This is a direct quote from http://www.alternet.org, an excellent site from which you’ll learn a great deal:
Chris Kluwe— a punter for the Minnesota Vikings between 2005 and 2012 — was recently arrested and carried out of a city council meeting by police after a viral speech.
Chris Kluwe — a punter for the Minnesota Vikings between 2005 and 2012 — was recently arrested and carried out of a city council meeting by police after a viral speech.
Kluwe started his speech by telling council members that he is a 15-year city resident and wanted to speak out against the current council and its plans for a MAGA plaque at a local library.
“I’d like to take my time to talk about what MAGA has stood for these past three weeks,” Kluwe said. “MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing.
“MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide, opioid addiction, and medical issues related to burn pits.
MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children.”
Kluwe went on to assert that MAGA “stands for hate and fear, and the idea that we should have a king instead of co-equal branches of government.”
He argued that MAGA’s philosophy was “profoundly corrupt” and “unmistakably anti-democracy,” while also calling it “explicitly a Nazi movement.”
“Every single thing MAGA stands for is what the Nazis did,”the retired NFL punter said. “Eugenics. Racism. Blind loyalty to the leader over what benefits the community as a whole.
“Removal or destruction of knowledge deemed “unsavory.” Removal of groups deemed “unsavory.” Sustained assaults on science, reason, and logic. Ceaseless propaganda that has no basis in reality. The promotion of fools, imbeciles, and charlatans to positions of power.”
Toward the end of his speech, Kluwe looked at the assembled council members on the dais and said he would “now engage in the time-honored American tradition of civil disobedience.” He then walked past the lectern toward council members while several police officers swarmed him and put him on the ground face-first.
Kluwe said later on Bluesky that he was charged with “disrupting an assembly,” and that he sustained minor cuts and scratches while police were restraining him.
I personally think there’s an information circus going on. They clearly understand that the root cause of a recession is ‘deficit control,’ as it impacts supply. In my opinion, there will be more spending . Meanwhile, MT (Musk/Trump) are just saying what people want to hear.
My comment in return was:
PT, I agree with you. The misunderstanding is on the part of the public. MT, along with their closest advisors take advantage of this misunderstanding for their own personal gain.
Example: In the world of commodities trading, there always is a losing position for every winning position. Therefore, a random bet should have a 50% chance of winning — EXCEPT –except that between the winners and losers there are the brokers who pull out a tiny percentage of each bet.
With enough bets, this tiny percentage evolves to the near certainty, that almost everyone will lose, except for the intermediaries: The brokers.
I was once a broker. After too long a time, I knew. It’s why I left the business. Long term, customers had to lose. We actually told them that, but the lure of riches was too strong. They bet, anyway.
My morals would have made me a terrible casino owner, for that is the basis of casino profits. Even on a 50/50 bet, you will lose long term when the casino takes out even .001% of each bet.
The Gross Domeitic Product = Federal Spending + Nonfederal Spending – Net Imports is no secret. Every first-year economist knows it.Further, a recession or depression is a series of reduced GDP. They know that, too.
So why do they opt for reduced Federal Spending, knowing this mathematically must result in a recession or depression, which inevitably must be cured by increased Federal Spending?
There are only two answers: Ignorance and deception, the latter being associated with personal gain. (No one wants to be the one to reveal that the Emperor has no clothes.)
I’m going to put this response into a post for more viewing.
The above GDP formula expresses one of the most fundamental facts in all of economics, a fact of which nearly all non-economists are ignorant, and most economists act ignorant.
This supposed ignorance is especially true of those with a Libertarian bent, who opt for “reduced central government” ignoring the mathematical factthat reduced central government –> reduced GDP — > recession or depression.
Historically and mathematically, reduced federal spending (blue line) has been associated with recessions (vertical bars). GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending – Net Imports.
Every U.S. depression has come on the heels of federal surpluses.
1804-1812: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 48%. Depression began 1807.
1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819.
1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837.
1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857.
1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873.
1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893.
1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929.
1997-2001: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 15%. Recession began 2001.
The Federal Government cannot run short of dollars. Your taxes do not fund federal spending. The federal government pays all its bills with newly created dollars.
Because the federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, it is not like you and me. It does not need to “save money.”
Who says so?
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”
Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell: “As a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally.
Statement from the St. Louis Fed: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”
The Boss and his underling.
So if the government isn’t running out of money, why is Musk/Trump (MT) firing so many federal employees?
Why gut these agencies? Because making the rich even richer requires making everyone else poorer.
The Game of Wealth: How the Rich Stay Richer
Wealth is relative. If you have $100,000, you’re rich when all others have $20,000—but poor when all others have $1 million.
