"This not only fuels the Republicans’ mostly white, male, Christian, American-born base. It also reassures the fat cats bankrolling the GOP that working-class resentments are channeled away from economic populism — which could threaten the fat cats’ wealth."

#Trump #Republicans #populism #CultureWars #WhiteChristianNationalism #patriarchy #EconomicElites
/2

"The billionaires who push Trump and his lies through their publications, think-tanks, and media outlets do so because they believe if he’s re-elected, they’ll get even more tax breaks and that Trump will continue his efforts to gut the IRS and EPA, which they hate.

~ Thom Hartmann

#Trump #Republicans #crime #BigLie #billionaires #EconomicElites #TaxBreaks #media

https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-to-de-program-fox-watchers-on-2dd

"The richer a fraction of society becomes, the greater its political power, and the more extreme the demands it makes. ...

What the ultra-rich want is to sustain and extend the economic system that put them where they are. The more they have to lose, the more creative their strategies become."

#ClimateChange #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites
/2

George Monbiot on what makes the global ecological crisis, which is reaching a pont of no return now, seemingly impossible to address effectively:

"[G]overnments have failed to break what the economist Thomas Piketty calls the patrimonial spiral of wealth accumulation. As a result, the rich have become ever richer, a process that seems to be accelerating."

#ClimateChange #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites
/1

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/15/food-systems-collapse-plutocrats-life-on-earth-climate-breakdown

Greg Olear writes,

"If we can distill [Great] Gatsby to its essence, this quote comes the closest:

'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

A century later, nothing has changed."

#GreatGatsby #Republicans #EconomicElites

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/sunday-pages-the-great-gatsby

The biggest story the national media don't tell us as Republicans create their usual faux crisis over the debt ceiling? Robert Reich writes,

"One of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue."

#DebtCeiling #Republicans #taxes #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-biggest-story-youve-never-heard

Gregg Gonsalves writes,

“'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others' would be a fitting motto for the current Covid response in the US."

If you're affluent and connected, you have a much better chance of being protected from infection and getting good treatment if you're infected. If you're not affluent and connected, good luck to you.

#COVID #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/orwellian-white-house-covid-policy/

Jared Yates Sexton succinctly sums up the problem facing us these days in so many parts of the world as we struggle for justice, rights, democracy:

"Corruption, betrayal, and authoritarianism are natural side-effects of a world where the only thing that matters is power and wealth."

#authoritarianism #corruption #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites

https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-world-to-buy-and-sell

Judd Legum looks at the global elite meeting at Davos, Switzerland, now — Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Mancin are featured there — and asks what are the priorities of the elite.

He concludes that with only 81 billionaires holding more wealth than 50% of the world combined, extreme wealth inequality is a policy choice "pushed for by corporations and the wealthy and enacted by government officials."

#EconomicElites #KyrstenSinema #JoeManchin

https://popular.info/p/the-true-priorities-of-the-global

Eric Levitz writes,

"The conservative movement’s antipathy for popular sovereignty did not begin with Donald Trump, but rather the New Deal. The modern American right was born to defend the anti-majoritarian preferences of reactionary business elites. And although it has undergone many transformations in the 90 years since FDR’s election, maximizing the wealth and power of such elites remains the movement’s core commitment."

#Republicans #EconomicElites #democracy

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/17/voting-rights-republicans-texas-restrictions