Are Democrats Cornered in Illinois?
The defeat of an amendment establishing a progressive income tax may force the state’s dominant party to pursue real reforms.November 8, 2020One of the most surprising results of the 2020 election was the defeat, in Illinois, of a state constitutional amendment to permit a progressive income tax. The Graduated Income Tax Amendment would have eliminated the Illinois constitutional requirement that tax rates remain flat across incomes. Its defeat is likely the most important political event for the state since I moved here 18 years ago. The proposed change in the state constitution was an effort by the dominant Democratic Party to continue its model of high taxes and high spending to support the base of its political muscle—public-sector unions. The party retains control of the legislature and the governor’s office, but it is politically cornered. Legislatively, it faces a choice between a reform agenda that would undermine its political base or a substantial tax increase on every working citizen.
The amendment went down to defeat for two overriding reasons—one analytical, the other more emotional. The first was that the proposed tax increase was not connected to any steps that would address the structural problems in Illinois finances. Illinois has the nation’s worst bond rating, largely because of its enormous unfunded pension liabilities. But Governor J. B. Pritzker, after taking office in 2019, has proposed no serious pension reforms. Nor has he pursued a deregulatory agenda that would lead to higher economic growth rates that might service these liabilities. And worse still, in connection with the referendum, he did not agree to use a substantial portion of the additional revenue flowing from the progressive tax rates to pay down these liabilities. Instead, much of the new revenue would have been spent on new programs or expanding old ones. His promise to use a mere $100 million of the new lucre to pay down pension liabilities was an insult to Illinois taxpayers who would see another $4 billion extracted from their pocketbooks.
The other reason for the amendments’ failure had to do with more stories of corruption coming out of Springfield. When state representatives are being indicted for extortion, citizens instinctively recoil at handing them more money. Even more problematic for the amendment’s prospects, it became clear that Michael Madigan—speaker of the house, chairman of the state Democratic Party, and undisputed power broker for the last three decades—was under investigation for getting ComEd, the state’s major utility, to hire some of his supporters in return for favors.
That investigation underscores the real scandal in Illinois: not merely the illegal trading in favors but the more damaging legal trading. Public-sector unions support the Democratic Party in return for the party giving them sweetheart deals with the state. Unfunded pension liabilities are the consequence because many politicians hope to retire or move on to the federal level before the full bill comes due.
The cost to Illinois is more than money. Public services have been degraded because unions insist on work rules that protect their most incompetent and ill-motivated members. Nothing illustrates this problem better than the current debate about excessive force by police. My colleague, Max Schanzenbach, has shown that union work rules protect bad apples in the Chicago police force. The governor and legislature, with its Democratic supermajorities, could vote tomorrow to make police discipline no longer a subject of union bargaining. Yet despite their rhetorical support for Black Lives Matter, they have enacted no such legislation. The reason: their political machine is dependent on support from public-sector unions. Throwing the police unions under the bus will raise questions about why they do not improve poor public education in urban districts by doing the same to the teachers’ union.
Governor Pritzker groused at the tax amendment’s defeat, blaming it on the “billionaires and millionaires” who opposed it. Himself a billionaire, Pritzker contributed more than anyone to the referendum campaign. He makes a poor contrast with Ken Griffin, who bankrolled much of the opposition. Unlike Pritzker, Griffin is a self-made businessman, creating substantial jobs in the private sector; Pritzker inherited his money and was not even trusted to run the major businesses of his own family. The governor has also become a byword for tax avoidance. He is apparently under investigation for trying to avoid taxes on a mansion he owned by making its bathrooms inoperable. His substantial offshore trusts have not paid Illinois taxes. Pritzker’s involvement in the referendum sent the message that Illinois will raise taxes on productive citizens who earn their money and create jobs, while leaving the wealth of tax avoiders like himself largely untouched.
The defeat of the Graduated Income Tax Amendment will force a rewriting of the Democratic playbook for governing Illinois. Looking for more revenue, Democrats could now simply try to raise taxes—but those taxes must be levied at the same rate on all earners. The amendment’s resounding defeat suggests that pursuing this option would be an invitation to disaster for Democrats at the next election.
Democrats could try to cut the state’s operating budget, in the hopes that the resulting pain would motivate Illinois voters to embrace the progressive tax amendment in the future. But the amendment lost badly, and the personal circumstances of Madigan and Pritzker make them unlikely champions for a successful retry.
The best way out of the state’s corner is to pass real pension reform and a program for economic growth to make the measures less biting. If a constitutional amendment is necessary to get around existing provisions in the state constitution, so be it. Such an amendment could even be coupled with a change in the flat-tax requirement if that would nevertheless limit the extent of differential tax rates. A combination of amendments might make the overall package more palatable. To be sure, this option would cost Democrats some union support. But their predicament is that the union support they currently enjoy is so costly to the rest of the state that it threatens their continued political dominance. Even in Illinois, good politics can become good governance once all the bad-governance options have been exhausted.
At Least 40 Shot, 5 Fatally, over Weekend in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago
At least 40 people were shot, five fatally, over the weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.
Breitbart News reported over 25 people were shot, four fatally, Friday into Sunday morning alone.
Three of those four earliest fatalities happened Saturday, with the fourth occurring around 1 a.m. Sunday morning.
The fourth fatality came as 25-year-old Lavell Mathis was walking in a vacant lot “in the 4900 block of West Madison Street.” Another man approached him, drew a gun, and opened fire, striking Mathis multiple times. Mathis died from his wounds.
On Sunday night CBS 2 reported a fifth fatality occurred at 6:15 p.m. Sunday, when a 24-year-old man was shot in the back “in the 7800 block of South Carpenter Street in Auburn Gresham.” He was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead.
Over 25 people were shot, four fatally, Friday into Sunday morning in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago. https://t.co/v2awG2VLJW
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) November 8, 2020
At 11:51 p.m. Sunday night CBS 2 noted 38 people had been shot over the weekend, five fatally. On Monday morning the Chicago Sun-Times reported the weekend total was at 43 shooting victims.
The Chicago Tribune reports that 3,560 people were shot in Chicago January 1, 2020, through November 4, 2020. The Tribune’s numbers include fatal and non-fatal shooting victims combined.
