Mitchell’s laws:
●The more budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Austerity = poverty and leads to civil disorder.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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Economics is morality. The science attempts to answer the question, “How can we improve our lives?” a moral and an economic question.
The right wing and the left wing have divergent views of morality. In the early 1860’s, the South, which at the time was mostly Democratic and also more right wing, felt virtue included slavery.
Even with southern preachers famously thumping their bibles and denouncing Satan, the notion of enslaving human beings, and denying them what we today consider human rights, the South was able to rationalize slavery. A master could beat, whip, starve and even kill his slaves, and no court would condemn him. That was considered moral by loyal church goers of the religious right.
A more left-leaning Republican North disputed this version of morality, and a civil war was fought over the difference, although as is the case with most morality questions, money was the underlying issue. The Civil War was the intersection of morality, religion, politics and economics, with each being used to justify the other.
Most Americans knew then and know now, slavery is immoral; the South was in league with the very Satan their religious preachers loudly warned about.
Today, the parties have flipped their right/left orientations; the Democrats believe those enduring poverty, sickness, homelessness and illiteracy are victims of fate, unfortunates who need and deserve direct support from a benevolent and financially limitless federal government.
The right wing, most pious voters believe otherwise, and tend to blame the victims, as exemplified in the following article from the Washington Post:
Romney attacks Obama over welfare reform
ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. – Mitt Romney sought to inject welfare as an issue in the presidential campaign here Tuesday, accusing President Obama of dismantling federal welfare reform and creating a “culture of dependency.”
The presumptive Republican nominee charged the Obama administration with effectively reversing the popular bipartisan welfare reform signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton by allowing waivers to states from welfare work requirements.
“That is wrong. If I’m president, I’ll put work back in welfare,” Romney said, campaigning in this suburb just outside Obama’s hometown of Chicago. He added, “We will end the culture of dependency and restore a culture of good hard work.”
The right wing version of morality is akin to “tough love.” It says people are responsible for their own misery, and government-provided benefits merely encourage sloth and Romney’s so-called “culture of dependency.”
Earlier Tuesday, the Romney campaign rolled out a new 30-second television advertisement, “Right Choice,” that says, “Obama guts welfare reform.” This is Romney’s latest attempt to cast Obama as a big-government liberal.
The Obama campaign responded by noting that in 2005, then-Massachusetts governor Romney and most other Republican governors requested state waivers similar to those the Obama administration began allowing with the Department of Health and Human Services’ July 12 announcement.
Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said the waivers give states additional flexibility only if they move more people – not fewer – from welfare to work. She said, “These false and extremely hypocritical attacks demonstrate how Mitt Romney lacks the core strength and principles the nation needs in a President.
In today’s political language, welfare “reform” actually is a move toward less welfare.. “Reform” often is invoked by the religious right to justify punishing the middle and lower classes. Social Security “reform” means lower or later benefits. Medicare “reform” means less Medicare. Tax “reform” means closing so-called “loopholes” such as the mortgage interest deduction and the medical deduction. Beware of “reform” in the hands of the religious right.
The fact that United States Presidential hopeful Romney lacks core beliefs comes as no surprise, but his repeated, pusillanimous flip-flopping is not the issue.
The issue is, what is the morality of federal aid?
Ezra Klein’s WONKBLOG included these comments:
Ron Haskins, one of the reform’s main authors enthusiastically supports the waivers. Waivers are what made welfare reform possible in the first place, he argues, by letting states experiment with new practices and they can be useful going forward.
“Do you trust that the secretary of HHS is only going to grant waivers that really are promising? Maybe I’m naïve, but I just don’t come to the conclusion that the Democrats would really use the waiver to undermine welfare reform.”
One reasons he’s doubtful of the Republican attacks is the experience of the stimulus package, which included new welfare funding for states. Republicans and conservatives attacked the idea as undermining the principle that states should be funded based on their success in keeping people off welfare.
