Even With The Pandemic Ravaging The World, The Greediest And Most Repulsive Among Us-- Take Lloyd Blankfein-- Still Oppose Medicare-for-All

My friend Frank Schaeffer hasn't been a Republican for many, many years and he is most certainly a #NeverTrumper. But he's been absolutely fiendish in his instinctual opposition to Bernie. Yesterday, though, he tweeted that after hearing from Trump and Pence that you could get a CODID-19 test at Walmart, he drove over to the one closest to his home in Massachusetts. "All I saw were Walmart employees with no health coverage smoking in the parking lot wondering how they can miss work with no childcare, no money, no savings. Yep, Walmart will save us! Thanks Donald."

I don't know how Frank feels about Medicare-for-All. But I do know how Lloyd Blankfein feels about it. The former Goldman Sachs top bankster hates it as much as he hates Bernie. Here's a Bankster Blankfein tweet from Saturday afternoon advocating for the kind of privatized, for-profit healthcare that Frank Schaeffer found in the Walmart parking lot Sunday morning:

And I found this popular tongue-in-cheek meme in one of the responses to Blankfein's tweet:

This was the video Bernie posted-- narrated by Bernie endorser actor H. Jon Benjamin ( Bob Belcher in Fox’s Bob’s Burgers and Sterling Archer in FX’s Archer)-- that the bankster objected to. Bernie's campaign's description may have ruffled Blankfein's feathers: "From Roosevelt’s attempt to create a New Deal national health insurance program, to the Trump administration’s repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate-- the three-part Bernie’s Damn Bill video series reveals how decades of influence by greedy special interests have led to the present health care crisis. Bernie has waged a four decades-long fight to implement Medicare for All and explains how his administration will take on corporations and the billionaire class to finally make it happen."





Tell me, did you find that clip more informative and more inspiring than Bankster Blankfein did? Here's the second video in the series:





And the third in these series-- a series that you can see helps explain Bankster  Blankfein's enthusiasm for Status Quo Joe, who has recently threatened that if he's nominated by the Democratic Partyand elected president then and Medicare-for-All finally passes, he would probably veto it:





At times like this-- and all other times-- Trump can't help taking on the role of the Ugly American and has offered a German medical company a fortune for exclusive access to a COVID-19 vaccine. The German government is trying to fight off what it sees as an aggressive takeover bid by the U.S. The U.S. Pig-man has "offered the Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac 'large sums of money' to gain exclusive access to their work, wrote Die Welt... Trump was doing everything to secure a vaccine against the coronavirus for the U.S., 'but for the US only.'" The loathsome monstrosity sounds like he actually wants to spend eternity roasting in hell.

Because Trump's top New York congressional crony, Chris Collins, was arrested and convicted on multiple charges stemming from his own Blankfein-like advocacy of for-profit (his own) healthcare-- involving a company he owned a plurality of the stock in, Innate Immunotherapeutics-- Collins was forced to resign from Congress, though not before he lied to NY-27 voters about the crime spree and managed to get-- narrowly-- reelected. Nate McMurray, the progressive Democrat who wrestled him to the narrowest congressional win in the whole country-- 140,146 (49.1%) to 139,059 (48.8%)-- will face off in the April 28th special election against hereditary billionaire, gambling magnate and right-wing state Senator Chris Jacobs. Jacobs' reactionary views on healthcare are about the same as Bankster Blankfein's. McMurray made his own clear in a simple tweet yesterday:

McMurray has a slightly longer version on his campaign website:

For years, we have watched large pharmaceutical and insurance companies set higher and higher prices that ultimately barred our access to affordable healthcare.

We can’t continue to let companies set prices and collect massive paychecks while our family members are dying from rationing insulin. The current system hurts families, it hurts businesses and it hurts our community. Common-sense healthcare reform will lower our costs and create a system that benefits everyone. With access to the greatest modern medicine in the world, American citizens deserve to not be kept up at night worrying about whether or not they can pay for their medical needs.

As your Congressman, I will support "Medicare for All" and fight for a system that keeps families healthy. I know we can do better for the citizens of New York 27 and I intend to fight like hell for that when you send me to Washington.

Bordering on McMurray's district, Robin Wilt is the progressive Democrat running for the Rochester, NY congressional seat held by pointless New Dem Joe Morelle. She told us that "NY Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a directive requiring New York health insurers to waive co-pays for Coronavirus tests, as well as any related emergency room, urgent care, and office visits for those who already have insurance. However, if one is not covered by insurance (and in the state of New York, that applies to almost 1 million people), the reality is that the lack of coverage presents a barrier to being tested and treated for the virus. This increases the overall risk of exposure for the population, at large. Steffie Woolhandler, founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, recently observed that the lack of Medicare for All is essentially forcing the United States to fight the COVID-19 pandemic with one hand tied behind its back, thereby increasing the threat to everyone--including the wealthy and people-- with-- insurance. By her example, it is estimated that 25% of cab drivers don’t have health insurance in this country (and that number is probably modest because it does not include rideshare providers like Uber and Lyft); 12% of home health aides lack health insurance; 15% of housekeepers lack health insurance. Essentially, those with means cannot avoid coming into contact with this epidemic just because they’re rich. The amount of wealth one has does not singularly eliminate one’s risk of exposure during a pandemic. We’re all in the risk pool for contracting COVID-19, so we all need to be in the system of care provision for maximum efficacy. That’s why Medicare for All is so important: because everyone being in the system means that no one has barriers to testing or treatment. It’s all about flattening the curve of the spread of the virus. Any barriers to testing or treatment when exposed to the virus, increase the risk of additional exposures. A global pandemic like COVID-19 is the perfect argument for a Medicare for All system."




Qasim Rashid is running for the Virginia congressional seat held by Trump lackey Robert Wittman, VA-01, which includes all of Caroline, Essex, Gloucester, King George, King William, King and Queen, Lancaster, Mathews, Middlesex, Northumberland, Stafford, Westmoreland, and York counties, Fredericksburg city, Williamsburg city and parts of Newport News city plus parts of Faquier, James City, Prince William and Spotsylvania counties. He told us yesterday that "In the richest, most industrialized country on Earth, Americans should never have to worry about the cost of medical care when they are facing injury or illness. In the midst of a global pandemic, guaranteed quality healthcare is even more of a necessity. To treat those afflicted and prevent spread of the disease, we must have a healthcare system where cost is not a barrier to access. We cannot afford to have Americans deciding against getting treatment-- further endangering public safety and creating a scenario where this pandemic overwhelms our hospitals and our communities. A single payer healthcare system that guarantees that every American has access to treatment and care is needed now more than ever."

On the other coast, Mark Gamba is the mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon and running for the congressional seat held by Republican-friendly Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. "This pandemic," he told us, "should be the starkest wake-up-call as to why a national healthcare system that covers every single person is so critical. When millions of people fear going to the doctor because they can’t afford it, they won’t go. Even if they are sick, even if they have a disease that is easily communicable. Those same people are the ones who cannot afford to stay home from work either when they are feeling ill. Instead, they will 'tough it out' and go to work so that they don’t get evicted because they haven’t earned enough money that month to pay the rent. So that means that literally millions of people will be working anyway, even if they are sick. Some of those work for the TSA, some work in restraunts, some in schools, some deliver the mail in busy offices, some work in nursing homes and day care centers. Think about who the people are, that are doing jobs that don’t pay well enough to afford health care. They are the jobs that we count on every day. In some ways, these are the people that we NEED to be the healthiest. They come in contact with the most people. They keep our society functioning. Imagine. Instead, a robust new Medicare for All world. Where everyone has easy, and free access to healthcare when they need it. A world in which there are more doctors. A world in which there are more hospitals and clinics, even in rural areas because they no longer need to 'make a profit,' they simply need to provide healthcare. In this world there are more hospital beds and more ventilators because even in normal times there are more people to treat because EVERYONE gets healthcare. No one is left at home to just die alone because they are too poor. This Medicare for All world is the one that is most prepared for a major pandemic. It’s a world where drugs are invented to solve medical issues, not to maximize profits. We would employ thousands, researching and manufacturing those drugs and other critical materials, like masks and gloves, right here in America rather than farming that out to the lowest international bidder who can then cut us off when it serves them to do so. We need a CDC that is fully funded and working to stop pandemics before they start, and we need Medicare for All to make sure that when they do, we are prepared. We need new leadership in the Whitehouse and Congress to make these things come to pass. The status quo, neo-liberal movement of a world designed for maximizing profits for the rich has failed us."

Is Every Single Thing Just A Distraction For The Unprecedented Kleptocracy?

Today, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, told a Bloomberg editor at the Economic Club of New York that he thinks Señor Trumpanzee is just bluffing about starting a trade war. "That’s what you’d do if it was a negotiating position and you wanted to remind your negotiating counterparty of how much firepower you have. I don’t think we’re in a suicide pact on this, so I suspect we’re not going to cause the economies to collapse... I do think-- as some people have commented-- that this is part of a negotiating pattern, that would be my best take." And no one knows what a gaslighting bullshit artist Trump is?

Jeremy Zipple is a film maker and Jesuit priest in San Antonio at Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine. He had a couple of powerful tweets over the weekend, aimed right at Señor Trumpanzee: "2600 years ago, one prophet named Isaiah said, 'Woe unto those who legislate evil'-- that’s actually scripture--'and rob the poor of their rights and make women and children their prey'" and "US Catholic bishops seem to be gearing up for a full on fight on this issue during an election year.

But suppose Trump feels enough pressure to finally give in on this, which I suspect will happen, maybe even fire far right racist neo-Nazi and crackpot Stephen Miller and make him the scapegoat. Although... Bannon doesn't agree that Trump is going to fold on this and that its core to his campaign promises and absolutely fabulous. Yesterday he told Jonathan Karl on This Week that listening to his inner voice Señor Trumpanzee "is going to lead-- write this down-- that’s going to lead to an astounding victory in November, where he’s going to run the tables in the House and he’s going to pick up a couple seats in the Senate... Trump is accomplishing everything he committed to the American people on the campaign that I stepped in as CEO. I couldn’t be prouder of the guy. All he has to do is continue to hit those marks on that whiteboard and he’s going to run the tables."

Yes, write this down. Or don't; write this down, an article by Francis Wilson for Bloomberg instead: New York’s Case Against Trump May Be Prophetic. But not prophetic in the same way Zipple talks about prophetic-- prophetic for the courts and for the members of Congress who have to vote on impeachment in 2019. It starts with Trump being an absolutely slimy crooked businessman, worst I've ever seen... and I've seen some bad ones.

The report released by the inspector general of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday painted a vivid picture of the past. It shows that in 2016, James Comey, then the FBI director, inexcusably broke the rules in advertising his department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton while simultaneously following the rules in keeping its investigation of Donald Trump under wraps.

Trump has already mischaracterized the report, in the way Trump routinely does. But it’s unclear, ultimately, how much all this history matters politically.

For a more prophetic vision of the future, you should read the complaint against Trump, his children and his foundation by New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood.

Why prophetic? Because it’s likely a preface to the report or complaint that special counsel Robert Mueller will bring. The alleged crimes described by Underwood are not similar to those being investigated by Mueller. But the behavior is.

One stumbling block to public understanding of the Mueller probe, in addition to a steady stream of propaganda and lies designed to undermine it, is that it’s hard for even a cynic to accept the premises of what is being investigated.

U.S. history simply doesn’t offer a lot of reference points for a major-party political candidate who so casually subverts the law and sells out the nation’s highest values. How many Richard Nixons are there?

Someone seems obsessed

To believe the accusations that Trump colluded with Russia, laundered vast amounts of money and/or put American foreign policy on the auction block in return for the enrichment of his family requires an awkward leap of faith. You have to believe this leader is both profoundly corrupt-- far more so than Nixon-- and staggeringly sloppy-- again more so than Nixon.

This is essentially the portrait that Underwood paints in the detailed accusations against the head of the Trump Foundation: that of a shady huckster who engages in “persistently illegal conduct” and is buffoonishly sloppy along the way.

To give credit where it’s due, the New York attorney general is building on the case built in 2016 by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, whose search for legitimate charitable activity by Trump’s foundation consistently left the reporter comically empty-handed.

What Fahrenthold detailed was Trump’s utter disregard for the law in taking in tax-deductible contributions to his foundation and proceeding to spend the money on his personal and business needs. 

New findings, for instance, show that the Trump Foundation’s largest-ever gift-- $264,631-- was used to renovate a fountain outside the windows of Trump’s Plaza Hotel.

Its smallest-ever gift, for $7, was paid to the Boy Scouts in 1989, at a time when it cost $7 to register a new Scout. Trump’s oldest son was 11 at the time. Trump did not respond to a question about whether the money was paid to register him.

Take a moment to savor that last detail. A man claiming to be worth billions of dollars-- and who certainly flaunted the lifestyle-- appears to have illegally diverted $7 from a charitable foundation to pay his son’s Boy Scouts registration fee.

Trump’s foundation is organized “exclusively for charitable, religious, scientific, literary or educational purposes either directly or by contributions to organizations that qualify as exempt organizations under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code."

Instead, as Underwood’s complaint shows clearly, he used it to pay settlements incurred in business lawsuits and to advance his 2016 political campaign. The foundation took in millions in donations for veterans. His campaign then directed the foundation to issue checks to Iowa veterans groups in advance of the Iowa caucuses as he sought to curry political favor.

How does Underwood know campaign personnel were involved in spending decisions? Because the Trumpsters are so recklessly contemptuous of rules that they left a trail of this blatant violation of campaign-finance law on their emails. At least one email thread included Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski weighing in on where he wanted the foundation’s tax-deductible funds directed.

The foundation also made a $25,000 contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who subsequently determined that fraud charges against Trump’s university were not a proper matter for her office. The foundation listed the contribution as going to a Kansas nonprofit with the same name as Bondi’s political committee.

“The Foundation has no credible explanation for the false reporting of grant recipients to the IRS and the State of New York,” Underwood concluded.

Trump will likely claim he was uninvolved and unaware. But Underwood’s complaint has that covered, too.

Mr. Trump, who was the sole signatory on the Foundation's bank accounts, approved all grants and other disbursements from the Foundation. Accounting staff for the Trump Organization had responsibility for issuing checks from the Foundation, and issued the checks based solely on Mr. Trump's approval before presenting the checks to Mr. Trump for signature.

Indeed, the foundation’s board didn’t provide much of a check on Trump’s personal whims, owing to the fact that, in violation of the law, it “has not met since 1999 and does not oversee the activities of the Foundation in any way.”

It took the attorney general’s office months to investigate this narrow corner of the Trump universe-- even though the evidence was lying around in plain sight. Mueller’s investigation is far broader and more consequential. His complaint may yet take a while. But it should be a doozy.

Trump's rotten regime seems to have lost close to 6,000 children, after telling Congress last month that they "only" lost 1,500. "To the extent that there are problems for protection of unaccompanied children, this will only become worse as they put more kids in the unaccompanied category by ripping them away from their families," said Clara Long, U.S. researcher at Human Rights Watch. This isn't just on Trump and the people that work in his fetid swamp. Every Republican enabler in Congress who hasn't spoken up with rot in Hell with them.

The reality is the Trump administration-— and the Obama administration beforehand-- has lost track and continues to lose track of thousands of unaccompanied minors while ORR does not appear to be trying to keep track of the children once they’re placed with sponsors.

...A 2008 law signed by President George W. Bush placed all children who arrive at U.S. borders and ports of entry without a parent or guardian under the care and custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Under President Barack Obama this issue grabbed national attention when, in 2015, it was discovered that HHS did not require any meaningful proof that the people who presented themselves as family friends really were who they said they were.

In one high-profile case, HHS allowed six migrant children from Guatemala to be turned over to traffickers who forced them to work in grueling conditions on an Ohio egg farm.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice: "What’s happened is that ICE has a new policy of going after sponsors. The bigger story if not that they are losing people-- it's that ICE is terrorizing people."

Think of the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg on July 16, 1918

Reich: The Problem Isn't That Sanders Doesn't Know How to Break Up the Banks; It's That He Does

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. Why isn't he in prison? Friends in high places, a great many of them (source).

by Gaius Publius

I've been wanting to write for a while about all the reasons the bipartisan Establishment — the people at the top running the "big game" that makes them all rich and keeps them in power — can't ever let Bernie Sanders get control of the Executive Branch of government. There are quite a few reasons, including the fact that people like Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, would certainly be prosecuted and most likely jailed for fraud.

But one story that's been making the ginned-up news rounds lately is that Sanders, in an interview with the NY Daily News, seemed in the Clinton camp's telling not to know how to go about executing one of his own policies, breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks.

The problem with that framing — which every news outlet, including the so-called leftie outlets — immediately jumped to support — is that it's exactly backwards. Sanders knows exactly how to break up the big banks, and he will.

And that's the problem Bernie Sanders presents. The problem isn't that he doesn't know how. The problem is that he does know how, and he will.

Robert Reich explains:

Robert Reich: Sanders Knows How to Break Up the Big Banks—That's Why He Scares the Establishment

Of course Sanders knows how to bust up the big banks.

The recent kerfluffle about Bernie Sanders purportedly not knowing how to bust up the big banks says far more about the threat Sanders poses to the Democratic establishment and its Wall Street wing than it does about the candidate himself.

Of course Sanders knows how to bust up the big banks. He’s already introduced legislation to do just that. And even without new legislation a president has the power under the Dodd-Frank reform act to initiate such a breakup.

But Sanders threatens the Democratic establishment and Wall Street, not least because he’s intent on doing exactly what he says he’ll do: breaking up the biggest banks.

And they should be broken up, for our own safety as well as theirs:

The biggest are far larger today than they were in 2008 when they were deemed “too big to fail.” Then, the five largest held around 30 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Today they have 44 percent.

According to a recent analysis by Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the assets of just four giant banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo – amount to 97 percent of our the nation’s entire gross domestic product in 2012.

If this isn't stopped, the next crash will be another "big one," perhaps bigger than 2008, after which there will be some flavor of bailout (or worse), followed by a revolt by everyone, left and right, who already hated the last one. I'd rather not see any of that occur.

What's Sanders' Plan?

Here's the Sanders plan from the Sanders campaign (quoted here):

Within the first 100 days of his administration, Sen. Sanders will require the secretary of the Treasury Department to establish a “Too-Big-to Fail” list of commercial banks, shadow banks and insurance companies whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the United States economy without a taxpayer bailout.

Within a year, the Sanders administration will work with the Federal Reserve and financial regulators to break these institutions up using the authority of Section 121 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Sen. Sanders will also fight to enact a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act to clearly separate commercial banking, investment banking and insurance services. Secretary Clinton opposes this extremely important measure.

President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Glass-Steagall Act into law precisely to prevent Wall Street speculators from causing another Great Depression. And, it worked for more than five decades until Wall Street watered it down under President Reagan and killed it under President Clinton. That is unacceptable and that is why Sen. Sanders will fight to sign the Warren-McCain bill into law.

I'm sure if Congress initially balks, and it's likely they will, Sanders will persist on the legislative front (as we're seen, he doesn't have much quit in him). But I'm also sure that if Congress fails to pass legislation, "within a year" he'll use every power he has as president to accomplish this breakup from within the Executive Branch. We have a very powerful executive branch, and a big-bank breakup is that important.

About Lloyd Blankfein...

Why isn't the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, in jail awaiting trial? Eric Levitz in New York Magazine reports on his and his firm's crimes (my emphasis):

Goldman Sachs Admits It Defrauded Investors, Pays $5 Billion Fine

In April 2006, Goldman Sachs provided investors with a bullish report on Countrywide’s high-quality mortgage loans — loans the bank had helpfully packaged into AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities, thereby offering those lucky clients a low-risk way of profiting from America’s housing boom. When the bank’s head of “due diligence” saw the report, he typed a short email to his colleagues: “If only they knew…”

Now we know. On Monday, the bank completed a $5.1 billion settlement with state and local authorities for its role in perpetuating the subprime-mortgage crisis. Goldman is the last of the major banks to pay for its financial-crisis sins, but unlike some of its peers, the firm has agreed to formally acknowledge its malfeasance. While Monday’s settlement does not include a confession of legal wrongdoing, it does contain a signed “statement of facts” that details the various ways Goldman Sachs misled investors about the risks inherent to its mortgage-backed securities. [...]

"Mislead investors" is code for "lied to investors about the facts in order to take their money." Which is code for "fraud." Matt Taibbi:

Re Goldman: if these firms were truly committed to reforming, they would want to serve up guilty execs for prosecution as a cheaper solution

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 11, 2016

So why isn't Lloyd Blankfein in a courtroom counting the days before he wears the orange jumpsuit? Because he has friends in high places, lots of them. Does Blankfein fear a Sanders presidency? Almost certainly, with every fiber of the last remaining shred of his soul.

I wonder who Blankfein is backing...

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you'd like to help out, go here. If you'd like to "phone-bank for Bernie," go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks!)

GP
 

Red Hot Chili Peppers Played A Bernie Benefit Tonight-- And Some Advise From Bankster Lloyd Blankfein

Tonight's Red Hot Chili Peppers concert for Bernie was sold out-- weeks in advance. Flea, the Peppers' long-time activist bass player, is a big Bernie fan, although sometimes he can't help himself when it comes to denouncing the Republican clowns. "I can't take Donald Trump or anything he says seriously," he said last week. "I just think that he's a silly reality-show bozo and blustering guy who likes getting attention. I don't think he wants to be president, and I don't think he has a chance to be the president. He's just some egotistical, silly person whose main concern in life is getting a blowjob. He wants to be on TV and he wants everyone to thinks he's important... I don't think he even believes what he says. He's just a product of, if you yell loud enough and bluster around enough, people are going to pay attention to you. He works the media and they love it. I'm hesitant to even discuss it because I just find it all to be really trivial. This guy literally has never said a single thing about anything that actually affects an issue that has anything to do with anyone in America's reality. He's never said anything like he is going to help working class people or poor people. I guess he can help rich people get tax breaks. He's a real-estate bozo who was born rich and has parlayed it from being a money-scammer guy."

And he hasn't exactly been a fan of the other fascist-leaning Republican in the race, Ted Cruz. "Ted Cruz is a selfish, mean-spirited man. He's taking millions of dollars from companies like Goldman Sachs and all these corporations and those are the people who are going to tell him what to do if he gets in office. The NRA and big financial institutions are going to tell him what to do, and he's going to do what they say because they're the ones that own him." But he'd much rather talk about Bernie. He penned a story for Rolling Stone this week.

When we first started hearing about the Democratic [presidential] hopefuls, I saw that he was running and I just started paying attention. When I heard that he wasn't taking money from any corporations, didn't have any Super PACs and was doing it with a lot of small donations, I was amazed. The concept of a president in this country who is not beholden to corporate lobbyists is such a beautiful idea.

A year ago, nobody really cared about Bernie Sanders or knew who he was. And here's a guy that is not relying on fear-mongering or Super PACs or billions of dollars. He's just talking about issues that really affect us as human beings, like caring about each other and evening the playing field.

People try to demonize it like, "Socialism is the next step to communism." That's just insane silliness. Bernie isn't talking about eliminating the spirit of capitalism in terms of the competitive spirit of people being able to lift themselves up by their bootstraps through discipline and hard work and creativity and ingenuity. He's not trying to eliminate making something great of yourself and being part of the American dream. He's just saying, "Let's even the playing field so everybody can get a decent education and have an opportunity to get health care and take care of themselves and educate themselves." That's what civilization should be about.

The bottom line is that everybody deserves to get a good education. This country is completely capable economically of providing a high-grade education for everybody regardless of their economic class. And everybody deserves to have a high grade of health care regardless of their economic class. That is what's going to help [reduce] crime and poverty. That is what's going to make this country a beautiful, vibrant place.

