Posts
More proof that not only do we have (and have had for a very long time) an oligarchy in solid control of the U.S., but that to place the proper type of frosting on their cake, they display absolutely no conscience (or much of a sense of morally questionable choices) as they throw around the money that they illegally extracted from the lower classes on shiny trinkets.
Hell (fresh Hell!), they are going on TV now and bragging about it!
For one frightening example we have the Warren Buffett "friend" previously described as a pretty smart guy.
I'll never forget the first time I heard self-advertised "average guy" from Omaha, Warren Buffett, sing Charlie Munger's praises as a smart businessman, investment guru and his best friend, on Lou Rukeyser's "Wall Street Week" back in the 80's.
I knew he was his partner soon thereafter, but I had no idea who "Charlie" really was.
Awwwww, and we all (once upon a time) thought sweetie pie was too much a "man of the people" to be a plutocrat? (I hope Lou is turning over and over in his grave.)
Mar 27, 2014
Billionaire Warren Buffett (Credit: AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
The Real March Madness: Warren Buffett’s Grotesque Sweepstakes
In the face of rampant poverty, one of the world's richest men is busy bragging about his billion-dollar NCAA bet
In historians’ quest to find the perfect anecdote to summarize this era of unprecedented economic inequality, they confront an embarrassment of riches (pun intended).
There are the stories of billionaires like Tom Perkins, Stephen Schwarzman and Ken Langone insisting that criticism of inequality is akin to Nazism.
There are more subtle antics at the local level — for instance, there is news this week that in New York (aka one of the most unequal states in America) Republican legislators are aiming to create a special sales-tax exemption for those buying private jets.
And there is, of course, the tale of the billionaire Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charles Munger, telling everyone to “thank god” for massive bank bailouts, and then telling the poor to “suck it in and cope” with their own problems.
Each of these makes a good modern-day analogue to the legend of Marie Antoinette’s attitude toward the proles during the 18th century. Yet, none of these examples rise to truly iconic “let them eat cake” status in the way the recent episode involving Warren Buffett does.
I’m referring, of course, to Buffett’s headline-grabbing deal with Quicken Loans to give away $1 billion to anyone who can perfectly predict the outcome of every game in the NCAA basketball tournament.
Buffett and Quicken Loans’ money was never really in jeopardy during this year’s contest, as one mathematician estimated that the odds of predicting a perfect bracket are one in 128 billion. However, that’s not the point because with no winner this year, Buffett says he wants to make it easier for a contestant to win next year.
“It would not have bothered me to pay out the billion,” he boasted.
Look, I’m as much of a fan of March Madness as the average guy, and I understand all the excitement surrounding this “who wants to be a billionaire?” sweepstakes. However, when you take a moment to think about this spectacle in the context of the current economic moment and recent economic history, it is downright grotesque.
Poverty is rampant. Wages are stagnating. Three quarters of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. The unemployment rate remains persistently high and inequality has hit Gilded Age levels. Much of this has been exacerbated by a housing crisis and mortgage fraud.
Yet, in the face of such emergencies, one of the world’s richest men joined a mortgage lender that sold shady loans to brag about their collective wealth. That’s the obvious takeaway as Buffett runs to fawning news outlets to proudly proclaim that it wouldn’t faze him in the least to write a billion-dollar check.
(David Sirota is a staff writer at "PandoDaily" and the best-selling author of the books Hostile Takeover, The Uprising and Back to Our Future. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.)
And if you're enthralled by the investment guru games players so ably trivializing their winnings (your financial lives) for fun, ultimately at our nation's expense, you'll really love how other "winners" of the financial "games" are using their booty.
To purchase your booty.
American democracy used to depend on political parties that more or less represented most of us. Political scientists of the 1950s and 1960s marveled at American “pluralism,” by which they meant the capacities of parties and other membership groups to reflect the preferences of the vast majority of citizens.
Then around a quarter century ago, as income and wealth began concentrating at the top, the Republican and Democratic Parties started to morph into mechanisms for extracting money, mostly from wealthy people.
Professor Robert Reich, ex-Labor Secretary, etc., etc., thinks we aren't a plutocracy/oligarchy quite yet, but I wonder if his sight problem isn't that people at the top of the academic/government world just haven't been affected enough yet.
The New Billionaire Political Bosses
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
26 March 14
harles and David Koch should not be blamed for having more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans put together. Nor should they be condemned for their petrochemical empire. As far as I know, they’ve played by the rules and obeyed the laws.
They’re also entitled to their own right-wing political views. It’s a free country.
But in using their vast wealth to change those rules and laws in order to fit their political views, the Koch brothers are undermining our democracy. That’s a betrayal of the most precious thing Americans share.
The Kochs exemplify a new reality that strikes at the heart of America. The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself the problem. The problem is that political power tends to rise to where the money is. And this combination of great wealth with political power leads to greater and greater accumulations and concentrations of both — tilting the playing field in favor of the Kochs and their ilk, and against the rest of us.
America is not yet an oligarchy, but that’s where the Koch’s and a few other billionaires are taking us.
American democracy used to depend on political parties that more or less represented most of us. Political scientists of the 1950s and 1960s marveled at American “pluralism,” by which they meant the capacities of parties and other membership groups to reflect the preferences of the vast majority of citizens.
Then around a quarter century ago, as income and wealth began concentrating at the top, the Republican and Democratic Parties started to morph into mechanisms for extracting money, mostly from wealthy people.
Finally, after the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” decision in 2010, billionaires began creating their own political mechanisms, separate from the political parties. They started providing big money directly to political candidates of their choice, and creating their own media campaigns to sway public opinion toward their own views.
So far in the 2014 election cycle, “Americans for Prosperity,” the Koch brother’s political front group, has aired more than 17,000 broadcast TV commercials, compared with only 2,100 aired by Republican Party groups.
"Americans for Prosperity" has also been outspending top Democratic super PACs in nearly all of the Senate races Republicans are targeting this year.
In seven of the nine races the difference in total spending is at least two-to-one and Democratic super PACs have had virtually no air presence in five of the nine states.
The Kochs have spawned several imitators. Through the end of February, four of the top five contributors to 2014 super-PACs are now giving money to political operations they themselves created, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
For example, billionaire TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his son, Todd, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, have their own $25 million political operation called “Ending Spending.” The group is now investing heavily in TV ads against Republican Representative Walter Jones in a North Carolina primary (they blame Jones for too often voting with Obama).
Their ad attacking Democratic New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen for supporting Obama’s health-care law has become a template for similar ads funded by the Koch’s “Americans for Prosperity” in Senate races across the country.
When billionaires supplant political parties, candidates are beholden directly to the billionaires. And if and when those candidates win election, the billionaires will be completely in charge.
At this very moment, Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (worth an estimated $37.9 billion) is busy interviewing potential Republican candidates whom he might fund, in what’s being called the “Sheldon Primary.”
“Certainly the ‘Sheldon Primary’ is an important primary for any Republican running for president,” says Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush.
“It goes without saying that anybody running for the Republican nomination would want to have Sheldon at his side.”
The new billionaire political bosses aren’t limited to Republicans. Democratic-leaning billionaires Tom Steyer, a former hedge-fund manager, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have also created their own political groups. But even if the two sides were equal, billionaires squaring off against each other isn’t remotely a democracy.
In his much-talked-about new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Thomas Piketty explains why the rich have become steadily richer while the share of national income going to wages continues to drop.
He shows that when wealth is concentrated in relatively few hands, and the income generated by that wealth grows more rapidly than the overall economy – as has been the case in the United States and many other advanced economies for years – the richest receive almost all the income growth.
Logically, this leads to greater and greater concentrations of income and wealth in the future – dynastic fortunes that are handed down from generation to generation, as they were prior to the twentieth century in much of the world.
The trend was reversed temporarily in the twentieth century by the Great Depression, two terrible wars, the development of the modern welfare state, and strong labor unions. But Piketty is justifiably concerned about the future.
A new gilded age is starting to look a lot like the old one. The only way to stop this is through concerted political action.
Yet the only large-scale political action we’re witnessing is that of Charles and David Koch, and their billionaire imitators.
Funny how it gets serious to those at the top when they realize they aren't really at the top.
Isn't it?
If anyone can throw a contribution to the continuation of this site, it will be deeply appreciated.
No comments:
Post a Comment