The Top Ten America's Greediest of 2013

America’s Greediest: The 2013 Top Ten By Sam Pizzigati

“Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. You won’t find any of them on our annual Too Much list of America’s most avaricious. You will find wheelers and dealers and a candy store heiress.

The impact on America’s super rich — and super-rich wannabees? Not much. They haven’t even deigned to slow their grabbing...

10/ Angela Spaccia: Pint-Sized Pilfering

We start this year’s top ten with garden-variety greed, the sort that inevitably grows in the shadows of escalating grand fortunes. In that shade, people in positions of modest power and authority regularly — and clumsily — try to emulate the avaricious high and mighty they see all around them.

In Bell, a small Los Angeles County working class community, that modest power and authority once belonged to Angela Spaccia. As Bell’s assistant city manager for a seven-year span that ended in 2010, Spaccia helped stuff hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of the city’s top officials, including herself. Spaccia in one year alone took in $564,000.

Prosecutors eventually caught up with Spaccia and her pals. Her boss, the Bell city manager, cut a plea deal in October to 69 corruption charges. He pulled in $1.18 million in his most lucrative year. Spaccia chose to go to trial instead, claiming she did nothing illegal.

“Everyone’s greedy,” her defense attorney argued  in November. “There’s no crime in taking too much money.”

Jurors disagreed. Last week, they found Spaccia guilty on multiple counts of criminal behavior, including one misappropriation of public funds designed to pump $15.5 million in pension checks to Spaccia and her boss.

9/ Dylan Lauren: Sweet Squeezer

They don’t come more suave and sophisticated than Dylan Lauren, the only child of billionaire designer Ralph Lauren. Or more ambitious either.

Not for Dylan the empty heiress life. Over a decade ago, she opened up her own business, a luxury candy emporium on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where moldings atop display cabinets mimic dripping chocolate and a cocktail bar offers Gummy Bear martinis.

“Dylan’s Candy Bar” would go on to become wildly successful, expanding into Miami Beach, Los Angeles, and the Hamptons, all the prime watering holes for America’s super rich.

Things today could hardly be peachier for the young Lauren. She has by her side a totally smitten hedge fund manager husband. Maybe even better, the 39-year-old has realized the life’s dream she’s had ever since she first saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the ripe old age of six.

“I just wanted,” as Dylan gushed recently, “to live in a world full of candy.”

Dylan’s employees, meanwhile, would be satisfied with a world where they could just make ends meet. Workers at her Manhattan flagship store have been protesting  their meager $8.50 hourly compensation and management policies that make sure employees never work enough hours to qualify for overtime pay.

The New York workers are seeking full-time weekly set schedules and a hourly wage at $13.99, the price of a Dylan’s Candy Bar pound of candy.

Earlier this month, in a pouring rain, the workers demonstrated to make their case, carrying lollipops that read, “Dylan, we’re not suckers.” Their chant: “Dylan, Dylan, Candy Queen, you’re filthy rich, so share your green!”

8/ Michael Duke: Low Wages All the Time

This may well be Walmart CEO Michel Duke’s last hurrah in America’s most greedy. He’ll be stepping down as CEO early in 2014, after an embarrassing final year at Walmart’s summit.

The crowning embarrassment? At the company’s 2013 annual meeting, a glitzy affair that management packs with “loyal” employees, one Walmart worker actually won cheers when she denounced Duke’s $20.7 million 2012 paycheck.

Researchers have calculated that Duke is essentially making $6,898 an hour, 779 times the $8.86 average Walmart wage.

In the nation’s capital this fall, city council members tried to up that worker average. They passed a bill that would have required Walmart stores in D.C. to pay at least $12.50 an hour. Duke reacted swiftly. He had his company threaten to pull up stakes if the bill became law.

Washington’s mayor promptly panicked and vetoed the measure.

Duke took a PR pounding for that threat and still another pounding when the Demos think tank in New York revealed  that the $7.6 billion Duke had Walmart spend last year buying back company shares, if redirected to worker compensation, could have raised Walmart’s lowest wages by $5.83 an hour — and ensured all the company’s workers at least $25,000 for full-time work.

Poor Michael Duke won’t have to face any more pounding come his retirement this February. He won’t face any financial worries either. Duke is sitting on $113.2 million in retirement assets, thanks to a tax loophole that lets corporate execs annually set aside unlimited sums, tax-free, into their retirement accounts.

Duke’s retirement stash, notes the Institute for Policy Studies, “could yield him a monthly retirement check of $669,169.” The average Walmart worker 401(k), by contrast, will generate a monthly retirement check of $89.

7/ Art Pope: A Backroom Bully Goes Public

In North Carolina these days, few people think Francis first when they hear “Pope.” A different Pope has been dominating headlines here, an exceedingly deep pocket who owes his fortune to a discount store chain his daddy built.

In the run-up to the 2012 elections, this Art Pope invested over $40 million of his personal wealth to gerrymander how North Carolinians cast their votes.

The gerrymandering worked. This year opened with the state sporting — for the first time ever — a conservative GOP governor, Supreme Court majority, and legislature all at the same time. The state budget director? Pope himself.

