THE GOVERNMENT(S) HAVE
SECRET TRILLIONS STASHED!
WHAT the AVERAGE CITIZEN CAN DO TO GET
THAT MONEY FLOWING FOR THE PEOPLE!!
CHURN THE CREAM BACK INTO THE MILK!
Geoff Metcalf
interviews Walter Burien on hidden public money
WorldNetDaily.com
Are local and state governments strapped with
severe budgetary constraints? Far from it, WorldNetDaily columnist Geoff
Metcalf recently interviewed researcher W. Burien (cafr1@aol.com ) about his work in educating the taxpaying public.
BURIEN: I was a commodities broker on Wall Street for 15
years. I was one of the first tenants in the World Trade Center. I did an
international newsline coast to coast on commodities. I thought I knew what was
going on; I thought I was one of those sharp little crackers. I always thought government
was maybe hiding 5 to 10 percent maximum of the revenue and not
reporting it to the public. There was a governor who got elected named Jim
Florio in New Jersey back in 1990 on a new tax platform. As soon as he got into
office, there was a $2.8 billion tax increase -- the largest in the state's
history. The public was not too happy, and a couple of DJs, John and Ken out in
Los Angeles, they started doing some rabble-rousing and taking calls from listeners
on examples of waste and misspending in government. I heard small figures --
$15,000, $25,000. The highest figure I heard was $85,000.
Q: Chump change.
A: Right. Being a commodity-trading adviser, I
pulled out the Budget Report, which was the only thing I was aware of at the
time. They had $11 billion on-budget, $6 billion off-budget, so the total service budget
was $17 billion for the year. Net available: $25.6 billion. So I called into
the radio show and said, "Come on guys; you're missing the whole point.
The state is dealing with billions of dollars. The highest figure I heard was
$85,000." I said if there is fraud, waste and misspending taking place,
it's taking place on the order of tens of billions if not hundreds of billions. The DJs challenged us to start
an organization. So, the next day, I got together with nine other people and
incorporated a group called "Hands Across New Jersey." We
rabble-roused and, when we had our first rally, 115,000 people converged on
Trenton and shut the Capitol down. I decided to start looking at the budget
revenue and finance so if I were approached with questions, I'd know what I was
talking about.
Q: So where did you look?
A: When I looked at the budget, which was all I
knew about, I noticed large, cash-cow investment agencies of state government
were not on the report, the New Jersey Turnpike, the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey -- no large returns from investment funds. Now they
gave mention of the different agencies on the report but not the revenue.
Q: Don't state treasurers have to report this stuff when
they are investing on Wall Street?
A: Here's where it broke down. I knew the
director of the budget was on vacation until the following Tuesday of the next
week. I called his office and found out who his two lower assistants were. I
said, "Hi. This is Walter Burien. I'm
working on a report for Richard (the boss) and I have to have it done by
Tuesday when he gets back from vacation. I need all the figures on all the
autonomous agency accounts and trust accounts and investment accounts."
And he said, "Oh, you want the Comprehensive Annual Financial
Report." I said, "Could I have a copy?" He said I'd better ask
Mark (the next one down the line from the budget director).
Q: Notwithstanding your 15 years on Wall Street, you
had never heard of this animal before?
A: First time. But I played the cards as they were
dealt. I knew it was the most important thing I needed to get my hands on. So, I called Mark and said, "Hi Mark, this is Walter Burien. I
just got off the phone with Jim. I'm working on a report for Richard and I have
to have it done by Tuesday. I need a copy of the Comprehensive Annual Financial
Report." He said, "Oh, where do you want it sent to?" I gave him
my office address. UNBELIEVABLE though it may be I got it that Friday and
started crunching numbers. Here's a state with a declared service budget of $17
billion showing a net available on their budget report of $24 billion. The
year's totals investments held on the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report:
$188 billion.
Q: $188 billion!?
A: Correct. Investment funds, assets and so forth. The
income I started looking for was total cash gross receipts -- the number one
item the IRS asks you for in an audit.
Q: Would this be interest on investments?
A: Total income. Whether it be cash collected by state
agencies, federal grants, the whole nine yards -- total income. I found it on
page 174 of the 1989 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report under cash
additions. Here's a state with a declared service budget of $17 billion that
was bringing in, "in cash," $86,799,000,000. I learned the definition of
syndicated organized crime on the spot and the principle of operation. Anything
that was a cost and an expense, an outright cost on a budgetary basis, the
public footed 100 percent of the bill for 100 percent of the services. Anything
that was a substantial profit center was totally restricted by statute from
inclusion whatsoever with the budgetary basis.
Q: This is above and beyond the off-budget stuff?
