The healthcare screwing: You voted for it; you have it

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressed and the treachery of their leaders..
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Primum non nocere

It means, “First, do no harm,” and it is the primary principle of bioethics. It means, “Given any medical situation, it is better to do nothing than to do something that causes more harm than good.”

That concept is the key element of the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. It is the fundamental of medicine.

And it is what the Republicans have ignored in their efforts to erase everything “Obama.”

For the Republicans, the motto seems to have been, “Pass anything that eliminates ‘Obama,’ anything the rich like, and anything that won’t get the voters too angry — and to hell with the lower income people the program was designed to help.”

‘What other explanation can you offer for the 7-years-in-the-making plan the Republicans have put forward?

Here are some excerpts:

“What’s in the House Republicans’ replacement plan?” 3/8/17, Chicago Tribune, By Noam N. Levey

Washington Bureau, WASHINGTON — House Republicans have finally unveiled legislation to repeal and — just as important — replace the Affordable Care Act.

Here’s a short guide to what’s in the Republican plan and what it could mean for Americans’ health coverage:

Obamacare required Americans to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty. The penalty is assessed annually when people file their taxes.

How it would change: The tax penalty is eliminated. But the Republican bill still penalizes people who don’t get insurance. If consumers allow coverage to lapse for as long as two months, insurers would be required to charge them a 30 percent penalty when they buy a health plan.

That penalty could discourage many people from getting new coverage if they lose their plan.

As you regular readers know, the Obamacare penalty and the “Trumpcare” penalty, both are based on the “Big Lie” — the lie that our Monetarily Sovereign federal government cannot afford to pay for healthcare, so the people must pay.

(The federal government never can run short of dollars. Can you?)

Image result for eliminate medical care The Republican plan is more onerous for the poorest among us; it will prevent them from receiving any insurance, and thus, from receiving healthcare. The Republican plan will make America sicker.

Poor adults without children were barred from Medicaid coverage in most states. Obamacare tried to change that by offering states billions of dollars to expand Medicaid to childless adults. Thirty-one states have done so.

That has helped millions of low-income Americans get health coverage over the last several years.

The House GOP plan would phase out the additional federal money that has helped states expand their Medicaid programs.

The GOP plan would give each state a fixed amount of money every year for every person who qualifies for Medicaid. Many advocates and medical groups fear that change would force states to scale back coverage.

The sole purpose of the Republican change is to widen the Gap between the rich and the rest, by helping the Monetarily Sovereign federal government save money (which doesn’t need saving), and by charging poorer people more money.

(In the Republican plan), insurers would now be able to charge older consumers five times more than younger consumers.

If you are poor and old — the very people who most need healthcare support — what are you supposed to do about unaffordable insurance and unaffordable healthcare charges? This is yet another Gap-widening effort by the “party of the rich.”

One of the most important features of the current law are insurance subsidies that are available to low- and moderate-income people who use the marketplaces to get coverage.

Subsidies are linked to consumers’ incomes, so people who earn less get bigger subsidies.

Subsidies also are pegged to how much insurance plans cost. That means that if health plans are very expensive in one market, the subsidies in that market are larger. There are huge variations in how much health care costs around the country. So people who live in higher-cost areas are protected.

Subsidies are automatically applied to consumers’ monthly insurance bills, so low-income people don’t have to pay a large premium every month and then wait for a rebate, something that can be difficult for consumers.

The House plan completely scraps Obamacare’s subsidy system. Instead, Americans who don’t get coverage through an employer would qualify for a tax credit based on how old they are.

Older consumers would get larger credit, as much as $4,000 annually for people over 60. And younger consumers would get a smaller credit, as little as $2,000 for people younger than 30.

Linking the credit to consumers’ age risks leaving lower-income consumers without enough financial aid to buy a health plan.

And because the subsidies would increase annually at a rate slightly above inflation, they risk not keeping up with rising health insurance premiums.

In total, the above subsidy cuts reduce federal government payments by reducing support for the lower-income consumers.

