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Dear friends,

Below
are one-paragraph excerpts of important news articles you may have missed.
These news articles include revealing information showing that "money
can't buy happiness," the U.S. income tax was only started in 1913,
anti-terror dolphins in use, and more. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from
the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to
function, click
here. Key sentences are highlighted for those with limited
time. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread
the word, we can and will build a brighter
future.

With
best wishes,
Fred
Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team

Former language
interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton


Money really can't buy happiness, study
finds

April 17, 2007, Chicago
Tribune


http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0704160387apr17,0,6484345.story

Highly-paid
professionals like doctors and lawyers didn't make the cut when
researchers set out to find the most satisfied workers. Clergy ranked tops
in both job satisfaction and general happiness, according to the National
Opinion Research Center [NORC] at the University of Chicago. Physical
therapists and firefighters were second- and third-ranked in job
satisfaction, with more than three-quarters reporting being "very
satisfied." Other occupations in which more than 60 percent said they were
very satisfied included teachers, painters and sculptors, psychologists and
authors. "The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions,
especially those involving caring for, teaching and protecting others and
creative pursuits," said Tom W. Smith, director of NORC's General
Social Survey. Intrinsic rewards are key, the study suggests. "They're
doing work they're very proud of, helping people," Smith said. Clergy
ranked by far the most satisfied and the most generally happy of 198
occupations. Eighty-seven percent of clergy said they were "very
satisfied" with their work, compared with an average 47 percent for all
workers. Others in helping professions describe their work as a calling.
"I believe I was probably put on this earth to make someone's life a
little easier," said Gina Kolk, [a] physical therapist. "I get rewarded
every day by what I do." Occupations with the least satisfied and happy
workers tended to be low-skill manual and service jobs. Roofers, waiters
and laborers ranked at the bottom ... with as few as one in five reporting
they were very satisfied. Bartenders, known for listening to other people's
troubles, apparently need sympathetic ears: Only 26 percent said they were
very satisfied.


Income tax is an old American story that just
grows more taxing

April 15, 2007, San Francisco
Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/15/INGO8P5G3B1.DTL

Millions
of us are engaging in one of life's least-enjoyable activities. We're
doing our taxes. We can thank the 16th Amendment for all this
unpleasantness. Much maligned, much misunderstood, this amendment,
ratified in February 1913, permits Congress to "lay and collect taxes on
incomes from whatever source derived." Proposed by a Republican
president, William Howard Taft, but commonly blamed on -- or credited to
-- his Democratic successor, Woodrow Wilson, it was promptly denounced by
unhappy members of both parties. Only in 1862 did Congress, facing Civil
War expenses, impose a federal income tax. There were two marvelous things
about this Civil War income tax. One was that you declared your own income.
The second was that it was abolished after 10 years. The main reason this
Civil War income tax disappeared was not that the government felt it no
longer needed the money (alas, this is never true). The tax was lifted
because wealthy Northeast manufacturers, the war's major taxpayers,
possessed the congressional clout to replace income taxes with protective
tariffs that shielded their manufactured goods. In 1894, [a] new income
tax became law, only to be declared unconstitutional one year later. When
the 16th Amendment was first put into practice, it would indeed be the
"rich man's tax," both sides predicted. With generous deductions and a
$3,000 exemption (about $55,000 today), most people didn't feel a thing.
Best of all, the instructions were only one page long. Soon, of course,
all this changed, in ways that nobody, pro-tax or con, could have
foreseen.

Note:
Many are unaware that the U.S. functioned without income tax for much of
its history. The public never would have supported the 16th Amendment in
1913 if they thought it would tax the common worker. Were we duped? The
16th Amendment coincidentally was passed in the same year that the
Federal Reserve (which took over the printing of U.S. money) was
established. Few know that the Federal Reserve is neither truly federal or
a full reserve. For more on this very well hidden fact and other cover-ups
around banking, click here.



Voter turnout limits said to be White House
goal

April 19, 2007, Miami Herald
(Miami's leading newspaper)


http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/79393.html

For six
years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political
appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter
turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political
candidates, according to former department lawyers and public records and
documents. Facing nationwide voter registration drives by
Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election
fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter
identification laws. The administration ... has repeatedly invoked
allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures
and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research
suggests that voter fraud is rare. Since President Bush's first
attorney general, John Ashcroft ... launched a ''Ballot Access and Voter
Integrity Initiative'' in 2001, Justice Department political appointees
have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the
department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to
protect minority voting rights. Several of [the eight fired U.S.
attorneys] were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud
cases important to Republican politicians. Virtually every significant
decision affecting election balloting since 2001 ... has come down on the
side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio,
Washington ... where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.
In the last six years, the number of voters registered at state government
agencies that provide services to the poor and disabled has been cut in
half, to one million.

