California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Congress Gets Paid While Government Shuts Down: Perfect!

by John Lawrence

A bunch of highly paid do-nothings keep getting paid while average paycheck-to-paycheck people starve. It doesn't get any better than this. The leader of the free world can't even keep its government functioning. What's wrong with this picture? Or, if you prefer, what a revolting development this is. Obviously, the founders did not contemplate this! Republicans want to reduce government spending, but they're not interested in reducing spending for the bloated defense department. They want to spend more on defense (offense), and they're only too happy to talk about all the wonderful new weapons the US is developing like the F-35 which continues to crash. Every one costs $150 million by the way. Recently a pilot bailed out of one and let it crash rather than trying to land it and save the country $150 million. And then there are the ATTACKEMS. What a clever name! Let's attack em before they ATTACKUS. Now Republicans don't want to spend any more money on Ukraine. Does that mean the US and NATO will have to negotiate a peace settlement? What a disaster - being forced to stop the killing because of an inability to ATTACKEM any more. As a last option we would be forced into peace instead of WINNING! What a disaster! No more killing? No more generals on TV telling us how disastrous this would be?

All the generals and spokesmen - and they are mostly men -  for the military-industrial complex, who only can think in terms of war and winning, cannot even contemplate that a negotiated peace settlement might be even possible. For them peace is an unmitigated disaster. Lockheed's profits might even go down. At least one thing Elon Musk has done is to show that it's possible to do great things without the venerable cost plus contracts that the military industrial complex prefers. Musk just gets paid for performance not cost plus. Cost plus contracts incentivize private industry to delay the finish date and run up costs because their profits are guaranteed to be a percentage of those costs. So, what the hell, the more something costs, the more money they make! Fortune magazine wrote: " Lockheed Martin’s $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet is 10 years late and 80% over budget—and it could be one of the Pentagon’s biggest success stories" Subtitle: "How America's biggest defense contractor turned a military spending fiasco into a business victory." You could say much the same for the bureaucracy at NASA. Musk totally showed them up with a workforce one tenth the size. Can you say "BLOATED" and by the way, "SCLEROTIC." Now the US government relies on Elon Musk for its space program. Pitiful. But at least it's saving the taxpayers money. You go, Elon!

Well, at least, SpaceX won't be shutting down although they probably won't be getting paid either. Perhaps Musk could build the next jet fighter for a fraction of the cost of the F-35. Meanwhile, part of the world is laughing at the fact that the US government can't even keep the lights on. And part of the world is crying in their beer about the fact that the US can't keep the lights on. I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to guess what parts are laughing and what parts are crying.

Off the Top of My Head

These Two Things Do Not Compute: Shutting Down the American Government and Lecturing the World About the Virtues of American Democracy

by John Lawrence

The US power structure dominates the world in terms of its military bases. The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. The US also controls the world's financial transactions. The dollar’s role as the primary reserve currency for the global economy allows the United States to borrow money more easily and impose painful financial sanctions. With the US' dominant position in world affairs, you would think that it would be impossible for a handful of representatives in Congress to shut down the entire US government. But that is exactly the situation the US and the world is in. The US is the leader in world affairs. Yet the leader can't even keep the lights on. Other countries are looking at this. Nixon called the US a pitiful, helpless giant. He said, "If, when the chips are down, the worlds most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world." So what is the US when its government shuts down? Exactly that: a pitiful, helpless giant. Its military personnel on the 750 military bases won't get paid. How's that for demoralizing the military? Service members will continue to report for duty, though they will not get paid during a shutdown. And many of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who work for the Department of Defense will likely be furloughed, says White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. Air traffic controllers will not get paid either although they will be required to report for work as well. Does that portend more close calls at airports?

The world is watching. American diplomats are fond of lecturing other world leaders about the pitfalls and shortcomings of their governments. However, their governments probably would not be caught in the pickle of a complete government shutdown. Nor would the governments of the civilized world, with the exception of the US, contemplate putting a person with 91 criminal indictments into the position of their President. The US is much in the need of updating. It is giving democracy a bad name in the sense that the national dialogue is turning into a clown show. Trump's rallies are providing entertainment for his base which is an audience that is more addicted to being entertained than it is to supporting a leader who is devoted to improving their lives. This reminds me of Hitler's rallies which were designed as pageantry for its entertainment value. It sure enthralled the German people. People are loyal to a leader who entertains them, who moves them, not one who will use the legitimate levers of government to improve their lives or to make the country and/or the world a better place. Joe Biden is the opposite. He has made the country and the world a better place despite not being very entertaining. That's why he's not leading Trump in the poles. Trump's base (cult) are excited by Trump. Biden's base, if you could call it a base, are ho hum. Oh well, I guess he's done some good, but I'm not excited. For Trump's base excitement is the sine qua non.

Getting back to the military NPR reports the following:

Separately, the Department of Defense says post and base services would be closed or limited, while elective surgeries and procedures in its medical and dental facilities would have to be postponed. Commissaries would remain open overseas but close in the U.S.

And certain Pentagon activities, like operational planning and military recruitment, will be paused.

Defense officials warned earlier this week that a shutdown would strategically "play into the hands of U.S. competitors" because it would cost time as well as money. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh called it "the worst thing that could happen."

"The U.S. military's going to continue to do its job and protect our national security interests, and of our allies and partners as well," she said, adding that a shutdown would make those efforts harder. "When you don't have your full operating capacity to be able to help with the mission, to be able to conduct an exercise or training, of course, that gets to our national security and readiness."

Kirby agrees that a prolonged shutdown could harm national security, especially when it comes to delayed management of DOD contracts for things like maintenance, logistics and procurement.

So five Republican representatives can act collectively as dictators to threaten national security as well as domestic tranquillity, and there's absolutely nothing anybody can do about it. This is democracy in action? This is the vaunted "rule of law"? What exactly is this except a fly in the ointment of democracy or in any system that purports to be a democracy and what does this say about the world's military and financial leader? Other countries are watching this spectacle.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Not Biden's Job to Reduce Inflation. That's Jerome Powell's Job.

by John Lawrence

Republicans are so stupid. They blame Joe Biden for not doing something that's not his job to do. Furthermore, the way Powell is going about his job requires him to create more unemployment, to reduce economic activity. That's the traditional way to reduce inflation. So getting rid of inflation requires more economic pain not less. Then if there is a recession, they'll blame Joe Biden, not Jerome Powell, for that. As far as house prices being out of sight for more and more people, how about blaming the hedge funds and other entities that are bidding up asset prices. Eventually houses will be unaffordable for the masses of people which will turn the American people into renters and basically debtors. Is that Joe Biden's fault or the fault of hedge finds and other cash flush investors who are entering this market? In fact they are in the process of cornering this market. Higher interest rates are also hurting would be home owners and car buyers. Is that Joe Biden's fault or Jerome Powell's fault for raising interest rates? Joe Biden has no control over interest rates. The American consumer is all about me, me, me not what is best for the country as a whole.

Biden has done more than any President since Lyndon Johnson to improve the economy with the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan and more. Nearly 11 million jobs have been created since President Biden took office – including 750,000 manufacturing jobs. It's the first time the US government has had an industrial policy. He kept the economy afloat during the COVID lock down. The US economy has been left to free enterprise for too long. With deregulation this has allowed corporate entities to pollute, to create dangerous products, to do nothing about carbon dioxide emissions.The government was just supposed to be hands off and let corporations run wild, all in the name of maximizing GDP. Well there are more important things than maximizing GDP like saving the planet from global warming. It is all ready too late to do that. It's only a question at this time of how bad it will get before some of the measures that are being taken today will kick in and save the planet, hopefully, from complete destruction. Each year heat waves and floods are getting more severe. Each year is hotter than the previous year. How important is it to maximize GDP under these conditions?

During World War II, the government made sure that the economy was completely focused on the war effort. Consumer consumption was kept low in order to support the war effort. Today with an even larger danger looming, the economy is going on its merry way with so many elements of it not focused on climate change. In fact I call it the Taylor Swiftization of the economy. Entertainment including professional athletics are very large components of GDP. Nero fiddling while Rome burned is nothing compared to what is happening today. Perhaps the energy going into these frivolous sectors should be refocused on climate change. But the American people don't even all agree that climate change is even a serious situation. They want more fossil fuels, more drilling, more pipelines, more gas production. Fortunately, some states like California are doing more like outlawing gas powered cars by 2035. However, 2035 is too late. Too little, too late is the story of the world's response to climate change. So major disasters will continue with the government's fiscal budget increasingly committed to bailing out these disasters. FEMA, by the way, is bankrupt, and insurance companies no longer want to insure.

Off the Top of My Head

The Best Democracy May Not Be One Achieved by Elections

by John Lawrence

For a truly democratic system we would have to go back to ancient Greece and the system developed by Aristotle: sortition. Sortition is the selection of a legislative body randomly by lot. If the American House of Representatives truly represented the American people it would be chosen in this way. There is no more representative way of choosing a democratic legislative body. In the ancient Greek legislative body known as the Council of 500, each representative was chosen by lot. If the American House was chosen in this way, it would a) eliminate the need for money in American politics and b) eliminate the need for political parties in American politics. People have been brainwashed to believe that only a government in which there are elections for the representatives is a true democracy. It's not the only or even the best way. Representatives chosen by lot are more representative of the American people than representatives chosen by election. So at least for the purposes of selecting this body, with sortition the two party system would go by the wayside.

So what would this say about the relative merits of a democracy in which the representative body was chosen by lot and a one party system such as the Chinese government. In other words how would a no party system compare to a one party system , and is a no party system more democratic than a one party system. Yes, certainly it would be. But is a two party system such as the US currently has necessarily more democratic than a one party system. In the Chinese system the lowest deliberative body is voted on by the people. Then there are 3 levels of elections. The first is for the municipal people's Congress which elects the people's congresses of provinces which elects the highest level the National People's Congress. If the National People's Congress were to be selected by lot, then the Chinese system would be truly democratic just as the American system would be if the House of Representatives were selected by lot. Based on this analysis one could argue that the Chinese one party system is just as much a version of democracy as the American two party system and that if both systems used sortition instead of elections by vote, both systems would be arguably more democratic. Whether a system is a one party system, a two party system or a multiparty system such as they have in Europe, the various systems should only be compared on the actual results the system is capable of manifesting and how much their various bodies reflect the wishes of the people.

The American system is currently on the brink of systemic failure due to the fact that there is such a great divisive split between the two parties.The American system notably does not always elect the best and brightest candidates. The Chinese system arguably is more merit based than the US system. In the US a clown and no nothing like Trump can be elected and cause great havoc. In fact he almost instigated a complete overthrow of the American system of democracy. People with money or financial backing stand a better chance of being elected than people of merit or good will. The First Amendment allows candidates to lie about virtually anything, and, if they can convince enough voters that their alternative facts are the true facts, they can win elections. While the Chinese system does not represent the ultimate democratic form of government, neither does the American system. Both systems could be reformed to allow more truly representative government and more successful and capable government. In fact in the US if the House of Representatives were formed by sortition and the Senate were formed by voting or sortition based on a pool of candidates that had at least minimal background, experience and educational requirements, the American system would be quite a bit more democratic than it is right now. The ideal system might be one that approaches as closely as possible to a no party system.

Off the Top of My Head

American Democracy Teetering on the Brink

by John Lawrence

So what are the possible outcomes? Let's assume Trump is the Republican nominee. Option 1: Trump is convicted and goes to jail before the 2024 election. In this scenario, Trump will probably lose the election for President. Independents will be aghast. Trump's base will not be able to organize sufficiently to carry out another assault on the seat of American democracy. There will be sporadic outbursts. In jail Trump will not have the media exposure he has outside of jail. Option 2: Trump is indicted multiple times but not convicted before the 2024 election. Trump probably still loses the national election, but is in a position as a free man to organize another insurrection, this time on a much larger level than the one on January 6, 2021. This could amount to civil war. Option 3: Trump loses the election and subsequently goes to jail. This could also result in a dangerous situation because Trump still has access to an outsize megaphone and continue to rile up his base before he goes to jail and cause trouble leading again to a possible civil war.

As long as Trump is a free man, he can continue to foment a revolution. He can continue to advocate for violence towards his perceived enemies, even those that are a legitimate part of the judicial and legal system. He is already attacking Jack Smith, the special counsel, who is prosecuting him on multiple counts regarding January 6 and also the document handling fiasco. Trump continues to insist that the American legal system is not legitimate. He continues to undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law. His followers essentially consist of a cult who want Trump exonerated irrespective of his purported criminality. As long as Trump is free, he will continue to whip up his followers and lead them to the brink of civil war. Who knows if in addition to Trump's calls for revolution, there is also a parallel movement going on to organize for a response to Trump's being convicted and put in jail or if Trump loses the election regardless of whether he has been convicted or not. Trump's followers are bound and determined to put Trump back in the White House by any means necessary. They will do whatever Trump eggs them on to do.

The United States' continued existence as a democracy cannot be taken for granted at this point. The Republican controlled House can throw the US into chaos if they decide not to authorize the budget. That in and of itself could shut the country down. There is a good chance that they will not authorize the continuance of government spending. There are many other ways that they could partner with Trump to bring the country down. Are some elements of the military also in league with Trump? Who knows. It seems that they were on January 6 when they wouldn't send troops to protect the Capitol on a timely basis. Obviously, some people in the military establishment sympathize with Trump. The influence of Fox News and other conservative media continues to amplify Trump's messages. The First Amendment guarantee of free speech enhances Trump's ability to foment a possible civil war. Trump's base who have grievances going back to loss of the Civil War combined with Trump's perceived grievances reinforce each other. An aggrieved leader and his aggrieved followers represent a volatile mixture

Trump almost succeeded in overturning the American government on January 6. Only Mike Pence stood in his way. Notably, firearms were not a part of the insurrectionists' arsenal as they invaded the Capitol. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that next time they would bring their fire arms. Could another mob do what they did on January 6, and also be successful at it? Or could they be successful at the State level? These are tenuous times during which a number of scenarios involving Trump trying to take over the American government could play out. His base will never accept the outcomes of any indictments or even convictions. How will they react when he is sentenced to jail for the rest of his life? Or will the prosecutors chicken out when it comes to conviction and putting Trump in jail. If Trump is successful in fomenting a civil war, an unlimited right of Free Speech will be largely to blame. Can Trump be sentenced to shutting his mouth?

Off the Top of My Head

How to Turn the US From a Two Party System into a Multi-Party System

by John Lawrence

Very simply by changing from a first past the post (fptp) system in which the candidate with the highest number of votes wins to approval voting. In the first past the post system a voter can only vote for one of the candidates who are running. In the approval voting system a voter can vote for more than one candidate. In both cases the candidate with the highest number of votes wins. Taking Presidential elections as an example, the fptp system generates the 2 party system. Third party candidates mess up the system because they take votes away from the party they are most closely associated with. Ross Perot took the 1992 election away from George H W Bush since some voters most closely associated with the Republican party voted for Perot while most Democrats voted for Clinton. The second choice of most Perot voters was probably George H W Bush. Perot took 19% of the vote. Clinton won with 43% of the vote, and Bush lost with 37% of the vote. If Perot had not been in the race, Bush probably would have won. If the fptp voting system had been replaced with approval voting, voters could have voted for Bush and Perot. In that case Perot still wouldn't have won, but he wouldn't have taken votes away from Bush. For example if all the voters voting for Perot had Bush as their second favorite and voted for both candidates, Bush would have had 19% more votes thus winning the election. Perot would still have 19% of the vote and Clinton would still have had 43% of the vote, but Bush would have won having garnered 37 + 19 = 56% of the vote!

Making this simple change in the US voting system at all levels would result in a flourishing of third, fourth and fifth parties. These parties would not take votes away from the winners of the election, but would give information about which alternatives were on voters' minds in addition to the platforms presented by the major parties. Eventually, one of the multitude of parties might even replace one of the two major parties. This change of voting systems would let a multitude of parties and ideas flourish instead of cleaving all voter concerns into two parties. It would result in a loss of power for the 2 major parties and do much to decrease the divisiveness in American politics. It would allow real participation by minorities in American politics. The fptp system encourages the division of American voters into two camps in a system where hate and divisiveness can flourish. Approval voting would eliminate the possibility of third party candidates being spoilers in elections and taking votes away from the candidate who would have won if the third party candidate had not been running.

The change from the fptp system to the approval system could be done very simply. Nothing else about the American system would need to be changed, not the ballots, not the counting of votes. The only change on the ballot would be from "vote for one" to "vote for more than one." This change would encourage a multiplicity of candidates and viewpoints and would enrich the American political system. Third parties would be welcomed instead of feared. It would also tend to diminish the role of money in politics as the two party system encourages wealthy donors to give to only one of the two parties. If a viable multi-party system were in place, they would need to spread their money among a multiplicity of parties. Parties with a small number of supporters would be in the position of adding to their membership and growing into major parties based on their ideas and not on their war chests. There are many other improvements that could be made to the American democratic system, but none could be implemented more simply and have such far reaching results. And it doesn't mention in the Constitution which voting system should be used.

Off the Top of My Head

Bidenomics: The US Finally Gets an Industrial Policy

by John Lawrence

The Republican policy that the government should be hands off regarding the economy is out the window. Trickle down is a failed policy. Bidenomics gets the government involved in crucial areas of the economy. The export of jobs to parts of the world where labor is cheapest is replaced with a policy of creating jobs within the US. Deregulation is replaced with regulations to protect the environment and combat climate change. The traditional Democratic alliance with unions is back in vogue. Bidenomics is all about building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up instead of from the top down. Bidenomics is about shaping the economy in a way that is propitious for the middle class and the environment. Infrastructure building is more important than accelerating the consumer economy. Putting our house in order is more important than giving away fattening goodies to consumers. People are being put to work doing jobs which actually make US society a better place instead of encouraging jobs in frivolous pursuits. This is not necessarily what the American consumer wants.The American consumer wants more money in their pockets so they can buy more gadgets and aspire to making millions as a pro athlete or an entertainer. They don't actually want to work at the good jobs Biden is creating building infrastructure or making semiconductors. CNN reported:

Trickle-down economics, which was at the heart of President Ronald Reagan’s policies and continues to be the guiding light of Republican lawmakers, typically revolves around tax cuts for the wealthy and large companies. Supporters say the benefits flow down to middle-class and working Americans, boosting economic growth more broadly. But many experts dispute the effectiveness of this practice at lifting all boats.

Biden argues that supply-side, trickle-down economics has cost jobs and hollowed out the middle class. He has long focused on that group of Americans, serving as chair of the Middle Class Task Force when he was vice president in the Obama administration.

“Folks, let me say it as clearly as I can: (The) trickle-down approach failed the middle class and failed America,” said Biden.

To fund Bidenomics, the president once again calls for ensuring the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

The problem is that now that the American people have had  a good taste of Democratic programs, they want more: Republican tax cuts. They want their cake and eat it too. They know that Republicans will have no problem with the national deficits and debts as long as they come in the form of tax cuts. So from the American consumer's point of view they have got about all they can expect to get out of Bidenomics. Now they want a tax break to boot.

The Biden administration has focused on infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductors, Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council, said. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and CHIPS Act each include direct funding and tax incentives for public and private manufacturing construction. Biden outlined how states will receive more than $42 billion in federal funding for high-speed internet service, which was part of the 2021 infrastructure law. It is aimed at bringing connectivity to more Americans and closing the digital divide. The administration is comparing it to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Act, which brought electricity to homes throughout the country. And 35,000 new projects – including roads, bridges and ports – have received funding through the bipartisan infrastructure law, the White House said.

E.J. Dionne Jr. said in the Washington Post:

Bidenomics has also gone global. One indicator is the exceptional and ongoing debate Sullivan’s speech provoked in proposing a “new consensus” to replace “a set of ideas that championed tax cutting and deregulation, privatization over public action and trade liberalization as an end in itself.” The old formulas, Sullivan argued, not only failed to address new problems; they didn’t work on their own terms.

“In the name of oversimplified market efficiency,” he said, “entire supply chains of strategic goods, along with the industries and jobs that made them, moved overseas.” The idea that freer trade “would help America export goods, not jobs and capacity, was a promise made but not kept.” He stressed the need for “a modern American industrial strategy” and the benefits of “moving beyond traditional trade deals to innovative new international economic partnerships.”

Can the dumbed down and self seeking American people even understand much less appreciate the great things that Bidenomics has brought forth? Biden has changed the narrative on taxes by repeating ad nauseum that he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year. Big idea: raising taxes doesn't mean raising taxes on everyone and a tax break does nor mean lowering taxes on everyone. The meme about raising taxes which Republicans have endeavored to attribute to Democrats ("tax and spend") and tax breaks which Republicans have endeavored to attribute to themselves has been change by Biden. "Tax the rich" has become the Democrats' motto thanks to Bernie Sanders and AOC.The immense inequality that Reaganomics has resulted in is being addressed by Bidenomics. The American people say "Ho Hum". They are more interested in spectator sports which is exemplified by the fact that news programs on TV are routinely bounced in favor of sports events. In short the American people don't appreciate Biden because they don't take the time to understand Bidenomics.

Biden has done much good for America and Americans. He is the least appreciated great President in American history. It's a reflection on the American people themselves that all they're interested in is their own personal situation. If they are well off, they could care less about social programs that help the poor. If they have a good job, they could care less about the unemployed. American have been taught to be totally selfish and not to care about the wider world or about the improvement of society in general. Corporations by law are only supposed to consider the financial well being of their share holders and nothing else. These attitudes in and of themselves preclude the concerns of minorities, whether racial or economic, because the US is a majoritarian society. In politics the majority rules. Concern about the welfare of minorities and of the world in general and in particular the environment is not a consideration. Meanwhile, global warming is taking out individual families who are victims of tornadoes or other particular manifestations of global warming on a daily basis. It has yet to sink in that perhaps concerns for larger interests than just ourselves might be a paradigm change we might have to make.

