The AFL-CIO releases a report that shows that CEO pay increased by 23% last year. Moreover, the top 299 CEOs received $3.4 billion dollars in compensation, enough money to employ 100,000 workers at the respective corporations.
Republicans continue to insulate the CEOs, the wealthy, and corporations from paying higher taxes consummate to the capital they are removing from our economy. Inasmuch as they are aware of the wealth and income disparity, it is their goal to provide further tax breaks. They have proposed budget cuts that almost exclusively burden the middle class and the poor to provide yet more tax breaks for the “have too much already” in our country.
The media is complicit in allowing Republicans to articulate a false narrative almost unchallenged. That the media allow Republicans to claim that Social Security is in trouble, that Medicare Advantage is less expensive than Medicare, that they are saving Medicare even as they decimate it, that they will be moving the country to prosperity even as their cuts materially hurt the middle class is journalistic malpractice.
How can Americans possibly understand the gravity of the pilfering of the middle class by the corporations, CEOs, and plutocrats if the media, whose responsibility is to maintain us informed in an unbiased form, fails to do its duty? Our media has become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the wealthy, the plutocrats, and the oligarchs.
The mainstream media for all practical purpose is now irrelevant except as a propaganda engine for corporate America. The vacuum created has opened the door for alternate sources of information. Mainly, blogs and online news sources provide the only source for learning. Unfortunately with many corporate influenced trolls roaming the internet, validating and cross sourcing information is essential.
As Americans are having to work more even as they earn less, time is a premium. However, the only way the middle class will be informed is to be more diligent in its information consumption. Absent taking the responsibility to independently educate oneself, our democracy is in peril as it degrades to a true plutocracy.
My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
Book’s Webpage: http://bit.ly/aB9Zkz – Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies