September 8, 2011
We have endured financial oppression for long enough. In a time of national crisis and shared sacrifice, the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population cannot continue on their merry way, living in obscene wealth and detached from reality, while the majority of the population desperately struggles to make ends meet. We are under attack, and it’s time to fight back.
I work over 60 hours a week and still barely make ends meet. Increased costs of living and thousands of dollars in medical bills have made me and my family move three times in the past three years to downsize and cut living expenses. I’m certainly not alone in this dire economic situation, tens of millions of Americans are fighting this daily war to keep their family fed and healthy with a roof over their head.
In fact, as long as I can keep up this intensive work schedule at my current income level, I’m actually better off than many Americans. Over 46 million [3] Americans are currently relying on food stamps to feed their family, over 50 million [4] can’t afford health care, 62 million [5] have zero or negative net worth and 64% of Americans have less than $1000 [6] saved. As the economic downturn begins to accelerate once again, the majority of the population, which has been struggling for over three years now, is going to be pushed to a breaking point.
Meanwhile, in this time of national crisis, as we keep hearing calls for “shared sacrifice,” tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within the hands of the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population. This unprecedented consolidation of wealth continues unabated, as we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in American history. US millionaire households now have over $46 trillion [7] in wealth, yet only one-tenth of one percent of the population makes over $1 million [7] per year.
Let me be clear, I don’t fault a person for being rich. If you are great at what you do and work hard, you should be financially better off than people who slack off, are bad at what they do and don’t work hard. Almost all Americans agree with that. However, the problem we currently have is that people who are extremely bad at what they do are now all too often the people who have the most money. For example, the very people who caused this economic crisis have profited off of it and are now among the richest people in the world [8].
The reality of our current crisis is that we now have an aristocracy in this country [8] that lives beyond the rule of law. They have used their wealth to rig the government and the economy. Through campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and the most powerful global corporations, the world’s richest people have now effectively rigged the system against hardworking Americans. This economic crisis is the result of a deliberate systemic looting engineered by the global financial elite. To attempt to dismiss this reality as some unproven conspiracy theory is to display a stunning level of ignorance.
Just look at the bailout of Wall Street: trillions of dollars in national wealth were given to the people who engaged in fraudulent activity [9] and crashed the economy. They then used the public’s wealth to give themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. And now, while the rich people who caused this crisis have never been richer, the government is giving them tax breaks and cutting vital programs [10] that we need to keep our society functioning. To say that America has descended into a neo-feudal banana republic is not using bombastic rhetoric or hyperbole, it is a technical fact to anyone who spends time analyzing our current economic and socio-political condition.
As our society is incrementally and steadily deteriorating, millions of people are growing more desperate by the day. American families can no longer remain passive when under such a prolonged and ongoing economic attack. We literally can’t afford to. Clearly, this is a highly unsustainable and dangerous situation that cannot continue for much longer. A small fraction of society has systemically robbed the country and destroyed the economic future of the majority of the population. As more people realize this, and as desperate times continue, the mega-wealthy will eventually reap what they have sown.
To understand our future prospects, we just need to look at the civil unrest that is currently spreading throughout the world. The same people who robbed America have also robbed many other countries. People worldwide who have been pushed into severe poverty are rebelling because they have no other choice. It’s either fight back or let your family die a slow death. The massive protests and riots that have swept from Cairo to London are just the first wave of a tsunami of rebellion and unrest that, if the present course is not urgently and significantly changed, is sure to hit America soon.
Even the Wall Street friendly press, such as Market Watch, are publishing reports like this one [11] from veteran journalist Paul B. Farrell:
“What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus….
Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super-rich get richer and richer.
Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future….
Super-rich addicts are destroying the American Dream for everyone. They’re destroying the American economy. They don’t care about you. Yes, they hear the ticking time bomb. They’re stockpiling cash. Don’t say you weren’t warned. The IMF sees a new collapse sweeping across the planet. Open your eyes. You’re not watching a film. This is not a metaphor. Plan now for the revolution, class warfare, market crash, economic collapse, plan for another depression.”
