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Ruling Class

We Can’t Afford These Billionaires

February 8, 2016 Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark for Counter Punch - In its 2015 report the World Economic Forum, aka the globe-grabbing business elite, pronounced from its opulent mountain fastness in Davos that, “Inequality is one of the key challenges of our time.” Paying $25,000 to attend this billionaires’ bash, and that’s after shelling out the compulsory $52,000 WEF membership fee, the said elite isn’t pronouncing on inequality out of any empathy for the poor and oppressed. This becomes perfectly clear on page 38 of the Global Risks Report 2016 where the reader is informed that inequality has consequences...

Research: Rise Of The Global Imperial Plutocracy

January 26, 2016 Sean Mcelwee, www.salon.com , , ,
By Sean Mcelwee for Salon - Since the beginnings of democracy, debate has raged as to how responsive politicians are to their constituents. Though such debates stretch back centuries, only recently have academics gotten the ability to use data to test how well legislatures represent the people they ostensibly serve. So far, the evidence hasn’t been kind, with two leading academics arguing recently that, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Richest 62 People As Wealthy As Half Of World’s Population

January 21, 2016 Larry Elliott, www.theguardian.com ,
By Larry Elliott for The Guardian - The vast and growing gap between rich and poor has been laid bare in a new Oxfam report showing that the 62 richest billionaires own as much wealth as the poorer half of the world’s population. Timed to coincide with this week’s gathering of many of the super-rich at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, the report calls for urgent action to deal with a trend showing that 1% of people own more wealth than the other 99% combined.

Dark Money Review: Nazi Oil, Koch Brothers And Rightwing Revolution

January 19, 2016 Charles Kaiser, www.theguardian.com , , ,
By Charles Kaiser for The Guardian - Lots of American industrialists have skeletons in the family closet. Charles and David Koch, however, are in a league of their own. The father of these famous rightwing billionaires was Fred Koch, who started his fortune with $500,000 received from Stalin for his assistance constructing 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. A couple of years later, his company, Winkler-Koch, helped the Nazis complete their third-largest oil refinery.

The Real Terrorists: The .01%

January 18, 2016 Paul Buchheit, www.nationofchange.org , ,
By Paul Buchheit for Nation of Change - Wealth ownership is not contemptible if the owners of that wealth accept their responsibility to the society that makes their great fortunes possible. But instead of paying taxes, the wealthiest Americans have formed an “income defense industry” to shelter their riches, with, according to the New York Times, “a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.”

Davos And Its Threat To Democracy

January 18, 2016 Nick Buxton, www.commondreams.org , , ,
By Nick Buxton for Common Dreams - It’s an all-too-easy event to mock. It’s hard to keep a straight face when the world’s rich arrive annually in their private jets to the luxury ski-resort of Davos to express their deep concern about growing poverty, inequality and climate change. US comedian Jon Stewart has labelled the World Economic Forum (WEF) the ‘money oscars’ and lampooned the media’s giddy sycophantic coverage of the event; Bono, himself a regular at the summit, jokes that it is a summit of ‘fat cats in the snow’.

CEOs Have As Much In Retirement Assets As 41% Of American Families

November 4, 2015 Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger, www.ips-dc.org , ,
By Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger for IPS - (Washington, D.C.) A just-released report by the Center for Effective Government and the Institute for Policy Studies, A Tale of Two Retirements, is the first to provide detailed statistics on the staggering gap between the retirement assets of Fortune 500 CEOs and the rest of America. The report’s major finding: just 100 CEOs have as much in their company retirement assets as the entire retirement savings of 41 percent of American families (50 million families total). The report comes on the heels of a Social Security Administration announcement that beneficiaries will not receive a cost of living increase in 2016.

Life For The 1% Has Gotten Worse Since Occupy

October 19, 2015 Jana Kasperkevic, www.theguardian.com , ,
By Jana Kasperkevic for The Guardian - It’s a rainy Wednesday morning and Clay Cockrell is sitting in his office at Columbus Circle across the street from 1 Central Park West, which houses Trump International Hotel and Tower. In front of the tower is Central Park, where Cockrell holds his popular walk and talk therapy sessions. Dressed in comfortable pants and a flannel shirt, Cockrell, a former Wall Street worker turned therapist, spends large parts of his days walking through Central Park or the Battery Park in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street, as a confidant and counsellor to some of the New York’s wealthiest.

The Enemy Is The Ruling Class

June 16, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , ,
This is an excerpt from American Autumn: an Occudoc. Get the full movie for FREE by emailing at AcronymTV@gmail.com with American Autumn in the subject line. Text, Animation & graphics by AJ Russo: Original; music by Goldi: Written, produced, and Directed by Dennis Trainor, Jr. “The Labor Movement has been kicked around now for quite a while and they have to fight. They see people fighting, and they see they are fighting the same enemy. This (Occupy) movement has show such an eagerness to reach out to the mainstream of the American public- and the Unions represent the organized part of that… The focus on the 1% and the first time in an American movement (I don’t think even in the 1930’s that the communist party did this in their mass work. I don’t think even they identified the enemy as the ruling class.” – Jackie DiSalvo | Occupy Wall Street Organizer
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