🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 
<3ae4adfd-0328-4b93-8d57-cda1fc4aa5ab@u26g2000yqu.googlegroups.com>,
 brad herschel <bradherschel@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sep 7, 2:48�pm, chatnoir <wolfbat3...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20102289-503544.html?tag=reddit
> >
> > headline:
> >
> > Left behind in America: Who's to blame for the wealth divide?
> > By Brian Montopoli
> >
> > Take a moment and think about how you feel wealth should, ideally, be
> > spread among the American people.
> >
> > If you're like the average respondent in a 2010 Harvard Business
> > School/Duke University study, your response was this: The richest top
> > 20 percent of society, as determined by net worth, should control 32
> > percent of the wealth. The bottom 20 percent should control about ten
> > percent. And the rest should be spread out among the 60 percent in the
> > middle, with higher-earners taking a slightly larger share.
> >
> > It probably won't surprise you to hear that those figures don't match
> > reality. But you might well be shocked by just how far off they are.
> > In the study, Americans were asked how they thought wealth was
> > actually distributed; they estimated that the top 20 percent
> > controlled about 59 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom
> > controlled about three percent.
> >
> > That wasn't even close: In reality, the top 20 percent controlled
> > about 84 percent of the wealth, while the bottom quintile controlled
> > just 0.1 percent. The combined net worth of the bottom 40 percent, in
> > fact, accounted for just 0.3 percent of the nation's wealth. (See
> > chart below, where that bottom 40 percent doesn't even show up.) ...
> > (cont)
> 
> Remove the unproductive Blacks and Hispanics from the equation.
> Another story.
> 
> http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/  The Occidental Observer

As everyone must know by now, the above is a white power, racist organ.

<http://www.democracynow.org/2011/9/9/rebuilt_ground_zero_billed_as_natio
nal>
SCOTT PAUL: Yeah, it�s a good question. It�s the right question to ask, 
Juan. And it is a fact that German manufacturing workers are paid an 
average of $48 an hour. In the United States, the average for 
manufacturing workers is $32 an hour. Germany has a national healthcare 
system. As you know, we do not. Germany has thick regulation, a much 
more progressive tax system than the United States does, yet Germany 
thrives in manufacturing. Germany has held its share of manufacturing 
throughout the last decade, while China has risen, and the U.S. has 
dramatically declined, in fact by one-third just over the last decade.

And the reason is because Germany has an industrial policy. Its leaders, 
of all the parties, believe that manufacturing is central to the 
performance of its economy, and it actually weathered the recession a 
lot better than the United States has. And there�s a lesson to be 
learned there, that there is a high road to economic development, where 
you can build your middle class, have a unionized work force, if you�re 
willing to put a focus on something like industrial production rather 
than on oil and gas subsidies or other things that don�t have nearly as 
much benefit for the American economy.

-----

Death of the Liberal Class 
by Chris Hedges (Oct 17, 2010)
<http://www.amazon.com/Death-Liberal-Class-Chris-Hedges/dp/1568586442/ref
=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304804162&sr=1-1>
(Available at a library near you.)


Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He
promised that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall
Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer 
following the financial crisis. It did not. The Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (FDIC) admitted that banks have reduced lending at the
sharpest rate since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would 
filibuster amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 
(FISA), which retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of 
millions of American citizens without warrant; instead, he supported 
passage of that legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops
from Iraq, close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, end torture,
restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus, pass a health-care bill 
with a robust public option, and create new jobs. Some troops have been
withdrawn, slowly and piecemeal, from Iraq, but other than this too-
little-too-late process, almost none of his promises has been kept. 

He shoved a health-care bill down our throats that will mean ever-
rising co-pays, deductibles, and premiums and leave most of the 
seriously ill bankrupt and unable to afford medical care. Obama, after
promising meaningful environmental reform, did nothing to halt the 

PERMANENT WAR / 27 

collapse of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference, a decision that
ended perhaps our final chance to save the planet from the catastrophic
effects of climate change. He empowers Israel's brutal apartheid
regime. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where
hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered
by sophisticated weaponry such as drones and the AGM-144 Hellfire
missile, which sucks the air out of its victims' lungs. He is delivering
war and death to Yemen, Somalia, and, perhaps soon, he will bring it to
Iran. Obama is part of the political stagecraft that trades in 
perceptions of power rather than real power. 

The illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth
upward in U.S. history, the deregulation that resulted in the environ-
mental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and the egregious assault on civil
liberties�begun under George W. Bush�raise only a flicker of protest
from the liberal class. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emotionally
disabled. They appear not to feel. They do not recognize the legitimate
anger of those who have been dispossessed. They retreat instead into
the dead talk of policy and analysis. The Tea Party protesters, the
myopic supporters of Sarah Palin, the veterans signing up for Oath
Keepers, and myriad groups of armed patriots have brought into their
ranks legions of dispossessed workers, angry libertarians, John
Birchers, and many others who, until now, were never politically active. 

The three-thousand-word suicide note left by Joe Stack, who flew
his Piper Dakota into an Internal Revenue Service office in Austin,
Texas, on February 18, 2010, murdering an IRS worker and injuring
thirteen others, two seriously, expressed the frustration of tens of mil-
lions of workers over the treachery of global corporations and a liberal
class that abandoned them.4 

Stack, in his note, remembered that when he was an eighteen- or
nineteen-year-old student living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he 
occupied an apartment next to an elderly widow. The woman had been 
married to a steel worker, who, Stack wrote, "had worked all his life in 
the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business 
and the union that, for his thirty years of service, he would have a 
pension,and medical care to look forward to in his retirement." But the 
worker, got nothing "because the incompetent mill management and corrupt 

28 / DEATH OF THE LIBERAL CLASS 

union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and
stole their retirement." The widow survived on Social Security. 

"In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was liv-
ing on peanut butter-and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to
splurge) for months at a time," he wrote: 

When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse
for her plight than for my own (I,'after all, thought I had everything
in front of me). I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we
exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, 
when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me
that I would be "healthier" eating cat food (like her) rather than 
trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn't
quite go there, but the impression was made. I decided that I didn't
trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take 
responsibility for my own future and myself.
-- 
- Billy
Both the House and Senate budget plan would have cut Social Security and Medicare, while cutting taxes on the wealthy. 

Kucinich noted that none of the government programs targeted for 
elimination or severe cutback in House Republican spending plans 
"appeared on the GAO's list of government programs at high risk of 
waste, fraud and abuse."
<http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/mar/28/dennis-kucinich/re
p-dennis-kucinich-says-gop-budget-cuts-dont-targ/>

[W]e have the situation with the deficit and the debt and spending and jobs. And it�s not that difficult to get out of it. The first thing you do is you get rid of corporate welfare. That�s hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The second is you tax corporations so that they don�t get away with no taxation. 
 - Ralph Nader
<http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/19/ralph_naders_solution_to_debt_crisis>