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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 4, 2011 - 03:39pm PT
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I'm going to paste that whole dang thread here (if it works) I don't appreciate it when threads get nuked after hundreds of post when the OP has a whim to destroy it. I figure that it's an important phenomena in our society at this point, which is mostly being covered on the net by the people and often ignored in the mainstream press, so I take it as my duty not to ignore it here
So without further adieu
+++++++
cleo
Social climber
Berkeley, CA
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:37am PT
This could be the start of more to come...
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:41am PT
What's their beef?
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:42am PT
I don't know. I've been looking for information. Almost seems bigger in the minds of the participants than anyone else. I have friends in NYC who haven't been saying much about it and they are usually quite active in such things.
It sounds like a worthy protest and I would like to know more details. Best of luck to them... hope it gains momentum.
Marines on Wall Street
http://www.in5d.com/occupy-wall-street-the-marines-are-coming-to-protect-the-protestors.html
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:43am PT
What are they protesting?
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:44am PT
y o u
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:44am PT
Chaz, I'm guessing that this will be lost on you, but it seems as if their main problem is the super wealthy putting profits above their fellow humans, and screwing us in the process.
:)
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:46am PT
and the corporate influence in politics
We the Corporations of the United Stocks of Uhmerikuh
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:48am PT
So, what do they intend to do about it?
ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:50am PT
clearly, they are protesting The Man
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:51am PT
Protest, genius.
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:51am PT
They are protesting Wall Street's "obsession" with what they consider outrageous profits,
and all done by manipulating paper that is ultimately "secured" by the work done by the middle class, as in massive mortgage backed derivative trades all backed by common folk making their mortgage payments on time.
They are protesting the rich shareholders against the middle class "struggle".
They are protesting the trillion dollar TARP "rescue" of Wall Street while main street got no bailouts.
ETC
Unlike the Tea Party, THIS citizen uprising is indeed truly and honestly grass roots.
It receives no corporate startup or continuing funding, as the Koch Bros and Tea Party.
This grass roots effort could have real legs, especially as the Class Warfare, the inequity of held wealth in this county, continues to grow and grow and grow, highlighting the us against them divide.
All just my opinion, of course.
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:52am PT
Shut down Wall Street.
Anonymous, understood to be a loose-knit group of internet activists, tweeted: "We are glad to tell you that mastercard.com is down and it's confirmed."
Another message read: "There are some things WikiLeaks can't do. For everything else, there's Operation Payback."
Mastercard was not immediately available to comment but repeated attempts to load the site met without success.
So-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks also appeared to have been launched against PayPal, PostFinance, and the Swedish prosecutors office.
"We can confirm that there was an attempted DDoS attack on paypal.com," a spokeswoman said.
"The attack slowed some payments down for a short while but we remained fully operational throughout."
DDoS attacks, which are illegal in the UK, involve overloading a website with requests so it stops working.
"While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons," the Anonymous group said in a statement on its website.
"We want transparency and we counter censorship...
Similar stategy, different tactics, and coordinated or not...
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:52am PT
I agree, this is the tip of the iceberg.
These clowns honestly think they can protest their way into the pockets of others. That they can get around taking people to court and proving they have been damaged.
They have no case. They have nothing other than to make themselves nuisance and whine about it in public.
If they were serious, and they really were damaged by rich people like they claim ...then they would have a case. But, unfortunately, they weren't damaged as they claim so they squander their time and ours with nonsense protest.
We have laws and the associated remedies in this country. We should demand the protestors use them just like the rest of us have too.
If they have been damaged as they say. Take the perp to court. Get out of the streets and quit hurting people that have nothing to do with the "so called" damages.
Skip
Timmc
climber
BC
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:58am PT
They appear to be non partisan- thought the right wingers will feel most threatened.
I respect their right to protest and wish them luck.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:00pm PT
skipt, pull the elephant size tea bag out of your mouth and wake the fuk up.
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:04pm PT
Skip, I can only assume that you believe the protest is about our recent financial woes.
IMO, the last couple of years are the proverbial straw. What I'm reading suggests the vocal support of a major paradigm shift in how we conduct business as usual.
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:04pm PT
Government simulates cyber attack for training
Reuters
Idaho Falls: The lights went out. Hackers had infiltrated the chemical company's computer network. The firm's own experts ran around from computer to computer trying to fight back and regain control. "We're flying blind," the chief executive of the fictitious ACME chemical company said. The cyber attack exercise was part of a week long training program that the Department of Homeland Security offers to industries to help them learn how to deal with intrusions into their computer networks.
The exercise is carried out in Idaho Falls where the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has programs focused on cybersecurity for industries, in partnership with the Idaho National Laboratory, which conducts nuclear research and also has expertise in the technology used by many industries. The city with a population of about 55,000 is surrounded by potato farms, has an airport with one baggage carousel, and a dairy that still delivers milk to homes. DHS is concerned about growing cyber threats to industries and conducts the training exercise about once a month. The sessions, aimed at raising awareness about how to deal with a real cyber attack, have been attended by representatives of the energy, oil and gas, and transportation sectors, among others.
Maybe I got tangled up in some wash from somehting like this.
Internet wouldn't let me onto three banking sites last night for hours. Other stuff worked OK. SLLoooowwww screens.
rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:06pm PT
Skipt...I think they are protesting keeping the wealthy out of their pockets...Activities like exhorbitant credit card interests , inflated grocery costs , energy supplies...Activities like supressing middle class wages...I'm glad we still have the right to protest injustices in America , a constitutional right...RJ
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:07pm PT
We are all tea partiers now.
Our government has let us down.
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:10pm PT
When the rich get money from the tax payers, it is "good for the economy."
When the tax payers get services from the rich paying an equal share of taxes it is "class warfare" and "socialism."
When skipt posts anything, it is pure idiocy.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:16pm PT
People do not appreciate this riot nonsense. They want to be left alone and allowed to do business with people they want.
The only monopolies are those granted by government.
Skip
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:18pm PT
It ain't a riot, bro.
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:28pm PT
Why aren't they protesting Obama and Solyndra??? How about GE?
Dodd and Barney Frank?
Eric Holder and Fast and Furious?
Oh yeah, that's o.k......
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:30pm PT
cuz yer a fuking moron, that's why.
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:30pm PT
Because they can't tell the difference between hating the game, and hating the player.
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:34pm PT
Occupy Wall Street has been dubbed the largest gathering of highly educated people in opposition of something. Or some such moniker.
When wicked smart people feel this passionately about something, it would do us some good to listen to what they have to say, whether we agree or not.
It ain't a partisan issue, it's an issue of respect.
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:35pm PT
We are all tea partiers now.
Our government has let us down.
Skip
That Royal "we" again... isn't that very odd indeed?
I thought Americans were republicans.
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:37pm PT
What's their solution to the problems they're spotlighting?
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:38pm PT
I thought Americans were republicans.
No, we're conservatives. And hence the revolt known as the Tea Party.
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:40pm PT
A glimpse into the protests;
http://zombietime.com/day_of_fail/
losers. All of them....
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:40pm PT
This ain't a riot bro'
This ain't a matter of rich people "stealing" money ... bro'
If it was you all would have a case. You don't.
I can assure you that point will be brought up over and over.
Because, if it is good enough for victims of violence to have to take people to court in order to seek remedy, then it is good enough for a bunch of rioting bozo's.
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
cutting edge blurring... a blog from a Sept 17th event... you've out done yourself.
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
The Banksters virtually bring down the world economy, using LOTS of fraud and dangerous techniques in the process, and NOBODY goes to jail and there's hardly any criminal investigation.
Some people non-violently protest that and Hundreds are arrested or cited.
And some of you squarely blame the protesters.
You are cuckholders
The Bankers broke plenty of laws. They are negotiating for immunity from state attorney generals as we speak. Why do that if you are innocent? No accountability, no personal or corporate responsibility. They got HUGE government bailouts and still aren't living up to their side of the bargain by loaning again.
but yeah, all that responsibility speech from the GOP is just for poor people
cuckholders
Peace
Karl
Edit
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:42pm PT
WE are a nation made up of immigrants who have a wide range of opinions on a myriad of topics. Not, as Bluering says, a nation of conservatives.
rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:43pm PT
The Tea Party...Puppets on a string ...A front for the Koch bros cajoling the financially oppressed to protest taxation of the elite...A noble cause...
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:47pm PT
This is a link to their first "official statement"...
http://getgrounded.tv/2011/10/02/grounded-news-first-%E2%80%98official%E2%80%99-statement-from-the-occupy-wall-street-movement/
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:47pm PT
Bluering,
As a well known supporter of the people in uniform, can you emphatically state they don't feel cheated for their service ? Iraq and Afghanistan were about oil acquisition. even arch Republican Greenspan admitted that on retirement.
Maybe people really getting shot at for principles would like the reason to be valid.
Jim
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:51pm PT
WEll then, you'll want to see this.
A message from anonymous about the wall street protests.
http://ampedstatus.org/a-message-from-anonymous-concerning-occupywallstreet-and-the-bankers-video/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hOit6CzX6M8
V for President!
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 2, 2011 - 12:59pm PT
I thought Americans were republicans.
No, we're conservatives. And hence the revolt known as the Tea Party.
Bluering, do you really mean that? :-D
You're not a republican?
You know, if you don't believe in the republican idea, the Brits do have a monarchy. I guess they're the best choice, the other monarchies would be too... too leftist for you, I'm pretty sure.
The Brits might have people opposing to public protest marches, you'd have a hard time to find that in the other monarchies. It would be considered quite normal to protest against Wall Street. It's called "free speech" over here, you see.
Don't know much about Tonga though, they have a monarchy too, btw.
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:00pm PT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-street-protests-new-york_n_989221.html
Occupy Wall Street: NYPD Arrests 700 Protesters On Brooklyn Bridge [LATEST UPDATES]
Occupy Wall Street
Hundreds of people protesting Wall Street abuses were penned in and arrested by police Saturday, two weeks into an ongoing demonstration that has become known on Twitter as #OccupyWallStreet.
Centered at Zuccotti Park since September 17, the gathering that began as a call to arms from anti-consumerist magazine AdBusters has shown no sign of a slowdown.
The movement aims to "express a feeling of mass injustice," according to the group’s declaration for the occupation of New York City released Friday. The injustices include the foreclosure crisis, work place discrimination and student loan debt, among a list of others.
As HuffPost reported recently, the movement is less about specific policy demands and more about an expression of opposition to ever yawning economic inequality driven by Wall Street and its allies in Washington.
Calling themselves an American revolution, the protesters say they plan to stay in the park indefinitely.
Greg Basta, an official with New York Communities for Change, said that the organizers were encouraged by police on Saturday to march on the street area of the Brooklyn Bridge, instead of the walkway, then subsequently arrested them for marching in traffic. Two lead organizers, Jonathan Westin and Pete Nagy, were penned in by police. Westin managed to exit the police pen, but Nagy is missing and presumed detained by police, Basta told HuffPost.
"Police say some demonstrators spilled onto the roadway Saturday night after being told to stay on the pedestrian pathway," the Associated Press reported.
Similar demonstrations started Saturday in Washington and Los Angeles.
Shon Botado, a protester staffing a first aid station in New York, told The Huffington Post on Friday that he’s not leaving “until change is made to the financial structure.”
Ron Anderson
Trad climber
USA Carson city Nev.
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:02pm PT
maybe,,,just maybe,, its the start of something good in this country.
khanom
Trad climber
The Dessert
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:03pm PT
Don't hold your breath. Like all dissent in recent times, it will be suppressed.
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:10pm PT
Ron, I sure hope this gains momentum.
Again, it's not a partisan issue, some here have blinders on in regards to the news. It IS NOT a political issue, it's more broad than that.
It seems to be about fairness and accountability and I hope it is about empathy for your fellow man trumping greed.
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:13pm PT
I hope too it does gain momentum.
There's so many who have lost their homes, lost their jobs, have no health care, lost their retirement funds, while jobs have been outsourced and profits and personal bonuses have gone through the roof. They play not only with Americans, they play with world economy too.
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:20pm PT
Here is a look at the protest in action...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fockzr7rXys#!
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:25pm PT
In Canada, banks are allowed to loan 7 times more than the assets they hold. This is conservative compared to the amounts loanable that only exist through gambling on people paying on time(same as Canada) in the USA.
If free enterprise was truly free, the institution you put in and borrowed your money from would prosper or fail on their ability to perform.
khanom
Trad climber
The Dessert
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:29pm PT
I can't believe so few cops stopped that group of protesters. In some other countries they would have just steam-rolled the cops and kept right on going.
To me this says a lot about our seriousness. I just don't think we have the conviction to really act.
I mean people are getting killed in protests in the middle east and we let one line of a couple of dozen cops stop a column of thousands?
It's embarrassing!!
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:31pm PT
I haven't seen any footage of the protesters being violent. What is the official justification for the arrests? How many tea baggers got arrested? What if these protesters had shown up with loaded guns?
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:34pm PT
Yeah, it's an inherently profitable business if you don't get super greedy.
A bank sells you a CD for $100,000 and pays 1/2 % interest on it these days. From that deposit they can loan out S1,000,000 of computer generated money for a mortgage and charge 5% on that money. 5% of 1,000,000 is $50,000 and to earn that they only had to give out $5,000 plus their overhead.
Nobody else has that sort of profit margin. It's only by leveraging, fudging and fooling dangerously that they can't make their business a cash cow, which it is, except the CEO don't want to take cuts in their multi-million dollars salaries to pay for bad calls they made trying to make ever greater profits
peace
Karl
Edit
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
Weschrist,
They didn't listen to the cops. That's why they got arrested.
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:36pm PT
We didn't listen to the British, that's how we got America
Edit
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 01:37pm PT
tsssssss!
Seems like the police orders to disassemble a peaceful demonstration contradicts the Constitutional Right to Peaceably Assemble. For reference, that is the one that comes BEFORE the one about guns.
So let me get this straight... conservatives with a history of rants about killing Obama can "peaceably assemble" with loaded guns and signs about niggers, but liberals can't peaceably assemble if it contradicts an order by one person with a gun and pepper spray?
Dave
Mountain climber
the ANTI-fresno
Oct 2, 2011 - 02:50pm PT
"if they earned less bonus incentives in new contracts than the year before, then they got none of it."
That statement makes absolutely no sense, Cleo.
Did they earn less bonus, receive fewer incentives to sign contracts, or sign fewer contracts?
I have worked for and with consulting engineering firms and have not found your statement (confusing at it is) true for most companies in my industry.
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:07pm PT
The police must have a reason to act, I assume? I assume that not even in the USA a police officer can behave as he pleases? Since it's one of the basic rights to demonstrate in a democracy, wouldn't that be a pretty serious offence, to act without a cause?
It's rather stupid by the police to stop a march if it's peceful. If enough people feel that their justified right to express their opinions are thwarted, it will too easily turn into violence instead. Hopefully numbers will grow, so it will be a real civil rights movement.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:14pm PT
All the usual suspects on this thread screamed at the top of their lungs for years telling us that Obama was the answer to all this Wall Street Greed.
We tried to tell them that no politician of any party will ever stop this. That the real answer is to limit government so that they don't have the power to hand over trillions of our dollars to greedy people.
But, they said we were wrong. They said what we needed to do was give more and more power to government. And more money to wall street. After all we were having a global meltdown.
Obama got to even lead the charge.
Now these same clowns want to cover all that up. They want to tell us they have the answer all over again. That what we need to do now, is give more power to government (Gee, who could have predicted) so that they can take other American's stuff without providing them due process.They tell us that it's because the rich didn't act fair.
More to the point: These same clowns don't offer the same due process they demand terrorists get.
These Obama drones flat out do not get it.
They always have an answer. And, it always involves either giving Government all power. Or telling us that anarchy is the only answer.
Give it up, drones.
You look foolish.
Skip
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:19pm PT
be afraid be very afrAID
FOR THIS IS A SMALL SAMPLE OF THINGS TO COME
or not.
just load up the 12 gauge and buy a big bag of bisanti rice,
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:21pm PT
Skip,
What does this have to do with Obama or even Bush ? It has more to do with enforcing the law. The law is not being applied to a sector of criminal behavior that includes a revolving door for lucrative jobs as private pirates or federal overseers.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:24pm PT
Gee Jim,
I have been saying that if a case could be made feel free to make it.
I was told over and over on this thread that I didn't understand what I was saying.
Now you back up my point.
Thanks.
Skip
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:27pm PT
It's quite easy to be caught up in the political threads.
I better stop.
:-)
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:31pm PT
I don't care what we do, as long as we don't interfere with the current tax breaks for the rich... that would be Socialism, or Marxism, or Communism, or something.
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:31pm PT
Skip,
your points can rise or fall on their own merits.
Unfortunately for your thing about less government, less government (no enforcement of law) is why whole scale rip offs are explained away as just economic bad luck. You know, unsophisticated investors and all the other pablum criminals feed people.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:35pm PT
We need the government to determine which Dr's go to jail for removing which rapidly reproducing cells in a woman's body... as long as they don't tell corporations which toxic chemicals they can dump into waterways, which endangered species they can harvest to extinction, what they can pass off as "food," and what taxes they pay... that just wouldn't be fair.
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:37pm PT
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:19pm PT
be afraid be very afrAID
FOR THIS IS A SMALL SAMPLE OF THINGS TO COME
or not.
just load up the 12 gauge and buy a big bag of bisanti rice,
Don't forget the bath salts.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:45pm PT
The people organizing these protests are using people and their passions for nothing more than a fundraising event.
Skip
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:46pm PT
that makes sense.
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:47pm PT
OK, here's an example of how I conduct business.
I recently finished a project where I was building a playground for a local nonprofit. We bid on it at a discounted hourly rate. We finished early and below budget. The three of us that were equal partners on the project took the dividend on the bid and gave it back to the nonprofit as a charitable, tax deductible donation.
I made exceptional money despite the intentional pay cut, and managed to give a cool thousand dollars back to the community center.
Not sure if this fits into this conversation, but I suspect it does.
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:51pm PT
+1 for doing business that way Brandon, especially for a non profit
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:55pm PT
you can not buy a country,
you have to earn it,
what that means is beyond my comprehension,
niners win again, wtf?
lucy, you have some splainin to do,
ricky retardo
late nite hero for insomniacs, methodists, narco snorters, you name it, we got it at rays chowder house,
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 03:59pm PT
Unfortunately for your thing about less government, less government (no enforcement of law) is why whole scale rip offs are explained away as just economic bad luck. You know, unsophisticated investors and all the other pablum criminals feed people.
Jim,
Your argument rests on the fact you cannot comprehend the difference between less government and no government.
Just because we can agree that government has its legitimate purpose does not mean we have to agree on all things past that point.
Skip
EDIT: Dr. Sprock, white face jive is disgusting....
Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:01pm PT
ST full of smart theory flies out the window when I read the first few of this thread today...
They (the protesters) are calling themselves the 99%.
They are calling for equality.
Good source of information so far has been Democracy Now.
http://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow
For more on the occupy wall street story:
http://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow#p/a/u/0/RSvutn9aNKE
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:09pm PT
Brandon is a better example of how to go about helping one another.
Certainly much better than taking rich people's stuff without due process.
I suggest we all take his example. Start making a difference on our own.
We can even have a motto:
WE can DO IT!!! Yes WE Can!!! WE don't need government to tell us what to do!!!
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:13pm PT
The people organizing these protests are using people and their passions for nothing more than a fundraising event.
Holy sh#t skipt, yer on a roll! What do you expect, after Fux News had such a great success with Tea Baggers?
Certainly much better than taking rich people's stuff without due process.
How about gambling on derivatives, taking tax payer money to give executives bonuses, and spending millions on lobbyists to make sure nothing changes? That seems to be working for the corporation funded Rupert Murdoch/Fux News "grass roots" Tea Bagger movement.
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:19pm PT
Ok I give up.
Just exactly WHO is behind these protests?
Who is this organized group that rounded up the protestors?
And who exactly are the people or organization that will get this "funding"..
And where does this funding come from?
Honestly, I have been reading everything I can find, and can't see answers to the above.
Edit: one more question: the names of rich people that these protestors have taken money from illegally, as in without due process, please?
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:20pm PT
Norton, Michael Moore and Al Gore started it.
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:20pm PT
How did Michael Moore and Al Gore have money taken from them by these protestors without due process?
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:22pm PT
They didn't. They just hate our freedoms.
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:30pm PT
Ah, got it now, thanks Wes.
I would have thought ACORN was behind the protestors.
Or more likely Anchor Babies.
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 04:56pm PT
Skip,
No where did I imply less government equals no government. Where there is less government there has to be less governing and in some instances, no oversight. The con artists always rise to these occasions when an industry is allowed to snow authorities into thinking they are worthy of self regulation.
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:02pm PT
blue collar anarchy is on the way
Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:04pm PT
Brandon-
Your post above is exemplary and commendable of your business model. It is, on the face of it, fair and equitable for both parties (though, taking a look from a purely capitalist standpoint you may have walked backwards naked through a corn field)….
You have to understand that this/your standard is not the standard for the current/recent, and past business model…. Greed is.
And that is the problem.
That seems to be the reason for the failure of the American model.
That seems to be the reason for the failure of America.
And that seems to be the reason for the occupy wall street.
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:08pm PT
Norton writes:
"I would have thought ACORN was behind the protestors."
A.N.S.W.E.R. is.
http://www.answercoalition.org/la/
Same thing.
cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:15pm PT
There is a huge number of Americans who simply don't realize that they've been victimized by Wall Street – that they've paid inflated commodity prices due to irresponsible speculation and manipulation, seen their home values depressed thanks to corruption in the mortgage markets, subsidized banker bonuses with their tax dollars and/or been forced to pay usurious interest rates for consumer credit, among other things.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/occupy-wall-street-drawing-the-battle-lines-20110927
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:26pm PT
"This Monday, 5pm, in Los Angeles there will be an emergency Mass March in Solidarity with the Wall Street Protesters who were arrested and those brutalized by New York City Police."
I'm going to be occupied by a pork taco around 5pm tomorrow... unless something else materializes.
oh...
http://www.occupytogether.org/
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:50pm PT
Did any of you click the second link after the link I posted? the one where V explains the goals and strategy of the Occupy WS?
Its labeled as being from Anonymous. and explains the crowd control methods the police will use, the kinds of clothing and equipment you should bring, and how to defend or "de-arrest" someone.
But I didm't see a way to link it seperate.
I kinda think it cute. An organized protest for a decentralized purpose.
Can dissent be coming back? Dissent is a mean social weapon when the right man can realize it. Abbie Hoffman was an ultimate poweer center, because of his sense of humor in planning events. THere were others.
I wonder who is Anonymous ...
nature
climber
back in Tuscon Aridzona....
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:53pm PT
Good luck with the march.
They will get Tooled.
the Pigs will f*#k up.
The pigs won't be held accountable.
same sh#t, different state.
not use to it?
and the fat ones will just shoot you....
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:59pm PT
The "stopped clock" got it correct today.
http://www.infowars.com/occupy-wall-street-protesters-call-totalitarian-government-re-election-of-obama/
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 05:59pm PT
Chaz, please try to understand that ACORN was a community benefit organization that received Federal Funding, and OccupyWallstreet receives no Federal Funding, and appears to be without "sponsors" or ANY funding.
Do you understand therefore that ACORN is not similar to OccupyWallstreet?
I honestly cannot see how in the world you could come that conclusion.
Perhaps you will list the very specifics of the similarities of their respective origin, organization, funding, and degree of true grass roots spontaneity?
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:06pm PT
Norton, this has been in the works for at least two years now. Andy Stern (SCIU), other ex ACORN functionaries and a host of both anarchist and communist organizations have been planning it for several years. There's even audio tape from the planning meetings last year and early this year.
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:14pm PT
TGT,
Can you direct me to the Communist organizations involved with this protest?
Just a quick link detailing their involvement, thanks.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:16pm PT
It's like Canadians don't read their own words:
No where did I imply less government equals no government.
Here are your words:
Unfortunately for your thing about less government, less government (no enforcement of law) is why whole scale rip offs are explained away as just economic bad luck
"less government (no enforcement of law)"
No Jim. You didn't "imply less government equals no government" you flat out said it in all its glory.
Skip
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:18pm PT
Norton writes:
"Can you direct me to the Communist organizations involved with this protest?
Just a quick link detailing their involvement, thanks."
Here you go, Norton:
http://www.answercoalition.org/la/
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:22pm PT
nature,
you make it sound as were you a third world dictatorship country. Voices brutally beaten down, as a protest in China.
Do you really believe it will be what happens?
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:26pm PT
Synergistic, decentralized, unrelated scamming and planning, Skippy.
Timelines converging, but without cellular interactions.
Groups don't know when, but at the right time, North Korea and Syria will add their teams to the internet convergence, strengthening the effect of the DOS that wipes out our silly banker owned coin of the realm, the Chase-Banko'merica electron. No backbone, no bank, no bank, no commerce, no currency (greenbacks) in circulation, no accounting systems in the cloud, for however many days they can keep the run going.
Bankers are insufficient to maintain an electronic currency security, and guaranteeing the success of the nations security that the currency represents. The government is required to be the backer of the currency. Its time they moved into the 21th century and secured our nations new electronic system of everyday trade, by nationalizing it and putting it under the Dept. of the Treasury. If anyone is going to make a percentage tax off of every dollar spent in common trade, it should be the US Government,(that is the ONLY agency that is allowed to lay a general fee of such magnitude) and be used to run the other stuff.. The bankers have appropriated a governments function, and it was not recognised at the time.
By the right people...
((It makes sense if you don't think about it...))
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:41pm PT
Who is SCIU?
Morons.
There's even audio tape from the planning meetings last year and early this year.
Great, where's the link?
I have audio tape of your mom.
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:42pm PT
Ok TGT and Chaz,
I have read the link, it is simply a news account of the protests from a minor media source, and calls on readers to do likewise.
I don't see anything proving the assertion that Communist are behind the protestors.
The link is not helpful in this regard as it says nothing about that.
But you directed me to you as if it did.
Perhaps you can give me the direct link from a major credible source to read where you personally learned of Communist involvement?
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 06:56pm PT
Skip,
To clarify:
Less government can and does sometimes lead to no enforcement of law. That was the intention of what I wrote.
Now, if you're a fan of industrial self regulation, I hope you weren't choking on some of that delicious bagged salad that was poisoning people a while ago...
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:00pm PT
Jim,
I don't have a clue as to what the hell you are talking about.
First you tell me that what I mean by "less government" means "no regulation" which it doesn't.
Then you tell me that what I mean by "less government" means "self industrial regulation" which it doesn't.
What more can you get wrong?
Honestly, if you want to know what I think you need to ask.
Skip
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:13pm PT
Ok Skip, I'll ask.
What do you think about the political and social relationships between employees of the SEC and employees of various Wall Street institutions ?
Cintune's link up thread is a good start concerning the journalism of Matt Taibbi. You don't have to like Taibbi, but his writings about Wall Street can be very illuminating.
Jim
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
I said "if you are a fan of industrial self regulation". That's different than stating you are a fan.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:23pm PT
Less Government = Less Cronyism
I think the relationship between Wall Street and Washington is way to cozy.
I support less government that focuses on real regulation and less cronyism.
Repeal Dodd-Frank NOW!!!
Skip
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:32pm PT
Chaz, where is the link between COMMUNISM and the wall street protestors?
TGT?
John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:35pm PT
Less Government = Less Cronyism
Whatever vacuum less government creates will be filled by private enterprise. Private enterprise has its share of cronyism.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:42pm PT
Moose,
Your argument gets us nowhere.
If you are doing business with someone you don't like it is for 1 of 2 reasons.
Either you are stupid. Or, you are forced.
And, since I don't think you are stupid, I will ask you who is forcing you...
Skip
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:51pm PT
Chaz, where is the link between COMMUNISM and the wall street protestors?
TGT?
John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
Oct 2, 2011 - 07:56pm PT
There are plenty of reasons one doesn't have much choice of who they do business with. And lots of circumstance that don't require government to provide the force.
The only options I have for high speed internet are ATT and none.
Is ATT forcing me to use them? Nope.. But my only other choice is dial up, and that aint high speed internet. I don't have an angle on satellite from my house. I could from across the street, but satellite is 3 times as much as I am paying.
So what kind of choice is that?
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 2, 2011 - 08:27pm PT
FAIL
as usual
Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
Oct 2, 2011 - 08:41pm PT
Whatever vacuum less government creates will be filled by private enterprise
Yep. I think you are really onto something there!
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 08:48pm PT
There are plenty of reasons one doesn't have much choice of who they do business with. And lots of circumstance that don't require government to provide the force.
The only options I have for high speed internet are ATT and none.
Is ATT forcing me to use them? Nope.. But my only other choice is dial up, and that aint high speed internet. I don't have an angle on satellite from my house. I could from across the street, but satellite is 3 times as much as I am paying.
So what kind of choice is that?
John, do you use cellular access (g3-g4) or do you use cable?
Skip
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 2, 2011 - 09:02pm PT
wall street and communism?
who is manipulating stock,
china?
no way,
right?
i better say goodbye before i cry
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 09:21pm PT
The real reason Dr. Sprock cries is because his whitey tighty ass is showing.
He takes his cue straight from the KKK.
"Let's all put on black face and do the shuck and jive together."
What a dope....
Skip
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 2, 2011 - 10:13pm PT
Some of you guys don't seem to appreciate how unique these protests are. They are similar to the g-whatever protests of the last few years, but his is pointed directly at American big banking business.
Not the Army, not the political conventions, its a modern and recent backlash at what people have perceived as financial risk engendered by the Big money boys, we used to trust a little more...
I kinda like it, its cute.
I will like it even more if it becomes a little MONSTEROUS protest. Its what we need. Wisconsin for Washington DC.
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 2, 2011 - 10:56pm PT
some people get rich, others eat sh#t and die
it is a generation of swine out there
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:05pm PT
Let's all put on black face and shuck and jive in concert.
Come on, Dr. Sprock does it. So, it must be OK.
Skip
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 2, 2011 - 11:17pm PT
your right, time for an avatar update
howa bout a baby's arm holding an apple, would you like to see that?
google tommy lee
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:20am PT
Dr. Sprock,
Would you like to see your mentor
Google Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Skip
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 3, 2011 - 04:02am PT
Credit: Lolli
khanom
Trad climber
The Dessert
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:56am PT
That was then... And Lennon's words aren't as relevant. "They" know how to handle non-violence perfectly. The NYPD has it down.
But how would the react to people who actually stood up to them? I wonder.
FortMental
Social climber
Albuquerque, NM
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:59am PT
Your argument gets us nowhere.
Thank you SkipT for arguments that do! Every "Occupy Wall Street" protester deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor for having the balls to do something no one is willing to do to save American civilization from itself.
You want to kill this movement? Hand every protester a free i-Pad. Guaranteed instantaneous lobotomy.
squishy
Mountain climber
Sac town
Oct 3, 2011 - 08:00am PT
Occupy Sacramento 1st meeting...protest is planned for the 6th...oh yeah!
There were tea baggers and progressives ready to help..
Lovegasoline
Trad climber
Sh#t Hole, Brooklyn, NY
Oct 3, 2011 - 09:19am PT
That was then... And Lennon's words aren't as relevant. "They" know how to handle non-violence perfectly. The NYPD has it down.
But how would the react to people who actually stood up to them? I wonder.
I wonder what would have happened if when confronted with arrest, the thousand(s) of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge immediately sat down and tightly locked arms with one another in one huge inseparable knot?
One benefit of the arrests is that although they have been protesting and marching en mass for weeks, the mainstream media has deliberately avoided reporting it. The mass arrests yesterday has got the media engaged and got you all talking about them. That in itself is a measure of success for the protesters. They now have the nation's attention. Let's see what the next step is.
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 09:30am PT
Now ordering up the LASD "Heat Ray" to handle the crowds.
The evil one
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 10:20am PT
What are they protesting FOR
ANSWER: Other people's money.
What do they have to LOSE
ANSWER: Their Union benefits
Skip
EDIT: This was in response to Dingus who pulled his post.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:07am PT
After a few days of banging drums and annoying locals, the Wall Street protests have finally incurred the wrath of New York City. Around seven hundred were arrested over the weekend and Mayor Bloomberg has spoken ominously about clearing the streets. They’ve put on a good show but the general feeling is that they’ve failed to engage a sceptical public. Given the scale of America’s economic and political crises, this is surprising. But then the protesters and their message are doomed to fail. There’s something oddly un-American about both.
Polls show that more than two-thirds of Americans think corporations and banks have too much power. They are correct. For example, liberal commentator Sally Kohn points out that “members of the congressional supercommittee charged with reaching a bipartisan deficit reduction solution have received $41 million from the financial sector during their time in Congress … At least 27 current or former aides to supercommittee members have worked as lobbyists for financial sector interests.” Congress has become a trading floor upon which influence is bought and sold for the price of a campaign donation. It’s about time someone kick started a revolt.
But the Wall Street protesters are the wrong crowd to do it. This photo, of a lady sitting next to a sign titled “Corporate Freeloaders!” while having her photograph taken with an IPad, goes to the heart of the problem. Never trust the political rhetoric of young white hippies: it is undermined by their fabulous wealth and their complete detachment from reality. They travel the world from riot to riot – a cause on every continent, a ring in every orifice. They might have the diet of a North African peasant, but these spoiled brats are professional agitators financed by a generous trust fund.
One thing that is especially irksome about their movement is its pleasure seeking. This protest, like countless others, has been described as having a “carnival atmosphere”. Doesn’t that seem a little less than revolutionary? During the Red Scare of 1919-1920, America was torn apart by union strikes and anarchist bombs. Clashes between labor and nationalist mobs in Cleveland, Ohio were only broken by mounted police. Two people died, forty were injured and 116 were arrested. Compare that grim, cheerless struggle for workers’ rights with this report from the Wall Street protests, which briefly swelled when it was announced that Radiohead would be playing in Zuccotti Park: “While hundreds of people have camped out overnight in the plaza during the two-week old sit-in for social change, an online announcement that Radiohead was en route jammed the plaza. “I actually think it's kind of ridiculous,” said a dreadlocked 20-year-old who identified himself as Pigpen. “The only reason 500 people are here is because they think Radiohead is going to be here.”” Radiohead’s appearance turned out to be a hoax and the crowd dispersed. According to the New York Daily News, “Organizers were red-faced.”
The protesters’ bigger problem is that the Credit Crunch has discredited the Left as much as the Right. Both sides have taken money from Wall Street and both sides have contributed to its financial nosedive. In 2008, Barack Obama gathered more money from hedge-fund and bank employees that he did from any other group. His appointments in office were lifted straight from the very financial institutions he spent the election criticising. Under his administration, the Federal Reserve gave $3.3 trillion in bailout money to overseas corporations without asking what the cash was for. American liberalism has become a byword for monopolistic capitalism. It supports Wall Street and big manufacturers by guaranteeing that they won’t go under. It simultaneously delivers billions of dollars to contractors, public service workers and welfare recipients as part of a strategy that is laughingly called Keynesian. As The Commentator has noted, across the Western World it is the ham-fisted, interventionist Left that is to blame for our economic woes by messing with the natural cycles of the free market. Capitalism doesn’t need to be abolished. It needs to be unleashed.
Compare the aimless Wall Street protesters with the folksy savvy of the Tea Party. The Tea Party was started by ordinary folks who hate the corporations just as much as they hate the government. They have experienced the nightmare of foreclosure, or of a chain store opening across the street and killing their trade. They know that the bailout was driven by financial lobbyists, and they hate every congressman who voted for it. They are what the novelist Chilton Williamson once called, “Country and Western Marxists”. What differentiates them from the Wall Street protesters is culture. They are recognisably American in their ideals and appearance. And they get that the American people don’t want to see the free market curtailed by yet another social democratic contract. Best of all, the Tea Party won’t take to the streets to get what they want. They understand that the path to reform of Wall Street begins at the ballot box. The Tea Party represents an American vision of the future. The Wall Street protesters are a horrible reminder of its past mistakes.
Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:09am PT
What are they protesting FOR
ANSWER: Other people's money.
What do they have to LOSE
ANSWER: Their Union benefits
Skip
This only shows how manipulated and totally clueless you are, skip. Start thinking for yourself with an open mind, stop letting Rush Limbaugh do your thinking for you.
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:16am PT
A suggestion Skip.
If you are going to revisit posts, it should be for grammatical reasons only. It's frustrating to reply to your ideas when you reconstruct a former post after the fact.
If you have more to add, just post it. Backtracking is like some weird, expedient time machine.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:17am PT
Barrack Obama got more money from Wall Street and Hedge funds than any other group.
Now he sends his Union Thugs out for another shakedown.
It's time for real Americans to take their country back from stupid trust fund liberals.
Skip
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:17am PT
Now ordering up the LASD "Heat Ray" to handle the crowds.
The evil one
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:18am PT
If you are going to revisit posts, it should be for grammatical reasons only.
Asswipe,
As much as you want to enact your slave holding mentality it won't fly.
You don't make the rules.
Skip
JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:24am PT
They've come by the hundreds all accross America to protest Wall Street, and they wonder why the world doesn't stop what we're doing and immediately do what they ask, whatever that is.
Sorry -- been there, done that. I was a student at Berkeley from 1969-73. We thought we had a monopoloy on intelligence, and couldn't understand why we weren't running the world. It never occurred to us that our observation about who wasn't running the world might contradict our assumption about our superior intelligence.
John
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:26am PT
Name calling....
Any way, If you want your logic taken seriously, don't be revisionist.
Slave holding mentality ? Huh? You rightly called me on not being clear. Can you accept your written imperfections ?
CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:30am PT
You have to understand that this/your standard is not the standard for the current/recent, and past business model…. Greed is.
And that is the problem.
That seems to be the reason for the failure of the American model.
That seems to be the reason for the failure of America.
And that seems to be the reason for the occupy wall street.
This is a very naive argument. First of all, do you really think greed just came into existence in the last few years? The problem is that the Government has completely distorted the incentives in the markets. In regards to the financial industry, Banks used to take in money from depositors, and loan it out to people who used it to buy houses, etc. They were VERY careful about who they loaned it to, because it was their money. THAT was greed! What we have now is a system where Banks don't even want deposits, because they can borrow money from the Treasury that they don't have to insure, at near zero rates, and then buy Treasury bonds with it. Banks still make some home loans, but they are quickly stamped with the Government's seal of approval so they are insured by Uncle Sam. Who cares what happens to them after that? It's no longer their money.
The problem is not greed. The Founding Fathers knew enough about human nature to factor that into our system. The problem is distorted/mismatched incentives.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:32am PT
Nicholas D. Kristof offers advice:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/02/opinion/100000001084589/advice-for-the-wall-street-protesters.html
Thanks
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:34am PT
Jim,
I really don't care what you think.
Honest, I don't.
You hound and hound me. You demand I respond to your incessant nonsense. All the while you put words in my mouth I don't say.
It is ridiculous.
BTW, how much did you pay in American Income tax last year?
Why is it you think your opinion is worth more than those who do?
Skip
Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:40am PT
Skipt, awesome essay. I especialy liked all that stuff about "natural cycles of the market" and "unleashing capitalism". That last up natural cycle we had back in 08 was pretty sweet but then the liberal interventionists must have done something and that why we are riding this natural down cycle which isn't so sweet but we now know that unleashing capitalism once again will cure everything.
I did notice one small typo which i took the liberty of fixing for you:
Compare the aimless Wall Street protesters with the folksy suckers of the Tea Party.
your welcome - any time i can be of help
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:41am PT
Skippy:
WOW: That post above about how lame and un American and Un-Tea-party the Occupy wall Street guys are set me to wondering where it came from.
I copied the first paragraph and looked for exact matches. On first blink, it looks like that shows up 266,000 times, in all manner of blogs, news services, forums and other places where people read bullshit propaganda.
That is the OFFICUIAL ANSWER to the Occupy Wall Street, and so far, I dom't even see an atribution. Where did the original verbiage come from, and who?
Edit: I got it down to abou 16 sites, although that thing looks plagerized about 10 times...
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:42am PT
Turn them to french fries:
http://sheriff.lacounty.gov/wps/portal/lasd/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3hLAwMDd3-nYCN3M19LA0_nEDPvMJMAQ39jA_2CbEdFAFVdgp4!/?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/wps/wcm/connect/lasd+content/lasd+site/home/home+top+stories/aid+unvealed
I worked a couple of shifts with Bob Osborne.
The evil one
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:43am PT
Hound you ? That's funny.
How about reply to you and try to understand your point of view. If I thought you were a joke,I'd just ignore it. I've said many times that I simply like good ideas, be they right or left.
What would be appropriate ? getting all thin skinned and thinking you are hounding me and I should be afraid because I got called "asswipe" on an internet forum ? Or Just rolling with it like in real life.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:44am PT
Jim,
Go away.
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:45am PT
It doesn't matter who it came from, or how accurate or informed it is. It only matters that skipt and clones BELIEVE it and spread it. Religitards are good at spreading propaganda without any attempt to understand or validate it. That's why Repugnikunts pander to them.
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:45am PT
Also I didn't demand you respond to my incessant nonsense. You asked me to ask you for your answer.
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:48am PT
Occupy Wall Street protests spread across U.S. to Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044704/Occupy-Wall-Street-protests-spread-U-S-Boston-Los-Angeles-Chicago.html
— The demonstrations have already spread to Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Denver and Seattle - and the arrests of 700 people in New York have only strengthened protesters' resolve.
How many of them fry units you think you got, Fattfried? Looks like you may need to put in another order. Wonder when the Wave reaches Boise?
We were on the trailing edge of the 60's and 70's, too.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:49am PT
Occupy Wall Street: A Sad Display
The occupation and threats amount to little more than mob rule, writes Jonathan Hoenig
By JONATHAN HOENIG
There's something rather sad about the "Occupy Wall Street" protests which have been underway for over two weeks in New York, Chicago, Boston and other major US cities.
In earlier generations, civil disobedience like the Montgomery Bus Boycott or women's suffrage movement used nonviolent protest to combat blatant violations of individual rights.
The dreadlocked bands of youth camping out in New York's Zuccotti Park, however, are hardly Freedom Riders. Their demands range from "ending the modern gilded age" to "ending joblessness," although as an asterisk on their "Declaration of the Occupation notes, "these grievances are not all-inclusive."
The blog n+1 reported proposals ranging from a lifetime guaranteed income to the removal of the New York's iconic Wall Street bull sculpture.
On the heels of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations in New York, protesters have gathered in downtown San Francisco. WSJ's Geoffrey A. Fowler reports.
And while it would be easy to write off these so-called protests as diffuse expressions of general twentysomething malaise, as they have grown, they have developed into something more dangerous: Organizing and promoting an "occupation" distinguishes this effort as that of a mob.
There is no right to disrupt traffic or occupy other people's property, no matter if it's one lunatic individual or the 99% of the public protesters claim to represent. What's so lamentable about "Occupy Wall Street" isn't even their collectivist goals but the means by which they go about to achieve them: force and intimidation.
Inspired by the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations in New York, some 100 people gathered Sunday outside the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago to protest inequities in the nation's financial system. WSJ's Jack Nicas reports.
Merriam-Webster defines "occupy" as "to take or hold possession or control of," which is exactly what the protestors have done. Just yesterday, 700 people were arrested in New York blocking cars on the Brooklyn Bridge. "These are our streets, we will occupy them" proclaims the Chicago group's fliers. Yet it's not the ideas they hope will persuade onlookers, but their obstruction. For more than two weeks they've camped out in front of the Chicago Board of Trade and other financial centers, banging drums, barking demands and disrupting people working in neighboring offices.
Capitalism, the system "Occupy Wall Street" so feverishly wants to bury, operates on the principle of voluntary trade, not occupation and threat. Capitalism treats men not as sacrifices for the public good, but as independent individuals with their own lives. From the professional on the trading floor to the kid selling lemonade, investors know that if you want something from someone else, you can't simply demand it by occupation, you have to trade for it, just as others must trade with you.
That's the justice protestors are seeking to destroy.
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:49am PT
You asked me to ask you for your answer.
skipt, you did, honest. I knew it was a load of sh#t when you asked, but I let Jim pursue it without saying anything.
Jim, you are wasting your time. skipt has proven countless times, beyond any shadow a doubt,that he is incapable of providing any form of useful contribution.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:51am PT
.
.
.
.
.
http://www.occupytogether.org/
,
,
,
,
,
,
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:53am PT
Jim,
The reason I had to tell you to "ask me" is because you kept putting words in my mouth.
You flat out wouldn't stop. So, I offered you a rhetorical remark about how to have a legitimate discussion.
If you want to know what I think just ask me. Stop putting words in my mouth.
Evidently you didn't quite get the concept.
Here is proof: You finally asked me and I answered you. Unfortunately, you have yet to respond to it. Instead, you changed the topic and started lecturing me on what posts I can respond to and how.
What to do.....
Skip
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:54am PT
I like mine extra crispy:
http://sheriff.lacounty.gov/wps/portal/lasd/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3hLAwMDd3-nYCN3M19LA0_nEDPvMJMAQ39jA_2CbEdFAFVdgp4!/?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/wps/wcm/connect/lasd+content/lasd+site/home/home+top+stories/aid+unvealed
The evil one
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:00pm PT
Well Skippy, I am surprised!
You can't seem to find ANYTHING to post that sounds at all positive.
And every word you've posted in those long rips of somebodies editorials sounds
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Gene
climber
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Will Karodrinker now please nuke his string of OCCUPY threads?
Appreciated,
g
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karodrinker
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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hell yea Karl. off with their heads.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 03:51pm PT
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I have to post the rest of the thread in a couple posts cause the whole thread doesn't fit in a post
++++
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:00pm PT
Well Skippy, I am surprised!
You can't seem to find ANYTHING to post that sounds at all positive.
And every word you've posted in those long rips of somebodies editorials sounds like its written by exactly the same group, maybe even the same guy! Same voice, same command of imagery and vocabulary, same illustration and examples.
All Same-same. Sounds like a professional paid to produce propaganda, not exactly unbiased even a little.
Here is the biggest thought you need get in your head.
Even the largest fires begin very small and weak.
This is a small fire, and its not got its theme worked out, the signs and slogans are still being devised. But this could catch, the soil is dry and the people are inflamed at corporate/political bullsh#t.
(Can a corporate-persona attend a riot?)
The Tea Party look old and dispassionate compared to these guys.
Burn baby, burn!
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:01pm PT
Capitalism, the system "Occupy Wall Street" so feverishly wants to bury, operates on the principle of voluntary trade, not occupation and threat. Capitalism treats men not as sacrifices for the public good, but as independent individuals with their own lives. From the professional on the trading floor to the kid selling lemonade, investors know that if you want something from someone else, you can't simply demand it by occupation, you have to trade for it, just as others must trade with you.
That's the justice protestors are seeking to destroy.
Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:05pm PT
Occupy Wall Street: A Sad Display
The occupation and threats amount to little more than mob rule, writes Jonathan Hoenig
By JONATHAN HOENIG
Skipt, it's rude, and violates copyright, to post an article without full attribution of the source, and a link. Or maybe you do not respect private property rights.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:07pm PT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Hoenig
Jonathan Hoenig (born September 10, 1975) is managing member at Capitalist Pig hedge fund and a regular contributor to Fox News Channel's Cashin' In.
Really, a contributer to Fux News? I never would have guessed.
Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:08pm PT
Anti-Wall Street Protests Spread to Other Cities
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5014162
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/anti-wall-street-protests-spread-to-other-cities.html?hp
http://www.occupytogether.org/
Edited on Mon Oct-03-11 02:35 PM by RedEarth
Source: NYT
Three weeks into a protest against corporate abuses and Wall Street power that has led to hundreds of arrests in New York, similar demonstrations are popping up in other cities across the country with the aid of social media and with the same loosely organized structure as the original demonstration.
On Monday, protesters were camped out in Los Angeles near City Hall, assembled in front of the Federal Reserve Bank building in Chicago and marching through downtown Boston to rally against corporate greed, unemployment and the role that financial institutions have played in pushing the country into its continuing economic malaise.
........
The groups have committees responsible for welcoming, security, transportation, art and the news media. Each has its own Google group. The arrests Saturday of more than 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge for blocking the roadway have energized the movement, and on Monday, new protests were planned for other cities, including Memphis, Tenn.; Allentown, Pa.; and Hilo, Hawaii, according to organizers.
Later this week, rallies are scheduled for Detroit; Portland, Ore.; Minneapolis; and Baltimore, as well as in cities that rarely see such civil disobedience — Mason City, Iowa; Mobile, Ala.; Little Rock, Ark.; Santa Fe, N.M.; and McAllen, Tex., according to Occupy Together, an unofficial hub for the protests that lists dozens of demonstrations planned for the next week, including some in Europe and Japan.
When the rich, elite 1%, immorally, unethically, and greedily abuse the rest of us 99%, this is what happens.
Wealth and opportunity should be for everyone, not just for the rich, elite 1%. The rules of the game should not favor the 1% only and screw everyone else. Nor should our government be all about protecting the rich elite 1%.
This is supposed to be a government, a democracy, for the people and by the people. Right now it isn't. I think the people want to see it changed equitably, to just and fair.
What is GOD's advice to the rich elite of the World towards the rest of us, and to the poor of the World?
There is your answer.
There is a right and wrong here.
Bruce Kay
Gym climber
BC
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:09pm PT
What differentiates them from the Wall Street protesters is culture. They are recognisably American in their ideals and appearance.
So true and i'm glad someone finally had the courage to point this out. I mean, how can anyone take seriously those who must surely be trust funders easily identifiable by nose piercings and dreadlocks? With looks like that, it really dosn't matter what they say.
We went through this nonsense a decade or so ago when a bunch of hackey sack playing, bongo druming grannies and mere kids had the nerve to claim that we were logging off our valleys at what they claimed to be a "unsustainable rate", as if they somehow knew better than industry. Well really all you had to do was look at them and compare to the hard working boys with the saws to know that they had no credibility. Now decades later the proof is in the pudding.
remember, if they look funny, they probably are
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:10pm PT
Capitalism, the system "Occupy Wall Street" so feverishly wants to bury, operates on the principle of voluntary trade, not occupation and threat. Capitalism treats men not as sacrifices for the public good, but as independent individuals with their own lives
Who, John Galt? You quoting Ayn Rand, Skippy?
Attribute the blatant propaganda, Skippy, we like to see the names of the propagandist. Good to know somebody still makes a living the old way. By Lying about motivations and reality.
Bitching about Capitalists crying over the unfair tactics. That's rich, because they always call "the body of the people" unfair. Corporate-persons are a fiction used to spread money and influence around without naming the actual man/men who are doing it.
But corporations cannot deal with the body of the people well, the people are usually too big to bribe with cash, and that is the trade of capitalism. The bigger the capitalist and the bigger the problem, the more he wants to solve problems by throwing money at politicians.
These guys are going to be spending a LOT of Corporate Donations To Political Events and Candidates this coming year. IT's their answer to the Morality of Human Needs.
Lets see if Americans are all THAT Stupid, STILL.
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:12pm PT
Ah, more revising of a post. OK:
Naturally I paid no American income tax because I am a Canadian.
Why do I have an opinion about the American economy and the recent unpunished criminal behavior of Wall Street operators equal with those that do pay American tax?
Because our North American economies are intertwined and what happens in Canada, The United States and Mexico affects everyone. The recent run at the communal cash in the marketplace that is considered private by those playing with it, reminds me of hero Reagan's blind eye to the opportunities presented by American Savings and Loan institutions. That went well for the depositors.
Now there it a nascent protest against similar behavior and the bitter feelings of being scammed are not washed away by a resurgent economy like in the 80's. This won't go away.
So why should I care as a foreigner ? Because globally and particularly for Canada, the American economy can pull everyone down like the Titanic. I have many friends who's real savings and collaterally their investment earnings were reduced by half after the sub prime mortgage scam hit the fan.
It can be assumed it was their own fault for playing stocks but only if there was honest representation from Lehman Bros.and all the other blood suckers.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:16pm PT
Bruce, top quality sarcasm! Nice work.
blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:20pm PT
Skipt, it's rude, and violates copyright, to post an article without full attribution of the source, and a link.
I agree it's rude, but if it violates copyright without full attribution, methinks it violates copyright with attribution as well.
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:22pm PT
I did not put words in your mouth. Remember I said "if you believe..." not you believe.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:26pm PT
When the f*#k are you going to stop this stupid nonsense, Jim?
I quoted what you said.
Here it is:
It's like Canadians don't read their own words:
No where did I imply less government equals no government.
Here are your words:
Unfortunately for your thing about less government, less government (no enforcement of law) is why whole scale rip offs are explained away as just economic bad luck
"less government (no enforcement of law)"
No Jim. You didn't "imply less government equals no government" you flat out said it in all its glory.
Skip
More to the point:
You asked me a question. I answered.
You are a whack job.
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:34pm PT
skipt has got to be used to it by now.
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:37pm PT
Trolls have to be quite oblivious to such trifles.
Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:38pm PT
Shouldn't skipt and his fellow travelers should be beating up us Canadians for inspiring the whole thing? The 'movement' was started by Adbusters Media Foundation, which is based in Vancouver.
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
Yeah, the American Billionaire Capitalist is ever so concerned that I remain an independent individual that they want to outlaw unions, collective bargaining and the efficacy of the vote in American Politics. Each of these things is under attack because they are effective defenses against the Big Businessman's abuse of wealth and power.
Nothing unusual about abuse of wealth and power, its what it's called to do.
For instance: Remember Parker Bros Monopoly? Once you got control of the Monopoly board, do you remember what happened to the other players? How much did it matter any more if you Passed Go, and if you got that $200.00 bucks? When you could charge $2000 bucks for the luck of the next necessary spin, did circling the board (I.E. personal-production) matter to you?
No, you began getting your money (living) through the destruction your investments made on the other players having to associate with you and your various properties. If you could strip $2000 bucks off a player just before he passed Go, that was satisfaction indeed for the holder of Park Place Properties!, and it made the $200 tax return look pretty feeble...
Monopoly was popular because it taught people about the causes of the LAST Great Depression. We need to learn from it still. A great simulation game, one of the best since Chess.
You're losing Skippy. Never bet against the Body of the People when they are looking for respect and decency from an oppressive overling. In the end, even a billionaire is only a single man who cannot forever deny the body of the righteous revolutionaries who form the host he feeds on. They can scratch him off like a dog does a flea.
What billionaire doesn't depend on the society around him to feed, clothe and care for him? Every billionaire depends on his society exquisitely for everything he craves as human being, and he should damn well pay as a big share of expenses as we do for his big prerogatives. From he who great things have been granted, great things are expected. Is that a paraphrase?
The riche man ain't THAT different, ain't half that special when it comes down to it, when he is dead he will be missed less than he thinks. One more dead rich man ain't going change much, really. He wealth will remain and finally "Trickle Down" at least a little ways.
Occupy Wall Street.
The more I hear it, the better the Idea sounds.
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:43pm PT
Chase bank recently donated 6 million to the NY police department. Wonder if that makes them even more inclined to protect Wall Street from inconvenience?
http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Home/article/ny-13.htm
Edit
Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:46pm PT
Funny how these dependable right wing shills suddenly see "mob rule" and "intimidation by thugs"...but when the Teahadists were showing up to public events armed to the teeth, well they were just "real Murcans" exercising their 2nd amendment rights.
Intimidation by armed right wing lunatics? No way!! Not those freedom loving, keep yer government hands off my medicare, patriots.
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:49pm PT
John Moses Browning has a solution.
Dingus Milktoast
Gym climber
And every fool knows, a dog needs a home, and...
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:50pm PT
^^^ Man ain't that the truth. When those Arizona racists showed up at the Obama rally with guns some conservatives were virtually saying prayers over their holiness, lol.
DMT
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:51pm PT
Shouldn't skipt and his fellow travelers should be beating up us
Canadians
I would rather have you pay American Income tax so you can put your money
where your big mouth is.
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:52pm PT
If the NYPD cops are as noble as they were portrayed to be during 9/11, they would use that $4.6 Million to help the people.
They won't. They are now nothing more than corporate body guards.
Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:53pm PT
Overall Canadians pay higher taxes than the US, and are mostly glad to do so. Taxes buy us not only a stable economy, but civilization.
Piton Ron
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:54pm PT
Browning had some world beater designs.
The potato digger wasn't one of them.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:55pm PT
The left simply cannot make up its mind if we need totalitarian government
or anarchy.
Skip
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:56pm PT
Overall Canadians pay higher taxes than the US, and are mostly
glad to do so. Taxes buy us not only a stable economy, but
civilization.
Sounds like you have it all covered. Feel free to comment on Canadian
politics to your little hearts content.
When you pay American Income tax we will take you seriously on ours.
Skip
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 12:57pm PT
We do put our money where our mouth is. We are free to invest in the American economy as Americans are free to invest in ours. We also are bound to and comply with NATO obligations.
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:03pm PT
There is ever a conflict of interest within the Police between the RichMan/Corporations and the Poorer Masses. One seems to be served far better overall.
If a culprit cannot be found, he will be assigned. We have to presume the new wave of "enhanced interrogation" and the Newly instituted enhanced "Judicial Execution" policies will greatly expedite this assignment policies.
So far neither Awalaki nor Osama have protested their sentence or its execution. This is an improvement over Saddam and that whole Kangaroo Court process that Iraq and US(A) used to use. Extraordinary Extradition and Guantanamo, they are expensive. So formal, and the prisoners always have the potential of talking, if they should live so long.
Shooting an indicted Criminal in the head on sight is ever so much more efficacious. ""Trial" THAT, Perp!"
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:04pm PT
What rox is saying is that Obama and his paid thugs are totalitarian
socialists.
Skip
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:06pm PT
Obama will save us, you'll see!
TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:08pm PT
watching with interest...not this thread, the event.
not sure if this link has been posted:
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:08pm PT
Browning had some world beater designs.
The potato digger wasn't one of them.
Yep, but the other really good photo of him with his face recognizable is behind a water cooled .50
Too much collateral damage.
Lovegasoline
Trad climber
Sh#t Hole, Brooklyn, NY
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:11pm PT
But the Wall Street protesters are the wrong crowd to do it. This photo, of a lady sitting next to a sign titled “Corporate Freeloaders!” while having her photograph taken with an IPad, goes to the heart of the problem. Never trust the political rhetoric of young white hippies: it is undermined by their fabulous wealth and their complete detachment from reality. They travel the world from riot to riot – a cause on every continent, a ring in every orifice. They might have the diet of a North African peasant, but these spoiled brats are professional agitators financed by a generous trust fund.
One thing that is especially irksome about their movement is its pleasure seeking. This protest, like countless others, has been described as having a “carnival atmosphere”. Doesn’t that seem a little less than revolutionary? During the Red Scare of 1919-1920, America was torn apart by union strikes and anarchist bombs. Clashes between labor and nationalist mobs in Cleveland, Ohio were only broken by mounted police. Two people died, forty were injured and 116 were arrested. Compare that grim, cheerless struggle for workers’ rights with this report from the Wall Street protests,
Pure idiocy.
The Occupy Wall Street Protesters have professed their non-violence.
The Occupy Wall Street Protesters are plugging into the tradition of non-violence civil disobedience. They are not throwing bombs into offices, doing targeted assassinations, or burying people alive and executing children like the Bolsheviks.
Instead of shooting people in the face, they are singing songs, chanting, marching. This is to their credit.
Furthermore, the protesters look more like average people than the tea party buffoons. The blandness of the average midwesterner is a scary visage to a New Yorker. We cringe at the thought of folks like that ... they look like zombies. Image 2,000 of your 'average American' walking en mass across the Brooklyn Bridge: we'd think we were being invaded by alien body snatchers.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:14pm PT
The Tea Party is a better description of a group committed to non violence.
They understand completely they have the numbers to throw the Obama cronies out and install a real constitutional government.
Skip
TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:15pm PT
keep on trollin skip
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:16pm PT
So did the Patriot act One(?), or Two(?) give the government the right to kill "fugitives" who are ACCUSED of crimes (but not in a court), in foreign nations, on sight, with a killer hit team?
Just queerious, if you understand. So how far does THAT go? Some people are calling the Occupy Wall Street people Economic Terrorists...
...I used to think that kind of thing was illegal, for like the last 700 years? Way back when the King of England (GOD Bless He's Dead!) used to pull that sh#t against the Irish and the Scotch.
But so was "Enhanced Interrogation" AKA "cruel and unusual punishment" without a Trial. Ah, the old days, of Terror Trials. "DUNK HER!"(Waterboard him!). "If she dies, she was innocent!"(If he dies he was guilty!)
Naw, none of them is innocent, they are ALL guilty, including the living. IF they wern't guilty, we wouldn't have shot them, would we? What might these guys have said had they been allowed to live until a PUBLIC TRIAL COURT ordered their execution? Who cares; It'd just add to the confusion and the people (History) got no right to know. Anyway, you sue for your rights afterwards, nobody respects them before the court says to, and that puppy ain't gonna testify, he-he.
SkIPT:
actually Skippy, you are right as far as you go about me calling down Obama.
I don't like what is going on, the extension of the Bush Policies is far too seamless.
Human rights are being violated and ignored at the same time. I don't like it for sh#t when my nation goes Fascist. Look it up, Fascism is always associated with big business getting together with government to tighten the controls on society, production and "capital" (Freedom, Power and Wealth).
I think it sucks "S H I T B I G" frankly.
What do you think?
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:16pm PT
This photo, of a lady sitting next to a sign titled “Corporate Freeloaders!” while having her photograph taken with an IPad, goes to the heart of the problem.
I'm betting that iPod was purchased fair and square with money the holder earned... which is more than can be said for most of Wall Street.
The Tea Party is a better description of a group committed to non violence.
Which is why they show up with guns, you know, cuz they are peaceful.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:19pm PT
keep on trollin skip
If these violent protest clowns had the numbers behind them they would just show up at the polls and vote people in who agree with them.
They don't. So they make noise and throw garbage all over the place. And, hope beyond hope that the Canadians show up to defend them.
Skip
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:21pm PT
That would be nice. We've certainly helped out before.
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:24pm PT
How have they been violent Skippy? Let me know, bro.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:26pm PT
How have they been violent Skippy? Let me know, bro.
Brandon,
Have you ever been snipe hunting?
Skip
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:27pm PT
Not sure what that means, bro.
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:27pm PT
"Release the hounds"
Montgomery Burns
The evil one
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:28pm PT
Same thing can be said of the tea partiers, skippy.
If htey had the numbers at the pools, Sarah Palin would be President.
How many are there Occupping Wall Street, and what way are they going to vote. How committed are they?
And how big is the fire of protest gonna spread in the next year?
You GROW your enemies, the more you oppress him, the stronger he becomes...
Do you think the Right is that smart to understand what that means? ...Not so far...
Big turnouts is always good for the Democrats.
Burn Baby, Burn!
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:29pm PT
Brandon,
Have you ever been snipe hunting?
Not sure what that means, bro.
That is classic.
Skip
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:32pm PT
If [they] had the numbers at the [polls], Sarah Palin would be President.
What Rox is saying is that it was disaffected Democrats that gave the Republican party a historic 65 seat win in the house. Another historic win in state houses and governorships all over the country.
On a side note: Hey Rox,
Is yours what they teach you when you learn how to cypher and do your numbers in sewer architect school?
Skip
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:32pm PT
You're classic.
Googled it. It's a turn of speech I hadn't heard before, kind of like the term open minded applies to you.
You seem incapable of hearing anything that doesn't align with the talking points you shoot up. Face it, you're addicted, bro.
blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:33pm PT
Don't give the police an excuse to kick your arse. Remember, they like to do it and they're getting paid to do it. (And if you know what average NY cops make, you'll see why they'll gladly kick arse even if they didn't think it was so much fun.)
malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
I'm somewhat sympathetic, we've all been robbed by these powers -but this kind of protest is just too much "I'm the victim" mentality for me. "We the people" have been robbed indeed, but I wonder where the outrage should really be directed. We bought into and continue to buy into this system. This kind of protest is like asking the robbers to save us. If people stop buying into it, and stop expecting that it will ever repay them for the theft, that's what will change it.
"Friends are more valuable than money"
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:36pm PT
^^^Word^^^^
Wonderfully said.
If you don't mind, may I add: "Cronyism takes two sides"
Thank you.
Skip
atchafalaya
Boulder climber
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:44pm PT
"they have the numbers to throw the Obama cronies out and install a real constitutional government"
What is a real constitutional government?
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
What is a real Constitutional Government?
Start here:
http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/1416562850
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:51pm PT
"Greed, for want of a better word, is good"
Gordon Gekko
The evil one
Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:57pm PT
It has surely not escaped skipt's attention that the Occupy Wall Street peaceful patriotic unarmed demonstrations started on September 17th, which is your Constitution Day. True Americans.
One of the fatal flaws of the tea party/right wing movement is that it denigrates its opponents as not being "true" or "real" Americans, both implicitly and explicitly. The right wing has no monopoly on patriotism, although it's big on jingoism and cheap nationalism.
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 01:58pm PT
Oooooops, corrected.
"What good is money if one cannot use it to oppress his fellow man"
Montgomery Burns
The evil one
CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:01pm PT
When the rich, elite 1%, immorally, unethically, and greedily abuse the rest of us 99%, this is what happens.
Wealth and opportunity should be for everyone, not just for the rich, elite 1%. The rules of the game should not favor the 1% only and screw everyone else. Nor should our government be all about protecting the rich elite 1%.
This is supposed to be a government, a democracy, for the people and by the people. Right now it isn't. I think the people want to see it changed equitably, to just and fair.
Our country is a democracy, but it was not founded on redistribution and entitlements. Tell me where that is guaranteed in the Constitution? Opportunity exists for everyone - but wealth must be earned. This is a capitalist economy - if we want prosperity, we have to allow capital to flow to where it can be the most productive. That means Government cannot pick favorites anymore, and cannot redistribute wealth for the sake of social engineering.
atchafalaya
Boulder climber
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
Skipt, no links please...
Surely, you can have an original, (i.e., plagarized) view on what a "real constitutional goverment" is?
Ron Anderson
Trad climber
USA Carson city Nev.
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
The actula positive thing about this i see, is that people, no matter the party affiliation, are FINALLY getting tired of the same ol...Hopefully, this is ONLY the tip of a MT EVEREST of vocal and visible opinion to come. Its a good tiny start and a good sign that we are closer to an END bottom so we can finally start building again.
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
One of the fatal flaws of the tea party/right wing movement is that
it denigrates its opponents as not being "true" or "real" Americans, both
implicitly and explicitly.
One of the fatal flaws of foreigners who take sides on American politics
is that they never defend the tea party/right wing when the very thing
happenes to them.
It's like they are blind or something.
Would you like to see what people on this very forum say about Republicans?
Would you like to open your eyes?
Where was Anders when tea party people were being beaten by SEIU thugs
when they were having a protest rally?
What say you Mr. Canada?
Skip
Jim Brennan
Trad climber
Vancouver Canada
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:06pm PT
Please elaborate Skip.
Rokjox
Trad climber
Boys I'dunno
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:12pm PT
CYPHERS?
I don't cut cyphers. Cyphering was for math majors.
Honest to god, you'd be amased at just how much engineering succumbs to the point/slope formula you learned in about 5th grade. The ultimate all purpose formula for grading and drainage, sewwer, storm drains, centerlines, parking lots, septic systems, leechfields, irrigation topo, surveying, drafting, curb gutter and sidewalk, estimating drop, distance or quantity, amoong a whole lot more.
In drafting, having some draftsman who was able to run the numbers every 50 or 100 feet along a road centerline to jot them on the plan, or the elevation of the spot on the curb 28 feet away at 2% cross-slope in his head, used to be pretty economic compared to having some high dollar engineer figure them with his calculator, write them down, THEN draft it, spending hours working. Probably doing the it hard way, to boot... and that was true in Autocad modelling, too.
I can do it faster and type it than I can temp the computer in displaying it by the rules of the automated software.
Point/slope formula rules.
Geometry is the universe, the draftsman is its translator. The Engineer or Architect is the boss... and the boss don't do the work.
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:16pm PT
An engineer is someone that puts a $500 dollar saddle on a $5 horse,
and then gets the client to pay for a unicorn.
If you are so gud at it Rox, when are you going to get a job?
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:17pm PT
Rokjox,
Personally, my favorite is multiple regression analysis.
The evil one
TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:19pm PT
“there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” Elizabeth Warren
TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
Credit: TKingsbury
skipt
Mountain climber
Washington
Oct 3, 2011 - 02:44pm PT
Personally, my favorite is multiple regression analysis.
That is some tough stuff.
It really is.
Skip
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 3, 2011 - 04:29pm PT
It's funny that someone would support the many tea party protests, ostensibly protesting higher taxes when no taxes have been raised,
but diss the Occupy Wall Street protesters when the Bankers crashed our economy and hosed the housing market and harmed us all.
Who really cost the people money? If you are unselfish, or selfish, the bankers have been the cause of great suffering to yourself and others and have escaped any criminal liability. Have they been proven innocent? No! They just got a pass. WHat happened to responsibility and accountability?
Just for poor people, I get it
Peace
Karl
Edit
malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
Oct 3, 2011 - 04:40pm PT
If you really want to protest the Wall Street system, you don't have to invest in it. I don't anymore. I don't believe in the us versus them thing on this. We (the collective) bought in to this system (Wall Street) knowing the game was rigged. At a certain point a few years ago I'd had enough, and sold all my investments. I'm out. That is the real protest. I am free to spend my capital on whatever I choose and invest it in other things. I do stand in spirit with the protesters whenever they protest using my tax dollars to bail out "Wall Street", which I want no part of saving since I'm not invested in it. I think if you are talking about "reforming Wall Street" it's barking up the wrong tree. It's rigged and it's always been rigged.
"Wall Street has nothing to do with creating capital for businesses, its original goal. Wall Street is a platform. It’s a platform to be exploited by every technological and intellectual means possible." -Mark Cuban
Source:
http://blogmaverick.com/2011/08/08/what-business-is-wall-street-in-2/
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 04:56pm PT
This is a capitalist economy - if we want prosperity, we have to allow capital to flow to where it can be the most productive.
You are assuming that unrestricted capitalism works. Plenty of reasons to think it does not. The only arguments I have seen in favor of unrestricted capitalism are tainted by aggressive indoctrination.
malabarista, not everyone affected has invested. I have no debt and have never invested in the wall sheet, nor have I inherited anything other than a strong work ethic. I still can't find a job, they just aren't there. I still have to pay my taxes so corporations that are "too big to fail" can give executives huge bonuses. I still have to pay higher food prices. Your argument is flawed.
malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
Oct 3, 2011 - 04:58pm PT
I'm lucky that I've never had a problem yet getting a job since my field still seems to be in demand. I am very lucky and grateful for that luck. I still think people have to quit participation in this sham of a system as much as possible for the protest to have any meaning. How many people are out there protesting while still dumping money into their 401K?
I would be fine with discontinuing social security as long as the government is willing to pay me back everything I put in with modest interest. If they try to steal what we people actually paid in to the system which was to be guaranteed for retirement then there should be a revolution.
jstan
climber
Oct 3, 2011 - 05:01pm PT
A while ago I posted the real Dow Jones showing long term real rate of increase is less than 2% and the last decade has been a no-winner. The plot shows to gain you have to actively trade. Something everyone says small investors are unable to do. And the dollar cost averaging brokers propose as a solution makes sense only if there is in fact an upward trend. Which there is not and has not been for more than ten years.
Don’t believe the data? Read the Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204831304576592822485984958.html
European nations, flirting with recession, can't agree on how to climb out from under their pile of debt. The U.S. is careening toward a budget fight that threatens to shut down the government. China's mammoth economy may be downshifting.
Economic fragility world-wide is causing investors to retreat from stocks. Traders signal offers on S&P 500 stock-index options in Chicago on Friday.
And across the financial markets, a sea change is taking place. Investors are abandoning the time-tested "stocks for the long run" optimism that dominated since the late 1980s. Instead, there is a widening belief that the mess left behind by the housing bubble and financial crisis will be a morass to contend with for years.
In a historic retreat, investors world-wide during the three months through August pulled some $92 billion out of stock funds in the developed markets, according to data provider EPFR Global—an exodus that more than reversed the total amount of money investors had put into those funds since stocks bottomed in 2009. The withdrawals matched the worst three-month period during the depths of the financial crisis.
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 3, 2011 - 05:02pm PT
malabarista,
You haven't seen my results.
Anyway, just got off the phone with Bob Osborne. Funny that he remembered me and the Hear Ray is on it's way to NYC. Turn the setting to 7 and burn the toast.
The evil one
CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 05:16pm PT
but diss the Occupy Wall Street protesters when the Bankers crashed our economy and hosed the housing market and harmed us all.
Karl, do you really think Bankers crashed our economy? It had nothing to do with this?
Credit: CrackAddict
This is the total credit market debt from 1920 on as a percent of GDP (so it is inflation adjusted). You see, all Wall Street does is peddle whatever we produce. Unfortunately our main export in the last 25 years has been debt. The biggest culprit here is the Fed though - the steepest sections of this graph correlate strongly with very low interest rate regimes. What banks do makes very good sense in the context of the sandbox they are given. Right now there is no incentive to even take deposits - it is cheaper to borrow at a negative effective rate from the Fed and loan it back to the Government to misallocate, which leads to recession after recession. The longer we try to avoid the pain by bailing out, printing money, stimulating, etc., the longer our economy stays disfunctional and the worse the eventual pain.
In order to get out of a recession, capital has to fall into the hands of those who can make a profit with it, on average. Government has NEVER been able to do this. Right now our ROI on government spending is about 20%(!). When the government bails out or throws stimulus at politically connected companies, the return is not much better than this (see Solyndra). Artifically low interest rates make the situation far worse: Companies that should never see the light of day get capital, creating an economic Galapagos full of companies that would never be able to compete in a tighter economy.
Bad companies have to go bankrupt. Jobs will be lost, but the long term cost of the alternative is far worse.
Again, you can throw every bank CEO in jail right now, but unless structural changes are made, we are not getting out of this funk.
CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 05:23pm PT
You are assuming that unrestricted capitalism works. Plenty of reasons to think it does not. The only arguments I have seen in favor of unrestricted capitalism are tainted by aggressive indoctrination.
Nobody is arguing for "unrestricted capitalism", whatever that is, but Government needs to get out of the way unless there is a compelling reason to think the private sector cannot function correctly without them (i.e., in cases with a misalligned profit motive). But if you make the argument that capitalism itself does not work, please give an example of a country that has become wealthy without it.
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 3, 2011 - 05:39pm PT
In the old days, class warriors were proverbial men of the people who made an effort to match their lifestyles with their rhetoric. Not now. When President Obama rails about "millionaires," we expect that in a few hours our Class Warrior in Chief will golf with Wall Street fat cats to hit them up for campaign money. We presume that the First Family prefers Costa del Sol, Martha's Vineyard or Vail to a passé Camp David.
If director Michael Moore or New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg warns us about impending rioting and class strife, we assume both live in huge homes and are multimillionaires. The new class-warfare coalitions are comprised mostly of the less well-off and the very well-off, one wishing for ever more state help, the other rich enough to not mind bestowing it. No wonder both demonize as greedy and racist Tea Baggers those in the middle who are most likely to feel the cost of ever more government.
....
Post Modern Class Warfare.
Class warfare is now not about brutal elemental poverty of the sort Charles Dickens or Knut Hamsun once wrote about. It is too often the anger that arises from not having something that someone else has, whether or not such style, privilege or discretionary choices are all that necessary. Endemic obesity, not malnutrition, threatens America — including the nearly 50 million Americans who are on food stamps.
These are hard times, with high unemployment rates and economic stagnation. But we are not a nation of the malnourished and starving who are preyed upon by idle rich drones who pay no taxes. And a government that borrows $4 billion a day and spends $2 trillion more a year than it did just 10 years ago is hardly stingy.
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson100311.html
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 05:50pm PT
Nobody is arguing for "unrestricted capitalism", whatever that is, but Government needs to get out of the way unless there is a compelling reason to think the private sector cannot function correctly without them (i.e., in cases with a misalligned profit motive). But if you make the argument that capitalism itself does not work, please give an example of a country that has become wealthy without it.
Yep.
Solyndra is an example of unrestricted socialism gone wrong. All the capitalists were saying it was a bad deal, and it was. Yet gov't forced it upon us, and we taxpayers lose.
Are any of those stupid anarchists in Brooklyn bitching about that???
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 06:08pm PT
Something is Happening, and you don't know what it is...do you, Mr. Jones...
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 06:11pm PT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/catherine-crier/capitalists-of-america--u_b_992786.html
Capitalists of America -- Unite! (Why Adam Smith would be marching today)
Posted: 10/3/11 03:24 PM ET
That's my rallying cry for the protestors on Wall Street, for the millions of citizens who are unemployed, for the anti-government Tea Partiers and for the nation's small business owners and entrepreneurs. It is time to expose the imposters and reclaim capitalism for the American people.
Today, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is considered a Bible for capitalism, but when published in 1776, it was a blasphemous challenge to the big business, big government mercantilism in Europe. Smith's free market theories expanded economic opportunity, promoted competition and encouraged innovation, in large part, by attacking the "concentrated wealth and power" of Britain's commercial elite.
More than taxation without representation, it was the corrupt British economic system that ignited the American Revolution -- just read the entire Declaration of Independence. This insidious corruption was a major focus of Smith's economic treatise. Smith's theories dovetailed beautifully with Thomas Jefferson's political manifesto, and his writings became the framework for our capitalist philosophy. But as both men learned in their lifetime, theory and practice are rarely in sync.
In a Faustian bargain, our leaders pay homage to Smith's ideals, but from the outset, they have ignored his model in favor of rapid national expansion and global economic power. What we call capitalism is, in fact, the American version of mercantilism. Ludwig von Mises, a libertarian economist, summed up its benefits rather nicely: "Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a growing population." Measured thusly, the results have been breathtakingly successful, but if the goal is the long-term viability of our economic and political democracy, we are in serious trouble.
Just as Jeffersonian democracy operates best on a small scale, Adam Smith believed his self-correcting free markets were ideal for small businesses in a domestic economy. Integrated in their communities, these businesses would be influenced directly by the needs and demands of consumers, and any dangerous or abusive conduct would rarely affect the broader economy. But Smith treated large, powerful companies very differently. He said big business was led by "an order of men...that generally have an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public", and he referred to powerful corporations (then known as joint stock companies) as "unaccountable sovereigns" that were as dangerous to free markets as tyrannical governments. Unrestrained, they had the power to shape society and governments for their own purposes, and consumers would pay for "all the extraordinary profits" while suffering from "all the extraordinary waste", the inherent fraud and abuse, that accompanies such immense economic power.
Smith stated emphatically that a strong government, acting through democratic and legal institutions, was the only entity capable of challenging such corporate power. Smith supported necessary government regulations, labor and human rights, public education, and progressive taxation to ease the economic and social inequities he knew would occur in a capitalist system. Without these "liberal" measures, social and political unrest would threaten a nation's stability and his free market economy could not survive.
While Thomas Jefferson applauded Smith's theories, the 'father of American conservatism', Alexander Hamilton, denounced this philosophy as nonsense. Hamilton intended to establish America as a global powerhouse in short order. He was thinking big and didn't have time for Smith's small-scale, go-slow approach. Britain's mercantile system was elitist and abusive, but Hamilton knew it was the engine that drove England's powerful economy. As Secretary of the Treasury, he planned to use that very system to propel America onto the world stage.
Both his plan and its execution were brilliant. Hamilton set out to consolidate power in the new federal government by controlling the money supply, tariffs and trade and by managing the nation's industrial development. Farmers and shopkeepers couldn't provide the revenue he needed, nor could they finance the commercial development and infrastructure necessary for America to play in the big leagues. Hamilton needed big money and powerful partners in the private sector.
To accomplish this, he used the courts and Federalist Congress to institutionalize a powerful federal government and corporatist economy, a practice continued by his successors. The myth that corporations are somehow "persons" and equivalent to the human beings Adam Smith was liberating in his free market utopia is possibly the most successful coup in the history of the world, achieved with the stroke of a judicial pen in 1886.
Despite warnings by prescient Republican presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, the American system has morphed quite predictably into a dog-eat-dog economic Darwinism, and the **big canines have rigged the game in their favor.
Flying the capitalist flag, the really big guys have completely corrupted Smith's free market philosophy. They use their concentrated wealth and power to buy off politicians, skate around regulations, abuse their privileges and sometimes, break the laws to win. When their politicians and corporate-sponsored "citizen" groups insist that small government and the market itself are sufficient checks, that further controls are a socialist plot to destroy capitalism, they are counting on our collective naiveté to win the game. They are destroying free enterprise by abusing the very freedoms intrinsic to a market economy.
That so many conservatives, adamant that they are defending true capitalism, would fail to make this distinction, gives credence to the power of the "big lie." They have so internalized this nonsense, that again and again, they are willing to defend transnational behemoths over the well-being of the American economy.
As one (somewhat mysterious) financial trader said in a BBC TV interview last week, a crashing economy is a brilliant opportunity for savvy insiders to make a killing. The economic well-being of a nation or its citizens is not a major factor in the world of transnational commerce. Predicting that the economic crisis will deepen, he summed up his message with a smile -- governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.
