While big media is "simply in the business of selling products"
The People's media reaches more people than Fox does
Also in this issue
- A drug-card nightmare
- Diebold banned in calif vote
- Pentagon fears global-warming
- A hummer of a loophole
- We can do clean energy
- Riches flow uphill
What the hell's happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money? Even my state's teetering on the brink of broke! Who did this to us? Fair questions, but we're not getting honest answers. 
Riches flow uphill
As Ray Charles sang, "Them that's got is them that gets"—and the getting was very, very good for those at the top in 2003.
Forbes magazine reports that there are now 587 lucky souls living in Billionaireville, up 10 percent over 2002. Among them are the heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, whose company got to be number No. 1 by paying poverty wages to its employees. Now, of the 10 richest people on the planet, five are Waltons, each one sitting atop $20 billion in Wal-Mart booty.
Then there are the CEOs who lavish corporate cash on themselves. Numero uno in corporate pay last year was Sandy Weill, head of Citigroup. He only worked nine months of the year before retiring in October, but he pocketed $30 million in salary. Let's see: $30 million divided by nine months...wow, that's $111,000 a day! Plus $14.7 million he took in "other compensation," plus some $285 million when he cashed in stock his board had given him.
The free market at work, no? Horsefeathers. The supply of potential CEOs is huge and the number of slots is very small, so if the free market really was at work, CEOs would be making an honest wage. But the pay of top bosses is set by board members handpicked by you-know-who: the top bosses.