There are times when it helps to be forewarned and forearmed - with knowledge. Facts. Figures. Truth. Reality.
As progressives we pride ourselves on it. We depend on it.
As part of another diary I brought up several excellent sources of Truth, Reality and Knowledge and today I re-post that information purely for it's own sake because I truly believe - it's worth the effort and benefit that it may impart to all those who are willing to listen and capable of comprehending the message.
Over the jump, these works will be unveiled.
The first is a Documentary "The One Percent" made by Jaime Johnson, the great-grandson of the founder of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals. He takes us not just on a walk behind the curtain into the world of people born into super wealth, but also an amazing view of how they view the rest of the world and how they manipulate it to fill their own pockets.
Amazingly, this film was produced and released in 2006, before the Great Recession, while George W. Bush was still President. The prescience of it is truly astonishing and it operates as an amazing counter-balance to the Hyper-Entitled perspective of the Netflix documentary "Mitt", especially when they talk to Nicole Buffet, the free-spirit, artist grand-daughter of Warren Buffet.
Next we have "We're Not Broke" which talks about the U.S. Uncut movement which started on Facebook and predates Occupy in it's efforts to fight the idea that America has "Run out of Money" and therefore earned benefits programs for the most vulnerable need to be slashed.
http://werenotbrokemovie.com/
Lastly I have "Inequality For All" a 2013 film by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich which is taken from his courses at Berkeley [and will be screened at this years Netroot's Nation in Detroit which will be the first such event I will attend myself] but is at the same time a surprisingly personal perspective on how he's been motivated to think about economics in terms of how it helps and benefits the most people. He tells how he has always been impacted by a genetic disorder that never allowed him to grow any taller he minimized the tendency for larger bullies to pick on him by building alliances with older boys, he then talks about how his life was forever changed when one of his boyhood protectors was tortured and murdered as he tried to promote voter registration in the Jim Crow South. His friend had been one of the three boys killed in the story that eventually became the center of the film "Mississippi Burning".
http://www.inequalityforall.com
He talks about how he first met Bill Clinton (aboard a ship that was taking both of them to attend Oxford as they were both chosen as Rhodes Scholars), and how much later as Bill was running for President he was invited to run the Clinton economic transition team as Bill had apparently read all of his books and was eager to implement his ideas into his platform. As you probably know the Clinton Administration presided over the greatest economic boom in living memory while expanding jobs, creating greater wealth and ultimately balancing the budget. What unfortunately they didn't do - is address the increasing income gap and get a better control of increasing power of corporate money in our politics, an issue which Reich ultimately determines they didn't "do enough to address".
Yeah, ya think, Bob?
These three films do a fantastic and well documented job of laying out the challenges ahead for the middle class as they continue to fight the creeping Fuedalization of our economy which began under Reagan and his famous "WelFare Queen" (who very likely never actually existed) with his tax and regulation polices which turned the Rich become the Quantum Rich, while the Middle class is dismantled piece by piece and the Poor are slowly crushed into a fine powder.
Arm Yourself with Knowledge.
Vyan