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Rattlesnake Manifesto, a fundamental appeal

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This document lives here: Thinman.com > Rattlesnake

create unlimited investment cash
to build export industries by allowing all income to be kept in 401K-type tax free accounts

eliminate inflation
with an exponential tax on money spent when deducted from 401K-type accounts, allow borrowing for major purchases

eliminate the middleman
with an exponential brokerage tax

eliminate gouging
with an exponential tax on the difference between prices (retail, rent, and real estate) and average (or mean) production or purchase costs with an exception made for replacement parts

even the field of competition
with an exponential tax on corporate size - balance the advantage caused by the gouging-elimination tax, and allow for the success of very small business

eliminate corporate person-hood
by removing ex post facto protection for corporations involved in any wrongdoing

protect the nation, people, and environment
by removing ex post facto protection for mass crimes against the economy (shipping jobs overseas), mass destruction of the environment (sub divisions and forest destruction), and compromises to security made as state expediences (allowing foreign drug and criminal infiltration to create a slave-level labor source)





The "official" America Revolution was "framed," as are our daily lives are psychologically framed

The Fathers of the US, also called the "framers of the Constitution," used didactic framing to build US capital from colonial capital. What we got was a new version of the same old thing: exploitation of the people by the elite. Didactic framing usually refers to the style of teaching where teachers force information down the students' throats, but technically it is the cognitive approach, which says that you need to be taught what to think, and if you are not, you are insane. Added to that in education and psychology is the behavioral approach that is simply sadistic conditioning.

Originally we lived in close collaboration with each other and with nature

The option, or perhaps the original human condition to which the above sickness is the option, is the natural collaborative system that nature provided for us through evolution. This is generally called constructivism in education, and humanism in psychology, but really is the way we do everyday things when things are going the way they should be.

Genuine revolutions are about restoring the native, and America's was no exception
The true American revolutionaries were a combination of Europeans and Natives who worked to integrate Native "law" into a document called the Bill of Rights, which has been the template for all rights documents since it was written several centuries ago. Europeans unquestionably came to the New World to capitally exploit it, capital colonial exploitation was nothing new, it was perfected by the Romans before Christ's time. But many Europeans came to the New World for the types of freedom that can only be called Tribal and Native: they were European Natives struggling against European, or perhaps extended Roman, capital.

Europeans who had been torn from their native environments "nativized" in America, bonding with the local natives
Many Europeans "nativized" easily, because, as it happens, and native anywhere is a native everywhere--Nativism means a collaborative connection to the Earth. Edward Curtis, the photographer, is such an excellent example -- his rendition of the Natives are unquestionably an example of founding abstract art.

The American Revolution quickly sold out to colonial capital
The US was nearly purely corrupt after the original American Revolution--much worse than the English colonial government. One of the main problems was the US government's lack of willingness to pay the revolutionary soldiers, and also its continuation of the use of debtors' prisons: shades of the situation we face right now.

Shay's and the Whiskey Rebellions set things straight
Two rebellions set that straight, and forced the creation of the Constitution, and with it the Bill of Rights. The "Whiskey" Rebellion is the better known (but poorly named), but the more important was Shay's rebellion that focused primarily on corruption in the courts and the debtors' prison situation. It was Shay's rebellion that forced the creation of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights -- two documents nearly completely ignored today in the land they were "framed."

Shays rebels, as well as other important American revolutionaries continued the struggle against capital corruption, and did so very near to where I sit right now, NW Connecticut. Most eventually went to Vermont to form the University of Vermont (well-educated rebels!), and none were punished. This consolidation of Nativism between the displaced natives of Europe and the natives of the New World, has defined the necessary path for humanity very well. Since then the consolidation has included Natives from Australia and the Pacific, and will soon include the Natives of Peru struggling against capital exploitation there.

Connecting with America today, and fixing its economy the old-fashioned way
After the extended US technology and manufacturing crash of 2000, I became a long haul truck driver, a job which brought me into direct contact with the entire US simultaneously. I created documentation suggesting a new direction for America that I "framed" within the ideals of Shay's Whiskey rebellions, that utilizes mildly but steadily increasing taxes to limit the kinds of damages that capital does to the economy and the environment. It limits law to a few specific items, like Christ's reduction of the Jews' 800 laws to the few laws of Christianity centering on love and forgiveness. It incorporates an exponential curve to bring the majority of taxation to where capital does the most damage and wastes the most -- at the very top. Because of the "trickle down theory," at least 90% of American wealth resides the hands of the top 10%, and across the world the ration is more like 99% and 1%.

Exponential Curve: Visualizing simple math that is useful for creating taxation that only helps and does not hurt
To visualize the use of an exponential curve, think of the right half of a huge suspension bridge viewed from the side. Near the beginning of the curve (or the middle of the bridge), the curve is nearly flat, and it stays flat for nearly the entire expanse, and only becomes steep at the very end. The vast, vast majority of us are in the flat end of the curve, and using the curve, would pay nearly no taxes. Only towards the end where the curve slopes upward would there be significant taxation, and please trust me when I tell you that the people that would be affected at this end of the curve are so rich that they would not physically feel taxation. In fact, this benign form of taxation would only deflate the most inflated prices -- expensive real estate and high-end luxury items.

John Wesley promoted much the same ideas, so "radical thrift" is neither new nor radical

As it happens, I recently learned that this concept is neither new nor revolutionary -- it is nearly economics as the great Christian Wesley promoted them; Wesley founded the very influential Methodist Church, and in a word, Wesley promoted "thrift."

The "trickle down theory must go" -- Obama promised!
Obama promised to end the ruinous "trickle down" theory that is destroying America's and the World's economies. This plan, sometimes called "taxing bads, not goods" would instantly end it. Below is the plan as I envisioned it as a trucker, so you know it is down to earth. There are other topics surrounding this kind of plan that explain how de-tuning capital actually increases real wealth by reducing the waste of the over-production of capital construction, but what we need to do here to properly implement democracy into economics is to keep it simple, as Christ did with his formation of the morals of Christianity. I called this document the "Rattlesnake" after the original American revolutionary battle flag.

Fundamental America Revolution
From living around here I became aware of Shay's Rebellion from a small monument on a short cut to Rt 22 from Rt 7 in Egermont, MA. I researched what is inscribed in it, which is a very rough-hewn rock always with two fresh American flags, and found that Shay's Rebellion forced the new country to straighten out its act in its early years. It led to the formation of the Constitution and most importantly, the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is the template for all rights documents in the world; the UN Charter is simply and updated version of the Bill of Rights.

Very few people are aware of Shay's Rebellion, though many are aware of the parallel Whiskey Rebellion, though probably only because of its alcoholic name. The reason so few know about Shay's Rebellion is that it had been decided by experts who tell lawmakers what is "best" for the nation, that this important history would be better buried, and that children would be taught that George Washington conceived a perfect nation at the outset.

Rebellion and deliberate misconception: Framing
This process is called didactic framing; American Education by Joel Spring describes the process well, but not Shay's Rebellion. In light of this, I think that the exact wording in the pledge of allegiance seems symbolic, and even the flag itself.

What is more important, I believe, is the meaning of our lives in this nation, and how our culture has evolved and in particular how American people consistently settle into a native mode despite the best efforts of the structure that controls what we know through didactic framing.

Ultimately the didactic framing system has allowed the US first ranking in 2000 to less than 10th ranking in 2008. School children in America are deprived of what school children around the world take for granted: an information technology education.

The growth economy is unsustainable without continual massive environmental destruction
We are all aware that we are headed into an inevitable slide because of unsustainability of continual growth, but we are approaching it as if we are unaware that we have been in one since March, 2000. From then until now America has been kept afloat with the savings of American families. But as we can see from the "credit crisis" the American people are heavily in debt, and I am sure that most people are aware that the US is heavily in debt to the nation of China. We are probably equally in debt to India for the technology services we have given to them, but the US government has hidden data on the amounts of money shipped for services, rather than goods.

Growth lowers average wages
According to economic measurements, the economy expands; politicians and economists promise that with a further expanding economy, wages will increase. But that is not so. Average wages have steadily declined in the US as the economy has "grown." It grows in size, and those at the top of the economic pyramid see increasing wages, possibly by virtue of their location at the apex of ever increasing height. As the economic pyramid grows, the bottom becomes much wider; there are many more workers at the lowest levels, perhaps fighting harder for what trickles down. Capitalists seek increased population as part of the growth without which it Capital cannot survive. If local mothers will not have enough children to support capital growth, then humans will be imported to satisfy growth: cheaper human resources.

The "ratcheting downwards" effect of of boom and bust

With each cycle of the free economy from boom to bust to boom again, the economic structure grows, but wages decline: the individual, his family, and his community loses. When the economy cycles downwards, obviously so do wages, and when the economy comes off the bottom, the worker can only be excited to see his income rise with the economy, but his wages are never resorted. Each cycle presents a significant percentage loss for local workers, and over a few cycles, perhaps two or three decades, wages may decline by half when adjusted for inflation, which can be considerable.

Jodi Rell, Governor of Connecticut, shows how "ratcheting downwards" works
When organized labor came to Jodi Rell offering concessions across industry to help stimulate the Connecticut economy, a purely capital state that had been in recession twice as long as the rest of the nation, she responded to their generosity by demanding that labor give up its right to collective bargaining. She attempted to use this latest recession to actual lower labor as close to slavery as possible. This recession was caused by a housing bubble that was linked to lending fraud and near-slavery imported labor practices, and among attempts to revive the economy include "stimulation" for the very thing that collapsed it: sub-division housing construction.

Connecting with the nation

While I was a trucker I thought about this economic quandary, and compared our present problems to the problems the US suffered as a colonial country. I also became aware that Bill of Rights was directly adapted from Native law, and for that to happen, there had to be a strong connection between the Natives and the early American "thinkers." After reading Petr Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, I began to feel that many settlers came to America to escape the abuses of the European royalty, and to join with the Natives in a natural life. Possibly many communities and families had retained historical native concepts despite the best efforts of religious and capitalistic forces to erase them.

This and related documents about fundamental change
With those ideas I created a document, which I believe will solve all the problems by altering the meaning of taxes; I call it the "gentle curve" because it will hurt no one, and will give to America "social security." I also call it the Rattlesnake Manifesto because I use the symbol from the early American war banner.

Related Links:

Americans kill, so what is the kindest way to kill?

Hyper-DE-flation makes sense

Lies of the Times: Obama needs to fufill his promise

Beginning the American Break-Up: Ending the CIA

Inflation Key to the Recession Cycle

Spiritual Darwinism: Natural and Native Empathy

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I am a worker, photographer, and writer. I am now working on a counseling masters degree focusing on youth and community, neurology and medication, and underlying genetics. My photography is my greatest accomplishment. The style is the art of (more...)
 
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