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Will Byrnes's Reviews > The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
by
He decided to look at how the legal system treats street crime and fiscal malfeasance. See? Even the terminology that pops to mind is a form of cover-up. If Al Capone stole, say, a million dollars from a bank there would be no question that he was a bank-robber and a dangerous felon. But if a corporate leach like, say, Barclay’s Bank, steals $10 billion, no one goes on the FBI’s Ten-Most-Wanted list. Newspaper headlines about a massive theft are remarkably absent, and ultimately, unlike the situation with Capone, no one goes to jail. (Yes, I know he went to jail for tax evasion, not bank-robbery, sheesh) The pension funds and other investors whose resources were stolen are left holding the very empty bag, with no Lone Ranger riding to the rescue. It is almost as if the prosecutors and regulators responsible for keeping the foxes from slaughtering the hens are wasted on heroin, nodding off in a corner while the predators go about their business.
The author
At the other end of the economic spectrum, the police-judicial system seems to be zooming along on speed or Angel Dust. Taibbi spent some time with illegal immigrants, working class blacks, and even a white musician to get a good look at how the legal system operates at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
Uptown, (generically, yes I do know that Wall Street is geographically downtown, geez) corporations routinely and knowingly engage in illegal behavior, confident that no one will ever go to jail, certainly not anyone who counts, and if the company is ever dragged into civil court for its crimes, the worst that will happen is that it will have to pay a fine, the cost of which will be borne by shareholders. Executives are never held personally liable, and any fines that may be levied against them are paid by the company. Corporations routinely hold their employees hostage in negotiations with regulators and prosecutors, threatening that if they are actually held to account for their crimes, thousands of innocent people will lose their jobs. This is the essence of the too-big-to-fail problem. When Arthur Andersen was actually prosecuted for its crimes, 27,000 people were put out of work. The political cost of such an impact is unacceptable to the politicians who run government and decide who gets charged with what. Yet, the regulators, prosecutors and legislators do nothing to reduce the size of these Godzilla-like corporations, leaving them free to roam the planet leaving a trail of smoking ruins in their wake.
On the other hand, it is stunning how much public investment there has been in stomping on the downtrodden. The welfare system, in particular, seems to feed on misery, doing its utmost to make needing help a scourge-worthy offense. If any of you have had to deal with this system, you will be familiar with horrendous lines, wait times, incompetent employees, contradictory requirements, byzantine regulations, and the complete surrender of your constitutional rights that is entailed when you are a poor individual in need. This is where all the moral hazard concern is focused, on whether a potential welfare recipient might have a pair of nice underwear in her drawer, or might somehow be trying to get over on the public welfare system. Somehow that moral hazard is not applied to organizations that borrow billions of public dollars at virtually no interest, then use those funds to engage in illegal activities. Nope, no moral hazard there.
Street crime has been dropping nationally for some time, but governments federal and local have been ramping up their wide net approach to filling jails and local coffers. Turns out arresting people willy-nilly is good business for local governments, regardless of the merits of the arrests. And apparently it offers career advancement for those who net the most fish. And if millions of people are irreparably harmed by this Orwellian practice, well tough titty. Who cares about those people anyway? They don’t write large checks to people running for office.
Taibbi looks at collateral consequences. When corporations are accused of anything they hide behind the collateral damage actual prosecution might cause, and battalions of lawyers. Overwhelmed, under-resourced and probably chicken-shit prosecutors advance straight to deals that not only entail no jail time for perpetrators of massive crimes, but not even an admission of guilt. When some poor schmo is gathered up in a street sweep, even if there is no actual justification, that person can spend months in jail, merely for being accused. The person’s family can be thrown out of their home. The person can be made ineligible for a whole raft of potential public benefits. Parental rights can be lost. But these collateral consequences are never considered when the person charged is poor, and particularly when that person is a minority.
It is a truism that life is not fair. But fairness should at least be a goal. We should at least try to apply the law equally to all people, certainly to all citizens. And yet we are headed in the opposite direction. Rule of Law has become a cynical joke. When punishment is routinely applied only to the powerless, and the powerful continue their illegal practices with no effective punishment, the law is no longer merely an ass, it is a trained attack dog, a weapon used by society to torment those it disapproves of.
