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America's Municipal Debt Racket
WSJ ^ | 06/14/10 | STEVEN MALANGA

Posted on 06/16/2010 4:56:47 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

America's Municipal Debt Racket

State and local borrowing as a percentage of U.S. GDP has risen to an all-time high of 22% in 2010.

By STEVEN MALANGA

New Jersey officials recently celebrated the selection of the new stadium in the Meadowlands sports complex as the site of the 2014 Super Bowl. Absent from the festivities was any sense of the burden the complex has become for taxpayers.

Nearly 40 years ago the Garden State borrowed $302 million to begin constructing the Meadowlands. The goal was to pay off the bonds in 25 years. Although the project initially went according to plan, politicians couldn't resist continually refinancing the bonds, siphoning revenues from the complex into the state budget, and using the good credit rating of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition authority to borrow for other, unsuccessful building schemes.

Today, the authority that runs the Meadowlands is in hock for $830 million, which it can't pay back. The state, facing its own cavernous budget deficits, has had to assume interest payments—about $100 million this year on bonds that still stretch for decades.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: city; debt; government

1 posted on 06/16/2010 4:56:47 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; PAR35; AndyJackson; Thane_Banquo; nicksaunt; MadLibDisease; happygrl; ...

P!


2 posted on 06/16/2010 4:57:08 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (The way to crush the bourgeois is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

much preferable to a perpetual
occupation of Afghanistan
started by bush


3 posted on 06/16/2010 5:02:03 AM PDT by element92
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To: element92

lithium


4 posted on 06/16/2010 5:03:52 AM PDT by palmer (Cooperating with Obama = helping him extend the depression and implement socialism.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
Montgomery County MD. is 1 Billion, with a 'B', in debt.

PS: 1/3 of the county of 1 million redidents is foreign born....

5 posted on 06/16/2010 5:55:03 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed, and I do not give a damn.)
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Simple, move out of the City. That debt is for the suckers that move in.


6 posted on 06/16/2010 6:05:59 AM PDT by sickoflibs ( "It's not the taxes, the redistribution is the federal spending=tax delayed")
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To: central_va; All

There are investors, usually old money-yankee types, called ‘coupon clippers’. They park their fathers money, long since grand dad’s money in bonds, usually tax free municipal bonds.

These pay, say, 4-5 percent, partially or wholely tax free. So figure, 5-6, percent, or more.

Where are you going to get that return, tax free, year after year after year?

So, to the point.

What we are seeing is a nexus of wealthy people that want government to have large debts. In fact these weathy people, push for large debts.

Haven’t you often wondered why many wealthy support government spending? Which means taxes? On them? Well, it is because they make more off of government debt, then the tax increases, because these are tax free returns, so it doesn’t matter what the taxes are. The more the better......for them.

In short we are seeing the government selling us, our children, into the debt collection hands of others. And, of course the government hacks, politicians, employees get a nice fat income and pensions....and we get crappy stadiums, roads and bridges that fall apart, new schools that leak....public housing ghettos/slums.

Everyone, though taxes, collected by force and violence is after you.


7 posted on 06/16/2010 6:53:01 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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To: sickoflibs

The Feds will tax rural people to pay off the bond holders.

There is no escape.


8 posted on 06/16/2010 6:53:57 AM PDT by Leisler ("Over time they create a legal system that plunders and a moral code that glorifies it." F. Bastiat)
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To: All
The Meadowlands building project went according to plan, but politicians couldn't resist continually refinancing the bonds (read taxpayers debt), siphoning its revenues into the state budget, and using the good credit rating of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition “Authority” to borrow for other, unsuccessful building schemes. Today, the “authority” that runs the Meadowlands is in hock for $830 million, which it can't pay back.

The IRS has targeted municipal and state tax-exempt “government authorities” as the locus classicus for tax evasion, government fraud, and money laundering.

POSSIBLE CRIMES: Colluding, conspiracy to steal; government fraud; theft of public property, filing false official records (a felony), money laundering, computer trespass, US Postal and electronic fraud, tax evasion (stolen money is taxable),

HERE'S HOW THEY PULL IT OFF
(1) Insider backroom deals
(2) Collusion to siphon off and kickback government funds.
(3) Siphoning off authority funds into falsified budget items labeled “overtime.”
(4) Computer entries falsely list “overtime” that are later deleted.
(5) Putting phantom employees on the payroll.
(6) Authority insiders' get kickbacks from vendors,
(7) Wire-transfers to numbered offshore accounts.
(8) Authority insiders take hidden equity positions in vendor companies---then inflate no-bid contracts (later paid off with fraudulent bank loans).
(9) Accounting fraud.
(10) Phony line items like "building costs, administration, legal fees, upkeep, " and the like.
(11) (a) loans, (b) sale, (c) exchange, (d) leasing of govt property to insiders.
(12) Executive pay not properly disclosed to the IRS (stolen money is taxable)
(13) Using two sets of books.

Here's how NJ pols crooked the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors "Authority."

$102 for an employee to rent golf clubs in Florida.
$494 for a Washington, DC-based employee to attend authority holiday parties.
$445 for the executive director to stay at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington which included $30 for liquor and a $27 breakfast.
$21,055 for an corporate tent and limousine minibus service to the Meadowlands to watch the Giants. Billed as a chance to show off for prospective clients.
$11,429 for a suite and transportation to see the Giants open their season in Dallas.
$400 for two bottles of wine at an Atlantic City restaurant.
$118 for a double tip (didn’t realize gratuity was included).
$165 for a meal in San Diego (no itemized receipt was made available).

REPORT HERE:
IRS TOLL-FREE 1-800-829-0433----you may remain anonymous.
FBI TIP PAGE http://tips.fbi.gov/ (you may remain anonymous)

9 posted on 06/16/2010 1:18:16 PM PDT by Liz (If teens can procreate in a Volkswagen, why does a spotted owl need 2000 acres? JD Hayworth)
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