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lihu

User Profile Image lihu
Member since : May-29-2009 (Verified)
5 Ideas, 30 Comments, 24 Votes

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Ideas Posted

I propose that we tally up what we should pay in taxes at the end of every year and that we should be able to elect to send the money to the public program(s) of our choice. If our concern is education, then we should send some to the school our kids go to. If the concern is poverty, send some to the soup kitchen or the the rehabilitation center or the job service agency that helps those folks. If our concern is potholes in the streets, send some to the transportation departments, then send the receipts with your tax form to the IRS. That's the only real way to have taxation with full representation.

We don't need the government to be the middleman and suck up all the money on earmarks and porkbarrel spending and fabulous permanent salaries and permanent health insurance for elected officials and oh yeah, WARS. I want to know where my tax money is going and I FOR SURE don't want to pay for any more stupid F*&%$&g wars, or for the US to be the world's 911 hotline, or for any imperialist endeavors. I want taxes to benefit the people of this country and be spent abroad for humanitarian purposes only. No more spending fortunes we don't have destroying other countries to protect corporate profits.

We really need to have taxation ONLY with representation. Our government has ignored the people's wishes for far too long and it has to stop.

ASK NOT what your country can do for you...
ask WHAT THE HELL DID THEY DID WITH OUR MONEY!!!

Our banking system is a privately-owned, for-profit enterprise based on fraud. It is owned and run by the international banking cartel because congress passed a law in 1913 (the Federal Reserve Act) creating the FED (a privately owned bank) and legalizing/granting a monopoly on the creation of money to the private banker owners via the FED.

Uh-oh. That's bad because it requires the US gov't to BORROW money AT INTEREST for government projects and operations from the FED and incurs an ever-increasing federal debt. Simply put, this is an economically and ecologically unsustainable system. It is an enormous monopoly game whose endgame, where the bankers have all the money, property and control and everyone else is broke, is what we are experiencing now. Our fraudulent banking system is at the root of our current economic meltdown. The interest on the debts has grown so large that the citizens and the country simply cannot pay anymore. Current government actions, the bailout and other schemes put forth by (guess who) bankers are aimed at propping up the current system as long as possible, instead of actually reforming banking so that it works for everyone.

WHAT WE SHOULD DO:

• Repeal the Federal Reserve Act and make debt-free treasury money the legal tender of the realm.
If the government can write a check, they can issue money--it's all done with the stroke of a key these days...
This would break the bankers' monopoly and the stranglehold they have on the US economy.

• Pay off the federal debt to the FED with all the worthless Federal reserve notes traded in for US Treasury Notes.
This would retire the debt and we would no longer need to spend our tax money paying interest on it.

• Create Treasury banks to lend to businesses and individuals, using the interest on those loans to fund gov't
operations and projects that enhance the well-being of the nation, -- education, research, infrastructure, etc.

• Form an Monetary Committee to oversee all banking activites including sales of deriviatives and draft
Ellen Brown, J.D., author of "The Web Of Debt and What We Can Do To Break Free" to oversee the
implementation of the 3 suggestions above.

I admit, I have only scratched the surface of these issues. These suggestions may not be the full answer to our woes but taking these steps would go along way toward straightening out our banking system and building a healthy and sustainable economy. An excellent analysis of how banking really works and affects all of us can be found at www.webofdebt.com, Other resources include the videos/films "From Freedom to Facism", "Money As Debt" --if you can still find it on the internet. It has been banned from google video and is expected to be removed from YouTube soon. And the video/film "The Money Masters".

All right, I am going to put WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT here too.
It seems like the why part doesn't get shown in the idea once it is submitted. If you see it twice, I apologize.

This idea is important because it would restore oversight and control of the money supply to the government on behalf of the people of this country. It would allow us to pay off and retire the federal debt, paying it off with all those traded in worthless federal reserve notes. It would provide competition for private banks, breaking the bankers' monopoly of money creation and their stranglehold on our government through the creation of recessions/depressions by manipulation of the availability of credit. Were the government to lend debt-free treasury money to businesses and individuals, interest on such loans could be used to fund government operations instead of taxes or to fund infrastructure, education, health care for everyone and other programs for the common good instead of being shoveled out of the economy into the pockets of private bankers. It would solve the "credit crunch". If the government decided it was time to make loans available there would be no bankers in between saying "Sorry! We're gonna use the bailout money to buy up other banks."

And I notice there is no category for ideas about banking. Why the hell not? We're in a depression for chrissakes! We SHOULD do something to fix the system.
So we know that our elected officials do their best to ignore and trample on what the people of this country want like, oh, peace, health care, and so on. My idea is that we need a 4th branch of government aka The People. It would work like this: All legislation would be made available to the public online together with the pros and cons for a minimum of 2 months and the public would be able to vote on it during this time as we are voting for these ideas now. The difference is that these public votes would have to be take seriously. In the Senate, where there are 100 senators, The Public would get 100 votes. The votes of The Public would be required to be distributed among Ayes and Noes in the same proportion as the online voting and count just the same as senators' votes in passing or not passing legislation.
Same idea would also apply to the house of Reps.

The People would have the right to propose new laws, reconsider and rescind old laws and laws or reviews proposed by The People would be required to be discussed and voted on in The House and Senate same as laws generated by reps or senators.

Our elected officials have made careers of listening to and legislating for corporations and bankers and anybody who will give them money to get re-elected and ignoring the interests and welfare of their constituents. It's time put an end to this and reassert that this is a government BY AND FOR the people.

This would limit the ability of corporations, lobbyists and other special interests to dictate our country's laws and give the people an actual voice in government instead of lip-service one through our senators and representatives.
YOu all have heard of eminent domain where the government can require you to sell your property to make way for some infrastructure necessary for the public good. My thought is that this principle should also apply to technological inventions which would really do the world a lot of good. It is well known that many patents which threaten the business of powerful corporations have been bought up and sat by these same corporations to protect profits.. Automakers for example sat on plans for engines that run on water, for electric cars and bought up railroads and let them rot to lessen competition for travel by automobile. I think it's high time for this practice to stop.

I propose that patents be regularly reviewed and that if it is deemed necessary for the good of the planet or the health of the population that the gov't may buy the patent from the patent holder for a reasonable fee and make the invention publicly owned and publicly accessible information.

This would spur the development of and make available new technologies which would help solve our energy source problems, oil dependence, pollution, and global warming to name just a few. It would also boost the economy as there would be work in R& D and in producing the technology and bringing it to market.

Why should intellectual property be treated differently than real property. If it is needed for the common good, let's buy it at a fair price and make it information or technology available. We need to use every resource we have to resolve the issues we are now facing.
Our banking system is a privately-owned, for-profit enterprise based on fraud. It is owned and run by the international banking cartel because congress passed a law in 1913 (the Federal Reserve Act) creating the FED (a privately owned bank) and legalizing/granting a monopoly on the creation of money to the private banker owners via the FED.

Uh-oh. That's bad because it requires the US gov't to BORROW money AT INTEREST for government projects and operations from the FED and incurs an ever-increasing federal debt. Simply put, this is an economically and ecologically unsustainable system. It is an enormous monopoly game whose endgame, where the bankers have all the money, property and control and everyone else is broke, is what we are experiencing now. Our fraudulent banking system is at the root of our current economic meltdown. The interest on the debts has grown so large that the citizens and the country simply cannot pay anymore. Current government actions, the bailout and other schemes put forth by (guess who) bankers are aimed at propping up the current system as long as possible, instead of actually reforming banking so that it works for everyone.

WHAT WE SHOULD DO:

• Repeal the Federal Reserve Act and make debt-free treasury money the legal tender of the realm.
If the government can write a check, they can issue money--it's all done with the stroke of a key these days...
This would break the bankers' monopoly and the stranglehold they have on the US economy.

• Pay off the federal debt to the FED with all the worthless Federal reserve notes traded in for US Treasury Notes.
This would retire the debt and we would no longer need to spend our tax money paying interest on it.

• Create Treasury banks to lend to businesses and individuals, using the interest on those loans to fund gov't
operations and projects that enhance the well-being of the nation, -- education, research, infrastructure, etc.

• Form an Monetary Committee to oversee all banking activites including sales of deriviatives and draft
Ellen Brown, J.D., author of "The Web Of Debt and What We Can Do To Break Free" to oversee the
implementation of the 3 suggestions above.

I admit, I have only scratched the surface of these issues. These suggestions may not be the full answer to our woes but taking these steps would go along way toward straightening out our banking system and building a healthy and sustainable economy. An excellent analysis of how banking really works and affects all of us can be found at www.webofdebt.com, Other resources include the videos/films "From Freedom to Facism", "Money As Debt" --if you can still find it on the internet. It has been banned from google video and is expected to be removed from YouTube soon. And the video/film "The Money Masters".

-----

If you want to vote on this ideaa go to the other one in Legal & Policy category and vote on it there. I just called it UNPRIVATIZE BANKING. --I had to repost it because I forgot the keywords and couldn't go back and put them in afterwards.--thanks, lihu
Displaying 1 - 25 of 4205 Ideas

Comments Posted

lihu 9 months ago
Addendum to aherodius: Not only does the banking industry contribute by far the most money to campaigns, they further threaten economic downturn (read: recession/depression) if the congressional stooges don't comply. And it's not an empty threat. We have a system mathematically impossible to sustain because it forces the borrowers into an impossible contract. If a person (or country) has 0 dollars to use for commerce or whatever and they borrow $100 but must pay back $110, where is that other $10 bucks going to come from? If only The Fed is allowed to create money, then the only thing that can happen is that more money must be borrowed to service the debt further enlarging the principal which means that the debt can never be repaid. The result is that when debts get so large that the interest cannot be paid, people, businesses and even countries default sending a wave of losses through the system. They call these waves "business cycles" but they are not caused by business, they are caused by the unsustainability (aka fraud) built into the system and the cycles of boom and bust are manipulated by the FED via the raising and lowering of interest rates. So, if they threaten an administration with a bust, they can well carry it out and no-one in politics wants to be the guy on whose watch the economy tanked. (Except maybe Bush who is, well, an idiot-puppet and just wants to go home to the ranch.)
lihu 9 months ago
911 was an inside job to get us into a war with Iraq, As disastrous as that is for millions of people, the ones who fomented it and their friends are making plenty of money by it. It's another reason we need to get the bankers out of government.
lihu 9 months ago
John66bessa, when your hangover wears off, go to www.webofddebt.com and read some stuff there. Better yet, buy the book and read all of it.
lihu 9 months ago
seashby, I'm not talking about looting from innovators. I'm talking about giving them an alternative to having to sell their ideas to big corporate competitors (the only ones out there with enough cash to buy the patents) who then sit on the inventions to protect their profits from potential competition. Drowning the kittens before they become a nuisance, as it were.
In cases like that the benefit to be derived from development of a good idea is lost to all of us. And so is the economic boost from bringing a new product to market. If the gov't BOUGHT the patents and maybe supported development with loans to inventors and other parties who want to develop the ideas further, might that not be a better situation all around? We will need every bit of our intellectual capital if we are to get through the next 50 years with the planet intact. It's time to change the mindset of hoarding great ideas.
lihu 9 months ago
President Obama, I DARE YOU to put this idea into action.
lihu 9 months ago
jerehough--Check out my other ideas. The are: Vote with your dollar, Eminent Domain for patents, and The Public Gets Their Own Votes In House and Senate.
lihu 9 months ago
Thanks, jerehough. I see you been reading the same stuff I've been reading... I'll have to read Stephen Zarlenga, too. Please join me in my avocation of reading online news articles and commenting with info about the role of banking fraud when they forget to mention that part. I'm shocked at how many articles from otherwise sane and knowledgeable people completely overlook the cost of fraudulent banking practices to our economy and citizenry. Once in a while I read articles (even from Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stieglitz) saying that nationalization of banks is inevitable but I am astounded to see that the word "nationalize" is always followed by "reprivatize". What are they thinking? That is another way to say mother-of-all-bailouts. I may not be an economist, but I HAVE been paying attention. Anyway, if you choose to join me in my quest to wake up all the monkeys as to how we're being screwed, don't forget to include references and links where they can get complete info on banking and read up on it. It is, as Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating!" --lihu
lihu 9 months ago
A stable dollar and and appropriately sized money supply is a national resource which this society and everyone in it needs to have to live and be healthy. The wealth of the people of a nation belongs to them --it's not for bankers to harvest via fraudulent banking practices. It is as wrong to privatize our monetary system as it would be to privatize the air we breathe or water we drink. IT seems a little crazy to me.
lihu 9 months ago
to tomgoldie--Please go to www.webofdebt.com . There is a wealth of information there about how the scam we call banking really works and it is SCARY!
lihu 9 months ago
Voting with your dollar could be optional. No need to force anybody to step to the plate who doesn't want to. On the other hand, if you don't want to step to the plate and do something about problems, you can't really complain if things don't go well.
lihu 9 months ago
yeah, I'm all for the treason idea. Polls, like elections, can be faked/rigged, no problem and by the time it's proven that happened, it's too late. For the moneyed corporate interests with long term agendas, the politicians are expendable pawns. So if one is removed for voting treason, another one can be popped into place pretty much immediately and the can continue ignoring the public. Who would enforce this treason idea? Would it be like Bush-Cheney who literally got a way with murder and are free as birdies right now? When the fox guards the henhouse, you know there's gonna be trouble. I think WE THE PEOPLE need to guard the henhouse ourselves.

The unfortunate thing is that representatives are very corruptible. If you remove the corrupt ones, you might have two, maybe 3 people left. And they are so
corruptible because they are not required to vote what their constituents tell them to or as they promised prior to election. (Obama, are you listening?) They can vote whatever way they like, and they like to cast votes which favor people who will give them money, cushy jobs after they're done with public "service" and help them stay in power. As it stands, there's no-one at the tiller to steer them away from passing really, really, bad legislation favoring corporate/banking interests. If We THE PEOPLE had our own 50% voice in the House and Senate, it would take a majority of elected officials AND a majority of the Public's Votes to pass something, which seems more balanced to me. The corporate interests get some votes via the senators and reps but those interests would be balanced out by WE THE PEOPLE whose interests center much more around what's good for us and our neighbors down here on main street. Just imagine what the outcome of counting what the public wants would have been over the last few decades. No bailouts, no wars, no nafta, no cafta, no vietnam, the list goes on.

Additionally, there are many things could/should be passed that no congressfolks want to touch (like bank reform) because they fear for their lives. More than one person has been asassinated for not wanting to dance to the bankers' tune and trying to reform banking and eliminate the fraud. If the public votes for something like that what are the banksters gonna do? Assassinate us all? There are so many more of us. If a congress person did that, as a single individual, they'd be much easier to target.
Basically most folks just want to live decent lives, have food and water, send their kids to school, have a healthy planet and know they will not be homeless when they get sick or old. And that's right and good. But it will never happen unless we have actual representation so that the laws that would make that happen get passed. The public may not have good info on many things due to media spin, but they CAN tell stupid ideas from good ones when they see 'em. I guess when WE THE PEOPLE represent ourselves in congress, we'll have to vote for truth in the media and budget for a good deal more public education, especially in the subjects of civics, banking, history, economics. It could be a real benefit all around.

Sorry, this did get a little long...
lihu 9 months ago
Right now it's the Bankers who decide who gets the loans and there is no chance of public oversight at all. If they and their cronies don't get loans / bailouts / laws or anything else they want, they threaten to (or do) crash the economy. The gov't can't force them to start lending to citizens at all! Worse still, private ownership of banking is THE cause of recessions/depressions. Every time they create one, it represents a huge movement of wealth from the people who earned it to the pockets of bankers and their friends. They periodically "harvest" the wealth of the nation.

HEY! THAT'S MY WEALTH! AND YOURS! Just ask someone who's retirement went up in smoke or whose dollars won't buy groceries anymore.

Personally If I'm going to pay interest on a loan, I'd prefer that that interest was used for the public good rather than to buy another learjet or yacht for a banker. Having banking in private hands is essentially handing over a goose that lays golden eggs. Why would anyone want to do that, even if we have to guard against corruption? Banking as we know it today is already corrupt beyond comprehension. A public ownership with public oversight could only improve it.
lihu 9 months ago
It's not like this is an untested idea. It worked in Ben Franklin's day. It worked so well they didn't need taxes at all. And when King George heard about it and made it illegal for the colonies to issue their own money it caused a huge economic crash within one year and kicked off the revolutionary war. If we can put a man on the moon, I'm sure we could figure out some public oversight for Treasury loan policies...
lihu 9 months ago
Yes, it isn't perfect --people run the system and they are a squirrelly bribable lot-- but I think there are a lot more pros than cons to this suggestion.
lihu 9 months ago
So fund the ones you do know about and want to support. Others can fund the ones they know about. Public participation does require some investigation, discovery and effort. I could see agencies putting a lot more into educating the public about what they do if they want the public to fund them...
lihu 9 months ago
And why should the public NOT vote on issues and laws? They vote for public officials who are supposed to represent THEM but instead most of them make a career of ignoring what is good for the people and cater to large, moneyed corporations and banksters instead.

Constitutional republic? If only it actually worked that way.
Our president is not actually elected by popular vote, they are chosen by the electoral college which can, if it wishes, cast an entirely different vote than what the people of a state voted. And the winner-take all system of electoral system (and election fraud) makes the whole thing a joke! Senators and Reps are not legally bound to vote as their constituents would have them do, so where is the representation? What do laws mean when there are riders--those sneaked-in provisions for special interests that gut the intent of the law or otherwise stick a knife in our backs? What do laws mean when they are selectively enforced?

I think it is high time we had direct access to what the hell our government is up to. A 50% say in government could stop the elected officials/corporate lackeys from doing whatever the hell the corporations want including oh... bailouts... wars... denying public single-payer health care...

Peer review doesn't amount to much if it is not required that the conclusion of the review be incorporated.
lihu 9 months ago
People may be ignorant, but they are not stupid. They easily recognize what is good for them if given the truth. Unfortunately we are often ill informed. We don't get anything from the media but propaganda and so much spin it makes us dizzy. It would certainly force people to educate themselves and give much more thought to what their priorities are. I doubt that collectively we would do worse than our gov't representatives most of whom make it a policy to ignore what the people want and need. How do you think they got funding for the wars we are in? The bailouts? Did anybody want or approve of that? the answer is that the public overwhelmingly chose not to fund those things and the gubmint did it anyway.

If the public underfunded/overfunded something by accident, vote with your dollar would provide a way to review the money distribution by choosing to send a particular agency more or less money the next year. If the agency were doing a lousy job, they might expect less funding and vice versa. It would also encourage agencies to better budget their funds--save some for a rainy day, do outside fundraising if needed. In short they would have to become more responsible to their direct funders than they are now with our current hold-your-nose, write-the-tax-check-and-forget-it system.

It would need to be binding because our representatives in government have not been listening to us for a very long time. They listen to corporate interests who will fund their next campaign and ignore what is good for the public.
lihu 9 months ago
Hell no we don't need to go to other planets for anything, we need to take care of the mess we made right here and pronto! Don't waste resources going to the moon or anywhere else when we need them to put things right in our own planet.
lihu 9 months ago
Amen!!!
And educate everybody about what a fraud banking currently is, while we're at it.
lihu 9 months ago
I reposted this because I forgot the keywords so it didn't show up for related questions.
lihu 9 months ago
Yes, that's exactly the intent, that eminent domain for patents be used for the World-Changers. All inventions and new thoughts stand on those that came before, so can anyone really say that an invention was whollly one person's idea? Or that one person can hoard the fruits of a long chain of people's creative thought? If a corporation had bought the patent for airplanes and sat on it, we'd live in a very different world. We're all in this together as far as our environmental reality goes and we really need to pull all our resources together to keep the planet livable.
lihu 9 months ago
Yeah, that's a good idea, but unless you make it MANDATORY that the gov't actually DO what the majority of the public has recommended, it won't amount to a hill of beans.
lihu 9 months ago
Amen to the idea, but I agree with ian, this is probably just a feel good website for folks disappointed with everything and Obama's not going to do anything with the iinfo at all, just delete it. Or take names and spy on the ones with anti corporate ideas.
lihu 9 months ago
Require that the public be allowed to vote on legislation proposed in the house and Senate and that the public commentary be given equal weight as the senate and congressional votes. In other words if there are 100 senators each with one vote, the public gets 100 votes which would be distributed among yes and no and reflect the percentages of public opiinion measured by online voting. Now THERE's a way to get people to participate iin government!!
lihu 9 months ago
I'd like to be able to edit my idea in case I left something out or needed to clarify. Or to adjust it in response to something brought up iin comments.
lihu 9 months ago
Further, I suggest that a percentage of profits taken on sales based on eminent domain patents be cyceld back to a government fund to pay for future common-good patents.
lihu 9 months ago
Ask not what your country can do for you...
ask what the hell they did with your money!
Amen!
lihu 9 months ago
I'd add that a course of education on how our monetary system actually works including the part where they tell you it's based on FRAUD! Go to www.webofdebt.com for more info.
lihu 9 months ago
Income tax is unconstitutional. Let's abolish tax on income entirely. If you ask an IRS agent to show you the law where it says that you must pay income taxes, they cannot do it. The 16th amendment (the one about income taxes) was never fully ratified but it was pushed on us anyhow to guarantee that the US would pay interest on the federal debt which was initiated by the passage of the Federal reserve Act in 1913.
lihu 9 months ago
Yessir! Income tax is unconstitutional --it was never ratified, just pushed on us to sign the citizenry up to pay the interest on the federal debt once the Federal Reserve act was passed in 1913. Once the gov't was forced to borrow money from the fed and stop issuing it's own debt-free money the lenders (private bank known as the FED) had to have collateral and the collateral is us! So, let's also repeal the FEd Reserve act and take back our banking system, issue our own debt-free treasury money and pay off the federal debt with all those worthless federal reserve notes. Then we won't need to levy income tax in the first place.
Go to www.webofdebt.com for more info.