Citizens United, SuperPACs, Transfusing the Economy, Anarchists, AR-15 Assault Rifles, a Reprint of "The Meeting," Originally Posted Here One Year Ago ... and of course, Sid

The Meeting, Revisted 

 

The following appeared in a posting on this blog on August 10, 2011, seven months after the Citizens United decision, which is also addressed further down in today's posting.  As I stated then, this is a work of fiction, but I find it very believable that such a meeting did indeed take place.  That is why I am asking you to read this again at this time.   I strongly recommend that you pass this piece of "fiction" on to your relatives, friends, neighbors and business associates because, to my way of thinking, it alludes to something very evil that is going on in our country right now.     JL 

 

                                                         

Aug. 10, 2011

Hey, guys and gals!  I don't like writing everything that appears on this blog.  Please put your thoughts together and submit something.  Agree with me, disagree with me, break new ground, write a poem, draw a picture, but submit it to me for inclusion in the blog.  See top of blog for my address.   (The following story is a work of fiction, I think.  Any resemblance to events which may have actually occurred is purely coincidental, I think.)

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The Meeting

Jack Lippman

 

The meeting was held in a secluded and luxurious chalet in the foothills of an isolated mountain range.   A private airstrip was the only access to the place other than a rugged unmarked road used to bring in the staff, food and housekeeping essentials from the nearest town, sixty miles away.  A number of private jets were parked at the end of the runway where the hangar and fuel depot were located.

The men, all casually dressed as if they were there for a weekend of hunting or fishing, sat around a large conference table.  They shall remain nameless, but suffice it to say, each one represented personal wealth in excess of the 300 billion dollar level, which made their eight figure annual salaries almost meaningless.  These were the wealthiest men in America.   If I were to identify them, you would not recognize one name.  Each had gone to great lengths to preserve their anonymity, a quality common to possessors of wealth of this kind.

“Gentlemen,” intoned a short gray-haired man sitting at the table.  “In order to get to our agenda promptly and tend to business, I want to remind all of you of what our group is all about.  I am sure you all already know this … that is why you are here … but these ideas bear frequent repeating.”  No one said anything.  A few of the men nodded their assent.

"Although we as individuals are clearly the most charitable people in the world, our prime objective is wealth preservation.”

“Not exactly,” someone interjected.  “I am not in the least charitable.  I don’t care if people out there live or die or starve or whatever.  I donate for tax purposes.  If the God damn government took away the deductions I get for what I give, and what my foundations give away, I wouldn’t let loose of a red cent.”

“Thank you, George, for your comments.  But let’s get on with it,” the discussion leader continued. 

“Ideally, it would be wonderful if there were no such thing as taxes.  Some of you, I know, have moved a lot of your wealth to countries where there are practically none, but we all know there are limits to how much of that you can do.  So long as we are Americans, we must do as much as we can to keep taxes here to a minimum and deductions and loopholes at a maximum.  We must have a government, for without one, we would lose the protection it provides to allow us the freedom to do what we want with our money.  And of course, at a minimum, we need an army and navy to provide that protection.”

George raised his hand, was recognized, and spoke up.  “Bull.  We don’t need the government to provide us with a military.  We can hire our own.  It’s cheaper that way.  There’s plenty of mercenaries around and no one gives a shit if they get killed.”

“George, thank you for your comments.  That’s something to consider, but let’s get on.  Even though the maximum tax rate is down to 35%. that's still a big hit.  Even with deductions and shelters, it takes a lot out our wallets.  The Democrats would like to see it go back up to 39%, like it was under Clinton.  I would love it back down to 25% or even lower.  Single digits would be fine.  And paying into Social Security is something we must avoid.  That’s a bottomless pit. We only pay into it on a miniscule fraction of our income but I would hate to see that changed, and there are those out there who want to do exactly that.”

“Look at the numbers, though. There are only ten of us in this room and there are maybe another 100,000 top-bracket taxpayers out there who are almost in the same boat as we are, and we are speaking for them too.  Our task is to make sure the government keeps doing it our way.  We have to get the country behind us.  That Norquist fellow did a fine job getting a lot of Congressmen to pledge never to increase taxes nor get rid of our blessed loopholes, but he’s beginning to lose his credibility.  Bush helped him a lot to connect to the conservatives out there, but that’s history now.”

The discussion leader paused briefly, looked out of the massive picture windows at the spectacular scenery surrounding the chalet and continued.  

                                        
                                                                                                   View looking westward from chalet picture window

“As I see it, we must do everything to promote the idea that tax increases, in any form whatsoever, including removing loopholes and deductions, are extremely bad for the country.  We must drill it into the heads of all Americans that taxation removes incentive to invest and grow the economy at all levels and kills jobs.  That gets them every time.  We have to get that into the schools at all levels, even kindergarten.” 

“Ha,” someone laughed.  “Maybe we should put out an Ayn Rand inspired comic book for kids.”

“Great idea,” the leader chuckled. “But this is no laughing matter.  We must convince America that the Laffer curve, the economic ideas of Milton Friedman and of course, of Frederick Hayek, are irrefutable truths, deserving of as much respect as the Ten Commandments.  And that the Keynesian policies of using government spending and higher taxes as tools with which to manage the economy, and to provide an unearned safety net, are poisonous.”

“The way to do this is to convince a majority of Americans of the validity of our positions.  And this is a great time to continue to do this.  The citizenry is hurting and they, like us, are taxpayers.  We need them on our side. They will buy this argument that taxes are the cause of all of the country’s problems, if we shove it down their throats hard enough and often enough.  Put the blame on the government.  It spends too much.  On anything and everything.  As a wise person out there has said, ‘we have to starve the beast.’ "

"If the funding for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and every government spending program out there were cut at least in half, we would never again need to even think about raising taxes.  We might even cut them significantly.   Frankly, I know people would be hurting and some might even die, and things the government does, like roads and dams and research, would have to be eliminated.  But it is far more important that this nation preserve our freedom to accumulate wealth without having to share it with anyone else through excessive taxation.  It’s our money. We cannot have anything that would even hint at the Marxist concept of wealth redistribution.  That’s what high taxes really are. The French cut off Louis XIV’s head to start this God damn leftist ball rolling and we aim to make sure it is stopped right here.” 

All those around the table rose and applauded the speaker.

“Okay, here is the way we do it.  And it has to be done so convincingly that even the Congressmen and local politicians who come aboard actually believe this stuff with all their hearts.  That won’t be easy, because some of them are really smart, but we need to make them believers.” 

1. We must control the media.  We have to have at least one or two major TV networks in our pocket whose programming we can control.  We must dominate talk radio, internet web sites, newspapers, particularly in smaller cities and towns, and magazines.  Once they get our message out, it gets E-mailed all over the country, multiplied ten-fold.  


2. We must fund foundations and institutes which provide legitimate appearing material and documentation, telling our story, to be provided to the media.  Generously endowing a few hard-up colleges or universities can result in strong support for our position from the academic world.  


3. We must ally ourselves with groups who seem susceptible to adopting our ideology because they are already single-mindedly devoted to one cause or another.  This blind devotion can be easily transferred to our cause. This will increase our numbers and believe me, this is very applicable to members of Congress and local legislators.  The groups with which we must ally ourselves are endless.  They include pro-Israel groups, pro-life groups, creationists, anti-fluouride groups, home schooling and pro-educational voucher groups, evangelical Christian groups, anti-immigrant groups, chambers of commerce, some professional societies, sporting groups, bankers associations and Second Amendment groups.


4.  We must repeatedly attack any opposition to our positions.  Innuendo and stretching the truth can be used to discredit any who disagree with us.  Guilt by association and lies, even ones easily disproven, are effective tools since refuting them takes the opposition’s eye off of the ball.  Individuals who are in financial distress can be coerced. Anything questionable in an opponent’s personal life should be capitalized on.

“Gentlemen, to embark on this program, we have established an off-shore funding center with access to all of our accounts in this country.  Everything is cryptographically protected to a degree beyond the capability of any government in the world to decipher.  You will never be identified as being involved in this program. Take a deep breath, gentlemen, for here is the price tag to do this job properly." 

"If any of you are not willing to contribute $200,000,000 to this effort right now and commit to that amount each and every year for the next ten years, you may get up and leave this room right now. All of your jets out there have been refueled and are ready to take off with you if you so choose. Remember though, what I propose  is not only for your good, but for the good of the country as we know it.  You see, I am firmly convinced of the truth of every word that I have said.”  

He rose and looked at all of the men sitting around the table, making eye contact with each of them individually.  None of the nine other men even budged nor made any motion to leave their seats.  He paused for half a minute and only then, smiled.

“Okay, then.  Let’s have lunch and afterwards, I want to introduce you to a few people who will make sure every penny of the two billion dollars that you have just pledged is well spent … and turn over the chair of our group for the next year to whomever is next in alphabetical order.  That’s you, George, right?”

Everyone leaned back as white-jacketed waiters entered the room, laid down fine bone china and sterling silver table settings and prepared to serve a lunch which did not come from McDonalds.      

                                                
 



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Advice for Businessmen, Bankers and the Government

Interest rates are low. This makes money “cheap” but on the other side of the coin, the return on money invested is miniscule.  So this is not the time to sit on resources and save.  Most of today's  interest rates on savings, when even minimal inflation is factored in, result in a net loss!  Rather, it is the time to spend for growth and expansion, and if businessmen must borrow to do so, this is the time to do it at minimal cost. This will create jobs and grow the economy. 

                                              

Austerity, which means cutting spending and leaving funds in sterile savings doing nothing, will not create jobs nor do anything to stem the world’s economic downturn.  In fact, it will worsen it.  Compare the medieval hematologic practice of removing, often via leeches, some of the blood of a sick person with the current medical practice of blood or platelet transfusions, when necessary.  That's what our economy needs: a transfusion, not continued bleeding!          

                                            






                       


                                  Medieval Bloodletting Contrasted with Modern Transfusions

              

                                                   

To solve the problem, businessmen, bankers and governments will have to work to borrow and spend together for each others' benefit.  The economy needs such a transfusion, and the money to do it is in the bank, and I don’t mean the “blood bank.”  Economic recovery must not be put in the hands of our present day "leeches."

JL

                                                             
                                                             

Citizens United Revisted

In very oversimplified terms, the Supreme Court’s 176 page decision in Citizen’s United vs. the Federal Election Commission basically said that the Commission could not restrict the speech of groups, such as corporations and unions, without violating the First Amendment right of free speech guaranteed to members of such groups.  This means that to restrict a corporation from making political donations would restrict the free speech of the individual shareholders with whom that corporation was identified.  

One of the reasons a business or any organization chooses to set itself up as a corporation is to safeguard the personal assets of the corporation’s owners, its shareholders, from liability.  For example, if an individual sues a corporation or even a corporate non-profit foundation and secures a judgment in excess of what the corporation can pay, the plaintiff cannot go after the individuals who own shares in the organization. 

Isn’t it contradictory, then, that when it comes to making political donations (which the courts earlier have decided are essential to free speech), the individual shareholders’ rights to free speech are transferred to and identified with the group, the corporation, which they own … but a wall of separation is maintained between the corporation and the individual shareholders when someone is suing the corporation.

I feel that that wall should remain in place in both directions, and that the rights to free speech enjoyed by shareholders should not be transferred to the corporation, just as financial liability is not transferred from the corporation to the shareholders.   Or, if the shareholders’ right to free speech is transferred to the corporation (as in the Citizens United decision), why shouldn’t a plaintiff be able to secure a judgment against individual shareholders?   Once the wall is broken down in one direction, it is breached in the other as well.

It should be noted that, despite this, most of the money contributed to Super Political Action Committees, the subject of the Citizens United decision, is not coming from corporations, but from individuals.   

Such contributions to SuperPACs, so long as they just provide funds to deal with "issues" and not specifically support  candidates, can be made without limit by either groups or individuals while individual contributions made directly to political parties and candidates are limited by law. 

But, if the contributions are made through a SuperPAC corporation structured under certain portions of IRS Code Section 503 C, as benefiting "social welfare," they not only have no limit, but the donor’s identity need not be disclosed either!  (Citizens United is organized under Section 503 C [4] of the IRS Code.) 

In the "fictional" story "The Meeting" reproduced above, it was likely that the Citizens United decision and IRS Code Section 503 C were discussed at great length in the session that resumed after lunch. 

JL




                                           

More on the AR 15 Assault Rifle

The previous posting talked about gun control and particularly the availability of the AR 15 Assault Rifle.  

Here are half a dozen shooters along with their weapons. This type of weapon can kill many people quickly and is valuable to our military forces (see picture #4 below) and to law enforcement personnel in extreme situations.  It is a highly efficient killing tool.   Such weaponry should not be available to hunters, collectors and sportsmen, such as those in the other pictures appearing below.  Taking it away from them will not deal a blow to our freedoms, as the NRA contends.  On the contrary, allowing them to be purchased takes away  freedoms from the rest of us, specifically freedoms to peacefully enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

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3                                                                          4

                     

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NRA members live in fear.  Their leadership promotes a paranoia vaguely related to a supposed conspiratorial plot to take away their weapons so that there will be no way to preserve their freedoms.  They believe this.  That is why they are addicted to weaponry.  They do not trust democracy.   They only trust the products of the greatest supporter of the NRA, the weapons manufacturing industry. 

I believe that most NRA members, if they stop to clear their heads of this fear for a moment, actually oppose the present level of availability of assault rifles.  Sadly, they will not speak out since they have been brainwashed into believing that restricting them will be the start of a slide down a slippery slope leading to the restriction of other, less lethal, weaponry.

In the previous posting on this blog, I asked the reader to rank four organizations in the order of the severity of a threat to democracy in this country which they posed.  Personally, I ranked them as follows (least threat listed first, greatest threat last).

American Civil Liberties Union     -  A protector of democracy.

Communist Party  -  At this time, powerless and with no foreign allegiance.

Al Qaeda -  Undoubtedly a terrorist threat to us, but not to the democratic process.

National Rifle Association   -  A minority overriding the will of the majority.

So I guess you know where I stand.

JL

                                                                  

                                                                   

Anarchists From Texas

                                                    

Over a century ago, the nation’s establishment was concerned with anarchists.  These bearded bomb-throwing subversives were against our capitalist system and wanted to bring down the government which allowed it to flourish.  Although some of them were influenced by Marxism, many were more interested in having “no government at all” rather than a leftist government.

                                                

Today, we have extremists at the right wing of the Republican Party who want to drown government in a bathtub, kill the beast, and do all sorts of cutting of government spending in an effort to establish conservatism as the way for our nation to go. Well, it appears that such an extreme right wing candidate for the G.O.P.’s senatorial nomination in Texas, Dave Dewhurst, has gone down to defeat!  But this is no occasion for rejoicing.

Despite the strong support of Rick Perry, Texas’ extreme right wing governor, Dewhurst was defeated by Ted Cruz, a candidate positioned even further to the right with even stronger Tea Party backing!  And I suspect that if a viable candidate still further to the right than Cruz (who does have a Princeton-Harvard-Supreme Court clerking background) turned up, Texas right wingers would abandon Cruz and turn to him or her instead!

                                 

                                                                  Cruz                                        

The only conclusion I can draw is that those on the extreme right really aren’t interested in shrinking government to a minimum.  They would prefer “no government at all,” just like the anarchists of over a century ago.  There can be anarchists at both ends of the political spectrum and as is the case with all extremists, none of them are any good.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater said that "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice ... and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."  What this translates to is a plea to those in his party, the G.O.P., not to compromise.  Well, you can see where that has gotten our government.   Goldwater carried only South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arizona and received 38% of the popular vote to Johnson's 61%.  Republicans never learn.

JL

                                                          

Sid's Corner 

MORE ON CHOICES   

Sid Bolotin

This is a follow-up to my recent story that described our human stress-filled dilemma of selecting from too many choices. The main character was a very elderly gentleman desperately trying to decide which of the many cell phones and plans available at Sears would be the best for him.

As stated in the story, I and my wife were in the store to purchase the television set that we thought best after going through our own agonizing search using the internet to research choices at Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Costco, and then visiting in person for hands-on inspection of the candidates.

Well, we purchased a 32-inch LCD Toshiba because it was on sale, schlepped it home in our SUV, and I struggled through the assembly instructions. Once I had it up and running, I then had to set up our Comcast digital converter with less than adequate telephone help from Comcast techs who clearly were incompetently consulting a manual as they spoke with me.

                  

With a song in my heart I announced my success to my wife who instantly declared, “The picture isn’t right!” Because the two page manual that came with the set was clearly of no use to fine tune the settings, I searched Toshiba’ web site and found their seventy-plus pages, on-line manual and began an in-depth perusal of its contents to seek a path to provide happiness to my beloved…which became a search for the Holy Grail.

Using the set’s remote (not the Comcast remote which only controls power and channel selection) I first had to choose “picture size” from five possible options by selecting each one and observing the effect on the picture…finally settling on one that seemed “best”. 

Then I tackled “picture mode” which offered three choices…dynamic, standard, and movie. Choosing between three was less harrowing that the five sizes, and I was quickly on my way to Picture Settings which presented seven standard categories plus an eighth called “advanced picture settings” which offered four more choices for a grand total of eleven forests to roam through. Some were self-explanatory like contrast, brightness, color, tint, sharpness; but the simple knobs to turn with small ranges of the sets of my youth had been replaced with right/left arrows that offered microscopic fine-tuning. And the others with names like DynaLight, Dynamic Contrast, and Static Gamma were a complete mystery.

Wiping away my tears of raging frustration, I turned again to my savior, Google, and once more set out to find help in the world of cyberspace. Surely I could not be alone in my misery. Lo and behold, as I bounced from site to site related to Toshiba televisions, I began to discover snippets of information…like the proverbial Sherlock Holmes sifting clues in a criminal case.

One site presented actual settings for each category that I used as a starting point. Another offered a tip related to Auto Brightness that claimed to make the picture “pop”. Googling on Static Gamma revealed that this had to do with the crispness of black in the picture.

Eagerly I experimented and was proud of my results until my wife compared my accomplishment with the crisp, bright, popper of a picture on our small Sanyo in the kitchen. So, back to the drawing board I went. The only thing I hadn’t done was to turn Auto Brightness off as suggested in the “tip”. No matter how many times I followed the instructions, I could not find the setting. Desperate to please my darling I again called Toshiba’s call center in the Philippines, hoping that this time I’d connect with someone who spoke better English than the others I had reached, and who did more than read the manual to me. Repeated attempts to get transferred to a stateside tech had failed because I was told that this call center was the only game in town.

This time I connected with “carl” who spoke understandable English, but still had to put me on hold whilst he consulted with someone else. He directed me to one of the five icons on the menu screen called preferences and had me scroll through the first seven options to an eighth that was grayed out to “energy savings settings” which brought up three more offerings, one of which was the sought-after “auto brightness sensor” so that I could set it to off.

Voila! The picture popped, and “she who must be obeyed” was finally satisfied.

As I journeyed through the forest of optional settings related to picture settings, I passed many other options related to closed caption, sound, digital noise, noise reduction, locks, and setup.

Had I attempted to navigate through the possible permutations presented by all these choices, I surely would have become a more severe basket case than I had collapsed into during my many hours traipsing through the jungle of possibilities called Picture Settings.

Oh, how I yearn for the days of my youth when three knobs plus rabbit ears provided a picture that was good enough…with only a sprinkling of snow. 

                                 

                                         

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Jack Lippman

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