So They Steal from the Paupers

Tax time is coming around for the year, 2022, April 15 in the U$A = The Year of Water Tiger, and that Zodiac went completey 180 degrees the other way:

The 2022 year of the water tiger promises a 15 year of positive changes. Your business will be stable, and finances will flow smoothly throughout the year. This year is favorable for new love and relationships. However, you are advised to make savings that might be needed in the future.

You might know where I am going with this. My spouse and I will pay through the nose these poll and toll taxes. The complete rip-off of our household. Recall, we pay taxes on other things daily, and alas, we get double and triple taxed so Warren Buffet can say this shit:

Buffett’s secretary since 1993, Debbie Bosanek, sat next to her boss just hours after being invited by the president to the State of the Union address, where the president made her the face of tax inequality in America. Bosanek pays a tax rate of 35.8 percent of income, while Buffett pays a rate at 17.4 percent.

“I’ll be a fair amount higher, 8 or 9 points higher,” Buffett said of his own tax rate in an appearance on CNBC Monday. “But the differential between me and the rest of the office, not just my secretary but the rest of the office, was greater than that. It’ll be closer, but I’ll probably be the lowest paying taxpayer in the office.” (source)

Nah, most people reading this will say he earned his money, right? And, well, Capitalism means we listen to the hoarders, the economists, the bankers, the pie in the sky billionaires lecture us on why they make billions and why we struggle to make rent: not working hard enough. You do not hate Jaime Dimon, Larry Summers, Michael Bloomberg, Bezos, Soros, Larry Fink? This is just part of another complete list short compared to global population, but in the multiple trillions of dollars of thievery. If you do not have a dart board or bullseye, then get one to take out some of that anger.

You know what Europe is mired in now — a war economy (sic) which is no economy at all. Devolution. Pain and cuts to social service in the death by 10,000 cuts. Building drones to kill children? Buttons for those flak jackets? Diodes for those missile payloads? You don’t need me to link all the stories on how the UK and Europe in general is suffering 40, 60 and 100 percent increase in food bills, let alone their tripling of energy costs. Go do your Google Gulag search yourself. Here, a little history:

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Europeans are getting poorer, do you care?

So, now, the European plan is to bring back conscription, new killing fields, flaunting the armed services service as some sort of youth enhancement thing,  you know, since these Macron’s and Scholz’s and the others are such self-sacrificing millionaires. This is what they want? Kid soldier? Yep.

So, sure, this is an undercount, as always when dealing with government stats = Roughly 20 percent of the federal budget is dedicated to defense and security, which can be understood as the percent of tax dollars spent on the military. Look, the VA is a behemoth, and this is an undercount, too = There’s $161.3 billion (an increase of $8.6 billion or 5.7 percent) in mandatory funding in 2022 for benefit programs inclusive of Compensation and Pensions, Readjustment Benefits, Housing and Insurance. Oh, so all that untreated C-PTSD, all the chaos in veterans’ and their families’ lives. All the overpolicing, the courts, all of that, tied to MILITARY. How much does that cost us, taxpayer, and lost lives and denuded families? Strike up the band:

A parable, to begin: in 2016, the 136 military bands maintained by the Department of Defense, employing more than 6,500 full-time professional musicians at an annual cost of about $500 million, caught the attention of budget-cutters worried about surging federal deficits. Immediately memos flew and lobbyists descended. The Government Accountability Office, laying the groundwork for another study or three, opined, “The military services have not developed objectives and measures to assess how their bands are addressing the bands’ missions, such as inspiring patriotism.” Supporters of the 369th Infantry Regiment band noted that it had introduced jazz to Europe during World War I.

How could such a history be left behind? A blues band connected effectively with Russian soldiers in Bosnia in 1996, another proponent argued, proving that bands are, “if anything, an incredibly cost-effective supplement” to the Pentagon’s then $4.5 billion public affairs budget. When the dust cleared, funding for the bands was not cut, because the political cost entailed in reducing the number of them by, say, half would have been enormous. The resulting $250 million in annual savings, on the other hand, while a significant sum for most government agencies, would have produced the almost unnoticeable difference of three one-hundredths of one percent in the Pentagon budget. (source)

Every bead of sweat in the USA goes into the military, spying — from DoD, NSA, CIA, FBI, to all those police units from Seattle to Selma, to all the universities with contracts with DoD, et al, all the crap, the junk on computers, all those software applications, pharma to viruses to ecological studies/research, all of it, beyond freeways and highways and waterways and airwaves, all of it is tied to the military, so screw that 20 percent of your tax dollar going to military offense estimate. It’s a lie. It’s more like 60 percent.

And, you can’t separate this onion, man. All the billeting, building, burgers, buttons, bombs, all of it, the USA taxpayer foots that bill. We have thrown hundreds of billion$ at Israel, in direct taxpayer money, and then these black budgets, and then, alas, it all comes down to Israel selling back what we GAVE them:

These figures are undercounts, so we need to multiple by 10: To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion (current, or non-inflation- adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense and …

As Israel has become a global leader in certain niche defense technologies, Israeli defense exports to the U.S. market have grown substantially.17 According to one report, the U.S. military purchased $1.5 billion worth of Israeli equipment in 2019, representing a five-fold increase from two decades before. In addition to the U.S. purchase of Iron Dome (see below), the United States has purchased, among other items, the following Israeli defense articles: Trophy active protection systems for M1 Abrams tanks, enhanced night-vision goggles, laser range finders for the U.S. Marines, helmets for F-35 fighter pilots, wings for the F-35, and a system of towers, electronic sensors, radars, and cameras for use along the U.S.-Mexican border. The U.S. Army is currently evaluating whether to purchase Rafael’s SPIKE Non-Line of Sight missile to be mounted on AH-64E Apache Helicopters. (limited source)

Here, The Cost of Israel to US Taxpayers:

Even excluding all of these extra costs, America’s $84.8 billion in aid to Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Or, put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million Israelis received from the U.S. government by Oct. 31, 1997 has cost American taxpayers $23,240 per Israeli. It would be interesting to know how many of those American taxpayers believe they and their families have received as much from the U.S. Treasury as has everyone who has chosen to become a citizen of Israel. But it’s a question that will never occur to the American public because, so long as America’s mainstream media, Congress and president maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers. (source)  

Again, lies, since aid to Israel in the form of, well, cultural, education, scientific aid, all of that soft money, is in fact MILITARY aid/$$ since that country is a full-fledged military society, bombing Syria as I write this, bulldozing Palestinians into the ground. Then, the Ukraine project? Israel loves that war. How much has the USA and its vassals thrown into Ukraine since 2000?

Oh, yes, it’s tax time, and I have a tax preparer in Arizona, and she’s okay in terms of some knowledge about the world, but she watches Maddow and CNN and CNBC, and she is Jewish as is her husband, so she has told me she is not up on Ukraine and Russia (doesn’t all the stuff I bring to her)  but that propaganda and fake education that are in the air, 24/7, all of that have created colonized minds, even smart ladies like this tax lady, not really knowing the deal in Maidan and Coups and the Neocon Jewish project. And, while she goes through our measley tax forms and measley losses in our retirement accounts, I am seething mad, man, seething. Our county is depressed, economically, as are hundreds and hundreds of counties throughout the land, but we foot that thief’s bills — Zelensky:

  • Military aid (discussed separately below);
  • Humanitarian assistance (discussed separately below);
  • Economic support to the Ukrainian government, which goes directly to the Ukrainian government to allow continuing operations since the war has disrupted its own mechanisms for raising revenue; and
  • U.S. government operations and domestic costs related to Ukraine, which covers the increased expenses to government agencies for operations like moving embassy personnel and prosecuting war criminals. It also includes $2 billion for support to energy companies, particularly the nuclear industry, to offset higher supplier costs. Some observers might exclude the energy subsidy as only tangentially related to the war in Ukraine. This tabulation includes the item since the administration categorized it as Ukraine related. (again, a propaganda and cover-up operation, pro-pro war, pro-pro-pro Ukraine — CSIS)

This YouTube on the infection of war and military in Hollywood is superficial, not deep, not the whole ugly taxdollar picture:
 

 
There is so much lying about what is happening in Ukraine, that those lies — PSYOPS of the highest level, and those presstitutes, the stenographers for the military and neoliberal cabal of Nuland-Blinken-Kagan Family-Sherman-Yellen-Garland-Biden-Power et al, — they have colonized the American mind, man. And in Europe. Imagine, the largest industrial terrorism in a long while, against Nordstream/Germany, and Sy Hersh covering it with plenty of others before him covering it, as an operation done by USA Inc., and now, we get these USA and German newspapers saying the pipeline was blown up by Oceans 6. With a billionaire’s yacht. This is the stuff of not dumbdowning, but Hollywood script writing. 

