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In Your Hometown, This Is Your Hometown . . .
Only twice before over the last century has 5 percent of the national income gone to families in the upper one-one-hundredth of a percent of the income distribution — currently, the almost 15,000 families with incomes of $9.5 million or more a year, according to an analysis of tax returns by the economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics.
Such concentration at the very top occurred in 1915 and 1916, as the Gilded Age was ending, and again briefly in the late 1920s, before the stock market crash. Now it is back, and Mr. Weill is prominent among the new titans. His net worth exceeds $1 billion, not counting the $500 million he says he has already given away, in the open-handed style of Andrew Carnegie and the other great philanthropists of the earlier age.
The scale of damage done to the foundational fabrics of our society and its possibilities as a stable, actually functioning liberal democracy is mindboggling. Particularly when combined with the destruction of a broad-based middle class in the last 7 years (obscured by the false economy of inflated housing 'equity'). The purposeful rollback of the 20th century (and as mentioned here often, 1789) is fuelled by a longstanding philosophy from the Continent and many American strands of the Movement. Most of them, except the Neocons, are ignorant of their historical roots and even larger political purpose — seeking only their immediate agendas.
And still we wonder who can rescue the Nation from this monsterous, mutational mockery of itself? And then summon the political will, fashion a concrete program, the cadre and infrastructure needed to retrieve this Nation from this grotesque state? We look, and we hope. And we find . . .
Tags:
Guilded Age,
Bush,
Radical Conservatives
Posted in General Aktion
at 20:01 on Saturday 14 July
by DrLeoStrauss
Comments
My knowledge of history is far from complete, but to my understanding no state has ever fallen this far into anti-liberalism and recovered without going through something resembling a revolution (not necessarily violent) to purge the accumulated crap out of government. Neither 2008 or 2012 will fix the damage caused by radical conservatism. It's going to take an upheaval on the scale of the fall of communism or the end of apartheid to bring the US back onto the liberal democratic path.
How about our booming prison and prison alumni communities - Massive!
Bush's press conference on Thursday was incredible - Just incredible. He's still lying about Libby and the press just rolls over, he pins blame (as we knew he would) on “Tommy” Franks - Does Franks know that he , in Bush's eyes, is an expendable “Tommy.” That's his title - not “General.” Plus Bush kept his BS linking of 9-11 to Iraq via Al-qada name games.
If you read the transcript, he covers almost every little sleezy trick that's been used since he was inaugurated.
It's just amazing with the “liberal media” puts up with and how easily they roll over (roll over is charitable).
The press lets Bush get away with total BS like descriving his own “psyche” and then attrbuting it to the American people. They would never let Gore get away with any of this. Again, when Tony Snow mutters under his flippant breath that the press is “focused on defeat.”
“If George Bush is defeated, then why shouldn't we be focused on it?” This was the follow up question they failed to ask - Because they have made the interior migration — mental migration - that Snow has assigned them - namely, as actors in the war, not reporters. Snow was beginning the process of blaming the media for the defeat, not Bush. And the press let it go.
DISALLOWED (TrackBack)
Add Comments
My knowledge of history is far from complete, but to my understanding no state has ever fallen this far into anti-liberalism and recovered without going through something resembling a revolution (not necessarily violent) to purge the accumulated crap out of government. Neither 2008 or 2012 will fix the damage caused by radical conservatism. It's going to take an upheaval on the scale of the fall of communism or the end of apartheid to bring the US back onto the liberal democratic path.