Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which leads to civil disorder.
●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.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.
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As readers of this blog know, the primary goal of the super-rich is to widen the income gap between them and the middle, so as to increase their power.
Readers also know federal taxes do not pay for federal spending. The federal government is not like state and local governments, and not even like euro-nation governments.
State and local government taxes do pay for state and local government spending. These governments are not Monetarily Sovereign. By contrast, the U.S. government is sovereign over its currency, the dollar.
Being Monetarily Sovereign, the U.S. government has the unlimited ability to pay any bills and never can run short of dollars. If all federal taxes fell to $0 or rose to $100 trillion, neither event would affect by even one penny, the federal government’s ability to pay its bills, forever.
What then, should one make of the following?
For Immediate Release:
Contact: John Kartch, jkartch@atr.org, 1 april 2013 202-785-0266Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway investors will voluntarily pay “Buffett Rule” tax
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett today announced he had written a donation check to the U.S. Treasury in order to personally comply with “The Buffett Rule.” In addition, all investors in Berkshire Hathaway will have 30 percent of their capital gains and dividends withheld by the company and sent directly to Washington.
After which, those Buffett investors are free to file amended tax returns, and get all their money back. We call that the “Romney Ruse,” commemorating Mitt’s fake income tax returns, in which he claimed not to have taken all his charitable deductions, but was free to file amended returns.
Championed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, the Buffett Rule is a proposed 30 percent tax on all income over $1 million.
Translation: A “donation check” would have only one economic effect: To remove dollars from the U.S. economy, and thereby be recessionary. Mr. Buffett’s “heroic” effort would hurt America, while making him seem like a hero, which presumably would be the purpose.
But why would Obama be thrilled about it? Because there would be another effect. Read on.
The Oracle of Omaha will personally unveil a three-foot by six-foot donation check at an afternoon press conference on the Treasury steps. According to a statement released in advance of the event, Buffett said, “As I wrote in the New York Times, ‘My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.’ Today, I, Warren Buffett, am personally getting serious about shared sacrifice.”
The White House praised Buffett’s action. “Let me be clear,” said President Obama. “This puts to rest any GOP-driven allegations that Warren Buffett was a hypocrite on the tax issue or was just engaging in a bit of moral preening.”
Translation: Standing in front of reporters, bragging about a big check he has written, is not “moral-preening” in Obama-world. It alludes to a clever scheme. Keep reading.
Because the federal tax code is already steeply progressive, the Buffett Rule, if enacted, would raise just $31 billion in tax revenue over the next decade, according to the Joint Tax Committee. To put that in context, that is less than one-tenth of one percent of federal spending over the next ten years.
Translation: The self-aggrandizing publicity would be priceless. But this whole “pay my share” idea is more than publicity.
Americans for Tax Reform is a non-partisan coalition of taxpayers and taxpayer groups who oppose all tax increases. For more information or to arrange an interview please contact John Kartch at (202) 785-0266 or by email atjkartch@atr.org.
Translation: Actually, this act by the Oracle (and we use the word “act” in all its meanings) is a tax increase, albeit tiny, but Americans for Tax Reform hasn’t yet figured that out.
You might think the Oracle doesn’t understand the difference between Monetarily Sovereign and monetarily non-sovereign. You also may think the President, Congress, the Counsel of Economic Advisers — not one of these 1000+ experts — understands fundamental economics.
But don’t be deceived. Something deeper actually is happening.
Buffett’s apparently heroic surrender of dollars to the government would allow Obama to rationalize his desired cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and all the dozens of benefits to the middle class.
That is what Obama’s incessant urging for “balance” means: Take a bit from the rich and a lot from the middle, the purpose being to widen the gap between them.
Bottom line: Buffett would get the saintly public relations he craves, while giving up the relatively few dollars he wouldn’t miss. Obama could cite this great sacrifice by the rich to justify an even greater sacrifice by the middle. The rich would be thrilled that the gap widens, giving them even greater power over the rest of us.
One day, Buffett and his super-rich pals will give Obama that big Obama library in Chicago, great speaking gigs, and lots of money for his family. Think: Bill Clinton.
So everyone would be happy — except for the 99% who are not among the rich, and who will see their federal benefits fall. But who cares about them? They aren’t the big campaign donors and they won’t provide Obama and his family with the big library he wants and with those six-figure speeches.
The Buffett Rule; the Romney Ruse; the Clinton Con; the Obama Obfuscation. The American people are taken with these guys. Yes, that’s the word: “Taken.”
H.L. Mencken: “No one . . . has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%
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 Imports
#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Obama Proclaims April the Month to Teach Young People ‘How to Budget Responsibly’, April 1, 2013
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Naked Capitalism, Sunday, March 31, 2013
by Yves Smith:
— Obama Plans to Sacrifice Ordinary Americans Yet Again in “Public/Private Partnership” Infrastructure Scam
>>>Apparently Obama’s idea of a Holy Week sacrifice is to feed American citizens to rapacious bankers, this time through the device of “public/private partnerships” to support infrastructure spending. Some NC readers were correctly alarmed by a speech by Obama on Friday on using public/private partnerships to fund infrastructure spending. This is not a new idea; Obama first unveiled it in his Statue of the Union address. But it is a singularly bad idea, that is, if you are anyone other than a promoter of or investor in these deals.
As we’ve discussed at length earlier, these schemes are simply exercises in extraction. Investors in mature infrastructure deals expect 15% to 20% returns on their investment. And that also includes the payment of all the (considerable) fees and costs of putting these transactions together. The result is tantamount to selling the family china and then renting it back in order to eat. There is no way that adding unnecessary middlemen with high return expectations improves the results to the public. In fact, the evidence is overwhelmingly the reverse: investors jack up usage fees and skimp on maintenance. And their deals are full of sneaky features to guarantee their returns.
“Piling on more rent instead of government funding “in order to advance democracy and the free market.” Neoliberalism aka crony capitalism at work.”-Tom Hickey
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Unfortunately, the quote from Yves Smith’s article doesn’t contain a motive. WHY does Obama “Plan to Sacrifice Ordinary Americans . . .”?
Without mentioning the motive, the public will not be convinced a crime has been committed.
The motive is: He has been Bribed to widen the gap. He has been given massive campaign contributions and promises of great wealth for him and his family after he leaves office.
It will begin with the Obama Library in Chicago.
He and his wife will receive repeated 6-figure speaking gigs. His children will “earn” well-paying jobs. In short, he is being “Clintonized.”
Writers should not be afraid to use the “B” word.
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The item from “Americans for Tax Reform” looks to me like an April Fool’s joke. A satire of Buffett.
Despite Buffett’s sham pronouncements, he is famed for avoiding taxes. That’s one reason why he and his Berkshire Hathaway clients became so rich.
I want zero federal taxes anyway (unlike MMT morons, who love federal taxes).
Speaking of April Fool’s jokes, Black April has arrived in England, and it is no joke.
Beginning today, if you live in social housing (government-built housing) and you have a spare bedroom that politicians say you are not using “efficiently,” then you will lose 25% of your benefits such as Disability Living Allowance, plus the “housing benefit” (the British equivalent to Social Security).
It’s part of ever-increasing austerity.
The new “bedroom tax” will hit over a million households. Two-thirds of the victims are disabled, most of whom want to move into smaller apartments so that their benefits will not be cut, but no properties are available.
Ten million other households have already been hit by austerity, leaving UK families £891 ($1,355) a year worse off than in 2012.
During the Easter weekend there were protests by members of trade unions, advocates for the disabled, leading churches, and anti-poverty protesters. More than 50 social policy professors signed a letter urging politicians to reconsider the latest cuts, citing that the increased austerity will result in the poorest tenth of households losing the equivalent of 38 percent of their income.
However British politicians hear only the rich, who want austerity.
Charities warn that the latest austerity cuts will cause up to 600,000 more children to sink into poverty by 2015. (It’s estimated that three million children already live in poverty in the UK).
Finance minister George Osborne laughs at all this…
“If you listened to the shrill voices of the Left, you’d think that every change to the welfare system, and any attempt to save money, marks the beginning of the end of the world.”
Mr. Osborne claims that his latest robbery of taxpayers will save those taxpayers £3 billion per year.
[The U.K. government does not need tax revenue, and does not need to “save money,” since the government is Monetarily Sovereign. Every penny of “saved money” is a penny robbed from the citizenry.]
The Mirror reports an estimated 3.7 million disabled people will lose a total of £28 billion ($42.6 billion) by 2018.
Also, politicians will change the definition of “disabled” so that 26,000 people are disqualified right away from getting a disability allowance.
WHY THIS CONTINUES
Opponents of the “bedroom tax” note that the government has not considered other options, like taxing mansions or second homes, rather than taxing the poor yet again.
However, opponents do not point out that the British government creates its money on computer keyboards, out of nothing. This is a mass refusal to face reality. The refusal is why the austerity and the depression continue to worsen.
And yes it is refusal. One half of the peasants dismiss the facts behind their suffering. The other half simply don’t want to listen.
We are in a vast dungeon with millions of other people, crying out to them, “We can get out of here! But only if we work together!”
Half of the slaves refuse to listen. The other half regard us as their enemy.
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Many a truth is told in jest.
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The more you leave them with, them being the elite whose sole purpose is to increase the gap(?), the more they will have to bribe politicians, influence legislation (or actually write it), and create all sorts of other mischief that creates benefits for them only. But, they are the job creators, the philanthropists, they create so many benefits for society as a whole. There is earned income and unearned income that comes from nothing productive. There is earned income and income produced by extraction only.
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Apr 3, 10:57 PM EDT
“Obama to return 5 percent of salary to Treasury”
By JOSH LEDERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) —
>>>Sharing a bit of budget pain, President Barack Obama will return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury in a show of solidarity with federal workers smarting from government-wide spending cuts.
Obama’s decision grew out of a desire to share in the sacrifice that government employees are making, a White House official said Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced to take unpaid leave – known as furloughs – if Congress does not reach an agreement soon to undo the cuts…blah…blah…blah…
Motive? Not “solidarity” but a scam! As you say above Rodger, THIS heroic surrender of dollars to the government will simply just allow Obama to rationalize his desired cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and all the dozens of benefits to the middle class.
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From the above post: “That is what Obama’s incessant urging for ‘balance’ means: Take a bit from the rich and a lot from the middle, the purpose being to widen the gap between them.”
Why are Obama and the millionaires in Congress taking pay cuts they barely will notice? To justify the massive sacrifices they have forced on the middle and lower income groups, thereby silencing the complaints about reduced social spending.
Take a little from the rich; take a lot from the middle; widen the gap.
Rather than show boating, how about simply cancelling the sequester?
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I’m surprised you haven’t uncovered the latest scheme to deprive ordinary depositors of their money in a force deposit-for-equity swap. Cyprus was just a dry run. The December joint Bank of England-FDIC report calls specifically for confiscating deposits to cover the next TBTF bank that, well, fails. Since Dodd-Frank precludes using taxpayer money for bailouts, and the Fed just doesn’t want to anymore, the new solution to keep these banks propped up, at all costs, literally, is to just take deposits forceably and convert into equity in the failing bank. See more here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/It-Can-Happen-Here-The-Co-by-Ellen-Brown-130329-684.html
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