Van Jones explains that this new movement he and others are now promoting want to create a movement which is Grass roots made up organizations joined for one main purpose to tetake and rebuild The American Dream
Rebuild The Dream Netroots 2011
Uploaded by TheAgendaProject on Jun 21, 2011
Van Jones keynote speech at Netroots Nation 2011
A Year in the Life of the Agenda Project
June 23, 2011.
CEO of Walmart Makes in One Hour What the Average Employee Makes In a Year: How Skyrocketing Inequality Is Hurting America A new report shows exactly who the top 0.1 percent of Americans with all the wealth are. The question is, what can we do about it?via AlterNet.org, June 20, 2011 |
S. Robson “Rob” Walton, Walmart chairman, has a net worth of about $19.7 billion. And he's only number 9 on the list of 2010's top 20 richest Americans.
Walmart workers, meanwhile, make around $8.75 an hour—about $18,000 a year. They'd have to work over a million years to approach what the chairman of Walmart Stores is sitting on. Alice and Jim Walton each have about $20 billion, and Christy Walton has $24 billion.
Last year Jonathan Turley noted that the CEO of Walmart, Michael Duke, makes his average employee's yearly salary every hour.
A new report by the Washington Post on “Breakaway Wealth” contains new research by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim, who analyzed tax returns from the top 0.1 percent of earners in the U.S. That top percentile takes home more than 20 percent of the personal income in the country, and their average income is $5.4 million. The average income of the bottom 90 percent, according to the Post, is just $31,244.
The news that the income gap is growing in the United States is probably not news at all to most working people. But this data throws the trend into sharp relief. Surprise, surprise, they're mostly not media personalities or athletes (just 3 percent). They're chief executives and managers (41 percent), and of course they work in finance (18 percent)--the same executives who are benefiting nicely from policies that have favored the rich and tilted the playing field in their favor, maintaining low personal and corporate tax rates and in some cases actually bailed their companies out with government funds.
Executive pay has been heading sharply upward since the 1970s, but at the moment the gap looks especially ugly as unemployment stagnates and real wages decline, as conservatives attack union pay and benefits and Congress has Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare in its sights.
Moreover, it's not an inevitable result of the invisible hand of the free market. The Post writes:
“What the research showed is that while executive pay at the largest U.S. companies was relatively flat in the ’50s and ’60s, it began a rapid ascent sometime in the ’70s.
As it happens, this was about the same time that income inequality began to widen in the United States, according to the Saez figures.
and more reasons for liberals, progressives and average Americans to be angry at the Obama Administration and its capitulation to the conservatives in both parties and to the rich and powerful and the vested interests of the old Military Industrial Complex.
And so once again the "Support The Troops Crowd" of sloganeering phony patriots are out to the gut the old GI bill why to save money and to the Vets they say FU.
These are the same people who get their panties in a twist whenever someone questions Prepetual War and then they insist on cuts in taxes for the wealthy while cutting back on programs for their Heroes the Vets and they also get upset if the Troops argue that they deserve salary increases and better benefits for them and their families.
These are the same toops Bush sent into Iraq ill-prepared and ill-equpped and in too few numbers all in the name of saving money.
Yet the government and Pentagon saw nothing wrong with outsourcing and privatizing jobs traditionally done by military personnel. So a lot of companies made out like bandits while mercenaries made 10 times as much as the average grunt.
Bush & the boys no more cared about the Troops they were more interested in proving that the US military should be outsourced and privatized except when all you neede was "CannonFodder".
Those in authority wether presidents or kings have never had much regar for the average soldier so never be folled when they say they care. They care for profits or they care to avenge some wrong they as being personal or maybe they want more land more oil and so on to increase their empire. Average Americans are under the delusion that the American Empire is their empire when in fact it belongs to that 5% or so ofthe rich and powerful who decide to increase or devrease the Empire and when it will be time for them toabandon it and move to a better pro-business pro-corruption environment as Erik Prince has done by moving his compay Black Water to UAE and Dubai - so much for his patriotism -
So the thinking of the Neo-cons and neo-liberals and other fiscal conservatives they asked why should veterans get any sort of "Free Ride" or as Americans say "Free Money". This harkens back to Van Jones comment about how the Neocons and the Tea Party financial backers are merely using the anger, frustration and resentment of average Americans to push their economic and social agenda that will only help the very rich while average workers, the unemployed, the poor are left to fend for themselves as the Rich send out their thugs to throw another family out of their home.
Just like the Great Depression when the average American was just tossed aside while the rich kept their wealth and some even made more money off of the backs of the poor since the out of work crowd were willing to work for subsistence wages rather than starve.
G.I. Bill Cuts: Veterans Enrolled In College Face Uncertain Futures by Amanda M. Fairbanks at Huffington Post ,June 24, 2011
In America prior to the Second World War, only relatively affluent elites owned homes or went to college. The G.I. Bill helped lower the barrier of entry for the average citizen. It suddenly made the American Dream of homeownership and a college education accessible to a new generation of young people.and another blow to liberals and progressives in America and all those who believed President Obama would bring about a fundamental change to America so that the US government would no longer write a blank cheque for the military and the Pentagon and the arms industry instead president Obama stepped up the bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan ignoring either government or the peoples of the region . The people fighting back against American and NATO troops are not all terrorists many are insurgents or in fact members of a resistance movement to resist the American/NATO occupation and indescriminate bombings and killing-killing far more innocent citizens of these areas than actual "Terrorists" , Al Qaeda or Taliban .
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, nearly half of the 16 million WWII vets used the original G.I. Bill for college between 1945 and 1956. Over the past two years, the ranks of veterans attending American institutions of higher education has again swelled -- with more than 500,000 now using the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill.
Under the first version of the bill, a veteran who served for a minimum of three years after Sept. 11, 2001 received a full tuition subsidy from the government if they enrolled at a public college. He or she also received a monthly housing allowance, which varies according to residency, and a $1,000 annual stipend for books. Yet another provision, the Yellow Ribbon Program, enabled veterans to attend private schools as well as graduate and doctoral programs.
All of that changed in December of last year when Congress voted to amend the enhanced G.I. Bill by capping tuition assistance for out-of-state residents according to in-state public rates. Meanwhile, veterans attending expensive private schools will face a $17,500 cap on tuition. Prior to the change, caps varied widely. For instance, student veterans in Mississippi were capped at $805 per semester, while veterans attending schools in Florida were capped at $43,660 per semester. The new rules increased benefits for some while decreasing coverage for many others.
In recent months, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have introduced separate pieces of legislation aimed at grandfathering in veterans currently enrolled in private schools whose tuition would skyrocket in August -- or about 30,000 veterans, according to Miller’s office. Currently, no provision exists to cover out-of-state veterans attending public schools.
The V.A. doesn’t track where student veterans reside, so the precise number of out-of-state students these changes affect is unknown. Student Veterans of America, a national coalition of student veteran's groups on college campuses, estimates that it may involve upwards of 80,000 out-of-state residents -- veterans that aren't protected under either Schumer or Miller's grandfather clause.
Now adding insult to injury President Obama on the pretext of humanitarian needs and protecting supposedly peaceful reformers in Libya has now entered into a third war in Libya . The so-called reformers in Libya are in fact made up of armed militias who have been using violence fro the get go.
Meanwhile the peaceful protesters in other countries such as Bahrain, Yemen , Egypt, Saudi Arabia are abandoned by the Obama administration. The Obama administration is not at all happy that for instance they lost their good friend and ally Hosni Mubarak.
And Obama has escalated the force being used in Libya far beyond what was the agreement entered into by Nato and their allies.
After having assassinated or executed Osama bin Laden Obama now wants to take out Gaddafi/Qaddafi by any and all means necessary why for the oil for the strategic value of Libya and to prove that Obama has just as much guts and determination as former president Bush that is to prove he is a"real Man' and therefore worthy of being re-elected.
NATO Forces 'Trying To Kill' Gaddafi: U.S. Admiral Samuel J. Locklear at Huffington Post, June 24, 2011
A top U.S. admiral has confirmed to a U.S. congressman that NATO forces are trying to kill Muammar Gaddafi, and that the need for ground troops in Libya after the embattled leader falls is anticipated.
House Armed Services Committee member Mike Turner (R-OH) reveals to The Cable that U.S. Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, commander of the NATO Joint Operations Command in Naples, Italy, told him last month that NATO forces are actively targeting and trying to kill Gaddafi:
"The U.N. authorization had three components: blockade, no fly zone, and civil protection. And Admiral Locklear explained that the scope of civil protection was being interpreted to permit the removal of the chain of command of Qaddafi's military, which includes Qaddafi," Turner said. "He said that currently is the mission as NATO has defined."
"I believed that we were [targeting Qaddafi] but that confirmed it," Turner said. "I believe the scope that NATO is pursuing is beyond what is contemplated in civil protection, so they're exceeding the mission."
Turner's revelation contradicts the Obama administration's previous insistence that regime change is not the ultimate goal of NATO's involvement in Libya, a claim which Locklear apparently still maintained. "Well, certainly if you remove Gaddafi it will affect regime change," Turner quoted Locklear as saying. "[Locklear] did not have an answer to that."
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and so it goes,
GORD.
1 comment:
amazing how they can come up with everyone elses net worth and incomes, but fail to show their own..
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