![]() Putin did this in the name of restoring a level playing field for Russians. Note how many billionaires are in Trump’s cabinet.īelton, a former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, reviews how, in the wake of Boris Yeltsin’s failed economy, Putin seized the assets of Russia’s Yukos Oil Company from oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was thrown in prison on fictional fraud and tax evasion charges. ![]() Parallels between Russia’s fall from tentative baby steps toward a free market economy to a thoroughly unlawful state takeover of the country’s key industries by Putin looks eerily similar to the dark path on which President Trump and his merry band of nepotistic cronies and lackeys are leading us. Journalist Catherine Belton’s forthcoming book, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, is chillingly prescient. If one needs a roadmap of where this nation might be headed look no further than Russia, ruled since 2000 by apparent president-for-life billionaire Vladimir Putin. In other words, they will be grabbing back those $1,200 checks, money that came not from Trump, but the taxpayers themselves. Watch as those same oligarchs will not hesitate to call in the mortgages and other debts the rest of us hold. However, billions were doled out to the few corporate oligarchs whose previous profits went to stock buybacks and to sate the bulging bellies of their overpaid CEOs. ![]() In the first stimulus bill, a mere $1,200 apiece was trickled down to the millions of Americans now out of work and on the verge of eviction and starvation. Under the corrupt leadership of Donald Trump’s personal litigator and fixer Attorney General Bill Barr, one can only imagine the glee that our government has as it tightens its grip on everything from the US Postal Service (warning to Amazon and Washington Post’s owner Jeff Bezos), to the control of much-needed ventilators and personal protective equipment (based on which governor lavished the most praise on Trump), to the distribution of tax breaks and bailouts to the people who need them the least – you know, the one-percenters that party and schmooze at Mar-a-Lago while donating big bucks to the Republican National Committee. “Contact tracing” might soon come to mean something non-medical in nature. The coronavirus epidemic has exposed the truth that the corporate oligarchs are firmly in charge of our fates and will be until the eventual collapse of our democracy.Ī pandemic is the perfect cover for a plutocracy to flex its monetary muscle and, additionally, for the government’s surveillance state to intensify its intrusive snooping. But today, that definition is more apt than ever. Plutocracy is a word I never thought I would use to define America.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |