Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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 ultimately 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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It works like this: The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the unlimited ability to create dollars. But somehow, for reasons never explained, the federal government is said to be in danger of running short of dollars.
Meanwhile, America’s poor are said to have too many dollars. So Congress has decided the poor should receive fewer dollars from the federal government.
But wait. Those slippery poor may have found a way to survive, and this is felt to be outrageous. As explained by Bloomberg News:
States Veto Food Stamp Cuts as $8.6 Billion Deal Fades
By Derek Wallbank and Alan Bjerga Mar 7, 2014 12:00 AM ET 0 Comments Email PrintCongress last month passed a revamp of agriculture and food policy that was supposed to save the U.S. government $8.6 billion in food-stamp costs over a decade.
Being Monetarily Sovereign, the U.S. federal government has no need to save costs.
That may not happen now that some states are finding a way to avoid the cuts.
New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are triggering extra nutrition spending by adding money to a home-heating subsidy tied to increased food-stamp aid. The move feeds needy families while thwarting spending-reduction goals.
Deficit watchers say they’re disappointed, while anti-hunger activists are lobbying other states to do the same. If more follow, the federal government would have to spend much of the $8.6 billion it planned to save, as states reduce spending on other programs to meet the new mandate.
How horrible. The federal government would have to spend $8.6 billion to feed poor men women and children — people who should be prepared to starve so that rich bankers and other 1%ers can enjoy their federal subsidies.
Under the previous farm law, states that gave residents as little as $1 a year in home-heating assistance — a move nicknamed “heat-and-eat” — could qualify that person’s household for an average of $1,080 in additional food stamps annually from the U.S. government.
About 15 states and the District of Columbia did just that, catching the attention of lawmakers who sought savings through the farm bill.
“States were gaming the system,” Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts said last month.
Good old compassionate Pat Roberts. He empathizes with the poor, the hungry, the needy. According to Wikipedia:
Roberts’s voting record is conservative. Among other issues, he is pro-life, opposes same-sex marriage and supports the Patriot Act, and loosening restrictions on NSA wiretapping.
Roberts opposed President Barack Obama’s health reform legislation; he voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009, and he voted against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.
The new law raises to $20 a year the home-heating aid needed for a household to get extra food-stamp money. The idea is that most of those 15 states will stop qualifying residents for the food aid and save the U.S. government money.
In 2006, In that year, the senator voted to increase offshore oil drilling, to include provisions for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to deny funding for low-income energy assistance and for environmental stewardship, and effectively to exempt Army Corps of Engineers project analyses from independent review.
Roberts voted to exclude oil and gas smokestacks from mercury regulations, and to reclassify the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a Cabinet department — moves widely seen as pro-business and anti-environment.
The house that Roberts claims as his residence in Dodge City, Kansas is actually owned and occupied by campaign contributors C. Duane and Phyllis Ross.
So Roberts is anti-poor, anti-environment and lies about his real residence, which actually is owned and occupied by his campaign contributors.
He is perfect.
Back to Bloomberg:
New York state said it raised home-heating spending by $6 million, triggering an additional $457 million a year in federal food-stamp spending to about 300,000 households.
“We didn’t expect that or we would’ve written it in the language to prohibit it,” said Iowa Republican Steve King, chairman of the House Agriculture subcommittee that oversees food stamps and nutrition aid. The move, while legal, is “perverse, just perverse,” King said in an interview.
It is “perverse, just perverse” that liberals have found a way to feed hungry men, women and children. These people should be made to starve.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about this compassionate guy.
King supports the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would ban federal funding of abortions except in cases of what the bill calls “forcible rape”. This would remove the coverage from Medicaid that covers abortions for victims of statutory rape or incest.
Translation: Women are at fault for being raped.
King opposed the McGovern amendment (to the 2012 farm bill) to establish misdemeanor penalties for knowingly attending an organized animal fight and felony penalties for bringing a minor to such a fight.
Translation: Dog fighting is a good, wholesome activity for adults and children.
King introduced an amendment to the House Farm Bill that would legalize previously banned animal agriculture practices such as tail-docking, putting arsenic in chicken feed, and keeping impregnated pigs in small crates.
Translation: Big deal, a little arsenic never hurt anyone. And as for animals, they’re no better than poor people.
King has voted against each stimulus bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying, “Our economy will not recover because government spends more. It will recover because people produce more.”
Translation: I don’t know how that works, but my stupid constituents will buy any sort of BS I throw at them.
King gained prominence by being one of 11 in Congress to vote against the $52 billion Hurricane Katrina Aid package.
Translation: Screw the homeless and impoverished. They’re just a bunch of liberal freeloaders.
In July 2013, speaking about proposed immigration legislation, King said of immigrants, “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
Now that we understand the quality of those who want to gut funding for the poor, let’s return to Bloomberg:
“These federal cuts have made it harder for our state’s most vulnerable residents to put food on the table. The state has intervened on behalf of these low-income New Yorkers,” Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said. “New York is stepping up to help families in need.”
Connecticut is spending an extra $1.4 million to preserve federal food-stamp money for about 50,000 households, Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy said the day before Cuomo’s announcement. Pennsylvania said March 5 it will spend $8 million to preserve $300 million in food-stamp funding for up to 400,000 families.
“This was always budget-driven,” Vollinger said in a telephone interview. “Discussions in Washington can be academic, but $90 a month for needy families is a real number. It’s shifting a burden to the states, and it’s doubtful how many of them will be able to do it.”
The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, never can run short of dollars. The states, being monetarily non-sovereign, can and do run short of dollars. Sadly, the states must do what the conservatives won’t do.
“True reform would have included stringent work requirements for food-stamp eligibility,” said Andy Roth, government affairs vice president with Club for Growth, a Washington small-government advocacy group. “Even better, devolve the program back to the states” as block grants, which would end the temptation to exploit quirks in federal law, he said.
The Club for Growth, one of many Koch Brothers front organizations, is consistent in its efforts to widen the gap between the rich and the rest. Not a day goes by when this nefarious group, funded by some of the richest people in the world, doesn’t try to make the lives of the poor ever more miserable.
For them, an ideal world would be one in which the 1% are all-powerful masters, and the 99% are abject slaves.
Sadly, nearly all conservative voters are part of the 99% that the 1% wishes to subjugate.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
8. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here)
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10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt
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:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports
THE RECESSION CLOCK
As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise. Federal deficit growth is absolutely, positively necessary for economic growth. Period.
#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Rep. Paul Ryan’s explanation for cutting aid to the poor:
Ryan told about an encounter with “a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school he would get a free lunch from a government program. He said he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown paper bag, just like the other kids. because he knew a kid with a brown paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand.”
Get it? If we give the poor money to buy food, they might give their children money to buy lunch at school, instead of packing brown paper bags. And this is a bad thing. So we are doing the poor a favor by not giving them money.
This is what passes for common sense in the conservative community.
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It gets worst than that Rodger. The tale Ryan is spinning earned 4 pinocchios from Washington Post :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/06/a-story-too-good-to-check-paul-ryan-and-the-story-of-the-brown-paper-bag/?hpid=z3
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Absolutely perfect and absolutely typical. Conservatives will say anything to substantiate screwing the 99% — and the 99% love it.
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Excellent catch, Zen.
The little Pinocchio symbols at the bottom of that article remind me of the dunce caps that Rodger used to award to people.
Since we all agree that the 1% and their lackeys are not fools, but are thieves and hustlers, perhaps we should start awarding little bottles of snake oil instead of dunce caps. Or maybe little pitchforks to honor the diabolical seflishness of these right-wing creeps.
Oh…and how about that priceless comment by Paul Ryan: “The left is making a big mistake here. What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul.”
Yes indeed. What people need are empty stomachs, and souls full of hate (i.e. full of right wing “Christian” values and opinions).
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I like how the right wing Bloomberg rag claims that states “veto” the cuts to Food Stamps.
States have no power to “veto” any aspect of the federal budget.
Rodger says that cuts to Food Stamps hurt “poor men women and children.” True, but the cuts also hurt people who harvest and transport food hurt. They also hurt retailers that accept EBT cards. The Bloomberg article admits that, “Almost half of all food stamps are redeemed at big-box retail chains such as Wal-Mart, while most of the rest are used at supermarkets.”
Thus, cuts to Food Stamps mean fewer jobs overall. Politicians cut SNAP benefits, ostensibly to force recipients to look for jobs, but the cuts cause jobs to disappear. Nice.
Iowa Republican Steve King calls it “perverse” that 15 out of the 50 states move money around in an attempt to offset King’s attack on Food Stamps.
What’s perverse is King’s hypocrisy.
When anyone suggests cuts to programs that benefit the 1% (e.g. subsidies to rich owners of farmland, and spending on weapons makers) King and the other politicians move money around in order to change the cuts into increases.
Here’s how they do it with spending on the Pentagon and weapons makers…
1. Politicians say we must cut all programs that benefit the 99% (Food Stamps, Social Security, etc.)
2. Politicians sell this by saying they will also cut the Pentagon’s budget, which mainly benefits the 1%.
3. Politicians agree to a federal budget that reduces social programs by 12 or 15 percent, and also reduces the Pentagon’s budget by an average of 7 percent. (Politicians must allow some cuts to Pentagon spending, since most of the budget is public knowledge.)
4. Politicians quietly reverse the cuts to Pentagon spending, so that the cuts become increases. They do this in three ways…
[a] They grab extra money from “prior year unobligated balances.” These are supposedly unspent funds from previous budgets. Politicians easily inflate these funds, since the Pentagon’s budget is so massive that no one knows where all the money goes. And of course the funds are not physical. They are not a pile of money lying in a bank somewhere. Instead, the funds (the “prior year unobligated balances”) are simply authorizations to spend, which are easily manipulated. Thus, politicians create money out of thin air by sending instructions to the Treasury, which sends instructions to the bank accounts of whoever pockets the loot.
[b] Politicians grab extra money from war spending, known as “Overseas Contingency Operations.” Cuts to the Pentagon’s budget only refer to the Pentagon’s regular peacetime budget, i.e. its “base budget.” By contrast, spending on the wars is off-budget. It has no caps and no limits, and is not subject to austerity. (Same with the billions spent on the intelligence community.) The war in Afghanistan has continued for 13 years, with no limit to its spending. Therefore, if a budget includes a modest cut to the Pentagon’s base spending, then politicians take more money from the (off-budget) war spending, which is limitless.
[c] Regardless of what budget the politicians establish, and what laws they pass, the politicians routinely hold emergency meetings to restore any monies cut from military spending. For example, the FY 2013 budget included the sequester that went into effect on 1 March 2013. In December 2013, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray reversed the sequestration, thereby restoring all funds (and then some) to the rich executives of weapons makers.
All of this is made to seem legitimate via creative accounting in the “non-partisan” (i.e. right wing) CBO.
Iowa Republican Steve King knows all this, yet he condemns 15 states for moving funds around in order to cope with King’s attack on Food Stamps.
Regarding federal subsidies to rich owners of farmlands, Steve King again moves funds around in order to turn “cuts” into increases. This trickery is so odious that farm bills are not passed every year, but every five years. As each five-year period approaches its expiration, politicians start wringing their hands. They want to increase subsidies to the rich, and decrease subsidies to the poor (e.g. Food Stamps) but how can they get away with this without angering the public?
Steve King’s solution this time around was to simply change the wording of subsidies to the rich so that they are now called “crop insurance.” Same cash giveaways; different name. Further, Steve King and his cronies removed the cap on who can collect this loot. Previously, rich landowners and Big Ag corporations that made over $750,000 in income could not get subsidies. King’s new farm bill removed that limit. It also absolved King and other Congressmen from having to report what they receive in subsidies, so the extra loot is not taxable, and the public never knows how much money King is receiving.
King’s hate, theft, and hypocrisy are without limit. (Is he a good “Christian” or what?)
NOTE: I do not claim that Pentagon spending is necessarily a bad thing. Any government spending is better than no spending. My complaint is that so much government money goes to the 1%, making them richer. This would not be a problem if the rich spent that money back into the real economy, but they don’t. They use it to gamble in the markets.
Hence, austerity is not simply about cutting programs that benefit the 99%. It is also about “reforming” labor laws so that workers are reduced to slaves. It is about privatization and deregulation. It is about corporations becoming governments. It is about increasing the gap between the rich and the rest, and increasing the supremacy of the financial economy over the real economy. That is, increasing the supremacy of finance capitalism over industrial capitalism. Die Märkte über alles! “The markets” over all.
None of this can change until a critical mass among the 99% stop believing the Big Lie.
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And of course, Putin, who also is among the .1% in both power and sympathy, is only to glad to create a crisis, so that the .1% can claim our and his military needs more money for “defense.”
But where can that money come from? From the 99.9%, of course.
The Cold War was massively profitable. It will be, again.
And the voice of the military-industrial complex is heard in our land.
