In a sign that his campaign is in need of fresh funds, Newt Gingrich on Monday began charging $50 to have a photograph taken with him following a campaign speech to Republican groups here in the northernmost part of the state.

“Some campaigns make you travel all the way to Wall Street to pay $2,500 for a photo with a candidate,” a Gingrich spokesman said in an e-mail. “We are trying out a new tactic and asking our supporters at our rallies for a nominal donation. And guess what, it is working.”

It was the first time that the former House speaker has charged those attending one of his public speaking events to pose for a photograph with him. Lately, a member of his campaign staff has been snapping photos of any interested attendee and later posting them online at the campaign’s website, Newt.org.

On Monday night, those paying for a photograph were also told they could find their photos on Gingrich’s website, after they had filled out a form providing their credit card information.

The campaign limped out of the month of February posting more debt than cash on hand. And poor showings in the recent primaries of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama — all Southern states Gingrich had once expressed optimism he could win — are likely not going to help any fundraising pushes.

Gingrich held only one public event on Monday, here in Delaware, which votes on April 24. He was scheduled to travel to North Carolina on Wednesday, but that trip was cancelled on Monday in favor of campaigning in the D.C. area. The former speaker will spend his next two days there and in Maryland before heading to Wisconsin at the end of the week.

Source: National Journal.

Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661. Now it’s come farther than most on the path toward getting rid of them.

“I can’t see why we should be printing bank notes at all anymore,” says Bjoern Ulvaeus, former member of 1970′s pop group ABBA, and a vocal proponent for a world without cash.

The contours of such a society are starting to take shape in this high-tech nation, frustrating those who prefer coins and bills over digital money.

In most Swedish cities, public buses don’t accept cash; tickets are prepaid or purchased with a cell phone text message. A small but growing number of businesses only take cards, and some bank offices — which make money on electronic transactions — have stopped handling cash altogether.

“There are towns where it isn’t at all possible anymore to enter a bank and use cash,” complains Curt Persson, chairman of Sweden’s National Pensioners’ Organization.

He says that’s a problem for elderly people in rural areas who don’t have credit cards or don’t know how to use them to withdraw cash.

The decline of cash is noticeable even in houses of worship, like the Carl Gustaf Church in Karlshamn, southern Sweden, where Vicar Johan Tyrberg recently installed a card reader to make it easier for worshippers to make offerings.

“People came up to me several times and said they didn’t have cash but would still like to donate money,” Tyrberg says.

CONTINUED at CBS News.

Pornographic toys, magazines and videos were stolen from a Linda sex shop, but the store’s owner is surprised by what wasn’t taken.

Kevin Couch owns Fantasy Factory across the street from a strip club, and Monday night someone broke into his adult store. But the culprits never touched the cash register.

“They just took the toys and left,” he said. “They didn’t take the money or anything so I was lost. The sheriff’s department was lost. When he saw all the stuff in here and he goes ‘that’s all they took?’ and I was like ‘yeah.’”

So Kevin thinks it was kids just trying to make a little mischief in forbidden territory.

“They see the adult store here, they can’t come in here they can’t purchase this stuff so they are bored and they break in and come in and take it at night when no one is here,” he said.

So far, there are no suspects, just a suspected age range: boys probably about 13 to 17 years old.

“If I was to do it I’d probably go for cash, not adult toys,” Linda resident Rodney Foster said. “I don’t really understand why somebody would take that, that’s kind of gross and weird.”

The thieves busted in by using a chunk of asphalt to crash through the door. It will cost Kevin about $800 to fix the door and he’s out about $150 worth of merchandise.

It’s the second time his store has been broken into in a year.

Source: CBS Sacramento. Video at link.

*Note.. that is not a picture of the store front, it’s just funny.

*Written by Cody Bennett.

What we now know as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began as an act by President Lincoln and Congress in 1862. It created the position of the commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted an income tax to pay for the expenses of the Civil War (Revenue Act of 1862). Initial rates were around 3% for incomes exceeding $800, which allowed for the majority of the working populace to be exempt. However, by 1864, rates had risen to 5% for low-income families, and up to 10% for anyone making $10,000 or more. By the end of the war, more than 10% of Union families were paying some sort of federal income tax.

In 1872, Congress allowed the temporary wartime tax to expire and federal income taxes didn’t become an issue again until 1894. The case of Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co. was a five-to-four landmark decision by the Supreme Court that the Income Tax Act of 1894 was unconstitutional on the grounds that it was a direct tax. Under the Constitution at that time, direct taxes must be apportioned among the states based on population. Since the act allowed for Congress to distribute the funds without apportionment, it was deemed unconstitutional.

Early in the 20th century, there was a populist movement for tax reform that climaxed on February 3, 1913 with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

This is one of the worst blemishes on the United States Constitution. It holds no regard for individual liberty and exists only to further the existence of the State, by whatever means necessary. It fundamentally changed the entire nation, nullifying a very important part of the Constitution. Forty-two states ratified the amendment. I can happily say that Florida didn’t even consider the issue.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue was founded once again. In the first year of its new existence, the BIR doubled its workforce, creating a whole new system of collection and organization. The newly revitalized institution was slowly becoming a standing army of tax collectors.

The first Form 1040 appeared that same year after Congress levied a 1% tax on net incomes above $6,000, and a 6%-10% progressive tax on incomes exceeding $500,000. However, five years later, the top bracket was being taxed up to 77% in order to finance our efforts in WWI. Percentages dropped sharply during the 1920’s, and remained low until the Great Depression.

In less than a century, what was basically a tax revolution seems commonplace to most Americans. Filing an annual income tax return has become an accepted must do. And you should file for a return, not because the IRS will get you, but because that money belongs to you anyway. The problem is that it shouldn’t have been taken from you in the first place.

I have a buddy who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He paid $2700 total in NY State and NYC income taxes for the fiscal year 2010. He only got $135 on his return. If he were investing $2700 into private stocks and received the same sort of return, I can bet he would fire his broker, withdraw his assets, and invest elsewhere.

The problem, though, is that you can’t fire the federal government, and you can’t opt out of paying taxes, either. The money Congress appropriates each year for its budget is your money. For too long they’ve been making mal-investments resulting in bad returns. The Chicago Climate Exchange is a good example of this. It was supposed to be a $10 trillion a year industry. Now it’s bankrupt.

In the 1950’s the BIR changed its name to the “Internal Revenue Service” to emphasize the “service aspect of their work”, even though its essential function remained the same. This is propaganda at its finest.

One of my heroes, Karl Hess, practically had his life ruined by the Internal Revenue Service in the 1960’s. He was the principle speechwriter for Barry Goldwater in the ’64 presidential election. Goldwater lost to Lyndon B. Johnson by a landslide. Shortly thereafter, Johnson had the IRS audit Hess. They charged him with tax resistance, confiscated nearly all of his property, and placed a 100% lien on all of his future earnings. You call that “service”?

When Hess questioned an IRS collector about a certain deduction that didn’t seem right, the agent told him, “it doesn’t matter if it’s right, what matters is the law.”

Feeling that the IRS would have a good sense of what is right and what is law, Hess sent them a copy of the Declaration of Independence with a letter attached telling them he would never pay taxes again. The IRS responded by revoking his ability to use American money. When he told them that he wouldn’t be able to feed himself if he couldn’t use money, they replied, “That’s not our problem.”

Hess became a heavy-duty welder, using only cash and bartering for food and supplies. He went on to become a prominent practitioner of “appropriate technology” and has been a major influence on libertarian thought over the last fifty years. He died in 1994…an anarchist.

If 10 million Americans had joined Hess in his anti-tax crusade, it would have transformed, perhaps even abolished the way we handle taxes in this country. I suggest we do exactly that.

Abolish the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS is the single-most authoritarian institution in the country. In 1998, under Clinton’s watch, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights III was passed. It’s hardly a step toward more liberty, though. This law shifts the “burden of proof” from the taxpayer to the IRS. This means the IRS can legally seize assets and enforce liens without obtaining judgment in court. It allows for those in power to silence their political enemies by physical coercion. THIS IS TYRANNY.

Economist Murray Rothbard defines a State as two things: a) an entity that acquires its revenue from the general population by physical coercion, and b) an entity who has a monopoly on the provisions for defense and protection.
The IRS is the physical arm of the state—the hand in your pocket—that takes what does not belong to it, and turns it over to congress for appropriation without apportionment among the many states. And if you don’t allow their hands in your pockets, they’ll be around your neck.

We are at a critical point in history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, decades from now, where we were and what we did. Will we be the silent observers? Or will we lead a charge for independence? Will we be able to tell them stories of how we actually dismantled the system, and that we did it without throwing bricks or turning over police vehicles, that we killed the beast from within, using its weaknesses against it, that the revolution was not a lie?

*Taken from Forbes.

Was the recent attack on Herman Cain’s presidential campaign a professional hit job? Absolutely, says Herman Cain. And he says he knows just where to look for the guy who did it: At 815 Slaters Lane in Alexandria, Virginia, a low-slung former warehouse in the shadow of a coal plant.

There, beside rusting rail lines, is the home of OnMessage Inc., a Republican-leaning consulting firm recently hired to bolster Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign.

CONTINUED..

Stewart pwns both over their recent idiocy/weirdness:

*Taken from Real Clear Politics. Video at link.

“I have never sexually harassed anyone, let’s say that. Secondly, I’ve never sexually harassed anyone, and yes, I was falsely accused while I was at the National Restaurant Association, and I say falsely, because it turned out, after the investigation, to be baseless. The people mentioned in that article were the ones who would be aware of any misdoings, and they have attested to my integrity and my character. It is totally baseless, and totally false, never have I committed any sort of sexual harassment,” Herman Cain told FOX News about claims from Politico that he was involved in the sexual harassment of two former employees.

My Two Cents: Sure, this may be a smear attempt by the media haters but it is also a scandal founded in truth. The idiot Cain representative on the phone with Geraldo proves that the Cain campaign is going ape shit trying to cover their ass on this one. In any event, Cain needs to fire that guy and he also needs to fire the idiot behind the smoking/creepy smile commercial. Frankly, I’m tired of Cain getting all these mulligans. If anyone else had these issues, it’d be over but once again the public is easily duped by another charismatic candidate with big empty promises and no experience. End Two Cents.

*Taken from Politico.

During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.

The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from KLFY. Video at link.

Cold hard cash. It’s good everywhere you go, right? You can use it to pay for anything.

But that’s not the case here in Louisiana now. It’s a law that was passed during this year’s busy legislative session.

House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions, and it flew so far under the radar most businesses don’t even know about it.

“We’re gonna lose a lot of business,” says Danny Guidry, who owns the Pioneer Trading Post in Lafayette. He deals in buying and selling unique second hand items.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Breitbart.

China, already the world’s second largest bullion consumer, has installed the country’s first gold vending machine in a busy shopping district in Beijing, state media said on Sunday.

Shoppers in the popular Wangfujing Street can insert cash or use a bank cardto withdraw gold bars or coins of various weights based on market prices, the People’s Daily said on its website.

Each withdrawal is capped at 2.5 kilograms (5.5 pounds) or one million yuan (about $156,500) worth of gold, the report said.

Gold vending machines already exist in Britain, the United States, the Middle East and Europe.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from CBS DFW.

A program to stop truancy in two North Texas school districts could be a moneymaker for some.

Both the Arlington and Mansfield Independent School Districts are participating in the “You Earn, They Learn. Stop Truancy.” program.

Arlington Police Department Spokeswoman Tiara Ellis Richard says both of the districts have a plan, “to try to utilize a reward system for trying to combat truancy.”

Ellis Richard explained that there are now steps people can take if they notice a chronic school skipper. “They notify Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers then sends a message to AISD and to our school resource officers, to make an effort to go make contact with that youngster.”

CONTINUED..