FIGHT BACK? Wedding Blues - The New Superclass, Trends to Barbarism, Army Suicides Reach One a Day: Economic Recovery of the Few (Very Few) Poor Girls

(If throwing a contribution Pottersville2's way won't break your budget in these difficult financial times, I really need it, and would wholeheartedly appreciate it. Anything you can afford will make a huge difference in this blog's lifetime.)


I've been thinking for a long time now about the end of this blog's existence. This week I lost my last kind benefactor (probably due to economic or psychic pain - you choose), and see the endpoint much more clearly now. By the way, did you ever stop to realize that the dream of a strong American middle class died with those tax breaks for those at the top, the benefits of which were supposed to trickle down (gently, of course) on the rest of the country. Pretty silly country, eh?

Speaking of that most "wonderful" wedding for a poor little rich (only child) girl who actually had her parents' undivided attention throughout her life (well, as much as that were possible with two parents who worked in big-time, well-paid jobs), the thought that keeps reverberating through my head is how much more self-indulgent could this wedding event have been?

Let's look at the facts. Here are two people who came from modest means (Bill less than Hillary, of course), but both of whom were cosseted throughout their lives by powerful people around them who never faltered in their attentions, and their child of luxury who not only had the absolute best education possible, but was also gifted with plastic surgery to "correct" any minor physical deformities. Right. Like her club foot and harelip. I may seem a little bit bitter when I remember how her parents sold out our chances for real "change" during the 90's due to their own self indulgence (and all that free moolah), but really. A $5-million dollar wedding for these educated bumpkins? I'm guessing that just meeting David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger - let alone deciding to work towards their ultimate goals - does count for a little.

And the fact that they so kindly allowed you and me to give them a gift from the taxpayers amounting to $2 million dollars is just another bit of no-shame self indulgence from the crowd who has helped to bring you the future: your increasing pauperization. Enjoy that E- , Hollywood Tonight coverage! You helped pay for it. (Dr. Stuart Bramhall, a fantastic woman leader, has some well-chosen words (and her book is truly astounding about how the CIA chased her out of Seattle when she attempted to help some ex-Black Panthers start a museum) about the incredibly dark origins of our current President (and his subsequent acquisition by those CIA connections), and why it was so easy for him to break his campaign "promises." Yes. If it astounds me, who genuinely liked his persona (because you know how tough that's getting to be these days), you may also be interested in these facts.)

And, oh yes. It is definitely coming home to us from many other sources as well. From the horse's mouth (emphasis marks added - Ed.):

Coming Home

I would like to tell you that America, the nation you love and chose to serve, appreciates your sacrifices and honors your service. But in reality, those who oppose the war and occupation believe you are at best misguided, at worst, a murderer. For the rest, their gratitude and appreciation is all pretense, a charade choreographed by war criminals to further mislead an uninformed and apathetic citizenry of sheep in order to encourage their continued indifference and/or support for their agenda of killing and destruction. For most, members of the military are cannon fonder, an expendable commodity to be exploited when political leaders and corporate magnates believe it profitable and in their interest.

Henry Kissinger made this quite clear, “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”

In addition, when you are no longer useful and have served their purpose, they will abandon you to face the demons of war alone, no longer a "hero" but a nuisance, a burden on the economy, and a reminder of a war America would rather forget.

Professor and ex- Asst. Treasury Secretary, Paul Craig Roberts, under Raygun says "Let them eat cake?" (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

Chelsea's Wedding

It is not unusual for members of the diminishing upper middle class to drop $20,000 or $30,000 on a big wedding. But for celebrities this large sum wouldn’t cover the wedding dress or the flowers. When country music star Keith Urban married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, their wedding cost $250,000. This large sum hardly counts as a celebrity wedding. When mega-millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump married model Melania Knauss, the wedding bill was $1,000,000. The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.

Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state

. . . Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding. The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them.

Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office? How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office? Who was Blair really serving?

These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked. While Chelsea’s wedding guests eat a $11,000 wedding cake and admire $250,000 floral displays, Lisa Roberts in Ohio is struggling to raise contributions for her food pantry in order to feed 3,000 local people, whose financial independence was destroyed by investment bankers, job offshoring, and unaffordable wars. The Americans dependent on Lisa Roberts’ food pantry are living out of vans and cars. Those with a house roof still over their heads are packed in as many as 14 per household according to the Chillicothe Gazette in Ohio.

The Chilicothe Gazette reports that Lisa Roberts’ food pantry has “had to cut back to half rations per person in order to have something for everyone who needed it.”

Theresa DePugh stepped up to the challenge and had the starving Ohioans write messages on their food pantry paper plates to President Obama, who has just obtained another $33 billion to squander on a pointless war in Afghanistan that serves no purpose whatsoever except the enrichment of the military/security complex and its shareholders.

Does this strike you as funny? Rather odd priorities of someone supposedly from modest means himself?

The Guardian (UK) reports that according to US government reports, one million American children go to bed hungry, while the Obama regime squanders hundreds of billions of dollars killing women and children in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Guardian’s reporting relies on a US government report from the US Department of Agriculture, which concludes that 50 million people in the US - one in six of the population - were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy in 2008. US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that he expected the number of hungry Americans to worsen when the survey for 2010 is released.

Today in the American Superpower, one of every six Americans is living on food stamps.The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive. The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain.

And the American sheeple remain acquiescent.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, How the Economy Was Lost, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.

I think this next article will also curl your hair (whatever hair you've got left after this national hair-pulling decade). (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

Trends to Barbarism and Prospects for Socialism

By James Petras Western societies and states are moving inexorably toward conditions resembling barbarism; structural changes are reversing decades of social welfare and subjecting labor, natural resources and the wealth of nations to raw exploitation, pillage and plunder, driving living standards downward and provoking unprecedented levels of discontent.

We will proceed by outlining the economic, political, and military processes driving this process of decay and decomposition and follow with an account of the mass popular responses to their own deteriorating conditions. The deep structural changes accompanying the rise of barbarism become the basis for considering the prospects for socialism in the 21st century.

The Rising Tide of Barbarism

In ancient society ‘barbarism’ and its carriers ‘the barbarians’ were envisioned as threats by outside invaders from outlying regions descending on Rome or Athens. In contemporary Western societies, the barbarians came from within, among the elite of society, intent on imposing a new order which destroys the social fabric and productive base of society, converting stable livelihoods into insecure deteriorating conditions of daily life.

The key to contemporary barbarism is found in the deep structures of the imperial state and economy. These include:

The ascendancy of a financial-speculative elite which has pillaged trillions of dollars from savers, investors, mortgage carriers, consumers and the state, siphoning enormous resources from the productive economy into the hands of a parasitic elite embedded in the state and paper economy. The militaristic political elite overseeing a state of permanent warfare since the middle of the last century. Endless wars, cross border assassinations, state terror and the suspension of traditional constitutional guarantees have led to the concentration of dictatorial powers, arbitrary jailing, torture and the denial of habeas corpus.

In the midst of a deep economic recession and stagnation, high levels of state spending on economic and military empire building at the expense of the domestic economy and living standards, reflects the subordination of the local economy to the activities of the imperial state. Corruption at the top in all aspects of state and business activity – from state procurement to privatization to subsidies for the super-rich – encourages the growth of international crime from top to bottom, the lumpenization of the capitalist class and a state where law and order have fallen into disrepute.

As a result of the high costs of empire building and the pillage by the financial oligarchy, the socio-economic burden has been placed directly on the shoulders of wage and salaried workers, pensioners and the self-employed resulting in long-term, large-scale downward mobility. With job losses and the disappearance of well paying jobs, home foreclosures skyrocket and the stable middle and working classes shrink and are forced to extend their hours of labor and years of work.

As imperial wars spread across the world targeting entire populations, via sustained bombings and clandestine terror operations, they generate opposing terrorist networks, which also target civilians in markets, transport and public spaces. The world resembles a Hobbesian world of ‘all against all’.

Please read on as it is quite specific about a whole host of events which no one among the sheeple of the U.S. cares to examine closely.

And, of course, the suicides rise - and that's just those suicides - I wonder if anyone's publicizing the number of suicides of those suffering from this economic catastrophe - like the MSM did with the fake numbers about the suicides of the bankers jumping out of Wall Street windows after 1929 (emphasis marks added - Ed.)?

Army Suicides Reach One a Day; Epidemic Spreads to National Guard and Reserves Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

Thursday, July 29, 2010 The U.S. Army, along with the National Guard and Army Reserves, averaged a suicide a day in June, making what already was a bad year even worse. Thirty-two soldiers, including 11 in the Guard and Reserve, killed themselves last month, a rate of suicide not seen since the Vietnam War. Seven of the suicides took place (in) Iraq or Afghanistan. During the first six months of 2010, 65 members of the Guard and Reserve took their own lives, compared with 42 for the same period in 2009. Although the strain of multiple deployments is often cited as a major cause in the rise in military suicides, this is only occasionally a factor in National Guard and Reserves cases. Some observers feel that the military suffers from a drastic shortage of mental health professionals.

National Guard and Reserve Suicide Rates Climbing (by David Goldstein, McClatchy Newspapers) Marine Corps Tries to Cope with Rising Suicide Rate (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov) Pentagon Begins Massive Suicide Study (by Jamie Mei Cheng, AllGov) More U.S. Soldiers This Year Have Died of Suicide than in Combat (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

And then we meet "The New Superclass!" Right. The people who totally outsmarted us (US). (And don't fear the source, kids, it's far more reliable than the MSM we've been paying attention to all our lives.)

The New Superclass

Video Report

Al Jazeera

A new breed has emerged; they set the global agenda, ride on Gulfstreams and manage the credit crunch in their spare time.

They are anything but elected; they are entrepreneurs and entertainers, media moguls and former politicians - the self-made super rich who are using their money to lay down a new set of global rules.

They have more in common with each other than with their countrymen, set apart by their ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people around the globe.

So where did this new global aristocracy come from and who is keeping them in check?

Why should Oprah Winfrey have the ear of President Obama, and who gave Shakira the right to dictate education policy?

But then again, when you have as much money as Bill Gates and you are prepared to give it over to a good cause who is going to stop you?

It is all well and good until the revolving door spins in the wrong direction. Empire talks to Christopher Hitchens about Henry Kissinger and his life beyond elected power - it does not seem to have changed that much.

Is the world suffering from a global governance gap? Should we be worried that the superclass seems to have an ever-expanding reach that bypasses governments and remains unchecked?

Gee whiz. I certainly am. Be sure to read the comments below the article linked above, friends. They are pricelsss.

And did I already mention "recovery" for the few - very few - yet? Keep reading for the ever-present, upcoming New Deal (and not from the progressives this time).

Economic Recovery for the Few

Where is this elusive recovery? The banks, some say, have "recovered." Yet they remain dependent on Washington, they do not make the loans needed for a general recovery, and many medium and small banks keep collapsing. The stock market shows no recovery. The Dow index was 14,000 in late 2007 when capitalism hit the fan, and it is around 10,000 now. The Nasdaq market index was 2800 then and is 2300 now. Everywhere else - unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, depressed housing market, and so on - no recovery in sight. Yet, my search finally found genuine recovery for one group, and its recovery offers a better policy to treat this crisis.

Every year, two major companies catering to rich investors co-author a survey of their clients. Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management's World Wealth Report covers the two groups that interest them: High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) and Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals (Ultra-HNWIs).

The first group counts all individuals with at least $1 million of "investible assets" in addition to the values of their primary residence, art works, collectibles, etc. The second group includes individuals with at least $30 million of such investible assets.

Their latest Report, covering the year 2009, finds 10 million HNWIs in the world that year: 3.1 million in North America, while Europe and Asia-Pacific each had 3.0 million. The rest of the world had a mere 0.9 million of the rich and richer.

The 10 million HNWIs -- in a global population of 6.8 billion in 2009 -- amounted to 0.14 per cent of the earth's people. Together, they owned a total of $39 trillion in "investible assets."

To see what this means: in 2009, the US GDP (total output of goods and services) was $14.6 trillion. The combined GDPs of the world's 9 richest countries (US, Japan, China, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, and Spain) totaled less in 2009 than the investible assets of the world's HNWIs.

During 2009, as tens of millions lost their jobs, the number of HNWIs rose by 17.1 per cent and their combined wealth rose by 18.9 per cent.

They had a genuine "recovery."

HNWIs regained in wealth most of what they lost in 2008. No wonder they celebrate "recovery" while the rest of the world wonders (or rages at) what they are talking about.

In the US, for example, the HNWI population grew by 16.6 per cent in 2009 while the US GDP fell by 2.4 per cent.

Only 1 per cent of all HNWIs were Ultra-HNWIs, but what a group that was and is.

Ultra-HNWIs alone owned 35.5 per cent of the $39 trillion owned by all 10 million HNWIs. And they recovered more during 2009 than their fellow HNWIs.

Does this tell you anything? Read on for the rest of the sickening news. Here are a few more revolting tidbits:

. . . What notions of fairness, decency, ethics, or democracy could justify such economic performance, especially in a time of global economic crisis? Recall as well that these same rich and richer people contributed so significantly (as industrial employers, bankers, and investors) to generating that global economic crisis.

Let's now concentrate on the HNWIs in just the US (including its Ultra-HNWIs). They numbered 2.9 million in 2009: well under 1 per cent of US citizens. Their investible assets totaled $12.09 trillion. For 2009, the total US budgetary deficit was $1.7 trillion. Had the US government levied an economic emergency tax of a modest 15 per cent on only the HNWI's investible assets, it could have erased its entire 2009 deficit. Over 99 per cent of US citizens would have been exempted from that tax.

The European, Japanese, and other governments could have treated the crisis likewise in their countries. Then governments would not have had to borrow trillions. They would instead have taxed the super rich tiny minority a small portion of its immense wealth. Those governments would not then have had to turn to lenders (often those same super rich).

There would be no current "sovereign debt crisis" in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, etc., and no need for the resulting austerities to satisfy those lenders. Republicans would have no "deficit, deficit" drum to beat hoping for election-day gains.

Taxing the HNWIs and Ultra-HNWIs would be the policy of governments responsive to the needs of their working-class majorities instead of their rich and super-rich patrons. Austerity is not the only policy. Modestly taxing the wealth of HNWIs is the far better policy choice.

The two wealth management companies that cater to HNWIs have kindly provided us all with the facts and figures needed to support the better policy.

. . . The business and political leaders generated by the last 30 years of neoliberal capitalism simply assumed that they could impose the costs of their crisis on their countries' people. That assumption is now being contested. The European people are beginning to fight back. And here, in the US?

Not so much.

Really.

And Just for Laughs (of course!):

Is this our Ken Starr?

Could someone, please, appoint a special prosecutor for these crimes? I hate Pete Peterson and those he represents more than almost anyone today (or anything/one I have ever hated). Cause I'm a lover, not a hater - usually. (Yes, emphasis marks added for your viewing convenience (and increase in levity) - Ed.)

In Retrospect, There Were A Bunch Of Things Accused Ponzi Schemer Kenneth Starr Didn’t See Coming

Say what you will about alleged Ponzi schemer Ken Starr, but the guy wasn’t stupid. He knew how to leverage his “friendship” with Blackstone co-founder Pete Peterson into big name clients for his scam operation and he kept them going for quite some time. Still, he apparently wasn’t the most perceptive guy in the bunch. As previously mentioned, he didn’t realize that obscenely flashy purchases and a high-profile, rather than laying low and not sticking out, might make people go, “hey wait a second…” and he apparently also didn’t realize that when you marry a stripper, known for her “pole-dancing prowess,” she might be proud of/want to publicly pat herself on the back over said skills.

Two days before his arrest for allegedly cheating clients out of $59 million, financial adviser Kenneth Starr presided at one of Harry Cipriani’s coveted front-room tables, with a view of the Plaza and Central Park, and grinned when his wife, Diane, protested, not very seriously, that she’d thought their third-anniversary dinner would be a private affair. Diane Passage, 34, was wearing a black Gucci dress with a scoop neck that kept slipping to expose more of her Brobdingnagian breasts than the designer had intended — only when she got home would she realize she had it on backward — but Starr, 66, was proud of his fourth wife’s provocative figure. He liked to brag about her pole-dancing prowess. Only when she brought up her past employment as a dancer at Scores strip club did he wince. Why, though? she would ask him. She had nothing to hide.

Yeah, and she’s probably pretty damn pleased with the fact that those moves were what landed her her big-shot husband in the first place. Think, Starr, think!

Diane and another dancer were approached at Scores, in Midtown Manhattan, one night in late 2004, she recounts, by a middle-aged couple enjoying a racy night out. Next thing they knew, Ken and Marisa Starr invited them to dinner. The dancers agreed — for $1,000 each — as long as dinner was the only thing on the menu. Soon thereafter the Starrs took them to the Four Seasons, Diane recalls, then to Bouley, then to Per Se: $1,000 for each dancer, each evening. (Marisa says she played no part in any such financial arrangements, and merely allowed Ken to take Diane to social events because her own declining health kept her increasingly housebound.)

For nearly a year, Diane relates, the $1,000 inner dates continued, though now just à deux: Ken and Diane. Oddly, says Diane, Marisa set up almost all the dates; she was in control. But Diane exercised a control of her own.

“During that whole year and into early the next year,” she says, “I never had sex with Ken.” Only when Starr moved to the Regency Hotel did Diane begin staying overnight with him, she says, while the Starrs negotiated their separation. She would have been happy, she says, to have Starr merely support her and her son. According to Diane, it was he who insisted on giving her a huge engagement ring, the Las Vegas wedding, the jewels and designer clothes. And it was he, she says, who pushed to buy a large, new apartment. “I had never owned anything in my life,” Diane says quietly, “so Ken said, ‘Let’s buy a condo.’ It was my dream place. Now it’s become a nightmare.”

Poor little rich girls.