A CDC survey finds that nine out of 10 Americans now have health insurance Reported by CBS News 2 hours ago.

OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A.M. Best has affirmed the financial strength rating of A (Excellent) and the issuer credit rating of “a” of PacifiCare Life and Health Insurance Company (PacifiCare) (Indianapolis, IN). The outlook for both ratings is stable. Concurrently, A.M. Best has withdrawn the ratings in response to the company’s request to no longer participate in A.M. Best’s interactive rating process. The rating reflects PacifiCare’s excellent level of risk-adjusted capitalization, str Reported by Business Wire 1 day ago.

For the first time in more than 50 years, the CDC reported that more than 90% of Americans have health insurance. Reported by Forbes.com 1 day ago.

Accreditation Commission for Health Care’s Sleep Accreditation program recently received acceptance by Highmark Health, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Effective beginning August 2015, the approval by Highmark Health permits ACHC-accredited sleep providers in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia to access the network.

Cary, NC (PRWEB) August 13, 2015

Accreditation Commission for Health Care’s Sleep Accreditation program recently received acceptance by Highmark Health, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Effective beginning August 2015, the approval by Highmark Health permits ACHC-accredited sleep providers in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Virginia to access the network.

Highmark Health is among the 10 largest health insurers in the United States and is the fourth-largest Blue Cross and Blue Shield-affiliated company. Highmark and its diversified businesses and affiliates operate health insurance plans in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia that serve 5.3 million members. Highmark is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, an association of independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies.

“ACHC offers a Sleep Accreditation program that facilitates the highest-quality patient care through a consultative survey approach that assesses sleep providers based on industry-specific quality standards,” said ACHC Director of DMEPOS, Pharmacy, and Sleep, Timothy Safley, MBA, RRT, RCP. “We are proud to gain acceptance by Highmark Health and believe the decision will allow sleep providers to select the accreditation organization that best fits the needs of the business and their patients.”

ACHC offers a patient-focused approach to Sleep Accreditation with principles that were developed with direct input from industry professionals to ensure relevant and realistic standards. The organization’s consultative approach to accreditation is designed to facilitate a higher quality of patient care while enhancing business efficiencies. In order to remain flexible to the needs of providers, ACHC’s Sleep Accreditation program offers standards for Sleep Labs/Centers (SLCs) and stand-alone Home Sleep Testing (HST) services.

ACHC is a not-for-profit accreditation organization that has stood as a symbol of quality and excellence since 1986. The organization has CMS Deeming Authority for Home Health, Hospice, and DMEPOS and a Quality Management System that is certified to ISO 9001:2008. ACHC’s broad range of accreditation programs also includes Pharmacy, Private Duty Nursing, and Behavioral Health. ACHC is the provider’s choice for accreditation because of its personal Account Advisors, relevant and realistic standards, competitive pricing, and consultative approach to accreditation. Accreditation by ACHC reflects an organization’s dedication and commitment to meeting standards that facilitate a higher level of performance and patient care.

For more information on ACHC’s accreditation programs and educational resources, or to download ACHC Accreditation Standards, please visit achc.org or contact them at customerservice(at)achc(dot)org or 855-937-2242. Reported by PRWeb 6 hours ago.

 Stride Health, a startup that aims to be the HR team for all independent working Americans, is introducing two new features today to help freelancers better manage their health insurance. Launched in March of last year in California, Stride expanded to six states in November, including New York, Texas and Illinois. Today, the service is available in an additional 17 states, and Stride… Read More Reported by TechCrunch 6 hours ago.

The flurry of recent merger announcements from the handful of remaining national health insurance providers is cause for alarm for all Americans.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has taken nearly full effect and it is clear that staggering annual increases in health insurance premium costs are still with us. The skyrocketing costs of health insurance and health care treatment are pushing working American families well past the breaking point. There is a limit to what working people can afford to pay for what should be a human right.

The most recent corporate advances down the road of health insurance monopolization are the announcements that the enormous Aetna intends to absorb rival Humana, and at the same time the Anthem corporate giant -- formerly Wellpoint -- is maneuvering to swallow Cigna.

Should these latest anti-competitive takeover moves go unchallenged by the Obama Justice Department when there is little doubt that the trend of double digit premium increases will accelerate?

In many areas of the country today there are frequently only one or two health insurers available when workers try to grapple with the dramatically rising premiums and costs. Their frequently identical plan offerings and prices raise the obvious suspicion that the insurers have fixed prices and rigged market share somehow.

And while these latest insurance company combinations and practices will be scrutinized by some states, that level of review is uneven and forced on reluctant state insurance departments ill-equipped to deal with such enormous corporations and their armies of legal and lobbying representatives.
*
Must Confront Corporate Criminality*

It is urgent that the Obama Administration act swiftly and decisively to confront corporate criminality.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has recently awoken from its slumber on the antitrust front, and has begun preliminary moves to investigate the obvious price fixing of the major airlines. They are likewise reviewing the sale of the General Electric appliances division to the European Electrolux corporation. But while both of these are cases are critical to the restoration of some semblance of an antitrust enforcement policy, the potential damage to working people from greater monopolization of the key health insurance sector is incalculable.

Until the United States Congress finds the political will to abolish our costly and badly broken health insurance industry the monopoly racketeers must at least be confronted and restricted from free rein.

A single payer system is urgently needed to solve this catastrophic crisis for working people.

Until then it is imperative that the Obama Administration utilize its full DOJ resources to investigate and stop the trend towards complete monopolization in the health insurance industry. This action takes no act of Congress, but merely requires the political leadership to commit the Justice Department to enforce existing laws on an industry that has demonstrated its intention to defy the law and rob working people in the process.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 5 hours ago.

WASHINGTON -- The Obamacare health insurance exchanges appear to be doing a good job at one of their most important yet underappreciated functions: offering a fallback option to people who lose their health coverage during the year. 

Already this year, almost half a million people have taken advantage of that safety net, a new government report shows.

Since the federal HealthCare.gov system and those run by states like California and Kentucky went live in October 2013, sign-ups during the annual open enrollment periods have garnered most of the attention, as has the rapid increase in the number of Americans with health insurance.

But a key function of these health insurance exchange marketplaces is to provide a place people can go if they lose their health coverage, such as when they lose a job and the benefits that came with it, or when they start working for an employer that doesn't offer a health plan. 

On Thursday, the federal government for the first time released data suggesting Americans are taking advantage of this option. According to a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, half of the 944,000 new enrollees on the federally run exchanges in 37 states between Feb. 23 and June 30 signed up because they'd lost their previous coverage. The agency doesn't have data for states that fully operate their own marketplaces. 

Losing health coverage is one of the qualifying events that allows individuals to access the exchanges outside of the regular yearly sign-up through what's called a special enrollment period, or SEP.The numbers in the new report represent how many people selected a health plan via an exchange, but do not reflect whether they completed the process of acquiring coverage by paying premiums to their insurers.  

Health insurance exchange enrollment mainly occurs during a limited annual period. For 2014, sign-ups took place from Oct. 1, 2013, through March 31, 2014. For this year, the enrollment period ran from Nov. 15, 2014, through Feb. 15, 2015. The 2016 open enrollment period runs from Nov. 1, 2015, through Jan. 31, 2016.

Prior to the Affordable Care Act becoming law, workers who lost health benefits had more limited options.

A person may have qualified for Medicaid because his or her income was low enough, but most people would've had to meet other criteria, such as being a parent or having a disability. People could also seek coverage directly from a health insurer, but those companies could reject customers based on their medical histories, charge them higher rates or offer a plan that didn't cover expenses related to their pre-existing conditions. Workers could also retain their former employers' coverage through the COBRA law, but have to pay the full price; this option remains available. And in the latter two cases, subsidies weren't available to make coverage affordable to low- and moderate-income households.

The new government report also shows that almost 144,000 people signed up for health insurance near the deadline for filing taxes this year. Residents of most states were permitted to enroll in exchange coverage for 2015 if they were uninsured last year and subject to the Obamacare individual mandate penalty. About 7.5 million taxpayers had to pay that fine in their 2014 returns.

As of March 31, 10.2 million people were fully enrolled into health insurance plans purchased via an exchange, the Department of Health and Human Services reported in June. Sign-ups on federal exchanges totaled 7.5 million, and the remainder were on state exchanges. That tally was down from the 11.7 million people who had selected a health plan as of Feb. 22, as individuals either obtained a different form of health coverage or allowed their policies to lapse, leaving them uninsured.

Combined with millions of people newly eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the share of Americans without health insurance has come down dramatically since before Obamacare. The uninsured rate halfway through this year is 11.7 percent, a 5.6 percentage-point reduction from 2013, according to Gallup survey results published Monday.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 3 hours ago.

By Valencia Higuera, Contributor

There's nothing fun about being stuck in a financial rut. Your income might only cover the bare essentials, making it difficult to save for retirement or pay off debt. It can feel as if you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. So when the price of a service you use increases, you feel the pinch.

Here's a look at different ways Starbucks, Barack Obama and Uber can affect your cash flow and keep you broke.
-1. Starbucks-
Can't start your day without your favorite Starbucks drink? You might be fully aware that you're overpaying for a cup of Joe, but it's an indulgence you're not apologizing for. To each his own. But if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, recent price hikes at Starbucks might have you re-thinking your coffee habit.

In July 2015, Starbucks increased the price of most of its drinks by 5 to 20 cents. The price of a large brewed coffee in most stores jumped to $2.45. Since the change primarily only affects hot beverages, the retailer believes price increases impact less than 20 percent of customers -- at least until the fall when customers start replacing their cold selections with hot ones.

You can argue that Starbucks' price increase is a small price to pay for your favorite coffee -- and maybe it is. But given how the coffee retailer also raised prices nationally last year, this trend might continue from year to year.

"The company claims that the average price increase will only be roughly 1 percent, but that can depend upon the drink," said David Bakke, consumer expert at Money Crashers. "If your favorite cup of Joe happens to be a Venti Caffe Americano, you'll be paying a little over 10 percent more. And if you drink one of those five days per week, your annual costs go up by $75. That might not keep you broke, but it's not going to make paying your monthly bills any easier."

*Related: The Ultimate Guide to Saving Money at Starbucks*
-2. Uber-
If you hate public transportation and hailing a cab, but you like the idea of sitting back and letting someone else worry about the driving, Uber can become your best friend. Download the Uber app, request a ride, and in most cases, a car can be at your door in minutes. But Uber isn't always cost-effective.

Sure, paying $5 to $10 per ride might seem like a drop in the bucket, but depending on how often you use the service, the cost of ride-sharing adds up quickly -- especially if you request a car when there's a high demand. If there are too many riders and not enough drivers, surge pricing goes into effect and you'll pay more for a ride.

Even if you feel Uber is a convenience you can afford, the company's rates are subject to change at any time. This might happen sooner rather than later since the California Labor Commission recently ruled that Uber drivers are actually employees and not independent contractors. If Uber has to reclassify their drivers as W-2 employees, the repercussions could be costly for the company, reports Business Insider. To compensate for added expenses, the company could possibly increase its prices for customers.

You might make out better driving yourself or learning to appreciate low-cost public transportation. If you have to use a ride-sharing service, you might save money using Lyft. According to a new report by SherpaShare, "Uber drivers in the U.S. collect an average $13.36 per trip, while Lyft drivers took in an average of $12.53 for each ride," reports Time.

*Read: 40 Mindless Ways You're Burning Through Your Paycheck*
-3. Obama's Policies-
In nearly eight years, President Obama has expanded health insurance coverage, ended the war in Iraq and supported same-sex marriage. Some might say these are excellent accomplishments, yet some of his policies might be keeping you broke.
-Affordable Care Act-
Health care reform gave more people access to health insurance. But unfortunately, some insurers estimate increases as much as 20 percent to 40 percent -- or more -- in certain states. The reason: "new customers under the Affordable Care Act are sicker than expected," reports CNBC. One health advocate from Oregon told the news site that rate increases will be bigger in 2016, causing some people to wonder if health insurance is affordable and whether it's worth the cost.

Higher premiums can cut into the average American's disposable income, making it increasingly harder for some to juggle their household expenses and save for the future.
-Clean Power Plan-
The Affordable Care Act isn't the only Obama policy affecting your pocket. Some experts are saying the president and Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) climate change plan will raise electric bills and eliminate jobs.

Obama's plan involves cutting back carbon emissions from power plants and continuing to blend ethanol in U.S. gasoline. The Washington Times reports that federal data indicates electricity prices will increase and then stabilize, and an Energy Information Administration report notes prices could go up by as much as 7 percent.

The White House, however, denies these claims. In a blog post, the government said EPA's climate plan "will actually shrink electricity bills $85 each year for the average household, and save consumers a total of $155 billion from 2020 to 2030 by increasing energy efficiency and reducing costs in the electricity system."

Whether your bill goes up or down, it's better to be safe than sorry. If you're barely making ends meet, higher pricing can have an impact on your household budget. For that reason, it might be a smart idea to get in the habit of limiting your electricity and power usage now.

*Keep reading: Does Obama's Overtime Pay Proposal Affect My Salary?*
-The Takeaway-
You can't control how much a health insurance provider charges or the cost of energy, but you can control how much you spend on costly conveniences like Uber and Starbucks. It's easy to say we don't earn enough to save for retirement or build an emergency fund, but the problem might not be your income -- it might be your spending habits.

Photo credit: areeya_ann / Shutterstock.com

This article, How Starbucks, Uber and Obama Are Making You Go Broke, originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com.

More from GOBankingRates:

*
· 5 Ways Your Money Choices Are Making You Sick· 8 Worst Ways to Make Money Online· 9 Things You Shouldn't Say to Someone in Debt
*-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 2 hours ago.

Starting last year, convenience store chain Stewart's added a deductible to its health insurance plan for employees to help control health care costs. The move is part of a trend among employers as they work to limit growth in health care costs. Many large employers plan to increase the amount employees contribute, offer telemedicine options and expand wellness tools for workers to manage their health, according to a survey by the National Business Group on Health that was released Thursday. Big… Reported by bizjournals 2 hours ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly a million people signed up for health insurance under President Barack Obama's law even after the official enrollment season ended, helping push the share of uninsured Americans below 10 percent and underscoring how hard it could be for Republicans to dismantle the program. The Health and Human Services Department said Thursday that 943,934 new customers have signed up since open enrollment ended on Feb. 22, benefiting from "special enrollment periods" keyed to life changes and other circumstances. Notably, there was an increase in the share of children covered by private plans, reversing a 14-year trend of declining private coverage for kids. — A large independent survey called the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found a statistically significant drop in the uninsured rate for most states since the law's big coverage push began at the end of 2013. HealthCare.gov and state health insurance markets offer subsidized private plans for low-income to middle-class households who lack access to job-based insurance. While pointing to accomplishments of the law, the report said that even with taxpayer subsidies the private coverage provided remains a financial stretch for many families. In the recent Supreme Court case, King v. Burwell, the law's opponents argued that a precise reading only allows the government to subsidize premiums in states that have set up their own insurance markets. Reported by SeattlePI.com 2 hours ago.

The University of Kansas is under more federal scrutiny than previously realized, with two simultaneous investigations underway into how one woman's sexual assault cases were handled. In addition, the school has been under monitoring by the U.S. Department of Education for a separate case from three years ago -- a fact not previously disclosed to the campus community.

New documents obtained by The Huffington Post show that KU, in Lawrence, Kansas, is currently the subject of a pair of simultaneous investigations by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights -- thus accounting for two of the 150 investigations OCR is carrying out at colleges nationwide. KU is also being monitored as a result of a sexual violence case that was resolved in 2012, to ensure that the school is implementing the terms of a resolution agreement. The 2012 case is unrelated to the current investigations.

The university has already taken steps to address student concerns regarding sexual violence. Earlier this year, a task force laid out a set of recommendations aimed at improving the school's handling of cases. And the federal investigations, in and of themselves, are not proof that the school has violated any laws.

Still, the issues that led to OCR's second investigation of the University of Kansas tap into privacy concerns that have arisen at other schools. And they show how tricky it can be for a university to navigate the various federal laws at play when handling a student's sexual violence complaint.

KU's entanglement with the federal government has unfolded along a complicated timeline involving multiple investigations by multiple parties. The roots of OCR's two current cases at KU go back to autumn 2013, when the school opened an investigation of its own after a female undergraduate accused a male undergrad of sexual assault. After the woman accused the male student, he admitted to campus police that on the night in question, he'd continued to have sex with the woman even after she told him to stop. The female student, whom HuffPost has spoken with, asked that she and her family remain anonymous in this story for privacy reasons.

KU found the male student guilty of "nonconsensual sex" and sanctioned him with probation and a ban from student housing. The school also considered ordering the male student to perform community service, but ultimately chose not to, because it would have been "strictly punitive," documents show.

The university attempted to justify its punishment of the man in part by citing a previous sexual encounter between the two students, saying it was a "mitigating factor," according to new materials obtained by HuffPost. The woman said the previous encounter, too, was nonconsensual, and asked for a separate investigation into that incident.

KU opened the second sexual assault investigation in May 2014, and took more than 200 days to complete it -- even though federal guidelines say such investigations generally ought to take no more than 60 days. KU did not provide updates throughout the second investigation, according to the woman's family. The family believes the school may have delayed the second case because the woman had not been satisfied with the results of the first investigation.

"We had no issue with IOA the first time around -- they were professional, they did their job," the woman's mother told HuffPost. ("IOA" is the school's Institutional Opportunity & Access office, which handles investigations into sexual assault accusations.) "The second time around, our interaction with IOA was completely different. It seemed they lacked neutrality from the start."

The school ultimately decided in its second investigation that the male student had done nothing wrong.

The federal government got involved in July 2014, when OCR opened an investigation of the University of Kansas due to a complaint filed by the female student over the mild punishment of the male student.

OCR's second ongoing investigation of KU, which it launched just last month, stems from a complaint alleging that administrators tried to get the female student to waive her federal privacy rights during the school's own second investigation -- the one that began in May 2014 and lasted more than half a year.

As KU started that second investigation last spring, the university asked if the woman would sign a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act release form so that administrators could review her therapy records. Jane McQueeny, director of the university's IOA office and a former federal government staffer at OCR, said that investigators were searching for corroborating evidence beyond the woman's complaint. The woman's attorney told the university on May 19, 2014, that she "decided the sanctity of her communications with her therapist should not be intruded upon," according to emails shared with HuffPost.

"While I appreciate [the woman's] position on the release of her medical records this will make the investigation more difficult," replied McQueeny in an email. 

The woman's mother told HuffPost that KU's request for the therapy records felt to her like an attempt to "discredit" her daughter -- that she had the impression the school was hoping to find something in the records that it could then use against the woman.

"The confidentiality of that relationship needs to be honored," the woman's mother said. "Otherwise, students will not come forward."

The school told HuffPost in a statement that it "works with complainants and respondents to get as much information as possible that would help him or her in regard to a sexual assault complaint."

"When medical or mental health documents are relevant and important evidence in the investigation, a complainant is given the option of executing a release to allow the investigator to review the records," the school said. "At all times the complainant has control over what information he or she shares."Victims' rights advocates have bristled at similar situations elsewhere, and experts have urged schools to be judicious about trying to access the medical records of alleged sexual assault victims.

"Once you take confidentiality away [from counseling services], students stop coming," said Brian Mistler, associate dean of students and director of health services at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida.

However, Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University, speculated that requests like KU's to bypass privacy laws could be coming "from a friendly place."

"It might be that an investigator thinks [the records] will help nail down the perpetrator that they believe committed the crime," Lake said. "So it might feel oppositional, but it might not actually be oppositional."

According to the woman's family, in September 2014 -- following a HuffPost report about the first sexual assault case, but prior to the conclusion of the school's second investigation -- KU asked if the woman would like to sign a Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act release allowing the school to discuss her case with two media outlets. The university's lawyer warned the woman to use caution if she wished to agree to a FERPA release, and asked her to think about the "potential impact."

The woman ultimately declined to sign the release. The University of Kansas told HuffPost it would never discuss a student's case without their permission.

Lake said a situation like this demonstrates that HIPAA and FERPA were not created with "any of these types of scenarios in mind" and likely need to be reformed.  

"I really feel for campuses, because they’re being asked to run a criminal justice-type system," Lake continued. "But this one is largely closed off to public scrutiny because of rules written long ago, before the system even existed."

 

Need help? In the U.S., visit the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline operated by RAINN. For more resources, visit the National Sexual Violence Resource Center website.

_____

*Colleges Under Federal Investigation For Sexual Assault Cases:*Tyler Kingkade covers higher education and sexual violence, and is based in New York. You can contact him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com, or on Twitter: @tylerkingkade.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 1 hour ago.

Tens of thousands of Louisianians who signed up for health insurance with the Louisiana Health Cooperative were abruptly notified last month the company would discontinue all coverage in 2016. It was likely surprising news to many of the 17,000 customers who... Reported by nola.com 1 day ago.

*Picking a home health agency just got a bit easier*

The federal government's recent introduction of a new, 5-star ratings system judging home health agencies could help ease the decision that millions of Americans make each year regarding home health care for an older or disabled person.

The new, free ratings, called Home Health Compare, hosted by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, judges about 9,300 private and public home health care providers (about 2,900 are not included). The five-star rating is based on nine measures. Another 20 measures are judged, but aren't included in the rating. 

On the Home Health Compare page, when you type in a zip code, a list of local home health agencies pops up. From the list, you can choose to compare reports on up to three agencies at a time. Or, you can type in the name of just one home health agency and get its report. 

The information is split into three categories: general information (is the agency public, private, or religious; services offered), quality of patient care (helping patients manage daily activities; managing pain and treating symptoms; treating wounds and preventing pressure sores; preventing harm, preventing unplanned hospice care), and results of patient surveys judging professionalism of care and communication, among other factors. You'll also see how the home health agency's rating stacks up against national and state averages.

I found the footnotes and links quite useful. Clicking on "Learn more about all the quality measures," for instance, led to a page listing five quality measures that contributed to the home health agencies' evaluations. The page included very specific sub-categories, and explained why each was important. Under "managing daily activities," for instance, were the quality measures "How often patients got better at walking or moving around,""How often patients got better at getting in and out of bed," and "How often patients got better at bathing." The accompanying explanations were detailed and informative.

-Home health agency ratings by stars-

- -

-*Star rating*-

-*Number of agencies*-

5

239

4.5

776

4

1,442

3.5

2,159

3

2,115

2.5

1.595

2

832

1.5

195

1

6

Not rated

2,902

 

 
Total 12,261

Source: Kaiser Health News analysis of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 

 

*The drawbacks*

The star ratings have some drawbacks, said Doris Peter, Ph.D., director of Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. Some of the data in the ratings are based on self reporting, suggesting the agencies could game the system, she noted. With two of the measures, performance among all the agencies is so high that there is no true variation. More crucial, because of the method used, most home health agencies earn overall ratings of 3 to 3 1/2 stars—middling to slightly above that for the state and the nation. "If you compare three providers at a time, you aren’t likely to find a high or low performer," Peter said.

In spite of that, Peter sees a benefit. "Most people get word-of-mouth recommendations, and this will be helpful because they can look up the ratings for an individual provider," she explained.

The star ratings don't allow users to sort from the best to the worst in a given market. But because the data are available to the public, "I’m sure somebody will eventually make a tool to download the data and sort it," Peter said.

The federal government also has created Nursing Home Compare, and is working on hospital ratings. Consumer Reports has its own Ratings of hospitals, as well as heart bypass surgical groups (by subscription), and health insurance plans. 

—Tobie Stanger (@TobieStanger on Twitter)

*Need to retrofit your home for an older person? Consumer Reports Home Improvement Guide has ideas.*

*Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright © 2006-2015 Consumers Union of U.S.*

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    Reported by Consumer Reports 4 hours ago.

Late last year, we said that "hookers and blow" were set to lift Britain over France as the world’s fifth largest economy. 

And we weren’t joking. 

As The Telegraph noted when the figures were released, "the Centre for Economics and Business Research said Britain's acceleration was boosted by the inclusion of sex and drugs to UK growth."

France, on the other hand, has taken the moral high ground by "refus[ing] to comply with EU rules because it does not consider [drug use and prostitution] to be 'voluntary commercial activities'".

"Voluntary" or not, failing to include the illicit activities which drive the world’s shadow economies could lead to material miscalculations. And besides, even if one wants to argue that illegality is impossible to measure, surely making an honest attempt to come up with an accurate representation of economic output is preferable to the BEA's now standard practice of simply "adjusting" the real data in order to get a goalseeked outcome. As WSJ put it last June, *"if drug sales aren't counted in a place where people spend half their income on drugs, one could conclude, wrongly, that the population saved half its money."* The U.N. made a similar argument back in 2008 when it contended that "accounts as a whole are liable to be seriously distorted" if governments refuse to include all transactions. 

Fortunately for anyone looking to get a read on the going rate for the various goods and services which comprise the world’s black markets (and in some countries serve as a much needed boon for GDP), *Havocscope has a price list for everything you’ve ever wanted to buy (and everything you wouldn’t touch even with Mario Draghi’s hands) from someone in a dark and smoky back alley. *

First, a bit on Havocscope’s methodology: 



Data listed within Havocscope’s website is collected from credible open-source documents such as newspapers, government reports and academic journals. The source for the figure is clearly listed on each data post. This allows users to see where the information has come from, judge the credibility of the source, and pursue further research if necessary.



That seems fair enough, and so, without further ado, we present current price lists for a veritable smorgasbord of illegal goods and services.

*AK-47 and Other Guns on the Black Market*

· Afghanistan$1,500
· Afghanistan-Kabul$1,500 for US issued Night Vision Googles
· Australia$15,493 in Sydney
· Average price of AK-47 worldwide$534
· Canada$2,000 for handgun, $600 to rent
· Europe$400 to $900 for Rocket Launchers and AK-47s
· Iraq$800, with Osama Bin Laden’s favorite model for $2,000
· Iraq-Bullets$0.15 to $0.45 per bullet
· Iraq-Rocket Launcher$100, $50 per grenade
· Mexico-AK-47$1,400 on US border/$3,000 in South
· Mexico-Gernade$100 to $500 for M67 Grenade
· Niger Delta-AK-47$75
· Philippines$120 for .22 Caliber Magnum Black Widow
· Profit in the U.S.$500 for selling AK-47 to Drug Cartels
· Somalia$400 for Russian AK-47, $600 for North Korean AK-47
· Sudan$86 for AK-47, $33 for child
· Syria$2,100 for AK-47, $2,000 for RPG
· Thailand$2,600 for gun
· United States$400 in California’s black market
· United States-Small Pistol$20 to $100 in Dallas, TX
· United States – Straw PurchaserUp to $500 per gun

*Bribes*

· Afghanistan – Election Bribes$1 to $18 per vote
· Afghanistan – Police Bribe$100,000 to be Police Chief
· Afghanistan Average Bribe Amount$214 in 2012
· Africa – Bribe Payments of Govt Officials$20 to $40 Billion
· Amount of Bribes Paid Worldwide$1 Trillion per year
· Bangladesh – Bribes Paid per Household$86
· Businesses – Rise in Market Value from Bribes$11 for $1 in bribe
· Cambodia – Bribes for Fishing Permit$50
· Cambodia – Bribes to Operate Fake License Shop$2.50 per day
· Cambodia – Citizens Paying Bribes to Receive Services72%
· China – Bribe to become a City Assemblyman$44,000
· China – Bribes to Education Officials$10,000 for School Admission
· China – Bribes to Rail Ministry$14,897 for job as Train Attendant
· China – Impact of Bribes on Drug Prices20%
· Companies Asked to Pay Bribes Worldwide28%
· Croatia – Average Bribe Payment$300
· Czech Republic Average Bribe Amount$248 to $497
· Education Corruption1 in 6 students pay bribes
· Greece- Bribes Paid by Families$2,500 to Public Officials
· Guatemala – Bribes from Drug Traffickers$2,500 to Public Officials
· Haiti – Bribe to Border Official for Human Trafficker$400 per immigrant
· Illegal Loggers$25,000 to $50,000 in bribes for permits
· India – Bribe to Sell DVDs$0.18 to Police
· India – Bribes to Police to Sell Water$0.18 to Police
· India – Families Paying Bribes4 million families
· Indonesia – Bribe to Chief Justice$250,000
· Indonesia – Bribe to Oil Regulator$600,000
· Indonesia – Bribes to Prison Guard$500 to use cell phone
· Indonesia – Businesses Paying Bribes60%
· Iraq – Bribes to Prison Guards$100 to Take a Single Shower
· Ivory Coast – Bribes at Traffic Checkpoints$300 Million
· Kenya – Bribes to Customs and Port Officials$5,797 per shipment
· Kenya -Average Bribes Paid Per Month16
· Mexico – Amount of Bribes Paid$2.75 Billion in 2010
· Mexico – Average Bribe Paid$14
· Mexico – Bribes Collected by Police65% less than $6,000
· Mexico – Bribes Paid by Drug Cartel to Police$1.2 Billion Per Year
· Mexico – Sinaloa Cartel Boss to Escape Prison$2.5 Million
· Nigeria – Bribes Accepted by Government Workers$3.2 Billion
· Nigeria – Bribes Paid by Shell$2 Million in bribes, $14 Million in profit
· North Korea – Bribes to Border Guard by Defector$6,000
· North Korea – Bribes to Inspectors$2,000 per visit
· Pakistan – Bribe to Police from Artifact Smuggler$10.62 per day of digging
· Pakistan – Bribes Paid by Smugglers$1,200 to Police Chiefs
· Peru – Bribe to Stop Logging Investigation$5,000
· Romania – Bribe to Receive Brain Surgery$6,500
· Romania – Bribes Paid Per Day$1 Million
· Romania – Bribes to Hospital For Employment$40,000
· Russia – Average Bribe Paid$189
· Russia – Bribes to Forest OfficialsCases of Vodka
· Russia – Business Bribe$10,000
· Russia – Education Admission Bribes$1 Billion
· Russian -Amount of Bribes Paid$5.9 Billion in 2010
· South AfricaTraffic Police Ask for Most Bribes
· Thailand – Bribes to Police to Allow Human Smuggling$160 per migrant
· Thailand – Kickback and Bribes to Officials25-35% of project value
· Thailand -Impact of Bribes on Economy$3.3 Billion
· Ukraine – Bribes to Police$1,000 from brothel owners
· United Kingdom – People who Paid Bribes1 in 20
· United States – Bribe to Border Agent$15,000
· United States – Bribes to Prison Guard$5,000 to pass meth
· United States – Bribes to TSA Screener$2,400 for each suitcase
· United States – Corruption At Workplace60% believe common
· Vietnam – Bribes to Forest Official$2,300

*Prices of Computer Hackers and Online Fraud*

· AdWords$1,000 to drain competitors AdWords budget
· Botnet – Canada$270 for 1,000 computers
· Botnet – France$200 for 1,000 computers
· Botnet – Russia$200 for 1,000 computers
· Botnet – United Kingdom$240 for 1,000 computers
· Botnet – United States$180 for 1,000 computers
· Botnet – Worldwide$35 for 1,000 computers
· Credit Card – Premium Card with Big Balance$250
· Credit Card and Social Security Number$5
· DDOS a Website$911,000 for gambling website
· Doxing Someone$25 to $100
· Email Addresses – Gmail$200 for 1,000
· Email Addresses – Hotmail$12 for 1,000
· Email Addresses – Yahoo$10 for 1,000
· Facebook Likes$15 for 1,000
· Facebook Spam$13 for page with 30,000 fans
· Hacked Webcam of Boy$0.01
· Hacked Webcam of Girl$1
· Hacking Classes$75
· Online Bank Account – EU4 – 6% of account balance
· Online Bank Account – USA2% of account balance
· Online Extortion$50 to $15,000 in Sextortion Blackmail
· Online Funds to CashCommission between 9% to 40% of Amount
· Online Game Hackers$16,000 per month in China
· PayPal Account6 to 20% of account balance
· Remote Administration Tool$40 for Blackshades
· Stolen Health Insurance Information$1,200 to $1,300
· Twitter Followers$15 for 10,000 Fake Followers
· Website Traffic$1 for 1,000 fake visitors

*Cost to Hire a Hitman*

· Argentina$3,749 to $5,555
· Australia$13,610 to $83,000
· BoliviaBetween $4,000 to $15,000
· ColombiaBase Salary of $600: $2,000 to $4,000 per hit
· France – Monaco$330,000
· India – MumbaiBetween $35 to $900
· Italy – Mafia Hitman$3,700 for kneecapping, $27,000 for hit
· Mexico – Ciudad Juarez$85 to Minors
· Mexico – Police Chief$20,832 to target Police Chief
· Mexico – Sinaloa$35
· Mexico – Teenage Boys$10,00 to $50,000 per killing
· Mexico – Teenage Girls$1,000 for 2-Week Salary to 16 year old girl
· Philippines Death Squad$110 per hit
· Spain$27 to $69,000
· United States and United KingdomFew hundred to $25,000
· United States Soldier$5,000 by Juarez Drug Cartel
· United States Soldier – Group of Snipers$800,000 for group of 3

*Exotic Animals for Sale*

· Abalone$52 per kilogram
· African Grey Parrot$2,000
· Arowana Fish$20,000
· Australian Lizard$7,500
· Baby Elephant in Thailand$7,000
· Bear – Complete $4,500 in Taiwan
· Bear Bile$200,000 per pound
· Bear Paws$50 for set of 4
· Black Cockatoo$31,000 in Australia
· Butterfly (Queen Alexandra)$8,195
· Chimpanzee (Live)$50
· Clouded Leopard$5,700 in China
· Dog Meat$29 in Vietnam
· Elephant$28,200
· Elephant Tusk$1,800 in Vietnam
· Frog Legs$11 for a dozen pairs in France
· Geckos from New Zealand$1,300 in Europe
· Geckos in the Philippines$2,300
· Gila Monster$1,500
· Gorillas$400,000
· Iguanas$10,600
· Ivory$850 per kilo in Asia
· Ivory with Carvings$3,000 per kilo
· Komodo Dragon$30,000
· Leopard$5,000
· Leopard Tortoise$403
· Monkey in Europe$123
· Monkey in Thailand$55
· Orangutan$45,000
· Owl$250 in India
· Pangolin$1,000
· Pangolin – Meat$300 per kilogram
· Pangolin – Scales$3,000 per kilogram
· Panther$5,000
· Ploughshare Tortoise$4,000
· Polar Bear Skin$7,760 to $9,930
· Puppies trafficked from Ireland$255 to $1,275 in the UK.
· Rhino Horn Dagger$14,000
· Rhino Horns$65,000 per kilogram
· Rhino Horns (Crushed for medicine powder)$10 in Vietnam
· Shark Fins$100 per kilogram
· Sloths$30 in Colombia
· Snake Venom$215,175 per liter
· Snakes (Banded kraits)$2,190 in India
· Snow Leopard Pelt$1,000 in Afghanistan
· Spotted Salamander$103 on the Internet
· Tiger (Dead)$5,000
· Tiger (Live)$50,000
· Tiger – Baby$3,200
· Tiger Bone$2,000
· Tiger Bone Wine$88
· Tiger Penis$1,300
· Tiger Remains$70,000 in China
· Tiger Skin$35,000
· Tortoises$10,000 in Madagascar
· Totoaba Fish – Bladder$200,000 in China
· Turtle – Chinese Golden Coin$20,000
· Turtle Eggs$1 in Costa Rica

*Organ Trafficking Prices and Kidney Transplant Sales*

· Average paid by Kidney Buyer$150,000
· Average paid to Seller of Kidney$5,000
· Kidney broker in the Philippines$1,000 to $1,500
· Kidney broker in Yemen$60,000
· Kidney buyer in China$47,500
· Kidney buyer in Egypt$20,000
· Kidney buyer in Israel$125,000 to $135,000
· Kidney buyer in Moldova$100,000 to $250,000
· Kidney buyer in Singapore$300,000
· Kidney buyer in South Africa$200,000
· Kidney buyer in Thailand$10,000
· Kidney buyer in United States$120,000
· Kidney buyers in Saudi Arabia$16,000
· Kidney seller in Bangladesh$2,500
· Kidney seller in China$15,000
· Kidney seller in Costa Rica$20,000
· Kidney seller in Egypt$2,000
· Kidney seller in India$1,000
· Kidney seller in Israel$10,000
· Kidney seller in Kenya$650
· Kidney seller in Moldova$2,500 to $3,000
· Kidney seller in Pakistan$10,000
· Kidney seller in Peru$5,000
· Kidney seller in Romania$2,700
· Kidney seller in Thailand$3,000 to $5,000
· Kidney seller in the Philippines$2,000 to $10,000
· Kidney seller in Turkey$10,000
· Kidney seller in Ukraine$200,000
· Kidney seller in Vietnam$2,410
· Kidney seller in Yemen$5,000
· Kidney Traffickers in Turkey$10,000 profit
· Kidney Transplant Operation – China$15,200
· Kidney Transplant Operation – Europe$32,000
· Liver buyer in China$21,900
· Liver seller in China$3,660
· Lung seller in EuropeAsking price of $312,650

*Fake ID Cards, Driver Licenses, and Stolen Passports*

· Average Price of a Stolen Passport for Sale$3,500
· Black Market Driver License – New Jersey$2,500 to $7,000
· Black Market Passport – Nepal$6,961
· Black Market Passport – Peru$1,750
· Black Market Passport – Sweden$12,200
· Black Market Passport and Visa – Australia$15,000
· Blank Stolen Passport – UK$1,642
· Fake Green Card$75 to $300
· Fake Birth Certificate – Cuba$10,000 to $50,000
· Fake Car License Plate in Cambodia$4.50 to $10
· Fake Driver License – California$200
· Fake Driver License – Confiscated in New York1,450 in 2012
· Fake ID Card – Malaysia$771 (includes smuggling)
· Fake ID Card – New York$160 in 90 min
· Fake ID Confiscated – Arizona2,064 from students in 2010
· Fake ID Confiscated from China1,700 in 3 months at one airport
· Fake ID from China$300 for 1, $400 for 2
· Fake ID Papers for Residency – USA$2,500 per set
· Fake IDs for Sale – United States$0.1 Billion ($100 Million)
· Fake Passport – Australia$806
· Fake Passport – China$10,000 to $25,000
· Fake Passport – China (Alter Photo)$3,500 to $5,000
· Fake Passport – Egypt, Germany, Morocco$6,830 to Syrian Refugees
· Fake Passport in Thailand – Basic$245 in 2 hours
· Fake Passport in Thailand – Higher Quality$1,000 to $1,250
· Fake Passports in India$294
· Fake Social Security Card$75 to $300
· Lost or Stolen Passport Reported11 Million in 2010
· Passport Selling – Thailand$200
· Stolen ID to buy Health Insurance$1,250

*Cocaine Prices*

· Kuwait$330 per gram (User Submitted)
· United States$300 to $8 (UN) |$30 (User Submitted) per gram
· Australia$300 per gram
· Japan$269.5 per gram
· Egypt$205.5 per gram
· Ukraine$189.6 per gram
· Denmark$180 per gram (User Submitted) | $89 per gram (UN)
· New Zealand$179.3 per gram
· Moldova$155.4 per gram
· Norway$154.45 per gram
· Saudi Arabia$133.5 per gram
· Romania$132.5 per gram
· Estonia$127.2 per gram
· Iran$126.3 per gram
· Jordan$126.3 per gram
· Cyprus$119.2 per gram
· Philippines$119 per gram
· Pakistan$118.7 per gram
· Latvia $112.6 per gram
· Montenegro$111.2 per gram
· Sweden$110.6 per gram
· Greece$110.3 per gram
· China$106.9 per gram (Hong Kong)
· Finland$106 per gram
· Czech Republic$104.8 per gram
· Croatia$99.4 per gram
· Austria$97.3 per gram
· Indonesia$96.5 per gram
· Switzerland$95.6 per gram
· Bulgaria$94.9 per gram
· Ireland$92.7 per gram
· Italy$91.6 per gram
· Serbia$88.2 per gram
· Germany$86.9 per gram
· Thailand$86.0 per gram
· Zimbabwe$80 per gram (Crack)
· Israel$80 per gram
· Poland$53 per gram
· France$79.5 per gram
· Spain$79.5 per gram
· Albania$79.5 per gram
· Lithuania$78.9 per gram
· Turkey$78.2 per gram
· Hungary$72.1 per gram
· Belgium$67.1 per gram
· United Kingdom$61.5 per gram
· Portugal$61.0 per gram
· Netherlands$58.7 per gram
· Cuba$56.7 per gram
· Lebanon$40.0 per gram
· South Africa$32.7 per gram
· Nigeria$32.5 per gram
· El Salvador$24 per gram
· Paraguay$20 per gram
· Costa Rica$17 per gram
· Guatemala$13.3 per gram
· Brazil$12 per gram
· Haiti$10 per gram
· Chile$8.8 per gram
· Venezuela$9.3 per gram
· Honduras$9.2 per gram
· Dominican Republic$8 per gram
· Argentina$5.9 per gram
· Ecuador$5.0 per gram
· Peru$4.5 per gram
· Bolivia$3.5 per gram
· Colombia$3.5 per gram

*Ecstasy Pills Prices*

· Myanmar$68.1 per pill
· South Korea$56.0 per pill
· Norway$44.1 per pill
· Montenegro$41.7 per gram
· Egypt$40.2 per pill
· United States$35.5 per pill
· Japan$33.65 per pill
· Vietnam$32.5 per pill
· Australia$32.1 per pill
· Thailand$29.65 per pill
· New Zealand$28.7 per pill
· Philippines$27.5 per pill
· Chile$25 per pill
· Costa Rica$25 per pill
· Ecuador$25.0 per pill
· Colombia$22.6 per pill
· Italy$22.0 per pill
· Dominican Republic$21 per pill
· Singapore$20.25 per pill
· Finland$19.9 per pill
· Switzerland$19.1 per pill
· Romania$18.9 per pill
· Sweden$16.2 per pill
· Malaysia$16.0 per pill
· Jamaica$14.5 per pill
· Spain$13.6 per pill
· Greece$13.2 per pill
· Cyprus$13.2 per pill
· Honduras$13.0 per pill
· Brazil$12 per pill
· Israel$12 per pill
· Czech Republic$10.5 per pill
· Zimbabwe$10 per pill
· Austria$9.7 per pill
· Venezuela$9.4 per pill
· Turkey$9.3 per pill
· Indonesia$9.0 per pill
· Denmark$8.9 per pill
· Bulgaria$8.8 per pill
· Germany$8.7 per pill
· France$7.9 per pill
· Latvia$7.5 per pill
· Guatemala$6.6 per pill
· Ireland$6.6 per pill
· Estonia$6.6 per pill
· Iran$6.2 per pill
· South Africa$5.8 per pill
· Belgium$5.7 per pill
· Cambodia$5 per pill
· Portugal$5 per pill
· Hungary$4.8 per pill
· United Kingdom$4.8 per pill
· Lithuania$4.6 per pill
· China$4.5 per pill
· Netherlands$3.9 per pill
· Croatia$3.3 per gram
· Serbia$2.65 per pill
· Poland$1.7 per pill

*Heroin Prices*

· Brunei$1330.4 per gram
· New Zealand$717.4 per gram
· Japan$683.6 per gram
· Georgia$650 per gram
· Australia$500 (User Submitted-Perth)|$50.4 per gram (UN)
· Sweden$276.5 per gram
· Denmark$213.6 per gram
· United States$200 (UN) | $110 (User Submitted) per gram
· Ireland$198.7 per gram
· Estonia$190.75 per gram
· Norway$169.1 per gram
· United Arab Emirates$165.0 per gram
· Finland$159.0 per gram
· South Korea$140.0 per gram
· Latvia$132.5 per gram
· Moldova$126.3 per gram
· Bangladesh$125.0 per gram
· Ukraine$123.9 per gram
· Singapore$123.9 per gram
· Philippines$108.8 per gram
· Cyprus$106.0 per gram
· Indonesia$98.95 per gram
· Austria$97.3 per gram
· Thailand$83 per gram
· Italy$80.6 per gram
· Spain$80.4 per gram
· Costa Rica$77.2 per gram
· Lithuania$76.6 per gram
· Croatia$72.9 per gram
· El Salvador$69.0 per gram
· China$66.9 per gram
· Nepal$64.6 per gram
· United Kingdom$61.5 per gram
· Romania$55.05 per gram
· Bulgaria$54.3 per gram
· France$53.0 per gram
· Poland$53.0 per gram
· Czech Republic$52.3 per gram
· Netherlands$50.8 per gram
· Brazil$50 per gram
· Guatemala$49.0 per gram
· Hungary$48.1 per gram
· Germany$48.0 per gram
· Switzerland$47.8 per gram
· Myanmar$47.1 per gram
· Portugal$46.7 per gram
· Greece$46.3 per gram
· Saudi Arabia$42.2 per gram
· Jordan35.1 per gram
· South Africa$35.0 per gram
· Belgium$31.8 per gram
· Turkey$31.1 per gram
· Albania$30.5 per gram
· Israel$28.0 per gram
· Zimbabwe$27.1 per gram
· Serbia$26.5 per gram
· Montenegro$23.6 per gram
· Egypt$22.35 per gram
· Dominican Republic$21.0 per gram
· Iran$20.2 per gram
· Colombia$20.1 per gram
· Lebanon$15.0 per gram
· Ecuador$13.0 per gram
· Venezuela$11.6 per gram
· India$10.93 per gram
· Malaysia$8.88 per gram
· Nigeria$6.8 per gram
· Honduras$5.3 per gram
· Cambodia$5.0 per gram
· Pakistan$3.0 per gram
· Afghanistan$2.4 per gram
· Kenya$1.9 per gram

*Meth Prices per Gram*

· Australia$641.4 per gram
· New Zealand$573.9 per gram
· South Korea$562.0 per gram
· Switzerland$286.7 per gram
· Philippines$214.1 per gram
· Indonesia$203.8 per gram
· Saudi Arabia$199.7 per gram
· Singapore$184.25 per gram
· Japan$125.3 to $683.6 per gram
· Afghanistan$105 per gram
· Germany$89.2 per gram
· United Kingdom$88.45 per gram
· China$72.9 per gram
· Malaysia$52.7 per gram
· Czech Republic$52.3 per gram
· Finland$45.9 per gram
· Spain$30.5 per gram
· South Africa$27.0 per gram
· Sweden$25.3 per gram
· Ukraine$25.0 per gram
· Austria$16.7 per gram
· Hungary$14.4 per gram
· Myanmar$13.6 per gram
· Latvia$13.2 per gram
· Honduras$13.0 per gram
· Lithuania$12.7 per gram
· North Korea$11 per gram
· Moldova$5.0 per gram
· Bangladesh$4.5 per tablet
· United States$3.0 to $500.0 per gram
· Cambodia$1.6 per gram
· Laos$1.0 per tablet

*Profits from the Business of Crime and Illegal Jobs*

· Afghanistan – Taliban$200 Million a year from Opium
· Antique Looter1 percent of final sale price
· Asian Massage Parlor – New Jersey, United States$108,000 per year
· Asian Massage Parlor – Washington DC, United States$1.2 Million per year
· Assassin – Colombia$600 monthly retainer, $3,000 per hit
· Assassin – Mexico$3,000 to teenagers
· Bootlegger – Pakistan$4,000 per year
· Bride Trafficker Broker – Cambodia$1,500 per bride
· Child Beggar – Pakistan$1.88 to $2.36 per day
· Child Beggar – Thailand$20 per day
· Child Begging Ring – China$40,000 per year
· Child Begging Ring – Saudi Arabia$15,000 per month
· Cigarette Smuggler – Mali$200 per trip, $2,000 if cocaine
· Cigarette Smuggling – USA$500,000 from One Run
· Cigarette Truck Unloader – Indian Reservation, USA$200 per truck
· Coal Mining – Mexico$25 Million by Los Zetas
· Coca Farmer – Peru$9,860 per year, $1,554 growing coffee
· Cockfighting – Management of Matches$2,000 a day
· Cockfighting – Prize Money for Winning Rooster$15,000
· Counterfeit Dollars – Peru$20,000 for every $100,000 in fakes
· Counterfeit Drug Seller$450,000 based on $1,000 investment
· Crystal Meth Smuggler – Indonesia$311 per trip
· Custom Officials – Mexico$1 Million per shipment passed through
· Driver License Broker – Afghanistan$10,000 per year
· Drug Dealer – Rio de Janeiro$15 Million in Favelas
· Drug Mule – Indonesia$15,000 to swallow 76 capsules of heroin
· Drug Mule – Panama$5,000 per trip
· Drug Mule – Paraguay Local$200 per trip
· Drug Mule – Paraguay Tourist$3,970 per trip
· Drug Mule – Teen in Mexico$50 to $100 per trip across border
· Drug Smugglers – Guatemala$600 Million to $800 Million per year
· Extortionist – Guatemalan Prison $6,000 a week
· Extortionist Gang – Colombia$100,000 per month
· Fake Degrees – Europe$50 Million per year to 15,000 customers
· Fake Degrees Online Website$5 Million in 9 years
· Fake Viagra Seller- South Korea$0.84 per tablet
· Football Match Fixing Syndicate$15 Billion per year
· Gambling Runners – Singapore$1,957 per day handling bets
· Gold Smuggler – India$33.50 for 10 grams
· Gun Straw Purchasers – United States$500 per gun for Mexican Drug Cartel
· Heroin Dealer – Ireland$694 per week
· High Class Escort – Florida, United States$80,000 a month
· Human Smugglers – Indonesia$1 Million per boat to Australia
· Human Smugglers – South Korea$2,500
· Human Trafficker – Canada$79,380 per year
· Human Trafficker – New York City$100,000 per year
· Human Trafficker – United Kingdom$77,000 per year
· Human Trafficker – Vietnam$470 to move victim to China
· Kidnappers – Virtual Kidnappers$1,000 to $3,000 per ransom
· Legal Brothel Owner40 to 50 percent of sex workers earnings
· Logger – Madagascar$1.33 per kilo for illegal timber
· Marijuana Plant – United States$2,200
· Meth Trafficking – Thailand$168 per trip
· Money Launderer – Mexico15 cents to each dollar laundered
· Money Mule – United Kingdom8 percent of cash laundered
· Oil Thieves – Nigeria$6,098 per day
· Online Dating Scammers – Ivory Coast$13,000 a month
· Online Drug Dealer$3 Million for Top Seller on Silk Road
· Online Extortion$500 to $15,000 in “sextortion”
· Online Game Hacker$16,000 a month in China
· Online Streaming Website$4.4 Million for largest sites
· Opium Farmer – Afghanistan$4,900 vs $770 for wheat farmer
· Opium Farmer – Myanmar$6 per day vs. $1.20 for rice
· Opium Farmer – Students$15 to $20 per day during season
· Organ Trafficker – Turkey$10,000 profit
· Passport Seller – Thailand$200 to sell own passport
· Pickpockets – Barcelona, Spain$6,132 per week
· Pimp$67,200 per year
· Pirate – Somalia$30,000 to $75,000 per hijacking
· Pirated Book Seller – Mumbai, India$2 per book
· Pirated DVD Seller – Los Angeles$50,000 a month
· Pirated DVD Seller – Mexico$2 Million per day
· Pirated Movie Uploader$1 to $2 per 1,000 views
· Poppy Farmer – Afghanistan$10,000 per year, $120 if wheat
· Prison Guard – United States$3,000 to $5,000 Smuggling Contraband
· Prostitute – Brazil$100,000 (High-End Prostitute)
· Prostitute – Calcutta, India$1.85 a day
· Prostitute – Cannes, France$40,000 a night
· Prostitute – Jamaica$470 per day
· Prostitute – Java, Indonesia$952 per month
· Prostitute – Kuwait$570 per month
· Prostitute – Male Prostitute in LondonHigh of $49,000
· Prostitute – Orange Country, California$700 a day
· Prostitute – Pennsylvania, United States$20,000 a week
· Prostitute – South Korea$70 per session
· Prostitute – UgandaUp to $500 a night
· Prostitute – Washington, DC$500 per day
· Prostitutes – Filipino Women in Japan$150 Million a year
· Ransomware$5 Million a year
· Roma Thief$7,000 a month
· Spam Sellers – Russia$60 Million a year
· United States Workers$2 Trillion Not Reported to IRS Reported by Zero Hedge 1 day ago.

Tomorrow is Social Security's 80th birthday, so here's to another 80 years of paying old people not to work while threatening young people they'll have to work until they're 80. It turns out cavemen may have actually eaten carbs, a gaunt Jeb Bush discovered in his morning paper, its pages trembling in his veiny, shrunken hands. And Paul LePage's welfare drug testing regime has only caught one drug user so far, but LePage will do his best to really humiliate that one person. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Thursday, August 13th, 2015

*AL GORE IS TIRED OF YOUR COLD WEATHER JOKES* - Andrew Kaczynski, Evan McMorris-Santoro & Ben Smith: "Supporters of Al Gore have begun a round of conversations among themselves and with the former vice president about his *running for president in 2016, the latest sign that top Democrats have serious doubts that Hillary Clinton is a sure thing*. Gore, 67, won the popular vote in the 2000 election, and has been mentioned as a possible candidate in every contested Democratic primary since then. He instead spent much of the 2000s focused on environmental campaigning and business ventures… *A member of Gore’s inner circle asked to be quoted 'pouring lukewarm water' -- not, note, cold water -- on the chatter*.'" [BuzzFeed]

*BUSH MAYBE OK WITH TORTURE?* "Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush says he would leave the door open for resuming the use of torture by the U.S. government. *Bush told an audience of Iowa Republicans on Thursday that he did not want to make a blanket statement* about whether he would keep or repeal President Barack Obama's executive order banning so-called enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA." [AP]

*DEATH PENALTY DEAD IN CONNECTICUT* - Kim Bellware: "The Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday ruled the state's death penalty is unconstitutional. *The deeply divided court's 4-3 ruling will affect the 11 inmates currently on the state's death row.* Lawmakers repealed the state's death penalty in 2012, but stipulated it only applied to future crimes. Plaintiffs in Thursday's case had argued the 2012 ban should also extend to prisoners already on death row. As a result of the ruling, the inmates’ sentences will be converted to life without parole." [HuffPost]

Jessica Schulberg and Ryan Grim report on the wobbly Democrats who could make or break Obama's Iran deal. Who are the shaky 15?

*OR SKIP THE DEAL, GO STRAIGHT TO THE WAR* - Schulberg: "Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings on Thursday became the latest Democrat to split with President Barack Obama over Iran, stating that he would not only vote down the nuclear agreement with the country, but would *also draft an authorization to allow the U.S. to go to war with it to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons*." [HuffPost]
This tweet didn't stay up very long.

*BUT WHAT ABOUT THEIR FREEDOM?* Jeffrey Young reports on another area where the Affordable Care Act has turned out to be a BFD: "The Obamacare health insurance exchanges appear to be doing a good job when it comes to one of their most important yet underappreciated functions: offering a fallback option to people who lose their health coverage during the year. *Already this year, almost half a million people have taken advantage of that safety net, a new government report shows.* … On Thursday, the federal government for the first time released data suggesting Americans are taking advantage of this option. According to a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, half of the 944,000 new enrollees on the federally run exchanges in 37 states between Feb. 23 and June 30 signed up because they'd lost their previous coverage." [HuffPost]

New research suggests cavemen ate carbs, contrary to the Paleo diet that Jeb Bush follows.

*DEPENDS ON WHETHER THE RHINO CONTAINS OIL* - President Barack Obama is traveling to Alaska later this month to visit the front lines of climate change, which he called "one of the greatest challenges we face this century" in a video posted Thursday… *While environmental groups welcome Obama's visit to the Arctic -- the first by a sitting president -- they also point out that the administration has approved permits allowing Shell to drill for oil in the region, even as the president decries the effects of climate change, which is largely driven by the burning of fossil fuels*… The prospect of drilling in the Arctic while promoting the need to protect it is "like shooting rhinos to save them," said Ben Schreiber, climate and energy program director at Friends of the Earth. [HuffPost]

The Washington Football Team has their first preseason game tonight.

*HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SOCIAL SECURITY!* May today's politicians find the same courage Ronald Reagan did to preserve future benefits by hiking taxes.

*DAILY DELANEY DOWNER* - Alanna Durkin: "Gov. Paul LePage hailed drug screenings for certain welfare recipients as a way to protect taxpayer dollars. But since the program was launched a few months ago, only a handful of recipients have been ordered to take tests and most people who have lost their assistance have done so because they failed to show up, the administration said….*Only one person tested positive for drugs and was stripped of benefits*, the [Maine Department of Health and Human Services] said." [AP]

Does somebody keep forwarding you this newsletter? Get your own copy. It's free! Sign up here. Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill

*BEN CARSON, ABORTED FETUS RESEARCHER* - Igor Bobic: "Famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson says that most medical research can be conducted without using fetal tissue, which has been in the news recently after a series of secretly taped but edited videos showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing how to legally provide aborted tissue to researchers. He has called the benefits of such research 'over promised,' and has said the videos have made him wonder 'how far we have drifted in terms of our humanity.' *But according to Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB-GYN and pain medicine physician, the Republican presidential candidate published a study with three other colleagues in 1992 that described using 'human choroid plexus ependyma and nasal mucosa from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation*.'" [HuffPost]

*CARSON FIGHTS BACK… WITH NONSENSE!* "You have to look at the intent," Carson told the Washington Post's Dave Weigel. "To willfully ignore evidence that you have for some ideological reason is wrong. If you’re killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it." Thanks, Ben! [WashPost]

Carson on Fox News last month: "At 17 weeks, you’ve got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart’s beating."

*SOMEBODY SAVE RAND PAUL FROM THIS FIGHT WITH DONALD TRUMP* - He is not winning. Brett Logiurato: "Real-estate magnate Donald Trump did not take kindly to GOP presidential rival and Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Kentucky) attack ad on Trump's record. In response to the online ad, Trump released a lengthy statement on Wednesday that, among other things, called Paul a '*total mess*,' noted his donation to a Paul-affiliated eye center, and trashed the senator's golf skills during a recent game they played together. '*Recently, Rand Paul called me and asked me to play golf. I easily beat him on the golf course and will even more easily beat him now, in the world in the politics*,' Trump said in the statement. 'Senator Paul does not mention that after trouncing him in golf I made a significant donation to the eye center with which he is affiliated.'" [Business Insider]

And good lord, in response to this Paul's campaign noted the golf game Trump won "was on his home course that he plays often." What a bloodbath!

*BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR* - Enjoy this plague pit.

*JEB BUSH: GOOD AT NETWORKING* - IBTimes: "Four years out of office, Jeb Bush was acting as a paid consultant to a for-profit education company that makes its money helping universities offer online classes. Seeking to grow the business, the former Florida governor emailed an old associate who was now the president of Florida International University, a public university that was already paying Bush’s firm to operate its Internet-based MBA program. *The profitability of his firm’s arrangement with the taxpayer-funded school 'warms my heart,'* Bush wrote to FIU president Mark Rosenberg in 2011. 'How can we expand the relationship to other degree programs?'" [IBTimes]

Bernie Sanders is drawing bigger crowds than Howard Dean did leading up to the 2004 election.

*COMFORT FOOD* by @MattDRamos

- If you have 484 hours to spare, you can watch this guy sit and smile for 20 days straight.

- Have you ever seen the rain?

- Drug-smuggling Minions will destroy America.

- Clams are the new lava lamp.

*TWITTERAMA*

@EmmaRoller: I just realized a cow made out of butter commands more political influence than I do

@HeerJeet: Everything gets gentrified. Even Sesame Street.

@JRehling: "I'm a patriot. I love America. I oppose all enemies of America."

"UT is moving the statue honoring Jefferson Davis."

"That's outrageous!"*Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com). Follow us on Twitter @HuffPostHill (twitter.com/HuffPostHill). Sign up here: http://huff.to/an2k2e*

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website. Reported by Huffington Post 23 hours ago.

(Photo courtesy of the St. Paul Union Advocate)

Activists demonstrate outside a Wells Fargo building in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, this past spring.

Last week, Amalgamated Bank announced that under its latest contract, all of its bank workers will earn a starting wage of at least $15 an hour. “We think it’s the right thing for our bank to do, and frankly we think it’s the right thing for all banks to do,” Amalgamated CEO Keith Mestrich told Buzzfeed News. “If any industry in this country can afford to set a new minimum for its workers, it’s the banking industry.”

Though it’s not surprising that the union-owned bank is upping its wages, the move reflects a growing push among labor advocates, community coalitions, and financial reformers to improve the working conditions for the employees on the frontlines of highly profitable banking operations—the bank tellers who process your deposits; the customer-service representatives who answer your questions on the phone; the personal bankers who help you get a loan. 

Despite the banking sector’s reputation as a lucrative field, retail banking is a different story. There are roughly 1.7 million retail-bank workers, and more than half a million—30 percent—are in positions with median hourly wages below $15 an hour. For the half a million (mostly women) bank tellers in the United States, nearly 75 percent make less than $15 an hour, according to a recent report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP). One-third of the bank tellers are on some type of public assistance, despite handling the daily transactions for some of the most profitable companies in the world. Taxpayers shell out $900 million a year in public assistance for bank tellers and their families, according to the Committee for Better Banks.

Thiago Marques recalls that when he was working full-time as a bank teller in New Jersey, he was told at a doctor’s appointment that his employer’s health insurance was so bad that he’d be better off getting on Medicaid. For the year and a half that he worked at the bank, he only got a 20-cent raise that brought his pay up to $10.20 an hour.

Eventually Marques got fed up with the lack of respect from management and left the bank. “You’re not getting the respect that comes with the territory,” he told the Prospect. “You have to dress up, but basically you’re working as a cashier in Walmart.”

Labor activists were first exploring the possibility of organizing in the banking sector before the financial crisis that began in 2008. Banking is a heavily unionized sector in other countries and international trade unionists were pressuring the U.S. movement to get on board, arguing that there are global ramifications for the most powerful banking sector in the world to not be unionized.

Right now, the Committee for Better Banks is the main driver of organizing and is working to build a membership of thousands of frontline bank workers and advocates. They have active committees in the Twin Cities, St. Louis, Providence, Newark, Orlando, and Southern California.

“In the ’50s and ’60s, a bank job was a path to the middle class,” says Renata Pumerol, a spokesperson for the Committee for Better Banks. “From meeting with workers, we see that is no longer the case.”

Not only is the pay lackluster for many bank tellers and other lower-level bank employees, but they are expected to push products to customers and meet often-excessive sales quotas. As one personal banker for Wells Fargo told The Guardian, he was expected to make 20 sales a day to customers—whether it was a new account, travel insurance, or withdrawal protection.

In April, bank workers and a coalition of community groups in the banking hub of Minneapolis protested in front of Wells Fargo’s corporate headquarters, objecting to the culture of pressure sales that put added stress on workers and are often not in the best interest of customers.

Cassaundra Plummer works for TD Bank in Bowie, Maryland. The bank is open seven days a week and she often works more than ten days straight without a day off. She has worked as a teller for TD since 2010. She started making $11 an hour and through minimal raises, she’s gradually worked her way up to $14 an hour. Plummer, who has two children, can’t afford her employer’s health plan, so she’s forced to try to get benefits through the state.

She knows firsthand the challenges of trying to meet demanding sales quotas. “Sometimes it’s hard for us, because as tellers we know that these products might not necessarily be beneficial to our customer,” Plummer says. But, “every customer, every time is the mantra.”

In addition to combatting sales quotas, community groups involved in the local efforts are also pushing for banks to be better community members. Teachers unions are calling for a moratorium on foreclosures during the school year. Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities are calling for banks to ease restrictions on remittances to home countries. And more broadly, the crux of the movement is to tie improved working conditions for bank employees to the financial-reform movement.

“The only way to win this campaign is to align it with broader reform in the financial sector,” says Stephen Lerner, architect of the successful Justice for Janitors campaign, who has been a key strategist for this effort. “You completely link what’s good for bank workers with what’s good for consumers.”

The strategic challenge is that traditional worker-organizing and public pressure campaigns will not work against U.S. banks because the banks wield too much power. Taking one look at how much the sector pays in fines for violations to the government shows that when confronted with public pressure, banks prefer fines to altering their behavior.

“If we’re saying that we need to fight for $15 for fast-food workers, we need to think bigger for the finance industry,” Lerner says.

While the bank-organizing efforts are tapping into the higher-wage rhetoric found in the Fight for 15, it will likely require a completely different strategic approach.

“It won’t look like fast food in the sense that we’ll pick one bank and put all our energy on that one bank,” Lerner explains. “Rather, it will be local committees and coalitions on the ground forging their own paths that fit the needs of their workers and communities.” Reported by The American Prospect 9 hours ago.

WASHINGTON — Nearly a million people signed up for health insurance under President Barack Obama’s law even after the official enrollment season ended, helping push the share of uninsured Americans... Reported by NY Post 21 hours ago.

Nearly a million people signed up for health insurance under the law even after the official enrollment season ended Reported by CBS News 22 hours ago.

Zirtual may have been saved by an acquisition, but its 400 or so former employees are still left picking up the pieces.

The virtual assistant company dissolved overnight on Monday and fired its entire workforce with an e-mail at 1:34 a.m. Within the next 48 hours, its CEO Maren Kate Donovan apologized for the last-minute shutdown and said the company has found an acquirer, Startups.Co.

Donovan, in an interview with Fortune, insisted that she was working hard to save the company until the last minute and that an external CFO firm made an error with projecting payroll in April. (The same CFO firm told Fortune that they are not to blame for any of this).

It's clear Donovan knew she needed more funding, but it appears she was counting on a round that never came through.

"We thought we were going to pull through until Sunday because things kept lining up," Donovan told Fortune. The funding fell through after an investor pulled out, and the company was forced to close its doors.

But a lot of former employees are saying that things had soured long before Sunday.

**Benefits only paid through July**

The company's HR chief had quit abruptly a week before, allegedly posting in a Facebook group that she didn't want to be party to doing anything illegal. (Donovan told Fortune that the HR chief's departure was because she wanted to let the employees go and Donovan wasn't ready to give up on securing the funding.)

But former employees say that Zirtual had already stopped paying for benefits in July even though it charged employees for this month. Insurance coverage had stopped July 31. 

"Anyone who went to the doctor in August won’t have it covered," said Katy Boyle, a former Zirtual Assistant or "ZA". Her visit to the doctor on August 3, while still employed with the company, now has to come out of her own pocket.

Moreover, employees were only paid through August 7 — but they didn't know this until the email arrived in the early morning of August 11.

The acquisition by Startups.Co won't be a saving grace for many employees, either.

While Zirtual is scheduled to turn its lights back on Monday, its new workforce will be made up of independent contractors, not full-time employees, according to an announcement on the site. This means they will not be eligible to receive benefits like health insurance or paid time off, like they were in their old positions. 

Re-hiring all 400 ex-Zirtual employees is also unrealistic, especially since burn was a problem to begin with.

"Ideally we’d like to keep everyone, but given that the previous state of the company was unsustainable, it’s not reasonable to think we can continue to do so. Prior to the announcement, the company had employed over 400 professionals, so we have a lot of work to do to determine how many we can retain," the acquisition announcement said.

While there are some Zirtual assistants who are interested in returning to the company, many like Boyle have said they've opted to leave or sign their own contracts directly with their clients. By signing their own contracts without the Zirtual middleman, they can keep 100 percent of the money themselves, said Daniell Wells, another contractor who is not returning to the company either.

Those who have applied to return will be accepted based on client demand, according the Startups.Co announcement, and they're already trying to re-book clients — although some assistants on Twitter are claiming that the company is also going about that in an honest way.

We've reached out Startups.Co for comment and will update if we hear back.



#Zirtual has NOT extended offers to any ZAs yet. If you get a call saying yours is back to work, it's a lie.

— Katrina C. (@kcarpenter_va) August 13, 2015



Hey @Zirtual - STOP TELLING CLIENTS WE ARE COMING BACK. No ZAs want anything to do with Zirtual. Clients - we are NOT working with Z!

— Charissa Moore (@mscharissamoore) August 13, 2015

*Next up: A lawsuit*

Even once it reboots, Zirtual has a new hurdle to face: a class-action lawsuit.

Business Insider has a copy of a lawsuit filed in Delaware — where Zirtual is incorporated — alleging that the company violated the WARN act (short for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) by not giving employees enough notice. The WARN act is supposed to protect workers from sudden shutdown by requiring a 60 days notice if its reasonably foreseeable.

If Zirtual is found to have violated it, the company would be responsible for 60 days of backpay and benefits.

Wil Schroter, CEO of Startups.Co, told the Las Vegas Sun that he had no comment on the lawsuit at the moment because the company was still working through the acquisition process. 

Whether or not the layoffs violated federal law will be an issue left up for the courts, but in the hearts of Zirtual Assistants, many are left feeling betrayed and blind-sided.

"You knew long ago it was not going to be able to be sustained and you did nothing morally and ethically responsible toward fixing it," one anonymous ex-Zirtual Assistant said on Medium. "If you had only been fair and honest with us all along, as you said you were being, things could have been so much different."

*SEE ALSO: The CEO of the startup that dissolved overnight explains what happened: burn*

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This robot wakes you up in the morning and checks if you turned off the oven when you leave the house Reported by Business Insider 19 hours ago.

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

*The average person is a statist, whether he realizes it or not.* It is important that liberty activists recognize and accept this fact because the truth of our limitations as a movement determines the kinds of solutions into which we should ultimately put our time and energy. The fantasy of a final grand march of an awake and aware majority on the doorsteps of power is just that: a fantasy. Some people might argue that given more time, such an event could be organized or could happen spontaneously. But these people seem to forget that the immediacy of any crisis inspires awareness and cuts the bindings of complacency for only a certain percentage of any given population. *With “more time” often comes more complacency, not less.*

So, history becomes a kind of balancing act, with crisis generating the necessity of intelligent and moral action in some people but rarely, if ever, in most people (even during the American Revolution, in which patriots represented a stark minority). *The reason that the culture of freedom consistently plateaus and remains stuck at underdog status is because human beings are, first, often acclimated to the idea that crises are things that only happen to other people, and, second, they are obsessed with the idea that governments should retain prohibitory and administrative power over the public as a means to "prevent" crisis from occurring* (the sheepdog and sheep mentality).

*Not all people necessarily “love” their current government, but many citizens tend to see the idea of government as an inevitability of a stable society.* They assume pre-eminence of the state because they have never known anything else. Not only that, but as people separate into political and ideological factions, often based on false paradigms (such as the false left/right paradigm), they covet government as a kind of tool or weapon that can be used for “the greater good” if only their side had total control of it. Very few people in this world want to shrink government down to a manageable size comparable to that which existed just after the American Revolution, and even fewer would entertain the idea of erasing central governments entirely. The allure of the federalized state as a means to impose ideological control over others is intoxicating.

*Central planning acolytes see society as a a single unit, or engine, in which all the people are parts rather than autonomous individuals.*  They believe that if any part acts outside of the bounds of the engine, the entire machine could break.  According to their fuzzy logic, everything you do as an individual affects everyone else, therefore, the collective state must mold and control each individual's behavior in order to ensure that what you do as a singular person does no harm to the whole.  This philosophy is the primary rationale for EVERY push for centralization, but it is based on a faulty premise.

*Governments are run by people, people commonly more flawed and corrupt than the average citizen. * Central planners adore the use of government as a means to reign in populations and to compel conformity and "oneness", but centrally planned systems always revert to a divided structure in which a criminal minority separates itself from the collective in order to rule over that collective.  The elites actions violate the integrity of the engine as they attempt to drive the engine according to their own twisted ideals, leading to disaster and the end of the supposedly safe environment which the central planners had originally claimed was the benefit of central planning.  Thus, the central planning model is an inherently self destructive and foolish one.

*At bottom, the only viable purpose of any central government is to safeguard individual liberty. *All other claims and supposed benefits are irrelevant. Infrastructure, food and water, health, education, public security, etc: All of these issues can be provided for voluntarily at a local level by common people without the aid of a central authority.  The original intent of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights was to LIMIT government to the job of ensuring the continuance of a free citizenry.  One could certainly argue that that role has been lost; not because of the constitution itself, but because of the lack of vigilance needed to defend the integrity constitution.  One could also argue that the very nature of a federal government is one of inevitable corruption; many of the founding fathers did as the document was drafted, after all.

I will say that the constitution and the Bill of Rights are representations of natural law and inherent conscience, and it has taken elitists over two centuries to mostly dismantle them.  At this point, a complete end to any form of federalization may be called for, but the founders certainly tried their best to create a government system that could be controlled by the people.

*It was war, of course, that was used to dismantle constitutional protections...*

Most of the outside or foreign threats we face today as a nation (threats often used to rationalize centralized government and standing armies) or have faced in the past century were directly or indirectly CREATED by our own government apparatus and by the banking class through covert means.  Funding and training of Americas future enemies has been a grand pastime for the power brokers and politicians that reside in this very country.  Without such people and the structures they exploit, it is not outlandish to suggest that the past hundred years could have been a period of peace and prosperity rather than mass death through engineered war, state culling, and mass enslavement through artificial debt constructs.

In a culture where vigilance is encouraged rather than labeled paranoia, in a culture where productivity is enabled rather than obstructed, in a culture where free thought is treated with interest rather than disdain, *government holds no value.*

The only people who understand the true nature of government and still value the existence of an overreaching state are the people who would like to take advantage of the unchecked power such a state affords. *We often call these people “elitists.”* They often call themselves elitists. *Big government serves only the interests of these elites. Everyone else is either a hapless victim of it, a useful idiot in service of it, or a revolutionary opposed to it.*

When a government becomes a power mechanism for a select few, it has lost all relevance. When a government like ours here in America violates the tenets of individual liberty despite its constitutional mandate, in the name of “protecting” individual liberty, that government no longer serves any purpose. Even further, when a government’s policies are designed only to ensure its own continued dominance rather than the freedom and prosperity of the citizenry, that government becomes separate from the people and is, by extension, an enemy to the citizenry.

*Governments and the elites behind them retain control over populations through the use of central planning. *Central planning is essentially a bureaucratic structure that bottlenecks productivity, resources, academia and ideas until all progress and expression require approval. That is to say, central planning is a machine that turns rights into privileges. It also sets up bureaucracy as the final arbiter of who is considered an authority in any particular field and who is a “layman.” These designations are not based on individual ability, intelligence or accomplishment. Rather, they are based on subservience and the level of blind faith in the establishment each person is willing to display in order to attain professional status.

Some of the most ignorant people in any given field or profession are often those deemed “experts” by establishment institutions, from politics, to law, to medicine, to economics, to science, to history, etc. *The sad fact is mainstream experts are rarely the most knowledgeable, but they are the most indoctrinated.*

As central planning gains ground, it moves away from more subtle institutional dependencies into full-bore tyranny. *The line between permission and despotism is razor-thin, and this is where we in the U.S. stand today. *Most nations around the globe are socialized nations, with central planning as the very foundation on which their societies stand. For the most part, these cultures are disarmed and servile with a modicum of perceived freedom that is treated as a privilege granted by the state rather than an inborn right of natural law. Yes, many societies have “freedoms,” as America does; but the difference is that these societies can have their freedoms confiscated at any given moment on the whim of the political elite. They have no recourse to obstruct such an action and no power to remove the offending system that rules over them when they finally get fed up.

*In the U.S., central planning is surely prevalent and socialization is on a fast track. But Americans, whether they know it or not, still retain the ability of independent response* — as we saw at Bundy Ranch, for instance, or in the defense of shopkeepers in Ferguson, Missouri, despite threats from government. We will lose our advantage of independent action if we allow the following changes to occur within our culture without a fight.

*Disarmament*

A disarmed population is utterly useless, philosophically and organizationally impotent, and easily ruled. Take a look at simpering weakling societies like the U.K., which prohibits anyone under the age of 18 to purchase plastic knives and punishes victims of crime for physically defending themselves. Governments that seek to undermine personal liberty ALWAYS disarm their respective populations if they can get away with it. In America, the only reason we have not yet been disarmed is because the establishment understands that revolution would immediately follow any attempt and that revolution would be seen as justified. I believe ultimately that disarmament in the U.S. will not be fully attempted until after a national crisis has been triggered.

*Centralized Health Standards*

The real purpose of Obamacare was not to provide universal health insurance. Such a task is utterly impossible in an economic system that is in the midst of decline with an aging population and reduced profit opportunities for the young. Socialism works only as long as there is someone from whom to steal money and resources. No, the purpose of Obamacare was to bond the healthcare industry to government in such a way as to make it an official appendage of the state.

Already, we have seen the push for the use of doctors as government informants, the issuance of forced vaccinations regardless of religious orientation or philosophical objection, increased taxation in the name of “harmonization” of care, etc. Beyond all this, the system must continue to perpetuate its own usefulness. And, I have no doubt that one day we will see such things as mandated health appraisals of individuals up to and including psychological health, as well as restricted care based on age, life habits or even ideological orientation. If the state can have your flight status restricted merely for your political beliefs, then why not one day have your access to medical care restricted?

*Population Planning*

We have heard it said many times that people should be required to attain a “license” before they are allowed to have children, but who gets to decide who is eligible for the “privilege” of children? Well, under a population planning scenario the state and its central planners do, of course. And what makes such people so ethically competent as to deserve this power over the right to family? Not a thing. In many cases, bureaucrats are the most psychopathic and unintelligent people in any given society.

Some people might argue that this kind of development is unthinkable in America and not a legitimate concern. But already in the U.S. we have seen instances of Child Protective Services abducting children belonging to parents with political conflicts with the existing establishment and living habits outside of the mainstream. We also live in a system in which many parents are forced by law to hand over their children to state-controlled schools for half of every weekday (as home-schoolers are attacked as aberrant child abusers). We are only a short step away from a world in which having a child invites as much government intrusion and restriction as rearing a child.

*Overt Militarization Of Police*

Yes, many people would claim that overt militarization of police has already occurred. I would say that they haven’t seen anything yet. We do not yet live in a country where jacked out cops with armor and M4 carbines stand on every street corner 24/7, but it won’t be long before this becomes our everyday environment. With politicians openly suggesting extreme measures to combat “lone wolf terrorists,” up to and including internment camps for “disloyal Americans” (thanks for at least being honest about your intentions, Wesley Clark), all it would take is one large-scale attack to inspire enough confusion in the population to provide cover for a full-blown police state. Central planning survives and thrives through fear. Fear is defeated through preparedness, planning and mindset.

*Resource Management*

A person cannot plan or prepare for crisis if he is not allowed to manage his own resources. In Venezuela today, the government has locked down all food production and is rationing out necessary supplies through sophisticated electronic tracking due to economic crisis. Make no mistake, America is just as vulnerable to financial disaster as any Third World nation, if not more so. Resource management will be the inevitable result. In fact, the Obama administration has already positioned itself for resource management through his National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order. Government officials will call preppers “hoarders” and argue that no one person should be allowed to have more than he needs.  Once again, the argument will be that the self preservation mentality of individuals actually harms the collective.

*Centralized Economy*

We already have a centralized and socialized economy for the most part, but private trade and production are still possible. Central planning is designed to wipe out alternative forms of trade and subsistence so that all people can be made dependent on the singular state. As in Venezuela, we should expect that economic declines will be used as a rationale for a clampdown on individual trade. The only way to fight these kinds of measures is for average people to become avid producers and be willing to fight back physically against confiscation and government-controlled rationing.

Beyond trade controls, centralization will culminate in economic “harmony” through multilateral currency schemes, ending in a one-world currency. A single currency system by default calls for a single economic authority, and this by default calls for a single political authority. A one-world currency is not only a fiscal coup for central planners; it is also a stepping stone toward world government.

*Cashless Society*

A cashless system is a kind of unholy grail for central planners because it allows for total control of economic trade. Electronic-based currency systems can be dictated from the comfort of a computer, and savings can be erased or limited arbitrarily. Cashless systems also allow banking structures to operate without the normal consequences of supply and demand fundamentals. Today, even in our massively corrupt financial system, one cannot get around the concrete effects of diminishing demand, endless debt obligations and criminal fiat creation. We are seeing these effects vividly so far in 2015, just as we saw then in 2008. In a completely cashless system, though, debts can vanish, capital can be stolen and shifted away from the public in a more precise manner, taxes can be excised without waiting for taxpayers to comply, and demand can be artificially generated with digital fiat directed to the correct accounts without any trail to follow.

*Of course, there will be damages. But, those damages will be foisted upon the general public incrementally until Third World living standards become normal, and no one will be the wiser after a couple of generations. Control of the population would be absolute, while any dissent could be met with immediate financial reprisal, as activists are sentenced to starvation.*

The examples listed above may be measured as extreme, but every single one has support within our existing government structure either legally or through actual programs already being implemented. The speed at which they might occur is an unknown, but the desire for them by central planners is absolutely certain. *There is no good or benevolent form of central planning. *There is no scenario in which the system will not be abused because such power concentrated in the hands of any group of human beings invites abuse. Therefore, the only prudent course, the only solution to the absolute terror of complete state power, is to reduce government down to a shell of its current size or to remove its existence entirely and focus on localized systems and independent trade and infrastructure development.* If the federalized state as an edifice no longer exists, then it can no longer be exploited by evil people.* Reported by Zero Hedge 18 hours ago.