The American rich get richer, while the middle class shrinks

Billionaires Up, America Down
By Holly Sklar
ZNet Commentary
11-22-7

When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great. Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the Forbes 400 went billionaires only. This year, you'd need a Forbes 482 to fit all the billionaires. A billion dollars is a lot of dough. Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch for five decades, would have to add $400 million to her $600 million fortune to reach $1 billion. And she'd need another $300 million to reach the Forbes 400 minimum of $1.3 billion. The average Forbes 400 member has $3.8 billion. When the Forbes 400 began in 1982, it was dominated by oil and manufacturing fortunes. Today, says Forbes, "Wall Street is king." Nearly half the 45 new members, says Forbes, "made their fortunes in hedge funds and private equity. Money manager John Paulson joins the list after pocketing more than $1 billion short-selling subprime credit this summer." The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn't party time for America. We have a record 482 billionaires -- and record foreclosures. We have a record 482 billionaires -- and a record 47 million people without any health insurance. Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires -- and 5 million more people living below the poverty line. The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won't get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525). Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer. Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent. In 2004, one out of six households had zero or negative net worth. Nearly one out of three households had less than $10,000 in net worth, including home equity. That's before the mortgage crisis hit. In 1982, when the Forbes 400 had just 13 billionaires, the highest paid CEO made $108 million and the average full-time worker made $34,199, adjusted for inflation in $2006. Last year, the highest paid hedge fund manager hauled in $1.7 billion, the highest paid CEO made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861, with vanishing health and pension coverage. The Forbes 400 is even more of a rich men's club than when it began. The number of women has dropped from 75 in 1982 to 39 today. The 400 richest Americans have a conservatively estimated $1.54 trillion in combined wealth. That amount is more than 11 percent of our $13.8 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) -- the total annual value of goods and services produced by our nation of 303 million people. In 1982, Forbes 400 wealth measured less than 3 percent of U.S. GDP. And the rich, notes Fortune magazine, "give away a smaller share of their income than the rest of us." Thanks to mega-tax cuts, the rich can afford more mega-yachts, accessorized with helicopters and mini-submarines. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of bridges, levees, mass transit, parks and other public assets inherited from earlier generations of taxpayers crumbles from neglect, and the holes in the safety net are growing. The top 1 percent of households -- average income $1.5 million -- will save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax Justice. That's more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department, Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer Product Safety Commission. Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus interest. The children and grandchildren of today's underpaid workers will pay for the partying of today's plutocrats and their retinue of lobbyists. It's time for Congress to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and close the loophole letting billionare hedge fund speculators pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It's bad for our nation now. ____ Holly Sklar is co-author of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us" and "A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future." She can be reached at

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Big Brother to fingerprint EU children

Children must give prints

for passports

By JASON LEWIS - More by this author »
Last updated at
22:31pm on 24th November 2007

Comments

Children over the age of six will have their fingerprints taken when
applying for a passport to comply with new EU regulations.

The European Commission says youngsters must be fingerprinted
for all new EU passports and national ID cards – even
those issued in the UK.

Until now, the Government has insisted that only children over
the age of 11 applying for biometric passports – which are due
to be introduced in 2009 – have to be fingerprinted.

• Revealed: The sinister truth about what they
do with our children's fingerprints

But under the proposals, revealed in a report by the
Commission, children as young as six could be forced to
attend special identity centres.

Once there, their hands would be electronically scanned
and their personal details entered on an identity database.

The Commission, which is responsible for the general day-to-
day running of the European Union, says the move is essential
to prevent child trafficking.

But Tony Bunyan, of civil rights group Statewatch, said: 'The
taking of fingerprints from all children from age six upwards
is highly questionable. It is a moral and political question, not
a technical one'.

Zionist deception

Makow - The World Of
Illuminati 'Make-Believe'

By Henry Makow PhD
(This slightly revised article was was originally

posted a year ago.)
11-25-7

If you asked Genghis Khan for his formula for world conquest, you'd expect to hear "overwhelming force" or "terror." You would NOT expect to hear, "'Make-believe.'" "Make-believe?" Who is this, a diabolical Disney? Yet in the First Protocol of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the author says three times, Our Countersign is "Force and Make-believe." By "Make-believe" I assume he means Mass Deception. I finally noticed this because of something I read in "The Truth About the Slump" (1931) by A.N. Field. It appears that Illuminati Jewish bankers financed the Bolshevik Revolution in exchange for ownership of Russian industry. (pp.62-72) German Secret Service documents instructed the Bolsheviks to "destroy the Russian capitalists as far as you please, but it would by no means be possible to permit the destruction of Russian enterprises." The German Imperial Bank sent the Bolsheviks in excess of 60 million rubles. In this context, Field cites Documents 10 and 11 between the bankers and the Bolsheviks: "They give a complete synopsis of the terms on which the German banks after the war were to control Russian industry." (p. 69) Of course German Secret Service Chief Max Warburg, the brother of US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Warburg, was behind this. We're talking about international bankers and their confederates here. I was taught Communism was about equality and "public ownership," and the workers rose up to overthrow capitalist tyranny. I was not taught that Communism was a clever scheme by which certain capitalists paid Lenin and Trotsky to steal the wealth of other capitalists while pretending to promote the cause of workers. The international bankers used US Treasury money to finance both the Bolshevik Revolution and the USSR. (Collective Speeches of Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman, House Banking Committee, p 397.) The Third Baron Rothschild was a Soviet agent and half the British establishment were Soviet assets. What a triumph of "Make-believe" Communism was! Think of the millions of idealists who devoted their lives to this farce? Think of the millions who died in World War Two when the same bankers financed Hitler to keep Stalin in line? Think of the trillions of dollars spent in the Cold War? "Make-believe!" Think of how little we in the West hear of Stalin's or Mao's atrocities compared to Hitler's. (See my "The Other Side of Holocaust Denial") If Communism was a ruse, we can assume that every major historical event and cultural trend in modern Western History, including the religion of "secular humanism and modernism", are also the product of "Make- believe." If they could pull off the Communist fraud, the 9-11 attacks and the "War on Terror" are small potatoes. How do they do it? They control the instruments of "Make-believe": the mass media and "education" system. ZIONISM Some people think the central bankers are instituting their world dictatorship on behalf of the Jewish people. This is understandable since the same bankers (Rothschild, Schiff, Warburgs etc.) have been the official leaders of the Jewish community. They finance most Jewish organizations and political movements where Jews are prominent. But if Communism was a ruse, certainly the others, Feminism, Liberalism, Socialism, Neo Conservatism and Zionism, are also fraudulent. As much as anyone, Jews are the target and victims of Illuminati banker "Make-believe." Louis B. Marshall, (1856-1929) the Counsel to bankers Kuhn Loeb, which represented the Rothschilds said in a letter Sept. 26 1918, "Zionism is but an incident of a far-reaching plan: it is merely a convenient peg on which to hang a powerful weapon." Gee, how would Jews who dedicated their lives to a "national homeland" react to this news? Or to the information that the new Israeli Supreme Court is filled with Masonic symbolism designed to serve the New World Order? Recalling that "force" is the other half of the formula, Marshall's letter ended with a threat to non-Zionist Jews: "All the protests they may make would be futile. It would subject them individually to hateful and concrete examples of a most impressive nature. Even if I were disposed to combat Zionism, I would shrink from the possibilities that might result." This letter was addressed to Max Senior, a businessman and philanthropist, who had asked Marshall to speak against Zionism at a rally (because Matshall posed as an anti- Zionist.) The threat is indicative of the gangster tactics Zionists used against the Jewish community. Senior was quick to react. He replied to Marshall Sept. 30 1918: "I repudiate any connection on national, religious , racial or cultural grounds, with 'national home- land for the Jews in Palestine.' We have seen how demoralizing a divided allegiance was to the Germans in this country. I do not pretend to know the inside political history and intricacies of policy at which you hint...I am not to be intimated into silence by either of the threats you mention...I regard the real danger to the Jew to lie in the silent acquiescence to the Zionist claims." (L. Fry, Waters Flowing Eastward, p.55) CONCLUSION J. Edgar Hoover famously said: "The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists." Communism and Zionism are just "incidents in a far reaching plan" to create a "world government" dictatorship run by the central bankers dedicated to Lucifer. The "powerful weapon" is the energy of organized Jewry in helping to overthrow the Christian basis of Western Civilization and ushering in the "New Age." If necessary, Jews again can be sacrificed in the bankers' twisted megalomaniacal game. Communism is satanic. Its emblem, the five-pointed star, is Satanic. The Communist Manifesto calls for the destruction of the family, culture, science and religion (atheism), the confiscation of property and inheritance, control of communication and dictatorship. It also called for private central banks and income tax. It troubles me that the central bankers behind Communism are also behind 9-11 and the War on Terror. It troubles me that Zionists ( i.e. Neo- Cons) figure largely in fostering the next stage of the "Far reaching plan", which is the "Clash of Civilizations." I don't believe Jews could have accomplished this without the cooperation of non-Jewish elites organized in corporate cartels and secret societies like Freemasonry, the Pilgrim Society, Skull and Bones, Mormons, Fabians, Jesuits, Theosophists and the Bilderbergs. Essentially the New World Order is the extension of British-American imperialism, which always was the expression of a small Jewish-Gentile plutocracy. It troubles me that, thanks to "Make-believe, " the masses (Jewish and non-Jewish alike) live in a fool's paradise unaware of the darkness descending on them. And those who pierce the "Make-believe" to alert the masses are accused of "hate"