Our Long National Nightmare… Continues

Note, this piece has been updated to include reference, & a link, to an editorial by Katrina vanden Heuvel: Republican tax bills would be paradise for plutocrats.

An earlier version of Our Long National Nightmare… Continues has also been edited for grammar and typos.

Our Long National Nightmare… Continues

My fellow Americans: Our long national nightmare is over… Our Constitution works.  Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men.  Here, the people rule.

- POTUS Gerald Ford

The major issue of our time is the rapid movement toward international oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires own and control a significant part of the global economy. The Paradise Papers shows how these billionaires and multinational corporations get richer by hiding their wealth and profits and avoid paying their fair share of taxes. 

- U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

By J.M. Hamilton (11-13-2017)

How long O’Lord… how long can what remains of our republic withstand the swamp and the super-predators that run our country?

The last two weeks have been shocking, but not altogether surprising; and just when we think the nation’s financial elite and political leadership can’t sink any lower, they take it to a new low.

The American people, as a consequence of the elite’s actions (or the lack thereof, in response outrages that seem to increase exponentially), have grown inured and numb.

The news flow is so rapid fire, it seems as if the 99% don’t have enough time to consider the scandal before their eyes, before another abomination erupts.

The Panama Papers - revelations of offshore fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion by our global economic & political elite - were released in 2015; and now we have similar revelations from the Paradise Papers (see Senator Sanders’ comments above for a summary).

Even in the midst of GOP led tax reform, the Republican Party has made little or no effort at closing offshore & onshore loopholes, or closing out a telephone sized directory of multinational dodges w/in the U.S. tax code.  A U.S. tax code that is so porous that many members of the S&P 500 pay no taxes at all.  Indeed, as pointed out by Katrina vanden Heuvel, the number of tax loopholes for multinationals & the wealthy, under the proposed GOP plan(s), is likely to grow.

Instead, the GOP plans on sticking it to the middle class to pay for massive tax cuts for high net worth individuals, multinationals, and indolent heirs and heiresses. 

Meanwhile, its appears that many male actors, directors, and producers in Hollywood cannot keep their sex organs w/in their pants.  Female actors could have had their careers ruined or stalled if they even dared speak out against the epidemic of harassment and sexual abuse.  The New Yorker reported that one, Mr. Harvey Weinstein, hired the world’s largest corporate-intelligence company, and another organization made up, largely, of Israeli Mossad agents, Black Cube, to conduct surveillance and dig for dirt on his victims.  Apparently, it wasn’t enough for Mr. Weinstein to misbehave in a crude, lewd, and rude manner (there are even allegations of rape), he also wanted information on his victims to compel them not to tell of his unacceptable behavior.  

That is to say, Mr. Weinstein was also, likely, engaged in forms of blackmail, coercion, and extortion (not to mention a gross invasion of his victims' privacy).  

This is how the elite and the powerful roll.

But such acts aren’t limited to Hollywood.  Alabama’s GOP Senate nominee, Roy Moore - a Holy-Roller and hypocrite of the first-order - has had a least four women come forward, alleging that Mr. Moore made sexual advances upon them while they were still in their teens.  Sadly, many members of the GOP have come forward to make excuses for Mr. Moore’s prurient behavior, including one who has offered up the “Jesus, Mary and Joseph" defense.  

Spin baby, spin.  It’s as if U.S. citizens are living w/in a dystopian novel, trapped w/in George Orwell’s worst nightmare.

And speaking of surveillance, the Deep State (you know, the U.S. intelligence & surveillance agencies, and private contractors, taxpayers pay tens of billions of dollars to, per annum) seems completely incapable of stopping any American white male terrorist, who gets their hands upon - a NRA endorsed and supported - assault riffle.  The latest homicidal rampage occurred inside a church, w/in a "sleepy little town down around San Antone."  Which begs the question JMH raised before, what is the true purpose of the Deep State: corporate espionage, mass U.S. employee surveillance, and/or digging up dirt for the oligarchy and the well-connected?  

Perhaps all the above.

The fact of the matter is the United State’s leadership, both economic & political, is morally bankrupt.  And if, as JMH has argued many times, we believe cartels and monopolies are highly detrimental to American citizens, the economy, our government…. Billionaires are equally dangerous and detrimental. 

Case in point, The Guardian reported that billionaire, Joe Ricketts, shut down news sites Gothamist, DNAinfo, and Shanghaiist.  The reason Mr. Ricketts, billionaire, shut down these news organizations?  The reporters w/in his newsrooms voted to unionize.

If cartels and monopolies now control broad swaths of the economy, the billionaires & multinationals - that enjoy ownership w/in, if not outright own, said cartels & monopolies (see Mr. Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway) - also, enjoy outsized influence w/in the economy and Western governments.  If a billionaire doesn’t like what their employees are doing, they can shut down a business, layoff said biz’s pool of labor, and the associated tax base. If a billionaire doesn’t like a U.S. administration - say the Obama administration - said billionaire can engage in a capital strike.  The billionaire can wait out the administration, all the while sitting on their cash pile, withholding investment in CAPEX and labor training, and placing a boot heal on the neck of labor, by suppressing wages.

And this has occurred in the past, and is likely to occur again, at a time when the political winds of change are shifting towards a more liberal POTUS entering the White House in 2020.

In short, billionaires represent - like cartels & monopolies - the concentration of power into too few hands.  The billionaire class (or Davos Elite), collectively, can be referred to as a global oligarchy that in a coordinated, or uncoordinated, fashion can and do push their interests, first and foremost, w/ the political class, and capture entire political parties, such as the aforementioned GOP, as well as, capture Western governments, themselves (see again, the GOP’s proposed tax plan). 

How coordinated is the global oligarchy?  Well, seemingly one cannot turnover a rock, or plutocrat w/in the Trump administration, w/out encountering a Russian oligarch.  Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, the aforementioned Paradise Papers revealed, has ties to a Russian within Vladimir Putin’s inner-circle (in regards an active shipping venture).  Ties, Mr. Ross, failed to disclose during the Senate confirmation process.  

Mr. Ross, like many members of the global oligarchy, is so obsessed w/ his status & wealth that Forbes reported he embellished his net worth by some two billion dollars. 

And the good news… or the ray of hope in all this?  Just as nation states don’t have to tolerate cartels, monopolies, and unlimited consolidation/M&A… Western democracies don’t have to tolerate billionaires.  In brief, just as cartels and monopolies are creatures of governments that fail to enforce antitrust laws, billionaires are also often products of crony/rigged governments.  And global governments are perfectly capable of cracking down on billionaires, and confiscating, impounding, and redistributing their wealth (which some billionaires often obtain through a nefarious & rigged system, and the redistribution of governmental largesse).

If billionaires continue to capture and manipulate Western democracy for their own ends, they should expect blowback on a monumental scale.  The future of capitalism and democracy depends upon containing & controlling the super-predators, who would run our governments for their own enrichment, and to the 99%’s detriment.

In the interim, our long national nightmare continues.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2017

Taxation without Representation

Taxation without Representation

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

By J.M. Hamilton (10-29-2017)

The Catalonian parliament declared itself an independent republic on Friday, and the elites in Madrid responded with characteristic thuggery, by abolishing democracy and the Catalonian government.  Catalonia is a region in Spain and is seeking independence from a highly corrupt Spanish government.

As noted in my last piece, Centrifugal Forces: Independence & secessionist movements, and a highly charged electorate that is disdainful of center left/right establishment parties are appearing throughout Western democracies.

The common theme, among the various forms of rebellion, is that democratic government - & Western economies  - has become unresponsive to the will of the people.  Rather, big money has contaminated and corrupted so-called "capitalist economies" and governments throughout the West, so that center left/right politicians are mere puppets.

In the United State in particular, the Congress and the Senate are wholly out of step with the will of the people, as is the Trump administration.  Ironically, POTUS Trump, originally, ran as a populist, a dark counter reflection to Senator Sanders' enlightened campaign. 

But candidate Trump and POTUS Trump are two entirely different animals, the former being a creature of the swamp and the latter being captured by it.  The Trump cabinet and his core team of advisors - consisting of Goldman Sachs bankers and assorted plutocrats – have largely done the bidding of corporate & multinational C-Suites, as well as, the billionaire class.

Just how disdainful and out of touch is the Trump administration, and the United States Senate, with popular opinion?  Let’s go down a laundry list of issues that a captured U.S. Congress refuses to act upon (and often acts against), while the Trump administration attempts to drag America back to the Dark Ages.

Gun control: Post-Vegas, and even prior to, the majority of Americans favored various types of gun control, particularly bans on assault rifles, and tighter background checks, pre-sale.

In regards taxes, the majority of Americans believe taxes should be raised on corporations and multinationals, and per Pew Research, greater than 40% believe tax rates should be raised on higher income homes.

On abortion, again, the majority of Americans believe in the right of the woman to choose.  

In regards climate change and the environment, the majority of Americans want the government to proactively fight climate change (not rape & pillage the land, and reinvigorate Big Carbon, as the Trump administration is doing).

Gay marriage, another – at least among the GOP – controversial topic, that really is not so controversial anymore.  Here again, the majority of Americans have no issue w/ same sex marriage.  Per Gallup, sixty-four percent of American adults support gay marriage.

Just this week – as reported in the Washington Post – a majority of Republicans have joined the human race, and finally, decided that cannabis (aka marijuana) should be legal.

Good Goddess Almighty … what has the U.S. come to?  Demon weed legalization?  Who’d have thunk it?  A lot of responsible Americans, Democrat and Republican, that’s who.  Nobody has ever died from a cannabis overdose, and the many and varied medicinal qualities of a weed - almost anybody can grow in their backyard - are just now being discovered.  Meanwhile, Big Pharma has grown wealthier than King Midas, by pushing a national opioid epidemic upon American society.

But I digress. On FP… here again, many of our allies now view U.S. foreign policy – power & influence – as a major threat.  Read the Pew Study here.  And the Charles Koch Institute, in a report published in 2016, states that Americans believe U.S. foreign policy and global wars have made the country less safe.

  

 Chart via The Washington Post, Story:

‘It’s just messed up’: Most think political divisions as bad as Vietnam era, new poll shows
(Click chart to enlarge)

In short, on issue after issue, the GOP establishment and the Trump administration, are acting against the popular will of the American people (or defiantly, not acting at all - in a case study of passive aggressive behavior - to protect the aforementioned societal beliefs & norms).

By dumbing down policy debate to tweets, via gerrymandering, and pandering to the baser demons of the republican electorate’s entropy (through divide & conquer/Nixonian Southern strategy), the GOP is acting as if they are running a dictatorship, not a democracy or a republic.  And the fact that the U.S. Senate gives undue weight to red states isn’t helping.

Now, front and center, is U.S. tax reform.  Here, we’ve heard POTUS Trump attempt to sell this dog, as a marvel and a big win for the middle class.  But in news story after news story, based upon what we know, it appears to be another pig out for the billionaire class and C-Suite royalty, at the expense of fiscal sanity and the middle class.  Of course, this process is just getting started, and it’s still too early to know what the final tax package will look like, or if there will even be genuine reform?  But if past is prologue, we can expect the grand ol’ party to reward the uber wealthy, at the expense of the 99%.

At this point, it would probably be a good time to remind the oligarchy that has captured our government, why the United States split from mother England.  Key among reasons was the imposition of taxes w/out representation, that is to say, American colonists were tired of paying taxes, while a despot ruled over them.  Today, Americans – in a regressive tax system – are being soaked in taxes (as a percentage of their income).  While high net worth individuals, and heirs, and multinationals often pay at a much lower capital gains rate, or take advantage of various and sundry loopholes written into the tax code, solely for their benefit.  (Many in the Fortune 500 – including GE – pay no taxes in any given year, period.)

All of which raises the question, if the U.S. government no longer represents the will of the people, but rather, an elite few… why pay any taxes at all?

All of which helps further explain, the growing inspiration for secessionist movements and the rejection of establishment parties by a disenfranchised Western electorate.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2017

Centrifugal Forces

Centrifugal Forces

In a report issued Wednesday, the (IMF) emphasized that flatter tax rates across income scales and lower rates for the highest earners could exacerbate a troubling trend toward growing inequality in the United States and around the world.

-       I.M.F. Cautions Against Tax Cuts for Wealthy… NY Times

During the campaign, Trump said that Republican rivals who attended secretive donor summits sponsored by the Kochs were “puppets.”

-       The Danger of President Pence… The New Yorker

By J.M. Hamilton (10-15-2017)

What do the following countries - or regions or states w/in states - have in common: The U.K., Scotland, Basque Country, Catalonia, Spain, Brazil, Canada, Quebec, Italy, Venice, Wallonia, Belgium, Kurdistan, and Iraq?

Answer:  These are just some of the countries - or regions/states within states - either facing breakaway movements or seeking to secede from their existing governmental arrangement.  

Not only are countries, states, or regions around the globe seeking to secede from their existing political arrangement, and establish their own governments, but there also has been a noticeable rejection of establishment (center right and left) political parties in many additional countries:  Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Poland, and the United States, just to name several.  More frightening still, parts of Europe - and even in the U.S. - have seen fascist/nationalist movements on the rise.

What is driving this political upheaval or centrifugal force away from the center?  The answer is both economic - as in globalization - and governmental.

Let's start with economics or globalization first.  Globalization or free trade was sold to many citizens throughout the West as an economic panacea.  Globalization - by allowing each country to specialize in the products & services it produced best - was supposed to bring political stability, a rising global middle class, and inexpensively produced goods and services.  Unfortunately, but for inexpensive goods & services, very little of globalizations promises have come to pass.

As for political stability, globalization has created political instability, see the aforementioned countries facing political revolt and secessionist movements.

As for a rising middle class, the middle class has nearly been obliterated in the West, and ask any day laborer in China, Mexico, or Indochina if they feel that they have achieved middle class success?  I can assure my readers many have not achieved middle class success, by any standard we would recognize w/in the West.  Instead globalization has created a global billionaire class that have exploited free trade agreements for their own ends. Namely, the billionaire class engages in currency, labor, regulatory, and tax arbitrage... which contributes greatly to ever growing wage & wealth inequality and wage stagnation for the 99%.  

This, in turn, has created a global race to the bottom among nation states, a reduction in tax revenue from corporations & multinationals in many countries, countries deeply mired in debt…  followed by austerity and a growing reduction in governmental services for the 99%.

Yes, “free trade” products & services are often cheaper, fueled by globalization, AI, automation, and slave labor from EM (such as Asia, India, and Mexico).  But for a dying middle class w/in the West, inexpensive goods and services are of no value, if the price paid is lost jobs and wages.

Catalan independence referendum  --- CreditEmilio Morenatti/Associated Press

Which brings us to Western governments and democracy, and its role in the rebellion and secessionist aims around the globe.  Many so-called democracies are democracies in name only.  The billionaire class - thanks to the outsized role money plays in the political process - confirms, nominates, pays for, and provides the talking points for many establishment politicians.  So that on matters concerning business interests, there is often very limited difference between center right and center left political parties. These elites have failed the middle class and the poor, and operate government almost exclusively for the oligarchy. 

That is to say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The secessionists clearly want their government local and accountable.

Hence, a powder keg of rebellion around the world. There is little doubt culture and race - at times - plays a role in some nationalist movements.  But ask yourself, if there was truly a thriving middle class around the globe would "democratic government," globalization, and neoliberalism be faced with the current threat list?  Ask yourself again, would fascist and nationalist movements rise, if the U.S. policy of endless war in the Middle East (and the West's policies that support climate change & fossil fuels) didn't send millions of refugees and migrants into Europe?

The elite and the oligarchy’s immediate reaction to the growing rebellion is to lash out, insist their ways are best, and use police state tactics to control and contain the rebellion.  

But these strong-arm tactics are bound to fail.  Police state tactics didn’t stop the former Soviet Union, and its satellites, from failing and surrendering to centrifugal forces, and they certainly won’t contain a growing number of independence movements.

Only real reforms will turn these centrifugal – economic & political - forces around.  Reforms that recognize both the economy and government must work for all, not just an elite cadre of insiders, are clearly needed.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2017