Contagion of Global Unrest Spreads Worldwide
Unfortunately, as we see spreading throughout the world, the blacklash by impoverished and economically disenfranchised people is already taking a violent turn for the worse. All throughout the UK, which is economically comparable to many American states, financially oppressed people have resorted to rioting and looting. While the fallout and financial loss from these riots have only been a small fraction of the economic looting global bankers have inflicted upon the British population, it is horrifying to see. The popular German news outlet Der Spiegel recently featured this article [12]:
A Society on the Verge of a Meltdown
“The riots in London are a social Fukushima for the Western world. Should we really be surprised that an increase in wealth for just a few, accompanied by simultaneous impoverishment of the masses, could not continue unabated?…
But with all due respect, the only thing astonishing here is the actual astonishment. Who really thought it could simply go on indefinitely like this? Who believed there would be no consequences to the increase of obscene wealth for a few while impoverishment simultaneously plagued the masses. Wealth disparity is no accident….We famously learn little from history. But if we take one thing from the Weimar era it should be this: The res publica amissa, or the neglected polity, will fail in the end.”
John Pilger, an award-winning London-based journalist, summed up the riots in this report [13]:
Damn it or fear it, the forbidden truth is an insurrection in Britain
“Such is the truth of [UK Prime Minister] David Cameron’s ‘sick society’, notably its sickest, most criminal, most feral ‘pocket’: the square mile of the City of London where, with political approval, the banks and super-rich have trashed the British economy and the lives of millions. This is fast becoming unmentionable as we succumb to propaganda once described by the American black leader Malcolm X thus: ‘If you’re not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing.’”
Phil Rockstroh exposed the corporate mainstream media’s biased reporting in this article [14]:
Life in an Age Of Looting
“According to the through-the-looking-glass cosmology of mass media elitists, when a poor person commits a crime of opportunity, his actions are a threat to all we hold dear and sacred, but, when the hyper-wealthy of the entrenched looter class abscond with billions, those criminals are referred to as our financial leaders.
Regardless of the propaganda of ‘free market’ fantasists, the great unspeakable in regard to capitalism is its wealth, by and large, is generated for a ruthless, privileged few by the creation of bubbles, and, when those bubbles burst, the resultant economic catastrophe inflicts a vastly disproportionate amount of harm upon those — the laboring and middle classes — who generate grossly inequitable amounts of capital for the elitist of the fraudster class… by having the life force drained from them by the vampiric set-up of the gamed system.”
Even in Germany, which has a better economic situation than most other European countries, people are burning luxury “fat cat [15]” cars.
Arsonists Torch Mercedes, BMWs in Berlin Protests
“Arsonists have set fire to 26 cars in the German capital in the last two days, mainly from Daimler AG (DAI)’s Mercedes, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Volkswagen AG (VOW)’s Audi, police said today. That brings the total number torched this year in Berlin to at least 138, more than double the figure for all of 2010….
‘The arsonists want to hit what they say are ‘Fat Cats,’’ Berlin police spokesman Michael Gassen said. A special unit is investigating the fires as political crimes after the police received letters claiming responsibility that derided globalization, gentrification and rising rents, he said.”
Israel is another financially “better off” nation that has seen massive protests. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country have been protesting the “high cost of living.” Some protesters even brought out a functioning guillotine on a street named after an infamous banking family. As Washington’s Blog summed it up [16]:
“Indeed, these pictures from Israeli protests on Rothschild Boulevard last week show that people worldwide are getting sick and tired of the wealthiest acting like despotic kings:”
This past weekend, over 430,000 people protested [17] throughout Israel in the country’s largest demonstration ever. This week, hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike in Italy and Spain [18]. In Greece, yet another country that has been looted by the same people that have robbed the US, they have seen increasingly violent protests. There have been many violent clashes [19] with the police. They even blew up JP Morgan offices [20] and have repeatedly attacked the Ministry of Finance [21] in Athens.
Throughout the world the situation is the same [22]: rising costs of living, rampant poverty and unemployment, lower income and increasingly dire economic prospects for the overwhelming majority of citizens, while 0.1% of the population, the people who caused this economic crisis, are richer than ever.
Unfortunately, most of the American public has been propagandized and they still do not fully comprehend this blatant reality. US corporate television “news” has blinded much of the US public to this highly volatile situation.
