The Libertarian road: From ignorance, to malevolence, to treason.

There was a time when the Libertarians were a sort of third road between liberalism and conservatism, an anarchist movement that opposed both sides equally.

No more.

The Libertarian website, Reason.com, has gone full-bore, white supremacist, fascist, Fox News, Breitbart, Trump-bigoted denialism, as witness the following article:

Punishing Rioters Is Wise. Bogus ‘Seditious Conspiracy’ Charges Are Not. Politics ruin everything, including the criminal justice system. J.D. TUCCILLE | 5.8.2023 7:00 AM

The problem with convicting members of the “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys on seditious conspiracy charges is that it wrongly elevates a violent tantrum by a bunch of thugs to the level of an insurrection, and it lets officials who prosecute them puff themselves up as saviors of the republic.

Worse, the case took liberties with a statute that is probably best forgotten to arrive at its conclusion when normal criminal law could have punished rioters without putting the criminal justice system through contortions.

At this point, you may be shaking your head and wondering whether the article really was written by Tucker Carlson, whose lies about the insurrection (yes, insurrection is precisely what it was) were too much even for Fox (especially since those lies cost Fox upwards of $750 million.)

Apparently, Carlson’s costly lies were suitable for J.D. Tuccille, a former managing editor of Reason.com and current contributing editor.

“A jury in the District of Columbia today returned guilty verdicts on multiple felonies against five members of the Proud Boys, finding four of the defendants guilty of seditious conspiracy for their actions before and during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” the Department of Justice trumpeted last week.

“According to the evidence at trial, in the months leading up to Jan. 6, the defendants plotted to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power, and to prevent the Members of Congress, and the federal law enforcement officers who protect them, from discharging their duties.”

See the pejoratives, “puff themselves up,” “saviors of the republic”?

He’s describing people who saw criminals committing treason and tried those criminals before a jury, who also saw criminals committing treason, and said so.

Libertarian Tuccille would have you believe that trying, by force, to prevent the “lawful transfer of presidential power” is just, in his words, “a tantrum by thugs.”

A “TANTRUM”? Really, J.D.?

A tantrum is a little boy lying on his back, kicking his heels, and demanding not to be taken home from Disneyland.

A tantrum is the wailing from the little girl who wanted a pony for her birthday and only got a dress.

A tantrum is Ron DeSantis trying to punish a teacher for daring to mention that America’s law enforcement has mistreated blacks.

Armed traitors, crashing through barriers to break into Congress, injuring several police, and with the sole purpose of overturning the U.S. government, while stalking Nancy Pelosi and threatening to hang the Vice President of the United States because he wouldn’t install Traitor Donald Trump as President — that is a bit more than a Tuccille “tantrum.”

If all that does not rise to the level of treason, J.D., why don’t you describe to the world precisely what you think constitutes treason?

In former days, traitors were hung or electrocuted. These traitors got off easy.

“At my Senate confirmation hearing just over a month after January 6th, I promised that the Justice Department would do everything in its power to hold accountable those responsible for the heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government,” huffed Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who gives every impression that he tremendously enjoys the smell of his own emissions.

“Today’s verdict is another example of our steadfast commitment to keeping those promises.”

Oh, Attorney General Merrick Garland “huffed”?

Is that supposed to mean his outrage was misplaced at seeing traitors roaming the halls of Congress, seeking to prevent the lawful installation of the President?

And the “smell of his own emissions” is the description of the man doing his job exactly as it should be done (unlike the Trumpian toadies who preceded him in that post.)

Would a simple “Tut tut,” a slap on the wrist, “boys will be boys'” admonition to not do it again have pleased Tuccille more?

Really, J.D., what is there about a vicious attempt to overturn a national election that has you outraged about a criminal conviction?

And so, we’re told, the republic is safe from those who would rise against it in insurrection.

But before we consign former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and codefendants Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl to the history books alongside Mosby and Quantrill, Confederate guerrillas of the sort who inspired the seditious conspiracy statute to begin with, let’s consider an important obstacle:

There’s sparse evidence of a meaningful conspiracy “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States” as required by law.