As for fatalities alone, the Tribune reports 658 homicides in Lightfoot’s Chicago January 1, 2020, through November 4, 2020.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
WATCH: BLM Protesters Harass Restaurant Patrons During Michigan Protest
Black Lives Matter protesters marched through a group of restaurant patrons in Ann Arbor, Michigan Sunday night. Protesters shouted “Out of the restaurants and into the streets,” at diners seated at sidewalk tables.
Video tweeted by journalist Brendan Gutenschwager posted a video showing a group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Ann Arbor harassed restaurant patrons seated at sidewalk tables. The protesters shouted, “Out of the restaurant and into the streets” at the people trying to enjoy a Sunday evening dinner.
“Out of the restaurants, and into the streets!” Protesters chant as they march past diners at outdoor patios in Ann Arbor #AnnArborProtests #AnnArbor pic.twitter.com/WqVjVafQ2x
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 8, 2020
Marching with ACAB signs past outdoor diners in Ann Arbor #AnnArbor #AnnArborProtests pic.twitter.com/jwXKuCtMzu
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 9, 2020
One older gentleman stood to express his displeasure with the marchers. Someone shouted “Sit down, grandpa,” Gutenschwager reported.
Protesters yell “Sit down, grandpa” at one diner that tried voicing his displeasure with them marching through #AnnArbor #AnnArborProtests pic.twitter.com/r76ukllWfo
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 9, 2020
The protesters continued down the street and passed a police car while shouting, “power to the people.”
Protesters march past cop cars in Ann Arbor, hundreds out in the streets for Black Lives Matter and Aura Rosser #AnnArbor #AnnArborProtests pic.twitter.com/8R9biXYHyc
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 9, 2020
The protesters yelled, “How do you spell murderers? AAPD!” for Ann Arbor Police Department.
“How do you spell murderers? AAPD!” chants through downtown Ann Arbor tonight #AnnArborProtests #AnnArbor pic.twitter.com/1m0UUNnKIy
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 9, 2020
The protests came on the sixth anniversary of the officer-involved shooting death of Aura Rosser, Gutenschwager stated.
Police have shut down the road near the Ann Arbor Police Department for a protest tonight 6 years after the death of Aura Rosser #AnnArborProtests #AnnArbor pic.twitter.com/W5mTSkSX5N
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 8, 2020
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX, Parler @BobPrice, and Facebook.
WATCH: BLM Shouts ‘Burn it Down’ During DC March
During a protest march to Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., BLM members shout “Burn it down.” Members wore all black and carried umbrellas for protection from police crowd dispersal munitions.
“Burn it down,” BLM members shouted as they marched through the streets of DC. The group headed to Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House late Saturday night, journalist Henry Rodgers tweeted.
Separate group has broken off screaming “burn it down”… Dressed in all black. Marching downtown DC. A lot of umbrellas as usual with no rain in forecast: pic.twitter.com/xBi6oMq0N0
— Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) November 8, 2020
The standard refrain of “What do we want? Justice” was followed with calls to “Burn it down!”
“If we don’t get it — Burn it down,” they chanted.
Another journalist, Madison Muller, tweeted a video of BLM protesters chanting, “All cops are bastards” as they approached Black Lives Matter Plaza.
A group of protesters continuing to fight for racial justice is now approaching Black Lives Matter Plaza, where Biden supporters have been celebrating all day. #dcprotests pic.twitter.com/nUZ72yCvUO
— Madison Muller (@g0ingmad) November 8, 2020
Another video from Jesse Franzblau reveals additional “Burn it down” chants from BLM protesters being followed by Metro DC police officers on bicycles.
Protests against racist police violence continue in DC #DefundMPD #DCprotests pic.twitter.com/qrEJtyFfgq
— Jesse Franzblau (@JFranzblau) November 8, 2020
The #BlackLivesMatterPlaza Take over. Fuck your Sweet Carolina because #BlackJoyMatter and #BlackLivesStillMatter #DefendBlackLives #DefundMPD #BlackLivesMatter #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/k29cfEoxmJ
— Black Lives Matter DC (@DMVBlackLives) November 8, 2020
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX, Parler @BobPrice, and Facebook.
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible
government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the
people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance
between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the
statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT
In 2014 the Russell
Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net
worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36
percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they
are more than making that money back.
Between 2009 and 2012,
95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is
the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
Practically every cabinet appointee of Obama’s has close
personal connections to the ruling class, many having come directly from
corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a single executive at a major
financial firm has been criminally tried, much less sent to jail, for their
role in the financial crisis.
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a
low point even within the disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL
GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
This manufactured
crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the Obama administration and both big
business parties to hand over trillions in pension funds and other public
assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat
and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with
third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by
its elite.” ----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the
donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
THE CRONY CLASS:
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES
FASTER under Obama-Biden and their bankster regime than Bush.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/12/obamanomics-at-work-depressed-wages-and.html
“By the time of Bill
Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its
association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton
gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich
(WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of
black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious
“three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population
in the world.”
“Our entire crony
capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden defended the
wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth
inequality.
Wealth
concentration increases in US.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/02/staggering-concentration-of-wealth-in.html
The latest research
on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor Gabriel
Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the global
financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who benefited
directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have seen their
wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the population has
suffered a major decline.
The past 40 years
have seen the consolidation of a plutocratic elite, which has subordinated
every aspect of American society to a single goal: amassing ever more colossal
amounts of personal wealth. The top one percent have captured all of the increase in national
income over the past two decades, and all of the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
“This was not
because of difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the
contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013
that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their
CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
"This is how they will destroy
America from within. The leftist billionaires who
orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing
us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of
millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt
for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being
intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and
human traffickers. These people have no intention
of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have
contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are
those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have
been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least
nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real
estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech
has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his
administration was “the only thing between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright
criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar
bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in
history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the
living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
No, Joe,
There Was No Economic Boom Under Obama
The great
Jackie Gleason once said, "The past remembers better than it lived."
And so it is, apparently, with the Obama years.
BLOG EDITOR: THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN OF 2008 WAS CAUSED ENTIRELY
BY THE VERY BANKSTERS WHO OWNED BARACK OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN FROM DAY ONE. THEY
NOW ALSO OWN KAMALA HARRIS.
ULTIMATELY, THE ‘OBAMA RECOVERY’ SAW THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF
WEALTH TO THE RICH IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
There was
no economic "boom" as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are misremembering.
This was an economy that skidded into a financial ditch and seemingly never
pulled out of it and got back on the prosperity hot lanes until Donald Trump
won the election in November 2016.
You can
mark the real recovery -- an economic inflection point almost the day after
that surprise election outcome.
Every
liberal forecaster and most academic economists had guaranteed America that, if
Trump were elected, the stock market would crash; workers would be flattened;
and, as New York Times economist Paul Krugman famously predicted, the economy
would "never" recover.
Instead,
the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared by 257 points the morning after the
election (that's some crash), and it rose for the next three years, as it has
again over the last several months. A few days after that election,
small-business optimism surged by its most considerable amount ever measured,
going back many decades. Family incomes surged to record-high levels in 2017,
2018 and 2019 as deregulation and tax cuts fueled a powerful engine. In three
years, ordinary people had made more income gains than in eight years under the
Obama-Biden administration.
But now
we are being told a fairy tale that the Obama economy was booming and Biden
miraculously fixed it and Trump "blew it."
Here's
the reality check. Under Barack Obama, the economy barely grew 2% -- rather
pathetic for a "recovery." The people who made the preposterous
bullish claims that Obama saved the economy are the ones who now say the Biden
economic plan will gain millions of jobs.
In the
last year of Obama's presidency, growth shrunk to 1.6%, and the concern was the
possibility of another recession. That's some boom.
If the
Obama recovery had been as rapid as the average recovery, we would have had at
least $1 trillion more GDP by 2016. If we had experienced a Ronald Reagan-style
recovery, the GDP would have been $2.5 trillion larger when Obama left office.
It is almost equivalent to the size of the entire output of the state of
California gone missing.
The first
four years of the Obama presidency were abysmal. The Obama-Biden $800 billion stimulus
plan left unemployment higher every year than their economists had predicted if
we did nothing. What bailed out Obama, ironically enough, was the shale oil and
gas revolution that added millions of jobs despite the Obama-Biden hatred of
fossil fuels. Most of the employment growth came in Texas, Oklahoma and North
Dakota. Meanwhile, most of the green energy subsidies went into failed and
now-bankrupt companies such as Solyndra. And now Biden promises another $2
trillion for "clean energy" corporate welfare subsidies.
Throughout
nearly all of the Biden-Obama presidency, roughly 1 out of 3 people in the
United States rated the economy as "good" or "excellent."
Most of the rest rated the economy "fair" or "poor." That
number surged to about 65% rating the economy as "good" or
"excellent" within a year of Trump's presidency.
People
can debate Trump's handling of the virus and the mistakes that have been made.
It now looks like under any scenario, except an airtight sequestering of those
over the age of 75, smokers, diabetics and severely overweight people, we would
have seen the same or worse results.
Now the
question is which game plan gets the economy and employment back to normal as
quickly as possible. Biden promises a $4 trillion tax hike on almost all U.S.
businesses and investors. That's roughly 5% of everything we produce that gets
snatched away in higher taxes. If you believe that this will get America back
on the fast track, you probably believe Obama caused an economic boom.
Stephen
Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant
with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of "Trumponomics: Inside the
America First Plan to Revive the American Economy."
Unmasking Obama: The Fight to
Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency Hardcover – August 18, 2020
by Jack Cashill (Author)
5 ratings
Unmasking Obama: The Fight to
Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency Hardcover – August 18, 2020
by Jack Cashill (Author)
Jack Cashill’s Unmasking Obama By Thomas
Lifson
To my surprise, Jack Cashill's new book,
Unmasking Obama, couldn't be more relevant to the political struggle facing us
today. In 2020, as in 2008 (and throughout the two Obama presidential terms),
the key to political power is what must be called "information
warfare" (my term, not Jack's) between the mighty establishment media and
the feisty conservative alternative media, which Jack likens to the samizdat
underground commentary in the old Soviet Union. It is the process of the
unmasking of the phony propaganda peddled by the all-powerful establishment by
the resource- and prestige-poor "Lilliputians" (an appropriation of
Jonathan Swift's work that the satirist surely would approve of) that is the
heart of the book. The narrative history presented in Unmasking Obama is
captivating. Jack takes readers along with him as he was both a participant in the
warfare and a historian of it, digging up parts of the elusive truth about the
real Barack Obama in the face of derision and obstruction that came his way.
But Jack is far from the sole hero of the story of the warfare. Because of his
literary detective work, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Bill Ayers
wrote the autobiographical book, Dreams from My Father, that first established
Obama as a serious intellect, Jack enjoyed access to many of the most
formidable truth-tellers about Obama. The book's prologue, in fact, begins with
a phone call Jack received in 2011 from a then little-known lawyer named
Michael Cohen, acting as a lawyer for Donald Trump. Unmasking Obama takes the
reader through the major aspects of the fraudulent picture of Obama that was
painted by the media and political establishments and details how the truth was
uncovered and often partially suppressed by the retaliatory efforts launched in
response. It often resembles detective fiction in the drama of the struggle to
get at the truth and the struggle to prevent that. I hesitate to call it beach
reading, for it is not in any sense fluff, intended to while away time. But it
is vastly entertaining and thought-provoking, and the 218 pages fly by rapidly.
Today, exactly the same struggle is underway between the Lilliputians seeking
to uncover who really is running the front-man candidacy of Joe Biden and the
shadowy movement that is looting and destroying our cities and the coordinated
might of the mass media that spends 95% of its time pushing a party line that
Trump is an unprecedented threat to human civilization and Joe Biden an amiable
and pragmatic centrist. Future historians, if there are any left still
interested and able to dispassionately understand how America came to the current
point of crisis, will find the story told in Unmasking Obama a very helpful
guide. If journalism is the "first draft of history," Unmasking Obama
is a well considered second draft, adding crucial perspective and assessment of
the consequences of the real-time reports. You don't have to wait that long,
though. It went on sale last week, and is well worth your time.
Income inequality grows four times faster under Obama than Bush …. we
bankroll Mexico's welfare state in our borders as the number of Americans
(Legals) sink into poverty! Illegals also get all the jobs!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/09/obamas-assault-on-american-people-on.html
The study noted that, in the aftermath of the Great Depression,
the US undertook policies “during the New Deal [that] permanently reduced
income concentration until the 1970s.” In contrast, the study noted a striking
absence of any measures to reign in social inequality in the present crisis.
Far from it, the Obama administrations’ bank bailouts, austerity program and
wage-cutting policies have vastly expanded the prevalence of social inequality.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM
THE FED'S OLD BOY NETWORK
By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of "The Rise of Tyranny" and
"Global Censorship of Health Information"
December 19, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News, performed an enormous
service for the American public when it sued the Federal Reserve and the
Clearing House Association LLC, an institution created by several of the
nation’s largest banks, to force disclosure of secret loans made by the Federal
Reserve principally to the six largest U.S. banks but also to certain foreign banks.
The treasure trove of evidence ultimately obtained by Bloomberg reveals that
while the public Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailed out leading Wall
Street firms for the whopping sum of $700 billion, the Fed at the same time
doled out some $7.77 trillion (an astronomical sum equal to have the gross
domestic product). To make matters worse, the Fed expanded its emergency
discount lending program, giving tens of billions more to the same banks at an
interest rate of 1%, while the prime lending rate stood at over 3%. The
banks getting these funds often turned them into profit centers, lending out
proceeds from them at higher interest rates and pocketing the difference,
profiting on federal largesse.
The President and his top economic advisers bought the “too
big to fail” concept, the notion that regardless of how profligate,
irresponsible, even criminal, heads of the leading financial institutions in
America had been, it would be worse for the nation if those institutions were
to collapse. Consequently, while pushing a legislative agenda of public
bail-outs, the Obama Administration maintained a secret program of
multi-trillion dollar loans, including billions at below market interest rates.
The principal recipients of the funding were JPMorgan, Bank of America,
Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan
Stanley.
The General Accounting Office audit of the
Federal Reserve revealed that some $16 trillion was supplied in secret loans
from the Federal Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010. The
largest single recipients were Citigroup ($2.5 trillion); Morgan Stanley ($2
trillion); Merrill Lynch ($2 trillion); Bank of America ($1.3 trillion);
Barclays PLC ($868 billion); Bear Stearns ($853 billion); Goldman Sachs ($814
billion); the Royal Bank of Scotland ($541 billion); JP Morgan Chase ($391
billion); and Deutsche Bank ($354 billion).
Bloomberg discovered that while top banks were touting in
their press releases during the crisis that they had fiscal soundness, their
balance sheets were made up primarily of federal funds, most from the Federal
Reserve. Moreover, while many banks paid back the TARP funds, they most often
did so in reliance on the secret receipts of tens of billions of dollars in
Federal Reserve money (in other words, the pay back was in that sense a
charade: federal money paid back federal loans). In short, the
Administration was complicit in the orchestration of a massive fraud on the
American public, making it seem that the banks largely responsible for the
financial crisis were weathering the storm of their own accord when in fact
they were on board the good ship U.S. Taxpayer.
Meanwhile, the bad lending and financial dealing practices
that helped produce the financial crisis have been largely kept in place,
underwritten by the federal government. The top banks suddenly realized that
far from having to suffer ignominy and defeat for their abuses, they would be
kept alive by a seemingly endless flow of federal cash. Indeed, the feds
accepted as collateral for loans securities of virtually no worth and other
properties that would never support private commercial lending. By propping up
the major banks despite their irresponsible lending practices, the federal
government has given them a privileged financial status whereby private lenders
will give them terms far more favorable than their smaller competitors because
they understand the federal government will not let them fail. Economist call
this safety net a “moral hazard” (effective federal underwriting for heightened
risk taking that permits these lenders to profit at above market rates of
return in speculative investing without suffering financial liability for
loss). The amounts doled out by the federal government to the banks could
have paid off as much as one tenth of all of the delinquent mortgages,
Bloomberg determined.
Rather than be forced to take their losses on their enormous
junk portfolios and interbank lending practices, the top six banks were allowed
to keep the junk portfolios, maintain their dubious lending practices, and turn
to the Federal Reserve for money on demand whenever problems arose. Repeatedly
when the banks should have gone under due to poor lending practices and grossly
speculative profiteering, they were complimented by the Federal Reserve,
rescued, and then allowed to tout the falsehood that their success came from
sharp management rather than from secret loans. At the same time, these banks
and others have shut down commercial lending for small businesses nationwide.
The “too big to fail” justification for the massive federal
welfare dole to the top six United States banks was based on a faulty premise.
Without question the demise of the leading banks would entail hardship,
particularly for the employees of those institutions, but the long term
prognosis was good for a restructuring of the financial market through
bankruptcies and takeovers. The alternative to allowing the market to impose
its own swift and harsh corrective involves imposing a massive burden on every
American citizen for generations to come for the trillions spent to prop up a
few dozen Wall Street moguls. Rather than have the taxpayers pay an inflated
sum to keep the banks responsible for the financial crisis alive, the nation
could have spared itself an assumption of massive debt and witnessed the demise
of these banks and the rise of new competing financial institutions based on a
solid financial model.
The Bush and Obama Administration’s role as Santa Claus for
Wall Street has kept from Wall Street the needed lessons that would have
otherwise come from the collapse of the major lending institutions. Painful as
it may seem to some, it is far better to allow the market to experience a
correction for profligate lending practices than to force the American
taxpayers for generations to come to pay for the bad decisions made by a few
and to let those few go without suffering a single consequence beyond temporary
embarrassment.
In the two years since leaving the White House, former
President Barack Obama has spent his time raising and solidifying his position
in the uppermost echelons of the top one percent of Americans. Obama has raked
in exorbitant amounts of money for public speaking events and made deals worth
millions with multiple companies.
Despite his quip, made during the depths of the Great
Recession, that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” there seems to
be no such limit for the Obamas. His family has amassed so much wealth that
even Obama himself said he was surprised in a speech in South Africa last year.
Since he left office, the former president has given an
estimated 50 speeches a year to corporate audiences for hundreds of thousands
of dollars per event. In 2017, the same year he left office, Obama was
officially recognized as one of the top ten highest paid public speakers in the
US.
Just last month, Obama was reported to
have been paid nearly $600,000 to speak at the EXMA conference in Bogotá,
Colombia. According to the Bogotá Post, EXMA is Colombia’s largest marketing
and business event of the year and one of the largest in Latin America. Simply
titled, “A conversation with President Barack Obama,” his talk purportedly
addressed “influential growth strategies” in marketing and other aspects of the
marketing economy.
Colombia is infamous for the corruption prevalent in
its public sector and military,
which costs the country $17 billion a year, equivalent
to 5.3 percent of its GDP.
Colombia exports half of the world’s cocaine and its
drug cartels have been known
to have a hand in the government. Corruption
and drug money are so rampant that
Colombia’s Inspector General likened it to “the
new cartel.”
While Obama warns of the danger of “exploding inequality”
in his speeches, the massive sum granted to him for one night in Bogotá is more
than 10 times what the typical household in the US makes in a year, and 72
times the average worker’s annual income in Colombia.
Notably, Obama’s purse was nearly triple the amount Hillary
Clinton was paid for her notorious speeches to Goldman Sachs that revealed her
and the Democratic Party as Wall Street stooges. Former President Bill Clinton
was paid just $200,000 per speech when he toured Latin America in 2005.
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are
those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have
been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least
nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real
estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech
has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his
administration was “the only thing
between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright
criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar
bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in
history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the
living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
Under Obama’s watch the stock markets soared as the Dow
Jones Industrial Average increased by 149 percent. Meanwhile, the “war on
terror” in the Middle East was expanded with Obama becoming the first president
to spend every day of his two terms at war, much to the delight of the
military-industrial complex.
As the wars raged on and the financial oligarchs fattened
themselves off the ever-increasing mountain of wealth being concentrated at the
top of society, real wages stagnated and an unprecedented opioid overdose
crisis spun out of control. Rising numbers of “deaths of despair” during
Obama’s tenure, particularly among the working class, resulted in a decline in
life expectancy unprecedented in the modern era.
In addition to monetary rewards for his service to the
financial elite and military-intelligence apparatus, Obama has been lavishly
feted by socialites and billionaires such as Richard Branson. Obama was
Branson’s special guest in 2017 on a private island where the pair were seen
kite surfing and enjoying the amenities of Branson’s exclusive resort.
Michelle Obama has also benefited after the family’s
departure from the White House. The couple signed a $65 million book deal with
publishing company Penguin Random House for their political memoirs. Michelle’s
memoir “Becoming” was the best-selling book of 2018 with over 10 million copies
sold. The pair also signed multi-year deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce
content aimed at “fostering dialogue” and promoting diversity in entertainment.
Obama’s lucrative post-White House career hobnobbing with
the corporate, entertainment and financial elite epitomizes the revolving door
relationship between the US government and the private sector. Obama’s rewards
are simply retroactive bribery for services rendered to the capitalist elite,
who have welcomed him with open arms.
In the two years since leaving the White House, former
President Barack Obama has spent his time raising and solidifying his position
in the uppermost echelons of the top one percent of Americans. Obama has raked
in exorbitant amounts of money for public speaking events and made deals worth
millions with multiple companies.
Despite his quip, made during the depths of the Great
Recession, that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” there seems to
be no such limit for the Obamas. His family has amassed so much wealth that
even Obama himself said he was surprised in a speech in South Africa last year.
Since he left office, the former president has given an
estimated 50 speeches a year to corporate audiences for hundreds of thousands
of dollars per event. In 2017, the same year he left office, Obama was
officially recognized as one of the top ten highest paid public speakers in the
US.
Just last month, Obama was reported to
have been paid nearly $600,000 to speak at the EXMA conference in Bogotá,
Colombia. According to the Bogotá Post, EXMA is Colombia’s largest marketing
and business event of the year and one of the largest in Latin America. Simply
titled, “A conversation with President Barack Obama,” his talk purportedly
addressed “influential growth strategies” in marketing and other aspects of the
marketing economy.
Colombia is infamous for the corruption prevalent in
its public sector and military,
which costs the country $17 billion a year, equivalent
to 5.3 percent of its GDP.
Colombia exports half of the world’s cocaine and its
drug cartels have been known
to have a hand in the government. Corruption
and drug money are so rampant that
Colombia’s Inspector General likened it to “the
new cartel.”
While Obama warns of the danger of “exploding inequality”
in his speeches, the massive sum granted to him for one night in Bogotá is more
than 10 times what the typical household in the US makes in a year, and 72
times the average worker’s annual income in Colombia.
Notably, Obama’s purse was nearly triple the amount Hillary
Clinton was paid for her notorious speeches to Goldman Sachs that revealed her
and the Democratic Party as Wall Street stooges. Former President Bill Clinton
was paid just $200,000 per speech when he toured Latin America in 2005.
A key factor in Obama’s newfound and growing wealth are
those who profited from his presidency. A number of his public speeches have
been given to big Wall Street firms and investors. Obama has given at least
nine speeches to Cantor Fitzgerald, a large investment and commercial real
estate firm, and other high-end corporations. According to records, each speech
has been at least $400,000 a clip.
During his presidency, Obama bragged that his
administration was “the only thing
between [Wall Street] and the pitchforks.”
In fact, Obama handed the robber barons and outright
criminals responsible for the 2008–09 financial crisis a multi-trillion-dollar
bailout. His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in
history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the
living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
Under Obama’s watch the stock markets soared as the Dow
Jones Industrial Average increased by 149 percent. Meanwhile, the “war on
terror” in the Middle East was expanded with Obama becoming the first president
to spend every day of his two terms at war, much to the delight of the
military-industrial complex.
As the wars raged on and the financial oligarchs fattened
themselves off the ever-increasing mountain of wealth being concentrated at the
top of society, real wages stagnated and an unprecedented opioid overdose
crisis spun out of control. Rising numbers of “deaths of despair” during
Obama’s tenure, particularly among the working class, resulted in a decline in
life expectancy unprecedented in the modern era.
In addition to monetary rewards for his service to the
financial elite and military-intelligence apparatus, Obama has been lavishly
feted by socialites and billionaires such as Richard Branson. Obama was
Branson’s special guest in 2017 on a private island where the pair were seen
kite surfing and enjoying the amenities of Branson’s exclusive resort.
Michelle Obama has also benefited after the family’s
departure from the White House. The couple signed a $65 million book deal with
publishing company Penguin Random House for their political memoirs. Michelle’s
memoir “Becoming” was the best-selling book of 2018 with over 10 million copies
sold. The pair also signed multi-year deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce
content aimed at “fostering dialogue” and promoting diversity in entertainment.
Obama’s lucrative post-White House career hobnobbing with
the corporate, entertainment and financial elite epitomizes the revolving door
relationship between the US government and the private sector. Obama’s rewards
are simply retroactive bribery for services rendered to the capitalist elite,
who have welcomed him with open arms.
They Destroyed Our Country
“They knew Obama was an unqualified
crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to
happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the
world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet
they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-democrat-party-party-for-illegals.html
CHICAGO
HUCKSTER or simply a PSYCHOPATH?
THE RISE TO POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED
BARACK OBAMA
'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most
frequently used words to describe the president: Pew Research Center
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/06/pew-american-people-legals-see-obama-as.html
The larger fear is that Obama might
be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when
they claim to be all for the common guy.
CRONY
CAPITALISM ...the rise of Barack Obama and the fall of America!
OBAMA'S ASSAULT ON AMERICA -WHY WALL STREET, ILLEGALS, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS
and the 1% LOVE HIM, AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS THE SHAFT TO PAY FOR HIS CRONY
CAPITALISM
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/07/obamas-looting-of-america-crony.html
CEO pay is higher than ever, as is the chasm separating the rich and
super-rich from everyone else. The incomes of the top 1 percent grew more than
11 percent between 2009 and 2011—the first two years of the Obama
“recovery”—while the incomes of the bottom 99 percent actually shrank.
Meanwhile, Obama is pressing forward
with his proposal, outlined in his budget for the next fiscal year, to slash
$400 billion from Medicare and $130 billion from Social Security… AS WELL AS
WIDER OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NO LEGAL NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
OBAMA AND BIDEN: SERVANT
OF THE 1%
Richest one percent
controls nearly half of global wealth
The richest one percent of the world’s
population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last
year.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-barack-obama-and-his-crony.html
The report found that the growth of global
inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the
values of financial assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.
Wealth concentration increases in
US.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/02/staggering-concentration-of-wealth-in.html
The latest research
on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor Gabriel
Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the global
financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who benefited
directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have seen their
wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the population has
suffered a major decline.
The past 40 years
have seen the consolidation of a plutocratic elite, which has subordinated
every aspect of American society to a single goal: amassing ever more colossal
amounts of personal wealth. The top one percent have captured all of the increase in national
income over the past two decades, and all of the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
Joe Biden
Fundraises with Wall Street During Donald Trump Rally
18 Jun 201984
Former Vice President Joe Biden attended a
fundraiser with Wall Street donors during President Donald Trump’s campaign
kickoff rally in Florida on Tuesday.
It was the fourth New York City
fundraiser for Joe Biden in about 24 hours.
The fundraiser was hosted by Eric Mindich, the CEO of Eton Park
Capital Management with about 100 donors including Stephen Scherr, the
executive vice president and chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, H.
Rodgin Cohen the senior chairman at Sullivan & Cromwell as well as former
Clinton and Obama officials
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
“You know what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic
as poor people,” he said. “Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize
anybody who has made money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know,
you all know in your gut what has to be done.”
Biden warned that if Trump won re-election, he would “literally
fundamentally change the nature of who we are and how we function.”
Biden boasted that Obama leaned on him to help bring members of
Congress together during their administration.
“Folks, I believe one of the things I’m pretty good at is
bringing people together,” he said. “Every time we had trouble in the
administration, who got sent to the Hill to settle it? Me. No, not a joke.
Because I demonstrate respect for them.”
Despite a booming economy, many U.S.
households are still just holding on
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-recovery-that-never-happened-except.html
"One of the
premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued
an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008
crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis”
was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that
effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of
the potential impact of central bank actions in driving
inequality between asset owners and labor."
“Our entire crony
capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great
country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN
THINKER.com
“Behind the ostensible government sits
enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no
responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul
the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first
task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
Jim
Carrey: America ‘Doomed’ If We Don’t Regulate Capitalism"
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater
concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is
starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and
working class living standards are driven down by entrenched
unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of
a broader global process."
Obama's Wall Street cabinet
6 April 2009
A series of articles published over the
weekend, based on financial disclosure reports released by the Obama
administration last Friday concerning top White House officials, documents the
extent to which the administration, in both its personnel and policies, is a
political instrument of Wall Street.
Policies that are extraordinarily
favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over the past month by
the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These
include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to
pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated prices, the Auto
Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and
its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’
health benefits and pensions, and the decision by the Financial Accounting
Standards Board (FASB) to weaken “mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit
banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets.
At the same time, Obama has campaigned
against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American International
Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that
he will slash social spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security.
The new financial disclosures reveal that
top Obama advisors directly involved in setting these policies have received
millions from Wall Street firms, including those that have received huge
taxpayer bailouts.
The case of Lawrence Summers, director of
the National Economic Council and Obama’s top economic adviser, highlights the
politically incestuous character of relations between the Obama administration
and the American financial elite.
Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as
a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world,
and another $2.7 million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have
received government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and
$67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives,
Summers walked away with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the
earnings for an entire year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been
pilloried by the Obama administration and the media for their supposedly
exorbitant and “unsustainable” wages.
Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant
conflict of interest revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on
Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields
important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled
financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.”
Summers was a leading advocate of banking
deregulation. As treasury secretary in the second Clinton administration, he
oversaw the lifting of basic financial regulations dating from the 1930s. The
Times article notes that among his current responsibilities is deciding
“whether—and how—to tighten regulation of hedge funds.”
Summers is not an exception. He
is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White
House team that is filled with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president
who parlayed his own political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael Froman, deputy national security
adviser for international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received
more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the
Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus
handed him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup has thus far been the
beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government
guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top
strategist and now senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last
year from two consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will
garner him another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims
personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser,
Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major
clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo
Management.
Louis Caldera, director of the White
House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the
California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last
summer and was placed under federal receivership.
The presence of multi-millionaire Wall
Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama administration
as well. David Stevens, who has been tapped by Obama to head the Federal
Housing Administration, is the president and chief operating officer of Long
and Foster Cos., a real estate brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens
served as a top executive for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage
lending giant that was bailed out and seized by federal regulators in
September.
Neal Wolin, Obama’s selection for deputy
counsel to the president for economic policy, is a top executive at the insurance
giant Hartford Financial Services, where his salary was $4.5 million.
Obama’s Auto Task Force has as its top
advisers two investment bankers with a long resume in corporate downsizing and
asset-stripping.
It is not new for leading figures from
finance to be named to high posts in a US administration. However, there has
traditionally been an effort to demonstrate a degree of independence from Wall
Street in the selection of cabinet officials and high-ranking presidential
aides, often through the appointment of figures from academia or the public
sector. In previous decades, moreover, representatives of the corporate elite
were more likely to come from industry than from finance.
In the Obama administration such
considerations have largely been abandoned.
This will not come as a surprise to those
who critically followed Obama’s election campaign. While he postured before the
electorate as a critic of the war in Iraq and a quasi-populist force for
“change,” he was from the first heavily dependent on the financial and
political backing of powerful financiers in Chicago. Banks, hedge funds
and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him
considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John
McCain.
Friday’s financial disclosures further
expose the bankruptcy of American democracy. Elections have no real effect on
government policy, which is determined by the interests of the financial
aristocracy that dominates both political parties. The working class can fight
for its own interests—for jobs, decent living standards, health care,
education, housing and an end to war.
“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).”
THE GLOBALIST LEGACY OF A SOCIOPATH
Obama warns against “cynicism” at Ohio
State commencement address
7 May 2013
At a commencement address on Sunday at
Ohio State University, President Barack Obama counseled students not to be
“cynical” about government and politics.
There was an almost comically absurd
element to Obama’s remarks, delivered with his characteristic demagogy and
attempted gestures at profundity. In his
first four years in office, along with the first months of his second term,
Obama proceeded to systematically repudiate every campaign pledge and to
deflate every illusion that, with the assistance of a highly coordinated
marketing campaign, led millions of people, including a large number of young
people, to vote for him in 2008.
The Obama administration handed trillions
of dollars to the banks; has overseen a massive attack on public education; is
leading the campaign to slash Social Security and Medicare, the core federal
retirement and health care programs; expanded the war in Afghanistan, led a war
against Libya, and is preparing a new war in Syria; and has asserted the right
to kill anyone, anywhere, including US citizens, without due process.
After this record of service to the
corporate elite, he declares: “When we turn away and get discouraged and
cynical… we grant our silent consent to someone who will gladly claim it.
That’s how we end up with lobbyists who set the agenda; and policies detached
from what middle class families face every day; the well-connected who publicly
demand that Washington stay out of their business—and then whisper in
government’s ear for special treatment that you don’t get.”
The references to the “whispers” of the
wealthy and well-connected is particularly rich, coming only a week after Obama
nominated Penny Pritzker for commerce secretary. The selection of
Pritzker—a longtime Obama confidant, billionaire heiress and owner of a private
equity company—only underscores the fact that the administration is a
government of, by and for the financial aristocracy. She will be the
wealthiest person ever to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Previous to his appointment of Pritzker,
Obama appointed Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC), one of the main financial regulators. White made millions of dollars as an
attorney for banks responsible for the financial crisis, including Bank of
America and JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, called White the “perfect
choice” to head the SEC.
Practically every cabinet appointee of
Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling class, many having come
directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch not a single executive
at a major financial firm has been criminally tried, much less sent to jail,
for their role in the financial crisis.
As a whole, Obama’s speech was
characterized by a complete separation from the actual conditions facing the
graduates he spoke to, who confront joblessness, falling wages, and a lifetime
in debt. “You have every reason to believe that your future is bright,” he told
his audience. “You’re graduating into an economy and a job market that is
steadily healing.”
He added later, “The trajectory of this
great nation should give you hope.” Really? This is under conditions in which
over 11 percent of college graduates are unemployed a year after getting out of
school, and another 16.1 percent simply drop out of the labor force, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most of those who do find a job are paid
barely enough to get by, let alone pay off student loans. Wages for young
adults are falling faster than any other part of the population, and are down
by 6 percent in the past four years.
Most of the students that Obama addressed
Sunday will be so burdened with debt that they will delay or have to completely
put off starting a family or buying a home.
It is not surprising that Obama should
neglect to dwell on this disastrous situation, because his administration bears
responsibility for it. In the government-sponsored restructuring of the auto
industry, the White House insisted that the wages of new-hires be slashed in
half, setting the stage for vast reduction of wages throughout the economy.
Obama sought to paint opposition to the
government’s violation of democratic rights as right-wing hysterics.
“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of
government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity,” Obama said.
“They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should
reject these voices.”
This comes from a president who has
personally overseen the illegal assassination of thousands of people, including
at least three American citizens, in weekly “Terror Tuesday” meetings. The
assertions of executive power have been systematically expanded, going beyond
those claimed even by the Bush administration. The specter of a police
state—the response of the ruling class to growing social opposition—is in fact
lurking around the corner.
The moribund state of American politics,
of which the Obama administration is a principal expression, is, according to
the president, the fault of the American people. “Democracy doesn’t function
without your active participation,” he admonished. If politicians “don’t
represent you the way you want… you’ve got to let them know that’s not okay.
And if they let you down, there’s a built-in day in November where you can
really let them know that’s not okay.”
Such limp efforts to encourage illusions
in the viability of the “democratic process” in the United States will not go
very far. The experience of the past four years has not passed in vain.
Millions of people, including many of those in the audience at Ohio State, are
drawing the quite justified, if “cynical,” conclusion that the entire political
and economic system is rotten to the core.
Mounting evidence of international
collusion in Libor rigging - THE RAPE OF THE ECONOMY BY THE BANKSTERS
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS:
STILL SUCKING THE BLOOD OUT OF AMERICA
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/01/fifty-years-since-johnsons-declaration.html
This manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the Obama
administration and both big business parties to hand over trillions in pension
funds and other public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
BANKSTER SOCIALISM
Dimon’s bank received tens of billions of dollars in
government bailouts and many billions more from the
Obama administration’s ultra-low interest rate and “quantitative
easing” money-printing policies. He told his shareholders that
“socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption” and
“authoritarian government,” and would be “a disaster for our
country.”… UNLESS IT IS SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET!
"This paved the way for the elevation of
Trump, the personification of the criminality and backwardness of the ruling
oligarchy."
BLOG: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF CRONY CAPITALISM IS THE PARTY OF
BANKSTERS AND BOTTOMLESS BANKSTER BAILOUTS... AND NO PRISON TIME!
Former adviser to President Obama and investor Robert Wolf
told Politico that
the financial industry has changed over the last few decades and that Wall
Street-types are vastly more aligned with the Democrat establishment than
Trump’s GOP.
“I don’t think the stereotypes of the industry serve the same
purpose as they used to,” Wolf said. “People who work in corporate America and
financial services may have the same views that she does on 95 percent of the
issues such as income inequality, student loans, climate change, and others.”
Wall Street and Warren have at least one major policy initiative
in common: A full repeal of Trump’s illegal and legal immigration reforms.
This month, Warren released her
immigration platform that includes increasing overall legal immigration to the
U.S. to provide business with an even greater flow of foreign workers to hire
over Americans, as well as a decriminalization of illegal immigration, an
amnesty for all illegal aliens in the country, and an end of Trump’s reforms
such as his immigration ban from terrorist-sponsored countries and reduction of
the refugee resettlement program.
Like Warren, Wall Street executives have railed against Trump’s
immigration agenda — demanding that his zero-tolerance policy at the
U.S.-Mexico border be ended and opposing his travel ban.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has supported amnesty
for illegal aliens since at least 2016 when he announced support for the
infamous “Gang of Eight” amnesty, saying, “Let them stay and let them build
companies.”
Last month, Dimon said amnesty for
illegal aliens was necessary to grow the economy, saying, “If we do these
policies right, America will be growing a lot faster.”
Some of the top multinational banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup,
Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — have come out against Trump’s travel ban
that effectively stopped all
immigration from a handful of foreign countries that sponsor terrorism.
“This is not a policy we support, and I would note that it has
already been challenged in federal court, and some of the order has been
enjoined at least temporarily,” former Goldman Sachs CEO
Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a
letter at the time. “Let me close by quoting from our business principles: ‘For
us to be successful, our men and women must reflect the diversity of the
communities and cultures in which we operate … Being diverse is not optional;
it is what we must be.'”
Meanwhile, Citigroup has promoted mass immigration as a
necessary component to growing the American economy in terms of increasing GDP.
A report released by executives
last year championed migration into the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Germany.
For decades, the big business lobby, Wall Street, and donor
class have said mass immigration is crucial to growing GDP in the U.S. though
research has shown that increasing legal immigration levels to an enormous ten
million admissions a year would only grow GDP by about 2.5 percent. Meanwhile,
Trump’s low-migration, high-wage economy has translated to 3.2
percent annual economic growth.
John Binder is a
reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Illinois governor admits
factories and other workplaces
are center of COVID-19
outbreaks
Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker announced Friday that 52 industrial facilities have been the leading source of COVID-19 outbreaks since the state reopened non-essential businesses in July. The announcement comes several days after news media leaked a list of locations linked to COVID-19 infections, which state officials had concealed from the public.
The list of infected workplaces includes those owned by Amazon, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, Tyson Foods, UPS and other giant corporations. The revelation is a damning exposure of the corporate executives, politicians from both parties, union officials and media spokesmen who have claimed that the largely cosmetic safety protocols implemented in factories and warehouses across the country have protected workers from the deadly contagion.
The number of COVID-19 cases in Illinois has climbed to more than 10,000 per day as the disease tears through the population of United States and Europe. The positivity rate has climbed from a low of 3 percent in September to a high of 12 percent in early November. State officials reported Sunday that 4,300 people are currently hospitalized, of which 833 are in intensive care and 368 on ventilators.
On October 27, Illinois Department of Public Health raised the number of infections that constitutes an “outbreak” in non-healthcare and school settings from two or more cases to five.
The state, led by the billionaire Democratic governor and Democratic supermajority in the state legislature, has been deliberately concealing details of COVID-19 outbreaks in order to prevent actions by workers to shutdown non-essential production and protect their lives.
On October 29, a local NBC and Telemundo affiliate reported the existence of workplace outbreak data the state was maintaining but not releasing to the public. Investigative reporter Sky Chadde indicated the detailed Illinois workplace outbreak data were accidentally shared with him as part of an open-records request. NBC5 and Telemundo subsequently reported their representatives had asked Illinois Department of Public Health officials “about the list and why it remains secret” for weeks. As of this reporting, no answer to that question has been offered.
In reading the leaked data, one gets the sense of reading the findings of a massive experiment on human test subjects. This data is housed at the “Documenting COVID-19 project at Columbia University's Brown Institute for Media Innovation.” The workplaces the state had identified as centers of COVID-19 outbreak resulting in infections in Illinois go through the month of September and include:
- Amazon
- Birdseye Foods
- Blue Cross Blue Shield
- Chicago Transit Authority
- DHL
- Enterprise Car Rental
- Frito Lay
- Ford Motor Co. Chicago
- FCA Belvidere
- Great Lakes US Naval Base
- JBS
- Jel Sert
- MSI Express
- Procter & Gamble
- Rockford Mass Transit
- Smithfield
- Tyson
- United Parcel Service
In addition to these facilities contributing to “community spread” in Illinois, they are also spreading the disease across state borders. Many workers at Illinois industrial sites commute from neighboring states of Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa. The Quad Cities area, home to manufacturing and meatpacking, straddles Iowa and Illinois and is not far from neighboring states Missouri and Wisconsin. Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant is a short distance from the Indiana border.
In addition to industrial facilities, Pritzker noted other leading sources of outbreaks were, in order of spread, unspecified “community events,” churches, colleges, and jails and prisons. The data was compiled based on the work of about 3,300 contact tracers across the state, including volunteers. It is likely, however, that this is an underestimation of the actual number of infections, since contact tracers cannot always reach people who have been infected and large numbers of people are unable to get tested for the disease.
The new data on workplace infections in Illinois is a warning to workers across the US and internationally. It underscores the critical need for workers to build rank-and-file safety committees, independent of the unions, to break the conspiracy of silence about the spread of the disease, enforce health and safety, and organize collective action to shut down unsafe workplaces and protect the lives of workers and their families.
In mid-March, autoworkers, first in Europe, then in North America, carried out a wave of wildcat strikes that forced the shutdown of industries and partial lockdowns across the US, which saved tens of thousands of lives.
But after the passage of the bipartisan CARES Act, which provided a multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America, the Trump administration and state and local officials from both parties began a campaign to herd workers back into the factories to resume the production of corporate profit. The key to reopening the plants were the claims by Democratic governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Pritzker in Illinois that non-essential production could be restarted safely. These were echoed by the United Auto Workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers and other unions.
The latest wave of illness has demonstrated that the current political and economic set-up poses immense and growing social dangers. While Democratic leaders may issue mask mandates, it is the bipartisan “back-to-work” campaign aimed at restoring profitability of businesses that is driving the latest lethal wave of disease. These experiences pose the sharpest warning to workers and young people about an incoming Biden administration, which is just as determined to defend corporate profits as Trump and the Republicans.
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