Taibbi is always very successful at pointing out the flaws in our systems, the inequities, the underhandedness, the corruption. He is extremely gifted at boosting his readers’ blood-pressure. I do wish he had devoted some more effort to offering suggestions as to how things might be nudged back toward a less toxic level of unfairness. He does so, in bits here and there, by noting, for example, the radically dimorphic funding allotments for white-collar prosecutors versus, say, immigration enforcement. But there really needed to be more of that. A tea-kettle opening, at least, through which we might direct some of that screaming steam. But Taibbi has indeed succeeded in pointing out the big-picture gross unfairness that permeates our nation. And if he allows himself to vent his rage at times, making not-wholly supported assumptions, stretching his canvas a bit, I suppose it is forgivable. Sometimes he goes too far, such as when he suggests that unfairness is an aim of our system. It may work out that way, but I do not accept that there is intentional unfairness at play here.
The American people are notoriously passive, having dined for a very long time on the empty calories of so-called personal responsibility. (Less filling! Tastes great!) People, it is not your fault that you got laid off. It is not your fault that the company your bank sold your mortgage to is foreclosing on you even though your payments are up to date. They are probably using feloniously false signatures to do the deed. It is not your fault that the local constabulary finds it convenient to take you in for being in the wrong place at any time, just so that some boys in blue can make their daily quotas. It is not your fault that corporate profits keep rising while salaries stagnate, or worse.
At some point you should begin to get really pissed. Divide will certainly fuel that justified rage. It seems sometimes that contemporary life, for many in the dwindling middle and working classes, is a series of frustrations designed to test our commitment to non-violence. Hopefully, by the time that pressure builds up, there will emerge some way to vent it other than in pointless street rioting or guillotine-fueled mass destruction. But at the rate we are going I would not bet on it. This is not a class war that is going on out there. War presumes multiple combatants. What is happening now in America is class enslavement. And it is not gonna get any better any time soon.
Any legal system that allows the biggest thieves in history to walk off scot free is a joke and does not deserve our respect. This is not to say that there are not good people in government, people who truly want to do right for all of us. And it is not to say that the system is incapable of locking up seriously bad people. And sometimes legislators and government executives do manage to get something positive, something reasonable, something fair, done. But the wins are few and far between, while the losses accumulate and accelerate. So long as the super-villains in finance and transnational corporations continue to loot the planet with impunity, it remains the truth. There is no law, only power.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
NY Times Magazine article about Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis
A NY Times op-ed by Thomas B. Edsall, Supreme Injustice, on how the top court is taking sides in the class war
A May 7, 2014 article from the Dealbook section of the NY Times on prosecution of big financial crime, Seeking Tough Justice, but Settling for Empty Promises
An August 26, 2014 NY Times Op Ed by Thomas Edsall,The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism, notes the increasing privatization of not only prisons, but public fine and fee administration, all with virtually no oversight. Guess who suffers?
In this August 26, 2014 opinion piece in the NY Times, How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops Erwin Cheminsky argues for recognition of what anyone who is paying attention should know. There is no law, only power.
Money in elections is the rotten core of the American electoral apple. Happily residing in that core is the Federal Elections Commission. This September 2, 2014 NY Times op-ed offers a fix for that particular problem. Some de-worming is in order.
Following the non-indictment in Ferguson (when was the last time you heard of a prosecutor offering a grand jury exculpatory evidence?) the notion of division is back on the front page - NY Times - 11/26/14 - After Ferguson Announcement, a Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice
A fine example of how the law tilts against the poor in a Dickensian version of debtors' prison - Can't Pay Your Fines? Your License Could Be Taken
Here is another way in which our legal system criminalizes being poor - Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat. - by Frances Robles and Shaila Dewan - April 19, 2015
Sued Over Old Debt, and Blocked From Suing Back - By Jessica Sinver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery - NY Times - December 22, 2015
in his op-ed piece, Is It a Crime to Be Poor?, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof looks at the growing trend of, effectively, a revival of debtors' prisons in the USA - June 11, 2016
3/8/2018 - Buzzfeed - an in depth report on how secret NYPD files show that many NYC police guilty of serious crimes are left unpunished - dark stuff and not all that surprising - BUSTED - by Kendall Taggert and Mike Hayes
5/20/2018 - NY Times - A chilling article on how unscrupulous landlords abuse the housing court system in NYC to push poor and working class people out of their apartments, so they can jack rents up to astronomical amounts - Unsheltered: The Eviction Machine Churning Through New York City - by Kim Barker, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Grace Ashford and Sarah Cohen
==============================THE AUTHOR
Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages
I could paste a gazillion Taibbi refs here, (not all of them complimentary) but if you are interested in more than the few listed here, the Google machine will happily spit up scads when you enter the author’s name.
Matt at Rollingstone (he left there in February 2014)
Matt’s pre-2011 blog
Matt’s prior book, Griftopia
by
Will Byrnes's review
bookshelves: books-of-the-year-2014, brain-candy, economics, nonfiction
Apr 30, 2014
bookshelves: books-of-the-year-2014, brain-candy, economics, nonfiction
There is no law, only power.The author looks at some of the details of how this is manifested in the USA, and offers, in addition, some insight into the psychology of criminal targeting. Matt Taibbi is widely known and respected as a hard-hitting author and financial reporter/editor for Rollingstone Magazine. His previous book, Griftopia, went into considerable detail about how debt is used by large corporations to ensnare customers, how commodity speculation screws us all, how some politicians are selling off public assets for their private political gain and how the vampire squid that is Goldman Sachs has been draining the fiscal blood from the planet. If you get off on seeing what is going on behind the curtains, this constitutes good times. Well, Taibbi is at it again.
He decided to look at how the legal system treats street crime and fiscal malfeasance. See? Even the terminology that pops to mind is a form of cover-up. If Al Capone stole, say, a million dollars from a bank there would be no question that he was a bank-robber and a dangerous felon. But if a corporate leach like, say, Barclay’s Bank, steals $10 billion, no one goes on the FBI’s Ten-Most-Wanted list. Newspaper headlines about a massive theft are remarkably absent, and ultimately, unlike the situation with Capone, no one goes to jail. (Yes, I know he went to jail for tax evasion, not bank-robbery, sheesh) The pension funds and other investors whose resources were stolen are left holding the very empty bag, with no Lone Ranger riding to the rescue. It is almost as if the prosecutors and regulators responsible for keeping the foxes from slaughtering the hens are wasted on heroin, nodding off in a corner while the predators go about their business.
The author
At the other end of the economic spectrum, the police-judicial system seems to be zooming along on speed or Angel Dust. Taibbi spent some time with illegal immigrants, working class blacks, and even a white musician to get a good look at how the legal system operates at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
We’re creating a dystopia, where the mania of the state isn’t secrecy or censorship but unfairness. Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process. Winners get rich and get off. Losers go broke and go to jail. It isn’t just that some clever crook on Wall Street can steal a billion dollars and never see the inside of a courtroom; it’s that plus the fact that some black teenager a few miles away can go to jail just for standing on a street corner, that makes the whole picture complete.Taibbi offers plenty of examples.
Uptown, (generically, yes I do know that Wall Street is geographically downtown, geez) corporations routinely and knowingly engage in illegal behavior, confident that no one will ever go to jail, certainly not anyone who counts, and if the company is ever dragged into civil court for its crimes, the worst that will happen is that it will have to pay a fine, the cost of which will be borne by shareholders. Executives are never held personally liable, and any fines that may be levied against them are paid by the company. Corporations routinely hold their employees hostage in negotiations with regulators and prosecutors, threatening that if they are actually held to account for their crimes, thousands of innocent people will lose their jobs. This is the essence of the too-big-to-fail problem. When Arthur Andersen was actually prosecuted for its crimes, 27,000 people were put out of work. The political cost of such an impact is unacceptable to the politicians who run government and decide who gets charged with what. Yet, the regulators, prosecutors and legislators do nothing to reduce the size of these Godzilla-like corporations, leaving them free to roam the planet leaving a trail of smoking ruins in their wake.
