutions in their home countries; and their view that the U.S. is a reliable place to keep their money. For Mexican nationals, there is a fear of their financial information getting into the wrong hands, resulting in kidnapping, extortion and other crimes.
“For banks, a drain in deposits would significantly reduce funds available for lending and investment,” said TBA President and CEO Eric Sandberg. “This reduction in deposits will further weaken the economy by making it difficult for community banks to make loans at a time that our economy can least afford it.”
A TBA survey found the outflow in non-resident alien deposits to have already reached approximately $100 million. In addition to significantly decreasing available bank funds, the compliance costs associated with this new rule will be considerable because of the paperwork that has to be filed to stay in compliance with the rule.
The Texas and Florida Bankers Associations are being represented in this case by Jones Walker, LLP.
TBA represents the Texas banking industry—with members ranging from the smallest bank in the nation to the largest bank in the nation. This includes 85 percent of Texas banks, 5,200 bank branches and 95 percent of Texas deposits.
Stuck In History…
Stuck in history: Mother’s Day, Niles, Bikers & Charlie Chapman
http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2013/05/stuck-in-history-mothers-day-niles.html
“Would you like to play Charlie Chaplin’s mother in my new movie?” a film student at UC Berkeley asked me recently. Of course I would. Yeah. Sure!
Did you know that Charlie Chaplin’s mother suffered from and finally died of tertiary syphilis, which she contracted while being forced into prostitution in the gold fields of South Africa by her greedy and unscrupulous husband? And that Charlie then grew up in a Dickensian-style orphanage in the slums of London? It’s true.
And did you also know that Chaplin made a whole bunch of his movies in Niles, California — back before Hollywood was Hollywood and Niles was Hollywood first? And that Niles is just 30 miles south of Berkeley? And that Niles is now one of the antique-store (and biker-bar) capitals of the world?
Just for a moment, let’s take a break from all the lies and propaganda http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17948-forget-cocaine-the-bigger-danger-to-america-is-snorting-crack-koch we are all currently being bombarded with on our flat-screen TVs (propaganda that tells us Syria has WMDs just like Iraq did; that Iran, not the CIA, is the world’s baddest Bad Guy; that only Wall Street needs and deserves a bailout; and that John Kerry has the absolute right and cajones to contest honest elections in Venezuela but did diddly-squat to contest dishonest elections in Ohio http://filmmakermagazine.com/69630-slurping-docs-at-tribeca/). Instead, let’s return to those simple days of yesteryear when everything was uncomplicated and nice and the Little Tramp was king of comedy.
That’s what happens when you visit Niles, CA.
Niles is a sweet little all-American town with a main street and steam trains and an old-fashioned tearoom that is offering Mothers Day high tea.
I remember my own mother with very mixed feelings. She’s dead now (death is the ultimate career change, BTW), so it’s obviously too late to be working out all that emotional spaghetti with her in person — so on Mothers Day these days I just have to say goodbye to all that ambiguity and just let it all go.
But apparently Charlie Chaplin couldn’t — and didn’t. He always thought that he was the one who drove his mother nutzo and never even knew that she had syphilis.
Did I drive my own mother around the bend also? Did Barbara Bush drive young GWB nuts? And what was Anton Scalia’s mother like? We should ask Sandra Day O’Connor about that one.
Happy Mothers Day.
According to Mary Catherine Bateson, her mother (Margaret Mead) completely changed the way that babies were brought into the world and how children were treated here in America. At a time when American children were regimented rigidly with regard to feeding times and that babies were tortured with weird-looking instruments immediately after their birth, Mead let the world know that, in Samoa it was okay to hug one’s child and even actually breast-feed it when it was hungry instead of just letting it cry for three hours and then feeding it only from a bottle.
My mother herself wrote in my baby book that the hospital staff where I was born didn’t hardly allow my mom to see me during the first whole ten days of my life — and then they had the chutzpah to tell her that she couldn’t breast-feed because her milk had all dried up. No wonder so many American guys have such fixations with breasts!
And American women seem to be fixated on them too. Just ask your nearest local plastic surgeon.
So. Perhaps the simple days of yesteryear weren’t so simple after all. Charlie Chaplin’s mother was bonkers from syphilis. We had the great 1929 stock market crash. And World War I was basically a slaughterhouse driven by propaganda and lies — so much so that the main difference between then and now appears to be that, back in the day, no one hadflat-screen TVs.
But Niles’ silent-movie museum, antique stores, biker bar and tea room are still nice places to go on Mothers Day, and to dream about a simple and peaceful time long ago — one that never really existed.
PS: I also got to play another mother in a recent Academy of Art student film as well. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6frzpjGhHEM
PPS: Chicago’s probate court system seems to have developed a rather unique way of celebrating Mothers Day. First, court attorneys who act as guardians for elders (at $250 an hour!) actively seek out home-owning old people; send in a phony doctor who declares them to be incompetent; get them tossed into a warehousing-type old people’s home; sell off the helpless elders’ homes; and then pocket the profits http://marygsykes.com/2013/05/03/a-system-set-up-to-dump-people-in-nursing-homes-let-the-attorneys-hold-a-bake-sale-for-funding/#comment-2050
How can people like this sleep at night? And how can they ever even look their own mothers in the eye after doing these grossly egregious things to other people’s mothers?
Saddam Offered To Leave Iraq In 2002
The Last Step For War – Keeping Saddam Hussein In Iraq
Why did Saddam Hussein stay in Iraq? There was every motive to leave. He had seen what happened to leaders who attempt to withstand the corporate interests who are looking for an opportunity to loot a country. While John Perkins had not yet written his book, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” he knew the score. Saddam could never withstand an invasion by America. He was not suicidal. He had gotten his start as a hire for the CIA and knew what was poised to happen to him, his family, and his nation.
Cast your mind back to those dark days when we were reeling, the images of towers falling from the sky still engraved on our retinas.
Voices were being raised in objection and silenced.
Look over the time line appearing in Mother Jones, September/October 2006 Issue, titled, “Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq,” by Jonathan Stein and Tim Dickinson.
The war against Iraq began June, 2002, with intense bombing. The U.S. military flew 21,736 sorties and attacked 349 targets between June and the official start of the war in 2003.
Bombing is an act of war.
Rove, Cheney, and the Bush Administration, thwarted with the lack of evidence that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, falsified evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Reports by debunked sources, specifically Curveball, known to be unreliable, was treated as trusted sources.
Every conceivable action was taken to suppress the truth and allow the spin campaign, which began as the White House Iraq Group in August of 2002. This included, Rove, Libby, Rice, as well as Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin.
Cheney personally lied, over and over again, to get Congress to acquiesce, to the media and to the public.
The Administration knew they were manufacturing, spinning, to start a war even while Saddam Hussein was offering to allow UN inspectors into his country (Sept. 18, 2002) and all reports from returning CIA moles affirmed Saddam had abandoned WMD programs. This information was buried in the CIA bureaucracy.
Anything which disagreed with the drive for war in Iraq was suppressed. Lies, ‘sexing up,’ reports, were reported publicly.
The use of torture has been rationalized and was being used, despite the Geneva Conventions and Protocols on Human Rights and the Conduct of Hostilities.
The Bush Administration was, collectively, behaving like a bunch of chimps working themselves up to violence, to a person, ignoring their actions and were, effectively, converting a nation dedicated to individual freedom and human rights into its antitheses.
One Sept. 26, 2002, during a Rose Garden speech, Bush said, “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.” The same day, during a speech in Houston Bush said of Saddam, “After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad.”
Two days later Bush said in his address to nation: “‘The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more, and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given.”‘
In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to come, Bush delivered a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, in which he stated, “‘Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Today we know effective deployment of drone technology was far beyond anything available to anyone – but the U. S.
Battered and intimidated, on Oct. 11, “Congress—including all serious Democratic contenders—votes to grant Bush power to go to war.” On Nov. 5, control of the Congress moved to the GOP. The campaign of lies, using fear and their love of country, had allowed the ongoing theft of elections by Karl Rove to work again.
On Nov. 10 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1441 offering Iraq ‘”a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.”” Iraq immediately agreed and UN weapons inspectors returned.
Saddam Hussein would have known of every comment and been forced to consider his options. His country was being hammered by bombs, his plans to sell oil to partners other than the U. S. were, therefore stymied. It would be a compelling reality for him to consider an exit strategy at this point.
Only one event could now stop the War in Iraq from going forward, for Saddam to offer to leave Iraq. Given his options, this would have been the only safe thing for him to do. All previous events, now clear to us and documented, show he was being set up. His very life, and those of his family members, were on the line.
Saddam made just this offer in November of 2002.
Clearly, the Bush Administration would ignore this request. Saddam, therefore, made contact with the previous administration. The Clintons, through their associate Sidney Blumenthal, former White House aide and his son, Max, pulled out all of the stops to ensure the one event which could derail plans to invade Iraq.
The offer was made by Saddam, via email, through Max Blumenthal, this forwarded on to his father. With the Clintons’ assurances, they were able to persuade Saddam to stay in Iraq.
Sidney Blumenthal was then unaware his computer had been hacked. A keylogger was sending his e-mails to another party, who reported this to the CIA. The same party then found herself subject to a barrage of harassment and threats beginning as the Iraqi invasion began.
How much was it worth to keep Saddam in place? Could pay-offs have been made to ensure the cooperation, and silence, of the Clintons and Blumenthals?
According to a Los Angeles Times article, titled, “Clintons disclose wealth,”published April 05, 2008, written by Peter Nicholas, Robin Fields, and Dan Morain,when the Clintons left the White House, “in January 2001, they (the Clintons) had amassed more than $11 million in legal debts, incurred during investigations into the Whitewater controversy and the former president’s affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.” Within the next year or so their, “returns show that the family’s annual income shot up after her husband left the White House, rising from $358,000 in 2000 to $16 million a year later, when Bill Clinton listed his occupation as “speaking and writing.” “
Sidney Blumenthal also left the White House in less than prosperous financial condition. The cause was also a lawsuit stemming from elements of the NeoCon cabal which went into the White House in 2001.
In 1997, Blumenthal had filed a $30 million libel lawsuit against Internet blogger Matt Drudge and AOL, Drudge’s employer, because of a false claim Drudge made of spousal abuse.
In fact, the article was the brainchild of Drudge and John Fund, then still on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Drudge had attributed the story to “top GOP sources.” Drudge later retracted the story.
Drudge publicly apologized to the Blumenthals and the lawsuit was dropped with Blumenthal, who, ironically, settled by making a small payment to Drudge over a missed deposition.
In his book, The Clinton Wars, Blumenthal claimed he was forced to settle because he could no longer financially afford the suit, which had proven to be expensive. Drudge, who was guilty, had managed to receive support from both solicitations, claiming he was being harassed, and likely from operatives working for the NeoCons.
Saddam’s actions, in offering to leave, were entirely predictable.
Soliciting support from the Clintons, by the Bush White House, resulted in a cooperative relationship between the former and then president which was mutually beneficial, ending any threat from the Clintons and sealing them into a role within the power elite, which they continue to enjoy today.