For the ultra-wealthy, getting richer isn’t just about making more money. It’s also about ensuring the rest of us have less—widening the income, wealth, and power gap.
How do they do it? ✅ Tax cuts for the rich ✅ Cutting healthcare and social services ✅ Making basic necessities like housing and vaccines unaffordable
This isn’t about “saving money.” The government creates money at will.
In the last thirty years of my business career, I specialized in turning around unprofitable small (under $10 million) businesses.
There are two ways to improve profitability: Reduce costs and increase sales. I did both, but mostly the latter. When cutting costs, one must be careful to cut fat without cutting too much meat. Growth requires keeping good people, not merely keeping fewer people.
Shortterm, it’s easy to increase profitability. Merely fire everyone. Long term such a path can destroy a company.
Watching cost-cutter Elon Musk and his boss, Donald Trump, I am reminded of the notorious Albert John Dunlap.
From Wikipedia:
Albert John Dunlap (July 26, 1937 – January 25, 2019) was an American corporate executive. He was known at the peak of his career as a professional turnaround management specialist and downsizer. The mass layoffs at his companies earned him the nicknames “Chainsaw Al” and “Rambo in Pinstripes”, after he posed for a photo wearing an ammo belt across his chest.
When Sunbeam announces year-end results in January, people will see that sales, not just profits, are rising dramatically. (Dunlap eliminated) 16 of 26 factories, five of six headquarters, and half the 12,000 employees, Dunlap extracted $225 million in annual savings.
Then again from Wikipedia:
It was later discovered that his reputed turnarounds were elaborate frauds, and his career was ended after he engineered a massive accounting scandal at Sunbeam Products, now a division of Newell Brands, that forced the company into bankruptcy. Dunlap is on the lists of “Worst CEOs of All Time” published by several business publications. Read the list and you’ll find that many of the “worst” were massive job cutters, whose overall philosophy was. “We don’t need people. Just pay me more.”Fast Company noted that Dunlap “might score impressively on the Corporate Psychopath measure” and in an interview, Dunlap freely admitted to possessing many of the traits of a psychopath but considered them positive traits such as leadership and decisiveness.
“Mass layoffs, “frauds,” “bankruptcy,” psychopathy” “accounting scandal,”— do those terms remind you of our leaders? Consider these articles:
According to the ruling, which allows the civil trial to begin next week, Trump lied to banks and insurers by both overvaluing and undervaluing his assets when it was to his benefit while exaggerating his net worth to the tune of billions of dollars.
BANKRUPTCYWhy Donald Trump’s Companies Went Bankrupt, Details About the 6 Trump Corporate Bankruptcies The New York Times, which conducted an analysis of regulatory reviews, court records, and security filings, reported in 2016 that Trump “put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses, and other payments.
“The burden of his failures,” according to the newspaper, “fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen.”
According to the Hare psychopath checklist, psychopaths tend to feel a lack of remorse for destructive acts, but they are unable to feel empathy, impulsive, manipulative and sexually promiscuous.
MASS LAYOFFSTrump officials fired nuclear staff not realizing they oversee the country’s weapons stockpile. by Rene Marsh and Ella Nilsen Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
Carly Arata received an email around 9 p.m. on Thursday saying her position in the federal government had been terminated. When she saw the email, Arata told ABC News that she “screamed.”
“I didn’t think it was real at first, so I reread it like three times, then kind of started crying because I was relying on this job,” Arata said. “My husband and I just purchased this house in December, and now we’re not really sure what we’re going to do.”
Arata is one of possibly more than 200,000 workers affected by mass firings of probationary employees.
Arata had been a probationary employee since September with the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service but had worked as a contractor in the role for a year before that. Arata, who turns 32 on Sunday, has experience in this area. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in environmental science and her master’s degree in ecological restoration.
“We’re relying on this job and we’re qualified for this job, and yet, we’re losing it just because we’re under a year,” Arata said.
“Chainsaw Al” fired his good, experienced workers, not for efficiency reasons but to demonstrate his frugality. Cutting payroll initially increased profits but losing good people helped destroy his company.
Trump/Musk are firing their good, experienced workers, also not for sound efficiency reasons, but to demonstrate frugality. The two are destroying government services, especially services to the middle-classes and the poor.
Does the Trump/Musk Joint Presidency claim a good way to lose weight is to cut off your arms and legs?THE CHAOS PRESIDENT
The computer people have a slogan, “Move fast and break things.” Musk seems to believe this idea defends his wild and reckless firing and deporting of good people.
