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In Defense of President Obama

close up public domain photo of President Obamas faceclose up photo of former President George W. Bush's face

Evans Liberal Politics
July 31, 2010

 

In Defense of President Obama

 

In Defense of President Obama, OpEdNews, July 30, 2010, by Suzana Megles, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

I don’t know if I should even come to the defense of President Obama because he has let so many of us down re the environment, allowing the continued mismanagement of the BLM re the wild horses of the West, and a seeming indifference generally to the causes of animals who suffer at our hands -especially in Confined Animal Farm Operations (CAFOs). However, these are my priorities and sadly they do not seem to be for the majority of people of our nation.

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Before launching into a defense of President Obama, I had to mention that despite having access to cabinet advisors and others, I realize that as a mortal being he will make judgments which will not please everyone and some of them may even hurt our nation. However, this is part of the human condition. We are ALL imperfect and realizing that, we should try to give the president as much latitude and leeway as possible. We should also give him due credit for any good he has done. Sadly, I see so much carping and criticizing of him on blogs and in e-mails that I believe that the good he has done is either forgotten or obscured at least momentarily.

I was really quite shocked how differently I and a person I e-mailed viewed the president. Admitting that the president was an improvement on Bush, she didn’t have much good to say about him either. She wrote me -"I just don’t like that Obama seems to not care about a lot of the things that this country was founded on. He seems to want to shortcut everything and that’s worrisome." I scratched my head and wondered what in the world was she talking about? Specifics please, I thought.

She continued: “He made a lot of promises during his campaign, as all politicians do but just seems like he’s done a really 180 degree flip on those promises. I don’t think he’s careful with our money and his whole thing of meddling in private industry isn’t cool.”

The last remark made me realize that she was clueless of how our hands- off policy re Wall Street and the Banks almost brought us to our knees but for the remedies Pres. Obama and his financial advisors put into place at the critical time of his first month as President.

I did respond to her e-mail and said: Thank you for your forthrightness. We do see him very differently. He came in with a huge deficit, the country spiraling from the breakdown of Wall Street and banking institutions, the housing market in turmoil and a huge debt from the two wars. God bless him. Even ONE of those problems would have been much for a new president. He tried to stimulate job growth with a stimulus package and he helped bailout General Motors. This man should be gray-haired by now.

You haven’t gone into specifics as I have. I think he was just what we needed. As for the two wars -he inherited them. I will give him the benefit of the doubt until he really misfires. Obviously, you think he has but you are too general in your condemnations.

In my opinion he has done a hellava job for the nation as a whole. He only disappoints me in is lack of care for the animal issues which I espouse. And I forgot to mention that I believe health care reform was much needed and sadly his appeal to the Republicans of Congress for bipartisanship was ignored. I also do not feel he has threatened our Christian beliefs as you do. I(f) so how?

Thus far I’ve gotten no response from her. One thing I have learned in my three-quarter century of living on planet earth is that we should give everyone their just due and most of all we should be grateful for any good we perceive in them. President Obama has been good for the country in many ways. I hope he will be good in the ways which are important to all of us and the nation as a whole. This is a humongous task and please -let us praying people pray for him and his administration every day. Criticizing is so easy to do – but understanding the problems which President Obama faces daily requires that we try to support him as best we can. I also try to be as positive as I can. We seem to only zero in on our perceived negatives. What is that song– “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.” Wow -how far back does this song go? Some of you probably weren’t even born yet. But the message is good. Heed it America!

Yes, of course you political pundits know a lot more about politics than I. I’m not saying that we should all wear rose-colored glasses, but I think we should think twice before launching into wholesale criticism which MAY not have any merit and perhaps very little truth.

Suzana Megles has been concerned about animal suffering ever since she received her first puppy Peaches in 1975. She continues: "she made me take a good look at the animal kingdom and I was shocked to see how badly we treat so many animals. At 77, I’ve been a vegan for the past 30 years and I thank God every day that I am. I am most disturbed at how little the Catholic Church and Christian churches generally give to concern re animal suffering in their ministry. I wrote to 350 bishops in 2001 and only 10-13 responded. I feel that the very least they can do is to instruct that the priests give one sermon a year on compassion to animals. I am still waiting for that sermon. I also belong to Catholic Concern for Animals – founded in England in 1929."

See the Guide to Liberal News and Politics on the Web for more on Evans Liberal Politics’ views about President Obama and the — in my opinion — relatively good job he has done. In particular, on that page we strongly recommend our article, “Barack Obama: In Crucial Ways, STILL Change We Can Believe In.” (There is an extensive discussion about and guide to liberal news and politics on the web there too, downloadable as a .doc Word document or a .pdf.)

While expressing my own disappointment that the President’s agenda has not been particularly progressive, Evans Liberal Politics thanks the President for his Herculean efforts to keep this country together. In fact, we believe that Obama has kept this country from totally falling apart, and at the same time enacted programs which are more liberal than many critics give him credit for. Keep fighting the good fight, Mr. President. ((And hire a new team of economic advisers. The current team of Summers, Geithner and Bernanke, and others like them, are doing you a discredit. Nobody on the left or on the right any longer has any faith in them. Their corrupt ties to Wall Street and the sweetheart deals they come up with for their buddies on the Street are hurting your credibility and dragging the country down. Oh, and hire Elizabeth Warren for the new Consumer Protection Agency! [Sign a petition in support of Elizabeth Warren here.] — Just a thought for you, Mr. President.)) ~ Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans.

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NYT: Democrats in Congress should remind Obama of his campaign promises

Evans Liberal Politics
July 31, 2010

 

NYT: Democrats in Congress should remind
Obama of his campaign promises

 

NYT: Democrats in Congress should remind Obama of his campaign promises, The Raw Story, July 30, 2010, by Muriel Kane, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Senator Pat Leahy promises hearings into White House request for expanded surveillance powers

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News that the White House has asked for a “clarification” in current law which would make it easier for the FBI to obtain private email and web browsing records without a court order has run into strong opposition from the New York Times.

In a Thursday editorial, the paper firmly opposed the expanded use of warrantless “national security letters,” which it points out have been widely used — and often abused — by both the FBI and the Pentagon.

“President Obama campaigned for office on an explicit promise to rein in these abuses,” the Times notes, citing a 2008 position paper which promised that “as president, Barack Obama would revisit the Patriot Act to ensure that there is real and robust oversight of tools like National Security Letters, sneak-and-peek searches, and the use of the material witness provision.”

“But instead of implementing reasonable civil liberties protections, like taking requests for e-mail surveillance before a judge,” the editorial concludes, “the administration is proposing changes to the law that would allow huge numbers of new electronic communications to be examined with no judicial oversight. Democrats in Congress can remind Mr. Obama of his campaign promises by refusing this request.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has already promised to hold hearings on the issue. In a statement released on Thursday, he writes that “the administration’s proposal to change ECPA to cover electronic communication transaction records raises serious privacy and civil liberties concerns.”

“While the government should have the tools that it needs to keep us safe, American citizens should also have protections against improper intrusions into their private electronic communications and online transactions,” Leahy’s statement continues. “We must also address past government abuses of these authorities. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings this fall to study these and other important issues.”

photo button to launch audio of Julian Sanchez speaking about electronic privacy in the 21st century at the Cato Institute "Electronic privacy in the 21st century:" Julian Sanchez speaks at the Cato Institute. — 15:13.

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BP fights lawsuit as jobless grow desperate

Evans Liberal Politics
July 30, 2010

 

 

Gulf coast fishermen increasingly desperate as BP begins legal wrangling, Agence France-Presse on The Raw Story, July 29, 2010, by Agence France-Presse, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

img of the sun shining off of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill shows us it's full extent

US spill chief Thad Allen failed Thursday to reassure desperate fishermen about their Gulf of Mexico oil clean-up jobs, while BP began the legal wrangling in a massive civil trial.

As engineers prepared next week’s vital operations to permanently kill the capped BP well, Allen met with parish presidents and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal in New Orleans to discuss how to safeguard local jobs going forward.

With little oil now floating in the Gulf, there are fears the popular “Vessels of Opportunity” program that employs fishing boats to skim crude off the surface of the sea might have to be scrapped.

Allen pledged to redeploy as many skippers as possible to other tasks, but could give no firm indication of how many of the 1,500 boats would still be working in the Gulf after next month.

“Obviously as we transition into a point where there’s not the threat of a spill, the involvement of Vessels of Opportunity is going to necessarily change,” he said after the meeting.

Allen said that over the next 10 days he would work with parish presidents and the governor to hammer out a plan for the fishermen and what to do with the program through to the end of August.

A large portion of the Gulf waters remain closed to commercial and recreational fishing and with lingering doubts about seafood safety, fishermen could effectively end up losing their jobs for a second time.

“The fishermen have missed a year, and we don’t know what the impact is going to be next year, or the year after that,” said Marty O’Connell, an environmental scientist at the University of New Orleans.

Many are worried it could be months or even years before they can fish again, and there are no guarantees the fish will be there in the same numbers when they do, or that they will be safe to eat.

“If BP uses the capping of the well as an excuse to minimize its clean-up operations, then shame on them,” said Mike Frenette, whose five boats in Venice, Louisiana missed an entire summer’s fishing due to the disaster.

Frenette had to apply four times before getting two of his five boats onto the program, which pays between 600 and 3,500 dollars a day, depending on the size of the boat.

“All that our Vessels of Opportunity work is doing is counting against our compensation claim. We’re not making any money, here, we’re just trying to keep our heads above water.”

Many disgruntled fishermen are expected to seek compensation for lost earnings and personal injury in the courts, and in Boise, Idaho on Thursday lawyers for disaster victims opened the first stage in a massive civil trial.

The hearing brought together a wide array of people and players linked to the disaster triggered by an April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana.

Plaintiffs range from the families of the 11 workers killed in the explosion to Gulf fishermen whose catch has been contaminated by the spill, threatening them with financial ruin.

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A seven-judge panel will decide over the next few weeks whether to consolidate the litigation into one or several cases, and where the trial or trials should take place.

BP and other firms named in the claims argued for the venue to be the oil headquarters of Houston, Texas, but victims’ lawyers said it should be somewhere closer to those hit hardest by the disaster, like New Orleans. Joining BP in court were Transocean, which leased the rig to BP, Cameron International, which manufactured the blowout preventer, the device which should have shut down the well but failed to work properly, and Halliburton, the oil services company which had finished cementing the well only 20 hours before the rig exploded.

BP hopes to begin a “static kill” operation as early as this weekend to plug the capped well with drilling mud and cement. Five days later a “bottom kill” through a relief well should finish the job once and for all.

A cap stopped the flow on July 15 after between three and 5.2 million barrels (117.6 million and 189 million gallons) had gushed out, making it likely the disaster is the biggest ever accidental oil spill.

See Incoming BP CEO: Time for ‘scaleback’ in cleanup, July 30, 2010, by The Associated Press.

Gulf Coast Oil Spill Audio News Update
and Relief & Protest Songs



ABC News update audio on the Gulf oil spill and the apparent degradation and disappearance of most of the oil ABC News Update on the Gulf oil spill and the apparent degradation and disappearance of most of the oil. — 2:18.

MSNBC’s Papantionio insists BP officials are looking at prison time over the Gulf Coast oil spill (The Ed Show) — 4:21.

Drill Baby Kill, a rocking Gulf coast oil spill relief and protest song "Drill Baby Kill," a rockin’ Gulf Coast relief and protest song — 5:10.

Oil is Blood is a heavy metal Gulf Coast oil spill protest song by Anfo Merc "Oil Is Blood," a heavy metal Gulf Coast oil spill protest song — 3:51.

a fisherman's skiff plies the Gulf Coast waterways of the Louisiana delta region "Cry For The Fishermen," (Gulf Oil Spill Disaster) – song — 3:30.

concert song by Melodeego on the BP oil spill "Melodeego’s Rolling BP Concert Series" song. — 3:05

song in protest of the BP oil spill "Song in Protest of the BP oil spill," with Christian overtones. — 3:00

U2 sings their famous protest song 'Silver and Gold' about how money can become something we are enslaved by U2 sings their favorite protest song “Silver and Gold” in this live performance. — 5:50

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Obama administration wants more warrantless surveillance of Americans

Evans Liberal Politics
July 30, 2010

 

Obama administration wants more
warrantless surveillance of Americans

 

Tech News About Your Privacy

 

Obama administration wants more warrantless surveillance of Americans, Daily Kos, July 29, 2010, by Joan McCarter, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

As Yglesias says, “The End of Probable Cause.” WaPo reports:

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The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.

This power would be conferred upon the same FBI whose agents have “cheated on tests on how to legally conduct domestic surveillance cases.” Maybe this is just the administration’s way of making sure these people won’t have to cheat on future tests–not they won’t have to worry about the pesky details of conducting domestic surveillance legally, since they won’t have to worry about warrants.

Matt raises the question of “misused work resources . . . for personal purposes.” The larger concern, and anybody who lived through Nixon and is old enough to remember it will share it, is the very real potential for the systematic misuse of information for political purposes. It’s happened before and will happen again, and our government should at least have to go through the niceties of taking actual legal steps in order to spy on us. As Matt also points out, it’s not that hard. All it takes is “some kind of cause—probable cause, let’s say—to suspect someone of involvement in terrorism, [is to] just get a warrant.”

Probable cause and warrants. The stuff of democracy. The stuff, in fact, of the Constitution, the fourth amendment to be precise.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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See ‘Private’ Browsing Sessions Not As Private As You Think, The Huffington Post, July 29, 2010, by Catherine Smith, excerpt quoted verbatim:

Surfing the Internet with a web browser’s “private mode” enabled may not keep users’ information as safe as they think, Switched reports, citing research conducted at Carnegie Mellon University.

Carnegie Mellon’s Collin Jackson told New Scientist that some sites may leave data on a computer’s hard drive, even if they were accessed while private browsing was enabled, effectively providing traces of what sites you’ve visited.

As Jackson and his team note, “sites visited while browsing in private mode should leave no trace on the user’s computer.” And yet, Jackson tells New Scientist that a hacker could “guess what sites you’ve been to based on traces left behind.” Switched summarizes the dilemma: “when your average surfer turns on the private mode in a browser, they expect their tracks to be erased, and erased they’re not.”

See Breaking a Promise on Surveillance, N.Y. Times Editorial, July 29, 2010, excerpt quoted verbatim:

It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyone’s e-mail correspondents and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission.

It is far more than a technical change. The administration’s request, reported Thursday in The Washington Post, is an unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign.

In a 1993 update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Congress said that Internet service providers have to turn over to the F.B.I., on request, “electronic communication transactional records.” The government says this includes the e-mail records of their subscribers, specifically the addresses to which e-mail messages were sent, and the times and dates. (The content of the messages can remain private.) It may also include Web browsing records. To get this information, the F.B.I. simply has to ask for it in the form of a national security letter, which is an administrative request that does not require a judge’s signature.

But there was an inconsistency in the writing of the 1993 law. One section said that Internet providers had to turn over this information, but the next section, which specified what the F.B.I. could request, left out electronic communication records. In 2008, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion saying this discrepancy meant the F.B.I. could no longer ask for the information. Many Internet providers stopped turning it over. Now the Obama administration has asked Congress to make clear that the F.B.I. can ask for it.

Jay Rockefeller offers the amazing opinion in Senate testimony that in his view it would have been better if the internet had never existed Jay Rockefeller — “It would have been better if the internet had never existed” – CSpan2 — 2:45 Amazing.

See Gates Assails WikiLeaks Over Release of Reports, July 29, 2010, by Charlie Savage.

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Obama v. Rockefeller on EPA carbon regulations

Evans Liberal Politics
July 30, 2010

 

Obama v. Rockefeller on EPA carbon regulations

 

Obama v. Rockefeller on EPA carbon regulations, Daily Kos, July 29, 2010, by Joan McCarter, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

While the energy bill won’t do much in the way of carbon regulation, the EPA still can. That is, if coal state Senators can be stopped.

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Via David Dayen, earlier this week the White House vowed to veto legislation that would block the EPA from writing new climate change rules.

Coal-state Democrats, led by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W. Va.), Reps. Rick Boucher (Va.) and Nick Rahall (W. Va), are trying to limit the federal government’s ability to control greenhouse gases from power plants.

The coal-state proposals, which would block the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority for two years, would undercut what is widely seen as Obama’s alternative climate policy, now that Congress has punted on cap-and-trade legislation for the year. The Obama aide said the proposals won’t win the president’s signature if they managed to pass on Capitol Hill. Rockefeller’s bill is expected to reach the Senate floor at some point this year.

Back in 2007, a Supreme Court ruling mandated that the EPA regulate greenhouse gasses, and the administration is determined to follow that law.

And Jay Rockefeller is determined to try to stop it, possibly by attempting to amend the energy bill on the floor next week. One way to circumvent him, without forcing a veto of the entire bill, would be for Reid to refuse amendments to the bill, something he has indicated might happen.

Which would hamper efforts to strengthen the bill in other ways. One of the most popular proposals in committee was the Renewable Electricity Standard, which would mandate that utilities get a certain percentage of their power from renewables. There’s an effort afoot now to get this amendment allowed on the floor.

Meanwhile, Republicans have introduced an alternative bill, that would basically let BP off the hook by not applying a liability cap in it retroactively to apply to the Gulf spill.

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Robert Reich: The Final Lesson of BP

Evans Liberal Politics
July 29, 2010

 

Robert Reich: The Final Lesson of BP

 

The Final Lesson of BP, Robert Reich.org, July 28, 2010, by Robert Reich, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

BP is starting over. It just named a new American president and its finances are looking up. BP’s second-quarter report showed surprisingly strong revenues of $75.9 billion, beating Wall Street’s estimates. (This includes a $32.2 billion writedown along with the $20 billion liability fund that the Obama Administration wanted.) The company has started to sell $30 billion of its assets to ensure it has all the money it needs to pay any liability claims. No wonder several Wall Street analysts are suggesting BP stock as a terrific buy.

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It doesn’t seem to matter BP was responsible for the worst environmental disaster in American history. Consumers worldwide – including Americans – continue to slurp up its oil.

But wait a minute. If BP emerges from this debacle fatter and happier than anyone imagined a few months ago, whatever happened to the idea of corporate accountability? Does this mean any giant corporation can wreak havoc and then get back to business as usual?

Corporations aren’t people. They have no brains, no consciences, no capacity for intent or guilt. Every one of their moveable parts can be replaced, just like BP’s former CEO Tony Hayward was replaced. Corporate accountability and responsibility are meaningless concepts. Corporations exist for only one purpose: to make money.

If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully enforced and through penalties higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.

Here’s the real outrage: In the wake of the BP spill, essentially no laws have been changed – not even a ridiculously low cap on damages private parties can collect from oil companies. Senate Republican leaders said Wednesday they wouldn’t support a bill retroactively removing the liability cap; and not even Democrats Mary Landrieu (D-La) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) will support it.

Why isn’t Congress doing more – not only removing the cap on civil liability but also raising the level of penalties oil companies have to pay for violating safety and environmental regulations, permanently prohibiting deep-water drilling, and enacting a carbon tax?

Because of Big Oil’s political clout.

The same anthropomorphic fallacy that accords human attributes to giant corporations like BP distorts clear thinking about how to limit their political influence.

Consider the grotesque Supreme Court decision earlier this year in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which gave corporations the status of people with First Amendment rights to spend unlimited amounts of money on political ads. Citizens United ranks right up there with Bush v. Gore and Dred Scott as the most brainless and irresponsible Supreme Court decisions in history.

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In March, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals decided that in light of Citizens United, there was no longer any basis for limiting contributions to so-called independent committees set up to support or oppose particular candidates. (Such committees are known as 527’s, after a loophole clause in the campaign finance laws.) The old contribution limit was $69,900 every two years. Now even that’s gone.

And the Federal Elections Commission has just interpreted these two court decisions to mean corporations, not just individuals, can now give unlimited amounts of money to 527’s.

To top it off, Tuesday the Senate failed (by only a few votes) to pass the “Disclose Act,” that would have forced corporate sponsors of campaign ads to reveal themselves and not hide behind innocuous sounding names like “Americans for America.” The bill also would have prohibited campaign ads run by U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies. (Think BP.)

Now all the limits are gone and the gloves are completely off. Even BP, incorporated in the UK, is officially free influence American politics to its heart’s content.

The will of the American people is being subordinated to the demands of giant money-making machines called global corporations that can now spend or threaten to spend unlimited amounts of money in support of any politician willing to help them make more and against any who might cause them to make less.

This is the final lesson of BP.

What should you do? As with the loophole-ridden finance reform law, and the new health law that richly rewards Big Pharma — get angry, not cynical. Commit to getting big money out of politics, even if it takes us years.

here. The above article is from Reich’s new blog, and can be viewed here.

Thanks to Professor Reich for permission to publish his articles on an ongoing basis.

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Income of very richest shot up by 281% since 1979

Evans Liberal Politics
July 29, 2010

 

Income of very richest shot up by 281% since 1979

 

Income of very richest shot up by 281% since 1979, The Raw Story, July 28, 2010, by David Edwards and Muriel Kane, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

In the wake of BP’s calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, CEO Tony Hayward is stepping down, but he will be receiving a severance package amounting to an estimated $18 million.

“That’s what he gets for presiding over a record oil disaster and massive losses,” commented Chris Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation, who was guest hosting MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Tuesday.

Hayes went on to note, however, that “Tony Hayward’s $18 million payoff is an absolute pittance compared to the kind of cash top CEO’s are raking in.” He cited a recent Wall Street Journal story which revealed that over the past decade, the two highest-paid CEOs at public companies each took in over a billion dollars in compensation, while others in the top 25 received compensation in the hundreds of millions.

graph showing income gains by the five fifths classes since 1979

What makes these pay rates really “infuriating,” says Hayes, is that “CEO pay is both a cause and partly a symptom of the staggering increase of inequality in this country.

Hayes cited a study recently released by the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities which shows that if you’re in the bottom 20% of earners, “you’re making only 16% more today than you would have in 1979.” If you’re in the middle fifth, you’re making 25% more. “But the top fifth of earners in this country — they’re making 95% more.”

“And that’s not the really shocking part of this graph!” Hayes exclaimed. “Check this out. This is how much better the top 1% of Americans are doing now. The income of the very richest among us has shot up by 281% since 1979.”

“There’s a social pyramid in this country,” Hayes commented, “and as you climb it, you encounter a smaller and smaller group of people doing better and better, while everyone at the bottom stays where they were. And it’s precisely this kind of systematic inequality that incentivized the corporate fraud of the last decade.”

“A select group of people are able to completely immunize themselves from the fate of the rest of the society,” Hayes concluded. “Our entire social and economic way of life in this country is broken and unfair and inequitable and we need to figure out a way to repair it.”

Noting that the George Bush tax cut for the wealthy is due to expire next January, Hayes suggested, “We could let it. What remains to be seen is whether the Democrats in Congress have the political will to take that step.”

a photo of a chart serves as a trigger to listen to Rachel Maddow discuss income inequality and the startling fact that the very richest had their income increase 281 percent since 1979 Rachel Maddow on outrageous CEO pay from July 27, 2010 — MSNBC – 5:30.

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