Tag: cause inflation

Do these lines move together, randomly, or in opposition? What is your opinion?

Would you say these lines move together?   That is, when one goes up, does the other also go up?

Or, do they move randomly, so that when one goes up, the other sometimes goes up and sometimes goes down?

Or do they move in opposition, so that when one goes up, the other goes down? What is your opinion?

I ask because these two lines demonstrate one of the beliefs-vs.-facts arguments we seem to endure all too often in economics. Perhaps because economics is intertwined with psychology, a science notable for guesses trumping facts — or lack of facts — that economics is so filled with myths.

Contrary to popular belief, which is taught in our schools by educated economists, here are some of the facts that are not taught:

Federal “debt” is not real debt. The federal government does not owe it.

The federal debt is infinitely sustainable. Federal “deficits” are economic gains.

The federal government neither needs, keeps, nor uses federal tax dollars or any other form of income.

The federal government cannot run short of dollars. The federal government creates new dollars, ad hoc, by spending.

The federal government does not borrow. T-bills, et al, do not provide the government with dollars. “How will you pay for it” never is a legitimate question regarding federal spending initiatives.

Gold is not, and never has been money. It is, and always has been, nothing but an ore. Federal government spending grows the economy. State/local government spending does not.

The debt ceiling does not put a ceiling on federal debt. Federal “trust funds” are not trust funds and they do not pay for federal spending.

Lately, because of massive spending by the federal government, you have begun to hear about the menace of inflation. The wrong belief is that federal spending causes inflation by increasing the money supply. It’s what you have been told thousands of times.

And it makes intuitive sense. After all, when you increase the supply of something without increasing the demand, the relative value declines. And you surely have seen photos of people, in hyperinflation-ravaged nations, carrying loads of currency in wheelbarrows.

But, in this case, intuition is misleading. Increasing the supply of money does not decrease its value. In the above graph, I do not see any sort of “together” movement. I do not see a cause/effect relationship.

Here is the same graph, except with labels attached. The blue line shows changes in prices. The red line shows changes in federal debt. I see peaks in one corresponding to valleys in the other.

Blue = price annual % increases. Red = federal debt annual % increases.

From the above graph, it would be very difficult to deduce that increases in federal debt cause increases in prices. In fact, a better case could be made that increases in federal debt cause a decrease in prices, and that decreases in debt caused an increase in prices.

How is that even logical? I can visualize one possibility. Federal debt, which results from federal deficit spending, stimulates the economy, i.e. it stimulates business’s anticipation of demand.

Even today, businesses are ramping up production in anticipation of increased sales due to projected federal stimulus spending. Is it possible that this anticipation causes businesses to overshoot their production, leading to excess supply and reduced prices?

Perhaps, but for whatever reasons, federal deficit spending has not caused inflation, at least, not inflation above the Fed’s arbitrary, 2% goal.

Over the long term, prices have increased. There has been some inflation. And we know that federal debt has increased. Is this the cause/effect we have been told about?

Here are the same data viewed from another perspective, and with the addition of Gross Domestic Product (green). Since 1970, prices (blue line) have risen slowly, GDP (green) has risen faster, while federal debt (red) has risen massively. This indicates three things you will not hear from the media, the politicians or the expert economists:

  1. Even during massive debt increases, prices have moved up moderately, actually below the Fed’s target.
  2. As federal debt increases, GDP grows faster than inflation.
  3. The growing debt is not a burden on the government, on taxpayers, or on the economy.

Sadly, these facts will not sway those whose motive clearly is to widen the Gap between the rich and the rest.

By claiming that federal spending to support the poor and middle-income groups is unsustainable, the purveyors of the “Big Lie” help enrich the rich and impoverish the rest. 

That is what the “Big Liars” are being paid to do. 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. The most important problems in economics involve:

  • Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
  • Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics. Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps: Ten Steps To Prosperity:

  1. Eliminate FICA
  2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
  3. Social Security for all
  4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
  5. Salary for attending school
  6. Eliminate federal taxes on business
  7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.
  8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
  9. Federal ownership of all banks
  10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

 

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

 

 

Only 450 words answer the question, “Does printing money cause inflation?”

Does “printing” money cause inflation? Or is so-called “printing” money the best way to cure inflation?

1. The federal government does not print money. It prints
Federal Reserve Notes (FRN), which are not dollars, but rather are bearer certificates: Titles to dollars.

Only a small percentage of dollars are represented by FRNs.

2. Dollars are balance sheet numbers. They have no physical existence. You cannot feel, see, hear, smell, or taste dollars.

3. The government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the unlimited ability to create dollars. The government never unintentionally can run short of dollars.

4. Printing FRNs does not cause inflations. The reverse is true. The printing of FRNs results from inflations.

5. The cause of inflations — a general increase in prices — is shortages, generally scarcities of energy and/or food.

Scarcity causes prices to rise, and widespread scarcities of food and/or oil, cause widespread price increases.

6. Federal deficit spending actually can prevent or cure inflations, if the spending cures the shortages.

Case in point: Zimbabwe’s inflation came when its government seized farmland from farmers and gave it to non-farmers, who could not grow enough food.

The resultant food shortage caused hyperinflation, which the government could have cured by deficit spending to purchase food from other countries.

The graph below compares changes in the U.S. money supply (Green – M3) to changes in inflation (red).

Changes in M3 (green) are NOT predictive of changes in prices (red).

The graph below compares changes in the price of oil (blue) (which closely reflect shortages) to changes in inflation. (red).

Changes in the price of oil ((blue — which closely reflect supply changes) ARE predictive of inflation.

The graph below compares the overall Consumer Price Index (Red) to the price index of food and energy (gold). Food and energy prices (which reflect availability) are predictive of overall inflation.

Food and energy inflation (gold) IS predictive of overall inflation (red).

Discussion of federal projects generally lead to the question, “How will you pay for it.” The correct answer never is, “by raising taxes” or “by cutting other spending.”

The correct answer always is, via federal deficit spending.

In summary:
Prices rise (inflation) because of scarcity, usually a scarcity of food and/or energy. Curing the scarcity reduces prices.

Scarcity can be cured by federal deficit spending to purchase the scarce items and distribute them into the economy.

The amount of deficit spending is not the key to inflation or its cure. The key is how the deficit spending is used.

Deficit spending, to purchase the scarce items, cures inflations. Poorly directed deficit spending that does not cure the scarcity, will worsen inflation.

A Monetarily Sovereign government cannot run short of the sovereign currency needed to cure an inflation.

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

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The most important problems in economics involve:

  1. Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
  2. Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.

Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually. 

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–“The only thing that stops a bad guy . . . “

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.
•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.
•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes. .
•Liberals think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.
•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between rich and poor.
•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between rich and poor.
•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

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The 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Wayne LaPierre, NRA: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.

We Almost Had 3 Mass Shootings Last Week

Vester Flanagan opened fire on two journalists on live television in Virginia.

Eighteen hours earlier in neighboring West Virginia, a boy walked into his high-school and pointed a pistol at his teacher’s head.

Forty-five hours before that, Boston police announced they stopped two men from massacring a Pokemon convention.

It is not known whether Flanagan belonged to a well-regulated militia that is protecting the security of America. It also is not known whether the victims were good guys who should have had guns to shoot back.

It’s Called Gendercide Armed Husbands Shoot Eight Women In One Week, Six Die

While the nation was trying to digest the crime of two media members killed on camera in Virginia by a legal gun owner, a spate of women killed by enraged armed husbands in one week received less notice.

James Terry Colley, Jr. shot and killed his wife Amanda Cloaninger and her friend Lindy Dobbins in St. Augustine, Florida on August 27 say police.

It is not known whether Colley belonged to a well-regulated militia that is protecting the security of America. It also is not known whether the victims were good guys who should have had guns to shoot back.

Blessing Okereke was fatally shot in the Bank of America tower in Oak Cliff in Dallas by her husband say police. Husband David Thompson told police he believed his wife was reaching for his pistol, so he shot her in self-defense. Right.

August 30, Nuria N. Kudlach was fatally shot at her home in State College, PA and her husband was charged with first- and third-degree murder.

It is not known whether Okereke or Kudlach belonged to well-regulated militias that are protecting the security of America. It also is not known whether the victims were good guys who should have had guns to shoot back.

The next day, August 31, Sonja Wells Raine was fatally shot on her job in Pascagoula, MS by her enraged husband according to police.

Raine’s “sister got killed the same way by her boyfriend or husband, so that is shocking,” said co-worker Kim Pinkney.

The next day, September 1, 76-year-old Norman McKinney of Erwin, Tennessee, allegedly killed his wife of 30 years. McKinney was elderly, “had two or three strokes” and other “medical issues” and couldn’t even dial a phone explained the sheriff.

It is not known whether Raine or McKinney belonged to well-regulated militias that are protecting the security of America. It also is not known whether the victims were good guys who should have had guns to shoot back.

Thirty-three thousand people were killed by guns in America in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control, a rate that’s higher than any other developed country on the planet.

It is not known whether the shooters belong to well-regulated militias that are protecting the security of America. It also is not known whether the victims were good guys who should have had guns to shoot back.

Between last Friday, July 17, and Thursday, July 23, there were at least 15 reports of murder-suicides committed with guns in the United States:

  • Friday, July 17, Chicago. A 38-year-old man is believed to have shot and stabbed his 72-year-old father and his 29-year-old brother at the father’s home, killing them, before shooting and killing himself.
  • Friday, July 17, Monrovia, California. A 35-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his 37-year-old wife before killing himself.
  • Friday, July 17, Norman, Oklahoma. A man is believed to have shot and killed his ex-wife and then killed himself in a hospital parking lot. The woman was at the hospital visiting her mother.
  • Friday, July 17, Perry Hall, Maryland. A 47-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his 12- and 10-year-old sons before killing himself.
  • Friday, July 17, Mauldin, South Carolina. A 34-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his 37-year-old brother before killing himself.
  • Saturday, July 18, North Ridgeville, Ohio. A 65-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his 62-year-old wife before killing himself. The woman may have been protecting the couple’s disabled 26-year-old daughter when she was shot.
  • Saturday, July 18, Tampa. A 32-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his 23-year-old girlfriend at a hotel before killing himself.
  • Sunday, July 19, Grady County, Georgia. A 55-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his estranged 39-year-old wife at her home, then to have driven to his home and killed himself.
  • Tuesday, July 21, Bear, Delaware. A 35-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed a 34-year-old woman before killing himself.
  • Tuesday, July 21, Amherst, New York. A 53-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his 55-year-old wife before killing himself.
  • Tuesday, July 21, Walnut Creek, California. A 21-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed a 19-year-old woman at her parents’ house before killing himself.
  • Wednesday, July 22, Jacksonville, North Carolina. A 69-year-old man is believed to have shot and killed his 68-year-old wife before killing himself.
  • Wednesday, July 22, Suwanee, Georgia. A man is believed to have shot and killed his wife and her two sons before killing himself. He also shot and injured his wife’s father.
  • Thursday, July 23, Vallejo, California. A man is believed to have shot and killed his ex-wife and injured another man before killing himself.
  • Thursday, July 23, Mason County, Washington. A 52-year-old man is believed to have killed a 17-month-old child before killing himself.

It is not known whether the shooters belonged to well-regulated militias that are protecting the security of America. It also is not known whether the victims (including the 17-month-old) were good guys who should have carried guns to shoot back.

And then there are just some of the school shootings since 2010:

  • 14-year-old Hammad Memon shot to death 14-year-old Todd Brown in a crowded school hallway of Discovery Middle School, during changing of classes. The shooting was possibly motivated by gang activities.
  • Amy Bishop Anderson, a biology professor, shot and killed three of her colleagues and wounded three others during a faculty meeting.
  • At eer Creek Middle School Bruco Eastwood opened fire from a Winchester Model 70 rifle in a parking lot. Two eight-grade students, one female and one male, were both shot and wounded.
  • Two students were shot and wounded in front of Mumford High School. A 17-year-old man, Steven Jamal Hare, was tried as an adult and charged with assault with intent to kill.
  • 15-year-old student Jose Daniel Cisneros was shot to death on an athletic field at Alisal High School. Cisneros was walking to the school campus at 8 a.m., and was shot multiple times.
  • Samuel Hengel, 15, took 23 students and a teacher hostage inside a classroom of Marinette High School for five hours. (When) police entered the building, Hengel shot himself in the head. He died the next day.
  • Outside Aurora Central High School, a 17-year-old girl was shot and wounded. The wounds caused her to be paralyzed. Luis Enrique Guzman-Rincon, 20, fired shots from a car while students were standing outside the high school.
  • At Millard South High School, student Robert Butler Jr., 18, shot and killed Assistant Principal Dr. Vicki Kaspar, and wounded Principal Curtis Case.
  • Schnell Elementary School Principal Sam Lacara is shot to death in his office, by John Luebbers, a custodial employee at the school.
  • Michael Phelps, a 15-year-old suspended student, returned to Martinsville West Middle School. In the entrance of the school, Phelps shot 15-year-old Chance Jackson twice in the abdomen.
  • Multiple gunmen opened fire during a powder puff football game at Worthing High School. One man, an 18-year-old former student named Tremaine De Ante’ Paul, died. Five other people received injuries.
  • A 14-year-old male student is accused of firing a handgun on the campus of Highlands Intermediate School, wounding one student.
  • A 15-year-old girl was shot in the neck at Cape Fear High School. A student of the school,15-year-old Charles Underwood, was arrested and charged with attempted murder.
  • Ross Truett Ashley, 22, a part-time business student at Radford University, shot and killed a police officer engaged in an unrelated traffic stop on the campus of Virginia Tech, then committed suicide in a nearby parking lot.
  • One student was shot and injured after another student opened fire at North Forest High School. The student said that he was being confronted by three other students who were bullying him, and he took out a handgun and fired at them in self-defense.
  • Third-grader Amina Kocer-Bowman was accidentally shot when a fellow student brought a 9mm handgun to school and it went off when he dropped his backpack. She survived after 6 weeks in the hospital and a surgery to remove the bullet from her spine.
  • Thomas “T. J.” Lane, 17, took a Ruger MK III,.22 caliber Semi-automatic pistol and a knife to Chardon High School and fired ten shots at a group of students sitting at a cafeteria table. Three students died in the attack. Three other students were injured.
  • At Episcopal School of Jacksonville, fired Spanish teacher Shane Schumerth, 28, shot and killed head of school Dale Regan before committing suicide.
  • One L. Goh was accused of shooting to death seven students and wounding three others in a classroom at Oikos University.
  • A Carrboro man was charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a woman in front of Mary Scroggs Elementary School.
  • Two Hamilton High School students were shot and wounded in the parking lot of the school.
  • Robert Gladden, 15, took a double barrel shotgu to Perry Hall High School and fired two shots inside the school cafeteria. A 17-year-old senior was hit in the lower back while he was sitting at a table and suffered critical wounds.
  • A student fired multiple gunshots in the ceiling of Normal Community High School, and was tackled by a teacher.
  • At a Halloween party on the University of Southern California campus, an argument escalated and a man pulled out a handgun and shot a rival gang member, Geno Hall, seven times, critically wounding him.
  • Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting: Adam Lanza, aged 20, killed 26 people and himself. He first killed his mother at their shared home before taking her guns and driving to the school.
  • Shots were fired at Apostolic Revival Center Christian School, leaving 27-year-old Kristopher Smith dead in what was believed to be a retaliation killing, possibly for talking with police about a previous incident.
  • A gunman entered a science classroom of Taft Union High School with a 12 gauge shotgun and opened fire. A 16-year-old male student, identified as Bowe Cleveland, was shot in the chest and critically wounded.
  • A gunman shot an administrator in his office on the fourth floor of Stevens Institute of Business and Arts, wounding him. The suspected gunman, Sean Johnson, a part-time student, shot and wounded himself on a stairwell.
  • Two people were shot and killed and a third person was wounded at the parking lot of Hazard Community and Technical College. The third victim, 12-year-old Taylor Cornett, died from her wounds the next day. 21-year-old Dalton Lee Stidham was arrested and charged with three counts of murder.
  • A 17-year-old boy, Tyrone Lawson, was shot to death in a parking lot of Chicago State University.
  • Between the Library and Academic Building outside of Lone Star College–North Harris, two men got into an argument and one of the men pulled out a gun and shot the other man, a student.
  • An argument over turf and respect between two rival gangs escalated to what police now describe as a “gun battle” in January at Cesar Chavez High School in Phoenix.
  • A 14-year-old male student was shot and wounded in the back of the neck at Price Middle School. The gunman, a student, was believed to be arguing with the other student before taking out a handgun and firing multiple shots at him.
  • Two women were wounded during a shooting at the campus of New River Community College. Neil Allen MacInnis was taken into custody.
  • At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a campus police officer was shot multiple times.
  • Allegedly responding to a student fight, a parent brought and fired a weapon on the campus of Ossie Ware Mitchell Middle School. No one was injured.
  • Six people, including the shooter died and four others were wounded at or near the campus of Santa Monica College when a lone gunman opened fire on the school campus library after shooting at several cars and a city bus at separate crime scenes.
  • Two custodians at Alexander W. Dreyfoos School were shot and killed. A third custodian was suspected in the killings .
  • A man with an AK-47 fired six shots inside the front office of Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, an elementary school. After the gunman fired the shots, he barricaded himself in the office and police at the scene returned fire.
  • A student, Roderick Bobo, 15, was shot during a football game at North Panola High School in what was termed as a gang-related shooting.
  • A 15-year-old male student was shot in the neck and shoulder at Carver High School (North Carolina). An 18-year-old male student was apprehended by a school resource officer without incident.
  • A 16-year-old student was shot in the hip at Agape Christian Academy after a fight broke out at 2 pm.
  • 12-year-old seventh-grade student Jose Reyes opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun at the basketball courts of Sparks Middle School, injuring one student in the shoulder. A teacher, Michael Landsberry, who was trying to intervene with the gunman was then shot and killed by Reyes, as he was standing on a playground.
  • A 21-year-old student was shot and wounded at North Carolina A&T State University.
  • A Stephenson High School student and a janitor were shot in an apparent confrontation between team members and a group of teens who were not attending the school.
  • After classes ended, at least one gunman came out of the woods and opened fire on three students as they were walking to their cars at Brashear High School. One student was grazed in the head, another was struck in the neck and shoulder, and a third was hit in the leg and foot.
  • A 15-year-old student was shot and wounded by a 17-year-old student near a soccer field on the campus of West Orange High School (Winter Garden, Florida). The shooting occurred after a fight broke out between the two students.
  • 18-year-old Karl Pierson shot 17-year-old student Claire Davis in the head, fatally injuring her, in a hallway in Arapahoe High School (Centennial, Colorado).
  • Four teens went into Edison High School (Fresno, California) in what was believed as a gang-initiation process. After accosting a 62-year-old woman about a mile away from school grounds, they found an athletic trainer who taught at Edison High and shot him several times in the leg and stomach.
  • A student was charged with bringing a gun to school at Liberty Technology Magnet High School and shooting a classmate in the thigh.
  • A 14-year-old boy was shot outside of a basketball game at the Hillhouse High School athletic facility, suffering wounds in his hand and leg.<
  • Two people were shot and wounded inside the gymnasium of Berrendo Middle School, at about 8:10 am. An 11-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl were airlifted to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas in critical condition. The 12-year-old suspected shooter, Mason Campbell, a seventh grade student, was apprehended at the scene after he was talked down by a staff member and dropped the shotgun.
  • A student allegedly shot two other students in the gymnasium at Delaware Valley Charter School.
  • One person was shot and critically injured at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania.
  • A 21-year-old student, Andrew Boldt, was shot and killed in a classroom building on the campus of Purdue University. A suspect, 24-year-old student Cody Cousins, was arrested and charged with murder.
  • A 20-year-old student was shot and killed at South Carolina State University. A 19-year-old was arrested and charged with murder.
  • A man was shot and killed at Los Angeles Valley College. Two suspects were arrested in the fatal shooting.
  • A group of students at Rebound High School got in an argument in the school’s parking lot. One student pulled out a gun and shot another student in the ensuing altercation.
  • One student was shot in the leg in an apparent altercation over a gambling debt at Tennessee State University.
  • Three students were fighting in a parking lot of Eastern Florida State College and one pulled out a gun and shot another of the students. All three student claimed self-defense.
  • After a basketball game at North High School (Des Moines), there was gunfire in a parking lot of the school.
  • |A 16-year-old student was shot in the stomach on the campus of Salisbury High School (North Carolina) during a dispute in the school gym. 17-year-old suspect was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
  • Five shots were fired in the parking lot of Charles F. Brush High School, including one which hit an unoccupied police car.
  • A male victim was shot in the back in a possible gang-related drive-by shooting near the University of Southern California. The suspect fled into the University Campus.
  • An elementary school teacher was shot and killed outside The Academy of Knowledge Preschool.
  • An argument between students led to shots being fired in a Benjamin Banneker High School (Georgia) parking lot during the afternoon.
  • Just after the lunch hour, at D. H. Conley High School, a car drove past the school and witnesses said an occupant reached out of a car window and fired shots in the direction of the school.
  • After a Friday evening student awards ceremony called “Grammy Night”, four men who were affiliated with a gang fired into a crowd in the parking lot of East English Village Preparatory Academy; one nineteen-year-old teen, Darryl Smith, was fatally shot in the head.
  • A man fatally shot his estranged wife in the parking lot of Saint Mary School in northwestern Indiana.
  • Two men fired shots inside a dormitory at Paine College on Sunday, injuring one student in the head.
  • An active shooter situation was reported at Paine College on Monday with one person reported to be shot. It was the second shooting incident to occur at the college campus in two days.
  • A person was shot on a student parking lot roof at Georgia Gwinnett College.
  • A 14-year-old student was injured during a drive-by shooting in front of John F. Kennedy High School (Richmond, California).
  • Three people were shot inside a hallway in Seattle Pacific University. One student died.
  • At around 8:30 am, shots were fired at Reynolds High School (Troutdale, Oregon). 14-year-old freshman Emilio Hoffman was killed. The gunman, 15-year-old Jared Padgett, exchanged gunfire with police officers and then committed suicide in a restroom stall.
  • A 20-year-old Indiana State University (ISU) student was shot by another ISU on Saturday inside a residence hall.
  • Two students got in an argument at Albemarle High School (North Carolina), and one of the students shot the other twice including once in the leg.
  • One student was shot and injured at Fern Creek Traditional High School. The incident occurred, reportedly after student became enraged in a hallway and pulled out a gun.
  • After a homecoming football game, a fatal shooting of Kristofer Hunter, 17, occurred in the Langston Hughes High School parking lot. The assailant, Eric Dana Johnson Jr., 18, turned himself in a week later.
  • Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting. A gunman, later identified as Jaylen Fryberg, who was a student in the school, shot five students, fatally wounding four, in the school cafeteria before committing suicide.
  • Florida State University shooting. A gunman opened fired in or near the Strozier Library. Three people suffered gunshot injuries and were taken to a local area hospital.
  • Two teens were shot Thursday during a fight on Miami Carol City High School property. One of the boys who was shot died.
  • On December 12, 2014, an unknown gunman shot three students and a man outside Rosemary Anderson High School in north Portland. A 16-year-old girl was in critical condition, while the others suffered minor injuries.
  • A 15-year-old boy, a student’s father, and a teacher were each injured at a Wisconsin Lutheran High School shooting that occurred Thursday night in the school parking lot at Wisconsin Lutheran High School.
  • Two students were shot outside Frederick High School near the gymnasium of Frederick High School during a junior varsity (JV) boy’s basketball game.
  • Two students argued outside the music building at Bethune-Cookman University when one pulled out a gun. Both had guns and it is not disclosed who did the shooting, injuring three students.
  • Police said one person has been arrested for a shooting at Pershing Elementary School.
  • A faculty member was shot and killed in the school library of Wayne Community College.
  • A police officer was shot outside a school in a school zone while he was directing school buses into a school. The school was J.B. Martin Middle School, and the suspect was apprehended at the scene.
  • A student at Deskin Elementary School brought an allegedly stolen .45 caliber gun to school and accidentally discharged it as he opened his backpack.
  • A student at North Thurston High School walked into the commons area and fired two shots into the ceiling from a .357 magnum pistol.
  • Police say a 14-year-old eighth grade boy brought his father’s gun to school.
  • An 18-year-old student, Marcus Wheeler, shot himself in a school breezeway, according to Tempe police.
  • Police report that a 16-year-old shot 5 bullets into a school bus and injured 2 students. Apparently, there was an argument that touched on previous events.
  • In the early morning hours of Memorial Day weekend, a group of people were at Southwestern Classical Academy in the parking lot. Shots rang out and 7 were injured, with two men being apprehended and charged.
  • A student was fatally shot in a student union building at Savannah State University.
  • A man was arguing with at least one other person escalated into a physical fight on the parking lot of Sacramento City College. A man opened fire, killing a 25-year-old student and wounding two others.

It is not known whether the shooters belonged to well-regulated militias that are protecting the security of America. It also is not known whether the victims (including the teens) were good guys who should have carried guns to shoot back.

When everyone carries guns, we all will be safe from gun violence.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Ten Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D plus long term nursing care — for everyone (Click here)
3. Provide an Economic Bonus to every man, woman and child in America, and/or every state a per capita Economic Bonus. (Click here) Or institute a reverse income tax.
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
5. Salary for attending school (Click here)
6. Eliminate corporate taxes (Click here)
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
8. Tax the very rich (.1%) more, with higher, progressive tax rates on all forms of income. (Click here)
9. Federal ownership of all banks (Click here and here)
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99% (Click here)

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

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

Recessions come after the blue line drops below zero.

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

Another reminder why reducing the federal deficit is national suicide. Your health, your children’s health and your grandchildren’s health are being sacrificed.

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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Another reminder about why reducing the federal deficit is national suicide: Your health, your children’s health and your grandchildren’s health is being threatened — no more than threatened, compromised. And it’s all because of the myth the federal deficit and federal debt are “unsustainable.”

While the myth is easily disproved, the politicians, media and mainstream economists refuse to learn.

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, May 17, 2011
WASHINGTON — A disease standoff may be brewing: How can Alzheimer’s research receive more scarce dollars without cutting from areas like heart disease or cancer?

In one of the stark realities of the budget crisis, scientists’ chances of winning research dollars from the National Institutes of Health for any condition have dipped to a new low.

“We are clearly not able to support a lot of great science that we would like to support,” NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told senators last week. This year, for every six grant applications that NIH receives, “five of them are going to go begging.”

That’s down from nearly 1 in 3 grants funded a decade ago, and 1 in 5 last year. And it comes before the looming fight over how much more to cut in overall government spending for next year, and where to make those cuts.

Already, a new report says one of the biggest losers is aging research, despite a rapidly graying population that promises a worsening epidemic of dementia, among other illnesses.

“Nobody wants to say Alzheimer’s is worse than diabetes or heart disease or cancer,” says Dr. Sam Gandy, a prominent neuroscientist at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

But “part of the problem now with all the pressure to cut the budget … is that for Alzheimer’s to get more, something else has to lose,” adds Gandy. His own lab is scrambling for funds to study a potential dementia drug after losing out on an NIH aging grant.

The NIH pays for much of the nation’s leading biomedical research. Republicans and Democrats alike have long been staunch supporters. But the agency’s nearly $31 billion budget offers an example of the hard choices facing lawmakers, especially if they’re to meet House calls for a drastic scale-back of overall government spending.

So which do you fear more: Disease or the federal deficit, knowing the federal government has proved it can support any size deficit? Have you been so brainwashed by the Tea (formerly Republican) Party nuts, you are willing to lay your health, and the health of your family on the line?

Consider aging issues.

The NIH spends about $469 million on Alzheimer’s research, says a new report from the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America that criticizes overall aging research as “a minuscule and declining investment.”

About 5.4 million Americans now have Alzheimer’s disease, and studies suggest health and nursing home expenditures for it cost more than $170 billion a year, much of it paid by Medicare and Medicaid.

NIH’s Collins told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that there’s a “very frightening cost curve.” In 2050, when more than 13 million Americans are projected to have Alzheimer’s, the bill is expected to reach a staggering $1 trillion. But he said that cost could be halved merely by finding a way to delay people getting Alzheimer’s by five years.

The debt-hawks are fond of showing you graphs illustrating (falsely) how the increase in older people will cause Social Security and Medicare to run out of money. But have they ever shown you a graph illustrating how many more people will get Alzheimers, for lack of medical research?

Monday, Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich jumped into the debate, saying that over the next four decades Alzheimer’s could cost the government a total of $20 trillion. He suggested selling U.S. bonds to raise money for research rather than have the disease compete each year for a share of the federal budget.

“We are grotesquely underfunded,” Gingrich said of health research dollars.

Yes, we are. Nice of him to notice. But creating T-securities out of thin air, then exchanging them for dollars we previously created out of thin air is foolish.

How foolish? Newt favors reducing the debt, but his bond-selling plan increases the debt. This demonstrates the idiocy of the Tea (formerly Republican) Party debt-reduction position. We wouldn’t need to struggle with complex, convoluted, nonsensical plans if we simply would end the debt-hawk control over our thinking. Stop selling bonds; fund with deficit spending.

Competition for today’s dollars is fierce, with applications up 60 percent at the aging division alone since 2003. Aging chief Dr. Richard Hodes says last year, his institute couldn’t pay for about half of what were ranked as the most outstanding applications for research projects. Still, he hopes to fund more scientists this year by limiting the number who get especially large grants.

What’s the squeeze? Congress doubled the NIH’s budget in the early 2000s, an investment that helped speed the genetic revolution and thus a host of new projects that scientists are clamoring to try. But in more recent years, economists say NIH’s budget hasn’t kept pace with medical inflation, and this year Congress cut overall NIH funding by 1 percent

The Obama administration has sought nearly $32 billion for next year, and prospects for avoiding a cut instead are far from clear. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the issue, warns that under some early-circulating House plans to curb health spending, “severe reductions to NIH research would be unavoidable.”

Still the Tea (formerly Republican) Party doesn’t get it. They don’t understand the simple premise that medical progress requires medical research.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., pushed Collins to make the case that investments in medical research really can pay off.

Collins’ response: Four decades of NIH-led research revealed how arteries get clogged and spurred development of cholesterol-fighting statin drugs, helping lead to a 60 percent drop in heart-disease deaths. Averaged out, that research cost about $3.70 per person per year, “the cost of a latte, and not even a grande latte,” Collins told lawmakers.

Get it now, debt hawks? Probably not. But are you willing to fight for your family’s health? Contact your Washington representatives and tell them our lives are being threatened by their misguided budget-reduction nonsense.

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