STEVE BANNON’S SWAMP KEEPER TWITTER TRUMPER SERVES THE SUPER RICH: IT’S
CALLED TRICKLE UP ECONOMICS.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/congress-passes-tax-windfall-for-super.html
"It will, in fact, no more provide
decent-paying jobs and improved wages than the previous tax “reforms” carried
out over the past three-and-a-half decades. The Reagan tax cuts of 1981 and
1986, Bill Clinton’s capital gains tax cut in 1997 and George W. Bush’s tax
“reform” of 2001 were all part of a ruling class offensive against the working
class, which included sweeping attacks on wages, jobs, pensions, education,
health care, housing and other social benefits."
In the Heart of Trump Country, His Base’s Faith is Unshaken
AP Photo/David Goldman
SANDY HOOK, Ky. (AP) — The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.
Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.
People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God’s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics — because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.
Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock.
“He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here,” says Whitt.
“I still see it.”
Despite the president’s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump’s white working-class base.
Main Street, center, cuts through Sandy Hook, KY, on Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
A customer walks into the Frosty Freeze restaurant in Sandy Hook, KY. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Steven Whitt, left, opens the Frosty Freeze restaurant he runs with his wife as regular customers wait outside in Sandy Hook, KY. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner’s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn’t shoulder the blame — because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.
It means God, guns, patriotism, saying “Merry Christmas” and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.
On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He’s punching at all the people who let them down for so long — the presidential embodiment of their own discontent.
“He’s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question,” Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt’s regulars, declares as he deals the day’s first hand of cards.
He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don’t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media — all “crooked as a barrel of fishhooks” — had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn’t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him.
Wes Lewis plays cards with fellow regulars at the Frosty Freeze restaurant in Sandy Hook, KY, Dec. 13, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
“One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody’s gonna push him into a corner,” says Whitt, 35. “He’s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it.”
He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes.
“Bill, bill, bill,” he reports to his wife, Chesla, who has arrived to relieve him at the restaurant they run together. He needs to run home and change of out his Frosty Freeze uniform, the first of several work ensembles he wears each day, and put on his second, a suit and tie. He also owns a local funeral home and he’s the county coroner, elected as a Democrat.
Steven Whitt dusts off his guitar in preparation to perform a song during a funeral service at the funeral home he runs in Sandy Hook, KY, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
The Whitts, like many people here, cobble together a living with a couple jobs each — sometimes working 12 or 15 hours a day — because there aren’t many options better than minimum wage. There’s the school system, and a prison, and that’s pretty much it. Outside of town, population 622, roads wind past rolling farms that used to grow tobacco before that industry crumbled too, then up into the hills of Appalachia, with its spectacular natural beauty and grinding poverty that has come to define this region in the American imagination.
Whitt slides a medical bill across the table.
“Looks like this one is the new helmet,” he says, and his wife tears the envelope open and reports the debt: $3,995. They will add it to a growing pile that’s already surpassed $40,000 since their son was born nine months ago with a rare condition. His skull was shaped like an egg, the bones fused together in places they shouldn’t be. Tommy, their baby boy with big blue eyes, has now outgrown three of the helmets he’s been required to wear after surgery so his bones grow back together like they should.
They pay $800 a month for insurance. But when they took their baby to a surgeon in Cincinnati, they learned it was out of network. In-network hospitals offered only more invasive surgeries, so they opted to pay out of pocket. At the hospital they were told that if they’d been on an insurance program for the poor, it would have all been free.
Chesla Whitt, right, takes off a helmet her nine-month old son, Tommy Joe, must wear after being born with a rare condition where his skull bones didn’t fuse together properly, at their home in Sandy Hook, KY. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
This represents the cracks in America’s institutions that drove Whitt, a lifelong Democrat, from supporting President Barack Obama to buying a “Make America Great Again” cap that he still keeps on top of the hutch. Many of their welfare-dependent neighbors, he believes, stay trapped in a cycle of handouts and poverty while hardworking taxpayers like him and his wife are stuck with the tab and can’t get ahead.
“Where’s the fairness in that?” he asks.
But Whitt doesn’t blame Trump for the failure this year to repeal the health care law and replace it with something better. He blames the “brick wall” in Washington, the politicians he sees as blocking everything Trump proposes while “small people” like them in small places like this are left again to languish.
A third of people here live in poverty. Just 9 percent of adults have a college degree, but they always made up for that with backbreaking labor that workers traveled dozens of miles to neighboring counties or states to do, and those jobs have gotten harder to find.
Many here blame global trade agreements and the “war on coal” — environmental regulations designed by Obama’s administration to curb carbon emissions — for the decline of mining and manufacturing jobs. When Trump bemoans the “American carnage” of lost factories and lost faith, it feels like he’s talking to the people in these Appalachian hills. When he scraps dozens of regulations to the horror of environmentalists and says it means jobs are on the way, they embrace him.
Coal has ticked up since Trump took office; mining companies have added 1,200 jobs across the country since his inauguration, more than 180 of them in Kentucky. But industry analysts say that was tied largely to market forces and dismiss Trump’s repeated pledges to resuscitate the coal industry as pie in the sky. Coal has been on the decline for many decades for many reasons outside of regulation: far cheaper natural gas, mechanization, thinning Appalachian seams.
Whitt leans back in his chair and ponders whether his community has so far sensed any relief.
“I don’t think we’re seeing anything yet,” he says, and asks around. “Do you?”
The stock market is surging, one of his regulars at the next table says. The tax reform plan will help them, they hope. The unemployment rate here has dipped slightly to 7.6 percent, still higher than the state and national average but better than it had been.
“With the opposition he’s had, I think he’s pulling the plow pretty good,” offers Wes Lewis from the card table. A few months ago, he says, he saw four brand-new coal rigs going through town. “For the longest time, under Obama, all we saw were trucks being pulled on wreckers, because people turned belly up, they went broke.”
Lewis says he’s heard about friends of friends being called back to work. He’s noticed new trucks in people’s driveways, too, which he takes as evidence that his neighbors are feeling confident about their futures. These tiny signs stack up to him as proof. Lewis fishes the tag out of the bib of his overalls: “Made in Mexico,” it reads.
“Trump’s bringing them back,” he says.
Lewis, a registered Democrat, trusts Trump because he trusts his values. And because of that, he trusts Trump’s other promises — so strongly he can’t think of anything that would shake that faith in him. If the factories and mines don’t come back, he’ll blame the opposition. If there isn’t a wall on the Mexico border, he says, it won’t be because Trump didn’t try. If investigators find his campaign colluded with Russians, it’s because so many people are so determined to bring him down.
He watches all the news stations, he says, toggling back and forth as he performs his own calculations to figure out what he wants to believe. He almost always sides with Fox News and anchors who dismiss allegations of Russian collusion as a “witch hunt” and tout the president’s declarations of accomplishments. The people against Trump are, by extension, against people like him, too, Lewis figures.
“They don’t care if we starve to death out here, because they don’t care the first thing about anybody other than their pockets being full,” he believes. “Donald Trump doesn’t care about that because Donald Trump’s pockets are already full. That’s the reason I’ve stuck with him.”
Lewis leaves the diner like he does every day as the midmorning lull tapers into the lunch rush, and Chesla Whitt scurries from the kitchen to the register to the walk-up window to the ringing phone.
Soup beans are on the menu today, like they are every Wednesday. The daily specials have been the same as long as anyone can remember, cooked by a woman they all call “Nanny” who has worked in the kitchen for 35 years. People here like tradition, says Gwenda Johnson, retired after nearly 40 years in community development.
That’s why the decades-old pinball machines are still in the back room of the Frosty Freeze and ashtrays sit on the tables, because smoking is still allowed.
But Johnson acknowledges one painful and irrevocable change in the region: Coal will never be what it once was, no matter what promises Trump makes to turn back time. Appalachia should be looking for a new path, she says, not the old one.
She rattles off all the things the community stands to lose under this administration: The region relies on programs like the Appalachian Regional Commission and Economic Development Administration that provide federal money for job-training, anti-poverty efforts and beautification initiatives aimed at transitioning to a tourism economy. Trump proposed a budget that wipes out those programs. Many depend on food stamps, disability coverage and health insurance through the Affordable Care Act — all of which could be upended.
“I fear that when they finally realize that Donald Trump is not the savior they thought he was — if they ever come to that realization — the morale in these rural areas will be so low that they will not ever put faith in anyone again,” she says.
Many families here can trace their ancestry back generations on the same land. Almost everyone is white, and almost everyone is Christian. At the Frosty Freeze, a plaque with a Bible verse hangs under the television, from the book of Romans: “Owe no man nothing but to love one another.” Steven Whitt says that most people he knows fret about transgender bathrooms and their Second Amendment rights being snatched away.
Sometimes, people from out of town find themselves in this diner. “They think we’re the most conservative Republicans they ever met,” Whitt says. “And we say, no, we’re all Democrats.”
That’s just the way it’s always been. Until recently, the number of Republicans in the whole county of 7,600 people was listed in the double-digits. Whitt never considered changing his registration. He thinks his own mom and dad wouldn’t vote for him in his next election for county coroner if he were a Republican. He hasn’t had the heart to tell them he’s a Trump supporter.
“Around here, you hear, ‘The Democrats were for the guys carrying a lunch pail,'” he says. Now, it seems to him, Trump has become the lunch pail party in the minds of many. But not all.
“I damn sure didn’t vote for Trump. I’d rather walk through hell wearing gasoline britches,” barks Terry Stinson, a retired construction worker. He has come to the Frosty Freeze almost every evening for dinner since his wife died.
He can barely bring himself to watch the news because it makes him mad, and he howls with laughter at the idea that the Republican tax cuts to corporations will eventually help the little guys. The country has been sold trickle-down economics before, he says, “And it’s never trickled down to Sandy Hook. Why would it this time?”
Terry Stinson, left, talks with Deborah Harmon at the Frosty Freeze restaurant in Sandy Hook, KY, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Chesla is working the counter alone, running between the ringing phone and the register. Steven had business at the funeral home, so she scrambled together someone to watch Tommy while she stays at the restaurant for the supper crowd.
“I hate rushing,” she says. “It seems like that’s all we ever do.”
She isn’t quite sure how much faith to put in Trump to improve things in her own life. She liked him on “The Apprentice.” She liked that he was funny and knew how to make money, and so she thinks everyone ought to calm down and give him a chance.
Steven didn’t get home until nearly midnight. Then he was back at the diner before sunrise to power up the coffee pot and turn on the open sign and start the whole routine again.
Lewis arrived and headed for his table the next morning, and he said he’d been thinking about whether Trump would pull off his promises.
“Here’s the big thing,” he says, shuffling the deck of cards, “if Trump lies to us, it won’t be anything different than what the rest of them always did.”
Percy Pennington restocks potato chips at the Frosty Freeze restaurant in Sandy Hook, KY, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
____
AP data journalist Angeliki Kastanis contributed to this report. Follow Claire Galofaro on Twitter.
This is the sixth and last in a series examining communities that helped Donald Trump win the White House.
No decline in Michigan poverty since the Great Recession
By Debra Watson
Socialism and the problem of the super-rich
28 December 2017
JAMES WALSH
THE OBAMA HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA
No decline in Michigan poverty since the Great Recession
By Debra Watson
28 December 2017
Despite a drastic fall in the official unemployment rate for the state the same percentage of Michigan households are living below the poverty line today as did after the onset of the Great Recession in December of 2007.
According to new income and poverty statistics from the US Census Bureau released in early December, Michigan’s poverty rate was 16.3 percent at the end of 2016, the same annual rate calculated as an average for the five-years from January 2008 through December 2012. The current rate is not much lower than the peak annual poverty rate of 16.9 percent reported for the five-year period of 2010-14.
Unemployment has been below five percent in the state since the end of 2015, down from a post-recession peak of 14.5 percent in 2009. However, this month Michigan unemployment ticked up slightly, to 4.5 percent.
The proliferation of low-paying temporary and part-time jobs in the auto industry, a process enshrined in the sellout contract imposed by the UAW in 2015, has been a key factor in the general decline in living standards in Michigan. According to data recently reported by the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget wages in manufacturing jobs in the state are down by $2.00 an hour, from a high of $22.73 before the crash.
Behind the apparent contradiction between declining unemployment rates and the ongoing high official poverty level is the massive and increasing income and wealth inequality in the US. As Karl Marx established over a century ago, poverty at one pole of society is complemented by obscene levels of wealth at the other. The three top American plutocrats, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, investor Warren Buffet and the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, now own more wealth than the bottom half of the US population, 160 million people.
Like Trump’s glorification of the ever-rising bubble in the stock market, Obama pointed to job growth when characterizing his administration as “the best time to be alive.” Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder and the Democratic Mayor of Detroit Mike Duggan have incessantly boasted of the declining unemployment and job creation as signals of a recovering economy.
Unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal recently touted that Michigan had “increased sharply” its “capital investment and hiring.” The paper praised policies that repealed personal-property taxes for manufacturers and right-to-work legislation, policies taken from the Republican playbook and implemented in the state.
The latest Census figures demonstrate that poverty remains a chronic condition in Michigan despite this supposed resurgence in the state’s economy. Even so, the official poverty rate grossly underestimates the depth of economic want.
In the US the official poverty level is not measured as a percentage of median income, as it is in many other developed countries, but on a far narrower measure related to food costs. Poverty for a family of three is pegged at a derisory $20,000 a year, far below sixty percent of Michigan’s current median household income of about $52,400 and drastically below the amount needed to support a family.
Sustained high rates of poverty over nearly a decade have had devastating personal implications. A family’s meagre resources can dwindle as successive years’ income deficits are never offset with rising income. They have had an equally devastating societal impact.
The five-year Census Bureau American Community Series (ACS) rolling averages from the December report supplement annual poverty and income statistics released by the Census’ Current Population Series in September. The greater sample sizes in the five-year averages allow for more accuracy and sufficient data to communities with smaller populations.
There are smaller communities in the state where there are indications poverty has increased dramatically. The large increases in poverty in these small communities indicate how a relatively small economic disruption can have a huge effect on living standards for a village or town.
For example, some villages in the Upper Peninsula with populations in the hundreds saw double digit increases. In Baldwin, which is located toward the middle of the state’s lower peninsula, poverty increased from a third of its one thousand plus residents in poverty in 2008-2012 to well over half now.
The December ACS release shows that in the five-year look-back from the end of 2016, there was an increase in poverty in half of Michigan’s communities of all sizes over the average recorded in the five years that followed the onset of the recession. Communities located throughout the state saw such increases.
Flint and other cities such as Jackson, Lansing, Detroit, Muskegon, Bay City and Ann Arbor showed small increases in their poverty rate. Other cities with comparable population sizes had poverty rates that declined, albeit slightly, including Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Saginaw.
Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, recorded a shockingly high official poverty rate of a 39.4 percent using the five-year ACS average. The city’s poverty rate was one percentage point higher than the 38.1 percent average for the years 2008 through 2012.
Whole cities with substantially sized populations like Detroit and Flint have average poverty rates that are more than twice the state poverty rate. The high rates in some cities reach the level of poverty concentration that is utilized by social scientists to identify neighborhoods endemic to urban areas where pervasive poverty seriously debilitates families and social structure.
Inequality is driving communities to be divided by income like never before in recent history. The growth in concentrated poverty nationwide was noted in a Brookings Institution report last year. According to the report, between 2005-09 and 2010-14 the number of such high poverty neighborhoods in the US, where more than forty percent of households are below the official poverty line, grew by more than 4,300.
By the end of 2016 Detroit, along with Cleveland, had a poverty rate a full ten percentage points higher than the city with the third highest poverty rate in the country, Philadelphia. Detroit Democratic Mayor Mike Duggan’s recent re-election campaign relied on the narrative of an ongoing “Detroit comeback” based on highly concentrated downtown real estate investment.
Detroit’s poverty statistics present a window into the effect of exploding growth in temporary and part-time jobs and parallel wage stagnation and how it has affected workers struggling in the lowest-paying jobs.
Thirty-six percent of Detroit residents now work for less than $15,000 a year. Twenty-five percent of residents do not have access to a car. Industrial jobs have hemorrhaged out of the city over the nine years since the recession. Suburban jobs require serious time and expense to reach as the mass transit system in the area is barely functional.
Two of the cities in Michigan where poverty rates were even higher than Detroit’s are actually enclaves of Detroit and would cause a higher rate and higher increase in the poverty rate for the Detroit inner-city area if their data was included. Hamtramck, a small enclave of Detroit has a poverty rate of 49.7 percent, up from 44.6 percent in the years immediately after the recession started. The other municipal enclave, Highland Park, has a poverty rate of 51.1 percent, up from 46.7 percent in the earlier years.
A Tale of Two Op-Eds
By Jason Richwine
The Corner at National Review Online, December 21, 2017
. . .
How about restricting low-skill immigration to encourage recruitment of Americans? No, Furman says, because — well, actually, he does not mention immigration at all, not even to dismiss its importance. Omitting the i-word in discussions of labor-force dropout is an unfortunate habit on both the left and the right. Amy Wax and I wrote our Inquirer op-ed (based on a much longer essay in American Affairs) to show that employers turned to immigrants as the native work ethic declined. As evidence, we point both to the much higher labor-force participation of low-skill immigrants compared to low-skill natives, as well as to the near-universal preference expressed by employers for immigrant labor. Restricting the flow of foreign workers would generate a major incentive for business owners, politicians, and opinion leaders to reintegrate American men into the labor force. It is, in our opinion, a crucial part of any reform strategy.
. . .http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/454859/male-labor-force-participation-immigration
By Jason Richwine
The Corner at National Review Online, December 21, 2017
. . .
How about restricting low-skill immigration to encourage recruitment of Americans? No, Furman says, because — well, actually, he does not mention immigration at all, not even to dismiss its importance. Omitting the i-word in discussions of labor-force dropout is an unfortunate habit on both the left and the right. Amy Wax and I wrote our Inquirer op-ed (based on a much longer essay in American Affairs) to show that employers turned to immigrants as the native work ethic declined. As evidence, we point both to the much higher labor-force participation of low-skill immigrants compared to low-skill natives, as well as to the near-universal preference expressed by employers for immigrant labor. Restricting the flow of foreign workers would generate a major incentive for business owners, politicians, and opinion leaders to reintegrate American men into the labor force. It is, in our opinion, a crucial part of any reform strategy.
. . .http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/454859/male-labor-force-participation-immigration
Study Shows E-Verify's Effectiveness
By Preston Huennekens
CIS Immigration Blog, December 8, 2017
Their study indicates that E-Verify is one of the most important enforcement tools available to states that wish to reduce their illegal alien populations. Research shows that most illegal migration is for economic reasons, and that the adoption of E-Verify and other worksite enforcement measures effectively blocks illegal aliens from procuring employment, thereby preventing many from settling down in the United States. Faced with mandatory E-Verify, the study shows that many aliens either returned to their home countries or traveled to other states that did not have employment verification regulations.
. . .https://cis.org/Huennekens/Study-Shows-EVerifys-Effectiveness
By Preston Huennekens
CIS Immigration Blog, December 8, 2017
Their study indicates that E-Verify is one of the most important enforcement tools available to states that wish to reduce their illegal alien populations. Research shows that most illegal migration is for economic reasons, and that the adoption of E-Verify and other worksite enforcement measures effectively blocks illegal aliens from procuring employment, thereby preventing many from settling down in the United States. Faced with mandatory E-Verify, the study shows that many aliens either returned to their home countries or traveled to other states that did not have employment verification regulations.
. . .https://cis.org/Huennekens/Study-Shows-EVerifys-Effectiveness
Whom Does Congress Work For?
By John Miano
CIS Immigration Blog, December 12, 2017
. . .
When Disney replaced 350 Americans with foreign workers, forcing them to train their replacements, did we see any Florida members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
When Southern California Edison and the University of California replaced Americans with foreign workers, did any California members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
When Toys "R" Us replaced Americans with foreign workers, did any New Jersey members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
When Cargill and Best Buy replaced Americans with foreign workers, did any Minnesota members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
No.
Yet when illegal aliens working under the DACA program are threatened with losing their jobs, members of Congress spring into action:
. . .https://cis.org/Miano/Whom-Does-Congress-Work
By John Miano
CIS Immigration Blog, December 12, 2017
. . .
When Disney replaced 350 Americans with foreign workers, forcing them to train their replacements, did we see any Florida members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
When Southern California Edison and the University of California replaced Americans with foreign workers, did any California members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
When Toys "R" Us replaced Americans with foreign workers, did any New Jersey members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
When Cargill and Best Buy replaced Americans with foreign workers, did any Minnesota members of Congress threaten to shut down the government unless it was stopped?
No.
Yet when illegal aliens working under the DACA program are threatened with losing their jobs, members of Congress spring into action:
. . .https://cis.org/Miano/Whom-Does-Congress-Work
AMERICA'S CRIMINAL BANKSTERS LOOTED MORE THAN A TRILLION DOLLARS OF AMERICA'S REAL ESTATE WITH THEIR TOXIC MORTGAGES AND WERE REWARDED WITH NO-STRINGS BAILOUTS AND NO (REAL) REGULATION.... THEY'RE STILL LOOTING AMERICA!
"It would inevitably be met with massive and overwhelming
opposition on the part of the financial oligarchy, which
controls all levers of the state power, and has at its disposal
not only the courts and politicians, but, even more decisively,
the police and the army."
EVEN BEFORE HE TOOK OFFICE, BARACK OBAMA HAD SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN ANY OTHER PRESIDENT IN HISTORY!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors
are employees of financial industry giants -Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207)
and Citigroup ($358,054).
Socialism and the problem of the super-rich
28 December 2017
Nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx, citing the early 19th century French economist Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, observed that “the Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society, while modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat.”
Never has this been so true as today, as day after day, week after week, reports are published showing the massive social wealth piled up by the financial oligarchy at the expense of the working class.
The latest of these is the Bloomberg Billionaires
Index published on Friday, which showed that the
fortunes of the world’s wealthiest 500 billionaires
rose 23 percent over the past year, making them $1
trillion richer than at the end of 2016. The combined
wealth of this group reached $5.3 trillion. The gain
of $1 trillion was four times last year’s increase.
Index published on Friday, which showed that the
fortunes of the world’s wealthiest 500 billionaires
rose 23 percent over the past year, making them $1
trillion richer than at the end of 2016. The combined
wealth of this group reached $5.3 trillion. The gain
of $1 trillion was four times last year’s increase.
Bloomberg found that the world’s richest 500 people as a group added an average of $2.7 billion to their fortunes every day in 2017. This means that, on average, each of these individuals added $5,400,000 every day, or $225,000 every hour—roughly equivalent to the combined income of five working-class households in the US over the course of a year.
The rapid expansion of the wealth of the financial oligarchy accompanies growing indicators of social misery at the other pole of society, exemplified in the report this month by the Centers for Disease Control that life expectancy in the US fell for the second year in a row.
Wealth concentration on the scale reflected in these reports has immense social implications. It is impossible to seriously address a single social issue without confronting the problem of economic inequality. The colossal diversion of resources into private wealth accumulation by the financial oligarchy effectively starves society of the resources it needs to deal with the most basic problems.
The United Nations estimates that it would cost $30 billion a year to eradicate world hunger, a small fraction of the wealth monopolized by the world’s billionaires. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos alone added $34.2 billion to his fortune in 2017.
America’s 159 billionaires added $315 billion to their fortunes last year, giving them a collective net worth of $2 trillion. This is double the $1 trillion spent by the US government in 2015 on health care ($980 billion), education ($70 billion) and housing ($63 billion) combined.
The funneling of these vast sums into the bank accounts of the super-rich, combined with the nearly $1 trillion set aside every year to fund the military machine that protects the oligarchy’s financial interests around the world, leaves virtually nothing to address the crumbling social and physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail, mass transit) of the United States.
The tax bill just passed by the Trump administration will fuel a further growth of social inequality in the US and around the world beyond what are already the highest levels since the Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century.
The economic life of the planet is determined by the drive of the ruling elite for ever greater self-enrichment. The policies of all capitalist governments and parties, whether right-wing or nominally “left,” are driven by this requirement. The unprecedented rise in the stock market has been engineered by the world’s central banks, led by the US Federal Reserve, to enable the capitalist class to recoup its losses and increase its share of wealth and income in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The Fed, first under Bush and then under Obama, led the way in organizing bank bailouts and the infusion of trillions into the financial markets by means of ultra-low interest rates and “quantitative easing” money-printing operations.
To provide a certain context, the total of $5.3 trillion in assets controlled by the richest 500 people is greater than the combined GDPs of the UK and France. The $2 trillion owned by US billionaires is almost twice the GDP of Mexico, a country of 128 million people. It is also more than double the combined GDPs of Argentina, Chile and Peru.
Bezos’ gain for the year is itself only slightly less than the combined GDPs of Jamaica ($14 billion), Niger ($7.5 billion) and Zimbabwe ($16 billion), with a combined population of 40 million.
The financial elite has definite social interests, which it enforces through the wholesale buying of political parties and politicians, making democracy under capitalism nothing but a hollow shell.
What would happen in response to any serious effort to reform this state of affairs, to pursue a modest reallocation of social resources, within the framework of the capitalist system, to ensure that all people received the basic rudiments of nutrition, health care, and education?
It would inevitably be met with massive and overwhelming opposition on the part of the financial oligarchy, which controls all levers of the state power, and has at its disposal not only the courts and politicians, but, even more decisively, the police and the army.
When social reform is impossible, social revolution becomes inevitable. There is no way to avoid the conclusion that it is necessary to expropriate the wealth of the financial oligarchy.
These resources are derived from the social labor of the working class, which produces all the wealth of society. The working class is the only social force that can and must carry out this historic task. The only answer to the growth of poverty and immiseration for the masses alongside ever more obscene levels of wealth for a tiny minority is socialism, based on common ownership and democratic control of the productive forces and the rational, planned international coordination of economic life.
Barry Grey
MICHAEL BARONE:
THE OBAMA YEARS: A LEGACY OF SCANDAL AND DECEPTION
Joe Biden’s bizarre disconnect regarding his scandal-ridden former boss.
December 27, 2017
On December 13, former vice president, Joe Biden, appeared on CBS with the hosts of “This Morning” where he peddled his new book and showered his former boss with praise. During the course of the interview, he was asked about his relationship with Obama and responded with the following; “I’ve served with eight presidents and I’ve gotten to know four of them very well. I’ve never met any president that has more character, more integrity, and more backbone than this guy does.” Then he went completely off the rails when he absurdly added; “And eight years, not a hint — not a hint — of a scandal.”
What was perhaps even more outrageous than the statement itself was the fact that none of This Morning’shosts challenged the veracity of that statement and allowed it to pass without a scintilla of scrutiny, exposing yet again an extreme bias existing within elements of the establishment media. In fact, the Obama administration was among the most corrupt and scandal-ridden in recent memory. Biden’s comment merits further examination so let’s buckle up and take a stroll down memory lane.
Solyndra Scandal – The Obama administration provided this failing solar company with a $535 million stimulus-funded loan, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Taxpayer money kept pouring in despite the fact that the Office of Management and Budget warned that Solyndra was not a profitable or viable company. But it gets worse. The family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser, was one of Solyndra's main investors. Can you say quid pro quo?
Veterans Affairs Scandal - Over 40 veterans needlessly died while waiting to be seen by doctors at a Phoenix VA facility. Another 1,700 veterans were forced to wait for months before being seen by medical personnel. An audit of the VA confirmed that VA officials systematically altered records and appointment schedules in a deliberate and methodical VA scheme to manipulate data to meet fabricated goals.
Operation Chokepoint Scandal – The Obama DOJ utilized the power of big government to pressure banks to cease doing business with industries with which the administration had ideological differences. Gun manufacturers and gun stores were prime targets even though they had not violated any laws. Eventually, the FDIC admitted to misconduct, bowed to pressure and significantly curtailed the discriminatory regulations after affected businesses threatened legal action.
Gibson Guitar Scandal – Armed federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., seizing guitars, electronic files and other inventory including wood that was purchased in India and Madagascar. The DOJ alleged that Gibson’s had violated an obscure law known as the Lacey Act which made it a crime to violate the environmental laws of another country. Gibson produced an affidavit from government officials in Madagascar stating that Gibson had violated none of that nation’s laws. Gibson also alleged that the DOJ was misinterpreting Indian law. Gibson’s CEO was a major donor to the GOP but his competitors, who purchased the same materials and were not GOP donors, were untouched by Obama’s DOJ. As part of a settlement to drop criminal charges, Gibson was required to pay a $250,000 fine and was required to donate $50,000 to an environmental group. Gibson was eventually able to retrieve its inventory from the clutches of the DOJ.
Fast & Furious Scandal – A scheme concocted by the Obama administration that went horribly wrong. The administration lost track of some 1,400 guns that made their way into the stream of criminal enterprises including those of the Mexican drug cartels. Two of the guns were found at the scene of the shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Attorney General Eric Holder was cited for contempt of Congress for failing to turn over documents relating to the scandal. It was the first time Congress had taken such an action against a sitting Cabinet official. Seventeen Democrats joined Republicans in voting in favor of the criminal contempt resolution.
DOJ-James Rosen Scandal – FOX News journalist, James Rosen became the target of Obama’s DOJ in yet another example of extreme government overreaching. Believing that Rosen was responsible for a leak concerning a policy decision on North Korea, AG Eric Holder sought a subpoena for Rosen’s emails claiming that Rosen had broken the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” The government’s affidavit also accused Rosen of possibly violating the Espionage Act. It appeared that the DOJ was acting like the East German Stasi in chasing fictitious enemies of the state. In a rare instance of bipartisanship, Holder was roundly criticized from all sides of the political spectrum and Holder himself was later forced to acknowledge that he regretted the episode.
Gruber-Obamacare Scandal – To establish Obamacare’s validity, Obama hired economist and academic Jonathan Gruber to give the plan his seal of approval. Gruber was later caught on video and audio making several disparaging remarks about Americans, stating that Obamacare’s passage rested on the “stupidity of the American voter.” Democrats later tried to distance themselves from him and tried to minimize his role in formulating Obamacare but there was no debating that he was one of Obamacare’s chief architects and was paid nearly $400,000 for his services. Gruber confirmed what most of us already knew; that Obamacare passed as a result of a concerted effort by the administration to deceive the American people.
Skolkovo Scandal – While serving as secretary of state, Clinton oversaw a program meant to “reset” relations with Moscow and improve ties. The program centered around the Russian city of Skolkovo near Moscow with the stated aim of “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the American and Russian people.” The program transformed Skolkovo into a technology hub akin to a Silicon Valley. Sensitive American technology was transferred to the Russians, substantially enhancing their military and cyber capabilities. The US Army and the FBI concluded that Russia had exploited the program for military applications. The FBI warned American technology companies doing business in Skolkovo that the Skolkovo project was a means by which the Russians would acquire dual use technologies and apply them for military ends. According to investigative author Peter Schweizer, Russian and American companies and individuals involved in the Skolkovo fiasco “had major financial ties to the Clintons.” Moreover, during the Russian reset period, those entities provided the Clintons with “tens of millions of dollars” in the form of “contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies with deep Clinton ties.”
Benghazi Scandal - U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed during an attack on the American consulate office. The Obama administration initially denied that the attack was terror related and instead peddled the now false and discredited narrative that it was triggered by a reaction to an anti-Muslim film. However, emails later confirmed that administration officials were well aware that it was a well-orchestrated, premeditated attack planned by Islamist terrorists and had nothing to do with an internet film. In addition, a congressional committee found that the delay in deploying military assets to the theater, which it attributed to needless bureaucratic bungling, almost certainly cost those men their lives.
IRS Exemption Scandal – IRS officials, taking their cues from the White House delayed, ignored or rejected nonprofit status applications from groups deemed to be right-wing or pro-Israel. Eventually, Former IRS senior executive Lois Lerner, one of the key actors in the scandal was held to be in contempt of Congress, though Holder’s DOJ refused to prosecute.
Iran Ransom Scandal – In deal to secure the release of four Americans held hostage by Iran, the Obama administration gave the Iranian government $1.7 billion in unmarked, untraceable cash, stacked in pallets. The money promptly went to finance Iran’s terrorist activities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was required to sign off on the ransom deal but no paper bearing her signature was ever produced despite congressional calls compelling her to do so.
Bergdahl-Guantanamo Scandal – Obama released 5 hardened Taliban terrorists for convicted deserter Bowe Bergdahl. The release of the terrorists was in violation of the National Defense Authorization Act. Obama was required to provide Congress with 30-days’ notice prior to releasing the Guantanamo detainees but he only provided notice on the actual day of the exchange. Consequently, the chief counsel for the Government Accountability Office determined that the Pentagon had illegally spent the money used to facilitate the prisoner exchange. In addition, like Benghazi, the administration tried to spin the story and portrayed Bergdahl as a soldier who “served with honor and distinction.” Lastly, at least 3 of the 5 detainees released for Bergdahl have reverted to their terrorist habits placing America and its allies at risk.
Dossier Scandal – Elements within the FBI and DOJ who were hostile to Trump and friendly to Clinton obtained a salacious and unverified dossier on Trump which was compiled by a British foreign agent from Russian sources. In addition to being unverified, unreliable and based exclusively on Russian sources, the dossier amounted to opposition research because it was obtained by agents and operatives working directly and indirectly for the Clinton campaign. Despite this knowledge, the FBI dressed up the dossier to appear as if it was a legitimate intelligence document and then used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on American citizens.
Clinton Email Server Scandal – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used an unsecured bathroom server to send and receive classified information. It is a virtual certainty that many of Clinton’s emails were compromised by foreign, hostile governments. Over 33,000 emails belonging to the State Department were deleted and some of Clinton’s state department emails ended up on a registered sex offender’s laptop. Clinton was criminally exonerated by the FBI and Loretta Lynch’s DOJ blindly accepted the FBI’s findings and recommendations without conducting an examination of its own. FBI agent Peter Strzok, who maintained a visceral hatred toward Trump and was deeply involved in the email investigation, later changed the wording of a memo exonerating Clinton to “extremely careless” from “grossly negligent.” The change was significant because the latter language tracked the wording of the criminal statute. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was also involved in investigating Clinton, failed to disclose that his wife had accepted $500,000 for her state senate campaign from long-time Clinton ally, Terry McAuliffe.
Uranium 1 Scandal – While serving as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton signed off on a deal that allowed Russia to acquire 20 percent of America’s uranium mining capacity. While other members of the Obama cabinet were also required to sign off for approval of the deal, Clinton was the only cabinet figure to obtain direct pecuniary benefit, to the tune of millions of dollars, from entities with vested interests in seeing the acquisition completed. She never disclosed this conflict of interest when giving her authorization. Once in Russian hands, some of the uranium, the foundational material for nuclear bombs, was exported abroad.
Loretta Lynch-Bill Clinton Tarmac Scandal – While Hillary Clinton was being criminally investigated by the FBI, Loretta Lynch, the nation’s top law enforcement official met with Bill Clinton for 30 minutes at a Phoenix tarmac where she says they discussed “grandchildren” and “golf.” Later, it was revealed that she instructed FBI Director James Comey to refer to the investigation as a “matter” rather than an investigation, tracking the Clinton campaign’s talking points. Finally, Comey testified in a closed session before the Intelligence Committee, that he confronted Lynch with a sensitive document in which it was suggested that Lynch was going to use her authority and power of her office to thwart prosecution of Clinton irrespective of the FBI’s findings. Lynch reportedly stared at the document and then “looked up with a steely silence that lasted for some time, then asked him if he had any other business with her and if not that he should leave her office.”
Project Cassandra Scandal – In an effort to curry favor with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Obama administration delayed, obstructed and ultimately shut down a DEA initiative aimed at thwarting Hezbollah arms trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering schemes. As a result, Hezbollah continued to import drugs into the United States, continued to supply anti-American insurgents with deadly Explosively Formed Projectiles and continued to engage in massive money laundering schemes.
The level of corruption and scandal witnessed during Obama’s tenure rivals, and perhaps even surpasses that of the Nixon years. The administration’s legacy leaves a long and wide trail of lies, deception and government overreaching. Biden’s comment on This Morning would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. Lastly, whether one opposes or favors Trump, all can acknowledge that but for Trump’s victory, many of these scandals would have never come to light because the Clinton administration would have happily swept all the filth under the rug.
BARACK OBAMA:
THE PSYCHOPATH WHO WOULD BE DICTATOR FUNDED BY HIS
CRIMINAL CRONY BANKSTERS AND REELECTED FOR A THIRD TERM BY
MEXICO
MICHAEL BARONE:
The Lawlessness of the Obama Administration: A never-ending story
JAMES WALSH
THE OBAMA HISPANICAZATION of AMERICA
How the Democrat party surrendered America to Mexico:
“The watchdogs at Judicial Watch discovered documents that reveal how the Obama administration's close coordination with the Mexican government entices Mexicans to hop over the fence and on to the American dole.” Washington Times
“The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals, according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”
SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty.
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS to serve the filthy rich
The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s.
“This study follows reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
EVEN BEFORE HE TOOK OFFICE, BARACK OBAMA HAD SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTERS THAN ANY OTHER PRESIDENT IN HISTORY!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors
are employees of financial industry giants -Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207)
and Citigroup ($358,054).
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