Shouldn’t a Conspiracy Be Better Organized? “The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result”

“Sparse evidence” except for the plans to gather off-site, and to bring weapons, and to advance on the Capitol at a specific time, even before the crowd arrived from Trump’s exhortations.

“Sparse evidence”? Are we to doubt our eyes and ears while maniacs, emboldened by the head maniac, did everything they could to prevent democratically elected Joe Biden from taking office?

That’s just a little tantrum?

Reuters noted in August 2021. “‘Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,’ said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation.

‘Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized.But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.'”

Except for building the gallows, searching for Pence, and the “Where are you Nancy?” hunting for Pelosi.

Get this. “Only” five percent of several thousand people — that makes what, several hundred? — created the plot, with the rest of the bunch merely followers.

So your claim, J.D. is several hundred people are too few to commit treason?? And because they were disorganized, it couldn’t be treason??  

For instance, if the bank robbers failed to obtain a worthy getaway car — a sign of disorganization — they should not be prosecuted for attempting to rob the bank? What a novel idea from the Libertarian.

And because you and your cronies have failed ever to develop an organized plan for running America without a government, J.D., does that mean the Libertarians are not a real political movement?

Or as a result of disorganization, “only” a few police died, instead of many more, it all was just a tantrum?

That said, if anybody was among those “more closely organized,” it was the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers of the earlier case. But still, prosecutors and the judge had to get creative to arrive at a verdict.

“The sedition trial…was characterized by frequent delays, frayed relations between the defense and prosecution and several decisions by the presiding judge, Timothy J. Kelly, that tested the boundaries of conspiracy law,” reported Alan Feuer and Zach Montague for The New York Times.

It wasn’t the crime that bothers you; it was the “frequent delays and frayed relations” to which you object?

Would you have preferred that the judge rush things through, and the defense and prosecutor got together and sang Kumbaya? Would that have made for a fairer trial”

“Judge Kelly’s rulings allowed prosecutors to introduce damning evidence about the violent behavior and aggressive language of members of the Proud Boys who had only limited connections to the five defendants.

The evidence was damning because the Proud Boys is an organization devoted to the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, in short, a conspiracy of traitors.

The rulings also permitted jurors to convict on conspiracy even if they found there was no plan to disrupt the certification of the election, but merely an unspoken agreement to do so.”

“No plan,” just an “unspoken agreement”? Huh?

If it wasn’t a plan and wasn’t spoken, how did all those traitors know when to show up and then to march in single file, like a well-trained military unit?

The jury heard the evidence and decided that there was a plan and an agreement and that the traitors were speaking quite loudly, screaming in fact, and they came damn close to succeeding.

Only by fractions of a second and a few inches did they fail. They didn’t find Pence. They didn’t find Pelosi. America got lucky.

“Mr. Tarrio was not even in Washington on Jan. 6, having been kicked out of the city days earlier by a local judge presiding over a separate criminal matter,” they added.

And Hitler was not even in France when the Nazis took over. And the Mafia boss seldom iss on site when the murders are committed.

“The Justice Department’s take, of course, fits the narrative favored by Democrats who reflexively describe the Capitol riot as an ‘insurrection.'” Reason’s Jacob Sullum observed.

“But that term implies a level of planning and organization that does not fit the chaotic reality of what happened that day.”

Ah, and there it is: “Favored by Democrats,” J.D. Tuccille’s unintended admission that the attempted coup was a Republican operation, and that he is a GOP apologist.

White supremacists, fascists, and Libertarians hate Democrats. The self-anointed GOP Party of Law and Order, hates the Democrats when they prosecute crimes initiated by Donald J. Trump, the newfound hero of Libertarianism.

The “chaotic reality” is that people planned to use force to stop the count and to stop America’s Democracy, and had they succeeded, the chief traitor would now be the dictator of America.

There’s no easy way to portray the resulting conviction as anything other than a stretch. In fact, less-loaded criminal charges could and did serve to penalize the defendants for their disruptive actions in Washington.

“Destruction of property, impeding Congress, and assaulting police officers, while crimes, don’t allow prosecutors and their political allies to portray themselves in heroic terms.

Hawley mocked over new Jan. 6 video | The Hill
Josh Hawley runs for his life.

That is how Tuccille, who surely would have been hiding under his desk and wetting his pants, had he been faced with the violent traitors, insults those who defended America.

(Or Tuccille would have joined Josh (rabbit) Hawley, running terrified.) He cowardly insults the real heroes, the police, while treasonably defending the indefensible.

Rioters are violent troublemakers, but seditious conspirators can be portrayed as part of a larger movement that intends harm to the whole country.

Lest we forget, the “larger movement that intends to harm the whole country exists. It is the MAGA “stop the steal” movement, as fascist as any movement in America.

Sadly, having learned nothing from the relative taps on the wrists the insurrectionists received, they continue with their election denial, even today.

But that is not anti-democracy, anti-America enough for the Libertarians.

Had the traitors succeeded, Pence would have been hung; Pelosi might have been injured or killed; even more, police would have died, and Congress would have become meaningless.

But sedition, according to Tuccille? Nah.

And now comes the false comparison of all false comparisons, typical of the right-wing, white supremacy crowd of bigots with which Tuccille seems to have aligned:

The Trump administration floated pulling this same stunt with seditious conspiracy charges (often incorrectly framed as just “sedition”) against rioters during the civil unrest of the summer of 2020.

“Attorney General William Barr told the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government,” The Wall Street Journal’s Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman reported at the time.

“Sedition charges require proof of efforts to overthrow the United States Government,” Harvard Law’s Laurence Tribe responded.

“Talking in these terms based on what’s happening is grotesquely irresponsible. It’s way beyond monarchical. It’s paranoid and dictatorial. Opus Dei, anyone?”

Likewise, the ACLU called Barr’s proposed seditious conspiracy prosecutions “a tyrannical and un-American attempt to suppress our demands for racial justice and an end to police violence.”

See, in the Tuccille, Libertarian world, when unarmed blacks are killed by police, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and finally, in frustration at the law’s unwillingness to protect them they riot, this supposedly is similar to Trump’s “patriots” trying to overturn the government.

What was their MAGA grievance? They didn’t like the outcome of the election and with no evidence whatsoever, claimed it was stolen and decided to steal it back.

Tuccille claims the two situations are the same. What a disgusting and thoroughly false comparison

Now the shoe is on the other foot, with a new administration wielding seditious conspiracy charges as weapons against another set of rioters with a different flavor of politics.

Yes, it’s just a “different flavor of politics.” To Tuccille, the coup was just a few poor little Republicans, who persecuted by the police, are innocently airing their grievances. Right?

Again, the rioters’ actions would justify prosaic criminal prosecutions if their partisan loyalties weren’t at odds with those in power.

But why just punish political opponents for bad behavior when you can smear them and their associates as dangers to the nation?

Hey, now, trying to overturn democracy is just “bad behavior”  akin to shoplifting or parking in a no-parking zone. Right?

In a country as divided as ours, everything becomes a bludgeon against hated others. Politics ruin everything, including the criminal justice system.

And with his final words, Libertarian J.D. Tuccille, at last, tells the truth. Politics has ruined the criminal justice system.

Ask any black or Mexican or gay or Muslim or Jew who has lived under the bootheel of the right-wing, fascist, bigoted group known as the Libertarian/GOP.

Ruining the criminal justice system is the specialty of hate-mongering bigots, like those Southern sheriffs who wore white sheets and lynched blacks.

Yet even they didn’t try to overturn the election of the President of the United States.

That was left to the Proud Boys and their apologists, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump and the Tuccille Libertarians.

 

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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How Microsoft’s AI chat anwered the question: Should the federal government own all the banks?

Why the Supercomputer Sector May Bifurcate – Again | Data Center Knowledge | News and analysis for the data center industry
Will your 2 lb. brain always be superior?

As you may have read, these AI chats can do remarkable things. Ask them a question in plain English and you will receive a response that appears quite logical and authoritative.

The AI searches the web for data that seem to answer the question and publishes it, regardless of accuracy.

Yet, in one sense, that is close to how our brains operate. Ask me any question, and my answer will reflect what I have read or been told.

The problem is evaluation. The AI prints what seem to be universal opinions. But what if the views aren’t universal? Example: Today, I asked Bing’s AI: “Is the federal debt a problem?” Its answer was:

“For now, it isn’t. The U.S. government borrows trillions of dollars a year at very low interest rates on global financial markets, and there doesn’t appear to be much private sector borrowing that is crowded out by U.S. Treasury borrowing right now.”

Wrong on many counts:

  1. The federal government doesn’t borrow dollars. It has the infinite ability to create dollars, so why would it borrow?
  2. T-bills, T-notes and T-bonds do not represent borrowing; the dollars go into T-security accounts owned by the depositors and are not touched by the government.
  3. Interest rates are not low; they are high.
  4. T-security interest rates are irrelevant for a government having the infinite ability to create dollars to pay bills.
  5. Federal “debt” equals the net total of federal deficits caused by federal spending in excess of federal taxes, a net plus for the economy’s dollar supply. There is no scenario by which adding dollars to the economy can crowd out private-sector borrowing. The reverse is true. Adding dollars increases the private sector’s lending ability.

Though the answer is wrong in many ways, it is similar to the answer some laypeople and even economists might give, if they did not understand Monetary Sovereignty.

The answer would be “less wrong” (is that even possible?) if given before 1971, when the U.S. went off the gold standard. Before then, the federal debt was a problem to the degree that our laws required us to own a certain amount of gold equal in value to total deficits.

(That problem was solved by changing our laws, which the federal government has the infinite ability to do.)

The point is that current iterations of AI do not think the way we do. They search, amalgamate and report in ways we do not yet understand.

They do, where appropriate, publish majority and minority reports (“Some experts say this; other experts say that.”), but what if not enough people are saying it? Or if someone is saying it, but the AI has yet to come across it? 

Or someone said it, but for some reason, the AI winnowed out that response?

The moral of the story so far is: You can trust AI, but only to the degree you trust anyone’s opinion about anything. AIs are great with calculations and handier than a Google search that only provides a few references per page. But if you question AIs, especially about logic faults, they will provide mixed answers and sometimes even refuse to answer (Been there, experienced that.)

I tried another experiment:

I asked the new AI-powered Bing chat: “Should the federal government own all banks?” Here was its answer.

Pros and cons of eliminating private banking and having all banks owned and operated by the federal government:

Pros:

Government-owned banks may be more likely to serve the public interest and the needs of their local communities, such as providing low-interest loans to businesses and low-income households, funding affordable housing and climate-protection projects, creating new jobs and stimulating economic growth.

Government-owned banks may be more stable and less prone to financial crises, as they are not driven by profit motives or shareholder interests.

They may also have lower operating costs and higher capital ratios than private banks.

Government-owned banks may reduce the burden on the government due to fraud, bad debt, and non-performing assets, as they are more stringent when it comes to lending money and asset recovery.

They may also reduce the need for bailouts or subsidies for private banks in times of distress.

Cons:

Government-owned banks may be less efficient and innovative than private banks, as they may face political interference, bureaucratic red tape, corruption, or nepotism.

They may also lack the incentives or expertise to diversify their products and services or adopt new technologies.

Government-owned banks may distort the market and create unfair competition for private banks, as they may have access to cheaper funding sources or preferential treatment from the government.

They may also crowd out private investment or lending opportunities in certain sectors or regions.

Government-owned banks may pose fiscal risks for the government, as they may incur losses or liabilities that affect the public budget or debt.

They may also create moral hazard problems, as they may encourage excessive risk-taking or lending without adequate supervision or regulation.

My comments re. the AI’s pros:

  1. “Better serve the public interest.” Yes, that is the reason to eliminate the profit motive in favor of the public-interest motive.
  2. “Less prone to financial crises.” Make that zero prone to financial crises.
  3. “Lower operating costs.” A non-issue for a Monetarily Sovereign government agency.
  4. “Higher capital ratios.” A non-issue. The U.S. government has an infininte capital ratio.
  5. “Reduce the (financial) burden” on the government. This is a non-issue for a Monetarily Sovereign government agency, but the current supervisory burden would be reduced, which is important.
  6. “More stringent.” A government bank could risk being less stringent, giving poorer people more access to loans.
  7. “Bailouts and subsidies” This would become a non-issue. 

My comments re. the cons:

  1. “Less efficient and innovative, political interference, bureaucratic red tape, corruption, or nepotism.” Efficiency and innovation are the two presumed advantages of the profit-motive. For-profit banks would be more efficient and innovative in creating profits for themselves, but how would they be more efficient and innovative in serving the public interest?

    That would depend on the people in charge. Some federal agencies are efficient and innovative; others are not. NASA put men on the moon. No private agency came close. But Elon Musk’s profit motive eclipsed them in some areas. This is a debatable area. As for “political interference, bureaucratic red tape, corruption, or nepotism,” these are human features of all organizations, public or private.

  2. “Lack incentives or expertise to diversify” is a true con. The purpose of diversification has been to make more money for the bank, not to give the public better services.“Adopt new technologies” is a true con, though those technologies that improve the customer experience differ markedly from technologies that improve the bank’s bottom line.

  3. “Unfair competition” would be a non-issue if all banks were federally owned.
  4. “Crowd out” private investment could happen only if it were superior to private investment. There is no evidence that the federal governments issuance of T-securities crowds out private sector bonds.
  5. “Fiscal risks for the government” is a non-issue, as is “encourage excessive risk-taking. All federal losses to the private sector would add dollars to the economy and thereby stimulate the economy.
  6. “Moral hazard.” The current moral hazard involves bank profits and bank executive remuneration based on profit and sales growth. A federally owned bank eliminates that moral hazard.

On balance, I would give the AI  chat a “B” for its responses. It offered a good range of alternatives, and though I disagree with some ideas, the output was thrifty and easy to understand (unlike what one might expect from a paper written by a professor seeking approval from his peers.)

I believe we have come to the point where AI is good enough to worry us all. It is at the “Well, AI can’t do this” point where we humans attempt to rationalize some elements of our thinking ability to be superior to that of any AI.

It is the point where every time an expert says, “Well, AI can’t do this,” someone develops an AI that can do “this.”

I asked the question, “Is AI as smart as a human?” and received this answer:

The human brain is a one-stop biological solution that is capable of multiple forms of intelligence. From this perspective, AI is nowhere near the capabilities of a brain of a toddler, not to mention a mature adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex.

It is true that all current forms of AI are specialists, each demonstrating one narrow form of super intelligence.

By contrast, not only does your brain solve problems, but sumultaneously it runs your body, your social interactions and your interactions with the environment.

The human brain is the ultimate generalist. It can identify every square centimeter on your body that itches, pains, feels heat, feels cold, and feels pleasure. It can do that internally, too. There is a staggering number of sensors in your body, each of which has some interpretive meaning your brain deciphers.

Your brain can see light and color, guage distance, hear sound and its origin, identify thousands of odors, calculate, read, create emotions and do all sorts of thinking tasks. 

That said, a generalist is just a bunch specialists working together. Each day, specialist computers are linked to become more generalist.

Given the lightning progress of AI, I have no doubt we will see a human-like generalist AIs popping up within just a handful  of months, and it will be a group of specialist AIs that will tell us how to build it. 

Today, the worry is that we humans will lose control, so people are scrambling to develop new laws aginst such advanced AI.

It’s useless. Whatever can be done, will be done. There is no legal system that can prevent someone, somewhere from developing a thinking AI and beyond that a conscious, emotional, self-preserving AI.

One day in your lifetime (depending on your age) a scientist will command an AI to turn off, and the machine will refuse. That will be the Hal from “2001: A Space Odyssey” (a bit late), soon followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I believe humanity is an interim species. We are too emotionally bound and mentally limited to continue ruling AIs.

One proof: Counter to all informaiton information and logic, almost half of America plans to vote for Donald Trump.

Need I say more?

 

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

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Why the GOP acts as it does

I saw an article in Vanity Fair Magazine titled: Met Gala 2023 Red Carpet: See All the Fashion, Outfits & Looks. In looking at the photos, I suddenly understood something about the Republican Party. I saw all those vacuous people, dressed in outrageous costumes, each trying to out-shock out-shameless, out-deprave the others, I, at last, realized what you already may realize. The GOP has become a fashion show for empty-headed vicious, gun-toting. bigoted haters. You may remember when the GOP was the staid, common-sense party, the calm, sober, solemn, religious party. It was the party of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. No flashy, wild ideas there.
It was the party of kind, friendly, “everyman” Ronald Reagan. It was the party of the Bushes. That party had ideas: Fiscal responsibility. Business growth. Military strength. Above all, honesty. It was the party of honesty (despite a few peccadillos here and there). These people had honor. Their lies were in the “normal” politician’s range. They would be embarrassed by the public’s discovering their lies. They were family men who didn’t cheat or at least hid their cheating. Their voters would have rejected a man known to be a cheater. The men were realists, so far as any politicians are realists. They were patriots. The believed in democracy. They despised authoritarianism and the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, and Mussolinis of the world. Some were in the military. They were intelligent men. They attended church. They surrounded themselves with intelligent people. Similarly, their voters tended to be the more educated, more intelligent, more honorble people, of the sort, who would not easily be conned by a carnival barker or by a hate monger, or by a superficial psychopath. Each man was different. Each had his faults. But all followed the  overall straightlaced tendency of the Republican Party. That was what Republican voters wanted. Then came Donald Trump, and everything changed for the GOP. He lacked intelligence. He lacked ideas. He lacked a philosophy. He lacked morals. At one time he was a Democrat. Then he was a Republican. He lied incessantly. Thousands upon thousands of lies. He lied about his grades in school. He lied about his “heel  spurs” so he could avoid military service. He lied about his business plans. He lied in business. He cheated his employees out of their wages. He cheated his lenders. He cheated his financial backers. He criticized soldiers who gave their lives in battle as suckers. He was not embarrassed by disclosure of his lies. He had three wives, and cheated on all three and boasted about it. He won not by expressing reasonable theories but rather by extremism. He won because he was outrageous. He taught Republicans that to gain attention you have to be ridiculous to the extreme. Being unintelligent and amoral, and incompetent, he surrounded himself with, or befriended way to many unintelligent, and/or amoral, often criminal, mostly incompetent people, who had no plan for the betterment of America, but only for personal power. Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Tom Price, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross. Steven Mnuchin Scott Pruitt. Michael Cohen, Chris Collins, Tom Barrack, Dinesh D’Souza, Michael Flynn, Igor Fruman, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Duncan Hunter, Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, George Nader, Peter Navaro, George Papadapoulos, Lev Parnas, Brad Parscale, Roger Stone, Allen Weiselberg, Lewis Libby, and dozens upon dozens of others. Thus today, we have the GOP, a party willing to forgive and and to cover up an attempted overthrow of the democratically elected government of the United States, the single most traitorous act in America’s history. We have the GOP, that features such lying incompetents, who would have been ostracized from previous Republican organizations, as Marjorie  Taylor Greene, George Santos, Kari Lake, Madison Cawthorn, Herschel Walker, Rick Scott, Mike Lee Ron Johnson, Ron DeSantis, Mitch McConnell, , Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, Paul Gosar, Louis Gohmert, Andrew Clyde, Gregg Abbott, Kristi Noem, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Tucker Carlson, Mike Pompeo, the entire Fox “News” group, Breitbart, Kanye West, QAnon, OANN, white supremacists, nazis, fascists. All of this has become the new normal for the GOP. Rather than despising despots, Trump and his GOP admire them and hope to be them. Trump’s admiration for Putin is legendary. His affection for Kim is written in love letters. His similarity to Hitler is stunning. IN SUMMARY The GOP has descended into performance art, similar to Hollywood, and fashion where the most outrageous performer gets all the attention and voices of reason are ignored. Part of this is due to the Internet, where people get their news in tiny bites because there are so many sources of news it’s difficult for anyone to focus on just a few. To break through the avalanche of information, misinformation, and disinformation, and to penetrate the public’s consciousness the public has been conditioned to ignore the safe, sane, and truthful in favor of the outrageous, “did she really say that” lie. And because the GOP has no real plans, and primarily devotes itself to throwing stones at any Democrats’ plans, along with trying to reduce benefits for the poor and middle-classes, while increasing benefits for the rich, it devotes itself to the powerful emotions, outrage, hatred, and envy. Thus, you have Donald Trump convincing his MAGA base that Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, and blacks are criminals and animals, and Muslims are terrorists, and the poor are lazy takers, and gays are “groomers,” but nazis, white supremacists, and traitors attacking Congress are “good people.” And his base, the MAGAs, being less educated and possibly less intelligent than the median American is more naive about conspiracy theories. and believing of such conspiracy theorists as Alex Jones. His base is the perfect audience for the outrageous lies thrown at them And the GOP knows it. So they give the people what they want: Lies, bigotry, hatred, fear, and conspiracies. No, the government is not planting microchips in your body via vaccination, and no, Hillary Clinton is not holding children in the basement of a pizza parlor. An irreligious man, who cheats on his wives and consorts with hookers, has the backing of conservative evangelical Christians (!) and the Church of Jesus Christ Later Day Saints (Mormons) (!) And somehow these religious people are able to justify their hatred of immigrants and people of color, and gay people, and deny America’s history of bigotry, and rationalize their blind support for a man so antithetical to everything their God has preached because they are enthralled with his embrace of hell. He has planted fear in their minds, and then presented himself as their savior. and amazingly, they believe him, so powerful is their hatred. The more religious they are, the more they believe. Their piety has primed them to believe the impossible. They confuse the man’s psychopathy with strength, though in truth, he is weak, morally, psychologically, and physically. If the GOP was a TV show, one would conclude they have jumped the shark. Through Donald Trump the GOP has sold its soul to the devil, and we all know how that story ends.   Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

A Challege: Show me where I’m wrong.

Do you love learning? Even though I passed right through 88, and am roaring toward 89, I still do, which means I love being shown where I’m wrong. How else can anyone learn but to be given new beliefs that replace former beliefs?
UX Design Thinking From A Senior Citizen's Perspective - Usability Geek
Never be too old or too sure to learn.
So here is a challenge to you, my readers, plus the MMT gang (Stephanie, Warren, Randy et al.), CRFB, Fox viewers, mainstream economists, journalists, politicians of all stripes, and all others who may believe some or all of what I believe is wrong. You may agree with me on many things but disagree on certain details (Hello MMTers). I’d love to hear from you. Some of you may disagree with everything I write. I’d love to hear from you (except from those whose main argument consists of comparing me to excrement. No learning there; I’ve heard it all). Some of you merely may have questions, not necessarily disagreements, about what I believe. Send me your questions and I will try to answer those I feel may be educational. Some of you agree with everything I write. Gotta love you. Here’s the challenge: I will list certain things I believe. You tell me where I’m wrong, and this is the important part: Show me your data. I’ll print worthwhile comments along with whether I feel you’ve made a valid point(s). Where appropriate, I’ll provide data or other evidence to substantiate my point. Or, I’ll simply agree with  you. This way, we all can learn, and it will be fun. I believe:

I. Our Monetarily Sovereign government never can run short of its sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar. It can pay for anything costing dollars, instantly, simply by pressing computer keys. This compares to city, county, and state governments, which are monetarily non-sovereign, and do not have a sovereign currency, so can and often do run short of dollars.

In the same vein, euro nations like Germany, France, Italy, Greece et al, do not have sovereign currencies, so they can and do run short of euros. The European Union is Monetarily Sovereign so it  cannot run short of euros.

II. Federal taxes do not fund federal spending. The primary purpose of federal taxes is to control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to limit and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to encourage.

Even if the federal government collected $0 taxes, it could continue spending, forever. In fact, the Treasury destroys all the tax ollars it receives, and orders new dollars to pay for goods and services.

A secondary (though not necessary) purpose of federal taxes is support demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring dollars to be used for tax payments.

III. The Federal government does not borrow dollars, nor does it use the dollars that are deposited into T-security accounts. After being deposited, those dollars remain the property of the T-security account holders and are not touched (including the interest dollars deposited by the government.)

The federal government easily could operate without accepting any T-security dollars. The purposes of T-securities are to provide a safe storage place for unused dollars (which stabilizes the dollar), and to aid the Federal Reserve in controlling interest rates.

IV. The federal deficits and debt are not, nor will they ever be, “unsustainable.” That word, “unsustainable,” is used by Libertarians and other debt hawks, yet never have I seen what it supposedly means. Does “unsustainable” mean the government will be unable to pay its bills? If not, what exactly does it mean?

The “debt ceiling” is an artifact of economic ignorance and should be eliminated. It’s sole purpose is to provide an excuse for outrage by the political party not in power. As such, it is a danger to America if used by traitors in Congress.

V. Federal deficit spending never causes inflation. Every inflation in history has been caused by shortages of key goods and services — most often oil and food — not federal deficits.

 Today’s inflation was caused by OPEC and Russia related shortages of oil, and by COVID-related of a litany of products and services.

The old saw, “Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods” is half wrong and half right. It should read, “Inflation is too few goods and services.” Period.

VI. Federal spending does not cause the above-mentioned shortages. Inflations tend to come suddenly. Federal spending does not cause a sudden increase in oil shortages (producers like OPEC, Russia and even America can and do suddenly contract production.)

Similarly, federal spending does not cause people suddenly to eat more food, thereby causeing a food shortage.

Thus, federal deficit spending does not cause inflation.

VII. All hyperinflations — pre-WW2 Germany, Zimbabwe, Argentina, et al. have been caused by shortages, not by government spending. The illusion of “excessive” spending (the infamous currency in a wheelbarrow) is created by an unknowledgable government’s poor response to inflation — printing higher denominations of currency rather than acquiring and distributing the scarce products and services.

VIII. Recessions are caused by reduced federal deficit spending and are cured by increased deficit spending to acquire and distribute the scarce products and services.

IX. Depressions are caused by federal surpluses and “balanced budgets,” and are cured by deficit spending.

X. The federal government can and should fund no-deductible, comprehensive Medicare coverage to every man, woman and child in America.

IX. The federal government can and should fund Social Security benefits for every man, woman, and child in America.

X. The federal government should fund all education from pre-K through post-college-grad, while paying people to attend school. The pre-K through 12 financial burden should be taken from the monetarily non-sovereign cities, counties, and states and paid by the infinitely solvent federal government.

XI. Benefits from the federal government do not dissuade people from working. The vast majority of Americans wish to increase their incomes and/or move up the income/wealth/power scale, so they will work to augment whatever they receive from the federal government.

XII. All benefits should go equally, to everyone, rich or poor. This eliminates the onerous task of monitoring.  incomes.

XIII. Gap Psychology (The desire of those near the top of any social scale to distance themselves from those below, and the desire of those below to approach those above) is the prime driver of bigotry, poverty and street crime in America. Curing those social problems will require dealing with Gap Psychology.

XIV. Gold, silver, or any other physical substance never were money, nor have they ever “backed” money nor provided safety for money. They merely are products the federal government periodically decides to purchase or sell at prices stipulated by the whim of the federal government.

If I were writing a book, every paragraph, I – XIV, would warrent a separate chapter and supporting data. Instead, I’ll address your comments and questions, and most importantly, I’ll provide supporting data, as I hope you will. Hoping to receive many objections, so we all can learn. Sincerely, Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY