Life and Death

Since looting the US Treasury in 2008 and 2009, the financial elite -- bailed out by the citizens of the United States -- have been breathing their own exhaust to the extent they seem to believe their own rhetoric. As reported in the Huffington Post, CEOs fattened at the government trough are now advocating that government cut loose the poor and elderly. Fixing the deficit caused by their government-sponsored champagne lunch, say CEOs of criminal enterprises like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, requires cutting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

Meanwhile, as reported at Al Jazeera, tax havens where the financial elite hide the trillions extracted from governments and laundered from criminal enterprises, in order to evade paying taxes, are coming under greater scrutiny. As noted in the article, if we are going to reverse the poverty created by the financial elite, then rules will have to be both changed and enforced. Otherwise, the rigged rules that now starve our schools, hospitals and social programs will mean the death of civil society.