Note, this piece has been
updated to include reference, & a link, to Republican tax bills would be paradise for
plutocrats.
An earlier version of Our
Long National Nightmare… Continues has also been edited for grammar
and typos.
Our Long National Nightmare… Continues
My fellow Americans:
Our long national nightmare is over… Our Constitution works. Our great
republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.
The major issue of
our time is the rapid movement toward international oligarchy in which a
handful of billionaires own and control a significant part of the global
economy. The Paradise Papers shows how these billionaires and multinational
corporations get richer by hiding their wealth and profits and avoid paying
their fair share of taxes.
By J.M. Hamilton
(11-13-2017)
How long O’Lord… how
long can what remains of our republic withstand the swamp and the
super-predators that run our country?
The last two weeks
have been shocking, but not altogether surprising; and just when we think the
nation’s financial elite and political leadership can’t sink any lower, they
take it to a new low.
The American people,
as a consequence of the elite’s actions (or the lack thereof, in response
outrages that seem to increase exponentially), have grown inured and numb.
The news flow is so
rapid fire, it seems as if the 99% don’t have enough time to consider the
scandal before their eyes, before another abomination erupts.
The Panama Papers -
revelations of offshore fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion by our global
economic & political elite - were released in 2015; and now we have similar
revelations from the Paradise
Papers (see Senator Sanders’ comments above for a summary).
Even in the midst
of GOP led tax reform, the Republican Party has made little or no effort at closing offshore
& onshore loopholes, or closing out a telephone sized directory of
multinational dodges w/in the U.S. tax code. A U.S. tax code that is so
porous that many members of the S&P 500 pay no taxes at all. Indeed, as pointed out by Katrina vanden Heuvel, the number of tax loopholes for multinationals & the wealthy, under the proposed GOP plan(s), is likely to grow.
Instead, the
GOP plans on sticking it to the middle class to pay for massive tax cuts for
high net worth individuals, multinationals, and indolent heirs and
heiresses.
Meanwhile, its
appears that many male actors, directors, and producers
in Hollywood cannot keep their sex organs w/in their pants. Female actors
could have had their careers ruined or stalled if they even dared speak out
against the epidemic of harassment and sexual abuse. The New
Yorker reported that one, Mr. Harvey Weinstein, hired the world’s
largest corporate-intelligence company, and another organization made up, largely, of
Israeli Mossad agents, Black Cube, to conduct surveillance and dig for dirt on
his victims. Apparently, it wasn’t enough for Mr. Weinstein to misbehave
in a crude, lewd, and rude manner (there are even allegations of rape), he also
wanted information on his victims to compel them not to tell of his
unacceptable behavior.
That is to say, Mr.
Weinstein was also, likely, engaged in forms of blackmail, coercion, and
extortion (not to mention a gross invasion of his victims' privacy).
This is how the elite and the powerful roll.
This is how the elite and the powerful roll.
But such acts aren’t
limited to Hollywood. Alabama’s GOP Senate nominee, Roy Moore - a
Holy-Roller and hypocrite of the first-order - has had a least four women come
forward, alleging that Mr. Moore made sexual advances upon them while they were still
in their teens. Sadly, many members of the GOP have come forward to make
excuses for Mr. Moore’s prurient behavior, including one who has offered up
the “Jesus,
Mary and Joseph" defense.
Spin baby,
spin. It’s as if U.S. citizens are living w/in a dystopian novel, trapped
w/in George Orwell’s worst nightmare.
And speaking of
surveillance, the Deep State (you know, the U.S. intelligence &
surveillance agencies, and private contractors, taxpayers pay tens of billions
of dollars to, per annum) seems completely incapable of stopping any American
white male terrorist, who gets their hands upon - a NRA endorsed and supported - assault riffle. The latest homicidal rampage occurred inside
a church, w/in a "sleepy little town down around San Antone." Which begs
the question JMH raised before, what is the true purpose of the Deep State:
corporate espionage, mass U.S. employee
surveillance, and/or digging
up dirt for the oligarchy and the well-connected?
Perhaps all the above.
The fact of the
matter is the United State’s leadership, both economic & political, is
morally bankrupt. And if, as JMH has argued many times, we believe cartels
and monopolies are highly detrimental to American citizens, the economy, our
government…. Billionaires are equally dangerous and detrimental.
Case in point, The
Guardian reported that billionaire, Joe Ricketts, shut down news sites
Gothamist, DNAinfo, and Shanghaiist. The reason Mr. Ricketts,
billionaire, shut down these news organizations? The reporters w/in his
newsrooms voted to unionize.
If cartels and
monopolies now control broad swaths of the economy, the billionaires &
multinationals - that enjoy ownership w/in, if not outright own, said cartels
& monopolies (see Mr. Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway) - also, enjoy
outsized influence w/in the economy and Western governments. If a
billionaire doesn’t like what their employees are doing, they can shut down a business, layoff said biz’s pool of labor, and the associated tax base. If a
billionaire doesn’t like a U.S. administration - say the Obama administration -
said billionaire can engage in a capital strike. The billionaire can wait
out the administration, all the while sitting on their cash pile, withholding
investment in CAPEX and labor training, and placing a boot heal on the neck of
labor, by suppressing wages.
And this has occurred in the past, and is likely to occur again, at a time when the political winds of change are shifting towards a more liberal POTUS entering the White House in 2020.
In short,
billionaires represent - like cartels & monopolies - the concentration of
power into too few hands. The billionaire class (or Davos Elite),
collectively, can be referred to as a global oligarchy that in a coordinated,
or uncoordinated, fashion can and do push their interests, first and foremost,
w/ the political class, and capture entire political parties, such as the
aforementioned GOP, as well as, capture Western governments, themselves (see
again, the GOP’s proposed tax plan).
How coordinated is
the global oligarchy? Well, seemingly one cannot turnover a rock, or
plutocrat w/in the Trump administration, w/out encountering a Russian
oligarch. Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, the aforementioned Paradise
Papers revealed, has ties to a Russian within Vladimir Putin’s inner-circle (in
regards an active shipping venture). Ties, Mr. Ross, failed to disclose
during the Senate confirmation process.
Mr. Ross, like many
members of the global oligarchy, is so obsessed w/ his status & wealth
that Forbes
reported he embellished his net worth by some two billion dollars.
And the good news… or
the ray of hope in all this? Just as nation states don’t have to tolerate
cartels, monopolies, and unlimited consolidation/M&A… Western democracies don’t have to tolerate billionaires. In
brief, just as cartels and monopolies are creatures of governments that fail to
enforce antitrust laws, billionaires are also often products of crony/rigged
governments. And global governments are perfectly capable of cracking
down on billionaires, and confiscating, impounding, and redistributing their
wealth (which some billionaires often obtain through a nefarious & rigged
system, and the redistribution of governmental largesse).
If billionaires
continue to capture and manipulate Western democracy for their own ends, they should expect blowback on a monumental scale. The future of capitalism
and democracy depends upon containing & controlling the super-predators,
who would run our governments for their own enrichment, and to the 99%’s detriment.
In the interim, our
long national nightmare continues.
Copyright JM Hamilton
Publishing 2017
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