Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz - Tightrope’s Recommendations vs. Reading Liberally - Salt Lake E-mail Campaigns


Question A

Have we undertaken 48 “Six Degrees of Separation E-mail Campaigns” during our 14.5 years of existence?

Answer A

Yes.

Question B

Were they aimed at the nation’s decision makers?

Answer B

Yes --

With only one or two exceptions such as Pope Francis in 2015 as described below in the portion of Q&A “G” dealing with our author’s “Big Step No. 2.” The 2015 campaign implored Pope Francis during his impending first visit to the U.S. to mention the U.N. Report that 23% of U.S. children live in poverty rather than vocalizing solely about his position on Global Warming.

Question C

Have many of our campaigns (such as recognizing the real cause of the 2008-2011 economic meltdown so that a similar economic meltdown in 2018 was avoided) been surprisingly effective?

Answer C

Yes.

Vis-à-vis the 2008-2011 economic meltdown, we have documented twice that it was caused by Congress changing the U.S. corporate income tax law to permit the U.S.-based Multi-National Companies (MNC’s) that had exported American jobs to repatriate as dividends from their tax-haven subsidiaries the $4 TRillion - $5 TRillion of profits that had accumulated in their foreign tax-haven subsidiaries from exporting American jobs -- at a special one-time-only corporate income tax rate of 5.25% rather than the normal 35% rate.

We also documented twice that the $4 TRillion - $5 TRillion of supposedly “offshore funds” WAS NOT STUFFED IN MATTRESSES LOCATED IN THE TAX HAVENS, but had long since been loaned by the tax-haven subsidiaries to the CHUMP AMERICAN COMPANIES that had NOT exported American jobs.

And that, accordingly, the Congressional action forced the CHUMP AMERICAN COMPANIES to reduce American payroll and capital expenditures by $4 TRillion - $5 TRillion so that they could repay their loans from the tax-haven subsidiaries of the MNC’s so that the tax-haven subsidiaries could pay the dividends to their U.S. parent companies.

With the result that the U.S. Federal Reserve lamented loudly and often during the 2008-2011 meltdown about the plight of the CHUMP AMERICAN COMPANIES being in dire need of loans which they could not obtain.

The rest was history!!!

Even though the mainstream media has written that history incorrectly, either from ignorance or a desire to deflect blame.

The correct history is that if Congress was going to throw 10% of the American work force out of work by forcing THE CHUMP COMPANIES to reduce American payroll, then of course there would be an economic meltdown as the workers’ homes were foreclosed and there was nobody to buy their homes in the foreclosures because, of course, there were no new hires replacing the 10% of the work force that was being thrown out of work.

And this would have happened whether or not there had ever been any so-called “sub-prime” mortgages!!!

Our first e-mail campaign was addressed to Paul Krugman, a former Princeton U. Economics Professor and Nobel Prize Winner.

The reason for addressing it to Paul Krugman was that he had become a New York Times Columnist and, accordingly, he could trumpet to the world in his columns the true cause of the 2008-2011 economic meltdown. And he would have enough prestige as a Nobel Prize Winner to set the record straight.

Details of our e-mail campaign to Paul Krugman are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1006&sid=7d41ae930 ... d712301e18.

Unfortunately, our faith in Paul Krugman’s patriotism was apparently misplaced.

Instead of sounding the alarm in his NY Times columns, he apparently sat on the knowledge so that he could “predict” the next economic meltdown. Apparently not “caring a whit” whether the American economy was ruined again so long as he could reap the glory of foretelling that a politician he despised would be responsible for the devastation.

What Paul Krugman overlooked was that Reading Liberally - Salt Lake prides itself in being a NON-PARTISAN PUBLIC-POLICY STUDY/ACTION GROUP THAT TAKES EFFECTIVE ACTION.

And that we would NOT sit idly by while Donald Trump campaigned for the Presidency in 2016 for, inter alia, permitting the U.S.-based Multi-National Companies that had exported American Jobs to repatriate as dividends from their tax-haven subsidiaries ANOTHER $4 TRillion - $5 TRillion of profits that had accumulated SINCE THE 2008-2011 ECONOMIC MELTDOWN in their foreign tax-haven subsidiaries from exporting American jobs -- at a new permanent ZERO tax rate for such income rather than the normal 35% corporate income tax rate which was being lowered, in the same legislation, to 21%.

This provision was part of the massive tax bill that was signed into law at the end of 2017.

Accordingly, our second campaign on this topic took the form of a 12/26/2017 Certified Mail - Return Receipt letter to each of the 12 Regional Federal Reserve Presidents -- (A) explaining to them the true cause of the 2008-2011 plight of the CHUMP AMERICAN COMPANIES THAT HAD NOT EXPORTED AMERICAN JOBS in being in desperate need of loans that they could not obtain – as the Federal Reserve had lamented frequently and loudly at the time, (B) explaining to them that the same thing was about to happen all over again to the CHUMP AMERICAN COMPANIES for precisely the same reason, (C) pointing out to them that each Regional Federal Reserve Bank has the authority to make loans to such companies under such circumstances, and (D) each of the 12 Regional Federal Reserve Presidents would be derelict in her/his duty if her Regional Federal Reserve Bank failed to make the replacement loans to the CHUMP AMERICAN COMPANIES.

Details of our campaign to the 12 Presidents of the Regional Federal Reserve Banks (including available for download a sample copy of the 4-page letter that each received) are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1685&sid=7d41ae930 ... d712301e18.

Once again, the rest was history -- though this time of a happier sort!!!

There was no economic meltdown.

And Paul Krugman disgraced himself by predicting loudly and often that President Trump would cause another economic meltdown similar to 2008-2011 -- though without explaining the true reason for how he “knew” such a meltdown would occur.

And Paul Krugman does not appear to have recovered from the widespread criticism and derision that greeted the failure of his prediction.


Question D

Noting that the 48 campaigns resulted from three times that many monthly meetings over 14.5 years -- (A) how are the topics for the monthly meetings determined, and (B) what are the standards for launching an e-mail campaign?

Answer D

Each of our 182 members is free to suggest a topic by posting her/his proposal in Section 3 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.

The topic for each monthly meeting is selected from the Section 3 array of proposals by the attendees of the previous month’s meeting. [If no proposal receives a majority vote, there is a run-off between the top two -- Yours Truly never votes except to break ties.]

The standards for launching an e-mail campaign are (1) a minimum quorum of 6 following proper notice to our 182 members so that any/all who might be interested can participate, and (2) no more than 1 dissent.

[Even though all of our 182 members are welcome to suggest topics, many and perhaps most of the topics are based on new books whose authors make presentations at the Harvard Club of NYC -- full disclosure, the NYC Harvard Club’s Program Committee appears to be “manned” by a cadre of solely-female Columbia U. Professors with Harvard degrees.]

Question E

Of our 48 e-mail campaigns, did 39 of them deal with issues other than those raised by Tightrope -- such as (1) The United Nation’s two-decade War on Human Trafficking, (2) Solving Global Warming 100% Without Having To Invade Other Countries Such As China To Force Them To Employ Uneconomic Energy Sources, (3-4-5) various foreign-policy issues (Korea, Afghanistan, the Palestinians), (6) saving Great Salt Lake from being destroyed to produce alfalfa to feed Chinese cattle, (7) campaign-finance reform, (8) dealing with spent nuclear fuel rods, (9) etc., etc.?

Answer E

Yes.

Question F

Did the Tightrope list of “Big Steps” contain a glaring exception vis-à-vis which we have had two e-mail campaigns -- viz., halting The Establishment’s Exporting of American Jobs to China (and other low-wage countries) via so-called Free-Trade Agreements 1993-2016 such as NAFTA, the WTO, dozens of trade agreements with China, etc., etc.?

Answer F

Yes, this was a glaring exception.

As we have studied many times beginning with our 2/14/2008 meeting 12.5 years ago focusing on Dana Milbank’s “Homo Politicus” and Robert Kuttner’s “The Squandering of America” --

“The Establishment” (which we have always defined as the billionaires who “own” both political parties, who “own” many, if not most, members of the Mainstream Media, and who “own” many members of academia) have conducted a “War on American Workers” since 1993 in the form of exporting American jobs via so-called “free trade” agreements and in the form of reversing the outcome of the American Civil War by importing “slave laborers” (illegal immigrants who cannot complain about any conditions meted out to them for fear of being reported to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka I.C.E.).

[NB: In order to have an opinion on The Establishment’s two-prong “War on American Workers,” you do not need to have read “Homo Politicus” by the Washington Post’s long-time liberal OpEd Columnist, Dana Milbank, who is syndicated nationally, or “The Squandering of America” by Robert Kuttner, Brandeis U Prof and former long-time liberal columnist for Business Week who continues to write columns for The Huffington Post and The New York Times. Simple observation will do.]

As a result of studying Dana Milbank and Robert Kuttner and subsequent observation, we have often characterized the U.S. government as a Kabuki Theater in which The Establishment controls both the RIGHT-HAND PUPPET and the LEFT-HAND PUPPET -- and called it “the best government that money can buy.”

[The latter epithet results from American campaign-finance law which permits pols to lie with impunity to voters while not daring, as a practical matter, to double-cross providers of “campaign contributions” (aka, bribes) -- details of our latest e-mail campaign on campaign-finance reform are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1910&sid=74b3bc059 ... 5185b26210.]

Exporting American jobs began in earnest with NAFTA in 1993.

Interestingly, President Clinton recognized that the U.S. Senate would NEVER ratify NAFTA with the 2/3 vote required by the U.S. Constitution because of the opposition of American labor unions and their Democratic Party supporters.

Accordingly, President Clinton VIOLATED THE U.S. CONSTITUTION by having both houses of Congress pass NAFTA as an ordinary law requiring only a majority vote in each house.

For the next 24 years, it was “off to the races” as scores of so-called free-trade agreements exported American jobs.

Indeed, President Obama directly interfered in Britain’s “Brexit” election by hectoring British voters loudly and often that if they voted for Brexit, Britain would have to go “to the end of the line” to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the U.S. [At least, so far as is known, President Obama did not use U.S. taxpayer dollars to oppose Britain’s Brexit vote the way he infamously used substantial amounts of U.S. taxpayer dollars to interfere with the 2015 re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (see, for example, “Obama’s Offensive Against Netanyahu Backfires” - Washington Post - 2/2/2015).]

And President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement negotiations came to a screeching halt with the election of Donald Trump who campaigned on the issue of halting the exportation of American jobs via free-trade agreements and bringing manufacturing jobs home again.

[Just like other free-trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement would have protected the foreign-manufacturing commercial interests of “The Establishment” whose “campaign contributions” create/sustain the afore-mentioned Kabuki Theater known as the U.S. Government, while “selling down the river” American workers whose jobs would have been exported.]

It would appear that President Trump’s opposition to The Establishment’s core philosophy of exporting American jobs is why The Establishment loathes him so much.

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Both of our e-mail campaigns on this topic were addressed to President Obama.

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The first followed our 5/11/2011 meeting on “Taxing The Profits From Exporting American Jobs” for which the details are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=958&sid=7d41ae9300 ... d712301e18.

That campaign implored President Obama to support taxing the tax-haven profits earned by U.S.-based Multi-National Companies from exporting American jobs.

Doing so would have reduced the “uneven playing field” which taxed corporate profits from using American workers at 35% while NOT taxing profits from exporting their jobs to foreign workers.

The campaign fell on deaf ears.

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Our second campaign followed our 2/12/2014 meeting on the topic of “Renewing 1968 Executive Order To Halt American Job Exports” for which the details are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1215&sid=7d41ae930 ... d712301e18.

It was a direct response to President Obama’s famous 1/20/2014 announcement that “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone” which invited ordinary citizens to submit recommendations to him.

Our recommendation was entitled “Renewing 1968 Executive Order 11387 To Halt The Export of American Jobs.”

Renewing 1968 Executive Order 11387 would have had the effect of directly prohibiting the exportation of American jobs.

The campaign fell on deaf ears.


Question G

Of the 9 of our 48 e-mail campaigns that relate to the 8 “big steps [our authors] urge the country to take,” how do our 9 campaigns compare to our author’s 8 “big steps”?

Answer G

The comparisons follow below. However, the first two “big steps” will be taken out of order to improve coherence (i.e., coherence regarding the rationales of our campaigns, rather than the coherence of the authors’ order of the “big steps”).


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Big Step No. 2. Universal high-school graduation

Composing this Answer to Question G vis-à-vis Big Step No. 2 was one of the most heart-breaking experiences in my entire life!!!

As should be painfully obvious from the Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz, I was incredibly impressed with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn -- both in terms of their accomplishments and in terms of their obvious love and concern for America’s downtrodden!!!

And I had read Tightrope cover-to-cover and composed Suggested Answers to Questions A thru F before focusing on the fact that Nicholas Kristof was one of 43 news-media superstars who had been implored on three separate occasions to “lift a finger” to save 10 million inner-city children from “a fate worse than death”!!!

And he knew full well that if any of the 43 had lifted a single finger, that tragedy might have been averted!!!

The indictment of Nicholas Kristof is contained in Section 4 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org entitled “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s ‘Apartheid’ Justice System (In Honor of Jonathan Kozol and In Memory of John Howard Griffin).”

The fourth posting in Section 4 is entitled “43 News Media Superstars Shun 10 Million Inner-City Children.”

That posting contains available for download three separate letters (8/16/2010, 9/2/2010 and 5/28/2011), each of which had displayed just below “Dear (Whomever)” in bold super-sized type – “Re: $84 Billion Legally Pledged For Education of American Inner-City Children Slipping Away Due To Judicial Improprieties – EQUAL PROTECTION BY THE MEDIA URGENTLY NEEDED!!!” [Original capital letters.]

That posting from which the three letters can be downloaded is available at viewtopic.php?f=211&t=767&sid=40a169e67 ... 60e914d61e.

The first and third letters appended a list of the 43 news-media superstars who were receiving their own personally-addressed copies of each of the three letters.

Nicholas Kristof received each of those three letters.

Needless to say, I was shocked and appalled while composing this answer to focus on the fact that Nicholas Kristoff had been one of the recipients.

Section 5 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org entitled “Addendum: Inner-City Holocaust and America’s ‘Apartheid’ Justice System” contains a fourth posting entitled “Final Report to 51 Inner-City Clergy Supporting The Cause.”

In that fourth posting is available for download the 10/5/2011 letter to each of the 51 clergy informing them that the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to hear our appeal for which the “Question Presented” was –

“Can state court judges order their decisions which they know are diametrically-opposed to well-settled law, not to be published or cited (a strategy labeled ‘the segregated toilet’ in correspondence with 51 inner-city clergy who represent the 10 million inner-city children who have been disclosed from the outset as the ‘real parties at interest’ in this law suit) in order to flush away the rights of the 10 million inner-city children without disturbing the rights of first-class American citizens -- without violating the ‘Equal Protection of the Law’ requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?”

In addition to informing the 51 inner-city clergy that the U.S. Supreme Court had refused on 10/4/2011 to accept our appeal, the 10/5/2011 letter --

1. Thanked them for their efforts with the solace that each of us would be able to say at The Pearly Gates with St. Paul (II Timothy 4:7): “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” and

2. Requested them and their congregants to pray for the 43 news-media superstars, the 21 governmental officials, the California judges and the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, that MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS!!!

In continuing to pray for the 43 news-media superstars that MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS, it had been nearly a decade since I had looked at the list of the 43 news-media superstars.


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Extending the 178 “I Have A Dream”® Programs in 51 American inner-cities to include 10 million inner-city children was the subject of the foregoing discussion.

In summary, each program adopted an entire third-grade class of an inner-city school (or third-grade cohort in a public-housing project) and provided each child with a tutor and mentor through high school graduation with a guarantee of college tuition.

You are urged to study the 9 pages of detailed information contained in the first of the three letters sent to Nicholas Kristof described above. For your convenience here is a copy of that letter –

8-16-2010 Letter to Nicholas Kristof.pdf

(126.37 KiB) Downloaded 676 times

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Comparing “I Have A Dream”® to the Kristoff/WuDunn “Big Step No. 2: Universal high school graduation”

As described in the 8/16/2010 letter to Nicholas Kristof, the early IHAD programs typically had 65% - 70% of their Dreamers graduate from high school and go on to college despite the class just ahead and the class just behind each Dreamer class typically having SINGLE-DIGIT HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES.

And when we realized that half of the female Dreamers had become pregnant and that the reason why the half who didn’t was that one of our tutors/mentors had become a surrogate parent who had expressed to the Dreamer that she could make something out of herself with the IHAD program AND IT WOULD BREAK THE HEART OF THE TUTOR/MENTOR SURROGATE PARENT IF SHE DIDN’T – the later IHAD programs in the 1990’s for which we requested all tutors/mentors to express often their hopes for their Dreamers -- typically enjoyed 90% high school graduation - college matriculation rates.

I am not aware of any other program that has “moved the needle” significantly vis-à-vis inner-city high school graduation - college matriculation.

[Though programs such as Big Brothers - Big Sisters which provide mentoring for “at risk” children have achieved some impressive individual results without enclosing an entire inner-city school class (or entire housing project cohort) in a protective cocoon in which education is worshipped rather than derogated.]

In contrast, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn simply want to force children to stay in school until they graduate from high school or reach age 18.

Some painfully-obvious heart-breaking questions –

1. If children who drop out tend to be the worst actors (e.g., gang members who get in trouble, etc.), won’t this policy make inner-city classroom learning even more impossible?

2. Is this policy anything more than awarding “participation trophies” for high school attendance even though, as Jonathan Kozol has reported in his award-winning books over the last half century, the U.S. government continually and consistently reports that 30% of Americans are illiterate as defined by an inability to read the warning label on a can of rat poison?

3. So what value is there to a high school degree that does not even mean that a graduate of one of America’s inner-city ghetto schools is literate???

4. Why should America be given absolution by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn for its “separate but UNEQUAL” K-12 “Apartheid” education system (Jonathan Kozol’s terminology in his 2005 book “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”) -- so long as everyone gets a “participation trophy”???

5. BTW, won’t this policy convert American ghetto schools into de facto prisons??? And will the policy be implemented by the Federal Government providing the Truant Officers who go into our inner-city ghettos to drag miscreants “screaming and kicking” back to “prison”???


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Our “Six Degrees of Separation” E-mail Campaigns on Inner-City Education

Not surprisingly, we have had 6 e-mail campaigns over our 14.5 years of existence trying to promote “I Have A Dream”® or IHAD-style programs.

One was even addressed to Pope Francis before his first visit to the U.S. in 2015 imploring him to take a stand on (as reported by the United Nations) “23% of U.S. children living in poverty.”

The record shows that Pope Francis concentrated on Global Warming during his 2015 trip and, apparently, did not even utter a word about 23% of U.S. children living in poverty.

Indeed, the record shows that Pope Francis (as well as the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) both began bouncing our e-mails within a matter of hours.

Even though we could not comprehend why Pope Francis thought Global Warming was a religious issue, and why he shunned an obvious religious issue about which Christ had constantly preached -- the poor.

Our six campaigns, details of which are available in Section 1 of www.readingliberally-saltlake.org (and, using the meeting dates indicated, to access a plethora of information posted on our website which, after the first 7 sections, contain clusters of forums (aka sections) relating to each of our meetings over our 14.5 years in reverse chronological order) --

6/3/2020: ADDRESSING THE CAUSE OF RACISM (VS. A MERE SYMPTON)

6/17/2015: POPE FRANCIS AND 23% OF U.S. CHILDREN IN POVERTY

9/12/12: BILL & MELINDA GATES' CRIMES AGAINST INNER-CITY ED

1/13/2010: PREVAILING SINGLE-DIGIT INNER-CITY GRAD’N RATES

5/13/2009: PREVAILING SINGLE-DIGIT INNER-CITY GRAD’N RATES

1/14/2009: PREVAILING SINGLE-DIGIT INNER-CITY GRAD’N RATES


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Big Step No. 1. High quality early childhood programs

We have never focused on early childhood programs except in passing while studying inner-city K-12 education.

Our excuse as an organization is that in focusing on inner-city K-12 education, we were painfully aware that the studies on the effectiveness of Pre-K education for inner-city children was that it had no discernable impact after 2-3 years.

The reason was that unlike Pre-K programs for children of affluent parents (who already provide a rich learning environment at home), inner-city Pre-K programs reach only a fraction of the students. Which means that inner-city schools have to gear Kindergarten and first/second grade to bringing up to speed the children who did not have Pre-K. And the early-learning of the fraction of inner-city children who did have Pre-K is wasted while their classmates are caught up.

In addition, the “I Have A Dream”® model demonstrated that it was possible to transform SINGLE-DIGIT high school graduation rates to 90% who then began college ON A PAR with affluent students.

So promoting IHAD-style programs was also a matter of assigning a higher priority to a program that was effective.

[My own personal excuse for our organization not focusing on Pre-K education is that, as described in Q&A “D” above, the focus for each meeting is determined by the attendees of the previous month’s meeting and I never vote except to break ties.]

BTW, it is noted that Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn stress in their discussion of Big Step No. 1 that high quality early childhood programs are beneficial to low-income parents by providing high quality childcare.

I confess that in ignoring Pre-K programs as a matter of priority for what is effective from an educational viewpoint, our organization has been oblivious to the child-care benefit to low-income parents who want to obtain employment.

Mea culpa and nostra culpa!!!


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Big Step No. 3. Universal health coverage

Our 7/12/2017 e-mail campaign on demonstrating that “Medicare For All” would save the U.S. Government $300 billion/year was addressed to Sen. John McCain a mere 16 days before his iconic “thumb down” vote against repealing and replacing Obamacare, which then failed by one vote in the Senate.

Details of the calculation, based on (1) U.S. census figures of how many Americans are already covered by Medicare, Medicaid, the U.S. military (incl. the V.A.) AND LOST TAX REVENUES SINCE THE COST OF EMPLOYER-PROVIDED HEALTHCARE IS DEDUCTIBLE FOR THE EMPLOYER BUT EXCEMPT FOR THE EMPLOYEE, and (2) how much U.S. healthcare should cost based on per capita costs for the other 35 economically-developed member countries of the OECD -- are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1631&sid=615488f0e ... d851611a3d.

BTW, our members who are conservative in conventional political terms loved the proposal because saving the government money is a bedrock conservative principle. And our members who are liberal in conventional political terms loved it because “it is the right thing to do.”

On 12/18/2019, we launched another “Medicare For All” e-mail campaign for two reasons --

1. Elizabeth Warren had recently issued a DEFAMATORY STATEMENT (defamatory toward “Medicare For All”) that it would COST the U.S. Government $52 TRillion over 10 years RATHER THAN SAVING IT MONEY!!!

2. The 2017 tax bill had lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, which meant that the lost tax revenues from employer-provided healthcare whose cost is deductible to the employer and exempt for the employee had been reduced by 14/35.

The reduced corporate tax rate meant that Medicare For All would SAVE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT only $86 billion/year rather than $300 billion. Details are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1869&sid=615488f0e ... d851611a3d.

The impact???

At least Elizabeth Warren went silent on how much Medicare For All would cost.

And Bernie Sanders began talking about how many people the Federal government already covers.

And about how Americans pay twice as much per capita as the citizens of the other 35 members of the OECD for healthcare.

But couldn’t quite bring himself to say that Medicare For All would produce a savings for the Federal Government.


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Big Step No. 4 - 7.

Our organization has never focused on any of these items.

Although they may have merit, it should be obvious that they do NOT “hold a candle” to --

1. Finally transforming America’s Permanent 30% Under-Caste with effective education of its children; or

2. Medicare for all.

Indeed, Big Steps 5-6-7 would probably be solved if America finally transforms its Permanent 30% Under-Caste.

[Though each Big Step might benefit from being addressed separately immediately rather than waiting for the Permanent 30% Under-Caste to be transformed by providing a decent education for its children.]


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Big Step No. 8. A right to work? (NB: as distinguished from “right to work” laws which permit workers to opt out of union membership)

On 12/9/2009, we launched a “Six Degrees of Separation E-mail Campaign” to President Obama imploring him to eliminate unemployment by creating a “National Security Workforce.” Details are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=951&sid=615488f0e6 ... d851611a3d.

The essentials of our proposal were --

1. Condition unemployment compensation upon working in a manufacturing plant to be created in every locality with significant unemployment, to manufacture solar/wind equipment – with the Federal Government running the plants in a WPA/CCC/TVA/Manhattan Project-style program.

2. Increase the length of the unemployment compensation so that it never terminates – everyone continues to work for the amount s/he would have received as unemployment compensation until s/he is hired away by private industry for higher compensation.

3. The Federal Government is now recouping a good share of the cost of unemployment compensation because now something worthwhile is being produced with those expenditures.

4. The Federal Government could require the owners of the best solar/wind technology to license their technology for reasonable fees.

5. If an employer wants to close (or significantly reduce employment at) a plant, the Federal Government should require the plant (or the unused portion) to be auctioned off under “eminent domain” – and if the auction price is sufficiently low, purchase the facility as a nearly-ready-to-go solar/wind manufacturing facility with its old work force starting ASAP to manufacture solar/wind equipment

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It should be noted that this 12/9/2009 proposal predated all of our subsequent thorium-fission campaigns that championed thorium fission as a way of solving global warming 100% without having to invade other countries such as China to force them to use uneconomic energy sources.

HOWEVER, the remainder of the proposal makes eminent sense -- only a change in what the plants manufacture would be required.