Authoritarianism Versus Authority to Fire Anyone

Imperious Trumpus
Identifying the President with the Government

This post follows How to Subvert the USA Government This post delves into what Trump's vision of a Dictatorship looks like some.

Trump met with Russian Top Spies this past week. They tried to keep that hush hush. The memo doesn't say what the Propaganda says it says. But you wouldn't know it from what Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh says. These people are touting Trump's Manfulness. They are using language intended to deify the President. Ironically the people most susceptible to this kind of thinking are folks in the Born Again Christian movement. They can't seem to tell the difference between the Anti-Christ and the return of Christ. They are looking for a Boss to tell them what to do.

Sacralizing Power

Masha Gessen writes about what is happening in the New Yorker, she quotes this tweet:

Note that the tweet contains these "buzz-words":

• Claims that officials politicized the investigation
• Calls the investigative process "sacred"
• labels the process as partisan "in favor of Democrats" & "against Republicans"
• Says that this would be "unthinkable" before.

Money Manager capitalism

Money manager capitalism is financial capitalism. But financial capitalism is only tangential to actual capital. It means money making money from money.

Put baldly it is rentier capitalism. Not concerned with machinery, or tools, roads or bridges, automation or labor but with numbers of digits on financial ledgers.

The money managers, whether managing their own, or other people's money, are primarily concerned with conserving and growing those ledger numbers abstracted from reality. Those become derivative instruments & they lose touch with the real economy, the inputs, real capital & other public goods, that drives a healthy society.

The numbers in such an economy thus become abstracted & unearned properties, & actually can threaten the people & things in the real economy.

Article;

http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180104/p2a/00m/0na/018000c

Pirates of PenceTrump

Trump the Pirate

Once there was a pirate,

Who danced on the deck of his ship

While Sailing on his Hunts

And giving the authorities the slip

 

The Very Stable Genius

He started to Dance!

I am a very stable genius!

I am the smartest in the world!

Nothing ever gets past me

Unless I let it go

 

I am a very able womanizer

The women always love me

When I see a woman that's pretty

I grab her by the kitty!

Grifter Trump

He continued:

I am the greatest Pirate!

the world has ever seen!

I promise my mates the world.

Then I pocket the gold

I sell them Warfs and Docks

Take their money and then go!

They wonder where I went

When their gold is in my hold

Watch out for the Pirate King!

My Father gave me money

I borrowed more from Italians

I blew it on Casinos

That started loosing money

So my Daddy bought some chips

And gave them to me as a gift.

 

I am a billionaire in every way!

Because I collect peoples money and never pay!

If you loan me money.

I won't repay

If you work for me.

I'll promise you wages you'll never see!

 

Eventually even the Italian Mob,

Didn't want to do business with me.

But the Russians did!

The Russians love me!

They give me everything I want!

Just so long as I don't recognize them

When the FBI comes to call.

(Truth is I'm afraid of them,

putting me to the wall!)

 

I am the Greatest Lover Anyone has Seen!

I go after the women,

Grab them by the kitty!

When I look in the mirror

I see someone pretty!

It costs me a pretty penny

But it is amazing what money will buy.

This is the only place I have to pay

Or I'm afraid the mud will fly!

 

I went to Russia

to build a Tower!

When they stalled

All I could do was glower

I hosted A Pageant

Watched all the girls

Dressed or undressed, what a time!

The Russians say they took a video

I say it is a lie.

Though when I'm alone privately

I like to watch!

 

The pirate Putin picked me

Said Run for President!

I could get in front of crowds

And preach Nationalism my way.

The only book I ever studied

Was Hitler's Speeches, or was it Mein Kampf?

I don't read much, but Ivanna said it was by my bed.

Candidate Trump

I am the greatest candidate you've ever seen!

My Grifting always entertaining

My Fleecing always Clean!

Why I'm a Grifters Wet Dream!

 

My Organization is Beautiful

A well oiled machine!

My Crew is always dutiful

Only to me!

The way it should be!

 

Says Pirate Trump to his Crew

When the HMS Mueller comes in View!

He opens his gun ports.

What will I do...

To be continued....

Saving our Democracy

In 300 days we can flip the house and maybe the Senate. If we don't we may flip into a full bore kleptocracy run by kakakrats. I'm not exaggerating. Trump is a plague of Russian Style Mobocracy backed by ambitious criminals, bribery and extortion. He's talking about ending democracy and ruling by decree already. His models are dictators worldwide.

Saving our Country

We have to save our democracy. That starts by defeating the fascists who are dominating the GOP

They are already dismantling our defined benefits, going after Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, giving power and wealth to their top 400 and effing not only the middle class but many small business-people and real farmers. The man is a serious narcissist but otherwise the only promises he keeps are those that promote dictatorship. We have to defeat him this year, or we won't have a Republic with the integrity to defeat him til his degradation has run its course.

Blue Wave

So the task is clear. Every single Frigging Republican in the Country that isn't willing to jump off the Trump Train has to be removed from office. We have to impeach him or we will start disappearing. This is not hyperbole. The man admires Russian Oligarchy. His followers have that in mind here. We can expect misinformation, disinformation, defamation

Moon over Washington -- Dictator Trumpenfűrer as Standup Comic

Dr Strangelov meets Standup Comedy

Trump is fracking Crazy. He essentially is daring an equally narcissistic Kim Jung Uhn to test whether he can blow up the USA. Someone noted that he's trying to please his core followers. That means we elected a Dictator who is also a Standup Comic. This is Dr. Strangelov meets Standup Comic meets "Moon Over Parador."

He's a Fracking 3rd Rate Standup Comic!!!

Tweet Address: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948355557022420992 taken 1/2/2018

Moon Over Parador: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095654/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl]

Further Readings

The Choice of Nature's Tax Collectors

Setting the Choice

Life sets choices before us. The world has set before our Oligarchs, Political leaders, Wealthy and Mafioso a choice:

Either Act for the Good of all the People, or for "Private Separate Advantage"

Moses says in Deuteronomy:

"30:19: I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live"

They can continue the path of conflict, aggregation of power and wealth and autocracy. Their wealth and their governing powers give them raw power and that power is the power to levy private taxes on property, which means:

"Since the power to tax is ultimately the power to destroy, tax collectors need great enforcement powers."

Indeed this is why the Right Wing was created. The purchase of think tanks, universities, professors and politicians, all was to enable millionaires to become billionaires and to protect their control over the forces of government necessary to enforce their private taxes (rent, interest on loans, money power to issue loans from thin air, etc...) on ordinary people (tuition loans, housing loans, rents, inflated insurance premiums, "financialization", in the first place. Crazy wealth is not possible without government grants of monopoly either through taking advantage of laws, corrupt law and corrupting legislators, judges and law enforcement. Allowing millionaires to become billionaires and oligarchs was a monstrous mistake, but it took years of propaganda, conditioning and astroturfing to make it easier.

The Power to Destroy

Now we have oligarchs who exercise "the power to destroy" in secret and in background. Corrupting utilities, newspapers, television, radio and overtly through this new President.

"Right now, the world's leading nuclear powers (the U.S. and Russia) are supporting their respective oligarchies, and therefore are parasitic world dominators."

A Choice:

But there is always a Choice. Wealthy people could act for the general good, their own selfish interests alone, or for perverse purposes. To this date they are not. But they could act for the good of the people around them. As my friend Rick DiMare puts it:

"But they have power to change that role by viewing themselves as "nature's tax collectors" who should be supporting a property right for wage-earners, and collecting most taxes by demanding the unearned income and estates of their oligarch buddies."

Some wealthy individuals donate millions (still chump change to a billionaire) to worthwhile causes. At one time most of them at least pretended to have a duty to the public good, to pay their own fortunes forward and were involved in progressive causes and charity. Unfortunately the spread of Randian Privateering ideology has led to many of them deciding they don't need to do anything for anybody. But they could change all that and simply acknowledge that there is a reason that the government needs to collect a portion of the taxes they collect. As Rick says:

"Stated differently, Trump and Putin could become great leaders by re-inventing themselves as the world's leading tax collectors of Henry George's "single tax," where "single tax"

Where single tax is a progressive taxation of unearned income from property privileges

Private Separate Advantage

Sources and Further Reading

The quotes in this post come from my friend Rick DiMare's facebook page:

Doc 133:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-133-henry-georges-single-tax-a-tax-on-land-values-a-tax-on-economic-rent-a-t/918244508288693/

Doc 159:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-159-updating-henry-georges-meaning-of-single-tax/1470776836368788/?hc_location=ufi

Benefit Versus Ability to Pay

I wrote on the question of Taxation based on ability to Pay or Fee for Service in 2015. It laid out the role of Edwin R.A. Seligman (1861-1939) who was a young disciple of Henry George. This subject comes up again as the question of "Benefit versus ability to Pay" that is the subject of this piece. This piece is a follow on the last post on

Nature's Tax Collectors

Who I identify with Pirates

In that piece I noted that according to the author, taxes should be:

• Taxes are a duty of citizenship.
• Taxes should be proportionate to the "faculty" or ability to pay of taxpayers.

Nature's Tax Collectors or Oligarchs?

What I didn't completely understand when I wrote the previous post in 2015 was the role of rent seeking, privilege, or the privateering that goes into the income of the wealthy and connected. Fortunately a number of my friends and a great man and his disciples, Henry George, Edwin Seligman and Thomas G. Shearman captured the extreme peril of not taxing privilege.

If you don't regulate or tax unearned income from privilege, then you get corruption, bad economic outcomes and oligarchs.

The Benefit of Unearned Income

People have been conditioned into embracing bogus ideas. There is a strong effort to forget the former and embrace the following pseudo-principles, that aren't really as old as they are argued to be. "Classical Economics" never really taught them. And Neo-liberalism teaches them, but they are propaganda:

1. Those who benefit from a thing should pay for it.
2. No one should pay for another person's benefits.
3. A person earns whatever he gains, however he gains.
4. The exception is the poor, who never deserve to keep what they earn.
5. Taxation is the government stealing from the privileged.
6. Taxation should be a "fee for service," and no more.

But guess what, rent seeking means that:

1. The wealthy benefit from a well fed, healthy and prosperous customers, renters and employees.
2. Almost everyone is paying for the benefits of the wealthy.
3. Unearned income means unearned. Income derived from privileges and properties like land, corporate, contract or monopoly is only partly early earned. But for the most part is almost entirely unearned. Most great wealth earn money from money, debt or ownership instruments. Pirates and privateers don't always deserve to keep what they took.
4. The people who deserve to keep their income are those who labor, sell, and work for a living.
   And those who are poor, ill, young or aged, deserve our support.
5. Privateering rent seekers are essentially stealing from government. Hence me calling them pirates.
6. Taxation is about regulating excessive issues of private money and privilege not just a "fee for service."

Benefit Versus Ability to Pay or Taxing Unearned Income

Related to the tax shiftability concern [See Progressive Versus Regressive] is the debate over whether the Single Tax was based on the “benefit theory of taxation,” where one is taxed on the benefits received from holding a land parcel vs. the “faculty” or “ability to pay theory,” where a tax on land gains is only collected when the taxpayer can easily pay the tax (without losing his land or going into debt to pay the tax). But that question is resolved when sees this as a tax on privilege and for regulating money.

The tax needs to be based on ability to pay. And it has to provide enough revenue to prevent inflation and regulate the money supply [see Money Privilege and Loot] The 1890 Plank says:

"To carry out these principles we are in favor of raising all public revenues for national, state, county and municipal purposes by a single tax upon land values, irrespective of Improvements, and of the abolition of all forms of direct and Indirect taxation." [Georgist Constitution]

Although many Georgists believe the Single Tax to be a form of property taxation, Henry George objected to property taxes because they targeted both land use (i.e., labor) and land ownership (i.e., potential ground rents) at the same time. George was concerned that, because a property tax is a direct tax on all aspects of land use and ownership, and demands a tax whether or not the landowner has access to the gain and is able to pay, that the tax would end up being falling on labor/wages. Any tax that can be shifted to ordinary people is not very progressive or fair and just. Thus what George was talking about was:

"not a tax on land, and therefore would not fall on the use of land and become a tax on labor."

Not a tax on land but on the:

"premium which the user of land must pay to the owner, either in purchase money or rent, for permission to use valuable land."

Which means that it was intended as a tax on what we now call capital gains. Thus anyone arguing over ability to pay/facility" versus paying for benefits, is missing the point. Taxation is also for the sake of regulating privilege. And also for making sure that such taxes were not shifted to consumers, workers or rent payers. More importantly, that such taxes weren't grabbed by Tongue eating Trolls.

Sources and Further reading

https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry-page.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollock_v._Farmers%27_Loan_%26_Trust_Co.

For those with Facebook:

Rick's pages:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-120-the-1890-georgist-constitution/813168725462939/?hc_location=ufi

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-georgist-constitution.html

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-161-poverty-is-caused-by-regressive-taxes-and-prevented-by-progressive-taxes/1498599096919895/

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/09/taxation-ability-to-pay-fee-or-taxing.html

Cooperative Individualism webpage [https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/george-henry-page.htm]]

Georgist Constitution

His copy is on facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-120-the-1890-georgist-constitution/813168725462939/?hc_location=ufi

Where he explains the tax is on unearned economic rent:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/common-wealth-tax/doc-133-henry-georges-single-tax-a-tax-on-land-values-a-tax-on-economic-rent-a-t/918244508288693/