Moyers: Saving Democracy

[Deborah]

Bill Moyers
Saving Democracy
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0224-20.htm

Bill Moyers is President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. This is the prepared text of his remarks on an eight-day speaking trip in California on the issue of money and politics.

This is the link to the petition that Bill Moyers talks about in his speech below, in case you dont' have time to read the speech.
http://ga3.org/campaign/cleanupcongressnow

Ah, yes, the quickest and surest way to the American dream remains to choose your parents well.

As great wealth has accumulated at the top, the rest of society has not been benefiting proportionally. In 1960 the gap between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was thirtyfold. Now it is seventy-five fold. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives in the country was 30 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker. A recent article in The Financial Times reports on a study by the American economist Robert J. Gordon, who finds ?little long-term change in workers? share of U.S. income over the past half century.? Middle-ranking Americans are being squeezed, he says, because the top ten percent of earners have captured almost half the total income gains in the past four decades and the top one percent have gained the most of all ? ?more in fact, than all the bottom 50 percent.?

No wonder working men and women and their families are strained to cope with the rising cost of health care, pharmaceutical drugs, housing, higher education, and public transportation ? all of which have risen faster in price than typical family incomes. The recent book, Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity, describes how ?thirty zipcodes in America have become fabulously wealthy? while ?whole urban and rural communities are languishing in unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, growing insecurity, and fear.?

[Anonymous]

I've come to the conclusion that the US is going to lose most of the middle class; the main part of it will become part of a huge number of people who are essentially serfs for the wealthy. I think there will be very few people making middling money, instead 2 main classes: those who are struggling to make ends meet, and those who struggle endlessly to maintain their extreme wealth. The consolidation of money at the top during the last 30 years should make most Americans sick. Working hard to gain wealth is fine, but making sure those with less stay that way is appalling. America seems to want to lead the way to a return to the middle/dark ages, with religious zealotry ruling the political landscape, and those with little power being kicked whenever they try to stand up.

[Anonymous]

I think the middle class will consist of medical workers, nurses, and all the other people employed to take care of the aging population. Take a look at how much a nurse makes for instance. Resorts, retirement places, people who pick up rich people's dog shit. The baby boomers are going to spend their money, mine as well go out and get some of it.

[Deborah]

Alex Jones: 911 Road to Tyranny
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 3931&q=911

Alex seems to believe, based on reading the plan for a New World Order and other research that....

About 80% (5 billion) folks will be leaving us.
The remainder ushered into small urban environments, with the UN in control of most public land. (Was surprised to learn how much they control already.)
A return to rich/poor, no middle class, or very small.
Some of his thinking is hard to believe, but plausible, when you look at the research.
It's 2 hrs 20 min. Give it a watch.
What do you think?

[Anonymous]

what are nurses incomes like? Good point about the boomers, but many boomers really don't have much.
The jobs move offshore. Bush said that India now has a middle class of 300 million, as if we should be proud that the companies here have made that the case-crazy. Bush also said in same speech that job loss here was "an opportunity". In a strict sense, I agree, but in a real sense, when the bills are due, does not seem such a great opportunity. I don't see losing a job @ 40k a year, to take one at 25k a year, as a great opportunity. Real income in constant dollars is falling here: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatu ... me20050831

We are becoming a nation that only buys, all the non retail work is moving out. Where are people, in vast numbers, going to earn what they need to get by?

As for resorts, etc, picking up dogshit - it's all service class work, the workers make a pittance relatively.

I'd like to *see* a rich dude pick up his dog's shit one day, but I doubt he would even know how - goes to Deborah's point about being born in the right family. Maybe that is why we have a prez who has screwed the pooch on every task he has ever had in life - and his family always bailed him out. After screwing up the USA & world what is his next target? the universe?

[Anonymous]

if that was Moyer's point, and not Deborah's, she has my apologies for citing it. Was not sure if it was part of Moyer's speech, or her comment, sorry.

[Anonymous]

Wow! you start following this stuff around, you begin to see what Ike was talking about!       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
You can't argue with the hard facts that this how our military brains sometimes "think". It's straight out of Nazt Germany. The corporations sign right on

[Deborah]

Creating A Moral Economy
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060320/block

Excerpt:

In the 1930s, in contrast, the Democrats were successful in telling people a story in which government action could overcome the rot caused by business greed while also protecting us from the overseas mobs following fascist (and later, communist) leaders. Moreover, government assistance would create a benevolent community that could respond, as FDR said, to the "third of a nation [that was] ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished." Within this community of care, hard work would be rewarded so that individuals could triumph and achieve upward mobility for their families.

According to Reich, the critical turning point came when the Republicans, starting with Reagan, hijacked these same stories and constructed a plot line in which the rot came from liberal elites, with the "Evil Empire" of the Soviets playing the role of the mob at the gates. Triumphant individuals had to be freed from government interference to restore the health of voluntary and faith-based communities. The Republicans have been telling versions of these same stories ever since, with George W. Bush endlessly promising to protect us from the terrorist mobs that have to be resisted overseas.

[Anonymous]

It's the BushCo (and modern republican) plan, propaganda all the time. How they convinced poor people to vote for them is mind boggling. It is amazing they don't ask the poor to tithe for Bush.

Republicans hated Social Security, now they sayonly they can save it...another hijack.

The Democrats are an ineffectual opposition

[Anonymous]

thanks for the link, Deborah

[Antigen]

On 2006-03-21 20:58:00, Deborah wrote:


According to Reich, the critical turning point came when the Republicans, starting with Reagan, hijacked these same stories and constructed a plot line in which the rot came from liberal elites, with the "Evil Empire" of the Soviets playing the role of the mob at the gates. Triumphant individuals had to be freed from government interference to restore the health of voluntary and faith-based communities. The Republicans have been telling versions of these same stories ever since, with George W. Bush endlessly promising to protect us from the terrorist mobs that have to be resisted overseas.

Yeah, that's what they say. But look at what they do! They take private property for the purpose of raising the tax base by awarding it to private business. Not yours or mine. We couldn't, say, get a sweet deal on a dilapidated downtown property in which to run our hair salon or comic book shop. You have to be a Huizenga or a Sembler or a subsidiary of Halliburton or some such to get in on those sweet deals.

They also favor forced treatment in almost all contexts. Look at their rhetoric on drug courts and why we need them to save the world from a certain disaster that's set to befall any minute now. That great flagship darling of the Religous Reich was invented and implimneted by Janet Rambo in Miami when she was SA under Chiles.

They've also apropriated drug prohibition from the New Deal Democrats. Look into the history of that.

Saddest part? You're dead on correct about the Dempublicans. These gifted intillectuals drove through the 60's and 70's talking about peace, love and happiness in dayglow painted Volkswagen. I wonder if any of them ever knew the history of that company and who was laughing all the way to the bank?

Impiety: Your irreverence toward my deity.
--Ambrose Bierce