Ruling Class

It’s “Deep State” Time Again

April 25, 2017 Fred Nagel, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Deep State, Ruling Class

By Fred Nagel for Counter Punch - Whenever there are obvious conflicts within the ruling class, the concept of a Deep State is brought out to explain why our government seems to be coming apart at the seams. When the tired rhetoric of our two party system can’t bring us to a satisfying catharsis, there is always the deus ex machina of grand conspiracies and hidden rulers. The actual nature of our oppression, however, has been in plain sight for decades, although assiduously avoided by much of our media. The criminality of the CIA and the FBI is a case in point. Both agencies have long been well beyond Congressional oversight. The dirty tricks, political harassment, and illegal spying carried out by the FBI, as well as the foreign assassinations, political coups, and massive surveillance of the CIA have only been thoroughly investigated once, and that was during the Church Committee hearings of 1975. The hearings exposed the lawlessness of FBI and CIA, but made little difference in either agencies’ long term accountability, despite the creation of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Thirty-two years later, Senator Jay Rockefeller, then Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee...

Why Society’s Biggest Freeloaders Are At The Top

April 24, 2017 Rutger Bregman, www.evonomics.com Educate! Ruling Class, wealth inequality

By Rutger Bregman for Evonomics - This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection – cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state. These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have “made it”. By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world. Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top. So entrenched is this assumption that it’s even embedded in our language. When economists talk about “productivity”, what they really mean is the size of your paycheck. And when we use terms like “welfare state”, “redistribution” and “solidarity”, we’re implicitly subscribing to the view that there are two strata: the makers and the takers, the producers and the couch potatoes, the hardworking citizens – and everybody else.

How Tax Policy Created The 1%

April 24, 2017 Julia Ott, www.dissentmagazine.org Educate! Policy, Ruling Class, Taxes

By Julia Ott for Dissent - Last Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters across the country joined the Tax March, although most realized Trump won’t divulge anything about his taxes unless Congress or the courts take action. So we may never know the truth about Trump’s income and charitable contributions, about the conflicts of interest and the “emoluments” from foreign powers. Trump’s already said a lot about his taxes. In the first presidential debate, he famously boasted that his ostensibly legal tax avoidance strategies prove he’s “smart“—and by extension, so are the rest of the rich who do likewise. With Republicans controlling both the White House and Congress, the stage is set for massive tax cuts to reward those brilliant members of the 1 percent—unless popular ire over Trump’s tax filings can be translated into demands for tax justice. Polls suggest that Americans won’t stomach a tax plan that will enrich the rich at the expense of the rest. In 2016 Gallup found that 61 percent of Americans agreed that “upper income people” paid “too little” in taxes. And a majority (52 percent) concurred that “our government should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich.”

A Tax Plan Only A One Percenter Could Love

April 6, 2017 Josh Hoxie, www.otherwords.org Educate! Ruling Class, Taxes

By Josh Hoxie for Other Words - After the failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), the Trump administration has set its sights on its next big project: so-called “tax reform.” And the “reform” they seek appears guaranteed to elicit disdain from all sides — with the notable exception of the ultra-wealthy. Let’s first acknowledge that tax reform is hard. The system is held in place by entrenched interests who don’t want to see their favorite loopholes taken away. That’s a big reason why it’s been over 30 years since the last major tax overhaul, championed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. Adding to the complexity of tax reform is the fact that all of the White House people working on it are resplendently wealthy

Baltimore’s Mayor Rejects $15 Minimum Wage Bill

April 6, 2017 Danny Haiphong, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Black People, Class Struggle, Ruling Class

By Danny Haiphong for Black Agenda Report - Black Agenda Report (BAR) has been the only media outlet in the United States to criticize and condemn mainstream Black political leadership. BAR anointed such leadership a well-deserved new title: the Black misleadership class. The Black misleadership class occupies the halls of local, state, and federal office. Members of this class have been traditionally nurtured from the bowels of the Democratic Party, with few notable exceptions. The rise of this class has correlated with an increase in representation of Black entertainers, athletes, and media pundits to ensure the most progressive polity in the US, Black America, is kept in the ideological thrall of the ruling system. Baltimore's Democratic Party mayor Catherine Pugh showed off her lock-step allegiance to the Black misleadership class with her veto of a bill that would have raised the local minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2022.

A Viable Billionaire Tax?

January 24, 2017 Josh Hoxie, www.inequality.org Create! Capitalism, Ruling Class, Taxes

By Josh Hoxie for Inequality.org - At the end of Thomas Piketty’s 2013 blockbuster Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist makes a compelling case for a global wealth tax. Levying a tax on wealth, Piketty explains, would be a preferable alternative to global war or economic calamity, the only other drivers for a significant redistribution of wealth he could find in the historical record. A global tax on wealth back in 2013 sounded quaint to many seasoned wealth researchers, a nice idea but something destined to go nowhere. The election of Donald J. Trump seemed to only confirm this political assessment.

Retirement Divide: 100 CEOs v. The Rest Of Us

January 20, 2017 Sarah Anderson, www.ips-dc.org Educate! Inequality, Ruling Class, Working Class

By Sarah Anderson for IPS-DC - A new report calculates the gap in retirement assets between the top 100 CEOs and all African-American, Latino, female-headed, and white working class households. (Washington, D.C. ) – The presidential election put a spotlight on the economic insecurity millions of voters are feeling as the result of the loss of millions of unionized factory jobs that were once a major source of both decent pay and retirement benefits. While white working class families have been the focus of much of this attention, a new Institute for Policy Studies report shows that the real retirement security divide lies between those at the top of corporate America and nearly all the rest of us.

Chinese Billionaire Says US Wasted Trillions On Wars And Wall Street

January 20, 2017 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Educate! Capitalism, China, Ruling Class, United States

By byLauren McCauley for Common Dreams - Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma accused the United States of spending too much money on foreign wars and risky financial speculation and not enough money "on your own people." The founder of the world's largest retailer, Alibaba, was addressing a question posed by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin about the U.S. economy in relation to China. In response, Ma said the U.S. should stop blaming other countries and look at its own spending priorities: "It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys," Ma said. "It's your strategy. You did not distribute the money and things in a proper way."

Stark Inequality: Oxfam Says 8 Men As Rich As Half The World

January 16, 2017 Pan Pylas, www.hosted.ap.org Educate! Capitalism, Inequality, Ruling Class, wealth inequality

By Pan Pylas for Associated Press - DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) -- The gap between the super-rich and the poorest half of the global population is starker than previously thought, with just eight men, from Bill Gates to Michael Bloomberg, owning as much wealth as 3.6 billion people, according to an analysis by Oxfam released Monday. Presenting its findings on the dawn of the annual gathering of the global political and business elites in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, anti-poverty organization Oxfam says the gap between the very rich and poor is far greater than just a year ago. It's urging leaders to do more than pay lip-service to the problem. If not, it warns, public anger against this kind of inequality will continue to grow and lead to more seismic political changes akin to last year's election of Donald Trump...

Trump’s Regulations Advisor Will Profit From Weak Regulations

December 26, 2016 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Donald Trump, Regulation, Ruling Class, Trump Administration

By Steve Horn for Desmog - In a recent “Victory Tour” speech in Des Moines, Iowa, President-elect Donald Trump told the audience that he sought to pick a Cabinet and team of advisors composed of “people that made a fortune” because “now they’re negotiating with you, OK?” Carl Icahn, the 26th richest man on the planet according to Forbes, fits the “made a fortune” bill. Icahn, a business partner of Trump and major donor to his presidential campaign, has been named by the President-elect as his Special Advisor on Regulatory Reform. However, as recently reported by DeSmog, Icahn stands to gain directly from deregulation in the energy and environmental sphere.

Retirement Divide: 100 CEOs V. The Rest Of Us

December 19, 2016 Sarah Anderson, www.ips-dc.org Educate! Capitalism, CEO, Retirement, Ruling Class, Working Class

By Sarah Anderson for IPS - If President-elect Donald Trump succeeds in cutting the top marginal tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, Fortune 500 CEOs would save $196 million on the income taxes they would owe if they withdrew their tax-deferred funds. Unlike ordinary 401(k) holders, most top CEOs have no limits on annual contributions to their tax-deferred accounts. In 2015 alone, Fortune 500 CEOs saved $92 million on their taxes by putting $238 million more in these accounts than they could have if they were subject to the same rules as other workers.

Trump’s Cabinet Has More Money Than Third Of American Households Combined

December 16, 2016 Dan Kopf, www.qz.com Educate! Donald Trump, Ruling Class, Trump Administration

By Dan Kopf for Quartz - The 17 people who US president-elect Donald Trump has selected for his cabinet or for posts with cabinet rank have well over $9.5 billion in combined wealth, with several positions still unfilled. This collection of wealth is greater than that of the 43 million least wealthy American households combined—over one third of the 126 million households total in the US. Affluence of this magnitude in a US presidential cabinet is unprecedented. The household data on which we based our comparison is from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances. Collected by the Federal Reserve, this survey is the most recent comprehensive data source on American wealth.

Billionaire Energy Investor Who Vetted Trump’s EPA Pick…

December 12, 2016 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Donald Trump, EPA, Ruling Class, Trump Administration

By Steve Horn for Desmog Blog - Asked for his take on President-elect Donald Trump's appointment of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), multi-billionaire investor and Trump business partner Carl Icahn told Bloomberg that Pruitt is “going to really be a breath of fresh air.” Given Icahn's business ties, that statement is steeped in accidental irony. Icahn, owner of the holding company Icahn Enterprises and a major donor to Trump's presidential campaign, was instrumental in choosing Pruitt — a man who as state prosecutor actively opposed most federal environmental regulations and denied the science of climate change

Political Elites Are Trying To Wreck Massachusetts’ New Marijuana Law

December 10, 2016 Mike Crawford, www.alternet.org Resist! Marijuana Legalization, Massachusetts, Ruling Class

By Mike Crawford for AlterNet - Immediately after Massachusetts voters passed Question 4 to legalize marijuana, the top office-holder tasked with leading the implementation and regulation of the law, Treasurer Deb Goldberg, was already asking to change it. She wasn’t alone. Within a week of people passing the initiative to tax and regulate cannabis, many other influential Bay State politicians—and at least one hack scribe, Boston Globe pro-business siren Shirley Leung—were advocating to repeal parts of the law that 1,745,945 heads pulled for.

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