–Some great American ad/marketing campaigns. The world of make-believe.

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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, and the motive is the gap.
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My own background is marketing. I was a partner in an advertising agency that earlier had created one of the greatest ad/marketing programs in history, the “Double Your Pleasure,” Doublemint twins. It began in the late 1930’s, and even today, people remember the “Double your pleasure” slogan.

The song, which repeated the word “double” 18 times, plus the use of twins plus the name, “Doublemint,” all left the impression of there being far more (double) to this gum than really existed.

There have been many great marketing campaigns, and here are but a select few.

Lucky Strike cigarettes told smokers, “Not a Cough in a Carload,” and “20,679 Physicians say, ‘Luckies are less irritating.'”

Later, the Marlboro man cowboy series began. It featured a John Wayne type smoking a cigarette, and millions of smokers bought Marlboro cigarettes, so subconsciously, they too could be cool, tough cowboys.

The Volkswagon “Lemon,” and other tongue-in-cheek ads combined to make Volkswagon, which was a beetle-ugly, under-powered, way-too-small car, seem like the coolest vehicle ever.

Avis’s “We’re only #2, so we try harder” campaign made renters think that being second best was a benefit.

The DeBeers “A Diamond is Forever” gives the impression that in some unknown way, giving a diamond will make love last forever.

There have been many great political campaigns, but the Obama marketers were exceptional for turning a “do-nothing, did-nothing” politician into a liberal icon. And he never even was a liberal. At most, he’s a middle-of-the-road Republican, who wants to cut Medicare and Social Security and balance the budget.

His signature “achievement” is Obamacare, a Republican program he neither created nor even campaigned for. (He left that to the Democratic party.)

Bernie Madoff created the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, and he did it by promising the impossible and playing hard-to-get. It became an honor to be “accepted” by Bernie. People invested a great deal of time, money and personal honor, sucking up to Bernie so he would allow them to give him money.

What do these, and many (not all) other great marketing campaigns have in common? They all appeal to the sucker in us.

To varying degrees, we all are chumps. The great campaigns make us believe in the impossible.

We knew that Doublemint gum doesn’t really double our pleasure, our fun or anything else. We knew cigarettes make us cough (They were called “coffin nails” for heaven’s sake).

And as for smoking Marlboros making us into cowboys — c’mon! But we felt better chewing Doublemint, and we thought we felt tougher and stronger smoking those little death sticks.

We knew Volkswagon was an uncomfortable, unsafe little car, but it was ever so cool! And does being in second place make for a better car rental company? Get real. We’re smarter than that.

We know a diamond won’t make the romance last forever. We knew Obama never had done anything of worth during his entire career. But we overpaid for the least attractive of all precious stones, and we voted for “hope” in the absence of anything real.

And anyone with the kind of money Madoff’s investors had, surely had done enough investing to know that what he promised was impossible. But they invested. Beyond all common sense, all of the above people believed in nonsense. Suckers.

And this brings me to the greatest marketing campaign of current times: The Gun industry’s NRA program.

How The Gun Industry Funnels Tens Of Millions Of Dollars To The NRA
Walter Hickey

In its early days, the National Rifle Association was a grassroots social club that prided itself on independence from corporate influence.

Today, the bulk of the group’s money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income, and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.

Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program.

Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala’s, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.

Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns.

Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA’s revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.

For what exactly are the gun manufacturers paying? PROTECTION:

The chief trade association for gun manufacturers is the National Shooting Sports Federation, but the NRA takes front and center after each and every shooting.

“Today’s NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. “While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the ‘freedom’ of individual gun owners, it’s actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry.

It’s possible that without the NRA, people would be protesting outside of Glock, SIG Sauer and Freedom Group — the makers of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — and dragging the CEOs in front of cameras and Congress.

That is certainly what happened to tobacco executives when their products continued killing people.

If history is any indication, the NRA will be front and center of the new gun control debate, while gun manufacturers remain safely out of the spotlight.

By paying the likes of Wayne LaPierre to mouth the obvious falsehood, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” the NRA has accomplished the seemingly impossible.

Their paid-for marketing has conned us Americans into believing:

1. We are in grave and imminent danger from “the government” (Which government? Any government) and from “them” (criminals, minorities, immigrants, other people with guns).

2. Guns make us safer. Owning guns (more, higher power, bigger magazines) will protect us from the government and “them.”

3. The second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees our right to own, possess and openly carry guns everywhere (except in Congress, where guns are dangerous), whether or not we belong to a “well-regulated militia.”

4. We need to vote for politicians who will allow us (and our friends, our neighbors, our enemies and ironically, the “them” whom we fear) to have as many guns as we want.

The IRA’s ad/marketing campaign has overcome the simple and obvious facts that guns are made specifically to kill, and the more people who own guns the less safe we are.

We live in a world of make believe, where fools still smoke cigarettes, still invest in Ponzi schemes and still believe guns make them safer.

Welcome to the fools’ paradise.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Ten 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)
10. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with much higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (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

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

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