Sunday, May 31, 2015

Atlanta Regional Commission

The Atlanta Regional Commission was created in 2008 by the Georgia Legislature.  Federal grants to states required that all states create unelected regional governance to implement UN Agenda 21.
Funding ARC includes the State of Georgia and federal grants totaling about $70 million a year.  Expenses include staff at about $20 million a year plus grants to CIDs, cities and counties about $50 million a year.  That’s where you got your bike lanes, multi-use paths, streetcars and other fluff. 
ARC is dedicated to the development of high density transit villages located by MARTA stations.
ARC is also interested in your water and what to do with old people. They’ve been grasping for straws to find a purpose since their T-SPLOST was defeated in 2012.
ARC pretends to rule over 10 counties they included in Region 3.  The real metro counties actually include Fulton, DeKalb and the City of Atlanta.  The other counties don’t have MARTA trains and most of these rural counties could do without ARC and so could the others.
ARC Chairman Kerry Armstrong is a developer.  ARC gives grants to developer projects aimed at packing high-rise office buildings and apartments next to MARTA and a Mall in a Community Improvement District (CID).
Multi-national companies are pressured to locate in these CIDs and support the rest of UN Agenda 21. Their goal is to eliminate cars and have everybody live, work, bike and walk, but not drive.  The problem is that the apartment rents are too high for most folks.
Local Elected Officials on the ARC Board include:
Buzz Ahrens
Clark Boddie
Eric Clarkson
Eric Dial
Tim Downing
John Eaves
Nancy Harris
Tim Lee
Mark Mathews
Lee May
Randy Mills
Ceasar C. Mitchell
Charlotte Nash
Charles Oddo
Richard A. Oden
Willie Oswalt
Harvey Persons
Robert Price
Kasim Reed
Tommy Smith
Jeff Turner
Jere Wood
Tom Worthan
If any of the above are your elected officials, you might ask them why they are involved in ARC and UN Agenda 21 implementation. You may get a load about economic development and millennials, but most of them are still living with their relatives. UN Agenda 21 has listed Atlanta as one of the “mega-cities” they want to use to house “the workforce”.
Many of us believe that the Georgia Legislature should repeal HB 1266 and HB 277, the Bills that created “regionalism” and unelected governance in Georgia.
http://www.atlantaregional.com/about-us/overview

