TIME FOR WAITING IS OVER; BABY STEPS

Looks like the American Middle Class may soon be off life support and transferred out of ICU.

The signs are subtle but remarkably clear. Americans want to return America back to Americans.

What better place to start than with our country's flag;

US Military Bans 'Made In China' American Flags

California Rep. Mike Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran and Purple Heart recipient, wrote the legislation that requires any flag purchased by the Defense Department to be 100-percent made in America.
“I am proud to have worked to pass this law so that our men and women in uniform never have to fight under a U.S. flag made overseas, and so that our Defense Department never again spends American tax dollars on a U.S. flag made overseas,” Thompson said to CBS News.

 Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/american-flags-china-2014-2#ixzz2u6j5L44M

A small gesture? Yes. But like the "shot hat was heard around the world" this might be the start of something big. Like direct sunlight on vampires the "profits first" 1% will be running helter-skelter for the nearest cave if next years Congress passes a 2014 version of the tried and true way to protect this country from literately being sucked dry of it's wealth and resources by a handful of "fangers" who have on more than one occasion proven themselves to be extremely dangerous if left to their own devices.

Greedy, self-centered, powerful sociopaths have been around since the beginning of Creation (either version) and over time have managed to evolve into (I use the term loosely) into money mongering vultures who feed on others for nothing more than self gratification.

In recent times this small group of bottom feeders have been able to bring this country to it's knees and on the brink of financial Armageddon with little or no consequences; having achieved (by hook and by crook) the status that only lepers once held; untouchable. "Too big" to fail or jail. They have succeeded in making mindless zombies of our our judicial system all the way to the "top 9" who recently granted "person-hood" to entities; allowing them to literally buy our political system and the government it represents.

Our citizens have been rendered helpless and forced into some warped form of slavery where; like hamsters on a wheel, can do nothing more than spend their lives spinning in circles.

There was a time in our history when one-liners like the "American Dream" or "Equality" and "Freedom" were more than just slogans on pillow cases and bumper stickers.

Our titans of industry who built the country on a foundation of Capitalism promised and delivered prosperity for everyone, not a select few at the top. Poster boys for capitalism like Henry Ford believed that the only way for the country to grow and prosper was if everyone grew and prospered in the process; from the CEO down to the janitor who cleaned their toilets.

The message was clear;

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Henry Ford

The minimum wage in Ford's day (1914) was $5.00 an hour or $22.00 an hour in today's dollars. 

Unlike today's corporate class Ford and others like him actually worked in the businesses they built; not from a board room in some Ivory tower high above the assembly lines, but down on the ground floor.

Ford and others like him had no illusion that the corporate giants they ran were created by magic because if some innate "talent" they inherited from above; unlike the Blankfein's of today claiming to be a prophet from doing "God's work."

Ford, and others like him, wrote the manual on how capitalism works best in a free market economy. This article straight out of a 1914 edition of the New York Times tells it all;

Ford Motor Company, announced today one of the most remarkable business moves of his entire remarkable career. In brief it is:

To give to the employees of the company $10,000,000 of the profits of the 1914 business, the payments to be made semi-monthly and added to the pay checks.

To run the factory continuously instead of only eighteen hours a day, giving employment to several thousand more men by employing three shifts of eight hours each, instead of only two nine-hour shifts, as at present.

To establish a minimum wage scale of $5 per day. Even the boy who sweeps up the floors will get that much.

Before any man in any department of the company who does not seem to be doing good work shall be discharged, an opportunity will be given to him to try to make good in every other department. No man shall be discharged except for proved unfaithfulness or irremediable inefficiency.

The Ford Company's financial statement of Sept. 20, 1912, showed assets of $20,815,785.63, and surplus of $14,745,095.57. One year later it showed assets of $35,033,919.86 and surplus of $28,124,173.68. Dividends paid out during the year, it is understood, aggregated $10,000,000. The indicated profits for the year, therefore, were about $37,597,312. The company's capital stock authorized and outstanding, is $2,000,000. There is no bond issue.

About 10 per cent of the employees, boys and women, will not be affected by the profit sharing, but all will have the benefit of the $5 minimum wage. Those among them who are supporting families, however, will have a share similar to the men of more than 22 years of age.

In all, about 26,000 employees will be affected. Fifteen thousand now are at work in the Detroit factories. Four thousand more will be added by the institution of the eight-hour shift. The other seven thousand employees are scattered all over the world, in the Ford branches. They will share the same as the Detroit employees.

Personal statements were made by Henry Ford and James Couzens, Treasurer of the company, regarding the move.

"It is our belief," said Mr. Couzens, "that social justice begins at home. We want those who have helped us to produce this great institution and are helping to maintain it to share our prosperity. We want them to have present profits and future prospects. Thrift and good service and sobriety, all will be enforced and recognized.

"Believing as we do, that a division of our earnings between capital and labor is unequal, we have sought a plan of relief suitable for our business. We do not feel sure that it is the best, but we have felt impelled to make a start, and make it now. 

We do not agree with those employers who declare, as did a recent writer in a magazine in excusing himself for not practicing what he preached, that 'movement toward the bettering of society must be universal.' 

We think that one concern can make a start and create an example for other employers. That is our chief object."

So, to the 1% to 5% class; especially those 85 who own a 1/3 of the planet, I say;

Follow the Ford model of capitalism. 

As for those in the 1% -10% who think that "equality" and "profit sharing" are evil communist-socialist, tyranical attempts to rob them of their hard earned wealth, I say, step back, take a deep breath and in the words of Francis (a true follower of Jesus and Christian teachings this country was founded on;

Francis decried an “idolatry of money” in secular culture and warned that it would lead to “a new tyranny.” 

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” 

Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “the excluded are still waiting.”

To those who want to keep Americans waiting I say let's go back to;

PLAN "B"  THE DREADED EPT!  (garlic for vampires, if you will)

In the United States, an excess profits tax is a tax, some say excise tax, on any profit above a certain amount. A predominantly wartime fiscal instrument, the tax was designed primarily to capture wartime profits that exceeded normal peacetime profits.[citation needed]

In 1863 the Confederate congress and the state of Georgia experimented with excess profits taxes, perhaps, the first time it has happened in American history. The first effective national excess profits tax was enacted in 1917, with rates graduated from 20 to 60 percent on the profits of all businesses in excess of prewar earnings but not less than 7 percent or more than 9 percent of invested capital. In 1918 a national law limited the tax to corporations and increased the rates. Concurrent with this 1918 tax, the federal government imposed, for the year 1918 only, an alternative tax, ranging up to 80 percent, with the taxpayer paying whichever was higher. In 1921 the excess profits tax was repealed despite powerful attempts to make it permanent. In 1933 and 1935 Congress enacted two mild excess profits taxes as supplements to a capital stock tax.

The crisis of World War II led Congress to pass four excess profits statutes between 1940 and 1943. The 1940 rates ranged from 25 to 50 percent and the 1941 ones from 35 to 60 percent. In 1942 a flat rate of 90 percent was adopted, with a postwar refund of 10 percent; in 1943 the rate was increased to 95 percent, with a 10 percent refund. Congress gave corporations two alternative excess profits tax credit choices: either 95 percent of average earnings for 1936–1939 or an invested capital credit, initially 8 percent of capital but later graduated from 5 to 8 percent. In 1945 Congress repealed the tax, effective 1 January 1946. The Korean War induced Congress to reimpose an excess profits tax, effective from 1 July 1950 to 31 December 1953. The tax rate was 30 percent of excess profits with the top corporate tax rate rising from 45% to 47%, a 70 percent ceiling for the combined corporation and excess profits taxes.

In 1991 some members of Congress sought unsuccessfully to pass an excess profits tax of 40 percent upon the larger oil companies as part of energy policy. Some social reformers have championed a peacetime use of the excess profits tax, but such proposals face strong opposition from businesses and some economists, who argue that it would create a disincentive to capital investment.

Let's see if it's time for Americans to take back America. The wait may be over.