The unprecedented level of economic inequality in America is undeniable. In an extended essay, Bill Moyers shares examples of the striking extremes of wealth and poverty across the country, including a video report on California’s Silicon Valley. There, Facebook, Google, and Apple are minting millionaires, while the area’s homeless -- who’ve grown 20 percent in the last two years -- are living in tent cities at their virtual doorsteps.

“A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government,” says Bill, “while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has turned us into the United States of Inequality.”

Full transcript below the fold.

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Robert Reich, former U.S. labor secretary and professor at U.C. Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, tells Current TV’s John Fugelsang why Democrats and Republicans need to cooperate in order to avert the looming sequester.

“What Democrats ought to be proposing, and even Republicans ought to be proposing, is to say, ‘Let’s just repeal the sequester,’” Reich says. “The problem right now is not the budget deficit — the budget deficit is actually shrinking — the problem right now is jobs. The problem right now is the economy and economic growth. Wages. That’s what we ought to get back to – the fundamentals.”

“Trickle-down economics is just a bald-faced lie,” Reich adds. “It means that you’re protecting the rich, protecting the powerful. It’s what Republicans have been doing for years, and you know, you tell a lie over and over and over again … and eventually people start to believe it.”

Senator Bernie Sanders:

When the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street drove this country into the deepest recession since the 1930s, the largest financial institutions in the United States took every advantage of being American. They just loved their country - and the willingness of the American people to provide them with the largest bailout in world history. In 2008, Congress approved a $700 billion gift to Wall Street. Another $16 trillion in virtually zero interest loans and other financial assistance came from the Federal Reserve. America. What a great country.

But just two years later, as soon as these giant financial institutions started making record-breaking profits again, they suddenly lost their love for their native country. At a time when the nation was suffering from a huge deficit, largely created by the recession that Wall Street caused, the major financial institutions did everything they could to avoid paying American taxes by establishing shell corporations in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.

In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands (which has a corporate tax rate of 0.0 percent) to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did Bank of America pay nothing in federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. They are not alone. In 2010, JP Morgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying some $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. That same year Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes. Citigroup has paid no federal income taxes for the last four years after receiving a total of $2.5 trillion in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

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Apparently, Wal-mart CEO Mike Duke isn't getting the message from all those employee protests over pay and benefits.

During an event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, Bloomberg LP President Dan Doctoroff asked Duke about Wal-Mart employee wages, and noted that "New York is claiming that wages, you know, aren't adequate for that middle-class or emerging middle-class."

Duke claims that Wal-Mart's over 2 million employees earn "competitive wages."

"Retailing is the most competitive industry out there, and we do pay competitive wages," Duke said. "Last year we promoted 165,000 people from entry-level to managerial positions."

Duke added that Walmart provides health insurance to 1 million people in the United States.

But he said he's used to all the criticism.

"With more success comes more responsibility and expectations from the public," Duke said. "So I'm thrilled to be in a position where people expect more of me."

Duke has been CEO since February 2009. According to Forbes, his compensation was $18.7 million last year.

If Duke is comparing Wal-Mart's wages to say Target, sure, maybe they're competitive. And as for the health insurance, I wonder if that is being "provided" to the less than 50% of Wal-Mart employees or simply "offered"? As many employees can't afford their share of the expense for the plans on their low wages

Note, too, that Duke didn't really respond to Doctoroff's question of "adequate" wages. How could Duke, who received a base salary of about $1.2 million and a performance-based bonus of nearly $3.9 million in 2010, possibly truthfully say those employee wages were adequate?

As CEO Duke spoke, Wal-Mart employees stood outside protesting their treatment at work.

Some of the employees of a Phoenix, Arizona Wal-Mart who protested on Black Friday and put together this great video to explain why they walked out, and what they hope to achieve.

According to the Organization United for Respect at Walmart, 1,000 protests occurred at Wal-Mart stores across 46 states, with hundreds of workers walking off the job in an unprecedented decentralized, open-source strike at the retail giant. Local Occupy groups supported actions in dozens of cities. OWS joined with 99 Pickets, ALIGN, the Retail Action Project, and others to show solidarity to Wal-mart workers in Secaucus, New Jersey. Despite attempts by Wal-Mart's propaganda department to downplay the events, the latest massive wave of strikes and solidarity actions at Wal-Mart forced even the corporate media to pay attention, and put the 1% on notice: When we work together, another world is possible. We do not have to accept poverty, low wages, or unfair working conditions with no benefits while six members of the Walton family are worth more than the bottom 42% of American families combined.

However, the struggle is far from over! Today's inspiring actions point the way forward. Please continue to support OUR Wal-Mart and all low-wage workers in the struggle for economic justice and show support for the courageous workers and unemployed people on the frontlines against income inequality.

They say roll back, we say fight back!

[Via OccupyWallSt.]

For the first time in 50 years of Wal-Mart’s smiley-faced existence, workers have been walking out and attempting to disrupt Wal-Mart’s warp-speed supply chain. Why? Because they want things like ceiling fans when it’s 120 degrees outside. But some billionaires can be SO touchy!

Since none of the workers are unionized, these people are especially brave. And now they’re talking about even bigger action on Black Friday.

