An Open Letter to My Friends who Support Donald Trump

By TheJeremyNix

Tue Dec 15, 2015 12:34 PM

http://thejeremynix.newsvine.com/_news/2015/12/15/34823207-an-open-letter-to-my-friends-who-support-donald-trump 

I'm cool with you removing me from your friends list if you don't like this post. You can even disown me if you like. But Donald Trump isn't a good person, nor would he be a good president. I can understand a difference in politics. I can understand if you don't like a government run by Democrats. I can understand if you don't like certain ideologies, like Socialism. But I can't understand why you would support someone as hateful, sexist, racist and ignorant as Donald Trump.
How do you support him so blindly? Ask yourself, are you a racist, sexist, hateful and ignorant person as well?  I hear his supporters saying they like him because he tells the truth, because he's so rich he can say whatever he feels like with no apologies.  Just because Trump is saying these things doesn't suddenly make them right.  It's not okay to discriminate against an entire religion based on a small percentage of its followers who have become terrorists by twisting the words of their religion to fit their crazy ideals. It's not okay to marginalize an entire race of people, saying things like all the Mexicans are lazy, and they are all stealing our jobs and bringing drugs into our country.
White people also have bad apples. So does every race of people. We're all human. Some humans are really bad people. Some are really good. And it doesn't matter what color they are, it makes no difference whatsoever.  Trump says he is just telling the truth. But whose truth? There are lazy people in every race and there are dangerous violent people in every race and every religion. Kicking all Muslims out of the country is not the answer, nor is it the acceptable behavior of a person in an extremely powerful position, like the President of the United States.
The Japanese Internment camps were wrong, Segregation was wrong, Slavery was wrong. We fought wars amongst ourselves to rise above racism and hatred.  In WWII more than 60 million people died worldwide. Why? Because of twisted people who were whipping up the population into a frenzy and making ridiculous statements, killing innocent people simply because of their race or religion. The United States lost more than 400,000 lives fighting in that war, against the same ideas that Trump is pushing. The idea that certain religions are more dangerous than others and the idea that people should be judged based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.
We're still healing from the damage inflicted by the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq and the War on Terror. And it isn't just ISIS or Al-Qaeda. It's our own people in this country killing their fellow countrymen over differences of opinion, like whether or not you believe abortion is okay or what kind of political ideology you support. And then there are just the plainly insane people who finally snap and go on shooting rampages for no discernible reason at all. They just went mad.
The kind of leadership Trump is displaying is irresponsible and dangerous. His virulent ideas are seeping into the brains of his supporters. Supporters who think it's okay to say things like "light the mother@!$%#er on fire" while a protester is being dragged out of one of his rallies. Maybe the protester was wrong to be where he was at the time, but no matter what he did, there was no reason to set him on fire. In fact, there is NEVER a reason to set anyone on fire. Unless it’s because they are dead and they wish to be cremated.
Trump's supporters are angry, and anger is infectious. I can tell you as a non-supporter of Trump I am just as angry. We need the kind of leader that seeks to bring us together, not tear us apart. Why do we have to fight against helping each other, against common sense, against a united Nation? The American Dream is a nightmare and we are feeding it, making it worse every day. Trump is a bully, a loud mouth, ignorant, sexist, racist, disgusting example of how horrible humans can potentially be.
He is the crazy person at your dinner table who won’t stop running his mouth. The only reason he is allowed to carry on with his ugly hateful rhetoric is because you have too much respect for Grandma to get into a fist fight in her home. He’s the guy you have to endure until he leaves, all the while hating every minute that you have to occupy the same space. Lucky for us, this isn’t Grandma’s house, so feel free to punch him in the mouth in the form of getting out and making your vote count.
They always say it’s so important to make your voice heard, to get out and vote. But I’m not sure if it’s ever been more important than now. Differences of political ideals are one thing, I can agree to disagree on many matters across a wide array of topics, but racism isn't one of them, neither is hate, neither is the belittling of women or the judgment of others based on their appearance or their disability, or their sexual preference.
By supporting Trump do you think things will go back to the way they were? Back when gay people had to hide in fear, back when people of any other color than white had to worry about getting lynched, back when it was okay to openly hate? Do you think empowered women will suddenly quit their jobs and go back to the kitchen ? Because electing Trump won't make any of that come true. We're past that as a nation, or at least I thought we were.
If you're not a racist, bigoted, misogynistic jerk then voting for Trump simply because you don't like Democrats is wrong.  If you are one of his supporters and you're just a racist and you don't care who knows it then vote for him, but know that the good people of America will not stand for it and he will never win a fair election. And please consider pursuing an education and work on your empathy toward your fellow human beings. Whatever led you to believe that racism is okay can be unlearned if you open your mind.  I'm sorry that you were raised to believe that you deserve better treatment than the rest of the people on the planet that have different views than yours, worship different gods than you and have skin that isn't white.
To all the people, of all the races and religions that Donald Trump stands against, to all the women that don't meet his standards of beauty, to all the good Muslims, and Christians, Mormons and Catholics and Jewish, Italians, Irish and Asians, to the African-Americans and Native Americans, to anyone who has ever been persecuted, belittled, made to feel inferior or bullied based on ignorance like the kind that Trump is spewing, please, I implore you to get out and vote against him. Don't let the progress of this great nation be halted. We've come too far.
In this country we FIGHT and DIE for freedom, for Truth and Justice. We fight for what's right. And what Trump is doing and saying isn't right.  Abraham Lincoln said:
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed."
And he couldn't be more right. Trump IS the one percent, he IS working on your prejudices, and he WILL destroy the Republic if he is elected, make no doubt about it.
If you don’t believe me, just look at the level of crazy coming out of his own mouth:
"[I am] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on" - Donald Trump That's religious discrimination.
"An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud" -Donald Trump That’s an outright lie.
"Ariana Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”- Donald Trump This is sexism, and just plain rude.
"You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you've got a young, and beautiful, piece of @!$%#." - Donald Trump This is misogyny at its finest.
“I will build a great wall –and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." - Donald Trump The words of an arrogant hate monger.
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They're not sending you, they're sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people." -Donald Trump Racist.
"Our great African-American President hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore." - Donald Trump Racist.
"If I were running ‘The View’, I'd fire Rosie O'Donnell. I mean, I'd look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I'd say ‘Rosie, you’re fired." - Donald Trump  The words of an @!$%#.
"The beauty of me is that I'm very rich."  - Donald Trump So Vain.
"It's freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming!" - Donald Trump Ignorant.
"My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body." - Donald Trump Gross.
"I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I'm more honest and my women are beautiful." - Donald Trump Sexist. As if women are possessions rather than people. And also a lie. A lie about how honest he is.
How can you support this man?

Paul Craig Roberts On Who Really Benefits From The Rate Hike

 

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/17/2015 09:26 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-17/paul-craig-roberts-who-really-benefits-rate-hike
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
What Does Today’s “Rate Hike” Mean?
The Federal Reserve raised the interbank borrowing rate today by one quarter of one percent or 25 basis points. Readers are asking, “what does that mean?”
It means that the Fed has had time to figure out that the effect of the small “rate hike” would essentially be zero. In other words, the small increase in the target rate from a range of 0 to 0.25% to 0.25 to 0.50% is insufficient to set off problems in the interest-rate derivatives market or to send stock and bond prices into decline.
Prior to today’s Fed announcement, the interbank borrowing rate was averaging 0.13% over the period since the beginning of Quantitative Easing. In other words, there has not been enough demand from banks for the available liquidity to push the rate up to the 0.25% limit. Similarly, after today’s announced “rate hike,” the rate might settle at 0.25%, the max of the previous rate and the bottom range of the new rate.
However, the fact of the matter is that the available liquidity exceeded demand in the old rate range. The purpose of raising interest rates is to choke off credit demand, but there was no need to choke off credit demand when the demand for credit was only sufficient to keep the average rate in the midpoint of the old range. This “rate hike” is a fraud. It is only for the idiots in the financial media who have been going on about a rate hike forever and the need for the Fed to protect its credibility by raising interest rates.
Look at it this way. The banking system as a whole does not need to borrow as it is sitting on $2.42 trillion in excess reserves. The negative impact of the “rate hike” affects only smaller banks that are lending to businesses and consumers. If these banks find themselves fully loaned up and in need of overnight reserves to meet their reserve requirements, they will need to borrow from a bank with excess reserves. Thus, the rate hike has the effect of making smaller banks pay higher interest expense to the mega-banks favored by the Federal Reserve.
A different way of putting it is that the “rate hike” favors banks sitting on excess reserves over banks who are lending to businesses and consumers in their community.
In other words, the rate hike just facilitates more looting by the One Percent.

Prominent Tennessee Senator Fails To Disclose Millions In Hedge Fund, Real Estate Investments

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/14/2015 17:30 -0500
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-14/prominent-tennessee-senator-fails-disclose-millions-hedge-fund-real-estate-investmen
Earlier this year, quite a few members of the American electorate were distressed to learn that the Clinton Foundation had apparently suffered what we called a “Geithner Moment.”
For those who might have missed the story, when a Reuters investigation revealed discrepancies, the charity decided to refile five years worth of tax returns and review filings dating back as far as fifteen years. At issue were disclosures around contributions from US and foreign governments which Reuters claimed totaled “tens of millions” of dollars in a typical year but which mysteriously disappeared altogether from the organization’s 990s starting in 2010. As we noted at the time, the Foundation was quick to point out that when it comes to charities, it is exemplary in terms of being forthright, but the missing disclosures will likely serve to fan the flames for Republicans who claim Clinton’s ties to the charities could make her susceptible to the influence of outside interests.
A few days later, the charity’s acting CEO penned a lengthy blog post explaining the “mistakes” and assuring voters that the organization goes to great lengths to avoid conflicts of interest. Finally, a few days after that, IB Times questioned whether a $200,000 payment made to Bill Clinton by Goldman Sachs (ostensibly as compensation for a speaking appearance) was an effort to influence the State Dept’s decision making process surrounding a loan from the Export-Import Bank to a company that was set to purchase planes from a Goldman-backed supplier. Revelations that Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved $165 billion in arms deals to nations who had previously given money to the Clinton Foundation didn’t help to reassure anyone.
Put simply: if voters don’t know where the money is coming from (even if the contributions are “charitable”) they are operating with incomplete information with regard to who may be influencing the candidates. 
Now, it turns out Tennessee Senator Bob Corker - who you might recall had a run in or two with Ben Bernanke and once penned a scathing FT Op-Ed about the market’s unhealthy fixation with the Fed - failed to disclose millions in income from hedge funds and real estate investments. 
As WSJ reports, “Mr. Corker late Friday filed a series of amendments showing that his personal financial reports as originally filed included dozens of errors and omissions.”
Ok, so what’s the nature of these “mistakes?”

The new forms show that Mr. Corker had failed to properly disclose at least $2 million in income from investments in three small hedge funds based in his home state.

Wow. Ok, was there anything else?

He also didn’t properly report millions of dollars in income from commercial real-estate investments due to an accounting error. 

This is starting to seem like a rather glaring omission - surely a member of the Senate Banking Committee wouldn’t have “forgotten” to disclose anything else, right?

And he didn’t disclose millions of dollars in other assets and income from other financial transactions.

Goodness. So what's the grand total?

His report for 2014 didn’t include a gain of between $304,000 and $1.4 million in hedge fund Gerber/Taylor.

In 2013, he failed to disclose a gain of between $100,001 and $1 million in hedge fund TSW II. And in 2012, he made a gain of $1.2 million in Pointer (QP) LP, though his previous statement reported income of $100,001 to $1 million from the hedge fund.

The amendments also show that he failed to disclose a 2014 investment in Gerber/Taylor of between $500,001 and $1 million and a 2013 investment in Pointer of between $1 million and $5 million.

The senator also underreported rental income from his commercial real-estate investments in Corker Properties, a company he founded years before being elected to the Senate. 

As a result of the accounting error, Mr. Corker’s new forms show additional income of at least $3.8 million between 2007 and 2014 from his commercial real-estate holdings.

So millions upon millions upon millions. Got it.
“This is not a situation calling for punishment or admonition by the Ethics Committee,” Robert Walker, a former chief counsel for the Senate ethics panel told The Journal. “You can’t just disclose once you get caught,” Anne Weismann, president of the Campaign for Accountability, counters.
For those unfamiliar, this isn't the first time Corker has come under scrutiny for his investments. Just last month, the Campaign for Accountability (CFA), a D.C. watchdog, called for an SEC and ethics investigation of Corker in connection with his family's trading in shares of CBL & Associates (a REIT based in Tennessee). Here are some excerpts from the CBA's press release:

Between 2008 and 2015, Sen. Corker, his wife and daughters made an astonishing 70 trades of stock in the real estate investment giant CBL & Associates Properties – more than triple the number of transactions he made of any other stock. Some of the trades closely preceded company announcements that led to changes in the stock’s price and seemingly resulted in the senator making millions of dollars.

CfA Executive Director Anne Weismann stated, “Sen. Corker’s trades followed a consistent pattern — he bought low and sold high. It beggars belief to suggest these trades – netting the senator and his family millions – were mere coincidences.”

As the Wall Street Journal has reported, Sen. Corker failed to report numerous trades of CBL stock. Federal law requires members of Congress to report stock trades and file reports disclosing their assets. Many of Sen. Corker’s profitable trades were made in advance of his broker, UBS, issuing reports impacting CBL’s trading price.

Sen. Corker recently amended his filings to reveal a 2009 purchase of between $1 and $5 million of CBL stock, sold just five months later in 2010 at a 42% profit. Similarly, Sen. Corker made purchases worth between $3 and $15 million in 2010 and, just after his last trade, UBS said it was upgrading its outlook. The stock went up 18%. Shortly thereafter, Sen. Corker began selling; a week later, UBS downgraded the stock and the share price soon declined about 10%.

Nope, nothing suspicious about that. But it gets better.
As CBA also notes, "as a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Corker has advanced legislation that would financially benefit UBS and CBL." Here are some excerpts from a piece by Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McClean who parsed the CBA's entire complaint (enbedded below):

As the complaint—filed with the SEC and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics—details, Corker and CBL go way back. Corker began his career at a company whose primary business was subcontracting for CBL and which is now substantially owned by CBL. CBL executives were Corker’s “first and most generous donors,” as the complaint put it, when Corker filed to run for Congress in 2006.

Both directly and indirectly, CBL have given generously to Corker. According to the complaint, CBL’s executives, directors and their spouses rank among the senator’s top campaign donors, contributing $88,706 to his campaign committee and PAC since his 2006 run. Since Corker’s arrival in the Senate, CBL executives have contributed more than $50,000 each to NAREIT and ICSC—which, in turn, were part of a nine-PAC consortium that held a fundraiser for Corker in Washington in 2011. NAREIT and ICSC also donated $15,000 directly to his campaign committee since his arrival in the Senate.

A few years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers issued a rule called “Waters of the United States,” which would have expanded the EPA’s jurisdiction.

Both the ICSC and NAREIT were among the many who fought against it.

Using a rarely used tool called a Congressional Review Act, the Senate passed a resolution last month by a vote of 53 to 44 to rescind the rule. Corker’s vote in favor of rescinding the rule was celebrated on Twitter. 
Then there’s the long, vicious fight over online retailers not charging sales tax, because states are barred from collecting sales tax from out-of-state companies. This has been an area of particular concern to companies like CBL, which own shopping malls, and which stand to lose out if consumers choose to buy online.

Back in 2013, a measure called the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would have required online retailers to collect sales taxes, failed in part because some top Republicans opposed it. Corker supported it. Just this spring though, a bipartisan group of senators including Corker reintroduced the measure. 

And on, and on, and on.
You'll also note that Corker comes in at number 23 on the richest members of Congress list. Here's the entry from Roll Call:

So if you needed another reason (or three, or four) to distrust politicians and to despise business as usual inside the Beltway, you can find plenty of things to be disgusted with here. Indeed, the latest revelations about Corker's "ommissions" look like par for the course for the Senator.
While none of the above will likely come as any surprise to readers, what we would note is that it's precisely this kind of thing that's driven voters to support a certain Presidential candidate who, like Corker, knows a thing or two about real estate...

289155471 Campaign for Accountability Requests SEC and Ethics Investigation of Sen Robert Corker R TN for I...

US .01% pay sports teams, reporters, missile salesmen to sell unlawful Wars of Aggression to 99.99%, continuing long criminal media disinformation history

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Carl Herman

hat tip: Activist Post
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/11/us-01-pay-sports-teams-reporters-missile-salesmen-to-sell-unlawful-wars-of-aggression-to-99-99-continuing-long-criminal-media-disinformation-history.html 
13-minute interview of Dr. Udo Ulfkatte, German journalist, editor, and whistleblower on CIA contracts to foreign journalists to lie/propagandize to sell US/UK/Israel wars:

The US Senate just reported our tax money is being diverted to professional sports teams in contracts to sell US wars to sports fans. The .01% Pentagon “leadership” did not cooperate with the Senate to disclose the “nature and extent” of these contracts.
.01% corporate media is again exposed for hiring weapons manufacturers’ employees to sell unlawful war on Syria to television viewers: 22 different men claimed as “experts” without disclosing they work for businesses that sell the very weapons that would be used on Syria.
Syria is the latest target after ongoing sales pitches to do Iran failed. All-importantly: all recent and current US/UK/Israel armed attacks are in Orwellian opposition of war law. Two world wars resulted in two legally-binding treaties that make armed attacks on other nations illegal unless under attack by that nation’s government. All military are trained to refuse unlawful war orders (there are no lawful orders for unlawful war), with officers trained to arrest those who issue them.
But this is “business” as usual for US .01% oligarchs. The most revealing testimony was three weeks before W. Bush’s election for a second term in 2004 with Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, chiding Pulitzer-winning journalist, Ron Suskind, in a rare admission of naked truth. Rove said:

Guys like [Suskind] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The 1975 Church Senate Committee hearings had the cooperation of CIA Director William Colby’s testimony for the stunning disclosure that over 400 CIA operatives were controlling US corporate media reporting on specific issues of national interest in Operation Mockingbird. This game-changing testimony was confirmed by Pulitzer Prize reporter Carl Bernstein’s research. Of course, corporate media refused to publish Bernstein’s article; it became a cover-story for Rolling Stone. Bernstein provided additional information of CIA control in the Senate report and corporate media subsequent “reporting”:

“Pages 191 to 201 were entitled “Covert Relationships with the United States Media.” “It hardly reflects what we found,” stated Senator Gary Hart. “There was a prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be said.”
Obscuring the facts was relatively simple. No mention was made of the 400 summaries or what they showed. Instead the report noted blandly that some fifty recent contacts with journalists had been studied by the committee staff—thus conveying the impression that the Agency’s dealings with the press had been limited to those instances. The Agency files, the report noted, contained little evidence that the editorial content of American news reports had been affected by the CIA’s dealings with journalists. Colby’s misleading public statements about the use of journalists were repeated without serious contradiction or elaboration. The role of cooperating news executives was given short shrift. The fact that the Agency had concentrated its relationships in the most prominent sectors of the press went unmentioned. That the CIA continued to regard the press as up for grabs was not even suggested.”

Importantly, US corporate media today is heavily concentrated in just six corporations, making the message much easier to control.
US corporate media lie to allow torture, a War Crime, as official US policy:
“Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media,” a paper published from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that reviewed the US’ four most-read newspapers, found from the 1930s to 2004 that The New York Times reported waterboarding as torture 82% of the time, and The Los Angeles Times did so 96%. After stories broke that the US was waterboarding “detainees” in US unlawful wars, the papers’ reporting of waterboarding as torture dropped to 1% and 5%, respectfully. In addition, after the US admitted to waterboarding, The Wall Street Journal called it torture in just 1 of 63 articles (2%), and USA Today never called it torture.
US .01% corporate media lie to allow a million children to die excruciating deaths from poverty every month:
And check this “reporting” from the NY Times to bury after the comics the largest meeting of heads of state in world history. The topic was ending global poverty with proven solutions that, yes, was an investment of only 1% of the developed nations’ income. I had personal experience with this. Of course, the .01% in political “leadership” of both parties reneged on every promise to end poverty, with corporate media allowing the story, and a million children every month, to die.
Polling proves the 99.99% are waking to US corporate media lies:
Corporate media won’t report the following polling data, but the American public have noticed something is very wrong with their “news” both as reported by government and regular media.
In 2010, only one in five Americans reported trust and satisfaction with their government (and here). In 2014, Gallup reported Americans’ confidence in Congress at the historic low of 7%, while 7% reported their confidence level at “none” and half as “very little.”
According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, the majority of the American public see the US major media news organizations as politically biased, inaccurate, and uncaring. Among those who use the Internet, two-thirds report that major media news do not care about the people they report on, 59% say the news is inaccurate, 64% see bias, and 53% summarize their view on major media news as, “failing to stand up for America.” In their 2009 poll, “just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.” Gallup’s 2014 poll recorded the lowest ever US public confidence in accurate news reporting from corporate media’s television news: 18%.
A June 2010 Rasmussen poll found 66% of voters “angry” at the media, with 33% “very angry.” Rasmussen also found 70% “angry” at current federal government policies. The most current Gallup poll in 2012 shows Americans’ distrust at an all-time high in the reporting from “mass media — such as newspapers, TV, and radio”: 60% have either “not very much” trust and confidence or “none at all” to “reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.”
And how long has corporate media been lying to the 99.99%….?
The genesis of oligarchic control of American major media was reported in the US Congressional Record in 1917. US Congressperson Oscar Callaway claimed evidence that J.P. Morgan had purchased editorial control over 25 of the nation’s most influential publications in order to create public support for US entry into World War 1 and his new banking legislative victory: creation of the Federal Reserve system. Mr. Callaway’s colleagues voted down an official investigation. Read this to see how even Abraham Lincoln’s powerful prose to explain and document how US war on Mexico was in obvious treaty violation didn’t have the votes to stop it. And read this to see how ridiculous the spin for US involvement in WW1 was compared to the absence of any threat to national security, followed by the .01%’s violent suppression of political dissent allegedly protected by the 1st Amendment.
Of course, corporate media owns the history textbook publishing companies that “taught” you this history with the lies of omission of Lincoln’s actions to point to the rule of law and what you’ll recognize from WW1 history.
This is what the criminal .01% do when confronted with real change:
Dr. Martin King was assassinated by the .01% to stop his “Occupy DC” plan for the summer of 1968. This is a legal fact; the verdict of the King Family Trial against the US government. This, of course, was ignored by corporate media and never spoken of by the .01% in politics today when they “praise” Dr. King’s life. Read this for the full story (you owe it to Dr. King to know the full truth); the trial evidence agreed as comprehensively valid by the jury includes:

• US 111th Military Intelligence Group were at Dr. King’s location during the assassination.
• 20th Special Forces Group had an 8-man sniper team at the assassination location on that day.
• Usual Memphis Police special body guards were advised they “weren’t needed” on the day of the assassination.
• Regular and constant police protection for Dr. King was removed from protecting Dr. King an hour before the assassination.
• Military Intelligence set-up photographers on a roof of a fire station with a clear view to Dr. King’s balcony.
• Dr. King’s room was changed from a secure 1st-floor room to an exposed balcony room.
• Memphis police ordered the scene where multiple witnesses reported as the source of shooting cut down of their bushes that would have hid a sniper.
• Along with sanitizing a crime scene, police abandoned investigative procedure to interview witnesses who lived by the scene of the shooting.
• The rifle Mr. Ray delivered was not matched to the bullet that killed Dr. King, and was not sighted to accurately shoot.

Corporate media lies to this day so the 99.99% do not know the .01% killed Dr. King.
How Mr. Gandhi and Dr. King saw their civic educational challenge:

“One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding… can be removed.” –  Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Opinion (1 October 1903)

***

“‘A time comes when silence is betrayal.’ That time has come for us…
The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

**
Note: I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences. I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.
**
Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu
Note: Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: here, here).

The "1%" Own Half The World's Assets: The Stunning Chart

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/13/2015 11:50 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-13/1-own-half-worlds-assets-stunning-chart
On of the key things to understand about the massive, coordinated, global easing effort on which central banks have embarked since the financial crisis is that these policies have served to widen the gap between the rich and poor.
Ben Bernanke - and plenty of other vaunted central planners for that matter - will tell you a different story. They’ll tell you that by creating jobs and boosting the economy, QE and ZIRP have actually done more for the middle- and lower-classes than they have for the wealthy.
Obviously, that’s nonsense. When you adopt a set of policy measures specifically designed to inflate the value of the assets that are most likely to be concentrated in the hands of the rich, you perpetuate inequality and exacerbate class segregation by default - indeed, by definition. Here's proof:

If it wasn't for Ben "the Hero" Bernanke's courage to print like a drunken Keynesian madman, none of this would have been possible, and by "this" we of course mean that the net worth of the top 0.1% of Americans is about to surpass the wealth of the bottom 90% of US households.

This is everywhere apparent and has been documented by the Fed itself on at least one occasion this year. Meanwhile, asset bubbles in things like high end art and mega mansions underscore the extent to which the top echelons of society are increasingly flush.
Credit Suisse is now out with the latest edition of its Global Wealth report and although the results are not surprising, they are worth highlighting.
Three standouts: i) the rise in the value of financial assets is most certainly contributing to an increase in global inequality, ii) dollar strength led to the first decline in total global wealth (which fell by $12.4 trillion to $250.1 trillion) since 2007-2008, iii) 0.7% of the world's population own nearly half of the world's wealth while the bottom 71% of the population own just 3%. 
We present the wealth pyramid first followed by some further color from the report.

The topd of the pyramid, zoomed in:

*  *  *
From Credit Suisse
The share of financial assets rose again as a percentage of total wealth and may help explain why wealth inequality is edging upwards. The top 1% of wealth holders now own half of all household wealth.
To determine how global wealth is distributed across households and individuals – rather than regions or countries – we combine our data on the level of household wealth across countries with information on the pattern of wealth distribution within countries. Once debts have been subtracted, a person needs only USD 3,210 to be among the wealthiest half of world citizens in mid-2015. However, USD 68,800 is required to be a member of the top 10% of global wealth holders, and USD 759,900 to belong to the top 1%. While the bottom half of adults collectively own less than 1% of total wealth, the richest decile holds 87.7% of assets, and the top percentile alone accounts for half of total household wealth. Last year’s report covered trends in wealth inequality in detail. The shares of the top 1% and top 10% in world wealth fell during 2000–2007, that of the top percentile from 48.9% to 44.8%, for example. However, the trend has reversed since 2008 and the additional rise this year takes the share of the top percentile to a level not observed since 2000 and possibly not seen for almost a century. Nevertheless, the share of the top decile remains below the 88.3% level achieved in 2000.

While there are reasons why wealth inequality may be on a secular upward path, the year-on-year changes are heavily influenced by the relative importance of financial assets in the household portfolio, as we explore in more detail in the next section of this report. There are strong reasons to think that the rise in wealth inequality since 2008 is mostly related to the rise in equity prices and to the size of financial assets in the United States and some other high-wealth countries, which together have pushed up the wealth of some of the richest countries and of many of the richest people around the world. The jump in the share of the top percentile to 50% this year exceeds the increase expected on the basis of any underlying upward trend. It is consistent, however, with the fact that financial assets continue to increase in relative importance and that the rise in the USD over the past year has given wealth inequality in the United States – which is very high by international standards – more weight in the overall global picture.


There are many reasons for the wealth differences observed across individuals. Some of those with low wealth are young and will have had little opportunity to accumulate assets. Others may have suffered business losses or personal misfortune, or may live in countries or regions where prospects for wealth creation are limited. Opportunities are also constrained for women or minorities in some countries. At the other end of the spectrum are individuals who have acquired large fortunes through a combination of talent, hard work and good luck. The wealth pyramid shown in Figure 1 reflects these differences. It has a large base of low wealth holders and upper levels occupied by progressively fewer adults. We estimate that 3.4 billion individuals – 71% of all adults in the world – have wealth below USD 10,000 in 2015. A further billion adults (21% of the global population) fall in the USD 10,000–100,000 range. While average wealth is modest in the base and middle tiers of the pyramid, total wealth here amounts to USD 39 trillion, underlining the economic importance of this often neglected segment.
Full report
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So please Ben, tell us more about how that trickle down "wealth effect" works...

2015 Winning Time: 3 phases to 99.99%’s victory over .01% criminal psychopaths

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Carl Herman

Please begin with Dr. King’s 2-minute personal message to you (credit and appreciation: War Made Easy).
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/2015-winning-time-3-phases-99-99s-victory-01-criminal-psychopaths.html

“Constitutional governments and aristocracies are commonly overthrown owing to some deviation from justice…the rich, if the constitution gives them power, are apt to be insolent and avaricious… In all well-attempered governments there is nothing which should be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small matters; for transgression creeps in unperceived and at last ruins the state, just as the constant recurrence of small expenses in time eats up a fortune.” – Aristotle, Politics, Book V. 350 B.C.E.

“The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.” –  “Abraham Lincoln, [September 16-17, 1859] (Notes for Speech in Kansas and Ohio),” Page 2.

Current humans empowered with “informed consent” are ending a viciously psychopathic history by a .01% upon the 99.99%. These 99.99% would never consent to what’s being done to them if empowered with accurate comprehensive information of their conditions. The informed are motivated to end the psychopathy, and create a new future of peace, technological advance, and cooperative happiness.
Objective, measurable, and independently verifiable facts easily explain, document, and prove Earth’s history of:

• Unlawful Wars of Aggression based on easily-provable lies (here, here, here, here),
• Bankster-looting economics (here, here, here, here, here),
• Lying sacks of spin corporate media that “cover” the crimes.

These “Big Lie” crimes center in war and what is used for money, but extend into ~100 areas of vital concern for all Earth’s inhabitants. The ongoing costs of Earth’s history controlled by these .01% literal psychopaths (and here), extending to our world of the present, are annual war and poverty murders of millions, gruesome harm to billions, and looting of  trillions.
Again, and importantly, these are facts that anyone with a basic education can easily verify with a few moments of attention as objective statements about Earth’s most vital conditions.
Res ipsa loquitur: these facts speak for themselves, for all who are ready to see, listen, and feel with Enlightenment ideals. If you’re educated enough to read this, you recall the points of the Enlightenment (ideals Americans are rightfully proud to embrace):

• Reject thoughtless obedience to would-be kings, so-called lords, and wanna-be masters in government, religion, and a .01% privileged class connected to government.
• Have EVERYONE educated enough to consider and discuss factual evidence in full freedom.
• Have EVERYONE empowered with voice and vote of how the facts should be related with in policy (what to do) in order to ongoingly optimize unalienable rights of Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Please stop until you’ve fully embraced this point: we assert facts that are independently verifiable, and to our knowledge have never been refuted. Indeed, as you’ll hear from Gandhi and Simon Johnson below, the .01% will do everything to avoid factual consideration of our points because our case is as clear as asserting a baseball pitch ten feet over everyone’s head is not even close to the definition of a “strike.” And we have the video for anyone’s independent review and analysis. In fact, we are unaware of any official voices even attempting refutation.
So, what stands between “Winning Time” and where we are at the start of 2015?
If the following three phases make sense to you, please make them your own, use them as you see best, and enjoy this wild planetary ride where Truth is far stranger than fiction:

1.   Critical mass of 99.99% discern and choose facts over .01% criminal psychopaths’ propaganda.
2.   99.99% remove lying sacks-of-spin criminal psychopaths from power.
3.   99.99% initiate breakthrough freedoms in peace, technology, happiness.

Let’s consider each point:

1.   Critical mass of 99.99% discern and choose facts over .01% criminal psychopaths’ propaganda.

Humanity has gone through an up-spiral phase of the process described by Gandhi (attributed and unsourced):

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
And then you win.

The up-spiral seems to be that today’s revolution (Latin etymology: to turn around) is global; a turning away from accepting debt and “wars for peace” from former/current colonial powers (and who/whatever’s coordinating this) and their creations (like the hypocritical war-enabling UN). When yesterday’s leaders, like Dr. King, spoke and acted to occupy Washington D.C. until his version of today’s wars were ended, and those resources unleashed for ending poverty, the US psychopath oligarchs assassinated him (as proven with overwhelming evidence in the King Family civil trial). Today’s “leaders” are people like you and me, in all areas of Life, learning, processing information, communicating, and making stands for the brighter future the 99.99% yearns to create, and all in multitudes of Life’s areas.
The up-spiral is a natural growth curve of those of us empowered with the facts removing our consent to be brutalized by .01% psychopaths, and pointing to a factually provable unprecedented future of integrity and beauty available here and now.
The .01% have rejected reasonable offers for surrender, including the attractive option for Truth & Reconciliation (and here) whereby they accept pensioned retirements without prosecution in exchange for full disclosure of what they’ve done and how they did it for God knows how long over Earth’s history. This option was/is also attractive for the 99.99% because planetary abundance easily provides for their retirement (their minions would overwhelmingly request to reclaim their hearts and join us), we could most rapidly end their criminal destruction, and we’d avoid corning the dangerous and vicious “leaders” afraid of anything they can’t control.
Critical mass of the 99.99% will occur in a relative moment, similar to paper catching fire as fire/light-sources become closer and closer: nothing happens for a long time, and then most-quickly the fire/light spreads like, well, wild-fire.
Another helpful analogy of the 99.99%’s “awakening” is the Emperor’s New Clothes. A .01% “leader” parades in obvious naked pretense, with zero facts “covering” his propaganda, and only supported by the duped and/or owned minions. This tragic-comedy ends with the ease of a child’s examination of the most obvious and verifiable facts (capacity we all have to simply look and see), the voicing of those facts that absolutely refute the propaganda, and a few more voices confirming the obvious.
Another helpful perspective to consider the 99.99% have all the facts on our side: MIT’s Simon Johnson (and former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund) describes our economy being led by gambling oligarchs who have captured government as in banana republics (his words). He concludes fraud is the heart of Wall Street.
His immediate best-selling book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street takeover and the next financial meltdown, was discussed with President Johnson’s Press Secretary and journalist with over 30 Emmy Awards, Bill Moyers, to explain the oligarchy, loss of trillions of American taxpayer dollars to oligarchs’ manipulation as a matter of definitive fact, the oligarchs’ looting of America is protected by partners with political muscle, and all rational consideration of the facts prove massive crimes by the .01% against the 99.99%:

SIMON JOHNSON: The American democracy was not given to us on a platter. It is not ours for all time, irrespective of our efforts. Either people organize and they find political leadership to take this on, or we are going to be in big trouble, okay?… That’s absolutely the heart of the problem. I would also say and tell you, and emphasize, these people will not come out and debate with us. The heads of these companies or their representatives, they will not come out. They’re afraid. They don’t have the substance. They don’t have the arguments. We have the evidence. They have the lobbyists. And that’s all they have.
BILL MOYERS: They’ve got the power, the muscle, the money.
SIMON JOHNSON: They have money.
BILL MOYERS: You just have the arguments. You just have the facts. On your side.
SIMON JOHNSON: Absolutely. That’s exactly what it comes down to.

So how close are we to critical mass as 2015 begins?
No colleague of mine has any way to factually address this question. Sorry; we’re only human in our capacities, just like you. And that said, given the option of “patient activism” for Winning Time over surrender to psychopaths, we’ll move forward in good-faith effort (and here). We observe progress, to be sure. We also rationally conclude that Winning Time will conclude in a fury of rapid developments similar to the above two analogies of fire and public recognition of a naked would-be emperor.
What we can be absolutely confident asserting is the validity of the facts anyone can confirm, and that informed consent ends this viciously psychopathic domination in the following way…
2. 99.99% remove lying sacks-of-spin criminal psychopaths from power.
Informed consent turns ordinary people in obvious favor of ending the .01%’s psychopathic destruction of wars, looting, and lying by a likely percent of 99.99% (consider who would really choose dominated misery after freely allowed fully informed choice of short and long-term consequences of each choice).
Once critical mass is achieved of public embrace of our facts, psychopathic policies are replaced with lawful arrests (and here, here) rather than stupefied obedience.
So how will such arrests occur that end these tragic-comic crimes? 
Sorry, again: none of my colleagues can predict how the endgame plays out (speculation here). That said, we’ve never found a counter-argument against the obviously necessary accomplishment to remove such Orwellian “leaders” from further power. If they’re in power, they’ll continue their psychopathy. Because our criminal psychopaths must be arrested, all of us can and should think, speak, and act for their arrests.
Our thoughts, words, and actions are totally within our authority (consider this, this, this).
And that said, given the US government was proven in civil court to have assassinated Dr. King for acts to put their unlawful wars to public consideration, this is a game of strategy for some of our players.
My colleagues and I have no advice over how to play this game. We respectfully assert that humanity’s choice is either to play the game of “Winning Time” for all Earth’s inhabitants, or allow us all to be played by psychopathic oligarchs. Perhaps the easiest way to understand these crimes, and end them, is US war history that active military end by living their Oaths to refuse illegal orders and arrest those who issue them. There are no lawful orders in unlawful wars/armed attacks.
No real improvements are possible with “leaders” acting for viciously antagonistic control with aggressive action to create a slave class out of the 99.99%.
Be proud of your thoughts, words, and actions: you have an historic role to play.
3. 99.99% initiate breakthrough freedoms in peace, technology, happiness.

Either you’re going to go along with your mind and the truth, or you’re going to yield to fear and custom and conditioned reflexes. With our minds alone we can discover those principles we need to employ to convert all humanity to success in a new, harmonious relationship with the universe. We have the option to make it.  – R. Buckminster Fuller (archive at Stanford)

Ending the .01%’s unlawful and lie-based Wars of Aggression, poverty-murders, bankster looting, and corporate media lying is an unprecedented victory in itself!
Available economic solutions transforms us to full employment, the best infrastructure we can imagine, and declining real prices.
Truth in media will inspire and catalyze good-faith work for genuine advancements. Health, free energy, and even extraterrestrial disclosure are among these tantalizing possibilities. While it’s relatively easy for anyone with a small degree of intellectual integrity and moral courage to see the crimes, propaganda, and existing solutions of 2014 Earth, we would love to see what an unleashed planet is capable of creating.
This topic will be the most fun, exciting, and joyful of all.
Game on; it’s Winning Time
**
Along with the above links, my best comprehensive historical arguments:
2011: Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic/criminal economics (and here)
2012: Why Occupy? A government/economics teacher explains
2014: MLK’s spirit rises: 2014 Worldwide Wave of Action for Truth, Justice, Freedom (8 parts)

Why the Bad Guys Keep Winning

How Come They Keeping Getting Away With It?

How come the bad guys keep getting away with it … even after getting caught again and again?

Reason Number 1: Falling for the Big Fib

People are wired to believe our leaders’ big statements, even if they are ridiculous:
As Adolph Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true in itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Similarly, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wrote:

That is of course rather painful for those involved. One should not as a rule reveal one’s secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

Science has now helped to explain why the big lie is effective.
As I’ve previously pointed out in another context:
Psychologists and sociologists show us that people will rationalize what their leaders are doing, even when it makes no sense ….
Sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):

• Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress

• Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

• “For the most part people completely ignore contrary information.”

• “The study demonstrates voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information”

• People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.

• “We refer to this as ‘inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.

• “People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war”

• “They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.

An article yesterday in Alternet discussing the Sociological Inquiry article helps us to understand that the key to people’s active participation in searching for excuses for actions by the big boys is fear:

MUCH MORE HERE!! One of the best blog forums ever!!

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/12/bad-guys-winning.html

Meet the Billionaires Using Their Immense Wealth to Make Life Miserable for Ordinary Americans

5 examples of billionaires pushing a right-wing economic agenda.

February 19, 2014  |  

http://www.alternet.org/economy/meet-billionaires-using-their-immense-wealth-make-life-miserable-ordinary-americans?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

 Here is how it works these days: You start hearing about a big, national problem and then it becomes a drumbeat. First there are a few articles and columns mentioning that such-and-such is a problem. Then a number of articles appear, then a “study” from a “think tank” confirms the problem and sounds the alarm about how terrible it is, and then just as the issue seems to be the only thing you are hearing about a solution is presented. Of course, the solution always involves taking something away from you and giving it to some company or industry standing in front of a billionaire or three. The right question to start asking when you hear about these “problems” is which billionaire is driving this.

Here are five-plus examples of billionaires who use their money to try to get us to think what they want us to think in order to enact a right-wing economic agenda.
1) Pete Peterson’s deficit/debt scare campaign and his ongoing effort to gut Social Security and other entitlements.Leading every list of billionaires pushing an issue is billionaire Pete Peterson and his forever war on government doing things to make our lives better, especially Social Security. Peterson leads the list because of reports of his pledge to spend $1 billion on his pet issue.
Have you ever heard anywhere that the budget deficit and national debt are a problem? You can’t pick up a newspaper or magazine, turn on the radio or TV, or listen to any politician from the so-called “center” to the far right without hearing that, and the reason is Pete Peterson and his money.
Peterson and his money are a big part of the backing for the Concord Coalition, Fix the Debt, The Can Kicks Back, the Comeback America Initiative, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Moment of Truth Project, the Committee for Economic Development, America Speaks plus contributions to many other groups. As Michael Hiltzik worded it in Unmasking the most influential billionaire in U.S. politics at the LA Times, “The shame of Washington… comes from the fact that almost every organization promoting the grand fiscal bargain in which those programs will be on the table has accepted, somewhere and somehow, money from Pete Peterson.”
Sourcewatch’s Fix the Debt portal contains much more information on this big-money influence campaign, including this graphic:
Last week one of Peterson’s deficit-scare groups was in the news. The Can Kicks Back is an organization named after the narrative that not cutting Social Security is just kicking the debt can down the road. They claim this is because there is a generational war where older people are living high on the hog and younger people will have to pay for this. The group tries to make legislators think younger people want them to cut Social Security, etc. using astroturf videos, Twitter posts, etc.
Well, the Peterson spigot seems to have dried up. The anti-debt group is... wait for it… in debt. All of that astroturf hype about younger people demanding Social Security cuts? When the Peterson money ran out, the urgency went away.
Here’s the thing about this massively funded deficit-debt scare the country has been put through. Getting people whipped up about budget shortfalls (when raising taxes on the rich or cutting the bloated military budget are off the table) necessarily leads to certain conclusions that benefit a wealthy few. It leads people to believe that our government should cut back on the things it does to make our lives better—also called “government spending.”
Meanwhile the country’s real deficit problem is our trade deficit, especially with China. The trade deficit is the measure of jobs and factories moving out of the country. Fixing this deficit just happens to create jobs, lift wages and repair our economy.
If you are hearing about how terrible the budget deficit is and how it is so important that we all make sacrifices in order to bring that deficit down, it’s Pete Peterson ‘s money talking. Too bad there is no billionaire pushing us to fix the trade deficit.
2) Billionaire John D. Arnold’s attack on public-employee pensions. Have you heard that the biggest problem facing our states, counties and cities is the bloated, lavish, insane level of money that goes to public-employee pensions? Of course you have, and that's partly thanks to billionaire John Arnold. Arnold got his start at Enron trading natural gas derivatives. After Enron he used his Enron money to form an energy-trading hedge fund. Now he is using his fortune to fund various philanthropic causes, including helping to keep Head Start running when Republicans recently shut down the government. Unfortunately he has also dedicated part of his fortune to gutting public-employee pensions.
In a September report for the Institute for America’s Future, the Plot Against Pensions (which has excerpts posted on Salon),David Sirota showed how the Pew Charitable Trusts was working in partnership with (and funded by) Arnold. The findings in Sirota’s report include:

• Conservative activists are manufacturing the perception of a public pension crisis in order to both slash modest retiree benefits and preserve expensive corporate subsidies and tax breaks.
• The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation are working together in states across the country to focus the debate over pensions primarily on slashing retiree benefits rather than on raising public revenues.

