Behavior as a Communist School Subject

My second grade class

I found a photograph of my second grade classroom with students in dark uniforms, mostly devoid of smiles, with sad and serious faces.  It is a depressing moment in time that speaks volumes of the strict disciplinarian code enforced in communist schools.

Children had to stand when called upon to speak, or when asked a question. If they took notes, hands were busy writing. When asked to pay attention to the teacher, they had to keep their hands behind their backs in a very uncomfortable, back-numbing position, leaning against the wooden bench behind. If anybody entered the classroom, the entire student body had to stand and greet them according to rank. The word ‘comrade’ teacher or professor, followed by name, was required to be used at all times.

Modesty and protection of the honor of the classroom, of the school, of the communist party had to be a very important goal of learning. Nobody was allowed to use hateful and insulting language, to exhibit nationalism, superstition, religiousness, or mysticism. If anybody failed in the subject of school discipline, the entire student body was to rebuke that student and take a stance against the offender. Parents were called at school, reprimanded, and embarrassed in front of all the other parents present as inadequate members of the socialist society.

A student’s duty was to come prepared to school every day to answer any questions on that day’s subjects. They were to present, when asked, their Student I.D. Book which contained their entire school history, grades on various subjects, tests, and whether they passed a subject, failed a subject, and what grade they received. This Student I.D. Book (“Carnet de Elev” in Romanian), the size of a passport, had to be presented upon request to any teacher, professor, teacher of behavior (“diriginte”), school director, parent, guardian, and after each notation made inside by school officials. The Student I.D. Book had to be kept clean.

Students had to enter the school quietly, in single file, wearing their uniforms, their matriculation numbers on their sleeves, on hats, and on their chests, hair combed, braided, tied with a white ribbon, wearing black or brown shoes, and white knee highs or heavy-gauge cotton panty hose. No stockings, makeup, shaving, or jewelry were allowed. Each pupil had to occupy their seat immediately and remain seated in silence until the teacher arrived.

Outside and inside the classroom bad and insulting language was forbidden as it was considered hate speech. Students were encouraged to be honest, fair, and courageous in public, in line with the communist party platform. They were to obey traffic signs, respect the elderly, those younger, the handicapped, and lend a hand when asked.

Students were not allowed to attend shows, marches, and public rallies that were not age-appropriate or sanctioned by the school or by the communist party. To ask or answer questions, each student had to raise a hand first; they could not speak unless told to do so.

They were expected to help with domestic chores and care for younger brothers and sisters. A school inspector or teacher would occasionally visit each student’s home to check on their behavior and the family’s habits.

Nobody was allowed to leave the classroom without the teacher’s approval, not even for a bathroom break. During a 4-6 hour school day, two breaks were given, a 10-minute break and a 20-minute break, and no lunch was provided. No students were ever bussed, everyone walked to school alone or in a group of other students.

If too many unexcused absences were recorded, a student was made to repeat the school year. If a student failed a class, he/she also had to repeat the year. If anybody in high school became pregnant, which was quite rare and morally frowned upon, the girl and the father were expelled and forced to finish their education during night school, separate from the more rigorous day schools. There was no daycare provided for out-of-wedlock student moms.

My Student I.D. Book had been lost long time ago, having left it behind when I came to the United States. But I still have my diplomas with the picture of a little girl with pig tails tied with white bows, innocently smiling. It was a time when we believed that everyone on the planet lived the same way we did.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

Note

Fortunately, Andreea Lupsor, a young Romanian writer for Historia.ro, found a high school Student I.D. Book from “Liceul Mihai Viteazu” stamped with the school year 1964-1965.

 

Middle Class Fleecing with Obamacare

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Virginians to find doctors and secure appointments in a timely manner thanks to Obamacare. After a fierce battle, the bills meant to create state exchanges and to expand Medicaid have died in the House and in the Senate. However, Democrat Governor McAuliffe added Medicaid expansion to his budget amendment. The House removed that language from the budget.

As millions of Americans, who previously had insurance and doctors they were satisfied with and wanted to keep, are suddenly left without insurance, millions others keep losing their new coverage under the much touted Affordable Care Act.

Many Americans became part-time employees without insurance, forcing them to choose plans under the state exchanges. Employers, who could not afford the mandated procedures of the Affordable Care Act, dropped the insurance coverage plans they had previously offered their employees at affordable rates, and reduced employment hours.  

With the new exchange plans, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, people cannot afford to see a doctor when their new plans have such huge deductibles. For most people, it is impossible to meet deductibles in a year and they must pay out of pocket. For them, medical care has now become a very expensive service.  

While Obamacare has helped a statistically insignificant percent of Americans, it has devastated the health care of millions who were previously affording their healthcare premiums, had good coverage, low deductibles and co-pays, and their doctors were available within their residential area or a short travel distance.

Suddenly, millions have found themselves paying double or triple premiums, with deductibles going up from $500 to $5,000 and decreased coverage, with the exception of maternity care for all and contraception. There is something seriously wrong when the monthly health care premium becomes larger than mortgage and utilities combined. How fair is it for the bulk of middle-class Americans to pay health care premiums for illegal aliens and welfare recipients while having to let go of their own health insurance because it has skyrocketed? This is not providing health care for 20 percent of previously uninsured Americans; it is socialist redistribution of wealth.

It is laudable to offer insurance to people previously uninsurable, but forcing other working Americans to pay for it and punishing them through IRS fines is wrong and it is a form of stealing. The law has been written by liberals for liberals, to benefit their Democrat voting constituents to the detriment of everyone else. The concept that everyone should be insured is sound but not through Obamacare.

Medical care is not a right, in spite of what liberals claim, it is a service just like any other service you purchase for a nominal fee. Doctors and nurse practitioners must spend years to train in medical school where tuition and books are very expensive.  Nobody wants to work for free and nobody should have the right to decide how much your remuneration should be.

Those who were previously uninsured due to preexisting conditions have a point. However, those who cried that they could not afford the premiums or chose to gamble on good health should look carefully at their priorities. What is the cost of their Internet, cable, Netflix, cell phone bill, cigarettes, beer, wine, movies, drugs, fancy clothes, and restaurant meals/ fast food?

Taking from those who work to pay for those who do not work is government-sanctioned stealing. Economically speaking, for every day that you have to work to pay for someone else, you are a financial slave to that person. The cheap, subsidized Obamacare policy that you receive through the exchanges is paid for by hard-working Americans, not by your Obama government.

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Alabama) said, “We took away the health care system that worked for 80 percent of the people of this country to fix a problem that we today know we fixed for only one percent of the American people. Only 3 million new Americans have gotten on this new health care plan that did not have insurance before, that’s one percent of the American people. So we threw out the health care plan that worked for 80 percent of Americans, to fix a problem for one percent of Americans. And look what it’s done! It’s wrecked lives!” He continued, “This law is fundamentally flawed! This law has victimized the people of America!”

Although there have been 60 attempts to repeal Obamacare, it is here to stay. The Daily Signal wrote about the Nebraska woman whose Obamacare insurance was canceled three times.  Her first cancellation was with Humana who decided to pull out of Nebraska and second and third from the Iowa nonprofit CoOpportunity Health which was liquidated and her platinum plan was no longer offered. She is now covered under a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan.  

The federal government offered $2 billion in loans to nonprofit co-ops created under Obamacare (to meet state reserve requirements) and twenty-three co-ops were formed offering insurance in 26 states. According to the Daily Signal, “more than 520,000 people enrolled in insurance coverage through the co-ops through September.” Their research indicated that all co-ops but one had operating losses, with outlays exceeding reserves. “Claims were eating up all the surplus and reserve [money].” http://dailysignal.com/2015/02/17/one-nebraska-woman-lost-health-insurance-three-times-obamacare/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoiu6vOZKXonjHpfsX56uwlX6W0lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ES8djI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D

There are more troubling thoughts in this quagmire.  The IRS has our medical records, will collect fines for non-compliance with Obamacare, and is going to demand refunds from those who received too much subsidy under the state exchanges.  But illegal aliens are still covered for free and those with religious objections don’t have to pay a penalty and are given medical care. What a relief!

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

Blustery Winds and the Gobal Warming Scare

Standard apartment blocks in Bucharest
Photo: Wikipedia

A blustery winter Hawk is blowing wind gusts of 60 mph and the temperatures are 15 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.  It is not unusual, it is winter time, and the weather has alternated periods of extreme cold and unusual balmier temperatures. The global warmists, of course, are blaming it on man-made global warming. The climate change industry’s golden goose is laying larger and larger eggs to those who stand to gain from this false narrative. And of course, the biggest gainers are the United Nations and its third world corrupt members who demand ever more redistribution of wealth and destruction of capitalism.

The real reason behind the global warming scare and why the United Nations’ alarmists have been driving us into forced submission of environmentalist stewardship of Mother Earth is that they want capitalism destroyed and replaced with their vision of a utopian communist economy that has never worked across the centuries.

These progressives have a problem with the Industrial Revolution, with “fossil fuels,” (They are not so fossil since the earth keeps producing them), with the only successful economic model that has provided generous income to all these hot-air spewing, idle bureaucrats, who have nothing better to do than meet in exotic locales planning the destruction of the goose that lays the golden eggs that feed their exorbitant lifestyles, salaries, bonuses, and pensions.

Christina Figueres, Executive Secretary of U.N.’s Convention on Climate Change, disclosed the real reason for the climate change industry when she told us that they are not interested in saving the world from global warming Armageddon but they want to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

Having lived under such economic model that these progressives advocate, I can say with 100 percent certainty that, on a cold day like today, the proletariat in the village would be huddled around a cast iron stove, or an adobe stove made of mud bricks and straw with a cast iron top, or a porcelain stove fed with chopped wood, trying to keep warm further than a few feet from the source of heat, providing they had money to buy the wood, and the wood was available since it was forbidden by the state to cut down trees.

City dwellers, who were forced to live in high rise concrete block quarters, heated their tiny apartments with steam sent from a plant via underground pipes. By the time this steam made its way up to our fifth floor apartment, we were lucky if the ambient temperature was 45-50 degrees F.  Bundled up inside the house like Eskimos, with icicles forming on the inside windows, we sometimes turned on the gas stove to heat the miniature kitchen, if the flame was strong enough. We were slightly better off than our communist Chinese brethren, who did not even have heat in winter time. There were times when we stayed in bed, fully clothed and covered by heavy wool comforters.

Have these promoters of communist utopia and of an unproductive but supposedly “equal” and “socially just” economy ever have to live like this? Of course not, their elitist reality comes from the Ivory Tower of academia, political office, and from college textbooks’ propaganda at Ivy League bastions of progressive thinking that enslaves people rather than frees them to pursue free-market capitalism.

Even the poorest person living under free-market capitalism has food, heat, medicine, health care, electricity, refrigeration, phones, TV, running water, water heaters, a bathroom, and other amenities that make life more pleasant, healthier, and double human life expectancy.

On a day like today when it is so dangerously cold even domesticated animals are sheltered, Americans should remember that these environmental global warmists and the United Nations want to put them out freezing in the cold, in the dark, hungry, sick, and hopelessly dependent on the global elites, who are wealthy, healthy, warm, and happy, bureaucrats that never produced anything, but would control our survival with a law, decree, or a treaty, dropping crumbs to keep us alive and under control.

Copyright:  Ileana Johnson 2015

Agenda 21, Cooked Science Data, and Property Rights

The State House voted 79-36 on February 4, 2015 on HB490 introduced by Rep. Becky Currie. “The State of Mississippi and all political subdivisions thereof shall not adopt, nor implement, the creed, doctrine, principle or any tenet of the United States Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and the Statement of Principles of Sustainable Development known as ‘Agenda 21,’ adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and development, held from June 3-14, 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, or any other international law contravening the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the State of Mississippi.” A companion Senate Bill, SB2809 has been introduced by Sen. Melanie Sojourner. Other states have proposed similar bills, Maine, Wyoming, Washington, Tennessee, and Missouri.  http://overpassforamerica.com/?p=4820

As I’ve demonstrated in my best-selling book, U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy, the globalist governance uses “Agenda 21” to control every facet of our lives: global land use, education, population control, health care, reduction of economic activity, and population reduction to a “manageable size” determined by the global elites who drive U.N.’s  “Agenda 21.” http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1423586115&sr=1-1&keywords=UN+Agenda+21%3A+Environmental+Piracy

These globalists, who use the global warming/climate change industry and Agenda 21 as tools of control and wealth redistribution, have deemed “not sustainable” most human activities that form our modern civilization: private property, fossil fuels, consumerism, farming, irrigation, commercial agriculture, pesticides, herbicides, farmlands, grazing of livestock, paved roads, golf courses, ski lodges, logging, dams, reservoirs, fences, power lines, suburban living, and the traditional family unit.

Paul Homewood wrote on his blog on January 25, 2015, an article titled, “Massive Tampering With Temperatures In South America.” According to Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), one of the “hottest ever year” regions was South America, Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina. Homewood stated that “much of this is fabricated, as they have no stations anywhere near much of this area,” as NOAA map showed. https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/massive-tampering-with-temperatures-in-south-america/

Homewood found out that there are only three rural stations in Paraguay that are operational – Puerto Casado, Mariscal, and San Juan. All three “show a clear and steady upward [temperature] trend since the 1950s with 2014 at the top.” When he looked at the raw data available on the GISS site through 2011, “the past has been cooled.”

Homewood collected raw data from GISS here http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v2/ and the adjusted data here. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

 

According to Homewood, the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), an integrated database of climate summaries from land surface stations across the globe, “show the extent to which they have adjusted temperatures [upwards], the best part of 2 degrees.” He continued, “Even by GHCN standards, this tampering takes some beating.”

Traust Jonsson, who ran the climate research for Iceland met office, was surprised to see how Iceland’s sea ice years had been disappeared around 1970, “when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country’s economy.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

It is sad to reflect that government policies and scientists around the earth rely on these tampered data to fight phantom global warming, giving rise to a huge climate change industry that does nothing but redistribute wealth and fleece the population.

And educators frighten and brainwash children into the same man-made global warming fantasy, using cuddly and lonely polar bears floating on ice floes as examples of a vanishing species due to global warming, when in reality the polar bear population has increased five-fold.

When the frequently adjusted data by NOAA is questioned, the response usually includes the word “consensus.” Consensus, a word that denotes agreement of opinion, does not constitute science. “Government climate scientist Peter Thorne, speaking in his personal capacity, said that there was consensus for the adjustments.” http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/20081-global-conning-temperature-data-cooked-in-biggest-science-scandal-ever

Christina Figueres of Costa Rica, London School of Economics graduate and chief of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters that U.N. is redesigning the world economy on purpose: “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” She continued, “The international community is quite grateful for the fact that in his second term, President Obama has turned his attention quite clearly and quite decisively to climate change.”

Should the American public be happy that EPA will finalize in 2015 the rules to cut carbon emission even further on new and existing power plants, thus negatively affecting our economy through more job losses and higher energy prices? Since there is no such thing as carbon, except on the table of elements, they are going to cut CO2 emissions, the gas necessary for plant life to thrive. Can any global warming expert explain how millions of years ago the atmosphere had more than four times the CO2 that is currently in our atmosphere yet there was no industrial activity or humans to cause it?

Should the American public be grateful that the EPA has released a 344-page rule to make wood stoves more environmentally friendly, forcing millions of Americans to buy more expensive wood-fired stoves? We have more EPA rules affecting poor people who cannot afford the higher natural gas and electricity prices, forcing them to pay more for using wood-stoves. The EPA says, at a cost of $45.7 million per year, 360 to 810 fewer deaths will occur from reduced carbon emissions. But, “there are no cordwood test methods yet for many appliance categories, much less data using such test methods.” http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/05/epa-wood-stooves/

The one hundred plus bankrupted green energy companies that squandered billions of taxpayer dollars can add one more case to the roster – FutureGen clean-coal facility in Illinois that would have used carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. FutureGen, with proper environmental permits and funded with 2009 stimulus package money ($1 billion) and some private investors, touted “the future of coal in the United States” by President Obama, will be suspended “to protect taxpayer interests,” pending litigation with Sierra Club. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/4/obama-pulls-funding-top-clean-coal-project/

Michael Bastasch wrote about a March 2009 EPA memo sent to officials to convince them to connect its regulatory agenda to “personal worries” of average Americans. “Polar ice caps and the polar bears have become the climate change ‘mascots,’ if you will.” The memo wants to use children in an effort to fight global warming and to “ramp up clean air and water regulations.” EPA wants to change the discussion from the mascots to people with respiratory illnesses and to environmental justice. EPA chief Gina McCarthy said, “Asthma disproportionately affects African-American kids.” Yet we all breathe the same air. http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/26/exposed-epa-memo-tie-fighting-global-warming-to-americans-personal-worries/

Helping the United Nations with its new world order “sustainability” goals, the Bertelsmann Foundation publication, “Winning Strategies for a Sustainable Future,” can be purchased on the Brookings Institution website. Bertelsmann Foundation “recently awarded former Secretary General of the U.N., Kofi Annan, € 200,000 ‘for his exemplary efforts to promote sustainable development around the world.’” Sustainable Development is the lynchpin of U.N.’s Agenda 21. Bertelsmann is quite influential in its publishing empire of social justice, wealth redistribution, and anything that promotes a one world government. According to Susan D. Harris, “Since 2001 the Poky Little Puppy [Little Golden Books] has been providing revenue for Bertelsmann to employ covert political and economic transformations around the globe.” http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/02/poky-little-puppys-covert-nwo-agenda/

U.N.’s Agenda 21 is so insidious that people do not connect the dots between global warmists, the climate change industry, extreme environmentalists, property rights battles with NGOs around the country, main stream media, publishers of textbooks and other publications, Common Core education standards, International Baccalaureate schools, land conservation, conservation easements, regionalism, living in tiny homes and tiny spaces, re-wilding of America, removing Americans from their cars into public transportation or bikes, taking roads out of commission, sustainable development, smart meters, destroying suburbia, smart grid, and the green agenda with wind and solar power.

Nobody batted an eye when a small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was raided in 2013 by a SWAT team who searched for ten hours. The Garden of Eden had been cited for code violations such as “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises.” http://huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/texas-swat-team-conducts- n 3764951.html

Martha Boneta has been fighting the intrusive Piedmont Environmental Council, the NGO that holds the conservation easement on her Liberty Farm, for eight years. She was instrumental in bringing to the public the plight of small farmers who are being pushed out of business by environmental groups who want to preserve the land unspoiled and put an end to farming.

The small farmers in Virginia rejoiced when Senate Bill 51 and House Bill 268, dubbed the “Boneta Bill,” passed both houses and the Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe signed it in 2014. The bill gave farmers legal protection from overreaching and overzealous county bureaucrats who imposed unreasonable requirements and unnecessary fees on small farmers. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/62043

 

The new 2015 “Boneta Bill,” the Virginia House Bill HB 1488, passed on February 2, 2015 by a vote of 87-9 addressed conservation easements, tax benefits, and disputes over easement terms. The bill now goes before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation, and Resources on February 12, 2015. This bill “allows a landowner or other party to a conservation easement to request that the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation use the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act to resolve a dispute relating to the interpretation of the easement.” http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?151+sum+HB1488S

 

A conservation easement is a contract between a private property owner and a land trust. Conservation easements are signed because some people want to protect their property from unwanted development in the future but they also want to retain ownership of the land. The donation of an easement to a land trust may give financial advantage to the donor.  The conservation easement is passed on to any future owners of that land. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56159

 

I dedicated an entire chapter in my book in 2012 to Martha Boneta’s story, to her organic farm in lovely Paris, Virginia, and to her ordeal with the local board of supervisors and PEC, but her harassment is far from over and continues to this day. She has vowed to continue her fight until small farmers are free to do what they love best, provide wholesome food to America’s table, exercising freely their property rights.  http://www.varight.com/news/virginia-land-trust-falsifies-stonewall-jackson-slept-here-claim-by-michael-thompson/

But land conservation is one arm of U.N. Agenda 21. All across the U.S. land is locked in conservation projects and easements contracts are convenient financial hooks to take land out of agricultural use in perpetuity under the guise of protecting it.

President Obama included for example up to $37.8 million in the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget to fund land conservation projects in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. We all want clean water, soil, air and want protection of watersheds. But the money is used for public access to our waters or lack thereof. Governor McAuliffe of Virginia stated on February 4, 2015, “If enacted by the Congress, these funds will protect key land areas for habitat, water quality, scenic views, and cultural resources.” The money authorized trails, historical parks, and civil war battlefields. But this is done by taking agricultural land out of production and using it to run a few show horses on perfectly manicured miles of green grasses. https://governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/newsarticle?articleId=7656

The Virginia Land Conservation announced 14 grants totaling $1.7. Such grants “are used by private land trusts, local governments and state agencies to protect and acquire special lands in the following categories: farmlands and forestry, historic areas, natural areas, and open spaces and parks.” Five of these grants are slated for conservation easements and seven are to purchase land from farmers in order to “protect” them, a euphemism for taking prime farm land out of agricultural use or lock land from residential/commercial development and turn it into wild habitat for “rare animals and plants.” https://governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/newsarticle?articleId=7634

“Nearly 150 conservation projects have been made possible through VLCF grants since 1999, when the foundation was created,” said Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Molly Ward, who chairs the foundation’s board. “The program provides an economical and efficient approach to conserving precious lands, protecting rivers and streams, and preserving farms and historic places for future generations.” http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/virginia_land_conservation_foundation/

The “visioning” grants and “challenge” grants are not really just meant to protect a clean environment for future generations to enjoy, they are part of a region-wide and country-wide plan to force local and state governments into Sustainable Development when we should be concerned about our Sustainable Freedom.  If the government was so worried about future generations, they would not spend us into oblivion and destroy our language, borders, and culture with unchecked invasion of illegal immigrants who have no desire to assimilate into the western way of life.

All these progressive platforms pushed by academia and the regime, i.e. social justice, environmental justice, green growth, equality are not cures for war, famine, pestilence, genocide, and poverty, they are recipes for global communism and control by moneyed elites, politicians, and U.N. bureaucrats who fancy themselves the arbiters of humanity’s rights and of the climate. They are intent on restricting and denying us freedoms.

What is morally repugnant to real scientists and logical thinkers are the lies and deceptions surrounding the manufactured global warming crisis with all its strings attached, created for political and financial gain at the expense of billions of people around the globe who must suffer the consequences of treaties, laws, rules, and regulations controlling their lives and economic activity so that a small number of global elites can enrich their bank accounts.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

 

 

 

 

My radio segment with Silvio on taxes, unemployment, and the Greeks. February 6, 2015

My national blogtalk radio segment with Silvio on strange taxes and the Greek economy. Click on my segment, the oval with the time, 00:39.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2015/02/06/taxes-and-other-us-economy-issues-with-dr-ileana-johnson

The Big Lie

Puppet Shop window in Florence
Photo: Wikipedia

While the country is busy blaming the measles outbreak at Disneyland on the official story line that it came from “overseas,” and the main stream media is pushing the agenda of vaccination, blaming the outbreak on the statistically insignificant number of Americans who refuse to vaccinate their children, the media is deliberately ignoring the elephant in the room, the illegal aliens bussed and flown in continuously since last year by this administration from countries where measles is endemic because of lack of vaccination and poor or non-existent healthcare.

The media is also gloating over the 5.6% unemployment rate which the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, Jim Clifton, described in his article as “The Big Lie:  5.6% Unemployment.” “The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.” http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/181469/big-lie-unemployment.aspx

While Americans have been told that their refunds may be delayed due to Obamacare penalties and calculations for those who may owe money to the IRS for overpaid subsidies, illegal aliens, as usual, are getting the red carpet treatment with taxpayer dollars. American taxpayers have to file an additional form, 8962, with 12 rows and 6 columns (72 boxes), to compute subsidies for each month of 2014.

“Consumers may be subject to tax penalties for any month in which they had neither insurance coverage nor an exemption.”

Do not expect speedy service or prompt answers from the IRS as they are busy with other issues. Thirty types of exemptions from penalty have been set up by the federal government, including for those in states that did not expand Medicaid, religious beliefs, or premiums higher than 8% of household income. Documentation must be provided to the IRS for such hardships.

Illegal aliens, who were working under the radar of the IRS were encouraged to pay taxes via the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). Many illegals took advantage of this loophole and claimed numerous children in the country and outside of the country under the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to the tune of $4.2 billion in 2010.  

According to Washington Times, “IRS Commissioner John Koskinen confirmed Tuesday that illegal immigrants granted amnesty from deportation under President Obama’s new policies would be able to get extra funds from the IRS for money they earned while working illegally, as long as they filed returns during those years.“ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/3/irs-offers-extra-tax-refunds-to-illegal-immigrants/#ixzz3QnJt4B1q

The new amnestied illegals, will receive official Social Security numbers, enabling them to file retroactively three years for Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), “potentially claiming billions of dollars in additional payments they were ineligible for before the amnesty.” The Earned Income Tax Credit was established in 1975 for American citizens whose income fell below the federal poverty line.

Likely 4 million illegal immigrants are going to receive this administration’s “deferred action” or “deportation stay,” and thus work permits. Supporters of ITINs and EITCs say that it would be “unfair” to withhold billions from children who are likely U.S. citizens anyway because they became “anchor babies” when their illegal moms gave birth in this country.

In the meantime, while you lost your doctor, your premiums skyrocketed, the deductibles went through the roof, co-pays were larger than ever, your medical care took a dive, had to see a nurse practitioner, and you had to drop your good health insurance and accept substandard insurance on the Obamacare exchanges, the illegal aliens are receiving income tax refunds and free medical care, while you are trying to find three jobs to replace the one full-time job you lost because of the Affordable Care Act mandates. But, on the bright side, if you are a man, you now have free contraceptives.

 

Looking Good Past 50 Is Torture

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2013

There comes a point in life when comfort is more important than looking good, when wrinkles don’t matter as long as the clothes are clean, and focusing on someone’s stained shirt is like a Rorschach test. After the age of 50 we’ve become those people we used to joke about in our ignorant youth—the sans-a-belt, stretchy Hagar-pants wearing old men and women with stretchy Wrangler jeans. We are a bit more sophisticated and fashionable in our elastic comfort, opting for Not-Your-Daughters-Jeans.

Looking good is torture! Wearing stretchy clothes is heaven on textile. Stilettos were invented by men who convinced women, who desired to look like the big screen plastic stars they were never going to be like, that walking on stilts will somehow make them more attractive, svelte, and desirable to men. But our generation of 50 year-olds wear orthopedic shoes with painless joy and secretive pride.

Constantly digging floss out of their rear ends, young and middle-aged women torture themselves and get awful bacterial infections so that their derrieres are more attractive in thongs and clothes show no panty lines just in case someone happens to ogle them.

The t-shirt, flannel shirt, football jersey, sweats, and pajamas become necessary wardrobe implements for someone’s comfort after the age of 50. After all, people born in the 1950s have lived in seven decades and two centuries, we earned the right to fall off the fashion train and adopt the liberal Birkenstock sandals worn proudly with white knee high socks.

Then you can be liberated from the crowded and expensive shopping malls. Good Will becomes quite attractive and cheap, especially in a well-to-do neighborhood where donated clothes are practically new.

It’s good to be over the hill if you want 50 cents discount on meals at McDonalds. On the other hand, who wants to admit they are on the downside of life for 50 cents? You can take naps any time of day without being thought of as lazy and nobody cares what you look like unless you are carrying the remnants of the last meal on your chin or shirt.

You can stop sucking in your stomach around your friends and relatives.  They already know you have a gut and nobody is fooled by your pretend svelteness. Besides, your face starts turning blue if you hold your breath in for too long.

Walking and farting in unison with each step becomes a necessary Beano gut cleansing, a sort of yoga without the contortions, the head stand, or the humming.

Going out to dinner after the age of 50 becomes an early bird excursion at four in the afternoon.  The restaurants are quiet, the help is awful, but you avoid the balding liberals with their young progeny and trophy wives eating at 9 p.m. and disturbing the entire restaurant. You go to bed by nightfall because you can.

You stop speeding because the road looks perennially foggy but cops ticket you now for going too slow and for forgetting to turn off the turn signal, confusing other drivers. Every other driver, frustrated by your slowness, gives you the finger because you block the faster lane but you wave at them with a silly and toothless grin.

If you want to know about the weather tomorrow, you no longer turn to the weather forecast, you just consult the level of pain in your arthritic joints. And you’ve learned to look at the phases of the moon to tell whether it will rain tomorrow or not.

It’s acceptable now to stay in pajamas all day and even wear them under clothes with a slight peek of flannel from under your high-water pants. People will ask you when they call during the day if they woke you up and nobody will get offended.

You can now tell all your deep, dark , and embarrassing secrets to your friends over lunch because your secrets will be as safe as Fort Knox – nobody will remember a thing after they wake up from the early afternoon nap.

Loud music will no longer be annoying because you can turn down your hearing aid and smile, nodding in agreement with everything.

Go ahead and take those around the world tours you’ve been saving yourself for your entire life. Make sure there are wheelchair ramps and the cobble stone or unpaved roads are wheelchair friendly. Take a good supply of diapers, diarrhea pills, and bribe money. Don’t worry, nobody would want to take you hostage abroad in order to demand ransom! They know your family does not want you back.

And don’t forget your health care insurance card. After all these years of paying high premiums, you are finally beginning to get some returns on your investment. The doctor knows you by your first name and is glad that you are helping pay his child’s expensive liberal tuition at Harvard.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2015