–Great movements begin with civil disobedience. Is this the time?

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 leads to civil disorder.
●Cutting the deficit is the government’s method for taking dollars from the middle class and giving them to the rich.
●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.
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All governments are ruled by the rich and powerful. And it is in the nature of the rich and powerful continually to try to become even richer and more powerful.

Becoming richer requires widening the gap between rich and poor. Becoming more powerful requires widening the gap between powerful and weak. Without the gap, no one would be rich and no one would be powerful.

So, governments tend to favor increasing the gap between the rich and the rest, and in fact the gap has widened in America for at least the past 45 years.

That being the case, what shall we do about it?

News > UK > UK Politics
Union leader warns of civil unrest in face of austerity programme
Sunday, 13 January 2013

A union leader has called for a campaign of “civil disobedience” in protest at the Government’s austerity measures.

Unite’s Len McCluskey pledged to “fight all the way to the next election” as he said no form of protest, including the prospect of a general strike, should be ruled out. He said the Govern- ment’s policies, designed to balance the nation’s books, were leaving working people feeling “battered”.

Of course, the UK, like the U.S., is Monetarily Sovereign, so has no need to “balance the nation’s books.” Presumably, the UK politicians, like the U.S. politicians, know this, but care little. They have been bought by the 1%.

Mr McCluskey told Sky News’s Murnaghan programme: “When governments are acting in a way that is against ordinary working people we have a right, in fact we have a duty, to stand up and protest. Those protests will take all kinds of different forms – marches on streets, civil disobedience, industrial action. All of those should be used and none of them should be ruled out.”

President Obama, the self-proclaimed protector of the middle class, has increased the most regressive tax in American history, FICA. He also has pledged to reduce Social Security further, and has spoken of “reforming” Medicare.

Thus, Obama favors austerity, impacting the upper 1% income group far less than it impacts the 99%, so widening the income gap.

The question at hand is, what can the 99% do to protect themselves against the injustice of the 1% continually stealing the public’s wealth and power?

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
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%

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:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Obama plays politics; to hell with the middle- and lower income classes who elected him

If you know Obama, this comes as absolutely no surprise, and it’s not only because he is a weak “leader.”

Obama administration shoots down platinum coin idea as debt ceiling solution
Fox News

The Obama administration ended speculation Saturday that it would mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin as a way to avoid the debt ceiling.

Treasury Department spokesman Anthony Coley said the agency wouldn’t mint one and the Federal Reserve would not accept the coin.

Translation: The Treasury, whose leader is appointed by the President, and the Fed, whose leader also is appointed by the President, were told what to say — by the President.

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” Coley said.

Translation: The law is clear that the coin is legal and would solve the problem, but Obama has a political agenda.

His statement was followed by one from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. “There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” Carney said.

Translation: Rejecting the coin accomplishes all of Obama’s goals:

1. It puts the Republicans in a bind, because they will be blamed for the catastrophe of default. For Obama, a seasoned Chicago politician, finger pointing is far more important than saving America.

2. Obama long has spoken for cuts to social spending and increased austerity. Why? He is paid by the upper .1% (via campaign contributions) which favors those cuts because they increase the income gap between the .1% and the 99.9%. To hell with the poor and middle classes that elected him.

Former Delaware Republican Rep. Mike Castle said Saturday, “When congressional Republicans played politics with this issue last time, putting us at the edge of default, it was a blow to our economic recovery, causing our nation’s credit rating to be downgraded. The president and the American people won’t tolerate congressional Republicans holding the American economy hostage again simply so they can force disastrous cuts to Medicare and other programs the middle class depend on while protecting the wealthy. Congress needs to do its job.”

Perfect for Obama. The debt limit stalemate gives him everything he wants: A crisis he can blame on the Republicans, while being “forced” to cut social spending.

Sure, the debt standoff will hurt America. And sure, the platinum coin solution would have ended the debt limit charade. But, no way will Obama allow any solution to ruin his perfect setup. As always, Obama will do what the .1% pays him to do: Increase the gap.

Raising FICA was only one step in his gap-widening scheme.

My opinion: History will judge Obama as morally and effectively below even Jimmy Carter. At least Carter is building houses for the poor. Obama is building fortunes for the rich.

(By the way, please remind me. How many bankers has the Obama administration prosecuted?)

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Guns in schools. The only way to beat ’em is to join ’em.

When Wayne LaPierre, chief executive for the National Rifle Association (NRA), said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the sane segment of America was shocked and disgusted.

His recommendation that armed guards be placed in every school was so outrageously wrong and dangerous, one wonders what kind of twisted mentality could subscribe to that “Shootout at O.K. Coral” concept of America.

I think we have our answer:

After Newtown shootings, Pennsylvania county hires armed school guards

BUTLER, Pa. — Four hundred miles from Sandy Hook Elementary, a superintendent named Mike Strutt . . .had specialized in school safety, filling three binders with security plans and lockdown drills — all of which felt suddenly inadequate.

He imagined a gunman approaching one of Butler County’s 14 schools, allowing the attack to unfold in his mind. In came the gunman, past the unarmed guards Strutt had hired after Columbine; past the metal detectors he had installed after Virginia Tech; past the intercom and surveillance system he had updated after Aurora.

Strutt stood from his desk and called the president of the Butler County School Board, Don -Pringle. “This could happen here,” Strutt said. “Armed guards are the one thing that give us a fighting chance. Don’t we want that one thing?”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are more than 98K public schools in America (67K elementary, 24K secondary and 7K other schools), plus more than 33K private schools and about 18K colleges of all kinds.

That’s about 150,000 schools of all sizes.

Assume that the very tiniest of schools would require at least two armed guards (to cover their own bathroom breaks, lunch breaks and those after-school hours. A big school or university might require at least 50 guards, maybe many more. So let’s speculate, that an “average” sized school conservatively might require a complement of 10 guards.

So to cover schools alone, would require a trained and supervised armed army of at least 1,500,000 “good guys.” Plus, you’d need a staff for the supervising, training, hiring, firing and background checks.

And that is just to protect schools.

A dozen states have proposed legislation to put armed guards in schools; five others have drafted plans to officially disallow them.

Groups in Utah are training teachers (!) to carry guns, Tennessee is hiring armed “security specialists” for $11.50 an hour and the National Rifle Association is working on a plan to arm school volunteers (!) even as teachers gather in protest outside the group’s headquarters.

Here in Butler . . . the district had a $7 million deficit, but some priorities demanded spending. The school board worked out details with a solicitor, who submitted a proposal to a judge, who came into work on a Sunday to sign an emergency order. Before the first funeral began in Newtown, Butler’s head of school security began calling retired state troopers to ask two questions with major implications for the future of public education:

Did they own a personal firearm? Would they be willing to carry it into an elementary school?

This is what passes for a background check in the hysteria the NRA has spread throughout our land: Two questions and the assumption that all retired state troopers are competent “good guys.” That’s it.

Frank Cichra owned a gun that he was willing to carry, so he arrived early last week at a shooting range in the mountains outside Butler, hoping to qualify as an armed school policeman. He slipped on gloves and cut the black fabric away from his right index finger.

“Won’t hit the target unless I can feel the trigger,” he said.

He loaded the magazine of his .40-caliber Beretta as half a dozen other men arrived at the range. Like Cichra, they all were retired Pennsylvania state troopers who had been recruited as guards.

The key criterion seems to be an ability to hit a target. Sanity and common sense do not seem to be on the list of needed criteria for a person carrying a loaded gun around children, teachers and parents.

Butler County had cut 75 teaching and administrative positions in the past five years because of a shrinking budget, but now the district of 7,500 students couldn’t hire armed guards fast enough. It had added a new insurance policy and $230,000 to the annual security budget in order to arm and employ at least 22 former state troopers — enough to station at least one guard at each school and every after-school event.

No money for teachers, but plenty of money for armed guards – what amounts to $10 thousand per guard. What? Only $10K for a full-time armed guard, working all day, every day and evenings (for after school events), putting up with teenagers and risking their own lives? Will the county really be able to recruit a group of high-quality “good guys” to work that hard, for $10 thousand each?

