–Republicans continue to be their own worst enemy, by Harold Meyerson

Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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The Washington Post published an article by Harold Meyerson, (Opinion Writer, June 2, 2011) titled, Republicans continue to be their own worst enemy. The article began with the well-deserved criticism of Paul Rand:

If you think it is Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s gutting of Medicare that is pulling the Republicans down, you need to think bigger. The House Budget Committee chairman’s proposal to convert Medicare into a private insurance-voucher plan is indeed a political calamity for the GOP, as the results of last week’s congressional special election in Upstate New York showed. But it’s far from the only disaster that the party has visited upon itself.

Mr. Meyerson then goes on to give what he considers to be additional examples of Republican self-immolation:

In Florida, only 29 percent of voters told the Quinnipiac pollsters last week that they approved of Gov. Rick Scott’s five-month tenure in office, during which Scott has endeavored to slash business taxes — already among the nation’s lowest — while also reducing spending on schools and cutting care for the developmentally disabled.
[ . . .]
Things are looking just as bad for the GOP’s new crop of Midwestern governors. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker, whose proposal to curtail collective bargaining for public employees triggered a nationally watched eruption of protest . . .

(Re.) Ohio Gov. John Kasich: . . . approval rating was a bargain-basement 33 percent, while his disapproval rating had risen to 56 percent. Voters . . . asked if they intended to support the referendum likely to appear on this November’s ballot that would repeal the Kasich-backed law sharply limiting collective bargaining rights for public employees. Ohioans said, by a 55 to 35 percent margin, that they’d vote to repeal it.
[ . . .]
In Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder had a 33 percent approval rating, against a 60 percent disapproval rating, in a May survey that also found that 71 percent of Michigan voters thought poorly of his budget cuts to public schools, and more than 60 percent opposed his proposed tax reductions on business. A May survey of New Jersey voters by Fairleigh Dickinson University pollsters found that Gov. Chris Christie’s favorables had slumped to 40 percent, while his unfavorables had risen to 60 percent.

Meyerson compares them with Democratic governors Jerry Brown (California) and Andrew Cuomo (New York), who have favorable ratings.

In contrast to their GOP counterparts, neither Cuomo nor Brown has proposed stripping public employees of meaningful union representation, though both have sought and obtained cutbacks to public programs. The Los Angeles Times/USC Dornsife poll also shows that Californians support Brown’s plan to retain higher tax rates rather than further decimate public schools.

Meyerson concludes:

But the Republican governors — like Ryan and his fellow Republicans in Congress — have pursued a more radical course that sharply disadvantages most Americans. . . . Republicans did not run last year on a platform of ending collective bargaining, slashing school budgets and gutting Medicare — in essence, favoring society’s most powerful at the expense of everyone else — yet that’s precisely what they’ve done since gaining power.That’s not merely bad policy; it’s bad faith — and bad news for Republicans’ electoral prospects.

It also is extraordinarily ignorant (though I don’t know whether Meyerson truly understands why), because it is unnecessary. At the federal level, a Monetarily Sovereign government does not need to cut Medicare and Social Security. The federal government has the unlimited ability to pay for these vital services. While the Tea (formerly Republican) Party rightly says that increasing taxes on the wealthy is a bad idea for the economy, cutting Medicare and Social Security are orders of magnitude worse ideas.

Not only will Medicare and Social Security cuts harm the lower and middle classes, their children and their grandchildren, but these cuts will harm the entire economy by removing money from the economy. And this whole controversy exists because the Tea/Republicans do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty.

By contrast with the federal government, the states, being monetarily non-sovereign, do not have the unlimited ability to support state and local programs. They are forced to cut services or increase taxes or be more efficient. In reality, there is a low limit to how far efficiency can take you, so it comes down to services vs taxes, and people want their services.

Of course, the long-term solution to the states’ (and counties’ and cities’) problems is federal support. But again, this requires an understanding of Monetary Sovereignty, a knowledge of which not one national politician has demonstrated. (Visualize 550+ people running our economy, and not one of them has even a basic understanding of economics.)

So the Tea/Republicans, who rode to power on a wave of knee-jerk discontent, now will face an electorate who have had a chance to think about realities. Carrying anti-government placards and screaming anti-government slogans will not overcome the reality that the people like their Medicare and Social Security, and if anything these programs should be expanded – and don’t you dare touch them. Here is one case, where the people are much smarter than the politicians – or is that always the case?

Of course, this all gets back to my own favorite slogan, “Those who don’t understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, don’t understand economics” (and they should stop writing about, or voting on, economic issues).

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com


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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. It’s been 40 years since the U.S. became Monetary Sovereign, , and neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Fed, nor the vast majority of economists and economics bloggers, nor the preponderance of the media, nor the most famous educational institutions, nor the Nobel committee, nor the International Monetary Fund have yet acquired even the slightest notion of what that means.

Remember that the next time you’re tempted to ask a teenager, “What were you thinking?” He’s liable to respond, “Pretty much what your generation was thinking when it ruined my future.”

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–When will the wise Muslim get out of America?

The debt hawks are to economics as the creationists are to biology. Those, who do not understand Monetary Sovereignty, do not understand economics. If you understand the following, simple statement, you are ahead of most economists, politicians and media writers in America: Our government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the unlimited ability to create the dollars to pay its bills.
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In the previous post ( We already have lost the war), I reprinted excerpts from an article written by John Mauldin, in which he asked, “When would a wise Jew have begun making plans to leave Germany?”

He reminds the reader about a series of events occurring in pre-World War II Germany that presaged the holocaust, events each of which would have given the “wise Jew” a clue about what was to happen. In each case, Mauldin asks whether this is the point at which the “wise Jew” should have seen the handwriting on the wall, and left. You might wish to read that post before continuing with this one.

The point of today’s post is that some of the same events occurring in pre-war Germany are occurring now in America, and this time, the main target is Islam. So the question is: When would the wise Muslim begin to make plans to leave America?

Here is one parallel with yesteryear:

Americans’ bias against Jews, Muslims linked, poll says
By Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, January 21, 2010

A (Gallup) poll about Americans’ views on Islam concludes that the strongest predictor of prejudice against Muslims is whether a person holds similar feelings about Jews.

The poll, conducted in the fall (of 2009), is the latest large-scale survey to find a high level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. . . The Gallup poll asked Americans about their views of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism and found that 53 percent see Islam unfavorably.

And here is another hint for the “wise Muslim.”

Ground Zero:Exaggerating the Jihadist Threat
by Romesh Ratnesar, Time, August 18, 2010

President Obama’s statement on Aug. 13 endorsing “the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan” has unleashed another storm of partisan bloviation. Obama is “pandering to radical Islam,” says Newt Gingrich; John Boehner finds Obama’s comments “deeply troubling.” On this issue, the President’s critics have public opinion on their side: nearly 70% of Americans in a CNN–Opinion Research Corporation poll say they oppose a Ground Zero mosque.”

And yet another hint for the “wise Muslim”

Growing Bias Against Muslims In America
Posted in Liberaland by Alan, 9/13/2010

“There is a hatred, an open hatred, and a lack of tolerance for people who are Muslim,” said Mary Jo O’Neill, regional attorney for the Phoenix district office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She said she has seen an uptick in discrimination complaints among Muslim workers in her region, which includes Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.

Claims of bias against Muslims in the workplace rose to 1,490 last year (2009) from 1,304 in 2008 and just 697 in 2004, according to EEOC figures. Last year’s total was even higher than in the year after the 9/11 attacks, when bias claims hit 1,463. Figures from this year are not yet available.

No, I am NOT suggesting that Muslims should leave America. On the contrary, my fervent prayer is that the anti-Muslim demigogs and the hate-mongering bigots will quit America and the Muslims will stay with us to enrich our multi-faceted society. But if you read the previous post and think about what happened in Germany and now is happening in America, you will see disturbing parallels.

We have not gone so far as a “Crystal Night” in America, yet. We like to think we are the compassionate land of the free – we like to think it couldn’t happen here — but in truth, no nation is immune from the bigotry disease. Perhaps the killing of bin Laden will reduce the heat, but I suspect that one more 9/11 tragedy will unleash the dogs of hatred, perhaps far worse than anything we have seen.

