US Workers Competing With $4.70 a Day Mexican Workers, Which is One of the Reasons Why US Wealth and Income Inequalities Are At Historic Levels

The billionaires who control the US federal government and both major political parties are quaking in their boots because the Mexican government has increased the national minimum wage ever so slightly, by .45 cents per day. No doubt the billionaires are worried the increase will cut into corporate profits, slow the increase in share prices during the current economic and stock market bubbles, and perhaps even slow the increase in dividend payments. Heaven forbid!

CNN reports that “Nearly 25 million Mexicans are getting a pay raise next week. From $4.25 to $4.70 — a day. Mexican government and business leaders agreed on Tuesday to raise the country’s minimum wage starting on December 1 to 88.36 pesos from 80.04 pesos. The 10% raise is good news for 24.7 million Mexicans who work either one or two minimum wage jobs. But it also resurfaces a key complaint by American workers who voted for President Trump, in part because of his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA, the trade pact between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Trump blames NAFTA for the loss of many American jobs. Cheap labor has attracted American companies to Mexico for decades.”

Trump, of course, is correct. Millions of US jobs have been exported to Mexico since before Nafta, and millions more have been created there by US corporations rather than here because the terms of Nafta paved the legal road to do so. Generally, the numbers have been egregiously understated by researchers because the methodology they use deliberately understates US job losses.

What Trump doesn’t want US citizens to know, which is also what the billionaires who run the Republican Party and the Democratic Party don’t want you to know is that US income and wealth inequalities have been fueled by Nafta, and the stock markets have been booming since Nafta, precisely because Nafta has allowed US corporations to export millions of US jobs to Mexico. The difference between the old higher US wages and benefits and the new lower Mexican wages with no benefits goes straight into the already super-sized and ultra-fat wallets of the uber-rich via higher corporate profits, surging share prices and rising dividends.

Do you ever wonder how Warren Buffett, Phil Knight, the Koch Brothers, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others ever got so much richer than they should be? These wonder boys have always been big-time supporters of cheap Mexican and cheaper Chinese, Vietnamese and Bangladesh wages with no benefits and fewer worker safety and relaxed or nonexistent environmental controls in those and other nations. They also have prospered because of these things.

So these rich folks owe quite a debt to the record income and wealth inequality they have created to Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Paul Ryan, and Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. The rest of us pay the price of the massive political corruption they have created.

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The Trump Tax SCAM is a big corporate giveaway to the rich: Here’s How

Trump’s tax scam, as you can see from the video above, is a big tax giveaway to the rich via corporations. When corporations receive tax breaks, this raises their after-tax profits, which is then passed on almost exclusively to the rich via higher dividends and surging stock prices.

We already have an ultra-dangerous stock market bubble about to implode, and Trump’s tax plan will only make it bigger, but it will also make the coming recession worse by a wide margin. It is likely Trump’s tax plan is designed to do precisely this.

This means the tax plan has been written to create greater income and wealth inequalities, which are already at dangerous levels not seen before in US history. US corporate profits have been at record levels for years, gaining in size quarter after quarter.

Is anybody corrupt, stupid or insane enough to believe that corporations and the rich need more money? Trump and the Republican Party are most likely all three of the above, or is it something else?

The corporate tax cuts given by the Trump plan will keep that bubble expanding until it pops. That is the only logical explanation for the tax plan, which is an extremely dangerous idea in itself.

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What the Corporate News Media Doesn’t Want You to Know: Massive Pipeline Leak Shows Why Nebraska Should Reject Keystone XL

Here is what the corporate news media doesn’t want you to know. What is really odd about the Keystone pipeline is that this Canadian corporation is using eminent domain to dispossess US citizens of their property in order to expand it. The only mention of eminent domain in the US constitution is for “public purposes,” whereas the Keystone Pipeline is clearly a private profit-making venture. Your government is allowing US investors who are heavily invested in the Keystone Pipeline to dispossess less financially endowed US citizens of their property. That’s how corrupt your government is, and especially the corporate wing of the US Supreme Court.

As for the pipeline leak the news media doesn’t want you to know about.

About 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) of oil leaked Thursday from TransCanada’s Keystone oil pipeline near Amherst, South Dakota, drawing fierce outcry from pipeline opponents, and meek coverage by the corporate news media.

The leak, the largest spill to date in South Dakota, comes just days before Nebraska regulators decide on whether its controversial sister project—the Keystone XL (KXL) Pipeline—will go forward.

“Enough is enough. Pipelines leak—it’s not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when.’ The pending permit for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline should be flatly rejected by Nebraska’s Public Service Commission (PSC), but know that no matter what the outcome, the fight’s not over yet,” said Scott Parkin, Rainforest Action Network’s Organizing Director. “We need to stop all expansion of extreme fossil fuels such as tar sands oil—and we need the finance community to stop funding these preventable climate disasters—disasters for the climate, the environment, and Indigenous rights.”

President Obama had rejected the Keystone Pipeline expansion, mainly because billionaire Warren Buffett likely told him in gentle terms to do so. Buffett owns BNSF railroad, which is the largest carrier of oil in the United States. Had the pipeline expansion gone through, BNSF’s profits would have suffered, and Uncle Warren didn’t want that.

President Trump reinstated the Keystone Pipeline because the Koch Brothers and other oil investors that invest heavily in the Republican Party made him do it. It’s that simple. The Koch’s, for example, are heavily invested in the pipeline as well as the Canadian tar sands, which produces the oil that will flow through the pipeline.

As for the oil spill, Dave Flute, tribal chairman of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, said. “We are concerned that the oil spill is close to our treaty land, but we are trying to stay positive that they are getting the spill contained and that they will share any environmental assessments with the tribal agency.” If Flute really believes management at Keystone will share any honest “environmental assessments with the tribal agency,” he is an idiot and a fool.

According to TransCanada, the Keystone pipeline system delivers Canadian and U.S. crude oil supplies to markets around North America, stretching 4,324 kilometers (2,687 miles) in length. It starts from Hardisty, Alta., east into Manitoba where it turns south and crosses the border into North Dakota. It then runs south through South Dakota to Steele City, Neb., where it splits. One arm goes east through Missouri for deliveries into Wood River and Patoka, Ill., and the other runs south through Oklahoma to Cushing and onward to Port Arthur and Houston, Texas.

The proposed KXL would add to the massive Keystone system, with its line starting in Hardisty, Alberta and ending in Steele City. Nebraka’s government needs to issue permits in order to construct the pipeline, and public discussion begins soon.

 

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US Wealth Inequality Has Increased Since the Great Recession: What the Corporate News Media Doesn’t Want to Tell You

Wealth inequality has grown since the Great Recession, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center. This inequality is at a level never seen before in the history of the United States, and it has been fueled by unprecedented income redistribution from the 99 to the 1 percent. Wealth and income inequalities have been created by a level of US political corruption not seen since the Gilded Age; and led by such political hacks as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden and Wall Street Congressman Paul Ryan.

It is only natural that wealth for the rich has grown since they have stolen via their political hacks 99 percent of all income growth from 2009 to 2014 and the vast majority of income growth since then. However, not willing to anger their corporate donors, the higher-ups at Pew are unwilling to disclose why the rich have acquired more wealth while the rest of us have lagged.

As the next recession unfolds, and it is unfolding, it is likely to be much worse in many ways than the Great Recession simply because the demand for goods and services on the part of the 99 percent has to a large degree been redistributed to the 1 percent since the last recession.

For more information see Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances

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The United States is a Billionaire Bonanza Created at the Expense of Everybody Else

How corrupt and sick is an economic and political system designed to churn out billionaires at the expense of everybody else? The top three richest Americans (Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates) own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. Is this what an economy is for?

A report from the Institute for Policy Studies has come out with a study on wealth inequality in the United States, which is a function of redistributing income from those who work for a living to the unproductive and idle ultra-rich.

The ultra-rich control both major political parties. So naturally, politicians enact trade policies and legislation that redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Republicans, such as the Bush clan, and Democrats such as the Clinton clan, as well as politicians such as Wall Street’s Senator Ron Wyden, and Congressman Paul Ryan have been instrumental in creating financial inequality. Quite naturally, President Trump wants to make income and wealth inequality worse through his proposed tax cuts for the rich. The repercussions of this inequality will likely be enormous. The last time such inequality occurred resulted in the Great Depression.

Key Findings from the study include:

* The three wealthiest people in the United States — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett — now own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 160 million people or 63 million households.
* America’s top 25 billionaires — a group the size of a major league baseball team’s active roster — together hold $1 trillion in wealth. These 25 have as much wealth as 56 percent of the population, a total 178 million people or 70 million households.
* The billionaires who make up the full Forbes 400 list now own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 80 million households or 204 million people — more people than the populations of Canada and Mexico combined.
* The median American family has a net worth of $80,000, excluding the family car. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 33 million of these typical American families.
* One in five U.S households, over 19 percent, have zero or negative net worth. “Underwater households” make up an even higher share of households of color. Over 30 percent of black households and 27 percent of Latino households have zero or negative net worth to fall back on.

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How Trump and the Republican Party Plan to Redistribute Income From the 99 to the 1 Percent Via Trump’s Proposed Tax Policy

We can pretty much see from the graph above what the Trump tax plan does. It raises taxes on those couples earning less than $80,000 a year, and reduces taxes on those earning more, until you get to the million dollar couples.

However, beyond the graph is something more illuminating, and both the liberal and corporate so-called news media won’t mention this because they don’t want you to know.

Income and wealth inequality will increase under Trump’s tax plan. In the United States, the top 1 percent already steal via legislation and trade treaties about 37 percent of all income produced in the United States, compared to just 8 percent in 1980. In addition, wealth inequality, already the most unequal in US history, will increase under Trump’s plan.

Do you know why? Because that’s what the Republicans and some Democrats like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden want to do!

Trump’s tax cut proposal will also reduce corporate tax rates, which will, quite naturally, result in higher corporate after-tax profits, which will then be redistributed to rich shareholders and bigwig corporate officers in the form of surging share prices and rising dividends. It will also help bid up the price of corporate bonds since corporations will be able to offer the rich higher rates of return with corporate tax cuts. Trump’s tax plan is really a plan to redistribute more money to himself and rich Democrats and affluent Republicans from the rest of us.

The government will experience greater budget deficits, which will mean reducing federal funds for Social Security, Medicaid, Aid to Needy Children, Food Stamps, etc…while, of course, maintaining or increasing funding for the military (which benefits only the rich).

Trump’s tax plan essentially calls for continued inflating of the current stock market bubble. Historically, the bigger the bubble, the greater will be the shock to the rest of the economy.

Naturally, one can look at the Republican created stock market bubble of the 1920s, and the income and wealth inequality that fueled that bubble, which led directly to the Great Depression. Then there was the Reagan bubble, and after a short blip of a recession in 1991 that cost President George H.W. Bush the presidency, the bubble renewed under the vigorous presidency of Wall Street’s very much owned Bill Clinton.

Under Clinton, there was a tech bubble, a telecommunications bubble (Bill signed the legislation guaranteeing it), a housing bubble (Bill refused to sign the legislation that would have prevented this), and, of course, all of these helped to fuel a stock market bubble (also fueled by exporting jobs to Mexico thanks to Clinton’s NAFTA). When the bubbles burst in 2001, the economy became a shambles.

Sure, the incompetent, corrupt and worst president in US history, President George W. Bush, followed the incompetent and corrupt President Bill Clinton into office, and did some really stupid things, like passing a tax cut for the rich that helped to create negative job growth in his eight years. However, to some degree, the economy under George W never recovered from the Clinton bubbles. It still has not, and likely never will, not without a major shift in political power from the billionaires who control both major political parties to people who will represent working folks, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Trump’s proposed tax cuts for the rich shows who is in control. It isn’t Trump, and it isn’t congress. A handful of billionaires need the bubble to continue to expand. Otherwise, they will lose trillions of imaginary dollars when it bursts, like back in 2008.

The best evidence of this collusion is Trump himself. When Trump was running for president he verbally assaulted in the most vicious of ways Chinese currency manipulation. The president has made certain not to mention this since shortly after he became president. This suggests one or more billionaires grabbed him by the lapels and told him if he mentioned Chinese currency manipulation again the billionaire’s club would take him behind the woodshed and give him a good political beating. Why would they do that?

When the Chinese manipulate their currency, it increases the profits of US corporations that manufacture in China and export those products to the US, and this, as you might suspect, fuels the stock market bubble.

As a senator, former President Obama also viciously attacked Chinese currency manipulation. However, once he became president Obama never mentioned the issue again, at least not in public. This suggests the same billionaires also threatened to take President Obama behind the political woodshed if he ever mentioned the subject again.

This suggests the same billionaires control both major political parties. Or, more than likely, there are two groups of billionaires, each in control over a major political party. However, it also suggests both groups close ranks when they have a common goal, such as making certain the public doesn’t know about how Chinese currency manipulation enriches them at the expense of everybody else, just like Trump’s tax cuts will.

 

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US Senator Elizabeth Warren Says the 2016 Democratic Nomination Was Rigged Against Bernie Sanders

A CNN reporter asked US Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, “Do you agree with the notion that the DNC was rigged in Hillary Clinton’s favor?”

“Yes,” Warren said.

Okay, virtually everybody in the world has known or suspected this for quite some time.

Warren said the 2016 Democratic nomination for president was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. She also said the Wall Street controlled Democratic Party faces “a real problem” in dealing with the fallout from the revelation that Clinton’s campaign secretly took over control of the Democratic National Committee in 2015.

Responding to the disclosure by Donna Brazile, who became interim chairwoman of the DNC as last year’s election approached, Warren told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that Democratic leaders must restore faith in the party’s operations.

“What we’ve got to do as Democrats now is hold this party accountable,” Warren said, adding that the current DNC chairman, former Labor Department Secretary Tom Perez is “being tested.”

Warren failed to mention that Perez was the Clinton and Wall Street candidate to manage the Democratic Party.

Donna Brazile, a Clinton and Wall Street loyalist, wrote in her new book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, that shortly after she took the DNC job in late July 2016, she discovered the Clinton campaign had signed an agreement to help keep the DNC financially afloat, a deal in “which [Clinton] expected to wield control of its operations.”

The agreement between the DNC and the Clinton camp was signed in August 2015, several months before the primary season began and almost a full year before she officially secured the nomination over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I).

The Clinton campaign “had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house,” Brazile said in her book, to be released on Tuesday.

“The funding arrangement … was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical,” Brazile wrote.

The excerpt, first published in Politico, includes details about Brazile’s call to Sanders after she discovered the arrangement, set up under her predecessor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).

“When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger,” Brazile wrote. “We would go forward. We had to.”

Of course, Brazile leaked the questions to the Clinton campaign for one of the debates. She did not perform the same favor for Sanders. This suggests Brazile wrote the tell-all-book-about-the-scandal-but-not-my-involvement-in-it to make a few extra bucks.

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