And Now the Richest .01 Percent

[Octafish]

by Robert Reich
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The richest Americans hold more of the nation’s wealth than they have in almost a century. What do they spend it on? As you might expect, personal jets, giant yachts, works of art, and luxury penthouses.

And also on politics. In fact, their political spending has been growing faster than their spending on anything else. It’s been growing even faster than their wealth.

According to new research by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics, the richest one-hundredth of one percent of Americans now hold over 11 percent of the nation’s total wealth. That’s a higher share than the top .01 percent held in 1929, before the Great Crash.

We’re talking about 16,000 people, each worth at least $110 million.

One way to get your mind around this is to compare their wealth to that of the average family. In 1978, the typical wealth holder in the top .01 percent was 220 times richer than the average American. By 2012, he or she was 1,120 times richer.

CONTINUED, despite promises to the contrary...

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/18/and-now-richest-01-percent

[Autumn]

1. It will only get better for them if we continue on the path we are on.

In 2016 we weill be offered a centrist who will side with the 1% and the .01% or a republican who will side with them also.

Our vote is our voice. Bernie 2016

[Octafish]

5. Money IS Speech means that the People without Money are S.O.L.

The USA has got a meta problem: the influence of Big Money on Governance. The only way to solve it is to identify it, discuss it among the citizenry, and elect people to office who'll do something about it. And that is the problem -- only those with money can get their message heard and can afford to back candidates, none of whom will do anything to disturb the status quo.

[Autumn]

7. I think we are out of options.

[corkhead]

8. The French didn't think so

[BobbyBoring]

14. Different day

If Louie 16 had everyone bugged and a militarized police force, he may have kept his head.

[Octafish]

18. Heh heh heh.

‘Like I Wasn’t President at All’

By Robert Parry
May 26, 1999

In 1992, less than four years after leaving the White House, Ronald Reagan claimed to have forgotten virtually every fact about the Iran-contra scandal, according to a newly released transcript of a formal deposition.

"It's like I wasn't president at all," Reagan said in response to one inquiry.

Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh accepted that Reagan's memory loss was a consequence of the ex-president's Alzheimer's disease. But the deposition also reveals that Reagan answered in rich detail when questioned about coincidental events not connected to alleged Iran-contra crimes.

Despite Reagan's unresponsive answers, the deposition offered a look at unreleased Reagan diary entries that were read into the record. The diary demonstrated that Reagan was intimately involved with the Iran-contra operations and fully aware that some of his actions violated the law.

Yet, when Walsh and his prosecutors questioned Reagan about even basic facts that connected to the scandal, the ex-president asserted a near-total lack of memory.

SNIP...

At another point, Reagan was reminded that "you had a task force on counter-terrorism. Do you remember? I think Vice President Bush headed it."

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699c.html

[hifiguy]

25. In a way King Ronnie the Simple never WAS president.

He was an amiable face and a reassuring manner to lull the sheeple into accepting the first stages of a descent into fascism. The string pullers were the rich, rightwing and powerful. Reagan did what he always did - he read the script.

Hey, Octafish, check this out if you have the time: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025817654
A more polished up version may wind up getting published on worldnewstrust.com

[Octafish]

30. VP George Herbert Walker Bush got policies enacted making Veep into a National Security King.

Bush made himself into the Secret Government Big Shot. I kid you not:

George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

SNIP...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

[font color="red"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.

Scary as Poppy's Secret Team has only gotten stronger with each passing year and administration.

PS: From the Takes One to Know One Because I Am One Department: Change "puberty" to "poverty" in the fourth graph. Other than a personal quibble or two about religion, it's great.

[hifiguy]

32. The line you mention was a nod to Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly's

horribly prophetic "The Coronation of King Dick" in the August 1972 National Lampoon. King Dick's "Minima Carta" listed "puberty and the freedom to expire" as rights guaranteed thereby. I put it in as a joke for myself.

[Maineman]

20. No. We need to be creative. Never give up!

If everyone who reads the article from Robert Reich or similar information available from numerous sources will forward it to 5 or 10 people who forward it to 5 or 10 people, etc., etc., lots of people will be better informed. We need information transmission that is not controlled by the main stream media. Way too many voters are uninformed and misinformed.

We need voters who do not fall for the clever, scientifically designed political ads paid for by big money.

We need to spread the comments of people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as well as various internet reporters, professors, investigative reporters, etc. We need to spread the facts and the truth along with ideas for what to do.

Democratization of wealth is a key to changing the rigged system. There are strategies for democratization of wealth being applied locally in numerous places throughout the US (See: What Then Must We Do? by Alperovitz) They include coops, credit unions, and employee owned businesses.

We need group actions, like boycotts -- for example, businesses owned by the Adelsons and the Kochs (and numerous others).

We need to hold politicians, especially Democrats, accountable for supporting big money agendas.

This is not about a liberal or progressive agenda, it is a 99% issue. There are people around who imagine that a benevolent dictatorship or plutocracy would be desirable. Most people know better. Their financial circumstances are telling.

Never give up!

[WillyT]

2. K & R !!!

[mb999]

3. We need maximum wealth limits

The top elite's "ambition" to steal more wealth has become parasitic.

[corkhead]

10. 90% top tax bracket on income including inheritance would fix that in a jiffy

[clarice]

23. and exactly who would be the "wealth monitors". nt

[daleanime]

4. K&R....

[packman]

6. This comes to mind

[hifiguy]

26. Who knew Daffy had read Ayn Rand?

[clarice]

9. I'm curious,

What is the exact criteria to be regarded as a 1%er? We hear the term bandied about, but no one has given me
a good answer as to what actually constitutes 1%erdom.

[Octafish]

16. Income? Power? Wealth?

Who Rules America?

by G. William Domhoff
UC Santa Cruz

EXCERPT...

This document focuses on the "Top 1%" as a whole because that's been the traditional cut-off point for "the top" in academic studies, and because it's easy for us to keep in mind that we are talking about one in a hundred. But it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand. (To get an idea of the differences, take a look at an insider account by a long-time investment manager who works for the well-to-do and very rich. It nicely explains what the different levels have -- and how they got it. Also, David Cay Johnston (2011) has written a column about the differences among the top 1%, based on 2009 IRS information.)

SNIP...



CONTINUED w LINKS:

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

[mtngirl47]

17. from the article above....

"We’re talking about 16,000 people, each worth at least $110 million"

[pampango]

11. Meanwhile in Canada: Canada's richest see share of income fall to 6-year low

The gap between Canada's rich and poor appears to be closing, according to new Statistics Canada data.

Canada's wealthiest — or the top one per cent — saw their share of the country's total income fall to a six-year low in 2012, the federal agency said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the total income portion of the bottom 99 per cent increased for the first time since 1982.

South of the border, the 99% are worse off. The income share of the richest Americans grew from 18 per cent in 2006 to 19.3 per cent in 2012.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-s-richest-see-share-of-income-fall-to-6-year-low-1.2838970

"South of the border" (That's the US!) the 99% are worse off.

[hfojvt]

12. why so many?

Why not the richest 0.00001%. Those 16 richest people must control 0.5% of the nation's wealth, the highest amount in history.

Doubtless everybody else is just middle class, compared to them.

The numbers seem high here as well. If a 0.01%er has at least $110 million in net worth and also has 1,120 times the net worth of the average American, then it would seem the average American has a net worth of at leat $98,000. Which seems kind of high.

[Jackpine Radical]

29. You'e basing your calculations on the assumption of normal distributions.

The income distribution is a positively-skewed "J" curve, which pulls the means far above the medians of the different distributions, thereby creating a distorted statistical picture.

[COORACPRO]

13. Face it!

Face it folks we are fucked!

[KingCharlemagne]

15. Yay, Capitalism! USA! USA! USA! :sarcasm: - nt

[Dustlawyer]

19. For this reason, I will continue to call for us to support

Bernie Sanders who has stated that his number one issue is to stop campaign donations and call for Publicly Funded Elections. Doing this attacks the root cause of our problems by taking away the 1% ability to legally bribe our politicians. We must support Bernie and let him know that we can make him competitive in the election to where he can get his message out to the American public.

[Initech]

22. Did you see Bernie on Colbert last night?

Now that's what I want to see - a president who's not afraid of taking the billionaires down a peg or two.

[Initech]

21. When the only thing you have left to buy is politics, you have too much money.

[LongTomH]

24. Amend the Constitution

Get rid of these dangerous precedents:

• That an artificial person, corporation, PAC, 501-3C, etc, can be considered a person under the law, entitled to the constitutional rights and protections intended for natural persons - i.e. citizens.
  
• That money, in the form of campaign contributions, can be considered constitutionally protected Free Speech protected by the First Amendment.

The only proposed Amendment to the Constitution that will accomplish both these ends is the We the People Amendment introduced in Congress as House Joint Resolution 29 on February 14, 2013. The recent Udall Amendment recently rejected by Congress lacked language that would address either the issue of corporate personhood or money as speech.

If you want to learn more go to Move to Amend's website. See if there's an MTA affiliate chapter near you, or start one.

[hifiguy]

27. This could be an excellent start.

[bobthedrummer]

28. I think about individuals and corporations that pride themselves on paying little of NO income taxes

They really make a KILLING that way, don't they? K&R.

[JEB]

31. Tax them back down to earth or

bring out the guillotine.