Wages Cut

British workers have seen the value of their real wages drop by 8.5 percent over the last three years, the UK's largest unions body the Trades Unions Congress  warns.


According to the TUC, average salaries in March 2013 were £2,234 down compared to 2010 level, putting more pressure on family budgets in the country.
“Average pay packets have fallen by nearly 10 per cent over the last three years, eroding the spending power of households and eating away at the value of savings for those families still fortunate enough to have them,” said TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady.

The TUC also warned that the prices are rising three times faster than real term wages, adding that the government’s austerity measures have squeezed the public purse.
An earlier study by the union showed that real wages dropped by 4.5 percent between 2007 and 2011, leaving workers with smaller incomes at a time of rising costs for basic necessities such as food, fuel, gas and electricity -not to mention housing costs.

Fact of the Day

According to Oxfam's estimates, almost $18.5 trillion is being held for individuals in tax havens, one third of it in British Overseas Territories and crown dependencies.


The charity said that even on conservative assumptions, the $18.5 trillion would yield $156 billion to tax authorities around the world, whilst the cost of providing every person on earth with an income of $1.25 a day would be $66 billion.

The Cautionary Principle

There have been two recent interesting news items on this. One that the amount of CO2 recorded in the atmosphere has passed the figure of 400 parts per million. Actually, the figure for CO2 equivalent (ie including other greenhouse gases) has long been above this level. Anyway, it confirms that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing year by year. The other report shows, however, that the Earth's average global temperature has remained static since 1996.


What does this mean? The "climate deniers" have been having a field day, claiming that this shows that measures to reduce the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere are unnecessary. Actually, what is shows is that scientists have been able to refine their theories, especially about "climate sensitivity", i.e. the relation between an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere and an increase in Earth's average temperature. This is a key figure for forecasting how much hotter the Earth will get and how fast. As we pointed out in an article in the December 2007 Socialist Standard:

"Socialists are not scientists so all we can do is to exercise critical thinking while taking into account what the majority of scientists in the field have concluded, knowing that they could be wrong.
The majority of scientists in the fields involved have concluded that the undeniable rise in average global temperatures has been caused since at least the 1970s by the rise in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels. In other words, that it is man-made or “anthropogenic”as they put it in their language.
What is not clear –scientists are still arguing about it –is what precise temperature rise is caused by the emission of a given extra amount of CO2. This of course is a key ratio since more and more CO2 is being released into the atmosphere by the continued burning of coal, oil and gas.
If you assume the “climate sensibility”of CO2 to be low, then the rise in average global temperature at particular levels will be low. If you consider its “climate sensibility” to be high, then by 2100 the rise could be 2, 3 or 4ºC. A 3 or 4º rise could cause huge problems: sea levels rising by a third to a half a metre (one or two feet), more stormy weather, more forest fires, more droughts and desertification.
So, without necessarily subscribing to the higher figures put forward by the more engaged scientists, it can be accepted that it is desirable to cut back on CO2 emissions. The question we look at in this issue is how likely is this to happen under capitalism given its competitive and anarchic nature?"

This cautious approach has allowed us to avoid some of the more alarmist views put out by some (and used to argue that the problem is so urgent that we can't wait for socialism and so should subordinate campaigning for socialism to campaigning to reduce greenhouse gases within capitalism).

For instance the Anarchist Federation brought out a pamphlet Ecology and Class in 2003 or 2004 which made the following claim on page 7:

"Global warming will expand ocean water and raise sea levels by two feet by the year 2010."

It didn't happen and they (and the others whose claim they accepted) were made to look fools. Ironically, the scientists' explanation for the pause in global warning since 1996 is that the heat has been absorbed by the sea, maybe to be released later and more slowly.

So, instead of making unsubstantiated claims in a bid to show how bad capitalism is, we should stick to what we advised in 2007:
"Socialists are not scientists so all we can do is to exercise critical thinking while taking into account what the majority of scientists in the field have concluded, knowing that they could be wrong"

All equal under the law?

The UK has been involved in 5 illegal wars since 2001. These have caused the deaths of at least 1 million adults in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya and Syria. An estimated 600,000 children have died.

The 1970 UN Declaration on Principles of International Law, Point 6:
“No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements are in violation of international law.”

The UN Declaration makes it clear that the invasion of another state is an illegal act and those who authorise it can, under the law, be brought to account. However, we see these war criminals still being lauded as respectable statesmen, rather than being cplaced before the courts and convicted.

The Socialist Party however view all war as "crimes against humanity" regardless of whether they are supposedly defensive or aggressive, imperialist or for national liberation. They are all fought in the interest of a country's respective ruling class.

Shares Soar

Low wages - High Profits

Shares in London have reached levels last seen at the height of the dotcom boom nearly 13 years ago. At a close of 6,755 points, the FTSE 100 blue chip index matched levels from September 2000, just before the market's fascination with loss-making technology companies such as lastminute.com came to an abrupt end and the dotcom bubble burst. The closely watched index of the 100 biggest companies traded in London is also within sight of its all time peak of the 6,930 reached on 30 December 1999. The S&P 500 in the US and the Dax in Germany are also at record levels. The low interest rates has also made shares more attractive than other investments.


UK's largest financial adviser, Hargreaves Lansdown, said shares in Britain's 100 biggest companies were likely to continue rising this year as long as companies could sustain their current run of profits.

"It doesn't look like central banks are going to stop printing money any time soon. Interest rates are going to remain low. When there is little money to be made investing in government bonds and commodities are volatile, stock markets have become the focus of most investors' attention," Richard Hunter explained.

Altruism and Empathy

Frans de Waal, is the director of Emory University's Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Georgia, USA that studies how our close primate relatives also demonstrate behaviors suggestive of a sense of morality and he is also the author of "The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates."


CNN: How would you say that ethics or morality is separate from religion?

De Waal: Well, I think that morality is older. In the sense that I find it very hard to believe that 100,000 or 200,000 years ago, our ancestors did not believe in right and wrong, and did not punish bad behavior, did not care about fairness. Very long ago our ancestors had moral systems. Our current institutions are only a couple of thousand years old, which is really not old in the eyes of a biologist. So I think religion came after morality. Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.

CNN: So do you believe that people are generally good?
De Waal: Yeah, my view is that you have two (kinds of) people in the world. You have people who think that we are inherently bad and evil and selfish, but with a lot of hard work we can be good, and you have other people like myself who believe that we are inherently good. There's a lot of evidence on the primates that I can use to support that idea that we are inherently good, but on occasion when we get too competitive or frustrated, we turn bad.

CNN: So when the stakes are higher for survival, we're more individualistic than group-oriented?

De Waal: Oh no, we very much survive by group life. Humans are not able to survive alone. For example, solitary confinement is one of the worst punishments we can give. We are not really made to live alone, we would not survive, and so when things get tough we would actually come together more and be more social when things get tough.

Full Interview here

For the Socialist Book Shelf

Forum was an internal discussion magazine of the Socialist Party published during the 50s and every issue was full of lively debate and controversy. The years 1952 and 1953 are now available in paperback:

1952 Forum: £3.76 (147pp)

1953 Forum: £7.43 (392pp)

Forgotten Working Class Hero?

George Julian Harney, the son of a seaman, was born in the squalor and misery of Deptford on 17th February, 1817. In September 1840 he married Mary Cameron, of Mauchline, Ayrshire, daughter of a radical weaver. Harney died in Richmond, Surrey on 9th December, 1897, the last surviving member of the 1839 Chartist convention.


Harney was a more ardent radical than most English activists of his generation. He founded the London Democratic Association which attracted thousands of workers. Not surprisingly, therefore, Harney gravitated towards the more militant wing of Chartism. While most Chartists sought peaceful change, Harney was committed to a revolutionary overthrow of the traditional system and establishment. In a speech at Derby, 28th January, 1839, Harney declared:
“We demand Universal Suffrage, because we believe the universal suffrage will bring universal happiness. Time was when every Englishman had a musket in his cottage, and along with it hung a flitch of bacon; now there was no flitch of bacon for there was no musket; let the musket be restored and the flitch of bacon would soon follow. You will get nothing from your tyrants but what you can take, and you can take nothing unless you are properly prepared to do so. In the words of a good man, then, I say 'Arm for peace, arm for liberty, arm for justice, arm for the rights of all, and the tyrants will no longer laugh at your petitions'. Remember that.”

Sunday Sermon - Non-belief

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is perhaps unique in declaring that religion is not a personal matter. We have not refrained from frontal attacks on all religious faiths as previous Sunday Sermon blog-posts have demonstrated. The Socialist Party takes a non-theistic, materialist approach particularly to society and social change. Religious people believe in the existence of at least one supernatural entity that intervenes in nature and human affairs. Socialists hold that we only live once. Religious people believe in some afterlife. Clearly the two are incompatible.

Levellers Day

“There was no other way to deal with these men, but to break them to pieces ... if you do not break them, they will break you.” - Oliver Cromwell

On 17 May 1649, three soldiers were executed on Oliver Cromwell’s orders in Burford churchyard, Oxfordshire. They belonged to a movement popularly known as the Levellers, with beliefs in civil rights and religious tolerance.

The name “Levellers,” like most party names (e.g., “Lollards,” “Anabaptists,” “Quakers,” “Whigs” and “Tories”) was originally a nickname applied in scorn and derision. The Levellers were those who demanded, so early as 1647, that the “whole body of the People” should make the people’s laws. During the Civil War, the Levellers fought on Parliament’s side, they had at first seen Cromwell as a liberator, but now saw him as a dictator. They were prepared to fight against him for their ideals and he was determined to crush them. Over 300 of them were captured by Cromwell’s troops and locked up in Burford church. Three were led out into the churchyard to be shot as ringleaders.

The Levellers were the most energetic and uncompromising faction in the English Revolution, with a short life taking shape in 1646 to be crushed by Cromwell’s dictatorship in 1649. The English Revolution was the revolution of the rising capitalist class against the monopolies and other restraints on free competition of the feudal-monarchic state in which many sections of the country gentry were capitalist, rearing sheep on land from which the peasants had been driven. Thus in 1640 they were able to combine with the merchants and lead the yeoman farmers and the artisans and apprentices of the town.

The Levellers started as a propaganda group and transformed themselves into a party as their influence extended and the revolutionary movement mounted. The Levellers linked themselves with the rank-and-file of Cromwell’s New Model Army. They supported elections of soldier’s delegates and the agitation of the soldier’s committees which took up their grievances and favored a popular militia, democratically controlled. Most of the Agitators in the revolutionary army either belonged to the Levellers or were inspired by their ideas. Both the Cromwellians and the Levellers moved forward to a Republic. The Cromwellians wanted a regime in which sovereignty was concentrated in the hands of the large property owners. The Levellers demanded a democratic republic based upon the power of the people and responsive to their demands.

Their religious, political and economic ideas expressed the interests and outlook of the artisans, apprentices, shopkeepers and similar lower middle-class and working-class elements in the cities and the yeomen in the country districts. The"far left” was occupied by the dispossessed peasants who formed the agrarian communist sect of the Diggers who recognised that political democracy was impossible without economic democracy. However, the Diggers’ condemnation of private property in land ran counter to the aspirations of the peasant majority. By contrast, the Levellers were opposed to “making all things common,” defended the rights of private property, and called for free trade. The Levellers called for sweeping democratization of both Church and State. Among the religious reforms were full freedom of religious belief, separation of Church and State, the suppression of tithes; among the political reforms were a constitutional republic, annual election of a Parliament responsible to the people alone, general manhood suffrage; among the legal reforms, the right to a trial by jury, no star-chamber hearings, no capital punishment or imprisonment for debt; among the civil rights, freedom of the press and no license on printing. In their day such doctrines were audacious and revolutionary.

The mass petition was the principal means they used to inform and arouse the people. These petitions containing the demands of the people were widely circulated for signatures, submitted to Parliament, and backed up by meetings and demonstrations. In March 1647 a great petition was presented to the Commons. It called for the abolition of tithes, for the abolition of the Merchants Adventurers Co., for relief to imprisoned debtors and assistance to the poor, for limitations on fees of all judges, magistrates, lawyers and government officials. It demanded the abolition of the veto power of the King and the House of Lords. The Commons ordered the petition to be burnt. Lilburne who had hitherto been a fervent admirer and supporter of Cromwell broke with him for his subservience to Parliament, denounced the Parliament as a tyrant and oppressor and called for a new constitution and new elections. Lilburne, himself at one time a soldier, now turned to the army’s the rank and file. A popularly elected soldier’s Council argued about the Army’s political programme on level terms with the Generals.

Both the Cromwellians and the Levellers supported a republic but the Cromwellians wanted a regime in which power was concentrated in the hands of the large property owners. The Levellers demanded a democratic republic based upon the power of the people and responsive to their demands.

The Levellers were the first to encourage women to participate in political activity. In one of the petitions offered in their name the women asserted that they had “an equal interest with the men of the nation in its liberties and securities.” They did not go so far, however, as to demand female suffrage.

Although only active for only a few years on the stage of history, the Levellers left a durable imprint on the development of democratic thought demonstrating how a revolutionary group which itself never attains the heights of power can nevertheless profoundly affect the course of a great revolution and fertilize progressive tendencies for centuries thereafter.

Marx and Engels knew that the Levelers were before their time and said so often, but they wrote also:
“We find the first appearance of a really functioning Communist party in the bourgeois revolution at the moment when the constitutional monarchy is removed. The most consistent republicans, in England the Levelers, in France, Babeuf, Buonarroti, etc. are the first who proclaimed these ‘social questions.’” - The Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality.

Ryanair Exploitation

Ryanair pilots have been warned by them not to sign a letter to airline regulators expressing concern that the airline’s employment practices could jeopardise passenger safety. In a memo staff were told they would be guilty of “gross misconduct” and “liable for dismissal” if they signed the letter to the Irish Aviation Authority that regulates Ryanair. The letter was drawn up by the Ryanair Pilot Group (RPG), which represents captains and co-pilots working for the airline but is not recognised by the company.


Pilots are paid for the actual flying work they do but have to pay for all their own expenses, including uniforms, identity cards, transport and hotel accommodation. The contracted pilots have no pension scheme or medical insurance unless they set it up themselves.

One Ryanair pilot said that the company was protected themselves because they could claim that pilots had a legal and moral obligation not to fly if they do not think they are capable. But they added: “People are human and if you’re not going to be paid [if you don’t fly] you might think ‘I can do this, I’m fine. I’ll just get on with it’. You should not have a safety culture based on fear.”

David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine and an expert on aviation, said: “Ryanair are pushing their luck on human factors when they employ pilots like a warlord employs mercenaries. There is the worry that if they are self-employed that might place additional pressures on them to work even if, for any number of reasons, they might not feel entirely fit to do so.”

Flight attendants are employed by Crewlink, a contractor for Ryanair. Cabin crew are obliged to take compulsory unpaid leave in the quieter months – during which they are forbidden to take another job but receive no money. Pay £360 for a Ryanair uniform plus another £1,800 towards a mandatory safety course. Wages are for the hours actually "in the air"and are not paid for pre-flight briefings, turnaround time between flights, sales meetings and time on the ground due to delays and flight cancellations. The hourly flying rate was just £13.07 an hour with no contractual review for three years. Pay is for only four days work a week. The fifth day is on-call, to turn up for work with an hour's notice. Stand-by days were not paid unless called to work. If an employee should leave within the first 15 months of employment, they would be liable for a 200 Euro administration fee.

From the Independent

Nationalist Hypocrisy

On‭ ‬16‭ ‬May Ukip leader Nigel Farage was confronted by protesters in Edinburgh.‭ ‬The demonstration had been partly organised by supporters of the Radical Independence Campaign‭ (‬a group supporting‭ ‬Scottish independence‭)‬.‭ ‬The BBC reported a spokesman for the Radical Independence Campaign,‭ "‬it is UKIP who are stoking division.‭ … ‬Everyone who opposes the politics of fear and division should unite against UKIP‭ ‬-‭ ‬whether you live in Scotland or England.‭"


This is hypocrisy,‭ ‬just as nationalism always is.‭ ‬The Radical Independence Campaign are arguing in favour of dividing workers in Scotland from workers in England.‭ ‬Ukip are arguing in favour of dividing workers in the United Kingdom from workers in the European Union.‭ ‬What is the difference‭?

Farage commented‭ “‬I have heard before that there are some parts of Scottish nationalism that are akin to fascism but yesterday I saw that face-to-face.”

The SNP and its First Minister Alex Salmond evasively failed to condemn the protest and described Farage's comment as an over-reaction and that he has "lost the plot".

Once again the Socialist Party affirms its commitment to free speech. Free speech means exactly what it says: any and every view should be allowed expression regardless of whether it is right-wing, left wing, separatist or racist. The Socialist Party unhesitatingly opposes the UKIP’s policies of British nationalism and its calls for immigration curbs but it does not serve democracy by denying UKIP’s right to declare those beliefs and reinforce its sense of “victimhood”. Rather than giving publicity to capitalism's defenders by shouting them down and letting them appear as martyrs, rather than shouting down those advancing unacceptable ideas, socialists must defeat their arguments with rational discussion and reasoned persuasion. Many on the Left advocate leaving the EU just as UKIP do. All mainstream political parties, including the SNP and Labour, are committed to some form of immigration controls just the same as UKIP.

The Socialist Party has never supported the disruption of our opponents' meetings and their right to speak. Workers have fought long and hard for the opportunity to speak openly, and genuine socialists understand that nothing is to be gained for our class by stifling ideas.

The world is rich - the rich are the problem

There’s no shortage of food, no shortage of wealth to solve social crises. The problem is a system that enriches a few and starves the many. We hear day in day out about the massive poverty and hunger that exists in the world. NGO’s and various non-profits have been around for decades appealing for assistance in feeding the world’s poor. Some experts think it is simply an overpopulation problem and it is the poor that are to blame; if only they’d have fewer children, they advise. It is not too many people that are the problem. It is not the lack of medical knowledge or technical expertise that leads to staggering infant and adult death rates in some parts of the world. It is the lack of social infrastructure and the political will needed to provide it.


The world produces enough food to feed everyone according to Hunger Notes —17% more calories today than it did 30 years ago. But food is a commodity and its production does not take place if the end product cannot be bought and the value added during the production process realized. The capitalist class would call this lack of demand. But in the world of the market, if you can’t pay you can’t play. No money for food, then you starve.

Unicef estimates that between 2000 and 2010 92 million children died form hunger and diseases, “…many of the illnesses and conditions that children suffer are easily preventable, technically.” says Global Issues, in other words, they are really what we might refer to as “man made” deaths. They are in actuality, market induced deaths.

Almost 2 million children a year die form diarrhea due to lack of safe drinking water, another market induced crisis with which even the UN seems to agree:

“We reject this [Malthusian perspective that global water problems are a problem of scarcity and population growth]. The availability of water is a concern for some countries. But the scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and inequality, not in physical availability.” (UN Human Development Report)

This situation is not something that cannot change. It is not an insoluble dilemma. It is not the fault of the victims, of “human greed” in the abstract or of “natural disasters” or the by-product of supernatural squabbling between a benign god and his disgruntled fallen angel. It is a very simple. We solve the problem by transferring collective wealth, and more importantly, the means by which it is created, the ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, from private individuals to the collective. Through this process, we can emerge from the depths of depravity to the apex of civilization. True freedom.

Taken from here

Hat tip to JanetS

Buying politicians

Politics is simply the expression of the economic interests of certain groups or classes. The “captains of industry” as they like to call themselves wish to steer the ship of government. They finance chosen and favoured politicians with generous party campaign funds with which the political process becomes corrupted. The exploiters realise they are in politics, not in non-partisan politics, but in politics. The capitalist tries to obscure it in every way possible by pretending to be responsible concerned citizens. The capitalist doesn’t vote for a workers’ party , yet money is spent to ensure that the working class will vote for the capitalist one. This is why the capitalists are in power and the workers are in subjugation.


In the American presidential elections an estimated $3 billion went to political advisors. $6 billion in 2012 went towards the advertising costs on TV, radio and press.

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson (fortune worth $26.5 billion) . He and his wife, Miriam, first gave $16.5 million in an effort to make Newt Gingrich the Republican presidential nominee. Once Gingrich exited the race, the Adelsons invested more than $30 million in electing Mitt Romney. They donated millions more to support GOP candidates running for the House and Senate, to block a pro-union measure in Michigan, and to bankroll the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other conservatives . All told, the Adelsons donated $94 million during the 2012. When you add in so-called dark money, one estimate puts their total giving at closer to $150 million.

Super PACs can raise unlimited amounts of money from pretty much anyone and there is no limit on how much they can spend. Every so often, they must reveal their donors and show how they spent their money. And they can't directly coordinate with candidates or their campaigns. For instance, Restore Our Future, the super PAC that spent $142 million to elect Mitt Romney, couldn't tell his campaign when or where it was running TV ads, couldn't share scripts, couldn't trade messaging ideas. The savviest political operatives quickly realized how potentially powerful such outfits could be when it came to setting agendas and influencing the political system. Karl Rove, George W. Bush's political guru, launched American Crossroads, a super PAC. As consultants like Rove and the wealthy donors they courted saw the advantages of having their own super PACs -- no legal headaches, no giving or spending limits -- the groups grew in popularity. Having decried super PACs as "a threat to democracy," Obama and his advisers flip-flopped and blessed the creation of one devoted specifically to reelecting the president.

The American Action Network raised $27.5 million from July 2010 to June 2011; of that haul, 90% of the money came from eight donors, with one giving $7 million. The story is the same with Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS. It raised $77 million from June 2010 to December 2011, and nearly 90% of that came from donors giving at least $1 million. And while Priorities USA, the pro-Obama nonprofit, raised a comparatively tiny $2.3 million in 2011, 80% of it came from a single, anonymous donor.
The liberal think tank Demos found that out of every $10 raised by super PACs in 2012, $9 came from just 3,318 people giving $10,000 or more. That small club of donors is equivalent to 0.0011% of the U.S. population.

In late April, roughly 100 donors gathered at a resort in Laguna Beach, California. They were all members of the Democracy Alliance, a private group of wealthy liberals that includes George Soros and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Over five days, they swapped ideas on how best to promote a “progressive” agenda and took in pitches from leaders of the most powerful liberal-leaning groups in America, including Organizing for Action, the rebooted version of Obama's 2012 presidential campaign. Since the Democracy Alliance's founding in 2005, its members have given $500 million to various causes and organizations. At the Laguna Beach event alone, its members pledged a reported $50 million.

At the same time, a similar scene was playing out at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort and Spa in Palm Springs . A few hundred conservative and libertarian donors were there for the latest donor conference convened by billionaire Charles Koch . Over two days, donors mingled with politicians, heard presentations by leading activists, and pledged serious money to bankroll groups promoting the free-market agenda in Washington and around the country.
The money raised by the Democracy Alliance and the Kochs' political network is secret. The public will never know its true source. Call it “dark money.” what is dark money? Say you're a billionaire and you want to give $1 million to anonymously influence an election. You give that money, as many donors have, to a nonprofit organized under the (c)(4) section of the tax code. That nonprofit, in turn, can spend your money on election-related TV ads or mailers or online videos. But there's a catch: unlike super PACs, the majority of a 501(c)(4) nonprofit's work can't be political. Where the IRS draws the line on how much politicking is too much, and even what the taxman defines as political, is very murky. Wealthy donors have seized on this as a new way to direct secret money into campaigns. Between 2010 and 2012, the number of applications for 501(c)(4) status spiked from 1,500 to 3,400, according to IRS official Lois Lerner. During the 2010 campaign, politically active nonprofits outspent super PACs by a three to two margin, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The Commission on Hope, Growth, and Opportunity (CHGO) was created in 2010, it informed the IRS that it wouldn't spend a penny on politics. During the 2010 elections, however, it put $2.3 million into ads attacking 11 Democratic congressional candidates. Then, in 2011, CHGO simply closed up shop and disappeared -- a classic case of political hit-and-run. And it wouldn't have happened without a secretive wealthy bankroller: of the $4.8 million raised by CHGO, tax records show that $4 million came from a single donor (though we don’t know his or her name).
Millionaires and billionaires handpick the candidates and the issues. "It'll be wealthy people getting together and picking horses and riding those horses through a primary process and maybe upending the consensus of the party," a Democratic strategist recently said. "We're in a whole new world."

A serious Senate or White House bid is dependent not on climbing the party ranks, but on winning the support of a few wealthy bankrollers. Although the political parties may still claim to officially pick the candidates for office, the power increasingly lies with the elites of the political donor class. After the 2012 elections, Republican politicians including Governor John Kasich of Ohio and Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana met privately with Sheldon Adelson. They were officially in Las Vegas for a gathering of the Republican Governors Association, but it was never too early to court the man who, with a stroke of his pen, could underwrite a presidential hopeful's bid for his or her party's nomination.

Democratic candidates are no different. House and Senate hopefuls are flocking to Hollywood studio boss Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of their party's biggest donors and fundraisers. And why wouldn't they? Barack Obama might not be where he is today without Katzenberg. Days after Obama launched his presidential campaign in 2007, the DreamWorks Animation mogul gave the junior senator his imprimatur and prodded Hollywood into raising $1.3 million for him. Years later, Katzenberg provided $2 million in seed money for the pro-Obama super PAC that played a pivotal role in his reelection.

Increasingly, it looks like before the rest of us even have our say, before we enter the voting booth, issues, politics, and the candidates will have been vetted, and predetermined by the wealthiest Americans.

Unfortunately, it is not a whole new world but the continuance of what has always been. Just the manner has changed.
ADAPTED from here

Hat-tip to JanetS

Fact of the Day

The wealth of the average person by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. The American at the midpoint in the wealth distribution had a net worth of $107,800 in 2007, falling to $57,900 in 2010 (in constant 2007 dollars) – actually less than the value in 1969 ($63,600).


The steep drop in asset prices during the recession, particularly housing, hit the “middle class” harder than more affluent Americans. Blacks and Hispanics and young adults also increased their net worth earlier in the decade, because so much of their assets were tied up in home ownership. These gains were wiped out during the recession. home values, which still make up two-thirds of their total wealth, and their high levels of mortgage debt have been the main cause of increasing wealth inequality since 2007.

Crazy Capitalism

Abercrombie and Fitch would rather burn clothes than donate to those in need


An interview with an Abercrombie and Fitch District Manager, who has requested to remain nameless, revealed an interesting procedure the company follows regarding its damaged clothing. "Any clothing that has any type of blemish, including things such as a stitch missing or a frayed fabric, gets sent back to the company for immediate disposal." He continued to share that a large amount of clothing gets sent back to corporate for issue such as the ones listed.

Abercrombie and Fitch has had many requests by non-profit organizations to have the clothing donated to areas of need but the company refuses.
"Abercrombie and Fitch doesn't want to create the image that just anybody, poor people, can wear their clothing. Only people of a certain stature are able to purchase and wear the company name."

Think of all the clothing they could have donated to Katrina victims or for the Haiti relief.

Abercrombie CEO Michael Jeffries got $48.1 million, according to the New Albany, Ohio-based company’s 2012 proxy. That’s 1,640 times the average clothing-store worker’s $29,310 in pay and benefits.

The 1969 Occupy Movement

In what was called Battle for People's Park or “Bloody Thursday”, on the 15th May, 1969,  students and members of the “counter-culture" fought against the police in Berkeley, California, who had fenced the park off in the middle of the night.

Frank Bardacke, a participant in the park's development, stated "A group of people took some corporate land, owned by the University of California, that was a parking lot and turned it into a park and then said, 'We're using the land better than you used it; it's ours'".

Michael Delacour stated, "We wanted a free speech area that wasn't really controlled like Sproul Plaza was. It was another place to organize, another place to have a rally. The park was secondary."

The university's Free Speech microphone was available to all students, with few if any restrictions on speech. The construction of the park involved many of the same people and politics as the 1964 Free Speech Movement.

Local landscape architect Jon Read and many others contributed trees, flowers, and shrubs. Free food was provided and community development of the park proceeded. Eventually, about 1,000 people became directly involved, with many more donating money and materials. The park was essentially complete by mid-May

Police killed a bystander, James Rector, & wounds 60 others, including Alan Blanchard, blinded for life. Seventeen days of street fighting ensued, capped by a march of 30,000, where another 150 demonstrators are shot & wounded.

Ronald Reagan then the governor of California considered the creation of the park a direct leftist challenge to the property rights of the university and says “If there has to be a bloodbath then let's get it over with. No more appeasement”.

1..2..3..4...What was it they were dying for?

Vietnamese rubber tycoon, Doan Nguyen Duc, the chairman of Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) Group, has been accused by Global Witness, a group that campaigns on resource issues, of land grabbing in Southeast Asia. In its report titled “Rubber Barons” Global Witness accused international investors including Deutsche Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the private lending arm of the World Bank – of financing two of Vietnam’s biggest rubber companies, the privately-owned HAGL and the state-owned Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG), to acquire vast amounts of land for rubber plantations in Cambodia and Laos. According to the report, the two firms have caused widespread evictions, illegal logging and food insecurity in the countries.


Global Witness concluded the Vietnamese firms gained rights to more than 200,000 hectares (nearly 500,000 acres) of concession land through secretive deals with the Lao and Cambodian governments. Land was often sold without villagers' consent or knowledge and without compensation, the report alleges. Families were forced off their land or expected to work for the rubber plantation, although jobs were few and far between.

"When they resist, communities face violence, arrest and detention, often at the hands of armed Cambodian security forces who are on the investors' payroll," the report claims.

It alleges the IFC invested US$14.95 million in a Vietnamese fund that holds 5 percent equity in HAGL, while Deutsche Bank owns some $4.5-million-worth of HAGL shares. Deutsche Bank is also said to have 1.2-million shares in a subsidiary company of VRG amounting to more than $3 million