Police state: Which vital secret did Edward Snowden reveal?

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which ultimately leads to civil disorder.
●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.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.

=====================================================================

According to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Edward Snowden is a traitor. He committed treason. He should be found and extradited.

House Speaker John Boehner said, “He’s a traitor. The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk. It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are. And it’s a giant violation of the law.”

The full weight of the United States of America’s monster security system is being employed to find and punish Snowden. So I am curious about one small detail: Exactly which vital secret did this “traitor” reveal?

Surely, it must be a very big, very damaging secret, to crank up the outrage expressed on both sides of the aisle.

Here is what the National Memo had to say.

Fourth Amendment Purists Are Living In A Dream World
June 12th, 2013, Gene Lyons

Where has everybody been since 2006, when USA Today first revealed the existence of large scale NSA telephone data mining? That was objectionable in two big ways: the Bush White House acted unilaterally, without the court supervision required by law, and it was also indulging in warrantless wiretaps.

Congress fixed that in 2008, permitting statistical analysis of telephone traffic, but requiring both ongoing FISA Court oversight and search warrants for actual eavesdropping.

After his customary tap-dancing, Sen. Barack Obama supported the bill. Hearing no announcement that the Obama White House had canceled the program, a person would have to be awfully naïve to imagine NSA had gone out of business.

Huh?

Way back in 2006, USA Today revealed the existence of large scale NSA telephone data mining? And in 2008, Congress, permitted statistical analysis of telephone traffic?

And now Snowden has “revealed” exactly the same thing?

Three questions:
1. Was USA Today traitorous in 2006, and if so, how was it prosecuted?
2. How was Bush’s lawbreaking punished?
2. What damaging information — information our enemies didn’t know back in 2006 — have our enemies now have learned from Snowden?

Perhaps, there will be other shoes dropping. Perhaps, the real fear is that Snowden may in the future, reveal something of note.

But, could the problem be something else, not concerns about what our enemies might learn, but concerns about what we Americans might learn?

At least, that was the concern with Daniel Ellsberg of the famous “Pentagon Papers” story:

Ellsberg: No leaks more significant than Snowden’s

In 1971, Ellsberg passed the secret Defense Department study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other newspapers. The 7,000 pages showed that the U.S. government repeatedly misled the public about the war.

And compare Snowden with Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier whom the U.S. government has illegally been torturing before for weeks in advance of his kangaroo court trial.

Washington Post
Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and the risk of the low-level, tech-savvy leaker

The records released by Snow­den are fewer in number but more sensitive and of higher levels of classification than the U.S. diplomatic cables and military reports Manning sent to WikiLeaks after he downloaded them while serving in Iraq.

Snowden has indicated that he sought to be more responsible, withholding records that might put U.S. intelligence operatives in jeopardy, unlike Manning, who is accused of turning over thousands of pages, some of which contained the names of informants.

We’re early in the investigation, but several questions come to mind:

1. Exactly what secrets have been revealed and exactly what damage has been done?

2. Given that somewhere between 30,000 and 200,000 people work in the U.S. intelligence community, how many are morally repulsed by government actions, i.e., how secure are our secrets?

3. Who is the greater traitor, someone who has divulged spying secrets, or someone complicit in destroying millions of Americans’ lives, by withholding the funds necessary to cure the recession, reduce unemployment, provide health care, provide retirement, end student debt, conduct medical research, improve the infrastructure, improve education and on and on and on?

(This last was a question for Barack Obama and John Boehner)

Maybe Snowden has revealed information that will give our enemies (whomever they are) an ability to hurt America they didn’t have before. It would be interesting to know.

Or maybe Snowden turned over a rock, and out crawled a whole bunch of dirty secrets, the government wanted to withhold from the American public.

Two things are highly probable: Snowden will pay heavily for his idealism. And, we never will learn the truth.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

====================================================================================================================================================

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Sure, Let Freedom Ring. But, Who Stole Our Bell?

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which ultimately leads to civil disorder.
●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.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.

