Who is the in the 1%?

“The One Percent” is an amazingly well done documentary that gives an inside look at how the richest millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. live. The documentary was made by Jamie Johnson (as in Johnson & Johnson) in 2003. He reveals his own families struggles to come to terms with their wealth in the face of growing inequalities. In his search for understanding of fairness, justice, morality and profit he speaks to everyone, from Nobel Prize winning Milton Friedman to the granddaughter of Warren Buffet to the poor living in the projects of Chicago or working on sugar plantations in Florida. It's available to stream on Netflix.

Here is a link to the synopsis and trailer.

Also, thanks to my friend Maren, here is a global perspective of where you can find the one percent: MAP.

While these highlight the problem of rising inequality and concentration of wealth, the question remains, what to do about it? I think the answer has to go beyond increasing taxes on the rich. We need structural changes that help to prevent the richest from buying political favors through large campaign donations and funding lobbyists. We also need to make reforms to ensure that even the poorest are able to send their children to quality schools. For a start...

Ray Charles - Biographic Movie

I’ve got Georgia on my mind, I got a woman, Drown in my own tears, Night time is the right time…
Ray Charles created so many incredible songs that broke musical boundaries - mixing gospel, r&b, blues, soul, country, pop ; broke racial boundaries – bring great music to white and black audiences in the north and refusing to sing to segregated audiences in the south; broke international boundaries – going from a ruff life of sharecropping in Georgia to playing and singing around the world; broke many hearts – he had the power to melt women with his music and magnetic personality. I knew he was extremely talented but I didn’t know where he came from besides knowing that he was blind. Last night I watched a fantastic biographical movie that brings his story to life. If you haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend you do.

Guantanamo May Remain Open Indefinitely… Take Action

Under the Bush Administration, the government threw out the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions in declaring an unconventional “War on Terrorism.” The struggle against terrorism is unconventional because we are not fighting against another nation; rather we are fighting against an extremist ideology that supports the use of violence and guerrilla warfare to attack their perception of infidel “Western” powers. Since this is a war of ideology, I don’t believe that it makes sense to further undermine our ideology of democracy and the protection of human rights by using unjust detention and torture of people suspected of committing acts of terrorism. This approach makes us appear hypocritical and weak. To succeed in a war of ideology we have to stand behind what we believe otherwise we have already let them win.
I hoped that the Obama administration would change our course in the struggle against terrorism. One of his first promises was to close Guantanamo. However, Guantanamo is still open and there is now a bill that has passed the House of Representatives and is being voted on by the Senate that would keep Guantanamo open indefinitely. Please join me in writing to your Senator to ask them to vote against this bill and demand changes that ensure that innocent civilians suspected of terrorism are not being treated inhumanely as this will only provide more incentive for people to perceive the U.S. as an enemy. You can find the full text of the bill at here . The sections of the bill pertaining to the status of prisoners at Guantanamo include Sections 1036-1039. You can express your opposition to the bill and write to your representative using the following link.

I recently watched a Danish documentary called Armadillo about the war in Afghanistan that gives a first-hand view of the brutality and ineffectiveness of the war. You can find it on Netflix. Also I suggest reading “Taliban” and “Descent into Chaos” by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid for an in-depth overview of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dedicated Protestors Making a Difference

The recent global protests are the result of an interesting and beautiful exchange...students in the United States created Facebook which has helped students in Middle Eastern and North African countries to coordinate and protest against dictatorships and inequality and now the success of their protests have inspired Americans to protest our own outrageous economic inequalities.

Tunisians got the ball rolling with a mostly peaceful protest and now a democratic election. Hopefully their new government will be able to respond to the demands of their people more effectively. I also hope that protests in the United States and even in more difficult situations, such as is the sad case in Syria, remain peaceful. The violence that erupted in Oakland is not the way to go. If the protests degenerate into fist fights with the police the credibility that the protests carry a message for how we can rebuild a more inclusive and strong economy will be lost. By contrast, the persistence and coordination of many protesters is gaining more and more positive attention. There is an online public forum for Occupy Wall Street where there is an explanation of democratic structure protesters are using to reach decisions is explained and there are links to open discussions on key issues such as the cash-for-immunity deal in negotiation between the government and banks related to the investigation of fraudulent "robo-signing" of foreclosures. The protesters are not an angry mob seeking to tear everything down, they are a legitimately angry group of intelligent people looking for answers to transform our economic system and society to one that is less unequal and unfair.

I have a passion for using numbers to contextualize problems. Here is a chart that clear shows the growing inequality in our society (click on it to see a larger image) as well as a link to an excellent slideshow elucidating the many problems we are facing.

What do the protesters want? Essentially, strengthened rule of law so that bankers and others can't get away with fraud and other crimes, increased taxes on the rich, and more jobs for the unemployed.

You’re FIRED! Here is $23 million for the SH*T you got us into! ???

“Just last week, Léo Apotheker was shown the door after a tumultuous 11-month run atop Hewlett-Packard. His reward? $13.2 million in cash and stock severance, in addition to a sign-on package worth about $10 million,…Carol A. Bartz took home nearly $10 million from Yahoo after being fired from the troubled search giant..” NYTimes

To fire 5 people in the past year, U.S. corporations spent $66 million. I would love to be paid over $10 million to do a bad job. What kind of an incentive is that to do a good job? And these are numbers after the financial crisis. Imagine what severance packages looked like before the crisis, when there was a lot more money floating around the financial sector. In 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, pay for the top 10% of corporate executives was 700 times greater than the average worker’s pay – earning over $55 million a year. Well, maybe it’d not that different since not much has changed since the crisis. Following the massive bailouts of the banks, Wall Street firms paid $18 billion in bonuses in 2008. NYTimes: Executive Pay Now they are wondering why people are camping out in Liberty Plaza on Wall Street for the past 12 days with lots of signs. I'm wondering why there aren't more protests around the country.

The argument for the obscenely high pay rates is that the corporations and banks needed highly skilled people who will produce amazing profits that the whole country will benefit from. Obviously, something went very wrong as the whole country is suffering from the mess these star executives made and they are still getting rewarded. Dan Airley, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, has done some tests to measure the impact of huge bonuses as an incentive. In his experiments he found that more pay increases a workers output if they are doing manual labor but not if there is cognitive skill or creativity involved. In this case, the bigger bonuses are counterproductive because of the high levels of stress that they cause.

Anyone just wandering around Wall Street can tell that it is not a very relaxed, creative environment. Maybe instead of high pay, corporate executives and financial analysts should be rewarded with more vacation, massages, and coupons to go to yoga classes instead of millions of dollars and our economy would be much better off. Things are changing a little, the protesters are settling in, hopefully the government will finally get the message and start forcing some much needed changes in getting pay and productivity back in line.

Fresh Pesto Pasta

Hello again. I realize that my last few blogs have been pretty much downers and decided to lighten things up with another recipe blog. So if your basil and zucchini plants have not been washed away by the recent hurricane you should try out this easy Pesto Zucchini Pasta recipe:

Ingredients:
• 2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup pine nuts
• 3 medium sized garlic cloves, minced
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 2 medium zucchini
• 1 lb thin spaghetti pasta (or any other type of pasta you like)

Preparation:

1. Combine the basil in with the pine nuts, pulse a few times in a food processor. Add the garlic, pulse a few times more.
2. Slowly add the olive oil. Stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor with a rubber spatula. Add the grated cheese and pulse again until blended. Add a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
3. Chop the zucchini into small wedges. Cook in a pan on medium heat with some olive oil and chopped garlic (about 5 min).
4. Cook and drain the pasta as directed on the box.
5. Combine all of the ingredients and enjoy!


Recently I attempted to make meatballs and spaghetti sauce from scratch. It was a lot of effort and not to great result. If anyone has some good meatball recipes please share.

DOWNGRADED - and we deserve it!

When the debt ceiling debates were happening, a friend of mine said that he hoped the U.S. defaulted because we deserved it. I agreed but I didn’t think the world deserved it. Now I think we got what we deserved, we’ve been downgraded. The U.S. is not acting like a world leader so why should we expect the world to continue to give us that title. I think every citizen has to take responsibility for the mess we are in. We have all been spending beyond our means. We haven’t demanded enough of our government to effectively regulate financial markets. We haven’t demanded enough from leaders of banks and corporations to act ethically. We also collectively have not done enough to respond to the obnoxiously loud and illogical demand of the Tea Party. The Tea Party helped push us to the brink of default in refusing to budge on their one demand, no taxes. The Tea Party got its way, no taxes, and now, no recovery either. What I don’t understand is why the Tea Party decided that taxes are the main issue of the day when the rich and big corporations haven’t been paying taxes all of this time anyway. According to Bloomberg, Google, Apple and other top profit making companies have avoided paying about $6 billion in taxes through legal loopholes that allow them to shift profits from the U.S. to Bermuda. IRS tax data for 2009 reveals that 1,400 millionaires paid no taxes in that year.

So why do the rich feel that taxes are what is holding back the economy when not only are many of them not paying taxes but they continue to benefit from Bush’s tax cuts that put capital gains and dividend tax rates at historical lows? Why do they want to undermine government revenues that have largely helped to bail them out when banks went bankrupt? Why do they want to continue to inflict deadly blows to the poor and elderly by demanding spending cuts on social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? And my greatest question is, why have more moderate Republicans and all of the Left and Independents not united in throwing a “Dump the Tea Party” Party? We ALL need to contribute to restoring our national economy and reputation for fiscal responsibility, even if it means paying taxes.