The War Over Global Warming is Class Warfare on Many Fronts

Global warming is upon us. My rhododendron told me this decades ago as it bloomed during the middle of a brutal January ice storm. However, we have been made a bit confused about the issue because some very rich people’s income and wealth accumulation, along with their economic and political power, is greatly dependent upon the rest of us believing something else despite what is happening right before our eyes.

We have been divided, sliced and diced into competing camps. A great many people believe either in the nonsense the Wall Street/billionaire controlled Democratic Party has conjured up, or the nonsense the billionaire/Wall Street/Big Oil controlled Republican Party has placed before us. We have been divided by social issues by the competing camps of billionaires while the big boys of both sides rape us financially. Most of the faithful of both political parties appear to be just like European soccer fans. It’s our team against their team and we’re going to believe whatever the leaders of our team tell us to believe. This is called WAR, which is an acronym for “We Are Right.” Some people are as zealous in this regard as the European soccer fans who duke it out in the stands and parking lots of stadiums over men kicking a ball.

Sometimes, however, the truth can win against the lies of either group of billionaires. Mother nature has been telling us for decades that global warming is occurring. We could see, for example, flowers that used to bloom in Spring blooming in December and January, insects we’ve never seen before that belong in hotter climates than the Pacific Northwest, in some places river and lake water levels have been reduced by 50 percent in just the last five years, and ducks and geese migrating south in November and December, and then flying north in February.

Hopefully, enough people have experienced the severe and record-breaking heat in the Pacific Northwest, along with historic droughts throughout the west, to understand the great danger to the people and other species of the world that global warming is bringing because these current events are only the tip of the ice berg of what the future holds, no pun intended. As late as early June 2021, nobody living in Portland, Oregon would have believed the record mid-June temperatures of 108 and 116 degrees would ever occur. The same thing has happened to the people of Montana, Idaho and Washington, among other places.

Hopefully, enough voters in the Republican Party will understand the billionaires who control the party have been lying to them that global warming is not occurring, and if it is by some miracle, it is not man-made; We can hope enough of them will believe the eyes and brains that God gave them, and they will demand action from their party leaders. By now many should have come to understand global warming is a reality in the same way many Democratic voters have come to realize the Wall Street controlled Democratic Party leadership and its news media has been lying to them that free trade agreements do not result in the exporting of jobs, although tens of millions of jobs have been exported over the last thirty years. The billionaires who control both parties and all three branches of the federal government, along with the corporate news media, have been lying to us for forty and more years over a great number of issues, thanks to their Supreme Court. It isn’t your Supreme Court, and it certainly does not belong to the U.S. Constitution; the super wealthy own the court.

We can only hope change will come in the midst of record setting heat waves and drought before those of us living outside of gated communities experience the full brunt of global warming, which will continue to get worse. 116 degrees is Portland Oregon is only the beginning unless action on a massive scale is taken.

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Why the Electoral College is Allowed to Exist

The electoral college is allowed to exist because the Republicans and the Democrats are indispensable enemies, at least for the billionaires who control both parties. If not for the electoral college, the last Republican United States president would have been George H.W. Bush from 1988 to 1992. The balance of power in Washington D.C. would have been in the hands of the Democrats for most of the time since. Those politicians serve many of the same billionaires who control the Republican Party. The billionaires and their corporate media divide the Republican and Democratic Party grassroots by social issues so as to take our eyes off the prize.

Nowadays, many of the grassroots of both parties are like European soccer fans. They root for their teams regardless of the economic issues that impact them, they engage in fistfights, protests and counter protests, and issue damning insults in person and on social media, much to the delight of the billionaires of both parties who have been pulling their strings as though they are mindless puppets.

George Carlin on education and political corruption

In the meantime, three billionaires own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans. According to Inequality.org, as of November 17, “the combined wealth of 647 U.S. billionaires increased by almost $960 billion since mid-March, the beginning of the pandemic lockdown—an increase of nearly $1 trillion in less than a year. Since March, there are 33 new billionaires in the U.S. Driving this exploding inequality are 12 companies whose profits are coming at the expense of workers and communities. These “Delinquent Dozen” companies are emblematic of the corporate greed that has grown rampant over the last 40 years. They include retailers like Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Dollar Tree and Dollar Store, gig economy companies like Instacart, and food producers like Tyson Foods.”

Worse yet, this massive increase in wealth inequality is driven by a huge rise in income inequality. The top 1 percent now take roughly anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of the total income produced every year in the United States, depending on whose stats you use. This is up from 8 percent in 1980. Extreme poverty has risen over the last thirty years from 36 percent of the world’s people to roughly 50 percent as massive amounts of income and wealth have been redistributed from the poorest to the most wealthy. The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population, according to a recent study by Oxfam. See https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people

During these decades our democracy has been turned into a plutocracy (government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich), our utterly corrupt Supreme Court has given massive power to the rich via their corporations while weakening our labor unions, which was once the primary counter balance to corporate power in the United States.

Sure, there are important issues the billionaires and their corporate news media have directed our attention to, such as transgender bathrooms, voter fraud, racism, gay rights, wars against Christmas, wars against women, global warming, abortion, wars for and against dirty diapers, etc…. While most of these are important issues for which many of us are passionate about, they are also issues intended to take our eyes off the prize.

Take racism, for example. Most of the people impacted by extreme poverty (defined in 1990 as living on $1.90 a day) throughout the world are our brown and black brothers and sisters from lesser developed nations. And yet, the policies which have pushed more and more of these people into extreme poverty, such as international trade agreements involving the United States, and lending actions by the U.S. dominated World Bank, are pushed by billionaire controlled politicians of both major political parties. Racism is never talked about in this context because the billionaires have directed our attention away from racist economic policies and how these policies have been directed by Republican and Democratic Party leaders over the last four decades and have pretty much kept our eyes off the big pictures of income and wealth inequality and how these two policies impact all working people, but in particular, black and brown people.

If the electoral college was eliminated, the Republican Party would be a largely permanent minority party unable to stop the Democratic Party leaders from enacting the demands of the Democratic Party grassroots for reforms, some of which would reverse income and wealth inequality, such as raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, which would cut into corporate profits, as well as ever rising share prices and dividends, which is the primary conduit by which the rich receive their income and wealth. Immigration reform would succeed, but the current policies are very profitable for a handful of publicly traded corporations, and which benefit billionaires.

The indispensable enemies must continue to coexist so as to provide the illusion of democracy. Eliminating the electoral college would go a long way toward destroying the illusion, which is something the billionaires do not want.

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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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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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The Billionaires Who Control the Democratic Party Rise Up Against Warren and Bernie

The billionaires who own the Democratic Party are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle, and have threatened to back President Trump if Senator Elizabeth Warren wins the party’s nomination. We know where the loyalty of the billionaires who control the Democrat Party lie, and it is with their comrades in arms, the billionaires who own the RepubliCon Party.

The billionaires that control both major political parties work hard using their news media and talking heads to get Democratic and Republican voters to side with their party and argue with one another about social issues, such as abortion, gun control, or whether or not transgender bathrooms should have urinals, and whether or not Albus Dumbledore of Harry Potter fame is gay or not, and whether or not Santa Claus should be depicted as transgender or not, rather than talking about income, wealth and the political inequality the billionaires, their politicians (such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden) and their Supreme Court have created, and how the billionaires have rigged and corrupted the democracy we live in, while simultaneously working together to financially rob and rape the 99 percent of both Parties in whatever way possible so long as it makes them richer in the process.

The billionaires who control the Democratic Party have already supported President Trump on a number of issues, such as tax cuts for the rich.

Warren tweeted in response to the threat, “I’m fighting for an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the wealthy and well-connected. I’m not afraid of anonymous quotes, and wealthy donors don’t get to buy this process. I won’t back down from fighting for the big, structural change we need.”

In recent weeks, CNBC spoke to several high-dollar Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community and found that this opinion was becoming widely shared as Warren, an outspoken critic of big banks and corporations, gains momentum against Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 race.

What CNBC did not say was that the vast majority of U.S. citizens need a new Franklin Delano Roosevelt as United States president in order to stave off the predations of the billionaires who own both major political parties, as well as the corrupt/corporate/conservative wing of the United States Supreme Court.

One Democratic Party senior private equity executive said, “You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump.’” This billionaire spoke on the condition of anonymity in fear of retribution by party leaders. The executive said this Wednesday, a day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.

During the campaign, Warren has put out multiple plans intended to curb the corrupting influence of Wall Street on government, both major political parties, and the United States Supreme Court, including a wealth tax. In July, she released a proposal that would make private equity firms responsible for debts and pension obligations of companies they buy. The billionaires surely do not want that. Trump, meanwhile, has given wealthy business leaders a helping hand with a major corporate tax cut and by eliminating regulations.

Warren has sworn off taking part in big money fundraisers for the 2020 presidential primary. She has also promised to not take donations from special interest groups. She finished raising at least $19 million in the second quarter mainly through small-dollar donors.

Trump, has been raising hundreds of millions of dollars, putting any eventual 2020 rival in a bind as 20 or so Democrats compete for their party’s nomination.

Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have raised over $100 million in the second quarter, and a record $125 million in the third quarter. Most of that came from wealthy donors who gave to their joint fundraising committee, Trump Victory. In August, the RNC raised just over $23 million and has $53 million on hand.

The Democratic National Committee have struggled to keep up. The DNC finished August bringing in $7.9 million and has $7.2 million in debt. CNBC decided not to mention this is because Democratic grassroots voters are throwing tens of millions of dollars to the Warren and Bernie Sanders campaigns.

Biden, who has courted and garnered the support of various wealthy donors, has started to lag in some polls. The latest Quinnipiac poll has Warren virtually tied with the former vice president. Biden was one of three contenders that saw an influx of contributions from those on Wall Street in the second quarter.

The business community’s unease about Warren’s candidacy has surged in tandem with her campaign’s momentum. CNBC’s Jim Cramer said earlier this month that he’s heard from Wall Street executives that they believe Warren has “got to be stopped.”

Some big bank executives and hedge fund managers have been stunned by Warren’s ascent, and they are primed to resist her. Ultimately, this means they intend to resist the will of the vast majority of United States citizens.

“They will not support her. It would be like shutting down their industry,” an executive at one of the nation’s largest banks told CNBC, also speaking on condition of anonymity. This person said Warren’s policies could be worse for Wall Street than those of President Barack Obama, who signed the Dodd-Frank bank regulation bill in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Yet before Obama was elected, his campaign took over $1 million from employees at Goldman Sachs, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

A hedge fund executive pointed to Trump’s tax cut as a reason why his colleagues would not contribute or vote for Warren if she wins the nomination.

“I think if she can show that the tax code of 2017 was basically nonsense and only helped corporations, Wall Street would not like the public thinking about that,” this executive said, also insisting on anonymity.

This really means something simple: if you want to vote for your interests, as well as the interests of the vast majority of United States citizens, vote for Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. If you want to vote for the interests of the billionaires’ vote for Joe Biden.

Billionaires Rise Up Against Elizabeth Warren

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United States Income Inequality Continues to Surge

The gap between the richest and the poorest U.S. households is now the largest it’s been in the past 50 years according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

U.S. income inequality was “significantly higher” in 2018 than in 2017, the Census Bureau says in its latest American Community Survey report. Since the rich in the United States possess earnings and investments abroad, it is likely the income and wealth gaps are much larger than the Census Bureau measures.

The gap grew despite a surging national economy that has seen low unemployment and more than 10 years of consecutive GDP growth.

The most troubling thing about the new report, says William M. Rodgers III, a professor of public policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University, is that it “clearly illustrates the inability of the current economic expansion, the longest on record, to lessen inequality.”

That is because the rich are using their political power to create income inequality in their favor.

When asked why the rising economic tide has raised some boats more than others, Rodgers lists several factors, including the decline of organized labor and competition for jobs from abroad. He also cites tax policies that favor businesses and higher-income families.

To understand even a little of how labor unions have been weakened you only need to look at a few of the legal decisions made by the corrupt corporate wing of the United States Supreme Court when it sided with the billionaires and their corporations in the Janus vs. AFSCME case. The corrupt wing of the court, lead by Cheif Justice John Roberts, decided to put an end to decades of legal precedent in which labor union members who did not want to pay union dues were required to pay a lesser fee to their unions to cover the cost of negotiating new contracts with management. Now labor unions are the only organizations in the United States that must provide free services to members who do not wish to pay. The corrupt wing of the court’s intention in making this decision was to weaken the power of labor unions, and working people in general, vis-a-vis the billionaires and their corporations.

Everybody knew the corrupt corporate wing of the court was going to vote in favor of Janus and end four decades of legal precedent in the process. Everybody knew the billionaires had the corporate wing in their hip pocket.

Income inequality is measured through the Gini index, which measures how far apart incomes are from each other. To do that, the index assigns a hypothetical score of 0.0 to a population in which incomes are distributed perfectly evenly and a score of 1.0 to a population where only one household gets all of the income.

The United States has been one of the most unequal of nations in the world using the Gini coefficient. The U.S. is ranked 103 in the world by the World Bank for income inequality, behind every major industrialized country, and up there with such nations as Haiti and Uganda. The U.S. was ranked at 73 ten years ago, so inequality continues to worsen here.

The billionaires’ control the corrupt corporate wing of the United States Supreme Court, the entire Republican Party, and most Democratic politicians at the national level. Therefore, you can expect income and wealth inequality will continue to get worse in the United States.

In other words, vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren for president.

US Census Bureau Report

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Elizabeth Warren Aims High on Trade Policy

Elizabeth Warren plans to put an end to Wall Street control of the Democratic Party if she becomes president. The first place she would begin is with international trade policies, drawing sharp contrasts with Wall Street puppet’s Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton in the process, along with Democratic Party Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden and dozens of other Democrats in political office.

Wyden has long been one of the architects of the growing income and wealth inequality in the United States over the last thirty years. He has continuously championed the exporting of tens of millions of American jobs on behalf of Wall Street investment banks and corporate bigwigs. The difference between the old higher U.S. wages and the new much less third world wages goes straight into the already fat wallets of the billionaires. My ex-wife calls Wyden, accurately as it turns out, a RepubliCon on all economic matters.

As for Warren, her plans include nine issues every nation would have to meet before negotiating a trade deal with the United States. Those standards include upholding and enforcing the labor rights laid out by the International Labour Organization, eliminating all domestic fossil fuel subsidies, fulfilling commitments from the Paris Climate Agreement, not running afoul of the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights, and not being on the Treasury Department’s monitoring list for manipulative currency practices. Warren’s requirements would apply not only to new trade deals but to existing treaties that Warren pledges to renegotiate.

Naturally, RepubliCons and Corporate/Wall Street Democrats, such as Wyden, will be opposed to Warren’s standards. So are the billionaires, Wall Street investors, and the so-called news media they control. Their only standard is to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent even if the world burns.

Taken together, Warren’s mandates would fundamentally change American trade policy, potentially excluding many countries that would see the requirements as too onerous for the parasitic elites who control those governments, and who want to continue the maldistribution of income and wealth that existing trade agreements have been negotiated to bring about.

“For decades, big multinational corporations have bought and lobbied their way into dictating America’s trade policy,” Warren wrote, calling the policies across Republican and Democratic administrations a “failed trade agenda.”

“Trade can be a powerful tool to help working families but our failed pro-corporate agenda has used trade to harm American workers and the environment. My plan represents a new approach to trade — one that uses America’s leverage to boost American workers and raise the standard of living across the globe.”

In effect, Warren aims to reverse the income and wealth stolen from 99 percent of Americans and given to the billionaires by Wyden, Clinton, Obama, and the entire RepubliCon Party.

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These CEO’s Make 1000 Times More Than the Lowest Paid Employees

Income and wealth inequality continues to rise in favor of the richest 0.5 percent in the United States and throughout the world. This is due solely to political corruption, often presented as making common sense. Former President Bill Clinton, who, like his wife, is owned by billionaires, is a perfect example of such political corruption, as much as any RepubliCon party politician, and that political party is the epidemy of corruption.

Twenty-five years ago, Clinton campaigned on an idea for limiting excessive pay for American CEOs by capping the tax deductibility of top executives’ compensation at $1 million, and corporations, not wanting bigger tax bills, might reel in their pay. Under the Clinton backed legislation, corporations couldn’t deduct CEO pay over $1 million unless it was “performance-based.” So stock options and performance-based bonuses became the norm. We were told this was a good thing, but, like many things the US public has been told by its corrupted political and business leaders, as well as the corrupted news media, this was a lie, and most likely a deliberate lie.

This lie has resulted in chief executive officers earning more money in less than an hour as much as their typical employee earns in an entire year. Notice the corruption of both political parties has decided not to rescind Clinton’s legislation that he signed on behalf of the rich and their corporations. Notice Joe Biden, an old, sleazy Wall Street pawn, hasn’t said a word either.

USA Today reported a month or so ago that “Stock options – which are often indicative of CEO performance – are not taxable, however, and as such, are often a preferred form of CEO compensation reported.”

Clinton’s legislation gone bad is one of the reasons why stock buybacks have become so popular with CEOs. 59 percent of corporate profits in recent years has gone toward stock buybacks, according to a story in the Guardian a few months ago. This is an easy way to manipulate stock prices higher and make an extra buck in the process. Corporations buy their own lousy stock, driving the prices higher, and then turn around and gradually sell their stock at the higher prices. Any high school student in the same position as any CEO would do the same since the result is higher CEO compensation.

Of course, CEO’s also drive wages, salaries, and benefits downward in order to increase their own compensation via stock options and bonuses. The result has been unprecedented income and wealth inequality. Thank you RepubliCon Party, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden.

According to USA Today’s report, the most overpaid CEOs are:

1. Arthur L. Peck
• Company: The Gap Inc.
• CEO annual pay: $20.8 million (3,566 times the typical employee)
• Median annual employee pay: $5,831
• Annual corporate profit: $1.0 billion

2. Ynon Kreiz
• Company: Mattel Inc.
• CEO annual pay: $18.7 million (3,408 times the typical employee)
• Median annual employee pay: $5,489
• Annual corporate profit: -$531.0 million

3. Joseph M. Hogan
• Company: Align Technology Inc.
• CEO annual pay: $41.8 million (3,168 times the typical employee)
• Median annual employee pay: $13,180
• Annual corporate profit: $400.2 million

4. Kevin P. Clark
• Company: Aptiv PLC
• CEO annual pay: $14.1 million (2,609 times the typical employee)
• Median annual employee pay: $5,414
• Annual corporate profit: $1.1 billion

5. Brian R. Niccol
• Company: Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.
• CEO annual pay: $33.6 million (2,438 times the typical employee)
• Median annual employee pay: $13,779
• Annual corporate profit: $176.6 million

For a list of the top thirteen, as well as the full story, click on the link below.

CEO’s Made 1000 Times More Than Their Employees

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World’s 26 Richest People Own More Wealth Than the Bottom 50 Percent of the World’s Population

In 2018, the world’s billionaires saw their wealth grow by $2.5 billion every day while the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people experienced an 11 drop in their wealth, according to a new report by Oxfam, a charity organization that tracks income and wealth inequality throughout the world.

The report noted the wealth of the rich grew by 12 percent last year. Much of that growth was because the billionaires extracted it from the lower 99 percent using their levers of political and judicial power, having corrupted democratic institutions in most nations of the world, most notably in the United States. So yes, the wealth of the rich grew at the expense of the lower 5O percent of the world’s population and most everybody else.

“Since the global economy collapsed, we have learned nothing—the number of billionaires has nearly doubled, with a new billionaire being minted every other day,” said Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s Vice President for Policy and Campaigns. “While corporations and the super-rich enjoy lower tax bills, millions of girls around the world have no access to a decent education and women are dying due to a lack of maternal health care.”

In the United States, 30 people hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the population. The Trump/Republican Party tax cuts favoring the wealthy and their corporations predominantly benefit men, who own 50 percent more wealth than women globally and control over 86 percent of corporations.

“The recent US tax law is a master class on how to favor massive corporations and the richest citizens,” O’Brien said. Corporations, coincidently, much like the corrupt corporate wing of the United States Supreme Court, are tools of the rich and are used to tilt the economic, financial and political markets in their favor, and against the interests of the 99 percent.

Globalization is a primary conduit for redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Exporting US jobs via free trade treaties, for example, is a perfect example. Income and wealth are redistributed by these government negotiated treaties as US jobs are exported; the difference between the old higher U.S. wages and benefits and the new poverty wages in third world nations is redistributed to the rich via higher corporate earnings, rising dividends, and surging share prices. The US workers, if they are lucky, might qualify for unemployment insurance for a few months.

Our economy has been broken by the rich using their ill-gotten gains to purchase the favor of politicians and US Supreme Court Justices, either with legalized bribes called campaign contributions, jobs for spouses, and/or their political and judicial actions are guided with a strong belief in class solidarity. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people live in extreme poverty while huge rewards go to those at the very top. The number of billionaires has doubled since the financial crisis and their fortunes grow by $2.5 billion a day, yet the super-rich and their corporations are paying lower rates of tax than they have in decades. The human costs, such as children without teachers, clinics without medicines, are huge. Piecemeal private services punish poor people and benefit the so-called global elites, who should be more accurately known as the global parasites.

“According to the report, “Women suffer the most and are left to fill the gaps in public services with many hours of unpaid care. We need to transform our economies to deliver universal health, education and other public services. To make this possible, the richest people and corporations should pay their fair share of tax. This will drive a dramatic reduction in the gap between rich and poor and between women and men.”

Click to access bp-public-good-or-private-wealth-210119-en.pdf

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Returning to the Good Times: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Proposes Raising Tax Rates on the Rich

There they go again. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) recently suggested the United States should raise the top marginal tax rate on the rich to over 70 percent. Republicans, naturally, have attacked her as being crazy, although all the evidence points toward higher marginal tax rates on the rich produces a stronger United States economy for all citizens, not just the rich ones.

As you can see from the graph above, the higher the tax rate on the rich, the stronger is GNP growth. The same can be said for jobs and wage growth. It can also be pointed out that when the rich have fewer dollars to spend, they have less spare change to bribe politicians with political contributions.

The only crazy people out there on this issue are Republicans, as usual, performing their jobs as lying lap dogs of the rich. As I have been saying for years, there is not a shred of evidence that suggests, as the Republican Party lap dogs proclaim, that lowering taxes on the rich has created a single job, and you can see that from the graph.

There is a ton of evidence in the form of peer-reviewed studies that show AOC is correct.

Paul Krugman recently wrote, “Republicans almost universally advocate low taxes on the wealthy, based on the claim that tax cuts at the top will have huge beneficial effects on the economy. This claim rests on research by … well, nobody. There isn’t any body of serious work supporting G.O.P. tax ideas, because the evidence is overwhelmingly against those ideas.”

Reducing taxes on the rich have always reduced gross domestic product, wages, and job creation. It also creates income and wealth inequality since the rich have more income to burn at buying both Republican and Democratic Party lap dogs, such as Mitch McConnell and Ron Wyden. These guys have voted time and again to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations-Journal of Economic Perspectives

Why one editor won’t run any more op-eds by the Heritage Foundation’s top economist–Columbia Journalism Review

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