Walter
Burien Jr. worked as a Wall Street Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) for
fifteen years, but now resides in Arizona. According to Mr. Burien,
every state, county and major metropolitan city is
keeping two sets of books. One set, the Budget, is commonly available and
tracks each governmental entity's costs and tax revenue. The Budget is the
financial record that's seen by the public and used by politicians to
justify new governmental services and higher taxes.
However,
there is a second set of books, called the Comprehensive Annual Financial
Report, or CAFR, which is virtually unknown to the public but contains the
real record of total governmental income.
According to Mr. Burien, although the Budget gives an accurate account of
government costs, only the CAFR gives an accurate account of government's
income.
For
example, while a particular state budget might report receiving $20 billion
in taxes (just barely enough to sustain its $20 billion in costs) - the CAFR
might reveal the state's real income is in the neighborhood of $60 billion -
three times as much as reported on the budget. If these allegations are
accurate, the particular state could stop charging all the taxes we are
familiar with and, not only survive but, either double the amount of
reported government services or give every citizen a huge tax rebate.
The
implications are mind-boggling. The CAFRs reveal that the world is so
different from what we are led to believe, so much more corrupt than
suspected, that we are left with three choices, either; 1) government agrees
to end the deception and stop overtaxing us, or 2) the American people agree
to accept their status as slaves, or 3) both sides refuse to agree and
precipitate a shooting revolution. The issue is that big.
Are Mr.
Burien's allegations correct? How could any
governmental entity dare to routinely overcharge its citizens by 200%,
underreport its income by 2/3rds, and knowingly press for higher taxes based
on an inaccurate budget? Worse, how could such a fraudulent system become
widespread among all states, counties, cities and the Federal Government?
Those
who have made efforts to verify Burien's research indicate that the
conclusions drawn by Burien are probably correct.
For instance: The State of Alaska and the city of Anchorage both use Budget/CAFR
accounting systems that conceal a breathtaking difference in reported
revenue. Another researcher in Wyoming claims that a comparison of his
state's budget and CAFR also support Mr. Burien's arguments. In every case,
there are two sets of books and the income reported on the budget is
millions or billions of dollars less than is reported on the CAFR.
These verifications of Burien's research and findings lend
credence to his allegations.
What
follows is an amalgam of statements or implications raised by Mr. Burien in
various interviews.
Mr. Burien
reports first discovering the CAFR report in New Jersey in 1989, when
he helped start and incorporated a New Jersey tax protest group called
"Hands across New Jersey." While involved with that group, Mr. Burien read
in the state's Annual Budget that the total cost of all public services was
$17 billion and the "net available" (the money on hand to pay all bills) was
$24.6 billion. But then he asked the first question the IRS asks in any
audit: "What are the gross receipts?" He added the
figures from various state government sources and came up with about $44
billion and began to wonder how the state could have $17 billion in costs,
$24.6 billion in cash on hand, and $44 billion annual income? The numbers
didn't add up, so he began to dig deeper.
Because his
father had been Personnel Manager for the State Treasury for four years, Mr.
Burien understood how to get around in the various government departments.
The state Director of the Budget was on vacation, so Mr. Burien called one
of his lowest level assistants and said, "I m working on a report for
Richard [the vacationing Budget Director] and I need all the figures on
the autonomous agency accounts, interest accounts, investment accounts." The
assistant said, "Ohh, you want the CAFR." This was the first time Burien had
heard of the CAFR but he said, "Yes" and the assistant mailed it to him.
The 1989
CAFR showed that New Jersey had liquid investment funds (cash) of $188
billion of which; common stocks worth $70 billion, $10 billion in loans made
by the state due from public and private corporations, and $14 billion in
insurance company equity participation. The little state of New Jersey,
which admitted to less than $25 billion in annual income on its budget,
reported $188 billion in cash, stocks, loans and equity participation on its
CAFR. According to Mr. Burien, "On that day, I
learned the definition of syndicated organized crime." Keep in mind that
most of the revenue and investments from the 21 counties, hundreds of
cities, municipalities, school districts, state financial authorities,
pension funds, and 69 enterprise authorities, all of which put out their own
CAFR or Combined Financial Statement are not inclusive with the state's
revenue and investments. Totals here when looking at composite New Jersey
government figures are well in excess of 1.8 Trillion dollars. Divide
that figure by the population of New Jersey to see the per capita share of
the wealth.
So why are
the taxes in New Jersey some of the highest in the country? The answered is;
Power corrupts, absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Mr. Burien keeps
emphasizing to the public that they, the public, left the VAULT door open,
and those sharp little crackers said thank you very much. The problem is
that most (95%) of the public responds with, Vault, what vault. With this
well entrenched attitude of naivety by the public in place, those sharp
little crackers now have even stopped saying thank you very much as they
plunder the wealth in their unabated efforts towards the building of their
own empires within the corporate structure of Composite Government.
The scam worked something like this: Anything that was a cost
or expense for public services (the traditional side of the Annual Service
Budget, such as the Department of Transportation, health and welfare, etc.)
was reported on the Budget where public taxes primarily paid 100% of the
bill for those services. That was $17 billion.
However, any governmental agency that was a profit center
(the Port Authority for New Jersey, the New Jersey Turnpike, and investment
accounts, etc.) that generated no tax revenue was "restricted by statute
from being reported in and benefiting the Annual Budget. Why? Because the
state legislature passed laws to prevent reporting the income from
investment or venture profit centers on the Budget. Instead, income from
these profit centers was disclosed only on the CAFR or other financial
reports referenced in the notes of the CAFR.
But that
disclosure was not immediately apparent. For example, when Mr. Burien looked
for New Jersey's 1989 "gross cash receipts" in the CAFR, he found the figure
buried on page 174, under the "Waste Water Treatment Trust Fund." It showed
the amount of the total cash receipts (Cash Additions) for 1989 from all
state agencies, departments and sources was $86.799 billion. In other words,
New Jersey State Government from all sources was
grossing $87 billion to provide $17 billion in public services as seen in
the openly represented Annual Service Budget. New Jersey citizens were
paying $5 for every $1 in services they received, and the state was
pocketing the other $4 as "profit."
When
breaking down the true revenue income, the most important revelation was
that only one third of the states income came from taxes, fines and fees.
Two thirds of state government’s income came from Other Sources with no
direct tie to the publicly known budget. When looking at the openly
disclosed Budget, which each year continued to grow at a runaway pace, here
ever expanding taxation primarily covered the expenses.
The CAFR
also reported the state owned $32 billion in common stocks - but this figure
was footnoted. The footnote revealed that the stocks were valued according
to their original purchase price, not the current market value.
In other words, if the state bought a stock in 1968 at $1.25
a share and it's worth $300 a share now, they still report it on the CAFR as
worth $1.25 a share. Burien determined that the
true market value for the "$32 billion" in stocks reported on the New Jersey
CAFR was actually about $70 billion.
But Mr.
Burien goes further - he claims that the dual system of books is not
unique to New Jersey, but also common among the over 54,000 local government
corporate entities operating within all fifty states. Moreover, he claims
the dual accounting system used ten years ago in New Jersey was created in
1946 through an organization by the name of GFOA (Government Financial
Officers Association) and is the primary local government accounting
structure being used today.
For
example, "In 1987 Arizona's annual service budget reported $2.8 billion in
revenues but the state's 1987 CAFR reported total cash receipts of $3.1
billion, a mere $300 million difference."
"However,
in 1997, Arizona reported an Annual Service Budget of $5.5 billion while the
State's CAFR (printed by the Auditor General's Office) showed total gross
cash receipts of $17 billion. That's a difference of over $11 billion. In
just ten years, Arizona had caught up to New Jersey in that both states
annual budgets reported less than one third of the actual gross income seen
in the states CAFRs.
"CAFR and
Combined Financial Statement reports indicate that
the composite totals for all government (Federal, state, county and city)
ownership of publicly traded stocks exceeds $32 TRILLION (53% of the total
ownership of all listed stocks from ALL exchanges), $8 TRILLION in
insurance company equity (should we be surprised by high priced mandatory
auto insurance or unaffordable health care?) and $5 TRILLION in Bond Surety
Escrow Accounts for future liability of existing or potential debt.
Governments use Bond Surety Escrow Accounts to evade that pesky little rule
that government should not operate at a "profit."
That is, government should not impose more taxes than it actually uses to
run the government. By designating tax revenue that exceeds operating costs
as “Bond Surety Escrow" for future liability, government avoids calling
excess revenue a "profit" and is thereby enabled to continue to enrich
itself at public expense.
To
illustrate the potential for abusing "future liability payments,” consider
the New Jersey plan in the 1950s to build the New Jersey State Turnpike and
Garden State Parkway Authorities. The state asked voters to approve a $7.5
billion bond to construct the turnpikes. The state explained that these
turnpikes would be operated as toll roads by the bondholders until the $7.5
billion bond was paid off - but the bondholders could not operate the toll
roads at a profit. Once the bonds were repaid, the turnpikes would revert
back into the state s Annual Budget as a normal cost/revenue item. The
public voted yes.
Over the
following years, the state sometimes alleged that the toll revenue from
operating those turnpikes failed to cover their operating expenses, and so
additional bonds were passed to fund the turnpikes. As a result, in 1990,
the total bond liability still owed for the turnpike had grown to $14.5
billion. But guess how much was in the Bond Surety Escrow Accounts? $38
Billion! Enough to repay the original $7.5 billion bonds almost four times!
How could
that happen? Say the toll road made a $400 million profit for the year and
the scheduled payment on the $7.5 billion bond was $100 million. The state
made the $100 million payment but kept the extra $300 million in a Bond
Surety Escrow Account which generated substantial annual dividend returns
for future liability payments. Although they kept the $300 million, they did
not declare it as an asset but wrote it off as a line item payment. In other
years, even though they made a profit, they alleged that they lost money
and therefore floated more billions in bonds. (Guess who pays?)
The bottom line is that New Jersey and other local government
entities are collecting hundreds of billions of virtually unreported dollars
from other operations. The motivating factor is not public welfare, but
control of those billions.
Mr. Burien
not only alleges that the dual accounting system exemplified by CAFR is not
only used by all fifty states, but also by all counties, cities and the
Federal Government itself. If Mr. Burien's allegations are correct, they
comprise the most damning indictment of big government yet seen. In sum, Mr.
Burien implies that our government is in fact a
criminal enterprise bent on oppressing Americans by extorting several times
as much tax revenue as it spends on public services and using the majority
of those extorted revenues to enrich, empower and enlarge government at
public expense.
Mr. Burien
contends that the inner circle of the individuals controlling the top wealth
of this structure, have the attitude toward the public of; Keep the Chipmunk
(the public) running on the treadmill, as through trickle down economics,
just enough revenue is supplied to keep the chipmunk running at optimum
efficiency as the top inner circle controlling parties tap off 80% of the
energy produced by the treadmill. The key words here are Optimum
Efficiency and by the definition of what the public has allowed to happen as
they left the vault door unintentionally open, the true final effect of
forced labor and subservience by unrestrained takeover.
According
to Mr. Burien, although the public is absolutely ignorant concerning CAFR,
the primary cause for that ignorance is not the politicians but the
mainstream media. When Mr. Burien first discovered the CAFR reports in New
Jersey in 1989, he went on radio 101.5 FM in a live 45 minute interview. Two
days later, that radio station was threatened with losing its license and
was almost shut down. CAFR had become another example of - "third rail
journalism" - any reporter or media outlet that touched the issue would be
silenced or driven from journalism. As a result, there's been a total
mainstream media blackout on disclosing CAFR reports. For over twenty five
years the directors and CEOs of the primary syndicated media organizations
both print and broadcast, were sent state CAFR reports each and every year,
as they maintained a blackout towards the simple mentioning of the report.