The saddest part is that we know how to begin fixing this problem [23], yet common sense steps are not being taken. We can start by breaking up the “too big to fail” banks that hold us hostage and hold their top executives accountable. We can also end the system of political bribery [23] that allows the mega-wealthy to control our political processes through campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door. Those are the first steps that absolutely need to be taken. Anyone who spends time researching our political and economic system will come to these obvious conclusions. These are common sense steps [23] that are in the interests of 99.9% of the population.
However, with the US public so marginalized, confused and unaware of basic political reality, it appears these changes will not happen. Therefore, based on much empirical and statistical evidence, our society will soon descend into outbursts of rioting and violence.
Preparing for Civilian Unrest, the Crackdown in the US
Major US cities are getting ready for the blacklash by preparing their police force riot squads. New York City, the financial capital of the world, is a geographically clustered region that is home to millions of poor people – significantly large populations in highly impoverished neighborhoods are only a stones throw away from Wall Street. As this recent report [24] reveals, the New York City Police Department is urgently preparing for unrest:
In wake of British riots, New York police prepare for unrest
“New York police anti-riot units assembled last week at a training facility on Randall’s Island to prepare for an outbreak of civil unrest similar to those that have occurred recently in Britain. The August 12 ‘mobilization exercises’ brought together police from all five of the city’s boroughs, including specialized units such as mounted police and aviation.
The riot training was held just days after the New York City Police Department (NYPD) announced the formation of a new ‘juvenile justice unit,’ which is to include detachments of cops assigned to troll Internet social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in search of any indication of impending disturbances….
The training mobilization of the NYPD, however, makes it more than clear that the ruling elite on the other side of the Atlantic is quite conscious that the conditions of social inequality, poverty, police abuse and attacks on social services and conditions that exist in both Britain and America can trigger an explosion in New York City.
In terms of income distribution, New York City, the capital of the US financial sector, is the most unequal major city in the US and is among the most unequal cities in the world. According to recent figures, the city’s top 1 percent monopolizes 44 percent of income. The city’s boundaries encompass both Wall Street, where top executives rake in salaries and bonuses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the Bronx, the poorest county in the country. If it were a country, New York City would be one of the most unequal in the world, ranking between Chile and Honduras.
Sitting atop this social powder-keg is Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the richest of New York City’s 58 billionaires….
The combination of stark social inequality, depression-level unemployment in many city neighborhoods, ever-escalating budget cuts and relentless police harassment are creating the conditions for a social eruption in America’s largest city.”
Violence is on the rise throughout New York City. Over Labor Day weekend, 48 people [25] were shot and killed in a rash of random shootings. New York is far from the only city in the country to be in imminent danger of mass civil unrest and increasing violence. Nine major US cities currently have a poverty rate over the critical threshold of 25%. As the economic downturn once again accelerates, there are many terrifying and ominous indicators. One leading indicator for unrest is youth unemployment. The percentage of young Americans who are not in the workforce, eligible workers up to the age of 24, is now at a record high of 51% [26].
As another example of a major US city on the edge, in Milwaukee the poverty rate is currently hovering around 30%. [Note: The graphic to the right is based on 2009 Census data. The poverty rate has increased since then.] Among African-American men in the region, 50% are now unemployed [27]. Milwaukee has recently seen several small-scale riots, a violent flash mob riot just broke out at a local state fair [28].
As we have seen historically and recently throughout the world, the first phase of economic disenfranchised backlash leads to riots where people who are deeply impoverished look for the nearest person to attack or the nearest store to loot or vandalize. This eventually leads to clashes with local law enforcement – much like we have already seen in San Francisco (see below) and on a larger-scale in London. Throughout the US, as just mentioned, we have also seen the start of violent flash mobs [29], a trend many believe will continue to grow and occur more frequently. After this initial emotionally-driven phase, there tends to be more sophisticated acts [30] of crime and violence directed at banks, politicians, mega-wealthy individuals and rich gated-communities, as we have started to see sporadically throughout Greece, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
The bottom line is that we will inevitably see many more “civil disturbances” throughout the United States, and the Army, just like the NYPD, is currently preparing for such occasions. As this report [31] from Tom Burghardt reveals:
As Economy Tanks, ‘New Normal’ Police State Takes Shape
“Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the ‘responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances.’ (emphasis added)
With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia are becoming the norm in so-called ‘Western democracies.’”
