Michael Krieger 
What better way to end 2015, than with a highlight reel of Donald Trump’s more colorful insults. The Washington Post has done an excellent job of putting together “A Comprehensive Guide to Everyone Donald Trump Insulted in 2015.”
Here are a few of my favorite clips:
I never liked the saying: “We are the 99%.” While admittedly catchy and effective as a slogan, I think it is ultimately divisive and counterproductive. The reason I say this is because the statement itself alienates much needed allies for no good reason.
In a country with a population of 320 million, the 1% represents 3.2 million people, which is a pretty big number. While the 1% certainly have far superior material lives compared to the 99%, that doesn’t mean a particularly large percentage of them are thieves, cronies or oligarchs. In fact, it behooves people interested in transitioning to another paradigm to court as many of them as possible to the cause. It is very useful to have well meaning people with resources and connections on your side. To blithely assume there aren’t plenty of potential allies from a pool of 3.2 million is committing strategic suicide.
– From the post: Charting the American Oligarchy – How 0.01% of the Population Contributes 42% of All Campaign Cash
Much of my focus throughout 2015 was on the pernicious influence of the 0.01%, i.e., the American oligarchy. Indeed, nothing would please oligarchs more than to define a struggle as the 99% vs. the 1% in order to shift attention away from the real root of the problem, themselves.
As I’ve mentioned time and time again, 99% of the 1% doesn’t bribe politicians, write tax laws, or influence U.S. foreign policy. To discover the real players, the people who drive American domestic and foreign policy, as well as make all of the important decisions, you only need to focus on a hand full of people.
Today, the New York Times published an important article that proves the point. Here are the key paragraphs in the entire lengthy article:
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Perhaps the greatest irony of this past year has been the mind numbing and irrational anti-free speech wave that swept across facets of so-called “liberal” America.
This regressive movement was most readily apparent on college campuses, where hordes of sheltered and emotionally stunted students demanded restrictions on free speech in order to prevent themselves from being offended by an ever expanding list of unhappy thoughts and words. However, what is far more troubling, albeit much less public, are attempts by two fascist academic authoritarians, to convince the American citizenry to relinquish their First Amendment rights in the name of fighting ISIS. One of these men is a close advisor to President Obama.
Glenn Greenwald does a great job of calling both of them out over at the Intercept. Here are a few excerpts from his article:
The following is an impassioned and powerful article written by Bill Moyers last week titled, The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don’t Let Them!
Enjoy.
Dear Readers:
In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.
Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears. Here in New York, we still were attending memorial services for our firemen and police. But in the nation’s capital, within sight of a smoldering Pentagon that had been struck by one of the hijacked planes, the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow, and loss.
What did they want? The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations. They even made an effort to repeal the alternative minimum tax that for fifteen years had prevented companies from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. And it wasn’t only repeal the mercenaries sought; they wanted those corporations to get back all the minimum tax they had ever been assessed.
They sought a special tax break for mighty General Electric, although you would never have heard about it if you were watching GE’s news divisions — NBC News, CNBC, or MSNBC, all made sure to look the other way.
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
– Warren Buffett
He walked them through Clayton-built homes on the lot, then into the sales center, passing a banner and posters promoting one subprime lender: Vanderbilt Mortgage, a Clayton subsidiary. Inside, he handed them a Vanderbilt sales pamphlet.
“Vanderbilt is the only one that finances on the reservation,” he told the women.
His claim, which the women caught on tape, was a lie. And it was illegal.
In minority communities, Clayton’s grip on the lending market verges on monopolistic: Last year, according to federal data, Clayton made 72% of the loans to black people who financed mobile homes.
The company’s in-house lender, Vanderbilt Mortgage, charges minority borrowers substantially higher rates, on average, than their white counterparts. In fact, federal data shows that Vanderbilt typically charges black people who make over $75,000 a year slightly more than white people who make only $35,000.
Through a spokesperson earlier this month, Buffett declined to discuss racial issues at Clayton Homes, and a reporter who attempted to contact him at his home was turned away by security…
She continued to raise concerns, writing in an email to Clayton’s director of marketing that when she spoke to new borrowers, “there were many things they were not made aware about during the sale.”
Managers and executives, she said, dismissed her concerns; she recalled one replying, “It doesn’t really matter as long as we get the money.”
– From the Buzzfeed article: Warren Buffett’s Company Wants to Sell You a Mobile Home
BuzzFeed News has just published a hard-hitting, extremely sickening investigative report which shines further light on the shady and unethical practices of Warren Buffett. A man who I have often referred to as the greatest American actor alive, for his uncanny ability to convince the general public that he’s just a kind, philanthropic grandfatherly figure, when in reality he is a ruthless, cunning, parasitic loanshark.
The latest Buffett expose relates to his Berkshire Hathaway owned mobile home company Clayton Homes. I’ve covered this previously, most recently in April’s post, Warren Buffett the Slumlord – Predatory Loans, Kickbacks and Preying on the Poor at Clayton Homes. Here’s an excerpt:
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
– H.L. Mencken
The saga surrounding American oligarch Sheldon Adelson’s purchase of Las Vegas’ largest newspaper, The Review-Journal, is turning into a murder-mystery of sorts, with the primary victim being the truth.
There’s a lot to cover here, so let’s get to it. First a little background from last week’s post, Sheldon Adelson Revealed as Mystery Buyer of the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
For nearly a week, the media and political worlds have been wondering who paid $140 million to purchase Nevada’s largest daily newspaper, The Las Vegas Review-Journal. The primary buyer had taken great pains to remain anonymous, but Fortune has learned from multiple sources familiar with the situation that it is Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO of casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp.
What remains unclear is why Adelson has refused to come forward. Clearly this isn’t a vanity play, and it’s also hard to imagine it as a financial investment (particularly given the steep price tag). What that leaves is political influence, particularly in a swing state like Nevada.That said, however, it would seem difficult to direct editorial coverage when the actual editorial writers are in the dark as to who signs their paychecks.
The purchase was a significant and ominous development on multiple levels. First of all, the man admitted last year that he doesn’t like journalism, but nonetheless thought he should scheme with Israeli-American oligarch, and top Hillary Clinton donor, Haim Saban to purchase the New York Times to shift the paper’s coverage of Israel. From Haaretz:
The $160 million bill includes $120 million for the body scanners now in place in hundreds of airports nationwide, according to newly disclosed figures obtained by POLITICO. The rest of the money went to the agency’s “naked” X-ray scanners, which it pulled from airports two years ago amid worries about health risks and the devices’ detailed images of travelers’ bodies.
A recent security audit found that TSA had failed to find fake explosives and weapons in 96 percent of covert tests. And members of Congress familiar with the classified details say the body scanners are to blame for much of the problem.
Johnson said that while bomb detection is obviously a complex undertaking, “these things weren’t even catching metal.”
– From the post: Big Brother Idiocy – TSA Spent $160 Million on Naked Body Scanners that Fail 96% of the Time
Long time Liberty Blitzkrieg readers will be well aware of the fact that I’ve never gone through one of the TSA’s ridiculous and completely pointless naked body scanners. Whatever shred of human dignity an American citizen has left is relinquished the moment one consents to raising his or her arms in the air like a prisoner, while a machine that never met a terrorist it could catch scans an image of your body in yet another superfluous display of imperial slave-training.
Have you ever stopped to think about how ridiculous your fellow travelers look when they go through one of these things. Take a look at the following images and think about them for a second.
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him… The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.
– H.L. Mencken
At 23-years old, Pete Seeger was an Army Private anxiously awaiting the opportunity to be deployed to fight fascism in the midst of World War II, when he became outraged by injustice in his own backyard. As such, he wrote the following letter to the California chapter of the American Legion:
The U.S. economy is so thoroughly corrupt and incestuous, each and every attempt to bring forward even the least bit of transparency is immediately stifled and quashed. The latest example is the thwarted attempt to bring some level of clarity surrounding private equity fees charged to California pensioners, which have amounted to $3.4 billion over the past two decades.
As reported by International Business Times:
Earlier this month, the nation’s largest public pension fund roiled the financial world: Officials overseeing $300 billion of California public employees’ retirement savings disclosed that the fund had paid $3.4 billion in fees to private equity firms over the last two decades. The news of the fees — and a call by California Treasurer John Chiang for legislation requiring more ongoing disclosure — seemed to herald a new trend toward greater transparency at a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission has warned that private equity investors may be getting hit hard by hidden fees.
That momentum toward transparency at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), however, appeared to abruptly halt last week when pension overseers quietly rejected a measure that would have required Wall Street firms to disclose all possible levies before they get their hands on the retirement savings of the system’s 1.7 million members. Some CalPERS board members said they were concerned the measure might alienate private equity firms, thereby denying pensioners the benefits of those investments.
Can you believe this ridiculous argument? It’s the exact type of absurd reasoning bank lobbyists use when they claim the government shouldn’t regulate them more or they’ll just move overseas and the U.S. economy will lose all that GDP from their criminal activities.