Something Very Sinister Is Going On

[LiberalAndProud]

The growing inequality in income and wealth may be a surprise to many Americans, pacified by the ‘greatest democracy in the world’ and ‘land of opportunity’ rhetoric of our political leaders. But the inequality is very real, and it was no accident. The concentration of income and wealth is the predictable and intentional result of changes in government policies that we as citizens stood by and let the wealthy impose on us through our allegedly democratic system. Not surprisingly, the corporations and wealthy capitalists who set the political agenda changed the rules in order to make themselves better off. Their gains came at everyone else’s expense. There has been no ‘trickle-down’ benefit. The ‘trickle down’ theory is a hoax.


http://nebraskansforpeace.org/growing-income-inequality
Our Growing Income Inequality (It's NOT an Accident)
Hendrik Van den Berg
UNL Professor of Economics

[GliderGuider]

1. The power elite sits at the top of a very sophisticated hierarchy.

All power hierarchies are about the theft of the peoples' sustenance.

It doesn't matter matter whether the systems call themselves capitalist, communist, fascist, monarchies, democratic or republican, or if they are American, Russian, Argentinian or Burmese. If the backbone of the system is a power hierarchy (as it is in every country on the planet today), its core purpose is to pump wealth and power away from those at the bottom and toward the power elite at the tip. The more advanced the hierarchy, the more effective it is at fulfilling its core purpose. There are no exceptions to this rule, only varying degrees of obscurantism and misdirection.

In today's world the corporations are the tools the power elite use to accomplish their goal. Corporations are so much cleaner and more efficient than gangs of feudal warriors on horseback who pillage the village for the King... Advanced hierarchies use the force of the law rather than the law of force.

To see how this evil flower bore its fruit in modern America, review The Powell Memo. Then weep. And finally fight.

[checks-n-balances]

3. Unfortunately, you & the OP are spot on.

When will everyone else realize this??? And will that really help?

I guess it will, because they'll stop blaming the wrong groups of people...

[azygous]

20. Dupe

[azygous]

21. Corporate coup

Has anyone else noticed that almost every one of Obama's advisers and cabinet and high government positions are people who've formerly worked in the corporate world?

If these people were former union officials, or were all former members of black organizations, or all GAY, everyone would be shouting that there has been a government takeover!

[patrice]

31. Of the two sets of groups you mention, which one authentically knows where all of the skeletons are

[patrice]

30. Love! your new avatar! nt

[GliderGuider]

32. Thanks!

:hi:
I like yours too - and have since 1960 or so. Do you know what it stands for in semaphore?

[patrice]

33. No. What?

[GliderGuider]

34. It's the combined semaphore letters N and D. For Nuclear Disarmament.

That's why it's called the "Peace" sign. It was invented by the group "Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament" back in the very early 60s.

:hippie:

[patrice]

35. Thank you for the info! I think I read that Dr. Spock was a member of that group. nt

[Donnachaidh]

2. Thank you Captain Nafta!

Globalization greased the chute - and the middle class is being pushed head first into a guillotine. Thanks Bubba!

[golfguru]

4. So are you disappointed?

in that the change promised has not come through?
Are corporations richer today than 2 years ago?

[SusanaMontana41]

28. Disappointed? No. Angry? Absolutely!

I'll stop here before I sound like Donald Rumsfeld ...

[EC]

5. I just can't figure out why the urgency all of a sudden.

They really HAD to get Bush in there in 2000 - they seemed hyper about that. So it made me wonder what's coming in the future that they know and we don't (Peak Oil, depression, climate change, lack of water)that they had to start stockpiling cash then. What was so urgent that they had to get Bush in there no matter what?

[bongbong]

6. Ditto

I've wondered the same thing many times. The pace of the give-everything-to-the-billionaires had been moving for decades at a relatively slow pace, but just in the last decade it has gone into mega-overdrive. I wonder what they know that we don't.

[raincity_calling]

29. Peak oil?

I ask this same question all the time. I think the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) document may give some insight to this question. Cheney, others desperately wanted to speed up the process to gain control of resources in the Middle East and central Asia.

I think water may be part of it too, as well as global warming. The elite know the world is
going to get very ugly, and they want all they can get before it happens. They want to protect/isolate themselves from this ugliness to the extent possible.

[hfojvt]

36. Huh? Bush was worth hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for them

Come on, if the Bush Presidency had put $200,000 a year in my pocket, I probably would have voted for him too.

[golfguru]

37. Did'nt Obama just signed extension of ALL Bush taxcuts?

[certainot]

7. our local unis and businesses support the loudest sellers of the hoax - RW talk radio stations

universities by broadcasting sports on them to give the whole talk radio monopoly community credibility for selling shit like this and global warming denial, and local businesses everywhere who often are unaware until they get a few calls that their ad money goes to support these lies and racism and sexism. often they believe the 'limbaugh as entertainer' lie, like most americans.

the real problem is that the left has NO ORGANIZED OPPOSITION TO THE TALK RADIO MEGAPHONE and it continues to make the difference.

[snagglepuss]

8. K & R nt

[RedCloud]

9. Nobody "let" this happen. It was hidden and silence was purchased.

[midnight]

10. I read that income equality is addressed in the Dodd Frank bill.

You see this problem has beed addressed by giving board members tools... These tools will allow board members to vote on ceo salary....

'Fortunately, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act contains new tools to help limit runaway CEO pay. Shareholders now have a “say-on-pay” vote on executive compensation, and companies must disclose the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay at each company.'http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/

[mntleo2]

11. I hate to say "I told you so ..."

...in 1996 when they passed Welfare DEFormed, we activists tried to say to the middle class, "You are next". We were laughed at and pshawed because the middle class, while applauding wildly for punitive impossible situations for "those welfare queens" refused to believe that this law, saying that the "only* thing that added to society was working that McJob that paid below minimum wage, exploited their workers, and had no benefits, well that did not apply to them.

This law subsidized these large corporations who were so "nice' to employ these (mostly) women and forced them into the workplace saying their children did not matter, just saying "Do you want fries with that?" did. This law that said that unpaid work such as the raising of the next generations, the care of one's family the creating of a future for this country, well that is "doing nothing" ~ only saying "Do you want fries with that" is "doing something".

This law that was aimed at poor women, the most exploited class in the nation and refused to acknowledge that women lose on the average of $270,000 in wages over a work lifetime because they face the agonizing choice of making the choice to work for a wage or take care of their children, then their parents, and finally their spouses because they ALL need 24/7 care and it is not affordable. These women that save America billions of dollars a year because they prevent the copious amounts of money to create institutions to do that job.

Furthermore when this law was enacted, welfare was less than 4% of the budget, corporations paid less than 8% of the revenue into taxes, and union jobs were being undermined while wages falling for those MCjobs with the advent of inflation that did not even pay the rent. Yet it was popular to blame the helpless welfare mom, who spent on the average of less than 2 years on welfare and using it to go to school and lift herself up, who had less the 2 kids, and who had no other place to turn except welfare for help when they lost their employment. Now they cannot even get a GED with assistance because Welfare DEFormed only wants Americans to say, "Do you want freis with that?" Now their children are left without any adult supervision at home while those McJobs (if they are lucky enough to have one) force them into the workplace at odd hours, odd days, and will not so much as allow them food stamps because "they make too much".

This is a LAW and if you read the Constitution, that law CAN'T apply to a certain class, it has to be enacted for everyone. But many of us, myself included, wrote article after article about the impact coming for the middle class, some on this very forum ~ and got booed off the stage.

Oh and BTW guess who wrote "The Personal Responsibility Act (Welfare DEFormed)? THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION and a man named Robert Rector who was incensed because he met some moms who were in college while on welfare and he did not like them "taking advantage of the System" while his friends sat around the pool drinking their Manhattens while collecting their tax-free dividends. Hey it was all right for his friends, but an uppity woman going to college and lifting herself up so she would be paying taxes and maybe even HAVE A JOB WITH A LIVABLE WAGE TO SUPPORT HER FAMILY? Why the NERVE of her!

SURPRISE! Now you ARE next and the destruction of the safety net and fall of middle class into a big black hole where there isn't anything left is well underway and everyone is all amazed.

Welcome to our nightmare. I am sad to tell you "I told you so ..." Maybe now the middle class will stop blaming the lower classes and realize that "what affects them affects me ..."

Cat in Seattle

[bengalherder]

13. +1000

I wish I could rec your reply. It is well within the experience of several friends of mine during the 90's (and I was not doing much better). I could see it then: even stopped listening to NPR back then because of the water they were carrying for Clinton's triangulation, NAFTA, and welfare deform, etc.

It doesn't cheer me that others are being faced with the reality of what was swallowed so easily fifteen years ago while straining at gnats, but there you have it. I dunno about wealth trickling-down, but poverty sure does trickle up these days.

[bobbolink]

15. A few days ago a DUer posted a speech by Tim Wise..and it was WISE, indeed.

To reduce it to its basics, Wise said that middleclass whites need to deal with their inbred privledge because, besides the moral issues, if the discrimination against race and class is allowed to continue, they will be next.

It was in the best interest of the middleclass to FIGHT tooth and nail that welfare deform mess.

"When they came for the poor, I was middleclass, so I turned my back."

[mntleo2]

19. And now the muddle class is all they talk about ...

...while the poor have been suffering the same crap for decades because of the punitive, ignorant treatment they have been assigned.

Now when a falling muddle class person faces the same treatment and the hopelessness it breeds and realize they are going to be blamed for it when it is a system designed to make it impossible to escape, well then they are outraged ...

As I said, SURPRISE!!!!! Welcome to our nightmare ...

Cat in Seattle

[bobbolink]

22. Tim Wise did a good job describing that SURPRISE and shock and bitterness. It stems from the sense

of entitlement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UJlNRODZHA

It is well-worth the time to listen. He runs it down very well!

The funny part is.....it IS all they talk about, but they can't do it without us.

Turns out, they need us. :rofl:

Sorry, guys... previous engagement.

[mntleo2]

23. Yeah and the poor are too beaten down to do much ...

...because we have been fighting an uphill battle for more than 15 years against DEFormed and then they expect us to come to THEIR aid? I will do it because I do not want anybody to suffer what we have, but dammit, I am old and I am tired and I wish they would have listened in the 1rst place.

Cat in Seattle

[bobbolink]

24. NO, you do it because you are a generous and forgiving person.

Not all of us are now willing to come to them.

The ball is in THEIR court, as far as a lot of us are concerned.

You are more saintly than I am. O8) I hope it gets some good results this time!

[tblue37]

26. Righteous rant!! nt

[OwnedByFerrets]

27. Thank you very much

[Taverner]

12. Sinister, yes. Co-ordinated, no

What's going on is everybody knows its going down, and those closest to the capital, want to make sure they get as much as they can of it.

It's not organized - if ONLY it were - then we could just arrest the people responsible

But this is part of Capitalism itself. When an empire dies, everyone has a run on the banks. See UK, France and Italy in the 1950s.

[SoulSearcher]

38. Have to have some faith in our leaders

easier said than done, but we can still vote.

[Pacifist Patriot]

I remember sitting in on a U.S. Income Gap lecture almost 30 years ago.

And periodically with different groups ever since. Only the diagrams and charts of the gap got wider and wider. Whoever is surprised by this has definitely not been paying attention.

[Plucketeer]

14. I wanna puke

every time I hear some idjit proclaim that we live in the greatest nation/country on earth. It's not so much the false statement in itself that makes me sick - it's the majority of folks that buy into it!

If THE MOST CAPABLE military machine is a measure of "greatness", then we qualify as greatest. By any other measure we fall far short. Compassion? Let me take you thru the least advantaged part of our Red Country burg. And when these folks DID try to fend for themselves awhile back, law enforcement was dispatched to scatter them to the winds - this in SPITE OF the fact that they had the landowner's blessings to stay there. Gop forbid we have a visible badge of blight anywhere to steal from the "Greatest Country" bullshit.

[Javaman]

16. To quote a recent movie...

The rich say to us, "I drink your milkshake, I drink it up!"

They want everything.

They won't be happy until all of the things they deem "overhead" are done away with.

They are "corportizing" the nation.

First we were citizens, then we were consumers, next we will be employees.

[Tigermoose]

17. Capitalism 101

As new technologies replace labor, wealth will tend to aggregate with the inventors and owners of those technologies. As capital owner find cheaper labor sources, wealth will tend to aggregate with the capitalists.

Labor's main hope is to redistribute this aggregating wealth back to labor through the government.

[teabaghater]

18. When Bush

"stole" the presidency from Gore, and we the people stood by and let it happen, the powers that push this country were emboldened like never before. If they could do that, the sky was the limit.

[patrice]

25. The only Trickle-Down they allowed is jobs as War Slaves. That is the assignment of

our particular branch/division of the the international hegemony of economic royalty. As the invasion and occupation of Iraq so clearly illustrates, we are to be the Wars 'r' U.S. division of the multinational conglomerates who own and operate Earth. TPB have a strangle-hold on our other jobs (and real estate equity, incidentally) in order to force us to acquiesce to our assigned tasks for the war profiteers who run our country at all levels, whose chief advocate amongst us currently is Project for a New American Century and their lead puppet-sales person, SP.

[stevebreeze]

39. not an accident and not unfortunately all that partisan.

It is a fact that Clinton lowered taxes on the wealthy more then Bush. His capital gains tax cut was worth 8%. Clinton lowered cap gains from 28 to 20 % Bush from 20 down to 15%.

[stevebreeze]

40. the Trickle Down Theory is a hoax, it is also a song.

Here is a link to a friend of mine's song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnbBWFLF_f8&feature=related
sorry about the truncated beginning. It starts out "Over 40 years ago today Ronald Reagan brought the boys to play. He told then he wanted a brand new economic plan"