For the American people, it's not abut how much Biden has done, it's about how much have you done for me lately, Mr Biden, and, more importantly, how much more are you going to do? If there are many more carrots, then maybe I'll vote for you. Otherwise, I'll take the tax break Republicans are offering. The American national character is selfishness personified. Ayn Rand would be proud.

Off the Top of My Head

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) Says Americans Need To Stop “Electing Idiots.”

by John Lawrence

Did the Founders design a Constitution that was idiot proof? Not according to Liz Cheney. Is this a flaw that is inherent to democracy? Not necessarily although it seems to be a flaw in the American system of democracy. There are other forms of democracy that may be more idiot proof. For instance, a democracy in which there are background requirements for political representatives such as education and experience. It is important to have a President who is educated and experienced in areas related to government. The Senate and House of Representatives also should have education and background requirements. Any corporation requires education and experience requirements for jobs. Why should the government be any different? The Hill reported:

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) suggested Monday that the problem with American politics is that “we’re electing idiots.”

“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Cheney said at an event with the cultural and community center, 92nd Street Y, New York. “What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”

Cheney, who is a staunch opponent of former President Trump, offered the reflection in response to a question about whether she would run for president if polling showed that it would hurt Trump’s third White House run.

“I don’t look at it through the lens of, you know, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do,” the former congresswoman said. “I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”

Cheney, who is a staunch opponent of former President Trump, offered the reflection in response to a question about whether she would run for president if polling showed that it would hurt Trump’s third White House run.

“I don’t look at it through the lens of, you know, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do,” the former congresswoman said. “I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”

“I really believe, and I’ve never believed something as strongly as I know this, that the single most important thing for the country is that Donald Trump can’t be anywhere near the Oval Office again,” she said.

The question is how do you accomplish "not electing idiots" within the constraints of the American system? Or should the American system be redesigned to accomplish this goal? Perhaps the first item should be to educate the populace in such a way that the voting pubic contains as few idiots as possible. If the electorate is a bunch of idiots, then they will elect someone who looks like them - namely, an idiot. The second thing is that perhaps people running for office should be required to take a test, the results of which would show their knowledge of the position they aspire to whether it's the Presidency, the House or the Senate. Americans are subjected to testing all through their educational experience. Corporations that hire American workers are very interested in their test scores. They want to know whether or not the person they are hiring is an idiot. Why doesn't this apply to politicians as well? Otherwise, running for election comes down to a popularity contest and very often a blood sport. Is this the kind of person who should be running our government?

Off the Top of My Head

Is Voting a Necessary Component of Democracy?

by John Lawrence

Many people consider voting the sine qua non defining characteristic of democracy. However, the inventors of democracy, the ancient Greeks, did not. Their legislative body, the Council of 500, was chosen not be voting but by lot, in other words randomly. Arguably, random selection is more democratic since it guarantees a legislative body which actually represents and reflects all of the people. Voting, at least in the US, does not result in a legislature that reflects the actual composition of the electorate because the candidates need a lot of money even to get on the ballot. Random selection requires no money, just a complete list of all citizens. A legislature which reflects the actual composition of the electorate is more democratic than one that reflects only the composition of the moneyed class. Therefore, voting must be disassociated from democracy in the larger sense. So let's ask the question how is the Chinese legislature, the National People's Congress, chosen? It is chosen by the people by voting although the nominees are chosen by the Communist Party. It could be argued and debated how well the National People's Congress reflects the actual composition of the electorate. It could also be argued which system, the American system or the Chinese system is more democratic in the sense that the national legislative body represents and reflects the actual composition of their respective electorates. My guess is that the American two party system is only slightly more democratic than the Chinese one party system. Someone should do a study and comparison.

In addition to getting money out of politics, random selection, which is also known as sortition, would end the districting system and gerrymandering. The House would reflect the composition of the US electorate. Instead of an elaborate system of voting and majority rule, all you would need is a data base of all 330 million Americans and a program for random selection. Voting systems in and of themselves are controversial (which of the several available voting systems should be used), and majority rule is notorious for leaving out minorities.  The US system know as first past the post practically determines that the US will be a two party system. Third parties contribute the "spoiler effect," which we've seen all to often in Presidential politics, for example, when Ross Perot and Ralph Nader ran as third party candidates. They just take votes away from the party that they are closer to on the political spectrum helping the other party to win. The Chinese have a one party system and the US has a two party system which is probably only somewhat more democratic than the Chinese system if the measure of democraticness is that the legislature represents a reflection of all the people. The European parliamentary system is a multiparty system where minorities are better represented than in the US or Chinese systems, and hence, is more democratic than either of them. A further benefit of random selection us that extremists and extreme parties are unlikely to be over represented in the outcome. In fact political parties would have no reason to exist if the legislature was chosen by sortition.

Rousseau says in The Social Contract, " 'Election by lot,' says Montesquieu, 'is of the nature of democracy. ' I agree , but how is it so? 'The lot,' he continues, 'is a mode of election which mortifies no on; it leaves every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country.' "Montesquieu , by the way was one of the chief architects of society that the Founders took as an example in their design of the US Constitution. Sortition was used in the Athenian democracy. With few exceptions, all magistrates were chosen by lot, beginning with the archons in 487–486 BC; likewise the Boule (council) of 500 and the juries of the law courts were chosen by lot. Sortition is used in the American system for jury selection.

My reform of the American system would be #1) The legislature should be chosen by sortition to serve 4 year terms. Pay would be high enough to induce the average person to want to serve. The only requirement would be US citizenship. #2) The Senate would be chosen by sortition among the people who met certain educational and experiential background requirements. The term would be 6 years. #3) The Supreme Court would be chosen from among the people with even more stringent background requirements especially in law and government. The term would be 8 years. #4) The President would be chosen by means of an electoral system with an advanced method of voting like approval voting. The electoral college would be abolished. The President would serve for 4 years with the possibility of serving two terms if the people elected him again. At any level of political participation people could opt out of the pool of which otherwise they might be randomly selected. We have already seen in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump how extremists can be elected by purveying false information and outright lies creating a cult following. The elimination of political parties altogether would transform politics from the Chinese one party system, the American two party system and the European multiparty system to in fact a more democratic no party system.

Off the Top of My Head

The Dystopian American Democracy

by John Lawrence

As set up by the Founding Fathers, the mechanics of the American electoral system inevitably lead to a two party system. This is as opposed to a parliamentary democracy as exists in most other democratic nations. Third parties never make it in American democracy precisely because they take votes away from the party whose views they most closely resemble. Example: the Presidential election of 2000. Since with the American voting system, a voter can vote for one and only one candidate, voters waste their votes voting for a third party candidate who has no chance of winning. Ralph Nader ran as the Green party candidate and won almost 3 million votes, votes which most assuredly would have been cast for Gore if Nader weren't running. As it was, Gore won more popular votes than George W Bush who eked out a victory because of the antiquated electoral college system. If Gore had also won the 3 million votes that Nader received, he may have had enough electoral votes to tip the balance. These voting mechanics have enshrined what is called plurality voting or the first past the post system into law. If the approval voting system had been in effect in 2000, Gore would have won. Approval voting is a system in which a voter can cast votes for all candidates he or she approves of. That means that all those who voted for Nader would also probably have voted for Gore giving Gore 3 million more votes.

Why the two party system, which is the inevitable result of plurality voting, is so toxic is that it leads to a government like we have today in which the two parties are diametrically opposed to each other. Instead of working in the best interests of the American people, the two parties end up fighting each other for power. This produces gridlock and a seesawing back and forth regarding policy depending on which party controls which branch of government. The dystopia that results from this winner take all system is that compromise becomes impossible. All the energy goes into winning and making the other party lose. It is all about the competition between the two parties and not about finding solutions to societal problems that benefit the American people. Another factor is that the plurality system of voting at best leads to majority rule. That means that at best each party represents a majority of the American people and not minorities at all. Certainly neither party needs to seek the votes of the poorest Americans who usually don't vote anyway, and, if they did, their interests need not be served by the winning party.

The American system has become a dystopia precisely because one party is only interested in winning, and, if the other party is in power, in making that party lose the next election. They do this by denying insofar as possible that party from making any constructive changes which might benefit the American people. As the American people get disenchanted with the ruling party because it can't bring about constructive change, they inevitably vote for the other party hoping that they can do what the ruling party wasn't able to based on their campaign promises. In a multi party system such as a parliamentary democracy, a party whose only purpose is to deny the ruling party the ability to bring about constructive change and thereby gain power for itself is less likely to be able to pull this off. A center party is more likely to win. The two party system is more likely to breed two extreme parties diametrically opposed to each other with each party vying for power.

Fortunately, because of his skill and dexterous maneuvering, Joe Biden has been able to bridge a lot of gaps in getting things done for the American people. However, it wasn't without the other party's determinattion to make him fail. Republican leader Mitch McConnell said this about President Obama: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." How they endeavored to do this was to make Obama fail at everything he promised in his campaign to do for the American people. If Obama wasn't able to accomplish his campaign goals, the American people would become disenchanted with him and put Republicans back in power. This is why Republicans never compromise with Democrats in the best interests of getting good things done for the American people. They only see these things as "wins" for the Democrats and hence "losses" for themselves. On the other hand, Democrats are somewhat more magnanimous in that they will vote with Republicans some times when they are in power. Example: Democrats voted 3 times to raise the debt ceiling when Trump was in power even though they objected to the $7 trillion that Trump added to the national debt by giving tax breaks to the rich. The only reason Biden was able to accomplish anything or any American President is able to accomplish anything is when their party controls all 3 branches of government. Even then the other party can filibuster making a mockery of the idea of democratic government.

Off the Top of My Head

The Government Should Buy Out Parts of Florida Rather Than providing Money to Rebuild

by John Lawrence

Owners of real estate on Florida's barrier islands should be bought out. Climate change will continue to provide hurricanes that will wipe out homes and businesses in these vulnerable areas. It doesn't make sense to rebuild there. Rebuilding there represents throwing good money after bad. If owners' investments in real estate can be made whole, then they can rebuild or buy in some other area which isn't prone to climate change induced disasters. 7 News reported:

"SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — When Hurricane Ian struck Florida’s Gulf Coast, it washed out the bottom level of David Muench’s home on the barrier island of Sanibel along with several cars, a Harley-Davidson and a boat.

His parents’ house was among those destroyed by the storm that killed at least two people there, and the lone bridge to the crescent-shaped island collapsed, cutting off access by car to the mainland for its 6,300 residents.

Hurricane Ian underscores the vulnerability of the nation’s barrier islands and the increasing costs of people living on the thin strips of land that parallel the coast. As hurricanes become more destructive, experts question whether such exposed communities can keep rebuilding in the face of climate change.

“This is a Hurricane Katrina-scale event, where you’re having to rebuild everything, including the infrastructure,” said Jesse M. Keenan, a real estate professor at Tulane University’s School of Architecture. “We can’t build back everything to what it was — we can’t afford that.”"

Actually, it would be cheaper to buy out this real estate rather than to rebuild it along with all the associated infrastructure. Buying or rebuilding in safer areas where the infrastructure is already present eliminates the costs of debris removal and infrastructure rebuilding. Insurance companies will either go bankrupt or be devastated along with the other natural devastation. FEMA's budget will be used up trying to compensate for all the billion dollar weather disasters that are surely coming. These are no "500 year storms." That is pure fiction. These are once or more a year storms.Much of Florida will be underwater eventually as oceans continue to rise. The only thing that makes sense is to move away from the coasts in the most expeditious and least costly manner. Government can expedite this process so that home and business owners aren't forced back onto vulnerable properties and will have somewhere else to go to without losing their real estate investments.

Off the Top of My Head

Problem of American Democracy: Constitution Guarantees Freedoms Without Demanding Responsibilities

by John Lawrence

There is nothing asked of an American citizen by the Constitution. It just gives citizens all kinds of freedoms - freedom of speech, assembly etc - without saying what the responsibilities or obligations of citizens are. It is just a free lunch for citizens. They have no responsibility either to the state or to their fellow citizens. This has led to the situation where every free agent is totally in it for theirself without regard to the interests or plight of anyone else. For instance the rich have no responsibility to alleviate the suffering of the poor. The poor must independently pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is the philosophy of liberal individualism. There is no responsibility for any American to the community as a whole. The 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights enumerated the many rights which enlightened governments should guarantee to their citizens. The US guarantees the political and civil rights, but stops short of guaranteeing Article 25: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Article 25 is a step too far for the American way of life which guarantees political and civil liberties, but not economic liberties because that would encumber some better off individuals to be responsible for some less better off individuals, and the philosophy of liberal individualism promotes individual initiative without any sense of responsibility for anyone else. What's mine is mine, and no one else including the government has a right to take any of my stuff away from me and give it to anyone else even if they are starving, homeless and sick.

In 1997 the InterAction Council decided to come up with "A Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities" to counterbalance the UN Declaration of Human Rights. They stated in the introduction: "Globalization of the world economy is matched by global problems, and global problems demand global solutions on the basis of ideas, values and norms respected by all cultures and societies. Recognition of the equal and inalienable rights of all the people requires a foundation of freedom, justice and peace – but this also demands that rights and responsibilities be given equal importance to establish an ethical base so that all men and women can live peacefully together and fulfill their potential. A better social order both nationally and internationally cannot be achieved by laws, prescriptions and conventions alone, but needs a global ethic. Human aspirations for progress can only be realized by agreed values and standards applying to all people and institutions at all times."

In other words we are all in this together so it's not enough to "get government off our back." In return for the wonderful freedoms government guarantees to us, government should ask for something in return both to the society as a whole and to our fellow citizens. It's not enough to be free and equal although the meaning of equal is up for debate. The motto of the French revolution was Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. At least there was a mention of "brotherhood", Fraternite, in the French motto even if the French have argued whether or not it means that they have any responsibility to their fellow French men and women. There is a growing realization that freedom must be balanced with responsibility. Otherwise, American democracy is just a big free lunch. You get all this stuff guaranteed by the Constitution including the rule of law with an elaborate court system which protects you from bodily harm, thievery and much else, but there are no explicit responsibilities on your part. It's as if your Dad gave you the keys to the car and said, "Here take it. It's yours" without asking for anything in return.

Article 7 of the Declaration of Human Responsibilities says: "All people have a responsibility to protect the air, water and soil of the earth for the sake of present inhabitants and future generations." There is a lack of responsibility on the part of some Americans who want to maximize quarterly profits without any consideration of the environment or global warming.The US Constitution allows them to do so. It makes no demands on them in this regard or in any other regard. The American way is to seek one's self-interest without regard to fellow Americans or the environment and self-interest in most cases means to maximize profits even when the maximizer is a billionaire with more money than they could ever hope to spend. Some Constitutions not only specify rights but duties as well. The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man adopted by the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogota, Columbia specifies among other things that one has both a right and a duty to work if able-bodied.

Americans are only tuned into their rights, but not their responsibilities because the Constitution makes no demands on them in this regard. This leads to and is partly responsible for the break down of the American democratic system. Too many disaffected people feel lost in a society which basically tells them, "You're on your own Buddy. Don't ask me for help." Too many people don't want their tax money going to help the homeless, the mentally ill or those who are barely scraping by. Societal stability is not as important as protecting someone's right to own a gun. Too much freedom without responsibility can lead to the breakdown of democracy, but the US is not really a democracy. As Ben Franklin said, "It's a republic, if you can keep it."

Off the Top of My Head

Don't Be Fooled: The Chinese Communist Party Has Taken Capitalism to a Whole New Level

by John Lawrence

In 2021, Forbes listed Beijing with the most billionaires at 100 people, followed by New York City with 99 billionaires, and Hong Kong in third place with 80 billionaires. Does this sound like communism? But it is not traditional capitalism either. China has eliminated poverty among its 1.5 billion people while traditionally capitalist countries like the US tolerate large rates of poverty and homelessness. In the US in 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019. There were also 580 million people homeless living on the streets in unsanitary conditions. This is the price we've been taught that Americans have to pay in order for us to live in a free capitalist country. So what is the difference between the US version of capitalism and the Chinese version? It is basically that the Chinese central government directs the tools of capitalism while in the US there is little or no government direction. Whatever any individual can devise as a way to make money is acceptable. In China the government directs capitalist entrepreneurialism and energy. So Chinese society is much more unified; American society is much more diverse.

Stability and cohesiveness is very important to the Chinese government and Chinese society in general. That's why dissidents are cracked down upon. Their attitude is why risk the great progress Chinese society has made and is making in order that a few people can speak freely and perhaps create a dissident movement which could bring it all down around their ears. Hence the crackdown in Hong Long. Hence the crackdown on the Uighurs. Xi fears that what happened to the Soviet Union could happen to China. It could fall apart. The US tolerates unlimited amounts of free speech with the result that the US is a very unstable society as witnessed by the January 6 insurrection. The US came very close to a ooup d'etat and an overthrow of the elected government. The US definition of freedom is leading to a society which maximizes freedom at the expense of stability and cohesiveness while the Chinese limit freedom in the interests of stability and cohesiveness. Which model is better? The world is watching.

Perhaps there is a middle ground between Chinese authoritarianism and US anarchy. Is this the social welfare democracies of Scandinavia? Perhaps. While the US has divided itself into 2 tribes at total odds with each other, China has become not only very prosperous but they are all, for the most part, on the same page. They are unified while the US is divided. Perhaps China has overdone the limitation of individual freedom, but most Chinese would probably trade off some loss of freedom for the huge increase in prosperity that the average Chinese is experiencing. Would Americans trade off some loss of freedom in order to get out of the malaise they are experiencing? Even though there are more rich Chinese than rich Americans at least in terms of the relative numbers of billionaires, there are no poor Chinese while the economic divide in the US grows bigger with every passing day.

The question Americans have to ask themselves is is a society teetering on the brink of collapse worth the American definition of freedom or could perhaps a slightly less free society, say one with a corresponding ethic of social responsibility, lead to a better society in terms of a better and more humane quality of life for the greatest number of citizens? Has America taken the concept of individual freedom too far at the expense of social cohesiveness?

Off the Top of My Head

Snake in the Grass Kyrsten Sinema Sells Out to Corporate Lobbyists

by John Lawrence

Corporations, especially the pharmaceutical, can thank Kyrsten Sinema for selling out to them. The least objectionable parts of Biden's Build Back Better plan are the ones Sinema vetoed. Biden's plan would have been much better if corporate lobbyists hadn't gotten to her. But not to worry. She's set for life with probable promises of corporate board positions paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few hours "work." With Democrats like her, we don't need Republicans. She's a Republican wolf in Democratic sheep's clothing. But never fear. Biden's Build Back Better Bill will eventually pass within the next couple of weeks, and it's still truly transformational. Too bad that every Democratic Senator had effectively a veto over any provision of it. Joe Mancin was at least up front with the public about his concerns, some of which were at least plausible. Sinema sprung her demands on Biden at the seeming last minute forcing him to renegotiate the whole deal and delaying the whole process. While pundits quibble over Biden's ratings, I don't think he's too concerned about that. He knows he has a BIG DEAL or a BIG FUCKING DEAL as he once whispered to Obama. He'll go down in history as a transformational President.

So what do the Republicans have to offer? Election denialism and insurrection denialism. It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that they could spring back to life in two or maybe four years. Too bad for the rest of the world's confidence in America. Although the US decries Soviet and Chinese authoritarianism in which one leader can remain in power for a number of years, while the whole US relationship with the rest of the world could change every four, what about Angela Merkel, who remained in power for 16 years, in a putative democracy. Longevity of intent is not a function necessarily of type of government. The US is back? Biden would like to convince others it's so. But Trump has a different perspective which is that Biden's version of the US is back until he, Trump, takes over again in 2024. The US could veer wildly back and forth without any continuity whatsoever. While Democrats are doing their best to help families and bring the US into the modern world, Republicans offer warmed over conspiracy theories aided and abetted by social media. The US needs to get serious about denying Trump a chance of ever running again. In fact he should be in jail for attempting to overthrow a legitimately elected US government which is treason. Yes, the T word applies to him. The S word, sedition, as well. Yet as of now he can run again and possibly win in 2024.

I think that, after the twin Build Back Better bills finally pass, Democrats will turn their attention to voting rights. Will Sinema and Mancin go along with holding the filibuster in abeyance to get voting rights passed? That's the big question. If not, Democrats are sunk in 2022 and 2024. And so is the US as a world leader. The US will become a backwater and a latter day banana republic with an outsize military, corporate lobbyists run amuck and a fast fading US dollar as the world's reserve currency. Runaway global warming will be a given if Trump is elected again in 2024. The US will become a billionaire's paradise with unrestricted limits in economic inequality and a burgeoning homeless population that neither Republicans or Democrats seem to be able to do anything about. Rents will soar out of sight as more people live in their vehicles and on the streets without adequate sanitation. The rest of the developed world will leave the US in its dust, but they alone will not be able to solve the problem of climate change which will eventually make parts, if not all, of the earth uninhabitable. So there is a lot riding on a Federal voting rights bill overriding the Republican state efforts to gerrymander and restrict access to the ballot in order to favor the electability of Republicans.

Off the Top of My Head

US Is Not a Democracy. It's a Republic if We Can Keep It.

by John Lawrence

Benjamin Franklin said, “It's a republic, if you can keep it.” when asked if we had a monarchy or a republic. We almost didn't keep it when Trump tried to turn it into a monarchy with him as the first monarch. However, the US is not a democracy. A democracy would be a nation governed by a majority of the people. There are a lot of reasons why this is not the case. #1 States' rights: The Federal government is not a national government. It's not a central government with power over the whole nation. Because of states' rights, the US federal government is a weak form of government that shares powers with the states which can veto an administration's agenda if they feel so inclined. States can overrule the central government. A country with a strong central government can set its agenda at the national level and then pursue it without any obstructions from various states or regions or provinces. All things being equal, a nation with a strong central government will surge ahead of one with a weak central government in a competitive enironment.

#2 Representative instead of direct democracy. A representative democracy does not necessarily govern in the same way a direct democracy would. Representatives are subject to lobbying which distorts their votes and makes them represent their donors more than their constituents. Opinion polls show that a majority of Americans want gun control, affordable health care and addressing the issue of climate change among other things. Yet the US government does little if anything regarding these issues because vested interests are funding politicians to vote "No" on these issues.  #3 Gerrymandering or political party control of district boundaries. When a political party controls district boundaries they can draw the districts in such a way as to favor the electability of their party's candidate. They can also practically guarantee that their party's candidate will be elected in perpetuity.

#4 The Electoral College. The electoral college makes it possible for a Presidential candidate to win the popular vote and lose the electoral college vote and hence the Presidency. Again it's minority rule not majority rule.

#5 The winner-take-all two party system eliminates representation for minorities. The way the US districting system is set up, it is impossible for third party candidates to win. They can be spoilers though taking votes away from the party that they're closest to ideologically. A parliamentary system is more amenable to multiple parties being represented.

#6 A Constitution set in stone whose barriers to change are seemingly infinite. The Constitution can be amended but not change except for amendments. The amending process requires a two thirds vote, not a majority vote, and hence is undemocratic. Other countries have procedures whereby the whole Constitution could be changed or updated or rewritten.

#7 Lack of continuity: Elections every 2 years can change the direction of government or the government's agenda or lack thereof. #8 Gridlock: An administration's agenda can't go forward due to the filibuster. In short, while other countries are surging ahead, America has the political equivalent of constipation. Gridlock is the outcome of a divided country controlled by the minority.

Fareed Zakaria wrote in an article in the Washington Post, The decay of American democracy is real:

"One aspect of the United States’ power remains substantially diminished: its role as a beacon of democracy. Among countries surveyed, 57 percent of people said the United States is no longer the model for democracy it used to be. Young people worldwide are even more skeptical about America’s democratic institutions.

"In one fundamental way, things look worse now than in prior periods of crisis. After Watergate, many were surprised that the world looked up to the United States for facing and fixing its democratic failures. It was a sign of the country’s capacity to course-correct. But imagine if after that scandal, the Republican Party, instead of condemning Nixon, had embraced him slavishly, insisted that he did absolutely nothing wrong, settled into denial and obstructionism and proposed new laws to endorse Nixon’s most egregious conduct? Imagine if the only people purged by the party had been those who criticized Nixon?

"The decay of American democracy is real. It’s not a messaging or image problem. Until we can repair that, I’m not sure we can truly say America is back."

 

Off the Top of My Head

Without Majority Rule Is The US Still a Democracy?

by John Lawrence

The US Senate is not ruled by a majority. Arguably that makes the US not a democracy or a democracy in name only. The filibuster is an artificial rule that precludes majority rule in the Senate, and, therefore, in the US since the Senate is a representative body of the people. A majority of the people want gun control, but, because the Senate is not a democratic institution, there is no gun control. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2019 found that 60% of Americans say gun laws should be tougher. Conclusion: the US is no longer a democracy. Strong majorities of voters across party lines view access to clean water, a quality public education, adequate food, and housing as basic human rights that should be secured by the federal government. A survey by Harvard University found the following: "The right to clean air and water, for example, was considered important by 93 percent of those surveyed; protection of personal data, by 93 percent; the right to a quality education, by 92 percent; racial equality, by 92 percent; affordable health care, by 89 percent; and the right to a job, by 85 percent."

The filibuster precludes democracy. It is not in the Constitution. Neither is the right to own a gun. The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." At the time of the American Revolutionary War, militias were groups of able-bodied men who protected their towns, colonies, and eventually states. They were state based armed groups that later became the National Guard. It was these groups that were allowed by the Constitution to bear arms, not every idiot who came down the pike. Other more mature societies regulate gun ownership the way the US regulates drivers.

NPR reports:

"It's illegal for Russian citizens to own automatic and semi-automatic guns. It's possible to apply for a handgun or shotgun license, though citizens are required to provide reasons such as hunting or target shooting. Applicants face strict background checks, including criminal history, a full psychological evaluation and a medical exam. They must pass a test on firearm laws and safety. Each weapon is then registered by the police during a home visit. Police take bullet patterns, test bullets and cartridges so bullets can be matched if the gun is used in a crime. A license lasts five years, after which applicants must go through the whole process again."

The US is falling apart because groups with lots of money are lobbying Congress to perpetuate their income stream from gun sales regardless of what the majority of US citizens want. Yet the US lectures other countries about human rights. Is it a human right to own a gun? I don't see it listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. What is listed is the following:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

The controlling interests of US society are not the majority of the people. US society is controlled by wealthy interests which lobby Congress providing them with financial incentives to do their bidding. One of the main reason companies lobby Congress is to preserve their rights not to have to pay for externalities. Externalities are byproducts of the production process that pollute the environment. It would lower their profits if they had to pay for them. William D Nordhaus writes in The Spirit of Green:

"One prominent example is the activities associated with the Koch brothers and their companies. Koch Industries is a privately owned company holding companies with major environmental impacts and with revenues of around $115 billion in 2017. As reported by the Center for Public Integrity, one of Koch's holdings, Georgia-Pacific, is significantly impacted by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision on dioxin. They write that Koch has intervened 'in various regulatory proceedings to dilute or halt tighter federal regulation of several toxic by products that could affect its bottom line, including dioxin, asbestos and formaldehyde, all of which have been linked to cancer.' According to Greenpeace, 'Koch Family Foundations have spent $145,555,197 directly financing 90 groups that have attacked climate change science and policy solutions, from 1997 - 2018.'"

So it's understandable why Republicans especially don't want Joe Biden's climate change agenda to pass even though a majority (actually two thirds!) of Americans want the government to do something about climate change according to a Pew poll. "A majority of Americans continue to say they see the effects of climate change in their own communities and believe that the federal government falls short in its efforts to reduce the impacts of climate change." But since the Koch brothers and others like them have the Republican party in their pockets, the filibuster assures them that nothing will get done. And this is happening in a democracy where democracy rule supposedly prevails? The US, sadly to say, is no longer a democracy if it ever was.

Off the Top of My Head

The Solution to Gun Violence in America

by John Lawrence

The government should simply buy out the gun industry. According to Fortune Business Insights: "The global guns and accessories market size was $6.14 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $9.33 billion by 2027." So for just $10 billion or so, the US government could buy out the gun industry and shut it down except for those guns that are needed by police and the military. Without lobbying and campaign donations to Republican Congressmen, political support for guns would quickly dry up, and gun sales could be carefully controlled by the government. Throw in another $10 billion to buy back guns that are already on the street, and for a measly $20 billion the government could buy up the gun industry and get guns off the street. Or a billionaire could do it. With the government spending trillions of dollars on an annual basis, $20 billion is peanuts in order to solve the gun violence epidemic in America. It would also be peanuts for a consortium of billionaires. Bill Gates is an advocate for global health and eliminating global disease. He could singlehandedly eliminate this one.

Other countries are capable of controlling the sale, distribution and licensing of guns in rational manners. Only in the US is there a literal fury about the right to own a gun as if it were a sine qua non more precious than food or water. There have been 47 mass murders in the last month, and it will only be getting worse without control of gun distribution. Why not replace the right to gun ownership by the right to health care and the right to adequate housing? We have the world's worst and most expensive health care system with the pharmaceutical industry along with the car industry practically supporting network television with ads. It would be better to eliminate pharmaceutical ads like they used to be disallowed before Republicans made them legal. These ads have been generating a nation of hypochondriacs. Sickness is becoming a booming entrepreneurial industry. Better to encourage the American population to have more healthy lifestyles.

Sad to say but the US is becoming a second rate nation incapable of maintaining public order. Liberty has gotten out of hand. There can be too much of anything, and Republicans have doubled down on the Second Amendment despite mass violence which is draining the life and security out of the American people. No one is safe and secure any more as long as mentally disturbed people have the right to buy guns. Republican demands for liberty are also affecting the pandemic response as they demand that Americans go about their business in any way they freely choose despite the best advice from responsible experts on pandemics. Rights should be balanced with responsibilities but in the US there are no responsibilities expected of citizens. Compulsory voting, also called mandatory voting, is the requirement in some countries that eligible citizens register and vote in elections. Penalties might be imposed on those who fail to do so without a valid reason. According to the CIA World Factbook, 21 countries, including 10 Latin American countries, officially had compulsory voting as of December 2017. Instead the US is doing its best to restrict voting. It is a country getting out of whack with the rest of the world yet pretending it has the right to control the world. Even the vaunted US dollar is losing ground as other countries find workarounds to avoid US sanctions.

Compulsory public service should be required as an alternative to military service. This could be in return for free public education. The US has been turned into an exploiter's dream where everything must be paid for or people have to go into debt or people have to do without the necessities of life if they can't pay. Money talks and shit walks. Instead of a rational public order, we get sold a bill of goods about the need for a bloated military and the right to own guns when the biggest threat to the security of American lives is domestic terrorism and random nuts with guns. In short unless some things are changed, America will lose whatever moral authority it ever had. This is a fast track to second ratedness and moral bankruptcy.

Off the Top of My Head

The Caring Component of Biden's Infrastructure Plan

by John Lawrence, April 6, 2021

It's about time that the need for a caring infrastructure is addressed. Caring used to be supplied almost entirely by wives when wives didn't work outside the house. However, they did considerable work inside the house caring for children, sick relatives and elders in addition to taking care of their husband's needs. Now that most wives are required by economic necessity to work outside the home, there is a need for child care for young children not old enough to attend school. There is a need for pre-K education plus babysitting services. Older family members have special needs for care giving as well. Who is to provide for this if wives are in the work force? Rich people can pay tuition for pre-K and child care as well as hiring caregivers for older relatives or paying for senior living facilities. For poorer people, wives have to do all this themselves in addition to working to provide income for the family.

That's why Biden's initiatives provides for a caring infrastructure. However, it is insufficient. The Guardian reported:

Just as our physical infrastructure is crumbling and requires substantial reinvestment in a 21st-century economy, our care infrastructure is fundamentally broken. As the only industrialized country in the world without a national paid family and medical leave program, only 17% of our people have paid family leave through their employers. Hundreds of thousands face daunting waitlists for essential home care. Childcare is the highest household expense for families in much of the United States. And the median annual pay of childcare and home care workers is $25,510 and $17,200, respectively, leading to high turnover and reliance on public assistance.

In the past most elderly people on Medicaid that needed care giving were forced into institutional care like nursing homes. There was no comparable funding level that provided care givers for people to stay in their own homes. Biden's care infrastructure corrects this anomaly by providing money for care givers to provide care outside of nursing homes and other institutions. However, the limitation is that people who qualify for either nursing homes or home care must be on Medicaid. Basically, this means that they have no assets. They could stay in their own home only if they don't own it. If they owned it, that would be considered an asset that would disqualify them from being on Medicaid. So older people on Medicare, but not Medicaid would not qualify under Biden's "care infrastructure" initiative. People with assets like home ownership usually want to pass those assets on to their children. It represents the intergenerational transfer of wealth. That's how white people have built wealth over the generations whereas black people, who were by and large prevented from owning their own homes after WW II, are by and large renters.

Elderly renters are mainly poor people who live off of social security which hardly provides for a decent living much less the intergenerational transfer of assets once the person dies. Biden's pre-election agenda called for an uping of social security payments so that people could have a decent existence just based on social security alone. It also called for an increased amount of social security for people who had been on social security for 20 years, in other words, the really old. The Boston Globe reported:

A critical part of Biden’s campaign plan was not only raising funds for Social Security but also expanding the benefits to reduce poverty among elderly Americans. It would, for example, ensure that benefits for workers who were in the labor force for 30 years or more would be at least 125 percent of the federal poverty line. The oldest beneficiaries would also receive a bump to offset dwindling retirement savings, and widows and widowers would receive a 20 percent increase so that their Social Security benefits don’t get cut in half when their partner dies.

The reason that Biden didn't include this in his "caring infrastructure" initiative is that the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax would (in the minds of politicians) have to be raised to "pay for" it, and Biden has promised not raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 annually. Right now, payroll taxes that go toward funding Social Security are capped at the first $142,800 of a taxpayer’s income. First of all the social security trust fund is basically a hoax. Money is available for social security in the same way that money is available for COVID relief, infrastructure and even tax cuts. As Modern Monetary Theory points out, the Federal Reserve creates the money without the need of taxes to pay for it. The same is true for social security. But Biden did not want to complicate the discussion around his infrastructure plan so he left his plan for social security increases behind presumably to be brought up at a later date.

There is much talk about enlisting the help of Republicans for Biden's infrastructure initiative, but it is a not a secret that Republicans will help with nothing Democrats want to do. The working across the aisle thing is a loosely held fiction. Democrats know that they must pass all Biden's bills just with the slim Democratic majority. That gives Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the most conservative Democrat, enormous power. You can bet your booty that West Virginia will get more than their fair share of roads and bridges. He wants to not raise the corporate tax rate to 28% as Biden as suggested. Big deal! Again tax money is not required for government spending. The Federal Reserve just issues the money, and then the Treasury Department sells the bonds. What bonds can't be sold to individuals or foreign governments end up on the Fed's balance sheet. The deficit between money spent and tax money collected is irrelevant. Taxes are only relevant to reduce income inequality as long as they are targeted on the rich. The Fed controls the interest rate, and as long as it keeps it at about zero, the Federal government can keep the amount of money it spends on interest under control.

Off the Top of My Head

Unlike Trump, Biden's New Deal Will Actually Make America Great Again

by John Lawrence, April 4, 2021

GDP is the measure of national economic activity and is composed of 4 components: private consumer consumption, business investment, government investment and net of imports and exports. America's economy is 70% consumption compared to about 50% for most of our western allies. Government spending is about 17% compared to 40-50% for most of our allies. In fact for Norway, Belgium, Finland and France it's over 50%. Joe Biden's infrastructure plan will change all that bringing government spending on infrastructure both material and human more in line with the rest of the developed world. While most of our allies spend around 50% on consumption, America is primarily a consumer economy at 70%. That's about to change under Biden's New Deal. Government consumption and employment will increase while private consumption and employment will decrease. This is a good thing, but Republicans and states' rights advocates disagree. American infrastructure is falling to Third World status while Americans entertain themselves to death. Nothing has been invested and everything has been consumed. Biden's attempted change in these dynamics, which Mitch McConnell has vowed to fight "every step of the way" is a bid to preserve first world status for the US which is rapidly diminishing.

The one thing the US has going for itself right now is the fact that the US dollar is the world's reserve currency. As such the US can spend large sums - trillions of dollars in fact - without fear of the dollar losing its value. So it might as well "go big" on spending because the dollar may not always retain that status. China is becoming the world's largest economy with major spending on infrastructure not only in China, but, with its Belt and Road Initiative, around the world. Meanwhile, what the US has to offer in that regard is using its bloated military to police the world. So if you were President of your country, which would you rather have - policing or investment. The answer seems clear to many, even to many US allies. China is consistent and values stability and unanimity of its citizens. The US government is subject to radical change every 2 or 4 years with deep divides among its populace, and more and more can't be counted upon by its allies even to the extent that a sizable number of US citizens invaded its Capitol! Autocratic countries may be brutal towards political dissidents, but they would never tolerate a threat to their very existence.

Some Americans will have to be brought kicking and screaming into the Biden economy. Just as they were cavalier about wearing masks, they could care less about good jobs at good wages. They just want good beer and football games. Cruises, spectator sports and abundant entertainment is what Americans have come to expect, and they prefer that to safer roads and rebuilt bridges. They are viscerally opposed to doing anything to prevent climate change or global warming. They don't want to work hard to make America great again. They want it all given to them on a silver platter preferably by an entertaining and charismatic President rather than a plodder who has their welfare at heart. There is a looming war between states rights Republicans who want the US to remain a private consumption economy and Democratic neo-New Dealers who want government to play a larger role in investing in American infrastructure, both material and human.There will be more and better paying jobs working in government infrastructure projects than there will be working in the entertainment industry. This infuriates some people.

Taxing the rich also brings Republicans out of the woodwork to proclaim that Biden will end up taxing the middle class as well "to pay for it" even though he has said that everyone making under $400,000 a year will not pay one penny more in taxes. Republican lawmakers will chomp at the bit to naysay that bit of profundity by saying over and over on their media outlets that it is not true. The truth is that Biden wants to construct a stronger safety net while rebuilding and extending American infrastructure, and a lot of Trump supporters just don't care about any of those things. They just want to be entertained and to eat out while watching spectator sports.

Off the Top of My Head

The Stock Market is Too Big to Fail

by John Lawrence, April 2, 2021

Just as the big Wall Street banks are too big to fail, so now is the stock market. The stock market will never take another radical dive downward because the Federal Reserve won't let it. The way the economy is shaping up Treasury bonds, which hardly pay any interest, are just a safe place to store your money and also for foreign nations which need the world's reserve currency (the US dollar) to have a savings account because they need dollars to conduct business. There is no worry that the US will have to pay off the trillion dollars in Treasuries that China owns because they need those dollars to do business with the US and other nations. If they did want to dump all their Treasuries for some reason the Fed could just create the money to pay them and effectively take the Treasuries on its own balance sheet.

So the stock market is the only game in town for those who want to actually "invest" their money. There is so much 401(k) money in the stock market that that is reason enough to never let it fail. Instead it will continue on its merry way upward while the Fed keeps interest rates at approximately zero so that not much in the way of interest will have to be paid on US debt. There is no reason to fear that Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan will bankrupt the US. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the Fed can print as much money as it wants. If international investors don't want to buy this debt, it ends up on the Fed's balance sheet which is an effective black hole from which it never has to emerge.

Then why is there all this kibuki theater about "how to pay for it," the $2 trillion infrastructure plan I mean. It's just that most Americans including most Congressmen are under the illusion that a country with a sovereign currency like the US faces any constraints in paying for anything. Well, there is one constraint - inflation. This is probably of little concern as long as the money is targeted at the lower middle class an the poor which haven't seen wages rise in 40 years. The real inflation in the economy is the asset inflation that the rich are mostly responsible for. That includes the stock market and real estate. Inflation in the stock market will be carefully controlled by the Fed. We've seen that the stock market moved up even during the pandemic. The real problem is inflation in the real estate market which has made housing unaffordable for many. It continues to get worse as the extra dollars the wealthy have to invest are driving up prices. That's why it makes sense to tax the rich ostensibly to pay for the infrastructure bill. The real reason, however, is that inequality is getting out of hand in the American and the world economy. Taxing the rich is the only effective means to reduce inequality to a reasonable level. It will also help to bring inflation in the real estate market under control.

The real problem that Biden's infrastructure bill will have to deal with is changing the nature of the US economy. When the economy was in full employment under Trump, there were still 4% unemployed. 5% unemployment is considered "full employment," but that still leaves about 15 million people out of work. Biden's infrastructure plan will put those 5% back to work. It had been considered by conservative neoliberal economists that 5% unemployment was necessary to ward off inflation, but that theory has been debunked by Modern Monetary Theory. While inflation will still be a concern with all of Biden's stimulus spending, the main concern is restructuring the US economy from an entertainment economy to a constructive labor economy. Trump's economy was arguably a full employment economy (except for the 4% unemployed), but it was an economy the jobs of which were mainly in the entertainment and military industries. In other words, in my opinion, it was an economy based on false unbeneficial values. An economy based on labor participation rebuilding American infrastructure will be an economy based on necessary and fundamentally beneficial values. This might mean that some of those presently employed in frivolous industries might be incentivized to change jobs. Reducing the entertainment and military sectors while increasing those employed rebuilding infrastructure would be, in my opinion, be a good thing.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Ending the Filibuster is Necessary for Voting Reform and Other Crucial Initiatives

by John Lawrence, March 18, 2020

Voting reform at the Federal level is necessary to counter all the state efforts to restrict voting. This is as important as Biden's COVID relief bill which was passed by budget reconciliation and only needed a majority vote. It is important to note how precarious the COVID relief bill was because it got zero Republican votes. If even one of the two Senators from Georgia had not won in the runoffs, there would be no COVID relief bill or Democratic majority in the Senate. The Republican party is the party of NO. Biden's trope of "working across the aisle" is a total fiction and he knows it, but he's trying to keep it alive for appearances sake as it makes him seem more moderate. He knows that he will get no Republican votes for any legislation he wants to get passed, but he will seem less extreme if he at least keeps the idea alive. But when it comes right down to it, Biden will do what he needs to do to get his legislation passed into law. He's  not naive.

So Republican Mitch McConnell has threatened a "scorched earth" policy if Republicans ever regain control of the Senate. He even threatened to defund Planned Parenthood. Golly gee! I'll take that in return for comprehensive national voting reform including eliminating gerrymandering and overruling state efforts to restrict voting. Democrats have a lot on their agenda for helping Americans; Republicans have nothing. Here is McConnell’s complete account of the horrors that await the country were the legislative filibuster to perish:

“As soon as Republicans wound up back in the saddle, we wouldn’t just erase every liberal change that hurt the country. We’d strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero input from the other side. Nationwide right-to-work for working Americans. Defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one. A whole new era of domestic energy production. Sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn. Concealed-carry reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Massive hardening of security on our southern border.”