We pray that one guard never has to pee, never takes a vacation, never goes home early in the evening, never gets sick and never eats breakfast, lunch or dinner – so he always can be on the alert, armed and ready, for anyone who looks like a “bad guy.” And all for $10 thousand a year (including insurance, supervisors, training, etc.

That is the educational system envisioned by the NRA and the gun nuts.

The district’s hiring requirements for guards were at once simple and absolute: only retired state troopers with 20 years of experience who owned a gun and could pass a 60-round shooting test.

Wisdom, patience with children, understanding and kindness not needed. We want trained killers, who accurately can fire off 60 kill shots, to be with our kids.

The first group of shooters rotated out, and Cichra holstered his Beretta and took his position on the range. The instructor explained that the test was meant to simulate a firefight — “a worst-case scenario,” he said. Cichra would be asked to shoot with one hand and then with two; while kneeling and while standing; while walking backward and while moving toward the target. “Listen to me and focus on the threat,” the instructor said. “Imagine you are closing in on the shooter.”

Cichra took aim at a silhouette target from 25 yards. “Fire!” the instructor yelled, as gunshots echoed off the mountains. Fifteen yards. “Hit his chest,” the instructor shouted. Seven yards. “Kill shot.” Two yards. “He’s wearing a vest. Aim for the head!”

Cichra fired his last round and holstered his weapon. Sixty shots fired. Fifty-nine to the chest and one to the head. “A real marksman,” the instructor said. He had scored a perfect 300.

Was anything mentioned about trying to talk a kid down, or just to reason with him or to express sympathy, so you wouldn’t have to kill him? Anything about being careful not to hit the children who might near? Any psychiatric exams? Any investigation into a guard’s history? Any anger management issues? Any bigotry issues?

No, that’s for sissies. The one criterion was simple. The ability to kill, kill, kill. Shoot first; ask questions later.

But wait. Why stop with schools? There are thousands of other places where large numbers of people gather – places ripe for mass murders – places that need full-time armed guards.

What about sports venues. Football stadiums, basketball arenas, baseball parks, swimming pools, track and field events, amusement parks, beaches, ski slopes, restaurants, movie theaters, concerts. How about putting thousands of “good guy” armed guards there? Don’t we need protection there?

And what about train and bus stations as well as the trains and busses themselves? Why not guards with guns for them?

And what about shopping malls and department stores? More armed guards. Millions and millions of armed guards – all “good guys” of course. NRA guarantees it.

And then there is the question of adequate arming. These mass murderers tend to use military-style weapons, with big magazines. What chance does a pistol have against an assault rifle? Not much.

So really, shouldn’t the guards have the same weaponry? As we all know, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a machine gun is a good guy with a machine gun.”

Visualize millions of armed guards, roaming virtually everywhere you go, all carrying military weapons. Who would supervise and direct this huge army? The federal government? No, that could be challenged on constitutional grounds, though there is a more important reason: The NRA tells its members to arm so they can defend themselves against the federal government.

You see, gun nuts stockpile guns and ammo, because they are afraid the U.S. government will take away their freedom. (Not sure of the freedom to do what – perhaps freedom to kill people?) Anyway, federal control is out. The NRA would hate it, ergo Congress would hate it.

So what about state control of these millions of militarily armed guards? Not sure why that would be better. State governments can be as ruthless and bigoted as the federal government – perhaps more so. Ask any African American or immigrant.

How about private, for-profit mercenaries? That would make for interesting competitions, where the football stadium guards could fight turf battles with the basketball arena guards. We have something similar in Chicago. They’re called gangs.

We even could put the mercenaries in uniforms. Brown shirts and jack boots would be nice.

In summary, the NRA has come up with a truly terrifying idea to “protect” our children and us, i.e. enslave us to gun nuts. And it has taken a dozen states only a week to try to adopt it.

Welcome to military gun insanity in America, where all the AK47s are in the hands of “good guys,” and someone with road rage (because you accidentally passed him, or looked at him, or didn’t look at him, or did nothing at all), could take your life. All the accidents and insults in life could be dealt with on the spot.

Guns in schools and everywhere else. Guns to the left of us. Guns to the right of us. Here guns, there guns, everywhere guns, guns. Millions upon millions of NRA people brandishing military style weapons. Fortunately, they all are “good guys.”

So, what could possibly go wrong?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Will the Harry Houdini Congress implement its next magic trick: Warrants?

The so-called “federal debt” is nothing more than bank deposits. It is the total of deposits in T-security accounts in the Federal Reserve Bank. The word “debt” is misleading. Unlike what the average person thinks of as “debt,” the federal “debt” is not a burden on the presumed “borrower,” the U.S. government.

The entire “debt” (deposits) could be “paid off” simply by transferring the dollars currently in those T-security accounts to the checking accounts of the T-security owners. The process is identical with transferring dollars from your savings account to your checking account.

If the “debt” properly were called “deposits,” the entire silly conversation would end. But of course, that is too sensible and easy for Congress and the President, so we have the spectacle of politicians intentionally chaining themselves, putting themselves in a box of their own making, then struggling to escape, like a bunch of Harry Houdini pretenders.

The Debt Ceiling’s Escape Hatch
By Edward Kleinbard, New York Times
Edward D. Kleinbard, a former chief of staff at the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, is a law professor at the University of Southern California.

Congressional Republicans have said they will demand immense cuts to popular government programs in exchange for agreeing to raise the nation’s authorized borrowing limit of $16.4 trillion. If nothing is done, the government will soon be unable to pay all of its bills in a timely manner.

Surprise: The “popular government programs” help the middle- and lower-income groups (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, other poverty and unemployment aids). My question: Yes, the Democrats are bad, but really, if you’re not in the upper .1% income group, what impelled you to vote Republican?

So far, President Obama isn’t giving in. As he rightly said last week, he “will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed.”

. . . supposed solutions — like the notion that the Treasury Department could create a $1 trillion dollar platinum coin and deposit it in its own account at the Federal Reserve — are even more fantastical.

The author doesn’t explain why the platinum coin solution is “fantastical,” but is it as fantastical as a Congress spending money, then deciding it would be fiscally prudent not to pay its bills?

However, there is a plausible course of action, one that the president should publicly adopt . . . He should threaten to issue scrip — “registered warrants” — to existing claims holders (other than those who own actual government debt) in lieu of money.

The scrip would not violate the debt ceiling because it wouldn’t constitute a new borrowing of money . . . It would merely be a formal acknowledgment of a pre-existing monetary claim against the United States that the Treasury was not currently able to pay. The president could therefore establish a scrip program by executive order without piling a constitutional crisis on top of a fiscal one.

. . . the scrip would not pay interest in most cases. And unlike debt, it would have no fixed maturity date but rather would become redeemable in cash only when the secretary of the Treasury was able to certify that there’s enough money available in the Treasury’s general fund to cover it.

Translation: “While my assistant is putting locks on my ankles, I secretly am picking the locks on my wrists. Then you will be amazed when I escape from my own, personally-built ‘water torture cell'”

The strategy may sound far-fetched, but beginning in July of 2009, California addressed its budget crisis by issuing 450,000 registered warrants, totaling $2.6 billion, to individual and business claimants, including recipients of aid programs, recipients of tax refunds and government contractors.

Would a federal scrip program be a painless way of resolving a debt ceiling crisis? Hardly. But it would be the least awful way to defang the most extortionate demands of Congressional hard-liners — and one that would not permanently damage America’s fiscal standing in the world.

No, the least awful way to defang the selfish hard liners would be to vote them out of office at the next election (in less than two years), as a lesson. Show all future hard liners the citizens of America will not put up with their political games threatening our poor and middle classes.

Identify the extremist nut-cases and throw the bums out. Meanwhile, change this incredibly stupid law. Is that too much to ask?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

Harry Houdini in his “water-torture cell”

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#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

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