But a study by LaDonna Pavetti, Liz Schott and Elizabeth Lower-Basch put out by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found (pdf) that the funding created 260,000 jobs and was actually used to promote welfare-to-work initiatives, not undermine them.
If the Obama administration wanted to undermine the reform’s work requirements, Haskins asks, “why did they allow the states to use the $5 billion to subsidize work?”
Personal opinion: It is unseemly — no, disgusting — for a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars to suck up to the 1% highest income group, by speaking against aid to the poor, and pretending this is in some way, “good for them” — and that to do otherwise is to create a “culture of dependency.”
Let’s face it, the rich pretend to believe they succeeded not by good fortune, but by hard work, and if only the poor had worked as hard, they wouldn’t be poor. So, to make this possible, the poor should be denied “charity,” which will force them to work hard and thus be successful.
Very conveniently, denying aid to the poor and middle classes helps enlarge the income gap between them and the rich. Less Medicare, less Social Security, less Medicaid, fewer food stamps, less aid to education, less unemployment insurance — less federal spending in total — all balloon the income gap.
But this is justified on a moral principle, not the true financial principle. Reducing assistance supposedly cures the 99%’s “addiction” to government aid, and oh yes, it widens the gap.
The battle of money is being fought on the field of morality.
Sadly, the lower income groups, tending to be more pious, are more responsive to a moral argument. By voting for the right wing, they tacitly accept the thesis that they are responsible for their own misery, and if only they were more ambitious and smarter, and less willing to be “food stamp queens” and “unemployment kings” they could have succeeded, just like Mitt Romney.
They also are susceptible to the false “fairness” argument that taxpayers pay for these subsidies (they don’t in a Monetarily Sovereign govenment), and the government can’t afford them (it can). It all works to keep the middle and lower classes down and the 1% up, up, up.
Once again, the so-called “religious” right-wing is on the side of money and on the wrong side of morality.
And as for Mitt Romney, he is neither moral nor immoral. He is amoral, a man with no underlying beliefs, a man who blows with the wind, genuflecting to the right one day, to the left the next, displaying a degree of spinelessness amazing even for a politician. But it doesn’t matter. This election has nothing to do with Romney. He might as well be Casper the Ghost. This election is all about hating or loving Barack Obama.
And money-biased morality.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption + Net exports
#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Before Lincoln asked for 75,000 troops, the original 13th Amendment was passed and was already being ratified by the Northern States. That Amendment stated that all Americans both North and South had the Constitutional Right to keep slaves. Please read Lincolns 1st Inaugural address: “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
Like any good racist, on his death bed and after having met some good “Negros”, in his last statement on the subject before he died, he suggested extending the vote to “Negros” that were “very intelligent” and ones that served as soldiers but not all “Negros”. Abraham Lincolns problem with slavery was about having White society contaminated by the Negro with their presence and made that clear in his speeches as a leader of the American Colonization Society. That is why he used Private & Federal money to pay Free Northern Negros to go back to Africa.
Lincoln repeatedly and clearly stated the reason why he started a war was because of a 47% tax increase on people in the south under the Morrill Tariff Act. Over and over Lincoln states his purpose is to collect revenue from that tax. In the collection of revenue he creates a war which eventually becomes a war to save the Union. The war in Iraq was because of 9/11, then because of WMD’s and of course we can not leave because we fight for the freedom of the people.
In Lincolns war proclamation on April 19th, 1861 he said: “Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out and the laws of the United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed therein: Now, therefore, I have further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States aforesaid.”
Of course this was because on April 8th, 1861 Lincoln sent warships down to Fort Sumter, one of 4 Southern Federal Tax collection centers after the locals had surrounded it.
The most clear statement that can not be questioned are the two presidential inaugural speeches of Lincoln (North) and Davis (South) that clearly state slavery has nothing to do with it and it is about TAXES.
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Thank you for your reliable information that unbeknownst to virtually everyone in America, Lincoln actually was a pro-slavery bigot. Ever hear of the Emancipation Proclamation?
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OK, now you are starting to sound like a creationist with blind faith.
Emancipation Proclamation:
January 1, 1863, in his final Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln affirmed his only reason for issuing the proclamation, was:
“as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion”
(Paragraph 4), by attempting to incite slave insurrections, as Britain did in 1776. This proclamation did not outlaw slavery in the North since it was seen as a Constitutional right. General Grant and many in Lincoln’s cabinet kept slaves.
“I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States.” Abraham Lincoln
“What next? Free them (Negros), and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this”. Abraham Lincoln 1858 (Lincoln – Douglas Debate)
“We cannot, then, make them (Negros) equals.” Abraham Lincoln 1858 (Lincoln – Douglas Debate)
“If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,-to their own native land.” Abraham Lincoln
“This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words…”
Still not feeling Lincoln’s love? Think about it. It was not until the civil rights movement took place that true freedom was in place.
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The politics of the time required Lincoln to tread carefully. He didn’t have absolute power, and most of the nation accepted slavery as normal.
At the start of the Civil War, his primary general, George McClellan, was plotting a coup, and as you said, many in the North owned slaves. So Lincoln had to avoid seeming too extreme for the times, or he would have been able to accomplish nothing.
In the early days of the war, Lincoln tried to work out a compromise with the South, that would prevent total war, while keeping the South as part of the Union. That was his primary concern, not slavery.
Eventually that became impossible. The Emancipation Proclamation was not approved by Congress. Lincoln issued it, not as President, but as Commander in Chief of the Army. That gave him power to suspend civil law over the states in rebellion, but not over the Northern States.
Lincoln did as much as he felt he could do, in freeing 3/4 of the slaves — the Southern slaves. He did not have the power to free those in the North. And yes, it also had the benefit of turning Southern slaves against their masters at a time of war.
You probably don’t realize that Lincoln is the most researched of all American presidents, and is considered by experts in the field, to be the best President America ever has had. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States
It’s quite doubtful that you have discovered something the vast majority of historians already have not known.
Your comments sound like someone living in a foreign country, who has read an anti-Lincoln treatise, and now feels he has become expert, and understands what the Lincoln scholars — thousands of people who have devoted years of their lives to the study of Lincoln — do not understand.
And by the way, none of this has anything to do with the point of post, which was that the battle of money is being fought on the field of morality.
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South Carolina (the first state to secede) drafted and published their reasons for leaving the union. Look it up and read it. They didn’t want to lose their slaves.
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“…Lincoln actually was a pro-slavery bigot…”
dunno where yukondave is coming from with the lincoln diatribe, but i have to say i agree with him to some extent. lincoln was “complex,” as his apologists describe him.
apparently, he WAS a bigot, but ANTI-slavery. his public statements and his private correspondence says it all. before he was prez of the US, he was prez of the american colonization society which advocated deporting black people “back to africa,” which for them meant liberia.
and it was such a shame, because a lot of the problems to this day in liberia and neighboring sierra leone are a direct result of the ACS’ (and american government and corporations) interference in their countries.
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Always have to be careful about judging yesterday’s morality. Lincoln was on the edge of the divide between Northern morality and Southern morality.
Lincoln may have had many beliefs, caused by his society, but what he actually did was moral — except in the eyes of the South.
Today, women’s suffrage is considered normal and tomorrow I suspect gay marriage will be normal.
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“apparently, he [lincoln] WAS a bigot, but ANTI-slavery…”
not to belabor the point, but, for those of you who want to investigate this further, there’s a good book out there i just discovered called “ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND WHITE AMERICA” by Brian R. Dirck.
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This post is an apropos commentary to your original postNew Paradigm II: What are your plans for the Age of Disemployment?dated Thursday,August 2, 2012.
Sometimes, you can’t win for losing!
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Prior to the French revolution, the Church was on the side of aristocrats rather than the peasantry.
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