For some, this may be “controversial,” for others difficult to accept. My challenge: do fact-based research in mainstream sources.
Following are various insights from Greek-Roman days forward, headlines and book excerpts DOCUMENTING the charge. No “reasonable” person, no real “patriot” will be able to deny a simple truth ; the very rich have sought throughout human history to hide their wealth, pay no taxes on it [because they “earned it all by themself!”], use it corrupting government and justice.
Very important: evidence herein is an exceedingly small portion of the mountains of proven documents about the corrosive, amoral, immoral, selfish greed of those acquiring great wealth. Obviously, not every wealthy person fits this, but millions do.
Much of the obscene wealth could possibly be “forgiven,” even accepted – except for one thing: their arrogant refusal to share any of it through taxes, accompanied by their amoral sabotage of ANY attempt to restrain their selfish destructive behaviors in rigging economies and governments.
Adam Smith: Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality…For one rich man, there must be at least 500 poor.”
“Top 1% of wealthy hold more assets than the entire middle class” [10/11/21, Blomberg – A.Tanzi, M.Dorning]. The middle 60% saw their combined assets drop to 26.6%; the super rich owned 27%. The middle class” share dropped in one generation.”
Economics Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz: “American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created.” [“The Price of Inequality. page 35]
“Plutonomics’: ‘..in a 2006 memo to Citigroup’s wealthy clients, lead ‘strategist’ Ajay Kapur..’Our thesis is..the rich are the dominant drivers of demand’ in the U.S. and other ‘plutonomies.’ How does a country become a plutonomy? One essential factor.. is “favorable treatment by…market-friendly governments to allow the rich to prosper.’ Another is..have CEOs who ‘lead the charge’ on globalization and automation to transfer more of the nation’s wealth into corporate profits ‘at the expense of labor.’ {Mother Jones, March/April, 2011] [Note: this article, and others, calculated the ‘average’ 41-60% American family is ROBBED of $10-11,000 every year by the top 1%]
Abraham Lincoln: “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country…corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” [11/21/64 letter]
Kurt Andersen: “During the 20th century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. Incomes rose in sync. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests..” [“Evil Geniuses]
Jesus: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven>” [Matthew 19: 24]
John D. Rockefeller: “God gave me my money.”
Plato: “Very rich and very good at the same time he cannot be.”
Propublica: “Wealthy avoided most U.S. taxes” [6/19/21] The richest 25 Americans paid relatively little, and sometimes nothing, in 2014-2018 taxes. They used various accounting tricks and loopholes [“campaign contributions” at work!]; and because America emphasizes taxing labor income [lower 90%] versus wealth [top l%]. The “true tax rate” for the ultrarich: 3.4% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oliver Goldsmith: “Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.” [1728-1774]
Washington Monthly: “..years-long assault by Republicans on the. internal Revenue Service” [July-August, 2021]. George Bush hired private contractors, who “..ended up COSTING the federal government money.” Republicans “slashed 20% of the IRS’s budget and 22% of its staff from 2010-2018. For people making over $1 million…tax audits dropped by 72% – money the IRS collects from audits fell..40%…Biden’s new IRS commissioner..told Congress the agency is leaving on the table $l trillion a year in uncollected taxes because it doesn’t have enough staff.”
Grover Cleveland: “Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil.”
“Tax firms find way to write the rules their workers leave for fed jobs, craft favorable policies, then return” {NY Times, 9/20/21 – J.Drucker, D.Hakim] “The largest U.S. accounting firms have perfected a remarkably effective behind-the-scenes system to promote their interests in Washington. Their tax lawyers take senior jobs at the Treasury Department, where they write policies…favorable to their former corporate clients, often with the expectation they will soon return to their old employers.”
Adam Smith: “The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respect different from, and even opposite to, that of the public…The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from this order…ought never be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined..with the most suspicious attention…it comes from an order of men…who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.”
Forthose thinking the January 6, 2021 insurrection to overturn results of the 2020 election was the first of its kind – you’re WRONG!!! The first occurred in 1933.
Jules Archer’s “The Plot to Seize the White House” states: “The crucial events of the plot to seize the White House unfolded between July and November, 1933, with hearings before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee begun…on November 20, 1934…On February, 1935, the committee submitted to the House of Representatives its final report, verifying completely the testimony of General Butler.”
