Handy hints for earthlings who wish to avoid enslavement and death

Introduction

About the Author: I'm an earthling, as far as I know (which is not much, as evidenced by the title of this blog), age 78 as of this writing. I have experienced much in those years, and have decided to record the most useful parts of that experience for the edification of whoever might read these words.

In my lifetime so far, I have held many beliefs and opinions which I have felt obliged to discard or modify when confronted with sufficient evidence. Many of my fellow earthlings have not made a similar effort to make such corrections, for a variety of reasons, none of them helpful to themselves or others. I endeavor to be as helpful as possible within my limitations. As Fox Mulder often said, "the truth is out there." Very far out, more often than not, and it's unwise to ignore it if you find it.

What I've learned so far would fill many books, but rather than write one I will simply provide hyperlinks or references to sources I've found to be most useful and trustworthy. You must be the judges of their contents. Many of these sources are not widely recognized as being either useful or trustworthy, for reasons which will soon become obvious.

How most people accumulate their beliefs and opinions

As children, we learn from our parents, teachers, and communities; friends, enemies, and experiences. As we grow older, we learn from independent reading and, increasingly, electronic media. The best education is designed to teach us how to learn, so we may discern when we are acquiring knowledge and not being manipulated by propaganda. Unfortunately, the primary motivation of the controllers of our key cultural institutions is to maintain their control of those institutions to infinitely expand their wealth and power. It's my observation that these institutions include all levels of education, our economic systems, governmental and corporate structures (now effectively united), and religious institutions.

A key enabler of this control is the universal use of deception The success of this universal deception is evidenced everywhere one looks if one can lean to see through it. I will point out examples as we go.

The most effective means of mind control

Many are familiar with the techniques practiced by the masters of propaganda of Hitler's "Third Reich."

(Provide reference)

Few are aware of a more fundamental technique, portrayed in George Orwell's 1984 (see https://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app) for a deep dive), in which language itself is manipulated and distorted so that clear, logical thinking becomes impossible. That's the ultimate means of mind control: language control. To corrupt a language is to corrupt thought. Do you wonder if, or how, our language is corrupted, and how damaging the results of such corruption might be (even after former Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway introduced us to the concept of "alternative facts," a phrase right out of 1984)? 

Here's a key example of "creeping newspeak" which has been used for decades by the kleptocrats who have captured our government for power and profit: the phrase "Federal Deficit" and the closely-related phrase "federal budget deficit." The word deficit carries a negative, dangerous vibe; its synonyms include shortfall, deficiency, shortage, undersupply, slippage, indebtedness, debt, arrears, negative amount, and loss—all things to be avoided in one's personal finances, as well as in state, local and corporate finance. The second phrase (federal budget deficit) is usually shortened to "budget deficit," as if all budget deficits are of the same character. This consistent imprecision is intentionally deceptive, pruning out more precise words to reduce the likelihood of that deception being perceived. The unconscious message: all deficits are the same (see that list of synonyms above).

"Fake News" and Propaganda

After finding this URL, https://taskandpurpose.com/news/dont-get-trapped-by-fake-news-blue-falcons/, I responded with a comment which began:

"I'm a Vietnam-era vet (USNR) and have mixed feelings about a site you feature as an example of a questionable site which should be taken with more than a grain of salt (VeteransToday.com). As an enlisted man with no ambitions to advance, I looked forward to the end of my 2 years of active duty. During those years, I experienced being told things by my superiors which turned out to be false. There's "need-to-know" and then there's just BS to cover up (ahem) untruths deemed necessary to satisfy control requirements of underlings (more subtle and effective than "you didn't see/hear that"). Remarkably, there have been moments of candor where official spokespeople have admitted that "the government has a right to lie" when "matters of national security" are involved. As Wikipedia reports, "historically, propaganda had been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions or ideologies." Today, it's primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. I'm now 78; when I was 18, I heard the news that JFK had been shot and killed. Initial news reports quickly settled on an official narrative: a lone gunman named Oswald was the shooter." 

(Exceeding their length limit for comments, I ended with "Continued on my blog, EverythingIknewWasWrong.blogspot.com." This blog entry is what I would have entered there, if there was no limit.)

I'm a Vietnam-era vet (USNR) and have mixed feelings about a site you feature as an example of a questionable site which should be taken with more than a grain of salt (VeteransToday.com). As an enlisted man with no ambitions to advance, I looked forward to the end of my 2 years of active duty. During those years, I experienced being told things by my superiors which turned out to be false. There's "need-to-know" and then there's just BS to cover up (ahem) untruths deemed necessary to satisfy control requirements of underlings (more subtle and effective than "you didn't see/hear that"). Remarkably, there have been moments of candor where official spokespeople have admitted that "the government has a right to lie" when "matters of national security" are involved. As Wikipedia reports, "historically, propaganda had been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions or ideologies." Today, it's primarily used to influence or persuade an audience so as to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. 

I'm now 79; when I was 18, I heard the news that JFK had been shot and killed. That event, its aftermath and my search for truth since then has shaped the way I evaluate any new information. Here’s why.

Initial news reports about the assassination quickly settled on an official narrative: a lone gunman named Oswald was the shooter. It would be 20 years until the internet’s “World Wide Web” became available to the general public for information searching. Mass Media was the primary source of timely information for local and world affairs, through 3 national TV networks, metropolitan and national newspapers and magazines, syndicated news services and radio stations. Most Americans got nearly all their information from the same set of sources. Everyone wanted to know who killed our president, the sooner the better, and the mass media did not disappoint. It was also an era when public trust of this media was quite high.

Even with that high level of trust in mass media (which no longer exists, replaced by assertions  from all sides that the “news” is fake until proven otherwise), skepticism of that original official story ran high. The Warren Commission was established ostensibly to find the truth, but it became obvious to young and old that its real purpose was to disprove any evidence that more than one shooter was involved—because more than one shooter, by definition, required a conspiracy—a coordinated group effort. This purpose was even acknowledged in some official quarters on the imperative of “national security;” the Cold War was still in full swing then, with Khrushchev’s words in 1961 of “We will bury you” still ringing in the national ear. The United States had claimed the mantle, as it still does, of “leader of the free world;” if a conspiracy to assassinate a US President could be traced to a source inside the government, that leadership might be fatally weakened. (The CIA had been implicated in assassinations of many foreign leaders, and JFK had made many enemies in his thousand days in office, including the CIA.) 

It was thus deemed essential that no presidential assassination conspiracy be considered. The facts of the case were then manipulated to match the desired conclusion—a lone gunman was the only permissible conclusion, and any other conclusion had to be given the pejorative, even treasonous, label of (say it with me) “a conspiracy theory.”

In the years since the assassination, ample and convincing evidence has accumulated of such a conspiracy, as has continuing official denial of that evidence. After 21 years, the phrase has maintained its pejorative status, despite all reason, and the reasons for that label are unknown to those too young to remember JFK.

Those like me who were young at the time may remember the fear connected with becoming a skeptic of that “mother of all conspiracy theories.” Once the mass media had proclaimed the national-security imperative of “conspiracy denial,” it seemed our entire culture adopted that imperative; those who spoke out against it lost their status in their community, their feeling of safety, even their jobs (or ability to regain employment). Imagine yourself waking up to a world in which your national leaders and the corporations who employed most Americans of the middle and upper classes were enforcing a status quo in which a President who did not “get with the program” could be liquidated like the leader of a “banana republic.” Would you protest, or quietly cower in fear of your life and livelihood? If you were the breadwinner of your family (in those days there was only one), which would you choose? If you were in school, would you stand up to the derision of your classmates, or keep silent? I know what I did, and I’m not proud of it. 

Today, "our government" is financially and (by default) morally supporting Israeli Zionist propaganda designed to conceal by repeatedly denying the obvious truth (admitted in past and present, by Israel, but suppressed in the dominant Western news media) that Israel's goal since 1948 has been to erase the existence and history of Palestine, a total erasure of a semitic population who have lived there for generations, usually in peace with their neighbors.

(Expand on the theme, reusing prewritten items when possible.)

The power is in your hands.

 Good news about the November election. As the saying goes, “Man plans, God laughs.” Will the prize go to the man who says, “Netanyahu must finish the job,” or the woman who says “Israel has the right to defend itself” (and supports Joe “I have always been a Zionist” Biden’s continuing arms shipmen’s to the man he affectionately calls “Bibi,” including bunker-buster bombs, while talking tough in public about “minimizing civilian casualties”—criminally absurd, given “Bibi’s” declarations about the second “Nakba” and the Knesset speeches about there being “no innocent Palestinians.” 

Watch what the IDF does, the crimes against man and God they commit on a daily basis, not the lies they repeat for foreign consumption: IDF snipers aiming at the heads of women, children and babies, bombing refugees in their tents, huddling where they were told to evacuate to, cutting off food, water and medicines, bombing churches, mosques, the last remaining hospitals, schools, all remaining infrastructure, ambulances, rescue workers, doctors, refusing to even seriously talk about ceasefires…no surprises here, this slow-motion holocaust has been grinding on according to plan since 1948. Most of us believe that we have only a “choice” between Red death and Blue death, under one management. I believe “most of us are dead wrong.

There IS another choice—a real one: the Green choice—“People, Planet, Peace.” America does not have a “democracy,” we have the Electoral College, a system designed by our white, male, landowning (and usually slaveowning) “founding fathers” to preserve their wealth and power. 

The surprising good news—our captured and compromised Supreme Court has given Biden a gift: total immunity from prosecution for any official act committed while President. 

This ruling applies to the sitting president, not just to the next one. He (or she) could abolish the Electoral College and found our first REAL democracy, to represent (for the first time) We The People. Why the hell not? Then, we could elect the only real anti-holocaust candidate, Jill Stein. 

For those who recoil in horror at the thought of not voting for Harris, because you be would effectively be “voting for Trump,” NONSENSE. It’s the Electoral College, dummy, which determines who wins. If you oppose genocide, Jill Stein is your only choice. An exercise in futility? She can never outspend or overcome the money and power of the “duopoly” (AKA the kleptocrat owners of the phony “2-party system”)? If every opponent of genocide voted their conscience, that would not be true. If Jill is on your ballot, you literally have no reason NOT to vote Green.

Do you fear that voting Green will have unintended consequences, like bankrupting the country should Congress pass the “Green Agenda?” How tragic that would be. Would we suffer ruinous inflation? Be forced to fund free education and health care for all? Would our military budget shrink to far below its current level of ten times that of all other countries combined? Oh, the horror, should peace break out. Relax, the economic consequences of that scenario would be the opposite of what we have been trained to fear by the Military-Industrial complex Ike warned us of (and now has all of us on a gaslighting-powered leash).

Most of us don’t know of or understand how our macroeconomic (“fiat money”) system works (it’s called “MMT.” A one-stop educational resource to dissolve that leash may be found at RealProgressives.org). Our collective ignorance provides the strength of the kleptocrats’ leash. 

RFK Sr. once said, “Others see what is, and say “why?” I see what has never been, and say: WHY NOT?” YOU have the power to change the world in your hands. 

If you would like to learn more about this very possible future, and would like to listen to a podcast, here’s the link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/macro-n-cheese/id1453085489?i=1000673674948

A few proposed antidotes to political despair

There's a deep political despair acutely felt by those who fear another run in 2024 by our former president, and observe the depressing performance by Democrats in general as they battle, or appear to battle, the seeming opposition of the “other party,” while I hold a tight grip on a minority, “alternate reality” view of US politics. I express this view at every opportunity.

The “two realities” in question are mine and that of the “conventional wisdom” supported by the corporate media. Only one of them can be real. The latter’s “reality” (shared by the 6 international media conglomerates which control 90% of what US media “consumers” see, hear, and read, and who have a stake in the outcome) is that in the United States, “we have a 2-party system,” for good or for ill—and that the chances of a candidate from outside that system gaining and holding office is vanishingly slim—therefore, supporting such a candidate is, at best, a waste of time, and surely votes for such candidates will steal votes from the “lesser of two evils” and will effectively be voting for the greater evil (whichever “major party candidate” you deem that to be).

The reality I deem to be the real one? In a nutshell, the two “major parties” don’t deserve that name; we have no actual politics here, only political theater, on a stage owned and operated by kleptocrats who use that stage to provide voters with the illusion of choice. Detailed facts behind this belief may be found at represent.us.

Is our only sane alternative, given our constricted “real choices, to “vote Blue, no matter who?” These folks, of course, face virulent opposition from the “Republicans” (whose party has now been effectively hijacked by Trump and his fans). How did this happen? What’s now the “Trump Party” has gained strength by numerous means; tactics sponsored by the kleptocrats, familiar to students of fascism, who divide and conquer by promoting fear and hate, scapegoating victims, and accusing them of the crimes which they themselves commit. 

Most of the parents of the MAGA crowd were better off than they are now, and are being led to blame an amorphous establishment, labeled “leftist elites,” leaders of “the New World Order,” or just “the libs” (or less polite terms). Regardless of who they are led to blame, they are justified in believing that they’re being treated unfairly by their own government. The Biden administration has been a disappointment to progressives of all stripes, but the MAGA counterparts of those disappointed progressives are suffering real trauma, along with us all, as we continue to lose our jobs, houses, savings, and sometimes lives. While all the details of these disappointments are too numerous to include here, remember how Trump supporters were labeled by HRC in 2016: as “Deplorables.” She’s the one who privately urged her numerous allies in the press to “elevate” DJT to the front-runner with free publicity, having decided that he would be the easiest Republican to beat. Shockingly, “her party” has embraced this tactic in recent state and local contests. 

How much better off, for working people? As the graph shown here depicts, between 1979 and 2021, productivity rose by 164.6% while income rose by only 117.3%. According to a RAND Corporation study (quoted in TIME), “had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.” This upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over $50 trillion in the past several decades, and it took place regardless of whether red or blue “parties” held sway in Washington.

My core message has either not been heard or is being disregarded as nonsense, namely that the ones dealing with a faux reality are those who view the “2-party system” as real, and our shared living nightmare of a kleptocrat-sponsored political theater is just a fever dream. Reality or nightmare? Shall we vote for Judy, because we simply MUST defeat Punch? C’mon, does that make any sense, or is it...malarkey? As Paul Simon wrote (in his lyrics to “Mrs. Robinson”), “Goin’ to the candidates’ debate…laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose…any way you look at it, you lose.”

So, what ARE my “two antidotes for political despair?”

In chronological order, they are the work of Steve Grumbine’s two organizations, presented at Real Progressives and at Real Progress in Action; the former is a tax-exempt group, and the latter is free to advocate for candidates and actions (but not tax-exempt). Together, they provide support for what they see as the best path away from kleptocrat control of the global economy and our “politics”—educating the general public about our REAL economy, explaining how it actually works, and dispelling the myths and misleading rhetoric which enables the ever-increasing wealth disparity here and worldwide. It’s known as Modern Monetary Theory (or “MMT”), which adherents describe as a lens through which to view our real economy. These websites contain a wealth of information and resources, with links to videos in multiple venues, podcasts (with transcripts), live events, books (now including a book club), and more, all searchable. 

Learning MMT has meant, for me, a paradigm shift from a world constrained by scarce resources as if by a law of nature, and not by a cruel policy choice—to a paradigm where public resources are not constrained by money, but only by actual physical and human resources. In short, our current system, a sovereign government with a fiat currency, enables us to get the things we want and need, constrained only by our political will. It’s the system with which we transformed our economy almost overnight to win WWII. At the war’s end, enabled by the new post-war political and economic environment, our middle class grew to be bigger than any in history, which led to panic by the upper class—which was as afraid of our new prosperity as were the crowned heads of Europe after the American revolution. They got together and invented the “Reagan Revolution,” and we’re all now living the results of their success. 

The second antidote is primarily political, rather than economic. Steve Grumbine, with all his amazing work developing his own revolution using his pair of websites as his main tool, confesses that he doesn’t yet have a firm pathway mapped out to transform a better-educated electorate into one that can break through the kleptocrats’ control matrix. Mass action in the streets may work in France, but not so much here.

I like the strategy of the late Buckminster Fuller: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Why not run without a party? That’s what George Washington did, a man who was convinced that political parties were a bad idea.

As I mentioned above, there's a website ("represent.us") with a collection of electoral reforms that could make our existing political reality obsolete. Here are a few of the changes they advocate.

The “Ranked Choice Voting” system is now a legal reality for many state and local offices. It eliminates the fear of voting for a “spoiler.” Every candidate on such a ballot gets a vote, numbered in order of preference. If a voter’s first preference does not win, their second-ranked choice instantly becomes that voter’s #1. Candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated until there is only one (hence the other name for RCV, "instant-runoff voting"). No voter need ever again fear that their least favorite choice will win because they voted for their favorite. Primary elections would be obsolete—voters, not party insiders, narrow the field. Election choices would not be limited by the fear of “avoiding the lesser evil,” forcing a vote against the one you fear more, instead of for the one you prefer.

Ranked Choice Voting has been adopted in many locales, but the duopoly parties fear the competition. In California, an RCV law surprisingly passed the legislature, but Gov. Newsom vetoed it. 

