Author: David Cay Johnston

Part-time Pay, Adjusted for Inflation, Fell in 2021 The number of Americans earning less than $15,000 a year fell significantly in 2021 as a growing number of states and localities increased minimum pay standards for millions of part-time workers, new federal wage data shows. One in four Americans with paid work made less than $15,000 in 2021. DCReport refers to these people as part-timers because working full-time for all 52 weeks at the federal minimum wage earns gross pay of $15,080. After considering inflation, their average pay fell by $275 for the year. That’s the equivalent of working one week…

Jobs Paying $3 Million Per Week Swell, Fueled by Trump Tax Favors for Big Business Last year the 237,000 highest paid employees in America together made more money than the lowest paid 60 million workers, my analysis of the latest federal wage statistics shows. The top employees collected  $659.3 billion for their work last year. The  worst paid 60 million workers earned $628.3 billion, about 5% less than the fat cats at the top of the pay ladder. These pay figures illustrate a long-term trend, heavily influenced by federal government policy, to restrain wages paid to the vast majority and…

The Executive Class Gobbles Up Much More of Total Pay Here’s the real news on your 2021 pay raise, thanks to exclusive reporting by DCReport. The Executive Class received $500 for every dollar in raises you earned last year, my annual analysis of the latest official pay data shows. If you worked full-time and made less than $250,000, your average pay increase last year was $1,600. For the Executive Class paid $1 million or more, the average pay increase was $840,500—500 times as much. Pay for the Executive Class, which had been slowly taking a growing share of all…

The Unthinkable, Pre-Donald, Must Command Our Attention After Highly Sensitive Secrets Recovered from Mar-a-Lago Despite Donald Trump’s many campaign rally boasts that he knows “everything” about nuclear energy, he can’t tell you the difference between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb. He’s a con artist, a know-nothing without even rudimentary knowledge of nuclear weaponry (the subject of Barack Obama’s senior college thesis) or national security. What Trump does know is this: Foreign governments whose dictatorial leaders he admires–North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia among them–would pay fortunes to acquire America’s most sensitive nuclear secrets. And what Donald knows is…

Coup Plotters and Observers Put on Notice  Rep. Liz Cheney delivered two clear warnings Tuesday. One was to Donald Trump aides and allies who conspired with him to violently overthrow our government. The second was to those who merely observed these crimes but refuse to tell what they know. The first message: the game is up because the J6 committee has the goods on Trump’s conspiracy, the coverup and the witness tampering so it’s time to either rat out Donald to save your own skin or give up any hope of leniency when indictments are handed out. The second…

Will Biden Administration Hold Fast or Cave on Punishing Corrupt Credit Suisse? Unless the Biden administration loses its nerve, one of the most corrupt banks in the world – Credit Suisse – will soon be banned from the lucrative business of steering pension fund assets into opaque investments where thievery and poor performance are easy to hide. If you haven’t heard this news it’s because nothing has appeared about it in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post or even Bloomberg. We checked those and other influential news organizations and found zip. That’s not surprising because…

Maverick Economist Tells Congress What the Oil Industry Wishes You Didn’t Know Are oil and gasoline prices being manipulated to create inflated profits? It’s easy enough to find out, maverick energy economist Robert McCullough told Congress Tuesday. It’s also easy for our government to adopt temporary policies that will lower costs at the pump by: Ripping the dark veneer off opaque market Creating incentives for more drilling in the short run Taxing away any windfall profits McCullough is a super smart and jolly old man who runs his own energy economics consulting firm in Portland, Ore. He is hated by…

New York’s Governor Has Authority to Take Charge of the Case, But Will She? We hope DCReport followers will read my op-ed essay in today’s New York Daily News on how to revive the moribund criminal investigation of Donald Trump by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. That op-ed begins: For more than two years, seasoned Manhattan prosecutors, working with two grand juries, investigated Donald Trump’s finances, coming to the firm conclusion that the former president has committed numerous crimes. But when prosecutors Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne recommended an indictment earlier this year, Alvin Bragg, the newly elected Manhattan…

Already Rampant Cheating on Gift and Estate Taxes Encouraged After months of delay, the Biden administration is moving ahead with a diabolical Trump era tax favor for the super-rich. This decision will cost our government billions of dollars and further entrench dynastic wealth in America while working people are fully taxed. We call the Trump era plan diabolical because on the surface it looks like a severe crackdown on wealthy tax cheats. In fact, it makes cheating easier and much less likely to be detected by IRS auditors. The Trumpian scheme increases by more than half the number of…

Measure Would Undo Police Accountability Law  A bill that would make it easy for police to hide for years body-cam videos and other evidence of police misconduct is sitting on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk. Until now it has received no news coverage. Senate Bill S7734 would undo a reform law enacted last summer and that took effect just weeks ago to increase police accountability and protect citizens from excessive use of force by making it hard for police to withhold body-cam and dash-cam video and evidence documenting police interactions with citizens. The theory is that such videos are…