tax cuts – The Burning Platform

US vs. THEM

“I’ll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. “I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.” “I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.” “Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding out both puppets!”” – Bill Hicks

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Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake news mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the “Us versus Them” narrative. It’s almost as if “they” are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their assigned puppets.

Most people can’t discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don’t believe there is a chance in hell of this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.

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NAVIGATING THROUGH THE STORMS

Several weeks ago I had to drive west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to pick up my son after his sophomore year at Penn State. I’ve made this trip a dozen times over the last few years, since this is my second son attending Penn State, with a third starting in the Fall. It’s a tedious, boring, protracted, four hour trek through the rural countryside of the Keystone State. During these trips my mind wanders, making connections between the landscape and the pressing issues facing the world. I can’t help but get lost in my thoughts as the miles accumulate like dollars on the national debt clock.

More often than not I end up making the trip in the midst of bad weather. And this time was no different. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a meandering, decades old, dangerous, mostly two lane highway for most of its 360 mile span. Large swaths of the decaying interstate are under construction, as the narrative about lack of infrastructure spending is proven false by visual proof along the highways and byways of America.

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THE HORROR! THE HORROR! (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I detailed how propaganda has been utilized by the Deep State for decades to control the minds of the masses and allow those in control to reap the benefits of never ending war. In Part Two I will discuss recent events, false flags, and propaganda campaigns utilized by the Deep State to push the world to the brink of war.

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness” – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The use of graphic images, electronically transmitted across the world in an instant, along with a consistent false narrative promoted by the captured corporate media, is the preferred means of appealing to the emotions of those who want to believe atrocity propaganda. Instigating a march to war through the use of unfounded fear, misinformation, staged photo ops, and appealing to passions and prejudices was as revolting to Albert Einstein in the 1930s as it is today to normal thinking individuals.

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” – Albert Einstein

It seems the level and intensity of the propaganda campaigns has ratcheted up dramatically in the last half dozen years and appears to be reaching a crescendo as we speak. It’s almost as if the Deep State is frantically trying to maintain the status quo, even as the worldwide financial Ponzi scheme of debt approaches the point of collapse. The domestic conditions in Europe, North America, and Asia are deteriorating rapidly. The propaganda doled out trying to convince citizens their financial situation is not worsening has failed.

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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

I stopped trying to predict markets back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Wall Street bankers, and their propaganda peddling media mouthpieces colluded to rig the markets to benefit the elite establishment players while screwing average Americans. I haven’t owned any stocks to speak of since 2006. I missed the the final blow-off, the 50% crash, and the subsequent engineered new bubble. But that doesn’t stop me from assessing our true economic situation, market valuations, and historical comparisons in order to prove the irrationality and idiocy of the current narrative.

The proof of this market being rigged and not based upon valuations, corporate earnings, discounted cash flows, or anything related to free market capitalism, was the reaction to Trump’s upset victory. The narrative was status quo Hillary was good for markets and Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric would unnerve the markets. When the Dow futures plummeted by 800 points on election night, left wingers like Krugman cackled and predicted imminent collapse. The collapse lasted about 30 minutes, as the Dow recovered all 800 points and has subsequently advanced another 1,500 points since election day. Krugman’s predictive abilities proven stellar once again.

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Trump’s Economic Plan—-A Dog’s Breakfast Of Some Decent Ideas And A Lot Of Really Bad Fiscal Math

Trump’s economic plan is the same old shit on a different day. No specific spending cuts whatsoever. Nothing about entitlement spending. No cuts to the military industrial complex. More infrastructure spending, building bridges to nowhere. Hillary’s plan is worse, but that doesn’t mean Trump’s plan is any good. Maff is hard for politicians. Especially when they are buying votes.

Guest Post by David Stockman

Donald Trump’s speech at the New York Economic Club on Thursday was quite brilliant, powerfully delivered and even laced with the kind of soaring “capitalist prosperity” rhetoric that has not been heard from GOP politicians since Jack Kemp.

I was all set to say as much this morning at 7AM on CNN’s “New Day” show. But the segment host, Alisyn Camerota, averred that first there was some more important business pending. That is, what did I think about Donald Trump’s “birther” views, and wasn’t that just as important as his economic speech?

That’s right. We have an economy that is on death’s door after 30-years of economic mis-governance by the Wall Street/Washington elites, but cable news was obsessed by the possibility that the Donald’s uuge comb-over might be hiding a tin foil hat!

So I thought it pertinent to observe that Barack Obama was born somewhere, had been elected President, served eight years and was on the way out—-but that he had left behind an even bigger economic mess than he inherited. In fact, the millions of families in Flyover America who have lost good jobs or seen their wages eroded by inflation or have had their savings crushed on the Fed’s zero bound do not care a whit about where our 44th President was born, but they most surely are interested in what is going to be done to change the current ruinous regime.

At length, we did get to Trump’s economic plan which among other things proposes to cut Federal taxes by $4.4 trillion over the next 10 years. I am more than ok with that because it at least recognizes the supply side principle that capitalist prosperity cannot be revived without lessening the heavy-hand of the state on incentives for work and enterprise in the private economy.

Besides, by the lights of CBO’s so-called “baseline” projections, Federal revenues under current policy would total $42 trillion over the next decade. So that means Trump’s tax cut is not all that radical, and at approximately 10% of the existing base is actually far smaller than the 25% revenue reduction embedded in the 1981 Reagan tax cut.

But what is profoundly disappointing about the Trump campaign’s stab at a semi-coherent economic plan is that it is a dog’s breakfast of some plausible policy ideas, really bad fiscal math and a relapse to the discredited, 35 year-old dogma of sweeping income tax cuts which pay for themselves.

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