Some damning information in graph form on how much wealth has been concentrated amongst so few Americans.

Or to put it another way, how little money is left for the rest of us to fight over.

“New Jersey has the third highest percentage of millionaire residents in America. Damn near 7 percent of the people that live in New Jersey are millionaires.

New Jersey millionaires, how many of them are there? Well, there’s 212,000 of them.

How many teachers? A hundred and twelve thousand.

They got more millionaires in New Jersey than they do teachers, but we got to have the teachers pay for everything. We can’t raise the taxes on the rich folks over in New Jersey, maybe the top 2 percent maybe giving 1 more percent? Nope, can’t do that.”

Ed likes to get bent out of shape over a lot of things, but sometimes he picks the right thing to be pissed about.

In case you were curious about whether this asshat Walker has a point, here are the actual facts.

In case you weren’t paying attention, the rich really ARE getting richer.

More importantly, our increasingly middle class is not.

It used to be that everyone had a fairly good shot at gaining a lot of money. Up until the first one to three milllion taxes weren’t too bad. After that, you got the 90+ percent taxes the GOP tries to scare you with. Let’s rehash that. After you made a few million dollars IN A YEAR you got most of the rest taxed.

That’s how this country ran. That’s how wealth is created and, yes, redistributed for the good of the nation.

Now? The rich have a MUCH lower tax rate. Obviously at some point you can’t buy any more. So the rich invest. The riskier the investment, the more profit you make. Profit, mind you, that doesn’t get taxed at more than 15%. That’s the capital gains tax you might have heard of. Republicans say it is a double tax. It would be if the initial investment were taxed; which it isn’t.

Let’s put it this way. If a rich investor “wins” a million in the stock market, he only pays 15% on the million. If YOU win the lottery, you have to pay taxes on it like it’s income. Why? Because the GOP only rigged the system for the investor, not you.

Same thing with the estate tax, also called the “death tax” by Republican marketing goons. They say this hurts family farms. It doesn’t. At least, none but the absolute largest ones. No, this is BS to distract you from the fact that wealthy kids – let’s say the Kardashians or Hiltons – can have it all by literally doing nothing useful with their lives.

Sorry, I’m venting but there’s a really our economy is lagging. Rich folks with money burning a whole in their pocket are betting in commodities and the stock market. Those bets are destabilizing markets so you have to pay more for gas, food, your house. Because their bets wash out what normally would be taking place. Instead of blindly throwing darts, many of those markets used to be full of estimates made by folks who worry about the supply and demand of refineries, pigs, corn, beaver pelts, whatever. Now that educated approach is washed out by rich dullards just looking to make even more money.

For the rest of us? We’ve got assholes like Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin trying to make people mad at teachers for having worked for better job conditions and benefits than the rest of us. Can you believe that? They have been pensions, and it’s THEIR fault? FAULT? We’re supposed to hate folks who have NOT gotten screwed by business or conservatives in general? The worst part is that such a line of argument works!

It makes me sick to see what we’ve come to as a people. Our wages haven’t gone up and they buy a lot less. Meanwhile, the folks who have more, keep getting more – at our expense – and we’re supposed to hate the folks who work hard, go to school to know more, serve our society for less than what they could make in the private sector.

Really?

Putting the lie to just about every conservative economic argument of late. It isn’t even partisan, it’s just reality.

You don’t have to wait for an anti-government terrorist to cut you down in front of a grocery store to die in Aryzona.

All you have to do is be poor and need an organ transplant. Then Governor Brewer and her “compassionate conservative” lackeys will make sure to cut funding to cover transplants under Medicare and make sure that being poor is once again a death sentence in our land.

This reminds me of Mississippi and Governor Haley Barbour. He freed two sisters incarcerated for stealing $11. Should they have been punished? Yes. For 16 years? Questionable.

Released on condition that one sister donates a kidney to her dying sister because the state doesn’t want to pay for an organ transplant for a black girl? No. But that’s exactly what that fat jackass did. I understand that people want to be polite and praise him for some small sliver of humanity. But that isn’t why he did it. He wanted to save a few bucks, and demean some human beings to literally begging for both their lives and freedom.

This isn’t even criminal behavior by both these Republican “leaders”. It’s evil.

Due to many factors, one of them being the rampant racism of our countrymen against migrant farm workers, many American farmers can’t make ends meet here in the US. Here are some pics and stories of those who have moved their farms to Mexico to go where the labor is.

Want more? The World did another story on the subject the next day.

Maybe when we stop blaming the poor for the things they have to do to survive, we might actually get to the root of the many problems we have. Unlike what most Republicans think, brown people really don’t want to cross borders illegally to get paid less than minimum wage and live stacked ten to a one bedroom apartment.

I heard about this story on Here and Now awhile back.

In short, Jan Brewja and her racist law are hurting tourism and killing jobs in Aryzona. Frankly, I’m glad, even if the laws do hurt folks who have nothing to do with the law. “Red” states should all embrace their racism and have their economies crash. Once they see there is no money in hate, maybe they’ll just keep it to themselves and let that crap die out in a generation or two.

Krugman covers the trend in many municipalities to turn off the lights and tear up the roads to save money. He considers why the government should be bailing out our towns instead of capitalists.

China is pouring billions into infrastructure and we can’t even keep our roads paved. Guess why we’re losing our place in the world.

Surprise! Surprise! Illiterate psychopath Glenn Beckkk is out to steal from his followers, setting them up for the gold scam.

Read more here plus get the full infographic.

Granted, I’m kind of for this. The more money lost from Tea Bagger’s bank accounts, the less they can donate to anti-American bastiches who want to make our nation a bullet-ridden religious terror camp.