From the March 2001 Idaho Observer:

CAFRs beginning to disappear from the Internet

Biggest game in town being driven further underground

by Don Harkins

Two years ago accountant Walter Burien exposed the existence of a document called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) which is compiled each year by most city, county and state governments. Opposition media outlets have been publicizing the outrageous implications of the CAFR, which has prompted thousands of concerned Americans across the country to access CAFRs locally or online. Burien has recently reported that growing public awareness of CAFRs is causing ones from years past to be removed from the websites of many state governments. "Before those State CAFR sites are changed, pulled, or the content of the report modified, please go there and download a copy of your state CAFR," Burien advised.

At this time, CAFRs can be found at: http://hometown.aol.com/cafr1/Listings.html

The CAFR reveals that the governments of this nation keep what is tantamount to two sets of books: One set of books is readily available to the public and shows how taxes must continually be increased to pay for increased demands upon government agencies to provide government services. The other set of books details how governments pool tax revenues and, with the aid of modern investment strategies, are able to make millions, even billions of dollars in profits that are not made available to the public.

Media Bypass magazine published an article by Burien called, "The Biggest Game in Town” (February, 2001). The article makes some startling revelations about the financial manipulations of most, if not all of the local and state governments in America. While governments incessantly complain that they do not have the money to keep roads adequately repaired or purchase new books and magazine subscriptions for libraries, investment brokers are using billions of taxpayer dollars to build astronomical stockpiles of cash reserves that are hidden from the public in a variety of ingenious ways that are documented in CAFRs.

Burien estimates that anywhere from 48 to 65 percent of all financial activity and asset ownership in the U.S. has resulted from this illegal use of taxpayer revenues. Burien claims that 30 years ago the government was only responsible for eight percent to 12 percent of all financial activity and asset ownership in this country.

It is important to keep in mind that, while CAFRs prove that government employee retirement accounts across the nation are on an average at least 200 percent funded, Social Security (the peoples' retirement account) is teetering on the verge of insolvency.

Burien began to uncover the "Biggest Game in Town" in 1989 after another "read-my-lips candidate implemented a $2.8 billion tax increase in his home state of New Jersey. Burien, a seasoned commodities trading advisor, decided to look at New Jersey's books. He found that there was $11 billion on budget, $6 billion off budget and the state had $25.6 billion of net available funds. "Then I asked myself the number one question the IRS asks at an audit, 'What are the gross receipts?'" Burien explained.

At this time he was informed of the CAFR. New Jersey's CAFR for 1989 showed that the state had liquid investment funds of $188 billion. The state had a declared service budget of $17 billion but, in reality, it was bringing in nearly $86 billion and had $799 million in cash. "I saw that figure and instantly realized the definition of syndicated organized crime," said Burien.

Since that time, Burien has found that every city, county and state government in the U.S. is likely participating in this scheme at some level.

One can also infer that this exploitive money making machinery, as funded by the American people, is largely being used to finance the agenda to economically, politically, spiritually, physically and statutorily enslave the people of this nation.

"Currently the federal government shows a slight deficit on budgetary basis, but the profit centers which would show a $16 trillion positive are excluded," commented Burien with regard to questions concerning the second set of books being cooked on Capitol Hill.

If these monies, which altogether equal trillions of dollars, were used in the best interests of the people whose labors generated the investment capital in the first place, Americans would never have to pay another dime in taxes.

Burien urges concerned Americans to secure copies of CAFRs from their city, county and state governments before it is too late to get them. Burien explains that, "Most of the CAFRs are in .pdf format [Acrobat Reader]. I have listed a link offered by Acrobat Reader that allows you to download a .pdf file as an .html file. This is a big plus being that some states no longer allow the CAFR to be downloaded as one file, but have broken it up into 20 to 30 segments. If you do not have the expensive full version of Acrobat reader, you cannot combine the CAFR segment files back as one file. But, in .html format, all segments now can be combined to make one file for that specific CAFR report after downloading the individual segments.

CAFRs are extremely complex documents that are best interpreted by persons that have managed extremely large budgets and have an accounting background. Burien added the following postscript with specific regard to state CAFRs: "When you distribute copies of those state reports, make special mention on those copies that the billions shown on the state reports is strictly the state's revenue.

It does not show the revenue/investments in most cases from the hundreds/thousands of other local government operations within that state whose revenue/investments are in total, substantially greater than the state's holdings."