SIGHED EFFECTS

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Well, dinosaurs laid eggs. (Unless you are Sarah Palin, it is pretty accepted that dinosaurs came first.) The chicken or egg dilemma is really an example of a circular argument of cause and consequence. Not taken literally, it presents a good example. Today, we seem to have a psychological problem with identifying cause and consequence. I saw an advert for American Solutions, and I clicked it. American Solutions is a tax exempt organization created by Newt Gingrich. If anyone does not know who Newt Gingrich is, go look it up. He’s been in the US Government since the end of the 1970s, and is a Tea Party supporting Republican. He has written several publications. His latest is To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine. According to America’s Solutions, we are at “The End of Obama’s ‘Recovery Summer’.” The entry is pretty concise. It relabels “Labor Day” as “Unemployment Day.” It states that the lack of jobs is due to uncertainty to tax increases and healthcare costs. Several problems arise in this. I am going to begin in the end, and then go back to the end after I do the beginning in the middle. Now that I have explained that well, let us continue. . . Why is it “Obama’s Recovery Summer”? There is a difference in this label than “America’s Recovery Summer.” This is all about President Obama, not America. If the recovery fails, it is all the fault of President Obama. If it succeeds, well, we do not have to worry about the success of the recovery. Any level of success will be marginally and easily dismissed. The reality is that President Obama has a job right now. He has a salary. He has accumulated wealth. This ‘recovery’ is not about Barrack Obama, it is about the American population. It is almost like President Obama’s opponents are creating a Cult of Personality for him. Everything is about the man, not the policy, not the nation, not the voting public. Just the man. While Obama’s recovery summer is coming to an end, it is the American people who are suffering. The same people that some Republicans have responded to with statements such as: “Tough Shit!” Some of them have even stated that Unemployment Insurance is for lazy people who want to do nothing. And, since 1999, the GOP has stated that they want “bipartisan politics.” When G.W. Bush ran for President, part of his platform was an end to bickering, party politics. And, yet, during the past decade, they have made divisive statements at every opportunity. The statement about the ‘recovery’ is no exception. This is “Obama’s Recovery.” Meaning, wanting to recovery to fail is not directed to the American people, but to the man who sits in office. They want it to fail so they can get the Democratic Party out of office and put the GOP back in control. In this piece about the ‘Recovery Summer,” they go into detail about tax breaks for those in the top 20% of income and wealth. How these tax breaks will benefit everyone. Supply-side economics have been the mantra of the GOP since the 1970s. This recurrent theme took firm grasp during Reagan. Since Reagan, the wealthy have increased in wealth and the middle-class has shrunk. The disparity between rich and poor has been growing exponentially for the past five presidents. Exactly when does this supply-side policy “trickle down”? The American Conservatives just keep trying to do the same thing, over and over, until it finally works. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein said this. Einstein said a lot of wonderful things, like “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Anyway, according to Albert Einstein, the Republican Party is insane. The United States has been giving the economic top 2%, and top 20%, tax incentives and wealth growing initiatives for several decades. The middle class is poorer now than it was ten years ago (even adjusting for inflation). American Solutions, most Conservatives, and just about everyone else admits that those with the best ability to create jobs and increase economic production are just sitting on their hands. In its most recent Small Business Survey, American Solutions entrepreneurs cited the federal government as the #1 culprit when it comes to imposing the most burdensome taxes or fees. In addition, twenty-seven percent (27%) of small businesses lose more than 10 hours per month complying with state or federal government requirements or regulations. American Solutions The solutions provided in the same piece is pretty simple: The plan is straight forward. Lower taxes and make the United States the most competitive country in the world for new business investment. The legislation reduces payroll taxes by fifty percent for both the employer and employee for one year, allowing for greater take home pay for individuals and more money for companies to hire new employees and make new capital investments. To spur manufacturing, the plan allows small firms to expense 100 percent of the cost of new purchases. To make the U.S. more competitive, the legislation reduces the corporate income tax rate to 12.5 percent and completely eliminates the capital gains tax. These two bold tax reforms will be an enormous boost to productivity and stop jobs from going overseas by making the United States — not India or China — the best place in the world to start and run a business. So, let us look into this. Businesses say they find the federal government’s taxes and rules the biggest hindrance into their means of producing wealth. These American companies want to continue to do business in America, utilize NAFTA and everything else that entails being an American corporation, or business, but they want lower taxes and less regulations. If they do not get what they want, they are going to sit and pout. The Conservative answer is to give them what they want. Basically, the top 2-20% are saying, “If we do not get what we want, we are not making any new jobs!” If they lose their tax breaks, a corporation is going to make $1.5 billion, instead of making $2 billion dollars. Or a ‘small business’ may only see a $200 million profit, instead of $300 million. Oh, that is just terrible. And I thought it was bad that “Josh the Plumber” has to pay $12,000 a year for COBRA even though his unemployment check is $293 a week. (MSN used for numbers.) We better give the top 20% what they want or they might leave. If they find investing in the United States is too expensive, they might to go Europe for lower tax incentives. Or maybe they will go to China. Or they might even go to some underdeveloped country in Africa, South East Asia or Latin America. (The risk of a socialist revolution or civil war is such a trivial concern.) And it’s not like we can tariff the hell out of them to reach our enormous consumer market. [The preceding paragraph was so sarcastic, it should be evident.] Here’s the thing: If all companies have to do is refuse to create jobs, cut back on jobs, decrease their spending, and other such tactics, and they get their own way, who is really in charge? It is Corporate America and Financial Institutions that can cripple the country until policies are passed that benefit them. This is called a Plutocracy. A Plutocracy is NOT a Democracy. The financial blackmail that is being perpetrated on the American People is insane. It is insane precisely for the reason Einstein stated. To continue to do the same thing over and over and expecting it to work. I debate against supply-side economics with my Conservative counterparts all of the time. The problem I have with supply-side is pretty simple. It is a two-fold problem. One problem I have is when is the wealth going to “trickle down”? The second is that it trickles down both ways. When the wealthiest members of our society are unhappy, they can without finances and the poverty trickles down. According to Forbes.com, Warren Buffet has a net worth of $47 billion. (That is $47,000,000.00) He now only makes a $100,000 salary. A hundred thousand dollars is a pittance compared to his wealth. It also farther complicates things because, when using a progressive tax, he pays a smaller income tax than many small business owners. So, when is his wealth going to “trickle down”? We had 8 years of Reagan and supply-side economics, 4 years of H.W. Bush, and, after a hiatus with Clinton, 8 more years of supply-side with G.W. Bush. We also had Supply-side policies under Richard Nixon. – The wealth in America did grow under Clinton, and one could argue that it was from the “trickle down effect” from his predecessors. Or you could argue that it was the “bottoms up” effect of the Secretary of Treasury under President Clinton. Why are we still doing this? Gingrich’s comments (and book title) speak volumes, too. “Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine.” Buzz words and sound bites. What do they mean? The GOP and Tea Party have been doing their psychological homework. These words elicit emotional responses in the American electorate. I contest that you can call every American politician a “Secular Socialist” on some level. The Separation Clause and the Supremacy Clause make the United States government “secular.” The egalitarian qualities of the Constitution make socialist implications. This elicits a negative response. But the creator of the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Julius Bellamy, was a socialist. So was Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Susan B. Anthony, and Helen Keller. Ho Chi Minh was a Communist that was inspired by the United States Constitution. Simply slapping a label on something does not make it a bi-polar dichotomy. There is no zero-sum game in ideology. The setup of the United States government makes every President since George Washington a “Secular Socialist” on some level. A little known tidbit of information: The reason many Muslims have a strong level of contempt for Marxism, and most Western governments, was in the earliest translations of these theories. The word “secular” was replaced with “Satanic.” This word-play makes any “secular” government appear “evil” in many aspects of Muslim culture. Gingrich is also outspoken in his stance against Sharia Law. In August of this year, he did “assert the principle that where sharia and American law conflict, it is American law that must give way.” That makes sense, in a secular sense. Didn’t the Establishment Clause and the Supremacy Clause already enforce this? In times when religion and the Constitution conflict, the religious law must yield. How secularly progressive of Mr. Gingrich. These constant attacks on the President and his non-existent Cult of Personality are tiring. These attacks on ideology based on whimsical fancy are just as tiring. What is the real motive behind these attacks? When tragedy strikes, people get scared. When the fear dissipates, it gives way to anger. With not enough jobs, people got scared. Now that the fear is dissipating, it is giving way to anger. We have seen where these heightened levels of social anger can lead. It leads to Hanoi. It leads to The Long Walk. It leads to the Bolshevik Revolution. In the most tragic cases, it can lead to Auschwitz and the Democratic Republic of Congo. (On a rare, good instance, it can lead to the fall of Apartheid, or the Orange Revolution. EVERYONE in the government knows they need to placate this anger. There are really only two ways to do this. One solution is to have the economy rebound. Increase personal wealth for the masses, increase standards of living, give the people what they need, or even want. The other way to placate the anger is to displace it. If the anger is displaced, the cost to the top 20% is marginal. Enter the enemies of the Obama Administration and the anti-Islamic sentiments. Right now, a few issues dominate the Tea Party landscape: immigration, Islam, government and jobs. The first three are all “others.” Immigrants are destroying America. Islam wants to destroy America. The government is growing out of touch and out of control. And we want jobs. Well, we can make the first three “enemies,” why not blame the enemies on the fourth? Sound bites, buzz words, and clever puns are being deployed by everyone in the entire political spectrum to elicit an emotional response and redirect anger. Nobody is mad at the corporations, businesses or the wealthy. Meanwhile, the wealthy are refusing to create jobs and stimulate the economy. Gingrich basically called Obama a “secular socialist” to elicit an emotional response. “He’s different and in a bad way.” The opposite of a secular, egalitarian society would be Saudi Arabia. Is that what Gingrich and American Solutions are advocating? (I’m not even going to go down the path of creating enemies and how this has led to the atrocities committed by the Nazi Party and the Khmer Rouge.) What they want to do is place the anger on the Democratic President and the current administration. They want to get back into office and pass legislation that will increase tax cuts and decrease regulations. They actually state this as part of their platform! They also come right out and admit that Corporate and Financial America are not hiring because they do not want to lose their tax breaks or have increased regulations. They want to pay the smallest amount and have the highest level of freedom. They do not want higher EPA standards, workplace regulations, safety regulations, etc. They tell us this! Corporate and Financial America are basically extorting the American people. They said, in so many words, “put officials in office that will help us continue to collect wealth, or we will let you starve!” So what happens if they do not get their tax breaks, income shelters, increased profits, decreased regulations? Someone needs to tell them to stop acting like spoiled brats and grow up. Why should you pay higher taxes, give everyone healthcare and create more jobs? Because if you do not, people are going to get more angry, and the results could be even worse. Do we want to create a situation where the people storm the Bastille? Where people go on The Long Walk? And the people that support the nonsense that not giving corporations what they want need to really look at the situation. Do you want a real Socialist Movement? It wasn’t very pretty in the early 20th century. The alternative to a Socialist Movement is a real Fascist Movement. Is that what we want? These are the options that the wealthy have given us: Give them what they want, or slide backwards. We have had these economic policies in place for several decades and the result is an increasing debt, shrinking wealth for the general population, and unfettered control of the society in the hands of corporate interests. We have been doing supply-side over and over again. It is insane to believe that doing it again is going to yield different results. And, when that is what created this mess, what is there to make us believe that it will fix it? . . . → Read More: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

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