The states do have the authority to regulate commercial activity but as you will see most of the people they are stopping are not engaged in commerce.

They always had a commercial lane but then decided to expand their operation onto the general public. ABSOLUTELY none of these laws, rules, or ordinances apply to the general public…they are for people with CDL licenses.

If you research the history of the “drivers license” you will find out they were issued to people who were engaged in COMMERCE.

Meaning, the only people that were to attain a “drivers license” were people who were “driving” using their vehicles to make money in the state. For instance, taxi cab drivers.

These inspection stations started around the 1920′s under the guise of keeping your food safe but really it was just another control mechanism.

I’m not saying no good came from them…I’m just saying that it was a means to control the flow of goods rather than keeping your food safe.

Incrementally as they gained the people trust is slowly got out of control. You don’t boil the frog all at once…you slowly turn the heat up.

With these checkpoints intact the free market was virtually gone and now a few people had the ability to control the price of food by manipulation. For instance, if an orange grower (mafia) in California wanted to increase his sales he could pay off someone at the checkpoint to keep Florida oranges from entering the state. An orange grower in Florida would (lobby) (donate) pay them to keep Texas oranges out.

“…For while a citizen has the right to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, that right does not extend to the use of the highways…as a place for “private gain.” For the latter purpose, no person has a vested right to use the highways of this state, but it is a privilege…which the (state) may grant or withhold at its discretion…” State v. Johnson, 245 P 1073.

“The right of the citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, either by carriage or by automobile, is not a mere privilege which a city may prohibit or permit at will, but a common right which he has under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”- Thompson v Smith, 154 SE 579.

“The right to “travel” is part of the Liberty of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment.” Kent v. Dulles 357 U.S. 116, 125. Reaffirmed in Zemel v. Rusk 33 US 1.

4409 — FRUIT POLICE SHOWDOWN – Introduction

4409 — FRUIT NAZI SHOWDOWN – PART 1

4409 — FRUIT NAZI SHOWDOWN – PART 2

4409 — FRUIT NAZI SHOWDOWN – PART 3

The Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) made by Cellebrite can extract data off 95% of cell phones on the market. It can also grab GPS information from units in most vehicles. According the company’s profile[PDF], the UFED is stand-alone gadget designed for “recovery and analysis” used by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, military and governments across the world in 60 different countries.

The ACLU of Michigan has been trying to get more information to determine if the Michigan State Police (MSP) are using these gadgets to “violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches if a warrant is not issued.” Back in 2008, after the ACLU filed the first FOIA request for logs, reports and records of use, the MSP said Okay but it will cost $544,680 to retrieve and assemble the documents to disclose how five of the devices were being used. The MSP wanted $272,340 deposit before showing the ACLU documents. After sending 70 different FOIA requests in November, narrowing the time period and the UFED models, the ACLU was told no documents existed with that criteria. It’s like a endlessly expensive and unfruitful fishing expedition for information.

There are many different UFED models, but most can access current or past phone lock codes,access any deleted data, or as stated on the company’s website for the UFED Physical Analyzer 2.0, it can decode chat, email, instant messages, call logs, text messages, web bookmarks and history, Facebook contacts, Skype contacts/calls/chats, photos, videos . . . pretty much whatever you have on your phone. Besides those forensic features, the UFED Ruggedized model can also clone a SIM Card when it is PIN locked or when “SIM is not available.”

The ACLU of Michigan sent this letter [PDF] to the MSP which included the statements, “Law enforcement officers are known, on occasion, to encourage citizens to cooperate if they have nothing to hide. No less should be expected of law enforcement, and the Michigan State Police should be willing to assuage concerns that these powerful extraction devices are being used illegally by honoring our requests for cooperation and disclosure.”

The smarter and more powerful our technology gets, the more intelligence agencies will want ways to exploit it. Such mobile forensic devices could be utilized by thieves who might get their hands on lost or stolen phones. A smart phone is like a little laptop packed full of personal details. If those details are being extracted just to see if the person is suspicious of anything, then that violates our Fourth Amendment rights. If UFED can basically scrape all the data in under a couple minutes, then it may be tempting to authorities with voyeuristic tendencies.

Some feds are predisposed to voyeurism. For example, the FBI gathered evidence of insider trading by intercepting more than 1,000 phone calls of former Galleon Group trader Craig Drimal. New York District Judge Sullivan “scolded” FBI investigators for “voyeuristic intrusion” while eavesdropping on private, intimate calls between Drimal and his wife, reported the Galveston County Daily News. The FBI should have stopped listening and hung up once it was clear that the phone calls were not related to their investigation. Despite the 10-page ruling which criticized the government for failing to stop listening during privileged, non-pertinent calls, the judge did not allow the wiretap evidence to be suppressed. “Given the wiretap’s scope and the substantial manpower needed to sustain it, the Court concludes that, on the whole, the wiretap was professionally conducted and generally well-executed,” Sullivan wrote.

PogoWasRight’s Dissent makes an excellent point that also crossed my mind. The “judge may be troubled by it, but there really doesn’t seem to be an adverse consequences to the prosecution.”

Image Credit: Cellebrite Brochure [PDF]

Florida is among several states now holding what military style “no refusal” checkpoints. Something you would expect more to see in Iraq or Afghanistan, not your local town.

With an influx of federal money into the cities from the Dept. of Homeland Security, city police across the states are increasingly holding large DUI checkpoints.

At a “no refusal” checkpoint if you choose to refuse an on-site breath test during one of the random stops made, an on-site judge issues a warrant that allows police to draw blood from your arm right on the side of the road.

“In the past, police routinely asked suspected drunk drivers to blow into devices that extrapolated their blood’s alcohol content from their breath. Now, authorities in most states are taking blood, by force if necessary.“

Not everyone is on board, though. Some states and lawmakers have challenge the checkpoints and blood taking, and one New Hampshire judge has ruled them Un-Constitutional.

DUI defense attorney Kevin Hayslett sees the mandatory blood test as a violation of rights saying,

“It’s a slippery slope and it’s got to stop somewhere,” Hayslett explained, “what other misdemeanor offense do we have in the United States where the government can forcefully put a needle into your arm?”

The federal government says Florida has among the highest rates of breathalyzer refusal.

