excerpts from the book

The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America

by David Degraw

AmpedStatus, 2010, paperback

p9
Michael Lind, To Have and to Have Not

The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.

p11
The Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us.

p11
The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and ... have launched a war to eliminate the US middle class.

p12
America is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented number of Americans living in dire straits and over 50 million citizens already living in poverty.

.p12
We have over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50% of US children will use a food stamp to eat at some point in their childhood.

p12
We have over 50 million US citizens without healthcare. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32% increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60% of them, and over 75% of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have healthcare insurance. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, we are forced to pay twice as much as other countries and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world.

p13
Over five million US families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million US families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25% of current mortgages underwater... Every day 10,000 US homes enter foreclosure.

p13
With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world - the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000.

p14
The government unemployment rate is deceptive on several levels. It doesn't count people who are involuntary part-time workers," meaning workers who are working part-time but want to find full-time work. It doesn't count "discouraged workers," meaning long-term unemployed people who lost hope and don't consistently look for work.

p14
When you factor in all uncounted workers - "involuntary part-time" and "discouraged workers" - the unemployment rate rises from 9.7% to over 20%. In total, we now have over 30 million US citizens who are unemployed or underemployed.

p15
A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year (2009), causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke.

p16
The national median wage was $32,390 per year in 2008.

p17
Over 60% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.

p18
Noam Chomsky

The war against working people should be understood to be a real war... Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class... And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don't want anybody else to know about it.

p18
In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made... An in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1.

p19
Since the economic crisis {2007] ... the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high. The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all-time record... 400 people have more wealth than 155 million people combined.

p20
The real size of the [Wall Street] bailout is estimated to be $14 trillion.

p21
We have a record $12.3 trillion in national debt - and we have to pay $500 billion in interest on this debt every year.

p21
69% of the "US" fighting forces deployed throughout the world in our name are in fact private mercenaries, 80% of them are foreign nationals. Private contractors regularly get paid three to five times more than our soldiers.

p21
In 2009, just over $1 trillion tax dollars were spent on the military.

p26
George Orwell

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied } by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

p26
Abraham Lincoln

The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes... As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

p29
The Economic Elite are primarily united by ideology. They're made up of thousands of individuals who subscribe to an ideology of exploitation and the belief that wealth and resources need to be concentrated into the fewest hands possible (theirs), at the expense of the many.

p20
The Economic Elite are made up of about 0.5% of") the US population. At the center of this group is the Business Roundtable, an organization representing Fortune 500 CEOs that is also interlocked with several lead elite organizations.

p29
G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?

The Business Roundtable joined the Business Council at the heart of both the corporate community and the policy-formation network and now has the most powerful role .... The Roundtable's interlocks with other policy groups and with think tanks.

p31
The Business Roundtable is the most powerful activist organization in the United States... Any legislation that affects Roundtable members has almost zero possibility of passing without their support.

p33
The [Business] Roundtable tells politicians what they want done, and the politicians do it... When it comes to getting elected, over 90% of the time the candidate who simply spends more money on their campaign wins the election. The Roundtable and politicians recognize this fact, so the overwhelming majority of current elected officials relied heavily on campaign funding from Roundtable members.

p34
The Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association along with the Federal Reserve ... form the center of the Economic Elite's power structure.

p34
Global Exchange

The World Trade Organization is the most powerful legislative and judicial body in the world. By promoting the 'free trade' agenda of multinational corporations above the interests of local communities, working families, and the environment, the WTO has systematically undermined democracy around the world .... Unlike United Nations treaties, the International Labor Organization conventions, or multilateral environmental agreements, WTO rules can be enforced through sanctions. This gives the WTO more power than any other international body. The WTO's authority even eclipses national governments.

p35
Global Exchange

World Bank and International Monetary Fund

When the Bank and the Fund [World Bank and International Monetary Fund] lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called 'structural adjustment policies.' These policies-or SAPs, as they are sometimes called-require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country's workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education .... And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction.

p35
Private mercenaries now outnumber US soldiers and receive the lion's share of military spending.

p36
The War on Terror's objective is to drain the US population of more resources ... while using our tax money to create a private military that is more powerful than the US military.

p37
The Wall Street bailout ... is strategically designed to eliminate the US middle class. Every time you hear the word "bailout," you should think "coup d'état.

p38
military historian Edward Luttwak in 'Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook'

A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d'etat.

p38
The [Wall Street] bailout was a financial coup, an intelligence operation to seize control of the US economy and tax system. It is similar to what the Economic Elite have done through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in many other countries throughout the world... When financial coups are carried out in other countries, they call it a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The end result is the theft of working class wealth, the privatization of public functions and resources, rising unemployment, the elimination of the middle class and increasing taxation and debt that turns the overwhelming majority of the nation into a peasant class.

p49
Powerful forces always seek to gain control of pre-existing social and political institutions so they can usurp their powers.

p50
[George W] Bush appealed to conservative Republicans and then ran up the deficit to record levels. [Barack] Obama appealed to liberal Democrats, but increased war spending and support for Wall Street billionaires. In both cases, the candidates severely divided the US middle class, but in the policy decisions that mattered most, they both sided with the economic top one percent at the expense of hardworking Americans.

p52
A significant majority of [Barack] Obama's campaign funding came from [Business] Roundtable members... Fox News is owned by Roundtable member Rupert Murdoch, and Fox relies heavily on advertising money from Roundtable members. Rupurt Murdoch even supported Obama over [John] McCain... So here you have an excellent divide-and-conquer psychological operation. Fox News declares Obama the enemy, and Obama declares Fox the enemy, yet the Economic Elite remain in the shadows, behind the scenes, untouched and continuing their plunder.

p53
The most significant bias in the mainstream media is not the liberal or conservative views propagated to divide, distract, confuse and create apathy among the populace; the ultimate bias is in what is missing from the coverage. The investigative reporting on the most powerful forces within our society is left out of the discussion.

p53
The main [media] bias is in favor of the thieves who stole our country and economy, and own the mainstream media companies. The omnipresent mainstream media is the greatest weapon of oppression humanity has ever known.

p54
The mainstream media creates what is known in mass psychology as the "spectrum of thinkable thought." By constantly discussing and debating surface issues, they limit the range of debate. Having the Republican vs. Democrat paradigm leads us to never debating the underlying Economic Elite who control both of the parties, not to mention their ownership of the media platform on which this debate is taking shape. The more important underlying issues are never discussed, and therefore never enter public consciousness.

p54
The censorship that is most prevalent today is the most dangerous form. Not the censorship of explicit words, sex, or violence, but the censorship of any thoughts outside of elite corporate ideology. Any debate that leads to critical thought on prevailing elite economic dominance is not allowed to enter into the mass media or mainstream public consciousness.

p54
The mainstream media creates what is known in mass psychology as the "spectrum of thinkable thought." By constantly discussing and debating surface issues, they limit the range of debate.

p54
Having the Republican vs. Democrat paradigm leads us to never debating the underlying Economic Elite who control both of the parties, not to mention their ownership of the media platform on which this debate is taking shape. The more important underlying issues are never discussed, and therefore never enter public consciousness.

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