Mr. Burien
reports the discovery of the fact that New Jersey State Judges are vested in
a personal retirement guarantee of $5,000,000.00, per judge after they serve
as a judge for one year. Federal district court judges did not have a
retirement or pension plan do to the fact that they were appointed for life.
Being appointed for life they received their full paycheck and benefits for
life. Do you need anyone to spell it out for you? Would a New Jersey State
or Federal District Judge allow an attack on the squirreled away $Billions
and jeopardize his entry into $Millionaire$ status? The inner circle gets
the gold!!
Later,
Burien learned that the New Jersey official in charge of discrediting his
CAFR discoveries was a former reporter (Harvey Fisher) who d been appointed
Assistant State Treasurer - even though he had no former financial
background. Burien investigated his background and learned that as a
reporter he made $35,000 a year. But as Assistant State Treasurer he made
$65,000 a year - plus a Carte Blanche expense account of $125,000 !????????
Burien
claims this was not an aberration: "I knew there was a state data search
department under the Department of Treasure Personnel division which tied
all agencies and departments together. I called that department and asked
for a data search on all key level directorships and supervisory positions
for all budgetary or autonomous agencies, and they came up with some 3,400
names from several administrations. Almost 1800 of these Directors were
former editors or reporters! It is a virtual certainty that many of
these appointments were payoffs for the journalist’s previous "cooperation"
in spinning or silencing stories to suit government.
If you
conduct a comparable search in other states, you may find a similar
symbiotic relationship between government, editors, and reporters.
The more money held and generated by an agency, the higher the percentage
will be. If so, the media's "liberal, pro-government bias" may run much
deeper than anyone has imagined, and the military-industrial complex"
described by President Eisenhower in the 1950's may have been replaced by a
“media-bureaucracy-banker complex" in the 1990s.
Therefore,
Mr. Burien recommends that once you analyze your state's Budget and CAFR
reports, you insist that your local news mainstream media (TV, papers,
radio) raise the "Public Awareness" by reporting the difference between the
composite "total of cash receipts from all agencies, departments,
investments, etc." and the "actual total composite revenues held or
controlled." Mr. Burien started with national disclosure of the CAFR and the
structure behind it on June 8th 1998. In 1999, GFOA and GASB (Government
Accounting Standards Board) changed the accounting requirements for local
governments within the Combined Financial Columns of the CAFR from; All
revenue, income and investments being shown, To; All revenue, income and
investments being shown that were necessary to meet obligations and
liabilities of that local government. This change in accounting is
substantial. The good point here for disclosure is that you can look at
a pre 1999 CAFR report, 1997-95-93, etc., and spot large drops in
revenue from post 1999 reports in comparison with pre 1999 CAFR reports.
With this being done, you now know to ask and look for the accounting of
those revenues taken off the balance columns of the CAFR. Read the notes
of the CAFR carefully.
If your
local media refuse to publicize your state's CAFR, they may be cooperating
with a criminal agreement which has effectively silenced public disclosure
of the CAFR reports for over forty years. However,
once Americans know how much money is out there, where it's coming from
and where it's going - the government's and the inner circle's game will be
over.
Any media
that refuses to make immediate mention of the CAFR report should be publicly
and aggressively boycotted. Exposure of the complicity of media is the
jugular vein of the evil and corruption.
A video
produced in December of 1999, by Mr. Burien, entitled: "The Biggest Game In
Town", is available and is set up for airing on your Public Access or local
TV stations. Mr. Burien, in this video introduces a program that could lead
to the final elimination of taxation in this country with a possible
dividend return to the public by and through the restructuring of the
principle of operation of government by public mandate in making the public
the direct beneficiary of the wealth. The information on the video is a must
see for every American.
