Nobody can rip you off as well as the government can -- and I mean all levels, not just the feds. There's no better business to be in than government. Not for the money, but for the power (You don't have to own the money if you can control absolutely how it is spent. Then you can command the power and the money will come, in many forms: high salaries, bonuses, graft, etc.).
There are many techniques the looters in government use to rip off the people. Here are but a few:
- The Baseline Budgeting Scam: A "basic scam," in that it allows them to put the con on you, on a regular basis, while telling you that they're not -- and making it sound like they aren't. Under this con, every government program is automatically given a certain percentage increase each year. It's automatic. Mostly, it's 10%. It's expected, because it's based on what they call the "Current Services Baseline." (This is the minimum they figure it will take to maintain current services and is based on this year's budget. If, in any given year, they don't increase the budget of a given agency by this much (say they only raise it 7% instead of 10%), they tell the public they've cut the budget by 3%! When they've really increased it by 7%.
This is how Slick Willie figures he has lowered the national debt by billions during his administration. It didn't go up by as much as he figured, so it's a cut. It is this con that allows them to continue to tell you all about how much they're cutting this and cutting that, while all the time they're voting themselves more of your money to play with. This is the basis on which they figured the GOP $4.5 billion dollar increase in the School Lunch Program was a "massive cut," and would "starve the children." This is a "base con." If you understand it, they can't con you any more about cuts or increases.
- The "Create a Crisis" Con: You've probably noticed the "Chicken Little" nature of government pronouncements: Everything is a crisis. The "Drug Crisis;" the "Health Care Crisis;" the "Environmental Crisis." The "We're Destroying The Rain Forest" Crisis and the "Endangered Species" and "Wetlands" crises, on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. This is called The "Hegelian Principle," where you create a crisis, publicize it like crazy until people start "demanding" a solution, then offer a solution that gives you permission to take more power.
- Get Their Permission: The key in each of these crises is that it allows the looters to get your permission to take some small right away from you in return for "solving the crisis" (Keep this key in mind. You'll be able to find it in just about all government programs.). But the crisis never gets solved. Your right is forever gone, and soon they're back for more of your rights because taking away the original right "didn't solve the problem" (and, of course, it's not their fault, you see, it's yours -- because you didn't give up enough of your rights.)
- Temporary Taxes: Right along with giving up rights to solve the crisis, you're also expected to give up money in the form of higher taxes or special fees. This is "...just until the crisis is over, don'tcha know." (There's nothing more permanent than a temporary tax. Don't believe it? How about the income tax? That was a temporary tax to finance a war.) But the crisis is never over. The problem never gets solved, succeeding generations end up forfeiting more and more of their rights, and paying ever higher taxes and special temporary fees that never go away. Pretty soon those "temporary taxes" are an "institution" and we wouldn't think of getting rid of them.
- The "Use A Real Crisis" Scam: Another technique they use is to take a real crisis (such as the "drug crisis" -- which they're getting a lot of mileage out of right now), blow it up way out of proportion, then attempt to solve it. The progression of events is the same as in creating a crisis.
- The "Camel's Nose Syndrome": Incrementalism. This one usually works because it is incremental. Each right -- each tax or special fee is so small that in itself it doesn't alarm you. But taken as a whole, it's a lot. It's like the story about the Arab who put up his tent in the desert with his camel outside. It gets cold in the desert at night, and the camel asked if he could sleep with "...just his nose inside the tent." The Arab, being a kindly sort, agreed. When he woke up in the morning, he was outside the tent shivering, while the camel was inside in the warm.
- The "Asset Confiscation" Scam: In the seventies, they passed a law allowing them to "...confiscate ill-gotten drug money gains," (The RICO Laws) supposedly to keep drug dealers and suppliers from benefiting from their illegally-gotten money. Their "stated purpose" in making this law was to deprive the so-called "criminal" of the use of his millions to mount an effective defense (which is unconstitutional). The only problem is that it is now being used against "the little guy" to steal his property for even such small things as unpaid parking tickets. The regulations written by the bureaucracy to define what this meant, conveniently forgot to require that the miscreant actually be convicted of a crime before they could confiscate his or her assets.
That means that the feds, or any other police agency can conduct a raid on your property on just the unsupported word of some government agent -- or worse, a paid snitch (who will tell them anything for the money or to shorten a sentence). Then they can frighten, humiliate, beat and even kill you if you resist, and confiscate all, or any part of your property. Sometimes, they even offer part of it back -- on the condition that you agree not to sue to get it all back (If the Mafia did that, it would be called extortion). The only way to get your property back is to sue for it, at your expense (after they've stolen your money). If you win or lose, you have to pay their legal costs (In fact, you're required to post a huge bond to assure payment of the government's legal costs, sometimes as much as $5,000 before you can file suit!). Of course, win or lose, they don't have to pay your legal costs. All this without having to convict you of a crime.
- Scanning the Money: If you've got any new $20, $50, or $100 bills (Series 1993 or newer), run your fingers over them. At some point, you'll find an ever-so-slightly thicker spot. That's were they put the scannable strip that will soon be in all our money, which will allow them to scan your pockets and your luggage as you walk by -- without your knowledge -- to find out how much money you're carrying. Even now, without this innovation, if they can find someone who is carrying a large amount of cash through an airport (for whatever reason), they can confiscate it, claiming it's drug money, forcing that person to sue (see above) to get it back.
- Incremental: That's the key word: incremental. Every assault they make on your rights, every assault on your pocketbook, is incremental. So small as to not alarm you until you start looking at it as a whole so that almost any crime, (with or without a conviction) can cause you to lose your property. Example: The city of Aurora, Colorado, is looking at an ordinance that will allow them to confiscate the car the John was driving when he got nabbed in a prostitution sting, again without a conviction being required (They're already publishing the pictures of these people in large paid for ads in local newspapers -- all without having to convict them first). Can more of this kind of thing be far behind? We rebelled against England, in part, for this kind of thing but we're now allowing it to be done to us again! Are we wimps, or what? (Update: that law passed and people are losing their expensive cars for engaging in a "victimless" minor crime)
- The "Thirty-Year Promise": Yet another technique to rip you off is the "Thirty-Year Promise." Here, they promise you anything to get you to go along with their program, then wait until you become senile or die: usually about 30 years later. Then they incrementally and quietly take it away from you. Your descendants don't even know a promise was made, so they don't complain. An excellent example of the "Thirty-Year Promise" is the illigitimate use of the Social Security number as general identification. When Roosevelt was promoting that pyramid scheme now known as Social Security about the time I was being born, people raised questions about the possibility of this number becoming the basis for a Universal Identification Number.
The looters of the time, to get around this problem, promised faithfully (a contradiction in terms if I ever saw one) that it would never happen. They even went so far as to print, right on the card: "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION." But they somehow (surprise, surprise!) neglected to make a law making it illegal to do so. Sometime in the sixties (about 30 years later?) they quietly did away with that line and started using the Social Security number as an identifier in all government business. Private enterprise took up the practice with their encouragement (especially credit reporting agencies) and now you can hardly buy anything without the seller demanding that number.
- The Federal Income Tax: When they were in the process of conning us into accepting the Federal Income Tax -- the one law which allows them to do anything they want to us with impunity -- they promised that the tax rate would never exceed 3% and only the very rich would have to pay it. Do I have to tell you how much it is now and who pays it?
- The Privacy Act of 1974 Con: In the late sixties, people again became concerned about the use of this number, so, to shut them up, the Congress passed the Privacy Act of 1974, stopping the practice, by the federal government, of using this number as an identifier. But they didn't make them get rid of it in current databases, nor (again) did they make it illegal for state and local governments or for private enterprise to use it. The feds, of course, encourage these agencies, both public and private, to collect as much information as they can about everybody. Then they "share it" with the feds -- which is not illegal under the Privacy Act of 1974 (They've got you conned, whichever way it goes).
I won't give my number to anybody but an employer or the IRS (I give it to my bank under protest because I have to have an account, and they've knuckled under to the feds.), although it's probably too late now for it to make any difference since so many databases already have it from before I became aware if its significance. But they made the promise, and I will hold them to it for as long as I can.
After "sharing" this data, they next integrate it with information already in their databases, enlarging the amount of information they have in the dossier they keep on each of us.
HOW DO WE CON THEE? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS! They have so many cons going simultaneously that it would take a ten-volume book just to list them all. But I'll mention a few more:
- The Wetlands Scam: In this one, a bureaucrat declares your property a wetlands and immediately, although you still own it you no longer control it, and its value plummets. Now you must go, with hat in hand, to a bureaucrat to beg for a permit (permission) to do anything to it. And since they've not "taken" your land, but only "devalued it," under current (1995) laws they don't have to pay you for it.
- The Endangered Species Scam: If a bureaucrat decides that your land is the habitat for the Purple Polka-Dotted Warbler which is, of course, nearly extinct, since only a few million remain, you lose control of it. Again without compensation.
- The Historical Site Scam: This one is practiced more often by local governments, but has also been used by the feds. In it, a bureaucrat decides that your property is a historical site, and you -- guess what? --lose control of it. Again, guess what? -- without compensation.
- The Drug Money Scam: A bureaucrat decides (do you see a pattern developing here?) that you have too much cash in your pocket (remember the money scanner?) and it is confiscated. Then the agency involved uses it as seed money to finance further rip-offs of other people.
- Highway Robbers With Badges: It's getting to the point where police no longer go after criminals. They now spend most of their time targeting people who have a lot of money. They don't care if these people are criminals or not. They don't need to convict them of anything to get their money. Pretty soon, they'll start giving individual cops a cut of the take. (It's already happening in Helper, Utah, where they passed an ordinance giving cops a cut of what they rip...uh, confiscate.)
- Rip-Off Laws: Congress started making laws to permit the government to seize the property of the Mafia and big-time drug smugglers in 1970 (It was a crisis, don'tcha know?). Today, the feds can seize private property under more than 200 different statutes. Between 1985 and 1991, federal property seizures increased by 1,500%! State and local governments have also been getting into the act. Steven Kessler, a New York lawyer who wrote a three-volume study (three volumes!) on federal and state forfeiture says: The use of forfeiture has probably increased a hundredfold in the last ten years. And 80% of the victims are never convicted -- nay, not even charged -- with a crime.
- The "Hate Speech" Scam: This is a scam designed to silence any criticism of their actions and policies. Coupled with the Hate Radio scam, it attempts to paint anybody who disagrees with them, in any way, as a purveyor of hate, and thus not worth listening to. You've probably noticed the concerted effort, since the Oklahoma City massacre, to blame everything bad on "hate speech" and "hate radio." They attempt to define every criticism of the government, bureaucrats and their policies as hate. Since they can't answer the substantive issues raised by such people as Rush Limbaugh and others with facts, they rely on character assassination. There's even a newsletter out called: "Flush Rush," in which the publisher spends all his time showing his ignorance (not to mention his rear end). Militias, which have come in for a lot of their fire, are mostly made up of law-abiding people who just want to be left alone, and have, for the most part, broken no laws. Since the same cannot be said for some of the people who have attended their meetings, they use this to involve the militias by association.
The looters say: "...you can't love your country and hate your government." That this is pure horse-puckey is a given. Most of the people who criticize them don't hate their government. They just don't like the people in government who are ripping them off.
THEY'RE ROBBING YOU BLIND! You think your government isn't robbing you blind? Think again. I could go on and on about this. I've got piles and piles of examples, plus many books that have been written on the subject. The hardest part about writing this report is figuring out what to leave out! And I've only mentioned income tax once.
IGNORING THE CONSTITUTION The looters in our government have been ignoring the Constitution since almost day one following the American Revolution. Today, the rate at which they make laws (and regulations) that violate it is increasing at a breathtaking rate, If we don't do something about it, we're going to soon have a dictatorship. You must stop allowing them to take away your rights. Start paying attention to what the looters in government are doing to you. Start looking for the con in every new program they propose.
And become an obstacle.
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