TiLTNews Network: Earth Watch

Monday, May 4, 2015

"Draw Mohammad" contest sponsored by neocon network propagandizing for war

“The attack in Garland that wounded a security guard in the foot will be used by neocons in the media to further portray Muslims as a threat to the national security of the United States and as a propaganda piece to inflate the war on terror.”

by KURT NIMMO | INFOWARS.COM | MAY 4, 2015

The group responsible for the Draw Muhammad event in Garland, Texas is part of a larger network of neocon organizations working behind the scenes to stoke tension between Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum (MEF) funds David Horowitz’s Freedom Center which in turn funds Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s American Freedom Defense Initiative.

MEF is closely linked to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), where Pipes was an adjunct scholar. WINEP is a spin-off the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the more influential advocacy groups in the United States dedicated to promoting Israeli policies in Washington, including confronting Iran and Arab nations opposed to Israel and its policies in regard to the Palestinians.

Additionally, MEF is linked to the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that played an instrumental role in promoting the invasion of Iraq. Its board of trustees is a virtual who’s who of the financial and corporate elite. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who led the propaganda charge into the lead up to invasion and its disastrous result — more than a million dead Iraqis — figures prominently on the board.

According to research conducted by The Center for Media and Democracy, MEF and other neocon groups receive funding through Donors Capital Fund, a shadowy 509(a)(3) organization that has created a “murky money maze” for the neocon and other corporate and financial class projects. “The twin Donors organizations are advertised as a way for very wealthy people and corporations to remain hidden when ‘funding sensitive or controversial issues,’ creating a lack of accountability,” writes Andy Kroll.

The MRF board of directors include a number of prominent neocons in addition to Daniel Pipes, including William Kristol, Laurent Murawiec (connected to war party corporation, RAND), Meyrav Wurmser (co-founder of the Israeli propaganda unit,MEMRI), Judith Miller (who sold lies about Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs via The New York Times) and others.

The attack in Garland that wounded a security guard in the foot will be used by neocons in the media to further portray Muslims as a threat to the national security of the United States and as a propaganda piece to inflate the war on terror.

Pam Geller has predictably used the attack by a man under surveillance by the FBI as a rallying call for war. “This is the Sharia,” she told Fox News. “This is the blasphemy laws under the Sharia. They mean to impose it… people better wake up to what’s going on and start taking back their freedom, start fighting back.”

http://www.infowars.com/garland-attack-neocon-network-baits-jihadists-and-pumps-up-the-clash-of-civilizations-agenda/

ENDANGERED SPECIES: THE SELF-EMPLOYED MIDDLE CLASS

No more than 4 or 5 million, depending on where you draw the line

Image Credits: Philip Taylor, Flickr.

by CHARLES HUGH SMITH | OF TWO MINDS | MAY 4, 2015

Including the professional class, perhaps 3% of the workforce is truly independent.

Being self-employed (i.e. owning your own small business that does not require employees) is an integral part of the American Dream. Many start out dreaming of a corner office in Corporate America, but as they move up the ladder, many become disillusioned by the process and the goal: do I really want to spend my life making big-shots even wealthier?

Bureaucracies (government and corporate) are safe sources of employment, but at a cost: they’re often soul-deadening.

Many dream of making a living doing something they actually care about, and that often means striking out on your own, i.e. self-employment.

This raises an interesting question: how many self-employed people in the U.S. actually earn a middle class income? Since all the government statistics have a line at $50,000, and $50,000 might support a minimal middle class lifestyle in areas with a low cost of living, let’s use $50,000 in annual income as our minimum.

As you might expect, government agencies count jobs and self-employment in different ways, which makes sorting out the numbers difficult. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for example, counts two types of self-employed, the unincorporated and the incorporated. The unincorporated may have employees, but typically do not, i.e. they are sole proprietors. The incorporated have employees, starting with the owner, as the BLS counts the incorporated self-employed as employees of their own corporation.

The analysts at Docstoc.com assembled a chart that counts only those sole proprietors, partnerships and corporations with no employees, i.e. the self-employed:The State of US Small Businesses.

They came up with a total number of all self-employed that earned at least $1,000 annually of 22.5 million, of which 3 million were partnerships or corporations. These are overwhelmingly professionals such as attorneys, accountants, physicians, consultants, entertainers, etc.

If we subtract the partnerships and corporations, there are 19.4 million sole proprietors.

For context: there are about 141 million people in the U.S. with some sort of employment according to the BLS: total nonfarm employment.

But this number includes tens of millions of part-time jobs and self-employed earning very little money. According to the BLS, there are about 121 million full-time jobs and 27.3 million part-time jobs.

But how many of these jobs are marginal, i.e. earn less than $10,000 a year? For that, we turn to the IRS data from tax returns (The Social Security Administration also compiles income statistics.)

I prefer the statistics compiled by tax returns, as these numbers are verifiable and precise. There is no seasonal adjustment of tax returns; there is an exact known number of tax returns with taxable income, i.e. net income after credits and deductions.

The IRS site Individual Statistical Tables by Size of Adjusted Gross Income offers a wealth of information that can be downloaded into Excel spreadsheets.

