Alliance of Hedging Cronies

The encompassing issue pertains to how best to dismantle our Rube Goldberg system of centralized regulatory confusion in order to revitalize the middle class and respect its political potency. I suspect few of those who fund either of our main political parties actually want to pierce through the confusion. They like being able to keep the middle stirred up, divided, at odds with itself, and diverted. During discontents, there's money to be made by hedge artists! So long as discontents can be so easily stirred, the middle can never become potent to counter: cronies from selling out the nation; taxes from tying workers to mortgages; promises like health insurance from being lost once employment is lost or corporations are repackaged; and education from being tied to centralized mind confusion. Thus, the middle class will never see obvious solutions, and it will instead remain mired in irresolvable cross purposes, impotent to stop the fleece machine.
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Indeed, the alliance of cronies holds all significant cards and coins, as it has held them for more than 50 years. Heads or tails, the fleece alliance hedges and wins either way. This is not the fault of advocates of any single issue! It's the fault of middle class leaders for allowing themselves to be divided by foolish concerns over foolish inconsistencies and for refusing to unite into a sensible third party in order to stop the general source of the rot. Case in point: diverting attention to bickering, as we go over the falls, as if nothing could be more important than that kids ought to be exposed to even more rot, drugs, and gender confusion --- as if sex, drugs, rap, and rot did not already becloud our vision of everything else. No, we must have more, and more, and more. After all, it energizes the easily misled, especially the youth.

Progressive Consumption Tax

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To better pursue solutions, we should better comprehend and prioritize relations among our concerns.  Many problems are not that hard to address, once their relations are identified.  Until relations are addressed, piecemeal solutions simply cannot work.  A boat with multiple holes in its bottom will still sink, even if all but one of its holes is filled.  A representative republic sickens into a walking contradiction the more it sinks its middle class.  It sinks into despotism pretending to contend for the best interests of its sheep.  The national scope of America's problems is less due to intolerance of the hubristic by the humble, modest, and decent than it is to intolerance by the hubristic for the humble, modest, and decent.  Less due to common sense of the experienced and insightful than to frenetic fascism of the callow and self professed elite.  Less due to advocates of individual responsibility than to advocates of international fascism, coupled with diversions into dopery.  The main problem now confronting empathetic humanity consists in clamorings of entitlementarians to force equality in mind and matter upon everyone else, accompanied by outrages against all decency and sustainability.  Our problem is not with education, health, or home mortgages.  Our problem is with Rube Goldberg styles of centralized regulation of education, health, and housing.  Our problem is not to discourage productivity, but to discourage sloth.  We fund our Rube Goldberg centralized system of regulation by taxing too much of what we want and too little of what we don't want!

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The idea of a progressive consumption tax fairly cries out from the wilderness!  Why hasn't it been paid more attention?  Well, until recently, the technology needed to support such an idea was not available.  Now it is.  Now, the fear is Big Brother.  However, Big Brother is already monitoring internet searches, purchases, indeed, our very keystrokes, and soon, our carbon emissions.  Big Brother will not be tamed by pretending he's not there or by declining to confront him on his own terrain.  We will either have a method for identifying our voters and citizens and for monitoring accumulations of economic activity, or America's identity as a nation will melt into the N.W.O., there to be ruled by international corporatists skilled at diverting attention of sheeple from fleece machines.  Technology has gone too far to allow anarchy.  Anarchy would only avail a short transition from mass mayhem to despotism.

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Check online for progressive consumption tax aspects in the idea of a Bradford-X tax.  Effect:  avoid double taxation of income.  However, think even further about what could be accomplished with a progressive consumption tax scheme.  Samples:  Encourage production by those who show talent to produce by not taxing corporate or individual income or investments in production.  Encourage cheaper prices secondary to mass production by taxing individual consumption progressively.  Discourage people from going into debt for what they cannot afford.  Discourage capacity to buy politicians as commodities by constraining corporate lobbying to fixed and highly taxed modes.  Do not allow corporations to make political or campaign contributions except as a form of highly taxed consumption.  Progressively tax lobbying by individuals as a form of consumption.  Discourage rise of despotisms and aristocracies by appropriate use of tariffs and death taxes.  Redistribute most taxes to states on a per capita basis.  Do tax financial outflows from country; do not tax financial inflows.

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There comes a point where increased resources spent on consuming results in decreased production, such that one cannot consume one's way to riches. One cannot print money to prime the middle class at the front door without availing those who cause the money to be printed to prime themselves at the back door. The proportionate wealth of the middle class cannot be increased merely by inflating money. Instead, the consumptive power of the money itself must be made disproportionally beneficial to all lower classes, by effecting progressive taxes against increasing levels of household consumption.

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He Who Frames The Issues

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All of good faith are betrayed, and most of ANY SIDE are too easily misled to care. Simply put, the middle class is not represented. Why?  In main, it has been divided to be served as the main course, rather than to be served in its own interests.  The game is now about competing for turns for overlordship.  Issues aren't addressed in terms of middle-class common sense. Rather, issues are reframed to appeal to oligarchic cronies and unionized gangs intent on fleecing the middle class. Crony hyenas reframe issues in terms of freedom to capitalize, while gang-banging wolves reframe issues in terms of redistribution of material equality. Neither side frames issues in terms of what's needed to avail ordinary citizens with decent freedom of expression and enterprise.
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Most people, were they not subjected to steady drumbeats of misleading noise, would readily intuit common sense, that: (1) both defense of civilization and environmental stewardship call for general incentives for moderating populations; (2) as much as practicable, ordinary citizens should be allowed to decide for themselves whether and when they wish to practice both contraception and religion; and (3) health insurance and housing should be more portable and less tied to employment or mortgages. Yet, those are not goals of those who fund and run our contending cronies and gangsters. Any astute observer will notice how common sense goals are continuously reframed and stalemated by hyenas and wolves.
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In effect, "leaders" who contend to fleece us unite to urge that nothing is feasible without first consenting to have our borders erased, our self reliance infantilized, our modesty outraged, and our respect for religious practices nullified. The between-the-lines message is: National health care is not feasible; national defense is not feasible; national economic competitiveness is not feasible. Given the way our leading contenders frame our situation, the only important things feasible are the demise of faith, the destruction of America, the outraging of modesty, and the sell out of middle classes to international corporations. This won't stop until perpetual fleecing is made irreversible --- unless the middle class as a whole soon wakes up.
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Chattel versus Children, Rights versus Definitions

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One hardly needs a piece of paper to engage in all the free expression of genitalia one likes, so long as within bounds of modest decency so as not to scare the wildlife. One can call such activities by whatever name one wishes. Marriage, significant other, fornication buddy, whatever. One can invent cults and religions and label favorite practices whatsoever names one desires. And one can contract with other adults, within bounds of enforcible contracts, and call those contracts by whatever label one favors. But one does NOT have a legal or moral right to contract so as to treat children as chattel. A child is a special ward of the State ---not a chattel of the State, not a chattel of parents.
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Those who choose to remain citizens of a civilization, governed under the form of a State, have an interest in preserving their civilization for themselves and their posterity. They have, and will take, power to moderate incentives for preserving and replacing demographics for sustaining their civilization. They can favor presumptions regarding how best to foster succeeding generations. Should parents be accorded tax breaks? Should parents be accorded presumptions of fitness to have and raise children? Should judges and orphanages be accorded discretion to weigh factors in assessing how orphans should be cared for and adopted? OR: Should political correctness require all children to be thrown to the first bidder, as of right? Should traditional families not be presumed superior, absent showing of disqualifiers? Should parents not be availed special certification as "married" in the eyes of the law?
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In itself, marriage is not a person. Marriage itself does not have rights. A State certificate merely indicates clearance for presuming participants to be generally qualified and favored for having and raising children. After all, there are persons unfit to have custody of children, and it must fall to government to assess such situations. An assault on government certified status of marriage easily morphs into an assault against protecting children from being treated as chattel. There is no "equal right," per se, to obtain the supervision of a child! Wider civilization will retain power to stop what the majority consider abuse. That interest is not to be destroyed by giving every person who may be adult in body but not in mind some presumed "right" to lordship over any child. Against such governance, the only check is availed by respecting a broadly assimilated society of decently qualified and relatively modest parents. To undermine interests of ordinary parents, to create a "right" in everyone to treat children as chattel, is to hurry the time when State elitists, as a matter of course, will assert superior and arbitrary power to control all significant details regarding the raising of the next generation. When it comes to asserting "equal rights," too many brains are blinded by their genitalia. Their ill considered implication is that hormone addled adults have rights, but children are chattel.
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Retch

If you want a republic that establishes generally decent rules for all, then you need citizens who are brought up to think in such terms. In most countries and most times, most aren't. Most are brought up thinking it terms of short term winners and losers. Decent people have souls that expand to identify their self interest to encompass far more than narrow, temporary opium fixes. When it comes to self interest, their idea of "self" extends beyond the constricted perimeter of their skins. Unfortunately, these people who think in terms of the good of their country and posterity also tend too much to project, to believe there are more like them than there are. When they let down their guard for too long, corruption soon surrounds, like wolf packs. That's where decent thinkers now are, mainly marginalized and targeted for fleecing on ALL sides. For a long time, the easy profit has been in fleece pacts. The fleecers who run mass media don't need to make money tied to media. They make it tied to their fleece machines. The people with stock in media will have stock in scams that media can tip to their favor. Arabs invested in Fox are interested in keeping America from becoming energy independent. They're about conquest and deception. Decency and truth are not what they're about. The centralizing franchises are not where anyone is going to find much truth or decency. Thinkers who want to preserve a viable, decent, representative republic will have to establish their own connections and alternatives. A good start would be for profs who heretofore have served socialists and sociopaths to suddenly retch away from what is being vomited on America. Has tenure made them independent enough, or has it just allowed academia to be filled with easily indimidated and conditioned kool-aid drinkers, now preparing the next generation for its final fleecing?

Non-Profits

The theory has been that non-profits are needed to avail a social safety net, so that charitable functions can be decentralized away from corrupt and inefficient political power mongers. Unfortunately, corruption knows little of decency or modesty and quickly learns how to overcome the politics not only of governments but also of charities. Once charities are reduced to much the same centralized corruption as government, then it becomes ridiculous to hope to replace inefficiency and corruption by relying on charities. Nearly every other institution of significance has been corrupted by cronyism, so it's only to be expected that opportunities respecting money and power in non-profits cannot remain unexploited. Crony power secondary to self worship has us in an evil vise grip. So the kind of reform that's needed will not be undertaken by powers that be. Those powers will not dis-establish themselves. The reform that's needed must be undertaken not by an ocean of new regulations (which would only be corrupted to service cronies), but by sensible and general measures calculated to restore common sense and decency. That will not occur, however, unless and until there's a general awakening. There's every chance such awakening won't occur until the cell doors have closed to the last chance. We may be seeing the last vistas of ordinary decency and liberty, as faux gods of crony self interest finish extending their overlapping spider webs to the very last of our material hopes. If the income tax cannot be repealed and replaced with a progressive consumption tax, then at least the deduction for charitable contributions should be repealed. Moreover, the talk of ending death taxes calculated to limit the progressive rise of an aristocracy is fundamentally misguided. Most likely, however, the noise machine will continue to drown any awakening to common sense.

The Establishment

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REGARDING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF, BY, AND FOR CRONIES:  Of course Americans are becoming more and more distrustful of the Establishment!  Consider who runs our institutions of significance and how they are run.  Banking, media, academia, political funding, corporate control.  Look at the stuff that passes for news and analysis on MSNBC.  Does anyone with the intellect of a goose fail to see how slanted it is?  Consider the political alignment that has pretended for more than 50 years that it is impossible to enforce the border.  Look at how fast American industry and the American middle class have hollowed out.  Look at millions losing jobs while billions in bonuses are funneled to cronies.  Look at cronies playing pay to play, choking domestic energy production after crony corporatists have finished placing their hedges.  Look at crazy, frenzied enrichment of almost every congressperson.  Look at free trade of technology with despotic regimes that cannot be trusted to keep WMD out of hands of pirates and terrorists.  What person of the least intellect who is not corrupt fails to see how corrupt and devoid the Establishment is of any value higher than constricted self interest?  Class warfare?  For what reason, apart from corruption, should any person who holds no value higher than his self interest, leveraged by gang support, ridicule any other for playing for his own self and gang interests ... by accusing him of playing for gang interests?
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CONSERVATION AND WEALTH CREATION: Since before dawn of recorded history, humanity has promoted hierarchies to direct its variously contending tribes. Masses have always been taxed to accord great sacrifice and effort to their chiefs, in order to preserve and redistribute liberty and wealth among tribes. Liberty and wealth were often obtained by imposing enslavement and extracting spoilage. At the end of each contest, the relative liberty and wealth of the combined masses was not likely improved, although the current of power to direct the hierarchy would be diverted. The main agency for promoting liberty and wealth was coordinate with spoilage, enslavement, and death. To considerable extent, the pie was made bigger by squeezing life in ways that banished many from the party.
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Now, instead of face to face military campaigns, we have face to face political campaigns. At the end of each face off, the relative liberty and wealth of the combined masses often seems not much improved, although the current of power to direct the worldwide hierarchy is diverted. (Yes, there is accumulation of access to technological diversions, if same are to be accounted "wealth," but often at price of unmentioned dead and diminished. In material terms, the law of conservation DOES impose a zero-sum environment, although the zero-summing is experienced as directionally accumulative. Thus, we accumulate stuff upon shoulders of the departed and diminished, and we convert earth to stuff at expense of altering previous balances.)
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Nowadays, the main agency for redistributing the conservation of liberty and wealth is less coordinated with the organizing of military expeditions than with the organizing of corporate and taxing expeditions. The pie is temporarily fluxed bigger FOR SOME by harnessing the many and then telling them to toil and wait on hope and change. Despots savvy in newspeak always rule by inspiring, organizing, and forcing masses to wear harnesses in order "to win individual liberty by accepting organized slavery."
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DECENTLY CIVILIZED LIBERTY AND OPPORTUNITY: To enhance liberty and opportunity for the masses, it's no answer to coax or force them into corporate or communal collectives in order to compete against the cheapest serfs for the opportunity to be ruled by elites. The longer the masses fail to apprehend, the more tightly their harnesses will be cinched. The answer is in (1) assimilation of common-sense respect for spiritual, qualitative, non-quantifiable empathies, (2) appropriate decentralization of governance, (3) general protection of borders, infrastructure, and industry of homeland, (4) re-balancing of prerogatives of international corporations, disloyal elites, and callow cannibals, and (5) general apprehension of zero sum conservation of material wealth versus appreciation of qualities of non-quantifiable values.
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SPIRITUALITY ---- OF META WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS: Why do post-analyzed, seemingly crazy dreams, visions, and meditations often seem to have been so real and logical before one wakes? it seems some meta-material aspect of The Axiomatic of which brains or minds are derivatively identified must have imaginative capacity to image all manner of fuzzy relations. In that respect, worlds abide within worlds, expanding, contracting, and conflating. The further one fuzzes away from the humdrum of the manifest, the closer one identifies with the meta Source of axioms. In that state, the usual logic of the materiality of the manifest tends to fall away, leaving one to image and adduce from the Source in respect of all manner of imaginative potentials. The reality that supports the logic of that altered state is not of the same quality of dependence upon assumptions of any particle of matter, as if matter could in itself constitute some kind of independent and unconscious "thing." The more one's waking self remains UNAWARE of one's dreaming self, the less one apprehends that materiality, as a mathematical extension of linearity-in-itself, is an illusion borne of happenstance of identification with imagination, and the less one is open to a non-quantifiable quality of empathy in consciousness, which is NOT constrained to the merely linear. Entropic directionality in the unfolding of an expanding universe of measurable matter is secondary to happenstance of identification with perspective of material linearity. Linear directionality is not predetermined secondary to meta-matter constituting some kind of measurable matter-in-itself. Alternatively stated, happenstance of identification with perspective of material linearity is not derivative of entropic directionality in the unfolding of an expanding universe of measurable matter-in-itself.  Rather, directionality of material unfolding is derivative of identification of conscious imagination with perspective of material linearity.
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