Jeesh, Mitch, I'm totally terrified! I say go ahead and abolish the filibuster. When you weigh all the good Democrats can do for the country against all the bad Republicans can do, the scales are tipped heavily in favor of ending the filibuster which is an archaic Jim Crow rule anyway. Any democracy worthy of the name should at least stand for majority rule. The things that Republicans are against are only manufactured pipe dreams anyway for the most part. If we have to give up Planned parenthood and sanctuary cities in return for solving the problem of global warming, I say go ahead and do it. There is so much important business that has to get done that Democrats are capable of doing. Biden learned his lesson under Obama when for 8 years Republicans slow walked him through a futile Presidency. Biden learned his lesson then although he still wants to seem moderate so he will appear to be just that. After Republican intransigence has been conclusively demonstrated, however, Biden will, as a seeming last resort, abolish the filibuster in order to get the job that he came to do done.

The For the People Act (also known as H.R. 1) is a bill in the United States Congress to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, limit partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders. This is the minimum of what needs to be done that will require ending the filibuster. Much needed and much delayed immigration reform will also require that. The question is will the US be a nation that accomplished big things or one in which nothing gets done. Republicans can threaten all they want. Their agenda is a big nothing burger. If HR 1 is enacted into law, they may never be back in power again. Their access to power is based on restricting voting rights. Democratic access to power is based on expanding them. The real question is is the United States going to stand for a real democracy or is it going to retreat into an autocracy. The rest of the world including primarily China is moving ahead while head in the sand Republicans are challenging and threatening Americans with their damaging policies. Biden and the Democrats should not take that bait, and, having learned their lesson from the Obama years, go ahead and do what's necessary to get America on the move again towards a more equitable and rational nation which makes a positive contribution in world affairs.

Off the Top of My Head

Former Energy Secretary Proposes Going to Capital Markets for Money to Upgrade Energy Grid Infrastructure: Is This Wise?

by John Lawrence, February 21, 2021

Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, proposes going to the capital markets since the government has been spending so much money on COVID relief. He suggests a public-private partnership. Evidently, Mr. Richardson, like most politicians and dignitaries, is totally ignorant of Modern Monetary Theory. The Federal Reserve can create interest free money with a few computer keystrokes while the capital markets will charge interest, and not only that. Once you enter the Wall Street casino you're subject to all the vagaries of the financial markets like securitzation, credit default obligations, interest rate swaps, betting against the success of various programs and much more. These are the kind of financial activities that caused the 2008 Great Recession and the bankruptcy of Orange County, Birmingham, Milan Italy and the misery in Greece. What's more going to the capital markets causes the same inflation risks as having the Fed create the money because inflation is caused by the amount of money sloshing around in the economy not who supplies it.

Larry Summers is worried about Biden's big spending bills causing inflation. What he doesn't get is that these bills are targeted. It's not just money pumped into the economy. The money going to states and municipalities, for example, is going to pay off debts. That holds for all the money going to families who are behind on their rents and mortgages. Paying off debts is deflationary not inflationary. Money going to unemployment insurance is just money that allows people to consume as if they had a job. That is not inflationary. Money going to businesses to prevent them from failing and putting employees back to work is not inflationary because having these businesses fail and employees without jobs is deflationary. All those flights and cruises not taken, all the money not spent going to movie theaters, all the money not spent on consumption when consumption is 70% of the economy - is deflationary. In fact there is so much deflation during a recession that that is the main worry - not inflation.

But reorienting priorities should also play a part in controlling inflation. Decreasing the trillion dollar budget of the military and military-industrial complex would help to offset inflation and pay for infrastructure repair. It would also free up the human resources needed for a build out of green infrastructure because wage inflation is caused by not enough human resources being available thus bidding up wages. The integrity of the US dollar could also be increased by eliminating sanctions on other countries. The US is using the fact of sanctioning other countries because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency causing the diminution of the use of the US currency as sanctioned countries find workarounds using other currencies. In America's Other Forever War, Peter Beinart explains that these sanctions do not accomplish anything except to hurt the people that happen to be living in the countries that are sanctioned. The chickens will come home to roost as the US dollar looses value in the international currency markets as the euro, yen and reminbi are used more for international trade. As Beinart writes, "“It is past time,” Joe Biden pledged last year, “to end the forever wars.” He’s right. But his definition of war is too narrow."

A careful analysis of Biden's spending plans  as well as reorienting current spending priorities needs to be carried out so that runaway inflation does not occur. Certainly putting people back to work is not inflationary. Federal money targeted toward paying off debts by states, municipalities and families is not inflationary. Federal money spent on infrastructure is not inflationary providing that the human and material resources are available. Since the Federal Reserve can create US dollars without the need for taxes, Modern Monetary Theory has shown and economists widely agree that the only limit on Federal so-called "deficit" spending is inflation. Stephanie Kelton has explained that Deficits Don't Matter in her book, The Deficit Myth. People like Bill Richardson and most liberal and conservative politicians need to study up on economics. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are some of the few people that already have.

Off the Top of My Head

Where Will the Republican Party Go From Here?

by John Lawrence

The Republican party is having an identity crisis. Will it be dedicated to the adulation of Donald Trump or will it be based on conservative principles? What are conservative principles? Is the US a Republic or a Democracy or an Autocracy? This whole situation comes about because of the shifting demographics of the US. Historically, the US has been based on rule by white European Americans who have been able to keep minorities including chiefly African Americans in check by various means including slavery, Jim Crow laws, domestic terrorism, red lining, exclusion from education opportunities, even unemployment which has been used by the Federal Reserve to control inflation. That is changing because now there are more educated minorities including immigrants from all over the world gaining positions of political and economic power. 216 companies on the Fortune 500 were founded by immigrants or their children.

Is it any wonder then that poor and middle class whites want to tamp down immigration and keep black people in their place which they have always successfully been able to do until now. A lot of Trump supporters are effectively saying to hell with democracy if it means a multicultural society in which we have to tolerate multiple religions and multiple ethnicities and multiple shades of skin so it's not a question for them of having a democracy or a republic or any kind of society based on some version of popular rule. They want white European American rule like they've always had. There is also the added impetus that most of the once good paying manufacturing jobs have gone elsewhere which leads to even more insularity. So Trump supporters are the real conservatives in the respect that they want to conserve a way of life in which white people and European Americans have all the advantages. They abhor a democracy in which their lifestyle, their religion and their prerogatives are not paramount.

The Mitch McConnell conservatives overlap with the Trump conservatives, but the former stand for the privileges not of the white majority necessarily but of the white elite, of the white wealthy. They are even liberal enough to let wealthy people of different colors into their club while assuring less fortunate Americans that they too, if they work hard enough, may one day gain privileged positions of power and wealth. Basically, they represent rich people and abhor the white rabble. The problem is that this branch of the Republican party is increasingly irrelevant to the problems that America and the world faces. They stand for a strong defense which has morphed into endless wars which have gone nowhere and have only made matters worse in areas of the world in which the US has inserted itself. They stand for a bloated military-industrial-intelligence complex which has proven its incompetence in that it wasn't even able to predict an insurrection at the US Capitol, much less even defend against it once the attack was underway. They have proven to be focused on the wrong problems despite having been lavished with trillion dollar budgets.

What else do "principled" conservatives stand for? Low taxes but modern economic theory has proven that government spending need not be predicated on or limited by tax receipts. They stand for maximizing the private sector and minimizing the public sector at a time when dealing with climate change and even traditional infrastructure rebuilding demands the opposite. They stand for aiding and abetting the rich which has driven economic inequality to new heights. So what would be the role of a revamped and principled Republican party? Probably just to be a Democratic party lite or a party that criticizes Democratic programs. But that wouldn't assuage the interests of most power hungry politicians nor would it excite many members of their base who demand an entertaining leader who is focused by means of dog whistle diplomacy on white power.

The Trump party is similar to the Know Nothing movement, formally known as the Native American Party (at that time meaning descendants of colonists or settlers, rather than Indigenous Americans) before 1855 and the American Party after 1855. It was a nativist political party and movement in the United States, which operated nationwide in the mid-1850s, originally starting as a secret society. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic movement. So naturally they would resent an Irish Catholic President even though now there have been two of them. Adherents to the movement were to simply reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, providing the group with its common name. Qanon anyone? Supporters of the Know Nothing movement believed that an alleged "Romanist" conspiracy was being planned to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States, and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. Sure enough sounds like the Trump base to me.

The question is will the US become a full fledged democracy and live up to its vaunted principles finally even though it traditionally never has or will it revert to some version of white European American rule by electing another entertaining autocrat. That may not be Trump who has been deplatformed from Twitter, his chief propaganda tool, and faces mounting legal challenges, but there are others waiting in the wings who will offer bells and whistles instead of sound programs that really benefit the American people as a whole. But do Americans want government based on democratic principles or neverending campaign rallies with flags, banners and chants? As my Dad used to say, we shall see what we shall see.

Off the Top of My Head

Contrary to Larry Summers Biden's Relief Bill Will Not Cause Increased Inflation

by John Lawrence, February 8, 2021

Joe Biden's almost $2 trillion pandemic relief deal will not be inflationary despite Larry Summers' opinion. Inflation occurs when there is too much money sloshing around in the economy chasing too few goods, services and human resources. That is not the case here. First of all it will reemploy the unemployed. This is a presently unused resource. Secondly, it will suck up unused or unsold goods and services funding things that are currently unfunded like child care, and thirdly, it will serve to pay off debt and replenish savings. Any money going into savings or paying off debt is not inflationary. It's deflationary in the sense that the banks will lose money due to interest they won't collect if loans are paid off. The middle class that did have savings or credit in many cases has had to use those to survive the pandemic. That's why giving money to higher earning, but not wealthy, families is a good thing. To hear some people talk only money should be given to those who are desperate and living from paycheck to paycheck. Yes, those are the families most in need who should be given money first, but higher earning families who have depleted their savings or gone into debt need to be resuscitated also.

So here is what Larry Summers says about inflation:

"First, while there are enormous uncertainties, there is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability. This will be manageable if monetary and fiscal policy can be rapidly adjusted to address the problem. But given the commitments the Fed has made, administration officials’ dismissal of even the possibility of inflation, and the difficulties in mobilizing congressional support for tax increases or spending cuts, there is the risk of inflation expectations rising sharply."

Summers fails to take into account the deflationary effects of the relief bill. Money going to states and municipalities will actually be deflationary because much of it will be used to pay down debts and loans. Many state budgets are in horrible shape and employees such as police, librarians and firemen have been laid off. People paying back rents and mortgages will have a deflationary effect on the economy. People on the lower end of the economic spectrum who are living paycheck to paycheck will be able to get a little ahead and also save. This will not add a lot to inflation. Also money can always be withdrawn from the economy by taxing the rich, those who actually added to their wealth and income during the pandemic. This is the only reason that taxes might need to be raised because the US government has the ability to spend without raising taxes. The only reason to tax would be to fight inflation and those taxes can be targeted towards wealthier families and individuals. The Federal Reserve has not been able to achieve its target rate of 2% inflation recently despite maintaining almost zero percent interest rates. It wants more money sloshing around in the economy.

There are other ways to suck money out of the economy to offset inflation. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) recommends Medicare for All which would result in much less money spent on health care while providing better health outcomes. This would be deflationary which would counteract any inflationary propensities of government deficit spending. Conventional economic thinking is that there is a tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. The more people unemployed there are, the more inflation is diminished. Therefore, full employment as defined by economists is not really employment where everyone is employed. It is that level of unemployment which just keeps inflation in check. However, according to "The Trade-off between Inflation and Unemployment in an MMT World: An Open Economy Perspective" by Emilio Carnevali and Matteo Deleidi, MMT it is contended that inflation "occurs when the system reaches the point of full utilization of its productive capacity, both in terms of capital utilization and in terms of availability of workers. At this point, the government should curb inflation forces cooling down the effective demand. This is another fundamental task of taxes." As long as there is unused capacity in human or production terms, increased employment will not be inflationary. So Larry summers need not worry that putting all those unemployed people back to work will lead to inflation.

Biden's putting a $15.00 an hour minimum wage in the relief bill is also what MMT advocates in relation to a Federal job guarantee. Real full employment at a minimum wage of $15.00 an hour does not need to be inflationary especially if it is in areas that don't compete with already employed workers. Biden's relief bill will have the effect of putting almost everyone to work with at least an hourly pay of $15.00 an hour. People who are living paycheck to paycheck and employed at $15.00 an hour are not going to contribute to inflation since their demands on the economy are those that can be easily accommodated by existing production and easily increased production. Deficit spending is not a problem. Former Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan said, "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default." So the real limit on government spending is inflation which can be controlled by taxes on those sectors of the economy which are not easily upscaled to provide more supply.

There is much unused capacity in the current US economy both in human and material or physical terms. People should be put back to work with a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour. A follow-on bill that would address infrastructure rebuilding and a Green New Deal also needs to be done. Resources may have to be managed by government to control inflation, but the important thing is that work needs to be done in these areas and people need to be put back to work. Inflation can also be offset by the deflationary effect of withdrawing funds form a bloated defense sector.

Off the Top of My Head

Bernie Sanders, Budget Reconciliation and Modern Monetary Theory

by John Lawrence, January 18, 2021

Joe Biden will have no trouble from Congress in passing his $1.9 trillion relief bill. That's because Democrats control all 3 branches, and the filibuster is neutered due to "budget reconciliation." This allows a spending bill to be fast tracked through Congress without the possibility of a filibuster. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "The Senate can consider and pass reconciliation bills relatively quickly and with only a simple majority, rather than the three-fifths majority often needed for controversial legislation. That’s because reconciliation legislation isn’t subject to filibuster. Under general Senate rules, legislation can be stalled by virtually unlimited debate and the offering of numerous amendments, with a three-fifths majority vote required to invoke “cloture,” thereby limiting debate and blocking non-germane amendments. For a reconciliation bill, however, the Congressional Budget Act limits Senate debate on the bill to 20 hours and limits debate on the subsequent compromise between the two houses to ten hours."

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has shown that deficits don't matter. At least George W Bush didn't think so when he used the budget reconciliation process to give huge tax breaks to the rich which significantly increased the deficit and reduced income to the Federal government from taxes. The use of budget reconciliation did an end run around PAYGO which requires the Federal government to balance its budget and the debt limit which also constrains Federal spending. Both conservatives and liberals will be enthused over the fact that MMT proclaims that either tax reduction or government spending is good for American society (up to a point) even though the debt limit or PAYGO may be violated. This is because government is effectively adding money to the private sector which drives economic activity.

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are very familiar with not only budget reconciliation but also MMT because one of its chief adherents, Stephanie Kelton who wrote the book, The Deficit Myth, previously was a Senate advisor to Bernie on the Senate Budget Committee. On December 26, 2014, Kelton was designated as Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee, a post that she held in 2015 and early 2016, when she left that position to become an economic advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign. So the American economy is about to get a shot in the arm that will mostly benefit poor and middle class people (whereas the Bush tax cuts primarily benefited the rich) much to the chagrin of conservatives that hold to the idea that government deficit spending should only benefit the rich through tax cuts.

MMT contends that, since the Federal Reserve creates money by keystokes on a computer and the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the US government can never run out of money. Treasury bonds can always be sold to cover deficits, and, if they can't be sold to the general public, they will end up on the Fed's balance sheet where they may remain forever as an accounting entry. Even the interest paid on Treasury bonds, which is now approximately zero, is not a consideration. Interest on Treasuries owned by the Fed is remitted to the Federal government anyway. So now is the time for massive spending by the US Federal government to 1) expedite recovery from COVID; 2) jump start the economy; and 3) expedite a global response to global warming by converting to renewable energy on all levels including:

"replacing fossil-fuel engines with electric in all public and private transport, super-insulating buildings and replacing inefficient HVAC systems, establishing regional photo-voltaic micro-grid electric networks, replacing gas cooking ranges with electric induction units, buying regenerative-produced farm products and 'meatless meats', replacing all small engine appliances and tools with battery electric power"

And this is not to mention that solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy need to replace fossil fuel electric generating plants.

There is no time to lose. The incoming administration has a lot on its plate. In addition to that they have to run an impeachment trial in the Senate. Let's hope it doesn't slow down any of Joe Biden's initiatives. With Bernie as the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, armed with a knowledge of MMT, we can look forward to restoring the US' standing in the world community as well as restoring an economy that works for the poor and not just the well heeled, getting the pandemic under control and mitigating climate change. Thank you Bernie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of American Consciousness

by John Lawrence, January17, 2021

Is it any wonder that a culture that celebrates the military and identifies patriotism with the American flag has generated a movement to over throw American constitutional government? Most of these people had their mindsets processed through the military establishment or through the military-industrial complex where the processing is just as military oriented. This combined with a perception that the US is becoming a multicultural, instead of a white oriented, society is enough to set them off. Also the state of American mental health is at a low ebb not least caused by the pandemic and the anger generated by the necessity of closing down small businesses or even with the perceived loss of freedom from a mandate to wear masks! The people chanting "USA. USA" and carrying multitudinous flags are the type of people whose notion of patriotism has to do with America being the Number One nation of the world, is identified with American power backed by the world's largest military. These are not people who served in the Peace Corps.

For example the Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia organization. The group describes itself as a non-partisan association of current and former military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath that all military and police take in order to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the group as "heavily armed extremists with a conspiratorial and anti-government mindset looking for potential showdowns with the government." The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists the group's founder as a known extremist and describes his announced plans to create localized militia units as "frightening". According to the SPLC, the group espouses a number of conspiracy and legal theories associated with the sovereign citizen movement and the white supremacist posse comitatus movement.

The bloated US military establishment is funded at a level that is ten times greater than the world's next largest militaries combined. In 2019, the United States spent $732 billion on national defense, which was more than the next 10 countries combined. So it's likely that the mindsets of the Capitol rioters have been processed through an American establishment that encourages their particular notion of patriotism which deemphasizes the idea of democracy and emphasizes xenophobia. It aspires to return to those days when the US was a white dominated country and rues the day that the demographics have changed toward a multicultural one. The American military establishment itself is an anachronism. When you add in the money spent on the US intelligence agencies and the nuclear program which is located in the Department of Energy, not in the Defense Department, the US spends about a trillion dollars a year on its defense establishment and yet it was impotent to prevent a mob of hooligans from taking over the US citadel of democracy - the US Capitol. Clearly our priorities are out of whack. Any ordinary 5th grader could have seen that a Trump rally numbering tens of thousands on the same day that Pence was supposed to legitimate the election results, after lies had been perpetrated ad infinitum that the results were not legitimate, could have been a disaster which it turned out to be.

Democracy cannot prevail without an educated citizenry yet the question must be asked: what kind of education? “If we needed a reminder of the fragility of our democracy, we got one,” said Andrew Delbanco, president of the Teagle Foundation, which promotes liberal arts education. “In the long run, the only force that can save democracy is an educated citizenry -- citizens, that is, who know enough to resist the kind of lies and incitements spewed out by the current president and his enablers.” But the US educational system does not emphasize an education in the humanities. It emphasizes the learning of technical knowledge and skills with an eye on innovation, entrepreneurship and potential profit. You too can invent some product and make a billion dollars. High school graduates are confronted with basically two choices: they can gain a college education while going deeply into debt or they can go into the military where they can get a free college education and even a pension after 5 years of service plus numerous other benefits. Which makes more sense? Young people are funneled into the military which is a command and control structure based on the most powerful leader at the top. Their mindsets are then prepared to want the same thing in civilian society. Trump gave it to them.

Clearly the people who carried numerous flags and chanted "USA. USA." are also of the mindset to chant "We're Number One. We're Number One." They are not the kind of people that want to live in a world where they cooperate with other people, perhaps of a different background or ethnicity, or a world based on US cooperation with other nations. They want to be part of a world in which the US dominates other nations, and the most powerful among us dominate and lead civilian life, just as the most powerful leaders are elevated to the highest ranks in the military and exert unquestioned command over those lower on the totem pole. This is the American mindset that the rioters demonstrate. This is a military consciousness based on American exceptionalism and white supremacy. They can't stand the fact that black and brown people are ascending into positions of power in American government and the world, that there has been a demographic shift in American society that does not favor them and that they will have to live in a more progressive society.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy

by John Lawrence, January 16, 2021

My Dad taught a course once with the above name. The major problem now is social media. Social media allows like minded folks to find each other, and, if they are the type that wants to overthrow the government, social media allows them to organize. In addition the First and Second Amendments enable them. Free Speech must be limited and those limitations need to be made clear and evident. As for the Second Amendment, it has to be made clear that this doesn't give gun owners carte blanche. It's ridiculous that they should be able to open carry inside a state Capitol. As for social media, their algorithms encourage the gathering of like minded domestic terrorists in the same way it allowed ISIS to conspire and attract disaffected Muslims.

Facebook in particular has allowed white supremacist and domestic terrorist groups to find each other, conspire and flourish. They encourage like minded people to "friend" as many people as possible. Then if one of them makes a cleverly hateful or conspiratorial poster, they can "share" it with everyone in their group of friends. Even a Russian hacker could put up a hateful poster and share it among hundreds or thousands of people. The more people it's shared among, the more Facebook brings eyeballs to their app, and the more money they make. Facebook's profits are predicated on an advertising model in which they get paid every time a person clicks on their app. People are routinely notified by email and other means that one of their "friends" has posted something even though their friend may only have "shared" it. Empty headed sympathizers of domestic terrorists or white supremacists have only to share someone else's original creations. Meanwhile, Facebook doesn't want to diminish their profits by either changing their highly profitable algorithms or hiring more people to police their site and take down hate speech, untruthful conspiracy theories or the organizing of domestic terrorists. That would diminish their profits.

Time magazine reported:

"At a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security in September 2019, Soufan urged lawmakers to take the threat more seriously. The following month, 40 members of Congress signed a letter calling—unsuccessfully—for the U.S. State Department to designate Azov [ a right wing group based in Ukraine] a foreign terrorist organization. “Azov has been recruiting, radicalizing, and training American citizens for years,” the letter said. Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, later confirmed in testimony to the U.S. Senate that American white supremacists are “actually traveling overseas to train.”

