Dick Meister | Wednesday 02 February 2011

Reagan had little apparent reason to fear labor politically. Opinion polls at the time showed that unions were opposed by nearly half of all Americans, and that nearly half of those who belonged to unions had voted for Reagan in both of his presidential campaigns.

Reagan, at any rate, was a true ideologue of the anti-labor political right. Yes, he had been president of the Screen Actors Guild, but he was notoriously pro-management in that position. He led the way to a strike-ending agreement in 1959 that greatly weakened the union. Under heavy membership pressure, he finally resigned as union president before his term ended.

Very few consultants and very few of those who hired them were asked for the financial disclosure statements that the law demands, yet all unions were required to file the statements that the law required of them, and that imbalance could be used to advantage by their opponents. Although the Labor Department cut its overall budget by more than 10 percent, it increased the budget for such union-busting activities by almost 40 percent.

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/ronald-reagan-enemy-american-worker67348

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Syl_61uNUs[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lXX8L-9cmc[/youtube]

By P.J. KONING

a private dinner (and possible fundraiser) hosted by Charles Koch in 2007. If you’ll remember, Charles and his brother, David Koch, were the ones profiled in the August 2010 New Yorker piece “Covert Operations: the Billionaire Koch Brothers’ War on Obama.” To bring things full-circle, the Kochs are also major donors to the Federalist Society, a group dedicated to right-leaning reforms to the American legal system. 

Tea Party caucus. In an immediately infamous meeting Monday, the justice and conservative lawmakers (and four Democrats) spoke at length about the Constitution and where the country is headed, and the entire conversation was off the record and closed to reporters.

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Hundreds march outside Koch brothers’ retreat

By Rich Connell and Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Rancho Mirage and Washington, D.C.

contributed $1 million to a failed ballot initiative to suspend California’s law to curb greenhouse gases.
“We cannot have democracy unless everyone has a voice,” said Cathy Riddle, a Temecula website developer who held a sign reading “Corporations are not people.” Donors like the Koch brothers are “drowning us out,” she said. “Their voices are louder.”
   The orderly protest, involving 800 to 1,000 people, ended after the arrest of 25 people for trespassing, according to authorities.
   Koch spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer said the closed-door meeting, the eighth of its kind, “brings together some of America’s greatest philanthropists and job creators … who share a common belief that the current level of government spending in our nation is simply unsustainable.”
   The meeting is focusing on ways to reduce the rising federal deficit, she said, as well as “strategies to promote policies that will help grow our economy, foster free enterprise and create American jobs.”
   The guest list was confidential, but attendees included House Republican leader Eric Cantor of Virginia. In past years, guests or speakers have included other GOP leaders and conservative commentator Glenn Beck.
Sunday’s rally outside the Rancho Las Palmas resort came after a midterm election year of unprecedented attention on the Koch brothers and their role in the nation’s politics. For decades, the family has underwritten conservative organizations and campaigns, providing significant funding for the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
   Protesters held a Sunday morning panel discussion that mostly focused on a Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, that permitted corporations and unions to contribute directly to political campaigns.
   Critics said Sunday that the Kochs, who have interests in oil, pipelines, chemicals and a range of consumer products, backed groups that supported the court’s decision.
   They echoed concerns of President Obama, who has criticized a group that David Koch helped form, Americans for Prosperity. The president cited AFP as an example of special-interest money that poured into last year’s campaigns after the high court decision. AFP had said it planned to spend $40 million in 2010 campaigns.
   This month, the watchdog group Common Cause delivered a letter to the Justice Department saying that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have disqualified themselves from the Citizens United case if they had taken part in a meeting the Kochs sponsored. A Supreme Court spokesman said neither justice participated in the meeting but said Thomas “dropped by.”
   Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause and a former Democratic congressman, told rally participants that the Kochs “are at the center of a hard-core conservative political network” that wants to roll back consumer protections and undercut fair elections.
   “This is a fight for nothing short of the heart and soul of America,” he said.
   Republican defenders of the Kochs accuse Common Cause and other critics of being hypocritical, saying Democratic causes have similarly large donors.
   Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, has attended Koch meetings in the past. He said the brothers were simply encouraging political participation. (sic)
   “Common Cause pretends to be in favor of political engagement and free speech, and now they are shouting down a group that wants to be engaged,” he said.
   The Kochs “encourage people to get involved in politics, support think tanks, to start think tanks. It’s important work.”
   But Jeff McCall, 67, a retired Upland teacher who was near the crowded front lines of Sunday’s protest, said he felt compelled to demonstrate against the Supreme Court’s relaxation of corporate political contributing.
   “It’s putting American democracy in the hands of people like the Kochs and others,” he said. “It’s not who you vote for, it’s how much money you’ve got.”
rich.connell@latimes.com
tom.hamburger@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

The superrich are doing fine, thank you. 

SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 2011

lenin“

The world’s population of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) grew 17.1% to 10.0 million in 2009, returning to levels last seen in 2007 despite the contraction in world gross domestic product (GDP). Global HNWI wealth similarly recovered, rising 18.9% to US$39.0 trillion, with HNWI wealth in Asia-Pacific and Latin America actually surpassing levels last seen at the end of 2007.

For the first time ever, the size of the HNWI population in Asia-Pacific was as large as that of Europe (at 3.0 million). This shift in the rankings occurred because HNWI gains in Europe, while sizeable, were far less than those in Asia-Pacific, where the region’s economies saw continued robust growth in both economic and market drivers of wealth.

The wealth of Asia-Pacific HNWIs stood at US$9.7 trillion by the end of 2009, up 30.9%, and above the US$9.5 trillion in wealth held by Europe’s HNWIs. Among Asia-Pacific markets, Hong Kong and India led the pack, rebounding from mammoth declines in their HNWI bases and wealth in 2008 amid an outsized resurgence in their stock markets.

The global HNWI population nevertheless remains highly concentrated. The U.S., Japan and Germany still accounted for 53.5% of the world’s HNWI population at the end of 2009, down only slightly from 54.0% in 2008. Australia became the tenth largest home to HNWIs, after overtaking Brazil, due to a considerable rebound.

After losing 24.0% in 2008, Ultra-HNWIs saw wealth rebound 21.5% in 2009. At the end of 2009, Ultra-HNWIs accounted for 35.5% of global HNWI wealth, up from 34.7%, while representing only 0.9% of the global HNWI population, the same as in 2008.

The total liquid wealth of the rich in 2009, at $39 trillion, was actually more than two-thirds of world GDP in the same year, almost triple the GDP of the US, and nearly ten times that of China. Another way of looking at it is that the increase in liquid assets from 2008 to 2009 held by the rich was about $6.5 trillion, more than 10% of total GDP in 2009. This was in a year in which world GDP actually shrank by 0.8%.

RIGHT: Entertainment and music mogul David Geffen.

contributed to the wealth of the US ruling class. This could happen partly because China’s growth rates were, like those of many ‘newly industrialising countries’, already robust. This meant that China’s per capita stimulus was greater than that of any other country, and as such accounted for 95% of economic growth in the first three quarters of 2009. But it was also in part because state ownership of the financial and banking sector in China has enabled the government to have more control over the coordination of its stimulus and its effects.

productivity of labour. Productivity growth has offset wage growth, thus allowing an increase in working class wages and living standards to take place, while continuing the long term strend for wages to decrease as a share of GDP [pdf]. The result is that the top 0.4% of the population controls 70% of the country’s wealth. Chinese growth has actually depended on wages sliding as a share of national wealth, and the world capitalist system would be a lot worse off if that hadn’t continued to happen. Indeed, according to a World Bank economist, China’s stimulus alone contributed 1% to world growth in 2010 – an extraordinary figure. Its GDP by purchasing power parity is already larger than the US by some calculations. China’s growth is enabling its ruling class to dramatically increase its demand for luxury goods, accounting for 49% of luxury market growth as the rich spoil themselves with the usual array of jets, mansions, and yachts. But it has also substantially paid for US growth, through direct investment and sovereign debt purchases.

global south, especially where popular movements succeed in establishing governments that are interested in independent development based on some concessions for the working class. One would also expect things like this to happen more often, as white supremacy in its various forms is a well-established praxis for weakening the bargaining power of labour and breaking the political threat from the Left. And, especially in a period like this, when growth is thin on the ground and profits have to be wrested through acts of accumulation-by-dispossession, that is how the ruling class makes its money.

Labels: american ruling class, capitalism, china, exploitation, profits, ruling class, the rate of exploitation

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/01/global-ruling-class.html

back on the ballot for the Chicago mayoral race, and as it’s been known, he won’t be hurting for dough — the former White House staffer raked in over $11.8 million in the final months of 2010, besting his main competitor Gery Chico by more than a whopping $9 million, Forbes reports. But where did his health coffers come from? That’s where it gets interesting.

published late last week, reads like a who’s who of glammy businesspeople. Trumped up by pals of his brother Ari — you know, the fancy Hollywood agent who inspired Jeremy Piven’s Entourage character — Rahm’s list of supporters includes 14 billionaires, Steve Jobs, tinseltown power-movers Steven Spielberg, Aaron Sorkin and David Geffen and, you know, Donald Trump. In other words — a lot of people who totally do not live in Chicago!

Carol Moseley Braun, who is working with a mere $450,000.

here.

Posted at January 26, 2011, 7:29 am

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ADDENDUM

Emanuel’s billionaire backers include:

Donald Trump, who kicked in $50,000

Joe Mansueto

Steven Spielberg, who gave $75,000

Haim Saban, Emanuel’s biggest supporter; he and his wife gave $500,000 between them

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO (his wife Laurene also donated)

David Geffen

Ken Griffin, who, along with his wife, gave $200,000

Jay and Nicholas

Eli Broad

Mortimer Zuckerman

Nelson Peltz, chairman of fast food chains Wendy’s and Arby’s

Ron Perelman

Marc Lasry

Emanuel’s other big-name backers include two prominent social media billionaires-in-the-making. Chicago-based Eric Lefkofsky, co-founder and 30% owner of web coupon phenomenon Groupon, gave $100,000 via his private equity firm Blue Media LLC. Facebook co-founder Sean Parker also donated $100,000 – the same amount he gave towards his last high-profile political cause, California’s marijuana legalization bill, Prop 19. Emanuel seems to have other friends at Facebook: Sheryl Sandberg, the website COO, gave $25,000. And, in a surreal but telling display of Emanuel’s clout from Silicon Valley to Hollywood, Facebook frenemy Aaron Sorkin — the screenwriter who fictionalized the site’s founding for the big screen — gave $10,000.

SCUMWATCH:

Brian Beutler | January 12, 2011 | [print_link]

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In response, the GOP-friendly National Association of Manufacturers has asked him to probe forthcoming regulations aimed at enhancing worker health, improving toxin standards, mitigating climate pollution and preventing another crisis on Wall Street.

EPA puts it. “These rules would significantly cut emissions of pollutants that are of particular concern for children. Mercury and lead can cause adverse affects on children’s developing brains — including effects on IQ, learning, and memory. The rules would also reduce emissions of other pollutants including cadmium, dioxin, furans, formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid. These pollutants can cause cancer or other adverse health effects in adults and children.”

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BONUS FEATURE

Issa’s Glaring Omission: War Spending

By Andy Kroll | Wed Jan. 5, 2011 4:58 AM PST