=====================================================================

Remember the Daily Bell? I both criticized and complimented them in an earlier post (I admire the Daily Bell and its publisher, Anthony Wile, but why did he publish such idiocy?) A reader asked, “. . . how can the paper be ‘very good’ if the creator of said paper can be so misguided?”

Here’s how. It publishes articles like this: Where Was Mainstream News While the Surveillance State Was Expanding? Here are a few excerpts:

You won’t find (this) analysis elsewhere. . . . The mainstream media is run by the same globalist groups running central banking. Honest reporting is almost beyond them.

An honest report would explain how what is obviously one of the biggest stories of the modern era has gone unreported by Reuters and by the mainstream media in general.

An honest report would address the aggregate courage of the alternative media in covering the rise of the surveillance state while being marginalized by the formal media and disparaged as being agents of “conspiracy theories.”

We have been telling you, our readers, that the mainstream media (and the mainstream economists, and the politicians) are owned by the super rich. But, of course, we are among the “alternative media,” ignored when possible, disparaged when necessary.

You must read the article to learn the degree to which our freedoms have been taken away – taken right out from under our noses and with our blessing. Here is but a tiny example of a truly is astounding report:

NSA is secretly building the world’s fastest and most powerful computer. Designed to run at exaflop speed, executing a million trillion operations per second, it will be able to sift through enormous quantities of data – for example, all the phone numbers dialed in the United States every day.

Today the NSA is the world’s largest spy organization, encompassing tens of thousands of employees and occupying a city-size headquarters complex on Fort Meade in Maryland.

(And that doesn’t include the FBI, the CIA and the thousands of police and sheriff’s departments around the country)

The article provides example upon example of secret government agreements and actions, each of which would be alarming, but together form an unprecedented attack on American freedoms – what the article terms, “creeping totalitarianism.”

The government is engaged in massive spying overkill – a Brave New World of controlling our lives, by watching our finances, watching our communications, watching our families and friends, peering into our bedrooms – cataloging our entire lives.

Is there anything about you the government does not already know, or will not know?
Is there any information the government cannot declare “secret,” and then prosecute you for revealing?
Is there any private action the government cannot declare illegal, even after the fact?

Historically, more people have been enslaved by their own government than by foreign governments. As an American, you are far, far more likely to be attacked by an agency of a U.S. government than by all the other world governments combined.

And if you live in another land, your government is more likely to attack you than is mine. And the worst crime of all: Revealing the truth. Governments hate the truth. It is alien to them.

Bradley Manning, an American soldier, faces life in prison as his trial gets under way in Fort Meade, Maryland, three years after he was charged with providing highly sensitive material to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

Federal authorities are looking into whether Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, can also be prosecuted.

The case is the most prominent prosecution for the Obama administration, which has been criticised for its crackdown on leakers.

To demonstrate the ferociousness of the government’s treatment of anyone daring to reveal its secrets, consider the treatment of Manning, who remember, has not yet been convicted of anything:

The Daily Beast
Extreme Solitary Confinement: What Did Bradley Manning Experience?
by Caitlin Dickson Jun 5, 2013

Back in January a military judge deemed Manning’s pretrial detention treatment “excessive.”

Experts say “extreme” versions of solitary confinement are rarely applied . . .. These are so severely harmful to (a prisoner’s) mental health, they may spark the violence they were created to prevent, while also violating a prisoner’s Eighth Amendment right to be spared cruel and unusual punishment.

(Bradley) was reportedly held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, forced to sleep naked without pillows and sheets on his bed, and restricted from physical recreation or access to television or newspapers even during his one daily hour of freedom from his cell.

Read the article to learn the full extent of this torture of an American citizen who is “innocent until proven guilty.” He too, once thought he lived in a “free country.”

The Daily Bell article goes on to ask:

Why is this creeping totalitarianism only now coming to light as a major news story when it’s been tracked and reported on alternative networks for several decades?

Perhaps the intention is that once these issues have been aired in the mainstream it will be time to “move on.” We think that this sort of “limited hangout” is a calculated gamble to blunt the growing knowledge of how Western societies are really organized and who is benefiting.

