Wiping out the American disease of greed

Or you could just label them, left to right, Democrat and Republican or Labour and Conservative. (Wiki Commons photo)

This unadulterated load of crass claptrap from America's young Ayn Rand wannabes popped up on my Facebook wall recently.

It is made up of ludicrous half-truths and untruths designed to appeal to a population frightened of its own shadow. Why is it so frightened? Somewhere, deep down, it knows that since electing Reagan, it has been on a downward spiral only temporarily broken by Clinton and Obama.

If a population wants to stop being frightened and halt the downward spiral for good, they have to elect several subsequent intelligent, tough, compassionate presidents. Republicanism, as practiced since Reagan, is a disease. To cure a disease, one must apply the right medicine, and one must keep taking that medicine until the problem has disappeared. The Reaganite Idiocy Syndrome is insidious; it will take several applications of democratic and possibly Democratic decency and common-sense medicine to eradicate.

It will be deadly, quite literally, to elect a Republican after only 8 years of the healing potion; Mr. Obama's applications of common sense and health care reform, for example, are still only starting to beat back the entrenched germs of greed.

First, however, one must dismantle the meme constellation constantly offered by those few who benefit from citizen fear (the rich) and those who are too ignorant to know what they do (the young conservatives.)

To refute the ludicrous points above one by one:

1. You can, in fact, legislate the poor into prosperity. It has been done time and again. Setting the slaves free "legislated" them into the ranks of those paid for work; it was then up to them to turn the possibility into prosperity.

If there is no possibility, then prosperity is not possible. When one percent of the population owns more than 90 percent of the wealth, the small amount leaked out to be shared amongst so many cannot, because it is spread too thinly, allow any one of the other 99 percent to create wealth; there is simply too little in the pot to share.

Decent tax legislation makes prosperity possible; current tax legislation makes it impossible. Simple as that.

2. This moronic statement would suggest that because I have a nice winter coat, you can't have one. It is the falsehood of inherent scarcity writ large.

I pay taxes. I have worked for that money.  But guess what? I received value for that money. I received protection from attack by foreign nations; I received education (and lo and behold, the teachers ALSO received, in the form of paychecks so this is a particularly fair exchange), and; people down on their luck or ill received money to continue living which has at least two benefits for me.

First, I have been able to provide for the less fortunate (and remind me, aren't these Conservatives usually claimants to Christian heritage?) without even having to bear the difficult task of interacting directly with people under stress.

Second, I have been able to ensure that, if it is possible and they regain their health or overcome whatever problem has led them to receiving benefits, those people will be able to contribute to society again. And if not, then I have done what the Jews call a mitzvah, a generous and kind act with no expectation of return--something almost every religion on earth says we should do one of daily without exception, though they might call it by another name.

3. About this government giving and taking idea; what a crock. The government administers the communal wealth of the nation, the wealth that we, through our legislation, have determined should be used in one way or another. They are not TAKING it from us: They are using what we have decided via laws our representatives made for the purposes we, via law, have approved. Let me know, will you, next time an armed human arrives at your door, carts off your big-screen TV and gives it to a homeless person living on the streets. I am not expecting your call.

However, that applies when we have chosen legislators who work according to voter bidding, not according to what the Koch Brothers and any number of greed-based corporations desire.

As a result, we have allowed too many legislators, mainly conservative/Republican, to shift enormous amounts of our money to those who don't need it and cannot benefit from it (for example, the Koch Brothers and Donald Trump, who took government funds to build structures about which he later went bankrupt, thereby doubling his fraud),in lieu helping those who do need it so they can rejoin productive society.

4. This is my favorite because it is so wrong on so many levels.  

You can, in fact, multiply wealth by dividing it. When a very few people have more money than they need to spend on necessities and luxuries, they hoard it, thus taking it out of circulation, which means it will not create a demand for more things. 

When many people have it, most of them will spend most or all of it for their needs and for luxuries, thus ensuring even more things will need to be created. The meme above assumes a static "pie" of stuff, which is a priori erroneous. In an expanding universe, virtually eveyr part will expand unless stopped by the application of an opposing force. Even then, eventually it will break through and expand again.

Aside from that, this is a manifesto for slavery, nothing more, nothing less. Please understand that this is precisely what the Koch brothers want, slaves to do their bidding and increase their wealth--and hidden power--far beyond its current obscene size.

 5. This one actually destroys itself. It is the result of believing numbers 1-4. Believing this and acting upon it, rather than taking back power--recalling legislators who are NOT using our money as we would like, to help the common people and not the uncommon scoundrels at the top--is the only thing that can make it true.

Here's the really bad news: So many people already believe that the falsehoods expressed by 1-4 are true that we are already well into the failure of society. Well into it. But the way out of it is NOT to believe in 1-4--that's what got us here in the first place. Reagan-Bush-Shrub made sure of it.

Taking the cure to stop the ethics-challenged, greed-ridden, compassion-negative Republicans and Conservatives from misusing our money is essential. It is the only thing we can do that will reverse our downward spiral.  The only thing.

Mr. Obama went a long way toward reversing it, but he had only two terms, hallmarked by Republican obstruction. To resurrect America from the five terms, between them, of Reagan-Bush-Shrub, not to mention the skids under society engineered by uber-criminal Richard Nixon will take more than a pound of cure. It will take boatloads.

Nixon-Reagan-Bush-Shrub are all criminals, not Occupy, not Mr. Obama. Nixon-Reagan-Bush-Shrub stole from the poor to give to the rich, and while they were at it, planted the spores of the diseases of greed, cruelty, ignorance and self-centeredness in the American population.

It is time to cure the disease, toss out the infection of conservatism and steal from the rich to give to the poor, like Robin Hood. Except we won't be stealing it; it was ours to begin with.



PS It might interest these obviously ill-educated Young Conservatives to know that their hero, Ayn Rand, accepted Social Security and Medicare, programs she railed against and which her halfwit followers now want to curtail.  Please note: She was so full of hubris that, despite relying on the largesse of the rest of us via Social Security and Medicare, she never recanted her hatred of those programs. Rand was a nicotine addict who had lung cancer and whose cockamamie ideas never made her enough money to retire without Social Security, thereby disproving her own theories.

Copyright 2016 Laura Harrison McBride

Renunciation is a right, not a treasonous act...even in America. Yet.

Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at an LGBT parade: I guess he thinks it's OK to be transgendered--but woe betide you if you try to change your nationality! (Wiki Commons)

When Democratic politicians begin tearing up their unspoken mandate to be the voice of reason and the champions of personal freedom, it's time to leave.

I have already done that. I saw it coming, and made plans to make tracks. I'm not prescient; I've merely been a journalist for 40 years and reading between the lines of what politicians spout had long since become second nature.

Once I was gone, I realized that I was actually a bit late on the uptake on that one. When we got to England, the local bank phoned to offer us a fantastic interest rate on our savings. We went to see the lady. Upon finding out that I was  US citizen, despite my having dual nationality, the second being that of the Republic of Ireland, she withdrew the offer. In fact, as it turned out, there was no banking product she could offer us except the lowest possible savings and checking plans. Why? She wasn't sure. So I began the research.

 

Everyone tarred with the USB brush

Why? Because in its avaricious attempt to own all the world's wealth, even that which has of its own accord chosen to go elsewhere, it has imposed on foreign banks serving US nationals residing there reporting requirements to the IRS that are draconian in every way. Nor can the banks opt out without incurring penalties that are exacted when they, or their other clients, attempt to do financial transactions in or with the United States. The convenient excuse for this intrusive juggernaut into the sovereign affairs of other nations was the UBS bank agreement a couple of years ago, whereby the notoriously secretive Swiss banks were coerced into giving up details of their well-heeled American clients. At the time, I wondered if it would be ALL their well-heeled American clients...or just the ones not politically safeguarded by the Bohemian Grove, and so on. Or if the one percent had identified and set up a different tax haven for themselves, and had decided the time had come to gather in the gold held by the next three of four percent of Americans.

I don't blame the foreign banks, by the way, for complying. Who wants Uncle Sam peeking into your undies and grabbing a good part of your package just because of Sammy's greed? But in global economic terms, complying is probably less horrific than losing business because of US sanctions.

I do blame the arrogant, avaricious, narcissistic attitude of the American government. The only question I have is this: Is it a case of trickle down? Or trickle up? We found that Reagan's General Economic Theory of Trickle-down was a miserable failure. Instead, wealth trickled up.

Saverin, Schumer, Casey and me--and you, like it or not

After reading the comments concerning Eduardo Saverin's renunciation of his US citizenship, I must conclude that in the United States, arrogance, greed and narcissism trickle up. The recent maneuvers by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Bob Casey (D-PA) make it clear that this is so. If they are responding to the grass-roots opinions vividly expressed on HuffPo and elsewhere regarding renunciation, they are simply the boil at the head of a great chancre of chauvinism--incorporating the other factors mentioned--that needs to be pricked.

A Yale Law professor, Bruce Ackerman, opined in the LA Times (requoted by HuffPo) those who "can look with disdain upon the struggling 99.9% who believe that a commitment to their country is a lifetime affair" deserve to be punished. He spoke, of course, about Eduardo Saverin, Facebook co-founder who relocated to Singapore last September. Ackerman  further stated that he thought that the "number of Americans renouncing their citizenship grew from 238 in 2008 to 1,534 in 2010. This sixfold increase no doubt includes a hefty portion of super-rich cosmopolitans."

He could not be more wrong. Very, very few renunciants are of the super-rich. Most are of the super-disgusted. The United States of America of song and story is long dead; it is the work of alchemists and fools to attempt to resurrect it at this point, and only trompe l'oeil painters have a shot at making it look like something it is not: the home of the brave and the land of the free.

America: "Love it or leave it" attitude..except you won't leave unscathed

The land of the free would not fear the defection, permanently or not, of citizens. If that nation were worthy of returning to, many would come back. Some would not. Some of those leaving for good would be rich, some middle-class, some poor. Same for those returning.

But the "all or nothing, love it or leave it" meme of America holds sway, and now anyone who wants for any reason to dance to his or her own drummer is branded an ingrate, a traitor even.

Shumer and Casey are fools. But they are fools likely to appeal to the lowest common denominator of American. The ill-educated (regardless of academic credentials). The impoverished who think the money of a few measly millionaires--and those of us who paid just ordinary folks' ordinary taxes--will solve the problem. The self-righteous. The unimaginative. The fearful. The jealous; perhaps those are the worst of all, as they might hide their base emotion under a cloak of drum-banging patriotism.

There is already a law on the books that requires that those whom the State Department finds--in its singular and unsupervised inquiry--to have left the US for tax purposes may never again set foot in the nation. Whether or not they have family left behind. Whether or not, one assumes, they meant to return with the solution to poverty or the cure for cancer. Period. Amen. End of story...the black-and-white No Man's Land that I once thought only Republicans loved so well.

Poor old Ackerman. He also noted, "If an American wishes to separate himself from this country and its people, he is taking a step of deep significance. He should not be able to easily return and brag to his friends about the billions he is making by evading civic responsibilities." Such a deluded man for someone with academic credentials. The Reed Amendment addressed that more than a decade ago. As for it being a significant step, as I've noted before, only the United States, among so-called First World nations, makes a renunciation irrevocable. Indeed, most other nations don't require any formulaic process at all; people just leave, and come back, at will.

The personal aspect for an ordinary citizen of the globe

So there it is. I had no intention of bragging about anything, least of all the millions I don't have, have never had, and don't expect ever to have. I don't brag about the fact that I have the luxury of a second (well, now an only) citizenship; I am grateful, because it allowed me to renounce. I am very, very grateful for that. I don't intend to brag that I left; I merely offer that after 50 years in the trenches--from the time as a teenager that I became aware of the disparities in American society and the disingenuousness of its politicians--I decided I needed a few years of peace and quiet and humble enjoyment of my husband, my pets (grieving the horse left behind with a friend because he was too old to travel) and a small, polite, lovely nation, unfettered with the constant need to protest something outside my immediate environment, or protect something within. I was late, I might add, protecting our assets from the Bush meltdown, so it is definitely a humble exile I have decided to enjoy.

I never intended to ever set foot in America again, with or without renouncing, although I doubt even the State Department could make a case that a basically penniless, semi-retired journalist renounced for tax reasons, especially since my tax rate is higher in the UK. I did, however, take the precaution of obtaining high calibre legal representation for the renunciation to ensure that I could re-enter the US if I ever want to. To see my family, friends and aged horse, perhaps, although all but the horse can visit me here, and are welcome.

Nor did I intend to let this cat out of the bag without prior notice to my family and friends. But in the end, I decided the chips will just have to fall where they may. I have taken care of business assiduously, and delayed my own pleasure, for 45 years. And I suspect I still take care of business: I think it is the business of my soul to use what I know and who I am to attempt to shed some light on how the world works, take it or leave it.

I am not, in fact, going to return to the United States. My chiropractor asked me yesterday, as he worked on a mighty sprain, whether my family was upset that I had left.

I said I didn't know. I guess now I will find out.

***

POSTSCRIPT: Americans are, at present, still guaranteed the right to renounce US citizenship if they can find another nation that will have them. No mean feat, actually, unless one has megabucks and can buy one's way in (certain nations sell citizenship) or are descended from a citizen of a nation that recognizes one or two generations removed as their own, such as Ireland (my own salvation) and I believe Greece and Italy, under some circumstances, and even the UK for one generation. However, renunciation comes at a cost. While each person's emotional cost will differ, all will pay $450 for the privilege, a fee that is actually a burden to some renunciants, thereby belying the claim that most are rich. Moving abroad is expensive; some do it with every cent they can round up and adding half a thou to that is burdensome, and, I have read, sometimes impossible. It is a right, then, like voting was a right, back in the poll tax era. Unfortunately, while voting rights got nominally more expansive (except in Florida in 2000, when some people were chased from the polls for being the wrong color), the right to leave and seek one's fortune elsewhere had gotten more dear. Many legal scholars also believe the fee is illegal, it being the ordinary business of government to serve its citizens in such ways free of charge. And when the fee is exacted (extracted?), the renunciant is STILL a US citizen. Only after the fee is paid, the interview is endured, the oath taken and the State Department's magic woven is the person relieved of his or her US citizenship.

Anyone who could lick the big C can lick his own hemorrhoids

Bachmann's core constituency. (Wiki Commons)

Try as I might, I cannot find the source of one of my favorite quotes about John Wayne: "Anyone who could lick the big C can lick his own hemorrhoids."

It's a shame, really, because I'm sure Michele Bachmann could use it sometime in her run for the presidency. She's so good at getting stuff wrong, she would be almost bound to use it wildly inappropriately...which is tough to do considering it's inappropriate already. But good for a laugh, anyway.

Which is what, in any reasonable world, Bachmann would cause, riotous laughter. Along with Palin, of course. I admit that I dumped one of my husband's ex-colleagues from FB a couple of weeks ago because the man claimed he liked Sarah Palin. I have no further use for such gullible dummies in my life. Not even for the nanosecond it takes to notice them and dismiss them on my daily FB trolls. When I'm trolling FB, I'm looking to hook up with friends, have a laugh, maybe gain some new information. Neither Palin nor Bachmann fit any of those bills, except when FB friends do something clever in dismissing the Two Whores of the Apocalypse, which fortunately many do with amazing frequency.

Apocalypse. Wait. Did it happen already? Is the United States, especially, living in the aftermath of the destruction of human life as once understood? That would be one answer for the election of Bush/Cheney, one answer for the continuing hollow life of the nation's financial institutions (I think of them as humongous intestines, packed with fecal money, blowing it all out over a group of brain-dead, spiritually rotten husks of men like so much green diarrhea.) It would be one answer for why America's education was permitted by whatever universal forces there are to sink to the level of No Child Left Behind, from which it may well never rise again.

Indeed, considering the apocalypse to already have happened is actually rather cheering. Or perhaps thinking that it is happening now; that's better than thinking that the current state of affairs is reality. The apocalypse is, most simply, the revealing of truths after a period in which they were hidden.

Still, it's hard to credit the idiocy of George Bush being hidden, but it was hidden from millions. And from Diebold computers, since they have no soul in the first place, and the manufacturers/programmers of those computers were not using theirs. (Benefit of the doubt.)

It's hard to believe people didn't understand that every single Republican act, and some by Democrats, since Ronald Reagan was bumbling around the Oval Office, was designed to hide massive enslavement from those being enslaved.

Although Reagan's government made massive strides in the direction of consigning most Americans to serfdom it was not sufficient to enslave the population of the United States financially, by compromising their tiny real estate holdings via home equity loans...

Not sufficient to ensure that future generations would lack the education to recognize disaster as it was visited upon them via No Child Left Behind and the unconscionable gutting of the GI Bill for the Afghan/Iraq soldiers....

Not sufficient to remove even the rudiments of subsistence employment from a great deal of the population, rendering them too demoralized to protest....

No, none of that was enough. It will never be enough for the self-appointed masters of the universe and their stooges (you can plug in the Koch brothers and the Bachmann crowd, but try not to forget the Nazi Bushes, the compromised Kennedy clan, etc. ad infinitum et ad nauseam) until Americans are terrified of speaking out against the evil policies of their own government regarding:

• Health care
• Warmongering
• Human rights abuses by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration)
• Guantanamo
• Fiscal policies that inflict suffering on the jobless
• Educational policies that turn bright children into dumb parrots
• Equal opportunity for all genders, races, religions, etc.
• Immigrants seeking a better life and WILLING TO DO THE JOBS HUBRIS-FILLED AMERICANS REFUSE (Just pointing out what morons the anti-immigration cadre is)

I'm sure there's more. But to get back on track, perhaps Michele Bachmann is precisely what's needed. Perhaps her idiotic pronouncements will ring a bell with those who excused the idiotic pronouncements of that other red-white-and-blue Barbie of a female jackass, Palin.  Maybe this version of cornball, knee-jerk, painted-on patriotism will finally wake them up.

My country right or wrong is possibly a more dangerous statement than any other generally spouted by unthinking Americans. It allows pseudo-patriots--armchair chauvinists with the knowledge of history of my kitchen table--to excuse the inexcusable, the wrong.

My country right or wrong totally precludes fixing what's wrong. To fix what's wrong, one must see what's wrong and take action to repair it. But under their cloak of pasted-on patriotism, the John Wayne patriots think it is unpatriotic to say, "Well, my country is wrong about this. I love what the country once stood for; I loathe what it is doing at the moment. Let's fix it."

In the all-or-nothing John Wayne World of Palin, Bachmann, Bush. the teabaggers, Glenn Beck and the other squawking heads of Fox-style TV, you're either with 'em or...you're a traitor.  

That's what it amounts to. We now have a woman standing for the highest office in America, a leading position globally despite Bush's best efforts to trash it, who is so stupid, she can't even get hirelings to put together coherent speeches for her. (See Palin, 2008, etc.) That, I think, is more amazing than the fact that the wench mixed up John Wayne, silver screen idol of the pitiful WWII generation, with John Wayne Gacy, murderer born into and out of America's downward slide to the dark side.

Bachmann. Moron.

But people will vote for her.

Morons.