Note:
Doublespeak, like
the "Ballot Access" initiative, is often used to disguise the
fact that the effect of the initiative is the opposite of what the title
suggests. Think about the results of the "War on Terror" and
"War on Drugs." The amount of terror and drug use has expanded
dramatically since these were initiated. Could this be a purposeful
maneuver? For more, click here.


Trust Busters

April 15, 2007, Los Angeles
Times


http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-neil15apr15,1,4345274.story

[ABC's
talk show] "The View," by accident or design, has an almost eerie
calibration to the public at large. For example, only one of the four
co-hosts ... is a supporter of President Bush. In other words, 25% of the
cast has a favorable opinion of Bush, pretty much in line with Bush's
approval ratings nationally. Likewise, last year a Scripps Howard poll
found that 36% of the U.S. public believes the government was somehow
complicit in the 9/11 attacks. I estimate Rosie [O'Donnell] constitutes
36% of the cast. Why does pop culture matter? Because it reveals ... what
is really on our minds. And what's on our minds lately is reasonable
doubt. Actor Charlie Sheen [is] onboard to narrate a new version of the
online 9/11 conspiracy documentary "Loose
Change," with distribution by billionaire Mark Cuban's Magnolia
Pictures. We're not talking about a couple of flaky moonbats in an Oakland
basement. Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks. And just about everywhere you
look, official narratives are coming unglued: Pat Tillman, for example, or
the firing of eight federal prosecutors. The abduction of British sailors
in what Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed was indisputably Iraqi
territorial waters has proved to be quite disputable. [An] ex-British
ambassador claims the map used by the Ministry of Defence to support its
case is a fake. I am not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. At the same time,
I'm certain we don't know all there is to know about those events.
The data stream has been so thoroughly corrupted. Weapons of mass
destruction. Abu Ghraib. The silencing of climate scientists. It's hard
for the ministries of Washington to make an appeal to authority when they
have been proven so unreliable.

Note:
For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information suggesting a
9/11 cover-up, click
here.

Web entrepreneurs have an eye on social need --
not personal greed

April 15, 2007, San Francisco
Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/15/BUG5SP63BR85.DTL

Ryan
Mickle's life was the stuff young bourgeois dreams are made of. Then a
year ago ... Mickle began to take stock of his life. He was earning a lot
of money but was giving very little of himself. So Mickle ditched his
high-paying job to brainstorm a new venture with friend Rod Ebrahimi. The
result was Dotherightthing.com, a San
Francisco startup that allows users to rank companies based on their
social impact on the world. Their site [allows] consumers to influence
corporate behavior. The sentiment is summed up in
Dotherightthing.com's T-shirt slogan: "It's cool to care."
Mickle, 26, and Ebrahimi, 25, are among a growing number of entrepreneurs
betting they can build ventures that deliver both financial and social
returns. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar has dedicated much of his fortune to
helping for-profits and nonprofits alike discover their power to do good.
At www.freepledge.com, shoppers buy
the same products from the same merchants for the same price, but a
percentage is donated to the nonprofit of their choice. Darian Hickman,
28, is designing an online strategy game that turns the players into
entrepreneurs who help bring prosperity to impoverished villages in
underdeveloped countries. [He was] inspired by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel
prize-winning micro-finance pioneer. Premal Shah [is a] former PayPal
executive who is president of online micro-lender Kiva.org. Brian Johnson, 32 ... said he
felt uncomfortable with capitalism until he hit on the concept of "using
economics as a force for good. How do we live our spiritual ideals and
make money?" Now Johnson tries to have it both ways with Zaadz.com, which he describes as MySpace
for people who want to change the world.

Note:
We encourage you to take some time to explore some of these exciting new
adventures which are transforming the face of business and building a
brighter future for us all. For more on micro-finance, micro-lending, and
how you can help end poverty without donating a penny, click here. And
for the profile of website founder Fred Burks on Zaadz.com, click here.


Navy Shows Off Anti-Terror
Dolphins

April 13, 2007, CBS News/Associated
Press


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/13/ap/national/main2681024.shtml

About 75
dolphins and 25 sea lions are housed at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego
Harbor as part of a Navy program to teach them to detect terrorists and
mines underwater. The base briefly opened its doors to the media Thursday
for the first time since the start of the war in Iraq. The display came a
few weeks after the Navy announced plans to send up to 30 dolphins and sea
lions to patrol the waters of Washington state's Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor,
which is home to nuclear submarines, ships and laboratories. Both species
can find mines and spot swimmers in murky waters. Working in unison, the
dolphins can drop a flashing light near a mine or a swimmer. The sea lions
carry in their mouths a cable and a handcuff-like device that clamps onto a
terrorist's leg. Sailors can then use the cable to reel in the terrorist.
The Navy's sea mammal program started in the late 1950s and grew
to comprise 140 animals during the Cold War.

Note:
Yet the navy's sophisticated new sonar systems are killing dolphins and
whales around the globe. For more on this, click
here. And what if the dolphins and sea lions go on strike for better
wages? ;o)