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Countless Americans selling as individual entrepreneurs on sites like eBay must now be aware that the Internal Revenue Service has modified their rules to make sure taxes are reported on private Internet transactions. As part of the housing rescue package just signed by President George W. Bush, the Internet transaction interface PayPal and other online payment processors will be mandated to report annual gross receipts to the IRS for almost all Internet sellers. The new law will not go into effect until 2011, time meant to afford banks and bigger merchants the opportunity for a smooth transition. The Government hopes to raise $9.5 billion over the next decade in tax revenue. The rules are outlined in the new Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008.

According to analysts, the new law is designed to force the largest payment processors, like PayPal, and others, to give over records about the biggest online-sales players. Says Daniel Ballon, a policy fellow in technology studies at the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute, "The inclusion of all third-party settlement organizations was designed to target eBay power sellers. If they make more than $10,000 per year, the IRS will receive information about their sales."

The new rules are found in the Foreclosure Prevention Act; Title III—Revenue Provisions, Subtitle B, starting in Sec. 3091. The subject is described as related to "third-party" transaction intermediaries, which includes any party processing online payments for transactions. The law states that the rules apply to "Returns Relating to Payments Made in Settlement of Payment Card and Third Party Network Transactions."

The law states that Internet third-party payment intermediaries must keep records and pass them onto the IRS, reporting such information each year: "name, address, and TIN of each participating payee to whom one or more payments in settlement of reportable payment transactions are made, and the gross amount of the reportable payment transactions with respect to each such participating payee."

The payment processors will need to file a 1099 form for each merchant and send it to the IRS and to the merchant. Merchants selling less than $10,000 and effectuating less than 200 transactions, per year do not need to be included in these filings.

The Wall Street Journal suggests some tips to staying out of trouble with the new law and the IRS:

-- Report all income from Internet sales, even for things you might consider non-relevant, such as items you made. Excluded are subjects sold for less than their original cost.

-- If you deduct costs on deductions, then make sure your entire approach is business-like and professional. The IRS defines as "business" an entity that made a profit in any three of the past five years. Contra, a hobby is something a person would still engage in, even if they did not make any profit from it.

-- Separate business and private bank and checking accounts to avoid confusion and make record-keeping easier. Says, Kristine McKinley of Beacon Financial Advisors, "Everything you can do to treat it like a business will help." Ms. McKinley specializes in tax advice to eBay entrepreneurs.

-- Consider claiming the IRS "home office deduction." This is a valuable deduction if space exists in your home you can use exclusively for business purposes. This will reduce your income for the purposes of self-employment tax.

As could be expected, many small-business owners are upset about the new rule. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce believes the law will create new, unjustified costs on merchants and hurt payment processors, too. The Chamber released an official statement, saying: "Many participating merchants will bear additional expenses related to the burdens of converting a payment distribution system that was previously not taxpayer-specific into one that would be."

IRS to Track Online Sellers’ Payment Transactions Beginning Next Year

Barbara Weltman
AuctionBytes.com
Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Internet sellers who don’t report their sales will no longer be under the radar. Starting next year, any bank or other payment settlement company that processes credit cards, debit cards, and electronic payments such as PayPal will have to issue information returns telling the IRS what merchants receive. The new returns are Form 1099-K, Merchant Card and Third-Party Payments.

Purpose of Reporting

The IRS believes that many online sellers fail to report their transactions. Some don’t report because they mistakenly believe that Internet sales are invisible. Others do so because they are trying to evade taxes.

The IRS has found that using information returns, such as W-2 forms for employees, Form 1099-MISC for independent contractors, and Form 1099-INT for bank interest, goes a long way toward improving the reporting of income. IRS computers can match income reported on these information returns with the income reported on tax returns.

Who’s Subject to Reporting

All merchants who accept payments through credit cards, debit cards, gift cards and PayPal will receive information returns telling them – and the IRS – the gross amount of the merchant card transactions. This will be broken down month by month. While the form uses the word “card,” the IRS has made it clear that this is interpreted broadly to include third-party network transactions (i.e., PayPal).