On the other hand, it is stunning how much public investment there has been in stomping on the downtrodden. The welfare system, in particular, seems to feed on misery, doing its utmost to make needing help a scourge-worthy offense. If any of you have had to deal with this system, you will be familiar with horrendous lines, wait times, incompetent employees, contradictory requirements, byzantine regulations, and the complete surrender of your constitutional rights that is entailed when you are a poor individual in need. This is where all the moral hazard concern is focused, on whether a potential welfare recipient might have a pair of nice underwear in her drawer, or might somehow be trying to get over on the public welfare system. Somehow that moral hazard is not applied to organizations that borrow billions of public dollars at virtually no interest, then use those funds to engage in illegal activities. Nope, no moral hazard there.
Street crime has been dropping nationally for some time, but governments federal and local have been ramping up their wide net approach to filling jails and local coffers. Turns out arresting people willy-nilly is good business for local governments, regardless of the merits of the arrests. And apparently it offers career advancement for those who net the most fish. And if millions of people are irreparably harmed by this Orwellian practice, well tough titty. Who cares about those people anyway? They don’t write large checks to people running for office.
Taibbi looks at collateral consequences. When corporations are accused of anything they hide behind the collateral damage actual prosecution might cause, and battalions of lawyers. Overwhelmed, under-resourced and probably chicken-shit prosecutors advance straight to deals that not only entail no jail time for perpetrators of massive crimes, but not even an admission of guilt. When some poor schmo is gathered up in a street sweep, even if there is no actual justification, that person can spend months in jail, merely for being accused. The person’s family can be thrown out of their home. The person can be made ineligible for a whole raft of potential public benefits. Parental rights can be lost. But these collateral consequences are never considered when the person charged is poor, and particularly when that person is a minority.
It is a truism that life is not fair. But fairness should at least be a goal. We should at least try to apply the law equally to all people, certainly to all citizens. And yet we are headed in the opposite direction. Rule of Law has become a cynical joke. When punishment is routinely applied only to the powerless, and the powerful continue their illegal practices with no effective punishment, the law is no longer merely an ass, it is a trained attack dog, a weapon used by society to torment those it disapproves of.
That’s what nobody gets, that the two approaches to justice may individually make a kind of sense, but side by side, they’re a dystopia, where common city courts become factories for turning poor people into prisoners, while federal prosecutors on the white-collar beat turn into overpriced garbage men, who behind closed doors quietly dispose of the sins of the rich for a fee.As more and more folks are being pushed over the side of the middle class to swim the waters of working class America, more and more folks are coming into contact with the legal horrors that swim those waters.
Taibbi is always very successful at pointing out the flaws in our systems, the inequities, the underhandedness, the corruption. He is extremely gifted at boosting his readers’ blood-pressure. I do wish he had devoted some more effort to offering suggestions as to how things might be nudged back toward a less toxic level of unfairness. He does so, in bits here and there, by noting, for example, the radically dimorphic funding allotments for white-collar prosecutors versus, say, immigration enforcement. But there really needed to be more of that. A tea-kettle opening, at least, through which we might direct some of that screaming steam. But Taibbi has indeed succeeded in pointing out the big-picture gross unfairness that permeates our nation. And if he allows himself to vent his rage at times, making not-wholly supported assumptions, stretching his canvas a bit, I suppose it is forgivable. Sometimes he goes too far, such as when he suggests that unfairness is an aim of our system. It may work out that way, but I do not accept that there is intentional unfairness at play here.
The American people are notoriously passive, having dined for a very long time on the empty calories of so-called personal responsibility. (Less filling! Tastes great!) People, it is not your fault that you got laid off. It is not your fault that the company your bank sold your mortgage to is foreclosing on you even though your payments are up to date. They are probably using feloniously false signatures to do the deed. It is not your fault that the local constabulary finds it convenient to take you in for being in the wrong place at any time, just so that some boys in blue can make their daily quotas. It is not your fault that corporate profits keep rising while salaries stagnate, or worse.
At some point you should begin to get really pissed. Divide will certainly fuel that justified rage. It seems sometimes that contemporary life, for many in the dwindling middle and working classes, is a series of frustrations designed to test our commitment to non-violence. Hopefully, by the time that pressure builds up, there will emerge some way to vent it other than in pointless street rioting or guillotine-fueled mass destruction. But at the rate we are going I would not bet on it. This is not a class war that is going on out there. War presumes multiple combatants. What is happening now in America is class enslavement. And it is not gonna get any better any time soon.
Any legal system that allows the biggest thieves in history to walk off scot free is a joke and does not deserve our respect. This is not to say that there are not good people in government, people who truly want to do right for all of us. And it is not to say that the system is incapable of locking up seriously bad people. And sometimes legislators and government executives do manage to get something positive, something reasonable, something fair, done. But the wins are few and far between, while the losses accumulate and accelerate. So long as the super-villains in finance and transnational corporations continue to loot the planet with impunity, it remains the truth. There is no law, only power.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
NY Times Magazine article about Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis
A NY Times op-ed by Thomas B. Edsall, Supreme Injustice, on how the top court is taking sides in the class war
A May 7, 2014 article from the Dealbook section of the NY Times on prosecution of big financial crime, Seeking Tough Justice, but Settling for Empty Promises
An August 26, 2014 NY Times Op Ed by Thomas Edsall,The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism, notes the increasing privatization of not only prisons, but public fine and fee administration, all with virtually no oversight. Guess who suffers?
In this August 26, 2014 opinion piece in the NY Times, How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops Erwin Cheminsky argues for recognition of what anyone who is paying attention should know. There is no law, only power.
Money in elections is the rotten core of the American electoral apple. Happily residing in that core is the Federal Elections Commission. This September 2, 2014 NY Times op-ed offers a fix for that particular problem. Some de-worming is in order.
Following the non-indictment in Ferguson (when was the last time you heard of a prosecutor offering a grand jury exculpatory evidence?) the notion of division is back on the front page - NY Times - 11/26/14 - After Ferguson Announcement, a Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice
A fine example of how the law tilts against the poor in a Dickensian version of debtors' prison - Can't Pay Your Fines? Your License Could Be Taken
Here is another way in which our legal system criminalizes being poor - Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat. - by Frances Robles and Shaila Dewan - April 19, 2015
Sued Over Old Debt, and Blocked From Suing Back - By Jessica Sinver-Greenberg and Michael Corkery - NY Times - December 22, 2015
in his op-ed piece, Is It a Crime to Be Poor?, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof looks at the growing trend of, effectively, a revival of debtors' prisons in the USA - June 11, 2016
3/8/2018 - Buzzfeed - an in depth report on how secret NYPD files show that many NYC police guilty of serious crimes are left unpunished - dark stuff and not all that surprising - BUSTED - by Kendall Taggert and Mike Hayes
5/20/2018 - NY Times - A chilling article on how unscrupulous landlords abuse the housing court system in NYC to push poor and working class people out of their apartments, so they can jack rents up to astronomical amounts - Unsheltered: The Eviction Machine Churning Through New York City - by Kim Barker, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Grace Ashford and Sarah Cohen
==============================THE AUTHOR
Links to the author’s Twitter and FB pages
I could paste a gazillion Taibbi refs here, (not all of them complimentary) but if you are interested in more than the few listed here, the Google machine will happily spit up scads when you enter the author’s name.
Matt at Rollingstone (he left there in February 2014)
Matt’s pre-2011 blog
Matt’s prior book, Griftopia
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Reading Progress
April 30, 2014
–
Started Reading
April 30, 2014
– Shelved
May 7, 2014
–
Finished Reading
May 8, 2014
– Shelved as:
books-of-the-year-2014
May 8, 2014
– Shelved as:
brain-candy
May 8, 2014
– Shelved as:
economics
May 8, 2014
– Shelved as:
nonfiction
Comments Showing 1-50 of 73 (73 new)
At least some small pleasures to be had from the general misery, rage and disgust. Madoff made the mistake of stealing from the wealthy. If he had stuck to robbing widows and pensioners he would still be at it.