The saying embodies a Silicon Valley ethos that encourages rapid change, even at the expense of stability or quality. But what may be acceptable for electronic program development is completely wrong for government programs that are supposed to “Improve and Protect People’s Lives.”
The destruction of a test rocket, as Musk has often done, doesn’t equate with the mass destruction of people’s jobs, lives, and financial protections.
Firing an entire police forcewill save money, but it opens the door to crime. If you have hoped that the U.S. would completely depart from democracy and adopt a dictatorship, your dreams are being answered.
Now, the Supreme Court. having given Trump limitless power, must worry that he will use the power to ignore and disobey every Court’s ruling. According to SCOTUS, Trump cannot be punished for any crime, so long as he can claim it was an official act within the scope of his presidential duties.
If Trump believes the Democratic Party is a threat to America, he could jail Democrats. He already has claimed that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, along with all the judges who have ruled against him, are corrupt and should be jailed. The Supreme Court has opened that opportunity.
Trump even claims he is king. Recently he said, quoting Napoleon, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
Apparently, SCOTUS doesn’t realize flouting the law is not a Trumpian bug; it’s a feature of the Trump persona and the solid step toward a dictatorship, where courts are puppets of the leader. In short, SCOTUS has voted for its own irrelevance.IN SUMMARY
Elon Musk and Donald Trump (MT) are clueless about the differences between business goals [monetarily non-sovereign finances] vs. federalgoals [Monetarily Sovereign finances].
In the MT business world the primary goal is to maximize profits, while spending is limited by income and borrowing. When MT began to cut federal expenses, mostly by mass firings, the naive public believed this benefitted the government and taxpayers.
But federal cost cutting benefits no one, not the public, not the government, not anyone.
Given the infinite power to create dollars,the federal government does not use taxpayers’ money to pay for things.
To pay for everything, the federal government creates new dollars, ad hoc. Taxpayer dollars are destroyed upon receipt. They begin as part of the M2 money supply measure, but when they reach the U.S. Treasury they instantly cease to be part of any money supply measure. They effectively are destroyed.
The sole purposes of federal taxes are to assure demandfor the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes to be paid in dollars, and to control the economy by taxing what Congress wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what Congress wishes to reward–not to provide spending money for the federal government.
(State and local taxes do provide spending money to monetarily non-sovereign state and local governments.)
By contrast, in the federal world, the goal is to “Improve and Protect the People’s Lives, and the spending is unlimited. Federal deficit spending benefits the publicand grows the economy at no cost to taxpayers.
By attempting business solutions to federal government problems, the MT pair solves nothing while causing great harm.
While other nations (particularly oil nations) are pouring vast amounts of money into artificial intelligence (AI) and massive infrastructure projects, the Make America Great Again bunch tries to make America smaller, weaker, and even more bigoted than ever — much like its current leaders.
MT are pushing for a $2 Trillion reduction in federal spending, based on the formula, GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending – Net Imports, this is what would happen to the economy:
Estimated GDP: $29.2T: Federal Spending: $6.5T: Non-Federal Spending: $22.83T: Net Imports: $0.1335T. Superficially, GDP would fall 2T or 7%
However, Federal Spending also affects Non-federal Spending and Net Imports. A reduction in federal spending leads to:
Fewer government contracts for businesses. This could lead to less spending and less investment by businesses
Private sector layoffs, reducing consumer income and spending.
Fewer government workers, further reducing consumer income and spending
Federal funds often support state programs (infrastructure, education, healthcare). A federal cut may force state governments to reduce their own spending, further shrinking GDP.
A spending cut could lower the deficit, leading to lower interests, i.e. less federal interest paid to the private sector by federal T-securities.
If we assume each $1 cut in federal spending reduces non-federal spending by $0.50 (admittedly a guess, based on the certainty there would be some negative effect on Non-federal Spending), then:
Direct Federal Cut: $-2.0T; Indirect Non-Federal Spending Reduction: $-1.0T; Total GDP Reduction: $-3.0T
So instead of just a $2T drop, GDP could fall by $3T, making the contraction even more significant.
A reduction in GDP is defined as a recession or a depression, depending on length. Therefore:
The Musk/Trump (MT) spending reduction promise is, in fact, a promise to cause a recession or a depression.
Fortunately, the MT pair seldom keeps its promises, so they probably will fail, at which time they will blame Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, the “fake” media, “crooked judges,” Joe Biden, and the entire Democratic Party.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary SovereigntyTwitter: @rodgermitchellSearch #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/
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A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
Kluwe started his speech by telling council members that he is a 15-year city resident and wanted to speak out against the current council and its plans for a MAGA plaque at a local library.
Saddam Hussein tops the list ahead of Henry VIII and Idi Amin
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 