Exception: Very small merchants won’t be issued information returns. “Small” for this purpose means annual gross sales on merchant cards of no more than $20,000 or 200 or fewer transactions. In other words, reporting is required only if gross amounts for the year exceed $20,000 and there are more than 200 transactions.

Mechanics
As it now stands (proposed regulations have not yet been finalized), gross amounts reported for merchant transactions do not take into account any adjustments for credits, cash equivalents, discount amounts, fees, chargebacks, refunded amounts, or any other amounts. It will be up to sellers to report on their returns the full amounts reported to them and then make adjustments or explanations to account for differences in what is ultimately taxable to them.

For example, a seller who is paid $1,000 by credit card for a particular transaction does not necessarily have $1,000 profit even though $1,000 will be included on Form 1099-K. The $1,000 must be reported so the return will match what's in the IRS computers, but this amount will then be reduced on the merchant's return by the cost of goods sold (what it costs for the inventory sold), merchant account fees, and other costs.

Providing Your Tax ID Number to Processors
Merchants will have to provide their federal tax identification numbers to the companies processing their transactions. If they fail to do so, they may become subject to "backup withholding," which means these companies will have to deduct and withhold income tax from reportable payments. Backup withholding won't go into effect until 2012.

Sellers who don't wish to provide their social security number to payment processors can obtain an EIN (Employer ID Number). Note that you can obtain an EIN even if you are a sole proprietorship. See the IRS website for more information.

More information on Form 1099-K
You can find more information about Form 1099-K, the new information return that payment settlement entities will use to report the gross amount of merchant card or third-party payments, on this IRS web page (PDF format).

See also, "What Every Merchant Should Know about New IRS Reporting Requirements" from this May 2009 EcommerceBytes article.

SMOLENSK, Russia – Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97, officials said.

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland's political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Although initial signs pointed to an accident with no indication of foul play, the death of a Polish president and much of the Polish state and defense establishment in Russia en route to commemorating one of the saddest events in Poland's long, complicated history with Russia, was laden with tragic irony.

At the time of Brown's death, Independent Counsel Daniel Pearson was
seeking to determine whether Brown had engaged in several sham financial
transactions with longtime business partner Nolanda Hill shortly before he
became secretary of commerce.

On March 19, just weeks before Brown's sudden death, Pearson obtained
subpoenas that showed his probe had widened to include Brown's ties to
possibly illicit fund-raising activities involving the Democratic National
Committee and a DNC-affiliated group called the Asian Pacific Advisory
Council. Pearson's investigation was closed soon after Brown's plane
crashed. Unfinished matters, including the investigation of Hill and
Brown's son Michael, were turned over to the Justice Department.

the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

• THE KEY FIGURES IDENTIFIED AMONG THE CASUALTIES
  
  Among the dead were the following:
  
