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We often have told you that most of your sources of information have been bribed by the rich:

—Politicians are bribed by campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later
—Economists are bribed by contributions to universities and “think tank” employment
—The media are bribed by rich ownership.

The Chicago Tribune’s ownership is big — and rich. How rich?

Wikipedia: Tribune Publishing Company is an American newspaper and print media publishing company based in Chicago, Illinois.

Among other publications, the company’s portfolio includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Orlando Sentinel, Sun-Sentinel [South Florida], The Baltimore Sun, The Morning Call [Allentown, Pennsylvania], Hartford Courant, and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

It also publishes several local newspapers in these metropolitan regions, which are organized in subsidiary groups.

It is the nation’s third-largest newspaper publisher (behind Gannett, and The McClatchy Company), with ten daily newspapers and commuter tabloids located throughout the United States.

That’s rich.

If you read the Tribune, you know it is solid red, from its front page to its back. More importantly, it disseminates “The Big Lie” with a gusto even Fox News must admire.

Today, they went all in and doubled down on the false narrative of right wing’s “The Big Lie”:

Marco Rubio for the GOP, but no endorsement for either Democrat
The Editorial Board

Of the hundred explanations for what now motivates the electorate, the best we’ve seen comes from political scientist Charles Murray writing in The Wall Street Journal:

The Republicans

The central truth of Trumpism as a phenomenon is that the entire American working class has legitimate reasons to be angry at the ruling class.

During the past half-century of economic growth, virtually none of the rewards have gone to the working class.

The real family income of people in the bottom half of the income distribution hasn’t increased since the late 1960s.

During the same half-century, American corporations exported millions of manufacturing jobs (and) the federal government allowed the immigration, legal and illegal, of tens of millions of competitors for the remaining working-class jobs.”

Part of the right wing’s “Big Lie” is to claim that immigrants are competitors for jobs but amazingly, immigrants supposedly are not consumers who create jobs.

It is utter nonsense, of course, but the beat-down 99%ers want scapegoats for their misery, and who is better suited than powerless, brown-skinned people?

(The right doesn’t object to white immigrants any more, though Jews, Italians, Germans, Japanese, Irish and Catholics have in the past, felt the sting of xenophobic bigotry.)

Many of the voters rallying to Sanders helped put Barack Obama in the White House, but doing so didn’t bring them much hope, much change.

Many Trump and Cruz supporters voted Republicans into control of Congress on promises of smaller, cheaper and less intrusive government, only to watch the national debt top $19 trillion-with-a-T.

Note the deceptive language: “Many of the voters rallying to Sanders helped put Barack Obama in the White House, but doing so didn’t bring them much hope, much change.”

You’re supposed to believe Sanders is the same as Obama.

The phrase “many of the voters” is a slick liar’s device. Hey, many of the Obama voters drive fast, take drugs, eat carrots and voted Republican in their states and cities, and that didn’t bring them much hope, much change, either.

Were eating carrots or voting Republican in local elections the cause?

And no right wing screed is allowed to make print without the fake concern about the U.S. debt — a debt that has increased 9,000% in the past 75 years, with no ill effects.

In fact, the ill effects have come when the debt has been reduced.

By the way, note how it was Trump and Cruz supporters, but not Rubio supporters, who voted Republicans into office. The Tribune Editorial Board can’t even lie consistently.

•The party of Abraham Lincoln finds itself with a front-runner (Trump)who has gone out of his way to anger world leaders, giant swaths of the American public and people of other lands who aspire to immigrate here legally. And to what end, other than self-aggrandizement?

•The best argument mainstream Republicans make for Cruz is that he might be able to sideline Trump. Cruz cannot process shades of gray. The same inability to compromise that has gridlocked Washington has left Cruz all but friendless in the U.S. Senate. What’s more, the multiple ethical offenses of his staff have fed pre-existing suspicion that Cruz would do or say anything to win this nomination.

•John Kasich’s expansion of Ohio’s Medicaid program earned him cred as a compassionate conservative. And we appreciate how he erased an Illinois-scale budget deficit and inflated Ohio’s rainy-day fund from 89 cents (true) to $2 billion. But Kasich hasn’t been able to put together the national campaign we expected.

We get it and we agree. Trump is a liar, a carnival barker and as qualified to be President of the United States as jailed TV pitchman Kevin Trudeau.

Cruz is a narrow-minded, rigid bigot, who would have no business running a multi-belief mixing bowl like the U.S.

And Kasich is a good “compassionate conservative,” — but only when he acts like a liberal.

•Many Republicans seem not to have noticed Rubio’s fundamental GOP message of opportunity and uplift.

Is that like Obama’s message of “hope and change” — which you hate?

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculated that the tax plan Rubio floated with Sen. Mike Lee would raise after-tax incomes for the bottom 10 percent of earners by 44 percent, chiefly viTV pitchman Kevin Trudeau a expanded credits.

Spending limits, line-item veto, a balanced-budget amendment — all Rubio policy pillars.

Crucially, his foreign affairs expertise vastly exceeds that of his rivals.

We like his youth, his bilingual fluency and the fact that he isn’t one more Republican who’s been standing in line, awaiting his turn to run.

What Republicans did notice is that he was paid to be in the Senate and never showed up, and neither invented nor even voted for the tax plan that was created by Sen. Lee.

An two of those three policy pillars — spending limits, a balanced-budget amendment — would starve the country of money at a time when it is short of money.

The third — line-item veto — would so switch the balance of power to the President, that we might as well do away with Congress. (Yes, yes, I know. But, joking aside, it’s a bad idea.)

