–Who are the frightened little people of the new America?

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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“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus

Fighting back: Residents force feds to scrap plan to house illegals at Va. college

The Obama administration Monday abruptly halted plans to shelter some of the children surging across the border at a defunct college in rural Virginia.

As many as 500 children were to start arriving this week at St. Paul’s College, a recently closed historically black college in Lawrenceville, Virginia.

More than 90,000 children, mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, will be caught this year, and more than 140,000 will be apprehended in 2015.

Plans to house some of the children at an empty office complex in Baltimore were halted after the city’s Democratic mayor and Maryland’s two Democratic senators objected as soon as the details were announced.

HHS officials estimated that a steady stream of children would be housed on the campus, each child staying about 30 days until being reunited with a parent.

Jerry Prince, the owner of Prince’s Barber Shop in Lawrenceville, said that he wanted what was best for the children, but he feared the children would bring diseases to his town. “Even kids carry diseases like smallpox, chickenpox and scabies.”

Immigration officials have said many of the children have never seen a doctor until they are intercepted by agents at the border, and head lice and scabies screenings are part of the initial checks.

The Obama administration has called the surge of children a “humanitarian crisis.” However, critics blame President Obama for laying out a welcome mat for illegal immigrants, especially minors, and for discouraging deportations.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. But the notion of arresting and deporting children seems so damn un-American.

Really, is this what we’ve become — a selfish, “me-first, me-only,” frightened little nation that makes up excuses for not helping children in need? Are these children just too inconvenient for us?

We gladly send our soldiers to be killed defending every nut-ball country on earth, but accepting foreign children here — where one day they might live near us — is that too much? Are we now the United States of Xenophobia?

These are children, for crying out loud. Children!. And our lame excuse for rejecting them is they have smallpox (a disease totally eradicated from this earth)? Children who are inspected for disease upon entry?

The kids weren’t going to be sent to your house or your neighbor’s house. They were going to a closed college outside of Lawrenceville, VA (population 1,500), and to an empty office building.

And this scares poor Jerry Prince? Apparently he never has set foot outside of the United States, and mingled amoung — oh, horrors! — foreigners. He “wants what’s best for the children,” but he is too terrified of children possibly having chickenpox (like his own children and his neighbor’s children did).

Has this once great nation become a cringing population of selfish cowards, hiding behind our open-carry AR15s, so to ward off any stranger who dares ask our help?

Rep. Candice S. Miller, Michigan Republican and chairwoman of a key border security subcommittee, wrote a letter asking Mr. Obama to deploy the National Guard to let (border patrol) agents get back to their job of stopping illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and gun traffickers.

She called on the president to not only deploy the Guard but to give it police powers so it could also aid in patrolling the border and arresting illegal immigrants.

Yes, that is our solution to a humanitarian crisis of children: Deploy the National Guard. Build the wall higher and deport those who, at great risk to their young lives, manage get in.

Is this the America our forefathers envisioned, when they took the perilous journey across the ocean? What happened to the proud, strong people who built this nation?

America, the once great. What are we, now?

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)

—–

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

–The “Leviathan” liars and fools

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

The upper .1% income/wealth/power group (You know, the ones who bribe politicians to widen the GAP between them and the rest of us) loves to talk about the horrors of “big” government.

Some of them call the U.S. government “Leviathan,” to make you visualize a huge, malevolent monster trying to swallow you up and controlling your life against your will.

The rich have recruited the Tea Party, the religious right and the Libertarians to call for smaller government, simply because reducing the size of government reduces benefits to the 99.9%, thus widening the GAP.

Given their choice, they would opt for no government at all. That would give the rich free rein to run rampant over the rest of us.

One Libertarian site named, “The Daily Bell” uses the term “Leviathan” in describing the U.S. government, and claims that big government has caused 150 million murders.

They forget that people, not governments kill, and citizens of small governments kill just as well, if not better.

The 150 million murder number undoubtedly includes the small governments of Uganda’s Idi Amin, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, the slaughters of Burundi and Rwanda, and the small governments of Vichy France, Poland, Austria and Germany itself, where the people and their small governments joyfully sent their neighbors to the gas chambers.

South Africa’s apartheid government was smaller than many U.S. state governments by any measure, and far more murderous.

Is “big” government worse than the state governments that embraced slavery? Or the state governments that foster cruelty to gays, women, browns, blacks, the poor, the elderly and immigrants?

Recently, I contacted Wes Benedict, Executive Director of the Libertarian National Committee, Inc. ((202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict@lp.org) and asked him one simple question: “Specifically, which Big Government spending do you wish to reduce or eliminate, and which do you wish to maintain or increase?”

His simple answer: “Reduce spending on defense, Social Security, Medicare, HHS, along with most other things. Increase nothing.”

(I wrote to him, a follow up question: “Why does the Libertarian Party wish to reduce spending on Social Security, Medicare and HHS?” but he will not answer.)

Although his answer differs somewhat from that of other right-wingers (Most of them want to increase military spending), still it leaves the question of “Why?” Why cut benefits to the elderly, the sick and the poor?

Before we address that question, let’s see where the federal government currently spends money:

If you go to the Federal Budget, Table S–4. Adjusted Baseline by Category, you’ll see the following figures for 2012:

Outlays:
Appropriated (“discretionary”) programs:
Defense: 671 billion
Non-defense: 614 billion

Subtotal: 1,285 billion

Mandatory programs:
Social Security: 768 billion
Medicare: 466 billion
Medicaid: 251 billion
Other mandatory programs: 548 billion

Subtotal: 2,032 billion

Net Interest: 220 billion

Total Outlays: 3,537 billion

Which of the above benefits do you feel is a monster, controlling your life against your will and trying to swallow you up?

Would you rather receive a smaller Social Security benefit? A smaller Medicare or Medicaid benefit? Less of other benefits (aids to the poor, the middle, the unemployed, the disabled and others in need)?

When you receive that Social Security check, or your medical bills are paid by Medicare, do you feel oppressed by the “Leviathan”?

Probably not.

And if you understand it isn’t the federal benefits that are oppressive, but rather the federal taxes, keep in mind that federal taxes do not fund federal spending.

You could receive exactly the same benefits if there were no federal taxes at all.

So if we don’t cut the military, and we don’t cut mandatory programs, what we have left is 614 billion, or about 17% of the budget. And what is the 17%? “Useless” things like road and bridge building, aids to education, NASA, the courts, Congress, the Supreme Court, the White House and thousands upon thousands of federal efforts to keep the country running.

So, in reality “cutting the size of the federal government” is mostly the same as “cutting the free benefits coming from the federal government.” Yet, still we hear about this nasty old “Leviathan.”

The Economist
Leviathan stirs again

Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology.

America’s financial capital has shifted from New York to Washington, DC, and the government has been trying to extend its control over the health-care industry.

Ah yes, not only “Leviathan,” but also “vengeance,” “brute” and “control.” Hmmm . . . do you think they’re trying to influence you with emotion rather than fact?

As for the government “extending its control,” this apparently is a synonym for the government trying to supply health care to the many millions of people who can’t afford it. Shame on the “Leviathan” for that.

But it gets worse. (Remember, this is from a publication that calls itself, “The Economist”):

The revival of the state is creating a series of fierce debates that will shape policymaking over the coming decades. Governments are beginning to cut public spending in an attempt to deal with surging deficits.

But the inevitable quarrels over cuts will be paltry compared with those about the growth of entitlements. America’s deficit, boosted by recession, is already hovering at a post-war high of 12% of GDP, and the American economy depends on the willingness of other countries (particularly China) to fund its debt.

The CBO calculates that the deficit could rise to 23% of GDP in the next 40 years if it fails to tackle the yawning imbalance between revenue and expenditure.

Here is a magazine, dedicated to the science of economics, that writes articles, pretending that:

–Deficits, which are absolutely necessary for economic growth, should be reduced, and

–China, which buys those unnecessary T-securities, is in some unexplained way, funding our debt, which itself, in some unexplained way, is funding the American government.

No, Economist, the deficit should not be reduced, it should be increased, via tax cuts and spending increases.

And no, Economist, neither China nor any other country provides the U.S. with dollars, our own sovereign currency.

We could pay off 100% of our so-called “debt” to China tomorrow, simply by transferring dollars from China’s T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank, to China’s checking account at any bank. No new dollars needed.

That a magazine devoted to economics, can be completely ignorant of even the basics of Monetary Sovereignty is stunning — or would be until you remember that it, like most media, is owned by rich people: “Since 1928, half the shares have been owned by the Financial Times, a subsidiary of Pearson, the other half by a group of independent shareholders.”

In summary:

1. Despite loaded names like “Leviathan,” big governments neither are more nor less honest, compassionate, understanding or beneficial than small governments. If you live in a cruelly run state, cutting federal Social Security benefits won’t help you.

Even a tiny county run by someone like Sheriff Joe Arpaio can be a nightmare if your skin is black or brown.

2. Names like “Leviathan” are used as emotional pejoratives for government, to convince you to cut your own wrists at the behest of the upper .01%. They want to widen the gap, and one way to do that is to cut what benefits you. The rich want to limit or even eliminate government, because only government is able to control the power lust of the rich.

3. If you read any article calling the U.S. government “Leviathan,” you can be absolutely positive the author is a liar or a fool.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–The GAP takes another life. Who cares? She was poor.

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

As readers of this blog know, the GAP represents the differences among the various income/wealth/power levels.

Members of every level aspire to narrow the GAPs above them and to widen the GAPs below them. One of many examples: Members of the middle class voting for politicians who promise to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment and poverty aid benefits — though that means cutting benefits to themselves.

The wealthiest, most powerful groups work hard to convince all the groups below them that both wealth and poverty are well-deserved.

It is like starving your children to buy a gown for the socialite ball –which brings us to the following article:

The new debtors prisons: Pennsylvania mother dies while jailed for truancy fines
by Laura ClawsonFollow

Eileen DiNino, 55, of Reading, was found dead in a jail cell Saturday, halfway through a 48-hour sentence that would have erased about $2,000 in fines and court costs. The debt had accrued since 1999, and involved several of her seven children, most recently her boys at a vocational high school.

“More than 1,600 people have been jailed in Berks County alone—two-thirds of them women—over truancy fines since 2000, the Reading Eagle reported Wednesday.”

Increasing court fees get added to fines—DiNino owed money for things like postage and a “judicial computer project”—often creating a cycle of debt owed to the state that it’s almost impossible for low-income people to escape, no matter how hard they work to avoid incurring further debt.

I would speculate that of those 1,600 mostly impoverished women sent to debtors prison, a total of 0% actually wanted their kids not to attend school.

I further speculate that 100% of these people had lost control over their children.

The difference is when wealthy people lose control over their children, and the children become truants, in the extraordinarily rare circumstance that a fine is levied, the wealthy person doesn’t go to jail.

As everyone knows, sending a poor person to jail is a wonderful way to help them improve their position in life. The time in jail either will get them fired from their current jobs, or be a nice addition to their resumes, fostering further dependency on society:

Parents serve jail time with children for truancy
By Natasha Chen

A mother and daughter were booked into Bell County Jail on Tuesday, one of many cases of parents serving time with their children for contempt of court after truancy.

The Temple Independent School District attendance policy reads that if a child under 18 is “absent from school on 10 or more days or partial days within a six-month period in the same school year, or on three or more days or parts of days within a four-week period,” the parent will be prosecuted for contributing to truancy and the child for failure to attend school.

So, not only are poor parents sent to debtors prison, but kids are too, because it is common knowledge that being in jail is a great idea for children. They learn so many useful things, there.

Earlier this year, the NAACP sued a Pennsylvania school district for levying what it claimed were illegal fines of thousands of dollars on truant students and their parents. Lenora Hummel was fined $8,000 after her son and daughter stopped going to school because they said they were bullied and harassed by other students.

When a child is frightened because he or she is being bullied, the appropriate cure is to send the child to jail and fine the parents. Everyone knows that.

By the way, there is a reason why debtors’ prison has been outlawed in all civilized nations (It persist in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Greece, and the United States): Forcing someone into prison for being unable to pay a debt is like forcing an asthmatic into a coal mine for coughing.

My final speculation is that much of America believes not only that poor people deserve to be poor, but that they should be punished for having the same problems as rich people, without the money to pay for them.

These are known as religious right-wingers, though many religious right-wingers are poor themselves (but, of course, they despise other poor people).

Thus, they may vote against increased Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment benefits, even when they themselves have received such benefits, while voting to cut taxes on the rich, whom they desperately wish to emulate.

These deniers of their reality have been indoctrinated in the belief the rich are superior human beings (“makers”) and the poor are inferior, even subhuman (“takers”), who either should be jailed or shot (by a military style gun).

So, if you are a mother, whose husband has run away, and who is working two, low-pay jobs to support your resentful, out-of-control children, you:

1. Shouldn’t have had those children in the first place, and
2. You deserve to be in jail

A California mom was sentenced to 180 days in jail after she pleaded guilty to allowing her kids to miss more than 10 percent of school last year.

Melissa Mooney, a parent at the school said. “Who’s going to watch her kids? I think 180 days is extreme.”

Ah, that’s what you get from weak-spined “libs.”

Fortunately, not everyone thinks that way:

Adriana Castaneda, another parent at the school, said the mother got off with a light sentence. “I would have given her a year,” she said. “Honestly, I think that punishment is not enough.”

See, it’s like this. If a kid grabs a gun, goes to the local school and blows a few heads off, it’s unlikely the kid’s mother will go to jail. After all, guns protect us. But if that same kid is a truant and the parent is poor . . . watch out!

[All of the above is what is known in America today as right-wing “compassion,” “justice” and “religion.”]

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–David Brat: The religious, patriotic, anti-government, economics professor

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

David Brat is the economics professor who beat Eric Cantor, the right winger, the “too-liberal-for-the-Tea-Party” guy. You can see Brat’s website here.

Here are a few of his opinions:

OBAMACARE
Obamacare has proven to be an economically disastrous law and an unconstitutional power grab by our Federal Government. The government cannot and should not be permitted to run and regulate nearly 20% of our nation’s economy.

We must restore the relationship between doctor and patient. We must restore the relationship between price and service in medicine. I support a plan to defund the law and replace it with free-market solutions that lower costs, improve quality, and increase access to care.

TRANSLATION: Obamacare has been an economic and human windfall for those states expanding Medicaid. Not only are those states receiving billions from the federal government, but millions of their poor people are receiving health care insurance. We right-wingers don’t like that.

In my “free-market” plan (the one that makes workers subservient to corporations), only the rich would be able to afford health care, which is as it should be.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
Our national debt has skyrocketed, reaching over $17 trillion dollars. What our leaders in Washington fail to mention is the $127 Trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities (see U.S. Debt Clock).

This lack of leadership on both sides of the aisle threatens our nation’s stability and long term growth and forces an undue burden on our children and grandchildren. We must balance the federal budget by reducing spending.

I will support a balanced budget amendment which will force Congress to reign in the out of control federal spending and to restore confidence in the American economy.

TRANSLATION: Although I am an economics professor, I am clueless about Monetary Sovereignty. I actually believe what the “Debt Clock” says. I don’t know that the U.S. does not and cannot have unfunded liabilities.

I don’t understand the financial difference between the U.S. government and the governments of the states, counties and cities.

I also don’t understand that national debt is not, and never will be, a burden on our children and grandchildren — or more likely I understand it and am just mouthing the BIG LIE.

I also pretend not to understand that a balanced federal budget (aka “austerity”) would be a financial disaster.

IMMIGRATION
When addressing the issue of immigration, we must start by securing our border. I reject any proposal that grants amnesty and undermines the fundamental rule of law. Adding millions of workers to the labor market will force wages to fall and jobs to be lost.

I support . . . a fair process to allow law abiding individuals to work towards becoming citizens of this great nation.

TRANSLATION: “Start by securing our border” means nothing can be done until zero brown-skinned people ever enter the country. By the way, you’ll note I said “border” not “borders.” We also have borders with Canada, but those are mostly white-skinned people, so they’re fine.

I also don’t want you to realize that “granting amnesty” means changing the law, so people receiving amnesty would, in fact, follow the rule of law. But, keep it quiet.

As an economist, I still haven’t learned that immigration isn’t what forces wages to fall and jobs to be lost. What does? My right-wing austerity and all those spending cuts.

By “fair process to work toward” citizenship, I prefer something with lots of hoops to jump through — something that takes at least 50 years and forces people to start over if they make the slightest mistake.

2ND AMENDMENT
I am a strong supporter of gun rights. The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right enshrined in the constitution for a reason – it provides the people with the ultimate guarantee of sovereignty.

Our founding documents make it clear that our inalienable rights come from God and that the job of the government is to ensure and protect those God given rights.

TRANSLATION: “The ultimate guarantee of sovereignty” is code for: If the government does something we don’t like, we can resist the army, navy and marines with our pistols and rifles — ala my hero, Cliven Bundy.

I am oh-so religious and oh-so patriotic. That’s why I say that God wrote the Constitution and God gave us the right to carry guns anywhere we want. Those are in the bible, aren’t they?

EDUCATION
As an economist and educator for eighteen years, I understand the value of a good education. I will support efforts to place Virginia’s teachers, parents, and local officials, who best understand the needs of the community, in control of our education system.

TRANSLATION: Don’t change anything. Our current education system is perfect, just the way it is. We need uneducated kids to do the grunt work for us elites.

NATIONAL SECURITY/FOREIGN POLICY
Ronald Reagan said it best: “Peace through strength.” A strong military is essential to the success of our nation. We must secure our borders, support the Armed Forces, both at home and abroad, and maintain a strong national defense in order to secure our country’s future. In addition, I support a full investigation into the Benghazi attacks.

TRANSLATION: Ronald Reagan is another one of my heroes. He opted for less deficit spending, then set a record for deficit spending.

He was against lying to Congress, except for the Iran-Contra affair.

He bankrupted much of the Savings & Loan industry with criminality and retro-active laws.

His Deaver and Nofzinger both were convicted of illegal lobbying.

His entire Department of Housing and Urban Development leadership was convicted of crimes while in office.

The same is true of his Environmental Protection Agency.

And there was the Department of Justice scandal.

But hey, let’s be outraged about Benghazi. That is the most important issue facing America.

I don’t like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, any aid to the poor, aids to education, relief of student loans or any other spending that benefits the middle- and lower-income groups.

But I love the military. Those weapons manufacturers really pay us politicians well.

ENERGY
I support a broad-spectrum energy approach that relies on the free market. The private sector must be set free to invest in natural gas, wind, solar, oil, nuclear, and other forms of energy as we move forward.

Ending our reliance on foreign oil and moving toward energy independence is vital to the future welfare of America.

TRANSLATION: Drill baby, drill. Who cares about the ecology or global warming or the world in which our children and grandchildren will live. Let’s take the money and run.

10TH AMENDMENT
The federal government has grown far too large. I fully support the Constitution and enforcing the 10th Amendment and getting the government out of the way of economic growth. I will work to bring power back to the Commonwealth of Virginia.

TRANSLATION: Please don’t tell anyone that Virginia receives $1.51 from the federal government for every federal tax dollar it pays. (See: http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2009/11/tax.jpg)

Virginia is self-sufficient, but if those federal payments stopped, we’d be broke within this year.

UPHOLD HUMAN LIFE
Human life is sacred, as proclaimed by our founding documents, and I will always support laws that protect life. Our fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness precede the existence of government and come from God, the Author of Nature.

These core constitutional rights have been usurped by the Judicial and Executive Branches and must be returned to the people and their representatives.

TRANSLATION: See, I told you I’m the most religious and patriotic guy in the room. That’s why I hate the government.

In fact, I so much want to get the government out of our lives that I want to pass a law outlawing a woman’s right to control her own body. And of course, there should be a federal law against gay marriage. But really, the government is too big and intrusive into our private lives.

That’s not hypocritical, is it?

But don’t worry: I’m a university professor and I teach your children.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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