Yes, perhaps the hope is we will become numb, enured to the outrage. Surely, there has been plenty of outrage in just the past few years.

Guantanamo secret torture: Check.
Prosecuting Wikileaks and its founder for revealing truths: Check.
Secretly torturing Bradley Manning for revealing the truth: Check.
Abu Ghraib secret tortures: Check..
CIA prisoner secret renditions to foreign country for interrogation: Check.
Secretly killing of Americans without trial: Check.
IRS secret political targeting. Check.
Seizure of the phone records of journalists and their family members: Check
Recording everyone’s phone history: Check.

And that’s just the federal government. We have other governments:

Gerymandering of voting districts: Check.
Onerous voting requirements to prevent certain groups from voting: Check.
Targeting minority groups for police arrests and searches: Check.
Restrictions on Medicaid and other aids to the poor: Check.

Finally, there are the efforts by the upper .1% to eliminate our freedoms:

Bribery of the President, bribery of Congress and bribery of university employed mainstream economists to widen the gap between the rich and the rest: Check and double check.

I’m outraged. But, maybe I’m just one of those bleeding-heart liberals one reads about. I suspect the right-wing Commentary thinks so, as they give the other side of the argument.

According to their article, everything is just peachy-keen in our little dictatorship.

Sure, Let Freedom Ring. But, Who Stole Our Bell

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

====================================================================================================================================================

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Is Obama protecting us from snakes or walling us in?

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which ultimately leads to civil disorder.
●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.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.

=====================================================================

Old joke: “I carry this stick as protection against snakes”
“There are no snakes around here.”
“See how well it works!”

We are a nation that prides itself on freedom. It is the defining aspect of America. The phrase, “This is a free country,” always is on our lips. The national anthem refers to America as, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

But what does that mean? Are we really the land of the free?

Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence is there said anything about personal freedom. The document refers only to “free and independent states.” The states are to be free, not the people.

. . . That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States . . .

Nor does the Constitution mention freedom:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It expresses the desire to “secure the Blessings of Liberty,” but what “liberty”? No one knows, and in any event, this Preamble has no legal significance. It’s a wish list from the writers.

Not one of the 27 Amendments to the constitution mentions personal freedom, the closest being Amendment I, which talks about freedom of speech and the press.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Clearly, we are not free to do as we wish. Every law that ever has been passed, impinges in some way on our freedom. When we speak about America being “the land of the free,” we usually speak of freedom from government tyranny. But when does freedom end and tyranny begin?

Once, we were free to kill native Americans. We were free to own slaves. We were free to buy alcohol, then not free, then free again – except for those below a certain age. We are free to build a house, drive a car, vote, except . . . except for the myriad restrictions on building a house, driving a car and voting.

Freedom is not a bright line; it is a fuzzy line, and nowhere is it fuzzier than when we consider that little phrase in the Preamble to the Constitution: “provide for the common defense.”

All governments are given that assignment. To “provide for the common defense,” a government is asked to identify harmful people, then prevent them from harming us.

Trials do that. Someone harms someone, is arrested, tried, convicted and punished. But most trials are after the fact. The harm already has been done. The victim has been victimized.

We expect our government to be more proactive. We want our government to identify and stop people who are planning to harm us. And that is where we really lose our freedom.

During WWII, the U.S. government identified Americans of Japanese heritage as being potential enemies. We took them from their homes and placed them into concentration camps. It was perfectly legal:

Wikipedia: In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion. The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau’s (unlawful) role was denied for decades, but was finally proven in 2007.

When American citizens filled out their census forms, they unwittingly provided the government with information used illegally to take away some of their freedoms. And this is a perfect introduction to the subject of this post: “Is Obama protecting us from snakes or walling us in?”

President Obama responded to reports that the National Security Agency is collecting vast numbers of phone records and collaborating with tech companies to track users:

“Now, the programs that have been discussed over the last couple of days in the press are secret in the sense that they’re classified, but they’re not secret in the sense that, when it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program”

Translation: This secret invasion of your privacy by the federal government is not really secret. The government knows about it.

The president insisted if any agency wants to actually listen to a call, they would have to get permission from a court to do so.

“When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls.”

Translation: Nobody is listening to your telephone calls (trust me). Listening to your calls requires court permission, which the courts always give, so yes, lots of people are listening to your calls.

” . . . you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy. Were going to have to make some choices as a society. “

Translation: No matter how much freedom you surrender, you never will have 100 percent security. Never. The “war on terror” will be endless. It is the greatest device in U.S. history, for taking away your privacy and your freedom. The government can do anything it wishes in the name of fighting terror. No limits.

And as for you making choices, forget it. Everything’s secret, so how can you make any choices? The government will make your choices for you.

And by the way, the government will use drones to kill American citizens, without trial. That’s another choice the government made for you.

On Thursday, Rep. Mike Rogers (R) of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the telephone metadata program had thwarted a terrorist attack within the past few years.

Translation: A Congressman said it, so it must be true.

But, wait. Just one attack thwarted? In the past few years??

Last year alone, Chicago alone had 506 murders. And the government tracked all of our phone calls to prevent one terrorist attack? Exactly how much freedom did we surrender, and what did we get for it? Don’t ask. It’s a secret.

But, from whom is it a secret, and why?

Is it a secret from terrorists, who surely must realize their phone calls not only would be tracked, but bugged? I mean, if you were a terrorist, wouldn’t you be careful about your phone calls? Wouldn’t you use pre-paid phones, switch phones, use coded Twitter messages, Facebook messages, etc.? That’s pretty basic stuff, isn’t it?

Even a half witted terrorist wouldn’t be caught by “secret” phone data mining (which may be why only one attack was prevented in the past few years.) So from whom was this kept secret?

Answer: Secret from us loyal Americans. And now that it’s no longer a secret, will it be stopped? No, it will be increased. There always, always, always will be a reason for more secret intrusions on our freedoms.

The war on terror is as big a fake as is the war on drugs. Never ending, always growing, with minimal benefit. Monster organizations – the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, aided by the President, the Congress and the courts – thousands of people, millions of hours, billions of dollars, all devoted to creating the bogeyman of rampant terror, so to constrain us.

Despite popular spy movies, secrecy is overrated. Even with a direct warning from the Russians, stealing our freedoms didn’t prevent those amateurish kids, those Boston bombers, from killing 3 people and injuring lots more. Our giant anti-terror apparatus works mainly to strengthen the government’s power over us.

Perhaps, many more plots secretly were thwarted, but we’ll never know. They are secret. We must trust that the federal government is judicious with its use of private data – something like the government being judicious with private census data, when it took the freedoms of Japanese Americans.

But there is one bit of “terrorism” the U.S. comes down on, hard: Revealing the secrets of the U.S. government.

Washington Times
GOP’s Peter King: NSA leaker Edward Snowden must be extradited, prosecuted

Leading Republicans in the House have called for the extradition of the man at the heart of the National Security Agency information scandal, Edward Snowden, who is in Hong Kong.

“If Edward Snowden did in fact leak the NSA data as he claims, the United States government must prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and begin extradition proceedings at the earliest date,” said Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee, in The Guardian, a British paper. “This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”

The government can’t give us 100 percent security. Nor can the government give us 100 percent privacy. But the government will crack down on anyone who dents its 100 percent secrecy. For the government, that is the ultimate crime.

It’s of “extraordinary consequence” that the terrorists suddenly have “learned” to not make repeated phone calls to other terrorists, always using the same two phones (What a revelation that must be to terrorists!)

Or is it of extraordinary consequence that once again, the federal government has been found to be deceiving the very citizens it is supposed to protect, and then justifying it with the bogeyman of terror.

President Obama wants to frame the discussion as a tradeoff: Surrender your freedoms or surrender your safety. It’s the same appeal to fear – the same false tradeoff – every dictator in world history has used. The purpose is not to protect the populace but to dominate the populace.

With the next terrorist attack (and there always will be another), the government will institute even more draconian – and secret – laws, taking away more of our freedoms. Then more and more and more.