  • Blasik, Andrzej, Chief of the Polish Air Force.
  • Bochenek, Krystyna, Deputy Speaker of the Polish Senate.
  • Chodakowski, Archbishop Miron, Orthodox Ordinary of the Polish Army.
  • Deptula, Leszek, Member of the Sejm (Lower House of Parliament).
  • Dolniak, Grzegorz, Member of the Sejm.
  • Fetlinska, Janina, Member of the Polish Senate.
  • Gagor, General Franciszek, Chief of the Polish Army General Staff.
  • Gesicka, Grazyna, Member of the Sejm.
  • Gosiewski, Przemyslaw, Member of the Sejm.
  • Handzlik, Mariusz, Undersecretary of State in President’s Office.
  • Jaruga-Nowacka, Izabela, Member of the Sejm.
  • Karpiniuk, Sebastian, Member of the Sejm.
  • Karweta, Vice Admiral Andrzej, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Navy.
  • Kaczynski, Lech, President of the Republic of Poland.
  • Kaczynski, Mrs, wife of the President of the Republic.
  • Kochanowski, Janusz, Polish Ombudsman for Citizen Rights.
  • Kremer, Andrzej, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister.
  • Kurtyka, Janusz, Historian and President of the Institute of National Remembrance.
  • Natalli-Swiat, Aleksandra, Member of the Sejm.
  • Nurowski, Piotr, President of the Polish Olympic Committee.
  • Plazynski, Maciej, President of the Polish Community Association.
  • Ploski, Tadeusz, Bishop of the Military Ordinariate of the Polish Army.
  • Przewoznik, Andrzej, Secretary-General, Council for Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites.
  • Putra, Krzysztof, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm.
  • Rumianek, Ryszard, Rector of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University.
  • Rybicki, Arkadiusz, Member of the Sejm.
  • Skrzypek, Slawomir, President of the National Bank of Poland.
  • Stasiak, Wladyslaw, Chief of the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland.
  • Szczyglo, Aleksander, Head of the National Security Bureau.
  • Szmajdzinski, Jerzy, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm.
  • Szymanek-Deresz, Jolanta, Member of the Sejm.
  • Walentynowicz, Anna, free trade union activist, member of Solidarity (Solidarity heroine).
  • Wassermann, Zbigniew, Member of the Sejm.
  • Woda, Wieslaw, Member of the Sejm.
  • Wojtas, Edward, Member of the Sejm.
  • Wypych, Pawel, Secretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland.
  • Zajac, Stanislaw, Member of the Senate
  … and several other Members of the Sejm.
  
  ALL POLAND’S TOP PEOPLE WIPED OUT IN ONE HIT!!!

QSC - Thank you for telling me about "Ron Brown".

• 
  General Shalikashvili and President Bill Clinton

• "In the Soviet Union/Russia they use a unique instrumental landing system called PRMG. It works almost exactly the same way as the international Western system ILS. However, the two are not compatible. The Polish airplane was modified to use the ILS, as the [Soviet] airplane was mainly flying to various airports that use it," Fisher told RT.
  

• Speaking to RT, defense analyst and former Polish military pilot, Mikhal Fisher, noted a previously unmentioned factor that possibly was one of the reasons for the crash.

• Former test pilot Magomed Tolboev told RT that of all the crashes in which the TU-154 aircraft has been involved, only 10 per cent were caused by technical problems.

• “It’s a very secure plane” Tolboev assured.

The last Polish leader killed in office, Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski — the exiled World War II leader who perished in a mysterious plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943 — is also interred there.

Some Poles criticized the decision to bury Kaczynski, whose combative style earned him many opponents, in a place reserved for the most esteemed of national figures. Hundreds staged a protest in front of the archbishop's residence in Krakow on Tuesday evening, carrying banners reading "Really worthy of kings?" and "Not to Wawel."

Is their a Polish joke for this or have I been left out of the loop
here?

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – President Barack Obama predicted Thursday his new space exploration plans would lead American astronauts to Mars and back in his lifetime, a bold forecast relying on rockets and propulsion still to be imagined and built.

"I expect to be around to see it," he said of pioneering U.S. trips, first to an asteroid and then on to Mars. He spoke near the historic Kennedy Space Center launch pads that sent the first men to the moon, a blunt rejoinder to critics, including several former astronauts, who contend his planned changes will instead deal a staggering blow to the nation's manned space program.

"We want to leap into the future," not continue on the same path as before, Obama said as he sought to reassure NASA workers that America's space adventures would soar on despite the impending termination of space shuttle flights.

His prediction was reminiscent of President John F. Kennedy's declaration in 1961, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth." That goal was fulfilled in 1969.

Obama did not predict a Mars landing soon. But he said that by 2025, the nation would have a new spacecraft "designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space."

"We'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history," he said. "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow."