Then last week, in The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division at PandoDaily, Sirota revealed how PBS’ WNET had solicited Arnold to fund a two-year series of “news” shows named “The Pension Peril” that would promote cutting the pensions of public employees. In this story, Sirota wrote:
“In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushinglawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.”
WNET severed the relationship. According to the New York Times, "WNET, the New York City public television broadcaster, said on Friday that it would return a $3.5 million grant it received to sponsor an ambitious project on public pensions in the face of charges that it solicited inappropriate underwriting for the series.”
To its credit the Times’ story gave full credit to Sirota’s reporting,
"Earlier, after a critical report on Wednesday by David Sirota on the website PandoDaily, WNET officials said they were comfortable with the foundation’s funding. Mr. Sirota sharply criticized WNET for accepting the Arnold Foundation money because John Arnold, a former hedge fund manager, has financially backed efforts to persuade municipalities to cut public employee pension benefits."
Note that Arnold allies are pushing a ballot initiative in California to gut public-employee pensions.
P.S. A while back I also took a look at the campaign to turn the public against public employees. In Discover The Network Out To Crush Our Public Workers I looked at some of the names behind the network of “institutes” and “policy centers” and what I called “cookie-cutter think tanks” that were issuing “reports” that basically claimed that the world would end if we didn’t “reform” (gut) the pensions and other compensation of public employees and stop them from being allowed to organize unions. Tracing through the directors of the various “institutes” and “pulling the threads” of partner organizations they listed, I found that many or most of the strings lead back to Wall Street. I wrote then:
“These corporate/conservative organizations are very good at manipulating the media and public opinion — it is their purpose. Their “experts” are well paid and always available to talk to reporters, appear on TV and radio shows and write articles and opinion pieces for newspapers, blogs and for their network of similar organizations. Their “reports’ and “studies” reach the conclusions that fit the strategy, and are crafted to sound just right. And there are so many of them! The result is development of “conventional wisdom” about what is going on in our society. This is why that conventional wisdom more and more reflects the corporate/conservative line.”
Of course, getting these things enacted often runs up against a troublesome problem: democracy. There are still places where voters have enough of a say to block some of the things the billionaires are demanding. But never fear, there are a few billionaires working on fixing that pesky democracy problem, too.
3) Charles Munger Jr. (near-billionaire and son of a billionaire)bankrolled California’s Proposition 20 in 2010 to create a “citizens redistricting committee” that took the process of drawing political districts out of the hands of California’s politicians. Munger and many Republicans believed this would immediately turn the state over to the Republicans because the districts were “gerrymandered”—rigged—to have a majority of “safe” Democratic-voting districts.
Prop. 20 passed, but it didn’t work out the way Munger and Republicans had hoped, not by a long shot. The earlier Democratic gerrymandering process had been “too clever by half.” To make sure Democrats would have a guaranteed majority in the legislature they drew up districts in a way that moved Republican voters into a minority of “safe” Republican districts. The problem with this is that it takes a two-thirds vote in the legislature to pass a budget, and Democrats had rigged the system in a way that left Republicans with just over one-third control. So year after year Republicans blocked everything, demanding big tax breaks for corporations as a ransom for passing anything that helped any actual people. (Why does that sound familiar?)
It turns out that fair redistricting is a gift to citizen control and democracy. After the citizens commission got rid of the gerrymander, voters kicked out enough Republicans to give Democrats two-thirds contro. Prop 30 increased taxes on the wealthy, while also bumping up the sales tax. Now the state has a budget surplus, schools are starting to get re-funded, infrastructure is starting to get repaired and things are getting done again.
Other Munger-financed propositions include Proposition 32, a failed attempt to keep unions from being involved in politics and Proposition 14, which passed and gave California an “open primary” which keeps political parties from being able to choose their own candidates—instead the top two vote-getters in the primary go into the general election regardless of party.

4) Billionaire Tom Perkins laid out his own solution to the democracy problem the other day in an interview at the Commonwealth Club INFORUM in San Francisco, saying, “The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” Perkins said. “But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”

There you go: one-dollar-one-vote plutocracy vs one-person-one-vote democracy is now openly part of the public discussion. Think Progress’ Igor Volsky explained how Perkins’ idea is “already in the works.”
“The nation’s growing gap between the rich and poor has become a full-blown crisis, with the top 1 percent of families experienced a 278 percent increase in their real after-tax income from 1979 to 2007, while families in the middle 60 percent saw an increase of less than 40 percent. A large body of research suggests that high inequality leads to lower levels of representative democracy and a higher probability of revolution, as poorer citizens become convinced that the government is only serving and representing the interests of the rich.
Wealthy people’s disproportionate impact on democracy also has the effect of perpetuating income inequality. During the 2012 elections, “the top 0.01 percent of campaign donors — one percent of the one percent — contributed more than 40 percent of all the money spent in the 2012 elections,” compared to 15 percent in 1980. Harvard economics professor Edward L. Glaeser argues that as the rich become richer and secure more political influence, they support policies that make them wealthier at the expense of everyone else.”
But wait, there’s more. Conservatives really are advocating migrating to a plutocracy. The conservative National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson argues that progressive taxation in which the wealthy are asked to pay more than others sets a precedent that should apply to votes. He writes, “If our political liabilities — taxes — should be as a matter of justice proportional to our income, then why shouldn’t our political input be likewise proportionate? Why should proportionality be the rule in one context and not the other? The leap from 'No taxation without representation' to 'proportional taxation with proportional representation' is not a very dramatic one.”
5+) Silicon Valley billionaires Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and others pushing low wages for people who work for them.
Speaking of Silicon Valley billionaires…did you think billionaires were in favor of “free markets” and such? Well, it turns out not so much. In one (more) example of billionaires rigging the free market for their own gain, a lawsuit alleges that the top executives of Apple, Google, Intel, LucasFilm, Pixar, Adobe and others conspired to set up a scheme to drive down the pay of executives, engineers and others. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 100,000 employees and claims that around $9 billion was stolen from these employees in the 2000s. eBay and Intuit are involved in a similar suit. See Pando’s The Techtopus: How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages.