Billionaire Marc Andreessen loves him some plutocracy, which his beloved Thomas Jefferson would have taxed into oblivion

Trump's so-called party of populism has given us a cabinet teeming with billionaires.

Welcome to rule by the rich. We deserve them, good and hard.

Andreessen's hero, Thomas Jefferson, would have taxed them all into oblivion to keep their baneful influence from destroying republican government. Thomas Jefferson was an advocate of what we have known as steeply progressive taxation.

But billionaire Andreessen thinks you are too dumb even to know that.

Hell, he's probably too dumb to know that.

 

"Exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."

Every Republican for president sucks on immigration, except for Romney

Ann Coulter gets reinstated here, for this, clearly delineating the new fault line for 2016, with Mitt Romney the only one on the right side of the issue:

The only Republican who has ever opposed the media and big campaign donors on immigration was Mitt Romney. You know, the guy we just kicked to the curb. On immigration, the elites speak with one voice: The donors want cheap labor, and the media hate Republicans who push ideas that are wildly popular with voters. ...

But with the cheap-labor plutocrats up in arms during the 2012 presidential campaign over Romney's suggestion that their serfs "self-deport," all the Republican lickspittles rushed to denounce his untoward remark. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker -- all of them lined up to take Sheldon Adelson's loyalty oath, swearing that, as far as they were concerned, illegal aliens should be treated as honored guests. 

Middle class revolution on hold, but CNBC commenter calls for military coup

Rick Newman says the middle class revolution is on hold here, but apparently spends less time reading the comments sections than he says:

"[A] populist threat to the plutocrats ... is years or even decades away. ... These days, all you have to do is read the blogs and follow the right Twitter ... accounts. If you do, you’ll encounter plenty of angst — but not much revolutionary zeal."

Oh really?

I've never seen anything on CNBC, of all places, like what I saw there this morning, here:

"There is only one entity that can stop the madness. ... There may be no option in the very near future but for the military to assume responsibility of running the country on behalf of the people and for the well being of the country. You must make it abundantly clear to the people (after you have commandered the MSM) that this is being done to preserve what was intended by the founding fathers - a free and just society that abides by the rule of law under all circumstances and does not change or abuse the law for convenience. For you military lawyers you would be wise to bone up on your Constitutional Law because if the Supremes do not play ball then they too must be unappointed. You are saying; 'but this would be treason'. Is it? When your Congress, President and Intelligence agencies arguably commit treason on a virtually continual basis who is exactly on the 'right' side. The time is quickly approaching where the glorification of Wall Street and the elitist classes that depend upon their treachery must end. How many more hard working Americans must have their potential prosperity irrepairably and irreversibly damaged by Wall Street's malfeasance before affirmative action is taken? Courage is one of the main tenets of the millitary ethos - prove it when the time comes."

Joel Kotkin Urges Republicans To Join The Class War

"It’s time for Republicans to break with the traditions of Goldwater, Reagan, and, particularly, Bush and shift to something more akin to the party’s roots in the mid-19th century. This party needs less preaching and libertarian manifestos that essentially defend plutocracy. Instead it’s time to embrace class warfare on today’s gentry, and embrace the aspirations of today’s middle-class. Honest Abe in 2016?"

Egging on the Republicans to embrace Marxist class categories and methods and pretending that's not an appeal to ideology, Joel Kotkin here thinks Republicans could win again if only they gave stuff to the yeoman class and took away stuff from the clerisy. You know, like his hero Pres. Abraham Lincoln did when he signed the Homestead Act in 1862, which gave away 160 acres out west to anyone who would improve the land, and when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which took away the property of slaveholders without compensation. Like all good dictators, Lincoln made notions of property and its value even more arbitrary than they had been before.

It is little appreciated how the Homestead Act basically destroyed the flexibility of the federal revenue system, causing the federal government to rely increasingly on tariffs and also excises which up until The War Between The States had fluctuated up and down as revenues from federal land sales did the same.

So Anderson and Martin, here, who emphasize the substitutability of tariff and land sales revenues:


"Coinciding with the rapid increase in land grants to homesteaders, railroads, and the states after 1862, the federal revenue derived from land sales fell rapidly as a proportion of total receipts. Further, the general decline in tariff rates that had occurred until the Civil War was reversed, and tariff rates began to rise rapidly. Import duty rates, which had reached their lowest level in the century in 1857, increased sharply during the Civil War and remained high for the remainder of the century (Baack and Ray 1983, p. 73). Tariffs continued to be the single most important source of federal revenue after the war ended."

So in an important sense, Lincoln and the Republicans are to blame not just for the development of Our Enemy, The State, they are also to blame for setting the untenable conditions to fund it as it henceforth and inevitably grew large. In the end, the price of Union and black emancipation would be universal bondage to Leviathan with the coming of the Income Tax in 1913.

Kotkin completely misses the significance of what's going on on the right. Conservatives in America are rediscovering the meaning of the constitution, and how people like Lincoln ruined it. Mitt Romney with his incessant talk of American supremacy in the world simply reminded them too much of him.

Kotkin's correct about one thing, though, that the socialism of Obama is misunderstood. But Kotkin doesn't call it the fascism that it is, because Kotkin himself actually advocates it himself, only that it's the good kind which helps grow the middle class.

From the comments section, Kotkin says as much:

"i am an old-style democrat who favors using government when necessary to create an ever-larger property owning class. neither party today has this as its main focus. instead both are neo-feudalist as I will explain in the coming months."

Old style democrat? You know, the FDR kind, which admired and imitated the strong men of Europe, who eventually plunged the world into a war far bloodier than, but no less reminiscent of, Lincoln's.

Conservatives want to get rid of the imperial presidency, not just get one friendly to its interests.

Joel Kotkin's "New Geography" isn't old enough.

"Vote For Me and I'll Set You Free" Went The Song on Don and Roma This Morning

On wlsam.com.

Nothing epitomizes better what's wrong with America than that: "Vote for me and I'll set you free!"

People want a savior it seems, especially of the presidential sort. If Christianity has had just one baneful influence on the American psyche, this obsession with presidential politics is it. No wonder the executive is imperial. That's just the way the slaves of God want it.

A more original, more free and noble America would save itself. It would demand broader, deeper and better representation, and would not wring its hands over our corrupt plutocracy.

Instead it would wring their necks.

The truth dies another death as the mobs cry "Give us Barrabbas!" 

Cutting Paychecks of 535 Members of Congress by 10% is Silly

Do the math:

$174,000 per year

10% of which = $17,400

x 535 members of Congress = less than $10 million.

That'll really hurt the plutocrats like John Kerry and Darrell Issa.

$10 million dollars goes into a $3.5 trillion budget 350,000 times for crying out loud. It's like taking a long piss in the Pacific ocean. NO ONE WILL NOTICE!

Get serious! Cut an entire Cabinet level department or two, starting with Education.

Story here.

Rule By The Rich: Do They Really Need Their Salaries of $3.83 Million?

2009's top congressional millionaires consist of ten senators and twelve representatives, in order from top to bottom as follows:

1. Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, $188.6 million

2. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, $160.1 million

3. Rep. Jane Harman, D-CA, $152.3 million

4. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, $83.7 million

5. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-TX, $73.8 million

6. Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, $70.2 million

7. Rep. Jared Polis, D-CO, $56.5 million

8. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-FL, $53.5 million

9. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, $49.7 million

10. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, $46.1 million

11. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-FL, $31.1 million

12. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, $21.7 million

13. Sen. Jim Risch, R-ID, $20.1 million

14. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-NJ, $19.9 million

15. Rep. Gary Miller, R-CA, $19.4 million

16. Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, $18.3 million

17. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, $15.7 million

18. Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-TX, $15.6 million

19. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-NY, $15 million

20. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, $14.1 million

21. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-ME, $12.6 million

22. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-TN, $12.1 million.

Altogether they represent wealth of $1.15 billion. Twelve are Democrats, seven of whom are in the top ten and six of whom are in the senate, worth $744.7 million. Ten are Republicans, worth $405.4 million,  three of whom are in the top ten and four of whom are in the senate.

TheHill.com has the complete story here and here, published annually.