(V): H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophy movement in the late 19th century, said that all forms of spiritual, psychic & natural "magic," done for selfish ends, is Black Magic by definition. This would include today forms of mind manipulation by politicians, preachers & even some corporate commercials, I would think.

(V): Naturally it would also include New Age gurus who work for the buck.

(V): There's no high like killing for God, I guess. I think Jesus also had something to say on that.....

(V): As for petrol taxes.. obviously not enough tax.



Well it varies by state, but in California for example, its about 55 cents per gallon.....

Czuch: 55 cents.. Oh wow that is high..... NOT!!!</b>

Drivers over here pay road tax, to help maintain the highways they drive on, they pay a high duty on petrol rather then those who don't drive paying tax for them.

But on the other side, some of the problem seems to be the oil companies, who make extra ordinary profits and are slow to pass on savings re reductions in the cost of oil.

(V): Its about a quarter of the total cost.... what is your tax rate then?

Czuch: Duty on petrol is about £2 per US gallon, plus VAT!!!

Looks like about $3.49 per gallon in the UK....(thats US dollars)

(V): so you pay about a $1.50 more per gallon in just taxes than we pay for it in total

Czuch: Yeah and nobody goes hungry. What a concept!

Besides, if I'm not mistaken, England has invested in public transit, whereas in America in most places you drive or you're up the creek.

Czuch: Yes.... But then again no-one can moan about the rich paying more taxes to subsidise fuel.

Plus, in such cases as farmers there are special rates.

The Usurper: Nobody in the UK goes hungry????

They better have a lot of public transport... who except the wealthy can afford to drive????

At least over here, the wealthy subsidizes the gas to keep prices lower for the poor... over there, the poor cant afford to drive!

The Usurper: We have a high level of public transport, including some very good deals on using buses over a long distance. I can buy a ticket that lasts all day and gives me unlimited travel in our local area. Or even for about £1.50 more buy a ticket that allows me to travel long distances and is recognised by many bus companies.

I use to do a 200 mile round trip in a day on the one ticket

(V): Yeah traveling by bus, thats convenient, and comfy, or going to run errands by bus or subway.... sounds like a load of fun to me... you can keep it, and I dont see Userper moving there anytime soon either

Czuch: Really? What printout did you read to get that info...the one supplied by the wealthy? lol

The wealthy jack up prices mercilessly unless & until people just have to stop buying gas. Then naturally they lower them. It's called monopoly capitalism.

Czuch: If we had public transit to get me there...who knows. lol

(V): You would think that public transport would cost you nothing with all the taxes you already pay to get it in the first place?

The Usurper: Where do you think the money comes from for the 'hand outs' to the oil companies?

The Usurper: Didnt we just go over this recently?

Czuch: So you're saying the money comes from the wealthy to pay off the wealthy? No my friend, the money comes from me & you, in taxes, in future debt, in inflation, and through price gouging.

Czuch: I thought our agreement was that cutting out handouts altogether, both to the rich & poor, is a better solution than we have know, because it would even the playing field and give everyone a chance to compete in a truly free market. Was that not our agreement?

Then I said, if we keep the handout system, it is better to let the money trickle up than trickle down, for a variety of reasons. But we didn't agree on this point.

The Usurper: The top 10% wealthiest Americans pay over 90% of the taxes in the US, so when the government subsidizes the oil companies, the majority of that money comes from the wealthy!

Without those subsidies, gas prices would be at $8 instead of $2... so I would think you would be advocating to let the rich keep paying the oil companies for lower gas costs for the poor?

The Usurper: Yes, I would be for cutting out all handouts, but it would mean a lot higher gas prices, and it would hurt the poor the most.... You seem to advocate for the poor, so I dont understand how you could favor something like that?

Czuch: Even if those stats were correct, which I correct, they still don't include inflation & price gouging. But it makes no sense to me, that a wealthy man would pay himself 6 dollars so he could offer gas for 6 dollars less. Maybe an oil guy pays a steel guy, and then a steel guy pays an oil guy, but it amounts to the same thing. It doesn't make sense and it isn't the way things work. Why are the rich getter richer and poor getting poorer? It can only be because wealth is being transferred. This is simple logic.

The Usurper: give everyone a chance to compete in a truly free market


Does that include allowing companies to send jobs overseas, if it helped them compete? Because i dont think most liberals like a market that free

Czuch: czuch, I'm formally accusing you of being involved in the conspiracy to steal my chips in poker, along with fencer, both bushes, dick chaney, and the Queen of England

Czuch: I do advocate for the poor. It's just that they'd have a better chance in a free system than in a system stacked against them.

"Does that include allowing companies to send jobs overseas"

If we had a truly free market worldwide, sure that would be fine. Corporations aren't people, and they would need restrictions.

Charles Martel: You need some solid evidence before you can rightly accuse Czuch of such a conspiracy. As to conspiracies, I don't believe in them either, except the ones that are true. :o)

The Usurper: Look.... the government subsidizes the oil industry, the government gets most of its money from wealthy people, and they certainly get none from poor people, these subsidies make it possible for $2 gas instead of $8 without them... this has nothing to do with price gouging (maybe there is gouging, but that doesnt change the fact that subsidies keep gas prices lower)

So in effect, it is the wealthy americans paying to keep gas prices lower for the poor people....something I would think you would advocate for not against?

The Usurper: Corporations aren't people


You are good with your conspiracy stuff, but have a lot to learn about economics..... Corporations have all the same rights and responsibilities of an individual, economics 101

Czuch: That's right, they have all the same rights. But they shouldn't have! That's my point.

Price gouging is a separate issue, as you say, though it is very real. But it is not true that the government gets most of its money through the wealthy, or that the poor pay nothing. It gets most of its wealth through INFLATION! Inflation is the hidden tax that robs you & me every day, a penny at a time.

Here's a great book on this, by a conservative:

"The Creature from Jekyll Island"
http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212

Czuch: The professor at the U. of Alaska (Rachunak, I think) tried to convert me to conservatism because I was his best student. There's plenty I don't know about economics, but I'm no dummy.

# An enormous percentage of taxes are payed by a minority of Americans:

* The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 29% of all taxes.
* The Top 5% of taxpayers pay 50% of all taxes.

# Our tax system is not so much progressive as it is confiscatory -- Frederic Bastiat called this phenomenon "legal plunder." A progressive tax is based on the premise that those with more income can afford to pay more taxes, and conversely, those with little or no income should pay no tax. However, a quick look at Graph 1A below shows that the U.S. tax system has become far beyond progressive. Fully half the taxpayers contribute almost nothing in individual income taxes.
# The Top 1% of income earners (comprising about 1 million families) earn about 15% of the total income earned by all wage earners in the United States, yet they pay almost 30% of all individual income taxes.
# Furthermore, the Top 1% are shouldering a roughly 50% higher proportion of the overall income tax burden than they did in 1977.
# The argument most oft used against tax breaks are that they benefit only the wealthy. It is clear from even a cursory look at the numbers below that the 'wealthy' will receive the majority of any income tax reduction because they pay a disproportionately huge percentage of the income taxes! To structure a tax break such that those in upper income brackets are excluded would constitute nothing more than transfer of wealth from those who have it to those who don't (i.e. legal plunder.)

The overwhelming majority of federal income taxes are paid by the very highest income earners. The top 1% of income earners pay about 32% of all income taxes. The top 5% pays 51.4%. The top 10% of high income earners, pay 63.5%. The top 20% of income earners pays 78% of all federal income taxes


The bottom 80% pay only 20% of the burden.

Czuch: Actually the buses here a very good, comfy and regular. Our local service is every ten minutes, and most services in this area run at least 4 times an hour. The Buses have been built to cover the problems of wheelchairs and prams (the doorside can be lowered to the level of the kerb) and have easy access.. Certain supermarkets offer free delivery... you shop it, they pack it and deliver it.

The bus companies are private run for the most, some services in some towns are free, it depends on where and what the service is for. The councils subsidise certain routes, and run a door to door service for OAP's and the disabled.

Us British like them.

Czuch: Actually that is not true, corporations are also bound by rules that are specific to business. And in certain aspects have less rights than an individual, as they are bound by standards that an individual not running a business has no call to live by.

(V): I have heard WONDERFUL things about public transportation over in your part of the world...I have been told that untill we SEE it,we can't begin to imagine just how good it is!!

(V): You guys sound civilized. I've heard of that word, but never really experienced it. Civilization would be a good thing to have here.

Czuch: Now there you go again. I make a point about inflation and you pretend it was never said, just plow right ahead with some copy-&-paste material from some rightwing think tank that, were it true, would still be begging the question.

Czuch: Here's how it works:

1. The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the U.S.A. Nevertheless it is privately owned, and its shareholders secret.

2. Whenever the U.S. Treasury wants money, the FR prints the money. It doesn't give the government money it HAS! It creates money out of thin air & loans it to the government, with interest.

3. The government gives this money away, a little to poor folk maybe, but most to major corporations, oil companies, etc., and the rest it uses to keep itself afloat. As we know, with all its departments, including the Pentagon & clandestine operations, Homeland Security now, etc., the U.S. is a big operation.

4. As soon as the FR has printed new money, the value of the money you have GOES DOWN! It is more cash covering the same amount of goods in the market-place. So, in effect, when new money is printed, it amounts to taking a little from every citizen and then redistributing it as it sees fit, and as mentioned above. This is the tax that is killing America, the hidden tax.

5. Wealthy people are by far the biggest recipients of these government handouts. They have to pay a little bit of it back, in the form of higher prices (inflation) & being in a larger tax bracket. But they still benefit from the process, because they pay back less than they receive.

6. The common man, poor or middle class, receives far less government aid, yet his dollar is still deflated by the currency increase. He loses MORE in the bargain as a result. He must pay higher prices but his wages do not increase proportionately, etc.

7. Finally, most taxes go to pay the INTEREST on the Federal debt owed to the Federal Reserve. So, in a nutshell this is the process: the FR produces cash at no cost, which cash then, as if by magic, is equal in value to existing cash. All cash is reduced in value now, but to the shareholders of the FR, this fact is inconsequential, because it cost them nothing to begin with! They get paid back with interest for doing nothing!

So, the real winners, in the overall scheme, are the private bankers. And they pull the strings of not only the U.S. government but also the corporations to whom they "give away" money. This is not Econ 101, by the way. You get a little in Money & Banking. You get zero of it in the financial media. But there is the truth, for anyone to investigate.

THOMAS JEFFERSON:
"The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."

WOODROW WILSON:
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world, no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." - after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

ABRAHAM LINCOLN:
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)

--To the former Republic of the United States of America--

But, as active citizens of this once great land, we ought rather to take the advice of Dylan Thomas:

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The Usurper: copy-&-paste material from some rightwing think tank that, were it true,


Not true???? I gave you three different sources, all with very similar conclusions.... its hard science and math, this is not some conjecture IE your conspiracy.... you can believe all that but you arent able to believe what percentage of people pay what percentage of taxes???

Czuch: My point is that it is not the REAL ISSUE!

Read the posts below. Read what Jefferson, Wilson, & Lincoln had to say.

Learn how the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S., is robbing you blind and controlling the political processes, thereby enslaving us all. For goodness sakes, WAKE UP!

Czuch: And that's right, these same people who finance BOTH SIDES of every war, and who pull the strings of government, ALSO are the real perpetrators of 9/11. Be an ostrich if you prefer.

The Usurper: Be an ostrich if you prefer.

I dont prefer.... but according to you 99% of the world has their heads in the sand....

Czuch: The peoples of the world in general have a better understanding of these things than most Americans do. 99%? That's still too high, even for Americans. 36% of the American people believe the Bush administration either had an active hand in 9/11 or else knowingly allowed it to happen, as a pretext for expansionism abroad. That's a hundred-million people. They also believe the 9/11 Commission is an official cover-up. More people are aware than you think.

As a matter of fact, the 9/11 Truth Movement was virtually ignored for years, until these polls came out & the powers-that-be recognized the truth was making headway, in spite of the fact that the Corporate Media has never investigated it or reported on it.

Now, there is an Info-War going on with pseudo-scientific websites supporting the official conspiracy popping up all over the place. Remember the PNAC vision of "Full Spectrum Dominence" includes the control of information.

A considerably higher number than 1% also understand the insidious nature of central banking. But you are right, a very large majority has its head in the sand.

anastasia: Our local service has just started with a new bus fleet. Leather seats hand stitched in Italy, very green engines.... and most stops have a computerised timetable display along with the old paper one. It tells you the time and the expected time of arrival of the buses due at that stop.

The Usurper: Takes years to develop. I know some Americans wished that we were still over in your country teaching you how to run a government.

For example, your lobbyist system... never would be allowed over here. There was a big enough stink when one MP took money just to ask certain questions in Parliament.