"The hearings on Capitol Hill glossed over a crucial question: How did Azov, an obscure militia started in 2014 with only a few dozen members, become so influential in the global web of far-right extremism? TIME, in more than a dozen interviews with Azov’s leaders and recruits, found that the key to its international growth has been its pervasive use of social media, especially Facebook, which has struggled to keep the group off its platform. “Facebook is the main channel,” says Furholm, the recruiter.

"In a statement to TIME, Facebook defended its recent attempts to deal with the proliferation of right-wing extremists, saying it has banned more than 250 white-supremacist groups, including Azov. “As they evolve their efforts to return to the platform, we update our enforcement methods with technology and human expertise to keep them off,” the statement said."

Well, I guess Facebook isn't trying hard enough. It doesn't want to change its lucrative model and the lucrative and profitable algorithms that have made them billions of dollars. What was purportedly supposed to be a platform for sharing family pictures among real actual friends and perhaps original free speech has become a model that's used by groups seeking to organize to overthrow governments. Facebook and YouTube played a role in creating, aiding and abetting ISIS. As the story continues:

"[Azov adherents] were not the only extremists to embrace social media in 2014. When the Islamic State declared a caliphate in the Middle East that year, it began posting propaganda on social networks—mashing together memes, religious verses and scenes of gratuitous violence. The approach took the platforms by surprise, and for a time the caliphate was able to lure a class of disaffected young Muslims to fight. But by 2017, both Facebook and YouTube had developed algorithms to detect Islamic extremist material, after facing significant pressure from Western governments to act.

"No government, least of all that of the U.S., put similar pressure on social media platforms to stamp out white supremacy. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was that many counter-terrorism agencies equated terrorism with Islamic extremism, allowing white supremacy to fly under the radar just as social media platforms like Facebook were giving the movement access to a bigger audience than ever before. “In a way, Facebook tracked the failed counter-terrorism policies of the Western world,” says Heidi Beirich, the director of an advocacy group called the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

"In its statement to TIME, Facebook said it began using its algorithms to detect Azov content after designating it a dangerous organization in 2016. But well after that date, members of white-supremacist groups, including Azov, were still able to evangelize on the platform.

"In some cases, Facebook’s algorithms actually nudged users into joining these groups. In an internal presentation in 2016, its analysts looked at the German political groups on the platform where racist content was thriving. They found that within this segment of Facebook, 64% of the people joining extremist groups were finding them through the platform’s own recommendation tools. “Our recommendation systems grow the problem,” the analysis states, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal that cited the internal document. In its statement to TIME, Facebook said the report was limited in scope and suggested the findings were misleading. It said it had adjusted its algorithms to stop pushing people toward known extremist groups."

Facebook has allowed right wing hate groups to proliferate on its platforms while doing too little, too late to eliminate their presence. It and other social media giants need to be regulated by government in order to rid the world of the threats to domestic order and constitutional government that they represent. “Because this material was allowed to proliferate so long, in particular on Facebook, we now have thousands, millions of people who have been sucked into the world of white supremacy and other forms of extremism,” says Beirich. “That problem now exists. That’s the fallout from not having acted originally.” Meanwhile, social media allows "friends" to schedule "events" that may or may not be gathering places for domestic terrorists and white supremacists. Friends, indeed!

Off the Top of My Head

My Horse, My Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse

by John Lawrence, January 9, 2021

Only in Trump's case: My Twitter Account, My Twitter Account, My Kingdom for a Twitter Account. Trump has been emasculated. He's been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Shopify and God knows what else. As well he should be. This guy was not so much a President as he was a Tweeter-in-Chief and rabble rouser. He roused a lot of rabble a few days ago when he almost had Congress persons killed and taken hostage. Who thought it was a good idea to have a rally on the day the votes for the next President were to be certified? Well, Donald Trump of course. He knew what he was doing. It's just that his doofus supporters were inept at coup planning or the outcome might have been entirely different. Trump, Rudy Giuliani ("trial by combat"? he was wrong and, according to his own words, has been made a fool of and should go to jail) and Don Jr should be criminally implicated for inspiring to riot. Trump should be criminally implicated also for not calling out the National Guard till it might have been too late. It seems that only he had the authority to do so, and he was allowing sufficient time for his acolytes to do their dirty work.

Joe Biden definitely has his work cut out for him. He has to deal with a global pandemic which may be mutating. He has to deal with 40 years of neoliberal economic policies which have made the rich richer and the poor homeless. And he has to deal with a cult of domestic terrorists. To those who think that China, Russia and Iran are the problems, I've got news for you: the American people, a huge contingent of them, are the problem. Gun violence is the problem. Trillions of dollars wasted on a sitting military, on the grounds that we have enemies who justify this, is the problem. The policies of George W Bush who caused millions of deaths in the Middle East with the result of ongoing chaos is the problem. It's enough to make your head spin. While the US is in chaos as a society, the rest of the world is moving forward. While Joe Biden must play catch up, the rest of the world is moving ahead. While much of the US citizenry is composed of cultish dingbats, the rest of the world are very clear eyed by comparison. While the US culture and militarization of mindset is descending into a cesspool of self indulgence, people in the rest of the world are using their brains and feelings of compassion for their fellow inhabitants of earth to move ahead. While religious bigots use Jesus as an excuse to do dastardly deeds in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan has always done, the rest of the world is coming from a more enlightened attitude toward ethics and morality, religion or no religion.

The result is that the US has become the equivalent of a Third World country with an outsized and bloated military. Pride goeth before a fall, and the US, if it cannot get its act together, will go the way of the Roman Empire when it descended into chaos. The best the US can hope for coming out of the putrefaction of the Trump era is to be a good partner with the rest of the world as we solve enormous problems including climate change and poverty. No more yelling "We're Number One" when clearly a significant number of us are spoiled brats and worse. Let's turn the military culture into a peace culture. Let's take megaphones away from demagogues the way Twitter has denied Trump his Twitter account. Let's police social media.

Social media has not ennobled the American people; instead it has allowed a large number of Americans to be turned into a cult the way radio allowed Hitler in the 1930s to encultify, to coin a word, the German people. Cults demand that people pay obeisance to a leader. Kim Jong Un is sitting there thinking that the US is just as big a cult as North Korea. The remedy for this is that people have to be educated to think critically and not to follow some powerful figure with a huge megaphone whether it be Hitler, Mussolini or Donald Trump. Trump's megaphone has been taken away the way a parent takes away a child's favorite toy if he or she misbehaves. Trump's following have a militarized mindset. I would lay dollars to doughnuts that most of them have served in the military the way Ashli Babbit, the rioter who was shot, did. Perhaps if young Americans were required to do two years of national service or service in the Peace Corps instead of being incentivized to become Marines, sailors and airmen, attitudes would change. Instead of their minds being molded to taking commands from superior officers, they might develop an alternative mindset in which serving the poor and unfortunate of the world would be their highest priority.

The US has become a degenerate society, composed of unthinking followers of a strongman who had promised them that they're number one, Americans are number one and we're the greatest society and nation on earth. This is misguided thinking doomed to failure. This is the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of which had become a bunch of degenerate spoiled brats. There are good people here of course. The new administration represents a great many of them. There are many changes that need to be made in US society that they will try to change. It will be a sisyphean effort. Much of what has been seen as essential to American culture will have to be discarded and we will have to join the rest of the world's nations humbly in a cooperative effort to combat global warming and create a culture of love, peace and compassion.

Off the Top of My Head

We Have Met the Enemy, Sir, And It Is Us

by John Lawrence, January 8, 2021

Why are we spending a trillion dollars a year on a defense establishment when the biggest threat to the republic is domestic terrorists? The failed coup attempt by inept Trump supporters could have ended a lot worse. Congress persons could be dead. Vice President Pence could be dead. Hundreds of Trump conspiracy theorists could be dead. The Capitol could have gone up in flames. And they will probably give Trump a slap on the wrist. He needs to go to prison. In other countries failed coup attempts end quite differently. The best outcome so far is the suspension of Trump's Twitter and Facebook accounts. It needs to be made permanent. Social media is responsible for spreading Trump's lies and conspiracy theories. They have profited from spreading lies.  Everything connected with Qanon should be taken down and accounts canceled. These white people (were there any blacks or Latinx in  the insurrection) need to be reeducated. I wonder if the Chinese have any room in their reeducation camps for the Uyghurs?

During the Jim Crow era in the South, African Americans by design occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder. The next rung up were people other southerners referred to as "poor white trash." The poor white trash were the most avid racists and white supremacists because their only point of pride was that they were better than African Americans. They did the dirty work for the Ku Klux Klan. Basically, Trump supporters and especially those that broke into the Capitol building are poor white trash. I have called the Republican party the WPP - White People's Party - and it's evident that that is what it really is. It remains to be seen whether they will remain loyal to Trump, but he has certainly exploited their grievances and pandered to their racism, white supremacy and demands that they be given supremacy over blacks, Latinx and immigrants. They are one rung up the ladder from minorities and immigrants, and they have demonstrated that they will go to great lengths to stay there just like the poor white trash of a foregone era.

Social media needs to be reigned in. The internet at this point has done more harm than good when you consider the hacking of government secrets and the harm social media has done in spreading conspiracy theories, falsehoods and lies. In the early days of the internet I taught a course at Palomar college. In our discussion I remember there were several layers of protocol that the internet was supposed to provide. One of them was security. Security then was mostly ignored by commercial software developers because it subtracted from their profits and didn't add to the commercial appeal - the bells and whistles - of the product. They need to go back and redesign the internet from scratch making security the number one concern. As far as social media is concerned, it needs to be tightly regulated by Congress with Federal authority to take down websites and cancel social media accounts. We now have seen a demonstration of what can happen when we let these wahoos run rampant. People exploit other people for profit, and even though that has been the American way, it needs to be stopped. Cults need to be taken down from social media. Free speech needs to have limits. So far this has been ignored, and it has been at our peril. It's a miracle that only one policeman was killed in the insurrection. What if the entire Congress had been taken down. There was practically no police presence and certainly not in the numbers required to withstand the mob that was incited to riot by Trump.

Hopefully, America has been chastened. Hopefully, this near coup has been a wake up call. Some of the people most likely to benefit from Joe Biden's initiatives are Trump supporters whether they know it or not. Of course they will have to occupy the same rungs of the ladder as minorities and immigrants, and this is what this latter day poor white trash of the WPP will hardly consent to do. Federal law makes it a crime to engage “in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof.” Someone who violates this statute faces a fine and up to 10 years in prison. Perhaps while these domestic terrorists are serving their 10 year jail sentences, they can be reeducated. At the very least their social media accounts should be taken down, and Trump should never be allowed to Twitter again.

Off the Top of My Head

They Should Have Seen It Coming. What Happened Yesterday Was a Failed Coup Attempt.

by John Lawrence, January 7, 2021

Miraculously, very few people were hurt. The inadequate police force was totally overwhelmed. Why wasn't the National Guard there in the first place? Why did it take hours for additional police to show up? The rioters could have taken over and held the Capitol if they had had weapons. They could have taken Congress persons hostage. These guys are Second Amendment advocates. Each of them could have had a gun under their winter coats. A good question is why didn't they? I'm assuming Trump's intention was a coup, but it failed because of ineptness on the part of the leaders. It might have been a dry run for January 20. Why are our leaders so naive? Why is the decision to activate the National Guard up to the President who had to be "convinced" to call up the Guard. Really? He was the one inciting the riot in the first place. Why would he call in troops to disperse it? The only way he would want any troops there is if they were loyal to him and were there to protect and enable the rioters. Remember the military presence at the Black Lives Matter movement when Trump wanted to cross the road and hold up a Bible in front of a church. Where were the helicopters yesterday? Why doesn't the Mayor of Washington DC have the authority to call in the National Guard?

January 20, the day President elect Biden is inaugurated, should see a sufficient police and military presence to insure that everything goes according to plan without the threat of disruption by any person or group. The perimeter for the event should be extensive and well guarded. No fooling around. It is a travesty that people were able to get inside and rampage in the Capitol building putting the lives of Senators, Congress persons, staff people, media and the vice President at risk. These rioters had been egged on by President Trump, Rudy Giuliani who called for "trial by combat" and Don Junior. "It should be a message to all the Republicans who have not been willing to actually fight, the people who did nothing to stop the steal," he. said at a "Stop the Steal" rally on the National Mall. "This gathering should send a message to them: This isn't their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump's Republican Party."

I half expected Trump to come on TV, proclaim martial law, suspend the Constitution and declare the election invalid, as troops, loyal to him, held Nancy Pelosi hostage on her knees and blindfolded. This is how coups are done, but, fortunately, the ineptness of the planners contributed to their not being able to go all the way. Also the fact that Trump didn't have any military units loyal to him, although he has put people loyal to him in important positions in the Pentagon, doomed Trump's coup attempt. In the final analysis I guess some people in important positions took their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution more seriously than their loyalty to Trump.

Now it's up to the FBI to track down all those people who invaded the Capitol and give them lengthy jail sentences. They have tons of visual records from cameras in the Capitol, and they have hotel records although a lot of them stayed at Trump's hotel. They probably have already destroyed those records. A lot of them flew there so they have those records. It's a credit to the Congress persons that they reconvened and got their business done even though they had to stay there most of the night. The election of President Biden has finally been certified. What an excruciating ordeal! By the way, Biden should not keep saying in regard to the rioters, "That's not who we are." The question is who do you mean by "we", Mr. President elect? Obviously, it is who some of us are. There are now two classes in America who are at war with each other. It has nothing to do with capitalists and proletarians. It has to do with those who have the decency of Biden and his followers and those who are basically latter day Ku Klux Klanners and white supremicists, who also by the way used the slogan "America First".

Now we have to be concerned about January 20. As Yogi Berra said, "It's not over till it's over."

Off the Top of My Head

Good-Bye Mitch McConnell: Democrats Win Control of Senate. Now They Need to Get Rid of Filibuster to Get Anything Done.

by John Lawrence, January 6, 2021

Nothing turned off GOP voters more than seeing their hero call for a $2000. payment to individuals while Mitch McConnell stood there on the Senate floor and said repeatedly, "Object. Object." Jon Offoss told his supporters that, if he were to be elected and Democrats controlled Congress, Biden had promised to implement the $2000 payments. That would be incentive enough for many Republican voters, especially the non-rich, to vote for a Democrat. Thank God, Democrats will control the Senate and the Roadblocker-in-Chief, will not get the chance to block all progressive Democratic legislation coming forward from the House in the next 4 years. Now there is one more potential roadblock that the Senate has the ability to do away with: the filibuster rule. Meanwhile, on the day Joe Biden is certified by the Congress, Trump, while completely neglecting the fact that yesterday the most people ever died from COVID, is holding another shit show and super spreader event in Washington so his supporters can get off on their collective anger that their hero wasn't reelected in a free and fair election. By the way I noticed in the excellent CNN film about Jimmy Carter (Rock and Roll President) that the Ku Klux Klan in white robes protested openly at one of his campaign events and one of them was carrying a sign, "America First." So that's where Trump got the idea for that slogan.

Even when Democrats gain control of the Senate, opposition party senators can filibuster the majority’s agenda. That means that any one Republican senator can filibuster any progressive piece of legislation that Joe Biden and House Democrats put forward including the Green New Deal, or more appropriately - the Biden New Deal, a public option for Obamacare which would allow anyone to choose Medicare, the elimination of part or all of student loan debt, $2000 COVID relief payments to most Americans and more, much more. The filibuster is not part of the Constitution; it is simply a rule of the Senate which can be changed by a majority vote. Eliminating the filibuster has been characterized as the so-called "nuclear option." Wikipedia notes:

"According to the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Ballin (1892), Senate rules can be changed by a simple majority vote. Nevertheless, under current Senate rules, a rule change could itself be filibustered, requiring two-thirds of senators who are present and voting to end debate. (This differs from the usual requirement for three-fifths of sworn senators.)

"Despite the two-thirds requirement described above being written into the Senate rules, any Senator may attempt to nullify a Senate rule, starting by making a point of order that the rule is unconstitutional or just that the meaning of the rule should not be followed. The presiding officer is generally expected to rule in favor of the rules of the Senate, but under rule XX, "every appeal therefrom shall be decided at once, and without debate" and therefore by a simple majority as there is no need for a vote on cloture.

"This happened in 2013, when Harry Reid of the Democratic Party raised a point of order that "the vote on cloture under rule XXII for all nominations other than for the Supreme Court of the United States is by majority vote". The presiding officer overruled the point of order, and Reid appealed the ruling. Mitch McConnell of the Republican Party raised a parliamentary inquiry on how many votes were required to appeal the chair's ruling in that instance. The presiding officer replied, "A majority of those Senators voting, a quorum being present, is required." Reid's appeal was sustained by a 52–48 vote, and the presiding officer then ruled that the Senate had established a precedent that cloture on nominations other than those for the Supreme Court requires only a simple majority. On April 6, 2017, that precedent was further changed by McConnell and the Republican majority, in a 52–48 vote, to include Supreme Court nominations."

Long story short. Democrats can eliminate the filibuster if they really want to. And they really need to do that because the Republican game plan will be to block all progressive legislation by means of the filibuster. Even without Mitch McConnell as chief roadblocker, Republicans will stymie Joe Biden and block all his initiatives. The result is that Biden's initiatives will go nowhere. It would be a total waste of Democratic power now that they have it. Republicans have shown no hesitancy to use their power to the full extent without any pretense of cooperating or compromising with Democrats. Now that Democrats have the power, they should use it starting with getting rid of the filibuster rule. Nobody knows more - from personal experience actually - than President Obama about how the filibuster rule can impede social progress. Republicans used it to effectively neuter Obama during his 8 year Presidency. Washington Post reported:

"Former President Barack Obama called on Thursday for eliminating the filibuster, joining a growing chorus of Democrats who portray the Senate’s signature procedural weapon as an obstacle to social progress that must be abolished if the party captures the Senate and White House.

"The appeal by Mr. Obama to do away with a tactic that Senate Republicans used to thwart him and the Democratic agenda for much of his eight years in office came during his eulogy in Atlanta for Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon. The former president seized the moment to cast the filibuster as a vestige of a grim period in the United States when Southern lawmakers used it to impede voting rights and other advances for African-Americans."

“Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching,” Mr. Obama said, referring to legislation Democrats are pushing on Capitol Hill in the face of opposition from Republicans. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.”

So the writing is on the wall. Do we want this democracy to represent the interests of the majority of its people or only the upper 10%? Do we want to save the planet from global warming? If so the Republican call for "moderation" or "compromise" or "not being too radical" will not work. There is a limited time frame for us to act or the planet will soon - in our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children - become uninhabitable for most people. We have failed to act on this in a timely manner. Now we must play catch up, and there is no time to waste. We have about 10 years to get global warming under control. Don't listen to people that say the Green New Deal is too radical. It's too radical only if we want to let the planet become virtually uninhabitable.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Not the Quantity of Government. It's the Quality.

by John Lawrence, October 13, 2020

Fareed Zakaria has written a brilliant book: "Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World." In it he says that the old debates between the Left and the Right are invalid. He notes that most major countries are a part of the world economic system. That system was set up after WWII by the US. China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. The WTO deals with regulation of trade in goods, services and intellectual property between participating countries by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants' adherence to WTO agreements. So China which is arguably the world's largest economy is playing on the same field and under the same rules as the US, the EU and 123 other nations. It's fair to say that all countries party to the WTO are hybrids of capitalism and socialism, some leaning more one way and some leaning more the other way.

Zakaria writes: "... the old ideologies are obsolete. The divide that has organized politics for centuries has been between left and right. The Left has advocated a larger role for the state in the economy. The Right has staunchly defended free markets. For the twentieth century, the great political debate was about the size and role of government in the economy - the quantity of government. But what seems to have mattered most in this [pandemic] crisis was the quality of government." Zakaria argues that the US' response to the pandemic was hindered by the fact of US federalism. The creation of a national strategy for dealing with the pandemic was "complicated by the existence of 2,684 state, local and tribal health departments each jealously guarding its independence. To make matters even messier, the US has 90,126 units of state and local government, many of which were tasked with devising their own rules on mask-wearing and public gatherings."

Zakaria continues: "But this patchwork of authority is a nightmare when tackling a disease that knows no borders. The fragmentation of standards is especially acute when handling Covid-19 tests. ... (It is a far cry from Taiwan's system of 'health cards', which link up with a single data base for all relevant medical information.)" Imagine if every US citizen was covered by a health card that linked up with a national data base. It will never happen as long as the US remains a fragmented national state with so many conflicting jurisdictions. This fragmentation contrasts with a country like Canada which has one health card which any citizen can use anywhere, and the doctor can access all that patient's records. The medical visit costs the Canadian citizen nothing. This streamlining of medical records saves a lot of money and effort compared to the hodge podge of American medical record keeping.

This hodge podge and fragmentation of the US extends to many other areas. It has made police reform almost impossible as there are 18,000 police departments across the country. The fact of the matter is that this Federalism precludes any coherent national strategy when it comes to the COVID pandemic or much of anything else. It's the reason that the medical system in the US is so expensive while returning mediocre results. China and some other countries have handled the pandemic in an intelligent and coherent way with the result that they have controlled COVID. Therefore, their economies have gotten more or less back to normal while the US is still struggling to get a handle on the pandemic with the result that the US economy is still a shambles.

Off the Top of My Head

Quantitative Easing = Printing Money

by John Lawrence

In her book, "Deficits Don't Matter," author Stephanie Kelton makes the case that we don't have to worry about deficit spending. That's when the US government spends more than it takes in in taxes. So in a sense taxes don't matter either at least as far as balanced budgets go. The US dollar is a sovereign currency. This means we don't have to ask anyone's permission to print money. The US dollar was taken off the gold standard in 1971 under President Nixon. It is a fiat currency meaning that it is not backed by anything other than the word of the US government. The US has experienced the phenomenon of printing money to bail out the banks in the Great Recession of 2008. As of September of this year, the Fed's balance sheet was $7.1 trillion. As of January 2008, the Fed's balance sheet was less than $1 trillion. That means that the Fed has printed money to the tune of over $6 trillion since 2008. Yet there has been no inflation in the US economy which is the danger a lot of economists had predicted from printing so much money.

The Federal Reserve bank can print US dollars just by a few keystrokes on a computer. Approximately $3.5 trillion was printed to bail out the banks during the Great Recession. Another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far to deal with the COVID pandemic. The question arises that, if the Fed can print money any time it wants, why can't there be Quantitative Easing (QE) for the people? In other words, if the Fed can bail out the banks, why can't it bail out the homeless, why can't it bail out the $4 trillion deficit in infrastructure spending, why can't it bail out the hungry and the poor? The answer is that it can do all those things, but this tool, QE, for that is what it is - a tool - should be used judiciously. It should be used to accomplish useful and necessary goals. It should not be used frivolously. It should be used in conjunction with other tools like tax policy. It should be used to promote a full employment economy and achieve socially useful goals.

Tax policy should be used to raise most of the money needed for government spending, and it should be used to redress the balance of the high amount of inequality in the American economy. Taxing the wealthy both in terms of income and wealth while giving tax breaks to the middle class and poor while implementing policies to help them build wealth is one of the major things US Federal tax policy should do. Additional money can be obtained by reducing the bloated military and military-industrial complex budget. If, however, there are additional goals that should be met like hastening the switch to renewable energy or a fuller safety net for the American people, then QE for the people should be implemented. The goal is to have a balanced and useful economy, one that promotes net zero carbon emissions, one that promotes sustainable development on other parts of the world, one that hastens the day when no child goes hungry or uneducated, one that reduces financial inequality.

It has already been demonstrated that deficits don't matter because the Great Recession of 2008 was quelled by the Fed's policy of printing money with no adverse effects on the economy. We have seen again the salubrious effects pf printing money or QE, if you want to call it that, during the COVID pandemic during which another $2.5 trillion has been printed so far. There is no reason why any country that has a sovereign currency like the US does cannot print money. Since the US dollar is the world's reserve currency, other countries and individuals are willing to buy up most if not all of US debt. But if they didn't buy up any of it, the Fed could still take it - or as much as necessary - on its balance sheet. In other words the fact that other countries are buying US debt means that the Fed doesn't have to print as much money. Any country with a sovereign currency can do the same even if their currency is not much in demand on world markets. Since the US dollar is used a lot in world trade, other countries need a supply of US dollars and are willing to buy US debt to get them.

There is no reason why any American should go hungry or be homeless or lack health care. Speaking of health care, Medicare for All would not eliminate private health care as some have suggested. Even with Medicare some doctors refuse to see patients because they don't like the reimbursement Medicare provides. There would be a private market for the wealthy who would just pay out of pocket to doctors who refused to accept Medicare patients. The wealthy don't even need health insurance. It could not be made illegal for such a market to exist. So even though everyone would have health care under a Medicare for All plan, the wealthy would still hire private and presumably better doctors at their own expense.

The policy of the Fed's buying US debt, which is equivalent to printing money, should be used wisely and the money not wasted.  QE for the people combined with the fact that deficits don't matter should lead to a more productive society providing that those additional tools and resources are used in a constructive way and not used to further militarize the society and the world. Any tool can be used for good or for ill. QE for the people could be used for a more healthy, beneficial and well balanced society for all people, could eliminate poverty in the US and the world, bring US infrastructure into the modern era and combat global warming and future pandemics.

Off the Top of My Head

Let's Talk About the Communist Bogieman

by John Lawrence, October 8, 2020

After the vice Presidential debate last night Trump called Kamala Harris a communist. Let's be clear: communism is a system in which the government owns all property and makes all economic decisions. Let's also be clear about this: nowhere in the world today does communism exist. Not in Russia. Not in China. Not in Cuba. In Russia private ownership of enterprises and property had essentially remained illegal throughout the Soviet era, with Soviet communism emphasizing national control over all means of production. In the 1990s, during the Presidency of Boris Yeltsin, there was  large-scale privatization of Russia's state-owned assets, particularly in the industrial, energy, and financial sectors. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality. It facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of oligarchs.

In China private property and state owned enterprises co-exist. According to the NY Times: "Today, the private sector contributes nearly two-thirds of the country’s growth and nine-tenths of new jobs, according to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, an official business group." In fact the reason why China has pulled 800,000 people out of poverty in the last 40 years is that the economy has been partially privatized. There are more billionaires in China than in the US. Many people in China went from being poor to middle class due to the privatization of the housing market. So although China is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, its government is communist in name only. They should probably eliminate the word "Communist" from the party's name.

Now consider Cuba. In 2010, Cuban leaders Fidel and Raul Castro made the decision to abandon the old Soviet model of centralized planning. In 2011, new laws were enacted to expand the right to private property. In 2019, a new Constitution was approved which officially recognizes the right to private property, while also reconfirming the central government's authority over the regulation of production and land.

So if the accusation that Kamala is a communist is ridiculous, what about socialism? There is not one definition of socialism. Many of the western democracies like France, Germany, the UK and Sweden, which are US allies, have been governed by democratic socialist parties. These societies have market economies including the encouragement of entrepreneurialism, but also have a government provided social safety net including universal health care, free or inexpensive education from pre-K through college, allowances for child care, elder care etc. Sweden's government even owned a hamburger chain until recently and owns Sweden's state-run alcohol monopoly Systembolaget. The democratic socialism advocated by Bernie Sanders and others is nothing more than a model based on Sweden where there are high taxes on the wealthy which provide a government sponsored safety net for the middle class and the poor. Today there is one more reason why there should be a strong social safety net: global warming. It is clear that private enterprise is not up to the job of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero within a reasonable amount of time, reasonable meaning before the earth becomes uninhabitable.

Today in the US we  have a nominal capitalist or free market economy, but even in this economy the government institutes the rules within which the economy operates. The rules are set up and tweaked by those in power, those who have the money to hire lobbyists to convince legislators to write the rules in their favor, namely large corporations and the very wealthy. Don't be fooled by the meme that the powerful don't want government regulations. They do want regulations, but regulations that favor their interests and not the interests, necessarily, of the average person who doesn't have the resources to influence legislation by hiring lobbyists.

Today Kamala Harris and other Democratic progressives are really taking the realistic middle ground when they advocate for government policies which will mitigate and reduce climate change and provide a social safety net for the American people. This goes against the interests of the oil and gas industry to be sure. To advocate for universal health care is to advocate for the health care system that Canada and all our allies already have in pace. To advocate for policies that reduce the out of bounds economic inequality by taxing the rich and spending the money on raising the economic level of the poor and lower middle class only makes sense. None of these policies make Kamala Harris a communist since communism doesn't even exist in the world today. Formerly communist countries have given way to hybrid economies in which private enterprise and state owned enterprises coexist with, in the case of China, private enterprise having been the significant factor in improving the lives of the Chinese middle class.

Today, the US has gone way overboard towards an economy controlled by the rich and powerful in their own interests. Economic inequality has gotten way out of hand. The balance needs to be redressed and only a government which uses its authority to diminish the economic power of the wealthy and augment the power of the poor and middle class can provide the necessary change. Good paying jobs can be created which address infrastructure and climate change needs. So more or less a Green New Deal or whatever else you want to call it is necessary. Too bad that Republicans have gone out of their way to demonize that name as they've gone out of their way to demonize Obamacare or any other initiative progressive Democrats put forth. That is their stock and trade - not discussing the merits but demonizing the name.

Off the Top of My Head

Is This Any Way to Choose Supreme Court ... Or a President?

by John Lawrence, September 27, 2020

So we have a situation in which a President who lost the popular vote has been able to pick 3 Supreme Court Judges. This is what our Constitution has led us to? The US Constitution is out of date, archaic and dysfunctional. It needs to be either revised or rewritten from scratch. Many other countries have done just that with their constitutions. There are better ways to choose a Supreme Court than to have a President choose the composition thereof. Other ways the Constitution is dysfunctional: the electoral college, the fact that the leader of the Senate has a veto over any legislation the People's House creates and the filibuster. I would also add the Second Amendment to the list.

Here is a better way to choose the Supreme Court. Have the House of Representatives vote on the composition of it and have each judge only serve a 10 year term, not a life term. Also have in place qualifications for nominees. In other words not everyone can run for a Supreme Court Judgeship. Only those who are well qualified should be able to. Here are some of the basic qualifications: a Doctor of Law degree from a major University (in other words the highest law degree one can get), a career either in teaching or the practice of law for at least 20 years, having argued at least one case before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court should be democratically elected at least by representatives elected by the people which at present is the US House of Representatives, and not subject to Senate approval. Let me note that I'm not an expert; I'm not a lawyer so anyone should take my recommendations with a grain of salt.

It is obvious that our current Constitution allows for the opening of a can of worms in the election of the President as President Trump has pointed out and intends to exploit. He expects that the balloting will be so mixed up that the Republican party will be able to challenge the outcome in a number of battleground states with the result that the selection of the President will end up in the Supreme Court, three of whose Justices he has picked himself. This is exactly why a Constitution should not let the President select members of the Supreme Court, and they should be democratically elected instead by a vote of the House.

I find it amazing that practically no research has been done on how the Supreme Court should be selected according to my limited Google search. In a democracy these courts should be democratically elected by a representative body within the boundaries that judges or Justices should be highly qualified to even be considered. What is unreasonable about these considerations except for the fact that they don't accord with our preexisitng Constitution? It has become obvious that our 231 year old Constitution, the world's longest surviving written charter of government, is not only out of date, it's anti-democratic in major ways. It was written at a time when only white, propertied men were allowed to vote, at a time when the writers didn't trust the hoi polloi, the rabble, the uneducated, the poor or those not of the same ethnic background as they were.

Off the Top of My Head

China Leads the Way on Electric Vehicle Production

by John Lawrence, September 19, 2020

A Chinese company has developed an electric car that can go 438 miles without recharging. They have developed an infrastructure of charging stations. China surpassed the United States to become the world's largest automobile market in 2009 with a record 13.9 million vehicles sold in the country, compared to 10.43 million cars and light trucks sold in the United States. China leads the world in deployment of electric vehicles. At the end of June 2019, almost half the electric cars and 99% of the electric buses in the world were in China. China reached its goal of 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2020. China is both the largest manufacturer and consumer market for electric vehicles in the world, accounting for more than half of all electric cars made and sold in the world in 2018. China also makes 99% of the world's electric buses. China manufactured and sold about 1.2 million plug-in electric vehicles in 2018, which was more than three times the sales in the US. China has become the fastest and largest growing market for electric vehicles in the world. New electric cars had a market share of 4.2% of new cars sold in China for the entire year of 2018. Big cities like Shenzhen and Beijing are rapidly adopting electric vehicles -- for example, all of Shenzhen's 16,000 public buses are now electric, and soon all of its 22,000 taxis will be electric cars as well.

You see, dear reader, the US needs to play catch up. That's exactly what Joe Biden wants to do. China subsidizes its electric vehicle industry and subsidizes the purchase of electric vehicles by the public which can be purchased for $30 to $40 thousand US before subsidies of $8000 or so making them very cost competitive with gas guzzling vehicles. So China has an industrial policy which is so far anathema in the US. For the US government to have an industrial policy or to subsidize certain industries smacks of socialism. But without Joe Biden's plan or some other plan, the US will fall far behind China in electric vehicle production and for the necessary R&D and infrastructure. China's EV production is also part of their plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They also need to replace their numerous coal fired electricity generating plants with renewables.

The number of EV charging stations in China is growing rapidly. In January 2019, the Chinese Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Agency (EVCIPA) reported 808,000 EV chargers in China (an 80% increase in one year). Of these, roughly 330,000 were public chargers, and 480,000 were home chargers. China has hundreds of auto manufacturers, many of which are owned in whole or in part by provincial or local governments. According to some reports, as many as 200 Chinese auto manufacturers have produced electric vehicles. In 2018, 1527 fuel cell electric vehicles also were sold in China, bringing the country’s total fuel cell electric vehicle fleet to 3428.

But it's not only China's government or SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) that are investing in China's EV market. It's China's private sector as well. In 2019 Evergrande, a Chinese firm believed to be the biggest real estate company in the world and backers of electric vehicle startups like Faraday Future and NEVS, announced a massive $23 billion investment in the production of 1 million electric cars and 500 GWh of batteries per year. With a valuation at more than $100 billion and revenues of over $40 billion, Evergrande is now looking to expand into electric vehicles. After acquiring large stakes in two electric vehicle companies, Evergrande claims to have “acquired key technologies in the sector” and now plans to launch its own production of electric vehicles in China in a big way. So why aren't American corporations making investments like these? They still seem committed to producing gas guzzlers. The Trump administration even has challenged California's attempts to set higher emissions standards. Trump revoked a longstanding waiver that allows California to set higher fuel emission standards than the federal government. The US is going backwards on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the earth burns and floods.

The waiver revocation is also part of the Trump administration’s longstanding attempt to roll back federal fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. Californians buy more cars than people in any other state, which means the emissions standards it sets for itself have big repercussions on the US economy as a whole. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have also adopted California’s vehicle emissions rules. So the California waiver was a big impediment to the Trump administration’s larger goal of rolling back regulations that were implemented to combat climate change. As a global warming denier, Trump is committed to dumping more rather than less greenhouses gasses into the atmosphere.

China's economy is a fusion of a socialist and free market economy so it's somewhat unique in the world. Like the US Federal Reserve, the Chinese central bank, the People's Bank of China, can print yuan, the Chinese currency. The Chinese market is more devoted to manufacturing for both internal sales and export while the US economy is now focused more on financialization which means making money off of money or betting in the Wall Street casino. The US is devoted to making money by any means necessary which has led to increasing inequality. The Chinese market is more devoted to making money from sales of actual goods and services and is less financialized. So US capital doesn't go so much into manufacturing as it goes into financial markets. China is more dedicated to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions while the Trump administration doesn't even believe in global warming and is a full steam ahead fossil fuel supporter.

Off the Top of My Head

US and China Need to Cooperate to Deal With Global Warming

by John Lawrence, September 9, 2020

The two largest greenhouse gas emitters are the US and China. As of 2017 China was responsible for 24.3% of the worlds GHG emissions, the US, 13.4%. The EU is third at 9.1%. These 3 countries are responsible for almost half of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Nothing will get done with respect to reducing the emission of greenhouse gasses unless there is cooperation among the major greenhouse gas emitters. As of now the US administration does not even believe in global warming. Trump is a global warming denier. So we are going backward rather than forward. That's why it is of utmost importance that Biden gets elected. Trump is trying to exacerbate tensions with China, drumming up a super competition. This is not constructive. The whole world must cooperate if there is a chance of getting global warming under control before it is too late. Right now the US is fiddling while the earth burns.

The Paris climate agreement is at risk of falling apart because the Trump administration is responsible for the fact that the US is dropping out. That means that the whole worldwide agreement will be meaningless because the US is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter per person and second largest overall. Withdrawal will take final effect on November 4, 2020, one day after the next US presidential election. To a great extent, the future of the agreement depends on the outcome of that election. This makes this a crucial election not only for the future of the US but for the future of the whole world. But a lot of damage has already been done. It was done the minute Trump announced his intent to leave the agreement and began rolling back Obama’s climate regulations. This makes twice a Democratic president signed an international climate agreement and a Republican subsequently reneged (the first was the Kyoto Protocol, signed by Clinton in 1997 but never ratified by Bush).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that, to get on a trajectory to limit the rise in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or even 2 degrees — the world’s shared targets — the global economy needs to rapidly reduce carbon emissions, hitting 50 percent less by 2030 and net-zero carbon by 2050. (After that, it will need to go carbon negative.) If Trump is reelected that means that the world will never achieve 50% less GHG emissions by 2030 let alone zero emissions by 2050. A Green New Deal of  some sort is absolutely necessary. What's the alternative? The free market will deal with global warming? Give me a break. It is absolutely necessary that governments of the world be fully committed to reducing GHGs and going to renewable energy at the fastest possible rate. If that's socialism, so be it. No government knows better the positive aspects of capitalism than the Chinese Communist government. They brought 800,000 people out of poverty in 40 years by converting to a capitalist economy although politically they are still an authoritarian state. So what? Cooperation with respect to global warming is more important than the exact economic arrangements that pertain in any country.

The US has not been able in recent years to develop its infrastructure even prior to any need for renewable energy. At this time infrastructure rebuilding and renewal is of paramount importance just to mitigate the effects of global warming. Case in point: California. A Green New Deal could put tens of thousands of people to work just clearing brush in vulnerable areas. This year even before fire season starts officially, more acres have been burned than in all previous history. To mitigate this threat brush needs to be cleared in a wide area, not just in "defensible areas" around peoples' houses. There are cases where home owners did clear defensible areas and their houses still burned to the ground. Other examples of mitigation are the undergrounding of utilities in areas where storms typically take out electric power. In fact they should be undergrounded all over the US. More wind and solar installations need to be built so that electric utilities are less dependent on fossil fuels, and the electric grid needs to be updated. The government needs to mandate that all new vehicles sold are electric vehicles, and that the national infrastructure for electric vehicle energizing be built.

So while the earth and all the peoples thereon are currently experiencing the effects of global warming, the pace of conversion to renewable energy is agonizingly slow. It's going to take a Green New Deal or a Green Marshall Plan or however you want to characterize it both to mitigate the effects that we are already experiencing and to convert to a world in which we are not spewing greenhouse gasses into the environment. In the process many good paying jobs can be created. They just won't be jobs created by private enterprise. Left up to private enterprise, the situation will only get worse as shown by the Trump administration's efforts to deregulate any restrictions on corporate dumping of waste products into the environment. Now is the time to come together as a world, not exacerbate tensions over relatively petty grievances, and create a habitable planet that future generations can live on in a healthy and sustainable way.

Off the Top of My Head

Bill Gates on COVID: Most US Tests Are Garbage

by John Lawrence, August 10, 2020

I have reported on this blog that a very inexpensive, highly reliable and accurate COBID test with quick turnaround results has been available for at least 4 months. On March 24 Lancaster University announced the development of this test. That was over 4 months ago. Why has our government failed to act on this?The question is why hasn't the Defense Production Act been put into effect to ramp up production? The government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have spent billions building factories to produce vaccines many of which may not even be proven to be safe and reliable just on the hope that when some vaccine is proven safe and effective, that vaccine will be already vialed up and ready to be distributed. But the cheap and effective COBID test kit, where is it? The government and the experts completely dropped the ball, and that is the difference between the US and other countries that have managed the pandemic quite successfully. It hasn't helped either that President Trump has totally denigrated testing.

In an interview on Wired, Bill Gates said:

Wired: But people aren’t getting their tests back quickly enough.

Gates: Well, that’s just stupidity. The majority of all US tests are completely garbage, wasted. If you don’t care how late the date is and you reimburse at the same level, of course they’re going to take every customer. Because they are making ridiculous money, and it’s mostly rich people that are getting access to that. You have to have the reimbursement system pay a little bit extra for 24 hours, pay the normal fee for 48 hours, and pay nothing [if it isn’t done by then]. And they will fix it overnight.

Wired: Why don’t we just do that?

Gates: Because the federal government sets that reimbursement system. When we tell them to change it they say, “As far as we can tell, we’re just doing a great job, it’s amazing!” Here we are, this is August. We are the only country in the world where we waste the most money on tests. Fix the reimbursement. Set up the CDC website. But I have been on that kick, and people are tired of listening to me.

I wrote previously:

Brunel University London, together with Lancaster University and the University of Surrey have joined forces with GB Electronics (UK) Ltd, Inovo Robotics and Unique Secure to develop an inexpensive, rapid, diagnostic test kit that can inform people if they have COVID-19 in under 30 minutes and make it widely available. 

The new partnership deal will bring together industry and academic experts in the fields of electronic and software engineering, diagnostics, virology, robotics and artificial intelligence to fast track the development of a new COVID-19 testing kit.

Yesterday, August 9, on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked Peter Navarro repeatedly about testing. This was his response: "We're issuing grants to make sure that we get point-of-care virus testing. This to me is going to be the game changer, where right now we've got two types, right? We've got a lab test that takes a number of days, which is not optimal. It's highly accurate. We've got the ID NOW of Abbott, which takes 15-20 minutes. [implication: not accurate] We're rapidly extending that reach. What we'd love to do is have a point-of-care kind of like a pregnancy test but the same idea where you can do it at your home."

So why hasn't the Defense Production Act been used to ramp up production of this test which was developed over 4 months ago? They totally dropped the ball, and the result is that the US is in deep doo doo to quote a previous US President. Peter Navarro is finally on the right track. This test module capable of providing unlimited tests for approximately $5 per test developed by 3 universities in the UK would cost about $100, and it could be in every home for that price. People could test every day, multiple times a day if needed. The US has totally screwed up! Now finally after 4 months Peter Navarro who is in charge of the Defense Production Act mentions in passing that we have a rapid cheap point-of-care test kit? This is absurd. Meanwhile, the US is languishing with a death count from COBID that will exceed all the American lives lost in World War II before it's over. Already 3 times as many lives have been lost as American lives lost in the Vietnam war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

How Ya Gonna Pay For It?

by John Lawrence, July 27, 2020

This is the question they often asked Bernie Sanders when he talked about the various programs that he would seek to implement as President. Programs like a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, forgiveness of all student loan debt, free college, free pre-school etc. Bernie never really had a good answer except for taxing the rich. Well, that was a pretty good answer, but it is not even necessary to raise taxes on the rich to implement all of Bernie's programs. Modern Monetary Theory maintains that the US, as a currency issuer, can just issue the money into the economy. The US dollar, actually a Federal Reserve Note, is issued by the Federal Reserve bank. The Fed has created or "printed" trillions of dollars bailing out the banks in 2008, with its quantitative easing programs since then and now to fund the response to the coronavirus pandemic. It's obvious that the Fed can just print money and add it to the economy. It can buy up the national deficit and debt. There is no need to worry that the US, which has a sovereign currency can ever run out of money. While you and I, states and countries which do not have a sovereign currency or which have loans in other currencies do have to pay them off, any nation like the UK, Japan, the European Union and China do not have to worry about running deficits.

Republicans have traditionally run on the mantra that Democrats will raise your taxes. Remember George H W Bush's pledge: "Read my lips. No New Taxes." Then he did go ahead and raise taxes after he got elected. Well now it is becoming obvious that Americans don't have to worry about new taxes. Social programs as well as the military can be funded by the Fed just printing the money. Of course it would not be a good idea simply to flood the economy with money for which there is no good purpose. That would lead to inflation and to a loss of trust in the dollar. Under current conditions, however, the dollar is the world's reserve currency and that is not going to change any time soon. So prudent and responsible spending is still necessary. It's just that the US does not have to worry about deficit spending. Other central banks like Japan's are doing the same. In fact Japan has a greater deficit to GDP ratio than the US does.

Which brings us to social security. The conventional wisdom is that the Social Security Trust Fund is in deficit and will be exhausted by 2035. Modern Monetary Theory says that this is rubbish. The US as a sovereign currency issuer can never run out of money. Al Gore used to talk about putting social security in a lockbox. Not necessary. It is not even necessary to debit everyone's paycheck to provide revenues for social security. This is not a program that people who have worked all their lives have "earned." It is a social welfare safety net program pure and simple. To apply basic accounting to social security as if people's payroll tax contributions were necessary to fund it is not necessary or desirable. To argue over whether or not the payroll tax needs to be increased or whether the cap (the payroll tax is just taken on the first $137,700 of a person's earnings) needs to be lifted is pointless. There was an old saw about you can't have both "guns and butter." Well, you can have both and tax relief too! We just have to determine the prudent balance between guns and butter based on other criteria. It is not true that there is only a finite amount of money based on tax revenues that determines total expenditures.

Look at reality. The US has been running deficits for years. Now we're running trillion dollar deficits. Is any creditor coming after us? I don't think so. And there is no inflation. So we don't have to limit our thinking to the Federal government's just spending what it takes in in taxes. In fact we haven't done this in years since Clinton balanced the budget when he was President.

Joe Biden has some good benefits proposed for older retirees. From his website:

"The Biden Plan will provide the oldest beneficiaries – those who have been receiving retirement benefits for at least 20 years – with a higher monthly check to help protect retirees from the pain of dwindling retirement savings."

and

"Under the Biden Plan, workers who spent 30 years working will get a benefit of at least 125% of the poverty level"

The poverty level for a single individual is $12, 760. 125% of that is $15,950. So a minimum monthly payment would be $1329. This is over twice what I am now receiving so I would be very happy if Joe is able to implement this plank of his platform. There is no way a person can live on $641 a month. Fortunately, I don't have to. Currently, the minimum monthly payout for a single individual is $510 a month. That amount is approximately $2,000 less than the annual poverty threshold for an aged individual. Bringing monthly payments for the elderly up to snuff is something Republicans have resisted for years. Then, they have tried to defund all social and welfare programs. However, funding for the military-industrial complex has been relentlessly increased come hell or high water. For that expenditure, deficits don't matter. They shouldn't for infrastructure development and social safety net programs either.

Off the Top of My Head

Reparations and Universal Basic Income

by John Lawrence, July 14, 2020

Old Chinese proverb: Give someone a fish, and they will eat for a day. Teach them how to fish, and they will eat for the rest of their life. This is how I feel about cash payouts for both reparations and Universal Basic Incomes (UBI). I am for reparations in the sense of guaranteeing a living wage job for people who are able bodied. If not the social safety net should provide food, housing and medical care free of charge. In kind welfare is always better than cash payouts which can be squandered, gambled away, spent on drugs and alcohol or other foolish items. Besides billionaires and millionaires, black or white, don't need reparations or UBI.

I am for reparations in the sense of affirmative action for minorities and poor people in the sense of providing jobs either in the private sector or by the government as a last resort. I believe government should be the employer of last resort. In Sweden they have a national employment database which tracks every job opening in the whole country. They will do their best to hook you up with one of those jobs. This is not a bad idea. Then if no matches can be found, the government should be employer of last resort. There sure is a lot of work that needs to be done that can only be done by government like infrastructure repair and development, not only in this country but around the world.

China has exported its expertise and workers to the rest of the world to build infrastructure. This creates future trading opportunities for China, but it also guarantees that there will not be an unemployed class in China. China by virtue of its Belt and Road Initiative is a full employment society. The US could do the same. There is much to be done in terms of sanitation, health, education and job development to bring the rest of the world up to even a minimally acceptable standard of living. At the same time everyone, in both developed and developing societies needs to adopt a sustainable standard of living. The New American Dream should encompass not unlimited consumption but reasonable and sustainable consumption. Otherwise, the planet's resources will be rapidly, at least in geological terms, exhausted, and the result will be resource wars, poverty of the majority and over consumption of the few.

There is much work that needs to be done, but the private economy is not concerned with necessary work. It is only concerned with encouraging consumption that produces the most profits. It is not concerned with what is good for the environment. It is only concerned with exhausting resources if that is what produces the most profit in the shortest period of time. We need to be concerned with husbanding the earth's resources so that they are there for future generations. Renewable energy is a must instead of exhausting earth's fossil fuels. The same can be said for agriculture and other consumable items. They need to be harvested in a sustainable way. Forests need to be maintained instead of being clear cut. The environment needs to be protected. Food needs to be grown without being sprayed with chemicals. There are good practices which will sustain, maintain and renew earth's resources in such a way that everyone can be employed and everyone can benefit including future generations.

In the meantime there is much necessary and essential work to be done here at home and around the world in eliminating poverty, building housing along the Habitat for Humanity model, growing organic food, eliminating factory food operations, providing health care. China is building infrastructure, but it is not directly eliminating poverty around the world. That's a niche the US could fill. A good step would be converting the 800 military bases in various countries to hospitals, schools and affordable housing for local and indigenous people, defunding the military and reallocating resources to helping poor countries become developed in a sustainable way rather than exploiting their resources.

Off the Top of My Head

The Monument

by John Lawrence, July 8, 2020

Perhaps replacing a statue of George Washington with a statue of Crispus Attucks, who was a black man and the first casualty of the Revolutionary War, would be an appropriate recognition of American history. Crispus Attucks (c.1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American stevedore of African and Native American descent, widely regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. Attucks was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Town histories of Framingham written in 1847 and 1887 describe him as a slave of Deacon William Brown, though it is unclear whether Brown was his original owner. In 1750 Brown advertised for the return of a runaway slave named Crispas.

My own American history on one side of my family goes back to about 1650 when Harman Hendricks Rosenkrans arrived from Bergen, Norway. A couple generations later Col. John B Rosenkrans was able to acquire a 1000 acre plantation in the Walpack area of Sussex County, NJ, on which he had African American and Indian slaves. He fought in the French and American War and later in the Revolutionary War. There is a monument to him in Sussex County which consists of a big boulder on which is a metal plaque near the Old Mine Road. I have never been able to find it, but, if anyone wants to topple it because Rosenkrans was a slaveholder, it would be pretty hard to do. Rosenkrans' life is well documented and his role in American history is as well. The New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution would probably be upset if it were to be toppled, however.

My American ancestors have probably been in this country for 10 generations. That means that I have about 1000 direct American ancestors of whom only one was a slave holder to my knowledge. At least he was an equal opportunity slave holder keeping Native Americans and African Americans as well. I don't even know who most of my American ancestors even are. I must have thousands of cousins, all but a handful, I know nothing of. My Grandmother, Alice Clark, born Alice Rosenkrans, was in the direct line of Col. Rosenkrans so I would be too. So would be my Grandchildren who are of African American as well as European American descent. So the American situation is very complicated. The plot thickens.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation's third President, is a case in point. He had six children with his wife, Martha, but only two survived to adulthood. Martha Jefferson died a few months after giving birth in 1782, and Jefferson's daughters, and later his grandchildren, became the focus of his domestic life supposedly. Jefferson also fathered six children with his slave Sally Hemings.

According to Wikipedia:

Jefferson became a widower at age 39 in 1782. He never remarried and died in 1826. Sally Hemings was his much younger slave and a likely half-sister of his wife. She accompanied his daughter Maria to France, where they are believed to have started a sexual relationship, and returned with him to Monticello. Most historians now believe that Jefferson had a relationship with Sally Hemings that lasted nearly four decades, until his death, and that Jefferson fathered her six children.

Four of Hemings' children survived to adulthood. In the antebellum period, hers would have been called a "shadow family". Sally Hemings was also the child of a shadow family. Historians believe her father to be John Wayles, Jefferson's father-in-law, who as a widower had a 12-year liaison with his mulatto slave Betty Hemings and fathered six children with her. These children had three-quarters European, one-quarter African ancestry, and were, half-siblings to Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Sally Hemings is the youngest child of this shadow family. Issac Jefferson described Sally as "mighty near white ... very handsome, long straight hair down her back."

Of the four Hemings children who survived to adulthood: William Beverley, Harriet, Madison and Eston Hemings—all but Madison Hemings eventually identified as white and lived as adults in white communities. Under the Virginia law of partus sequitur ventrem, because Sally Hemings was a slave, her children were also born enslaved. But the children were seven-eighths European, one-eighth African by ancestry. If free, they would have been considered legally white in Virginia of the time.

Oh what tangled webs we weave. Thankfully, the issue of slavery has finally been settled. DNA analysis proved that Jefferson had six children with Sally Hemings who was half black or, evidently much less than half. Jefferson probably has more descendants who have African American blood than those that don't. The same probably holds true for many other slaveholders. So America is a composite of many races and combinations of races.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." At the time of this writing it was more wishful thinking than anything else. Jefferson goes on: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Jefferson said it best - whenever government is destructive of the ends of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, it is the Right of the People to alter it or abolish it and replace it with a government that is more conducive to their Safety and Happiness. Is the present American government conducive to the most Happiness for most of the people? I doubt it. The French Revolution enshrined "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite". As Americans we've left out entirely "Fraternite" or the notion that "we're all in this together." Instead we've enshrined the notion "every person for themself." Egalite also has been given a very twisted definition. Perhaps we should go back to the original writings of the French philosophes who inspired both revolutions.

Off the Top of My Head

A Jobs Program for Inessential Workers
by John Lawrence, April 30, 2020

Turn inessential workers into essential workers by putting them to work building green infrastructure. This is essential work that is not getting done. Much of the previous inessential work they did is better left undone even in a recovery. It is still inessential. It'll always be inessential compared to what needs to be done in creating and building green infrastructure. Building out solar and wind renewable energy could employ thousands if not millions of people. Repairing roads, bridges, waterways, clean water systems, airports, railroads and all other infrastructure could employ millions. This is essential work that has remained undone despite the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers has given the US a D rating for infrastructure. High speed rail needs to be built. The widespread adoption of electric cars has to be mandated, and construction of a national electric vehicle charging network to power them has to be built.

Unemployed people still need jobs. Mark Cuban said on CNN this morning that there should be a jobs program similar to that of the New Deal. He is exactly right although he didn't make the necessary connection about the essential work that's still being left undone and the inessential work that doesn't need to be done even in a recovery. Forget Cuban's sports and entertainment enterprises. I hate to tell you that they are basically inessential. What is essential is greatly expanding the public health undertakings of the Federal  government which has been totally behind the curve in this pandemic.

We must ask ourselves what is essential and not go back to a new normal in which all the inessential businesses of the past are brought back just in order to provide employment to the millions who have lost their jobs. The pre-pandemic economy was 70% consumerism. The economy post epidemic should be much less a consumerist economy and much more an investment economy. The four components of gross domestic product are personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports. Of these government spending must be ramped up to provide the essential jobs in infrastructure building as well as in the areas that the pandemic has made clear are indeed essential: health care, education, transportation, agriculture.

Government spending must go up; personal consumption must go down. It's as simple as that. As for business investment, it's a lost cause as business will only do what's profitable for itself as has been made abundantly clear. Investment in fossil fuels and plastics which the big oil companies are making is only destructive to a green economy, not constructive. As far as exports are concerned, the dollar has already been weakened as much as it could possibly be by zero interest rates, so increased exports, although desirable, are not likely to happen any time soon.

Private enterprise knows only one thing in terms of the economy "reopening": get back to consumer spending. It ain't going to happen. People are still afraid of the virus. The pandemic is not over. They will use their money to pay off debts instead of going in debt to the hilt like they are used to. People will save their money instead of entertaining themselves to death. Why? Maybe they have learned their lesson that a high employment economy predicated on the fact that people will always have a job and always have a prepensity to consume is just a chimera. Rather than living paycheck to paycheck, I hope people will understand that there may come a rainy day, and they need to save for that. That lesson has really been brought home by the coronavirus pandemic.

The true heroes are essential workers not the military. The military itself was brought to its knees by COBID-19. There is a lesson there. It's more important to spend our collective money on preparing for the coming pandemic of global warming than on a bloated military. It is more important to house the homeless and guarantee the economic rights of shelter and health care to all Americans as in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. It is more important to help people all over the world escape from extreme poverty because poverty breeds health crises which then can spread all over the world. It's more important to make peace with our rivals rather than try to control them with military threats and sanctions.

May the next President (and I hope to heaven that it's not Donald Trump) see the light of a more rational, compassionate and humane world, one more concerned about the health and welfare of all the world's peoples. I hope Governor Cuomo's values of being tough, smart, disciplined and most importantly loving spread to every corner of US and world society, and we get on with essential business instead of the inessential business of amusing, entertaining and consuming ourselves to death.

Off the Top of My Head

Explainer: Quantitative Easing for the People

by John Lawrence, April 19, 2020

Let's say a Wall Street bank has a mortgage that's been defaulted on. That qualifies as a "toxic asset" meaning the guy isn't paying his mortgage. The bank then pleads with the Federal Reserve to take it off its hands because the bank is running low on money that it thought would be coming in if the guy had made his monthly payments. So the Fed adds "liquidity" by saying to the bank, "Give me that mortgage. I will take it off your hands and pay you the full value of the amount borrowed, and then I will be the mortgage holder for the "toxic asset." So the bank is made whole, and the Fed is now the holder of the toxic mortgage. The Fed has "taken it on its balance sheet" and taken it off the balance sheet of the Wall Street bank. This is what happened during the Great Recession of 2008. It's what Quantitative Easing is all about. Theoretically, some day the Fed will sell this mortgage in the marketplace, but who wants to buy a mortgage that no one is paying either interest or principal on especially if the mortgagee is long gone. Instead the toxic asset disappears in what amounts to the Fed's black hole.

Although the Fed will do this for a bank especially for those banks that are too big too fail, they will not do this for Joe Blow. Joe blow, for instance, may have a toxic asset of $30,000 in credit card debt or $100,000 in student loan debt. Why couldn't Joe Blow approach the Federal Reserve and say please will you take this toxic asset off my hands? That would mean adding "liquidity" to Joe Blow's bank account by taking the credit card debt or student loan debt onto the Fed's balance sheet and paying off Joe's creditors. This would make the Fed Joe's creditor. Perhaps some day, when Joe is better off, the Fed might be able to move Joe's debt off its balance sheet and put it back on Joe's account. At least theoretically that could happen.

What is happening today with the coronavirus relief package and the stimulus checks is a variation on QE which amounts to QE for the people. Where is all the money coming from you say? Will it just be added to the deficit and the national debt, God forbid? Right now interest on the national debt is $479 billion. The more money the nation borrows, the more interest on the debt crowds out other items in the Federal budget like social security, Medicare and the military. But there is a neat little trick that is played between the Treasury department which issues the bonds that comprise national debt and the Federal reserve which has the aforementioned capacity to make debts disappear down a black hole.

Those toxic assets that the Fed took off of banks' balance sheets? Some of them were Treasury bonds. Now more than ever the Fed will be taking Treasury bonds off the big banks balance sheet for two reasons: 1) they can't be all sold in the open market because there are no buyers and 2) the US taxpayers will not have to pay interest on these bonds because although the government pays interest to the Fed on these bonds all profits the Fed makes are returned to the Treasury after deducting minimal expenses at the end of the year. So one hand really does wash the other or, if you prefer, the Federal government is playing a shill game with the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve monetizes the debt which is the same as saying that it disappears down a black hole on the Fed's balance sheet. The middleman in this whole operation is Wall Street since the Fed by law cannot buy Treasury bonds directly from the Treasury Department. So by monetizing the debt, the Fed is doing two things: 1) it is taking the pressure off of interest paid in the Federal budget and 2) it is guaranteeing that the Federal government will have whatever amount of money it needs to pay its bills without having to increase taxes.

Now this is good news for pandemic relief. Deficit hawks are muted because they know how this shill game is played, and it's no skin off their backs. The Fed essentially prints money (although it's doe with a couple of keystrokes on a computer) and bails out the whole economy. There is no inflation since unions which drove up the price of labor were essentially muted during the Reagan administration which saw most manufacturing jobs transferred to China. So then Fed can print away giving everyone a taste of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). (See Ellen Brown's accompanying article.) Since the cat is out of the bag there is no reason why this same game couldn't be played to relieve American consumers of student loan debt and credit card debt although you can get rid of credit card debt in bankruptcy. Not so for student loan debt.

Also money for infrastructure could be obtained this same way by having the Fed monetize the debt. This would create good union jobs according to Bernie Sanders. But this is exactly what the bond market and the Fed doesn't want - good union jobs - because that would create wage inflation. When wages go up prices go up, and the bond market would not be pleased because inflation eats up the yields on their bonds. What the Fed and the monied interest want is an economy in which workers are deeply indebted because that means a ton of interest going to the banks which are totally in cahoots with the privately owned Fed. If your a worker, the Fed is not really your friend. They are the banker's friend. The Fed was set up in the first place to bail out banks not American consumers. Now it is giving American consumers a taste of a bail out because the coronavirus presents a unique situation with everybody being out of work. When things get back to normal, the Fed will go back to just bailing out banks, and relieving pressure on the national debt.

Off the Top of My Head

Maybe the Shut Down of Non-Essential Businesses Should Be Made Permanent

by John Lawrence, March 27, 2020

As long as we have electricity, the internet, clean water, waste water disposal, full grocery markets, pharmacies, excellent health care, gas stations, trash collection and other essential businesses, perhaps the shut down of non-essential businesses is a good thing. Already it has cleaned up the environment and significantly reduced the emission of greenhouse gasses. What about all those unemployed people, you say? Put them to work in the Green New Deal building and repairing infrastructure throughout the country. If this COVID-19 thing lasts till January 20, 2021, I'm hoping President Joe Biden will do just that. And we should help build essential businesses in other parts of the world instead of engaging in military adventurism. Billions of people don't even have clean water, adequate sanitation, the internet, full grocery markets and other essential businesses.

Once these essential needs are taken care of for the entire world's population in such a way that GHG emissions are reduced to zero, then maybe some non-essential businesses could be reestablished. The pandemic goes to show that much of the US economy is based on non-essential businesses and the provision of non-essential goods and services. In fact not only are many of them non-essential, they are downright deleterious. Consider the gambling industry: downright deleterious. The movie and TV industry: about 70% deleterious. The fast food industry: 90% deleterious creating obesity and diabetes. Why isn't the school system educating people about nutrition? Many people have essentially a fast food diet. The food is cheap and ubiquitous, and people don't have time to create nutritious meals any more the way Moms used to when they didn't have to work to pay the mortgage and car payments.

The American way of life including may non-essential businesses is sickness producing. The profit oriented health care industry makes money off of sick people, not keeping people healthy. If everyone were healthy or were encouraged to lead healthy lifestyles, there would be far less sickness. But the stress induced by both spouses having to work leads to unhealthy lifestyles. Some families need 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet. The children are also subjected to a competitively oriented style of learning in which they are forced to compete with other children to get good grades so they can get into the best colleges. Instead maybe they should be encouraged to think in terms of what they want to do in their lives which would be a service to society in addition to affording a comfortable living for themselves.

More businesses considered to be non-essential:

Theaters, Salons and Spas, Racetracks, Shopping malls, Bowling alleys, Sporting and Concert Venues, Liquor stores, Bars, Cruises, Golf Courses, Resorts, Hair and Nail Salons.

Highly polluting industries and activities which are non-essential:

Most airline travel, the cruise industry, the travel and tourism industry, most automobile travel (use mass transit instead), most of the trucking industry (use rail instead), the beef industry, the hog industry, agribusiness (encourage small organic farms instead), most military and military-industrial complex, the plastic industry, the fossil fuel industry.

In Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How. Mark Lawrence Schrad writes:

America has long equated patriotism with the armed forces. But you can’t shoot a virus. Those on the frontlines against coronavirus aren’t conscripts, mercenaries or enlisted men; they are our doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers, caregivers, store clerks, utility workers, small-business owners and employees. Like Li Wenliang and the doctors of Wuhan, many are suddenly saddled with unfathomable tasks, compounded by an increased risk of contamination and death they never signed up for.

When all is said and done, perhaps we will recognize their sacrifice as true patriotism, saluting our doctors and nurses, genuflecting and saying, “Thank you for your service,” as we now do for military veterans. We will give them guaranteed health benefits and corporate discounts, and build statues and have holidays for this new class of people who sacrifice their health and their lives for ours. Perhaps, too, we will finally start to understand patriotism more as cultivating the health and life of your community, rather than blowing up someone else’s community. Maybe the de-militarization of American patriotism and love of community will be one of the benefits to come out of this whole awful mess.

The same sentiments hold true for teachers and other caregivers. People that take care of people and encourage people to have better lives are the true heroes. The Peace Corps and AmeriCorps should be the preeminent national services not the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. We need to spread good will in the world by spades instead of bullying the rest of the world with US sanctions. We should develop the equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative and start building clean water plants, sanitation plants, industries which decrease pollution and plastic trash in the ocean. We need to clean the environment around the world not contribute to dirtying it. We need to help bring home all the refugees in refugee camps and guarantee the safety and security of Latin Americans so they don't become migrants and refugees.

Off the Top of My Head

One Positive Thing: Lower Pollution and Greenhouse Gases

by John Lawrence, March 24, 2020

Among all the negative things that are happening because of the coronavirus, there is at least one positive thing: air pollution and the emission of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) is way down. The pandemic is shutting down industrial activity and temporarily slashing air pollution levels around the world according to satellite imagery. There are fewer cars on the roads, fewer airplanes flying, fewer ships at sea. The downturn in economic activity means that less power is being consumed; therefore, less coal is being shoveled into power plants around the world. It's a veritable demonstration that it is possible to reduce pollution, reduce global warming and in other ways have a cleaner, healthier planet.

Paul Monks, professor of air pollution at the University of Leicester, predicted there will be important lessons to learn. “We are now, inadvertently, conducting the largest-scale experiment ever seen,” he said. “Are we looking at what we might see in the future if we can move to a low-carbon economy? Not to denigrate the loss of life, but this might give us some hope from something terrible. To see what can be achieved. It seems entirely probable that a reduction in air pollution will be beneficial to people in susceptible categories, for example some asthma sufferers,” he said. “It could reduce the spread of disease. A high level of air pollution exacerbates viral uptake because it inflames and lowers immunity.” Agriculture could also get a boost because pollution stunts plant growth, he added.

One of the largest drops in pollution levels could be seen over the city of Wuhan in central China which was put under a strict lockdown in late January. The city of 11 million people serves as a major transportation hub and is home to hundreds of factories supplying car parts and other hardware to global supply chains. According to NASA, nitrogen dioxide levels across eastern and central China have been 10-30% lower than normal.

This period, when the pandemic is not under control, is an opportunity to think differently about the economy. What are essential goods and services? Definitely we need food, clean water and sanitation services. We need garbage collection. People need enough money to supply essential needs for themselves. We could also ask what are inessential needs? Some of these are going to sporting events, going to movie theaters especially when we can watch movies at home, going to music events at arenas especially when we can listen to music at home, going on cruises. With the increase of capabilities for working from home, going into the office is not a necessity for a lot of workers. This can be increased with the result that there will be fewer cars on the road, less rush hour traffic and less GHG emissions. Getting cars off the road is a long term goal for a green economy. This would mean fewer car sales, but it would be better for the environment.

We should ask what are essential activities to keep people healthy and safe and think about doing away with other activities which don't increase the health and welfare of human beings. After dithering for years over the homeless situation, homeless people are being put up in motels and hotels post haste as a public health issue. This is a positive development and goes to show that the homeless situation could have been ameliorated years ago if we had the will to do it. The provision of money to average Americans will not hurt the economy. It will only help the economy. During the 2008 Great Recession trillions of dollars were given to the banks to bail them out. Much of this money went to bail out investors and hedge funds which had made huge bets on the economy. Many of these bets paid off, and their bets were covered in full by the Federal Reserve when the individual Wall Street banks couldn't cover them. Obviously, these rich people did not need that money to continue to cover their own 'essential needs' or the needs of their families. It was money given to gamblers while Joe six pack got zilch. We don't need an economy which caters to rich gamblers and showers them with money when they bet the economy will go down bringing suffering to millions.

At this point the Fed has the capability of bailing out the average American family especially if they have lost their jobs so they can continue to eat and pay rent. This support for average Americans will function also to stabilize the economy and maintain GDP but at a lower level. Perhaps the 70% level that consumption contributes to GDP cannot be maintained, but this might actually be a good thing by eliminating things that are not essential to the health and welfare of the population while driving air pollution and greenhouse gasses down. Neel Kashkari President of the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve siad on 60 Minutes that the Fed needs to be "overly generous" to the average family, something they weren't when the economy tanked in 2008. The Fed is committed to not letting any banks or major US businesses go under. They could just as well make sure that no American families go under. Andrew Yang's idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) not only helps families survive. It will help the economy survive.

Off the Top of My Head

China Out Capitalizes Capitalist Nations

by John Lawrence, March 23, 2020

Who would have thunk it? China has taken capitalist financial methods to the next level with the result that it is progressing more rapidly in material abundance and a consumer society than the proto-capitalist nations of the world: the US and Europe. Sure, politically, they are an authoritarian nation. But that expedites their development since all institutions are on the same wavelength. In particular their central bank, the People's Bank of China (PBC) funds infrastructure projects all over the world. This keeps China a full employment society. They put all the Chinese people to work building infrastructure which expands the money supply in a very widespread way. Essentially the PBC provides loans for all these projects which means it creates the money just as US banks do when they create loans or the Federal Reserve does when it provides "liquidity" to the markets through quantitative easing (QE).

The Federal Reserve has actually expanded the range of market interventions it can do. It used to be that the Fed could only set interest rates. That was it. Now it can buy corporate bonds, state and local bonds and give money directly to corporations to keep them afloat. In fact it can act more like the PBC which interacts directly in the Chinese economy. The Fed can take debts directly onto its balance sheet where they may remain forever. This is exactly what it did in the 2008 financial crash. It provided cash directly to banks in return for mortgage backed securities and Treasury bonds thus providing liquidity to the banks so that they would not go under. Now the banks are well capitalized, and, since they know that the Fed stands ready to bail them out again, they have no worries. In fact the term "bail them out" is actually a misnomer at this point. It can be replaced with "provide them with cash" as necessary.

There was an interesting interview on 60 Minutes with Neel Kashkari, Obama's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who was in charge of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) during the Great Recession. He noted that TARP, which was supposed to help out actual people with their mortgages did not go far enough. They were too stingy with it, and not very many people got helped. He says that this prolonged the recession. Instead of being stingy as they were, they should have been "overly generous." That is the lesson he learned. So now in the coronavirus recession, his advice is that the Fed should be overly generous in providing relief to actual everyday people and not just to banks. At this time the banks are doing very well, thank you.

It is well known that money is created by the banks themselves when they create a loan which they do with a couple of keystrokes on a computer. Why is this possible? Because money has no relationship to gold or any other precious metal any more. That's why it's called "fiat money." So what bankers and economists are realizing (which has been the secret of China's success all along resulting in their bringing 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years) is that the US central bank, the Federal Reserve can do the exact same thing. It can create fiat money just like the banks do, like Wall Street does. The only concern is that money so created would lead to inflation, but, as Kashkari noted, there was no inflation even after the Fed created trillions of dollars in 2008 most of which went directly to bankers, hedge funds and rich individuals and not to the average American. Now Kashkari, who is President of the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve, is saying that the Fed could provide liquidity to the American people and not just to the banks. How this will probably happen is by Congress passing a bill on the "fiscal side" as they say. Then they will sell more Treasury bonds to cover the increased deficit. Wall Street banks will buy them since other countries are decreasing their purchase of US debt, and then the Fed will provide liquidity (cash) to Wall Street taking the Treasury bonds onto its balance sheet where they will reside forever probably. This is why the national deficits and debt are no problem because the Fed can print money to cover them ad infinitum. It's as if the Fed provided money directly to the US economy, but, by law, they have to do so indirectly.

Ellen Brown understood this possibility long before Neel Kaskari had his "awakening."

America’s chief competitor in the trade war is obviously China, which subsidizes not just worker costs but the costs of its businesses. The government owns 80% of the banks, which make loans on favorable terms to domestic businesses, especially state-owned businesses. Typically, if the businesses cannot repay the loans, neither the banks nor the businesses are put into bankruptcy, since that would mean losing jobs and factories. The non-performing loans are just carried on the books or written off. No private creditors are hurt, since the creditor is the government, and the loans were created on the banks’ books in the first place (following standard banking practice globally).

Precisely! So no need to worry about another Great Recession or Depression. The US could effectively provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to its citizens indefinitely as Andrew Yang proposed.

As observed by Jeff Spross in a May 2018 Reuters article titled “China’s Banks Are Big. Too Big?”:

[B]ecause the Chinese government owns most of the banks, and it prints the currency, it can technically keep those banks alive and lending forever.…

It may sound weird to say that China’s banks will never collapse, no matter how absurd their lending positions get. But banking systems are just about the flow of money.

Spross quoted former bank CEO Richard Vague, chair of The Governor’s Woods Foundation, who explained, “China has committed itself to a high level of growth. And growth, very simply, is contingent on financing. Beijing will come in and fix the profitability, fix the capital, fix the bad debt, of the state-owned banks … by any number of means that you and I would not see happen in the United States.”

There is no reason why the US could not emulate China. From an economic point of view QE or a UBI would not be inflationary as long as the dollars provided to the system were either invested in new plants and equipment, infrastructure or consumption. What is needed now is about $10 trillion worth of Green Infrastructure, a Green New Deal funded indirectly by the Fed. This money can be provided to the American people and not only rich billionaires as was done in 2008 and as China is providing directly to its workers who are kept busy building infrastructure in the Belt and Road initiative. It would also ease economic inequality and not induce inflation as long as the money is widely distributed.

Off the Top of My Head

Surveillance In the US and China

by John Lawrence, November 27, 2019

In the US everyone has a FICO score which is a number between 300 and 850. In general, scores above 650 indicate a very good credit history. In contrast, individuals with scores below 620 often find it difficult to obtain financing at favorable rates. In China they are giving everyone a social index score which not only measures credit worthiness but a whole lot of other things to determine how good a citizen you are. It might be called a citizenship index. To facilitate this they have cameras everywhere and they can identify and watch every person out in public to see how well they're behaving. In addition to deterring crime and identifying criminal acts, they take the smallest things into account. For instance, if a person drops a piece of paper on the sidewalk and doesn't pick it up and deposit it in a litter box, they might get points deducted from their social score. On the other hand, if a person helps an old lady across the street that might get points added to your social score.

In the US cameras are getting more ubiquitous as well, but they are largely used to deter crime and to identify criminal acts. This I think is more acceptable than the Chinese idea of surveillance in which the smallest acts, good or bad, contribute to some overall rating of the individual. This is just too much. Deterring crime and identifying criminal acts is a legitimate use of cameras, but examining every little act criminal or not and using it to tote up a social index is definitely in the realm of Big Brother watching you. It is creepy to think that the government has that much control over you.

On the other hand there is not much privacy in the US either. The DMV can sell your information to private parties for use in evaluating you. Facebook and other companies gather information about your buying habits so they know how to pitch you with advertising. In the US it's all about financial and consumer data. In China they are also concerned about what kind of a citizen you are in general. I suppose this is not too far fetched from what colleges do when they look up your SAT scores, your grades, your extra curricular activities and evaluate what kind of a person you are when they are making a judgment about letting you into college.

So in the US private entities are evaluating you while in China it's the government that's doing it in general. Not that the US government doesn't also have tons of information on its citizens of both a financial and criminal nature. It's just that the US government is not interested in the finest detail about you unless you are suspected of some nefarious activity. You are allowed full privacy inside your home, but  that holds true in China too. Their cameras are only trained on their people when they are in public places. Law enforcement cannot enter you home without a warrant. in the US or in China. So privacy rights in both countries are similar. Where the countries differ is that in China the government keeps tabs on all its people; in the US private corporations keep tabs on all the people with government playing a minor role in that regard.

Off the Top of My Head

How to Counter China's BRI Initiative: A Worldwide Green New Deal

by John Lawrence, July 24, 2019

The American political establishment is all worried about China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) because it forges alliances with many countries especially, but not limited to, those of the Eurasian land mass including Russia. They do this by partnering to build infrastructure in those countries thereby increasing trade with China primarily. The Chinese approach is basically the equivalent of Dale Carnegie's book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People." The American approach is to threaten other countries with its military might or its weaponized dollar. These are the only things in the American playbook. Other American interactions with third parties have been left to the private sector because the American government has been hollowed out to the point that all activities with the exception of the military and the use of sanctions have been left to the private sector. America cannot even repair its own infrastructure much less build infrastructure in the rest of the world like China is doing. China can do this because it has a government capable of launching huge initiatives. Unless those initiatives are of a military nature, the US can do nothing of the sort.

Therefore, I have a great idea (I think). The Democrats should think big and their agenda should be (in addition to universal health care which I will discuss later) a Worldwide Green New Deal (WWGND). Climate change will not be ameliorated that much by just greening America. Most of the greenhouse gasses are being emitted elsewhere. So a Green Marshall Plan or a Worldwide Green New Deal is in order, and it will counter China, not militarily like the Washington Republican establishment is trying to do (after all if all you possess is a hammer every problem must be solved by hammering), but by peaceful green development exactly like China is trying to do although I don't know how much the emphasis with the BRI is on green.

Some quibbles with the Green New Deal as presently constituted: it guarantees a government job for anyone who needs a job. No, leave this part out, because the Republicans will slaughter you over this. A Worldwide Green New Deal is necessary not only to save the planet, but to counter China's growing influence in the world. This would be a peaceful competition instead of the military one that has borne no fruit over the last years since WW II. The wars since then have been a waste and a tragedy that have only destroyed infrastructure and alienated major parts of the world's population. A WWGND will also be a change in foreign policy vis a vis the rest of the world. It will say we are not here just to try and control you militarily or to destroy your economies with sanctions if you don't obey our orders. It would be saying to the world "let's have a peaceful competition with China and save the world from the worst effects of climate change at the same time."

The US political establishment is apprehensive about China. It is getting defensive about China. That's why it is taking the attitude towards Huawei which is outdcompeting American companies. The US is trying to use sanctions to block Huawei's progress since it is on the losing end of the competition. But America has no industrial policy; China does and this makes all the difference. America can only react defensively using threats both military and dollarized.

Now regarding universal health care, as much as I like Bernie Sanders, I think Medicare for All as a plank in the platform has to go. The Republicans will slaughter us over that. Hickenlooper and others have a better idea: Medicare for All Who Want It. The rest can stay with their private insurance. Evidently, 180 million Americans are covered by employer based insurance, and, evidently, they like it. This would be similar to restoring the public option that was lobbied out of Obamacare. Let people opt in to Medicare, but don't force them to. This is the winning agenda item. Over the years as more and more people become disenchanted with private insurance, they will start opting in until the point will be reached that effectively Medicare For All will be realized. This is the way to make universal health care evolutionary instead of revolutionary.

The American Republican poltitical establishment is taking a defensive, fearful attitude towards China's BRI. They are trying to control the world not by military supremacy but by peaceful development in conjunction with their neighbors. How dare they! The US has invested the whole ball of wax into military domination of the world to put America first. After all we beat communism leaving America as the world's dominant empire. But if America doesn't change course it will be left in the position of trying to hold back China's peaceful initiatives with its threats of military action and sanctions.

One last note: the US will have to replace the privately owned Federal Reserve with a public central bank in order to fund a WWGND. Ellen Brown has discussed this in detail. Lincoln essentially did this with his issuance of greenbacks to fight the Civil War and build the transcontinental railroad. It worked for him and us.

With Trillions in Safety Net Cuts, Bernie Sanders Says Trump Budget 'Breathtaking in Its Degree of Cruelty'

Published on Monday, March 11, 2019 by Common Dreams

"This is a budget for the military industrial complex, for corporate CEOs, for Wall Street, and for the billionaire class."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

65 Comments

Copies of volume 1 of President Donald Trump's new budget for Fiscal Year 2020 that has been delivered to the House Budget Committee, on March 11, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

If a budget is a statement of values and priorities, President Donald Trump's proposal for fiscal year 2020 clearly displays his commitment to enriching the wealthy at the expense of ordinary Americans.

"Make no mistake about it: Trump's budget is a massive transfer of wealth from working class families to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

 

That was how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) characterized Trump's $4.7 trillion budget request on Monday after the White House released details of the plan, which includes a massive increase in military spending and trillions of dollars in total cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

"The Trump budget is breathtaking in its degree of cruelty and filled with broken promises," Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. "Donald Trump promised the American people that he would be a different type of Republican, that he would be a champion of the working American and that he would not cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But his budget does the exact opposite of what he promised the American people."

Over the next decade, Trump's budget—officially titled "A Budget for a Better America"—would slash Medicaid by $1.5 trillion, Medicare by $845 billion, and Social Security by $25 billion, according to Sanders' office. The president's blueprint also requests $8.6 billion in border wall funding.

"This is a budget for the military industrial complex, for corporate CEOs, for Wall Street, and for the billionaire class," Sanders said. "It is dead on arrival."

This is a budget for the military-industrial complex, for corporate CEOs, for Wall Street and for the billionaire class.

We don’t need billions of dollars for a wall that no one wants. We need a budget that works for all Americans, not just Trump and his billionaire friends. https://t.co/qKf8iXpYzF

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 11, 2019

Giving the Pentagon "even more than it hoped for," Trump's budget calls for an $861 billion increase in base military spending over the next ten years.

That sum, Sanders said, "could make public colleges and universities tuition-free over the next decade."

Warren Gunnels, Sanders' staff director, tweeted: "We don't need a magic wand or a genie to make public colleges free. We need to get our priorities right."

Over the next 10 years, Trump's budget would cut:
- $1.5 trillion from Medicaid
- $845 billion from Medicare
- $25B from Social Security
- $207B from college education
- $220B from food stamps

While base defense spending would increase by $861 billion https://t.co/o7IW4SQIMq

— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) March 11, 2019

As the Washington Post's Jeff Stein and Amy Goldstein reported, Trump's budget proposal calls for coverting Medicaid into a block-grant system and handing states the power to set coverage rules—a move that would endanger the healthcare of millions of low-income Americans.

"Make no mistake about it: Trump's budget is a massive transfer of wealth from working class families to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America," Sanders concluded.

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Trump Wants Socialism for the Rich, Harsh Capitalism for the Rest

by Robert Reich

Monday, February 11, 2019

"America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. Someone should alert Trump that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it is socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.

In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. That pretty much describes the $21 billion saved by the nation’s largest banks last year thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, some of which went into massive bonuses for bank executives. On the other hand, more than 4,000 lower-level bank employees got a big dose of harsh capitalism. They lost their jobs.

Banks that are too big to fail – courtesy of the 2008 bank bailout – enjoy a hidden subsidy of some $83 billion a year, because creditors facing less risk accept lower interest on deposits and loans. Last year, Wall Street’s bonus pool was $31.4 billion. Take away the hidden subsidy and the bonus pool disappears.

Trump and his appointees at the Federal Reserve are easing bank requirements put in place after the bailout. They’ll make sure the biggest banks remain too big to fail.

Trump is promoting socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everyone else in other ways. Since he was elected, GM has got more than $600 million in federal contracts plus $500 million in tax breaks. Some of this has gone into the pockets of GM executives. Chairman and CEO Mary Barra raked in almost $22m in total compensation in 2017 alone.

But GM employees are subject to harsh capitalism. GM is planning to lay off more than 14,000 workers and close three assembly plants and two component factories in North America by the end of 2019.

When he was in business, Trump perfected the art of using bankruptcy to shield himself from the consequences of bad decisions – socialism for the rich at its worst – while leaving employees twisting in the wind.

Now, all over America, executives who run their companies into the ground are getting gold-plated exit packages while their workers get pink slips.

Sears is doling out $25 million to the executives who stripped its remaining assets and drove it into bankruptcy, but has no money for the thousands of workers it laid off.

As Pacific Gas and Electric hurtles toward bankruptcy, the person who was in charge when the deadly infernos roared through northern California last year (caused in part by PG&E’s faulty equipment) has departed with a cash severance package of $2.5 million. The PG&E executive in charge of gas operations when records were allegedly falsified left in 2018 with $6.9 million.

Under socialism for the rich, you can screw up big time and still reap big rewards. Equifax’s Richard Smith retired in 2017 with an $18 million pension in the wake of a security breach that exposed the personal information of 145 million consumers to hackers.

Wells Fargo’s Carrie Tolstedt departed with a $125 million exit package after being in charge of the unit that opened more than 2 million unauthorized customer accounts.

Around 60 percent of America’s wealth is now inherited. Many of today’s super rich have never done a day’s work in their lives.

Trump’s response has been to cut the estate tax to apply only to estates valued at over $22 million per couple. Mitch McConnell is now proposing that the estate tax be repealed altogether.

What about the capitalist principles that people earn what they’re worth in the market, and that economic gains should go to those who deserve them?

America is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history. As rich boomers expire over the next three decades, an estimated $30 trillion will go to their children.

Those children will be able to live off of the income these assets generate, and then leave the bulk of them to their own heirs, tax-free. (Capital gains taxes don’t apply to the soaring values of stocks, bonds, mansions and other assets of wealthy people who die before they’re sold.)

After a few generations of this, almost all of the nation’s wealth will be in the hands of a few thousand non-working families.

To the conservative mind, the specter of socialism conjures up a society in which no one is held accountable, and no one has to work for what they receive. Yet that’s exactly the society Trump and the Republicans are promoting for the rich.

Meanwhile, most Americans are subject to an increasingly harsh and arbitrary capitalism in which they’re working harder but getting nowhere, and have less security than ever.

They need thicker safety nets and deserve a bigger piece of the economic pie. If you want to call this socialism, fine. I call it fair.