For true American patriots who believe in a vibrant free market economy, it is time to recognize we've been sold a bill of goods. The real enemy in the battle for American capitalism is not socialism; it is global corporatism. For true patriots, conservatives and liberals alike, the stakes could not be higher.
My new book, Patriot Acts -- What Americans Must Do to Save the Republic, examines the true nature of our constitutional system, how it has been interpreted and manipulated by conservatives and liberals since 1789, the effect of partisan ideology on this democratic system, including the economy, national security, health care, education and immigration, and how modern politicians betray the founding principles, constitutional system and economic capitalism that all Americans, left and right, profess to defend. Patriot Acts can be preordered on-line and will be released on November 1, 2011.
Patriotacts.com, catherine@patriotacts.com
John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
Oct 3, 2011 - 06:15pm PT
Yet gov't forced it upon us, and we taxpayers lose.
I totally agree!
Just like Iraq.. 1 trillion dollars versus half a billion. those damn socialist.
Why can't they think big like the Republicans?
Riley Wyna
Trad climber
A crack near you
Oct 3, 2011 - 06:16pm PT
If the tea baggers and the progressives are getting together that can only a good thing!
Kick ass boys!!
Thieves, crooks and corrupt sociopaths.
I've seen enough of it personaly and nationally to last a life time.
Revolution!!
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 06:26pm PT
You know something? [Wall Street] will get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later, 'cause they own this f*in' place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. ... The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good, honest hard working people ... continue to elect these rich c*suckers who don't give a f*** about them.
-George Carlin
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:07pm PT
I'm not saying bank bailouts were good. They should have been allowed to fail if they made bad decisions.
But blaming "wealthy" people on this problem is somewhat misguided. This was a Fannie/Freddie problem coupled with some other factors.
The anarchists demonstrating are mostly lazy anti-capitalist commies. They can go f*#k themselves for all I care. Go to work, get a job!
Quit being a PITA to people who choose to go to work and lead responsible lives!~
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:17pm PT
Government needs to get out of the way unless there is a compelling reason to think the private sector cannot function correctly without them
Uh... if government isn't going to restrict corporate greed, who is? I think the private sector has proven it cannot function correctly on its own.
China seems to be doing pretty well without capitalism.
Spidey, thanks for the post:
Just as Jeffersonian democracy operates best on a small scale, Adam Smith believed his self-correcting free markets were ideal for small businesses in a domestic economy. Integrated in their communities, these businesses would be influenced directly by the needs and demands of consumers, and any dangerous or abusive conduct would rarely affect the broader economy. But Smith treated large, powerful companies very differently. He said big business was led by "an order of men...that generally have an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public", and he referred to powerful corporations (then known as joint stock companies) as "unaccountable sovereigns" that were as dangerous to free markets as tyrannical governments. Unrestrained, they had the power to shape society and governments for their own purposes, and consumers would pay for "all the extraordinary profits" while suffering from "all the extraordinary waste", the inherent fraud and abuse, that accompanies such immense economic power.
Smith stated emphatically that a strong government, acting through democratic and legal institutions, was the only entity capable of challenging such corporate power. Smith supported necessary government regulations, labor and human rights, public education, and progressive taxation to ease the economic and social inequities he knew would occur in a capitalist system. Without these "liberal" measures, social and political unrest would threaten a nation's stability and his free market economy could not survive.
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:20pm PT
"if you don't like the world, don't bitch and moan, do something about it!"
bill graham rock promoter
his shows always started at 8:00 pm
never 8:01, always 8. dude was badass
FortMental
Social climber
Albuquerque, NM
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:20pm PT
China seems to be doing pretty well without capitalism.
Umm.... Excuse me?
Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:22pm PT
Weschrist writes:
"Uh... if government isn't going to restrict corporate greed, who is?"
In a free country, what business does the government have restricting anybody's *greed* ?
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:23pm PT
yer excused, now get the fuk out of here.
In a free country, what business does the government have restricting anybody's *greed* ?
That IS the business of government in a free country when crooks are concerned, moron.
Donald Thompson
Trad climber
Los Angeles,CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:28pm PT
The historical arc of the liberal activist:
Street demonstrating --- legitimate political power in government ---failure of policies and values --- back to the street
Donald Thompson
Trad climber
Los Angeles,CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:29pm PT
That IS the business of government in a free country when crooks are concerned, moron.
Some of the greediest people on the planet are in government. And most of the corrupt ones.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:33pm PT
A well spoken young lad. Never made it on Faux News. They were probably too busy covering important stuff, like the Jackson trial.
http://youtu.be/6yrT-0Xbrn4
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:41pm PT
This whole she-bang resulted from many things;
Fannie/Freddie basically forcing banks to give loans to losers.
The repeal of the Glass-Stiegal Act.
Reapealing the 'uptick rule' in bond/stock trading. (A big one!!!).
Short selling.
In short, yeah, there needs to be regulations in a free-market system. But to pin this on rich right-wingers is misguided. The lefties soak the system and the rules just as much.
Put the regs back into place. Wealthy people create jobs. Let them continue to do so. It's the traders who are f*#king us!
Donald Thompson
Trad climber
Los Angeles,CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:42pm PT
Never made it on Faux News.
But I bet he made it on CBS,NBC,ABC, Reuters,AP, NPR, and CNN
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:44pm PT
I think it's pretty clear from watching the rapid economic rise of East Asia that state managed capitalism is far more efficient than the individualistic laisez faire version practiced in America. It doesn't matter if it is managed by the left (China) or the right (Singapore) or moderately democratic, center leaning, right regimes (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan), what's important is having professional economists running the country instead of hack politicians backed by selfish and greedy corporate interest who care only for their own welfare and that of their company and not the country and its people as a whole.
All of these successful economies also level the playing field by government sponsored basic services to their citizens such as education and health care.
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:45pm PT
only smart people should breed.
no wait, i sound like hank jr
global warming is gonna kick everybody's ass, so screw politics because...
your gonna die!
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:47pm PT
what's important is having professional economists running the country instead of hack politicians backed by selfish and greedy corporate interest who care only for their own welfare and that of their company and not the country and its people as a whole.
Like Paul Krugman???
Donald Thompson
Trad climber
Los Angeles,CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:48pm PT
state managed capitalism
If ever their were an oxymoron this is it.
You ought to float that by the spoiled brats currently stinking up the NY streets.
dirtbag
climber
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:49pm PT
Glad you agree that Krugman should have a greater role.
;-)
ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:50pm PT
punkz!!!
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:50pm PT
oh yeah, lets bring back warren greenspan,
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:51pm PT
Put the regs back into place.
yeah, less government!
The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity...
William Domhoff, UCSD
Yeah, the rich don't have anything to do with the stock market, it is just the traders.
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:53pm PT
sorry, i meant alex greenspoon
Donald Thompson
Trad climber
Los Angeles,CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 07:54pm PT
spoonex greenale
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 08:01pm PT
The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity...
And they just lost their asses in the past 2-weeks. Is it becuase of them of gov't lack of policy? Uncertainty due to lack of leadership and misguided Keynesian policy?
Or is it because of stout leadership and faith in markets?
The man in the WH breathes uncertainty and distrust of our current direction.
EDIT: Greenspan was a putz too.
Donald Thompson
Trad climber
Los Angeles,CA
Oct 3, 2011 - 08:07pm PT
The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity...
Yes and the top 10% of pro athletes make nearly that much relative to the other players. Where would those teams be if the players making less confiscated the earnings of the top 10%?
Lovegasoline
Trad climber
Sh#t Hole, Brooklyn, NY
Oct 3, 2011 - 10:28pm PT
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
Oct 3, 2011 - 10:35pm PT
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Lovegas,
Right on!
OK SuperTopians, let's take a moment for a teach-in. We have a great teachable moment here. Let's not waste it.
What's going on for real?
Occupy U.S.A., with Jeff Madrick - Countdown with Keith Olbermann (Prof./Author of The Age of Greed)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x621442
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0o1DpNSkpc
Moore From The Street, with Michael Moore:Countdown with Keith Olbermann
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x621447
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXVz3378pcQ
Tomorrow the World? with Michael Moore - Countdown with Keith Olbermann
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x621452
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJcjonMckY
OccupyWallStreet Protester - DESTROYS - Fox News Reporter!!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x621083
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yrT-0Xbrn4
The Bible on the Poor
or, Why God is a liberal
http://www.zompist.com/meetthepoor.html
Luke 12:48 (KJV)
" . . . For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:21pm PT
Crack wrote
This is the total credit market debt from 1920 on as a percent of GDP (so it is inflation adjusted). You see, all Wall Street does is peddle whatever we produce. Unfortunately our main export in the last 25 years has been debt.
It's more complicated than that. Wall Street Created much extra debt without responsibility by loaning to people who couldn't afford it, telling them housing was only going to appreciate, and then offloading that risk from themselves by securitizing it, and then further leveraging with CDOs. They sold that crap to other suckers who had no way of knowing what was truly inside those securities and the credit-worthiness of those loans were lied about. This was made possible by deregulation, greed and often Fraud. (Cooking the loan books and much more)
The biggest culprit here is the Fed though - the steepest sections of this graph correlate strongly with very low interest rate regimes. What banks do makes very good sense in the context of the sandbox they are given. Right now there is no incentive to even take deposits - it is cheaper to borrow at a negative effective rate from the Fed and loan it back to the Government to misallocate, which leads to recession after recession.
I'm all for getting rid of the Fed, which you will note is NOT a government body and is comprised of Banksters! It's an insane and crude scam that Banks are able to take the gift that they have given themselves by having a negative effective rate and milking it at the people's (Government's) expense while not loaning to the people. Yes the structure is wrong. It should be changed but don't blame government. Government not truly existing is the problem. Private industry deregulated has already proven more corrupt.
Government is screwed up here because they have been bought GOP and DEM alike by big business and are populated by a revolving door of big Wall Street criminals like Larry Summers and Geitner and the rest, All former executives of the same firms that sodomized the country.
So yeah, I'm critical of Government too, but getting rid of government isn't the answer, it's already been done by selling out to Wall Street control which is why nobody went to jail for the 2008 crisis while LOTS of people went to Jail for the S&L crisis back d
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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power to the people
rite on karl
hey karl, how many different girls have you slept with?
do they all have the same response or is each one a little different?
what if you get a screamer while camping in a public campground?
duck tape?
tweezers?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 03:53pm PT
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This will probably finish the posting
+
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 3, 2011 - 11:21pm PT
Crack wrote
This is the total credit market debt from 1920 on as a percent of GDP (so it is inflation adjusted). You see, all Wall Street does is peddle whatever we produce. Unfortunately our main export in the last 25 years has been debt.
It's more complicated than that. Wall Street Created much extra debt without responsibility by loaning to people who couldn't afford it, telling them housing was only going to appreciate, and then offloading that risk from themselves by securitizing it, and then further leveraging with CDOs. They sold that crap to other suckers who had no way of knowing what was truly inside those securities and the credit-worthiness of those loans were lied about. This was made possible by deregulation, greed and often Fraud. (Cooking the loan books and much more)
The biggest culprit here is the Fed though - the steepest sections of this graph correlate strongly with very low interest rate regimes. What banks do makes very good sense in the context of the sandbox they are given. Right now there is no incentive to even take deposits - it is cheaper to borrow at a negative effective rate from the Fed and loan it back to the Government to misallocate, which leads to recession after recession.
I'm all for getting rid of the Fed, which you will note is NOT a government body and is comprised of Banksters! It's an insane and crude scam that Banks are able to take the gift that they have given themselves by having a negative effective rate and milking it at the people's (Government's) expense while not loaning to the people. Yes the structure is wrong. It should be changed but don't blame government. Government not truly existing is the problem. Private industry deregulated has already proven more corrupt.
Government is screwed up here because they have been bought GOP and DEM alike by big business and are populated by a revolving door of big Wall Street criminals like Larry Summers and Geitner and the rest, All former executives of the same firms that sodomized the country.
So yeah, I'm critical of Government too, but getting rid of government isn't the answer, it's already been done by selling out to Wall Street control which is why nobody went to jail for the 2008 crisis while LOTS of people went to Jail for the S&L crisis back during the First Bush days.
Which brings up a another point. Seems like there is this Boom Bust cycle, that seems engineered by Wall Street and the Fed that always manages to bust right at the end of a presidential term limit. Doesn't matter whether it's GOP or DEM. Dotcom busted after Clinton, housing busted at the end of Bush, Carter went out with a Bust, and then the S&L.
And after all these busts, the super-rich last-guys-standing, who have made bank on the boom, buy up all the losers in the bust.
Just watch it
Peace
Karl
Edit
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Oct 4, 2011 - 01:04am PT
karl, how many chicks?
Lolli
Mountain climber
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
Oct 4, 2011 - 02:25am PT
I think it's pretty clear from watching the rapid economic rise of East Asia that state managed capitalism is far more efficient than the individualistic laisez faire version practiced in America. It doesn't matter if it is managed by the left (China) or the right (Singapore) or moderately democratic, center leaning, right regimes (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan), what's important is having professional economists running the country instead of hack politicians backed by selfish and greedy corporate interest who care only for their own welfare and that of their company and not the country and its people as a whole.
All of these successful economies also level the playing field by government sponsored basic services to their citizens such as education and health care.
+ North Europe
exactly.
gf
climber
Oct 4, 2011 - 02:30am PT
It's the traders who are f*#king us!
Far be from me to defend short-sellers, but all they are doing is amplifying bad calls by countries (97 asian meltdown anyone), banks or individuals.
But then again, the best way to outlaw short sellers is to outlaw poor judgment -and i don't think we can outlaw people voting repub :/
Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
Oct 4, 2011 - 06:01am PT
Want to know the background of what happened to us financially?
Want to know why people are marching and protesting?
Inside Job - Download the FULL Movie
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xekoka_inside-job-download-the-full-movie_shortfilms
Good short review of the movie:
http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/7817/Inside-Job-
If you haven't seen this movie yet, then you must. There were 2 9-11s. One near the beginning of Bush's time in office and then the economic 9-11 right at the end. Gee, both on his watch. Who would of thunk? What are the odds of that?
gf
climber
Oct 4, 2011 - 06:07am PT
Thank goodness for the movie to tell us what happened, it just makes me want to get out in the street, wall or main and tell the man that I'm as mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Oh hang on, I just noticed that the cows got out and i'd best go close the barn door. be right back
Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
Oct 4, 2011 - 06:38am PT
Good grief, here we go with the “general welfare” clause again as if the whole Constitution were spun around it. It is one of six clauses in a perambulatory statement explaining why the actual document was written. And while yes, it is there, it is clearly the most softly stated of the six, beginning as it does with the word “promote.” Read it again if you will.
Each of the other five clauses is stated with more assertive language, for example “provide for the common defense.” To form…, establish…, insure…, provide…, and finally to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” are all more definitive statements. To promote does not mean to insure or to provide or to establish or to secure.
dirtbag
climber
Oct 4, 2011 - 06:57am PT
Yeah, the preamble doesn't really mean much.
Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
Oct 4, 2011 - 07:08am PT
I didn't say it doesn't mean much. I just think the words are very carefully chosen. I like words and think they have meaning.
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 4, 2011 - 07:18am PT
Then there's the little problem of the tenth amendment that overides all that proceeds.
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 4, 2011 - 09:26am PT
Yes and the top 10% of pro athletes make nearly that much relative to the other players.
To suggest the top players (richest Uhmerikuhns) do not influence the success of the NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL, etc (stock market) would be absurd. And yes, I expect nothing less than absurd from blurring.
Where would those teams be if the players making less confiscated the earnings of the top 10%?
Where they belong, playing a GAME on the streets or wherever. Not treated like gods while teachers get paid squat to dodge bullets and babysit kids who have been sold the fairytale that they can be part of the machine, a TOP athlete, if they just spend their money on Gatorade(R) or Nike(R) or whatever(R) instead of something useful and real.
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 4, 2011 - 09:29am PT
+1 for Inside Job - watched it last night, gives a great explanation for what really happened with interviews with the banksters, footage from congressional testimony, interviews with economists, etc.
Even the professional economists are in on it. They all get paid by the banksters too.
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 4, 2011 - 09:35am PT
Karl is correct for the most part, BUT, no one points guns at the heads of consumers to buy homes, Harleys, take out more credit cards, flat screen TV's, etc. And think about all of the jobs that get created to produce those houses, cars, bikes, TV's!!!!111666
The regulators dropped the ball watching Wall ST, the street can get carried away.
Karl,
I'm still a homeless person, a squatter.
The evilone
khanom
Trad climber
The Dessert
Oct 4, 2011 - 09:38am PT
...no one points guns at the heads of consumers to buy homes, Harleys, take out more credit cards, flat screen TV's, etc.
Ever watch TV?
TGT
Social climber
So Cal
Oct 4, 2011 - 09:56am PT
The French Revolution is the template for all mob uprisings, and the signal event of that lunacy was an attack on a prison housing only half a dozen prisoners.
As best anyone can tell, the storming of the Bastille was instigated by a rumor that the laughably impotent King Louis XVI was about to stage an attack on the National Assembly. Or perhaps they were upset that the inept finance minister, Jacques Necker, had been fired. Or they thought the Bastille was an eyesore.
(The only other possible cause was recently ruled out when it was conclusively determined that France had no teachers unions in the late 18th century.)
No one is sure -- but a good time was had by all! Except the prison administrators murdered in the attack.
Liberals love mobs because rioting and anarchy is their path to power.
Making sound proposals based on facts and logic is not their metier. Issuing impossible promises to the easily fooled is their specialty. For more on this, see "The 2012 Democratic Platform."
The entire Democratic Party is currently promising to "save" Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in their present form. According to Obama's own Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, in less than 10 years, spending on those three entitlement programs, plus servicing the national debt, will consume 92 cents of every dollar in the federal budget.
The Democrats are openly lying to voters. It is a mathematical impossibility for these programs to continue without major reform now, or complete bankruptcy later -- and not very much later.
But Democrats' real achievement has been in destroying the family, and thereby creating an endless supply of potential rioters.
When blacks were only four generations out of slavery, their illegitimacy rate was about 23 percent (lower than the white illegitimacy rate is now). Then Democrats decided to help them! Barely two generations since LBJ's Great Society programs began, the black illegitimacy rate has tripled to 72 percent.
Meanwhile, the white illegitimacy rate has septupled, from 4 percent to 29 percent.
Instead of a "War on Poverty," it should have been called a "War on the Family."
The vast and permanent underclass created by the welfare state is a great success story for the Democratic Party, which now has a loyal constituency of deadbeats who automatically vote for the Democrats to keep their Trojan horse "benefits" flowing.
It's the Democrats' "heroin dealer" model of government.
Apparently, it takes a lot of government workers to minister to the poor, inasmuch as government employment has skyrocketed in tandem with the family's disintegration. As long as Democrats are serving their principal constituency -- recipients of taxpayer money -- they don't care what happens to the rest of society.
They champion any mob that will increase their political power. Liberals promote welfare dependency, class warfare, endless government programs staffed with public sector workers, street protests, coddling criminals and physical attacks on their ideological opponents. This is how they create reliable Democratic voters.
True, government employees are doing jobs we don't want done, can never be fired, are bankrupting the country and periodically break out in mob violence.
True, also, that the children of broken families sometimes burn city blocks to the ground or kill their great-grandmothers with swords. But what a voting bloc!
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-08-17.html
weschrist
Gym climber
left sac
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:00am PT
Warning... the above link is a transvestite donkey witch masturbating to her own scat.
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:01am PT
Wow. what a bunch of drivel. (edit - referring to Coulter's article above)
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:01am PT
TGT,
I'm not much of a Coulter fan, but she is spot on with that one. The Dems have created a permanent welfare class and the votes that go with it.
The evil one
FRUMY
Trad climber
SHERMAN OAKS,CA
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:02am PT
Kris I can't believe that you don't understand the importance of the preamble to the constitution.
Each & every word is of the utmost importance, it's setting up the whole constitution.
It was writen by Gouverneur Morris. The job was given to him for many reasons. The most important one being that Gouverneur had not signed the Declaration of Independence, because he thought that working people could not govern them selfs. Without the ruling class to govern them they would kill each other & steal what was left. By 1787 he had radical change he understood that all people have a right to self govern & that the sole job of goverment was to care for it's people.
fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:23am PT
Fry them with the Heat Ray.
The evil one
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:24am PT
See Inside job! Might as well know why our rear ends sting
Want to know the background of what happened to us financially?
Want to know why people are marching and protesting?
Inside Job - Download the FULL Movie
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xekoka_inside-job-download-the-full-movie_shortfilms
Good short review of the movie:
http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/7817/Inside-Job-
Edit
spidey
Trad climber
Berkeley CA
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:26am PT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein/occupy-wall-st-this-is-no_b_994388.html
Occupy Wall St.: This Is Not a Head Scratcher
Last night I heard a story on NPR about the Wall St. protest that is now spreading to other cities. The gist of the story was: "what are these protests really about? What do they want?"
I'm sorry, but that's just not a head scratcher. Do these news analysts think it's a coincidence that they're occupying Wall St. as opposed to Columbus Ave north of 79th?
As Andrew Sorkin put it today (after writing that the message was "at times...hard to discern"):
... the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.
I'm not saying everyone down there is ready to give a clear exposition of the facts of the case, but commentators can stop scratching their heads now.
I've been writing about these problems for decades. Sometimes they've gotten a little better, but mostly they've gotten worse. Before the downturn, the share of income held by the top 1% was 23.5%, the highest since 1928 and more than twice the 10% level of the late 1970s.
These are growth shares, as in they have to sum to 100%-when one group's share goes up like that, everybody else's has to shrink.
That doesn't mean real income values can't rise for other groups, of course (though it does imply slower relative growth, compared to the high end). But in fact, the middle class and the poor haven't seen that either... the decade of the 2000s saw middle-incomes decline in real terms for working-age households. The recession just made those incomes fall faster.
Protest movements are often born of two interacting injustices: the lack of opportunity and the lack of accountability by the persons perceived to be blocking that opportunity.
Given the facts of the income distribution, the trends in real middle-class incomes and poverty, the failure of policy to do much to change these trends, the government bailouts of the only class that's benefited from the recovery so far, the absence of clear punishment/accountability for the financial and political institutions that helped inflate the debt bubble that continues to squeeze economies across the globe, and the dysfunctionality of the current political system (they're arguing more about whether they can keep the lights on than whether they can help solve the economic problems), the more interesting question is what took so long for such protests to show up?
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:36am PT
Ann C is a ^*&(()&
She decries all this additional money supposedly going to the poor! Without mentioning the MUCH GREATER increase in military spending
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=125
By Richard Kogan
Revised March 6, 2008
Some may think the President’s recent attempts to squeeze domestic appropriations are being made in response to an explosion of domestic discretionary funding during his Administration’s first six years. But this is not correct: there has been no such funding explosion for domestic discretionary programs. Between fiscal year 2001 (the last year for which appropriations levels were set under President Clinton) and fiscal year 2008, funding for domestic discretionary programs has been more constrained than any other area of the budget and has shrunk both as a share of the budget and as a share of the economy. In contrast, appropriations for defense and other security-related programs have increased more rapidly than any other area of the budget — even more rapidly than the costs of the “big three” entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Then the Idiot writes
But Democrats' real achievement has been in destroying the family, and thereby creating an endless supply of potential rioters.
When blacks were only four generations out of slavery, their illegitimacy rate was about 23 percent (lower than the white illegitimacy rate is now). Then Democrats decided to help them! Barely two generations since LBJ's Great Society programs began, the black illegitimacy rate has tripled to 72 percent.
Meanwhile, the white illegitimacy rate has septupled, from 4 percent to 29 percent.
Of course she claims Democrats destroyed the family without any citation or evidence. You have to wonder what the illegitimacy rate would be if the GOP's position of banning Abortion were enacted.
But here's a bit more from the link regarding spending
There has been no rapid rise in funding for domestic discretionary programs in recent years; in fact these programs have shrunk both as a share of the budget and as a share of the economy.
In contrast, funding for defense and related programs has exploded. Since 2001, it has jumped at an annual average rate of 8 percent, after adjusting for inflation and population — four times faster than the average rate of growth for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (2 percent), and 27 times faster than the average rate for growth for domestic discretionary programs (0.3 percent).
Funding for defense and related programs has shot up by 2 percent of GDP in just seven years. It is expected to take more than two decades for Social Security to grow by 2 percent of GDP.
Even when costs for Iraq, Afghanistan, and the “global war on terror” are excluded, funding for the regular defense budget has risen at a stunning rate that dwarfs the growth rates for all parts of the domestic budget.
The combined effect of the Administration’s tax cuts and its defense spending increases (including the war) has been a budget deterioration equal to 3.3 percent of GDP since 2001. By contrast, increases in costs for all domestic programs combined have cost a little less than 0.6 percent of GDP.
The GOP has taken to talking sh#t out of context and just saying what they want you to believe, not what's true. It is the military budget that has more than doubled since 2001. Why don't they care?
Peace
karl
Ps, The "Welfare Class" doesn't vote as much as you think. Better beware if they start cause there is a lot more very poor than very rich
Edit
Dingus Milktoast
Gym climber
And every fool knows, a dog needs a home, and...
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:38am PT
The GOP has taken to talking sh#t out of context and just saying what they want you to believe, not what's true. It is the military budget that has more than doubled since 2001. Why don't they care?
Because defense spending is as close as they are ever going to get to defending their country. Plenty O democrats in that lineup too. The more you spend the bigger the patriot you can pretend to be! Yee HAH!
DMT
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
Oct 4, 2011 - 10:46am PT
Everyone in this country should be required to listen to the farewell address of this Republican Military General Turned President
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
Peace
Karl
Edit
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:03am PT
Karl is correct:
The poor simply do not vote, or do vote at a rate much lower than the "middle class".
And Fattrad, the fact is that American capitalism simply cannot create enough jobs for anywhere near "full" employment. In that sense, capitalism is a "failure".
So that leaves us with tens of millions of Americans who, not by choice, will never find jobs and contribute any tax dollars from earned income to society at large. FACT
So, what to do with "them"?
That question was answered over 50 years ago when "we" decided that we would not let Americans live anymore without some kind of safety net.
Safety net means "welfare", food stamps, SS and Medicare.
Now you can be an ignorant ass and say the "Dems" created this situation, but the fact is that abject poverty existed in America long long before any social programs existed.
Why don't you try pulling your head out of your ass and propose solutions to problems instead of sitting in the bleachers and repeating tired old talking points like a child.
atchafalaya
Boulder climber
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:08am PT
"Now you can be an ignorant ass and say the "Dems" created this situation, but the fact is that abject poverty existed in America long long before any social programs existed.
Why don't you try pulling your head out of your ass and propose solutions to problems instead of sitting in the bleachers and repeating tired old talking points like a child."
Because stupidity has been around even longer then poverty?
10b4me
Boulder climber
Happy Boulders
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:20am PT
reminds of the people that walk around wearing Che Guevarra t-shirts while living in a capitalist country.
but hey, I liked Che
Dingus Milktoast
Gym climber
And every fool knows, a dog needs a home, and...
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:21am PT
Saw one of those guys in the Minneapolis airport last week... middle aged geezer, his Che shirt under a flannel long sleeve, (seriously) and a nice vente Star Bucks clutched in his pudgy mitt... hahahahahahaha!
DMT
Lovegasoline
Trad climber
Sh#t Hole, Brooklyn, NY
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:26am PT
Ksolem:
Good grief, here we go with the “general welfare” clause again as if the whole Constitution were spun around it. It is one of six clauses in a perambulatory statement explaining why the actual document was written. And while yes, it is there, it is clearly the most softly stated of the six, beginning as it does with the word “promote.” Read it again if you will.
Each of the other five clauses is stated with more assertive language, for example “provide for the common defense.” To form…, establish…, insure…, provide…, and finally to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” are all more definitive statements. To promote does not mean to insure or to provide or to establish or to secure.
????
Ksolem, apparently you do not possess the language skills of the framers.
Allow me to alleviate your ignorance.
Here's a language lesson for you.
promote|prəˈmōt|
verb [ trans. ]
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin promot- ‘moved forward,’ from the verb promovere, from pro- ‘forward, onward’ + movere ‘to move'.
1 further the progress of (something, esp. a cause, venture, or aim); support or actively encourage : some regulation is still required to promote competition.
• give publicity to (a product, organization, or venture) so as to increase sales or public awareness : they are using famous personalities to promote the library nationally.
• Chemistry act as a promoter of (a catalyst).
2 (often be promoted) advance or raise (someone) to a higher position or rank : she was promoted to general manager.
• transfer (a sports team) to a higher division of a league : they were promoted from the Third Division last season.
• Chess exchange (a pawn) for a more powerful piece of the same color, typically a queen, as part of the move in which it reaches the opponent's end of the board.
• Bridge enable (a relatively low card) to win a trick by playing off the higher ones first.
DERIVATIVES
promotability |prəˌmōtəˈbilətē| noun
promotable adjective
promotive |-tiv| adjective
That's right: PROMOTE!
Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:31am PT
That's pretty funny Dingus, and one reason why this well meant movement is probably ( and unfortunately) doomed for obscurity in the annals of history.
This thread has degenerated to a point where I just kinda wanna nuke it.
But that's not very democratic I guess.
CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:32am PT
I'm all for getting rid of the Fed, which you will note is NOT a government body and is comprised of Banksters! It's an insane and crude scam that Banks are able to take the gift that they have given themselves by having a negative effective rate and milking it at the people's (Government's) expense while not loaning to the people. Yes the structure is wrong. It should be changed but don't blame government. Government not truly existing is the problem. Private industry deregulated has already proven more corrupt.
Government is screwed up here because they have been bought GOP and DEM alike by big business and are populated by a revolving door of big Wall Street criminals like Larry Summers and Geitner and the rest, All former executives of the same firms that sodomized the country.
So yeah, I'm critical of Government too, but getting rid of government isn't the answer, it's already been done by selling out to Wall Street control which is why nobody went to jail for the 2008 crisis while LOTS of people went to Jail for the S&L crisis back during the First Bush days.
Which brings up a another point. Seems like there is this Boom Bust cycle, that seems engineered by Wall Street and the Fed that always manages to bust right at the end of a presidential term limit. Doesn't matter whether it's GOP or DEM. Dotcom busted after Clinton, housing busted at the end of Bush, Carter went out with a Bust, and then the S&L.
And after all these busts, the super-rich last-guys-standing, who have made bank on the boom, buy up all the losers in the bust.
Karl, I think you are right on with many of these points, esp. about the Fed and it's interplay with the banks. But I don't believe deregulation had anything to do with our problems, and in fact I don't believe any real deregulation occured (congress chose NOT to regulate derivatives, but that is not deregulation). Getting rid of the Glass-Steagall act did nothing because banks already had workarounds. There is a strong correlation between the amount of regulation a country has and its level of corruption - politicians impose barriers, and make money by granting people exemptions to these barriers. Regulation is seldom made to solve real problems. For example, a very simple regulation that would do more than the entire Dodd-Frank is to make financial institutions carry collateral for any derivative they write, for example if a Credit Default Swap could potentially pay out $1 Million if a company defaults, the financial institution should have to keep that million in reserve (which they hate to do).
The best regulation is RISK. That means everyone plays with their own money. People who buy worthless mortgage backed securities suffer the consequences when their value goes to zero. Pension funds lose the money and have to answer to their employee unions, their managers are FIRED. A big part of our problems is this bailout entitlement, where there is an arbitrary "the loss stops here" mentality. This causes bad decisions to be reinforced, and bad money managers to double down (pension funds are now making even riskier bets to try to make up what was lost in 2008). Nothing will get better unless people have to suffer the consequences of their actions.
The boom-and-bust cycle is a simple consequence of easy money that gets misallocated. Money goes into investments that should never see the light of day, usually because of government subsidies (i.e. housing programs) and this creates a positive feedback loop in the price that always overshoots - because the price is based on projected price appreciation, not intrinsic value. When the market corrects, as it always does, this works in reverse. Sure there are losers who get "bought up" in this bust, but a fool and their money were lucky enough to get together in the first place. If you want to end (or at least minimize) this cycle, get rid of the Fed and let interest rates rise to the value the Market sets. The prime mover of the housing boom was when Bush pushed interest rates to near zero after Sept. 11. The spread between the prime rate and Fannie Mae bonds was close to 7%- guaranteed return, and of course it was far greater for sub prime. This was the updraft that caused bankers to lie, beg, borrow, steal, etc.
Captain...or Skully
climber
Where are you bound?
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:32am PT
I'd nuke it just to piss off the 'Tards.
Dingus Milktoast
Gym climber
And every fool knows, a dog needs a home, and...
Oct 4, 2011 - 11:35am PT
Right on Brandon, agree with the Cap'n... nuke it. Its good for the monkeys.
DMT
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 03:55pm PT
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Sprock
hey karl, how many different girls have you slept with
If I slept with them, it means they're "different" But, like a private corporation, I don't publish my numbers
Peace
Karl
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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It's really funny that some people think the Tea Party protests are great but these are bad... LOL.
It's amazing to me that otherwise intelligent people can be so blinded and one sided.
The right wing loonies claim there is something wrong with these protests, but claim they want freedom of speech.. haha, only if it suits their interests.
I wish the Tea Partiers were more Libertarian than the lame old conservatives they of course turned out to be.
I wish these protests concentrated on the undue influence of money in our political systems and how most people are suffering but the very rich are doing better than every. But of course the left wing loonies will make it all about crazy unrelated stuff.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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But greed is good.
GOP GOP GOP GOP
BAHAHAWAHAHA
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Greed is good.
And the fact that almost 10 million American kids under 6 years old aren't getting enough to eat is even better!
Ideologically I think you should be able to keep everything your earn. But practically what happens when the rich (top 0.1%) start controlling 99% of the wealth, and get richer and richer when everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Because that's were we are headed if current trends keep going. Is that what you want?
The interviews of protesters I have heard were with recent college graduates that can't find jobs and have huge students loans (more wealth concentration). But they are just lazy welfare recipients who just want the money from other people's hard work right?
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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ford will add 6000 jobs ,
20 million minus 6000 still equals 20 million if you round off to the nearest digit
woodie guthrie, gas up the van
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land". Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress.[1] Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer, and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence.
Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour".[2] Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was seemingly not a member of any.[3]
Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie.[4] Guthrie died from complications of Huntington's disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.
Woody Guthrie was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 1997.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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you are jesus
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 04:38pm PT
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Rox, after this post it bumps to a whole new clean page and all good
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 04:41pm PT
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Skip
Those who think that backing this two bit mob rule will ever get you anything other than people calling for beheading others are fooling yourselves.
We have seen where mob rule goes.
So non-violent protest is "Mob Rule" And just how is this different than those beloved Tea Party protests?
Fatty
So, you want to place zero blame on those that took out all of the credit and enjoyed the benefits? ???
Benefits like being underwater on your house and getting forclosed on anyway? They were the chumps that got sold. They are as much to blame as soldiers shot in the war are for foreign policy. THey signed up right?
PEace
Karl
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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stocks are up
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 06:41pm PT
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Karl,
There were quite a few people warning the public against buying homes during the feeding frenzy, you here on this very forum. I did in my local paper, no, most of these people just made poor decisions and should honor their liabilities.
The evil one
I'm just saying I'm not putting them to "Blame" which is the word you used. They might have to honor their liabilities (or walk away from their homes, an option legally open to them just like BK is for companies) but they are no more to blame than the soldiers who signed up for a war on terrorists and wound up serving in Iraq which never attacked us.
Those guys are still obligated to Die if ordered to do dangerous duty in Iraq but that doesn't make it right nor does it excuse the lying cheating scumbags who sent them over there knowing it wasn't really about WMDs
The bankers pulled a scam due to greed and should be investigated more thoroughly, not just bailed out and continuing to pull in millions per year.
Peace
Karl
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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The bankers pulled a scam due to greed and should be investigated more thoroughly, not just bailed out and continuing to pull in millions per year.
That 'll never happen Barry's in bed with 'em.
and Eric is too busy trying to cover his own tracks anyway.
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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Fatty,
TARP was only a small fraction of the bailout+stimulus. So no, it has not been paid back.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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I can't keep it straight.
Is Barry in bed with the fat cats and Wall Street OR in bed with the middle class?
I know it's "Class Warfare" somehow, but can't remember which O'Reilly says he is on today.
yesterday Obama was against the "job creators" (the wealthy), yet today he promotes class warfare by being FOR Wallstreet.
WHICH IS IT?
Doesn't matter which way it is spun, as long as I can say I am against whichever way the wind is blowing.
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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In the original Boston Tea Party, the tea that was destroyed belonged to a corporation: the East India Company.
A corporation that was protected and heavily subsidized by the British government.
Today's American "Tea Party" celebrates this event and have made it their representative symbol.
But today's "Tea Party" is on the side of government-supported corporations. They fight for the cause of the bankers and oil-companies - the modern-day equivalent of the East India Company.
The irony and ignorance is mind-boggling.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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The Repubs had the Presidency, the Senate AND the House from 2000-2006.
The economy went into RECESSION in 2007.
See the relationship?
FAIL
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Care to tell me what the evil bankers received beyond TARP???????
You can't possibly mean Fannie/Freddie, those were overseen by the Dem congress.
Why can't he mean Fannie/Freddie? The bankers still received it, no matter who gave it to them (and it was a doosey!)
How 'bout loose monetary policy?
How 'bout Gramm–Leach–Bliley?
How 'bout an SEC that was asleep at the wheel?
How 'bout zero regulations on derivatives trading?
How 'bout AAA ratings on mortgage-backed securities?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I couldn't figure out if it was the usual anarchist suspects, or just brainwashed commies. Looks like the latter;
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/
Why can't he mean Fannie/Freddie? The bankers still received it, no matter who gave it to them (and it was a doosey!)
How 'bout loose monetary policy?
How 'bout Gramm–Leach–Bliley?
How 'bout an SEC that was asleep at the wheel?
How 'bout zero regulations on derivatives trading?
How 'bout AAA ratings on mortgage-backed securities?
Yep, but you missed a couple too. Oh, and you're wrong about the more modern Tea Party. Not necessarily pro-corporation at all, just anti-big gov't and spending.
I'll repost the commie-brats in action photos again;
http://zombietime.com/day_of_fail/
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Do you know what the acronym stands for?
T. E. A. : "Taxed Enough Already"
While I agree with that acronym, it was co-opted. That is NOT the genesis of the current movement.
It was a Rick Santelli meltdown on one of the business channels. People who could not afford houses, or more importantly, chose mot to dive into a sketchy housing were paying for people who made stupid/greedy decisions without thought of consequence. It was a movement againt bailing these mortgages out at the expense of more prudent, or smarter, house shoppers.
The housing market was totally over-valued and had to crash, especially with unqualified people buying houses they could not afford.
I put most of the blame on Fannie/Freddie.
Here's the Santelli rant;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k
From wiki;
He is also credited with being a catalyst in the early formation of the Tea Party movement via a statement he made on February 19, 2009
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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I know about the Santelli rant.
I've probably watched more CNBC than anybody here (not by choice, and BTW Maria Bartiromo has no f*#king clue what she's saying most of the time...)
But Santelli was complaining about bailing out consumers - individuals with mortgages, not Wall Street. He is Wall Street for cricksakes.
I actually agree with Santelli on the basic premise of his rant, but that's over and done.
But dude, you are being played. They know there are lots of guys like you out there that have disdain for "hippe/commies" and they totaly use it to dupe you. The Tea Party is not a grass roots organization - it is a phenomenom that has been carefully engineered by corporations and the political right.
They want you to vote for thier tax break. They might throw you a small bone in the form of lower taxes now but you'll pay for it ten times over when they take medicare away from your parents.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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You're wrong, Mangy. Maybe some of the Tea Party has been co-opted by poseurs like Dick Armey, but I talk to these people. They are middle-class WORKERS, not ditbags, who are fed up with expanding gov't, green bullshit that fails, and a gov't that thinks spending more money OF MINE is the key to fix shit!!!
And healthcare will be fine unless Obama continues to f*#k with it. I'm not worried, and my folks (baby-boomers) aren't worried. What worries them is Obama's plans for the future.
To say that I'm a chump for wanting less gov't spending and smaller gov't overhead cost is pretty disengenuous, and a f*#king lie. It's smart fiscal policy!
It's common sense.
I know about the Santelli rant.
I've probably watched more CNBC than anybody here (not by choice, and BTW Maria Bartiromo has no f*#king clue what she's saying most of the time...)
But Santelli was complaining about bailing out consumers - individuals with mortgages, not Wall Street. He is Wall Street for cricksakes.
I actually agree with Santelli on the basic premise of his rant, but that's over and done.
Well then you're formally disengenuous, or you're a liar. Which is it?
You claimed Tea Partiers were formed by a pro-corporatist sentiment. WTF?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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A Common Sense True American Patriot has spoken. No others have common sense, or are true American patriots.
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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To say that I'm a chump for wanting less gov't spending [...]
Spending on what exactly?
NPR?
Acorn?
Aren't you the guy that posts about how he gets a hard-on when he sees a $100 million dollar military plane?
Both NPR and Acorn got less funding than the cost of a single F-22. You know, that plane that the Air Force doesn't even want, but some folks wanted so badly to keep building?
Less government spending...right.
Obey your masters.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aren't you the guy that posts about how he gets a hard-on when he sees a $100 million dollar military plane?
Both got less funding than the cost of a single F-22. You know, that plane that the Air Force doesn't even want, but some folks wanted so badly to keep building?
What you fools don't understand that national defense is one of the few legit platforms of Federal Gov't responsibility. And yeah, we should stay ahead of the curve there.
As for PRIVATE spending, that is left to the free-market system. And yeah, it should be closely watched by the FED, another one of their mandates from the constitution.
I didn't hear the AF disliked the f-22 Raptor. Must be an Adml. Mullen type who dissed it.
Spending??? Obama's green sh#t is rotting!!!! How much did we give them??
Mangy, question;
How do you feel about the Dept of Energy? (Blew the Solyndra deal amonst others).
How about the Dept of Education?
Maybe we should cut back on Defense and encourage lifetime support of other bullshit that, frankly, is detrimental.
Wes, you're laregly unworthy of a reply. You're just a f*#king dick....
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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What you fools don't understand that national defense is one of the few legit platforms of Federal Gov't responsibility.
Really? Cite the part of the Constitution that says that.
We all know you never defended it. Have you ever even read it?
Must be an Adml. Mullen type who dissed it.
Yeah, must be one of those guys who has spent their entire life in the service of defending the United States. WTF?
Anyway, back to your Constitutional expertise. Let's see if you can cut and paste...
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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No Jeff, you were a one dollar a year DEPUTY.
Why don't you get out your little certificate of appreciation.
It's Show and Tell time now!
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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I wish I could nuke this cockpageant too.
Grow up bitches.
And Blue, I love your passion but trying to argue a point after a couple of beers using other people's bullet points does not behove you. You seem like youd be a cool person in person, act it online man.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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What's dope got to do with this Fattrad?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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And Blue, I love your passion but trying to argue a point after a couple of beers using other people's bullet points does not behove you. You seem like youd be a cool person in person, act it online man.
Point out where I'm incorrect in anything.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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I'm not in the mood to fact check your posting record, and my point was aimed more at the manner in which you convey a point. Posting with lots of !!!!!!!!!!'s and calling people names undermines the body of your statement. Try bucking the fanatical trend of forcing opinions without truly hearing and appreciating the counterpoint, and listen. Most of us listen to the counterpoint and form an opinion based on all the facts. I personally, try as much as I can to do that. I'm not telling you that your opinion is wrong, that defies logic, as all opinions are property of their owners. I'm just imploring you to listen a little more and think a little deeper before you type. Nobody's perfect, least of all me. I'm simply voicing an opinion.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Brandon, my young friend, you too seem pretty personable.
However, if you choose to jump on the Wes-wagon and accuse me of being drunk and posting crap, you better be able to back that sh#t up, or else I'm gonna call you on it and throw some disparaging remarks back.
I don't tolerate fools lightly, nor rhetoric. I expect nothing less from others that debate here. If you can't take the heat...
I stand by all my remarks on this thread and the one you deleted. Again, nothing really personal, but be careful what you accuse me of. I will respond.
EDIT:
The only facts you need to know is that $66.7 billion in fighter jets that were introduced over 6 years ago is ESSENTIAL to protect us from terrorists who fly airliners into skyscrapers.
Unlike you, dipsh#t, we have smart minds in the military who think of the next realistic conflict. I'll let you contemplate that, genious.
Who could it be???
EDIT:
And $100 million is an OUTRAGEOUS amount to spend on public radio.
I agree. What's your point? Spend more money on Public Radio and less on national defense?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Wow... I have said some pretty interesting and to the point sh#t on that thread....
Three cheers for Jingy for being right!!!!
(Other more right leaning pundits have weighed in with their jive-ass sh#t too... three boo's for the idiots)
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I don't know, who has oil?
We do, next guess?
Wow... I have said some pretty interesting and to the point sh#t on that thread....
Three cheers for Jingy for being right!!!!
Wow, man!!! Lift up yer skirt, bro, you have yer own cheerleaders!!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 10:20pm PT
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BES1'st writes a scenario about his small business that wasn't a financial service business and wasn't a public corporation traded on wall street and then criticizes the protesters, whose beef HAS NOTHING TO DO with the kind of business he as in. Come on buddy, it's not about you and definitely not in support of government (both parties have been bought and sold to BIG corporations and money, not your operation, how big a check did you write to a politician?)
as for the defense Budget. Come on Bluering, how can you be for cutting spending when you defend defense spending when it has DOUBLED since 2001. On other hand, your taxes DID NOT double. In fact, they are less than 2001. Income tax rates went down, capital gains taxes went down. And yet you bitch about taxes and spending while leaving the fastest growing spending of all. You really think those third world terrorists will march down our streets if we don't spend as much as the rest of the world COMBINED on defense (which we do)
Here's why the Military (Secretary Gates, originally appointed by George Bush and kept on by that partisan commie Obama, doesn't want the f-22
http://articles.philly.com/2009-07-09/news/25290122_1_fighter-plane-f-22-fighter-jet
The F-22 is the most capable air-to-air fighter in the Air Force inventory. Yet it has only limited air-to-ground attack capabilities, which makes it unsuitable for today's counter-insurgency operations. In fact, the F-22 has never been used in either Iraq or Afghanistan. It was designed to fight next-generation Soviet fighters that never materialized, and, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates has noted, it is nearly useless for irregular warfare.
The F-22 has no known enemy. It is the most advanced fighter plane in the world, and there are no other planes that could threaten its supremacy in air-to-air combat. The United States already has 187 F-22s on hand or on order - a silver-bullet force that is more than adequate to deal with any likely contingency. In fact, Gates said that even if he had $50 billion more to spend, he would not buy any more F-22s.
Left wing pinko peacenik John McCain agrees
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/07/mccain_allies_w.html
Peace
Karl
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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The F-22 has no known enemy. It is the most advanced fighter plane in the world, and there are no other planes that could threaten its supremacy in air-to-air combat. The United States already has 187 F-22s on hand or on order - a silver-bullet force that is more than adequate to deal with any likely contingency. In fact, Gates said that even if he had $50 billion more to spend, he would not buy any more F-22s.
To say it has no current role is stupid, and some mil-intelligengece dudes know this. That is why we're somewhat happy with the fleet we have.
The plane is an air-superiority work of technical genius. It shot down 6 f-15's (previous air super-powers) in trials. The f-15 pilots couldn't even see them on radar as the F-22's attacked.
187 may be enough. I'll give you that. But do not dispute the power and future effectiveness of this craft. It WAS money well spent. Not against current campaigns, but future ones. We always look ahead, as we should.
Also, the F-22 technology will lead to better sh#t.
The F-35 is a plane designed to sell to NATO as part of the MIC (military industrial complex). Big mistake. They are giving NATO our secret weapon. Stealth tech.
EDIT: Karl, McCain is an ass.
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WBraun
climber
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The plane is an air-superiority work of technical genius.
The common house fly can easily out maneuver any plane.
It is far superior and the work of a real genius.
Modern materialistic man is only a crude imitator ......
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 10:50pm PT
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Let me put this another way Bluering. You say you're against all this government debt.
What if every percent that military spending went up, your taxes went up to pay for it. So double your 2001 tax bill.
Still for more F-22 fighters?
Peace
Karl
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Saugy
Mountain climber
BC
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http://youtu.be/NZpcEGxM9XY
...and thats what Occupy Wall Street is all about...isnt it?
And the Arab Spring?
And rioting punks in U.K.?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2011 - 10:55pm PT
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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/04-4
Reposted from Rueters
Citi, BofA Cut Workers After US Tax Holiday-Report
Report singles out 10 companies for cutting jobs
Ten major U.S. corporations, including big banks Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp, laid off workers after enjoying a tax holiday in 2004-2005 that had been billed as a form of economic stimulus, said a report released on Tuesday.
With large multinational companies today pressing Congress for another tax holiday, the Institute for Policy Studies reported that the last one did not fulfill its rosy promises for hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers.
Fifty-eight corporations that accounted for 70 percent of overseas profits repatriated under the 2004-2005 tax break collectively saved $64 billion in taxes, then cut 600,000 jobs through layoffs, the report said.....
and there you have it. Why "cutting corporate taxes and giving them breaks equals new jobs" is horseshyit!
....Large companies are lobbying again for such a tax break, which would let them repatriate much if not all of an estimated $1.5 trillion in overseas profits for well below the full 35-percent corporate income tax rate.
Legislation in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives would let them repatriate those profits at 5.25 percent, the same tax rate given to them under a similar tax holiday during the Bush administration.
Just as they are doing now, companies six years ago said that the repatriation tax break would boost jobs and the economy. But the institute said this did not happen, as earlier academic studies have also found.
Peace
Karl
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Bluerags incessant "leghumping".... What a panzie
"Wow, man!!! Lift up yer skirt, bro, you have yer own cheerleaders!!"
Blahblahblah.... Pointless meanderings from a routine head in the ass righty....
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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What if every percent that military spending went up, your taxes went up to pay for it. So double your 2001 tax bill.
Still for more F-22 fighters?
First, that's a what if???
Second, I already said we have a good supply of F-22's. The F-18 is a solid platform too. Why share the F-35 with NATO and spend all that cash?
F*#k the F-35. Let's roll with our fleet of F-22's, and we have to build more plane, build F-18's?
Our air force is pretty solid right now. We only need to replace what is decommissioned. Not a lot.
Next...
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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That fly was going 550 miles per hour! That is one fast f*#king fly bro.
And the passengers were walking that fast when they got up to go to the bathroom.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Let me put this another way Bluering. You say you're against all this government debt. What if every percent that military spending went up, your taxes went up to pay for it. So double your 2001 tax bill.
Karl, can't we just keep borrowing the money from the Chinese and let our kids deal with it? It's their tax bill....and we don't need to worry about that do we? Let us keep spending like drunken sailors my brobhams!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 5, 2011 - 11:43am PT
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That fly was going 550 miles per hour! That is one fast f*#king fly bro.
And the passengers were walking that fast when they got up to go to the bathroom.
and they both are rocking 66,600 miles per hour around the sun, and our whole shebang is traveling like 558,000 miles per hour around the Milky way. Good thing there's nothing standing still out there to get in our way!
Peace
Karl
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WBraun
climber
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The modern stupid materialists make a crude imitation mechanical death bird.
Killing machine this F-22.
They think they're advanced.
Yes they have advanced very well going backwards into the stone age wasting everyone's hard earned money and worlds resources to throw rocks at each other.
Stupid people.
Meanwhile half the world is bereft of a basic decent life .......
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krahmes
Social climber
Stumptown
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Too bad about the original thread it had saliency some in places which is about the most you can hope for on the internetz when the talk is political.
Put me in the austerity camp as a way out of this mess, but now that we’re in QE3 (the Twist is how their hyping that) it looks like the Krugmanites (is it any wonder that he’s Bernanke’s old roommate?) have their hands on the wheel of the USA economy.
It’s been suggested that the occupation of Wall Street is the start of a progressive equivalent of the tea party; we’ll see. Bongos and placards only get you so far. Anonymous is perhaps the wildcard, but 3 years ago those clowns were mostly going after Boxxy and Applemilk1988 on YT and it’s hard to believe that there is any genuine political conscience in those joker hackers.
The most relevant chart in the old thread was this one:
I’d add this one which is a chart of Inflation on the Consumer Price Index over time with the government issued CPI number, which was tweaked in both the Reagan and Clinton administrations in contrast to a calculated change in CPI as it was calculated in 1980, collated by shadowstats.com.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 5, 2011 - 03:41pm PT
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I think some austerity is in order but it's going to require some austerity on the part of the wealthy in coughing up some dough in tax increases because it's plain from the history of increasing debt that politicians have bought votes by lowering taxes again and again without commensurate spending cuts. Now we are at a point where no amount of reasonable spending cuts brings us to a balanced budget
And we have to beware of the flip side. What does serious austerity mean? It means cutting people's jobs. Those people become unemployed and that many unemployed will mean a LOT of long term unemployment. That means more folks needing government services and also money taken out of the economy and tax base as well.
Let 'em eat cake? Even the rich don't want a revolution. Imagine lots of unemployed people, thrown off unemployment by the government, facing foreclosures, even homelessness. Hardly the bright future the GOP promises with minimum government and taxes.
PEace
Karl
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dirtbag
climber
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Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University gave the New York protests a lift on Sunday with a speech that has been making the rounds via Youtube. Because the protesters were prohibited from using a megaphone, he paused in between lines for the crowd that had gathered around him to repeat his words more loudly. He told the protesters they were doing the right thing by standing up to Wall Street:
"You are right to be indignant. The fact is the system is not working right. It is not right that we have so many people without jobs when we have so many needs that we have to fulfill. It’s not right that we are throwing people out of their houses when we have so many homeless people."
"Our financial markets have an important role to play. They’re supposed to allocate capital, manage risks. But they misallocated capital, and they created risk. We are bearing the cost of their misdeeds. There’s a system where we’ve socialized losses and privatized gains. That’s not capitalism; that’s not a market economy. That’s a distorted economy, and if we continue with that, we won’t succeed in growing, and we won't succeed in creating a just society."
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/10/05/occupy_wall_street_stiglitz_lessig_west_lend_protests_intellectu.html
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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The Fixx - How Much Is Enough?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcuGBQWswg
How much is enough?
Good enough, is not good enough
Don't complain that you've got it tough
With all you have, your life's a bore
Can't relax, you want so much more
Blind needs won't set you free
Can't you see that time is slipping away?
But I got to say
How much is enough? When your soul is empty
How much is enough? In the land of plenty
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough, is enough
Gravity may bring you down
But harmony could spin you 'round
Information ariel says buy buy buy material
Give take all day long
Can't you see it's hopeless being strong When you live it wrong?
How much is enough? When your soul is empty
How much is enough? In the land of plenty
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough? How much is enough?
Buy buy buy, buy buy buy
So give me your attention, I know it's getting late
While we were dreaming, something slipped away
We're drowning in possessions, playing tricks with our minds
Lost from one another, baby put your hand in mine
Time is slipping away, but it's not too late
How much is enough? When your soul is empty
How much is enough? In the land of plenty
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough? How much is enough? How much is enough?
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough? How much is enough? How much is enough?
How much is enough? How much is enough? How much is enough?
Read more: THE FIXX - HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH LYRICS
http://www.metrolyrics.com/how-much-is-enough-lyrics-the-fixx.html#ixzz1ZvxCkiXX
Copied from MetroLyrics.com
The Fixx - No one has to cry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74dlhTr9H50
As I wake today, same as yesterday
I get in my car, poor, turn my wheels
So much to say, who's got time to listen
Fulfill our dreams, shame is left unseen
Why should someone lose so that I get by?
Why should someone pay just to send me high?
No one has to cry while I can smile
No one owns the sky, so blue above you
But somewhere in this world is a field where we all play
Secrets in your eyes, no one has to cry
There's no self-control as we play our roles
It's all dog eat dog, we're all dressed for show
As we plot and scheme full of American dreams
Who says it's fair who gets the opportunities?
There are some who live without so that I get by
They pay the price for doubtin' just to send me high
No one has to cry while I can smile
No one owns the sky, so blue above you
'Cause somewhere in this world is a field where we all play
Secrets in your eyes, no one has to cry
No one has to, oh, no
Why should someone lose so that I get by?
Or pay the price for doubting just to send me high?
No one has to cry while I can smile
No one owns the sky, so blue above you
'Cause somewhere in this world is a field where we all play
Secrets in your eyes no one has to cry
No one, no one, no one has to cry
'Cause somewhere in this world is a feeling we possess
Secrets in your eyes no one has to cry
No one, no one, no one has to cry
No one, no one, no one has to cry, no one has to cry
Read more: THE FIXX - NO ONE HAS TO CRY LYRICS
http://www.metrolyrics.com/no-one-has-to-cry-lyrics-the-fixx.html#ixzz1Zw1kfPiY
Copied from MetroLyrics.com
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 6, 2011 - 02:53am PT
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If you confiscated every single dime from every single billionaire in America you couldn't cover all the debt our government will rack up this year
fine Skip. Let's totally slash the military by 70% and just threaten to Bomb the crap, even nuke, anybody who seriously threatens our country. If allies want protection, they have to pay for it. It's the military budget that's DOUBLED since 2001, not the medicare budget or the Social Security expenses, they didn't double. The military did and we were already spending more on our military than any country in the world by far.
Are you guys so chicken that your really have to be able to destroy the world 100x over instead of just 10x?
That's less risky than gutting our schools and elderly
Peace
Karl
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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UC Davis
1973
tuition: $212.50 per quarter
which was picked up by the state scholarship program,
total tuition: 0
nowadays, you are just a slave to citibank for tens of thousands plus interest
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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The Board of Regents for the University of California (UC) has proposed to raise tuition by up to 16 percent a year over the next four years. The increases would bring tuition to $22,000 for the 2015-2016 school year. Adding campus fees, room and board, and books and supplies brings the total cost of a four-year bachelor’s degree program to a staggering $160,000.
UC President Mark Yudof claims the extreme increases are needed to meet the projected $2.5 billion shortfall in the current UC budget. The alternatives, according to Yudof, are increasing the number of higher paying out-of-state students—decreasing the enrollment of California students—or eliminating classes. Although several regents loudly opposed raising tuition, they offered no serious counterproposals.
One regent, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, suggested a new tax dedicated to the state colleges and universities, but his regressive proposal is little more than demagoguery given the opposition of the financial oligarchy to any significant increase in social spending.
Since coming to office, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown has approved a budget that may cut almost $3 billion from education. An earlier plan to raise taxes primarily targeting the state’s poor was scrapped due to lack of support.
While Democrats control both houses of the state legislature, not a single politician has proposed raising taxes on the wealthy to preserve social funding. Currently only 11 percent of UC’s $22 billion budget is paid for by the state of California.
Richard Blum, a UC regent and the multimillionaire spouse of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, has called for a turn toward outright privatization. “I’ve been watching this for 10 years, it has essentially been a waste of our time to beat on governors and legislators,” Blum told reporters on Friday. “Where is the money? It’s in the private sector, with corporations and with wealthy individuals.”
At the same time that programs are cut and tuition soars, the Board of Regents has approved several bonuses to already highly compensated administrators. The largest of these, $744,950, was given to UC chief investment officer Marie Berggren, bringing her total annual compensation to $1.2 million. The bonus was required by her contract due to a better than expected performance of the UC’s $70 billion endowment.
Similarly, on Thursday the board approved a $259,000 raise for UC Davis Medical Center CEO Ann Madden Rice, bringing her base pay to $960,000 a year. Using the same justification as the bailed-out banks to defend exorbitant CEO pay, the Board of Regents claims these huge paychecks are needed to stay competitive and retain “talent.”
Significantly, most of the highest paid UC employees head programs such as sports or medical centers, which generate large amounts of money. Blum’s push for corporate intervention would only accelerate the current trend of cutting programs that do not make money and concentrating wealth on the programs that do.
Financial aid programs like the Pell Grant are facing cuts of their own, deepening the crises for students from lower and middle-income families. Under these circumstances, young people will be forced to either quit college, or take out gargantuan loans.
These debts burden working class families for decades. Already by June of last year, student loans exceeded credit card debt in the US for the first time.
Unlike credit card debt, student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and there is no statute of limitations for repayment. As tuition rises and the job market remains stagnant, far more students will find themselves in cycle of debt they cannot escape. In 2009 the percentage of people who defaulted on their student loans within two years of entering repayment rose from 7 percent to 8.8 percent.
There is no longer any significant section of the bourgeoisie that views public education as crucial to society. In bourgeois politics the only important question now is whether students will be employable.
Indicative of this is the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of State Senate Bill 547, which would loosen high school standards for producing college-ready graduates. A recent editorial, for example, states, “not all students are interested in attending college, and not all of them should.” Rather, what is needed is an education system that primarily trains students to “qualify for a satisfying and well-paid job.” Nowhere is it suggested that education is important to a person’s quality of life or the social fabric of society.
Students and their families must reject the position that they must either become indentured servants or beg from the rich—or perhaps do both—to get a basic education. Free, quality education from pre-school through university is a fundamental social right, which must be fought for on the basis of an independent socialist perspective.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 6, 2011 - 10:21am PT
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UC Davis
1973
tuition: $212.50 per quarter
which was picked up by the state scholarship program,
total tuition: 0
nowadays, you are just a slave to citibank for tens of thousands plus interest
not only that but the banks have it worked out with the politicians that the Government GUARANTEES to the banks that the students will repay the loans and then NOBODY can declare bankruptcy on student loans, even after 50 years. So better not flunk out of medical school (or get sick bad) halfway through or you're hosed for maybe life!
If the gov is going to guarantee it. why not loan the money themselves and make bank on it?
Peace
Karl
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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not only that but the banks have it worked out with the politicians that the Government GUARANTEES to the banks that the students will repay the loans and then NOBODY can declare bankruptcy on student loans, even after 50 years.
I think Obama put a 20 year limit on payback, and the amount you have to pay back every year is a small fraction of your monthly pay. The downside is rates are sky-high, usually about 10%, even when the prime rate is 0%.
This will cause more people to take out bigger loans without a thought of having to pay them back, and will allow Universities to raise prices even higher. Politicians then want more money for student loans, and the cycle continues unabated.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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This Revolution against Our dysfunctional Right Wing Government, that only works for the 1% has been in works since Reagan wrecked America
I'm joining in
The Tea Baggers have even joined in, they got smart and figured out that they were on the wrong side, and were just helping the Rich (Koch Bros) take over.
Yeah, the Unions are trying to hijack it now too, how long before Obama is marching on Wall Street in a desperate effort to be re-elected?
Everyone involved is a puppet for failed Government policy. The Obama administration is giddy that people actually believe a handful of Corporate types will take the blame for the mess our economy is in, and they can keep getting kickbacks while pushing financial "reform" that addresses such issues as overdraft fees, etc. What a joke. We deserve better than that.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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All just "tea party"envy by the unwashed mob and their puppeteers.
They are just a mob,
incapable of elucidating anything coherent.
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dirtbag
climber
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TGT, whatever.
It is gaining momentum.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
Where are you bound?
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Why do you people hate rocks?
I like rocks.
'Tards, not so much.
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dirtbag
climber
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Yes, but...their theme--that there are a lot of people in suits getting away with f*#king up the economy while the middle class suffers--is spot on. We'll see what develops...
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Wall Street Protests:
In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.
Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand?
PK
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jeff,
Well based on what you have put forth, it makes absolutely no sense for us to engage in discussion. I don't agree with any of those assessments which you have offered but you are certainly entitled to your opinion. For my part, I am only interested in having debates with people who are not overtly hostile and genuinely wish to look at the various issues. If you perceive me in the light you have outlined, then, of course, you WILL be hostile. You would be unable to meet my criteria for having non-hostile interaction as a requisite for discussion.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jeff,
I do wish to thank you for sharing your perceptions, thus clearing up this matter. It certainly does explain a whole lot of that which here-to-fore made no sense to me. Continued interaction would be pointless and would likely generate nothing but additional hostility. There would be no realistic prospect of us ever achieving any meeting of the minds. In fact, discussion would foster both of us to invest time and energy into patently negative pursuits. Doing so would certainly not represent a positive use of our respective life energies. If it is all the same to you, then, regarding future discussions between us, I shall simply pass.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jeff,
I am sorry you perceive it that way but I see it differently. When I come in from outdoor work and check in only to find a HUGE number of extremely emotional vitriolic posts directed specifically at me over the span of a but few hours, I become concerned. Moreover, this was not the first time it has happened. It is happening more and more frequently - long posts and numerous posts directly in a very emotional tone specifically at me. It is not a situation wherein he posts one comment which is "heated" and then waits for me to return to reply to it. I am noticing a pattern of escalating vitriol and it is directed at me. I do not feel this pattern is healthy for any of the parties involved and accordingly I have asked Ken not to specifically engage me in these discussions. I do not feel that request is unreasonable.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Hey Jeff, its Show and Tell time!
Why don't you post up your high school diploma?
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cleo
Social climber
Berkeley, CA
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They socialized risk and privatized profits.
I hope the Tea Party joins the protests.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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The dupes (TGT, bookworm, skipt, bluering) who believe the Occupiers all want hand outs or are anti-American or anti-capitalist are unbelievably naive. I think Fattrad is at least honest about his greed.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Cliché, sure, but it's also more true than at any time since the Gilded Age.
The poor are getting poorer, wages are falling behind inflation, and social mobility is at an all-time low.
If you're in that top 1%, life is grand.
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4
You always hear about how the bottom 50% pays no taxes (which I agree is lame, they should pay a low percentage) but they never say the bottom 50% only has 2.5% of the wealth. Wonder why?
Normalized to 1979, the top 1% have seen their share of America's income more than double. The bottom 90% have seen their portion shrink.
It's not "fair" for the govt to take from the rich and give to the poor, but is it "fair" for the rich to get richer and richer and live off accumulated wealth while the other 99% gets worse and worse off? Do we really want a country of Paris Hiltons and everyone else?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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TGT Are you in the top 1% and being dishonest about this being about socialism, or are you really gullible enough to believe what your masters tell you? Because it's either one of the other.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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The tax rate for income above $250,000 going from 35% to 39.6% isn't socialism.
The tax rate for capital gains (money you didn't work for, but was made off existing wealth) going up from 15% is not socialism. This one would hurt me, but I'm not enough of a selfish prick to think I should pay less tax from making money off of wealth than people do for working.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Fattrad,
I don't know or care who Alinsky is but I do know Obama's policies:
Obama ≠ Socialist
What's really sad is both the Repubes or the DRats haven't proposed a balanced budget for any point in the future. We really need cuts like the Repubes want and to raise taxes like the DRats and we'd get to a balanced budget. But no one has the guts to admit it.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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"The People" were stupid enough to take the loans.
and, the taxpayer loans have been paid back.
Good point.
First, I don't see the logic of this movement. If you believe a that a private company can pay their CEOs whatever they want (and if you don't, you should move to Cuba), then the only thing you can complain about is that these companies took TARP money. In that case the Teapartiers had it right, the TARP money should not have been given out (even though as Fattrad says most of it has been paid back). The Tea partiers at least knew that the TARP would go towards CEO bonuses. These people were broadsided by this apparently and now they are applalled, so basically this is a naive Tea Party.
Second, what about the counterparties here? As fatty mentioned, millions took out loans that they knew they couldn't pay back, hoping to make fast money in the Real Estate mania. Now they are staying in houses they have NEVER had equity in for as many as 3 years without making payments, and gleefully trashing the place on exit. Bank of America alone is sitting on about $100 Billion in bad loans, while most homeowners skate.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Over TWO THIRDS of our National Debt was added under Republican Presidents.
DUH
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OR
Trad climber
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I love the " List of Demands" and the corresponding "Manifesto". Its the worst movement/protester cliche out there. I believe they have a right to protest and although misguided, are on to something though. The first time some of these people created a list of demands and a manifesto was over the lack of vegeterian options in the freshman cafeteria at Brown.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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What's really sad is both the Repubes or the DRats haven't proposed a balanced budget for any point in the future.
Kinda true. Since the Repubs took the House this year though, THEY HAVE offered balanced budgets but they were shot down in the Senate by Reid et al....
Oh, and many in these mobs self-identify as socialists and commies. Ever seen their demands?
They're backtracking on it now like typical commies.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Care to list the specific charges and prosecution results? ^^^^^^^ ?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Care to list the specific charges and prosecution results?
The probe is still underway, but you're smart enough to realize what they're probing.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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No Blue, I am not as smart as you.
Why don't either you or TGT list the specific charges and prosecution results.
Seriously, I need your deep intellect and experience with corruption on this.
LIST THE CHARGES AND PROSECUTION RESULTS.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I'm going to dinner. Later....
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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A response to Bill Ayers from one of his neighbors.
You can sum up the "manifesto" of the 99%ers in three main statements:
1. I am absolutely entitled to be happy, stress free, anxiety free, perfectly healthy, well-rested, and entertained every waking minute of my life, and if I can't pay for these things myself (for whatever reasons, including laziness and incompetence on my part) it is the responsibility of everyone else to do so.
2. If anything happens that all of these conditions aren't met, then it is the primary police, regulatory, and tax-policy responsibility of government - and the primary obligation of taxpayers - to see that they are restored immediately.
3. If these things aren't restored immediately, then I will use whatever means -- electoral or violent -- to smash anyone or any business who is better off than I am.
My response to these as follows:
1. There is no right to happiness. Only its pursuit. You are not entitled to a materially excellent, stress free, exciting life. Nobody who has ever lived is entitled to this. When you adopt the attitude that it is ultimately the responsibility not of yourself but of some agency outside of yourself to provide you with material satisfaction and happiness and freedom from anxiety, you void your humanity. The default condition of humans throughout millions of years of history is hungry, stressed, and in need of sleep. Until the past few decades in the Western and Westernized world and with a free market, capitalistic system, this is how most people lived. The capitalist system you all seem to hate also had some of this stress and is far from perfect, but it is the only one that gave people an opportunity (not a guarantee, an OPPORTUNITY) to do something about it. It's not my fault that your politically correct history teachers imbued with leftist agendas failed to teach you any of this, or that your demagoguing leftist politicians were dishonest about what were historical norms in terms of what to expect out of life.
2. The primary purpose of government is to guarantee civil rights (negative rights, not positive economic ones), be an impartial judge in civil matters, provide equal access to energy and commerce, and then get the hell out of the way and let people sink or soar based upon their native skills, work ethic, and the value of their particular work at whatever the existing level of technology might be. Period. It is NOT to make sure that you have enough money for all the trinkets and outward signs of success and status. Not to free up money that you would have spent on medical care so you can have a new car by taking that medical money from your neighbor who earns more than you do. Not to put in regulations which guarantee your job security and income security at bulletproof levels. We've had governments that are like that in the last hundred years or so. Review them and their histories and their human rights legacy and then decide which is best, that way or this one.
3. It's true that there was much malfeasance on Wall Street. The bad actors should go to jail. But everyone on Wall Street isn't bad, and Wall Street is only a tiny fraction of the business community. It is insanity to paint all business people with a broad brush as you do and want to crush them with protests and support politicians who promote a ridiculous level of regulation. Smash business and your wealthier neighbors and you will destroy any opportunity for yourself. Everyone can't have a good paying public sector job with great benefits where you don't have to work very hard and can retire at 58. And what jobs there are that are like that will not be increasing in number as time goes by, given the obvious failure of the big-government welfare/nanny/hyperregulatory state. Success in the private sector requires that you learn to manage stress. That you purge envy from your life. Learn to multitask. Learn to work within a hierarchy even if you aren't at the top. Learn that your are valuable to your boss if you need to be told how to do something only once and learn and retain it forever (something you would certainly demand if you were boss). Learn that you may have to move and make other sacrifices in order to be somewhere where your skills are in demand. Learn that you may not get all the material things you want quickly and at once. Learn to be happy with whatever pay rate your neighbors and community have decided your labor or product is worth on a free market . The very fact that you're in this protest and failing to thrive, and that other young people are doing well and happy with less education and even lower pay than you, is prima facie evidence that you have not learned at least one and possibly several of these necessary things. It's not the fault of George Bush or businesspeople or devout Christians or Republicans - or Democrats, even. It's your own deficits, or your own stubbornness.
Beyond these specific things, there are other points I would make.
Your anger and efforts would be better directed at the (largely government) education system. In this you have been ill-served. It is overpriced, staffed primarily with people who aren't there to be excellent but to get thirty years of guaranteed pay and a pension, who are not at all averse to using the bully pulpit they possess to propagandize instead of teach and conveniently forget to mention aspects of philosophies or historical facts that blow holes in their narrative, and their marketing of their services with respect to ultimate financial expectations has been largely dishonest. If you didn't fit in exactly to their expectations or were difficult to teach they would put you on Ritalin or some other drugs. That said, nobody forced you to go deeply into debt for an "education" that is more often an indoctrination with no guarantees of a marketable skill.
Likewise, your parents did you no favors. They had you play soccer in leagues that didn't keep score and gave trophies to all the teams regardless of how good or bad they were, shielding you from the concept of winning and losing, the notion that not everyone has the same skill set, and the idea that actions have consequences. They supported the notion of getting rid of class rank for valedictorian, got rid of physical education and home economics and recess. They filled you with the poisonous notion of outcome egalitarianism, the greatest lie of all.
The minute you were "unhappy" your parents brought you to the doctor and put you on happy pills. They bubble wrapped you so you would never be hurt or suffer consequences for bad actions or words. They insisted you go to college instead of getting a trade because they wanted to impress everyone with how awesome they were as parents as evidenced by sending all their kids to college.
Your media and information industry failed you, getting you to think that supporting Obama in 2008 was a blow against Wall Street by not reporting that Wall Street gave him five times more money than McCain. Protesting Wall Street but not Obama is illogical but understandable if you aren't aware of his campaign finance connections. (If you know about them and are still protesting Wall Street but not Obama, you're a hypocrite.)
However, your biggest failure is to yourself. Whatever people or circumstances led you to believe that you deserve to have perfect, stress free happiness and everything you wanted or the government would get it for you, they were wrong, and so are you. Want to be successful and ultimately happy? You'll need to learn that you will have to sacrifice much in the short term. You'll be best friends with the concept of delayed gratification. You'll have to learn to deal with high stress levels, lack of sleep, and lack of material status among peers, not for a few hours or a day or two but for weeks or months or years. You'll learn to exist not being fully happy for extended times in your life -- without happy pills. You'll learn that there are things in life that make you happy like religion, community, volunteer work, and so many other things that have nothing to do with pay.
You'll learn to deal with all of this with dignity and a sense of humor, not pouty aggrieved entitlement.
Or you'll fail utterly and cosmically deserve to fail, regardless of what happens to Wall Street.
Occupying Wall Street isn't the solution.
http://rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=331230&D=2011-10-08&SO=&HC=4
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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photos from DailyMail
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the goat
climber
north central WA
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College graduate protesters who can't find jobs are probably ones with social science and arts degrees. Double E's and other engineering degrees are in high demand around these parts. How many "environmental science" degrees can this economy carry, probably very few.
Bring down wall street and really watch the s#*t hit the fan.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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I'm not making excuses for Obama.
He should of have been doing more.
It's not too late for him to begin to do what he said he would do.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Skipt writes:
"The Wall Street Squatters have nothing but a bunch of sh#t to offer."
That guy is squatting to piss.
He has to squat to piss, because he's wearing zip-up-the-back pants.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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edit: Bluering
Regarding the supposed corruption charges pending against Pelosi and Emmanuel?
I have asked you to specifically show where you got this factual information.
Your above post very clearly has nothing at all to do with proving this contention.
Again, simply show your credible source link where you claim to be informed of these specific corruption charges against these two people you named.
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Helga
Mountain climber
stateline, NV
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The mortgage crises is every one's fault who gave out and took loans for hopeful and realized short term profits. BUT- and these are BIG BUTS- 1)Banks are supposed to know better. And they did, as evidenced by their huge bets against the products they were selling. Hell, didn't Pete Rose get kicked out of the hall of fame for bettin against his team? 2) With the deregulation and creation of creative "financial products" banks were theoretically able to leverage the "value" of real estate infinitely. Even in traditional banking, they are allowed to lend 10 times what they actually have! Talk about the deck being stacked in their favor. That kind of leveraged lending is able to produce way more worthless money than a printing press. 3) We bailed them out. Sure they paid it back, but doesn't that just prove that it's f'n easy for the banks to make profits? and 4) Those profits come from being in bed with government and being total insiders to the whole financial scheme.
Mortgage crises aside, it's totally reprehensible that Wall St does things like start wars so they can sell taxpayers their bombs. Can anybody say " no-bid contracts " to "rebuild" Iraq? And then to give us this "no taxes, smaller gov't" bs. These guys are crooked to the core!
Here's a link for light reading
http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_financial_crisis#Increased_debt_burden_or_overleveraging
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Helga
Mountain climber
stateline, NV
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The mortgage crises is every one's fault who gave out and took loans for hopeful and realized short term profits. BUT- and these are BIG BUTS- 1)Banks are supposed to know better. And they did, as evidenced by their huge bets against the products they were selling. Hell, didn't Pete Rose get kicked out of the hall of fame for bettin against his team? 2) With the deregulation and creation of creative "financial products" banks were theoretically able to leverage the "value" of real estate infinitely. Even in traditional banking, they are allowed to lend 10 times what they actually have! Talk about the deck being stacked in their favor. That kind of leveraged lending is able to produce way more worthless money than a printing press. 3) We bailed them out. Sure they paid it back, but doesn't that just prove that it's f'n easy for the banks to make profits? and 4) Those profits come from being in bed with government and being total insiders to the whole financial scheme.
Mortgage crises aside, it's totally reprehensible that Wall St does things like start wars so they can sell taxpayers their bombs. Can anybody say " no-bid contracts " to "rebuild" Iraq? And then to give us this "no taxes, smaller gov't" bs. These guys are crooked to the core!
Here's a link for light reading
http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_financial_crisis#Increased_debt_burden_or_overleveraging
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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WHERE'S THE EPA?
I thought it was their job to protect us all from environmental degradation.
Like sh#t in the streets.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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I think former Congressman Alan Grayson is a great voice for OWS . . .
Argue with the that -- the truth -- Rethugs . . .
"Make my day."
(said in the best Clint Eastwood voice imaginable)
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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if rich filth didnt fear the protests
and hadnt PUT that in your mouth
Nobody fears the protests. Most people see them for what they are.
Lazy, pouty, commies who want something for nothing. Dirty little commies.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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The Repugs were actually the ones putting up the biggest fight in 2004 to resolve this
I agree with a lot of what you say about it being a problem of elitism, and that both parties have it, but I don't think the republicans were doing anything about the problem in 2004, as they had all the power then.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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first they ignore you
then they laugh at you
then they fight you
then you win
enjoy the laughs
Good luck with that. Haha!
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeL8nHm1TC4
It's getting bigger....
Are you republicans on the right side?
Or is this something that cannot be rationalized.. Just believed in?
A protester says: "Once you are not afraid to get arrested the control of the Police State disappears..."
I say Once you are no longer afraid to die all controls (religious, economic, cultural) disappear.
Those of you who claim that Soros is a bad guy... I point to the Koch Brothers and say they too are just as bad, if not worse.
The Pathetic repeater robots speak: "Lazy, pouty, commies who want something for nothing. Dirty little commies."
If you still believe this pathetic '60's and '70's era slogan-ism, than you are in a worse place than I can possibly describe.
The statement made, to me, describes wall street bankers plain and simple.
But if your mind is clouded by the dumbing down that the liberal media provides to you, then you won't see it for what it is... You'll see it for what they tell you it is.
Giant pile of sh#t. Guy shows up at a social gathering.
On the taco he claims to be a conservative.
In person he's "an alright guy".
But his view of the world is so out of touch, so skewed by right wing pundits.
He claims to want what's best for common man, but he votes against his own self interest in every election dating back to when he was first able to vote.
Claims to want equality for all, but adds plenty of exceptions based on skin color.
claims to want what's best for America, but routinely spits opinion that goes further to degrade America than anything else.
If he hadn't wrapped himself in the American Flag he'd see that his opinion is a poison that every has become immune to.
It is often quite funny to read the rantings of an imbecile, which to some of you, I am.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jingus, can you give a brief summary of what these people want?
EDIT:
Those of you who claim that Soros is a bad guy... I point to the Koch Brothers and say they too are just as bad, if not worse.
So you agree Soros is bad?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Lolli didn't you know you are a "Lazy, pouty, commie" for pointing out the massive, rising, and unsustainable inequality in American wealth? ;-)
I remember in the late 90s my boss (a small business owner) told me that things were getting worse and worse for the average person. In the 70s and 80s he was able to take time off, travel in an RV, etc. In the 90s he made more money but everything was more expensive, he had to lay people off, couldn't do the same things he used to do, etc. I thought he was just being pessimistic or it was personal, but low and behold the next 15 years things have continued and even accelerated on this course. The very rich have increased their wealth and income greatly and everyone else is doing worse. I'm not sure of the best way to fix the situation but if it keeps going in this direction we'll eventually have another depression. But if you point this out you are a "commie" or "socialist". Stupid sheeple.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Blue,
You are either exaggerating my importance to the Occupy Wall Street protests (I have no importance to the movement, you you ask me to claim a statement) in order to make a joke, or you are the complete imbecile I've mentioned above.
Here is the best piece I've seen as to what the protest is about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ju_N9wreGI&feature=related
But much like large overlapping movements in the US it's not the only thing the protest is about... There would be one statement for each person in that crowd if you cared to look.
Edit: "So you agree Soros is bad?"
So you agree Koch Brothers are bad?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Hey now.. those CEOs work hard for their money. Hard I tell you. Very very very hard. While the rest of those people are just lazy. lazy lousy commies. This country would be nothing without rich people. NOTHING
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Lolli didn't you know you are a "Lazy, pouty, commie" for pointing out the massive, rising, and unsustainable inequality in American wealth? ;-)
You commies want CEOs to earn the same money and pay the same taxes as someone who shits on a police car.
CEOs that I've looked at devote their lives to companies, usually working insane hours. They CHOOSE to work more to create wealth, to make their endeavors better.
And you f*#king losers think that something is owed to you???? Why?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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You commies want CEOs to earn the same money and pay the same taxes as someone who shits on a police car.
uh.. no.. we don't.
We just think that the ratio between the value of the work of a good solid janitor and that of a CEO shouldn't be so high.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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You commies want CEOs to earn the same money and pay the same taxes as someone who shits on a police car.
And you f*#king losers think that something is owed to you???? Why?
Bluey is your thinking really that simple?
You have a completely brainwashed view that makes you read ridiculous assumptions into what you think other people want.
You do realize that YOU are also being screwed too? And these people are fighting for your benefit as well.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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its a tough job to rob the tax payers of the US blind, all while convincing their elected (and paid for) leaders to agree to the fleecing.....
Yeah.. that's a tough f*#king jobs, it it should earn anyone who does it billions of dollars...
Oh, wait.. I don't actually mean that..It's not that difficult to steal money from the taxpayer... I think that the feecing sham CEO's should go to jail for their part in the robbery (not to mention they dug the whole in the first place, they created the problem, they are the problem)
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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^^^^Poop^^^^
Here's the thing....
I guess it goes back to "What is the meaning of life".....
Some think that making money is what we (human) are here for.
I'm not totally sure that this is the case, and one might find if a questionnaire were to be sent to everyone in the world that there is much more to live for than money.
I say this because there are no forums on "Making More Money Than One Person Can Possibly Spend In One Lifetime" anywhere on the web, and if there is, it's more likely to be a scam site set up to fish for dummies to gather their CC/Bank information.
No, I think that life has another "meaning"...
Life is to live.
Hence all the different activities us human beings have been doing all this time.
Climbing... Would it be possible without a Job? Look into any history of US/World climbing and you will find plenty of stories of folks going on the road without a job, living a minimalist lifestyle so that they may spend a majority of their time in the wild and on rock.
I'm sure this stands for most here on the ST - That if they had the opportunity, they'd give up their job in order to pursue their heart felt passion (not to say that there are no people on the ST forum who have money on their mind all the time, if that is their goal in life then so be it, who am I to say who's life is the life well spent?).....
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Troll
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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"Prosperity helps one do just that. "
Hey Troll EB....
Explain Chongo
Explain Alex Hannold....
Explain plenty of un-named and countless thousands on the climbing world
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I have this odd notion you see, that people shall be honest, have a work honour code and contribute to the society.
That's a loaded statement.
Do people have a 'right' to be employed? Is an employer 'compelled' to hire somebody? Under what conditions? Those mandated by a silly human rights group?
You people have lost grip with reality and the real, functioning world.
Get a grip.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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The Gods of the Copybook Headings
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
R. Kipling
Tyranny always begins with the mob.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Yep, sure does:
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Other than the union goons arrested for beating a black man, how many arrests have there been at "Tea Party" events?
How many piles of garbage and human waste left in their wake?
How may broken windows and vandalized businesses?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Ignorance and unapologetic racism are, duh, vastly more telling than bad toilet habits:
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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No ignorance and racism in the Tea Party
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Some of those photographs are obvious Photoshop jobs.
Some posed provocateurs.
Some ignorant nut cases, but not representative.
Kinda hard to Photoshop someone defecating in public though, or the piles of stinking trash.
I'll stand with my statement that tyranny is produced by the mob.
Usually directly, and those behind this mob have declared that that is their intent. But, it also sometimes comes as a reaction to the mob.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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TGT (and others), do you really imagine that there is a demonstration of any variety that doesn't leave a mess? Whether conservative, liberal, or non-denominational?
Sorry, large groups of people virtually always leave messes behind them. Probably even environmentalists.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Most interesting train of thought, bluering. Seems as you don't agree with me. Which part exactly don't you agree with?
Don't you believe in honesty?
Don't you think work ethics is recommendable?
or
Don't you think one shall contribute to society?
Well, I can only say that if it is so, we're truly far apart in how we see things.
If you believe in small gov't, less spending (and as result less taxes), and personal liberty then I agree with you.
I actually partially agree with the commies in the streets. The problem is they don't know what the f*#k they're talking about.
When yer pissed off and gather, it's better to have a clear, coherent message. Otherwise people just see what we're seeing. Dirty, lazy, hippies and anarchists spewed forth by the the likes of Soros and ANSWER (look at the signs).
It's really pretty lame.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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The fact that you select isolated instances of bad behavior on the part of tea-party members proves nothing
LOL, you do realize any negative tea party stuff posted was to respond to above posts about how the occupy people are dirty, violent, lazy, etc.
But of course you are right. You can't generalize those on the left, right, or center. But guess who does it WAY more, the right. Look at Bluering's posts, even I (a centrist) am a lazy commie, who wants something for nothing. I guess I should just sink to that level and say ALL righties beat homosexuals to death and drag African Americans behind trucks to their death. But no, I realize all people are different and there is a whole spectrum of people on the left and the right, some are great and some are horrible.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Proof that George Soros is behind these protests?
Any kind of a credible source link will do.
Just would like to know where you got this information, thank you.
Like to add that ACORN is somehow behind this also?
Maybe Bill Ayers?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Doesn't matter what else you say, just make sure you include those dog whistle talking points... they make me salivate.
You don't like those, Wes. Which one really pisses you off?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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TGT (and others), do you really imagine that there is a demonstration of any variety that doesn't leave a mess?
It's a fact that the "Tea Party " gatherings have left the locations cleaner than they found them, with the only LEO interactions coming from counter demonstrators.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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If it's a fact, please cite one or more independent sources to prove it. I'm rather skeptical of claims that any group is cleaner or tidier than others.
I suspect that municipal police, emergency services, and garbage collection departments find all demonstrations a chore, with little to distinguish between them in terms of messes. One reason why they like such things to be planned, so there's at least some level of extra services available. The same amount/person of garbage and poop is produced, but providing ahead of time for it makes it a bit easier to clean up.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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They all piss me off. I won't be happy until we are all gay muslim hippies being force fed organic kale grown, processed, and shipped in an Al Gore certified Prius driven by Mexican immigrants.
Fair enough. At least your honest.
And yeah, what TGT said^^^^^^^^^
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Pretty funny that I'd find this hilarious
"I actually partially agree with the commies in the streets. The problem is they don't know what the f*#k they're talking about."
Two Bit-tuey says that he partially agrees with commies in the streets; people he says don't know what the f*#k they're talking about......
That's kinda lets us know exactly where his head is at... He agrees with people who don't know what the f*#k they're talking about....
He is firmly conservative.
He is firmly libertarian.
He is firmly reupublican....
That certainly fits his description of people he agrees with.....
bwahahahahahahaahhahahahah
You're too funny....
Sometimes I wish this was a video forum so that we could all see you blathering on about this or that non-issue
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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If it's a fact, please cite one or more independent sources to prove it. I'm rather skeptical of claims that any group is cleaner or tidier than others.
I suspect that municipal police, emergency services, and garbage collection departments find all demonstrations a chore, with little to distinguish between them in terms of messes. One reason why they like such things to be planned, so there's at least some level of extra services available. The same amount/person of garbage and poop is produced, but providing ahead of time for it makes it a bit easier to clean up.
It IS A FACT. You know why? Some people follow the rules. Some people have standards of decency.
This is the difference between us and them. They will always be losers, until they grow up and get a f*#king life like every other responsible American.
Quit bitchin', start workin'!
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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I have to repeat
"The Repubs had the Presidency, the Senate AND the House from 2000-2006.
The economy went into RECESSION in 2007.
See the relationship?
FAIL"
Wholly shite, I just wanted to make sure this didn't get erased once the idiot realizes how ridiculous the statement really is...
It IS A FACT. You know why? Some people follow the rules. Some people have standards of decency.
This is the difference between us and them. They will always be losers, until they grow up and get a f*#king life like every other responsible American.
Quit bitchin', start workin'!
First posted by a total retard
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Keep reaching, Jingus, you may hit the bar....
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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"
...which is where blurring desperately wishes he were, instead of getting drunk alone at his house while his family quietly weeps to themselves in the other room. Family values...woot! "
Bwahahahaha
So.... I'm not the only one with this image of bluey...
Good to know.
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monolith
climber
berzerkly
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Oct 10, 2011 - 12:00am PT
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That pic has been debunked, Tom. Still doesn't mean there is not significant people in this movement.
Rockermike was duped as well.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 10, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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I no more believe that tea baggers/conservatives/republicans produce less (or more) poop and garbage at demonstrations than other groups, than I believe that their poop don't stink.
It is possible that given that the right may now be large and organized enough that it obtains the needed permits for their demonstrations, including providing portapotties, garbage, and cleanup. The "occupy Wall Street" people are numerous, but less focused and organized, and so not to that point. And the corporate and Republican links the tea baggers have developed undoubtedly help with obtaining permits and funding for demonstrations.
You don't have to be a teabagger to be a 'real' American. Many of their countrymen, of all political stripes, also share and act on values such as self-reliance, cleanliness, thrift, responsibility, etc.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 12:12am PT
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1) They are definitely Communists.
2) George Soros is definitely involved in backing these hippie low life protestors.
3) ACORN is busing them to the protests, just like ACORN bused in the poor to vote for the Democrats and paid them Federal money to vote Democrat.
4) They are violent THUGS who are unclean with their fecal matter
5) Their main goal is to unlawfully take money away from the rich, and the want to be rich
6) They are secretly taught to "organize" by the UNIONS, which I just hate so damn much
7) I bet a lot of them are homos.
8)
9)
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 10, 2011 - 12:51am PT
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/panic-of-the-plutocrats.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
Panic of the Plutocrats
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 9, 2011
It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.
And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.
Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.
Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.
And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”
The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.
Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.
Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.
This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.
So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 10, 2011, on page A23 of the New York Times edition with the headline: Panic Of the Plutocrats.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:03am PT
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karl marx for dummies:
October 10, 2011
Occupy Wall Street: A Manifesto
By David Harsanyi
10/5/2011
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, women and transgendered -- and any other human who is able to elude the tyranny of work for a couple of weeks -- are created equal. We gather to be free not of tyranny, but of responsibility and college tuitions. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that a government long established and a nation long prosperous be changed for light and transient causes. So let our demands* be submitted to a candid world.
First, we are imbued with as many inalienable rights as a few thousand college kids and a gaggle of borderline celebrities can concoct, among them a guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment and immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness -- even if that debt was acquired taking on a mortgage with a 4.1 percent interest rate and no money down, which, we admit, is a pretty sweet deal in historical context...
...but down with the modern gilded age!
We demand that a Master of Fine Arts in musical theater writing, with a minor in German, become an immutable human right, because education is crucial and rich people can afford to fund unemployment checks until we find jobs or in perpetuity, whichever comes first.
We demand a minimum wage of $10, no ... make it $20. We earned it. And we demand the end of "profiteering," because there is no better way to end joblessness than stopping the growth of capital. We also demand a maximum wage law, because selfish American dreams need a firm ceiling.
We demand the institution of direct democracy, because if a bunch of people say it's OK, it's OK. And everyone deserves to have his or her voice heard. Except Mr. Moneybags, who we demand stop contributing his own money to candidates we disagree with, to issue groups we loathe and to lobbyists who do not work for organizations featuring "Service," "Employees," "International" and/or "Union" in their title.
We demand the end to bailouts and corporate subsidies, unless we're talking about companies that feature sunflowers or sun rays in their logos, because that's the kind of morally gratifying institution we approve of, and thus, they should totally be fast-tracked and bailed out with your money to bring the fossil fuel economy ("the economy") to an end.
We demand the end to a corrupt Wall Street ("Apple" "your 401(k)") because banks hold too much power. We demand that government consolidate authority so that elected officials can make prudent choices for us. All that cash in banks was printed by the war god Mars and has nothing to do with the voluntary deposits by ordinary Americans, so we do not consider this theft.
We demand the end to corporate censorship, because if we can't force private news organizations to run the types of stories with which we agree, there can't be a healthy democracy. So actually, we demand the end of all corporate news organizations in the name of free speech.
We demand the end to health profiteering, because everyone knows that all the wondrous and lifesaving advances in modern medicine were invented in the People's Democratic Republic of Laos. Smart people work for the good of humanity, not because they're greedy.
We demand these rights because of the mass injustice of being able to freely protest against racism and corporatism without any real fear of imprisonment in the most diverse city on earth. And to the wiseguy who walked by the other day and claimed that I'd be writing this manifesto with a quill pen on parchment paper if it weren't for capitalism, we have two words for you: Koch brothers. Think about it.
This is the fifth communique from the 99.9 percent. We are occupying Wall Street, and we're not going home until it gets really cold.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:10am PT
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...which is where blurring desperately wishes he were, instead of getting drunk alone at his house while his family quietly weeps to themselves in the other room. Family values...woot! "
Bwahahahaha
So.... I'm not the only one with this image of bluey...
Good to know.
You two losers must be jealous of my family to always bring them up in these discussions.....
Go crap on a cop car. It's where you belong.
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apogee
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:38am PT
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The Repugs are questioning the 'grassroots' nature of Occupy Wall Street?
Why does that sound so familiar??
Oh, yes, that's right...
The Dems questioned the 'grassroots' nature of the Teabaggers...
Now it all makes sense. Quid pro quo, baby!
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:39am PT
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"Go crap on a cop car. It's where you belong."
- Some idiots want people to crap on cop cars...
That's American Values for ya
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:51am PT
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GOD is on the side of the 99% ers . . .
The Fixx: "How Much is Enough?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcuGBQWswg
The Fixx: "No one has to cry"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74dlhTr9H50
The Bible on the Poor or, Why God is a liberal
http://www.zompist.com/meetthepoor.html
The 1% will ultimately lose the fight. Truth and Righteousness will always prevail in the end.
What did Jesus Christ, Emmanuel (GOD with us), tell us so plainly and simply?
"It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
What you do on this Earth while you live here matters. How you treat others matters. The Golden Rule.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:45am PT
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fattrad
Mountain climber
GOP Convention
Oct 10, 2011 - 08:21am PT
Turn the heat ray on them, extra crispy.
The evil one
Fattrad,
If you are trying to be funny by you keep saying this, it isn't funny.
It's pretty offensive.
Although you are proving the point that the GOP are not caring people. Now I don't know you, but I have heard in person that you are a great guy and caring. So why with the continual evil jests and very dark humor?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 01:26pm PT
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Many seem content to criticize the Occupy Wall Street protests because they cannot distill it to a precisely stated 'goal' or a simple 'solution'. I'm not so convinced of the efficacy of 'goals' as regards national or global events. Complex historical events are set into motion that often bear little resemblance to their intended outcomes.
Good point. But the Genesis of 'change' came from Obama, and as a rather bizarre result, the Tea Party movement.
Change is underway, you got that right. It's ironic that Obama caused this. Not exactly the change he could've imagined.
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apogee
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 02:27pm PT
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"Many seem content to criticize the Occupy Wall Street protests because they cannot, or are unwilling, to distill it into a precisely stated 'goal' or a simple 'solution'."
Precisely the same thing was said about the Tea Party movement when it started (and some find that this is still the case).
Personally, I find that the OWS movement is fairly murky in it's specific goals, but I understand & support the general sentiment. We'll have to wait & see if it sharpens it's focus and continues it's momentum to a broader scale.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 02:29pm PT
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i think any vineyard owner who pays people for doing no work will go out of business fast...i also think that story is why only 13% of workers are union members (and the number is lower for the private sector)
anyway, i'm not sure exactly what the most important message is in this video...
1. that our founders were right when they rejected democracy
2. that mindless drones are scary...even when they are manipulated into behaving like kindergartners using hand signals
3. that the ows, a primarily and overwhelmingly white group of 'protestors', is RACIST for refusing to allow john lewis, a black congressman and civil rights leader who marched with mlk, to speak at their gathering and that the crowd's effective method for shouting down the man who tried to apologize to rep lewis illustrates everything you need to know about the ows' appreciation for civil rights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 02:34pm PT
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Yeah, and the Tea Party were just regular folks of all races, SO suddenly concerned about "spending""
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 02:37pm PT
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The Tea Party: SUCH an orderly group of people of ALL races and political persuasions:
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 02:38pm PT
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blurring, which side do you think your jesus would be on, assuming he were around today
How can I discuss something with you that you have no faith in, with something you hold in contempt? And yet, you hold this as the basis of your assertions?
It's futile and hypocritical..
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 02:41pm PT
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Fattrad, wherever did you get such a thought? Not from me, honey.
Perhaps wishful thinking?
God put me here to torture you, not going anywhere.
Target rich environment.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:03pm PT
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What a shame. Well, I at least hope you read Matthew 20. Your jesus had some good insights... it is too bad many of his followers are too ignorant to understand.
Wes quoting the Bible is utterly priceless.
Did you read the one about teaching a man to fish instead of giving him foodstamps and welfare?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:14pm PT
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Did you read the one about teaching a man to fish instead of giving him foodstamps and welfare?
Which is balanced by..
Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Luke 6:30
We could do dueling bible verses all day. So what. Especially if you only want to cherry pick the verses that bolster your position.
None of that leads to understanding.
and I'm pretty certain that Jesus never said anything about only discussing the bible with those who believe in him. How else are people going to understand? But of course, Wes' position is that you don't understand your own teacher.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:18pm PT
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What does that have to do with giving preferential treatment to profit driven corporations rather than the people?
Wes, try to be honest as to why banks were FORCED to give out bad loans. The whole race-based, class-warfare attack on banks forced them to capitulate. As a result, they gave out ridiculous loans and bundled these loans into securities to divert their obvious losses.
Yeah, the banks knew they were eating a sh#t-sandwich, hence the divergence of obligation.
But what is the root cause of this problem? Fannie and Freddie. And the notion that everyone is entitled to a mortgage.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:20pm PT
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Nice one Lovegasoline. that is a good argument for why in todays lifestyle public education should be supported by everyone.
I would add.
blue, So republicans believe that everyone is entitled to have a mortgage? Since they were in charge when the melt down occurred.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:39pm PT
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blue, So republicans believe that everyone is entitled to have a mortgage? Since they were in charge when the melt down occurred.
Wake up! It's institutional, not party based. That's what the idiots crapping on cop cars cannot illucidate.
It's systemic. And it ain't capitalism to blame, it IS the rich. But not the rich employers...the rich elite gov't overseers.
The gov't is rotten. It requires new minds, new blood.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:48pm PT
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No bank was forced to give any loan, and no investment bank was forced to leverage subprimes. Nor were they forced to hide bad assets and sell them to their own clients. The investment banks were insanely reckless, if not comitting out and out fraud.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:55pm PT
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Foodstamps, welfare, and Medicaid exist primarily to prevent a violent revolution. They maintain the proles with just enough resources to prevent them from becoming truly desperate. The social safety valve.
Your lock-step to your ideology has taken you so far afield from the practical considerations which it ostensibly advocates, that it has taken you far out on a thin limb over an abyss.
The textbook zealot.
If the time comes when those at the bottom do not have anything to eat, while the upper 1% own the majority of the nation's wealth, then you can be sure that all hell will break loose upon this nation. All bets will be off, every crumb will fight to the death for their survival, and they will take it from any available source. By any means necessary.
You are so wrong. And you feed the class-warfare mantra.
I will always be self-sufficient. It's not rocket science. To be reliant on the gov't for food is 'giving up'.
It's sad. And lame.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 03:57pm PT
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OTE, like I said, it's a systemic problem that grew over time.
Point fingers all ya want. Look where yer pointing.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 04:12pm PT
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It isn't class warfare, it's called survival.
And yet it is class warfare when a oligarchy monopolizes the resources.
A hungry man is an angry man.
That's ridiculous. I'll reitterate FOOD STAMPS. Nobody is starving, this isn't f*#king Sudan!
Let's be honest here.
The problem with our Capitalist system is all about regulation.
That's it.
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 04:18pm PT
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I can’t for the life of me figure this one out. Please help.
An investment bank purchases $1 gazillion in mortgages – crappy and otherwise. The bank slices and dices them into various tranches and has the idiot rating agencies sprinkle holy water over them. Fine and dandy. Here’s where I stub my toe. Investment bank sells these sliced, diced and blessed securities to other banks, pension plans, insurance companies, etc. – the so called institutional investors who manage $gazillions in investments. One might think that the buyers are ‘sophisticated’ and are able to do their own due diligence. Apparently not in retrospect. But why are the buyers getting a pass on buying crap? You can’t sell the Brooklyn Bridge unless you have a buyer for it, right? Blame is being put on the sellers, but why on earth did the buyers purchase this stuff? If you try to sell me a used car I’m gonna look under the hood, check the tires and slam the doors. If you’re gona try to sell me several hundred billion dollars in CDOs, wouldn’t I be prudent to drop whatever it takes to figure out what the hell I was buying?
g
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 04:23pm PT
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Gene,
Your questions go to the heart of the intellectual emptiness of the occupy movement. At this point, I wonder who demonstrates the greater rejection of reality: the occupy demonstrators, or the msm attempting to legitimize the movement.
John
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 04:28pm PT
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Please explain cuz I am obviously very slow....
Who forced the buyers to buy?
g
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 10, 2011 - 04:33pm PT
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Conservative = greedy = self deluded
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 04:43pm PT
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Gene’s Hypothetical Taxi Service once had a fleet of three cars. Three years ago, I negotiated a five year deal with a local fuel supplier to provide me with 15,000 gallons of gas at a fixed price. My taxi business slowed down when the economy tanked. I figured with the recession that there would be no way I’d use all 15,000 gallons of fuel, but since I had a deal at a fixed price, I found a third party who wanted to buy my interest in the remaining term of the deal. He was crazy happy until he had to lay off half his fleet.
Should I go to jail?
g
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 10, 2011 - 05:06pm PT
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JE: At this point, I wonder who demonstrates the greater rejection of reality: the occupy demonstrators, or the msm attempting to legitimize the movement.
Or the teabaggers, whose world view is fixed firmly in the mid 19th century.
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 05:34pm PT
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Only if you secretly added water to the fuel, had someone certify it as pure fuel, and then bought the fuel back at 1/4 the price once the third party was in financial ruin and had no other choice.
True dat. But if I were to try to sell you, say, $15 billion in gas, do you think you might want to check out what I was selling before you wrote the check?
Lots of bad stuff happened, obviously. But both sides of every transaction have responsibilities. Especially at the magnitue of the deals that have stripped a decade or two from our prosperity. My point is that the greed of the sellers was only matched by that of the buyers in these mega-transactions.
g
EDIT: Check out this old thread: http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=185510&tn=0&mr=0 from 5 1/2 years ago. Lots of us saw it coming.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 10, 2011 - 05:42pm PT
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very interesting discussion and range of opinions; but i think you are all being mislead by the 'wilderness of mirrors' actively created 24/7/365 in the controlled media
now is the time for the 'moment of truth'; when the bull (i.e. the public) figures out the difference between the red cape and the matador
the red cape being manipulated and waved about is money
money is just an idea based upon trust; and the trust is gone now
the matador has one primary objective: depopulation (so he can inherit the earth)
fomenting all available differences of opinion in order to create the chaos of social unrest, riots, revolution, and the like; only serves to provide a suitable environment in which the matador can act on that objective
participating in social unrest; whether for or against any particular faction; just plays into the hands of the matador
go ahead pawing the ground and running around in little circles and pay no attention to the matador and his sword...
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 05:55pm PT
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Fattrad,
People fear that which influences their lives and over which they have little control or understanding. They are justified to the extent that something out of control that was not even understood by its participants has put our fiscal well being back by a minimum of two decades.
It’s more about being F’d than getting laid.
g
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 06:05pm PT
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WE are the 99%
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
"We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.
Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street."
I will be 30 this month. I have a Master’s degree in education but cannot find a teaching job. I have over $80000 in student loans. For over two years, I have been working at a dental office where they don’t give me dental insurance. My salary was recently cut by 10% - while my boss bought himself two new motorcycles. I am disrespected, overworked, and sexually harassed at work by cannot afford to leave without another job to go to, which I cannot find.
What did I do wrong?
7/30/03 - Mother injured on the job and denied compensation and medical treatment. The beginning of eight years (and ongoing) of financial and legal turmoil.
7/30/11 - Parents file for bankruptcy.
THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.
-Sincerely,
1 of the 99 PercentI am the 99%.
I am the 99%!
I am 14 and I am terrified for my country.
My dad has been laid off and is working a job that requires him to make a commute that takes 1/3 of his pay for gas. My future of getting a job seems to be getting slimmer and slimmer.
I am the 99%
Occupy America!!!
I worked hard (40 hours a week during most of my education), for what? Because hard work and education is supposed to pay off.
Cuts to education on the Federal and State levels = hiring freezes at colleges and universities, despite rising tuition costs for current students.
I will never own a home.
I am one misfortune away from disaster.
My only luxury (one I need for my job) is the internet—what else do I cut back on? Tell me what I need to do to get ahead, because I did EVERYTHING RIGHT! EVERYTHING!
I AM THE 99%!
OCCUPYWALLST.ORG
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 06:28pm PT
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What exactly did the above people "do wrong"?
They are simply Americans expressing their frustration while doing nothing wrong, while reading how the richest 1% get more rich.
Free speech from regular people. That's all, nothing to fear.
They don't want to "take" your money from YOU.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 06:45pm PT
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I don't personally know of any laws that the Banks broke.
So, no wonder they are not being prosecuted.
Who said the banks broke what laws?
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 06:59pm PT
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Weschrist,
Very good post. {several above}. I get your point. Here’s where we differ. The scale of the deals that brought us into this morass.
You are right on with taking your used car to the independent shop ( rating agency and having it evaluate your new ride. (Slight difference – the sellers, rather than the buyers paid for the ratings of the CDOs).
But, let’s say for discussion purposes, you were buying the car manufacturing facility for a few hundred million or so, wouldn’t you send in your manufacturing engineers, your audit team, review the ‘as built’ plans of the factory, check rail connections, etc? Do your due diligence? When doing deals of the magnitude of those which crashed the world economy, I hope the buyers of crap didn’t make their purchasing decision through Kelly Blue Book. Apparently they did, and that’s why they are culpable as the sellers. If I had to sign the check with eight or more zeroes, I would want more than a glossy marketing flier.
g
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:03pm PT
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Doesn't a "consumer" have a legal right to assume that the licensed and regulated auto Dealer is doing business in both "good faith" and in strict accordance with law?
There is no "buyer beware" when buying from a dealer.
Buying from a private party is of course a different matter.
Wes had every right to expect both adherence to non tampering law and also "good faith"
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:15pm PT
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How naive, Jeff.
A lot of those derivatives were sold to small towns and counties, even globally, who were relying on the major credit rating agencies such as Moody's and S&P for the legitimacy of the AAA ratings.
These same rating agencies were getting PAID by Wall Street firms FOR those ratings.
Your contention fails because of inadequate logic and linear fact, not Wes's.
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:19pm PT
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The buyers were major institutional investors that had the ability, if not the will, to conduct thorough and proper due diligence.
My point is that without the institutional investment firms that willingly threw down hundreds of billions for crap paper, we’d be in a much better place today. They bought the toxics because they were either idiots, greedy, both, &/or failed to understand what they were buying. It’s not just the sellers’ fault.
g
EDIT: Your opinions on any topic are worthless Go buzz yourself, Fattrad. We're having a conversation.
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:31pm PT
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I'm pretty sure people are upset about the whole fiasco and could[couldn't sic] care less which bankers bought or sold which pile of sh#t...
I couldn't agree more.
g
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:32pm PT
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It’s not just the sellers’ fault.
Of course. I don't know anyone who is saying blame isn't shared all around. Except Jeff who keeps trying to imply that liberals are doing this, when they aren't. But who really has the power? Like Wes says, if it is wall street buying from wall street, using the little guys investment money. And they tank it and then get bailed out. It is the little guy who gets screwed. The wealthiest folks certainly aren't hurting during this recession/depression. So who is?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:33pm PT
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The people of any country, in particular its central bank and government, are ultimately responsible for the stability of its fiscal system. They're the guarantors. Which is why in turn governments have not only the right but the responsibility to regulate the banking and fiscal systems, balancing all factors, with the goals of a stable currency, steady growth, minimizing unemployment, etc.
Which in turn means that in most financial bubbles, those benefiting did so by making bets with public money, knowing they'd never have to pay. And a root cause was probably failure to effectively regulate.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:35pm PT
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And it is possible that they purposely tanked the system because they can make a lot of money during a recession.
Thanks Lovegasoline, for pointing out all the different entities fined for this fiasco.
Pay a fine and you are back in business. The system is gamed.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:43pm PT
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It doesn't matter how sophisticated or careful a buyer is where there is a failure to disclose and/or outright fraud.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 07:54pm PT
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Amazing that these idiots receive so much comfort.
And the Tea Baggers are referred to as rascists.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:04pm PT
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And the Tea Baggers are referred to as rascists.
there were many many racist signs among the tea baggers, whereas you want to label all the current demonstrators as terrible because one guy pisses/shits on a cop car.
So which is it Blue. If the tea baggers aren't racist because of many many racist signs, then why do you blanket label this group of protesters for the actions of one guy?
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:04pm PT
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It doesn't matter how sophisticated or careful a buyer is where there is a failure to disclose and/or outright fraud.
Disagree. Should people buy a house only after driving by because the Realtor says it's a great deal? When you are going to plunk down several billion of other peoples' money, you have a duty to open the box of Corn Flakes to see what is inside. If you can't open the box, walk!
g
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:11pm PT
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So if you inspected a house and later learned the seller had witheld key information or hidden a defective condition you would blame yourself?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:19pm PT
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The Tea "Baggers" are NOT racist! Damn it! That is NOT what I WANT to believe!
And because I believe it, it MUST be the truth!
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:20pm PT
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So if you inspected a house and later learned the seller had witheld key information or hidden a defective condition you would blame yourself?
First, I would hire an inspector (rating agency).
Second, I would buy an insurance policy covering home defects (CDS).
If I was buying a home that cost in the billions, I'd bring in a structural engineer, a forensic architect, a title lawyer, an accountant or two, an insurance consultant, a home resale pro, a termite guy, a roofing contractor, a radon expert, etc.
It's a matter of scale.
If after their collective and thorough due diligence I find out my house is floating in a swamp, I would not blame the seller.
EDIT: EDIT: I guess my issue is that I believe that markets are made with the assumption that the seller is acting in its own interest with the buyer also acting in its interest. Competition for capital. Knowledgeable participants acting for their own benefit. If a party does not have a full understanding of a deal, and then gets screwed, why are they in the deal in the first place? The magnitude of these deals to investment heavy weight suggests that little if any due diligence was done.
We are paying for that neglect.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:22pm PT
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The Tea Party people is just good White People protesting excessive "spending".
They are ORDERLY, respect CIVIL RIGHTS, and do NOT have a violent MOB MENTALITY.
Dam it.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:42pm PT
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One good reason why the populace is getting pissed off.
Money in American politics
From POLITICO (sure they're liberal. They're smart.).
The billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch plan to steer more than $200 million — potentially much more — to conservative groups ahead of Election Day, POLITICO has learned. That puts their libertarian-leaning network in the same league as the most active of the groups in the more establishment-oriented network conceived last year by veteran GOP operatives Rove and Ed Gillespie, which plans to raise $240 million. $440 million. Only 4/5 enough money to pay back the gov't loan to Solyndra. I'll bet they can get the other $100 million from KochBros if Obama and the Dems look like winning the 2012 election.
And why the HE((( did we start fighting the next election 18 months before the voting?
This is MADNESS, yea there be method in it.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65504.html
Norton: disturbing pics. Two direct threats to interfere with the election by force.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 10, 2011 - 08:55pm PT
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Elizabeth Warren is the right wing Capitalists' worst nightmare.
A very good lawyer, understands how the financial system is screwed up (and how it's not) and tough enough to do something about it.
WASHINGTON -- Consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren announced in an e-mail to her supporters that she has raised $3.15 million since entering the race to take on Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).
Warren's haul was largely raked in through small-dollar donations. According to her campaign's e-mail, she received 96 percent of her contributions from donors giving less than $100. More than 11,000 citizens of Massachusetts donated to her campaign. The number of donors from out-of-state was not listed in the campaign e-mail. You and I have a voice as well. As long as we can write a check. Of course it takes 11,000 of us to match pocket change from KochBros or Bank Of America.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 10, 2011 - 09:19pm PT
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There is hardly an uncorrupted candidate let alone elected official in Washington.
It is basically impossible to get elected, democrat or republican unless you pass the corporate test.
It is far past time to pass a constitutional amendment providing SEVERE penalties for anyone or anything that gives or receives donations of any large value towards running for office.
the rest of the issues are pointless until we get legalized bribery and vetting via cash out of politics.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 10, 2011 - 09:37pm PT
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we are not nearly as divided as we are being PAID to be.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 09:49pm PT
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DO NOT REPLY TO THE TROLL
A really good internet troll has one goal, to attract attention to themselves by playing the victim when challenged, by being personally insulting in a clever kind of vague manner, and constantly provoking anger and emotions so as to keep the other posters responding to the troll with every reply.
This good internet troll knows very little of the specifics behind what is being discussed, offers nothing of concrete value, changes the subject frequently in order to avoid being proven specifically wrong, never ever admits to being wrong, and is an expert at appearing to be personally wounded and hurt when their own actions cause others to reply in the same insulting manner as the troll.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 10, 2011 - 09:50pm PT
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OOOPS too late
Becoming a masters degree teacher is irresponsible?
WOW
Thanks for dissing my mom.. who retired twice after 40+ years as a teacher.
Incase you hadn't noticed but teachers are being laid off by the 100k lately.
Which certainly wasn't predicted by anyone 4 years ago.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:19pm PT
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you are so full of troll sh#t.
right now there isn't a single safe degree ..in case you hadn't noticed the economy is in a prolonged depression due to a repeat of the same sh#t that caused it 80 years ago.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:27pm PT
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DO NOT REPLY TO THE TROLL
A really good internet troll has one goal, to attract attention to themselves by playing the victim when challenged, by being personally insulting in a clever kind of vague manner, and constantly provoking anger and emotions so as to keep the other posters responding to the troll with every reply.
This good internet troll knows very little of the specifics behind what is being discussed, offers nothing of concrete value, changes the subject frequently in order to avoid being proven specifically wrong, never ever admits to being wrong, and is an expert at appearing to personally wounded and hurt when their own actions cause others to reply in the same insulting manner as the troll.
Do not ever reply to the troll and do not ever use the troll's name.
Ignore ignore ignore
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:29pm PT
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BINGO
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:33pm PT
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An authentic black gentleman will be F's next president.
He'll just have to learn to deal with it.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:50pm PT
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Racist!
He's the real deal.
BHO is as black as I'm Irish
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 10:58pm PT
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Yes, Obama IS only half white, not a REAL black man, like Herman Cain.
And it is this only 50% Whiteness that is SO troubling.
Even as a child, you can see the young Muslim's hatred for White People in his eyes.
Yes, 100% White People are SUCH good judges of the Blackness of Black people.
JESUS FUKING CHRIST
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:06pm PT
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LOL,
A man who's dad worked three jobs as a janitor , chauffeur, etc. and succeeded on his own initiative and drive is an Oreo.
But, a half white guy raised by his white grandparents, coddled in all private schools is somehow "authentic"?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:09pm PT
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Agree with you that the villainous commie mobs that are trying to occupy the centers of American capitalism are worthy of clubbing for their scheming duplicity.
Typical socialist trickery. Invest in bodybags. Make a profit.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:19pm PT
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A thought provoking book on the subject.
Job that is.
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karodrinker
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:34pm PT
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great pics! Posted by war above. Donald Thompson, you are a disrespectful turd.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:45pm PT
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TGT, try getting your facts straight BEFORE you speak.
You state that President Obama was "coddled" by attending private schools.
REALLY?
He went to a PUBLIC grade school in Hawaii, and a PUBLIC high school in Hawaii
He went to a PUBLIC college, Columbia University.
His mother had no money for his education and so he, like many, had to take out student loans to get through Columbia University.
How in the world could any reasonably intelligent person believe this represents an education that is comprised of coddling done at "private schools"?
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Gene
climber
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:49pm PT
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most of the worest christian today, are athiests
Who can argue with that?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 10, 2011 - 11:57pm PT
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Does that mean that christianists are whores? (That's the word my thesaurus comes up with as a synonym for "worest".)
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 11, 2011 - 12:03am PT
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hi folks,
seems like i can drop a boulder into the pond without even causing a ripple:
Oct 10, 2011 - 02:42pm PT
very interesting discussion and range of opinions; but i think you are all being mislead by the 'wilderness of mirrors' actively created 24/7/365 in the controlled media
now is the time for the 'moment of truth'; when the bull (i.e. the public) figures out the difference between the red cape and the matador
the red cape being manipulated and waved about is money
money is just an idea based upon trust; and the trust is gone now
the matador has one primary objective: depopulation (so he can inherit the earth)
fomenting all available differences of opinion in order to create the chaos of social unrest, riots, revolution, and the like; only serves to provide a suitable environment in which the matador can act on that objective
participating in social unrest; whether for or against any particular faction; just plays into the hands of the matador
go ahead pawing the ground and running around in little circles and pay no attention to the matador and his sword...
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Gene
climber
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Oct 11, 2011 - 12:04am PT
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war,
Please grace us by letting us know what you mean in a way we can understand it. That would be a good way to continue the conversation.
Unless you prefer to play Nazis and Indians.
Thanks,
g
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 11, 2011 - 12:53am PT
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Oct 10, 2011 - 09:37pm PT
Well what do you propose Tom?
that is the right question and one that i spend much of my time thinking about and there are a lot of possible answers; summed up by ceasing to flow power to the powerful
i think that squabbling over petty differences works very much against us all
i don't think that money and the economy are the critical issues; nor race, religion, or social status
i don't think it is worthwhile to seek out and punish the perpetrators; for various reasons
just stop supporting them and flowing power to them
one possible answer is for people to abandon the use of banks and credit cards and retreat to using cash and barter
we no longer need the banks in an online economy
You believe we are encouraged to protest so that the powers that be can depopulate planet earth? Mass Extermination?
yes, we are being exterminated, starting with 'them';
with 'them' moving closer and closer to home
various forms of social unrest are being used to disguise this; so when i see social unrest fomented in the USA, the writing is looming larger on the wall
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:00am PT
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the American public, even those who read widely, tend to be very poorly informed and heavily misinformed on events in the world;
one answer is to seriously study world news and alternative news and try to pick out realities from the sea of intentional noise
search Georgia Guidestones
yes, the Georgia Guidestones are an interesting data source to consider
A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles is engraved on the Georgia Guidestones in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones. Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.
considering that many people make plans; and some plans are more likely to occur than others; depending upon who knows about them and goes into agreement with them...or not...
the oldest trick in the book is, "why don't you and him fight?!"
all the noisy differences are just being used to obscure the hands fomenting the differences
the same hands obscuring the facts and providing a deluge of disinformation: 'a wilderness of mirrors' to quote an old CIA insider
Edit: Occupy Wall Street might be a great place to found an alternative economy; if that isn't already happening fast enough
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:26am PT
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the best way to deal with power mongers is to cease flowing power to them
the classic example is the Jewish Tribes leaving Egypt to live in the desert
(having wilderness survival skills can be pretty useful)
In order for civilization to persist, it must have a back door into wilderness - Walt Whitman
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:43am PT
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a picture is worth...well...oh, so much:
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:56am PT
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Oh LOOK!
Booky found some a picture on the internet that some dumb fuk put some words on!
THESE pictures are not "made up"
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 10:19am PT
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"But then there’s the irony of OWS’s anti-corporate impulse, at least in St. Louis. Brand new Ozark Trail dome tents (a popular Wal-Mart item as it turns out) dominated the encampment circumscribing the park. Occupiers with modern Apple and Dell laptops busily plucked internet from the air while compatriots passed the time doodling and diddling with their smartphones, waiting for the next communal activity. Coffee cups from the Panera Bread Co. and Hardee’s comforted the waking, as Coleman sleeping bags embraced the comatose. Using the blank side of a giant canvas Adidas advertisement as a screen, occupiers watched “V for Vendetta” — a Warner Brothers film — with Windows Media Player. As it turns out, there is very little the Occupiers could do without a corporate assist, leaving them just like the rest of us in that regard."
ok, i'll defend the ows-ites...this isn't ironic or even hypocritical; the ows-ites are not really against the fruits of corporate greed; they simply believe that they should be able to indulge in the fruits FOR FREE...what kind of cruel, racist hater would deny them such "rights"?
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Oct 11, 2011 - 11:38am PT
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What's the difference between these protesters and the tea party? Seems like the anger stems from the ordinary tax-payer being forced to secure transactions to which they were not a party.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 11, 2011 - 12:21pm PT
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No one is against people, businesses, or corporations making an honest living and making a profit.
What we are against is the out of balance greed, and we are against the corruption.
How much is enough?
You can't go to the grave with your billions. It won't help to open Heaven's doors to you.
You have a responsibility a social obligation to help others less fortunate from your abundance (ie. jobs for all people, debt relief, housing, clothing and feeding the homeless, caring for the sick and elderly, helping those who can not help themselves etc. etc. etc.)
Do you not get this?
Once again . . .
Oct 10, 2011 - 07:51am PT
GOD is on the side of the 99% ers . . .
The Fixx: "How Much is Enough?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcuGBQWswg
The Fixx: "No one has to cry"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74dlhTr9H50
The Bible on the Poor or, Why God is a liberal
http://www.zompist.com/meetthepoor.html
The 1% will ultimately lose the fight. Truth and Righteousness will always prevail in the end.
What did Jesus Christ, Emmanuel (GOD with us), tell us so plainly and simply?
"It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
What you do on this Earth while you live here matters. How you treat others matters. The Golden Rule.
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OR
Trad climber
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Oct 11, 2011 - 12:24pm PT
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Norton....
TGT, try getting your facts straight BEFORE you speak.
You state that President Obama was "coddled" by attending private schools.
REALLY?
He went to a PUBLIC grade school in Hawaii, and a PUBLIC high school in Hawaii
He went to a PUBLIC college, Columbia University.
Columbia is about as far from a public university as possible. Its an IVY and the oldest private college in New York state. Not knit picking here but you are calling out TGT on getting his facts straight.......
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 12:48pm PT
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They are out there protesting the miserable lives they've built for themselves. HS dropouts, Humanities majors, losers, let them rot in the street.
Thanks Jeff. I appreciate your positive contribution.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 11, 2011 - 12:53pm PT
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:01pm PT
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Right on Tom!!!!
I have Been thinking that humanity needs to be flushed. I'm tired of the fattrads of the world. So thanks for the positive contribution.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:04pm PT
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Yes, that guy ^^^ sounds like a "drop out"
Jesus what a dumb fuk
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:10pm PT
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“there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” Elizabeth Warren
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:15pm PT
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I don't see why we can't just deregulate everything and let the consumers dictate a myriad of things. From ethics to environmental impact, if consumers don't agree with a corporation or businesses policies then we just won't buy those products, right? I mean, we're ALL super up to date with current events in our Nation. I'm sure that ethics and fairness would trump money. Sounds like a plan, tell those uneducated hippies to deoccupy Wall St, and get a job if they can find one.
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krahmes
Social climber
Stumptown
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:32pm PT
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It seems to me the OW OWS are day late and dollar short. Did the banks and financial firms executive need to be held to a reckoning? Yes. Has the Obama administration had 3 years to lead on this issue and done nothing?
It’s unbelievable that more people went to prison during the dotcom bust. Maybe we should just throw Martha Stewart in jail again. It’s not that I so much want these white collar criminals/business retards to go to prison; than I want them to be exiled to suburbia on a stipend with the possibility of ever possessing large sum money removed from the outcome of their pathetic lives. Need a list to start? Maurice R. Greenberg (AGI); Charles O. Prince III (Citibank); Richard S. Fuld (Lehman); Franklin D. Raines (Fannie Mae); John Thain (Merrill Lynch); James E. Cayne (Bear Stearns- but to be fair he did ride the crash just about to bottom-still he’s probably worth $100 million)
By the same token it hard not to look at the death of Steve Jobs and realize the not everyone is created equal in ability or awesomeness. Entrepreneurs have an important place in the USA.
As for transnational corporations it would be nice to see so called free trade become more fair equitable, but don’t hold your breath.
Did the Bush tax cuts (which should have never been implemented in a time of war) need to be extended? Not in my opinion. That the Obama administration and Nancy Pelosi (talk about a political aristocrat) and a Reid led congress couldn’t make this happen just reflects the Democratic hypocrisy and lameness. The stimulus was a joke.
The precious compassionate European State held up by the educated and the idle in the USA as a model of governance is a house of cards.
Just as the tea party started as something and has been sucked into the corporatist wing of the GOP, I see the Occupy crowd destined to be swallowed whole by the public employee unions.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:45pm PT
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Dr,
Exactly, history dictates that businesses should be able to do as they please, because all of America pays attention to how businesses conduct themselves.
Problem solved.
And on the environmental side, you naysayers may cite superfund sites. In the new model, there will be no superfund sites. No more EPA.
Problem solved.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 01:59pm PT
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What is lead and arsenic trading at right now?
Serious $ potential there.
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:04pm PT
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Hey luvgas, can we all crash at your place when it gets cold out?
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:16pm PT
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So, if I travel the five hours to NYC to participate in the protest in my truck, burning fuel, am I a hypocrite? Or am I just using a product or commodity to facilitate the voicing of my displeasure in regards to their practices?
Should I walk?
Maybe I should just stay home and pray, prayer solves everything if you believe and listen to The Word, right?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:20pm PT
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It seems to me the OW OWS are day late and dollar short. Did the banks and financial firms executive need to be held to a reckoning? Yes. Has the Obama administration had 3 years to lead on this issue and done nothing?
It’s unbelievable that more people went to prison during the dotcom bust. Maybe we should just throw Martha Stewart in jail again. It’s not that I so much want these white collar criminals/business retards to go to prison; than I want them to be exiled to suburbia on a stipend with the possibility of ever possessing large sum money removed from the outcome of their pathetic lives. Need a list to start? Maurice R. Greenberg (AGI); Charles O. Prince III (Citibank); Richard S. Fuld (Lehman); Franklin D. Raines (Fannie Mae); John Thain (Merrill Lynch); James E. Cayne (Bear Stearns- but to be fair he did ride the crash just about to bottom-still he’s probably worth $100 million)
By the same token it hard not to look at the death of Steve Jobs and realize the not everyone is created equal in ability or awesomeness. Entrepreneurs have an important place in the USA.
As for transnational corporations it would be nice to see so called free trade become more fair equitable, but don’t hold your breath.
Did the Bush tax cuts (which should have never been implemented in a time of war) need to be extended? Not in my opinion. That the Obama administration and Nancy Pelosi (talk about a political aristocrat) and a Reid led congress couldn’t make this happen just reflects the Democratic hypocrisy and lameness. The stimulus was a joke.
The precious compassionate European State held up by the educated and the idle in the USA as a model of governance is a house of cards.
Just as the tea party started as something and has been sucked into the corporatist wing of the GOP, I see the Occupy crowd destined to be swallowed whole by the public employee unions.
I read this and thought it was from Bluering because out of the corner of my eye the avatar picture looked like his. I was thinking "Wow, he has expanded beyond his us or them thinking and actually made some very intelligent and insightful comments. But alas it was krahmes who has an open mind and sees reality.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:23pm PT
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They are out there protesting the miserable lives they've built for themselves. HS dropouts, Humanities majors, losers, let them rot in the street.
-- fattrad
They don't make many people more ugly than fattrad.
[maybe 1%]
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:26pm PT
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http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
My dad is unemployed due to disabilities obtained on the job. He’s in need of health insurance but is NOT ELIGIBLE for Medicare because he could be covered on my mom’s health insurance.
The problem is, if she adds him, she would OWE her job $$ each month and have no take home income. The sole income upon which they rely.
After 25+ years of happy marriage, my parents are considering DIVORCE just so he can be eligible for Medicare.
WE are the 99%.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
It is sad that I consider my family lucky.
4 kids
Husband works full time for minimum wage and no affordable benefits (health insurance would cost more than his monthly gross pay)
We qualify for food stamps and housing assistance
We live paycheck to paycheck
But at least we have food and shelter.
We are locked into a single income because child care would absorb a second income (plus some)
We do not have credit cards and drive a car that is over 10 years old because we don’t want payments.
Neither myself or my husband have been to the doctor or dentist in over 5 years.
I am in a community college (for Computer Science) and I am fortunate that a Pell Grant covers my tuition and books. But I can see that it is a useless degree.
I fear that the programs that feed us and keep us in a home will be cut soon.
I am the 99%.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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Why would anyone feel "threatened" by normal Americans expressing frustration?
They don't want your job, and they don't want your money.
They are simply pointing out the growing inequity gap in America.
They feel they did everything "right", they have less and less, and see the rich get more rich.
They have a right to express their opinion.
Why would anyone have a problem with this?
Talk against them?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:37pm PT
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THIS is what they are expressing their own frustration about: THE 1% versus the 99%
The state comptroller of New York reckons that Wall Street firms paid $20.8 billion in cash bonuses to their employees in the state in 2010. This was 8% lower than the total for 2009, and just 61% of the sum paid in 2006, when bonuses peaked at $34.3 billion. The decline reflects a shift toward deferred compensation and higher base salaries rather than lower profits. Total profits of $27.6 billion made 2010 Wall Street’s most profitable year with the exception of 2009, when it benefited from bail-out money and low interest rates.
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 02:43pm PT
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Riley, isn't it a strange concept? That people would care so much more about themselves as to throw everyone else under the bus?
This selfish concept has always been lost on me.
I like making money, and lately I'm very good at it. Who cares though? Money is such a small fraction of what should define humanity.
Empathy should trump money every single day, and anyone who disagrees is eitherly overly selfish or has never known true adversity or struggle.
IMO.
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 03:04pm PT
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I think somebody should actually go and read what Adam Smith really said.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 03:06pm PT
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Corporations are people, my friend.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 03:12pm PT
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EVERYTHING Fattrad says is rooted in FEAR.
FEAR that someone wants to take something away from him.
The very core of modern conservatism is this same FEAR.
FEAR that the black woman in Detroit will spend her welfare money on drugs.
And that welfare money comes out of their tax dollars paid.
FEAR
SOME of that fear IS justified, but the pure childish ignorance is using that fear to justify their own selfishness, especially at the expense of people who truly do need help.
as John Kenneth Galbraith said:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. ...
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sandstone conglomerate
climber
sharon conglomerate central
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Oct 11, 2011 - 03:20pm PT
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Turn that LASD heat ray on yer fat ass fattrad! Don't you know people are starving in Africa? They'd appreciate a couple of well done flank steaks you meanie...
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Oct 11, 2011 - 03:36pm PT
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This may be simplistic, but is it not the case that after a company issues stock under an IPO - that is basically the last time that company receives funds for it's own stock.
From that point forward, the stocks are bought and sold back and forth between a small percentage of fat white rich guys who have figured out how to make money both ways.
No one else appears to benefit outside of this small pool of "investors".
While I have no issue with white guys selling paper one day and buying it the next - I do wonder how and why this "system" has come to represent the basis of our overall economy.
They produce no product, provide no service, enlighten the country in no discernible way other than ensuring their personal wealth.
I can see the selfishness that pisses people off.
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froodish
Social climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 11, 2011 - 03:41pm PT
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@Brandon-
Riley, isn't it a strange concept? That people would care so much more about themselves as to throw everyone else under the bus?
This selfish concept has always been lost on me.
I find it puzzling too, but perhaps "last-place aversion" explains at least some of it:
Never mind the top, avoid the bottom
Instead of opposing redistribution because people expect to make it to the top of the economic ladder, the authors of the new paper argue that people don’t like to be at the bottom. One paradoxical consequence of this “last-place aversion” is that some poor people may be vociferously opposed to the kinds of policies that would actually raise their own income a bit but that might also push those who are poorer than them into comparable or higher positions. The authors ran a series of experiments where students were randomly allotted sums of money, separated by $1, and informed about the “income distribution” that resulted. They were then given another $2, which they could give either to the person directly above or below them in the distribution.
In keeping with the notion of “last-place aversion”, the people who were a spot away from the bottom were the most likely to give the money to the person above them: rewarding the “rich” but ensuring that someone remained poorer than themselves. Those not at risk of becoming the poorest did not seem to mind falling a notch in the distribution of income nearly as much. This idea is backed up by survey data from America collected by Pew, a polling company: those who earned just a bit more than the minimum wage were the most resistant to increasing it.
Poverty may be miserable. But being able to feel a bit better-off than someone else makes it a bit more bearable.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:01pm PT
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Corporations are people, my friend. \
yeah brandon,
like steve jobs = apple....
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:02pm PT
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80% of wall streets traffic today,
will be in stocks the owners sold within 10 seconds
thats not trading
thats looting
is it legal?
what prevents you from doing it?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:04pm PT
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It is sad that I consider my family lucky.
4 kids
Husband works full time for minimum wage and no affordable benefits (health insurance would cost more than his monthly gross pay)
We qualify for food stamps and housing assistance
We live paycheck to paycheck
But at least we have food and shelter.
We are locked into a single income because child care would absorb a second income (plus some)
We do not have credit cards and drive a car that is over 10 years old because we don’t want payments.
Neither myself or my husband have been to the doctor or dentist in over 5 years.
I am in a community college (for Computer Science) and I am fortunate that a Pell Grant covers my tuition and books. But I can see that it is a useless degree.
I fear that the programs that feed us and keep us in a home will be cut soon
let me get this straight....someone has 4 kids but only has the education/training/experience/motivation to get a minimum wage job?
and its the wealthy peoples fault? really? you are not serious are you?
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:13pm PT
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let me get this straight....someone has 4 kids but only has the education/training/experience/motivation to get a minimum wage job?
and its the wealthy peoples fault? really? you are not serious are you?
He's serious as a heart attack. That's how capitalism works, amigo.
This is long, but an interesting read. I ask forgiveness in advance.
We never traveled together at all, you know, since the kids been little they've
always known that I vanished from their lives periodically. And they never
really had any idea of what it is that I do. What do I do? If I don't know
why should they?
Yeah, Brandon, the fourteen-year-old, he got to travel with me, during the
summer. But we got a chance to talk to each other as adults, you know, as - well - as adults, instead of just father and son. We left Boston - we were headed up to the Left Bank Cafe in Blue Hill, Maine - and Brandon, just above Marble Head, turned to me and he said, "How did you get to be like that?"
It's a fair question.
I knew what he meant, but he didn't have all the language to say exactly what he meant - what he meant to say was: "Why is it that you are fundamentally alienated from the entire institutional structure of society?"
And I said, "Well, I've never been asked that, you know. Now don't listen to the radio and don't talk to me for half an hour while I think about it." So we drove and talked - we were on Highway 1 because it was pretty and close to the
water. Got up toward the Maine border and there was a picnic area, off to the side some picnic tables. It was a bright, clear day. So I pulled into their parking lot; we sat down at the picnic tables, and I said, "Now, sit down, I want to tell you a story, cause I've thought about it."
So I sat down and said, "You know, I was over in Korea." And he said, "Yeah, I've always wondered about that, did you shoot anybody?" And I said, as honestly as I could, "I don't know. But that's not the story," I said, this is what I was telling him:
I was up at Kumori Gap there by the Imjin River. There were about seventy-five thousand Chinese soldiers on the other side and they all wanted me out of there, with every righteous reason that you could think of. I had long since figured out that I was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time for the most specious of reasons.
But there I was - my clothing was rotting on my body, every exotic mold in the world was attacking my clothing and my person, my boots had big holes in them from the rot. I wanted to swim in the Imjin River, and get that feeling of death, that feeling of rot off of me. The Chinese soldiers were on the other side; they were swimming, they were having a wonderful time. But there was a rule, a regulation against swimming in the Imjin River. I thought that was foolish, but then a young Korean fellow - cartworked for us as a carpenter - by the name of Young Shik Han. All of his family had been killed off in the war.
Well, he said to me in what English he had, "You know, when we get married
here, the young married couple moves in with the elders, they move in with the grandparents. But there's nothing growing, everything's been destroyed. There's no food. So [when] the first baby's born, the oldest, the old man, goes out with a jug of water and a blanket and sits on the bank of the Imjin
River and waits to die. He sits there until he dies, and then will roll down the bank and into the river, and his body will be carried out to the sea. And we don't want you to swim in the Imjin River because our elders are floating out to sea."
That's when it began to crumble for me, you know. That's when I, well, I ran away, and not just from that, I ran away from the blueprint for self-
destruction I had been handed as a man, for violence in excess. For sexual
excess, for racial excess. We had a commanding officer, who said of the G.I. babies fathered by G.I.'s and Korean mothers that the Korean government wouldn't care for so they were in these orphanages, and he said: "Well, as sad as that is, someday this'll really help the Korean people cause it'll raise the intelligence level." That's what we were dealing with, you know.
So I ran away. I ran down to Seoul City, down toward Askom. Not to the Army. I ran away to a place called the Korea House. It was a Korean civilians' [group] reaching out to G.I.'s to give them some better vision of who they were than what we were getting up at the divisions. And they hid me for three weeks. Late one night - I didn't have any clothes that would fit me - late one night, it was a stormy, stormy night, the rain falling in sheets, I could go out, cause they figured no one would see me. We walked through the mud and the rain - Seoul City was devastated. And they took me to a concert at the Aiwa Women's University. Large auditorium with shell holes in the ceiling and the rain pouring through the holes, and clyde lights on the stage hooked up to car batteries. This wasn't the USO, this was the Korean Students' Association.
The person that they invited to sing - I was the only white person there - the person that they invited to sing was Marian Anderson, great black operatic soprano who had been on tour in Japan, you see. There she was, singing "Oh Freedom" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." And I watched her through the rain coming through the ceiling and thought back to Salt Lake [City].
My father, Sid, who ran the Capitol Theatre - it was a movie house but it had been an old vaudeville house and he wanted to bring back live performances back to the Capitol - in 1948 he invited Marian Anderson to comed and sing there. I remembered we went to the, to the train station to pick her up and took her to the biggest hotel in town, The Hotel Utah, but they wouldn't let her stay there, because she was black.
And I remembered my father's humiliation and her humiliation, as I saw her
singing in there, through the rain. And I realized right then, I said,
"Brandon, right then I knew that it was all wrong, and it all had to change. And that that change had to start with me."
*
I learned in Korea that I would never again in my life abdicate to somebody
else my right and my ability to decide who the enemy is.
Got back from Korea; I was so mad at what I'd seen and done I wasn't sure I
could ever live in the country again. I got on the freight trains up in
Everett, north of Seattle, and kind of cruised the country for two years makin' up songs, but I was drunk most of the time and forgot most of those.
I'd heard that there was a house in Salt Lake City by the roper yards... where there was a clothing barrel and free food. So I, I got off the train there. I was headed for Salt Lake anyway.
I found that house right where they said it was, but most of all I found this, this wiry old man, sixty-nine years old. Tougher'n nails, heart of gold, fella by the name of Ammon Hennacy. Anybody know that name? Ammon Hennacy? One of Dorothy Day's people, the Catholic workers, during the Thirties they started houses of hospitality all over the country; there're about eighty of 'em now.
Ammon Hennacy was one of those; he'd come west to start this house I'd found called The Joe Hill House of Hospitality. Ammon Hennacy was a Catholic anarchist, pacifist, draft-dodger of two World Wars, tax refuser, vegetarian, one-man revolution in America - I think that about covers it.
First thing he said, after he got to know me, he said: "You know you love the country. You love it. You come in and out of town on those trains singin' songs about different places and beautiful people. You know you love the country; you just can't stand the government. Get it straight." He quoted Mark Twain to me: "Loyalty to the country always; loyalty to the government when it deserves it." It was an essential distinction I had been neglecting.
And then he had to reach out and grapple with the violence, but he did that
with all the people around him. These second World War vets, you know, on
medical disabilities and all drunked up; the house was filled with violence, which Ammon, as a pacifist, dealt with - every moment, every day of his life. He said, "You got to be a pacifist." I said, "Why?" He said, "It'll save your life." And my behavior was very violent then.
I said, "What is it?" And he said, "Well I can't give you a book by Gandhi - you wouldn't understand it. I can't give you a list of rules that if you sign it you're a pacifist." He said, "You look at it like booze. You know, alcoholism will kill somebody, until they finally get the courage to sit in a circle of people like that and put their hand up in the air and say, 'Hi, my name's Utah, I'm an alcoholic.' And then you can begin to deal with the behavior, you see, and have the people define it for you whose lives you've destroyed."
He said, "It's the same with violence. You know, an alcoholic, they can be dry for twenty years; they're never gonna sit in that circle and put their hand up and say, 'Well, I'm not alcoholic anymore' - no, they're still gonna put their hand up and say, 'Hi, my name's Utah, I'm an alcoholic.' It's the same with violence. You gotta be able to put your hand in the air and acknowledge your capacity for violence, and then deal with the behavior, and have the people whose lives you messed with define that behavior for you, you see. And it's not gonna go away - you're gonna be dealing with it every moment in every situation for the rest of your life."
I said, "Okay, I'll try that," and Ammon said "It's not enough!"
I said: "Oh."
He said, "You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial
America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of
weapons. The weapons of privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege,
economic privilege. You wanna be a pacifist, it's not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words, but giving up the weapons of privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed. Try that."
That old man has been gone now twenty years, and I'm still at it. But I figure if there's a worthwhile struggle in my own life, that, that's probably the one. Think about it.
I'd always wanted to write a song for that old man. He never wanted one about him - he's that way - but something mulched up out of his thought, his anarchist thought. Anarchist in the best sense of the word. Oh so many times he stood up in front of Federal District Judge Ritter, that old fart, and he'd be picked up for picketing illegally, and he never plead innocent or guilty - he plead anarchy.
And Ritter'd say, "What's an anarchist, Hennacy?" and Ammon would say, "Why an anarchist is anybody who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do." Kind of a fundamentalist anarchist, huh?
And Ritter'd say, "But Ammon, you broke the law, what about that?" and Ammon'd say, "Oh, Judge, your damn laws the good people don't need 'em and the bad people don't obey 'em so what use are they?"
Well I lived there for eight years, and I watched him, really watched him, and I discovered watching him that anarchy is not a noun, but an adjective. It describes the tension between moral autonomy and political authority, especially in the area of combinations, whether they're going to be voluntary or coercive. The most destructive, coercive combinations are arrived at through force.
Like Ammon said, "Force is the weapon of the weak."
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:13pm PT
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One of the things that makes stock valuable is the ability to sell it. If Wall Street stock trades were outlawed for whatever reason the Occupiers desire, it would inhibit the ability of any other public companies to raise capital in IPO's or otherwise.
I could add comments about how we will desperately need more investment as my Baby Boomer generation retires and spends the rest of our lives disinvesting, but the anti-Wall-Street/Capitalism/Capital/Business/"Rich"/White/Whatever-else-they're-against probably don't care.
john
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:14pm PT
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Presumptuous to assume that the four children came BEFORE and not AFTER the supposed economic preplanning of deciding on children.
We do not know the lineage of the facts to assume anything like that.
All we know is she, like the tens of thousands protesting, are feeling personal frustration.
They see the very rich getting richer, and they see themselves, largely through no direct "fault" of their own, feeling more and more helpless, screwed, and therefore disenfranchised.
They are not asking for anything, no official "demands" have been made.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:19pm PT
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i am all for feeding children. i also believe in the same medical treatment for all, even possibly socialized medicine and NO insurance as we would all be covered.
anyone who has 4 kids without a very good job and security is a moron. sorry. you have to take a test for a drivers license, any moron can have a kid.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:23pm PT
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The crime, Hawkeye, is that someone can have a full time job, be a productive member of society, and not be able to feed, clothe and shelter a family.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:28pm PT
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Haweye, how do you know that she DID have a job and "security" BEFORE and/or after she chose to have children?
I don't see how anyone could know this fact from reading her post.
Sh#t happens in life, often AFTER one properly plans the future.
IF your point is she should not have had children many years ago because she did not have a job or a reasonable future at that time, I happen to agree 100% with you.
But that is not the case here, because we cannot know the time line of facts.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:28pm PT
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i agree. its a crime for some lazy ass moron who has not planned their life well enough that they bring 4 children into this world that they can't afford. while they were busy making babies perhaps they should have planned on just how much money those kids would cost then got the education/experience/motivation in order to pay for those kids.
sorry guys, thats they way it works. 200 years ago if you were not a good enough hunter the kids starved to death. and while i am NOT advocating that, something has been lost in evolution. if you want a good job then you damn well better be motivated to get one. why should corporate amreica be responsible for that? their motivation is simple. money. if a worker can make them money then they will hire the worker. if you can't afford 4 kids then keep it in your pants.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:37pm PT
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If you want a good job then you damn well better be motivated to get one.
I'll remember to tell that to a few of my out of work/underpaid buddies...they must not be motivated!
EDIT: Fvck, I didn't know it was that simple! Thanks for clearing that up!
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:38pm PT
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So the the kids should just starve
Because the parents can't get a well paying job
Thats what the 1% believe
I reject it
we can do better
Thats so pathetic
and at the same time, some millionaire is scoring another million off paying cheap labor
we should feed them. and i hope they are ashamed to get food stamps as that means that some hard working stiff who did plan properly is helping to pay for their lack of vision on how much it costs to bring kids into this world.
did someone prevent you from being a millionaire and hiring cheap labor? if those cheap laborers had valuable skills they would not be cheap! duh.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:41pm PT
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what are your friends skills kingsbury? climbers? skiers? carpenters?
i suppose that they want a good paying job and they want to stay in Montana too? a state that is notorious for low paying wages. i would love to work and live in MT but i cant afford too. i have to go where the job is.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:46pm PT
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Not just Montana. I know plenty of folks on the east coast, Midwest and in CA that are hurting. Lots of them college educated. I guess they are all lazy though...
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:49pm PT
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i agree. its a crime for some lazy ass moron who has not planned their life well enough that they bring 4 children into this world that they can't afford. while they were busy making babies perhaps they should have planned on just how much money those kids would cost then got the education/experience/motivation in order to pay for those kids.
sorry guys, thats they way it works. 200 years ago if you were not a good enough hunter the kids starved to death. and while i am NOT advocating that, something has been lost in evolution. if you want a good job then you damn well better be motivated to get one. why should corporate amreica be responsible for that? their motivation is simple. money. if a worker can make them money then they will hire the worker. if you can't afford 4 kids then keep it in your pants.
In other words, you don't believe in the work ethic? Honest labor has no value to you?
Only those who have jobs that are of value to The Man are of any worth?
You are a good toady, Hawkeye, but they'll come for you someday. They have no loyalty.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:51pm PT
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Where does the assumption come from that Obama or Wall Street "owes" the protestors a job?
Anyone care to show how, what source, they got this fact from?
A protest rally sign maybe, an interview source maybe?
What protestor said he or she is "owed" a job?
They "want" a job yes, but owed a job?
From what credible source does the assumption come from that these protestors want to
"take" or "steal" wealth from anyone at all?
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:52pm PT
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I'm lazy.
Fifteen years of experience as a carpenter.
I just wrapped up two years of unemployment, cold calling job sites daily.
Yeah, I'm lazy, that's it.
I have a feeling that most of those who side with the right don't work in the trades.
Without journeymen you wouldn't have all of your luxuries, like homes, flush toilets, etc.
I feel entitled to a job, that's it.
Right.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:57pm PT
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Lois, that was very pathetic. You've lost your credibility. Who has hacked your old account? DMT?
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 04:59pm PT
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Unleash the job creators.
Let them keep their money. Stop telling people they have been put on this earth to give you their wealth.
Dump Obama. Jobs are the issue. Unleash the job creators instead.
Finally, skip gets it!! Yes!! Tell the capitalists to get a job like the rest of us, and earn their own way. Stop taking OUR hard earned wealth.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:00pm PT
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I'll remember to tell that to a few of my out of work/underpaid buddies...they must not be motivated!
EDIT: Fvck, I didn't know it was that simple! Thanks for clearing that up!
just to check things out here.....
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=engineer&l=Montana&start=10
198 Engineering jobs in MT.
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=nurse&l=Montana
1,486 Nursing Jobs in MT.
1,278 Computer Jobs in MT on same web site.
there are jobs out there. is it tough? sure its tough. but it won't be handed to anyone on a silver platter either.
if all you have these days is a HS education, apply at walmart. or mcdonalds. but don't cry about not having a good job if you have not prepared yourself adequately for the current job market by working your ass off gaining marketable skills.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:08pm PT
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In other words, you don't believe in the work ethic? Honest labor has no value to you?
Only those who have jobs that are of value to The Man are of any worth?
You are a good toady, Hawkeye, but they'll come for you someday. They have no loyalty.
honest labor has only the value that someone is willing to pay for it at a given time. it is (fortunately or unfortunately depending upon your perspective) a commodity. and if you are unhappy with the man, create your own business.
should i pay someone simply because they want it and need it? or should i pay someone because they offer a skill that i want or need at a given time?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:10pm PT
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your supposed job creators have more money in the bank than they ever had,
they have the least taxes theyve seen in 80 years
war, i am all for making the warren buffets of the world pay more taxes. no doubt.
but our OWS folks are protesting the wrong people if they want that to happen. morons.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:14pm PT
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so your cheering the fact that whenever i get a job,
someone with 4 kids and a family lost theirs...
No, war, the economy is not a zero-sum game, despite the rhetoric of those on the left. If it were, why would we all agree that increasing employment benefits society?
John
Edit:
I see skip beat me to it.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:14pm PT
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So if you don't have skills
or not cute, or popular
or can't compete with the other 1000 applying for the same job
try getting the skills or a business so as to COMPETE in the market place. unfortunately, being popular can help you, it is called marketing ones skills. of course, if one has no skills to market then it might help to be pretty. i would not know about that. but it is in fact about skills.
companies cannot pay someone simply because that someone thinks they deserve it.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:18pm PT
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If anyone in New England is truly hurting for work and is properly qualified, I'll split the hours on my $34/hr, 40 hour a week carpentry job.
I've got a part time ski race coaching job lined up for the winter at $15/hr. It's a good offset and I keep warmer skiing than my usual finish work.
It's called altruism.
I'd have to vouch for you and I'm not sticking my neck out for someone I don't know, but if we meet up and you prove your value, I'm open to the idea.
The reason we're busy is that we care and work for the love of it, rather than the immediate profits. It builds a client base that can't be beat.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:18pm PT
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This leaps out at me. If you are looking to the distant past as a yardstick for contemporary society and policy, you'll be lost down a rabbit hole.
200 years ago if you weren't white you were someone else's property.
Get with the 21st century, eh?
you missed the sentance right after that loves gas.
the point is that modern day survival revolves (for almost all of us) around getting cash to feed, shelter and clothe us. in order for one to compete for that cash, it takes a bit of a survival instinct in terms of planning what one wants to do with their life to get skills so that one can make a living. it is not easy. there are things that I think government can do to help. but the day of HS education and affording 4 kids is over for all but the most creative and hard working individuals.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:22pm PT
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If anyone in New England is truly hurting for work and is properly qualified, I'll split the hours on my $34/hr, 40 hour a week carpentry job.
I've got a part time ski race coaching job lined up for the winter at $15/hr. It's a good offset and I keep warmer skiing than my usual finish work.
It's called altruism.
I'd have to vouch for you and I'm not sticking my neck out for someone I don't know, but if we meet up and you prove your value, I'm open to the idea.
The reason we're busy is that we care and work for the love of it, rather than the immediate profits. It builds a client base that can't be beat.
good job brandon. i have seen your pics on the building thread and i think your work is great. last i checked, where i live at, 34$/hr for finish work is a hell of a lot of money. just saying.
besides, caoching ski racing is a gas and the kids will love it too...
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:24pm PT
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i get a job 9 other guys bid on,
i get the job, cuz i only got one mouth to feed and therefore can offer to lowest bid
i get a job, cuz i willing to help toss 9 family into the street
f*#k you cops and boy scouts and self help religious idiots
im not going to stand on anyone else,
to reach whats right and fair
you can always go on a diet....or do the hunter gatherer thing....
if i were wanting a discrete piece of work done and got 10 bids, and the quality/experience level were all the same....i would probably take the lowest price bid....just sayin...
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:26pm PT
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I sure hope the Republicans Cut aid to the Native American Indians
They have No Marketable skills, no money, and nothing of value
They just won't bring their game up so they can get a High Paying Job, Total Slackers
We should just let them starve, and stop all assistance, especially Health Care, they are just a group of leaches
not sure why you brought them into the mix. they have casinos in many parts of the country. they have lands that will only increase in value....they have other things that are not "given" to other members of the population. how many years should we subsidize them? by the way, i voted democrat the last election.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:27pm PT
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I want each one of them to work in their own selfish interest, that will make the group/society as a whole strong.
Sorry Jeff you are wrong there. For the best results there should be a balance between your own selfish interest and those of your society. Education is the perfect example. We all pay for public education and in time your society (America) has more skilled people making more money, buying more products, and we are ALL better off. When people only act selfishly they will get short term benefit, but over time society is worse off and there is less money and competetiveness in America and everyone including the 1% is worse off. It's shortsighted and self defeating in the long run.
Right now there is too much selfish interest going on. Bush lowered the taxes for the rich and no jobs were created, it just helped setup the huge budget defecit we have. The economy sucks, so people are buying less, people are sharing housing, so the poor and middle class are hurting. If everyone was doing better (unemployment lower, housing pickup, etc.) the rich we be doing even better, but their short term selfhishness is often self defeating.
its a crime for some lazy ass moron who has not planned their life well enough that they bring 4 children into this world that they can't afford. if you want a good job then you damn well better be motivated to get one.
Why does it always go to thninking the less fortunate are all lazy or unmotivated for these people? I was smart, learned a lot, made good choices, worked hard and I'm doing well. But I have empathy and understand some people don't have the intelligence, wisdom, support, or education that I have had the good fortune to enjoy. Some people don't have the capacity to get a college degree or figure out what the best field to be in is. So many of them work extra hard, and can't get a job or even worse work full time or even more hours for less pay than it takes to survive.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:29pm PT
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You get nothing till you do something for somebody else.
No, skip, here's how capitalism works:
You get nothing while you do something for somebody else.
So here's reality. We can no longer afford to feed the pigs on Wall Street. They'll have to start rooting for themselves.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:30pm PT
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There are millions of American that have no skills, no education, no motivation and no desire to become a 40 hour a week slave
And yet, they seem to want the rewards that we 40+ hour a week workers receive. I know lots of people who want to work more and can't find the work, and they deserve all the help we can give them. I have a harder time motivating my altruism for those who don't want to engage in the prerequisites for their desired income levels.
john
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:33pm PT
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I hear you on that, John.
What's the solution? Mandatory adult education for welfare recipients? It'd educate the poor, but expand government spending.
Edit; Dr, I DO hear a lot from my unemployed acquaintances about equality. Perhaps we should mandate education in conjunction with financial assistance.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:38pm PT
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Just conversing with Republicans makes me want to puke
Where is the compassion, the National Pride
The support for the weakest link, so we can all be strong
We shouldn't be increasing our percentage of poor, yet thats what the Republicans want, and then they blame them for being poor, and not having a job
Truly pathetic
dr. F,
i voted for Obama. i am not dem or republican. i voted for him because he was the best candidate. while i am not sorry to vote for him i am disapointed.
but this is not a dem vs repub issue. where is self sacrifice? in terms of working hard to earn money? should those of us who work our a$$es off just give it to those who sit on their butts all day?
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:42pm PT
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FACT, there are too many people who abuse our social services.
What do we do to put this abuse in check?
Social services are important and we need these in our nation. Abuse is inexcusable.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:42pm PT
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I'd guess about 5% of the people who are suffering are lazy/unmotivated, the other 95% would jump at the chance of a decent paying job. But it's easier to pretend it's all just lazy people so you don't feel guilty.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:50pm PT
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I guess I'll reiterate.
I encounter people who abuse the welfare system on a regular basis.
I agree with the welfare system.
However, reform to this system from qualifications to administration could result in a lower tax bill for all of us.
I'm with you guys, don't get me wrong, but if the winds of change are blowing, let's direct them properly.
The repercussions would only affect those who are playing the system.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:51pm PT
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You are not giving it away, that is total BS
You are paying taxes, and your taxes could be spent on $40 billion subsides to big oil, Walmart, crony capitailism and rebuilding Iraq
Or making sure Americans that DON"T HAVE a Job don't starve
and providing jobs that rebulid infrastructure and what not
Its not your money, its the Government's Money, and the issue is how it gets spent
hey, dont preach to me about wars, i didnt want any of them.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:53pm PT
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Jobs are created by only one factor
Demand
No demand, no jobs,
No one would just create a job for no reason
We have to create demand by spending more
Yet the Republicans want to cut spending
So more Jobs will be lost due to Republican Policies
hey, i actually agree with you here.
what are all the poor defense contractors going to do when we cut defense?
edit:
Dr. F, i actually agree with a lot of what you are saying....i am one of those poor "centrist" voters who feel like we need a new Party in politics....something better than the current "dumb and dumber" that we have...
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:55pm PT
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Maybe you're not picking up what I'm throwing down, Wes.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:55pm PT
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do you strap them to the board before cutting them or just hope they dont flop around?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 05:58pm PT
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I have seen various studies that say that about 50 percent of people on welfare will return to welfare at some point. Other studies put it at as low as 10 percent. I don't know which is true. But what this does tell me is that as few as 50 percent, and possibly many more, do get off of welfare and stay off of it.
During recessions, the numbers always go up because their just isn't work and unemployment benefits run out. I know many people like this. My brother in law was out of work for 3 years. He is a mid level marketing manager with a lot of skills, and he has worked for many of the biggest companies, but he is also 58 now, and few people are hiring mid level managers with lots of skills. Instead, they are hiring younger people with fewer skills because his age worries them, even though he is healthy.
He has been down to the final two job applicants 12 times in the last 3 years and each time he was turned down for the job for someone younger. He is over qualified and too old.
During one job interview, the president of the company really liked him and they flew him across the country to interview him. The president showed him one of their products and gave him 10 minutes to look at how they were marketing it and then asked him what he would do to fix the problems they had with it. After he gave them his fix, the president turned to the VPs that were present and said that they had just spent more on a marketing analysis then it would cost to hire my brother inlaw for one year, yet he came up with the same basic solutions to their problem in 10 minutes.
My brother inlaw lost that job to a guy 20 years younger with way less experience, even though my brother inlaw was willing to accept the lower wages.
I can say that he finally got a job 3 months ago. But damn was it a long time in finding a job.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:01pm PT
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i am a HS dropout. got my GED, then BS Engineering. MS Engineering.
not adviseable, but it is doable. some of us screwed up then figured out when we screwed up and tried to fix things. so far its worked.
my first hand experience tells me if you cannot pass the GED you ought to be sterilized to prevent offspring.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:06pm PT
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The Military Industrial Complex is a tough issue
Of course we need to cut military spending
and that means jobs
Maybe we can start a new High Tech Green Jobs using them
and they can build stuff for the good of the Nation, rather than for death
But thats socialism, and we can't have socialism
i am all for a little socialism, personally. so long as it makes sense. i recently had brunch in the Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood. Really cool lodge built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 30's. i could go for some things that at least when our children are paying off the national debt our kids can point to something and say we are paying for that..,.unfortunately, most of our politicians are so short sighted they only keep track of the next votes
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:08pm PT
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thats some sick sh#t your thinking hawkeye,
got anything to add concerning kikes or spicks while your at it?
war, that was tongue in cheek for saying that if you are not smart enough to pass a GED, you really have some challenges in life that government is not ever going to be able to fix.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:15pm PT
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aint a test you ever pointed to wasnt a racist attack on the poor
why all this fuss about erecting social barriers to biological functions?
i am not understanding you war...this morning at the gas station i was getting coffee and there was a crew of mexican farm laborers with only one of them who could speak english getting coffee. i salute them. they were going to work to do a job that some white people feel to speshul to do....
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:24pm PT
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We are in tough times,
And yet you post this..
They are out there protesting the miserable lives they've built for themselves. HS dropouts, Humanities majors, losers, let them rot in the street.
Why are we in tough times?