We have no idea where the absent Marco Rubio received his “foreign affairs expertise,” but yes, he hasn’t been standing in line awaiting his turn to run.

In fact, he hasn’t been standing anywhere. Surely not in the Senate, a job for which he received six figures and did virtually nothing.

And, he’s young. So is Justin Bieber. Hasn’t the Tribune learned: Never send a boy to do a man’s job?

The Democrats

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are welcome to pander however feverishly they wish, promising vast new expenditures by a federal government already committed to wildly more spending than its taxpayers and its low-growth economy can afford.

Except that federal taxpayers don’t pay for federal spending.

Earlier, the Tribune observed: “During the past half-century virtually none of the rewards have gone to the working class. The real family income of people in the bottom half of the income distribution hasn’t increased since the late 1960s.”

Now, when Democrats offer to provide the working class with their well-deserved rewards, and to increase the bottom half’s income distribution, the Tribune describes this as “pandering.”

Hey boys, get your story straight. Either you want to help the working class or you don’t. Or do you want to help only if the Republicans find a way to do it — which they never do.

And now “The Big Lie” makes its full-blown entrance:

Sanders first amused Americans who know their fiscal math with proposals for free college tuition, expanded Social Security, $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, “Medicare for all”

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculates that his economic plans would push the top federal tax rate to about 77 percent.

And, “When state and local taxes are included, the top rate rises to an average of about 85 percent (nationwide) ….”

To term the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (Maya MacGuineas, President; Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson board members) “nonpartisan,” is akin to claiming David Duke is black.

I won’t belabor the truth that unlike state and local taxes, which pay for state and local spending, federal taxes do not pay for federal spending.

The federal government uniquely is Monetarily Sovereign and never, never unintentionally can run short of dollars. Never.

In fact, even if all federal taxation fell to $0, the federal government could continue spending forever.

The rich owners of the Chicago Tribune don’t want you and the rest of the 99% to know this, because then you’ll realize the government can and should provide universal healthcare insurance, free college and other benefits to our poorer Americans.

That would narrow the Gap between you and the rich — the very last thing the rich want.

So benefits to you, me and the rest of the 99% are called “pandering” by the rich, who already have the “stuff,” the right wing likes to denigrate.

If you like window-shopping at the Lamborghini dealership on Sundays, when no salespeople are around to check your credit, then you’ll enjoy the bounty of Free Stuff that Clinton and Sanders promise to provide.

Get it? For you to receive good health care is like shopping for a Lanborghini. How dare you?

And here is a bit more of “The Big Lie.”

Clinton’s serial diminishment during the Iowa caucuses campaign of the crisis menacing Social Security — “depletion of total trust fund reserves” in 2034, the system’s trustees warn — edges her toward the Cruz zone of doing or saying anything to win this nomination.

Now repeat after me: There is no Social Security trust fund. Never has been. The federal government neither needs nor uses trust funds.

In fact, I’ll tell you a little secret: The federal government has no funds at all.

Don’t believe me? Then try to find out how much money the federal government has. Ask your Senators; ask your Representative; look it up on Wikipedia; search all government web sites.

Ask them all the simple question: “How much money does the federal government have?”

You and I need a source of money in order to pay our bills. By contrast, the federal government creates money by paying bills.

I works like this: To pay a creditor, the federal government agencies send instructions (not dollars) to the creditor’s bank, instructing the bank to credit the creditor’s checking account.

At the instant the bank obeys those instructions, and not before, dollars are created.

Given the distance from economic reality that Clinton and Sanders have catapulted in their exhortations, we cannot endorse either of them in the Illinois primary election.

Believe it or not, the right wing newspapers have been spreading this same BS for . . . more than 75 years! Way back in 1940, the NY Times ran an article in which Robert M. Hanes, president of the American Bankers Association referred to the federal debt as a “ticking time-bomb which can eventually destroy the American system.” /em>

(Look at the link to see the progress of that “time bomb.” Hey, would a banker lie to you?)

For 75 years, every time anyone suggests any program that can benefit the 99%, the rich-owned media howl that the debt will rise to unsustainable levels.

They do not want you to have what the rich take for granted. They do not want the Gap to be narrowed.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the funniest comment of this entire post — perhaps the entire election season

Marco Rubio . . .offers Illinois voters the framework of a presidency that realistically could exist. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have not met this fundamental economic test.

(OK, here it comes:)

We’re keeping an open mind, hoping that whichever of them prevails will meet that test in the general election campaign.

The owned-by-the-rich editors of the Chicago Tribune are “keeping an open mind.” Does it get any more wildly hilarious than that?

Because promises, pledges and policies mean nothing to a gravely indebted American government that can afford only to window-shop.

According to the Tribune, the American government has run out of its own sovereign currency, the dollar. So the most powerful government on earth actually is standing impoverished, with its nose pressed against the window, unable to buy anything.

And if you believe that Tribune lie, please contact me. I have the British Crown jewels I want to sell you — at a yu-u-uge discount.

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 Click here
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
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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

THE RECESSION CLOCK

Recessions begin an average of 2 years after the blue line first dips below zero. A common phenomenon is for the line briefly to dip below zero, then rise above zero, before falling dramatically below zero. There was a brief dip below zero in 2015, followed by another dip – the familiar pre-recession pattern.
Recessions are cured by a rising red line.

Vertical gray bars mark recessions.

As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the growth lines rise. Increasing federal deficit growth (aka “stimulus”) is necessary for long-term economic growth.

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Mitchell’s laws:
•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..
•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.
•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
•Deficit spending grows the supply of money
•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
•The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

•Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and the rest..
•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between rich and poor.
•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY