Are concerned about the next election? Read this

You probably have no idea what President Biden has done. The Democrats do a poor messaging job.

Here is a brief outline, taken from 30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed

  • Infrastructure law: $1.2 trillion for roads, waterlines, broadband networks, airports etc.Joe Biden: The President | The White House
  • Expanded overtime guarantees for millions
  • OTC birth control pill
  • Office of Gun Violence Prevention
  • Student wellness and school mental health program
  • Inflation Reduction Act to support green power sources: solar and wind, and green hydrogen.
  • Anti-redlining framework requiring banks to lend to lower-income communities
  • Cut junk fees by airlines, cable companies, concert ticket-sellers and hotels.
  • Forced Chinese companies to open their books
  • Brokered a deal that saved the Colorado River
  • Cracked down on food monopolies; supported small and midsize U.S. farmers.
  • CHIPS and Science Act: $50 billion for new microchip facilities
  • Boosted research and development in national research facilities.
  • Brokered cooperation between Japan and South Korea to offset China’s regional threat.
  • Reinvigorating cancer research to lower death rates
  • Cemex decision strengthens unions
  • Aided 5G wireless technology
  • Strenthened oversight of artificial intelligence
  • Strengthening military ties to the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, India, Australia, Britain, Japan.
  • Strengthened Cyber Safety Review Board to investigate computer security breaches
  • Raised compensation for passengers when flights get disrupted.

You can read the full article to get more complete information.

Now, here is what you can expect from a Trump administration in 2025. The following two articles are presented without comment. They speak for themselves.

The sole question: Is this the America you want?Trump plans to hold news conference on January 6 riot anniversary

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An article by Amber Phillips (Email Amber Phillips)

If Donald Trump struggled somewhat in his administration to move the country dramatically to the right, he’ll be ready to go if he’s elected again.

That’s the aim behind Project 2025. It’s comprehensive plan by former and likely future leaders of a potential Trump administration to remake America in a conservative mold while dramatically expanding presidential power and allowing Trump to use it to go after his critics.

It’s getting so much attention right now because of the dramatic policy changes it calls for, and because Democrats — dealing with an existential crisis of their own — see it as an easy campaign target.

It’s coming up as Trump is trying to moderate his stated positions to win the election, so he’s criticized some of what’s in it as “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

Still, what’s in this document is a pretty good indicator of what a second Trump presidency could look like. Here’s what Project 2025 is and how it could reshape America.

A blueprint for a second Trump administrationIn Sheep's Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism -  9781538183281

The centerpiece is a 900-page plan that calls for extreme policies on nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives, from mass deportations, to politicizing the federal government in a way that would give Trump control over the Justice Department, to cutting entire federal agencies, to infusing Christian nationalism into every facet of government policy by calling for a ban on pornography and promoting policies that encourage “marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”

The main organization behind the plan, the Heritage Foundation, is a revolving door for Trump officials.

“This is meant as an organized statement of the Trumpist, conservative movement, both on policy and personnel, and politics,” said William Galston, head of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

How It Would Move America to the Right
A few of the highlights:

1. Remake the federal workforce to be political: Instead of nonpartisan civil servants implementing policies on everything including health, education and climate, the executive branch would be filled with Trump loyalists.

“It is necessary to ensure that departments and agencies have robust cadres of political staff,” the plan says.

That means nearly every decision federal agencies make could advance a political agenda ― as in whether to spend money on constituencies that lean Democratic.Fulton students fly Trump banner at basketball game vs. Syracuse school:  'It's racism,' coach says - syracuse.com

The project calls for cutting LGBTQ health programs, for example.

2. Cut the Education Department: It would cut longtime low-income and early education federal programs like Head Start and even the entire Education Department.

“Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated,” the plan reads.

3. Give Trump power to investigate his opponents: Project 2025 would move the Justice Department, and all of its law enforcement arms like the FBI, directly under presidential control.

It calls for a “top-to-bottom overhaul” of the FBI and for the administration to go over its investigations with a fine-toothed comb to nix any the president doesn’t like.Sanho Tree on X: "“Five people were arrested on Thursday as part of a  long-running investigation into suspicions that during Bolsonaro's 2019-22  government the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (Abin) was used to

This would dramatically weaken the independence of federal law enforcement agencies. “There’s going to be an all-out assault on the Department of Justice and the FBI,” Galston said. “It will mean tight White House control of the DOJ and FBI.”

4. Make reproductive care, particularly abortion pills, harder to get: It doesn’t specifically call for a national abortion ban, but abortion is one of the most discussed topics in the plan, with proposals throughout encouraging the next president “to lead the nation in restoring a culture of life in America again.”

It would do this by prosecuting anyone mailing abortion pills (“Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world,” the plan says).

It would raise the threat of criminalizing those who provide abortion care by using the government to track miscarriage, stillbirths and abortions, and make it harder to get emergency contraceptive care covered by insurance.

It would also end federal government protections for members of the military and their families to get abortion care.That Time the Media Cheered for Gestapo Immigration Tactics | Mises  Institute

5. Crack down on even legal immigration: It would create a new “border patrol and immigration agency” to resurrect Trump’s border wall, build camps to detain children and families at the border, and send out the military to deport millions of people who are already in the country illegally (including dreamers) — a deportation effort so big that it could put a major dent in the U.S. economy.

“Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized,” the plan says.

6. Slash climate change protections: Project 2025 calls for getting rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which forecasts weather and tracks climate change, describing it as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”Is Global Warming the Same as Climate Change - Unite for Change

It would increase Arctic drilling and shutter the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change departments, all while making it easier to up fossil fuel production.

7. Ban transgender people from the military and consider reinstating the draft: “Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service,” it reads.

The author of this part of the plan led the Defense Department at the end of Trump’s presidency, and he told The Washington Post that the government should seriously consider mandatory military service.

How all of this would be implemented
A huge part of this project is to recruit and train people to do this. There’s even a place on the plan’s website where you can submit your résumé.Why we're so obsessed with Donald Trump's body - The Washington Post

But there are some major hurdles. For one, Trump doesn’t appear to agree with everything in it. His campaign platform barely mentions abortion, while Project 2025 repeatedly zeroes in on it.

Also, some of these ideas are impractical or possibly illegal. Analysts are divided about whether Trump can politicize the civil workforce to fire them at will. And the plan calls for using the military to carry out mass deportations on a historic scale, which could be constitutionally iffy.

Ominously, one of the project’s leaders opened the door to political violence to will all of this into being: “We are in the process of the second American revolution,” Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, warned recently, “which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.”

 

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Trump allies at Heritage declare 2024 election illegitimate in advance

A “war game” presented at the right-wing foundation imagined far-fetched scenarios for election interference to justify preemptive measures.

 
Barbra Streisand kidnapped by Hamas. Antifa-BLM protesters taking over a migrant detention facility. The FBI arresting Donald Trump two days after winning the election.

These were among the far-fetched scenarios imagined by a simulation of threats to the 2024 election showcased Thursday by the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

The presentation, delivered at the foundation’s Washington headquarters, stated as a given that the Biden administration was already engaged in a sweeping conspiracy to use multiple forms of federal power to influence the presidential election. It did not supply any evidence.

 
The report said a key finding was that the sitting president is the greatest danger to the peaceful transition of power, with no mention of Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss.
 
Instead it offered that conclusion as justification for doubting the outcome of the 2024 election and trying to reject anything other than a Trump victory.
 
Trump himself has repeatedly declined to say he will accept the results or rule out a violent response. He has told his supporters that he can only lose through cheating.
 
Howell said the exercise would lead Heritage to file more litigation over election procedures. He also said it should help the public resist “psychological operations” that he claimed were used in 2020 and are being used again.
 
He didn’t say who supposedly ran the operations.

“The upshot is that we will see a contested election the likes of which we’ve never seen,” said Adam Ellwanger, a rhetoric professor at the University of Houston-Downtown who helped lead the simulation.

“If we see the kind of manipulations that we saw in 2020, I wonder if average Americans who are supporters of the president [Trump] will swallow that so easily as they did in 2020.”

The Heritage Foundation, a longtime bastion of conservative orthodoxy that has more recently reinvented itself for the Trump era, has become a lightning rod in the campaign because of its role in convening “Project 2025.”

That project published detailed policy proposals for every federal agency, ready for the next Republican administration to implement.Jessica Yellin | AP REPORT: HOSPITALS DENY EMERGENCY CARE TO PREGNANT WOMEN  IN CRISIS We are sharing this today as the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case…  | Instagram

Some of the most controversial ideas including banning abortion medication, facilitating White House involvement in law enforcement and rolling back legal protections for LGBTQ+ Americans.

As some of those proposals have garnered scrutiny, Trump and his campaign have repeatedly distanced themselves from the effort. Many of the proposals were written by alumni of his administration and are likely to be appointees if he wins another term.

Attendees on Thursday walked past a mobile billboard criticizing Trump and Project 2025, which the Democratic National Committee positioned outside Heritage’s headquarters.

Biden campaign spokesman James Singer called Thursday’s presentation “nothing more than an attempt to justify their efforts to suppress the vote, undermine the election, and ultimately another January 6.”

Howell said the election threats project was devised in response to a 2020 bipartisan group of academics, former officials, journalists and others that tried to anticipate and prepare for ways that then-President Trump might try to disrupt the election or the peaceful transfer of power.

Their report raised concerns about violence but did not imagine the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol that temporarily disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s win.

Howell accused the Biden administration of a “coordinated invasion over our southern border for the purposes of impacting this election.”

As evidence, he said a camera crew went door to door in an apartment complex outside Charlotte, asking people whether they were noncitizens registered to vote, with 10 percent responding yes.

Howell said his team did not verify those registrations. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

One scenario in the war games involved people flooding the FBI with reports of civil rights violations as a staged provocation for the Justice Department to take over local election authorities.

Howell and Ellwanger objected to those observers using a version of arguments that have been consistently made against civil rights legislation since the Civil War.

“To put it simply, the federal government should have a very limited role in our election systems. They should be left to the states to decide,” he said.

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Will this be your America in 2025?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell; MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Heritage Foundation: Ignorant, stupid, or traitors? You choose.

Are the writers for the right-wing Heritage Foundation ignorant, stupid, or merely traitors to America? Read the following excerpts and you decide:

Commentary: Dealing with America’s Olympic-sized debt problem

Image result for Rachel Greszler and David Ditch. Size: 316 x 160. Source: www.buckscountycouriertimes.com
Rachel Greszler is a research fellow in economics at The Heritage Foundation. David Ditch is a researcher specializing in transportation issues for Heritage’s Hermann Center for the Federal Budget.
Rachel Greszler and David Ditch, The Heritage Foundation on Aug 5, 2021 Most Americans realize the federal government spent a lot of money, including three rounds of so-called “stimulus payments” that most households received. But those $3,200 worth of individual checks pale in comparison to total spending. If ordinary Americans had spent like the federal government did in 2020, the median household that earns $68,703 would have spent $131,620 and put $62,917 on the credit card, despite already being $541,287 in debt.
In our previous post, “Debt is not debt; deficits are not deficits; the government never borrows; gold never backed the dollar; inflation is not caused by federal spending,” we describe how charlatans use homonyms to deceive you. Via ignorance, stupidity, or malice, the writers for the Heritage Foundation prove our point by attempting to confuse federal finances with personal finances. The two are as completely different as flypaper is from the daily paper.
As of 2021, the U.S. debt comes out to roughly $220,000 per household. That’s enough to buy about eight years’ worth of groceries, gas, clothing, and housing for the typical household.
The above is a completely meaningless and misleading comparison, that is supposed to shock you, but not to inform you. You are not, and never will be liable for the so-called, misnamed federal “debt.” It isn’t a debt, and no one is liable for it.
And even that figure doesn’t include the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. Without a significant reduction in the size of those programs, each household’s total debt is actually over $660,000. That’s equal to the cost of a median family home, a new car, plus over five years’ worth of a typical household’s income.
Utter nonsense. All federal liabilities are “unfunded” until the government funds them by creating dollars, ad hoc. The real purpose of the article is to groom you for acquiescence to right-wing calls for Social Security and Medicare cuts. But even if the FICA tax were eliminated, the federal government could support Social Security for All and a comprehensive Medicare for All, forever. Then follow more meaningless comparisons, all designed only to be shocking. Your household will not ever pay a single penny to pay off the so-called federal “debt.”
However, even this massive a debt doesn’t seem all that bad. Interest rates are low, and the federal government has had little problem seemingly borrowing into oblivion without consequence. (The same could be said of Greece before a financial crisis ensued.)
The fact that interest rates are low is yet more meaningless tripe. The U.S. government sets interest rates at any level it chooses, and it pays interest by creating new dollars, ad hoc, which it has the infinite ability to do. And by the way, Greszler and Ditch, is it ignorance, stupidity, or traitorousness that causes you to compare the Monetarily Sovereign United States (which has the unlimited ability to create its own sovereign currency, the dollar) with the monetarily non-sovereign Greece (which has no sovereign currency)?
But our currently low interest rate payments—equal to over $2,500 per household in 2021, or the cost of about 6 months’ worth of groceries—are on track to rise to about $6,400 per household in 2031. That’s four months of mortgage payments.
Again, more designed-to-deceive, meaningless, false equivalences between federal finances and personal finances
And that’s the equivalent of an interest-only mortgage. Those costs don’t even begin to reduce the principal amount of debt.
The so-called federal “debt” is not a debt in the usual sense. It is the total of deposits into Treasury Security accounts (similar to safe deposit boxes) which are no burden whatsoever on the government or on future taxpayers.
While ordinary Americans aren’t allowed to take out mortgages or open up new credit cards in their children’s names, the federal government does this every day.
Yet even more ignorant, stupid, or intentionally deceptive false comparisons between federal finances and personal finances. The Heritage fraud goes on and on.
The share of debt for a child born this year was $66,874. And that debt is on track to rise every year, reaching $111,552 by the time they’re 18 and either start working or head off to college. It will then hit $191,768 by the time they’re 30 and potentially raising young children.
The above implies that future children will have to pay for the so-called “debt.” It is a lie of the first order. No one will pay for the “debt” because it is not debt. It is deposits that will be paid off as they always have been: By simply returning the dollars in those T-security accounts.
Fortunately, it’s not too late to prevent the nation from going broke.
It is impossible for the United States to “go broke.” Being Monetarily Sovereign (unlike Greece), the U.S. has the unlimited ability to create dollars. If needed, it could press one computer key and create a trillion dollars tomorrow.
Congress should cut out wasteful spending such as corporate welfare and excessive compensation for federal bureaucrats.
The Heritage Foundation, being right-wing, now complains about “corporate welfare.” Do they mean the Republicans’ tax cuts for businesses? And really, how many federal bureaucrats receive “excessive compensation”? Of course, the whole thing is meaningless, because all federal deficit spending, even so-called “wasteful” spending, benefits everyone by adding stimulus dollars to the economy.
Congress should stop shirking their responsibilities by placing an increasing amount of federal spending on autopilot, and instead seek to reform programs like Social Security and Medicare that are on a path to bankruptcy.
I have no idea what “autopilot” means in this context. I suspect the authors don’t know, either. But none of it matters. The real purpose is to make you believe Social Security and Medicare should be cut. That is the goal of The Party of the Rich, the Republicans. The rich, who support Heritage Foundation, always want to widen the Gap between the rich and the rest. The wider the Gap, the richer are the rich. It’s known as Gap Psychology — the desire to widen the income/wealth/power Gap below, and to narrow the Gap above. So they repeatedly warn that Social Security and Medicare soon will run short of money, despite their being a federal agency that has available to them, infinite dollars. Neither the federal government, nor any agency of the federal government, can go bankrupt unless Congress and the President want them to.
Congress should focus on core federal responsibilities and clear away countless programs that benefit narrow interest groups at the expense of the public good.
The elderly and the poor — are they what Heritage considers to be “narrow interest groups”?? Or aren’t the rich — Heritage’s buddies — who really comprise the narrow interest groups?
Congress should recognize our looming debt disaster and step away from shortsighted spending plans.
Still “looming.” Debt-nuts like Heritage have been making the same “disaster” claim for more than 80 years, yet here we are, with the strongest economy in U.S. history.
Big problems like the unsustainable national debt won’t be solved quickly or easily. However, Congress must begin to take fiscal responsibility seriously as soon as possible.
The “unsustainable” national debt has been growing massively, and sustaining, since 1940, while organizations like Heritage have been crying “Wolf” again, and again, and again.
Otherwise, a Greece-like fate may await us.
And the article ends appropriately, with one, final, false comparison of monetarily non-sovereign Greece vs. Monetarily Sovereign America. The Big Lie is alive and well at Heritage. Even, an organization as devoted to advancing the interests of the rich vs. the rest, should be embarrassed by the above article. It is so wrongheaded and misleading as to be written by fools and approved by traitors. They do more to hurt America than do the most devoted Russian, Iranian, and Chinese spies. Perhaps The Heritage Foundation should be renamed The Benedict Arnold Foundation. 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:
  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. 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