There are only eight states with a population greater than Los Angeles County where 47% of those with a job are ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS!
This same county pays out $600 million per year in welfare to illegals and has the highest rate of Mexican gang murder in the nation! In fact 95% of all warrants for murder are for illegals from Mexico!
A POSTER ON CRAIGSLIST:
PROTEST!!!!!!!!!WE NEED SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Los Alamitos)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2010-11-13, 9:58AM PST
Reply to: see below
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey guys me and some High School friends are doing a protest today from 11:30-2 at a place called ABC pools, they have a sign outside their store saying "Hiring Americans Only". They also recently raised the Arizona flag in support of the Immigration Law..The address is 10560 Los Alamitos Boulevard......Los Alamitos, CA 90720..Cureently about 7-10 of us are going. PLEASE SUPPORT!
•Location: Los Alamitos
•it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 2058304824
Saturday, November 13, 2010
MEXIFORNIA - Another Case of LA RAZA MEXICAN SUPREMACY
School forces student to remove Old Glory from bike (Hispanics want only the Mexican flag!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2010-11-13, 7:18AM PST
Reply to: comm-dytjv-2057977294@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
School forces student to remove Old Glory from bike
By The Scribe November 12, 2010 8:01 AM
Political correctness runs amuck again. It seems there is a new story involving misguided school officials every week.
This time, eighth grader Cody Alicea is learning a lesson that no parent expects to be taught in an American school.
The latest story comes via KSBW from the Stanislaus School District in Denair, CA where a middle school student is not allowed to fly the American flag from his bicycle because other students have complained.
A Stanislaus County school is forcing a student to take an American flag off of his bike. Thirteen-year-old Cody Alicea put the flag there as a show of support for the veterans in his family. But officials at Denair Middle School told him he couldn't fly it. He said he was told some students had complained.
Obviously, the appropriate response to this would have been for school officials to tell the complainers that this is America, Old Glory is the American flag and it will fly on American soil or even American bikes. Any attempt to prevent it from flying should result in immediate discipline for the student who creates a disturbance or takes an action to interfere with private property.
Thatdoes not happen because school officials are terrified of ACLU lawsuits which immediately follow any attempt to defend American traditions.
Who are the complainers who so dislike our flag? Let's see how Superintendent Edward Parraz described them.
"Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they'll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don't really want," Parraz said. "We want them to appreciate the cultures."
Common sense has obviously deserted the officials of Stanislaus School District. Let's hope there are enough Americans left in this area of California to bring it back.
-----
UPDATE: The good news is that there are still patriotic Americans in California.
A California school has done a U-turn after it forced a student to remove an American flag attached to his bike, saying the Stars and Stripes could spur racial tensions on campus.
Now, after a public outcry, the school has decided that the grand old flag can come back.
"I'm supposed to be free in this country and I should be able to fly the flag wherever I want to," he (Cody) told Fox40.
Read more at Fox News...
You betcha, buddy. You may be only 13 but you taught everyone an important civics lesson.
Categories:Education
Read more: http://www.gopusa.com/fresh-ink/2010/11/school-forces-student-to-remove-old-glory-from-bike.php#ixzz15Axe0OMh
•Location: Hispanics want only the Mexican flag!
•it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 2057977294
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2010-11-13, 7:18AM PST
Reply to: comm-dytjv-2057977294@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
School forces student to remove Old Glory from bike
By The Scribe November 12, 2010 8:01 AM
Political correctness runs amuck again. It seems there is a new story involving misguided school officials every week.
This time, eighth grader Cody Alicea is learning a lesson that no parent expects to be taught in an American school.
The latest story comes via KSBW from the Stanislaus School District in Denair, CA where a middle school student is not allowed to fly the American flag from his bicycle because other students have complained.
A Stanislaus County school is forcing a student to take an American flag off of his bike. Thirteen-year-old Cody Alicea put the flag there as a show of support for the veterans in his family. But officials at Denair Middle School told him he couldn't fly it. He said he was told some students had complained.
Obviously, the appropriate response to this would have been for school officials to tell the complainers that this is America, Old Glory is the American flag and it will fly on American soil or even American bikes. Any attempt to prevent it from flying should result in immediate discipline for the student who creates a disturbance or takes an action to interfere with private property.
Thatdoes not happen because school officials are terrified of ACLU lawsuits which immediately follow any attempt to defend American traditions.
Who are the complainers who so dislike our flag? Let's see how Superintendent Edward Parraz described them.
"Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they'll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don't really want," Parraz said. "We want them to appreciate the cultures."
Common sense has obviously deserted the officials of Stanislaus School District. Let's hope there are enough Americans left in this area of California to bring it back.
-----
UPDATE: The good news is that there are still patriotic Americans in California.
A California school has done a U-turn after it forced a student to remove an American flag attached to his bike, saying the Stars and Stripes could spur racial tensions on campus.
Now, after a public outcry, the school has decided that the grand old flag can come back.
"I'm supposed to be free in this country and I should be able to fly the flag wherever I want to," he (Cody) told Fox40.
Read more at Fox News...
You betcha, buddy. You may be only 13 but you taught everyone an important civics lesson.
Categories:Education
Read more: http://www.gopusa.com/fresh-ink/2010/11/school-forces-student-to-remove-old-glory-from-bike.php#ixzz15Axe0OMh
•Location: Hispanics want only the Mexican flag!
•it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 2057977294
Obama's Agenda: The Rich & Illegals
Obama… JUST A PERFORMER PLAYING THE ROLE OF GEORGE W BUSH…!
His agenda is war, the rich, banksters and more illegals to keep wages depressed! WHO PAYS FOR ALL THIS CORRUPTION?
AND THE LOOTING OF AMERICAN ROLLS ON AND ON!
*
Obama moves toward extending Bush tax cuts
A government of, by, and for the rich
By Tom Eley
13 November 2010
The Obama White House’s move toward extending Bush-era tax cuts for the rich, in the wake of the midterm election, demonstrates the stranglehold of the financial aristocracy over government and both the Republican and Democratic parties.
The latest indication that the administration will support extending the tax cuts for the top income bracket came from Obama’s closest adviser, David Axelrod. In an interview with the Huffington Post published Wednesday, Axelrod claimed that continuing the give-away to the rich was the only way to keep middle-class tax cuts in place.
“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” Axelrod said. “The world of what it takes to get this done.”
Responding to questions about Axelrod’s comments in Seoul, Obama signaled his readiness to accept an extension. “My number-one priority is making sure that we make the middle-class tax cuts permanent,” he said. “I continue to believe that extending permanently the upper-income tax cuts would be a mistake and that we can’t afford it. And my hope is, is that somewhere in between there we can find some sort of solution” (emphasis added).
In fact, the temporary suspension of the cuts, enacted in 2001 and 2003, is a step toward their permanent implementation. This was acknowledged by Axelrod, who said “there are concerns” that Congress will, in the words of the Huffington Post, “kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again.”
Obama ran for office two years ago on the promise to end the tax cuts for the wealthy, which would expire at the end of December without Congressional intervention, along with middle-class tax rate reductions. Then, in the lead-up to the midterm elections, he touted his opposition to Republicans who were calling for a two-year extension of all the Bush tax cuts.
Yet with large majorities remaining in both houses of Congress through December, Obama has already surrendered to the Republicans’ demands. As a matter of fact, the extension of the tax cuts for the rich can only be put in place by the lame duck Democratic Congress.
The cowardice of the Obama administration and the Democrats is surpassed only by their dishonesty. In late September the Democratic Congressional leadership determined to table the issue of a tax cut extension for the rich until after the elections; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid canceled plans to introduce and vote on a measure that would have extended the cuts for households earning $250,000 or less, but allow them to expire for those above that income level.
The move was made precisely because sections of the Democratic leadership anticipated the results of the election, and preferred to delay a vote until they could justify giving a handout to the wealthy by citing the Republican victory.
Moderate and right-wing Democratic legislators—who had earlier signaled their discomfort with allowing the tax cuts for the rich to expire—will now claim that the American people favor the tax cuts and will very likely provide the necessary votes to secure their extension. This will at the same time free up liberal Democrats to voice opposition to the tax-cut extensions, safe in the knowledge that the wealthy will keep their tax cuts.
The bipartisan consensus in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy elite was revealed again this week by Obama’s handpicked co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton administration chief of staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, issued a tax “reform” that would actually lower the top end income tax rate by one third, from 35 percent to 23 percent, along with a similar cut in the corporate tax rate. This supposed budget-balancing plan would rest almost entirely on savage cuts to social spending (including Social Security and Medicare), new taxes imposed on the broad masses, and cuts to the jobs and pay of government workers.
In line with Reid’s decision to delay a vote on the extension of the tax cuts for the rich, Bowles and Simpson waited until after the election to make public their plan. This open flouting of the democratic process is what the corporate-controlled media calls “political courage.” Significantly, the plan has won the praise of both the right-wing Wall Street Journal and the liberal New York Times.
The extension of the Bush-era tax breaks and the Bowles-Simpson proposal would most benefit a tiny layer of billionaires and multimillionaires, who have gorged themselves from decades of destructive financial speculation and cuts to the progressive income tax.
The current high-end tax rate of 35 percent—applying to those who make more than $373,000 per year—has fallen from 91 percent in the early 1960s. It is the lowest high-end rate among the major industrial economies.
The results of these tax policies are extreme levels of social polarization. As measured by the United Nation’s Gini index, income inequality in the US is the worst among the advanced economies. The most recent data placed the US on par with Turkmenistan and Ghana, and slightly more unequal than Sri Lanka. The top 1 percent of US households monopolizes nearly 20 percent of all US income, up from about 8 percent in the late 1960s. Wealth inequality is even more marked. As of 2007, the top 1 percent of US households controlled 42.7 percent of all financial wealth. The bottom 80 percent shared 7 percent.
These statistics measured social inequality before the financial crisis of 2007 and the subsequent social crisis, which has driven down median US household wealth by 36.1 percent, according to economist Edward Wolff.
The economic crisis, which was itself triggered by the money-mad speculation of the financial elite, has been manipulated to effect what must surely be the largest redistribution of wealth in history, from the working masses to the extremely rich. Thanks to the Bush and Obama administrations and both big business parties, trillions have been handed over to the biggest banks, which have in turn showered their executives and top stockholders with record payouts and a doubling of share values. For the population there is joblessness, foreclosures, hunger and—in order to pay for the bailout of the banks—massive cuts to social spending.
The near certainty of the perpetuation of the Bush-era tax cuts for the extremely wealthy is the clearest evidence yet that the financial aristocracy’s death grip over government and the economy must be broken. This requires an independent mass movement of the working class, mobilized behind a program of social equality and democratic control over the economy.
WSWS.ORG…. GET ON THEIR FEE NO ADS E-NEWS!
*
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA
POVERTY RISES AS WALL ST. BILLIONAIRES WHINE!
These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.
*
While 43.6 million Americans live in poverty, the richest men of finance sure are getting pissy. First Steve Schwartzman, head of the Blackrock private equity company, compares the Obama administration's effort to close billionaires' tax loopholes to "the Nazi invasion of Poland." Then hedge fund mogul David Loeb announces that he's abandoning the Democrats because they're violating "this country's core founding principles" -- including "non-punitive taxation, Constitutionally-guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority, and an inexorable right of self-determination." Instead of showing their outrage about the spread of poverty in the richest nation on Earth, the super-rich want us to pity them?
Why are Wall Street's billionaires so whiny? Is it really possible to make $900,000 an hour (not a typo -- that's what the top ten hedge fund managers take in), and still feel aggrieved about the way government is treating you? After you've been bailed out by the federal government to the tune of $10 trillion (also not a typo) in loans, asset swaps, liquidity and other guarantees, can you really still feel like an oppressed minority?
You'd think the Wall Street moguls would be thankful. Not just thankful -- down on their knees kissing the ground taxpayers walk on and hollering hallelujah at the top of their lungs! These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.
Instead, standing before us are these troubled souls, haunted by visions of persecution. Why?
The world changed. Before the bubble burst, these people walked on water. Their billions proved that they were the best and the brightest -- not just captains of the financial universe, but global elites who had earned a place in history. They donated serious money to worthy causes -- and political campaigns. No one wanted to mess with them.
But then came the crash. And the things changed for the big guys -- not so much financially as spiritually. Plebeians, including me, are asking pointed questions and sometimes even being heard, both on the Internet and in the mainstream media. For the first time in a generation, the public wants to know more about these emperors and their new clothes. For instance:
• What do these guys actually do that earns them such wealth?
• Is what they do productive and useful for society? Is there any connection between what they earn and what they produce for society?
• Did they help cause the crash?
• Did these billionaires benefit from the bailouts? If so, how much?
• Are they exacerbating the current unemployment and poverty crisis with their shenanigans?
• Why shouldn't we eliminate their tax loopholes (like carried interest)?
• Should their sky-high incomes be taxed at the same levels as during the Eisenhower years?
• Can we create the millions of jobs we need if the billionaires continue to skim off so much of our nation's wealth??
• Should we curb their wealth and political influence?
How dare we ask such questions! How dare we consider targeting them for special taxes? How dare we even think about redistributing THEIR incomes... even if at the moment much of their money comes directly from our bailouts and tax breaks?
It's true that the billionaires live in a hermetically sealed world. But that doesn't mean they don't notice the riffraff nipping at their heels. And they don't like it much. So they've gotten busy doing what billionaires do best: using their money to shield themselves. They're digging into their bottomless war chests, tapping their vast connections and using their considerable influence to shift the debate away from them and towards the rest of us.
We borrowed too much, not them. We get too much health care, not them. We retire too soon, not them. We need to tighten our belts while they pull in another $900,000 an hour. And if we want to cure poverty, we need to get the government to leave Wall Street alone. Sadly, their counter-offensive is starting to take hold.
How can this happen? Many Americans want to relate to billionaires. They believe that all of us are entitled to make as much as we can, pretty much by any means necessary. After all, maybe someday you or I will strike it rich. And when we do, we sure don't want government regulators or the taxman coming around!
Billionaires are symbols of American individual prowess and virility. And if we try to hold them back or slow them down, we're on the road to tyranny. Okay, the game is rigged in their favor. Okay, they got bailed out while the rest of us didn't -- especially the 29 million people who are jobless or forced into part-time work. But what matters most is that in America, nothing can interfere with individual money-making. That only a few of us actually make it into the big-time isn't a bad thing: It's what makes being rich so special. So beware: If we enact even the mildest of measures to rein in Wall Street billionaires, we're on the path to becoming North Korea.
Unfortunately, if we don't adjust our attitudes, we can expect continued high levels of unemployment and more people pushed below the poverty line. It's not clear that our economy will ever recover as long as the Wall Street billionaires keep siphoning off so much of our wealth. How can we create jobs for the many while the few are walking off with $900,000 an hour with almost no new jobs to show for it? In the old days, even robber barons built industries that employed people -- steel, oil, railroads. Now the robber barons build palaces out of fantasy finance. We can keep coddling our financial billionaires and let our economy spiral down, or we can make them pay their fair share so we can create real jobs. These guys crashed the economy, they killed billions of jobs, and now they're cashing in on our bailout. They owe us. They owe the unemployed. They owe the poor.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was no radical, but he accepted the reality: If America was going to prosper -- and pay for its costly Cold War -- the super-rich would have to pony up. It was common knowledge that when the rich grew too wealthy, they used their excess incomes to speculate. In the 1950s, memories of the Great Depression loomed large, and people knew that a skewed distribution of income only fueled speculative booms and disastrous busts. On Ike's watch, the effective marginal tax rate for those earning over $3 million (in today's dollars) was over 70 percent. The super-rich paid. As a nation we respected that other important American value: advancing the common good.
For the last thirty years we've been told that making as much as you can is just another way of advancing the common good. But the Great Recession erased that equation: The Wall Streeters who made as much as they could undermined the common good. It's time to balance the scales. This isn't just redistribution of income in pursuit of some egalitarian utopia. It's a way to use public policy to reattach billionaires to the common good.
It's time to take Eisenhower's cue and redeploy the excessive wealth Wall Street's high rollers have accumulated. If we leave it in their hands, they'll keep using it to construct speculative financial casinos. Instead, we could use that money to build a stronger, more prosperous nation. We could provide our people with free higher education at all our public colleges and universities -- just like we did for WWII vets under the GI Bill of Rights (a program that returned seven dollars in GDP for every dollar invested). We could fund a green energy Manhattan Project to wean us from fossil fuels. An added bonus: If we siphon some of the money off Wall Street, some of our brightest college graduates might even be attracted not to high finance but to jobs in science, education and healthcare, where we need them.
Of course, this pursuit of the common good won't be easy for the billionaires (and those who indentify with them.). But there's just no alternative for this oppressed minority: They're going to have to learn to live on less than $900,000 an hour.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
His agenda is war, the rich, banksters and more illegals to keep wages depressed! WHO PAYS FOR ALL THIS CORRUPTION?
AND THE LOOTING OF AMERICAN ROLLS ON AND ON!
*
Obama moves toward extending Bush tax cuts
A government of, by, and for the rich
By Tom Eley
13 November 2010
The Obama White House’s move toward extending Bush-era tax cuts for the rich, in the wake of the midterm election, demonstrates the stranglehold of the financial aristocracy over government and both the Republican and Democratic parties.
The latest indication that the administration will support extending the tax cuts for the top income bracket came from Obama’s closest adviser, David Axelrod. In an interview with the Huffington Post published Wednesday, Axelrod claimed that continuing the give-away to the rich was the only way to keep middle-class tax cuts in place.
“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” Axelrod said. “The world of what it takes to get this done.”
Responding to questions about Axelrod’s comments in Seoul, Obama signaled his readiness to accept an extension. “My number-one priority is making sure that we make the middle-class tax cuts permanent,” he said. “I continue to believe that extending permanently the upper-income tax cuts would be a mistake and that we can’t afford it. And my hope is, is that somewhere in between there we can find some sort of solution” (emphasis added).
In fact, the temporary suspension of the cuts, enacted in 2001 and 2003, is a step toward their permanent implementation. This was acknowledged by Axelrod, who said “there are concerns” that Congress will, in the words of the Huffington Post, “kick the can down the road in the future by passing temporary extensions for the wealthy time and time again.”
Obama ran for office two years ago on the promise to end the tax cuts for the wealthy, which would expire at the end of December without Congressional intervention, along with middle-class tax rate reductions. Then, in the lead-up to the midterm elections, he touted his opposition to Republicans who were calling for a two-year extension of all the Bush tax cuts.
Yet with large majorities remaining in both houses of Congress through December, Obama has already surrendered to the Republicans’ demands. As a matter of fact, the extension of the tax cuts for the rich can only be put in place by the lame duck Democratic Congress.
The cowardice of the Obama administration and the Democrats is surpassed only by their dishonesty. In late September the Democratic Congressional leadership determined to table the issue of a tax cut extension for the rich until after the elections; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid canceled plans to introduce and vote on a measure that would have extended the cuts for households earning $250,000 or less, but allow them to expire for those above that income level.
The move was made precisely because sections of the Democratic leadership anticipated the results of the election, and preferred to delay a vote until they could justify giving a handout to the wealthy by citing the Republican victory.
Moderate and right-wing Democratic legislators—who had earlier signaled their discomfort with allowing the tax cuts for the rich to expire—will now claim that the American people favor the tax cuts and will very likely provide the necessary votes to secure their extension. This will at the same time free up liberal Democrats to voice opposition to the tax-cut extensions, safe in the knowledge that the wealthy will keep their tax cuts.
The bipartisan consensus in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy elite was revealed again this week by Obama’s handpicked co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton administration chief of staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, issued a tax “reform” that would actually lower the top end income tax rate by one third, from 35 percent to 23 percent, along with a similar cut in the corporate tax rate. This supposed budget-balancing plan would rest almost entirely on savage cuts to social spending (including Social Security and Medicare), new taxes imposed on the broad masses, and cuts to the jobs and pay of government workers.
In line with Reid’s decision to delay a vote on the extension of the tax cuts for the rich, Bowles and Simpson waited until after the election to make public their plan. This open flouting of the democratic process is what the corporate-controlled media calls “political courage.” Significantly, the plan has won the praise of both the right-wing Wall Street Journal and the liberal New York Times.
The extension of the Bush-era tax breaks and the Bowles-Simpson proposal would most benefit a tiny layer of billionaires and multimillionaires, who have gorged themselves from decades of destructive financial speculation and cuts to the progressive income tax.
The current high-end tax rate of 35 percent—applying to those who make more than $373,000 per year—has fallen from 91 percent in the early 1960s. It is the lowest high-end rate among the major industrial economies.
The results of these tax policies are extreme levels of social polarization. As measured by the United Nation’s Gini index, income inequality in the US is the worst among the advanced economies. The most recent data placed the US on par with Turkmenistan and Ghana, and slightly more unequal than Sri Lanka. The top 1 percent of US households monopolizes nearly 20 percent of all US income, up from about 8 percent in the late 1960s. Wealth inequality is even more marked. As of 2007, the top 1 percent of US households controlled 42.7 percent of all financial wealth. The bottom 80 percent shared 7 percent.
These statistics measured social inequality before the financial crisis of 2007 and the subsequent social crisis, which has driven down median US household wealth by 36.1 percent, according to economist Edward Wolff.
The economic crisis, which was itself triggered by the money-mad speculation of the financial elite, has been manipulated to effect what must surely be the largest redistribution of wealth in history, from the working masses to the extremely rich. Thanks to the Bush and Obama administrations and both big business parties, trillions have been handed over to the biggest banks, which have in turn showered their executives and top stockholders with record payouts and a doubling of share values. For the population there is joblessness, foreclosures, hunger and—in order to pay for the bailout of the banks—massive cuts to social spending.
The near certainty of the perpetuation of the Bush-era tax cuts for the extremely wealthy is the clearest evidence yet that the financial aristocracy’s death grip over government and the economy must be broken. This requires an independent mass movement of the working class, mobilized behind a program of social equality and democratic control over the economy.
WSWS.ORG…. GET ON THEIR FEE NO ADS E-NEWS!
*
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA
POVERTY RISES AS WALL ST. BILLIONAIRES WHINE!
These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.
*
While 43.6 million Americans live in poverty, the richest men of finance sure are getting pissy. First Steve Schwartzman, head of the Blackrock private equity company, compares the Obama administration's effort to close billionaires' tax loopholes to "the Nazi invasion of Poland." Then hedge fund mogul David Loeb announces that he's abandoning the Democrats because they're violating "this country's core founding principles" -- including "non-punitive taxation, Constitutionally-guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority, and an inexorable right of self-determination." Instead of showing their outrage about the spread of poverty in the richest nation on Earth, the super-rich want us to pity them?
Why are Wall Street's billionaires so whiny? Is it really possible to make $900,000 an hour (not a typo -- that's what the top ten hedge fund managers take in), and still feel aggrieved about the way government is treating you? After you've been bailed out by the federal government to the tune of $10 trillion (also not a typo) in loans, asset swaps, liquidity and other guarantees, can you really still feel like an oppressed minority?
You'd think the Wall Street moguls would be thankful. Not just thankful -- down on their knees kissing the ground taxpayers walk on and hollering hallelujah at the top of their lungs! These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits.
These billionaires don't even have to worry about serious financial reforms. The paltry legislation that squeaked through Congress did nothing to end too big and too interconnected to fail. In fact, the biggest firms got even bigger as they gobbled up troubled banks, with the generous support of the federal government. No bank or hedge fund was broken up. Nobody was forced to pay a financial transaction tax. None of the big boys had a cap placed on their astronomical wealth. No one's paying reparations for wrecking the US economy. The big bankers are still free to create and trade the very derivatives that catapulted us into this global crisis. You'd think the billionaires would be praying on the altar of government and erecting statues on Capital Hill in honor of St. Bailout.
Instead, standing before us are these troubled souls, haunted by visions of persecution. Why?
The world changed. Before the bubble burst, these people walked on water. Their billions proved that they were the best and the brightest -- not just captains of the financial universe, but global elites who had earned a place in history. They donated serious money to worthy causes -- and political campaigns. No one wanted to mess with them.
But then came the crash. And the things changed for the big guys -- not so much financially as spiritually. Plebeians, including me, are asking pointed questions and sometimes even being heard, both on the Internet and in the mainstream media. For the first time in a generation, the public wants to know more about these emperors and their new clothes. For instance:
• What do these guys actually do that earns them such wealth?
• Is what they do productive and useful for society? Is there any connection between what they earn and what they produce for society?
• Did they help cause the crash?
• Did these billionaires benefit from the bailouts? If so, how much?
• Are they exacerbating the current unemployment and poverty crisis with their shenanigans?
• Why shouldn't we eliminate their tax loopholes (like carried interest)?
• Should their sky-high incomes be taxed at the same levels as during the Eisenhower years?
• Can we create the millions of jobs we need if the billionaires continue to skim off so much of our nation's wealth??
• Should we curb their wealth and political influence?
How dare we ask such questions! How dare we consider targeting them for special taxes? How dare we even think about redistributing THEIR incomes... even if at the moment much of their money comes directly from our bailouts and tax breaks?
It's true that the billionaires live in a hermetically sealed world. But that doesn't mean they don't notice the riffraff nipping at their heels. And they don't like it much. So they've gotten busy doing what billionaires do best: using their money to shield themselves. They're digging into their bottomless war chests, tapping their vast connections and using their considerable influence to shift the debate away from them and towards the rest of us.
We borrowed too much, not them. We get too much health care, not them. We retire too soon, not them. We need to tighten our belts while they pull in another $900,000 an hour. And if we want to cure poverty, we need to get the government to leave Wall Street alone. Sadly, their counter-offensive is starting to take hold.
How can this happen? Many Americans want to relate to billionaires. They believe that all of us are entitled to make as much as we can, pretty much by any means necessary. After all, maybe someday you or I will strike it rich. And when we do, we sure don't want government regulators or the taxman coming around!
Billionaires are symbols of American individual prowess and virility. And if we try to hold them back or slow them down, we're on the road to tyranny. Okay, the game is rigged in their favor. Okay, they got bailed out while the rest of us didn't -- especially the 29 million people who are jobless or forced into part-time work. But what matters most is that in America, nothing can interfere with individual money-making. That only a few of us actually make it into the big-time isn't a bad thing: It's what makes being rich so special. So beware: If we enact even the mildest of measures to rein in Wall Street billionaires, we're on the path to becoming North Korea.
Unfortunately, if we don't adjust our attitudes, we can expect continued high levels of unemployment and more people pushed below the poverty line. It's not clear that our economy will ever recover as long as the Wall Street billionaires keep siphoning off so much of our wealth. How can we create jobs for the many while the few are walking off with $900,000 an hour with almost no new jobs to show for it? In the old days, even robber barons built industries that employed people -- steel, oil, railroads. Now the robber barons build palaces out of fantasy finance. We can keep coddling our financial billionaires and let our economy spiral down, or we can make them pay their fair share so we can create real jobs. These guys crashed the economy, they killed billions of jobs, and now they're cashing in on our bailout. They owe us. They owe the unemployed. They owe the poor.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was no radical, but he accepted the reality: If America was going to prosper -- and pay for its costly Cold War -- the super-rich would have to pony up. It was common knowledge that when the rich grew too wealthy, they used their excess incomes to speculate. In the 1950s, memories of the Great Depression loomed large, and people knew that a skewed distribution of income only fueled speculative booms and disastrous busts. On Ike's watch, the effective marginal tax rate for those earning over $3 million (in today's dollars) was over 70 percent. The super-rich paid. As a nation we respected that other important American value: advancing the common good.
For the last thirty years we've been told that making as much as you can is just another way of advancing the common good. But the Great Recession erased that equation: The Wall Streeters who made as much as they could undermined the common good. It's time to balance the scales. This isn't just redistribution of income in pursuit of some egalitarian utopia. It's a way to use public policy to reattach billionaires to the common good.
It's time to take Eisenhower's cue and redeploy the excessive wealth Wall Street's high rollers have accumulated. If we leave it in their hands, they'll keep using it to construct speculative financial casinos. Instead, we could use that money to build a stronger, more prosperous nation. We could provide our people with free higher education at all our public colleges and universities -- just like we did for WWII vets under the GI Bill of Rights (a program that returned seven dollars in GDP for every dollar invested). We could fund a green energy Manhattan Project to wean us from fossil fuels. An added bonus: If we siphon some of the money off Wall Street, some of our brightest college graduates might even be attracted not to high finance but to jobs in science, education and healthcare, where we need them.
Of course, this pursuit of the common good won't be easy for the billionaires (and those who indentify with them.). But there's just no alternative for this oppressed minority: They're going to have to learn to live on less than $900,000 an hour.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
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