Top 1 percent hijacks gov’t, lower 90 eats cake?

“There is a war going on in this country. I am not referring to the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people against working families, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The billionaires of America are on the warpath. They want more and more and more. …” U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, December 10, 2010

Editing, excerpting, comment by Carolyn Bennett

“You cannot become a billionaire stepping over children sleeping on the street. …Enough should be enough.”

“The top 1 percent today earns 23.5 percent of all income. In the 1970s, that number was 8 percent. In the 1990s, it was approximately 16 percent. Now it is 23.5 percent. So the people on top are getting a bigger and bigger chunk of all income. Furthermore, it is not only the top 1 percent, there are economists who ask: ‘You think the top 1 percent are doing well? It is really the top one-tenth of 1 percent.’ If you can believe this, the top one-tenth of 1 percent—and I don’t know how many people that is, you can do the arithmetic, 300 million into one-tenth of 1 percent—took in 11 percent of total income, according to the latest data. One-tenth of 1 percent earned 11 percent of all income in America.

“In the 1970s, the top 1 percent only made something like 8 percent of total income. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 to 14 percent. In the late 1990s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005 it passed 21 percent. In 2010, the top 1 percent receive 23 percent of all the income earned in this country.

“The last time that type of income disparity took place was in 1928. I think we all know what happened in 1929.

Top one percent, enough should be enough
But is it?

Today, in terms of wealth as opposed to income, the top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

The United States is in a “horrendous recession right now, where millions and millions of people have lost their jobs, their savings, their homes. This recession was caused by the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street. These people created the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression. The American people bailed them out.

“Now, two years after the bailout, they are giving themselves more compensation than they ever have. They are saying to the American people,

Sorry we caused this recession because of our greed. Sorry you are unemployed. Sorry you lost your house but that is not all that important. What is important is that I, on Wall Street, continue to get millions of dollars in compensation and in bonuses, that I have big parties. How can I get by on one house? I need five houses, 10 houses. I need three jet planes to take me all over the world. Sorry. We have the money. We have the power. We have the lobbyists here on Wall Street. Tough luck. That is the world, get used to it.

“They need more, more. Fifty million is not enough. They need $100 million. One hundred million is not enough. They need 1 billion. One billion is not enough .…When will it stop?

Last year “the Supreme Court made a very strange decision. The Supreme Court decided that corporations are people and they have the right of free speech —and the right without disclosure —… to put as much money as they want into campaigns all over the country. In this last campaign, that is what we saw: Billionaires, in secret, pouring money into campaigns all over the country. Does that sound like democracy to anybody in America— that we have a handful of billionaires probably dividing up the country?”

“The very rich seem to want more and more and more, and they are prepared to dismantle the existing political and social order in order to get it.”


Bottom 99 percent shut up, shut out

“When we went to school, we used to read in the textbooks about Latin America, and they used to refer to some of the countries there as ‘banana republics,’ countries in which a handful of families controlled the economic and political life of the nation.

“…The American people … are not all that far away from that reality today. The top 1 percent has seen a tripling of the percentage of income they earn. The top 1 percent, since the 1970s, has owned 23 percent of all income, more than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. That is not the foundation of a democratic society. That is the foundation for an oligarchic society. The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks. Poverty increases.

“All over America, people are angry, frustrated. …

“Over the 8-year period of President [George W] Bush, from 2001 to 2009, we lost 600,000 private sector jobs and only a million net new jobs were created, all of them in the government sector. … Five million manufacturing jobs disappeared, as companies shut down plants in the United States and moved to China, Mexico, Vietnam, and other low-wage countries. During the Bush era, median income dropped by nearly $2,200 and the trade deficit with China more than tripled, overall trade deficit nearly doubled.… During the eight years of Bush, over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. We do not talk about poverty in America anymore. We do not talk about the homelessness in America very much anymore.

“Today, nearly 40 million Americans are living in poverty; 7.8 million Americans lost their health insurance, and that is continuing.… During the Bush years, 3.2 million workers lost their pensions, and about half of American workers in the private sector have no pension coverage whatsoever.… Workers are more and more dependent on Social Security, which has been there for 75 years, which we have to protect and demand that it will be there another 75 years because right now millions of workers are losing their pensions.

“One of the reasons people are angry and frustrated is they are working incredibly hard. … There are people who do not work one job or two jobs; they are working three jobs and four jobs, trying to cobble together an income in order to support their families. While people are working harder and harder, in many cases, their income is going down. They are not going anywhere. In some cases, in many cases, their standard of living is actually going down.

“When asked the question by pollsters, ‘Do you think America is moving in the right direction,’ people overwhelmingly think not.”

Senator Sanders said on Monday, “The American people are saying, given the $13.8 trillion national debt, let’s not give tax breaks to billionaires and drive up that national debt, forcing younger generations to pay more in taxes; allowing Republicans to start slashing Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security because of this large debt we are making larger.…”

“We do not need tax breaks for billionaires. We need to create jobs for the middle class of this country so that we can put people back to work. … We need agreements now that do not give tax breaks to millionaires or billionaires, that do not lower the tax rates or the estate tax, which is applicable only to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. We need an agreement that rebuilds our infrastructure, rebuilds our manufacturing base, and creates the millions of good-paying jobs the American people desperately want.

“If the American people stand and say, ‘We can do better than this…’ and we are prepared to follow them … we will do better…, reflecting the needs of children (the future) and of the working-class and middle-class of our country.”


Sources and notes

“THE ECONOMY” -- (Senate - December 10, 2010) Full Congressional Record Transcript of Sanders Filibuster December 10, 2010, http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=e35eddb4-0d83-4c55-92c0-e448c55526ff


Bernard Sanders , Senate Years of Service: 2007-
Party: Independent, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index
Senator Bernie Sanders was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. While in office Sanders focused issues have been shrinking middle class and widening income gap, reversing global warming, universal health care, fair trade policies, supporting veterans and preserving family farms. He serves on five Senate committees: Budget; Veterans; Energy; Environment; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, http://sanders.senate.gov/about/
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=387b127b-1f18-4032-b07d-92e17452e219


See also
Letters to Washington, for December 13, 2010, http://www.kpfa.org/archive/show/54209
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/65994

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