UN Death Quotas

Elderly face NHS discrimination under new UN death targets by Sarah Knapton, Science Editor, 29 May 2015
Elderly people will be treated like second-class citizens and denied medical care under new targets which give priority to saving the lives of young people
The NHS could be led to discriminate against the over 70s to meet ‘highly unethical’ UN health targets which seek to reduce premature deaths in younger people, senior medics have warned.
Under the proposed Sustainable Development Goals, UN member states will be given targets to cut the number of deaths from diseases like cancer, stroke, diabetes and dementia by one third by 2030.
However because many are age-related illnesses people who succumb to those diseases from the age of 70 are not deemed to have died prematurely and so are not included in the target.
Unsung army of elderly carers swells
Wave of home closures leaves elderly stuck in 'care warehouses'
In an open letter published in The Lancet, an international group of ageing specialists say the new guideline sends out the message that health provision for younger groups must be prioritized at the expense of older people.
Prof Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, professor of social policy and international development at the University of East Anglia, and lead author of the letter, said: “This premature mortality target is highly unethical, since it unjustifiably discriminates against older people.
“We already know that there is age discrimination in cancer care and surgery and these targets give that the stamp of approval.
“The targets are not quite set in stone yet, so we have a final opportunity to impress upon the UN the need to alter this explicitly ageist health target.
“If this doesn’t happen, people aged 70 and over will become second-class citizens as far as health policy is concerned.”
The letter warns that the UN target: “has the potential to undermine cherished, fundamental principles of universality and health as a right for all.”
“Put simply, it tells policy makers, particularly in poorer countries that older people do not matter,” the signatories warn.
• NHS 'defies the law' to deny pensioners vital operations, warns Royal College of Surgeons
• Elderly dying due to 'despicable age discrimination in NHS'
• Lives of elderly at mercy of postcode lottery in 'ageist' NHS, figures suggest
Others who have signed include ageing experts from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University as well as representatives of The Alzheimer’s Society, Age UK, and HelpAge International.
Baroness Sally Greengross, former director of Age Concern England who also signed the letter said: "If adopted, this UN target could lead to institutionalised discrimination against older people in health care, both here in the UK and globally.
“This target will inevitably reinforce the ageist bias that pervades many aspects of health care decision-making.”
The Sustainable Development Goals which are due to come into effect later this year, replace the Millenium Development Goals which ran up to 2015 and include ambitions for climate change, health care, development and policy.
If the target was met, around 42,000 lives would be saved each year for the under 70s. However if older people were included in the target an extra 130,000 lives would be saved.
Although the guidelines are not binding, health experts warn that the UN is likely to take a dim view of countries who fail to comply.
Last year the Royal College of Surgeons warned that elderly people are being denied life-saving operations because of age discrimination within the NHS.
Data released for the first time showed that across large areas of the country, almost no patients above the age of 75 are receiving surgery for breast cancer or routine operations such as gall bladder removal and knee replacements.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), was also criticized for attempting to change its funding criteria to take into account "wider societal benefits" when deciding on whether to fund drugs.
Health experts branded the move ‘deeply suspect’ and said the elderly, may lose out because they do not contribute as much to society as younger people.
Tom Gentry, policy advisor at AgeUK said that people were living far longer than in the past, with even the average 70-year-old expected to live for at least another decade.
“We know that access to surgery is getting worse for older people, and yet we are talking about people who still have years left to live,” he said.
“We need to improve. We are fighting entrenched cultural attitudes about the value of older people and this target will not help that.”
In 2013, the Government introduced age discrimination laws which mean patients should not be denied procedures on grounds of age. Doctors are supposed to assess patients based on their fitness for an operation, and likely benefit from it.
A spokesman for the Department of health said: “It is wrong to deny people treatment just because of their age, which is why we made it illegal.
“Decisions on care should only ever be based on clinical need.”
Comments
It’s time to quit the UN and let it drift off to somewhere else.

Fly the US Flag

He Flew Our Flag to Honor Fallen Soldiers, What His School Required He Do to It Will Tick You Off
Our flag means many things to many people. For some it’s a sign they’ve left behind oppressive and totalitarian cultures to live in the land of the free. For others it represents a rich military heritage with the flag calling to attention those who died to protect what it stands for. And oddly enough for another group of people it stands as reason to be offended.
You’ve seen it all over the nation, people complaining about the American flag because they don’t like what it stands for. Looks like schools are now joining in to get the flag banned.
Kalisa Michaels writes: Peyton Robinson said he got the bad news from a school administrator Wednesday morning. The 18-year-old senior at York Comprehensive High School was told he wasn’t allowed to fly his American flag and POW-MIA flag in the bed of his pickup truck.”He said, ‘We’re having some issues. Some people were complaining about the flags in your truck,'” Robinson told WBTV-TV. He said the administrator said the flags could “possibly” be offensive, and told Robinson to take them down before coming back to the South Carolina school Thursday.
But apparently, Robinson didn’t have to lift a finger. He told WBTV that at some point Wednesday, a school official unscrewed the bolts securing the flags to his truck and laid them in the bed “when I wasn’t even there.”
By the end of the school day, officials announced that flags such as Robinson’s are safety concerns. Superintendent Vernon Prosser told WSOC-TV the fear is that they could block the view of other drivers and cause a wreck.
The senior — who has relatives who served in the military — was upset. “I was pretty mad,” he told WBTV. “I don’t see how it’s a problem. Nobody has ever complained about it before. ”I’d understand if it was the Confederate flag or something that might offend somebody,” he added. “I wouldn’t do that. But an American flag — that’s our country’s flag. I have every right to do it. I don’t see a safety issue. I mean, I understand it’s a big flag — it’s 4 by 6 — but nobody has ever complained about it being in their way or anything.”
So Robinson hit his Facebook page Wednesday and let everybody know what was happening — and fellow students quickly took up the cause, driving back to school that night with flags flying from their vehicles. “I’ll keep fighting,” Robinson told WSOC Wednesday night. “I’m not letting it go; I won’t go down without a fight.”
Students also vowed to fly flags Thursday morning at school in solidarity with Robinson — and more than 70 vehicles equipped with waving flags pulled into the school parking lot. A crowd stood on the roadside and cheered them on, and what appeared to be a group of veterans saluted at the school’s entrance as they rode in. Principal Christopher Black told WSOC on Thursday he would be asking all of those students to remove their flags. But just a couple of hours after the demonstration, there was a big change of heart.
“Due to the outstanding display of patriotism through peaceful demonstration, it is apparent to us that many are not happy about this policy,” the school said in a statement. “School officials have reviewed the standing policy regarding flags and have decided that an exception will be made for the American flag, as long as the size of the flag(s) does not create a driving hazard.”
The state Highway Patrol told WSOC the York students’ flags are legal.
Robinson’s dad told WSOC he’s proud of his son and that he encouraged him to keep flying the flag whatever the rules might say, even if it meant leaving school.
http://preservefreedom.org/he-flew-our-flag-to-honor-fallen-soldiers-what-his-school-required-he-do-to-it-will-tick-you-off/

