–Senator Durbin continues to cement his legacy

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.
==========================================================================================================================================

My Senator, Dick Durbin, continues to cement his legacy

January 16, 2013
Dear Mr. Mitchell:

Thank you for contacting me about tax and spending changes scheduled to take effect in January. I appreciate hearing from you.

Concerns have been raised about the effects that impending changes to our tax code and the automatic spending reduction, also known as sequestration, could have on our economy. Congress must take steps to alleviate economic concerns while ensuring that our nation is on a sustainable fiscal path.

Sequestration was created in the Budget Control Act, enacted on August 2, 2011, to prevent a default on our nation’s debt and to give our economy the certainty it needs as we recover from a historic recession. The Budget Control Act also established the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which was assigned the task of issuing a formal recommendation to reduce the nation’s deficit in November 2011. I was disappointed that the Committee failed to reach a compromise for such a recommendation. Since an agreement was not reached, a $1.2 trillion automatic spending reduction was triggered and will be phased in over nine years beginning in January unless alternative legislation is enacted to prevent it.

During the remainder of the year, I hope that Congress can reach a bipartisan agreement to deal with the deficit prior to the round of deep spending cuts scheduled to take place. I have consistently worked with a bipartisan group of my colleagues to craft a balanced plan for controlling our federal deficits, and I am optimistic that we can come up with a proposal to which members on both sides of the aisle can agree. I will continue to work to find commonsense solutions to rein in our ballooning debt without risking the economic recovery or breaking promises to senior citizens, working families, and future generations.

Your voice is a valuable part of this discussion. I will keep your concerns in mind as the Senate considers the future of expiring tax provisions and next year’s spending changes in upcoming months.

Thank you again for contacting me. Please feel free to keep in touch.

Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator

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
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

–Republicans’ plan to destroy your financial life. They know you won’t do anything about it.

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.
==========================================================================================================================================

Double trouble: House GOP eyes default, shutdown
By Jim Vandehel, Mike Allen and Jake Sherman | 1/13/13

House Republicans are seriously entertaining dramatic steps, including default or shutting down the government, to force President Barack Obama to finally cut spending by the end of March.

Translation: “Cut spending” is shorthand for cut spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that help the middle- and lower-income classes. The military is one of those “other” programs as it directly employs thousands of lower paid people, and indirectly employs the thousands of workers in the industries that support the military.

Spending cuts (aka austerity) are the proven method by which the government takes money from you and widens the income gap between the rich 1% and the rest.

The idea of allowing the country to default by refusing to increase the debt limit is getting more widespread and serious traction among House Republicans than people realize, though GOP leaders think shutting down the government is the much more likely outcome of the spending fights this winter.

Translation: “If we don’t get our way, we Republicans plan to shut down the government, because that really would screw you of the lower 99%. The only question is when we’ll do it – for the debt limit fight or the spending fight.”

“I think it is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama understands that we’re serious,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state told us.

Translation: “Attention, middle and lower classes: We’re going to cut your noses to spite your faces. And you’re so stupid, you’ll agree with it.

House Speaker John Boehner “may need a shutdown just to get it out of their system,” said a top GOP leadership adviser. “We might need to do that for member-management purposes — so they have an endgame and can show their constituents they’re fighting.”

Translation: “We’re going to punish the poor to show the rich we’re worth the campaign money they give us. We don’t bite the hand that feeds us.”

The country would eventually default if House Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit. Obama assumes Republicans would never be so foolish as to put the economy at risk to win a spending fight. Conservatives say he’s definitely wrong on that score. They say he’s the foolish and reckless one for piling up $6 trillion in debt on his watch.

Translation: Federal deficits are the government’s method for adding dollars to the economy, which is the way the economy grows. With our large net imports taking billions out of our economy, no federal deficit = recession. Guaranteed.

Economic disaster is good for the 1%. It widens the income gap by impoverishing the 99%.

“No one wants to default, but we are not going to continue to give the president a limitless credit card.”

Translation: “We’ll keep telling the same ‘credit card’ lie, as long as you keep falling for it. You haven’t yet figured out that the federal government never can run short of money. Until you get it, we’ll just keep beating you, your wife and your worthless children down.”

The conventional wisdom is that Obama and Congress will ultimately work out a grand spending compromise that raises the debt limit, keeps funding the government and changes the $1.2 trillion in automatic “sequestration” spending cuts set to kick in on March 1.

Two top GOP officials told us Republicans are not willing to compromise on the $1.2 trillion in cuts. Right now, half the cuts target defense, half other programs. The White House not only wants to use the sequestration debate to resolve all of the spending fights — it wants to replace some cuts with tax increases.

Translation: The Republicans want to keep their promise to the 1% (to widen the gap) by shutting down the government. The Democrats want to keep their promise to the 1% (also to widen the gap) by increasing taxes on the middle and lower classes. Obama already has done his part by increasing FICA.

GOP officials said 90 percent of their members are prepared to allow the cuts to take effect, rather than compromise, based on their preliminary head counts. This seems like the most likely outcome right now.

Translation: “To hell with America. We made promises to the rich, in exchange for campaign contributions, and we intend to keep those promises. We’re honorable people. Anyway, what are you poor people going to do about it, huh?”

Boehner’s own staff has warned conservative lawmakers that deficits will soar, as interest rates rise, the markets will tumble and the economy will face catastrophe if they truly follow through on default.

Translation: “Ah, who cares. The people are sheep. They’ll do anything and believe anything we tell them. A little poverty will teach them a lesson (so long as I’m O.K.)”

Look for (Republican) members to push for an idea, crafted by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), to cushion the effect of default by passing legislation beforehand that prioritizes the order that government bills will be paid in the event the debt limit is not increased.

Translation: “Trust us Republicans to come up with an idea that is against the law. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 forbids the President from not spending (“impoundment”)what the Congress has authorized, without approval of both houses of Congress.

“We plan to blame the Democrats for not spending what we have authorized, because we want to decrease spending. Think about it and tell me if you understand what I just said.”

Chris Chocola, president of the conservative Club for Growth: “What’s more irresponsible: continuing on this path to fiscal ruin, or changing the path?” he said. “There is a high level of frustration, and a willingness to do something dramatic. They think this is the only way to get Obama’s attention.”

Translation: “It goes like this. Sure, we know the federal government is different from you and me. It even is different from state and local governments. How? It alone never can run short of money, so there never can be ‘fiscal ruin.” But “fiscal ruin” is just our phony argument to brainwash you, the public, and so far, you have proven ignorant enough to buy it.

“Our real goal is to keep collecting campaign money from the rich, who want to push you and your family down as far as possible. We don’t care what disasters befall you – in fact we welcome those disasters — so long as our own jobs are safe.”

By now the stock market should have gone into free fall. But sane people have trouble believing politicians claiming to be patriots, and elected to help the economy, intentionally would cause a depression.

We disagree. We now regard Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Wayne LaPierre, Herman Cain and Rush Limbaugh as among the less crazed Republican “patriots,” (who, by the way, plan to destroy America.) There actually are Republicans far more damaging.

And, you believe what they tell you.

Back in Chicago, we call you “chump.”

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
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

–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.
==========================================================================================================================================

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

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

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

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.
==========================================================================================================================================

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

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

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