Tax Scams and Tax Robbers...Bilking America(ns) BIG TIME!

I do not know about you, but I stress over money more than anything.  As I discussed in last week's post, one of the primary causes of conflict in relationships today is financial ... MONEY ... or lack thereof. I discussed credit and credit scores as a source of conflict in my last post, educating you on some pitfalls and secrets, and telling you how to stay on top of your credit score (Vantage or FICO) and avoid potential problems down the road.

I saw a story on "Rock Center with Brian Williams" last night about tax refund fraud and the IRS. Apparently, this has become a very lucrative crime with scumbags stealing identities (very easy) and filing made-up tax returns IN YOUR NAME ... TO THE TUNE OF $5 BILLION LAST YEAR!

If you have worked with or for the federal government, you have witnessed WASTE in unfathomable proportions, fraud and abuse as well, but waste is rampant! Government departments and contractors waste HUNDREDS OF BILLION$ EVERY YEAR and this $5 billion scam is just the tip of the iceberg!

Medicare fraud, social security and disability fraud, and now tax fraud, if there is a way to defraud the government or waste taxpayer dollars, someone has figured it out.

There was another story on the same program about Carnival Cruiseline and the fact that they pay only 0.6%, that is less than one percent, in international, federal, state...etc. taxes! Not only that, they have bilked the US Coast Guard and Navy  out of over $2 million over the past year in recovery operations for their poorly maintained fleet alone. That does not include the millions being spent on the Costa Concordia (one of their ships) clean-up effort. Their CEO is the proud owner of the Miami Heat basketball team and one of the richest men in Florida, yet his company (Carnival) rips-off billions from United States citizens every year ... what a great American!

Bank of America, Pfizer, and hundreds of other behemoth corporations pay 0.0% in tax to our government to the tune of over $70 BILLION every year by taking their accounts offshore and exploiting tax laws that are so complex and detailed the IRS has difficulty understanding them.  Really?  $70 million gone and nobody cares?  I pay more in taxes than Bank of America?  What a great country!

I have witnessed, first-hand, government/contractor waste on a huge scale recently.  I cannot go into detail because of pending litigation, but this one contractor AND THE GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING OFFICER supposedly "overseeing" the contract, are wasting many millions of dollars annually and this is just one relatively SMALL contract! If the Department of Defense would join us in the 21st Century and take the steps necessary to give our military confidentiality when seeking mental healthcare, this particular contract would not even be necessary! A contract a few simple policy changes would eliminate all together wastes tens, if not hundreds, of millions each year. How absurd is that?

With all of that being said, why the hell do the White House, Congress, Pentagon, and many other federal entities primarily target personnel and benefits when things get tight? Why do they not focus on the massive amounts of fraud and waste within our own government, bilking American taxpayers out of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ANNUALLY and running up our deficit INTO THE TRILLIONS!

We should not stand for this ANY LONGER! If you are sick and tired of government/contractor fraud, waste, and abuse, LIKE and SHARE THIS POST with all of your friends.

Until we citizens, the American taxpayers, the people who elect these morons and pay their salaries, say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and unite in defiance, these frauds, wastes, and abuses will continue unabated.

END THE APATHY...UNITE...GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND STAND-UP FOR OUR COUNTRY...BEFORE WE DO NOT HAVE ONE TO STAND-UP FOR!

ENSURE every citizen, every Service Member & Veteran, you know SEES THIS POST! LET'S START A NON-VIOLENT UPRISING, DEFIANCE AGAINST INSANITY AND SUPPORT WHAT IS RIGHT, BY UNDERSTANDING JUST ONE PROBLEM AND SIGNING THIS  WHITE HOUSE PETITION: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/help-end-military-suicides-and-negative-stigmas-surrounding-ptsd-and-mental-health-treatment/DTjdBHdY

God bless you and our great nation, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

Beware of TweetAdder and Other Twitter Time Management Programs...Your Twitter Account Could Be Suspended!

Already having nearly 550 followers on Twitter @CombatCongressman after only two weeks and thousands more on my alter egos, @CombatCounselor, @CombatCritic, @3rdWaveMediaGroup and others (I am a very busy and diversified guy), I needed a time management tool to help me.  I believe it is important to connect personally with each person who follows me, sending them a personalized tweet or direct message (DM), whenever possible, to thank them for taking the time to listen to what I have to say.  I really appreciate the fact that complete strangers enjoy the things I talk about and take the time to follow me, retweet (RT) my posts, and "favorite" my tweets.

Well, it had become extremely time consuming to send personalized messages to close to 100 new followers, retweeters, and direct messengers each day, so I decided to look for a way to save time.  While doing a search on Google for ways to improve time management, I came along a website called Squidoo, http://www.squidoo.com/twitter-auto-follow-tools, and an article entitled:

7 Auto-follow Tools for Twitter Marketing

I simply wanted to find a way to automatically #followback those who followed me and send them a personal message when they did.  Of the seven tools, a site called TweetAddder seemed like just what I needed, http://www.tweetadder.com/, so I signed up for the FREE service to try it out.  All I did was set it up to auto-follow new followers and send them a DM, thanking them for following me...that was it, or so I thought.

I normally do most of my social media catching-up while on the elliptical at the YMCA and the day after I started TweetAdder, I noticed that when I tried to access my @CombatCongress account, Twitter took me to the sign in screen and would not accept my log-in information (on my Android phone), something that has never happened before.  I thought it was strange, but went on about my business with my other accounts.  It was not until the following day that I tried to login to my @CombatCongress Twitter account from my computer when I received a message "Your account has been suspended for aggressive following", something apparently against their rules of engagement.  

Twitter never bothered to warn me before taking action, they simply suspended my account, removing all of my 500+ followers and the hundreds I had already followed myself.  I had to check two boxes, promising not to do "IT" again, whatever "IT" is, and the one telling me that if I did it again, my account "COULD BE TERMINATED". If I did something wrong, may Twitter should tell me EXACTLY what it was so it will not happen again.  I was smart enough to figure out that the new program I installed two days before was generating problems that Twitter did not like, so I shut it down immediately.

As a word of caution to other unsuspecting Twitter users and computer users in general, be very careful about what you load on your computer and which permissions you allow the program to access, including performing processes that you did not intend to permit.

I know Twitter's basic following and unfollowing, spam, and other rules, but many do not. So be very careful or you could have your account "SUSPENDED" without notice.  Mine is a new account, established on February 1st, 2013 and I already have 544 followers.  I was averaging around 35 followers each day before the suspension, when Twitter too all of my privileges, followers, and the people I was following away.  In the two plus days it took to figure out, then have Twitter reinstate my account and replace my data, a process they said would take an hour , but took well over one day, I gained only four (4) followers.

I am a candidate for congress in Missouri's 6th Congressional District and one vote could make or break my chance at election.  Did Twitter's over aggressive policies hurt my ultimate chances?  Did Twitter irritate some of my followers who had no idea what was going on, as if I did, and sway them to look elsewhere or unfollow me for not responding to a comment or question submitted during my account's suspension?  We will never know.

Copyright 2013 - CombatCounselor and KCCBT, LLC - All Rights Reserved