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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Study Shows Middle Class Continues to Lose Ground During This Economic Expansion

Nowadays, United States middle-class families are making less money in almost every state. Since 1999, median incomes have dropped nationwide and, in states like Indiana, they’ve shrunk by more than 9 percent. This is because trillions of dollars of yearly income have been redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent by the billionaire controlled US government.

The folks at the financial website GOBankingRates used Pew Research Center and United States Census Bureau data, as well as data from real-estate site Zillow, to find the change in median household income in every state. The incomes are adjusted for inflation and the percentages reflect the increase in incomes from 1999 to 2014.

However, I should point out that the US government has been accused, and probably rightfully so, of deliberately understating inflation. In which case, real median incomes have dropped even further than the study shows.

You need to earn an annual household income of “two-thirds to double the national median, after incomes have been adjusted for household size,” to be considered middle class, according to Pew. The most recent national household median income estimate was $59,039, according to the U.S. Census.

“Although the middle class is shrinking,” the GOBankingRates report says, in some places “middle-income families continue to thrive.” Here’s where the numbers have gone up instead of down:

South Dakota

Median household income of middle-class families : $77,176

Median household income change of middle class : 1.7 percent

“South Dakota has the fifth-highest median household income for middle-class families, and it’s where middle-class incomes increased the most between 1999 and 2014,” according to GOBankingRates. It’s “one of only two states where middle-class incomes actually increased over those years, and it’s one of only four states where the proportion of middle income households has increased from 2010 to 2015.”

Vermont

Median household income of middle-class families : $75,540

Median household income change of middle class : 0.2 percent

Vermont is the only other state where middle-class incomes have risen; however, it’s also “one of the costliest states for an in-state college education,” the report finds, with the second-highest in-state tuition and fees in the country behind New Hampshire.

Middle Class Families Earning Less–Yahoo News

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How Does the US Middle Class Compare to Europe?

Income inequality is getting worse in the United States, and some new data from Pew Research shows this to be true.

An analysis that weighs the U.S. against 11 countries in Western Europe shows that America holds the tiniest middle class, with just 59% of the United States’ population falling between rich and poor on the income scale. By contrast, 72% of the German population falls into that middle-income bracket — defined by Pew to be between two-thirds the country’s median income and double the median — as does 80% of the Danish population.

“Countries with higher income inequality tend to have smaller middle classes,” said Rakesh Kochhar, the associate director of research at Pew Research Center. The US rates 93rd worst when it comes to income inequality. That’s because the vast majority of new income in the United States is being redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent, and because the rich control virtually all levers of government that determines income and wealth redistribution.

Tens of millions of US jobs have been exported thanks to Free Trade Treaties since 1990, for example. The difference between the old higher US wages and benefits and the new lower third world wages with no-benefits go straight from the pockets of the middle class to the super wealthy via higher corporate profits, soaring share prices, and surging dividends.

There’s one interesting wrinkle to the Pew data: While the U.S. middle-income segment is smaller than in European countries, it takes a higher income overall to make it into that group. The median income for a middle-class household in Italy is $35,608. It’s $44,000 in France and $46,000 in Denmark.

But in the United States, it’s $60,084. That, however, simply measures how badly income inequality has become in the US since income inequality in the US badly skews the data. Pew defines the middle class to be between two-thirds the country’s median income and double the median. The median is the midpoint. So if the highest earner in a nation earns $1.2 billion a year and the lowest worker earns $50,000, the midpoint is $599,950,000.

The median is the midpoint. So if the highest earner in a nation earns $1.2 billion a year and the lowest worker earns $50,000, the midpoint between the two is $599,950,000. Whereas, if the highest earner garners $1 million while the lowest worker earns $100,000, then the median income is $450,000. The higher income inequality, the more money it takes to get into the middle class. The less income inequality is, the less cash it takes to be in the middle class.

 

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More US Jobs Lost as US Taxpayer Dollars Are Being Exported to India Via Outsourcing

Computerworld reports that the University of California is outsourcing eighty IT jobs to an Indian corporation, HCL. US workers are now training their H1-B replacements. Note that H1-B visas are supposed to be given only when qualified Americans cannot be found to do a job in the USA.

The situation is really this; US citizens are qualified to train their H2-B replacements. This means the H1-B visa recipients are not qualified to do the job until they receive training from the US citizens they are replacing, who are sufficiently qualified to train their replacements.

In other words, the H1-B system is being used to undercut US wages and salaries. That is this program’s sole purpose. When a US worker has to train an H1-B visa worker to do their job it is the H1-B worker who is not qualified and the US worker who is.

One of the effected University of California employees wrote California US Senator Diane Feinstein, a person who was reported to be worth between $43 and $99 million in 2005. Her wealth and income has likely grown since then. Much of the growth is likely due to exporting jobs and outsourcing jobs to H1-B visa workers. When you push wages down, or export jobs overseas, the difference between the old higher pay and the new lower wages goes straight into the pockets of the rich via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and surging dividends.

Feinstein clearly has an incentive to say one thing in public and an opposite thing with private bankers.

Anyway, the US citizen IT worker wrote,

“The decision to move the University of California San Francisco datacenters from California to Washington was difficult to grasp. I saw several of my long time co-workers terminated, and my California tax dollars that go into the UC system being diverted to the state of Washington.

“The recent decision to outsource 17% of Information Technology to India based Company HCL has literally hit home. I am being asked to do knowledge transfer to a foreigner so they can take over my job in February of 2017.

“I am asking for your support in requesting an oversight with the Department of Labor in regards to the contract between HCL of India and University of California San Francisco. This contract will more than likely not save the University money, but it will definitely wipe out what is now a somewhat diverse workplace.”

According to Computerworld, “As a U.S. senator, Feinstein could have asked the U.S. Department of Labor, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to review the situation. She could have also asked California’s governor to take a look at the IT outsourcing or contact the University of California directly — a public institution that also receives federal dollars — to ask why a partially taxpayer-supported university is moving jobs to India.”

Instead Feinstein did nothing, except respond with a form letter.

For more on this story, click the following link to Computerworld. Outsourced Workers Ask Feinstein for Help and Get a Form Letter in Return–Computerworld

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The Moment US Middle Class Senator Bernie Sanders Won the First Democratic Presidential Debate

US Senator Bernie Sanders does several things right. One of them is to keep on his message, no matter what distractions the media throws his way. His message is simple,

1. The US middle class is being wiped out.

2. International trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership have shipped away tens of millions of American jobs.

3. The rich are getting wealthier at the expense of everybody else.

4. We need to overturn Citizen’s United, which overturned 100 years of legal precedence regarding campaign finance laws.

5. The corporate press is doing its best to keep American citizens ignorant of these and other issues, by focusing on missing emails, gun policy, gay rights, and anything else that will distract us.

5. We need to do something about all of these things and more.

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State-by-State, and In Every State: Pew Charitable Trust Reports on the Shrinking Middle Class

The US middle class has been shrinking for decades, but never as rapidly as under the Obama administration. 95 percent of all income growth since 2009 has gone to the super affluent. This means the uber wealthy now steal 37 percent of all income produced in the United States every year, compared to 21 percent in 2009, and 8 percent in 1980. And they’re stealing it from the middle and lower classes. They’re sucking the middle class dry because these rich folks have all the gold, which follows the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules. Check out the link below from the Pew Charitable Trust to see how much your senators and congressional representatives have robbed from the middle class and given to the rich. That’s what the rich pay them to do.

The Shrinking Middle Class Mapped State-by-State–Pew Charitable Trust

Take the case of Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. He is supposed to represent the people of Oregon, rather than the robber barons of Wall Street, but Wyden has led the fight to ship and create jobs overseas, as well as privatization scams. Wall Street Ronnie is no dumb dumb. He knows these things redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. That shows whose side he is on in the war against the middle class. The senator has a 100 percent voting record for shipping and creating jobs overseas. He calls his efforts free trade treaties, but in reality, these deals are designed and negotiated by multi-national corporations to redistribute income, wealth and political power from the 99 to the 1 percent. The senator has also proposed measures to redistribute Medicare benefits from the 99 to the 1 percent via a privatization scams. He claims he is bipartisan, but he has never led a Republican to successfully support legislation that reverses his shameful income redistribution policies.

Wyden voted for NAFTA and every income redistribution treaty since. He’s the Democratic senator who led the fight in favor of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest income and political power redistribution treaty ever. The result of the senator’s work in the halls of congress are evident:

In Oregon,

• 47.7 percent of all people live in middle class households as of 2013, compared to 51.4 percent in 2010. Rest assured, when the numbers are compiled for 2014 and 2015, the number of people living in middle class households will be less than in 2013.
• medium income has declined from $50,251 per household per year in 2013, compared to an inflation adjusted $56,382 in 2000. Worse yet, the medium family income has declined. The senator has voted to redistribute that $6,000 a year to the 1 percent year after year.
• Poverty is up.
• The 1 percent now steal 37 percent of all income made in the USA, compared to 10 percent when Wyden entered congress over twenty disastrous years ago.

Luckily, people are organizing in Oregon because they’re fed up with the disastrous policies of one of Wall Street’s favorite employees, that’s Wyden.

Wyden is in a dominant position inasmuch as he and the local corporate propaganda machine hide his economic legislative record by extolling the virtues of his social issues. However, Kevin Stine, a Medford city council member is running in the primary against Wyden. Wyden’s disastrous economic policies, bad for Oregonians and good for Wall Street, have begun to come out and his position is not so secure anymore.

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How the Corporate News Media Lies to Us: Studies Show A Global Middle Class Is More Promise than Reality

After thirty-five years of globalization, most people in the world are still living a wretched existence by US middle class standards, according to the Pew Research Center. More people than ever before have entered the middle class throughout the world, which the US corporate news media will brag about, but definitions of middle class vary throughout the world, which the same corporate news media won’t tell you. So, for example, people living in poverty in Vietnam on $2.70 a day might be considered middle class if their wages double, which would mean those folks are still living a wretched existence by any standard, except now they’re considered middle class, by somebody’s definition.

According to a Pew Research Center analysis, “…though there was growth in the middle-income population (in the world) from 2001 to 2011, the rise in prosperity was concentrated in certain regions of the globe, namely China, South America and Eastern Europe. The middle class barely expanded in India and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central America.”

This rise in the third world middle class corresponds with a decline in the middle class in the United States, which the corporate news media won’t mention. That’s because globalization is a facade hiding the reality that free trade as is currently negotiated is nothing more than an income redistribution scam. Here’s how it works, and here’s how the researchers at Pew have been easily fooled.

One needs to earn between $6,000 and $25,000 a year to be considered middle class in China. See understanding-chinas-middle-class–China Business Review. In China, these people are free from such things as social security, free from overtime pay, free to suck in the world’s worst air pollution, free to drink among the world’s most polluted water, and they’re are often forced to work sixteen hours a day.

Do a little math. A person in the USA earning the federal minimum wage of $7.50 an hour working forty hours earns $15,600 a year, hardly middle class by US standards. The difference between middle class in the US and China is one of income redistribution.

When the US government signs a so-called free trade treaty, the result redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent because these agreements legally pave the way for US corporations to ship jobs from the US to lesser paying nations, like China. The treaties also pave the way for US corporations to create jobs overseas, rather than in the US, so they serve to discourage US job growth, and corporate investment in the USA. The difference between the old higher US pay and the new lower pay, in say China, goes straight into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and soaring dividends.

So, for example, a job paying $50,000 in the US may pay only $6,000 in China (with no overtime pay, and often being forced to work 16 hours a day). The difference between the two figures is $44,000, and that goes toward rising corporate profits, which in turn, goes into the pockets of the one percent via rising dividends and share prices. The US jobs losers get a few months of unemployment insurance, if they’re lucky.

In the meantime, as millions of jobs are shipped overseas, or created there when they would have been created over here in the absence of these income redistribution scams known as free trade agreements, the tax dollars that normally go to schools, fire, police, roads and other infrastructure, and our social safety nets, are being redistributed to the 1 percent with every job that is exported overseas. By the way, the BIGGEST EXPORT PRODUCT OF THE UNITED STATES IS JOBS.

These agreements weaken the Social Security Trust Fund because the people earning $55,000 a year are paying into it, and the people who steal their wages when jobs are shipped overseas, pay social security taxes on only the first $118,500 of their their $10,000,000+ income, which, coincidentally, violates the fourteenth amendment’s equal protection clause of the US Constitution.

However, narrow minded researchers and corrupt news media reporters influenced by corporate dollars will declare that free trade agreements are good things, and they’ll point to China’s growing middle class as their evidence, rather than the declining US middle class, as an example. And they’ll do this without mentioning that middle class in China means living a very subsistence life style at best, and being encapsulated with dire poverty at the worst.

So when the corporate news media reports on the growth of the middle class throughout the world, take it for what it’s worth, which is nothing.

A Global Middle Class Is More Promise than Reality –Pew Research Center

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US Senator Jeff Sessions on the Devastating Consequences of Passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership

US Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama has come out against the Wall Street wings of the Republican and Democratic Parties by opposing giving Wall Street President Barack Obama Fast Track Trade Authority, which is known simply as Fast Track. Fast track would provide little debate over trade agreements, call for an up and down vote in congress over any trade agreement, eliminates any amendments to the agreement, and eliminates any filibusters in the senate when it comes to trade agreements.

The looming Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a massive income and political power redistribution corporate power grab falsely being marketed as a trade agreement by such Wall Street senators as Ron Wyden, Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch, as well as the president.

The TPP is a knife into the heart of the middle class and the American dream.

On his website, Sessions gives five reason for his opposition to fast track.

1. Fast track consolidates power in the executive branch of government, although, while true, fast track cedes and consolidates federal political power to Wall Street investment banks, unregulated hedge funds, and other major corporations, through the president. This is why Wall Street senators Wyden, Hatch and McConnell are behind this boondoggle.

2 The TPP will increase trade deficits. Sessions seems to have a good understanding of this, although he doesn’t mention that the US trade deficit will increase because more US jobs will be shipped overseas via the TPP, and the products formerly made in the US will be exported from Vietnam to the US, and this will increase the US trade deficit.

Think about this; when was the last time you purchased something from a Chinese company? Probably never. But you have bought plenty of things “Made in China” by US companies like Nike, Apple, and Microsoft, just to name a few.

3. Ceding Sovereign Authority To International Powers.

4. Currency Manipulation. The biggest open secret in the international market is that other countries are devaluing their currencies to artificially lower the price of their exports while artificially raising the price of our exports to them.

5. Immigration Increases. There are numerous ways TPA could facilitate immigration increases above current law—and precious few ways anyone in Congress could stop its happening.

Check out Sessions website by clicking on the link below for greater explanations on why he opposes giving the president Fast Track Authority.
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http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=955DBDEC-E383-4401-AC3C-4E5EE06E99D1

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Fast-Track: A Gut-Kick to the Middle Class: Thank You Wall Street Senator Wyden

In a move that elicited a collective groan from virtually all of progressive America, the Obama administration and congressional Republicans reached a deal on April 16 on so-called “fast track” trade authority. This is the legislation needed to ram new trade agreements through the US Congress with limited debate and no amendments. While it was a gut kick to the progressive movement, it was also a gut kick to grass roots Tea Party Republicans, and the entire middle class.

Fast Track is another way to rig the economic and political game against the 99 percent. Fast Track was championed by class warriors and Wall Street Senator’s Ron Wyden, Orrin Hatch and Mitch McConnell.

It was a gut-kick for labor unions and environmental, consumer, human rights and other groups that have long called for a change of course on US trade policy. Instead, the fast track legislation shows we’re still stuck in the same old failed model of the 1990s. The bill lays out trade policy objectives that elevate the narrow interests of large corporations and undercut efforts to support good jobs, the environment and financial stability.

Read the rest of this story by clicking on the link below.
Fast-Track: A Gut-Kick to the Progressive Movement.

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Hyper Immigration and Trade Treaties Hammering Middle Class Wages

A new congressional study suggests that massive immigration increases in recent decades have hammered middle-class wages. Whether through taking jobs or casting votes, hyper-immigration is revolutionizing the U.S.

We are a nation of immigrants, it is often reflexively said. But it is a little-known fact that our foreign-born population dropped more than 11% in the quarter century after World War II.

Since 1970, however, we have become a nation of hyper-immigration, as the foreign-born among us have exploded from fewer than 10 million to more than 41 million as of 2013 — a staggering 324.5% increase.

If a job cannot be exported, then immigrants are encouraged by business and government leaders to enter the United States to generate greater competition among middle class workers, which lowers wages and benefits. For example, a recent study shows that three out of four high tech workers are unemployed in their areas of expertise, and wages in the high tech sector are the same as during the early 1990s, and yet congressional leaders want to admit more immigrants via the H1-B visa. In this way wages and salaries will continue to stay artificially low, which benefits the 1 percent at the expense of the middle class.

The difference between the old higher wages (what wages should be under normal immigration increases) and the new lower wages with hyper immigration, goes straight into the pockets of the super rich via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and soaring share prices.

The middle class is getting hammered by the loss of millions of jobs that are exported via international agreements falsely marketed as free trade agreements. But the middle and lower classes are also getting hammered by hyper immigration. These two governmental policies are income redistribution scams perpetrated by the leadership of both major political parties and their billionaire and corporate sponsors, such as the Koch Brothers and Warren Buffett.

How badly has immigration and free trade policies been for the middle and lower classes?

“A new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service for the Senate Judiciary Committee finds that during this era of free trade and hyper-immigration, incomes of the bottom 90% of Americans flat-lined, then dropped starting in 2000. By comparison, middle-class wages increased between 1945 and 1970.

Last year, Karen Zeigler and Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies found that, according to federal government data, “since 2000 all of the net gain in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal).”

In the fourteen plus years since 2000, less than six million net jobs have been created in the United States, and all of them have gone to immigrants. On the other hand, according to the Federal Reserve, 28 million jobs were exported from the USA from 1990 to 2010, and several million more have been exported since 2010.

Salaries, wages and benefits would be going up if the United States had six million less working age immigrants. More significantly, however, US wages would be surging and our tepid economy would be booming if those trade agreements hadn’t been conceived. In both cases, trade agreements and immigration, income and wealth inequality in the USA would not be nearly so significant as it is now.

While so-called international trade agreements are the major cause of the income and wealth inequality of the last thirty-five years, with the 1 percent going from taking 8 percent of all income created in the USA in 1980 to 37 percent today, immigration (legal and illegal) is another, though admittedly lesser, but still significant, culprit in the financial war the super rich are waging against the middle class.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the largest income redistribution scam of all time. It is falsely being marketed as a free trade treaty. The Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, led by President Obama and Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, have merged with the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party. The TPP will provide incentives for US corporations to ship millions of US jobs overseas, and drive millions of Latin American immigrants illegally into the United States simultaneously, just like NAFTA did.

That’s why the TPP is another income redistribution scam for the 1 percent.

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