War profiteering: a cancer upon America (and the world) ~ The Occupy Wall Street protesters and those marching in solidarity with them throughout the nation are attempting to fight back against the top 1% of earners who have hijacked our nation and turned what is claimed to be a democracy into a plutocracy rife with corruption and corporatist policies. While the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be focusing mostly on the banking interests that have run our economy into the ground while raking in staggering profits, there remains a sub-set of the 1% that needs to be identified and exposed. This sub-set is the 0.01%, the executives that take in astounding sums of money, leverage tens of millions in lobbying money to control our so-called representatives all to the detriment of the American people, the American economy, and the world at large. They profit at the expense of the American taxpayer, off the lives of American soldiers, and from death and destruction around the globe. These are not entrepreneurs who struck it rich giving us a product or service that we need, they are getting rich while manipulating the American political system and the fear of the American people while perpetuating endless, unnecessary and unethical wars. This one hundredth of one percent includes the war profiteers, the CEOs of military contractors that are paid even more than CEOs of financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. To put this in perspective, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, James “Jamie” Dimon was paid $20.81 million in 2010. The CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, was paid $18.97 million, while the CEO of Bank of America, Brian Moynihan, was paid a relatively small $1.94 million (although it would be a huge amount of money for most Americans). When considering these numbers, one must keep in mind that the earnings can be highly variable, with Jamie Dimon pulling in $1.32 million in 2009 and $35.76 million in 2008. These numbers for Dimon include salary, bonuses, stock awards, option awards, changes in pension value and “nonqualified deferred compensation earnings” and “all other compensation”. Now let’s take a look at what top CEOs in the defense contracting industry were paid last year. CEO of Northrop Grumman, Wesley Bush, made $22.84 million. CEO of Lockheed Martin, Robert Stevens, made $21.89 million and Boeing’s CEO James McNerney made $19.74 million. These figures put military contractor executives deep in 0.01% territory, seeing as one must make $9.14 million annually to fall in this ultra-elite strata, according to an article published on the liberal website AlterNet. However, an anonymous investment manager’s article published on a University of California at Santa Cruz professor’s website claims that the top 0.01% has a net worth of $24.4 million on average. Unfortunately a source for this statistic is not cited. Either way, it is an irrefutable fact that the income distribution in the United States is highly unequal and a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report makes it clear that it is just getting worse (more here and here). The war profiteers that make up the 0.01% of earners in the United States are not simply bad because they make far more money than anyone else. This is the type of skewed logics that so-called conservatives regularly use in order to justify claims of class warfare. Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with making money, and there is nothing wrong with making lots of money. However, if you’re buying off politicians, putting Americans in the line of fire while destroying foreign nations, robbing taxpayers blind and killing jobs in order to get rich, I take issue... Continues with video @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.au/2011/11/war-profiteering-cancer-upon-america.html by Madison Ruppert
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 09:22:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015