Sen. Bernie Sanders: No to Oligarchy
(h/t HuffPo)
Thank God there's at least one senator who is speaking sense:
The American people are hurting. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, life savings and their ability to get a higher education. Today, some 22 percent of our children live in poverty, and millions more have become dependent on food stamps for their food.And while the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the middle class, the truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance. Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.
But, not everybody is hurting. While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.
The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.
Go read the entire article, it's well worth your time.
Oligarchy is really the only way to describe this. The Republican platform benefits such a small percentage of Americans. And that's the way they prefer it. Social programs are democratizing and give voice to the unwashed masses, which only get in the way of the elite. That's why there's been a systematic dismantling of social programs since Reagan.
Meanwhile, the Republicans keep just a high enough percentage of authoritarian-minded voting against their best interests by preying on their worst instincts--fear of the Other, where the other is alternatively people of color, women seeking reproductive rights, gays, undocumented workers, or any other variation on a theme. The oligarchy points to these fellow-victimized groups as the ones to blame for the poor condition of your life, rather than admit that it is their policies: free trade, union-busting, corporations off-shoring, and the dismantling of social safety nets that hurt you.
And they just flat out lie to you. Other countries manage to offer systems that enable there to be a thriving middle class, social programs like universal healthcare, paid college educations, public transit, child care, and job training. But you'll never hear the truth about how well these programs work, because that might clue in the masses at just how much is kept from us.
Even worse, alternatives to U.S.-style capitalism -- and its attendant inequality, poverty and instability -- are harder than ever to glimpse, as the sovereign debt crisis across the Atlantic distracts U.S media and politicians, once again, from the impressive achievements of European social democracies. That's a shame, because if we can't imagine a better world, our political and economic status quo appears inevitable and uncontestable, much to the benefit of those in power.
Thankfully, we have Thomas Geoghegan's new book Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life (The New Press, 2010) to remind us that things like tax cuts for the wealthy, a healthcare system controlled by corporations and privatized retirement schemes are not inevitable.
The book's central mission--to detail a more humane form of capitalism -- couldn't be more relevant to overworked Americans quietly thinking to themselves, there has to be a better way. Indeed, there is: Contrary to apocalyptic U.S. news articles, European-style social democracy is not about to go extinct. Dig a little deeper and you'll discover that Europe is not an undifferentiated mass of debt, socialist profligacy and unemployment.
The article goes on to specifically mention Germany's economy, which has a thriving industrial base and yet protects its labor force. And yes, they do pay higher taxes, but they get that money back in services that make their lives better.
Unfortunately, we have the right wing noise machine here that will prevent us from having an honest discussion about this. Because the oligarchy never wants anything that might challenge their power.
Talks like a real democrat. The ones we use to elect on the democrat ticket..
Shame most of the democrats do not follow his advice.
How in the h... did we get all these corporate republicans elected as democrats.
Just ask Emanuel and his group which has taking over our democrat party.
None
Yes we can!
brings common sense...along with Grayson...Call the republican fools out.
The repubs are using Israeli propaganda tactics to push their agenda from Hasbara Campus Handbook :"Propaganda is used by those who want to communicate in ways that engage the emotions and downplay rationality, in an attempt to promote a certain message."
The Republican "Southern Strategy" brought the Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party into the Republican after LBJ signed Civil Rights Act. That's a big part of the reason Reagan got elected and the country lurched to the Right after the Left's successes in the 60s.
To counter the theft of their Southern constituency the Democratic leadership decided to court the Corporate interests who had once principally backed the Republicans. That's how Clinton and now Obama got elected and that's the constituency they both have served. And that's how their counterparts in the House and Senate have been elected.
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
and tell us we just have to accept it. The Republicans would be worse. That's an excuse they've used forever.
...on the Democrat ticket, should read, ...on the Democratic ticket. Democratic being an adjective modifying the subject, ticket. Not unlike other Bushisms, and Frank Luntz talking points, or Palin speak: can you say, refudiate? You betcha
respond to Pete2069 if ever. That kind of laguage makes them sound just like a teabagger.
Seriously, what's with this pretense that the Dems have been this bastion of the progressive left through their history, when their historical pattern points to a different conclusion altogether?
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
He talks the talk, but bends to the corporate leadership, just like every other *progessive* in Congress.
you're as pathetic ass they get. Why don't you go to your new home at ass of sickos.
The truth is neither Sanders nor any other *progesssive* in Congress has done anything to stand up legislatively to the Republicans or to their own conservative leadership. In fact, every last one of them voted for the corporate-written HCR bill. These people are clearly unreliable as representatives of the left, and actually, their only reliable characteristic is insincerity.
could be beets, who knows? could be peaches.
but no one else is laying it out like that, and i can think of at least one person who has what they call the "bully pulpit".
You sir, are what we call a free radical.
Quarks are family people.
They stick together like glue.
The rePugs would love to separate us.
But we are the quarks here.
Funny how we can't acuse reThugs back,
of being "fake" racists, isn't it. ;)
A few more like Alan Grayson will be needed to
reverse the damage the reThugs have done to the DemocratIC party.
That's only natural.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
How else can you explain a person who signs an oath not to vote for a bill and then votes for it anyway?
He's no chicken!
Those people made their wealth on the backs of the average working class and government infrastruture. It is time that they give back. The tax cuts for the rich provided jobs alright, but those jobs were in China and India. Some were created in other 3rd world countries but almost none here. Tax the bastards.
They can't take their money with them when they die so they might as well give back the money that they shipped off shore. These bastards need to pay their fair share and some.
Children of wealth tend to be the greatest wastes of skin on the planet, if they had to survive on their own, they would actually have to WORK for a living, possibly working for some middle-class business owner, and that would just be CRAZY!
Maybe they can't take it with them when they shuffle off,but they can pass it on to their progeny or to the wingnut cause nearest and dearest to their little black hearts. Of course taxing it at that point becomes what the wingers have so sucessfully framed as the death tax and convinced virtually everyone it's going to leave their offspring penniless and on the street.
Or (God Forbid!) having to work for a living ..
Oh! Noes!
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
is writing a column for NY Post, Times, Wapo, Washington standard or just name a TV snooze show. They don't work anyway.
And when they do work a real job, it's more of a hobby to them than a matter of sustenance.
So to satisfy their need for a hobby they take food from the mouths of the family of the person they displace.
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
US citizens hoarding their wealth in that Swiss Bank?
Yeah, like that was ever going to happen.
Why doesn't Obama overturn Swiss privacy laws by executive order?
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
The US doesn't have to honor Swiss privacy laws anymore than they have to obey our speed limit.
The names were supposed to be released a very long time ago, and weren't.
Now a Swiss company, paying Swiss taxes not US taxes.
effect's what. at the most the richest 2% of our society. And even then not in the least excessively so. And dirt poor idiots who would never in a hundred generations be in that group whine about it. Only in America!!!
Now, they stand in line as Whoreporatist's, with their hand out for their pimp corporations to contribute to their reelections.
produced by GOLDMAN SACHS!
And they hired the
corporate sellout"documentary" filmmakers Ken and Ric Burns to shoot it:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274...
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
the Greatest Generation belief that paying taxes is your privilege as an American citizen - that paying taxes is the cost of freedom? And that for those citizens blessed with or given more, then more is expected?
Back then it meant paying your fair share and helping to carry the load. The filthy wingers turned that into launching wars of aggression and torturing people to death.
education, and everything except the military, in order to allow these Galt's of the world to keep making trillions.
And the corporate oligarchs are mad at the Democrats because they put in some regulations and they want them to again lower corporate taxes.
Why?
Because regulations and tax increases will stop economic growth.
You remember that growth, don't you? We're all so fucking rich after 30 years of Reaganomics, that we're the laughing stock of the industrialized world.
Stick a fork in America, it's done...
This country is going down the shitter faster than an iron turd.
Get the tax breaks while small businesses get little or nothing.
tax cut that was OPPOSED by almost all of the Republicans.
WTF? They have gone completely mad, MAD, I tell you!!!
winger on Facebook this morning telling people that those tax cuts are tax increases for 50% of small businesses. Wingers are indeed the most ignorant assholes in our society. Dangerous too.
Long live the REVOLUTION.
"To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And,
at the same time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between,
plus some things I can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing."
This is truth, to me. "
-Jack Handy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqH_DnGL8a0
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
you either win or die .
Ernesto Guevara
every time you throw a little mud , you lose a little ground .
The top priority of Americans is jobs. The top priority of the Republican party is tax cuts for the rich, stealing more money from the taxpayers, dismantling Social Security and impeaching President Obama. Republicans have NO job plan for Americans.
Can you pick cotton?
you get the bonus of not being whipped?
I druther have the bonus of being whipped:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbaHrpl8qWY
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
You're a naughty boy, ysb!
;)
... is that the masses have bought into it in a "Wayne's World," we're not worthy sort of way.
CaliforniaMike blogs at All Voices and at his own blogs, http://www.mikerappaport.net/onevoice and at http://oneminutewithmike.blogspot.com.
Finger licking good...
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Oh if only ..
No one would serve any of these 400 families in any restaurant.
Or drive their cars or planes or yachts.
Or clean their houses.
Or sell them food.
Or repair their clothes.
Or clean their pools.
Or guard their residences.
And by "no one" I mean no one on this planet.
When they surrender the terms of negotiation will be tough but fair.
They will be allowed to keep a tiny fraction of their former wealth. Maybe one house, one car, a modest IRA.
But they'll all be required to work, and go to re-education classes if they can't overcome their snotty attitudes.
But the vast majority of their wealth will be returned to the people.
Their former estates will become parks and museums.
...
Oh if only ..
Democracy is too important to be entrusted to politicians.
Rise Up!
Protest!
The real number is around $13 Trillion. Don't know where they hide it all but it's somewhere.
"Wealth" is an abstract concept, it means what we want it to mean.
So a bunch of assholes have a bunch of arbitrary numbers, in some arbitrary computers, or in some arbitrary pieces of paper. Big fucking deal. That only works because we allow it to, so it does not matter how many revolutions we go through... because we will keep attacking the symptoms not the actual root/cause of the problem.
The numbers in the article you mentioned, from The Nation I believe, lead one to make the astonishing realization: 400 households in this country are "worth" upwards of 7 orders of magnitude more, than any of the almost 100 million of other households in this country. That is just insane.
And I am not referring at the "funny haha" insane, I am talking about this is mental health persuasion insane. There is something wrong with this metric (capital) and concept of worth, because there is no fucking way a single human being is a few million times smarter than the average person, or that they work tens of millions of time harder than the majority of their employees. And basically that is what those numbers are telling us.
There are some serious questions we need to ask ourselves. Because there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture. And we can bitch and moan, and throw a hissy fit when the symptoms become too painful to ignore. But what is the actual root cause of this. Because this is nothing new, if anything we probably went through one of the longest stretches of relative calm through human history.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
Well said ixnay.
Wealth aka Money is the means to enable you to order about anybody to do anything. The uber rich literally have the power of life and death with their billions stashed away.
They are what Europeans would call nobility, or barons or lords. They rarely have the foot soldiers or thugs that their medieval counterparts controlled, apart from Blackwater and a few other cases. But they have the power through access to their law system and their ability to play with law and courts, the ability to change laws that affect peons, direct DAs and AGs to chase after dissidents, and generally use the socialized law enforcement (which we the little taxpayers pay for) as their modern day version of hired swords aka men at arms.
I am in full agreement on most of what you say here. But when do we start asking those questions? How about now.
The entire system is unsustainable. There can't be ever increasing profits anymore than there can be ever increasing debt. We can't continue to uses the earths' raw materials in a consumerist society. How do we cause our society to become sustainable, economically, energy wise and natural resource wise?
Technology can be our friend or enemy. It can take jobs or make our life easier. It allows us to produce in abundance should we desire. It allows us to make very durable goods. The space shuttle is one example. Look at the pressures on that piece of equipment. We have the ability to make durable goods.
You are right. The system we have is fubar but we have what we need to fix it and make it better. I think we should be talking about how to do that and not so much about the latest fox news drama.
Watch words: Unity and sustainability.
and a sensitive new age man besides, the usual disorders of the corporate state afflict me also, to your question.
the first thing to be reversed is this supreme court ruling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_Coun...
this is where it really went wrong, not that it wasn't wrong before, but to do something about the other, this has to go.
same old, same old, with me. but you asked how to fix it.
my favorite, wait for it, "synthetic financial instuments".
"There is something wrong with this metric (capital) and concept of worth"
you're telling me. but then people will always use some medium of exchange, there has to be some measure of value, so we won't get away from that anytime soon; plus the fact that our creditors expect to receive something of value in exchange for giving us what they perceived as valuable, or have we been, as they say, hoist on our own petard?
we will have to deal with it as it is, and nobody in washington has the slightest clue except the good senator, sort of, maybe, vaguely.
but i couldn't agree more with your statement.
indeed!
http://media2.nbcactionnews.com/blogimg/DSC06...
City Limit
Netroot
Pop. 2020
Walter Mondale once said that voting for Republicans was the same as chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.
offered two choices.
One, you get an affordable mortgage, only one parent needs to work, national healthcare, a college education for anyone that desires it, a good steady job, and your taxes go up, say 3%.
Two, you worry about your job, your spouse has been out of work for over a year, your son/daughter had to drop out of school because you can't afford it - and they can't get a job either. No healthcare, you need to work 80 hours a week to meet a mortgage you can't afford (on a home that is worth less than when you bought it), impending homelessness.
But for number one, you have to allow gays to marry, allow a woman's right to choose, end discrimination (you might have work with or live next to someone who doesn't look like you).
And by and large, EGADS! the republican base always chooses number two.
:(
Maybe we could just give them the choice between the 1950's tax rates and the Clinton administration tax rates? 10 to 1 they don't have a clue what either were and would go for the 1950's rates and our country would be back in business with the wealthy having to pay their fair share again or reinvesting the money back into the workforce or infrastructure.
the hell we ended up with Leahy becoming such a corporate jackweed. But we'll do what we can to replace him this year with someone more of Bernie's standing. Someone who will put the interests of the majority(ie: the workers) ahead of those of the minority(ie: the corporations).
State powers can be used by anti secular forces.
Federal power is required to maintain a secular democracy.
State powers are the tool of the racist.
Tea Baggers are Pro State Power for a reason.
racism.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
And they point out that any family is free to take over and pillage any country they please. That's what America is all about. Freedom.
one or two or three out of 100 hey that should work out for americans.
guess who put these crooks into office?
you got it.
you see in a republic we get what we deserve.
our politicans are a reflection of us
dear old us
most americans cant stand to think that.
easier to blame them and not look into a mirror.
I actually voted this time for obama hoping he would be different.
nope same old demo weak and spineless.
give it up the end is near of americans and its power.
what did we do with our power and wealth but have our wars for profits and our mega industrial military complex.
every great and powerful nation subcummbs to imperialism. ie ego thing.
if you guys are having trouble looking across the Atlantic and seeing the benefit of social democracy you could always look across the pacific instead, at Australia.
for all the problems we have here, we do have universal healthcare and we do have an economy that has more or less shrugged off the GFC. we do have a Conservative here in Tony Abbott who is very much in the GOP mould of 'cut essential services' (being Health and education programs) and being a lapdog for business. oh and xenophobism about the illegal immigrants ('Boat people' in our parlance).
but Tony is at the moment unlikely to win the late August election which is just as well. the man is a christianist snake.
oh and our unemployment rate is a little above half of yours.... its quite depressing to look at the US and see a jobless recovery in the works, for the want of some balls to put through a jobs bill. and for the want of some Democrats willing to vote WITH their party rather than rolling to the shrill claims of the Republicants.
i sincerely hope the midterms deliver more and better Democrats as that will be the only way i can see out of that hole. good luck, you are seriously going to need it.
(BTW cos im not a US citizen or resident i dont think i can vote for the billboards for Boehner. id vote the "He'd rather be Golfing" board myself. that sort of behaviour for an elected official really makes me fume....).
/edit oh and i nearly forgot! top tax rate in Aus is 45% - the rich will effectively pay less than that just as in the States, but so far contrary to GOP expectation, the sky has not fallen in on us. but if its only an effective of 16.6 percent there im totally not shocked that asshole Murdoch headed your way.
Remember all those stories about people building prisons and lockups just to house people on trumped up charges? It may not be as dire as the government locking up all people in case of revolution, but it sure does sound like the government can always depend on racism and bigotry to fill their jail cells.
I'm glad somebody's talking about the oligarchy. I do take exception to your statement "The Republican platform benefits such a small percentage of Americans." You left out 80% of the Dems too. The strategy of the oligarchs (and it has been working perfectly) is as old as the hills....divide and conquer. Publicize hot-button issues that will inflame the left/right differences. That way no one sees the backdoor theft through the FED. They've backed the truck up to the doors since the crisis began and have been shoveling money out as fast as they can. It's the greatest theft in history and it's going on....right now....in front of your eyes. Republicans stab you in the front and Democrats in the back. Shirley Sherrod said in her speech- It's not white v. black, it's rich v poor. I'll add it's not left v. right, it's oligarchs v. everyone else. They've sucked all they can from the poor and now they're doing it to the middle class. I'd like to point out that some of our greatest growth periods were when the taxes on the oligarchs was 90%!
If you want to stop the oligarchs from destroying America, you have to understand how they got their power and how they maintain control (and it goes deeper than simple deregulation). This is the end point of a systemic problem- money backed by debt. At some point people can't afford to take on more debt and the fractional reserve lending scheme either collapses or causes a Depression. The problem isn't that the government is spending too much money, it's that they're BORROWING IT. I don't want to turn this into another long rant so go here if you want to learn about the solution.
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