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- Uncivilized Investing
- Investing in Gold as World Economies Falter
- Bracing for a Greek Exit
- Currencies Try to Rebound Today
- Superior Biotechnology Leads to Superior Drugs
- The Delusion of Regulating Risk
- Talk of a Greek Exit Gets Louder
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom, Part II
- Is Facebook the Rusty Hinge of the Stock Market?
TSA Toddler Terror: Family Marched Off Plane; 18-Month-Old On No Fly List
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Eighteen-month-old Riyanna has been called a lot of things: cute, adorable and now … a suspected terrorist.
She was called that on Tuesday night at the Ft Lauderdale Airport. She and her parents had just boarded a JetBlue flight when an airline employee approached them and asked them to get off the plane, saying representatives from the Transportation Security Administration wanted to speak to them.
“And I said, ‘For what?’” Riyanna’s mother told only WPBF 25 News on Wednesday. “And he said, ‘Well, it’s not you or your husband. Your daughter was flagged as no fly.’ I said, ‘Excuse me?’”
Riyanna’s father was flabbergasted.
“It’s absurd,” he said. “It made no sense. Why would an 18-month-old child be on a no-fly list?”
Riyanna’s parents, who asked not to be identified, said they think they know the answer to that question. They believe they were profiled because they are both of Middle Eastern descent. Riyanna’s mother wears a hijab, a traditional head scarf. That’s why they have asked to remain anonymous. They said they’re concerned about repurcussions. That said, they are both Americans, born and raised in New Jersey, just like their daughter.
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What is America’s Economic Breaking Point?
If there exists a single factor that can put enough pressure on the whole of the American economy and force it to crumble under its own weight, it’s the price the average American pays for gas. Extreme up-side gas price swings have preceded seven of the last eight American recessions, most recently in the summer of 2008 when drivers were forced to pay an all time high in excess of $4.50 per gallon at the pumps. What followed this spike – caused in part by tightening supplies, rising demand, easy money and a health dose of financial propaganda – was nothing short of the most severe financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Nearly four years on the country finds itself in the midst of difficult times that have taken their toll on millions of Americans through job losses, home foreclosures, un-servicable debt, and ever dwindling retirement savings. By all accounts, Americans are worse off today than they were ten years ago, and the state of our nation, despite what Washington’s media masters report, is fiscally, economically, and socially dire.
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NSA Whistleblower Speaks Live: “The Government Is Lying To You”
Just a month ago we raised more than a proverbial eyebrow when we noted the creation of the NSA’s Utah Data Center (codename Stellar Wind) and William Binney’s formidable statement that “we are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state”. Democracy Now has the former National Security Agency technical director whistleblower’s first TV interview in which he discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could “create an Orwellian state.” Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national TV about NSA surveillance. Starting with his pre-9-11 identification of the world-wide-web as a voluminous problem since the NSA was ‘falling behind the rate-of-change’, his success in creating a system (codenamed Thin-Thread) for ‘grabbing’ all the data and the critical ‘lawful’ anonymization of that data (according to mandate at the time) which as soon as 9-11 occurred went out of the window as all domestic and foreign communications was now stored (starting with AT&T’s forking over their data). This direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country was why Binney decided he could not stay (leaving one month after 9-11) along with the violation of almost every privacy and intelligence act as near-bottomless databases store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
There was a time when Americans still cared about matters such as personal privacy. Luckily, they now have iGadgets to keep them distracted as they hand over their last pieces of individuality to the Tzar of conformity.
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No Taxes, No Travel: Why the IRS Wants the Right to Seize Your Passport
Does the Tax Man have the right to prevent us from traveling, even without a formal charge of evasion or another crime? Maybe we’re about to find out.
You’re standing at the airport. The ticket agent clacks away on the keyboard. She looks up. “I’m sorry,” she says. “We can’t let you board the plane today.” Why? “It’s the IRS. They say you haven’t paid all of your taxes.”
It sounds like the opening scene of a straight-to-DVD Washington thriller. It’s actually a few votes from becoming a reality. A new bill, quietly making its way through Congress, allows the federal government to stop people with unpaid taxes from leaving the country– even if they haven’t been charged with tax evasion or any other formal crime.
It all started last fall, when Senator Barbara Boxer introduced the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act” (or “MAP-21″ as it’s now called), to reauthorize funds for federal highway and transportation programs. While that doesn’t sound like anything having to do with your taxes, the bill includes a little-noticed section that allows the State Department to “deny, revoke or limit” passport rights for any taxpayers with “serious delinquencies.”
Here’s how it would work. If someone owed more than $50,000 in back taxes, the IRS would be able to send their name over to the passport office for suspension, provided that the IRS already either filed a public lien or a assessed a levy for the outstanding balance. The bill does provide a few exceptions though. For example, if a person has set up a payment plan (that they’re paying in a timely manner), is legitimately disputing the debt, or has an emergency situation or humanitarian reason and must travel internationally, they may be able to leave for a limited time despite their unpaid taxes.
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U.S. space tourism set for takeoff by 2014, FAA says
(Reuters) – The Obama administration is preparing for a space tourism industry that is expected to be worth $1 billion in 10 years, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office said on Tuesday.
Rocket planes and spaceships to carry passengers beyond the atmosphere, similar to the suborbital hops taken by Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom in 1961, are being built and tested, with commercial flight services targeted to begin in 2013 or 2014.
“Based on market studies, we expect to see this type of activity result in a $1 billion industry within the next 10 years,” George Nield, associate administrator for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation testified before the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics.
“This is a new and growing industry. If you look at the last 25 years, almost all the launches were for the same basic purposes – to launch a satellite, such as a telecommunications satellite, to orbit – and that level of business for that part of the industry is continuing today. But there are several new segments that we see just on the horizon,” Nield said.
The boom in launch business is expected to begin this year, he said in the hearing, which was carried via webcast.
NASA has hired two companies, privately owned Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp., to fly cargo to the International Space Station, a $100 billion research complex orbiting 240 miles above Earth. The contracts are worth a combined $3.5 billion.
“We know that’s going to start soon, probably this year,” Nield said.
Space Exploration Technologies, which is known as SpaceX and owned and operated by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is preparing for a trial run to the station on April 30.
“We need to be careful not to assume that the success or failure of commercial spaceflight is going to hang in the balance of a single flight,” NASA space station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters during a separate news conference.
“If they have problems along the way, it’s the kind of thing you experience in this difficult process of not only trying to launch into low-Earth orbit, but do the next-hardest thing which is to try to rendezvous safely with another spacecraft in orbit,” Suffredini said.
Also on the horizon are commercial flights that reach at least 62 miles above the planet, an altitude that exposes passengers to a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of Earth juxtaposed against the black sky of space.
In addition to tourism, suborbital spaceflights are being marketed and sold to research organizations, educational institutes and businesses that want to conduct experiments and fly payloads in space.
One company, Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of London-based Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, already has collected about $60 million in deposits for rides that cost $200,000 per person.
“Exactly when those launches will start is hard to predict, but it looks very very clear it’s going to be in the next one or two years,” Nield said.
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TSA asks woman to prove her breast pump is real at Lihue Airport
Lihue, HI (KITV) — A Hawaiian mom says she was humiliated when asked to prove her breast pump was real at an airport.
The woman says she was flagged for additional screening at the Lihue Airport Wednesday because of her electric breast feeding pump.
She claims agents told her she couldn’t take the pump on the plane because the bottles in her carry-on were empty.
“I asked him if there was a private place I could pump and he said no, you can go in the women’s bathroom. I had to stand in front of the mirrors and the sinks and pump my breast in front of every tourist that walked into that bathroom. I was embarrassed and humiliated and then angry that I was treated this way.
When the bottles were full, she was allowed back on the plane.
The TSA is apologizing, saying the agent made a mistake.
The agency released a statement, saying in part: “We accept responsibility for the apparent misunderstanding and any inconvenience or embarrassment this incident may have caused her.”
The TSA recently changed screening procedures to allow women to carry breast milk onto planes without testing it.
However, breast pumps may require additional… Continue reading
