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AP’s Today in History for August 15th
Allies mark VJ-Day as World War II effectively ends; Woodstock begins; France’s Napoleon Bonaparte born; India gains independence; Blast hits Omagh, N. Ireland; ‘The Wizard of Oz’ premieres in Hollywood.
Breakfast Tune Hendrix on Banjo | Banjo Bonanza Episode 13 July 14, 2020
Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below
Since 1978, CEO pay has risen 1,322 percent. Typical worker pay? Just 18 percent
Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
A new analysis released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute finds that CEO pay in the United States rose by a staggering 1,322% between 1978 and 2020—a sharp contrast to the pay increase of the typical worker, which was just 18% during that same period.
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In 2020, a year of pandemic and widespread economic dislocation, the top executives at the largest public firms in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker, with CEO pay measured by salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, and exercised stock options. According to Bloomberg, Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk was the highest-paid corporate executive in the U.S. in 2020.Highlighting the extent to which inequality has soared in recent decades, EPI observes in its report that the CEO-to-worker-pay ratio was 61-to-1 in 1989.
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In its new analysis, EPI points out that the 1,322% CEO pay jump between 1978 and 2020 far outstripped the 817% growth in the S&P stock market during that same period. The dramatic increase in executive pay has also significantly outpaced the 341% earnings growth of the top 0.1% overall since 1978.
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THE MOST HIGH-PROFILE AL QAEDA PLOT FOILED AFTER 9/11 WAS AN FBI SCAM
Alice Speri, The Intercept
THE BIGGEST Al Qaeda plot the FBI claimed to have foiled in the years following the 9/11 attacks involved no weapons, no plot, and no Al Qaeda. Instead, the vague, implausible threat by a group of construction workers in Florida to blow up U.S. buildings, including Chicago’s Sears Tower, was mostly the making of the FBI, whose undercover operatives sought out the men, promised them money, and coached them over months to implicate themselves in a conspiracy to commit violent acts they never actually intended or had the means to carry out.
The “Liberty City Seven” case — known by its connection to the poor, violence-ridden Miami neighborhood where the men involved lived — was the most high-profile FBI investigation of a supposed terrorist cell after the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. It came as the bureau, which had failed to act on intelligence it had received before 9/11, faced enormous pressure to predict and stop the next attack, setting off its transformation, in the words of former Deputy Director John Pistole, “from reactive crime-solving agency to preventative national security agency.”
The ordeal of the seven Black men, most of them Haitian American, who were manipulated by two paid FBI informants into pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda is recounted in a new Frontline documentary, “In the Shadow of 9/11,” by British director Dan Reed.
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- Corporate Liberalism Is No Match for Trumpism
NORMAN SOLOMON
- Ghost Canaries in the Amerikaner Mine
PAUL STREET
Something to think about over coffee prozac
Toddler Cites Freedom Of Choice In Refusal To Use Potty
The Onion
CHESANING, MI—Noting that it was her right as an American citizen to decide when and where she would urinate and defecate, 3-year-old Madison Ackrite told reporters Wednesday that she was simply exercising her constitutionally guaranteed freedom of choice when she refused to use the potty. “My decision to pee-pee and poo-poo in the place of my choosing is a private health decision,” said Ackrite, noting that there was still a lot she didn’t know about the potty, and until she had done enough research to satisfy her concerns, she would continue to relieve herself in her pull-up diapers, as was her right in accordance with the rule of law. “Unlike a lot of the kids in my daycare, I am not a sheep. If you want to use the potty, that is your personal choice, and no one is stopping you. All I ask is that you respect my decision, which is based on my personal belief that I hate going to the potty. I hate it, hate it, hate it!” At press time, Ackrite refused to answer whether or not she had emptied her bowels on the living room floor, arguing that her refusal to divulge such information was protected by the courts.