"Voters Evolt! - Promoting a Peaceful Political Evolution as a Focus for Dissent"

Mexico: The Greatest Threat To U.S. National Security

Facebook Note - June 16, 2010

As early as 1978, William Colby, then head of the CIA, stated, �In the long run, Mexico is a bigger threat to the U.S. than the Soviet Union.� Colby was concerned about population growth and illegal immigration; however, in 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden ranked Mexico as the greatest threat to the security of the United States, after Al Qaeda. Immigration is no longer the reason, and causes of the crisis flow from the north to the south.

Porfirio D�az, who ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1911, observed, �Pobre M�xico! �Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos! (Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!)

Implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 did in fact result in an increase in trade to and from Mexico by the U.S.; however, the 150% increase in exports from the U.S. to Mexico included the massive importation of cheap USDA-subsidized corn, which virtually destroyed Mexico�s corn production. Prior to NAFTA, Mexican farmers used half of Mexico�s farm land to produce corn, a staple of life in Mexico, for domestic consumption.

By 1996, Mexico was importing more than $1 billion in corn each year, and millions of indigenous rural workers were thrown out of work and reduced to wage slavery in the cities. Some migrated, illegally, to the U.S. looking for work, but many turned to the more lucrative illegal drug trade.

The former U.S. drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, says the Mexican government "is fighting for its survival against narco-terrorism" and could lose effective control over the areas of Mexico near the U.S. border.

Fed by enormous profits of up to $25 billion each year flowing from the U.S., along with a seemingly unlimited supply of military weaponry, the powerful drug cartels are armed with sophisticated weapons, many of which are smuggled over the border from the United States. It is with this array of superior weapons that drug cartels are threatening the very stability of their own country.

Upon taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calder�n unleashed the military in his declaration of war on the drug cartels. Since then, more than 23,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence, including hundreds in just the past five days.

President Calder�n does not equivocate about the blame: �The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug consumption in the world. It is as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world.�

Combined with an armed uprising of the indigenous people, who are being thrown off their constitutionally mandated ejidos by the neo-liberal polices of the Mexican government, the well-armed and powerful drug cartels pose a clear and present danger to the Mexican government and to the United States.

Mexican has a history of revolutions separated by a century: 1811 and 1911. With the 100th anniversary of the last one approaching next year, perhaps the United States should surrender in its own �War on Drugs,� legalize personal use and possession, and avoid the most dangerous threat to its own national security.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist who is currently writing a fact-based fictional political philosophy. His promotion of a peaceful political evolution is based at VotersEvolt.com, and he can be contacted at u2cox@msn.com.

Photo Credit: http://www.newcriminologist.com

The Age of Space-Solar Energy: Innovation in the Public Interest

Global Research - May 16, 2010

The industrial revolution has been driven for the past two centuries by the burning of hydrocarbons, first by coal in the Age of Steam, and then by oil and natural gas in the Age of Petroleum; however, as the flow of these fossil fuels slows down as demand goes up, ever-more-intrusive and massive extraction efforts increasingly threaten the progress of industrialization and the civilization it has produced.

The catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the latest and largest of hundreds of such ocean spills, and the recent methane gas explosion in Massey�s Montcoal mine was just another of the many disasters, worldwide, which have snuffed out the lives of workers who labor in dangerous conditions to feed our fossil-fuel addiction.

All around the planet we live upon, the quest for hydrocarbons is threatening the ability of humans to survive in the degrading environment and to govern their own corporate-dominated societies.

It is not just the environmental destruction caused by the extraction of coal-bed methane in Wyoming and Montana, the �fracking� of deep shale-gas formations and the consequential contamination of fresh water aquifers and rivers in the northeastern United States, or the blasting away of mountain tops in Appalachia; it is the fact that these extreme efforts are facilitated by a concert of corporate and governmental corruption that erodes freedom and democracy in the United States and threatens human civilization around the world.

There is no hope for the recovery of earth�s environment and the survival of human civilization as long as extraction decisions are governed by corporate greed. Public energy policy must be based on what is good for the people who vote for representatives, not on what produces profits for the corporations who buy the votes of the people�s representatives.

It may already be too late. The environmental destruction caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels may have already set in motion irreversible events which will ultimately spell the extinction of humanity. But, not to worry.

Our loving and forgiving Mother Earth will survive. It may take eons for her oceans, winds, and rains to wipe clean the crap we have produced, but someday, never fear, another of Gaia�s children will learn to fly and will study the artifacts of our existence and will wonder of we and why?

There may be, however, a more sensible and realistic alternative which will preserve the environment and human civilization, and which offers a more exciting and rewarding future for our children, as they learn to fly throughout the universe and to explore its adjacent dimensions.

So, let�s expand our vision and imagine for a moment how life could be after just a decade or two of innovation in the public interest.

A Vision for the Future

Imagine that the Interstate Highway System and most major streets and freeways in America were improved to provide a constant source of electromagnetic energy sufficient to power a standard automobile, with comfortable seating for five adults, anywhere in the United States at no cost to the owner-operator.

Imagine the introduction of triple-hybrid cars designed to operate primarily on electromagnetic energy supplied by induction through the surface of most highways and freeways, and which are equipped with small fuel-efficient internal combustion engines to supplement rechargeable batteries for trips on local streets and byways.

Imagine people could travel for free throughout the United States as a matter of national privilege. Workers could get to their jobs without having to labor for the first hour each day just to pay for getting there. People would have more money to spend on vacations, and they would be able to tour the nation, see the grand sights, and visit with friends and relatives along the way.

Imagine the positive economic consequences that would flow from the rebuilding of America�s transportation infrastructure and the creation of a domestic manufacturing capacity to build for the future.

Is this a realistic dream? If the United States decided to provide free power on its national highways as a matter of innovative public policy, where would it obtain the energy?

A Miraculous Source of Abundant Energy

First proposed by Dr. Peter Glaser in 1968, space-based solar technology can provide an inexhaustible, safe, pollution-free supply of energy and may offer a far more logical solution to current energy problems than petroleum or ethanol-based or even nuclear-fueled hydrogen systems.

The technology currently exists to launch solar-collector satellites into geostationary orbits around the Earth to convert the Sun�s radiant energy into electricity 24 hours a day and to safely transmit the electricity by microwave beams to rectifying antennas (rectennas) on Earth.

Space-solar energy is the greatest source of untapped energy which could, potentially, completely solve the world�s energy and greenhouse gas emission problems.

Following its proposal, the concept of solar power satellites was extensively studied by both the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. By 1981, it was determined that the concept was a high-risk venture; however, further study was recommended.

With increases in electricity demand and costs, NASA took a �fresh look� at the concept between 1995 and 1997. The NASA study envisioned a trillion-dollar project to place several dozen solar-power satellites in geostationary orbits by 2050, sending between two gigawatts and five gigawatts of power to Earth. However, the study�s leader, John Mankins, now says the program �has fallen through the cracks because no organization is responsible for both space programs and energy security.�

The project may have remained shelved except for the military�s need for sources of energy in its campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where petroleum costs $400 a gallon. A report by the Department of Defense�s National Security Space Office in 2007 recommended that the U.S. �begin a coordinated national program to develop [space-based solar power].�

There are three basic engineering problems presented in the deployment of a space-based solar power system: The size, weight and capacity of solar collectors to absorb energy; the ability of robots to assemble solar collectors in outer space; and the cost and reliability of lifting collectors and robots into space.

Two of these problems have been substantially solved since space-solar power was originally proposed. New thin-film advances in the design of solar collectors have steadily improved, allowing for increases in the efficiency of energy conversion and decreases in size and weight. At the same time, industrial robots have been greatly improved and are now used extensively in heavy manufacturing to perform complex tasks.

The remaining problem is the expense of lifting equipment and materials into space. At a cost of $20,000 per kilogram of payload, the U.S. is currently relying on the last few remaining flights of the space shuttle to move satellites into orbit and to resupply the space station. It has been estimated that economic viability of space solar energy would require a reduction in the payload cost to less than $200 per kilogram and the total expense, including delivery and assembly in orbit, to less than $3,500 per kilogram.

An American president once said, �We choose to go to the moon in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.� The United States readily achieved that objective and, effectively, won the Cold War. A similar challenge is now presented in the �Energy War.� What, if anything, will the current president say or do?

Although there are substantial costs associated with the development of space-solar power, it makes far more sense to invest the precious space exploration budget in the development of an efficient and reliable power supply for the future, rather than to waste tax dollars on a stupid and ineffective missile defense system or on an ego trip to Mars.

With funding for the space shuttle ending in 2012 and for the space station in 2017, America must decide upon a realistic policy for space exploration, or else it will be left in the dust by other nations, which are rapidly developing futuristic space projects.

China has aggressively moved into space by orbiting astronauts and by demonstrating a capability to destroy satellites, and it is investing $35 billion of its hard-currency reserves in the development of energy-efficient green technology, and has become the world�s leading producer of solar panels.

Over the past two years, Japan has committed $21 billion to secure space-solar energy. By 2030, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plans to �put into geostationary orbit a solar-power generator that will transmit one gigawatt of energy to Earth, equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant.� Japanese officials estimate that, ultimately, they will be able to deliver electricity at a cost of $0.09 per kilowatt-hour, which will be competitive with all other sources.

The first nation that captures and effectively makes use of space-solar energy will dominate the world energy market for generations to come and will provide its citizens with a much healthier and a far more secure society.

The drawing of �Who Were They?� is by Helen Werner Cox, who was trained as a classical painter at Boston University. She is nearing retirement as a nationally-certified library media teacher, who has made extensive use of art in her literacy programs.

Elitism and Empathy in American Presidents:Who Cares for the Suffering Children?

Online Journal - May 1, 2010

Who cares that millions of children are suffering and dying around the world, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Gaza, Sudan, the Congo, Colombia, and Mexico, and in the United States?

Why are American voters only given the choice of voting for members of the political, social and economic elite to be their president, rather than for leaders who care for and identify with the needs of ordinary people?

Do presidential candidates supplant their empathy with loyalty to the ruling elites, or do the elites only select pliable candidates with an absence of empathy?

Elitism and the Seizure of Political Power

Webster�s defines elites as �a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence.�

Elitism was exemplified by the royals of Europe who sat on the thrones of England, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Russia and other countries. They intermarried and for hundreds of years controlled the lives of their subjects, while occasionally sending them to die in family squabbles with their cousins.

The royal�s concern for those they ruled was famously illustrated by Queen Marie Antoinette who, when told that the peasants had no bread, exclaimed, �Then, let them eat cake!� The hoi polloi returned the favor during the French Revolution by cutting off her head, along with that of her husband, King Louis XVI.

Earning millions of dollars a year from salaries, bonuses, investments and fraud, the individuals and their families who control major financial institutions, foundations and corporations are the new royalty and, like the kings and queens of old, they have little care or concern for anyone other than themselves, their own, and their profits.

With little allegiance to the United States or its people, these elites seek a �New World Order� within which to exercise their power. They meet secretly on Hilton Head Island and in the Bohemian Grove to network, and they conspire at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group to complete their arrangements.

Since 1980, all U.S. presidents, including the current incumbent, have shared an allegiance to the ruling elite, and they have governed with policies that favor the rich and powerful over the poor and disadvantaged.
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Economic Chaos and Political Survival

Global Research - October 11, 2008

" -That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,� organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." ~The Declaration of Independence

How many more lies must we listen to and how many more political scandals must we endure before we become sick enough to demand effective changes in our government? Have we suffered enough to force us through a political "evolution" to safeguard our freedoms in this country and to avoid committing war crimes against others?

In Washington's Crossing, an excellent history of the near failure of the American Revolution in the winter of 1776, David Hackett Fischer concluded that it was not Washington's leadership or the victories at Trenton and Princeton that saved the revolution following his resounding defeat in New York City. Rather, the victories resulted from the revival of spirit that arose among the ordinary people in the Delaware Valley as they began to read Thomas Paine's American Crisis.

According to Fischer, "This great revival grew from defeat, not from victory. The awakening was a response to a disaster. Doctor Benjamin Rush, who had a major role in the event, believed that this was the way a free public would always work, and the American republic in particular. He thought it was a national habit of the American people (maybe all free people) not to deal with a difficult problem until it was nearly impossible."

Although we are calculating the cost in thousands of lives and billions of dollars, we cannot imagine the full extent of damage that will flow from President Bush's having misled the American people into an illegal war with Iraq and our innocent troops into the commission of war crimes. We must pay attention to the threats and fear the U.S. will launch another "preemptive" war, dropping nuclear "bunker busters" on Iran.

Increasingly, we can perceive the extent of devastation to our economy, as President Bush throws away our hard-earned money, eliminates taxes for his wealthy friends, runs up debts for our children and grandchildren to pay in the future, tries to destroy our Social Security, encourages the shipment of American jobs out of the country, and allows the international value of our currency to depreciate.

All of us, liberals, independents, and conservatives, are going to be increasingly harmed by the failures of our government and those we've allegedly elected to run it. We must anticipate there are more lies on their lips waiting to be told, even more ugly secrets waiting to be uncovered and even worse scandals yet to unfold.

The good news is that the American people are still among the best, the bravest, and the brightest our human civilization has ever produced. America is the promised land - we are an amalgamation of all races and all cultures on Earth. We will survive and, ultimately, we will achieve a government that better cares for us and is less threatening to the rest of the world. The bad news is that we will have to go through hell to get there. So, how do we brave the flames? Continued - Print

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party Movement

Consortium News - April 22, 2010

Editor's Note: America's right-wing Tea Party movement harkens back to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 when angry citizens protested a British tax by throwing crates of tea into Boston Harbor. But the irrationality and inconsistency of today's Tea Partiers invite a more literary comparison: the tea party of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Today's Tea Partiers - by rejecting democratic institutions in the name of "liberty," by complaining about their loss of gun rights while brandishing firearms at government parks, by shouting wild claims about socialism" and "fascism," and by making the crypto-racist demand to "get our country back" - show all the sense of the Mad Hatter without the amusing charm, as author William John Cox and artist Helen Werner Cox note in this guest presentation:

There may be good reasons why the Tea Partiers are mad; but their solutions are equally mad.

The movement has rallied a mixed group of Americans who have come to believe their government has failed them and that the political process is doing nothing to solve the nation's problems.

While there may be truth in this complaint, the larger truth is that all of us are being manipulated by the big corporations and the wealthy elites, who have used the corporate-owned media to mislead many Americans, including the Tea Partiers, into acting against their own interests.

For millions of Americans, lies have become truth, such as during the health-care debate when modest reforms were distorted into "death panels" and "socialized medicine," or when some protesters demanded that the federal government keep its hands off Medicare, apparently not knowing that the health-insurance program for seniors was government-run.

But the sophistry that has infused the Tea Party protests would not have troubled the Mad Hatter or other characters in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

When the March Hare tells Alice during a tea party in Wonderland that she should "say what you mean," she replied: "I do, at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing you know."

To which the Hatter replied: "Not the same thing a bit! Why, you might as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see!'"

The March Hare added, "You might as well just say that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like!'"

The Dormouse piped up, "You might just as well say, that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe!" The Hatter concluded, "it is the same thing with you."

And so it has been for many American workers, the middle class and small business owners who have been deceived by oft-repeated lies and clever propaganda.

Indeed, one could argue that the Republicans used distortions - and the U.S. news media's obsession with the relatively small Tea Party protests - to trick the Democrats into passing a Republican health-care law, one that primarily benefits the insurance industry and other parts of the medical-industrial complex. The insurers stand to get 31 million new customers who will have no option to buy into a public plan.

The losers, again, will be the American people who already suffer from the most expensive and most inequitable health-care system of any industrialized nation. Yet, because of political/media pressures, the proposals that might have reined in costs and guaranteed meaningful access to doctors - a single-payer system or at least a robust public option - were discarded.

The next targets of this anti-government crowd are Social Security and other social welfare programs, including unemployment insurance and public education. With the wealthiest Americans paying historically low marginal income-tax rates, the burden for these programs has already been shifted to workers, the middle class and small business owners.

Now, the American people are being told that they cannot afford the very programs that most benefit them.

While presenting themselves as a kind of vanguard for rank-and-file Americans, the Tea Partiers are instead advocating more tax cuts for the well-to-do and fewer government services (and protections) for everyone. That will only give the corporations and the elites greater dominance over American life.

The future of democracy - and the survival of the last few constraints on unbridled corporate power - hang in the balance.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book, You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency is reviewed at YoureNotStupid.com.

The drawing of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party is by Helen Werner Cox, who was trained as a classical painter at Boston University. She is nearing retirement as a nationally-certified library media teacher, who has made extensive use of art in her literacy programs.

Anti-War March in Los Angeles on March 20, 2010

More than a thousand people, including hundreds of young people, marched on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles this afternoon to protest the illegal wars of aggression being fought by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Obama has become a target of the protest by his failure to end the war in Iraq and because of his escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Many of the protest signs demonstrated the people�s concern about jobs, education and health care and the wasteful expenditures of the illegal wars.

Voters Evolt! focused its cameras on the young people in the march and prepared a video slideshow set to Edwin Starr's anti-war classic, War. Click here.

A Highway for Peace

Media Monitors Network - March 24, 2010

The latest flap over Israeli housing construction in East Jerusalem has caused me to reflect upon the very deep and complicated feelings I have about the city.

I first passed through Jerusalem in December 1979 in an attempt to sneak into Tehran shortly after the American embassy hostages were taken. I returned two years later following the favorable verdict in the Holocaust Denial case and shared morning tea with Prime Minister Begin. In 1992, I testified in a trial there about the publication of the suppressed Dead Sea Scrolls and refused to identify my secret client. My last visit was in 2000 when my wife and I were married at Christ Church in the Old City on Valentine's Day.

The most pressing political issue is not who has the greatest international property rights in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nor, is it that the Palestinian people are more genetically related to the ancient Israelites who occupied Jerusalem at the time of Jesus than the Ashkenazi Jews who now control the Israeli government and who exercise great influence over U.S. policy.

The critical question is: "what can be done to peacefully resolve the dispute in a way that protects the political rights and ensures the operational and economic security of the Israeli and Palestinian people and which removes the United States as a target for terrorists?"

Rather than answering with a complicated policy paper, let me share a simple vision I have experienced over the years.

First, accept that the nation of Israel is politically, economically, and militarily capable of defending its own interests on the world stage and that it has the right to be free of internal terrorists attacks.

Second, imagine that the United Nations imposes a 50-year protectorate over the land of Palestine, including Gaza, as it existed prior to the 1967 war and declared the area to be a duty-free economic zone, with security and freedom of access guaranteed by the UN.

This is the vision:

Instead of the existing concrete wall, I imagine a modern freeway extending from Gaza through Hebron, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, Jericho and north along the 1967 West Bank border through the Golan Heights to the Syrian and Lebanese borders and terminating at the Mediterranean Sea.

Like all freeways, I imagine that the highway (border) is fenced and that it is patrolled and controlled by three-person motorized teams consisting of a non-Arab UN police supervisor, an Israeli police officer and a Palestinian police officer.

I imagine that the protectorate police force is only armed with non-military weapons, that all members are highly trained professionals, and that the protectorate provides economic and physical security to all of its inhabitants, both Palestinians and Jews, from its administrative headquarters in East Jerusalem.

I imagine that after living in peace for 50 years, the right of Israel to exist will be accepted by all nations in the Middle East, that the United States and the United Nations are perceived to have acted even-handedly in the matter, and that the "War on Terrorism" will have become a footnote in history.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book, "You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency" is reviewed at YoureNotStupid.com, and he is currently working on a fact-based fictional political philosophy.

Restore the power to the people: Amend the Constitution!

Online Journal - January 29, 2010

�Plata o plomo? Colombian and Mexican drug gangs ask government officials, judges and police officers which they prefer, �silver or lead,� when offering bribes and threatening violence.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision granting corporations the same free speech rights as natural persons allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and public affairs.

Corporations, foreign and domestic, can now force politicians to choose silver or lead when supporting or opposing corporate and foreign power interests.

Any politician who places the well-being of the public over corporate demands can count on well-financed negative publicity at the next election.

Moreover, corporations will be able to directly influence the election of state judges and the confirmation of federal judges.

With the Congress, White House and Supreme Court now up for sale to the highest bidder, we, the people of the United States of America, must exercise our fading power before it is lost forever.

The 11^th and 12^th Amendments clearly establish that the Constitution exists to protect the rights and powers of the people, not corporations.

It is our Constitution! We must amend it to ensure it protects us against corporations.

The Power to the People Amendment

Section 1

Only natural persons shall be protected by this Constitution and entitled to the rights and freedoms it guarantees.

Section 2

Nothing contained in this article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press for non-person entities engaged in the gathering and reporting of fact, analysis, and opinion. In all other respects, Congress and the States shall regulate and tax non-person entities as necessary for the public good.

Section 3

This article shall become operative once it has been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three-fourths of the States thereof.

William John Cox is a retired prosecutor and public interest lawyer, author and political activist. His 2004 book, "You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency" is reviewed at YoureNotStupid.com.

The drawing of the NASCAR politician is by Helen Werner Cox, who was trained as a classical painter at Boston University. She is nearing retirement as a nationally-certified library media teacher, who has made extensive use of art in her literacy programs.

A Smart and Simple Tax

The Public Record - December 12, 2009

The burden of taxation in the United States has been shifted from those who most benefit from our government to those who work the hardest and earn the least. This shrugging of responsibility is not only unfair, it fails to accomplish public policy goals required to move the economy out of recession and the environment out of crisis.

Uncorrected, the heavy burden of taxation borne by workers and small businesses today for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy elite will certainly lead to chaos and violence tomorrow.

It is time to discard our stupid and complex system of taxation and replace it with a smart and simple tax that balances the burden of taxation with the benefits of government.

How It Happened

Commencing in 1817, Congress eliminated all internal taxes and funded the government by tariffs on imported goods. Tariffs increased the cost of goods imported from outside the country, and were primarily paid by the wealthy and larger businesses. Laborers, farmers, and small business owners paid little or no taxes because the goods they consumed were primarily manufactured in the U.S.

Enforced by a new Internal Revenue Service, Congress passed an income tax during the Civil War along with sales, excise and inheritance taxes. The income tax was progressive in that those who earned less than $10,000 only paid 3%, while those who earned more were taxed at a higher rate.

Congress eliminated the income tax in 1868, and although it later flirted with taxing income, the government mainly relied on tariffs and an internal tax on tobacco and liquor for support. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1896 that taxes on income violated the Constitution, since they were not apportioned among the states.

The Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 allowed Congress to tax the incomes of both individuals and corporations. Taxes continued to increase over the years, and with the introduction of payroll withholding in 1943, most Americans were forced to pay a tax on their incomes.

Initially, the wealthy and corporations were taxed more heavily than individuals. When Eisenhower was president, corporations paid approximately a quarter of all federal taxes, the maximum tax rate on top earners was 92%, excise taxes brought in 19% of tax revenue, and most workers paid minimum Social Security payroll taxes.

Today, corporations pay about 12% of income taxes, the maximum rate is only 35% for all those who earn more than $372,950, even those who receive millions or billions each year, and excise taxes have dropped to 3% of revenue.

It gets even worse!

Government Accountability Office reported that two-thirds of all U.S. corporations and 78% of foreign companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, even though they booked trillions of dollars in receipts.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States was almost $14.2 trillion in 2008. The government took in $1.2 trillion in estimated receipts and sustained an estimated deficit of $390 billion. Approximately 45% of the revenues came from individual income taxes, 36% from Social Security and other payroll taxes, 12% from corporate income taxes, 3% from excise taxes, 1.2% from estate and gift taxes, 1.3% from customs duties, and 1.5% from other sources.

The Tax Policy Center calculates that individual income taxes and payroll taxes now account for four out of every five federal revenue dollars.
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What You Didn't Know About The War

November 13, 2009

A shocking and deeply disturbing YouTube video was posted by TheParadigmShift on October 22, 2009.

Portions of the video are narrated by Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi physician, whose website is located at http://www.liberatethis.com.

Warning: The video contains heart-wrenching scenes of infants and children who have been born horribly deformed or injured by the U.S. wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is difficult to believe that any fair-minded person could continue to support the U.S. War on Terror and the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan once they have viewed this video.

Please circulate the following link to all correspondents and ask them to take a few minutes to see the effects of the wars being fought in their name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsrMzfhdmkU