It’s a “chump-or-brains” decision. Which are you?

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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Let’s begin with an absolute truth: Unless you own at least $20 million — and this is a ridiculously bare minimum — you are a chump if you vote for the GOP, aka “The Party of the Rich.”

Yes, yes, I know. The Dems are “libtards,” and Hillary is “crooked,”, and Bernie is a clown, and Bill is a womanizer, etc., etc. , but the fact remains that the GOP uniquely does everything in its power to take dollars from you and give those dollars to the very rich.

First, the GOP tells you the rich are “makers” and the poor are “takers” — a bold-faced lie — to make you believe you should be grateful for what the rich do to you. In fact, as you will see, it is the rich who are the real “takers” in America, and it is the lower income groups who do all the “making.”

All the rich do make is money for themselves. Nothing is done for you.

Any jobs the rich make are incidental to their primary purpose: Self-enrichment. Any money that floats down to you not only is inadvertent, but is resented by the rich. (That’s why they call you “takers.”)

The minimal benefits you receive are just designed to be barely enough to get your vote; nothing more.

Then the GOP tells you the federal government can’t afford deficits and debt — another lie — which requires that your meager social benefits like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, housing aids, food aids, education aids must be limited or eliminated.

But, the U.S federal government never can run short of its sovereign currency, the dollar. All the dire warnings about “unsustainable” deficits and your grandchildren paying for the debt, are 100% false, lies designed to make you accept short rations, while the rich sop up all the gravy.

By no coincidence, the social benefits despised by the GOP were provided by the Democrats.

Now, the GOP offers tax “reform” that cuts taxes on the rich and raises taxes on the middle classes, while cutting ACA and other benefits to the middle-class.

This will be one of the largest pickpocket, money-transfer schemes in history.

You can read about the scam at:

The Trump tax cuts fall far short of Ronald Reagan’s reforms
The Gipper is an inspiration to Republicans, but they are not following his example

As Republicans embark on yet another sweeping rewrite of the tax code, many point to the 1986 effort as a model to emulate. It was “really something special”, Donald Trump said in August.

However, admirers of America’s last comprehensive revision of its tax code should be disappointed with the GOP’s current attempts.

The authors of the last reform relied heavily on advice from professional economists. In contrast, Mr Trump’s Treasury department is yet to find a credible study supporting its claim that tax cuts will deliver enough economic growth to pay for themselves.

It also removed from its website a paper arguing that the benefits of corporate tax cuts flow primarily to investors, rather than to workers.

Also, the 1986 tax code law:

” . . . included full committee hearings, markups and deliberations. That legislative process bears little resemblance to the Republican Party’s current approach to tax reform.

Republicans are using the restrictive procedure of budget reconciliation to try to push the legislation through on a party-line vote.

And unlike the exhaustive review that occurred from 1984 to 1986, Mr Trump has promised to sign a bill by Christmas, just two months after the first legislative text was introduced.

. . . According to figures from the Joint Committee on Taxation, most of the benefits will go to the rich. Reagan’s 1986 reform did the opposite.

Despite these shortfalls, the House is expected to vote on its tax proposal today.

That may have less to do with enthusiasm for the bill itself than with Republicans’ belief that they need to approve some form of major legislation to avoid a wipe-out in next year’s midterm elections.

Do you see anything the GOP is doing for you? No, you don’t, because the GOP doesn’t care about you.

It cares only about fooling you long enough to get your vote so it can continue transferring dollars from your pockets to the never-satisfied rich.

The GOP assumes that by repeating “Hillary, Bill, Obama, and Democrats” often enough, your dislike for the left will prompt you to vote against your own self-interest, and instead vote for the interests of the billionaires.

In short, the GOP expects you to vote like a chump.

Speaking of billionaires, here are a few who think you poor chumps receive too much, and so you should give more to them:

The Paradise Papers
Bloomberg News

Earlier this week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released over 13 million heretofore confidential records documenting the offshore financial interests held by wealthy individuals and corporations who may have wanted to shield their involvement in offshore tax havens from public scrutiny.

[You’ll see several references to “Appleby,” self described as “. . . an offshore law firm. We advise global public and private companies, financial institutions, and high net worth individuals, working with them and their advisers to achieve practical solutions.” The two word description of what Appleby does best is “tax havens.”]

Known as the Paradise Papers, the documents originate primarily from Appleby, a Bermuda-based law firm, says the ICIJ. The firm specializes in catering to UHNW clients and blue chip companies

• Reveals offshore interests and activities of more than 120 politicians and world leaders, including Queen Elizabeth II, and 13 advisers, major donors and members of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s administration
• Exposes the tax engineering of more than 100 multinational corporations, including Apple, Nike and Botox-maker Allergan
• Reveals tax haven shopping sprees by multinational companies in Africa and Asia that use shell companies in Mauritius and Singapore to reduce taxes
• Shines a light on secretive deals and hidden companies connected to Glencore, the world’s largest commodity trader, and provides detailed accounts of the company’s negotiations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for valuable mineral resources
• Provides details of how owners of jets and yachts, including royalty and sports stars, used Isle of Man tax-avoidance structures

While your employer dutifully deducts payroll taxes and income taxes from your paycheck, the rich rake in billions of untaxed dollars — and still complain the federal deficit is too high.

Donald Trump told voters he would put “America First.” But surrounding him are associates who have used tax havens to conduct business.

Go to Explore The Influencers: Donald Trump’s allies in the Paradise Papers and you’ll see some of the people who cry about the federal debt and what meager “freebies” you receive, while they gorge at the tax-free trough.

You’ll see such names as:

Stephen Schwarzman, co-founder and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm, has been one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies on Wall Street. Shortly after his election victory, Trump named Schwarzman chairman of the White House’s business advisory council. An outspoken opponent of raising taxes on the rich, Schwarzman once compared an Obama administration plan to raise taxes on hedge fund managers to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are among the most influential
political donors in modern U.S. history. After declining to back Donald Trump during the 2016 election, the two brothers appear to have warmed to the new president. In July, it was reported that they had launched a multimillion-dollar campaign in support of President Trump’s tax plan.

Real estate investor Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a close friend of and adviser to Donald Trump, was a fundraiser for Trump, donor to his campaign and chairman of the inaugural committee. During the campaign, Barrack said he raised $32 million for a super PAC backing Trump’s candidacy. CNN has called Barrack “perhaps the single
person closest to [Trump] outside of his immediate family.”

Barrack’s firm, Colony Capital, now known as Colony NorthStar, owns a vast web of offshore holdings that operate in tax havens around the globe. Among them are a pair of Cayman Islands shell companies in the law firm Appleby’s files that list Barrack as a director.

As vice chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve, Randal Quarles is the central bank’s watchdog over the U.S. banking industry. Appleby files identify Quarles as an officer of two tax-exempt entities registered in the Cayman Islands and associated with the Carlyle Group.

Casino magnate Sheldon G. Adelson was the Republican Party’s leading donor in 2016, contributing more than $82 million to GOP candidates and causes. He provided an additional $5 million to Trump’s inaugural festivities, the largest-ever contribution to an inauguration.

Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands paid tens of millions of dollars to Adelson’s Interface Bermuda between 2010 and 2016, SEC filings show – effectively shifting Adelson’s money from the United States to a tax-free jurisdiction.

Rex Tillerson is the U.S. secretary of state. Before his nomination by President Donald Trump, he served for more than a decade as CEO of the oil giant ExxonMobil.

Robert Mercer is the CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a highly profitable
hedge fund that relies on secret trading algorithms. Mercer was a prominent financial backer of Donald Trump’s candidacy and is credited with influencing
key decisions by Trump, including the hiring of Stephen Bannon as White House
chief strategist, a position Bannon held for seven months.

An Appleby spreadsheet created on September 2015, lists Mercer as a director of eight Renaissance Technologies subsidiaries, all registered in Bermuda.

Another billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn, is the founder of Wynn Resorts. A friend of Donald Trump, Wynn donated $729,000 in “entertainers and production work” to the incoming president’s inaugural fund, a Wynn spokesman told the Associated Press. In February, the Republican National Committee named Wynn its finance chairman.

Wynn’s casino company, Wynn Resorts, controls several offshore shell companies
associated with its move into the Chinese gambling hotspot of Macau in 2006. Although Wynn had no resorts or casinos on the Isle of Man, two of the offshore
entities relating to his Macau venture were incorporated in the small
island tax haven in the Irish Sea.

Wilbur Ross is the U.S. secretary of commerce. Before his appointment by President Donald Trump, Ross was a billionaire Wall Street investor best known for buying struggling companies to turn around and sell for a profit.

Ross’ private equity firm W.L. Ross & Co, LLC, was one of Appleby’s biggest clients. Appleby administered more than 50 W.L. Ross companies and partnerships, most in the Cayman Islands.

Paul Elliott Singer is the founder of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that purchases distressed assets and has been accused of acting as a vulture fund. A top donor to Republican candidates, Singer contributed $1 million to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund. As president, Trump has called Singer a “very strong ally.”

Among Elliott Management’s holdings in tax havens across the world has been a firm called Kensington International Ltd., registered in the Cayman Islands.

Gary Cohn is President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser and the director of the National Economic Council. Before joining the administration, Cohn was the president and chief operating officer of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Cohn was the president of 20 Bermuda incorporated companies affiliated
with a fund managed by Goldman Sachs.

Real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer contributed $5 million to a super PAC that
supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and has donated to dozens of other Republican candidates and causes.

His company G.H. Palmer Associates owns more than 10,000 apartment units in Southern California, and he has been a strong opponent of affordable housing requirements for real estate developments.

Palmer is the principal of a Bermuda-based company called Malibu Consulting Ltd. In 2009, a lawyer for a Deutsche Bank affiliate contacted Appleby to
request the assistance of a “Bermuda aircraft attorney” in connection with the affiliate providing a loan to Palmer’s company.

These are but a few of the GOP Billionaires, who have avoided taxes.

While the chumps pay and pay and pay, the billionaires complain that the government spends too much on benefits for yes, the chumps.

Keep all this in mind as you read more details of the GOP tax plan.

Then decide whether, in the coming election, you will vote for your interests or for the billionaires’ interests.

It’s a “chump-or-brains” decision.

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

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The 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 (Economic Bonus)) 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