What is voting, REALLY??Have you every wondered why people spend huge amounts of money to be elected mayor, school board member, county commissioner, governor, or president? The answer is simple - They gain access to the control of absolutely ENORMOUS funds that are the true source of political power!  

Every citizen must educate themselves regarding the ENORMOUS WEALTH that is held (in trust) by their city, school system, county, state and country. 

When you vote for a mayor, city manager, school board member, county commissioner, governor or president, what are you really doing?  Well, there are many facets to those "jobs", but one of the basic functions of these elected officials is to act as a trustee, who will be trusted to skillfully manage the holdings of the city, school district, county, state or country.

It is within the power of every American citizen to perform a simple "litmus" test in order to hold every candidate for public office accountable for their actions after they enter office.  

NO - DO NOT DO THIS:Candidates should not be permitted to talk about their plans for the "budget". 

YES - DO THIS:Every candidate MUST be aggressively questioned about how they plan to handle the accumulated FUNDS that are controlled by the government. 

Walter Burien Exposes the CAFR Secret

Mr. Walter Burien is the first person who is known to have raised this issue publicly.  Mr. Burien first discovered the CAFR report in New Jersey in 1989, when he helped start and incorporated a New Jersey tax protest group called "Hands Across New Jersey." While involved with that group, Mr. Burien read in the state's Annual Budget that the total cost of all public services was $17 billion and the "net available" (the money on hand to pay all bills) was $24.6 billion. But then he asked the first question the IRS asks in any audit: "What are the gross receipts?" He added the figures from various state government sources and came up with about $44 billion and began to wonder how the state could have $17 billion in costs, $24.6 billion in cash on hand, and $44 billion annual income? The numbers didn't add up, so he began to dig deeper.

Because his father had been Personnel Manager for the State Treasury for four years, Mr. Burien understood how to get information from the various government departments. The state Director of the Budget was on vacation, so Mr. Burien called one of his lowest level assistants and said, "I'm working on a report for Richard [the vacationing Budget Director] and I need all the figures on the autonomous agency accounts, interest accounts, investment accounts." The assistant said, "Oh, you want the CAFR." This was the first time Burien had heard of the CAFR but he said, "Yes" and the assistant mailed it to him.

The 1989 CAFR showed that New Jersey had liquid investment funds (cash) of $188 billion of which included; common stocks worth $70 billion, $10 billion in loans made by the state due from public and private corporations, and $14 billion in insurance company equity participation. The little state of New Jersey, which admitted to less than $25 billion in annual income on its budget, reported $188 billion in cash, stocks, loans and equity participation on its CAFR. According to Mr. Burien, "On that day, I learned the definition of syndicated organized crime." 

Keep in mind that most of the revenue and investments from the 21 counties, hundreds of cities, municipalities, school districts, state financial authorities, pension funds, and 69 enterprise authorities, all of which put out their own CAFR or Combined Financial Statement are not inclusive with the state's revenue and investments. The totals here, when looking at composite New Jersey government figures, are well in excess of 1.8 Trillion dollars. Yep, you heard that right, 1.8 trillion. Divide that figure by the population of New Jersey to see the per capita share of the wealth.

So why are the taxes in New Jersey some of the highest in the country? The answered is; Power corrupts, absolute Power corrupts absolutely. The public left the VAULT door open, and those sharp government officials said thank you very much.

The scam worked something like this: Anything that was a cost or expense for public services (the traditional side of the Annual Service Budget, such as the Department of Transportation, health and welfare, etc.) was reported on the Budget where public taxes primarily paid 100% of the bill for those services. That was $17 billion.

However, any governmental agency that was a profit center (the Port Authority for New Jersey, the New Jersey Turnpike, and investment accounts, etc.) that generated no tax revenue was "restricted by statute from being reported in and benefiting the Annual Budget. Why? Because the state legislature passed laws to prevent reporting the income from investment or venture profit centers on the Budget. Instead, income from these profit centers was disclosed only on the CAFR or other financial reports referenced in the notes of the CAFR.

But that disclosure was not immediately apparent. For example, when Mr. Burien looked for New Jersey's 1989 "gross cash receipts" in the CAFR, he found the figure buried on page 174, under the "Waste Water Treatment Trust Fund." It showed the amount of the total cash receipts (Cash Additions) for 1989 from all state agencies, departments and sources was $86.799 billion. In other words, New Jersey State Government from all sources was grossing $87 billion to provide $17 billion in public services as seen in the openly represented Annual Service Budget. New Jersey citizens were paying $5 for every $1 in services they received, and the state was pocketing the other $4 as "profit."

When breaking down the true revenue income, the most important revelation was that only one third of the states' income came from taxes, fines and fees. Two thirds of state governments' income came from Other Sources with no direct tie to the publicly known budget. When looking at the openly disclosed Budget , which each year continued to grow at a runaway pace, here ever expanding taxation primarily covered the expenses.

The CAFR also reported the state owned $32 billion in common stocks - but this figure was footnoted.  The footnote revealed that the stocks were valued according to their original purchase price, not the current market value. In other words, if the state bought a stock in 1968 at $1.25 a share and it's worth $300 a share now, they still report it on the CAFR as being worth $1.25 a share. Burien determined that the true market value for the "$32 billion" in stocks reported on the New Jersey CAFR was actually about $70 billion.

But Mr. Burien goes further - he claims that the dual system of books is  not unique to New Jersey, but also common among the over 54,000 local government corporate entities operating within all fifty states. Moreover, he claims the dual accounting system used ten years ago in New Jersey was created in 1946 through an organization by the name  of GFOA (Government Financial Officers Association) and is the primary local government accounting structure being used today.

For example, "In 1987, Arizona's annual service budget reported $2.8  billion in revenues but the state's 1987 CAFR reported total cash receipts of $3.1 billion, a mere $300 million difference."

"However, in 1997, Arizona reported an Annual Service Budget of $5.5  billion while the States CAFR (printed by the Auditor General's Office)  showed total gross cash receipts of $17 billion. That's a difference of  over $11 billion. In just ten years, Arizona had caught up to New Jersey  in that both states annual budgets reported less than one third of the actual gross income seen in the states CAFRs.

"CAFR and Combined Financial Statement reports indicate that the composite totals for all government (Federal, state, county and city) ownership of publicly traded stocks exceeds $32 TRILLION (53% of the total ownership of  all listed stocks from ALL exchanges), $8 TRILLION in insurance company equity (should we be surprised by high priced mandatory auto insurance or unaffordable health care?) and $5 TRILLION in Bond Surety Escrow Accounts  for future liability of existing or potential debt.

Governments use Bond Surety Escrow Accounts to evade that pesky little rule that government should not operate at a "profit." That is,  government should not impose more taxes than it actually uses to run the  government. By designating tax revenue that exceeds operating costs as "Bond Surety Escrow" for future liability, government avoids calling  excess revenue a "profit" and is thereby enabled to continue to enrich  itself at public expense.

To illustrate the potential for abusing "future liability payments,"  consider the New Jersey plan in the 1950s to build the New Jersey State Turnpike and Garden State Parkway Authorities. The state asked voters to approve a $7.5 billion bond to construct the turnpikes. The state  explained that these turnpikes would be operated as toll roads by the  bondholders until the $7.5 billion bond was paid off - but the bondholders  could not operate the toll roads at a profit. Once the bonds were repaid, the turnpikes would revert back into the state's Annual Budget as a normal cost/revenue item. The public voted Yes.

Over the following years, the state sometimes alleged that the toll revenue from operating those turnpikes failed to cover their operating  expenses, and so additional bonds were passed to fund the turnpikes. As a result, in 1990, the total bond liability still owed for the turnpike had grown to $14.5 billion. But guess how much was in the Bond Surety Escrow Accounts ? $38 Billion! Enough to repay the original $7.5 billion bonds almost four times!

How could that happen? Say the toll road made a $400 million profit for  the year and the scheduled payment on the $7.5 billion bond was $100 million. The state made the $100 million payment but kept the extra $300 million in a Bond Surety Escrow Account which generated substantial annual dividend returns for future liability payments. Although they kept the $300 million, they did not declare it as an asset but wrote it off as a line item payment. In other years, even though they made a profit, they alleged that they lost money and therefore floated more billions in bonds. (Guess who pays?)

The bottom line is that New Jersey and other local government entities are collecting hundreds of billions of virtually unreported dollars from "Other" operations. The motivating factor is not public welfare, but control of  those billions.

This issue ENORMOUS

Mr. Burien not only alleges that the dual accounting system exemplified by CAFR is not only used by all fifty states, but also by all counties, cities and the Federal Government itself. These financial manipulations comprise the most damning indictment of big government yet seen. Our government is, in fact, a criminal enterprise bent on oppressing Americans by extorting several times as much tax revenue as it spends on public services and using the majority of those extorted revenues to enrich, empower and enlarge government at public expense.

The inner circle of the individuals controlling the top wealth of this structure have the attitude toward the public of: Keep the the public running on the treadmill, so that just enough revenue is supplied to keep the economy running at optimum efficiency, while the top inner circle skims off 80% of the energy produced by the people on the treadmill.

The general public has been kept ignorant concerning CAFR by the complicity of the mainstream media. When Mr. Burien first discovered the CAFR reports in New Jersey in 1989, he went on radio 101.5 FM in a live 45 minute interview. Two days later, that radio station was threatened with losing its license and was almost shut down. CAFR had become another example of - "third rail journalism" - any reporter or media outlet that touched the issue would be silenced or driven from journalism. As a result, there's been a total mainstream media blackout on disclosing CAFR reports. For over twenty five years the directors and CEOs of the primary syndicated media organizations both print and broadcast, were sent state CAFR reports each and every year, as they maintained a blackout towards the simple mentioning of the report.

Mr. Burien reports the discovery of the fact that New Jersey State Judges are vested in a personal retirement guarantee of $5,000,000.00, per judge after they serve as a judge for one year.  Federal district court judges do not have a retirement or pension plan due to the fact that they were appointed for life. Being appointed for life, they receive their full paycheck and benefits for life.  Do you need anyone to spell it out for you? Would a New Jersey State or Federal District Judge allow an attack on the squirreled away billions of dollars and jeopardize their financial windfall? The inner circle gets the gold!!

Later, Burien learned that the New Jersey official in charge of discrediting his CAFR discoveries was a former reporter (Harvey Fisher) who had been appointed Assistant State Treasurer - even though he had no former financial background. Burien investigated his background and learned that as a reporter, Fisher had made $35,000 a year. But as Assistant State Treasurer he made $65,000 a year - plus a Carte Blanche expense account of $125,000.

Burien claims this was not an aberration: "I knew there was a state data search department under the Department of Treasure Personnel division which tied all agencies and departments together. I called that department and asked for a data search on all key level directorships and supervisory positions for all budgetary or autonomous agencies, and they came up with some 3,400 names from several administrations. Almost 1800 of these Directors were former editors or reporters! It is a virtual certainty that many of these appointments were payoffs for the journalists previous "cooperation" in spinning or silencing stories to suit government.

If you conduct a comparable search in other states, you may find a similar symbiotic relationship between government, editors, and reporters. The more money held and generated by an agency, the higher the percentage will be. If so, the media's "liberal, pro-government bias" may run much deeper than anyone has imagined, and the military-industrial complex" described by President Eisenhower in the 1950's may have been complemented by a "media-bureaucracy-banker complex" in the 1990s.

Mr. Burien started disclosing this information on a national basis on June 8th 1998.  In 1999, GFOA and GASB (Government Accounting Standards Board) changed the accounting requirements for local governments within the Combined Financial Columns of the CAFR from: ALL revenue, income and investments being shown, To:  All revenue, income and investments being shown that were necessary to meet obligations and liabilities of that local government.  This change in accounting is substantial. You may need to read the notes of the CAFR very carefully in order to find the hidden money.

oldickeastman@q.com

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