Muslim Common Core

How the Muslim Brotherhood Uses Common Core to Brainwash Children
This is one crazy story, one I’m not at all surprised liberals are ignoring. Turns out there are very strong connections tying the Muslim Brotherhood to the nation’s Common Core public education curriculum.
It’s already been shown to be true the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated some of the top positions in Washington D.C. (see www.shoebat.com).
But now it looks like those connections extend deep into the public education system. I wish I could say this is a bit of a surprise, to know our school system is being taken over too, but based on the headlines these past few months it really isn’t.
Here’s what the Conservative Tribune writes on the matter.
While many have cried out against the Common Core as having a strong pro-Muslim bias, others have done some digging and traced the origins of the money financing the latest federal takeover of American education to the Middle East.
Common Core is part of the “One World Education” concept, which was put forward by the Connect All Schools program. This program is in turn funded by the Qatar Foundation International, the director of whom is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The QFI partnered with the U.S. State Department and Department of Education in 2011 to implement the Connect All Schools program, joining U.S. classrooms with others around the world.
Of course, the story here in America is that the Common Core standards were created by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, among other groups.
Many of these groups can be traced to an organization known as Pearson Education, which designs and creates educational products and services for its clients. Pearson Education’s largest financial stakeholder is the Libyan Investment Authority, originally founded by one of Moammar Gadhafi’s sons.
The Libyan Investment Authority in turn is made up of investors from Libya, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, as well as members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood, according to The Washington Times.
Add into that mix the progressive propaganda also prevalent throughout the Common Core curriculum, and one can clearly see that the educational standards are little more than an indoctrination scheme aimed at the impressionable children of America.
When one also considers the fact that the federal government is coercing and threatening states to adopt the Common Core standards or risk losing federal funds, it becomes obvious that parents must rise up and take back their local and state education systems from the feds and foreign influences.
Knowing this, is it any wonder the government is going after off-the-grid parents who want to teach their children an independent education? No, it’s not.
The government needs children under their thumb so they can continue to indoctrinate them. Brainwashed children will be passive observers to the rise of an Islamic Caliphate. They won’t dare put up resistance because they’ve been taught since day one this is the way things are.
Now you can see why there’s so much pro-Muslim material in our schools and why Christianity is constantly under attack.
It’s frightening, don’t you think? What do you think of this report….conspiracy or right on the mark?
http://survivaljoe.net/blog/fact-muslim-brotherhood-using-common-core-to-brainwash-children/
 

TPP the End of the US Economy

WikiLeaks’ Assange – TPP Not Only Trade, 83% Is Fascists Controlling Our Daily Lives – Once We’re In, We’re Stuck Forever by Rick Wells 05/30/2015
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange knows more about the contents of the TPP than most members of Congress and is doing much more to inform the American public than any of our so-called representatives with the lone exception of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL). He has no restrictions other than his politically-motivated confinement to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on his freedom to disclose the truth to the world and he is sounding the alarm.

Assange described it in a “Democracy Now” interview as being “not formally classified but being treated as if it is classified in terms of how the information is being managed.” He says, “It is very well-guarded from the press and the majority of people and even from Congressman, but 600 U.S. companies are part of the process and have been given access to various parts of the TPP.”

He continues, “It’s the largest ever international economic treaty that has ever been negotiated. Very, considerably larger than NAFTA, it is mostly not about trade. Only five of the twenty-nine chapters are about traditional trade. The others are about regulating the Internet. Internet service providers have to collect information; they have to hand it over to companies under certain circumstances. It’s about regulating labor, what labor conditions can be applied, regulating whether you can favor a local industry, regulating the hospital health care system, privatization of hospitals.”

“Essentially every aspect of the modern economy,” says Assange, “even banking services, are in the TPP. So that is erecting and embedding a new, ultra-modern neo-liberal structure in U.S. law and in the laws of the other countries that are participating.”

Assange notes that because it is in a treaty form, it is “very hard to overturn,” requiring agreement of the other nations involved. He gives examples of how this will most certainly be abused if it’s approved and points out that the enhanced ability to sue and intimidate governments only applies to the large, multinational corporations. Corporations owned and operated solely within the United States are at a disadvantage in that regard to the unconstitutional advantages provide to the multinationals.

He addresses the chilling effect of intimidation and the wide ranging impact it will have as a result of threatened lawsuits, from the prospect of the legal expenses alone.

This treaty is the antithesis of what America is built upon. It’s no surprise that the global Marxist Obama is its greatest champion. What is surprising is that Republicans are his most vocal and ardent cheerleaders.

There’s a stench rising from the McConnell / Boehner Congress. That’s what treason smells like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5b-99oxCEsRick Wells is a conservative writer who recognizes that our nation, our Constitution and our traditions are under a full scale assault from multiple threats.


Comments

The US government is the greatest threat to our economy. If TPP passes, we’re sunk.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Agenda 21 in CA




Two years ago I wrote an article for PolitiChicks titled, “Local Governments Have Joined the U.N. in Curtailing Your Freedoms,” so with the help of a local patriot, conservative political activist and former City Council candidate, Diana Serafin, my husband and I set out to a specific neighborhood where Diana said we could see Agenda 21 in action in our community – no thanks to our Republican City Council.

Agenda 21, as you might recall, is a global effort based on Marxist theories and Progressive community organizers.

Check out the following video (please excuse my language in the video). The reason our City Council approved this bizarre “city planning” is because the residents of this neighborhood said there was too much traffic cutting through from one major thoroughfare to another one to avoid traffic. Be careful what you ask for.

There is a website, TrafficCalming.org, which lists the effectiveness of different traffic calming measures. For example, a 12 foot speed hump gives you the 85th percentile of the “speed afterward,” and the average change in 85th percentile speed. They also offer these categories for a “raised intersection,” traffic circle” and a host of others. It also lists “Volume Impacts of Traffic Calming Measures and the “Safety Impacts…”

American’s Progressives have gone beyond insanity. Watch the video. Notice the sign the city put up, “Entering a traffic calmed neighborhood.”

http://politichicks.com/2015/05/agenda-21-alive-well-in-california-video/

 

 

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Importing the Poor

America Has Already Taken in One-Fourth of Mexico’s Entire Population!
(Ann Coulter) – I finally found a Mexican willing to do a job no American will do! I have an explosive book on the No. 1 issue in the country coming out next week, I’ve already written 10 New York Times best-sellers — I’d be on a postage stamp if I were a liberal — but can’t get an interview on ABC, NBC or CBS. Only Mexican-born Jorge Ramos would interview me on his Fusion network. Yay, Jorge! After a spellbinding interview, Ramos ended by asking this excellent question — which I had suggested myself for all authors, most of whom write very boring books, harming the marketability of my own books: “Is there anything in your book that isn’t already generally known?”
My soon-to-be-released book, “Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole,” is jam-packed with facts you didn’t already know. Don’t even think of using it as a coaster, like those other books. These are just a few: –
Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was expressly designed to change the demographics of our country to be poorer and more inclined to vote Democratic. – It worked! Post-1970 immigrants vote 8-2 for the Democrats. – Citing this dramatic shift in the Democratic Party’s fortunes, Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy called the 1965 Immigration Act “the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.” –
Immigrants admitted before 1970 made more money, bought more houses and were more educated than Americans. The post-Kennedy immigrants are astronomically less-educated, poorer and more likely to be on welfare than the native population. –
With no welfare state to support them, about a third of pre-1965 Act immigrants returned to the places they came from. British and Jewish immigrants were the least likely to go home — less than 10 percent did. –
Although America is admitting more immigrants, they are coming from fewer countries than they did before 1970. On liberals’ own terms, the country is becoming less “diverse,” but a lot poorer and a lot more Latin. –
America has already taken in one-fourth of Mexico’s entire population. – In 1970, there were almost no Nigerian immigrants in the United States. Our country is now home to more Nigerians than any country in the world except Nigeria. – America takes more immigrants from Nigeria than from England.
– The government refuses to tell us how many prisoners in the United States are immigrants. That information is not available anywhere. But the ancillary facts suggest that the number is astronomical. – There are more foreign inmates in New York state prisons from Mexico than from the entire continent of Europe. –
Hispanics are less likely to be in the military than either whites or blacks, and a majority of Hispanic troops are women. On the other hand, Hispanics are overrepresented in U.S. Prisons. –
In Denmark, actual Danes come in tenth in criminals’ nationality, after Moroccans, Lebanese, Yugoslavians, Somalis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks, Iraqis and Vietnamese. –
At least 15 percent of all births in Peru and Argentina are to girls between the ages of 10 and 15. In the U.S., only 2 percent of births are to girls that young, and those are mostly Hispanics, who are seven times more likely to give birth at that age than white girls are. –
Sex with girls as young as 12 years old is legal in 31 of the 32 states of Mexico. – In all of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel combined, there have been eight reported births to girls aged 10 or younger. Seven of the eight were impregnated by immigrants. –
In some areas of America, law enforcement authorities have given up on prosecuting statutory rape cases against Mexican men in their 30s who impregnate 12- and 13-year-old girls, after repeatedly encountering parents who view their little girls’ pregnancies as a “blessing.” –
The same North Carolina newspapers that gave flood-the-zone coverage to a rape that never happened at a Duke lacrosse party completely ignore real rapes happening right under their noses, being committed against children by immigrants providing cheap labor to the state’s farming and meat-packing industries. –
Since 2004, Mexicans have beheaded at least a half-dozen people in the United States. – Mexican drug cartels — not ISIS — pioneered the practice of posting videotaped beheadings online.  An alleged “ISIS” beheading video making the rounds in 2014 was actually a Mexican beheading video from 2010.
Post-1970 immigrants have re-introduced slavery to America. Indian immigrant Lakireddy Bali Reddy, for example, used the H1-B visa program, allegedly for “high-tech workers,” to bring in 12-year-old girls he had bought from their parents for sex. – The above story was missed by the San Francisco Chronicle. It was broken by a high school journalism class. – The ACLU took Reddy’s side.  
We’re still letting in Hmong immigrants as a reward for their help with the ill-fated Vietnam War, which ended 40 years ago. – Between 2000 and 2005, nearly 100 Hmong men were charged with rape or forced prostitution of girls in Minneapolis-St Paul, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The vast majority of the victims were 15 years old or younger. A quarter of the victims were not Hmong.
Proponents of the 1965 immigration bill swore up and down that it would not alter this country’s demographic mix. In fact, Kennedy’s immigration policy has brought about the greatest demographic shift of any nation in world history.  
In 1980, Reagan won the biggest electoral landslide in history against an incumbent president, Jimmy Carter.
Without the last 40 years of immigration, in 2012, Mitt Romney would have won a bigger landslide than Reagan did. He got more of the “Reagan coalition” than Reagan did.
If Romney had won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, he still would have lost. If he’d gotten just 4 percent more of the white vote, he would have won.
Comments
Our high real unemployment with 93 million working-age US citizens with no jobs was caused by bad trade agreements like NAFTA and WTO and excessive immigration.
You can have open borders or a welfare state, but you can’t have both. – Milton Friedman
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Let the Patriot Act expire


Tomorrow I will force the expiration of the NSA's illegal spying program. I will not allow any bill extending illegal NSA spying to be rushed through ahead of the deadline.
 