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Just to clarify, Russian troops did not invade Ukraine. The troops had already been in Ukraine for over 15 years, at the invitation of the Ukrainian government. Ukraine authorized Russia to have 25,000 troops in Ukraine, but the number in Sevastopol is a small fraction of that.
Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin reminded everyone of this in the UN, but he was ignored. The neo-cons want a Cold War so the media will interview them for their “expertise.”
Crimea is a semi-automonous region with 65% Russian population. When the Kiev coup-plotters announced that all official communications must be in Ukrainian (not Russia), the Crimean government unanimously asked for Putin’s help to defend their autonomy. Putin said he would do what he could, but that military force was a last resport. By contrast, the USA says that “All options are on the table.”
Actually a new Cold War might not be a bad thing, as long as it didn’t become a nuclear war, and it helped to create jobs.
Unfortunately the rich might use a new Cold War to increase austerity EVEN MORE.
Since the federal government is “broke” and “in debt,” the only way to counter the “global Russian threat” is to eliminate Food Stamps, and to privatize Social Security (i.e. send all FICA tax revenues to Wall Street).
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Zen, I’ll see your Ryan article and raise you a Bill Clinton article:
I wonder if anyone still doubts my oft-repeated claim that politicians (including the President) are bribed by the .1% (via campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later), to increase the gap between the rich and the rest.
Clearly, Mr. Obama (infamous author of the “grand bargain”) falls into that category. Watch as billionaire Penny Pritzker (recently appointed by Obama as United States Secretary of Commerce) collects money for a big Obama library.
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Convincing evidence as clear as light of a cloudless day, indeed.
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Off topic
WHO IS EVIL?
A right wing blog had a reader comment: “This shows the futility of handouts, be they spare change, food stamps, or welfare. If you don’t break the cycle of reliance, you’ll never improve their situation.”
Handouts? If the rich didn’t receive continual handouts from the public (including the government), then they would no longer be rich.
I love the “logic” in that above-quoted comment…
When the poor exchange things with society, right wingers call the exchanges “handouts.”
When rich parasites suck the life from society, right wingers call this “self-reliance.”
The reader’s comment above is yet another example of why people resist the facts of Monetary Sovereignty. It is not because are stupid, but because they are hateful and selfish. Rodger says they are brainwashed, but I say that average people WANT to be brainwashed — although it is not their fault. People’s natural state is to want the truth. Therefore right-wingers must make people give up their natural state, and seek to be brainwashed.
To do this, right-wingers seek out negative feelings and opinions, and inflame them so that the masses attack each other. The masses want logical “justifications” for attacking each other. This is where the brainwashing comes in. Right-wingers provide “reasons” for the hate. When the hate becomes a habit, the desire for “reasons” (i.e. brainwashing) becomes an addiction.
How do we break the cycle? The poor are desperately preoccupied with raw survival. Some resort to crime. Some seek Food Stamps. Some withdraw into substance abuse, or religious fanaticism. Whatever. There are many coping strategies. Some are self-destructive.
The right wing solution is to make the poor even poorer, so that they will develop a fictional “self-reliance.”
In reality, if you give people enough to live on, so that they are not preoccupied with raw survival, then you empower people. You make them ambitious and enterprising.
This is exactly what the rich and their toadies do not want. They do not want the poor to rise from the sewer in any way. They do not want competition, or any narrowing of the gap between the rich and the rest.
Thus, the right wing perspective is not an “opinion.” It is a rationalization of theft and oppression.
In past times there were endless rationalizations for enslaving black people on plantations. All the rationalizations were “logical,” “common sense,” and were blessed by the churches. Their purpose was to justify oppression. This continues today with people like Paul Ryan.
I criticize the masses for wanting to be enslaved, but I much more condemn the Paul Ryans who seek to worsen the slavery. The masses are ignorant peasants, like children, but the Paul Ryans are authentically evil.
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King has voted against each stimulus bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying, “Our economy will not recover because government spends more. It will recover because people produce more.”
True leaders, statesmen and representatives of the people value facts and evidence. The facts and evidence with regard to the above are, to put it simply, American workers productivity has grown astronomically over the past 4 decades; to levels previously unheard of. Unfortunately the result of greater worker productivity has not resulted in wage growth equal to that growth in productivity. Yet that message is seldom broadcast by the MSM or for the most part by the so-called progressives or alternative media. Why, because the entire grossly unfair, exploitative system then comes into question. It’s the system, capitalism, which is to blame.
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