[Via Upworthy]

Video via CBS Channel 13.

UPDATE: Ho no! Poor a glass of milk for the dessert foods that are no more, because it appears that Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and the rest of Hostess Brands Inc.’s cupboard full of snack foods could really be leaving supermarket shelves for good. Mediation efforts between the company and the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco, and Grain Millers Union—which were supposed to save the company—failed Tuesday, meaning Hostess will return to bankruptcy court Wednesday to make its case of liquidating and selling off its assets. Roughly 18,000 workers at the Texas-based company will lose their jobs.

Twinkies may yet have an infinite shelf life. Hostess Brands Inc. and one of its largest unions have agreed to go into mediation, so the company will stay in business for the time being. Hostess filed for bankruptcy last Friday, claiming a union strike ruined its operations and announcing plans to lay off all 18,500 of its employees. But a bankruptcy judge on the case said the dueling parties have to go through mediation before Hostess Inc. can sell off its assets. It won’t be a cake walk, but at least you can cancel your $1,000 Ho Ho bid on eBay.

NYT:

Judge Robert D. Drain of the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York pushed hard for the two sides to try one last round of talks. The judge expressed worry that neither side had exhausted all efforts to avoid liquidation. He especially urged the bakery union to seek mediation, suggesting that it might face significant legal claims if Hostess is forced to liquidate.

“I’m giving the union, as well as the debtor and their lenders, a chance to work out their issues in private,” Judge Drain said. “If they don’t take it, it’s not that the issues won’t be worked out. They will, but it will be done in public and in an expensive way.”

While publicly Hostess blames the union for their financial woes, it seems the corporate executives were engaged in some "fuzzy math" behind the scenes.

CNN:

Even as it played the numbers game, Hostess had to face chaos in the corner office at the worst possible time. Driscoll, the CEO, departed suddenly and without explanation in March. It may have been that the Teamsters no longer felt it could trust him. In early February, Hostess had asked the bankruptcy judge to approve a sweet new employment deal for Driscoll. Its terms guaranteed him a base annual salary of $1.5 million, plus cash incentives and “long-term incentive” compensation of up to $2 million. If Hostess liquidated or Driscoll were fired without cause, he’d still get severance pay of $1.95 million as long as he honored a noncompete agreement.

When the Teamsters saw the court motion, Ken Hall, the union’s secretary-treasurer and No. 2 man, was irate. So much, he thought, for what he described as Driscoll’s “happy talk” about “shared sacrifice.”
...

Some unsecured creditors had informed the court that last summer — as the company was crumbling — four top Hostess executives received raises of up to 80%. (Driscoll had also received a pay raise back then.) The Teamsters saw this as more management shenanigans. “Looting” is how Hall described it in TV interviews.

In the end, Hostess could still go through bankruptcy, and shutter all the plants. However, the only real question at this point is will they actually get away with blaming the employees for their financial shenanigans while the executives sail away in their golden parachutes?

But whatever happens, just remember that this is all the fault of the E-vil unions and their minions, got it?

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Thanks to Heather for the video embed.

In response to a question about what the candidates would do to address gender inequality in the workplace, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that when he was governor and looking to fill his cabinet, women's groups brought him "whole binders full women."

Here's an excerpt of Mitt Romney's remarks:

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?

ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"

And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.

I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.

I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.

Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort.

Guess what? Romney's answer isn't true, he never asked for such a study.

From David Bernstein:

What actually happened was that in 2002 -- prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration -- a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.

They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
...

First of all, according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, as I have reported before, those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn't care about -- and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about -- budget, business development, etc. -- went to women.

Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)

Romney's odd phrase "binders full of women" really stuck with viewers of the debate. Twitter users immediately caught onto the comment, with "binders" and "binders full of women" being mentioned at one point in the evening more than 40,000 times in one minute, according to data from Topsy, a social web analytics tool.

The comment also spawned a "Binders Full Of Women" Tumblr account, a "Binders Full Of Women" Facebook page that already has 179,000 likes, and a new Twitter account, @BindersofWomen has over 1,300 followers.

Via Occupy Wall Street, Real Democracy Now! Paris:

To the financial institutions of the world, we have only one thing to say: we owe you NOTHING!

To our friends, families, our communities, to humanity and to the natural world that makes our lives possible, we owe you everything.

To the people of the world, we say: join the resistance, you have nothing to lose but your debts.

On O13, in the larger context of the worlwide "globalnoise" mobilisation, and within the Global Week of Action against Debt, we will mobilise against debt in several cities of the world: Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico, Paris, New York, Rome…

The governments' response to the financial and economic crisis is the same everywhere: cuts in expenditure and austerity measures under the pretext of reducing deficits and the repayment of a public debt which is the direct outcome of decades of neoliberal policies. The same neoliberal policies that have plundered economic and natural resources and exploited human lifes in Latin America, Asia and Africa for decades, are now also being imposed on the people of Europe and North America.

Governments in the service of finance are using this pretext to further reduce social spending, lower wages and pensions, privatize public utility and goods, dismantle social benefits and deregulate labour laws, and increase taxes on the majority, while social and tax giveaways are generalized for the big companies and the highest income households, the rich, the 1%.

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