My oath is to support and defend the Constitution and I won't back down. The abuse of general warrants and the attack on the Bill of Rights must stop once-and-for-all.
 
We don't have to choose between fighting terrorism and obeying the Constitution. That's why, two years ago, I sued the NSA. It's why I proposed the Fourth Amendment Protection Act to force our government to abide by the Bill of Rights. It's why I have fought for a full, open and honest debate on warrantless domestic spying -- a debate that is always kicked down the road in the name of "security."
 
So last week, with the proponents of this illegal spying rushing toward a deadline to ram through renewing illegal spying, I took a stand. I filibustered for over 10 hours to shine a light on the vast expansion of the spy state and the erosion of our liberties. I stood on the Senate floor until the early hours of the morning and helped block any short-term extension of these powers.
 
Tomorrow, the Senate will come back from recess with just hours left before the NSA's illegal spying powers expire. And I won't allow defenders of the spy state to legislate through a manufactured crisis by holding a deadline over the head of Congress.
 
Let me be clear: I believe the number one job of the federal government is national defense. I believe we must fight terrorism and I believe we must stand strong against our enemies. But we do not need to compromise the Constitution in the process. In fact, we must not.
 
I am ready and willing to start the debate on how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty. This can't be delayed any longer. I do not do this to obstruct.
 
I'm fighting for a strong national defense that upholds the Constitution and protects Americans from enemies who seek to do us harm.
 
*So I hope I can count on you to sign your petition and stand with me as I force illegal NSA spying to expire and stand strong against any deals or threats
 
<http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/28101194:27003794280:m:1:444779297:716CBE8BE175AF538B9E6820FD44A4DC:r>*
.
In Liberty, Rand Paul
 
Comments
 
The guy believes in the Constitution and he's got the courage to stand up for it. - David
 
The greatest threat to our freedom is our own federal government – Norb Leahy

Connecticut Taxes Unsustainable


Worse than Illinois, Connecticut Democrats are raising taxes again after promising not to. May 29, 2015, WSJ
 
The Census Bureau says Connecticut was one of six states that lost population in fiscal 2013-2014, and a Gallup poll in the second half of 2013 found that about half of Nutmeg Staters would migrate if they could. Now the Democrats who run the state want to drive the other half out too. That’s the best way to explain the frenzy by Governor Dannel Malloy and the legislature to raise taxes again and blow through a state constitutional spending cap. They’ve been negotiating behind closed-doors over the details of a two-year $40 billion budget that could be revealed this weekend, but it’s already clear that Connecticut residents will pay big time.
 
Mr. Malloy promised last year during his re-election campaign that he wouldn’t raise taxes, but that’s what he also said in 2010. In 2011 he signed a $2.6 billion tax hike promising that it would eliminate a budget deficit. Having won re-election he’s now back seeking another $650 million in tax hikes. But that’s not enough for the legislature, which has floated $1.5 billion in tax increases. Add a state-wide municipal sales tax that some lawmakers want, and the total could hit $2.1 billion over two years. 
 
One reason Mr. Malloy needs cash is because the state economy isn’t growing. According to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, the state grew a scant 0.9% in 2013, the last year state data are available. That was tied for tenth worst in the U.S. The state’s average compounded annual growth for the last four years is 0.42%. Slow growth means less tax revenue but spending never slows down.
 
