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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTaken For Granted At Davos That US Government Run On ‘Legalized Corruption’
The Referees are deflating more than our balls, America.
Taken For Granted At Davos That US Government Run On Legalized Corruption
By: DSWright
FireDogLake.com, Wednesday January 21, 2015
While there may be confusion among some in the US as to how the American political system operates, it is apparently taken for granted by participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that politics in America is based on bribery and corruption.
In an interview at Davos with Bloomberg News related to growing concerns about rising wealth inequality and its corruption influence on American politics economist and NYU business professor Nouriel Roubini stated as a matter of fact that it would be hard for the US to overcome wealth inequality because the US political system was based on legalized corruption which meant rich people having more resources to bribe politicians with would generally prevail.
Tom Keene, Bloomberg: How big is the plutocracy effect in 2015?
Nouriel Roubini: Its significant because we are in a democracy where it supposedly has to be one man, one vote, but the reality is that those who are billionaires, those that have economic and financial power can affect legislation on taxation of capital gains, of carried interest by having that political power.
In the US we have a system of legalized corruption if you think about it. K Street and the lobbying affect legislation with the money they give the politician and therefore those who have financial resources have a greater impact on the political system than those who have less. So its not a true democracy, its a plutocracy.
This is not news to anyone paying attention. In fact, Princeton University produced an exhaustive study that made headlines demonstrating that the wealthy ultimately determine legislative outcomes in the US Congress. Add to that an experiment the progressive group CREDO and UC Berkeley ran where they offered meetings to representatives with either actual constituents or non-constituent donors with the representatives overwhelmingly choosing the donors and you certainly have a picture of a cynical system run on cash.
CONTINUED w/links...
http://news.firedoglake.com/2015/01/21/taken-for-granted-at-davos-that-us-government-run-on-legalized-corruption/#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=-&at_pos=7&at_tot=8&at_si=54c5412562e4586b
djean111
(14,255 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)It was a short time after the generals, with the tacit approval of Poppy Bush, overthrew the first democratically elected leader in 70 years of the poorest nation in the hemisphere. Aristide brought to my attention the concept of the "1 percent owning 99 percent" and I wrote about it at the time as a reporter and then 13 years or so later on DU:
Aristide told me the Generals ran Dope, Inc. on Haiti. Personally.
Posted by Octafish in General Discussion (Through 2005)
Sat Mar 20th 2004, 06:49 PM
Sorry if the following is an old read. The thing held true then and holds true still
I met Jean Bertrand-Aristide after he was deposed by the generals in the early 90s. He came to metro Detroit and spoke before the Cranbrook Peace Foundation.
The newspaper I then worked for didnt see any reason for sending me to cover Aristides speech. The editors werent BFEE, but the events on a Caribbean island just werent local enough for their budget. So, I went on my own time.
The Cranbrook people were happy to see me. They wanted, of course, as much coverage as possible. So, they invited me and the other interested reporter types to have at him for an hour before his address.
Im ashamed to report, at an important event in two nations larger media market, only a couple of CBC radio reporters out of Windsor and one local Detroit TV crew bothered to show. I was the lone print guy. Anyway
Aristide answered every question asked in English or French. He also told us about life in Haiti, where there were four doctors to care for 4 million people. Another interesting stat: One percent of the population own 99-percent of the property.
I asked Aristide what the United States could do to help him restore democracy to Haiti? Aristide said all Poppy Doc Bush had to do was pick up the phone, call the generals and say, Get out, and they would quit their coup and the first democratically elected leader of Haiti in 75 years would be returned to power. Bush didn't and Aristide wasn't until Clinton sent the US Marines, many years and many Haitian lives later.
The reason for Bush Senior's inaction? Aristide said he didnt know the answer, but he suspected Bushs politics favored the landowners over the masses. (Sounds familiar, I then thought and still think today.)
Aristide said that the generals were deep into the wholesale cocaine importation business. Now who would be their partner in all that? Besides the wealthy landowners, for whom the Generals worked, I mean.
Original OP from 2004: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1257891&mesg_id=1259743
The BFEE (AKA the War Party, War Inc., Wall Street Über Alles, the Mafia Banksters) and the people they front for as the Secret Government are doing to the United States of America what the landowners of Haiti -- and those in Columbia and the other nations of the world where the small minority control the majority of wealth, land and resources. These undemocratic tools only work to enhance their own privileged positions and holdings. The rest of humanity could be cattle or piss-ants, for all they care.
You know I am a broken record when it comes to Nov. 22, 1963: The problems our nation and world face today -- from war without end to inequality and welfare for the wealthy to pollution and overpopulation to those who think "There's nothing we can do..." stem from that moment when the forces of totalitarianism took control of the US government from democracy.
djean111
(14,255 posts)JonLP24
(29,322 posts)to locate, organize & store countless and ready to lay out detailed accounts to something as far ranging as me posting an article of a nobody (not well known, especially so for even someone with the Obama administration) who wrote a college paper a few months prior to taking the job in the administration the paper advocating for "cognitive infiltration" (a fancy word for trolling) to debunk conspiracy theories & he responds to that post with additional information on that nobody as well as a specific.. operation is probably the best word I think of right now that has been going on since the Bush administration. I'd have to his post ready to give a an accurate account of the content was.
I'd favor in making a special folder on DU which has the entire collection of the poster's articles & links in that one folder. I applaud the awareness he brings to countless & wide ranging issues.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Amen to all the above. Octa is a treasure.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)He has organization and research skills that I envy.
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)blm
(113,018 posts)Our groveling newsmedia LET IT HAPPEN.
mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)and I agree about 11/22/63.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)stage left
(2,961 posts)for the bitter truth.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Poor have no Voice.
And many if not most of us are fast becoming penniless.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)of it than others.
Locrian
(4,522 posts)How can this be with the "liberal" media, "hollywood elite", tree-hugger / environmentalist, left wing / commie socialists in charge? I just don't get it. They have ALL the power.
Especially the poor. They get EVERYTHING just handed to them for doing nothing. I sometime wish I had it as good as them just getting paid for nothing. Lucky I have a superior work ethic and actually earn my living.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Perhaps one day our patriotic media will have to again observe the Fairness Doctrine, which served the community, not the 1-percent.
Locrian
(4,522 posts)I'm too busy reading about the Superbowl, Ebola, Isis, and all the attacks on us white males. We're such an oppressed segment of the population. Wish I had all the power and advantage they're giving to minorities.
The teevee media (well at least the ones reporting the truth, not the liberal lies) tells me that the powerful rich job creators are trying to help - but there's too much money being spent on welfare for the poor, and they need tax cuts to be able to help us.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Corporate McPravda owns the airwaves.
And Corporate Tee Vee is still where most Americans get most of their information, including their ideas about these two statues. Wonder what people would think were they to learn from the tee vee what pater and fils have really done with their power?
The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making
Pulling back the curtain on how intent the wealthiest Americans have been on establishing a propaganda tool to subvert democracy.
Wednesday, 17 April 2013 00:00
By Andrew Gavin Marshall, AlterNet | News Analysis
Where there is the possibility of democracy, there is the inevitability of elite insecurity. All through its history, democracy has been under a sustained attack by elite interests, political, economic, and cultural. There is a simple reason for this: democracy as in true democracy places power with people. In such circumstances, the few who hold power become threatened. With technological changes in modern history, with literacy and education, mass communication, organization and activism, elites have had to react to the changing nature of society locally and globally.
From the late 19th century on, the threats to elite interests from the possibility of true democracy mobilized institutions, ideologies, and individuals in support of power. What began was a massive social engineering project with one objective: control. Through educational institutions, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations and advertising agencies, corporations, banks, and states, powerful interests sought to reform and protect their power from the potential of popular democracy.
SNIP...
The development of psychology, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines increasingly portrayed the public and the population as irrational beings incapable of making their own decisions. The premise was simple: if the population was driven by dangerous, irrational emotions, they needed to be kept out of power and ruled over by those who were driven by reason and rationality, naturally, those who were already in power.
The Princeton Radio Project, which began in the 1930s with Rockefeller Foundation funding, brought together many psychologists, social scientists, and experts armed with an interest in social control, mass communication, and propaganda. The Princeton Radio Project had a profound influence upon the development of a modern "democratic propaganda" in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world. It helped in establishing and nurturing the ideas, institutions, and individuals who would come to shape Americas democratic propaganda throughout the Cold War, a program fostered between the private corporations which own the media, advertising, marketing, and public relations industries, and the state itself.
CONTINUED...
http://truth-out.org/news/item/15784-the-propaganda-system-that-has-helped-create-a-permanent-overclass-is-over-a-century-in-the-making
Here's how much of the nation's press were magically transformed from watchdogs into lapdogs:
The Powell Memo (also known as the Powell Manifesto)
The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971
Introduction
In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powells nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powells legal objectivity. [font color="red"]Anderson cautioned that Powell might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice in behalf of business interests.[/font color]
Though Powells memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administrations hands-off business philosophy.
Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building a focus we share, though often with sharply contrasting goals.* (See our endnote for more on this.)
So did Powells political views influence his judicial decisions? The evidence is mixed. [font color="red"]Powell did embrace expansion of corporate privilege and wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a 1978 decision that effectively invented a First Amendment right for corporations to influence ballot questions.[/font color] On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.
CONTINUED...
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
Thankfully, to help spread light when the protectors of the First Amendment won't, Maria Galardin's TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) Radio. The podcast helps explain how we got here and what we need to do to move forward, starting with putting the "Public" into Airwaves again:
Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda
The Attack on Democracy
The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.
John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.
Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.
This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.
SOURCE: http://tucradio.org/new.html
If you find a moment, Locrian, here's the first part (scroll down at the link for the second part) of a wonderful web-based radio program on Carey:
http://tucradio.org/AlexCarey_ONE.mp3
It's important for there to be more than a handful of companies providing "news." Democracy depends on it. Thank you for grokking, Locrian.
Bookmarked
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Davos oligarchs are right to fear the world theyve made
Seumas Milne
The Guardian, jan. 22, 2015
The billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this week are getting worried about inequality. It might be hard to stomach that the overlords of a system that has delivered the widest global economic gulf in human history should be handwringing about the consequences of their own actions.
But even the architects of the crisis-ridden international economic order are starting to see the dangers. Its not just the maverick hedge-funder George Soros, who likes to describe himself as a class traitor. Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive, frets about the capitalist threat to capitalism. Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, fears capitalism might indeed carry Marxs seeds of its own destruction and warns that something needs to be done.
The scale of the crisis has been laid out for them by the charity Oxfam. Just 80 individuals now have the same net wealth as 3.5 billion people half the entire global population. Last year, the best-off 1% owned 48% of the worlds wealth, up from 44% five years ago. On current trends, the richest 1% will have pocketed more than the other 99% put together next year. The 0.1% have been doing even better, quadrupling their share of US income since the 1980s.
SNIP...
In most of the world, labours share of national income has fallen continuously and wages have stagnated under this regime of privatisation, deregulation and low taxes on the rich. At the same time finance has sucked wealth from the public realm into the hands of a small minority, even as it has laid waste the rest of the economy. Now the evidence has piled up that not only is such appropriation of wealth a moral and social outrage, but it is fuelling social and climate conflict, wars, mass migration and political corruption, stunting health and life chances, increasing poverty, and widening gender and ethnic divides.
SNIP...
Perhaps a section of the worried elite might be prepared to pay a bit more tax. What they wont accept is any change in the balance of social power which is why, in one country after another, they resist any attempt to strengthen trade unions, even though weaker unions have been a crucial factor in the rise of inequality in the industrialised world.
CONTINUED...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/22/davos-oligarchs-fear-inequality-global-elite-resist?CMP=ema_565
The Have-Mosts will use the Have-Mores and Haves to keep the 99 percent under control until Democracy says, "No more."
libodem
(19,288 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)... the size of Kim Kardashian's butt.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)but the US is committing atrocities all over the world and among the things many of its citizens concern them self is viewing an organization as corrupt (long before the deflated balls, which functions as ammo for the many Patriot haters) for violation of the regulations of a privately run cartel.
CanSocDem
(3,286 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)In the last six years he has accepted free items valued at $42,200, the most on the high court.
Richard A. Serrano and David G. Savage
Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2004|
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts since joining the high court, including $1,200 worth of tires, valuable historical items and a $5,000 personal check to help pay a relative's education expenses.
SNIP...
[font color="green"]He also took a free trip aboard a private jet to the exclusive Bohemian Grove club in Northern California -- arranged by a wealthy Texas real estate investor who helped run an advocacy group that filed briefs with the Supreme Court. [/font color]
Those and other gifts were disclosed by Thomas under a 1978 federal ethics law that requires high-ranking government officials, including the nine Supreme Court justices, to file a report each year that lists gifts, money and other items they have received.
Thomas has reported accepting much more valuable gifts than his Supreme Court colleagues over the last six years, according to their disclosure forms on file at the court.
CONTINUED...
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/31/nation/na-gifts31
It's a good bet that Clarence's Sugar Daddy has kept the receipts, sort of an IOU.
Thank you for grokking, CanSocDem!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)by Erich Zeuss
GlobalResearch.ca
On December 10th, Wall Streets federal appeals court, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that if inside information about what is going to happen to a corporation is taken advantage of by an investor, its okay, so long as the source of the inside-tip isnt directly paid for passing it along.
In other words, if you have friends who have inside information that they received from their friends, they are free to pass it along to you, and you are free to pass inside information that you possess along to them to pass along to others, but neither of you is permitted to pay the other for any inside tip the information can legally be acted on only if the tipper is not paid for the tip.
CONTINUED w/links...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/corruption-is-now-officially-legal-in-the-u-s-but-must-be-done-right/5419612
Sad day in America when a guy can't find the scratch to buy his own politician, even with all these great corrupt laws.
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Last edited Tue Jan 27, 2015, 12:13 AM - Edit history (1)
but since both parties are very partisan they whitewash, defend, pretend it isn't true something when there a prominent member of their party does it and both parties do it. It is so obviously clear. Why would a former Green Party member who worked on Ralph Nader's Presidential campaign who later became elected and is among the most poorest House Members recently voted against Wall-Street reform & vote for "Citibank protection" for anything else other than corruption?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Dr. Black is a forensic economist who helped put thousands of Savings & Loan crooks behind bars in the 80s and 90s. That Trillion dollar bailout was peanuts compared to the Banksters of '08. He terms the phenomenon"Control Fraud." For some reason, no one from the Bush or Obama administrations have called him back to government service.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/category/william-k-black
The guy would fill the prisons with Banksters and all manner of traitors so damn fast it would give Cheney whiplash.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)serious, peaceful mass revolution.
but much like the "wasted vote", we live with it because most likely everyone else is going to live with it. A "wasted vote" voting bloc could be significant, a study based on 92 exit polls claimed that if all the voters who would have voted for Ross Perot if they didn't consider it a "wasted vote", voted for him anyways could have impacted the election based on the popular vote lead it would have given him but the "wasted voters" made the right call since the other wasted voters didn't vote for him.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)No Oversight means No Accountability and No Responsibility. It also means that the beneficiaries of all these secret laws, programs and deals are unknown. "Trust us" doesn't cut it when there's trillions to be made for secret agents.
Secret Government is an issue that cuts across ideological, party and class lines like nothing else. People aren't stupid. They see the rich keep getting richer and everyone else getting stuck with the tab. You should see my Republican friends' eyes light up when they discover NSA's main contractor Booz Allen Hamilton happens to be owned by Carlyle Group.
The keepers think that they can continue to get away with treason, conspiracy, crime and all the rest of their corruption. The crooks always thinks that.
When the People find out the truth, though, it's: "Goodnight, Corruption!" And like in Gdansk, the numbers will be "fix-proof."
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)America will make sure it does not get out of hand....yes?
Shows like 60 Minutes are incorruptible. Witness with your own lying eyes the hard hitting cross examination of the GOP Congressional leaders yesterday, that was amazing journalism, American style.
The incorruptible and not at all propaganda pushing American media has the common folks backs. It is not like they have ALL gone corporate or anything.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I was told, to my face at a conference by a major newspaper publisher, that "Ben Bagdikian is full of shit!" when I brought this up.
Ha ha. It is to laugh.
The New Communications Cartel
from the
Preface to the Fifth Edition (1997)
of the book
The Media Monopoly
by Ben H. Bagdikian
published by Beacon Press, 1997
In the last 5 years, a small number of the country's largest industrial corporations has acquired more public communications power-including ownership of the news-than any private businesses have ever before possessed in world history.
Nothing in earlier history matches this corporate group's power to penetrate the social landscape. Using both old and new technology, by owning each other's shares, engaging in joint ventures as partners, and other forms of cooperation, this handful of giants has created what is, in effect, a new communications cartel within the United States.
At issue is not just a financial statistic, like production numbers or ordinary industrial products like refrigerators or clothing. At issue is the possession of power to surround almost every man, woman, and child in the country with controlled images and words, to socialize each new generation of Americans, to alter the political agenda of the country. And with that power comes the ability to exert influence that in many ways is greater than that of schools, religion, parents, and even government itself.
Aided by the digital revolution and the acquisition of subsidiaries that operate at every step in the mass communications process, from the creation of content to its delivery into the home, the communications cartel has exercised stunning influence over national legislation and government agencies, an influence whose scope and power would have been considered scandalous or illegal twenty years ago.
The new communications cartel has been made possible by the withdrawal of earlier government intervention that once aspired to protect consumers and move toward the ideal of diversity of content and ownership in the mass media. Government's passivity has emboldened the new giants to boast openly of monopoly and their ability to project news, commercial messages, and graphic images into the consciousness and subconscious of almost every American.
Strict control of public information is not new in the world, but historical dictatorships lacked the late twentieth century's digital multimedia and distribution technology. As the country approaches the millennium, the new cartel exercises a more complex and subtle kind of control.
CONTINUED...
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/CommunCartel_Bagdikian.html
Third World Traveler has an excellent resource on it: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/MediaMonopoly_Bagdikian.html
closeupready
(29,503 posts)And it's a great gig if you can land a job in Congress, even if just for two years. Lifetime, fully-paid health care, generous defined benefit plan, half the year off on vacation, what's not to like about that kind of scam?
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)and recommended a whole bunch!
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)The only revolution we really need is for people with a liberal conscience to start acting like it instead of just playing pretend.
One cannot devote themselves to feeding & enriching the monster denying not just ourselves, but the entire world a fair shake at democracy and then turn around and claim to be someone on the side of the commoner.
We have people who provide material support & comfort to the most heinous villains we can produce. People who deny science, people who deny the Constitution, people who thirst for war, people who deny aid to the least among us. They are in power because many people have worked hard and paid for them to be in power.
When it all boils down to the basics. Most people prefer money over democracy. It is evident by the representation we have in DC. The best ones Wall St dollars can buy. Dollars provided by people more concerned with themselves than the ripples that expand outwardly from every drop in the corporate pond. Ripples that are literally killing us.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)It is right there in front of us, thumbing its nose and there ain't shit anybody like myself can do.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts)Corruption = regular business and politico too
Duh...No Shit,..category kind
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)But hey ...Hillary Sachs is inevitable.
Duval
(4,280 posts)mountain grammy
(26,598 posts)So, do we accept defeat or fight back?
http://billmoyers.com/2014/11/21/8-ways-get-money-politics/
turbinetree
(24,685 posts)We need to help out with Democratic Study Group (DSG----from long ago and to some of the current names being used to today like the CPC ---Congressional Progressive Caucus) and our message, and what it did in the past and into the future, which made the middle class and poor stronger.
Instead of the right wing republicans new message from the RSC from such funded groups like AEI ( American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, ect.....) and of the message which came out of Iowa in there little right wing get together on how they are all concerned about the citizens of this country in there new rebranding that they are for "INCOME EQUALITY"----I mean really, this is coming from Mittens, and Cruz and others, and there 200 million funds compared to the "excitable donors" of 25 dollars and some of our functions and groups having only 40 million for example to get the message out .
The AMP 2015 winter magazine subscription had and has a very good article on the DSG,
I strongly believe that this what is needed, this election is extremely critical for the citizens of this country
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and the one with the most $$$$ wins. First Amendment, and all that.
Revolving door.
Police brutality.
No jobs, no hope, no change, no future.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)..............to plan their continuing campaign of highway robbery!
Apparently, this year's Davos participants are supposed to give lip service to the issue of growing inequality in the world; but, Beware the Dark Side, Luke:
Even the rightwing National Review is weighing on Davos Destructive Elites. The author critiques hypocrisy of the elites who express concern about global warming, while the 1,700 private jets filling general aviation hangars at Davos contribute such a large carbon footprint.
And their hypocrisy about discussing inequality while:
Give the author credit, he does criticize his fellow conservatives as well as 'liberals' like Clinton.
Oh, almost forgot to mention, that guy with the two nannies on his private jet, Jeff Greene, he's the guy telling the American middle class that their expectations are unrealistic:
Blogger Felix Salman actually gets around to asking: How Stupid is a Davos audience, anyway?
As you can expect, the big money people: the IMF and international banksters are arguing about how to screw Europe's working people:
//snip
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Living above the clouds and lording it over the proles, these globalist turdballs must think that the drones and H-bomb will protect them. They have no idea of the power of an idea, nor a defense for the good ones.
Rex
(65,616 posts)they got. The idiots that run around and pretend everything is just fine are the same ones that would destroy this country in order to save it.
I have a hard time with who to blame more; the owners or the enablers that have no moral compass and sellout for pennies on the dollar.
Madmiddle
(459 posts)of the Feds has been around forever. These days it is there for everyone to see, but because we are all sheep, it will carry on. Until people pick up the arms we are constitutionally allowed to use against this corrupt form of government, we will not exact change as seen fit. We have every right to put a stop to it and we fucking well a have the might to change all of government.
handmade34
(22,756 posts)it is not guns we need... it is mass collective action that is necessary for change and that doesn't come from a few people with guns playing shoot 'em up...
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Thanks for the post O.
90-percent
(6,828 posts)Is a giant among progressive liberals of the world. The current state of affairs is so French Revolution-y that I can't help contemplating that the solution of last resort for those of us unfortunate enough to be in the bottom 99% would be Sharon Engel's classic:
SECOND AMENDMENT SOLUTION
To wreak some justice upon our greedy sociopath plutocrats and their fucking White House cuff links.
-90% Jimmy
KT2000
(20,568 posts)and that is what I am seeing more of from the 99%. Lots of things die with that, like hope, trust, and community.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)As Ed Schultz used to say, if you're not outraged it's because you aren't paying any attention.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)so its hidden from the masses.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)tblue37
(65,227 posts)Ramses
(721 posts)MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)After seeing posts about Greece and the comments that were made, the best explanation of what goes on is a legalized corruption of one society and then another.
On the domestic side in the US, have so many completely forgotten who has been in charge of writing laws on behalf of the oil and gas industry, thereby corrupting what is a constitutional right to clean air and water? Or, how about taking over countries and opening the door to corruption from the international banking system?
Unparalleled wealth is the gateway to legislation and the coup d'etat.
Beartracks
(12,801 posts)It was specifically so plutocracy could be redefined as democracy. I mean, $1 of a rich man's money is no more powerful than $1 of a poor man's money, no?
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blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Agony
(2,605 posts)they have been strategizing around this idea for a while.
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/
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1. They are all created by disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist friendly cooperative governments, immigrants
the rule of law and patenting inventions. Often these wealth waves involve great complexity exploited best by the rich and educated of the time.
2. There is no average consumer in Plutonomies. There is only the rich and everyone else. The rich account for a disproportionate chunk of the economy, while the non-rich account for surprisingly small bites of the national pie. Kapur estimates that in 2005, the richest 20% may have been responsible for 60% of total spending.
3. Plutonomies are likely to grow in the future, fed by capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity and globalization.
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navarth
(5,927 posts)NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)CanSocDem
(3,286 posts)...Saying out loud what everybody has been thinking for years.
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