We Owe It To America To Put The Country Back On The Right Path

Man, was I lucky! I was born into a working class family clinging by its fingernails to afford whatever it was the middle class was supposed to be offering. I rejected the entire project at an early age and fled. I washed up in Eurasia and made my way, by the grace of God, for almost 7 years from Germany to Afghanistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and back to Europe again. Nixon being impeached, I returned to America, I started my own record company-- for fun-- had some success (luck), and then got hired by a big corporation looking for an entrepreneurial type with some foreign market experience. Being recruited for that job was probably the fastest trip ever from $10,000/year to over a million. I'm retired now but last weekend my boyfriend told me not to worry about being part of the 1%; we were on our way to a $10 all-you-can eat Ethiopian vegan lunch. If I was in DC today-- God Forbid-- I'd have joined the Patriotic Millionaires demanding Congress raise taxes on the rich.

Yesterday we looked at how the 1%-- millionaires-- have thoroughly taken over Congress. Almost half the Members are millionaires themselves. Many are a lot richer than mere millionaires. And most of the rest cater to the demands of millionaires as a first tenet of their political careers. At the same time, ABC News was exposing the 8 most powerful businessmen influencing politics. And the list starts with the worst of the worst-- the fascist-oriented Koch brothers who are making war against democracy itself.

The Koch Brothers are typically secretive and reluctant to speak in public but in September 2011, David Koch addressed Tea Party leaders, saying, "The American dream of free enterprise, capitalism is alive and well."

According to one estimate, they've contributed more than $100 million to conservative political causes, and a foundation that they back has trained thousands of Tea Party activists.

David H. Koch, 71, and Charles Koch, 75, together own Koch Industries, a Kansas-based company started by their father. The privately-held, $100 billion-dollar-a-year company is best-known for its oil and energy business... Controversy has arisen around Koch Industries, which allegedly traded with Iran and paid bribes in France to get payments in six different countries. This summer, the Koch brothers admitted making from illegal campaign contributions between 2005 and 2009, and said that they fired an individual responsible for the bribes.

Demands to return to the good old days of Clinton era tax rates are bogus. The 1% had already taken over the government lock, stock and barrel by the time Clinton-- a completely dependable servant of the 1% in every way, much the way Obama is-- became president. The most pronounced social mobility in contemporary American history-- and the greatest thrust at social equality-- came to a peak during the Eisenhower years. Those should be the model for American tax policies. Obama wants to increase the top rate for 1%-ers from 35% to 39.6%. It was 70% under Nixon and a far healthier 91% under Eisenhower. That's when America was winning.



And in case you were wondering how the Chamber of Commerce is financing the advertising campaign against anyone will to stand up for working families, Amanda Terkel went into the specifics yesterday at Huff Po. No mention of the money that China funnels into the GOP through the Chamber but "88% of the donations they got were for $100,000 or more, and 53% of the members donated $1 million or more. The Chamber also received two contributions that were each in excess of $10 million." The 1% is not going down without a fight.