Some “40% of the state budget goes to government employee compensation and benefits, including payroll, state pensions, teacher pensions and current and retiree health care,” says Carol PlattLiebau, president of the Hartford-based Yankee Institute. “These items are growing at a rate that exceeds the growth of the economy. ”The Tax Foundation ranks Connecticut as one of the 10 worst states to do business. The state finished last in Gallup’s Job Creation Index in 2014 and now ties with Rhode Island for the worst job creation in the index since 2008.This will only get worse if the state Assembly gets its way.
 
Democrats want to make permanent what has been a temporary surtax of 20% on a company’s annual tax liability, while limiting the use of accumulated tax credits. They also want to apply the 6.35% state sales tax to services, increase the top marginal income tax rate for individuals to 6.99% from 6.7%, and add a new 2% surcharge on capital gains income, which is now taxed as ordinary income. In a sign of grasping desperation, the proposal also calls for the Connecticut Lottery to put keno in bars and restaurants.
 
Not too many years ago Connecticut was a tax refuge for New York City workers, but since it imposed an income tax in 1991 the rate has kept climbing, as it always does. We’re tempted to say that the Connecticut voters who re-elected Mr. Malloy after he dissembled on taxes the first time are getting what they deserve. But this is what happens when a state, like Illinois and New York, becomes dominated by public unions and gentry liberals. They soak the middle class. 
 
On May 13 Nutmeggers became the last U.S. residents to reach Tax Freedom Day, when they finish paying the government each year and begin working for themselves. No wonder so many want to leave.
 
http://www.wsj.com/articles/worse-than-illinois-1432939572
 
 

Public-Pension Potholes in Wine Country Paradise


Sonoma County voters are being asked to raise taxes to fix roads—while public workers savor sweet retirement deals. By STEPHEN EIDE, May 29, 2015
 
It takes a lot of effort to botch Sonoma County, Calif., an earthly paradise north of San Francisco Bay that is home to some of the world’s most outstanding winemakers. But massive pension obligations seem to be doing the trick. On Tuesday, voters will be asked to raise county sales taxes by a quarter-cent to fix their roads.
 
California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, a portion of whose revenues is specifically dedicated to local transportation. Yet Sonoma estimates that it needs to spend nearly $1 billion over the next two decades to keep its roads in shape. The county routinely ranks at or near the bottom in surveys of state and regional pavement conditions.
 
In 2010, the county director of transportation and public works warned that, without more investment in pavement, some local roads would soon “feel and look like a loose cobble road. ”All this cannot be chalked up to a weak tax base or punishing winters. But retirement-benefit costs for its public employees are skyrocketing.
 
Between 2005 and 2014, Sonoma’s annual required pension contribution more than doubled, to $52 million, while tax revenues increased 25%, to $247 million. Thanks to state balanced-budget requirements, something had to give. In Sonoma it was basic infrastructure. 
 
At the height of the dot-com bubble in 1999, the California legislature enacted a retroactive pension increase, Senate Bill 400.  Calpers, the state’s massive retirement system, assured lawmakers in Sacramento that returns on the system’s investments would easily cover the cost of the richer pensions. The benefit enhancement applied to only state workers, but numerous counties and cities, including Sonoma in 2002, followed suit at the urging of government unions. 
 
The new benefit formula for Sonoma’s public-safety employees, such as cops and firefighters, was “3% at 50.” At the age of 50, workers became eligible for a pension equal to their years of service times 3% of their highest salary—so 90% for someone who had been on the job for 30 years. The formula for non-safety employees was boosted to 3% at 60. (Sonoma County retirees also receive Social Security benefits.)
 
Between 2002 and 2006, the average pension for new safety retirees increased by 69%, according to an analysis by New Sonoma, a citizens group that claims the retroactive pension increases were illegal, as they were enacted without public notice of the future annual cost. Retirees made energetic use of opportunities to “spike” pensions by taking advantage of the formulas so that their unused vacation and sick days were counted in their pensionable earnings. Through such tactics, some county employees have even been able to retire with pensions over 100% of salary.
 
Defined-benefit pensions are often touted as a powerful tool for employee retention, but a wave of attrition followed Sonoma’s pension boost. Between 2003 and 2004, when the increase went into effect for general employees, the number of annual retirements doubled. Why keep working past the age of 50 or 60 when one can bring in close to as much income in retirement—especially since Sonoma extends its health-care coverage to retirees?
 
The county’s unfunded pension liability—the gap between assets and liabilities—is $350 million. Sonoma owes an additional $460 million in “pension obligation bonds,” borrowing from credit markets to backfill unfunded pension liabilities, a risky financing maneuver that the Government Finance Officers Association recently advised state and local governments to steer clear of.
 
For the sake of context, the county’s annual spending is about $800 million. Some progress has been made. California’s 2012 Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act rolled back benefit formulas for county employees, and the county itself has restructured retiree health care. But the important changes applied only to new hires.
 
This will help the county’s finances in the future, but not its current woes. The best-maintained roads in Sonoma are the 360 miles eligible for federal funding, which the county rates as “good to very good.” The county’s other 1,010 miles are rated “poor.” To bring all its roads to “good” condition, the county would need to spend $954 million over the next 20 years. Basic road maintenance should be considered among the more manageable of a local government’s responsibilities. And Sonoma County, whose poverty rate is about 30% lower than the statewide average, seems better-positioned than most to fulfill its ordinary duties to the taxpaying public.
 
Yet Sonoma now must perform expensive reconstructive work on miles of deteriorated roads which years earlier would have needed only minor resurfacing touches. Sonoma officials blame declining gas-tax revenues, caused in part by greater fuel efficiency, and a state funding formula that unfairly favors dense areas such as Los Angeles County.
 
Some roads advocates are also critical of the county’s commitment to the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, which will offer passenger rail service between low-density Sonoma and Marin counties when it opens in 2016. The rail-transit construction is being financed by a special quarter-cent sales tax sold to the two counties’ voters in 2008 in part for its potential to “fight global warming. ”But these two factors—insufficient gas-tax revenues and an overemphasis on service expansion over basic maintenance—can’t account for the local roads’ deterioration.
 
The math is simple: Last year Sonoma spent $26.1 million on retiree health care, exactly three times what the county expects to receive from the new sales-tax increase. In short, Sonoma’s road woes are not a revenue problem. “Fix it first” is the rallying cry for transportation advocates—but when it comes to basic road maintenance in Sonoma County, what really needs to be fixed first is the pension system.
 
Mr. Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the recent report “California Crowd-Out: How Rising Retirement Benefit Costs Threaten Municipal Services. ”Public-Pension Potholes in Wine Country Paradise
 
Source: WSJ, Public-Pension Potholes in Wine Country, In The Wall Street Journal, Stephen Eide writes that public-pension potholes have hit the wine-country.
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Comments
The same neglect of roads and highways has infected Metro Atlanta. For decades, Georgia overspent on public education and indigent healthcare and underspent on roads and highways. 
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader  

Attacks on Military. Police, Teachers, Parents and Property

UN Agenda 21 calls for the dismantling of all elected governance in the US and replacement with appointed governance.  States are bribed with federal grants to states to pass enabling legislation to allow these abuses.
We have federally mandated appointed “Regional” Commissions that usurp local city and county governance.  But leading US citizens to accept UN global governance requires the removal of our guns, bullets, military and police to replace them with federal police and a UN military presence.
We have a Military that has been purged of officers who want to defend the US Constitution and refuse to pledge their allegiance to Obama.  We have Bolsheviks paid by George Soros to burn and riot in our cities and local police are being attacked if they try to maintain the rule of law.
The first step in creating the “national police” is federal “Guidelines” being released, instructing police to let the Bolsheviks burn their cities down.  This won’t be enough, so old fashioned, Constitution swearing police chiefs and sheriffs will need to be replaced and the “training” will continue.
Education is traveling the same road to ruin and “rebirth” under Common Core’s plan to do psychological testing and behavior modification to our children.
Parents are having their children taken with medical and child protective services kidnappings.
Federal agencies are seizing homes, bank accounts, farms, ranches, businesses, land and water rights from owners.   
In some cases, the courts are intervening, but too many of these abuses have succeeded. 
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader