Review of Salon Article "5 Billionaires Who are Making Life Miserable for Ordinary Americans"

I started reading the Article "5 Billionaires Who are Making Life Miserable for Ordinary Americans," by Dave Johnson from Alternet, and I thought I'd see the usual suspects. But from the looks of it there are a lot more than 5 billionaires trying to turn the USA into an Oligarchy. His article points to 5 people who are not the Walton's or the Koch Brothers. The article demonstrates that we have hundreds of Billionaires whose idea of our Republic is an oligarchic Republic. It looks like Billionaire Tom Perkins is speaking for his fellow Billionaires!:

“The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” Perkins said. “But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”

And it seems like these Billionaires are working to make this a reality. The list of Miscreants in the Salon Article are:

Billionaires:

1) Pete Peterson

2) John D. Arnold

3) Charles Munger Jr.

4) Tom Perkins

5) Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and others

There are a lot more than 5 persons. It seems like venal and perverse billionaires have become legion. Hundreds? They seem to be in every State of the Union, and their gatherings with the Koch Brothers or the other factions are chauffeured events; usually secret. It's no wonder our Democracy is in trouble. They seem to have taken the Powell memo as a declaration of war on the USA. Essentially they are running their own revolution. The Salon Article gives detail on only 5 of them, but it has links to more information. So when we talk of the Koch's takeover, we are really talking about a group of sometimes aligned oligarchs pushing different issues for self aggrandizement using politics to buy power and influence.

Here are some highlights for those who might not click on the link:

1) Pete Peterson’s deficit/debt scare campaign and his ongoing effort to gut Social Security and other entitlements.

Pete Peterson is the pointman on the effort to privateer and eliminate social security:

"Leading every list of billionaires pushing an issue is billionaire Pete Peterson and his forever war on government doing things to make our lives better, especially Social Security. Peterson leads the list because of reports of his pledge to spend $1 billion on his pet issue."

And that is one billion this year. Think of it! The Koch's have pledged to spend a billion electing candidates across the country who reflect the beliefs of this group. But you can better believe that Pete Peterson's ads will coordinate with those of the Kochs and the others. They all share hostility to the idea of democracy. They really are disciples of Tom Perkins. The article continues:

"Have you ever heard anywhere that the budget deficit and national debt are a problem? You can’t pick up a newspaper or magazine, turn on the radio or TV, or listen to any politician from the so-called “center” to the far right without hearing that, and the reason is Pete Peterson and his money."

The Salon Article includes a video of Pete Peterson in video:

https://youtu.be/Rui5m_DRdvg

But what Pete Peterson is running a hoax. Social Security's only threat is from Pete Peterson.

Some of the front groups in the Pete Peterson list is;

"Peterson and his money are a big part of the backing for the

"Concord Coalition,

"Fix the Debt,

"The Can Kicks Back,"

the Comeback America Initiative,

the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,

the Moment of Truth Project,

the Committee for Economic Development,

America Speaks plus contributions to many other groups."

And the article notes:

"As Michael Hiltzik worded it in Unmasking the most influential billionaire in U.S. politics at the LA Times, “The shame of Washington… comes from the fact that almost every organization promoting the grand fiscal bargain in which those programs will be on the table has accepted, somewhere and somehow, money from Pete Peterson.”

At least Pete Peterson doesn't hide his numerous front groups like Koch brothers and their "kochtopolis". His looks more like a pyramid:

http://www.salon.com/.../5_billionaires_who_are_making.../ and

And Source Watch

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Portal:Fix_the_Debt

 

Our Real Problem is in the Trade Deficit and War Mongering

Meanwhile our real debt problem is in our trade deficit and war-mongering. As the Salon Article also notes:

"Meanwhile the country’s real deficit problem is our trade deficit, especially with China. The trade deficit is the measure of jobs and factories moving out of the country. Fixing this deficit just happens to create jobs, lift wages and repair our economy."

"If you are hearing about how terrible the budget deficit is and how it is so important that we all make sacrifices in order to bring that deficit down, it’s Pete Peterson ‘s money talking. Too bad there is no billionaire pushing us to fix the trade deficit."

Too bad they are all exploiting it using Wall Street Arbitrage tricks and offshoring.

