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Political commentator Mark Shields began his career as a campaign manager in 1968, when he helped to organize Robert F. Kennedy's campaign for the ...
Read more about Mark Shields.
Political commentator Mark Shields began his career as a campaign manager in 1968, when he helped to organize Robert F. Kennedy's campaign for the ...
Read more about Mark Shields.
Outrage at Socialism for the Rich
Mark Shields
The anger rises. The fury rages at a new economic order that rules our
lives. American capitalism has now been redefined to mean the freedom
of the rich to reap enormous rewards if the risks they take do work
out and -- more importantly -- if those risks do not work out, for
everybody else to bail out the rich. In the American financial world,
we have an economic hybrid: free enterprise for the working majority
and socialism for the privileged rich.
Listen to the good news for Goldman Sachs: In 2008, to save that New York investment firm from collapse, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of the national government -- underwritten by the tax dollars of waitresses, machinists and firefighters -- came up with an emergency loan of $10 billion to keep Goldman afloat. But the insolence of wealth was not shaken. In that year when Goldman earned $2.3 billion -- while tin-cupping $10 billion from the U.S. treasury -- it still rewarded its top employees with bonuses of $4.8 billion.
To be fair, Goldman Sachs has since repaid with interest its $10 billion life-saving loan to the U.S. Citigroup, which eagerly welcomed $45 billion in taxpayer help in 2008 while simultaneously running up a company loss of $27.7 billion -- shockingly -- still honored its failed corporate leadership with $5.33 billion in bonuses. Citigroup, let it be noted, is one-third owned by U.S. taxpayers.
Don't overlook JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, which between them, paid out to their brass $5.694 billion more in bonuses than the two organizations made in profits -- while at the same time they were seeking and accepting some $35 billion in transfusions from their fellow taxpayers. The road to wealth is obviously using other people's money.
As that widely admired American philosopher Donald Trump once told us, "The point is that you can't be too greedy."
All of this took place while Americans' median income was falling $52,163 a year to $50,303, wiping out all the gains from the preceding decade and dropping to its lowest level since 1997, and the nation's unemployment rate is at its highest in 26 years.
Yesterday, 14,000 Americans lost their health insurance. Both today and again tomorrow, another 14,000 will suffer the loss of their health insurance. Every minute of this day, another seven American families -- that means 424 each hour -- will lose their homes to foreclosure. Unlike Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, two additional corporate welfare clients, these ordinary folks are obviously not "too big to fail."
And while a record 5.4 million citizens have been out of work for six months or more, the U.S. Senate -- which obligingly rescued those bonus-addicted financial giants -- has hesitated to even extend unemployment benefits to their fellow citizens.
Has official Washington somehow forgotten -- in a society where too often we are what we do -- just how cruel life can be when we are "doing nothing"?
"We have always known," the greatest American president of the 20th century told his fellow citizens, "that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."
The question, some 70 years after Franklin Roosevelt made that statement, is do we agree and are we sufficiently outraged to rebel against taxpayer-subsidized socialism for the rich and a cold shoulder to our hurting brothers and sisters?
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To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Distributed By Creators.Com
Copyright 2009 Mark Shields
This news arrived on: 10/17/2009
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Posted Comments:
10-21-2009 15:18
JCE wrote:
Amazing. After the trillions spent by the industries, and by the right wing propaganda machine, to stop health care reform, they really haven't fooled that many people. Somehow, the truth has gotten out. Obama, by suggesting, and leaving force up to the right, has done better than even I expected. More people have enough sense to see that we do need a public option, and single payer, and a mandate, a cap on premiums, and most people do want reform. So now we wait to see if the democrats will give the people what they want, or if the democrats will follow the lead of the republicans, and give the industry what it wants. This is the real thing. It is about life and death of people, and their dreams, and the economy. Propaganda didn't stop everyone from seeing it. Not that we are out of the woods yet. The industry and the right won't go down without a fight, and they haven't lost yet. One can pray that the people keep wising up, and that the democrats remember that they are democrats, not blue dog wannabe republicans. Hopefully, they will put the people before money. There will always be the fringe lunatics who are against reform, and who buy into the lies, but let us hope the numbers keep dwindling.
10-19-2009 11:58
casey42 wrote:
When OBama suggested a ceiling on CEO pay the republicans went ballistic, as the chief beneficiaries of the wealthy's largese in the political arena they cannot bear the thought of it being decreased by even a jot or tittle.
10-19-2009 09:16
Redneck wrote:
Oh My God---what happened ????
Glenn Beck must have hacked this article!!!!! All those leftist, Obama worshiping, City dwellers, have seen the light!!! We rednecks have started using a word for recovery! It's Bastille Day---- Look it up! The solution for the French! Freedom until now when they are about to become an islamic state! Do you think "Office Politics" may NOT be the know-all answer???
10-18-2009 23:14
JCE wrote:
They have been telling us for so long that we can't fight city hall, that over half of us believe it. And it isn't true. We can, if we do it together. Ever since the early chiefs and shamans figured out that they had to control the people, and get them to work for them so they could live far better than them, there have been people dedicated to that idea. And today, it has become the most developed idea man has ever had, even more than democracy and freedom. But only by voting together on a local level can we move up to the congressional level.
The Veterans who sacrificed their lives in WWI &II and in Korea, as well as Viet Nam, had no idea that even then the leaders were working toward this. And if we didn't have technology, we might be even more in the dark, where they want to keep us. As long as the right blames it on the left, and the left blames it on the right, we remain divided, and conquered. The rich rulers aren't divided, and have most of the money, so they continue to rule. Even tho we know it is happening. Partisanship will kill us. We stopped being capitalist long ago. What is the sense in being the richest country on earth if people can't find work, feed their families, get healthcare that won't deny them, or send their kids to school? Somebody is rich, but not the country.
Retired,broke,66,HelenUU,MartyB,TruthinWords,
MarineMom,old cowboy, and Denise Barnes are all so right. I just wish the rest could see it, and take the necessary action, instead of fighting them
The Veterans who sacrificed their lives in WWI &II and in Korea, as well as Viet Nam, had no idea that even then the leaders were working toward this. And if we didn't have technology, we might be even more in the dark, where they want to keep us. As long as the right blames it on the left, and the left blames it on the right, we remain divided, and conquered. The rich rulers aren't divided, and have most of the money, so they continue to rule. Even tho we know it is happening. Partisanship will kill us. We stopped being capitalist long ago. What is the sense in being the richest country on earth if people can't find work, feed their families, get healthcare that won't deny them, or send their kids to school? Somebody is rich, but not the country.
Retired,broke,66,HelenUU,MartyB,TruthinWords,
MarineMom,old cowboy, and Denise Barnes are all so right. I just wish the rest could see it, and take the necessary action, instead of fighting them
10-18-2009 19:55
wrote:
Marine Mom,
You are so right. They are all Bernie Madoffs. I have to laugh everytime I hear a story about how p.o'd. Palm Beach is at getting the short end of the stick from old Bernie. He was one of them, he wasn't supposed to rob them, just the peasants. Bad Bernie, bad, bad, bad, go directly to jail! Hahaha. Yes, we pay the bills for the welfare class, upper and lower both. They will end up killing the gooses with the golden eggs. We are having a tougher time everyday and there are no jobs around here. Not even warehouse night shift work. I worry for our young people, it is so hard to get started at any age but now. . I don't know what is coming next. I do know we need to get a true economist in the W/H or at least a sane person. Making nice is terrific in a neighborhood but we need so much more in the W/H.
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