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, and the motive is the gap.
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Sometimes, you have to just shake your head in wonderment.
GOP Straight Up Bribes Democratic Senator In Effort To Block Obamacare
The Huffington Post | By Ryan Grim & Ashley AlmanThe Republican Party in Virginia has resorted to what appears to be outright bribery in its ongoing effort to deny low-income residents in the state access to the Medicaid expansion authorized by Obamacare.
Republicans offered to move Democratic state Sen. Phillip P. Puckett and his daughter into prestigious jobs in exchange for Puckett’s resignation, which will flip the chamber into Republican hands. Puckett officially accepted the offer on Monday, but then appeared to back away amid a public outcry.
The Senate was on course to pass an expansion of Medicaid, as the law allows, while the House of Delegates, in GOP hands, aimed to block it.
What does this mean to the people of Virginia?
PolitiFact: There’s a tremendous amount of federal money at stake.
As many as 400,000 Virginians could become eligible for Medicaid under Obamacare, and the U.S. would pay their entire health care costs through 2016.The most recent estimate of expansion costs (benefits to Virginia), released in January, breaks down to about $3.5 million a day for the budget year that starts this July 1. The federal contribution would be about $4.5 million a day during the following budget year, starting in mid-2015.
In short, the federal government would pump between $3.5 million and $4.5 million every day, into the Virginia economy, plus 400,000 Virginians would receive health care insurance.
But, the Republicans don’t want this. Why? They don’t want Obama and the Democrats to get the credit for these benefits. So they cut Virginians’ noses to spite Obama’s face.
Hey, who cares about the people. This is politics.
Eric Cantor Defeated by David Brat, Tea Party Challenger, in G.O.P. Primary Upset
By JONATHAN MARTINJUNE 10, 2014David Brat, a professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va., toppled Mr. Cantor, repeatedly criticizing him for being soft on immigration and contending that he supported what critics call amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally.
The Virginia Republican voters ousted one of the most powerful people in Congress, just to avoid accepting immigrants into their midst. They have left the frying pan of right-wing politics to the extreme right wing fire of Tea Party politics.
These voters have allowed fear and bigotry to craze them. And here is the irony.
The Tea Party is the extreme proponent of “small government, cut spending.” That philosophy has decimated the middle- and lower-income groups, not only by reducing benefits to the not-rich, but by reducing economic growth.
Reduced economic growth causes unemployment and reduced salaries in existing jobs, both of which have been a big issue in Virginia.
The Virginians’ middle- and lower-income’s primary fear of immigrants is that they will take these low wage jobs and will vote for people who side with immigrants.
So — ironically — Virginia’s middle- and lower-income groups vote for the Tea Party, because the Tea Party is the most anti-immigant party — even though it is the Tea Party that is most responsible for the middle- and lower-income group’s economic troubles.
In short, Virginians not only have voted to jump from the frying pan into the fire, but to elect the people who built the fire in the first place! And in the fall, they probably will vote Republican.
Not even a fiction writer could create such a crazy scenario.
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
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Translation: To hell with the blacks, the browns, the gays and the women. Focus on rich, white old men.
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and Brat is an economics professor, who loves ayn rand… gotta love it.
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Steve Forbes has the answer — bring back the gold standard:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/bring-back-the-gold-standard-and-the-economy-will-prosper–says-steve-forbes-165840191.html
Forbes of course is editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, famous for calculating that the wealth of the “Forbes 400” is greater than all 41 million African Americans. Mathematically, each billionaire must have worked 100,000 times as hard over their lifetime.
http://inequality.org/wealth-400-billionaires-wealth-41-million-africanamericans/
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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/35-pizza-world-cup-visitors-hit-with-price-shock/
“Experts say prices are kept high because supply can’t keep up with demand. About 40 million Brazilians – a fifth of the population – joined the middle class in the past decade, on the back of strong economic growth and increased government social programs. Between 2009 and 2012, average annual income rose by more than 40 percent, from $8,140 to $11,630, according to the World Bank. For many, the new affluence sparked a spending spree.”
As the article shows, Brazil increase spending on government social programs, and there was some inflation. However, the nation experienced huge economic growth, higher wages and less poverty.
We have the opposite in the US. Businesses would love to have more customers. But people like Steve Forbes advocate less social spending to keep the income gap as wide as possible.
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[1] Rodger says “The Tea Party is the extreme proponent of ‘small government, cut spending’.”
No one wants to cut federal spending. In fact, Tea Party clowns are the biggest advocates of increased spending. They just want less spending on social programs that help average people, and more spending on war, on Wall Street, on Tea Party policies, and so on.
Nor does anyone want “smaller government.” Libertarians want a tyrannical, militarized police / surveillance state to “guard my freedoms.” The bigger the better. For these idiots, the definition of “big government” is whatever slows the acceleration of the gap between the rich and the rest. For average Tea Party types, “big government” is whatever de-legitimizes their hatred of brown people.
[2] So the ultra-right-wing Eric Cantor lost his re-election bid to even farther-right-wing Dave Brat, who hates immigrants. This was in Virginia, a state full of federal employees that feed at the public trough. These “takers” are fat and comfortable, and don’t want anyone else to be.
Compared to Dave Brat, Shish-o-nomics is quite reasonable. Brat says the (non-existent) “free market” is “morally superior.” He says the financial world needs more deregulation. He worships Ronald Reagan. He champions “Christian” capitalism with its ever-worsening inequality. He wants more austerity for the masses, calling it “fiscal responsibility.” He says that if churches don’t become even more radical in their support for the rich, then “a Hitler-like figure could rise to power.” He calls himself a “Calvinist,” meaning he believes that the rich are rightly privileged because it is “God’s will.” He opposes gay marriage and women’s reproductive rights. He is also a Randroid (a cult devotee of Ayn Rand, who was herself an atheist who despised religion, especially Christianity).
This clown would use the Bible to justify slavery if he lived in antebellum Virginia. He is Virginia’s version of Rick Santorum, and would make a fool of himself if the corporate media would actually question him.
Unfortunately Brat will likely be elected. In the November general election, his democratic opponent, Jake Trammell, will face an uphill battle in an extremely right-wing district.
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Tea Party Platform contains these points:
1. Eliminate Excessive Taxes (i.e. cut taxes on the rich)
2. Eliminate the National Debt (How? See #3.)
3. Eliminate Deficit Spending (If taxes will not be increased, the only way to eliminate deficit spending is to cut spending for social programs)
4. Protect Free Markets (By eliminating laws that restrict business criminality, i.e Let ’em pollute and steal)
5. Abide by the Constitution of the United States (Everything is covered in a blanket of patriotism).
6. Promote Civic Responsibility (i.e., it’s everyone for themselves)
7. Reduce the Overall Size of Government (by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to the poor, road & bridge building, research & development and the million other things the government does for us.)
8. Believe in the People (i.e Rich people)
9. Avoid the Pitfalls of Politics (Although, we are as political as it gets)
10. Maintain Local Independence (Until one of ours gets to be President, at which time you all will do as we say — or else.)
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Nicely put. The Tea Party clowns remind me of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, who said that “all men are created equal.”
Slaves, of course, were not equal, since they were not men. Women were not equal either.
Most people think that Jefferson opposed slavery. In reality, Jefferson owned 600 slaves. No wonder he is a darling of the Tea Party crowd.
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I rated you down by accident rodger….. on to my point…. as we saw in Europe a few weeks ago, right wing wackos are in ascendance in the EU. I do not think it will reverse, here or there, it will only get worse (unless the Euro disbands, which it will not…. or unless the large swath of angry white americans reverse themselves. I wait with bated breath). I have maintained, for ten years, that the only way out of this situation is revolution. not because I look forward to violence, but because that is where we are headed, albeit slowly (Americans being dimwitted when compared to Europeans).
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Re #7…cut funding for road and bridge building.
Wouldn’t the tea party candidates have to drive on roads to get to the airport where their private jet is located?
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Re #7, the Tea Party dream is to have the federal government finance the construction of roads, bridges, and highways, and then privatize them.
That way the rich owners of our infrastructure become even richer, while the impoverished masses become even poorer.
This is called “patriotism.”
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== Off topic ==
[1] Corporate media outlets claim that euro-zone voters have “rejected austerity.”
Nonsense.
As long as voters embrace the euro, they will embrace austerity, no matter who they elect. Austerity is mathematically unavoidable until they recover their Monetary Sovereignty. And even if they do recover it, their governments will likely switch to the American-style Big Lie. (European politicians would falsely claim that the government, which creates money, is the same as an entity that uses money).
As long as the masses refuse to understand this, their suffering will increase.
The blind spot regarding the euro is incredible. The article below claims that 60% of French public debt is illegitimate and “odious,” meaning it serves to make the rich richer at the expense of the masses.
Okay, but what causes this debt? Nowhere in the lengthy article is there a single mention of the euro and Monetary Sovereignty. They are the elephant in the room, which everyone ignores.
From the article…
>>“What explains the rise in public debt? First, a fall in the tax revenues of the state. Massive tax reductions for the wealthy and big corporations have been carried out since 1980.”
Okay, but what about the role of euro and the loss of Monetary Sovereignty?
>>“No one knows who holds the French debt. To finance its debt, the French state, like any other state, issues bonds, which are bought by a set of authorized banks. These banks then sell the bonds on the global financial markets. Who owns these titles is one of the world’s best kept secrets. The state pays interests to the holders, so technically the state could know who owns them. Yet a legally organized ignorance forbids the disclosure of the identity of the bond holders.”
Okay, but what about the euro and Monetary Sovereignty?
(Incidentally, governments with full Monetary Sovereignty do not issue bonds to “finance their debt.” They don’t need to “finance” anything. Their issuance of bonds has no effect on their ability to create money.)
>>“The French people have a right to demand a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and the cancellation of at least part of it. There is precedent for this: in 2008 Ecuador declared 70% of its debt illegitimate.”
Nonsense. France has a significant trade deficit. Therefore France will have more public debt as long as France refuses to reclaim its Monetary Sovereignty. The people’s “rights” are irrelevant to this, as is the “legitimacy” of the national debt.
Moreover, you cannot compare France, which has no MS, with Ecuador, which has partial MS. Ecuador adopted the US dollar as its currency on 13 March 2000, under President Gustavo Noboa, who sought to revive the Ecuadorian economy. Ecuador continues to use the dollar today as a convenience, and because the dollar limits the ability of private local bankers to play games with the currency.
>>“The French government should cease to borrow on financial markets, and instead finance itself through households and banks at reasonable and controllable interest rates.”
Yet more nonsense. Why can’t the French government simply create its own money, like the USA does?
Incidentally, note the irony. France controls 14 nations in Africa by issuing their currency (the Central African CFA franc, and the West African CFA franc). Yet France surrendered its own Monetary Sovereignty to Germany and the Troika. Therefore Germany and the Troika are the true rulers of those 14 African nations.
>>“Debt should be democratized. Elements of socialism must be introduced at the very core of the system. To counter the tyranny of debt on every aspect of our lives, there is no alternative.”
No alternative? Why not dump the euro? Until you address that, all your talk will be meaningless chatter.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/09/french-public-debt-audit-illegitimate-working-class-internationalim
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[2] Olivier Blanchard has been a professor of economics at Harvard, and is now a professor at MIT. He is also the IMF’s chief economist.
Last year, Blanchard said the UK government should ease austerity to boost growth.
Now Blanchard faces some kind of sex scandal (like fellow Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn did) or has some other problem that threatens his job, because Blanchard has suddenly reversed himself. Now he says that austerity has been “appropriate” all along.
As “proof,” Blanchard says that last year the IMF had “underestimated” the strength of the UK’s (non-existent) growth.
Further, Blanchard claims that this year, draconian austerity will cause the UK economy to be the fastest growing of any major economy.
George Osborne (British finance minister) says that austerity has been vindicated.
The wonder of economics is that officials can say whatever they want, and get away with it. The more absurd, the better.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10881540/IMF-accepts-it-was-wrong-on-George-Osbornes-austerity.html
Some readers claim that the UK has had no austerity at all, since the British government does not yet have a balanced budget, and continues to sell T-securities (“gilts”).
That is, since the UK government is “borrowing” £2 billion ($3.3 billion) per week, there has been no austerity whatsoever.
One reader claims that austerity only exists in places like Greece, Portugal, and Spain. Not the US or UK.
The reader says the US and UK governments have “printed themselves into oblivion, which is the opposite of austerity.”
The reader says that anyone who disagrees with him is “financially illiterate.”
It’s like Shish-o-nomics. If you expose the Big Lie, then you are “financially illiterate.”
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[3] Because of ever-worsening austerity and inequality, the UK food bank demand for 2013 was 54% higher than 2012.
Over the last year, two new food banks have opened up every week – often by church-based organizations – and more than 900,000 people have been forced to get emergency food aid.
There are 6,500 churches in the UK. More than half of them run emergency social programs.
This is what the IMF and George Osborne call a “strong economy.”
http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2014/jun/09/church-charities-role-voluntary-sector
The international Save the Children fund says that austerity in the UK will plunge an additional 1.4 million children into poverty during the next six years, and that by 2020 an estimated 5 million children—one-third of all children in Britain—will be “sentenced to a lifetime of poverty.”
The figures confirm a survey by the charity Oxfam, which found that austerity (i.e. welfare cuts) have sunk 1.8 million families deeper into poverty.
Specific facts and figures are here…
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/10/chil-j10.html
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[4] A MEANINGLESS GESTURE
Seattle is the seventh most expensive city in the US, with a cost of living 24 percent higher than the national average. One-bedroom apartments rent for an average of $1,381 per month. (Some sources claim that the rent is slightly lower; some say higher. In New York City the average apartment rent is $2,902 per month.)
On 2 June 2014, Seattle’s City Council voted to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 hour.
This was a meaningless gesture aimed at maintaining the status quo, and bolstering illusions about the Democratic Party in an election year.
It was meaningless for the following reasons…
>>There will be no minimum wage increase for workers under the age of 18, even if they perform the identical work of people 18 and over.
>>The increase will be phased in incrementally over a seven-year period, beginning in April 2015. During that time lag, any benefits of an increase will be eroded by inflation.
>> Businesses with less than 500 workers are exempt from the increase until 2021. Most businesses will simply ignore the law, since there is no provision for enforcing it, and the penalty for defrauding workers of their legal wages is limited to $500 for the first offense. Recently the City Council passed laws mandating sick leave, and outlawing wage theft. Companies ignored the laws. None faced any fines. The laws are not enforced.
>>Even with a full-time job (which many low-wage workers are denied) at $15-an-hour a family of four still qualifies for food stamps in Seattle, since they cannot sustain a decent standard of living.
>> There are not enough jobs in any case. And most city governments in the USA give tax breaks to large companies as incentives to not re-locate, even with no increase in the minimum wage. Thus, the local tax burden is shifted onto workers, who pay the corporations to stay.
Bottom line: nothing has changed. The Big Lie marches on, and the gap continues to widen.
[5] MIRACLES DO HAPPEN
In April 2013, Frank N. Newman published a book titled “Freedom from National Debt,” which gets many of the facts of MS correct. For example, Mr. Newman explains that Treasuries do not represent a burden to future generations, and that taxes are never required to “pay them off.”
Newman explains why the issuance of T-securities does not increase or decrease the money supply, and does not “crowd out” funds available for investment. He explains why foreign ownership of Treasuries does not create indebtedness to other nations. He explains why America need not fear “national debt,” and why we can upgrade America’s infrastructure and create millions of new jobs, while reducing taxes. He explains why inflation, not solvency, is the only conceivable constraint on the US government’s ability to create money. And so on.
THE MIRACLE is that Mr. Newman is truthful despite having spent 30 years in banking, and being the number two official of the U.S. Treasury. He recently completed five years as Chairman and CEO of Shenzhen Development Bank, China, during that bank’s successful turnaround. Previously he served as Chairman and CEO of Bankers Trust, and as CFO of Bank of America and Wells Fargo. In the 1990’s, he was Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and was awarded the Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department’s highest honor. (See biography at Wikipedia.)
Despite being an insider, he tells the truth. Newman even appeared on Fox News. See a 60-second excerpt…
Normally, insiders tell 100% lies. For example, on 31 May 2013 the Social Security Board of Trustees sent a letter to VP Joe Biden claiming that Social Security will be insolvent within ten years. Signees of the letter include Jack Lew (Treasury Secretary), and Kathleen Sibelius (then HHS Secretary)
Their solution, of course, is more austerity. (Cuts in benefits and increases in the FICA tax).
The four-page letter is here (.pdf)…
Click to access 709letter_TR13_Senate.pdf
One reader of Frank Newman’s book says, “Would somebody please buy a copy of this for each euro-zone minister?”
That reader’s comment is based on the delusion that euro-zone ministers simply “misunderstand” national finances.
Naturally “Fortune” Magazine condemns Newman’s book, using deficit hawks lies…
http://fortune.com/2013/05/16/former-treasury-official-lets-keep-running-big-deficits/
Mr. Newman published a previous book titled, “Six Myths that Hold Back America: And What America Can Learn from the Growth of China’s Economy” (Dec 2011). Here he takes a Keynesian approach to debunk the standard lies of deficit hawks and deficit doves.
The six myths:
1. Asian nations are bankrolling the U.S. (False.)
2. T-securities crowd out the private sector. (False.)
3. If everyone tries to save more, the nation will save more, and investment, GDP, and employment will increase. (False.)
4. If the government reduces the deficit, then national saving and investment will increase. (False.)
5. Today’s deficits create great burdens of tax for our children. (False.)
6. If the U.S. does not get its deficit reduced soon, then T-securities will face the same problems as Greece and Ireland. (False.)
Again, I have not read the book. Unlike Mr. Newman, I would not praise China as a model to emulate. China is fully infected with austerity mania — i.e. the eternal drive to privatize all, to subordinate the real economy to the financial economy, and to widen the gap between the rich and the rest.
Mr. Newman evidently shares the delusion that BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are “economic powerhouses” because they supposedly do not indulge in austerity.
In reality they all have austerity mania. Their “economic strength” exists only in their financial economies, not their real economies.
Because of austerity in the BRIC nations, inequality continues to worsen, and the vast majority of people are poorer than ever. In Brazil there are daily riots because the government claims that there is “no money” for social programs, but has infinite money to build new soccer stadiums for the FIFA World Cup, which starts tomorrow.
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This article has the wrong headline:
It should read: “The Party That Sold Out 400K Uninsured Constituents”
No wait: It really should read: “Virginians Sell Out 400K Uninsured Fellow Virginians.”
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Cantor got the frying pan today, and more fires are coming.
Who really believes the republicans are “conservatives”? The GOP and the Democrats are one single party. The Republicans spew garbage to make it seem like they are the real deal.
Once they are in office, they team up with the communists in the Democratic party to implement socialist measures.
I hope you are taking note as to what is happening Rodger, because the country is waking up. Slowly, but waking up nonetheless.
The California teacher/union case and Cantor are warnings of what’s to come. Socialists have done enough damage. I think Americans’s have had enough of it and are going to castigate those that have been fleecing this country. Enough is enough.
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Please define a “socialist”. Can you? I doubt it.
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Let me give it a shot…
– Union proponents
– Proponents of social programs (aka, programs to “help” the people)
– Those wanting a hakuna matata utopia society where everyone lives happily ever after. No need to deal with the realities of life, work, etc….
– Those proposing and implementing “solutions” to “help” those in need. Except that they forget to about the negative effects of their ideas.
– Gun control – I’m sure killers will think about following the law before shooting someone.
– Education – since not enough damage has been done by allowing students to take on loans – now that education is too expensive – subsidize their interest (nice voting block – and they won’t know they paid for it anyway).
– Climate change – force everyone else to believe in a blatant lie – just because you are afraid that “your” environment will be damaged. I’m sure these are the same jackals that invented HOAs, deeds, etc.. They love everyone, when they can force their will upon them.
– All government spending is good – because we need “more” money. Except that some nations have WAY more money than the US – go check out how good it’s doing them.
Oh yes, the do gooders. They love to help “shishhh don’t say it out loud – they love to help when it’s not their own money”.
If socialism worked – it would have worked a long time ago. 99% of the population believes in socialism. The US is one of the less socialists – and is full of socialists – just watch TV and you will see. Most movies today are a big ad for communist ways. Instead of working, it has bankrupted nations and is destroying the US.
Let me ask you – what other prove do you need to know that socialism doesnt work?
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Socialism is government ownership, not government spending.
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The best cartoon of the month
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