“Now you’ve got attorneys telling their clients, don’t blow, don’t blow! Because we know from the results from these machines that they’re not operating as the state or the government says they’re supposed to operate,” said Stephen Daniels, a DUI consultant and expert witness.

“We don’t want to violate people’s civil rights. That’s the last thing we want to do, but we’re here to save lives,” Unfried said.

However many others still feel that it is unnecessary, intimidating, and perhaps goes too far.

People should feel secure in their travel and not be subjected to random searches and submissions, be it on the road, on a train, an airplane terminal, or inside their own house.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has recently said he wants to see more states hold similar programs.

U.S. History or Searches and Seizures

In Colonial America legislation was explicitly written to enforce English revenue gathering policies.

Until 1750, all handbooks for justices of the peace, the issuers of warrants, contained or described only general warrants.

William Cuddihy, Ph.D. in his dissertation entitled The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning, claims there existed a “colonial epidemic of general searches.” According to him, until the 1760s, a “man’s house was even less of a legal castle in America than in England” as the authorities possessed almost unlimited power and little oversight.

Seeing the danger general warrants presented, the Virginia Declaration of Rights explicitly forbade the use of general warrants. This prohibition became precedent for the Fourth Amendment:

Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

One Person’s Experience At A DUI Checkpoint

The rights group submitted their report this week, titled “Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term Restraint in the United States on Children and Adults with Disabilities at the Judge Rotenberg Center,” after an in-depth investigation revealed use of restraint boards, isolation, food deprivation and electric shocks in efforts to control the behaviors of its disabled and emotionally troubled students.

Findings in the MDRI report include the center’s practice of subjecting children to electric shocks on the legs, arms, soles of feet and torso — in many cases for years — as well as some for more than a decade. Electronic shocks are administered by remote-controlled packs attached to a child’s back called a Graduated Electronic Decelerators (GEI).

The disabilities group notes that stun guns typically deliver three to four milliamps per shock. GEI packs, meanwhile, shock students with 45 milliamps — more than ten times the amperage of a typical stun gun.

A former employee of  the center told an investigator, “When you start working there, they show you this video which says the shock is ‘like a bee sting’ and that it does not really hurt the kids. One kid, you could smell the flesh burning, he had so many shocks. These kids are under constant fear, 24/7. They sleep with them on, eat with them on. It made me sick and I could not sleep. I prayed to God someone would help these kids.”

Noting that it believes United States law fails to provide needed protections to children and adults with disabilities, MDRI calls for the immediate end to the use of electric shock and long-term restraints as a form of behavior modification or treatment and  a ban on the infliction of severe pain for so-called therapeutic purposes.

“Torture as treatment should be banned and prosecuted under criminal law,” the report states.

The U.S. Department of Justice opened a “routine investigation” of the center in February of this year in response to a September 2009 letter signed by 31 disability organizations claiming that the center violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Judge Rotenberg CEO and founder Dr. Matthew L. Israel began his first program in California back in 1977. In 1981, a 14-year old boy died face down, tied to his bed, while living in the California center.  Dr. Israel was not held responsible for the death. After an investigation by the State of California, Israel relocated to Rhode Island, and then to Massachusetts, where his facility still operates today.

Mother Jones magazine published an extensive investigative report on the Rotenberg Center in 2007 titled “School of Shock.” Reporter Jennifer Gonnerman asked, “How many times do you have to zap a child before it’s torture?”

Children at the Judge Rotenberg Center are often shackled, restrained and secluded for months at a time, the report says.  Social isolation, and food deprivation as forms of punishment are common.  Mock and threatened stabbings — to forcibly elicit unacceptable behaviors resulting in electric shock punishments (Labeled as Behavioral Research Lessons or BRLs, by the center) were reported to MDRI as well as state regulatory bodies.

A former student of the center reportedly tells MDRI, “The worst thing ever was the BRLs. They try and make you do a bad behavior and then they punish you. The first time I had a BRL, two guys came in the room and grabbed me – I had no idea what was going on. They held a knife to my throat and I started to scream and I got shocked. I had BRLs three times a week for stuff I didn’t even do. It went on for about six months or more. I was in a constant state of paranoia and fear. I never knew if a door opened if I would get one. It was more stress than I could ever imagine. Horror.”

Behaviors that the center deemed “aggressive,” as well as those considered “minor,” or “non-compliant” — such as raising one’s hand without permission — are all considered punishable by electric shocks, restraints, and other punishments to students.

“One girl who was blind, deaf and non-verbal was moaning and rocking,” a former teacher says in the report. “Her moaning was like a cry. The staff shocked her for moaning. Turned out she had broken a tooth. Another child had an accident in the bathroom and was shocked.”

The rights group investigation found that the Rotenberg center is the only known facility in the United States, “Or perhaps the world,”  that employs the use of electricity, long-term restraints and other punishments to deliberately inflict pain upon its children and then refer to it as “treatment.” The electric shocks alone are cited as having possible long-term effects such as muscle stiffness, impotence, damage to teeth, scarring of the skin, hair loss, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), severe depression, chronic anxiety, memory loss and sleep disturbances.

The MDRI report states that more than any other source for its information, they relied upon information readily obtained from the Judge Rotenberg Center’s own website.

In response to MDRI’s report, the Judge Rotenberg Center said, “There is no credible evidence that for these most severe forms of behavior disorders, there is any pharmacological or psychological treatment that can effectively treat these students or even keep them safe. JRC is the only program willing to address the reality of these children’s disorders and endure the political firestorm in order to save these children and give them an education and a future.”

The complete rebuttal from the center can be read in full at JRC’s website.

Voters in Port Chester, 25 miles northeast of New York City, are electing village trustees for the first time since the federal government alleged in 2006 that the existing election system was unfair. The election ends Tuesday and results are expected late Tuesday.

Although the village of about 30,000 residents is nearly half Hispanic, no Latino had ever been elected to any of the six trustee seats, which until now were chosen in a conventional election. Most voters were white, and white candidates always won.

Federal Judge Stephen Robinson said that violated the Voting Rights Act, and he approved a remedy suggested by village officials: a new system called cumulative voting, in which residents get six votes each. He rejected a government proposal to break the village into six districts, including one that took in heavily Hispanic areas.

Furano and his wife, Gloria Furano, voted Thursday.

“That was very strange,” Arthur Furano, 80, said after voting. “I’m not sure I liked it. All my life, I’ve heard, `one man, one vote.’”

It’s the first time any municipality in New York has used cumulative voting, said Amy Ngai, a director at FairVote, a nonprofit election research and reform group that has been hired to consult. The system is used to elect the school board in Amarillo, Texas, the county commission in Chilton County, Ala., and the City Council in Peoria, Ill.

The judge also ordered Port Chester to implement in-person early voting, allowing residents to show up on any of five days to cast ballots. That, too, is a first in New York, Ngai said.

Village clerk Joan Mancuso said Monday that 604 residents voted early.

Gloria Furano gave one vote each to six candidates. Aaron Conetta gave two votes each to three candidates.

Frances Nurena talked to the inspectors about the new system, grabbed some educational material and went home to study. After all, it was only Thursday. She could vote on Friday, Saturday or Tuesday.

“I understand the voting,” she said. “But since I have time, I’m going to learn more about the candidates.”

“I hope that if Hispanics get in, they do something for all the Hispanic people,” Sandoval said in Spanish. “I don’t know, but I hope so.”

FairVote said cumulative voting allows a minority to gain representation if it organizes and focuses its voting strength on specific candidates. Two of the 13 Port Chester trustee candidates — one Democrat and one Republican — are Hispanic. A third Hispanic is running a write-in campaign after being taken off the ballot on a technicality.

Campaigning was generally low key, and the election itself was less of an issue than housing density and taxes.

Hispanic candidates Fabiola Montoya and Luis Marino emphasized their volunteer work and said they would represent all residents if elected.

Gregg Gregory gave all his votes to one candidate, then said: “I think this is terrific. It’s good for Port Chester. It opens it up to a lot more people, not just Hispanics but independents, too.”

Vote coordinator Martha Lopez said that if turnout is higher than in recent years, when it hovered around 25 percent, the election would be a success — regardless of whether a Hispanic was elected.

“I think we’ll make it,” she said. “I’m happy to report the people seem very interested.”

But Randolph McLaughlin, who represented a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the goal was not merely to encourage more Hispanics to vote but “to create a system whereby the Hispanic community would be able to nominate and elect a candidate of their choice.”

That could be a non-Hispanic, he acknowledged, and until exit polling is done, “it won’t be known for sure whether the winners were Hispanic-preferred.”

The village held 12 forums — six each in English and Spanish — to let voters know about the new system and to practice voting. The bilingual ballot lists each candidate across the top row — some of them twice if they have two party lines — and then the same candidates are listed five more times. In all, there are 114 levers; voters can flip any six.

Besides the forums, bright yellow T-shirts, tote bags and lawn signs declared “Your voice, your vote, your village,” part of the educational materials also mandated in the government agreement. Announcements were made on cable TV in each language.

All such materials — the ballot, the brochures, the TV spots, the reminders sent home in schoolkids’ backpacks — had to be approved in advance, in English and Spanish versions, by the Department of Justice.

Conetta said the voter education effort was so thorough he found voting easier than usual.

“It was very different but actually quite simple,” he said. “No problem.”

Suspicious bags, some provoking a cautious response, were checked out in large numbers in the weeks after the failed Times Square bombing attempt.

Now as large numbers of tourists flood into New York City and the nation’s capital, the FBI is warning of a new terror tactic.

Citing an FBI informational document, ABC News reports a so called “battle of suspicious bags” is being encouraged on a jihadist website.

Bomb expert Kevin Barry with 20 years experience in the NYPD says the bags could be filled not with bombs, but with innocuous items like water bottles or socks.

The potential terrorists would be watching the response.

“How they evacuate. The standoff distances. How long it takes additional emergency services to come to the scene,” Barry said.

“After every major incident there will be a spike in calls because people become more nervous and there is more reporting of suspicious items,” Barry said.

Putting more emphasis, security experts say, on the slogan “see something, say something.”

“People are becoming more suspicious, more vigilant and that results in more calls. We understand that happens and we are prepared to respond,” police commissioner Ray Kelly said.

(AlterNet) According to Yale historian David Blight, Memorial Day (first called Decoration Day), the U.S. holiday commemorating fallen soldiers, got its start at the end of the Civil War. In 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina former African-American slaves exhumed Union soldiers from a mass grave on the site of Charleston’s exclusive racetrack and buried them in individual graves, a ten-day project that ended in a day of celebration of the nation, peace, and freedom in which thousands of Charleston’s black families gathered to decorate graves, pray, play games, and picnic. 145 years after the end of our Civil War, our nation is engaged in near civil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which we had a part in starting and no plans for ending.

“We don’t do body counts,”General Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, famously remarked, when asked about Iraqi civilian casualties. We do do body counts of our own — though we don’t talk about them much. Thanks to groups like Veterans for Common Sense, Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs data have been publicized, and thanks to projects like Iraq Body Count, we do count them.

As we picnic and play this Memorial Day, let’s try to remember that:

• 1. To date, there have been 90,955 documented U.S. troop casualties in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of these, 4,378 troops have died; 37,280 have been wounded in action; and 48,272 have been medically evacuated due to injury or disease.
• 2. The Department of Defense last year warned that as many as 20 percent of veterans (360,000) may have suffered traumatic brain injury from IED blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blast injuries generally do not result in skull fractures or loss of consciousness yet the Institute of Medicine has reported that these traumatic brain injuries may cause diffuse brain bleeding and result in PTSD and problems with mood, attention, concentration, memory, pain, balance, hearing and vision.
• 3. 508,152 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are patients in the VA system. Thousands more are waiting as much as a year for VA treatment for serious ailments including traumatic brain injury. 243,685 (48 percent) are mental health patients and 143,530 (28 percent) are being treated for PTSD. A recent University of Michigan study demonstrated that PTSD sufferers have more physical illness in later life as their immune systems take back seats to systems needed for crises.
• 4. Every day, five U.S. soldiers attempt suicide, a 500 percent increase since 2001.
• 5. Every day 18 U.S. veterans attempt suicide, more than four times the national average. Of the 30,000 suicides each year in the U.S., 20 percent are committed by veterans, though veterans make up only 7.6 percent of the population.
• 6. Female veteran suicide is rising at a rate higher than male veteran suicides
• 7. In 2009, there were 3,230 reports of sexual assault including rape, according to the DoD, with many more that number thought to be unreported. In a 2003 survey of female veterans 30 percent reported being raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans with PTSD reported that 71 percent of women seeking treatment said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving in the military.
• 8. The number of U.S. service men and women killed in Afghanistan has doubled in the first quarter of 2010. compared to the same quarter last year. In the first two months of 2010, injuries tripled, with U.S. casualties expected to rise still more with the troop surge in Afghanistan.
• 9. 2,052,405 service men and women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Over 40 percent of them have been deployed two or more times. Some will have been deployed as many as five years Currently 94,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan and 92,000 in Iraq.
• 10. Estimates of civilian deaths from violence in Iraq alone range from a conservative 105,000 (Iraq Body Count project) to over 1.2 million (UK pollster Opinion Research Business), with estimates by Johns Hopkins at 655,000. More than 125,000 civilians have been injured in Iraq and 4 million displaced, with civilian death and injury in 2010 rising each month. By most estimates, tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed or injured since the 2001 invasion, over 200,00 have been internally displaced, and over 2 million have become refugees, with civilian deaths and injuries rising dramatically in 2010.

The war in Iraq is in its seventh year. The war in Afghanistan, in its ninth year, is the longest war in our history. On Memorial Day, as we remember the dead and wounded, ours and theirs, the latest installment of 30,000 new troops is readying for new battles with Taliban fighters in Kandahar.

When will they ever learn, oh, when will they ever learn?

(USA TODAY) The White House has warned state and local governments not to expect a significant federal response at the scene of a terrorist nuclear attack for 24 to 72 hours after the blast, according to a planning guide.

Page 14 of the guide says, “Emergency response is principally a local function.”

President Obama told delegates from 47 nations at the Nuclear Security Summit on Tuesday that it would be a “catastrophe for the world” if al-Qaeda or another terrorist group got a nuclear device, because so many lives would be lost and it would be so hard to mitigate damage from the blast.

A 10-kiloton nuclear explosion would level buildings within half a mile of ground zero, generate 900-mph winds, bathe the landscape with radiation and produce a plume of fallout that would drift for hundreds of miles, the guide says. It was posted on the Internet and sent to local officials.

Read: The Official Guide For Response To a Nuclear Detonation (pdf)

The document is designed to help local officials craft plans for responding to a nuclear blast. The prospect is anything but far-fetched, says Rick Nelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Do I think in my lifetime I’ll see the detonation of a nuclear device? I do.”

One challenge he says, will be to persuade survivors to stay indoors, shielded from dangerous radiation until they’re given the all-clear or told to evacuate. “In all likelihood, families will be separated,” he says. “It’s going to be scary to sit tight, though it’s the right thing to do.”

The government’s planning scenarios envision a terrorist strike in an urban area with a 10-kiloton device, slightly smaller than the roughly 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb. A 10-kiloton device packs the punch of 10,000 tons of TNT.

The chaos that would inevitably follow such a blast would make it difficult for the federal government to react quickly. “Emergency response is principally a local function,” the document says, though “federal assistance will be mobilized as rapidly as possible.”

The “Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation” was developed by a task force headed by the White House Homeland Security Council. It was circulated to state and local government officials and first responders in January 2009.

The report has never been formally released to the public, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says.

It offers practical guidance to first responders and advice on radiation measurement and decontamination.

Disaster experts say local governments aren’t prepared for a nuclear attack. “There isn’t a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event,” says Irwin Redlener of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The message for families is simple, he says: Stay put. Wait for instructions. If you’ve been outside, dust off, change, shower. “What citizens need to know fits on a wallet-sized card,” Redlener says. “A limited amount of information would save tens of thousands of people.”

“I did the best with what they (the county commissioners) gave me. If it wasn’t enough, don’t blame me, don’t blame this department,” said Sheriff Billy Johnson.

Johnson said he is suing the commissioners to get a determination of whether he should use his limited budget to carry out obligations defined by law or put more patrol cars on the streets.

“I just can’t do it anymore,” he said. “I have to have the court explain to the commissioners and to me what my statutory duties are.”

The Ashtabula County Jail has confined as many as 140 prisoners. It now houses only 30 because of reductions in the staff of corrections officers.

All told, 700 accused criminals are on a waiting list to serve time in the jail.

Are there dangerous people free among the 700 who cannot be locked up?

“There probably are,” Sheriff Johnson said, “but I’m telling you, any known violent criminal, we’re housing them. We’ve got murderers in there.”

Ashtabula County is the largest county in Ohio by land area.

Ashtabula County Common Pleas Judge Alfred Mackey was asked what residents should do to protect themselves and their families with the severe cutback in law enforcement.

“Arm themselves,” the judge said. “Be very careful, be vigilant, get in touch with your neighbors, because we’re going to have to look after each other.”

Ashtabula County gun dealers and firearms instructors tell WKYC their business has really picked up since the Sheriff’s Department cutbacks began some months ago.

“That’s exactly why they are coming, so that they can protect themselves,” says Tracy Williams, a certified firearms instructor in Jefferson. “They don’t feel that they are protected. They want to be able to protect themselves.”

Williams says interest in his classes has doubled recently, and many of those coming are people who he would not normally expect to have interest in obtaining a concealed carry permit.

“And as far as him (Judge Mackey) telling you to arm yourselves and protect yourselves, you don’t have any other option,” Williams told WKYC. “We don’t have the law enforcement out here to handle it right now.”

Ashtabula County, where unemployment is higher than the state average, is asking voters to approve a one half per cent sales tax increase in May.

The tax hike would raise the tax in the county to seven percent.

As of Wednesday, more than 30 governors had received letters demanding they leave office within three days or they will be removed, according to an internal intelligence note by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

Acccording to D. Merlin Cambell someone familiar with the group. The Restore America plan does not call for violence.

a Declaration from a lawful Grand Jury of 26 people in each state which is endeavoring to re-establish the true Republic in a peaceful and lawful manner. It does not represent a “threat” from an “extremist” (as is commonly associated with “terrorist” in the media today) group but instead it is a real, legally binding document which is presented by a Grand Jury of regular people which declares that the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller and treasurer all must have lawful oaths of office in order operate in their respective positions.

The bonds which they all operate under have been effectively seized and noticed to be null and void. The package includes the following; Declaration, Warrants, Orders to the Governors, General orders to the military. It is not a threat, it is a truth that must be complied with or there will be consequences, not of violence, but legal recourse.

Investigators do not see threats of violence in the group’s message, but fear the broad call for removing top state officials could inspire others to act out violently.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal were among those receiving the letter.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said federal authorities had alerted the governor that such a letter might be coming, and it arrived Monday or Tuesday. Boyd, who described the letter as “non-threatening,” said it was opened by a staffer and immediately turned over to the Michigan State Police.

Jindal’s office confirmed the governor had received a letter from the Guardians of the free Republics and directed all further questions to the Louisiana State Police.

“They called us as they do for any letter that’s out of the norm,” said Lt. Doug Cain, a state police spokesman.

He declined to provide specifics about the letter, but said, “not knowing the group and the information contained in the letter warranted state police to review it.” Cain said the letter has gone to numerous governors across the country.

The FBI warning comes at a time of heightened attention to far-right extremist groups after the arrest of nine Christian militia members last weekend accused of plotting violence.

In explaining the letters sent to the governors, the intelligence note says officials have no specific knowledge of plans to use violence, but they caution police to be aware in case other individuals interpret the letters “as a justification for violence or other criminal actions.”

The FBI associated the letter with “sovereign citizens,” most of whom believe they are free from all duties of a U.S. citizen, like paying taxes or needing a government license to drive.

Listen To The Broadcast:

According to their websites, The GOTFR lists 26 points to their plan to restore lawful government to America.

Calling the Plan “a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war.”

• Restore and reinhabit the de jure institutions of lawful government.
• Terminate illicit corporations posing as legitimate governments, in particular the territorial jurisdiction United States Federal Corporation (corp. ref. 28 U.S.C. 3002) posing as the de jure United States of America.
• Terminate all presumed powers of attorney to such corporations.
• End the foreclosure nightmare (for borrowing against one’s own credit).
• End tax prosecutions for resisting the transfer of private wealth to foreign banking cartels such as I.R.S. (former Puerto Rico Bureau of Taxation).
• End street assaults against the sovereign People for failing to exhibit a State-issued confession of subject-class citizenship.
• End all prosecutions which lack an injured party.
• End admiralty prosecutions for kidnapping and other heinous crimes against mankind as “commercial crimes” against the corporate State under a contrived corporate color-of-law venue (corp. ref. 27 C.F.R. 72.11).
• Terminate the intrusion of corporations posing as the state into every aspect of the People’s lives.
• End the use of covert contracts such as Form 1040, car registrations, birth certificate applications, and bank signature cards which confess the signer to be a legal fiction subject of the United States Federal Corporation (“U.S. person”) that has waved his/her rights in favor of state-issued privileges.
• End the use of deeds which classify the People as “tenants” on their own land, thereby transferring control to incorporated County registrars and tax assessors.
• End the perversion of marriage into a commercial system of state-issued privileges through the so-called “marriage license” whereby incorporated “courts” presume the “right” to trespass on families and kidnap children.
• End the hijacking of automobile ownership through DMV registrations which covertly exchange the divine rights of travel and ownership for the state-issued “privileges” of “driving” and “title.”
• In place of all of the above, substitute sovereign identification, diplomatic immunity and sovereign passports to facilitate safe passage throughout the world free from corporate State molestation and terror.
• Restore the People’s money and wealth from the banking institutions, war profiteers, and international loan sharks.
• Instantly vest all mortgages, auto loans and personal business loans “issued” by members of the Fed. The state shall hold no paper on, or debts against, the sovereign People, directly or through its agencies and licensed banking institutions.
• Instantly end all non-consensual and unlawful taxation including all taxes on the sacred rights of labor and privacy.
• Empower and inspire the sovereign People to righteousness through such renewed abundance.
• Issue orders to the military and police powers to enforce the Peoples’ divine rights of birth.
• Reabsorb all de facto actors into lawful de jure capacity.
• End the perverse act of requiring the People to pray to “courts” as is now required under corporate rules and traditions.
• Restore the de jure judicial institutions including the district court of the United States and the one supreme Court.
• Quietly mirror the strategies of 1933 thereby using their (our) institutions, military and public officials to undo eighty years of subterfuge without provoking alarm, controversy or armed conflict.
• Return the military and law enforcement institutions to proper and lawful de jure sovereign authority from the clutches of corporate actors.
• Forgive all corporate actors who repent for their State-sponsored crimes against mankind. Remove the recidivists from office.
• Do all of the above, and more, peacefully, discreetly, quietly and honorably, behind the scenes, without public proclamations or provocative actions against a general public that is mostly unaware of the hijacking of their free de jure American republics, and their hapless media.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.

The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.

Analysts have long tried to predict the year when Social Security would pay out more than it took in because they view it as a tipping point — the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency, unless Congress strengthens the program’s finances.

“When the level of the trust fund gets to zero, you have to cut benefits,” Alan Greenspan, architect of the plan to rescue the Social Security program the last time it got into trouble, in the early 1980s, said on Wednesday.

That episode was more dire because the fund could have fallen to zero in a matter of months. But partly because of steps taken in those years, and partly because of many years of robust economic growth, the latest projections show the program will not exhaust its funds until about 2037.

Still, Mr. Greenspan, who later became chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said: “I think very much the same issue exists today. Because of the size of the contraction in economic activity, unless we get an immediate and sharp recovery, the revenues of the trust fund will be tracking lower for a number of years.”

The Social Security Administration is expected to issue in a few weeks its own numbers for the current year within the annual report from its board of trustees. The administration has six board members: three from the president’s cabinet, two representatives of the public and the Social Security commissioner.

Though Social Security uses slightly different methods, the official numbers are expected to roughly track the Congressional projections, which were one page of a voluminous analysis of the federal budget proposed by President Obama in January.

Mr. Goss said Social Security’s annual report last year projected revenue would more than cover payouts until at least 2016 because economists expected a quicker, stronger recovery from the crisis. Officials foresaw an average unemployment rate of 8.2 percent in 2009 and 8.8 percent this year, though unemployment is hovering at nearly 10 percent.

The trustees did foresee, in late 2008, that the recession would be severe enough to deplete Social Security’s funds more quickly than previously projected. They moved the year of reckoning forward, to 2037 from 2041. Mr. Goss declined to reveal the contents of the forthcoming annual report, but said people should not expect the date to lurch forward again.

The long-term costs of Social Security present further problems for politicians, who are already struggling over how to reduce the nation’s debt. The national predicament echoes that of many European governments, which are facing market pressure to re-examine their commitments to generous pensions over extended retirements.

The United States’ soaring debt — propelled by tax cuts, wars and large expenditures to help banks and the housing market — has become a hot issue as Democrats gauge their vulnerability in the coming elections. President Obama has appointed a bipartisan commission to examine the debt problem, including Social Security, and make recommendations on how to trim the nation’s debt by Dec. 1, a few weeks after the midterm Congressional elections.

Although Social Security is often said to have a “trust fund,” the term really serves as an accounting device, to track the pay-as-you-go program’s revenue and outlays over time. Its so-called balance is, in fact, a history of its vast cash flows: the sum of all of its revenue in the past, minus all of its outlays. The balance is currently about $2.5 trillion because after the early 1980s the program had surplus revenue, year after year.

Now that accumulated revenue will slowly start to shrink, as outlays start to exceed revenue. By law, Social Security cannot pay out more than its balance in any given year.

For accounting purposes, the system’s accumulated revenue is placed in Treasury securities.

In a year like this, the paper gains from the interest earned on the securities will more than cover the difference between what it takes in and pays out.

Mr. Goss, the actuary, emphasized that even the $29 billion shortfall projected for this year was small, relative to the roughly $700 billion that would flow in and out of the system. The system, he added, has a balance of about $2.5 trillion that will take decades to deplete. Mr. Goss said that large cushion could start to grow again if the economy recovers briskly.

Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office’s projection shows the ravages of the recession easing in the next few years, with small surpluses reappearing briefly in 2014 and 2015.

After that, demographic forces are expected to overtake the fund, as more and more baby boomers leave the work force, stop paying into the program and start collecting their benefits. At that point, outlays will exceed revenue every year, no matter how well the economy performs.

Mr. Greenspan recalled in an interview that the sour economy of the late 1970s had taken the program close to insolvency when the commission he led set to work in 1982. It had no contingency reserve then, and the group had to work quickly. He said there were only three choices: raise taxes, lower benefits or bail out the program by tapping general revenue.

The easiest choice, politically, would have been “solving the problem with the stroke of a pen, by printing the money,” Mr. Greenspan said. But one member of the commission, Claude Pepper, then a House representative, blocked that approach because he feared it would undermine Social Security, changing it from a respected, self-sustaining old-age program into welfare.

Mr. Greenspan said that the same three choices exist today — though there is more time now for the painful deliberations.

“Even if the trust fund level goes down, there’s no action required, until the level of the trust fund gets to zero,” he said. “At that point, you have to cut benefits, because benefits have to equal receipts.”

The mother, whom KOMO News has chosen to identify only as “Jill,” says the clinic kept the information “confidential.”

When she signed a consent form, Jill figured it meant her 15 year old could go to the Ballard Teen Health Center located inside the high school for an earache, a sports physical, even birth control, but not for help terminating a pregnancy.

“She took a pregnancy test at school at the teen health center,” she said. “Nowhere in this paperwork does it mention abortion or facilitating abortion.”

Jill says her daughter, was given a pass, put in a taxi and sent off to have an abortion during school hours all without her family knowing.

“We had no idea this was being facilitated on campus,” said Jill. “They just told her that if she concealed it from her family, that it would be free of charge and no financial responsibility.”

The Seattle School District says it doesn’t run the health clinics at high schools. Swedish Medical Center runs the clinic at Ballard High and protects the students’ privacy.

T.J. Cosgrove of the King County Health Department, which administers the school-based programs for the health department, says it’s always best if parents are involved in their children’s health care, but don’t always have a say.

“At any age in the state of Washington, an individual can consent to a termination of pregnancy,” he said.

But Jill says she not only didn’t have a say in her daughter’s abortion, but also didn’t know about it.

“Makes me feel like my rights were completely stripped away.”

(Infowars) H.R. 3590, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, to give it its full title, is rammed full of tax increases which will further economically cripple Americans already laboring under the worst financial crisis since the great depression.

The partnering Reconciliation Act, currently in the Senate, also contains a raft of pork barrel and tax hikes, there to fund the trillion dollar cost of nationalizing medicine.

As reported by Bloomberg News today, analysis by the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation reveals that the bill will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes by 2019.

In addition, the Congressional Budget Office states that the bill also levies almost $69 billion more in penalties for those who fail to meet mandates to buy insurance.

The Journal of Accountancy boils down some of the tax hikes and penalty fees in H.R. 3590 and the Reconciliation Act – the highlights include:

• Excise Tax on Uninsured Individuals – Individuals who fail to maintain minimum essential coverage will be subject to a penalty equal to $750. The fee for an uninsured individual under age 18 is one-half of the adult fee.
• Excise Tax on High-Cost Employer Plans – The federal government would impose a 40% tax on the value of employer-sponsored health coverage exceeding certain thresholds. Those levels are projected to be $8,500 for self only and $23,000 for any other level by the year 2013. This excise was announced with fanfare by the White House and labor unions in January and remains in the final bill.
• Increase in additional tax on distributions from Health Savings Accounts and Archer Medical Savings Accounts not used for qualified medical expenses – An increase from 10% to 20% on taxes of money in a health savings account not used for qualified medical expenses. For Archer medical savings accounts, an increase from 15% to 20%.
• Additional Hospital Insurance Tax on High-Income Taxpayers – High income tax payers, making on a joint return over $250,000 and a standard return over $200,000, are required to pay an additional 0.5% of wages. This applies to both self-employed, and regularly employed individuals.
• Fees on Health Plans – A fee applied to all health insurance providers based upon net premiums and any third party fees associated with the administration of those programs. The fees will total $6.7 billion annually. This figure begins at $8 billion in the Reconciliation Act and rises to $14.3 billion by 2018.
• Tax on Indoor Tanning Services – The act imposes a 10% tax on amounts paid for indoor tanning services. Like a sales tax, the tax will be collected from the person tanning when payment for the tanning services is made.

Business Insider boils down 15 more tax hikes here – highlights include:

• Tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage – A 2.5% income tax on individuals who do not have health care coverage, limited to a cost less than the average national health care premium.
• Excise tax on elective cosmetic medical procedures – A tax of 5% is levied upon the am mount paid for any cosmetic surgery. This does not include the need for such surgeries created by trauma or a disfiguring disease. If the tax is not collected by that professional completing the procedure, their business is still liable for the requirement.
• The Reconciliation Act also legislates for the following surcharges: 1% surcharge on individuals making more than $350,000, 1.5% surcharge on individuals making more than $500,000, 5.4% surcharge on individuals making more than $1 million.

Yet even more tax provisions in the bill are highlighted by Investors Business Daily in their piece titled 20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms – highlights include:

• Taxes On Employers – If you are a large employer (defined as at least 101 employees) and you do not want to provide health insurance to your employee, then you will pay a $750 fine per employee (It could be $2,000 to $3,000 under the reconciliation changes) (Section 1513).
• Taxes on Pharmaceutical Companies – The government will extract a fee of $2.3 billion annually from the pharmaceutical industry (Section 9008 (b)).
• Taxes on medical device manufacturers – The government will extract a fee of $2 billion annually from medical device makers (Section 1405).

One important rule to remember is that if you want more of something, then you subsidize it. If you want less of something then you tax it. So under the Obama healthcare plan we will be getting a whole lot less from our employers, our drug companies, and medical devices.

As a candidate and President, Barack Obama has had one core message for middle class Americans: I won’t raise your taxes.

By putting his name to the health care reform bill today he has swiftly put to bed any pretence that he would uphold that pledge (multi-trillion dollar bailouts aside).

While the new taxes on individuals are bad enough, the penalties imposed on pharmaceutical corporations, health insurers and employers are will inevitably serve as a double whammy as the hikes will undoubtedly be passed on to the general public in the form of higher costs.

“Simply, you have nationalized healthcare by proxy.” writes Jonah Goldberg of the LA Times.

“Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington! They will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when healthcare costs rise — and they will — Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame and out from this Obamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.”

“The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.” Goldberg concludes.

A swift dose of propaganda is sure to silence some critics. However, if the softly softly approach fails, the myriad of new taxes and regulations contained in the Obamacare bill will be aggressively enforced by no less than 16,500 new “combat trained” IRS agents armed to the teeth with shotguns, who will also closely scrutinize Americans’ income tax returns and be waiting to pounce should they find evidence of anyone trying to avoid paying for mandatory government health care.

Even if you agree with socialized health care in principle, the fact is that this will only benefit the insurance companies who wrote it. Meanwhile millions of Americans will be subjected to more taxation, harassment, and oppression at the hands of a federal government run amok. An out of control leviathan, hell-bent on an agenda to control every aspect of your life, as they lay in wait to exploit the momentum achieved through the passage of Obamacare by ramming through nightmare cap and tax levies to further financially castrate already beleaguered Americans.

States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.

“It’s an indicator of how bad it is,” says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “You know things are bad when you have to do that.”

New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.

Hawaii’s Department of Taxation says some residents may not see state income tax refunds until the end of August, The Honolulu Advertiser reported. It was part of a plan by Gov. Linda Lingle to deal with a revenue drop-off by pushing costs into the next fiscal period, which begins in July.

States often do not have a timetable for refunds because delays are based on cash flow. Most states typically issue refunds within 30 days.

Delaying refund checks isn’t unprecedented, Pattison said, but it is something virtually no politician wants to do, because taxpayers are owed the money and in most cases want it fast. Delays in paying refunds and other state bills can trigger interest on those overdue payments, depending on state laws, he said.

California’s massive budget shortfall of more than $20 billion last year prompted it not only to delay tax refunds but to issue billions of dollars in IOUs to vendors and others who were owed money. State Controller John Chiang called the delayed payments a “shameful chapter in the State’s history” when the IOUs ended last September.

California still faces budget problems, but Chiang said that revenue is running ahead of projections so far this year, lessening the threat of a repeat.

“Californians should expect to receive their hard-earned tax refunds on time,” Chiang said.

The delays come as some states continue to face deep budget holes, even as economists say the nation as a whole has begun recovery. In a recent report, the budget officers group and the National Governors Association said state fiscal conditions “have continued to worsen,” and that state revenues can be expected to lag one to three years behind a national recovery from recession.

This fiscal year, the report said, 36 states have cut nearly $56 billion in spending, and 30 states have cut funding to public and higher education.

The U.S. Travel Association calls it a major step in addressing the drop-off in such visits to the U.S. during the past decade. The association says the U.S. welcomed 2.4 million fewer overseas visitors last year than in 2000. And that, the group says, has cost it an estimated $509 billion in total spending and $32 billion in direct tax receipts.

Government and private industry would evenly split the program’s costs, with Washington contributing up to $100 million a year. That money will come from a $10 fee paid by foreigners who do not pay for visas to enter the U.S.

“I’m normally a nice person, but I have to be really firm with these people,” Stephany said. “They must come in, sit down and write this line on paper, front and back.”

The line: “I will serve the glorious East German state better.”

The students copied it repeatedly after watching a propaganda film depicting the evils of Western culture.

The drill was part of a history lesson taken to an elaborate level Tuesday at Pine View, where Stephany and the rest of the 2,000 students participated in an interactive lesson commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.

“This was a project of the history club, and their idea was that students should really have an idea of what it was like to live in a communist state,” said social studies teacher Patricia Johnston, who helped organize the project and served as the lead “comrade.”

Students, with the help of a local landscaping company, erected a nearly 100-foot paper replica of the Berlin wall, complete with graffiti. It stood across the middle of the campus to mimic the concrete wall that separated communist East Germany from capitalist West Germany from 1961 to the end of 1989.

On the west side, students could walk around, socialize and behave as they normally do.

But on the east side, students could only walk on sidewalks, wear approved clothing (no hats, for instance) and had to behave in an orderly, controlled fashion.

Propaganda posters with phrases like “technology is unnecessary and degrades intelligence” lined the hallways, and gazebos and other recreation areas were marked as “unnecessary installations.”

Teachers on the East German side taught lessons from a communist perspective.

As an East German general, Stephany gathered intelligence from other officers and handed out punishment to enemies of the state.

She looked the part, wearing a black business suit and black stockings, heels and dark eyeliner. Hundreds of other students wore military jackets — and sometimes complete uniforms — with red arm bands signifying their communist allegiance.

“I looked up ‘communist women’s fashions of the day’ online,” Stephany said. “The women all had pale faces and red lipstick. You had to look cold and imposing.”

Most of the day’s activities were at the wall itself and the five checkpoints where students could cross.

Students were given passports that were stamped as they crossed; illegal crossings and other disobedience was recorded in the passports.

“Although we really can’t show them exactly what it was like, we want to show that the east was more strict,” said student Marine Robbins, who commanded a checkpoint. “We’ve had quite a few people that have been belligerent and just don’t agree at all with the simulation.”

Marine said some students protested the project, including setting up Facebook pages to rally the opposition. But Marine said the protests actually simulated similar efforts during the real German struggle and made the entire exercise more authentic.

Most students followed protocol and said they learned more than in a regular classroom assignment. Ninth-grader Joe Polarr was arrested several times for walking on the grass, wearing a hat and not pulling back his long hair — basically just being Joe Polarr on a normal school day.

“I’m not trying to get arrested, really. I’m just trying to get lunch,” Polarr said. East Germany would not have been a great place to live in, he said.

As the Palmetto Scoop first reported, Pitts, a Republican, introduced legislation this month banning “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.

In an interview, Pitts told CBS that he believes that “if the federal government continues to spend money at the rate it’s spending money, and if it continues to print money at the rate it’s printing money, our economic system is going to collapse.”

“The Germans felt their system wouldn’t collapse, but it took a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread in the 1930s,” he said. “The Soviet Union didn’t think their system would collapse, but it did. Ours is capable of collapsing also.”

The lawmaker believes that a shift to an economy based on gold and silver coins would give the state a “base of currency” should that collapse come. As one expert told the Scoop, however, his bill would likely be ruled unconstitutional because it “violates a perfectly legal and Constitutional federal law, enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, that federal reserve notes are legal tender for all debts public and private.”

In addition, since gold and silver regularly fluctuate in value, they could not easily function as stable currency.

But Pitts maintains that his state is better off with something he can hold in his hand and barter with as opposed to federal currency, which he described to the Scoop as “paper with ink on it.” He says he resents what he considers the federal government’s intrusions on states’ rights.

Though he did not offer a timeframe, Pitts told CBS that he anticipates a nationwide economic collapse “if our federal government continues the course it’s been traveling under the previous administration and this administration.”

States have saved $2.35 trillion of the $3.35 trillion owed to workers as of mid-2008, the center said. The Washington-based group expects the deficit to grow because of investment losses states sustained in the second half of 2008, the report said.

Illinois,Connecticut and New Jersey were among the 16 lowest-ranked in terms of funding pension and retiree health care, according to Pew. The gap reflects “states’ own policy choices and lack of discipline” in failing to set aside enough money and expanding benefits without deciding how to pay for it, the report said.

“States don’t manage this liability and the costs continue to go up,” said Susan Urahn, managing director for the Pew Center, in a conference call with reporters yesterday. “States will either have to make cuts in other priorities or raise taxes.”

Local governments’ borrowing costs in the U.S. municipal bond market may rise because companies that grade the debt factor in the liability, said Urahn. Investors seek higher yields when ratings are lower to compensate for the perception of greater risk.

$3 Trillion

The gap that Pew calculated may be one-third that estimated by Orin S. Kramer, chairman of New Jersey’s State Investment Council and manager of Boston Provident Partners, a hedge fund. Kramer projected a $2 trillion unfunded liability for public pension funds and a $1 trillion gap for health-care benefits for retired public employees, according to a January commentary published by Bloomberg.

Underfunding of pensions has been cited in rating cuts or negative outlooks for Connecticut, Nevada and New Jersey, said Edith Behr, a senior credit officer with Moody’s Investors Service.

“States have less money to pay for services that are absolutely expected,” Behr said in an interview. “It’s when you get to times like this when you start having to make some of the tough choices, cutting back services, cutting back staff, raising taxes.”

Urahn called the pension gap “perhaps the most daunting” of all the bills that will come due for states and municipalities. The full payment for plans the study looked at was $108 billion last year, compared with spending of $152 billion on higher education. Florida, Idaho, New York and North Carolina entered the recession with fully funded pensions, the report said. Twenty states have saved nothing for future obligations for health care and other benefits.

California’s Obligations

California, the most-populous U.S. state, owes $51.8 billion for future retiree health and dental costs, an increase of $3.6 billion from a year earlier, said state controller John Chiang in a press release Feb. 9. At the same time the state faces a budget deficit of $20 billion over the next 18 months.

The state can’t ignore its promised benefits “even as we try to claw our way out of the recession and provide needed cash to the state’s coffers,” Chiang said in a statement.

Fitch Ratings, which hasn’t seen states cutting back on funding pensions, is monitoring for such steps because of the tendency by states to trim contributions in past recessions, Richard Raphael, an analyst with Fitch, said in an interview.

Illinois sold bonds last month to cover its pension liability.

Nine years after the defining moment of the 21st century, a stunning set of photographs taken by New York Police helicopters forces us to look afresh at a catastrophe we assumed we knew so well.

You know but cannot see the 2,752 men, women and children who died at the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001.

See The Pictures: Daily Mail

Kenneth Howe, 45 of Worcester, was arrested at a North Andover sobriety checkpoint on November 25. Less than an hour later, he was dead.

Photos from the Eagle Tribune allegedly show several state troopers and North Andover police officers subdueing Howe.

Howe’s family says the police went too far.

“This is a case of murder. We want criminal prosecutions, and we want these cowards that beat this man to death prosecuted and punished,” said Frances King, attorney for Howe’s family.

The cause of death is listed as “homicide” on Howe’s death certificate. The state medical examiner said homicide doesn’t necessarily mean murder, but King disagrees.

“Between 10 and 20 police officers swarmed on Kenneth,” King said.

King said Howe, who was a passenger in a truck, had just tossed off a marijuana cigarette when he approached the police roadblock. Police said Howe struck a female trooper,released his pit bull on police, and attempted to run.

Police said Howe eventually taken down, but stopped breathing at the Andover State Police barracks. He regained a pulse, and was then taken to Lawrence General Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

King said she plans on filing a lawsuit in federal court next week.

“Kenneth Howe, at the very least, should be alive today and possibly facing criminal charges. He should not be dead. You do not beat somebody to death,” King said.

State Police had no comment, but the Essex District Attorney said he has been working on the case, and is meeting with the U.S Attorney next week. He said he will comment when the investigation is complete.