Friday, March 27, 2015

Two Cops Arrested for Beating 3-Month-Old Into Vegetative State; Baby Not Expected to Recover

A bond hearing was held on Wednesday for Robert Jeffrey Taylor Jr., 45, who worked for the York Police Department as a corporal.

Taylor was arrested for abusing his 3-month-old baby so badly that he is not expected to survive.

The infant’s mother, Audrey Schurig, 36, is also a police officer. She was arrested as well and charged with unlawful neglect of a child or helpless person for leaving the baby in his father’s care despite allegedly knowing about the abuse and failing to protect her child.

Jaxon Jennings Taylor, their 3-month-old son, was abused so brutally on February 15, that he is unable to move or eat without a feeding tube. Despite being in a vegetative state, he “is in some pain” and exhibits “periodic cries,” according to 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett.

“We don’t know if this child will survive much longer,” Brackett stated.

Upon arriving at the hospital, the infant was foaming at the mouth, had bruising around his neck consistent with being held by the throat, and was suffering from a lack of oxygen. He sustained brain damage as well as retinal hemorrhaging, or bleeding from his eyes, that is so severe it could only have been caused by violent shaking or a fall from a building of at least 20 feet, according to the prosecutor.

[Read more…]

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Wisconsin Police to Begin Forcibly Taking DNA for ALL Misdemeanor Convictions

Starting April 1st, felons will no longer be the only ones in the state of Wisconsin to have their DNA forcibly taken. The state is expanding its DNA collection regime to include ALL criminal misdemeanor convictions.

The new law being implemented is expected to exponentially increase the number of samples being analyzed in Madison. The current number of DNA profiles created, from the felons’ samples, ranges from 10,000-12,000 per year.

Of those cases, 550 positive hits were made on unsolved cases, according to Fox 6.

The number of samples is expected to potentially increase to an estimated 60,000 samples being collected per year. Police make the case that perhaps thousands of unsolved crimes could be solved.

“We will save lives. We will save people from becoming sexual assault victims, shooting victims because of the evidence that is collected and out there,” said Brian O’Keefe, with the Department of Justice.

But the infringement upon individual liberties didn’t go unnoticed.

Currently, every time a new felon is convicted, a DNA sample is taken. The sample is tested at the State Crime Lab, creating a DNA profile. Police then input this data into a database and attempt to see if that DNA was found at the scene of any unsolved crimes.

Rep. David Craig (R-Big Bend) made the very important point that for the first time in Wisconsin’s history, DNA would be taken from suspects who have not been convicted, but are accused of a violent crime.

[Read more…]

House Introduces Bill to Repeal the Patriot Act

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have introduced the Surveillance State Repeal Act that would end the NSA’s unconstitutional domestic spying. I can say without hesitation: this bill is the real deal.

“The Patriot Act contains many provisions that violate the Fourth Amendment and have led to a dramatic expansion of our domestic surveillance state,” said Rep. Massie. “Our Founding Fathers fought and died to stop the kind of warrantless spying and searches that the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act authorize. It is long past time to repeal the Patriot Act and reassert the constitutional rights of all Americans. I am proud to co-sponsor Congressman Pocan’s bill and look forward to working with him on this issue.”

Congress has introduced a handful of NSA reform bills over the past few years. Due to public disapproval of NSA spying, there is significant political pressure to “do something” about it. Most of these reform bills, however, would do practically nothing to rein in warrantless spying. Civil liberties experts say that most of these bills contain loopholes that would allow the invasive practices to continue.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to see a bill like the Surveillance State Repeal Act. It’s bold and effective. Specifically, here is what the bill would do:

Repeals the Patriot Act (which contains the provision that allows for the bulk collection of metadata from U.S. citizens).

Repeals the FISA Amendments Act (which contains provisions allowing for the government to monitor emails).

[Read more…]

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Income Tax is Immoral and Unconstitutional – and Not (Just) for the Reason You Think

I have just paid my biggest bill of the year. The invoice was for a cool 9% of my entire annual income – or my “Adjusted Gross Income” (AGI) as it appears on my tax returns, which have just been filed. And that invoice was from my accountant who just filed them for me.

I have a pretty modest income – so modest, in fact, that my AGI is of the order of a half of the median household income across the United States – the kind of income that triggers significant subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Even the “top line” of my income falls short of that median: so it’s not as if I’m earning loads and deducting huge amounts.

My financial life last year was pretty simple: my earnings derived from a modest real estate portfolio and some freelance/consulting work. My income is earned through my small business, which, for those who know about these things, is an S-corporation. I have no employees. I do no payroll.

Yet, I have just paid my accountant more than a month’s worth of income to complete my tax returns.
How many pages of tax returns do you think that I, a single individual, and my S-corporation (a small business) had to file, bearing in mind the small amount of income in question?

Frankly, there’s no good reason the answer is not one or two. But you already know the answer is more than that, don’t you?

Ten? Try again.

Twenty? Keep going.

Surely not 50?

You’re still not close.

Did I hear you say 100 – you’re going for three digits now? Wow.

Still not there.

The answer, my fellow American tax victims, is 149.

Just take a moment to absorb that. A sub median-earning American taxpayer, engaged in simple business activities, has a 149 page tax return. And if he doesn’t get it right, his error is punishable. Of that 149, about 100 go to the Feds.

Completing 149 pages of tax forms/schedules/supporting statements is a lot of work. And I know exactly how much it is, because of that big invoice from the accountant that I already mentioned.

It’s $2000 of work – my aforementioned largest bill of the year. And it’s $2000 of work I in no way could have done myself.

I’m no high school drop-out. I have a first class degree in physics from one of the best universities in the world. I like numbers. I like logic. I like intellectual rigor. I even have a nerdy love of spreadsheets (which tells me, for example, exactly how much I spent on groceries this month five years ago ($173.41, as it happens. I’m low-maintenance)).

But I could not reverse engineer those 149 pages of tax returns if my life depended on it. And I would defy anyone without a CPA qualification to be able to do so.

[Read more…]

Monday, March 23, 2015

Heavy burden weighs on markets

The grand experiment of central banks to borrow their way to growth may be headed for implosion.

The record expansion in debt across the globe — a stunning $57 trillion since 2007, when the financial crisis erupted — is shattering market confidence and choking prosperity at home as the Fed threatens higher interest rates and Europe engages in its own round of quantitative easing, according to many Wall Street analysts.

“The debts grow larger and larger because of our ability to postpone the consequences — and we are rapidly approaching the crisis that will dwarf the crisis in 2007 and 2008,” said market pundit Peter Schiff, CEO at Euro Pacific Capital.

“The only way we are able to stay ahead is by reducing interest rates and by having the Federal Reserve monetize debt,” he added

And with talk of raising rates at the Fed, the losers are already piling up.

Big institutional investors were licking their wounds earlier this month. Government bond yields plunged to all-time lows in the eurozone — dampening returns — after the European Central Bank began buying government debt and other bonds. It did so in a US-style $60 billion monthly quantitative easing program aimed at inflating Europe’s struggling economies.

The US debt markets are not doing much better. US Treasury yields have trended lower as investors vainly chase them for better returns. Corporate debt markets are also being battered by a rash of bad economic indicators — such as retail sales falling the last three months — showing that the astronomical debt burden has produced little economic growth.

The S&P 500 index posted its largest loss in two months, losing 34.91 points, or 1.7 percent, during the second week of March only to rebound last week when the Fed seemed to push back the date on raising rates.

[Read more…]