Getting Older

Taxes are controversial in the world. They are necessary for the world to promote. Taxes have many purposes. The government of Virginia and the federal use taxes as a means to fund services, make projects, and to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities. The government use taxes collected from individuals and corporations to finance their own operations. Congress is given the right to tax citizens from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The income tax is primarily found in the federal government. It’s paid by individuals and corporations. It’s the largest single source of revenue today. Taxation can be used to raise revenue. Revenue is a profit earned by a business, corporation, or the government in general. The Income tax has been legalized by the 16^th Amendment. The 16^th Amendment created the income tax to be a progressive tax. A progressive tax is a tax that the richer citizens pay more than poorer citizens. For example, hypothetically, a poor person can pay 16 percent of their income taxes and a richer person can pay about 30 percent of income as in the form of an income tax. An income tax is a tax on a yearly income. Corporate income taxes are when corporations pay for money on income. The payroll tax is assessed by the federal government in all 50 states including the District of Colombia. The payroll tax is one major way that the federal government can get revenues. These taxes are used to pay for Social Security, Medicare, and other forms of insurance. The payroll tax is regressive. This means that lower income person pay more than higher income persons. For example, a person making about 200,000 dollars a year can pay the same Social Security tax as someone earner over 97,000 a year. Custom duties are tariffs or taxes on the imports of goods sent into America. For example, if a good comes into America, there is a tariff or tax on them. On average, the tariff is about 3 percent of imported goods to America. Sales taxes can occur in the federal and state level. A sales tax is a tax on goods and services (when the consumer buys a product). For example, if I buy a ring or foods, a sales tax is added on the total amount of the cost of the stuff that I brought. Most local government has a real estate or property tax. A property tax is a tax on human property like a home or a business. Property taxes generated $436 million in 2011 in revenue. Differences among property taxes vary from state to state. The proportional tax plan or a flat tax means that everyone (regardless of income level) pays the same percentage of taxes. For example, regardless if a person’s income is 1 million dollars yearly or 40,000 yearly, they pay the same 15% tax rate nationally.

The more truth comes out about the Trayvon Martin murder, the more truth is coming on our side. Our side wants justice not tokenism. Our side wants tolerance not stereotyping your fellow man. For a time, the reactionaries from FOX News and other locations slandered the victim. Today, their lies caught up with them when new evidence pants a more accurate picture about the whole Trayvon Martin tragedy. Investigator Chris Serino said that Zimmerman didn’t use self defense. He wanted George Zimmerman to be charged with manslaughter, but the Florida state attorney’s office shot that idea down (since they felt that there was insufficient evidence to charge Zimmerman. This is silly since probable cause is merited in an arrest). Zimmerman’s father is a judge too. It’s 2012 and people can still be murdered if they wear a hoodie in a gated community. The Sanford police supported Zimmerman from the beginning and treated Trayvon as the criminal when he was not. Zimmerman weighs 250 pounds and Trayvon Martin weighed 140 pounds. He is skinny than me when I was 17 years old (and I was skinny back then). Many witnesses say that they heard a young man cry out for help before a shot was fired. After the shot was fired, the cries for help immediately ended. The police didn’t check Zimmerman’s criminal record or drug/alcohol content, but only Trayvon Martin’s. Zimmerman is found to have assaulted a police officer and he assaulted a woman. He’s a punk and a criminal. The police didn’t even talk to Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend, who had been on the phone with him before and during part of the attack. Police video proves that there are no signs of blood or bruises on Zimmerman. Zimmerman didn’t went into the hospital too. Captain Robert O’Donnor made the decision to release George Zimmerman. Yet, it’s important for us to not financially exploit this tragedy. We should fight for truth and fight for justice without a financial angle at all. Also, we should recognize the epidemic of police brutality, racial profiling, and other evils in the world today. The police still haven’t talked to Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend. In fact, the Sanford police have a history of protecting those who brutalize and murder black people. In 2005, two security guards, one the son of a Sanford police officer and the other a department volunteer, killed a Black man they claimed was trying to run them over. The guards were eventually acquitted. And the officer in charge of that case was the same one in charge at the scene of the Trayvon Martin murder. In 2010, police waited seven weeks to arrest a lieutenant’s son who was caught on video punching a homeless Black man. This is why even the celebrities are speaking out, because this Trayvon Martin unjust murder is so blatantly unjustified. The wars on drugs and mass incarceration policies have harmed America. It’s not the youth’s fault for these evils. It’s the fault of the oppressor alone. This oppression against people of color and all people should be fault against by the people.

Hunger Games is an unique, controversial movie. Some people wanted to rate the movie R because of its violence. Yet, the move was classified as PG-13. The movie talks about the place of Panem, which is the authoritarian high tech dictatorship described in the film. The film outlines the police state fictionally, which is similar to the so-called “benevolent” police state that we experience daily in America. It’s interesting The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins gave her dystopian nation an appropriate name – Panem, from the Latin phrase “Panem et Circenses” which means “Bread and Circuses.” It was the basic Roman recipe for the required amusement and distraction of the masses existing within a military dictatorship. People already realize that we have huge civil liberty violations in America that negatively affect human beings. This film shows a collapsed society and a dictatorship running 12 regions in the world. There is feudalism and people killed who dare to eat. Men in the film are emasculated, so masculinity is based on the film. Femininity is based in the film as well. This film is similar to predictive programming or the plans of the elite shown in a fictional film. The film describes Agenda 21 like system. The 12 world regions are controlled by a centralized system. Agriculture is very limited in the film. The government has the high tech system that controls the masses. Agenda 21, the Biodiversity Treaty, etc. is about the violation of national sovereignty and the depopulation of the population of humanity. The elite control most of the land. The film shows sacrifices and also the showing of splitting the family up. A militarized society has occurred in nations worldwide. In the USA today, we have more militarized police, more tyranny since 9/11, and more innocent people being murdered under suspicious circumstances via the police. The reality is that life is worth living. We can see the moon, trees, animals, and humanity to see the beauty of God’s creations. Information is electrifying. Even some scientists have reversed aging in mice. There is still Big Brother in the world. The world is active and so many occurrences have been occurring. There has been a lot of hype surrounding the Hunger Games. The film describes t eugenics agenda. The film shows gladiatorial games and human sacrifice (which is supported in Biodiversity Treaty). The film talks about the time period of 47 years after the rebellion. There were genetically modified wasps. The film talks about sacrificing children and people cheer for their sons to die. There are nanotech creatures that are commonly shown in the Hunger Games movie. The film shows the last of resistance that wants to battle against the globalized system. The world in the movie is divided among groups and classes plus styles. The people in the film are very hungry and they live off a squirrel meat. Hunger Games shows reality. In real life, the elite promote rationing of foods, while they store grains secretly in the Arctic Circle (while restricting it from the poorer people in the world).

The Supreme Court is questioning the new heath care law, especially its component of the individual mandate (that forces people to have private health insurance). Populists have said that singer payer system is better than the current law. The current law has some legitimate parts in it though. The Republicans are very hypocritical to claim to oppose the mandate when the individual mandate was supported by Republicans since that late 1980’s (even before Mitt Romney’s Romney care in Massachusetts). Back in the late 1980’s, conservative economists like Mark Pauly wanted a mandate. He was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business. Pauly wanted a mandate to make an alternative to government sponsored universal health coverage. The Heritage Foundation with its people like Stuart Butler advanced the mandate as well. The Heritage Foundation worked with Mitt Romney to pass his 2006 health reform law (that forces citizens in his state to purchase insurance coverage). Some Democrats oppose this Republican idea, because it can be used as a gateway for the insurance industry to dominate health care services. Even Bill Clinton opposed it. President Barack Obama once opposed the mandate during the 2008 Presidential campaign. It’s very strange to support a mandate that forces people to buy into the same private insurance companies that is harming us. It’s better to promote a single payer, Medicare for all type of system. The private health care insurance industry supports both parties, but even the vast majority of Americans (as proven by polls supported single payer health care).

We should oppose the onslaught on American workers. We have the evil war on terrorism, the corporate crimes of the elite, the bailout of banks, and tax cuts for the super wealthy rich. We have jingoistic patriotism in America. We live in a country where the police and intelligence agencies monitor what you read and can arrest you on suspicion of subversive activity. Being a good citizen is not about submitting to the evil whims of the corrupt state. It’s about being knowledgeable of the world, strong for fight tyranny, and never giving up in your life. That’s honorable and true. We know that the war allows the Pentagon to militarily dominate Latin American nations. When the Drug war is strenghten, the privatized prison system has increased its powers as well. In fact, over 40 percent of the people in prison in America (made up of 2.3 million people) has been Congress passed legislation giving the same severe jail time for the milder cannabis as for the sale or possession of cocaine and heroin. This remains the foundation of current drug law. Even in some states, if you are convicted of non-violent possession of marijuana, you can get life in prison. Yes, life in prison, so this stuff is wrong blatantly. Tough on crime rhetoric doesn't solve the problem of crime conclusively, but it does increase the power of the prison industrial complex.

Timothy