Pope’s budget priorities would soon start wreaking havoc with the lives of North Carolina’s most vulnerable. In a state with America’s fifth-highest jobless rate, lawmakers indebted to Pope and his millions slashed top weekly jobless benefits and denied 170,000 long-term jobless special federal aid.

North Carolina’s conservatives didn’t stop there. They put in place, notes one Duke University analyst, an agenda that cuts education and social programs, shifts the tax burden “toward the less affluent,” and restricts voting rights.

North Carolinians have responded to this rich people-friendly legislative onslaught with spirited demonstrations. The latest protest: an “educational picket campaign” outside the discount stores the Pope family owns.

Art Pope, notes state NAACP president William Barber, has brought a “cynical and sinister form of wealth and power manipulation” to North Carolina.

Pope has put his stores “deliberately and publicly in communities of low wealth,” exploited people in these communities with low wages, and then employed his resulting wealth “to push and promote policies,” sums up Reverend Barber, that undercut the quality of average people’s lives.

6/ Tim Cook: Lost Even with a Compass

The $100 million club, researchers from the corporate watchdog GMI Ratings revealed  this past October, has become a bit less exclusive. Last year, for the first time, America’s ten highest-paid CEOs all realized over $100 million in compensation. High on that list, at $143.8 million: Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook’s good fortune came as no surprise to computer industry observers. Apple retail stores, notes  Forbes, “take in more money per square foot than any other United States retailer.”

Yet Apple store employees only average $25,000, and Apple can’t seem to afford to compensate its 42,000 retail workers for the time they spend every day waiting to get searched — for stolen goods — before they can leave the store premises. Two former Apple employees have filed  a class-action lawsuit to recoup those unpaid wages, estimated at about $1,500 per year.

But give Apple credit. The company remains an equal-opportunity exploiter. The company mistreats workers both at home and abroad. Workers at Apple’s offshore suppliers continue to work in factories that, says  the Economic Policy Institute, “reflect some of the worst practices of the industrial era.”

Apple, details EPI analyst Isaac Shapiro, “has not met commitments to ensure that workers in its supply chain receive retroactive compensation for working unpaid overtime” or “ensured promised wage increases.”

Apple CEO Cook’s response to critiques like this?

“Apple,” he told reporters before U.S. Senate testimony this past spring, “has a very strong moral compass.”

5/ Ron Packard: The ABCs of Avarice

Some of us look at school buildings and see students learning. Ron Packard looks at schools and sees himself becoming fabulously richer — if he could only empty the buildings.

Packard runs K12 Inc., a for-profit company that specializes in “virtual” education. K12 Inc. operates online “schools” that supply lessons to kids sitting in front of computers, a business endeavor that Packard pronounces a noble step toward “educational liberty.”

“Kids have been shackled to their brick-and-mortar school down the block for too long,” he has declared.

An army of corporate lobbyists has been spreading this message over the past five years, backed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, and more than three dozen states have now enacted legislation that lets companies like K12 Inc. grab students — and tax dollars.

K12 Inc. currently has nearly 130,000 students in its “virtual learning” empire, with only one problem. Compared to their traditional school peers, K12 Inc. students are not doing much learning. Critics are, understandably, blasting the K12 Inc. business model as a giant scam.

In that model, heavy K12 Inc. advertising on kid-centric media like Nickelodeon gets kids enrolled for the company’s offerings. State government education officials, after their annual student “head count,” then pay K12 Inc. for each kid signed up. But after the head count, many of the “virtual” students drop out. K12 Inc. doesn’t mind. The company gets to keep the money.

Lots of it, enough to reward Packard over $19 million in personal compensation the last five years. Not bad, notes the Center for Media and Democracy, for a former Goldman Sachs executive “who started K12 Inc. with a $10 million investment from convicted junk-bond king Michael Milken.”

4/ Lloyd Blankfein: An Appetite for Aluminum

Five years ago, Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs tottered near disaster, as did every other major U.S. bank.

America’s taxpayers came to the rescue. Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein soon had at his disposal $814 billion in near zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve and $10 billion from the Treasury Department.

Blankfein has made the most of this generous support. Forbes calculates his total compensation for the last five years at $159.5 million. Blankfein currently holds over a quarter-billion dollars worth of Goldman shares in his personal portfolio.

How have Blankfein and Goldman Sachs done so nicely the past five years? We learned a good bit about that in 2013. The juiciest revelations came over the summer when the New York Times exposed a commodity speculation scheme that Goldman “intentionally created” to drive up the global price of aluminum.

This scheming, the Times estimates, has cost consumers $5 billion since 2010.

Blankfein has shared, at tax time, precious little of the profits from Goldman’s speculative ventures, thanks in large part to Goldman’s dozens of offshore tax havens. In 2010, these tax havens cut Goldman’s tax bill by $3.32 billion.

Blankfein is putting his share of those tax savings to something less than productive social use. News reports have him down as an advance buyer in the new $1 billion Faena Miami Beach, an 18-story oceanfront luxury tower set to open next year. The tower’s 47 residences are going for up to $50 million each.

3/ Jim McNerney: Middle Class Manslaughter

The U.S. manufacturing giant Boeing, analyst Harold Meyerson observed last week, has only one global rival in the large-scale passenger-plane market, the European conglomerate Airbus.

Workers at these two aerospace giants turn out to make about the same compensation. But executives at Boeing make more.

Question: Given these realities, what should Boeing do to compete more effectively? The answer from Boeing CEO Jim McNerney: Cut Boeing worker wages, benefits, and pensions!

Earlier this fall, McNerney gave his Seattle area workers an ultimatum: Either accept a contract “extension” that would leave them paying more for health care and getting less in retirement — and force new hires to work 10 extra years at substandard wages — or Boeing would go elsewhere to manufacture its new 777x passenger jetliner.

Boeing gave Washington State’s political leaders a similar ultimatum: Either fork over new subsidies and tax breaks or see your state lose jobs by the thousands. Washington lawmakers caved almost instantly. They voted Boeing the largest subsidy deal in U.S. history, over half a billion annually for the next 16 years, over double  the state’s annual funding for the University of Washington.

Boeing’s workers didn’t cave. They rejected the Boeing ultimatum, and McNerney, who pulled in [39] $27.5 million in take-home last year after $23 million the year before, is now parsing subsidy offers from half a dozen other states.

How does this story end? Maybe with the “Walmartization of aerospace.”

“This,” as Seattle author Timothy Egan puts it, “is how the middle class dies.”

2/ David Novak: Fast-Food Glutton

At first glance, corporate CEO David Novak doesn’t need a subsidy from anybody. The fast-food empire Novak oversees, Yum! Brands, amassed $1.59 billion in profits last year.

And Yum — think Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC — is doing pretty well by Novak, too. He pocketed $94 million worth of “performance pay,” notes an Institute for Policy Studies analysis, in just 2011 and 2012 alone.

But Novak and Yum are collecting subsidies anyway — and plenty of them. One comes directly from the U.S. tax code. Current tax law lets corporations deduct executive “performance” pay off their taxable income. This sweet subsidy saved Yum $33 million the last two years on Novak’s ample compensation.

Average Americans are actually subsidizing Novak and Yum at much higher levels than this single tax break suggests. In fact, taxpayers are subsidizing Yum’s entire fast-food business.

Workers at fast food giants like Yum simply don’t make enough to make ends meet for their families. So how do these workers get by? They depend on taxpayer-financed social safety net programs, from food stamps to Medicaid.

Overall, researchers noted  in 2013, American taxpayers “are spending nearly $7 billion a year to supplement the wages of fast-food workers.”

And how are fast-food executives like David Novak spending the profits this generous taxpayer support makes possible? They’re having their companies, for starters, buy back shares of company stock off the open market, a strategy designed solely to bump up their share prices.

Higher share prices, in the meantime, produce higher “performance pay” awards for execs like Novak.

If Novak had plowed the vast millions that Yum spent last year on share buybacks into worker pay, estimate researchers from Demos, worker wages at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC would have jumped by as much as $3 per hour.

1/ Larry Ellison: An Awesome Arrogance

Drum roll, please. Our 2013 greediest of them all: Larry Ellison, the longtime chief exec at business software kingpin Oracle.

Ellison currently owns a quarter of Oracle, a chunk that makes the 69-year-old the ninth richest individual in the world. His total net worth sat last week at $38.6 billion.

Enough? Not for Ellison. Last year, the software kingpin had Oracle award him $96.2 million in compensation. Unhappy shareholders considered those millions a tad excessive. In a nonbinding 2012 say-on-pay vote, an Oracle shareholder majority turned thumbs-down on Ellison’s pay package.

Ellison, of course, gave none of that $96.2 million back. This year, he had Oracle hand him another $76.9 million. Unhappy shareholders again expressed their displeasure, making Oracle just the 12th company  in U.S. corporate history to have its shareholders go on record against their CEO’s pay in consecutive years.

No frustrated shareholder better try getting any of Ellison’s latest paycheck back. Oracle spends $1.5 million a year on security personnel to protect him. And why not? Ellison, as Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley gushes, rates as Oracle’s “most critical strategic visionary.”

Sign up for To Much Ellison pays dearly to surround himself with such fawning adulation. His two top executive underlings collected $43.6 million each in compensation in Oracle’s fiscal 2013.

Ellison’s billions, to be sure, buy him more than office sycophants. This past year Ellison hosted global yachting’s premiere race, the America’s Cup, in San Francisco Bay. Each race’s host sets the race’s rules. Ellison’s rules limited the field to ultra-expensive — and ultra-dangerous — catamarans.

One sailor died in training runs for the race.

Whose yacht eventually won? Guess.

Links:

Super Sizing Public Costs How Low Wages at Top Fast-Food Chains Leave Taxpayers Footing the Bill

“The Fast Food industry is marked by two extremes: on the one hand, the leading companies in the industry earn billions in profits each year, award chief executives generous compensation packages, and regularly distribute substantial amounts of money in the form of dividends and share buybacks.

At the same time, the overwhelming share of jobs in the fast-food industry pay low wages that force millions of workers to rely on public assistance in order to afford health care, food, and other basic necessities. This report focuses on the 10 largest fast-food companies in the united States and estimates the substantial costs that these highly profitable companies’ low-wage, no-benefits business model imposes on taxpayers.
our findings include the following:

• Low wages and lack of benefits at the 10 largest fast-food companies in the united States cost tax-payers an estimated $3.8 billion per year. Mcdonald’s alone costs taxpayers an estimated$1.2 billion each year.
• While low wages and lack of benefits cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, the seven publicly-traded corporations on this list remain in strong financial condition today. Last year, these companies collectively:

• Earned $7.44 billion in profits;
• Paid $52.7 million to their highest-paid executives;
• Distributed $7.7 billion in dividends and buybacks

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The Pathology of the Rich

On The Real News Network. with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges discusses the decadence of the ruling elite, the psychology of the super rich; their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms. "Après moi, le déluge"

Hedges asserts that the intellectual class serves the system--that allows those at the top to plunder the wealth from the rest of the population-- don't have a job.

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Who Says You Must Be Super Wealthy To Ride Out the Apocalypse?

From DVICE:

"If you're determined to live through any possible doomsday scenario, the thought of climbing into one of those deep underground shelters might give you pause. After all, who wants to live dormitory style with a bunch of strangers when you've become accustomed to the comforts of your own double-wide at the RV park?

Dug over 100 years ago as part of a limestone mining operation, this bunker in Kansas covers 45 acres sitting 100-150 feet below ground. Developer Robert Vicino says that the structure can withstand a 1 megaton nuclear blast just 10 miles away, but there's no word on how many apocalyptic zombies the doors can hold back. The temperature inside hangs constantly in the low 70s, so it should be fairly comfortable as you wait for things to settle down up on the surface.

The shelter is being built by the same Vivos folks who gave us that missile silo bunker for the super rich. The difference here is that bunker is much larger, allowing you to move in complete with your own portable home. As with most RV parks, the costs are somewhat lower too at $1,000 per linear foot for the RV space plus $1,500 per person for food. That means a family of four with a 30-foot rig could move in for $36,000, a whole lot less than the $170,000 you would need to get into the Indiana silo bunker.

Once it's fully developed and sold (sorry, cash only), participants will be encouraged to spend their vacations at the facility to familiarize themselves with underground bunker living. Sounds like fun to me.

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A Note of Appreciation From the Rich

From the creators of the search engine that did not track your every move, Scroogle - Google Watch - now blocked by Google: A Note of Appreciation From the Rich.

"Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.

On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it -- you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us -- and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!

You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to "break out of the mold."

Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking "foreign competition," "the law of supply and demand," "national security," or "the bloated federal deficit." We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening -- instead, you blame "Aliens," "Tree-hugging Environmentalists," "Niggers," "Jews," Welfare Queens," and countless others for your troubled situation.

We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the "work ethic," even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!

Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system -- robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.

So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for "knowing your place" -- without even knowing it!

Links

CIA on Campus

Great Google Book Grab

Namebase is a proper name index only -- it contains names of individuals, groups, and corporations, but no subject categories.

Wikipedia Watch

"Jimmy Wales, the man behind Wikipedia, probably approves of this practice. After he made a fortune in futures trading, he started up Bomis.com in the mid-1990s. Bomis was one of the first sites to scrape the ad-free Open Directory Project, and turn it into a huge mass of paid links and ads, mixed together with porn.

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America's Wealth Fell Nearly 40% in Three Years!

A strong middle class has been what sets America apart from the rest of the world.  If you believe in the reality of the "American Dream", then you must believe in a strong middle-class, as this is what makes the "American Dream" possible.

However, for many, if they were not living the American Dream, came awfully close. That is, until the 2008 financial crisis, which crushed the middle class, in particular, waking an ever increasing many to an evolving nightmare.

According to the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finance : " Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2007 to 2010: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances.", US median household net worth plunged 40% from 2007-2010, "wiping almost two decades of asset accumulation off the books". Specifically, from $77,300 in 2007 to $126,400 in 2010. Moreover, real  income fell as well, from $49,600 in 2007 to $45,800 in 2010, which amounts to a 7.7% decline.

Families in the top 10% of income actually saw their net worth increase over the period, rising from a median of $1.17 million in 2007 to $1.19 million in 2010.

Meanwhile, middle-class families who ranked in the 40th to 60th percentile of income earners reported that their median income fell from $92,300 to $65,900 over the same time period.”

Of course, it was, and continues to be the housing sector that contributed to the bulk of the huge loss. Wages and income in real terms have been stagnating for decades, while the purchasing power of the dollar continues to deteriorate, which also played a part in the recent massive transfer of wealth.  Prior to this time, the many were living far beyond their means.  Because prior to 2008,   your pet snake could, at the very least, obtain a credit card, and more than likely, a mortgage to boot..

The NINJA Loan - No Income No Job No Assets - has lead to the NINJA generation, who not only are drowning in student loan debt, but can't get a decent job, and it only follows that their chances of accumulating assets is slim to none..

From the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, health and home aides, who earn approximately $20,000 per year, are the fastest growing occupations in the nation. Need I say more.

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103,000 Individuals With $15 Trillion in Investible Wealth.

And, that does not include their homes, jewelry, cars, yachts or any other of their luxury goods! Meanwhile the rest of us must accept austerity to one degree or another, "the world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs)1 expanded in population and wealth in 2010 surpassing 2007 pre-crisis levels in nearly every region, according the 15th Annual World Wealth Report released today by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini.

Remember, we’re not talking total wealth here, only investible assets. The Capgemini-Merrill Lynch tallies don’t include the residences wealthy people call home, their diamonds, their luxury cars and yachts, or any other personal luxury goods and collectibles that sit in wealthy households.
[...]
The world’s ultra rich, those 103,000 deep pockets with at least $30 million to invest, could afford to pay off the entire national debt of the world’s biggest deadbeat nations without having to sacrifice a single Rolls or Bentley.

40% of the world's wealthiest live in the United States

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Incarceration Instead of Education?

At one time, it seemed that prison was reserved for violent offenders who posed a threat to public safety and to those who were repeatedly convicted for felonious acts. Those times have changed. The number of federal crimes, newly enacted by Congress, have exploded over the last three decades.

Consider this. From 1925 to 1972, the prison population fluctuated between 100,000 and 200,000 inmates. In 1980, there were less than 500,000 Americans in prison. On June 30, 2002, the number of incarcerated topped 2 million. At the beginning of 2008, the nation’s total inmate count was more than 2.3 million. To be sure, the great majority of America's incarcerated population has one thing in common: poverty. Yet, it's clear the opposite is occurring. Rather than trying to reduce the over 4,000 offenses that carry criminal penalties in the United States Code, more are being created everyday... in addition, lawmakers are upgrading misdemeanors to felonies!

Take, Tonya McDowell, a 33-year-old homeless mom, who was charged with "first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools," for using her babysitter's, Ana Rebecca Marques, address to send her six-year old to school.  Not only that, Ms. Marques was kicked out of her residence at the housing authority.  Can you say, 

Dr. Boyce Watkins, a social justice advocate and Syracuse University professor said the following:

“The message now is that they would rather incarcerate than educate. This is no different from the days when slaves were jailed for trying to learn to read."

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness  would agree, I'm sure.

In another case, in January, Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron Ohio was convicted and sent to jail after she used her father’s address to enroll her two children in a suburban school district, in an effort to better their education.

"Additionally, Williams-Bolar’s father, Edward L. Williams, was charged with a fourth-degree felony of grand theft, in which he and his daughter are charged with defrauding the school system for two years of educational services for their girls. The court determined that sending their children to the wrong school was worth $30,500 in tuition"

What makes these arrests all the more horrifically absurd, is that our nation's elitist thugs not only go free, but are continuing to reap enormous reward.

Links:

Children of Incarcerated Parents Fact Sheet

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What Should Be the Servant has Become the Master.

It's no secret that the ruling class does not want an alert and informed citizenry that can read budgets and ask critical questions. In fact, millions, if not billions of dollars are spent to keep the masses completely in the dark regarding our monetary system. Why? Those who "get it" are far more likely to fight for control.

In an overly acquisitive society such as ours, where the drive to amass obscene amounts of wealth trumps any and all regard for human life, it's time to reform our monetary system. Hence, the reason why it's so important to develop an understanding of what money really is. That is, if we, the masses, wish to not only take back our nation, but, moreover, to maintain our humanity.

Here's the thing, there is so much disinformation circulating, it's not easy to discern the truth. Nevertheless, this is some of what I've learned so far.

Economics is not a science, yet economists - in an effort to make economics, more scientific, I guess - removed "normative values" from its study. What are "normative values"? In one word, morality. Well, removing standards of ethics, honesty and morality from its study might be okay if economics followed the scientific method, and wasn't so intertwined with our survival, but it doesn't, and it is.

Unfortunately, too many economists ignore the historical origins of money, as most are trained to support the status quo...something that is clearly not working. As Alexander del Mar once said, "As a rule, economists do not take the time to study the history of money. It's much easier to imagine it and deduce the principles of this imaginary knowledge."

So, what is money? 

John Locke and Ben Franklin defined money as a pledge for wealth instead of wealth itself. However, it is Aristotle's definition: "money exists not by nature, but by law," that made "money" by it's very nature, a fiat of the law.  Now, despite the ranting and raving of the many against our fiat money system, fiat money, in and of itself, is not the problem; rather, it's fractional reserve banking...the private creation of "money" that is the problem here. Why? In a nutshell, it benefits only those who control its usurious issue.  If the money power is privately controlled, it benefits the few...if publicly controlled, it benefits the many.


It was Jeremy Bentham, best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism, and his influence upon modern welfare economics, who we can thank for redefining usury.  In a series of letters written to Adam Smith, he tried to convince Smith to give up his support for interest rate limits. Originally, the concept of usury was much more comprehensive than the mere charge of interest. According to Stephen Zarlenga, usury was the "antisocial misuse of the money mechanism for private gain".  Our entire monetary system is a usurious kleptocracy. 

Part of the "monetary" agenda consists of substituting the idea of credit for the concept of money, so that we, the people will come to think of money and credit as interchangeable, when that not true at all. Credit is only a promise to pay in the future; whereas money pays at the time of exchange. Not to mention, credit evaporates in a crisis; money does not.

What about Ron Paul and his mission to return to the gold standard?

Essentially, he is mis-defining money as a thing...in other words, as wealth. This will not give our society the ability to advance properly, because there will never be enough gold to keep pace with population and commerce growth. As history has shown,  banks will cheat and issue private bank paper that only pretends to be convertable to gold. One can only imagine the problems that would cause in a crisis. 

So back to Aristotle's defintion.  The only problem with  is that his definition is all too brief. Alexander del Mar later expanded on Aristotle with the following defintion of money:

"What is commonly understood as money has always consisted tangibly of the number of pieces of some material marked by public authority named and understood by the laws and customs that its palpable characteristic: mark of authority; essential characteristic: possession of value defined by law, and it's function: the legal power to pay debts and taxes and the mechanical power to fascilitate the exchange of other objects possessing value." -- Alexander Delmar

In other words, setting aside whatever is used to signify it - paper, metal, feathers, etc. - "money  is an abstract social power embodied in law, as an unconditional means of payment." *

Which brings us to Stephen Zarlenga's three elements (The American Monetary and Financial Securities Act) that he maintains must be included in order to create a monetary system that works for the benefit of all:

1. Put the Federal Reserve system into the US treasury so it is within our sytem of checks and balances.
2. Get rid of the fractional reserve Stop the banks from creating our money supply...any of it. If they create even 10%, they're smart enough to get all of it. Billions are being stolen under cover of law, for not only doing nothing, but for damaging and destroying society.
3. Government prints and spends new money into circulation to pay for infrastructure repair, either printed on paper or inserted on an account The key is that it's not debt; it's money.  Moreover, human infrastructure must be included:  health care and  education, as you cannot build the hardware without healthy, intelligent people. .

Source:

* Stephen Zarlenga, author of the ‘National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010’ (renamed The American Monetary and Financial Securities Act by Rep Dennis Kucinich, which gets rid of a private credit system, and puts into place, a government money system),  founder and director of the American Monetary Institute, and author of The Lost Science of Money

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Gradual Subversion of the Democratic Party

Many of the traits that we either have or admire in other people...that make us human - loyalty, trustworthiness, faithfulness, a tendency to seek out heroes, etc. - unfortunately, also makes us more likely to ignore evidence that contradicts what we believe to be true. In fact, the evidence to the contrary can manifest itself as large as an elephant, yet we still ignore. In other words, our humanness makes us vulnerable to master manipulators who may very well be less than human.

This brings me to why I believe in the co-option of the left.  The modern liberal – typically associated with the Democratic Party - fears the extremes of wealth and poverty under unrestrained capitalism; thinks all citizens are entitled to the basic necessities of life; champions the protection of the environment, and puts the welfare of all people above the ability of a few to profit enormously from what we’ve been led to believe is the “free market”.

Unlike the Republicans - who,  regardless of their status in life, seem to support the less humanitarian, less "bleeding heart" values of those who dwell at the apex of society - the positions that the Democrats  usually take, make the Democratic Party, in particular, more threatening to the powerful and wealthy. Simply put, the Democrats [used to] believe in speaking truth to power, whereas the ruling class is not interested in truth...only in growing and keeping all of their their wealth and power to themselves.

Therefore, it makes sense, that if the elitists want(ed) to secure their power base, throwing the Democrats/progressives/liberals off their scent...even better, engaging them in the task of defending/supporting their "cause" just might make their road a little easier.  So, why not push their agenda through the Democratic Party; albeit, much more covertly than they do, through the Republican Party.

How?

That's simple, when you consider the aforementioned traits that make us human. It's all about making good use of timing; infiltration, semantics (Orwellian doublespeak); consensus making -  placement of "change agents" or "facilitators" and "divide and conquer" technique (Delphi technique), and let's not forget the Hegelian dialectic (problem-reaction-solution), and/or psychological warfare.  In other words, deceiving the liberals by embedding their operations in issues that appeal to the left.

The evidence for this transformation is right in front of our eyes.  Ever since President Clinton took office, the Democratic Party has gradually moved so far to the right that it's transformed into the Republican party. Moreover, from "the environment" to "family planning", the issues or causes that the Democrats have traditionally supported have been, more or less, co-opted by the ruling class to mask their true motives. 

“I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.”

MR. RUSSERT: Let me pick up on some interviews that you’ve given this week as you’ve been touring, talking about your book, “The Age of Turbulence.” You said this: “I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” Republican?

MR. GREENSPAN: I’m sure he doesn’t like that joke, but if you look at his record compared to what I think appropriate policy ought to be, he’s for free trade, he’s for globalization, he was for welfare reform, fiscal restraint and—true enough, he’s not a Republican. I’m sorry, President Clinton, I didn’t mean to say that. But I must say, I had to follow an awful lot of your particular guidelines and found them very compatible with my own.

Remember DADT/DOMA-signing President Clinton promising that NAFTA wouldn't hurt a bit? Welfare Reform Act of 1996? Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act? DADT?

Fast forward a bit and we have President Bush 2.0 Obama who is a master at cloaking his almost neo-con "actions" in moderate, democratic rhetoric.  Obama, who Jeremy Scahill called "Blackwater's New Sugar Daddy" has upgraded America’s network of overseas detention facilities or ‘black sites’; approved the assassination of American citizens; signed a defense bill that blocks his bid to close Guantanamo Bay;  supports a 3-year extension of Patriot Act surveillance; extending the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, etc. Sure President Obama throws a bone to his base every once in a while, just like the Clinton administration did, but, for the most part, it's just a bone. Unless he's got some super secret strategy I'm unaware,  President Obama is as "Republican" as former President Clinton.

Regarding the co-opting of issues,  take global warming, of which a very strong argument can be made proving it's not man-made.  To be sure, the issue of global warming falls under the category of a "liberal" cause; however, if you dig deep enough and research Agenda 21, "sustainable development" and Global Biodiversity Assessment (the blueprint for Agenda 21) you will find a huge profit motive whose carbon reducing methods exploit all of us, but especially, those who have the least.

In the US, tighter controls on levels of consumption, and standards of living, intrusive carbon taxes, tolls, massive land grabs, conservation easement, zoning restrictions, energy audits, forcing small business to become energy efficient,  etc. are supposed to take place. Some already have.

"... an ‘agricultural world’ in which most human beings are peasants, should be able to support 5 to 7 billion people, probably more if the large agricultural population were supported by an industry-promoting agricultural activity. In contrast, a reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be one billion…” -- U.N. Global Biodiversity Assessment Report, states at page 773:””Whittaker and Likens (1975)

Former President Kennedy defined a liberal as the following:

“ ...someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'.

Granted, as a 'Liberal', he didn't make it far, and maybe that's why he was our second to last liberal president. Former President Johnson was probably our last.

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Are the World's Wealthiest People Pulling Out While We Continue to Drink the Kool-Aid?

The world is chock-full of money, so why does everyone seem to be getting poorer? Well, not everyone.  Speak of the devil, what is going on in the world of the elite?  Because they seem to know something we don't. But what else is new?

First things first. The Federal Reserve plans on stepping up its expansionary monetary policy even further in November, and the rest of the world is responding accordingly, by devaluing its own currency. Quantitative easing is the name of the game. This Fed policy is supposed to keep interest rates as low as possible by purchasing government securities, or other securities from the market, thereby flooding financial institutions with capital in an effort to promote increased lending and liquidity.

Now, keep in mind that the interest rate is essentially the price of money, and although, people like former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan would have you believe he promoted the idea of free markets, he did not. Because, at the same time he's preaching the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism, his heavy hand was busy intervening, controlling the price of money (interest rates).

You will find a good explanation of debt monetization here.

Anyway, Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz thinks the ultra-loose monetary policies by the Federal Reserve is throwing the world into chaos rather than helping global economic recovery.

"The irony is that the Fed is creating all this liquidity with the hope that it will revive the American economy. It's doing nothing for the American economy, but it's causing chaos over the rest of the world. It's a very strange policy that they are pursuing." -- Joseph Stiglitz

Back to the wealthy.  Why the hurry to move assets out of the financial system? Do they know something we don't?
Well, they know one thing for sure: the Federal Reserve will go as far as it takes to protects their ASSets.

By all appearances, the way the wealthiest people in the world are rushing to gain exclusive access to real gold, as they buy it up by the ton, gold just might become extremely scarce in the future, as if it's not already. 

Even the Federal Reserve is selling its paper gold and buying up real gold.  Everyone knows if the financial system collapses, paper gold is worthless, right?  The price of real physical gold goes up as paper gold trades lower and lower and lower. Like everything else, precious metals will never find their true free trade value. That's the scam plan, anyway. Gold bubbles are created the same way other bubbles are created – by converting a limited item to unlimited, by fiat.

JPMorgan reopened its New York gold vault.

JPMorgan has reopened an underground gold vault in New York that was mothballed in the 1990s, in the latest sign of the soaring appetite for bullion.

Investors are piling money into gold in record quantities, pushing the price on Friday to a record nominal high of more than $1,320 a troy ounce. That has made the vaulting business highly lucrative, since banks often charge a small percentage of the value of the gold stored.

And why are insiders in such a rush to get out? 

Insider Selling To Buying: 2,341 To 1 "...insiders in these names sold a combined $200 million in stock in the last week alone (following Oracle insider sales of $223 million in the prior week). Insiders can. not. wait. to. get. out. fast. enough."

So, as more and more high income Americans are reduced to living paycheck to paycheck and record numbers apply for government anti-poverty programs, those at the top are cashing out.

Thirty percent of workers with salaries of $100,000 or more said they are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 21 percent last year, according to the survey of 4,400 workers nationwide.

Overall, 61 percent said they always or usually live paycheck to paycheck, up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

To cope, Americans have been cutting back on how much they save.

Some 21 percent of all respondents said they have reduced their 401(k) contributions or personal savings in the last six months in order to get by, while 23 percent of the $100,000-and-over group said they had done so.

While some Americans have cut back on what they set aside, others have stopped saving all together.

Links:

Calculate your net worth, if you dare.

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The Last Three Decades of Swag Flag.

In The Sopranos episode, "Luxury Lounge" the morally obscene world of mobsters juxtaposes the meaningless existence of Hollywood swag, when Christopher goes to Hollywood to make a movie. While there, actor Ben Kingsley introduces him to the "goody bags" celebrities receive just for showing up, and he is overcome with envy and mugs Lauren Bacall for her $35,000 swag bag.

In a nutshell, the juxtaposition and intertwining of these two worlds, in this episode, is what America has become in the last three decades. The celebrity "swag bag" — the most prestigious of "bags" can total $100,000 — epitomizes our paradoxical system that rewards greed and punishes need. Showering thousands of dollars of products on people who can afford to buy the items 100 times over makes little sense when over 45 million, mostly working Americans, go without or must ration the essentials, yet this is the way our system is designed to operate.

"Picking through $35,000 gift baskets is disgusting and shameful. My suggestion was to have the Academy commit to [charitable] contributions in the name of the winners." - Edward Norton

The "swag bag" is symbolic of what occurs everywhere in our culture. People who truly need basic necessities - food, shelter and health care - must navigate through an incredibly punitive system just to obtain, what amounts to crumbs, while those of us in society who need the least - working mostly in white-collar environments - have access to free food and stuff on an ongoing basis. Most meetings, seminars, receptions, training, etc. that take place fairly consistently in a white collar atmosphere, usually include at the very least, free food, and the higher up the ladder the more of those type of events one attends, and the better the food and freebies.

On the other hand, lower income areas, many times do not even have access to grocery stores, hence little if no access to fresh produce and healthy food. Not only that, if they do need assistance, they must conquer countless bureaucratic stumbling blocks, making their way through a maze of paperwork and red tape.

While it's true that American hunger - food insecure more accurately describes hunger in America as it refers to the inability of people to obtain sufficient food for their household, and recurring food insecurity and involuntary lack of access to food can lead to malnutrition - is not on the scale of third world countries, many Americans often times must choose between food and rent; food and health care, etc. If healthy food is available, and that's a big if in some areas, it's more costly, forcing many to purchase highly fattening food with very little nutrition, if any, hence the obesity problem so prevalent in lower income areas. Of the 36.4 million Americans, including 12.4 million children, only 10% of that total are on welfare.

As actions speak louder than words, we believe Paris Hilton deserves the 30 swag bags of bling she supposedly took from Sundance more than children deserve to eat healthy food. Why? Because she's entitled, as are so many undeserving Americans who are either born into the right family, or are ruthless enough to climb to the top, or just plain lucky. Obviously, there are many talented and deserving Americans who have "made it" to the top, who understand that they did not get there all by themselves, as well.

Overall, our society punishes the truly needy, as if they deserve their plight, and until deep structual change takes place, the rich will keep getting richer and the poor, poorer because our system is designed to make it happen that way.

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Red-Scare Rhetoric Still Packs a Mean Punch

If you ask any American today what they think of McCarthyism, the vast majority will condemn it as a dark period in our nation's history yet more than likely these same people will cringe at anything associated with "Communism" even if what is associated, has nothing at all to do with that form of government.

Conservative politicians, very aware of the power "McCarthyism" still holds, figured out that by appropriating certain parts of the English language under the banner of communism, they could make most Americans vote counter to their own interests. In other words, they select benign words; soak them in a "communist red" solution until the whole spectrum of "red-scare rhetoric" is represented, ranging from "commie pinko" to full-blown "soviet crimson”, and then apply them to anything that interferes with their agenda. This tactic is so powerful it can convince the majority to deliver themselves into the hands of the enemy.

"Socialized" is an example of one of the words this group has chosen to soak in their "communist red" solution, allowing the word to absorb just enough of the color to manifest a distinct shade of pink. Any government-sponsored program that tries to level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots is labeled with this pink word. Yet, what about all the Republicans who are in favor of publicly funding defense? What about publicly funding capitalism?

If the word socialized is defined as any program that is publicly financed or under government control, our defense program, and capitalism are most certainly, socialized. True, President Bush is trying to semi-privatize the military by using independent contractors in Iraq; however, defense and military spending consumes most of his budget, therefore it is socialized.

In contrast to the word, socialized, the term capitalism is pink-free, all-American, and totally supported by all those who circulate among the right-winged, wealthy elite. Yet despite the American flag, wrapped letters, only a very small part of the private sector reap the rewards of capitalism, and "we the people" always pay for its failure, especially every time the government bails out an industry or company. Not only that, between corporate welfare, rules, and regulations or lack thereof, created to benefit the rich, and a 28th grade level of education - or the money to hire people with that level of education required to figure it all out - American capitalism sounds pretty socialized to me.

As long as the socialized program does not enable or prop up the part of the population who struggle to make ends meet or who may have hit hard times, then, not only is it OK to bankroll, according to conservatives, its perfectly patriotic to run a deficit so large we can barely keep track of what it truly is.

Those who embody conservatism, whether they like Ayn Rand or not, embrace her egoistic ethics and believe in her "every man for himself" philosophy, totally discounting the importance of social structure and co-operation that allowed humanity to survive and evolve over time.

I am certainly not advocating Socialism, merely pointing out that just as each one of us is a complex composite of many different qualities, our society is also a composite of capitalism, democracy and yes, even socialism. Our job is to adjust, balance, and tweak the ratio of each element to create the kind of society our Founding Fathers so eloquently established in the Constitution.

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