IRS Coaching College Students On Taking Down Small Business Owners

IRS Coaching College Students on How to Take Down Small Business Owners

The Internal Revenue Service is recruiting college students by giving them a taste of what it feels like to take down a tax evader.

But Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has doubts that the recruitment initiative is going to benefit the American people. He shared a clip of an April report on what the IRS has dubbed the “Adrian Project.”

“In case you thought the IRS needed 87,000 more agents to help you with your tax returns and audit billionaires, watch this: Highlights from the IRS Adrian recruiting project,” he tweeted on Aug. 17.

“Notice the scenario in this IRS recruiting program is ‘taking down a landscape business owner who failed to properly report how he paid for his vehicles,’ not ‘taking down a billionaire who uses the corporate jet for private trips,'” Massie added.

The recruitment event highlighted in the video took place at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. It was reported by the university’s Community Education Channel.

In one exercise, students played armed IRS agents arresting a landscaper wanted for purchasing vehicles with unreported income.

“You’re going to jail, buddy,” one of the students said playfully.

Special agent Elizabeth Lam told the Community Education Channel that IRS criminal investigators “have regular trainings in firearms, building entry” and that their work includes “doing search warrants or making arrests.”

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Economic Collapse Looms As Europeans Head Into Extremely Cold And Bitter Winter

Their Economy Is Collapsing All Around Them As Europeans Head Into An Extremely Cold And Bitter Winter

Michael

Last winter, Europeans were looking forward to yet another year of peace and prosperity.  This winter, Europeans will find themselves right in the middle of an economic collapse.  It is often said that energy is the economy, and energy is going to be in very short supply in the months ahead.  Thanks to the war in Ukraine and a number of other factors, energy prices in Europe have shot up to levels that would have once been unthinkable, and several European governments are already preparing to ration energy.  This is going to have a tremendous impact on economic activity, and it is going to mean that this winter is going to be extremely cold and extremely bitter for millions upon millions of Europeans.

In Poland, many households usually use coal that is imported from Russia to heat their homes, but that won’t happen this year because of the war.

As a result, some desperate people are now standing in line for days just to have the opportunity to buy some coal…

According to Reuters, with Poland still basking in the late summer heat, hundreds of cars and trucks have already lined up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as householders fearful of winter shortages wait for days and nights to stock up on heating fuel ahead of the coming cold winter in queues reminiscent of communist times.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 km (18 miles) from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tonnes of coal for himself and his family.

“Toilets were put up today, but there’s no running water,” he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers and private cars. “This is beyond imagination, people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times but it didn’t cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”

Video footage of Polish citizens lined up for coal is so bizarrethat it is difficult to believe that it is actually real.

In Poland, where coal is king, dozens are lining up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, waiting for days and nights to stock up on heating fuel. Read more: https://reut.rs/3KruiYb

In the UK, countless consumers will be facing financial hardship this winter as energy bills soar into the stratosphere…

Millions of households will see their energy bills rocket as the price cap is hiked to £3,549 a year, plunging many into financial hardship.

The record 80% October increase, announced by the regulator Ofgem, will see a typical default tariff customer paying an extra £1,578, laying bare the deepening cost of living crisis.

The rise follows a 54% increase in April, which saw average bills surge to £1,971 a year.

A third of all UK citizens are already having trouble paying their energy bills, and this new increase won’t even be implemented until October.

So how high will that figure be six months from now?

Will half the country be struggling to pay their energy bills at that point?

Right now, poverty is on the rise all over Europe.

For example, just check out this video footage of people lined up for food in Italy’s wealthiest city.

And things are going to get a whole lot worse for western Europe if Russia decides to totally cut off the gas.

Already, Russia has reduced the amount of natural gas that it is supplying through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to just 20 percent, and one German official is entirely convinced that it will soon go to zero…

Germany faces the “bitter reality” that Russia will not restore gas supplies to the country, the German economy minister said on Monday, ahead of planned halt by state energy giant Gazprom of exports to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

“It won’t come back … It is the bitter reality,” Robert Habeck said in a panel with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

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U.S. Artillery Stockpiles 'Uncomfortably Low' After Ukraine Aid

US artillery stockpiles ‘uncomfortably low’ after Ukraine aid

RT

The US military is running low on some types of ammunition after the White House approved and delivered billions of dollars in “lethal aid”for Ukraine since February, several military officials told the Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity.

In addition to thousands of guns, drones, missiles, artillery platforms and rocket launchers, Washington has supplied Kiev with large amounts of ammo, including up to 806,000 155mm howitzer rounds. The stocks of the latter munitions are running “uncomfortably low,” an unnamed Pentagon official told the Journal.

“It is not at the level we would like to go into combat,” the official added, though noted that since the US is not currently directly involved in any major conflict, the 155mm rounds have not yet reached “critical” levels.

The drawdown on supplies has prompted the Army to carry out an “ammunitions industrial base deep dive,” in which it will determine how to maintain its own supplies while keeping up the current pace of aid to Ukrainian forces. The United States has devoted nearly $14 billion in direct weaponry supplies to Kiev this year alone.

According to an industry official reached by the Journal, it can take suppliers up to 18 months to manufacture new ammunition from the time orders are placed, while more sophisticated weapons, such as missiles, are likely to take much longer. While the Army and other branches continue to fulfill existing contracts with ammunition producers, they have not signed deals to account for the growing scarcities.

Since Washington intensified its arms deliveries to Kiev in February, some suppliers say the Pentagon is simply not communicating the needs of the military, which has created “delays” and left contractors “unable to prepare for more production,” the outlet reported

The Threat Of Cashless Societies

The Threat Of Cashless Societies

 Louis Weber 

A cashless society truly is a scary world. Picture everything that you’ve read about in history books within other totalitarian regimes, and you’ll get a taste of what is to come.

So the old adage goes anyway, and for the prepper – the one who’s keeping abreast of current events – cash is one of the last man-made means of protection that he or she has against governments that have grown to a degree of power that they never had before.There are two predominant dangers that come with a cashless society, and just about every negative that you can think of due to such will fall into one of these two groups:

1. Denial of purchasing power
2. A complete loss of anonymity

A cashless society is a controlled society. If everything must go through an online banking or credit card process, then you have just lost virtually all control over what you buy.

Anything that is not politically sanctioned(guns, ammo, body armor, helmets, particular books, particular website premium subscriptions, political donations, etc.) could very easily be vaporized overnight.

This, of course, would drive the makers and holders of such products into a black market to barter their goods, and this in turn would be responded to by the use of overwhelming government force. This will come in the form of Stryker vehicles, concussion grenades, snipers, and men with automatic rifles and body armor.

Don’t believe me? Read FA Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Totalitarian governments must resort to force simply for the sole reason that people will naturally refuse to comply with widespread theft of their own goods. This force will only continue to grow in its usage.

Totalitarians do not accept blame for their own economical failures. The state is the end of all things to them, and as such, the end justifies the means – no matter how terrifying such a means may be.

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Energy Update II - Germany

German Energy Apocalypse Update II

 Eugyppius

This is bad.

Noted children’s book author Robert Habeck, who is somehow also the German Minister of the Economy, turns out to know very little about his job or the industries he proposes to regulate. His gas surcharge scheme, conceived to keep the importer Uniper solvent in the face of skyrocketing prices, has now imploded and must be redrafted. It has emerged that, under his defunct proposal, many businesses not in danger of insolvency would have had a claim on the funds. This is probably because the bill was co-authored by the major energy companies themselves. In an extremely awkward speech, Habeck admitted that the problems with the law reflected his own ignorance of the gas industry and its internal complexities.

Meanwhile, our lunatic Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who like Habeck also hails from the economic saboteur collective known as the Green Party, has spoken out against keeping our three remaining nuclear plants open beyond 2022. This would be “crazy” in her conception, because Germany has fought so long and invested so much in getting out of nuclear power. Sensible commentary on German affairs is often to be found only beyond our borders. As an editorial in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung puts it: “If the Federal Republic shuts down its last three nuclear power plants, this winter of all times, then the country is beyond all help.”

Indeed, electricity is looking increasingly scarce across the entire continent. German power futures for January 2023 surged more than threefold towards the end of last week, as planners directed all spare natural gas into winter reserves.

There looms a deep macroeconomic shock, which threatens not only to crush many private finances, but also to devastate large sectors of German industry.

It seems increasingly possible that we’ll see measures like managed brown-outs, with bizarre shortages of everyday products like toilet paper, as manufacturing is scaled back. Electricity prices have finally come to the notice of our political class, who have promised to remedy the problem with regulatory tinkering that will do nothing, because the problem is not regulation but the simple unavailability of a key commodity. Unless they can conjure natural gas from the ether, the technocrats cannot help us.

The entire Eurozone, as well as the United Kingdom, faces the worst cost-of-living crisis in modern memory. Already the German savings ratio has collapsed due to inflation, and this is well in advance of the true price shocks to come. Ulf Kempfer, vice-president of the German Association of Municipalities and mayor of Kiel, gave an interview to Welt that sheds light on the practical measures that are being contemplated to reduce electricity usage. Assuming that Nord Stream 1 continues to operate at one-fifth capacity, German energy consumption will have to be reduced by at least 20%; if the Russians cut off all gas, which they may well do, we’ll face a 40% shortfall. Even the best case here is a catastrophe that turning off street lights will not remedy. The biggest savings are to be had in reducing indoor heating, and cutting back on the use of warm water, refrigerators, washing machines and computers. Municipal services and office buildings will probably have to be closed, though some facilities, like public libraries, may be kept open as a refuge for those unable to heat their homes.