Wiki Leaks Details Of The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Negotiations

Thanks to leaked documents, we now know some of the undesirable details of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Negotiations being conducted away from the public arena and most don't pertain to trade!



Rather, TPP would impose a system of binding global governance over our federal and state laws and courts. We would be obliged to conform our domestic policies on land use, food safety, financial regulation, foreign ownership, patents and copyright, and more to TPP's terms.

Failure to do so would result in trade sanctions and/or obligations to compensate foreign firms with our tax dollars - penalties imposed by foreign tribunals. We now know the following:

• Offshoring Incentives: TPP has the investor protections also found in NAFTA that help corporations offshore jobs by removing many of the risks associated with relocating to low-wage nations. The U.S. has lost more than 5 million (1 out of 4) of its manufacturing jobs since NAFTA and the global WTO went into effect. This will mean a loss of many more American jobs.

• Ban on "Buy American": Any firm operating in a TPP signatory nation would get privileged access to U.S. procurement contracts paid with our tax dollars! TPP would send our taxpayer money offshore, rather than recycling it here to create American jobs. "Buy American" would be penalized if not made outright criminal.

• U.S. Submitted to Jurisdiction of Foreign Tribunals: TPP would expand the notorious "investor-state" system, subjecting the U.S. to the jurisdiction of World Bank and U.N. tribunals. The tribunals would be empowered to order payment of our tax dollars to foreign corporations operating within the U.S. if they object to complying with the same laws that apply to U.S. firms.

• More Financial Instability: TPP would forbid bans on risky financial products or services while making measures to reduce systemic risk, such as capital controls, illegal.

• Higher Medicine Prices: Big PhRMA would get new privileges to raise drug prices.

Etc...

TPP secrets: Obama covertly handing more power to corporations



Interestingly, New Scientist published a study conducted by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich which combined the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

What they discovered analyzing the relationships between the 43,000 largest transnational corporations on earth was that 147 organizations, mainly banks, wielded a disproportionate power over the global economy.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

Forbes explained the size of these 147 companies is simply a reflection of the way most people invest in the public markets; however, allowing the world financial system to be dominated by a relatively few firms is obvious: when they go broke they take everyone else with them, as we have already witnessed.

Another problem is that they wield enormous power over governments and can end up dictating and oppressing the populations and small businesses (e.g. their competitors) of entire nations effectively becoming the "iron hand in the velvet glove" over not only our jobs, income, and property but also our government, rule of law, etc...

It is by leveraging our own government, that they have created a trade and business paradigm by which they displace our U.S. middle class into the ranks of the poor acquiring their income, wealth, and property in the process. The TPP is simply the next logical step for them to take.

It should also be noted that the Commerce Clause of our Constitution is an enumerated power listed in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 which states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

Obama is currently "freelancing" the executive branch to push through a secret treaty to regulate commerce in the United States that allows for foreign corporations operating in the US to appeal regulations to an international tribunal that could over rule American laws. This is a secret backdoor strategy and it's completely out of line.

Also:
1. Visit 'Economy In Crisis' at http://www.economyincrisis.org for more information.

2. Enter your zip code at the Electronic Frontier Foundation to tell your representatives you want "to bring transparency to the TPPs agreement and ensure that the TPP text reflects the interests of all U.S. industries and citizens."

Is Barack Obama Intentionally Denuding The United States?

What Should Happen When A United States President Works Against The Economic and Political Interests Of His Own Country To Accomplish A Globalist Anti-American Agenda After Exploiting A Society's Nomenclature To Get Elected? What About The Media Conglomerates That Fully Support And Endorse It?



Obama voters themselves are now expressing their disappointment and a new film 'The Hope and The Change' exposes the hard truth that many Democrats and independents are suffering at the hands of President Obama’s failed policies.



Obama: Management of a Wounded Empire by Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick.



Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected.



Media Research Center
http://www.mrc.org/

Leftist Bullying



Primetime Propaganda




View 'The Masters of Audacity and Deceit':

Part 1: http://youtu.be/xeik7bwm91E
Part 2: http://youtu.be/l7V6r5l3ecA
Part 3: http://youtu.be/MAXf53jzwI4
Part 4: http://youtu.be/TAkubDMLmIc

Update: Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment

"It is a straightforward matter to establish that President Obama has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” a term signifying maladministration and abuses of power by holders of high public trust. But making the legal case is insufficient for successful impeachment, leading to removal from office. Impeachment is a political matter and hinges on public opinion.

In Faithless Execution, former top federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy weighs the political dynamics as he builds a case, assembling a litany of abuses that add up to one overarching offense: the president’s willful violation of his solemn oath to execute the laws faithfully. The “fundamental transformation” he promised involves concentrating power into his own hands by flouting law—statutes, judicial rulings, the Constitution itself—and essentially daring the other branches of government to stop him. McCarthy contends that our elected representative are duty-bound to take up the dare."

http://www.amazon.com/Faithless-Execution-Building-Political-Impeachment/dp/1594037760/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400865043&sr=8-1&keywords=faithless+execution

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/05/04/impeach-president-obama-book-from-former-top-fed-prosecutor-will-make-serious-mainstream-case/

Balance The Budget And Pay Off The National Debt

The 2012 enacted U.S. budget contained $2.469 trillion in receipts and $3.796 trillion in outlays, for a deficit of $1.327 trillion.

Here's how it is being spent:

Public encyclopedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget#Total_revenues_and_spending

You can verify the data by accessing the 2012 Budget of the U.S. Government available from the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO): http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?packageId=BUDGET-2012-BUD

This author is an honorably discharged U.S. military veteran but notice that the largest discretionary cost in the budget is military spending at almost $712 billion for 2011. Except for government spending on welfare (not counted are veteran's programs, Obamacare, or entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare):  it is the number one discretionary cost to the U.S. taxpayers.

The enormous amount spent on Iraq Wars aside (which arguably didn't need to be fought as Iraq had zero to do with 911 and al-qaeda though I would say we could have joined the powers in the region in keeping with our treaty obligations with those countries if they wanted Saddam gone badly enough to pay the brunt of the cost rather than the other way around), we are paying enormous sums of taxpayer money to protect Europe from Russia (completely unnecessary as the Cold War is over and the EU can certainly take over that responsibility) and wealthy asian countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. We get a rebate back from these countries but it's paltry compared to what we outlay in military spending for them.

Want to see what our military spending looks like compared to the rest of the world? We account for almost half of the entire world's military spending just by ourselves:

Public encyclopedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

You can verify the data by accessing the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) military expenditure database: http://milexdata.sipri.org/

A major expense is the interest on our national debt. There's a lot of confusion on the internet about the national debt but the numbers are all published by our government and I have them right here.

The U.S. Treasury National Debt Statistics shows that on January 31, 1981 ten days after Ronald Reagan took office for the first time (U.S. Presidents enter office on January 20th and leave office on January 21st four years later unless they resign or are impeached), the U.S. national debt was only $934.073 billion total.

The monthly statement of the public debt of the United States for January 1981 can be accessed here: ftp://ftp.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdm011981.pdf

As of March 8, 2012, the U.S. national debt is $15,517,794,642,311.25.

Type in the date above to confirm: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

Now debt is accounted for when it is incurred, not when it is paid. Here's what that looked like as of July 26, 2011:

Documentation: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/us-national-debt

The OMB publishes the annual cost of interest paid on the national debt which is a major non-discretionary expenditure in the U.S. budget at $241.598 billion dollars for 2012 and estimated to be $248 billion for 2013 (see S-5).

This money goes out of the pockets of taxpayers every year straight into the pockets of our creditors and foreign countries hold a good share of it these days. The Treasury Bulletin, available online from the Financial Management Service categorizes ownership of U.S. Government securities by types of investors.

In order to reduce the amount spent on interest of our national debt, we need to balance the budget and then start paying it down. All spending areas can be reformed to help do this; however, how and what is cut must be carefully considered lest Americans be unecessarily hurt and even killed if areas such as medicare/social security, medical care for the indigent, disability, etc... are negatively impacted.

And it's important to note that tax breaks add up to almost the entire cost of the deficit currently.

It's also important to note that government welfare spending has rapidly increased as well.

But since the people and U.S. businesses don't want to give up their tax breaks, careful spending reform to lower the deficit combined with increasing revenue through fixing our economy is another way to balance the budget.

Though about 75% of all U.S. businesses are currently structured as pass-throughs that pay zero federal income taxes (contrast that with the year 1986, when non-taxable U.S. businesses comprised only 24 percent) and taxes on the wealthy are at historically low rates (for example, the hedge fund long-term capital gain rate is taxed at a maximum of 15%), we can carefully reform spending (including military spending) and fix our economy to balance the budget.

Putting 40 more million unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid American citizens to work at good paying jobs paying taxes would bring in hundreds of billions of tax dollars each year to the federal government. And it would benefit state and local governments as well. The combination of fixing our economy and appropriately reducing government spending would put the U.S. back in the black.

But that requires fixing U.S. trade, ending horizontal monopolies, ensuring job growth goes to American citizens rather than insourced foreign workers like so much of new job growth does now, etc... and neither party has shown an interest to do any of these things (we'll discuss why both party's politicians are deliberately ignoring fixing the U.S. economy and arguing about relatively minor federal spending cuts at another time as it's beyond the scope of this post).

The point that new job growth increasingly goes to foreign workers instead of American citizens is a major obstacle to balancing the budget. When American citizens are bypassed, new job growth doesn't benefit them and they don't pay taxes nor spend money. Also, the quality of the jobs is omitted from almost all media reports. Most of these new jobs are not on par with what Americans are accustomed to in pay and benefits and what we need to see to balance the budget.

The press has been touting new job growth in the media of late but they have omitted mentioning that a good share of it has gone to migrant workers and foreign workers insourced by the U.S. Labor Bureau's Office of Foreign Labor Certification nor that the jobs are not on par with what Americans are used to earning.

Look at the U.S. population clock and you'll see that as of the date of this article we net one international migrant worker every 46 seconds. That's 686,020 new American jobs going to foreign workers each year currently.

And though quotas exist, the U.S. Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) also imports foreign white collar workers to take new U.S. middle class jobs that are created in the U.S. but not offshored or outsourced as so many have been and contiue to be. In fact, the OFLC processed 422,228 employer applications requesting 851,556 foreign workers in 2010 and more in 2011.

Consider that in Texas, for example, between 2001 and 2007 the Center for Immigration Studies was able to show that 81% of all new job growth went to immigrant workers (both legal and illegal). Natural born American citizens were just passed over though the job growth was touted in the media and used to propel Rick Perry's run for the presidency. Both the red and blue teams play these games with the American public.

Documentation: http://cis.org/immigrants-filled-most-new-jobs-in-Texas

They have also ignored discussing U.S. population growth. New born American citizens quickly grow into adults that need to earn sustainable incomes and we have a net gain every year and when you add the foreign workers and the new population growth together, the U.S. is actually going backwards in job growth.

The number of illegals working in the Southwest may surprise you. Here's a study showing California's economy being negatively impacted by two million illegal aliens working under the table in that state.

Weak outlook for state seen: Many are working under the table, UCLA group says.

Cutting spending isn't going to be enough. If we are going to balance the budget without ending tax breaks and raising taxes, we need to generate revenue by fixing our broken economy and immigration system. Simply implementing a value-added tax (VAT) on all foreign made goods would bring in hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. Treasury. It would also stimulate new job growth in the U.S. resulting in increased tax revenues.

U.S. government employees should be agitating to fix trade so they can draw their income off government revenues rather than deficits as they currently do. It's in their long-term interest to do so. It's in all U.S. citizen's long-term interests.

But instead, their public employee unions, along with other Democrats are agitating for a "trillion dollar coin" solution. They assert that simply having Geithner mint trillion dollar coins, walk them over to the Federal Reserve and deposit them in the Treasury’s account to erase our national debt is a solution.

This makes about as much sense as waiving a magic amnesty wand to do away with all of the problems illegal immigrants are creating in this country which is to say it makes no sense at all. Obviously, the social and economic problems being caused by illegal immigrants remains after amnesty but now there is no way to remove them.

Likewise, to simply coin trillions of dollars out of thin air for the government to spend is called straight monetization and it has very serious negative consequences to a nation's people and economy.

From the Wiemar Republic to the Argentine economic crisis, modern history is replete with concrete examples of how printing enormous amounts of money from thin air has melted down entire economies.

Some of the negative consequences are that it generates high inflation adversely impacting savings and pensions while spurring increases in the price of goods and services eventually resulting in capital flight and replacement of the dollar as the currency of choice in the world ushering in uber-negative draconian economic problems for the U.S. people... for you.

Of course, it violates the rule of law and principles of economics as well as U.S. central banking policy while encouraging U.S. fiscal profligacy by finding a way to fund excessive government expenditures that does not bear the cost of paying interest on reserves or any interest differential between new and old debt (as the Treasury would if the Fed used standard open market operations). And, as stated, it has a much greater inflationary potential than open market operations because a direct infusion to the Treasury will definitely be spent while injections of reserves into the banking system will likely not enter the spending stream.

This is a very bad idea lacking any common sense that manages to undermine any semblance of sanity in both monetary and fiscal policy simultaneously. But the Democrats call it a solution. If you're trying to finish destroying the U.S. economy, then it's a "solution." That it is being seriously discussed by our politicians is a sign of how far the U.S. economy has fallen and what a mess has been made of U.S. fiscal and monetary policy.

The author hopes his "MBA analysis" has helped you to have a better understanding.

I recommend visiting Economy In Crisis for more information:
http://www.economyincrisis.org/

Update April 2014: China is poised to supersede the U.S. as the largest economy in the world but note that China's national debt is only about $5 trillion USD (1). Not a big deal since the U.S. owes China a little over $5.308 trillion (2)(3)(4). Of course, nobody owes the U.S. anything. We're stuck with our $17.577 trillion debt.

To provide some perspective, the entire U.S. national debt the month Ronald Reagan took office (note U.S. Presidents enter office on January 20th and leave office on January 21st) on January 20, 1981 was only $934.073 billion (5).

Now, using the CPI calculator (6), $934.073 billion in 1981 would be equal to $2,678.579 trillion in 2014. If the U.S. had passed the balanced budget legislation brought in 1982 (7), we'd be in an excellent position right now with respect to our national debt.

Data Sources:

(1) http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/china

(2) Federal Reserve Statistical Release. H.4.1. Factors Affecting Reserve Balances. Release Date: 17 April 2014. [Online Document]. Accessed 23 April 2014. [Data through 16 April 2014]. http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/Current/

(3) U.S. Treasury. Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities. Accessed 23 April 2014. [Data through February 2014]. http://www.treasury.gov/ticdata/Publish/mfh.txt

(4) U.S. Treasury. Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2014 Through March 30, 2014. [PDF Document]. [Data through March 2014]. http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0314.pdf

(5) Source: ftp://ftp.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdm011981.pdf

(6) http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

(7) http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/169050.pdf

U.S. Pass-Through Businesses Make Record Profits But Pay No Federal Income Taxes

Many Americans are confused about how U.S. corporations can be making record profits yet not paying any federal income taxes. The way most of them do it is through the “pass-through.”

Sole proprietorships, partnerships, most LLC's, and Sub-chapter S corporations qualify for pass-through status.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporation

Despite record high corporate profits, the vast majority of U.S. businesses do not pay any income taxes to the federal government whatsoever and the percentage of U.S. companies doing this is increasing.

The ones that still do pay federal income taxes employ accountants to take advantage of loopholes and to shield profits in complex tax shelters to reduce tax liabilities as much as possible but let's look at the ones that don’t pay any income taxes (often despite record profits).

These companies are called pass-throughs which are structured to shuttle company profits along to investors (e.g. other names for “investors” are “shareholders” and “owners”).

Pass-through companies use a special structure to pass along profits to investors who then are supposed to pay income taxes. Despite taxes for the wealthy being at historically low rates currently, they funnel this money into hedge funds and other tax sheltered vehicles.

Pass-throughs are legal and encouraged by Congress and state governments and the Wall Street Journal reports that 69 percent of U.S. corporations were organized as nontaxable pass-through businesses in 2008.

Contrast that with the year 1986, when non-taxable U.S. corporations only comprised 24 percent of all U.S. corporations.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses survey found that 75% of all U.S. small businesses pay zero federal income taxes.

The percentage of all corporations and businesses (including non-profits) aggregated, is that about 75% pay no federal income taxes anymore and their number is rising.

Large companies are often structured as pass-throughs, with an estimated 60 percent of U.S. businesses that have profits of $1 million or more comprising this category, the largest such percentage of nontaxable businesses in any developed country.

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/10/10094176-companies-that-pay-no-federal-income-tax-on-the-rise

For the wealthiest Americans, this money often passes right through non-taxed "pass-through" businesses into their hedge funds where long term earnings are taxed at a maximum rate of 15%... far less of a percentage of income than the typical middle-class wage earner pays.

Our government also bestows money grants to these U.S. companies from public funds and process U.S. business applications to insource foreign workers which displaces American workers while permitting them to offshore and outsource American jobs, capital investment, and innovation to foreign countries and workers.

For example, though quotas do exist, in 2010 the U.S. government processed 422,228 employer applications requesting 851,556 foreign workers in 2010 so American corporations can give foreign workers American jobs right here on U.S. soil.

http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov

Much of the "job growth" we see in the news today is going directly to these insourced foreign workers and immigrants both legal and illegal.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) was able to show that in Texas, for example, between 2001 and 2007 81% of all new job growth went to immigrant workers (both legal and illegal) instead of American natural born citizens.

http://cis.org/immigrants-filled-most-new-jobs-in-Texas

Our government also enables a broken U.S. immigration system that fostered the establishment of Spanish-speaking immigrant networks all over the Southwest that block American citizens from working in the U.S. as those jobs go directly to the friends and family of the immigrants bypassing American workers.

A UCLA study showed that a weak economy in the state of California was the result of more than two million Spanish-speaking immigrant workers who were receiving their pay off the books without paying taxes (yet using all of the social services and public education they could qualify for both for themselves and their children). These immigrant networks typically only hire other immigrants or their families.

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Weak-outlook-for-state-seen-Many-are-working-2567081.php

Our government makes the American middle-class and blue-collar workers pay the lion’s share of the country’s bills (the individual income tax has been the largest single source of federal revenue since 1950) while permitting most corporations and businesses operating in the U.S. to avoid paying federal income taxes of any kind whatsoever and, at the same time, engaging in trade practices and immigration policies that are wreaking economic havoc on the very people's bottom lines who are paying the lion's share of the country's bills.

And for those companies that still do pay federal income taxes, the tax codes of foreign countries are exploited.

January 24, 2013 update - A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) finds that U.S. corporations report a huge share of their profits as officially earned in small, low-tax countries where they have very little investment and workforce while reporting a much smaller percentage of their profits in larger, industrial countries where they actually have massive investments and workforces.

I hope you have found this informative and will think about the ramifications.

2013 Update: And, the gap between hourly compensation and productivity is the highest it's been since just after World War II. This divergence is one of the major drivers of the nation's growing income inequality and it's getting worse every year.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/07/news/economy/compensation-productivity/index.html

Red Flavor-Aid - The Problem with Republican Economics

The point of my blog article is to honestly and openly examine those GOP economic positions that need to be corrected. These times call for honest and open examinations of each party and each policy. Only by correcting what's wrong, can we hope to create a real and long lasting economic recovery for this country.

Red flavor-aid is a popular term used to describe problems with the GOP's economic platform while blue flavor-aid is used to describe problems with the Democratic Party's economic platform. Today we'll look at red flavor-aid.

Red flavor-aid says cut federal income taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans but around three-quarters of all U.S. businesses are currently structured as flow-throughs (e.g. pass-throughs) and currently pay zero federal income taxes while the wealthy's maximum hedge fund rate on long term capital gains is 15%.

If you're wealthy, the profits on your investments increasingly flow tax free through the businesses you invest in directly into your hedge fund where capital gains are taxed at a maximum rate of 15%.

The hedge fund then invests in the very corporations offshoring and outsourcing American jobs, capital investment, and invention/innovation to foreign countries and workers.

These companies also submit requests to the U.S. Office of Foreign Labor for almost a million foreign workers a year to be insourced to displace American workers further.

Though quotas exist, the Foreign Labor Certification FY 2010 Annual Report reveals that the United States Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) processed 422,228 employer applications requesting 851,556 foreign workers in 2010, in the middle of a U.S. Great Recession to give foreign workers American jobs right here on U.S. soil!

A quick look at the Census Bureau's U.S. Population clock for April 2012 reveals one new international foreign worker enters the U.S. every forty four seconds. That's over 707,000 foreign workers entering the U.S. this year and taking new jobs while displacing American citizens from existing jobs right here on U.S. soil.

These companies actively resist protecting American made goods and services. They resist the implementation of tariffs and/or value added taxes (VAT) on goods and services not made or performed in the United States using only the labor of American citizens despite all of our serious trading partners engaging in the practice to protect their own domestic markets for their citizens.

Reference: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2011/10/21-tax-reform-gale

This actually accelerates the nation's woes further gutting the U.S. labor market and ceding away our invention/innovation to foreign interests to use against us.

How is this red flavor-aid an economic solution for America?

And recently, the countries we've offshored and outsourced to have begun forming their own businesses (which are often state capitalized and owned in places like China) and begun competing directly against the very U.S. businesses that gave U.S. invention/innovation to them to build their products with.

But they also are buying American companies. Arco and Amoco oil companies are now British owned, IBM PC is now a Chinese company, Lucent Technologies and RCA are now French, Zenith is Korean, Frigidaire is Swedish and Westinghouse Nuclear is Japanese, Chrysler is close to being 70% owned by Fiat, etc...

Not to mention we're displacing American students to fill our colleges with these same country's students many of whom are working for their respective country's spy networks (such as China's Student Information System) and are here for our science and technology domains.

Reference: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/24/chinas-student-informatio_n_813056.html

And we haven't even touched the formation of immigration networks that are violating the law by only hiring other immigrants and blocking American citizens from the industries they've taken control of.

The GOP wants to continue ALL of the above practices hurting our economy, the national interest, and the average American worker. That is red flavor-aid.

Cutting government spending to eliminate the deficit is necessary; however, cutting government spending by itself won't fix our economic problems.

The 2012 enacted U.S. budget contains $2.469 trillion in receipts and $3.796 trillion in outlays, for a deficit of $1.327 trillion.

Reference: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?packageId=BUDGET-2013-BUD

If we got rid of the deficit and cut government spending in half tomorrow, we'd still not have an economic recovery in this nation because of our broken trade paradigm and lack of good paying jobs for American workers in the private sector.

The result would be that we would stop increasing our national debt and start paying it off which is desirable but millions more Americans would flood into a very poor U.S. labor market without access to adequate medical care in an environment where income and wealth ownership disparity between the top 1% in this country and everyone else is quickly rising (see The Great Divergence by Timothy Noah).

Despite the rhetoric for cutting red tape and helping American workers and small businesses that both major political parties engage in, both parties are committed to policies that will further injure the U.S. political system and economy. Though some of their policies are the same (e.g. more free trade, more immigration, more nefarious treaties, etc...), some of their policies do differ and favor different demographics and special interests. The differences themselves will not materially change the downward decline of the U.S. standard of living for most Americans.

Red flavor-aid asserts that the U.S. can right our economy by cutting government spending and lowering federal income taxes further on corporations (most of whom pay zero federal income taxes) and the wealthy (who pay historically low federal income taxes) while expanding free-trade agreements and negotiating treaties (free trade and nefarious treaties are two items that blue-flavor aid has fully supported as well) that actually increase red tape, favor large trans-national corporations, hurt American workers, hurt small businesses, hurt U.S. startups, and actually increase red tape.

Reference: http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates

It will not.

What it will do is further redistribute America's income, wealth, ownership, and control to businesses and the wealthiest Americans; hollow out the U.S. labor market further as increased investment goes into companies offshoring and outsourcing jobs, capital investment, and innovation while insourcing foreign workers; increase immigration networks to further displace American workers because these interests won't E-verify the nation; strip unemployed Americans who can't find employment of medical care; and quite possibly begin to result in real increases in incarceration (1 in 31 Americans is already in jail/prison or on parole/probation) as millions of Americans become destitute, hungry, and homeless due to a severe scaling back of government jobs and social services.

We don't see that occurring right now as homeless rates are low due to social services and families taking up the slack for their unemployed in a labor market where unemployment isn't being properly accounted for.

Current methods of measuring unemployment are inaccurate in that they do not adequately take into account those who have lost their jobs and become discouraged over time from actively looking for work, those who are self-employed such as tradesmen or building contractors or IT consultants making a shadow of what they once did, involuntary early retirees, those on disability pensions who still wish to work in occupations suitable for their medical conditions, those who work for payment for as little as one hour per week but would like to work full-time, the available working population incarcerated in U.S. prisons (who may or may not be working while incarcerated), the "involuntary minimum-wage part-time" workers who are grossly underemployed (e.g. a middle-aged computer networker or programmer who is working in a retail store because he cannot find a permanent job for example), involuntary stay-at-home mothers who would prefer to work, and graduate and professional school students who were unable to find worthwhile jobs after they graduated with their college, etc...

The GOP platform is not going to change any of the above. That's red flavor-aid also.

In order to fix this economy, we have to fix U.S. trade and put unemployed and grossly underemployed Americans back to work in the private sector so they can both pay taxes again and not become expensive social problems.

Also desirable is decertifying public employee unions, E-Verifying the country, protecting U.S. invention/innovation like we did during the Cold War (to gain and maintain invention/innovation competitive advantages), and scaling back government spending.

The GOP just wants to lower federal income tax rates on U.S. businesses that don't pay any federal taxes or whom are at historically low rates currently and wealthy investors who pay historically low rates currently so they can invest in countries to further gut the domestic labor market and hand over what remains of our innovation advantage to foreign countries and foreign workers and dramatically cut government jobs and social services in a Great Recession without doing any of the other to ensure Americans can not just survive but prosper. That's red flavor-aid.

January 24, 2013 update - A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) finds that U.S. corporations report a huge share of their profits as officially earned in small, low-tax countries where they have very little investment and workforce while reporting a much smaller percentage of their profits in larger, industrial countries where they actually have massive investments and workforces.

Both red flavor-aid and blue flavor-aid are extremely damaging to most American citizens and the long-term national interest of the United States of America.

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Barry C. Lynn, senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., explains what most Americans sense but don't yet understand, namely the how and why the level of monopolization has increased to the point where it hurts America's entrepreneurs and small businesses while staying just under the regulatory agencies ability to break it.