It's a FREE LUNCH

[seemslikeadream]

Listen after 4:00pm today


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17808622





Fresh Air from WHYY, January 3, 2008 · Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston explores in his new book how in recent years, government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.

Cay Johnston covers tax policy for The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on that beat. His previous book, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich — and Cheat Everybody Else, was a best seller.

The new book, which expands the inquiry beyond tax policy into a whole range of regulatory machinery, is titled Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).

[bobthedrummer]

1. I'd like some chicken stir fry (with sugar snap peas) and a glass of iced tea

:9

[seemslikeadream]

5. For you

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/12/david-cay-johns.html


David Cay Johnston's next book, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and StickYou with the Bill), will be released on December 27, 2007. Here is the publisher's description:

How does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? Free Lunch provides answers to this great economic mystery of our time, revealing how today’s government policies and spending reach deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of the wealthy few.

Johnston cuts through the official version of events and shows how, under the guise of deregulation, a whole new set of regulations quietly went into effect—regulations that thwart competition, depress wages, and reward misconduct. From how George W. Bush got rich off a tax increase to a $100 million taxpayer gift to Warren Buffett, Johnston puts a face on all of the dirty little tricks that business and government pull. A lot of people appear to be getting free lunches—but of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and someone (you, the taxpayer) is picking up the bill.

Johnston’s many revelations include:

How we ended up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world
How homeowners’ title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly
How our government gives hidden subsidies for posh golf courses
How Paris Hilton’s grandfather schemed to retake the family fortune from a charity for poor children
How the Yankees and Mets owners will collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds
In these instances and many more, Free Lunch shows how the lobbyists and lawyers representing the most powerful 0.1% of Americans manipulated our government at the expense of the other 99.9%. With his extraordinary reporting, vivid stories, and sharp analysis, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic lives—and shows us how we can finally make things better.

[mod mom]

2. On at 3pm here. Did you hear Naomi Klein on Randi yesterday? (1st hour)

I only got to hear the first 25 minutes but it was great!

I look forward to Terry Gross today!

[seemslikeadream]

7. Yes and this interview was GREAT

They talked about georgie's little 15 milllion profit from the baseball thing, no taxes btw



http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber10172007.html



What Do Brazil, Mexico and the US Have in Common?
The New Billionaire-Criminal Class
By RUSSELL MOKHIBER

What do Brazil, Mexico, Russia and the USA have in common?

A rapidly expanding billionaire class.

Rampant poverty.

And a distressed middle class.

That's the take of Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston in a soon to be released book--Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill) (Portfolio, December 2007).

In it, Johnston seeks to afflict the comfortable top one tenth of one percent of Americans--the 300,000 men, women and children who last year made more money than the bottom 150 million Americans.

Yes, we all have the right to vote and change this unbalanced state of affairs.

But political power in the United States is exercised by this narrow, rich segment of the population.

Much of the wealth transfer upstairs has come at the hands of corporate welfare artists who have shifted billions from the middle class to the billionaire class.

Some politician could take the central political issue of Free Lunch--wealth inequality--and run on it to the White House in 2008.

But the current crop of corporate candidates will likely ignore it so as to not offend the funding class.

While Johnston focuses on the perfectly legal schemes that bloat the richest of the richest at the expense of the rest of us, much of the thievery he documents is the result of pure un-prosecuted or under-prosecuted corporate criminality.

[mod mom]

13. Inequality of wealth:

New data from the Internal Revenue Service show that income inequality continues to widen. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earn more than 21 percent of all income. That's a postwar record. The bottom 50 percent of all Americans, when all their wages are combined, earn just 12.8 percent of the nation's income.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/25/taxes/

:mad:

I look forward to listening to it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Historically this has been the case

remember before the French Revolution how the rich and the gentry weren't paying taxes, pushing expenses like that on the poorest people? The thing is that the rich are coming from a position of lack, believe it or not. They fear that they will lose what they have, and so want more and more and more.

[spinbaby]

8. You have a point there

If there is no social safety net, no amount of money is enough to make you feel secure.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. It's more than that

it's a mindset that focuses on lack and scarcity. I've heard it said many times that there are enough resources on earth to feed everyone--the problem is in distribution. And if someone is of a mindset that there might not be enough for tomorrow, he'll take his share and more just to be on the safe side.

[Wiley50]

4. Is that CST, SLad?

BTW, thanks for all you do

[seemslikeadream]

6. Thinking of you Wiley50

We're having stir fry for lunch would you like some?

[Wiley50]

12. Still breakfasting on cheese danish here. But thanks n/t

[helderheid]

9. Good cause I'm starving

[seemslikeadream]

10. I hope you like stir fry?

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/01/free-markets-fo.html


Bush isn't alone in finding ways to enrich himself in a government protected environment. This interview of New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston appearing in the libertarian online magazine reasononline details how common this is:

The Cost of a Free Lunch, by Brian Doherty, Reason: ...David Cay Johnston<'s> .... latest book, just out this week, is called Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (and Stick you With the Bill). It’s valuable ... because of its detailed stories of government attempts to manipulate or adjust the market, leading—predictably, a libertarian might say—to benefits for the well-off and well-connected rather than the disadvantaged or the masses.

Free Lunch is full of sharp, heavily reported takedowns on eminent domain, expensive special favors for sports teams, legislative deals that put taxpayers on the hook for private train company’s crimes and errors, giveaways from small towns to attract big-box stores, and how heavily government-managed markets in areas such as power and health care can enrich some at everyone’s expense. ...

reason: What is the theme of Free Lunch, and what made you write it?

David Cay Johnston: Ronald Reagan famously asked Americans if we were better off than we were four year ago; Americans said “no” and elected him. This empowered a great change, supposedly, in government. It was supposed to lead to less government, more market solutions, and lower taxes.

What I’m asking in Free Lunch is: Are you better off than you were a generation ago when Reagan was elected? Government is just as big, there are vastly more regulations, and as I show, we have many new rules and regulations that handcuff the invisible hand of the market and instead, in subtle, sometimes hidden, ways, extract money from the pockets of the many and funnel it to the politically connected few. ... I would think libertarians would like everything in the book, except for the parts about health care . ...

[lame54]

14. Welfare Kings

[SmokingJacket]

15. I heard him on Terri Gross earlier today. WOW!!

I urge everyone to listen. He has a lot to say -- you might know the gist of his argument, but his specifics will shock you.

I thought I was unshockable at this point... but did you know that some big box stores get to KEEP the sales tax they collect? Yep. You pay the tax, thinking it will go to build sidewalks in your town, but actually it's just going to buy another yacht for a Walton.

[nashville_brook]

16. listening now on WETS-FM -- wow!