I stopped hanging out here; too much confusion as to what the problems and goals are. I'm wondering if things here have changed?
http://www.salon.com/...
Jul 23, 2010
Why has the Post series created so little reaction?
Any doubt about whether there'd be any meaningful (or even cosmetic) changes as a result of the Post exposé (it was really more a compilation of already known facts) was quickly dispelled by the reaction of the political class: not just one of indifference, but outright contempt for the concerns raised by this story. On Tuesday - 24 hours after the first installment appeared - the Senate's Intelligence Committee removed a provision from the Intelligence Authorization Act which would have provided some marginally greater oversight over the Government's secret intelligence programs, because Obama was threatening to veto any bill providing for such oversight. Then, Obama's nominee..
...to be the next Director of National Intelligence, Ret. Lt. Gen. James Clapper, all but laughed at the Post's work,
dismissing it during his Senate confirmation hearing as "sensationalism," praising the bureaucratic redundancies as "competitive analysis," and insisting that the National Security and Surveillance State are perfectly "under control." The Post's Jeff Stein today documents how Congressional Democrats can barely rouse themselves to the pretense that they intend to do anything to impose any restraints or accountability on Top Secret America....
...What ties together virtually every political issue is the one highlighted in this new article in The Nation by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Entitled "No to Oligarchy," it documents with an array of facts how America's wealth is rapidly becoming more concentrated in a tiny number of families while the middle class essentially disappears. As Sanders emphasizes, the outcome is not only the destruction of the "American dream," but serious threats to the very concept of a republican form of government:
Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children...
But, not everybody is hurting. While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.
The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record....
...It is absolutely beyond the Republicans' power to cut Social Security, even if they retake the House and Senate in November, since Obama will continue to wield veto power. The real impetus for Social Security cuts is from the "Deficit Commission" which Obama created in January by Executive Order, then stacked with people (including its bipartisan co-Chairs) who have long favored slashing the program, and whose recommendations now enjoy the right of an up-or-down vote in Congress after the November election...The desire to cut Social Security is fully bipartisan (otherwise it couldn't happen) and pushed by the billionaire class that controls the Government.
The secret, omnipotent National Security State highlighted by The Washington Post will endure and expand as is because those who control the Government (or, as Dick Durbin put it, who "own" the Government) benefit endlessly from it.... .
Additional Comments Added A Bit Later:
If you have skimmed the comments section, you will know that, even after I cut out at least half of the text quoted (and pasted) from Greenwald's recent blog post, and even though the subject seems to require a strong, representative, visible sample of Greenwald's work, if for no other reason than to distinguish it from the presumably much better known details of Obama's "work", most commenters are instead, still intent on keeping the discussed reaction to my diary on the subject of the size of the cut 'n paste, instead of about the actual subject.
During the campaign, Obama talked briefly about "spreading the wealth around". Greenwald referred to a new article authored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The article is excerpted above. In support of the points raised by Greenwald and by Sanders, I have to wonder why the fact that the bottom 80 percent own only 12.3 percent of the total wealth in the country is not a matter of grave concern, as in the subject of frequent discussion, media coverage, and widely not considered a grave national crisis, especially since it is also true that the bottom 80 percent is reponsible for the bulk of outstanding consumer and mortgage debt?
http://www.levyinstitute.org/...
(bottom of page 32)
"..it is possible to provide a partial update of the wealth figures to July 1, 2009 based on two notable developments....
...Trends in inequality are also interesting.... The share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of the second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent. ..the share of households with zero or negative net worth, from 18.6 to 24.1 percent."
Why then, is Timothy Geithner appearing on CNBC to assure that "the administration" is hard at work trying to prevent the tax on dividends from returning to its pre Bush tax cut level top rate of 39 percent, as it would if Bush tax cuts were permitted to sunset in 5 months, in their entirety?