Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Alexis Tsipras, the New Prime Minister in Greece
Just imagine what would happen in the United States, land of the billionaire Koch brothers’ well-heeled minions and their obsessive hysteria against the government helping those in need, if a political party called the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza is the Greek shorthand) took over the country in a landslide victory.
Even though it happened in Greece yesterday, not the United States, it is sure to provide plenty of fodder for the Kochs to incite fear in their ranks and ramp up campaign spending by billionaires heading into the 2016 U.S. election. Just this past Saturday, Charles Koch was warning his Ayn Rand-worshiping followers at their annual confab in Palm Springs, California that “Americans have taken an important step in slowing down the march toward collectivism.” In excerpts of his speech leaked to the media, Koch said his vision is one of a “society that maximizes peace, civility and well-being.”
Riverside County Sheriff Officers Guard the Entrance to a Rancho Mirage, California Luxury Resort Where the Koch Brothers Held their January 2011 Political Strategy Confab. Photo Courtesy of Michael Cline, ClineFoto.com
The Koch brothers appear incapable of comprehending that their own ultra “well-being” and that of fellow billionaires is a wealth-stripping device that is impoverishing the rest of the country. As we previously reported, the Koch brothers’ combined wealth grew by $33 billion in a recent three-year span at a time when the U.S. Department of Education was reporting 1,065,794 homeless schoolchildren in the U.S., the highest number on record. Americans living in poverty according to the U.S. Census Bureau is 45.3 million while median income is 8 percent lower than in 2007 and only slightly above the level of 1995. Clearly, the billionaire approach to “well-being” isn’t working for the population at large.
The man who led Syriza to victory in Greece is Alexis Tsipras, a 40-year old veteran political activist. He has called what is happening in Greece a “silent humanitarian crisis” and, indeed, it is. As a result of the austerity program imposed by the terms of its bailout, Greece’s GDP has plunged 25 percent, unemployment is running at 26 percent, and almost a third of its population of 11 million is living below the poverty line.
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