Study Shows Corrupt US Politicians Only Listen to the Rich

In the video above, was comedian George Carlin right about the US being a cesspool of political corruption? You better bet he was. Your vote is meaningless, and an academic study shows how true this is.

It is pretty obvious, isn’t it? We didn’t need an academic study to tell us the rich are using the government to financially bleed the rest of us dry. They’ve used the government to redistribute trillions upon trillions of dollars from the 99 to themselves over the last forty years.

Our democracy has been hijacked. Both major political parties have been hijacked. The United States Supreme Court has been hijacked, bought off really. Click here for more on this issue.

This is a no-brainer. The United States has one of the most corrupt governments in the world, aided and abetted by one of the most corrupt corporate news systems in the world if you can call it news. (Click here for how the media lies to us.) The billionaires use their corporate news media to manufacture public opinion in favor of whatever they want, regardless of how it might hurt average citizens (See Trans-Pacific Partnership below). If they can’t manufacture consent, most of the time they still get what they want, with rare exceptions.

Despite the obvious, academic research was conducted on this issue by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern. The study has received lots of attention because the authors conclude that the US is a corrupt oligarchy where ordinary voters barely matter. Or as they put it, “economic elites and organized interest groups play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence.”

The authors discovered that politicians, such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, will be happy to fight in the halls of the US Congress for legislation that is desired by citizens of average means, but they “only get what they want if economic elites or interest groups also want it.”

You can see in the graph below that as the percent of average citizen’s who want something from government rises from 0 to 100 percent the odds of them getting it remains tiny.

On the other hand, the graph below shows that as the economic elites and organized interest groups that control both major political parties form ranks behind legislation they want, politicians happily respond to them.  Nobody knows this better than Wall Street’s Senators Wyden, Mitch McConnell, the entire Republican Party, and the majority of the Democratic Party politicians.

Sometimes, to avoid raising the political awareness of the masses, the oligarchs who control the US and many state and local governments will decide not to do something the rich want, such as when then President Obama decided he did not have the votes in the US house and senate to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade treaty that would have redistributed trillions of dollars a year from the 99 to the 1 percent. Public resistance was too significant, but that was a rare defeat for the economic elite.

Why is income and wealth inequality so unequal? Political corruption is the answer. Why is this so? It is the golden rule in action: He who has the gold makes the rules. The US is not democracy except in illusion only. Instead, it is an oligarchy of the rich.

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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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People Power: What We Learned About It In 2016

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~Alice Walker

People Power Works! More and more people are fed up with the corruption of the Republican and Democratic establishments. Those two establishments have corrupted government at all levels in the United States to such an extent that the US federal government is now the most corrupt in the industrial world, and by a wide margin. And so more people than ever before are taking to the streets and voting against the candidates backed by Wall Street.

In 2016, the grassroots destroyed the plans of Wall Street executives and billionaire investors to redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent a number of times.

1. A grassroots campaign turned Bernie Sanders into serious candidate for US presidency, and likely will send him or Elizabeth Warren into the White House in 2020.

2. A tenacious cross-border, cross-sector progressive movement of movements stopped the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) corporate power grab led by Wall Street drones Barack Obama, as well as Wall Street senators Ron Wyden, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch.

3. Indigenous water protectors used nonviolent direct action to interrupt the Dakota Access Pipeline.

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President Obama’s Top Accomplishments as President and His Worst Actions. Part 1

Official portrait of President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, Dec. 6, 2012.

President Obama was no Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he did take office during an economic crisis greater than any since the Great Depression, a mess helped along by the worst and one of the most corrupt presidents of all time, George W. Bush. I don’t consider Obama to be a great president. I don’t think we’ve had one since Harry Truman. That being said, I think he’ll be remembered fondly even though he was largely a puppet of Wall Street.

1. Obama actually accomplished quite a bit despite the fact the Republican Party leadership fought against almost everything he wanted tooth and nail even if it meant sending the United States down the tubes. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said, “Our top political priority over the next two years is to deny President Obama a second term.”

2, Got us out of the illegal and costly occupation of Iraq.

3. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). This became the first time in US history the government could tax us for not buying something, which is not a good sign since now the government can tax you on anything you choose to not purchase. This legislation also drove up health care costs for everybody, increased deductibles and co-pays.

3. Ended the trade embargo against Iran, which put Iranian oil back on the market and helped drive down the cost of oil and gasoline.

4. Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for seven years, creating 12 million new private-sector jobs. However, it should be pointed out that on a per month basis this growth was worst than that which occurred under President Jimmy Carter. On the other hand, monthly job growth of all of the presidents since Carter have been worst than what happened under Jimmy.

Worst Action?

Along with Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden, President Obama continuously groveled at the feet of Wall Street and other big corporate executives, which is why he mightily tried to secretly ram through the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Obama promised an open and honest administration, but he was extremely secretive about the TPP, most likely because it would’ve exported millions of US jobs and redistributed trillions of dollars from working folks to Wall Street and other corporate executives and rich shareholders.

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Is the End of Wall Street Dominance of the Democratic Party at Hand?

The near miss of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary this year against the Wall Street Establishment candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, should’ve sent a clear message to the Democratic Party Establishment, but it didn’t.

It’s business as usual in the white house, and business as usual within the US House and Senate. President Obama and Wall Street’s favorite senator, Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden (sometimes known as US Nike Senator Ron Wyden), are plotting to fool the grassroots of the Democratic Party by waiting until the election is over before throwing all of their energies into passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through congress. Obama has already signed it.

The TPP is a massive income and political power redistribution scam promoted by Obama, Wyden, a few other Democrats, and most of the Republican Party, and, of course, Wall Street investment firms, hedge funds and major corporations. The TPP will redistribute trillions of dollars and large chunks of political power from the 99 to the 1 percent. The TPP will also steal many of your voting rights.

In a recent Harvard/Politico poll 54 percent of Democrats, compared to 85 of Republicans, believe trade scams such as the TPP have cost the USA more jobs than they create. A quick look at the US trade deficit bears this out. Millions of jobs are being exported from the USA every year, which is why Obama, Wyden, Wall Street and the Republican Party want to pass this scam.

When US jobs are exported to low wage nations, the difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower third world nations goes straight into the already fat wallets of the superwealthy via higher corporate profits, rising share prices, and surging dividends. Wyden and Obama know this. They’re not the dummies they’re pretending to be on this issue. That’s why we have record share prices along with an historically weak economic expansion.

Had 85 percent of Democrats believed trade scams like the TPP cost more jobs than they create, Bernie Sanders would likely be the Democratic Party nominee rather than the Wall Street jobs-exporter Hillary Clinton. Likewise, if 54 percent of Republicans believed trade scams exported more US jobs than they created here, Donald Trump would likely not be the Republican Party nominee.

The day of reckoning within the ranks of the Democratic Party is coming sooner than later. The next recession is already on its way in, and the tepid economic expansion of 2009-17 is nearly over. If I am correct, and this recession will be the worst since the Great Depression, the result of the destructive economic policy of redistributing income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent by the Wall Street supported Democratic Establishment and the Republican Party is almost at an end. The coming of this recession may bring about the end of Wall Street’s control of the Democratic Party. For more on this coming recession, click  The New Recession is Knocking at the Door–JohnHively.Wordpress.com

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Trump or Clinton? The Two Choices for President Are Incredibly Poopy for Working People

On May 17 2016 the Richmond Times Dispatch posted the above obituary. No doubt these were the sentiments of Mary Noland and her family.

What choice do we have?

We have Hillary Clinton on one side. She was for the massive income redistribution scam known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and for fracking. We know from leaked emails she told Wall Street executives she was for “free trade and open borders.” Those are code words for accelerated exporting of jobs and pushing US wages lower. Then Bernie Sanders entered the Democratic primary. Since then Hillary has said she’s against the TPP and fracking, but she has already stacked the deck in favor of Wall Street, the TPP and fracking, and she’s not even president yet.

Everybody opposed to fracking and the TPP should be alarmed at the choices she’s making, and her sincerity should be seriously questioned, especially since she has lied many times before.

She chose Tim Kaine to be her running mate. Kaine voiced support for the TPP two days before Hillary chose him. Now he claims he’s against it.

And now she has named former Colorado Democratic Senator and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be the chair of her presidential transition team — the group tasked with helping set up the new administration should she win in November. That includes identifying, selecting, and vetting candidates for over 4,000 presidential appointments.

Wall Street and other corporate CEO’s are drooling at her two choices. Kaine and Salazar demonstrate a complete lack of sincerity in her opposition to the TPP and fracking. If she is elected president, expect her to push the TPP and redistribute massive amounts of income from the 99 to the 1 percent, especially by exporting jobs.

Now if she wanted to represent the people of the US, and not just the super rich ones, Clinton would chose Joseph Stiglitz as Treasury Secretary. That would alleviate some anxiety on the part of labor union members and leaders about her sincerity, but that’s not going to happen.

Then we’ve got Donald Trump. He says and does anything like he’s a contestant on a reality television show. He’s got zero political experience. He’s gone bankrupt on four occasions. He’s got two feet that must be terribly swollen because of all the times he’s stuck them in his mouth in just the last twelve months.

The Republican Establishment is against him, as are the Koch Brothers. The corporate media is also against him.

My girlfriend is from Iran. Her brother lives there. He says the people of Iran are laughing at us because of our presidential choices. No doubt much of the rest of the world is also. Is this the best we’ve got?

Where have you gone Harry Truman? We need you. Where is an Eisenhower? A JFK? We sorely miss you Franklin Roosevelt! We miss you too Jimmy Carter! I’d give anything to have Gerald Ford or Bob Dole running for president in 2016! Even Lyndon Johnson of the Vietnam quagmire, Ronald Reagan of numerous scandals, and Richard Nixon of Watergate are preferable to the choices we have today.

Are you listening Elizabeth Warren, Sharrod Brown or Jeff Merkley?

Bernie! Can you still run as an independent?

Click here for Mary Noland’s obituary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

 

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Get it Straight! Both Political Parties are Rotted to the Core with Corruption, but this Story is Only About the Democratic Party and How Wall Street Controls It

Citibank of Wall Street pretty much chose who was going to serve on President Obama’s cabinet, as well as who was going to fill the key positions elsewhere in his administration.

John Podesta is the campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

WikiLeaks released some of Podesta’s emails, many of which go back to 2008 when Podesta was the co-chair of the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama. A month before the election, the primary staffing of the key positions in the Obama administration was almost complete.

In 2008, Michael Froman was an executive at Citibank. According to the New Republic, Froman “wrote an email to Podesta on October 6, 2008, with the subject “Lists.” Froman used a Citigroup email address. He attached three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them. “The lists will continue to grow,” Froman wrote to Podesta, “but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.

The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.

This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that.

These revelations also reinforce the need for critical scrutiny of Hillary Clinton, and for advocacy to ensure the next transition doesn’t go like the last, at least with respect to the same old Democrats scooping up all the positions of power well in advance.”

In 2016, Michael Froman was the US Trade Representative negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership, the largest income and political power redistribution scam in world history. Froman was negotiating to export millions of US jobs to third world nations. The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower third world wages will go straight into the pockets of the wealthy via higher corporate profits, surging share prices and rising dividends. Wall Street banks would be a primary beneficiary at the expense of the 99 percent.

Obama is doing exactly what his Wall Street masters want him to do, just like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden does. Will Hillary do the same if she is elected?

As an aside, I mention Wyden because he is the Democrat who will lead the charge for the TPP in the US senate on behalf of Wall Street and Nike.

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What People Believe About Free Trade Agreements, Jobs and Other Things

A new poll by the Pew Research Center show that 80 percent of US citizens believe that trade agreements have cost the United States jobs. According to the poll:

“The public sees threats to jobs coming from several directions: Eight-in-ten adults say increased outsourcing of jobs to other countries hurts American workers, and roughly the same share (77%) say having more foreign-made products sold in the U.S. has been harmful. Significant shares also cite increased use of contract or temporary workers (57%) and declines in union membership (49%) as trends that are hurting, rather than helping, workers. At the same time, global markets for U.S.-made products are seen as helpful for workers by 68% of adults. And seven-in-ten say the rise of the internet and email has been a net positive.”

The poll suggests the US public is not fooled by these trade scams that redistribute income from working folks to the rich. And they’re spot on.

According an Economic Policy Institute Study shows that over 2 million US jobs were exported to the eleven nations participating in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2015. That doesn’t count China, since it is not a part of the as of yet not approved TPP.

The U.S. trade deficit with China was $365.7 billion in 2015, or about double what it was with the TPP nations. This is a new record, up slightly from last year’s record of $343 billion. Counting the trade deficit with China suggests US companies exported at least 4 million more jobs in 2015, for a total of over 6 million jobs in 2015.

At least one study suggested US corporations have exported 26 million jobs since 2000. The EPI study for jobs loss in 2015 coupled with the US trade deficit with China suggests this is very likely, and perhaps even understates the job loss numbers.

That’s why Americans have wised up to these income redistribution scams falsely marketed as trade agreements. They may not know the exact number of jobs lost, but given that the current economic expansion is the weakest since the Great Depression, most people can see and feel that something has gone terribly wrong with the US economy.

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Hillary and Her Lies to the Public About Her Support for the Trans Pacific Partnership

March 6, 2015

In public, after Bernie Sanders entered the Democratic presidential primary as a fierce opponent of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a scam that will redistribute trillions of dollars a year from the 99 to the 1 percent while raping us of our tax dollars for social safety nets, fire schools, police, social security, etc.., Hillary Clinton abruptly became an opponent of the TPP, after having been a long-time supporter of it.

Leaked emails last week show Clinton told a private gathering of Wall Street executives, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”

Since Sanders entered the race, Hillary has said in public, “I oppose the TPP now, I’ll oppose it after the election, and I’ll oppose it as president.”

The TPP is a massive income redistribution scam that will compel US corporations to export millions of jobs from the USA. The difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower overseas wages goes straight into the wallets of Wall Street fat cats and CEO’s of the US job exporters.

As Secretary of State, Clinton should have had some access to the negotiations, otherwise, why would she call it the “gold standard” of trade agreements?

“Open borders” will quite naturally do the same trick. If a company cannot export a job, it will be able to import low wage workers to compete against US workers, driving down the price of labor, and enriching Wall Street fat cats and CEOs in the process. “Open borders” means only one thing; increase the supply of labor in order to drive down the price of labor.

The choices people who work for a living have in this presidential election are likely the worst in presidential history. Can Senator Warren still enter as an independent?

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The Corporate Tax Dodge US Style

According to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute and Americans for Tax Fairness, corporate tax dodging is at record levels while corporate profits have reached record highs. U.S. corporations have stashed $2.4 trillion offshore. It is estimated corporations could owe as much as $700 billion on those profits, much of which are earned in the United States. Some of the findings are below. I should like to point out that a recent report in the Guardian stated that US corporations were the best at avoiding taxes.

1. Corporate profits are way up, and corporate taxes are way down. In 1952, corporate profits were 5.5 percent of the economy, and corporate taxes were 5.9 percent. Today, corporate profits are 8.5 percent of the economy, and corporate taxes are just 1.9 percent of GDP.

2, Corporations used to contribute $1 out of every $3 in federal revenue. Today, despite very high corporate profitability, it is $1 out of every $9.

3. Many corporations pay an effective tax rate that is one-half (or less) of the official 35 percent tax rate.

4. One thing not mentioned by the study is that many US corporations pay no taxes and sometimes receive tax rebates on taxes they never paid, Verizon, for instance, paid no Federal taxes in 2009, 2010 and 2013, and received tax rebates in each of those years.

5. As of 2015, U.S. corporations had $2.4 trillion in untaxed profits offshore. This is roughly a five-fold increase from $434 billion in 2005. It stems largely from anticipation of a tax holiday.
Just two industries—high-tech and pharmaceutical/health care—hold half the untaxed offshore profits.

6. Just 50 companies hold over 75 percent of untaxed offshore profits. Ten companies hold 39 percent of these profits. Just four companies—Apple, Pfizer, Microsoft, and General Electric—hold one-quarter of all untaxed offshore profits.

7. About 55 percent of U.S. corporate offshore profits are in tax-haven countries. Corporations pay an average tax rate of between just 3.0 percent and 6.6 percent on profits in tax havens.

8. U.S. corporations pay very low tax rates—6 percent to 10 percent, mainly to foreign governments—on all their offshore profits. A tax break known as “deferral” allows them to delay paying U.S. taxes until the profits are repatriated to the parent corporation in the United States.

9. The U.S. Treasury will lose $1.3 trillion over 10 years—about $126 billion a year—due to the deferral of taxes on offshore profits.

10. Income shifting—which are making profits earned in the United States look as if they were earned offshore—erodes our corporate tax base by over $100 billion a year. U.S. corporations increasingly manipulate transfer pricing and bilateral tax agreements to make their U.S. profits appear to be earned in tax havens. Think Panama Free Trade Agreement and the looming Trans-Pacific Partnership.

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