"Did I hear that properly? Obama doesn't like how the US Constitution works, because it's getting in his way?...As a Senator in 2005, President Obama opposed changing the filibuster rule. WH says GOP use of filibuster as a tactic is worse now...The US Senate was designed precisely to be a brake on transient majorities. Delay isn't an abuse of its function; it *is* its function" -- British journalist and MEP Daniel Hannan in a series of Twitter posts following the elimination of the Senate's filibuster rule.
"In fact, a source who I haven’t named but who is familiar with the Census data accumulation process has told me that falsifications have been occurring on a regular basis."
The alleged use of chemical weapons as a pretext for military escapades is a common theme of the Bush/Obama administrations. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh expands on the facts cited in this link from this October post. Bottom line: U.S. backed rebels were just as likely responsible for the chemical weapon attack as Assad's forces. LondonReviewofBooks: 'Whose Sarin?'
"Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack ...he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin...When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad."
"Ida Mae Fuller, the first Social Security recipient, got 462 times what she and her employer together paid in “contributions."
In contrast with the U.S. -- Iceland is a government of laws, not of men: TheGuardian: Four Icelandic bankers sentenced to prison for market abuses in 2008. American bankers on the other hand commit fraud by budgeting civil fines as a mere cost of doing business, which even when levied are paid not by them but by bank shareholders; the perps still retain their bonuses derived from the frauds. There are no criminal consequences for U.S. banking fraud other than for an occasional mid-level scapegoat. NYTimes: Stern Words for Wall Street’s Watchdogs, From a Judge"Can you imagine participating in a protest outside the White House and forcing the entire U.S. to government to resign [and] rewriting the U.S. constitution to include measures banning corporate fraud? It seems incomprehensible in the U.S., but Icelanders did just that...yet there’s been no word from the U.S. mainstream media about any of them...This has created current accusations of an intentional cover up of the story by mainstream U.S. news sources."
"The first thing you need to know about JPMorgan Chase's long-awaited $13 billion deal is that it's not $13 billion"
"All I can say is that money printing by central banks will end very, very badly. There is no doubt about this. But before it ends very badly, in the case of Mexico when they printed money in the 1980's the market went up 343 times in Mexican peso terms. In other words you had a huge increase in stock prices before the system essentially collapsed. The same happened in Argentina and Brazil. The currency (the peso) obviously collapsed, but in dollar terms at that time you didn’t make any money". -- Marc Faber, 12/9/13.
"Now, this gentleman we were talking to probably has a better idea of physical gold flow than anybody else globally. He sees what is coming from the mines, he sees what is coming from the UK, and all over the world, as well as where it's going. He indicated the price didn’t make sense because he has got so much fabrication demand. They put on three shifts, they’re working 24 hours a day, and originally he thought that would wind down at some point. Well, they’ve been doing it all year. Every time he thinks it's going to slow down, he gets more orders, more orders, more orders. They have expanded the plant to where it almost doubles their capacity. 70 % of their kilobar fabrication is going to China, at apace of 10 tons a week. That’s from one refinery, now remember there are 4 of these big ones [refineries] in Switzerland."
____________________________________________
* SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
On January 31, 1940, the first monthly retirement check was issued to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54. Miss Fuller, a Legal Secretary, retired in November 1939. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65 and lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975.
Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program. The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75. Her initial monthly check was $22.54. During her lifetime she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.
This chart details her covered wages and payroll tax contributions prior to filing her retirement benefit claim.
Quarter Ending Covered Earnings Taxes Paid
|
Quarter Ending |
Covered Earnings |
Taxes Paid |
|
6/37 |
$450 |
$4.50 |
|
12/37 |
$450 |
$4.50 |
|
3/38 |
$225 |
$2.25 |
|
6/38 |
$225 |
$2.25 |
|
9/38 |
$225 |
$2.25 |
|
12/38 |
$225 |
$2.25 |
|
3/39 |
$150 |
$1.50 |
|
6/39 |
$225 |
$2.25 |
|
10/39 |
$300 |
$3.00 |
|
TOTAL |
$2,475 |
$24.75 |
Prepared By:
Larry DeWitt
SSA Historian's Office
July 1996