This page was started
in 2011 as a way of taking notes on the issues while I was running
for the House of Representatives.
Results of California 2nd district House of Representatives race (Wiki).
When I see something interesting I add it to this web page.
Axioms:
1. Your ability to improve or fix something is limited by how
well you understand how it works.
2. Everybody, without exception, holds false beliefs.
2016 The key message when I ran for the House of
Representatives in 2012 was that electing either a
Democrat or Republican would result in no change in Wall
street or War policy.
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with any
possibility of making a change.
If you are happy with how Obama fulfilled his campaign
promises then vote for Hillary.
If you are happy with Bush43 vote for the Republican
candidate.
If you want a change vote for Bernie, even if that means
writing his name on the ballot.
Here are a couple of key concepts:
1. The Republicans and Democrats are in agreement when it comes
to supporting big business and war. They only differ on a
few other issues. So if you want reform in how business
works or our war policy do not vote for either of them.
2. The bad outcomes we are experiencing (for example we pay the
most for our medical care yet the quality of that care is ranked
much lower than other countries) are the direct result of policy
decisions we have already made. The outcomes are not
random.
The
Newsroom
This is a good summary of where we are
as of 2012.
The Newsroom may be based on some of the
ideas related to the book and movie about Dan Rather's
(Will McAvoy) 60 Minutes II story on George Bush's
National Guard produced by Mary Mapes (MacKenzie (Mac)
McHale). The ACN (CBS)
network owned by Atlantis World Media (Viacom (Wiki))
and the owners want to be friendly with the Republican
administration because decisions made by the government
had a strong influence on their profits. The news
was not particularly easy on the government.
Book: Truth & Duty: The Press, the
President, and the Privilege of Power by Mary Mapes 2005
Mary Mapes (Wiki)
is the producer of a number of stories presented by Dan
Rather (Wiki)
on 60 minutes (Wiki)
and/or 60 minutes Wednesday (Wiki).
She
won a Peabody award for breaking the Abu Ghraib (Wiki)
prison torture story. She makes a very convincing
case that her 60 minutes II story is true.
In the book a web page truthandduty.com
is mentioned, but today (21 Feb 2016) it is directed
to some other web site.
Censorship
Sort
of like the Saturday Night Live opening sketch of
Obama's first 100 days has been scrubbed from the web
(Huffpost - SNL
Vs. Obama: Sketch Details All The President's Failures
Since Taking Office (VIDEO) - The article remains
(even has VIDEO in title, but the video has been
scrubbed. The actor portraying Obama says: "There are
those on the right who are angry. They think that I'm
turning this great country into something that resembles
the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, but that's just not
the case. Because when you look at my record it's very
clear what I've done so far and that is nothing. Nada.
Almost one year and nothing to show for it." PS If
you have a copy of that SNL sketch please contact me.
2016: Found this rebuttal that has some of the footage: YouTube:
CNN
Fact-Checks SNL's Spoof on Obama - here is the
video Season
35, 2009 with Fred Armisen- skit not
listed on Wiki
for season 35
DVD on order: Saturday Night Live SNL 35th Season
Best of '09/'10 - has Betty White, but NOT the Spoof on
Obama's first year of doing nothing, zip, zilch Nope.
Here it is: snl Obama
nothing
-----------------
U.S.S.R. 1960s
While learning about the problems we
face in a number of places I've seen a strong parallel between
where we are now (2012) and the U.S.S.R. in the 1960s. When
I was working in Silicon Valley in the 1960 - 1980 time frame it
was a common saying that the difference between the U.S. and
U.S.S.R. was that in the U.S. a business can fail, but in the
U.S.S.R. that does not happen. That can no longer be said of
the U.S. Here are some points to consider:
the news media being a propaganda machine for the government
("Fox News" is an infomercial paid for by the Republicans, CNBC
is the Wall St. propaganda outlet)
(Wiki: Smith–Mundt Act 0f 1948, Foreign
Relations Authorization Act in 1987) prohibited using foreign
propaganda in the U.S.
BuzzFeed May 18, 2012: Congressmen Seek To Lift Propaganda Ban
Privatization today working as inefficiently as Russian
factories and for the same reasons that depend on the details of
a contract,
the 1% being very well off while the 99% suffers,
way more people in prison than belong there
a business can not fail in socialism because government and
business are the same thing (Too Big to Fail)
repression of the people because they disrupt
business/government
Congress: what you see on any day is a show for the public and
all the important stuff happens behind closed doors.
Justice is decided based on political positions rather than
the merits of the case.
The government in involved in both real and character
assassination of it's citizens
Citizens are put in prison without any hearing.
The verdict in a court depends on your wealth more than on
guilt or innocence.
One of the differences between the US and USSR in the 1960s
was that in the USSR there were only two economic classes of
people Upper and Lower, but in the US there was a large middle
class. Today the US middle class is disappearing.
there's more and I'll come back to this and fill in.
Progress & Science
I put this paragraph on a web page about politics because we
currently have a misconception about many aspects of how society
can be best governed and they need to be replaced by better
misconceptions (in the sense that the new one works better than
the old one).
It turns out that for almost all of humanity's existence the
life of children was pretty much the same as their
parents. That's to say there was no progress. Here
I'm talking about progress as any of the measures of well
being. The change came about because of the scientific
method which I'd say started with Copernicus (Wiki)
around 1514 when he told some friends about his heliocentric
hypothesis (Wiki).
It was almost 100 years later when Galliello (Wiki)
had visual evidence that it was true and the Bible was
wrong. The problem with dogmatic religious belief is that
it must be accepted as truth with no possibility of improvement,
which means no progress. Most practical religions do not
act as if their "book" is factual and so society can improve
even when some of it is made up of practical religious people.
So, rather that believe in an absolute truth, society advanced
by using the scientific method. But there continues to be
a question about what 'science' really is. In my opinion
the key difference between science and religion is that in
science there are no facts, only conjectures. For example
you might talk about Newton's misconception of gravity or
Einstein's misconception of relativity this allows a
misconception to be falsified and be replaced by a better
misconception (in the sense that the newest misconception is the
best description of all the experimental evidence).
Example 1
In the late 1970 through 2000 a new misconception of economic
theory emerged that looked to be better than the post depression
misconceptions and this new theory was tried out, but it failed,
but today we have not replaced the failed economic theory.
But we could. One of the key ideas on this web page is
that many of the misfortunes we experience are the direct result
of laws we have passed. There needs to be a better
mechanism to remove the bad laws (see below).
In science when a new theory (misconception) is adapted as the
current one projections are made and tested to try an falsify
it. In a similar way new laws might contain some metrics
as to how well they are working so they could be reviewed after
a few years to see if they should remain.
Example 2
The supreme court (see below) made a
number of bad decisions such as Citizens United v. FEC (Wiki),
Bush v. Gore (Wiki),
Shelby County v. Holder (Wiki),
and many others that have tarnished the reputation of the
supreme court. For most cases pretty much everyone knows
how each justice will vote based on their political bias.
This could change if more impartial judges were appointed.
Example 3
The two party system. It's not part of the constitution,
which provides only for the election of congressmen and the
president. The inability of Congress to act on many issues
and the 2016 presidential elections where the voters are clearly
not happy with either party demonstrate that the current
misconception of how a representative democracy should work is
false. We can learn a lot be looking at how the rest of
the world holds elections and their multi party system.
Most of the paragraphs on this web page could be reworded in
such a way as to demonstrate that the current way many things
are being done is based on false ideas and need fundamental
change. But that would take something like constitutional
congress made up of intelligent fair minded people, an unlikely
event.
Books about how science works:
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch 1997 -4 key
areas: quantum physics, epistemology, theory of computation,
theory of evolution The
Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the Worldby David Deutsch 1998 - amplifies and develops the 4 key
areas Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge
by Karl Popper 1963 - The Myth of the Framework: In defense of science and
rationality by Karl Popper 1994 -
Democrats the same as Republicans on the big
issues
I'm running for the House of Representatives mainly as a public
service to let people know about the major problems we face and
point out that there's hope if the voters will stop doing
the wrong thing, that's to say don't vote for any Democrat or
Republican.
2016 - For many of the past presidential elections we've
been voting for the lesser of two candidates, i.e. voting
against the less evil candidate. For the first time in
decades there may be a candidate to vote for . . . Bernie. The lesser of evils is still evil.
Feb 2013 - Reading "The Parties versus
the People" by Mickey Edwards, ISBN: 978-0-300-18456-3 as part of
the description of the problem he has a quote from Gilbert &
Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore:
"always voted at my party's call,
and never thought of thinking for myself at all."
This is by far the biggest problem where the voters have
the power to make a real change.
Expecting a Republican candidate to do
a bad thing because it was a campaign promise is like expecting a
Democrat to do a good thing because it was a campaign
promise. Neither will happen. They will both do what
the money and their party tells them to do.
Rita Mae Brown in her book Sudden
Death on Pg. 68 from 1983.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but
expecting different results."
The Democrats and Republicans have
the same position about war, the economy, health care, justice,
environment . . . . Obama is a good case
in point, he is out Bushing the prior president.
In the 2012 2nd district Congressional race there are a number of
Democrats saying things that the people want to hear, and they may
even believe it themselves, but once in office they must follow
their party line. Even if they got elected without much or
any help from their party, if they don't follow the party line
they will be replaced by their party at the next election.
This is called "Primarying" (Wiktionary).
Lawrence Lessig (see: Money below)
points out that the primary is where people with money select
which candidates they want to see on the November ballot.
This is where attack ads get a candidate removed.
Those candidates who have accumulated many times the salary of a
Congressman are trying to be a career politician and want to be
reelected over and over so will follow their party line even if
that means NOT following what they said in the campaign.
It's clear the people want single payer health care (and it's the
only viable solution), yet the two front running Democrats are
already saying they will support Obama Care rather than saying
they will support Single Payer Health Care. Many of the
candidates say they will support Democrat or Republican Values and
then mention Right to Choose or Gay Rights, i.e. their only
"values" are these issues. But as the two front runners have
demonstrated they have no values when it comes to the big issues,
they are good party members and will follow the party line.
This reminds me of the U.S.S.R in the 1960s.
The two parties vote on party lines, not because of PAC or
SuperPAC money, but because of the higher dollar value support
they get from their respective national committees. This
shows up in Congressional votes that block bills and nothing gets
done.
Note that virtually all the money spent lobbying goes to the
campaign committee for that Congressman, it does not go into his
or her personal pocket. The money is then used for TV spots,
mailings, yard signs, etc. for the next election. This means
it will take a real grass roots movement (not the astro turf tea
party) to make a real change.
2016 June 27 - this has changed. In the old days it was a
crime if someone who was in a official position accepted a
bribe. When I was working there were rules saying we could
not give gifts to someone who we were trying to influence.
But the supreme court has ruled that money is free speech in
McDonnell v. United States (SCOTUSblog,
Wiki).
Now it's OK to give the bribe as long as no one can prove the
receipt gave an "official act" in return.
For an independent to make a change it's not necessary to have a
majority. Instead only a few votes are required to give a
whole new complexion to Congress. A very small number of
independent votes can make all the difference in getting a bill
passed or blocked. This forces both parties to come up with
good bills and court the independent votes.
Constructing Public Opinion: How
Politicians and the Media Misrepresent the Public a
documentary by Media Education Fund (6 min YouTube,
small
format full length preview)
based on the book: Constructing
Public Opinion: How Political Elites Do What They Like and Why
We Seem to go Along With It by Justin Lewis (2001)
They also produced: Hijacking
Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
(Wiki)
(2004 DVD) This is a MUST watch video interview.
PBS - Bill Moyers Journal - WEB
EXCLUSIVE: Glenn Greenwald -
Transcript Salon.com - Glenn
Greenwald - With Liberty
and Justice for Some (Book)
The Democrats and Republicans are now to the far right and so the
party names no longer have meaning.
Rachel
Maddow - Goofy gun conspiracy surfaces in Congressional
action
21 May 2012 - there seems to be a rash of "Values" press
releases. For example: Obama coming out for Gay
marriage. This is an example of the Democrats and
Republicans making an issue of the one thing they differ on.
The media is lapping it up and NOT reporting on how they agree on:
the defense budget, the economy, health care, the environment,
justice, etc.
It turns out that while the constitution does not setup the two
party system, the electoral college (Wiki)
system does. Because of this it's virtually impossible for a
third party candidate to become president. This is why in
the 2016 primary the two anti establishment candidates, Sanders
& Trump, are running inside the two party system. So the
idea behind naming this web page End 2 Party Government is really
not workable. A more correct approach would be reform 2
parties.
FEC: The Electoral
College by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC Office
of Election Administration, May 1992 - a history explaining the
concerns and their solution. The idea of the winner not
having a majority vote was done on purpose to result in a
president more able to govern more states rather than a population
center.
China and the One Party System
This TED Talk clearly shows that the idea of all countries
moving to a democratic from of government is false. What
the U.S. and much of the world needs to be doing is fixing our
political problems.
Eric X. Li: A tale of two political systems
(TED,
YouTube)
Laws are the Cause of Many Problems
Many of the problems that we have were
caused by politicians in the sense that they authored laws now on
the books that were a mistake.
See the authoritarian section for Prison and Teen
Pregnancy.
Since 2008 there has been no
improvement and in fact it's getting worse. Obama's JOBS Act
of 2012 (the Wall St. boiler room full employment act) and the
good parts of Dodd-Frank have not been implemented on schedule.
There's talk of new laws to further gut Glass-Steagall and
counteract the good parts of Dodd-Frank.
All lawmakers are human and therefore
make mistakes in the form of bad laws. It's not that they
set out to make bad laws.
But, there's no provision to get the bad laws off the books.
A very few laws have expiration dates.
Good Laws
that worked
Harvard
College v. Amory 1830 (Wiki)
- defines the prudent man - "people in charge of
other people's money must exercise due care and skill, and look
after the money as if it were their own"
Sherman
Antitrust Act of 1890 (Wiki)
- "... prohibits certain business activities that reduce
competition in the marketplace..."
The McFadden
Act of 1927 (Wiki) -
"specifically prohibited interstate banking by allowing each
national bank to branch only within the state in which it is
situated."
The Glass-Steagall
acts of 1932 (Wiki)
(2
pages) and 1933 (Wiki)
(37
pages + 6 page summary=53 pg). In 1929 the stock
market crashed and the great depression followed. The
latter was aimed at controlling the run away banking
system. But starting in 1980 Congress passed a number of
laws that removed the restrictions of Glass-Steagall and those
have lead directly to the financial mess we now are in. Matt
Tabbi "There was a $7 billion settlement paid by Citigroup,
which incidentally is the company that Bill Clinton originally
repealed the Glass-Steagall Act to create."
**** Ask your congress person what they are doing to get this
back on the books, so far (March 2014) mine has not answered
that question.*****
Communications Act of 1934 (Wiki)
- Ch 5 formed the FCC and Title II regulated "common carriers".
Pecora investigation (Wiki)
- Congressional investigation into the causes of the great
depression that lead to many of the good laws below.
Something NOT done after the current crash.
Public Holding Company Act of 1935 (Wiki)
Wheeler-Rayburn Act - was to keep utility holding
companies that were engaged in regulated businesses from
engaging in unregulated businesses (repealed by the 2005 Energy
Policy Act (Wiki)
Robinson–Patman Act of 1936 (Wiki)
- Prevents unfair competition where large retail stores can buy
at lower prices than small retail outlets, thus putting them out
of business.
Investment Advisers Act of 1940
(Wiki)
- " ...the SEC's New York office, from a period
stretching for over half a decade through December, 2008, did
not as a matter of policy pursue cases against
investment managers like Bernie Madoff" See: Why
Didn't the SEC Catch Madoff? It Might Have Been Policy Not
To by Matt Taibbi, May
31, 2013
Hobbs Act 1946 (Wiki) -
originality to combat racketeering
in labor-management disputes - frequently used in connection
with cases involving public corruption, commercial disputes, and
corruption directed at members of labor
unions
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Wiki:GATT)
- post W.W.II plan to encourage world trade (discouraging global
financial flows was desired but not part of this agreement).
Bank
Holding Company Act of 1956 (Wiki)
- "specified that the Federal Reserve
Board of Governors must approve the establishment of a
bank holding company, and prohibited bank holding companies
headquartered in one state from acquiring a bank in another
state."
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Wiki)
Prior to this act immigrants were pretty much all from Europe,
after 1965 they were from the world as a whole.
Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (Wiki)
- requires banks to keep records of cash transactions over
$10,000 per day to help prosecute money laundering
Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (Wiki)
- was violated on a grand scale post 9/11 - then immunity was
granted after the fact
Prompt Corrective Action (US Code Title 12, 1831o, Wiki)
-"...federal officials were ignoring
the PCA law requiring them to put insolvent banks into receivership.[2]
The PCA law applies only to institutions insured by the FDIC and
therefore would not affect, for better or worse, companies such
as AIG." Why
Is Geithner Continuing Paulson's Policy of Violating the Law?
Dodd–Frank
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 2010 (Wiki)-
The Volcker Rule (Wiki) is
the good part of this law, but has been and continues to be
attacked by Wall Street so (as of March 2016) 6 years after
being passed still has not been implemented. Also see The
Global Minotaur below. Volcker
understands the problem and has been correct for a long
time. In 2008 Wall Street, one of the hand maidens of the
Global Minotaur, killed it but it lives on now out of
control. See Bad Laws (just below) for the bad parts of
Dodd-Frank.
Sec 1504: Cardin-Lugar Amendment (Wiki)
- requires on line disclosure of bribes - killed by Trump 2017
Gainful Employment rule - 2013 (US
dep of Ed, 2014 fact
sheet.pdf) - requires for-profit educational institutions
to find gainful employment for a percentage of their graduates
not a day at a trade show).
Bad Laws
The vast majority of the problem we face are caused by bad laws
we passed. The problems are not random like the weather,
but unintended consequences (Wiki)
of things we put in motion.
--------------------------- Thomas
Jefferson (Wiki) 1801 - 1809 -------------------
12th Amendment 1804 (Wiki)
establishes the Electoral College (Wiki)
see Electoral College below.
The presidential elections of 1876, 1888, 2000 & 2016 saw
the popular vote go to one candidate and the election to a
different candidate. It also means that because I live in
California my vote for president and vice president does not
count and that's the case for many states. This needs to
be repealed.
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857) the Supreme Court: "a
negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold
as slaves",[2][3]
whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and
therefore had no standing to sue in federal court;[4][5]
and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery
in the federal
territories acquired after the creation of the United
States
---------------------------
Abraham Lincoln (Wiki) 1861–1865
------------------- Civil War
13th Amendment 1864 (Wiki)
makes slavery lawful "...as a punishment for crime whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted,..." This is one of the
reasons the U.S. has such a high prison population (see below). See Clinton Omnibus Crime Bill
below. Needs to be modified to remove the prison
exemption.
----------------------------
Andrew Johnson (Wiki)
1865 - 1869 ----------------------
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163U.S.537
(1896) the Supreme Court rules that "Separate but equal"
segregation is OK. This was the law until 1954 when the
Supreme Court ruled segregation was not OK (Brown v. Board of
Education Wiki)
-------------------------
Chester A. Arthur 1881 - 1885 -----------------
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (Wiki)
- The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law implemented to
prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United
States. "Repealed" by the 1943 Magnuson Act, which allowed 105
Chinese immigrants per year, and did not repeal the restrictions
on immigration from the other Asian countries. Large scale
Chinese immigration did not occur until the passage of the Immigration
and Nationality Act of 1965. Chinese
exclusion policy of NASA 2011 Public
Law 112-55, SEC. 539: (Wiki)
- I learned about this from a hard copy of the California 1879
Constitution in my mother's bookcase. In Article XIX
Chinese are described in a racist way. In the book A
Convenient Spy 2001 it appears that the DOE, FBI and other
government agencies operated on racist ideas, i.e. that people
were guilty of spying simply because they were Chinese
Americans. Very similar to the Interment of Japanese
Americans (Wiki).
YouTube: George Carlin -
You Have No Rights
-------------------- Woodrow
Wilson 1913 - 1921 ---------------------
Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (Wiki)
Establishes the Federal Reserve System (Wiki)
which is supposed to be in charge of Monetary Policy (Wiki)
. This was supposed to control inflation (that failed in
the 2008 Financial crisis) and to control employment, but that
too has not worked. So all that's left for the FOMC (Wiki)
to do is set the overnight inter-bank lending rate, which can be
done be a computer. So it's time to fold up the fed and
move the overnight rate to a computer in the Treasury.
Note: Kelton was on a
Bernie Sanders committee on reforming the Fed and was his
campaign advisor on economics. Modern
Monetary Theory, in my opinion, is the correct way to view
the federal economy.
Buck v. Bell, 274U.S. 200 (1927) (Wiki) -
Supreme Court ...a state statute
permitting compulsory sterilization
of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled,
"for the protection and health of the state" did not violate the
Due Process clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution....the
decision in this case still stands! the BookImbeciles:
The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of
Carrie Buck - makes the case that Carrie Buck was a rape
victim, not an imbecile.
Korematsu v. United States, 323U.S. 214 (1944) (Wiki)
- Supreme Court In a 6–3 decision, the Court sided with the
government on incarceration of U.S. Citizens - overturned in
November 10, 1983 by Calif. Dist Court. -WaPo 2017 Feb 19 - NYT
1983 Nov 11 - DOJ
2011 May 20 - see: 2018 June 27
-------------------- Harry S. Truman 1945 -
1953 ------------------------
McCarran–Ferguson Act of of 1945 (Wiki)
- "...exempts the business of insurance from most
federal regulation, including federal anti-trust
laws..." The Sherman Antitrust Act does NOT apply to
insurance companies. There's nothing in Obama Care to
change this, yet Obama
Care is based on mandating that the insurance companies
run the program.
--------------------------Lyndon Johnson 1963 -
1969 ---------------------
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (Wiki)
- this is an example of a well meaning government making laws with
unintended consequences. The final version was No
Child Left Behind (Wiki:
NCLB) - both of these resulted in the schools "teaching the test"
(Wiki)
and turning out students that could not think or reason. Common
Core (Wiki)
is the latest version of "teaching the test". also see: Surely
you're joking Mr. Feynman! page 211 "In regard
to education in Brazil. . . . ." "the students had memorized
everything but they didn't know what anything meant."
As a direct result of NCLB the vocational education programs were
terminated. That's because NCLB required teaching college
transfer subjects. As of 2016 there is a growing shortage of
skilled trade workers such as nurses, auto mechanics, all of the
building trades, &Etc.
Wiki: Vocational education in the United States, Smith–Hughes
Act of 1917,
Movie: Where to Invade Next 2015 Michael Moore (Wiki)
- Finland: education policy = short school day, minimal homework,
let kids play, Slovenia: debt-free/tuition-free higher education
(some US students enrolled and happy).
Truth In Lending Act of 1968
(Wiki)
- allows the Federal Reserve Board ability to regulate financial
agreements, Dodd-Frank transferred that authority to the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Wiki).
---------------------------1969 - 1974
Richard Nixon ------------------------
Powell
Memorandum 1971 (Wiki)
- Just prior to be appointed to the Supremes by Nixon, Powell
wrote a memo outlining how business should get everything they
could from government. A business response to Ralph Nader
(Wiki).
His book Unsafe At Any Speed (Wiki)
came out in 1965. This is an infamous thing and there are
many books about it. (YouTube)
------------------------- Gerald Ford 1974-
1977 ------------------------------
1975 Employee Retirement Income
Security Act (Wiki)
- When the Studebaker Corp. (Wiki) went
out of business it was discovered that the union had "lost" four
million dollars in employee benefit funds, so ERISA was written
into federal law requiring care in handling of the funds.
The unintended problem is caused by there being no provision in
the law to treat the employees fairly. So the fund
managers abuse the employees and they can not sue in local
courts, but must sue in a federal court which really means that
they have no recourse.
PS I should have received long term disability but could not
find a lawyer licensed to practice in federal courts to sue for
me because he could make more money representing a younger
person where his percentage of the settlement would be more
money in his pocket.
1976 Buckley v. Valeo 424 U.S. 1 (Wiki)
- struck down limits on spending by campaigns and citizens, but
upheld the provision limiting the size of individual
contributions, determinative in Citizens
United
Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (Wiki)
Starting in the 1990s government pressure was put on banks to
make loans to "red lined" areas of cities. This is a case
of unintended consequences.
-----------------------------
Jimmy Carter 1977 - 1981 -----------------------------
Depository
Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act 1980
(Wiki)
- removed interest rate caps
Staggers Rail Act of 1980 (Wiki)
deregulated the railroads and allowed secret deals to stifle
competition. See the book The Fine Print by
David Cay Johnston
The Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary
Control Act of 1980 (Wiki)
- motivated S&Ls to offer what's now called subprime
mortgages (Wiki)
which started with S&Ls in Orange county, California (see:The Monster:
How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers
Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis byHudson,
Michael W.) Note there are two distinct types of
"banks". U.S. government FDIC insured banks loan money by
printing the money, within a week after making the loan
they may borrow from the FED to meet the current reserve
requirement. But private home loan companies are not
part of FDIC and must get the funds from somewhere. In
this case by packaging mortgage securities which get sold on
Wall St.
Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981
(Wiki)
"Kemp-Roth Tax Cut" - the Reagan "tax cuts" -
Raised federal income tax revenues because of the Laffer Curve
(see below) but that's not the purpose of
income taxes (MMT). Their main function
is to serve as a automatic stabilizer (Wiki)
to dampen a hot economy and stimulate a slow economy. So
making the middle class pay more income taxes (the effect of the
Reagan tax cuts) rather than leaving the progressive rate
structure in place also had the effect of increasing drastically
increasing C-Suite compensation packages (Wiki).
Surface Transportation Board (Wiki
STB) one of it's first rulings after being founded in 1996 was
the "Bottleneck" rule which says that if any part of a rail
route is a monopoly they can charge the monopoly rate for the
whole route. Court
case cites Staggers Rail Act (PS the STB has a revolving
door relationship with the railroads, i.e. the railroads control
the STB)
----------------------------------- Ronald
Reagan 1981-1989---------------
Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (Wiki:
Kemp-Roth Tax Cut) - lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70%
to 50% based on the Laffer Curve (Wiki, Supply
Side Economics (false idea))
Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act of 1982
(Wiki)
- allowed balloon payment, adjustable rate & Interest Only
mortgages - adjustable rate were one of the causes of the
housing crash. The root cause was lack of money in the
private sector, see MMT below.
SEC
Rule 10b-18 1982 - from 1934 until 1982 it was fraud if a
company manipulated their stock price by buying back shares.
Rule 10b-18 changed that
Garn–St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982
(Wiki)
- deregulated savings and loan associations and allowed
banks to provide adjustable-rate mortgage loans = S&L
Crisis (Wiki,
Control
Fraud)
---------------------------------Bill
Clinton 1993 - 2001----------------- (In my opinion passed more
Republican laws than any president in history) ----------
NAFTA (Wiki,
Politifact)
Although the first version was signed by GHW Bush, Bill Clinton
modified it's terms and championed it through congress and
signed the final version on Dec. 8, 1993 (YouTube).
It seems that on balance the agreement is good for all it's
parties, but the negative side of the balance contains millions
of lost jobs and no provision to make replacement jobs. So
while wages have been stagnant for many decades the lower cost
of imported goods has tended to maintain the middle class
standard of living. Either Clinton lied or was deceived when he
said it would result in American jobs. Some economists
that supported NAFTA were: Milton Friedman, James Tobin, Janet
Yellen and a bunch more. See: LA Times 283
Top Economists Back Trade Pact, Letter Shows, September 04,
1993, David Lauter
Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994
(Wiki)
- allows woo-woo products that have no proven objective
value. These products are not controlled so in some cases
do not contain the "advertised" ingredient and in others
actually cause harm.
Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 aka Clinton Omnibus
Crime Bill (Wiki)
- "Three Strikes, You're Out" - greatly increased the prison
population. Movie 2016: 13th (Wiki)
- how the constitution allows for slavery when someone is in
prison.
GATT Uruguay Round, 1994 (Wiki) -
against the ideas of Bretton Woods, opened up globalization of
banking - also see Wiki: Hot Money
Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency
Act of 1994 (Wiki,
Federal
Reserve, RollingStone)
- allowed banks to get much bigger
1996 Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Act (Wiki)
- Republican bill passed by Clinton causing 3 assistant
secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services to
quit in protest. This law put an additional 1 million
children into poverty and did nothing to help anyone. "..
insistence that people would not be poor if only they would try
harder defines the thinking behind the signature welfare
restructuring law of the Clinton era.." (WashingtonPost
Mar 8 2017)
Congressional Review Act (Wiki)
- allows new incoming party to overturn a law passed by the
prior administration if done within 60 days. In 2017 it's
the favorite of Donald Trump.
Telecommunications Act of 1996
(Wiki)
- spurred on Mergers, takeovers and acquisitions consolidating
the media into a few hands, removed regulations from the 1934
telecom act. - ...removed many of the restrictions on access
and, in fact, mandated the opening up of networks. While this is
a good thing for an array of reasons, it did result in certain
complications, one of which is the barrier to gain access to SS7
was dramatically lowered, so a security threat (CSRIC)
Federal Direct Student Loan Program 1997 (Wiki)
- privatized the student loan program where the goal was profit
rather than helping students. (YouTube: How College Loans Got So
Evil)
1998 National Center for Complementary and Alternative
Medicine (Wiki: NCCAM)
- Woo-woo organization that has spent $20 Billion and has not
one positive result.
Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act aka Financial
Services Modernization Act of 1999 (Wiki)
- started "too big to fail" and removed the separation between
investment and commercial banks (repealed Glass-Steagall).
$300 million was spent lobbying congress for this. The
merger of Citibank & Travelers Insurance was a crime that
was put on the sidelines while GLB was passed to allow it to be
legal.
S900 Vote: Senate
(Boxer & Feinstein:No), House
(Thompson: FOR, Woolsey: No)
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (Wiki)
- source of the Enron Loophole (Wiki)
and enabled "credit default swaps", turned the commodity market
into a gambling den (& prohibited states using their
gambling laws to regulate it) where the price of food and oil
among other things is now the result of banks gambling rather
than supply and demand. Deregulates derivatives. The Financial
Crisis Inquiry Report (Wiki,
Commission) lists
this law as causing one of the problems leading to the Global
Financial Crisis (Wiki).
The GFC was caused, it did not happen randomly (See Problems above and MMT
below).
1998, 1999 & 2000 Bill Clinton (Wiki)
ran a budget surplus (equivalent to a private sector debt) see MMT/Key Years for forecasts of the
Global Financial Crisis (Wiki)
as a direct result of this.
Attempt to Privatize Social Security Oct 1997 -
This was derailed by the Monica Lewinsky affair. It's
documented in the book: The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt
Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation,
Steven Gillon, resident historian of the History Channel and a
professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. The
Atlantic - How
Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul -books: Listen, Liberal: Or,
What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? -
2016,by
Thomas Frank -
The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt
Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation,
Steven Gillon,
-----------------------------------George W. Bush
2001 - 2009----------------------------------------
FCC Cable Modem Declaratory Ruling of 2002 (FCC
02-77). Poor decision by FCC removing cable delivery of
internet from Communications Act of 1934 Title II regulation.
Sarbanes–Oxley Act (2002) (Wiki)
- is an attempt to outlaw cooking the books like in the case
of Enron, but it uses the SEC as it's enforcement agent and we've already seen that the SEC works to
prevent Wall St. from going to prison, not bringing charges
against them.
Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Wiki)
- a huge tax gift to utility companies see: The Fine Print
by David Cay Johnston
FCC Wireline Broadband Order of 2005. Poor
decision by FCC removing telephone (DSL) internet delivery
from Communications Act of 1934 Title II regulation.
Protect America Act of 2007 (Wiki)
- removed the warrant requirement for government
surveillance of foreign intelligence targets "reasonably
believed" to be outside of the United States.
FISA
Amendments Act of 2008 reauthorized many provisions of the
Protect America Act in Title VII of FISA. This violates the
constitution.
Higher
Education Opportunity Act - 2008 (Dept
of Ed) - prohibits the Education Department from
defining or setting standards of student achievement that
accreditors must apply to the colleges they oversee.
Thanks to Lamar Alexander (R) (Wiki)
in the Bush43 administration - read the linked Wiki page for
illegal and unethical activity - This provision relates to $5
Billion that goes to for profit colleges
Ownership Society (Wiki)
- pressured Fannie May (Wiki),
Freddy Mac (Wiki)
& Federal Housing Administration (Wiki)
to make loans to poor people, something banks would rather not
do on their own.
-------------------------------------Barack
Obama 2009 - 2017 ---------------------------------
Dodd–Frank
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 2010 (Wiki)
does not come close to restoring the checks and balances
needed. In fact Title IX, Subtitle B, Section 929 (Wiki)
repeals the Freedom Of Information Act reporting requirement
from the SEC allowing them to hide information to prevent
prosecuting Wall Street criminals. It's part of the Obama
'Opaque' government plan. Note that the SEC already is
working to protect (not regulate) Wall Street because of
Regulatory Capture (Wiki).
There were some good parts to Dodd-Frank, but they are being
undermined, see good laws above History
will show DC District Court has drawn the wrong conclusions on
Dodd-Frank section 1504
4th July 2013
This article holds out the hope that the SEC will proceed to
fix the problem, but we already know the job of the SEC is to
insure the profitability of Wall St and keep people who work
there out of jail. How
Wall Street Killed Financial Reform -ByMatt
Taibbi May 10, 2012
Uniform
Prudent Investor Act (Wiki)
- repeals the prudent man idea - passed on a state by state
basis.
FTC Act
(Wiki) of
1980 15 USC § 46 - Additional powers of Commission (cornell.edu)
- "Nothing in this section (other than the provisions of clause
(c) and clause (d)) shall apply to the business of insurance,
except that the Commission shall have authority to conduct
studies and prepare reports relating to the business of
insurance. The Commission may exercise such authority only upon
receiving a request which is agreed to by a majority of the
members of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation of the Senate or the Committee on Energy and
Commerce of the House of Representatives. The authority to
conduct any such study shall expire at the end of the Congress
during which the request for such study was made. "
another example of regulatory capture (Wiki).
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010
(aka: Obama
Care) (Wiki) - Leahy
and Conyers tried to tack on a provision that would make it
illegal for health or medical malpractice insurers to fix
prices, rig bids for contracts, or divide up markets among
themselves, but this provision was removed. (PBS: Obama's
Deal)
No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (Wiki)
- teachers need to game the system and teach the test rather
than teaching subjects.
Three Strikes Laws (by each state) (Wiki)
- If you have a couple of criminal convictions and live in a 3
Strikes state (Wiki)
you should move to a state that does not have the draconian
law. That's because if you are convicted of spitting on
the sidewalk you'll go to prison for a very long time.
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and
Modernization Act of 2003 (Wiki)
- prohibits Medicare from negotiating drug prices. Came
to a vote at 3 am 22 Nov while some congressmen were on
Thanksgiving break. This is one reason the U.S. has the
highest prices for drugs in the world.
Defense of Marriage Act (Wiki:
DOMA) -
Article 4 of the U.S. Constitution leaves all things not
specifically granted to the federal government to the
states. Marriage is one of those things that's solely a
states right. HR3396 Vote: House,
Senate
Protect America Act of 2007 (Wiki)
- allows for warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. - debasing
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 &
violating the constitution.
Shelby County v. Holder 2013 (Wiki)
- This is another case of the Supreme Court making a very bad
decision. The 2016 presidential primary vote
in Maricopa County, AZ where 140 of the previous 200
polling places were closed making for lines over 5 hours long
and denying the vote to who knows how many people.
McDonnell v. United States (SCOTUSblog,
Wiki)
- it's now OK to bribe someone so long as a prosecutor
can not prove that the bribed person did not commit an "official
act" in return. This is similar to lobbyists making
contributions to a Congressman's reelection fund and
congressman votes the way the lobbyist wants. The
congressman was not bribed because absent a tape recording to
prove an "official act" was done as quid pro quo (Wiki)
there is no crime.
McDonnell v. United States 2016 (Wiki)
- to show public corruption an "official act" needs to be shown,
not just the acceptance of a bribe and doing something for the
person paying the bribe.
Senate.Joint Resolution 34 — 115th Congress
(2017-2018) - "Resolved by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled, That Congress disapproves
the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission
relating to “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband
and Other Telecommunications Services” (81 Fed. Reg. 87274
(December 2, 2016)), and such rule shall have no force or
effect." The FCC and FTC claim this will allow the FTC to
do a better job, but that remains to be seen. I've put it
under Bad Laws because I expect it's in the same category as
other Trump legislation that benefits corporations and hurts the
common man.
Repeal of the Filibuster (Wiki)
3/5 voting requirement in the Senate to approve Supreme Court
Judges. Mitch McConnell used the Nuclear Option in the
Senate(Wiki)
(vote
109) to change the rules. This follows the Democrats
using that option for district court judges because the
Republicans would not vote on them. Note that the
Filibuster rule still is in force for legislation, but the
handwriting is on the wall so expect that to go within the next
one or two presidents because the minority party has become the
party of the "no" vote.
2018 March - S.2155 is a bill to remove a big chunk of
Dodd-Frank to benefit the "Stadium banks" and maybe even Citi
Bank. Democrats and Republicans working for their donors.
The
Intercept & The
Intercept
2018 June 27 - Trump v. Hawaii (Travel Ban) (SCOTUSblog,
Wiki,
TRMS) - In my opinion
the dissenting opinion (3
docs down) by Sonia Sotomayor (Wiki)
reference to Korematsu v. United States (1944) is
correct and the Republican judges are corrupt.
2018 June 27 - Janus v. AFSCME (Wiki)
- the first union to feel this will be the NEA where
hundreds of thousands of teachers will stop making union
payments (teachers and unions tend to be Democrats, so this is a
change for Republican judges to punish them).
