They are all looking alike to me.
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Is Speaker Johnson Acting Like He’s Speaker For The Democratic Party?
Posted by M. C. on May 9, 2024
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Democratic, Speaker Johnson | Leave a Comment »
Empire Managers Explain Why This New Protest Movement Scares Them
Posted by M. C. on May 9, 2024
During a vitriolic rant about university demonstrators at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security on Tuesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.
For those who don’t know, Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.
The ability to wage peace was lost long ago. What is left besides war?
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/empire-managers-explain-why-this
The US secretary of state and a Bilderberg surveillance tech oligarch have both made some very interesting admissions about the burgeoning protest movement against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza and the problems it poses for the empire they help run.
During a vitriolic rant about university demonstrators at the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security on Tuesday, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.
For those who don’t know, Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. Karp is a billionaire who sits on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and regularly features at the World Economic Forum and other platforms of plutocratic empire management.
“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”
Everyone should listen very carefully to Karp’s words here, because he’s giving the whole game away. He’s making it very clear how crucial it is for the empire to stomp out this protest movement and the zeitgeist upon which it rides, because the very existence of the imperial war machine depends on it. At a time when most imperial spinmeisters are trying to dismiss the importance of this movement and what young people are doing on college campuses around the world, this is a really extraordinary admission from someone who lives deep in the guts of the imperial hydra.
Such conferences are great for obtaining useful information from swamp monsters that you don’t normally hear, because when they’re surrounded by like-minded empire goons they tend to get a lot more loose-tongued than they are when they’re more aware that they have an audience of normal people.
We saw this illustrated again in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute last week, during which both acknowledged some facts that generally go unstated by such creatures.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Alex Karp, Antony Blinken, Empire Managers, Palantir | Leave a Comment »
Government Intervention
Posted by M. C. on May 9, 2024
But if you look at the facts, they go like this: Unemployment never hit double digits in any of the 12 months following the big stock market crash of 1929 that is often blamed for the massive unemployment of the 1930s. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the October 1929 crash, and then began drifting downward.
Unemployment was down to 6.3 percent by June 1930, when the first big federal intervention occurred. Within six months, the downward trend in unemployment reversed and hit double digits for the first time in December 1930.
What were politicians to do? Say “We messed up”? Or keep trying one huge intervention after another?
Thomas Sowell
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“do something”
Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024
There are always calls for the government to “do something” when things are going bad. Those who make such calls have almost never bothered to check out what actually happens when the government does something, as compared to what happens when the government does nothing.
Thomas Sowell
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Why Not Abolish All Foreign Aid?
Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024
“Where is the care and compassion in that type of system? It is nowhere to be found! The IRS is not demonstrating care and compassion when it seizes people’s money. The taxpayers are not demonstrating care and compassion when they pay their taxes. The federal officials who send the money to Israel are not demonstrating care and compassion. The manufacturer of weaponry that receive purchases from the Israeli government using U.S. taxpayer money are also not demonstrating care and compassion.”
“The same holds true, of course, for all foreign aid.”
Americans who object to the Israeli government’s military campaign in Gaza rightly object to the massive amounts of money and armaments that the U.S. government has provided — and continues to provide — the Israeli government to wage its campaign. Why should American taxpayers who oppose the Israeli government’s actions be forced to fund a military campaign to which they object?
But doesn’t that principle apply to all foreign aid? The question that every American should be asking, especially in the context of the foreign aid to Israel, is: Why should American taxpayers be forced to fund any foreign regime whatsoever?
The common rationale for foreign aid to Israel is that such assistance shows that Americans are kind and benevolent. But that is a patently ridiculous notion when one breaks down the foreign-aid process.
We begin with the income tax and the IRS. Under America’s income-tax system, the federal government forcibly seizes a portion of people’s earnings. If someone refuses to pay his income taxes, he is confronted by the IRS, one of the most tyrannical and fearsome agencies in U.S. history, one that wields virtually omnipotent powers to collect income taxes. After all, if the IRS decrees that someone hasn’t paid his taxes, the IRS does not have to sue in court for the money. It has been given the omnipotent, totalitarian power to simply seize the money through garnishments, liens, attachments, and other non-judicial means.
Moreover, if someone knowingly refuses to pay his taxes, he is arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated, and forced to die in prison for his political sin. That’s certainly what they did to Irwin Schiff — and what they are willing to do to anyone else who refuses to pay his taxes.
After the IRS forcibly collects the tax money, other federal officials then distribute that tax money to the Israeli government, which turns around and uses it to buy weaponry from U.S. arms manufacturers.
Where is the care and compassion in that type of system? It is nowhere to be found! The IRS is not demonstrating care and compassion when it seizes people’s money. The taxpayers are not demonstrating care and compassion when they pay their taxes. The federal officials who send the money to Israel are not demonstrating care and compassion. The manufacturer of weaponry that receive purchases from the Israeli government using U.S. taxpayer money are also not demonstrating care and compassion.
This is, in fact, an evil system, one founded on force and one that is devoid of any care and compassion on the part of anyone.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Foreign Aid, income-tax, IRS | Leave a Comment »
The Great Ukraine Robbery is Not Over Yet
Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024
by Ron Paul
The US weapons industry and its cheerleaders in Washington DC are determined to keep Ukraine money flowing…until they can figure out a way to gin up a war with China after losing the current war with Russia.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61 billion is “not a whole lot of money for us…” Well, that’s easy for him to say – after all it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money!
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/the-great-ukraine-robbery-is-not-over-yet
The ink was barely dry on President Biden’s signature transferring another $61 billion to the black hole called Ukraine, when the mainstream media broke the news that this was not the parting shot in a failed US policy. The elites have no intention of shutting down this gravy train, which transports wealth from the middle and working class to the wealthy and connected class.
Reuters wrote right after the aid bill was passed that, “Ukraine’s $61 billion lifeline is not enough.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went on the Sunday shows after the bill was passed to say that $61 billion is “not a whole lot of money for us…” Well, that’s easy for him to say – after all it’s always easier to spend someone else’s money!
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, was far from grateful for the $170 billion we have shipped thus far to his country. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine as the aid package was passed, Kuleba had the nerve to criticize the US for not producing weapons fast enough. “If you cannot produce enough interceptors to help Ukraine win the war against the country that wants to destroy the world order, then how are you going to win in the war against perhaps an enemy who is stronger than Russia?”
How’s that for a “thank you”?
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America First – Why We Need To End All “Foreign Aid” – with Joshua Smith
Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Foreign Aid, Joshua Smith | Leave a Comment »
Opposing The War Machine Is Cool Again, And The Empire’s Getting Nervous
Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024
Seriously, how can a bunch of boring empire managers in DC and Virginia hope to compete once that happens? What are they going to do, win the young back by writing another Wall Street Journal think piece? Have Netanyahu rap about how Zionism is rad while Tony Blinken plays guitar? They’ve got nothing.
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/opposing-the-war-machine-is-cool
American rapper Macklemore has released a single titled “Hind’s Hall”, the name given to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall by anti-genocide protesters in honor of the six year-old Hind Rajab who was murdered in Gaza by Israeli forces. The artist says all proceeds from the track will go to UNRWA.
The song with its accompanying video is such a scathing indictment of the US-backed destruction of Gaza that Google-owned YouTube promptly age-restricted it. Macklemore attacks Biden, the brutal police crackdowns on protesters, the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, US politicians and the Israel lobby, with lines that will haunt you for days like “The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied.”
This marks the first really mainstream artist to take on this issue in their chosen medium with a track intended for widespread circulation. It probably won’t be the last. Opposing the Gaza genocide is quickly moving from the right thing to do to the cool thing to do, which is a major problem for the empire.
The empire can handle being on the wrong side of an issue; it has all the media and mainstream culture-manufacturing institutions on its side, which allows it to frame public perception of that issue in a way that quells dissent. What it absolutely cannot handle is a critical mass of young people deciding the imperial murder machine sucks, and that opposing it is fun and makes you cool.
That’s when dissent takes on a momentum of its own. As long as opposing militarism and imperialism is just the morally correct thing to do it will always be a marginal position in an information ecosystem that’s controlled by the powerful, because simply being on the right side of an issue has little natural magnetism of its own. But the instant it moves from being about morality to being fun and cool it suddenly starts crackling with energy and drawing in huge numbers of people who normally wouldn’t be that interested on their own.
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ruinous prices – paid by others
Posted by M. C. on May 8, 2024
Thomas Sowell
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Government, ruinous prices | Leave a Comment »
The Flat Tax Revisited Yet Again
Posted by M. C. on May 7, 2024
There is nothing moral about a flat tax or any other tax that confiscates 17 percent, or any other percent, of someone’s income and then redistributes it, wastes it on government boondoggles, spends it on unconstitutional agencies or programs, sends it to foreigners and their governments, and funds unnecessary and immoral foreign military adventures.
Having a progressive income tax is indeed one of the 10 key planks of the Communist Manifesto and an instrument of class warfare. Yet the flat tax is also progressive, just like the current tax system with its seven tax brackets.
Tax season ended last month, but talk of tax reform is still very much with us.What is really needed is the abolition of welfare-warfare programs, along with the income tax that funds them.
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Many provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that the Republican-controlled Congress passed, and President Trump signed into law, in 2017 will expire at the end of 2025, along with other temporary tax provisions not enacted by the TCJA—commonly known as “tax extenders.”
After 2025, marginal tax rates will revert to their pre-TCJA levels of 10, 15, 25, 28, 33, 35, and 39.6 percent. The basic standard deduction amounts will revert to their lower pre-TCJA levels and then be adjusted for inflation. The personal exemption will be reinstated and then be adjusted for inflation. The child credit will revert to its lower pre-TCJA amount. The “credit for other dependents” or “other dependent credit” (ODC) instituted by the TCJA will also expire. Cash contributions to charity will generally be limited to 50 percent of the taxpayer’s adjusted gross income (AGI). Taxpayers who itemize their deductions will no longer have a cap on their state and local tax (SALT) deduction, and the estate and gift tax exclusion amount will be cut in half and then be adjusted annually for inflation.
At a recent event in New York City, Steve Forbes—the editor-in-chief of Forbes who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000—said that “he is advocating for Trump to support a flat 17% tax rate for all income brackets with ‘generous’ exemptions.’” For a family of four, Forbes suggests that the first $54,000 of income be exempt from federal income tax.
The event was organized by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, whose mission is “to educate policy makers and the public about government policies that have been proven, in practice, to maximize economic growth and equitable prosperity in America and around the world.” The founders of the committee are Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore, Larry Kudlow, and Steve Forbes.
Forbes has been one of the biggest proponents of a flat tax, and it was the centerpiece of his presidential campaigns and the subject of his 2005 book, Flat Tax Revolution: Using a Postcard to Abolish the IRS (Regnery, 2005).
I have been one of the biggest critics of the flat tax—and the FairTax and every other conservative tax-reform plan. I first visited the flat tax idea in my 2006 review of Forbes’s book, and then again in my 2008 New American article, “The Flat Tax Is Not Flat.” I revisited the flat tax again in my 2015 LewRockwell.com article, “The Flat Tax Revisited.” I think it is now time to revisit the flat tax yet again.
According to Forbes:
NEXT TO THE UNSTABLE DOLLAR, the biggest deadweight today on the American economy is the horrific federal income tax code. It is past time we junked this incomprehensible, opportunity-killing and corrupting monstrosity and replaced it with a simple flat tax.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: boondoggles, Flat Tax, progressive income tax, unconstitutional | Leave a Comment »
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