What a great review Will. I love when you said " A tea-kettle opening, at least, through which we might direct some of that screaming steam." How can one put the sentiment any better than that. This stuff fires me up so much I might explode without a tea-kettle opening!!
Everything, or almost everything, anyway, is driven by campaign finance reality. So long as laws are made by people who are reliant on big contributors to get elected, change is unlikely. This is where moral hazard truly resides. Something needs to change, or there will be an explosion. It may take decades, but it will come. The problem then will be the possibility that what comes next might be worse than the horrors it replaces.
Libby wrote: "Will wrote: "Everything, or almost everything, anyway, is driven by campaign finance reality. So long as laws are made by people who are reliant on big contributors to get elected, change is unlik..."Political upheaval is like a box of chocolates?
Will, give me a push up the ladder and when I get there I'll reach down and help pull you up, I promise.
This sounds like a book worth reading. I saw the author's interview on Jon Stewart a while back and made a mental note to check it out, yet like so many mental notes, this one got lost in the pile. So glad to have it brought back to my attention.
Wow! Your review, believe it or not, is more eloquent than the author, himself, in interviews I have heard!
I am sure that were I to be interviewed the result would be mortifying. Thanks for the kindness.
Ha! Ha! Too funny; you are so modest. Your reviews alone have pushed my "To read" list into overflow. It's a double pleasure. I enjoy reading the review. Then, when I finish reading one of your books, I get to re-read the review and savor all of the nuance. Keep writing!Best,
Ms. P
It's a compulsion. I cannot turn it off. Heeeeeeeeelllllllpppppp meeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Any legal system that allows the biggest thieves in history to walk off scot free is a joke and does not deserve our respect. This is not to say that there are not good people in government, people who truly want to do right for all of us. And it is not to say that the system is incapable of locking up seriously bad people. And sometimes legislators and government executives do manage to get something positive, something reasonable, something fair, done. But the wins are few and far between, while the losses accumulate and accelerate. So long as the super-villains in finance and transnational corporations continue to loot the planet with impunity, it remains the truth. There is no law, only power. Truism upon truism! Very insightful review! I get so angry it almost overtakes my sadness. What has happened to us and what is next?
Great review, Will. Bookmarked - Social Sciences.It's hardly surprising then that the U.S., with its prison population of roughly 2.2 million, leads the world in that stat; also leads the world in population per 100,000 in prison. (World Prison Population: BBC News)
If we had the same population per 100,000 in prison as Japan does, our 2.2 million would shrink to 185,000.
Oh, and would you believe that the U.S. and Japan are pretty much on opposite ends of the scale when it comes to income inequality among the developed, rich nations. (I know you would.)
It's taken a few years, but it seems to me (maybe I'm just hoping, wouldn't be the first time) that The Spirit Level might be gaining a little traction.
Ted wrote: "Great review, Will. Bookmarked - Social Sciences.It's hardly surprising then that the U.S., with its prison population of roughly 2.2 million, leads the world in that stat; also leads the world i..."
An endorsement by the Pope of the notion that radical income dimorphism is immoral is probably helping the idea gain, um, currency.
Will wrote: "Ted wrote: "Great review, Will. Bookmarked - Social Sciences.It's hardly surprising then that the U.S., with its prison population of roughly 2.2 million, leads the world in that stat; also leads..."
Yes, that does help. I think a certain number of people would be made to think about something that they maybe dismissed previously.
A great review of a fascinating sounding book. A lot to think about...Over here in the UK, government bodies are given much more money to investigate possible welfare fraud than they are given to chase up tax evasion at the other end of the spectrum. It is absolutely ridiculous.
Lovely review Will but I think that the photo of the author portrays a slightly furtive individual. Look at the eyes!
They do follow you back and forth across the room, don't they. :-)
It was the most respectable shot I could find. Taibbi is a good guy. donut be put off by the photo.
Taibbi is top notch, albeit with looks perfect for radio.
Chintan Shah wrote: "lalala"care to expand on that, Chintan?
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Sane blood pressure is over-rated.
So true.Great review.
1% of the global population own almost half the entire wealth of the world today.
"The 85 Richest People In The World Have As Much Wealth As The 3.5 Billion Poorest"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin...
This is an excellent review Will! Thanks for writing it! I had previously read some of Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stones articles and thought they were brilliant. Ever since the 2008 American (or global) financial debacle, I thought Corporate America really stank. But it was how the American government handled the aftermath (giving no more than a slap on the wrist to the culprits and using tax dollars to bail them out) that made me really sick.Closer to home, Hong Kong has been in a similar rut for years. On top of relentless corporate greed, Hong Kong's inherently skewed land system and the average citizen's apathy to injustice are the reasons why the status quo doesn't budge.
Alice wrote: "This is an excellent review Will! Thanks for writing it! I had previously read some of Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stones articles and thought they were brilliant. Ever since the 2008 American (or global..."That's because there is no law, only power. Look at the travesty of a settlement NJ is making with EXXON over ecological devastation. Citizens and any sense of fairness being sold to a corporation by a corrupt politician for pennies on the dollar.
William wrote: "So true.Great review.
1% of the global population own almost half the entire wealth of the world today.
"The 85 Richest People In The World Have As Much Wealth As The 3.5 Billion Poorest"
http..."
Great comment, William Here is a link to a report itself.
We can rant and rage all we want, but is there a solution to human greed?
Some of the worst and the greediest were removed in the French Revolution. Much as I would love to see heads on pikes, or bouncing down the byways of Wall Street and K Street, that does not seem a viable option, as it allows other sociopathic sorts onto the stage. But I do not see any organized force, military or moral, operating in the USA, that has the ability to change the bloody course we are on now, as the rich, like a band of vampires, feed on the lives of working people while despoiling our common Mother.
How depressing but true, Will! In fact I gave up hope long time ago on Hong Kong's dire situation :)
Wow! You really can get exited about social injustice, Will. Can't you?Well, don't despair as I have good news for you: Donald Trump will make America great again. He'll see to it that the veterans will get wonderful health care. He'll bring jobs to America. He'll take care of the drug problem. He'll build a wall along the Mexican border and have the Mexican government pay for it. He will start a little war with Mexico and a little bigger war with Iran. And if Putin won't be compatible, he might get into a hassle with him, too, and show him who is the greatest. Oh, I forgot the Chinese. Goes without saying that Donald Trump won't take any shit from them. What does America have all these expensive weapons for? They need to be used before their expiry date.
So just give Donald Trump a little time, and I'll guarantee you, all social injustices will be equaled out. All survivors (provided that there are any) will start at ground zero again. There won't be any nasty Wall Street and no overpriced apartments in New York (because there won't be any New York), and there won't be any scams with electricity bills (because there won't be any electricity). And rest assured that there won't be any new social injustices for quite some time, that is, until humanity (provided that there is any left) will make it out of stone age again and new politicians and corporations will emerge. But this might take some time, and I wouldn't worry so far into the future.
So rejoice. Donald Trump will take care of all problems you may have at this time and day. He'll be the great Equalizer.
It might be a toss-up as to which is worse, the impressively pompous and arrogant Mister Trump or the impressively stupid majority of other Republican presidential candidates. Trump wants to stick around to enjoy all his wealth. The religious sorts are looking for a reward elsewhere so are more than ok with sacrificing us all to get a front seat at the End Times. Even those who do not enjoy glowing dreams of an irradiated second coming will still do all they can to see to it that working people are faced with decades more of the socio-economic tribulations with which we have already been afflicted for so long. The Beast I worry about is rule by corporations, whether fueled by a frenzy of the greed or faith-based sort.
Will wrote: "It might be a toss-up as to which is worse, the impressively pompous and arrogant Mister Trump or the impressively stupid majority of other Republican presidential candidates. Trump wants to stick ..."I agree with everything you are saying, except that you disregard the following fact: Mr. Trump might WISH to stick around to enjoy all his wealth, but his megalomania (combined with his lack of intelligence) is likely to let him believe that a war he would start will end with him as victorious leader of the whole world (or what's left of it).
I am equally worried, however, about the "religious sorts" as you call them. I have started reading "American Fascists", by Chris Hedges. It gives me the shivers.
There is also the danger that "the religious sorts" will help Donald Trump into the saddle, as it happens in the book "It Can't Happen Here", by Sinclair Lewis, where the fascist candidate is lifted into power by a popular radio preacher. Or it might happen vice versa. In either case, the outlook is not very good.
All we little ants of democracy can do is to warn as many people as possible and get them to vote for the right nominee.
Will wrote: "Or the least worst"Yep!
Due to your recommendation, I have just put "The Divide" onto my TBR-list and given it some priority.
It deserves a spot high on your list
Will wrote: "It deserves a spot high on your list"O.k., I'll give it even a higher priority.
This graph tells the story. "In Prison? Can't Vote" - https://gyazo.com/228b749d70c37532cc6...
William wrote: "This graph tells the story. "In Prison? Can't Vote" - https://gyazo.com/228b749d70c37532cc6..."Great link, William. Thanks. IT demonstrates pretty clearly one of many ways in which the radical right, that lies in calling itself conservative, has gone about suppressing the votes of those not to their liking
Given your recent read, you may be interested in The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War.
Excellent review by the way. Added to my TBR.
Thanks, Josh, I TBRd your rec
This most recent study only confirms what has happened and has a dismal view of what likely will happen in the next century or two. http://cfed.org/policy/federal/The_Ev...
HBalikov wrote: "This most recent study only confirms what has happened and has a dismal view of what likely will happen in the next century or two. http://cfed.org/policy/federal/The_Ev......"Read it. Most of what the report has to say is interesting. However, as a political document, it might as well have a boat anchor attached. I expect a better envelope in which to seal the study recommendations would be one that focuses less on ethnicity and more on class. As someone whose wealth and earning capacity has plunged to nearly nada, while the uppers take everything, and as a person of decidedly Caucasian epidermis, it did seem pretty clear that the recommendations the study offers would do good things for all working class and almost all middle class people. Couching the study in ethnic terms serves mainly to offer the Trumpzis an easy target to inflame their base with lies about benefits being redirected from them to ethnic competitors. The numbers presented on ever increasing concentration of wealth are alarming indeed, but that is what happens when the wealthy are allowed to rule practically unchecked. Grim reading indeed on projections, but heartening in offering specific ways of reducing the imbalances. Thanks so much for passing this on. Fascinating stuff.
There was a time, Will, (wasn't there?) when Americans felt united by class. At least one party has made its mantra the kind of fear that has destroyed much of that unity. I agree that the proposals in the report could easily, and more effectively, be directed at class needs. We'll see if it proves to be part of one party's policy proposals, or another party's attempt to inflame..........or both....or neither.
Will said, " I do wish he had devoted some more effort to offering suggestions as to how things might be nudged back toward a less toxic level of unfairness..."This is what I was thinking after reading Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus. He points to Bernie, which saves the book from dystopian horror.
Bernie, for all his many good points, caused a lot of damage in this election. How many people, poisoned by his relentless attacks on Hillary, either declined to vote or voted for a third party candidate or even the beast himself? Months and months of non-stop attack could not be wiped away by joining forces after the convention.
We will have to disagree on that, Will. Bernie showed us what is possible. Hillary did what she could do and after that, it was up to us.
Yet, the regulators, prosecutors and legislators do nothing to reduce the size of these Godzilla-like corporations, leaving them free to roam the planet leaving a trail of smoking ruins in their wake.
The American people are notoriously passive, having dined for a very long time on the empty calories of so-called personal responsibility. (Less filling! Tastes great!)
Then you get wonderfully pithy with:
He is extremely gifted at boosting his readers’ blood-pressure.
Picturing Madoff or executives of Enron in prison is such a small pleasure over nipping the tip of an iceberg. The 27,000 laid off from Anderson give no pleasure, but it raises some curiosity how well their employment there flies on their resume. Hard to tarnish working for such a respected company.