President Joe Biden and the False Promises of Immigration Reform and Raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15

There are an estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States as of 2021. This estimate has remained relatively constant throughout the last few decades. In the billionaire’s news media there is always a political issue of what to do with these people. The Democrats under newly elected President Joe Biden want to push through immigration reform, which means providing a road to citizenship for the undocumented. No penalties will exist for those who enter the United States illegally after legalization is granted. Biden’s basic plan, then, is to encourage more undocumented immigrants to enter the United States after legalization is granted. But this is a ploy that will ensure the president will not be able to fulfill his pledge on this issue.

The billionaires who control both major political parties are against legalization. This is why Biden has instructed Democratic party senators to keep the filibuster, meaning that it will take sixty votes in the senate to pass Biden’s immigration plan. That is not likely to occur with Republican Party opposition. Biden has already sent his stimulus package scurrying through the senate using something called a procedural vote. Notice he refuses the do the same thing with immigration reform, as well as raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, and other promises he made to the Democratic Party grassroots voters. There is a reason for this. It is called profits.

Roughly 73 percent of all immigrants detained by the government are sent to private prisons. This is a $4 billion a year industry. CoreCivic (CXW) and Geo Group (GEO) are the two largest private prison corporations. CoreCivic’s share price was $41 in 2015, but dropped to $7.19 as of February 20, 2020. Likewise, Geo Group’s share price plummeted under President Trump from $32 in April 2017 to $7.30 on February 20th. Lobbyists for these and other corporations that benefit from the apprehension of undocumented immigrants are battling tooth and nail to ensure the filibuster is not shoved to the side on immigration reform. Campaign money has been given to the president to ensure a rising tide of undocumented workers cross the border, while stifling immigration reform, all of which should push share prices higher.

Immigration reform would hurt the profits of a number of corporations and private businesses in food service, technology, ground transportation, air transportation, “bail bond companies, health care companies, food service groups, money transfer services and more” are “working in tandem with for-profit prisons and ultimately, the U.S. government, to help run the multibillion dollar business of immigration enforcement.” This is big business!

So don’t expect immigration reform. Don’t expect an increase in the federal minimum wage. The billionaires who control both major political parties are saying no to both, and President Biden must obey. Enacting either piece of legislation would reduce corporate profits, share prices and dividends, which would lessen to a small degree income and wealth inequality. Biden’s job is to ensure that does not happen.

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The Billionaires Have Programmed Too Many of Us Into Opposing Teams

The people of the United States have been sliced and diced by the billionaires into two large points-of-view over the last forty years, and deliberately so. The billionaires have used their money, their corporations, their control over the news media, as well as their control over the right-wing of the United States Supreme Court to divide a large segment of the U.S. population into two opposing camps; grassroots Democratic Party voters and Republican Party voters.

These people have been emotionally programed to support one side or the other, pretty much on par with English soccer fans, who will swap punches and riot over a referees call or a perceived slight where none might exist.

Many Democratic party members will cheer their team on with unbounded enthusiasm and little critical thought, especially if it means their Democratic Party team triumphs over the Republican party team, regardless of what those teams actually support. Many Republican Party voters are just as thoughtless.

One of my favorite examples is when Donald Trump was elected president. The Wall Street controlled Democratic National Committee (DNC) and its associate organizations immediately began to campaign that Donald Trump was the worst U.S. president of all time. Democratic voters were repeating this message even before Trump took office. Republican voters have been just as susceptible to this kind of messaging for decades.

Few Democratic voters are critical of Joe Biden because he won the election and that is all that counted. Our team won! The other team is the worst!

Forget that then Senator Biden continuously voted to redistribute $2.5 trillion for every year over the last twenty-five years from those who work for a living to the billionaires who pull his strings. That amounts to $50 trillion. Forget that Biden voted for numerous, but profitable wars, voted to incarcerate a high number of African-American males, and refuses to eliminate the senate filibuster for most things, like raising the minimum wage, immigration reform, and other things that would reduce the profits of the billionaires and their corporations. Many Democratic Party voters like to brush off these issues because, well, Biden is a Democrat, and he won, and when he won our team won. Hooray for our team!

That is the problem with Trump voters. When he lost, their team lost, and that is not acceptable.

Sliced and diced we have been. The billionaires have used social issues to divert our attention while financially raping each and every one of us for their own benefit. But we get emotionally lifted when our team scores a victory, or emotionally deflated, when our team loses. The billionaires can even lead many of the grassroots to feel great anger if our team loses.

All of which means the issues do not matter. Everything boils down to whether or not our team wins or loses, rather than how much the billionaires controlling both political parties close ranks to financially rape us using whatever corrupt means possible.

This is nice situation for the billionaires because we working folks are fighting each other rather than them and that is the point of it all.

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The Political Games of the Billionaires and Their Political Representatives

The political games of the billionaires and their political representatives are afoot and quite noticeable, if one cares to look. Did anybody notice over the last several months that Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell made it abundantly clear that he was not going to consider a stimulus package of more than $500 billion while House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was looking at a minimum of $2.2 trillion.

President Donald Trump tried to negotiate something in the middle since he had to placate both. Now that Trump is soon to be out of office, McConnell and Pelosi are looking at a $900 billion package. They put Trump in a hard squeeze for months, and both made certain he was not going to get a new stimulus deal that might help him win reelection. McConnell and Pelosi proved they are different sides of the same coin; they’re corporatists and globalists and controlled by billionaires. They put their desire for political power ahead of the welfare of millions of American citizens who are unemployed because of Covid-19. The terms of the March 2020 CARES Act are due to expire the day after Christmas. People will be evicted from their homes by the millions, while millions will lose their unemployment insurance, and all Pelosi and McConnell cared about for the last several months was increasing their political capital at the expense of everybody but the billionaires who control both of them.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that “More and more Americans are going hungry as the pandemic continues to spiral out of control and government aid dries up, with children bearing the brunt of the hardship.

More than 27.3 million or 12.7% of Americans — 17.5% among households with children — reported they either sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the last week, according to new data this week from the U.S. Census Bureau that polled people from November 25 to December 7. That’s the highest level dating back to the last week of April when the Census survey began.”

Even before Covid-19 struck, according to a 2017 CareerBuilder survey, “78 percent of U.S. workers live paycheck to paycheck to make ends meet (up from 75 percent a year earlier), and nearly one in ten workers making $100,000+ live paycheck to paycheck. More than half of minimum wage workers say they have to work more than one job to make ends meet, while nearly three in four workers say they are in debt today. “A quarter of workers (25 percent) have not been able to make ends meet every month in the last year, and 20 percent have missed payment on some smaller bills. Further, 71 percent of all workers say they’re in debt — up from 68 percent” in 2016. “While 46 percent say their debt is manageable, more than half of those in debt (56 percent) say they feel they will always be in debt. It should be noted that 18 percent of all workers have reduced their 401k contribution and/or personal savings in the last year, more than a third (38 percent) do not participate in a 401k plan, IRA or comparable retirement plan, and 26 percent have not set aside any savings in the last year.” 81 percent of workers “have worked a minimum wage job, and 71 percent of them were not able to make ends meet financially during that time — more than half (54 percent) had to work more than one job.” According to a study by the United States Federal Reserve Bank, 61 percent of adults could pay for an unexpected expense of $400 with cash, savings, or a credit card they could pay off the following month. 27 percent would need to borrow or sell something to pay the expense, and 12 percent could never cover it. This was all before Covid-19.

If you think things were bad for the middle class in 2019, it surely has got to be worse for them nowadays. Below are some other statistics that place things in perspective, and all of these were calculated before Covid-19.

As of 2020, the average working citizen in the USA no longer could afford to raise a family on his or her yearly salary, demonstrating how badly off the middle class has become since 1980. In 1985, a middle class male had to work thirty weeks in order to pay the $13,227 it cost for housing, healthcare, transportation and education. By 2018, the average cost of those four items had risen to $54,441, and it took a male head-of-household fifty-three weeks to pay for them. This stark reality was even worse for female heads of households. Women had to work forty-five weeks to pay for the same things in 1985, but it required sixty-six weeks to earn them in 2018. By 2018, both male and female head-of-households had to work more than a year to pay for a year’s worth of those four items.

There are many reasons why millions of middle class people are in such dire straits; trade agreements, for example, have exported middle class jobs by the millions. Pelosi and McConnell supported every one of these boondoggles. This is why they are different sides of the same coin. Meanwhile, the fifty richest billionaires are worth as much as the poorest 165 million Americans. Both Pelosi and McConnell have worked hand-in-hand to ensure this outcome.

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Why the Next Stimulus May Never Arrive

The combined wealth of U.S. billionaires increased by $850 billion since March 18th, 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, an increase of over 28 percent. The billionaires like that.

The billionaires who control the Republicon Party want as small of fiscal stimulus as possible since it will be directed at the needs of the 99 percent. The billionaires who control the Democratic Party support a large stimulus directed at the 99 percent, perhaps because our severe recession is only beginning. Democrats control the U.S. House of Representatives and have pared down a $3.4 trillion stimulus to $2.2 trillion in negotiations with Senate Republicons.

Republicon Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already stated no stimulus will occur before the election of November 3rd. What if, as expected, the Republicons lose the senate and President Trump loses his reelection bid? Will the Senate Republicons pass a stimulus bill before President Biden enters office on January 20, 2021?

And the answer is; not a chance.

In 2008, McConnell made it a crusade to ensure that newly elected President Barack Obama was going to be a one-term president even as the nation was burning during the Republican created Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. Expect McConnell’s job will be to ensure Biden becomes a one-term president if he wins the election, which means letting the raging coronavirus financial conflagration lay waste the United States as much as possible before Biden takes office on January 20th. For the billionaires who control the Republicon Party, no pain and no suffering is enough to achieve this end so long as the 99 percent get all the pain and suffering.

Expect McConnell to oppose any stimulus after Biden takes office, except perhaps a tiny one. This means the economy will burn, and Republcons will try to blame the Democrats in order to retake the House and Senate in 2020. This tactic will not work since once the election is over changing demographics will ensure the Republicon Party becomes a permanent minority party whose influence at the national level will consistently decrease until it can no longer stop legislation in the senate with a filibuster, and that moment is no more than ten to fifteen years away.

On the other hand, a President Biden is unlikely to ask his other billionaire controlled Democratic senators to eliminate the filibuster for one time even to pass a much needed stimulus because to do so will mean the grassroots will demand they do the same for other issues, such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, creating a public option for health care, raising the taxes on the billionaires who back Biden and other Democrats, immigration reform, and many other issues.

If President Trump wins but the Republicons lose the senate, McConnell is still likely to oppose a major stimulus package for the reason stated above. So don’t expect a major stimulus package to help fight off this economic disaster. We may get one, but it is unlikely or will be too small to be of much help. Keep your fingers crossed.

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The Battle over Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee is an Illusion

Truer colors have never been more clear. As the economy continues to place more than 800,000 citizens on the unemployment rolls for many weeks in row, as the stock markets have tanked over the entire month of September 2020, as the number of people applying for welfare increase week after week, the Republicans have decided to divert all of their attention toward pushing through a Supreme Court nominee and the Democrat leadership have decided to say they intend do all they can to oppose that nominee.

Sure, there is talk of another stimulus package which lifted the stock market on Friday, but the two sides are so far apart that we can rest assure all discussion about a stimulus package is simply a joke perpetrated on us since the two sides are far apart and have been for months on this issue.

In the meantime, both Dems and Republicon Party leaders are using the Supreme Court issue to divert our attention from all of the above. There is not a whole lot the Dems can do to stop Trump’s choice. They insist if the Republicons go through with the nominee before the election, making 17 Republican senators liars and hypocrites in the process, the Dems will end the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court by pushing its number from 9 to 13 justices, if Biden wins and the Dems take the Senate.

Well, if Biden wins and the Dems take the senate the very last thing they will want to do is end the filibuster. Ending the filibuster means a simple majority vote is all that will be needed for the Dems to push through the agenda the grassroots of the party demand.

However, the billionaires who control the party do not want what the grassroots are demanding, such as a higher federal minimum wage like $15 an hour, greater healthcare coverage (such as Medicare for all or a public option), more legislatively enacted labor rights, a packed court, immigration reform, more paid time off for new parents, higher taxes on the rich and their corporations, enacting other legislation and federal action that would reduce income and wealth inequality, and a host of other things.

These things would drive corporate profits, share prices, and dividend payments down, and neither the billionaires who control the Republican Party and the billionaires who control the Democratic Party want that since this is where all their financial and political power, income and wealth emanate from. So all of the so-called Democratic resistance against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee will never be enacted.

There will not be an end to the filibuster because it allows both parties to not govern on behalf of their grassroots while allowing the billionaires who control both major political parties and the Supreme Court to get everything they want.

Questions about corporate power will not be asked of Trump’s nominee during the soon-to-be senate confirmation hearings. This is because Trump will choose a candidate who supports the billionaires and their corporations, somebody who will not want to say in public, “Yes, I believe that Amazon.com is a person deserving of Constitutional rights, including freedom of speech and religious choice, and yes when Amazon.com and Microsoft and any corporations spend money on politics this is Constitutionally protected free speech and the founding father’s believed it to be true.”

All Republican nominees to the court have pretended to believe this even though corporations are creations of state charters and have no ability to speak or spend money. Some rich person has to do all of this for corporations, and corporations are the center of billionaire financial power. Thus, Trump’s nominee will want to give the billionaires greater Constitutional rights than you and I have via their corporations. The Dem leadership also wants this.

If the nominee was to say in the confirmation hearings corporations (ie General Motors and TESLA) are people she will sound very stupid, and hideously biased in favor of the billionaires and their corporations, and therefore undeserving of the position since you cannot find any founding father who ever said or wrote anything so stupid.

The game is rigged folks, and not for you. It’s a rigged game for the billionaire club only. Divide and conquer the masses using social issues while ensuring the billionaires and their corporations can financially rape the 99 percent via their corporations and their corrupted Supreme Court is the name of the game. The leaders of both major political parties are playing the same game.

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Has Joe Biden’s Selection of Kamala Harris Curtailed his Chances of Beating Donald Trump

The news media has touted Kamala Harris as a good selection by Joe Biden. She will rally African-American supporters to vote in greater numbers for Biden, the press has touted. In reality, the very existence of Donald Trump will rally African-American supporters. Harris was selected by Biden because that is who the billionaires that control Biden wanted. The last person they wanted was Elizabeth Warren, who Biden could never seriously consider to be his running mate, because the billionaires opposed her.

The Guardian recently reported that “Harris was the early frontrunner for the VP slot in part precisely because her political record reveals only spotty and inconsistent ideological commitments. During her own presidential bid in the primary cycle, she moved left on Medicare for All, Bernie Sanders’ signature issue, but then backtracked right. She claimed to have evolved her thinking on law enforcement and incarceration in one instance, then touted her record as a prosecutor in another. Harris was by no means alone in this ideological shape shifting: she was no more willing to alter her positions for the sake of convenience than, say Mayor Pete Buttigieg. But the shifts signaled that what Harris was selling to the American people was not so much an ideological commitment, like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to her left, or Amy Klobuchar to her right. What Harris was running on was more cultural and affective. She was not selling a policy platform. She was selling her character; namely, the carefully projected impression that she was thick skinned, intelligent and unwilling to suffer fools.”

Like Biden, Harris is the choice of the billionaires who control the Democratic Party, willing to sell her soul to do whatever it takes, and for whomever it is necessary, to feed her ambitions. She has not been selected to be Biden’s VP because of her commitment to the welfare of the vast majority of Americans.

The selection of Harris may decrease Democratic turnout at the polls in closely fought states as progressive voters shun Biden, who has voted to export millions of American jobs, and redistributed trillions of dollars from working Americans to the idle rich during his time in Washington, and Harris, who appears to bend to the whims of the idle rich.

As such, Biden’s best campaign issue is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Supreme Court Justice is ailing and may not make it past the next four years. A conservative nominee under Trump will provide more constitutional rights to the mouse clicking rich and perhaps overturn Roe Vs. Wade. No doubt, Biden and Harris prefer the rich receive more constitutional rights than everybody else, but progressives do not.

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The Rupublicans, the Dictatorship of the Billionaires: It’s the Economy Stupid!

U.S. Senate Republicans cannot figure out the math. As a political party of consequence, they are on the verge of historical irrelevance after the November elections. There are several red (Republican) states turning purple and or on their way to becoming blue (Democratic). Virginia is turning bluer by the moment, and so is North Carolina. Red states such as Texas and Arizona have a blue tinge and are getting bluer.

Now let’s count how many blue states are turning red. Oh, yes! That’s easy. The answer is zero.

According to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will likely be the next senate minority leader come November, fifteen to twenty  Republican senators will not vote yes to a 5th coronavirus aid package even as the unemployment rate soars during the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.

This crisis was triggered by the coronavirus pandemic to be sure, but forty years of Republican and Democratic Party legislation redistributing trillions of dollars from the 99 to the 1 percent have caused the crisis to be deeper and getting deeper than it otherwise would be. The 1 percent were getting about 8 percent of all income produced in the USA in 1980 while nowadays that number hovers around 38+ percent not counting money the rich have offshore to avoid their fair share of taxes. Three people (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett) had more wealth than the 90 percent of Americans as of a few years ago. Now it is possible that three people have more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of the population since Buffett has gotten richer since then but has fallen to number eight this year.

The rich receive 2/3rds to 100 percent of their income and wealth from corporations. This is why the CARES ACT legislation was easily passed back in March by both Democrats and Republicans. The two parties voted to give the rich $4.75 trillion in a $2.2 trillion package while giving the rest of us crumbs. Click here for that story. The two parties were voting to protect the financial engine of the rich.

One of the sticking points in negotiations between Democrats and Republicans this week is the $600 a week the unemployed were receiving and that officially ended on July 31th. Republicans argue that this paid more money to some unemployed people than they were actually earning on their jobs. Trump’s brain-dead, incompetent and hypocritical Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said this morning during an Interview with ABC’s “This Week” than nobody should be given more money than they earn but the Republicans did not mind giving away $4.75 trillion to the 300,000 richest of Americans for sitting on their asses and not doing anything.

Senate Republicans and House Democrats are negotiating this weekend to prevent the economic disaster from spreading.

McConnell and the Republicans could only offer a $1 trillion relief package in the current negotiations that will fall far short of saving the nation from this disaster. U.S. House Democrats, under Majority leader Nancy Pelosi, proposed and passed through the House the HEROES Act, a $3.4 trillion stimulus package two months ago, which is also likely to fall short of our nation’s needs.

The failure of the Republicans to take this economic crisis seriously means more states are going to continue to turn blue for generations to come, making the Republican Party a permanent super minority party for decades to come on its way to becoming the political party of irrelevance.

 

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How Stupid Are the RepubliCons? It’s all about the economy stupid!

U.S. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must be as stupid as U.S. Senator’s Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Paul and Cruz oppose the U.S. House of Representatives Heroes bill sponsored by the Democratic Party that will continue to provide $600 a week to the unemployed until January, as well as tens of billions of dollars to cities and states that are experiencing reduced tax dollars and will likely need to lay off tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or more, of public employees without further Federal aid.

Many Republican senators are opposed to the HEROES Act because it will not reward their billionaire owners to the same degree the CARES Act did, and which gave the superrich and their corporations $4.75 trillion in a $2.2 trillion bill. (Click here for that story.)

McConnell, appearing to be a dimwit, does not understand the issue that will decide the election in November. “It’s the economy stupid,” James Carville used to say. Carville was Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign manager in 1992. They won the election in 1992.

“We swears to serve the master of the precious.”

The U.S. economy is tanking big time. The only thing stopping the economy from further falling and moving into a Great Depression is the CARES Act, one of whose most important provisions for the 99 percent is about to expire. That provision is the $600 a week extra in unemployment benefits.

McConnell does not understand the economy needs people to spend money to keep it afloat. He opposes the $600 extra a week because some people are receiving more money than they were earning at their jobs, giving them an incentive to not look for work. Who cares? That $600 dollars is helping to keep the economy afloat, and there are not a whole bunch of available jobs out there right now anyway.

When cities, counties and states begin to lay off employees by the tens of thousands, along with those folks on unemployment who will stop receiving that $600 at the end of this month, the economy will likely move into a Great Depression, if we have not already done so.

The result will be a Democratic Party wave in November. Then it is likely the Republican Party will begin its fade into the history books as more and younger voters have become Bernie style Democratic Socialists, which is to say New Deal Democrats. McConnell and the rest of the Republican senators are about to send their political party into historical oblivion after voting to reward their billionaire backers $4.75 trillion while providing the vast majority of U.S. citizens crumbs with the CARES Act last March.

Meanwhile, U.S. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi decided to placate her Party’s base by sponsoring the Heroes Act, but not that saving the base and the economy from ruin was something she actually wanted to do. The Heroes Act is the fourth stimulus package since March and her attempts to save the billionaires who control her Party and neglect the financial needs of the 99 percent is most obvious by this fact alone. Something must have clicked in her brain to come up with the HEROES Act.

She likely came to understand saving the economy and the billionaires from ruin means having to save the rest of us. McConnell, Rand Paul and “tiny hands” Ted Cruz have not figured out this basic economic issue yet even as Texas, the state Cruz represents, is rapidly turning blue along with Virginia, North Carolina, and several other states the Republican Party reliably once controlled.

When these states turn blue, this will eliminate the Republican Party as a factor in national politics. This has already occurred on several state levels. The Republican Party used to control California. Now it is the super minority party in both of California’s legislative houses. McConnell, Cruz and Paul are hastening the Party’s decline by their economic stupidity. It’s the economy stupid!

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Dictatorship of the Billionaires: Is this the United States Argentina Moment?

In the 1920s, Argentina was a nation with one of the great middle classes in the world, equal with most Europe nations. Then corruption sunk in and now Argentina is a nation filled with desperate people. We may be at such a tipping point in the United States.

The rich learned a valuable lesson from the Great Depression. Never let the stock market drop in value for too long. Otherwise, their economic and political clout will falter and open up the door for allowing democracy for the vast majority of citizens. Political corruption is so massive in the United States that members of both major political parties enacted the CARES Act in March 28, 2020. This was a $2.2 trillion economic rescue package that was actually a rescue package of over $6 trillion, most of which is making the top 0.01 percent of the U.S. population richer, while keeping political and judicial corruption at elevated levels.

The rich are receiving $4.95 trillion from the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill. You read that right. The $2.2 trillion includes more than $450 billion for large corporations, allegedly in loans. The bill includes a proviso that the Federal Reserve can print up to ten times that amount and lend that $4.5 trillion with a nod and a wink to large corporations. The combined profits of all US corporations in 2018 and 2019 were slightly over $4 trillion before taxes. The rich and their corporations, in other words, are getting more than two years’ worth of profits from the stimulus bill. This money will mainly go to the the 100 to 150 largest corporations, which will then funnel the money to the billionaires and multi-millionaires.

The Fed has been buying corporate bonds by the truckload every day. This money has been used in a large degree to providing dividend payments and keeping share prices up, which enriches the billionaires.

The primary purpose of this program has been to stifle democracy for the vast majority of citizens. If the stock markets had been allowed to continue falling in March 2000, the political, judicial and economic power of the rich would have evaporated and opened the door for democracy for the rest of us.

With the coming of the Great Depression and the New Deal programs of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), Kim Phillips-Fein writes in her book Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal, “Many of these programs were measures that American’s business class had resisted for a generation, and the government enacted them at a moment when the power and prestige of business was at its nadir. The employer’s paradise had been lost.” The rich wanted it back in a big way. So they organized over a few generations and brought us to the economic disaster that has been unleashed upon us now.

The 1 percent derive 2/3rds to 100 percent of their income and wealth from owning shares of corporations. During the Depression, they had lost their power and prestige because corporate profits and the stock market had dropped 90+ percent from 1929 to 1933. This opened the door for FDR’s innovative socialist programs, such as Social Security, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, controlling Wall Street’s depravity with the Securities and Exchange Commission, raising tax rates on the rich so they had less money with which to corrupt all three branches of the federal government and which also functioned to set maximum take-home wages, etc…. The rich appear to have learned a lesson the rest of us have plainly not learned.

The stock market must not be allowed to fall in value for the billionaires to continue their dictatorship of the United States. Both major political parties, the Federal Reserve, the United States Supreme Court, they’re all corrupted to the bone and the only thing allowing the 1 percent to continue corrupting government at all levels is the stock market, the fortunes of which have been disconnected from the real economy for at least a dozen years, and probably more. So long at the rich can use the Fed and the federal government to keep the value of the stock market disconnected from real world economic fundamentals, the door is open to enter that Argentine moment for the vast majority of United States citizens. We will become a nation of desperate people, if we have not already become so.

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The Coronavirus Recession; The Dictatorship of the Billionaires is Getting Richer at Our Expense

I wonder how bad this economic downturn is going to be. This recession just began in February 2020. The economy is opening up for the first time since the coronavirus struck the United States and people are saying the economy is going to pop right out of its slump. I doubt that.

This week, I saw all kinds of people standing in the soup line three blocks long, which was three blocks longer than two weeks ago. Facebook just laid off my friend across the street a couple weeks ago. Just a week ago, a long-time friend was furloughed from her job for the summer. My domestic partner has seen her hours reduced at work. Middle class families are rummaging through my garbage and recycle bins. The rich are getting richer. Maybe that was the big boys plan.

No, I just do not see an economic recovery around the corner. I see a deep recession. One of my local bicycle stores is closed, along with two bakeries, the coffee shop, the chocolate shop, my chiropractor and others. Four blocks away two Vietnamese restaurants have closed permanently along with a pizza parlor. Seven blocks away the Roseway Theater is shuttered. Next to it the wedding store is closed forever, and next door to that the appliance repair store is gone. All have closed permanently since March 2020. All have been open since at least the 1980s. The Roseway Theater had been open since 1924.

The coronavirus pandemic ignited this recession, but its depth and misery for Americans have been caused by 40 years of relentless class warfare by the rich. The opening shots of the war began in 1971 when a little known Republican tobacco attorney named Lewis Powell wrote what is known as the Powell manifesto urging the rich to combine their resources, establish a variety of organizations to turn back the clock to the era of the robber barons, take over the courts, and generally fight back against the Constitutional and democratic rights of the vast majority of people. The rich took his advice. They organized. Out popped the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Federalist Society, and a lot more. Two months after he wrote his manifesto, Powell was sitting on the Supreme Court bench serving the rich as a legalized guerilla fighter in their war against the rest of us.

The Roseway Theater is closed and that financially helps streaming corporations like Amazon and Apple and their rich shareholders become richer. The local restaurants are gone but that financially helps Walmart, Domino’s Pizza and other major corporations and billionaire owned private equity companies by eliminating the local competition, and their rich shareholders are prospering at the expense of local business people, the real entrepreneurs, people who are our neighbors. The local coffee shops are gone, and that helps the affluent shareholders of Starbucks and other major coffee corporations get richer.

A recent poll shows 62 percent of Americans think the United States is in the toilet. Political corruption on a massive scale has done that, with the billionaires in control of both major political parties, as well as the Supreme Court. (Click here for that story)

The CARES Act of March 2020 was supposed to help the economy with loans to small businesses, but apparently, the authorized money is not enough and perhaps deliberately so. Thank you Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. The CARES Act authorized $4.75 trillion to save the 1 percent who derive the vast majority of their income and wealth from major corporations.

Bloomberg reports the Federal Reserve is printing and giving billions of dollars to major corporations, such as Walmart, AT&T, and United Health. Technically, those are loans but will likely be forgiven. Meanwhile, those billions find their way into the hands of the rich via higher dividends and capital gains. Click here for that story.

If you count capital gains, the rich have gone from stealing 7 percent of all income produced in the United States in 1971 when Lewis Powell wrote the Powell Manifesto to at least 37 percent by 2016. It is likely closer to 40 percent in 2020. You can thank the corporate wing of the Supreme Court for much of that gain.

Don’t you think it’s time to forget about our petty differences on the social issues the rich have used their news organizations to get us to focus on, and unite to save ourselves against the depredations of the rich? If not for yourselves, why don’t you do it for future generations?

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