Introduction Including Info On Third E-Mail Campaign

[johnkarls]

.
Editorial Note: The first two attachments to the following e-mail are not posted in this "Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-Mail Campaign" Section because they are not relevant here and because they are posted elsewhere in sections dealing with the June 15 meeting.


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From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: Our Approximately 150 Members
Subject: Various
Date: Saturday, May 28, 2011
Time: 10:15 am MDT > 11:49 am MDT
Attachments:
RL-w528-1-June15MeetingInfo
RL-w528-2-MonthlyShortQuiz
RL-w528-3-SixDegreesEmailCampaignReExportingAmericanJobs
RL-w528-4-DoItYouselfEmailCampaignRePreservingForAmn TaxpayersTheBenefitsOfTheBasicResearchTheyFund


Dear Friends,

Our next meeting is Wed Eve June 15th at the Salt Lake Public Library (210 East 400 South) in Conference Room C.

Information about the meeting including the suggested reading is contained in the first attached Microsoft-Word file.

Our traditional monthly Short Quiz is contained in the second attached Microsoft-Word file.

At our May 11th meeting, we agreed unanimously to recommend a Six-Degrees-of-Separation E-mail campaign requesting President Obama to honor his campaign promise to try to prevent the exportation of American jobs by announcing immediately that he will veto any legislation that exempts American-based multi-national companies from tax on their profits from exporting American jobs. In this regard, President Obama's Deficit Reduction Commission's Recommendation 2.2.3 (p. 33 of its Official Report of December 2010) was to exempt all foreign profits which, of course, would include profits from exporting American jobs.

The third attached Microsoft-Word file contains an e-mail that can be used by you for doing your part in launching this Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaign.

At our May 11th meeting, we had two dissents for a second E-mail campaign requesting President Obama to announce a new policy accompanied by legislation, if necessary - (A) that the U.S. Government will begin patenting all discoveries resulting from basic research that it funds, and (B) that the U.S. Government will license such discoveries for commercial use provided that the licensees, whether U.S.- or foreign-based, conduct in the United States any manufacturing operations utilizing the technology.

The fourth attached Microsoft-Word file contains an e-mail sent by "yours truly" to President Obama making this recommendation. However, since our official e-mail campaigns require unanimity or, at most, one dissent (in which case we report that we reached a consensus), this e-mail is not official. Nevertheless, all recipients of this weekly e-mail have a constitutional "freedom of speech" and, accordingly, can substitute the e-mail in the fourth attachment into what is provided in the third attachment to launch their own Do-It-Yourself Six-Degrees-of-Separation E-mail campaigns on this subject, in addition to their participation in the official campaign.

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Our last two weekly e-mails apologized for being unable to report on the THREE Proposed E-mail Campaigns considered at our May 11th meeting due to my being inundated with trying to compose five letters and assemble 12 reference materials that have now been posted on www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org under its third category entitled "Possible Topic for Fall 2011."

Many of you may recall that the Suggested Discussion Outline for our May 11th meeting had contained a THIRD suggested Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign =

"President Obama should be requested to appoint a permanent Independent Prosecutor to prosecute for perjury economics professors who knowingly publish false papers-studies-articles that will be used by lobbyists to influence Congress, and prosecute for suborning perjury the lobbyists who finance such papers-studies-articles. [In this regard, please see under Reference Materials on www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org "McNeil-Lehrer - Economic Studies/Testimony = Suborned Perjury" which includes the 5/5/2011 transcript of their interview of Oscar-Winning "Inside Job" Director Charles Ferguson.]"

The reason for this third suggestion was that we were examining whether the thesis of the book we were reading (and the conventional wisdom as well) is correct that the Economic Meltdown 2008-201? was caused by a subprime-mortgage crisis.

The reason for challenging the conventional wisdom is that the American Jobs DESTRUCTION Act of 2004 permitted all of the American-based multi-national corporations that had exported American jobs to pay dividends virtually "tax free" from their foreign tax-haven subsidiaries of several TRillions of dollars which constituted the profits that had accumulated over more than a decade from exporting American jobs. During that period, the only thing that could be done with those profits (other than pay the full U.S. corporate tax if they were repatriated as dividends) was to invest them in the short-term "commercial paper" of (in other words, make short-term loans to) the American companies that had NOT exported American jobs.

The American-based multi-national corporations used the TRillions of dollars of dividends from their tax-haven subsidiaries, by and large, to redeem parent company stock.

What many economists (including former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan) and the Congressional apologists have done is create a myth/”cover up” that the subprime-mortgage crisis caused the 2008-201? Economic Meltdown as a "cover up" for the tragedy that is the American Jobs DESTRUCTION Act of 2004.

Nothing is further from the truth than the myth/"cover up"!!!

The dislocations caused by the American Jobs DESTRUCTION Act of 2004 meant that the American companies that had NOT exported American jobs were forced to reduce payroll and capital expenditures by TRillions of dollars during 2005-2007 in order to pay off their "commercial paper" loans from the tax-haven subsidiaries of the American companies that had exported American jobs, so that those companies could redeem their parent-company stock.

This caused Congress to convene two weeks early in January 2008 and, within 5 weeks which is a Guinness Record for Congressional action except Acts of War (of which there have been none since December 1941), to enact the first Economic Stimulus Act which rebated as quickly as possible 2007 personal income taxes at the rate of $300 per taxpayer plus $300 if the taxpayer had a minor dependent ($1,200 max for a joint return).

For history buffs, the subprime-mortgage crisis did not occur until 9 months later at the height of the 2008 Presidential Campaign when John McCain famously suspended his campaign only a few weeks before the election to return to Washington to work on the SECOND Economic-Stimulus Bill (the so-called "TARP").

Incidentally, not only was the American Jobs DESTRUCTION Act of 2004 the real cause of the 2008-201? Economic Meltdown which would have occurred whether or not there had been any subprime mortgages, but the real "fuel on the fire" once the meltdown got started was probably not even subprime-mortgages -- but rather the failure of the Federal Reserve to provide an adequate response because its model of the American economy was still assuming that the 1.5 generations of Americans that had "come of age" since 1945-1985 when the American economy used to experience fairly regular economic cycles featuring fairly frequent recessions, would not panic but view a recession with the same equanimity as their experienced elders!!! [Unfortunately, Congress is too compromised by its complicity in passing the American Jobs DESTRUCTION Act of 2004 and its interest in perpetrating and perpetuating the “fairy tale” that subprime mortgages caused the economic meltdown to even require disclosure from Greenspan regarding how badly the predictions of his economic model regarding the behavior of the 1.5 new generations of Americans diverged from reality!!!]

Incidentally, many of us will recall that Fed Chairman Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson expressed amazement that the TARP funds that were injected into the nation's largest banks were NOT used by the banks to make loans. SO WHAT'S THE MYSTERY??? IT WAS THE TAX-HAVEN SUBSIDIARIES OF THE COMPANIES THAT HAD EXPORTED AMERICAN JOBS THAT HAD BEEN MAKING LOANS TO THE AMERICAN COMPANIES THAT HAD NOT EXPORTED AMERICAN JOBS -- NOT THE BANKS, "FOR CRYING OUT LOUD"!!!

But all that is "neither here nor there"!!!

Because "yours truly" was the only attendee on May 11th who voted for the third proposal. The consensus of the other attendees is that perjury in Congressional investigations is protected by the "Free Speech" provision of the First Amendment -- even though every sports fan knows that such perjury in a Congressional investigation was the basis for the recent criminal trial of Barry Bonds and that it is the basis for the criminal trial of Roger Clemens that is scheduled to begin this summer.

One last matter requires comment.

Earlier this year, American business representatives were trumpeting that $2 TRillion of “cash” had piled up on the balance sheets of American companies and President Obama would just have to retreat on a lot of his proposals in order to create greater confidence on the part of the American companies to get them to invest the $2 TRillion.

Some observations =

(1) If anyone is willing to take the time to check the Annual Form 10-K’s filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, “your truly” will cover everyone’s bets, any odds, that the $2 TRillion of “cash” has piled up on the balance sheets of almost solely American companies that have exported American jobs and that the $2 TRillion represents the “re-growth of crab grass” or, in other words, the piling up ONCE MORE in tax-haven subsidiaries of profits during 2008-2010 from having exported American jobs.

(2) “Yours truly” is also willing to bet that the $2 TRillion this time has not been loaned to American companies that have NOT exported American jobs because, following their TRillions of dollars of forced reductions in payroll and capital expenditures 2005-2007 and the general meltdown of the entire American economy caused by those reductions, they have plenty of spare plant capacity to handle any pick-up in economic activity.

(3) Accordingly, “yours truly” is willing to bet that the $2 TRillion has largely been invested by the American companies that have exported American jobs in U.S. Treasury Department “T Bills” and other short-term U.S. governmental debt.

(4) If the U.S. simply decided to tax the earnings of foreign subsidiaries on a current basis, including the $2 TRillion that has piled up during the last 3 years from exporting American jobs, we wouldn’t even be witnessing our pols squabbling over deficit reduction!!! After all, the tax on $2 TRillion that has piled up = $700 billion or, assuming it piled up 2008-2010, $233 billion/year. In other words, $700 billion up front + $233 billion/year going forward + increased tax revenues from restored economic growth by implementing economically-sound policies for a change, should be enough to eliminate our current deficit and begin paying down our accumulated debt.

(5) Instead, Recommendation 2.2.3 of President Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission proposes to exempt American companies from U.S. tax on their profits from exporting American jobs for competitive reasons!!! This provokes an additional set of questions =

(5-A) Why did the Commission, the majority of which comprises 6 U.S. Senators and 6 U.S. Congress-persons (half from each party), look through the microscope “the wrong way” and make the wrong decision about what to do about competitive pressures from multi-national companies based in European continental countries, many of which exempt foreign earnings??? Why didn’t the Commission, instead, recommend leaning on those European continental countries to tax the foreign earnings of their companies???

(5-B) How much by way of “campaign contributions” did the 12 pols on the Deficit-Reduction Commission charge the multi-national companies for including Recommendation 2.2.3 in their Official Report???

[In this regard, let’s remember that The American Jobs DESTRUCTION Act of 2004 permitted the TRillions of dollars that had piled up over more than a decade in foreign tax-haven subsidiaries to be paid to the U.S. parent companies at a special U.S. income tax rate of 5.25% rather than the regular 35% rate. Obviously, the American companies that exported American jobs demonstrated a willingness to pay at least 5.25% PLUS whatever “campaign contributions” they had to “pay” in order to obtain the 5.25% rate. So let’s assume they’re getting a bargain this time and only have to “pay” the 5.25% itself -- ALL OF WHICH IS PAID TO THE POLS SINCE THEY ARE LAVISHING A COMPLETE EXEMPTION THIS TIME AROUND!!! Let’s see -- $2 TRillion * 5.25% = $105 Billion to be “paid” in “campaign contributions” divided by 12 pols = $8.75 Billion/pol. Amazing!!! Because each of the 12 pols has raised 9 times as much as President Obama is expected to raise for his reelection campaign!!! Does anyone think any of the 12 pols will challenge the President??? Or has the $8.75 Billion/pol gone into those super-secret bank accounts in the Caribbean that have made Swiss numbered accounts passé???]

(5-C) What do the 12 pols think will happen THIS TIME if the American companies that have exported American jobs are ONCE MORE suddenly permitted to jerk out of their tax-haven subsidiaries the TRillions of dollars of accumulated profits from having exported American jobs??? By the time Recommendation 2.2.3 is enacted, there will probably be close to $4 TRillion of “cash” trapped in the tax-haven subsidiaries. If it has been invested in short-term U.S. governmental debt, will it occur to the pols that the $4 TRillion of short-term U.S. governmental debt is more than 3 times the amount of US governmental debt than the Chinese hold (over which we obsess incessantly whether the Chinese will dump!!!)??? And to the extent the $4 TRillion has been invested in short-term loans to the American companies that have not exported American jobs, will it occur to the pols that this is just another re-run of that Horror Movie entitled “The American Jobs DESTRUCTION Act of 2004” that required TRillions of dollars of reductions in American payrolls and capital expenditures 2005-2007???

(5-D) And do the pols really think the American public is dumb enough to believe in another myth/cover-up about something else being the real cause of the next economic melt-down that is looming because of their unwillingness to deal effectively with the TRillions of dollars that are sloshing around and accumulating fast because of the profitability of exporting American jobs??? [Hint = they probably do because the American public is addicted to “fairy tales” when it comes to politics!!!]

(5-E) And will we regret not having recommended the installation of an Independent Prosecutor to deny the pols another myth/cover-up for the looming disaster???

Enough already!!!


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We hope to see all of you on June 15th.

Your friend,

John K.

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