What do you think the wise Muslim should do?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com


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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. It’s been 40 years since the U.S. became Monetary Sovereign, , and neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Fed, nor the vast majority of economists and economics bloggers, nor the preponderance of the media, nor the most famous educational institutions, nor the Nobel committee, nor the International Monetary Fund have yet acquired even the slightest notion of what that means.

Remember that the next time you’re tempted to ask a dopey teenager, “What were you thinking?” He’s liable to respond, “Pretty much what your generation was thinking when it screwed up my future.”

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–We already have lost the war. For what exactly are American soldiers giving their lives?

The debt hawks are to economics as the creationists are to biology. Those, who do not understand Monetary Sovereignty, do not understand economics. If you understand the following, simple statement, you are ahead of most economists, politicians and media writers in America: Our government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the unlimited ability to create the dollars to pay its bills.
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Memorial Day weekend:
We are in a war and we already have lost. Some people believe the war began on September 11, 2011, but that was just a prominent salvo. The war actually began in 1775, and for many years we were winning.

It was a dual war, one for geography and one for a great idea – the idea of freedom, democracy and the rule of law – the idea that made America unique. We won the war for geography and never have looked back. In fact we have added massive pieces of geography, and today America’s land exists, safe and secure from any invaders.

We have enemies, but none is a likely threat to peel off any of our geography. New York is safe; California is safe; Alaska is safe; Hawaii is safe; everything in between is safe. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, the Islamist extremists – we fight them with weapons of war, but they have no chance to defeat us on the battlefield. They are annoying gnats, nothing more.

Yet they have defeated us in that other war, the war for freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Lest you feel this is one of those philosophical overstatements, made for shock effect, but lacking reality, I direct you to two articles:

Here are excerpts from an article written by John Mauldin, published May 28, 2011 and titled” “Trigger Points and Evasive Action” He asks, “When would a wise Jew have begun making plans to leave Germany?” but he really means, when did Germany become a dictatorship?

“When would a wise Jew have begun making plans to leave Germany? 1933? 1934? 1938? 1939?

“In retrospect, most people would say 1933, the year Hitler was appointed (not elected) Chancellor by President von Hindenburg. On 30 January, Hitler became Chancellor. He asked Hindenburg to dissolve the government and schedule new elections for March 5, which Hindenburg did.
[. . . ]
“On 27 February, the Reichstag building burned down. One man did it, who admitted he had done it. Hitler immediately identified him as a Communist, although even today, it is not clear that he did anything but act alone.

“Hitler used this as a propaganda tool. On March 5, the Nazis got 44% of the popular vote, up from 33%. With an allied party, they had 52% of the vote in the Reichstag.
[. . . ]
“On March 23, the government passed the Enabling Act. It took a two-thirds vote to do this. Hitler now possessed dictatorial powers. He had attained these by means of support by rival political parties.
[. . .]
“On April 1, a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses was staged by the S.A., which were technically private storm troops.
[. . .]
“What about 1935’s Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race? They made it illegal for Jews to be citizens.
[. . .]
“And so on, right down to Crystal Night in November 1938, when rioters broke the plate glass windows of 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses and burned or damaged 200 synagogues, meaning most synagogues in Germany.
[. . .]
“After that, over 100,000 Jews packed their bags and departed. Between 1933 and 1939, about half the Jews in Germany emigrated: 250,000. But half did not. “There were a series of trigger points, 1933 to 1939. Most Jews sat tight until very late.
[. . .]
“Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor and announced in the Reich Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date. Articles 68 to 77 of the Constitution do not apply to laws enacted by the Reich government.

“Articles 68 to 77 stipulated the procedures for enacting legislation in the Reichstag. ‘So what?’ This seems to have been a mere technicality. The language was so procedural. But there was substance to it. As we read on Wiki, ‘The Enabling Act allowed the cabinet to enact legislation, including laws deviating from or altering the constitution, without the consent of the Reichstag.’

“It was time to move out and move on . . . and not just if you were Jewish.

“Some people see the signs. Others do not. Some decide to get out while the getting is good. Others do not. “Incident by incident, trigger point by trigger point, people see signs. Most people ignore them. ‘It can’t happen here.’ Most times it doesn’t. Sometimes it does.”

As John Mauldin said, “It can’t happen here. Most times it doesn’t. Sometimes it does.” Could it happen in America? Has it already happened in America? Read excerpts from a May 28, 2011 article in Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture, titled “We’ve Gone from a Nation of Laws to a Nation of Powerful Men Making Laws in Secret.” (For the full article, go to: Secret Laws )

Some defendants are no longer allowed to see the “secret evidence” which the government is using against them. . . The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that judges can throw out cases because they don’t like or believe the plaintiff … even before anyone has had the chance to conduct discovery to prove their case. In other words, judges’ secret biases can be the basis for denying people their day in court, without even having to examine the facts.
[. . . ]
Congress just re-authorized the Patriot Act for another 4 years. However, Senator Wyden, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, notes that the government is using a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act different from what Congress and the public believe. . . “Known as Secret Law, the official interpretation of the Patriot Act could dramatically differ from what the public believes the law allows.”
[. . . ]
Most members of Congress have not even seen the secret legal interpretations that the executive branch is currently relying on and do not have any staff who are cleared to read them. Even if these members come down to the Intelligence Committee and read these interpretations themselves, they cannot openly debate them on the floor without violating classification rules.
[ . . . ]
So patently illegal is Obama’s war in Libya as of today that media reports are now coming quite close to saying so directly; see, for instance, this unusually clear CNN article today from Dana Bash. As a result, reporters today bombarded the White House with questions about the war’s legality, and here is what happened, as reported by ABC News‘ Jake Tapper:

Talk about “secret law.” You’re not even allowed to know the White House’s rationale (if it exists) for why this war is legal. It simply decrees that it is, and you’ll have to comfort yourself with that. That’s how confident they are in their power to operate behind their wall of secrecy: they don’t even bother any longer with a pretense of the most minimal transparency.

[. . . ]
Scott Horton – a professor at Columbia Law School and writer for Harper’s – says of the Bush administration memos authorizing torture, spying, indefinite detention without charge, the use of the military within the U.S. and the suspension of free speech and press rights:

We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.

[ . . . ]
The United States has been in a declared state of emergency from September 2001, to the present. . . . “NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001 . . . .”
That declared state of emergency has continued in full force and effect from 9/11 to the present. President Bush kept it in place, and President Obama has also.
[ . . .]
The Washington Times wrote on September 18, 2001: “Simply by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to impose censorship and martial law.”
[ . . . ]
The New York Times wrote in an editorial:
Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the President may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack, or to any ‘other condition.’ (These) continuity of government laws were enacted without public or even Congressional knowledge, and neither the public or even Congress members on the Homeland Security Committee – let alone Congress as a whole – are being informed of whether they are still in effect and, if so, what laws govern.

So the war for freedom, democracy and the rule of law, now has been lost. The Germans didn’t see it coming, when Hitler stole their freedom, all in the name of national security, that all-purpose excuse every dictator uses, when he steals freedom from the people.

It is the same excuse President Bush used after 9/11, and it is the same excuse President Obama uses today. It’s so insidiously logical, so beguilingly rational: “The nation is threatened, so we must enact these ‘temporary’ measures. And yes, you may lose a bit of freedom, but the laws only threaten terrorists (Germany called them ‘Jews”) so you, being innocent, have nothing to worry about.”

Bush gave himself dictatorial powers, while Congress and the Supreme Court acquiesced. Obama now has inherited those dictatorial powers, while Congress and the Supreme Court, both more concerned with liberal vs conservative causes than with freedom, democracy and rule of law, continue to acquiesce. America now effectively is a dictatorship.

And that is how the war was lost. Please tell me again, on this Memorial Day weekend, for what exactly are the men and women in our armed forces giving their lives?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com


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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. It’s been 40 years since the U.S. became Monetary Sovereign, , and neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Fed, nor the vast majority of economists and economics bloggers, nor the preponderance of the media, nor the most famous educational institutions, nor the Nobel committee, nor the International Monetary Fund have yet acquired even the slightest notion of what that means.

Remember that the next time you’re tempted to ask a dopey teenager, “What were you thinking?” He’s liable to respond, “Pretty much what your generation was thinking when it screwed up my future.”

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Financial frauds who give exactly the same advice to every client, no matter what the situation.

The debt hawks are to economics as the creationists are to biology. Those, who do not understand Monetary Sovereignty, do not understand economics. If you understand the following, simple statement, you are ahead of most economists, politicians and media writers in America: Our government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the unlimited ability to create the dollars to pay its bills.
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We all are aware of the euro nations’ financial problems, especially the problems of the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. We have discussed the fact that because these nations, in surrendering their Monetary Sovereignty, surrendered their control over their money supply. They are unable to create the money necessary to support their economies.

I predicted in a 1995 speech at the UMKC, “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.” However, not all European nations surrendered their Monetary Sovereignty. Among the nations choosing to remain Monetarily Sovereign are Poland, Romania, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Here are some sample news items:

Bloomberg; 5/25/11: “Poland’s economic-growth forecast was raised to 3.9 percent from 3 percent at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

5/27/11: According to Capital Economics, a British research group, Romania’s economy will grow by 3% this year compared to a previous forecast of 1%, followed in 2012 by a 2.5% advance. The recovery will be fueled by private consumption, but also by the resumption of investments. Also the research group states that Romania has the second best potential for economic development in the region, along with Bulgaria, Poland and Russia.

OCDE:1/2/11 – Sweden is expected to continue to recover strongly from the recession as high saving, low interest rates and an improving jobs market encourage consumers to step up spending, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of the country.

Bloomberg: 5/26/11: The mainland (Norway) economy will expand 3.3 percent this year and 4 percent in 2012, after growing 2.2 percent in 2010, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said yesterday.

The Monetarily Sovereign nations are doing better than the monetarily non-sovereign nations. No surprise there for those of you who have been reading this blog. The key, of course, is for a Monetarily Sovereign nation to realize it’s Monetarily Sovereign. Not all do.

Why the British economy is in very deep trouble, Financial Times, Posted by Neil Hume on May 26, 2011

Here’s something for the Chancellor and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to chew on: a warning from Dr Tim Morgan, the global head of research at Tullett Prebon, that the deficit reduction plan won’t work and the UK is headed for a debt disaster.

Morgan says sectors that account for nearly 60 per cent of UK economic output are critically dependent on debt (public or private) and set to contract rather than expand. This will render economic growth implausible and means the burden of public and private debt will prove too heavy for the nation to carry:

Over the past decade, the British economy has been critically dependent on private borrowing and public spending. Now that these drivers have disappeared – private borrowing has evaporated, and the era of massive public spending expansion is over – the outlook for growth is exceptionally bleak.

Sectors which depend upon either private borrowing or public spending now account for at least 58% of economic output. These sectors are now set to contract rather than expand, which renders aggregate economic growth implausible. And, without growth, there may be no way of avoiding a debt disaster.

The UK, wisely avoided surrendering its Monetary Sovereignty, then forgot why it did so. It thinks, “the era of massive public spending is over.” Why? It has no idea. It believes it’s monetarily non-sovereign.

This puts the UK in the same position as the U.S., whose politicians, media and old-time economists do not understand the implications of Monetary Sovereignty. Read any article or listen to any politician, and you will not be able to tell whether the subject is a Monetarily Sovereign nation or a monetarily non-sovereign nation. They say exactly the same things about both.

What would you think about an investment advisor who gives exactly the same advice to a wealthy, married old man with no children, as he gives to an impoverished single, young woman supporting five children? If someone says exactly the same things, makes exactly the same predictions, and offers exactly the same advice regarding two diametrically opposite monetary situations, that person is a fraud.

I have just described the debt-hawk media, politicians and old-time economists.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com


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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. It’s been 40 years since the U.S. became Monetary Sovereign, , and neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Fed, nor the vast majority of economists and economics bloggers, nor the preponderance of the media, nor the most famous educational institutions, nor the Nobel committee, nor the International Monetary Fund have yet acquired even the slightest notion of what that means.

Remember that the next time you’re tempted to ask a dopey teenager, “What were you thinking?” He’s liable to respond, “Pretty much what your generation was thinking when it screwed up my future.”

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY