[OBupdates] Second Set of Eyes?

[OB Updates Announcement List]

Hey Dale--how are you? Have you been able to find work? "Hi" to Susan! I
have barely been tuned into left politics recently, really trying to make a
go of my business, but the Ferguson thing makes me sick to my stomach. I'd
like to send this out on the lists soon. Would you mind? love, D.

(If you wish to be unsubscribed from this list you must do it yourself, see
below.)

Ferguson Finances, Simplified

The latest Justice Department report has revealed that 150 years after the
formal end of slavery a new kind of race based profiteering is alive and
well in Ferguson, MO.  To the police department and town officials of
Ferguson, MO, the lives, well being, livelihood, dreams and bodies of the
descendants of African slaves are nothing more than little pots of money
waiting to be harvested via traffic tickets, dog bites and noise
complaints. All so that business as usual could continue as usual, so that
the poor would stay poor--or get even poorer---and the rich could stay
rich. What Ferguson officials and all like them want more than anything
else is for nothing to change. No one, but especially not a Black someone,
can be allowed to work their way out of the muck not when court fees for
minor infractions multiply exponentially and anyone Black can be arrested
at any time for just about anything, all for the enrichment of the 1%.

But things cannot stay the same; things must change. And the change must be
economic. The only way to stop the capitalist system from finding new ways
to divide us along race lines and make a profit from those on the wrong
side of the line--the not white side--is to tear down the system, starting
with the financial system.

Why is the town of Ferguson not able to meet it's financial obligations
from tax revenues? Why are the tax paying citizens of Ferguson not able to
make enough money to keep their town a float? Why does it always seem like
there "is not enough" to go around?

It's the bloody 1%.  The bankers, the financial services industry (which
serves no obvious social utility), the layers of bureaucracy that make all
our lives hell by putting six fingers in every deal and six salaries in
between our tax dollars and the services they are supposed to procure, are
the problem. Not the least of these are plasma sipping cretins that own the
health insurance industry and suck every health insurance dollar dry before
it reaches the clinicians--who unlike the overlords--actually work for a
living.

*Another World is Possible*

What is most needed is vast, far reaching and radical simplification of how
the federal government takes in and distributes money. Our world is too
complicated and that complexity hides profiteering and dishonesty. We have
a tax system that compels lying and economy where half the jobs are either
"make work" funded by the government or about to be zapped away by
technological innovation. We must do what we can to eliminate the expensive
complexity that hides avarice and bigotry and clear the way for a simpler
more honest world. That means a much straighter line between money coming
in and money going out.

Replace All Entitlements With A Basic Income Guarantee and Healthcare.
A New Tax Code for A New Economy.
Direct government production of housing.
Single Payer Health Insurance.

*Replace All Entitlements With A Basic Income Guarantee and Healthcare*

In the immortal words of Jennifer Anniston in the movie, "Friends with
Money", "Why don't they just give the money to poor people?" Why indeed. If
every tax paying resident of the US received a Basic Income Guarantee of
$21,000/yr, there would be no need for a bloated social services industry
and labor would really be free from the demands of capital. Secure in
knowing that they could purchase goods to fulfill the majority of their
basic needs on the open market, workers would be free to move out of dying
industries and chart new economic territory. You could call this "Trust
Funds For Everybody."

*A New Tax Code for A New Economy*

The 17 volume federal tax code is so complicated and changes so
often--changes to the tax code are type of legislation most often passed by
Congress--that it is not possible to actually put your hands on a copy of
it because by the time you touch it, it has been altered to fit the needs
of the 1%. It must be re-written from scratch and become a vision not a
chicken wire and duct tape escape hatch for people who don't work for a
living.

*Direct government production of housing.*

Housing is expensive because there are too many blood suckers in between
production and sale. The federal government should produce small,
multifamily units itself and sell them itself so that purchasers are able
to collect rental income from their units. The founding fathers believed
that the country would prosper if it were a country of small slave owning
farmers. In the city and suburbs the family farm is the owner occupied
triple decker. Slavery, as re-invented by Ferguson and many other town
officials, we can do away with if our tax dollars went to the pockets of
people who actually build housing. Instead we feed bankers, insurance
companies, real estate agents and countless pencil pushers now paid to
development "non-for-profit" single family housing, the cost of which is
barely affordable and offers no way out for low income workers and no new
source of income.

*Single Payer Health Insurance*.

Socialized medicine is good medicine. Our health insurance system is the
laughing stock of the developed world and a moral abomination.

Another world is possible, but first we must get rid of the one we have now.

A.
.

-- 
"Our goal is a society that prioritizes the needs of all before the profits
of the few." passed by Occupy Boston General Assembly 11/29/11
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