You need to know this... Donald Trump is setting up a cabinet of plutocrats.

As Quartz reports - the 17 people he's chosen for cabinet level positions so far have "...well over $9.5 billion in combined wealth... greater than that of the 43 million least wealthy American households combined - over one third of the 126 million households total in the US." This shouldn't surprise anyone - no matter how populist Trump sounded on the campaign trail.

Billionaires and millionaires are flocking to the Trump administration for one very simple reason: his policies are going to make them a whole lot richer.

For example - according to a report from the Center for Tax Justice that came out just before the election - the top 1 percent of Americans would take a full 44 percent of the tax cuts proposed in Trump's tax plan.

The bottom 20 percent - on the other hand - would see just 2 percent of the cuts.

This is socialism for the rich, or, as it's more popularly known as, Reaganomics -- and it's been the major driver of income inequality in America for the past 30 plus years.

If you compare historical top income tax rate over the course of twentieth century with a chart of income inequality in the United States over roughly the same time period, you'll see that the period with the highest taxes on the rich - the period between the Roosevelt and Reagan administrations - was also the period with the lowest levels of economic inequality.

You'll also notice that since marginal tax rates started to plummet during the Reagan years, income inequality has skyrocketed.

Even more striking, in the 35 years since Reagan took office and started cutting taxes on the rich, income levels for the top 1 percent have ballooned while income levels for everyone else have stayed pretty much flat.

This situation is only going to get worse under Donald Trump and his cabinet of plutocrats.

The new Gilded Age is upon us.

Unless we repudiate Reaganomics and put back in place the progressive tax system that worked so well between Roosevelt and Reagan, the rich will only get richer.

-Thom

(What do you think? Tell us here.)

Tonight on The Big Picture on RT TV at 7pm and 10:30pm... Lookout! Net Neutrality Is In Danger (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT or Free Speech TV, and catch past shows on Youtube)

Monday's Daily Stack 

Article: "Polar vortex" by Wikipedia.

Article: "The Electoral College Meets Monday. Here's What to Expect." by Emmarie Huetteman.

Article: "December 19 Coalition Gathers at State Capitols Across America for Protests" by Common Dreams.

Video: An Echo Of Sophie Scholl....

Article: "Sophie Scholl" by Wikipedia (quotes).

Article: "White Rose: The Germans who tried to topple Hitler" by Lucy Burns.

Article: "13th Amendment", December 6, 1865. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Article: "14th Amendment, July 9, 1868 (citizenship, representatives, public debt)

Article: "15th Amendment" (right to vote), February 3, 1870

Site: National Popular Vote.

Article: "On Social Security, Trump and Pence couldn't be more different" by Jeanne Sahadi.

Article: "Donald Trump's Social Security heresy: Taking on Paul Ryan and the privatization push" by Simon Maloy.

Article: "Donald Trump Transcript: 'Our Country Needs a Truly Great Leader'".

Article: "Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years" by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Trump Says He'd Do What the Democrats Are Doing: 'Leave Social Security the Way It Is'" by Susan Jones.

Article: "Gingrich brags that Republicans are coming for everything FDR accomplished" by Ian Millhiser.

Article: "Death of Salvador Allende" by Wikipedia.

Article: "2004 Haitian coup d'�tat" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Murder of Seth Rich" (DNC).

Article: "Protests across Poland over media restrictions" by Neil Buckley, Evon Huber.

Article: "Poland's media protests mark bitter political stand-off" by Neil Buckley, Evon Huber.

Article: "Donald Trump Meets Off The Record With Journalists" by Michael Calderone.

Article: "Russia's ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara" by Mehul Srivastava and Max Seddon.

Article: "50 years of health reform will be on the chopping block, if Trump's HHS pick gets his way" by Thomas Huelskoetter.

Article: "Donald Trump's Many, Many, Many, Many Ties to Russia" by Jeff Nesbit.

Tweet: "For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia." by Donald Trump.

Article: "Ineligibility Clause" (Emoluments Clause).

Article: "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Chris Hedges.

Case: "Buckley v. Valeo", 1976

Case: "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" (2010)

Case: "McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission", 2014

Article: "New Deal" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Chuck Schumer Is All In On Bernie Sanders' Democratic Party" by Michael McAuliff.

Article: "Labor secretary Tom Perez announces bid for DNC chair" by Lauren Gambino.

Article: "Obama All But Endorses Tom Perez Against Keith Ellison For DNC Chair" by Zach Carter.

Article: "100 CEOs Have as Much Retirement Savings as 116 Million Americans" by Andrea Germanos.

Article: "Economic growth in the United States: A tale of two countries" by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman.

Article: "US social mobility gap continues to widen" by Lauren Leatherby.

Article: "Martin Shkreli" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Marco Rubio Quietly Undermines Affordable Care Act" by Robert Pear.

Article: "Explaining 'Risk Corridors,' The Next Obamacare Issue" by Louise Radnofsky and Jennifer Corbett Dooren, Jan 22, 2014.

Article: "IMF welcomes Ukrainian bank nationalisation" by Mehreen Khan.

Article: "French court finds Christine Lagarde guilty of negligence" by Michael Stothard and Shawn Donnan.

Article: "Mylan CEO Faces Tough Questioning in Congressional EpiPen Hearing" by Jonathan D. Rockoff, Louise Radnofsky and Daniela Hernandez.

Article: "Giuseppe Zangara" (attempted assassination of FDR).

Article: "Roy Cohn" (Trump mentor).

Book: "None Dare Call It Treason" by John A. Stormer.

Letter: "to Edgar Newton Eisenhower, November 8, 1954" by Dwight Eisenhower. "Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Article: "Robots-replacing-workers is a bad reason to fight against a higher minimum wage" by Ethan Chiel.

Article: "China restaurant sacks robot waiters" by BBC.

 

Talk Media News Segment:
- Victoria Jones 

Article: "Russian ambassador to Turkey assassinated in Ankara" by TMN.

Article: "Electoral College on track to make Trump's win official" by TMN.

Article: "Democrats point fingers as Trump Electoral College win nears" by Kyle Cheney.

Article: "Transcript And Video: NPR's Exit Interview With President Obama" by Steve Inskeep.

Article: "Bill Clinton: Trump knows how to get 'angry, white men to vote for him'" by Louis Nelson.

Article: "NC Gov. Pat McCrory calls for special legislative session to repeal HB2" by Jim Morrill and Steve Harrison.

Site: "Goats for the old Goat".

Site: Governor Free Don Siegelman 

Article: "Congressional Apportionment Amendment" (Article the First).

Article: "Fairness Doctrine" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Polis" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Idiot" by Wikipedia.

Law: "Clean Air Act", 1963.

TV: "The Crown".

Article: "Great Smog of London" (1952).

Article: "Cuyahoga River Fire" by Michael Rotman.

Article: "Lake Erie" by Michael Rotman.

Audio Book: The Best of the Thom Hartmann Program: Volume I: We the People by Thom Hartmann.

Audio Book: The Best of the Thom Hartmann Program: Volume II: Our Living History by Thom Hartmann.

Audio Book: The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America - and What We Can Do to Stop It by Thom Hartmann.

Audio Book: Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class - and What We Can Do About It by Thom Hartmann.

Audio Book: Death in the Pines: An Oakley Tyler Novel by Thom Hartmann.

Audio Book: What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy by Thom Hartmann.

Audio Book: Cracking the Code: New foreword written and read by Jim Hightower by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "CBS CEO: "For Us, Economically, Donald's Place in This Election Is a Good Thing"" by Lee Fang.

Site: Common Dreams

Site: The Hartmann Report

Article: "United States involvement in regime change" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Senate Democrats Have One Shot At Saving SCOTUS - Will They?" by Karoli Kuns.

Article: "Campaign Finance: United Kingdom" by Clare Feikert.

Tuesday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET 

 

We'll have the latest news and information...everything you need to know to win the water cooler wars...

 

And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...

 

The Thom Hartmann Program, Occupying The Media 3 hours a day 5 days a week" for "we the people"

 

And don't forget...Democracy is NOT a spectator sport...it begins with you...