The Guardian has the story World’s witnessing a new Gilded Age as billionaires’ wealth swells to $6tn.

Josef Stadler, the lead author of the report and UBS’s head of global ultra high net worth, said his billionaire clients were concerned that growing inequality between rich and poor could lead to a “strike back”.

“We’re at an inflection point,” Stadler said. “Wealth concentration is as high as in 1905, this is something billionaires are concerned about. The problem is the power of interest on interest – that makes big money bigger and, the question is to what extent is that sustainable and at what point will society intervene and strike back?”

There worry about the strike back is well founded, I hope. Excuses like the following won’t cut it.

He added that 98% of billionaires’ wealth found its way back into wider society and said the world’s super-rich employed 27.7 million people – not far behind the number of people in the UK workforce.

First one has to ask if those 27.7 million employed people are getting a living wage out of their employment.

Second, we have to think about the following information from the article:

Billionaires’ fortunes increased by 17% on average last year due to the strong performance of their companies and investments, particularly in technology and commodities. The billionaires’ average return was double that achieved by the world’s stock markets and far more than the average interest rates of just 0.35% offered by UK instant-access high street bank accounts.

To me, this out performing the stock market tells me that the billionaires are using their wealth as a catalyst to taking an even greater share of the wealth than they already have. If their average take is more than double the rest of the stock market, that means that there is a flood of money flowing from the rest of the markets into the hands of the billionaires. What are they going to do when they have it all?

The Real News Network has an excellent segment Trump’s Opioid Response Ignores Real Solutions.

President Trump has declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, but his ‘Just Say No’-like approach ignores the roots of addiction and proven ways to address it, says best-selling author Johann Hari.

This talks about some solutions that have a history or working. It is nothing like what I have been touting lately about jailing the pushers in the executive suites of the big pharmaceutical companies. In fact the interviewee mentions why my idea is not the solution.

People’s World has the article AFL-CIO calls for a break with “lesser of two evils” politics.

“For decades the political system has failed working people,” Weingarten said. “Acting on behalf of corporations and the rich and powerful, the political system has been taking away, one after another, the pillars that support working people’s right to good jobs and secure benefits.”

I am glad to see that the labor unions are waking up to the fact that something has to change in the way we do politics if workers are ever to get a fair chance again.

The article has some discussion about the idea of a Labor Party, and some of the problems of getting such a party established.

YouTube has the Jimmy Dore video Bombshell: 2016 Stolen- But NOT By Russia!

I first got pointed to this video from what seems to me to be an organized attack against Greg Palast and Jimmy Dore. What fools the attackers are. This video will be long remembered and appreciated long after the attackers are exposed.

On this issue, I think Palast is spot on, and Jimmy Dore knows an important story when he hears it. The oligarchs must really be so worried about Palast, that they would pay for trolls to attack him. I think this just makes the case he presents here all the stronger.

The Washington Post has the article and the video ‘I will not be complicit.’ Jeff Flake’s retirement speech, annotated

When we remain silent and fail to act when we know that that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do – because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseum – when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of the institutions of our liberty, then we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.

An honest address by a Republican.

The Real News Network has the interview Trump’s Would-Be Drug Czar Helped the Drug Profiteers.

Rep. Tom Marino has withdrawn his nomination as President Trump’s new drug czar after revelations he pushed through a measure that worsened the U.S. opioid epidemic. White-collar criminologist Bill Black says Marino and other lawmakers have been bought off by pharmaceutical companies he says have acted as “illicit, criminal, drug dealers”

This is essentially the video version of my previous post It is Impossible to Compete with Unintentional Self-Parody: Trump and Opioids.

This has implications from Obama and his Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and on through the two chambers of Congress. These people are as corrupt as the Mexican politicians who are bought off by their drug dealers.

New Economic Perspectives has the article It is Impossible to Compete with Unintentional Self-Parody: Trump and Opioids.

The diversion and dealing of prescription opioids is a major part of the problem. In the U.S., three big pharma companies control the distribution of opioids. They have readily available data that allows them to identify quickly, cheaply, and reliably the primary sources of diversion and dealing because these drug stores and pain clinics purchase opioids in amounts that are nonsensical given the size of the local population and stores making the purchases. The first scandal, therefore, is that the big three distributors continue to sell to firms that they know are diverting and dealing opioids in ways that are illegal and murderous. We should not need laws or rules to prevent the distributors from profiting from sales to obvious diverters and dealers. The people who run big pharma are experts in what opioids do to humans. All of big pharma firms have senior officers who are doctors and chemists. They know the human misery and murder their sales to the diverters are certain to produce in staggering numbers. When elite doctors and chemists are willing to profit by selling to those they know to be dealers and diverters who will maim and murder their countrymen and women you know the rot lies deep in our elites.

How could we have ignored for so long the cause of the problem? The aftermath of the Savings and Loan crisis was the last time that these elite white collar criminals were held accountable for the damage they did. The aftermath of the collapse of the real-estate bubble may have been one of the seminal cases of rewarding the criminal predators for the damage they caused. The opioid crisis is just the latest example of the Republican’s (and Democrat’s) policy of being soft on crime.

Politico has the article The Boomtown That Shouldn’t Exist.

Cape Coral, Florida, was built on total lies. One big storm could wipe it off the map. Oh, and it’s also the fastest-growing city in the United States.

A few years ago we actually made an offer on a house in Cape Coral. Fortunately Sharon confessed to me that there was no way she could contemplate living in Cape Coral. We withdrew the offer before the owners could even think about it. Just proves that with all my sales resistance, I am still a sucker for a good story. It’s not that we were pulled in by a sales story, though. We had visited the area many years ago, and finally decided we might want to live there. I obviously didn’t do enough fact based research, but luckily Sharon’s intuition kept us from making a huge mistake.

Jimmy Dore has the episode Clinton Advisor Gives Tongue Bath To Wall Street-NYTimes Prints It.

If you are going to insist on reading the New York Times, you really need to let Jimmy Dore read it to you. When we talk about fake news, this op ed piece in the NYT is what we mean. Unfortunately, Trump has co-opted the fake news term.

Here is a link to The New York Time article Why Democrats Need Wall Street.

Now here is the bio of Douglas Schoen, the author of the piece. Would this have changed your opinion of his article had you known who he is? I’ve just given one excerpt from the bio below.

His political clients include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Indiana Governor Evan Bayh, and his corporate clients include AOL Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and AT&T. Internationally, he has worked for the heads of states of over 15 countries, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and three Israeli Prime Ministers.
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He is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and various other newspaper and online publications. He is also a Fox News Contributor, making appearances on various news programs several times a week.

Common Dreams has the article Sent to Destroy Sanders’ Case for Democratic Socialism, Danish Right-Winger Bolsters It.

Fellow at Peterson Institute, a regressive-minded think tank, concedes the many benefits of a nation that provides universal access to pre-school, healthcare, and college

Here is one of the featured videos in the article. Despite what it says in the headline, this is only about a 20 minute segment of the debate.

Ted Cruz admits that paying lower taxes means much higher out of pocket expenses. Bernie asked if you’d rather pay a net $12,000 extra to lower your taxes. The brilliant mathematician that Ted Cruz is, he thinks you would rather pay $20,000 to lower your taxes by $8,000.

He also uses Cuba as an example of the faults of socialism. He didn’t ask the right question about people fleeing Cuba to get to the USA. He should have asked if it is preferable to live in a powerful country that makes the rules, or would you like to live in a small island country that has been under economic attack for over 50 years by its big domineering neighbor?

Ted Cruz extolled the history of his father who came from Cuba with only a few hundred dollars and became wealthy in the USA.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say.

Cruz’s father Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz is Cuban American, born in Cuba and growing up middle class there. He left Cuba in 1957 to attend the University of Texas at Austin and obtained political asylum in the U.S. after his four-year student visa expired, as the Cuban Revolution had changed the government. He earned Canadian citizenship in 1973. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2005. Eleanor and Rafael Cruz divorced in 1997