People can still get rich, but it's just giving everybody a chance that everybody deserves. I'm for Bernie Sanders all the way. I believe in him; I believe in what he says. I relate to people who realize that we're all connected, and who realize that we have to look out for each other and love each other. And that's what Bernie's about.

Beyond economic issues, the thing that drives my interest the most in any presidential candidate is the one that's least likely to go to war and least likely to start some bloodthirsty murderous war campaign in order to keep the Military Industrial Complex going and make billions for the corporations at the expense of human life. I think Bernie is the least likely to start a cockamamie war.

I just don't care [that critics call him "unelectable"]. I think saying he's unelectable is a silly thing. Clearly, he's electable. He's a guy who's getting votes and just showed in Iowa that he's neck-and-neck with Hillary. Consciously electing someone based on being a human being with integrity who actually speaks for the people of this country and the things that concern them-- and not fear-mongering — is an amazing concept that's really inspiring. And it gives me a little bit of faith in the political process.

The Chili Peppers are doing a show for Bernie this weekend and it's something like $30,000 to rent the venue. We said, "Oh, we'll pay for the cost of the venue rental." And he wouldn't accept it! He said, "We can't accept you guys; you're a group-- you're incorporated-- so I can't accept that money." He can accept the ticket cost because each one is a small donation, but the 30 grand? "No, I don't accept money like that."

If he's elected, I would hope that a Sanders presidency would make it so 1) he wouldn't go off into any wars unless if it really was to protect other human beings, 2) that he would make high-quality health care accessible to everybody regardless of how much money they have, and 3) that he would make higher education available for everybody. And that means everybody. That means people who live in very poor communities and are struggling who deserve as good as an education as people in rich communities. The playing field is rigged. And if you're poor and a minority, you don't have a chance, man. Or your chance is like a needle in a haystack. I want everybody to have an equal chance.

Oh, and if you missed the show and still want to contribute to Bernie... here's the place.

More Rolling Stone... this time full of free advice from from Hillary booster Lloyd Blankfein plus bankster whores Joe Kernen and Becky Quick of CNBC. (Hillary's #2 campaign donor is Blankfein's company, Goldman Sachs-- $711,490.) Blankfein went on Squawk Box to squawk about how "dangerous" and "frightening" Bernie is.

"Could you imagine," he asked, "if the Jeffersons and Hamiltons came in with a total pledge and commitment to never compromise with the other side?"

The slobbering Squawk Box hosts went on to propose firing all the academics in the country, because clearly it is their fault that so many young people are willing to support a socialist.

"I'm ready," said co-host Joe Kernen, "to send my daughter to Brigham Young or Liberty or something."

Then Kernen, Becky Quick and Blankfein all made jokes about how socialism doesn't work and how all those Berniebots should take a trip to Cuba.

"The best real-time experiment is, I went to Cuba," said Lloyd.

"I haven't been," Kernen said proudly.

"You should go," said Lloyd. "You go there, stop in Miami and you just see the Cuban community and how much wealth they've generated.

Of course the politics of Sanders is closer to what you'd find in Sweden or Denmark than Cuba, but they were rolling by then.

Lloyd added that the current popular discontent with Wall Street was just something that happens randomly, like the weather. "There's a pendulum that happens in markets and it happens in political economy as well," he said.

He added that he didn't want to pick a candidate because "I don't want to help or hurt anybody by giving an endorsement."

For people who so very pleased with themselves for ostensibly being so much smarter than everyone else, people like Blankfein are oddly uncreative when it comes to deflecting criticism.

The people who don't like them are always overemotional communists. All those young people who are flocking to the Sanders campaign? Dupes, misled by dumb professors who've never been to Cuba.

And their anger toward Wall Street? Causeless and random, just a bunch of folks riding an emotional pendulum that brainlessly swings back and forth. Don't take it personally, people are just moody that way.

...Lloyd apparently thinks politicians should naturally reside in a state of more or less constant accommodation with Wall Street. Thomas Jefferson would have compromised with us, he says! One can assume that his model of a "compromising" politician is Hillary Clinton, who took $675,000 to give three speeches to his company. "Look, I make speeches to lots of groups," Hillary explained. "I told them what I thought."

Asked by Anderson Cooper if she needed to take $675,000 to tell Goldman what she "thought," Hillary shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "That's what they were offering."

Even more significant than the $675,000 Hillary took from Goldman, or the $30 million in speaking income she and her husband received combined in the last 16 months, is the account of what Hillary apparently told Goldman she "thought" during those speeches.

According to Politico, who spoke to several attendees, Hillary used the opportunity to tell the bankers in attendance that the "banker-bashing so popular within both parties was unproductive and indeed foolish."

She added that the proper attitude should be, "We all got into this mess together, and we're all going to have to work together to get out of it."

...In her speech, Hillary's we included the executives in her audience. Her message was basically that It Takes a Village to create a financial crisis. This was the Robin Williams breakthrough scene in Good Will Hunting, with Hillary putting a hand on the Goldmanites' shoulders, telling them, "It's not your fault. It's not your fault."

But it was their fault. The crash was caused by a tiny handful of people who spent years hogging fortunes through a bluntly criminal scheme in the home lending markets. The FBI warned back in 2004 of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud that could have an "impact as big as the S&L crisis," but those warnings were ignored.

What the FBI was talking about back then mainly had to do with smaller local lending operations that were systematically creating risky home loans, falsifying credit applications to get unworthy borrowers into mortgages they couldn't afford.

What they didn't understand back then is that the impetus for that criminal activity was the willingness of massive banking institutions on Wall Street to buy up those bad loans in bulk. They created a market for those fraudulent loans, bought billions' worth of them from local lenders, and then chopped up and resold those bad loans to pension funds, unions and other suckers.

The "village" didn't do this. Lloyd Blankfein and his buddies did this. (Goldman just a few weeks ago reached a deal to pay a $5.1 billion settlement to cover its history of selling bad loans to unsuspecting investors, joining Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase and others).

People aren't pissed just to be pissed. They're mad because a tiny group of crooks on Wall Street built themselves beach houses in the Hamptons through a crude fraud scheme that decimated their retirement funds, caused property values in their neighborhoods to collapse and caused over four million people to be put in foreclosure.

And they're particularly mad that they got asked to pay for this criminal irresponsibility with bailouts funded with their tax dollars.

What the Clintons have done by turning their political careers into a vast moneymaking enterprise, it's not a value-neutral activity. The money isn't just about buying influence. The money also physically moves people, from one side of an imaginary line to another.

You will never catch Bernie Sanders standing in a room as a paid guest of a bank under investigation for ripping billions off pensioners and investors, addressing the audience in the first-person plural. He doesn't spend enough time with that kind of crowd to be so colloquial.

The Clintons meanwhile have by now taken so much money that when they stand in a room full of millionaires and billionaires, they can use the word "we" and not have it sound odd. The money has irrevocably moved them to that side of the ropeline. On that side of the line, public anger isn't legitimate, but something to be managed and waited out, just as Lloyd suggests.

When people like Blankfein tell us they don't take criticism personally, what they're saying is that it's too brainless and irrational to be taken any other way. He means to be insulting. And we should all take it that way.

Economic Inequality Is Expensive… And Destructive

Lately you've been hearing a few political leaders, particularly Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Brian Schatz and Bernie Sanders in the Senate and some of the Progressive Caucus members in the House, talking about steeply rising income inequality. They're talking about the kind of inequality that's part of vicious cycle that inevitably leads to oligarchy, plutocracy or outright fascism, in which a few families, through an accumulation of wealth and power, can dictate the laws and even the societal norms and control the mechanisms of enforcement to such an extent that they can virtually enslave an entire passive population.

It can't happen here? The manifestations are already undeniable. The greed and rapacity of the .01% has become so overbearing and their refusal to pay their fair share of taxes so debilitating that a UNICEF report I ran across this morning, a report that would have scandalized an empowered middle class anytime between the time Harry Truman was president until the beginning of the new normal under Ronald Reagan. The report goes a lot deeper than the shocking chart at top of the page which ranks 29 developed countries according to the overall well-being of their children. The 5 countries ranked at the very bottom include 4 of the poorest-- Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Greece-- plus the U.S., which is both one of the richest and one with the least economic equality. Those 5 countries, along with Italy, Portugal and Spain, have child poverty rates higher than 15%. The only countries that have allowed the child poverty gap to widen to more than 30%. are Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and, of course, the United States.

Some of the manifestations of America's rush to the bottom:

• The only developed countries with infant mortality rates higher than 6 per 1,000 births are Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and the United States.

• Only in Greece, Hungary, Portugal and the United States does the low birthweight rate exceed 8%.

• Only Canada, Greece and the United States have childhood obesity levels higher than 20%. The United States had the highest proportion of children overweight at both the beginning and end of the decade, reaching almost 30% by 2009/2010.

• Romania, the UK and the United States have the highest rates of teenage births (above 29 per 1,000).

• Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the United States are the only countries in which the homicide rate rises above 4 per 100,000. Almost all other countries fall into the range of 0 to 2.5 per 100,000.

The video above is Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on CBS' This Morning on Thursday. At the 4.30 mark he was asked what he thinks about income inequality. Keep in mind he has done more than almost anyone else in the country to accelerate economic inequality, paying his bankers an average of close to $400,000 annually-- and taking annual compensation for himself of tens of millions of dollars. After a couple of seconds of stutters and stammers he said "Income inequality is a very destabilizing thing in the country. In other words, it's responsible for the divisions in the country. The divisions could get wider. If you can't legislate, you can't deal with problems. If you can't deal with problems you can't drive growth and you can't drive the success of the country. It's a very big issue and something that has to be dealt with. One of the ways of dealing with it is to make the pie grow and people are better at making the pie grow but I have to say too much of the GDP over the last generation has gone to too few of the people… If you grow the pie but too few people enjoy the benefits of it in the fruit, then you'll have an unstable society."

About 2 weeks earlier CBS' Money Watch sat down to interview economist Thomas Piketty about the implications of his new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. They began, "Piketty's thesis: that the rate of return on capital, such as real estate, dividends and other financial assets, is racing away from the rate of growth required to maintain a healthy economy. If that trend continues for an extended period of time-- if wealth becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of a few-- then inequality is likely to get worse… [I]nequality is evident in what are by now a host of familiar symptoms. Stagnant pay, except among the super-rich. Soaring health care and education costs. The diminished expectations commonly found in young, especially those lacking college degrees, and old alike, as retirement becomes something to endure rather than to enjoy. And at the bottom of the income distribution, a road to nowhere as the avenues of upward mobility that once led to the American Dream are closed off. In the U.S., the gap between rich and poor has today reached 'spectacular' heights, Piketty says in an interview, rising to levels not seen in a hundred years. And America, a self-described classless society, has been revealed as far more socioeconomically stratified than 'old Europe,' notwithstanding its ancient history of inherited wealth."

Piketty: "The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and '20s. And largely these fiscal institutions were invented in America because the U.S. didn't want to become as unequal as the patrimonial societies of 19th century Europe. There was this strong feeling of American identity, of a country where everyone gets a chance, and you don't want to perpetuate extreme wealth concentration across generations. You want people to be able to become rich, of course. But you also don't want the wealth to perpetuate itself over time and across generations without [constraint]. This is why progressive taxation was first invented in the United States… The share of total primary income going to the top 10 percent was about 30-35 percent of total income until the 1970s. That started to increase a lot in the 1980s and is now around 50 percent."

MW: But are you suggesting that there is something inherent in capitalism that fosters inequality?

TP: It's really a matter of the choices that are available to us as a society. Capitalism and market forces are very powerful in producing wealth and innovation. But we need to ensure that these forces act in the common interest. We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

Market forces and capitalism by themselves aren't sufficient to ensure the common good and to limit the concentration of wealth at levels that are compatible with democratic ideals. We need to make sure that we use these forces in a way that's consistent with our common interests and, in particular, the interests of disadvantaged groups. Ultimately, that's a matter of political choices and political institutions.

MW: Speaking of the choices we make as a nation, you write that a progressive tax on capital-- property, stock holdings and corporate profits, for instance-- is a better way of reducing inequality than a progressive tax on income. How so?

TP: In the past, there have been many debates between people who want only a wealth tax and no income tax and some people who want only an income tax and no wealth tax. And in fact, this debate goes beyond left and right. You have some people on the right who hate income taxes and who just have a tax on the stock of wealth, and some people on the left who feel the same. It's been a very hot debate forever. What I try to emphasize in the book is a more balanced view in the sense that both a tax on the income flow and a tax on the wealth stock have merit. We need both.

In particular, a progressive income tax is a better way to try to control the rise of managerial compensation at the very, very top. That's useful particularly in the U.S.

Now, in the future, taxation of wealth is going to become more and more important because wealth is likely to become more and more important. So the quantity of wealth that you accumulate relative to one year of national income or one year of GDP tends to rise in countries with a slowing growth rate or slowing population growth.

In the U.S., population growth has been a key driver of the overall growth of the country. Population in the U.S. used to be 3 million at the time of independence, and it's now 300 million. Is the rate of population growth going to be the same in the future-- is America's population going to be 900 million a century from now? Nobody knows. It could be that the rate of growth will continue. But if it slows down, this will have important implications for the relative importance of wealth and annual income.

I can't make predictions about the immigration patterns in the U.S., but it is likely that at some point population growth will slow down, as it did in Europe and Japan. Immigration can counter this for a long time. But if it happens that you have this growth slowdown, then the quantity of wealth accumulated in the past relative to one year of national income or GDP will tend to rise.

The other reason it's important is because our system of property taxation both in the U.S. and in Europe comes directly from the early 19th century. Property taxes in the U.S. aren't progressive-- it's proportional. Also, it doesn't take into account financial assets or liabilities. It's only based on the value of your real estate. This is because in the early 19th century, most wealth was based on real estate and land. Few people had financial assets and liabilities.

But this isn't appropriate for the the 21st century. For instance, you now have people whose home value is below their mortgage, which means they have a negative net wealth. Yet they keep paying the same property tax as people with no mortgage and those who have a very high net wealth. So this system isn't working well.

MW: You also endorse the idea of a global tax on capital as a way of reducing inequality, while at the same time conceding that such a remedy is "no doubt a Utopian ideal." Isn't it unrealistic to think that countries around the world will use tax policy specifically to combat inequality?

TP: If we're talking about a global tax administered by a global government, then it's not realistic. But there's a lot that can be done at the national level. Particularly in the U.S., you can have a more progressive income tax and a more progressive wealth tax. It's not like everybody is going to go to Mexico or Canada.

The U.S. is sufficiently large that you can go a long way toward the kind of progressive wealth tax that I describe in the book without any problem. The U.S. represents one-quarter of world GDP, so there's a lot you can do when you're that big. The U.S. doesn't have to ask permission of the United Nations or the European Union to change it's tax system.

The reason it's difficult to change the U.S. tax system lies elsewhere. The problem isn't international competition or whatever. It has more to do with the U.S. political system. In particular, property taxes are local, not federal, so that makes it difficult. But this is more a problem of internal political organization.

In fact, it was exactly the same problem with the income tax a century ago, which is that the U.S. Constitution made it impossible for the federal government to have an income tax. Then the Constitution was changed and the income tax was adopted. So the history of income, wealth and taxation is full of surprises. I am reasonably optimistic about the future. Democratic institutions can respond to threats, as they have in the past.

…MW: Beyond a global capital tax, what policies do you favor for reducing inequality in the U.S.?

TP: Better access to education-- that's really the key. In the book, I talk about access to top U.S. universities, and I give some numbers on the average income of the parents of Harvard undergraduates. Right now, this corresponds with the average income of the top 1 percent of the U.S. distribution.

This is quite extreme when you think about it. It's really hard to believe that, just on the basis of merit, it should be this way.

Of course, no country has found the ideal system when it comes to combining efficiency and equal opportunity in its education and university system. Speaking as a Frenchman and a European, I'm certainly not pretending that the university system in France is working well, because in fact it's not efficient and not fair. I'm not trying to say it's easy to solve the problem. The point is that it's a major challenge for every country to have better access and more equal access to skills and higher education.

More transparency also would be useful. One problem with the admission system in a number of universities is that there's no transparency-- we don't know the role that merit exams play, versus parental [influence]-- it's pretty opaque.

…MW: What role do you see for government in reducing inequality in the U.S.?

TP: The most obvious ways government can help by is by providing better access to education, more progressive taxation of income and wealth, and a higher minimum wage… For a long time, America defined itself as a counter-model to the sort of patrimonial societies associated with "old Europe." And it's a bit paradoxical that the U.S. is now reaching the kind of inequality that we saw in pre-World War I Europe. The structure of that inequality is different-- today's inequality in the U.S. relies more on very high managerial compensation and less on high levels of inherited wealth. But it could be that in the future you're going to combine both.

And, as if on cue, this weekend saw the floating of rumors, again, that Mister 47% could be a viable presidential candidate for the Party of Greed and Selfishness. Both Joe Scarborough and Brian Schweitzer have said so out loud; many other conservatives will only say it when there are no microphones around.

Ezra Klein-- A Veritable William Jennings Bryan

Yesterday, we saw how overrun Congress is with very rich people and how the lack of empathy by rich politicians for normal working families is a policy disaster going into the Grand Bargain. Not many people think of Ezra Klein as some kind of raging populist. In the crucial election of 1896, are you sure where Ezra would have stood? The disgust he expressed on The Last Word Friday (above) and in his Washington Post column over the weekend for the super-wealthy trying to undermine Social Security, gave me some hope that maybe, just maybe, enough Democratic corporate shills could be deterred from voting for the Obama-Boehner Grand Bargain that seeks to balance the budget on the backs on working families. I think the chance is slim because the media is so firmly clinging to the elite gestalt that Ezra suddenly recognizes as inherently unfair. But I never really even thought that there might be any chance at all.

“'Cutting' Social Security, writes Ezra, "is unpopular and people don’t like to talk about it. So folks who want to cut the program"-- like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein-- "have instead settled on an elliptical argument about life expectancy. Social Security, they say, was designed at a time when Americans didn’t live quite so long. And so raising the retirement age isn’t a 'cut.' It’s a restoration of the program’s original purpose. It doesn’t hurt anything or anyone." Expect to hear a lot of this coming out of that transpartisan list of congressional multimillionaires we looked at yesterday. Ezra's response is worth remembering for the pushback:

The first point worth making here is that the country’s economy has grown 15-fold since Social Security was passed into law. One of the things the richest society the world has ever known can buy is a decent retirement for people who don’t have jobs they love and who don’t want to work forever.

The second point worth making is that Social Security was overhauled in the ’80s. So the promises the program is carrying out today were made then. And, since the ’80s, the idea that we’ve all gained so many years of life simply isn’t true. ... [S]ince 1977, the life expectancy of male workers retiring at age 65 has risen six years in the top half of the income distribution. But if you’re in the bottom half of the income distribution? Then you’ve only gained 1.3 years.

If you’re wealthy, you do have many more years to enjoy Social Security. But if you’re not, you don’t. And so making it so people who aren’t wealthy have to wait longer to use Social Security is a particularly cruel and regressive way to cut the program.

It’s also a cut that’s particularly tough on people who spend their lives in jobs they don’t enjoy.

You know what age most people actually begin taking Social Security? Sixty-five is what most people think. That’s the law’s standard retirement age. But that’s wrong. Most people begin taking Social Security benefits at 62, which is as early as the law allows you to take them.

When they do that, it means they get smaller benefits over their lifetime. We penalize for taking it early. But they do it anyway. They do it because they don’t want to spend their whole lives at that job. Unlike many folks in finance or in the U.S. Senate or writing for the nation’s op-ed pages, they don’t want to work till they drop.

As Peter Diamond, the Nobel laureate economist and Social Security expert, told Dylan Matthews:

What do we know about the people who retire at 62? On average, shorter life expectancy and lower earnings than people retiring at later ages. If anyone stood up and said, “Instead of doing uniform across the board cuts, let’s make them a little worse for people who have shorter life expectancies and lower earnings,” they’d be laughed at. Anything that reduces benefits is going to hurt everybody. It’s going to hit people with short life expectancies, it’s going to hit people with high life expectancies. But we should not make it worse for those retiring earliest.

That’s what’s galling about this easy argument. The people who make it, the pundits and the senators and the CEOs, they’ll never feel it. They don’t want to retire at age 65, and they don’t have short life expectancies, and they’re not mainly relying on Social Security for their retirement income. They’re bravely advocating a cut they’ll never feel.

But you know what they would feel? Social Security taxes don’t apply to income over $110,000. In 2011, Lloyd Blankfein’s total compensation was $16.1 million. That means he paid Social Security taxes on less than 1 percent of his compensation.

If we lifted that cap, if we made all income subject to payroll taxes, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would do three times as much to solve Social Security’s shortfall as raising the retirement age to 70. In fact, it would, in one fell swoop, close Social Security’s solvency gap for the next 75 years. That may or may not be the right way to close Social Security’s shortfall, but somehow, it rarely gets mentioned by the folks who think they’re being courageous when they talk about raising a retirement age they’ll never notice.

And lifting the cap is exactly the solution progressives in Congress, led by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Raul Grijalva in the House, are pushing. You'll notice that neither Sanders nor Grijalva is on our list of multimillionaires-- nor has either of their political careers been underwritten by wealthy corporate interests. In the end this is precisely the argument that kept Blue America from endorsing corporate shills in blue t-shirts like newly elected "Democrats" millionaire Patrick Murphy (FL), millionaire Suzan DelBene (WA), millionaire Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), millionaire Joyce Beatty (OH), millionaire Elizabeth Esty (CT), millionaire Bill Foster (IL), millionaire Brad Schneider (IL), millionaire John Delaney (MD), or millionaire Scott Peters (CA). Better than Republicans? Not particularly if you've worked like a dog all your life and want a dignified retirement.

The shrew has a point: Why should Goldman Sachs wives be treated like (shudder) "the $650 donors"?

Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein --
his wife must be an exceptionally important person

As part of its "appeal to the common man" mission, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post occasionally practices a kind of crackpot populism that even more occasionally lands just right on just the right target. Offered for your consideration -- with no further comment from me -- is this Hamptons vignette from yesterday's Page Six. -- Ken

GOLDMAN SACHS WIVES HATE TO WAIT

August 5, 2009 --

GOLDMAN Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein has warned his employees to avoid high-profile spending, as The Post reported -- but his wife evidently didn't get the memo.

Laura Blankfein and her friend Susan Friedman, wife of another Goldman honcho, Richard Friedman, caused a huge scene at Super Saturday in the Hamptons last weekend when they arrived at the event before the noon start time and balked at waiting in line with the other ticket-holders.

"Their behavior was obnoxious. They were screaming," said one witness. Blankfein said she wouldn't wait with "people who spend less money than me."

Another observer said the women were so impatient, it was as if they were waiting on line for a kidney transplant instead of a charitable designer clothing sale.

Friedman shouted at the event organizer, "You have lost so much money because of this . . . Why should we be treated like the $650 donors?"

Sources said Blankfein and Friedman had bought tables with blocks of tickets going for $833 apiece, as did many of the women who were waiting patiently in line, happy to raise $3.4 million for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

In the end, the hot-headed duo got in at 12:03 p.m., three minutes after those who arrived before them.

No word on how much of their husbands' money they spent. But Lloyd Blankfein -- wary of bad publicity over the big bonuses he and his colleagues expect to collect at year's end -- has called for an end to conspicuous consumption.

A Goldman Sachs executive was quoted in yesterday's front-page Post story, "[Blankfein] wants to make sure we're not being seen living high on the hog." A Goldman Sachs rep did not respond to requests for comment left at the offices of both Lloyd Blankfein and Richard Friedman.

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