As the excerpt above references, in San Francisco, after the police fatally shot a person, protests broke out and a police state crackdown occurred, similar to the attempts to stifle free speech in Egypt. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sums up here [32]:
BART Pulls a Mubarak in San Francisco
“This week, EFF has seen censorship stories move closer and closer to home — first Iran, then the UK, and now San Francisco, an early locus of the modern free speech movement. Operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) shut down cell phone service to four stations in downtown San Francisco yesterday in response to a planned protest…
One thing is clear, whether it’s BART or the cell phone carriers that were responsible for the shut-off, cutting off cell phone service in response to a planned protest is a shameful attack on free speech. BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who ordered the shutdown of cell phone service in Tahrir Square in response to peaceful, democratic protests earlier this year. Free speech advocates have called out British Prime Minister David Cameron for considering new, broad censorship powers over social networks and mobile communication in the UK, and we are appalled to see measures that go beyond anything Cameron has proposed being used here in the United States.”
To see how far the US police state is going, the Department of Homeland Security just sent out a bulletin warning financial corporations [33] of an upcoming non-violentSeptember 17th [34]. Police are now employing unprecedented measures to stifle First Amendment rights. In another recent example, an artist who painted a picture of a JP Morgan Chase bank on fire, to symbolize the financial crisis, was visited at his home by police questioning him as a potential terrorist [35]. protest on Wall Street this
It’s Time for Aware Citizens to Hold the Richest 400 Americans Personally Responsible
There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class,Obviously top Wall Street executives, the Federal Reserve, members of the Business Roundtable [36], the American Legislative Exchange Council [37], health insurance CEOs, war profiteering oil and private military companies, both dominant political parties [38], along with the Bush and Obama administrations all bare direct responsibility for our economic suffering. First and foremost, they deserve most of the blame. We need to hold them all personally responsible and apply mass direct action and pressure upon them.
That being said, at this urgent point in our national crisis, as the economic situation grows increasingly severe, we need to also focus on the richest 400 Americans and hold them personally responsible as well. We need to get in their face and call them out in a non-violent manner.
It is not my intention to demonize all 400 of the richest Americans. Some of them are well-meaning and hardworking people. However, as the primarily beneficiaries of a rigged and predatory economy, they must all acknowledge that the system that has produced their immense wealth is now overrun with corruption and society is breaking down as a result.
At this point, even the billionaires who haven’t had a direct role in creating this financial crisis need to be held responsible. As a person who has benefited so greatly, and has acquired so many resources, whether they like it or not, they are now in a position of responsibility. The richest 400 Americans have as much wealth as 154 million Americans combined, that’s 50% of the entire country. They personally have the power and wealth necessary to financially support organizations and politicians who will fight for much needed changes. If they are unwilling to put their immense power behind changing this dire situation, they too must be held personally responsible.
I’m extending an olive branch to these 400 billionaire Americans. I’m giving them fair warning. Either use your wealth and power to make urgently needed changes, or you too will end up like tyrants of the past..
Our country and our families have endured systemic financial oppression for long enough. In a time of national crisis and shared sacrifice, the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population cannot continue on their merry way [39], living in obscene wealth and detached from reality, while the majority of the population desperately struggles to make ends meet.
The last thing I want to see is rioting and violence. However, as we have seen throughout the world, it is evident that you cannot rob tens of millions of people of their economic security, dignity and future and expect society to continue functioning business as usual. All the gated communities and private security you can buy still won’t be enough to save you from tens of millions of desperate and enraged people.
As the economic crisis once again begins to accelerate, the overwhelming majority of Americans are hanging by a thread. When the inevitable wave of unrest hits our streets, the masses will be looking in your direction – this you can be sure of. Either start fighting for much needed changes or face the consequences of your actions, and inactions.
To paraphrase Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Mask of Anarchy,” we are many – you are few.
Are the 400 richest Americans going to stand and fight for America, or is history going to remember them as short-sighted, delusional, narcissistic and despotic tyrants?
The choice is theirs.
Which side of history will they be on?
From here on in, the people will be watching their every move.
We want to know what these 400 billionaires are personally doing to solve our financial crisis. In the days ahead, we will track their political activities [40].