I am referring here to Table 1.1, All Returns: Selected Income and Tax Items for tax year 2012, (the most recent data available) and Table 1.4, All Returns: Adjusted Gross Income, Exemptions, Deductions, and Tax Items for tax year 2012.

If we examine Table 1.1, we find there were about 145 million returns filed, and 93 million had taxable income after credits and deductions. Roughly 46 million earned less than $20,000: 22 million workers earned less than $10,000, 35 million earned less than $15,000, and 46.5 million earned less than $20,000.

While 19.4 million sole proprietors is a big number, it turns out most are side businesses that earn relatively little income. 5.5 million earn less than $5,000 annually, 3.8 million net between $5,000 and $10,000, 5.7 million earn between $10,000 and $25,000, and another 3 million net between $25,000 and $50,000.

Only 4.48 million self-employed earn $50,000 or more, and 3 million of those are partnerships or corporations, i.e. professionals such as CPAs, attorneys, etc. That leaves leaves about 1.5 million people who aren’t in the professional class (those with advanced degrees and professional licenses and credentials) who earn a middle class living as sole proprietors.

This is roughly 1% of the workforce of 145 million. It turns out the non-professional self-employed that make enough to maintain a minimally middle class lifestyle are a razor-thin slice of the workforce.

Table 1.4, All Returns: Adjusted Gross Income, Exemptions, Deductions, and Tax Items is a treasure trove of telling statistics. Information junkies will be in hog-heaven as soon as they open the spreadsheet, because these numbers cut through the fog of employment and income.

As many of you know from previous entries on jobs, work, etc., I am self-employed and have no employees. I am one of the 1% who earns more than $50,000 annually via self-employment who is not a licensed professional or equivalent. Since I have to file Schedule C tax returns, I am keenly aware of the deductions that are only available to sole proprietors/self-employed taxpayers.

Only self-employed taxpayers get to deduct half of their healthcare insurance premiums. You have to earn a fair sum to actually afford the sky-high costs of health insurance. We pay $15,300 per year for stripped-down healthcare coverage, which is more than the annual earnings of the bottom 35 million workers in the nation.

Only 3.9 million taxpayers took the self-employed health insurance deduction.That’s a pretty good indicator of how many taxpayers are actually living solely on their income, that is, they don’t have a spouse who has family healthcare coverage via being an employee for the government or a corporation.

The number of taxpayers who took the deductible part of self-employment tax was 18.6 million. This includes everyone with a net income from a business. According to the IRS tax data, 7.39 million taxpayers reported self-employment of $50,000 or more.

This is almost 3 million more people than counted in the infographic, which shows that it takes cross-checking various agency statistics to sort through all the data.

This means roughly 5% of the workforce is self-employed and earns $50,000 or more annually.

According to the Federal Reserve of St. Louis (FRED) data shown in The Decline of Self-Employment and Small Business (April 22, 2013), there are 5.5 million incorporated self-employed and 9.2 million unincorporated self-employed.

If we assume most of the incorporated self-employed are professionals, this leaves roughly 1.9 million non-professional self-employed who earn more than $50,000 annually (7.39 million – 5.5 million).

However you figure it, there are less than 2 million non-professionals making a middle class living via self-employment. That is roughly 1.5% of the 121 million full-time workers in the nation.

I confess to being astonished at the tiny number of truly independent self-employed people in the U.S. Only 3.9 million of us deduct our healthcare insurance, and only 7 million out of 145 million earn $50,000 or more–and on the left and right coasts, $50,000 is not a middle-class income–it is borderline poverty.

If we only counted the self-employed who earn enough to afford a minimally middle class lifestyle in high-cost urban zones such as greater New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, etc., the number declines to an even thinner slice of the workforce–no more than 4 or 5 million, depending on where you draw the line.

It isn’t easy to earn enough to afford a middle class life via self-employment.Including the professional class, perhaps 3% of the workforce is truly independent.

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2015/05/endangered-species-self-employed-middle.html

SAVAGE ON GARLAND SHOOTING: THERE’S A LINK BETWEEN WHITE HOUSE AND ISIS

"Someone on that team in the White House is playing for the other side," syndicated radio host says

by KIT DANIELS | INFOWARS.COM | MAY 4, 2015

ISIS sympathizers have infiltrated the government and how high it goes up is anyone’s guess, syndicated radio host Michael Savage said.

“The fact of the matter is, the FBI director [James Comey] warned us six weeks ago, just before Hussein’s [Obama] counter-terrorism conference in Washington where he invited Muslim groups [but] disinvited [Comey], that ISIS is in 49 out of 50 states,” he stated Monday on the Alex Jones Show. “Why would he do that to the guy who warned us? There’s only one answer: someone on that team in the White House is playing for the other side.”

“We’ve been penetrated, we’ve been infiltrated and how high it goes up is anyone’s guess,” Savage also said. “We know that the president’s middle name is not Jesus. We know the military has been told to stand down.”

“We know the police have been told to stand down.”

And we also know that Obama ordered the Border Patrol to stand down from enforcing immigration laws, which practically opened the border for anyone – including ISIS – to enter the country with impunity.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s drugs, bodies, or how large the group is, our agents are being ordered to stand down by Border Patrol management,” Shawn Moran, Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council, told Breitbart in Oct. 2013. “I have received reports from our agents in every single sector from San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas that they are receiving these orders.”

Obama even told the Department of Homeland Security to slow down prosecution of illegals and may have even offered Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents paid temporary leave from duty.

“In essence, the administration has declared that U.S. immigration is now virtually unlimited to anyone willing to try to enter and only those who commit violent felonies after arrival are subject to enforcement,” Federation for American Immigration Reform President Dan Stein said to CNN.

Follow on Twitter:
@RealAlexJones | @KitDaniels1776

http://www.infowars.com/savage-on-garland-shooting-theres-a-link-between-white-house-and-isis/

REPORT: EMP DEVICE USED TO DISABLE POSSIBLE EXPLOSIVES FOLLOWING GARLAND ATTACK

"... I guess we'll have to add EMP devices to the growing list of military tech trickling down to domestic US law enforcement"

by MIKAEL THALEN | INFOWARS.COM | MAY 4, 2015

Several reporters at the scene of Sunday’s terror attack in Garland, Texas, stated that police used an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device when examining the suspected shooters’ vehicle for explosives.

According to NBC 5’s Kevin Cokely, an explosion sound was heard from the suspects’ vehicle shortly after the police bomb squad told media personnel to disable all electronics.

USA FREEDOM Act: Just Another Word for Lost Liberty

written by ron paul sunday may 3, 2015

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Apologists for the National Security Agency (NSA) point to the arrest of David Coleman Headley as an example of how warrantless mass surveillance is necessary to catch terrorists. Headley played a major role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people.
While few would argue that bringing someone like Headley to justice is not a good thing, Headley’s case in no way justifies mass surveillance. For one thing, there is no “terrorist” exception in the Fourth Amendment. Saying a good end (capturing terrorists) justifies a bad means (mass surveillance) gives the government a blank check to violate our liberties.
Even if the Headley case somehow justified overturning the Fourth Amendment, it still would not justify mass surveillance and bulk data collection. This is because, according to an investigation by ProPublica, NSA surveillance played an insignificant role in catching Headley. One former counter-terrorism official said when he heard that NSA surveillance was responsible for Headley's capture he “was trying to figure out how NSA played a role.”
The Headley case is not the only evidence that the PATRIOT Act and other post-9/11 sacrifices of our liberty have not increased our security. For example, the NSA’s claim that its surveillance programs thwarted 54 terrorist attacks has been widely discredited. Even the president’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies found that mass surveillance and bulk data collection was “not essential to preventing attacks.”
According to the congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 and the 9/11 Commission, the powers granted the NSA by the PATRIOT Act would not have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Many intelligence experts have pointed out that, by increasing the size of the haystack government agencies must look through, mass surveillance makes it harder to find the needle of legitimate threats.
Even though mass surveillance threatens our liberty, violates the Constitution, and does nothing to protect us from terrorism, many in Congress still cling to the fiction that the only way to ensure security is to give the government virtually unlimited spying powers. These supporters of the surveillance state are desperate to extend the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that are set to expire at the end of the month. They are particularly eager to preserve Section 215, which authorizes many of the most egregious violations of our liberties, including the NSA’s “metadata” program.
However, Edward Snowden's revelations have galvanized opposition to the NSA’s ongoing violations of our liberties. This is why Congress will soon vote on the USA FREEDOM Act. This bill extends the expiring surveillance laws. It also contains some “reforms” that supposedly address all the legitimate concerns regarding mass surveillance.
However, a look at the USA FREEDOM Act’s details, as opposed to the press releases of its supporters, shows that the act leaves the government’s mass surveillance powers virtually untouched.
The USA FREEDOM Act has about as much to do with freedom as the PATRIOT Act had to do with patriotism. If Congress truly wanted to protect our liberties it would pass the Surveillance State Repeal Act, which repeals the PATRIOT Act. Congress should also reverse the interventionist foreign policy that increases the risk of terrorism by fostering resentment and hatred of Americans.
Fourteen years after the PATRIOT Act was rushed into law, it is clear that sacrificing liberty does little or nothing to preserve security. Instead of trying to fool the American people with phony reforms, Congress should repeal all laws that violate the Fourth Amendment, starting with the PATRIOT Act.

DISNEY SETTING UP HIGH-TECH SWEATSHOPS IN U.S., FORESHADOWING TPP

Trade agreement makes NAFTA look like child’s play

by JON BOWNE | INFOWARS.COM | MAY 3, 2015

If President Obama, the IMF, the WTO and legions of New World Order stalwarts have their way, your job, your children’s future, and the future of the United States will be assimilated to the corporacratic borg.

http://www.infowars.com/disney-setting-up-high-tech-sweatshops-in-u-s-foreshadowing-tpp/

Prison Planet.com » Fox News Posts Fake Baltimore Riot Photo That’s Actually From Venezuela

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