Or has anyone read his book FREE LUNCH: HOW THE WEALTHIEST AMERICANS ENRICH THEMELVES AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE (AND STICK YOU WITH THE BILL.) ?
Link to the transcript
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01182008/transcript.htmlHere is part of the transcript that sent me over the edge.
BILL MOYERS: You mentioned Warren Buffet. I was impressed in the book that you do name names. And so let me mention some of the names that you talk about in the book. Warren Buffet. Everyone respects him as the world's greatest investor. Yet he's in your book on free lunches.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: In Several places.
BILL MOYERS: Several places.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: He got a $665 million interest-free loan for the utility he has in the Midwest. Now--
BILL MOYERS: From? He got the loan from?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: From the taxpayers. Now, imagine for a moment that the house you live in today, you bought it 24 years ago and you agreed to pay the price then. And now you've got to pay back with no interest half the price in the dollars you agreed to in 1924. You could be rich just from that alone?
BILL MOYERS: But those are the rules. Buffet was doing something legal.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: That's right. And that's always the biggest scandal is what is legal. Steve Jobs. Well, Steve Jobs got $70 million of stock options at a meeting of the board of Apple company directors that never took place.
BILL MOYERS: In fact, you say Steve Jobs arranged to have his fraudulently-issued options exchanged for restricted stock worth hundreds of millions. And the government has yet to take any action.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, not against him.
BILL MOYERS: But not against him.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: They prosecuted two people under him, one of whom said, "I warned Mr. Jobs about this." Mr. Jobs says, "You know I really didn't understand the rules."
BILL MOYERS: Donald Trump.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Donald Trump benefits from a tax specifically levied by the State of New Jersey for the poor. Part of the casino winnings tax in New Jersey is dedicated to help the poor. But $89 million of it is being diverted to subsidize Donald Trump's casino's building retail space.
And this made my head explode DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, this is one-- this is a great irony. George Bush owes almost his entire fortune to a tax increase that was funneled into his pocket and into the use of eminent domain laws to essentially legally cheat other people out of their land for less than it was worth to enrich him and his fellow investors.
BILL MOYERS: By building this stadium in Arlington, Texas
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: For the Texas Rangers.
BILL MOYERS: --baseball team-- Texas Rangers.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right.
BILL MOYERS: That's right.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: One of the key sources I quote is a prominent Republican lawyer married to a United States senator who is the expert in Texas on municipal finance. The subsidy, he says, is $202.5 million. And Bush and his partners captured about 168 million of it.
BILL MOYERS: Bush, you say, used eminent domain to claim the land on which the stadium was built, right?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Right.
BILL MOYERS: And Bush advised his investors, his co-investors this is a sweet deal …
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, yeah. He said that I mean, here's this money losing team. It's got this little stadium. It can't make money. But if we can get a stadium built, it'll be worth a lot of money. And that's going on all over the country. All you have to do is get the stadium built and we'll-- you'll be rich.
Meanwhile, here in Florida, people with degrees are scrambling to take jobs at call centers. I know...I'm one of them. I seriously want to kick the shit out of some people.