–Virginia: From the frying pan into the fire

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.
======================================================================================================================================================================================

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 Alman

The 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, 2014

David 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

====================================================================================================================================================
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

–What is the real pattern behind immigration reform cowardice?

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

To demonstrate the cruelty of a Congress that has lost all sense of decency, consider the latest in immigration “reform.”

The most incremental of immigration bills, known as the ENLIST Act would let immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children to enlist in the military. If they serve and are honorably discharged, they would then be eligible for a green card, which would put them on a path to citizenship.

Now consider two children, both 1 year old. The first child was born on U.S. soil a year ago. The second child was taken here from a foreign country, by his parents.

Which of these two, one-year-old children, is a better American?

According to the ENLIST Act, the child born on U.S. soil is the better American. The second child must avoid being deported, until he is old enough for the military. Then he must risk his life in the military and serve honorably. Then by some unknown means obtain a green card, which still does not make him a citizen, because at that point he only is on a “path to citizenship.”

House Majority Eric Cantor said, “If you’ve got a kid that was brought here by their parents — unbeknownst to the child — and that they’ve grown up in this country and not known any other, and they want to serve in our military, they ought to be allowed to do that and then have the ability to become a citizen after that kind of service.”

But Cantor has not even brought up for a vote, this ironically labeled “reform,” this convoluted, cruel maze through which an innocent child must crawl.

And this little law applies only to children. It says nothing about the rest of the 12 million undocumented immigrants in America.

Why?

It’s the old story: Political leadership’s use of paranoia to seize and retain power.

Voters (though especially right-wing voters) have been taught they need to live behind personal stone walls of fear and hatred. They are taught to fear and hate black people. They are taught to fear and hate brown people and yellow people. They fear and hate gays, Jews, Muslims, foreigners, Communists, Socialists, liberals, anyone wearing a hoodie.

They fear and hate the poor. They fear and hate the people in the next state. They even are taught to fear and hate the U.S. government, thus the “small government” efforts by the extreme right wing.

They are told to demand to own ever more and ever bigger guns to protect themselves against those they fear. They shoot when they hear a knock at the door.

When they sneak out from behind their stone walls, they feel they must carry guns everywhere they go.

Never mind that we all are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Never mind that study after study has shown that recent immigrants have been just as law-abiding, hard-working, benefit-to-America people as those born here.

Never mind that according to the Center for Naval Analysis:

Non-citizens, once they have joined the military, are also far more likely to complete their enlistment obligations successfully than their U.S.-born counterparts.

Thirty-six month attrition rates for non-citizens are between 9 and 20 percentage points lower than those for white citizens, the largest demographic group in the military.

So craven are our leaders, that even this punitive ENLIST act — and act that would delay citizenship for many years — cannot move forward.

It is the leaders, those cynical little pretend patriots of little morals, whom we sent to Washington to represent America, but who feel their real power comes from building the wall of hatred and fear ever stronger — they are the ones who repeatedly appeal to the worst instincts of a population they intentionally frighten.

During war, fear and hatred bring a nation together under its leadership. So now our leaders have invented wars — wars against drugs, wars against immigrants, wars against alien terrorists — to solidify the power of the leaders.

President Bush created the fear of little Iraq and its little leader Saddam Hussein, so to give himself the power to cause thousands of American deaths and dismemberments — unnecessarily.

The leaders tell a gullible populace, “I am fighting for you, against your fears,” while the populace does not understand that it is the leaders, who have implanted those fears. Fear and hatred are a leader’s greatest weapons.

Now we have about 12 million undocumented, only about 4% of the total U.S. population — certainly not enough to cause great concern. They already live here and will continue to live here. What public purpose is achieved by keeping them in an illegal status?

But our leaders, through exaggeration and caricature, intentionally have spread the fear of this small, comparatively benign group.

One day a law will be passed, and it will be called “reform,” and it will be nothing of the sort. There will be no true reform while paranoids have a strong voice.

We weren’t born to fear and hate. The Paranoid Gun Nuts weren’t born PGNs. They were indoctrinated into the world of fear and hatred by the power-mad. The gun companies use fear and hatred as their marketing too.

One day, Americans will wake up and open their arms, just as the people who really built America did. Those brave, compassionate souls, not the mean, cringing cowards of today, were the real American patriots.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Try everything but the solution: ECB cuts deposit rate below zero

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

Let’s say you want to cook your food by building a bonfire on the rug in the middle of your dining room. But you know that this could burn the house down.

How would you solve the problem?

You could coat all your walls with fireproofing material. You could trade your wooden furniture for steel furniture. You could put bricks between the fire and the rug.

You could stash a few dozen fire extinguishers all around, within easy reach. You could tell the fire department to be on alert. You even could close all the windows and doors to deprive a spreading fire of oxygen.

You could try any number of crazy solutions.

Or, you simply could forget about the stupid bonfire, and cook your food on the kitchen stove.

Because the euro deprives euro nations of their most valuable asset — their Monetary Sovereignty, they have have lost control over their money supplies, so have run short of money to sustain, much less to grow, their economies.

With bonfires roaring in the euro nations’ dining rooms, the EU and ECB twist and turn and pretend to try in every possible way, to save a truly horrible idea.

(In a June 2005 speech, I said, “Because of the Euro, no euro nation can control its own money supply. The Euro is the worst economic idea since the recession-era, Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The economies of European nations are doomed by the euro.”)

Now we have the next bit of ECB twisting and turning and “problem solving”:

Draghi breaks new ground with negative interest rate

The European Central Bank (ECB) took the unprecedented step on Thursday of declaring a negative interest rate for deposits, in effect charging banks to park money with the ECB.

The move was part of a series of measures to combat the euro zone’s growth-sapping disinflation.

No, it isn’t disinflation that saps the euro zone’s growth. It’s the euro that saps the euro zone’s growth.

At its June monetary policy meeting, the ECB cut the rate on its deposit facility for banks to minus 0.10 percent, from 0 percent. This is the first time a major global central bank has moved rates into negative territory.

ECB President Mario Draghi (said,) “The measures will contribute to a return of inflation rates to levels closer to 2 percent.”

The ECB lends to banks at low interest rates, in order to encourage them to lend to households and non-financial corporations.

As usual, the ECB has everything bass-ackwards. Banks are failing to lend, because households and corporations can’t or won’t borrow — not because interest rates are high (they already are low), but because the economy is so bad and the future looks worse.

Businesses and individuals borrow in anticipation of future income. But when the economy is dropping like a boulder, no one can count on enough future income to warrant borrowing — not the borrower and not the lender. No one.

Until now, the EU’s favorite “solution” to the euro disaster has been to lend euros to insolvent euro nations — nations that, being monetarily non-sovereign, have no means by which to pay the euros back.

So when the debts come due, the EU:
1. Criticizes the euro nations for being profligate and wastrel
2. Demands that spending be cut ever more (thereby starving the lower 99.9% income group and further destroying the infrastructure)
3. Lending the “profligates and wastrels” even more unpayable euros, thereby creating ever greater indebtedness and dependency.

Then the process repeats.

There are two, and only two, solutions to the euro problem:
1. The euro nations return to Monetary Sovereignty by re-adopting their own sovereign currencies
or
2. The EU joins politically (like a United States of Europe), in which the EU gives, not lends, euros to euro nations as needed — just as the U.S. government gives dollars to our monetarily non-sovereign states (by deficit spending).

Don’t imagine for one minute, that every single economist in the EU and the ECB is so stupid, they cannot see the folly of the euro. If you can see it, and I can see it, they can see it.

So, why do they do it?

Quite simple: They are paid to do it by the upper .1% income group to widen the income/power GAP between the rich and the rest.

The corollaries in America are the Tea and Libertarian Parties, both of which insist on “smaller government” — code for reduced spending that would have benefited the 99.9% and reduced taxes on the upper .1%.

The euro is a powerful weapon against the middle- and lower classes, turning the euro nations into slave nations, at the pleasure of the rich.

What’s happening in Europe is a prelude to what will happen in America as the “small government, anti-deficit, pro-rich” crowd widens the GAP between the rich and the rest, with cuts in the spending that benefits the populace and reductions in the taxes on the wealthy.

The house is afire in Europe, and some embers are glowing on the American rug.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Three poisons: Lead, coal and money

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

THE POISONING EFFECTS OF LEAD:

Tetraethyl lead (TEL)was mixed with gasoline (petrol) beginning in the 1920s as a patented octane booster that allowed engine compression to be raised substantially, which in turn increased vehicle performance or fuel economy.

Ethanol was already known as a widely available, inexpensive, low toxicity octane booster, but TEL was promoted because it was uniquely profitable to the patent holders.

TEL was phased out starting in the U.S. in the mid-1970s because of its cumulative neurotoxicity and its damaging effect on catalytic converters.

TEL is still used as an additive in some grades of aviation gasoline, and in some developing countries.

We long had known lead is a poison.

In the Nov. 10, 1924, issue of TIME, a report showed that 35 men at the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had come down with an “occupational disease.” Symptoms ranged from insomnia to low blood pressure, all at the hands of lead poisoning.

That was one thousands of subsequent articles detailing the terrible, toxic effects of lead, especially on our children:

Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2002

The use of lead as a petrol additive has been a catastrophe for public health. Leaded petrol has caused more exposure to lead than any other source worldwide. By contaminating air, dust, soil, drinking water and food crops, it has caused harmfully high human blood lead levels around the world, especially in children.

Soon after production began in Bayway, New Jersey, USA, an outbreak of acute neuropsychiatric disease appeared among workers, 80% of whom developed convulsions and five died. Then, despite strong public health warnings, production resumed. By the 1970s, almost all petrol produced around the world contained lead.

The nervous system of the fetus and infant is especially susceptible to lead.

The consequences are loss of intelligence and disruption of behaviour.Because the brain has little capacity for repair, these effects are permanent and untreatable.

In the USA, the removal of lead from petrol between 1976 and 1995 resulted in a 90% reduction in mean blood lead level. Similar effects were recorded in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

In a number of developing countries too, including China, El Salvador, India, Mexico and Thailand, declines in blood lead levels have followed the removal of lead from petrol. Nearly 50 nations have now renounced the use of lead in petrol.

This is a triumph for public health.

Why did it take 50 years of human poisoning to even begin to stop adding this toxin to our environment?

THE POISONING EFFECTS OF COAL:

Coal generates 44% of our electricity, and is the single biggest air polluter in the U.S.

Burning coal causes smog, soot, acid rain, global warming, and toxic air emissions. Ash, sludge, toxic chemicals, and waste heat create more environmental problems.

Mining, transporting, and storing coal levels mountains and pollutes the land, water, and air. Coal plants need billions of gallons of cooling water and harm wildlife.

Coal today, is responsible for poisoning millions of Americans and billions of people, world wide, in addition to increasing the CO2 load that contributes to global warming.

Washington, DC – November 18, 2009 – Physicians for Social Responsibility today released a groundbreaking medical report, “Coal’s Assault on Human Health,” which takes a new look at the devastating impacts of coal on the human body.

By examining the impact of coal pollution on the major organ systems of the human body, the report concludes that coal contributes to four of the top five causes of mortality in the U.S. and is responsible for increasing the incidence of major diseases already affecting large portions of the U.S. population.

“These stark conclusions leave no room for doubt or delay,” says Kristen Welker-Hood, SCD MSN RN, PSR’s director of environment and health programs. “The time has come for our nation to establish a health-driven energy policy that replaces our dependence on coal with clean, safe alternatives.

Business as usual is extracting a deadly price on our health. Coal is no longer an option.”

Coal combustion releases mercury, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health. This report looks at the cumulative harm inflicted by those pollutants on three major body organ systems: the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, and the nervous system.

The report also considers coal’s contribution to global warming, and the health implications of global warming.

Respiratory Effects: Air pollutants produced by coal combustion act on the respiratory system, contributing to serious health effects including asthma, lung disease and lung cancer, and adversely affect normal lung development in children.

Cardiovascular Effects: Pollutants produced by coal combustion lead to cardiovascular disease, such as arterial occlusion (artery blockages, leading to heart attacks) and infarct formation (tissue death due to oxygen deprivation, leading to permanent heart damage), as well as cardiac arrhythmias and congestive heart failure. Exposure to chronic air pollution over many years increases cardiovascular mortality.

Nervous System Effects: Studies show a correlation between coal-related air pollutants and stroke. Coal pollutants also act on the nervous system to cause loss of intellectual capacity, primarily through mercury. Researchers estimate that between 317,000 and 631,000 children are born in the U.S. each year with blood mercury levels high enough to reduce IQ scores and cause lifelong loss of intelligence.

Global Warming: Even people who do not develop illnesses from coal pollutants will find their health and wellbeing impacted due to coal’s contribution to global warming. The discharge of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere associated with burning coal is a major contributor to global warming and its adverse effects on health and wellbeing worldwide, such as heat stroke, malaria, declining food production, scarce water supplies, social conflict and starvation.

THE POISONING EFFECTS OF MONEY

Life Worth $10 Million, Tears Averted $16 Under EPA Plan

Laura Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, coalition of industries involved in power generation from coal, said the health benefits claim from Obama’s greenhouse-gas plan is “is disingenuous at best.”

“Reductions in carbon have not an iota to do with reducing asthma or other health related issues,” Sheehan said. “As for premature deaths, ask EPA to show you a death certificate that says cause of death — carbon.”

Many of the health and economic benefits the Environmental Protection Agency attributes to the climate change regulations aren’t directly from limiting carbon emissions. They are mostly driven by the cuts in soot and smog the administration expects as utilities shut coal power plants and take other steps to meet the standards.

Sheehan is paid by the coal industry. Her weasel words deny adverse health effects from CO2, conveniently omitting the adverse health effects of burning coal pollution.

The objections to cutting coal pollution are all about that most devastating poison, a poison that clouds all rational thought: Money

A trio of Democratic candidates running in high-profile congressional races in two of the biggest coal-producing states quickly criticized President Obama on Monday over his administration’s new proposal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants in the next 16 years.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) not only criticized the “disastrous new rules” but also vowed to introduce legislation to stop them. Rahall faces a tough reelection bid against state Sen. Evan Jenkins (R) in a district where Mitt Romney received nearly twice as many votes as Obama in 2012.

Running in West Virginia’s open U.S. Senate race, Secretary of State Natalie Tenannt (D) also panned the proposal. “I will stand up to President Obama, Gina McCarthy and anyone else who tries to undermine our coal jobs,” Tennant said. “Washington bureaucrats need to understand, these are not numbers on a balance sheet, they are real people with families to feed.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

These politicians are not fools. They understand quite well, the poisoning effects of burning coal.

Nor are they evil men. They are correct that many people depend on coal for jobs to support their families (though new jobs may be created by building other energy sources).

Further, reductions in coal burning initially will increase energy costs for everyone (though less polluting, renewable energy eventually will reduce costs, not only of energy itself, but of health care).

The advantages are long term, but the costs are immediate.

THE SOLUTION

The Federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign can and should underwrite the financial burden of conversion of coal-fired plants and for the creation of sustainable energy (wind, solar, nuclear) plants.

Simply pay companies for converting to renewable energy sources. It will cost taxpayers nothing (Federal spending, unlike state and local spending, is not supported by taxes). And paying people and companies will add stimulus dollars, thereby enriching the entire economy.

Further, the people whose jobs are eliminated by these conversions, should receive extended and enhanced unemployment compensation — extended for perhaps 5 years, and enhanced to perhaps 100% of their previous compensation, even if they find new jobs.

Yes, pay them for not working. And give them a bonus for not objecting. It’s worth it to all of us to reduce air pollution and global warming.

We don’t want to wait another 50 years to eliminate the poison of coal, like we did with the poison of lead.

And we don’t need to.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

—–

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: