I’m not opposed to people having money. I’m opposed to people who have money because they screwed someone else out of it, and I am opposed to the seriously rich who have forgotten or who have never learned the concept of noblesse oblige.
"Noblesse oblige" is generally used to imply that with wealth, power and prestige come responsibilities. The phrase is sometimes used derisively, in the sense of condescending or hypocritical social responsibility. In American English especially, the term has also been applied more broadly to those who are capable of simple acts to help another, usually one who is less fortunate.
In ethical discussion, it is sometimes used to summarize a moral economy wherein privilege must be balanced by duty towards those who lack such privilege or who cannot perform such duty. Finally, it has been used recently primarily to refer to public responsibilities of the rich, famous and powerful, notably to provide good examples of behaviour or to exceed minimal standards of decency.
Wikipedia entry – Noblesse Oblige
You know, to whom much is given and all that.
I am also not opposed to those who have money that they have earned honestly, legitimately and ethically. I don’t even mind if you’ve inherited billions, as long as you don’t use it to club poor people like so many baby seals – that is to say, if you don’t support Republican, rightwing or corporatist policies.
When I speak derisively of ‘the rich’ I am not speaking of all who might qualify in strictly financial terms. I am referring to the scoundrels, gangsters, greedheads and brigands who have bankrupted the world with their shameless thievery, and not just anyone and everyone who has money. People often ask me what is the cut-off, how much does one need to have to be one of the filthy few? To me it’s more a question of criminality, immorality and venality. If you are a person who does good things, or at least doesn’t do bad things with your money, I have no problem with you.
My beef is with those who have corrupted our government and twisted our society into a Gordian Knot of injustice and inequity. I am speaking of Hunter S. Thompson’s greedheads. I am talking about Bush’s ‘haves and have mores’. I am speaking of the Military Industrial Complex and the war profiteers among us. I am speaking of our Wall Street overlords and those kings of hubris, corporate CEOs. I am speaking of corrupt politicians and the rot in the body politic.
To me, the final word will always be that we’re all in this together – and that’s what pisses me off.
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I got mine – fuck you! or Let them eat shit!
The income of the 400 wealthiest Americans swelled in 2006, soaring nearly 23 percent from the previous year, to an average of $263 million, according to data released Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service. Since 1996, this group has nearly doubled its share of all income earned in the United States.
The top 400 paid just more than $18 billion in federal income taxes in 2006, or an average of $45 million, on a record $105 billion in total income — the lowest effective tax rate in the 15 years since the agency began releasing such data.
The New York Times
If you are a person of average means, you’re in serious trouble. The machinations of speculators, hucksters, lobbyists and thieves have left you twisting in the wind along with all the rest of us. It’s horrifying really how many of us have no health insurance, no retirement pensions, savings, financial reserves or in many cases jobs or homes. Even those who still have homes have lost 32% of its value. Our hopes for a better future for our children and grandchildren have vanished into the ether. Even hope has been devalued – to the point of nonexistence. Ahh, but the compassion the ultra-wealthy have for us is really quite touching.
Last October, Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus blew a gasket, spewing outrage in all directions. "This is the demise of civilization," he exploded. "This is how a civilization disappears. I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it!"
Bernie's outburst came during an hour-long conference call with various other corporate executives and their political operatives. The purpose was to collect industry funds for a campaign to kill a piece of legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Yes, the spark that ignited Bernie's fury, the hellish horror that he insisted would produce America's Armageddon, was a simple labor bill, and he was demanding that the corporate powers rally to save civilization as they know it.
"As a shareholder, if I knew the CEO of the company wasn't doing anything on [EFCA]...I would sue the son of a bitch," he foamed. "If a retailer has not gotten involved in this...he should be shot. They should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs."
He didn't specify whether such traitorous executives should be shot first, then thrown out of their jobs, or vice-versa-- but you get the point: Corporate America is working up a feverish panic over the very notion of linking the term "employees" with the concept of free choice.
"It is a political nightmare and a public policy disaster," shrieked a PR flack for a corporate front group opposing this legislation. He even claims that top executives "are ready to riot in the street about it." Now that's exciting! I, for one, would pay to watch a horde of red-faced, Gucci-clad, CEOs rioting, wouldn't you?
Americans Are Raring for a Fight Against Corporate Power - Jim Hightower
After decades of fighting a losing battle for workers’ rights, decent wages, universal healthcare, social justice, non-discrimination, basic fairness and etcetera, it’s interesting to see what happens when the uber-rich get in trouble – when they need help. Why the billions and trillions are flying fast and furious. We gave the rich assholes who did this to us all $850 Billion – no questions asked...none answered at any rate. And the billions and trillions keep on rolling. They get whatever they want just for the asking - because they bought our government lock, stock and barrel. They own it outright. And just look what they’ve done with it.
Greed is good...if you love cancer.
The funny thing about greed, and what makes it so very much like cancer, is that it feeds on itself. The impulsive desire for more is never sated. The more greed has, the more it wants. Even now, when greed has wrecked the entire global economy, the greedheads are furiously stealing everything that’s left. They cannot stop themselves. The question is, can anyone - and what happens when they’ve stolen everything?
Ronald Reagan and the Republicans didn’t invent greed but they damn sure let the monster out of its cage, and today anyone and everyone can see the disastrous end result.
However, the enablers are the AIG leaders who, as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo revealed Tuesday, signed those bonus contracts a year ago to reward the very people "principally responsible for the firm's meltdown." That's a cool $44 million divided among the top 10 shysters, even though the depth of their chicanery was well known to top management.
As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank: "The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals' bonuses to be 100% of their 2007 bonuses. Thus, in the spring of last year, AIG chose to lock in bonuses for 2008 at 2007 levels despite obvious signs that 2008 performance would be disastrous in comparison to the year before."
The lame argument that those bonus-baby employees needed to be retained in order to sort out the mess they had created was also shot down by Cuomo, who revealed after his office's initial investigation had pierced AIG's veil of secrecy that "[e]leven of the individuals who received 'retention' bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million."
But the $165 million in taxpayer funds used to reward them is but a sideshow in a far larger drama of moral decay swirling around the banking bailout. It should not distract from the many billions, not paltry millions, of our dollars being diverted to reward the very folks who brought us such misery. Consider the $12.8 billion of the $170 billion that taxpayers gave AIG in bailout funds that AIG then secretly diverted to Goldman Sachs, a company that evidently has a lock on both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve no matter which political party is in power. It was the biggest payoff among those that AIG made to a score of foreign and domestic financial giants.
Moral Decay Swirls Around Banking Bailout: Time for a Criminal Investigation - Robert Scheer
The damage done is incalculable. The AIG bonuses are a pittance compared to the whole of it. Though we here have written about the inequity, the fraud and corruption, the suffering it causes, and discussed it all for years, it is only now dawning on the majority of our compatriots how badly we’ve been served ripped-off.
Millions who have not yet lost everything are in the process of doing so. The government seems very intent on saving the assholes at the top, but those of us at the bottom are fucked. We see the diaries here every day – job losses, homelessness, despair. Our friend snafubar wrote this in his diary today:
So my plan is basically suicide. Not any time soon...I still have a lot left to lose. But I'm not a competitive person who can wear his pride on his shirt and get a job in a tough economy. I will get passed over again and again and I'll slowly lose bits and pieces of what I have and then some day I'll be overwhelmed by how I've failed, given all that I stared with, and my shame will cause me to destroy myself.
I see a future where there will be lots of misery, pain, and loss before or if things turn around. Those with wealth and power that was gained under the old system are not about to do anything that will cause them to accept their thinking is wrong; only when the most fundamental concepts of human reliance on one another for sustenance and growth turn inside out will they begin to accept any changes.
Optimism, pessimism, my state of mind
It’s heartbreaking what’s happening to the little people, the people no one officially cares about. dconrad wrote in his diary today:
I haven't seen my friend George in several years. We went to high school together. We were both in the band. George went into the Army after high school, stayed in for a couple years, got out, worked various odd jobs, then went back into the Army again.
A few years ago he was serving in Iraq, in Samarra. He made it back from Iraq in one piece, and moved to Iowa. As far as I knew, he was still living there. At least, until my phone rang in the wee hours this morning.
He was calling me from San Diego. Things had gone downhill for him since the last time I saw him (he visited me here in Detroit back in the summer of 2007). He had changed jobs, going from a low-paying factory job to driving a truck, and then had lost his job entirely. As a last-ditch effort when his money was running out, he bought a bus ticket to San Diego so that he could be homeless in a warmer climate, rather than suffer through an Iowa winter out-of-doors.
I just got a call from a homeless vet
So please spare me the angst over how the rich are suffering.
You Try to Live on 500K in This Town
PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student.
Mortgage: $96,000 a year.
Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.
Nanny: $45,000 a year.
We are already at $269,000, and we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet.
The New York Times
Cry me a fucking river.
To preserve and expand their privilege, the rich have not only ruthlessly exploited labor in this country for lo these many years, they have thoroughly corrupted our government by lavishing their millions on our ‘public servants’, turning them into lapdogs and errand boys and girls who live to do their bidding. And these geniuses have led us all over the cliff. They have poured trillions down the black hole of war in mindless servitude to the military industrial complex while providing nothing but crumbs, empty promises and lies for those who work for a living, those who struggle to get by and for people in need.
Hundreds of billions for a fraudulent, completely unnecessary and shamefully immoral war in Iraq? No problem. A few bucks for the arts, or to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, provide healthcare for all Americans or rescue people from being foreclosed upon? No fucking way.
How does anyone make it on $263 million a year?
I say it’s time we quit putting up with these ass-wipes and I know many people feel the same way, but our cries seem to be falling on deaf ears when it comes to our government. The greedheads are still firmly in charge, and their cancer is inoperable, their blind running greed unstoppable.
My heart goes out to all who suffer and all who will suffer...and especially to those whose suffering could have been prevented by a responsible and principled government. Shame on us all for ever accepting anything less.
Peace out.
OPOL