Trade Agreements
Trade agreements such as WTO (Wiki: Criticism),
NAFTA (Wiki: Disputes
and controversies) and TPP
(Wiki: Criticism)
have an overall benefit to the countries that sign them, but at
a cost. "Overall" means positive outcomes minus negative
outcomes. One of the negative outcomes is the permanent
loss of jobs and businesses in all the countries that sign the
agreement. The bulk of the job loss is related to
"productivity improvement" (i.e. automation).
Now (Aug 2016) the TPP has in addition other problems (don't
know about WTO and NAFTA). Some details: 18.82
Requires ISPs to take down sites without a court order
18.78 Criminalizes whistle-blowers who expose corporate
wrongdoing
18.63 Exports the worst parts of US copyright law - without
mandating Fair Use
18.68 Makes it illegal to unlock, modify, or tinker with a
device you own 9.ISDS
Gives companies the right to sue governments for not protecting
their IP
Fundamentally the TPP allows business what I would call an
unfair advantage. For example see the WTO criticism link
above.
Also note the these agreements to not take into account the
ideas of Modern Monetary Theory.
Corruption
The political system is corrupt, not completely in the legal
sense that people are liable to fines and/or jail time, although
there's plenty of that which is not even being brought to trial,
to the point that it's spreading. For example the Fat
Leonard scandal of the U.S. 7th Fleet (Wiki)
where over 30 admirals are under investigation starting in 2013
and the investigation is ongoing. I suspect that the
admirals are seeing Washington as corrupt and so don't feel bad
about following along. Note that most of the hundreds of
millions that are used to bribe congressmen goes into some tax
exempt status rather than into the congressman's pocket and so
is legally not a bribe. But the effect is the same.
The funders have control not the voters. See Lawrence
Lessig Money in Politics below.
Instead of our leaders being examples to follow they are acting
as bad examples.
The thing that's allowed this to work
is that the people who enforce the law have quit enforcing against
the top 1%. Regulatory capture (Wiki)
means that the agencies who are tasked to regulate are now working
to protect the industry from criminal prosecution.
March 2015 YouTube:SEC's
Andrew Bowden at Stanford – A Regulator for Sale? - sad
2014 - Eric Holder worked to NOT
criminally prosecute any of his Wall St. cronies while the local
police put people in prison at an all time high rate.
See the book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the
Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi
The
Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia by Matt Taibbi June 21, 2012 - bid rigging
for municipal bonds.
Note: the insurance business is exempt from the Sherman Antitrust
Act (Wiki)
and so it's legal for them to do this.
Bill Moyers Journal - William K. Black - Video
interview, transcript
(William K. Black TEDx talk)
The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate
Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry by
William K. Black
In the movie Where to Invade Next (Wiki)
there is a segment on how Iceland prosecuted bankers (Wiki)
with the help of someone from the U.S. and put 20 people in
jail. Correcting for the population difference the U.S.
should have put away about 20,000 people, but only one (with a
Muslim name) was sent to jail.
If the president and members of Congress take an oath to up hold
the U.S. Constitution and they do things that are clearly in
violation like is now happening then can they be impeached for
failing to uphold their oath?
Structural
Over the past 30 years the
Constitution has been subverted and is no longer operational on
many levels. This is the number one thing that needs to be
fixed. Without it all the rest will be meaningless. I
think a Constitutional amendment is needed to get away from the
corruption that Lawrence Lessig talks about (see his talk: Congress), although there is a chance that
election finance reform can be done on a state by state
basis. A possible answer is if many states enact election
finance reform that limits campaign contributions so that they can
only come from voters registered to vote for them and with a
dollar limit on each of those. That would eliminate
contributions for people who were not voters, i.e. eliminate a
dependency that is not to the people who vote.
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites
and organized groups representing business interests have
substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while
average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or
no independent influence. The results provide substantial
support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for
theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of
Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."
Gilens and Page have a book: Democracy in America? What has
gone wrong and what we can do about it 2017 -
Average citizens have little or no influence on policy
even highly popular policies often fail
Americans want higher spending on Social Security
Affluent Americans have substantial influence on policy
TEDxMileHighSalon
- Michael Huemer - The Irrationality of Politics
-----
-----
Office of the President
No Choice in elections
For a number of decades there really was not a president to
vote FOR, rather there was the choice between the lesser of
two evils. It seems the party in power (not really the
man who is president) does something to cause the country to
change political parties. The problem is that both
parties agree on the big issues: the economy & war; so
changing parties does not bring about the change the voters
want to see.
2016 - Both Democrats and Republicans are fed up with the
establishment and there's strong popular support for Bernie
and Donald. Bernie is popular with college students
(maybe because they have considered his positions) and Donald
is popular with many Republicans that are also also tired of
the establishment politicians.
Clinton adapted Republican Financial
ideas because the Republicans got money from business
and they got none. So the Democrats now get money
from Wall St. and Republicans from other
businesses.
Sanders & Trump are both anti
establishment & neither is endorsed by their
political party.
Trump's win was a surprise.
Key factors: Jobs (See below)
& Clinton being an establishment candidate,
while Trump was NOT a politician and clearly anti
establishment.
The Office of the President has much more power than the
Constitution allows. In some cases this has happened by
presidential directive and in others (like war powers) was given
away by the Congress. The Department of Justice (Wiki: DOJ)
has become a branch of the White House (index0811.html#SEC) and no longer
enforces the law.
The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (Wiki)
is just the latest example of the office of the president taking
on powers that are in violation of the Constitution and
international law.
Wiki: Hedges v. Obama - Challenge to
the NDDA - YouTube
interview with Chris Hedges - repeals the protection of the
Posse Comitatus Act (Wiki)
Legal-Easy by
Mark Foire (00:01:36)
Change by
Mark Foire (00:01:44)
Supreme Court
2018 The Kavanaugh Hearings (Wiki)
demonstrate that the GOP has politicized the Supreme Court.
Republicans campaigned saying they would overturn Roe v. Wade,
i.e. they made the selection of a Supreme Court justice a
political issue.
Obama went to the ABA for his list of candidates, Trump went to
the Heritage Foundation (Wiki).
Maybe, like re-districting, this type of decision should be taken
out of the hands of politicians, but that would require a change
to Article II Section 2:
"He shall have power, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of
the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and
with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint
ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the
Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States,
whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for and
which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law
vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think
proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the
heads of departments."
2006 Samuel A. Alito Jr. - “expansive view of executive authority”
and decisions he has written on race, religion and reproductive
rights. 1987 Robert H. Bork 1971 William H. Rehnquist 1991 ACLU
remained neutral on the nomination of Justice Clarence
Thomas...But its Southern California chapter broke
ranks with the national organization and opposed Thomas’s
nomination, citing the judge’s positions on affirmative action and
school prayer.
Restrain Yourself by Mark Foire (2:31)
United States of
John Roberts by Mark Foire (1:39)
The Supreme Court (Wiki)
has lost sight of fairness and needs to be over-ruled by
Congress. Note the U.S. Constitution (Wiki)
defines the powers of the federal government: Congress (A1), the
President (A2), the Courts (A3) and all powers not so defined are
left to the States (A4).
In Citizens
United vs. Federal Election Commission558 U.S. 08-
(2010) (Wiki)
the court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited the
government from restricting political expenditures by
corporations and unions. The idea of corporate personhood
(Wiki)
In Santa Clara County v. Southern
Pacific Railroad118
U.S.394
(1886) (Wiki)
- Thom Hartman has pointed out that the ruling had nothing to do
with corporate personhood, that was an idea wrongfully put into
the case summary by a clerk. Note the actual decision was
OK, it's just that the wrong summation has become the basis of
the current law. Thom claims it's also the reason that the
supreme court threw out the Kasky v. Nike, Inc. (Wiki)
case because they knew that the case would reopen the meaning of
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Railroad. Corporations can not be sued for torture and “extrajudicial
killing” (can you say assassination?) that's just for people
Mohamad, et al., v. Palestinian Authority, et al. (docket
11-88) Bowoto, et al., v. Chevron Corp., et al. [docket
10-1536] Kiobel, et al., v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, et al.
(10-1491) Opinion
analysis: Anti-torture law given narrow scope (UPDATED)
I guess that means Blackwater (Wiki)
mercenaries are individually responsible but not their employer. Young Turks - Witchcraft More
Popular Than Citizens United-
Voter Photo ID
In Crawford v. Marion County
Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008) (Wiki)
the supreme court upheld a 2005 Indiana law requiring all voters
casting a ballot in person to present a United States or Indiana
photo ID. Note the U.S. Constitution does not
contain a "right to vote" clause.
Equal Protection Clause
In Bush vs. Gore 531 U.S. 98 (2000) (Wiki) the
Court ruled that the Florida Supreme
Court's method for recounting ballots was a violation
of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Wiki).
Commerce Clause
The Commerce Clause (Wiki)
of the U.S. Constitution (A1, S8, C3) reads:
[The Congress shall have
Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among
the several States, and with the Indian tribes;
Commerce means trade, not manufacturing,
retail sales etc. and only commerce (trade) between foreign
nations and the U.S. or between states or between states and
Indian tribes.
In Gibbons
v. Ogden 22 U.S. 1 (1824) (Wiki)
- The court (I think unfairly) concluded that
Congressional power over commerce should extend to all aspects
that "significantly affected" interstate commerce. This
opened the door to more abuse of the Constitution.
In Wickard v. Filburn317 U.S. 111 (1942) (Wiki)
- Mr. Filburn was growing wheat on his own land for
consumption by his farm animals, none of it was sold
anywhere. The court ruled that the Agricultural Adjustment
Act of 1938 (a United States federal
law of the New
Deal era which restricted agricultural production by
paying farmers subsidies not to plant part of their land)
(Wiki)
applied to him using the commerce clause as the basis of the
decision. That's to say it would force him to buy some of the
wheat he needed. In my opinion this was a huge mistake and
should be repealed.
In United States v. Lopez514 U.S.549
(1995) (Wiki)
- The court ruled that the federal Gun-Free
School Zones Act of 1990 (Wiki),
part of the Crime Control Act of 1990 (Wiki),
was unconstitutional based on the commerce clause. I think
this was the correct decision but is not consistent with Wickard v. Filburn.
In Gonzales v.
Raich545 U.S. 1 (2005) (Wiki)
- Raich grew and consumed
California legal marijuana in her home. The court ruled
that, based on the commerce clause, she was guilty of a
violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (Wiki).
I think this was a wrong decision, there was no interstate
commerce and this is a states right.
There have been a few Individual Mandates (Wiki)
by the U.S. government.
The first was the Militia Acts of 1792 (Wiki)
would have required every "free able-bodied white male citizen"
between the ages of 18 and 45, with a few occupational
exceptions, to "provide himself" a military type weapon and
ammunition. It was not legally tested in the courts.
The second is contained in the mandate to pay income tax which
was found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1895
because it was a direct tax not apportioned according to the
population of each state. Income tax became legal after
passage of the 16th amendment to the Constitution (Wiki)
in 1913.
The third Individual Mandate (Wiki)
is contained in the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (Wiki: Obama
Care) of 2010 due to go into effect in 2014 but in the
court now (2012). National Federation of
Independent Business v. Sebelius, 11-393 (2012) (Wiki,
SCOTUSblog) Department of Health and Human
Service v. Florida, 11-398 (2012) (Wiki,
SCOTUSblog) Florida v. United States
Department of Health and Human Services (Wiki, SCOTUSblog) SCOTUS
for law students: Health-care litigation -
The epistemology of science put forward by Karl Popper (Wiki)
contains the idea that incremental improvements are the key
to progress. So there needs to be a mechanism to
unambiguously renounce bad decisions such as the ones above.
DOJ
The Department of Justice (Wiki)
and the U.S. Attorney General (Wiki)
are supposed to prosecute criminals. But this is not
longer the case for the top 1% and businesses.
In 2007 Alberto Gonzales (Wiki)
supported the Bush43 administration rather than the constitution
and eventually resigned.
In 2007 (after two interim AGs) Michael Mukasey (Wiki)
continues to support Bush43 instead of the constitution.
In 2009 under Obama Eric Holder (Wiki)
not only supports the continuation of the Bush43 polices, but
the "Holder Memo" (DOJ)
is used as the basis of stopping prosecution of Wall St.
criminals.
With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is
Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful 2012
by Glenn Greenwald - how the holder memo was used to protect
Wall St, while people using small amounts of pot were sent to
prison (not jail) for many years.
YouTube: Modern Money
& Public Purpose 7: Financial Reform - about the
criminal actions taken by Wall St. and how the DOJ stopped
prosecutions.
Congress
There are two branches of Congress.
The Senate where the members serve six year terms.
There are two Senators from each state. The idea is to
give each state an equal vote at the federal level. An
interesting observation is that whenever I have contacted my
Senators neither of them ever responded, except a recent
answer from D. Feinstien saying she backed giving the NSA more
power to spy on U.S. citizens. Although she's clearly in
the pocket of the people feeding her money, at least she is
now aware that she can't continue to totally ignore those who
can vote her out of office.
The House of Representatives was supposed to have one member
for each 30,000 people, but when it grew to 435 members the
Constitution was changed locking the number at 435.
Note: If the population of the U.S. is about 300 million
then we should have 10,000 Representative. But as it is
each Representative has about 700,000 voters in their
district. There's no way that they can represent such a
large group of people. Note: Every 10 years when a
new census comes out the 435 districts get redrawn. In
most states this is a chance for that state's legislature to
gerrymander (Wiki)
the boundaries so that the political party in power will get
the most votes.
The book: Rat F**ked why your vote doesn't count
by David Daley, 2017 goes into how bad this problem really
is. It explains that the vast majority of Congress
people can not be voted out of office and so they vote solely
based on their funders. This explains why Congress
people seem to be voting against their constituents and why
Congress, after the great 2010 state level gerrymandering has
not been able to pass meaningful legislation.
@Google: Lawrence Lessig: Republic, Lost: How
Money Corrupts Congress
The Sequester starts today Monday 7 Oct 2013. Here's a SNL
skit about how the House Republicans are blackmailing the
country to defund Obamacare. We Did Stop -
SNL Highlight
Congress today looks like the 1960s Soviet Politburo in
the sense that what you see on any day is a show for the
public and all the important stuff happens behind closed
doors.
We have become a "Banana Republic" (Wiki).
That's to say we have a two-tier justice system. The
1% are immune from prosecution while the 99% are over
prosecuted. For more on this critical problem read the
book "With Liberty and Justice for Some" (2011) by
Glenn Greenwald. http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/26/glenn_greenwald_on_two_tiered_us When I went to college in California there was no
tuition. The idea was that the state would fund
education from property taxes. In the 1960s there were
more advanced college degrees in Silicon valley than
anywhere else in the World and that may be the key reason
for so many high technology start-up companies there.
Around 2004 spending on prisons passed education and now the
university system is being privatized, i.e. California is
funding less than half the tuition.
In the movie The Reagans (IMDB)
based on the book "First Ladies Volume II". During his
campaign for governor of California some Berkeley students
threw an apple (?) at him and in retaliation Reagan
dismantled the state support for the UC system, stopping the
free higher education in California. UC
Berkeley News "Kerr was fired three weeks after Reagan
took office. . . . . he wanted to set a political standard
for appointing faculty members. " It was Clark Kerr
and Pat Brown who instituted the free higher education
policy in California. It was a policy that was very
profitable to California.
Politicians now spend all their time raising money.
That's to say they are not spending the time they should on
solving problems.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (Wiki)
and the National Republican Congressional
Committee (Wiki)
will spend millions of dollars to help their candidates get
elected by producing and paying for air time, phone calls,
mailers, signs, etc. Much of what they do is negative ads
for the primary elections to bounce candidates they
oppose. So they have the power to say who is going to
be on the November ballot.
The Patriot Act (Wiki: PA,draft
PAII)
and presidential directives (Wiki)
have taken away a good part of the Bill of Rights and this
MUST be repealed.
the U.S. spies on
everyone and collects their data into a massive data
base. The Forth Amendment is gone.
"The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon
probable cause, supported by the oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized."
If ignoring this amendment is going to be official
policy then at the Constitutional Convention we
should remove it, or better, leave it in and start
to obey it.
Resend the "bankrupt the U.S. Post Office" bill passed
under Bush43 as part of the Republican privatize everything
plan. (Wiki)
(truth-out) Don't Let Business Lobbyists Kill the Post Office
Subsides: Agricultural 32% of
the payments go to farms with sales of $500,000 or more (2003
DoAEB6). Since the annual subsidy is
$8,000,000,000 (8 Billion) that 32% is 2,560,000,000 or a
little over 2.5 Billion going to farms with profits of more
than $ 50,000 per year. Oil March 30, 2012
U.S. Senate Votes to Continue Oil Subsidies
The primary election had a huge number of
provisional ballots. That's because of the lawsuit
related to the top two primary system used in the 2012
election. In the 2012 election there was only one
ballot, it did not matter how you were registered. But
in the 2016 primary it mattered a lot how you were registered,
and if you wanted to vote for Bernie and were not registered
in of the accepted parties you needed to use a provisional
ballot.
PS If the top two ballot was used in the 2016 primary for
Mendocino county, California the two candidates would be
Sanders and Clinton (Trump came in third so not automatically
on the November ballot.
Because of a lawsuit the 2016 primary is very complicated.
In prior years(before 2012) California used a closed
primary (Wiki)
where only registered Republicans get to vote for the
Republican candidates and only Democrats for Democratic
candidates. The problem with this system is that
there's no oath or other way of confirming which party you
belong to when you register. So voters would register
in the opposition party so that they can vote for the
candidate most likely to loose the election.
The Top Two primary system that started with the June 2012
primary has the effect of eliminating third party (i.e. all
except Democrats and Republications) from being on the
November ballot. That's because only two candidates
are on the ballot and there's no provision for a write
in. In the presidential race there's provision for a
voter to write in the name of anyone for president.
The people who vote in the primary are at the
extremes of their parties, i.e. they do not represent the
main stream voters. So the extremists pick the
candidates who will run in the November general
election. There's also low voter turnout.
We should just get rid of the primary elections, their main
function is to eliminate candidates that are good for the
people and put in candidates that big money wants.
This is a KEY point, i.e. Citizens United v. FEC (Wiki)
was passed by the Supremes because the voters do get a
chance in the November election. If the primary
election is removed that invalidates Citizens United.
This causes a lot of confusion in the 2016 primary election
where many people thought they could vote for Bernie, but
could not because they were not registered correctly.
The poll workers have strict instructions not to say
anything that could be interpreted as telling someone who to
vote for, so were less than helpful in getting
mis-registered voters the correct ballot. If they used
a provisional ballot and filled out a critical piece of
information then that ballot would be disqualified, so they
lost their vote.
Lawrence
Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim
Note that the
12th amendment of constitution (See bad
laws) makes provision for the electoral college for
the office of President and Vice President (ahistory of The
Electoral College by the chairman of the FEC).
Because of those rules a third party candidate can not be
elected as president (bottom of pdf page 12). But
there is no provision for political parties in the
Constitution. Yet in the history of the electoral
college it's flatly stated that the effect is such as to
force a two party system, i.e. it prevents a third party
candidate from being elected. I expect this is why
Bernie Sanders is running as a Democrat and also why Donald
Trump is running as a Republican even though both of them
are anti establishment candidates.
Others
Ethics. Campaign finance (Wiki),
lobbying (Wiki),
revolving door (Wiki),
Freedom of Information Act (Wiki)
whistle blower treatment (Wiki),
regulatory committee capture (Wiki),
PACs (Wiki: PAC,
Super
PAC)), Presidential Signing Statements (Wiki,
Line
Item Veto), Congressional Insider Trading (Wiki)
the list goes on . . .
An example of the Revolving door is that case of John
Michael McConnell (Wiki)
G.W. Bush DNI
2007-2009. At both Booz-Allen and the defense
department he oversaw outsourcing pretty much all the
government functions he could. The
spy who came in from the boardroom: Why John Michael
McConnell, a top executive at a private defense contractor,
should not be allowed to run our nation's intelligence
agencies. By Tim Shorrock
I have not accepted any PAC or Super PAC money and will
not in the future.
I'm running a ZERO MONEY campaign where if you support my
ideas you tell your friends, in person, via email, and/or
social media like facebook and ask them to tell their
friends. That's to say true grass roots support.
Note you can tell you friends that are outside the new 2nd
district in the hope that they have friends inside the 2nd
district.
Any candidate who says they will not accept PAC money and
who is running as a Democrat or Republican is being
hypocritical because they are going to get a lot of money or
the equivalent in support of their campaign. Then they are
in a position where voting against their party may cost them
an election. This is currently a big problem in
Congress. That's why all the votes in Congress are
along party lines.
Bob Altemeyer has spent a number of decades refining his measure
of authoritarian behavior and it's now a very valid
indicator. Instead of using a book publisher he has chosen
to make his book "The Authoritarians" a free on line pdf
file.
Conservatives Without Conscience, ISBN-13:978-0670037742,
2006, by John Dean is where I learned about Authoritarian
behavior along with the Milgram Experiment (Wiki)
(see below). Milgram has shown that
some people will do the bidding of an authoritarian figure, even
to the point of killing someone else. His experiment has
been repeated many times with a number of variables and the
result is confirmed. The point is that it's not good for
society to blindly follow authority figures.
Republican
Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,
ISBN-10: 1568584172, 2010, by Max Blumenthal http://maxblumenthal.com/
- much of the analysis is based on the idea of authoritarian
behavior. It's interesting that Max uses Erich Fromm (Wiki)
instead of Bob Altemeyer as his authoritarian expert although he
uses Bob's phrasing.
Fromm's books that are referenced in Gomorrah: Escape
From Freedom (US), or The Fear of Freedom (UK) (Wiki)
"Fromm characterizes the
authoritarian personality as containing a sadist element and a
masochist element. The authoritarian wishes to gain control
over other people in a bid to impose some kind of order on the
world, they also wish to submit to the control of some
superior force which may come in the guise of a person or an
abstract idea."
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness(1973) ISBN 978-0805016048
"Fromm detected a profound link
between necrophilious (Wiki)
character traits and right-wing ideology."
"In all of the samples, we found
that anti-life tendencies were significantly correlated to
political positions that supported increased military power
and favored repression against dissenters."
"Fromm identified necrophilious characters as among the most
dangerous members of any society. 'They are the haters,
the racists, those in favor of war, bloodshed and
destruction,' he wrote. 'They are dangerous not only if
they are political leaders, but also as the potential cohorts
for a dictatorial leader. They become the executioners,
terrorists, torturers; without them no terror system could be
set up. But the less intense necrophiles are also
politically important; while they may not be among its first
adherents, they are necessary for the existence of a terror
regime because they form a solid basis, although not
necessarily a majority, for it to gain power."
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most
Powerful Mercenary Armyby Jeremy Scahill - it's very clear
that there is a strong link between Christianity and the
military.
In the bonus features for the movie Green Zone it's also
very clear that soldiers in a squad will do WHATEVER they are
ordered to do when they have respect for their commander.
In
Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews by James
Carroll 2001 (book
and movie)
- it's clear that the New Testament was written to be
different than the Old Testament and the it's built-in hatred
of Jews lead directly to the Holocaust
(Wiki).
Also that the battle sword became the symbol of Christianity
because of Constantine's victory at Rome.
In the TED Talk How
economic inequality harms societies: Richard Wilkinson
says that income inequality is the cause of many social
problems, but I say that authoritarianism has a stronger
correlation to those problems by up to a factor of two.
Here's some data I collected based on fifty U.S. states ranked
by percent of population that was Evangelical Christian (as a
proxy for authoritarianism). Income inequality is an
available parameter for each state. R*R is a measure of
the statistical fit of a straight line to the data.
Some of these correlations are mentioned in the book Republican Gomorrah.
Correlation based on Authoritarianism is better than
Income Inequality for: Life Expectancy, Obesity, Infant
Mortality, Hi School Grad, Teen Birth Rate and Prisoners.
Correlation based on Income Inequality is better than
Authoritarianism for: Murder, Abortion, Suicide and Army
Recruiting.
There does not appear to be a correlation preference for:
Unemployment, Economic Growth or Rape.
There is nothing in any of his or my data the goes to
causality. It may be that some states have a lot of
problems and that drives their population to be Evangelical.
Or it may be that people who are Evangelical make poor decisions
that lead to social problems.
Authoritarian
R*R
Income
Inequality
R*R
Life Expectancy
0.52
0.26
Obesity
0.49
0.01
Infant Mortality
0.40
0.27
Hi School Grad
0.40
0.30
Teen Birth Rate
0.37
0.21
Murder
0.25
0.32
Abortion
0.07
0.31
Suicide
0.00
0.28
Prisoners
0.25
0.12
Unemployment
0.22
0.20
Army Recruiting
0.03
0.15
Economic Growth
0.07
0.00
Rape
0.03
0.04
The UN's Human Development Index (UN, Wiki)
- shows similar data but based on countries instead of states.
These are not only examples of authoritarian behavior but
also of how current problems are caused by the actions of
politicians where the Democrats and Republicans agree on the
policy.
Prison
The U.S. has more people in prison that any other country in the
world (Wiki).
This is a result of the authoritarian mind set of the law makers
when there was a "crime wave" in the 1980s and 1990s (Wiki).
As a result about half the people in prison are there for
victimless crimes and need to be released and also have their
rights restored. The "Tough On Crime" laws, like Three
Strikes (Wiki)
need to be repealed. The War on Drugs (Wiki)
needs to be stopped both because it's wrong and because, like
all wars, it's expensive.
YouTube - Stanford
Prision Experiment
IMDB - The
Experiment 60
Spins Around the Sun (IMDB, NetFlix)
- Randy Credico & his work on prison reform
In the book My Life with Lifers (2012) Elaine Leeder makes that case the the majority
of lifers have reformed themselves in spite of the prison
system and no longer belong behind bars. So it's not
just the pot laws that need reform, it's much bigger than
that.
Brooke on Prison
Law & Disorder by Mark Foire
(00:01:36)
The Mean World Syndrome
by Media Education Foundation
The U.S. is No. 1 of the industrial countries in teen
pregnancy.
Joycelyn Elders (Wiki)
was the U.S. Surgeon General while Democrat Bill Clinton was
president and fired for honestly answering a question about
masturbation. At that time (and still in 2014) the
official U.S. policy was that teenagers should abstain from
sex. The Republican position on anything sex related is
from the dark ages. And even today under Obama the
surgeon general advice dances around contraception in
education, see:
"The Nordic countries and the
Netherlands have the lowest rates of relative child poverty,
at around seven per cent. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and
the United Kingdom have rates of between 10 and 15 per cent,
while more than 20 per cent of children in Romania and the
United States live in relative poverty"
Making Sex Normal: Debby
Herbenick at TEDxBloomington
In the talk starting at 05:38 are U.S. maps showing Gonorrhea
and HIV. Notice that the authoritarian states have a
much higher infection rate than other states.
--------------
-------------
TED Toni Mac -The
laws that sex workers really want- decriminalization,
like has been done in New Zealand, is the best solution (Wiki).
The next step would be to use the employer of last resort by a
sovereign government idea from MMT to
offer a job to anyone who wanted one.
End War in all it's forms
Where do the other candidates
stand on the Defense (war) budget and foreign military
bases? This is the No. 1 expense of the U.S. and is taking
money away from other uses.
Any other "War on . . . " needs to be looked at in the light of
ending it. Wiki: List
of countries by military expenditures - U.S. 711
Billion, China 143 Billion - the U.S. spends more than all the
other countries combined on war. Wiki: List
of countries by number of military and paramilitary
personnel - U.S. has 4.7 soldiers per 1,000
population, a much smaller fraction than 49 other
countries.
When you combine the above two statistics you can see that the
U.S. spends the money on equipment, like aircraft carriers,
fighter planes, bombs, bullets, etc. Wiki: List
of countries by level of military equipment - the
U.S. has 12 aircraft carriers, no other country has more than 2
Dying To Win: The Strategic
Logic of Suicide Terrorism 2005 by Robert A. Pape - He
makes a good case that suicide terrorists have a strategic goal
of getting an invading army to withdraw. The invading army
is from a democracy (there is no point in trying to change the
mind of a dictator) and the terrorists have a religion that's
different from the invading military. It's very clear that
the religion of the terrorists is a secondary factor. The
primary factor is that they are being invaded.
This means our foreign policy is wrong on many counts,
especially stationing U.S. troops in non Christian
countries. Much better to get them all out ASAP.
Institute
for Economics and Peace (Wiki)
- 2012 Global Peace Index (GPI) ranks the U.S. at 88
out of 158 countries. The
Economic Consequences of War on US Economy.pdf - "The
higher levels of government spending associated with war tends
to generate some positive economic benefits in the short-term,
specifically through increases in economic growth occurring
during conflict spending booms. However, negative unintended
consequences occur either concurrently with the war or develop
as residual effects afterwards thereby harming the economy over
the longer term.
The U.S. is the world's imperialist war monger. We must
remove all ability of the President to declare war. The
Constitution says it's the job of Congress to declare war.
If we are really attacked AND the enemy is really known, I think
Congress will act.
Johnson lied to the people and Congress to start the
Vietnam War. (The second attack, which started the war,
never occurred Wiki: Gulf
of Tonkin)
Bush 43 lied to the people and Congress to start the 2003
Iraq War. (There were no WMDs. Wiki: Rational
for the Iraq War)
Obama lied to the people and Congress to start the Libyan
War. (U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1973 clause 6 calls for
only a No Fly Zone, not bombing.)
Obama as has involved the U.S. in the war in Syria without
legal justification (Wiki).
There are Congressmen promoting a war on Iran.
The 700-plus foreign military bases need to be closed. Not
only is what we're doing ugly, but it's also extremely
expensive. We simply can not afford it. Dismantling the
Empire: America's Last Best Hope (American Empire Project)by Chalmers A. Johnson (2010) The Book Rogue State: A Guide
to the World's Only Superpower by William Blum (2005)
explains the current U.S. situation. TED: Regina Dugan:
From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone - why
spend all this money on what will become a faster Predator drone
instead of doing some good?
Biometric identification and tracking, Due process, Executive power, Freedom of speech and dissent, Government secrecy, Immigration, enforcement, Infiltration of First Amendment-protected groups,
Militarization of local police, Military detention, Privacy, Racial profiling, Torture, Second Amendment, Surveillance and intelligence collection
In California there are FasTrak
towers along the 101 freeway to monitor cars (not for charging
tolls) and in areas where there are no FasTrak towers they
have license plate readers. This all goes into a data
base so when asked someone can find out where you drive.
Combine that with every use of a credit or charge card, or
photo posted to a web page (the EXIF data on the photo often
have location data and face recognition puts a name, date,
time and location together) and you have a location data base
for everyone in the world.
Heart and Mind-O-Matic by Mark Foire
(00:01:31)
Declaration of
Thingamajigby Mark Foire
(00:01:56)
War on Terror
Note: Whether you call someone a terrorist or a freedom
fighter depends on which side you are on. I think that all
those the past two administrations have called terrorists are
being called freedom fighters in their country. So a war
on terrorism makes no sense. That's to say they are
attacking us because of something we are doing that they can't
stand. Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower by William Blum (2000 & 2005) Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of
Suicide Terrorism by Robert Pape (2005) The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to
9/11 by Robin Wright (2006)
"I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky
questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what
this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man
who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had
little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the
Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left
and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we
couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black,
but by getting the public to associate the hippies with
marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both
heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest
their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and
vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know
we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Has been a very expensive failure in many ways and needs to be
ended.
The Wiki web page looks at the cost to tax payers and only uses
two economic factors: law enforcement savings ($ 44 Billion) and
tax revenues ($33 Billion). But the U.S. annual spending
on prisons is $ 60 Billion. If half the prison population
is there because of victimless drug related crimes there's a
savings of about $ 30 Billion. It's not clear of the wiki
number for law enforcement includes the prison savings. I
think it's just the enforcement aspect of the War of Drugs.
"Australia and Switzerland were
two countries which introduced harm reduction very early on in
their HIV epidemics, and they have a very low rate of HIV
among injecting drug users. The U.S. and Malaysia came to harm
reduction a little later, and they have higher rates of HIV in
these populations. Thailand and Russia, however, have resisted
harm reduction and have stringent laws which punish drug use.
And hey, surprise surprise, have very high rates of HIV among
people who are injecting drugs."
Our misguided war on drugs is surely an important
factor where gangs are concerned. This is another vicious
circle: Like Prohibition before it, the war on drugs renders
the sale of illicit drugs extraordinarily profitable while
requiring that drug dealers function outside the law,
protecting their investment and turf with guns. If we ended
our war on drugs, the money that finances most gang activity
would disappear, as would one of the primary reasons for gang
violence. No doubt, gangs would remain. But with the war on
drugs abandoned, our police, courts, and departments of
corrections could focus on the real problem of violent crime.
12 June 2014 - Time magazine cover Eat
Butter: Scientists labeled fat the enemy. They were
wrong by Bryan Walsh
Time's video: Ending the war
on fat- the science is sound, but the politicians don't
get it and are still promoting sickness.
Wiki defines a terrorist as people who commit "violent acts
which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for
a religious, political or, ideological goal; and deliberately
target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians)."
Notice that there's no focus in this definition, that's to say
if the attack was motivated by religion then the attacks would
be everywhere in the world where that difference existed.
If people in a country feed they are under attack by another
country then they will focus their efforts at that
country. I think that's what happened on 9/11.
The 9/11 hijackers (Wiki)
were all affiliated with al-Qaeda (Wiki) one of
it's founders was Osama bin Laden (Wiki)
and he explained why they attacked (Wiki).
This explanation does not involve terrorism (even though Wiki
says it was a terrorist act). From the point of view of
those who planned and executed the attack thought they were
defending their way of life from attacks by the U.S. in the form
of sanctions against Iraq (Wiki),
Presence of
U.S. military in Saudi Arabia (Wiki)
and by Support of Israel by
the United States (Wiki).
This is a witch hunt that needs to be ended. In the book Dying to
Win: the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert
Pape (2005) the case is made that they were trying to get a
foreign military out of their religious region. And that
the religion of the invading military was different from that of
the region and that the military came from a a democracy.
This started in 1964 and has been a total failure.
Modern Monetary Theory (See MMT below) says that the main
reason for poverty is lack of jobs. None of the programs
in the WOP involved creating jobs.
Until a direct job creation program is put in place for "full
employment" poverty will continue.
Okun's rule of thumb (Wiki) -
for every 1% increase in the unemployment
rate, a country's GDP
will be roughly an additional 2% lower than its potential GDP.
If the US GDP (WIKI 2015) is $ 20 trillion and unemployment (Wiki)
is at 10 to 30% (depending on if it's "official" or includes
people who have given up or underemployed).
(20% unemployment * 2 * 20 trillion is $8 trillion per year in
improvement in GDP if these people were employed.
If the 20% * 150 million employable people = 30 million
people that could be working.
$ 8 trillion / 30 million people = 0.266 * 1E6 =
$267,000/year/person for a break even jobs program or
$133/hour. But, according to MMT the wage should be below
Walmart or maybe $ 8 to $10 /hour. So it seems to make economic
sense to employ everyone ready, willing and able to work.
International Agreements
The U.S. has lost sight of these.
Hague
Convention of 1907 (Wiki) Geneva Protocol
of 1925 (Wiki)
Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1926 (Wiki) Nuremberg principles of 1950 (Wiki)
Others
Things like jobs, the economy,
Global Warming and education can not be improved unless the
above issues are greatly reduced in importance. Part of
the benefit of addressing the above issues is that a huge amount
of money will become available for peaceful purposes.
Justice
Here's an example that demonstrates a number of the problems.
First that the Democrats and Republicans agree on the big
issues (see above), Justice in this case,
they don't what any part of it.
Third that the concept of Justice is now only applied to
the 99%, the 1% (starting with the President and trickling
down to the corporations) are immune.
Presidential Pardons & Grants of
Immunity & Cover Ups
Ford pardons Nixon
for criminal activity (Wiki)
- Watergate Carter pardons G.
Gordon Liddy (wiki)
- Watergate
Reagan pardons George Steinbrenner (Wiki)
- Obstruction of Justice, Watergate G.H.W. Bush pardons: Elliott Abrams, Duane Clarridge, Clair George, Alan D. Fiers,
Robert C.
McFarlane, Caspar Weinberger - Iran-Contra,
Armand Hammer CEO of the
Occidental Petroleum Co. & many many others (Wiki)
Clinton pardons: Roger Clinton, Jr. - his
brother, Lewis Libby Watergate, Fife Symington III -
Republican Governor of Arizona, Susan McDougal - partners with
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton (Wiki:Whitewater),
Henry Cisneros - Clinton's
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mel Reynolds - Democratic member of the United
States House of Representatives, John Deutch - Director of
Central Intelligence, FALN - commuted the sentences of 16
members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that
set off 120 bombs in the United States G.W. Bush pardons: Lewis "Scooter" Libby -
Assistant to President George W. Bush and Chief of Staff
to Dick Cheney related to Valerie Plame & gave
retroactive immunity to Verizon,
AT&T, and Qwest. "...the Bush White House had
converted the DOJ into it's own political group and was firing
honest prosecutors who refused to advance that agenda." (from
Greenwald's book With Liberty and Justice for Some
page 196)
Obama gives immunity
to the telecom industry (Wiki).
He also has stopped foreign governments from prosecuting the
Bush43 administration for war crimes (see: Greenwald's book With
Liberty and Justice for Some starting at page 181
Philadelphia Daily News "The Day
That Barack Obama Lied to Me" by Will Bunch (1
Oct 2010).
"In its first months in
office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush
administration officials facing criminal investigation
overseas for their involvement in establishing policies
the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist
suspects. An April 17, 2009, cable
sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State
Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by
WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working
with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this
potential prosecution."
---------------
Barak Obama's Righteous Drone Strikes - "has carried out 5 times
as many drone strikes as Bush43...
Rather than send prisoners to Gitmo, he's taking the high road
by sending them to their maker."
NYT -"Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by
deciding...to take no prisoners alive."
Another way justice is thwarted is by means of Executive
Privilege (Wiki).
Examples:
United States v. Nixon (Wiki)--abou
getting the Watergate tapes
Clinton tried to use it in the Lewinsky scandal but failed.
G.W. Bush used it on many occasions (Wiki)
The SEC used it Feb. 4, 2009 during the House Investigation of
why they failed to act when information about Bernard Madoff was presented (Wiki)
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act CISPA
(Wiki) - this
proposal contains a grant of immunity from criminal prosecution
for the companies who provide private information. This is
in addition to throwing out the 4th amendment of the
constitution.
"State Secrets" (Wiki) -
I believe there are a number of things that should be secret and
we have the National Security Agency (Wiki) who makes
and breaks secret codes. But I also think it's very wrong
for the government to hide behind the claim that something can
not be disclosed because it involves something related to a
state secret. The problem is that the government is
saying "trust us". And as the book Why Leaders
Lie: the Truth About Lying in International Politics by
John Mearsheimer it's common for leaders to lie to their own
people. Hiding behind the claim of a state secret started
with the supreme court case United States v. Reynolds
(Wiki)
which led to the State secrets privilege
(Wiki).
The proposed State Secrets Protection Act
(Wiki)
would have made it harder for the government to hide what it
was doing, but it could not be passed in Congress.
Education
The quality of education in the U.S. is very poor considering
that we spend more than any other country on it (in terms of
absolute dollars or in terms of dollars per student).
Note, this very similar to the case of our health care where
we spend more than anyone else in the world, yet have poor
coverage. (Dec 2018) this may relate to the U.S. being
high on the Hofsteade Individualism Culture Dimension Scale (official
web page)
Here is a YouTube video that I feel is 100% correct. Next School (Big Picture Learning) -
6 Problems with our
School System (5:56) -
Problems: Seth Godin
(0:21) Home page, YouTube, Amazon, Wiki,
Ken Robinson Home Page, TED2006,
TED2010,
TED2013,
Wiki,
1. Industrial Age Values
2. Lack of Autonomy & Control
Dan Pink (2:06) Home Page, TED2009,
Wiki,
Peter Gray Psychology
Today, Wiki,
Amazon
(Free to Learn: Why
Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children
Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life - on
order)
3. Inauthentic Learning
4. No Room for Passions & Interests
Winston Churchill - has an average grade of
'C' in school
Steven Spielberg - Failed 6th grade
John Lennon - was described as hopeless and a
clown in class
Albert Einstein - was expelled for his
rebelliousness
[Thomas Edison - H.S.D.O (High School Drop
Out)]
5. Differences in How we Learn
6. Lecturing
Sal Khan (Wiki)- Kahn Academy (Wiki) -
a fundamentally dehumanizing experience
Our whole education system is geared to turn out factory workers
but almost all those jobs have been replaced by robots or moved
offshore. (see John Gato below)
California Master
Plan
When I went to Foothill Jr. College (1960) then transferred to
San Jose State (1962) there was no tuition (Wiki).
I only needed to pay for my books and lab fees. This was
part of the California Master plan for higher education (Wiki). When
I was working in Silicon Valley there were more Masters and PhD
degrees there than anywhere else on the planet. Because of
that, there were (and still are) a lot of high technology start
up companies located there. So the state of California got
back much more than they invested in higher education.
When Ronald Reagan was running for Governor of California some
college students threw a vegetable at him in protest of his
ideas. In retaliation, when he became governor he fired
Clark Kerr (Wiki,
movie: The Reagans IMDB, book:
First Ladies Vol 2 Amazon)
and changed the funding system of the colleges in California to
make students pay, i.e. reversing the system that Brown and Kerr
had put in place for free public higher education. This
has lead to the current situation where the UC system is so
expensive (UC: admissions,
does not include normal living expenses like food, clothes,
computer, gas, etc.) that even if you live here it's not
affordable to normal people.
Critics of Bernie Sanders ask how he will fund free public
college. What they fail to see is the huge benefit of that
education, which has much more value than it's cost. Also
Modern Monetary Theory teaches us that
the federal government can fund anything it wants (federal taxes
do not fund federal spending and never have)
This will have an impact on where high technology businesses
will locate, both in terms of California and the U.S. vs. other
countries.
Since the manufacturing jobs that depend on labor have been (or
will be) replaced by robots or exported to countries with lower
labor rates, it's even more important to increase the level and
quality of education in the U.S.
The United Nations - Human Development Report
- Public Data
Explorer - the U.S. is spending about 5% of GDP on
education or about $750 Billion per year but the results are
very poor for the money. It's the same story as our
health care.
Wiki: List
of countries by literacy rate - U.S. is No. 45
(2012)
, 46, 47, 50100
(Feb 2016), 232 of 234 (Dec 2018) a pretty poor showing.
As of Jan 2017 the US is no longer ranked, ie. "not reported by
UNESCO 2015" along with those countries that are below the world
average.
PS I edit the page every now and them. When I first made
this web page (2012) the U.S. was 45th, but each time
our ranking goes down a notch or two. Feb 2016 we are now
half way down the list since there are about 200 countries in
the world a ranking of 100 is average, that's to say half of the
countries in the world have better education than we do.
John Gato (Wiki)
says our "schooling" system was designed to put the "lesser
people" in their place so they could be controlled. I
don't buy all of his ideas, but some of them may be correct.
TED Talk: José
Bowen: Beethoven the businessman - it's not till the
last few seconds that he makes the parallel to education, but
it's a very good one. "with the internet we have a different
distribution system and so schools have got to think about
what we are selling. (he thinks) the face to face interaction
is not going away...."
and that leads to:
TED Talk: Salman Khan: Let's use
video to reinvent education - Khan
Academy - students learn on line and do homework in class
with a teacher
The Los Altos school district is using this system and it
includes breaking the lessons into units that match the
California curriculum.
The educational system of Finland (Wiki)
may be a better model of where we should be heading.
(maybe not, see Gadwell -
Andrews below)
Note: compulsory education is through 9th grade (Wiki)
and admission to upper secondary school (17 & 18 year old)
is based on GPA (Wiki). In March 2018 Finland was ranked the most happy
country and they have the best school system
worldwide. Note that "Most of the top 10 are social
democracies, which “believe that what makes people happy is
solid social support systems, good public services, and even
paying a significant amount in taxes for that.”
In Taiwan there are national tests and only some
percent of students can advance in public education (Wiki),
so only the very best students attend public high school.
This has the effect of weeding out students who are
troublemakers. In the U.S. the schools keep all
students, and the troublemakers pull down the rest.
In Denmark (Wiki)
"education is compulsory for children below the age of 15 or
16, even though it is not compulsory to attend"
Now reading: Education Myths: What Special-Interest
Groups Want You to Believe About our Schools - and why it
isn't so by Jay P. Greene
Promotes the idea of Charter Schools (Wiki)
- this privatization (Wiki,
Major
U.S. cases almost all of which turned out badly) of the
schools is a bad idea for a number of reasons.
The U.S. is now suffering many of the problems of the U.S.S.R
in the 1960s. One of those is that the factories in the
U.S.S.R. were under contract to the government, but they did
stupid things, while in full compliance with their
contract. Whenever any business comes about by
privatization they have a capitalistic motive to make profit
by strictly following the contract but doing things that harm
society. So although it's possible to have a successful
privatization, it requires an iron tight contract and those
are as common as chicken's teeth.
It used to be that the U.S. Vocational Schools (Wiki)
were run by the state governments. This provided three
options for people leaving high school: college, vocational
school or no further education. As part of the No Child
Left Behind (Wiki)
Act the idea was that all students would go to college, hence
vocational ed was shut down. By 2015 it was realized the
"teaching the test" (Wiki)
which was a result of No Child Left Behind was a bad idea the
federal program was terminated, but the vocational schools
have not been brought back. Where I live there is a
shortage of trades people.
A recent report on the Junior College system shows that a two
year degree in any real profession results in a huge
multiplier on annual salary and so is an excellent
investment. Our local Jr. college has a long waiting
list for the nursing school.
For profit schools tried to fill the void left by the state
run vocational schools, but pretty much all of them failed to
deliver. It turns out that some of these private schools
falsified their placement rates to defraud their investors,
get money from the U.S. government and to get more
enrollment. In order to have a viable vocational
education system there needs to be jobs for those who
graduate.
Note that in my opinion there's a large need (demand) for
many vocations such as nurses, building trades, and once the
federal government understands how the economy really works
(see MMT) infrastructure related
jobs. These all require vocational education, something
now only a small part of our educational system. For
example the California
Dept of Ed web page shows Agriculture, Business &
Marketing, Health, Home Economics & Industrial &
Technology but not building trades or infrastructure related
jobs.
If we shrink class sizes and give schools the power to expel
difficult students then we also need to think about where the
expelled students end up.
John Gatto (Wiki)
says the education system is "Dumbing Us Down". Here are
some of his ideas: Why
you should take your children out of public school -
"Advice from Harvard: 10 Skills for Success in the Global
Economy" - Enter your email on John's page for a
free copy of his paper, or just Google
the title. 10 qualities to acquire to meet the changing standards
1. Ability to define problems without a guide.
2. Ability to ask questions that challenge common assumptions.
3. Ability to work without guidance.
4. Ability to work absolutely alone.
5. Ability to persuade others that yours is the right course.
6. Ability to debate issues and techniques in public.
7. Ability to re-organize information into new patterns.
8. Ability to discard irrelevant information.
9. Ability to think dialectically. (Karl Popper would challenge
this idea, see Open Society below)
maybe this is better phrased as critical thinking (Wiki)
10.Ability to think inductively, deductively, and heuristically.
Sep 2016 - NYT -
Government Severs Ties With For-Profit Colleges Accreditor
- Inside Higher Ed - Nov
2015 Shaming Accreditors -
See Higher Education Opportunity Act above
in Bad Laws- This is very similar to how the financial rating
agencies (S&P), Moody's, and Fitch) lied about the credit of
various Mortgage Backed Securities and were not held accountable
(Wiki).
There has been little if any change in the rules for the rating
agencies. Note the annual US government spending on for
profit colleges is about $5 Billion and it appears most of it is
of little or no value in terms of education, but only to go into
the pockets of the for profit colleges.
added this Gadwell -
Andrews ideas 2018 December 28
There is some criticism of RWA and the PDI may be a more
accurate metric? then he said that PDI may be the key to
teaching math. Teachers in the Cupertino school district (Wiki)
say "not all Asian students get straight As". The paper
below by Andrews is probably his source.
paper: Understanding
the Cultural Construction of School Mathematics.pdf, Paul
Andrews, 2016 - "...Finnish students linguistic and mathematical
competence. However, recent analyses indicate that such
successes may be due more to matters cultural than didactical."
... "Hofstede’s well known study initially identified four
dimensions of culture. The first, power distance, concerns
the extent to which followers accept being led. “A
society’s power distance level is bred in its families through
the extent to which its children are socialized toward obedience
or toward initiative” In the criticisms of RWA I've read
the best replacement relates to "parenting" and there the key
question of how to raise children in regard to
obedience/initiative.
The Economy
The paragraph below on MMT came about after doing a
lot of reading about the Global
Minotaur which turns out to be a Greek myth (then and
now).
MMT is a new way of looking at the economy of countries.
For sure it's a major paradigm shift (Wiki).
This means that it's difficult to convince people that hold the
old fashioned ideas of economics that the new way offers a more
accurate view. This is demonstrated by making better
predictions and explanations of factors that the old view has
been getting wrong for about four decades.
For about 200 generations of economists the monetary system they
were studying had an artificial constraint in that the money was
tied to either gold or silver. There have only been 2
generations of economists looking at some economies (like the
US, Japan, China) where that's no longer true. So it's
easy to see how they missed the underlying ideas of MMT.
Prior to 1971 there was "classical economics" but after 1971
everything changed, but most people are still working on the old
rules. If you don't know how something works then it's
hard to make predictions or fix a problem. It's like a
mechanic trained on a gas engine car horse
and buggy trying to work on an electric car. The economic
policies of political parties are grounded in the old system and
they can not "flip-flop" so have not adopted MMT yet. But
the time is coming when the failure of the old ideas to work as
predicted will be clearly seen and a change will then
occur. For example the idea that the FED can influence
"stability (aka: Inflation) or jobs is false, but a lot of
people still think it's true. Also the national debt is a
good thing now, but is now seen as a bad thing. The idea
that the federal government needs to raise money to fund their
spending programs is false.
Money based on gold and/or silver ended
in 1971. Prior to 1968 they could be changed for silver,
after than only into a Federal Reserve Note.
"Silver Certificate (Wiki)
this certifies that there is on deposit in the treasury
of the United States of America One Dollar"
Note the Series (year) 1957 B on this case is not the
year printed but rather related to the year the design
was first introduced. The newest $1 silver
certificate is this one.
The replacement Federal Reserve Notes now used are not
redeemable for anything. But they say "This note
is legal tender for all debts public and private"
Scope
This is an idea that came about post 1971 (Wiki: Nixon Shock),
so does not agree with prior economic theories that go back
thousands of years. The benefits of MMT apply only to
sovereign governments where there are no constraints on the
money (for example not on the gold standard) and the
government is the issuer of the money (not a user like the
members of the EMU) . But MMT can also be used to get
insight into economies where the benefits do not apply, such
as the EU. The U.S. federal government operates using
MMT rules but elected officials don't understand that.
MMT does not apply to the EU (Wiki),
states, cities or households. The key concept is that
when MMT applies the government can always pay for what it
wants, i.e. it's checks never bounce. There's never a
solvency issue.
I see MMT as a new framework or point of view in
understanding how the US (and other countries) economy
works. It is not a policy. That's so say how
someone uses the ideas of MMT depends on them. For
example the quantity (G-T) government spending minus
government taxes can be changed many ways. Bill Clinton
(Wiki)
made (G-T) negative, i.e. he paid down the national debt,
which MMT teaches us means he sucked money out of the private
sector, not a good thing in a healthy economy. So how
you raise or lower spending and/or taxes is a policy
decision. MMT allows you to predict the impact based on
(G-T).
Recognizing that MMT is the correct way of seeing the US
government financial situation does not mean that there will
be more money to spend but rather it makes much more clear how
fiscal and monetary policy work.
The mood of society today (2016) seems pessimistic. For
example the movie Requiem For The American Dream (IMDB, Netflix)
reinforces the pessimism. While American manufacturing
output is at an all time high in terms of dollars, employment
in the private sector is down about 30% from 20 years
ago. That's to say there are a lot (tens of millions) of
people out of work. It's clear that the private sector
has traded jobs for profits and they will not be the source of
new jobs any time soon. None of the presidential
candidates has presented a concrete program for job
creation. But MMT offers a lot of hope for job creation.
Reality vs. Policy
I've heard from some people that they "don't like MMT" because
if the government "adopts" MMT they will end up just printing a
huge amount of money. This mistakes the reality of how our
economy works with a policy decision. It's not that the
government should adopt MMT, but rather MMT explains how a
policy will impact the economy. MMT is a description of
how the economy currently works. For example the FED
currently has: " three key objectives for monetary policy in the
Federal Reserve Act: maximizing employment, stabilizing prices,
and moderating long-term interest rates. (Wiki)".
But after 1971 monetary policy has no effect on jobs, hence
after all the Quantitative Easing (Wiki: QE)
there has been no impact on jobs because the rules have
changed. In fact the only thing the Fed can do is control
the overnight interest rate. It does not have any tools
that will do anything else. There is talk of just folding
it into the Dept. of the Treasury since what it does now is an
automatic function.
If you don't know how something works and you try to fix or
modify it the results may not be what you expect. For
example if you believe that when your car is going down the
freeway it makes a lot of exhaust, so if you pipe the exhaust
back into the engine the car will run better, it will not work
the way you expect. A good understanding of how things
really work is necessary in order to make changes that will work
the way you expect. The economic ideas prior to 1971 were
sort of OK for their time, but now no longer describe how the
system really works.
Key Years
1776 - There were two revolutions, one summarized in the
Declaration of Independence (Wiki)
and the other in the book Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (Wiki),
which is the basis of capitalism. (but with errors)
1946 - American Affairs Jan 1946 V VIII, No. 1 - Taxes for
Revenue Are Obsolete (pdf),
Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
- The experience of W.W.II showed that the U.S. could pay
for the war without raising the needed revenue from taxes.
(for more see Other MMT references)
1971 - Another major revolution happened, but very few people
really understood the implications. It wasn't until 1992
that Warren Mosler, the father of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)
had an epiphany in relation to the bond market in Italy where he
understood better than the Italian government that they could
never default on their bond payments because they were at that
time a sovereign government with a floating currency. That
meant that they could always pay their bills.
1998 - Forecast of 2008 Global Financial Crisis (Wiki): Goldilocks
and the Three Bears - the 3 bears are: Asian debt
deflation, belief that economy was strong 1996 - 1997, Clinton
budget surplus
1999 - Forecast of 2008 Global Financial Crisis: Can
Goldilocks Survive? - "Goldilocks is doomed"
forecast the Global Financial Crisis and cites the Clinton
budget surplus as the cause
2001 - Forecast 2009 European Union debt crisis (Wiki),
Rites
of Passage financial problems would happen in the
European Monetary Union (see EU below) in the
exact way that they transpired.
YouTube talk:
Warren
Mosler, The Euro: past, present and future. The Crossroads
Workshop 1 in Zurich
2003 - Iraq War: taxes were not raised to pay for the
war, the government just wrote checks to pay for it
2003 - Convergence
Going In, Divergence Coming Out Default Risk Premiums and the
Prospects for Stabilization in the Eurozone - "Until something is done to enable
member states to avert these financial constraints (e.g.
political union and the establishment of a federal (EU) budget
or the establishment of a new lending institution, designed to
aid member states in pursuing a broad set of policy
objectives), the prospects for stabilization in the Eurozone
appear grim."
2007 The
Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs (Ben Stein was very
wrong) - Jan Hatzius of Goldman
Sachs forecasts trouble with home mortgages based on Wynne Godley's Sectoral balances. This is some years after the
1998 & 1999 papers making the same case. I'm looking
for the paper by Jan Hatzius.
2008 - Alan Greenspan when asked if taxpayer money was used
to bail out the banks he said no, it was just keystrokes.
Key Idea Governments operating under the MMT rules (see Scope above) are the issuers of
their currency. They must spend money BEFORE they can
collect it using taxes. (see gold
below for how it used to be) The current misconception that the
federal government must tax in order to raise money so they can
spend it on government programs appeared to be true prior to
1971, but that's no longer the case. This is similar to a
football stadium issuing tickets then collecting them, in both
cases the issue comes before the collection.
Note that for a simple model of the economy where there is only
the government sector and the private sector (i.e. assuming
balanced imports and exports) any deficit in the government
sector is balanced exactly to the penny with a private sector
surplus. This is an accounting identity, not a
theory. It's like looking at a transaction as if you are
the government or the private sector. So if the federal
government balances the budget, or worse runs a surplus, the
private sector is drained of money, that's not a good
thing. Since it's impossible for a government operating
under the MMT scope to bounce a check there's no problem with a
deficit. In fact if the economy is healthy you would
expect the federal deficit to grow. That's to say the
surplus in the private sector will grow.
The book The Deficit Lie
points to the 1992 presidential debate where a question about
the deficit can not be answered.
Trade
After W.W.II the U.S. invested heavily in Germany and Japan
rather than punishing them like Germany was punished after
W.W.I. Since W.W.II the US has imported many products from
Germany and Japan, and more recently from China. The
countries whose products we import are getting paid in US
dollars. The reason we are importing these goods is
because they appear to be a good deal to us and the sellers are
happy to get US dollars in exchange. There is some current
worry about the amount of US bonds and Treasury bills held by
China. But China can not ask the US to cash in their
bonds/bills in gold (see Scope
above). Their options are limited. They can buy US
products or exchange the US dollar denominated bonds/bills for
some other currency at the existing exchange rate. Note
that a large currency exchange will have the effect of making
the Chinese money stronger (which has been the desire of the US
government for a long time) thus making Chinese imports more
expensive and also making US exports to China, Germany and Japan
more attractive to them.
Trade allows for world wide competition so a free market allows
consumers to pay a lower price. So economists say it's a
good thing. But, when US workers compete in a world wide
market they loose their jobs. So, while it's true that in
an economic sense everyone is better off (in terms of being able
to buy goods at lower prices) it comes at the expense of jobs
that are permanently lost.
MMT offers a solution to the unemployment problem (see jobs below). Classical economics
offers no solution to unemployment. That's to say
classical economics has blood on it's hands in terms of human
suffering.
I expect that in the future a larger percentage of the
population will be permanently out of work. The existing
support structure for the unemployed is far from adequate and
needs to be improved.
Tax Implications
Prior to 1971 the government did need to use federal taxes to
fund their spending (see Gold below), but
that's very different since 1971.
Since there is no need to collect taxes in order to spend, the
policy of taxes can be seen in light of two ideas.
First, if the federal government did not require anyone to pay
them using US dollars then the currency probably would not have
value. So if somewhere the federal government requires a
payment in US dollars then the US dollar has some value.
Because MMT is such a new idea no one has really determined what
level of payments to the government are required, if any, to
give the US dollar official value. Prior to 1971 this was
not an issue.
Second, taxes should be used for progressive purposes and to
punish "evils" such as alcohol, tobacco or other things society
wants to discourage. So when the purpose of taxes is seen
in this light, payroll taxes are a very bad idea. They
penalize employers, employees, drive jobs off shore and
encourage replacing workers with automation. So a
very progressive income tax would stop the extreme compensation
packages that C-suite executives now get. Prior to 1980
the marginal rate was 80% now it's more like 15%. In my
opinion is should be 50.0%. I choose half because if the
rate goes over half then the taxpayer is encouraged to waste
money on buying tax losses. That's to say people do stupid
things when they are dealing with losses rather than gains.
A really simple solution would be to eliminate all payroll taxes
and provide all citizens Social Security (medical then
retirement) benefits and eliminate all the current payroll taxes
and record keeping and replace that with an annual W2 statement
of taxable income that would determine the retirement benefit
amount. Note "medicare for all" greatly simplifies the
current record keeping both for the government and for the
vendor (doctor, hospital, employer...). I expect this
simple idea would save billions if not trillions of dollars in
record keeping costs alone. Currently every medical
facility in the country has a staff of people whose only job is
to match up the different insurance payment rules with the
procedure the doctor recorded. In a similar way employers
have record keeping expenses that really are not needed if this
simple idea was adopted.
National Debt
The interest on the national debt is seen as a problem, but
again a government operating under the MMT Scope there's no need
to raise money by borrowing (or taxing) in order to be able to
spend it. So no borrowing is needed "to fund the debt" the
government just makes the payments it desires.
Fallacy of the Money Multiplier
When a bank makes a loan thus creating money (see Money based on debt below),
contrary to the current idea that they are somehow restricted by
the reserve requirement, in fact the bank borrows whatever
reserve it needs during the next week's bank clearing
cycle. The problem of the bank lending only the principal
amount (they do not lend the money needed to pay the interest)
is solved because the other source of money is US government
spending. The idea of a money multiplier (Wiki)
is not valid because the reserve ratio (percent of loans covered
by reserves) is a false concept if the bank does not restrict
loans based on reserves. That's to say changing the
reserve requirement does not change the multiplier.
MMT Textbook
The first college text book on MMT was published in 2016: Modern Monetary Theory
and Practice: An Introductory Text by Prof
W F Mitchell(Author), Prof L R Wray(Contributor),
Prof
M J Watts(Contributor).
William Mitchell - Introduction
(16:02) L.
Randall Wray will discuss how the book treats Keynes
(36:02)
Martin Watts will consider some topics such as the labour
market and international trade.
(52:14)
MMT University background
(58:47)
Questions H. R. 2990 National
Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2011 - idea to
change the law to allow MMT - not passed
We reach an understanding of balance sheets and banking
Part 3 National Income, Output and Employment Determination
Keynes and the Classics
Effective Demand
Involuntary unemployment
AD and AS
Part 4 Unemployment and Inflation
Phillips curve.
Buffer Stocks - core MMT.
Part 5 Economic Policy in Open Economy
Core MMT
Fiscal space - real resources
Monetary Policy - balance sheets - reserves
Open Economy
Part 6 Economic Stability
Investment
Part 7
Part 8 Contemporary Debates
Range of topics
Macro and the GFC
Recap
Table of
Contents: Chapter 1:
Introduction & Measurement Chapter
2: How to Think and Do Macroeconomics
Chapter 3: A Brief Overview of the Economic History and the
Rise of Capitalism
Chapter 4: The System of National Income and Product Accounts
Chapter 5: Sectoral Accounting and the Flow of Funds
Chapter 6: Introduction to Sovereign Currency: The Government
and its Money
Chapter 7: The Real Expenditure Model
Chapter 8: Introduction to Aggregate Supply
Chapter 9: Labour Market Concepts and Measurement Chapter
10: Money and Banking
Chapter 11: Unemployment and Inflation
Chapter 12: Full Employment Policy
Chapter 13: Introduction to Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Operations
Chapter 14: Fiscal Policy in Sovereign nations
Chapter 15: Monetary Policy in Sovereign Nations
It is intended as an introductory course in macroeconomics and
the narrative is accessible to students of all backgrounds.
All mathematical and advanced material appears in separate
Appendices.
Introduction
April 2016 - just read The Seven Frauds book (Ref) and have
a bunch of MMT books on order.
Here's an introduction to the idea:
YouTube: L. Randall Wray -- MODERN MONEY: the way a sovereign
currency "works" & there are a number of others by The
Modern Money Network (YouTube).
Here are the pop quiz questions asked in the beginning of the
video:
1. Just like a household, the government has to finance its
spending out of its income or through borrowing. [ ]True [
]False
2. The role of taxes is to provide finance for government
spending. [ ]True [ ]False
3. The National Government borrows money from the private sector
to finance the budget deficit. [ ]True [ ]False
4. By running budget surpluses the government takes pressure off
interest rates because more funds are then available for private
sector investment projects. [ ]True [ ]False
5. Persistent budget deficits will burden future generations
with inflation and higher taxes. [ ]True [ ]False
6. Running budget surpluses now will help build up the funds
necessary to cope with the aging population in the future. [
]True [ ]False
See answers below.
When the US left the gold standard (see Gold
below) a profound change occurred. Maybe because of
the way Nixon made the change most people did not recognize
the HUGE implications. It may be more accurate to
say that after 1971 how the economy really works was made
clear. It's not that the economy worked in a new and
different way after 1971, but instead it was easier to see how
it had always worked.
Keynes recommends deficit government spending (Wiki: Fiscal
Policy) when there's a recession as does MMT. But
a faster way would be to reduce taxes, for example have the
U.S. Treasury (Wiki)
pay both employer and employee FICA (Wiki)
taxes. The idea is that if the FICA taxes were
eliminated the determination of Social Security benefits would
be difficult, but with the Treasury paying the records would
be as they are now. Note that there's no problem funding
Social Security (Wiki)
since the U.S. is a sovereign country and our money is not
constrained to gold or the euro. Note that employment
taxes hurt the economy, not what you what any tax to do, by
penalizing employers, employees and drives jobs off shore and
encourage automation.
But the idea that lowering interest rates (Wiki: Monetary
Policy, Quantitative
easing) will stimulate the economy is wrong "you can not
push a string" (Wiki).
If a business has no customers they don't care what the
interest rate is. Getting out of a depression or
recession requires fiscal policy adjustments.
A sovereign government (U.S., Japan, Turkey, &Etc. but
not EU) puts money into circulation by spending. Banks
can also generate money but that's a small fraction of the
total money. The money has value because it's what's
needed to pay taxes and other government fees.
The purpose of taxation is not to raise money but rather to
control the economy. The government funds whatever it
wants to do directly. For example to pay for a war the
government just writes checks to it's suppliers. There
was not a tax increase to pay for the recent wars. The
old idea that taxes are needed to pay for government programs
is just flat out wrong.
The government buys some goods and services and what's left
the private sector can buy. In a hot economy, where the
government competes with the private sector for goods and
services inflation results.
The standard of living for U.S. citizens depends on the sum
total of goods and services provided in the U.S. plus what is
imported less what is exported. Imports improve the
standard of living for those getting them. When China
(or anyone) exports to the U.S. they are paid in U.S.
denominated currency (dollars). They can use those
dollars to by treasury bonds which is many believe is funding
the U.S. deficit, but that's not the case. Suppose they
get mad at us what can they do: buy stuff in the U.S., get
U.S. paper money to take back to China, exchange U.S. dollars
into some other currency. If the later that would cause
the exchange rate between China and the U.S. to change making
the dollar weaker and Chinese goods more expensive. But
the U.S. has been trying to get China to increase the value of
their money for many years and if they changed their dollars
to something else it would have that effect, i.e. making
Chinese imports more expensive and U.S. products less
expensive.
EU
MMT predicted the problem with the EU in 2001, see Key Years above.
When the EU (Wiki)
was setup the European Central Bank (Wiki)
was setup to maintain price stability. But in times of
recession the central bank needs to pump money into the economy,
but the ECB does not have this power (limited to 3% of GDP) and
the member countries in the EU do not have that power. The
problems will continue until there's a way to deficit spend
money into circulation. The IMF (Wiki)
was founded at the Bretton Woods conference and was intended to
work along side a gold standard, the Marshall Plan and other
economics of the 1945 time frame, not the post 1971 non gold
standard times. It appears that the IMF is causing much
more harm than good and needs to be shut down or totally
revamped to take into account MMT.
Note the ECB only has monetary policy tools (Wiki),
it does not have fiscal policy tools. MMT (or Keynes)
tells us that fiscal policy is needed it time of a debt crisis
(Wiki)
but the EMU has no fiscal policy tools.
The Stability Growth Pacts (Wiki)
limit the debt of an EU member government so they can not use
fiscal policy to recover from a recession. The 2005
reform still kept the ceilings of 3% for budget deficit and
60% for public debt were maintained.
Falsification
of neoliberal economics
2018 August 14 - The Week: The
biggest policy mistake of the last decade by Ryan L.
Cooper - This article is the first one I've seen that
goes to the idea of falsification that Karl Popper (see Progress & Science) says is a good way
to disprove something. Note that Ryan does not invoke
MMT, but everything he is saying is consistent with MMT.
The following "economists" got it very wrong:
Alberto Alesina (Wiki)
and Silvia Ardagna (Wiki)-
"expansionary austerity," arguing that governments could
increase taxes, cut spending, and grow strongly. (cherry
picked data)
Carmen Reinhart (Wiki)
and Kenneth Rogoff (Wiki)
- demonstrated an apparent trigger point of a 90 percent
debt-to-GDP level beyond which more borrowing would cause
economic stagnation (Causality backwards)
European countries that subjected themselves to severe
austerity regimens saw their employment
and production collapse, just like Keynes would have
predicted
Michael Boskin (Wiki
- Stanford), John Cogan (Stanford),
Niall Ferguson (Wiki
- Stanford),
Kevin Hassett (Wiki)
Douglas Holtz-Eakin (Wiki),
Bill Kristol (Wiki),
and John Taylor (Wiki)-
signed open
letter to then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke warning that
"[t]he planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and
inflation."
Tyler Cowen -book: The Great Stagnation: How
America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,
Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better
Robert Gordon - book: The Rise and Fall of American Growth
The U.S. Standard of
Living since the Civil War The two books argue ... that the slow post-recession
growth problem was a structural one caused by lack of
innovation, meaning the economy was running up against
supply constraints. We simply couldn't grow any
faster."
If the above "economists" were correct then we would be
seeing hyper inflation, but that's not happened then or now
and if fact inflation is low. Barack Obama - claimed a "skills gap" (NYT:
16:30 Training Skilled Workers) Bill
McBride - "stay-at-home dads"
There's been no real wage growth to support the above two
labor ideas. "There was no skills gap, nor an innovation
shortage, nor an explosion of stay-at-home dads."
All the above "experts" got it very wrong.
The Deficit Lie: Exposing the
Myth of the National Debt by Rick Boettger, 1994 (The Blue
Paper?)
This book was published in 1994, probably before the
term "Modern Monetary Theory" was coined. Written during
the Clinton high tax low spending years (Wiki).
Major Points:
1. The so-called "deficit" is a myth.
2. Our only problem is a shortage of cash.
3.The solution: Spend more and tax less.
In chapter 5 " The Big Lie: The inflationary Obsessions of the
Economic Anorexics" Rick points out Milton Friedman's false
idea that inflation is caused by the money supply without
taking into account the total of goods and services.
Instead he has illustrations (Fig 6 Good Balance, Fig 7
Inflation Hawks' Nightmare, Fig 8 Recession & Fig 9
Better Balance) showing a balance scale where goods and
services are on one pan and money on the other pan. It
is not just the money but rather the balance between the money
and goods and services that's important in relation to
inflation. A rough cut is that the deficit should be about the
size of the GNP (Wiki).
Mentioned is the 1992 presidential debate (CNN: | Clip Of Presidential
Candidates Debate) where an audience
member asks “How has the national debt personally affected
each of your lives?” (Perot, Bush & Clinton), “And if it
hasn’t, how can you honestly find a cure for the economic
problems of the common people if you have no experience in
what’s ailing them?” When Bush answers he hems and haws,
i.e. has no answer. The moderator changes the question for
Clinton to "I think she means more the recession -- the
economic problems today the country faces rather than the
deficit." which Clinton easily answers. The book makes
the point that a tax cut and/or government check to someone,
i.e. things associated with the national deficit, are good
things for the people who receive them. The woman who
asked the question mistakenly thought the financial hardship
her friends were suffering was caused by the deficit.
But in fact the deficit is a private sector savings, a good
thing.
Andrew Yang for President 2020
While not an MMT person, Yang's ideas about the current state
of the U.S. and his vision for our immediate future seem spot
on.
See this YouTube:Joe Rogan Experience
#1245 - Andrew Yang (1:52:02) -
MMT
References (and those who seem to be in line, but not
necessarily promoting MMT)
Italy
Then and Now.pdf 2012 by Warren Mosler - how
joining the EMU caused a lot of problems for them. "The euro
zone is in 'Ponzi' until the ECB writes the check"
Rites
of Passage 2001 by Warren Mosler predicting the
problems now facing the Euro - "The market’s arrows will
inflict an initially narrow liquidity crisis, which will
immediately infect and rapidly arrest the entire euro payments
system."
(19:29)
"MMT is prepared to answer the new questions that come
up." Low interest rates create savings desire.
(24:03)
Zimbawae & Reimar Germany - MMT has the only valid of
explanation of inflation.
The currency is a monopoly. The people need the
government's money in order to pay taxes.
Better price stability if there's a buffer stock of
workers rather than unemployed people.
Right now we are using unemployment to control inflation
but it does not do a good job.
A "buffer stock of workers" (job guarantee) will do a
better job.
(24:21)
Fox Business News - Stewart Varney (Wiki):
Spending
Necessary for Economic Recovery - Mosler asks for
a payroll (FICA) tax holiday (0:35) and the host says
"hold on, hold on, you want more spending". The
idea "printing money" is based on the linkage between
gold and currency and is no longer a valid concept.
(25:39)
MMT is the only valid explanation of inflation there
is. There's no dispute about.
(29:27)
the book "Soft Currency Economics" has not had any part
refuted. Sound bites: "the public debt is just the Dollars
spent by the government that has not yet been used to pay
taxes." "The only financial problem related to the debt is
inflation."
(35:29)
FAQs:
How are you going to pay for it? Credit account at
the central bank just like all government spending.
Aren't taxes required to fund the spending? No.
Would this cause inflation? It might, but the Fed's
inflation target is higher than where we are now, so a
good thing.
Why do politicians not switch to MMT? Because the voters
have not yet embraced it.
How does Social Security work? Just accounting, not money.
Should the Fed be ended? All profits go to Treasury.
Fed works at the whim of Congress.
How about the effect on the dollar? The exchange rate
changes independently of us.
There's no unemployment in non monetary societies (animals
or human).
If CBO scored medicare for all inflation would not change
or go down.
GOP tax plan - not a favor to corporations, it's
political, all corporate taxes are a pass through to
consumers
(5:25)
Sanders came out with medicare for all but adds big tax to
pay for it - medicare for all is deflationary, not tax
needed. Headline left botched it. Paul Krugram, Dean
Baker are other examples of left not understanding.
(26:55)
Bitcoin - does not contribute to medicare for all or any
other social program, it's just a money substitute.
(49:52)
Petro Dollar (aka: reparation) - nonsense -
apple example where their money is located makes no
difference, no liquidity problem,
(1:00:42)
"The public debt is the public money supply." Example:
coins found in public places in Pompeii. The
government spent those coins and the taxes did not collect
all of them so leaving some in private hands.
MMT, The Euro and The Greatest Prediction of the Last
20 Years (free
html) based on a 1992 article by L. Randall Wray -
predictions of MMT
Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for
Sovereign Monetary Systems 2nd Ed - 2012,
2015, L. Randall Wray, Palgrave MacMillian, ISBN
978-1-137-53990-8 (see on line as MMT
Primer, including responses to readers comments)
pg 131; "A government that operates with a
nonsovereign currency, using a foreign currency or a
domestic currency convertible to foreign currency (or to
precious metal at a fixed exchange rate) faces solvency
risk. However, a government that spends using its own
floating and nonconvertible currency cannot be forced into
default. ... This is why a country like Japan can run
government debt-to-GDP ratios that are more than twice as
high as the "high debt" Euro nations (the "PIIGS": Portugal,
Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) while still enjoying
extremely low interest rates on sovereign debt."
pg 141: "Ideally, it is best if tax revenue moves counter
cyclically - increasing in expansion and falling in
recession. That helps to make government's net
contribution to the economy counter-cyclical, which helps to
stabilize demand."
Why Minsky Matters: An
Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist– November 3, 2015, by L. Randall Wray - looks good on the free
Amazon preview - goes into why classical economists did
not see the GFC coming, but Minsky did. Cites The
Financial Crisis Inquiry Report (Commission)
listing the causes (see Commodity Futures
Modernization Act of 2000bad laws above).
"...Minsky argued that the internal dynamics
of our modern economy are not equilibrium-seeking.
There's no invisible hand operating that way.
Furthermore, if we ever did achieve the mainstream's
beloved "equilibrium," those internal dynamics would
push us away - the system is not stable."
"...- offered an alternative to the Kennedy-Johnson
orthodox Keynesian-based War on Poverty. From the
beginning, Minsky argued that this "war" would fail
because it did not contain a job creation
component. For Minsky, the solution to most
poverty is to eliminate involuntary unemployment. . . .
Minsky believed that maintenance of full employment and
reduction of poverty and inequality were essential to
promoting financial and economic stability."
"The stagflation of the late 1970s ended the great
debate between "Keynesians" and "monetarists" in favor
of Milton Friedman's rules. This is because the
Keynesians had no answer to a problem of high inflation
and high unemployment at the same time - policy should
stimulate demand to fight unemployment but should slow
demand to fight inflation. They had no answer to
stagflation (Wiki).
Policy adapted the monetarist recommendation of focusing
on controlling money growth by sticking to a rule.
Yet, monetarism itself suffered a defeat in the early
1980s when the Fed under Charmian Volcker tried to hit
money growth targets (in line with Friedman's
prescription) but repeatedly failed to hit them.
So not only did "Keynesian" theory and policy fall out
of favor, but monetarism also lost sway.
This then set the stage for the rise of a succession of
increasingly radical theories rooted in the
pre-Keynesian thought - most notably the rational
expectations-new classical economics of Robert Lucas (Wiki)
and the real business cycle theory of Charles Plosser (Wiki)
and others."
Labor and the War Against Poverty by Hyman Minsky April
19-20, 1965 (before the Nixon
Shock) - The Johnson-Kennedy plan will fail
because there's no provision for job creation. In
the section titled "Cross of Gold" (pg 11) he points out
the problem of the interest rate being set to maintain
the fixed exchange rate translates into unemployment.
"There is nothing wrong with a 6 per cent
interest rate, at a 1-1/2 per cent unemployment
rate. There is something wrong with high
interest rates at a 5 per cent unemployment
rate. We want an economy with so much steam in
it that you have to hold it back by tight money, but
you don't want to hold back an economy with a lot of
slack in it. That is what we've been doing."
"The elimination of the barrier to expanding aggregate
demand due to the international monetary system is
simple: get rid of the gold standard."
Securitization
by Hyman P. Minsky 1987 with Preface & afterword by
L. Randall Wray -
Vimeo - 2016 - The
Radical Imagination: Imagining Economics in an Age of
Stein, Clinton, Trump or Johnson - 2015 Lyons
Lecture: What is Wrong With the Euro? - MMT has
long argued that the EMU was designed to fail.
This is not a Greek problem. It is not an Irish
problem. It is not an Italian problem. It is
a Euro problem - and the inevitable crisis could have
been foreseen (indeed was foreseen) even before the
launch of the new currency.
Barter story (no evidence)- Goldsmith-Bank story (no
evidence). Alternate idea historical artifacts
that appear to be stones, bones, with scratches,
then tokens that can be pressed into clay tablets
(invention of writing) used for monetary contracts.
Money came before writing. Money invented to keep
accounts not for exchange. Crown spending and tax
collection used up to 1830, it was not gold coins.
Because of the existence of writing for the past 4,000
years we know that the barter story is not true.
"Can not have a European Fiscal Union, only a Monetary
Union because of mistrust, but both are needed, like in
the U.S." (about 1:10:00)
Theoretical basis of MMT:
Georg Friedrich Knapp (Wiki)
- The State Theory of Money 1905 - money must have
no intrinsic value and strictly be used as
governmentally-issued token, i.e., fiat money.
Abba P. Lerner (Wiki)
- Functional Finance 1943 (Wiki)
- government should finance itself to meet explicit goals,
such as taming the business cycle, achieving full
employment, ensuring growth, and low inflation.
Beardsley Ruml (Wiki)
- Taxes for revenue are obsolete (free
pdf) 1946 - We learned from W.W. II that taxes
do not fund spending.
Hyman Minsky (Wiki)
- Financial Instability Hypothesis (Wiki)
- "Stability is destabilizing". 3 types of borrowers: hedge
borrowers, speculative borrowers & Ponzi
borrowers. People are momentum investors by nature,
not value investors.
Alan Greenspan (Wiki)
- the Greenspan put (Wiki):supposedly
eliminated risk in the financial markets, but, according to
Minsky, that increased risk. "Matt Taibbi described
the Greenspan put and its bad consequences saying: "every
time the banks blew up a speculative bubble, they could go
back to the Fed and borrow money at zero or one or two
percent, and then start the game all over", thereby making
it "almost impossible" for the banks to lose money. He also
called Greenspan a "classic con man" who, through political
savvy, "flattered and bullshitted his way up the Matterhorn
of American power and...jacked himself off to the attention
of Wall Street for 20 consecutive years".
Ben Bernanke (Wiki)
- The Great Moderation (Wiki)
aided by the Taylor Principle (Wiki)
- The pronouncement of a new stability caused instability.
Employer of last resort (Wiki)
- the government offers jobs to anyone who wants one
On Taxes (goal is to drive the money, change behavior and be
progressive):
Duping Dopes will not work - BitCoin will not succeed since
that's their model
Taxing work is bad idea (Wiki: Payroll
Tax, FICA)
- regressive, discourages work, discourages employing
people, favors moving jobs outside America, favors replacing
people with robots
Taxing corporations is a bad tax: drives them out of
America, encourages cutting deals
The Income tax: he's neutral
Likes taxing bads: alcohol, tobacco, pollution, financial
transactions,
A Hut tax based on cubic feet of your house (eco friendly).
Inheritance tax to stop family fortunes he likes.
Movie: Boom Bust Boom (IMDB,
Netflix, Trailer)
- Randall Wray is one of the people interviewed & and some
attention to Hyman Minsky (Wiki).
Levy Institute
The War On Poverty after 40 years, A Minskyuan
Assessment, No. 78, 2004 (pdf)
- "the real flaw in the WOP was that it lacked job-creation
initiatives of the type developed by President Roosevelt
during the Great Depression."..."Instead of providing th
impoverished with an opportunity to work, it provided them
with the opportunity to learn how to work."...“policy
weapons which are sufficient to move aneconomy from slack to
full employment are not sufficient to sustain full
employment” ...
"Minsky’s fundamental argument is simple:
(1) poverty is largely an employment problem;
(2) tight full employment improves income at the bottom of
the wage spectrum; and
(3) a program of direct job creation is necessary to sustain
tight full employment. Thus, he argued that a program of
direct job creation was “a necessary ingredient of any war
against poverty” (Minsky 1965, p. 175).
As Minsky put it: “The New Deal, with its WPA, NYA, and CCC,
took workers as they were and generated jobs for them....The
resurrection ofWPA and allied projects should be a major
weapon of the War on Poverty” (1965, p. 195). Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in
Financial Crisis, 2012(pdf)
-
Chapter 2. Summary of the Causes of the Global
Financial Crisis: A Minskyan View -
“I think there is an element of
truth in the view that the superstition that the budget
must be balanced at all times [is necessary]. Once it is
debunked [that] takes away one of the bulwarks that
every society must have against expenditure out of
control. There must be discipline in the allocation of
resources or you will have anarchistic chaos and
inefficiency. And one of the functions of old fashioned
religion was to scare people by sometimes what might be
regarded as myths into behaving in a way that the
long-run civilized life requires. We have taken away a
belief in the intrinsic necessity of balancing the
budget if not in every year, [then] in every short
period of time. If Prime Minister Gladstone came back to
life he would say “uh, oh what you have done” and James
Buchanan argues in those terms. I have to say that I see
merit in that view.”
In
other words, the need to balance the budget over some
time period determined by the movements of celestial
objects, or over the course of a business cycle is a
myth, an old-fashioned religion. But that superstition
is seen as necessary because if everyone realizes that
government is not actually constrained by the necessity
of balanced budgets, then it might spend “out of
control”, taking too large a percent of the nation’s
resources. Samuelson sees merit in that view. Ref.: PAUL
SAMUELSON ON DEFICIT MYTHS by L. Randall Wray)
Six Myths that Hold
Back America: And What America Can Learn from the Growth
of China's Economy 2011 by Frank Newman - on order
Freedom from
National Debt– May 2, 2013 by Frank
Newman - on order
Vimeo
(2012, Suny
Global Center): “Six
Myths That Hold Back America- and What America Can Learn
From the Growth of China’s Economy” - (1:20:26) Frank Newman (Title
is book title) The six myths:
1. Asian nations are bankrolling the U.S.
2. Treasuries "crowd out" financing for the private sector.
3. If everyone tries to save more, the nation will save more,
and Investment, GDP, and employment will increase.
4. If the deficit is reduced, then national Saving and
Investment will increase.
5. Deficits create great burdens of repayment and taxes for
our children.
6. If the U.S. does not get its fiscal deficit reduced soon,
U.S. Treasuries will face the same problems as bonds of Greece
and Ireland.
The Observer Aug 31,
1997:
Curried Emu - the meal that fails to nourish by
Wynne Goodley -
London Review: Maastricht
and All That Oct 1992 by Wynne Godley - "The
central idea of the Maastricht Treaty (1991 Wiki)
is that the EC countries should move towards an economic and
monetary union, with a single currency managed by an
independent central bank. But how is the rest of economic
policy to be run?" Sectoral balances (Wiki)
simplified version: [Public/Government] + [Private] +
[Foreign] = 0
This means when the US government runs a deficit then there is
a surplus in the private and foreign sectors.
"According to the sectoral balances approach, austerity can be counterproductive in
a downturn due to a significant private-sector financial
surplus, in which consumer savings is not fully invested by
businesses."
Super Imperialism:
The Economic Strategy of American Empire by Michael Hudson 1972
- may be the first book to describe American Dollar
Hegemony (Wiki: Dollar
hegemony)
Killing the Host: How
Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global
Economy by Michael Hudson (Wiki:
)2015 - looks very interesting
The
Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street
Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis
Episode
#91.2 // Michael Hudson on Killing the Host - 1 hour
audio interview based on the book Government
Debt and Deficits Are Not the Problem. Private Debt Is.
- 2013 paper The
Economic Crisis & Crisis Theory II 2014 - includes
a video Alan
Freeman Consumption, Profit and Finance: why can't the left
get it right? (0:00 to 21:45), Andrew Kliman Were
Corporations--or Corporate Executives--Really Hogging a
Bigger Share of the Income Workers Produce? No. (23:00 to
45:35), Michael Hudson The New Austerity: Feeding the FIRE
sector overhead (46:45 to 1:50:00), Q&A (1:50:30 to end)
Banks through out history, even when Marx was writing, only
lent money to already existing products, not to industry or
business. Michael
Hudson, Financial Parasites, Left Forum 2014 Excerpts-
Parasite different than Vampire Squid - an excellent 30
minute explanation of his idea Michael
Hudson: Money & Debt 2012 - historical overview
and how canceling debts makes sense. MMT vs. Austrian
School Debate 2013 - Warren Mosler (Wiki,
Amazon, home page)
for MMT (Wiki)
- The Austrian ideas work with fixed exchange rates, but not
when rates float, so after 1971 no longer works. In
today's floating rate world MMT describes how things work.
There's a problem with merging the central bank
into Treasury in that the treasury is controlled by
politicians and without a well functioning government (which
we don't have in the US) there will be runaway spending.
"Never let the facts get in the way of a good
story is a well-known proverb. However, the story of
the financially constrained government, rooted in metallism,
is particularly debilitating for democratic politics. The
deconsolidated government accounting convention is an
institutional habit, which could be abandoned with no
material effect to the economy, according to this analysis.
However, it would remove the psychological effect on the
public of having a government account that seemingly could
reach zero if market confidence or taxes deteriorate. This
psychological feature and misreading of the financial system
galvanises politicians to implement otherwise unpopular and
imprudent macroeconomic policies. A paradigm shift to
functional finance may revitalise the post-democracies
ridden with various legitimacy crises by encouraging
citizens to deliberate over the state’s public purpose
rather than taking a backseat to technocrats who claim to
safeguard future welfare by ‘balancing the books’.
Government spending should be constrained indeed, but by
budgeting, accounting and democratic politics."
There are 3 separate issues regarding ability to
provide SS/Medicare in future years--financial ability to
pay, legal authority to pay, & productive capacity to
provide increasing standard of living to future workers
& non-workers. Unfortunately, these 3 separate issues
are not kept separate in public discourse by journalists,
policy makers, SS/Medicare trustees, and even economists.
First, though, let's understand that the SS/Medicare trust
funds are about the LEGAL authority to provide benefits.
They are not about FINANCIAL ability to provide benefits . .
.. In the future, when/if the payroll tax does not cover
legal authority to pay all benefits & SS/Medicare "cash
in" the bonds owned by trust funds, govt will get legal
authority to pay benefits via general revenues or selling
securities (deficit). But this is exactly what govt
would do WITHOUT trust funds--get legal authority to pay
benefits beyond payroll tax revenues either from general
revenues or selling securities (deficit). Because govt
does same thing w/ or w/o trust funds, trust funds do not
provide FINANCIAL ability to pay, only LEGAL ability. But
just as sufficient balances in trust funds provides no
FINANCIAL ability to pay shortfall is not a legit argument
against FINANCIAL ability to pay. FINANCIAL ability to
provide future benefits is NEVER in question for a monetary
sovereign. FINANCIAL ability to pay is a POLICY CHOICE, not
a constraint. Greenspan explains this here very clearly in
first 18 seconds https://youtu.be/m6MGX1AKFm4
LEGAL authority to pay is also a POLICY CHOICE, not a
constraint. For example, Govt could pass law giving trust
funds 100% interest/year (remember, trust funds aren't about
FINANCE, so not a problem FINANCIALLY), which would provide
LEGAL authority to pay SS/Medicare FOREVER. Another
example of providing LEGAL authority to pay future benefits
is to pass a law saying govt will pay full benefits. @StephanieKelton
explains here that we already do this in some cases.
FINANCIAL ability to pay and LEGAL authority to pay future
benefits are POLICY CHOICES. They are UNCONSTRAINED by
anything other than policy makers simply writing a law
saying the benefits will be paid. Anyone who says otherwise
is muddling the 3 separate issues. However, ability to
provide future standards of living to retirees and rest of
population w/o cutting benefits IS a constraint. If you just
run deficits to pay benefits in future, if productive
capacity is insufficient you will get inflation, not more
real goods/services. Greenspan again (B.C. tries to)
explains this clearly here starting at 45 seconds in
https://youtu.be/m6MGX1AKFm4?t=45s
Lastly, some are talking about Fed simply transferring its
govt bonds to trust funds as way to ensure future
entitlements. This is simply a transfer of assets from one
agency of govt to another, and shows clearly that LEGAL
authority to pay is always a POLICY CHOICE ...BUT, Fed
transfer of its securities does not work under current law
because to debit Fed assets you have to debit Fed capital
(equity). Fed is legally required to send its retained
earnings to Tsy, so they are part of govt budget position .
. .So, if Fed transfers its securities and debits its
capital, under current law, this would increase current and
future govt deficits by same amount until Fed's capital was
built back up. Of course, yet again, you could simply
change the law and do some creative accounting on Fed's
balance sheet for this debit of assets and capital. So,
again, LEGAL authority to pay is a POLICY CHOICE.
In sum, always remember that govt ability to LEGAL authority
and FINANCIAL ability to pay benefits are NOT CONSTRAINTS,
they are CHOICES, just like govt chooses to pay for wars,
cut corporate taxes, etc., all the time. It can ALWAYS
choose to authorize and pay SS/Medicare. The only
actual hard constraint on future entitlements is PRODUCTIVE
CAPACITY to pay these benefits and maintain standards of
living for others at same time.
Thus it is NOT useful for informed policy debates to have
CBO & SS/Medicare trustees to forecast "solvency" of
trust funds in the manner they do now. However, it
WOULD BE useful for them to say "our analysis shows govt has
CHOSEN not to legally fund these programs in full after
20XX; if it CHOOSES to do so w/o taxes/spending cuts, given
assumptions in our econ model we forecast inflation to be
X%."
YouTube: Stephanie
Kelton -The Angry Birds Approach to Understanding
Deficits in the Modern Economy- 2014 - video
clips saying the national debt is a problem (including Cenk and
Bernie).
"Capitalism Runs on Sales - Spending creates Income - income
creates sales - sales create jobs"
Republicans say, We have a spending problem!"; Democrats say,
"We have a revenue problem!" - both lead to fewer jobs
Calming Fact: "As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt
is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government cannever become
insolvent, i.e. unable to pay its bills. In this sense,
the government is not dependent of credit markets to remain
operational. Moreover, there will always be a market for
U.S. government debt at home because the U.S. government has the
only means of creating risk-free dollar-denominated assets." St.
Louis Federal Reserve.
"[A] government cannot become insolvent with respect to
obligations in its own currency. A fiat money system, like
the ones we have today, can produce such claims without limit".
Alan Greenspan 1997 congressional testimony
(50:33)
"Every single time that the federal government's deficit gets
too small, which here gets to be below it's average of 3.1%,
we've had a recession. Every single time."
"Currently, banks are allowed to have accounts with the
Federal Reserve that come with a lot of privileges: higher
interest rates, instant clearing, and the security
provided by being nondefaultable. Authors Morgan Ricks,
John Crawford, and Lev Menand argue for ending these
exclusive privileges by offering “FedAccounts” to
everyone. FedAccounts would be a public option for the
unbanked and underbanked while also providing substantial
benefits to businesses and our economy as a whole.
FedAccounts would provide the following features to all
Americans, as well as American businesses: no fees or
minimum balances; the same interest rate that commercial
banks get; and no interchange fees for debit card
payments. Also, payments between FedAccounts would clear
in real time, and there would be no need for federal
deposit insurance, as FedAccount balances would be
sovereign and nondefaultable. The lack of fees and minimum
balances would remove obstacles that exclude millions of
Americans from our financial system, and the perks of
central banking would greatly increase the cost and
efficiency of transactions for businesses.
This report details the FedAccounts proposal and its
benefits. It also discusses the merits of FedAccounts over
other reform proposals like narrow banking, postal
banking, and cryptocurrencies."
Debunking
Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences by
Steve Keen, 2001 - Talks about the problem with the EMU before
it happened. Dec 2016, reading. Highly
recommended. For more on
this book see below.
Has a few areas that interest me.
1. new thinking about how the economy works, for example
including energy in addition to labor and capital: "a worker
without energy is a corpse, a machine without power is a
sculpture". Also the importance of private sector debt in
relation to growth and GDP.
2. In college (San Jose State) Louis O. Kelso was promoting Two-Factor
Theory: The Economics of Reality where the example I
remember was two house moving companies. One based on the
use of a horse and buggy, the other on the use of a modern
moving van. At the end of a year's operation the two
questions are: Who worked harder (ans. the horse and buggy
company), and Who made more money (ans. the moving van company).
Kelso attributed the higher income of the moving van company to
the higher amount of capital used to acquire the moving
van. But . . . Keen probably would say another difference
was the difference in energy. i.e. One horsepower
(literally) vs. maybe 500 horsepower. Thinking about this
example a year or two ago I saw the idea that energy impacts not
only a business, but also our day to day life, since there are
many motors in pretty much every house. 746 Watts of
electricity is equivalent to one horsepower. A trained
cyclist can produce about 400 Watts. So each 400 Watts of
electricity consumed for an hour is about the same as having a
servant working for that hour.
3. modeling using the "Minsky" software. But this appears
to me like a first grader working with SPICE (Wiki, example) modeling that's very
basic and he makes no validation to real world data.
Note that when tube based electronics were at their
peak there were no computers or SPICE modeling and so plots and
equations were used to analyze tube circuits. Early on the
grid was treated as independent from the other electrodes, then
Miller (Wiki)
saw that there was capacitance between the grid and plate which
explained tube operation much better than the old way. The
feeling I get watching the "Minsky" related videos is that they
are far from discovering the economic equivalent to the Miller
effect and so the models today do not have much value, maybe in
a few decades they will.
"Now that economists have explained the persistence of the ZLB,
they can now turn their attention to understanding its
perverse effects. The real problem of the ZLB
for economists has been that it inverts the status and
behaviour of all other sub-economic particles. In particular:
Growth, which was high, is now
low;
Inflation, which was bad &
everywhere, is now good & nowhere;
CBs (“Central Banks”) which
prevent inflation, now try to cause it; and
HMDs (“Helicopter Money Drops”)
which were mad, are now sane
These inversions are causing real problems for economists,
who find themselves arguing for policies they used to oppose.
Professor Summers hopes that knowledge of the existence of the
FERIR will make it easier for
economists to argue that night is day and rainbows are grey,
as they provide policy advice in these troubled times."
CERN:
Crazy Economic Rationalizations for
aNomalies (Paradoy) FERIR: Full Employment Real Interest Rate
(Paradoy) GFC: Global Financial Crisis (Wiki)
MMT says caused by high debt which in turn was caused by
Clinton budget surplus (sucked much needed money out of
private sector) Growth: Economic (Wiki)
MMT says "trickle down" (Wiki)
does not work, but "bubble up) does work. HMD: Helicopter Money Drops (Wiki) Inflation: (Wiki)
MMT says caused by government competing with private
sector NAIRU: Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of
Unemployment (Wiki) -
MMT says false concept ZLB: Zero Lower Bound (Wiki)
Debunking Economics: The
Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences by Steve Keen, 2001
- Talks about the problem with the EMU before it
happened. Dec 2016, reading. Highly recommended.
This book shows that microeconomics (Wiki)
is based on a number of false beliefs. The first few
chapters are devoted to supply and demand curves and the
numerous false underlying assumptions.
For example that a factory making a commodity will first
improve it's profitability after hiring more workers will
increase, but at some point hiring more workers will decrease
profitability.
The book does not mention that there are very few commodities
being manufactured anymore. I've heard a rumor that
there is a local hardware store that sells nails from a
bin. The hardware stores near me all sell nails packaged
in boxes with brand labels. Propane is a commodity, but
is delivered in trucks from different suppliers and there is a
huge difference in the price depending on the supplier so, at
least here, propane is not a commodity.
This book debunks microeconomics.
The book: Zombie Economics:
How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us, May 6, 2012, by John Quiggin debunks some key ideas of
macroeconomics. Highly recommended.
Father of Functional Finance (Wiki).
See the paper Functional Finance and Full Employment: Lessons
from Lerner for Today, 1999 (above)
The following copied from Wiki:
The principal ideas behind functional finance can be summarized
as:[1]
Governments have to intervene in the national and global
economy; they are not self-regulating.
The principal economic objective of the state should be to
ensure a prosperous economy.
Money is a creature of the state; it has to be managed.
Fiscal policy should be directed
in light of its impact on the economy, and the budget should
be managed accordingly, that is, 'balancing revenue and
spending' is not important; prosperity is important.
The amount and pace of government spending should
be set in light of the desired level of activity, and taxes
should be levied for their economic impact, rather than to
raise revenue.
Principles of 'sound finance' apply to individuals. They
make sense for individuals, households, businesses, and
non-sovereign governments (such as cities and individual US
states) but do not apply to the governments of sovereign
states, capable of issuing money.
Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us,
2010 - Points out logical fallacies and examples where the
idea is shown to fail in a big way, yet it is still
believed. Debunks key macroeconomic ideas. Debunking
Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences by
Steve Keen, 2001 - Debunks the
core ideas in microeconomics.
A chapter is devoted to each of these:
the Great Moderation (Wiki)
- Wiki has a paragraph "Possible_end" indicating the zombie
nature of the idea
Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH)(Wiki)
- Wiki has a paragraphs titled: Criticism and
behavioral finance, Economic
bubbles and irrational exuberance, Behavioral
psychology, View
of some economists (mentioned Quiggin, citing
Bitcoin as a pure bubble), Late
2000s financial crisis where they all are critical of the
idea, but the top paragraph presents the idea as valid.
"Since Bitcoins do not generate any actual
earnings, they must appreciate in value to ensure that
people are willing to hold them. But an endless
appreciation, with no flow of earnings or liquidation
value, is precisely the kind of bubble the EMH says can’t
happen."
Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (Wiki)
- Wiki has a paragraph titled: Controversy
- but it's framed as a debate so still a zombie.
Trickle-down economics (Wiki)
- If you read the Criticisms paragraph there is no question
that this is a dead idea, yet the introductory paragraph
calls it a political term and links to Trickle-down effect (Wiki)
talking about fashion
In 1890 the term was "horse and sparrow theory" - 'If you
feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the
road for the sparrows.'.
Privatization (Wiki)
- A sub-paragraph of "Opinion" is Opposition,
but the overall view of Wiki is that the idea is still
debatable, so a zombie. Quiggin says there are a few
cases where it makes sense, for example GM was privatized
after being taken over, but the notable failures are:
RailTrack in the UK, London Underground, Natioinal Broadband
Network in Australia, Edison Schools in the US, Crown
Health Enterprises in New Zealand, police, prisons &
mercenary military forces (Wiki).
The 2017 US Dept of Education head supports privatization of
the public schools.
Getting-Back-Full-Employment: A Better Bargain for Working
People, 2013 - debunks NAIRU, False
Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, 2010 -
they are: Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Social
Security: The Phony Crisis, 1999 - Ironically, the
only real threat to Social Security comes not from any
fiscal or demographic constraints but from the political
assaults on the program by would-be "reformers". The
United States Since 1980, 2007 Plunder
and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy,
2009, 2010 (Written Oct 2008)- Ch 2 The Clinton Era and the
Origins of the Stock Bubble, Ch4 The Beginning of the
Housing Bubble (In the late 1990s.."But in most areas around
the country at that time, there was a close relationship
between the cost of renting and owning comparable units",
Predicted the
Global Financial Crisis Book: The Coming First World Debt Crisis,
2006 (Amazon)
on order
Started reading: She mentions
the UK "Competition and Credit Control" in Sept
1971 as a turning point rather than "Nixon Shock". I wonder
if they are related?
She agrees with Michael
Hudson that bankers need to be removed
from their current parasitic position and go back to
serving the productive economy. That's to say that
making money using money is not productive.
As of 2017 it appears that we are still in a bubble
economy where prices are inflated by the very low
interest rates. But raising rates will burst the
bubble.
See Effect
of Interest Rates on Home Values
YouTube: Ann Pettifor - How
Society Can Break The Despotic Power of Finance - Warwick
Economics Summit 2014 - If an airplane crashes because
of how it's designed it would be an outrage to blame the crash
on human error, but in the case of the recent financial
crisis, economists blamed it on human error (greed) rather
than on their policies. Hyack, Friedman & Eugene
Fama (2013 Nobel prize winner) are to blame. Savings are
not needed to fund investment. There is no such thing as
Fractional Reserve Banking since 1694. Commercial banks
do NOT lend the deposits of savers, they do not need deposits
in order to lend. BitCoin is based on mistrust Ponzi).
YouTube: TEDxUtrechtUniversity -
Ann Pettifor - Decarbonising the economy: How we can finance
it. - How banking really works, credit is not
subject to the laws of supply and demand, Limits on money
creation:
too much credit->Inflation, not enough
credit->unemployment & deflation, credit at interest rates
too high to pay back-> defaults, ecological cost to to much
credit
She says the Fed deregulated credit in 1971 causing
inflation. Household consumption rises dramatically
starting in 1971 because of credit cards.
Need turn banks from being masters of the economy to servants
of the economy.
Although she uses the year 1971 in many places, "Nixon Shock" is not mentioned, but
rather the UK the adoption of "Competition and Credit Control"
in Sept 1971 (Wiki)
which used reserve asset ratios (a false concept according to
MMT) instead of lending ceilings.
Ann Pettifor InterviewFeb 17, 2018 (13:34) - Prime Economics: On tectonic plates, the economic
system & the economics profession25 April 2018 - "But while the theory is faithfully
taught, and policies implemented, the economics profession
collectively still fails to understand the operation of the
system – or so it seems to both outsiders and insiders.
The economics profession, it would seem, has reached the stage
the geology profession reached fifty years ago – before the
discovery of tectonic plates." . . ."... society demands to know
why economists have not “discovered how the economy really
works”
He is NOT a proponent of MMT, but favors austerity. That's
to say he does not see the need for sovereign governments to
directly create jobs. In my opinion, his proposal to train
displaced workers will only allow the more trained worked to
displace a less trained worker, i.e. it will not create a new
job. It's also not clear if he made the prediction or if
it was someone on his staff.
None of these people mention MMT, but some of them are using
ideas that are a fundamental part of MMT and are not part of
historical schools of economics.
Jakob Madsen (Wiki,
)& Jens Kjaer Sørensen (Denmark) - When
doomsday economist was right - "The
macroeconomic reality is generally difficult to be
explained within the dominant neoclassical
equilibrium model."
see: Zombie
Economics
Nouriel Roubini (Wiki)
- does not understand MMT and so have made what I
(BC) feel are predictions that will fail
Peter Schiff (Wiki)
- he does not understand MMT and has policies that
are counter to MMT
Robert Shiller (Wiki) - preface to 3 editions of
his book Irrational Exuberance offer
predictions of bubble - not so much MMT
Bezemer applied four
selection criteria.
Some account on how they arrived at their
conclusions.
Including an analytical account linking a real
estate crisis to real-sector recessionary
implications (eliminating John Talbott).
Prediction in the public domain, and
The prediction had to have some timing attached to
it (eliminating Raghuram Rajan and Claudio Borio)
It seems strange that Ann
Pettifor is not on that list. Why?
Other MMT References
American Affairs Jan 1946 V VIII, No. 1 - Taxes for
Revenue Are Obsolete (pdf),
Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York - The experience of W.W.II showed that the
U.S. could pay for the war without raising the needed
revenue from taxes.
"Taxation is one of the limitations placed by
government on the power of business to do what it
pleases. There is nothing reprehensible about this
procedure. The business that is taxes is not a
creature of flesh and blood , it is not a citizen."
"The necessity for a government to tax in order to
maintain both its independence and its solvency is true
for state and local governments, but it is not true for
a national government. Two changes of the greatest
consequence have occurred in the last twenty -five years
(since 1921) which have substantially altered the
position of the national state with respect to the
financing of its current requirements. The first
of these changes is the gaining of vast new experience n
the management of central banks. The second change
is the elimination, for domestic purposes, of the
convertibility of the currency into gold."
Purposes of taxation:
1. instrument of fiscal policy, i.e. price stability
(goal: stable purchasing power)
2. public policy, i.e. progressive income and estate
taxes (goal: wealth & income equality)
3. public policy, i.e. subsidizing or penalizing
industries or economic groups
4. isolate and asses directly the costs of certain
national benefits, such as highways ande social security
Taxing corporations is a Bad Tax.
Journal of Finance Aug 1946: Tax policies for Prosperity (pdf)
by Beardsley Ruml - behind a pay wall
"Briefly the idea behind out tax policy should
be this: that our taxes should be high enough to
protect the stability of our currency, and no
higher...Now it follows from this principle that our tax
rates can and should be lowered to the point where the
federal budget will be balanced at what we would
consider a satisfactory level of high employment."
Since countries differ in their export/import balance
the above gets modified by MMT to be:
(from the MMT primer by Wray) "Tax rates should be set
so that the government's budgetary outcome (whether in
deficit, balanced, or in surplus) is consistent with
full employment.
Levy Economics Institute - MM
Papers - Working paper 778 Modern Money Theory 101:
A Reply to Critics 2013 (free
pdf)
High Powered Money (Wiki)
is mentioned in the paper and I didn't recognize the term and
the Wiki page was less than helpful. Warren Mosler has
this to say:
"That's just cash plus dollars held by member banks in the
reserve accounts at the Fed. It was called high powered
money because it was convertible into gold before 1934.
Randy (Wray) still uses it because his professor's initials
were HPM (Hyman P. Minsky)."
Regarding the large upturn in HPM since 2007 (Wiki
plot) L. Randall Wray says:
In any case what happened was that the Fed got confused and thought that QE would stimulate something. Exactly what, we do not know.
Fed also started paying interest on reserves--which makes them equivalent to bills. So think of the $4T of reserves as bills paying low interest.
That was the kink in the curve you saw. You could just as well exchange the reserves for bills and then the kink goes away.
email sent to Dan Kedmey 7/20/2016 about a TED ideas article
related to Yanis and a Time magazine article about the possible
US default and China.
Hi Dan Kedmey::
I saw your article http://ideas.ted.com/what-should-the-future-of-capitalism-look-like/
And want to point out that Yanis describes what happened
to the economy after 1971 as "The Global
Minotaur". He is a very charismatic speaker
and so I read his book, then a book on Volcker including
communicating with the author and can not find any plan
by Volcker for American hegemony. My research into
The Global Minotaur is at:
http://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html#Global_Minotaur
I then discovered Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) which
offers a good explanation of what happened after
1971. I believe that Yanis used Greek mythology
because he didn't really understand what happened.
For me the fact that MMT predicted the problems with the
Euro in exactly the way they have happened and also
predicted the Global Financial Crisis (one of the key
factors was the problem created by the Clinton budget
surplus) makes me a believer in MMT. Here's some
research on MMT you may want to study:
http://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html#MMT
Please let me know you received this.
PS Most thinking on the economy is based on how it
worked up until 1971. So there's about 4,000 years
of thought than no longer is applicable. This may
explain why so many people keep thinking the old
way. If you don't know how something works
it pretty much impossible to predict it's behavior or
make make "improvements" to it's operation.
Have Fun,
Brooke Clarke
brooke@..........
Andrew Flowers
Not an MMT person but wrote an extensive article examining
what might be called a bubble up economy.
Rent = House price x (interest rate +
depreciation rate) So, house prices
depend on equivalent rent rates as well as mortgage interest
and depreciation.
[2017 - This paragraph added after I started reading the 2006
(pre Crisis) book The Coming First World Debt Crisis]
A home buyer approaches the housing market and the first
calculation is "What can I afford". This is determined
by what monthly payment they can make based on the type of
loan and downpayment.
Here is an example of the effect of the interest rate on
affordability.
Payments do not include title, morrgatge insurance, taxes or
property insurance, maintance, just principle and interest.
Rather than run the calculation for the loan amount it's being
run assuming $1,000/month is available to buy a house, i.e.
what can you afford.
APR
%
Loan Amount
$
Total $
Payments
Total $
Interest
Interest/Loan
10
113,951
360,000
246050
2.15
8
136,283
360,000
223717
1.64
6
166,792
360,000
193208
1.16
4
209,461
360,000
150539
0.72
2
270,549
360,000
89451
0.33
One way to view getting a lower rate loan is to allow you to
buy a more expensive house. But when the mortgage is bought by
investment banks in order to "financialize" it the low
interest rate does not go to getting a "better" house but
rather only goes to make the price of the house higher.
This can easily be seen by considering what a change of
interest rate has on the price of a home you can afford.
For example a house that sold some years ago for $166,792 with
a 6% loan, sells today for $209549 with a 4% loan (all other
variables constant), so there's an increase in the price of
the house of 26% soley because of the lower interest rate.
This same effect applies to anything were borrowed money is
involved, such as the stock market. This was origionally
named the Greenspan Put (Wiki),
but was renamed the Bernanke Put in 2007 and today might be
called the Yellen Put since there has been no change in
keeping the interest rates very low to promote higher capital
asset "values". LOw interest rates support various
"bubbles" (Wiki)
(but do not cause them).
In the above table note the ratio of Interest/Loan. I
see a problem here relating to the lack of money to pay off
the loan. Note when you borrow money the bank only loans
you the principle amount. For example if you borrow
$166,792 from the bank they "print money" in that they just
make bookkeeping entries, one in your checking account and one
in their asset account for the same $166,792 amout. But
the bank expects you to pay back $360,000 over the life of the
loan. The bank is creating new money in this
process. They are NOT loaning you money that someone has
deposited in their bank.
As of 2017 there are only two places the money used to pay
the interest can come from. Either someone else has to
go bankrupt or the Federal government has to supply that
money. Note that the amount of interest is about the
same as the loan amount for a 30 year fixed mortgate near 5%
so is a considerable amount of money.
If the economy has inflation then as the mortgate advances in
years the money used to pay it back is inflated, making the
true interest rate lower than the number shown on the loan
documents. But if there's deflation then the effective
loan rate increases causing a deflationary spiral (Wiki).
Wiki has three definitions for "Gold Standard": specie
(money is only gold coins), bullion (government will
sell gold bars at fixed price), exchange (paper money in
one country can be exchanged with paper money in another country
at fixed rate).
Before and for some years after the Declaration of Independence
and Constitution the US colonies (Wiki)
used British Pounds (Wiki) as
well as Spanish dollars (Wiki).
"By far the leading specie coin circulating in America
was the Spanish silver dollar, defined as consisting of 387 grains
of pure silver. The dollar was divided into "pieces of eight," or
"bits," each consisting of one-eighth of a dollar. Spanish dollars
came into the North American colonies through lucrative trade with
the West Indies. The Spanish silver dollar had been the world's
outstanding coin since the early 16th century, and was spread
partially by dint of the vast silver output of the Spanish
colonies in Latin America. More important, however, was that the
Spanish dollar, from the 16th to the 19th century, was relatively
the most stable and least debased coin in the Western world"
Coinage Act of 1792 (Wiki)
- An act establishing a mint, and regulating the Coins of the
United States. The coins contained either gold ($10, $5,
$2.50) silver ($1, 50¢, 25¢, 10¢, 5¢) or copper (1¢, half¢) of a
specified purity and weight (Wiki).
There were a number of following Coinage acts, but this one tied
gold and silver to money. Note there was no provision for
paper money and the US silver dollar was to have a value the same
as the Spanish silver dollar.
Ratio of the price of Gold to Silver
Greenbacks
1862 to 1971: "This Note is Legal
Tender for All Debts Public and Private Except
Duties On Imports And Interest On The Public Debt; And Is
Redeemable In Payment Of All Loans Made To The United
States."
ended silver in the dime and
quarter
$20.67 / 16 = $1.29 Oz of silver
so silver quarters were worth 34.5 cents.
Executive order 6102 (Wiki,
Text)
(March 9, 1933) required everyone to turn in all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold
certificates in excess of $100 per person (at $20.67 per ounce,
the then going rate) to a Federal Reserve Bank on or before May
1, 1933. This was done using registered mail where special
locks were used on the mail bags, not to stop theft, but
as tamper indicators.
The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 (Wiki)
Took the US off the specie gold standard and fixed
the price of gold at $35/oz. "...outlawed most private
possession of gold. The act also changed the nominal price
of gold from $20.67 (price paid to people turning in gold) per
troy ounce to $35 (the dollar is pegged to gold, not floating).
This price change incentivized foreign investors to export their
gold to the United States, while simultaneously devaluing the
U.S. dollar in an attempt to spark inflation. The increase in
gold reserves due to the price change as well as the
confiscation clause resulted in a large accumulation of gold in
the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. The increase in the money
supply lowered real interest rates which increased investment in
durable goods." This removed the "gold standard" and left
the value of gold at $35 per ounce which was maintained until
the Nixon Shock of 1971.
For about 200 years (1792 to 1971) U.S. currency was tied to
gold and/or silver. Before 1971 the folding money in my
wallet said Silver Certificate (Wiki)
on the front (see photo above). I
could take it to the mint in San Fransisco (or any other US
Mint) and get either silver dollars or silver ingots in
exchange. Prior to 1971 the measures of the money supply
like M0, M1, M2 &Etc (Wiki)
were important because the amount of money was limited by the
gold and/or silver reserves held by the US government. If
the government ran a large deficit while the dollar was pegged
to gold/silver there might be a problem if everyone turned in
their currency and asked for silver. So, back then, the
government needed to use taxes to raise money in order to fund
government programs because they could not just print more
money. So governments at all levels (federal, state and
local) used taxes to raise money to fund their programs.
Prior to 1971 this was the correct way to think about government
funding of programs, but not after 1971.
[side bar: in 1946 Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote a couple of articles
pointing out that the US had paid for W.W.II without raising the
money by taxation, see link above).]
The Federal Reserve System (Wiki)
was created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (Wiki)
(Public
Law 63-43, 63rd Congress, HR 7837) section
14(a). Open Market Operations: "To deal in gold coin and bullion
at home or abroad, to make loans thereon, exchange Federal
reserve notes for gold, gold coin, or gold certificates, and to
contract for loans of gold coin or bullion, giving therefor,
when necessary, acceptable security, including the hypothecation
of United States bonds or other securities which Federal reserve
banks are authorized to hold: (b)..." The current
version of has the same paragraph 14a. BUT. . . in
1971 gold was decoupled from our currency so the Fed no longer
can do anything with gold (see Nixon Shock implemented policies
below).
Tax cuts to stimulate employment
must be matched by spending cuts to restrain inflation. To
check the rise in the cost of Government, I have ordered a
postponement of pay raises and a 5 percent cut in Government
personnel,
a 10 percent cut in foreign
economic aid,
Investment tax credit,
a freeze on all prices and wages
throughout the United States
suspend temporarily the
convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve
assets (Doublespeak (Wiki):the
word "temporarily" in this case means "forever")
I remember this. The big thing was
the freeze on wages and prices. The company were I worked
(Aertech) liked
the investment tax credit. The other things like the
"temporary" suspension of convertibility of the dollar for gold
was, as Nixon said, "very
technical--what does it mean for you? " and had little impact on
anyone except for Bob B. who panned gold on his vacations and
prior to 1971 was not allowed to smelt (Wiki) the
gold dust into solid gold. Now he and everyone else could
hold gold as a metal.
I doubt that neither Nixon nor his financial advisers understood
the impact of decoupling the dollar from gold/silver and
allowing the currency to float. For example:
Item 3 & 4 he is cutting taxes (T) and cutting spending (G)
so G and T both go down. MMT tells us that to create jobs
G-T needs to go up, so the tax cut was a good thing but the
spending cut was wrong. Note it would have been correct
with a fixed price of gold because all levels of government
needed to raise money for spending by collecting taxes.
Nixon used the pre 1971 rules for the period after 1971 because
no one understood the implications of the change.
Note that everything about this announcement seems designed to
obfuscate its true meaning. By making the decoupling of
the dollar and gold the last of a bunch of items and using the
word "temporarily" he did about everything possible to not draw
attention to this change that would have implications for the
world and also to discourage economists from figuring out the
implications. What's the point of doing a lot of
theoretical work when the suspension is "temporary"?
The Bretton Woods System (Wiki)
that tied the currency exchange rates of 40 countries to the
U.S. dollar which was in turn fixed to gold at $35 per
ounce. When Nixon closed the Fed's gold window it impacted
all of those 40 countries and especially the oil producing
countries represented by OPEC (Wiki).
Since Nixon shock amounted to a devaluation of the dollar and
they priced oil using $ per barrel. This dollar
devaluation and the Yom Kippur
War (Wiki)
resulted in the 1973 Oil Crisis (Wiki).
The Oil Crisis resulted in the OPEC countries holding a lot of
dollars which needed to be invested. Here is a plot of the
US government bond interest rates from 1950 to 2017:
source: tradingeconomics.com
Note the with the U.S. paying high rates of interest the OPEC countries sent the
dollars back to investment banks in the U.S.. But this
places a burden on the investment banks because they needed to
make money on the deposits. This started the idea of
making loans to third world countries. As part of the
Bretton Woods System (Wiki)
trade was encouraged and the only capital flows allowed were
those to clear trade balances. Global investment capital
flows were not allowed. So in order for the investment
banks to make these loans the laws regarding global capital
flows needs to be liberalized. The people at Bretton
Woods realized that there is a conflict between global trade
and global capital flows and wanted global trade as it would
improve everyone's life while global capital flows would hurt
people. When the third world countries went into
competition with each other they ended up not being able to
pay off those high interest rate loans. The IMF (Wiki)
which was founded as part of the Bretton Woods System and
under the fixed exchange rates tied to the U.S. dollar which
was in turn tied to gold imposed austerity on these delinquent
countries, but that policy no longer was applicable because
the rules had changed in 1971. Austerity means cutting
spending which in turn hurts economic output decreasing the
money available to pay off their loan.
Here is a plot of the U.S. Import-Export trade balance aka
Current Account (Wiki)
for the same 1950 - 2017 year range:
Note that the Import-Export balance was zero until 1971.
This is because when the Bretton Woods
System was in effect there was a built-in mechanism
coupling money and trade balance. For example if a
country was a net importer, like the U.S. prior to 1971,
then we would need to export gold to pay for those
products. That causes the prices of imports to rise
slowing down the imports. This is the capital
"Recycling" that Yanis is
talking about. The problem was that by 1971 the U.S.
owed France literally a boat load of gold and Nixon was
not about to give it to them.
From the late 1800s on schools have been teaching
economics based on a gold/silver backed dollar. Even
though that changed in 1971 they continue to teach the outdated
ideas. So even today the school economics curriculum
pretty much everywhere is still teaching the same outdated
ideas. Also micro economics is based solely on
industrial age manufacturing, i.e. before computers and
automation, and so has fundamental problems. Macro
economics is also based on false ideas. see books above.
Global
Capital Flows
2017 - I've been reading about how no bankers were invited to
the Bretton Woods Conference (Wiki)
because of the damage they did in the Great Depression (Wiki).
One of the key provisions was to limit capital flows between
countries, i.e. to allow for the prevention of
Globalization. States and the Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton
Woods to the 1990s (Cornell Studies in Political
Economy) Hardcover – June, 1994, Eric Helleiner (Wiki)
-
Deutsche Bank, Markets Research:Dark
matter: the hidden capital flows the drive G10 exchange
rates -
Global Finance
One of the books cited by Ann
Pettifor, and others who predicted the Global Financial
Crisis of 2008, a number of times is "States and the Reemergence of Global
Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s" by Eric Helleiner,
1994 - Note this was written after
1971 and before the 2007/2008 crisis, but the author did not
know about the ideas of MMT, but nevertheless talks a lot about
how the Bretton Woods agreement spent a lot of time looking at
the need for controls on global finance while at the same time
liberalizing international trade. They recognized then
that global finance leads to destabilizing the global economy
and restricting economic options and is not compatible with
global trading which they promoted. Helleiner gives a number of reasons why
global finance was allowed while global trade is still regulated
and it boils down to controlling global finance requires global
cooperation and so can be defeated by a single country (like the
policies of the U.S.). Since global finance does not
directly effect jobs, like global trade does, there is not much
political will to restrict it. Multinational corporations,
oligarchs (Wiki)
and people involved in money laundering (Wiki)
are in favor of no global financial regulations so that they can
move money to avoid rules they do not like. Note that
money laundering is a federal crime inside the U.S. In my
opinion it is commonly practiced by IBFs (Wiki)
even though they are not supposed to. This recently (March
2017) was in the news in relation to Russian oligarchs making
"wash transactions" in two different markets where they
purchased using Russian money and sold in markets where the
proceeds were in US$, thus moving their money out of Russia,
i.e. a global financial transaction.
The Global Minotaur (This is
NOT the real problem instead it looks like not understanding
MMT: see MMT above, i.e. the Minotaur is a
myth.)
But the idea that there's no longer democracy in the
EU is a correct assessment. This is because economic
policy decisions are made in Germany for all of the EU and the
people in the EU have no say in those decisions.
Feb 2016 - If, as Yanis Varoufakis (Wiki)
says, Greece is the canary in the coal mine (Wiki)
then we need to really understand what's going on. He says
there are two indications of the problem.
1. A growing mountain of debt caused by borrowing.
2. A growing mountain of cash caused by it not being used
productively to reduce the mountain of debt.
Profit Recycling by Gold Standard
If a country maintained it's money supply based on it's gold
reserves then the exchange rate between countries would change if
either of them changed it's money supply. Suppose that, like
after W.W. II the U.S. starts to buy more from Japan than it
exports to Japan (a negative trade balance). The U.S. ships
gold to Japan in exchange for cameras, cars, TVs &Etc.
Then the exchange rate will change making those things more
expensive and making U.S. goods look cheaper to the
Japanese. This happened and Japan went on a buying spree in
the U.S. acquiring a lot of real estate among other things.
This also happened with Europe and Germany in particular.
The U.S. bought a lot of Volkswagen and Merecedes Benz cars,
Hasselblad cameras, machine tools, &Etc. By 1971 Europe
was expecting the U.S. to ship billions of dollars worth of gold
to them and Nixon turned off the gold standard.
Marshal Plan
During (and for some time after) W.W.II the U.S. accumulated a
lot of gold as a result of a trade surplus. At the Bretton
Woods Conference (Wiki)
in April 1944 the Marshal Plan (Wiki)
was a way that the U.S. recycled it's trade surplus to
strengthen Japan and Germany (the offer made to the U.S.S.R. was
rejected). This essentially sent U.S. dollars to Germany
and Japan and allowed them to buy U.S. products. So from
the end of W.W.II until 1971 when the U.S. left the gold
standard (Wiki: Gold
Standard, Nixon Shock)
the U.S. sent it's excess trade balance to other
countries. This allowed them to buy U.S. products.
PS The CIA actions in South American politics (1944 to 1971) is
related to the U.S. Global Plan for Japan in protecting it's raw
material suppliers.
Paul Volcker (Wiki)
& American hegemony i.e. the Global Minotaur
When the Gold Standard ended so did the Bretton Woods System (Wiki)
since the gold standard was part of it's construction and the U.S.
was no longer running a trade surplus (we were buying a lot of
products from Germany and Japan), but those countries (and most
other countries) sent their money to Wall Street (the U.S. dollar
was the strongest currency in the world). So between 1971
and 2008 what Yanis Varoufakis calls the Global Minotaur served
the same purpose as the Marshal Plan except instead of recycling a
U.S. trade surplus it recycled the trade surplus of other
countries. In an attempt to reign in Wall Street congress
passed Dodd-Frank (see good laws above)
which included the Volcker Rule, but as of 2016 Wall Street is
fighting it tooth and nail and it's not yet been implemented. YouTube - Ron Paul
Questions Paul Volcker During Joint Economic Committee 02 26
200 - Since 1971 (the end of Bretton Woods the stability
of fiat currency (Wiki)
needs to be better
On order:
Volcker: The Triumph of PersistenceHardcover– 2012
by William L.
Silber
But as the post 1929 financial crash laws were repealed between
1965 and 2007 (see: Bad Laws) the banks
were allowed to gamble with depositors money. For example
the wide use of Collateralized debt obligations (Wiki:
CDO) in association with liar home mortgage loans (Wiki)
along with false AAA credit ratings (Wiki)
resulted in the financial crash of 2008 (Wiki). This
killed the Global Minotaur and has allowed a lot of debit to
accumulate in some places and a lot of cash to accumulate in
other places instead of allowing the cash to be invested in
places where there's debt to allow both accumulations to get
reduced. The 4 handmaidens of the Global Minotaur -
Chapter 5 (1.Wall Street, 2. Walmart, 3. the ideology and
politics of 'trickle-down' and 4. toxic economic theory)
These are discussed in Chapter 5 The Beast's handmaidens. Note
the 2008 crash has killed the Global Minotaur but the
handmaidens are still around and out of control, sort of like
the Sorcerer's Apprentice (Wiki)
Note: Walmart pays more than the minimum wage, but virtually
all of it's employees are below the poverty line which means
they qualify for food stamps and other government aid. So
the government is subsidizing Walmart, i.e. privatize the
profits and socialize the losses. Walmart is a socialist
business. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, rather I'm
saying it's not fair to allow corporations to work in a
socialized economy yet not allow people to do it.
A related idea is the "part time worker" (Wiki)
and/or "independent contractor" (Wiki)
- these are both ways that employers get around the requirement
to provide benefits to their employees that they otherwise would
be required by labor laws to provide.
What's needed is a way to recycle excess debt or cash so
neither accumulates.
In the first chapter there's reference to a Monthly Review Volume
55, Number 3 (July-August 2003) paper: The Global Minotaur byJoseph Halevi & Yanis Varoufakis (it's
behind a pay wall but here's a free version pdf) Here's a 2015 YouTube talk by Joseph Halevi: Joseph
Halevi - Farewell Lecture - the '29 crash was because of
oligopoly (Wiki)
not monopoly (Wiki). Also
there are two distinct pricing structures one for raw goods
(cost of extraction) and one for industrial goods (labor?).
Modern
Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World
2011 by Yanis Varoufakis, Joseph
Halevi, Nicholas J.
Theocarakis - pricey so haven't read the book, but have read the
free Amazon part pg 338 Kissinger & Volcker's plan
mentioned.
Volcker - Quarterly Review of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York (The political Economy of the Dollar (FRBNY.pdf
Quarterly Review winter 1-12) and the Fred Hirsch (Wiki)
Lecture at Warwick University, Coventry November 1978:
"It is tempting to look at the market as an impartial arbiter
... but balancing the requirements of a stable international
system against the desirability of retaining freedom of action
for national policy, a number of countries, including the US
opted for the latter...'
and quoting Fred Hirsh:
"[A] controlled disintegration in the world economy is a
legitimate objective for the 1980s."
22 May 2013 - Jared Huffman has his first telephone Town Hall
meeting. I was No. 6 to ask a question "What was he doing
to bring back Glass-Steagall?" but after over a dozen answers he
didn't get to my question. At the beginning he said he
would answer everyone's questions off line if not on line, but
as of 13 Oct 2014 he has not answered this one. See the
TED talk above Capitalism will eat democracy for an explanation
of how politicians no longer can control the financial markets.
He also responded to a direct question where I was in disagreement
with the idea of taxing internet transactions. It turns he
is a sponsor of "H.R. 684, the Marketplace Fairness Act".
So here's the federal government making a law about sales tax that
will very substantially increase record keeping and customer
disclosure requirements. The idea that people will buy on
line instead of locally to save paying the sales tax ignores the
reality that the shipping costs are typically much higher than the
sales tax. The definition of a "small business" that's
exempt from the proposed law is sales below one million dollars,
but that's far different than the definition of a small business
in other branches of government where it's 20 or 30 million
dollars in annual sales.
5 May 2016 - Huffman has changed his position as a super delegate
from supporting Hillary to supporting whoever gets the most votes
nationwide. He will not vote based on how the district 2
vote goes. So, in my opinion, he's still an establishment
politician, not part of Bernie's camp.
The book Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics
by Nicholas Wapshott (Wiki)
2011 - Both Keynes and Hayek started by looking into the causes of
the Great Depression (Wiki)
from, two very different points of view. Hayek (Wiki)
based his Microeconomic (Wiki)
ideas which looks at the actions of individuals whereas Keynes
took a top down Macroeconomic (Wiki)
view. That had never been done before. In my opinion
Microeconomics is a failed idea because humans (and other
primates) do not behave rationally (Wiki)
when making decisions involving loss (Wiki). During
depressions everyone throws out Hayek and adopts the Keynes idea
that government should borrow and stimulate the economy.
From the end of W.W.II to the election of Ronald Reagan (Wiki)
Keynesian economics (Wiki)
were popular. Reagan had a foot in both camps, he cut taxes
in line with Hayek and he radically increased spending by
borrowing in line with Keynes. But beginning in the 1980
some the ideas of Hayek became popular. From pg 219:
"Hayek's utopianism often spilled over into
religiosity. As his disciple Ralph Harris described it,
"once . . . you understand there is no other way to preserve the
substance of individual freedom except through dispersed
property ownership, . . . you can say it's almost like a
religious belief . . . I have said - and it's offended some of
my other Christian friends; they have said this is awful,
sacrilege- . . . that the market is almost god-ordained"21
In Hayek's vision, government would be left to manage only those
elements of society that could be run by no one else, such as
defense. Among the services Hayek believed should be
privatized were "all those from education to transport and
communications, including post, telegraph, telephone and
broadcasting services, all the so-called 'public utilities,' the
various 'social' insurances and, above all, the issue of money."22
Tellingly, and perhaps surprisingly for those who subscribe to
Hayek's general aims today, he advocated mandatory universal
health care and unemployment insurance, enforced, if not
directly provided, by the state, and he believed there should be
free movement of labor across national borders."
21. Interview of Ralph Harris (Wiki),
July 17, 2000 Commanding Heights, PBS
22. F.A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, VOl 3: The
Political Order of a Free People, Univ of Chicago Press 1979,
pg. 147
This included steps to privatize the U.S. Postal Service,
deregulation of the banking system &Etc.
The Open Society and Its Enemies
by Karl Popper 2013 (First published in 1945 as 2 volumes, this
book combines them and adds some new information) - on order
Dark Ages America: The Final
Phase of Empire by Berman,
Morris (Wiki:
links)
2006 - on order The
Twilight of American Cultureby Berman,
Morris 2001 - on order
Social Change and
Scientific Organization: The Royal Institution, 1799-1844,
by Berman, Morris 1978 - on order
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by
Chris Hedges 2007 (Wiki: Links,
Amazon)
- on order because of Donald Trump (Wiki)
Ancient Economic History
Mercantilism (Wiki) was
the economic system from the 1500s to 1800s replaced by Adam
Smith's Capitalism. "Most of the European economists who
wrote between 1500 and 1750 are today generally considered
mercantilists." "In modern economic theory, trade is not
a zero-sum game of cutthroat competition because both sides can
benefit."
The Wealth of Nations (Wiki)
laid out what's called classical economics including the concept
of the Invisible Hand (Wiki). I
think the Invisible Hand sort of worked in Adam Smith's time
(i.e. before the Industrial Revolution (Wiki)
and large corporations), if there was a retail mom and pop store
that was doing something underhanded you could easily open a
shop that was fair and be successful, but that no longer is the
case with large corporations.
There was a change in focus from the King's wealth to the
wealth of the population.
PS. I think neoclassical economics (Wiki)
is a waste of time because humans do not make good decisions
under negative conditions i.e. they do NOT act as rational
persons. There are a number of TED Talks on the topic of
how humans and chimps make the wrong choice when loss is
involved.
Supported the Bank Charter Act of 1844 (Wiki)
which said that only the central bank could issue new paper
bank notes and then only if they were backed 100% by gold.
The idea that people are rational
in their decisions relating to money. It's not true on a
number of levels.
The book "How we Decide" by Jonah Lehrer goes into some
depth about how our mind works and it's not how most people
think it works.
When humans make a choice where gain is involved they act
rationally, but when making a choice where loss is involved they
make very poor choices, this is also true for the grate apes.
This means that the basis of most
microeconomic theory (Wiki)
is flawed.
When a bank makes a loan they just make two entries in their
books. One puts the principal amount into your checking
account (as a bank liability) and the other puts the principal
amount into their collection of assets.
Example:
You borrow $100,000 for 30 years at 6%. The amount of
money created is $100,000. Your checking account entry
is a liability for the bank and your loan is an asset for the
bank.
But, you need to pay back close to $216,000.
This is a big problem because the money to pay back the
interest was NOT created. There is no provision to
create money for the interest. Where is it going to come
from?
Either the economy keeps on growing putting new money in the
system, some of which is used to pay off old loans or there
are bankruptcies that cancel loans.
A possible way around this is to eliminate interest from the
system.
Islamic banking and finance (Wiki)
does not allow interest and while the religious components
don't make sense, the basic idea seems valid.
One way of doing this would be to make banks a utility
operated by government paid employees where no interest is
charged and the bank partners with the borrower.
Standard & Poor's: Repeat After Me: Banks Cannot And Do
Not "Lend Out" Reserves (pdf)
Aug 2013 - since banks have never been constrained in making
loans based on reserves (the reserve requirement is met AFTER
the loan is made) there is no "money multiplier" (Wiki)
effect caused by the excess reserves generated by QE.
2016 Update - See MMT above for how the
government puts money into the economy in addition to the
bank's creation of money out of thin air.
The International Monetary Fund was created as part of the
Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 (Wiki). This
was a time before MMT (see MMT above)
when there were fixed exchange rates and a gold
standard. That changed in 1971 with the end of the gold
standard, but the magnitude of the impact (the start of MMT)
just started to be understood by a very few people in
1992. The result is that the IMF is basing it's demands
on no longer valid theories.
IMF
groupthink and sociopaths by Bill Mitchell (See above) - The IMF report IMF
Performance in the Run-Up to the Financial and Economic Crisis:
IMF Surveillance in 2004-07 mentioned in the article can be
found at (IEO
part of the IMF).
re: Global Financial Crisis - "As the private debt was building
up and the shonky (and criminal) bankers were increasingly
defying responsible and ethical business practice, the IMF was
part of the cheer squad – urging, no, bullying governments to
deregulate further and undermine the working conditions further
and to reduce the scope and quality of public services."
It's time to disband the IMF and probably the World Bank.
Capitalism- It's OK if Regulated but can
be so much more -> Capitalism 2.0
The year 1776 is notable for (1) the Declaration of
Independence and (2) the publication of the Wealth of Nations (Wiki)
by Adam Smith, the basis of Capitalism.Prior to this there was
Feudalism (Wiki).At the time products
were made by craftsmen one at a time, and there was no
manufacturing, electricity, plumbing, etc.A high technology
business was making cast iron cookware.So the philosophy of
doing what’s in your own self interest (greed) and an invisible hand (Wiki)
will guide you for the good of society might have worked then.But greed is no longer
working and we need to move on to a better idea.
Note: in the book Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline
(2012) Morris Berman makes the case that the United States was
founded on the idea of the swindle. He bases this on the
group of people who founded the U.S. being driven by the idea of
getting away with something. Note the founding fathers were
all: white men who owned slaves.
The Constitution was ratified over a dozen years after the
Declaration of Independence was signed and so our economic system
of greed and the "invisible hand" was built into it not only in
terms of the economic system but things like the legal system.
Joseph
Stiglitz: Smith's "Invisible Hand" a Myth? (00:02:35)
90 years later in 1867 Carl Marx published Das Kapital (Wiki) and
said Capitalism could not work and socialism was the answer.The U.S.S.R. tried socialism and it failed
in 1989.
John F. Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize in
economics for his theory of Governing
Dynamics.In
the movie A Beautiful Mind
the bar scene is an example of his two part idea that starts with
Adam Smith’s Capitalism and adds a second idea: “doing what is in the best
interest of the group”. http://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html#ASvJN
<- the 3 minute bar scene
We need to move to Capitalism version 2.0.
Has built in the idea of a growing
economy and that's not sustainable. This needs to be
changed. YouTube - Money As
Debt-Full Length Documentary- the only item they
may have wrong is the idea that spending on infrastructure
promotes the economy. I think R&D on sustainable
projects would be a much better way for the government to spend
money. ContagionEx by by Mark
Foire(00:01:32)
The Laffer Curve & Voodoo Economics
2017 - This is an idea from the primary where Ronald Reagan was
running against Bush Sr. It was an answer to the wrong
question.
The question was what marginal tax rate will maximize the amount
of income taxes collected?
The reason it's wrong is that the rules changed in 1971, see Gold Standard.
The Laffer Curve (Wiki)
says that if the tax rate is either zero or 100% the amount of
tax revenue will be small and somewhere in between more will be
collected. At that time the marginal tax rate was 80% and
so it seemed reasonable that lowering that rate would cause more
money to be collected. But MMT teaches us that the federal
government does NOT fund spending from taxes, so there's no
reason to maximize tax collection. In fact taxes pull
money out of circulation, something you only want to do if the
economy is too hot.
David Stockman (Wiki: part
of the Reagan OMB) coined the term "trickle down" to
promote what's called supply side economics (Wiki)
which the book Zoombie Economics
says is a false concept. A good analogy is that a business
with few people coming through the door is not going to expand
if the loan rate goes lower, it takes more customers to cause
the expansion, i.e. demand-side economics (Wiki).
When Reagan cut the marginal tax rate G.W. Bush used terms like
"voodoo economics". The reason was that what Reagan said was
that by cutting the marginal tax rate the government would take in
more money. This is a counter intuitive idea, you would
think that raising the marginal tax rate would increase income and
the cutting it would lower government income. But that
simple thinking does not take into account what's called
elasticity of tax rates or the Laffer Curve (Wiki).
Prior to the Reagan tax cuts the
marginal tax rate was 70% (IRS: 1980
Marginal Tax Rates). What this means is that the IRS
takes 70 cents of the next dollar of income made. This
caused stupid behavior like buying tax losses (Wiki: Tax Shelter)
rather than trying to actually make more money. It caused
those paying the tax to do stupid things. For more on how
incentives effect behavior see the books with Freakonomics (Wiki) in
the title.
The Laffer curve says that if the
effective tax rate is zero then the government will collect a very
small amount of money by means of charitable contributions.
If the effective tax rate is 100 percent then the government will
collect a very small amount of money from those who volunteer to
work for free. Somewhere between 0 and 100 percent there's
an optimal tax rate that will bring in the most money. If
the current effective tax rate is higher than the optimum rate
then lowering the tax rate will result in bringing in more
money. And that's where we were in 1980. So when the
marginal rate was lowered there was a huge influx of money. The
tax cut part of what Reagan did worked well. The thing he
did wrong was the massive increase in war spending. Instead
of a peace dividend (Wiki) we
got massive military expansion at a time when the U.S.S.R. had
disintegrated. (Wiki:
Peace Through Strength). Some critics of tax cuts cite
the increased national debt when Reagan left office as proof of
it's failure, but that ignores the military spending.
Today (2012) we are at the other end of the Laffer curve, i.e.the
marginal tax rate is about 15% (Huffington Post: Marginal
Tax Rate Chart). So raising the marginal rate will
bring in a lot more money into the government.
Note that the Laffer Curve is not Trickle-down economics (Wiki). This
is a very false idea.
Modern Monetary Theory (see MMT) says that the
purpose of taxes are to punish things we want to discourage, so
studying the effect of marginal tax rates on tax income is only of
secondary interest. Much better to do a zero base study of
the overall tax system.
Adam Smith vs. John Nash -> Capitalism 2.0
Adam Smith (Wiki)
is commonly credited with formulating the idea of Capitalism or
free markets. He published The Wealth of Nations (Wiki)
in 1776 this is at the start of mass production and before the
problems caused by large corporations were known. Smith thought
that when everyone works for their own best interest an "invisible
hand" guides them to also do what's best for society. There
was no electric or phone service and plumbing was yet to come to
homes. All businesses were family run. Free market
"hands off" capitalism failed in the early 1900s with the advent
of big business and big banking. This led to government
regulation of business and banking.
After W.W. I Russia was in a very bad way economically, and
medically (Wiki)
which allowed Lenin to stage the October Revolution (Wiki)
and install the Communist party in Russia which used the ideas of
Karl Marx for their economic system. This economic system
did not work and the U.S.S.R. fell apart in the late 1980s.
Capitalism can work when applied to a competitive market, for
example things sold in grocery and hardware stores. But it's
not so good when applied to monopolistic cases like utilities.
John Nash (Wiki)
won the Nobel prize for his idea that there are two factors that
determine the best outcome (1) what's best for the individual and
(2) what's best for the group he is in.
This has implications for both national and world wide economic
theory.
See the bar scene from A Beautiful Mind (a bio on Nash) for a
practical explanation of his idea.
Bar Scene from A Beautiful Mind:
Governing Dynamics by John F. Nash "Adam Smith was
Wrong" (00:03:16)
This means that the Republican Party ideas about economics are
based on a false idea "free market capitalism" and a false idea
"voodoo economics" about tax cuts. It turns out that the
Democrats were the root cause of the 2008 financial crisis because
of the Clinton budget surplus. See Key
Years for the Goldilocks papers predicting the crisis.
Using Nash's idea we will get the best outcome if we do what's
best for the Earth and what's best for us individually. It
may be a good idea to call this Nashism rather than keep using the
word Capitalism. This has a profound impact on economic
thinking.
Brooke on Capitalism 2.0
Alexis de Tocqueville
(Wiki:
Democracy
in America) - “self-interest properly understood.”
looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s
good for business.
"Tocqueville warned that "modern democracy may be adept at
inventing new forms of tyranny, because radical equality could
lead to the materialism of an expanding bourgeoisie and to the
selfishness of individualism. In such conditions "we lose interest
in the future of our descendents...and meekly allow ourselves to
be led in ignorance by a despotic force all the more powerful
because it does not resemble one."
Tocqueville worried that if despotism (Wiki) were to
take root in a modern democracy, it would be a much more dangerous
version than the oppression under the Roman emperors or tyrants of
the past who could only exert a pernicious influence on a small
group of people at a time. In contrast, a despotism under a
democracy could see "a multitude of men," uniformly alike, equal,
"constantly circling for petty pleasures," unaware of fellow
citizens, and subject to the will of a powerful state which
exerted an "immense protective power".
Tocqueville compared a potentially despotic democratic government
to a protective parent who wants to keep its citizens (children)
as "perpetual children," and which doesn't break men's wills but
rather guides it, and presides over people in the same way as a
shepherd looking after a "flock of timid animals."
Privatization (Wiki)
It turns out that the Bush43 administration has put a poison pill
into the Postal Accountability Act of 2006 (Wiki)
(truth-out). This
was part of a larger move to privatize everything.
In Eat the Rich by
O'Rourke (Wiki,
Amazon)
the chapter on Russia during the cold war has information on how
poorly the factories worked. The description fits most cases
in the U.S. where a government monopoly is privtized. What
happens in both cases is that the business operates strictly to
the letter of their contract and they find loopholes that allow
them to optimize some other parameter (minimizing material
requirements for the USSR and maximizing profits for the U.S.).
Jobs
A key idea from MMT is that unemployment is caused by taxes.
There is no unemployment in societies where there are no taxes. In
2015 Finland was the happiest country and most of the top 10 happy
countries employ a social democratic (Wiki)
system of government (but they haven't yet figured out MMT).
While US manufacturing output has continued to grow it did this by
productivity improvement rather than by adding jobs. This is
a worldwide problem.
US Population Data
Between 1980 and 2016 the population of the U.S. has grown from
227 million to 324 million (World
Meters), a 42% increase. Note that the population includes everybody from newborns
to retired people.
BLS Data
Start at this BLS web page: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001 Then set the starting year to 1980 and press "GO".
The number of employees goes from 90 million to 140 million.
So the percent of the population goes from 90/227 = 40% to 140/324
= 43%. So things are getting better.
But the number of people out of work is also growing in terms of
absolute numbers: 1980 unemployed (227 - 90) 137 to 2016 (324 -
140) 184 million.
The BLS data titled "Charting the
labor market: Data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), Sep
2, 2016" is misleading. For example "Chart 1. Civilian
labor force, Seasonally adjusted, 1990-2016" on page 4 and
"Civilian employment, Seasonally adjusted, 1990-2016" on page 6
are very different. Chart 1 shows the people the BLS
considers the "labor force" those who are either working or
looking for work and so understates the unemployment. (does
not account for those who have given up looking for a job).
Chart 4. Employment-Population ratio, Seasonally adjusted
1990-2016, page 7 shows that between 58 and 65% of the population
work, i.e. a little over half the population is working.
This is an indication that social benefits like health care should
not be tied to working since over a hundred million people do not
work.
I think that manufacturing jobs are declining in the U.S. because
of trade deals that permanently send those jobs overseas.
These jobs typically included benefits. But most service
sector jobs today are part time or "independent contractor" (Wiki)
and have no benefits. Also many main St. jobs are part time
rather than full time, which is done mainly to avoid paying
benefits, the key one being medical coverage. So the
percentage of available work force who have jobs with benefits is
much less than the BLS data indicates.
The US government could start a "jobs for all" program offering an
entry level job to anyone who wants one based on MMT.
This would be in parallel with the existing safety net programs
now in place. People in this program would find it much
easier to get a better job in the private sector since they would
have a current track record of being a good worker. In all
probability most if not all of the current safety net programs
would be reduced since these would be full time jobs. Note
the pay rate needs to be below Walmart or McDonald's so that it
does not compete with the private sector.
The Philips curve (Wiki)
has been shown to be wrong, so full employment does not
automatically lead to inflation. The curve may of had some
value pre 1971. So, under MMT, it's probable that a zero
rate of unemployment is not inflationary. One MMT adage is
that the key indicator for limiting government spending is the
length of the unemployment line. When it is at zero length
further spending will cause inflation. This is because at
that point the government is in competition with the private
sector.
It appears that an Employer of Last Resort (Wiki)(CFEPS) or jobs
guarantee (Wiki)
can be done without an impact on inflation. The idea of
a Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (Wiki
:NAIRU) is false.
According to MMT, government policy now sets the unemployment
rate as a result of trying to control inflation.
Unemployment can be near zero if that's what the government
wants without unacceptable inflation. Also note that
although the Federal Reserve Act says that Fed should control
"price stability" (ie. inflation) and jobs, according to MMT it
can do neither.
As a general rule, mild inflation seems to be desirable. "Economists generally believe that
deflation (Wiki)
is a problem in a modern economy because it increases the real
value of debt, and may aggravate recessions and lead to a
deflationary spiral". Note: all the Wiki deflation
examples are post 1971, so this idea may be in line with MMT?
Note that the productivity of the job is not part of it's MMT
economic value. For a silly example if you hire
someone to dig a hole then fill it there's a tremendous benefit
to the economy. That's because the worker will spend
pretty much all the money he earns and so will help create other
jobs where he spends. But the jobs can be much better for
society such as when the job includes training for needed jobs
to maintain infrastructure and to build new infrastructure such
as a nation wide fiber optic network in a similar manner to the
interstate highway system. Infrastructure maintenance is
an on going requirement and is not being done at any level of
government. So a key target for the jobs program would be
to maintain it not only at the federal level, but also at the
state and local levels.
Note: caution is needed when looking at exports and imports after
NAFTA because we then started exporting a lot of sub assemblies to
Mexico and Canada that came back to us a final products.
From what I've read the TPP (Wiki)
is not in the best interests of U.S. people, but is going to be
good for business profits. I expect, if passed, it would also
result in taking away many more jobs. Part of the population
will be able to buy more imported goods at low prices, but at the
same time there will be jobs permanently lost increasing the
unemployment.
I can think of different types of programs:
Helicopter Money (Wiki)
- This is being tried out (2016) by Y Combiner (Moving
Forward on Basic Income) giving 100 people in Oakland
free money. Note this is pretty much helicopter money,
not a job. This has a huge advantage over a jobs program
in that there is a much lower administrative cost than a
federal jobs program.
Jobs through state, county or city governments where the
wages are paid for by the federal government. This would
result in improvements in infrastructure, but also could help
in other ways since there's a broad spectrum of job skills
available. Again this has the advantage of simpler
federal administrative costs.
The U.S. needs a fiber optic backbone system so everyone in
the U.S. has "broadband" internet access. As is is now there's
a large part of the U.S. without broadband internet, but it's
now a requirement for everyone, especially students doing
homework (at home not at school). What good does it do
to supply students with a laptop if when they get home they
cannot connect it to broadband and that's required for them to
do their homework? The FCC decision to include the
internet under Title II (as a utility) and the confirmation of
that by the district court decision (FCC).
So a federal jobs program to install a fiber network in a way
similar to the TVA project to electrify rural America is now
needed. This would be more costly from an administrative
aspect, but is very much needed.
Mark Blyth says that in the not too
distant future 10% of the world's population can manufacture all
the products for the other 90%. This scale of change has
already happened in agriculture and it's in the process of
happening for manufacturing, white collar and some blue collar
jobs.
This means a new type of economic system will be needed.
Maybe something like AmeriCorps
but with a more expanded list of jobs, higher pay and a more
inclusive age range. This would not in itself provide the
answer but is an example of a way to provide jobs to replace those
that are being permanently being eliminated.
When new factories are built they include more and more
automation. That decreases the number of jobs.
When I was working as an engineer a number of times I proposed
building an automatic microwave test system. The bean
counters wanted a proposal showing that the all up cost of the
system would be less than the labor savings over the life of the
system. The first few times I did that the system was not
built. But eventually we built a system. That was when
we made a startling discovery. There were intangible
benefits that were orders of magnitude higher than the labor
savings. That's to say a company gets financial benefits far
in excess of the labor saving when they automate. This is
why modern factories are using as much automation as they can
get. It's also the reason that you will not see factories
removing automated equipment.
The
New York Times published "How
Trump Reshaped the Election Map" showing changes (mostly
Democrat to Republican) in the mid North East (aka: the rust
belt). There's a lesson from car sales that a disgruntled
customer will tell 10 friends, but that was before the internet
(think YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, &Etc) where millions of
people will view a video in a matter of days. So, for
everyone who looses their job permanently because of a plant
closing the number of people who know about it is much more than
just immediate friends and family.
After Trump won the election there are articles saying Trump's
solution is higher import tariffs, but they are wrong. The
loss of domestic jobs is only partially caused by exporting jobs
the larger factor is increase in productivity. Not only does
this result in fewer jobs, but because of the post Ronald Reagan
tax cuts it also results in obscene C-suite annual
paychecks. I think the marginal income tax rate needs to be
about 50% or higher to discourage that. Note that stores
like Walmart, Harbor Freight, Dollar Stores and many "Main St"
shops are selling imported products for much less than a domestic
product would sell for. These low cost products are the
benefit side of trade deals, the lost jobs and closed businesses
are the cost of trade deals.
Productivity increases have been and will continue to eliminate
jobs on a large scale. Note this will effect not only blue
collar jobs but also white collar jobs. This means that
basing the economics of families on wage earners is not a viable
thing to do.
FiveThirtyEight - What
Would Happen If We Just Gave People Money?Apr
25, 2016 - While mostly about the Swiss Universal Basic Income
plan that was considered at the national level, it's making the
same point as the above UN article, namely: "In a
much-written-about
2013 paper,
two Oxford economists estimated that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs
were at risk of computerization. Increasingly, technologists
envision basic income as a “hack,” or fix, to the system — it
offers a way of coping with an economic future dominated by
automation, a fallback plan for when most human labor isn’t
valued or needed."
NYT - Trump
Rides a Wave of Fury That May Damage Global ProsperityBy Peter
S. Goodman, Nov.
9, 2016 NYT - More
Wealth, More Jobs, but Not for Everyone: What Fuels the Backlash
on Trade By Peter S.
Goodman,
Note that even China has this problem with modern factories highly
automated creating unemployment. Universal
Basic Income for everyone potentially could cause inflation if
it drives up wages for the remaining jobs. If you don't
like your job and are willing to live at the basic income level
you can quit your job and do anything you like.
The great thing about a basic income is that it will be spent
making business very happy because they have buyers. It's
a win-win (Wiki)
situation.
Bill Clinton was the first Democrat to adopt the Republican
strategy of getting large corporate donations. Clinton
choose Wall St. as the source of these donations and in that
process the Democrats quit being the party of working men.
The 2016 election say working men leave the Democratic
party. The mistake they made is that now neither parts
represents them. The Republican party gets their big
donations from business, not working people.
Trump Election Upset
Nov 10 2016
I
think Trump won because:
of unemployment (but he blamed trade deals, but I think
increased productivity (often automation) is as big if not a
bigger factor)
Clinton is an establishment politician whereas Trump is not
a politician (when I ran for the House
of Representatives I did not wear a suit and tie to help
make it clear I'm not a politician). Trump did many
things that would disqualify him if he were a politician , but
were forgiven by his supporters since he's not a
politician. It may be that he did these things to
emphasize that he is not a politician and at he same time to
attack the Republican party for their Southern Strategy (Wiki).
Russian
(Iran, Turkey & Guiana) Connection
I'm interested in this topic since it mirrors my comments above
about how the U.S. today looks like Russia in the 1960s, i.e. a
third world country, banana republic, &Etc. This has
nothing to do with why H.R. Clinton lost the 2016 election.
The reason for that is the same as for brexit (Wiki) and
Emmanuel Macron (Wiki,
a man with no political experience, just like Trump). These
results were a vote against the establishment. You might say
a brick through the window. That's to say the people who
made these votes knew full well that the result will be breaking
the current government, but they are willing to pay that price in
the hope of changing it (an idea Obama used to win his election
and which he failed in a big way to deliver on). See: Democrats the same as Republicans on the big issues
above.
Wiki: Russian
interference in the 2016 United States elections - Timeline
-
There were a number of Russian incidents related to Trump.
2013 March 19 - Gates meeting. See 2018 February 23 statement of
offense pg 7 paragraph 16. "..meeting involving Manafort, a senior
Company A lobbyist that there were no discussions of Ukraine at
the meeting. At the time of his proffer statement, GATES
knew that: (a) Manafort and the senior Company A lobbyist had not
made the above statements to him; (b) Manafort and the senior
Companuy A lobbyists had told him that the meeting went well; (c)
GATES had participated with Manafort in preparing a report that
memorialized for Ukraine leadership the pertinent Ukraine
discussions that Manafort represented had taken place at the
meeting; and (d) Manafort told GATES in 2016 that Manafort told
his FATRA lawyer that there had been no discussion of Ukraine at
the meeting."
2013 April 16 - arrest warrent served at 63A Trump Tower (see:
2016 September 14 Mother Jones) -Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, Miss
Universe Pageant, Vladimir Kozhin,
2013 June - BuzzFeed
2017 April 3: FBI interviewed Carter Page about his
relationship with Russians
2013 August 24 - NYT: Trump
University Made False Claims, Lawsuit Says -
2013 August ? - Carter Page writes in a letter (TRMS
2018 Feb 5) "Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to
serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin"
2013 September 10 Manhattan
U.S. Attorney Announces Civil Forfeiture Complaint Against Real
Estate Corporations Allegedly Involved In Laundering Proceeds Of
Russian Tax Refund Fraud Scheme
The Trump Tower meeting where an attorney from this
case ( Natalia Veselnitskaya) was in attendance happened on 2016 June 9
while this case was ongoing
Preet Bharara for the SDNY Sessions fired Prett on 2017 March 11
ie. while this case was ongoing! (Wiki)
United States v. Prevezon Holdings Ltd.
(1:13-cv-06326) (Court
Listener) as of 2019 January 20 the last
entry is on 2018 March 30) Click here to
view chart(s) (list of Manhattan properties) U.S. v. Prevezon et al. Exhibit B - Org chart Russian Treasury
at top and Prevexon 8160 at the bottom Alpha Bank in the middle
(815 Million rubles in, 1,185 million rubles (about US$18
Million out) U.S. v Prevezon et al. Complaint
2013 September 11 - Twitter:
Donald J. Trump: Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone -
next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman. Is he a
crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner
2013 November 7 - Trump’s Cessna jet leavs Asheville NC 9:57pm,
lands at New York’s La Guardia 11:05pm (Bloomberg
2017 July 13)
2013 November 8 - Trump at Nobu restraunt in Moscow with Emin (Facebook)
for 2 hour meal, then to Backstage Restaurant for Agalarov’s
58 birthday party.
2013 November 9 - Trump at Ritz Hotel (Facebook) filming music
video for Emin. Trump
Tweet 6:21 am,
2013 November 9 - Miss Universe Pageant in Russia (Wiki).
Trump there probably Friday (8 Nov) to Sunday (10 Nov).
2013 November 9 - RT: US 'Miss Universe' billionaire plans Russian Trump
Tower -
2013 November 10 - Trump flies home, Tweet
6:44pm
2013 - "The adviser, Carter Page, met with a Russian
intelligence operative named Victor Podobnyy in New York,
who was later charged by the US government alongside two others
for acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government. (Buzzfeed 2017 April 3)
2013 November 11 - Twitter:
"@AgalarovAras
I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a
FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!"
2013 November 22 - Financial Times: ENRC
‘should have set off alarm bells’ - (See: TRMS 2018
January 17)
2013 November 30 - The Hill: Research
Associate Veronika Kyrylenko: Ukraine, the runaway bride -
was this article written by Paul Manafort? Case
1:18-cr-00083-TSE Document 81-1 Filed 06/04/18 (pdf pg 60)
2013 December 10 - NYT: Kerry’s
Statement on Ukraine - President Yanukovych (manafort is his
adviser at this time)
2014 ? Internet Research Agency sets up operations in Russia with
$1M per month budget to influence US. (See DOJ indictment 2018
February 16) (a few months after Trump was in Russia for Miss
Universe)
2014 January 2 - WashingtonTimes: TORSHIN:
Kalashnikov, the man and the weapon - "...attending the
National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Houston"
2014 January 22 - Yulya Alferova Tweets "I'm
sure @realDonaldTrump will be great president! We'll support you
from Russia! America needs ambitious leader!" photo of
Trump & Yulya, ex wife of Artem Kly
2014 February - (Yahoo 2018 March 8): Ivanka Trump flew to Moscow
to scout potential sites for the (Trump Tower Moscow) project with
Emin Agalarov.
2014 Feb 6 - Guardian: US
official apologises to EU counterparts for undiplomatic language
-
Victoria Nuland's phone hacked and leaked after her support for
the people of Ukraine. see 2013 Dec 10 Guardian: Kerry's statement
on Ukraine and TRMS
2018 July 12
2014 February 14 - NYT: 2
in Russian Protest Band Held, Then Freed, in Sochi - Pussy
Riot song Chaika (Wiki)
Yury Chaika (Wiki)
alluding to findings of Anti-corruption
Foundation. Video "Don't call him "Dimon" with English subtitles. Web
page (Google Translate) - TRMS
2004 February 20: NYT: op ed How
Ukraine Can Be SavedRomano Prodi - written by P. Manafort Case
1:18-cr-00083-TSE Document 81-1 Filed 06/04/18 (pdf pg
85) How Ukraine Can Be Saved - Romano Prodi,the prime minister of Italy from 1996 to
1998 and from 2006 to 2008, and the president of the European
Commission from 1999 to 2004, is the United Nations special
envoy for the Sahel region of Africa.
2014 February 20 -Wiki: Annexation
of Crimea by the Russian Federation - International
sanctions during the Ukrainian crisis - List
of people sanctioned during the Ukrainian crisis - this
stopped the Trump Tower Moscow project -Yahoo 2018 March 8:... the
demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s
view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that
Trump was keenly interested in.”)
2014 February 25 - Observer: The
Politics and Power of A.G. Schneiderman - Jared Kushner is
the publisher of TheNew York Observer
2014 February 28 - BuzzFeed: Ukraine
Pleads For Help Against "Russian Invasion" Of Crimea -
2014 March 6 EO
13660 Blocking Property of Certain Persons
Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine (see Ukraine
& Russia Sanctions DoS): BOLOTOV, Valery, GIRKIN, Igor
Vsevolodovich, KAUROV, Valery Vladimirovich, MENYAILO, Sergei
Ivanovich, PONOMARYOV, Vyacheslav, PURGIN, Andrey Yevgenyevich,
PUSHILIN, Denis (see: OFAC: Ukraine
& Russian sanctions - This may be the heart of all the
current Russian interference)
2014 March 10 - Trump twitter: "The #CNBC 25 poll is a joke. I was
in 9th place and taken off. (Politics?) No wonder @CNBC ratings
are going down the tubes." (see: 2019 January 17 WaPo) Michael
Cohen tried to rig this poll as well as the Drudge Report pole,
but didn't move Trump to the top.
2014 March 17 EO
13661 Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to
the Situation in Ukraine
2014 March 20 EO
13662 Blocking Property of Certain Persons
Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine
2014 December 19 EO
13685 Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting
Certain Transactions With Respect to the Crimea Region of Ukraine
2014 March 20 - NYT: Obama
Steps Up Russia Sanctions in Ukraine Crisis - see EO
13694: 2015 April 1, EO
13757 2016 Dec 26,
2014 April 30 - Obama administration asked Flynn to leave as head
of the military (and Defense Intelligence Agency) (Wiki)
and he did in August. (What did they know then?)
2014 August 7 - Michael Flynn retires from military and is
no longer head of the DIA.
2014 August 14 - Guardian:
Dmitry Medvedev Twitter account hacked - maybe a hoax by the
Internet Research Agency
2014 October 8 - DIA sends letter to recently retired
general Michael Flynn explaining his responsibility
regarding accepting foreign money. 18USC207(a)(1) Lifetime Ban,
18USC207(a)(2) 2-year ban, 18USC207(c) 1-year cooling off,
18USC207(b) 1-year ban on aiding or advising, 18USC207(f) 1-year
ban on assistance to foreign governments, 6. Foreign Compensation
Requires Advance Approval (per Constitution A1, S9, C8
(emoluments)
2015 January ? - (Yahoo 2018 March 8): Trump
and the Russians: A new book describes how it all began — at a
Las Vegas nightclub - meeting in Trump Tower: Trump, Emin
Agalarov, Rob Goldstone - meeting in Trump Tower with Goldstone
& Emin Agalarov
2015 February 2 - Michael Cohen asks John Gauger to rig a Drudge Report poll for
$50,000 (see: 2019 January 17
WaPo). He did not do a good job, but was paid some
cash and a boxing glove.
2015 February 27 - Boris Nemtsov (Wiki)
assassinated in Moscow (Wiki)
- anti-Putin activist
2015 March 6 - FinCEN: FinCEN
Fines Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort $10 Million for
Significant and Long Standing Anti-Money Laundering Violations
- "Trump Taj Mahal has a long history of prior, repeated
BSA violations cited by examiners dating back to 2003"
2015 March 11 - Valdai: Vienna
Talks on Syria: Diplomacy at Work by Joseph
Mifsud - pro-Putin propaganda
2015 March 14 - Maria Butina emails Person 2 Torshin confirmed his
desire in our Russian-American project". (see affidavit 2018
July pg 10) and "for building this communications channel".
2015 March 24 - Maria Butina emails Paul E. about the GOP likely
to obtain control of US (see affidavit 2018 July pg 5 - 6) 4
months prior to her question to Trump in Las Vegas (2015 July 11 -
14)
2015 March 25 - SDNY: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/usao-sdny/legacy/2015/03/25/Tokhtakhounov%2C%20Alimzhan%20et%20al.%20Indictment_7.pdf
- Russian crime boss
2015 March 30 - Maria Butina emails organizer of Prayer Breakfast
for going to Moscow for a meeting. hoping Putin would attend the
2017 Prayer Breakfast.
2015 April 1 - Executive
Order 13694 (Wiki):
Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant
Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities
2015 April 21 - CNN: Sanctions
will cost Russia more than $100 billion - Dmitry Medvedev
made the estimate - this could be the what Russia was trying to
get reversed by electing Trump.
2015 June 2 - NYT: The
Agency By Adrian Chen (Russian
Language version)- Columbian Chemicals hoax (Wiki)
perpetrated by the Internet Research Agency of Russia (Wiki).
#EbolaInAtlanta,
#shockingmurderinatlanta,
2015 June 16 - Trump announces he's running for president (Wiki)
2015 late summer - Michael Flynn meets Trump (WaPo
2016 Aug 15)
2015 July 11 to 14 Freedom Fest, Paris, Las Vegas: Trump has
prepared answer to question from Ms. Marina Butina and called on
her- YouTube: Trump
answers question on Russia at FreedomFest 2015 - the
sanctions are in relation to VTB Bank, not
the Obama election sanctions, i.e. to help Russia pay Trump (See:
2018 November 30 TRMS)
2015 July 23 - The Diplomat: Donald
Trump’s Problem With the US-Korea Alliance -
2015 September 21 - NYT: Malaysia’s
Leader, Najib Razak, Faces U.S. Corruption Inquiry - A
federal grand jury is examining allegations of corruption
involving the prime minister, Najib Razak, and people close to him
2015 September 28 - Boris Karpichkov (Wiki)
was the source of the article about Williams murder see: 2010
August 16
2015 October 12 -Minority Report from House: email from Fleix
Sater to Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen titled "Andrey
L. Kostin - CEO VTB Bank": "Kostin who is Putins top finance guy
and CEO of 2nd largest bank in Russia is on board and has
indicated he would finance Trump Moscow. This is major for
us, not only the financing aspect by Kostins position in Russia,
extremely powerful and respected. Now all we need is Putin
on board and we are golden, meeting with Putin and top deputy is
tentatively set for the 14th. See buddy I can not only get
Ivanka to spin in Putin's Kremlin office chair on 30 minutes
notice, I can also get a full meeting. I will call you later
today to discuss getting the LOI signed." (note 165) 2015 October 28 - Trump signs letter
of intent for Trump World Tower Moscow (see 2018 May 17 Buzz Feed,
2018 December 19 CNN) ( LOI.pdf
+ Schedule 1 & 2) 1:18-cv-03501-JGK
2015 November 3 - Felix Sater, a longtime Trump associate with a
criminal past, writes to Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen,
bragging he has proven contacts in Moscow who could help get Trump
elected. (NYT: Trump
Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald
Elected’ 2017 August 28) 2015 November 5 - Mikhail Lesin’s
battered body was discovered in
his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015,
with blunt-force injuries to
the head, neck, and torso (BuzzFeed
2017 July 28). In Washington to be interviewed by DOJ
about Russia Today (RT) news outlet. undated
ME DOJ News Release (Press
Release March 10, 2016) wtop 2018 October 26,
2016 January - Michael Flynn "...applies to renew his
security clearance - using a Form SF-86" (SF86-10.pdf)
Note 1 (The
Hill 4/28/17) a month after he traveled to Moscow
2016 January 10 - Seth Rich murdered near his residence in
Washington DC (Wiki)
- possible link to leaked DNC email is right wing conspiracy
theory.
2016 January 26 - NYT: Malaysia
Closes Investigation Into Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Funds
- Razak's hand picked attorney general said there's no problem.
$681 million "was a personal gift from the Saudi royal family".
2016 February - Michael Flynn is informal adviser to Trump
2016 March - FBI investigation moved back to March (see April 7,
2017 - Pyotr Levashov)
2016 March 3 - Jeff Sessions leads National Security
advisory committee (USA
Today 17 March 2016)
2016 March 4 - BBC: Donald
Trump's business links to the mob - Sater-Bayrock promotes
branding - Trump Soho, Trump Fort Lauderdale & Trump Camelback
AZ.
& Trump
2016 March 6 - "that improving relations with Russia is a
principal concern for the Trump campaign" (NYT
2017 Nov 2 & WaPo
2017 Oct 30)
2016 March 14 - Papadopoulos, then in Italy, meets a
London-based professor. - Joseph Mifsud (NYT2017Dec30)
2016 March 15 - Russian Agents hacked Yahoo (NYT)
Alexsey Belan, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev,
Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, Karim Baratov - (Indictment)
2016 March 16 - Wikileaks: Hillary Clinton
Email Archive - goes on line - her private email server
2016 March 17 - Jeff Sessions speech "There is no reason
for the U.S. and Russia to be at this loggerheads," (USA
Today 17 March 2016)
2016 March 19 - Podesta's emails hacked (Wiki) -
Wikileaks: The
Podesta Emails - 21 March according to U.S. v. Viktor Borisovich
Netyksho, et al (1:18-cr-215, District of Columbia)
2016 March 21 - WaPo
Trump names four foreign policy advisers:
"Carter Page, PhD,"
"George Papadopoulos – he's an energy and oil consultant,
excellent guy,"
"Walid Phares, who you probably know, PhD, adviser to the
House of Representatives caucus, and counter-terrorism expert" (Wiki)
Honorable Joe Schmitz, [former] inspector general
at the Department of Defense; [retired]
2016 March 24 - Papadopoulos email "to arrange a meeting between
us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under
President Trump."
2016 March 28 - NYT: Donald
Trump Hires Paul Manafort to Lead Delegate Effort - his first talking point to get job
was I will do thi
2016 March 31 - Trump Instagram:
national security meeting with Papadopoulos sitting at the center
of the table
2016 March 31 - Sessions said that at Campaign meeting he "pushed
back" against Papadopoulos suggestion of meeting with Russians -
not so, see: 2016 March 24 above, 2018 March 18 Reuters.
2016 April - Michael Flynn (it took 3 months to process
the January application) has clearance renewed. (NBC)
2016 April - NBCnews 2017 May 8:
Flynn Never Told DIA That Russians
Paid Him -
2016 April - DNC emails hacked by Russia and DNC calls in
Crowdstrike (Wiki)
to investigate
2016 April 10 - NBC
Meet the Press: Manafort: “I’m not working for any clients
right now other than Mr. Trump.” - a lie since he was working on
the Kilimnik Peace Plan. (see: 2019 January 13 WaPo)
2016 April 11 - NYT: Donald
Trump Hires Paul Manafort to Lead Delegate Effort - for the upcoming Republican
convention
2016 April 11 Briefing by James Clapper: UNLOCKING
THE SECRETS: How to Use the Intelligence Community - 102
pages of slides, election stuff starts @ pg 12, but most of the
pages after that are redacted.
2016 April 18- S.284 -
Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Wiki)
because of Russian killing of Magnitsky while he was
trying to expose financial fraud
2016 April 18 - 1:18-cv-03501-JGK:
Russian intelligence operatives successfully hacked into the DNC’s
computer network
2016 April 25 - Papadopoulos email: "The Russian government has an
open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is
ready."
2016 April 26 Papadopoulos email: "the Russians had emails of
Clinton ... thousands of emails." 1:18-cv-03501-JGK
2016 April 26 - WaPo: Inside
Trump adviser Manafort’s world of politics and global financial
dealmaking - Oleg Deripaska, Richard Gates,
Charlie Black, Roger Stone
2016 April 27 - Trump Speech
at The National Interest Mayflower Hotel - "The Center for
the National Interest invited Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak
and several other ambassadors to the speech." attended by Sessions
and Kushner, among other Trump aides. Looks like there were
no real conversations here. Trump quote from speech: “I
believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia —
from a position of strength only — is possible, absolutely
possible,” Speech edited by Papadopoulos (NYT
2017Dec30)
2016 April (late) - at a London hotel, Mr. Mifsud told Mr.
Papadopoulos that he had just learned from high-level Russian
officials in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton
in the form of “thousands of emails,” (NYT
2017Dec30)
2016 April 29 - (book: Hacks by Brazile) DNC learns they have been
hacked and they contact the FBI and CrowdStrike
2016 May - Aug - RNC pays Hamilton Trading Group $34,100
for Russian connections of HRC (Politico)
- Gennady Vasilenko, Jack Platt, Ben Wickham
2016 May - Manaffort meets with Kilimnik (WaPo
2017 June 19)
2016 May 4 - Papadopoulos email to Corey Lewandowski: "What do you
think? Is this something we want to move forward with?"
2016 May 4 - Times (UK): Say
sorry to Trump or risk special relationship, Cameron told -
David Cameron should apologise for calling Donald Trump “divisive,
stupid and wrong” George Papadopoulos told The Times.
2016 May 9 - Chris Christie named to be head of Trump
Transition team (CNN)
2016 May 16 - "In May 2016, a Russian military intelligence
officer bragged to a colleague that his organization, known as the
GRU, was getting ready to pay Clinton back for what President
Vladimir Putin believed was an influence operation she had run
against him five years earlier as Secretary of State. The GRU, he
said, was going to cause chaos in the upcoming U.S. election."
(Time 2017 May 18: Inside
Russia’s Social Media War on America)
2016 May 18 - LA Times: U.S.
intelligence official says foreign spy services are trying to
hack presidential campaign networks - James Clapper (see:
2016 April 11): "We’ll probably have more” cyberattacks on the
campaign trail"
2016 May 18 - AP: Trump unveils list of potential picks for
Supreme Court seat - 1st list - "Trump’s list is also notable for
the names that don’t appear. It omits two of the biggest stars in
the conservative legal world, Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the federal
appeals court in Washington, and former Bush administration
Solicitor General Paul Clement."
2016 May 19 - NYT: Trump
Aide Paul Manafort Promoted to Campaign Chairman and Chief
Strategist
2016 May 21 - Papadopoulos email to Manafort: "Request from
Russia to meet Mr. Trump," 2016 May (late) - Papadopoulos meets with Mr.
Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat, about his contacts with
the Russians and the thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.
(This was not public information at this time.) When Australia
told the FBI about this it started the investigation, it may not
have been started because of the "dossier". This happened
about 2 weeks after the his late April meeting in London hotel
with Mr. Mifsud.
2016 May 24 - RNC: RNC and
Donald J. Trump for President Announce 2016 Trump Victory
Leadership Team - Vice Chairs: Elliott Broidy see: TRMS 2018
March 9
2016 June - Corey Lewandowski (Wiki)
resigns as Trump campaign manager
2016 June - Jeff Sessions (Wiki)
meets with Sergey Kislyak (Wiki) at
Heritage Foundation (Wiki)
on sidelines of the RNC convention
2016 June - Podesta's emails go public and Fusion
GPS (Wiki)
hires Orbis Business Intelligence (Wiki)
to investigate (Christopher Steel is Orbis). 2016 June 3 - Rob Goldstone (Wiki)
emails Donald Trump Jr. (Wiki)
offering "damaging information about Hillary Clinton. (see: 2017
July 10 - NYT) Aras (Wiki)
& Emin Agalorov (Wiki)
were the references used in the email. Aras Agalorov was
mentioned in the Trump Steele Dossier pg 27 (Wiki,
see: 80 BuzzFeed).
2016 June 7 - Donald Trump gives speech where he promises a
major speech about Hilary Clinton's crimes on 13 June. (YouTube: Donald Trump
Primary Night Speech 6/7/2016) i.e. he know about subject
of Trump Tower Meeting.
2016 June 9 - Trump Tower Meeting (Wiki&
Trump campaign–Russian meeting)
Attendees:
1. Donald Trump Jr.
2. Jared Kushner 3. Paul J. Manafort
4. Natalia Veselnitskaya (Wiki)
5. Rinat Akhmetshin (Wiki)
6. Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze (Wiki)
7. Anatoli Samochornov, a translator for
Veselnitskaya
8. Rob Goldstone (Wiki)
Natalia flew to the U.S. just for this meeting. (See: 2017
July 10 NYT, 2016 June 7 Trump Speech. Maybe 8 people in
meeting. 2017 July 15: CNN: Trump Tower Russia meeting: At least eight
people in the room) (6) Rinat Akhmetshin (Wiki)
involved in hacking email, (7) Rob Goldstone (Wiki)
- meeting setup at behest of his client Emin Agalarov (Wiki),
son of Aras Agalarov (Wiki),
plus at least one more (8) Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze (Wiki)
(NYT 2017 July 18: Guest
List at Donald Trump Jr.’s Meeting With Russian Expands
Again)
2016 June 14
6:05 AM Felix Sater: "Michael, please call me, I want to
get the visa's today please let me know (to go to Russia
for the 2016 St Petersburg economic forum) (See: BuzzFeed
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5719169-Trump-Moscow.html#document/p275)
12:06 PM : Michael you are radio silent please
respond" Michael: "I will call you in 2
minutes" "OK"
2:41 PM "I'm here", "One second and I will be down",
"Bar?", No. Atrium snack bar, Coming down"
At this meeting the trip to Russia was canceled.
- WaPo: Russian government hackers penetrated DNC,
stole opposition research on Trump - (TRMS 2017 Oct
27) story from DNC & CrowdStrike - this story killed
the Trump Tower Moscow project (see: 2018 November 30
NBC), 2019
February 5 BuzzFeed) i.e. there's a connection
between Russian election interference and Trump Tower
Moscow.
2016 June 14 - Michael Cohen meets in lobby of Trump Tower and
tells individual 2 (Sater) that he will not be traveling to Moscow
to meet about Trump Tower Moscow (see 2018 November 29 SCO)
2016 June 15 - “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher
(Wiki)
and Trump,” .."No really" McCarthy (Wiki,
R-Calif.) said,.." (WP:
2017 May 17)
2016 June 15 - CrowdStrike: Bears
in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee
- COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR
2016 June 15 - 1:18-cv-03501-JGK:
"Russian intelligence agents began disseminating to the public a
trove of documents stolen from the DNC and other Democratic party
targets. The agents continued these releases through Election Day
in 2016. Some documents were disseminated through “Guccifer 2.0,”
a fictitious persona created by Russian intelligence agents, and
others were disseminated through WikiLeaks."
2016 June 19 - Papadopoulos email: "The Russian ministry of
foreign affairs messaged and said that if Mr. Trump is unable to
make it to Russia, if a campaign rep (me or someone else) can make
it for meetings? I am willing to make the trip off the record if
it's in the interest of Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet
specific people."
2016 June 22: U.S.
v. Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al (1:18-cr-215, District of
Columbia) - pg17 Russia to Guccifer 2.0 "to
[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to
review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are
doing."
2016 June 27 - WaPo: Michael McFaul (Wiki): How
Brexit is a win for Putin - Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin :
“Without Great Britain in the E.U., no one will so zealously
defend the sanctions against us.”
2016 June 29 - Wiki:
Trump campaign hires Jason Miller as as senior communications
adviser.
2016 July - it became known that Cambridge Analytica (Wiki)
is working for Trump campaign
2016 July 6 - Politico: Trump
urges Russia to hack Clinton's email -
2016 July 6 - U.S. v.
Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al (1:18-cr-215, District of
Columbia) - pg 18: "if you have
anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic]
days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will
solidify bernie supporters behind her after" response "ok... i
see" Organization 1 explained "we think trump has only 25%
chance of winning against hillary...so conflict between bernie
and hillary is interesting"
2016 July 7 - WaPo: Manafort
offered to give Russian billionaire ‘private briefings’ on 2016
campaign (2017 Sep 20) - "...message be sent to Oleg
Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with whom Manafort had done
business in the past, these people said. “If he needs private
briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016,
email..." 2016 July 7 or 8 - Carter Page
gives speech to Higher Economic School in Moscow (Trump
Steele Dossier pg 30) he tells Sessions (CNN
Nov 3, 2017)
2016 July - Christopher Steel (Wiki)
supplies dossier (Wiki)
to FBI agent in Rome.
2016 July - After Clinton campaign emails are released Mr.
Alexander Downer notifies the Australian government about his late
May 2016 meeting with Papadopoulos. Australia notifies the
FBI. (TRMS 3Jan2018)
2016 July - FBI starts investigation into Russia helping
Trump campaign. He declined the offer to be White House
communications director.
2016 July 11 - 1:18-cv-03501-JGK:
"the Trump Campaign intervened to prevent other Republicans from
inserting anti-Russian language regarding Ukraine into the GOP
platform."
2016 July 14 to 18 - 1:18-cv-03501-JGK
pdf pg 5: Russian intelligence operatives transmitted stolen
DNC documents to WikiLeaks, which promised to release them in time
to disrupt the Democratic National Convention.
2016 July 15 - Twitter:
Trump chooses Mike Pence as Vice Presidential running mate.
2016 July 15 - USA Today: Reports:
At least 90 dead in attempted Turkish coup - "...President
Obama urged all parties in Turkey to support the government
of President Erdogan." "A lawyer for the Turkish government,
Robert Amsterdam, said "there are indications" that a cleric
living in exile in Pennsylvania (Fethullah Gulen) had "direct
involvement" with the coup plotters."
2016 July 15 - General Michael T. Flynn at Act! for America (Wiki:
anti-Muslim, Pro-Trump) Trump campaign event speaks (YouTube) about how
the military coup was "worth clapping for" (see 2016 July 26 for
Flynn taking the opposite stance for money)
2016 July 16 - CBS: Donald
Trump offered Chris Christie vice president role before Mike
Pence, sources say - "Manafort had arranged for Trump to
meet with his first choice for the job on July 13: Indiana
Governor Mike Pence.
"
2016 July 18 - WaPo: Trump
campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine - "...Paul
Manafort, worked as a lobbyist
for the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president Viktor
Yanukovych for more than a decade." Sessions & Page speek with
Kislyak (WaPo 2017 March 2)
---------------------------------------
2016 July 19 - NBC: It’s
Official: Trump Wins GOP Presidential
Nomination -
---------------------------------------
2016 July 20 - Pavel_Sheremet died in a car explosion in downtown
of Kyiv (Wiki)
Prosecutor General Yuriy
Lutsenko described it as a murder, the best television
reporter in Belarus
2016 July 20 - DOJ: United
States Seeks to Recover More Than $1 Billion Obtained from
Corruption Involving Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund -
see TRMS 2018 March 9
2016 July 21 - LAT: In
a shift, Republican platform doesn't call for arming Ukraine
against Russia, spurring outrage -
2016 July 22 - Wikileaks publishes DNC email database
(source: Guccifer 2.0 (Wiki, DNC
email leak) - this is DNC staffer email
2016 July 22 - Guccifer 2.0 Tweet
- taking credit for supplying WikiLeaks with the Clinton emails.
2016 July 24 -Trump
Twitter: The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the
biased media will say how great they are doing! E-mails say the
rigged system is alive & well!
2016 July 25 - 2016 Democratic National
Convention (Wiki)
- email leak effect on DNC convention (Wiki)
2016 July 24 - Trump
Tweet: "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the
disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written
(stupid), because Putin likes me."
2016 July 24 - Trump
Tweet: "If the Republican Convention had blown up with
e-mails, resignation of boss and the beat down of a big player.
(Bernie), media would go wild
2016 July 25 - Trump
Tweet: "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the
disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written
(stupid), because Putin likes me
2016 July 25? - Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Wiki)
is asked to resign by Obama after the DNC email leak (See: 2016
July 22)
2016 July 25 - Lawfareblog: What
Does the US Government Know About Russia and the DNC Hack? -
2016 July 25 - Stone email to Jerome Corsi, Subject: Get to
Julian Assange Body: “Get to Julian Assange @ Ecuadorian Embassy
in London and get the pending WikiLeaks emails . . . they deal
with (Clinton) Foundation, allegedly.” See 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018 2016 July 26 - (see 2018 December 12
Indictment) - Flynn had detailed discussion with Rafiekian about
going to work on the behalf of the government of Turkey to go
after Fethullah Gulen. Rafiekian email: "We are ready to
engage on what needs to be done". (see 2016 November 8 The
Hill article)
2016 July 26 - NYT: Spy
Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C. - DNC
emails posted at Wikileaks by "Guccifer 2.0"
2016 July 26 - TrumpTweet:
For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia. - this killed
the Trump World Tower Moscow deal see: 2018 May 17 BuzzFeed
2016 July 27 - WaPo: The
other remarkable, pro-Russia thing that Donald Trump just said
-
2016 July 27 - Breibart: To
Destroy ISIS, We Must Give Its Victims the Tools to Fight Back
by Sam Patten -
2016 July 27 - "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you'll be able
to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said, speaking
about Hillary Clinton's deleted emails from her private email
account from her time as secretary of state. "I think you'll
probably be rewarded mightily by our press." (NPR
2016 December 12)
2016 July 27 - WaPo: The
other remarkable, pro-Russia thing that Donald Trump just said
- "QUESTION: I would like to know if you became president, would
you recognize (inaudible) Crimea as Russian territory? And also if
the U.S. would lift sanctions that are (inaudible)? TRUMP: We'll
be looking at that. Yeah, we'll be looking.
2016 July 27 - U.S. v.
Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al (1:18-cr-215, District of
Columbia) pg 7 "22. "For example, on or about July 27 2016,
the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first
time email accounts at a domain hosted by a thirdparty provider
and used by Clinton's personal office."
2016 July 27 - Wired: Here’s
What We Know About Russia and the DNC Hack -
2016 July 29 - WaPo: Here’s
what we know about Donald Trump and his ties to Russia -
2016 July 29 - Atlantic:
Did Manafort Use Trump to Curry Favor with a Putin Ally? -
Manafort emailed his old lieutenant Konstantin Kilimnik (Russian),
who had worked for him for a decade in the Ukrainian capital,
Kiev.“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage,
right?” Manafort wrote. “Absolutely,” Kilimnik responded a few
hours later from Kiev. “Every article.”“How do we use to get
whole,” Manafort asks. “Has OVD operation seen?”
2016 July 31 - Stone email to Jerome Corsi, Subject: “Call me
MON, Body: Jerome Corsisee's associate in the United Kingdom
“should see Julian Assange see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 July 31 - NYT: How
Paul Manafort Wielded Power in Ukraine Before Advising Donald
Trump -
2016 August & end of September - Trump's server has DNS
look up pings from Russian Alpha Bank B and Spectrum
Health (tied to DeVos Prince)
2016 August ?? - The Intercept: Top-Secret NSA Report
Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election -NSA
Report: "Russian General Staff Main Intelligence
Directorate.." i.e. not private hackers in Russia, but the Russian
Government.
2016 August 2 - Jerome Corsi email to Stone that he was in Europe
and planned to return in or around mid-August. “Word is friend in
embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in
Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.” “Time to let more
than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready
to drop HRC. That appears to be the game hackers are now about.
Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke
– neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus,
setting stage for Foundation debacle.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
"This goes, I think, very much to the heart of
what the Special Counsel's Office is
investigating. And in 2016 there is an in-person
meeting with someone who the Government has certainly
proffered to this Court in the past, is understood by
the FBI, assessed to be -- have a relationship with
Russian intelligence, that there is [redacted] And there
is an in-person meeting at an unusual time for somebody
who is the campaign chairman to be spending time, and to
be doing it in person. That meeting and what
happened at that meeting is of significance to the
special counsel. The -- in looking at the issue of
what [redacted], all are the focus of -- and are
raised by the issue of the August 2nd meeting.
"...When the meeting broke up, prosecutors said,
Mr. Manafort “took the precaution” of leaving with Mr.
Gates through a separate door than Mr. Kilimnik. (pdf pg
71 line 6)"
"There is no question that Mr. Manafort had
communications with people at the State Department
(Ukraine). There's no question that Mr. Kilimnik
did. [redacted]"
"Exhibit 236, which is a 302 with respect to Mr. Gates"
on "page 3 it discusses the August 2nd meeting.". . .
"Mr. Gates talks about the August. 2nd meeting and
actually has Mr. Manafort walking Mr. Kilimnik through
[redacted]"
The Ukraine Peace Plan is another issue discussed at
this meeting?
2016 August ? - WSJ:
"Trump donor Rebekah Mercer in August 2016 asked the chief
executive of a data-analytics firm (Wiki)
working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign whether the
company could better organize the Hillary Clinton-related emails
being released by WikiLeaks..."
2016 August ? - ...yacht trip with Deripaska and Prikhodko (see
2018 February 27 - WaPo: A
self-described sex expert says she will spill information on
Trump and Russia to get out of a Thai jail) Nikolai
Patrushev in Thailand on 27 Feb 2018 when the story broke, so may
have had a part in getting Anastasia Vashukevich arrested in a
country known for sexual freedom. 2016 August 3 - meeting in Trump Tower
arranged by Erik Prince: Donald Trump Jr., George Nader, Joel
Zamel, "After Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Nader paid Mr. Zamel a
large sum of money, described by one associate as up to $2
million. " see: 2018 May 19: NYT
2016 August 4 - CIA Director John Brennan on scheduled phone call
with Alexander Bortnikov (FSB) topics: Syria, Russia’s harassment
of U.S. diplomats, Russia’s interference in the American election
(Yahoo
2018 March 9)
2016 August 4 - Roger Stone on InfoWars: "The Clinton campaign
narrative that the Russians favor Donald Trump and the Russians
are leaking this information, this is inoculation because as you
said earlier, they know what is coming and it is
devastating. Let's remember that their defense to all the
Clinton Foundation scandals has been not "we didn't do it,' but
'you have no proof. Yes but you have no proof.' I
think Julian Assange has that proof and I think he is going to
furnish it for the American people." (CNN
April 4, 2018)
2016 August 4 - Stone wrote to former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg
that he had dinner with Assange the night before (WSJ
April 2, 2018)
2016 August 5 - Breitbart, Roger Stone: Dear
Hillary: DNC Hack Solved, So Now Stop Blaming Russia -
2016 August 5 - NYT: I
Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton. by
Michael J. Morell
(Wiki)
- "Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job,
but he may well pose a threat to our national
security." "In the intelligence business, we would say
that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of
the Russian Federation."
2016 August 8 - at Southwest Broward Republican Organization,
Roger Stone says: “I actually have communicated with Assange. I
believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton
Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may
be.” (WaPo 13 March 2018 & 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018)
2016 August 8 - NYT: 50
G.O.P. Officials Warn Donald Trump Would Put Nation’s Security
‘at Risk’ - Letter
-
2016 August 9 - "..Flynn and the Flynn Intel Group (Wiki)
signed a contract with Inovo BV (Muckety)
for $600,000 over 90 days to run an influence campaign aimed at
discrediting Fethullah Gulen (Wiki),
an reclusive cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and whom Mr. Erdogan
(Wiki)
has accused of orchestrating a failed coup in Turkey last summer."
2016 August 9 - WikiLeaks
Tweet - ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k
reward for information leading to the conviction for the murder of
DNC staffer Seth Rich. (Wiki: Seth
Rich Conspiracy)
2016 August 10 - (see 2016 July 26, 2018 December 12 Indictment,
2016 November 8 The Hill) - email subject: "Truth" to Rafiekian
& Flynn: "I met with [Turkish Minister #1] and explained our
proposed approach." and another email with same subject: "I just
finished in Ankara after several meetings today with [Turkish
Minister #2] and [Turkish Minister #1]. I have a green light
to discuss confidentiality, budget and scope of the contract."
2016 August 10 - "Stone tells a local Republican Party group in
Florida "I've actually communicated with Julian Assange."" (CNN
March 20, 2017)
2016 August 12 - Stone says in interview “in communication with
Julian Assange” but was “not at liberty to discuss what I have.”
see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 14 NYT: Secret
Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
- ledger shows Paul Manafort listed for a total of 12.7 million
dollars. Viktor F. Yanukovych (Wiki)
2016 August 15 - U.S.
v. Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al (1:18-cr-215, District of
Columbia)- Guccifer 2.0 writes to Trump
campaign "thank u for writing back.. do u find anyt[h]ing
interesting in the docs i posted?" 17 Aug: "please tell me if i
can help u anyhow... it would be a great pleasure to me".
Sept 9: "what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the
decocrats entire presidential campaign." the response was
"[p]retty standard." & Guccifer 2.0 received a request
for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress.
The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent
the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate's
opponent.
2016 August 16 - Stone interview: “it became known on this program
that I have had some back-channel communication with WikiLeaks and
Julian Assange" see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 16 WaPo - Trump
adviser Michael T. Flynn on his dinner with Putin and why Russia
Today is just like CNN - interview with Michael Flynn 2016 august 17 - NBC
- FBI: Trump & his top aids's (including Flynn) first
intelligence briefing - includes warning about Russian attempts to
spy (TRMS & NBC:
2017 December 19)
2016 August 18 - NBC:
Donald Trump Aide Paul Manafort Scrutinized for Russian Business
Ties - "In 2008, according to court records, senior
Trump aide Paul Manafort's firm was involved with a
Ukrainian oligarch named Dmytro Firtash (Wiki) in
a plan to redevelop a famous New York hotel, the Drake. The total
value of the project was $850 million. Firtash's company planned
to invest over $100 million, the records say."
2016 August 18 - Politico: Manafort’s man in Kiev;The Trump
campaign chairman’s closeness to a Russian Army-trained linguist
turned Ukrainian political operative is raising questions,
concerns. - Konstantin Kilimnik 2016 August 19 - Paul
Manafort (Wiki)
resigned as Trump campaign manager (Russian connections), March
2016 he replaced Corey Lewandowski (Wiki)
as Trump's campaign manager.
2016 August 18 - Stone TV interview: had communicated with the
head of WikiLEaks through an “intermediary, somebody who is a
mutual friend.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 19 - Paul Manafort creates a shell
company and it received millions of dollars (NYT
April 12, 2017, 377 Union St)
2016 August 19 Friday- text from Randy Credico to Stone: “I’m
going to have Julian Assange on my show next Thursday.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 21 Sunday - text from Randy Credico to Stone: “I have
Julian Assange on Thursday so I’m completely tied up on that
day.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 21 - Trump adviser Roger Stone (Wiki,
see 2017 May 17 Netflix) repeatedly claimed to know of forthcoming
WikiLeaks dumps (CNN: 2017 March 2017) Roger Stone
tweets "it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel." -
see: 2016 October 3 and October 7 - 5pm
2016 Gardian: British
spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia
- "..GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan (Wiki),
passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan
(Wiki)."
(See August 25, 2016 below)
2016 August 23 - Randy Credico asked STONE during a radio
interview, “You’ve been in touch indirectly with Julian Assange .
. . Can you give us any kind of insight? Is there an October
surprise happening?” STONE responded, “Well, first of all, I don’t
want to intimate in any way that I control or have influence with
Julian Assange I do not. . . . We have a mutual friend, somebody
we both trust and therefore I am a recipient of pretty good
information.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 25 Thursday - Julian Assange is guest on Randy
Credico's radio show. see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 25 - CIA starts classified briefings of a few
Congressmen (Wiki: Gang
of 8) (NYT
4/7/2017), starting with Harry Reid (Wiki) that
Russia is working to get Trump elected (not just trying to break
down democracy). Reid writes to James B. Comey (Wiki)
about it, but the FBI had already started an investigation in July
2016.
2016 August 26 Friday - text from Randy Credico to Stone: "Julian
Assange talked about you last night" Stone asked what he said,
Randy responded “He didn’t say anything bad we were talking about
how the Press is trying to make it look like you and he are in
cahoots.”
2016 August 27 Saturday- text from Randy Credico to Stone: “We are
working on a Julian Assange radio show,” and that Randy was in
charge of the project" In a text message sent later that day,
Person 2 added, Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary.”
see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 August 29 - NYT: Harry
Reid's Letter to James Comey - Reid has announced his
retirement long before this so is speaking his mind. 27Aug2016.pdf
-
2016 September 5 - WaPo: U.S.
investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November
elections - "...to sow public distrust..."
Coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr.
2016 September 8 -Jeff Sessions (Wiki)
meets with Sergey Kislyak (Wiki) in
Sessions office
2016 September 9 - Papadopoulos: “Received a request from Interfax
Russian News Agency with Ksenia Baygarova on U.S.-Russia ties
under a President Trump. What do you think?” “If the campaign
wants me to do it, can answer similar to the answers I gave in
April while in Israel.” see: 2018 March 23 WaPo
2016 September 14 - Mother
Jones: How Did an Alleged Russian Mobster End Up on Trump’s Red
Carpet? - see 2013 April 16, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, Vadim
Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik, Illya, Hillel Nahmad,
2016 September 18 - Stone text to Randy Credico: “I am e-mailing u
a request to pass on to Julian Assange.” Randy responded
“Ok,” and added in a later text message, “[j]ust remember do not
name me as your connection to Assange you had one before that you
referred to.”
on or about 2016 September 18 - Stone email to Randy
Credico an article with allegations against then-candidate
Clinton related to her service as Secretary of State. STONE
stated, “Please ask Assange for any State or HRC e-mail from
August 10 to August 30—particularly on August 20, 2011 that
mention [the subject of the article] or confirm this narrative.”
on or about 2016 September 19 - Stone text to Randy Credico:
“Pass my message . . . to Assange.” Randy's response: “I did.”
see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 September 19 - meeting at
Essex House hotel in Manhattan: Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Cavusoglu
(Wiki),
Berat Albayrak (Wiki, WikiLeaks)
the energy minister for Erdogan, president of Turkey (Wiki),
former CIA director James Woolsey (Wiki)
- Ref WSJ
March 24, 2017 -
2016 September 19 -
Getty Images: General Michael Flynn,Ret,
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL),
and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump look on as
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
speaks during a meeting at the Plaza Hotel on September 19, 2016
in New York... See: 2018 March 23 WaPo Papadopoulos
2016 September 20 - New Youk Post: Trump has sit-down with
Egypt’s president -
2016 September 20 - WikiLeaks Tweet to Trump Jr.: “A PAC run
anti-Trump site putintrump.org
is about to launch," “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We
have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who
is behind it. Any comments?” (The Atlantic 12 Nov 2017)
2016 September 20 - WaPo: Securing
Tomorrow with David Ignatius: James Clapper Interview -
2016 September 21 - Trump Jr. Tweet: “Off the record I don’t know
who that is, but I’ll ask around, Thanks.” (The Atlantic 12 Nov
2017) Later Trump Jr. notified: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway,
Brad Parscale, and Jared Kushner & Hope Hicks, telling them
WikiLeaks had made contact. (The Atlantic 12 Nov 2017)
2016 September 23 - Yahoo: U.S.
intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin
- Carter Page see: TRMS 2 Feb 2018
2016 September 23 - Life News: Donald
Trump Releases 2nd List of Potential Supreme Court Judges: “I
Will Nominate Someone Like Scalia” - 2nd list, more
diversity, not not Brett Kavanaugh "This list is definitive and I
will choose only from it in picking future Justices of the United
States Supreme Court." Mueller appointed 2016 May 17 (4 months
prior)
2016 September 25 - Politico: Conway
denies Trump campaign ties to Russia figure - "...Carter
Page, whose nebulous ties with Russia are under scrutiny, is not
connected to the Trump campaign." Conway lied. ""He's certainly
not part of the campaign I'm running," said Kellyanne Conway"
2016 September 26 - WaPo: Trump’s
Russia adviser speaks out, calls accusations ‘complete garbage’
-
2016 September 26 - Carter Page resigns as Trump foreign
policy advisor
2016 September 30 - Interfax: George
Papadopoulos: Sanctions have done little more than to turn
Russia towards China - see 2018 March 23 WaPo
2016 September 30 - Randy Credico text to Stone: photo of Randy
standing outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where was
Assange located. see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 September - U.S. v. Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et
al (1:18-cr-215, District of Columbia) - 34. DNC's
analytics stolen (data on individual voters) also see: 2016
October 27 - The Hill Trump
aide reveals 'three major voter suppression operations' - It
appears that Trump aid had already seen the DNC analytics and had
a strategy on how to use them.
2016 October (early) - FBI agents interview Mr. Steele about the
dossier in Europe. (NYT
2017Dec30)
2016 October 1 - Forture: DHS
Confirms Hackers Targeted Election Systems in 20 States -
Russia-based hackers
2016 October 1 Saturday - Randy Credico text messages to Stone
"big news Wednesday . . . now pretend u don’t know me . . .
Hillary's campaign will die this week" see: 2018 November 14 NBC, 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 October 2 - Roger Stone email to Randy Credico, Subject: WTF
(What The Fuck), link to (? Jesse
Rodriguez Tweet, i.e. a fake story) "Due to security
concerns at the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange's balcony
announcement on Tues has been cancelled, per @wikileaks” Randy
responded to STONE, “head fake.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 October 2 - Roger Stone text to Randy Credico: “Did Assange
back off.” On or about October 3, 2016, Randy initially responded,
“I can’t tal[k] about it.” After further exchanges with STONE,
Person 2 said, “I think it[’]s on for tomorrow.” Person 2 added
later that day, “Off the Record Hillary and her people are doing a
full-court press they [sic] keep Assange from making the next dump
. . . That’s all I can tell you on this line . . . Please leave my
name out of it.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 October 2 - Roger Stone Tweet:Wednesday@HillaryClinton
is done. #Wikileaks.—
Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) October
2, 2016 (The Hill 10/02/16 11:22 AM EDT)
2016 October 3 - STONE wrote to a supporter involved with the
Trump Campaign, “Spoke to my friend in London last night. The
payload is still coming.” see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 October 3 - Randy Credico- Roger Stone text messages: "There
will be an announcement but not on the balcony" see: 2018
November 14 NBC
2016 October 3 - STONE received an email from a reporter who had
connections to a high-ranking Trump Campaign official that asked,
“ Julian Assange – what’s he got? Hope it’s good.” STONE responded
in part, “It is. I’d tell [the high-ranking Trump Campaign
official] but he doesn’t call me back.”
2016 October 3 - WikiLeaks Tweet to Trump Jr. “Hiya, it’d be great
if you guys could comment on/push this story,” (attached was this
link: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/782906224937410562)
(The Atlantic 12 Nov 2017)
2016 October 3 - Trump Jr. Tweet in response: “Already did that
earlier today,”“It’s amazing what she can get away with.” (The
Atlantic 12 Nov 2017)
2016 October 3 - Twitter:
Roger Stone: "I have total confidence that @wikileaks
and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American
people soon #LockHerUp"
2016 October 4 - Stone email to Stephen K. Bannon (chief campaign
strategist) implying he had information about WikiLeaks’s plans to
release material that would be damaging to Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton. see: 2018 November 1 WaPo
2016 October 4 - Brian McCauley receives $5,000 from Michael
T. Flynn (see FARA2 below pdf pg 12)
2016 October 4 - Paiul E. emails "Unrelated to specific
presidential campaigns, I've been involved in securing a VERY
private line of communication between the Kremlin and key GOP
leadeers through, of all conduits the NRA." (see affidavit 2018
July pg 11)
2016 October 4 - Assange has press conference (YouTube), but nothing
about emails. Shortly afterwards, STONE received an email
from the high-ranking Trump Campaign official asking about the
status of future releases by Organization 1. STONE answered that
the head of Organization 1 had a “[s]erious security concern” but
that Organization 1 would release “a load every week going
forward.” Later that day, on or about October 4, 2016, the
supporter involved with the Trump Campaign asked STONE via text
message if he had “hear[d] anymore from London.” STONE replied,
“Yes - want to talk on a secure line - got Whatsapp?” (Wiki)
STONE subsequently told the supporter that more material would be
released and that it would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign.
see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
2016 October 5 - Stone Tweet - “Payload coming. #Lockthemup,”
2016 October 5 - Maria Butina and Torshin tweet each other (see
affidavit 2018 July pg 11 - 13)
2016 October 7 - Twitter: Jason Miller (Wiki):
2/2
Our data-driven campaign is shifting resources from
over-performing markets to new battlegrounds w/in the
battlegrounds. Buy is growing. - did he get DNC analytics? 2016 October 7 - 4pm WaPo: Trump
recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005
(Access Hollywood grab them by the pussy tape) -
2016 October 7 - 5pm Wikileaks starts publishing Podesta
emails (Wiki, Politifact
Dec 18, 2016) one hour after release of Access Hollywood
tape. - Who caused this release at this time? See (2019 January 29 WaPo:
i.e. Roger Stone)
Shortly after Organization 1’s release, an associate of
the highranking Trump Campaign official sent a text message to
STONE that read “well done.” In subsequent conversations with
senior Trump Campaign officials, STONE claimed credit for having
correctly predicted the October 7, 2016 release. see: 2019_January_23_1:19-cr-00018
"Archived Content
In an effort to keep DHS.gov current, the archive contains
outdated information that may not reflect current policy or
programs."
2016 October 7 - WaPo: U.S.
government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to
interfere with elections - Trump knew the timing of this
article's release
2016 October 8 - email From: P. Manafort, To: S. Calk, Subject:
____, "“You are becoming a very good friend and I look forward to
building our relationship into both a deeper business and personal
one,”
2016 October 10 - Trump
Tweet: Donald Trump, October 10, 2016: "This just came out.
WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks!" - includes video clip
2016 October 12 - WikiLeaks Tweet to Trump Jr.: “Hey Donald, great
to see you and your dad talking about our publications,” “Strongly
suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” wlsearch.tk “There’s many great
stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows
[sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released
Podesta Emails Part 4.” (The Atlantic 12 Nov 2017)
2016 October 12 6:46 AM - (15 minutes after the above tweet
to Trump Jr) Trump
Tweet: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of
incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged
system!”
2016 October 13 - Brian McCauley receives $3,000 from Michael T.
Flynn (see FARA2 below pdf pg 12)
2016 October 13 - Stone private Twitter: described himself as a
defender of the organization and objected to its “ strategy of
attacking me,” the Atlantic reported
this year. WikiLeaks replied to Stone in a private message
that“false claims of association” were being used by Democrats to
undermine the group. Stone answered: “You need to figure out
who your friends are.”
2016 October 14 - Trump Jr. Tweet:
“For those who have the time to read about all the corruption and
hypocrisy all the @wikileaks emails are right here: http://wlsearch.tk/,”
2016 October - see 2017 June 25 WaPo article: Kushner firm’s $285
million Deutsche Bank loan came due just before Election Day
2016 October 15 - FISA court gives permission for the Department
of Justice to investigate two (unnamed) banks suspected of being
part of the Kremlin’s undercover influence operation (Guardian
April 13, 2017) & to investigate Carter Page (WAPO
April 11, 2017), (BBC 2017 Jan 12)
2016 October 17 - a critical date in the Trump-Steele dossier.
Probably because of the 7 October official government charge of
interference.
2016 October 18 - Brian McCauley admits leaking info on
HRC (but not that he received money) (New York Times: Ex-F.B.I.
Official Acknowledges Role in New Clinton Email Controversy)
2016 October 21 - FISA authorizes First surveillance of Carter
Page . (see Nunes memo 2018 February 2)
2016 October 27 - The Hill: Trump
aide reveals 'three major voter suppression operations' -
was this the result of getting the DNC analytics? See: 2018
July 18 TRMS DNC data - this may be a call to the Russians on who
to target. Note "The Hill " has published fake articles
planted by the Trump campaign (Manafort).
2016 October 30 - Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid writes an open letter to FBI Director James Comey, "In my
communications with you and other top officials in the national
security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive
information about close ties and coordination between Donald
Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government," 2016
October 31 - Mother Jones: A
Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian
Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump - Fusion GPS (Wiki) was
funded then by an unnamed Republican client. Later the
Democrats funded the dossier. 2016 October 31 - Slate: Was
a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? - Alfa Bank see
2018 July 11 TRMS - lawyer from Alpha bank nominated by Trump for
DOJ job.
2016 October 31 - WaPo: Harry
Reid’s incendiary claim about ‘coordination’ between Donald
Trump and Russia - 30Oct2016Letter.pdf
- accuses Comey of violation of Hatch Act and not disclosing
investigation of Trump-Russia (Comey later testified that the
Clinton investigation was closing while the Trump-Russia
investigation was just starting) 2016 October 31 - NYT: Investigating
Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia -Brooke's
comment: It's legal for law enforcement to lie to suspects and the
media. (this story was false - which had many ramifications)
This is one week prior to the election. It had a
number of impacts. Steele said it was because of this
article that he leaked the dossier. Why did Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers publish a fake
news story just prior to the election? (see: 2018 October 9
TRMS)
Between election day and the inauguration
Trump is not the president and has no authority to act as
president. So any negotiations with Russia are not
legal.
2016 November 8 & 9 - Maria Butina and Torshin email: decided
to use WatsApp (secure)
to discuss who should be Secretary of State. (see: affidavit 2018
July pg 13)
2016 November 9 - Russian State Duma: "Three minutes ago Hillary
Clinton admitted her defeat in US presidential elections and a
second ago Trump started his speech as an elected president of the
United States of America and I congratulate y ou on this". (from:
House of Trump, House of Putin)
2016 November 10 - at Oval Office Meeting Obama warrns Trump
not to hire Michael Flynn. (NBC)
2016 November 11 - abcnews: Donald
Trump Replaces Chris Christie With Mike Pence as Head of
Transition Team -
2016 November 11 -
Daily Caller: Trump’s Top Military Adviser Is Lobbying For
Obscure Company With Ties To Turkish Government - Mike
Flynn
2016 November 11 - Maria Butina emails Torshin about Mitt Romney
is likely SoS - how do "our people feel about that? (see:
affidavit 2018 July pg 14)
2016 November 12 - Maria Butina holds birthday party at Cafe Deluxe. Paul
Erickson (Wiki)
(see: affidavit 2018 July) 2016
November 12 - Facebook: Konstantin Rykow: "It's
time for great stories.... (I don't know how to verify is
this is his facebook post?) based on The Plot to Destroy Democracy
by Nance pg 275, note 13.
Привет мир "It's time for great stories. I'll tell you about it
now, as Donald Trump and I have decided to free America and make
it great again. It took us two years and two more days.
It began at night from 6 TO 7 November 2012
It was the night of the presidential election. Sparring between
Obama and Republican Romney. I was so crazy about Twitter, and I
was entertaining myself by online broadcasting and commenting on
the results.
It's no secret that I always sympathizer Republicans (except
Mccain) and drowning against the Democratic State Department.
Professor Майкл Makfol this story remembers well and to his role
in it we will come back.
All right! To all normal people then it was obvious that if
Barack Obama was given a second term, it would be a disaster for
the world.
At that time, we knew very well that in the arab spring, the
case would not end and Ukraine, sanctions, Syria and so on.
Obama's victory will be devastating not only for Russia, but
also for the world.
Unfortunately, Romney was unable to rip off the nefarious
liberals at the time, and at 8:20 am admitted his defeat. He's
just a weak politician. Nothing personal.
To say that I was very worried.. is not to say anything. I was
furious. Wrote angry tweets and sent curses.
The only person on the entire network who fought to the end, did
not want to admit and tolerate the results, was Donald Fredovič.
He raised his plane in the sky and flew between New York and DC,
calling on the world through his twitter - to start a march on
Washington!
Without a second thought, I wrote to him a replaj who sounded
Russian like, " I'm ready. What do you have to do?"
But.. There was no response from trump.
I admit to being honest, I thought Donald was off the subject. I
was even more upset and decided to go to bed.
I couldn't sleep. I was. I was looking at the ceiling, and I had
the terrifying images of the upcoming future in my head. Wars.
Global terrorism. Coups D ' état.
All of a sudden! There was a thin alert in DM.
I opened the Ipad and I didn't believe my eyes.
It was a message from Donald Trump. Actually, a picture. In the
picture he sat in the chair of his jet, enthusiasm smiled and
showed me the thumb of his right hand.
To be continued...
Part Two:
What was our idea with Donald Trump?
In four years and two days.. It was necessary to get into the
brain and seize all possible means of mass perception of
reality. Ensure Donald's victory in the us President's election.
Then create a political union between the United States, France,
Russia (and other states) and establish a new world order.
Four years and two days is a very long time, and the other is
very small. Our idea was crazy, but feasible.
In order to make things clear, it was necessary to "Digitize"
all possible types of modern man.
Donald has decided to invite the special science division of
Cambridge University for this task.
British scientists from Cambridge Analytica offered to make out
of 5 thousand existing human psihotipov - the "perfect image" of
trump's possible supporter. Then.. put that image back on all
the psihotipy and thus find the universal key to anyone and
everyone.
The development eventually cost Donald Fredoviču $ 5 million.
But! He got into his hands a secret super weapon.
You know, who's been doing a p.r. ad.. will know what that
means.
Do you remember how much money the Clinton funds and "their
supporters" spent on a campaign around the world? 5 times more
than trump.
But who invested in the network promotion 5 times more Hillary
and became president? Also Donald Trump.
It was only possible to upload these data to information flows
and social networks. And we started looking for those who could
do better than others.
At the very beginning of Braves and romantic, there was not
much. A couple of hacker factions, civil journalists from
wikileaks and political strategist Михаил Kovalev.
The next step was to develop a system of transfer of tasks and
information so that no gébuha and nsa could burn it.
How to make sure that even people do not speak each other's
language, could exchange information faster than everyone,
understand each other with completely, feel trends and influence
their development?
The programming of such a system has left for about a year.
Another year left for tests and refinement. In the end. In a
year with a small one, we set up the "Mediafilʹtr" to everyone
who had been able to pull up our plot and opened the trump-2016.
Portal on August 18, 2015
August 19 At 9:00 me in DM came a message from Vladimir
Volfovich.
To be continued..." Konstantin Rykov
2016 November 15 - email from Steve Calk to Paul Manafort:
Subject: Candidate for SEC ARMY - see TRMS 2018 August 13 US v. P.
Manafort exhibit 452
2016 November 17 - Yahoo News: Michael
Flynn, Trump’s reported pick for national security adviser, sat
in on intel briefings — while advising foreign clients -
(see: 2016 November 18 Letter)
2016 November 18 - Letter
from Elijah Cummings Ranking Member of House Oversight committee
warning about retierd Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
2016 November 19 - NYT: Trump
Meets With Romney as He Starts to Look Outside His Inner Circle
- People being considered fro SoS: Mitt
Romney, Rudolph W. Giuliani & Kris Kobach - Trump
does not know Tillerson and he's not on anyone's radar.
2016 November 21 - "On Nov. 21, 2016, Emin Agalarov’s checking
account received $165,000 from an account based in Russia
belonging to his family. The following day, the account sent
$107,000 to Corsy International, a company run by Kaveladze, the
longtime Agalarov associate who attended the Trump Tower meeting."
(2018 September 12 - Buzzfeed) 2016 November 24 - (BuzzFeed 2017
June 19 - The
Man Who Knew Too Much) - Dr Matthew Puncher died of
multiple stab wounds, deemed a "Suicide". "Russian assassins are
being allowed to operate in Britain with impunity, 17 current and
former high-ranking intelligence officials on both sides of the
Atlantic told BuzzFeed News."
2016 November 24 - email From paul manafort, To: rick gates,
Subject: DOD Service Secretaries: "Rick We need to discuss Steve
Calk for Sec of Army. I hear the list is being considered
this weekend. P" (see 2018 August 14 TRMS)
2016 November 30 - email From Paul Manafort, To: Jared Kushner,
Subject: 3 Recommendations for Major Appointments (see 2018 August
14 TRMS) "Stephen Clak His preference is Secretary of the Army."
2016 November 30 - email from: Jared Kushner, To: Paul Manafort,
Subject: 3 Recommendations for Major Appointments, "On it!" about
getting S. Calk job in White House or ambassadorship
2016 November 30 Maria Butina emails about Russian guest list for
National Prayer Breakfast and that they are coming to establish a
back channel of communication (see: affidavit 2018 July pg
14) "Would Person 2 like to meet them?"
2016 December (early) - "In early December, Kushner met in
New York with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey
Kislyak, and he later sent a deputy to meet with Kislyak.
Flynn was also present at the early-December meeting, and
later that month, Flynn held a call with Kislyak
to discuss U.S.-imposed sanctions against Russia. Flynn initially
mischaracterized the conversation, even to Vice President Pence —
ultimately prompting his ouster from the White House. Kushner
also met in December with Sergey Gorkov, the head of Vnesheconombank,
which has been the subject of U.S. sanctions following Russia’s
annexation of Crimea and its support of separatists in eastern
Ukraine." (WaPo 2017 May 25)
2016 December 1 - meeting in Trump tower with: Sheikh Mohammed bin
Zayed al-Nahyan, Michael Flynn,Jared Kushner & Steve
Bannon. Since al-Nahyan did not notify the State Department
of his visit, the intelligence community was paying a lot of
attention. (see: CNN 2017
2016 December 5 - Foreign Affairs: How
Democracies Fall Apart - Why Populism Is a Pathway to Autocracy
- "authoritarianization"
September 2017 & Seychelles - 2017 January 11 & 12 &
2017 April 3) - WaPo
2017 May 26 - asked for secret communications channel with
Russia
2016 November 29 - book: Russian Roulette (memo by C. Steele):
"...a senior official working at the Russian MFA (Ministry of
Foreign Affairs) reported that a rumour is currently circulating
there that US President Trump's delay in appointing a new
Secretary of State is the result of an intervention by President
Putin/the Kremlin. The latter reportedly have asked that
Trump Appoint a Russia-friendly figure to this position, who was
prepared to move quickly on lifting Ukraine-related sanctions and
cooperation ('security') in Syria. The source assumes the
Kremlin's reported intervention was in response to the possibility
that Mitt Romney, view as hostile to Russia, might be appointed
Secretary." see 2018 March 14 TRMS
2016 November 29 - Twitter: Alexander Torshin: "I've
been interested in this bright figure for a long time. Already 7
years I LM NRA in which it lm very, very long ago... Was sure of
his victory."
2016 December 1 or 2 - Sergey Kislyak, Michael Flynn
and Jared Kushner met at Trump Tower to see if they could
use Russian secure communications to talk to people in Russia (WaPo
2017 May 26)
2016 December 5 - Brian McCauley receives $15,000 from Michael
T. Flynn (see FARA2 below pdf pg 12)
2016 December 8 - NYT: Carter
Page, Ex-Trump Adviser With Russian Ties, Visits Moscow -
his company: Global
Energy Capital
2016 December 9 - John McCain (Wiki)
passes a copy of the dossier to James Comey (Wiki)
2016 December 9 - emptywheel: UNPACKING THE
NEW CIA LEAK: DON’T IGNORE THE ALUMINUM TUBE FOOTNOTE - "...Russians hacked the
Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to
their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release
whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks."
2016 December 10 - WaPo: FBI
and CIA give differing accounts to lawmakers on Russia’s motives
in 2016 hacks - (My comment: the FBI did not to lie about
their then secret investigation in order to not tip off the
guilty).
2016 December (mid) - Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (Wiki:
MBZ) visited New York (without telling the Obama administration)
and met with Michael T. Flynn, Steve Bannon
& Jared Kushner (Wiki).
This is before the meeting on 2017 January 11 & 12.
2016 December12 - USA Today: Trump
to nominate ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of State
-
2016 December 13 - NYT: Democratic
House Candidates Were Also Targets of Russian Hacking -
(TRMS)
2016 December 13 or 14: Kushner-Gorkov meeting, VEB (see 2017 June
1 WaPo: Explanations....)
2016 December 15 - Guardian: Czechoslovakia
spied on Donald and Ivana Trump, communist-era files show -
2016 December 19 - Andrei
Karlov was shot in Turkey (Wiki)
2016 December 19 - NYT: Austria’s
Far Right Signs a Cooperation Pact With Putin’s Party - Heinz-Christian
Strache (Wiki)
met with Michael T. Flynn 2016 December 20 - Petr
Polshikov was shot in Moscow (Evening
Standard UK)
2016 December 21 - Egypt submitted a UN resolution about Israeli
settlements to be voted on 22 Dec 2016
2016 December 22 - a very senior member of the PTT directed Flynn
to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia,
to learn where each stood and to delay the vote or defeat it.
2016 December 22 - Flynn contacts Kislyak about the UN vote and
asked that Russia vote against it or delay the vote.
2016 December 23 Kislyak tells Flynn that Russia would not vote
against the UN resolution. 2016 December 26 - Oleg
Erovinkin died (Wiki) -
unnamed information source in the Donald Trump–Russia dossier,
an aide to former deputy prime minister Igor Sechin (Wiki)
2016 December - Sergei Mikhailov (FSB) bagged and taken
from meeting (USA
Today)
2016 December - Michael T. Flynn meets with Heinz-Christian
Strache (Wiki),
leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria,
at Trump Tower in New York.[62]
2016 December - Ruslan Stoyanov (top manager for Russia's
largest cybersecurity firm) bagged and taken from meeting (USA
Today) 2016 December 28 Wednesday - Obama
Sancations Imposed on Russia for Russian involvement with election
(Wiki: Russian
Interference with 2016 election) including expelling 35
people and taking over Russian compounds in New York City,
Maryland's Eastern Shore & San Francisco. Executive
Order 13757 & modifies EO
13694 April 1 2015Taking additional Steps to Address the
National Emergency with Respcet ot Significant Malicious
Cyber-Enabled Activities (BC comment: Trump and his team had no
prior knowledge of this. The IC knew this would trigger
responses and were waiting for them. Probably more lines
were tapped and we've only heard about theKislyak-Flynn calls.)
The Entities & Individuals mentioned in EO 13757 (the U.S.
Treasury page has more entities and individuals (?).
Entities
1. Main Intelligence Directorate (a.k.a.
Glavnoe Razvedyvatel'noe Upravlenie) (a.k.a. GRU); Moscow,
Russia
2. Federal Security Service (a.k.a.
Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti) (a.k.a FSB); Moscow, Russia
3. Special Technology Center (a.k.a. STLC,
Ltd. Special Technology Center St. Petersburg); St. Petersburg,
Russia
4. Zorsecurity (a.k.a. Esage Lab); Moscow, ..
Russia
5. Autonomous Noncommercial Organization
"Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing
Systems" (a.k.a. ANO PO KSI); Moscow, Russia
Individuals
1. Igor Valentinovich Korobov; DOB Aug 3,
1956; nationality, Russian (Wiki)
(current Chief of the GRU (Wiki))
enters US
2. Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov; DOB Oct 18,
1956; nationality, Russian (cyberscoop
Deputy Chief of the GRU)
3. Igor Olegovich Kostyukov; DOB Feb 21,
1961; nationality, Russian (a First Deputy Chief of the GRU)
4. Vladimir Stepanovich Alexseyev; DOB Apr
24, 1961; nationality, Russian (a First Deputy Chief of the GRU)
2016 December 28 Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak calls Flynn (see 2017 November 30 DOJ) right after
the announced sanctions.
2016 December 29 - FBI: GRIZZLY
STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity - See 2016
2016 December 29 - NYT: Obama
Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking -
2016 December 29: White House announcement Fact
Sheet: Actions in Response to Russian Malicious Cyber Activity
and Harassment -
2016 December (updated) 29 USA Today: Obama
sanctions Russian officials over election hacking -
2016 December 29 - Michael T. Flynn 5 phone calls with Sergey
Kislyak (Wiki)
Russia's ambassador to the US (call recorded because Kislyak was
being watched) talks about lifting sanctions (VOX
2017 Feb 20)
2016 December 29 - Michael T. Flynn calls a senior
Presidential Transition Team (PTT) member at Mar-a-Lago
(McFarland?) to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to
Kislyak about U.S. sanctions. Flynn then called Kislyak and
asked him to not escalate but only respond in a reciprocal manner.
Flynn then called the PTT team member to report Russia would not
take retaliatory measures. (see 30 November 2017)
2016 December 29 - (NYT 2017 December
2): "Ms. McFarland wrote, Mr. Flynn would be speaking with
the Russian ambassador, Mr. Kislyak, hours after Mr. Obama’s
sanctions were announced."
2016 December 30 - Guardian: Obama
expels 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for US election
hacking -
2016 December 30 - NBC: Putin:
Russia Won’t Expel U.S. Diplomats in
Retaliation for Sanctions - he was expected to so this is
news.
2016 December 30 - Vladimir Putin releases statement indicating
that Russia would not take retaliatory measures... (see 30
November 2017)
2016 December 30 - Trump
Tweet: "Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he
was very smart!"
2016 December 31 Kislyak calls Flynn confirming Russia
would not retaliate (strange since Trump already knew)
2016 December 31 Flynn talks to Presidential Transition Team (PTT)
senior members about call with Kislyak (why?)
2016 January 4 - Donald F. McGahn II (Wiki),
Trump transition lawyer, was informed that Mike Flynn was under
investigation by the FBI (see 2017 May 17 NYT)
2017 January 5 - Comey, Brennan & Clapper brief Obama about
Kislyak calling Flynn the same day Obama announced the Russian
Sanctions because of election meddling. In a follow on
meeting Obama met with Comey & Yates, Biden & Susan
Rice See: 2017 February 14 - WaPo, 2018 February 12 TRMS, 2018
February 8 - Senate Judiciary
2017 January 5 - James Woolsey (see Sep 19 2016) quits Trump campaign
(why the long time from 19 Sep?)
2017 January 6 - Guardian: Trump
meets with intelligence leaders after calling Russia case
'witch-hunt' -
2017 January 6 - Office of the Director of National Intelligence
releases report on Russian involvement in 2016 election (Wiki,
ODNI)
Russia was involved in election and helped Trump
2017 January 6 - James Comey and other IC leaders give
classified briefing to Donald Trump at Trump Tower on the
IC assessment concerning Russian efforts to interfere in the
election released the same day. (Comey's
7 page written statement) 2017 January 9 - Andrei Malanin
found dead in Greece (BBC)
Russian Consul in Athens, Greece
2017 January 10 - Sessions has run in with Al Franken at his
hearing (WaPo 2017 March 1)
2017 January 10 - Buzzfeed published the uncomfirmed "dossier "These
Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia" (Wiki: Trump
Dossier) dossier written by Christopher Steele, former MI6 agent
(Wiki)
2017 January 11 - Twitter "Russia
has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO
WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!" 2017 January 11 & 12
- meeting at Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean:
Victor Podobnyy, Male1 (Carter Page) meet Erik
Prince (founder of Blackwater (Wiki) & brother of Betsy
DeVos - sec of Ed) - hosted by Mohammed bin Zayed Al
Nahyan (Wiki:
MBZ) see 2017 April 4 Buzzfeed article.
2017 January 12 - BBC: Trump
'compromising' claims: How and why did we get here? - 2
days after the dossier published "...money from the Kremlin going
into the US presidential campaign.",
2017 January 12 - WaPo; Why
did Obama dawdle on Russia’s hacking? - "Flynn phoned
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the
day the Obama administration announced the
expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures
in retaliation for the hacking."
2017 January ? Michael Flynn blocked a military action
against ISIS because Turkey did not want it and was paying him
(see 2017 May 17 Miami Herald)
2017 January 15 - CBS: Face
the Nation transcript January 15, 2017: Pence - Pence
repeats the false Flynn story
2017 January 17 - Carter Page communicated with Steve Bannon
(phone & text) on this date after FISA approved surveillance
on 2016 October 21 see: 2018 February 8 - Politico
2017 January 17 - Global Chairman's Dinner 2017 January 18 (8:30am) -
breakfast at Trump International Hotel (DC): Saudi Arabia,
United Arab Emirates, Israel, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Japan,
Angola and others, Kairat Umarov, two senior Qatari officials,
Pluvious Group, Devin Nunes, Michael Flynn, (see 2019 January 14 -
DailyBeast)
2017 January 18 - NYT: How
Anna Wintour’s Longtime Party Planner Turned to Trump -
Melania's friend paid $26 Million as one of the inauguration
advisers. What did she do? (see 2018 February 16)
2017 January 20 - Trump Inauguration
(Friday)
Alex Copson of ACU Strategic Partners attens
inauguration and said "This is the best day of my life"
because of a project Flynn had brokered was "good to
go". "This is going to make a lot of very wealthy
people." See 2017 December 6 - NYT
2016 January 21 - FISA authorizes Second surveillance of Carter
Page . (see Nunes memo 2018 February 2)
2017 January 24 - Michael Flynn (Tuesday) tells FBI that
he did not talk to Russia about sanctions. They discussed
his "underlying conduct" which was problematic.
2017 Jan 25 - NYT: Top
Russian Cybercrimes Agent Arrested (in Moscow) on Charges of
Treason - Sergei Mikhailov (a senior officer of the
Federal Security Service, or F.S.B. which is implicated in US
election hacking) bagged and arrested.
2017 Jan 16 - USA Today:
Reports: Arrested Russian intel officer allegedly spied for U.S.
- In addition to Sergei Mikhailov two others were arrested
in the same case: Major Dmitry Dokuchaev (an FDSB officer)
and Ruslan Stoyanov (a computer incidents
investigation team leader at Kaspersky Lab (Wiki)),
"Russian media says the FSB believes Mikhailov tipped U.S.
intelligence about Vladimir Fomenko and his server
rental company "King Servers."
2017 January 24 - FBI interviews Michael T. Flynn and Flynn lies
to them about Russia involvement in the election (see 30 November
2017)
2017 January 26 - Sally Yates goes to White House
(Thursday) and warns Don McGahn (Wiki)
that Michael Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail because of
lying about sanction talk with Russians. This is before the
agents could write up their 302 reports (Wiki,
Rachael
Maddow). 2017 January 26 - Alexander
Kadakin (Wiki)
- died in India 26 Jan 2017
2017 January 27 - Sally Yates (Wiki) goes
to White (Friday) House and aswers questions from Don McGahn
about why there's a problem with Michael Flynn.
2017 January 27 - Trump invites James Comey to a dinner in the
Green Room at 6:30 pm by a phone call around noon the same day. (Comey's
7 page written statement)
2017 January 28 - NPR: Trump
Speaks With Putin In Saturday Phone Call - lasts 50 minutes:
Reince Priebus, Mike Pence, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer &
Michael Flynn.
2017 January 30 -Monday Sally Yates orders DOJ
(Wiki)
to NOT defend the Trump's Muslim Ban executive order (Wiki).
2017 January 30 - Trump fires Sally Yates
(Monday), says because of her position on Muslim Ban. But
Michael Flynn continued on as National Security Adviser (Wiki)
and sat in on classified meetings.
2017 January 30 - NYT:
Deutsche Bank Fined in Plan to Help Russians Launder $10 Billion
- the $10 Billion was from VTB, $425 million fine to New York
State’s main financial regulator, Russian mirror trading scheme,
Many of these dollar-based mirror transactions flowed through the
office of Deutsche’s New York bank,
2017 February ?- Trump asks James B. Comey to shut down
investigation of Michael T. Flynn (see 2017 May 16)
2017 February ? - Marie Royce writes to Elliott Broidy asking for
a position, with the top choice "assistant secretary of state for
education and cultural affairs" - Trump nominated her 2018 January
3:Orange County Register. also see: 2018 March 29 Newsweek
2017 February 2 - White
House National Security Advisor Announces NSC Senior Staff
Appointments -
2017 February 2 - National Prayer Breakfast (Wiki)
attended by Maria Butina and a delegation from the Russian
Federation. (see 2018 July 17 affidavit, pg 15) (transcript
of Trump's talk White
House: "We have a lot of very distinguished guests.")
2017 February 2 - John Eisenberg (White House attorney) reviews
transcript of Flynn - Kislyak phone call in SCIF (Wiki)
at DOJ as set up by Yates, but she was fired and so did not attend
(See: 2017 December 20 FP, 2018 February 2 White House, 2018
August 29- NY Books) This is prior to the Trump - Comey
meeting.
2017 February 2 -John Eisenberg reviews Flynn
tapes (NYR
2018/08/29)
2017 February 8 - WaPo asks Michael Flynn if he talked to
Russia about sanctions, he answers: no.
2017 February 9 - WaPo: National
security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian
ambassador, despite denials, officials say - Mike Pence says
this is the first he heard about this. If true why wait 4 more
days?
2017 February 10 - Andrew McCabe brings Flynn phone records to the
Situation Room, Later there's a Meeting in Situation Room (Wiki
- SCIF)
Mike Pence, Reince Priebus & Don McGahn review Flynn - Kislyak
phone records. THey then called Flynn and afterword told
Trump F;lynn “had to be let go” "...the president’s refusal
to fire Flynn was inexplicable. Priebus, McGahn, and a White
House attorney named John Eisenberg, who had listened to the
intercepts six days earlier, were concerned that Trump was
protecting Flynn, and speculated among themselves and with
their subordinates that this might be because the president knew
in advance of Flynn’s dubious, back-channel diplomacy with Russia,
or had even authorized it.see 2018 September 25: NYR: Mike Pence,
Star Witness
2017 February 13 -WaPo: Justice
Department warned White House that Flynn could be vulnerable to
Russian blackmail, officials say -
2017 February 13 - Michael T. Flynn resigned as National
Security Advisor (Wiki).
It appears as if he stayed on in spite of the problems and was
only fired after the WaPo broke the story.
2017 February 14 - Trump asks James B. Comey in
oval office meeting to shut down investigation of Michael T.
Flynn See 2017 May 16 below)
2017 February 14 - Trump when asked about Flynn and
Russia says he will look into it.
2017 February 14 Michael T. Flynn DIA suspends access to
classified information.
2017 February 14 NYT Feb 14, 1017: Trump
Campaign Aids Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence
- Paul Manafort mentioned as was the ongoing FBI investigation.
2017 June 8: Comey says this article has many factual
errors. NYT Response
2017 June 8.
2017 February 14 - After an oval office meeting Trump asks
everyone to leave the room except James Comey (Jeff Sessions left
the room) and asks Comey to let the Flynn matter
go. (Comey's
7 page written statement)
2017 February 14 - WaPo: Flynn’s
swift downfall: From a phone call in the Dominican Republic to a
forced resignation at the White House -
2017 February 15 - Andrew McCabe (Wiki),
deputy director of the FBI after 7:30 AM meeting at White House
was pulled aside and had a 5 minute one-on-one meeting with the
White House Chief of Staff Reince Pribus (Wiki)
about the NYT story yesterday (Feb 14). McCabe
(FBI) told Priebus (WH), ‘I want you to know story
in NYT is BS," (Time,
Feb 24 2017). Why did he say that? This is improper as
it suggests that the executive branch is trying to meddle in
Judaical matter om violation of the separation of power part of
the Constitution.
2017 February 16 - Wikileaks: CIA
espionage orders for the last (2012) French presidential
election -
2017 February 16 - WSJ: Spies
Keep Intelligence From Donald Trump on Leak Concerns -
2017 February 17 - CNN: Harward
says no to national security adviser role - "A friend of
Harward's said he was reluctant to take the job because the White
House seems so chaotic. Harward called the offer a "s***
sandwich," the friend said. A Republican official told CNN
that Harward made it a condition of taking the job that he could
form his own team. In the end, he didn't feel that was the case."
2017February 17 - Brittany Kaiser, a senior executive at Cambridge
Analytica visits Julian Assange at the Ecuador embassy in the UK
(see 2018 June 7 Guardian) This is long after the leak in July
2016 and after the election.
2017 February 18 Reuters:
U.S. inquiries into Russian election hacking include three FBI
probes - Pittsburgh field office: identify the people behind breaches of the
DNC, San Francisco: ID “Guccifer 2”, counterintelligence
Washington: informants and
foreign communications intercepts https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/
2017 February 19 - WaPo: Amid
Russia scrutiny, Trump associates received informal Ukraine
policy proposal - Andrii V. Artemenko, Michael Cohen, Felix
Sater - needed VTB Bank
2017 February 19 - NYT: A
Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump
Associates - Michael D. Cohen, Felix H. Sater,
Paul Manafort, Andrii V. Artemenko, Petro O. Poroshenko. "Mr.
Cohen has a personal connection to Ukraine: He is married to a
Ukrainian woman and once worked with relatives there to establish
an ethanol business." 2017 February 20 - Vitaly
Churkin died (Wiki)
cause of death needed further study,
2017 February 20 - AP: On
foreign policy, Trump still speaking campaign language -
"According to one U.S. official, national security aides have
sought information about Polish incursions in Belarus, an
eyebrow-raising request because little evidence of such activities
appears to exist. Poland is among the Eastern European nations
worried about Trump’s friendlier tone on Russia." (see 2019
January 3 TRMS )
2017 Feb 21 - Forbes:Vladimir Fomenko, The Only Russian With Known Links To
U.S. Political Hacking, Speaks Out -
2017 February 22 - Senator
E. Warren letter to Steven T. Munchin: Anthony Scaramucci
acting as Trump "translator" at Davos in relationship to Russian
Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) which is sanctioned by U.S.
2017 February 23 - Daily Beast:
The Kremlin and GOP Have a New Friend—and Boy, Does She Love
Guns -
2017 February 23 - letter
from Elliott Broidy offering to remove Russian sancetions for $26M
covering 2017 to 2019 (Intercept:
2018 April 20)
2017 February 24 WaPo:
Trump administration sought to enlist intelligence officials,
key lawmakers to counter Russia stories - Sen. Richard Burr
(Wiki)
and Rep. Devin Nunes (Wiki) made
calls to the press.
2017 February 27 - Edge Markets: TA
Global all set to capitalize on the Trump factor - 2017 February 28 - CNN: Meet
the developer behind the newest Trump hotel - See 2018 March
10 CNN - Joo Kim Tiah, chairman of TA Global, scion of one of
Malaysia's richest families Photo of (left to right) Eric Ivanka,
Don Jr, Trump & Joo Kim Tiah
2017 March (early) George Papadopoulos (Wiki)
learns he will be on the Trump campaign foreign policy advisory
panel.
2017 March 1 - NYT: Obama
Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian
Election Hacking - "I did not have communications with the
Russians"
2017 March 1 - WaPo: Sessions
met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did
not disclose -
2017 March 2 - DOJ: Attorney
General Sessions Statement on Recusal - note the footnote
"Updated March 2, 2017"
2017 March 2 - Trump on USS Gerald Ford. male Reporter: "Should
Sessions recuse himself from investigations into your campaign and
Russia? Trump: "I don't think so at all." female
reporter: When did yhou learn that Sessions spoke to the
Russian ambassador? Did you know during the campaign?"
Trump: "I don't think he should do that at all." female reporter:
"When were you aware that he spoke to the Russian ambassador?
Trump: "I wasn't aware at all." (Sessions had decided in
late February to recuse and Trump did no know on 2017 March 2)
2017 March 2 - Jeff Sessions recuses himself from any
investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign, which
would include any Russian interference in the electoral process. (WaPo,
official
statement) "Having concluded those meetings today, I have
decided to recuse myself from any existing or future
investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns
for President of the United States." NOTE: "campaigns" with
an s on the end.
2017 March 3 - Business Insider: It
looks like another Trump adviser has significantly changed his
story about the GOP's dramatic shift on Ukraine - J.D.
Gordon "...amendment — which originally called for "providing
lethal defense weapons"...ultimately watered down to "providing
appropriate assistance" to Ukraine"
2017 March 4 - Buzzfeed - A
Former Trump Adviser Met With A Russian Spy - Male1 (Carter
Page) meet Erik Prince (founder of Blackwater (Wiki))
2017 March 4 - WaPo: Despite
early denials, growing list of Trump camp contacts with Russians
haunts White House -
2017 March 4 - Wilileaks: Hillary Clinton
Email Archive - updated today
2017 March 5 - Steve Bannon (Wiki)
removed from National Security Council
2017 March 7 - Michael T. Flynn files under the Foreign
Agents Registration Act (FARA)
+ Supplemental Attachment (FARA2).
These filings contain false statements (See 2017 November 30 DOJ)
& the article for The Hill was was supervised by officials
from Turkey.
2017 March 7 - TRMS: More
Pieces Of Donald Trump Russia Dossier Check Out-
(see 2017 January 10 - Buzzfeed) - Mikhail Kalugin (pg 22:
misspelled Kulagin in dossier)
2017 March 8 - Politico: Authorities looked into Manafort protégé;
An associate of an ex-Trump campaign chairman is suspected of
connections to Russian intelligence. - Konstantin Kilimnik
2017 March 9 - Buzzfeed: Nigel Farage Just Visited The
Ecuadorian Embassy in London - where Julian Assange, head of
WikiLeaks, is staying
2017 March 9 - (CBSnews,
Fox
&Etc) Mike Pence and Sean Spicer say the first
they knew Michael Flynn was lobbing for Turkey was from
his FARA filing (a lie, see 2016 Nov 8 & 2016 Nov 11 + there's
many more)
2017 March 10 - The
Hill: Sessions asks 46 Obama-era US attorneys to resign -
2017 March 10 - Monica Crowley (Wiki)
had problems getting into Trunmp's NSC because of Plagiarism today filed as agent (FARA)
for Victor Pinchuk (Wiki)
2017 March 10 - WaPo: Flynn
told Trump team he might register as a foreign agent -
2017 March 11 - NYT: U.S.
Attorney Preet Bharara Says He Was Fired After Refusing to Quit
- US Attorney in SDNY where international money laundering and
financial crimes are tried.
2017 March 13 - National Law Journal: Ex-DOJ
Insider on Trump's Prosecutor Purge and Life After Government
- Matthew Axelrod (Wiki) - "The transition team
recommended to the incoming administration that they not get rid
of the U.S. attorneys all at one time, and that recommendation was
adopted. It's not clear what changed and led the
administration to get rid of everyone all at once."
2017 March 14 George Papadopoulos meets the "professor" in Italy.
2017 March 20 - House Intelligence Committee open hearings (Wiki)
testimony by James Comey and NSA director Michael S.
Rogers (Wiki)
testify
2017 March 21 - George Papadopoulos WaPo announces he will be on
the foreign policy advisory panel.
2017 March 21 - Medium:
Inside the secret Trump lobby that wants to profit from the
break-up of Iraq: A network tied to Cambridge Analytica,
Islamist insurgents, ExxonMobil and Koch convinced Trump to let
go of Iraqi unity - "The locus of the activity is an
organization called the Committee to Destroy ISIS (non functional
web page: http://www.destroyisis.org/,
Facebook, YouTube)
set up in July 2016 by Sam Patten." provided financial support to
the Hudson Institute . . .George Papadopoulos, a former research
associate at the Hudson Institute from 2011 to 2015 . . . Patten’s
biography on the website of
his lobbying firm, Office of Sam Patten LLC, describes him as
having worked with “one of London’s most innovative strategic
communications companies to introduce new technologies and
methodologies to US campaigns during the 2014 congressional cycle.
This beta run of a cutting-edge electoral approach included taking
micro-targeting to the next level. Currently this approach is
being adopted by at least one major US presidential candidate.”
Cambridge Analytica . . Oregon office of its parent company, SCL
Group . . . Trump’s chief strategist in the White House, Steve
Bannon, is on the board of Cambridge Analytica . . Michael
Flynn — who advised Michael Pregent’s VATD — also served as an
advisor to Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL
Group, to help expand its contracting work. Under Trump
2017 March 22 - AP
Exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin -
Oleg Deripaska (Wiki) -
2017 March 22 - Mr. Gorokhov
lawyer for Sergei Magnitsky "fell" out a window in his
apartment building. He was to appear in court on 29 March 2017
& in New York in May on money laundering. See
S.284 & Nov 16, 2009 above
2017 March 22 - AP: AP
Exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin -
2017 March 22 - House Oversight Committee (Wiki) asks the director
of the FBI (James Comey) for "..Flynn’s communications with and
payments from Russian, Turkish, or other foreign sources,
including the Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, between the time of
his retirement in 2014 to the present." (2017-03-22.Chaffetz-EEC-to-Comey-FBI-re-Flynn.pdf) 2017 March 23 - Denis Voronenkov (Wiki)
shot and killed in Kiev, act of Russian "state terrorism"
2017 March 24 - George Papadopoulos meets the "professor" and a
female Russian national in London.
2017 March 28 - House Intelligence Committee open hearing
cancelled by Devin Nunes (Wiki)
& he was removed from the committee - so Sally Yates testimony
was not heard then.
2017 March 29 - WSJ: Paul
Manafort Received Loans From Another Former Trump Adviser’s Bank
-
2017 March 29 - Elizabeth
Warren letter to Office Gov. Ethics: many pages of details
re Mrs. Trump.
2017 March 30 - BBC: Trump
Russia dossier key claim 'verified' - see TRMS 2017 March 7
- "...Steele spoke of an "established operational liaison between
the TRUMP team and the Kremlin… an intelligence exchange had been
running between them for at least 8 years."
2017 March 30 - Trump phones Comey in the
morning and complains that the Russia investigation as “a cloud”.
He asked what we could do to “lift the cloud.” (Comey's
7 page written statement)
2017 March 31 - WaPo: Flynn
offers to cooperate with congressional probe in exchange for
immunity -
2017 March 31 - CBS: FBI
probing whether Trump aides helped Russian intel in early 2016
- going back to March 2015
2017 April 2 Financial
Times: FBI
plans to create special unit to co-ordinate Russia probe -
"central manager" - maybe the resources needed (see: 2017
May 5?) were for this?
2017 April 3?5 - Jared Kushner meets with Ali Sharif Al Emadi in Qatar about refinancing the 666 Fifth
Ave property, but the deal doe no happen. 2018March 2 Intercept)
2017 April 3 - WaPo:
Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish
Trump-Putin back channel - see 2017 11 Jan for meeting.
2017 April 3 - Buzzfeed:
A Former Trump Adviser Met With A Russian Spy -
“Male-1” is Carter Page, Victor Podobnyy
2017 April 3 - nra.lv: KNAB
wanted to question Donald Tramp (Google translate) -
Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) investigators
wanted to question the current US President Donald Tramp...whether
he knows Latvian politician Ainārs Slesers... February 21,
2014,...
2017 April 3 - NBC: CIA Director Pompeo Calls WikiLeaks a 'Hostile
Intelligence Service' - Don Jr. still talking with WikiLeaks till
June 2017 (for another 2 months, see 2019 January 29 TRMS)
2017 April 5 - CBS: U.S.
deports Russian spy who posed as bank employee - convicted spy
Evgeny Buryakov - Victor Podobnyy, Carter Page
2017 April 6 - NYT: C.I.A.
Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than
Believed - TRMS 2017 Apr 10 - CIA saw links to the Trump
campaign
2017 April 7 - Pyotr Levashov/ joint US-Spanish arrest in
Spain, hacker: mainly a criminal, but also supplied Russian
government with data on specific individuals (WAPO)
"...linked to America’s 2016 election hacking..." Kelihos botnet (Wiki)
& Waledac botnet (Wiki, Rachael
Maddow)
2017 April 9 - NYT: Spain
Arrests Russian Thought to Be Kingpin of Computer Spam
-FSB TRMS 2017 April
10 - arrested because FBI asked that he be arrested.
Has been extradited to the US.
2017 april 10 - RT: Wife of Russian programmer 'suspected of
cyber attacks on US' shares details about his arrest -
2017 April 10 - Buzzfeed: This
Russian Hacker's Wife Says He Was Arrested For Being "Linked To
Trump's Win" -
2017 April 11 - Trump calls Comey and asked
what I had done about his request that I “get out” (Comey's
7 page written statement)
2017 April 12 - AP
Exclusive: Manafort firm received Ukraine ledger payout -
This means that Paul Manafort not only was listed on the ledger
(see: 2016 August 14) but actually received the payments.
2017 April 12 - WAPO
story that Paul Manafort will register as a foreign
agent, but as of : 4/13/17, 4/14/17, 4/25/17, 5/10/17, 5/11/17,
5/12/17, 5/18.17 only the Kelly listing appears on the FARA web page, only a 1986
registration for Kelly, Scruggs & Heales alias Black,
Manafort, Stone & Kelly Public Affairs
Company. 2017 April 13 - The Sun, UK -MOSCOW MONEY
Ex-MI6 chief accuses Donald Trump of secretly borrowing from
Russia to keep his property empire afloat during the financial
crisis-
2017 April 20 - Jason Chaffetz (Wiki)
abruptly quits his position as Chairman of the House Oversight
Committee (he signed the 21 April 2017 letter to the white house).
2017 April 17 - DIA sends letter to General Flynn in 2014 at time
of his retirement re: Constitution does not allow him to accept
foreign money (Reuters)
2017 April 21 - House Oversight Committee requests documents from
White House (Oversight
Committee Requests Documents on Trump Organization’s Treatment
of Foreign Government Payments)
2016 April 21 - FISA authorizes Third surveillance of Carter Page
. (see Nunes memo 2018 February 2)
2017 April 25 - Trump refuses House Oversight Committee request
for Flynn documents. (The
Hill)
2017 April 26 - George Papadopoulos the "professor" in London
where he learned that the Russians had "dirt" on then-candidate
Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.
2017 April 26 - NYT: Bribe
Cases, a Jared Kushner Partner and Potential Conflicts
- There's a case currently in New York courts relating to bribery
in Guinea (Wiki)
because a New York bank was involved. Beny Steinmetz (Wiki),
the owner of the company doing the bribes has been making real
estate loans to Jared Kushner (Wiki).
This might be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (Wiki).
This has been know since the Nov 7, 2012issue of the Financial
Times article: Guinea - What
Lies Beneath.
2017 April 28 - TRMS on Michael
Flynn video - [See 2016 Nov 8 The Hill, 2016 Nov 11
Daily Caller, 2017 March 9] Jeff Sessions spinning story -
"Why are they lying?"
2017 April 28 - Senate Finance committee: Wyden
Urges Review of Ivanka Trump's Trade Relations, Financial
Conflicts of Interest -
2017 April 30 - Trump
interview with CBS - Transcript
-re. General Flynn: "PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Excuse me. I
didn't realize this, when he went to Russia, it was 2015 and he
was on the Obama clearance. When General Flynn came to us, as you
now know, he already had the highest clearance you can have. I
think the same clearance as the president of the United States
would have. He had this really high clearance. And, by the way,
they're so devastated because this only came up two days ago. "
2017 April - "Eric Lichtblau left the Times,
after fifteen years—in part, he said, because of the way that the
Alfa Bank story was handled. (2018 October 15 New Yorker)
2017 May 1 - US News: Trump: Next
Supreme Court Nominee Will Come From Conservative List -
2017 May 2 - Time:
President Trump and Vladimir Putin Had a 'Very Good' Phone Call
- Putin asks Trump to meet with Laslatov and Kislack in the oval
office.
2017 May 5? - (NYT
2017 May 10) "Days before he was fired as F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey asked the Justice Department for more
prosecutors and other personnel to accelerate the bureau’s
investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential
election." Comey made this request to "...Rod J.
Rosenstein (Wiki),
the deputy attorney general, whose
memo was used to justify Mr. Comey’s abrupt
dismissal on Tuesday."
2017 May 8 - Vanity Fair: Eric
Trump Reportedly Bragged About Access to $100 Million in Russian
Money - “We don’t rely on American
banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
2017 May 8 - private meeting between James Comey, Richard Burr (Wiki)
and Mark Warner (Wiki),
see TRMS
2017 May 25) - it may be a rumor that Comey asked for more
resources prior to being fired.
2017 May 8 - In testimony before the Senate Judiciary
Committee says that "..the underlying conduct that general
Flynn had engaged in was problematic in and of itself." She would
not go into details because it's classified. This is much
more than Flynn lying. James Clapper (Wiki)
testified that when said that there was no investigation he was
speaking from ignorance (he was not aware of the FBI
investigation). Dianne Feinstein (Wiki)
asked both Yates and Clapper "..over the spring of 2016 multiple
European allies passed on additional information to the United
States about contacts between the Trump Campaign and
Russians. Is this accurate"? (confirming the 2017
February 14 NYT story) Sally Yates: I can't answer that. James
Clapper: "Yes it is and it's also quite sensitive". "The specifics
are quite sensitive". Mr. Lindsey Graham (Wiki):
"General Clapper, during your investigation of all things
Russia, did you ever find a situation where a Trump business
interest in Russia gave you concern? Clapper: "Not in the
course of the preparation of the intelligence community
assessment (see: 2017 January 6). Graham: "Since"?
Clapper: I can't comment on that, because that impacts ...
.investigation".
2017 May 8 - (Monday) shortly after James Clapper and Sally Yates
testify before Senate, White House has news release: WaPo - U.S.
poised to expand military effort against Taliban in Afghanistan
- see the movie "Wag the Dog" (Wiki, IMBD).
2017 May 8 - Trump
Tweet: "The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax,
when will this taxpayer funded charade end?"
2017 May 9 - Rod J. Rosenstein (Wiki)
writes memo to Jeff Sessions making the dast to fire
Comey. This is the same day Trump tells Rosenstein
and Sessions that he will fire Comey.
2017 May 9 - Jeff Sessions fires James Comey (Wiki,
Rachael
Maddow, CNN:Jeffrey
Toobin (Wiki)).
Jeff Sessions has already recused himself (see 2017 March
2) from anything to do with the investigation of Trump (and
related to the Clinton campaign), so how can be fire Comey?
2017 May 10 - RussiansSergei
Lavrov and Sergey
Kislyakmeet with Rex Tillerson (Wiki) at
the State Dept. and with Trump in the Oval Office.
2017 May 10 - Senate Intelligence Committee (Wiki)
has sent a request to the Financial Crimes Unit (Wiki: FinCEN)
of the Treasury Department (Wiki)
about information they may have about Trump or his associates.
(TRMS: Donald
Trump Fires James Comey As Investigations Into Russia Ties
Heat Up)
2017 May 10 - Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenas
"...records of any emails, phone calls, meetings and financial
dealings with Russians." from Michael T. Flynn. (NYT)
2017 May 10 - TRMS: New
FBI Director Andrew McCabe Compromised By Serious Conflict
- see: 2017 February 15
2017 May 11 - NYT:
In a Private Dinner, Trump Demanded Loyalty. Comey Demurred.
- (TRMS
2017 Jun 8))
2017 May 11 WaPo: Senate
Democrats demand answers from Rod Rosenstein about involvement
in Comey firing -
Letter from Committee on Appropriations (Patrick Leahay &
Jeanne Shaheen) to Rod Rosenstien asking about the
increase of resources asked for by Comey for the Russian
investigation.
2017 May 11 TRMS: DOJ
Won't Say If Jeff Sessions Is Recused On Paul Manafort - Paul
Manafort has not registered with FARA (see 2017
April 12 above), so Rachael has been asking the DOJ if Jeff
Sessions has recused himself from dealing with Paul
Manafort and the DOJ has not answered. Note that
Sessions fired Comey even though he was recused from
anything related to the Trump campaign or Clinton campaign which
should include Manafort. Nixon was impeached
for interfering with an investigation and Manafort may be
the key witness against Trump.
2017 May 11 - Vanity Fair: Inside
Trump's comming war with the FBI - "Another F.B.I. insider
points out that while the media has focused on the investigation
of possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign, there
are actually multiple inquiries in progress. “There’s also a cyber
investigation, about the hacking and whether crimes were
committed,” he says. “And then there’s the business side: Was
there money laundering going on? Money from these Russian
plutocrats that’s been washed through Trump’s real estate and
businesses? That’s gotten overlooked, but Preet Bharara
and the Southern District were supposedly looking into that.” They
were until April anyway, when Trump and Sessions canned Bharara
along with 45 other U.S. attorneys.
2017 May 11 - WaPo:
Here’s how the Russians might have snuck a recording device into
the Oval Office - the day after he fired Comey, Trump had a
meeting with Sergey Lavrov, Sergey Kislyak and a photographer from
Tass where all U.S. reporters were excluded. The visit to
the oval office was at the request of Vladimir Putin (Politico).
2017 May 11 - NBC interview Lester Holt: Trump says: "I was going
to fire Comey…. And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said
to myself, I said, "You know, this Russia thing with Trump and
Russia is a made-up story."
2017 May 12 - movie: Get Me Roger Stone (Wiki,
IMDB) -
2017 May 12 - Letter
from four senators to Michael E. Horowitz (Wiki),
Inspector General of the DOJ asking for investigation into Comey's
firing
2017 May 12 - NYT:
Letter From Tax Firm on Russian Connections in Trump's Tax
Returns - Russian money directly to Trump: 2013 Miss
Universe $12.2 million, 2008 Florida
Property profit of $54 million (95 - 41) & misc
money.
2017 May 12 - WSJ: Financial-Crimes
Monitor to Share Records in Trump-Russia Probe - TRMS
- "One person said that without them, though, the committee
wouldn't be able to reach a conclusion on whether there was
collusion between Trump associates and Russia during last year's
campaign."
2017 May 12 - WSJ:
Former Trump Advisor Paul Manafort's Bank Records Sought in
Probe - Citizens Financial Group Inc. made the loan of $2.7M. . . " .
.has spent and borrowed tens of millions of dollars in
connection with property across the U.S. over the past decade,.."
2017 May 15 - WaPo: Trump
revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign
minister and ambassador - “This is code-word information,”
said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology
that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by
American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information
to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own
allies.” Thomas P. Bossert (Wiki)
notified CIA & NSA.
2017 May 15 - TRMS: Donald
Trump Shares Highly Classified Info With Russian Officials,
part 2 -
See: 2017 April 3 WaPo and 2017 January 11 & 12
(part 2) WSJ: Shane Harris (Wiki),
David Priess (Amazon: President's
Book of Secrets), Ned Price (Wiki)
2017 May 15 - Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (Wiki:
MBZ) met with Trump at the White House.
2017 May 16 - NYT: Comey
Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation - 2017
Feb 14 in Oval office. Obstruction of Justice (Wiki).
Comey's friend leaked his unclassified memo of the meeting (Comey's
7 page written statement)
2017 May 16 - Steth
Meyers: A Closer Look - Trump campaign clips of Trump on
classified information. "The only thing he got wrong was the
president's name."
2017 May 16 - NBC: Manafort
Got $3.5M Mystry Mortage, Paid No Tax - Feds Subpoena
Records for $3.5M Mystery Mortgage on Manafort’s Home -
"Manafort's name and signature do not appear on any of the loan
documents that are publicly available." Funding from Spruce
Capital (official web page)
a co-founder is Joshua Crane (S3 bio)
Note_2 who has done real estate deals with
Trump and funded by Alexander Rovt (Wiki)
who over donated to the trump campaign and had the balance
refunded. See: 2016 August 19
2017 May 17 - DOJ Special
Counsel's Office
On May 17, 2017, Robert S. Mueller III was
appointed by acting Attorney General Rod J.
Rosenstein to serve as Special Counsel by the
order below.
11 pgs "Provided strategic counsel and
advice to members of the Party of Regions regarding their
interactions with U.S. government officials and other
Western influential persons to advance the goal of greater
political and economic integration between the Ukraine and
the West. Provided advice to the European Centre for
a Modern Ukraine, which was also working for the same
purpose. "
"10/30/12 Email to Ambassador John Tefft regarding U.S.
statement on Ukrainian elections. "
"8/24/12 $2500.00 Vernon Parker - Arizona
State Office"
11 pgs Jan - June 2012
14a Receipts-Monies: "see attached"
15a Disbursements-Monies: "see attached"
15a Disbursements:
First 6 months of 2012
Date
Contractor
Purpose
Amount
5/16/2012
Fabrizio Ward Associates LLC
Polling and surveys
$35,000.00
6/27/2012
Rabin Strasburg LLC (no
internet presence)
Media consulting services
$91,693.00
Last 6 months of 2012
Date
Contractor
Purpose
Amount
7/31/2012
Rabin Strasburg LLC
Consulting services and
expenses
$65,631.00
8/28/2012
Steven J. Brown
Political and media outreach
$20,000.00
8/31/2012
Rabin Strasburg LLC
Consulting services and
expenses
$74,265.00
9/4/2012
Fabrizio Ward Associates LLC
Polling and surveys
$73,500.00
10/1/2012
Rabin Strasburg LLC
Consulting services and
expenses
$53,899.00
10/1/2012
Steven J. Brown
Political and media outreach
$5,000.00
10/5/2012
Christopher Spence
Election data analysis
$10,000.00
10/5/2012
Clear Dialogue LLC
Election integrity consulting
services
$10,500.00
10/31/2012
Clear Dialogue LLC
Election integrity consulting
services
$10,500.00
10/31/2012
Rabin Strasburg LLC
Consulting services and
expenses
$83,832.00
11/7/2012
Fabrizio Ward Associates LLC
Polling and surveys
$35,000.00
11/7/2012
Fabrizio Ward Associates LLC
Polling and surveys
$35,000.00
11/19/2012
Clear Dialogue LLC
Election integrity consulting
services
$12,000.00
11/19/2012
Clear Dialogue LLC (Ejaz
Khan, director)
Election integrity consulting
services
$6,935.44
11/29/2012
Fabrizio Ward Associates LLC
Polling and surveys
$35,000.00
11/29/2012
Steven J. Brown
Political and media outreach
$5,000.00
12/28/2012
Steven J. Brown
Political and media outreach
$5,000.00
Total for the year
632,755.44
Travel: 648,840.83 + 769928.53 = 1,418,769.36 for 2012
Meals/Living Exp: 88404.45 + 99812.72 = 188,217.17 for
2012
Total Travel & Meals/Living = 1,606,986.53
Grand Total all expenses: 2,239741.97
4pgs.
"Provided strategic counsel and advice to members of the
Party of Regions regarding certain interactions with U.S.
government officials and other Western influential persons
to advance the goal of greater political and economic
integration between the Ukraine and the West. "
3 pgs,
11: "Focused on electing Party of Regions' candidates at
the national and regional levels in the Ukraine by
implementing pro-democratic campaign activities, engaging
in party building activities, developing a party platform
and political agenda, and implementing election planning,
election integrity, and international election monitoring
programs. Provided strategic counsel and advice to
members of the Party of Regions regarding their
interactions with U.S. government officials and other
Western influential persons to advance the goal of greater
political and economic integration between the Ukraine and
the West. Communicated with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev
regarding developing events in the Ukraine. "
12: Provided strategic counsel and advice to members of
the Party of Regions regarding their interactions with
U.S. government officials and other Western influential
persons to advance the goal of greater political and
economic integration between the Ukraine and the
West.
DMP International LLC Operating Agreement
written 1 Sep 2011.
Class A Members: Paul J. Manafort & Richard W. Gates.
Membership Interest: Paul J. Manafort 100%
U.S. v. George Papadopoulos
(1:17-cr-182, District of Columbia) Criminal
Information - Plea Agreement
(does not include the attachment) - Statement of the
Offense -
2.a. G.P. learned he would be part of the Trump campaign in
early March and met the "professor" on 14 March 2016 which is
where he learned about the "thousands of emails" related to the
Clinton campaign. The "professor" was only interested in
G.P. because of his position in the Trump campaign.
2.b. The "professor" had substantial connections to Russian
government officials.
2.c. G.P. met with female Russian national on or about March 24,
2016 and was using her to setup a meeting between campaign
officials and Russian government officials.
U.S. v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr.,
and Richard W. Gates III (1:17-cr-201, District of
Columbia)
Indictment There are no
tax charges in this indictment because Manafort and Gates filed
their tax returns in Virginia, not D.C. See:2018 February 22 indictment
U.S. v. Michael T. Flynn (1:17-cr-232,
District of Columbia)
Criminal
Information : Count 1: lied to FBI about (i) Dec 29, 2016
asking Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to refrain from
escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the US
had imposed the same day. . . Kislyak told him Russia would
moderate it's response.... and....(ii) Dec 22, 2016 Flynn asked
Kislyak to delay the vote on or defeat a pending UN resolution
and Kislyak (agreeded?). Plea Agreement - the mechanics of of the
plea (not details) Statement of the Offense -