The Peasants Need Pitchforks

AFP image

Robert Scheer
TruthDig

A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

That is the harsh reality obscured by the media’s focus on celebrity gossip, sports rivalries and lotteries, situations in which the average person can pretend that he or she is plugged into the winning side. The illusion of personal power substitutes consumer sovereignty—which smartphone to purchase—for real power over the decisions that affect our lives. Even though most Americans accept that the political game is rigged, we have long assumed that the choices we make in the economic sphere as to career and home are matters that respond to our wisdom and will. But the banking tsunami that wiped out so many jobs and so much homeownership has demonstrated that most Americans have no real control over any of that, and while they suffer, the corporate rich reward themselves in direct proportion to the amount of suffering they have caused.

Instead of taxing the superrich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.

It is a reality further obscured by the academic elite, led by economists who receive enormous payoffs from Wall Street in speaking and consulting fees, and their less privileged university colleagues who are so often dependent upon wealthy sponsors for their research funding. Then there are the media, which are indistinguishable parts of the corporate-owned culture and which with rare exception pretend that we are all in the same lifeboat while they fawn in their coverage of those who bilk us and also dispense fat fees to top pundits. Complementing all that is the dark distraction of the faux populists, led by tea party demagogues, who blame unions and immigrants for the crimes of Wall Street hustlers.

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Ratigan EXPOSES the Bankster Con on America (Video)

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Rescue Choppers Or Corporate Jets? The Biggest Fraud Of All

Japan devastation/AFP image

Dylan Ratigan
Daily Bail

I've been glued to my TV and computer all weekend watching the horrors unfold in Japan. I don't know very much about the Japanese budgetary situation, how much the clean-up is going to cost, etc. But I know that no one in Japan right now is worrying about the Japanese budget deficit, or whether there is any waste in the emergency services departments of local or national governments, or whether the emergency shelters holding millions of people could be provided any cheaper. At times like this, people are desperately hoping that someone can save their friends, family, and make sure that supplies move to people who need them.

And in all the footage of people being saved, I haven't seen one mega-bank rescue anyone. I saw help from a lot of volunteers, firemen, rescue workers, doctors, nurses, etc. But not one bank. And that was true during snowstorms in North Dakota, the floods in New Orleans, and the earthquake in Haiti. Oddly, though the banks are sucking up enormous amounts of our budgetary resources, they don't own rescue helicopters, they don't track earthquakes, they don't study tsunamis, and they don't deal with radiation poisoning.
According to Simon Johnson, roughly 40% of the increase in privately held government debt over the past few years is due to the financial crisis caused by these mega-banks. Yet, the Federal budget debate is centered on slashing spending on things that we actually need, things that, when a crisis happens, saves our lives.

Instead of taking back the money spent on these bailouts, the new "tea party" Republicans are instead trying to slash funds for the agency that warned our West Coast of the tsunami. How many millions of dollars did NOAA save by giving us due warning and letting us protect property? We'll never know, just as the Japanese can't know how many hundreds of thousands survived due to a strong infrastructure and well-funded preparations.

I don't mean to pick on the Republican leaders, though actually, yes, I do. Just cutting government programs sounds good, until your friend or family member is hanging on a rooftop somewhere praying for a rescue, a rescue that would have had to have been planned and pre-funded years before since helicopters can't actually be wished into existence upon demand. But let's be clear, the dynamic that is starving our government of revenue is one that the Democrats created from 2008-2010, when they allowed and encouraged the big banks to feed on the government trough. This bipartisan corrupt racket, where Democrats help banks loot and Republicans give the bill to the rest of us, needs to end.

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Keiser Video Report: Why Do Bankers Prefer Tyranny?

YouTube -- RT

This week Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report from Cairo about markets loving tyranny, a former prime-minister visiting dictators in the desert for JP Morgan and a Central Banker running over bicyclists. In the second half of the show, Max talks to investigative journalist, Lina Attallah, about the role of social media, women and youth in the Egyptian revolution.

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