"A Land Grab by the Ruling Elites": Trump's Tax Plan Derided for Benefiting the Rich

The White House has outlined a plan to give the nation’s millionaires and billionaires a massive tax break while adding trillions of dollars to the U.S. deficit. The plan would lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, end the estate tax and end the alternative minimum tax—a move that would solely benefit the richest Americans, including President Trump. A leaked 2005 tax return shows Trump paid out $36.6 million in federal income taxes that year—most of it due to the alternative minimum tax. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described Trump’s tax plan as a form of class warfare. The tax plan was unveiled on Wednesday by two former executives at Goldman Sachs—Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—who hailed the tax cuts. We speak to economist James Henry of the Tax Justice Network.

Corrupt Crony Oligarchy: Ivanka Trump at Meeting with Japanese Prime Minister

As a relative of the President-elect, Ivanka Trump is banned from being part of her father's administration, yet a disturbing picture has surfaced of her meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

Sarah Palin Is Already Sick Of Trump

Sarah Palin fired off a scathing op-ed late last week, accusing the Trump administration of committing the same kind of crony capitalism that he railed against during his campaign. And Sarah isn’t alone – many Trump voters have already said that they regret their decision to vote for him. The Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

Gove Attacks 'Preposterous' Number of Old Etonians in Cameron's Cabinet

Michael Gove, the education secretary, was educated at a fee-paying school in Scotland.

THE GUARDIAN: Education secretary draws comparisons between PM's team and cabinet of Lord Salisbury, criticised for alleged cronyism

The education secretary, Michael Gove, has attacked the "preposterous" number of Etonians in David Cameron's inner cabinet and, in the process, taken aim at the chances of Old Etonian Boris Johnson succeeding Cameron as party leader after the general election.

He described the concentration of Old Etonians as "ridiculous", adding that such a bastion of privilege does not exist in any other rich country.

Although Gove, in an interview with the Financial Times, stressed that the elite nature of Cameron's top team reflected the failings of past state education policies, the remarks fit perfectly with the Labour claim that the top of the Conservative party is an out-of-touch elite. » | Patrick Wintour | Friday, March 14, 2014

Leading Article: Crony Capitalism and Craven Folly
THE INDEPENDENT: What is it about bankers' pay that makes the hard-pressed majority feel that finance capitalism is a conspiracy against them? Could it be that, more than three years after the credit crunch of 2008, we feel that the unfair rewards in the sector that caused the crisis continue unabated? Could it be that the rewards now seem even more unfair because we, the taxpayers, put up the security to bail out the banks? Could it be that we feel that politicians, who mouthed slogans about fairness and how they would put an end to excessive pay, have played a cynical game? Could it be that the way banks pay their top people seems designed to confuse us, even when we, the taxpayers, are their shareholders.

All of those. The fuss over the bonus awarded to Stephen Hester, boss of RBS, a nationalised bank, has been running all week on the basis that it was conveniently just under a round £1m. David Cameron, one moment has been saying it was nothing to do with him, the next moment claiming credit for having cut it to 60 per cent of what it could have been. As we report today, Mr Hester's bonus turns out to have been a highly coloured decoy designed to draw outrage away from the main story, which is that the total sum he can hope to collect from his three years in charge of the bank, already heading towards £39m, could reach £50m in a couple of years more if the share price performs well.

That we have been distracted by a tiny detail in a show of monstrous greed is bound to leave us feeling once again bamboozled.

As Paul Vallely argues on the previous page, something has changed in people's perception of fairness, and it is simply impossible for Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, his accessory in inequity, to maintain that we are "all in this together" when such vast riches are lavished on a public employee at the same time as capping the benefits of the poorest. » | Sunday, January 29, 2012

Barack Obama under Fire for Picking a Crony Fundraiser as His Ambassador to Britain
THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama has been embroiled in a cronyism row after reports that he intends to make Louis Susman, one of his biggest fundraisers, the new US ambassador in London.

Photo of President Barack Hussein Obama courtesy of The Telegraph
The selection of Mr Susman, a lawyer and banker from the president's hometown of Chicago, rather than an experienced diplomat, raises new questions about Mr Obama's commitment to the special relationship with Britain.

American commentators denounced the selection of a rich friend to the plumb post, regarded as one of the most prestigious in the president's gift, as worthy of a "banana republic".

They said it was proof that Mr Obama has turned his back on his campaign pledge to end politics as usual.

A source with knowledge of the negotiations told The Washington Post that the appointment is "likely to happen" but is "not final".

A British diplomat told The Sunday Telegraph they [are] aware of the reports and are watching the situation but stressed they remain neutral about the appointment.

Others are not so sanguine. Critics said that it would have been more appropriate to dispatch a high profile diplomat at a time when there are fears in British government that Mr Obama is not as attached to the special relationship as his predecessors.

And they pointed out that there is little difference between handing a major diplomatic post to a fundraiser and the "pay to play" scandal in which disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich apparently auctioned off Mr Obama's senate seat to the highest bidder.

Mr Susman's reputation for hoovering large amounts of cash from deep pockets saw him nicknamed "the vacuum cleaner" when he raised more than $240million for John Kerry's White House bid in 2004. >>> By Tim Shipman in Washington | Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
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More Cronyism? Blair Could Be A Replacement for Wolfowitz!

Photo courtesy of Google Images

BBC: The US has said it will move "swiftly" to find a replacement for Paul Wolfowitz, who says he plans to quit as head of the World Bank on 30 June.

Mr Wolfowitz will step down after he was caught up in a bitter row surrounding the promotion and salary of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza.

The World Bank said that Mr Wolfowitz had acted in good faith, but admitted that a "number of mistakes" were made.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been mentioned as a possible replacement. US to replace Wolfowitz ‘swiftly’ (more)

Mark Alexander

Endemic Corruption at the Top in Business and Politics, and the Unfairness of the System
Never in the history of the world has so much been earned by so few; and never in the history of the world has there been so much corruption.

Nowadays, we hear about corruption at the top all the time; indeed, almost on a daily basis, we hear some new titbit about the goings on of this CEO or that, or this politician or that. Political appointments are handed out based on nepotism and cronyism. Fat salaries are paid to people who have little experience, and sometimes even little understanding, of the positions to which they have been appointed.

We hear about this sort of thing all the time: one day it’s the slush fund that BAE is alleged to have set up, the next, it’s the enormous salary raise awarded to one’s fancy woman, yet another, we hear about the extraordinarily extravagant lifestyle of the gay head of Head of British Petroleum (BP), Lord John Browne, the socialist peer, who, it has been alleged, ran that oil company as though it had been his private enterprise, and who financed an extravagant gay lifestyle beyond any normal person’s wildest dreams: private jets to take the gay couple to the place or country of their whim and choosing; three-thousand-pound bottles of claret for lunches; trips to the Salzburg festivals; and so on and so forth. All, of course, on company expenses. Lord John Browne took the term ’gay lifestyle’ and gave it its full meaning! Pity he didn’t think of giving the term its full meaning out of his own pocket. Indeed, so gay was his lifestyle that his gay French-Canadian lover, Jeff Chevalier, couldn’t keep up with Lord Browne and is said to have had to go into therapy!

The evidence coming to light about the goings on at the World Bank apropos of the shenanigans of Paul Wolfowitz paints a depressing picture of corruption at the very top, in places one would hope would be corruption-free. Fat salary increases to one’s bed partner should surely be left to one's colleagues to decide; further, where such vested interests lie, they should be handed out by those other people on the basis of merit, and merit alone.

Then we have all those millions which are said to have been laundered in Switzerland to pay members of the royal family of Saudi Arabia in return for contracts and extensions of contracts pertaining to the Al-Yamamah contract which Mrs Thatcher initiated many years ago. It was a very large contract even then; now it is colossal. Funny that the name of the contract - Al-Yamamah- has such a whiter than white name; for in Arabic, the name means ‘the dove’. Doves, as we all know, have such a pure, often white, connotation. There seems to be little white and pure about the goings on behind the scenes between BAE and the Saudi government. Anyone would think that those already fabulously wealthy Saudi princes needed even more money!

The funny thing is that there are hundreds and hundreds (maybe even thousands and thousands) of ex-employees of BAE who have been treated shabbily. BAE is famous for its bad treatment of any employee who happens to fall foul of their autocratic management style. How many innocent ex-employees of BAE have had their careers washed up because of BAE, I wonder? How many lives has BAE destroyed? How many sacrificial lambs have there been since the inception of this so-called Al-Yamamah contract? One can only hazard a guess.

Then we have the Bush-Saudi connection. The relationship between these two parties seems most unhealthy to me and to many I know. Bush keeps harping on about terrorism and the need to win the war against it. Have you noticed, though, that he avoids calling that same terrorism by its proper name: Islamic terrorism? One can only wonder why.

The sad thing about the ‘war on terror’ is that Bush is all for beating it on the one hand, but on the other is allowing the Saudis to pump untold millions, nay billions, into the US to finance the propagation of Wahhabi Islam, known to be the most pernicious brand of Islam around. On this score, Bush speaks with bifurcated tongue. So Islam-friendly have his policies been over the time he has been in office that Islam has grown in the States like never before. Doesn’t the president realise that Islam is out to destroy the US constitution? Does he not realise that Islam and democracy are totally and utterly incompatible? Does he not realise that Islam is as much a political system as it is a religious one? Can Mr Bush really be that naïve? Or is there something else going on behind the scenes which we, the ordinary people, just don’t get to hear about?

Then we have the vast inequalities of wealth created here in the United Kingdom by no less than a so-called socialist government under Tony Blair’s watch. It has recently been reported that the top echelons of society have seen their riches increase threefold in the past decade! And they call that socialism! That’s ‘Champagne socialism’ if ever I saw it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am no friend of socialism. Socialism is one of the worst forms of government ever dreamed up by any political thinkers. But nor am I in favour of a form of unbridled capitalism which treats people unfairly. It cannot be right for foreigners to be allowed to come to this country and not be taxed on their earnings from abroad, when ordinary people, you the voters, have to be taxed on any small amount of money you might be able to earn from that self-same source.

In London, there are many who have to slave away for a full week for as little as £400, and often less, whereas there are the fat cats who earn upwards of £46,000 in that very same week!

If the corruption I have referred to is allowed to continue, then we should not be surprised if one of these days the people will turn on the people who govern them. Nor should we be surprised if the pendulum will swing in the favour of socialism in the years to come. Even the very best of parties come to an end, sometime. Our politicians should be aware that people’s tolerance is not infinite. It used to be said that poverty was the breeding ground of communism. In those days, they were speaking of absolute poverty, of course. But I should like to add that relative poverty could also one day become the breeding ground of communism. We should all be aware that this is a distinct possibility. Fairness still counts for something. No sensible person wants to live in a political system that treats the rich differently from the poor. Any country that legislates so much in favour of the rich at the expense of the poor is heading for political turmoil. Those odious systems of government – socialism and communism – are not dead; they are simply lying dormant. And in some countries, most notably in Venezuela, we can see extreme socialism beginning to raise its ugly head even as I write this.

Capitalism is by far the best political system around; though it is far from perfect. The greatest weakness in capitalism is that it plays to man’s greedy nature. In years gone by, this wasn’t such a problem, since in years gone by, the influence of the Church and Christianity were far greater: they acted as a counterbalance to man’s greed, and checked people’s lack of principle, thereby keeping corruption, nepotism, and cronyism in check. Alas, in today’s increasingly secular world, there are few such checks and balances. The Western capitalist world has become a ‘free for all’: you take what you can, when you can.

Corruption, nepotism, cronyism, unbridled greed – these are the sad realities of life in the twenty-first century.

©Mark Alexander

Wolfowitz: The more you dig, the dirtier it gets
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The cronyism that may cost him his World Bank job is also what caused the Iraq debacle.

The executive board of the World Bank mulled a possible vote of no confidence in the leadership of its president, Paul Wolfowitz, this weekend. How did the renowned neoconservative and former deputy secretary of defense, a primary architect of the Iraq war, come to these straits? Is he, as he claims, the victim of a smear campaign by those who dislike his politics? Or do the charges of favoritism and nepotism reflect genuine character flaws?

The small morality play unfolding at the World Bank tells us something significant about how the United States became bogged down in the Iraq quagmire when Wolfowitz was highly influential at the Department of Defense. The simple fact is that Wolfowitz has throughout his entire career demonstrated a penchant for cronyism and for smearing and marginalizing perceived rivals as tactics for getting his way. He has been arrogant and highhanded in dismissing the views of wiser and more informed experts, exhibiting a narcissism that is also apparent in his personal life. Indeed, these tactics are typical of what might be called the "neoconservative style." Paul Wolfowitz’s Fatal Weakness (more) By Juan Cole

Mark Alexander