It's Time For 2018

Financial FAQs

We will need the 2018 elections now more than ever to vote out the greed and cowardice of those members of our national legislature who oppose all forms of gun control in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre of innocents.  It is those who have supported gun-rights groups that need to be replaced to protect Americans from such random acts of violence.

Gun-rights groups have allowed the killing of thousands of Americans in mass shootings over the past decade, including 521 mass shootings in just the last 477 days, according to New York Times columnist Frank Bruni.

That’s also because we have to vote out supporters of the largest terrorist organization in the U.S., the National Rifle Association, that opposes any controls on military-style weapons of mass destruction.

Yes, that’s right. Military weapons, such as the AK-47 developed by the Soviets because it was cheap to manufacture and easy to use, are responsible for more American deaths than ISIS; or any other terrorist organization that has killed maybe 15-20 Americans in all, yet we spend $billions trying to eliminate them, but nothing on eliminating American terrorism.

Instead those monies are donated to the candidates that support American anti-gun control organizations, such as the NRA. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were the top recipients of monies from organizations that oppose any form of gun control in 2016, reports Marketwatch — no surprise, since they both ran for president.

Cruz raked in $360,727 to lead the way, according to OpenSecrets.org. Just two years earlier, Cruz had collected $18,300 when he was the junior senator from Texas and lacked any significant influence in the Senate.

Third on the list of recipients of their largesse is House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said of the Las Vegas massacre, “this is not who we are”. Do we really believe him when he was the recipient of $171,977 from such organizations?

Who are we when President Trump, our elected President said, “You came through big for me, so I will come through big for you,” at the NRA’s latest convention?

Graph: Marketwatch.com

That is in fact “who we are” at the moment, but not who we can become if we will take on such American terrorist organizations as the NRA that are responsible for the indiscriminate killing of so many women and children.

The big lie broadcast by gun-rights groups is that banning military-style weapons is banning the Second Amendment right to bear arms. No, that right is protected by the Second Amendment, but not the right to bear arms that slaughter so many innocents.

Harlan Green © 2017

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

A Ted Cruz Presidency?

Financial FAQs

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is about to announce his candidacy for the 2016 presidential campaign. What would his presidency look like, if he were elected? “Mr. Cruz has also begun championing a message of economic populism,” said the NYTimes on his announcement of candidacy, “denouncing income inequality and borrowing the “two Americas” metaphor used most famously by former Senator John Edwards in two unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

Let’s start with his silliest proposal to abolish the IRS. It tells us how he really views income inequality. There would then be no means to collect the taxes that pay his Senator salary. So he would have to work for nothing. Is that how he will tackle the scourge of income inequality afflicting those Americans that work for little or nothing?

We also know what his presidency might look like from another far right Tea Party favorite and potential candidate’s agenda; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Walker’s first priority has been to downgrade union organizing and education funding in Wisconsin, in order to deprive Democrats of union support, as well as dumb down his own electorate. The result has been the lowest job creation and growth rates of all neighboring states.

Senator Cruz’s programs would have a similar result—would in fact increase income inequality—as he has opposed every economic program that would better ordinary Americans’ lives, including raising the minimum wage. “If you raise the minimum wage, the inevitable effect will be, number one, young people will lose their jobs or not be able to get their first jobs,” he said in 2013 in reaction to President Obama’s inauguration speech that included a call to raise the national minimum wage to $9 per hour.

But history has shown just the opposite effect. Where ever the minimum wage has been raised—such as in Seattle, Washington where it is $15/hr., or the state of Minnesota, where it will be $9.50/hour for large employers in 2016, employment is thriving. Seattle’s unemployment rate is now under 5 percent, and Minnesota’s unemployment rate has dropped to 3.6 percent, the lowest in 13 years.

He also opposes any climate change legislation that would reduce our dependence on carbon-creating fossil fuels, including his support of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and more offshore oil drilling. Yet even the Pentagon has documented the extreme economic costs, including future wars, of ignoring the effects of Global Warming.

And how about his call for greater liberty? He also opposes all forms of amnesty for Illegals, or ‘undocumented’ immigrants, though he’s the son of a Cuban-born immigrant. This would greatly restrict the freedom of those immigrants to become American citizens, of course.

Cruz has particularly stressed his opposition to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, said the PBS Newshour. The Texas senator filed a bill blocking the president’s actions, which allow more undocumented residents to gain legal status, including the administration’s waivers for young people brought to the U.S. as children. Cruz argues that those actions encouraged increased illegal immigration.

And how about his call to dissolve the Affordable Care Act? Killing Obamacare would increase the poverty of the poorest and sickest among US that cannot afford, or would be ineligible for private health care insurance.

No, Senator Cruz’s presidency would neither create more liberty, nor better the lives of the poorest that suffer most from income inequality. Those liberties have been under steady assault by Tea Party members, in particular, with their no compromise positions on even the most basic poverty alleviating programs.

So his words don’t match his actions. Isn’t that called pandering, when a politician will say anything to win votes?

Harlan Green © 2015

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Is This A New Civil War?

Popular Economics Weekly

The New York Times stated in a 2010 poll that the 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45. History tells us the last time white males were willing to destroy the economy and maybe country. It was the United States Civil War, of course. Then it was about such men attempting to preserve slavery and state rights. Today, it is about not giving more rights to minorities and the poor.

Then it was about the south, desperate to preserve their privileges, today those Tea Party Republicans are desperate to preserve their traditions of power—low taxes and small government—even though our modern economy can’t function without an effective government that makes the rules that allow financial markets as well as our overall society to function smoothly.

So they are now desperate enough to use the debt ceiling as their Weapon of Mass Destruction. Not okaying an increase means the government is shut down, as well as the U.S. financial system that depends on debt to finance operations. And there are those on the right, such as Tea Party Republican Ted Cruz that would like to see this happen.

“The debt ceiling historically has been among the best leverage that Congress has to rein in the executive,” said Cruz to CNN’s Candy Crowley recently. “There’s great historical precedent. Since 1978 we’ve raised the debt ceiling fifty-five times. A majority of those times, twenty-eight times, Congress has attached very specific and stringent requirements, many of the most significant spending restraints, things like Gramm Rudman [i.e. the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act], things like sequestration, came through the debt ceiling.”

The last Civil War cost some 600,000 lives. If prolonged, this civil war would cost millions of jobs. In a new report, the Treasury Department studied the economic fallout from a similar debt ceiling impasse in 2011 — when the nation came within days of defaulting on its obligations — and said that the country could see similar effects this year if lawmakers wait until the final hours to raise the debt ceiling.

“A default would be unprecedented and has the potential to be catastrophic: credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, U.S. interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse,” the report said.

Yet as the New York Times reported, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups put together a plan to defund Obamacare in 2012.

“It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.”

Yet this hasn’t sunk in to the general public, apparently. The 18 percent of the electorate, those Tea Party males, are willing to fight another civil war they cannot win, but could cause great damage to all of U.S.

So how long might this civil war last? “You’re here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare,” declared Mr. Cruz, at a recent fundraiser. “This is a fight we can win.”

Will we need another Abe Lincoln to save the Union?

Harlan Green © 2013

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/HarlanGreen