Land Of The Flea

Why You Might Only Be Able to Get Part-Time Work in 2013

"Here is what I am doing for the rest of the year -- working with every manager in my company so that as of January 1, 2013, none of our employees are working more than 28 hours a week. We have got to get our company under 50 full time employees or else I am facing a bill from Obamacare in 2014 that will be several times larger than my annual profit. I love my workers. They make me a success. But most of my competitors are small businesses that are exempt from the Obamacare hammer. To compete, I must make sure my company is exempt as well. This means that our 400+ full time employees will have to be less than 50 in 2013." Continue reading →

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New Taxes to Take Effect to Fund Health Care Law

"Among the most affluent fifth of households, those affected will see tax increases averaging $6,000 next year, economists estimate. The law does not provide for the money to be deposited in a specific trust fund. It is added to the government’s general tax revenues and can be used for education, law enforcement, farm subsidies or other purposes. Under another provision of the health care law, consumers may find it more difficult to obtain a tax break for unreimbursed medical expenses. In addition, workers face a new $2,500 limit on the amount they can contribute to flexible spending accounts used to pay medical expenses." Continue reading →

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Hemingway Museum Needs USDA Zoo License for Cats

"Mr. Hemingway spent most of the 1930s in Key West completing some of his best work. Now, his former house at 907 Whitehead Street is a museum open to daily tours and the occasional wedding. It also continues to be home to 40 to 50 six-toed cats that are a living legacy of Hemingway. As in Hemingway’s time, the cats are allowed to roam and lounge at will in the house and on the one-acre grounds. At some point several years ago, a museum visitor expressed concern about the cats’ care. The visitor took that concern all the way to the US Department of Agriculture and, literally, made a federal case out of it." Continue reading →

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FBI vs. Actress Jean Seberg

"The U.S. government showed its totalitarian face by harassing Seberg for years and driving her into nervous despair. A false story planted in the LA Times and Newsweek led to a miscarriage that killed her baby and eventually to her death. The Leadership has a basket of techniques, legal and illegal, to discredit, pressure and chop down people this malicious society considers its enemies in the mass society that it seeks to control. The FBI is a Leadership organization. The FBI hasn't changed one bit since the 1960s and 1970s. It now creates terrorists and terrorist incidents that never occur. This acts to align mass society in support of the FBI and the Leadership." Continue reading →

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NDAA Lawsuit Brief Filed By Children Of Japanese-Americans Interned During World War II

"The children of Japanese-Americans whose internment during World War II was upheld by the infamous Supreme Court ruling Korematsu v. United States are stepping into a new legal battle over whether the military can indefinitely detain American citizens. Writing that their parents 'experienced first-hand the injustice resulting from a lack of searching judicial scrutiny,' the children of Fred Korematsu and other Japanese-Americans who were interned filed a brief on Monday in support of a lawsuit against the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012." Continue reading →

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Hunger and homelessness rise dramatically in the U.S.

"The most striking increase in homelessness was among families, and shelters had to turn away about 17 per cent of people seeking a place to sleep due to lack of space. A lack of affordable housing was the most common reason for homelessness among families with children, followed by poverty, unemployment, eviction and domestic violence. Some 51 per cent of the people seeking food assistance were families, 37 per cent were employed, 17 per cent were elderly and nine per cent were homeless. Unemployment was nonetheless the leading cause of hunger, followed by poverty, low wages and high housing costs." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingHunger and homelessness rise dramatically in the U.S.

David Galland: Justice

"Regardless of what the popular corruption indexes show, when you take into account the systematic skewing of the judicial and electoral systems to favor the entrenched politicos and their friends in high places, the level of corruption in the Anglosphere would make an African despot blush. It's not an accident that the Republicans and the Democrats, two sides of the same coin despite all the rhetoric, are never remotely at risk of losing their collective grip on power – the system has been carefully and thoroughly rigged to prevent that from happening." Continue reading →

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Central bankers rethink their devotion to slaying inflation

"A subtle shift in monetary policymaking is afoot with a new generation of central bankers, striving to secure global economic recovery, prepared to challenge the old doctrine of inflation-fighting at all costs. Policymakers from the U.S. Federal Reserve to the Bank of Japan have reconsidered or relaxed their inflation targets and have given more emphasis to economic growth. With the financial crisis having starkly exposed central banks' failure to stave off danger, and policymakers having responded by flooding world markets with trillions of dollars in cheap funding, a small run-up in inflation may no longer be the anathema it once was." Continue reading →

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Expatriation Can Save You From the Not-So-Free America

"The terrorist attacks of 9/11, 2001 have been used as a twisted justification by the U.S. Congress and by two presidents to enact unconstitutional laws that sacrifice the very principles they claim to be defending, all in the name of an elusive national security. This is a list of illegal and unconstitutional actions on which I recently spoke to a group of 50 Sovereign Society members who visited Uruguay last month. Many in the group seemed genuinely surprised when they saw the list, unable to believe such things were possible in America." Continue reading →

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U.S. Treasury to miss deadline on FATCA tax crackdown

"The Treasury Department will miss a year-end deadline to publish final rules for a new global tax enforcement regime targeting the offshore assets of U.S. taxpayers. FATCA was enacted in 2010 after an outcry over a Swiss banking scandal that revealed U.S. taxpayers had hidden millions of dollars in assets overseas from the Internal Revenue Service. The law requires foreign financial institutions to tell the tax-collecting IRS about Americans' offshore accounts worth more than $50,000. International businesses ranging from Western Union Co to BlackRock Inc are waiting anxiously to see the rules so they can figure out how to comply with the law." Continue reading →

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