September 29, 2010 my client checked her First Mid-Illinois checking account on line and discovered fraudulent charges against the account initiated by BSS*WEBGRANTACCESS 866-978-9383 CY using her debit card and PIN numbers. My client has never used her debit card online. She uses it only to make small purchases from local vendors and restaurants. The first charge was made on September 27 in the amount of 4 cents, obviously to test the scam. That was followed by another charge made that day and two more the following day. The amount was relatively minor, $61.37. She telephoned the number shown on her account, 866-978-9383 which was answered by a woman speaking English with a foreign accent who told her that she would only refund $40.00 of the charges. My Client had never had any previous contact with the fraudulent Internet company. She immediately reported the fraud to the bank’s office in Monticello, Illinois and was required to cancel her existing debit card and obtain a replacement at a cost to her of $10.00
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For the Tea Party there is no such thing as a moderate Republican; no such thing as a loyal opposition; no such thing as compromise. Incumbent Republicans who cast votes of conscience are regarded as Republicans in name only to be summarily excluded from the Party of No and their voices stilled. The Tea Party marches to the beat of a different drummer and those who can’t keep the cadence are banished to the wayside. There is simply no room for individual opinions that point out the contradictions in its shoddily woven platform of slogans that boil down to a resounding “NO!” It is a movement devoted to destruction; to ending, not beginning.
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They call it STUXNET. It is a computer worm, quite sophisticated and apparently aimed at automated control of industrial processes. It is said to intercept commands and switch the effect to the opposite of those intended by the controlling program. For example, a control system might detect a dangerous condition in a nuclear power plant and send a command to increase the flow of cooling water. STUXNETwould intercept the command and order the cooling water pump to shut down. It is, security experts say, the first detected cyber weapon designed to impact and destroy real world systems.
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"I dabbled into witchcraft -- I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do, One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that. We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar."
That is what Tea Party Darling Christine O’Donnell had to say in an October 29, 1999 taping of the Bill Maher show Politically Incorrect. It is 11 years later and Ms. O’Donnell is the Republican nominee to fill the Senate Seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden. Now 41 she was 30 when she made the remarks describing her experiences dabbling with witchcraft; experiences she now says dated back to her high school years.
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In 1789 Benjamin Franklin wrote to Jean-Baptiste Leroy saying, "'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." He borrowed and paraphrased the epigram from Daniel Defoe’s A Political History of the Devil published in 1726. Death is an inevitability of life and, so long as human society has been organized into communities, taxation has been an inevitability of human existence in order to finance the community’s common services and improvements.
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