Extreme Income/Wealth Gap... 400 own as much as bottom half!

The top 1% took in 23.5% of all of the country’s income in 2007... in 1979 they only took in 8.9%. The top 1% owns more than 90% of us combined.
"In 2007 (latest year for which figures are available from the Federal Reserve), the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 33.8% of the nation’s private wealth. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.

400 people have as much wealth as half of our population. The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans in 2007: $1.5 trillion. The combined net worth of the poorest 50% of American households: $1.6 trillion.
The top 1% also own 50.9% of all stocks, bonds, and mutual fund assets. The top 10% own 90.3%.

Income inequality is actually greater in the United States than it is in Egypt. Politicians here have close financial ties to big corporations, both personally and through their campaigns. Corporate lawbreakers often do go unpunished. Poverty and unemployment statistics for US minorities are surprisingly similar to Egypt's.

The chief harm done by men of swollen fortune to the community is the effect that their success sets up a false standard, and serves as a bad example to the rest of us.

Boys (and gals) & Their Toys

Societies that are more equal do better... great inequality harms us physically as well as spiritually, and the these harmful effects show up across society.

Nine Pictures of the Extreme Income/Wealth Gap

'World's Worst Oil-Related Disaster' ... The Amazon

“As horrible as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse,”
What has happened in the rainforest is heartbreaking, although it has not gotten nearly the coverage that the BP spill has.

“Texaco (later merged with Chevron) deliberately dumped many billions of gallons of waste byproduct from oil drilling directly into the rivers and streams of the rainforest covering an area the size of Rhode Island. Gouged more than 900 unlined waste pits out of the jungle floor... pits which to this day leach toxic waste into soils and groundwater. And burned hundreds of millions of cubic feet of gas and waste oil into the atmosphere, poisoning the air and creating ‘black rain’ which inundated the area during tropical thunderstorms.”

What we’ve learned from the BP debacle in the gulf, and from the rainforest, and so many other places, is just how reckless and inept the oil companies can be when it comes to safeguarding life, limb and the environment.
We need to be searching with a much, much greater sense of urgency for viable energy alternatives.
Treating the Amazon and the gulf and the Arctic as if they were nothing more than toxic waste sites is an affront to the planet and all life-forms that inhabit it.


Chevron Accused Of 'World's Worst Oil-Related Disaster' In Ecuador: Alleged Evidence Submitted In Lawsuit (PHOTOS)

Coal extraction... massive destruction...

The extraction and burning of coal in 26 states is perhaps the most urgent environmental concern facing the United States. Nearly 40 percent of our CO₂ emissions come from coal-fired plants. If we do not begin to regulate and control the coal companies and plan for a future without coal, there will be no possibility to thwart the spiraling effects of climate change.

Hundreds of thousands of acres, as well as major watersheds, have already been turned into poisoned wastelands, especially as coal companies blast away mountaintops for the last seams of coal. Communities in the coal fields have been poisoned out of existence by the release of mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, manganese, beryllium, chromium and other carcinogenic substances into the air, soil and water. Hundreds of communities are now ghost towns.

The health effects in the country’s major coal fields, where the water running out of the tap is often so rancid it is undrinkable and cancer and respiratory illnesses have reached epidemic levels, are spreading far beyond the coal fields.

These toxins migrate and are a threat to us all.


2.16.11   .... an updated item regarding the costs of coal on our society...

Coal Impacts Cost Public up to a Half Trillion dollars Annually

Chris Hedges: Fight for a World Without Coal - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

'Progressive Taxation'... best way to revive economy.

"The best way to revive the economy is not to cut the federal deficit right now. It’s to put more money into the pockets of average working families. Not until they start spending again big time will companies begin to hire again big time.

Don’t cut the government services they rely on – college loans, home heating oil, community services, and the rest. State and local budget cuts are already causing enough pain.

The most direct way to get more money into their pockets is to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (a wage subsidy) all the way up through people earning $50,000, and reduce their income taxes to zero. Taxes on incomes between $50,000 and $90,000 should be cut to 10 percent; between $90,000 and $150,000 to 20 percent; between $150,000 and $250,000 to 30 percent.

And exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes.

Make up the revenues by increasing taxes on incomes between $250,000 to $500,000 to 40 percent; between $500,000 and $5 million, to 50 percent; between $5 million and $15 million, to 60 percent; and anything over $15 million, to 70 percent.

And raise the ceiling on the portion of income subject to payroll taxes to $500,000.

It’s called progressive taxation.

The lion’s share of America’s income and wealth is at the top. Taxing the very rich won’t hurt the economy. They spend a much smaller portion of their incomes than everyone else.

A progressive tax system will get the economy growing again."

The Obama Budget: And Why the Coming Debate Over Spending Cuts Has Nothing to Do With Reviving the Economy

Water Evaporates in Peru's For-Export Crops

As freshwater disappears from the super-populated Peruvian coast, the most water-intensive crops are expanding unabated as highly profitable exports. Observers warn about the harm this is causing. With rising international commodity prices, the value of Peruvian exports reached more than 3 billion dollars.

An example of this boom is the asparagus industry, which employs 120,000 people in the fields alone, according to official figures. But this crop requires huge volumes of water. One hectare of asparagus needs 22,000 cubic meters of water... seven times more water than is needed to grow the displaced "quebranta" grape, the traditional crop of the southwestern department of Ica.

The Ica aquifer is one of the largest underground water reserves along the Peruvian coast, but is being depleted, and if the current pace continues, it could disappear by 2013.
Over-exploitation of water resources has combined with climate change and the subsequent melting of glaciers in Huancavelica, the region neighboring Ica, and which supplies water to its rivers.

...  'it is not viable to continue growing water-intensive crops in desert zones."
...  'water shortages in Ica have reached "critical levels."

In all of Peru there is a water crisis.. glaciers are rapidly disappearing, when they are gone mass migrations of people will need to take place... where are they going to go...

Water Evaporates in Peru's For-Export Crops - IPS ipsnews.net

... take 5: Carrier Fights For Life...

It was during the time of the Vietnam War that I graduated from college. Upon graduation I was assigned a 1-A draft status, so no corporate employer was going to hire me. I had been working local jobs (part-time, and full time) pretty much straight from when I was thirteen years old, right up until I graduated, so I decided to take some time off and relax. This lasted a few months, and then I began hacking a cab in New York City (mostly in Manhattan)... waiting to be called up into the army (and probably head over to Vietnam).

While doing some free time shopping in New Rochelle one day, I ran into a guy I knew from college. He mentioned his reserve unit was looking for some new enlistees... (I gave him a big hug & kisses)...and that night went to the reserve center in New Rochelle, signed up, and two weeks later found myself in Norfolk, Virginia.... assigned to the pre-com unit of the USS John F Kennedy CV67... (a brand new aircraft carrier).
One of the first training sessions I can remember, they showed us a fire rescue film ('Learn or Burn') regarding the USS Forrestal... this film scared the ever lovin daylights out of all of us watching.... we were going on a carrier!!... (did these guys know what they were doing??!!).

Flight deck duty is some of the most dangerous work anywhere... how close all those 5,000 guys came!.. (many were killed and badly wounded).... to this day still sends shivers down my spine.

Note:
One major item not mentioned in this film.. with the vast amount of sea water being pumped hour after hour into the ship, she was listing badly, and almost rolled over. They had to shift massive amounts of fuel to the opposite side of the ship to counter the lean, and that prevented her from toppling over, and ultimately saved the lives of all the men on-board.

Trial by Fire: A Carrier Fights For Life

Parts of U.S. to Warm Nearly 100 Degrees in Next Week

Wild weather like this might just be the new normal.
And, if we don’t act soon to address climate change, as unbelievable as it might seem, it could get even much more extreme.


Parts of U.S. to Warm Nearly 100 Degrees in Next Week – Planetsave.com: climate change and environmental news

Another step toward mainstreaming nonviolence

... it offers us a glimmer of hope as we stand at a monumental crossroads in human history.

In a time of virtually permanent war, growing poverty, threats to civil liberties, ecological devastation, and many other problems, humanity faces the challenge and opportunity to choose powerful and creative nonviolent alternatives. We can continue to opt for the devastating spiral of violence and injustice, or we can build civil societies where the dignity of all is respected and the needs of all are met.

True peace and long-term human survival depend on this.

Another step toward mainstreaming nonviolence / Waging Nonviolence

Lack of Attention to Farming Catching Up With India

India is struggling to feed its 1.1 billion people... nearly half of Indian children age 5 or younger are malnourished, and soaring food prices, a critical problem around the world, are especially acute in India.
Agriculture employs more than half the population, but accounts for only 15% of the economy...
and unlike the U.S., there is no agribusiness (with highly mechanized farms growing thousands of acres of food crops), because Indian laws and customs bar corporations from farming land directly for food crops.
As a result, India is importing ever greater amounts of staples like beans & lentils, & cooking oil, and food prices are rising faster in India than in any other major economy.
Indians spend a bigger portion of their disposable incomes on food than people in other big, developing economies... the worst form of taxation on the poorest of the poor.

Lack of Attention to Farming Is Catching Up With India - NYTimes.com

Food Crisis Benefits Goldman

Food commodities should never have been deregulated allowing for derivative investments based on food commodities. It is extremely dangerous and harmful having food commodities controlled by large, powerful institutional investors such as hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks, all of which are unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals.

Some $9+ trillion in trades take place in commodity derivatives, with 80-90% in over the counter (OTC) trading, outside public scrutiny. Five banks control 96% of derivatives activity, giving a few players decisive market power. The ratio of non-commercial speculators to commercial hedgers (those with a commercial interest in the traded commodity) is by some estimates 4:1, roughly a reverse of the shares ten years ago when speculators accounted for 20% of the activity. Then, such speculators indeed provided liquidity to the markets without overwhelming them. That is no longer the case... the food markets are now being excessively influenced by speculative interests... this should not be allowed to happen... food should never be a speculative investment.

 2.16.11  ... a follow up...

Speculation And The Frenzy In Food Markets

Food Crisis Benefits Goldman Sachs | Common Dreams

Pakistan Sinking Into Crisis

Here's a country with more than half the population size of the US (and will equal ours by the middle of this century).. and look at its' size in relation to the US

....water and food shortages... enormous dangers in the immediate future.

Pakistan Sinking Into Water Crisis - IPS ipsnews.net

Obama's 'Confidence Gap'

It's all a nonsense smokescreen, so he can say he's doing 'something'... we are in deep, deep trouble...
...this college kid's video puts it all in pretty stark perspective...  

...Visualizing Obama's budget cuts.

Obama Orders $100 Million in Budget Cuts, Worries About 'Confidence Gap' - FoxNews.com

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a 'Liberal Hoax'

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist. An Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident and an anarchist, referring to himself as a libertarian socialist. Chomsky is the author of more than 150 books and has received worldwide attention for his views, despite being typically absent from the mainstream media.

According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992. He is also the eighth most cited source of all time, and is considered the "most cited living author". He is also considered a prominent cultural figure, while his status as a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy has made him controversial.

*******************

Follow Up... 2.17.11

Noam Chomsky and Bill McKibben Talk Climate Change

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a 'Liberal Hoax' | The Nation

Saudi oil reserves overstated by as much as 40%...

That $7500 electric car tax credit lookin better...
Reserves of world's biggest oil exporter have been overstated by nearly 40%... Aramco's 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to keep a lid on prices could not be reached.... industry had overstated its recoverable reserves to spur foreign investment.

Possibly as early as 2012 – global oil production would have hit its highest point....known as  "peak oil".... at that point Aramco would not be able to stop the rise of global oil prices... once 50% of original proven reserves has been reached … a steady output in decline will ensue and no amount of effort will be able to stop it.

"We are asleep at the wheel here: choosing to ignore a threat to the global economy that is quite as bad as the credit crunch, quite possibly worse."

WikiLeaks cables: Saudi Arabia cannot pump enough oil to keep a lid on prices | Business | The Guardian

Senators Seek Ways To Assist Failed States

State budget gaps total $113 billion and are expected to grow to $140 billion. At least 35 states are projecting gaps for 2012... Illinois, Arizona, Washington, California and Texas as among those with the greatest gaps in 2011.
"We’re talking about a significant problem here!"

Senators Seek Ways To Assist Failed States - Bond Buyer Article

Our Growth Divide

... more and more people are being left behind in economies divided ever more starkly between haves and have-nots. (More out of work than any time in history, and the top 1% taking in half the profits in the US markets).
And a good portion of the citizenry is not aware, or yet owned up to the scale of the economic crisis confronting this country and others of the world as well. 

Depending on whose numbers you use, 15 to 20 million are unemployed in the U.S. (and scarey as it would be, it might even be higher). For a variety of reasons, there are not enough tax revenues being generated to pay for the basic public services. State and local governments have eliminated 407,000 jobs since August 2008, with the unthinkable likelihood of matching numbers to come. 

Illogical and unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to consume insane amounts of our tax revenue, and add to our already outrageous national debt And along on a upwardly spiraling path marches the MIC, taking over ever more of our economy and dwindling resources.
Corporate profits and the stock markets are way up. Businesses are sitting on mountains of cash... much a result of aggressive cost cutting through layoffs, and our ponzi-style financial maneuvering.
 
And ever more alarming, for larger numbers of American corporations, the emphasis is increasingly elsewhere in the world. The CEO's and the corporate headquarters might still be here, but their interests are no longer the same as those of their workers, or the country as a whole.
These corporations don’t need America anymore. Ever on the rise, more than half their revenues come from abroad, and their products increasingly come from overseas as well.  And with the huge potential for growth outside the US that is not going to change for quite some time. Standards of living for the people on the wrong side of the economic divide are being driven lower, and although no one wants to admit it, they will more than likely remain that way for years to come. 

Forget the tall tale rhetoric of the politicians, as both parties are perversely in bed with corporate lobbyists. Their hollow assurances are in fact harmful, as they dangerously obfuscate and delay much needed information from getting to the general public. 
New ideas on a grand scale are critically needed...(from completely new leadership). The U.S. can’t recover, with so many of its citizens condemned to shrunken standards of living because they can’t find adequate employment, or shackled with a government clandestinely controlled by corporate power grabs and greed.

Long-term joblessness is a surefire recipe for a society to destabilize... and without a dramatic change of direction, will undeniably be a part of our future.

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Goodbye to All That

This guy always writes a superb piece... highly recommend you put your address on his mailing list.. would be surprised if you subsequently cancelled.

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Goodbye to All That | TomDispatch

U.S. Censors Al Jazeera for No Good Reason

When we were going through the process of planning for our trip to Israel and Egypt last year, we came across and started following the Al Jazeera (English) website.
It is a top notch news-site, and with all the hours spent watching their programming we never found them to be anything other than a direct, and very professional news outlet... (not duty-bound to ANY government in what they were reporting).

AJ (an Arab free press) had allot to do with what happened recently in the Middle East... they have dramatically 'opened things up.'

If you've not watched them before, give them a try... you may be very surprised just how good they are.... AL JAZEERA - English

The US Censors Al Jazeera for No Good Reason | BuzzFlash.org

Corporate Media Push Wrong Story on Obama's Relationship With Business

Most media outlets fail to mention many corporations that fund the COC are responsible for sending millions of jobs overseas, and yet they present themselves as the saviors for job creation as long as they continue receiving tax breaks. “And that’s just wrong,” ... REALLY!
It’s a rewriting of history, and the fact that they haven’t been called on it is a major failing among our 'progressive' leaders!

Corporate Media Push Wrong Story on Obama's Relationship With Business

Banksters Back in the Black

In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion... JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon may take home the biggest bonus check, an eye-popping $17 million.

All the while, U.S. foreclosure filings are projected to reach 9 million in 2011, and the big banks and mortgage firms are rushing to kick American families to the curb to pocket more fees.
In addition, 43 million American families rely on food stamps. JPMorgan Chase is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States, and the bank is contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Paid per customer means when the number of food stamp recipients goes up, so do JPMorgan profits. Talk about perverse incentives. JPMorgan is taking its responsibility to keep the U.S. unemployment rate high by offshoring the servicing of many of these contracts to India.

Banksters Back in the Black: JPMorgan Chase | BanksterUSA