 Ah yes... 'Reaganomics' - Supply Side Economics - 'Trickle Down Theory', the promise of prosperity for all... BULLSHIT!
According to an analysis of Congressional Budget Office data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
between 1977 and 1994 the average after-tax income of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans rose 72 percent, after adjustment for inflation,
while the average income of the highest-earning 20 percent of families rose 25 percent. By contrast, the average after-tax income of
the middle fifth of the population stagnated, while that of the poorest fifth of families shrank 16 percent.
The graph on the right covers a slightly different period but it shows the weighting of the 'bennies' in graphic detail.
Looks to me like somebody plugged the 'leak' that was supposed to 'trickle down'!
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Billy Gates is the richest person on the planet with an estimated personal fortune of $48,000,000,000. Rumor has it that he's thinking of buying 'Palmyra', a small atoll in the Hawaiian Island chain (it is for sale, the price - a paltry $48,000,000 - 'pocket change' for Bill).
April 09, 03:40 EST
Groups To Pay Washington Not To Log
By HUNTER T. GEORGE - Associated Press Writer
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- Environmental groups are scrambling to come up with $20 million to pay the
state to protect 30,000 acres of virgin forest that is home to much of the last lynx habitat in the United States.
Excerpt Copyright 1998 Associated Press - acquired via 'The Wire'
Looks to me like Billy could donate the entire amount (from the 'change' in his other 'pocket') to keep his own backyard pristine!
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 I watched Ms. Paula Jones' press conference (04-16-98), announcing her decision to appeal her case, very carefully. She started with a smile, paused (while she bit her lip), and started to 'cry'. Not once, during the entire 'show', did a tear roll down her cheek!
My opinion: she was faking it! Hey, if I bit my lip, I could force myself to cry too.
Remember Susan Smith? She stood before the tv cameras in Florida, crying and pleading with the 'kidnappers' of her babies to return them unharmed. Of course, in reality, she had already drowned them herself!
Is it so far fetched to say that Ms. Jones could have faked 'it' (her 'pain') as well?
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While the NRA rants over their perceived 'erosion' of American's 2nd Amendment rights* with the passage of the Brady Bill and the banning of the import of 'assault' weapons - children are killing children.
Consider the following:
April 16, 18:42 EST
U.S. Leads the World in Gun Deaths
By CHELSEA J. CARTER - Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA (AP) -- The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found.
Excerpt Copyright 1998 Associated Press - acquired via 'The Wire'
Seems to me that, the time has come for a concerted effort to ban ALL weapons designed with only one purpose: to fire as many rounds as possible in the shortest period of time! Once that's completed, the next step would be to regulate gun ownership (retroactively if possible), by testing and licensing prospective gun owners. Personal gun ownership is a privilege NOT a right!
* An individual's right to bear arms' has never been successfully argued in a court of law. It's pure fiction!
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 Environmental activists have been accused of attempting to sacrifice the rights of 'man' for the protection of other species. Damn those 'environazis'! Right-wing 'conservatives' (oxymoronic) believe the Earth is ours to use however we see fit!
Consider the following:
April 19, 1998
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE - New York Times News Service
Scientists have discovered why relatively few people in the American West develop Lyme disease compared with people who live in the
Northeast. According to a surprise finding reported last week in California Agriculture and in a recent article in the Journal of
Parasitology, the secret lies in lizard blood.
Excerpt Copyright 1998 New York Times - from a story in the San Diego Union Tribune.
Could it be that we don't really know how valuable a given species is to our survival? Maybe it's a good idea to protect ALL species from extinction!
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With the announcement on 05-18-98 by the Justice Dept. to proceed with the anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft after failing to reach an agreement over the inclusion of the 'browser' in Windows 98, the dis-information has started to fly!
Microsoft claims that the Justice Dept. wants them to: bundle its rival's browser with Windows 98; and allow OEMs to change the 'opening screen'! Bundle a competitor's product??? Change the 'Starting Windows 98' intro screen??? Why should they???
In fact, the Justice Dept. gave Microsoft a couple of options: unbundle IE4 OR include Navigator; and allow OEM's to decide what software (icons) appear on the desktop. This is, to me, a reasonable request.
Microsoft should release Windows 98 sans IE4 (hopefully with all the bugs, included with '95, fixed). We (the consumer) don't need a fancy new desktop with a lot of fancy new bugs! We need a stable, reasonably bug free, OS to run the programs we chose to install on our computers.
I suggest we (the consumer) do not buy Windows 98; its real 'advantages' over '95 are few (USB support, multi-monitor support), and could be offered as 'updates' to the existing OS (USB support already is!).
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Note: This 'rant' isn't mine but it's posted here because I agree with it 100% and I couldn't have said it better myself!
Stop Corporate Welfare!
by Ralph Nader
The issue of concentration of power and the growing conflict between the civil society and the corporate society is not a conflict that you read about or see on television. So unfortunately, most of us grow up corporate; we don't grow up civic.
If I utter the following words, what images come to mind: crime, violence, welfare and addictors? What comes to mind is street crime; people lining up to get their welfare checks; violence in the streets; and drug dealers -- the addictors.
And yet, by any yardstick, there is far more crime, and far more violence, and far more welfare disbursement (and there are far more addictors) in the corporate world than in the impoverished street arena.
The federal government's corporate welfare programs number over 120. They are so varied and embedded that we actually grow up thinking that the government interferes with the free enterprise system, rather than subsidizing it.
It's hard to find a major industry today whose principal investments were not first made by the government -- in aerospace, telecommunications, biotechnology and agribusiness. Government research and development money funds the drug and pharmaceutical industry. Government research and development funds are given freely to corporations, but they don't announce it in ads the next day.
Corporate welfare has never been viewed as debilitating. Nobody talks about imposing worker requirements on corporate welfare recipients or putting them on a program of "two years and you're out." Nobody talks about aid to dependent corporations. It's all talked about in terms of "incentives."
At the local community level, in cities that can't even refurbish their crumbling schools -- where children are without enough desks or books -- local governments are anteing up three, four, five hundred million dollars to lure very profitable baseball, football and basketball sports moguls who don't want to share the profits. Corporate sports are being subsidized by cities.
Corporations have perfected socializing their losses while they capitalize on their profits. There was the savings-and-loan debacle -- and you'll be paying for that until the year 2020. In terms of principal and interest, it was a half-trillion-dollar bailout of 1,000 savings-and-loans banks. Their executives looted, speculated and defrauded people of their savings - and then turned to Washington for a bailout.
There's a new drug called Taxol to fight ovarian cancer. That drug was produced by a grant of $31 million of taxpayer money through the National Institutes of Health, right through the clinical testing process. The formula was then given away to the Bristol-Myers Squibb company. No royalties were paid to the taxpayer. There was no restraint on the price. Charges now run $10,000 to $15,000 per patient for a series of treatments. If the patients can't pay, they go on Medicaid, and the taxpayer pays at the other end of the cycle, too.
We have 179 law schools and probably only 15 of them offer a single course or seminar on corporate crime. You think that's an accident? Law school curricula are pretty much shaped by the job market, and if the job market has slots in commercial law, bankruptcy law, securities and exchange law, tax law or estate planning law, the law schools will oblige with courses and seminars.
One professor studying corporate crime believes that it costs the country $200 billion a year. And yet you don't see many congressional hearings on corporate crime. You see very few newspapers focusing on corporate crime.
We grow up never learning what we own together, as a commonwealth. If somebody asks you what you and your parents own, you'd say homes, cars and artifacts. Most of you would not say that you are owners of the one-third of America that is public land or that you are part-owners of the public airwaves.
When you ask students today who owns the public airwaves you get the same reply -- "the networks," or maybe "the government." We own the public airwaves and the Federal Communications Commission is our real estate agent. The radio and TV stations are the tenants who are given licenses to dominate their part of the spectrum 24 hours a day, and for 24 hours a day they decide who says what.
You pay more for your auto license than the biggest TV station pays for its broadcast license. But if you, the landlord, want in on its property, the radio and TV stations say, "Sorry, you're not going to come in."
You and your parents also may be part-owners of $4 trillion in pension funds invested in corporations. The reason this doesn't get much attention is that, although we own it, corporations control it. Corporations, banks and insurance companies invest our pension money. Workers have no voting mechanism regarding this money.
Not controlling what we own should be a public issue, because if we begin to develop control of what we own, we will marshal vast existing assets that are legally ours for the betterment of our society. That will not happen unless we talk about why people don't control what they own.
As in the Middle Ages, 1% of the richest people in this country own 90% of the wealth. The unemployment rate doesn't take into account the people who looked for a job for six months and gave up, and it doesn't take into account the underemployed who work 20 hours a week. Part of growing up corporate is that we let corporations develop the yardsticks by which we measure the economy's progress.
Democracy is the best mechanism ever devised to solve problems. That means the more we refine it -- the more people practice it, the more people use its tools -- the more likely it is we will not only solve our problems or at least diminish them, we also will foresee and forestall risk levels. When you see corporations dismantling democracy, you have to take it very seriously and turn it into a public political issue.
We're supposed to have a government of, by and for the people. Instead we have a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors and for the DuPonts. We have a government that recognizes the rights and liabilities and privileges of corporations, which are artificial entities created by state charters, against the rights and privileges of ordinary people.
Jefferson warned us that the purpose of representative government is to counteract "the excesses of the monied interests" -- then the merchant class; now the corporations. Beware of the government that doesn't do that.
Copyright Ralph Nader - from: Third World Network Features through PeaceNet
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Here's a little followup to the Justice Dept. vs Microsoft battle. It just goes to show you what 'unrestrained' 'free-trade' really means when in the hands of the ruthless 'n greedy.
May 20, 1998, 08:35 PDT
Justice Department uses Microsoft's own words against it.
By Bob Trott - InfoWorld Electric
Microsoft executives pouring over the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust case will see plenty of familiar phrases and comments -- and may wish they could take them back.
The Justice Department's filing includes several internal Microsoft memos, press interview excerpts, and other comments that prosecutors say show the software giant has tried ruthlessly to crush Netscape, Sun and its Java programming language, and other competitors.
The federal government -- along with 20 states and the District of Columbia, which also filed suits -- say the documents prove that Microsoft sought to protect its operating system dominance, and use that dominance to create other monopolies.
On another level, the documents provide a fascinating "fly on the wall" glimpse inside the inner workings of the software behemoth -- even in the office of Chairman Bill Gates.
For instance, without identifying the author, the Justice Department filing quotes an internal Microsoft document as saying that the "strategic objective" was to "kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
Similar comments were found in an e-mail written by Paul Maritz, group vice president of the platforms and applications group, who wrote that Microsoft must "blunt" Java's momentum and "reestablish ActiveX and non-Java approaches . . . [to] protect our core asset Windows -- the thing we get paid $'s for."
Linking Internet Explorer with Windows as a way to sink Netscape and its Navigator Web browser is a recurrent theme in the internal documents the Justice Department cited.
In an e-mail allegedly written to Maritz, Senior Vice President Jim Allchin said Windows was the key to winning the browser market.
"If you agree that Windows is a huge asset, then it follows quickly that we are not investing sufficiently in finding ways to tie IE [Internet Explorer] and Windows together ...," Allchin wrote. "Memphis [the code name for Windows 98] must be a simple upgrade but most importantly it must be killer on OEM shipments so that Netscape never gets a chance on these systems."
According to the Justice Department, Windows marketing director Jonathan Roberts told his subordinates to "to really look at why people who get IE with a new machine switch to Navigator and what is being addressed in IE 4.0 to make that difficult."
And, allegedly from Windows product manager Christian Wildfeuer: "It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser market share on the merits of IE 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator."
In the end, it was hard to determine which Microsoft considered more important -- Windows 98 and the OS market, or gaining browser share with Internet Explorer.
"Memphis is a key weapon in the IE share battle," Brad Chase, head of marketing for the personal and business systems group, allegedly wrote in an e-mail.
The internal memos included in the Justice Department case also appear to bolster prosecutors' contention that Microsoft has used Windows to have its way with OEMs, Internet service providers, and other companies.
In a memo dated July 1996, Gates allegedly described to other executives his efforts to persuade Intuit CEO Scott Cook to move his company from Navigator to Internet Explorer: "I was quite frank with him ... that if he had a favor we could do for him that would cost us something like $1M to do that in return for switching browsers in the next few months I would be open to doing that."
The lawsuit also quoted Brad Silverberg, former head of Microsoft's Internet Group who currently is on a sabbatical, as telling AT&T officials that if they "want to be a part of the Windows box, you're going to have to do something special for us."
"There are very, very few people we allow to be in the Windows box," Silverberg allegedly told AT&T. "If you want that preferential treatment from us, which is extraordinary treatment, we're going to want something very extraordinary from you."
The memos also detail Microsoft's determination in keeping OEMs from removing the Internet Explorer icon from the Windows desktop. Several PC makers, including Micron, Compaq, and Gateway, butted heads with the Redmond, Wash., giant over the issue -- and lost.
"Microsoft executive Chris Jones noted in 1995 that some OEMs want to remove the [IE] icon from the desktop' but that the OEMs should be told 'this is not allowed,'" the lawsuit stated.
Bob Trott is a senior editor for InfoWorld.
Copyright 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.
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How come liberals have allowed conservatives to exclusively claim to be 'patriotic'? I am (and have been) a liberal most of my life. I served in Viet Nam in '67. I pay my taxes. I get 'teary-eyed' whenever I hear the National Anthem. I'm proud of this nation. Why am I not considered a patriot?
 July 7, 1998
Liberalism is as patriotic as apple pie!
By Salon Magazine Columinst Joe Conason
LEFT-WINGERS HAVE AS MUCH RIGHT TO WAVE THE FLAG AS CONSERVATIVES -- AND WHEN YOU LOOK AT OUR NATION'S HISTORY, MAYBE MORE.
Excerpt Copyright 1998 Salon Magazine
Click HERE to read the column in its entirety.
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A Mother Jones classic: Back in 1992, Mother Jones dug into the dubious financial dealings of then-President George Bush's three sons. With one of them now running for dad's former office, we thought we'd bring the story out for an encore.
September/October 1992
Bush Family Value$
By Stephen Pizzo
In 1991, President Bush bristled at a flurry of news accounts that questioned the business ethics of three of his sons. "The media ought to be ashamed of itself for what they're doing," Bush complained. "They [the boys] have a right to make a living, and their relationships are appropriate," added a White House spokeswoman in June 1992.
Since George Bush has raised "family values" as a campaign issue repeatedly, though, it seems only fair to take a look at his own family. A computer search showed that over the past five years stories have periodically surfaced chronicling the individual business antics of the president's sons -- each riding comfortably through life in the slipstream of his father's growing power and influence.
Excerpt Copyright 1992 MoJo Wire - Mother Jones Magazine
Click HERE to read the article in its entirety.
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