In 2016, registered as a Democrat, I worked to elect Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. After he “lost” to Clinton, I discovered that the DNC had used a basket of dirty tricks to steal the nomination from him. Bernie supporters, much later, sued the DNC for justice. The judge threw out the case, agreeing with the position of the DNC’s lawyer: as a private corporation (and not part of our government, except by custom), no court, and no voter, could tell the DNC which candidate to choose, or that they could not violate their own rules (or make new ones—see "DNC to Court:..."). Therefore, I hold that no one aware of this decision can assert that “Democrats” are a “political party” as we know it. And “Republicans?” 

Eisenhower said, “A political party must be dedicated to the advancement of a moral cause, otherwise it is just a conspiracy to seize power.” (See this Snopes fact check.) There’s strong evidence that Trump (who seems to have gained and held a degree of control over “his party” equivalent to that of a Mafia don) has done just what Ike warned might happen someday, by making plans to declare victory in the 2020 election (and perhaps the 2016 election as well) before a single vote was cast. According to The Hill (see Pompeo on election results), Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in a press conference on 11/10,20, was asked if the State Department was prepared to engage with Biden’s transition team.

“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo replied. Pompeo appeared to smirk after delivering the line about a “second Trump administration,” though it was unclear from his remarks themselves whether he was joking. The State Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry about his comments…The Secretary of State’s remark quickly drew widespread attention and could signal to U.S. allies and enemies alike how to handle results in their own elections.”

With these established facts in evidence, do you still think we have a real “2-party system,” or NO parties at all—just an image projected on a wall of an elephant and a donkey, depicting two parties? Would it be more believable if it were a holographic video, sponsored by a consortium of global corporations, as seen on TV? Which is more real, the shared belief or the truth?

This hologram was created by kleptocrats at tremendous cost, and we've been paying the bill for it since the "Reagan Revolution." (For an in-depth review of that "revolution," see this excellent article from The Hartmann Report, at https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-the-reagan-revolution-scheme. Why not choose an actual human being for office instead, free of any "party" control, one who pledges to represent us, instead of being a proxy for a Military-Industrial-Congressional complex bent on owning and controlling our pale blue ball, scouring the life out of it until it’s a burnt-out cinder, while they make a new home for themselves on some other unfortunate planet? It’s impossible to choose between “two parties” which exist only in a fantasy world governed by kleptocrats. Let's reject the impossible, take Bucky Fuller's path, and create a new reality, one that makes the current, phony one obsolete.

Here's my view of what We the People need in order to get what we're supposed to have (representative government): 1) A national law establishing Ranked Choice Voting, to remove the fear of choosing a "spoiler candidate;" 2) every voter gets to choose and rank any candidate meeting the constitutional qualifications for office; 3) Each qualifying candidate gets a comprehensive listing on isidewith.com; 4) voters could find the candidate closest to their views and preferences without even needing to know their name (by consulting https://www.isidewith.com/elections/). 5) Political parties and lobbyists would be banned. 6) The Electoral College and the Senate would be abolished, while the House would be enlarged so that each representative would be elected by a nearly equal number of voters. 7) Party functionaries would be replaced by caucuses and committees organized by task. 8) All campaigns would be publicly funded, ending the current money-controlled system. 9) Term limits would apply to all three branches of the federal government. 10) The Citizens United decision would be nullified by law, ending corporate citizenship. 11) Private prisons would be outlawed, as would slave labor by prisoners. Then, we would arguably achieve all the goals sought by represent.us. 

The Party's Over (an open letter to Marianne Williamson and you)

Who's Marianne? My new favorite 2024 presidential candidate. If you are as amazed and disgusted as I am that our nation may be faced with a choice between two duopoly candidates seemingly chosen by that duopoly to be the worst possible choices, so as to increase the share of eligible voters who choose not to vote (now between 37 and 50%) to an even higher number—at a time when maximum participation of that electorate has never been more crucial for the survival of humanity—you should check out her website and view her social media presence. In short, she's a candidate that over 90% of that electorate might choose as their president if they just look, listen, and read.

Here's the message I composed for her and sent to her campaign, where I now volunteer, and Realprogressives.org, where I also volunteer. (Revised Nov. 6, 2023.)

The DNC has announced that there will be no primary debates between Democratic presidential candidates in 2024, and (barring acts of God) Biden will be the nominee. Faced with challenges to that foregone conclusion by Marianne and others, they will ignore them the same way they ignored the challenge to Hillary's candidacy by Bernie Sanders: if sued by non-Biden-supporters, the DNC will doubtless get the court to throw out the case, again, with the same argument—that the "Democratic Party" is a private corporation and not only is the DNC outside the jurisdiction of any court, but it denies any obligation to follow its own rules (since they can be changed at will) or to honor the wishes of the voters in its primaries.

 

I am certain that Marianne has a zero chance of becoming the nominee of that "party" in 2024, or any other year. Her campaign is one of revolutionary change, whereas the "Democratic Party" is an antidemocratic institution, owned and operated by the same kleptocrats who ultimately own the equally-bogus "Republican Party."

I see only one rational alternative: Marianne must gain ballot access as an independent candidate (without any party affiliation). We need "power to the people," not "power to the party."

I'm reminded of the cartoon meme of Bernie using a torch to set fire to a straw donkey with the caption "Bern it down." Doubtless, lifelong "party" loyalists were offended. How dare he? (Of course, the real Bernie, after assuring his supporters that they should follow their consciences, quickly honored his "party" pledge and backed the "party" nominee.)

What might make "party" loyalists abandon their straw-stuffed icon in favor of a real revolutionary who credibly pledges to uphold their interests and oppose the interests of the corporate mega-donors who are pledged to burn down our republic, and obliterate our democracy? "Party" is in quotes above to remind the reader that to leave out the quotes grants the kleptocrats their need to frame the word as if it still means what it's assumed to mean, and not a euphemism for the loose-knit cabal of corporate con men who currently own and operate the "two parties" to provide the electorate with the illusion of choice. One set of owners, one corporate duopoly; heads they win, tails we lose. Of course, they always seem to be locked in an eternal battle with each other, but only over issues which do not challenge their continuing control. (What part of "illusion" is unclear?)

In the words of president Eisenhower, “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956.)

To be sure, the "two parties" have different approaches to ignoring the electorate's wishes; for the "Democrats," a corporate-compliant candidate is chosen by the DNC without reference to primary results (see the first paragraph above). The "Republicans" focus more on choosing their voters through gerrymandering and suppression (theft) of the votes of likely non-Republican voters. If these tactics fail, they simply declare victory by declaring that the "other side" MUST have cheated somehow, without evidence acceptable by even Republican-appointed judges—or concoct illegal schemes like replacing legitimate Electoral College delegates with shills who were not even on a ballot. (See gregpalast.com.)

Like Ike's warning to us of the profound danger to our democratic republic by the "Military-Industrial Complex," his  warning about parties-in-name-only has also come true. More recently, George Carlin warned us to beware of another term in the kleptocrat newspeak arsenal: "The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out." If Patrick Henry were here, he might counsel us that "Now is the time for all good men to burn down their party and elect representatives of the people, not straw-stuffed effigies of kleptocrats."

Consider the fact that the largest sector of eligible voters in the United States (ranging from 37-50%) is the sector which does not vote at all. The largest percentages of actual voters by party (where those percentages are available) identify themselves as "Democrats," 38.78%; "Republicans," 29.42%; Independents/No Preference, 28.5%, and "Other," 3.25%.

 

Currently, this sector is ignored by the "political class" as irrelevant. Perhaps non-voters, rather than being indifferent to voting, are just painfully aware that their "representatives" don't care whether they're alive or dead, as evidenced by websites like represent.us.

Marianne, don't trust your ballot access to kleptocrats disguised as a party machine, who'd prefer you were dead because they can't control you. Keep appealing directly to your fellow Americans, instead. God is not dead, but "both parties" ARE. Americans want and expect their representatives to represent THEM, not lobbyists for corporate oligarchs (ie the "duopoly"). So-called party politics in America is dead, because the "2-party system" is a walking, talking zombie, performing political theater. The zombie will retain its grip on our political system until the electorate sees it for what it is. When that happens, the party's over, replaced by true representatives of the people, advancing causes that are right and that are moral. Who will that be? The people will decide—that is, the people who vote.

 Will you be among them, or will you be among the over 80% of the electorate who won't even be able to pretend they're represented in government?

 

 

Thom Hartmann's essay on the "Two Santas" strategy

I submitted this comment to Thom Hartmann (at https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-debt-ceiling-is-just-two-santas/comments). Please read it before you read my comment below. It's an excellent analysis, but the core issue has not been addressed: the "national debt" itself is being treated as if it were the same as debt by state or local governments, or household debt, or corporate debt. It is (as Monty Python would say) "completely different." ONLY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN ISSUE OUR CURRENCY. Congress (contrary to the "common sense, bipartisan" consensus) neither has nor hasn't any money to "spend." It creates new funds at will, with every appropriation, under our current fiat system. It does not have to tax or borrow before it "spends;" it can always create all it needs, by fiat. Every Congressional appropriation, rather than causing a deficit, is deleted from the national spreadsheet and added to the accounts of the recipients of those appropriations for a net-zero balance. It does not cause inflation with this process. Inflation can only become a hazard when the created money is spent, in excess of productive capacity. Federal taxes never "pay for" anything, they are deleted on receipt to shrink the money supply to control inflation and for other purposes. Until these facts become common knowledge (and are accepted as "common sense") to the general public (and progressives like Thom Hartmann), the kleptocrats who invented the "two Santas" and "debt ceiling" scams will continue to use them to get the 99% to consent to deadly "austerity" budgets in the name of "fiscal responsibility" (which magically never applies to military budgets). For a sharper view of how our modern money system actually works, as opposed to the confusion and myths promoted by almost everyone in politics and the mass media, see realprogressives.org.

Why McCarthy's "Debt Ceiling" is worse than wrong

Here's food for thought: what motivates Congressmen (mostly on the right) to insist on cutting items in the budget that would help people directly, like promoting environmental protection, expanding Social Security and Medicare benefits, raising the minimum wage to livable levels, providing a federal job guarantee, fighting homelessness, and more? They'd get my vote. The reasons they always give: "We can't afford it. Inflation would spike." (Usually untrue.) The real reason: "We must vote as our corporate sponsors' demand, or we'll lose election funding and may lose our jobs."

Here's the "worse than wrong" part, the reason their corporate sponsors demand that their minions push for austerity budgets that will cut funding for social-benefit programs like the ones above. It's not to be "fiscally responsible," because those same sponsors are fine with military budgets in excess of what the military asks for, which are now as untouchable as Social Security and Medicare benefits used to be. Our military spends more on war preparations and materiel (er, "defense") than the next ten countries combined, and in the war category, as Dick Cheney scolded his colleagues, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

To hold that "deficit spending is fiscally irresponsible" in the human needs and infrastructure sectors, while simultaneously holding that such spending is not only responsible but critically necessary for an already-bloated war budget is intellectually dishonest. It's also morally bankrupt, as such a budget kills more people than war does when people are foreclosed from getting what they need to survive in the social sector–in jobs, housing, debt relief, education, and health care.

Why, you might ask, do the billionaire corporate owners of Congress wish to cause suffering among the non-rich while lavishing ever more riches on our war machine? By doing so, they enrich themselves twice: once from their war investments and once more by raising unemployment, homelessness,  and bankruptcy which all depress wages, increasing their profits. It's not cruelty, they tell themselves, it's just the American way of business. (More intellectual dishonesty, worthy of a Mafia Don.)

 

Meanwhile, as a pundit recently wrote, "As renewables start to overtake fossil fuels in the United States, the GOP is fighting to reverse that progress: House Republicans are sticking to their proposal to only agree to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts that include most of the clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ signature legislative achievement this term."

The "debt ceiling" is not so much a "law" as a procedural rule. It's often been ignored when it's stood in the way of right-wing-favored budget items (like anything military or profitable for the war industry), and it's a peculiar institution currently in use by only one other nation, Denmark. Yet, asked by a reporter if it should be abolished, Biden responded "No, that would be irresponsible." Really? the US and Denmark are the only "responsible" nations? Sounds very "Republican," does it not? Remember the seldom-mentioned reassurance Biden gave to a private group of rich campaign contributors that if he were elected, "nothing will fundamentally change." A promise made, a promise kept.

Our current Speaker of the House (Kevin McCarthy), in a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcjMxEc4Qnk) explains what our path forward must be, as if he were guiding his teenage son in "responsible economics," thusly (text of paragraphs 1 to 4 below were taken verbatim from the closed-captions of the YouTube link above): 

(1) “If you gave your child a credit card, and they kept hitting the limit, you wouldn’t just raise the credit limit, you’d sit down with them, and help them to figure out where they could cut back on spending.

(2) "The same thing is true of our national debt.

(3) "We are spending more than we take in. And in the last couple of years, it has gotten really out of control. We must change our spending habits or we will leave the next generation with a bill they cannot afford.

(4) "Now is the time for a responsible debt limit, before it’s too late.”

Anyone who truly understands how our current federal financing works (aka the "MMT-wise") knows this narrative is beyond bunk, it's gaslighting to profit the 1%, damn the collateral damage to everyone else. Taking this toxic trash one sentence at a time:

1) This Dad-to-Son dialogue is relevant to raising a child to live within his or her means (ignoring who’s funding the credit card, and why), but only in the context of household finance (or even state government, where McCarthy cut his political teeth)—but in the context of federal finance, it's not just irrelevant but it’s just plain wrong.

2) "The same thing is true of our national debt." Totally false and either a) deliberately misleading, if Kevin is a competent federal legislator, or b) a bald-faced lie in service to his own portfolio and his kleptocrat sponsors if he knows the first thing about federal finance.

3) "We are spending more than we take in..." Again, nonsense in the federal context. As the sole legal ISSUER of our currency, "we" (Congress) spends nothing. It issues new money for every allocation of funds; nearly all that the federal government "takes in" is in the form of taxes, which *fund nothing*—they are deleted on receipt, primarily to control inflation. Sure, we should tax the rich as they were taxed in the Eisenhower years (look it up), not to "raise funds" but to reduce today's obscene wealth inequality, which is far greater today than it was in the "gilded age" of the "robber barons." "...We must change our spending habits or we will leave the next generation with a bill they cannot afford." Spending "habits?" like always getting our java drinks at Starbucks instead of at 7/11? The worst spending "habits" of Congress are rewarding the Military with more funds than they ask for, never asking for an audit to find where the missing Trillion$ went, spending more per year than the military budgets of the ten next-biggest-spending countries on the planet *combined,* without a murmur about deficits or "fiscal responsibility.” If it kills, it's sacred and not to be questioned. And if we don't change these irresponsible spending habits, "we will leave the next generation with a bill they cannot afford." Ahem. No generation gets a bill from the previous one's "spending" (Congressional appropriations). They may reap the whirlwind from the wind their fathers sowed, as our children may inherit disappearing islands, receding coastlines, extreme droughts and floods, poisoned land, food, air and water, climate refugees, homelessness, unemployment, hunger, and disease, at an incalculable economic and human cost. How will the next generations handle the legacy we're in the process of leaving them? Will they ever be able to "pay that bill?"

4) Kevin, what would that "responsible debt limit" look like? Ask any Fed Chairman ever about "federal debt," and they will tell you that it's a number on a spreadsheet, always balanced to the penny by funds added to the accounts of the recipients of Congressional appropriations. Congress never has to borrow from China or anywhere else, or from existing programs, for funds it creates at will. It's restricted only by real resources—natural and human—in the real economy, not by arbitrary numbers in a budget. Ever wonder why there are two sets of budgetary "rules" in Congress—one for military "spending," another for everything else (you know, that "promote the general welfare" stuff)? Just ask "Deep Throat"—Follow The Money. Congress does what its kleptocrat sponsors tell it to do. Don't look to "Democrats" to save us from the Red Team of the duopoly. A reporter recently asked President Biden if it's time to abolish the "debt ceiling," as Australia did recently— leaving only two other countries with this peculiar brand of "financial responsibility"—us and Holland. His response? "That would be fiscally irresponsible."

Who can save us from this madness, so that we may avoid the coming "bi-partisan," self-inflicted apocalypse? Look in the mirror, my friends. I was a young teenager when Ike was president. He told a meeting of a Woman's Club, "If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power." Let's face it, our "two parties" are two teams of corporate lobbyists paid to put on a pageant so we can convince ourselves we have a choice. There's no law that says a candidate must belong to any party. There must be good, competent men and women to choose from who can be new, party-free standard bearers willing to lead from behind, ones we can trust to truly represent us, to champion causes that are right and that are moral. The ones you choose will not be career politicians out for power, fame, and wealth, but those willing to harness the nation's near-limitless resources to restore sanity to public life, to perform feats like the leaders of the "greatest generation" did when they defeated the Axis powers and built the largest, most prosperous middle class in history. We did it then and we can do it again. The stakes are even higher now than they were then, and the rewards will be astounding. If we fail, as seems likely on a bad day, we may not recover from our current slide into ecological, social, economic, and political disaster. We need a team like the one with the "right stuff" that got us to the moon and back. I don't know who they are, but their names will not be Biden, Trump, Bezos, or Musk.

Perhaps they could call themselves "the Responsible Party." (Look for that title in an upcoming post.)