On Jesus Christ, economic inequality, and progressive Christianity

Income Inequality and Jesus Christ

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

I have always vigorously maintained that the gap between the rich and poor is a moral problem as well as a socioeconomic problem in desperate need of solutions. Yes, it's a religious problem too, and religious people are causing it. They come to church faithfully every Sunday, dressed like fashion models, and go through all the motions of worship and praise. Sometimes there will even be some tears or some healing that takes place. But, as the Bible says, if we do all that and even more without compassion for all humankind, none of those church services I just mentioned will mean one stinking thing. Neither will the people at church, particularly the rich or comfortably well off who do nothing to help those less fortunate than themselves. All their praising, worshiping, preaching and their exclamations of, “Thank you, Jesus!!” will be meaningless. Regarding this the apostle Paul wrote, “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1^st Corinthians 13, verses 3-7, NIV)

So we can see that at least part of the reason for inequality is people who keep all they own and all they earn completely to themselves. They won't share anything – nothing! Despite near-record levels of economic inequality, many politicians and pundits still don't think this widening chasm is much of a problem in a country supposedly dedicated to egalitarian ideals. Inequality, the logic goes, is a natural result of different degrees of work and creativity. Some people strive harder and have better ideas, as well as take more risks, and giving them out-sized rewards is a good thing, since it encourages others to emulate this behavior and makes us all wealthier in the end. The only problem with this story, of course, is that it's persistently contradicted by the actual facts about inequality today. In truth, inequality in America tracks more closely with a classic Marxist analysis whereby the owners of capital exploit a surplus of labor to keep wages low and generate high profits for themselves – depriving workers of a fair share of the value they are creating for companies. Yes, there are smart entrepreneurs taking big risks in America, but the more dominant face of the economy is well-established corporations run by professional managers who keep finding new ways to drive labor costs down and profits up.

The big losers are the people who are actually creating most of the value of these companies -- i.e., the workers who make the sales, prepare the food, stock the shelves, handle the phones and so on. Many of these people are paid under $10 an hour, which is not enough to live on – and certainly not enough to save for retirement or buy health insurance, which is not offered to most low-wage workers. All of us are hurt, too, by the way that the low-wage model drags down economic growth. If you give a low-wage worker higher wages, they immediately pump that money back into the economy through more spending. But if you give a CEO another few million dollars in compensation, he'll most likely just plow that money into his stock portfolio or other savings vehicles, which doesn't do much for the economy since capital is cheap right now and customers are scarce. If we want an economy with robust consumer demand, workers need to a bigger slice of the pie. Business leaders once understood that elementary fact.

Jesus, Pope Francis, and brain scientists have asked what happens to a person who is repeatedly given a larger and larger portion of the economic pie at the expense of the workers, and the answers are clear if unnerving. Wealth and power are dangerous for your mental health, your spiritual condition, and for society in general – especially when they contribute to the neglect of the poor. Ridding the world as it exists today of poverty is currently a fantasy. Jesus spoke of this: "The poor you will always with you, but you will not always have me" (Matthew 26:11). He also said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke 6:20). Only a few verses before this moment in Luke, he cries (quoting Deuteronomy 6:13): "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor." (Luke 4:18). Jesus also noted, famously and controversially, that it is easier "for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 19:23-24).

Jesus discouraged the accumulation of wealth, worried about its effects on those who had it, and took special pleasure in helping the poor, dedicating His efforts to them. He must have shaken his head at the large gaps between rich and poor throughout the Middle East in the first century. Pope Francis has taken up Jesus' call on this. During his 2014 visit to South Korea, he repeated a cry that has become a central theme of his papacy, telling hundreds of thousands of listeners in Seoul that the gap between the rich and poor in Korea was a problem, and they should think back to early Christian martyrs in Korea. He said: "Their example has much to say to us who live in societies where, alongside immense wealth, dire poverty is silently growing; where the cry of the poor is seldom heeded and where Christ continues to call out to us, asking us to love and serve him by tending to our brothers and sisters in need." Now, I'm not a fan of the Catholic church, but I must admit the pope has a good point here.

Everyone knows that the wealth gap in the U.S. has increased dramatically. "The top 10 percent took more than half of the country's overall income in 2012, the highest proportion recorded in a century of government record keeping," the New York Times reported in April 2014. It's a problem that makes you dizzy, and one that will never be easily solved. Indeed, the concentration of wealth at the very top of American society recalls the early 20th century, before the income-leveling measures of the New Deal kicked in. The growing income gap is perhaps the most pressing issue before the world, not just the United States, as the level of misery rises among the world's poor. Even those formerly known as the middle class, who have struggled mightily to make ends meet for decades now, face an array of problems that create mental and physical pain on a vast scale. So let's go back to Jesus and Pope Francis and their concerns. Do people on the other end of this inequality equation really fare better? Does wealth make you happy? Jesus certainly didn't think so, and neither do I. Although I've never been really rich, there was a time in my life during the 1990's when I owned and operated a small computer repair shop. For the last 4 out of 8 years that I was in business, I earned a 6-figure income. But in the process, my life had sped up to a frenzied pace. By the time I closed that business in June 1999, I was so exhausted that I took a couple of months off to recuperate. So I know first hand that money does not necessarily solve all problems. Indeed, it can sometimes create more problems than it solves.

Three Canadian neuroscientists have suggested that being rich and powerful actually makes you less happy and, even worse, incapable of sympathizing with the poor. They find that the rich and powerful among us show less brain activity in that region of the brain where human sympathy is excited. Power diminishes all varieties of sympathy, and it drowns empathy in a sea of greed. Conversely, those who feel poor and marginalized in society show a great deal of sympathetic activity. The ability to sympathize with those around us seems crucial to our survival, and it's connected to the mirroring functions of the brain. As the research now suggests, the richer and more powerful we feel, the deader will be that area of our brain where this crucial activity, which generates empathy, occurs. In fact, power fundamentally changes the way we respond to those around us.

Is it any wonder that when a rich young man came to Jesus asking for spiritual guidance, Jesus said what he was not expecting to hear. “'All these I have kept', the young man said. 'What do I still lack'? Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth” (Matthew chapter 19, verses 20-22, NIV). The young man "went away sad," since he had so much materialistic stuff and didn't want to let go of any of it. But letting go is essential to our own happiness as well as the world's economic equilibrium. Jesus, Pope Francis and brain scientists would agree on this. It's a hard teaching, but it's important. We as humankind must – absolutely must – outgrow our childish need for accumulating material things. The notion that economic prosperity equals happiness borderlines on insanity because of the deliberate refusal of those who practice it to plug into reality. And so on and on it goes. The saying used to be, “On and on it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows”, remember that one? The difference between then and now is that the stopping point is finally in sight due to a series of wars and natural disasters culminating in the return of Jesus Christ. Oh, what a day that will be!

The American People Deserve to Know the Truth

Twenty Four Injustices That The

Mainstream Media Won't Discuss

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

During the days of Nazi Germany from the early 1930's up to the mid-'40's, there was a branch of the government called "The Ministry of Propaganda" that dished out a torrent of profane distortions about Jewish people, and later the outcome of the war itself. It was headed by a guy named Joseph Goebbels, who committed suicide at the end of the war rather than face capture, which would surely have been followed by a death sentence at the Nuremberg Trials. Today in America, we have a similar position within the White House staff that we call the Press Secretary, who can be seen regularly on the evening news. He serves the same function, he just has a far more innocuous title than "Propaganda Minister". This person's job -- and I have noticed regular personnel changes -- is to spoon-feed the media the information Du joir of the day. Everybody knows that the media is told what to say and how to say it, and yet there a few protests about it. Today's message, in light of the recent events involving police shootings of unarmed black men, is my small contribution towards demanding some truth from our news sources. No more US Government propaganda please, uncle Sam, we have all had a belly full already!

For decades, the mainstream media in the United States was accustomed to being able to tell the American people what to think and how to think it. Unfortunately for them, a whole lot of Americans are starting to break free from that paradigm and think for themselves, and the reason can be summed up in two words – information technology. A Gallup survey from 2014 found that over 60 percent of all Americans “have little or no trust” in the mainstream media. More people than ever are realizing that the mainstream media is giving them a very distorted version of the truth (“Truth? You can't handle the truth!!”), and they are increasingly seeking out alternative sources of information. In the United States today, just six giant media corporations control the mainstream media. Those giant media corporations own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many prominent websites. But now thanks to the Internet the mainstream media no longer has a complete monopoly on the news. In recent years the “alternative media” has exploded in popularity. People want to hear about the things that the mainstream media doesn’t really want to talk about. They want to hear news that is not filtered by corporate bosses and government censors. They are hungry and thirsty for some real truth, and they know that they are not getting it from the mainstream media. If only they knew Jesus as I do. They wouldn't be hungry and thirsty any more, but that's another sermon by itself so I will quickly move on. But this is also one of the primary reasons why people are doing away with cable TV as I have. It's not just the money saved from unsubscribing to cable TV, it's the fact that everybody knows everything they are watching is a load of B.S., and they're sick and tired of it!

We are watching a media revolution happen, and many in the mainstream media today are totally freaking out about it. In fact, some in the mainstream media have even begun publishing articles that mock the American people for not trusting them. For example, a recent CNN article entitled “Still ‘Paranoid’ After All These Years” portrayed Americans that don’t trust the media as paranoid conspiracy theorists that have left rationality behind. Ever have the feeling you’re being lied to by the news media, the authorities, and/or the corporate world? That somebody — or something — is out to get you? You’re not alone. Welcome to 21st-century America. Look around. Trust is hitting historic lows. Less than 15% of Americans have a favorable view of the federal government, a decline of 31% since 2002, according to the Pew Center for People and the Press. Gallup has Congress’ approval rating down in the low teens, after nearing single digits in the summer of 2013. And the news media aren’t much better off. “Negative opinions about the performance of news organizations now equal or surpass all-time highs on nine of 12 core measures the Pew Research Center has been tracking since 1985,” a Pew report said last summer. The article goes on to make it sound like it is very irrational not to trust the media, but in this day and age it is imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves. Blindly trusting someone else to do your thinking for you is very, very dangerous.

Anyone that does not acknowledge that the mainstream media has an agenda is either not being honest with themselves, or they are complicit with the powers that control it. The mainstream media presents a view of the world that is very favorable to their big corporate owners and the big corporations that spend billions of dollars to advertise on their networks. The mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the establishment, and the world view being pushed on the big networks is going to be consistent with the economic, financial, political and social goals of the establishment. The mainstream media loves to talk about things that fit with that agenda, and they don’t like to talk about things that suggest that there is something wrong with that agenda. And so here are 24 facts that the mainstream media doesn’t really want to talk about right now, in no particular order of importance (because they're ALL important!):

#1) The mainstream media doesn’t really want to talk about the fact that gun sales are absolutely skyrocketing all over America.

#2) They also don’t really want to talk about the fact that disarming the population has resulted in some of the most horrific massacres in human history.

• 1911 – Turkey disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1915 – 1917 they murdered 1.5 million Armenians.
• 1929 – Russia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1929 – 1953 they murdered 20 million Russians.
• 1935 – China disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1948 – 1952 they murdered 20 million Chinese.
• 1938 – Germany disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1939 – 1945 they murdered 16 million Jews.
• 1956 – Cambodia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1975 – 1977 they murdered 1 million Educated people.
• 1964 – Guatemala disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1964 – 1981 they murdered 100,000 Mayan Indians.
• 1970 – Uganda disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1971 – 1979 they murdered 300,000 Christians.

#3) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that a bill allowing for the “indefinite military detention of US citizens on American soil” has already been passed by the U.S. Senate and signed into law by president Obama. Never mind that it's completely unconstitutional (see the Bill of Rights 4th amendment, among other places in the US Constitution).

#4) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that volcanoes all along the Pacific ocean's Ring of Fire are roaring to life. It seems like a new eruption is being reported every few days now. In fact, a red alert has been issued for a massive volcano that sits along the border between Chile and Argentina, as well as for the super-volcano at Yellowstone National Park. An eruption there could devastate much of North America, killing millions.

#5) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that the use of genetically engineered seeds has caused on explosion of new “super weeds” that are incredibly difficult for farmers to kill.

#6) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that renowned trends forecaster Gerald Celente is predicting a “financial disaster” somewhere between September 2015 to as late as 2018, but no later and more likely sooner.

#7) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that it is easier to get into Harvard than it is to get a job as a flight attendant in America today.

#8) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that nearly 400 TSA employees have been fired for stealing from travelers since 2003. Our tax dollars hard at work. Nice.

#9) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that giant corporations such as Face-book are funneling gigantic amounts of money through offshore banking havens such as the Cayman Islands in an effort to avoid taxes.

#10) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that the U.S. dollar is in real danger of losing its status as the primary reserve currency of the world. It's no longer a question of if this might occur, but when. A financial calamity would surely follow. China and Russia are buying up all the world's gold and silver reserves. What does that tell you about their view of the US dollar?

#11) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that the mainstream media always keeps track of what the president does, when in actuality they should be doing a much better job keeping track of Wall Street speculators, their bankers, and all their filthy lucre.

#12) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that there are government websites that give immigrants instructions about how to come over to our country illegally and then apply for SNAP benefits while formerly middle class American workers and their children starve for lack of work. Yes, America has always been a nation of immigrants, but never before at the expense of any of its citizens. Something is very wrong here (BTW, I don't blame the immigrants. They are economic refugees from the third world).

#13) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that the U.S. economy is losing millions of jobs to nations where it is legal to pay workers slave labor wages. Actually, this process is already started in the US as well, due to the fact that no one can live on a minimum wage paycheck. The mainstream media is totally married to the one world economic agenda that their corporate owners make so much money from, and so they say nothing as a steady stream of businesses and jobs continue to leave our country.

#14) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that hunger and poverty are absolutely exploding in the United States at the same time that they are telling us that the economy is “recovering”.

#15) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that North Korea now has a three-stage rocket with enough range to potentially hit the western United States.

#16) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that the United States Postal Service is losing 25 million dollars a day and is on the verge of financial collapse.

#17) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that our biggest oil supplier in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, still kills people for changing religions.

#18) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that political correctness has taken over America. The truth is that the media does not see any problem with that at all.

#19) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that nearly half a million employees of the federal government are making more than $100,000 a year.

#20) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that the birth rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. The elite are absolutely thrilled that less babies are being born. Fewer of us means less competition for them.

#21) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that violent crime in the United States increased by 18 percent in 2014 and that many major U.S. cities are seeing violent crime totally spiral out of control.

#22) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that Barack Obama received more than 99 percent of the vote in more than 100 precincts in Ohio on election day in 2012.

#23) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that during the first four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. national debt grew by about as much as it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that George W. Bush took office.

#24) They don’t really want to talk about the fact that the Federal Reserve created the conditions for the last financial crisis, and their mismanagement of the economy has now brought us to the verge of another horrible economic downturn. According to the mainstream media, the Federal Reserve is “above politics” and should not be criticized. Maybe the Federal Reserve should be nationalized so that printing and coining money returns to the auspices of the US Treasury like our Constitution specifies. All the US top-tier leadership needs to do is return to the original Constitution. It's the perfect way to wipe out the so-called national debt. Because America's so-called “national debt” is a boatload of financial B.S.

Law enforcement misconduct has become a foul stench in God's nostrils

Once Again, the Government Sins Against the People

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

There was a headline just a few days ago on the Internet mainstream media that was all over the national news on my old rabbit-eared TV and CNN's website. The FBI, our nation's top law enforcement agency (at least up to now), has been giving false testimony about forensic samples obtained from alleged crime scenes. Fully 95% or more of all federal criminal prosecutions in the last ten years – those we know about so far – were engineered by way of apparently bogus testimony! Allow me to quote a short excerpt from this article:

FBI admits it fudged forensic hair matches in nearly all criminal trials for decades

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Beforeitsnews.com

WASHINGTON — “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000. Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 per cent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence. The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions. The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convicts guilt. Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District of Columbia are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated. The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the U.S. courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said. The question now, they said, is how state authorities and the courts will respond to findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques — like hair and bite-mark comparisons — that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989. In a statement, the FBI and Justice Department vowed to continue to devote resources to address all cases and said they “are committed to ensuring that affected defendants are notified of past errors and that justice is done in every instance. The Department and the FBI are also committed to ensuring the accuracy of future hair analysis, as well as the application of all disciplines of forensic science....”

In other words, there are thousands of criminal convictions that were falsely obtained, meaning there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in the federal prison system who aren't supposed to be there in the first place. To call this outrageous would be a gross understatement, to call it a miscarriage of justice would in my view still be insufficient. The best description I can think of – and I can think of a few I can't print here – is “completely over the top”!

Wikipedia has this to say about incarceration in America: “The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the second-highest per-capita incarceration rate, behind Seychelles (which has a total prison population of 786 out of a population of 90,024). In 2012, there were 707 adults incarcerated per 100,000 population. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2011 – about 0.94% of adults in the U.S. resident population. Additionally, 4,814,200 adults at year-end 2011 were on probation or on parole. In total, 6,977,700 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2011 – about 2.9% of adults in the U.S. resident population." Of that 2.26 million incarcerated individuals in state and federal prisons, that number is pretty much divided down the middle between the two. So, if there are 1.13 million people in federal prison, and 95% of them are there due to what amounts to perjured testimony, the FBI just lost every ounce of its credibility. Plus, a crime of the highest order has been committed in America due to false imprisonment and perjury – both felony offenses – and, people's civil rights have been violated because 3 out of 4 prisoners are black. The uproar over this should have been deafening, but the story came and went in 24 hours or less. Without a doubt the majority of people do not yet know about this report, which is why I am going to great lengths to bring this topic back up again.

What does the Bible say about this? Quite a lot, actually, so let me quote just a handful of verses, which should be sufficient for me to make my point. In Exodus chapter 20, verse 16 says, “You shall not bear false testimony against your neighbor.” No doubt you will recognize this as being one of the ten commandments. Exodus chapter 23 says in verse one, “Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.” Proverbs chapter nineteen, verse five says, “A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free.” Psalm 119, verse 163 says, “I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love the law.” It says in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 25, “Therefore each one of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body”. And finally, Jesus himself said in Luke chapter 3, verse 14, “Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely – be content with your pay”. What's the 21^st century version of that truism? Don't be greedy! Sorry, Gordon Gecko and Wall St., greed is most definitely not good, not even a little. Greed is counterproductive, it is self-centered and therefore childish, and often times it can be criminal in nature.

As our planet becomes more and more populated, working for the greater good instead of one's personal needs and desires will become the preferable way of life. Fewer resources for more people seems to be the order of the day. As such, hoarding money, food, investments such as houses, or other commodities like gold and silver, is becoming the old way of doing things. People are finally starting to figure out that we can either coexist together peacefully, or we can annihilate each other in war. Which do we choose? As for me, since I worship the Prince of Peace, I choose to live in His peace, and harmoniously with those around me to the best of my ability. But when people are falsely imprisoned, that's where I draw the line. When people are railroaded into prison after being nearly defenseless in court based on false testimony, that is where I draw the line. When people's civil rights are being viciously violated up one side and down the other, that is where I draw the line! This grotesque miscarriage of justice has just over a million people falsely imprisoned, and that's the federal system alone. The other 50 states are undoubtedly just as bad, if not worse.

What can we do about this? There can be no question that law enforcement and the criminal court system are utterly corrupt, all one has to do is watch the news on TV or the Web. The latest death of yet another unarmed black man in Baltimore, Maryland is the most current example as I write this. It seems this poor guy suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody. Naturally, nobody in the department knows anything about it, not one little bit. Evidently the police in Baltimore expect us to believe this gentleman broke his back accidentally. How ridiculous!! This was a case of cold-hearted murder, pure and simple. If a civilian did this to another, at the minimum they would be charged with second degree murder, or at least manslaughter, depending on the jury. But if it's the police, they will almost always get off scott free. Why? Because the cops lie on the witness stand to convict people just like the FBI agents I wrote about at the beginning of this posting. And, as you have read, God hates false testimony and He hates liars.

Is it any wonder that more and more people are becoming afraid of the police? When I'm out in public and see a cop, I refuse to even so much as make eye contact with them. You see, a long time ago, back in the early '90's, I found myself convicted of a weapons charge over an altercation in traffic. Another driver was repeatedly cutting into my lane and slamming on his brakes right in front of me. After the altercation, I left the scene, nor do I make an apology for that because I regarded it as justifiable self-defense, and I still do. A year and a half later, when the case came up in court (I had posted bond and gotten out of jail), I found out that the man who started the whole thing was an off-duty cop. He was driving in his civilian car wearing civilian clothes, and I had no idea this guy was a police officer. The bottom line was that I was convicted of 2 felonies because the off-duty cop who started the whole thing got up on the witness stand and told one lie on top of another (naturally, this time he was in uniform). My only consolation was that I got probation and a fine instead of jail time. So I know what it's like to be falsely convicted of a crime. And that's exactly why I side with the protesters, and I always will. And I am convinced that this police and courtroom misconduct will eventually deteriorate into massive civil unrest, which is something I've been predicting in my books for years. The summer of 2015 could get very interesting. Only time will tell.

Now that tax season is over, it's time to fix it. Replace the federal income tax.

Now That Tax Season Is Over, It's Time to End

the Immoral and Illegal Income Tax

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

With another federal income tax deadline having passed this past week, it is time for me to bring up the dubious nature of income taxation in America, and why I think it's long past due for some serious change in the way we are taxed. Part of the reason for this is to correct the extreme imbalance of wealth and to speak out against the hoarding of cash and assets by the top 1% of the US population. Under no circumstances do I think this matter should be resolved by force, and I am aware that there are people – both Christian and secular – who think otherwise. There is certainly no way we are going to be able to correct this imbalance of wealth by going door-to-door in wealthy neighborhoods asking for money, although I can see where that could be a form of protest in and of itself. The rich and powerful are most certainly not going to surrender their filthy lucre voluntarily. What we will have to do is to legislate it while still remaining within the boundaries of the Constitution. The best way to accomplish this is by establishing an all-new tax system that is fair and equitable and which does not impose an excessive burden of payment on the backs of the lower 50% of wage earners in America, the ones who can afford it the least.

The origin of the income tax on individuals is generally cited as the passage of the 16th Amendment, passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified February 3, 1913; however, its history actually goes back even further. During the Civil War Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861 which included a tax on personal incomes to help pay war expenses. The tax was repealed ten years later. However, in 1894 Congress enacted a flat rate Federal income tax, which was ruled unconstitutional the following year by the U.S. Supreme Court because it was a direct tax not apportioned according to the population of each state. This was in reference to Article 1 and section 8 of the US Constitution, which gives Congress the right to levy taxes, but which also says, “... but all Duties, Imposes and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States”. The taxes our founding fathers had in mind had to do with imported goods and interstate commerce. It says nothing about an income tax. The 16th amendment, ratified in 1913, made an attempt at removing this objection by allowing the Federal government to tax the income of individuals without regard to the population of each State. The most efficient way America can accomplish this is by a national commerce tax, which is much more in the letter and spirit of the law as it was originally written than the current federal tax code. I realize this is not a new idea. It's the way it's applied that's new.

The first step in this process will be to replace the income tax with a consumption tax and the second step will be to legislate an excess wealth tax, in order to be able to finance the needs of the military and the space program. The federal income tax for individuals, families and businesses will go the way of the Chevy Vega under this proposed new tax system. In its place will be a 9% Consumption Tax on all retail and Internet commerce. Why 9%, you ask? Because the average income tax paid by working Americans comes to about 18% of their gross income, so let's cut it in half! Governments, nonprofits, groceries, utility bills and fuel should be the 5 main exceptions, that is, these should in my view remain untaxed. Repeal of the income tax will by extension include the abolition of the federal withholding tax that is currently deducted from our paychecks. From now on all this extra money will flow back into the pockets of the American workers and business people where it belongs. Add that to the fifteen dollar per hour minimum wage ('low pay is not OK'), we find out that the net take-home pay for the overwhelming majority of American workers will be raised by at least one-fourth overnight! This is just one more reason for everybody reading this to stop and put it down and go participate in a public demonstration or protest of your choice, and start protesting for these fundamental human rights today! You can finish reading this when you get back home. That's how urgent this has become! If you can't find an ongoing protest anywhere, start one.

The federal income taxes for business and corporations will also be going away under this proposal. It's common knowledge by now that many of these companies have moved their manufacturing overseas due to lower wages and taxes in the third world. But what if the business income tax were suddenly repealed in this country? What if Obamacare succeeds to the point of taking the burden of employee health insurance off the backs of businesses, something Obamacare has already begun to do whether one is in favor of it or not? When you combine these two factors then you have a great recipe for job creation. That is how we can bring back many of the jobs that were lost to outsourcing. And so I propose that a luxury tax that I will call the Excess Wealth Tax be put up for a popular vote. (How do we get it on the ballot? By making as much noise about it as we can until we get what we want!) The Excess Wealth Tax for individuals and families is that all earned income up to $1 million is tax free. Period, end of story. For individuals and households with a net income in excess of $1 million, they will be taxed at a 50% rate. So, let's say a single taxpayer, or a family of four, has $101 million in income in any given year. Since the first $1 million is tax free, all that would be owed would be 50% of the remaining $100 million. So your hypothetical tax bill for that year would be $50 million. Uncle Sam keeps half, and we keep half. Besides, anybody who can't live on an annual income of $51 million is spending way too much money on all the wrong stuff.

For businesses and corporations all earned income and net assets up to $300 million is tax free. There is a 33 and 1/3% tax levied on anything over that amount. So if we have a company or multinational corporation with gross sales of $1.5 billion in any given year, then that company would only pay tax on everything in excess of $300 million. So 33.3% of the remaining $1.2 billion would be $400 billion, and that would be their Excess Wealth Tax for that year. Uncle Sam gets a third, the enterprise keeps the rest. It's so simple you won't need an accountant any more (sorry, all you CPA's). It will also mean that the capital gains, estate, the alternative minimum and self-employment taxes would all be going away for good. But so would itemized deductions. That should make business owners, entrepreneurs, and investors very enthusiastic about supporting this proposal.

Money from these tax payments would be used for public education, to fund higher learning for adults changing careers as well as for high school graduates going on to college (which would end student loans except for private colleges and universities), for military funding, and for funding for an ambitious and pioneering space program. What about the federal income tax? It needs to go the way of the dinosaurs! Taxation of our incomes is tantamount to limitation of our incomes! I could write that we should all organize a tax protest next winter, but unfortunately refusing to pay taxes as a form of protest has been criminalized, so I can't condone that. Organizing on social media would be one way to reach out to a lot of people. But I thought I would get the conversation started by posting this. I first proposed this four years ago in my book, “The Middle and Working Class Manifesto”, and no one paid any attention. But with the waves of protest about police violence and unrealistically low wages ($7.25 an hour? What??), I ask you this question: How do we peacefully replace our entire tax code? By peaceful mass protests and demonstrations? Trying to coax Congress into passing this into law would be an exercise in futility, we need a better way than that. But if the system is dysfunctional – as the US tax code currently is – it must be replaced from the outside in, not the other way around as is our tradition. Tradition doesn't work anymore. Time for us to get outside the box.

I don't tolerate legalized criminal behavior, and neither should you

How Much Longer Are We Going to Tolerate This?

By Rev. Paul J. Bern

I have always strongly believed that it's not possible to be an effective Christian without taking a stand against social and economic injustice, and against government corruption in all its forms (such as lobbyists at the federal and state levels, who give out bribe money like Halloween candy). In fact, I have been a proponent for radical change for a number of years now, and I have written and published 2 books on this very topic. Where shall I begin? In God-blessed America, the land of the free where everyone is an economic slave, our founding fathers' sacred idea of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has become but a cruel joke. Former president George W. Bush has notoriously (for both Christian and secular people) called our Constitution – our supreme law of the land – "that (uses God's name in vain) piece of paper". The federal government is currently spending at least $60 billion per month on military excursions in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and northern and western Africa – including operating between 800 and 1,000 foreign military bases all over the world. Our country's over-used flying drone aircraft kills hundreds daily overseas, many of whom are only innocent bystanders.

Meanwhile here on the home front, our police officers have collectively decided to go on safari, and the big game they are hunting is unarmed black men, preferably those who have their backs turned. I don't blame anybody for fighting back or running away! If a cop shows up out of nowhere and draws his/her weapon on me, I might turn and run like crazy my own self! Moreover, one in seven American people are on food stamps, and at any given time one in four American children are going hungry today. Right now. Our country spends more money incarcerating people than it does on education. America spent between 300 and 400 million dollars prosecuting drug offenders last year, and only $3.7 million for treatment and rehab. What's up with all that? Our political and court systems are openly rigged against the best interests of the American people, particularly those of color. A massive market mechanism is securely entrenched in our political system where political influence is openly bought and sold. Tens of thousands of highly-paid middlemen called "lobbyists" facilitate the legal transfer of billions between moneyed special interests and our so-called "representatives" in Congress. This very lucrative business of buying and selling political influence has become the driving engine of our government. Our so-called "representatives" in Congress vie for millions in legalized bribes in return for delivering billions of our tax dollars to moneyed special interests. It's pure folly to think our current political system could possibly look out for the best interests of the American people.

Just ponder what our government has done, not for us but to us, in the last ten years alone. It's utterly mind boggling. The best interests of the American people have been sacrificed to moneyed special interests time and time again. The Wall Street bankers paid millions in bribes for a legal license to steal billions more from the American people. When greed got them in trouble, our so-called "representatives" gave them billions more of our money, American tax dollars. In the last ten years, our so-called "representatives" shared nearly a billion dollars in bribes from the "defense" industry alone. In return, they doubled our defense budget to $700 billion (equal to all other countries combined!) and lied us into unnecessary, endless, expanding wars that will ultimately cost us trillions. This is aside from the extreme human costs of war with multiple consecutive deployments. For example, 1 in 5 returning veterans from US occupations overseas have permanent psychiatric disabilities so severe that they will never work again. Speaking as a minister and lifelong peace activist, I find this to be utterly reprehensible on the part of the US military! Be all you can be? Yeah, right.

Our so-called "representatives" are slashing social spending (excluding Obamacare) for senior citizens and the poor just when far too many American people need it most. Yet they continue to spend hundreds of billions on weapons of mass destruction to "protect us" from our enemies. But most of our "enemies" are purposely created by our government's blatantly unjust foreign policies (that openly support oppressive military regimes) and by our violent military occupations of their homelands. Without a perpetual supply of "enemies", "defense" industry profits would plummet. If that weren't enough, our so-called "representatives" have worked hard to keep America the number one weapons merchant on earth. Our so-called "representatives" continue to support the sale of billions in weapons to oppressive dictatorships around the world, which creates still more "enemies", which creates more special interests profits, etc. So we can fight wars, but we can't have a robust space program? We can fight wars, but we can't update and upgrade America's dilapidated power grid? We can fight wars, but America can't replace its crumbling infrastructure? We can fight wars, but we can't afford to make public colleges and universities free? America can't forgive $1 trillion in student loan debt so those of the millennial generation can get on their feet and start families and buy cars and houses?

Our current political system guarantees our so-called "representatives" will continue to pass and sustain legislation that transfers billions of our hard-earned tax dollars to moneyed special interests. That's because members of Congress who oppose moneyed special interests are promptly punished, ostracized, or replaced (if their offense is great enough). President Kennedy paid the ultimate price for opposing the elitists. Moreover, our current political system guarantees moneyed special interests and our so-called "representatives" must participate in this influence-peddling scam against the American people, mainly because it's so lucrative they'd be stupid not to. Big corporations could be at a competitive disadvantage (and would likely resort to cheating their shareholders to replace lost profits) if they refused to buy political influence. Likewise, our so-called "representatives" would be at a competitive disadvantage getting elected or staying in office if they refused to sell political influence. Another “problem” as these elites as I see it is that, if corporate influence were to decline, it would open up windows of opportunity for start-up businesses and entrepreneurs, and there's no way Wall Street will tolerate that. Anything that puts money into the hands of ordinary folks – such as owning a business no matter how small – is seen as a potential threat and gets treated as such. Just ask any of the American merchants who lost their businesses because they couldn't compete with Wal-Mart.

The upcoming national elections in 2016 are merely melodrama for the masses. Our "choices" have all been pre-chosen for us by moneyed special interests pumping millions into the process. Besides, whoever wins will be forced to play by established political rules that guarantee moneyed special interests will always come ahead of the American people's best interests. For months before the elections, the lackey mainstream media, using colorful pundits who talk smart and know little, entertain us with political melodrama. They arouse us by pitting one segment of the American people against another. They make millions bombarding us with empty, emotional, 30-second TV ads that are little more than name-calling or patriotic platitudes. Congressional elections are sheep fighting among themselves for their favorite pre-chosen wolves. Congressional elections merely determine which segment of the America people gets screwed by which moneyed special interests group.

Trying to reform our current political system using that very same corrupt system is just an exercise in futility. It's like trying to fix your broken arms using your broken arms. It's like trying to start a car that is out of gas. Our current political system is designed to be reform proof. It has well-established mechanisms to protect and maintain the status quo. That's why "campaign finance reform" and all other such efforts to "reform" our current political system from within are doomed to either fail outright or be so watered-down as to be nearly useless. All these outrageous government actions are exactly what we should expect from a government openly for sale to the highest bidder. “We the people” are just government-controlled fodder for moneyed special interests. Moneyed special interests paid for these outrageous government actions, and they got what they paid for. How much longer are we going to tolerate this? We, the people, got screwed. I have the solution to this problem, and it can be found in any English dictionary.

rev-o-lu-tion (Dictionary.com) 1. an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.

Our country's elections amount to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We can't vote our government back to us. It was deliberately taken away from us, so we will deliberately take it back. A peaceful, people's revolution is the preferable way we can take back our government. But, like the saying goes, “Use your first amendment rights and protest! If that doesn't work, use your second amendment rights and get a gun”. The multi-billion dollar business of buying and selling political influence (currently the driving engine of our government) must be overthrown, repudiated and thoroughly replaced if democracy is to survive in America. This massive influence-peddling scam must become our number one political issue because it underlies and thus greatly affects all other issues. If we don't get all the dirty money out of our politics, our democracy and our standard of living will continue to decline and surely we'll take the rest of the world down with us.

We can't afford to sit by like sheep meekly waiting for slaughter. The police are already shooting us like rabid animals! We must find ways to hinder and harass the corporate state at every turn, and to control the violent tendencies of the police who protect them. Nothing will change unless we, the people, begin to organize radical acts of civil disobedience to disrupt our current political system, upping the ante until this massive influence-peddling scam is thoroughly exposed and eliminated. For example, in Iceland in 2012 when the entire country went completely bust (you know, like the US is about to) the people had arrested and jailed over 100 bankers after throwing the old government out of office peacefully but effectively. The citizens stood in the streets and banged on pots and pans, and they didn't stop until they got what they wanted. Then they (the people, not the government!) wrote a new constitution and passed it into law. It's been reported all over the European press but largely censored here in the US. Is it any wonder? If there were enough people inspired by what happened in Iceland, it could happen here next. Well, what do the elite capitalists want? They can either allow what happened over there to happen here, or America will turn into another Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy or Portugal. Or maybe even another Egypt, Yemen or Syria. The only way to prevent this from occurring here is that “we the people” must take back our government by peaceful revolution because it will never be given back voluntarily. Remember what President John F. Kennedy said: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Major U.S. Allies Join AIIB to Establish New World Reserve Currency

As we celebrate Resurrection Day, the world edges closer to nuclear war

The Nuclear Genie Is Out of the Bottle, and It's America's Fault

by Rev. Paul J. Bern

On July 16^th, 1945, the 'Trinity' nuclear test plunged humanity into the Atomic Age. The first-ever nuclear bomb was detonated in New Mexico, at the Alamogordo Test Range. Within just days, the first nuclear bomb ever used in wartime was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and a second one was dropped on Nagasaki less than two weeks after that. In the first blast at Hiroshima, well over 100,000 people were instantly vaporized in the initial explosion, and the death toll at Nagasaki was tens of thousands higher. Over the next month or so, over a million more individuals died from the aftereffects of radiation poisoning. But, what is generally not known – especially here in America with its propaganda machine otherwise known as our “free press” – is that the US use of nuclear weapons against Japan at the end of World War 2 was unnecessary. Let's not forget that the winners of wars are the ones who write the history books, and the US is no exception. The fact of the matter is that by the summer of 1945, Japan had already been bombed back to the stone age. In point of fact, Japan was already attempting to start negotiating for peace. But the Japanese wanted to do it secretly, so as to not alarm the Japanese people (sound familiar?), and US military leaders wanted the announcement to be public. And so the die was cast, and the rest is history.

In the late 1940's Josef Stalin, Russia's leader and dictator at the time, acquired an atomic weapon through quite a lot of espionage, much to the discredit of America's “intelligence” community. As a response, the US supplied England and France with the technology and experience needed to build a few bombs of their own. By this time it was the 1950's, and within just a few years Communist China developed their first atomic weapons. By the 1960's, other countries such as Israel, India and Pakistan had nukes as well. The genie was out of the bottle, and there was no putting it back. It was too late. And it all started with one nuclear test in the New Mexico desert in 1945. I have been studying up on this as of late, knowing that we are living in the End Times, and that the world as we have known it is drawing rapidly to a close. The one verse I have found that corresponds to these times and the accompanying nuclear proliferation can be found in the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, chapter 7 and verse 7, which reads as follows:

“After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast – terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.”

To put this into context, Daniel had a vision in chapter seven where he saw four “beasts” come up out of the sea. The sea in Bible prophecy usually always symbolizes all the nations of the world. The first was like a lion, but it had eagle's wings. What country uses a lion as its symbol? Great Britain. The eagle's wings, then, represent America, whose symbol is an eagle, and who is an offshoot of the former British Empire. OK, so what's the second one, you ask? The second beast Daniel saw in his vision looked like a bear. What country uses a bear as its national symbol? Russia. And Daniel's third beast looked like a leopard, which symbolizes Germany. The fourth beast which is unlike all the rest could only be the United States, since it has the most powerful military force in human history. But what do the ten horns represent? Could they be nuclear powers? According to a new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), nine nations — the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — possess approximately 16,300 nuclear weapons in total. This is an obscenity because it's enough atomic power to blow up every city on the planet several dozen times over. But it's even more than an obscenity, it is utter madness and insanity!

But still, that's only nine countries that have nukes, so who's the tenth one, the one that completes the symbolism of Daniel's ten horns that he saw on the fourth beast? It has got to be Iran, there is no other explanation that I can think of, at least for now. No other country is as close to developing a bomb as Iran, everybody knows that. But this is a prophecy that has yet to come to pass. But you can all be sure that this will be happening in the near future, no doubt about it. And once it does, Daniel's prophecy about the beast with the ten horns will be fulfilled. Since the British Empire and two world wars that were initiated in part by Germany have come and gone, this is the only part of this prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled. Once that happens, once Iran gets its hands on its first nuclear weapon – which is only a matter of time – the prophecy will be fulfilled and the stage will be set for world war three, which will be a brief but exceptionally deadly nuclear exchange (more on that in a separate message later). If it involves Iran and Israel as I suspect, then surely America and Russian will become involved sooner or later. And that's when world war three will start. It's all getting very close now. Prepare yourselves accordingly if you have not yet done so. We are just about out of time.