Fight the War on greed = Robert Greenwald

TAKE ACTION: Join Robert Greenwald & Brave New Films In Fighting the
War On Greed

By David Sirota, 12/3/07
...
I wanted to
leave folks with an important note telling everyone to go check out
the new campaign of Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films. To join
Robert's campaign, go to:

http://www.warongreed.org {http://www.warongreed.org}

Robert has been one of the most effective progressive warriors
against the likes of Fox News and Wal-Mart, and his newest campaign
takes on one of the most powerful forces perpetuating the horrific
economic equality America is now struggling with: private equity
managers. These are the millionaires and billionaires who use
investment money from large institutions (pension funds, etc.) to
purchase public companies, break them up and sell off the parts -
making huge cash for themselves while often crushing workers in the
process. If you've seen the movie Wall Street, then you know about
these Gordon Gekkos - and, as I noted in my last nationally
syndicated column, they are working hard to preserve a massive tax
loophole that allows them to pay a lower tax rate on their income
than the rest of us regular Americans.

Over the next few weeks, Robert will be rolling out a series of
movies about how private equity managers are hurting the nation.
These movies will be timed with protests against some of the most
high-profile private equity managers, and pressure aimed at getting
Congress to close the absurd tax loophole that lets these
billionaires pay lower taxes than their servants.

For some more background on private equity and how it works, check
out the Service Employees International Union's website called Behind
the Buyouts (www.beyondthebuyouts.org
{http://www.beyondthebuyouts.org}). Then, as I said, go over to
www.warongreed.org {http://www.warongreed.org} and see Brave New
Films' first new movie being released this week and sign up to be a
part of his campaign.

Greed
by Cliff Schecter

Gordon Gekko
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." So said fictional character Gordon Gekko, the embodiment of a 1980s corporate raider in the movie Wall Street.

Yet, sadly, just as the Gekko character was based on real men and the greed speech on an actual address, today we also see real live Gekkoesque creatures of venality kwown as equity fund managers. For these self-appointed demi-Gods who lord over Wall Street, no amount of compensation is too much and no amount of compassion too small. Furthermore, it is this very ruinous rapacity that is playing an important role in damaging our economy, assaulting the standard of living of middle class Americans and raising economic disparity to levels unseen since The Guilded Age.
...
ccording to Executive Excess 2007, a study released in August by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, the 20 highest-paid fund managers made an average of $657.5 million last year--22,255 times the average annual U.S. salary of $29,500.

This is not only an immoral way to treat the middle class and working Americans on whose backs this country's economy has been erected. It also provides an atmosphere ripe for the kind of Abramoffian political corruption to which we have all become accustomed over the past seven years. Furthermore, this increasing subjugation of everone except those at the very top of the income ladder is dangerous for a democracy, as any historian can tell you.

Which reminds me. Gordon Gekko had another piece of sage advice in the movie Wall Street. At one point in the film he turns to his new protege, stock broker Bud Fox, and offers this prescient observation with practiced nonchalance, "now you're not naïve enough to think that we're living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It's the free market, and you're part of it."



Yes, indeed we are.