Friday, April 24, 2020

Dumping Humpty Dumpty


With his kind permission this week the Newsletter is publishing Harvey Wasserman‘s take on what it will take, with everyone of us applying our collective shoulders to the grindstone to ensure the future of this country in November,

Please think carefully and take his suggestions to heart:

HOW YOU CAN DUMP TRUMP

(Originally Published In Buzzflash).

By Harvey Wasserman

Grassroots action’s immense upset victory in Wisconsin shows we can overcome even a rigged election.

In November, you must do it again.   

When Trump tries to steal or cancel the election, our informed non-violence must rise to protect and win it. 

Neither the human race, nor American democracy, nor the US economy will survive more of this. Our further existence as a species depends on you.  

Much of the upcoming election will be through Vote by Mail (VBM).  Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Hawaii already use it with great success.  

VBM is probably (as Winston Churchill said of democracy) the worst election system there is…except for all the other ones. 

Huge problems are virtually certain.  We need to be prepared to deal with them.

Congress has approved just 1/10th of the $4 billion the Brennan Center says is needed to do VBM right.  Senators Amy Klobuchar and Jeff Merkely have proposed a bill asking for the money.  It needs our support, as well as some serious thought about alternatives.  

Sufficient voting centers need to be maintained to offset the inevitable VBM shortcomings, as Greg Palast has detailed.

The presidency will be won in the Electoral College.  So every state needs a coalition dedicated to contesting every detail of the stripped voter rolls and flipped vote counts we know are coming.  (The Democratic Party can’t be counted on to get this done).

Gerrymandered GOP legislatures consider any ballot cast by someone who is not rich, white, old or Republican to be “voter fraud.”  Your finding (or founding) a local voting rights group to fight back is crucial. Progressive Democrats of America is among them.   

Here are other ways to have a direct impact: 

 X Greg Palast says at least 17 million citizens have been stripped from the voter rolls.  That means you, your kin, someone you know or someone you (hopefully) will call or canvass needs help getting and casting a ballot.

X Do not assume you’re registered just because you’ve lived and voted in the same place for decades.  Everyone must check the voter rolls.  

 X Make sure you get your ballot.  Absentee paper ballots are technically available in all states.  But gerrymandered legislatures don’t want you or anyone like you to get one.

 X So start fighting now!  Anyone who fails to get a ballot in advance may spend many hours in an election day line amidst the pandemic threat, only to have a “provisional” vote pitched in the trash.  

X Help your pro-democracy family, friends, neighbors or those you choose to canvass to get their early ballots…then help get them walked or mailed in. 

X Forget the opinion polls!  Take no chances, make no assumptions.  This work must be done.  

X The Electoral College will swing the presidency in 12 states:  Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Iowa.  

X If you live in none of those states, you can canvass by phone or go there in person.

X West Virginia, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, Montana and Kentucky could also be in play. 

X All 33 Senate races this year are critical, but especially in Colorado, Montana, Maine (Susan Collins), North Carolina, South Carolina (Lindsay Graham), Alabama, Arizona, Kentucky (Mitch McConnell). 

X As a local poll worker you can help guard against the sabotage we know is coming.  .

X As a local poll worker, you can stay late to guard the vote count. 

X No candidate should concede until every vote is fairly counted and recounted, whatever the apparent initial outcome.  

Two additional points (among the many to be made):
X  Trump’s attack on the US Postal Service means to enrich his billionaire cronies, destroy the unions representing its 700,000 workers, and cripple Vote by Mail.  The USPS is a treasured American institution (dating back to Benjamin Franklin) and must be preserved. 

 X  Legislatures in WI, MI, OH, PA etc. are GOP-weaponized despite statewide Democrat majorities because of gerrymandering done in 2010.  They must be uprooted.  By popular referenda, California won the fight for a fair, functional transparent non-partisan redistricting commission.  Several Wisconsin counties endorsed this vital process last week with 4 to 1 majorities. Such commissions are essential to end the gerrymandering that’s destroying us.  

We have just 6.5 months to save our species.  

Every possible outrage, corporate dollar and dictatorial dirty trick is already being thrown at us.  

It will take the biggest, best-coordinated local-state-national grassroots movement in history to dump the Trump Dictatorship.

You can make the difference.  

There are no excuses. 

Harvey Wasserman’s People’s Spiral of US History is at www.solartopia.org, along with Solartopia!  Our Green-Powered Earth. His Green Power & Wellness Show is podcast at prn.fm; California Solartopia is broadcast at KPFK/Pacifica 90.7 FM Los Angeles.  



Please contact Harvey at solartopia@gmail.com to sign up to dump Trump.  


Solar-powered barges sitting at the mouths of rivers and invented by a Dutch teenager, scoop up to 50 tons of plastic per day.

International Coalition of public health advocates denounces any Big Pharma effort to profiteer of C-19 treatments, vaccines.

France and Germany join ten other EU countries in call for Green recovery.

Milan’s plan to limit cars after C-19 lockdown  lauded as example of #buildbackbetter.

Michael Gorbachev says C-19 pandemic shows that governments that think of security in mostly military terms are wasting money.

Major victory against nuclear: at EBCE (East Bay Community Energy) meeting, board decides not to accept an allocation of nuclear energy.

Citigroup releases updated energy policy that rules out financing for oil and gas exploration and development in the Arctic.

Democrats urged to end shilly shallying and fight like hell for C-19 relief that puts people first.

Citing “utter inability to discharge duties of his office,” MoveOn demands Humpty Dumpty’s removal under 25th Amendment.

Activists deliver body bags to Trump properties.

AOC takes lonely stand against unconscionable C-19 relief that doesn’t address help for those who hurt the most.
  
As oil prices fall below $0 a barrel, climate advocates urge against fossil fuel industry bailout.

Federal court invalidates key permit for Keystone XL.

In the deliberate absence of labor reporting in the U.S. press, the number of strikes nationwide is going unreported.

Color of Change announces people incarcerated in federal prisons have been granted free phone calls during the pandemic.

SURJ reports thanks to activists, people are being released from jails, prisons and detention centers across the country.

Three “races” have shifted away from red to blue in Colorado, New Hampshire and Maine.

Healthcare workers stand in street to block right-wing protests against Colorado stay-at-home order.

Economist Ellen Brown, writing for Popular Resistance claims universal basic income is essential and will work.

General strike campaign growing in the U.S. set to focus on May Day.

Unions back U.S. Postal service’s $75 billion  pandemic appeal.

New York tenants plan  massive wave of rent strikes.

Largest strike yet as Amazon workers call in sick.

United Farmworkers win two weeks’ extended pay for California farm workers who are ordered to self-quarantine by a medical professional

Nurses protest at White House for mass production of PPE for health care workers.

Immigrant meatpackers fight back against intimidation and death threats.

HIV prison activists lead freedom movement.

Pandemic turns people back to local farms.

Burger chain Shake Shack returns $10 million “stimulus” loan  intended for small business relief.

No more milk dumping as Wisconsin farms give milk to people in need.

Flint prosecutors say investigation on track despite earlier statue of limitations warning.

Pandemic offers opportunity for major economic and societal changes.

Baltimore car caravan demands immediate release of prisoners during C-19 crisis.

Saturday, April 18, 2020

The Perfect Trifecta Teaches Vital Lessons


Why is this flu unlike any other flu? That was the Passover-resonating question one writer recently raised. The pandemic in which we find ourselves has some aspects worth separating out if we are to reach some kind of clarity: a braid of the medical, the political, and the wildly successful media- and government-engineered psy-ops, or the psychological dimension of fear, which has most people grounded, frightened, and paralyzed into political inaction.

This flu may be different because its remediation is still under discussion, although from what we have learned from Cuba starting in 1959, where bio warfare introduced dengue fever, it appears that Heberon , or Interferon Alfa 2b, a therapeutic manufactured in Cuba, not a vaccine, has been used to statistically good effect.

From my wide readings, from what world authority epidemiologists are saying, the U.S. approach is the wrong one. To lick a virus, global immunity is the goal. Children ought to be kept in school, because they are the least susceptible to it. The so-called curve may be flattened in order to spare a woefully inadequate oxymoronic U.S.  healthcare system, but that strategy will most likely lengthen it, assuring a second wave of infection, if we are to judge from the three waves of the 1918 pandemic, and that is exactly what we can expect.

What’s playing out in the theater of U.S. administrative politics during this time?  Power is being swiftly consolidated.  Huge bribes are embedded in so-called “stimulus” packages (I am reminded of ants stroking the backs of aphids). These are bribes to various corporations and financial sectors which, through the good offices of “Citizens Disunited” have the leverage to sway the next election. Vote-by-mail is the only avenue assuring democracy in any shape or form during a pandemic. The postal service is being deliberately starved. President Ubu’s announcement that the office of the President supercedes all other imperatives and that he’s planning to adjourn Congress to ram his political appointments through is not to be taken lightly. Nor is the criminalization of dissent  and the divide-and- conquer attempt to deny medicare to the disabled anything but a sign of things to come.

But what really needs to be carefully examined is the psychological manipulation that has society paralyzed.  That is not the virus.  That is fear, and fear that has been very deliberately engineered to keep us safely in our place. Social separation ipso facto denies our right of assembly, and our duty to sue the government for grievance. It may spare a catastrophically underprepared medical system, yes, but it must be weighed against the cost of totalitarian government, and the lifelong installation of President Ubu, the Lord of Misrule, in a permanent Saturnalia. 

Saturn teaching his children how to walk: La Habana, Bellas Artes
If we intend to prevent eternal Saturnalia, we must vote, and risk our lives to vote.  If the vote is denied us, we must drop all pretense at pretense, and hit the streets en masse.

This week produced some good news from Wisconsin: It’s not the first time by any means people have upheld the vote by risking their lives.  Ask any black person in the South, or any one who went South to register voters during the Mississippi summer. An Ubu dictatorship can be defeated, but voters may have to risk their lives to do it.

Manipulators Are Not Your Friends

Fear is as powerful a force as the tides or as an earthquake. It can accomplish what no other force can.  For example: if our societal manipulators had marshaled fear to force us to recognize what a threat to the planet the entire nuclear industry really is, we would have shut down all reactors, and ceased producing plutonium pits or silo-ing nuclear bombs long ago; if our manipulators had brought fear to bear to reveal to us now devastating climate collapse would be to our present and all future generations, we would have kicked the fossil fuel habit decades ago. A discussion of why they didn’t might point to the very obvious: they didn’t BECAUSE IT WASN’T PROFITABLE TO THEM. Societal manipulators are quite happy to socialize our lives, as long as the lives they privatize are their own.

As the planet continues its death spiral, we can expect many more pandemics, far more severe than COVID-19 can ever be because the melting arctic and antarctic ice will release many pathogens which have not plagued this planet for millennia.  And if we tend not to thrive as a species burrowed down like rats, it may be that we will seize this magnificent opportunity to LEARN LESSONS we desperately need to learn.


A LOCAL ROSE:

My new book comes out officially November 15 From U. Georgia Press. It maps a part of my life work against an immigrant background that denied my authentic roots.




PLEASE MAKE TIME TO call your Congress person.
The number toll free is 866-220-0044. (In NorCal Feinstein, 415-393-0707, Harris, 415 981-9369, Lee in Oakland, 510-763-0370, and  Pelosi in SF, 415-556-4862.)
Emphasize your deep concern about three issues:

Do not eliminate the payroll tax deduction.  Protect social security.
Guarantee the vote by protecting our postal services. Provide the needed funding so it can continue serving the public.
Automatically fund  $1200 to SSI, VA, and other low-income beneficiaries so they
can receive their C-19 bribery without needing to file a tax return.

PLEASE DO NOT DELAY

READ  https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/letter-new-left-biden/


READ Coronavirus Death Predictions Bring New Meaning to Hysteria by Charles Rotter at Wattsupwiththat.com





As coronavirus spreads, IMF cancels 6 months debt for poorest countries.

Spain moves to establish permanent basic income.

In times of pandemic, peasants of Eldorado de las Carajás  are united to feed the people.

In Brazil, landless workers challenge unequal land distribution and corporate agribusiness.

From AIDS, Dengue and Ebola, Cuba offers palliative for corona: Heberon, or Interferon Alpha-b-2.

As coronavirus sickens growing members of Saudi royals, rulers of Kingdom call off assault on Yemen.

Colombians rejects role as U.S. client state.

In UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria, anti-5G movement prompts vandalism against mobile masts. 

Outrage forces USAA to reverse course, guaranteeing it will not seize coronavirus payment from Vets.

Navy considers reinstating falsely fired Capt. Crozier to his command aboard SS Theodore Roosevelt.

Even  Republicans support $2,000 a month payments during coronavirus crisis.

Enviro groups applaud legislation introduced by Reps. Garcia and Porter to increase oversight of major financial institutions.

Over 30% of US renters didn’t pay April apartment rent.

Tough and angry badger Wisconsin voters defeat Trump agenda.

More than 100 lawmakers demand moratorium of utility shutoffs to ensure access to services ‘essential to survive’ during pandemic.

GE workers protest, demand to make ventilators.

Workers file sex harassment class-action suit against Golden Arches.

As rents soar in Oregon, democratic socialist candidates gain traction with progressive housing agendas.

Virginia Dems enact huge range of voting reforms, including automatic registration.

ICE releases 4 medically vulnerable detainees from Cal facilities following ACLU lawsuit.

Pandemic reason for no March school shooting episodes in US schools.

Michel Che pays rent for everyone in the high rise building his grandmother lived before dying of coronavirus.


 

 

 


Monday, April 13, 2020

WE ARE ALL BERNIE SANDERS


It’s 1942.  I am ten years old, living in New York. The Vichy government has ordered the French Navy to scuttle its ships so they won’t fall into German hands.  I’m old enough to know my French godmother feels devastated by the news. She goes out to buy the most stylish hat she can find. She was a quand meme kind of dame. Which roughly translated means “So what?” It’s a toughster’s way of expressing grief. 

When I read that Bernie had conceded, I ought to have gone out to buy a fancy hat last week except I was “sheltering in place” and wearing a mask and gloves when I went out because I don’t want to overwhelm or to help overwhelm the Bay Area health system (that’s an oxymoron, we have a pay-to-play system, like all good capitalists).  But even so, nurses, and even doctors are dedicated people serving on the front lines. They deserve the best treatment our prudence can offer. 

The irony is that in 2016 a well wisher advised Bernie to run on an Independent ticket.  No, said Bernie, (an odd fish, someone who’s so backward he actually loves his country) no, I don’t want to ‘Ralph Nader’ the election. He imagined the DNC  and all its toads and lizards and bottom feeders, including the New York Times, would countenance a Bernie candidacy.  What the hell was he smoking?

The powers that will always be, the two branches of the one-party slavery upholding system, the duopoly of the business party, stopped representing ordinary mortals long ago. It hues to the pantheon of its immortally stupid and greedy gods, the lying media out for profit, the people who hustle in the august halls of government. Those folks have a mansion to upkeep in Pacific Heights, a third yacht to buy, they’re not interested in you or me. They’re not interested (not like the mushy gushy Iranians) in releasing prisoners crammed into their factory-jails body to body, why should they: they’re mostly black and making “product,”  or the ICE detention centers, why should they, they’re mostly brown, all folks who’ll vote Democratic (when there was the vote) or the ghetto-dwellers, or the homeless, or the working stiffs who deliver your food in boxes and bushels, or the home caregivers, or the Mexicans and other browns who get chained to truck beds at night in Florida, or who get to sleep, some of  them in ditches, who stoop over the baking furrows by day growing food to keep the system churning.

In 2005 Katrina changed my life.  I had no way of knowing at the time I helped the terrified and traumatized people of New Orleans I found sheltering on Oakland’s streets that I’d entered a new level of making America grate. I still remember the story one of them told me about the folks trying to leave Jefferson Parish across the city connection, how the national guard had their guns drawn. “They wouldn’t let nobody through. And then a convoy of white folks actually came speeding at 90 mph down that causeway, waving at all of us niggers camped out there, ‘So long suckers.’ They just left us there to die.”

All the establishment is speeding down that causeway now, doing us, our future and our planet incalculable harm the faster they go. And that’s why we have no other choice: We are our own best hope for the things we deeply care about: Medicare for all, reducing the wealth divide, student debt forgiveness, free education, abolish ICE, a guaranteed living wage for all (and that’s lots more than $15 bucks an hour), a sane foreign policy, and a Green New Deal with teeth. These are our banners now.  We’ve gotta wave them as we come.  Because we’re gonna come marchin’ now, make no mistake. Because We Are All Bernie Sanders now. 




Too many actions this week to provide  URLs for each. Here are the actions. Take your pick:














Who knew: UN ceasefire defines war as a non-essential activity.

RIP: Bolsonaro is out, replaced by General Netto.

Five million Nigerians oppose Monsanto plan to introduce GMO crops.

Prioritizing health & welfare of citizens, E. Nigeria researching 5G safety before deployment.

Cambodian garment workers strike over unpaid wages during pandemic.

Navajo (Diné) and Hopi families fund builds movement in response to C-19.

Australian MPs call for Assange release to home detention as C-19 spreads in UK prisons (where Boris Johnson must have sneezed.).

Cuban medical aid in Italy shows positive results.

As reported April 6, ordinary New Mexicans flatten curve with collaboration and solidarity.

With public health and democracy at stake (remember that?) Wisc. governor postpones in-person primary voting until June, but…

Democracy in “gravest danger” warns fired intel IG Michael Atkinson.

In demand for better treatment during outbreak, Target delivery workers walk off job.

Amazon workers walk off job to demand safer conditions during pandemic.

In California, fast foods workers at 30 restaurants go on strike.

Striking McDonald’s workers say their lives are more essential than fast food.

As strikes proliferate, the wave moves to general strike.

Rock star Bon Jovi and wife Dorothea, of the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation wash dishes to feed the hungry.

In effort to reform California’s property tax, activists file new ballot measure.

California Democrats pass resolution supporting local control over 5G and wireless facilities deployment.

California governor Newsom toys with idea state might assist undocumented residents shut out of C-19 relief.

Leading Democrats in both Houses craft bill ensuring immigrant communities are no loner shut out of critical C-19 relief.

Jeopardized LA renters form rolling protest for rent forgiveness.

Wave of rent strikes originally started by Rent Strike 2020, sweeps across country from Crown Heights to Chicago following 10 million new unemployment claims.

Residents at Alexandria VA, prepare to rent strike.

San Francisco leases 945 rooms in eight hotels to receive people quarantined or isolated or those moved from within the shelter population or moved from the street.

City of Berkeley opens test site for vulnerable community members at LifeLong Medical Care, 510 981-4100.

US Customs to seize mask and glove exports amid C-19 pandemic.

Epidemiologists praise aggressive stay-at-home orders in CA,  OR, and Washington States for helping limit spread of C-19.

Sanders and Jayapal advance bill providing no-cost health care for all during pandemic.

Federal Judge Chesney orders ICE to release four immigrants at risk of C—19.

While S.F. Mayor London Breed Disease prepares Moscone megashelter housing homeless in close proximity, Oakland’s mayor Libby Schaaf announces slow streets, designating 74 miles of  neighborhood streets for walking, running and cycling.





California overpass








Sunday, April 5, 2020

SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?



Learning from past history appears not to be a human forte.  
 

Amnesia has its reasons. Apart from certain Nordic forward-looking countries where it’s extending, reduced life expectancy does not allow anyone now alive to remember the influenza pandemic of 1918 whose three waves lasted a little over a year.

Then as now, certain themes seem to apply: incompetence and silence on the part of government authorities, and shortages of essential medical supplies. A leadership vacuum existed in Washington where a silent Wilson was more interested in selling war bonds, and public authorities either advanced the merits of snake oil, or lied deliberately to keep reports of numbers affected secret. This month the Navy sought fit to fire Captain Brett Crozier, commander of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt because he was caught asking for help for the growing number of sailors infected on his ship.


Research shows that the 1918 pandemic killed between 23 and 50 million worldwide, less than 3% of the global population at the time, although it infected an estimated 500 million, about one-third of the world population. Then as now, there was a shortage of medical equipment.  In recent California history, ventilators were allowed to go into disrepair to eventually be discarded because Gov. Jerry Brown not considering them important, zeroed out a line item that might have kept them operable. Masks are in  short supply because of the current trade war with China, although a first planeload arrived within the past few days.

Nurses collecting masks, 1918

But the connection between war and pandemic cannot be overlooked.  It comes as no surprise that in 1918, the pandemic killed many more people of recruitment age in the 18-44 group. In 1918, Étaples on the Western Front was a UK staging camp and hospital treating thousands of victims of gassing.  100,000 troops passed through it every single day. To cap the perfect storm, poultry farms and piggeries lay nearby. Conditions were crowded and unsanitary, and that is where cases of influenza were first reported, although one report claims it was already circulating in the cold and wet of the WWI trenches long before it may have mutated full blown.

As troops were demobilized they returned home to their cities, towns and villages, spreading the infection worldwide. In the US, infection clusters were first reported in Kansas at a military installation from where it spread.

Walter Reed, 1918
Then as now, many reports raise that old racist whipping boy, the Chinese specter, and eventually the pandemic came to be known as the Spanish flu, another ethnic slur. One report carries a nice little irony claiming that, because of modern scientific advances, the likelihood of pandemic recurrence is now nil.

Pandemics and their aftermath are never factored in when “defense” budgets are drawn up. In 2009 Obama introduced the “Stockpile Stewardship Program,” allocating more than a trillion dollars to maintain the deteriorating nuclear stockpile. Contrary to popular belief, war as a human behavior did not always exist. And because war and militarism burns up more fossil fuel than many countries, war levels its cannons at climate equilibrium which ultimately threatens our very tenancy on Earth.



Are governments capable of learning new behavior?  If they fail the cost is astronomical.



The EU and UN, adopt resolution urging “intensified International Cooperation” in  support of Venezuela in its fight to contain the virus in the midst of US unilateral and illegal blockade.

Ireland nationalizes hospitals for coronavirus duration.

Guatemalan water protectors persist over 8 years, despite KCA mining company threats.

Slovenia stops 5-G over health risks.

After Trump awards Gilead Sciences monopoly claim to coronavirus cure, caving to popular pressure, Gilead releases its claim.

Michael Hudson, writing for Nakedcapitalism.com suggests debt jubilee may be only way to avert Depression

Unscientific, but true: New York’s Lenox Hill reports hydroxycloroquine successful in treatment of coronavirus.

NPR Seattle member station refuses to air Trumpo’s press briefing live.

US-led NATO forces pull out of third Iraqi base.

98.6% Chinese industrial companies resume operations (look for more air pollution).

First aircraft carrying medical supplies arrives from China (and is not turned back.)

Justice Department investigating lawmakers for insider trading.

Some US Senators call for end of Venezuelan and Iranian blockades.

To reduce congestion, Cleveland frees many non-violent offenders from Cayuga County jail.

Federal judge finesses ICE, orders releasing more immigrants amid pandemic.

Amid pandemic police close Hobby Lobby locations after stores defy state order to close.

Children’s Health Fund forces FCC to publish in the Federal Register, blocking it from dismissing 5-G lawsuits.

UltraViolet applauds federal judge’s move to keep Ohio and Texas abortion clinics open.

13,000 e-mails to Congress opposing bailouts for fossil fuel companies force bill revision preventing $3 billion giveaway.

McDonald’s workers go on strike over unsafe conditions, lost hours, and pay cuts.

Grad student TAs strike at UC’s Sta. Cruz campus (which promptly fires them).


Support a global cease fire at

Block war against  Venezuela at
https://www.codepink.org/pandemicpluswar

Block Trump attempts to restrict the vote at

Block daily live Trump coverage at

Defy handouts to big oil at

Reduce prison population concentration at
https://afgj.salsalabs.org/endorseopenletteroncoronavirusandusprisonimperialism/index.html?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=7b31a1a2-de33-4b01-92d6-28e51d095c10

Donate to block Trump “emergency powers” at


Donald Trump was visited three days ago by the ghost of Washington.
“George,” asked Trump, “how can I fix this? How to MAG again?”
“Never tell a lie.”
Unsatisfied, he was visited next day by the ghost of Jefferson.
“Tom, how do  fix this? How can I MAG again?”
“Listen to the people.”
Unsatisfied, next day, he was visited by the ghost of Lincoln.
“Hey, Abe, how do I fix this? How can I MAG again?
“Go see a play.”

From your friendly tax accountant:
Q. What is an economic stimulus payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.
Q. Where will the government get this money ?
A. From taxpayers.
Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Just a smidgen.
Q. Why?
A. The plan is for you to use it to stimulate the economy by buying a high definition TV, a new iPad, or a new SUV.
Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China?

Your accountant’s helpful advice on how to best help the U.S. economy:
If you spend the money at Walmart, the money goes to China or Sri Lanka.
If you spend it on gas, the money goes to the Saudis.
If you get a computer, it goes to India, Taiwan, or China.
If you get fruits and vegetables, it goes to Mexico, Honduras or Guatemala.
If you get a fuel-efficient car, it goes to Japan or Korea.
If you get stuff you don’t really need, it goes to Taiwan.
If you pay off your credit card, or buy stock it goes to rack up bonuses the CEOS will hide offshore.

Spend the money on the only businesses still operating in the US:
Spend it at a yard sale
Go see the ballgame
Spend it on a hooker or
Some beers,
Or a tattoo.

Solution: Go see the ballgame with a tattooed prostitute you met at a yard sale, and suck up beer all day.