Monday, November 26, 2007

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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Sunday, November 25, 2007

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

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

rense.com

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"