Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

. . . “details would outrage Americans and spook Congress from rubber-stamping it.” Who said that? A.) An al Qaeda leader? B.) Saddam Hussein? C.) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un? D.) None of the above? The answer is D; the speaker was Ron Kirk, President Obama’s trade representative speaking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Administration’s latest gift to multi-national corporations. The T-PP is an attempt to disguise a corporate giveaway as a trade agreement. The T-PP would require all countries who sign it – including the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Viet Nam, and eventually China, Indonesia and Russia - to pass no laws or enact policies of any kind that infringe upon trade with or production within any of the other countries in the Partnership. So far the Obama Administration has refused to allow any members of Congress to view the 29 chapters of the agreement, of which only five have anyt...

     On October 24, 2011, I wrote about the ridiculous decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission , “In January 2010, using a logic that defied common sense, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission five Supreme Court Justices suddenly transformed corporations into human beings, with a power that flesh and blood humans do not have: they can spend unlimited amounts of money in order to buy elections.”      Although most of the comments I have received have been favorable, I have been taken to task by “Pennsylvania's #1 Conservative Jungle Cat,” Phil Gruber. According to him, “American law has long held that corporations should be treated as people in the eyes of the law. After all, a corporation is just a group of people who use shared capital to make a profit. Grunenberger simply feels broadsided by facts he did not know.”      While it is true that from...

     Much heat has been generated on the subject of the huge salaries received by the CEOs of major corporations. One popular method of illustrating the obscenity is by showing the CEO's salary as a multiple of a typical production worker's salary. It is not unusual for the CEO's salary to be equal to 300, 400 or even 600 times the hourly workers income.      The following table is a listing of the 2010 salary and other income paid to the heads of several of our largest corporations.* Much of the “other“ income is not taxed until it is actually received. Because much of it consists of stock options, it may be considerably more valuable at that time then as shown here; options will be taxed at a maximum rate of 15%.      Also shown is the executive's total earnings per minute, based on 40 hours per week for 52 weeks.    Company            Total          Salary ...

Since medieval times, corporations have been legal formats created by the government, such as the Crown, Governor, Legislature, etc., to enable citizens to do business as a group. As the American colonies developed and won their independence, corporations for the most part remained in the background. (The Boston Tea Party, wherein the Sons of Liberty dumped 342 crates of British East India Company tea into the ocean, was a notable exception.) The vast majority of Americans at the time lived and worked on small family farms. The real threat was the unilateral, unaccountable power of King George III, and the founders of a new nation, skeptical of that kind of power, formed a government of checks and balances to prevent any one branch from getting too powerful. Although corporations were not mentioned in the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson famously noted that representative government’s purpose was “to curb the excesses of the monied interests.” After the American Revolution, corporatio...

      The founding fathers left us with two concise views of the role they expected government to play: In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “...all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men...” The Preamble to the Constitution states, “...in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, [we] do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”       Because of the makeup of society, however, the fathers were not quite as principled, at least by today's standards, as one would expect from the foregoing statements. Electors in federal...

     It should come as no surprise to readers of this blog to learn that the transfer of resources to the super-rich from everyone else is well underway. For details see the series “The Recession Is Over For Some People...” posted between 16 February and 18 March, 2011. A May, 2011, study by the Center for Labor Market Studies of Northeastern University , Boston, confirms it. For my purpose, two findings from the study are relevant:      (1) Using the lowest point, 30 June 2009, of the recent recession as the base figure, as of 30 April 2011, real corporate profits increased 39.6%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 45.8%, and Average Real Weekly Earnings of the Private Sector decreased 1.0%.      (2) During the same period, Annualized National Income grew by $505B. While corporations' share of the growth was 92%, the share going to wages and salaries was 0%.      A recent article in Forbes provide...

     The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which includes the price of gasoline and food, shows an increase of 2.7% over March, 2010. Gasoline at the pump rose 5.6% in March alone, and is now 27.5% higher than it was a year ago. Food is 2.9% higher than it was at March 31st, 2010.      Economists generally consider the core-CPI, which excludes energy and food prices, to be a better indicator of long-term inflation. At March 31st this index was just 1.2% higher than it was a year earlier – hardly a harbinger of runaway inflation. Unfortunately, most of us have to live with short-term inflation; regardless of what the price at the pump will be in six months, we have to deal with it today.      According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (USBLS), in spite of a 0.6 increase in average weekly hours worked, real average weekly earnings for all employees decreased 0.4% between March 2010 and March 2011. People are working longer and ...

     I have devoted several blog entries to indicating how our economic system moves money from the not-so-deep pockets to the very-deep-pockets of our society. Today I am going to list the top ten corporations that donated to Republican candidates, and the top ten who gave to Democratic candidates. Amounts listed are in millions of dollars, and include donations to state candidates: Corporation Total Contribution Republican Recipients Perry Homes 12.24 11.13 TRT Holdings 5.26 5.26 Chartwell 3.34 3.30 Altria 3.14 2.07 Goldman Sachs 3.06 2.08 Bank of America 2.80 1.68 Koch Industries 2.52 2.27 Home Depot 1.53 1.04 Wells Fargo 1.72 1.13 Exxon Mobil 1.62 1.30 Totals 37....

     ...but it is going to last a long time for the rest of us. In order to speed up the flow of assets from the bottom of the economic pyramid to the top, the rich have acquired the services of a powerful ally: the U.S. Supreme Court. Observe the following: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce       According to its web site, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “...is the world's largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations...As the voice of business, the Chamber's core purpose is to fight for free enterprise before Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies, the courts, the court of public opinion, and governments around the world.”      In view of that declaration, note the following from the Daily Kos of March 14, 2011: Carter G. Phillips, who often represents the chamber and has argu...