I have SPENT a Life Negotiating for America -- & put MORE thought into a plan to upgrade America than Sanders has!

Why does someone who has negotiated globally and been a terrorism analyst on TV think Bernie Sanders has no solutions?

Because frankly, as a non-candidate I have put MORE thought into a plan to upgrade America than Sanders has! And he's the candidate for president who recently admitted in a newspaper interview that he "never thought about" how to do the things, like breaking up the banks, he has advocated for over a year!

You can say "Let's raise the minimum wage to $15" but unless we upgrade our skills, we will still lose the global technology race.

I HAVE thought about it --for decades--and developed a real written plan based on experience in the real world (about 50 countries.) Unlike Bernie, when i traveled the world I was not chasing popes or to praise Fidel Castro and the Sandinista socialists who had taken power by force.

I went from a farm in Iowa to schools in Texas before becoming a legal negotiator selling American products globally (which actually create jobs HERE).   I did it as a young professional for Fortune 500, and later as an entrepreneur for small outfits after a lay off in the 80s (documented in "Better Times Ahead April Fool").

I have not been a government employee for the last 30 years as BERNIE has. I went broke in the 80's after a lay off. I know what the bro life is like more than the Bern.

Bernie hasn't even had a regular job like the bros in decades, so what the hell does HE know about being broke when he's been on taxpayer payroll over 30 years?

Bernie bros, the link below shows how the world really works -- by someone who actually got off the farm in Iowa and traveled the world on negotiations not tourist junkets to shake a popes hand (I didn't do that when I ran for Congress. My voters were here in the U.S. A.).

Bernie is pandering to your ass - you need to upgrade your skills because the rest of the world is getting smarter. We won't win a world that so many are clueless about.

It's in "Agenda for American Greatness."

http://globalamericanvalues.blogspot.com/2015/07/agenda-for-american-greatness-2015.html

Most Shallow Unprepared Presidential Candidates in Decades - FEAR is not a SOLUTION

Disagreements are Ok. They are an unavoidable part of life (ask any married person.)  What's important is HOW we handle them. By calm discussion or name calling? By rational presentation of facts or by attacking the other person and their body parts instead of adult discussion?

Candidates and supporters who use attacks instead of facts for persuasion to make their point, do so because they don't have real solutions. In 2016, America has the most shallow, unprepared bunch of presidential candidates in history, who are pushing FEAR instead of SOLUTIONS.

By making you fear Muslims, blacks, gays, "the Washington Cartel" whatever -- you won't notice that the emperor is naked. You won't notice that their economic plans are bizarre and would rack up TRILLIONS in deficits. By making you hate the other guy, you won't notice your pocket being picked.  Remember when people were labeled witches and burned at the stake?  Fear caused by an innocent person's awful death on our own history.

By using your fear, you won't notice that the emperor is naked. You won't notice that his economic plans are bizarre and would rack up TRILLIONS in deficits. You won't analyze that slapping China with a 45% tariff (Mr. trump) would immediately cause most goods people use go up in price by 45%!

Do your research. Too many people are buying into generalities not backed up with thought. "How do your break up the banks?" The answer should not be "I never thought about it!"  Nor should it be "Let THEM figure it out!"  That isn't a solution; that is a cop out of someone too lazy to actually figure out a reasonable solution.  Hate Wall Street? No, its not perfect but what's your SOLUTION, because even communist China used the free market economic approach to mushroom its growth, bringing millions of Chinese out of poverty --unlike Castro's Cuba that stuck with a socialist economy and hasn't advanced in 50 years.  IN China they ride the 265 mph MagLev train; in Cuba, they ride 1957 cars.

Start HERE at Global American Values blog with "Agenda for American Greatness" and pass it on to those looking at the issue this election year.

It's not based on fear but FACTS and a strategy to make America a key part of a new high tech global economy in a rapidly changing world. I have seen what we are up against in the world since I spent a life doing deals worldwide for Americans (which create jobs HERE). I see them passing us by if we don't upgrade our skills to compete.  But not by killing our economy with protectionism that created the Great Depression and Fear of the other in a diverse country that we are....

That diversity is our greatest strength that is nearly impossible to match by any other country in the world.  It is not to be feared but harnessed as we deal with a rising China, nuclear North Korea, Pakistan and India, the Middle East, and a Europe being banged about by bad economics and millions of migrants, causing nationalist parties to rise, based on.....FEAR.

There is only one candidate of the remaining big 4 that is offering actual, sensible solutions. I'll let you figure it out, or find it in Agenda for American Greatness. Stay tuned.

Michael Fjetland, Author
Better Times Ahead April Fool

http://globalamericanvalues.blogspot.com/2015/07/agenda-for-american-greatness-2015.html

Bernie Sanders "Hanoi Jane" Moment Makes Him A Loser Against GOP

There is a reason that Donald Trump wants Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic primary nomination. He knows that there is a dark time in Bernie's past that would enable even someone as hated as he is to win.

Is America ready for a socialist President who courted two communist governments that gained power by bullets, not ballots? Bernie courted Fidel Castro - even took a photo with him. This is when Cuba's economy was living on handouts from the Soviet Union. yet Bernie claimed how "impressive" Cuba's situation was.

My bet is that even a fascist would beat a naive socialist if it came down to that choice on the ballot.  Here's what I know, some from personal experience.

Bernie Sanders also supported leftist Daniel Ortega who led the Sandinista violent takeover of Nicaragua. Sanders did it personally, verbally and positively,  Google it. The Nicaraguan economy under Sandinista socialism is so bad that children live in a dump where they forage for food. They are called "Children of the Dump" in Managua, Nicaragua, which I discuss in the 2 minute video below. That's the type of economy they have twenty years later. Yet Sanders praised the Sadinistas as much as Fidel.

Castro and the Sandinistas denied free speech. Castro still does. They denied elections. They denied people freedom to protest. They denied free speech, and even freedom to own their own businesses. Yet Bernie Sanders sought out to praise these dictators.  Remember Hanoi Jane? Bernie in the mid-80's was like Hanoi Jane. (When I went to Nicaragua before the Sandinistas, described in my book, it was for a water project; I never praised them after their takeover, ever).

Check out this photo of Bernie with Fidel. It is not a photoshop. One is smiling like a Cheshire cat. The other is not impressed.  Bernie wasn't there to tell him to set his people free. He didn't push for a free market. Bernie was there to praise him --unlike Obama who made Raul Castro answer reporters questions for the first time in his life during his visit to Cuba.

In this photo, Bernie looks as ridiculous as Michael Dukakis looked in the tank helmet when he was running for president.

I happened to know about what was happening in Nicaragua because as a young lawyer for a big company I was sent their on my first trip overseas, on a mission to negotiate a water project for a Fortune 500 company just before the Sandinista's took over. So I saw personally what was going on (which is detailed a chapter in my book "Better Times Ahead April Fool") not expecting it to relate to this presidential race. 

President Somoza was a crook yes; my book talks about how he was trying to sucker our company to do a project that would calm people down; but the Sandinistas turned out to be even bigger crooks. They wrecked their economy just as Fidel wrecked Cuba's. Yet Bernie approved and praised them.

This is an excerpt from my book on what I found in Nicaragua - something Bernie apparently didn't see:
" ----------------------
Michael’s Journal
Nicaragua 1977
----------------------
            Though the night seemed quiet when I stepped off the plane into the darkness of Nicaragua’s capital city, Managua, the pot was already boiling as the taxi took me to the pyramid-shaped Intercontinental Hotel.

 Photo above: The pyramid building is the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Managua, capital of Nicaragua. Famous, flamboyant Howard Hughes was living on the top floor at the time of the 1972 earthquake, and fled. I stayed in the same hotel when I arrived in 1977 – the city still had not been re-built.

            All hell was about to break loose.  Only I was too naive to know it.  Hell, the whole world was naive about this flyspeck of a country in Central America that no one had ever heard of, until it became a household name during the Reagan administration.  Maybe a couple of spooks in the CIA knew the lid was about to blow off, but they weren’t talking to me or my Fortune 500 bosses. If they had, no one would have sent me, right?  But here I was on my first international trip as a young lawyer. Now what?

            The first indication that something was strangely amiss was the empty blocks we passed in the taxi on the way to the hotel. Whole blocks were barren of buildings: here a building, there an empty block, then another building then another empty block. It was eerie. Like a moonscape or something from a WW II bombing. But I heard no shooting, saw no overt violence.

Photo: After the quake in Managua

           I asked the taxi driver what had happened.  He said that an earthquake before Christmas in 1972 had knocked down many of the buildings.  The devastation looked like a scene from Bosnia in the ’90s. I found out later that President (a title synonymous with dictator in those days) Somoza had taken millions in U.S. aid money to replace the lost buildings, yet years later the blocks remained empty and there was no sign of construction activity.

            Eighty percent of Managua's buildings had been destroyed or damaged in the quake; over 10,000 people had been killed.  Somoza apparently looted the money, and people were ..." (cont at the link.)

Yesterday it was Cuba and Nicaragua, tomorrow it will be other countries. We can't afford naïve dreamers as president leading our ship of state through these perilous global waters of terrorism and global tax schemes. Frankly, such a lack of judgment disqualifies a person from being considered a serious candidate for a country that is built on elections, free press, rule of law. 

Of the remaining candidates, only Hillary Clinton has the experience and judgment to be president of the United States in these turbulent times in this inescapable global economy. The other choices are people with insane ideas that would cost trillions in debt and global ill will.  This is a time when America has to be the adult in the room when Europe is facing a split and China is about to become the world's No. 1 economy with a growing military presence.

Both Trump and Sanders - Far Left and Right are Trade Isolationists Who Would Destroy Our Economy

Bernie Sander and Donald Trump are in two different parties but both isolationists on trade. So both fringes are the same, once again.

Fact is, China has NO Trade Agreement with us - never has -- so "Trade Agreements" don't explain job losses.  We run deficits because we buy more of their stuff than they buy of ours. Only a trade agreement can reduce their tariffs for our companies to sell more there.

However, the article points out that Bernie expects low wage countries like Vietnam to pay U.S. wages as part of a trade agreement! That's absurd -they can't go from 65 cents to $6 an hour wages overnight.  That's like asking New York rent in Iowa - doesn't work.

This article points out that high wages in the U.S. are because we make high end goods - like aircraft. In low wage countries they make low end goods, simple things like electronics or clothes. That will happen WITHOUT trade agreements folks - it is the free market at play on a global scale.

Taiwan was once the low wage country taking our low end manufacturing. Then it was China. Then it went to Korea. Now its Vietnam. Tomorrow it will be another country. That's how it works. It is a constantly changing dynamic.

China started low end, yet its labor wages have gone UP - to the point where they can't make it cheaper than us.

Isolationism hurts US. It's what caused the Great Depression, along with increasing tariffs.  Trump and Sanders would be economic disasters with their strange trade ideas.

I spent many years promoting American made goods around the world and wrote about it in Better Times Ahead April Fool.  I lost deals because we had no trade agreements with a country we wanted to sell our technology. 

I saw plants move into other countries where there were no trade agreements, because it was the only way to avoid tariffs that would have driven up the price too much for the buyer.  If you want to see how it works, check out Better Times Ahead and Agenda for American Greatness, at the link.

Panama Papers & Inversions - The Trillions in Untaxed Hidden Wealth Our Congress Allows

The "Panama Papers" has exposed a dirty secret that our U.S. Congress has known about for decades - dirty money that hides in offshore accounts in places like Panama, Cayman Islands and other tax havens known to international tax experts. 

At one point in my career, while employed by a Fortune 500 company and later as an individual international attorney, I went to Panama and the Cayman Islands and set up offshore companies. I always told clients that having an offshore account is legal, but since Americans are taxed on their worldwide income hiding money from the government that you didn't pay tax on is not. I was never sure they really listened. I would not be surprised that they used the account for tax avoidance.

The Panama papers show that over 14,000 banks were involved in setting up accounts for over 140 officials from 50 countries; people like Russia's Putin may have $2 billion hidden away; China's leaders are blocking the internet so their people won't find out.  Corrupt leaders like Gaddafi had such accounts. It has already brought down the leader of Iceland.

Eighty 80% of the money in these accounts is "dark" money - money where the source of the funds is unknown and is either criminal proceeds from the drug trade or monies looted from governments by their own leaders. Only 20% of it is reported and disclosed and that needs to change.

Our Congress has known about these offshore accounts for decades and has done almost nothing to bring international pressure to bear. These accounts amount to trillions of dollars that governments are denied, therefore causing tax increases on the middle and lower classes while the rich 1% escape taxes entirely. It allows a haven for global criminals to hide their money. It's time to stop it.

President Obama has done what he can by himself to stop inversions - where companies pretend to  set up overseas to avoid taxes in the U.S. (which killed the Pfizer merger). But he needs support.

Only Congress can repeal the tax deductions Congress passed under the Bush administration with a GOP majority that allowed companies to ship jobs overseas and get a deduction for it. Only Congress can pass laws to help reduce dark money hidden in tax havens. 

This is why governments are struggling to pay their bills and the 99% are being screwed by the uber rich who pay little or nothing in taxes since they have the cash to hire lawyers and set up elaborate shell companies to hide their identity and source of funds.

If you want change, change Congress so we can eliminate these laws protecting tax havens.  I wrote about our twisted tax rules and how to change them in "Agenda for American Greatness" at the link. Check it out and pass it on.

Pakistan Tactical Nukes on India's Border Could Mean Mushroom Cloud over DC

Pakistan is about to do something that could kill millions right here in America - by placing small portable nuclear weapons near its border with India, as reported in the Huffington Post today.

Pakistan is the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons, including not just the giant missiles in silos but also small, portable ones that would fit in a small vehicle. Reports are that is now has over 100 of them (versus zero in Iran).

Pakistan has been a proliferation state that sold that technology to North Korea and Libya's Gaddafi. Now it plans to put small Tactical Nukes on India's Border. That could mean a Mushroom Cloud over DC. Here's why.

                                  This is called a "Suitcase NUKE" - Huge Kill Zone in a Small Package

Terrorists are not an existential threat to Europe and America. Bringing down the World Trade center did not destroy America.

Nuclear weapons are an existential threat. And so are Terrorists with nukes that fit in the trunk of a car.

A 'suitcase nuke' was supposedly made in the USSR.  It's small enough that you can put in the trunk of a car could be used on a street in DC during a meeting of Congress, and totally eliminate our government in one second, throwing the entire country in chaos and anarchy. Pakistan's tactical warheads aren't that small, but small enough to make stealing one possible.

So we must support President Obama's call for greater nuclear security. I am all over this because I wrote about the threat of nuclear terrorism in the 90's in a fiction book "Fire Over Arabia" that I was writing which became non-fiction before I finished it.  First, in the first gulf War and then with the bombing of the World Trade center in 1993. That was the warm up to 911.

I documented it on TV during the first Gulf War here.

I produced and hosted this TV program with a weapons expert from the Reagan administration entited "Nuclear Terrorism: Could It Happen Here?" in 1994.  It aired on Houston cable TV numerous times on the municipal channel.  I sent it to my Congressmen Tom DeLay (hand delivered it to his daughter at his campaign office) and sent another copy to Dick Cheney's attention -- nine months before 9/11.

NO RESPONSE. From any one. No one said: "What the hell is this!?"

SO that is why Donald Trump's call for MORE NUKES for Asia and places like Saudi Arabia is INSANE.

Pakistan and India have already fought three non-nuclear wars; we don't need a nuclear one and we don't need ISIS stealing one of these battlefield weapons and using it against a European or American city or government.

Pass this on.

Michael Fjetland, Author
Better Times Ahead April Fool

Notice the Same Flaw in Each Candidate But One? It's All about THEM, not America

What I have noticed about the candidates for president, with one exception, is that each seems to have the same character flaw. It is ALL about THEM.

Trump is so vain he'd be having a nuke exchange over Putin posting a bad photo of his wife; one slight from a foreign leader would lead to military action from a crazed leader who is as presidential and educated about the world as a street bully dropout.

Ted Cruz has been all about Ted Cruz that he felt compelled to shut down our gov't over people getting healthcare, at a... cost of $24 billion - causing more damage to our economy then terrorism in a decade.

Bernie started off with some ideas but then he turned to fantasy land of free college with no taxes, and showed how HE didn't like his wife sharing the podium "Don't stand next to me." Then began the same "Lyin Ted" routine of making up false facts - such as progressive people like me who work in conservative oil companies who donate to Hillary are somehow "the company" making the donation so "its BIG OIL supporting Hillary." It is nonsense, and it is a lie because he knows better, having been an insider on the taxpayer payroll for decades submitting campaign reports. Some donated to Bernie too, so by his definition, he is on the take for big oil. Further, he refuses to fundraise for the party as Hillary has, because its all about HIM. That means down ballot losses and no change of Congress from R to D, making progress impossible.

Only Hillary is talking about THE COUNTRY and our people, not inciting violence at her rallies or fantasy's of free stuff that won't happen when you lose 49 states because the Trash Trump points out how Bernie was praising Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas as an elected official (ignoring that they took power at the barrel of a gun, then trashed their economies.)

Think about THAT. Only the woman is thinking of others instead of herself (isn't that how it is in most families?)

I have some items to add to Hillary's $10 billion rebuild America manufacturing plan. It includes putting unskilled to work, and skilled - like a solar energy generator by NASA. It's in "Agenda for American Greatness" - a realistic, not fantasyland roadmap for America.  Look for it in the last half of the chapter (after showing how we got where we are). It's based on 30 years global experience.

But its not about me; its about America and our childrens' future....