385%

385%.  That’s how much the incomes of the top 1% has grown since the 1970’s.   Compare that to the 1% decline in the average income for everyone in the bottom 90%.

Surprise, Surprise: Our Economy Still Sucks!

Gas prices are up because of questionable speculation practices and Wall Street is still deregulated. The national debt is up because of huge tax cuts to corporations and the rich, and unemployment is up because the middle class and its purchasing power are being eliminated. Yet, government seemed surprised when recent job numbers were released.

Well, of course.

We no longer have a capitalist economy. The US economy is now controlled by centralized corporate monopolies. These conglomerates have been slowly reducing the rights of workers by funding politicians, and have over time reduced our purchasing power. At first, husband and wife solved this problem by both getting a job. But wages kept decreasing. Next, families started borrowing money: credit cards, loans and mortgages. But, wages kept going down. Now, corporate-funded government wants to reduce social safety nets, teachers, researchers, and students, while banks and health insurance companies continue to make record profits.

Trickle-down economic theory is clearly not very predictive of reality. Even though profit margins have been through the roof, jobs continue to be slashed. If we don’t increase purchasing power and strengthen the middle class, the economy will not get better. Period. However, government refuses to introduce legislation that would empower the middle class.

These huge and powerful corporations have a legal duty to make profit for their shareholders. That’s it. They will continue to make a profit until American workers are treated like those in China. Let’s return to 12-hour workdays for a few cents a day. Maybe we should allow child labor again so that we can stay competitive!

Until we stop the downward spiral of corporate power and control, our economy will not get better. It just won’t. Our job numbers will remain low, unemployment high, and education underfunded. Yet, politicians keep pretending that everything will just magically get better with time. We the people need to take back control of our government and cut the many corporate strings that are destroying our economy.

‘The Cult of Elizabeth Warren’

What began as a taste-less accusation by Representative Patrick McHenry has become something larger and harder for him to contain.  Last week, Rep. McHenry called Elizabeth Warren a liar, in testimony and in action.  This rude, yet innocuous, statement received a large and near-immediate response: Representative McHenry’s Facebook wall was bombarded by thousands of posts either defending Ms. Warren or attacking McHenry (in ways both political and personal).

This particular phenomenon was the impetus for a recent article by Tiffany Stanley at The New Republic, who wanted to find out the kind of people support Warren so much as to take to the internet and voice their collective distaste at McHenry’s accusations.  What Stanley discovers catches her off-guard: “they were by no means the same Internet-savvy millennials that pioneered Obama’s web support in 2008… But my cursory phone survey lent further evidence to the fact that Warren fan clubbers are overwhelmingly 40-plus, boasting a fair number of retirees in their 60s.”

The rest of the article goes on to explain why these surprising demographic data made sense: her appearances on popular television shows like The Daily Show and Dr. Phil, her grasp on the causes of the financial meltdown, and her ability to break down complicated economic ideas and data and condense them into easily-digestible bits, among other things.

Although the byline of the article refers to supporters of Warren as ‘the Cult of Elizabeth Warren’ (a characterization I wholly disagree with), it lays bare the kind of people that are supporting Warren.  Put simply, it’s us.  Her constituency is that of the working men and women in this country.  This is what needs to be made evident to President Obama and Congress if she is to be appointed as the head of the CFPB.

Link to article: http://www.tnr.com/article/the-hill/89148/elizabeth-warren-facebook-consumer-protection-patrick-mchenry?page=0,0