Ultimately, all consumers would pay more for medical insurance than they now pay, but the poor are punished most.

Obamacare’s architects cobbled together a mix of taxes to offset the cost of subsidizing insurance for tens of millions of low- and moderate-income Americans. –

The House Republican plan scraps all Obamacare taxes. That’s a big tax cut for the medical device and insurance industry.

It’s also a large tax cut for the wealthiest taxpayers, who would no longer be subject to the Medicare payroll surtax.

Obamacare was based on the fiction (“The Big Lie”) that our Monetarily Sovereign federal government cannot afford to pay for healthcare. (Fact: Even if all federal taxes were $0, the federal government could continue spending, forever.)

As with virtually all facets of the Republican plan, the purpose is threefold:

To save money, unnecessarily, for the Monetarily Sovereign federal government.
To save money for the insurance and medical device industries.
To widen the Gap between the rich and the rest by costing the lower income groups more and/or by eliminating healthcare coverage for these groups.

Other than the above, the plan is “change-for-the-sake-of-change,” to eliminate anything related to Obama, despite the damage caused to America.

Obamacare is not a good plan. It is based on “The Big Lie” of federal unaffordability. But the Republican plan is horrible. Ironically, it will hurt most those lower income people who formed the basis for Trump’s following.

But perhaps the ultimate irony is that the party-of-the-rich tries to reduce federal spending, not seeming to get the fact that federal spending is economically stimulative, thus helping business.

See Step 2 of the Ten Steps to Prosperity (below):

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.

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 The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:
1. ELIMINATE FICA (Ten Reasons to Eliminate FICA )
Although the article lists 10 reasons to eliminate FICA, there are two fundamental reasons:
*FICA is the most regressive tax in American history, widening the Gap by punishing the low and middle-income groups, while leaving the rich untouched, and
*The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither needs nor uses FICA to support Social Security and Medicare.
2. FEDERALLY FUNDED MEDICARE — PARTS A, B & D, PLUS LONG TERM CARE — FOR EVERYONE (H.R. 676, Medicare for All )
This article addresses the questions:
*Does the economy benefit when the rich can afford better health care than can the rest of Americans?
*Aside from improved health care, what are the other economic effects of “Medicare for everyone?”
*How much would it cost taxpayers?
*Who opposes it?”
3. PROVIDE A MONTHLY ECONOMIC BONUS TO EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA (similar to Social Security for All) (The JG (Jobs Guarantee) vs the GI (Guaranteed Income) vs the EB (Guaranteed Income)) Or institute a reverse income tax.
This article is the fifth in a series about direct financial assistance to Americans:

Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Employer of Last Resort is a bad idea. Sunday, Jan 1 2012
MMT’s Job Guarantee (JG) — “Another crazy, rightwing, Austrian nutjob?” Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee is like the EU’s euro: A beloved solution to the wrong problem. Tuesday, May 29 2012
“You can’t fire me. I’m on JG” Saturday, Jun 2 2012

Economic growth should include the “bottom” 99.9%, not just the .1%, the only question being, how best to accomplish that. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) favors giving everyone a job. Monetary Sovereignty (MS) favors giving everyone money. The five articles describe the pros and cons of each approach.
4. FREE EDUCATION (INCLUDING POST-GRAD) FOR EVERYONE Five reasons why we should eliminate school loans
Monetarily non-sovereign State and local governments, despite their limited finances, support grades K-12. That level of education may have been sufficient for a largely agrarian economy, but not for our currently more technical economy that demands greater numbers of highly educated workers.
Because state and local funding is so limited, grades K-12 receive short shrift, especially those schools whose populations come from the lowest economic groups. And college is too costly for most families.
An educated populace benefits a nation, and benefitting the nation is the purpose of the federal government, which has the unlimited ability to pay for K-16 and beyond.
5. SALARY FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL
Even were schooling to be completely free, many young people cannot attend, because they and their families cannot afford to support non-workers. In a foundering boat, everyone needs to bail, and no one can take time off for study.
If a young person’s “job” is to learn and be productive, he/she should be paid to do that job, especially since that job is one of America’s most important.
6. ELIMINATE FEDERAL TAXES ON BUSINESS
Businesses are dollar-transferring machines. They transfer dollars from customers to employees, suppliers, shareholders and the federal government (the later having no use for those dollars). Any tax on businesses reduces the amount going to employees, suppliers and shareholders, which diminishes the economy. Ultimately, all business taxes reduce your personal income.
7. INCREASE THE STANDARD INCOME TAX DEDUCTION, ANNUALLY. (Refer to this.) Federal taxes punish taxpayers and harm the economy. The federal government has no need for those punishing and harmful tax dollars. There are several ways to reduce taxes, and we should evaluate and choose the most progressive approaches.
Cutting FICA and business taxes would be a good early step, as both dramatically affect the 99%. Annual increases in the standard income tax deduction, and a reverse income tax also would provide benefits from the bottom up. Both would narrow the Gap.
8. TAX THE VERY RICH (THE “.1%) MORE, WITH HIGHER PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES ON ALL FORMS OF INCOME. (TROPHIC CASCADE)
There was a time when I argued against increasing anyone’s federal taxes. After all, the federal government has no need for tax dollars, and all taxes reduce Gross Domestic Product, thereby negatively affecting the entire economy, including the 99.9%.
But I have come to realize that narrowing the Gap requires trimming the top. It simply would not be possible to provide the 99.9% with enough benefits to narrow the Gap in any meaningful way. Bill Gates reportedly owns $70 billion. To get to that level, he must have been earning $10 billion a year. Pick any acceptable Gap (1000 to 1?), and the lowest paid American would have to receive $10 million a year. Unreasonable.
9. FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF ALL BANKS (Click The end of private banking and How should America decide “who-gets-money”?)
Banks have created all the dollars that exist. Even dollars created at the direction of the federal government, actually come into being when banks increase the numbers in checking accounts. This gives the banks enormous financial power, and as we all know, power corrupts — especially when multiplied by a profit motive.
Although the federal government also is powerful and corrupted, it does not suffer from a profit motive, the world’s most corrupting influence.
10. INCREASE FEDERAL SPENDING ON THE MYRIAD INITIATIVES THAT BENEFIT AMERICA’S 99.9% (Federal agencies)Browse the agencies. See how many agencies benefit the lower- and middle-income/wealth/ power groups, by adding dollars to the economy and/or by actions more beneficial to the 99.9% than to the .1%.
Save this reference as your primer to current economics. Sadly, much of the material is not being taught in American schools, which is all the more reason for you to use it.

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Why you believe the Big Lie: The Gap Psychology con job

As we have repeated through the years, ad nauseam, the single biggest economic problem facing America and the world is the wide (and widening) Gaps between the richer and the poorer.

Gini ratio. Higher line = greater disparity between richer and poorer

The Gaps are what makes people richer. Without the Gaps, no one would be richer, and the wider the Gaps, the richer they are.

It is a rule of human psychology that we want the Gap below us to widen and the Gap above us to narrow.

Said another way, we wish to distance ourselves from lower income/wealth/power people, while coming closer to the higher income/wealth/power people.

We see this Gap Psychology everywhere; it is responsible for much of what happens in our economy.

Gap Psychology makes us receptive to the Big Lie, that social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and aids to poverty are “unsustainable,” unaffordable” and must be cut.

The following is Gap Psychology at work:

The Confederacy Was A Con Job On Whites. And Still Is.
BY FRANK HYMAN

The Confederacy – and the slavery that spawned it – was one big con job on the Southern, white, working class. A con job funded by some of the ante-bellum one-per-centers, that continues today in a similar form.

You don’t have to be an economist to see that forcing blacks – a third of the South’s laborers – to work without pay drove down wages for everyone else. And not just in agriculture. A quarter of enslaved blacks worked in the construction, manufacturing and lumbering trades; cutting wages even for skilled white workers.

Thanks to the profitability of this no-wage/low-wage combination, a majority of American one-per-centers were southerners. Slavery made southern states the richest in the country.

The South was richer than any other country except England. But that vast wealth was invisible outside the plantation ballrooms.

With low wages and few schools, southern whites suffered a much lower land ownership rate and a far lower literacy rate than northern whites.

Most Southerners didn’t own slaves. But they were persuaded to risk their lives and limbs for the right of a few to get rich from slavery.

For their sacrifices and their votes, they earned two things before and after the Civil War. First, a very skinny slice of the immense Southern pie.

And second, the thing that made those slim rations palatable then and now: the shallow satisfaction of knowing that blacks had no slice at all.

That “shallow satisfaction” is Gap Psychology. The Southerners who were made poor by slavery and bigotry still supported it because it widened the Gap below them. Though it made them poor, it made the blacks poorer, yet.

Today, when middle- and lower-income people vote for politicians who promise to cut benefits to the poor, we see the same Gap Psychology — our willingness to sacrifice so long as those below us on the totem pole of life, sacrifice even more.

Thus, because of Gap Psychology, we blithely believe the obvious lie that the U.S. government is running short of dollars to support social programs. Why do we believe the lie that social programs are unaffordable? Because those programs narrow the Gap by benefitting people poorer than us.

The rich teach us to sneer at the poor, and we don’t seem to understand that the rich sneer at us in the same way. To the rich, we are the “takers,” and they are the “makers.”

How did the plantation owners mislead so many Southern whites? They managed this con job partly with a propaganda technique that will be familiar to modern Americans.

Wealthy Southerners supported more than 30 regional pro-slavery magazines, many pamphlets, newspapers and novels that falsely touted slave ownership as having benefits that would – in today’s lingo – trickle down to benefit non-slave owning whites and even blacks.

The flip side of the coin of this old-is-new trickle-down propaganda is the mistaken notion that any gain by blacks in wages, schools or health care comes at the expense of the white working class.

Today’s version of this con job no longer supports slavery, but still works in the South and thrives in pro trickle-down think tanks, magazines, newspapers, talk radio and TV news shows such as the Cato Foundation, Reason magazine, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

These sources are underwritten by pro trickle-down one-per-centers like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch.

In case it isn’t obvious, the above are Republican, right-wing “news” sources, promoting Gap Psychology every day.

We could add to the above list the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) and the Concord Coalition, which spread the ridiculous propaganda that our Monetarily Sovereign federal government somehow can run short of its own sovereign currency — the currency it creates simply by pressing computer keys.

Our Monetarily Sovereign government neither needs nor uses tax dollars to pay its bills. Even if federal taxes were $0, the federal government could continue spending forever — and without borrowing.

This fact means that ACA itself, and the Republican “repeal and replace” ACA campaign, both are based on the false notion of federal dollar scarcity.

Yes, ACA should be repealed and replaced — but replaced with federally funded Medicare for every man, woman, and child in America. (Step #2 of the Ten Steps to Properity)

A map of states that didn’t expand Medicaid – which would actually be a boon mostly to poor whites – resembles a map of the old Confederacy with a few other poor, rural states thrown in.

Another indication that this divisive propaganda works on Southern whites came in 2012. Romney and Obama evenly split the white working class in the West, Midwest and Northeast. But in the South we went 2-1 for Romney.

Only by shedding (self-destructive beliefs) will Southern whites finally catch up to the rest of the country in wages, health and education.

The “self-destructive beliefs” are a foundation of current political propaganda. They have led to the urgent push to destroy the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which provides healthcare insurance to millions of people who otherwise could not afford it.

(We further discuss the power of Gap Psychology at: “What is the real reason the Republicans hate Obamacare?” Monday, Mar 6 2017.)

Just as with the Confederacy slavery con job, the anti-Obamacare con job is promulgated by the rich to widen the Gap between the rich and the rest.

While no one yet knows the details of the Republican plan, what we do know for sure is this: Millions of poor people will lose their healthcare coverage. And this will be just fine for large swaths of the populace.

It will appeal, not just to the rich, but to all those whose Gap Psychology makes them happy to sacrifice a bit, so long as the poor sacrifice more.

The rich have been successful with Gap Psychology since slavery days. And we suckers still buy into it.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.

Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Employer of Last Resort is a bad idea. Sunday, Jan 1 2012
MMT’s Job Guarantee (JG) — “Another crazy, rightwing, Austrian nutjob?” Thursday, Jan 12 2012
Why Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee is like the EU’s euro: A beloved solution to the wrong problem. Tuesday, May 29 2012
“You can’t fire me. I’m on JG” Saturday, Jun 2 2012

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

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

There is one thing the GOP is doing right, and they even don’t talk about it.

There is one big thing the Republicans are doing right (no pun intended), and not only don’t they talk about it, some of them may not even realize it:

IRS income tax audits plummet as agency faces budget cuts
Christian Science Monitor, Ben Rosen, March 6, 2017

Americans filing income tax returns this year can worry less about being audited, after the Internal Revenue Service said budget cuts and a reduced staff are to blame for it auditing the fewest number of people in 13 years in 2016.

The lower number of audits the IRS performed in 2016 – down 16 percent from the year – are part of a six-year trend started by Republicans in Congress.

After they took control of the House and Senate in the 2010 elections, Republicans shrunk the agency’s budget from $12.2 billion to $11.2 billion last year, citing the IRS alleged singling out conservative political groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

The Republicans hate federal taxes, as well they should. Unlike state and local tax dollars, which are recirculated through the economy, federal tax dollars are removed from the money supply the instant they are received.

By definition, federal taxes (i.e.sucking dollars from the economy) reduce Gross Domestic Product, and that is why federal taxes are recessionary. (GDP=Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)

So the Republicans are right to cut IRS funding, as a way to reduce tax collections. It makes economic sense.

But the IRS Commissioner, not a part of the controversy, says the cuts are costing the federal government between $4 billion and $8 billion a year in uncollected taxes.

“We are the only agency if you give us more people and money, we give you more money back,” John Koskinen told the AP.

Translation: “If you give us more money, we will remove more dollars from the economy. Give us enough dollars and we will give you a depression.”

In the face of budget of cuts, the IRS lost more than 17,000 employees since 2010, nearly one-fifth of its total staff. This includes the loss of nearly 7,000 enforcement agents.

Losing employees does exacerbate unemployment. But collecting more taxes is really bad for the economy.

Republican lawmakers have defended the IRS cuts, mentioning the alleged mistreatment of conservative groups.

“Go look at all the areas where they’ve wasted money, mismanaged taxpayer resources,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R) of Ohio. “Not to mention the fact that, you know, one of the reasons we went after them so hard is they did target people for their political views.”

See, it’s like this:

We, the GOP, tell you that more taxes should be collected (to balance the budget) even though this isn’t true.

But, we’ll overlook what we tell you is good for the economy because we are angry at the IRS. So there!

We cut the IRS budget because they picked on conservatives, even though we want more taxes to “pay for” additional military spending. (O.K., federal taxes don’t pay for anything, but you don’t know that.)

So here is what we plan to do. We’ll cut spending for Social Security and Medicare benefits, because the rich don’t care about those, and we’ve convinced you the federal government is running short of dollars.

We also will cut spending for Medicaid, ACA, and all benefits for the poor, because the rich don’t collect those, either, and again, you think the federal government can run out of its own sovereign currency.

And we’ll cut tax rates, because the rich pay the highest rates, and because we know federal taxes don’t pay for anything. (We also will create more loopholes for the rich, because they give us lots of money.)

And you, the public, will go along with all this because we have brainwashed you into believing federal taxes are necessary to fund federal spending, and the rich supposedly are the “makers” while the poor are the “takers.”

If you go along with the GOP’s “reverse Robin Hood” (take from the middle and poor, and give to the rich), you are going to love the next four years.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

ECONOMICS LAWS

•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.

•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..

•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.

•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.

•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)

•Deficit spending grows the supply of money

•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.

•Progressives think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between the rich and the rest.

•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.

•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.

•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Why the passion to destroy lives?

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty

Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressed and the treachery of their leaders..

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These excerpts from an article in the Chicago Tribune have me puzzled.

Maybe you have the answers.

Legal hurdle looms for fast deportations

Battles brew over immigrants’ right to hearing before ouster

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s plan for putting hundreds of thousands of recent immigrants in the country illegally on a fast track for deportation is likely to trigger the next major legal battle over immigration enforcement.

These are people — men, women, and children — people just like you and me. The vast, and I mean VAST majority are good people, hard-working people, people who lead orderly lives, trying to build a better world for themselves and their children. Image result for deport children

They are the very people who historically have built melting-pot America.

So why is there now a great passion to destroy their innocent lives by shipping these people out of the country?

Judges have put on hold the president’s temporary ban on travel to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries. That executive order, as originally proposed, could have affected tens of thousands of travelers and U.S. visa holders.

Why would America want to ban U.S. visa holders? We can’t even use the “criminals” excuse.

But the administration’s efforts to step up immigration enforcement and streamline deportation — outlined in memos from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly — could affect far more people, including potentially most of the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

Why do we want to injure 11 million lives. What is the need?

One part of that effort — the expanded use of what the law refers to as expedited removal — is almost certain to face a constitutional challenge in the courts.

Noncitizens living in the country illegally can be arrested and held for deportation, but they have had a right to a full hearing before an immigration judge before they can be removed from the U.S.

At such a hearing, they may rely on the help of a lawyer and can argue they have family and work ties here. If a ruling goes against them, they may appeal in the immigration courts and in federal court. The process typically takes years.

In his Feb. 20 memo, however, Kelly complained the immigration courts were clogged and the removal process was too cumbersome, and he called for a new approach.

“The surge of illegal immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed” the system, he said. “There are more than 534,000 cases currently pending on immigration courts dockets nationwide — a record high.” In some areas, he said, it takes “as long as five years” for a case to be heard by an immigration judge.

Not only is the process life destroying, but it clogs up our courts and costs a great deal of money. So is it all worth the time, effort and cost?

To speed up deportations, Kelly proposed to use expedited removal, with no hearings before a judge, for those immigrants who cannot prove they “have been continuously present in the United States for a two-year period” prior to their arrest. The new procedures would not be limited to border areas and could be used to deport immigrants living in the interior of the country.

Kelly said the law since 1996 has authorized the government to “remove aliens expeditiously,” and he said his agents “shall make full use of these authorities.”

The American Immigration Council said this approach means a Homeland Security agent “operates as prosecutor and judge and often arrests an individual and orders him or her deported on the same day. With limited exceptions, the government takes the position that noncitizens subject to expedited removal have no right to appeal.”

Is this what we want in America — Homeland Security agents wandering the country, having the power of life or death over millions of people? Has anyone considered the consequences of allowing agents absolute power?

Given the truth that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” does America wish to create a squad of absolutely corrupted goons extracting “favors” from otherwise innocent people?

What does America gain from such cruelty? Is this what “makes America great, again?”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly cited the Fifth Amendment, which says, “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.”

Because the language refers to “no person,” and not “no citizen,” its protections cover “even one whose presence in this country is unlawful, involuntary or transitory,” the court said unanimously in 1976.

Doesn’t it seem odd that the same people who are so protective of the Second Amendment, wanting even mentally disabled people to carry life-taking weapons, care so little about the Fifth Amendment that saves lives?

What is the motive?

Jessica Vaughan, policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reducing the level of immigration to the U.S., said the administration is following the law.

No, not just following the law. It’s more like enthusiastically and zealously bending the law in an effort to destroy as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible.

Why? What is the goal?

Cornell law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr: “These executive orders will eventually impact millions of more people. And we will be litigating this for years.”

Trump conducts a photo op of him casually signing an order; then he goes on with his glittering life, while millions of people see their lives shattered. Is this what America is all about?

Oh, I’ve heard the excuses. One goes something like this:

“My parents came here legally. Why should these people be allowed to come here illegally.”

All that means is, “I was lucky. Why should these people be lucky, too?”

And then there’s Trump’s:

“These people are criminals and rapists.”

A typical Trump lie. (Does the man ever tell the truth?) The fact is these immigrants are less likely to be criminals than the population at large, and the comparatively few who are real criminals can be deported without objection. But why deport the innocent ones?

And then, the ever-popular:

“These people are here illegally, which makes them criminals.”

No, that doesn’t make them criminals. It’s a “gotcha” excuse to call them criminals.

Imagine this: A police officer is beating a girl with his nightstick. She covers her head, so the officer he beat her because she resisted arrest. She’s a criminal, but the officer invented an excuse for beating her.

And finally, thoroughly debunked:

“They’re taking jobs and using resources without paying taxes.”

Actually, they’re consumers who create jobs by buying stuff, and contrary to popular myth, they do pay taxes.

So what is the real reason for the rush to destroy lives? Why have we become so mean-spirited and uncaring?

I have a hypothesis about this. See if you agree.

Millions of guns have gone into millions of hands, and now even mentally challenged people can get killing machines. As a result, there are far more killings of innocent people.
We have witnessed the terrorist actions of “9/11,” “Oklahoma City,” “Boston Marathon,” “Pulse nightclub,” and so many others.
The atomic bomb and the “doomsday” clocks have made life seem more tenuous.
Social media have reduced “in-person” contact, which dehumanizes those we don’t know intimately.

So we have developed a “fortress” mentality. Every stranger seems to be a threat. Everyone not exactly like us is to be feared. We want to get them all away from us.

We reject those who look, talk, or pray differently; we feel no compassion for them. In fact, we hate them and want to punish them scaring us by their presence.

And into this mix of anger and dread come the opportunist scare-mongers, who gain power by telling us our lives hang by a thread, and they alone can save us.

They tell us that hatred and bigotry are justified by circumstance, so we need not feel guilty about our lack of morality. We are told hurting innocent men, women, and children is wise if it can chase away the danger — a danger that exists primarily in the tales told by the scare mongers.

My hypothesis is that Donald Trump is a coward, a little man whose daddy saved him from numerous failures, a boy who sneaked his way out of the military, a man who hides behind his gold plate and towers, and who now wants us to be cowards, too.

He wants us to shiver behind a massive wall of shame. He wants us to destroy the people who scare him, while we arm ourselves against the bogeymen he has created.

It takes more courage to be open and welcoming than to be remote and hidden. Leaders are more popular during wars, because the people want a strong person to shelter them from their fears.

Knowing this, would-be tyrants frighten us by inventing enemies and then claiming to protect us from the enemies they invented.

I had been puzzled about why we seem to have this great passion to injure people that have done us no harm — why we are so mean-spirited these days.

Now you know my hypothesis.

What’s yours?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty

ECONOMICS LAWS

•Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.

•Any monetarily NON-sovereign government — be it city, county, state or nation — that runs an ongoing trade deficit, eventually will run out of money.

•The more federal budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes..

•No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth.

•Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia.

•A growing economy requires a growing supply of money (GDP = Federal Spending + Non-federal Spending + Net Exports)

•Deficit spending grows the supply of money

•The limit to federal deficit spending is an inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control. The limit to non-federal deficit spending is the ability to borrow.

•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.

•The single most important problem in economics is the Gap between the rich and the rest.

•Austerity is the government’s method for widening the Gap between the rich and the rest.

•Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.

•Everything in economics devolves to motive, and the motive is the Gap between the rich and the rest..

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

Primum non nocere

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