 

Public Pensions

 

2) Billionaire John D. Arnold’s attack on public-employee pensions.

If the Kochs are point people for stealing elections and the Tea Party/GOP takeover of State after state, and Pete Peterson is the point man on cutting Public Pensions, John D. Arnold runs point on the Far Right's attacks on the pension system. They've already systematically looted private, University and public pensions across the country but it seems Arnold sees his mission as to end the rest. David Sirota has done work on this one. "David Sirota showed how the Pew Charitable Trusts was working in partnership with (and funded by) Arnold." The findings in Sirota’s report included this:

"Finding: Conservative activists are manufacturing the perception of a public pension crisis in order to both slash modest retiree benefits and preserve expensive corporate subsidies and tax breaks."

The primary source for the money and movement on this is Arnold.

"David Sirota showed how the Pew Charitable Trusts was working in partnership with (and funded by) Arnold. The findings in Sirota’s report can be read at this link "Plot against Pensions" [http://ourfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Plot-Against-Pensions-final.pdf]

So if you were expecting a pension from your police or fire job. If that gets done away with you can thank John D. Arnold. Remember that name, friends, especially if you are in law enforcement.

They are attacking every single source of information and influence in the country. Even Sesame Street!

The Wolf of Sesame Street: [http://pando.com/2014/02/12/the-wolf-of-sesame-street-revealing-the-secret-corruption-inside-pbss-news-division/]

And more about PBS under John D. Arnold's influence:

http://ourfuture.org/.../discover-the-network-out-to...

As Dave Johnson notes:

“These corporate/conservative organizations are very good at manipulating the media and public opinion — it is their purpose. Their “experts” are well paid and always available to talk to reporters, appear on TV and radio shows and write articles and opinion pieces for newspapers, blogs and for their network of similar organizations. Their “reports’ and “studies” reach the conclusions that fit the strategy, and are crafted to sound just right. And there are so many of them! The result is development of “conventional wisdom” about what is going on in our society. This is why that conventional wisdom more and more reflects the corporate/conservative line.” [Also: discover-the-network-out-to...]

3) Charles Munger Jr. (near-billionaire and son of a billionaire) wants to control California

I hadn't heard of Munger (He's mostly California's problem). I think that Dave profiled him because he's typical of those billionaires who are based in their home cities and have a perverse loyalty to the GOP and country club of those places. There are a lot of local politically active billionaires whose focus is more local politics, like Munger.

 

4) Perkins -- see above

 

What Matters about Perkins is that his statement might have sounded like a Joke, but when you take these billionaires in tandem it's not funny anymore. Indeed they could be cutting their own throats in the long run. David quotes Igor Volsky from Think Progress:

“The nation’s growing gap between the rich and poor has become a full-blown crisis, with the top 1 percent of families experienced a 278 percent increase in their real after-tax income from 1979 to 2007, while families in the middle 60 percent saw an increase of less than 40 percent. A large body of research suggests that high inequality leads to lower levels of representative democracy and a higher probability of revolution, as poorer citizens become convinced that the government is only serving and representing the interests of the rich." [http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-one-billionaires-idea-give-rich-people-more-votes-already-works]

Another recent study showed that our elected officials pretty much ignore public opinion. What they do pay attention to are campaign donations. And the poor can't donate anything so the strategy of the rich is to eliminate the middle class that the features of Democracy depend on. Perkins is "already getting what he wants." And we arent':

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/"

And the reason is that politicians do as their campaign donors do. And the country does as the media tells them to do. And the media is influenced (if not outright slaves to) these billionaires and those citizens who pay them. For a few hundred bucks a local crook can buy a politician. For a few billion our billionaires have decided to buy out the country.

5) And then there are the Supposedly Liberal Silicon Valley boys

Then there are Silicon Valley billionaires Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and others pushing low wages for people who work for them. This one frosts me because I worked "figuratively" in the extended silicon valley and the Government heavily subsidized it's creation. Then the moguls who took advantage of Wall Street money to monopolize key pieces of software and connectivity started working on us. Pensions? We never had them. We had 401K's and IRAs, and initial promises of employer matching that were never kept. And now these folks have the stones to go to Congress and say they have to hire abroad rather than tap into the pool of unemployed software engineers and skill in this country. It's a transparent effort to enslave all of us. And taken together, it's pretty clear we are fighting oligarchy.

And this article didn't even include the Koch Brothers, Adelson or the legions of other folks in Florida and Nevada, Chicago and New York -- and scattered throughout the country, who are pursuing similar agendas.

Further Reading

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/20/5_billionaires_who_are_making_life_miserable_for_ordinary_americans_partners/

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Portal:Fix_the_Debt

The Wolf of Sesame Street: [http://pando.com/2014/02/12/the-wolf-of-sesame-street-revealing-the-secret-corruption-inside-pbss-news-division/]

http://www.concordcoalition.org/

Dave Walker is a Pete Peterson Shill on Video:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=david+walker&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=E299D178EB0C851E71E7E299D178EB0C851E71E7

The Lioness

I was wondering where the lioness went.

Now I know.

I hadn't seen you stalking your foes

Nor sunning yourself in green trees.

I was afraid you might be ill or wounded.

and that life might have brought you to your knees.

But I needed not worry about you at all.

 

I was wondering where the Lioness went.

Now I know.

You didn't leave the war

Nor did you let go of the scent,

You didn't stop stalking Your enemies,

or run away from your duties.

But you sought a quiet place

to make a statement of hope for us all.

 

I was wondering where the Lioness went.

Now I know.

You made a statement of love with your mate.

And chose to step away from confusion and hate.

To find a quiet warm place, well protected and safe.

Where you could exercise your faith

and give birth to a child of great hope.

And in the process maybe save us all?

 

I was wondering where the lioness went.

Now I know

She emerges from her quiet dark lair

With a little lion cub at her side.

No lioness would ever run and hide.

Unless it was important to you.

In nurturing the future

and living in the present.

You do what is important to do.

 

Thank God for people with the courage inside,

to carry on from the heart for the future.

I have no doubts this cub will one day run and play

And take her place in the great game of life.

 

Christopher H. Holte, July 10, 2015

Thinking of my friend Christine Dillon Strickland and her daughter -- and her granddaughter.

Anyone surprised that Exxon knew about climate change in 1981?

Exxon knew of climate change in 1981. Funded climate change deniers to manage the information.

Alternet reports:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-knew-climate-change-1981-email-says-it-funded-deniers-27-more-years?sc=fb

 

The Pirate

The Pirate cares not

for the dying sailors

as the ship he sank

Sinks below the Sea

 

What he may rue

is not the slick from the ship,

but that it sank

before he could loot it.

 

Christopher H Holte, 7/9/2015

The Cons Lament

There but for life's hard knocks go I:

In hateful ignorance sure of my righteousness

living in my sty

 

I'd still be:

Armed with ignorance, warring on all

who might prevent my inevitable fall!

I'd be standing behind my wall!

Of Armed Ignorance and fear.

confidently ignorant

 

If it were not for merciful lessons

I'd be confident my earthworks don't stink

And that I would profit

From what others drink

I'd still be brewing a putrid brew

And share it for others to drink too.

Oblivious that there but for fortunes arrows;

Go I too.

 

Christopher Hartly Holte, 7/7/2015

Star Haiku

Saving up the daylight

Storing up the sun.

What a wonder the stars are

when the day is done.

Not 3 lines, not 5,7,5 syllables either.

Haiku:

Daylight storing sun.

Such a Wonder have become!

Stars, When day is done.

Going Greek on the Whole World

Turning the World into Greece

While I was writing my last post ["TISA mroe scary than TPP]I did a search for Ben Beachy and the wikileaks articles and I got 10 pages of ads. I had to spend about 10 minutes getting past google and refine my search terms to get an actual search. Wonder why? It's probably because Google, Netflix, Bing, Microsoft, etc... are writing TISA. Anyway here is the text of the public citizen News Release with my comments:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/press-release-tisa-leak-july-2015.pdf

It would be helpful if policymakers acted with some recognition that the 2008-2009 financial crisis actually occurred. It shouldn’t be hard. In the United States alone, nearly $20 trillion in wealth was lost, between lost output and lost home equity; unemployment peaked at 10 percent; millions of families lost their homes. The situation was worse in much of the world, with severe problems continuing in many countries, notably in Europe."

On the contrary the interests who are writing TISA with the support of revolving Door Trade Representatives learned from the Financial Meltdown that they can get away with three part frauds:

First stage is to use the money supply and advertising to turn some commodity (such as real estate) into a leveraged bubble. Sell debt with promises of riches by making people think they are buying homes, businesses, or going to make a lot of money.

Second Stage, use financial derivatives to bet against those people achieving their riches.

Third Stage, foreclose on the poor rubes who bought into the first stage of the Fraud.

They are using this method in country after country to practice a sort of financialized neo-liberalism. Instead of:

"Learning from the crisis means not repeating the deregulatory and non-enforcement mistakes that led up to it. Yet a secret international trade agreement, the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), threatens to adopt and impose a global financial deregulatory standard."

The Service Industry doesn't see the meltdown as a mistake. It was a highly successful swindle that left the swindlers billionaires. The only thing the financial services industry and it's little toys (companies owning telephone, internet, roads, bridges, infrastructure, software, etc...) have learned from the financial meltdown is that burning off real wealth by mixing it with paper wealth is a great way to acquire assets and shift ownership of real wealth to themselves while punishing victims such as homeowners in the USA or little colonial enterprises like Greece.

Almost nobody guilty went to jail. No billionaires were forced to return their treasure, the chests were buried in offshore beaches and pirate havens, for later retrieval and now they have a tried and true method to extract wealth from all over the earth and accumulate power to themselves. They can do all this, and then come in and pose as saviors, piling on more debt by loaning people their own money at interest to pay the interest on the money they were loaned at interest that they couldn't pay before. They can enslave a few politicians and use them to enslave the whole world. That is the lesson this industry learned. And TISA is another round of laws that will provide all the loopholes they need to keep doing this cycle til they can declare themselves a world aristocracy formally.

Rubin and his disciples, playing the left and Friedman, Greenspan and his disciples playing the right, perfected this sort of privateering corrupt regulation in the name of de-regulation starting in the 70's. In a free-booting world you can bet on anything. Exchange rates, whether businesses will fail, etc... and if you are savvy you can make money from other folks money and other folks failure. Even better people will welcome you as a savior when you spread the money around. When a person is desperate for money they will take any terms on a loan. And when you are unscrupulous you can always find public officials to Greece, especially if you can saddle the public with those loans. Banks loan people their own money and they are grateful for it. But the key is, to get laws changed and make it all nice and legal. TISA will be a letter of Marquee for modern piracy worldwide just as de-regulation provided such letters for Enron and even crazier frauds..

"Our analysis of a leaked version of the draft agreement, along with a draft annex on financial services, identifies threats to rules and policies ranging from limits on overall bank size to consumer protections, from prophylactic protections against new speculative financial instruments to limits on transfers of personal financial data."

Of course.

"It is unimaginable that such an agreement is under negotiation while the global economy is still recovering from the most severe crisis since the Great Depression, and while Greece and other countries are still reeling from developments related to the crisis."

"Yet, thanks to the publication of the TISA texts by WikiLeaks, we know that such negotiations are in fact underway."

Once you understand that the giant banksters got away with it. It is not only imaginable, but not a surprise at all.

"Post-crisis, the United States and countries around the world have tightened their domestic financial regulations, imposing somewhat tougher restraints on Wall Street and financial centers around the world. TISA is an effort by Wall Street and its global counterparts to undo those positive steps in a forum absolutely closed to the public."

Actually the United States has had trouble implementing reforms. And with TISA they won't be able to.

"To analyze the TISA text is to see that negotiators are ignoring the lessons from the financial crisis, and to see how vital it is to shine a light on the secret TISA negotiations. These leaks show that it is imperative for TISA negotiators to suspend their efforts, publish all texts under negotiations and not resume until there is a proper public debate about their radical deregulatory maneuvers."

The "New World Order" is not the Right Wing or Left Wing fantasy. Just international piracy involving Kochs, Republicans, and the wealthy of all advertised ideologies; and it works through trade agreements like TISA.

Common Dreams is reacting to a News Release from Public Citizen:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/press-release-tisa-leak-july-2015.pdf

Read the Article at Common Dreams:

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/02/tisa-leaks-part-deux-more-evidence-concerted-attack-democracy?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/policy-making/analysis/sustainability-impact-assessments/assessments/

Previous post: [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/07/tisa-even-more-scary-than-tpp.html]

TISA even more scary than TPP

The Trade In Services Agreement (TISA)

The Trade In Services Agreement is designed to "fix" some problems with previous trade agreements from the Point of view of the corporations involved. The Service Coalition Board says about it [https://servicescoalition.org/negotiations/trade-in-services-agreement] in their "What is TISA section;

"The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) is the most promising opportunity in two decades to improve and expand trade in services. Initiated by the United States and Australia, the TISA is currently being negotiated in Geneva, Switzerland with 51 participants that represent 70 percent of the world's trade in services."

Privateering on an International Level

But that says very little. The reality is that, as always, the devil is in the details. And the details are of more neo-liberal ideology seeking to give impunity and immunity to international corporations by shifting governing powers from local government to these for the private, separate gain public corporations.

"As WikiLeaks puts it, the regulations together create "international legal regime which aims to deregulate and privatize the supply of services—which account for the majority of the economy across TISA countries."

This is privateering on an international level. Treaties like this are pirate treaties promising to turn the World Trade Organization into the Confederate Corporations of the World. That might be an improvement over the current chaotic oligarchy but it is the institution of hierarchical oligarchy and the institutionalization of wealth and power into rulership. It won't end war or solve hunger, but it will give more power to the already powerful for their separate enjoyment as they fly over the rest of us.

Common Dreams, an Anti TISA Website reports:

"As with Wednesday's documents, Thursday's batch of texts reveals 'a concerted attempt to place restrictions on the ability of participating governments to regulate services sectors, even where regulations are necessary to protect the privacy of domestic populations, the natural environment or the integrity of public services,' WikiLeaks declares." [http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/02/tisa-leaks-part-deux-more-evidence-concerted-attack-democracy?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork]

The website goes on to list initial negotiating companies, but the says:

"TiSA is based on the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services ( GATS ), which involves all WTO members. This means that if enough WTO members join, TiSA could be turned into a broader WTO agreement and its benefits extended beyond the current participants." [http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/tisa/]

Common Dreams alleges that:

"the corporate aim [is] to use TISA to further limit the public interest regulatory capacity of democratically elected governments."

They then quote Ben Beachy:

"TISA would expand deregulatory 'trade' rules written under the advisement of large banks before the financial crisis, requiring domestic laws to conform to the now-rejected model of extreme deregulation that led to global recession."
—Ben Beachy, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

What is TISA?

The services in question "relate to regulation of financial services, e-commerce, telecommunication, and maritime transport." These are powerful public services, many of which are within the public realm and are vital services that are also natural monopolies. They have to be regulated or they tend to be run as feudal kingdoms.

De-regulating them would put some of them back in the state they were in the 19th century and would allow 19th century style impunity and immunity for newer services like e-commerce and telecommunications, both of which are extensions and modernizations of the concept behind the Post Office and have traditionally been associated with the Post Office and been so important and powerful that they demand their own organ of government out of reach of both legislature and post office under normal circumstances. Deregulating them creates a power that is part of rule and gives it to private individuals, establishing kings.

The Euro folks said:

"Like any other trade negotiations, the TiSA talks are not carried out in public and the documents are available to participants only." [http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/tisa/]

Like with TPP I've been hoping that the Wikileaks were premature and the allegations were going to be proved false but it seems that the secrecy that is still around TISA should be a warning that the allegations are liable to be true. Nobody goes to such extremes to hide a treaty unless there is something sketchy about it. This sort of thing goes all the way back to the Jay Treaty, which the Washington Administration tried to keep secret because they knew it would infuriate many Americans.

...more on this in my next post "Going Greek on the Whole World" [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/07/going-greek-on-whole-world.html].

Common Dreams is reacting to a News Release from Public Citizen:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/press-release-tisa-leak-july-2015.pdf

Read the Article at Common Dreams:

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/02/tisa-leaks-part-deux-more-evidence-concerted-attack-democracy?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/policy-making/analysis/sustainability-impact-assessments/assessments/