Octafish
Octafish's JournalBINGO! Why would the Bush Crime Family, who stole office 5-4, want to take a chance with prison?
So, in addition to who would forgive and forget over at Just-us, the ownership class looks to have made certain things clear and one of them was who would get to control the Pentagon cough Gates and another the Treasury cough Geithner. and to make sure no one of any import gets to say anything on the tee vee about it, we get Sunstein.
TIRED of INEQUALITY? Get used to it. Things look like they're only gonna get worse.
Just when I thought, maybe, we had reached bottom and were ready to bounce up -- I discovered there may be no bottom -- for me and the large part of the 99-percent.
Economist Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has seen the future and it looks bleak for most of us. Thankfully, those at the top, though, are in for some more good times. He spoke about his findings with NPR's Steve Inskeep. I almost dropped my smartphone into my coffee while texting during rush hour, listening to the report this morning, I was so steamed.
Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse
by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM
Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:
"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."
It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.
SNIP...
Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded — every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.
CONTINUED with link to the audio...
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse
For some reason, the interview with Steve Inskeep didn't bring up the subject of the GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT LIKE IN THE NEW DEAL so I thought I'd bring it up. Older DUers may recall the Democratic Party once actually did do stuff for the average American, from school and work to housing and justice. But, we can't afford that now, obviously.
Oh, the good news is the 1-percent may swell to a 15-percent "upper middle class" while the rest of the middle class goes the other way. Gee. That sounds eerily familiar.
This President is why America today is run by warmongers and traitors!
First, the guy made it OK to be a racist in America, again.
Just to make sure people got the message of where he was coming from, Reagan declared his candidacy in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Obama would do well to learn, if not remember, the story from Terrel Bell, Prunefaces's shocked Secretary of Education, who heard White House staff refer to Dr. King as "Martin Lucifer Coon":
After he became one of the one-percent, Pruneface didn't care much for poor people or working people.
The Trickle Down crowd still holds sway in Washington, ask David Stockman or Penny Pritzker.
Then, the Prunefaced sumbitch made some kind of deal with the Ayatollah in order to hold the hostages until after the election.
Then, after the election, and after the Ayatollah blew up the US barracks in Beirut, Reagan did another deal with the Ayatollah to free another batch of hostages and used the profits to finance an illegal war in Central America.
Of course, Poppy Bush pardoned the various conspirators on behalf of the BFEE.
Poppy sort of took charge of things after Reagan, eh, slowed after that almost-assassin's bullet got him.
[font size="1"]In happier days, Detroit, July, 1980.[/font size]
The great DUer MinM wrote in 2011 about the death of Hammarskjöld...
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/MinM/295NSA bosses feared releasing Gulf of Tonkin intel would draw ''uncomfortable comparisons'' with Iraq
One of the reasons to be wary when Washington uses secret intelligence as a basis for war.
Tonkin Gulf Intelligence "Skewed"
According to Official History and Intercepts
Newly Declassified National Security Agency Documents Show Analysts Made "SIGINT fit the claim" of North Vietnamese Attack
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 132 - Update
John Prados
National Security Archive
EXCERPT...
New York Times reporter Scott Shane wrote that higher-level officials at the NSA were "fearful that (declassification) might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq."
CONTINUED...
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm
Anyone ever hear OPLAN 34-A mentioned on tee vee or in history class?
Caro’s Flawed Tale of LBJ’s Rise
Exclusive: Author Robert Caro has labored through decades of his multi-volume study of Lyndon Johnson’s life, only now reaching LBJ’s presidency in The Passage of Power. But the much-praised book misses – or misrepresents – many of the key events, writes Jim DiEugenio.
By Jim DiEugenio
ConsortiumNews July 28, 2012
EXCERPT...
Caro mentions OPLAN 34A, the plan for covert operations against North Vietnam. The seed for this plan was approved by Johnson as part of NSAM 273 in late November of 1963. Caro actually calls it a “reaffirmation.” (Caro, p. 403) If what he means is a reaffirmation of Kennedy’s policies, then this is just wrong.
CONTINUED...
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/07/28/caros-flawed-tale-of-lbjs-rise/
Me, I'm all for war if it's to defend the United States and the Constitution from any and all enemies, foreign and domestic. Other than that, I'll try peace first.
Taxpayers Pad Military Contractor CEO Pockets
[font size="1"]Warmonger by John Carroll.[/font size]
Military contractors among the highest-paid CEOs of the past two decades.
by Javier Rojo
Published on Tuesday, September 3, 2013 by Foreign Policy In Focus
Would you believe me if I told you that your tax dollars are lining the pockets of some of the highest-paid CEOs?
The Institute for Policy Studies recently released a report examining the performance of the corporate chief executives who have ranked among America’s 25 highest-paid CEOs in one or more of the past 20 years. CEOs from leading government contractors comprise more than 12 percent of the top-paid chief executives in the Institute’s report. In the same years that these CEOs received some of corporate America’s fattest paychecks, their firms snagged $255 billion in taxpayer-funded federal contracts.
Five of the companies with the highest-paid CEOs made the top 100 U.S. government contractors list every year over the past 20 years. These firms include two big military contractors — Lockheed Martin and United Technologies — along with IBM, General Electric, and Honeywell. These five companies have received $671 billion in federal contracts over the past 20 years.
More taxpayer dollars have flowed into the coffers of aerospace giant Lockheed Martin than any other U.S. corporation over the past 20 years. In 2012, U.S. government contracts accounted for 82 percent of Lockheed’s net sales.
A massive chunk of these public funds has wound up in the pockets of the company’s executives. Five times over the past 20 years Lockheed CEOs ranked among America’s top 25 highest-paid chief executives, earning sums that dwarf the pay levels of any U.S. military general or, for that matter, the commander in chief.
These taxpayer dollars haven’t inspired superior CEO performance. Lockheed Martin stands responsible for one of the most wasteful military projects of all time, the F-22 Raptor. At a cost of $339 million each, this plane became the most expensive fighter jet ever built— and never saw action in actual fighting.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/03-1
PS: Think about this when you wonder why We the People live like serfs and the Grandees at the top of the food chain live better than Xerxes could ever have dreamed.
Remembering Karen Silkwood, Union Martyr
She wanted to bust Kerr-McGee Company for exposing unaware workers to plutonium contamination.
On the way to talking to the press, she died. Of course, her briefcase and documents were missing.
Remembering Karen Silkwood, Union Martyr
We must remember her story, because it is a symbol of the ... courage of millions of trade unionists who have fought, and still fight, to defend the health, safety and security of their fellow workers."
A union activist, alarmed by the serious health risks in a nuclear fuels production plant, investigates the dangers. She uncovers a frightening cover-up by the company. Her home is mysteriously contaminated with radioactive plutonium.
While taking revealing documents to a confidential meeting with a union staff representative and an investigative reporter, she’s killed in an auto accident under highly suspicious circumstances.
That, in brief, is the story of Karen Silkwood, still remembered as a union martyr 25 years after her death. Silkwood, an employee of the Kerr McGee Company’s Cimarron plutonium plant in Crescent, Okla., was a member of Local 5-283 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union.
CONTINUED...
http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0100_slkwd.html
More details from the human side:
Remembering the Killing of Karen Silkwood
August 11, 2009 in Capitalism, Environmental Justice, Nuclear, Organizing
After watching the brilliantly-acted and courageous film Silkwood (1983, starring Meryl Streep), I learned the compelling story of Karen Silkwood and her death, which has seemingly been forgotten by America. Karen, only 28, was a union activist working in a Kerr-McGee nuclear power plant in Oklahoma, who died in a suspicious car accident while on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter for a story that would have exposed the company’s dangerous and illegal mishandling of plutonium.
Karen was active in her union, calling attention to the radioactive contamination in the plant, and spent months compiling evidence to show that the company was deliberately covering up the fact that their fuel rods contained imperfections, which could put millions of lives at risk if they sparked a meltdown. The night of her death, many believe Karen was deliberately driven off the road by another car, and her family was later able to sue Kerr-McGee for $1.3 million in damages, but the company admits no wrongdoing.
The nuclear plant where Karen worked was shut down in 1975, one year after her death. When Karen’s story became public controversy, it helped display the dangers inherent to nuclear power, contributing to the amazingly successful anti-nuclear movement that has stopped construction of all new nuclear plants in the US since 1979. Thus is especially important today as some corporate lobbyists are trying to repackage nuclear power as a “clean” or “carbon-free” energy “source.” In fact, it’s none of those things.
Karen’s story is both a warning and an inspiration – that capitalism pushes companies to sometimes do terrible things to protect their profits, even if it means endangering lives, but also that brave people such as Karen Silkwood, in bringing the truth to light, can challenge us to create a better world.
CONTINUED w LINKS:
http://endofcapitalism.com/2009/08/11/remembering-the-killing-of-karen-silkwood/
Not much justice was done. Kerr-McGee lost a suit and was ordered to pay $10.5 million, but had it reduced after appeal to $5,000. Eventually, the company settled for $1.3 million. Frontline did an excellent report: The Karen Silkwood Story.
What nuclear power means to the powers that, eh, manage the planet, and to those like Karen Silkwood who labor to make this a better world for ALL:
Fukushima, Plutonium, CIA, and the BFEE: Deep Doo-Doo Four Ways to Doomsday
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