Tag: big lie

–How many Christians are there in America?

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●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.
●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.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.
==================================================================================================================================================================

How many Christians are there in America?

I don’t know Christianity. I don’t know the various groups — Catholic, Eastern Othodox Protestant — nor all the various sects within the groups.

I am a Jew, aka a “pre-Christian,” just like Jesus Christ, who also was a “pre-Christian.”

If he existed, he didn’t just love me; he was me. “Christian” means follower of Christ, and follower means that which comes after.

Follower also means adherent, someone who follows the example of. So all Christians are pledged to follow the example of Jesus Christ. If not, then what is a Christian?

The “last supper,” I again am reminded this season, was a Passover seder. When we had our seder a few days ago, we followed essentially the same rituals Christ would have followed. He would have told the story of the Exodus, as did we.

The holiday commemorates our (Christ’s and my) ancestors fleeing from oppression. To celebrate Passover, neither Christ nor I drank babies blood, as some pseudo-Christians have claimed. Christ would have drunk four cups of wine, as did we.

And by the way, I did not kill my brother Jew, Jesus. Nor do Christ or I have horns on our heads.

My meager understanding of Christ is that he was all about love. There was no hatred in the man. He, as it is written, loved the poor, loved the downtrodden, loved the weak, the tired, the homeless, loved the helpless in the face of cruelty. Mostly, he loved the compassionate.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? “Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

So, I ask again, how many Christians — followers of Christ — are there in America?

Does a follower of Christ despise immigrants who do not have citizenship? Christ, I believe, did not love only his Jewish brothers, but men and women of all faiths.

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Does a follower of Christ despise the poor as “takers.” Does he despise the homeless or the hungry as “lazy” or deserving of their misery?

If a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Then who are these people who turn away immigrants and deride the poor and deny charity to the hungry? Are they true Christians or loud pretenders?

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?

We wrote in The slippery slope of religious immorality, “The ostensible purpose of religion is to provide moral guidance. The foundation of morality is the Golden Rule: ‘Treat others as you wish to be treated.’”

But, we have the very base of the Republican party, a group that considers itself the “religious” right — followers of Christ. And they hate. It is what they do. Hatred is the distinguishing characteristic of the right.

They despise the poor. They despise the homeless and the immigrant. They despise those of another faith, the Muslim and most ironically, the Jew. They despise the powerless. They despise the elderly, the jobless, the unwed mothers and parentless children.

These pseudo followers of Christ, would deny destitute people medical care and unemployment compensation and Social Security. They sneer at those needing food stamps. These self-proclaimed Christians would send immigrant children back to misery and death.

To defend their cruelty, the pious fakers select passages from the bible, that allowed for ancient cruelty, while ignoring the fundamental meaning of the Bible. They invent a mean God to justify their own meanness.

They select one criminal as representing an entire race.

If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.

Then on Sunday, these pious pretenders nod their heads in unison, as the preacher intones about piety and pretense. And they think, by this, they are Christian.

They should feel shame, this Republican “base.” They should be ashamed to call themselves Christians, as should the politicians who sell their souls for a vote.

So, to answer the question, “How many Christians are there in America?” I ask you, how many followers of a loving and merciful Christ are there in America?

After all, what do I know? I am a Jew.

We have our own fakers.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The 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. Federally funded, 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. (Refer to this.)
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)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK
Monetary Sovereignty

Monetary Sovereignty

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.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–Why compulsory education? Why educate at all? Why not college?

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●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.
●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.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.
==================================================================================================================================================================

Why do we require our children to be educated? Why do we send them off to approximately 12 years of schooling, most of which is paid for by a local government (i.e. by local taxpayers)?

What is the purpose? Why not just have the kids go to work and earn a living rather than spending valuable years in classrooms?

By 1900, 34 states had compulsory schooling laws. 30 states with compulsory schooling laws required attendance until age 14 (or higher). As a result, by 1910, 72 percent of American children attended school.

Even more than 100 years ago, when science and industry were much simpler than today, Americans understood that a successfully competitive nation required educated people.

It was, and remains, to the entire nation’s benefit, that it educate all its youngsters, not just the rich children, but all children.

So, America decided that local taxpayers, not the federal government, would pay for education, up through the 12th grade.

And there it has remained.

As all the sciences have required ever more specialization and education, America still is committed to educating just through 12th grade.

And even as the U.S. federal government has become Monetarily Sovereign, and thus able to pay any bill of any amount, without collecting taxes, still the onus is on the monetarily non-sovereign state and local governments to pay for education.

Why?

Consider the case of monetarily non-sovereign Germany, a nation that like our state and local governments, does not have the unlimited ability to create its sovereign currency (it having no sovereign currency, but rather using the euro):

There Is No Such Thing As A Free College Education
By: Christopher Denhart

Following Wednesday’s decision to overturn tuition and fees in Lower Saxony, Germany, all universities will now be tuition free. According to The Times, Germany will now be 100% free of charge to students, national and international, as political figures call tuition fees “socially unjust.”

Of course, college tuition fees are “socially unjust.” Even a fool realizes that charging for education leads to a widening of the Gap between the rich and the rest.

Even a fool realizes that education is as important as medical services, and should not be reserved for those who can afford it.

Of course, not everyone agrees

There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. And there is also No Such Thing As A Free Higher Education. Higher education, especially in science-heavy Germany, is incredibly costly to run and maintain.

In a typical economic model for financing higher education, the consumer (student) would pay for the good that it consumes (education) and the research that researchers do would lead to innovations that have positive economic impact on society, therefore paying for themselves.

We have departed from this free market, “sustainable,” model globally, and rely heavily on federal subsidies to keep universities afloat.

CCAP has argued that these federal monies have largely led to increases in the cost of higher education, which has over time compounded, translating into higher tuition fees.

Remember that Germany is monetarily non-sovereign, just like our state and local governments, so taxpayers do indeed, pay for all government spending. So concern for budgets is understandable.

It is clear in the United States, with annual tuition fees in the $40,000s or $50,000s and millionaire university presidents, that federal subsidies have led to outrageous increases in university spending, as universities, administrators, and faculty enjoy the benefits of captured student loan and grant moneys.

Sooner or later this “free” higher education will feel less and less free as increasing taxes will likely drive the most educated, highest earning, most able Germans away from Germany and into societies where they can take home a greater percentage of their pay.

This will then reduce the tax cache and start to decrease the deficit more than the added tax revenues from a more professional society will add to them.

The author, Christopher Denhart, who though clearly not understanding Monetary Sovereignty, makes this point: In a monetarily non-sovereign community, social services — health care, poverty aids, road building, indeed all government initiatives — are unfair to the taxpayers who don’t use them.

If your city pays for elementary school, the point could be made that such payment is unfair to you, a taxpayer who has no children in elementary school.

Never mind that educating children rewards the nation that educates them. The rewards to any individual city are hard to measure. Sure, good schools increase property values, but by how much? And is a higher property value a benefit if it comes with a higher property tax?

What is the U.S. government’s solution to the unaffordable cost of college? STUDENT LOANS — you know those rare loans that cannot even be discharged in bankruptcy (because that’s not what the big lending banks want).

That is our solution: Put middle- and lower-income families deeply into an unsustainable debt, from which they never can emerge. Conservatives love it.

As the rich folk say, “Let them go to community colleges (paid for by the monetarily non-sovereign states), if that’s all they can afford. Our kids will go to the best universities. That is exactly the way the world should work.”

Activists Stop Paying Their Student Loans
MARCH 31, 2015

Latonya Suggs says she borrowed thousands of dollars in student loans to attend the for-profit Corinthian Colleges but has nothing to show for it. Most employers don’t recognize her criminal justice degree.

Suggs and 106 other borrowers now saddled with Corinthian loan debt say their refusal to repay the loans is a form of political protest. And Tuesday, the U.S. government gave them an audience.

Representatives of the “Corinthian 100” met with officials from the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Rohit Chopra, the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman, said in a letter to the strikers that the CFPB would like to “discuss further” potential “ways to address the burden of their student loans.”

In September, the CFPB sued Corinthian, accusing it of predatory lending practices. Weeks later, roughly half of its campuses were sold to the Educational Credit Management Corp., a financial company with no prior experience operating colleges.

Finally, in February, the CFPB and the Department of Education announced the forgiveness of $480 million in private student loans held by former Corinthian students.

But those are just the private loans. Borrowers are still on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student loans — money that the Department of Education expects to be paid back.

That’s true even for students who never earned their degrees, on campuses that are being shut down.

Refusing to pay back a student loan can have serious consequences. Wages and tax refunds can be garnisheed. It can also sink a credit score; limit access to a credit card, auto or home loan; and hurt your chances of getting a job.

Yes, that is our Monetarily Sovereign government’s solution to unaffordable education: Indentured servitude courtesy of rapacious lenders — the student loan scandal.

Or, the federal government simply could pay for a college education, far more easily than state and local governments pay for grades K-12.

Lending money to students and their parents is ridiculous, particularly since the federal government has zero need to receive dollars — its sovereign currency — from anyone. Why send people to loan sharks when dollars are freely available to the federal government?

There is one, and only one, purpose for college student loans — and its not to make college more affordable.

The sole purpose of our student loan program is to benefit rich lenders by enslaving families of modest means — luring them with something they know they need but cannot afford.

In this sense, the federal government is no better than the street corner drug dealer, sucking victims into a life that will lead to their destruction.

The solution: Follow Step #4 in the “Ten Steps to Prosperity,” below.

Do it now!

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The 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. Federally funded, 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. (Refer to this.)
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)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK
Monetary Sovereignty

Monetary Sovereignty

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.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–The Neville Chamberlain lesson, not learned

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●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.
●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.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.
==================================================================================================================================================================

Sometimes no comments are needed.

Consider this:

“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”

—Neville Chamberlain, 27 September 1938, 8 p.m. radio broadcast, on Czechoslovak refusal to accept Nazi demands to cede border areas to Germany.

And this:

The Obama Watch, Obama’s Strange Iran Negotiations
He turns down a bargaining chip from Congress.
By Scott McKay –

Two senators, Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Bob Menendez, have authored a bill to impose tougher economic sanctions on Iran if it ultimately refuses to honor the demands of the international community as regards its nuclear weapons program.

President Barack Obama has now pledged to veto that bill.

Obama said in a written statement last week that threatened a veto of the bill. “Imposing additional sanctions now will only risk derailing our efforts to resolve this issue peacefully.”

Not only has Obama rejected the bill, he touched off an intraparty squabble with Menendez and other Democrats by attacking it as the product of influence by “donors and others” — which many have interpreted as code for influential Jews protecting Israeli interests.

PowerLine’s Paul Mirengoff suggests (Obama’s) willing to give away the store to Iran in order to set the stage for a grand bargain with the mullahs that will magically solve the problems in the Middle East.

And this:

Iranian General: ‘Erasing Israel Off the Map’ Is ‘Nonnegotiable’

The commander of the Basij militia of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in an interview that “erasing Israel off the map” is “nonnegotiable.”

“The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” he added.

Fars News also quoted Naqdi threatening both Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Any questions, college students?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

monetary sovereignty
THE OBAMA NEGOTIATIONS

===================================================================================
The 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. Federally funded, 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. (Refer to this.)
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)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK
Monetary Sovereignty

Monetary Sovereignty

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.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY

–Jacob Sullum says, “Ted Cruz is Right About Taxes” Really?

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
●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.
●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.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap.
==================================================================================================================================================================

Direct quote from Reason Magazine:

“Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com and a nationally syndicated columnist.

Sullum’s weekly column, distributed by Creators Syndicate, is carried by newspapers across the U.S., including the New York Post and the Chicago Sun-Times.

His work also has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Cigar Aficionado, National Review, and many other publications.

He blogs about drug policy for Forbes.”

Perhaps Mr. Sullum should focus on drug policy, because when he blogs about tax policy, he goes astray.

Ted Cruz Is Right About Taxes
The Internal Revenue Code’s headache-inducing complexity is a scandal.
Jacob Sullum | March 25, 2015

“Instead of a tax code that crushes innovation [and] imposes burdens on families struggling to make ends meet,” Cruz said, “imagine a simple flat tax that lets every American file his or her taxes on a postcard.”

Flat-tax proponents, including several Republican presidential candidates, have been asking us to imagine a postcard-sized tax return for more than three decades.

If it still sounds far-fetched, that is only because we are sadly accustomed to jumping through hoops for the privilege of parting with our money.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? A simple little post card on which you write your income and multiply it by some percentage — and that’s it. Who wouldn’t want such simplicity?

Except for a few tiny details, wherein the devil resides.

First, what is income? You own stocks and they appreciate, but you don’t sell them. Is that income? You own stocks and they depreciate, and you don’t sell them. Is that a deduction from income?

You sell stocks that have appreciated. Income? Sell stocks that have depreciated? Deduction?

You give money to your young children. Income? You give stocks to your young children. Income? You receive life, health or accident insurance payments. You pay FICA, the receive Social Security. You win a free vacation. Income?

Your house burns down. Deduction from income? You win a lawsuit. Income? You lose a suit. Deduction from income?

Half your income comes from an overseas job. Income? Large medical expenses. Deduction? You child receives a scholarship. Income? Are Medicare and Medicaid benefits income? Food and housing for the poor. If the government wants to help these people, why give with one hand and take with the other?

Hmmm . . . have we drifted a bit from that “postcard”?

Let’s continue with the article:

“The most serious problem facing U.S. taxpayers is the declining quality of service provided to them by the IRS when they seek to comply with their federal tax filing and payment obligations,” says the Taxpayer Advocate Service

Well, not really. The biggest problem facing U.S. taxpayers is paying taxes — taxes a Monetarily Sovereign government neither needs nor uses.

Cruz’s solution—a single income tax rate with deductions limited to charitable donations and home mortgage interest—would be a step in the right direction.

ut retaining any deductions at all is an invitation to escalating exceptions, and keeping the income tax would mean keeping the IRS or something like it, contrary to what Cruz implies.

A flat tax with no deductions except for charitable donations and mortgage interest. Sounds simple enough.

Uh, well . . . exactly what is a charitable deduction? If you give clothing to your church, don’t you have to list what you gave and the value of each item? On a postcard??

And are we talking about eliminating all charitable trusts? Or will we keep charitable trusts — on a postcard?

And then there is mortgage interest, but not other interest. Why? No deduction for school loans? If corporations can deduct every expense, why can’t individuals deduct every expense?

Why can’t you deduct the cost of food, clothing and housing, the way corporations do? Why can’t you deduct the cost of raising and educating children? Isn’t that important to America?

Do Cruz and Sullum visualize no deductions for corporations? Not a chance. Rich people own corporations.

Anyway, in all fairness, Cruz wants to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service altogether. No more income tax on anything. And that’s not a bad idea (since the federal government neither uses nor needs tax dollars), except for another one of those small details:

A national sales tax, an approach Cruz also has endorsed, would make “abolishing the IRS” feasible and a return to something resembling the current tax code less likely, with the additional economic advantage of taxing consumption rather than savings and investment.

In 2013 Cruz cosponsored the Fair Tax Act, which would have replaced the federal income and payroll taxes with a 23 percent sales tax, collected by a new Treasury Department agency with help from state revenue departments.

And here is where we drift from loopy and ill-considered to downright evil.

As anyone who has given more than two seconds worth of thought to the problem knows, sales taxes are highly regressive. They punish the poor- and the middle-classes far more than the rich.

Sales taxes are the perfect vehicle for widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.

While the “99%” tend to spend a high percentage of their income on things, the rich invest most of their income. For a poor person, a 23% sales tax effectively would be a 23% income tax. For a rich person, a 23% sales tax might not even amount to a 1% tax on income.

And of course, that is exactly what Republican Cruz wants. It’s what all right-wingers want. Punish the 99%, reward the 1% and sell the whole package to the gullible as a way to “make things easier.”

Yes, Cruz’s “Submit your taxes to the IRS, on a postcard” should be changed to “Submit your entire income to the IRS, on a postcard, unless you’re rich.”

Hey, in the next election, that could happen. The Republican Supreme Court can be depended upon to support income and vote confiscation of the non-rich.

By contrast, I suggest Items #6, #7 and #8 of the Ten Steps to Prosperity, a program to grow the economy and narrow the Gap between the rich and the rest.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

===================================================================================
The 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. Federally funded, 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. (Refer to this.)
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)

Initiating The Ten Steps sequentially will add dollars to the economy, stimulate the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
——————————————————————————————————————————————

10 Steps to Economic Misery: (Click here:)
1. Maintain or increase the FICA tax..
2. Spread the myth Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. government are insolvent.
3. Cut federal employment in the military, post office, other federal agencies.
4. Broaden the income tax base so more lower income people will pay.
5. Cut financial assistance to the states.
6. Spread the myth federal taxes pay for federal spending.
7. Allow banks to trade for their own accounts; save them when their investments go sour.
8. Never prosecute any banker for criminal activity.
9. Nominate arch conservatives to the Supreme Court.
10. Reduce the federal deficit and debt

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.
1. A growing economy requires a growing supply of dollars (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)
2. All deficit spending grows the supply of dollars
3. The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control.
4. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

THE RECESSION CLOCK
Monetary Sovereignty

Monetary Sovereignty

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.

#MONETARYSOVEREIGNTY