Obama said he was "100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future." He outlined plans for federal spending to bring more private companies into space exploration following the soon-to-end space shuttle program.

He acknowledged criticism for his drastic changes to the space agency's direction. But, he said, "The bottom line is: Nobody is more committed to manned space flight, the human exploration of space, than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way; we can't keep doing the same old things as before."

Obama said the space program is not a luxury but a necessity for the United States.

He noted that the Kennedy Space Center has inspired the nation and the world for half a century. He said NASA represents what it means to be American -- "reaching for new heights and reaching for what's possible" -- and is not close to its final days.

Obama sought to explain why he aborted President George W. Bush's return-to-the moon plan in favor of a complicated system of public-and-private flights that would go elsewhere in space, with details still to be worked out.

"We've been there before," Obama said of the nation's moon landings decades ago. "There's a lot more of space to explore."

He said his administration would support continued manned exploration of space "not just with dollars, but with clear aims and a larger purpose."

The Obama space plan relies on private companies to fly to the space station, giving them almost $6 billion to build their own rockets and ships. It also extends the space station's life by five years and puts billions into research to eventually develop new government rocket ships for future missions to a nearby asteroid, to the moon, to Martian moons or other points in space. Those stops would be stepping stones on an eventual mission to Mars itself.

Addressing concerns of job losses to space program workers, particularly in Florida, Obama said that "despite some reports to the contrary," his plan would add more than 2,500 jobs to the Cape Canaveral region over the next two years than would the plan worked out by his predecessor.

"We'll modernize the Kennedy Space Center, creating jobs as we upgrade launch facilities. And there is potential for even more job creation as companies in Florida and across America compete to be part of a new space transportation industry.

"This holds the promise of generating more than 10,000 jobs nationwide over the next few years. Many of these jobs will be created in Florida, an area primed to lead in this competition," he said.

Among his most vocal critics has been Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Obama did not mention Armstrong, who did not attend the speech, but he did praise Buzz Aldrin, one of Armstrong's Apollo 11 crewmates.

Aldrin did attend the speech — flying in with Obama on Air Force One.

Obama also said his administration would rescue a small part of the moon program: its Orion crew capsule.

But instead of taking four astronauts to the moon, the not-yet-built Orion will be slimmed down and used as an emergency escape pod for the space station.

Obama spoke in the vast launch complex's Operations and Checkout building — the place where Orion is scheduled to be eventually prepared for launch.

The president said, "This Orion effort will be part of the technological foundation for advanced spacecraft to be used in future deep space missions. In fact, Orion will be readied for flight right here in this room."

White House science adviser John Holdren summed up Obama's program as "a faster pace in space, more missions to more destinations sooner at lower cost."

relying on rockets and propulsion still to be imagined and built

February 24, 2010 — MEP and UKIP leader Nigel Farage on Wednesday delivered another major tirade against EU President Herman van Rompuy and, along the way, severely insulted Belgium and Greece during a plenary debate in the European Parliament. Farage said Van Rompuy had the "charisma of a damp rag" and the appearance of a "low-grade bank clerk."

i dont know whether to keep laughing or go to a funny farm Very Happy cause the uk and european political system is beyond insanity

• 
  George Osborne
  
  Future UK government leaders such as David Cameron and Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, may have been filmed using drugs and engaged in Sadomasochism and other acts which Hawks’ CAFE alleges could be used to extort official policy from these individuals while they are in positions of power.
  
  Agents acting for Magic Circle law firms such as Linklaters or their associates, such as DLA Piper and Sidley Austin, could use this footage to extort support for the $70 trillion Anthropogenic Global Warming scam (Carbon Disclosure Project and Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change—IIGCC) operated out of Number 10 Downing Street.
  
  Descriptions of S&M ceremonies engaged in by members of the Bullingdon club, recalls images of torture at Abu Ghraib which may have been used to demonize George Bush who refused participation in the Warmists’ Kyoto Treaty.

• 26 October 2008—Dominatrix Natalie Rowe saw at first hand the desperate longing of a gauche Oxford student [George Osborne] struggling to fit in with the fabulously wealthy like university pal Nat Rothschild.
  
  She revealed how she and the young Tory were drawn together as she supplied girls and drugs to parties for some of Oxford’s notorious Bullingdon Club drinking circle. Its members included both Osborne and his former pal Rothschild, the man now accusing the top Tory of soliciting a £50,000 donation from aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska.
  
  
  Rowe & Osborne
  
  “George was fascinated when he heard what I did for a living. He wanted to know about the clients, how much I charged, what went on. He seemed a bit more than curious about what went on.
  
  He wanted to see the equipment-the whips, the chains, the belts.
  
  He was particularly interested in the dog collars we put on clients and the rubber underpants they wear as submissive slaves.”
  
  George was intrigued by all my stories and wanted to be shown how hard it would be to be hit. I told him that most of the guys tend to use the sex drug amyl nitrate.
  
  Once George and his friends were at my flat while I was actually having a session with a paying customer.
  
  I had the man on all fours with a collar on and beat him. I was making him bark like a dog and act like a slave. They found it quite funny.
  
  None of them hid the fact they liked it and they weren't embarrassed. They were turned on by it.
  
  When they had coke they would probably divvy up a gram and a half. They’d have competitions to see who could snort the longest line and get completely wasted.” ~Dominatrix Natalie Rowe
  
  
  Natalie rowe
  
  Natalie, who styled herself as Mistress Pain and ran an escort agency called Black Beauties, met Osborne and Rothschild through her boyfriend at the time, fellow Bullingdon member William Sinclair, grandson of Winston Churchill's wartime air minister Sir Archibald Sinclair.
  
  Osborne was offended when some members of the Oxford group would hurl racial slurs at Natalie. But she says that he was still so desperate to fit in that he didn't have the courage to stop them.
  
  Natalie was this week intrigued how, given their once close friendship, the damaging claims that today threaten Osborne's political future actually came from financier Nat Rothschild, heir to a family baronetcy and a £500 million banking fortune. She recalled how the two students and their band of pals would head to the country for wild weekends.
  
  The Bullingdon Club thought they were untouchable. They thought they could do what they wanted. They had money and arrogance. They thought there were no consequences, anything goes.
  
  
  Nat Rotchschild
  
  She said the group's bad behaviour came to a head in March 1994 at the Rothschilds' stately home, Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. Natalie sent three strippers.
  
  Around six grams of cocaine were also provided for the club members to snort. As well as stripping, it was made clear that the girls' services would extend to ‘extras’-sex with guests.
  
  But Natalie claims the party degenerated into a humiliating experience for the girls who were abused by some braying Bullingdon boys.

• 
  

  19 April 2009—Natalie Rowe will reveal how the men enjoyed degrading sex sessions which saw them whipped and handcuffed while high on cocaine.
  
  Two of her former clients are in Tory leader David Cameron’s top team today, while the other two are former Tory ministers—one was in the Cabinet. Her £1million memoirs—already snapped up by a major publisher— threaten to send shockwaves through David Cameron’s party ahead of next year’s general election.
  
  
  Sex toy
  
  Natalie, 45, is the woman at the heart of the Smeargate emails over her relationship with shadow Chancellor George Osborne.
  
  Natalie claims the young Tory was fascinated by her world of whips, chains, rubber bondage equipment and sex toys.
  
  “It’s time the truth was told about some of the men who could end up running the country. Men who have been on all fours before me, crying like babies, taking massive amounts of drugs as I whip them senseless.”
  
  She says she had repeated sex sessions with them over a year-long period when they paid to be sex slaves. One snorted copious amounts of cocaine during the sessions:
  
  “I had them barking like dogs and begging for mercy. Quite often they would take me wholly in their confidence, discussing deep, personal matters about their past and their thoughts on other politicians. Most of them are desperately insecure and at war with their own egos.”
  
  Natalie found herself unwillingly at the centre of the emails scandal last week when she was identified by Gordon Brown’s spin chief Damian McBride in a dirty tricks campaign.
  
  McBride is believed to have pointed to the existence of a tape-recorded conversation between Natalie and a close friend of Osborne’s in which the friend claims Osborne slept with her and took cocaine.
  
  In another smear, the emails also said that an ex-girlfriend of Osborne’s has photos of him in a bra, knickers and suspenders.
  
  The Sunday Mirror has decided to withhold the names of the four perverted Tories—although Miss Whiplash will show no such mercy.
  
  “This book will be the opposite of Belle du Jour—the real story of my life as a dominatrix. It’s not dressed up or sanitised—just the gritty truth involving some very powerful men.
  
  And I would like nothing more than for one of them to sue me so I can stand up and face them in court.”

• An average of 18 US military veterans are taking their lives every day as the Obama administration and the Pentagon grow increasingly defensive about the epidemic of suicides driven by Washington's wars of aggression.
  
  The stunning figure was reported last week by the Army Times, citing officials in the US Veterans Affairs Department.
  
  The department estimates that there are 950 suicide attempts every month by veterans who are receiving treatment from the department. Of these, 7 percent succeed in taking their own lives, while 11 percent try to kill themselves again within nine months.
  
  
  
  The greatest growth in suicides has taken place among veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who accounted for 1,868 suicide attempts in fiscal 2009, which ended on September 30. Of these, nearly 100 succeeded in killing themselves.
  
  The connection between the "surge" in military suicides and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is undeniable. The suicide rate within the military doubled between 2001 and 2006, even as it remained flat among the comparable (adjusted for age and gender) civilian population. And the numbers continue to rise steadily. In 2009, 160 active-duty military personnel killed themselves, compared to 140 in 2008 and 77 in 2003.

• 
  

  
  
  BEING ALL THAT YOU CAN BE?
  Carl F. Worden
  May 2, 2010

  
  I'm pretty sure Adam Wehinger was the son of my most favorite Chiropractor, Ralph Wehinger, who died a few years ago from a brain tumor. Dr. Ralph told me his son was a Marine and had re-enlisted in the Army to serve in Iraq, but that is all I knew of Adam.
  
  On today's Medford Mail Tribune (5/2/10) front page it was reported that Adam Wehinger was shot dead by Jackson County Sheriff Deputies. The article, written by Mail Tribune reporter Chris Conrad, reported that Wehinger had come back from his military service pretty messed-up with PTSD and alcohol abuse. In a previous incident, it was reported that Wehinger held a gun to his own throat and begged the cops to kill him, but was eventually subdued. In this case, it was reported that Wehinger was involved in a domestic dispute and threatened the deputies with his gun when they shot him dead. What was not reported was the names of the deputies and how many times Wehinger had been shot.
  
  Oregon law requires a different law enforcement agency to investigate shootings by law enforcement officers employed by another law enforcement agency, but here in Southern Oregon that law means nothing. These local cops of all stripes all stick together, and you can't trust the reporting of the Mail Tribune either. Reporter Chris Conrad is about as credible a reporter as the cops themselves would be had they written the story themselves. If no eye witnesses other than the cops themselves were present when Wehinger was shot, who knows what really transpired?
  
  Just to illustrate how crooked and corrupt these local cops are, I decided to test the waters by providing a Medford City Police detective with hard photographic evidence of a murder that occurred in the Medford City jurisdiction. What I didn't tell the detective immediately was where the murder happened: It happened in the Jackson County Jail at the hands of Jackson County Sheriff Deputies, but I decided to save that for last.
  
  That detective (now retired) was gung-ho to go after whoever committed such a cruel and vicious murder until I revealed where it happened, and when I did the guy recoiled like a snake, dropping the photos on the table as if they'd suddenly become red-hot. He was visibly angry, knowing I'd set him up, but he stuck to the cover-up like a good little dirty cop. He told me he couldn't just go over to the Sheriff's Jail and begin an investigation, as if it were some kind of "law". In Southern Oregon it is the "unwritten" law, whether state sanctioned or not, and with that I left the Medford Police Department with my evidence knowing for certain, once and for all time, that they are corrupt, cannot be trusted and will cover up a crime for fellow law enforcement officers if at all possible. That's the kind of scum we have "protecting" us here.
  
  What I do know is that there is no statute of limitations for murder and that the murder occurred in the City of Medford. The evidence included a signed affidavit from an inmate who knew the victim, Jeffery Stuart Anderson. Eye witness Doty's affidavit states that deputies had taken Anderson out of the general population for medical watch, and it was the last time Anderson was seen alive.
  
  Anderson came out of the jail with severe bruising all over his body, including his groin area, his head and his back. His wrists and ankles bore the deep-cut marks of being shackled into a restraint chair as he struggled during the beating. Anderson's feet and hands were stomped swollen and purple, and he had the tell-tale marks on either side of his Adam's apple indicating "somebody" had used just two fingers to strangle him, not fatally, but clearly hard enough to leave clear, deep bruises. Anderson had taken so many blows to his head that an inter-cranial blood vessel hemorrhaged and he died a few days after being taken to the hospital.
  
  Forget all the reports of torture and abuse inflicted on Iraqis suspected of terrorism in Iraq: What the deputy or deputies did to Anderson was nothing short of a prolonged and horrific beating, and it killed him. One can only speculate how long the beating took, yet when questioned by the FBI, the deputies on duty when Anderson suffered his injuries all claimed to be deaf, dumb and blind. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything and nobody knew anything. They claimed Anderson inflicted the injuries on himself. On medical watch? I don't think so.
  
  So naturally, I have doubts about what really happened when Wehinger was killed. If it was suicide-by-cop, okay, but they could have used bean-bag guns to subdue Wehinger, with lethal force as a back-up if necessary. I wasn't there, so I can't possibly play Monday-morning quarterback, but I do have a solid, historical knowledge of what these local cops will do if they think they can get away with it, and that's too bad. People living in any community anywhere should have an abiding trust in their law enforcers, but because of all the shady and crooked cover-ups that these local cops have engaged in over the 20 years I've lived here, that trust has been repeatedly and irrevocably violated.
  
  Joining the U.S. military is a fool's choice nowadays, and I'm sick of all the lies like, "They are fighting for our freedoms". If you are in the military or thinking of joining, that's your choice, but don't buy into fat lies like that, and don't expect me to. You are joining for the "adventure" of killing other human beings, the travel, or you are joining with the hopes you'll get training and experience to get a decent civilian job after an honorable discharge, but you are NOT joining the U.S. military to fight for our freedoms. Nobody in the United States military has fought for American freedoms since the end of World War II, so if you join the U.S. military, you will be used as an expendable pawn to further U.S. Government political ideology throughout the world, and you can also expect to be treated poorly if you come back with a face burned off and/or missing a few limbs. If you come back like Wehinger, psychologically screwed up by all the death and general mayhem you saw while on duty in a war zone, you can reasonably expect to end up like Wehinger, either by your own hand or by the helpful police officers who respond to your last hurrah.
  
  Oh, you'll get a parade, alright. Our local National Guard troops just returned to a wonderful reception, but when you get home and all the glitter and thanks have faded into memory, you'll be facing an uphill battle. Soldiers returning with severe physical injuries will be greeted warmly, but if you are married, the divorce rate that awaits you can't be argued with. If you are mentally affected by your war duties, divorce is just about guaranteed, and once you are used up and not needed anymore, you'll find the "care" provided by the Veteran's Administration to be far less than what you expected.
  
  So if you are thinking of joining the U.S. military, try to remember what happened to Adam Wehinger and all the others.
  
  Carl F. Worden