Little do most people realize but ALL governments, town, city, county, state and national keep 2 sets of books. They have the annual budget which is what most naive unsuspecting people think shows the true picture of assets and liabilities....with in most years showing a deficit and justification for a tax increase, right?
The 2nd set of books that most aren't aware of is something called : The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Every government has one. If you look through THIS report you'd see so much money in the form of investments that isn't being spent, you'd realize that if that money was used, there'd be no need for taxes whatsoever!
To understand how they do this, let's say you have a business and it costs you $30k each year to operate that business from which you generate a gross income of $100k. Some years it may cost a little less and other years it might cost more. Roughly $30k is your budget to run the business. This is typically what we are shown as taxpayers when the annual budget for the government is discussed---just the budgetary expenses---but NOT the total income/revenues from all sources including investments.
I looked up the one for my state of South Carolina for 2009 since 2010 may not be on-line yet. It is here:
http://cg.sc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/ED8AC0A6-4BF5-4AB0-A88F-9386FF8FD180/0/CompleteCAFR.pdf
There are more than $31 Billions in Total Assets in SC as you can see on page 23 of the document and the total liabilities is $13 billions which includes short-term and long term liabilities. Then if you look at the liquid assets for Pensions on page 63 they have more than $23 Billions between Cash, Investments and Securities. Deductions for retirement benefits are $2.5 Billions. Still there is around $20 Billions in net liquid assets left over!
If you simply look up government wealth on a search engine look what you find:
This site explains all about the techniques used by governments to hide money in these Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports:
www.cafr1.com
There is also this 2 hour video that goes into this in detail given by Walter Burien and how he discovered how governments take use and hide money.
"The Biggest Game InTown" about the Government CAFR wealth shell game#
You only need to watch the first 10 minutes or so of the above video to see how governments rip us all off.
Unfortunately he keeps clearing his throat which is annoying to listen to but the subject is so important it is worth listening to the entire thing.
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I challenge you to find your city, county or state Comprehensive Financial Report for 2009 on-line or our national report. Forward it on to the leaders in your community.
We all should be outraged at government officials for non-disclosure of these assets which could save us all a TON of money if these monies were used for operating expenses rather than governments continually turning to taxpayers when there is a short-fall in the annual budget.
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