I got some serious icicles.

There are dozens icicles, some of them 6 or 7 feet long, hanging off my roof.

Hope they don't fall and impale anyone...

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This should not surprise anyone.

Some of the fallout of the current policies of the U.S. federal government is that the middle-class is being depleted and the upper-class is a club that is becoming more difficult to get into. In other words, the American Dream is going away for a large number of us.

The reason this is happening is simple. In order to bolster the financial security of the poor in this country, someone must pay for their needs and that someone is the middle-class. We are being tasked with supplementing the financial status of the poor via federal taxation and penalties.

The problem with those policies is that more and more individuals in the upper-class and some individuals within the middle-class are taking their money and moving out of the U.S.

This has resulted in what is perceived as tax-evasion by the government when in reality, it is simply tax-avoidance on the part of the people. The government, in order to overcome this so-called tax-evasion, has passed laws that require foreign banks to report on the value and interest earned by anyone holding a U.S. passport.

Now think about this for a minute. Let's assume you earned two million dollars over your life time and you diligently paid your taxes on those earnings. You managed to squirrel away a tidy nest egg during your working years and you now have a half a million dollars or more sitting in an interest bearing account.

You quickly realize that you cannot possibly hope to live the rest of your life on half a million dollars if every year, you have to give 10, 20 or even 35 percent of the interest to the federal government.

So being the smart, hard-working human being that you are, you look around a little bit and you quickly discover that Belize, a lovely little country near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, does not tax income generated by a pension and it has fairly low taxes for other forms of income.

This, you say to yourself, is perfect! I'll move to Belize, put my pension money into an interest-bearing account in the Belize Bank and live out the rest of my life in a tropical paradise.

The U.S. government, however, says, "Oh no you don't. You are a U.S. citizen so you must pay the vig. Even though you do not live in the US, your income is not generated in the US or held by any US institution and you derive no benefit from anything the US government does, you must still pay us!"

Your only solution to avoid this strong-arm tactic is to renounce your citizenship and become a citizen of your new home.

Hmmm... Let's see if I got this straight:

You can stay in the United States and watch your nest egg go away faster than a strippers g-string while living in a nation that is imposing more and more legislative restrictions on you.

Or....

You can live in a tropical paradise and keep all the money you slaved for your entire working life.

That, my friends, is what is driving more and more people to renounce their citizenship from what was once considered to be the greatest nation on earth.

There is no American Dream.

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You can visit these links:

• Yes, alcohol was involved.



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• Key phrase in this story: "...we suspect he was under the influence of alcohol."



• Key phrase in this story: "A beaten Martinez fled the store..."



• Only in Walmart.



• This is why I only watch dumb TV.