Third Way Economics
Posted: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - 09:29
Dear friends of the US constitution and international law, and unwilling participants in the US Empire. As long as you give the US government your tax money, they don't have to listen to a word you say. As Alexander Haig once said, "Protest all you want, as long as you pay your taxes." Here is my latest letter to the IRS:
IRS PO Box 9052 Andover, MA 01810-9052
Dear IRS employee that is reading this letter (no responsible person was given),
I recently received the revised “Amount due” forms from your office. They state that I owe $7,144.77 for 2006 and $1,476.88 for 2007 (see enclosed copies). I do not deny that I owe taxes for those years, and penalties and interest have been added. I would like you to consider your role in perpetuating...
Posted: Thursday, April 5, 2012 - 23:33
Paul Craig Roberts hits the nail on the head....again in his recent essay:Empires Then and Now
He notes that in The Rule of Empires (2010), by Timothy H. Parsons, the normal behavior of Empires is to extract resources from colonies until it is no longer profitable to do so. I have written in "Peak Empire" about Joseph Tainter's analysis of complex societies (like empires) which expand until the marginal returns from expansion diminish and then become negative.
Roberts turns this argument on its head. Isn't it puzzling that the US didn't get any oil concessions from Iraq? If it wasn't about oil, then what was it about? What benefit do we get from the war in Afghanistan? If we're not getting anything, why does it continue?
Roberts says...
Posted: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - 00:09
If you want to know how the economy works read the Mother Jones article : It's the Inequality, Stupid The top 10% own 73% of all the wealth. Those are the rules.
Polanyi wrote in his classic book, "The Great Transformation" that land, capital, and labor are "false commodities" because they are not produced or manufactured. Land and capital do not follow the rules of the market because they are in limited supply and are subject to asset bubbles. Competition for most goods causes more suppliers and the price to be competed down. Competition for assets such as land drives the price up until the bubble pops as we saw in 2008.
Land and money should not be commodities for speculation, but those are the rules: 98% of international transactions...
Posted: Monday, March 5, 2012 - 08:10
As we are about to vote in the Burlington mayoral election on Tuesday we are reminded of the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) fiasco of 2009 and are about to face another possible fiasco due to the previous fiasco. Because of a rare statistical fluke of IRV, most analysis using various voting methods for the 2009 election concluded that Andy Montroll should have won. See: http://rangevoting.org/Burlington.html or other sites.
Backers of mayoral candidate Kurt Wright in particular felt that Bob Kiss should not have won the 2009 election and therefore successfully organized to overturn IRV in Burlington. At the same time they imposed a 40% plurality rule to win the mayoral election.
Most elections worldwide including Russia's current...
Posted: Saturday, January 28, 2012 - 15:11
We hover like vultures, waiting for the wounded beast to die: The murderous, torturing, depraved beast that the US has become, or always was. To the beast, it’s just a facet of nature, the predator feeding on prey. It’s not an ethical issue, the strong kill the weak in nature all the time. It’s an evolutionary strategy, that feeds the empire for a while and keeps it strong, until the inevitable corruption and decline.
The suffering of millions of victims is irrelevant to its subjects, insulated by distance, propaganda, and narcissism. But, what feeds on the death of others will be food for the vultures. And we hover, the doomsters, secessionists, anti-imperialists, decentralists, waiting for the beast to die; watching incredulous...
Posted: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 23:21
In response to Obama's duplicitous and delusional state of the disUnion speech, and the ongoing criminal conspiracy that comprises our national government, as defined by the Nuremburg Principles, I offer the readers a copy of my recent letter to the IRS regarding my tax refusal for 2006 and 2007. Substitute Obama for Bush in the letter below and there is no difference. Sheeple, if you are nauseated by your choices this year and by your government you will have to starve the beast. As former Reagan Secretary of State Alexander Haig said, "Let them protest all they want, as long as they pay their taxes."
Dear Miss Duenas,
Thank you for providing me with additional time to complete my tax returns for 2006 and 2007. I...
Posted: Monday, January 16, 2012 - 23:17
This is not hyperbole, demagoguery, or exaggeration. If we are honest with ourselves we will have to admit that eight out of ten of the Bill of Rights have been revoked. Chris Hedges is suing Obama and Panetta for the NDAA which revokes the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, not to mention Amendments 4,5,6,7,8. See link
I Have listed the Bill of Rights here which are the first ten amendments to the US Constitution. Anyone can look at this list and see that these rights no longer exist: Assassination of U.S. citizens by drone without due process; Indefinite detention; Arbitrary justice; Warrantless searches; Secret evidence; War crimes; Secret courts; Immunity from judicial review; Continual monitoring of citizens; Extraordinary renditions...
Posted: Sunday, January 8, 2012 - 23:46
I just had one of those weird disconnect experiences, like HUH?? I read two entirely opposite accounts of the same time period and they can’t both be right. First I read Michael Moore’s recent book “Here Comes Trouble”, which isn’t great, but has some interesting anecdotes worth reading. The one that caught my attention was the time Moore attended “Expo Maquila ‘86', a US Commerce Department conference in Acapulco, Mexico to help US companies move jobs to Mexico and save on labor costs. He went to write an article for Nader’s Multinational Monitor. Nader’s chief of staff John Richard told him, “The Reagan administration, they’ve been on a mission to do this since they took office.”
At the conference an Arizona Congressman told the...
Posted: Thursday, December 29, 2011 - 11:33
Filed Under:
Currency, Commerce, Economics, History, Foreign Policy, Transportation, Military, Politics
Currency, Commerce, Economics, History, Foreign Policy, Transportation, Military, Politics
Ellen Brown begins a recent essay explaining the genesis of a bill to create bank credit in Minnesota for the funding of infrastructure: "In August 2007, the nation was stunned by the collapse of a major Minneapolis bridge, killing thirteen. The bridge had been rated structurally deficient by the U.S. government as far back as 1990, and it was only one of more than 70,000 bridges across the country with that rating. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that it would take nearly $190 billion to fix the country's failing bridges over the next two decades." See: Minnesota Bank Proposal Those living in Vermont or New York might remember that the Champlain Bridge was just replaced due to extensive corrosion. At least it was...
Posted: Thursday, December 1, 2011 - 03:21
You may have heard that the US was seeking immunity from prosecution for its soldiers in Iraq in order to keep them there. The Iraqi government refused to give the US military "blanket immunity" from prosecution for crimes, and therefore the US is pulling out its troops. You can find it easily on the web, here is one link.
Likewise Wall street banks like City Group are seeking "blanket immunity" from prosecution by state attorneys general in their attempts to settle their fraud cases without admitting guilt. You can find this easily on the web too, such as here.
Why nuclear envy? They only want what the nuclear industry already has, blanket immunity from prosecution. The Price-Anderson Act, a "temporary" bill, first passed in 1957,...