A group of wealthy industrialists in league with groups like the KKK and American Liberty League planned a fascist coup. They wanted to turn unhappy war veterans into American “Brown Shirts” to depose President Roosevelt and stop the New Deal. The hero was General Smedley Butler, who rejected his proposed “American Caesar” role and revealed the plot to journalists and Congress.”
For perspective on the above, read Charles Higham’s “Trading With the Enemy. An Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot. 1933-1949.” Declassified WW II documents reveal a long list of prominent “American” corporations supporting the Nazis, even during the war. Edwin Black’s “IBM and the Holocaust” reveals how IBM helped the Nazi war effort. James and Suzanne Pool’s “Who Financed Hitler” documents how. “American” citizens funded Hitler’s rise to power.
Paul Krugman: “We are on a road not just to a highly unequal society, but to ..oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth. When you have a few people who are so wealthy they can effectively buy the political system, the political system is going to tend to serve their interests…” [Dark Money”, page 10}
“…Jeffrey Winters, a professor..specializing in..comparative study of oligarchies, was one of a growing number of voices..beginning to argue..America was a ‘civil oligarchy’ in which a tiny and extremely wealthy slice of the population was able to use its vastly superior economic position to promote a brand of politics that served first and foremost itself.” [“Dark Money”, page 10]
“Let’s call the system..”Citizens United’ and other rulings and laws have created what it is: an oligarchy,’ declared McKinnon. “The system ids controlled by a handful of ultra-wealthy people, most of whom got rich from the system and who will get richer from the system.” [“Dark Money,” page 371]
Gaius Petronis Arbiter [27-66 AD]: “What power has law where only money rules?”
“Trump’s taxes illustrate how the game is rigged” [Jared Bernstein, 10/4/16] “If billionaires..don’t pay what they owe in taxes, there are only three unfortunate consequences: Those of us with less means make up the difference, we lack the revenue to meet challenges we face, or we borrow and run up the deficit.”
Abraham Lincoln: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people.” [1837]
CORRUPTION – I – “Leaked records show vast hidden wealth” [4/5/13 – R.Goldstein]. The files show how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy to avoid taxes, fueling corruption and economic woes.”
CORRUPTION II – April-June, 2016 – “Panama Papers show how U.S. citizens hid millions” [6/6/16. NY Times, E.Lipton, J.Cresell] “..Federal officials estimate..the government loses between $40 billion and $70 billion a year on unpaid taxes on offshore holdings.”
“Tax reform advocates say U.S. is a haven for evaders” [4/7/16 – P.Wiseman, M.Gordon] “The banking lobby has resisted changes in the law that would allow more sharing of data,” says Peter Cotorceanu, a Zurich-based lawyer who specializes in private banking.”
CORRUPTION III – “‘Pandora opens up calls for reform. Cache of documents shows how rich and famous hide wealth”[10/5/21 – P,\.Wiseman, M.Gordon]. “Hundreds of politicians, celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers have used shell companies or other tactics to hide their wealth and investments…according to a review of nearly 12 million files obtained from 14 firms located around the world.”
Adam Smith: “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expenses, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
“Free Lunch” [David Cay Johnston]: “The rich and their lobbyists have taken firm control of the levers of power in Washington, and the state capitals while remaking the rules in their own interests…These same people also happen to be the primary source of campaign donations that put politicians in office and keep them there…Rules define a civilization…For more than a quarter century..our government has been adopting rules that tilt the playing field in favor of the rich, the powerful, and the politically connected.”
“Woe to them that make unjust laws.” Isaiah 10:1
CORRUPTION – Issues above discussed America as a “plutonomy” and an “oligarchy.” What must be stressed: this is all planned and organized. This is a documented 50-year project. Some recent studies documented corruption occurring. Several have witnessed foreign corruption, see it in America. If you care, read any/all below:
– Nancy MacLean – “Democracy in Chains. The Deep History of Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America” [2017]
– Jane Mayer – “Dark Money The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” [2016]
– Anne Applebaum – “Twilight of Democracy The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism” [2020]
– Zephyr Teachout – “Corruption in America From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United” [2014]
– Eric Weiner – “The Shadow Network How a Group of Wealthy Nations and Powerful Investors Secretly Dominates the World” [2010]
– Anne Nelson – “Shadow Network. Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right” [20190
– Sarah Chayes – “On Corruption in America. and What is at Stake” [2020]
Chayes, pages 95-112, describes “the development of a U.S. integrated kleptocratic network like the ones that dominate so many developing countries. It is the most sophisticated, powerful, and threatening such organism to anchor itself in the United States since the Gilded Age.” Leaders of lucrative industries – fossil fuels, private investment firms, tobacco, Amway, HomeDepot, Coors are there. At the HYDRA’s center: Charles Koch. The Koch network includes “dozens” of non-profits, the Federalist Society, universities such as George Mason and many “law and economics” departments; “thousands” of public officials.
THE OBJECT OF MUCH OF THIS; CHANGING THE RULES by which America runs. The Koch network did this at state levels. Lobbyists do it in Washington. Nancy MacLean: “They want to protect their infinite wealth-accumulation from democracy. They WANT PERMANENT,, RADICAL RULES CHANGES that would shackle the majority’s ability to chart our collective future. Up to and INCLUDING CHANGING THE CONSTITUTION.”
The network wants to change HOW YOUNG AMERICANS THINK – at high school and university levels. An insider: “They want to imbue kids with MARKET-BASED MORALITY.” The notion that everything is worth, in moral terms, the price it can bring, that there is nom such thing as a sacred moral value.”
We end asking how a “reasonable person” would judge the Roberts Supreme Court. Examine the entire 2005-20xx. PATTERN. Look past sensational, emotional, threats to the Constitution. Mitch McConnell and the billionaire donors stress issues affecting how government and economy run. The Roberts Court is VERY BIG ON RULES CHANGES. They’ve defined away a number of restraints on business – probably WHY the Roberts Court is ranked THE MOST BUSINESS-FRIENDLY Court since 1945. [remember things discussed above – WHO wants the rules changed]
Look for cases about forced arbitration, limiting class action suits, impedes unions abilities, “free speech’ rulings giving rights to business, multiple rulings sharply reducing or eliminating limits of “free speech” spending of political campaign contributions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a 70% win rate in the Roberts Court.
If you do things suggested above, you’ll have learned why Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz said: “American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created.” and – most importantly, WHO the creators were.
You’ll have learned what Wendell Phillips meant: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty – power is ever stealing from the many to the few.”
YOU need to ACT – because as Dante Alighieri Said: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”
Those of us whom lived during the peak of American civilization, the great 1947-73 middle class golden age, are now dying. Those of you younger have no clue – and you’re “not supposed to” – of what America was like then. Nothing is ever perfect, but this was as close to it as America has ever come.
As all the above has illustrated, for then very rich – 1947-73 America was “too good a deal” for the “undeserving’ lower 90%. The empire struck back – IT CHANGED THE RULES. The result is 2021 America: the planned DELIBERATE destruction conducted during then Reagan, Bush II, Trump years.
A massive campaign, 1865-2021, using fear and violence, divide-and-conquer, sophisticated propaganda and lies, has been conducted by then top 1% defending their obscene wealth and power. They’ve used religion, perverted economic “theories,’ twisted legal “theories” defending this. 1890s workers were threatened with if “the wrong man ” became president. 1970 forward its “campaign contributions” buying off elected officials, obtaining FAVORABLE RULES. They own a propaganda TV station, numerous reactionary talk radio and internet mouth pieces. They’ve succeeded in dividing a confused, often gullible, public – and laugh all the way to their banks.
Those of us who lived in 1947-73 America have memories of simple things – working over a summer for tuition money at a good private college; people with “just” a high school education supporting 2-3-4 kids on one salary; a government that actually car ed about ordinary people. This – and MUCH MORE – is what has been STOLEN from ordinary Americans, DELIBERATELY, starting in the 1970s, escalating in the 1980s.
It isn’t only memories. As this post has tried to show – it’s in the NUMBERS, the real, UNSPUN NUMBERS. IT’s NUMBERS that led people quoted above to say what they did. It’s NUMBERS that prove the eternal enemy is the GREEDY RICH.
With Justice For All 