corporate america

Bob Cesca has posted the following chart, showing how the share of income labor sees is at a historic low:

What's interesting is how much the share dipped during the Bush years. During Clinton's term, the rate was on the rise, after a substantial fall during the Reagan and Bush 41 years.

So what does all that mean? Trickle down works!

Of course the trickle down I'm talking about isn't the one Republicans push. Instead it's one that see's the wealth of America rapidly decrease as the money trickles down to the mass population.

And speaking of Republican economics, this highlights another problem. Look again at the big dip in the Bush years. Republicans constantly told us how bigger tax cuts to corporate America would mean more jobs and better wages. Care to re-think that position?

In a world of supply side economics, the equating factor is simple - if the people have more money then they will buy more goods. Instead Republicans want you to think that if the big corporations have more money, they'll hire more people and put out more goods, even if those goods won't sell. It's that kind of thinking that will keep us in a recession and cause our middle class to keep declining. It's that kind of thinking that the media and right wing has pushed for years and so many Americans now buy into it, despite the historic numbers showing something totally different.

As if this comes as any shocker:

Corporate America finished the second quarter with "near-historic" profits, largely by cutting costs, laying off employees and streamlining operations, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Profits for companies in the S&P 500 soared 38 percent from the same period last year, hitting $189 billion, the WSJ says, the sixth-highest quarterly total ever. S&P analysts expect the trend to have continued in the third quarter.

Since 2008, corporate profits increased 10 percent -- but revenue was down 6 percent, the WSJ says. To achieve the impressive quarterly results, companies have had, as the WSJ puts it, to "streamline" their operations. This means firing workers, outsourcing labor and shuttering

This amounts to a Republican Mecca of capitalism ; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And while the poor are eating from hand to mouth, the Tea Partiers want to increase this dangerous economic disparity by doing such things as eliminating the minimum wage.

The thing that drives me crazier than anything though is the minions who by into this “let the corporations rule” meme the right pushes. So many are in the middle class and one down sizing or out sourcing away from hitting hard times. Reality is a myth to these people.

Now that the American people have bailed out the banking system and our leaders are looking at ways to recoup the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we have spent, Wall Street is starting to look at ways to get out of paying us back.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which is the main lobbying arm of Wall Street, sent a e-mail to the heads of Wall Street’s legal departments last week saying that the tax may be unconstitutional since it would single out big banks. They have also hired Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin, an attorney who is no stranger to the Supreme Court, to review the proposal and determine if it could be considered unconstitutional.

When introducing this proposal last week, President Obama sent a warning shot to Wall Street, saying: “Instead of sending a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal or employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee, I suggest you might want to consider simply meeting your responsibilities.” Now it seems like Wall Street isn’t intent on doing that and instead wants to fight their responsibilities.

This becomes another gloomy chapter in corporate America’s milking of the people. They stood with their hands out when is was time to pass out money from the stimulus, but now that the government wants to take action to recoup costs and maybe prevent further failures, Wall Street is turning their noses at us. You can just hear Gordon Gecko muttering those famous words: “greed is good.”

I have always hated those things. These are the "contracts" you sign when you start a new job stating you won't go to work for a competitor. Well California's Supreme Court has just now ruled them null and void:

Californians have the right to move from one company to another or start their own business and can't be prohibited by their employer from working for a competitor in their next job, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In a unanimous decision, the justices said state law since 1872 has forbidden what are called noncompete clauses that restrict management employees' options after they leave a company.

In my opinion these things should be made illegal nationally. It's corporate America's way of monopolizing individuals, and something that tries to limit individuals from gaining new employment. In essence, it's as far from being part of capitalism as you can get.

A post-election e-mail to executives at the drug company GlaxoSmithKline details just how tough. "We now have fewer allies in the Senate," says the internal memo, obtained by The Washington Post. "Thus, there is greater risk over the next two years that bad amendments will be offered to pending legislation." The company's primary concerns are bills that would allow more imported drugs and would force price competition for drugs bought under Medicare.

The defeat of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) "creates a big hole we will need to fill," the e-mail says. Sen.-elect Jon Tester (D-Mont.) "is expected to be a problem," it says, and the elevation to the Senate of Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) "will strengthen his ability to challenge us."

That is buried in an article in yesterday's Washington Post. Should they be afraid? Hell yeah they should! The 109th Republican controlled Congress has been a gift horse to mega corporations in this country and it has been the American people that have paid the price. The Democrats need to restore the power to the people and take it away from these corporate greed mongers. They also need to start pushing legislation through that makes such things as price gouging a serious crime with mandatory prison time for anyone involved. We pay the highest prices in the world for medicines and there is no excuse for that.

After reading

AMERICABlog this morning and seeing his entry of how Bush is

planning on using the State of the Union Address as a GOP campaign platform,
I have decided to help Bush with his speech.