some interesting facts

[sasha031]

Dear Friend,
Here’s a headline from Tuesday’s New York Times:U.S. Royalty Plan To Give Windfall to Oil Companies, $7 Billion Over Five Years.And now, guess which topic will get more attention from the mainstream media:
Dick Cheney’s birdshot.
Or
Exxon’s illegitimate, staggering profits? You got it.

The growing divide between rich and poor is the 900-pound gorilla in the room.
On the whole, the mainstream media ignores it, because increasingly, the media executives and editors are part of the ruling elite.

That leaves us.
We raised it during the 2004 campaign because, as former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it:
"We can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few or we can have democracy, but we cannot have both."

Did you know?
Top executives now make more in a day than the average worker makes in a year.

Plutocracy: 1. The rule or power of wealth or the wealthy; 2. A government or state in which the wealthy class rules. 3. A class for group ruling, or exercising power or influence, by virtue of its wealth. (Webster's Unabridged Dictionary)



Of the world's 100 largest economies, 47 are nations, and 53 are corporations.Seventy-five percent of major corporations hire a union-busting firm to stop employees from forming a union.

Stretch limousines are longer, yet more people are homeless.Thirty zip codes in America have become fabulously wealthy.

Meanwhile, whole urban and rural communities are languishing in poverty, crumbling infrastructure, growing economic insecurity and fear.

"Inherited economic power is as inconsistent with the ideals of this generation as inherited political power was inconsistent with the ideals of the generation which established our government."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

The wealth of the world's three most well-to-do individuals now exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the 48 least developed countries.The bottom 60 percent receives 13.9 percent of the world's income.

Born on home plate -- Forty-two percent of those listed have inherited sufficient wealth to rank among the Forbes 400.

[Wilms]

1. K&R n/t