economic inequality

Like Rick Perry, Gavin Newsom is certain new glasses make him look seriousGavin Newsom presents well. When he still thought he was running for governor, he called a meeting of L.A. political bloggers in some sleek West Hollywood hotel and did a free-flowing Q and A. He was as sleek as the hotel and everyone swooned. Except me. Having recently exited the corporate world, Newsom's glitz and studied expertise in everything didn't impress me. Good hair, yes...

Zach Goldfarb celebrated the 4th of July with a column for the Washington Post informing us that the moneymen behind the New Dems, Blue Dogs and Third Way-- i.e., the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- have had enough of all this income gap and economic inequality palaver.

The word on the street: rigged. It's certainly the central theme of what we're hearing from Elizabeth Warren-- and has a lot to do with why voters in Massachusetts replaced Wall Street's favorite senator with her. Yesterday we read, watched and listened to Nick Hanauer warn his fellow billionaires of the dangers inherent in too much and too blatant rigging.

How does this sound to you?

The landslide election earlier this month of Narendra Modi does not bode well for the 800 million or so Indians living in destitution, or the 120 million minority Muslims in the country, or the Adivasi (indigenous) people and Dalit groups sitting on resource-rich land in Orissa, Jharkhand and elsewhere. He may well come from a humble background, but Mr. Modi’s loyalties lie firmly with the corporations of India, not the chai wallahs working the train station at Vadnagar in Gujarat State like his father once did.

War is a bastard but the bitch that bore him is in heat again.
— Berthold Brecht

Lately you've been hearing a few political leaders, particularly Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Brian Schatz and Bernie Sanders in the Senate and some of the Progressive Caucus members in the House, talking about steeply rising income inequality.

"When People Cheat, You Cannot As A Regulator Continue Business As Usual"You probably know by now that a great deal of Elizabeth Warren's new book, A Fighting Chance, deals with creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "I had no doubt-- zero-- that the banks should be held accountable for breaking the law," she wrote.

Tonight at 8:30 (5:30 PT), MoveOn and HuffPo are broadcasting a dialogue between Senator Elizabeth Warren and author Thomas Piketty from Boston's historic Old South Meeting House. I wonder how many other Members of Congress, or how many candidates for Congress, have read Piketty's high acclaimed new book, Capital In The Twenty-First Century. I did an unscientific survey and found that no one had.

The wave of super-charged economic inequality-- spurred by uncontrolled greed and avarice and abetted by sold out politicians-- isn't just drowning the American middle class. This week, the British are being told to get ready for a grim future, with no chance for the vast population to "claw their way out of a hand-to-mouth existence."