The Real Looting Happened Elsewhere! How Police and Rioters Both Got Shafted During the Coronavirus

July 3, 2020

Politics , Economy , Society , Videos , Kodoom Official Blog

While the police force is unleashed against petty looters across the United States, several news editorials, even on conservative media outlets such as Fox News, describe how the real looting happened not on the streets but through the coronavirus stimulus package, and how a majority of Americans, including both rioters and the police, were looted Big Time in the aftermath of coronavirus pandemic for the benefit of major business and asset (real estate and stocks) owners. The U.S. Treasury has printed about $15000 in the name of each low or middle income American or about $60,000 on average for a family of four, in direct or indirect benefits. Most Americans have not received anything close to this. Yet stock market has skyrocketed despite the riots and a paralyzed economy. The news editorials quoted in this report explain how this happened.

News Aggregation Editorial, Kodoom.com

Videos shared by social media fans of Kodoom.com capture a violent game of cat and mouse across the U.S. between the police and and rioters/looters. But several prominent news commentators make a strong case that the real looting happened not on the streets but through the U.S. Treasury and the coronavirus stimulus package. So while clashing, the petty looters and police officers alike were looted Big Time through legislations serving the ruling class. These are not just ordinary rich folks. These are folks who rent mansions in Los Angeles (pictured below) for $350,000-a-Month to ride out the coronavirus pandemic, away from the mayhem of protesters, rioters and the police.

Widespread riots are blamed on the angry and hopeless underclass. Well, that underclass seems to be massive and of seismic nature. Sizable enough that in New York alone, the world's largest police force, employing some 40,000 officers, could not stop looters attacking heavily boarded and protected stores. About 1000 people were arrested for looting, while thousands more escaped. In other cities, more than 13000 protesters and rioters have been arrested. Rioters have fought back by setting hundreds of police cars on fire or in cities like Las Vegas, New York, St. Louis and Philadelphia, firing back at police officers. Looking at these events, you don't have to be a fan of socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders or Yanis Varoufakis to see how riots are fueled by an ever increasing income disparity and wealth gap created by a ruling class. Even the coronavirus pandemic, which was supposed to enlighten us on the ephemeral nature of life and wealth - remember "We are all in this Together!" - was (ab)used - legislatively- to channel more money from the underclass to the ruling class.

So how did an average middle class or poor American fare with the coronavirus stimulus package? The Congress authorized the Treasury to assume debt and print about $15000 in the name of each low or middle income American. So a family of four must have received on average about $60,000 in direct or indirect benefits even if they lost all other income and livelihood. If you exclude people who kept their employment and kept working and being productive, the share of stimulus per unemployed or furloughed person would be even higher than $15000 per person. Yet, most Americans have not received anything close to this!

The following excerpts from news editorials across the country, shared by Kodoom.com's social media fans, quoting both liberal (such as New York Times) and conservative sources (such as Fox News), describe how wealthy business, stocks and real estate investors, including many politicians and the President's family, were the biggest beneficiaries of the coronavirus stimulus packages worth trillion of dollars. These editorials share glaring examples of how large chunks of income and wealth were not generated or stimulated the old fashioned libertarian way, or just distributed equally the socialist way, but printed (as currency) and then distributed as unequitably as possible for the benefit of the ruling class. This is not new. The stimulus package of 2008 did the same and the new stimulus package being negotiated between the Congress and the President will probably be the same:

In Crumbs for the Hungry but Windfalls for the Rich, New York Times' opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof aptly points out: "Billions are going to zillionaires under the guise of pandemic relief..... While President Trump and his allies in Congress seek to tighten access to food stamps, they are showing compassion for one group: zillionaires. Their economic rescue package quietly allocated $135 billion — yes, that’s “billion” with a “b” — for the likes of wealthy real estate developers...My Times colleague Jesse Drucker notes that Trump himself, along with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may benefit financially from this provision. The fine print was mysteriously slipped into the March economic relief package, even though it has nothing to do with the coronavirus and offers retroactive tax breaks for periods long before Covid-19 arrived....About 82 percent of the Zillionaire Giveaway goes to those earning more than $1 million a year, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. Of those beneficiaries earning more than $1 million annually, the average benefit is $1.6 million ... In other words, a single mom juggling two jobs gets a maximum $1,200 stimulus check — and then pays taxes so that a real estate mogul can receive $1.6 million. This is dog-eat-dog capitalism for struggling workers, and socialism for the rich."

In The Evil Tucked Into the $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Bill, Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis and Dr. William J. Barber, co-chairs of the Poor People's Campaign (a movement to build the power of poor people and change the public narrative on poverty) write: "On Friday President Trump signed a third bill to address the COVID-19 crisis. The largest relief package in U.S. history, this $2 trillion bill provides direct cash payments to tens of millions of Americans, immediate relief to small businesses, and expanded unemployment benefits for some of those who are out of work while much of the country is under stay-at-home orders. But it also includes a $500 billion fund to bail out corporations, and Trump has already vowed to defy the oversight that Democrats in the Senate and House worked to require. Americans who are desperate for aid from their government could not get it without paying a 25% surcharge to the rich and powerful. In a word, this is evil. ... The Bible is clear that making policy that does not protect the rights of the poor and puts the cause of the wealthy first is evil. Zechariah 7:10 reminds us: “Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” ... If we do not want to be enablers of evil, we must speak out and stand up against it. To write a bill in the time of a pandemic that includes $500 billion for the already wealth and greedy is–according to the word of God–evil....Epidemics emerge along the fissures of our society, reflecting not only the biology of the infectious agent, but patterns of marginalization, exclusion and discrimination. The coronavirus pandemic is no exception. The United States has many open wounds rooted in decades of racist policies and the criminalization of the poor. COVID-19 has revealed deep failures and will reinforce existing health inequities unless we proactively turn our attention to how we serve the poorest and most marginalized in our societies..."

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and a Professor at Berkeley has posted a poignant video about "Who's Really Looting America?":

In How private jet owners got a subsidy from coronavirus relief funds, authors provide an example of how "A Hollywood aviation management company is sharing the benefits of a taxpayer-financed loan with its private jet-owning clients after it won the loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program .. the company, Clay Lacy Aviation, will be able to keep pilots and flight attendants employed with the money it received. The crew members keep their jobs, which is a condition of the taxpayer-backed loan, and jet owners keep more of their money, which is not! ...CLA's client list includes rocker Don Henley, Sexy Brand CEO Mark Bonfigli and private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Freeman Spogli, which is owned by the finance chairman of President George W. Bush's inaugurations and a former ambassador to Italy and San Marino, according to a list of aircraft registration numbers provided to NBC News by a source and a combination of federal and state disclosures."

In Tax change in coronavirus stimulus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires, Megan Henney of FOX Business elaborates how "More than 80 percent of the benefits of a tax change included in the coronavirus stimulus package that President Trump signed into law at the end of March will go toward Americans who earn more than $1 million annually, according to a nonpartisan congressional committee... The provision, placed into the legislation by Senate Republicans, temporarily suspends a limitation of how much certain business owners can deduct against their nonbusiness income to reduce their tax liability."

In U.S. taxpayers' virus relief went to firms that avoided U.S. taxes, Tom Bergin and Lawrence Delevingne write: "Last month Zagg Inc, a Utah-based company that makes mobile device accessories, received more than $9.4 million in cash .. as part of the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) — a linchpin of President Donald Trump’s economic rescue package, meant to save small firms convulsed by the pandemic and help them to keep workers on the payroll... Claimants certified the loans were necessary to support their business and received an average of $115,000 as of May 26, according to the Small Business Administration, which administers the program. Nasdaq-listed Zagg’s loan was more than 80 times that amount... That wasn’t the only help Zagg had from the government lately. Last year, the company received a $3.3 million tax refund and racked up U.S. tax credits worth $7 million, its public filings show. It made $6 million in profit for 2019, but paid no tax in the United States... Zagg has booked much of its profit through small companies in far-off Ireland and the Cayman Islands, its filings show."

In US CORONAVIRUS ‘BAILOUT’ SCAM IS $6 TRILLION GIVEAWAY TO WALL STREET, economist Michael Hudson explains why the US Congress rammed through the CARES Act, which is not a bailout but a massive, $6 trillion giveaway to Wall Street, banks, large corporations, and stockholders. Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton discuss the enormous financial scam with Hudson, who reveals how the economy actually works, with the Federal Reserve printing money so rich elites don’t lose their investments.

In 'Grotesque': While 41 Million People Lost Jobs Due to Covid-19, US Billionaires Grew Nearly $500 Billion Richer, the author shares "Statistics released ... by the U.S. Department of Labor show that .. a staggering 40.7 million Americans have lost their jobs over just the past 10 weeks as mass layoffs induced by the coronavirus pandemic continue. During that same 10-week period, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the combined net worth of America's billionaires soared by nearly half a trillion dollars, bringing their total wealth to $3.4 trillion... IPS found that there are currently 16 more billionaires than there were in mid-March, when many U.S. states began locking down their economies as Covid-19 spread rapidly across the country. According to IPS, This isn't just unsustainable, It's unconscionable."

In BlackRock Authored the Bailout Plan Before There Was a Crisis – Now It’s Been Hired by three Central Banks to Implement the Plan,Pam and Russ Martens write: "The plan was rolled out in August 2019 at the G7 summit of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming – months before the public was aware of any financial crisis..The BlackRock plan calls for blurring the lines between government fiscal policy and central bank monetary policy – exactly what the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve are doing today in the United States. BlackRock has now been hired by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, and Sweden’s central bank, Riksbank, to implement key features of the plan...We now understand why, for the first time in history, the U.S. Congress handed over $454 billion of taxpayers’ money to the Fed, without any meaningful debate, to eat losses on toxic assets produced by the Wall Street banks it supervises. The Fed plans to leverage the $454 billion into a $4.54 trillion bailout plan, “going direct” with bailouts to the commercial paper market, money market funds, and a host of other markets... BlackRock-run program will get $75 billion of the $454 billion in taxpayers’ money to eat the losses on its corporate bond purchases, which will include its own ETFs, which the Fed is allowing it to buy in the program..."

Epilogue:

While news commentators and editorials are reporting on the massive rigging of the stimulus package and shedding light on the roots of current riots, other journalists are covering the riots and paying a heavy price. Police in Minneapolis directly fired rubber bullets at a journalist, who was permanently blinded in one eye. U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented numerous Police attacks on journalists reporting the riots. Despite the crackdown, news and amateur images of the riots continue pouring into the social media including ours.

Rigging legislation in the aftermath of a pandemic which has already decimated the poor, to further enrich the ruling class, is grotesquely greedy. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins.

According to research published in Science, it takes about 25% of people to take a stand before large-scale social changes or revolution occur. The widespread and multiracial nature of protests across America reveal that we are close to this tipping point.

Has anyone in the ruling class ever watched Elysium or listened to Nina Simone's: Sinnerman, where you gonna run to? All on That Day?

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