The Post-Partisan Emporium

  The American Tax Racket Involuntary extortion on a grand scale DONALD JEFFRIES This country fought a war for independence over taxation without representation. The Founders really, really didn’t like taxes. They dressed up as Indians at the Boston Tea Party. Over a pretty small tax on tea. They became incensed over a similarly modest tax on stamps. Our forebears called these things the Intolerable Acts. Since the early 1770s, our increasingly tyrannical government has implemented a lot of Intolerable Acts. Many people don’t realize that, until 1913, there was no income tax in the United States. You may well ask, how did they fund the government for well over a century without one? We had a growing military force, which Thomas Jefferson and the other wisest Founders would have opposed, a post office, roads and bridges. The odious withholding tax, which the beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt assured us would be but a temporary measure, dates from the 1930s. But as with so many unconstitutio

  Billionaire Larry Fink of BlackRock, Which Grabbed Fed Bailouts in 2020-2021, Lectures Struggling Seniors on Making More Sacrifices By  Pam Martens and  Russ Martens : March 27, 2024 ~ Laurence (Larry) Fink, Chairman and CEO, BlackRock Yesterday, billionaire Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of the giant investment manager BlackRock, released his  annual letter to shareholders . In it, Fink revives the same ole trope that billionaires Kenneth Langone and Stanley Druckenmiller were taking on a road show in 2013. Back then the billionaire propaganda was called: “ General Theft: How Entitlement Spending is Stealing Opportunity from America’s Youth .” Every time there is talk of raising taxes on the super-rich, some of whom pay less in taxes than plumbers and teachers through a  tricked-up tax dodge known as “carried interest ,” the billionaires launch a concerted effort to scapegoat struggling seniors living on an average monthly Social Security retirement benefit of $1772.51. The inability

  Almost 10,000 U.S. Banks Have Disappeared Since 1985, Leaving 4 Mega Banks Controlling 39 Percent of Bank Assets By  Pam Martens and  Russ Martens According to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) data, there were 14,417 federally-insured banking institutions in the U.S. in 1985. As of December 31, 2023, the  FDIC reports there are only 4,587 remaining . The vast majority of the 9,830 banks that have disappeared since 1985 did not fail – they were merged with other banks. Today, just four banks control $9.3  trillion  in consolidated bank assets or 39 percent of all bank assets. Those four banks are JPMorgan Chase with $3.395 trillion in consolidated assets; Bank of America with $2.540 trillion; Wells Fargo with $1.7 trillion; and Citigroup’s Citibank with $1.685 trillion. (All asset figures are as of December 31, 2023 and come from  the Federal Reserve’s statistical release of the largest banks .) The political clout of these mega banks is such that one of them, JPMorgan Cha

  Naming Names: Professor Exposes the Banking Cartel that Has Hijacked U.S. Democracy By  Pam Martens and  Russ Martens Gerald Epstein is Professor of Economics and a Founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A book he has spent the past decade researching and writing comes out today from the University of California Press:  Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us . Anticipation of this book’s release has caused some sweaty brows in the halls of Congress, on Wall Street, at Big Law, and in the economics community. That’s because Epstein is naming names – the names of the people who have sold out American democracy and the public interest by becoming sycophants for, or actual members of, the Bankers’ Club. The Chairman of the Bankers’ Club is the Federal Reserve, writes Epstein. That’s because the Fed has strongarmed its way to becoming both the supervisor of the Wall Street mega banks while also be