Saturday, January 31, 2009

STIMULATE WHAT? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

CORRECT STIMULATION MEANS A WISE AND EFFICIENT FUTURE.

At this point the USA is crumbling under inefficient economics; in the last decade, a huge stimulus was applied to the financial and real estate sector. Mac Mansions in suburbia and corruption on Wall Street came out. No high speed trains, no efficient cars, no good education, no good science, no social programs, no diminution of the slow sinking of the middle class, no good health care, no good jobs with added value for the whole country came out. Nothing really worthy came out. What mostly came out was ever more money for the few, ever less for the rest. Ever more power for money, ever less for the rest. Then People revolted, and refused to pay their outrageous mortgages.

The first reaction of the plutocracy was to re-stimulate what had made it so much more of everything: it came out with TARP. The TARP has revealed itself to be: Transferring Assets to Rich People. TARP was all about stimulating the plutocracy. The People stayed stuck in the muck, and the economy went down faster.

So the only question to ask the new incoming stimulus is: what will it attempt to do? What will it stimulate? Will it stimulate the lower parts, those balls of greed on Wall Street, or will it stimulate the real economy one needs to be more efficient, more educated, more healthy, safer and happier tomorrow?

Equations, like statistics, can say whatever. What is sure is that the economic model that reigned in the USA ever since Nixon created HMOs, has failed. That model privatize everything, forgetting that entire sectors of the economy are immune to the profit motive. Since 1996, the USA has been overstimulated, and overstimulated the wrong way. Coke addicts get stimulated too, and it's not good. Stimulating with electric shocks someone who has cardiac arrest is good. But the same shock on someone that is healthy would be deadly.

Looking forward is not about silly equations, but really about what one wants to do with the USA. It is a philosophical problem. Philosophers discerned and named economics. Time to come back to that reality.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com

Monday, January 26, 2009

BAD FAITH PUBLISHING

THE CENTRAL ARGUMENT FOR GOOD CHANGE IS TO AUGMENT THE CIVILIAN STATE, BUT THE NEW YORK TIMES WILL NOT ALLOW TO TALK ABOUT IT.

In an excellent editorial,Paul Krugman (NYT, Jan 27, 2008 "Bad Faith Economics", observed that: "Cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a stimulus plan through as fraudulent arguments that seem superficially plausible." He criticized heavily "conservatives". In reply, I wrote the following, but it was not allowed for publication (although 307 comments were, most of them pretty obvious, and none of them talking about the subject below, although it is at the core of "Change You Can Believe In").
***


I was looking for an appropriate word to qualify these people who obstruct the "Recovery and Reinvestment" plan of Obama. Paul Krugman uses the word "conservatives", and I may use it too. The advantage is that people understand who we are talking about. The disadvantage is that it does not describe their mission well, but rather compliment them with the opposite of what they are. Because, in truth, far from conserving anything, they are rather busy destroying the country (while serving themselves).

The fact is all and any country, or even city, since civilization exists, and by definition of civilization, is a mix of the public economic activity and the private economic activity. Private is what functions best with the free market, motivated first by financial profit, public what functions best according to law, regulation and monopoly powers. For example when the State does not have the monopoly on the military, one gets a civil war. This happened at the end of the Roman republic, when, in practice, a few of the richest people each owned a part of the Roman army. Four centuries later, the Roman empire collapsed when the rich disconnected from the rest of society, with so much riches grabbed by, and for themselves, that the Roman army left outside was too small to defend the empire.

The private sector is less important than the public sector: Stalin fought Hitler with monstrous efficiency, and no private sector. Hitler mostly worked with a greedy private sector, with the result that he found himself with hundreds of half completed weapons projects at the end of the war. None of this non sense in the USA: Roosevelt installed a command economy run by a young Canadian, with very few weapon systems, and a total monopolization of the socioeconomy.

So the next question, that no serious American economist seems to have considered, is this: is the US State big enough as a government? The total size of the US government is 36% of US GDP (Fed plus states), but the USA spends at least 5% of that on the military. So we are left, in the USA, with a civilian State sector that is about 31% of GDP. That is two-third of the large European countries' States. Those have government that are 45% of GDP. Two of these, France and Germany, are resisting better than the third, Britain, mostly because they are more industrial and technological [Germany is the world number one exporter]. They are so, because their governments made them so. Trust the French and Germans to know where real power comes from.

There is plenty of evidence that the US State is too small to provide the country with the infrastructure it needs for its private economy. The best example is health care: private US companies are supposed to provide it, a subject of endless hilarity around the planet. In general US health care does only one thing really better: make a few of the rich richer. It costs twice more, and does less well than the competition.

Another example is the schooling system: at this rate of descent into illiteracy, an acculturation, one will soon have to import Indians to teach English and thinking to Americans. Also US science, for decades the best financed in the world, now is not so [European are running many basic experiments that the USA does not plan to, but the reciprocal is not true].

Trains are the most basic part of transportation (even in the USA), but, whereas the subsidy for roads is above 110 billions, that for trains is one billion (1%). France is presently building four high speed train lines [for 250 mph. 400 kph trains], and is in the diverse stage of elaborating and planning several others. Such lines are immensely expensive. The USA does not seem to have the money for them. The first French high speed train line was publicly financed, twenty-five years ago, the others have been self financed with private capital. It's the same picture around Europe, even in Russia (equipping itself with French and German trains, and technology transfers).

Barack Obama speaks instead about high speed Internet, as if it were high speed trains. But in France one can go anywhere, even in the deepest forest, and get extremely high speed broadband Internet (from satellite), basically for free.

To finance green energy, Obama will need money. No money, no green. Even US capitalist know that. So he needs a users' tax. Namely a tax on carbon, a tax on hydrocarbons. Yes, that will grow the government. So what?

Organizing a bigger turkey shoot in Afghanistan also grows the government. But instead of health care, schools, students and high speed rail, one gets blood, bombs, pathetic little ribbons, hatred, and an ineluctable defeat. Some choice.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com

Thursday, January 22, 2009

THE ROGUE WAVE IS TOO BIG, SO CHANGE THE OCEAN!

CONVENTION OF THE COMMONS CANNOT ADDRESS CATASTROPHE OF THE AGES: O BA MA NEEDS TO O BA BOOM IN MATTERS ECONOMIC.

In another excellent editorial [NYT, January 22, 2008], professor Krugman points out that: "Everyone hoped that President Obama’s Inaugural Address would offer some reassurance. But at least on matters economic, the speech was too conventional."

Camping outside of the Obama administration, as Krugman does, has the obvious advantage of being able to choose a mountain top, with fresh and clear air, and to look down in the smoggy valleys where pathetic minds choke on power...

Yes, there was too much, in the economic part of Obama's speech, of it's all-our-fault-we-puritans-did-not-beat-our-backs-enough-with-chains. Instead, of course, what happened is that the plutocratic wolves have guarded the sheep, all too long, and now that they have run out of sheep, they howl to get more, and more sheep bleat, and come their way.

The only way out is something like the Resolution Trust Corporation, a total nationalization of the financial sector. One cannot just nationalize a piece, for competitive reasons. (Yes, in the Scandinavian financial crisis at least one giant private bank opted out of nationalization and survived, but this, now, is different.)

Nationalizing all of finance as it is, of course will not be enough. It would be a momentary measure, but the system needs to be changed long term. New laws will have to prevent the malignant growth of derivatives, way too risky investing motivated by excessive personal greed of financial manipulators, excessive trading and bonuses. A whole arsenal of new tools could allow to do this [detailed rules on derivatives, that should be restricted to those officially authorized, worldwide; transaction tax; higher taxes on short term cap gains, lower on long term ones].

The future financial sector should be of assistance, have a fiduciary duty of keeping capital in trust, and have some leeway to invest according to tight regulations. The idea being that never again should the financial tail wag the economic dog. At the limit [see comrade Stalin], a powerful economy can operate without finance; but what we have here now is a situation where a rogue financial system is strangling the real economy. Rogue waves exist in the ocean, on a regular basis: they can be 100 feet tall, when other waves are only 15 feet tall [they sink hundreds of ships a year]. What we have here is a rogue wave so bad, we will have to change the ocean.

Last point about brain power: most of Obama's power will be into making speeches with great ideas, and he has to learn to trust the force of his intelligence. The professional speech writers of the American presidency constitute an unfortunate canning of the mind. Professional speech writers are like lobbyists for the common mind, rewarded with money to think common thoughts. Nothing that a soaring imagination can blossom from.

Patrice Ayme

Patriceayme.wordpress.com

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

COGNITIVELY RESETTING THE USA, OBAMA IS.

OBAMA AS SPIRITUAL MANIPULATOR IN CHIEF:

The major and most original part of Obama's Inaugural speech, resets the value system, away from the superstition of "God", back to the core human value, the ground of man as a successful animal, TRUTH. Here it is:

..."those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship...

These things are old, indeed: they date millions of years, Obama hinted implicitly. Let's give a sampling of what the President said: "Old and TRUE...TRUTHS... responsibility — a re-cognition... knowledge." Hence Obama is operating a resetting of all American values around reality as determined by TRUTH (as it always is) and, thus, not by faith (which, at best, works only on the margin). Many have not seen this, and called the speech not his best. But of course they could not see it, because the speech is having effect in the recesses of their minds. True, to put them to sleep, Obama mentioned "God", so that they would not suffer and rebel as he manipulated the very foundation of what make their minds tick.

Anyway, that was excellent, just what was needed.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com

Friday, January 16, 2009

NO TRUTH, NO JUSTICE, NO DEMOCRACY.

OBAMA SHOULD LET THE REPUBLIC SAVE ITSELF BY LETTING JUSTICE DEAL WITH THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

As Paul Krugman points out in an excellent and very important essay in the New York Times: "If we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years, this means that those who hold power are above the law and can abuse their power."["Forgive and Forget", New York Times, January 16, 2008].

I agree 100%.

After the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of French collaborators of the Nazis were put on trial, 120,000 were condemned, nearly 50,000 suffered "National Degradation" (loss of face and civil rights), and well in excess of 10,000 were executed (under diverse legal procedures).

That may sound excessive, but the USA has never been occupied by Nazis, and suffered the rule of extreme traitors. France was not alone in the severity of her reaction. Several European countries, some of which had made the death penalty unconstitutional for more than a century (e. g., the Netherlands), reintroduced it, and judged and executed their own traitors and war criminals. In France some of the most famous Frenchmen were judged, and condemned to death, including a former head of state and a past prime minister (Laval). The famous writer Brasillach was condemned to death. He wrote movingly to president De Gaulle to spare his life, denying he did anything really wrong, but for writing. He was executed. Decades later, photographs were found of him looking at freshly assassinated victims of the holocaust.

One or two European countries (that will stay nameless at this point) never prosecuted any Nazi collaborators. Why? Because they were themselves wholeheartedly collaborating with Hitler (giving him most of his steel, for example).

Morality? Culprits will lie and deny. At some point, the truth has to be established. Truth can only be established in the past, so it can be hoped for, in the future. The USA never prosecuted the many US citizens who helped the Nazis before, during, and after W.W.II. This had many deep consequences for the deep gangrene of the republic. As Paul Krugman points out, a habit of not establishing the truth was taken. Another consequence has been the systematic rewriting of history, but a rewriting many people do not believe around the planet (since it was not certified by justice). For example, it is often alleged, worldwide, that many of the American secret services took the habit of self financing through drug trafficking (South East Asia, Pakistan-Afghanistan, South America), an Iran-Contra of drugs. It is even alleged that they used famous Nazi monsters (such as Klaus Barbie in Bolivia) to set up the drug networks. Now, the easy reaction of many Americans, when hearing of such things, is to deny it all, and condemn anti-Americanism. But so doing, by not projecting the power of truth and justice, they actually feed the Anti-American propaganda (just as well, or better, than Osama bin Laden).

Western republics are states of laws. They are not states of siege, as Bush tried to make them. If there is never any threat to apply the law, there will be no law. The law is hard, but it is the law, as the Romans said. Far from being above the law, politicians, being more visible, should lead exemplary, extremely lawful lives.

In the French republic, in recent years, the head of the Constitutional Court was prosecuted and had to resign, and the latest president of the republic, Chirac, is being prosecuted (and had to answer judges' questions many times). The preceding Prime Minister, Villepin, famous for his critique of Bush in 2003, has been charged, and is being judged [Not for criticizing Bush, but for taking part in a nasty campaign of disinformation]. No doubt the present French president, Sarkozy, does not feel above the law. If the USA refuses to ever prosecute its worthies, it's not really a democracy. Democracy means people-power, not people-noodle.

It would be very sad if Obama did not let the law be respected inside the USA. That would be more of the same: Bush violated the law outside the USA, now it would be violated inside. Maybe the USA should change its Constitution, so that justice can be much more independent of politicians. This is the case in France.
***

Patrice Ayme

A much deeper version of this essay is found in Patriceayme.wordpress.com: "JUSTICE AS TRUTH FIRST, AND FAIRNESS, SECOND."

— Patrice Ayme, Hautes Alpes

Thursday, January 15, 2009

GOD IS NOT SMART, AND IT IS CRUEL.

THE FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTIANITY: IT'S NOT ABOUT SMARTS. LESSON FOR THE USA.

Washington had already discovered the "smart power grid" (as if the grids built before were dumb). Now it is discovering "smart power". The expression "smart power" was sprinkled through Senator Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It's an excellent idea to brandish "smart" as the new requirement, the indispensable adjective. This is the new thing that is needed, indeed: out with standing above the world, in with realism, thinking, and smarts. How do we get more smarts? By listening to Rick Warren? Rick Warren believes that he is good only because he fears God. Is that smart?

How can this new preoccupation with smarts be reconciled with the obvious violation of smarts, of not understanding that all the religious semantics and semiotics of the present United States of America, violate the separation of Church and State? (Ever since 1956.) It may be the deepest mystery of American "smarts".

It's fascinating to see how many American democrats, pushed in their ultimate reasonings, evoke "God".

One should stop a moment here, and wonder what it means. This means that the ultimate reasoning of even many supporters of Obama is NOT HUMANISTIC, BUT superstitious. For a real, literal Christian, the ultimate moral reasoning does not stand on the ground, but on the “City of God”, up there in heavens. As Saint Augustine pointed out a good Christian worries about the supernatural, not real things such as real bodies, real lives, simple desires.

Such was Saint Augustine’s answer to the doubt that “most” of the intelligent people were having (Saint Augustine says) about Christianity, because the Roman State had been collapsing ever since Christianity had been in command.

Superstition, comes from super-stare, that is, above-stand. It means standing above reality (craftily, emperor Constantine imposed the label "superstitio" to all religions except Christianism).

Fundamental humanistic reasonings are hard, complex, intricate. In one word: smart. Smarts require serious brain activity. It's very tiring. By contrast, reasonings evoking a being standing above reality, allow to forget humanism, and to act, according to faith, which means without reason, without consideration to reality, without tiring brainwork. This neglect of sophisticated morals, devilish details and human responsibilities, is what allowed to engage in the worst atrocities. Including Crusaders' cannibalism in the Middle East. As Jesus put it: "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:53). Constantine's Catholic Church interpreted this appeal to cannibalism, and similar calls to monstrous crimes, literally. Similarly, Bush's God ordered him to invade Iraq (he said).

Some say that such mischief is unrelated to what they mean by Christianism. They miss the Machiavellian subtlety of Constantine. By celebrating fundamental atrocities as a religion, Constantine, and his similarly minded successors, brandishing the crucifixion, proclaimed that everything was permitted (as long as it was OK with God, a personal faith). This was very practical: his Christianism allowed Constantine to kill his son, his nephew, and to boil his wife, among other feats (hunting Jews and burning philosophers or architects are examples). The aim of Christianity, from the time of its imposition by Constantine, was as a way to enforce brutal, atrocious imperial power, in the image of, and in the name of, the Bible's jealous and cruel God. Between Constantine and Bush are found hundreds of lying and bloody tyrants, all of them using Christianity just as Constantine had intended it, and as he had inaugurated it, for unrestrained cruelty, allowing to economize on smarts. As Hitler put it: "God with Us!"

State superstition is not about smarts, it is quite the opposite. The Christian terror Constantine imposed shattered the religious tolerance and the mental performance, of centuries of Greco-Roman civilization. It made the Greco-Roman empire so stupid, it quickly disappeared (this manifested itself in the destruction of books, schools, intellectuals, and the loss of major wars after making idiotic mistakes).

What does that all mean for the future of the brand new, let's say, brain new, American smarts? Well, there is a long way to go. This is how the first two United States presidents put it: "...the government of the United States of America is NOT, IN ANY SENSE, founded on the Christian Religion... ". Washington and Adams insisted on this in 1796-1797. Why? Because they wanted the USA to be smart. Smarts require thinking, not praying. Change one can believe in will not come from a Jesus best ignored by people of advanced smarts.
***

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

IF PEACE DOES NOT WORK, FORCE WILL.

ISRAEL CAN BE FORCED TOO... MAYBE IT NEEDS TO BE SAVED FROM ITSELF... BY FORCE.

On January 14, 2008, Thomas Friedman claims in the New York Times that:"The focus for Israel and Barack Obama’s team should be on creating a clear choice for Hamas for the world to see: Are you about destroying Israel or building Gaza?"

Nice alternative. All we were seeing so far was dying children, we are getting educated. But of course Friedman is forgetting that there was a blockade and big walls. Moreover, Friedman insists that Israel "educated Hezbollah" and now is educating Hamas. That is why Hezbollah is so calm, he says. Then what of "Israeli Arabs" are they being educated too? What about connecting with reality? Is that educative?

It seems to me that the calm of Hezbollah has more to do with the force of 13,000 United Nations soldiers in Southern Lebanon headed by Italy (it used to be headed by France). This land force is buttressed by a naval arm. In 2006 French soldiers "came within seconds" of firing on Israeli F15s (said the French defense ministry).

The same solution, extraneous force, may have to be applied to the entire area, enforcing whatever the United Nations decides. It may be a better use of NATO troops than bombing Afghan villages from the air. Just a thought.

Ah, yes, also if some of the settlers are not really settled where they should be settled, force could be applied... The EU and the USA send many billions a year for that pathetic show to go on. They could also stop it. All it will take is the will to change.

Israel is playing a dangerous game. Of course it looks as if it has no choice. But it should not forget that it exists not from invincible hubris, but at the good will of the EU and the USA. It may be prudent to not be too rough with the neighbors. Some of the Frankish kingdom during the Crusades lasted two centuries, but died off when Europe decided there were better things to do. Israel is only 60 years old, and its only way out is the (future) Mediterranean Union. The MU will in particular forbid what Israel is trying to do presently, namely preventing Arabs living in Israel to vote in the February 2009 elections.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com

Sunday, January 11, 2009

ADVICE TO OBAMA: DON'T GO ROMAN!

NO DEATH BY A THOUSANDS TAX CUTS, PLEASE!

As Krugman puts it:"President-elect Barack Obama’s economic plan falls well short of what’s needed. To fix it, he needs to stop talking about “jump-starts” and focus on long-term investment." Krugman disapproves of the tax rebates, because they have proven highly ineffective. Searching deeper in history, we find more reason to condamn this old trick of the US plutocrats.

My advice to Obama: please do not imitate the Roman empire, and its death by a thousands tax cuts.

Obama does not have to feel bound by promises made when the economy was still cruising in choppy seas. Now the economy is sinking, and it's not a cruise anymore. Obama was going to be captain of the ship of state, instead he finds himself in command of a sinking wreck. All hands should be on deck, everybody should sacrifice.

A thousand dollars of tax rebate will be mostly spent to buy stuff in Asian factories set up by US plutocrats. These rebates to not help create an economy at home, they just help the infernal machine that suck jobs out of the USA. Trade is good, but right now all governmental money should be reserved to create an economy at home. Anyway without the later, there will not be any trade looking forward.

These tax rebates, long a weapon of those who wanted to weaken the state, are akin to the distribution of money new Roman emperors were making. Throwing money at the people bought people off in Rome. Of course, two years later, those same people were worse off, and the economy had sunk further. Rome went on like this for a long time, sinking ever lower. Roman investments in factories, engineering and industrial infrastructure were actively discouraged, although grandiose economically useless projects were still engaged in (such as displacing the capital city to Byzantium).

The Roman empire became characterized by a dying off of the central state, as more and more money was sucked by rich, increasingly provincial plutocrats, who manipulated the system so that they paid ever less taxes (think about today's US hedge fund managers and other money manipulators with their 15% maximum tax rate, and enormous tax evasion overseas by the richest US citizens). The industry and production of the core of the Roman empire was eviscerated. The Roman plutocracy did all this intentionally, to prevent a revolt against the plutocracy, and a return to the republic. Weakening the Populus Romanus was a must. Putting people out of work in the center of the empire while throwing money at them was the key concept. (Progressively the feodal system appeared, although emperors were endowed with ever greater powers, and the Roman Senate sieged for centuries more.)

The American plutocracy has embarked on a very similar course, ever since Reagan. It is death of the republic, by a thousands tax cuts. As the state relatively shrinks, essential services that cannot be provided by the free market die off, and the later starts to freeze. A difference with Rome is that, whereas Rome stood in magnificent isolation for three centuries of quiet decay, the USA is far from being alone, so the decay of the USA will be much faster, if counter measures are not imposed swiftly.

The first thing to do is not to persist with the contempt of the Roman emperors, giving their subjects crumbs to keep them happy from one day to the next, as if they were birds.

The second thing to do is to free the subjects by giving them real work. There is plenty of work to do, it's capital and the will to use it that is missing. Obama at this point has plenty of capital, as long as he does not waste it on crumbs (or on the plutocracy as a lot of the TARP has been). What is now needed is the will to create as much of an economy as possible, as soon as possible. The occasion will not show up again, it's a one time shot.

An important thing to understand is that, whereas the economists that talk in the name of the plutocracy claim that the state should not grow, there is no theory of the ideal size of the state. After a giant military built up by Bush, the entire US State (Federal plus States) is 36% of GDP. Big European states such as Britain and France are exactly at 45% of GDP (with a smaller military spending). Now Europe is doing much better than the USA in the present crisis. Conclusion: the Federal State should grow, a lot, and that means new taxes. For all. An obvious one should be a higher gasoline tax. As it is, roads cost 107 billion dollars more than what the gas tax brings.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com

Saturday, January 3, 2009

THE MORE IT CHANGES, THE MORE IT STAYS THE SAME.

CORRUPTION IN THE USA GOES ON UNABATED.

There is no excuse for allowing private equity partners and hedge fund managers and other money manipulators the lowest tax rate in the country. They are the richest people, and they put more of their money outside in tax paradises, for further tax evasion.

The explanation for letting this ongoing outrage keeping going on seems simply to be that, the day after his election, Mr. Obama worked from a hedge fund office (as reported by the New York Times). If Mr. Obama has another explanation, we are all ears. Saying that the richest stimulate the economy the more is counter factual: they save and export their money, while the poor spends it all. And it is not just Mr. Obama, it's general.

Mr. Rahm Emanuel, somebody without mathematical, scientific or economic background, just a "Master in Speech", took a two year paid vacation from the US Congress. A "leading global investment bank" called him an investment banker, and gave him 16.2 million dollar. Now he is called a wealthy philanthropist good enough for helping us by volunteering in the White House. In some big European countries, a judicial inquiry on him would start right away. But in the USA, it's change you can believe in, because it brings a huge amount of cash. Call that change you can cash in.

To believe that, by being nice to the rich, money will be nice to us, and come our way, is magical thinking. But magical thinking is cool in the USA.

It is true that a maximal infrastructure trillion dollar package has to be put in place, but, at the same time, deficits should be mitigated. That is all the more fruitful if bad, dangerous, unpatriotic, unwise habits can be discouraged. Taxing the rich, carbon and consumption of non necessary items is the solution that kills these two birds with one stone. That is what is done, all over Europe. It is working. The big European countries are barely slowing down.

Now, of course, the future tremendous salaries of Rahm Emanuel and the likes of his in the incoming White House, depend upon them not understanding this. So don't be surprised if they do not.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com