Amazing how much money we the taxpayer pay in taxes and then feed the dirty machines of Amazon Studios, Showtime, Hulu, Netflix, HBO, the lot of them, with their sick and propagandistic and pro=pro=pro War and CIA crap, that now, we have Ocean’s Six on a yacht with two scuba divers bombing Nordtream.

Here’s a good but wordy look at that lie: Russia Captures East Bakhmut, Zelensky Admits Importance: Intel: Nord Stream Attack 6 Guys (actually, the story says, one woman) & A Boat.

All of this crap is paid for by you and me, by my spouse and my daughter. On and on and on.

Norway wants it. UK wants it. France, too. Forced military mercenary service/disservice. While neighboring Lithuania decided to reinstate conscription in 2015, and Estonia never abolished it, Latvia chose no change. Classes on national defense were introduced in schools, along with summer camps for practical skills. My goddamned tax dollars, with my measley social security checks, $3.60 a gallon for gas, $4 for a dozen eggs, and, well, taxes taxes and taxes for our house since the money is going to, well, Vanguard and Blackrock and pipsqueaks like ZioLensky and Bibi.

Look at this crap from the Intercept, Sept 2022, though this paragraph gets some of it right:
Ukraine is on track to become the largest recipient of U.S military assistance in the last century. But questions surround the policy.

Because the assistance is drawn from a variety of sources — and because it’s not always easy to distinguish between aid that’s been authorized, pledged, or delivered — some analysts estimate the true figure of the U.S. commitment to Ukraine is much higher: up to $40 billion in security assistance, or $110 million a day over the last year. This assistance is believed to be playing an important role in the advances Ukraine is making in an ongoing offensive to retake territory seized by Russia earlier this year; the cities of Kupiansk and Izium are reported to have just been liberated. What is clear is that the volume and speed of the assistance headed to Ukraine is unprecedented, and that legislators and observers are struggling to keep up.

I have seen how my tax lady has been PSYOP-ed into delusional thinking, like this one: I saw two “reports” putting Ukrainian soldier losses at 100,000 and Russian losses at 180,000. Amazing this crap still flies around. Ukraine lost the war in April 2022. The mercenary forces of NATO and USA and other demented countries have thrown junk and killer junk at Ukraine. USA is spending money on AWACs and satellite time and so so much on this war. But it’s an eight to one deal, really, UkroNazi’s dead v. Russians. 

Taxes, taxes, taxes. And we throw money at Europe, and gut Europe at the same time. Here, more of the insanity:

Max Blumenthal interviews Heinrich Bücker, founder of Berlin’s COOP Antiwar Cafe, about his prosecution at the hands of the German state for publicly denouncing Germany’s military aid to a Ukrainian government that reveres World War II-era Nazi collaborators and incorporates neo-Nazi battalions into its military. Bücker also discusses that state of the German antiwar movement as it gathers momentum following mass protests after the February 24 first anniversary of the Ukraine proxy war.

These are our allies, though we bugged German politicians’ and military personnel’s phones, and then the Nordstream, man. This is what my taxes pay for: “U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh says, “they can’t be that stupid” in reaction to NYT’s article claiming a “pro-Ukrainian group” carried out the Nord Stream attacks.”

And so, am I mad as hell and can’t take it anymore? Are you?

And under Biden Incorporated, how many more agents hired for the IRS? “Do you make $75,000 or less?” tweeted House Minority Leader Slug/Leech Kevin McCarthy. “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you—with 710,000 new audits for Americans who earn less than $75k.”

The Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate, health care and tax package that passed the Senate on Sunday and is expected to head to Biden’s desk after the House approves it on Friday, includes roughly $78 billion for the IRS to be phased in over 10 years. A Treasury Department report from May 2021 estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031. But most of those hires would not be Internal Revenue agents, and wouldn’t be new positions.

Paul Haeder's been a teacher, social worker, newspaperman, environmental activist, and marginalized muckraker, union organizer. Paul's book, Reimagining Sanity: Voices Beyond the Echo Chamber (2016), looks at 10 years (now going on 17 years) of his writing at Dissident Voice. Read his musings at LA Progressive. Read (purchase) his short story collection, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam now out, published by Cirque Journal. Here's his Amazon page with more published work Amazon. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul's website.