The folks who labeled supporters of the Internet Sales Tax Mandate “champions of Main Street” could benefit from Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul’s 2013 column explaining how the Internet Sales Tax will harm small business and stop entrepreneurs from creating the next generation of Amazons and Overstock.com. Dr. Paul is particularly interested in this issue as one feature of the Ron Paul Home School Curriculum encourages students to start and manage their own online businesses. Under Dr. Paul’s leadership, Campaign for Liberty will continue to oppose all attempts to impose new taxes on Internet commerce.
Internet Sales Tax Could Crush Small Businesses

One unique aspect of my homeschool curriculum is that students can start and manage their own online business. Students will be responsible for deciding what products or services to offer, getting the business up and running, and marketing the business’s products. Students and their families will get to keep the profits made from the business. Hopefully, participants in this program will develop a business that can either provide them with a full-time career or a way to supplement their income.
Internet commerce is the most dynamic and rapidly growing sector of the American economy. Not surprisingly, the Internet is also relatively free of taxes and regulations, although many in Washington are working to change that. For example, earlier this year the Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act, more accurately referred to as the national Internet sales tax act. This bill, which passed the Senate earlier this year, would require Internet businesses to collect sales tax for all 10,000 American jurisdictions that assess sales taxes. Internet business would thus be subject to audits from 46 states, six territories, and over 500 Native American tribal nations.
Proponents of the bill deny it will hurt small business because the bill only applies to Internet business that make over a million dollars in out-of-state revenue. However, many small Internet businesses with over a million dollars in out-of-state revenues operate on extremely thin profit margins, so even the slightest increase in expenses could put them out of businesses.
Some businesses may even try to avoid increasing their sales so as to not have to comply with the Internet sales tax. It is amazing that some of the same conservatives who rightly worry over Obamacare’s effects on job creation and economic growth want to impose new taxes on the most dynamic sector of the economy.
Proponents of the law claim that there is software that can automatically apply sales taxes. However, anyone who has ever dealt with business software knows that no program is foolproof. Any mistakes made by the software, or even errors in installing it, could result in a small business being subject to expensive and time-consuming audits.
Some say that it is a legitimate exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power to give state governments the authority to force out-of-state businesses to collect sales taxes. But if that were the case, why shouldn’t state governments be able to force you to pay sales taxes where you physically cross state lines to make a purchase? The Commerce Clause was intended to facilitate the free flow of goods and services across state lines, not to help states impose new burdens on out of state businesses.
The main proponents of this bill are large retailers and established Internet business. Big business can more easily afford to comply with a national Internet sales tax. In many cases, they are large enough that they already have a “physical presence” in most states and thus already have to collect state sales taxes. These businesses are seeking to manipulate the political process to disadvantage their existing and future small competitors. The Internet sales tax is a bad idea for consumers, small Internet business, and perhaps most importantly, the next generation of online entrepreneurs.
For more information about the small business program well as all other aspects of the Homeschool curriculum please go here. And to purchase a copy of my new book, The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System please go here.

Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
The post Ron Paul Classic: Internet Sales Tax Could Crush Small Businesses appeared first on Campaign for Liberty.

Ron Paul Classic: Internet Sales Tax Could Crush Small Businesses
Norm Singleton
Fri, 23 May 2014 18:15:45 GMT

Ben Swann Radio: Shona Banda Explains Her Remarkable Story On How Cannabis Oil Saved Her Life

• Politics

By: Evan Mulch May 23, 2014

After being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 2002, Shona Banda went through the struggles that many suffer with when battling the autoimmune disease. On the Ben Swann Radio Show, Ben and Shona discussed her tribulations while suffering from the disease and her immediate experiences after finding the cure to her disease.
During the show, when Shona Banda discussed her experiences while raising her kids with the disease, she said:
“I literally raised my kids from the couch and tried every pharmaceutical option that was offered including many many surgeries, so when I watched Rick Simpson’s movie Run From The Cure online I knew for sure I wanted to try it.”
Shona couldn’t believe the amazing effects of cannabis, when she told Ben about her first experience while smoking the plant, she said:
“Just smoking it made me fall to the floor and cry, because it’s like finding like Santa Claus isn’t real as an adult – your whole world changes. Because it helps me better than any pharmaceutical I had ever had…just smoking it.”
The road to recovery after finding the cure has taken years for Shona but the feeling of surviving came immediately to her:
“I literally went from feeling the degradation of dying, the pain from dying, knowing that I wasn’t going to be here very long to literally waking up on day three knowing that I was going to live long enough to see my grandkids someday.”
When Ben asked Shona if people she consults with realizes the same results that she has experienced, Shona said:
“Yes, the longer you’re on the medicine the more healing happens and cancer patients actually seem to heal faster a lot of the times than people with autoimmune disease — and the longer that you had a disease or illness the longer that you need to be on the oil. I had mine seven and a half years and it took me a full year to be on the oil three times a day for me to feel comfortable enough to go down for a maintenance dose.”
Shona went on to talk about the current media obsession with CBD oil and why modern medicine is falling behind the grassroots when it comes to the healing properties of cannabis.  You can hear more about that as well as the rest of the interview here:
The interview with Shona begins at 19:20.
More about Shona can be found in a story we published earlier this year called, The Cannabis Oil Invention Shona Banda Wouldn’t Hold Secret.
Read more: http://benswann.com/ben-swann-radio-shona-banda-explains-her-remarkable-story-on-how-cannabis-oil-saved-her-life/#ixzz32hdO5ewt
Follow us: @BenSwann_ on Twitter

AMERICA JUST LAUNCHED A ROCKET ON A SECRET MISSION INTO SPACE

The Atlas V rocket carrying the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-19 spacecraft Thursday April 3, 2014. // United Space Alliance, Bill Hartenstein/AP
By Danielle Wiener-BronnerThe WireMay 23, 2014

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While we were all pondering Facebook’s role in devaluing the media (ok, maybe a little before) the U.S. went ahead and launched a spy satellite into orbit, for use by the National Reconnaissance Office.
Reuters reports that earlier today, an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, equipped with a “classified satellite” for the National Reconnaissance Office — one of the “big five”intelligence agencies. According to Reuters:

Five minutes after the 9:09 a.m. EDT/13:09 GMT launch, rocket manufacturer United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, shut down its live webcast under a prearranged news blackout ordered by the U.S. military.

The rocket was launched by United Launch Alliance (ULA) a private company backed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. ULA vice president Jim Sponnick said the launch went off smoothly in a press release:

Congratulations to all of our mission partners on today’s successful launch of the NROL-33 mission! The ULA team is honored to deliver another critical national security asset to orbit together with the NRO Office of Space Launch and the Air Force.

Sponnick adds that this marks the fourth successful launch for ULA in just seven weeks.
Though the purpose of the mission is under wraps, we do know that use of the Atlas 5 rocket is contentious. Folded into would-be rival company SpaceX’s lawsuit arguing that ULA shouldn’t have exclusive rights to military launches is a claim that ULA may be violating sanctions by using Russian-made parts in the Atlas 5 engine,per Reuters. The U.S. had briefly banned use of the engine before changing its mind, but Russia — angered by the decision — soon retaliating by saying it won’t sell the part to the U.S. anymore. So far, however, no action has been taken.
The corporate spat is taking place as space-related ties between U.S. and Russia are at a low in the midst of political conflict over Ukraine. Russia has threatened to withdraw from the International Space Station in in 2020, leaving the U.S. in a lurch. But the tense relationship has remained stable for now. We just hope that satellite isn’t planning on spying on the Kremlin.

House Rejects Measure to End War on Terror

By: Ben Swann Staff May 24, 2014
Affirms Status Quo in $601 Billion Military Budget

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) with troops in Afghanistan (image: Facebook)
This article was written by guest contributor Jason Ditz.
Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D – CA) efforts to repeal the 2001 Authorization on the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which the Bush and Obama Administrations have used as the legal cover for virtually all military operations since, failed today in a 191-233 vote.
The bill had initially been seen as having some administration support, but that myth evaporated after yesterday’s fiasco in the Senate, where officials argued the AUMF had nothing to do with anything, and that President Obama would attack whomever he pleased, whenever he pleased. The officials came out for vague, non-specific changes to AUMF, but not for repeal.
This led hawks to angrily condemn Rep. Schiff’s bill, with Rep. Mac Thornberry (R – TX) accusing him of having “forgotten” 9/11. The Senate’s AUMF efforts don’t look promising either, with some now arguing in favor of “revisions” that would greatly expand the war powers to authorize President Obama’s attacks on groups not even cursorily linked to al-Qaeda.
Underscoring just how little appetite there is for even the illusion of change, Rep. Adam Smith (D – WA) introduced an amendment to allow transfer of Gitmo detainees, something President Obama demanded, and that too was rejected. The White House had threatened a veto if they didn’t get this, but where they stand now is unclear.
In the end, the $601 billion military spending bill, which was bigger than even the Pentagon sought, passed easily in a 325-98 vote, and is now just waiting for the Senate to come up with their version, so they can reconcile the two.
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Read more: http://benswann.com/house-rejects-measure-to-end-war-on-terror/#ixzz32hb9ks6d
Follow us: @BenSwann_ on Twitter

Nathan Williams of Forbes is the latest writer to praise Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul’s 2009 New York Times bestseller End the Fed. Williams is particularly impressed with how Dr. Paul condenses his lifetime of study and experience with monetary policy and Dr. Paul’s account of the young people chanting End the Fed at college campuses in 2008:

“[After a Republican primary debate in 2007,] I was able to speak to more than 4,000 students in the quad at Ann Arbor. …
When I mentioned monetary policy, the kids started cheering. Then a small group chanted, ‘End the Fed! End the Fed!’ The whole crowd took up the call. Many held up burning dollar bills, as if to say to the central bank, you have done enough damage to the American people, our future, and to the world: your time is up.”
People know. Even people aged 18-21. But, they need someone to put it into words.
I’ve talked about the need for a “shelf of books,” that are contemporary and correct, and which can serve as the conceptual foundation for whatever monetary system may eventually replace our present arrangements. No old books and no books that are so full of fallacy as to be unusable, no matter how well-meaning the authors may have been. People actually understand these things significantly better today than was the case in the 1960s and 1970s, although unfortunately that improvement has not been well documented in print.
One reason why we still have floating currencies today is that people just didn’t understand these things at all in the 1970s. You would think that after twenty years of extraordinary prosperity during the 1950s and 1960s with the Bretton Woods gold standard arrangement, and a decade of inflationary disaster in the 1970s with floating fiat currencies, that people in the U.S. might have been a little favorable toward the Classical (gold-based) monetary approach that the U.S. had pursued for the previous 182 years. Nope. Paul recounts his experience at the 1981 Congressional Gold Commission:
“Henry Reuss, chairman of the House Banking Committee, attended one meeting and left in a rage. He couldn’t stand one minute of serious consideration of the importance of gold.”
That was a typical response from other supposedly knowledgeable people at that time. The ignorance of that era is breathtaking — especially considering that the U.S.’s gold standard era had ended only ten years previous.

Under Dr. Paul’s leadership, Campaign for Liberty continues to work to free the American people from the harm down to their freedom and prosperity by the Federal Reserve. The first step is to Audit the Fed.
You can purchase an autographed copy of End the Fed here.
The post Ron Paul’s wisdom on display in End the Fed appeared first on Campaign for Liberty.

Ron Paul’s wisdom on display in End the Fed
Norm Singleton
Thu, 22 May 2014 21:47:16 GMT

IRS Employees Conducting Union Activity Costs Taxpayers $23.5 Million in FY 2013

Posted by Charleston Voice
Look Ma over here – – another Republican congressional oversight fraud! Let’s head over to Social Security afterwards where the plunder picking is great too!

The 571,725 hours stolen at the IRS equates to over 13,043 weeks paid, but not worked. Why not cut the equivalent number of employees on the payroll since we obviously have no need of them? Besides an additional savings could be achieved at Social Security, let’s keep going from agency to agency.
And these are just annual numbers – do your own math to extrapolate the savings to us taxpayers!

by Trey Kovacs
Union “official time” is a massive taxpayer subsidy to government unions, which releases federal employees from their regular public duty, without suffering loss of pay, to conduct union work.
Worse, the Obama administration is years late in releasing a report, published by the Office of Personnel Management, on the cost and use of official time across the federal government. The last available official time numbers are from FY 2011.
And its not a situation where nobody is asking for the data. Most recently, in March, Representative Phil Gingrey (R-GA) and Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) sent a letter to OPM Director Katherine Archuleta requesting the official time report.
She has yet to respond.
However, other federal government agencies send reports to certain committees annually revealing its official time costs. Paul Bedard, a columnist at The Washington Examiner, has the latest:

The Treasury Department has revealed to the House Ways and Means Committee that Internal Revenue Service employees spent over 500,000 hours on union activities last year. They estimated the cost to taxpayers at $23.5 million in salary and benefits.

Officials told Secrets that the exact hours IRS members of the National Treasury Employees Union dedicated to labor activities was 521,725 in fiscal 2013, which ran from October 2012 to September 2013. That was slightly less than the 573,319 hours in fiscal 2012, according to the IRS, but the spending was significantly above that year’s total of $16 million.

The Social Security Administration is another agency that annually reports its official time costs to the House Appropriation Committee. SSA employees spent 244,290 hours on official time at a cost of  $14.6 million in FY 2013.
To learn more about union official time see, here, here, and here.
via workplacechoice

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MUST READ: Ted Cruz Lays Out 10 Questions About Benghazi [VIDEO]

 
After the House of Representatives announced the formation of a specialBenghazi Select Committee, Senator Ted Cruz renewed his call for a Senate select committee on Benghazi that would work jointly with the House committee.
Senator Cruz has long been critical of the lack of action on the part of the Obama administration in dealing with the aftermath and coverup of Benghazi, and has even introduced a bill that would offer a $5 million reward for information leading to the death or capture of the terrorists that carried out the attack.
Ted Cruz has also been highly critical of the unresponsiveness and lack of cooperativeness of the Obama administration in answering a number of basic questions about what happened before, during and after the Benghazi attack.  Rep. Trey Gowdy has similar questions about Benghazi, and recently challenged the media as to why they haven’t been asking these questions.
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When Cruz took to the Senate floor to speak about his reintroduced resolution calling for a select committee, he spoke about how “chilling” the roles of Obama and Hillary Clinton appear to be in the Benghazi coverup.
(H/T TPNN)

“Twenty months after the Benghazi attack, we have four dead Americans and no dead terrorists,” Sen. Cruz said. “It is chilling to think our President had better things to do than personally attend to an ongoing terrorist attack on our people. It is chilling to imagine we could have mounted a rescue attempt of our people but did not even bother to try. It is chilling to think our Secretary of State would not insist on giving an interview for the ARB report. It is chilling to think we have an administration that is reluctant to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ let alone fight against it. The clock is ticking.  Memories are fading. It is beyond time to get the full resources of both houses of Congress behind this investigation.”

Cruz also took the time to lay out 10 questions that he feels have not been sufficiently answered.

• Why was the State Department unwilling to provide the requested level of security to Benghazi in the summer of 2012?
• Did President Obama’s daily intelligence briefings in the run-up to September 11, 2012 support the assertion that there was no credible threat of a coordinated terrorist attack on Benghazi during this time? And if so, why does the White House not declassify and release the briefings, as President George Bush did his pre-September 11, 2001 briefings?
• Why did we not anticipate the need to have military assets at the ready in the region on the anniversary of September 11, of all days?
• Did President Obama sleep the night of September 11, 2012? Did Secretary Clinton? When was President Obama told about the murder of our ambassador?
• If the secretary of defense thought there was “no question” this was a coordinated terrorist attack, why did Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary Clinton, and President Obama all tell the American people that the cause was a “spontaneous demonstration” about an internet video?
• Why did former deputy CIA director Mike Morell edit the intelligence community talking points to delete the references to “Islamic extremists” and “al-Quaeda”?
• Why did the FBI release pictures of militants taken the day of the attack only eight months after the fact? Why not immediately, as proved so effective after the Boston bombing?
• Why was Secretary Clinton not interviewed for the ARB report? And if all relevant questions were answered in the ARB report, why did the State Department’s own inspector-general office open a probe into the methods of that very report?
• Why have none of the terrorists who attacked in Benghazi been captured or killed?
• What additional evidence that the White House engaged in a political campaign to blame the Benghazi attack on the internet video is contained in the additional emails requested by JudicialWatch but withheld by the White House on the grounds that it would put a “chill” on internal deliberations?

 
These questions must be answered satisfactorily as soon as possible, and Trey Gowdy will likely get answers to these, and other questions, once he has subpoenaed Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and all relevant documents that pertain to Benghazi, unredacted of course.
The Democrats know that Gowdy will eventually get to the truth, which is why they threatened to boycott the select committee.  They have now agreed to take part, but will likely try to obstruct and provide cover for Hillary, because she is scared of what Gowdy’s investigation will uncover.  Obama is also afraid of Gowdy, because he knows that the already crumbling coverup will be blown wide open.

No Water For You: Obama Administration Moves To Cut Off Water To Pot Growers In Washington and Oregon

written by jonathan turley
saturday may 24, 2014

For months, the Obama Administration has been dealing with the growing revolt among the states over federal marijuana laws. Twenty states and the District of Columbia legalized medical marijuana use over the opposition of the federal government and medical use. Two states, Colorado and Washington, have legalized the sale and possession of marijuana. It is a classic conflict between states and the federal government under federalism. Some of us view the states as asserting a classic police power in an area that was left to the states under our federalism principles.
Now the Obama Administration has said that it will withhold water from state-licensed pot growers in Washington state and Colorado. The decision by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is particularly problematic given the fact that the federal government has stepped in to take effective control of the water resources in these states and now appears to be using that control to try to coerce states to change their laws to satisfy the federal government.
Dan DuBray, the agency’s chief of public affairs, insists that “[a] a federal agency, Reclamation is obligated to adhere to federal law in the conduct of its responsibilities to the American people.” However, that position is inconsistent with the actions of the Obama Administration in other years. I recently testified (here and here and here) and wrote a column on President Obama’s increasing circumvention of Congress in negating or suspending U.S. laws. The Obama Administration has no qualms about rewriting laws like the ACA or ordering the non enforcement of other laws like the controversy over the DREAM Act. However, when administering a water resource, the Administration insists that it has to actively cut off water in order to indirectly support federal marijuana.
This argument is even less plausible when one considers that the Justice Department has altered its enforcement of the actual drug laws in light of these two state changes. So, the Administration is directly altering enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act but a water agency is actively changing its operations “in a manner that is consistent with the Controlled Substances Act.” Note this policy is not a refusal to make a change of accommodation but a decision to take action in a way to punish growers.
The decision of the federal government to take control of the water resources out West has long been controversial. Many warned that the control of water could result in an attempt to control a state’s internal policies or laws. The Bureau of Reclamation, the nation’s largest wholesaler of water, was created in 1902 to cover 17 states due to the building of federal dams and canals that took control of what was once free flowing surface waters. Part of the Department of Interior, it now delivers water to more than 31 million people and one out of every five Western farmers. In Washington state, that translates to 1.2 million acres of land — much of which is coming from the Columbia and Yakima rivers which once were under state control.
This is the first time in recent memory that the government is using the control as a weapon to punish errant states over its laws. The agency controls two-thirds of the water of Washington state’s irrigated land. Washington is most at risk for that reason (Oregon’s pot farms are only allowed for indoor growing).
Reprinted with author’s permission.

We the People have a natural, inherent and unalienable right to keep and bear arms.  Contrary to popular belief, that right was not granted by the Second Amendment, but instead is derived from English common law, the Enlightenment, and even ancient Roman philosophy.
When looking at the original intentions of the Founding Fathers, we see that the Second Amendment was actually devised as a way to prevent the federal government from infringing on our preexisting right to own and carry weapons.  In fact, any federal laws that limit or control guns in the hands of citizens would be viewed as tyranny by the Founders, and dealt with accordingly.
As such, it should come as no surprise that some states have responded to this tyranny by nullifying it in their states, exercising their Tenth Amendment right of state sovereignty.  Also unsurprisingly, people are increasingly supportive of these efforts by the states.
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A poll last year by the prestigious Rasmussen showed that only about 4 in 10 people support the idea of federal gun control laws in their state, with about 50% of respondents saying that local and state gun laws should take precedence over federal laws.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the federal government should be chiefly responsible for setting policies about gun ownership. Forty-nine percent (49%) think it should be a state or local issue. That includes (34%) who think state governments should determine gun ownership rules and 15% who think local governments should have that responsibility. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.

The poll also showed that nearly 4 in 10 people support their state nullifying federal gun laws within their borders.  This can be done by passing a piece of legislation modeled after the Tenth Amendment Center‘s ‘Second Amendment Preservation Act’.

Basically, the Second Amendment Preservation Act reasserts the right of a state to determine what is best for its own citizens when it comes to gun laws.  The Act declares that any and all federal laws that are viewed as unconstitutional or an infringement of the Second Amendment will be null and void within the state, and no agent or officer of the state may enforce, or cooperate with federal enforcement of, these gun control measures.  Some states have even addedcriminal penalties to this act.

A number of states have already passed or are currently working on legislation that would nullify federal gun control laws in their state.  But nullification is not strictly limited to gun control, nor is it only being pursued in conservative red states.
Numerous states are attempting to nullify Obamacare in their state, and while those states tend to be Republican states, liberal states like California and Michiganhave gotten in on the nullification act too, trying to ban the NSA and the NDAA ‘indefinite detention’ provision, respectively.
Back to the issue of gun control, several liberal states are seeing their populations rejecting not only federal gun control laws, but also strict new state laws.  People inColorado, Connecticut and New York are rebelling against their state government’s embrace and expansion of federal gun laws and the anti-gun agenda being pursued by President Obama’s administration.
Ultimately, the people will decide for themselves whether they will continue to let the federal government infringe on their gun rights by voting for change,moving to more gun rights friendly states, or actively rising up in rebellion against the feds.  Let’s hope that the government gets the message that people oppose their strict gun control and infringement on their natural rights, before drastic measures become necessary.

Barclays Fined For Manipulating Price Of Gold For A Decade; Sending “Bursts” Of Sell Orders

Posted by Charleston Voice
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/23/2014 06:56 -0400

It was almost inevitable: a week after we wrote “From Rothschild To Koch Industries: Meet The People Who “Fix” The Price Of Gold” and days after “Barclays’ Head Of Gold Trading, And Gold “Fixer”, Is Leaving The Bank“, earlier today the UK Financial Conduct Authority finally formalized what most in the “tin-foil” hat community had known for years, when it announced that it fined Barclays £26 million for manipulating “the setting of the price of gold in order to avoid paying out on a client order.” Furthermore, the FCA confirmed that those inexplicable gold raids which come as if out of nowhere, and slam gold with a vicious force so strong sometime they halt the entire market, had a very specific source: Barclays, whose trader Daniel James Plunkett, born 1976, “sent out a burst of orders aimed at moving the price of the yellow metal.”

This took place for a decade. As the FT reports:

The FCA said Barclays had failed to “adequately manage conflicts of interest between itself and its customers as well as systems and controls failings, in relation to the gold fixing” between 2004 and 2013.

Some further details on Plunkett’s preferred means of manipulating the gold price.

The FCA said Mr Plunkett had manipulated the market by placing, withdrawing and re-placing a large sell order for between 40,000 oz and 60,000 oz of gold bars.

He did this in an attempt to pull off a “mini puke”, which the FCA took to mean a sharp fall in the price of gold. As a result, the bank was not obliged to make a $3.9m payment to the customer under an option contract.

Which is precisely what we have shown many times here for example in “Vicious Gold Slamdown Breaks Gold Market For 20 Seconds“, when a sell order so aggressive comes in it not only takes out the entire bid stack with an intent not for “best execution” but solely to reprice the market lower. Recall from September:

There was a time when, if selling a sizable amount of a security, one tried to get the best execution price and not alert the buyers comprising the bid stack that there is (substantial) volume for sale. Of course, there was and always has been a time when one tried to manipulate prices by slamming the bid until it was fully taken out, usually just before close of trading, an illegal practice known as “banging the close.” It appears that when it comes to gold, the former is long gone history, and the latter is perfectly legal. As the two charts below from Nanex demonstrate, overnight just before 3 am Eastern, a block of just 2000 GC gold futures contracts slammed the price of gold, on no news as usual, sending it lower by $10/oz. However, that is not new: such slamdowns happen every day in the gold market, and the CFTC constantly turns a blind eye. What was different about last night’s slam however, is that this time whoever was doing the forced, manipulation selling, just happened to also break the market. Indeed: following the hit, the entire gold market was NASDARKed for 20 seconds after a circuit breaker halted trading!

To summarize: a humble block of 2000 gold futs (GC) taking out the bid stack, and slamming the price of gold, managed to halt the gold market: one of the largest “asset” markets in the world in terms of total notional, for 20 seconds.

And Mr. Plunkett in action:

To be sure Barclays was truly sorry, and pinky swears that having been caught manipulating the gold market for ten years it will never do it again:

The news is also a fresh blow to Barclays’ chief executive Antony Jenkins as he tries to overhaul the culture of the London-based lender. Mr Jenkins took over 18 months ago after his predecessor, Bob Diamond, stepped down amid the Libor scandal.

Analysts said the fine reflected badly on the industry – as well as the hard-charging, revenue-focused business model that Barclays had previously been operating.

Mr Jenkins said in a statement on Friday: “We very much regret the situation that led to this settlement . . . These situations strengthen our resolve to improve.” The bank discovered the misconduct after the client complained. It then reported the incident to the regulator, for which it received a 30 per cent discount on its fine for co-operation.

Ian Gordon, analyst at Investec, said that in pure financial terms, the fine was “utterly inconsequential, both in a group context, and in relation to the quantum of other conduct costs”. He was referring specifically to the bank’s provisions for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance and interest rate hedging products.

So a wrist slap, we get that. One wouldn’t expect more – after all the banks run the show.  And yet, one wonders: is this just a case of “Fab Tourre-ing” the scandal, and redirecting all attention to just one (preferably junior) person? To be sure, this one trader made handsome profits from gold manipulation…

Mr Plunkett boosted his trading book by $1.8m at the expense of a customer, who was later compensated. He has now been banned from “performing any function in relation to any regulated activity” and fined £95,600. At the time, Barclays was one of five banks that set the price of the precious metal twice a day. Tracey McDermott, the FCA’s director of enforcement and financial crime, said: “A firm’s lack of controls and a trader’s disregard for a customer’s interests have allowed the financial services industry’s reputation to be sullied again.”

… but is this just an attempt by the FCA to pass this off as the proverbial “only cockroach”, especially when as we reported earlier this week, none other than Barclays head of trading Marc Booker quietly left dodge?

The speculation is further heightened when one considers that Plunkett had left Barclays nearly two years ago in October 2012! According to his FCA record:

Prior to Barclays Plunkett worked as a lowly junior trader at Dresdner and RBC – and this is the a manipulation mastermind? Further, considering the FCA found failures at Barclays starting in 2004 and Plunkett only joined in 2006, can the FCA please disclose who else was the frontman for gold manipulation at Barclays in the 2004-2006 period? READ MORE…

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Published on Saturday, May 24, 2014 by Common Dreams

Dr. Vandana Shiva: “We did not choose to target Monsanto. Monsanto chose to target our seed and food freedom, our scientific and democratic institutions, our very lives.”

– Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Marchers in Durban, South Africa. (Photo: @Revonews/ Twitter)”It’s time to take back our food!” was the cry as people in 52 countries worldwide took to the streets in a global day of action on Saturday against chemical behemoth Monsanto.

The third annual March Against Monsanto (MAM) is slated to be the biggest yet, according to movement founder Tami Canal, with millions of people in over 400 cities expected to take part.

“From Agent Orange to Monsanto’s pending patents directly affiliated with weather modification to the gross government corruption, MAM has evolved to expose all the insidious tentacles that Monsanto possesses,” said Canal in an interview with Anti-Media.

Across social media, protesters shared images from demonstrations around the world where people called for the permanent boycott of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and other harmful agro-chemicals.

“People often ask me ‘Why Monsanto?'” wrote food justice advocate Dr. Vandana Shiva in a statement on the March. “My response is, we did not choose to target Monsanto. Monsanto chose to target our seed and food freedom, our scientific and democratic institutions, our very lives.”

“Monsanto wants superprofits through total control over nature and humanity,” Shiva continued.

“The greed and violence of one corporation cannot be allowed to destroy life on Earth, the lives of our farmers, the lives of our children,” Shiva added. “That is why we March Against Monsanto.”

Citing recent successes such as a ban on GMO cultivation in two Oregon counties and thepassage of a GMO labeling initiative in Vermont, Canal said the movement has already seen a number of “positives” this year, where people “truly battled the Goliath biotech industry and overcame the odds and financial power of companies like Monsanto.”

Though GMOs have been at least partially banned in over 15 countries and must be labelled in 62 countries, according to MAM organizers, food safety advocates face an uphill battle in the U.S.

“The revolving door between Monsanto employees, government positions, and regulatory authorities has led to key Monsanto figures occupying positions of power at the FDA and EPA,” the group writes in their call to action.

A list of all March Against Monsanto demonstrations can be found here.

Report: Hillary Clinton is Scared of Trey Gowdy’s Investigation.

Report: Hillary Clinton is Scared of Trey Gowdy’s Investigation

Vulnerability of the U.S. power grid

Judge Jeanine: What would we do if the lights went out?
Sun, 23 Feb 2014 18:25:26 GMT

(NBC NEWS) Retirement savings for about a quarter of Americans amounts to … $0.
One out of every four Americans is not saving for retirement at all, either because they are not thinking about it, do not really know how, or worse, do not feel they can afford to, according to a report by Country Financial.
Americans between the ages of 18-29, often called “millennials“, are among the worst when it comes to saving for retirement, the firm said. A full 32 percent of them aren’t saving at all for their “golden years.”

Report: 25% of Americans saving $0 for retirement
-NO AUTHOR-
Fri, 23 May 2014 19:43:24 GMT

WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is blaming former President George W. Bush for the Veterans Administration scandal, but, according to the VA’s own numbers, she has the facts wrong.

Pelosi never mentioned Bush by name at a press briefing Thursday, but she left no doubt as to whom she was talking about.

She referred to “the ramifications of some seeds that were sown a long time ago, when you have two wars over a long period of time and many, many more, millions more veterans.”

Pelosi then blamed the VA scandal on an increase in veterans due to recent wars.

“[W]e go in a war in Afghanistan, leave Afghanistan for Iraq with unfinished business in Afghanistan. Ten years later, we have all of these additional veterans. In the past five years, two million more veterans needing benefits from the VA. That’s a huge, huge increase.”

Actually, according to government statistics, there are far fewer veterans in the VA.

According to the VA, the number of vets declined by 4.3 million from 2000 to 2013.

Democrats such as Pelosi claim more money is the solution.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said, “If the VA does not have enough doctors to see these patients, then these problems are a result of a lack of funding.”

But spending on the VA actually tripled from 2010 to 2013.

John Merline at Investor’s Business Daily crunched the numbers and found the VA’s budget has been exploding, even as the number of veterans steadily declines.

Even more telling, wounded warriors coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan are not increasing treatment costs.

Those vets are actually far cheaper to treat than aging vets.

In fact, the costs of treating veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is almost half of what it cost to treat other vets.

A Congressional Budget Office report found that the younger vets cost $4,800, on average, in 2010 compared with $8,800 for other veterans who used the system.

It also found, while the Iraq and Afghan vets account for 7 percent of patients treated, they were responsible for only 4 percent of health costs.

Iraq and Afghan vets, the report found, “are typically younger and healthier than the average VHA patient and as a result are less expensive to treat.”

A problem that Democrats such as Pelosi face in trying to blame Bush for the scandal is Obama’s long history of declaring the VA needed fixing and claiming he was working on the problems.

In a 2007 speech, then-Sen. Obama said: “Keeping faith with those who serve must always be a core American value and a cornerstone of American patriotism. Because America’s commitment to its servicemen and women begins at enlistment, and it must never end.”

During his transition into the White House in 2008-09, Obama even proposed in his “Obama-Biden” plan to “make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible.”

Obama was also warned of severe problems at the VA repeatedly over the years, even before he became president.

• WND discovered that Obama was briefed on problems at the VA as far back as 2005, when he was a senator and a member of the Veterans Affairs committee.

• The Washington Times reported Monday that the Obama administration received notice more than five years ago that VA medical facilities were reporting inaccurate waiting times and experiencing scheduling failures that threatened to deny veterans timely health care.

• VA officials reportedly warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the wait times the facilities were reporting were not trustworthy.

• More recently, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., wrote a letter to Obama on May 21, 2013, that warned of “an alarming pattern of serious and significant patient care issues at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) across the country … (including) failures, deceptions, and lack of accountability permeating VA’s healthcare system. Miller concluded: “I believe your direct involvement and leadership is required.”

• WND reported last week that Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., reminded VA Secretary Eric Shinseki that Congress had been informed two years ago that gaming the system at the VA was so widespread, employees would look to get around regulations as soon as the rules were implemented.

Pelosi even had the temerity to suggest Obamacare might be the key to fixing the VA scandal, stating, “We have the Affordable Care Act that is out there that is providing resources for more federally-qualified health clinics around the country.”

Critics such as Rush Limbaugh have pointed out just the opposite, warning that the immense problems with government-run healthcare at the VA are a preview of such horrors as death panels under the Affordable Care Act.

Similarly, John Fund wrote in National Review that the VA scandal was “a warning sign of what could happen as the pressure to ration, inherent in all government-managed health care, is applied to the general population.”

However, Pelosi did make a suggestion favored by advocates of free-market reforms of the health-care system.

She implied it might be better to treat vets in private clinics rather than at VA facilities.

“Maybe we should take a look at how we deal with our veterans’ needs in a way that says let’s help them closer to home, whether that’s a federally qualified health clinic or in some other institution that provides health care closer to home. [It’s] especially important for our veterans who live in rural areas.”

Many Republican critics have said recently that having the federal government provide vouchers to allow vets to see private doctors would be a humane way to get them help and an efficient method to deal with the tremendous backlog in the VA system.

When Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., floated the idea, even the editorial board of his home-state paper, the left-of-center Arizona Republic, said “that might make sense.”

In the video below, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., who served as a physician at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital and as a medical officer in the Naval Reserve, makes the case for health-care vouchers so vets can opt out of the VA health system, calling it “the real free-market solution for helping our veterans.”

Follow Garth Kant on Twitter @DCgarth

Pelosi drops brand-new whopper with VA blame
Gart
h Kant
Fri, 23 May 2014 21:01:59 GMT

(Los Angeles Times) Anti-government rebels lobbed a mortar shell at a campaign rally supporting President Bashar Assad in southern Syria on Friday, killing several dozen people and wounding many others, according to state media and opposition sources.
The attack heightened fears of escalating violence in pro-regime areas as the June 3 election approaches.
The Syrian state news agency SANA said the mortar shell struck a tent full of Assad’s supporters in the border city of Daraa early Friday morning. The agency blamed “armed terrorist groups,” a term the Syrian government uses to describe opposition fighters.

Mortar round kills dozens of Assad supporters at rally
-NO AUTHOR-
Fri, 23 May 2014 21:50:01 GMT

(Truthstream Media) Yes, HAARP — the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program — can be used to manipulate the weather… …but even though the actual HAARP patent itself — “Weather modification is possible by, for example, altering upper atmosphere wind patterns or altering solar absorption patterns by constructing one or more plumes of atmospheric particles […]

Who gave the U.S. gov’t permission to control the ionosphere in the first place?
Melissa Melton
Thu, 22 May 2014 04:05:49 GMT

On this edition of DTRH Popeye covers the ongoing problems with the VA medical system. He takes President Obama to the woodshed for his lies about it, and his weak excuses. In hour two Popeye shows how the problems with the VA are not new at all, and in fact have been going on for a very long time. He gives examples of a few different veterans whose lives were permanently effected because of lack of care, and neglect, including his own.
website: federaljack.com

The Truth About The VA Medical System Scandal
downtherabbithole
Fri, 23 May 2014 04:00:00 GMT