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The Super Rich Are Robbing Us All Blind
The Super Rich Are Robbing Us All Blind
They do it all the time.
Guess who’s the biggest welfare recipient in Mississippi state history. No, it’s not a single mom with three kids or a homeless drug addict.
It’s Brett Favre, an American football hero.
He’s worth $100 million.
Recently, a reporter named Anna Wolfe won the Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the largest federal embezzlement scandal to ever happen in Mississippi. It revolves around the legendary Favre, who pressured the state’s welfare office to spend $77 million on volleyball facilities for his daughter, a student at Southern Miss. When confronted, Favre went out of his way to portray himself as a clueless victim. As Sports Illustrated writes, Favre was “obsessed with not paying for it himself… He was relentless in his pursuit of government money.” He knew what he was doing. Favre didn’t stop with volleyball, either. He went on to press the governor for more money, via business grants and speaker fees. He even sent texts making sure the public didn’t know “where it came from.”
You’ll have fun reading the texts between Brett Favre and the state’s governor, Tate Reeves. It makes one thing painfully clear:
If you’re a star quarterback, you don’t have to work very hard to get powerful politicians to raise money for anything you want. When Favre asked for the volleyball stadium the governor replied, “We will have that thing built before you know it. One thing I know how to do is raise money.”
That’s interesting…
Mississippi routinely struggles to provide safe drinking water for its own citizens, many of whom live in extreme poverty. Last year residents in the state’s capital went months without drinking water at all. The problem loomed for years as the state continually refused to upgrade and maintain their water treatment facilities…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
New “Dark Money” Documentary Shines Light Into the Shadows Cast by the Super-Rich
IF YOU, LIKE most Americans, believe you’re being screwed by the U.S. political system, and would like to know exactly how the screwing functions, tune into “Dark Money,” a new documentary premiering Monday, October 1 on PBS. The film, directed by Kimberly Reed, is one of the most expert dissections ever conducted of the subterranean tentacles quietly strangling U.S. democracy. (“Dark Money” was co-funded by Topic Studios, which is part of First Look Media, along with The Intercept.)
The movie is largely about the last decade of politics in Montana. This long-term, close-to-the-ground focus is cinematically unique, and makes it possible for “Dark Money” to illuminate three startling facts about how America now works.
First, the corporate hard-right is systematically investing in politics at an incredibly granular level, down to state and local races.
Second, they’re not just trying to crush Democrats. Leaked documents examined in the movie show conspirators discussing a plan to “purge” all Republicans who don’t share their worldview — an ideology so conservative that it hasn’t been seen in full flower in the U.S. for 100 years. In fact, the politicians who appear in the film are largely Republicans who’ve been successfully targeted for the right-wing purge, who speak wistfully about Montana’s evaporating history as a small-d democracy.
Third, dark money, while just one tributary of the Mississippi of cash flowing through the U.S. political system, is a key tool of the corporate right. It gets its name from the fact that certain kinds of nonprofit corporations — unlike political campaigns and even Super PACs — currently do not have to disclose their donors.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Super-Rich Rush to Buy Nuclear-Proof Bunkers
Why Super-Rich Rush to Buy Nuclear-Proof Bunkers
The rush amongst the super-rich started after the key event of 2014; this single stunning event suddenly sparked that rush by the super-rich to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, and the rush has been nonstop since that event. Though many news-media in The West have reported on the existence of this suddenly booming market for luxurious and supposedly nuclear-proof bunkers, none has reported on what actually caused it — the event that had sparked it. In fact, that event is still a secret in The West — not publicly mentioned here; it is, practically speaking, bannedfrom being publicly even mentioned, in The West. So: since that event is necessarily mentioned in this article, and is even linked-to here, so that the reader can see videos of it that were posted of it online while it was happening, and there is even “smoking gun” evidence showing government officials actually planning it, and covering it up, and blatantly lying about what they had done, this report, explaining why the super-rich rush now to buy nuclear-proof bunkers, violates that ban. As a consequence, probably none of the hundreds of major news-media in The West that this news-report is being submitted to for publication, will publish it. But perhaps a half-dozen of the small ones will publish it. After all: a few small news-media cannot have much impact. The government and media don’t need to fool everyone in order to succeed, but only to fool the vast majority of people. (However, maybe now they don’t any longer even need to continue worrying about public opinion, at all. So: maybe they no longer need to continue such bans. But they do continue them, perhaps simply out of institutionalized bad habit.)
Wherever you’re so fortunate as to be reading this: here is the reason why the market for luxurious deep-underground nuclear-resistant bunkers has so suddenly blossomed:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Child Poverty Jumps by 2.6 Million in Developed World Since 2008, While Number of Global Billionaires Doubles | Liberty Blitzkrieg
Two headlines came across my screen today, which taken together pretty much sum up the effects of policy decisions made by Central Bankers and politicians since the financial crisis. The financial oligarchs got bailed out, and the rich got richer due to decisions made by “leaders” around the globe. As such, the entire planet has now been transformed into a neo-feudal tinderbox. Myself and countless others warned all the way back to 2008 that this is what would happen, and here you have it.
Let’s first examine the results from Oxfam’s report on the billionaire growth spurt. I hope all 1,645 of you have sent thank you notes to the patron saint of oligarchy: Ben Bernanke. From NBC:
The super-rich club has become less exclusive, with the amount of billionaires doubling since the financial crisis, according to a report from global charity Oxfam. There were 1,645 billionaires globally as of March 2014, according to Forbes data cited in the Oxfam report, up from 793 in March 2009.
The report ‘Even it Up: Time to End Extreme Inequality’ noted that the world’s richest 85 people saw their wealth jump by a further $668 million per day collectively between 2013 and 2014, which equates to half a million dollars a minute.
Unsurprisingly, this reverse Robin Hood policy of Central Banks and governments the world over has also resulted in increased poverty. Rob from the middle class and give to the oligarchs. Here’s what you get…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