A: Whenever you hear the word "off-budget,"
that is something that is inclusive in the budget. When you look at the
Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, you will see complete separate areas
totally restricted by statute for inclusion with the budgetary basis. A lot of
people would refer to it as "two sets of books," although it's not
exactly two sets of books. The budget report is in one book, and the
Consolidated Annual Financial Report is THE book, the showing of the complete
pizza pie.
Q: There are two things I want us to make real clear.
You conducted your investigation in New Jersey. But this is not unique to New
Jersey.
A: I'm going back 10 years. When I found out about New
Jersey, especially when I found out they had approximately $80 billion in
common-stock ownership, as a commodity trading adviser ...
Q: You wanted them as a client?
A: That was actually true to a certain extent. But I
was mad more than I was greedy. I said, "How could I have not heard of
this?" Here's New Jersey holding $80 billion in common stock. I was a
commodity-trading adviser. I dealt with a lot of the CEOs of some of the major
investment firms and I never heard it mentioned -- in any circles. I found out
when I called the mailroom of the Department of Treasury for New Jersey. It was
sent out to every editor of every paper up and down the East Coast. It was sent
to the directors and CEOs of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. And now I'm getting mad. I
was seeing a cooperative effort at non-disclosure and it wasn't as if it was
just created that year and the word hadn't gotten around.
Q: This Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, is it
just a stack of numbers or is it something that has an executive summary and
can actually be read and understood?
A: The CAFR is set up to be a simple, quick evaluation
book to show: total income, total assets, total investments, total net worth.
What's been going on in this country for the last 65 years is government will
always focus the public's attention -- intentionally so -- on the budgetary
basis of the budget report. And the only thing the budget report is, is their
annual operating expenses.
Q: Give me an example.
A: Say it cost us $30,000 a year to maintain our house.
Say our salary or income was $100,000 a year and we had a million dollars in
investments, and say our total net worth was $3 million. What if we talked
about our $30,000 budget as being our net worth? It would be ludicrous.
Q: So this is an intentional scam?
A: You've had a shell game played on the public where
governments are constantly talking their budget, their budget, and their
budget. They just happen to leave out the decades and
decades and decades of investment wealth that has been building up, the decades
and decades and decades of enterprise and venture projects they have created
separate from the budgetary basis.
Q: Just how ubiquitous are these Comprehensive Annual
Financial Reports?
A: The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report was
created by a group called Government Financial Officers Association in 1946. It
was a program created to standardize accounting in all local governments so the
federal government could easily see what the true picture was. In 1981, the
federal government mandated that all local governments prepare a CAFR or, in
the alternative, a combined financial statement. To qualify this, there are
over 54,000 separate corporations within local government.
Q: What kind of corporations are you talking about?
A: A city is a corporation; a state is a corporation; a
school district is a corporation. Each is filing their own separate report,
each with their own investments. I've had a lot of people looking at their
state reports. They see the tens of billions of dollars they never knew existed
-- and they are floored. Then I bring to their attention: "You're just
looking at the state report."
Q: Give us an example.
A: I'll use the state of Washington as an
example. It lists $64 billion in liquid investment funds. Now the state of Washington
has 2,300 separate local government corporations filing their own separate
reports: cities, counties, school districts, and authorities. You have 2,300
other reports.
Q: And still no one does anything about this?
A: Recently, a person was running for city council in
Corona, Calif., with a center city population of about 10,000. He saw the video
I put out called "The Biggest Game in Town." This individual is an
attorney. He'd been pressing the county on different issues concerning financial
fraud. He saw the video and said, "Nah, this can't be." But he saw it
on the weekend and it motivated him to check. He discovered the city had a
Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. He got a copy of it. He didn't see any
large numbers in the combined financial columns, but he observed in the notes
of the report that it directed you to four other areas outside the report. The
first area he looked into, he found $144 million in U.S. Treasury Bonds sitting
there. Now divide that by a population of 10,000. That's $14,000 for every man,
woman and child. (NOTE: imagine the classrooms, after school programs have been
implemented, books purchased. Imagine our city with roads fixed, libraries
funded, ghettos gentrified, public housing provided, Free Clinics implemented, Senior
feeding programs, special education provided for mentally marginal, or
impoverished, soup kitchens for homeless, cheese giveaways, adult high school
scholarships, etc. all not getting funded NOW that would be appearing in your
life!).
Q: How do they report the income?
A: On the CAFR. That's why it's noted to refer to
other reports for an accounting.
Q: So there is no way this money gets applied to
the general fund for expenses?
A: When you look at the general-purpose funds,
they have very stringent rules on managing taxpayer dollars. For example, you
can only invest in Treasury bills, triple rated bonds, 4.5, 5 percent max. The
game has been over the past 25 years in whatever way, shape or form, to shift
revenue outside of the general-purpose operating fund. Whether it be through a
local-government investment pool, bond refinancing accounts, insurance company
equity participation -- anything that will be outside the general-purpose
operating fund, which is very restrictive. ( NOTE: meaning that if hue and cry raised by PTA's in every school,
creates an amendment to city codes, with a vote, then that huge cash is avail.
for public welfare!)
Q: Two questions I've always wanted to ask you
and never gotten around to: 1) Is there anyone providing oversight for all
these things, and 2) if there is, do they get a piece of the action?
A: I get a lot of phone calls, and folks ask,
"Where's all the money sitting? What account is it in? And who's managing
it?" I would say, this is the principle of operation. There are over
54,000 separate corporations. The public left the vault door open. I give the
example: If you had 12 and 13-year-old boys and you gave them carte blanche to
let them write their own allowance check every week, and you make $1,200 a
week, within no time, they would be cutting a check for $1,000 a week. If you
told them you were going to cut them back to $800 a week, they would scream,
holler, kick and use any logic available to them to justify how 12 and a
13-year-old boys could not survive on just $800 per week. There's no difference
here -- you just have bigger boys and sharper players. People mention
conspiracies and so forth. I say there is no conspiracy here. You just have the
vault door wide open. The public allowed it. The bank left the doors open over
the weekend with cash lying on the counter and no one guarding it.
Q: So who is the primary beneficiary of this vast
wealth?
A: No one. No person. Only the investment
revenue, itself. There is $60 trillion in investment revenue. You have tens of
thousands of little empires being built all over the country, people
controlling those monies that are invested. You know when you go to the bank
and you get a mortgage on your house, you think you are borrowing
private funds. When I look at the [government] revenue flows, I see hundreds of
billions in different pension funds, investment funds, invested with the local
banks under their mortgage division. The banks are acting as the "in
between" agent getting a half a point or two-thirds of a point for cutting
the loan.
Q: Walter, there is a mountain of information you
have that we won't have time to get to. So please let our readers know how they
can find more information on this chilling topic.
A: The e-mail address is cafr1@aol.com and if anyone wants to send or
show a VIDEO of all this to a reporter, PTA president, friend, or have a
showing of it, I'd gladly send anyone a copy of the video "The Biggest
Game in Town," just put in the subject line "requesting video"
and I'll send back an order form for the video. I also include various links
for getting assorted information. It behooves the people to legislate to get
this money back into flow. Invested in the children, the future, we will have a
happier, more productive society. There's so much that people need to have a
good life. College, food giveaways, coupons for vitamin pills maybe, or what
would be wrong with food coupons for everyone except the upper middle class?
Right now, the amt. Of starvation, poverty, addiction to CIA distributed drugs
or other uppers for the nutritionally marginal, and all the birth defects going
on in the first country in the world is astonishing. How much worse off than US
are poorer economies? So this new 'churn the cream' gambit would be a model for
all societies. As always, the US will go first with its city, state
governments, Then maybe with the Federal gov!
AUTHOR's note: "I have interviewed Burien a few times
over the past two or three years. His information is remarkable. The CAFR has
been around for over half a century and, despite the vast money involved, this
story has remained virtually ignored by the mainstream. Sarah Foster of
WorldNetDaily wrote about this shortly after I first put Walter on the air in
San Francisco.
Read the stories at these URLS (below). Click on them
right now, save to cache as html, (NOT TEXT), print it out for your PTA or
civic group, all your hotshot local reporters, congressman, city councilman.
Better yet, SEND it to their email, so they can visit the URLS BELOW and pass
it on to publishers, congressmen, councilmen in your city, voter activist
groups, whom THEY may know. Right here at sightings.com you will find a list of
media emails that beats all!
THE GOVERNMENT'S SECRET SLUSH FUNDS and Secret GOV Scams! http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/19990615_xex_secret_slush.shtml
Go to TalkNetDaily : http://www.wnd.com/talknetdaily/
And go to: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_metcalf_news/20000806_xngme_the_govern.shtml
CAFR link Pages: http://www.financenet.gov/state/cafr.htm
http://www.financenet.gov/state/reports.htm and http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/gasb/rlinks/index.html
and http://www.fms.treas.gov/cfs/index.html
and a good '101' learning site http://www.cafrman.com
THEN, loaded for bear, find ALL THE ACE REPORTERS
at your daily paper, get their email by phoning them, then forward this
to their email. You must SAVE IT first, as an html file (extension) so that the
live links inside it will stay ALIVE. Write down directory where you set it,
and the path as C:\mydocuments\cafr.html Better yet, capture the URL in the top
window of browser, do 'edit, cut, paste' into a new email and email it to the
reporter. For files (free) on how to be an effective, political activist, write
astrology@earthlink.net signed,
Anita the Activist who submitted this to SIGHTINGS.
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