There never will be a time when we are told things are safe enough. Always, there will be a new danger. To protect us, the government walls us in. With each new secret threat, real or imagined, the walls are pressed in closer and closer, restricting our freedom ever more, crushing us.

Note to government: Don’t tell us you may be able to protect us via some secret means. Tell us exactly what the dangers really are, and tell us what you want to do. We’ll determine whether the “protection” is worth the cost. We can decide how cramped our jail cell will be.

Meanwhile, every day, guns kill more Americans than terrorists have killed in the past 10 years. Of course, that is not an “extraordinary consequence,” so no government action is needed.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

====================================================================================================================================================

Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–I admire the Daily Bell and its publisher, Anthony Wile, but why did he publish such idiocy?

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

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor,
which ultimately leads to civil disorder.
●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.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
●The penalty for ignorance is slavery.
●Everything in economics devolves to motive.

=====================================================================

I subscribe to the Daily Bell, a very good online paper, which about itself says,

Welcome to The Daily Bell – home of the Internet Reformation and of Free-Market Thinking.

I’m Anthony Wile, and I work hard – together with my team of advisors, writers and editors – to bring you cutting edge, freedom-oriented, sociopolitical and economic analysis and solutions.

. . . we don’t believe in the massive solutions that are evidently and obviously run by a handful of elitist individuals for their own benefit rather than for yours or mine. We believe “smaller is better” – and that the most successful and livable societies offer people the ability to influence their communities in a positive way at a local level.

Ah, yes, the “smaller is better” slogan as in “America would be better if it were smaller in size?” No? Not that one? How about, “America would be better if its people had less (a smaller supply of) money? No? What about a smaller oil supply? Smaller research & development? Smaller highway system? Smaller rivers? Smaller mountains?

Funny, how when all your thinking begins with a little slogan, your thinking becomes little, and you find all those exceptions to your fixed beliefs — which brings me to an article that appeared in The Daily Bell, today”

The Daily Bell
Krugman Misses the Point
By Anthony Wile

Paul Krugman recently published a column called “The Unbearable Lightness of Being Right.” In it, he once again explains failures of so-called “austerity” and defends his own perspective, which is thoroughly Keynesian.

Now, within the context of free-market economics, we’ve long been anti-austerity but not for the reasons that Krugman advances. Krugman believes that austerity is wrong because governments ought to print lots of money from nothing. This is basically a Keynesian point of view and it is one he advances relentlessly.

Not sure to what Wile objects, the “lots of money” or the “from nothing.” America is big (not small) and big countries need “lots of money” to grow, or even to survive, and yes, a Monetarily Sovereign government creates money from nothing.

So what’s the problem other than “print lots of money from nothing,” though necessary, sounds oh, so reckless to the uninformed?

We believe austerity is a wrong approach from a theoretical standpoint because it is one that uses government to correct government excesses.

Wile doesn’t define “government excesses,” but whatever they may be, they surely are different for a monetarily non-sovereign government, which can spend beyond its means, vs. a Monetarily Sovereign government, which having no “means,” never can spend beyond it.

This is not to say that shrinking government is bad.

Nor does it say that shrinking government is good. But yes, he believes “smaller is better,” so a smaller government must be good. After all, that is his slogan, and the world must fit within it.

But it ought to be accomplished with a broader agenda in mind, one that acknowledges the larger failures of regulatory democracy generally.

Here we get to an important point. Never, and I mean NEVER, does Wile acknowledge the ongoing, horrific failures of austerity, everywhere in the world it has been tried.

Every depression in U.S. history has come on the heels of austerity. The Great Depression was caused by austerity, then worsened by more austerity.

The recession following Bill Clinton’s reign was caused by Clinton’s austerity. And please don’t even ask about the euro nations and their austerity.

Admittedly, saying austerity is “wrong” or “isn’t wrong” is like saying bunting in baseball is wrong.” It depends on the circumstance.

For monetarily non-sovereign governments (the euro nations, the American states, counties and cities), austerity may be “right” to the degree it’s necessary.

These governments cannot create their sovereign currency, simply because they don’t have a sovereign currency, so eventually they can run short of money. Under that circumstance, they may need austerity, heaven help them.

For a Monetarily Sovereign government (the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, China), austerity is “wrong,” always has been “wrong” and always will be “wrong.”

Austerity removes money from an economy which by definition (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending – Net Imports) is recessive.

Further, a Monetarily Sovereign government, having the unlimited ability to create its sovereign currency, has only one reason to adopt austerity: An inflation that could be controlled otherwise.

Of course, for a Monetarily Sovereign government, there is no such thing as an inflation that could not be controlled otherwise, because such a government not only can control its money supply, but also can control its money’s value. That is what being “sovereign” over your currency means.

Thus, for a Monetarily Sovereign government, austerity always serves only to widen the gap between the rich and the rest.

Sadly, Anthony Wile, not understanding the many differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, writes an article that in essence says “bunting always (or never) is wrong.”

Those who don’t understand those differences do not understand baseball or economics and surely should not comment on either.

Even if government gets it right, it will eventually get it wrong. Austerity policies merely substitute one kind of official action for another.

Here, “austerity is seen to be neutral. Never mind that austerity always makes the poor and middle suffer. . To Wile, it’s just “one kind of official action,” maybe something like changing the design of the flag.

Krugman acknowledges none of this. He is focused, at least most recently, on a study provided by two Harvard economists whose research has come into question.

“Come into question” is Wile’s euphemism for “disgraceful bit of misleading research, that omitted all negative results and didn’t consider the fundamental differences between government financing systems.”

Krugman and others like him always start with the idea that SOME government spending is necessary and justified. The problem is always HOW MUCH. And in Krugman’s case it is even worse. He is determined to cure old spending with even more new spending.

What can one say about this inanity? Does Wile mean that SOME government spending is not necessary?? Does he mean the problem is not HOW MUCH? And what the heck does he mean by “cure old spending”?

And because of the Reinhardt Rogoff reversal, he believes his arguments are justified . . .

Well, Reinhardt Rogoff sure didn’t overturn Krugman’s position.

He is waiting for those who have endorsed austerity to repent, or at least receive additional public condemnation.

So am I, but since the austerians are bribed by the super rich, that won’t happen until the populace gets so fed up with austerity-caused destitution, they begin to drag out the Guillotines.

Here’s more:

Overall, it’s hard to think of any previous episode in in the history of economic thought in which we had as thorough a showdown between opposing views, and as thorough a collapse, practical and intellectual, of one side of the argument.

And yet nothing changes. Not only don’t the policies change; by and large even the people don’t change. Reinhart and Rogoff may get a bit fewer high-profile invites, as will Alesina and Ardagna; but Bowles and Simpson are still touring, the same people at the BIS and the OECD are still issuing dire warnings about the dangers of easy money, George Osborne is still making pronouncements, Paul Ryan is still the intellectual leader of his party.

Krugman can’t help himself. Even when addressing an economic issue, he ends up politicizing it. He is at heart a political animal, whose economic principles revolve around statism and support big government nostrums. Of course, he would not be writing for the big-government New York Times if he supported anything else.

Wile says Krugman is wrong because he’s political, as though austerity were not political.

Krugman is certainly correct about austerity, but not for the reasons he believes. Forced confiscation always reduces prosperity as price-fixing must do, by introducing distortions into the marketplace.

No, it’s not the “distortions” that are the problem. It’s the “forced confiscation.” Money and livelihoods are being stolen from the masses. Calling austerity a “distortion” is like calling smallpox a health “distortion.”

Krugman hopes for an apology, and for an admission by opponents that their viewpoints have been supported by a research paper with computational flaws. This perspective almost entirely misses the point.

Actually, Krugman hopes, not for an apology, but rather for a realization that austerity is and always has been a death sentence for an economy, and serves only to make the lower and middle classes sink deeper and deeper into misery, while the rich celebrate.

Gee, Mr. Wile. I feel the same way.

Don’t you?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone. Click here
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

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.
Two key equations in economics:
1. Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
2. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY