Senator Elizabeth Warren Plans to Battle Political Corruption in the United States Government

Sen. Elizabeth Warren cited recent Pew Research Center polling that found only 18% of Americans say they can trust the U.S. government to do the right thing to unveil her Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act on Tuesday.

It is well known that the rich, their corporations, and their lobbyists have bought almost every member of the United States House of Representatives and almost every member of the Senate since 1981, which include such corrupt blowhards as RepubliCons Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell and Democrat Ron Wyden. Since 1981, every United States president has bent to the desires of the well-to-do on all matters having to do with redistributing income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. Wyden, Hatch, and McConnell have voted to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 percent to the rich and powerful time and time again when they voted to export millions of jobs held by United States citizens via trade agreements.

The difference between the old higher US wages and benefits and the new three dollars a day jobs in foreign nations goes straight into the pockets of the super-rich via higher corporate profits, rising share prices, and surging dividends. The newly unemployed in the U.S. might get unemployment insurance for a few months if they are lucky.

Political corruption is precisely why income inequality has grown from the 1 percent receiving 8 percent of all income produced in the USA in 1980 to 37 percent today, and why three people own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population, and why the 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

Warren’s plan provides a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress, Presidents, and agency heads and banning foreign lobbying and lobbyists donations to candidates and members of Congress.

Warren’s bill seeks to eliminate both the appearance and the potential for financial conflicts of interest by banning members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and other senior government officials from owning and trading individual stock, including requiring the Supreme Court follow the ethics rules applicable to all other federal judges. One study has found that members of the U.S. Supreme Court rule in favor of companies they invest in.

Warren advocates “locking the government-to-lobbying revolving door” and eliminating the “golden parachutes” that companies pay some executives when they enter public service, citing the instance of Goldman Sachs paying Gary Cohn more than $250 million when he left the firm to lead President Trump’s National Economic Council.

Warren’s legislation also aims to end what she characterizes as the corporate capture of public interest rulemaking by requiring disclosure of funding or editorial conflicts of interest when corporations and special interest groups pay for comments and studies that support rulemaking, as well as requiring elected officials and candidates for federal office to disclose more financial and tax information and making federal contractors – including private prisons and immigration detention centers – comply with federal open records laws.

A lot more can be done to end corruption in the U.S. government. Banning the paid speeches made by former presidents and high officials is a starter. Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama get $250,000 a pop for half-hour paid speeches. Who is to say the lure and promise of future profits do not influence the choices made by people in high office? In addition, the government could limit the amount of funding of political campaigns provided by political action committees, corporations, and individuals. However, the corporate wing of the United States Supreme Court has been so corrupted by the inflow of cash and favors and class warfare mentality in favor of their social and economic class, that they eliminated one hundred years of legal precedent in the Citizens United case of 2010 that limited contributions as outlined in the sentence above. Reversing that, and successfully impeaching the corrupt corporate wing of the Supreme Court would go a long way toward ending the massive wave of political corruption that has swamped the United States governments at all levels like rising tides of overflowing cesspools.

For the complete story, see Elizabeth Warren Proposes Ways to Fight Political Corruption–MarketWatch.

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Brett Kavanaugh Lied Under Oath and Is Not fit to be a Supreme Court Justice

Professor Christine Blassey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh of having sexually assaulted her back in the day. She testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh testified before the same committee that Ford’s accusation was not true. This was a he said/she said moment.

However, when questioned about his alcohol consumption back during the time of the alleged crime, Kavanaugh, the treasurer of his high school Keg100 club, said he was always a light drinker. This brought about accusations from his friends from days of yore that he was lying. On top of that, it appears he lied about a few other things during his confirmation hearings.

It is a federal crime to lie to Congress. And, indeed, if he did lie, that makes him a perjurer.

Kavanaugh’s college roommate and friend says Kavanaugh was often drunk, violent and belligerent. This has been corroborated by several other classmates of Kavanaugh. It appears, once again, members of the Republican Party are about to vote to put a well-known perjurer on the United States Supreme. Chief Justice John Roberts is also a well-known perjurer and Republican Party hack.

Kavanaugh appears to have lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and they don’t give a damn. This suggests something quite ugly about the entire Republican Party, at least its members in the US Senate. Partisan politics and political power are more important than honesty in a Supreme Court Judge. Make no mistake about; Kavanaugh is a Republican Party hack.

Is there not a single Republican senator who will stand up to the billionaires who control their party? Chuck Grassley does not care about Kavanaugh’s lack of honesty. Orrin Hatch seems to enjoy it when Kavanaugh lies to him and his Senate colleagues.

Is there not a single Republican in the United States Senate in which honesty matters? Is it all about naked power, redistributing income and political power and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent? Susan Collins? Lisa Murkowski? Will no Republican stand up for honesty? Jeff Flake, you are quitting the Senate. Can you not vote for honesty in judges by voting against Kavanaugh?

Anybody with half a brain knows the Republican’s can find an honest and qualified Supreme Court nominee who is anti-abortion (to satisfy the base) and who will argue with a straight face that corporations are people, money is free speech, labor unions are bad and illegal, corporations and the rich are good, working people are lazy, and trade treaties are not trade agreements.

Something really stinks about Perjurer Kavanaugh, otherwise, the Republicans would drop him as a candidate, or launch an FBI investigation into whether or not he lied to Congress. It’s pretty obvious he lied multiple times to Congress.

Links
Bernie Sanders Wants FBI to Determine If Kavanaugh Told the Truth–Huffington Post

Kavanaugh’s College Roommate Says Lied-San Diego Union Tribune

All the Lies Kavanaugh Told-Huffington Post

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Middle Class Public School Teachers Strike Back Against Income Inequality

The idea that public school teachers need to go on strike in order to get livable wages and benefits is spreading, much to the dread of the billionaires who control both major political parties.

Early in March 2018, striking West Virginia teachers declared victory with a 5 percent raise and returned to their classrooms. Their organizing and their 13-day strike not only forced the legislature to raise their rock-bottom pay; it backed off corporate-linked education “reformers” on a host of other issues: charter schools, an anti-seniority bill, and preventing payroll deduction of union dues, and the rich who control the corporations that would benefit from these things are not happy state money went to impoverished public school teachers.

Emboldened by the success of the teachers of West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky are now striking, sicking out, rallying, and Facebooking to push officials to raise their salaries and defend their benefits.

Teachers in Oklahoma are set to strike on April 2 if the legislature doesn’t grant a $10,000 raise for teachers and a $5,000 raise for school support staff. It’s been a decade since Oklahoma teachers got their last raise. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, pay for educators there ranks last in the country, with high school teachers averaging $42,460.

Like the case in West Virginia, Oklahoma teachers are emboldened by a shortage of qualified educators. “Teachers are fleeing the state,” said Molly Jaynes, a third-grade teacher in Oklahoma City. “You can go to Arkansas and make $15,000 more; you can go to Texas and make $20,000 more”—as did Oklahoma’s 2016 Teacher of the Year. The state issues hundreds of emergency certifications every year to anyone with a bachelor’s degree. (It should be pointed out there is a teacher shortage throughout the United States)

Arizona teachers signed up in droves for a new Facebook group, “Arizona Educators United.” Thirty thousand joined in its first 10 days. Teachers there are building a grassroots “Red for Ed” movement, spreading photos of themselves wearing red T-shirts to school every Wednesday and assembling en masse at legislative hearings at the Capitol.

The latest state to join the strike talk is Kentucky, where the fight is about pensions and funding cuts to schools. Having systematically underfunded pensions for over a decade, the legislature is now pushing to cut cost-of-living adjustments for teachers and other employees. Like teachers in 14 other states, Kentucky teachers do not collect Social Security, so they rely entirely on the state pension system.

These four states; Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and West Virginia are dominated by the Republican Party, which is controlled by billionaires. Strong labor unions can often help defeat the billionaires in state and local elections. Keeping the memberships in poverty and financially starving public education has been a political strategy, effectively waging war against children, the poor and the middle class.

On the other hands, the billionaires of the Democratic and Republican parties have to a large degree gutted the tax base of the United States by voting to export tens of millions of US jobs over the last twenty-five years in order to redistribute the massive difference between the old higher wages and benefits of tens of millions of US workers and the new poverty third world wages of the exported jobs.

Democrat politicians such as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ron Wyden and Earl Blumenauer have joined hands with Republicans such as George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and John Boehner to export those jobs, and creating the highest income and wealth inequality in US history.

On the state and local levels, the rich control contracting corporations that feed on useless public projects and services. Giving the teachers raises and higher benefits means that some public money will need to be diverted from those tax guzzling projects to the teachers, which may negatively impact the share prices of corporations.

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How the Rich Keep Our Attention Diverted While They Financially Rape Us With the Help of the Corporate News Media

In exercising control of the political processes in the United States, and thereby determining the distribution of income and wealth, one of the foremost strategies the rich use to suppress US democracy is to divert the attention of the 99 percent from looking after their own economic interests by raising social concerns.

Republican Party leaders, such as the Bush family, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Orrin Hatch are awesome at this. So instead of Republican grassroots voters thinking how grotesque and anti-Jesus income and wealth inequality have become in the USA, they are led to think about war against Christmas, the Muslim peril, terrorism, President Obama is going to take your guns, the war against white males, transgender bathrooms, abortion, undocumented immigrants and much more.

Democratic Party leaders, such as the Clintons’, Nansi Pelosi, Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden and others, are also awesome at creating social issues that are shamelessly self-serving at diverting our attention away from their helping the rich redistribute our income into their pockets via trade treaties and other legislation. Think about the war against women, keeping abortion legal, transgender bathrooms, racism, undocumented immigration, and much more.

The corporate news media is also quick to divert our attention away from the income and wealth inequality since they also serve the interests of the rich, being linked by the need for advertising dollars to keep their profits and share prices rolling upward.

Diverting us is determined by a “collectively manufactured elite (meaning parasites) consensus,” according to Branko Milanovic in his book Global Inequality. Given the enormous amount of private money that is used in politics and media, one cannot but think that this is one of the aims of these investments.

A perfect example of this is being played out in the media as you read this. Pornstar Stormy Daniels is suing President Donald Trump over an adulterous affair he allegedly had with her at the same time President Trump is pushing for more deregulation of Wall Street. Most media attention is one the Daniels issue because the corporate media does not want you to know the president, the entire Republican Party, and sixteen Democratic senators support the president’s proposal.

The last time there was deregulation of Wall Street we came face-to-face with the Great Recession. The next recession should be even worse, even without the deregulation.

And so it goes again, around and around. Democratic grassroots are gloating over the Daniels issue, while Republican grassroots are rushing to his defense, all the while oblivious to the fact that legislation is about to be passed making it easier for Wall Street to rip the 99 percent off even more than it is already.

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In the United States the 1 Percent Now Own More Wealth Than the Bottom 90 Percent for the First Time In US History

The United States Federal Reserve Bank issued a report in September 2017 showing that the top 1 percent of US income earners now own almost twice as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of Americans. Notice the corporate media did not cover this report. They did not want us to know this stuff.

Anyway, wealth is defined as assets, such as stocks, bonds, futures options, houses, cars, clothes, trinkets and such.

The graph above is straight from the Federal Reserve Bulletin. Notice the bottom 90 percent have seen their wealth drop from nearly 38 percent of the total wealth in 1989 to 23 percent today, a 40 percent drop. Meanwhile, the 1 percent has seen their wealth grow from just under 30 percent in 1989 to 38.6 percent today. The 1 percent also own more wealth than those people among the 90 to 99 percent, but just barely.

The reason the 1 percent has gained so much wealth while the 90 percent has lost it is that the rich are stealing it from everybody else via their corruption of both major political parties, and such corrupt politicians as Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch, Paul Ryan, and Ron Wyden.

In the same report, Federal Reserve researchers discovered the rich stole a record-high 23.8% of the overall US created income in 2016 (See graph below), up from 8 percent in 1980. However, the current figure appears to be understated. At least one report shows the rich are stealing 37+ percent of the total income produced in the United States. The Fed’s report showed the bottom 90% of families now make less than half of the country’s income. That figure slipped to 49.7% in 2016, down by more than 20% since 1992 (It is likely the drop is greater according to another study).

The reason why the billionaires are getting wealthier and the rest of us are becoming poorer is because of such things as trade agreements via political corruption, privatization scams, tax cuts for the rich, unrestricted campaign finance donations, mandatory testing of public school students K-12, student loans, Federal Reserve and US government rescue of mortgage-backed bondholders by the tens of trillions of dollars (See The $26 Trillion Dollar Bailout to Save the 1 Percent, a totally corrupt corporate wing of the US Supreme Court (John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Anthony Kennedy),  etc…. Corruption in US politics have not been this bad since the Gilded Age, and this is how the rich are getting richer by stealing from the rest of us.

Millions of US jobs have been exported since 1992, thanks to trade treaties negotiated to ensure US corporations can export jobs to low wage nations, as well as create jobs in these poverty-wage nations rather than here. The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower extreme poverty wages in Mexico (where the minimum wage is $4.70 a day), China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and elsewhere goes straight into the already fat wallets of the well-to-do parasites of the millionaire and billionaire classes.

The job losers (the producers) might get unemployment insurance if they are lucky. The rich take their stolen loot and purchase wealth, such as stocks and bonds. The job losers often have to sell their assets to cover their expenses as they search for new jobs that typically pay less than what they once earned.

This is a nice income and wealth redistribution scam that every Democratic and Republican senator and member of the House of Representatives know very well. Every president since and including Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have known this scam.

The billionaires continued their war against the 99 percent when the US Senate passed their tax cut for the rich and their corporations. And so the war continues against the 99.5 percent. This is class warfare at its most one-sided.

You can find the report from the Federal Reserve at https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf17.pdf. The graphs are located on pages 11 and 12 if I remember correctly.

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How Bad is Income Maldistribution in the United States for Older Americans?

The entire Republican Party (Think John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump) and nine-tenths of the Democratic Party (Think Hillary and Bill and Ron Wyden) managing the US federal government have been committed to redistributing trillions of dollars of income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. The result has been wonderful for people who are already rich, and pretty much own the politicians of both major political parties as they do dogs on leashes. This has been devastating to those whose incomes and wealth have been redistributed to the rich and powerful leash holders.

According to AARP Bulletin, “Older Americans are selling their prescription painkillers to drug dealers to raise needed cash.”

Written by Joe Eaton, the story begins with “Over a span of about two years, Ajellon Dedeaux, a 29-year-old drug dealer, sold thousands of prescription painkillers on the illicit drug market near Sacramento, California. Finding customers was easy. The hard part was finding a supply of pills. A reliable source?

“Older people,” Dedeaux said in an email sent from a federal prison in Arizona. Dedeaux is serving twelve years for drug dealing.

According to Eaton, “Some (Retired Americans) sell their pills due to a financial crisis or to make ends meet.”

Retired Americans are forced to do this due to poverty and they also find it easy to gain prescriptions from doctors. Of course, if their insurance covers most of the cost of the pills, they can and are forced to illegally sell the painkillers to drug dealers.

“If they discover they can make $20 a pill on the street, then it becomes a temptation to supplement their income,” said Charlie Chichon, executive director of the Ntional Association of Drug Diversion Investigators.

According to convicted drug dealer Austin Serb, “A patient who is prescribed three pills a day can make up to $3600 a month,” which may be far more than many retired people receive from Social Security, 401Ks, IRAs, and pensions.

Of course, this is one of the side effects of ensuring that 36 percent of the yearly income produced in the United States goes to the 1 percent, up from 8 percent in 1980. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden is most likely the biggest scam artist in Washington D.C. Wyden pretends to support seniors while voting to exports tens of millions of jobs overseas, including pensions.

When Social Security can easily be strengthened with expanded payments to seniors, simply by eliminating the cap currently at $127,200, Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden continues his cozy relationship with rich Wall Street folks, which is why he has always made certain to do nothing but keep exporting our tax paying jobs overseas. Wyden’s Wall Street masters do not want the cap eliminated. One of Wyden’s favorite ploys is to pretend he cares about seniors while gutting programs that help them, like exporting jobs overseas by the millions and thereby redistributing payments to social security by the millions to the uber rich whom he supports.

Click here for the story from Eaton.

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Trump’s Withdrawal from Paris Climate Accord Was a Triumph and Financial Windfall for the Koch Brothers Over Democracy

The billionaires David and Charles Koch now own the Republican Party, which should be called the Death Panel Party for wanting to steal the health care insurance from 23 million US citizens, but that’s another story. These two people have driven the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords, which will prove to be financially beneficial to them, and against the overwhelming majority of US citizens who support the Pact. Think about it.

Two billionaires have overwhelmed the will of a hundred million non-billionaires, which is the majority of voters. That’s how corrupt government has become. Of course, the Koch’s had help, some of which they bought with their dollars.

Twenty-two Republican Senators sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. Together, these skunks received more than $10 million dollars in campaign funds from fossil fuel interests. In the old days, these campaign contributions would have been called bribes. My how words matter!

The two-page letter was signed by a number of Republican heavyweights from coal/gas/oil-rich states, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.

The Guardian newspaper calculated the oil, gas and coal industries bribed the twenty-two senators with a total of $10,694,284 during the last five years. See Death Panel Party Senators Paris Climate Deal Energy Donations-the Guardian

However, that sum does not even come close to a number of undisclosed funds coming from the deep pockets of Charles and David Koch’s coal, oil and gas conglomerate, Koch Industries, and other outside groups.

As the Guardian explains:

“Visible donations to Republicans from those industries exceeded donations to Democrats in the 2016 election cycle by a ratio of 15-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that does not include so-called dark money passed from oil interests such as Koch Industries to general slush funds to re-elect Republicans such as the Senate leadership fund.

“At least $90m in untraceable money has been funneled to Republican candidates from oil, gas and coal interests in the past three election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics.”

Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, told his views on Trump’s climate walkout in an interview with Bloomberg News. Sachs referenced the senators’ letter and specifically cast blame on the billionaire oil barons for pulling the strings of Republican party leaders, like they were Koch puppets, who both supported exiting the Paris accord.

“This is the victory paid and carried out for 20 years by two people, David and Charles Koch,” Sachs said. “They have bought and purchased the top of the Republican party. Trump is a tool in this.” In other words, Trump is officially now a puppet of the Koch Brothers in their war against the 99 percent according to Sachs and many others.

The Death Panel Republican Party is funded by the Koch brothers, and it’s funded by the coal industry. The Kochs and Big Coal insisted that Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General of Oklahoma that sued the EPA 19 times on clean air, clean water, soot, mercury issue, become the head of the EPA in our country. They got what they paid for.

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US Workers Training Their Mexican Worker Replacements

Rexnord Corporation is closing its ball bearings plant in Indiana, laying off its 350 workers, and exporting those jobs to Mexico. In addition, as part of its US workers severance package, many of those workers are training their Mexican replacements, who will $3 an hour with no benefits. John Feltner is a machinist earning $25 an hour in the Indianapolis, Indiana plant. He resents having to train his replacement, but he’ll lose his severance package of $5,000 if he refuses.

Most of the difference in pay between US and Mexican workers will go straight into the pockets of wealthy shareholders. Rexnord’s share price peaked at $30.82 in April 2014. It’s been dropping ever since. It hit a low of $14.72 on January 15 2016, rose a tad, and has stayed stagnant since, hovering around $22. No doubt CEO Todd Adams is hoping that exporting jobs to Mexico will increase its bottom line and attract investors to bid up the share price and his compensation. His CEO pay is tied to the share price thanks to legislation signed by then President Bill Clinton.

Exporting jobs and CEO pay tied to corporate share price are two of the biggest factors in the widening gulf between the 1 percent and everybody else because they redistribute income and wealth from one group to the other. Currently, six individuals own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of humanity, while the 1000 richest individuals own more wealth than the bottom 70 percent. Currently, in the USA, the 1 percent steal 35 percent of all income every year, compared to 8 percent in 1980, thanks to their ownership of such politicians as the Clinton’s, Wyden, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch.

John Feltner and his 350 fellow workers lost their jobs thanks to Bill Clinton, who signed legislation deregulating Wall Street, as well putting his signature on the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA. NAFTA was negotiated by Clinton’s representatives with an eye to getting US corporations to export US jobs to Mexico in order to boost their bottom lines. After he left the presidency, Wall Street rewarded the Clinton’s for their service to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. The Clinton’s are still faithful servants of Wall Street in their war against the middle class, such as the workers at the Rexnord plant.

We also can’t forget Democratic Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden has continuously supported redistributing the income of the middle class to billionaires. The Democratic Party is corrupted to the core by big money, though maybe a bit less than the Republican Party. But then again, maybe not.

“The big picture is that American jobs are leaving this country to exploit cheap labor,” Feltner said. “When you start taking away the middle class, what do you have left?”

This is the sentiment that President Donald Trump played to so effectively during the 2016 presidential campaign. It spoke to John Feltner somewhere down deep.”

“He’d been a loyal union man for years, been raised on the notion Democrats were the party of the working man and made calls for Democrats from union phone banks. But after the trade agreements that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama signed, and after Trump spoke to the plight of workers at places such as Carrier, John Feltner broke ranks.

With the layoff fresh on his mind, he cast his November vote for Trump. He says most of his rank-and-file union members did the same.”

And what were those workers supposed to do? Support Hillary Clinton who aspired to export millions of US jobs to China via the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was being negotiated on behalf of Wall Street by then President Barack Obama?

Feltner and his fellow employees don’t know what they’re going to do once their jobs are gone. Thank you Bill Clinton. Thank you Barack Obama.

For more on this story, click the following link, Rexnord’s Indiana Plant Exported to Mexico–USA Today

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Six Men Own More Wealth Than the Bottom 50 Percent of Human Kind

The economic and political game is clearly rigged in favor of wealthy, and its getting worse. This is a recipe for economic disaster, and which has been closely followed by major Wall Street politicians, such as Ron Wyden, Barack Obama, Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch, and George W. Bush.

The richest are getting richer, and their doing so quickly, and at the expense of the rest of us. For the most part, control of the levers of political power is how they have gained their money. It’s that simple. The rich control the Republican and Democratic parties, and with them, they control all three branches of the federal government, as well as most state and local governments. And that’s just in the USA.

In early 2016 Oxfam reported that just 62 individuals had the same wealth as the bottom half of humanity. About a year later Oxfam reported that just eight men had the same wealth as the world’s bottom half. Based on the same methodology and data sources used by Oxfam, that number is now down to six.

There is a reason why the rich, and in particular the super rich, continue to get richer. The politicians of both major political parties work as agents on behalf of their billionaire benefactors, whether its Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, or Democrats like Ron Wyden.

This is why the poorest half (and more) of the world has continued to lose wealth; and the very richest individuals—especially the top thousand or so—continue to add billions of dollars to their massive fortunes. Inequality deniers and apologists say the Oxfam methodology is flawed, but they’re missing the big picture. Whether it’s six individuals or 62 or 1,000 doesn’t really matter. The data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook (GWD) and the Forbes Billionaire List provide the best available tools to make it clear that inequality is extreme and pathological and getting worse every year.

As of Feb. 17 of 2017, the world’s six richest individuals (all men) had $412 billion. Just a year ago, on March 1, 2016, the world’s six richest men had $343 billion. They’re the same men today, although slightly rearranged as they play “king of the hill”: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Amancio Ortega, Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim Helu (with Larry Ellison jockeying for position). The wealth of these six men increased by $69 billion in just one year.

According to a new report, which can be accessed below, the poorest 50 percent of the population has seen their share of wealth decline. And the richest 500 people own more wealth that the bottom 70 percent.

Six Men Own More Wealth Than the Bottom 50 Percent of the World’s Population–EcoWatch.org

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Part 6–The Accomplishments of President Barack Obama

The financial collapse of 2008 was the worst recession since the Great Depression. Give President Obama and his administration credit for saving the economy from the depredations of Wall Street despite massive Republic resistance to resuscitating it, which they did solely for political gain. However, this historically weak recovery masks a startling reality.

Only one perpetrator of Wall Street crimes was ever brought to justice, and he wasn’t a big figure in the massive corruption going on. In March 2009, Obama met with Wall Street leaders and said, “I stand between you and the pitchforks. I am on your side and I will protect you.”

Only one banker from that era was prosecuted. That was Bernie Madoff, and the only reason he was carted off to prison was because he stole from rich people. And not one other Wall Street criminal executive went to jail after stealing billions via fraud, money laundering of Mexican drug cartel profits, and numerous other crimes. Many became his financial advisers, which meant Obama pursued policies to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent for eight long years.

At all times, Obama refused to bite the hand that funded his past, present and future, as well as funding much of the Republican and Democratic Parties. In other words, Obama was largely, if not completely, in the back pocket of Wall Street as were President Bill Clinton, both President’s Bush, Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Wall Street Senator’s Ron Wyden, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch.

Obama operated in a cesspool corruption. He was part of the problem, not the solution.

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