I know.. you want to blame people for being greedy, yet you say greed is good. You want to deregulate and free the economy, yet without sound regulation and firm oversight, a free economy will go from boom to bust.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:28pm PT
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Welfare fraud ain't got squat on banker fraud, insurance companies, or the war machine.
You can say that again!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:39pm PT
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I addressed them. You just weren't paying attention.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:39pm PT
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Welfare fraud ain't got squat on banker fraud, insurance companies, or the war machine.
insurance companies are the worst.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:40pm PT
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I would say that they are all about equal in their corruption.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 06:46pm PT
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not possible
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:07pm PT
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Occupy Wall Street, insofar as it had a genesis, was started by Adbusters magazine, which is based in Vancouver. They're going to begin an Occupy Wall Street event in Vancouver on October 15th, if they can ever get organized - the tea party's corporate funders do help with that part. Anyway, Wall Street in Vancouver is actually a residential and (partly) commercial/industrial area, well away from financial centres downtown, which are more or less on Howe Street. So will it be occupy Wall Street, on Howe Street?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:09pm PT
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MH, OWS vancouver will go over really well if there is free beer....that corporate giant of molson may contribute.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:13pm PT
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Well the Gov. should put them to work
paying them tax payers money
Since the Job Creators aren't hiring
You will have to vote for Obama's Jobs Program
so they can feed themselves
Obama's jobs program is pathetic. Are you really naive enough to think it will create jobs?
You just don't get it. Government jobs are not created in a vacuum. You have to look at the costs to the private sector - that is why these stupid, ill advised jobs programs always create higher overall unemployment in the long run. Look at the previous $600 Billion stimulus - Government can count some pathetic number of jobs (I heard that dimwit Nancy Pelosi claim 1 Million), but why did we LOSE jobs overall?
Creating jobs is not hard. But to lower unemployment is different - you have to create jobs that add value. This is hard even for the private sector (esp. with unions, taxes and regulations) but nearly impossible for Government.
The most absurd thing about the "Jobs" package though is the way it was sold to the public. It pays for itself! We won't add to the deficit because the money we make in the future will pay for the costs in the present! Are you f'ing serious? How stupid does Obama think the public is?
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:17pm PT
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Ok, screw the jobs program. How about we look at the fact that the government can currently borrow money long term at historically low rates and we spend a trillion dollars or so fixing our country's infrastructure. Highways (maybe beef up mass transit a bit), bridges, sewers, education, the electrical transmission grid is in bad shape and needs a few hundred billion, etc.
Of course, unemployment will stay over 9% because a democrat in the whitehouse can't create jobs by spending money, but at leat maybe our country's infrastructure can keep up with China's...
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:27pm PT
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Ok, screw the jobs program. How about we look at the fact that the government can currently borrow money long term at historically low rates and we spend a trillion dollars or so fixing our country's infrastructure. Highways (maybe beef up mass transit a bit), bridges, sewers, education, the electrical transmission grid is in bad shape and needs a few hundred billion, etc.
Of course, unemployment will stay over 9% because a democrat in the whitehouse can't create jobs by spending money, but at leat maybe our country's infrastructure can keep up with China's...
august, you confuse me. i agree with the whole infrastructure thing...but wouldnt the government spending money on infrastructure create jobs? isnt that what you say in your first paragraph?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:33pm PT
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How about we look at the fact that the government can currently borrow money long term at historically low rates and we spend a trillion dollars or so fixing our country's infrastructure. Highways (maybe beef up mass transit a bit), bridges, sewers, education, the electrical transmission grid is in bad shape and needs a few hundred billion, etc.
You mean those 'shovel ready jobs' that we spent 800 billion on? How did that work out again?
And those pie-in-the-sky Green jobs? They're going out of business with nothing to show for.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:33pm PT
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...but wouldnt the government spending money on infrastructure create jobs
No man, those bridges and highways design and build themselves. Rise of the machines and all that.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:35pm PT
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Elcap,
thanks for explaining. for a second there i thought august was contradicting himself.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:36pm PT
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Jobs are created by only one factor
Demand
No demand, no jobs,
No one would just create a job for no reason
We have to create demand by spending more
Yet the Republicans want to cut spending
So more Jobs will be lost due to Republican Policies
Spending more what? Printed money? Haven't you learned anything in the last 10 years? How is misallocating capital going to create jobs? Printing money and giving it to one segment of the population only creates inflation.
Demand does not drive growth, Production does. Everything produced is eventually consumed, but you can't consume what is not produced.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:46pm PT
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this thread motivated me to look at some jobs out there. not for me, but it never hurts to know what the market is like.
search indeed.com utah engineers. two jobs for engineers at BD in SLC.
i looked at engineering jobs because thats me and there are tons of them. it just depends upon where you want to live. i did not look up hs dropouts or illegal fruit pickers but my guess is there are some of those too.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:49pm PT
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edit:
deleted due to non-directed vulgarity...
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 11, 2011 - 07:58pm PT
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Demand does not drive growth, Production does. Everything produced is eventually consumed
Aside from being completely discredited, asinine trickle-down supply side pap, this is stunningly ignorant. Tell the homebuilders with half-developed subdivisions and never-occupied houses and condo towers that get dozed due to blight that "everything produced is eventually consumed".
Sh#t, go tell that to the kid out behing McDonalds throwing out the left over french fries at the end of the night.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:00pm PT
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i am glad i am not the only one who saw crack had been at his pipe.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:00pm PT
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Dr. F,
At some point, you'll learn that firms hire to make money. If they see no profit, they make no hires.
This administration chose to pursue policies villifying business. Its NLRB sued Boeing for locating a new plant in a right-to-work state, where it had an existing plant, rather than in a coerced-into-a-union-to-work state, where it also had an existing plant. The demand for Boeing's output is there, but with this action, the profit that would have been there is not.
THis administration's EPA has chosen to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, with the promise of heretofore unimaginable costs to those business that manufacture in the United States, thus reducing profit and reducing hiring.
This administration's SEC has pursued policies which greatly increase the cost of raising equity capital, while this administration's fiscal and monetary policy has robbed the Greatest Generation of any return on their savings.
This administration has chosen to try to treat banks as public utilities and, as a result, lending to all but government-subsidized programs has dried up.
This administration has spent over a trillion dollars "stimulating" the pocketbooks of those who bought and paid for its election. The result has been a hodgepodge of ill-planned, uncoordinated and often useless spending with neither lasting public benefit nor any economic stimulus.
This administration has no signs of any adult behavior. Until that changes, this economy will remain vapid, because this administraiton neither understands private business, nor has any appreciation for its importance.
A pox on it!
John
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:01pm PT
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Aside from being completely discredited, asinine trickle-down supply side pap, this is stunningly ignorant. Tell the homebuilders with half-developed subdivisions and never-occupied houses and condo towers that get dozed due to blight that "everything produced is eventually consumed".
Sh#t, go tell that to the kid out behing McDonalds throwing out the left over french fries at the end of the night.
Yep..
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:02pm PT
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A thought.
I've wondered why I don't hear about this. Most of the people I know are salaried. I believe (though I don't have the numbers so I could be wrong) that the use of salaried employees has increased greatly. It's a nice strategy for companies - get way more work for much less money out of an individual.
These same friends (self included) work 60 hours per week easily each and every week.
If companies allowed people to get their salary and work the normal 40 hour week, then wouldn't for each two currently employed a third job become available?
I know this would cost companies more in terms of benefits etc. (which is why they do it likely) but I wonder if this would not absorb many of the talented and educated people who cannot find work because they jobs don't exist.
Thoughts?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:03pm PT
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LOL ^^^^^^^^
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:03pm PT
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Crimpie, that is where strong unions come into play. Enforcing the 40 hours work week.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:07pm PT
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moosie,
thats as funny as fattrads peyote remark.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:10pm PT
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How do you think the 40 work week came into existence Hawkeye?
I'm not saying that unions aren't out of balance at this point. I believe that they are, but unionizing helped employees gain many benefits, including the 40 hour week.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:12pm PT
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there are some good things that unions have done. and bad. some of them reward simply on seniority and it gives those unions a bad name....just sayin.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:14pm PT
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I agree.. Like anything run by humans, be it government, private industry, or unions, they get corrupted without wise leadership and sound regulation.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:16pm PT
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If by 'bonus hours' you mean additional pay that's not what I am talking about. Everyone I know gets bonus hours - that is - more time they are expected to be at work for no additional money. Maybe that is what you mean by bonus hours?
The 40 hour work week does not exist for salaried employees that I know of. If it did, then more folks could be put to work.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:21pm PT
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Callie, you'd have to look at labour standards legislation in each state, to see what is permitted. Often there is a fixed maximum work week - that is, an employer can't require someone to work more than a certain amount of hours per day or week, without paying overtime. But as you say, it may not apply to supervisory or management people.
Simply paying someone a salary, and saying that the person is thereby supervisory/management and not subject to maximum hours of work/overtime rules, may not cut it. (WalMart would have tried it long ago.) Although a professional at a college may not get far with the argument. Probably there's some exemption for them, too.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:40pm PT
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Ok, screw the jobs program. How about we look at the fact that the government can currently borrow money long term at historically low rates and we spend a trillion dollars or so fixing our country's infrastructure. Highways (maybe beef up mass transit a bit), bridges, sewers, education, the electrical transmission grid is in bad shape and needs a few hundred billion, etc.
I agree that we should be improving infrastructure, but we need to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and use the money from those projects instead. Just borrowing Trillions more is a mistake. Rates are at an all time low only because Bernanke has created a massive bubble in Treasuries. I am sure most people believe it will never crash - that is precisely WHY yields are so low! Most people believed house prices would never fall, which is a major factor that drove house prices so high.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:44pm PT
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you might should also ask what that graph would look like if none of those things were done.
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Ricky D
Trad climber
Sierra Westside
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:49pm PT
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Crimpie - to your point regarding intentional increase of hours per employee - yes - this is a valid and well used strategy among today's corporations.
In my own case, I participated in this strategy both as one who implemented such actions and one who died by that same sword - I can assure you the tactic is real.
At the time I was RIFfed, my personal hours per week exceeded 90 on a regular basis. I had personally "absorbed" the duties of three additional regional positions yet had a 65% reduction in reporting employees with which to perform our function.
It was neither pretty nor productive, but it did cause the stock value to rise so our CEO was quite happy.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 08:58pm PT
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At the time I was RIFfed, my personal hours per week exceeded 90 on a regular basis. I had personally "absorbed" the duties of three additional regional positions yet had a 65% reduction in reporting employees with which to perform our function.
Maybe you didn't have enough of a "work ethic". Ask Lois, she can explain it so that you will work harder and keep your job.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:05pm PT
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Lois, you have a way of insulting everyone, as though only you know what is real. Take for instance your work ethic comment after Ricky D gave his example of having to work 90 plus hours a week.
It isn't about work ethic, though I agree that some union employees are lazy and it pisses me off that the union protects them. I worked both union and management and fired a few people for being lazy.
So you don't need to insult me either.
Yes, some union workers are lazy, but many many aren't. As a manager, I wanted to get rid of about 10 percent of my work force. The rest I would keep. The unions protected that 10 percent, and that sucked, but that doesn't mean that the majority of union workers had lousy work ethics.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:11pm PT
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Not really an issue since the talented or educated folks have an unemployment rate near 5.4%.
The unemployment rate is mostly junk, since workers who stop getting benefits aren't counted.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:15pm PT
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Republicans are idiots.
don't take that personally Lois.
meh..
Your mindset is bogus. So is your understanding of union workers.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:23pm PT
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The unemployment rate is mostly junk, since workers who stop getting benefits aren't counted.
Close, but not quite, John. The unemployment rate calculates those who are looking for work and don't find it. It does not count you if you aren't looking. Thus if, for example, the employment scene has you so discouraged that you don't look -- and your unemployment benefits ran out so you don't need to look to keep them -- you don't count. If you keep looking after your benefits run out, you still count.,
You also might want to check where a lot of the modern work rules originated. They owe at least as much to Henry Ford as to unions. I do believe, though, that unions serve useful roles still, by lowering transactions costs for certain types of labor negotiations. I just find them and their premise repulsive for professional work.
John
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:27pm PT
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If you keep looking after your benefits run out, you still count.,
How do they know that you are still looking? My brother inlaw didn't report to anyone. He looked for his jobs online.
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froodish
Social climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:36pm PT
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Printing money and giving it to one segment of the population only creates inflation.
How's that theory working out for you?
Way Off Base
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 09:43pm PT
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In Straight Party Line Vote, Senate Republicans Kill Jobs Bill:
YIPPIE: you all can kiss goodbye the 2% ($1000 on 50K) tax CUT Obama gave you.
Yes, your beloved Republicans voted to take away, let expire on 12/31 Obama's tax cut.
WASHINGTON — United against Barack Obama, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday night to kill the jobs package the president had spent weeks campaigning for across the country, a stinging loss at the hands of lawmakers opposed to stimulus-style spending and a tax increase on the very wealthy.
The $447 billion plan died on a 50-49 tally that garnered a majority of the 100-member Senate but fell well short of the 60 votes needed to keep the bill alive. The tally had been 51-48, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., switched his vote to "nay" so that he could force a future revote.
This is GOOD NEWS!
We do not want to cut taxes for both employers and employees.
We do not want to rebuild infrastructure.
That way, we can do nothing at all, while we blame the 9% unemployment rate on the Democrats!
GOOD PLAN, WORKS EVERY TIME!!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 10:14pm PT
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United against Barack Obama, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday night to kill the jobs package the president had spent weeks campaigning for across the country, a stinging loss at the hands of lawmakers opposed to stimulus-style spending and a tax increase on the very wealthy.
The $447 billion plan died on a 50-49 tally that garnered a majority of the 100-member Senate but fell well short of the 60 votes needed to keep the bill alive. The tally had been 51-48, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., switched his vote to "nay" so that he could force a future revote.
You're a disengeuous man, Norton. How many Repubs are in the Senate? How many Dems?
It is apparent that the Dems killed it. If all the Dems liked it, it would have passed.
Keep up your misinformation.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 10:15pm PT
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Yep Donald, keep voting for people who tonight voted to take away YOUR 2% Obama tax cut because the bill included a 5% tax increase on those making OVER one million a year.
Think about it Donald.
The people you vote for told YOU to pay MORE taxes on 1/1/12 because THEY refuse to pay not one nickel in additional tax on their own income over one million a year.
Can you understand how you just got screwed?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 10:28pm PT
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Jesus Donald, are you really as stupid as you come across?
It was Obama's bill for Christ's sake.
He asked Harry Reid to bring it up for a vote.
Reid did, and every one of the Democrats voted FOR the bill.
And every one of the Repubs voted against the bill.
If you have trouble understanding this, you have the intellect of third grader.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 11, 2011 - 10:32pm PT
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The Dems liked it, and had 51 votes
But it died 50/49 votes, due to Reid's vote? And this is a Repub problem?
You have some weird distortions, dude....Sounds like the Dems killed their own bill.
Spin it any way you want.
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krahmes
Social climber
Stumptown
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Oct 11, 2011 - 10:34pm PT
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you might should also ask what that graph would look like if none of those things were done.
I think about it all the time. The unemployment dip would have been greater due to layoff in the government sector, but the recovery quicker.
You know the UK went down the austerity road and have taken some heat, but this little tidbit yesterday was interesting:
http://www.markiteconomics.com/MarkitFiles/Pages/ViewPressRelease.aspx?ID=8689
PMI indexes all up except in Scotland and Wales.
There’s this bit too by Ed Harrison:
“If you believe, as I do, that the problem is excessive private sector debt and leverage due in large part to resource misallocation, you probably think growing into asset prices via increasing borrowing and lending is misguided. Debt/income and debt/GDP levels are simply too high. The government can act as a counterweight to the demand drag. But the recovery will always remain fragile until you get substantially all of the credit writedowns on unrecoverable loans. The reason financial crises are followed by slow recoveries has everything to do with this. Moreover, you want to focus on income and not GDP because the household sector is indebted and it pays for debt out of income; higher GDP doesn't make any difference for debt service unless it is felt in income.”
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/10/manufacturing-inflation-in-a-wage-deflationary-environment.html
I see above froodish is carrying Krugman’s water I’ve posted the actual CPI number as calculated before tweaks by Reagan and Clinton. I’ve posted the chart up thread, here’s the site:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
As anyone with a budget and knack for pattern recognition knows prices are going up and not deflating or holding steady. Wages is another story, except for our intrepid government employees.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 11, 2011 - 10:40pm PT
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froodish
Social climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 12, 2011 - 12:31am PT
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I see above froodish is carrying Krugman’s water I’ve posted the actual CPI number as calculated before tweaks by Reagan and Clinton. I’ve posted the chart up thread, here’s the site:
While on the site, be sure to read John Wiliams'HYPERINFLATION SPECIAL REPORT (2011)
Hyperinflation Special Report (2011) is the fourth in a series of related writings going back to 2006.
Gold Standard? Seriously? So just when is that hyperinflation supposed to make us the Weimar Republic?
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:10am PT
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the bankers and brokers and politicians and their masters in the intelligence, energy, military, religious, pharmaceutical and corporate communities are providing us all with profound demonstrations of barbaric uncivilized behavior
these are not superior beings or holy or enlightened; rather many of these people are selfish and narrow and greedy for the power to pursue small-minded goals and purposes
these are barbarians; don't waste creative energy fighting them; just don't provide them with support and comfort; just let that alone be their punishment
it is time for us to move on together and create a civilized society
a civilized society does not involve centralized power monopolies, slave-master mentalities, extermination of populations, and mutual disrespect based upon ideological differences
civilization involves mutual respect, tolerance for differing viewpoints, and setting aside ideological differences; working together solving the challenges that face all of us living together on this small planet
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:37am PT
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Printing money and giving it to one segment of the population only creates inflation.
How's that theory working out for you?
Hmmm.. I don't see house prices in your graph... I guess that wasn't inflation?
This graph also makes use of clever baseline: 2008, the bursting of the inflationary bubble in housing and the beginning of the greatest deflation we've had since the Great Depression. Look at the same graph from a 2009 baseline and you will see a very different story.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:40am PT
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Taxes were high during from the 50s to the 70s
when you could live the American Dream
But greed for low taxes gave us this instead
Lowered Wages and scarce Jobs, and a bunch of hypocrites calling us lazy
we are slaves to our jobs now, since they provide health care and money
and you can't find a new one if you lose your job
In 2010, 560 Billion was spent on programs for the poor. That's up 5,600% from 1970. Looks like redistribution has made people more poor.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:53am PT
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In 2010, 560 Billion was spent on programs for the poor. That's up 5,600% from 1970. Looks like redistribution has made people more poor.
You are going to have to explain that number. Do you include social security and medicare in that number? Is so, then you have a warped definition of poor, as my dad got both and he isn't poor. So what is in the number?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:48am PT
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You are going to have to explain that number. Do you include social security and medicare in that number? Is so, then you have a warped definition of poor, as my dad got both and he isn't poor. So what is in the number?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:56am PT
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they are practically paying you to borrow money today,
if your credits good
given an infrastructure which gets an f plus on its best day
why on earth isnt now the correct time to buy the tool needed to build the most up to date version of everything any economy needs to run on?
That has only allowed us to borrow up to our eyeballs already. And our Government, in it's wisdom, has almost all if it's debt in short dated treasuries (avg. time to maturity is less than 5 years) in order to get the best rate. These have to be "refinanced" in 5 years (sound familiar?). But hey, it will be paid back within 5 years, right?
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 12, 2011 - 08:54am PT
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And So We Go, On With Our Lives
We Know The Truth, But Prefer Lies
Lies Are Simple, Simple Is Bliss
Why Go Against Tradition When We Can
Admit Defeat, Live In Decline
Be The Victim Of Our Own Design
The Status Quo, Built On Suspect
Why Would Anyone Stick Out Their Neck?
Fellow Members
Club "We've Got Ours"
I'd Like To Introduce You To Our Host
He's Got His, And I've Got Mine
Meet The Decline -nofx
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 12, 2011 - 09:38am PT
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Occupy Wall Street isn’t about Wall Street
By Zachary Roth | The Lookout – 18 hrs ago.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/occupy-wall-street-isn-t-wall-street-191808167.html
Here is a deep question. Could something like this be done here in the USA?
Should a Nation such as India, who has recently recently discovered a vast National Treasure, then use the worth of the treasure to help put Indians to work, and care for their poor, their homeless, those who are hungry, and those who are sick? Or should the Nation state lock-up the wealth and hide it away, along with its worth and value, and then never give like worth to the people of India?
If the people of a Nation give you (the governement of a nation) a 1000 kilos of Gold, and ask for like value in money in return from the Nation state, and then they turn around and ask that the money be put to use to put people to work, and to care for those less fortunate, has the Nation state lost any value? Has the Nation state given up its treasures? Has the Nation state acquired debt? I say it hasn't. So why not do this for your people?
Treasure trove of jewels, gold coins worth billions found under Hindu temple
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1019054--treasure-trove-of-jewels-gold-coins-worth-billions-found-under-hindu-temple
You can google more for better articles and even video regarding this incredible discovery. The amount of Gold historical relics and even the size of individual pieces of golden treasure is staggering.
From the article:
“The current market value of the articles found so far by the committee members would be roughly 900 billion rupees ($20.2 billion),” one temple official who was not authorised to speak to the media told Reuters."
"As estimates of the treasure’s worth rise, a fierce debate is growing regarding what to do with the discovery, in a country where 450 million people live in poverty.
Leaders of the Hindu community want the wealth to be invested in the temple, while many intellectuals, including former Supreme Court judge Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer have suggested it should be used for the public good."
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:28am PT
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Hmmm.. I don't see house prices in your graph... I guess that wasn't inflation?
Asset appreciation is not inflation. Inflation deals with goods and services - not assets. There is a difference.
You don't understand some basic aspects of macroeconomics and monetary policy.
The notion that "printing" money automatically leads to inflation is high-school economics. The real world is a little more complicated.
Start by understanding what the money supply actually is and how the Fed controls it.
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:30am PT
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That has only allowed us to borrow up to our eyeballs already. And our Government, in it's wisdom, has almost all if it's debt in short dated treasuries (avg. time to maturity is less than 5 years) in order to get the best rate. These have to be "refinanced" in 5 years (sound familiar?). But hey, it will be paid back within 5 years, right?
Once again, utterly clueless. Long-term rates are at historic lows also.
Just because you use economic and financial words in a sentence, doesn't mean you actually understand the concepts.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:32am PT
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Blame the Baby Boomers
The Wall Street protesters blame Big Business for our economic problems. But Niall Ferguson claims they should direct their fury at the profligate spending of the baby boomers.
by Niall Ferguson
After years when young Americans yearned only to be occupied on Wall Street, suddenly they have taken to occupying it. It’s easy to scoff at this phenomenon. I know, because I have.
This is certainly not America’s answer to the Arab Spring—the Bobo Fall perhaps, unmistakably both bohemian and bourgeois. But it’s still worth taking seriously. What is it that makes evidently educated young people yearn to adopt leftist positions that are eerily reminiscent of the ones their parents adopted in 1968?
Check out the protesters’ website (http://occupywallst.org/); , which on Monday featured a speech by Slovenian critical theorist Slavoj Žižek. At first I thought this must be some kind of parody, but no, he really exists—red T-shirt, Krugman beard, and all: “The only sense in which we are communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and only for this we should fight.”
Yeah, man. Property is theft. Ne travaillez jamais. And all that.
There are three possible explanations for this retrogression to the language of ’68.
1.Increasing inequality exemplified by Wall Street is worth protesting against.
2.So is the fact that only a handful of bankers have been prosecuted for their part in the financial crisis.
3.Demonstrating is way cool.
Yet if I were a young American today, occupying Wall St. would not be my objective. Just reflect for a minute on the unbridled economic mayhem that would ensue if the protesters actually succeeded. The headline “Goldman Sachs Under Control of Hip Teenage Revolutionaries” would be the last straw for an already fragile economic recovery.
Now ask yourself what the financial crisis really means for today's 15- to 24-year-olds. Not only has it raised the probability that they will be unemployed after graduation. More seriously, it has massively increased the debt that they will have to service when they do get jobs.
Occupying Wall Street isn’t the answer to this generation’s problems. The answer is to occupy the Tea Party—and wrest it from the grumpy old men who currently run it.
Never in the history of intergenerational transfers has one generation left such a mountain of IOUs to another as the baby boomers are leaving to their grandchildren.
When you do the math, there is only one logical political home for today’s teens and 20-somethings ... and that is the Tea Party. For who else is promising to slash Medicare and Social Security and keep the tax burden at its historical average?
Let’s just remind ourselves of the report of the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds back in 2007, which projected a rise in the cost of these two programs from 7.3 percent of gross domestic product to 17.5 percent by 2030. The trustees warned that to achieve actuarial balance—in other words, solvency—for these two programs would require (for Social Security) an increase of 16 percent in payroll tax revenues or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent. For Medicare we are talking a 122 percent increase in payroll taxes or a 51 percent cut in spending.
As Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns pointed out in The Coming Generational Storm (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Generational-Storm-Americas-Economic/dp/0262612089); , by 2030 there will be twice as many retirees as there are today but only 18 percent more workers. Unless there is really radical reform of entitlement programs—especially Medicare—the next generation of American workers will be paying roughly double the taxes their parents and grandparents paid. This is what Kotlikoff and Burns mean by “fiscal child abuse.”
Of these harsh realities the occupiers of Wall Street seem blissfully unaware. Fixated on the idea that they somehow represent the 99 percent of people who scrape by on 80 percent of total income, they fail to see that the real distributional conflict of our time is not between percentiles, much less classes, but between generations. And no generation has a keener interest in slashing future spending on entitlements than today’s teens and 20-somethings.
So occupying Wall Street is not the answer to this generation’s problems. The answer is to occupy the Tea Party—and wrest it from the grumpy old men who currently run it.
Call it the Iced Tea Party.
Way cool.
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mrtropy
Trad climber
Nor Cal
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:52am PT
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:54am PT
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Taking Medicare and SS out of the mix, the problem with welfare spending is that it does not help to raise anyone out of poverty. In fact, it would seem to entrap them there.
Do you just believe every bit of drivel you hear on Fox News? What raises people out of poverty is jobs. What keeps people in poverty is moving jobs to China to increase corporate profits.
So it goes.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:15am PT
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Do you listen to Fox News on a regular basis? If not, how would YOU know what is or is not being advocated or discussed therein. I do listen to it regularly so I am fairly qualified to comment on the content. Where do you get your information regarding this organization? Are you parroting what you have heard or are you watching it yourself and making your own judgments?
I watch it at the gym. It's hilarious, really. And sort of sad and pathetic at the same time. Strange world, isn't it?
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:27am PT
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Helping the needy to survive while at the same time ensuring that they remain in poverty is not serving the needy very well.
Which is why capitalism sucks. Its lifeblood consists of keeping people alive to do the work, yet the goal is to keep them mired in poverty so that the capital they produce is concentrated into the hands of a few.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:33am PT
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Yeah socialism is much better. Have a huge class of peasants mired in poverty working so the party leaders live in luxury and make bad decisions.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:35am PT
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You go ahead and let fools define socialism for you if it makes you feel better.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:45am PT
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Gary it must be you that doesn't understand the textbook definition of socialism. The means of production are state or commonly owned. It's a recipe for disaster. Look at the first European people to come to America, they tried socialism and almost starved to death. They switched to a capitalist model with some sharing and production went way up. Pure socialism is against human nature.
The problem now is the haves aren't sharing quite enough with the have nots, and over time that is not sustainable because all the wealth will be held in very few hands. It might not be 'fair' to force the rich to share some of their wealth with the rest of society but it is pragmatic and necessary.
We complain a lot but America's model IS very good, we just need to tweak it a bit. The median household income with the first half of households earning less than the median household income and the other half earning more is #2 in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:52am PT
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:55am PT
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I was going to post about crackhead's chart on the last page LOL. A heritage foundation chart LMAO. Anyone posting something from them has their blinders firmly attached.
Notice how the chart breaks welfare spending into decades. It's the same trick they pulled on the deficit charts blaming Obama for the mess Bush created. Welfare spending skyrocketed under Bush and actually goes down under Obama but they present it in such a way (lumping together the decade after Bush's big increase) so it looks like Obama increased it. Typical B.S. The heritage foundation is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Here's what the actual data shows:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1930_2016USb_12s1li111mcn_40t_40_Welfare_Spending_Chart
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 12, 2011 - 12:00pm PT
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It's the job of corporations to make money (shareholder value) and there's nothing wrong with that. They help create the wealth that drives the economy. Part of the governments job is to make sure everyone CAN participate and have reasonable living/working conditions. I like the Tea Parties calls for small govt. but many of them actually mean they want to take away that function from the govt., so I'm glad we have the 99%ers to even them out.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 12, 2011 - 12:08pm PT
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TGT would rather have this than the Unicorn.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 12:39pm PT
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Gary it must be you that doesn't understand the textbook definition of socialism. The means of production are state or commonly owned.
The Fet, I'm not sure where you got your definition of socialism, but mine comes from Norman Thomas, Eugene Debs, and Michael Harrington, leaders of the old Socialist Party.
The means of production are not state owned. Important facets of the economy would be publicly owned, utilities, transportation, etc. Most of the economy would be privately held. Small business would thrive when not being crushed by monopolies, for example.
Take a look at Forbes Magazine's list of the best cities in the world in which to live. They are all located in the social democracies.
And no, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China don't count as socialist. Who knows what China is. The USSR was bureaucratic collectivism.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
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However, "I am entitled to your wealth because I draw air on the planet" is another issue altogether and the two get conflated when they are actually very different animals. I would say many of the "Wall Street protesters" have conflated these two issues.
I'd say you have conflated the issue. You look at the parasites and call them the "job creators", when it is they that have been created by jobs. Our work has made them rich. You can feel good about being robbed if you like, I don't.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:03pm PT
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) Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury. Today, more than a quarter of all credit card holders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 59 percent.
yes war,
and i am certain that the banks pointed a gun at credit card users heads to get them to spend beyond their means too....if people are stupid enough to get into that kind of mess is it really the banks fault? do you believe in any kind of personal accountability? i didnt think so.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:11pm PT
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The 1%ers, the rich elite of the World just don't get it.
They fail time and time again. "The Ebenezer Scrooges of the World," the rich powerful elite of the World do not get it. They fail to understand in this life what they are supposed to do with their wealth, and hoard away their wealth, and for what? But what they don't understand is that in the next life they lose for eternity. You can't take any of your Earthly wealth beyond the grave. None of it. What you do in this life does matter in the next, whether you think so or not. It doesn't matter if you are atheist, agnostic, or a true believer.
Why not give most of the wealth away? Take care of your immediate family and your relatives first (you have a Biblical obligation to do so), and give away the rest to make jobs, home the homeless, feed the poor, care for the sick etc. etc. So much good can be done, from the goodness of your heart.
We are not a poor country. We have plenty of wealth. The problem is that we are a nation very poor in compassion for our own. The rich powerful elite of the world hoard away their wealth. The Lazarus's of the World beg at their doorsteps, and they have no compassion as they step over others while they suffer, and they do not care.
It is pretty easy to understand.
It is about compassion. Good ethics. Good morality. "The Golden Rule."
GOD is on the side of the 99% ers . . .
The Fixx: "How Much is Enough?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcuGBQWswg
The Fixx: "No one has to cry"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74dlhTr9H50
The Bible on the Poor or, Why God is a liberal
http://www.zompist.com/meetthepoor.html
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:21pm PT
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 12, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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LEB,
You don't owe Gary anything more, but because you have a good heart and realize that all your wealth really is not of your own doing completely, and because without other people you have no wealth, you decide to give your employees bonuses and you "spread the wealth."
You also decide to set-up a worthy social non-profit cause or fund one out of your profits that you deem you can afford to do. You decide to give back to the community.
You also allow those who are hungry to eat from the leftover fruit from your property and you put them out for those who need it to take it freely.
That is the right thing to do.
The Bible on the Poor or, Why God is a liberal
http://www.zompist.com/meetthepoor.html
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 02:12pm PT
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OK the "big bucks" roll in after xyz years. So now, Gary, what do I own you beyond the wages which you and I agreed to and which you deemed was fair.
Nothing. You are entitled to the fruit of your hard work, just as everyone else is.
The capitalist is entitled to the full fruit of his labors, also. It's when he wants what the rest of us produce that causes trouble.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 12, 2011 - 02:28pm PT
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Man that is funny. Lois' utopia. Where the wonderful sweet landowner takes care of its workers. hahaha.. too funny.
What is owed to the worker? Nothing. Unless you agreed to a retirement program. Because lets face it, no matter how much you might wish it were otherwise, most people aren't smart enough, or disciplined enough, to set up a safe retirement for themselves.
What is owed to the country? A lot, since without the countries help, someone bigger and stronger would have just taken your farm. Or your neighbor could have decided he didn't like your trees and sprayed them with roundup, or polluted your water supply with the toxic waste from his manufacturing plant because he is bigger and wealthier then you. Or some mafia dude could just come in and tell you that you owe him a monthly protection fee of 80 percent of your profit.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 12, 2011 - 02:50pm PT
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So the government has to take care of almost everyone??????????? Comrade Moosie
If by taking care of you mean design a sustainable retirement program that covers everyone and is funded by everyone, then yes, I think that is wise.
I forgot to add some things to Loisland.
In taking care of her workers wife, she gives her a medicine that isn't tested because there is no FDA and it paralysis her workers wife. Then, because her worker is now exhausted because he has to care for his wife, their children and do his job, while out working on the trees he falls asleep and the tree chipper shreds his arm. So now Lois is responsible for a worker who can't work, and his wife.
Or.. she could just toss them out into the street.
Meanwhile.. Her trees are dying from lack of care, so she hires another worker, who turns out to be a drunk and he smashes her truck into her neighbors child, injuring the child and now she is being sued for that.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:02pm PT
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the instantly went straight after women and minorities to abuse with their lies and deceits
war,
are you saying women and minorities have inferior intellect and therefore do not understand the terms of their loan?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:05pm PT
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well, white women don't have inferior intellects
but it is well known that minorities do
Greed is good. Why not prey on the mentally defenseless?
I mean, how ya gonna make a real good living otherwise?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:25pm PT
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christ you sh#t f*#king scum dont miss a chance to hate on girls indians and niggers
fraud is defined by statue
why you christian all hot to protect darling criminals just cuz they prey upon those individuals you got your predatory eye on?
war,
clearly you have issues with minorities and women. i take it you were probably not breast fed and an illegal nanny must have raised you with a cold baba. maybe that also contributed to your lack of reading comprehension.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:25pm PT
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I find myself in the uncomfortable position of partially agreeing with war on credit card interest rates. The initial credit card rate is subject to contract, so there we still disagree. Where I think regulation comes in, however, are in the default rates.
I represented many lenders and borrowers when I actively practiced law, but on the consumer side, I exclusively represented borrowers, so I acknowledge a bias. Many of my clients saw their initial interest rates increased from around 18% to almost 40% around 2004-05. When I started practicing in 1979 (when the prime rate was around 18%), those who charged 40% didn't use the legal system to enforce their debts -- they just used cement shoes.
There is a well-settled doctrine in contract law that says that parties can contract for reasonable liquidated damages if the damages are difficult to ascertain with certainty beforehand, and the agreed result reasonably reflects what damages could be. If they do not, however, the "liquidated damages" are an illegal penalty (think of them as the commercial equivalent of a pound of flesh), and are unenforceable.
Courts in commercial settings seldom uphold default interest rates that exceed 5% added to the contract rate, though I have seen default rate additionas as high as 7% upheld in rare cases. That same doctrine would make the 20% bumps I've seen in consumer cases illegal penalties, but consumers can't afford to litigate that, particularly with arbitration clauses that would make it difficult for consumers to get their attorney's fees reimbursed.
For these reasons, I support limitations of consumer default rates. The commercial cases I dealt with usually related to seven-figure-plus loans, and both parties could afford to litigate illegal terms, so I see no need for commercial regulation, but a loan made for personal, family or household use, that involves an interest penalty that exceeds 5% should be presumptively illegal IMHO.
John
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:29pm PT
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john,
raising rates once one has a debt seems bogus to me. but if someone signs up for a lousy rate, then proceeds to spend more than they can pay, then that person is an idiot.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:33pm PT
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Agree, Hawkeye. I just don't think we should enforce terms against stupid individuals that courts would not enforce against stupid commercial borrowers.
John
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:34pm PT
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sounds reasonable except for one thing. some stupid borrowers should be held accountable or its people like you and i that foot the bill to pay for their ignorance.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:36pm PT
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raising rates once one has a debt seems bogus to me. but if someone signs up for a lousy rate, then proceeds to spend more than they can pay, then that person is an idiot.
I get notices ALL the time from credit card companies that they are changing the terms without my consent. What's up with that? It doesn't bother me because I pay my cards off monthly, but it seems they are changing the contract I signed up for.
A lot of people lose their jobs, pay for things with credit cards to survive, then miss a payment and their rate goes from 11-18% to 25-50%. That's BS and where the government needs to intervene and specify a maximum increase and maximum penalties.
But there are also a lot of people who buy things they can't afford on credit, can't pay for it, and declare bankruptcy and wipe that debt out and the rest of us pay, which is bogus as well.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:39pm PT
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then that person is an idiot.
Usually.. But There are times when people use cards to feed and house their families because some calamity has befallen them. They mistakenly think that they will be able to rise out of the calamity shortly, but then find that the calamity is lengthened, and then find themselves in a trap. It happens more then many people realize. Lots of those folks find a way out, but there are still plenty who don't.
Misakes? Idiots? sometimes it is in perspective. I have helped counsel multiple people out of debt who got trapped by a health problem in the family followed by a lost job due to a declining economy or just a lousy business plan. Its not all peaches and roses out there.
One of Lois' problems is that she perceives everything through her experience. Her experience is based on working in a field where demand for workers has not gone down in her entire work history, which has given her a strong bargaining position. But that is a rare industry and not everyone can work in it. What would happen if everyone decided to go into healthcare? There would then be a glut of workers and her wages would go down, through no fault of her own.
Does Jaybro's decision to become a teacher mean that he was an idiot when the economy went south and our nation decided we didn't really need teachers? I don't think so.
Life isn't as simple as "just work hard and make smart decisions". I wish it were, but there are many things complicating life beyond your own decisions.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:49pm PT
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I get notices ALL the time from credit card companies that they are changing the terms without my consent. What's up with that? It doesn't bother me because I pay my cards off monthly, but it seems they are changing the contract I signed up for.
A lot of people lose their jobs, pay for things with credit cards to survive, then miss a payment and their rate goes from 11-18% to 25-50%. That's BS and where the government needs to intervene and specify a maximum increase and maximum penalties.
But there are also a lot of people who buy things they can't afford on credit, can't pay for it, and declare bankruptcy and wipe that debt out and the rest of us pay, which is bogus as well.
i agree.
the fundamental issue today is the unemployment. what seemed like a good career 20 years ago is no longer. in order to survive people need to be more nimble, work at creating opportunities for themselves through education and experience. and it is going to get worse. in places like india there are a high number of technical people that will work for pennies as compared to us and even tech jobs will be outsourced. i have seen it on a project i am currently on.
what this means is that people who want to stay gainfully employed must develop other skills to navigate through through this minefield that is home to trashed lives, unemployed professional degreed people and others. you may even have to move around to a less desireable place.
at the end of the day there are things that people can do to afect the outcome. OWS is stupid. they ought to be OCH (occupying capitol hill).
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 03:54pm PT
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Dr. F,
life has changed for the indian as much as it has for many non-indians.
my ancestors came across america in wagon trains very early. i cannot ggo shoot an elk when i am hungry without getting thrown in jail or fined. that just sucks.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:10pm PT
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an investor has skin in the game,
a speculator doesnt
a speculator has to pay the same per share price as anyone else.
do you have the balls for that?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:17pm PT
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btw hawk,
shooting an animal served one purpose back then
serves another entirely today
an entirely different purpose
its sad to see
you sucking prick for
today
war,
i see that lack of breast feeding is really getting to you. do you want that included as a social program as well?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:22pm PT
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OWS is stupid. they ought to be OCH (occupying capitol hill).
It doesn't matter where they occupy, they are just trying to raise awareness of the undue influence very wealthy people have on government.
Unfortuneatly what shold be their primary message is being polluted by far lefties, arrests, and unrelated demands.
It's the same with the Tea Party. Their primary message should be to limit the spending of government which is a good message and we should have people being a watchdog for that. But then they cite examples of welfare which is a drop in the bucket compared to defence and other spending that should be reduced.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:22pm PT
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and yet, you still pull your skirt up over your face to avoid skin in the game
that aint balls sonny,
thats pussy
you should post a pic, seeing as your showing it off
war,
sorry but you are not my type. you ought to check out some social programs for folks like you. there are probably drugs that might help you out as well.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:25pm PT
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It doesn't matter where they occupy, they are just trying to raise awareness of the undue influence very wealthy people have on government.
i am with you here and believe that all lobbying should be outlawed. i also believe in limiting the amount of money spent on campaigns so as to minimize the resulting prostitution.
It's the same with the Tea Party. Their primary message should be to limit the spending of government which is a good message and we should have people being a watchdog for that. But then they cite examples of welfare which is a drop in the bucket compared to defence and other spending that should be reduced.
i agree with you here as well. tea partiers are misguided souls.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
Where are you bound?
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:28pm PT
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Did anyone check on Karodrinker?
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:31pm PT
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well for starters,
how about the banks pay restitution to everyone they have criminally forclosed on?
war,
I'm unaware of a single ciminal foreclosure proceeding by any California bank on California real estate. Not one. Perhaps you can identify one for me.
In addition, your distinction between an investor and a speculator makes no sense, and differs from the standard definition in economics, finance and Webster's, which defines a speculator as one who buys or sells land, stock, commodities, etc., usually in the face of higher than ordinary risk, hoping to take advantage of an expected rise or fall in price.
Speculators status has nothing to do with the amount of skin in the game; it has to do with an investment strategy founded on an expected price change to reflect what the spectulator believes to be the true conditions in the market for the commodity in which they speculate. Thus, if I think gold is priced too low, I buy gold (or pay for an option to buy gold at the current price). If the price rises I make money. If it stays the same, I lose any interest. If it falls, I lose.
Speculators perform the necessary function of adjusting market prices to market reality. If I expect prices to move, it means i perceive the current market price incorrectly reflects the reality of supply and demand. By speculating, I help move the price in what i think is the proper direction. If I'm right, I can reap a handsome reward. If I'm wrong, I receive financial punishment. On its face, there's nothing wrong -- and much right -- with speculation.
If we judge by how much skin is in the game, we should eliminate HUD, the FHA, Fannie, Freddie, etc and, essentially, eliminate very low downpayment loans. Most states, California included, do not allow a creditor to obtain a deficiency judgment on a mortgage or deed of trust securing the purchase money for a residence (See California Code of Civil Procedure Section 580b, as one example). Thus, most of the homebuyers in California who put very little down effectively have no skin in the game. Do you really mean that they're all speculators?
John
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:38pm PT
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John,
war has been talking about skin in the game ever since his mama neglected to breast feed him. some people just never get over it.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:46pm PT
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I find dicussion of the "Occupy" movement and the Tea Partiers rather interesting.
Despite the best attempts of the MSM to descredit them, the Tea Partiers came by the millions, assembled legally and peaceably, had specific demands, and successfully elected politicians committing to executing those demands.
In contrast, the Occupiers, despite the MSM's attempt to portray them as a significant movement, come by the hundreds, have no discernable demands, have often assembled illegally and caused great inconvenience for those unfortunate enough to be in the same place, and come accross as juvenile whiners envious of those with money.
I find the Democrats' attempts to identify with the Occupiers curious at best, and indicative of their lack of any clue about what to do -- and their sole hope being to get elected through jealousy and envy.
John
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 04:48pm PT
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while your at ot,
care to inform us who taught you to hate darkies and lust after their blood?
war,
you really do not understand the written word, do you? your interpretation and perspective on things is not reflective of reality. i am thinking that LEB might have a cure.
i never said anything about racism, ever. but you certainly indicated that you thought woman and minorities were not as smart as others. what is your beef with them? does that go back to time in your mom's womb? maybe she listened to too much heavy metal? my guess is that it all goes back to no breast feeding and an illegal nanny not worming your baba up, but i admit, i am not an expert in these matters. LEB?
are you related to AC? perehaps you were his twin seperated at birth as you both seem to be twisted in a unique and perverse sort of way.
i would support social programs for you but i doubt that breast feeding at your age is included....
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 05:06pm PT
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I take it from your answers, war, that you have no criminal foreclosure cases either, despite some very agressive DA's who would love to go after the banks.
John
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 05:09pm PT
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I take it from your answers, war, that you have no criminal foreclosure cases either, despite some very agressive DA's who would love to go after the banks.
John
John,
please dont confuse war and the OWS crowd with facts. facts get in the way with all that pent up anger and stuff...
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 12, 2011 - 05:10pm PT
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I find the Democrats' attempts to identify with the Occupiers curious at best, and indicative of their lack of any clue about what to do -- and their sole hope being to get elected through jealousy and envy.
Mercy John.. Don't let wars negative attitude fool you.
the tea partiers had big money behind it.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 05:10pm PT
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Such Typical partisan BS
Dr. F, we know you would never engage in typical partisan BS....
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 05:29pm PT
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Dr. F,
i voted for obama. figured he was better than the alternative. our current political party choices are dumb and dumber.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 12, 2011 - 05:41pm PT
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There is little difference between the Occupy Wall Street bunch, and the teabaggers, except that the latter have a two year head start, and major corporate backing. Each group in its own way believes that the system needs to be repaired, although the teabaggers' links to the business and Republican establishment make their legitimacy questionable.
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 05:45pm PT
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Despite the best attempts of the MSM to descredit them, the Tea Partiers came by the millions, assembled legally and peaceably, had specific demands, and successfully elected politicians committing to executing those demands.
When you refer to "MSM" exactly what does that mean? It's a term only used by the right, particulary Fox News, the largest (by viewership) news organization. So what makes media "mainstream?" And how did the "mainstream" media attempt to discredit them when the largest media organization was actually in full support?
Whenever I hear someone use the term "MSM" it's pretty clear to me they never gave much thought to what they even mean their own words. This particular term is used only by folks who parrot right wing talking points.
The Tea Party was nothing more than a political funding effort - not much different than the process that existed before this "movement" existed. Big corporations have been successfully electing politicians for a long time. The only thing different about the Tea Party is that there were a few demonstrations organized as sideshows (and there was nowhere near "millions" at any of them.)
The real distinction between the Tea Party and the OWS movement is that OWS is genuinely grassroots - there is no corporate money behind it, and no professional strategists and PR firms developing the message. So it's not surprising that OWS is more chaotic and likely less effective.
Ironically, the goals of the Tea Party and OWS have much in common, but it's unlikely that we will see any unification of the two groups. American politics is too polarized and too many people choose to argue for side rather then understand the substance of the actual issues.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 06:01pm PT
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Crimpie, an "illegal" foreclosure may be simply an invalid foreclosure. If there is some contractual infirmity, forelcousre under that contract is "illegal."
The issue posed by war was one of criminality. That's an entirely different matter. An unenforceable contract is an illegal contract, but it doesn't automatically give rise to criminal liability. As just one example, under section 2924c of the California Civil Code, a lender cannot advertise a trustee's sale under a deed of trust until three months have elapsed since the recording and service of a Notice of Default. If the lender tried to conduct the sale too early, the sale would be illegal, but the result isn't a crime; the lender simply has to go back and re-notice at the right time.
None of the cases cited involved criminal prosecution and, contrary to war's contention, any state attorney general would give his or her eye teeth to bring such a prosecution. In fact, many state's attorneys general have done so, because the foreclosure procedure in those states involves filing suit and filing affidavits in court. The "robo-signing" cases involve filing false affidavits that state that the purported signers read documents they never even saw. In California, there is no such requirement because almost every foreclosure -- and particularly on residences, does not involve a court action. Accordingly, I am unaware of criminal prosecution for any foreclosure law violations.
I know in war's world the rich rule everyone else, and the evil Bush administration can order state attorneys general around. In the one in which you and I live, it doesn't happen that way.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 06:02pm PT
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downright niggarly
Um, I hate to be picky, but the word is "niggardly." A misspelling here could lead to embarrassment or worse.
John
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 12, 2011 - 06:04pm PT
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Thanks John!
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 07:27pm PT
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Is Joe the Plumber one of the 53% ?
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Gene
climber
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Oct 12, 2011 - 07:31pm PT
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I have read parts of this thread and even posted a few times. Some have made thoughtful points and stated their views &/or grievances. Although I won’t guess the ratio, the screw you/no screw you content exceeds reasoned dialog by far. Bad stuff is all around us. This economy has made my one-person business dry up and blow away. Lots of hurt out here.
How can we as a community, country, even world ever find our way out of this mess if we focus primarily on blaming, belittling and bitching about those whose views we don’t share?
Is there any common ground upon which solutions can be built?
Serious question.
g
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 07:39pm PT
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Is Joe the Plumber one of the 53% ?
Yeah, prolly.
Gene, I'd say yes. There is common ground to be had. Which is why I identify more with Tea Partiers than OWS types.
I feel like the TPers were more honest and represented a kinder, yet just as frustrated glimpse in to everday America.
While the messages seem similar they do have juxtopposed positions in some areas.
TPers don't want mandates, don't blame bankers for problems (generally), and aren't socialists. They actually want lower taxing, personal responsibility, and less gov't intrusion. Not more.
To blame the banks for the bailouts is shortsighted without having equal disdain for Obama Stimulus and Fannie/Freddie and Acorn.
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Jorroh
climber
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Oct 12, 2011 - 07:57pm PT
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elezarian said
"Crimpie, an "illegal" foreclosure may be simply an invalid foreclosure. If there is some contractual infirmity, forelcousre under that contract is "illegal.""
exactly John when I "robbed" a bank last month it was really nothing more than an invalid withdrawal...I still don't see what all the fuss was about.
Its just as well that our legal system is such a paragon of objectivity, especially for those of us with a bit of money.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 12, 2011 - 07:59pm PT
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weschrist and jorroh, you guys crack me up.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 08:41pm PT
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Some of the foreclosures have occurred with incomplete or missing paperwork, but in almost every case the homeowner has failed to make several payments and is subject to foreclosure. The loans were sold so often that the paperwork is in the shuffle.
The missing/incomplete paperwork is a result of 2 factors:
1) Real paperwork is not conducive to the process of loan securitization, where docs have to be sent all over the place as securities are traded, and after a while nobody knows which security the papers belong to
2) Because of (1), Mortgage brokers used the MERS system (mortgage database) as the primary system of record, which is far more efficient and accurate. The problem is, now that the sh1t has hit the fan, the courts are interpreting the laws strictly so that the mortgage papers are the only legal system of record.
FT is correct though, NONE of this is about unwarranted foreclosures. Banks and Borrowers both made bad decisions- the banks are really the ones holding the bag now though with something on the order of a Trillion dollars worth of bad loans, probably worth $0.30 on the dollar on average. Most of this has still not been written down.
The Tech bubble did not lead to an extended recession/depression like we are experiencing now, primarily because the losses were absorbed by individual shareholders, not the banks. Banks are leveraged and they have a tight profit margin for home loans. A 70% loss on a loan destroys a lot of capital that could be loaned out to a small business.
Another factor that led to sloppiness is that the mortgage servicer is rarely the same institution that owns the loan, so incentives are distorted.
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Gene
climber
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Oct 12, 2011 - 08:47pm PT
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the banks are really the ones holding the bag now though with something on the order of a Trillion dollars worth of bad loans, probably worth $0.30 on the dollar on average. Most of this has still not been written down.
True dat!
Policies about loans on the books can be characterized as:
Pretend and extend.
Pray and delay.
A rolling loan gathers no loss.
There's more coming, Folks!!! $Trillion might be low given the amount of commercial RE loans due.
g
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 12, 2011 - 09:46pm PT
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Mt. 25:31-46.
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on His left. Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.' Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite you in, or naked, and clothe You? And when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' And the King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.' Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.' Then they themselves will also answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?' Then He will answer them, saying, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xcuGBQWswg
How Much Is Enough Lyrics
The Fixx
How much is enough?
Good enough, is not good enough
Don't complain that you've got it tough
With all you have, your life's a bore
Can't relax, you want so much more
Blind needs won't set you free
Can't you see that time is slipping away? But I got to say
How much is enough? When your soul is empty
How much is enough? In the land of plenty
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough, is enough
Gravity may bring you down
But harmony could spin you 'round
Information ariel says buy buy buy material
Give take all day long
Can't you see it's hopeless being strong
When you live it wrong?
How much is enough? When your soul is empty
How much is enough? In the land of plenty
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough? How much is enough?
Buy buy buy, buy buy buy
So give me your attention, I know it's getting late
While we were dreaming, something slipped away
We're drowning in possessions, playing tricks with our minds
Lost from one another, baby put your hand in mine
Time is slipping away, but it's not too late
How much is enough? When your soul is empty
How much is enough? In the land of plenty
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough?
How much is enough? How much is enough?
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing at all
How much is enough? How much is enough?
How much is enough? How much is enough?
How much is enough? How much is enough?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 12, 2011 - 09:54pm PT
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k-man
great link. All the disparate (desperate) financial trends and meaningful (to people's perception of fairness) data in one place.
fattrad: I think you should have a close look and ponder. I don't expect you to change your mind about much but it would help you see where people are coming from.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:08pm PT
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Hey wes, some of those signs you posted are meaningless. You want to compare those signs to OWS signs? Really? You wanna go there?
I can. And only one of yer signs can possibly be contrued as racist. One.
Can you find more?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:10pm PT
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:18pm PT
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Funny that Norton posts the same old sh#t. And it's pretty lame too.
The McClatchy link has been diproven, and for you to bring that up shows how desperate you idiots are. You actually fuxcking perpetuate a lie and portray it as gospel.
Got audio or video of this widely public protest with any evidence of your claims???
You people are despicable and need to be called out on this bullshit!!!!
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:21pm PT
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yeah!!!!
and don't forget "disingenuous"
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:23pm PT
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Dispute my claim with evidence, Norton.
You are a liar. There was video rolling and nobody uterred "niggar".
You perpetuate a common lie.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:47pm PT
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:47pm PT
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Edit: deleted because it sounded like a personal attack which is not what I intended
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:52pm PT
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HT, Breitbart gave out a $10,000 reward for video evidence of this happening. And there were many cameras roliing at the time. It was a big event.
No evidence other that his word. I don't buy it.
Dr.F, you aren't even worthy of a reply. You are sick and crazy.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:54pm PT
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HT. I know what ya meant. It's cool.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 10:56pm PT
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War is equally unworthy of sensible discourse. He hits the 'ignore' list.
Awfully hateful f*#ker too!.
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Captain...or Skully
climber
Where are you bound?
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:05pm PT
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Ya gotta kinda like the talkin' dog.
Don't cha?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:17pm PT
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Racism and sexism? You must be referring to Cain and Bachman.
War is a troll. Prolly an Obamabot.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Oct 12, 2011 - 11:40pm PT
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Yes indeed. The charts say it all. Thanks for that link to the charts.
It has to change. It can't go on like this. People are hurting and the rich powerful elite are awash in money and wealth, like never before.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 13, 2011 - 12:56am PT
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How's it feel to be the rich's bitch?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 13, 2011 - 04:51am PT
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Donald, Interesting that I didn't address my comment to you but you had to respond as if it was. I guess you know what you are.
On another note, finally the right has some fodder for some halfway decent comedy. Usually the right wing's attempt at comedy is utterly devoid of a sense of humor and laughs, but it's hard not to find amusing things about the 'flea baggers'. Of course the closeted 'Tea Baggers' have been and excellent source of material since their inception.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 01:46pm PT
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JE: "I'm unaware of a single ciminal foreclosure proceeding by any California bank on California real estate. Not one."
Lovegasoline: "You need to look deeper than that."
Does that mean that you can't find a counterexample to my contention?
I realize it's really unfair of those lenders to expect to be paid back, but really?
John
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 02:28pm PT
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war finally posted something legible, of course he didnt write it but thats ok....
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
i agree with this except for the blather on mafias.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.
this is ok too. but it must be stuck in a rainy day fund. politicians are already notorious for robbing other funds to pay for pet projects.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.
good idea
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.
another good idea
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.
if you do 1-4, then you really shouldnt need this one, so i disagree with that. but all in all a good list.
now, how do OWS accomplish this by OWS? WS will not/can not do these changes. Congress has that power.
the OWS are misguided. OCH - occupy capitol hill.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 02:50pm PT
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fattrad, hopefully they will pay their taxes or perhaps thats another reason to tool them....tax evasion.
frankly, they are misguided as hell. while i have no issue with the list from rolling stone, OWS wont accomplish anything. except of course tool practice for the cops.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 03:11pm PT
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war, there you go again. spouting off against women? we know you missed getting breast fed but there is help for you....
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 13, 2011 - 03:17pm PT
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 13, 2011 - 04:53pm PT
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It's funny to hear the righties putting down the movement and saying it's nothing and ineffective as they post about it over and over. LOL.
The list of demands above is pretty good, if they can stay focused they could do some good. But as I mentioned the Tea Party has potential to do good but can't stay on the topic they should so I expect the same thing of OWS.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 04:56pm PT
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i said it was inneffective. i voted for obama. i am neither right nor left but one of those forgotten centrists.
and the demand list is not bad but if you got demands you at least ought to go to those who can make the demands happen. do you think that WS can make it happen? nope. congress probably cant make it happen either but at least thats their job. its WS job to make money, not hand it out.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 13, 2011 - 04:59pm PT
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Conservatives worship veterans...
They just don't bother to be veterans.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 05:02pm PT
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Colin Powell. i would vote for him...but he's too decent to make it through a repug primary.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 13, 2011 - 05:07pm PT
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I wouldn't vote for Colin Powell unless he admitted and apologized for lying about WMD in Iraq. He misled the american public and lost my trust.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 13, 2011 - 05:11pm PT
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Funny, I have not seen a sign or any indication that anyone is "asking for money".
Have not seen anything to suggest the protestors want to "take away" someone's money.
What they clearly want is just voice their personal frustration with what they see as glaring inequities between the rich and the middle/lower classes.
They, like a LOT of Americans, see Wall Street and the big banks getting trillion dollar bailouts when they screw up (the 2008 housing derivative meltdown).
The above frustrates and angers them.
They are not asking for anyone to "give" them anything, nor are they asking to have the rich have any of their wealth taken away from them and given to the protestors.
Simply put, they see the economic playing field as being tilted to the rich.
They feel they personally did not do anything wrong and are the ones getting screwed by losing their jobs, etc, yet the rich continue to get disproportionally richer.
Very simple, free speech. Yet very sadly there are those that feel somehow threatened, afraid, imagining that somehow they might be required under some vague new law to write a check out to one of the protestors.
The ignorance behind the "slippery slope" contention: If you smoke a reefer today, you WILL become a heroin addict tomorrow.
So better diminish and mock the protestors today, because tomorrow ................
Childish fear, that is not what they are asking for.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 06:32pm PT
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After thirty years of his abysmal record, Rogers' constituents have had enough. This Friday, at 3pm, Oct. 14, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth will hold a peaceful demonstration at Rogers' Somerset office to ask a simple question: Doesn't Kentucky deserve better?
one of the great conundrums of republican politics. the poor people who keep on voting for the same crook....
perhaps rather than sitting in those folks should try some education to the constituents so they can vote him out...
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 13, 2011 - 06:38pm PT
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Obama is my shepherd; I shall not work.
He keepth jobs out of the hands of the people,
Which leadeth the country to class warfare and polarization.
He encourageth sloth; he leadeth the government to new heights in deficit spending.
Yea, though I walk in the shadow of Economic collapse,
I shall fear no depression: for Obama is with me.
His handouts and monetary indiscretion supplement my income.
He maintainest spending increases in the presence of insurmountable debt;
He punisheth businesses with excessive regulations;
And giveth the hard-earned fruits of labor to the unproductive.
Surely, handouts and stimulus payments shall follow all the days of his administration;
And I will stay unemployed forever.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 13, 2011 - 06:53pm PT
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A public union employee, a Tea Party guy, and a bank CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the Tea Partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy; he wants your cookie.”
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 07:38pm PT
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fattrad,
i think war likes you. next thing he will be talking about your nightstick...
i bet he would love to get tooled by you! be careful out there fattrad.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 07:54pm PT
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I wonder if all the Fet's, war's, Tkings, et al. can tell us what they want to see happen in Wall Street or gov't to institute a better way?
What are you solutions?
Are you aware that it's likely that George Soros is funding this?
Are you angry with Fast/Furious and Eric Holder?
Does Google and Warren Buffet's tax deficiencies anger you (hiding money)?
Do the Green Energy Stimulus scams piss you off?
Try to answer all the questions. Even if just a yes/no.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:01pm PT
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Tking had no response to the 1,000 plus jobs i posted in montana. yes it is terribly difficult these days but jobs are not handed out on the street corner.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:06pm PT
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war, this is about tkings buddies unemployed and i assumed they were in Montana.
there are jobs out there but it is tough, no doubt.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:07pm PT
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whats that got to do with 20 millions job applicants searching for the ability to feed their families?
Nothing. Maybe those people protesting joblessness should protest China.
Thanks for honestly offering answers to my questions. Not!
You're just a bitcher and a whiner. No Solutions. No ideas. Just whining.
EDIT: I believe Tkings is in the Geology field, no?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:19pm PT
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im just making sure ive been counted out of the support of a system wanting you to run a gauntlet simply to keep yourself fed
Yes. It's called earing a living. Do you think you simply deserve to be fed? And at the expense of people who are busting their asses in a 9/5 job?
funny you party favors for the kings of old stick your heads up now
I cannot even understand that. Is English your first language?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:23pm PT
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war thinks his hot air and vitriol should account for something...it does but then again my wife makes me flush after #2.
anyone else think that war is crowley's and norweigians offspring?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:25pm PT
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Not Norwegian's.
He makes more sense than that.
(and when he doesn't, it at least has entertainment value)
Maybe Crowley and F
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:41pm PT
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i do that alot,
bad with the english
You are either lying or you have a sub-secondary school education (which is cool), but I cannot even understand you.
You sound like an Iranian agent. Prolly Hezbollah. Or Quds. Maybe Chinese or N. Korean.
In any regard, you make yourself appear unintelligent and unintelligable.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:46pm PT
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war posted this a couple pages back:
Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone that "the [Occupy Wall Street] movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on." However, he says, "the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street."
Taibbi offers the protesters a "short but powerful" list of demands that he thinks they should get behind. And they make a lot of sense! Here they are:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/my-advice-to-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-20111012
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:48pm PT
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What are you solutions?
Are you aware that it's likely that George Soros is funding this?
Are you angry with Fast/Furious and Eric Holder?
Does Google and Warren Buffet's tax deficiencies anger you (hiding money)?
Do the Green Energy Stimulus scams piss you off?
Well I can only talk of my perspective which is probably much more centrist than others supporting OWS. But it seems to you there is only conservative or liberal which is a shame, because they both are typically off base when it comes to pragmatic solutions.
I don't care if Soros is funding it. I don't waste any of my time reading about what bad old George is up to, you shouldn't either. So what if he is, I can think of much worse ways for a billionaire to spend him money than trying to reduce the inequality of wealth/income in America. Do you care that The Kock Bros fund the "grassroots" Tea Party?
Haven't read about Fast Furious, all I can say is it's very lame to name a govt. program after a cookie cutter Hollywood movie!
Any scams piss me off. But they piss me off in relation to how much it costs the US taxpayer. Any green energy scams pale in comparison to the scams that happened during the $Trillion Iraq war e.g. Dick Cheney's company ripping us off. I think we should be investing in green energy not only for the environment but for the competitiveness of America, so it does piss me off extra when a scam hurts this effort.
Don't know about Google/Buffet's tax. But I think it's cool for Buffet to call for higher taxes on the wealthy when he knows it will hit him personally, but it will be better for the country. I just watched a documentary on George Washington, at the end of the Revolutionary War he said he would step down as commander in chief effectively giving up king like power. King George of England said if he did that he would be the greatest man in the world. And sure enough he did. Some people have enough honor that they will give up power/money for themselves for the betterment of their country or the world. I don't know if anyone will ever be able to live up to such an extreme example as Washington set but I don't think the "greed is good" crowd would even do anything like that!
As Norton reposted the OWS/Rolling Stone demands are a decent start for solutions, I like the results they want but I'm not in agreement with the methods they propose to get there. This isn't about taking money from hard working 9-5ers and giving it to lazy welfare bums. It's about how the 1% and even more so the 0.1% are taking such a huge share of the wealth of this country that it is leading to huge problems in the economy. Historically this happened before the great depression. And compared to the rest of the world we are way off. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the middle class become poor is going to screw almost all of us in the long run.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:49pm PT
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What does Norton think about re-instating Glass-Steigal and the "uptick rule"???
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 13, 2011 - 08:57pm PT
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but FACT: Fux News Corp DID fund the Tea Baggers,
Prove it.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:03pm PT
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Well I can only talk of my perspective which is probably much more centrist than others supporting OWS. But it seems to you there is only conservative or liberal which is a shame, because they both are typically off base when it comes to pragmatic solutions.
Well, I'm tired of "independents" of trying to have sh#t both ways. We have a financial crisis at hand. Pick a f*#king side! Either you want to tax people more to maintain Keynsian crap, or you say let people keep more money legally.
I don't care if Soros is funding it. I don't waste any of my time reading about what bad old George is up to, you shouldn't either. So what if he is, I can think of much worse ways for a billionaire to spend him money than trying to reduce the inequality of wealth/income in America. Do you care that The Kock Bros fund the "grassroots" Tea Party?
You're wrong. So the Koch bros had ill-will but Soros doesn't on an opposed position? Only the right, or TPers are funded by big-money? Let's just disregard the Soros connection? Your bias shows despite your claims of perceived 'independant superiority'. You aint!
Haven't read about Fast Furious, all I can say is it's very lame to name a govt. program after a cookie cutter Hollywood movie!
Any scams piss me off. But they piss me off in relation to how much it costs the US taxpayer. Any green energy scams pale in comparison to the scams that happened during the $Trillion Iraq war e.g. Dick Cheney's company ripping us off. I think we should be investing in green energy not only for the environment but for the competitiveness of America, so it does piss me off extra when a scam hurts this effort.
Wrong again. If the Head US LEO agent can perpetuate this kind of program, what can't they do? This might be an impeachable offense.
Don't know about Google/Buffet's tax. But I think it's cool for Buffet to call for higher taxes on the wealthy when he knows it will hit him personally, but it will be better for the country. I just watched a documentary on George Washington, at the end of the Revolutionary War he said he would step down as commander in chief effectively giving up king like power. King George of England said if he did that he would be the greatest man in the world. And sure enough he did. Some people have enough honor that they will give up power/money for themselves for the betterment of their country or the world. I don't know if anyone will ever be able to live up to such an extreme example as Washington set but I don't think the "greed is good" crowd would even do anything like that!
Google it. Or wait, Google may be screening those searches. Use a different search engine for details of Google and Buffet hiding cash and not paying 'their fair share'.
Hypocrites?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:09pm PT
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png
This is what's lame about the Tea Party, instead of talking about cutting defense, SS, or medicare, the huge blocks, they complain about welfare and other small portions of small blocks. If we are serious about cutting spending we have to look at the whole pie. Welfare fraud pissed me off too but I know we could eliminate all welfare and still have a huge problem. I also would think 'fiscal conservatives' first goal would be to balance the budget (that's how I run MY finances) but they just talk about cutting spending AND taxes. There's not way we should be cutting taxes until we can balance the budget. That's like if I said I don't feel like working so much I'll cut back my hours and pay without lowering my expenses, just dumb and unrealistic.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:15pm PT
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I also would think 'fiscal conservatives' first goal would be to balance the budget (that's how I run MY finances) but they just talk about cutting spending AND taxes. There's not way we should be cutting taxes until we can balance the budget. That's like if I said I don't feel like working so much I'll cut back my hours and pay without lowering my expenses, just dumb and unrealistic.
We've tried. You know who holds it up?
Keeping taxes static and lowering spending was the name of the game. Agree?
Wes, hold on for a reply....
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:16pm PT
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I'll answer your stupid questions, even though you refuse to answer other, more applicable questions.
Ask me a question.
Likely? Based on what? Not just likely... but FACT: Fux News Corp DID fund the Tea Baggers, does that bother you? If George Soros was funding OWS, don't you think he would at least spring for some toilets?
Great way to answer a question, though satire. It appears AdBusters took money to promote people.
Less than water boarding, domestic wire tapping, invading a sovereign nation using fabricated intelligence, and the 3 decade old ineffective drug war that is responsible for the Mexican cartels in the first place.
Obama is better? I agree with enhanced interrogations. Do you like Drone zaps? Should we invade Pakistan to 'acquire' people instead of just killing shitcocks?
Less than this? Defense spending is what keeps you and your brethren safe from outside invaders.
Less than a $640 toilet seat for the military.
Yeah, that's super-f*#ked up. I can explain how to fix that.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:18pm PT
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No Bluey we could cut spending and leave tax revenues where they are. I'm not saying that's what we should do but we could. I think we need to cut spending AND raise taxes and balance the budget.
You bias is showing in how you read into my comments. I don't think it's wrong for Soros or the Koch's to fund what the believe in. I do think it's more honorable to fund things that will cost you personally than keep more money in your own pocket.
If google/buffett did anything illegal to hide wealth than yes that's wrong. If they were justing taking advantage of the same loopholes that everyone uses that's ok.
Sorry folks gotta go.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:26pm PT
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You bias is showing in how you read into my comments. I don't think it's wrong for Soros or the Koch's to fund what the believe in. I do think it's more honorable to fund things that will cost you personally than keep more money in your own pocket.
If google/buffett did anything illegal to hide wealth than yes that's wrong. If they were justing taking advantage of the same loopholes that everyone uses that's ok.
Valid point....
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:38pm PT
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Ok Blue, I am asking YOU to show proof that Soros funding the protestors.
You state it as if it is a fact.
Therefore, given your powerful knack for credible source fact verifying BEFORE you speak,
show your sources?
I won't ask you for three credible sources, how about JUST ONE CREDIBLE SOURCE.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 13, 2011 - 09:57pm PT
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The Fet writes:
"But I think it's cool for Buffet to call for higher taxes on the wealthy when he knows it will hit him personally, but it will be better for the country."
Maybe it would be cool, if that's indeed what Buffet was doing.
But he's not calling for tax increases that would hit him personally.
Buffet's calling for higher income taxes.
Buffet makes most of his money on capital gains. Remember? That's how he pays a lower rate than his secretary.
Higher income taxes wouldn't hit Buffet - and he knows it - but it would have the effect of making it tougher on those who aspire to be in Buffet's position.
What Buffet's trying to do is pull up the ladder, not help out his secretary.
Don't let Buffet dupe you.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 13, 2011 - 10:01pm PT
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If income tax rates and capital gains tax rates both go up, he'll still be paying a higher rate than his secretary.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 13, 2011 - 10:38pm PT
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Ok Blue, I am asking YOU to show proof that Soros funding the protestors.
You state it as if it is a fact.
Therefore, given your powerful knack for credible source fact verifying BEFORE you speak,
show your sources?
I won't ask you for three credible sources, how about JUST ONE CREDIBLE SOURCE.
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Oct 14, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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If Fox funded the Tea baggers, who is funding the sleeping bagger in the park?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:13am PT
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blurring, who paid for the public facilities at the Tea Bagger's gatherings? With that many people, all full of sh#t, clearly they had to have facilities... port-a-potties or something?
I have no beta on that. But at least they found someone to pay for shitters unlike the unwashed masses currently assembled in the streets. They apparently have no regard for spending money for stuff like that.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:42am PT
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Donald..That's one of the Koch brothers giving another payment to the New york police to silence the flea baggers...dude
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 12:05pm PT
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I like that the political opponents to the Occupy Wall Street protest are dialoging about hygiene, real or imagined.
The irony is not lost on me contemplating a climbing forum wherein most of the members have voluntarily invested large tracks of time for living in the outdoors with the attendant raw conditions that accompany it, such as missing their manicure, forgoing the bubble bath, skipping the shave, nixing the trip to the dry cleaners to press their clothes, while returning nightly to be entombed in the same unwashed bag that hasn't been laundered for months, if not years, on end.
When climbers start turning on protesters with invented criticisms of hygiene, you can be sure the time has come for grasping at straws. Gossamer thin, microscopically irrelevant, desperate straws.
When you are trying to locate the 'Real' and when in so doing you have occasion to look deep inside of yourself and recognize, clearly, that you are completely and irretrievably full of sh|t, so full of sh|t that you stumble upon yourself inverting values unconsciously with no real moral compass, no center to speak of ... you then need to recognize that you are not just disingenuous, not just unenlightened; you're not just another empty facile urgent disingenuous broken human being like the politicians that you so detest, but that you truly are a lost and confused soul. When you finally come face to face with that, it's time to start rebuilding your character and try to work your back to where you once belonged.
Truth is a bit much for some to swallow.
Dirty little boy.
Dirty little girl.
Bad boy.
Bad girl.
No decency.
No truth.
No clarity.
Dirty unintelligent worthless climber.
Get a haircut son.
Hot damn!!!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:23pm PT
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Wes, your chart shows that the incomes of all classes rose. Would you prefer that those of all classes fall, if those of the top 1% fall more than average?
John
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:31pm PT
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When you are trying to locate the 'Real' and when in so doing you have occasion to look deep inside of yourself and recognize, clearly, that you are completely and irretrievably full of sh|t, so full of sh|t that you stumble upon yourself inverting values unconsciously with no real moral compass, no center to speak of ... you then need to recognize that you are not just disingenuous, not just unenlightened; you're not just another empty facile urgent disingenuous broken human being like the politicians that you so detest, but that you truly are a lost and confused soul. When you finally come face to face with that, it's time to start rebuilding your character and try to work your back to where you once belonged.
Hot damn 2. But I'd venture a big part of the problem is their moral compasses are external. They believe what they have been told is right and wrong instead of thinking it through themselves, and allow it to reinforce their self centeredness and empower their lack of empathy.
Dr F. you asked me a few pages back about siding with the Liberals. I'm a radical centrist which means I don't just take the center to sit on the fence, but I choose my positions based on what I think is moral, fair, and pragmatic. In today's current climate I end up siding with the left more often than the right, but I do side with the right occasionally. 20 years ago when the Republicans were more centrist I agreed with them more. But now the somewhat far right is calling the shots the federal republicans are way too far right for me.
Today I see it breaking down as maybe:
Under 2% far left (people who actually want real socialism)
10-15% Left (universal healthcare, free higher education, I'd venture you are in here)
25-30% Left of Center (Average Dems, a lot of "left" posters on the taco, A BIG ISSUE I HAVE IS A LOT OF PEOPLE ANYWHERE RIGHT OF CENTER THINKS THIS GROUP AND THE LEFT ABOVE IS FAR LEFT, SO THEY CAN DISCOUNT WHAT THEY SAY)
20% Independent centrists
10-15% Right of Center
25-30% Right
Under 2% Far Right (Blatant racists, Fascists, Want a Religious State like Iran).
So I'd guess there are twice as many people on the Right as on the Left, but twice as many Left of Center as Right of Center. So the Right is calling the shots for their sides, while the Left of Center is calling the shots for their side. So the whole right is too far right. But I believe the FAR left and right are much smaller and more insignificant than their opposition makes them out to be.
So in summary I'd say a lot of the taco poli-posters are Right, but they view anyone who isn't right (even the right of center and centrists) as far left. Because they don't have the courage or honesty to see reality.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:32pm PT
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Would you prefer that those of all classes fall, if those of the top 1% fall more than average?
Having a bad morning John?
Come on man.. what kind of question is that. Don't get trapped in the negativity. I know it is pervasive at times, and it certainly gets to me also, but I hope that you can see past it.
It seems to me that there is a lot of frustration in the world right now, expressed by both sides. Neither side seems to be doing that great of a job of expressing it, but it certainly needs to be expressed. From frustration about how dominating the government has become, to frustration about how out of balance income has become, this world is getting more and more difficult to live in.
I don't know what the answer is, because we can't even define the problem. We need government, yet we hate government. We need businesses, yet we hate the unbalanced out of control, too big to fail aspect of todays corporatism.
So what gives? To me the answer involves a return to spirituality, but how many people will buy that. Not many. And that is from both sides of the equation.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:34pm PT
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In answer to Lois..
I like that the political opponents to the Occupy Wall Street protest are dialoging about hygiene, real or imagined.
The irony is not lost on me contemplating a climbing forum wherein most of the members have voluntarily invested large tracks of time for living in the outdoors with the attendant raw conditions that accompany it, such as missing their manicure, forgoing the bubble bath, skipping the shave, nixing the trip to the dry cleaners to press their clothes, while returning nightly to be entombed in the same unwashed bag that hasn't been laundered for months, if not years, on end.
When climbers start turning on protesters with invented criticisms of hygiene, you can be sure the time has come for grasping at straws. Gossamer thin, microscopically irrelevant, desperate straws.
When you are trying to locate the 'Real' and when in so doing you have occasion to look deep inside of yourself and recognize, clearly, that you are completely and irretrievably full of sh|t, so full of sh|t that you stumble upon yourself inverting values unconsciously with no real moral compass, no center to speak of ... you then need to recognize that you are not just disingenuous, not just unenlightened; you're not just another empty facile urgent disingenuous broken human being like the politicians that you so detest, but that you truly are a lost and confused soul. When you finally come face to face with that, it's time to start rebuilding your character and try to work your back to where you once belonged.
Truth is a bit much for some to swallow.
Dirty little boy.
Dirty little girl.
Bad boy.
Bad girl.
No decency.
No truth.
No clarity.
Dirty unintelligent worthless climber.
Get a haircut son.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
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Three weeks without a bath
hahaha.. as though they couldn't figure out how to get clean.. too funny.
, smoking dope and shooting heroin.
mercy..
Maybe their parents who they leech upon have used these weeks as a good opportunity to air out their rooms.
What an out of touch pathetic faux news driven statement.
...
Edit: Perhaps you were trolling. If so.. touche', though the trolls are getting old. If not.. damn woman.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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We have been under a full moon for the past 20 years or so.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 14, 2011 - 01:55pm PT
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When climbers start turning on protesters with invented criticisms of hygiene, you can be sure the time has come for grasping at straws. Gossamer thin, microscopically irrelevant, desperate straws.
HAHA!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 02:08pm PT
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I don't know what the answer is, because we can't even define the problem. We need government, yet we hate government. We need businesses, yet we hate the unbalanced out of control, too big to fail aspect of todays corporatism.
So what gives? To me the answer involves a return to spirituality, but how many people will buy that. Not many. And that is from both sides of the equation.
John, I was just looking at a graph that showed that all income levels rose and fell at similar times, but in the rise, the top income levels rose faster, and in the fall, the top income levels fell faster. A logical conclusion of that graph is that when top incomes grow, so do the bottom ones. When top incomes fall, so do the bottom ones.
This runs counter to the zero-sum school that seems to motivate the anti-rich, anti-business crowd. It also explains why their rhetoric is to incite envy of that top 1%. I find envy not only unproductive, but immoral. I find it particularly immoral to wish the top 1% ill if doing so reduces the incomes of everyone else, as the chart suggests it does.
I agree that we face a moral failure, particularly when we substitute materialism for concern for our neighbors, but covetousness is also a part of that moral failure. When we covet what others have, we start to justify force and worse to get it.
If that constitutes having a bad day, so be it. I'll admit that my Fridays begin with an alpine start without alpine adventure (I have a meeting every Friday from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.), but I think my post reflected mere analysis of the chart presented.
John
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 02:13pm PT
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From the Congressional Budget Office: an explanation for our unrest:
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 14, 2011 - 02:26pm PT
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The difference is that climbers CAN'T wash up when they are "on the road" so to speak
Sure climbers can wash up. There's creeks and lakes.
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 02:39pm PT
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This runs counter to the zero-sum school that seems to motivate the anti-rich, anti-business crowd.
I agree that Wes's chart demonstrates that everyone is better off today than they were in 1979 (assuming his caption is correct and these are real, i.e. inflation-adjusted, numbers.)
And IMO, an economy where everyone's wealth and income grows over the long term is an economy that is working. We really shouldn't care if one group sees more income growth than others, provided everyone is doing better and everyone gets opportunity to move upward.
We also should not forget that the the top "1%" is not a fixed class. It's worth noting that the man at the very top of that 1%, Bill Gates, was middle class in 1979. Many of the wealthiest people in America today earned their wealth during their lifetime. This upward-mobility is a sign of an economy that, in general, works well for everyone.
It also explains why their rhetoric is to incite envy of that top 1%. I find envy not only unproductive, but immoral. I find it particularly immoral to wish the top 1% ill if doing so reduces the incomes of everyone else, as the chart suggests it does.
The chart doesn't suggest that anyone is "wishing ill" toward anyone else. It may show that some people are using a standard for "fairness" that is unproductive. I agree that focusing on the large growth of the top bar while ignoring that the others have grown as well is an incomplete and flawed interpretation.
Perhaps it would be ideal if growth across all strata of society were consistent, but it would be folly to try to develop policy that would attempt to produce such a result without the risk of screwing up the economy for everyone. I personally don't care if the rich get richer, provided that the the poor don't get poorer.
Although the trend since 1979 looks encouraging, the trend in the past few years probably is not so rosy. Poverty has increased in recent years, but growth at the top is still trending upwards.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/more-americans-chinese-t-put-food-table-132752601.html
So the chart that starts at 1979 is useful, but the problem today is what we would likely see on a similar chart that starts in 2006 or so: continued accumulation of wealth at the top while the bottom is falling off into unemployment and poverty. This condition is unacceptable in America.
While some may find it immoral that some people wish rich people were less rich, I find it immoral that children are going hungry in the wealthiest society on earth.
Which of these immoralities should receive more attention in our public policy?
Dave
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 02:44pm PT
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I will have you know, Mr. John Moosie, that I made that comment up myself. I is educated nuff to think on my own, sometimes.
I'm certain that I knew that Lois. I didn't say you copied the statement. I meant that the thought is typical of right wing rhetoric, especially that which comes out of faux news, and I thought that you were above that. But if those are your real feelings, then I feel sorry for you, as that would mean you didn't really understand what is going on and I don't have a clue as to how to help you understand.
..
John
but covetousness is also a part of that moral failure.
Of course, though I think that it is a small part of what is going on today. Instead I think that the main driving force of this groups frustration has more to do with the growing gap between the wealthy and everyone else, and how much of our government is controlled by the elite, who doesn't really care if the economy goes south because they stand to make massive fortunes during downturns, and thus they work against what is better for our society.
This isn't a left or right thing. Both sides have their elite.
As for the tea partiers versus the wall street protesters, I think both sides have legitimate beefs, and that our media has generated much of the hatred by focusing on the negative aspects, and not on the real frustrations. Though I can't for the life of me understand why the tea partiers would accept and cheer someone like Glenn Beck, who I feel is a distraction from the real concerns.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 02:50pm PT
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So what if every group has experienced growth, when so many are disenfranchised and left out in the cold.
A pox on the heartless who wouldn't extend unemployment benefits. A pox on our politicians who bicker and moan and drive our economy further south. A pox on our media who focus on the failures of frustrated people, rather then on the real social concerns, and a pox on those on this site who play a party to that.
May God's retribution be upon you soon.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 03:14pm PT
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As for the tea partiers versus the wall street protesters, I think both sides have legitimate beefs, and that our media has generated much of the hatred by focusing on the negative aspects, and not on the real frustrations. Though I can't for the life of me understand why the tea partiers would accept and cheer someone like Glenn Beck, who I feel is a distraction from the real concerns.
Agree, John. I have two daughters in their middle twenties, the younger of them still in grad school. If I were their age, I wouldn't be a happy camper looking at employment opportunities. As a Baby Boomer, I'm not too pleased looking at retirement prospects either.
My concern is that both the Occupy and the Tea Party movements have a certain scapegoatism (if that's a word) about them that implies that if we just get "them" (admittedly different "thems" for each group) out of the way, we'll all be fine. That may make for good politics, but it's bad public policy and bad economics. Dialog such as you, and many others here, provide is a much better way toward reaching our best result. I appreciate your willingness to engage in it.
John
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 14, 2011 - 03:27pm PT
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"The first thing we do, is kill all the lawyers".
William Shakespeare
The Occupy Wall Street and the teabaggers - at least, to the extent that the latter aren't just corporate sock puppets - are both rather nebulous, but both contain significant anti-establishment elements.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 14, 2011 - 03:34pm PT
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I think that there is a strong possibility that the guy in the video above faked being run over.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 07:02pm PT
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I think that there is a strong possibility that the guy in the video above faked being run over.
Of course he is. He's also a National Lawyers Guild lawyer. No surprise.
Also, Peter's chart does not surprise me. Notice all the up and downs follow stock market market trends. The more money people have invested in markets, the more they will gain overall.
Notice the flatline of the bottom-most. Not investing their money.
And remember the chart is PRE taxes.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 14, 2011 - 07:10pm PT
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Like Nixon with the anti-war movement sure Fatty and his big brothers already have plans for Muslim Mexican drug Cartel masks to hand out to various paid mercs to wear when they start throwing bricks and start throwing the cocktails. Let’s see old Blackwater excuse me XE and company. In fact they would do it for free.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 07:15pm PT
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I'll reiterate;
I wonder if all the Fet's, war's, Tkings, et al. can tell us what they want to see happen in Wall Street or gov't to institute a better way?
What are you solutions?
Are you aware that it's likely that George Soros is funding this?
Are you angry with Fast/Furious and Eric Holder?
Does Google and Warren Buffet's tax deficiencies anger you (hiding money)?
Do the Green Energy Stimulus scams piss you off?
Try to answer all the questions. Even if just a yes/no.
Thanks Fet and Healyje for your thoughtful replies.
I'll also reitereate this;
Also, Peter's (and Wes') chart does not surprise me. Notice all the up and downs follow stock market market trends. The more money people have invested in markets, the more they will gain overall.
Notice the flatline of the bottom-most. Not investing their money.
And remember the chart is PRE taxes.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 14, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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Yes, if only the poverty stricken would keep their stock brokers on speed dial, all will be well.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 14, 2011 - 07:41pm PT
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Poverty stricken? Like someone else or the 'system' struck them with poverty?
No. They made foolish decisions with no foresight for their future well-being. This is largely a function of parenting too. Instilling into a child a sense of how to shape their future.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 14, 2011 - 10:50pm PT
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Meet the Flea party.
But apparently liberals couldn't even convince themselves that tea partiers were an extremist group unworthy of emulation.
At least they're embarrassed about what the OWS protesters really are: wingless, bloodsucking and parasitic. This is the flea party, not the tea party.
Contrary to all the blather you always hear about how lawless street protests and civil disobedience are part of the American tradition -- "what our troops are fighting for!" -- they are not. We are an orderly people with democratic channels at our disposal to change our government.
The very reason we have a constitutional republic is because of a mob uprising. Soon after the American Revolution, Shays' Rebellion so terrified and angered Americans that they demanded a federal government capable of crushing such mobs.
For nearly 200 years, Americans understood that they lived in a country capable of producing bad politicians and bad policies, but that was subject to change through peaceful, democratic means. There was no need to riot or storm buildings because we didn't have a king. We had a representative government.
Even when injustice existed, there were constitutional mechanisms to right wrongs.
For nearly a century after the Civil War, congressional Republicans kept introducing bills that implemented the civil rights amendments -- only to be blocked by segregationist Democrats. But then, attorney Thurgood Marshall came along and began winning cases before the Supreme Court, redeeming black Americans' constitutional rights through the judiciary.
As long as a Republican sat in the White House, those victories were enforced. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Ark., to walk black children to school in defiance of the segregationist, Democratic governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus -- Bill Clinton's friend.
This is what our Constitution was designed for: to use the force of the federal government to uphold the law when the states couldn't (Shays' Rebellion) or wouldn't (segregationist Democrats).
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-10-12.html
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 14, 2011 - 11:01pm PT
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wingless, bloodsucking and parasitic
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 15, 2011 - 12:41am PT
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Warbler
Might make difference: He who is in power [POWER THAT BE]controls or WHO takes control the POWER[Rep]has the guns but the one thing that the left has that the republicans do not have is the unions [truckers] which has control of the food.
Water is another issue. Food or wealth that will determine who wins.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:05am PT
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The unions distribute the food they do not own it. The people that pick our food is not you that is why we have illegal immigration that we try to hide and seek.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:22am PT
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Tomorrow I will be marching in Occupy Reno. I will be for the 28th amendment.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:41am PT
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I don't have the time to read through the entire thread but.....
The one thing that just lept off the page at me was the fact that the Occupy Wall Street, Occupy SF, LA, and others throughout THE WORLD...
Have all happened without any commercials making the big announcement that a big thing is happening....
FACT: The flat-lined tea party would be nothing if it wasn't paid for by a couple of billionaires.
FACT: Already there are way more people in NY than there have been at any tea party rally.
You folks on the right should just sit this one out....
Occupiers are coming to stay in your town soon enough
reitereate?
re (again) iter + irare (repeat)
from re- "again" + iterare "to repeat," from iterum "again."
Blues spell-check is not working, or he's drinking again?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:12am PT
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So skipt, etc: Assuming that Obama is re-elected in 2012, would you agree that he then would have the confidence of the American people to take the needed actions? That is, the actions that have been thwarted by Republican obstructionists for the last two years and more? To reform health care, the economy and its regulation, and other things? Would you particularly agree that he has that mandate if the Democrats also have a majority in one or both houses of congress?
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:17am PT
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Skip you are on the wrong side of history . like the british , the confederates, the flat earthers, alabama, hitler, shrub, mccarthy and endless others.
Dont worry bud, your psyche has the vast untapped resources required to protect your ego from confronting its severe inadequacies.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:37am PT
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The bailouts might have been a mistake, but they did not cause the problem.
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Archie Richardson
Trad climber
Grand Junction, CO
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Oct 15, 2011 - 08:40am PT
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In an ideal capitalist system, people would be paid for their work according to the benefit it brings to society. Pay becomes an incentive to perform useful work. In practice this does not happen, but when things become too distorted, society loses direction.
The Fed seemingly has the authority to create money at will. Our present system allocates compensation according to proximity to this source of money creation. On its way to the economy, large streams of this money are diverted in profits and bonuses to individuals who may contribute very little to society.
The banking system is important to our economy, and bankers should be well paid. However, at present it seems the very purpose of the system and all our daily efforts is to keep Wall Street happy and well compensated.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:21am PT
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So bluering, skip, LEB et al,
Does it concern you that the share of all income for the top 1% and even more so the top 0.1% has risen so much over the last decade, while most people's inflation adjusted income has gone down? Does it concern you if this trend continues?
Does it concern you that more and more middle class families must have both parents working to live the American dream?
Does it concern you that more and more people are falling into poverty?
Don't be lame and answer by attacking the left or Obama, that just shows lack of impartiality and/or fear.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 15, 2011 - 12:56pm PT
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Lois you are so wrapped up in your own limited world view it's painful.
Just couldn't resist blaming the left/Dems huh?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:04pm PT
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Does it concern you that the share of all income for the top 1% and even more so the top 0.1% has risen so much over the last decade, while most people's inflation adjusted income has gone down? Does it concern you if this trend continues?
No. Most more wealthy people invest their money, so it's no surprise that their wealth grows exponentially, even in a down market. They are more savvy investors for the most part.
Does it concern you that more and more middle class families must have both parents working to live the American dream?
Not really. This is a bizarre premise. It also has a lot to do with where you choose to live.
Does it concern you that more and more people are falling into poverty?
No, not a lot. Define 'poverty' first.
I was raised to understand that whatever lifestyle I choose to live is going to require that I carefully asses how I'm going to achieve it. I'm not rich because I chose a regular, modest income. I don't want to be rich. I chose a career path that appeared to be in large demand, only required 40hrs/week, leaving me the opportunity to live an enjoyable, moderate, middle income life.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:33pm PT
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So bookworm. Where are all those jobs that the tax cuts were suppose to create? The rich are richer then they have EVER been. So where are the jobs? Corporations have huge cash reserves, so where are the jobs? Obama didn't raise taxes, so where are the jobs? Why aren't the wealthy creating jobs?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:42pm PT
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So bookworm. Where are all those jobs that the tax cuts were suppose to create? The rich are richer then they have EVER been. So where are the jobs? Corporations have huge cash reserves, so where are the jobs? Obama didn't raise taxes, so where are the jobs? Why aren't the wealthy creating jobs?
The jobs are in China, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, etc...
Ya know why? Because the tax-code and regs here are too burdonsome. If you want more jobs back here, the solution is pretty simple...
Make it as cheap to do business here (or at least close).
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:46pm PT
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Poverty stricken? Like someone else or the 'system' struck them with poverty?
Hey, bluering, you're starting to catch on!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
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Funny that you wanted tax cuts because they would create jobs, but where are the jobs? Overseas.
Why is it that most first world countries have higher taxes then we do, and they have jobs?
You might have a point about regs. I dont' know how we stack up to other first world countries. Do you?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:50pm PT
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Wow Jeff, he is wealthy and he added 'one" new job???? wooo hooo.. things are cooking now. Obama must be doing a great job.
I am poor and I just hired someone. Woo hooo..
Me and the wealthy. Getting America back to work.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:51pm PT
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Skipt
Growing up on a farm and bringing in labour to harvest is two different things.
All farms were different. Some complied while others didn’t and still do. Reason for the current raids.
Cesar Chavez did what no other person could have done in the valley he stopped the abuse, the slum conditions, low pay [faster you worked and filled the bins the more you made], and created a union. I bet when you grew up you and your family went on vacation/s or left the area for a couple of days when the Farm owners sprayed hundreds of different pesticides’ on the fields. They were eventually banned because of Chavez and his fellow workers demands but some still exist on our food today.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 01:53pm PT
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So does that mean we should become like the 3rd world countries?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:05pm PT
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It means because of global competition those with high school degrees or college degrees in poetry should never expect to own a home, new cars, great vacations.
You keep focusing on that like it is a big deal. Like lois and her welfare queens are breaking america.
How do you explain this? The numbers show that those with college degrees have unemployment in the mid 5 percent. That is all degrees, from underwater basket weaving to engineering. I think that is low because of how the numbers are figured, but the main point is that compared to blue collar workers, it is much lower. Blue collar workers don't have a college education in anything. So your theory is hogwash. How do you explain Jaybro not being able to get a teaching position? Eh? Was he a fool for becoming a teacher? Should he retrain to become an engineer, starting a new career at this stage in his life.
Your excuses aren't realistic and you focus on pathetic things. Degrees in poetry aren't why people are out of work. A wrecked economy is. So stop with the nonsense. Please.... You want people to respect your opinion. Well stop with this nonsense that degrees in poetry are why people are out of work. It just isn't true.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:07pm PT
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and donate either your money
Thank you Lois for agreeing to higher taxes.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:09pm PT
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ncrockerclimber. It has been posted and has been explained away by the Loises of the world by saying that the wealthy work harder and smarter and thus should be wealthier. As though modern wealthy people are somehow smarter then those during the 50s and 60s.
oh.. and the lower middleclass is becoming poor because they are lazy. If they weren't so lazy and stupid, then they would have good jobs because the wealthy create all the jobs that they need.
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Helga
Mountain climber
stateline, NV
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:18pm PT
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LEB
I think it's the theft of our government that people are protesting here. I believe the great state of PA has some interesting history regarding what I believe is the root of the current crises and all this bickering. Google topics like "fractional reserve banking" and "the federal reserve" . I'm pretty sure it was PA(way back) that refused to borrow money anymore from the central bank and started printing their own money based on productivity. When the US has done that in the past, it has resulted in eras of prosperity.
PS There are moochers on both sides of the spectrum and moochers on both ends of the financial ladder
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Helga
Mountain climber
stateline, NV
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:26pm PT
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youmightbeafleabagger if you think you should pay somebody interest on money they loaned you but that they created out of thin air
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Helga
Mountain climber
stateline, NV
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Oct 15, 2011 - 02:29pm PT
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youmightbeafleabagger if you empathize with hard working people but you support corporations that bought your government AND you have to look up the word "empathize"
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Archie Richardson
Trad climber
Grand Junction, CO
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Oct 15, 2011 - 03:12pm PT
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It may be necessary to bail out financial institutions to prevent a collapse of the world financial system. But if you privatize profits and socialize losses in the financial system, Wall Street has been rewarded handsomely for massive incompetence if not outright conspiracy.
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Archie Richardson
Trad climber
Grand Junction, CO
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Oct 15, 2011 - 04:12pm PT
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This administration missed the boat by spending its first year on health care instead of financial reform. While health care is a critically important issue, in the dark days of the financial crisis Obama had a mandate for complete reform of the financial system (including compensation practices). They could have moved the world. The honeymoon is now over, so to speak, and nothing substantive will be done. I believe the next crisis is looming, however. Another opportunity for change.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 15, 2011 - 07:46pm PT
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It dosn't matter a bit how you vote anymore. The government is 90+ percent controlled by big money. They vet and choose which of the two people will get a chance to get into office LONG before we get to vote on THEIR candidates.
Today I joined the Occupy Reno demonstration. I had a sign that simply said
28th Amendment.
Was great hearing the few Skipt types jeering and the hundreds of cars honking in support and cheers.
Everyone I met was in agreement. It is time to make it illegal to bribe candidates via large donations.
I dont think we will fix a single important issue in this nation until we do
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 15, 2011 - 08:53pm PT
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War,
How Christian Fundamentalism Helped Empower the Top 1% to Exploit the 99%
Deference to religion masquerading as politics must end.
Excellent post and excellent link:
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152724/how_christian_fundamentalism_helped_empower_the_top_1_to_exploit_the_99/
I've been thinking along similar lines for a several years now. Either with no one interested or no one picking up on it. Maybe increased attention will now be given to this amazing amalgam - between rich and religious.
Hey I'll start paying more attention to your posts now, you've earned it!
.....
Edit to ADD.
That was coincidental, your posting just now. I was referring to your earlier post. Linking religious fundamentalism, God and Country and Freedom, and Republican Party and poor republicans voting against their (economic) interests.
I look forward to reading that link tonight after dinner. tfpu
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 09:07pm PT
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No wonder no one will hire them. They are too stupid to be employed. They protest on wall street yet they don't even vote. So besides taking a shower, it would appear that some of them need to grow a brain, as well.
Could be they believe that their vote wont matter because all politicians are bought and paid for by wall street and the wealthy. Which is what they are protesting against.
But all you give a sh#t about is whether they took a bath recently or not.
Meh..
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 15, 2011 - 09:12pm PT
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Wall Street (particularly Goldman Sachs who have an unrepresentative number of ex employees in the BHO administration)
Mega Banks, (The local community banks were allowed to fail or forced to be swallowed up by the mega banks)
Big auto, (Ford managed to not put its hand in the public's pocket)
Were all BAILED OUT BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE!
Why aren't the fleabaggers protesting big Socialism?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 09:39pm PT
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The entire right wing and some of the left....
They all need to sit down and think about this...
In my world I've see the development of huge corporations that have been lauded by wall street, government officials and radio talk show hosts alike.
But then, once everyone finds out just some of what they are doing they fall flat, like the fake-show that they are. One example that comes to mind is Enron. Totally fake.
Here's the thing: Enron, prior to being found to be a total fraud, provided some of the big catch phrases used in America today: Jobs and Profits.
I agree with the right: Corporations provide jobs.
And people on the right seem to always want to make a connection between jobs and regulations, saying things like regulations are job killers.
I say corporations should just say what regulation really is: The peoples wish for the industry to be safe, clean and effective.
Safe Jobs is what the corporations need to provide, otherwise I am against your corporation.
Your corporation needs to be clean: If your corporation pollutes air, water or land, then I am against your corporation.
If your corporation is only in the business of moving money around the world in order to reap a profit, chances are you are not very effective for very many other than those above you in your chain of command, and I am against you as ineffective. To prove my point: People don't get public awards for shifting moneys around the world, and if they do it's probably an exclusive club that meets up in board rooms of hotel ball rooms to give out the awards to each other (much like a circle jerk of the wealthy). Due to the fact that this is a pointless activity... I am against you.
And if your corporation actively seeks to legitimize your unsafe, unclean and unnecessary activities with no regard to the workers, the citizens or the environment... well then,..... I am against you. Just like you are against me.
And though conservatives will rail against me for saying so they are ignorant for putting their faith in their corporate gods hands because eventually they will do to you what they do to anyone who stops to question them or their methods.
corporate shamelessness coupled with Conservative lameness equals a very much worse America, indeed.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 15, 2011 - 09:45pm PT
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The Tea Party went home after cleaning up after themselves, leaving the premises cleaner than they found them, and won the House, came within a couple of seats of taking the Senate and sent hundreds of their members to state legislatures.
The fleabagers will leave a landfill, broken windows and general public disgust in their wake and then go back to momma and daddy's to sleep off the hangover.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A community of hairless apes
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Oct 15, 2011 - 09:45pm PT
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"Fundamentalist religion of all kinds is the enemy of democracy and thus of America. It is also the enemy of working people everywhere, when its bogus moral crusades empower the rich to thumb their noses at our government.
Fundamentalist religion here and around the world must be stopped in its anti-fact, anti-progress crusade. The alternative is chaos, decline, oligarchy and theocracy."
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152724/how_christian_fundamentalism_helped_empower_the_top_1_to_exploit_the_99/
I've said it before: My own aunt and uncle vote Republican cycle after cycle. Because they're religious fundamentalists and because they they think the Party of Reagan and Lincoln cares more about religion, religious values. That's right - they vote Republican cycle after cycle for religious reasons, not economic reasons. They live in a trailer.
.....
Tax the filthy rich. Then tax em again.
Offspring who inherit $2 million can sit on their asses, do nothing, and make 100k a year. Year after year their entire lives. While creators, producers, might work eight hours a day to solve life problems or contribute to a better world and only make $50k if that. There's something fundamentally wrong about this set-up. Time for change.
.....
It's about time partisan politics became (economic) class warfare between haves and havenots. Long-overdo. I for one look forward to it.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 09:48pm PT
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lets argue about who is cleaner instead of whether they have a reason to be frustrated. The original tea partiers probably weren't all that clean.
Nice post Jingy.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 09:57pm PT
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"Mine is for the GOP"
one meaningless vote for business as usual...
(Edit - I hear in some circles the Tea Party was refered to as "Tea Baggers". And as we all know that's the same as a group of people who gobble c*#k and balls.)
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:02pm PT
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The KKK marched with the newest tea partiers. Another stupid thing to argue about.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:23pm PT
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I can not even talk to you people anymore. You are gone!!
You think the flea-baggers want a just system? Read about Mao and Lenin. You are all being used.
And you could say that about us 'tools' that work for the man, but I still have a choice as to who will be blessed with my skills.
It's called a free market. Everybody should jump on the Cain-Train.
Woo-woo!
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:28pm PT
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Blue...you've been polishing too much cain..
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:30pm PT
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TGT - Why do you waste your life on this stuff....?
All I know is that the people hanging out on wall street are more closely aligned with the original tea party (the one that started the American revolution The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston's commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.)
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:32pm PT
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More-on Blue
"I can not even talk to you people anymore."
You could leave and never come back like another one of the troll tools out there.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:34pm PT
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Keep trying, wes.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:40pm PT
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Bluering - Curious how do you reconcile the tea partiers (sp?) who are marching in the Denver OWS? They are proudly waving their tea party flag and being peaceful like the rest of the folks there.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:45pm PT
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No, wes, I don't 'try', I just walk the line.
I live my own life and raise my family based on my own standards. Unfortunatly for you, most Americans agree with me.
The WOS dirtabags can have their say. But at some point they should be jailed, let's be honest. They are loitering losers.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:46pm PT
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"Here is a very simplistic take on things. Before we had much industrialization, people were forced to take care of themselves and their families. You really couldn't carry too many people on your back and still survive yourself,"
How wrong of me would it be to say that all tea-partiers be jailed?
What if I took it a step further as said that republicans should be jailed?
And what if I took it a step further and called for the jailing of those corporations that gained the most in the economic downturn of 2008?
Would I be considered American?
How many people do you think would agree with you then?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:47pm PT
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Bluering - why do you bring in the Wings of Steel characters? Now this thread is really going to get ugly.
:)
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:49pm PT
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Jail the original tea partiers!!!!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:54pm PT
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Bluering - Curious how do you reconcile the tea partiers (sp?) who are marching in the Denver OWS? They are proudly waving their tea party flag and being peaceful like the rest of the folks there.
I didn't see that, but 2 quick thoughts entered my pea-brain.
#1 Infiltrators to disparage the Tea Party.
#2 Legit Tea Party folks who are sick of gov't bail-outs of banks.
There is mucho common-ground available here. Please try to understanstand ther legit genesis of the Tea Party. Not the one you hear from quacks.
The Tea Party started here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k
The Koch bros. jumped on the train later, despite the left's claims.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:57pm PT
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there is mucho common-ground available here.
So why do you bag on them so much?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:57pm PT
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"Bluering - why do you bring in the Wings of Steel characters? Now this thread is really going to get ugly."
Crimpie hits the nail on the head!!!!!
BWAHJAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH
disparage - regard or represent as being of little worth
So, tea party people are going to the Occupy Movement rallys in order to show the Tea Party is of little worth?
Do you know the language you speak?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:58pm PT
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I've never posted or stated anything negative about the tea partiers.
There is a ton of common ground between the two groups and they are hardly distinctive. Yet somehow there is big hate, no?
Dividing a group is an effective way to keep people from seeing the real issue. At least I think so.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 10:59pm PT
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Couldn't resist that Jingy. :) Too fun a typo to pass over for someone with such little discipline as I. Thanks for appreciating it. :)
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:01pm PT
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Another question. Some say that Soros is funding OWS. Yet they also say that the OWS people have no bathrooms or other material goods. So *what exactly* is it Soros is funding?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:01pm PT
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"There is a ton of common ground between the two groups and they are hardly distinctive. Yet somehow there is big hate, no?"
Tons of common ground in that freedom may be mentioned in a tea party rally... But that's where it stops in similarity.
OWS seems (to me) to take it a bit further and include the words "from corporate influence in government and peoples lives."
Where the TP calls for individual responsibilities, OWS seems (to me) to say something the TP would would never say... Corporations should be just as responsible in their dealings.
And the Soros question needs to be looked at from the standpoint of: The Koch Brothers completely funded and ran the TP..... OWS has no backing, and is on solid ground as a peoples movement, each of which have a grievance as a collective against business as usual.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:07pm PT
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There is a ton of common ground between the two groups and they are hardly distinctive. Yet somehow there is big hate, no?
Dividing a group is an effective way to keep people from seeing the real issue. At least I think so.
Let me clarify, Callie. I respect people who want justice in Corporate policy. But I also hate, and can smell a commie at 100 yards.
This, you may laugh, is the difference. Tea-baggers hate the current gov't, and so do WOS socialists, commies, and college punks.
Tea-baggers want less gov't. Better regulation of financial systems.
Commies want financial markets gone. Take money from the Jewish bankers and give it to the people. I DO NOT EXAGERRATE.
Another question. Some say that Soros is funding OWS. Yet they also say that the OWS people have no bathrooms or other material goods. So *what exactly* is it Soros is funding?
Look at the bottom-part of the prepared signs. You'll usually see who's funding those prepared signs. Usually ANSWER.
Grassroots my ass!!!!!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:12pm PT
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Some folks have gheydar. Blue has Commiedar!
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:14pm PT
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Hey Bluey,
if you could back up any of that with proof, or documentation I might buy it....
but at the moment you've been told what this is by your corporation media, and you believe it more than you question it....
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:16pm PT
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So Soros is funding the signs?
Edit:
So I'm googling images for "OWS". I honestly can't find anything but cardboard signs. Anyone have a link to the printed signs Blue is talking about? Would like to see them.
Oh, and lots of weird stuff does come up when one googles OWS for images. Like this...who knew?
double edit: I'll pull this image if it bugs anyone. Just can't figure out the connection. I mean, she looks like she bathes to me. :)
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:23pm PT
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So commies are not only godless, but bathless?
Apparently the HCUA really had no scents.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:26pm PT
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They even have libertarians in the crowd (which is cool);
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:27pm PT
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Commies don't bathe thus Blue can smell them 100 yards away...I get it...!
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:27pm PT
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Indeed. Many Libertarians. They bathe too. And many even have jobs!
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:29pm PT
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Larouche hasn't bathed in weeks...!
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:30pm PT
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Communists don't have baths.
Climbers don't have baths.
bluering is a climber.
Therefore, bluering is a commie.
QED
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:31pm PT
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:32pm PT
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The dump Obama sign was paid for by Soros? I thought Obama was a commie liberal.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:39pm PT
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Google Soros and Media Matters or Soros and MoveOn.
I agree it's petty sh#t. But if you guys wanna play the Koch game, let's play!
Soros is a muther-f*#ker though. He would sell out his country for cash.
Evil...
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:41pm PT
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Wow, is Soros a commie, too? I didn't know he was a climber! Is he on 8a.nu?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:43pm PT
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I guess what I'm missing is what exactly is being paid for with the money.
Blue mentioned some signs (that I honestly can't find, but I'm sure they are out there - can someone post them?). But what else? They aren't paying people money to gather I presume. Not feeding them. Not bringing in shitters according to everyone. If there is big money backing, I don't see it.
Where is all that money going that folks say is coming from Soros? I am seriously curious.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:44pm PT
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Yes, Soros is a commie. Only if he can be in the Politboro though.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:50pm PT
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Good Luck getting your answers Crimpie.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:51pm PT
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Blue mentioned some signs (that I honestly can't find, but I'm sure they are out there - can someone post them?). But what else? They aren't paying people money to gather I presume. Not feeding them. Not bringing in shitters according to everyone. If there is big money backing, I don't see it.
Where is all that money going that folks say is coming from Soros? I am seriously curious.
I'll dig up the stuff for ya. Funny you don't question how the Tea-Baggers came up with their money? Should we just assume it was some rich dude?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:55pm PT
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She didn't have to question it because it was all over the news. But I have only seen a few signs that looked professional. Most were hand drawn.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:57pm PT
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does this mean I should load my weapon? You will fail before my family does.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 15, 2011 - 11:58pm PT
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I appreciate it, and of course you don't have to. Just sounds like you know Blue.
I haven't questioned the tea partiers' backing because it's a bit more transparent and the answer is clear to me. I don't think there is anything wrong with financial backing either. Not sure why you assume I dislike the partiers - I have never had a negative thing to say about them. With that group, I can see where much of that money is being spent. For example, portapotties when there are gatherings, clean up crews after events to leave grounds tidy, paying for some organized events for key members (travel, food, etc), and signs. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I was just wondering, if there is a big money backing the OWS, where it is going. That's all.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:06am PT
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How also do you rail out against capitalism all the while eating McDonalds fast food and texting on one's ipad, blackberry or android.
Out of thousands of OWS demonstrators - protestors may be too strong a word - no doubt some were doing the above, perhaps even at the time. Have you any proof that it was more than a few, or are you just creating a fantasy stereotype?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:13am PT
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Crimpie, they are more devious.
The right has no problem usually. Giving cash. And it has little to do with the Koch Bros.
It's the insedious way the left funds this stuff that is troubling. Have you ever heard of a George Soros link to the Tides Foundation, Move On, Media Matters???
I doubt it. But I bet you hear all about Rupert Murdoch, right? Fox News, right???
Why is that?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:18am PT
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Actually I've heard of them all. And why that is is because I'm a news junkie. I look at tons of news sources all the time.
It seems someone is getting ripped off if they are dumping money into OWS because I can't see where any of this money is being spent.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:21am PT
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Callie, now you're juss gettin' funny.....
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:23am PT
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bottom line, Callie;
system overhaul 2.0
get on the Cain-Train.
Woot!!!!
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:29am PT
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I seriously am a news junkie!
And I am a bit tongue in cheek about someone being ripped off because I really really don't see where the money is being spent.
edit: Oh, and as far as Cain...nah. He's got some screws loose imo and they are showing more and more each day. I predict a self-implosion for him.
For example, he wants to build an electrical fence the length of the border that kills folks who touch it? :/ Sort of expensive, unrealistic, and crazy talk. The whole touch-and-die...not my style. We are smarter than that. We can stop the open border if we really wanted to. Not convinced we really want to as we benefit from the presence of undocumented here. Politicians just like saying stuff like that so people vote for them. It's been that way a long time, and will continue to bet that way for a long time I think.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:32am PT
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Go here Crimpie;
http://www.adbusters.org/
These are the dudes getting Tides/Soros money to promote this crap.
And they say Fox News is disengenuous.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:36am PT
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Well I knew the OWS started with an ad they placed in the middle of their publication a while back.
So Adbusters Canada got 8,000$ from the Tide Foundation. So the big money backing this is 8k? No wonder we can't see it's effects!
Heck, B-cycle here in Boulder got a grant award 3x that ($24,332.50) from them. Poor AARP, they only got 5k.
edit: Oh, and that Adbusters got the 5k is available on their website (if you haven't seen it). I don't think they are trying to hide that grant.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:42am PT
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But is Soros funding it, Crimpie?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:51am PT
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Hell if I know. That has never been my question or a concern. Just like it's no big deal to me if the Kochs or anyone is funding the tea partiers, it's no big deal to me if Soros or anyone is funding OWS. So what if the Koch brothers or Soros or aliens from Mars are funding anyone as far as I'm concerned.
My question came up from two disparate comments I hear over and over. 1) OWS is being back by big money. 2) They are a bunch of umemployed (fill in string of negative adjectives here) that don't even have a place to go to the bathroom.
#1 implies money going into the movement. #2 implies no money going into the movement. My question has been how those two often repeated points are reconciled. If there is big money, where is it? I just don't see evidence of any funding anywhere.
That's been my only question.
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:13am PT
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This movement or protest reminds me of the freaks that fallowed the Grateful Dead around. AHHH what are you doing Man! AHHH, I’m on tour DUDE!! Selling my home made Bongs, screwing Girls with hairy legs and arm pits and wishing it was 1967.
Get a Clue! People and companies making money is not the problem.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:17am PT
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I'm probably going to regret posting this.
I disagree about the money. It has corrupted our politicians, and it could be using the peoples frustration for its own ends. It is power elite against power elite, each trying to outdo the other simply for the sake of trying to be the big dog.
Callie, I think what Blue is referring to is that he thinks groups like moveon are funded by people like Soros, and these groups then help create the frustration. In some ways I think he has a legitimate beef. Just as the frustration of some over government abuse has been guided and created by groups like fox news, which has led to deregulation of things that shouldn't have been deregulated, instead of truly trying to understand how government has gotten out of balance.
There is government abuse. There is waste. Unions are out of balance, and at the same time, the gap between the wealthy and the rich has grown. Corporations have become too powerful and our politicians are beholden to special interest. They don't have the peoples best interest at heart.
There are just too many sheep and they are being led by evil f*#ks who just don't give a damn about them. This is happening on both sides of the equation. So I do think that the money is a concern.
It is a concern on both sides of the equation.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:32am PT
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Occupy Wall Street, downtown Vancouver (Georgia & Hornby, outside the art gallery), 09:00, Saturday October 15th, 2011.
Lots of cops standing around drinking coffee. The participants, per LEB's orders, were at Starbucks sending tweets to each other.
Apparently about 4,000 people attended "Occupy Vancouver", and later they erected about 20 tents on the lawn. (The art gallery is the recognized public gathering/protest/free speech site in Vancouver - the hockey riot was mostly elsewhere.) They were planning to stay for awhile and not take baths, because they know that bluering will be annoyed. It sounds like they all had a good time, and no one got hurt injured, though no doubt some Saturday afternoon shoppers were entertained or annoyed.
http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/Upwards+protestors+march+downtown+Occupy+Vancouver/5556518/story.html
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:04am PT
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What’s the Camp4 thing?
Camp 4 is where the sun comes up first in the valley, has the only real boulders and is stumbling distance from the bar. Nothing more! It’s not a political statement or some kind of click (what the f*#k) Man has sh#t got off track.
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Archie Richardson
Trad climber
Grand Junction, CO
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:45am PT
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The productive people can carry just so many non-productive persons within any given society.
Quite true, but can we say that trading commodities derivatives is productive? All it produces is higher prices for commodities (such as food)and million dollar bonuses for the traders.
I suppose the bonuses support some segments of the global economy (Ferrari, Gulfstream jets, Yacht manufacturers, etc).
And there are still 6 and 7 figure floor traders on the NYSE that do work easily done by computers. Are they productive?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:54am PT
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Money can matter for sure.
But here is what we know. Soros gives money to Tides. Tides gives money via grants to a SH#T LOAD of places every year. The list, in smallish font is 42 pages long and has a lot of variation though each recipient is supposed to be engaged in 'positive social change' (vague). Tides gave money to Adbusters (has every year for ten years of so) in the 10k-ish range annually.
Did Soros fund OWS? Well, if one wants to say that some of Soros' money went to Tides, to Adbusters, to OWS, then they can believe that. It also means that Soros--> Tides --> B-cycle Boulder. And Soros--> Tides --> AARP. And Soros--> Tides --> Board of Regents University of Nebraska. And Soros--> Tides --> Battered Women Support Services. And Soros--> Tides --> Wounded Warriors Project (100k). Etc.
Each are equally plausible if any are(and that is only a few of the 42 pages of grantees in one year alone).
But in the end, I said that Soros' connection did matter to me because it had nothing to do with the question I asked over and over.
I'm sad that now, according to this thread, the University of Nebraska and Wounded Warriors have been revealed as the commie organizations they are. :)
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 12:40pm PT
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And now for something completely different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss
Question of the day: Which politician comes immediately to mind when you get to minute 5?
The final "scene" is prescient.
From the age of the cars, I'm guessing this was made about 1970
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:04pm PT
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For example, he wants to build an electrical fence the length of the border that kills folks who touch it? :/ Sort of expensive, unrealistic, and crazy talk. The whole touch-and-die...not my style. We are smarter than that. We can stop the open border if we really wanted to. Not convinced we really want to as we benefit from the presence of undocumented here. Politicians just like saying stuff like that so people vote for them. It's been that way a long time, and will continue to bet that way for a long time I think.
I've never heard Cain say that. But I do know I like him a lot more than the guy we have in the White House.
Let me ask you Callie, who's your candidate in the next election? Who do you like?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:06pm PT
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Here you go:
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:11pm PT
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Crimpie
BRILLIANT!
bluey
I've never heard Cain say that He's actually said it quite a lot.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:15pm PT
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Bluering - Cain's discussed his border death fence before and recently repeated it (yesterday or the day before...I'm non-stop working (and goofing off on the taco for breaks) so the days are running together). Here is the first hit on a google of "cain electrical border fence" (477,000 hits) if you want to read a wee bit about it: http://www.care2.com/causes/morning-mix-cain-electric-fences-and-the-impossible-dream.html.
As far as who I like right now. Meh. I think who I think is better and who is electable are two very different things - that is the reality of politics in the US.
On the R side, I think Romney is the best of those offered. But electable? Don't know. They aren't coming up with compelling candidates in general IMO. On the D side, no real choice so can't discuss them.
As is sadly the case, it's easier to point out the people I see as actual certifiable nutjobs. Perry - nutjob with a record to demonstrate his nut-job-ness. He's also been pushing some uber cuckoo ideas too (e.g., changes to higher ed in TX). Cain - nutjob in his ideas (maybe he'd be fine, but I have yet to see a policy presented that has any body to it. So far they've been sound bytes to get the needed attention from voters. Bachman - googly eyed nutjob and scary to boot. Probably don't even need to discuss her. Paul - poor guy. The electoral system will never see him elected though he has presented some ideas that are interesting (and others that are not). Meh.
I remember in a past election thinking the D's wanted to give away the election based on the terrible candidates they were putting forward. I think that applies this year for the R's unfortunately.
edit: Happy to help with the few tech skills I have. Here's how I did it. Go to the image, right click. Click on "save image location." Come back to the taco, right click in the message box. Paste. Then on the left side of that code that you just pasted, type (without the period at the end) [img].
Then on the right side type (without the period at the end) [/img].
Voila, any image should then show.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:18pm PT
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The more I think about it, the more I like the fence. Wall would be better.
So now Soros is some benevolent saint??? Are you guys f*#king kidding me??? Herman Cain is a bloodthirsty immigrant killer and Soros is a charitable man.
Really?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:24pm PT
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There is actually already quite a bit of a fence on the border. It is 15' high (if I recall right) and it's helped the border patrol quite a bit. BTW, the border patrol has real guns and real bullets already. There is also a lot of technology being used to deal with people crossing. While they don't get everyone, they are really capturing many trying to cross.
And they are hiring! It's decent pay, but it's hard physical work involving physical interactions quite a bit of them time (depending on location stationed). I think several things get in the way of hiring as many people as they need. First, one must be 21. Cannot be older than 39. US Citizen. Driver's license needed. Must pass physical fitness tests. Must pass educational classes regarding constitutional rights, use of force and other CJ things. Must pass other relevant courses (e.g, firearms). Need at least a H.S. education. Good driving record. No use of drugs for a long time and some drug use (even just for fun) rules you out forever. No history of alcohol abuse. NO COMMIES. No DV arrest of any kind. No felons. A desire to live in some less-than-desirable areas. And then after working hard as a Border Patrol agent to be abused by the public and to hear everyone call you a loser bureaucrat lazy bum on the gubmit tit weasel.
edit: those are my words. Here is the official site: http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/careers/customs_careers/border_careers/application_process/basic_requirements_for_bp.xml. Sign up people!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:27pm PT
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The more I think about it, the more I like the fence. Wall would be better.
That is because you have bought the notion that illegal immigration is destroying america. It isn't. Illegal immigrants pay more taxes then they collect, even when you include hospital visits.
They are making it difficult for hospitals, no doubt, but that is because we haven't figured a way out to transfer what they pay into social security, but don't collect, and apply it towards hospitals bills.
We need some sort of guest worker program that would cover them, from which they could pay taxes towards health insurance.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:30pm PT
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Cain is far from the brightest bulb in the pack. When asked this morning on one of the Sunday talks shows if his foreign policy would be neoconservative, Cain appeared to have never heard of the word. Seriously.
Makes Bachmann look like a Roads Scolar.
The two worst presidents in my lifetime have been very bright: Nixon; and dim as a cow pie: guess who.
Intelligence should be a fundamental prerequisite for the "leader of the free world". With his/her hand on the button of thousands of nuclear warheads and gets to appoint Supreme Court dunces like Clarence Thomas.
Among other trivial tasks such as Reagan negotiating directly with Gorbachev at Reyjkavik for a nuclear missile reduction treaty.
It's a very complex world out there. Mental Midgets need not apply,
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:41pm PT
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Sign up people!
I did consider it, Callie. Really. That was when I was 40.
Maybe some of the younger unemployed from OWS should inquire, huh?
And those that say Cain isn't the brightest bulb, how about Newt. Clearly the smartest and most savvy up there. Is he good?
Bottom line is that you people are looking for another fancy-talking lawyer to run the f*#king country. I say, NO!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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Regarding "corporations are people", referring to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that removed all restrictions on the amount of $$ corporations can pay politicians.
On its central point, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Justice Stevens’s dissent was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Kennedy: appointed by Reagan
Scalia: Reagan
Roberts: Shrub
Alito: Shrub
Thomas: (one of the dimmest bulbs ever on The Court) Bush Sr.
Stevens: Ford (now retired)
Breyer: Clinton
Ginsburg: Clinton
Sotomayor: Obama
Funny how this vote went on "party lines" even though the Supreme Court was meant to be above politics.
Stevens' replacement: Kagan (Obama)
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 01:49pm PT
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I did consider it, Callie. Really. That was when I was 40.
Maybe some of the younger unemployed from OWS should inquire, huh?
And those that say Cain isn't the brightest bulb, how about Newt. Clearly the smartest and most savvy up there. Is he good?
Bottom line is that you people are looking for another fancy-talking lawyer to run the f*#king country. I say, NO!
A lot of govt agencies have age requirements. I'm too old for all of them and have been for some time. I understand why the reqts exist, but many are absolutely struggling to get bodies. Maybe that will change in time.
I know that many of the OWS are unemployed. Same as many of the Tea partiers. But all are not. I know many people engaged in both movements who have jobs. And maybe some from both crowds should apply. But I seriously think that many people have such an anti-government attitude they would never resort to working for them. That is too bad.
As far as Newt. I haven't given him much consideration because I think his personal life will prevent him from ever being elected. Do I think reality like that is good? No. But it is the reality.
I've heard no one say they want a lawyer specifically as a president. Thought the general public hated lawyers...well until they need one. Interestingly, many of our presidents have been lawyers. Obama is hardly the first, and likely will not be the last.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0768854.html
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:01pm PT
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Time for a revolution. I hope the protest movement grows, and turns all these institutions on their heads. Time for the new.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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Crimpie: another great link
A few notable lawyers to consider:
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams.
Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman (a judge), Nixon, Ford, Clinton, Obama.
A few notable Senators/Congressmen:
Madison, Monroe, Adams, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Bush I, Obama
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:08pm PT
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Another notable lawyer: Rick Accamazzo. :)
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:13pm PT
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As far as Newt. I haven't given him much consideration because I think his personal life will prevent him from ever being elected. Do I think reality like that is good? No. But it is the reality.
I agree. He's probably the most qualified, yet "unelectable". Cain is the best man for our current times, but is unelectable.
So we'll get more milktoast crap...again. Wake up! You want real change???
Do you?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:16pm PT
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Cain/Gingrich 2012!!!!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:18pm PT
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sure they signed on the dotted line. And sure, some were in way over their head, or buying too much house. But others were just trapped by the times. Encouraged by the system to keeping buying, when the system was corrupt. Some of us saw it coming, but most didn't, and you blame them for the collapse.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:19pm PT
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fattrad
The only reason to get rid of Obama is that he attempts to make things worse with short term "fixes". First of all he attempts to make things better, and a large number of economists agree his proposals are largely on the right track for the short term. You're implying he doesn't give a sh#t and that he's trying wacko economics. That's flagrant nonsense.
Secondly, when the boat is sinking, the first problem is to keep the boat afloat.
At All Costs. A "short term fix" to keep you afloat.
If you'd ever been in a sinking boat, either floating on water or your own economic boat, you'd understand that fundamental principle.
Keep The Bloody Boat Afloat.
Or go down like the Titanic.
I'm keeping my unemployed boat afloat by cutting back my expenses as much as possible and drawing down my retirement funds. That have lost 25% of their value in the past 3 months thanks to the demagogic Congressional Republicans, particularly your pal Kantor. Might have to put my house up for sale, which has lost a lot of market value since 2008.
Or do you have any better ideas? Got a decent paying job for me? I'll be glad to take it. Hell, I'll even commute out to Ritzville to mow your lawn and clean your pool if you'll cover my health insurance and leave some left over for food and gas money.
There's nothing wrong with a "short term fix" right now. And I think you'd find very few Americans, including Obama, who don't want to improve things in the long term. All Kantor and Mitchell give a damn about is winning the next election. Screw the good of the country. I left Boehner out because even though I think he's an idiot (he's publicly stated he's a global warming denier), I do believe he really wants a solution. I could be wrong, he could be as venal as Mitchell and Kantor.
How long can this country survive with 9% unemployment? How will you get us back to work NOW? Answer that.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:23pm PT
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so the 95% deserve to drown. Because they were seduced by the Wizards of Oz?
Those smart (they must be because they have MBA's from Harvard, Wharton and Stanford), honest (aren't all bankers?) and regulated (we trust the government to protect us from swindlers) investment bankers. You mean we couldn't trust them with our money and our mutual fund investments? You mean they were screwing us?
WOW
and ONE of them (Rajaratman) is finally, now, 3 years after swindling $64 million, going to jail. Oh, he went to Wharton and was swindling for 7 years at Galleon. While awaiting trial he was under "house arrest" at his estate. Sentenced to 11 years in prison.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-11/rajaratnam-is-found-guilty-of-all-counts-in-galleon-insider-trading-trial.html
Oh dear, I didn't mention Madoff: $18 BILLION (with a B). But I'm not too bothered, his clients were (mostly) rich and connected. The 1%.
So when the 1% get screwed, they JUMP on the swindler, toss him in prison pending trial, and sentence him to 150 years.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:24pm PT
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Many on the streets for OWS are just as guilty as the bankers.
Thank you for finally admitting that there is corruption in our banking system. Something that the OWS are demonstrating about. Thank you for admitting that the demonstrators frustration has a basis in reality.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:31pm PT
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so the 95% deserve to drown. Because they were seduced by the Wizards of Oz?
This is a statistical fallacy. Am I the 5%? I ain't rich, don't have a house, yet managepretty well. This 99 or 95 stuff is utter bullshit!
Most Americans are fine. Some. Some could use better jobs. But don't blame that on banks. Blame it on gov't and Obama and Bush and Clinton.
Their jobs went overseas. We don't need anymore PhD's in Women's Studies or Black Studies.
We need to get back to work.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:32pm PT
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So we'll get more milktoast crap...again. Wake up! You want real change???
As a long time member of the cynical political party, I don't expect to see much change regardless of who is president. They are but one person in a complex machinery that has interests different from the public's interests.
People in power pass policies to retain and ensure their power. It's as simple as that. They say what has to be said and do what has to be done to achieve that, their primary goal. If someone else benefits as a latent consequence, so be it, but don't mistake it for doing something for us little people.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:32pm PT
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deleted.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:40pm PT
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You think Cheney is a good guy.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:41pm PT
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As a long time member of the cynical political party, I don't expect to see much change regardless of who is president. They are but one person in a complex machinery that has interests different from the public's interests.
People in power pass policies to retain and ensure their power. It's as simple as that. They say what has to be said and do what has to be done to achieve that, their primary goal. If someone else benefits as a latent consequence, so be it, but don't mistake it for doing something for us little people.
I tend to agree with your sentiment, mostly.
This is why I'm on the Cain Train. I feel that he is different. In a good way.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:42pm PT
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Do you know how many Ph.D.s were awarded in women's studies or black studies in 2009 (the most recent year for which there is data)?
Here is a link to the statistical abstract where you can find that info...sort of. Why is it hard to discern? Because all the Ph.D.s in these often-discussed areas are probably (but can't be sure) found under "Social Science and History". In 2009, there were a total of just under 20k Ph.D.s awarded in Social Science and History.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0303.pdf
BTW: Social science encompasses different disciplines at different campuses. It often includes economics, sociology, criminology, and history.
Now, there are about 320,000,000 people in the USA right now. This means that in 2009, 0.00625% of the population got a Ph.D. in Social Science and History.
Can you name one university that offers a Women's studies Ph.D.? Not saying it doesn't exist, but I don't know of one. We don't have it at CU Denver. CU Boulder (a liberal strong hold some say) doesn't either.
At CU Boulder there is the Women and Gender Studies (WGST) Program that offers an undergraduate bachelor of arts degree and a minor, as well as a *graduate certificate* for students enrolled in another disciplinary master's or doctoral degree program.
No Women's Studies Ph.D. there either. Where are these degrees coming from?
And Black Studies too? Where are these? There is a Department of Ethnic Studies at CU Boulder, but no Black Studies.
Maybe the economic problems in the nation are found somewhere else?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:44pm PT
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Thanks for your answers Bluey and Lois. As I suspected you are both incapable of thinking outside of the box. Your statements portray all OWS as dirty slackers wanting a handout and all Tea Partiers as grass roots saints. The truth is there are good and bad people in both movements. You both claim to know what the other 'side' wants and their motivations so you can pick the most rediculous left wing examples so you can ignore anything you don't agree with.
Lois of course your worldview informs your thinking, but for you it seems that's it, you can't expand beyone that. You and Bluey should think what things are like for other people. Not only does it make you a better person but then you'll truly be able to understand your fellow man. It's much easier to come up with pragmatic solutions and compromise when you don't assume different people are evil and lazy.
Oh and they idea of the current trend continuing means we will end up like things at the turn of the century when the Standard Oil monopoly was screwing up the entire economy. But you both can't figure that out or are ok with it I guess.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:47pm PT
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Callie, I was making a point. That people pursue degrees that have no demand in the real world.
Get a job!
These kids today don't pursue fields that are actually employable, except for....professors in colleges. How many of those jobs are available?
People need to seek education that has employment in demand. It's really nice to 'follow your dream' in education, but are you going to be employable?
Ya know?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:52pm PT
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I disagree Fatty. Political Science literature is clear about what are the major predictors of party ID. Among the strongest - parental Party ID. (This is not to suggest social scientists like political scientists have this all figured out, it remains an active area of inquiry).
Yeah, yeah, everyone knows someone who is a different party than their parent (or maybe they are), but when one looks at the population in general, that is it. Ideology often matters. And income.
There is a term in political science called the 'unsophisticated electorate.' It refers to the well-established finding that individuals in the public have a terrible understanding of policies and politicians. Most cannot identify their Senator's name. Or understands how a budget works. Or can accurately name some rights enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I don't think it's because we are stupid (as some believe). But more a function of it not having been a priority.
This is why media can be powerful. BUT the media is not a conveyor of ideas...the era of "broadcasting" is long gone. Media now engages in 'narrowcasting' or singing-to-the-choir in colloquial terms.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:53pm PT
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That people pursue degrees that have no demand in the real world.
And Callie's point was that this group makes up a very very very small percentage of all the degrees out there.
Jaybro is a teacher. Many many teachers are out of work right now. Did they make a mistake? Or has the system gone completely whacky? My contention is that the system has gone completely whacky thanks to corruption at many levels of our society.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:53pm PT
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Wouldn't it be something if the next presidential candidate were to announce their entire cabinet prior to becoming president?
Fact is America needed huge change when Obama was elected, and expectations were high after the dumbass bumbly Buch.
But when the cabinet was selected all the air went out of the sails (for me at least).
I'd like to know who these candidates plan on heading which departments once they get elected.
P.S. I think that in just 3 posts Callie has won my vote.
Blue sits at the back of the class with the dunce cap on. When asked a question why is it that the answer never really gets stated. Answers questions with questions, diversionary tactics.. It's amazing how much of an imbecile someone can look like when simple questions are asked and avoided.....
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:55pm PT
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I can't speak to how many professor jobs are available right now. I can speak to our own situation. We are hiring one professor right now. I have 72 applications for it. about 75% of those folks already have a position. At least in my field it's a good market.
Others fields too. Some other fields not so much.
Plus, many people who do get Ph.D.s never become a professor or "use" it in the job they get.
There are very few degrees that chart one's course for post-graduation work. Engineering is one. Teaching is another (not a great time - know many awesome teachers who cannot find work). Accounting possibly. Oh and nursing (though I know many nurses struggling as well). Probably forgetting some.
Hey, btw, I do want to thank you for engaging me and indulging my questions. I appreciate you'll do that kindly. :)
edit: about ten years ago, all the undergrads were majoring in Business because it was purported to be the only one that would get them a job. In the 4-5 years it takes to get a degree, things change. Many of these business major came out and couldn't find work. Or the work they found did not require a degree. It's all a gamble. I tell students to pursue what they enjoy and have passion for because there is no guarantee.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 02:58pm PT
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But when the cabinet was selected all the air went out of the sails (for me at least).
You wouldn't have liked McCain's choices. So what would have changed? You would have still voted for Obama, though you might have voted for Hilary in primaries and you would have realized that not much is going to change.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:03pm PT
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I hear ya, Callie. I'm just saying that people aren't 'training' for the kind of work we need.
We don't need more teachers.
Another biggie here is that many jobs people were qualified to do have left. Manufacturing.
You want poor and middle-class employment to rise? Guess what?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:06pm PT
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Bluering - you are on the same page with OWS and tea party and folks like me in that manufacturing should be here. That it is gone is a huge problem.
Until it's corrected the gap between the haves and the have nots will continue to grow until there are no more sort-of-haves.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:07pm PT
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We don't need more teachers.
If every college student that was working towards being a teacher changed their course of study, then within 2 to 3 years there would be a glaring shortage. Teachers retire every year. The main glut right now is because america isn't supporting our education system. Which is another reason that this country could fail.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:11pm PT
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This 99 or 95 stuff is utter bullshit! 9% of americans are unemployed. That means that only 91% of Americans who are want jobs have them. And don't forget: the 9% is considered a low estimate because of the way it's defined. People who "don't want jobs", aren't actively looking, including those who want to work but have given up, aren't counted. So the "bum on the street" (Utah Phillips' phrase) doesn't get counted.
The people in prison/jail are also not counted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
As of 2006, the United States had one of the highest levels of income inequality, as measured through the Gini index, among high income countries, ... being one of only a few developed countries where inequality has increased since 1980.[14]
Alan Greenspan stated before Congress in 2005[15]:
As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society – a capitalist democratic society – can really accept without addressing. Alan Greenspan: that noted socialist (insert sarcastic smile here). Notably NOT from one of the Big 3 business schools. MA and Phds from New York University.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:13pm PT
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What's wrong with income inequality?
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:17pm PT
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bluering scoffed People need to seek education that has employment in demand. It's really nice to 'follow your dream' in education, but are you going to be employable?
Ya know?
The gap between the reality of the unemployed and what you imagine the problem is is pretty immense. There are lots of jobs available in certain fields or for people with certain skillsets, as Crimpie illustrates. Some industries cannot find employees fast enough while there are a lot of unemployed people that simply don't have skills that are in demand at a level that can support their previous lifestyle. These are generally not people with a "women's studies" major like you scorned earlier, but people who spent their lives in manufacturing or construction or other fields that have been in decline in the US.
In virtually any economy, people with the right skills and the right background and the right personalities always find a flexible job market full of opportunity. For whatever reason, those are the people that constantly get pointed to as the evidence that there really isn't a problem.
In reality I can't see much of a difference between this protest and the Tea Party protests that were happening in 2009 except for the lack of "Obama is Hitler" signs. They are both upset at the obvious access that the economic elite has to government and that the government bailed them out in such a big way with no discernable return on that investment. What, exactly, is making you so eager to scorn them so much, bluering?
*edit* I see that you made a comment about the lack of manufacturing jobs, but I'm still puzzled about your eagerness to jump on people who have the audacity to study minorites or women. And we definitely need more teachers.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:19pm PT
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Chaz
that question misses the point.
There will always be income inequality. In most economic theories it is necessary and "good". The problem is when inequality rises AND other serious economic problems exist. Such as long term unemployment, access to a good education, access to affordable and effective healthcare.
Made even worse when the wealthiest people and corporations don't pay "their share" of taxes. Or are perceived as not paying their share. No worries in a thriving society, a significant worry when things are going poorly, as they are now.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:22pm PT
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I still don't understand why I should care if some one somewhere makes more than I do. Or if a bunch of people make more than I do. Why should I care?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:22pm PT
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Some industries cannot find employees fast enough while there are a lot of unemployed people that simply don't have skills that are in demand at a level that can support their previous lifestyle +5
My expertise is in automated systems for factories. Manufacturing. There are many fewer job opportunities for me now than 10 years ago. Especially in Northern California. I'm in the process of "re-tooling" but that takes time. Add to that, I'm "overqualified" for most of the jobs I've applied for.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:23pm PT
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Fatty-
Which was then paid out in interest back to the banks to pay for the debt that we issued to pay for the bailouts.
QE1/QE2 and the other programs were designed to help increase liquidity in the markets and urge lending for housing and small/medium businesses. The banks have eagerly taken that money and then not budged an inch on housing/business lending. There has been no payback for those policies, just for Tarp.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:25pm PT
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Or if a bunch of people make more than I do. Why should I care? As long as you're employed, your kids are getting a good education, you've got quality healthcare, you don't have to worry about your bank account or retirement, you shouldn't care.
Unless you're also concerned about social instability. Like the 9% unemployed. Which significantly underestimates the number of people in serious financial difficulty.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:27pm PT
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What would cause social instability?
Is there some rational reason to be anti-social?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:28pm PT
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Emporer of Yosemite (secretary of Interior) Now we know why fattrad is all buddy buddy with Cheney, Kantor and Kevin McCarthy (Majority Whip). Money buys access. Access gets you political appointments.
Be Very Afraid (to quote fattrad himself)
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:29pm PT
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Chaz
surely you're playing provocateur
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:32pm PT
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chaz said I still don't understand why I should care if some one somewhere makes more than I do. Or if a bunch of people make more than I do. Why should I care?
Yeah that's a cute quote spoken from a position of comfort about someone else in a position of comfort. When you are in a position of pain things start to look very differently. When Person A is eating shrimp and Person B can't afford their heart medication or heatingh oil it's not really an "oh gee I'm so mad cause someone else makes more money" situation. Your lack of empathy does not mean you have a salient point.
Fatty said There hasn't been much lending because very few people or businesses qualify under the the more rational traditional underwriting standards. My family's bank has tons of money to lend, few qualifiers.
Which then prompted the gov't to create a safer lending environment. Which the banks have taken full advantage of and not passed any along to others. I know several small business owners who could expand their businesses right now but can't qualify. It's a system set up to advantage those who don't really need it. And then those people complain about taxes and regulations holdnig them back and how the private sector is what creates jobs. It's bullsh#t.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:33pm PT
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Are you saying I should be mad at others who are more successful than I am?
Would that be a rational response?
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:45pm PT
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If someone does something illegal, by all means prosecute them.
But why should we be bitter?
Part of the equasion is missing.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:48pm PT
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I'm very angry at Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, they are more successful than me.
It is answers like that make me think we should just wipe this planet out.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 03:52pm PT
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Chaz said Part of the equasion is missing.
The only thing missing from your equation is a "t."
Fatty said
So, you are suggesting that the banks make unsafe loans?????
One of your better trolls. 7/10
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:03pm PT
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Fatty said I'm very angry at Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, they are more successful than me.
I'm still alive so I feel like I'm beating out Jobs at the moment.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:04pm PT
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fattrad
What you said is a very good synopsis. (about businesses and loan requirements)
The fact that so few business can qualify for loans under rational standards is the indicator of the underlying problems.
Lack of business flow. Largely due to lack of demand. My wife and I haven't bought diddely in all of 2011. We've had to turn down nice vacation opportunities with relatives and friends because we couldn't afford the airfare. Tens of thousands of $$ we haven't been able to spend.
95% of the people buying clothes, vacation trips, cars, dishwashers, tuition to expensive colleges. That's a helluva lot more money than the top 1% who earn 25% of the total income, put into similar items. There was even a limit to the number of shoes Imelda Marcos could buy.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:11pm PT
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Chaz
fattrad
It shouldn't be about envy and anger.
Here's a reasonable explanation about why the better off should pay their fair share. Written in "plain speak".
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.
Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead. http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
If course you could shrug it off as "socialist bunk" since it's written by a Nobel Prize Economist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:20pm PT
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Are you saying we'd be better off if there were a limit set on what we could achieve?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:30pm PT
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"Are you saying we'd be better off if there were a limit set on what we could achieve?"
Just like a right winger to take it to an extreme....
To answer the question with a question, bluerig style: What is your definition of "better"? Who do you mean when you say "we"? And what do you consider "acheivement"?
There may be some agreement among all human beings as to a couple of the statements, but one leads me to think that its to the beholder.
Right wing wants to drop the minimum wage..... I want to put in place a maximum wage....
What is the difference?
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:35pm PT
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Standard, common definitions Jingy. I'm trying to simplify, not complicate. Before I go "yay" or "nay" on this, I'm trying to find out just what yay or nay means.
What would be your maximum wage set at?
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:35pm PT
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Wes- Why are you even taking that bait? I mean seriously. You're allowing him to frame the debate which means you're just typing lots of words trying to explain how something isn't something else that you aren't even talking about.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:40pm PT
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High Traverse wrote
Now we know why fattrad is all buddy buddy with Cheney, Kantor and Kevin McCarthy (Majority Whip). Money buys access. Access gets you political appointments.
Be Very Afraid (to quote fattrad himself)
Access gets you political appointments and more:
Well we all know Pres. Cheney and his connections and continue to have. Ok! That is just one under Bush, but he cut his connections off so he could serve his country.
How about Donald “baby” Rumsfeld that dropped from what he did [just one of many] so he could serve as well:
Remember Bush with “instill panic in this country” by telling us a minimum of 200,000 people will die from the avian flu pandemic, but it could be as bad as 2 million deaths in this country alone.
Justifying the immediate purchase of 80 million doses of Tamiflu, a worthless drug that in no way shape or form treats the avian flu, but only decreases the amount of days one is sick and can actually contribute to the virus having more lethal mutations.
So Cheney's,Bush's,Rumsfeld's U.S. placed an order for 20 million doses of this worthless drug at a price of $100 per dose. That comes to a staggering $2 billion. Your tax money at work.
Who made a profit: a big fat one at that?
Donald Rumsfeld was appointed Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. in 1997, a position which he held in the years prior to becoming Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration. Rumsfeld had been on the Board of Directors from the establishment of Gilead in 1987.
And you say corporations are not to blame? No we are; we should have bought shares.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 04:51pm PT
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1 Million a Year?
Way f*#king more than I will ever need.
Way more than I can spend (at my current spending rate)
Way more than I need to invest.
Not to mention, even with expenses, after 3 years or "earning" 1 million a year, you'd have enough to live off the interest earned by a savings account or investment dividends.
You could retire early.
But that might lead to everyone becoming lax and not really giving a sh#t about the next generation... But how is that different from now?
The right want to completely do away with all regulation.
The right want to completely do away with the EPA.
Why?
Is it really because they think that jobs can be had by a majority of people currently unemployed? Or is it because the human beings in and around the corporations that pollute the most want to continue, without sanction, to pollute the environment to the point of un-inhabitability of plenty of US cities, where people aren't much more that a hindrance to the corporations.
And the republicans do nothing about helping "the people"....
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 05:04pm PT
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Jingy,
What you're saying is what I'm trying to be cautious about. I don't want to jump on the bandwagon when the solution proposed is worse than the problem.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 05:11pm PT
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"What you're saying is what I'm trying to be cautious about. I don't want to jump on the bandwagon when the solution proposed is worse than the problem."
Chaz, be a good sport and post more of your thoughts on the subject that you have started to discuss?
What exactly are you being cautious about and what did I write that you need to be cautious about? Is "being cautious" in your world not taking a stand on anything, not stating your point, or just voting for your favorite bible-like character no matter how completely ignorant they may be?
What bandwagon are you talking about?
What solution to you think is being proposed, and how is it "worse that the problem" when the problem is not being mentioned either?
For now, I consider your questions to be trolls, just like a few others, unless you want to make more sense than blueringnuts
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 06:26pm PT
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Great point, skipt. Well said. If you are upset that the financial sector got a bailout without real noticeable benefits to the populace as a whole that you are literally Hitler.
Kristof did a pretty good job of articulating the general sentiment and manages to cite some actual data (much of which has been cited on this forum in regard to numerous topics).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-americas-primal-scream.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
Some bullet points: The frustration in America isn’t so much with inequality in the political and legal worlds, as it was in Arab countries, although those are concerns too. Here the critical issue is economic inequity. According to the C.I.A.’s own ranking of countries by income inequality, the United States is more unequal a society than either Tunisia or Egypt.
Three factoids underscore that inequality:
¶The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
¶The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
¶In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.
More broadly, there’s a growing sense that lopsided outcomes are a result of tycoons’ manipulating the system, lobbying for loopholes and getting away with murder. Of the 100 highest-paid chief executives in the United States in 2010, 25 took home more pay than their company paid in federal corporate income taxes, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.
To underscore skipt's point he continued
Living under Communism in China made me a fervent enthusiast of capitalism. I believe that over the last couple of centuries banks have enormously raised living standards in the West by allocating capital to more efficient uses. But anyone who believes in markets should be outraged that banks rig the system so that they enjoy profits in good years and bailouts in bad years.
Funny, that seemed to be one of the major points behind the Tea Party protests. Those nazi communists.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2011 - 06:46pm PT
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I appreciate you liking my point, but to quote Jon Stewart, maybe take it down a notch?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 06:50pm PT
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Relevance? fatty
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 06:53pm PT
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Entertainment has value, but yes, the amounts we pay ball players is out of whack.
To realize that there should be a limit to how much one can earn, just realize that we already limit people/corporations from being monopolies. Why do we do that if one should be able to make as much as they can? Do you know Chaz?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 06:57pm PT
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"Entertainment has value, but yes, the amounts we pay ball players is out of whack."
You make it sound as though the we are you and I when you say "we pay ball players"....I'd prefer it be said that owners and fans pay ball players what they get paid...... and I don't pay ball players anything.... Unless she's doing a really good job at it too... then she may get a tip (no pun intended)
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:00pm PT
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So, although I think the income inequality is too great, the only way to change it is to get the end users to stop using the product.
The primary problem involves a bought and paid for political system.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:02pm PT
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Too late...
I'm already there....
Bwahahaa
You are starting today? I've been on the "eliminating the end user money" for the last many years....
You have some catching up to do
next?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:08pm PT
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Fatty is just trying to frame the problem so that he can blame the little guy who in reality can't be the cause of the problem because he has no power because our politicians don't really serve the little guy.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:09pm PT
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Does that mean that parents who stay at home to raise kids are worth nothing? Market pays them nothing.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:18pm PT
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Plenty wrong with the big guys, plenty wrong with the little guys as well.
And yet you frame the answer so that it appears the little guy is to blame. If only we wouldn't support those large corporations. Yet how can we not if they are the only ones we can buy from.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:20pm PT
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Eliminate the estate tax
Yep, protect those estates so that money can be past on so that we can continue to protect the power elite. Lets continue to create a landed gentry.
A graduated estate tax is what we should have.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:25pm PT
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Still, stay at home people get paid nothing. According to the theory you noted, that means the market deems them worth nothing.
And children. They are worth nothing.
And the unemployed. They are worth nothing.
And the retired - worth nada.
And the seriously infirm - zippo.
Maybe the theory needs a bit of work?
edit: just occurred to me that during the last part of his life, Jobs was worth nothing (according to this theory).
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:25pm PT
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Crimpie
Right again.
cute movie stars, high school dropout ball players, gansta rap singers Sure they make lots of money. Much more than some of us would think they're worth. But in the end, they are employees, getting paid as much as they can in a free market. One might argue that entertainers have moral obligations that "gangsta rap singers" don't meet. Or not. But they are all Employees. When they don't perform, they don't make as much money.
I'm in favor of the same "get paid what you're bloody well worth" mechanism for CEOs. Yet how do you determine their worth? Plenty of them were paid huge bonuses while the US and world economies were collapsing.
Take just BofA for example:
On August 3, 2009, Bank of America agreed to pay a $33 million fine, without admission or denial of charges, to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the non-disclosure of an agreement to pay up to $5.8 billion of bonuses at Merrill. The bank approved the bonuses before the merger but did not disclose them to its shareholders when the shareholders were considering approving the Merrill acquisition, in December 2008. $5.8 Billion (with a B) bonuses to the brilliant minds who ran Merrill Lynch into bankruptcy.
BofA
In 2010, the bank was accused by the US federal government of defrauding schools, hospitals, and dozens of state and local government organizations via misconduct and illegal activities involving the investment of proceeds from municipal bond sales. As a result, the bank agreed to pay $137.7 million, including $25 million to the Internal Revenue service and $4.5 million to state attorneys general, to the affected organizations to settle the allegations.
BofA
During 2011, Bank of America began conducting personnel reductions of an estimated 36,000 people, contributing to intended savings of $5 billion per year by 2014.
Bank of America received $20 billion in the federal bailout from the U.S. government through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on January 16, 2009, and also got a guarantee of $118 billion in potential losses at the company.[75] This was in addition to the $25 billion given to them in the Fall of 2008 through TARP. The additional payment was part of a deal with the US government to preserve Bank of America's merger with the troubled investment firm Merrill Lynch.
During Ken Lewis' tenure as CEO and Chairman of the Board of BofA his earnings were:
In October, 2009, at the suggestion of Kenneth Feinberg, the U.S. Treasury's special master for compensation, Lewis decided to forgo salary or bonus in 2009. His 2008 salary was about $1.5 million. "He has taken home $148.8 million from cash and stock sales since taking over the bank in 2001, according to Equilar, a compensation research firm. He is also leaving with more than $135 million in retirement benefits, including the pension and $10 million in life insurance benefits, according to an analysis of corporate filings by James F. Reda & Associates, an independent consulting firm." That's about $2 from every working person in America, over a period of 8 years. Paid to one man. Who didn't even do much good for his own company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Lewis_(executive)
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 07:50pm PT
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Unlike fatty's republican friends....
"parents that stay at home allow the other parent to spend more time producing income."
The little people at the bottom cannot just materialize income out of thin air.... like the fat cat bankers can....
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 16, 2011 - 08:05pm PT
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Jeff, bullsh#t
Name the significant legislation to regulate the financial industry passed by the Repubs
Name the legislation passed by the Repubs that directly benefits consumers.
then,, when you are done saying nothing, apologize to everyone here for being full of shit
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 08:06pm PT
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fattrad
don't forget to ask McCarthy to support you for Emperor of Yosemite.
1031 tax deferred exchanges.
Even though I'm reasonably well informed financially, I had to look it up.
the exchange of certain types of property may defer the recognition of capital gains or losses due upon sale, and hence defer any capital gains taxes otherwise due...the properties exchanged must be held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment. WOW. And you say it will be "revenue neutral". So you're going to remove a tax break (I won't call it a "loophole") to corporations, real estate developers, real estate investors (even Mom and Pop).
So if you "exchange" a certain type of investment or "productive use" property, you would have to pay capital gains tax when you get the profit, instead of later.
Tell me, if it's revenue neutral, how it helps anyone.
Capital gains tax of 10%????
So money I make by the sweat of my brow is taxed at say: 33% plus social security, medicare, unemployment compensation, etc.
Yet if I sit in my chair, buy and sell capital items like airplanes, ships, business parks, I only have to pay 10%??
You really don't get it do you?
Maybe I don't get it. Instead of developing technologies to make our vanishing manufacturing sector more capable and efficient, I should take up investment banking. Got an internship I can apply for?
I'm not going into the whole estate tax argument because it's really all about greedy socialists and those poor wealthy who can't pass all their stuff onto their kids.
For deaths occurring in 2010, up to $5,000,000 can be passed from an individual upon his or her death without incurring estate tax $10Million for couples.
Over $5Million (or 10), the max tax rate is currently 35%. Already down from 55% in 2001. Oh the poor little rich boys and girls. They might have to go out and get their next $million the Merrill Lynch way "we earn it".
And a lower estate tax rate reduces the incentive for people to donate to charitable causes.
Besides, the estate tax is an employment guarantee for tax accountants and lawyers. Eliminate the estate tax and you'll be putting thousands more people OUT of work.
WHOOPS, I got into the Estate Tax argument.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 08:33pm PT
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Jeff: again we are largely in agreement.
Of course the owners of BofA who are losing money include plenty of 95% 'ers, losing money on their direct investments or through their 401ks or mutual funds or IRAs as BofA stock tanks. AND BofA starts charging them $5 per month to use their debit cards.
Is it a wonder people are pissed?
Back to the Estate Tax for a moment. The estate tax rate has almost zero affect on the US Treasury.
Estate Tax revenue as % of total tax revenue for 2010: 0.9% 2000 (Clinton) 1.3%
Business income tax 2010: 9.6% 2000: 10.8%
Personal income tax 2010: 43.4% 2000: 51.5%
Employment taxes: Social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc 2010: 43.7% 2000: 33.3%
Excise taxes 2010: 2.4% 2000: 2.8%
You too can download the IRS tax statistics as a spreadsheet from:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=171960,00.html
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 08:44pm PT
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HighTraverse
Asking fatty to do any background on any factual anything.... may be fruitless......
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 16, 2011 - 08:47pm PT
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Jingy
I'm betting fattrad has all the facts and ins and outs of derivatives, estate tax planning, short selling and junk bonds wired.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Oct 16, 2011 - 09:07pm PT
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you give him a lot of credit....
I wonder if that will have any sway with him??
I trust that man very little (my own opinion) and as far as smarts... he's the same as another colorful character here on the topo....
Just as ignorant, just as reactionary, just as... well.... blue
Think about it....
The guy comes onto a "Climbers forum" to talk about his personal backing for a prepublican right wing panzy....
I'm all for freedom of speech... I'm all for the right to choose... and I'm all for personal liberties....
His choices say a lot about his character
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 09:52pm PT
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The tea partiers said.. Listen to us, or we will come back with guns.
It is just frustration. There is the potential for violence in every area of society when frustration reaches a high enough level. Including religion.
So the key is to figure out what the frustration is about, rather then focusing on the negativity of the potential for violence. If you do that, then you negate any way to avoid the violence.
The tea partiers had legitimate beefs, even though some of their membership promoted violence.
The same is possibly true of the OWS movement. Though their concerns aren't necessarily coherent yet, nor understood.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 09:56pm PT
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Short/simple Question -
If I make money and die, why can't I give it to my kids or grandkids? I earned it. Why can't I keep it or give it to my family?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 16, 2011 - 09:59pm PT
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The only violence that ever happened at a Tea Party rally was when some of your fellow union goons severely beat a black man Moosie.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:00pm PT
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I didn't say that there was violence at the tea party gatherings. I said they had signs saying that if they were ignored, then they would come back with guns.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:06pm PT
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You keep posting one picture.
Who is he?
It turns out one rally where one guy showed up with a weapon, the guy was a Democrat and a plant.
Crowds with news media attract nuts like lightbulbs attract moths. Trying to characterize a movement from isolated and primarily staged photos is ludicrous.
Every "Tea Party" gathering ended peacefully with the area cleaner than before.
The flea party will leave filth, mayhem, looting, arson and anarchy in their wake.
Just wait for it.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:27pm PT
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What if I want to give millions away? Why can't I give it to grandchildren and great-grandchildren? As well as several million to charities I like. It is my money.
It is money earned and already taxed. If I feel like gifting money to my relatives upon my death why should government stop me?
I made the money so it makes sense that government should take half when I die. Sounds like a very sound plan.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:27pm PT
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TGT, are you saying that the signs saying.. "We came unarmed, this time" were all written by a democrat?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:34pm PT
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I'm saying that your trying to paint the "tea Party" as some sort of anarchistic, racist mob is a figment of your own feeble imagination, (or projection).
The "tea Party" cleaned up the premises, went home and won elections.
The flea party will end up going on an anarchistic orgy of arson and looting and then go home to mom and pops to sleep off the hangover.
You aren't the 99%
The 90% haven't cottoned to mobs since Shay's Rebellion was the impetuous for a republican Constitution in 1786.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:54pm PT
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Rok. Check your facts before you bet or are so certain of it.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 10:59pm PT
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Rokjox
In short, you are asking for my money. Why?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:01pm PT
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Because Rox is the poster child for the zero liability voter.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:05pm PT
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TGT-
Thanks, it is nice that some folks understands that money is made, not taken, in America.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:06pm PT
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When did the thinking become tax-centric?
I thought the government was entitled to what it needed to get by on to do the basic job it had to do, protect your liberties.
When did it spawn rokjox-type guys who come from the view of looking at individual incomes and getting mad that someone who has more gets to keep it?
I think what he is actually mad about is that he paid $100 for the basketball game, which contributed to the baller's millions for the year and he wants the money back. Or he paid his mortgage this year, which was mostly interest, and the banker got rich, and so he wants his money back.
If that isn't the problem, is it the no-bid contracts that guys get through well-placed lobbyists and pals which make them billions off of Rok's tax money and he doesn't want to be the only sucker who has 1/2 of his disposable income blown up in a useless war or failed Fannie Mae?
What, Rokjox, is really bothering you? Because I know it isn't the dumbest thing on my list.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:15pm PT
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Tooth-
I am tax centric on my views. Of course you aren't because you probably pay none (just a guess). Let me know if I'm wrong.
I'm an American born and raised, and have no regrets!
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:20pm PT
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Example- tonight, Obama, Dems and Repubs just took over, who wuld you give the keys too?
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:22pm PT
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I think that if I don't want to spend my post-tax dollars on myself, I should be able to spend them on whomever I want, or let them spend those dollars however they want.
Why should someone else take that decision from me? The decision of what I want to happen to my wealth? An interaction between myself and another non-corporate entity on planet earth. I paid my dues on it, that would be permissible in the land of the free.
Look at it this way. I could see fattrad criticizing how they aren't free in Iran and how the government intervenes in interpersonal interactions and saying how America is better because they are the land of the free etc.
But it's not true. And you think that is somehow justified?
If you think that the government should step in at that point, where do you think the line should be drawn?
Or are you thinking about it from the government's perspective, take as much as possible? Or from a socialist's perspective, take from them, give to us?
What justification is there? If it is a loophole problem, address that without infringing on personal liberties.
What is YOU beef again?
Rok, the 6 rentals. Mabye the dad did other things to the son as well. But where do you draw the line of interfering with your fellow American's personal liberties? Isn't that none of your business?
edit.
oh, I didn't say no income taxes. The reality of it is that Even without a death tax you get taxed on the gifted money these past couple years.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:30pm PT
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Tooth, Do you see any problem with the disparity between the wealthiest and the middle class, or the poor?
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:37pm PT
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I'm confused. How much do you pay the government a year? I obviously don't pay anything compared to you in taxes or charity because I believe in paying the people. Then uncle sam slams me for several 100,000 legal. Aint't I an as#@&%e! Make sure to give the government their fair share!
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:37pm PT
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I see a problem with the system that allows that to happen.
Do you see how it will continue to happen unless the system is changed? Taxing people is already part of the system.
eg.
I see how global warming could be a problem. But my solution isn't making ice cubes and piling them up in the arctic. It is removing the cause of the warming.
Taking money from rich people is like shipping ice cubes up north.
If they got rich from lobbyist getting no-bid contracts from their buddy in the WH and then not following through with production, do you think that may be a problem? It is taking money from the poor without providing a service (bombing Iraqi's) for them.
Taking the money from the rich and giving it back to the government isn't going to fix a thing. It will corrupt the government and cause more things to happen which caused the problem in the first place.
How do you not see that?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:42pm PT
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Tooth, right now there are studies that say that 500 families own 50 percent of the worlds wealth. As you point out, they probably got at least some of that wealth by controlling the political system which created the economic situation. So how do you solve that problem once you have created a landed gentry? If you don't tax estates.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:43pm PT
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tooth-
why will taking money from Americans make you happy? I've never asked for any. I am very happy!!!!
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:44pm PT
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A poll from CNN....Which protest movement do you favor more, Occupy Wall Street or the tea party?
Occupy
70%
253484
Tea party
30%
110300
Teabaggers are going south...quickly.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:47pm PT
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Do you vote Qball? Did you go to a public school? Do you drive on public highways? Have you gone to a publicly supported hospital? Have you ever called the police or the fire department? Do you like breathing clean air and drinking clean water?
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:48pm PT
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So if you know that there is a problem, identified the 500 of them, what is the next step?
Making sweeping generalizing laws that affect the other 360million people isn't going to solve THAT problem.
When was the US functioning well, I mean, when was the middle class growing and the USA a place to build your dreams?
Now what conditions were in place for that to happen?
What conditions created the disparity today? What do you do to fix that?
It surely isn't arguing about changing taxes on the 99% a few percent. You know that death and estate taxes don't affect those 500 families.
And if you did manage to lobby and use the government to take the wealth from them and spread it around, how do you know it won't happen again?
What is it in the system that is creating the problem?
Rokjox says it is the death tax.
Q-ball, taking money from Americans won't make me happy. Not sure where you got that from.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:50pm PT
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When was the US functioning well, I mean, when was the middle class growing and the USA a place to build your dreams?
Taxes were higher when things were going well in America. At least taxes were higher for the wealthy. So were estate taxes.
We supported public education. We supported systems like social security and medicare.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 16, 2011 - 11:51pm PT
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You know that death and estate taxes don't affect those 500 families.
You aren't making any sense. So they don't die? They don't pay estate taxes? Why.. because they found loopholes? So the way forward would seem to be to close the loopholes. Not do away with the tax.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:02am PT
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Rok, you can gift $15,000 free of taxes to individuals per year in your country. Trust funds work well too, but I last looked into them in Canada, so I'm confusing it with the US rules. I agree with you that there are so many ways to spread it around and not get taxed on it. That's why Im wondering why adding another law or trail in the corn maze is going to slow down the rich who are flying the helicopters? These laws have been in place except for the past few years, and still there are 500 who managed to get around them and own 50% of the wealth (apparently).
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:04am PT
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Tooth, taxes on estates have been going down while the disparity between the wealthy and everyone else has been growing.
Yes, they have gamed the system, but what solutions do you have?
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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Hey Roxjox,
Why do you care about my knowledge? I know you fail, Some day you will get up that hill!!!
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:07am PT
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I haven't identified the cause of the problems yet. All we know are the problems on this thread apparently.
If we are saying the cause of the problem is dads giving their sons money, then yes, estate or death taxes would slow that down. But dads give their sons money in every country around the world. Heck, they do it in Canada. But the spread is getting wider much faster in the US don't you think?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:08am PT
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In part because estate taxes are going down here.
Edit: Another part of the problem is things like property taxes being frozen. That came about in an effort to help old people on fixed incomes keep their homes, but it had unintended consequences. It also allowed businesses to keep their property taxes low, making it much more difficult for new businesses to compete. Since our political system is corrupt by money, it may not have been an unintended consequence.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:12am PT
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What if the problem isn't dad's starting a company and passing it on where it continues to grow?
What if it is stemming from individuals having access to tax bases and the strings that run those systems?
I think the US situation is bigger than one type of tax being at 0% for one year.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:16am PT
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I agree that it is bigger then that one tax, but that is part of the problem. See my edit above.
There are other problems, such as the loosening of rules about media which undermined the fair and balanced intentions of the regulations.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:18am PT
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Part of the solution may be campaign finance reform.
But the problems really are deeper then that. I believe that they are spiritual. I don't think that there is anyway to legislate that.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:21am PT
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Have you gone to a publicly supported hospital?
ALL hospitals are publically supported. Even the private ones through favored tax treatment.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:21am PT
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That's funny John. I don't know the history on the media thing, but I just heard that Fox news wasnt' allowed into Canada this year because we apparently don't think they are fair and balanced enough!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:22am PT
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That's funny John. I don't know the history on the media thing, but I just heard that Fox news wasnt' allowed into Canada this year because we apparently don't think they are fair and balanced enough!
I admire the Canadians wisdom.
..
I knew that Ken. I don't think Qball has really thought out his position. That he has never used public money.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:27am PT
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If I use a hospital, or have the potential to use the hospital as much or more than anyone else, should I be taxed more than someone else for it?
What about roads? Your only legal way to tax for roads is through gas taxes, representation, etc.
If that is ok, what about income taxes? Following the same logic, shouldn't they be flat taxes as well? I mean, the millionaire doesn't have to pay more for gas at the pump because he has more money! Should he pay a higher percentage of his income for senator's salaries or for millitary actions?
Here in Canada Indians pay less for their gas if they buy it on reserves.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:31am PT
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income tax should be progressive. A flat tax is actually regressive. The poorer you are, the more it hurts or becomes impossible to pay.
A graduated tax is graduated for everyone.
Your first 10 grand is taxed at one rate.
your second 10 grand is taxed at a higher rate.
On up.
that happens for everyone.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:44am PT
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Chaz: What's wrong with income inequality?
Nothing, it's income thievery that is the problem.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:45am PT
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I'm very angry at Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, they are more successful than me.
Face facts, fattrad. EVERYBODY is more sucessful than you.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:51am PT
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Lotta fake posters here. You have to wonder why.
What conditions created the disparity today? What do you do to fix that?
Massive tax cuts for the rich resulting in shifting of the tax burden to the middle class.
The rich have used the extra money to buy up the resources of the country, resulting in a major shift of the material wealth of the USA from the middle class to the few.
Fix it through tax policy resulting in a shift BACK to a broader base of wealth ownership.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:59am PT
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How do you write tax laws to get those who have a monopoly on those resources to give it up?
How do you motivate others to take the responsibility of managing these resources?
Or do you leave it to the government to manage?
How are you going to do this in today's economy where the population would much rather sell Yosemite to China to pay what we owe to China?
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:02am PT
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:09am PT
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What do these occupy people think they are accomplishing? I haven't read anything about that.
I mean, what are the mechanics of change with them? Does the group have anyone who knows how things work, or a politician that can tell them that in fact the changes they forced by camping out are the changes that will effect the change they want?
I don't get it. Even if they rotate people through the government, isn't the thing they are protesting deeper than that?
It isn't as simple as picking up the pitchfork and torch anymore, but it seems like the 99% are acting like it is.
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:14am PT
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Wait, isn't that just a typically day in downtown Olympia WA?
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Risk
Mountain climber
Olympia, WA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:20am PT
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I guess so, as they are setting up for long/permanent stay. Show us a pic from San Diego of the police action there Friday. Couldn't find one on the net. . . .
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:22am PT
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Tooth.. the movement has no leadership. Its just expressed frustration at this point. Who knows if it will peter out or gain momentum. Lots of movements in history started unorganized and without a clear message.
If they are to grow, then their message will have to become clearer.
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Chinchen
climber
Way out there....
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:23am PT
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Tooth, perhaps they just want to be seen and heard. Just maybe something will give. But I doubt it. Those in power will never release it.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:38am PT
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It is fair, but in order to give the government as much as they get right now the majority of people couldn't live on a flat tax anymore. It wouldn't work.
Either there would have to be fewer taxes collected or people would have to make more and live on less.
But you are right. It is fair. Just not possible at this point.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:39am PT
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Nope,, its more harmful the poorer you become. Try it some time. Find out just how much the bare minimum is to live on, Then add a 10 percent tax to it.
When you are poor, the financial decisions become more profound.
A wealthy person doesn't need to work 10 percent harder to feed and clothe himself. A poor person just might have to depending on how close they are to abject poverty.
A flat tax affects a person less and less the farther they get away from poverty, even though they are paying a greater amount of money.
A flat tax is regressive.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:45am PT
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Which decisions are harder? Feed my kids, or put a roof over their heads, or get medical care when you are living at the poverty level.
Versus, which luxury car do I buy and where do I go on vacation, when you are wealthy.
The difference in those decisions is what makes a flat tax regressive.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:47am PT
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Bloated spending? How about two wars given to us by the repubs? How about the biggest military budget in history?
I guess we could do without clean air and clean water.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:03am PT
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There is and always will be people living at and below a line.
There is and always will be tax deductions that basically allow for no tax to be paid on the first money you owe to that point.
Right now 49% of Americans pay no Income tax anyway. So changing a tax style that is graduated to say 10% across the board will not affect them.
I lived in the US, and paid from nothing to a lot in taxes each year there. Now I pay there and in Canada.
In Canada I found the ticket to accumulating wealth and not getting taxed on it. Incorporating. Unfortunately, in the US it isn't recognized as say a LLC, so I get taxed on what I make in Canada in the US, since a tax shelter in Canada doesn't get recognized in the US and an US tax shelter doesn't get recognized in Canada. The same with student loans. I have to make an extra $70k a year to pay for taxes since I want to pay my loans off in less than 30 years and Canada doesn't give me tax breaks on them like the US would if they were Fed loans. Which they aren't, so I don't get it in the US either.
I live on less than what I pay in taxes after education payments. And will for more than the next decade.
I truly think the answer you are looking for is in how you can use corporations to move money and to influence the tax rules. It has less to do with personal taxes, flat or graduated.
And don't end up paying taxes in 2 countries at once!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:05am PT
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Nope.. I shouldn't need a graph. It is simple math and simple logic.
You just have to understand how difficult it is to pay the bills when you are poor.
10 percent of someones wages when they are fighting to pay the bills every month is much more difficult then even 50 percent of someone making 100 million dollars a year. If you can't live on 50 million dollars a year, then you are doing something wrong. Sure, you might think you need that much, but you can cloth and feed yourself and your family, plus put a roof over their heads and get them the best medical care. It really is that simple.
My only point is that a flat tax is regressive, and is thus not truly fair.
Certainly a flat tax could be less difficult then a progressive tax if the progressive tax jumps up quickly and does it before one gets out of poverty. But that isnt' the point. The point is that a flat tax is regressive, and thus not truly fair.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:09am PT
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Right now 49% of Americans pay no Income tax anyway. So changing a tax style that is graduated to say 10% across the board will not affect them.
Not true. Everyone who earns money pays a tax on their income. Mostly in the form of social security and medicare taxes, but those are taxes on income. Some on the right are trying to do away with social security and medicare. Maybe not all of them, but enough to give the system problems.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:13am PT
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John,
I have found that the more I make, the more it is because I'm putting my butt on the line to create business/jobs/etc. and bring people along with me.
Taxing 50% of that would cripple my income that I'm using to develop my business. I only live on the same amount that I did when I was climbing at Josh 3 days a week, but now I climb only once a month, and work the rest of the time. If I had taxes that high I would quit growing, lay off a few people and still be canning food for the winter etc.
I don't know where the line is where people no longer have to reinvest their money, but In California everyone drove BMW's and it shocked me. They all lived in crummy apartments. In BC nobody drives them unless they live in a huge house. So I guess everything is priorities.
Edit:
The % of Income tax in the US doesn't include SS and Medicare. Those are capped for people anyway, it doesn't increase all the way up as income increases. It is a different calculation as Income Tax and is taxed differently.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:19am PT
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The income tax isn't on a difficulty scale as you repeat in your arguments. It isn't designed to make life equally difficult for everyone. So you can't judge it's fairness based on resultant difficulty.
If it was, nobody would ever make more than 50k a year take home and in fact, everyone would end up with that after rebates. That would be fair.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:20am PT
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Tooth, I only used that figure to show that a flat tax is regressive. A progressive tax can also be burdensome if the amounts are out of whack, but doing a flat tax isn't more fair then a progressive tax.
A flat tax is more difficult for the poor. The people who can least handle more difficulty.
If you want to argue that our regulations and requirements for small businesses are out of whack, then you wont get an argument from me. I agree that they are. Prop 13 in california is just once example, which favors businesses that have been in place for years. Handicap parking is another crazy example.
But saying that a flat tax is more fair is just plain wrong. A flat tax is regressive by nature.
You also wont get an argument from me about the complexity of our tax codes. Especially concerning businesses. It has gotten crazy.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:25am PT
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So then sales taxes are wrong? Or since they pay for different things compared to income tax it is alright?
What are taxes for? What makes some special, or eligible for flat taxes while it is wrong for other taxes to be flat? The use of that tax?
It is wrong to pay for military with a flat tax, but ok to pay for roads with a flat tax?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:32am PT
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Yes.. sales taxes are regressive. If they weren't, then why do we exempt food?
And I didn't say that they were wrong. I said that they are regressive. You said that flat taxes were fair. I just pointed out how they weren't.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:33am PT
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I'm arguing with two guys basically defending personal income from the government as if there isn't enough taxes paid by Americans already to take care of every American's needs.
Basically, if I can get free healthcare and all the other perks here in Canada on what I pay in taxes without my government being in as much debt as the US, why can't I get it with the equal amount of taxes I pay in the US?
Why this argument about why the rich should be taxed more? You know with how your government spends money that you could tax all the money from the top 5% and it would pay for only days of the debt.
And you know that it won't stop the problem from developing in the first place.
But it will make your government bigger, which costs more to run.
Rok, they don't quit making themselves rich. They move it offshore or do something else which essentially means they quit paying taxes. The one thing they don't do if they are smart is move to Canada!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:36am PT
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We voted for two wars. We need to pay for them. Sure, if we could stop doing that and reduce our military we could lower taxes, but that isn't happening in our society.
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:38am PT
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Isn't that happening in society with Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party?
What ARE they about?
edit: wait, you voted for two wars? Which poll/election was that?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:40am PT
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Tooth... stop being a pisser. YOu know what I meant. We voted for Bush. Twice.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:49am PT
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When I said "we" rox, I meant America. I was speaking to someone living in Canada. And yes, I remember the problems with the system. We still allowed it when we didn't revolt. So in essence, we voted for him.
Now its time to take a break from this. Good night.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 17, 2011 - 08:40am PT
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Hawk wrote back on the 13th:
Tking had no response to the 1,000 plus jobs i posted in montana. yes it is terribly difficult these days but jobs are not handed out on the street corner.
Earlier hawk wrote if someone was unemployed or underpaid it was because they were not motivated...that is what I took exception to, not the fact that jobs are out there...I agree it's tough, that was my point. You made it sound as if the folks out there struggling are lazy...I don't believe that's true.
and since Blue asked,
A couple of things that will help:
pull out of the wars
invest in our country's infrastructure
end the Bush tax cuts
Sorry it took so long to respond...working full time as well as starting a business...kinda weird since I don't fall in the 'job creator' category...
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 17, 2011 - 09:04am PT
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^^^^Cherry picking the fringe in an attempt to discredit the whole...
just sayin
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tooth
Trad climber
B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 09:55am PT
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66114.html#ixzz1b2aMmbbo
How about laying out a plan to balance the budget within 3 years? Including paying the president under 40k/yr?
A plan to strengthen the dollar and get out of debt without making promises that society can't keep without being taxed past the limit.
Here's someone who laid it out, and volunteered to get paid the median wage in the US to do it.
How do you differentiate between the rest of the republicans and obama when you compare the field to this guy?
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 10:28am PT
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"Cherry picking the fringe in an attempt to discredit the whole..."
tk, do you apply that same explanation to those who condemned the tea party as fascist and racist?
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 17, 2011 - 10:49am PT
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Yeah, I do.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 11:21am PT
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and since Blue asked,
A couple of things that will help:
pull out of the wars
invest in our country's infrastructure
end the Bush tax cuts
Thanks, Tkings.
Since I'm a big fan of cutting spending, I cannot disagree with your sentiment on pulling out of wars. Maybe all but Afghanistan, there're just too many bad boyz there and in Pakistan. Maybe leave an airbase or 2. Shut down the ones in Italy and Germany.
Infrastructure? We just spent 800 billion on "shovel-ready jobs". The monet was essentially looted. Maybe if it wa done better, I could agree more.
Bush tax-cuts? Not that big of a deal. It would raise my taxes too. I'm not a fan of paying more while the gov't can't control itself.
I think most Americans want more oversight in Wall Street. Better regulation that is actually enforced. Bring back Glass/Stiegel. Maybe get the gov't out of Fannie/Freddie and the buisness of home-loans to unworthy and unqualified people.
EDIT: Oh, and good luck with your new biz. I hope it works out well.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 17, 2011 - 12:35pm PT
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Conservative = self centered
If you have an open mind you can see how continued increasing income inequality will lead to negative consequences for America. I could spell it out but those that don't want to understand it still won't.
If you have an open mind you would see how a flat tax actually means the poorer someone is the greater the total percentage of their income is paid for all taxes. I could spell it out but those that don't want to understand it still won't.
It's not about coveting what someone else has, it's about creating the best environment for everyone who is willing to work to prosper.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:09pm PT
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The Occupy Vancouver group continue to camp in front of the art gallery - actually, it used to be the courthouse - and hopefully are having a nice time in the autumn sunshine, although it's a bit cool at night.
This is Co-op Week in B.C., so co-operatives and credit unions (financial co-ops) are in the news. A different and maybe better way to do things. http://www.vancouversun.com/business/solution+Occupy+Wall+Street+woes/5559462/story.html
Plus 2012 is International Year of the Co-operative.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:09pm PT
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Restructure the of role of politician as a civil servant, as opposed to means of personal enrichment and function cronyism.
How do you do this? Many of the jobs entail the control of power. Power is just as enticing as money.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:18pm PT
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I think another rot on our system is that the more money you have, the better your chances of winning elected office.
This is why we suffer the current a-holes in office, the Senate, the House, and state-wide offices.
The best person doesn't win, the one with the most money does.
F*#ked up...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:26pm PT
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Fatty, wouldn't you agree that McClintock would have helped Cali more than Arnold?
And Cain is a better choice than Romney?
Both of my guys are way better for everyone's interests than the 'establishment' or 'electable' person.
The Republican party is a disappointment to common conservatives and independants like myself.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:31pm PT
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Rather than a participatory democracy it has created representatives/specialists beholden to serve the interests of big money.
Yes, too many of our politicians are corrupt, but the people aren't that trustworthy either. We have voter initiatives in California, and they are a mess because people don't really study the issues, and they swallow the most appealing sound byte, which isn't always the truth.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:40pm PT
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I think another rot on our system is that the more money you have, the better your chances of winning elected office.
Something we can agree on. We should have public financing. Our current system means politicians need millions of dollars in donations to get elected. Then of course they have to make those people paying happy for the next election.
Both of my guys are way better for everyone's interests than the 'establishment' or 'electable' person. If by everyone you mean less than 1% of the people LOL.
McClintock and Cain however would be terrible. The would skew things further for the advantage of the very wealthy. McClintock is our rep now, which sucks, he encouraged people to go to town hall meetings and disrupt them. What an ahole. He is just like the Flea Baggers doing lame things like shitting on cop cars and disrupting traffic or business. Cain wanted to build a death fence to kill illegals, then said it was a joke when it clearly wasn't, no honest or honor. The only real candidates on the right at the Pauls. Not that I support them, but they are the only ones not full of sh#t.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:41pm PT
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I would call you an indepenadant hard Right Wing Conservative that Votes Republican O.k., true.
and that follows anything that the Right Wing Cult leaders say No, you just contradicted yourself.
so now you must stop the overtaking of America by Sharia Law and those Damn commies
Yeah, I'm working on it.
EDIT: Fet, you're wrong about McClintock. He's a true fiscal conservative. And he'd never encourage car-crapping. Let's be honest.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
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Democracy is a radical idea. Maybe we should try it.
Picking people to lead is easier then picking ideas or laws that work. Campaign finance reform is probably the best chance we have at fixing things.
People just don't have the time to study every issue. Even our politicians don't have the time to study every issue. I think that one thing that we should do is to slow down our law making so that there is more time to really look at things.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 01:51pm PT
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In retrospect, McClintock would have done a better job for California. There was no way to know that Arnold wanted to be loved by everyone and would only get tough on the budget during his last year.
Do you know how many Arnold-voters I talked to who played out the 'McClintock can't win even though I like him more'??? If all those people voted Tom, we'd be way better off today. Vote for what you believe, not what the media, pollsters, or party tells you. This is what really pisses me off!!!!
Cain is completely unprepared for the issues that would face him and 999 is no viable. Romney has made mistakes, he knows it, he is better prepared.
I keep hearing this crap, Fatty. It's Arnold all over again. Cain knows how to lead, especially in a financial crisis. Other issues he'd be confronted with are insignificant. That's what advisors, staff, and cabinet ministers are for.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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Fatty, I have no evidence. But he does seem to lead pretty well and turn around failing entities.
I think an ideal ticket would be Cain/Gingrich. Let Cain run the show with insider input and guidance from a super-smart, experienced man like Newt.
I think that is a perfect ticket.
Wes, of course you hate McClintock.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:07pm PT
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skip: I fail to see what isn't "fair" about a flat tax.
So, you do support raising taxes? Just not on the rich. Interesting.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:07pm PT
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^^^ WOW ^^^
Keep drinkin' brah.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:07pm PT
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I think another rot on our system is that the more money you have, the better your chances of winning elected office.
This is why we suffer the current a-holes in office, the Senate, the House, and state-wide offices.
The best person doesn't win, the one with the most money does.
F*#ked up...
Easy there, cowboy. Above is my full quote.
It applies aptly to Obama too. And Pelosi, and Reid, and Boxer, and Feinstein.
It plays against honest family-men like Tom McClintock, Lt Col Allen West, and the honorable Herman Cain.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:28pm PT
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The AIPAC board.
This is why I love Tommy McClintock. He doesn't give a f*#k about Jews, Blacks, Whites, Dems, Repubs....
He just wants a system that runs within it's means, regardless of race/ethnicity/social class.
He is truly an ideal man of the people. Yes he IS conservative, but he doesn't really push social crap like abortion and religion. He is a great fiscal conservative. And he's f*#king smart about that shit!
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 17, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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Fatty...I assume you voted for Arnie , the gropenator...? Remember what a fiasco the last actor-governor became...? RJ
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 17, 2011 - 03:04pm PT
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McClintock is a career politician and a carpet bagger. Yeah Bluey I didn't say he told people to crap on cars he told them to disrupt public meetings. That's not as bad but they both cross the line of civil democracy to being an ahole. And he does push his social conservatism on the rest of us. Believe what you want to believe but when you push your views into law that affect someone else you don't truly understand freedom and equality.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 03:19pm PT
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i'll never be one of the 1%, and i'm absolutely fine with that
i'll never be on of the 99%, and i'm absolutely proud of that
here's one for the rest of us:
http://the53.tumblr.com/archive
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 17, 2011 - 03:21pm PT
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You may not think it raises enough money. You may not like a lot of things.
But, you don't get to make up your own definitions of what fair means and claim everyone who doesn't agree is "unfair."
Who said anything about fair? The flat tax, or at least the proposals I've read and heard, will raise taxes on the working poor.
So, is that a tax increase you support?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 17, 2011 - 03:28pm PT
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Yeah Bluey I didn't say he told people to crap on cars he told them to disrupt public meetings. That's not as bad but they both cross the line of civil democracy to being an ahole. And he does push his social conservatism on the rest of us. Believe what you want to believe but when you push your views into law that affect someone else you don't truly understand freedom and equality.
Do you have any context into this before you slander him? Links?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 17, 2011 - 05:59pm PT
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^^^ so am I
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Oct 17, 2011 - 06:38pm PT
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In theory I'm ok with a voter education test. In practice, I don't think it is a good idea.
However, I am very much opposed to all these "Get Out the Vote" public service drives.
If you are paying attention, you should be fed up enough to vote. If you aren't, Please, Please, stay home.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 17, 2011 - 07:00pm PT
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Fatty; “ McClintock (scared the crap out of him when I mentioned the AIPAC board)”
Probably too scared since there is/are an investigation[s] going on with Congressional Ethics Committee against the funding of Congressional trips to Israel by the American Israel Education Fund, an affiliate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
From their tax returns, it is clear that AIPAC pays the salaries of staff at AIEF, meaning that a lobbying group is paying to organize Congressional trips supposedly organized by a nonprofit group in violation of Congressional travel guidelines prohibiting lobbyist- sponsored travel.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 17, 2011 - 08:07pm PT
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Fatty
I am sure you know how the dark money is distributed: Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel.
Corruption one of the things about this thread. Just like the other things that will never go away that we seek: drugs,alcohol,tobacco,prostitution and greed.
Or as the old saying goes: sex, drugs and rock and roll. Ah! Climbing of course.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 17, 2011 - 09:25pm PT
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Tell us again Fats how "many boots on the ground" troops did Teddy Roosevelt send into Morocco.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 17, 2011 - 09:31pm PT
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Tell us again how taxing internet sales would raise 700 billion dollars to pay for Medicare
what a dumb fuk
$15,000 Obama beats any 13th century evolution denying dumb ass Republican in 2012
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 18, 2011 - 12:50am PT
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So war, done any good climbs lately? 276 posts in a month, maybe ten on climbing threads, though few of substance, and another ten or twenty on non-climbing, non-political threads. It seems that you were rightly outed as troll early on.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 18, 2011 - 11:34am PT
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Where are your balls, Jeff.
I WILL put up $15K today to be held in a mutually agreeable account and holder.
You could not be in a better position right now, right now, to take my bet.
Obama is way down the polls and your Republicans are SO righteous.
Jeff, it does not get any better than this for you.
Show us all you are half the man I am.
$15,000 TODAY that Obama beats ANY evolution denying 13th century Republican and goes another four years.
Suck on it bitch.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 18, 2011 - 11:55am PT
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FYI - you can bet on the election over at sportsbook.com...currently Obama is a lock.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 18, 2011 - 11:56am PT
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Yeah, made a bundle betting on Obama in the Iowa Electronic Market in 08
Fattrad remains clueless
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 18, 2011 - 01:17pm PT
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One of the Tea Party's and conservatives favorite targets is TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Package)
Signed by Shrub on 3 Oct 2008.
So how's TARP doing? And some of their beneficiaries:
from Wikipedia
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008. It was a component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.
Originally expected to cost the U.S. taxpayers as much as $300 billion,[1] by December 16, 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the total cost would be $19 billion,[2] although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner argued that the final cost would be still lower.[3] This is significantly less than the taxpayers' cost of the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. The cost of that crisis amounted to 3.2 percent of GDP during the Reagan/Bush era, while the GDP percentage of the current crisis' cost is estimated at less than 1 percent.[4] While it was once feared the government would be holding companies like GM, AIG and Citigroup for several years, those companies are preparing to buy back the Treasury's stake and emerge from TARP within a year.[4] Of the $245 billion invested in U.S. banks, over $169 billion has been paid back, including $13.7 billion in dividends, interest and other income, along with $4 billion in warrant proceeds as of April 2010. AIG is considered "on track" to pay back $51 billion from divestitures of two units and another $32 billion in securities.[4] In March 2010, GM repaid more than $2 billion to the U.S. and Canadian governments and on April 21, GM announced the entire loan portion of the U.S. and Canadian governments' investments had been paid back in full, with interest, for a total of $8.1 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
So GM has paid the loan all back with interest. US Govt still owns 27% and Canada 16%. GM earned $4.7 Billion in 2010. WSJ estimates the US tax subsidies to GM are worth $45 Billion over the next 20 years. That's $2.2Billion per year. $6 per year subsidy from everyone in the US. At least their 61,500 US employees are still employed. US employees were 91,000 when they declared bankruptcy. That's nearly 30,000 people who had to find work and were on unemployment for at least some time. Unemployment which has now run out. Their current worldwide employment is 209,000. So they employ more than 2 people overseas for every 1 in the US.
Good deal for the US Taxpayer?
BofA received $45 Billion. All paid back in Dec 2009. Last quarter's profit: $6.2 Billion. Do a little math: that's approx $20 profit for every man, woman and child in the US in 1 quarter. While the economy is tanking and unemployment is over 9% with no improvement this entire year. And they're going to lay off 10.5% - 30,000 employees and charge you $5 per month to use your ATM card for purchases.
CitiGroup received $45 Billion. All paid back by Dec 2010 with $12Billion profit for the US. However we're still guaranteeing more than $200 Billion in "troubled assets". So you and I aren't out of the woods yet. CitiGroup's cash in hand is $462 Billion, more than the GDP of Sweden. More than $1500 for every resident of the US. CitiGroup just reported $3.2 Billion profit for last quarter.
Wells Fargo received $25 Billion, all paid back by Dec 2009 with $132 Million profit to the US Treasury. Wells Fargo had $4.1 Billion net income las quarter.
So these three banks made $22 Billion last quarter. Nearly $70 profit for every man, woman, child and illegal immigrant in the US. That's what I call part of the top 1%. Excepting possibly Wells Fargo, these companies would likely be GONE if it weren't for TARP. How many more 10's of thousands would have been laid off?
How much will they pay in income tax? You'll have to read their year end balance sheets to find out.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 18, 2011 - 01:34pm PT
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 18, 2011 - 01:39pm PT
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^^^^^^
I had to read it 3X to get it.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Oct 18, 2011 - 01:42pm PT
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GOP= greed over people.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 18, 2011 - 02:06pm PT
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fattrad
NOPE. And having anticipated that question I'd already decided to answer it with my own question: How much did those "little people's" stock appreciate in the last quarter?
I'll answer for BofA common stock (BAC): In the last three months, it's down about 40%. So the "little people" owning BAC in their pension plans are getting screwed. Especially if they're unemployed and having to draw them down early. The less they own of BOC the better in the past 3 months.
CitiGroup new common stock: C is only down 12% in the past 3 months.
Dow Jones Industrials down 15%. NASDAQ down 10%. Apple UP 5%
Over the last 6 months:
DOWJ down about 12%. NASDAQ down about 11%. Apple up about 20%
Shall I go on?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 18, 2011 - 02:24pm PT
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fattrad: What's the matter? Is Bernie getting under yours and Kevin (McCarthy)'s skin? One progressive/socialist in a Senate with 4 Tea Party nuts? 62 nuts in the House Tea Party caucus, led by the Queen Nut Bachmann.
What's the matter? Are you afraid of a little democracy? Don't want any opposition voices? Especially when they have a grasp of the facts?
What's the matter with you Big Cheeses that Bernie scares you so much? Is he threatening your much desired "Republican Hegemony"? Do you resent him because he's the nearest to an Honest Politician we have? His points 3, 5 and 6 are all right on. The others, debatable.
fatty
If they're employed, hopefully they're long term investors. But when you're out of work and out of unemployment insurance you have to start selling your retirement assets. If they're short term investors, they don't have the time to do productive work. Presumably my stock fund managers are active traders. Lot of good they've done me.
The obvious (to most) point is that in the same period that these banks' common stock, and the stock market as a whole, has declined by as much as 1/6 of their value, the banks have made $Billion in profits, after (because of?) the TARP bailout. Also presumably the stock traders. Has YOUR income decreased by 1/6 in the last six months? I rather doubt it.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 18, 2011 - 02:25pm PT
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So Schrub gave 16 trillion to bail out the banks and nothing to the little people...? Don't worry those tax payer dollars will eventually sheckle back down to the little people..Be patient...RJ
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 18, 2011 - 02:44pm PT
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i was thinking about Cain's 9-9-9 plan. i had this image of a bunch of idiots voting for him and liking his plan, being sold on his talk (which i find enertaining but filled with nonsense, kind of like a male sarah palin). anyway, these voters would be like thinking of a great meal (taxplan) that Cain had prepared for them and when they tasted it (ie: the impact to their pocketbooks) it of course tasted like crap.
wall street would be happy though.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 18, 2011 - 05:19pm PT
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More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed’s lending programs during the financial crisis.
As a result of this audit, the American people have learned that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, huge foreign banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world. But none went to small businesses, not a single dime.
In other words, when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the federal government acted boldly, aggressively, and with a fierce sense of urgency to save our financial system from collapse with no strings attached.
Yes, the Tea Partiers protested this before it happened. Nobody listened. The OWS folk are the stupid ones who were for the bailouts but did not think anybody on Wall Street would take a bonus after them.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 18, 2011 - 06:00pm PT
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Now that all gthe banks have become creatures feeding of the government, what the hell do they need with the customers for? The Governemnt is 100% sewcure, but contract, and the customers are something less than that. A bank can make more money off a 0% loan than they EVER did on ALL their customers.
Bankers got NO incentive to EVER deal with customers, except for getting 20% on existing credit card loan balances...
... the whole damn industry has changed completely, and NO regulations apply to the new industry at all.
There are (and were) plenty of Regulations, and Dodd-Frank nearly doubled them. But if the incentives are distorted, regulations are worthless. Even useful regulations will usually have some workaround.
How did we get to the point where banks don't WANT people's deposits? This should be a wake up call that there is something severely wrong with Monetary policy.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 18, 2011 - 06:01pm PT
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2012 Presidential Election Winner from intrade:
Obama 50%
Romney 33%
Perry 6%
Cain 4%
Sorry right wingers.
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Jorroh
climber
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Oct 18, 2011 - 08:07pm PT
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Fattrad.."Bernie Sanders, another looney case. Kevin is actively searching for a candidate to take out that whack job."
nice ad hominem there Fattrad. I await your insightful point by point refutation, i know a smart guy like yourself would never just start calling people names for no reason.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 18, 2011 - 08:24pm PT
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commiecrats... This data is a prediction, not the results of a poll.
Lol. Not the sharpest tool are you capt obvious?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 18, 2011 - 09:52pm PT
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Intrade is not a "poll"
No one gets a phone call and gets asked any questions.
Anyone in the world can open an account on Intrade or the Iowa Electronic Market and put their own money in an account there.
They then choose how much of their own money they want to bet on all kinds of things,
including how they see the current political scene playing out on election day 2012.
Because they are betting with their own money, they tend to be much more astute, knowledgeable about the subject matter.
As a result, the "odds" that are established by that pool of betting is highly accurate in "predicting" outcomes.
FAR more accurate than a "poll" of supposedly random people asking what they "thought" about something after eating dinner.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 18, 2011 - 10:08pm PT
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Yes Donald, that is correct.
As news changes and evolves daily, so do the betting participants "bets".
The closer the event being bet on gets in time, the more accurate the final pool bets are.
But then, you knew all that already didn't you.
Being experienced in electronic betting and all, in addition to your in-depth knowledge of all issues.
You towering intellect, you.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 19, 2011 - 01:10am PT
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You posted it as if it were a legitimate poll with partisan significance.
Yeah, that's why I put "from intrade" to make it look like a poll...
The significance was in regards to people's place on the political spectrum not what party they were partisan to. The people who are willing to put their money where their mouths are think the moderate republican has the best chance. But Obama has the best chance of all.
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cliffhanger
Trad climber
California
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Oct 19, 2011 - 11:38am PT
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An Alternative Model to Private Profiteering on Wall Street: Public Banks
Ellen Brown, Truthout: "Publicly owned banks were instrumental in funding Germany's 'economic miracle' after the devastation of World War II. Although the German public banks have been targeted in the last decade for takedown by their private competitors, the model remains a viable alternative to the private profiteering being protested on Wall Street today."
Read the Article:
http://www.truth-out.org/public-option-banking-another-look-german-model/1318444344
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 19, 2011 - 11:41am PT
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We had plenty of small Community banks until Dodd Franks made it impossible for them to stay in buisiness.
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Robb
Social climber
The other side of life
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Oct 19, 2011 - 03:14pm PT
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Enjoy
Dear Investor:
Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:
How can we make money off them?
The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain - but there's plenty of money to be made on the way down.
The Rage Fund will seek out opportunities to invest in products that are poised to benefit from the spreading protests, from police batons and barricades to stun guns and forehead bandages. Furthermore, as clashes between police and protesters turn ever more violent, we are making significant bets on companies that manufacture replacements for broken windows and overturned cars, as well as the raw materials necessary for the construction and incineration of effigies.
It would be tempting, at a time like this, to say "Let them eat cake." But at Goldman, we are actively seeking to corner the market in cake futures. We project that through our aggressive market manipulation, the price of a piece of cake will quadruple by the end of 2011.
Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus. As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, "Occupy this."
Sincerely,
Lloyd Blankfein
Chairman, Goldman Sachs
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 19, 2011 - 03:16pm PT
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Communism sucks. The supertopo conservatives are right we need the conservative version of communism Facism! We need the government telling us what to believe and being totally involved in our most private of affairs, as long as they don't take any of our money. Because that's what freedom is all about.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 19, 2011 - 03:22pm PT
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 19, 2011 - 04:46pm PT
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The Conservatives are against this revolution
Just like the First American Revolution
Yeah, the funny part, Dr. F, is that in 1776, skipt would have wanted to hang the minute man he uses as an avatar!
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 19, 2011 - 04:48pm PT
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The Conservatives are against this revolution
Just like the First American Revolution
and the Cuban revolution.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 19, 2011 - 07:46pm PT
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Dellums is senile. At least that's what the Repubs said when he was Oakland Mayor. So now he's a Repub. What goes around comes around.
Dingus, don't try to talk sense. You won't be understood by your intended audience.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 19, 2011 - 11:29pm PT
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Here ya go.
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 20, 2011 - 08:38am PT
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Yeah public employees are certainly evil.
I'm going to dress up as one for Halloween.
BOO!
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 08:49am PT
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Darnold: Left wing street demonstrations...
Donald would have been on the sidelines cheering on the British to shoot.
The great dichotomy of the right: they despise revolution, and yet claim to be like the patriots of 1776. No wonder they are confused.
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Oct 20, 2011 - 09:35am PT
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figures don't lie, but liars figure ^^^^^^^^^ (don't believe it)
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 10:53am PT
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If you work for a wire factory that goes bankrupt, you may well have a rough year or two before you find another job, and your income may never fully recover. But if you own that factory, it will be years before you have an income even close to what you enjoyed before--and it's very possible that you'll never get there at all.
Oh, boo-hoo-hoo!!!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:01pm PT
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Crocodile Tears
As the author notes near the end. The data only go to 2009. Sure Wall Street (boy there's a generalization if there ever was one) took it in the shorts in 2008 and 2009. Then the taxpayers of the US bailed them out. You and I.
Let's see what the 2010 data shows when it's published. $22 Billion profit for 3 banks in Q3 2011. So you suppose the bonuses won't reflect this?
By the way, I had to deal with a "Vice President" at a well respected brokerage firm last week. He was dumb as a post and his executive assistant had to come into the meeting to bail him out. He was too stupid to be an accounts payable clerk at any company I've worked for.
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new world order-
climber
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:15pm PT
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We need a world government!
A world central bank, world single electronic currency and a world army to impose the will of the world government.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:19pm PT
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new world order-
climber
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Oct 20, 2011 - 12:21pm PT
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nwo,
How do you know what Obama dreams about every night?????????????
The evil one Both wings of the U.S. government are of the same bird, fattrad.
Do you honestly believe things will change for the better should a Republican win in 2012?
You're dreamin'.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 02:01pm PT
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from vdh:
"So here goes an explanation for the multifaceted unrest. For the last six decades, constant technological breakthroughs and growing government subsidies have given a billion and a half Westerners lifestyles undreamed of over the last 2,500 years. In 1930, no one imagined that a few pills could cure life-threatening strep throat. In 1960, no one planned on retiring at 55. In 1980, no one dreamed that millions could have instant access to civilization’s collective knowledge in a few seconds through a free Google search.
Yet, the better life got in the West for ever more people, the more apprehensive they became, as their appetites for even more grew even faster. Remember, none of these worldwide protests are over the denial of food, shelter, clean water, or basic medicine.
None of these protesters discuss the effects of 2 billion Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Japanese workers’ entering and mastering the globalized capitalist system, and making things more cheaply and sometimes better than their Western counterparts.
None of these protesters ever stop to ponder the costs — and ultimately the effect on their own lifestyles — of skyrocketing energy costs. Since 1970 there has been a historic, multitrillion-dollar transfer of capital from the West to the Middle East, South America, Africa, and Russia through the importation of high-cost oil and gas.
None seem to grasp the significance of the fact that, meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Westerners were living longer and better, retiring earlier, and demanding ever more expensive government pensions and health care.
Something had to give.
And now it has. Federal and state budgets are near bankrupt. Countries like Greece and Italy face insolvency. The U.S. government resorts to printing money to service or expand entitlements. Near-zero interest rates, declining home prices, and huge losses in mutual funds and retirement accounts have crippled the middle classes.
Bigger government, marvelous new inventions, and creative new investment strategies are not going to restore the once-taken-for-granted good life. Until “green” means competitive renewable energy rather than a con for crony capitalists, we are going to have to create and save capital by producing more of our own gas and oil, and relying more on nuclear power and coal.
Westerners will have to work a bit longer and more efficiently, with a bit less redistributive government support. And they must confess that venture capitalists, hedge funds, and big deficit-spending governments are no substitute for producing themselves the real stuff of life that millions now take for granted — whether gas, food, cars, or consumer goods.
Otherwise, a smaller, older, and whinier West will just keep blaming others as their good life slips away. So it’s past time to stop borrowing to import energy and most of the things we use but have given up producing — and get back to competing in the real world."
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 02:04pm PT
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"So here goes an explanation for the multifaceted unrest. For the last six decades, constant technological breakthroughs and growing government subsidies have given a billion and a half Westerners lifestyles undreamed of over the last 2,500 years.
Well it did until the '70s. Then the corporate agenda started rolling back the gains made by the middle and working classes. vdh didn't bother to mention that did he?
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 02:06pm PT
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"Then the corporate agenda started rolling back the gains made by the middle and working classes"
at least vdh's argument makes sense and is validated by tangible evidence
life has gotten much better much faster for ALL of us since the 70s
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:39pm PT
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at least vdh's argument makes sense and is validated by tangible evidence
life has gotten much better much faster for ALL of us since the 70s
Uh, yeah, right. Is that why the middle and working classes have been losing ground all that time?
You should at least pay attention, bookworm.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:45pm PT
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And Republican voters have failed to see that they vote against not only their own best interests, but the best interests of America as well.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:47pm PT
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This is from the years of the Run Old Ray Gun debacle.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 20, 2011 - 03:51pm PT
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This is also from the Ray Gun Daze.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 04:33pm PT
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losing ground?
i'd rather be poor in america than middle class anywhere else because i'd still have a standard of living that many people are willing to risk their lives to have
as vdh says, ows isn't about poverty; owsers are not claiming they can't eat or find shelter...they're pissed off because they have huge college loans they used to pay off overpriced universities for distributing unmarketable degrees (how they managed to pay for their iphones and ipads and laptops, etc. is politely ignored)
from wsj:
"Here's a puzzle: Try to figure out what we're describing.
It costs a lot of money, so much that most people have to go into debt to buy it. It has considerable intrinsic value, but it is also understood to be an investment. And it is a status symbol--indeed, almost a necessary condition for achieving middle-class status.
Its acquisition by as wide a swath of the population is widely seen as a social good. Thus the government heavily subsidizes it through tax incentives and other means. That, however, creates an artificial demand that drives prices up and, in a vicious circle, spurs demands for more subsidies. Efforts to make it more easily acquired for minorities, who by objective standards tend to be less qualified, compound the problem.
In the current economy, it has turned out to be considerably less valuable than promised. As a result, many Americans are under water, with debts that they will not be able to pay off easily.
What is it? A...college education...
...young people like Taylor would feel aggrieved. Growing up, they were told they needed a college education as a ticket to a productive life. Now they find themselves deeply in debt, their employment prospects limited in the Obama economy. So they're lashing out at the banks that hold their debt and at the corporations that have made a college degree into a license to hunt for a job.
Their anger is understandable but misplaced. The banks were merely doing what banks do; if they had refused to make student loans, these youngsters would have been just as upset. As for the corporations, the reason they demand college degrees, as we wrote in 2007, is that is that the government forbids them to screen applicants directly for basic intelligence under a doctrine of antidiscrimination law known as "disparate impact" that the U.S. Supreme Court established in the 1971 case Griggs v. Duke Power Co.:
But why are employers able to get away with requiring a degree without running afoul of Griggs? Because colleges and universities--again, especially elite ones--go out of their way to discriminate in favor of minorities. By admitting blacks and Hispanics with much lower SAT scores than their white and Asian classmates, purportedly in order to promote "diversity," these institutions launder the exam of its disparity.
Thus the higher-education industry and corporate employers have formed a symbiotic relationship in which the former profits by acting as the latter's gatekeeper and shield against civil-rights lawsuits. Little wonder that in 2003, when the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of discriminatory admissions policies at the University of Michigan, 65 Fortune 500 companies filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging that they be upheld."
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 04:54pm PT
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Why we need to deregulate the "financial services industry"
Why not call them banks? They're nothing like what your Mom and Pop called a bank. And they consider their business to be selling "products". Ergo "financial services". Appropriately vague and non-threatening. "Industry", no longer providing services but wheeling and dealing and figuring the markup for every item sold.
Citigroup is paying $285m (£180m) to settle civil fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC said that Citigroup misled investors when it invited them to invest in a product based on US mortgage debt.
It said that Citigroup did not inform investors that it was betting on the value of the investment falling or that it had chosen the assets itself.
Citigroup settled without admitting or denying the charges.
Credit Suisse was also involved in the transaction and has paid $2.5m to settle the case, also without admitting or denying the charges.
The SEC said that Citigroup built a collateralised debt obligation, or CDO, made up of about $1bn of home loans in 2007.
It alleges that Citigroup sold the CDO to investors, but took a short position itself, betting that the value of the assets would fall.
"The securities laws demand that investors receive more care and candour than Citigroup provided to these CDO investors," said Robert Khuzami from the SEC.
"Investors were not informed that Citigroup had decided to bet against them and had helped choose the assets that would determine who won or lost."
The CDO defaulted within months, leaving the approximately 15 investors facing losses while Citigroup made $160m in fees and trading profits. So Citigroup had a vested interest in their mortgage customers losing value on their mortgaged properties.
Excellent. I wish I had thought of that. And if I had, that I would have had the cojones and entire lack of moral sense to pull it off.
$285 million fine. Wow, nearly $1 for every man woman and child in the US put into the US Treasury. Repubs would label this as a hidden tax, if they wanted to talk about it at all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15375111
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 20, 2011 - 04:58pm PT
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Facts are overrated
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 05:04pm PT
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bookworm
i'd rather be poor in america than middle class anywhere else because i'd still have a standard of living that many people are willing to risk their lives to have
What bullsh#t. OK, sure, "many people are willing to risk their lives to have your standard of living". Presumably you mean illegal South American immigrants. I doubt you'd survive a month in some of the poor fishing villages along the Sea of Cortez that I've visited. No running water, outhouses, scraping a living from the arid land with minimal water and fishing from a panga for the diminishing stocks of fish. Burning sticks of mesquite for cooking. You'd be dead of dysentery or other GI illness that you don't have immunity to. I know you wouldn't survive a week picking squash in Taft California.
These days, not many middle class Northern Europeans or Japanese would trade places with you. First of all because they know our health care system is either laughable or incompetent, or both. Secondly because they know our political system has been bought by Big Business, Big Banks and Koch Brothers.
Get out of your books and see some of the real world. While you're there, live with some real people.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 20, 2011 - 06:52pm PT
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 06:54pm PT
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I think you left out a negation, so to give you credit, I'll insert it.
Citi was not betting against individual home owners, but the buyers of CDO's and CMO's Well, yes, you're more correct than I.
The ethical misconduct is the same.
And I know a heck of a lot more about banking than you give me credit for. Of course, I don't RUN one, nor do I come from a family that owns one. I work hard for my living, usually 50 - 60 hours a week, when I can find employment.
So I plead nolo contendre.
Tell me now why Citi betting against their own products, the CDO and CMO's, was good for the financial system. (and yes, I do have a pretty good idea what these obfuscating instruments do and why they were created)
I await enlightenment.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 06:58pm PT
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Isn't banking when you take other people's money and use it to make lots of money for yourself without doing any work, other than making a few phone calls and sending an email or two?
Oh yeah, and you nickel and dime the people who put money in your bank every time they need to to use some of it.
And you also loan those peoples' money to other people for a much higher interest rate than you pay them to use it.
And really good bankers do that to A LOT of really wealthy people all at the same time
Bankers are kind of like parasites
Here is some news: Banks no longer WANT your deposits. They can't make money from them because it costs more to insure them than they get in interest.
It costs a large bank about $200 per year in administrative fees to manage your pathetic checking account.
So tell me, how are they making money from you?
Of course, if you are right about the profits, you are free to own part of a bank yourself! Buy some stock in BofA, Wells, CITI...
Not sure I would though. Banks are too heavily regulated and it is getting worse. BofA's charge of $5 per month for using a check card to purchase is the most transparent fee I have ever heard of, yet even Obama is hinting that it may be "illegal".
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:00pm PT
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ahhh yes Rush Limbaugh.
Once upon a year, many years ago, my little ones, I was in a rental car and turned on the radio to Rush. I'm perfectly OK with listening to someone I'm likely to disagree with and I'd never heard him before so I listened. Seriously. In about 30 minutes I hadn't heard him say one cogent thing, nothing logical, nothing supported by facts. And mostly unintelligible nonsense. And this was before his brain was drug addled and senile. Bah Humbug.
He makes an attempt to know what he's talking about but really can't make the grade.
At least he doesn't scream and rant like Glenn Beck.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:02pm PT
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Tell me now why Citi betting against their own products, the CDO and CMO's, was good for the financial system. (and yes, I do have a pretty good idea what these obfuscating instruments do and why they were created)
I assume the CDOs were crap, so somebody should have bet against them. The reason the housing bubble lasted so long is that very few people bet AGAINST it. Short sellers are able to burst bubbles before they get dangerously large.
And don't forget, short sellers were responsible for exposing Enron, rather than Federal regulators.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:10pm PT
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Of course the winners in the short selling game are the trading companies that can afford the fastest computers and the most expensive algorithm creators and programmers.
Not that I object to short selling in general. As long as there's an even playing field; a fundamental requirement for any honest bidding transaction.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:15pm PT
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Of course the winners in the short selling game are the trading companies that can afford the fastest computers and the most expensive algorithm creators and programmers.
Most of the time, but not always. In 2008 they took it on the chin because their algorithms were written to make money on arbitrage, but the market kept moving in one direction - down.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:16pm PT
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How about that stupid NAFTA BushCo agreement to allow Mexican national truckers to do business in the U.S.... all you dumb sonsabiches who complain about illegals and unemployment rates don't have much to say about it now do ya.
I just hope none of you are truck drivers....
DMT
If you'll recall, I opposed that. Just for the record...
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:41pm PT
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I thought the banks paid the Tarp money back? Obama assured us it would be.
We were told they did time and time again by the Obama drones. They had charts
and graphs and they even called everyone stupid who didn't agree with them.
So, I ask all the Obama drones protesting for a bigger government:
Where is that money now? Because, I remember quite well, we were told it
would all be paid back and we would even make some money when it was over.
Why is it that we are now arguing about how the banks have the money?
The Tarp money, that President Bush and Paulson pushed through congress to save the banks that self-destructed during the Bush presidency has largely been recovered by the Obama administration, some of it even at a profit. Fannie Maie and Freddie Mac has not and there will be some losses there, but Wall Street Banks and GM have mostly paid it back.
The banks should have been better regulated in the first place and the Tarp money should have had tougher terms (when/if the banks recovered, the taxpayers should have reaped more of the benefit since they were on the hook if the bank didn't recover).
But by and large, the Tarp program and other actions prevented a Great Depression outcome.
But the economy was left with a huge hole that was going to take a while to climb out of even if the administration/Fed/congress continued smart policies. That hasn't happened, and the Greek/Euro crises could put us right back to a Lehman moment (if the Repubs don't get us there first).
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:43pm PT
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Yeah but, facts are irrelevant
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 07:57pm PT
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The Tarp money, that President Bush and Paulson pushed through congress to save the banks that self-destructed during the Bush presidency has largely been recovered by the Obama administration, some of it even at a profit.
Sounds like you want it both ways.
Bush saved the banks (who were encouraged to take bad home-loans) from further killing this country, and Obama gets credit for recovering the money? Is that what you're saying?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 08:14pm PT
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But by and large, the Tarp program and other actions prevented a Great Depression outcome.
But the economy was left with a huge hole that was going to take a while to climb out of even if the administration/Fed/congress continued smart policies. That hasn't happened, and the Greek/Euro crises could put us right back to a Lehman moment (if the Repubs don't get us there first).
We get the Depression either way. The TARP program was a gift to special interests in the financial industry. There should have been a much larger hole blown in this industry, and then we would then have had a chance to be climbing out of the Depression by now. With TARP, we followed the Japanese model to a tee. They did not escape a Depression, and neither will we.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 20, 2011 - 08:24pm PT
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It lasted as long as it did because of the investment funds that bet against the subprime mortgage backed CDOs in the form of credit default swaps. They rigged the game by dictating the structure of the CDOs - which were guaranteed to fail - to the banks. Without these investment funds rigging the game, many of the CDOs based on subprime mortgages would never have been created because there was no market for them, as no one wanted the extremely risky equity tranch of the CDO.
Wrong. Credit Default Swaps betting against Subprime Mortgage CDOs were not written until 2006, when PRIVATE investors like John Paulson and Michael Burry foresaw the coming collapse and had them written by the suckers at the large investment banks. By 2006 the bubble had reached it's maximum size.
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OR
Trad climber
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Oct 21, 2011 - 10:22am PT
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Thats great^^^^
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Mangy Peasant
Social climber
Riverside, CA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 11:08am PT
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With TARP, we followed the Japanese model to a tee. They did not escape a Depression, and neither will we.
In another thread you say the US prints too much money...now you say we are mimicking Japan.
Except we are not.
http://www.pcasd.com/us_not_going_down_japans_road
Is deflation bad or good? Please make up your mind.
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cybele
Ice climber
the hell of grad school
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Oct 21, 2011 - 01:19pm PT
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It's not exactly on topic, but akin. I was recently very intrigued by the movie "Why we Fight," about the current military-industrial-congressional complex. It is available for free online.
And I was impressed by the wide variety of people who turned out here in Phoenix for the 99% rally last weekend. Politically, economically, and racially heterogenius.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 01:33pm PT
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In another thread you say the US prints too much money...now you say we are mimicking Japan.
Except we are not.
I say a lot of things, and some of them actually make sense.
We do print too much money. But what I am referring to here is not money printing, or eating sushi, it is BAILOUTS and Government picking the winners, not allowing the markets to decide where to allocate resources.
Both the U.S. and Japan should have let failing businesses fail. Like I say, it would have been more painful initially, but at least we would have a chance at a real recovery as capital is reallocated in a way more conducive to real growth.
Is deflation bad or good? Stability is better than either, but after a large run up in inflation you have to have deflation in order to allow prices to come down to where consumers can buy. It is also important to trim inefficient and bloated business models that grew unimpeded during the inflationary regime.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 01:43pm PT
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The Fed has failed in getting the money supply into the economy because banks are unable to make loans, we may have more deflation ahead.
I am still in the inflation camp though. I think we will follow all the other countries like Zimbabwe, Argentina, Russia, etc. that have debt and unfunded liabilities way beyond their ability to pay back - we will try to print our way out of debt. I just don't see any other way. The Government is the entity with the most debt and unfunded liabilities, and they are the ones controlling the printing press.
It is complicated though, and for one thing, we have already had (and still have) inflation - it has been sector based though, in stocks, real estate, health care, education, etc. although it is fairly significant in food and energy since QE2 began. I think the Government likes to scare us about deflation because they benefit from inflation.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 01:46pm PT
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"Ah, no tea baggers then! Probably no guns being brandished either."
nope. and no rape, sexual harrassment, anti-semitism, theft, destruction of public and private property, public defecation, communist supporters, or nazi supporters, either
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Oct 21, 2011 - 02:14pm PT
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It seems like where the rubber hits the road with the tea party people and ows--when you ignore gun nuts and sidewalk poopers--is dissatisfaction with congress and its capitulation to large financial institutions at the expense of everyday tax paying citizens. I don't see how either group is wrong in that regard.
I don't see a real difference betweeen the two.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 02:26pm PT
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rape: http://www.drudge.com/news/149493/protester-raped-occupy-cleveland
sexual harrassment: http://www.verumserum.com/?p=30928
theft: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/criminal_occupation_oh3CnKANUqYHrGPCaZaLRK
anti-semitism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFFlQEN0SvY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEf7gGNFDfg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Y9CARUwio&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMjm4LxFa1c&feature=grec_index
vandalism" http://www.koinlocal6.com/news/local/story/Police-car-vandalized-near-Occupy-Portland/M4kmAI26-kmYJKbQfE4v0Q.cspx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grRNmgMRcP8
http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/vandal-hits-occupy-philly-protests-101411
communists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avG4LgTF0ho
and, finally, from the nazis:
The foremost authority on National Socialism in America has this to say about “Occupy” [ANP leader Rocky Suhayda -ed.] :
What is really MISSING – is the “MOVEMENT” from these popular protests – its time to pull WN heads out of their collective ass’s, and JOIN IN the attack on Judeo-Capitalism. What do you suggest? That WN Working Class White people DEFEND the Judeo-Capitalists? IF the “movement” wasn’t so PATHETIC it would be OUT THERE – LEADING these protests! The fact that its these “lefties” as you call them, who are picking up the ball and running with it – only shows how much more in tune THEY are with the fed up masses of White Workers, than the fossilized, reactionary “right-wing”. WHO holds the WEALTH and POWER in this country – the JUDEO-CAPITALISTS. WHO is therefore the #1 ENEMY who makes all this filth happen – the JUDEO-CAPITALISTS. WHO therefore do WN need to FIGHT? My heart is right there with these people, perhaps someday the “movement” will SHOW the same COURAGE and DEDICATION that these people OUT THERE FIGHTING are SHOWING!
Sincerely, ROCKY SUHAYDA Hail Victory! 88!
you're right, f, ows is truly pathetic
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Oct 21, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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You guys will never understand Crack Addict's and the other Repugnican apologists' flip-flops until you understand this:
The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 02:31pm PT
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oops, my bad, f, i forgot you libs consider everything "free speech"...like flag burning, rape, theft, sexual harrassment, public defecation...i bet those folks are happy to have you defending their rights...i'm also sure you're eager to have them over for lattes and drumming around the cacti
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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bookworm,
You're almost right. Libs consider anything not spoken by those with conservative views free speech. Those things spoken by those with conservative views they consider a clear and present danger, and try to suppress.
john
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 21, 2011 - 02:58pm PT
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Libs consider anything not spoken by those with conservative views free speech. Those things spoken by those with conservative views they consider a clear and present danger, and try to suppress.
I would have expected more from you John. sigh...
The failings of some libs are EXACTLY the same as some conservatives. Unable to truly understand what the other side wants. Portraying all on the other side as extremists. Proclaiming to know what the other side wants instead of saying what they want. And yes some Libs AND conservatives BOTH think free speech ends where THEY want it to. If you think OWS don't have the right to say what they want OR you think the Tea Partiers don't have the right to say what they want, then your head is up your a*# and you don't truly understand freedom.
Here's a perfect example:
i forgot you libs consider everything "free speech"...like flag burning, rape, theft, sexual harrassment, public defecation.
What an idiot. Throwing flag burning in there just shows he dosen't understand free speech and does want to limit other people's free speech. If I caught someone burning a US flag in America in protest I would probably pull it away from them and put it out. But I would defend their right to do it without the government interfering.
That reminds me of a boy scout camp we recently went to and at the flag burning (retirement) ceremony some moron right wingers got all upset. You can't fix stupid.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 03:37pm PT
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The Fet,
I'll accept your criticism, but I was making a bit of a dig. At least a few times a month I get skewered here for my support of the Citizens United decision. I just find it odd that those who tend to find all sorts of non-verbal, and often non-political, expression to constitute protected speech are so anxious to restrict political communication.
John
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Oct 21, 2011 - 04:38pm PT
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The Tarp money, that President Bush and Paulson pushed through congress to save the banks that self-destructed during the Bush presidency has largely been recovered by the Obama administration, some of it even at a profit.
Sounds like you want it both ways.
Bush saved the banks (who were encouraged to take bad home-loans) from further killing this country, and Obama gets credit for recovering the money? Is that what you're saying?
I've never criticized Bush/Pauslon/congress for passing Tarp and doing what it took to save the eocnomy. I do criticize people that call it Obama's bailout.
I also criticize the deregulation of the Banking sector. Democrats jumped on the bandwagon but thinking the solution to everything is to deregulate is a Republican agenda (and the current Republicans are still crying that we need to deregulate Wall Street despite that the 2008 crisis was only two election cycles ago) and Reagan was/is the poster child leading that vanguard.
I absolutely criticize the fact that tax payers got a raw deal. For the amount of money that tax payers put at risk, they should have gotten a much bigger slice when things recovered. Most of the Tarp money that went to big banks was done under Bush/Paulson. They gave us a raw deal notwithstanding the fact that most of it was paid back.
And while it would be nice if people actually gave Obama credit for recovering the money, there are enough people out there telling out right lies (I include your original post in that) such that most Americans believe (erroneously) that it has not and never will be paid back.
Peace is War.
This rewriting history would make Orwell/Big Brother proud. Tarp was passed under Obama. Saddam Hussein was behind 911. Government forcing loans to low income people caused the Housing crises. Stimulus was tried and didn't work (change in total government spending, Fed + State + local, during the "stimulus" was actually flat as the increase in Fed spending did no more than offset the cuts at the state and local level), it goes on and on.
Peace
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 21, 2011 - 04:52pm PT
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I finally watched this video posted before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI_P3pxze5w
So true. Get the money/corruption out of politics. That should be the unified message of OWS.
It's tough because you need to protect free speech, but when politicians can't make decisions in the best interest of the country because they are beholden to the people who give them enough money to get elected we have a problem. And it's not just the right, the unions have too much power too because of this.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 21, 2011 - 04:58pm PT
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And it's not just the right, the unions have too much power too because of this.
Please, if the unions exert so much power in the political process, exactly what significant gain has labor made in the last 40 year?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 21, 2011 - 04:59pm PT
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Some of the strongest unions are the prison, police, firefighters and other emergency services - not noted as bastions of liberality. Although the percentage of US workers who are unionized, especially those outside the public sector, has dropped dramatically over the last 40 years.
Most of the right-wing anti-union rhetoric is simply an application of their anti-government ranting.
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dirt claud
Social climber
san diego,ca
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Oct 21, 2011 - 05:27pm PT
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cor·po·ra·tion
[kawr-puh-rey-shuhn] Show IPA
noun
1.
an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.
2.
(initial capital letter) the group of principal officials of a borough or other municipal division in England.
3.
any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body.
4.
Informal. a paunch; potbelly.
Dr.F
Did you let Websters know you changed the meaning of corporation.
Edit:
"created by law or under authority of law"
Corporations will do what the government allows them to do. They don't make the rules, government does.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 05:37pm PT
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Gary,
Labor has made enormous gains in the last 40 years protecting public employee union members from the rapacious taxpayers and other members of the public that nominally employ them.
Dr. F.,
Neither unions, nor corporations, nor the Access Fund, nor any other non-individual is a "natural person" (to use the law's definition), but rather a group of people organized to undertake activities in concert. The "corporations aren't people" argument fails to account for people acting in concert. The guarantee of free speech cannot be limited to exclude all group actions or else it becomes, essentially, meaningless except for those individuals who possess the enormous financial means necessary to reach large numbers of people. I assume you don't want to limit meaningful political advocacy to "the rich."
The Fet,
My reply to Gary illustrates the real problem, because it isn't just public employee unions that feed at the taxpayers' expense. Far too many businesses and individuals get subsidies, handouts and bailouts in amounts that should stagger and outrage all of us -- even the otherwise Delphic OWS crowd.
As long as dealing with the government is a way to get money outside the marketplace, money will find a way to influence political outcomes. The rather crude and overbroad means we've been able to devise so far to try to stem the tide are about as effective as a child's low-tide sea wall would be in keeping the rising tide away, and about as dangerous to free speech as hunting flies with H-bombs would be for public safety.
John
John
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 21, 2011 - 05:39pm PT
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The DIFFERENCE, is that a corporation exists for one reason, to enrich the shareholders.
Therefore, according a corporation "person" status allows a for maximum profit entity the ability to use unlimited amounts of corporate cash to influence political legislation favorably for that corporation's gain.
An individual person, on the other hand, makes decisions and votes accordingly for all kinds of reasons, of which personal financial gain is only ONE "desire".
As stated, the goals of corporations and individuals are not "equal".
Individual People do NOT have huge amounts of cash to influence legislations and elections, but corporations have, in theory, unlimited resources to do likewise.
Citizens United, by straight 5-4 ideological vote, has altered the future of politics.
PROFIT motive now is clearly defined as acceptable.
---
Oh, and let's quit this union crap, union members account for only some 7% of the workforce, and that number is steadily shrinking.
They can extract only so much in dues to use for political purposes, a FAR cry from the corporate cash available.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 21, 2011 - 05:49pm PT
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Norton,
Citizens United involved a non-profit corporation. The four "liberal" justices voted to restrict the political speech of non-profits, which was the issue presented in the case.
Plenty of corporations are not for profit. Almost every charitable institution is run as a not-for-profit corporation. Plenty of corporations that don't claim a 501(c)(3) exemption (making contributions tax deductible), such as the Sierra Club, are still not for-profit entities.
The dissenters in Citizens United didn't distinguish between for-profit and not-for-profit entities; the facts wouldn't let them.
As for unions, public employee unions in California account for a very great deal of California public expenditures, as I'm sure you know. They also provide a very great deal of Democratic Party campaign cash, as I'm sure you also know. Don't pretend they're different from a corporation that wants to feed at the public trough. Both want our money in amounts greater than we would otherwise think prudent.
John
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 21, 2011 - 05:49pm PT
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Labor has made enormous gains in the last 40 years protecting public employee union members from the rapacious taxpayers and other members of the public that nominally employ them.
They have so much power in California that they took a 15% pay cut for three years, and even now are taking a 5% pay cut. Meanwhile highway work, for example, is being contracted out in no bid design-build contracts to politically powerless private sector companies. Contracts which have no top end.
You'll have to do better than that, John.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 21, 2011 - 06:35pm PT
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Turn on the Heat Ray, turn them to french fries.
That would be cruel and unusual punishment, even for commie Democrats. The Supreme Court may be dominated by extreme right-wingers, but they know there are some limits even on fascist fantasies. It has ruled that the Democrats have to be turned into freedom fries.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 21, 2011 - 06:40pm PT
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John, did the Court restrict the definition of "person" to only a non profit?
As in your contention that Citizens was a non profit?
This must be an important distinction, as you chose to point out it as somehow relevant?
So Exon, not being a non profit, cannot use their corporate cash to buy media time, John?
Really?
Not aware of this, I will go read the decision again to find that restricting language.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 21, 2011 - 06:47pm PT
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Darnold: Almost the complete and total control of at least one state: California
Yes, complete control, that's why they took the 15% pay cut. Complete control.
Gonna have to do better than that.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 21, 2011 - 07:23pm PT
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fattrad, perhaps you could take a remedial logic course at your local community college. It would do you a lot of good.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 21, 2011 - 08:58pm PT
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That's an insult to whores everywhere.
(even the J Tree Circle K bunch)
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 21, 2011 - 09:33pm PT
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Gary,everyone and his uncle knows the Public employee Unions literally own the state government
Yes, they are the masters of state government. That's why the got their pay cut 15%. Brilliant f*#king logic, there, Donald. No wonder you vote Republican.
Do you guys ever think about issues at all? Or just go with Rush's drug addled blather. "Rush says state workers control the government! It must be true!" Despite all evidence to the contrary. But as Ronald Raygun said:
Facts are stupid things.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 22, 2011 - 08:05pm PT
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Facts are overrated, and irrelevant.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 22, 2011 - 09:15pm PT
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Norton, I disagree.
Facts are to be denied, twisted and warped until they are unrecognizable as such.
The Tea Baggers and other RepubTard's comments last night about Obama bringing the troops home from Iraq and Gadaffi's death are chilling examples of stupidity, self contradiction and cynical demagoguery.
They'll contradict their own prior statements and actions to deny two of the things he really got right.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 24, 2011 - 04:24pm PT
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ows vs the homeless???
"...according to the Daily News, "Zuccotti Park has become a haven for the homeless," who are abandoning shelters and camping out at the park, "enticed by the allure of free food and a community of open-minded people." But as in Boston, open-mindedness goes only so far. "We have compassion toward everyone. However, we have certain rules and guidelines," says Lauren Digioia, 26, who belongs to the "sanitation committee":
"If you're going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back," Digioia said. "There's a lot of takers here and they feel entitled."
oh, the irony...
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 24, 2011 - 04:35pm PT
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marching orders for the psyco f*#ks
Tea Party Nation wants all small business owners to stop creating jobs by not hiring anyone in protest of President Obama and the Democratic Senate.
can you imagine the society where these job destroyers are good credit risks?
http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/216451/250/Tea-Party-group-Stop-creating-jobs
from wars link:
Tea Party Nation is one of the two major tea party organizations, and the group had Sarah Palin as their keynote speaker at their convention this year.
at least they are consistent morons. any group that would have palin as keynote speaker can't be expected to be too bright.
edit:
that is funny bookworm....
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Oct 24, 2011 - 04:43pm PT
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dont worry war,
you wouldnt get it.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Oct 24, 2011 - 05:20pm PT
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Here's a very interesting, non-partisan look at the US economy:
USA Inc.
It's a 45-minute video that surmises the longer, full version of the report. It looks at the USA budget as if the USA were a company. Very enlightening.
USA Inc. examines the U.S. government’s income statement and balance sheet, interprets the underlying data and facts, and illustrates patterns and trends in easily understandable terms.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 24, 2011 - 05:38pm PT
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Another dead beat non contributing supposed American joins the protests:
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 24, 2011 - 05:47pm PT
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Fattrad, how you do you know that the veteran DID turn into a "drug dealer" after he served?
What an ass you are to even try to suggest that a WW2 veteran resorted to dealing drugs.
Keep grasping at straws, Jeff.
Keep trying real hard to make up some reason to denigrate Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 24, 2011 - 07:14pm PT
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Well Jeff, let me tell you why posting a picture of a WW2 vet joining the protests IS "meaningful"
BECAUSE: in a patriotic, service rendered to our country manner, it shows that these protests are NOT what your right wing is trying so very hard to characterize as lazy, shiftless, unemployed, money grubbing, take from the rich, filthy scum.
When I post a pic of a REAL American who served, that pic strongly refutes the hateful, unpatriotic, anti First Amendment attitude of the right wing in this country toward these protests.
It just keeps on proving what ignorant hypocrites your party's "base" is.
Now tune in to Fox News tonight to find out what your father authority tells you what to "believe" in, or really against, tomorrow.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 24, 2011 - 07:20pm PT
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BECAUSE: in a patriotic, service rendered to our country manner, it shows that these protests are NOT what your right wing is trying so very hard to characterize as lazy, shiftless, unemployed, money grubbing, take from the rich, filthy scum.
When I post a pic of a REAL American who served, that pic strongly refutes the hateful, unpatriotic, anti First Amendment attitude of the right wing in this country toward these protests.
Keep all that in mind next time you disparage a Tea Party event.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 24, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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With all due respect to our veterans, how do we know this guy didn't turn into a drug dealer after his service.
Clearly you have little if any respect for veterans, given that the man in the photo was a veteran of World War II and is well over 80 years old.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion would no doubt be interested to know that a wannabe bootlicker Republican is saying such things. And if FatTrad went into a legion and said it, he'd be lucky to get out alive.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 24, 2011 - 07:35pm PT
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Oh, and let's quit this union crap, union members account for only some 7% of the workforce, and that number is steadily shrinking.
They can extract only so much in dues to use for political purposes, a FAR cry from the corporate cash available.
Some people just don't get it... the difference is that Corporations in general CREATE the wealth that goes to shareholders, by creating value and therefore profit. The public sector lives off of the private sector, and they do not have to make a profit or even add value (of course many firemen, police, teachers, etc. do), so there has to be controls on how much is funneled out of the private sector. Politicians have enriched themselves with cozy deals that have cost taxpayers dearly. As Donald has pointed out, they typically cannot raise pay in the current fiscal year for budgeting purposes, but they can make promises for the future based on the white elephant of safe 8% returns (not possible when interest rates are nearly zero). The taxpayer is left holding the bag when the inevitable shortfall comes.
I feel for firefighters, teachers, police, etc. but the fact is simply that Government has made promises it cannot keep. Raising taxes produces diminishing returns, and the debt burden we are facing is impeding any economic growth.
We will not have robust growth again until public, private and corporate debt have been paid off or written down. That means many people will have to take large cuts in benefits, just like many banks and investors will have to acknowledge that the great majority of underwater borrowers will not repay their loans.
When Enron went down, many people lost their retirements. Some executives went to prison. When people in the public sector lose some of their retirement benefits, Politicians and and the union bosses they were in collusion with should go to prison as well.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 24, 2011 - 08:29pm PT
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the difference is that Corporations in general CREATE the wealth that goes to shareholders
No, the people who work in that corporation create the wealth. That's what workers are: wealth creators.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 24, 2011 - 08:39pm PT
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Oh, I will "disparage" a Tea Party event all day long.
And send every one of those suddenly fiscally conscious hypocrites back to their lilly white neighborhoods, so they can come "armed" next time.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 24, 2011 - 08:52pm PT
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With all due respect to our veterans, how do we know this guy didn't turn into a drug dealer after his service.
It is a classic neo-con repug method to disparage the messenger when the message can't be.
You're a moron.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 24, 2011 - 09:03pm PT
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No, the people who work in that corporation create the wealth. That's what workers are: wealth creators.
A corporation is an entity that uses capital such as infrastructure and labor to produce profit. But here is the key: how this capital is utilized IS IMPORTANT. How did all those little wealth creators in the Soviet Union fare?
This is the point that is lost on socialists. Creating wealth is a very complicated task, that requires an effective mechanism: capitalism, in which a natural selection process hones this ability. Central planning doesn't stand a chance.
Let's do a thought experiment: put all the union bosses and government bureaucrats on an island and let's see if they can invent all the modern conveniences we have, i.e., lightbulbs, automobiles, computers, etc.
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 24, 2011 - 09:05pm PT
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Buncha horsesh#t.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 25, 2011 - 12:10pm PT
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Let's do a thought experiment and put all the capitalists on an island and watch them starve to death waiting for someone else to do the work.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 25, 2011 - 12:12pm PT
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Getting excited about my counter-protest tomorrow.
What, did some lunch counter refuse service to poor little FatTrad, and now he's going to boycott it? Maybe have a little sit-down strike? Just like the real NAACP lunch counter protests of the 1960s?
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Nohea
Trad climber
Living Outside the Statist Quo
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:11pm PT
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Aloha Gang! Lets take a closer look at who are the 1%
"The State Is the 1 Percent (edited for brevity)
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. on October 24, 2011
The "occupy" protest movement is thriving off the claim that the 99 percent are being exploited by the 1 percent, and there is truth in what they say. But they have the identities of the groups wrong. They imagine that it is the 1 percent of highest wealth holders who are the problem. In fact, that 1 percent includes some of the smartest, most innovative people in the country — the people who invent, market, and distribute material blessings to the whole population. They also own the capital that sustains productivity and growth.
But there is another 1 percent out there, those who do live parasitically off the population and exploit the 99 percent. Moreover, there is a long intellectual tradition, dating back to the late Middle Ages, that draws attention to the strange reality that a tiny minority lives off the productive labor of the overwhelming majority.
I'm speaking of the state, which even today is made up of a tiny sliver of the population but is the direct cause of all the impoverishing wars, inflation, taxes, regimentation, and social conflict. This 1 percent is the direct cause of the violence, the censorship, the unemployment, and vast amounts of poverty, too.
Look at the numbers, rounding from latest data. The US population is 307 million. There are about 20 million government employees at all levels, which makes 6.5 percent. But 6.2 million of these people are public-school teachers, whom I think we can say are not really the ruling elite. That takes us down to 4.4 percent.
We can knock of another half million who work for the post office, and probably the same who work for various service department bureaus. Probably another million do not work in any enforcement arm of the state, and there's also the amazing labor-pool fluff that comes with any government work. Local governments do not cause nationwide problems (usually), and the same might be said of the 50 states. The real problem is at the federal level (8.5 million), from which we can subtract fluff, drones, and service workers.
In the end, we end up with about 3 million people who constitute what is commonly called the state. For short, we can just call these people the 1 percent.
The 1 percent do not generate any wealth of their own. Everything they have they get by taking from others under the cover of law. They live at our expense. Without us, the state as an institution would die.
"They do not comprehend that the real enemy is the institution that brainwashes them to think the way they do."
Here we come to the core of the issue. What is the state and what does it do? There is vast confusion about this issue, insofar as it is talked about at all. For hundreds of years, people have imagined that the state might be an organic institution that develops naturally out of some social contract. Or perhaps the state is our benefactor, because it provides services we could not otherwise provide for ourselves.
In classrooms and in political discussions, there is very little if any honest talk about what the state is and what it does. But in the libertarian tradition, matters are much clearer. From Bastiat to Rothbard, the answer has been before our eyes. The state is the only institution in society that is permitted by law to use aggressive force against person and property.
Same goals, different means, two very different sets of criminals. The state is the institution that essentially redefines criminal wrongdoing to make itself exempt from the law that governs everyone else.
It is the same with every tax, every regulation, every mandate, and every single word of the federal code. It all represents coercion. Even in the area of money and banking, it is the state that created and sustains the Fed and the dollar, because it forcibly limits competition in money and banking, preventing people from making gold or silver money, or innovating in other ways. And in some ways, this is the most dreadful intervention of all, because it allows the state to destroy our money on a whim.
The state is everybody's enemy. Why don't the protesters get this? Because they are victims of propaganda by the state, doled out in public schools, that attempts to blame all human suffering on private parties and free enterprise. They do not comprehend that the real enemy is the institution that brainwashes them to think the way they do.
They are right that society is rife with conflicts, and that the contest is wildly lopsided. It is indeed the 99 percent versus the 1 percent. They're just wrong about the identity of the enemy."
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:36pm PT
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only in America Lolli...
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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The state is the institution that essentially redefines criminal wrongdoing to make itself exempt from the law that governs everyone else.
...the state, which even today is made up of a tiny sliver of the population but is the direct cause of all the impoverishing wars, inflation, taxes, regimentation, and social conflict. This 1 percent is the direct cause of the violence, the censorship, the unemployment, and vast amounts of poverty, too.
The state is the only institution in society that is permitted by law to use aggressive force against person and property.
The state is the institution that essentially redefines criminal wrongdoing to make itself exempt from the law that governs everyone else.
there seems to be some ring of truth...
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:55pm PT
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Let's do a thought experiment and put all the capitalists on an island and watch them starve to death waiting for someone else to do the work.
If we put all the labor leaders and all the bureaucrats on one island, and someone like Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison on another, where would you put your money?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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notice how they evade the real world with their thought experiments?
The "Real World" is littered with the carcasses of dead economic models, all of them centrally planned. Capitalism has it's ups and downs, but it survives, and if Government gets out of the way it is usually stronger for it.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:06pm PT
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:23pm PT
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name your economic model which doesnt rest on a public envisionsed
rather than what we have in fact?
I'm not sure I understand what you're challenging us to do. If you're asking us to name an economic model based on reality, I've got plenty of them, but capitalism is the most realistic, because it recognizes that people, and metaphysical entities such as corporations, act in their perceived (as opposed to real) self-interest.
If you're claiming that any model with assumptions must have assumptions that are absolutely correct, then you don't understand models and assumptions.
My econometric models predict future economic outcomes better than the "consensus" forecasts I've seen, but they still predict imperfectly. That's the nature of our current knowledge and, I believe, the limits of trying to model a chaotic system where we have only non-experimental data.
If you want the parameters of any of my models, though, you're out of luck. They're proprietary. I've spent years estimating and refining them, and they don't get disclosed in public because they form a significant part of my livelihood.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:27pm PT
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Gary,
Using your "capitalist island" approach, I'd like to see an island of workers who don't save and invest try to make any modern items, or any significant profit. They may or may not starve, depending on the seasonality of their food supply, but they couldn't even organize themselves without someone taking an entrepreneurial risk.
Simply put, labor is not the only factor of production, nor is it the only wealth creator. Wealth comes from saving and investing. You can create wealth making $30,000 a year, if you can find a way to spend less than you make. You can fail to create wealth making $300,000 a year if you spend everything you make.
John
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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Now that Cristina has been re-elected in Argentina you will see again how
idiots trying to control their economy will fail miserably. I give them two
years, three at the outside.
Argentina is a great example of how you can destroy a country by re-distributing
wealth. In their case they manage to actually make it disappear as the
re-distribution goes up in the smoke of inflation.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:04pm PT
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Be careful conservatives, you are increasingly on the wrong side of this thing.
Public opinion is overwhelmingly supportive of the protestors AND their "position"
By denigrating this protest, you are only painting yourselves even more vividly as "anti middle class" and putting yourselves and your Republican party on the wrong side of "class warfare"
The Right Wing's clear opposition to OWS could very well hurt them in tbe upcoming elections.
Let's hope so, so they can go back to concentrating on denying evolution and defunding Planned Parenthood, their really big issues.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:14pm PT
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so these 8 cops
occupied a couple booths at dennys
spent an hour bragging about beating on unarmed civilians
and drinking
minutes later,
a mob appeared and beat the living sh#t out of these scumbag cop
two hours later
aint a witness to be found
aside from the f*#king badge with the black eye
You're a troubled soul...it must suck to be you.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:23pm PT
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ah,
but when i don my uniform, go to work
and take it out on the innocent,
your my cheerleader!
Let me ask you something, as#@&%e. What is a better uniform, a little Mao-jacket, or jeans and a T-shirt doing the work that I have CHOSEN to do out of free-will?
Idiots like you have no idea or intellect to understand what you're advocating. Have you no concept of history?
I salute the cops that actually found the balls to pick trash like you off the streets.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:31pm PT
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And Kevin, a true liberal patriot, gets the symbolic post #1776.
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:34pm PT
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BOOB BOMB!!!
(because responding to right wing horsepucky tends to be a huge waste of time)
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:41pm PT
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notice that when he says concept of history,
hes speaking about a specific reading of it
only possible when you have excluded so much of it
the blinders seem prescient
notice that the guy
with the morgage
and the two cars
and the property taxes
and in income withholdings
and a few kids
want to lecture us about freedom
heh
What? Are you a wanna-be illiterate poet now?
F*#king lame. Do you think that makes you sound smarter and give you more relevance?
EDIT: I don't own a home. I wasn't stupid enough to buy one in the recent past.
But kid, yes, 2 cars (all paid off) yes.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:01pm PT
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why,
you high browed bigot!
I'm neither high-browed, nor a bigot. Far from it actually.
I'd rather hang with gunrack-conservatives and rednecks than Repubs who prefer the golf course.
And the bigot-card is old and tired. I judge people all the time but it has nothing to do with race, gender, or sexuality.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:04pm PT
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The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive,
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:07pm PT
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Tom, what the hell does that mean??? What is yer point?
EDIT: Does everyone feel the need to post pseudo-intellectual or poetic crap to make a point? WTF?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:09pm PT
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Bluering you need to look up the definition of bigot.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:10pm PT
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Bluering you need to look up the definition of bigot.
For f*#k's sake!!!! Didn't we do this already????
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:31pm PT
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several points:
a society is based upon trust; and when that trust is broken, the society is at risk of destruction
the 1% who have dishonestly gamed the system to gain the majority of the wealth and power have defacto managed to divorce themselves from the social agreements that create the system
now that the 'moment of truth' has arrived; the 99% don't need a revolution against the 1%; that just makes them vulnerable to attack by the power elite; who have long been planning for this...
the 99% just need to figure out a system for society that marginalizes the 1%; avoiding the 'Gotcha Capitalism' that is currently in effect, and evolving to online media of exchange
money is an idea based upon confidence; and when that confidence is shaken, people need to move to an alternative means of exchange for valuable goods and services
specifically we no longer need the fed and the banks and the stock market as dictators of the means of exchange; now that we have the internet
the public is generally overlooking the high importance of the fact that unbreakable encryption tools have escaped the intelligence community (against all their best efforts) and become publicly available; i.e. for securing online exchanges for valuable goods and services
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:37pm PT
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Which side are you on?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:42pm PT
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money is an idea based upon confidence; and when that confidence is shaken, people need to move to an alternative means of exchange for valuable goods and services
specifically we no longer need the fed and the banks and the stock market as dictators of the means of exchange; now that we have the internet
the public is generally overlooking the high importance of the fact that unbreakable encryption tools have escaped the intelligence community (against all their best efforts) and become publicly available; i.e. for securing online exchanges for valuable goods and services
Every "alternative currency" has flopped so far, unfortunately. Bitcoins are the latest example.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:42pm PT
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Tom, I generally I agree with you. Many rules/regs have been relaxed at the behest of politicians (both parties).
Hatin' on Banks and Wall Street is not the way to go. People should be hatin' on the way gov't has ALLOWED this to happen.
Again, it's naive to blindly blame Repubs for this. Both parties vie for the money. It's a matter of who has control or power, who gets lobbied.
The system needs tweaks, not an overhaul.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:48pm PT
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the 1% who have dishonestly gamed the system to gain the majority of the wealth and power have defacto managed to divorce themselves from the social agreements that create the system
Tom, I have seen words similar to the statement above as justification for, or motivation for, the OWS movement. OWS makes a lot of unwarranted assumptions with the sentence I quote above. Did Steve Jobs dishonestly game the system? What about the liberals' hero, Warren Buffett? Just who do they have in mind? Be specific. Name names. Otherwise, the statement reflects envy and covetousness, not virtue.
In fact, the actual participants in the OWS movement depend on creating hate and resentment of the anonymous 1%, judging by their signs and statements. I realize that there are no official spokespeople for the OWS movement, so it could mean or stand for whatever one desires, but I go by what I see, and what I see I just described.
If there are crooks, they should (and, believe me, they will) be prosecuted. Any prosecutor I know would give his or her eye teeth to go after a big shot -- particularly a rich and unpopular one. The fact that there haven't been prosecutions means -- to the anti-capitalists -- that the rich gamed the system. It means, to those familiar with American prosecutors, that they don't have the goods.
Unfotunately for the OWS instigators, but fortunately for the truth, the modern 1% largely made their money by producing and investing in goods and services that people want to buy.
John
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 04:54pm PT
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Well said, John...
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:08pm PT
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:22pm PT
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OWS doesn't want to hate Wall Street, they want the Government to regulate it, blue. They want to draw attention to that reality, and are having more success doing it that any group has so far.
You just don't understand how regulation works. Our government does not create smart regulation that would improve the markets. That is difficult to do - they are complex systems and there is just no money in it for them anyway. Regulation is created as barriers to making profit. Politicians make their money by creating exemptions that allow specific companies or industries to go around these barriers. That is how we get such a complex infrastructure of regulations that grows nearly exponentially every year. Despite what liberals say, deregulation did not cause the financial crisis and in reality did not even occur. Don't believe me? Point to a specific regulation that was removed, where it's removal exacerbated the crisis. Removing Glass-Steagall did nothing to cause the crisis. The companies that needed the most help from the Government were not banks, in fact the Government allowed them to BECOME banks so they could get more aid.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:24pm PT
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a big part of the problem is unfair distribution of the tax base
people with large amounts of money live on relatively small declared incomes offset by tax deductions and then invest their major resources in mutual funds where they are not taxed on the profits
since a major portion of the economy is thus not taxed; the burden falls upon the middle class
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:28pm PT
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That evil, evil Alice Walton. She presides over millions of employees who can barely afford IPhones. What is she worth, a few Billion? So let's take her money, and give it to all the Walmart employees. That will give them a few thousand each.
Then what?
In the meantime there is no capital to run the company, everybody must be laid off and go on unemployment.
Your arguments just show a lack of understanding about economics.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:33pm PT
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a big part of the problem is unfair distribution of the tax base
people with large amounts of money live on relatively small declared incomes offset by tax deductions and then invest their major resources in mutual funds where they are not taxed on the profits
since a major portion of the economy is thus not taxed; the burden falls upon the middle class
Please show your work - this is absolute Bull.
In particular, show a graph or some numbers. I am tired of hearing the baloney about "the rich not paying their fair share". They pay more than their share in terms of percentage of their income and FAR more in terms of dollar amounts.
Typically on here people parrot this about, then some graphs are shown, and people realize the rich pay a very disproportionate amount of taxes. It dies down for a while until someone thinks it is safe to spread lies again and ... "The rich don't pay their fair share... B'gawww... Polly want a subsidy".
Even if you were correct (which you most certainly are not) if they are investing it in Mutual funds like you say, MORE POWER TO THEM. Let's not tax them while the money is invested, it is providing jobs. Tax them when they spend it. The point of money is to spend it right, otherwise why would anyone work for it?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:35pm PT
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If there are crooks, they should (and, believe me, they will) be prosecuted. Any prosecutor I know would give his or her eye teeth to go after a big shot -- particularly a rich and unpopular one. The fact that there haven't been prosecutions means -- to the anti-capitalists -- that the rich gamed the system. It means, to those familiar with American prosecutors, that they don't have the goods.
They won't get prosecuted if it not illegal. That's the point. Just because it's unfair doesn't make it illegal.
Some in the 1% have gamed the system by getting politicians to create conditions favorable for them to accumulate or hold wealth without contributing enough to the society that allowed them to get that wealth. It's not illegal, it's just unfair to the 99%.
Capital gains tax is a great example. Very rich people, some who don't work at all, pay less % tax on the money their money makes than % middle class people working for their money.
Then you have politicians like Cain and Perry who want to eliminate ALL capital gains tax. So a very rich heir like a Walton or Hilton pays NO tax on the money their moneys makes, yet the enjoy the defense, infrastructure, etc all our taxes pay for. While middle class people pay.
This is a big thing that concerns OWS, and should concern everyone. You have very rich people bankrolling the campaigns of people like Cain and Perry who if they get into office will give them tax breaks. The rich get richer and the poor and middle class get poorer until the whole economy is in the crapper, because consumer demand drives the economy and eventually it will be reduced. That's a big part of the current economic downturn. 99% of the people don't have money for cars, houses, etc. Trickle down / supply side economics is B.S., if everyone does well then the economy does well and everyone prospers. But we're in a period of greed where the rich are doing well and everyone else isn't and our economy sucks. It's easy to see this unless you don't want to see it.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:44pm PT
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Capital gains tax is a great example. Very rich people, some who don't work at all, pay less % tax on the money their money makes than % middle class people working for their money.
Then you have politicians like Cain and Perry who want to eliminate ALL capital gains tax. So a very rich heir like a Walton or Hilton pays NO tax on the money their moneys makes, yet the enjoy the defense, infrastructure, etc all our taxes pay for. While middle class people pay.
They are not getting off as easy as you think though. Capital gains are a double tax. Warren Buffet pays little income tax because he makes most of his money in capital gains on his stock. But stock is company equity - and the price is based on profits. But profits are already taxed at the corporate level. If instead Buffet chooses to take his money as income, it would be taxed at the highest level.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:45pm PT
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Every "alternative currency" has flopped so far, unfortunately. Bitcoins are the latest example.
i am not advocating an alternative currency...not practical
there is far too much social inertia involved with the dollar; even an overinflated dollar
as with many things in our society, it is a matter of centralized monopolization vs local control
i advocate a restoration of local monetary control through personally encrypted exchanges over the internet on a bypass of the banks and brokers
this is already happening on a significantly large scale; it is just not fully within the general public's awareness i.e. paypal, ebay, craig's list, second life, etc
note that it is also possible to perform such exchanges without the aid of these popular sites
there can actually be a significant advantage to the general population in allowing the fed to keep diluting the dollar currency through bailouts and inflation
that is the public can pay off their debts to large institutions using greatly devalued dollars; while potentially maintaining a private economy of online exchange with dollars maintained at a higher agreed upon value
if the public fully realizes the potential here and gets serious about migrating their commerce towards private person-to-person exchanges on the internet; then the large institutions can just get starved down to a more appropriate size in money and power
a lot of this just has to do with communication, knowledge, and making contact with the right people who want to do business together...all on a bypass of the banks and brokers and regulators
we need to recognize that there are people who think they are only able to feel good about themselves based upon greedily collecting personal wealth and power
by my personal observation that often doesn't work out well for them
however we are not born with a requirement to flow wealth and power and admiration towards such
we do have choices in life
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:47pm PT
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That evil, evil Alice Walton. She presides over millions of employees who can barely afford IPhones. What is she worth, a few Billion? So let's take her money, and give it to all the Walmart employees. That will give them a few thousand each.
She might be the biggest welfare queen in the nation. Their employees make such a poor wage, that the tax payers have to subsidize their wages with food stamps, housing subsidies, health care, etc. That of course, translates into bigger profits for the Waltons.
But welfare for the rich is A-OK!
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:48pm PT
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What % people pay.
Rich people pay less than upper middle class.
This is my favorite. It shows that well off people do pay more taxes, BUT they also have more income. I wish it was broken down for top 0.1 and 1% as well. To me this shows things are pretty fair, but could use a few tweaks to keep income inequality to keep from getting totally out of hand and really screwing up the whole economy.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:49pm PT
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The problems and complexities you describe are real, certainly, but things have to change, and less regulation isn't going to solve the problem. The bush admin eased regulation, and look what happened.
How did they "ease regulation". The number of laws regarding the Financial industry doubles approximately every 10-15 years, and this is still true of Bush's presidency.
Regulation goes hand in hand with corruption. The only regulation that works is competition. Create a level playing field, that's it.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:55pm PT
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Capital gains are a double tax.
Utter B.S. that you need some twisted logic above to support. Corporate tax on profit isn't the same as profit on some individual's investments.
Your investment makes money, your principal is not taxed again. Just the increase in value when you cash out.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 05:56pm PT
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What % people pay.
Rich people pay less than upper middle class.
I don't see that at all. The richest 1% pay about 1% less IN PERCENTAGE TERMS than the richest 4%. So what?
So someone who makes 1 Billion in a year pays $300,000,000. where someone who makes 1 Million in a year pays 310,000. How is the Billionaire not paying his fair share? Liberals should be ecstatic for all the social programs the person funds.
The curve in the graph is deceptive though because the x-axis is not to scale. The last 4 columns should be aggregated into 1. If you do this, the tax system looks very progressive.
The second graph is more instructive, and it shows by definition that the rich pay MORE than their "fair share" of taxes.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:00pm PT
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Your investment makes money, your principal is not taxed again. Just the increase in value when you cash out.
Yes, and the increase in value is decreased by corporate taxes, which cut into profits. I am not sure why this doesn't make sense to you.
Double tax.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:06pm PT
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She might be the biggest welfare queen in the nation. Their employees make such a poor wage, that the tax payers have to subsidize their wages with food stamps, housing subsidies, health care, etc. That of course, translates into bigger profits for the Waltons.
But welfare for the rich is A-OK!
Actually, no, the tax payers do NOT have to subsidize their wages with food stamps, housing subsidies, health care, etc. - Democrats CHOOSE to do this, and FORCE us to pay for it. I for one don't want to do this.
Walmart sounds so terrible. I must be missing something, but why don't those people just get high paying jobs that PROVIDE health care, retirement, etc.? Oh yeah, Alice Walton is holding a Walmart gun to their heads, I forgot.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:06pm PT
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If you are against every double taxes, then you should be against all sales taxes. why don't you rant about that?
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:08pm PT
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Tom,
I have a great deal of respect for your intellect and both your climbing and your life. I nonetheless strongly disagree with your characterization of the "unfairness" of the tax base. In what way are mutual funds tax exempt? How do they differ from any other capital investment? You can't depreciate them, and if their value increases at exactly the rate of inflation, you nonetheless get taxed on the amount of that increase of you sell your interest in them.
Capital gains get special rates precisely because they differ from other income in at least the following ways:
They come from earnings that are already taxed at least once (if wages or other capital gains) or twice (if dividends);
They may represent no real gain considering inflation, and yet are considered to generate "income" when sold; and
They tend to get sold less frequently than once a year, thus distorting their tax incidence because of increasing marginal rates.
I could think of plenty of other ways to deal with this other than a special rate, but almost all of them would result in virtually the same result, namely an adjustment for capital gains that someone on one side of the issue (and we know which side it will be) claims is unfair.
John
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:09pm PT
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Crack, Because it doesn't make sense.
First of all a lot more goes into stock price than profit.
But more importantly you can't just add taxes for different sources and call it a double tax. The corp pays corp tax on profits, the investor pays tax on the increase in value of their investment.
If you just start adding taxes where does it end? I bought gas and paid tax, the station pays tax, the refiner, the driller, the tanker, and all the employees working for them pay tax so is my gas tax a quintuple tax?
Is income tax from a corp a double tax too?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:10pm PT
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If you are against every double taxes, then you should be against all sales taxes. why don't you rant about that?
If you remove income, capital gains, corporate taxes, then income taxes would not be a double tax, would they?
Seriously though why not just tax based on spending? FairTax subsidizes the poor by giving them tax credits, so it can still be a progressive system.
Like I say, all money is earned to be spent, eventually. Why tax money that goes to production and jobs when the person who holds the money is not getting any benefit from it? Tax them when they spend it. If they spend it we get the benefit, if they don't spend it, who cares? It makes everyone else's money more valuable.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:13pm PT
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But more importantly you can't just add taxes for different sources and call it a double tax. The corp pays corp tax on profits, the investor pays tax on the increase in value of their investment.
The flaw in your logic is that the corp and the investor are the same entity. That is capitalism.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:14pm PT
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If you only taxed sales tax, then you would certainly help drive savings, which would decrease sales.
But I still don't know why you rant against the double taxation of capital gains, yet don't complain about the double taxation of a sales tax.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:15pm PT
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Crack Addict,
Remember that the allegation of the rich not paying their fair share largely comes from the Social Security wage cap. Those who point that out forget that Social Security payments also depend on how much you put it. Thus, while those whose incomes exceed the cap pay a decreasing percentage of their income in FICA, they also receive a decreasing percentage of their income in benefits. The "Rich Don't Pay Their Fair Share Because Warren Buffett Even Says So" crowd uses an economic and mathematical red herring because they ignore the benefits side of the equation.
John
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:17pm PT
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They come from earnings that are already taxed at least once (if wages or other capital gains) or twice (if dividends);
They may represent no real gain considering inflation, and yet are considered to generate "income" when sold; and
They tend to get sold less frequently than once a year, thus distorting their tax incidence because of increasing marginal rates.
The 2nd and 3rd points are valid and there should be adjusments for them.
But the first isn't true. They "come from" principal not earnings. Who knows what tax was paid on the pricipal. It could be inheritance under $5 million, it could be from cash deals, etc. And so what, you aren't paying tax on the pricipal again, only in the gain.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 25, 2011 - 06:21pm PT
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Remember that the allegation of the rich not paying their fair share largely comes from the Social Security wage cap.
I disagree. I think it comes from the capital gains tax being low. The complaint is that corporate taxes hurt the income of those who own the corporation, ie stockholders, yet it also hurts those who work for the corporation, since they can't make as much from the company. So both sides of the equation take a penalty. Yet the side that only works for the company can end up paying a higher tax rate on their earnings then those who sell stock and make their earnings on capital gains. which was Warren Buffets point.
....
But the first isn't true. They "come from" principal not earnings. Who knows what tax was paid on the pricipal. It could be inheritance under $5 million, it could be from cash deals, etc. And so what, you aren't paying tax on the pricipal again, only in the gain.
+1
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 25, 2011 - 07:48pm PT
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 07:53pm PT
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JEleazarian, thank you for the complement and also for correctly revealing that i don't necessarily know enough to argue this topic of economics properly
i'm just trying to understand...
also not sure whether anyone of us does, other than those creating and obfuscating the game board
however the system is clearly broken in important ways; and that is the critical topic of discussion
i try to be a 'systems thinker' and work professionally to build 'systems management tools'
my original ideas for building these tools have been so that we could properly manage the large life support systems upon which we depend for life
sadly my primary lessons learned in this have been that 'the powers that be' didn't want such tools to be generally available; but wanted to use them primarily behind closed doors for centralization of power; and not necessarily for optimum management of the systems
the argument for centralization of power is an elitist idea involving specialized superior knowledge to provide optimization of efficiency in the face of the general lack of sufficient public knowledge to make proper decisions
this principle was clearly stated by the founders of this American Republic (note: specifically NOT a Democracy)
unfortunately it appears that those who theoretically do have such sufficient knowledge are better skilled at gaining power than at using it wisely
much of the current climate of social noise seems to be directed at a general policy of massive depopulation, not for the general good of the human population
i understand the broad-based desperation behind the forming of such a draconian general policy; but don't agree with it
i continue to hold the thought that it is possible for us to grow up and wise up
such having very little to do with who is the richest or most powerful or most famous and well liked
i know enough of wealthy and powerful people to understand that they may be special people; but they certainly don't know all the answers
it takes a lot of people working together to build a workable society
it is very unfortunate that our society is collapsing; and fighting each other for control isn't what will bring it back to life
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 25, 2011 - 07:54pm PT
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Gary you have been on a roll!
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 26, 2011 - 11:24am PT
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Good tweet re. police violence in Oakland: "What does it say about our country when Iranian dissidents are giving US advice on how to get rid of the effects of tear gas?"
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new world order-
climber
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Oct 26, 2011 - 11:26am PT
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The Constitution no longer applies!
We need a world government as a solution to all our problems.
A world central bank, world single electronic currency and a world army to impose the will of the world government.
Bah-ah-ah-ah....I only believe what my government and mainstream media tells me.
Would you like your RFID implanted in your head, hand or adze?
Sheeple in training... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqwDqN7LNsc
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 11:42am PT
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i'll post this here because barry's pandering to the ows crowd
http://nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/obama-to-announce-student-loan-reforms-20111026
note: the repayment assistance ONLY applies to student loans that come directly from the gov and until last year, the vast majority of student loans came from the private sector and were only "guaranteed" the gov
last year, barry and congressional dems (before the repub tidal wave in the house) eliminated fed guarantees on student loans which eliminated the private student loan industry
thus, in the future, ALL student loans will come directly from the gov, meaning ALL student loans will be subject to similar "reforms" which means ALL student loans will be paid for with YOUR tax dollars which may NEVER be paid back
hopenchange
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 26, 2011 - 11:46am PT
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Using your "capitalist island" approach, I'd like to see an island of workers who don't save and invest try to make any modern items, or any significant profit. They may or may not starve, depending on the seasonality of their food supply, but they couldn't even organize themselves without someone taking an entrepreneurial risk.
Well, John, the hunting and gathering societies, those that still exist, seem to do very well without entrepreneurs, despite the limited resources they have at hand. In most so-called primitive societies, they only put in around three days of work or so per week. You get more leisure time when you don't have to support an upper class of wealth concentrators.
Simply put, labor is not the only factor of production, nor is it the only wealth creator. Wealth comes from saving and investing. You can create wealth making $30,000 a year, if you can find a way to spend less than you make. You can fail to create wealth making $300,000 a year if you spend everything you make.
Just think how much we could save and invest if our excess wealth wasn't being siphoned off to a very tiny class of capitalists.
All I ask is to get what I produce and let the capitalists produce what they get. Fair enough?
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new world order-
climber
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Oct 26, 2011 - 12:06pm PT
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These protests will ebb and flow, maybe even get shut down. Eventually however, protests world-wide will escalate, as people lose all hope, their savings and pensions.
As the protests grow, perhaps become violent, martial law will be invoked.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Oct 26, 2011 - 12:35pm PT
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bookworm complains:
last year, barry and congressional dems (before the repub tidal wave in the house) eliminated fed guarantees on student loans which eliminated the private student loan industry
What's the difference between a loan guaranteed by the government, and a loan directly from the government, booky ?
Other than there's no parasitic, "free market" 3rd party making a profit in the exchange?
Warbler, I think there was a 50% markup on these loans by way of this private system. By eliminating it, it created a 50% more economically more efficient system, or to put it another way, made it phenominally cheaper than the system created through the private sector.
Somewhat similar to Medicare, which has costs of administration of around 3-5%, compared to the cost of private health insurance, which runs in the 35-40%.
It's that "Free Market Magic"!!
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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How about we give workers, that is: us, the right to sack unproductive corporations.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:05pm PT
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http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175454/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_mapping_america%27s_shadowy_drone_wars
you really should go to the site and read more
Tomgram: Nick Turse, Mapping America's Shadowy Drone Wars
Posted by Nick Turse at 5:47pm, October 16, 2011.
These last weeks, there have been two “occupations” in lower Manhattan, one of which has been getting almost all the coverage -- that of the demonstrators camping out in Zuccotti Park. The other, in the shadows, has been hardly less massive, sustained, or in its own way impressive -- the police occupation of the Wall Street area.
On a recent visit to the park, I found the streets around the Stock Exchange barricaded and blocked off to traffic, and police everywhere in every form (in and out of uniform) -- on foot, on scooters, on motorcycles, in squad cars with lights flashing, on horses, in paddy wagons or minivans, you name it. At the park’s edge, there is a police observation tower capable of being raised and lowered hydraulically and literally hundreds of police are stationed in the vicinity. I counted more than 50 of them on just one of its sides at a moment when next to nothing was going on -- and many more can be seen almost anywhere in the Wall Street area, lolling in doorways, idling in the subway, ambling on the plazas of banks, and chatting in the middle of traffic-less streets.
This might be seen as massive overkill. After all, the New York police have already shelled out an extra $1.9 million, largely in overtime pay at a budget-cutting moment in the city. When, as on Thursday, 100 to 150 marchers suddenly headed out from Zuccotti Park to circle Chase Bank several blocks away, close to the same number of police -- some with ominous clumps of flexi-cuffs dangling from their belts -- calved off with them. It’s as if the Occupy Wall Street movement has an eternal dark shadow that follows it everywhere.
At one level, this is all mystifying. The daily crowds in the park remain remarkably, even startlingly, peaceable. (Any violence has generally been the product of police action.) On an everyday basis, a squad of 10 or 15 friendly police officers could easily handle the situation. There is, of course, another possibility suggested to me by one of the policemen loitering at the Park’s edge doing nothing in particular: “Maybe they’re peaceable because we’re here.” And here's a second possibility: as my friend Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace, said to me, “This is the most important piece of real estate on the planet and they’re scared. Look how amazed we are. Imagine how they feel, especially after so many decades of seeing nothing like it.”
And then there’s a third possibility: that two quite separate universes are simply located in the vicinity of each other and of what, since September 12, 2001, we’ve been calling Ground Zero. Think of it as Ground Zero Doubled, or think of it as the militarized recent American past and the unknown, potentially inspiring American future occupying something like the same space. (You can, of course, come up with your own pairings, some far less optimistic.) In their present state, New York’s finest represent a local version of the way this country has been militarized to its bones in these last years and, since 9/11, transformed into a full-scale surveillance-intelligence-homeland-security state.
Their stakeout in Zuccotti Park is geared to extreme acts, suicide bombers, and terrorism, as well as to a conception of protest and opposition as alien and enemy-like. They are trying to herd, lock in, and possibly strangle a phenomenon that bears no relation to any of this. They are, that is, policing the wrong thing, which is why every act of pepper spraying or swing of the truncheon, every aggressive act (as in the recent eviction threat to “clean” the park) blows back on them and only increases the size and coverage of the movement.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:09pm PT
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government is driving up the cost of higher education with too many loans. How many MFA's do we really need????
So true Fatty. Not sure why people don't see it. During the housing bubble cheap credit (directed by social policy) drove real estate prices sky high. The same thing is happening in Education right now, and just as in Real Estate, the cost of most degrees have risen beyond what they are worth in terms of future income.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:16pm PT
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Just think how much we could save and invest if our excess wealth wasn't being siphoned off to a very tiny class of capitalists.
All I ask is to get what I produce and let the capitalists produce what they get. Fair enough?
OK let's see what you can produce if you don't use any products created by capitalists. How long will it take you to create a blanket? Do you even know how to make one? A toothbrush? Or a house? To gather the food you need?
Spend a month or so trying to do this. I think you may change your mind about that "excess wealth".
What makes you think your labor is worth so much? Indians and Chinese will do the work for 1/3 of what you want. And you are surprised that the middle class is shrinking? I am surprised that it has held on so long. We haven't outsourced upper management yet, so the rich are still gaining, but it will happen and we will all be poorer from it.
The real problem is there is no real "excess wealth", the Fed prints money and calls it such, but they are not adding any real capital to the system by doing this. If interest rates were allowed to rise to what the market sets, people would have incentive to save. As it stands now we have imaginary money chasing high risk returns because that is the only way to make a return. This is a forced miss-allocation of capital that leads to a recession.
The OWS people are barking up the wrong tree. Most people in the U.S. want to live in a house they can't afford, drive a car they can't afford, and eat out every night. We have a government that tells us it is all good, just keep spending, borrow as much as you need, we will push the interest rates to zero! Wall Street peddles our debt to make it happen, and when the inevitable crash occurs, we act as if we are victims, taken advantage of by these evil moustache-twirling villians!
Take some personal responsibility. Get a job, pay your taxes. LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:24pm PT
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finally, a clear explanation of ows:
Why we must lose the darn 1 percent
By FRANK J. FLEMING
Posted: 10:55 PM, October 25, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street crowd has correctly identified two distinct groups in this country: the wealthiest 1 percent and the other 99 percent, who suffer from the 1 percent’s vast wealth: The wealthiest 1 percent not only have more money than us, they have much, much more money. That’s just wrong.
It’s easy to see how the wealthiest 1 percent are devastating our country. Let’s say you took part in a raffle and won a prize of $500. Happy at your good fortune, you’d start thinking of all the neat things you could buy with $500.
But say the person next to you won $1 million. Then, suddenly, your $500 would seem like nothing in comparison, and all your ideas of what to do with that $500 would seem pathetic compared to what you could do if only you had the other person’s $1 million.
One truth would ring constantly in your mind: “That’s not fair!”
That’s what the wealthiest 1 percent do to us a nation: It’s just impossible to appreciate our affluence while other people are allowed to have so much more than us.
Sure, we could instead compare ourselves to the poor in other nations who live on a dollar a day or the poor throughout history who lacked all the freedoms, opportunity and technology we have -- but it’s too depressing to think about those people. Instead, we just need to do something about the wealthiest 1 percent.
Some might say one person’s income doesn’t affect another’s, and people should only worry about improving their own finances, but this is ignorant of how math works: None of us can get ahead while the 1 percent are around.
Let’s say you had two apples and another person -- let’s call him “Rich” -- also had two apples. If you then got one more apple and Rich got 80 more apples, would you now have more apples? No, you’d have fewer apples -- fewer than that other guy who has an unfair number of apples!
See, the wealthiest 1 percent prevent us from getting ahead because any time we improve our incomes, we spend more on businesses and services, and guess who that helps? The 1 percent. Getting ahead just isn’t worth the knowledge that the rich are getting richer.
There’s no point in working hard to try to become one of the 1 percent ourselves, because what’s the chance of that happening? One in 100? Who would play a lottery with odds that bad?
No, instead of working hard, the 99 percent can only sit and protest on Wall Street until the wealthiest 1 percent are torn down.
Here’s the thing: They’re the 1 percent, but we’re the 99 percent. Their wealth may be much more than ours, but 99 is a much bigger number than one. So we should just gang up and take their money.
When one person takes the property of another, that’s tyranny, but when lots of people get together and do it, that’s democracy. So we should legislate that the 1 percent no longer get to keep that vast wealth and must instead distribute it among the rest of us. (I should get the largest portion because it was my idea.)
After we’ve taken care of their wealth, to keep the nation happy and prosperous we should pass a law making it illegal for there to be a wealthiest 1 percent -- this country should just be the normal 99 percent.
Sure, that isn’t mathematically possible, but government shouldn’t be about what’s possible; it should be about what’s fair.
Frank J. Fleming’s e-book, “Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything,” will be released by HarperCollins on Nov. 15.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:29pm PT
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http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175454/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_mapping_america%27s_shadowy_drone_wars
America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases
Its Full Extent Revealed for the First Time
By Nick Turse
They increasingly dot the planet. There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth at an air base in the United Arab Emirates that almost no one talks about.
And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide. Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous -- until now.
Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases -- some little more than desolate airstrips, others sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens and high-tech electronic equipment -- are the backbone of a new American robotic way of war. They are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad -- in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign “footprint” and little accountability.
Using military documents, press accounts, and other open source information, an in-depth analysis by TomDispatch has identified at least 60 bases integral to U.S. military and CIA drone operations. There may, however, be more, since a cloak of secrecy about drone warfare leaves the full size and scope of these bases distinctly in the shadows.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:50pm PT
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Rumor going on about last night’s Oakland’s riot, seems there were three white guys in a black van with no license plates parked for five to ten minutes then left. The driver and the other two passengers had hoods on and yelling $100.00 plus a brick to anyone that want’s them.
One protestor seeing the brick and asked where did you get that? The one protestor with his brick in hand said down the street, gave the description of the van and said make sure you ask for the guy that goes by the name “The Evil One”.
Hey! Fatty noticed you had not posted during the night till this morning. Where were you last night?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 02:57pm PT
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Let’s say you had two apples and another person -- let’s call him “Rich” -- also had two apples. If you then got one more apple and Rich got 80 more apples, would you now have more apples? No, you’d have fewer apples -- fewer than that other guy who has an unfair number of apples!
Funny. And true.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 26, 2011 - 03:56pm PT
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OK let's see what you can produce if you don't use any products created by capitalists.
That's the point, Crack, they produce nothing, only consume what we produce.
Let's say you picked 80 apples, and some guy who'd been sitting around all day came and collected 79 of them. And then he claimed you couldn't get along without him, because he was the apple job creator.
What would you say?
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 26, 2011 - 04:09pm PT
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Let’s say you had two apples and another person -- let’s call him “Rich” -- also had two apples. If you then got one more apple and Rich got 80 more apples, would you now have more apples? No, you’d have fewer apples -- fewer than that other guy who has an unfair number of apples!
Then the guy with 80 apples uses them to buy up all the apple tree orchards and starts cutting them down because the price of apple tree wood is high. You get a job for 10 years cutting up apple trees, but then with all the apple trees cut up, there is no more work.
think it doens't happen? well, it does. Talk to the lumberjacks in humboldt.
During the boom of extra work cutting down the apple trees, prices of houses went up. People moved there to teach school, or to be a fireman, or policeman, bought homes, but then the market collapsed and they were out of a job because the town couldn't afford to keep them and didn't need them because all the appletree cutters and apple harvesters moved away, and they try to sell their house so they can move to a new town, but their loan is upside down, so they can't. Ta dah..
Oh, and part of the reason applewood sold for so much is because the rich guy bought the politicians and got them to write a law which didn't allow any foreign applewood, which jacked up the price in America, so that he could make a huge profit on all the applewood he bought.
So whoop te doo.. I have 3 apples now, but also have a home that I owe 6 apples on, but is only worth 1 apple. And now I have no way to get anymore apples.
And you think the system isn't rigged, and you hate the apple picker because he just wasn't smart enough to see it coming.
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nature
climber
back in Tuscon Aridzona....
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Oct 26, 2011 - 04:47pm PT
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You see, we have a strong tradition in believing that higher education is good for the country as a whole.
a novel concept. one the republican'ts don't seem to either care about or grasp (or both)
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 26, 2011 - 04:47pm PT
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Without the building, machinery, computers and supplies, the workers produce nothing.
Wrong, who do you think built and managed the building, the computers and the supplies? It wasn't the fatcat clipping coupons in his private compound in Barbados.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 04:57pm PT
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And Gary, who paid those workers? Not someone with no savings. The economy needs labor, capital, natural resources and entrepreneurial actions to produce. You can't single one out and say that it is the only essential ingredient.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 05:14pm PT
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I served as a trustee of a private university (quite highly ranked as first a regional liberal arts college, and then as a regional university by US News & World Reports) for 11 years. I was the chair of the budget & finance commission and on the executive committee for five of those years. The Board set tuition at the university, and we raised it at a clip greater than the inflation rate in every year in which I served. Most other non-profit institutes of higher education did the same.
We could not have done that without federal student financial assistance. In essence, the colleges and universities sucked up all the increased federal student financial assistance in raised tuition and fees. It didn't cost the students more unless they came from high-income families, but that's another little secret of private colleges and universities. The nominal tuition rate is simply what they charge the rich kids. They adjust this to pay for the financial aid of the other kids. In reality, it's plain, old-fashioned price discrimination.
I'm all for encouraging higher education, and for making sure that it is not limited to the most wealthy. Not only is it becoming a necessity for individual prosperity, but a good education (in contrast to what some institutions and majors provide) enriches all of us by creating more productive, informed and contributing citizens. Nonetheless, the unintended consequence of steeply rising tuition is a direct result of federal student financial assistance. If you have a way to stop it, I'm all ears.
John
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 26, 2011 - 05:34pm PT
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...The economy needs labor, capital, natural resources and entrepreneurial actions to produce. You can't single one out and say that it is the only essential ingredient.
John, I am in total agreement with you.
What we don't need is a class of people whose only job is to collect capital. They serve no purpose.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 06:00pm PT
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/45031100/
$40 Billion down the tubes, Government cannot even tell us where it went. That is $120 per man, woman, baby in the U.S. - think of what a homeless person could have done with $120.
Sickening- and Nobody went to jail for this.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 26, 2011 - 06:07pm PT
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My goodness!
Not very fiscally responsible handling of tax payers money under the Bush Administration there was it?
But then, what's tens of billions when trillions were pissed away in the Iraq nation building experiment?
But let's concentrate on important stuff now, like defunding National Public Radio and Planned Parenthood. Gotta throw red meat to the Repub "Base" ya know.
Oh, and make sure those gays don't go having abortions.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 26, 2011 - 06:33pm PT
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http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/numbers-income-top-one-percent-skyrocketed-over-last-153005722.html
So you already know that the gap between rich and poor has been widening lately. But some new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office put the issue into stark relief.
As the chart at right shows, between 1979 and 2007, the share of after-tax income going to each of the bottom four income quintiles--the bottom 80 percent--has dropped. The only quintile that has increased its share is the top 20 percent. And the top 1 percent has more than doubled its share.
That top 1 percent saw its income skyrocket by 275 percent. Those between the 80th and 99th percentile--that is, the top 20 percent, excluding the very top 1 percent--also did pretty well, seeing their income rise by 65 percent. Income for the bottom 20 percent, meanwhile, grew by just 18 percent.
One reason for the growing gap, the report said, is the impact of government transfer programs. Back in 1979, the poorest 20 percent of the population received 50 percent of all government transfers. By 2007, that had dropped to 35 percent, thanks largely to increases in spending on Social Security and unemployment benefits, which aren't focused exclusively on poor households.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has made inequality a key focus of its protests, and has used the slogan, "We are the 99 percent." After starting in lower Manhattan last month, the movement has spread across the country, and has succeeded at helping to put the inequality issue into the media and political spotlight.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 26, 2011 - 06:51pm PT
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Jeff, seriously just for one minute, consider that your party is on the wrong side of this.
Your party, by vigorously opposing what already a far higher percentage of the American people support than the tea party, is unknowingly promoting "class warfare" and is pitting Americans against each other.
It will take time, usually at least six months for the American consciousness to become mostly familiar with something, but by next spring the Republican Party could be very damaged by their opposition to what the majority of Americans will support by then.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 26, 2011 - 07:09pm PT
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Iraq War Veteran Scott Olsen Critically Injured at Occupy Oakland Raid
http://sfist.com/2011/10/26/critically-injured_person_in_occupy.php
the person who was hit in the head with a projectile during last night's beanbag assault by Oakland police has been identified as Iraq veteran Scott
who served two tours in Iraq. Olsen is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace, and was reportedly against the war before he even fought in it.
And the neo-religious repuglibags say "wrong side? what fence?".
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 07:42pm PT
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One reason for the growing gap, the report said, is the impact of government transfer programs. Back in 1979, the poorest 20 percent of the population received 50 percent of all government transfers. By 2007, that had dropped to 35 percent, thanks largely to increases in spending on Social Security and unemployment benefits, which aren't focused exclusively on poor households.
Welfare has gone from something for those in need to something to supplement falling middle class incomes. Now days, 40 million people (> 13%) get food stamps.
But this does not explain why the middle class is shrinking, the middle class is not (and should not be) dependent on welfare outlays for income. It is shrinking because we have lost jobs to overseas competition. I was not surprised that incomes shrank, I was surprised that they held up as long as they did.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 07:51pm PT
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Nonetheless, the unintended consequence of steeply rising tuition is a direct result of federal student financial assistance. If you have a way to stop it, I'm all ears.
Education, Real estate, health care - everything the government aims its printers at experience double digit inflation.
The only real way to stop it is to pull the plug, get government out. Will some people fall through the cracks when it comes to buying a house, getting health care, getting an education? Sure, just like there are now people who fall through the cracks, although it may be different people. At least we won't have prices rising beyond what the degree/house/treatment is worth.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 26, 2011 - 07:54pm PT
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Fats the man peeacefully opposed the illegal war, went anyway, two tours, returned to the states, continued to peacefully protest, was critically wounded by the fat assed and jack booted Oakland Storm Troopers and all you can say is he is a fuk-up?
The belligerent hypocrisy of the noob-con capitalistniks is awe inspiring.
What happened to all that "support our troops" cheerleading when Spurious George was sending them to die for oil profits? Now that they are vets who disagree they are fuk-ups and drug dealers eh?
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Oct 26, 2011 - 07:54pm PT
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I'm all for peaceful demonstrations, but lets remember the biggest most peaceful demonstration in US history, Woodstock, left a hell of a mess.
Who is going to clean up the Occupy messes?
Yeah, yeah, I know, democracy is messy. But it is a lot easier to take people seriously when they act responsibly.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 26, 2011 - 08:10pm PT
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Fats would you have told the "rebels" who have been transforming the Arab world (for themselves) to stand down when the "Man" showed up and said leave? Would you prefer Gadawful still be in power?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 08:19pm PT
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 26, 2011 - 08:28pm PT
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whatever,
A martyr will only strengthen the movement's resolve.
Jihad!! Die fighting a capitalist and get 80 black eyed virgins in paradise!!
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 26, 2011 - 08:54pm PT
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No,
Although I got to Woodstock a day late, i volunteered along with hundreds, to be part of the clean up effort.
We worked for 30 hours after everyone left, and that farmer's field was CLEAN.
So yes the kids were wet and mostly miserable by the time it ended, but a lot of us made sure we did NOT leave a mess.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 26, 2011 - 09:09pm PT
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Well, Skip, you are entitled to your opinion.
I was there, were you even born yet?
Everyone had a great time, we cleaned everything up, and the organizers, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Mike Lang, did NOT "profit", at all.
When it was all over, they actually owed money to various venders and some to the rock bands who were promised appearance money.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Oct 26, 2011 - 09:24pm PT
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Protesting is not ok according to our republican brothers.
Only peaceful assemblies at the appointed times in the appointed places were used by our founding fathers that the conservatives are always waving in our face like a flag.
Didn't you pay attention in history class? sheesh.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 26, 2011 - 11:58pm PT
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Anybody want to hazard a guess to which side Skip would have been on in this little skirmish?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 27, 2011 - 01:47am PT
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Watching the mob of Oakland CA zombie occupiers on the move after getting kicked out of their nest in Oscar Grant Plaza.
Ch 2 live.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 02:36am PT
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They aren't asking for more government. They are asking for sound government.
The 60s protesters were anti establishment because the establishment was creating Vietnam.
This group is anti establishment in that the establishment is wall street and wall street owns the government, which is suppose to be the peoples government.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 27, 2011 - 02:39am PT
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Occupy' dimwits – aren't they darling?
...we already know that it is primarily due to their indoctrination by
leftists in education and the media; throw in their manipulation by radical
agitators and a dab of innate stupidity, and we have what we see
transpiring in cities across America.\
Also important to remember:
OWS is the brainchild of Obama surrogates – and you can take that to the bank.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=360509
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 02:48am PT
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Perhaps you need to learn that even though the people don't really have it figured out yet, maybe that doesn't matter at this point. What matters is to express the frustration, and then see who can speak and formulate the frustration into something useful, such as campaign finance reform. I do understand that it is a system that allows politicians to be bought, which is one reason I do support campaign finance reform.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 02:54am PT
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Because, it will point to the fact that it isn't going to be paid back and the Obama administrations hands are all over it.
You laugh, but you act as though the republicans would do better. You don't have any answers either, but you sure find it easy to laugh at others.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:12am PT
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that's so unfair!
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:14am PT
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i wonder...why were there no "crackdowns" on the racist, hating, fascist, nazi, VIOLENT tea party protests? why did all these DEM mayors allow such racist, hating, fascist, nazi, VIOLENT behavior by the tea party protestors? seems to me, these DEM mayors need to be replaced for somebody who will deal more consistently with unlawful behavior
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/us/oakland-and-other-cities-crack-down-on-occupy-protests.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:01am PT
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You don't know it Skipt but just because you and the other ST shankers keep saying that President Barack Obama is doing a bad job doesn't make it so. Actually, all things and circumstances considered he has been doing a remarkable job. History will show to those of you with your blinders still on that Dr F has been right and you right wing-nuts have just been fools. Show us your birth certificate Skippypoo.
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:47am PT
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F*#k you BW.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 27, 2011 - 11:11am PT
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What's it like to enjoy living under a yoke, bookworm?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 12:11pm PT
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The Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street
Finally, a truly populist uprising
by David Morris
Published on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 by On the Commons
Host David Gregory complained about Occupy Wall Street protestors “demonizing banks” and wondered, “Is this not a reverse tea party tactic?”
Gregory is right. In many respects Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is indeed a mirror image of the Tea Party. To the Tea Party government is the enemy. To OWS the huge corporation is the enemy. OWS wants to raise taxes on billionaires. The Tea Party wants to considerably reduce them. OWS wants to rebuild and strengthen the safety net. The Tea Party wants to weaken it.Which stands up for the majority of Americans? (Credit: Long Island Rose under a Creative Commons license from flickr.net)
Both OWS and the Tea Party are mass movements but their attitude toward the masses couldn’t be more different. OWS and the other #Occupy protests lack leaders and a formal platform, but their demands clearly emerge from the thousands of individual grievances expressed in homemade signs and letters. Mike Konczal at Rortybomb.org did a statistical analysis of 1000 personal statements posted at We are the 99% TUMBLR and found them far less ideological than practical. Their demands effectively boil down to these. “(F)ree us from the bondage of our debts and give us a basic ability to survive.”
From his analysis, Konczal sees the outlines of a program, “Upon reflection, it is very obvious where the problems are. There’s no universal health care to handle the randomness of poor health. There’s no free higher education to allow people to develop their skills outside the logic and relations of indentured servitude. Our bankruptcy code has been rewritten by the top 1% when instead, it needs to be a defense against their need to shove inequality-driven debt at populations. And finally, there’s no basic income guaranteed to each citizen to keep poverty and poor circumstances at bay.”
As one would expect, given its longevity and political impact, the Tea Party does have leaders and a relatively clear program. Probably the best expression of that program occurred when Houston-based attorney Ryan Hecker created a website and invited people to propose ideas for a platform patterned on the Contract for America the Republicans effectively used in 1994 to gain control of the House of Representatives. Some 1,000 ideas were submitted. Ultimately 450,000 people voted online for the final 10 that became the Contract from America.
All parts of this new Contract are intended to shrink government. “Identify the constitutionality of every new law.” “Audit federal agencies for constitutionality.” Demand a federal balanced budget amendment. Reduce taxes.
Starkly absent is any mention of the dangers associated with concentrated private wealth and power.
Faux Populism vs. True Populism
Both OWS and the Tea Party might be described as populist but their definitions of populism wildly diverge. That divergence has been clear from their founding. Occupy Wall Street began on September 7, 2011 with hundreds converging on Wall Street. The Tea Party began on February 19, 2009 with a rant from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. CNBC Business News editor Rick Santelli loudly condemned the government’s plan to help people stay in their homes. “(D)o we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages”? he asked. Santelli suggested holding a tea party for traders to dump derivatives into the Chicago River. Floor traders around him cheered his proposal. The video went viral after the Drudge Report publicized it. Within days, Fox News was discussing the appearance of a new “Tea Party”. A week later coordinated protests under the Tea Party banner took place in over 40 cities.
Santelli’s insistence that those who lose their homes are “losers” who have only themselves to blame is a sentiment widely shared among Tea Party Republicans and most recently expressed by Republican Presidential candidate front runner Herman Cain. When asked about Wall Street protestors Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza declared, “Don’t blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”
During a recent CNN televised Republican presidential debate held in front of a Tea Party audience, the moderator asked Representative Ron Paul what he would do if a healthy 30 year old man decided not to buy health insurance and then had an injury or disease that required hospitalization and surgery. Who would pay for that? Ron Paul said the man was responsible for his actions. He had taken a risk and would have to suffer the consequences. The moderator asked, “Should society just let him die?”. While the Congressman pondered the question, audience members vocally expressed their approval.
This lack of empathy for what OWS would call the 99% is palpable wherever Tea Party Republicans come to power,
In Michigan conservative Republicans gained control last November. The state is home to nearly 2 million people, about 20 percent of the state’s population, who depend on food stamps. Until last month, eligibility was based on income. But this year, even while the state remains mired in the worst recession since the 1930s the Republicans made it much more difficult to qualify for food assistance. Eligibility is now based on assets. Those with assets of more than $5,000 in the bank or who own a vehicle worth more than $15,000 will no longer be eligible.
For Michigan Republicans it is not enough to be poor and needy to qualify for food assistance. You must be destitute.
In the Tea Party era, policy makers in three dozen states have proposed drug testing for people receiving benefits like welfare, unemployment assistance, job training and food stamps.
In 2011, Florida succeeded in passing legislation requiring the drug testing of welfare applicants at the urging of its Governor Rick Scott, who rode to office on a wave of Tea Party support. The roughly 113,000 Florida welfare recipients must pay for their own drug test. People who fail the test become ineligible for a year. A second failed test makes them ineligible for three years. The Economist magazine’s headlines conveyed the elation Tea Party members must have felt with their legislative victory. Drug testing in Florida: their tea-cup runneth over.
Despite Governor Scott’s rhetoric, the poor are not drug addicts. Only about 2 percent of Florida’s welfare applicants are failing the test, according to Florida’s Department of Children and Families. After adding up the savings derived from not paying welfare to this 2 percent and subtracting the cost of testing 100 percent of the applicants the Tampa Tribune concluded that Florida may save “up to $40,800 to $60,000 for a program that state analysts have predicted will cost $178 million this fiscal year.
But in Florida or Michigan or a dozen other states, it’s not about saving money. It’s about punishing those who teeter on the economic edge. It’s about making clear that we are not our brothers’ keeper.
OWS does demonize powerful banks. The Tea Party demonizes the poorest and weakest of us all.
For OWS unfairness means taxing billionaires at half the rate their secretaries pay and allowing the top 1% of the population to “earn” as much, collectively, as the bottom 60 percent. For Tea Party Republicans taxes themselves are unfair and inequality is desirable. Indeed, they want to give the 1% even a greater share of the nation’s wealth.
All Republican presidential candidates promise to lower taxes on the rich. Herman Cain has captured the popular conservative imagination with his 9-9-9 plan, a flat tax of 9 percent on the rich and corporations and the imposition of a 9 percent national sales tax on everyone. This would result in a 50-75 percent cut in taxes paid by the richest 1% while imposing a hefty new tax on the 99%. The Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that under Cain’s plan, the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers will pay about $2,000 more in taxes while the richest 1% will pay about $210,000 less.
The Tea Party vision of a future America may have been best expressed by the budget introduced last spring by Tea Party darling Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) last spring and passed enthusiastically by the Republican House. “This is not a budget,” Ryan declared at the time. “This is a cause.”
Indeed it was, and is. Ryan’s plan would cut about $4.3 trillion from programs that primarily benefit the 99% while cutting taxes by about and equal amount, $4.2 trillion, cuts that would overwhelmingly benefit the 1%. According to Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Ryan’s plan “would produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history, while increasing poverty and inequality more than any measure in recent times and possibly in the nation’s history.”
Even when they agree that federal spending is profligate, OWS and the Tea Party violently disagree on what should be cut. Signs and speeches at #Occupy events often target the exorbitant military spending and foreign wars. But despite the fact that the Pentagon is the poster child for government waste and incompetence, not to mention corruption, it is also the only part of the government the Tea Party considers all but off limits.
As soon as Republicans took over the House of Representatives in November 2010, they changed the rules so that military spending does not have to be offset by reduced spending somewhere else, unlike any other kind of government spending. It is the only activity of government Republicans believe does not have to be paid for. The Tea Party’s ascendance has only strengthened the Republicans’ resolve that the Pentagon’s budget is untouchable. An analysis by the Heritage Foundation of Republican votes on defense spending found that Tea Party freshmen were even more likely than their Republican elders to vote against cutting any part of the military budget.
The Use and Abuse of Government
The Tea Party hates the very idea of government, embracing Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum, “Government is the problem.” OWS also sees government as an enemy when democracy has been corrupted by money and government has been captured by corporations. The Declaration of Principles adopted by the general assembly of Occupy Wall Street in its first days makes this clear, “…no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.”
As Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz observes government increasingly is the 1%.
Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office….When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
But OWS also knows that government is the only vehicle through which the majority can fashion rules that increase personal security and restrain unbridled greed and private power. If we give up on government we give up on our ability to collectively influence our future.
Which is why high on the list of demands by OWS protestors is to minimize the impact of money on politics and increase the number of people voting.
Tea Partiers again take the opposite position. They defend the right of global corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and they advocate policies that suppress voter turnout.
“Since Republicans won control of many statehouses last November, more than a dozen states have passed laws requiring voters to show photo identification at polls, cutting back early voting periods or imposing new restrictions on voter registration drives,” the New York Times reported a few weeks back.
A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law analyzed 19 laws that passed and 2 executive orders that were issued in 14 states this year. The report concludes that these policy changes “could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.”
Today the Tea Party has the upper hand. With the backing of some of the world’s richest men and most powerful corporations, it has successfully converted the justifiable anger at Wall Street and government inaction into an unprecedented and ahistorical form of populism: a mass uprising against the masses. The Occupy Wall Street movement proposes a populism more compatible with other mass protests, one that doesn’t turn its back on neighbors, one that fights against massive inequality and concentrated private power, and that urges reforms that can once again allow us to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 27, 2011 - 12:35pm PT
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Excellent post Norton.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 27, 2011 - 12:44pm PT
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Re: Kitchen
From what I gathered actually watching livestream and the GA, the kitchen is giving more power to the working groups rather than having a centralized kitchen, this should help reduce the stress put on the main kitchen.
Some folks may feel the way the article expressed, but I heard from many people yesterday(from the kitchen group) saying "feed everyone"(Now there is a revolutionary idea!).
It's an open group(Kitchen), if someone doesn't want to cook, they don't have to, someone else will step in.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 12:53pm PT
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Jeff, do you have to work at being a total horse's ass or were you born that way?
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Oct 27, 2011 - 12:55pm PT
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i wanna go to jail with fatty,
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Oct 27, 2011 - 12:55pm PT
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Stay classy fatty...
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 01:19pm PT
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criminals and professional homeless should blend right in with many of the protesters.
We have been over this already, but you don't seem to be capable of learning.
I suppose you would have been against the original tea parties methods. Well? Wouldn't you?
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 27, 2011 - 01:34pm PT
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I like how each citys character is reflected in the protests.
The San Francisco protest is filthy, with piss and sh#t all over the place, the Oakland protest is dangerous and violent, and in L.A., the government's worried that protesters are trampling the lawn.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
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from michael moore:
"I do very well -- and for a documentary filmmaker, I do extremely well. That, too, drives conservatives bonkers. "You're rich because of capitalism!" they scream at me. Um, no. Didn't you take Econ 101? Capitalism is a system, a pyramid scheme of sorts, that exploits the vast majority so that the few at the top can enrich themselves more. I make my money the old school, honest way by making things."
and by not hiring union workers
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 01:39pm PT
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Dirty hippies join the OWS protests: Oh the IRONY!
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 01:50pm PT
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I am thrilled that the protesters are out there, but there are rules against overnight camping, they should be showing up every morning at 7AM.
Jeff, there were rules against stealing and dumping tea. Overnight camping is a small price to pay for allowing the people to voice their frustration. And this is the people's frustration.
Given an opportunity to speak and lead the people, the right seems to merely want to belittle them. What a shame.
It is also a shame that the democrat leadership is doing nothing for them either. Has even one leader gone to try and talk to them?
What a shame, but keep on ignoring them. That is the one thing that will make this movement stronger, because there is a genuine frustration with how our government leads by allowing large financial institutions to set policy.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 27, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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a revolution won't work
the slave masters have been planning for that for a long time; and counting on that as a critical component of their long term plans
a revolution just gives them an opportunity to unleash their dogs
what will work is to cease flowing power to the criminal mighty
research the truth behind all the secrecy and disinformation and let it be widely known
and figure out how to develop a society based upon individual contributions and mutual respect that is not a pyramid scheme
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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Peoples Park. the extreme brutality of the Right on actual Hippies. And what they did in return.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/488646/Peoples-Park-An-American-Shame-OT-Long-Pics-Political-
THESE were Hippies. REAL, actual hippies, living in the time of our greatest inter-generational solidarity and love.
In the 90's I lived half a block from People's Park. I admit to enjoying the history of it, but it turned out the same way every leftist utopian dream does - it went to $hit. Walk by there now, you are likely to get mugged, or get offered all manner of drugs. Women brace themselves for the inevitable catcalls. Drunks sleep behind bushes. The stench of urine is obvious from hundreds of feet away.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 02:33pm PT
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Rox, you lose support when you advocate killing.
I advocate a slightly higher tax rate on them and A firmer hand on the financial regulations. With penalties beyond just a few million. Some of those folks should have ended up in jail. And not just the peons who were taking orders, but the big whigs.
You will undermine this movement if you advocate killing.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 03:00pm PT
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I don't care about you.
We realize that Skip. You complain about Rox not caring about the rich, yet you are also uncaring.
Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me...
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 27, 2011 - 03:45pm PT
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billionaires and politicians are more symptomatic of social system problems rather than being a root cause
they are simply the winners in the current system
the system has worked better than most, but is faulty and will fall apart under its own weight
the root cause is setting up our society as a Ponzi pyramid scheme
we have greater corruption and inequality in this country than in any of the middle eastern countries
however a revolution is a very bad idea and simply leads to massive destruction
recognizing the problems opens the possibilities for correcting with a more viable system
we can conceivably unravel the Ponzi scheme without destroying the society
the people fighting to keep the system working are fighting so hard to maintain something that is not workable; because they can't imagine something that is workable
people with better imaginations should be agreeing to keep the system together long enough to replace it with something more workable
there is more than enough creative energy in this country to develop a system that will be more equitable, workable and stable
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 04:03pm PT
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hat part do you not understand that demagoguing any 1% of the population,
by definition, makes you a bigot?
But, we understand. We really do. Lynching people that you don't' agree
with has long and favored history in the Democrat Party.
Oh.. I see, so when we demagogue someone, according to you, that means we care for them. And of course we only hang those we care about. Got it.
In other words, you have confused posting to SuperTopo with actually helping the poor.
Uh.. don't know what you are talking about as I am fully aware of the limitations of the taco. But if you want to pretend you know, then go for it. I would say that most here on the taco think that it is you who lives in la la land, as your ideology and action here on the taco seems to be fully removed from any caring. Notwithstanding whatever non profit you have set up to buy your way into heaven.
As for me, I am just holding a conversation. A conversation that can help clarify thought, which could lead to action, but isn't yet really action.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 04:10pm PT
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As for this movement not having leadership, why in God's name would anyone expect that a movement of the people would immediately have leadership. It is a collective of frustration, nothing more, until someone comes along and molds it. Glenn Beck was one of the talking heads for the tea party movement. I don't respect him and his attempts to demonize others in order to make himself appear humble, so I didn't really respect the tea party, though I thought that they had some legitimate beefs. Beefs that got taken and used by some less then savory people.
At this point, the same thing could happen to the OWS group. Some less then savory leader could step up and take it over, but at this point, it hasn't happened. It doesn't mean their beefs are illegitimate. It just means a leader hasn't stepped up.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 04:25pm PT
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ows proving that socialism/communism do NOT work::
By JAMES TARANTO
The New York Post has another hilarious dispatch from the People's Republic of Obamaville (or, as it was known before the revolution, Zuccotti Park). It seems "the Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a 'counter' revolution yesterday--because they're angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for 'professional homeless' people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters."
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep's-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
To show they mean business, the kitchen staff refused to serve any food for two hours yesterday in order to meet with organizers to air their grievances, sources said.
It reminds one of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi: "No soup for you!" But it's also reminiscent of President Obama's comments that we noted yesterday: "The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don't work even harder than we did in 2008, then we're going to have a government that tells the American people, 'you are on your own. If you get sick, you're on your own. If you can't afford college, you're on your own. If you don't like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then you're on your own.' That's not the America I believe in. It's not the America you believe in."
Yet to judge by their actions, the denizens of Obamaville have come to believe in it very quickly. They selfishly feast on spaghetti bolognese and sheep's milk, but when the truly needy show up, the cupboard is bare. "No soup for you! You're on your own, freeloader." Apparently it's the bottom 1% against whom they're waging class war.
Of course we are being half-facetious here. In truth, the Obamavillians are learning why Obama is wrong--why socialism doesn't work. A society that makes a virtue of dependency ultimately encourages freeloading and grifting. The instinct to prevent it is a healthy one. A lot has been written about the similarities and differences between Obamaville and the Tea Party, and here is one: Whereas the latter arose out of the instinct to reward self-reliance and discourage dependency, the former is having it awakened by an encounter with the real world.
Will Obama ever have such an encounter with the real world? Probably not until he's been out of office for at least 10 years. There were no reports that any homeless people or ex-cons showed up asking for dinner at the million-dollar fund-raiser where he made the sanctimonious remarks quoted above. If they had, the Secret Service would have told them they were on their own.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 27, 2011 - 04:34pm PT
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because they're angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for 'professional homeless' people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters."
Well, that's why they are protesting in the first place, isn't it? They are tired of working for con-men, frauds and ex-cons masquerading as "job creators."
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 04:51pm PT
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yes Jeff, I can see that for you everything boils down to those beliefs. But the real world is a whole lot larger then that.
But carry on with those shallow beliefs, and see how far it gets you. Sure, you might defeat Obama, and this movement might fade out, but if the underlying frustration isn't dealt with, then it will irrupt in some other way.
But of course, your world is black and white and the only thing you care about is beating Obama.
I consider that to be foolish and very narrow minded.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 27, 2011 - 04:56pm PT
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What, no comment about Jerry Brown abandoning the cause????
We're confused, fattrad. Your fellow Republican spambot Darnold Thompson assures us that state workers have 100% control of the state government.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 05:20pm PT
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Brown also proposed raising the age at which most new state workers can retire with full benefits and banning abuses known as “pension spiking” and “double dipping.” He would revamp the make-up of boards overseeing pension funds, bar retroactive benefit increases and disallow workers from “buying” credit for additional years of service to boost retirement payments.
Wonderful. In 40 years we will save a billion a year.
California's government will have long since defaulted.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 05:26pm PT
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Occupy Wall Street!
Occupy every USA city!
Occupy city squares and parks!
Occupy, Occupy, Occupy, Protest, and Occupy again to make your demands known to the powers that be.
How about occupying a job? Get off your butt.
Climbers should be more independent than this. Stop whining about what other people have, stop demanding a handout. Sad and Pathetic.
Can't make anything of yourself? Time to start looking at the choices you made in life instead of blaming other people.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 27, 2011 - 05:42pm PT
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Here's an excerpt (read the whole thing at the link at bottom) from Taibbi that puts this into perspective better than I ever could:
...When you take into consideration all the theft and fraud and market manipulation and other evil sh#t Wall Street bankers have been guilty of in the last ten-fifteen years, you have to have balls like church bells to trot out a propaganda line that says the protesters are just jealous of their hard-earned money.
Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.
Where was all that class hatred in the Reagan years, when openly dumping on the poor became fashionable? Where was it in the last two decades, when unions disappeared and CEO pay relative to median incomes started to triple and quadruple?
The answer is, it was never there. If anything, just the opposite has been true. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we've obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.
Moreover, the worse the economy got, the more being a millionaire or a billionaire somehow became a qualification for high office, as people flocked to voting booths to support politicians with names like Bloomberg and Rockefeller and Corzine, names that to voters symbolized success and expertise at a time when few people seemed to have answers. At last count, there were 245 millionaires in congress, including 66 in the Senate.
And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.
In this country, we cheer for people who hit their own home runs – not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.
That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.
All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes, things like:
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 05:45pm PT
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Awesome post Elcap.. too bad the fatties and skips and bookworms won't understand it and will try to pervert it.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 05:55pm PT
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A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity [which] can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes"
Analyzing political conservatism as motivated social cognition integrates theories of personality (authoritarianism, dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity), epistemic and existential needs (for closure, regulatory focus, terror management), and ideological rationalization (social dominance, system justification). A meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (-.32); uncertainty tolerance (-.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (-.20); fear of threat and loss (.18 ); and self-esteem (-.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 06:03pm PT
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All Republican presidential candidates promise to lower taxes on the rich. Herman Cain has captured the popular conservative imagination with his 9-9-9 plan, a flat tax of 9 percent on the rich and corporations and the imposition of a 9 percent national sales tax on everyone. This would result in a 50-75 percent cut in taxes paid by the richest 1% while imposing a hefty new tax on the 99%. The Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that under Cain’s plan, the bottom 60 percent of taxpayers will pay about $2,000 more in taxes while the richest 1% will pay about $210,000 less.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Oct 27, 2011 - 06:34pm PT
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I'd like to see stats to back that up, Skip(repubs providing more for the poor). Otherwise - I have to say it sounds like one more example of "Republican Factuality." That is - to simply state something makes it true, regardless if the person who says it is twisting a statistic or event, or even pulling it right out of thin air.
I know that there are studies that show that people of lower incomes donate most, as a percentage of their income. The writings about that, I don't recall being broken down by political party, though.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:07pm PT
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They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day
Well, that ensures that the Republicans will be taken care of. Probably the wouldn't want to be seen at the OWS event.
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:11pm PT
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:17pm PT
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But, you also cheer for drugged out money makers, Winehouse, etc,
FAIL. Assuming facts not in evidence. Try again.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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System is rigged. Taibbi:
FREE MONEY: Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as "standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself."
Or the banks borrow billions at zero and lend mortgages to us at four percent, or credit cards at twenty or twenty-five percent. This is essentially an official government license to be rich, handed out at the expense of prudent ordinary citizens, who now no longer receive much interest on their CDs or other saved income. It is virtually impossible to not make money in banking when you have unlimited access to free money, especially when the government keeps buying its own cash back from you at market rates.
Your average chimpanzee couldn't f*#k up that business plan, which makes it all the more incredible that most of the too-big-to-fail banks are nonetheless still functionally insolvent, and dependent upon bailouts and phony accounting to stay above water. Where do the protesters go to sign up for their interest-free billion-dollar loans?
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:26pm PT
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“Abbie Hoffman was created from the turmoil of the 60-70's. He was murdered by a hit team to prevent him from becoming effective again. We can recreate him.”
Not true he died from an overdose
Stokely Carmichael can be recreated. So can the SLA. The Weathermen.”
But can agree that all can be recreated and looks like the 60’s will return
What was the song Bye, Bye American Pie?
Two books: The one of the LEFT or the message finally went away but the one on the RIGHT which it’s prime objective and the success of their activities was to contribute in the defeat of Fascism and did and was correct at the time but their message/ideals has changed and what have they done or doing.
Introduction; Prairie Fire
On November 4, 2010, Dohrn was interviewed by NewsClick India. About the "Right" in the U.S., she said, "It’s racist; it’s armed; it’s hostile; it’s unspeakable." Referring to the Restoring Honor rally which was promoted by Glenn Beck and held on August 28, 2010, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., "You have white people armed, demanding the end to the [Obama] presidency." She also stated, "The real terrorist is the American government, state terrorism unleashed against the world."[33]
Source: News Click India; newsclick.in
As for the other book: Assessment of Men
Last sentence in this April 30 1947 publication: “Introduction”: We trust that these will not fail to make paths for their potentialities so that our predictions will be verified and there will be triumphs in which we can partake vicariously as we say to ourselves: “Ah! Years ago this was foreseen.”
In “Conclusions and Recommendations” last sentence: Despite the somewhat equivocal outcome of the whole enterprise, we believe that by trials and errors we have exposed and found remedies for most of the defects of the system, and have finally arrived at a plan as promising as any that is known to us for advancing the science of man, a plan which contains the necessary instruments for its own modification and perfection.
My question instruments for WHOM? Not back then when Julia Child and John Ford were part of, it is now after 65 years; the last 20 years, now and the future?
Fox news will and will always do the disinformation or propaganda. Palin, Beck…………….
So I say divide the country into two: East vs. West, Cut CA into half: North and South. Let Mexico have Texas and Arizona and put missiles, anti-artillery weaponry at the above borders facing each other and arm the US citizens to the teeth. No military/police replace them with militias, John Birchers, Pat Robertson’s army of god, replace books with guns at the schools.
Vote in the Republicans so we can have more hate, racism, waterboarding, no education replace it with recess and eating at fast food outlets because they know how to create jobs.
The hell with democracy the republicans do not want it Fox wants control so let us replace it with anarchy. “What’ do we want?” and “When’ do we want it?
Then and only then can we take back this country. We can smoke in public, drive 100 miles an hour, turn off or get rid of stop signs, drink and drive, steal food what little of it is still left.
Hopefully the flooding will subside in Chiangmai by this year to watch all of this.
So bye, bye America Pie.
edit: Now can not wait to here on this post on the Obama / Ayers connection since there wasn't.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:39pm PT
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Tax the rich, Warren Buffett says -- and a majority of millionaires agree.
According to a survey from the consulting firm Spectrem Group, sixty-eight percent of millionaires -- defined as people with investments of $1 million or more -- support raising taxes on people who earn $1 million or more in income, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The survey seems to reflect the sentiments of groups like Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of wealthy citizens that has urged the government to impose higher taxes on people like themselves. It also echoes the policy recommendations of President Obama, who has called for revisions to tax law that would levy a tax rate on millionaires at least as high as that experienced by middle-class earners.
And, of course, the survey hearkens back to Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who galvanized a conversation about taxing the wealthy with a widely read New York Times Op-Ed this summer.
Spectrem's findings also seem to indicate that the grim state of the American economy -- where jobs are scarce, investment has fallen off and wages for most have flatlined -- hasn't escaped the notice of the country's more comfortable citizens.
The WSJ quotes Spectrem's George Walper as saying, "What this tells us is that there are a number of wealthy folks who said: 'Gee, we need to increase taxes to stimulate the economy. No one likes to be taxed more, but the reality is maybe it has to be done.'"
While some conservatives argue that higher taxes for the rich would discourage investment and slow economic growth, analysts have suggested that in fact this is not likely to happen. Historically, there is almost no correlation between high tax rates for the rich and a struggling national economy.
Earlier this month, a CBS News poll found that 64 percent of all Americans think millionaires should pay higher taxes -- a percentage nearly the same as the rate of millionaires in Spectrem's poll who feel the same way.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:45pm PT
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Here is what the Oakland "protest" looked like;
http://zombietime.com/occupy_oakland_10-22-2011/
Squatting, loitering, etc...Why can't these brats be arrested just for that? Especially if they refuse to leave?
These people are a public nuisance. This IS NOT lawful assembly.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Oct 27, 2011 - 07:59pm PT
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Squatting, loitering, etc...Why can't these brats be arrested just for that? Especially if they refuse to leave?
These people are a public nuisance. This IS NOT lawful assembly.
There's a good little brownshirt. Way to get in line and serve your masters. God forbid the people peacefully protest in a PUBLIC space. Loitering? In a park? Even a dimbulb like you ain't that stupid.
Your little link could be staight up parody it's so comical. Here's a black man counting his cash, he MUST BE A DRUG DEALER. Here's a empty nickel-bag, but it MUST BE A CRACK BAG! Here's a recycling, composting, and trash bin to keep the park clean, but instead we'll say it's a "heaven for rats".
It's amazing that someone so bone-stupid and credulous can even tie their shoes.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:02pm PT
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There's a good little brownshirt. Way to get in line and serve your masters. God forbid the people peacefully protest in a PUBLIC space. Loitering? In a park? Even a dimbulb like you ain't that stupid.
Are you denying that these people are camping overnight en masse in a public area??
Are you stating that I can camp for repeated nights in public parks in a f*#king tent with pallet-trails joining all the tents? Really???
Who's the dumbsh#t, commie?
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:13pm PT
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Fatty
That quote was from Rokjox. And by the way was going to mention about Canter's to you. One place you could go to,sit down with Dorothy Healey and have a discussion, LAPD would come in. Would look and not really say hello but gave her respect.
Then weeks later during another Anti-War protest we go out and see the sh#t beat out of protestors.
Much of what you guys do today. Nixons war plan to subvert with agent provocateurs.
I have it all on film. In fact quite a few published in newspapers.
Best one on front page of "Pravda" the FBI was not too happy about that one.
List what list.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:22pm PT
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Are you denying that these people are camping overnight en masse in a public area??
No, he's saying you guys are good little brownshirts. You talk the talk about the constitution, but can't walk the walk.
Unless you're goosestepping.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:27pm PT
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Oh! SLA Fatty
Funny how "patty baby" and her father,family,a corporation or connections got her off with a spank. Guess Dohrn and Ayers at the end did as well. But sure was a burn.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:32pm PT
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FREE MONEY: Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve.
So Occupy Washington, not Wall Street. Would you turn away free money?
Or the banks borrow billions at zero and lend mortgages to us at four percent, or credit cards at twenty or twenty-five percent. This is essentially an official government license to be rich, handed out at the expense of prudent ordinary citizens, who now no longer receive much interest on their CDs or other saved income. It is virtually impossible to not make money in banking when you have unlimited access to free money, especially when the government keeps buying its own cash back from you at market rates.
Your average chimpanzee couldn't f*#k up that business plan, which makes it all the more incredible that most of the too-big-to-fail banks are nonetheless still functionally insolvent, and dependent upon bailouts and phony accounting to stay above water. Where do the protesters go to sign up for their interest-free billion-dollar loans?
Free money makes people gamble on stupid things, which would never see the light of day in a tight money market. Banks made loans to people they shouldn't have. Most of these people who overpaid for houses are not making payments now, living in these houses rent free for up to 3 years, and then trashing the properties when they are forced to leave. In these cases the Banks write off at as much as 90% of the loan value.
You are obviously trying to be anti-capitalist, but you are complaining about something that is definitely NOT capitalism. In a truly capitalist economy, interest rates should be set by the market.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:36pm PT
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No, he's saying you guys are good little brownshirts. You talk the talk about the constitution, but can't walk the walk.
Unless you're goosestepping.
If that what he's saying, he's an idiot!
The costitution talks about lawful assembly. Once you break those rules, you should be warned to leave and then forcefully removed it you do not oblige those instructions.
It's really simple.
And these asshats ran into a business (Chase Bank) and disrupted a private entity.
You cannot do whatever your stupid hippy, anarchistic mind perceives in a public space. This is the law that protects your precious 'public' from anarchistic, pothead, communistic squatters.
How do you idiots not understand they law? Public land in a city is not legally BLM land. It is owned by the city for PUBLIC use. They control it and it's regulation. They have lawful discretion over it and it's laws.
You idiots don't look at laws or legality, just words that jive with you agenda.
Want 'public' land and squat nad loiter and go shootin'??? Go to Fed BLM land.
EDIT: Where did ElCrapInHisMouth go????
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:38pm PT
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Rarely mentioned and little known by the general public we are subsidizing big business to the tune of more than 50 billion dollars per year, a projected total of $265 billion over five years, from 1995 to the end of the century. You would be hard pressed to find a Fortune 500 company that is not subsidized annually with millions of dollars of taxpayers' money.
"big business" probably pays on the order of a Trillion dollars a year in taxes, so this is a drop in the bucket.
But we should end these subsidies, as well as the subsidies for those who DON'T pay taxes.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:38pm PT
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Some more unlawful, dirty, hippie communists join the OWS march:
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:47pm PT
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Dirty, filthy, hippie, moocher, welfare queen commie joins OWS;
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:51pm PT
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No, Rocky, you are wrong on Lawful Protest...
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:56pm PT
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On Hoffman
It’s plausible, seen stranger things that took place and would not be surprised but there were other bigger targets that did not happen. Then again Nixon and his crew just got caught and everything and everyone shut down.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:58pm PT
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Hey Fatty
Wonder what your position is on DROP: double-dipping with LAPD and the union demands.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:59pm PT
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How is this a free market capitalist system when smaller businesses cannot compete with the larger businesses, since they can't buy political influence and thus don't receive politically administered, free tax payers' money?
The capitalist system itself is rigged by the biggest players.
WOW! Another anti-capitalist ignoramus who is actually complaining about socialism and cronyism. Re-read your quote above and tell me what it has to do with CAPITALISM.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 08:59pm PT
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These OWS "protesters" are NOT real Americans, like me.
They are not patriotic. They urinate and poop.
They are HIPPIES.
They are COMMUNISTS.
I am fuking sick and tired of their filthy, LIBERAL ways.
F*#K THOSE PROTESTERS!
I am a CONSERVATIVE and you are all CLOWNS, and LITTLE BOYS.
edit: and ACORN bused those vets in and PAID them to be there
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:03pm PT
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Commie fags should get a job!!!
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:43pm PT
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These good Tea Party Patriots are just good Americans mad about maybe losing their Social Security due to spending cuts to balance the budget
They are peaceful folk just exercising their Constitutional rights of Free Assembly.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:50pm PT
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or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Wes, if you're breaking the law, you are not peaceably assembling, especially when you go into a private business and disrupt the 'peace'.
Norton, what is wrong the the last pic you posted??? Is that inciting violence?
Your WW2 vet pics are pretty rare compared to the rest of the Commies, Anarchists, Black Panthers, and general PITA's.
To say the OWS guys are as peaceful as tea-partiers is ridiculous.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Oct 27, 2011 - 09:52pm PT
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i'm a tea bagger from way back,
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:01pm PT
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From Skips Link..
According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do.
I figured this was true.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:16pm PT
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prove it
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:19pm PT
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Between 7AM and 10PM they can protest all they want, more power to them. Between 10:01PM and 6:59AM they should be tooled ruthlessly.
fattrad, just remember what Hitler did to his brownshirts. You'll get the same treatment when they no longer need you.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:34pm PT
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prove it
Why don't you prove how the Tea-Baggers are more violent, more filthy, and less law-abidibing as the OWS commies?
Did Tea-Baggers camp overnight unlawfully? Fire paint-balls at LEO? Did they trash public parks, or leave them just as they were? Did they disrupt private business or sh#t everywhere?
Who is the problem?
fattrad, just remember what Hitler did to his brownshirts. You'll get the same treatment when they no longer need you.
That's a good point, but I think you have it backwards. You fools are rallied against the 'rich' so that a select elite can gain control to make us all subserviant to them. It's called Communism. The useful idiots are in proud display in the streets.
The patriots who see this coming just sit and wait...and buy ammo.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:41pm PT
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My point about Republicans giving more to Charity than Democrats what not to get into who gives more.
You have a lousy way of making your point.
Get a clue: The Republican do more, pay more and work more for the poor
than the Dems ever do. I know I do a hell of a lot for charity.
Oh, and here you go:
Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government
spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it
comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are
cheapskates.
"Liberals are cheapskates."
Sure you didn't mean to paint liberals poorly.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 10:42pm PT
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Your charity helps poor people from other countries. Single payer healthcare will have nothing to do with that.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 27, 2011 - 11:11pm PT
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Hey bluey....Keep your eye on the ball...The bankers ,elite , etc. are the filthy ones..the patron saints of economic violence..They are screwing you and you are loving it...who was pounding the drums to invade Iraq...Your heroe Bush....major vioence coming from a dipshit Junior of the Bush arms manufacturers..? No need to mention Cheney , Mr Conflict of interest and Mr. vested interest in the Iraq invasion...Alls you have to do is read , open your mind and stop listening to fox news and other right wing fascist media...You conservatives are so paranoid , latching on to any tidbit of hysteria at the drop of a worn out buzz-word...Communist , marxist ,socialism , terrorist....All it takes is for Rush to fart and you simpletons start gasping for his anal vapors...Keep up the entertainment...
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Oct 27, 2011 - 11:21pm PT
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If liberals and moderates donated blood at the level conservatives do, the blood supply in the U.S. would increase 45%.
Pretty funny statistic. Do you have "republican" tattooed to your forehead, cause I haven't ever had to state whether I was a liberal, democrat, republican, conservative or whatever when I give blood.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 27, 2011 - 11:39pm PT
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...promote the general Welfare...
Sound familiar? Probably not to a Republican.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 28, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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In colonial times "welfare" could mean communities auctioning off needy families...
Colonial times? That must be why you conservatives fought to remain colonies.
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apogee
climber
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Oct 28, 2011 - 01:34am PT
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 28, 2011 - 01:35am PT
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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/10/wall-street-protests-ows-vatican-pope/1
St. Peter's Square, meet Zuccotti Park.
The Vatican today elaborated on Pope Benedict XVI's call for a global entity to bring justice and compassion to the world economy.
"The economy needs ethics," says the new document released today by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
According to the Associated Press, the Vatican suggests "the reform process begin with the United Nations as its point of reference."
The Rev. Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University, calls the Vatican view...
closer to views of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement than anyone in the U.S. Congress.
Echoing the pope's 2009 encyclical on the economy, it calls for the redistribution of wealth and the regulation of the world economy by international agencies.
Reese says it's not only to the left of President Obama, it's "to the left of Nancy Pelosi."
Reese revisited the encyclical to get a sense of the pope's thinking that shapes the new document. The pope called for more, not less, government regulation, saying:
The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from 'influences' of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way... In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.
Reese noted Benedict's support for a new world authority ...
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration...
And he concludes,
On economic issues, the pope is to the left of Obama. He is even to the left of liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi.
Catholic News Service has more details of the document, Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority.
The document said the current global financial crisis has revealed "selfishness, collective greed and the hoarding of goods on a great scale."
...The current economic crisis, which has seen growing inequality between the rich and poor of the world, underlines the necessity to take concrete steps toward creating (a global) authority, it said.
Heads up, Wall Street. According to John Thavis' Catholic News Service report:
One major step ... should be reform of the international monetary system in a way that involves developing countries. The document foresaw creation of a "central world bank" that would regulate the flow of monetary exchanges; it said the International Monetary Fund had lost the ability to control the amount of credit risk taken on by the system.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Oct 28, 2011 - 01:54am PT
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The study that shows why Occupy Wall Street struck a nerve
By Eugene Robinson, Thursday, October 27, 4:53 PM
The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.
That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.
The gist of the CBO study, titled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that’s where we’ve been led.
Overall, in inflation-adjusted dollars, average after-tax household income grew by 62 percent during the period under study, according to the CBO. This sounds great — but only until you look a little closer.
For those at the bottom — the one-fifth of households with the lowest incomes — the increase was just 18 percent. For the middle three-fifths, the average increase was 40 percent. Spread over nearly 30 years, these gains are modest, not meteoric.
By contrast, look at the top 1 percent of earners. Their after-tax household income increased by an astonishing 275 percent. For those keeping track, this means it nearly quadrupled. Nice work, if you can get it.
This is not what Republicans want you to think of when you hear the word redistribution. You’re supposed to imagine the evil masterminds as Bolsheviks, not bankers. You’re supposed to envision the lazy free-riders who benefit from redistribution as the “poor,” and the industrious job-creators who get robbed as the “wealthy” — not the other way around.
If Americans were to realize they’ve been the victims of Republican-style redistribution — stealing from the poor to give to the rich — the whole political atmosphere might change. I believe that’s one reason why the Occupy Wall Street protests have struck such a nerve. The far-right and its media mouthpieces have worked themselves into a frenzy trying to disregard, dismiss or discredit the demonstrations. Thus far, fortunately, all this effort has been to no avail.
The right maintains that inequality is the wrong measure. To argue about how the income pie should be sliced is “class warfare,” and what we should do instead is give the private sector the right incentives to make the pie bigger. This way, according to conservative doctrine, everyone’s slice gets bigger — even if some slices grow faster than others.
Indeed, the CBO report says that even the poorest households saw at least a little income growth. Why is it any of their business that the high-earners in the top 1 percent saw astronomical income growth? Isn’t this just sour grapes?
No, for two reasons. First, the system is rigged. Wealthy individuals and corporations have disproportionate influence over public policy because of the often decisive role that money plays in elections. If the rich and powerful act in their self-interest, as conservative ideologues believe we all should do, then the rich and powerful’s share of income will continue to soar.
Second, and more broadly, the real issue is what kind of nation we want to be. Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal” is properly understood as calling for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. But the more we become a nation of rich and poor, the less we can pretend to be offering the same opportunities to every American. As polarization increases, mobility declines. The whole point of the American Dream is that it is available to everyone, not just those who awaken from their slumbers on down-filled pillows and 800-thread-count sheets.
So it does matter that as the pie grows, the various slices do not grow in proportion. We’re not characters in one of those lumbering, interminable, nonsensical Ayn Rand novels. We believe in individual initiative and the free market, but we also believe that nationhood necessarily involves a commitment to our fellow citizens, an acknowledgment that we’re engaged in a common enterprise. We believe that opportunity should be more than just an empty word.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Oct 28, 2011 - 02:42am PT
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Rokjox
Man you brought back some memories.
Geronimo Ji Jaga but went by the way of Geronimo Pratt. Spent 27 years in prison as a high ranking member of the Black Panthers. He was targeted and FBI/LAPD covering up evidence. He had nothing to do with a murder he was accused of. Vacated/freed in the year of 1997. rewarded 4.5 million dollars for FBI and LAPD for blowing it. Died June of this year of a heart attack.
Fatty: LA taxpayers had to pay 2.75 mil of it. LAPD and Sheriff is why Los Angeles has been close to bankruptcy for 30 years because mistakes you guys have done not knowing how to handle a situation correctly. Forgot how much they paid King but how about the lawsuits you lost that the County had to pay out for yours. Don't lie now.
And by the way Rokjox I did steal his "Steal this Book" in one of local bookstores in Santa Monica.
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Hilt
Social climber
Utah
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Oct 28, 2011 - 03:10am PT
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Life is unfair... Suck it up, run for office, vote, be active in your local politics, be a whistle blower, have more integrity than greed. Most of all be like your grandparents. Remember them? The greatest generation that ever lived? They were never about "me," it was about family values, community, hard work, "being fair despite the world being unfair" and love of one's country above the selfish "I."
Try being something greater than yourself, live for others and then you might discover true greatness.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 28, 2011 - 09:13am PT
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Oh the IRONY!
See what conservatism has wrought:
Oh the HYPOCRISY!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 28, 2011 - 01:58pm PT
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I am rightfully annoyed by the new terminology emerging from the Repo-con's talking heads.
Now when we are talking about Millionaires and Billionaires they are not "the 1 %" they are the "Job Creators" and their wealth must be protected otherwise they may move somewhere else.
Reality Check... These sleazy greedy bloated useless f*#ks are not creating jobs except in China.
We should freeze all their assets until they regain a modicum of care and patriotism for this country and start paying ball.
Meanwhile Exxon, one of the biggest recipients of Corporate Welfare posted record profits, up over 40 % from last years record profits. So how is that Prince William Sound clean up going, hmmm? All good now? Tell us you made it better than before. Go on tell us. There's a gaggle of bible thumpin' drill baby drillers just dyin' to give you an AMEN! Oh while your at it send a memo to BP. They should delare "Misson Accomplished".
You know the $150 I just poured into the tank of my American made Suburban? Well I want a rebate. If you pirates are making that kind of dough and not reinvesting into a sustainable future then you ought to be able to drop the price of a gallon of your poison by $1.50 easy. I double dog dare you. Or maybe and better yet you could be job creation heros by putting hundreds of thousands of minimum wage gas station attendants back to work. Civilized gas stations like in my youth. "May I check your air & oil" said the man with the PHD.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 28, 2011 - 04:06pm PT
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^^^ More humorless lies Dewish Bag? ^^^
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 28, 2011 - 04:21pm PT
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Dewish Bag, the Louse that Bored.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 28, 2011 - 05:50pm PT
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Another great moment in GOP history
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 06:03pm PT
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Alan Greenspan virtually single-handedely busted the dot com era with rampant fear mongering. I never understood the cult of personality surrounding that gnome. I wonder how much money he made off it?
This has to be one of the most naive things I have ever read.
Yes. Without that hater Greenspan Pets.com would be worth more than Walmart today!
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 06:07pm PT
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It is applied American capitalism.
There is no single 'Capitalism', there is an infinity of Capitalisms. Capitalism is ductile and takes the form of the vessel in which it is incarnated in.
Nice try, Lovesgas. But no, government choosing winners, channeling public money into failing companies is NOT capitalism, by any definition.
Capitalism requires failure just as it requires success.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 06:10pm PT
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There was one wimpy looking guy in Joshua Tree today, on Hwy 62 by Natural Sisters cafe, holding a sign saying "we are the 99%".
Maybe you guys can help him if you come out for the weekend. I will think of you while I go climbing.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Oct 28, 2011 - 07:35pm PT
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I have 30 stiches in my foot
Jesus Warbler, what happened?!
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 07:37pm PT
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Kevin,
I am a software engineer with a scientific background but I usually work in Finance, currently for a large bank. I am sure most on here would characterize me as a member of the 1% based on my posts, but I am just a climber trying to support my habit (climbing, not crack).
I hope your recovery goes better than ours has gone in the last 3 years.
Sincerely, Paul Parker
[edit] I should also note that I don't have any special loyalty to my (or any) bank. I didn't agree with the bailouts, I would rather have lost my job than allow the government to socialize losses in this way.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 07:45pm PT
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You've lost it. Bubbles occur when less sophisticated investors and momentum market players push the valuations of an asset class beyond a point of reasonable ROI. The media plays it on the way up and down, but does not cause it.
This is correct, but there is more to it. Bubbles can occur anywhere, but cheap credit and printed money virtually guarantee them. Remember when QE2 was announced by Bernanke? Investors flooded into oil, gold, wheat, etc. because they saw inflation. They were correct, but less savvy investors just saw rising prices and jumped on the bandwagon. This drove prices beyond ROI.
Also true for the real estate bubble - Bernanke pushing interest rates to 1% when Fannie/Freddie insured MBSs were paying 7% created the updraft that fed on itself until there was no more fuel to burn, and then it imploded.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 07:48pm PT
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My Dad retired a fews years ago as a high-level exec of Bank of America Asian operations. Prolly a 1%er.
Keep in mind he's the son of Italian migrants (legal, Ellis Island). His Dad joined the US Navy as an engineer, served in Korea, and died after I was born.
My Dad, after graduating San Jose State with a Busines degree went to work as a teller for Wells Fargo Bank. Work his way up, joined BofA, and was asked to go overseas to help Euro operations. He did.
He did that all the way up the ladder of management while managing his family in different countries.
I think he retired as VP of Asian Operations. He busted his ass the whole way, all the way. Honest work. He even took down a colleague for corruption while he was an auditor for a while.
He's a very honest, ethical man. He earned every f*#king penny he made!
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 07:58pm PT
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Thanks for sharing Bluering, I like inspirational stories like that.
I just spoke to a guy the other day who is now in a Ph.D. program in the U.S. but was once a 15 year old child soldier in Congo.
I am even very cynical about the opportunities in this country now days, but he saw plenty.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 08:39pm PT
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They are far and I mean FAR more tolerant than their parents (us, lol). They grew up in the rainbow world and it doesn't really matter whether you accept it or not.
Define 'more tolerant', and expain how that is more helpful than regressive in terms of national unity and identity.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 08:45pm PT
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They are far and I mean FAR more tolerant than their parents (us, lol). They grew up in the rainbow world and it doesn't really matter whether you accept it or not.
Much more willing to partner, to build consensus and work as a team, than the generation of their parents.
Yall should be proud of them and share my feelings that the future is bright and the kids are all right.
Dingus, I agree that kids these days are more tolerant and that is a great thing. However I am dismayed by the sense of entitlement that people of all ages show in the U.S. have right now. 63 percent of all federal spending this year will consist of checks to individuals for which the government receives no services, up from 46 percent in 1975 and 18 percent in 1940. When someone who is not making payments on his house is foreclosed on, he trashes the place, and feels justified because the bank is stealing "his" house - a house he has NEVER had any equity in.
We complain and lash out at the rich because our incomes have not risen appreciably in the last 20 years. But why do we think we deserve incomes 10 times greater than the Chinese, for doing the same work? We need to become more competitive. This will not happen by vilifying the wealthy, they will leave and take their wealth with them.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 28, 2011 - 09:05pm PT
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I am a software engineer with a scientific background but I usually work in Finance, currently for a large bank.
Which, given government bailouts and support for banks, kind of makes you a government employee, doesn't it?
The rumour that Kevin hurt his foot kicking himself at the stupidity of right-wingers here is completely untrue.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 09:23pm PT
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Which, given government bailouts and support for banks, kind of makes you a government employee, doesn't it?
The rumour that Kevin hurt his foot kicking himself at the stupidity of right-wingers here is completely untrue.
We were forced to take money and paid it back at the first opportunity with interest, so no.
I would have no qualms if I did work for the Government, Government has it's place. But it's place should not be EVERYWHERE, and it should not suck up half of the economy.
As (I believe) Skip said, it needs to be put back in it's constitutional box.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 09:27pm PT
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Crack, what did you specialize in for your PhD
Nonlinear inverse theory.
Really.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 28, 2011 - 09:29pm PT
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Isn't the Defense budget about half the economy?
Now there's a perfect place to make some BIG cuts.
Absolutely. Spending $1 Million a year to have a single foot on the ground (well, 2 feet) in some God forsaken land does not seem like money well spent to me.
Time to bring em home.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Oct 29, 2011 - 02:05pm PT
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It's time to light the Big Wooden Man on fire.
Then go home.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 29, 2011 - 02:38pm PT
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Tom C THANX for that!
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 29, 2011 - 03:47pm PT
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 29, 2011 - 03:53pm PT
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And look, lo and behold, it all goes back to the disastrous presidency of the Great un-American Reagan. Damn if I could only the repo man hadn't taken my time machine away.
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sempervirens
climber
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Oct 29, 2011 - 04:45pm PT
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The graph in Tom's post is the main point. However, I don't understand the vertical axis. 350% of what?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 29, 2011 - 07:01pm PT
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facts are irrelevant
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 29, 2011 - 07:31pm PT
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Get a job ya dirty hippy!
Most times its the simple solutions that work best: working a job for money rather than stealing from others (entitlements) seems reasonable.
The OWS'ers know the country is laughing at their idiocy.
Get a job ya dirty hippy!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 29, 2011 - 09:38pm PT
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So the Oakland PIGS can get away with rules of engagement that even our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are not allowed to use.
Talk about things that make you go HMMMMMMMM?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:59am PT
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Another OWS hottie or just New York working girl?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 30, 2011 - 02:34am PT
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Hey CornHole Chomper you know what is funny in a pathetic way? When we on the Progressive and intelligent side post pics of you ignorant hateful TeaBaggers they are real photos. These dumb as turds un-Americans display their wanton stupidity and bigotry thru their own hand made and misspelled signs.
Because you and the other sheeple have NOTHING you respond with a lame as all photoshop job.
Are we supposed to be impressed or just sorry for you?
By the way nice touch of misogyny there scum bag.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 30, 2011 - 02:59am PT
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Pile-O-turds - you've labeled yourself as a taker rather than a producer.
Sad you quit trying to better yourself.
Now you must suffer the disdain and ridicule of the anti-OWS working people.
Enjoy the next visit from the cops! Tear gas must be so pleasant at 4am!
Go get a job you dirty hippies.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 30, 2011 - 03:07am PT
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^^^ what an idiot ^^^
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Oct 30, 2011 - 09:12am PT
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Now we get to see how many OWSers can bivy like a Scotsman,..
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2011 - 11:06am PT
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We have been moving towards an oligarchy in this country for quite some time, but the middle and even lower classes have a decent lifestyle for the most part.
Where the concentration of wealth is a true problem is when it comes to political power. Particularly since the Citizen's United Supreme Court decision.
That one will eventually bite the ass of everyone from either end of the political spectrum.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 30, 2011 - 11:43am PT
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So Corny let's see if we can examine your fool's words.
Pile-O-turds - A fair if not humorous attempt.
you've labeled yourself as a taker rather than a producer Now, how and why would that be? I am a business owner. I work my ass off. I raise my kids. I donate time and services. Please explain how I have labeled myself so. Exactly what makes me a taker in your fetid musings? Is it just because you think so poorly of progressives that I am, in your mind, guilty by association?
Sad you quit trying to better yourself. I can't fathom where you get this notion other than the same guilt by association non-sense. Obviously you have not been paying attention. I have started my life over. I have quite recently separated & divorced, quit smoking tobacco, had major life saving spinal surgery and started drawing, painting, sculpting, and writing again. So how is it I quit trying to "better myself"? Is it because I am not a devoted TeaBagger or Noob-Conservative that in your mind I have so tragically stagnated.
Now you must suffer the disdain and ridicule of the anti-OWS working people. I suffer no fools. Are you really stupid enough to believe Rush's assessment of OWS participants? Do you really think that all those folks are unemployed welfare recipients? To be ridiculed by idiots oh the horror. What will my parents tell the neighbors?
Enjoy the next visit from the cops! Tear gas must be so pleasant at 4am! What exactly does this supposed to mean? Why is it supposed to be relevant to me?
Go get a job you dirty hippies. The whole "Ditto Rush" Dirty Hippie BS. Good lord man are you dense.
REALLY!?! Why don't you go and tell that to the WWII US vets who are protesting. I am sure they will appreciate your ASS-essment. On your way why not stop at the Wetburro Babtist Church for an anointment. They are looking for a few good sheeple to continue the gud wuk ofda Lawd.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:27pm PT
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I think the protests make a lot of sense.
The U.S. took a punch in the face far worse than 9-11 in the banking meltdown.
Nobody is being prosecuted, although fraud was obvious and widespread.
If the financial lobbyists and the boards of Fannie and Freddie were muslims in Yemen, we would be killing their asses with drone strikes.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:30pm PT
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Drone Wall Street.
DWS.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
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While we are at it, I used to wonder if any of those tea party wag bags had jobs. If so, they must have used up all of their sick days.
They had a point. Even if the OWS or the Tea Party turned your stomach, the constitution does expressly give the freedom of assembly.
Which state is it that passed a curfew to try to shut the OWS protests down? Tennessee?
They get arrested, but the magistrate refuses to prosecute. Pretty clear violation of the constitution.
I need to check on any protests in my state. It will be hard to go to because I work too damn much. Sure wish I had an 8 to 5. Getting into the 1% isn't all that fun unless you are one of the many who happened to hit the vaginal lottery to gain your wealth.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:50pm PT
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Drone strikes.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 30, 2011 - 01:51pm PT
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I think the protests make a lot of sense.
The U.S. took a punch in the face far worse than 9-11 in the banking meltdown.
Nobody is being prosecuted, although fraud was obvious and widespread.
If the financial lobbyists and the boards of Fannie and Freddie were muslims in Yemen, we would be killing their asses with drone strikes.
I don't think you can argue against that.
It's the manner of the protests that disgusts me.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
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I know Bluey. I about gagged over the Tea Party popping up from the "deficits don't matter" party, but you have to respect the protest. The protest and right of assembly should be sacred as long as it is peaceful.
Shooting protestors is what they do in Iran and Syria.
As Americans, we have to support the protest even if you can't stand what they are saying.
It would be a crappier country if nobody got pissed off enough to go carry signs.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 30, 2011 - 02:32pm PT
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ACORN is behind these hippie protestors.
ACORN bused them in and paid them to protest.
I have it from good source that they are mostly Anchor Babies.
Send them all back to Mexico.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2011 - 02:45pm PT
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I don't think that the constitution has a time limit for peaceful assembly, Fattrad.
Really. Like this or not, it is part of who we are, or should aim to be.
Said it above: they shoot protestors in Iran and Syria.
Hell, we don't have that great of a record when it comes to dealing with protests. Kent State. Chicago Democratic Convention. Dead Civil Rights marchers.
I dunno. I read a very exhaustive book on the roots of the financial meltdown. The lobbyists, along with Fannie and Freddie, were able to do practically anything they wanted with impunity.
"All the Devils are Here." Great book. It names tons of names. Nobody has spent a day in jail. They are still all rich.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 30, 2011 - 03:04pm PT
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Well, I think these protestors just want to take some of my money from me.
I may not make over 500K a year, the 1% group, but it still scares me to death.
I just know they want to somehow take my money.
Besides, I am against any kind of "change", and especially "hope".
Why why why can't people just leave everything the way it is?
I mean, I have a job and my life is going good, don't they get it?
It's all about ME, not them.
Stupid hippies
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Dave
Mountain climber
the ANTI-fresno
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:27pm PT
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That's not why many of us are against OWS, d-bag. Yeah, the banks suck and got bailed out. Old news.
OWS are taking up public resources and looking like idiots while asking for themselves to be bailed out by this fictional 1%.
America is about hard work. The "1%", and everyone else on the way up, or who has to deal with the traffic jams these idiots cause on their way to work, is making their own little piece of America, and making their own change. You make your own opportunity or you get left behind by your own decisions.
Anyone who built a company or built their own nest egg or is trying to, chafes at what these idiots are "protesting" against.
If these protestors had a brain they'd be in DC, protesting against the K-street lobbiest machine. If they really want to change the root cause of what they are bitching about, go tie up DC. Not Oakland, Denver, Memphis, and all the other places where the rest of us are trying to actually get something accomplished.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:27pm PT
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Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:34pm PT
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If these protestors had a brain they'd be in DC, protesting against the K-street lobbiest machine.
Umm, that is what they are protesting about (the idea that most of them want handouts is laughable and shows an attempt to ignore reality). Why does it have to be in DC?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:35pm PT
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Dave, mind showing a link, source, showing that a core ideology of the OWS protest is asking to have the richest 1% "bail them out"?
I have not seen any signs or interviews of the protestors asking for the 1% to give them any money, or to legally or illegally "take" any money from anyone else.
Oh I suppose with hundreds of thousands now protesting all over, there probably is some idiot with sign asking for money, but that's like saying all Tea Party people come to rallies wearing guns, we know not all of them are like that.
Seeing as there is no recognized national leadership, curious where you got this?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:42pm PT
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What is Inciting a Riot?
A riot is essentially thought of as mob mentality. A riot can occur as the
direct result of many things, and can certainly be blamed on one
individual. Noted historical psychological authority, Sigmund Freud viewed
crowds as crazed, criminal, unanimous masses of anonymous individuals who
had ceded psychological control of themselves to the group mind and whose
behavior was being directly controlled by the mob.
http://disorderlyconductlaws.com/inciting-a-riot/
Weeding the violent rioters out from the peaceful protesters is a job for the police.
Check out what happens to this Denver OWS bozo who pushes a motorcycle cop
over as he goes by. Big mistake. So many strange looking people at the Denver protest.
http://tv.breitbart.com/occupydenver-thugs-knock-motorcycle-cop-to-ground/
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:47pm PT
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The protestors are filthy trust fund pigs waiting for a catalyclismic trickle down moment...Send em back to the corner Starbucks...
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:50pm PT
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by contrast, the good folks at Tea Party rallies had no inclination to violence
No talk of "we came unarmed THIS TIME"
Nope, they all just woke up on January 21, 2008 and discovered they all had been having trouble sleeping, what with being worried about Federal spending and all, so stressful
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 30, 2011 - 05:59pm PT
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Corniss demonstrates his usefulness to society
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 30, 2011 - 06:29pm PT
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Howard Stern? Really Cornhole Chomper, HOWARD F*#KIN" STERN. Oh get real.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 30, 2011 - 06:39pm PT
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Nope, don't see anything about the OWS "movement" stating that they want to "take" money from the 1% super rich.
No one is talking about passing legislation to take money away from the 1% and then turn around and hand it out to the 99%.
And both articles were clear that there is no movement leadership.
No one "speaks" for the protestors. They have no cohesive voice.
Right now, they are just regular Americans of many diverse colors and ethnicities who are protesting what they see as government bailouts for Wall Street ( Bush gave them 900 billion) when the housing market derivatives eroded.
And yes, as I mentioned previously, with hundreds of thousands protesting all over, of course there will be people with signs saying they personally want all kinds of things.
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Dave
Mountain climber
the ANTI-fresno
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Oct 30, 2011 - 07:13pm PT
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Tell me, Norton, who exactly is going to pay for Demands # 3,4,6,7, and 11?
You didn't read the first link, did you? OWS is organized. They have a committee. LOL. Change you can believe in?
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Oct 31, 2011 - 05:25pm PT
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haven't read all of the above, but here's a pretty good summary IMHO
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Occupying Public Space is Just the Beginning
By Kevin Zeese
http://www.OccupyWashingtonDC.org
The Occupy Movement is not only resulting in the occupation of public space, but also in political space. We are already shifting the dialogue and the movement has just begun.
When we started planning the occupation of Freedom Plaza six months ago, our goal was to create a place where the ignored voices of the American people could be heard. They are starting to be heard thanks to occupations all over the country. If it is not clear to the economic and political elites, this is the beginning of an American revolt.
Before considering occupation, we tried other avenues: elections, lobbying, petitioning, email campaigns, telephone campaigns, marches, rallies -- but they were ineffective . The country continued going in the direction of concentrated wealth, rather than where super-majorities of Americans wanted to go.
The occupation of Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington, DC and occupations around the country display our message of anger at the unfairness of the economy, the expanding war quagmires and the corruption of government that result in the people's urgent necessities being ignored in favor of more wealth for the top 1%.
I don't like sleeping in a tent in Freedom Plaza. But we see no other way to get our voices heard. We are occupying Freedom Plaza because Americans have been kept out of the political process. Money rules elections and lobbying, while the 99% are ignored.
We occupy Washington, DC because it is where big business money combines with campaign laws that corrupt government so that it does not respond to the people. Washington, DC is corporate occupied territory with 18,000 professional lobbyists , most of who work for business interests pushing the agenda of concentrated wealth.
The great health care reform "triumph" of the Obama administration highlighted how out of touch government is with the people. For more than a decade Americans have simply wantedimproved Medicare and for all and removal of the unnecessary insurance industry. Instead, President Obama and the Democratic leadership pushed "reform" that further entrenched the insurance industry with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual tax subsidies and forcing Americans to purchase flawed insurance. They kept single payer out of the debate because Medicare for all compared with insurance-based health care is less expensive, covers everybody and improves the quality of health care.
The response to the financial crisis was also inadequate. People from Wall Street responsible for the collapse were put in key positions in the administration. Congress was unable to pass a real stimulus early in the Obama era. Instead a weak, partial stimulus was passed that may have slowed the economic collapse but missed the opportunity to turn things around. The financial reform was inadequate as it failed to break up the big banks, bring back Glass-Steagall or adequately regulate derivatives. Last week Citibank got off easy with a $285 million fine for the sale of a billion dollars in fraudulent mortgage derivatives but this was only one of many corrupt Citibank deals , the rest will not even be investigated. Once again, obvious and necessary steps were impossible due to corporate power.
Occupying public space is an opportunity to discuss political taboos. As the war drum against Iran began to beat Freedom Plaza held an Iran night with Persian food, music, dancing and discussion. We discussed why war on Iran was wrong, as well as the problems in the U.S. relationships with Saudi Arabia and Israel. And, we mentioned a reality almost never heard in U.S. media or politics -- U.S. Empire. While the military will not say how many bases and outposts it has the most thorough review estimates more than 1,100 around the world and now a new empire of drones . The British Empire had 37 bases at its peak and the Romans had 36 . The U.S. Empire is a secret to most Americans only discussed as a euphemism --policeman of the world. This false description hides the real facts of exploitation and domination. This taboo needs to be broken so Americans can debate whether empire is good for the nation and the world.
The Occupy Movement is being driven by economic insecurity . Almost all Americans feel it that is why we are all part of the 99%. The economic insecurity is not because of lack of resources, but because political elites consistently send money to economic elites through tax breaks and giveaways resulting in the wealthiest 400 Americans having the wealth of 154 million of us, yet paying 17.4% in federal taxes while working Americans pay 25% to 30%. The tax structure needs to be restructured so wealth is taxed more than work, purchases of stocks, bonds and derivatives are taxed (we pay taxes on purchase food, clothing and shelter) and a truly progressive income tax is put in place. It is this unfairness at a time of economic fear that is driving the Occupy Movement.
A warning to the elites: occupations are only the beginning. This movement is in its early stage and is going to grow in ways that are hard to imagine right now. We know that decades of the expansion of corporate power will not be undone with one occupation. Plans are being made by some of us to move "Beyond Occupation" to the next steps of building a movement that represents all Americans -- youth burdened with college loans and lousy jobs, seniors stuck in poverty retirement with their Social Security and Medicare threatened, the middle class who worked their whole lives and are now part of the long-term unemployed, live in homes with underwater mortgages and fear foreclosure and of course the poor, homeless and mentally ill whose mistreatment has become more obvious as the public space we occupy draws them to us for food and housing.
A message for the elites: THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING. LISTEN TO US NOW OR THE PRICE OF CHANGE WILL GET MORE EXPENSIVE FOR YOU: What do we seek? We seek an end to corporate rule and shifting power to the people.
Kevin Zeese is one of the organizers of the Freedom Plaza Occupation,http://www.OccupyWashingtonDC.org.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 31, 2011 - 08:56pm PT
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For those who aren't familiar with The Economist, it's a "conservative" by European standards news magazine that's got primarily an economic view towards society. They're also nearly entirely neutral on American politics. I say "nearly" because they usually endorse a Presidential candidate and some governor's candidates.
Enough for the preamble. Here's their take on the 99/1% question.
Oct 26
"Occupy Wall Street" gets a boost from a new report on income distribution
OF ALL the many banners being waved around the world by disgruntled protesters from Chile to Australia the one that reads, "We Are the 99%" is the catchiest. It is purposefully vague, but it is also underpinned by some solid economics. A report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) points out that income inequality in America has not risen dramatically over the past 20 years—when the top 1% of earners are excluded. With them, the picture is quite different. The causes of the good fortune of those at the top are disputed, but the CBO provides some useful detail on that too. The biggest component of the increase in after-tax income for the top one percent is "business income" as opposed to income from labour or investments (though admittedly these things are hard to untangle). Whatever the cause, the data are powerful because they tend to support two prejudices. First, that a system that works well for the very richest has delivered returns on labour that are disappointing for everyone else. Second, that the people at the top have made out like bandits over the past few decades, and that now everyone else must pick up the bill. Of course it is a little more complicated than that. But this downturn ought to test the normally warm feelings in America of the 99% towards the 1%.
The most concise summary of the problem I've yet found. From sober-minded economic reporters/analysts.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/10/income-inequality-america
If you don't understand this explanation, you're in denial.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Oct 31, 2011 - 09:15pm PT
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rockermike - you're not making any sense at all. Typical of anarchist is that they are sore losers and want to use force to take what others have.
Why can't you get out of there and play the game of 'civilization' with the rest of us? Everyday you waste getting poorer is a day we get richer and entertain ourselves laughing at you.
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 31, 2011 - 10:28pm PT
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Hate to burst your bubble Donald, but I'm a lefty, I pay far more taxes than the average bear, and I don't mind doing it. So, it's my money that's going out.
And, a disproportionate amount of my dough goes to red states.
You're welcome. :-)
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 31, 2011 - 10:47pm PT
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I said I don't mind.
Right?
So guess what, i don't mind.
I'm just pointing out WHO is receiving the most tax $$$, and who is giving. Because conservatives frequently paint libs like me as the ones getting a disproportionate amount of taxpayer money, which simply ain't so.
But then again, "Facts are stupid things."
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 31, 2011 - 10:56pm PT
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You really are confused, Donald?
Were the words I used too big for you?
No wonder you vote Republican.
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 31, 2011 - 11:01pm PT
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LOL...
Whatever, Donald.
"Facts are stupid things."
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 31, 2011 - 11:03pm PT
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Well, we'll I'll take your word on it, you're the expert.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Oct 31, 2011 - 11:03pm PT
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skipt chided You complain about there being no weapons of mass destruction.
Would you like to tell us where the weapons of mass destruction are in Libya?
Awww you're mad because our guy premised his mission based on factual information and then executed it in a competent and concise manner with a clear exit strategy while you're stuck having to get defensive every time someone says "WMDs."
Trick or Treat!
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 31, 2011 - 11:25pm PT
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 31, 2011 - 11:25pm PT
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Yeah! What we need is a new rigorous FLAT TAX!
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 31, 2011 - 11:28pm PT
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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war - Just so you know you're being played like all the other OWS's.
Sun Tzu taught: why chase the enemy into the bush when you can lure him into a convenient area where he will be forced to surrender. Get a clue!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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From The Guardian
St Paul's Cathedral in London is dropping it's intent to evict the OWS encampment. They are becoming somewhat more enlightened. Recognizing the real ethical and moral questions.
St Paul's Cathedral has confirmed it is suspending a legal bid to remove activists from its grounds in favour of engaging with the protesters.
The cathedral's authorities said they would engage "directly and constructively with both the protesters and the moral and ethical issues they wish to address, without the threat of forcible eviction hanging over both the camp and the church", while recognising the City of London Corporation's "right to take such action on corporation land." http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/01/st-pauls-cathedral-suspends-legal-action
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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The Republican Party is on the wrong side of this thing.
They keep marginalizing themselves, keep shrinking their "base" more and more.
Their base is only good for putting up candidates that are "pure" to their ideology.
Their base of old, white, and rural people grows ever smaller and smaller.
One, maybe two more elections cycles and they are through as a competitive party.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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OWS remains a movement based on envy and ignorance.
Real incomes for average Americans (and judged by income, I'm included in that class) increased 40%, but the highest income level in any given year has increased by eight times as much.
So I'm supposed to be angry? Does it really matter how much the very highest income is in a particular year? Only if reducing their income increases mine. There is no evidence that this is the case.
The whole comparison misleads in addition because those with the highest incomes change from year to year. As several have pointed out, and none have refuted, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs weren't in the highest income category in 1970. Neither were Oprah Winfrey or any of the hedge fund managers making a killing now.
It's been shown conclusively that, on average, "the rich" pay more in proportion and absolutely in taxes than anyone else, and yet I still read a letter in today's Fresno Bee from an OWS supporter that "the rich pay no taxes." And you wonder why we have difficulty listening to the OWSers with anything but contemptuous skepticism?
As soon as someone can demonstrate that decreasing the highest income levels will raise the average income level more, they'll have my attention. To date, they haven't done that, probably because they can't.
John
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Not directly related to the OWS, but according to a post from Orion Magazine on Facebook:
"Breaking good news: U.S. Senators Udall, Bennet, and others have introduced a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Citizens United case. They agree that corporations are not people, and should not have the same (and in some cases, more) rights as the rest of us."
http://www.facebook.com/OrionMagazine
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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The best thing to happen to the Republican Party is their opposition to OWS.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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OWS remains a movement based on envy and ignorance.
-- John
John, for being such a "bright" man, the ignorance displayed in your post is astounding. OWS is not just about the inequality, or stratification, of pay.
However, I'd be surprised if that is news to you. If it is news, then you are dumber than a box of bait. If not, then you're not being honest in your post.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Time for a welfare check on our good bud Rokjox and ensure he's not making
Molotov cocktails in his basement and breathing the fumes!
Remember Rokjox that the pen is mightier than the sword. So make a sign and protest like a responsible citizen.
Something like this message is about right for your sign.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Real incomes for average Americans (and judged by income, I'm included in that class) increased 40%, but the highest income level in any given year has increased by eight times as much.
So I'm supposed to be angry? Does it really matter how much the very highest income is in a particular year? Only if reducing their income increases mine. There is no evidence that this is the case.
I guess it matters if you want something for nothing. Many of the "OWS" protesters live off welfare money which comes from the top 1%. They should be happy the 1% has been as successful as it has, because the middle class tax base has not kept up.
OWSers frame this as a result of the rich being greedy because their incomes went up eight fold. But the middle class was greedy also: they demanded higher pay, more job security, more benefits and more safety in the form of regulation. The problem is they wanted it at a time when hungrier countries were coming up to speed. Now we have lost most of our manufacturing jobs, and the service sector jobs we have replaced them with do not pay nearly as well. The math here is very simple: it should come as no surprise that middle class wealth has stagnated.
How to get these jobs back? Cut out costly regulations, streamline the hiring process. Allow people to make less than minimum wage if they are learning a trade or skill. We have too many people with useless college degrees and not enough skilled workers. Allow companies to fire workers for any valid reason, without recourse. This will remove a barrier to hiring.
The other crucial ingredient is capital- we need a savings base again so small companies can get loans to grow. This part will be painful because it means raising interest rates. Of course, the Fed does not want to do this, because it means we will be paying hundreds of billions more in interest on the debt. But it is something we have to do if we ever want to achieve real growth again. Real growth, not speculative bubbles.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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The attacks on my last post make me wonder what I'm missing. All over OWS protests I've seen and read, including a post 17 before my last one on this thread, OWS supporters gripe about income disparity. Even in the liberal press, I read that OWS is a reaction to "corporate greed," whatever that means.
The letter I cited in my post is in today's Bee. You can read it if you doubt me. I'm merely responding to what supporters of OWS say. With no "official" platform on anything, judging the movement by what its participants actually say strikes me as a perfectly rational way to judge its foundations.
You're free, of course, to come to your own conclusions about what keeps people coming by the hundreds to OWS events. I'll continue to make deductions by what I see and hear from participants.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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The other crucial ingredient is capital- we need a savings base again so small companies can get loans to grow. This part will be painful because it means raising interest rates. Of course, the Fed does not want to do this, because it means we will be paying hundreds of billions more in interest on the debt. But it is something we have to do if we ever want to achieve real growth again. Real growth, not speculative bubbles.
Crack Addict, you hit on a problem too many ignore. The virtually non-existent interest rates have robbed the income of savers -- many of them retired, and most members of the "Greatest Generation" to which we pay such meaningless lip service. I personally know plenty of people (my wife's folks prominently) who relied on interest earnings for a significant part of their retirement. Unfortunately, with current policy, the only way nominal interest rates will rise is after unanticipated inflation. That will give them some income, but rob their principal. Shame on us!
John
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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You're free, of course, to come to your own conclusions about what makes hundreds of millions stay away from the OWS camps and continue to go about
making a living.
Hint on what we think OWS really is about.
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Jorroh
climber
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Jesus John, get a clue.
Yeah all about envy, I wonder where you got that piece of wisdom?
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jorrah, as I said, I get it from what the protesters say.
Where do you get that it's not?
John
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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Occupy is the new political reality.
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Jorroh
climber
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Dingus, I don't think Johns blinkers allow a vision of that width.
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Jorroh
climber
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Lolli
I guess one of the nice things about an event like OWS is that it brings out the very worst reactionary instincts in our resident conservatives. It certainly makes it easy to see why Weapons of Mass Destruction/ the fictional Saddam-Al queda link/ trickle down economics etc were such easy sales to these people. Get them in the right mindset and they'll willingly parrot all sorts of baloney.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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What an ignorant, bitter, uninformed piece of sh#t you are.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Coupled with the outrageous Supreme Court decision granting corporations peoplehood your damned right a lot of people are pissed.
Thanks for that legal wisdom.
So I guess laws restricting what newspapers can/can't report would be just fine, since newspapers are published by "corporations," now "people"?
Face it: you liberals are just mad that rich people are exercising their right to free speech and it's effective in getting relatively poor, stupid people to vote against their economic self interest, and that just burns you up!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Now I'm really confused. The 1% vs. 99% are corparations vs. poeple? Here, all along, I thought it was the richest people vs. everyone else. Silly me!
Then again, you said corporations weren't people, so how can they have emotions like greed?
While we're at it, please explain why if I want to sell something for the most I can get I'm greedy, but if I want to buy something for the least I can pay, I'm not.
The beauty of OWS is that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. "We are the 99%" looks like envy to me, but it obviously looks different to you.
john
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Example: Company A from Europe buys Company B from U.S. Company B was a successful start up, profitable and a couple hundred high tech strong. Company A was a publicly traded EuroD#@&%e company with a lot of borrowed cash on the table, to affect the 'market entry' purchase.
First thing Company A does is off shore more than half of the tech talent, never to return. They did so because to compete on a global scale they 'must' - their competition demands it and analysts will penalize the investors of Company A if they fail to do so.
In this way, investment groups become criminal gangs imo. Coupled with the outrageous Supreme Court decision granting corporations peoplehood your damned right a lot of people are pissed.
So what? When you choose to buy a computer, and you save $50 by buying one from China, do you want death threats and people protesting outside of your house? We should have the economic freedom to buy what we want. Jobs are not a human RIGHT. To keep a job we need to be able to do it better than the next guy. This is (and always has been) a fact of life. There is nothing at all criminal about it. As soon as we accept this and get back in the race the better off we will all be.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Roxjox, you idiot!
I was NOT talking about, or TO, YOU!
You and I are ok!
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Crack Addict, you hit on a problem too many ignore. The virtually non-existent interest rates have robbed the income of savers -- many of them retired, and most members of the "Greatest Generation" to which we pay such meaningless lip service. I personally know plenty of people (my wife's folks prominently) who relied on interest earnings for a significant part of their retirement. Unfortunately, with current policy, the only way nominal interest rates will rise is after unanticipated inflation. That will give them some income, but rob their principal. Shame on us!
John, you make a very good point, what the government is doing here is shameful. There is another issue at work here also though.
Interest rates have been pushed to below zero in real terms. This discourages savings and encourages speculation. Uncle Sam prints money and loans it to banks at nearly 0% and believes this keeps credit flowing. Again, the problem is they don't understand the difference between capital and money. If we are saving 10% of our paycheck at the bank, that is real capital that can be used to loan to small businesses (we have SAVED instead of CONSUMING). If we save a meager 1%, all that printing money does is tax the existing (1%) savings pool and forcibly redistribute it. That is why low interest rates do not seem to help a small company get a loan or a person borrow to buy a car - there is not enough capital to loan out right now, despite all the economic gobblygook you will hear from Bernanke.
This is the problem with government economists - they are "bad economists" according to Von Mises - they see what is openly visible but they ignore the hidden. The same with employment - when the Government creates a job, they see that as an increase in employment, but they do not see what is lost by taking money out of the private sector.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Rox, did you see my reply?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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this society of idiots fixated on unregulated profit driven free-market corruption may very well decide that clean water is not worth their time and money... they may decide that the free-market has more influence over flooding and water management than storage-discharge relationships and geology... they may decide their new crop of useless business management students don't need any natural science education.
http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking.aspx
Here is a list of Countries ranked by Economic Freedom. The countries at the top of the list have the least financial regulation, on average. There is a VERY strong correlation here with prosperity.
Now look again at the list, and tell me which countries have cleaner air, water, etc. - the ones at the top of the list, or the ones at the bottom?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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The whiners at OWS have misdirected angers.
They should not be angry at corporations or Wall St. They should direct their anger at gov't (both parties lately).
Too much gov't interference in some areas - like encouraging home loans to unqualified people, ridiculous labor and manufacturing regs that do nothing but force jobs overseas.
Too liitle gov't in others - like not doing their jobs in regulating the free market properly, or worse, repealing common-sense regulatory measures.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Is the following what the OWS people are concerned about?
It was done for the International Monetary Fund, with sources such as the CIA and the Economist - all sound conservative bodies. No doubt a little out of date, given that statistics almost always are, but not very.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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It looks like you must agree with me, Anders, about my assertion that it's not a capitalism problem here, but a gov't problem.
Look at where we scored badly and then look at my previous assertions.
That 'food insecurity' category is really lame though. They 'asked' people??? Kinda telling of the overall chart, IMO.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Lolli
Don't try making sense. Their minds are made up.
You observation is at once astute, damning and embarrassing to intelligent Americans.
The Republicans have become nastier and more fanatical every year since the 90's.
I say fanatical with hesitation because I don't believe any kind of polite discourse is helped by rude labels. Unfortunately in this case I think it's true. Since Clinton was re-elected in 1996, the Republicans have consistently lied, distorted facts, whipped up religious conservatism and appealed to the baser instincts of Americans. The unceasing (see Rick Perry last week) questioning of Obama's birth is the most ridiculous but unfortunately not the most destructive example.
If you'd like an impartial callout of lies and misrepresentations of all sides, see factcheck.org.
http://www.factcheck.org/
Unfortunately the Republicans (and occasionally the Democrats) can generate salacious and sensational claims faster than responsible people can keep up with.
We have indeed dropped to a sorry state of affairs.
And plenty of people on all sides in this silly little "forum" are guilty of making ridiculous, unsubstantiated and logically fallacious claims. Many them refuse to actually debate. When questioned about their facts or reasoning they just vomit one more bowl of tripe. I won't stoop to naming names.....yet.
There are plenty of very bright, responsible and well meaning reporters, commentators, economists and political scientists on all sides. Unfortunately the howling hyenas drown them out.
We are digging our own graves with our insolent preference for ignorant obstinacy over intelligent discourse and compromise. The desire to win at all costs. And I don't mean campaign $ costs. I mean the cost to society when our democracy runs amok.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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And don't forget to give me my "it was manufactured by a child slave" discount.
You (hopefully) and I know how to make us competitive again. It's a matter of political will.
Ironically, the same people at the OWS protests are largely resposible for off-shoring.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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...and a good conservative would have bet on them dying.
Then bribed doctors to withhold treatment.
How does it feel to be an utter as#@&%e? He is conservative and is helping people like most conservatives do. Not because he has to, or gets money for it, but because he cares for sick children.
You, sir, are a dick.
What is it with USA and the amount of people in prison? It's more than twice as high as the next country? How come is that?
Too many gov't regs.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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And don't forget to give me my "it was manufactured by a child slave" discount.
Those "slave children" will own this country soon unless we turn things around. Your argument is tired and outdated. Cheap labor is the only tool emerging markets have traditionally had to compete, but as they acquire skills and knowledge, they increase their standard of living. If you were alive in the 70s you remember "made in Taiwan", or in the 60s "made in Hong Kong" or "made in Japan".
You also don't seem to understand that the alternative for these "slave children" is lower pay or even starvation. Foreign companies pay TWICE as much on average as domestic companies in emerging markets.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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But what you state above is wrong. Most of those countries are well regulated in financial respect. It varies widely among them, though.
No, economic freedom is freedom from restrictive business and financial regulation. That is what the list shows- it is based on factors like the time it takes to start a business, etc.
Regulations are necessary to smooth the rough edges of capitalism, but by and large countries over-regulate, and there is a reason for this - creating barriers allows politicians to charge tolls to get around them. Excessive regulation goes hand in hand with corruption.
Also, Norway and Sweden are great countries to live in, no argument there. But they are also somewhat special cases because of oil. Norway is the 3rd biggest oil exporter, and they have been very smart about how they use the money. Sweden does not benefit from this directly but free trade with Norway gives them comparative advantage in every other industry.
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Jorroh
climber
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'No, economic freedom is freedom from restrictive business and financial regulation"
Bullsh#t. Regulation often confers greater economic freedom to individuals in their dealing with corporations and other much larger entities.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Regulations are necessary to smooth the rough edges of capitalism, but by and large countries over-regulate, and there is a reason for this - creating barriers allows politicians to charge tolls to get around them. Excessive regulation goes hand in hand with corruption.
Also, Norway and Sweden are great countries to live in, no argument there. But they are also somewhat special cases because of oil. Norway is the 3rd biggest oil exporter, and they have been very smart about how they use the money. Sweden does not benefit from this directly but free trade with Norway gives them comparative advantage in every other industry.
Good points.
Jorrah is an obvious troll commie.
Next...any connection???
http://www.jorrah.ca/
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Jorroh
climber
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Bluering said
"Good points.
Jorrah is an obvious troll commie.
Next...any connection???
http://www.jorrah.ca/"
thanks for the laugh Bluering..you are truly one of the dumbest people I've ever run across. Who's this Jorrah guy by the way?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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bluering may also think that Charlie Chaplin was a commie, and J.E. Hoover and Joseph McCarthy were great Americans.
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Jorroh
climber
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"and they have been very smart about how they use the money."...thats because they are what you call Socialist, they make collective decisions about national priorities.
While we were pissing away our Capital on Pets.com, useless giant mergers, miles of unused fibre networks, and endless condo complexes and strip malls that now sit empty and rotting..what were they doing with theirs? education, infrastructure , basic research, alternative energy, Health care..etc etc. But hey at least you get to call them socialists, that must comfort you crackaddict.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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"and they have been very smart about how they use the money."...thats because they are what you call Socialist, they make collective decisions about national priorities.
While we were pissing away our Capital on Pets.com, useless giant mergers, miles of unused fibre networks, and endless condo complexes and strip malls that now sit empty and rotting..what were they doing with theirs? education, infrastructure , basic research, alternative energy, Health care..etc etc. But hey at least you get to call them socialists, that must comfort you crackaddict.
The larger European union is socialist also, do you know how many jobs they created from 1980-1992? None. And do I even need to bring Cuba, North Korea, East Germany, the Soviet Union, etc. Into the conversation? These countries make (or made, for most of them) collective decisions about national priorities also.
I guess the economic "debt spiral" Europe is in right now is due to Wall Street fat cats and deregulation also though, couldn't be from an over-sized public sector, could it? Nah....
While we were pissing away our Capital on Pets.com, useless giant mergers, miles of unused fibre networks, and endless condo complexes and strip malls that now sit empty and rotting
Yes these are the unfortunate results of government monetary policy. Although not all of these bubbles were bad: the fiber optic networks across the Atlantic has made overseas communications nearly free, whereas in the late 80s very few people could afford to call out of state, let alone overseas. And hey, the sock puppet was fun to ridicule.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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An aside:
Starting today, many prison inmates in the USA who received disproportionately harsh sentences for crack cocaine will be released and/or have their sentences reduced. In the USA, powdered cocaine is generally used by more affluent white people who can afford the high cost, while crack cocaine is more generally used by poor individuals of color. Thus as a form of class and racial discrimination, the USA instituted legislation and sentencing guidelines to give much longer prison sentences to those convicted with crack cocaine vs. those convicted of powdered coke.
I heard this on the radio this morning. I tend to believe that the vast majority of Americans are inclusive, I have met very few people I would actually call racist. But it is absolutely appalling that it has taken so long for this to be corrected.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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While we were pissing away our Capital on Pets.com, useless giant mergers, miles of unused fibre networks, and endless condo complexes and strip malls that now sit empty and rotting..
How about them green jobs, eh? Don't forget that, but of course you won't mention that. Or the "shovel-ready jobs" promised by the liar-in-chief!
Wes? You are a hateful and despicable man. Why do you you dwell on pain I overcame? You havereal issues, man. Instead of tackling arguements I bring up that you cannot defend, you resort to attempted personal insults???
You offer no validility to your arguements. You just come off as an as#@&%e. I hope you can climb out of that chasm of hate. Pretty sad.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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"While we were pissing away our Capital on Pets.com, useless giant mergers, miles of unused fibre networks, and endless condo complexes and strip malls that now sit empty and rotting.."
How about them green jobs, eh? Don't forget that, but of course you won't mention that. Or the "shovel-ready jobs" promised by the liar-in-chief!
LOL true. Even pets.com created some real, albeit temporary, jobs.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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What's amazing to me is the lack of scrutiny on this administration compared to the former. The transparency 'the One' campaigned on. The MSM is derelect in their jobs absolutely.
No doubt about it.
I would ask anyone to try to despute that claim. I f*#king dare you!!!!
Is this guy more transparent than Bush>?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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What's telling is the lack of replies to this...
Prolly out in a NF 4-season tent "protesting" corporate greed.
Idiots...
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Crackaddict said This is the problem with government economists - they are "bad economists" according to Von Mises - they see what is openly visible but they ignore the hidden. The same with employment - when the Government creates a job, they see that as an increase in employment, but they do not see what is lost by taking money out of the private sector.
And people who have government jobs never reintroduce that money back into the private sector again? They don't buy things? Do they live in government run cities eating government produced food or something?
If that government job is used to protect forests that are then used to attract tourists is it "taking money out of the private sector?" If that government job is used to promote American business or protect American consumers from price gouging or ensure that Americans aren't eating unsafe food that forces them to go to the hospital or become disabled is that "taking money out of the private sector?" Where is this black hole exactly?
Here in New Hampshire, the "no tax raises" tea party legislature raised taxes on hospitals to ensure they didn't "take money out of the private sector" and it cost hundreds of middle class Yankees their jobs while ensuring that the people of northern New England got crappier health care (which in turn costs them more money and risks their well being). I guess those people can feel comfortable knowing that their families are going to have to move or find new, much lower paying jobs because their old salaries are staying safely in the private sector.
Crackaddict continued:
Note that the "ignore this" part of that photo all took place under tax rates and fiscal policies that would be considered solidly liberal by today's liberals and pure insanity by today's conservatives. You are, in fact, making an argument for what you are deriding as "socialism" in that cartoon.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Today, while walking in the woods, pondering the struggles of humanity...
I thought of the suffering I have seen in Zimbabwe, the poor of Honduras, and the struggles of Altain Herders in RU.
I then thought of everything America has done to help our fellow man as well as the world.
Do you realize how good and fair America is? Every time the wheels hit the ground I say, "thank god I'm back in ol' number one!!!) Liberty will succeed.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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I just wish folks understand how good we have it. It is fine to be mad, but to call out sh#t while you go to bed without worrying about the Yak in the back yard. I mean that literally. When was the last time you had to check on multiple livestock/livelihood before you hit the sack
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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gov't problem...Don. The Fed spent their money. SS was supposed to be safe, in gov't hands. Hahaha!
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Um...SS is still safe. Ask anyone who invested via Bernie Madoff. I know plenty of people who can't retire because their IRA tanked. I don't know anyone who has had to delay retirement because of SS. In fact the only reason SS is at risk at all is because certain people don't want it to be safe anymore for purely ideological reasons.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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You're right, Donald. I remember those "government is evil" campaigns that swept the Dems into power in 2006 and 2008.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Who was the last person to take money from you?
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Note that the "ignore this" part of that photo all took place under tax rates and fiscal policies that would be considered solidly liberal by today's liberals and pure insanity by today's conservatives.
Oh really? What ere the rates from 1986 on/ What was the growth rate? Your chart contradicts your attempted correlation.
John
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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John said Oh really? What ere the rates from 1986 on/
Largely higher and more regulated than they are now. And your comment should come complete with an "ignore this" X through most of the chart as well I guess.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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I am the 99, or maybe near it, I'm not sure. Why do you hate trying to work and make a living?
I'm proud to have a job and contribute to the best country in this world!!!
Go USA! (Where the locals have cable and don't starve). So fu#k you!
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Most of these threads just bring out the angry and bitter. This thread is bringing out the hilarious.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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So where are the 'Occupy Yosemite' protesters?
New York and Oakland are easy and fairly meaningless. Lets see some group try to occupy a real park like Yosemite, maybe locate at the Church Bowl?
(near the store and medical)
Yelling and beating drums all night keeping the Park staff and the Ahwahnee Hotel guests awake would not last 24hrs till they were all arrested for disorderly conduct and carted out of the park.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Donald...SS works for lots of people , Tea baggers and anti-government nazis as well...Leave well enough alone...What is your solution for providing Americans with housing , food , and dignity as they enter the final days of their lives..? another tax break for the struggling rich ain't going to fullfill your elusive fox news wet-dream...? What are you proposing , Concentration camps with concertina wired...? Face it you have no solutions , only spoon fed propaganda from the fascist media pigs and their corporate masters....
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dirtbag
climber
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Donald has really lost it.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Donald...Not me...! That is some filthy smut...
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Donald sniped And the haughty who continually overestimate their intellect.
Sorry, I mean the bitter and hilarious.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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No, Wes, every time I try to debate you with facts and logic you simply reply with 'fuktards' and 'morons'.
It's actually very telling of when I'm right and you have no retort. This should be obvious to such a smart boy as yourself.
Where did you go to school again?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Corzine is a typical lib politician. Never made anything himself, uses others money to destroy what he has control of.
And then he walks away with a pocket full of kickback cash.
What a mother-f*#ker!!!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Skippy, that's what I mean. Everything the guy touches rots. Look at his history.
Kinda like someone in the Oval Unit.
And yet he walks away with millions. Where is the outrage? Or media coverage????
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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And people who have government jobs never reintroduce that money back into the private sector again? They don't buy things? Do they live in government run cities eating government produced food or something?
Prosperity comes from production, not from consumption. Government workers don't typically produce anything, or when they do it does not add value. Capitalism requires production of value added goods or services. This creates profit, which usually leads to hiring. Governments can destroy value as well: in East Germany before the Wall came down there was actually a car company that made cars that were worth less on the market than the cost of the raw materials used. In other words they took perfectly good steel and ruined it.
Spending money may increase GDP, but GDP is a flawed measure of prosperity. Increasing GDP in this way is taking advantage of that flaw. If I give you $1000 and you give it back to me we have just added $2000 to GDP. But has it increased our prosperity?
Note that the "ignore this" part of that photo all took place under tax rates and fiscal policies that would be considered solidly liberal by today's liberals and pure insanity by today's conservatives. You are, in fact, making an argument for what you are deriding as "socialism" in that
Yes- you can see that during the 70s (high taxes and a more complex tax code) we had stagnation in growth. Growth picks up with a vengeance in the 80s after Reagan simplified the tax code and cut taxes.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Um...SS is still safe. Ask anyone who invested via Bernie Madoff. I know plenty of people who can't retire because their IRA tanked. I don't know anyone who has had to delay retirement because of SS. In fact the only reason SS is at risk at all is because certain people don't want it to be safe anymore for purely ideological reasons.
No, it is at risk because the funds have been removed and replaced with I.O.U.s. from the Treasury.
I want you to feel just as safe about your retirement savings, so can I take it from your bank account and give you an I.O.U.?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Skip,
Likewise- thanks for your insights as well.
Paul
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Jorroh
climber
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Crackaddict said "The larger European union is socialist also, do you know how many jobs they created from 1980-1992? None. And do I even need to bring Cuba, North Korea, East Germany, the Soviet Union, etc. Into the conversation? These countries make (or made, for most of them) collective decisions about national priorities also."
No sh#t, you really can't tell the difference between western social democracies and the eastern block communist countries?
It cracks me up to hear you guys throw around the word socialist, picking up a political science book might help, but hey, its fun to watch three chimps playing in the zoo.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Socialist...It's more like waynes world with wayne and garth discussing urban legend...Quite hilarious...Party on..!
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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I'm not interested in getting into debates about this topic - I'm reading from all viewpoints as I think all sides have merit. People lose points for sh#t-slinging, and there sure is a lot of that going on here.
But I am a believer that the system has found it's way to a section in the maze where there is very little change of finding the exit. It IS possible, but how....nobody can agree on which course to take.
United, we stand. Divided, we fall.
As individuals - do we really - REALLY - want to see our country fall? I know that I do not.
But, I also do believ it is greed which has gotten us here. Some suggest we should be mad at government, and not individuals. I agree, to a point. But it is individuals who make up the government, and individuals who, because of self-interest, have bribed those in positions of power to bend their way.
The amazing maze of US corporate politics in the late 20th and 21st centuries.
I have a question, for those supporting OWS: Are you still, perhaps inadvertently SUPPORTING WS?
Still own stocks, even as part of your company 401k?
Still shopping at the corp store(publicly traded) when you know you have smaller options?
Moved money from big bank yet and into credit union? Or found another way to not keep your assets IN an institution?
I know it has become very difficult, and in some cases impossible, to not utilize the system which has been corrupted. But I think that the OWS movement would make an even greater impact by starving WS.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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You're free, of course, to come to your own conclusions about what keeps people coming by the hundreds to OWS events. I'll continue to make deductions by what I see and hear from participants.
![](/images/SqBullet.gif) JEleazrain
Well John, you must try hard to NOT listen to what the OWS participants are saying, because you miss most of what they are saying.
Is it that you are stupid or that you just don't really want to look at what the participants are saying?
(I know you're not stupid, so I'll conclude it must be the latter.)
Here, let me help you out. This is straight from the mouth of the official Occupy Wall Street web site, not some MSM intrepertation:
First OFFICIAL Release from OCCUPY WALL STREET
[Edit: This is not an actual "official" release from OWS, but is it does contain some of the items for which the protests are about.]
Now you can't claim ignorance.
So how about it, think you can revise your statement: "OWS remains a movement based on envy and ignorance."
These folks are not ignorant--in fact, they are brighter than most because they see through the manipulations that have wreaked havoc on our economy.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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The participants aren't saying anything, K-man.
They're doing that on purpose.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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I personally know plenty of people (my wife's folks prominently) who relied on interest earnings for a significant part of their retirement.
- JE
I find this ironic. From my readings on this forum, conservatives find it weak to blame others for their hardships. To the poor they say that they didn't apply themselves well, didn't save correctly, or work hard enough. And because of this, they have no right to complain about their standings.
But here is John, a staunch conservative, bemoaning the low interest rates and how they have hurt his parents in-law. Well John, tell them to buck up. They obviously didn't work hard enough, and are now trying to live off poor investments. Where's the good conservative in you that says "screw all those that got shamed by an unregulated marketplace."
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Chaz, you're actually trying to claim that the OWS participants aren't saying anything?
Did you read the page I linked to, where the OWS participants wrote to the NY General Assembly?
How about this from the Home Page of OWS:
It is time for us to come together and build a new world through the power of the individual and the community. We are not here to make requests of a corrupt political system - we are here to take our lives back into our own hands. We are not acknowledging subservience. There is no higher power than the power of the people. We are not asking for assistance. We are declaring independence. Our demand is not to those in power, it is to those individuals still silenced. Join us.
Read more here: http://occupywallst.org/
Good thing for you breathing is a primitive.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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No sh#t, you really can't tell the difference between western social democracies and the eastern block communist countries?
It cracks me up to hear you guys throw around the word socialist, picking up a political science book might help, but hey, its fun to watch three chimps playing in the zoo.
Of course there is a difference, but only one of degree. The more a country adopts central planning and top down government, the more poverty stricken the population in that country becomes. Western social democracies are dying a slow death, whereas the eastern block communist countries were complete and utter economic disasters.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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check this
some church choir shuts down a public auction of forclosed homes
This is just plain dumb. There is no housing shortage. Anybody being foreclosed on can turn around and rent for cheaper than the house payment they weren't making. 99% of these people are getting out of a very bad decision on their part with few repercussions. Banks, investors, pension funds, etc. are the ones left holding the bag, getting collateral worth 30% of the loan they made (after 3 years of no payments and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars of fix up).
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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heh,
f*#king dipshit wonks
google "tent city" images,
"local incampments"
those aint protestors, those are your neighbors
living down in the gulch
while you f*#kers complain about the green pools
and the brown yards of the empty houses
all over your neighborhood
They aren't my neighbors. I know plenty of people who have foreclosed. They realized they bit off more than they could chew and they have moved on with their lives.
The larger point is though that this is what happens when central planning tries to override market forces. Government policies to put everyone in their own home were ill-advised. Not everyone should, or needs to, own their own home. The market gets what the market wants, eventually. The longer it is forestalled the more the eventual pain.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Wait, the spokesperson for the occupy wall street protest is about to make a statement......
...wait for it...............
Let him be heard my brothers.......
Looks like the current problem is that his Oshkosh overalls are too ....ahhhem, damp shall we say. He's blaming everyone for this btw.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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About debt. It's interesting to note that the amount of debt accrued in the world is equal to [roughly] 14x the world's annual GDP.
To put this in prospective, imagine that you made $50k / year, and you owed $700k on your credit card. Think you'd ever be able to pay it off?
And the amount of world debt ain't getting smaller.
What do you think this means for the economic systems currently in place?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Why wouldn't his overalls be wet? Surely he's a believer in trickle on economics?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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I'll be attending a reunion of my Young Republicans graduation class.
Then, I'll be meeting with MIchele Bachman.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Ill be out counter-protesting today in Walnut Creek
Just be sure not to sit on that counter. In fact, maybe you should rethink your protest idea and make it simply a sofa protest.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Crackaddict Of course there is a difference, but only one of degree. The more a country adopts central planning and top down government, the more poverty stricken the population in that country becomes. Western social democracies are dying a slow death, whereas the eastern block communist countries were complete and utter economic disasters.
Can't believe I'm wading into this, but huh? I wouldn't argue that the eastern block countries were a disaster, but the Scandanavian countries, which are more social welfare states than say the US or Germany, have higher standards of living for the majority of their population than do the more capitalist examples such as the US.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Ill be out counter-protesting today in Walnut Creek
Don't you mean getting lunch?
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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99% of these people are getting out of a very bad decision on their part with few repercussions. Banks, investors, pension funds, etc. are the ones left holding the bag,
Um, bro? You do know that there are only 12 non-recourse states, right? California is one of them. In the rest, your "few repercussions" amount to the lender suing and getting judgement for the deficiency between the loan amount and proceeds of sale of the collateral.
Additionally, you can be liable for taxes on the deficiency amount whether recourse or non recourse.
But that doesn't fit with your Randian narrative about leeches and producers and whatnot.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Um, bro? You do know that there are only 12 non-recourse states, right? California is one of them. In the rest, your "few repercussions" amount to the lender suing and getting judgement for the deficiency between the loan amount and proceeds of sale of the collateral.
Additionally, you can be liable for taxes on the deficiency amount whether recourse or non recourse.
This is rarely done and when it is it is almost exclusively in the case of a HELOC. If you got greedy when you saw the price of your house go up, took money out to buy jet skis, and then walked away when your home lost value, the bank can sue you for this money. Sounds fair to me.
I guess that doesn't fit into your "something for nothing" Marxist fantasy narrative though.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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I love that the OWS movement will take contributions in the form of check or money order.
Oh the hypocrisy!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Please Crackeraddy explain why?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Certainly they would not cash a check from my Bank of America account?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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OK, here's the plan for "Occupy Pinnacle Capital Management".
Address: 1700 North Broadway, Walnut Creek - when you see nuts, you're getting warm. Warmer than the occupiers in New York, anyway. Plus there'll be a daily BBQ hosted by the friendly capitalist oppressors:
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ncrockclimber
climber
The Desert Oven
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Um, bro? You do know that there are only 12 non-recourse states, right? California is one of them. In the rest, your "few repercussions" amount to the lender suing and getting judgement for the deficiency between the loan amount and proceeds of sale of the collateral.
Additionally, you can be liable for taxes on the deficiency amount whether recourse or non recourse.
**This is rarely done and when it is it is almost exclusively in the case of a HELOC. If you got greedy when you saw the price of your house go up, took money out to buy jet skis, and then walked away when your home lost value, the bank can sue you for this money. Sounds fair to me.
I guess that doesn't fit into your "something for nothing" Marxist fantasy narrative though.**
Crack Addict, you are incorrect. It is not "rarely" done.
Banks very often pursue individuals if they feel that they can get money from them. Between the tax burden and deficiency judgements, very few folks are getting out of underwater home loans unscathed. It is easy to simplify this argument with the straw-man of greedy individuals, but that is not the majority.
Do the banks have losses here? Absolutely. Did some individuals abuse the system by living above their means on HELOCs? Absolutely. At the same time, the financial institutions were making sick profits off the loans and in many cases had zero exposure for the loans by selling them back to the govt. In the end, it comes down to "main street" vs "wall street." Major institutions got bailed out, individuals didn't. Both took hits, but the financial institutions are back on track 12 month later with record bonuses and profits, while many individuals will feel the pain from the real-estate crash for many years to come.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Both took hits, but the financial institutions are back on track 12 month later with record bonuses and profits, while many individuals will feel the pain from the real-estate crash for many years to come.
This is completely incorrect, and smells of ignorant OWS talking point. The average time between initial delinquency now and foreclosure is about 2 years. The reason for this is that banks are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of loans that have already defaulted, and they are getting no income streams for, but they have not foreclosed on them yet because they would have to write down the loss. Writing down these losses would cause nearly all of the large banks to be insolvent. As it stands, they are extending and pretending. Look at the Bank Stock Index:
This is not indicative of "record profits". These bad loans will produce losses for many years to come, and will likely be a severe drag on the economy.
Also, I was completely against the bailouts, but ostensibly the idea was to help the overall economy. It was believed (by some) that pumping money into the banks would trickle down in the form of loans, etc. Did it happen? I don't know. Most liberals claim that "trickle down" does not work anyway, but they then have the task of explaining why a "banking crisis" caused so much pain on main street.
Of course, the answer is that it was not simply a "banking crisis", this was just a symptom of the debt addiction we are suffering from. We lived way beyond our means, and when the inevitable debt hemorrhage occurred, Wall Street was not able to pump money to the debt addicted sectors of the economy any longer.
As to your first point, I work for a major bank and to my knowledge they have never pursued anyone for a first lien. It is very rare that they will pursue you for a second lien, and even if they did, bankruptcy is an option after foreclosure. Fannie Mae will qualify you for a new home loan 3 years after foreclosure and bankruptcy.
At the same time, the financial institutions were making sick profits off the loans and in many cases had zero exposure for the loans by selling them back to the govt.
This is absolutely correct. But it is also where the OWSers are wrong. It should be OW. Blaming banks for making profits is like blaming a beaver for building a dam. The problem is the moral hazard created by Washington in buying and insuring these loans.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I'll reiterate;
The whiners at OWS have misdirected angers.
They should not be angry at corporations or Wall St. They should direct their anger at gov't (both parties lately).
Too much gov't interference in some areas - like encouraging home loans to unqualified people, ridiculous labor and manufacturing regs that do nothing but force jobs overseas.
Too liitle gov't in others - like not doing their jobs in regulating the free market properly, or worse, repealing common-sense regulatory measures.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Here is a perfect analogue for your twisted argument Blew.
http://motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness
For seven years the Ford Motor Company sold cars in which it knew hundreds of people would needlessly burn to death. Why would anyone buy a car that for seven years Ford new was a death trap?
One evening in the mid-1960s, Arjay Miller was driving home from his office in Dearborn, Michigan, in the four-door Lincoln Continental that went with his job as president of the Ford Motor Company. On a crowded highway, another car struck his from the rear. The Continental spun around and burst into flames. Because he was wearing a shoulder-strap seat belt, Miller was unharmed by the crash, and because his doors didn't jam he escaped the gasoline-drenched, flaming wreck. Wow wasn't he lucky that having been forced by Govt regulations Ford Co had made the necessary safety improvements to his Continental.
"I still have burning in my mind the image of that gas tank on fire," Miller said. He went on to express an almost passionate interest in controlling fuel-fed fires in cars that crash or roll over Wow I am convinced that he has "seen the light" And has found the spirit of altruism and the value of the common good.
Almost seven years after Miller's testimony, a woman, whom for legal reasons we will call Sandra Gillespie, pulled onto a Minneapolis highway in her new Ford Pinto. Riding with her was a young boy, whom we'll call Robbie Carlton. As she entered a merge lane, Sandra Gillespie's car stalled. Another car rear-ended hers at an impact speed of 28 miles per hour. The Pinto's gas tank ruptured. Vapors from it mixed quickly with the air in the passenger compartment. A spark ignited the mixture and the car exploded in a ball of fire. Sandra died in agony a few hours later in an emergency hospital. Seven years of no fix. Oh well you know the Pinto was an fuel saving economy car Ford never wanted to make anyway.
Why did Sandra Gillespie's Ford Pinto catch fire so easily, seven years after Ford's Arjay Miller made his apparently sincere pronouncements—the same seven years that brought more safety improvements to cars than any other period in automotive history?
So who could expect them to make safety changes to them so quickly. I mean think of the shareholders profits after all.
Blew's warped logic would say the Fuknbitch deserved to die cause she was dumb enough and greedy enough to buy a car beyond her means to control. And ol' Arjay deserved to live unharmed because he knew better than to buy the Death Traps his corporation was, through incentives, foisting on the American public. That and because as a corporate fat cat he was a "job creator". Ford of course shouldn't be held accountable right Blewy. Saving innocent lives would be onerous government regulations and you know how that kills jobs.
You know I am with you Blew ol' Arjay Miller probably should have gotten a multimillion dollar bonus for being smart enough to get the Lincoln. Stupid crispy chick shoulda got a Continental.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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As a side note Blew, do you know who was President when the Ford Pintos were making passenger flambes all over America?
Well I'll tell you. Richard Nixon.
That's right Richardmotherf*#kingtrickydicknixon.
And Blew, do you know what political Party Ol' Dicky came from?
Well I'll tell you. Republican.
Thats right another republican shill for Corporatocracy.
Do you want to know the dirty deals between Nixon and his Corporate masters?
OCCUPY WALL STREET!
Drag the Corporatocracy to the ground and stick a dagger where it's hard should be,
Hang the Profiteers by their cankles and whack them like pinatas till something finally trickles down.
Take back our country and reclaim citizenship from the Corporations.
Like the sign said I'll believe Corporations are people when Texas executes one".
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Hey Philo, re-read my post above about regulation. But it's kinda weak that you have to go back to the 60's to make a point. Exploding pinto's??? And Nixon???
Should I bring up Carter next? And the housing program he initiated?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Blew's warped logic would say the Fuknbitch deserved to die cause she was dumb enough and greedy enough to buy a car beyond her means to control. And ol' Arjay deserved to live unharmed because he knew better than to buy the Death Traps his corporation was, through incentives, foisting on the American public. That and because as a corporate fat cat he was a "job creator". Ford of course shouldn't be held accountable right Blewy. Saving innocent lives would be onerous government regulations and you know how that kills jobs.
Yes! Let's revert to socialism, and let the government manage the auto industry. Then they can make safe cars, cars which cannot possibly kill anyone - because they won't be able to build one that can go fast enough!
This is such an infantile straw man argument, which always comes up when lefties are running out of angles to argue. As if capitalism is supposed to guarantee that nobody will ever be hurt because under capitalism bad decisions and error-prone thinking are non-existant.
At least under capitalism we became aware of the problem and Ford fixed it. Do you think a government which managed the car company and controlled the press would ever let this get out, much less correct the problem?
How about those FEMA formaldehyde trailers? They are still for sale if you want one...
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Yes! Let's revert to socialism, and let the government manage the auto industry. speaking of infantile straw man arguments.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Just curious... are you aware (hahaha, that alone is funny)
that the original members of the Tea Party did something illegal and left quite a mess?
Are you aware they they were fighting a government backed corporation?
Are you aware that they were citizens without corporate sponsorship... more like the OWS folks than the Tea Baggers? Of course you aren't.
How is that relevant now?
Then, it was a foreign entity trying to tax the piss out of us and we said, "Screw you, we'll take sovereignty of this land and make a new tax-code and Constitution". It was more about independance from foreign rule.
The current theme is just a smaller Fed, less spending, and a more diligent, responsible gov't held accountable by the People.
There are similarities, but it's different. Kinda like the difference between OWS and the Tea-Baggers.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Yes, Wes, they were Brits imposing taxes from across an ocean and the American people got fed up with being ruled by Britain and the Church of England.
Do you really think I don't know the history?
Many countries told the Brits to piss off. We were one of the first.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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and a more diligent, responsible gov't held accountable by the People Right on Bluey.
But consider carefully what you said in the current context.
That the government has become much more accountable to the money provided by special interests, including corporations. Corporations are "people" and now have the legal right to spend as much $$ on political candidates as they like. Then there are the "citizens" like Koch Bros and many many more who own corporations who will benefit directly from the laws they try to influence. Regardless of the benefits such laws provide society.
The thuggery is transparent to people who look at the whole picture.
Throw in a nasty mix of religious fundamentalism, global warming denial, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a frequently corrupt and incompetent healthcare system that has terrible outcomes compared to other industrialized countries, disbelief in science (intelligent design anyone?), denying women the right to manage their own fertility, gay bashing, privatizing the education system for profit.......
Intelligent and caring people are pretty pissed off. And it's not because they think their government is overtaxing them. It's because they see the rich getting MUCH richer and themselves and others getting nowhere.
10% unemployment while corporation, Wall Street and banking executives take home millions per year, each. The US Gov't is currently not representing the needs of the people and the people are finally becoming aware. On the issue of gov't representing the people, there's not much difference between the Tea Party and OWS.
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dirtbag
climber
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Dr. F, weschrist, philo, high traverse, and others: good job here.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Throw in a nasty mix of religious fundamentalism, global warming denial
This is where you lose me, bro.
But I mostly agree with the rest of your rant.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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imposing taxes from across an ocean and the American people got fed up with being ruled by Britain and the Church of England It's a lot more complicated than that. Freedom of Religion was pretty much alive in the Colonies soon after they were settled. In England there was religious freedom by the early 1700's.
The Stamp Act was designed to financially assist the East India Company who had the monopoly over trade with England in the colonies. Until 1776, most of the Colonists considered themselves proud to be English. Which is one of the reasons they were so pissed off about not being represented in Parliament.
Much as many Americans, including yourself I believe, but for different reasons, think the Gov't is now in the hands of corporations and wealthy people effectively bribing and then coercing "our" representatives.
It was the English Parliament and King cracking down on the political discontent that created the actual rebellion. Had the King and Parliament given the Colonists representation in Parliament we might still be part of the United Kingdom.
There are a lot of similarities to the US during the later stages of the Vietnam War.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Blue wrote: Should I bring up Carter next? And the housing program he initiated?
Yeah...please do as it was one the most successful government housing programs ever and with the highest payback.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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This is where you lose me, bro right, I retract the word "nasty".
Please note, I have no problem with people practicing their religion as long as it's personal between them, their family and their god. Just keep it out of government, as Goldwater said, and the 1st Amendment says. And I include Islamic Fundamentalism. I have absolutely no quarrel with Islam. I know quite a few Muslims and every one of them is a very decent person. Unlike some Christians I know, none of them has tried to tell me what I should believe.
Neither you nor I want to live under a religious theocracy if it's Islamic, why should we accept "Christian" control of our government?
As for denying science. We do that at our peril. Seriously.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Are you referring to the mob of unwashed riff-raff who are currently disgracing whats left of American liberalism? Yet another carefully reasoned response supported by facts. Entirely predictable.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Tell me, when did America first become its very own country?
Well that sounds like a trick question. Make it more specific. Independance from Britain, declaration of independance, etc..
Yeah...please do as it was one the most successful government housing programs ever and with the highest payback.
Carter was the Genesis of the Community Reinvestment Act that led to Acorn, Fanni/Freddie, and our current mess.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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OOOh Ooooh Ooh... Pick me, pick me, I know the answer because I lived there.
Morocco.
Okay what do I win.
Hey HighTraverse, Good stuff!
Please note, I have no problem with people practicing their religion as long as it's personal between them, their family and their god. Just keep it out of government, as Goldwater said, and the 1st Amendment says. And I include Islamic Fundamentalism. I have absolutely no quarrel with Islam. I know quite a few Muslims and every one of them is a very decent person. Unlike some Christians I know, none of them has tried to tell me what I should believe.
Neither you nor I want to live under a religious theocracy if it's Islamic, why should we accept "Christian" control of our government?
As for denying science. We do that at our peril. Seriously.
Morocco, a Muslim Arab Monarchy, was the first sovereign nation to recognize the nascent America.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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HT: Freedom of Religion was pretty much alive in the Colonies soon after they were settled. In England there was religious freedom by the early 1700's.
Ummm, no. That would be NO. Many of the settlers of the US were from sects that were persecuted, and so emigrated. Where they promptly set up and persecuted everybody else. The most famous being the pilgrims who settled in New England. The intolerance broke down over time, but not until the late 18th century was there something like freedom of religion in much of the US - freedom, that is, if you were educated, well to do, part of the ruling class, and living in an urban setting. There is arguably still not freedom of religion in the US, given the intolerance shown to non-Christians. You haven't elected any but professed Christians as president in decades, although whether most of them actually believed in it is another matter. Most probably just thought Washington was worth a mass.
The English (and Scots and Irish) were virulently intolerant in religious matters until well into the 19th century, and often later. Certainly the state (mostly) stopped executing people for their religious beliefs after the late 17th century, apart from the whole witchcraft nonsense. And of course those pesky Indians, whose Christianization and extermination often went hand in hand. But there was abundant religious intolerance throughout the British Isles and what became the US until well into the 19th century, or later. Certainly not freedom of religion in any real meaning of the word.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Wes, if you want to have a discussion, fine. I'm not going to play US History trivia with you.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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That the government has become much more accountable to the money provided by special interests, including corporations. Corporations are "people" and now have the legal right to spend as much $$ on political candidates as they like. Then there are the "citizens" like Koch Bros and many many more who own corporations who will benefit directly from the laws they try to influence. Regardless of the benefits such laws provide society.
The problem is more complex than this. For one, unions are special interests also, despite the fact they are always left out of the discussion by liberals. Unions have given workers higher pay and everything they want to feel secure in their jobs, but at the small cost of their jobs, which have been off-shored. The other problem is that we, as voters, do not always read the Economist, and we don't see that countries like China and India are gaining on us in job skills and streamlining costs, so we start to vote ourselves more job security and higher wages in the form of regulation, which of course has the opposite effect in the long run because it makes us less competitive. In real terms, auto workers were paid much more before unions.
I have made it a point to keep up with world economic trends since the early 90s, and I have been surprised our middle class has held on as long as it has. I kept wondering when we would have to pay the piper, and I think it is funny that now it has happened, people are blaming corporations for it. I guess it is an easy argument for someone who doesn't want to look below the surface.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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CA
Your last post is one of the most reasonable you've put up. There's a lot of truth in union excesses. Where you go awry is when you absolve corporate excesses. The "union problem" is a manifestation of the built-in tension between capitalists and labor. To a capitalist, labor is a cost. A cost to be minimized. The working man/woman knows this. Hence unions. Without unions, YOU'd not have company assisted (it used to be fully paid) health insurance, a 40 hour work week, social security, any kind of pension, not even 401k. There would still be child labor and garment factory fires that killed hundreds. There'd be no mine safety.
All of society's workers, of all financial levels, have benefited from labor unions' existence. Please tell me how it has hurt the corporations. And don't try the "GM failed because of the unions" ploy. Ford has the same unions. GM crashed solely because of really bad management. There are some excesses with unions, just as there are with Capitalists. Which is why they both need to be regulated. Unions have lost about 2/3 of their power compared to Corporations in the US since Reagan. You want to take the rest?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Rachel Maddow last night. Covering the Oakland general strike.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#45142791
A little before 1/2 way she encapsulates the OWS (world wide) complaint succinctly:
the people believe they are underserved by our economy and by our political system which has been captured by the 1%
Note the very clear distinction: "underserved by our economy". The fundamental complaint is NOT about capitalism. It's that the people are underserved by BOTH capitalism and the government. And the root cause is the corruption of the political system by the 1%.
The complaint is NOT that capitalism or government are in themselves bad.
Sure there are radicals, but I think Maddow got the feeling of the majority of OWS active and passive supporters.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Not to mention the unrelenting greed of the oil & gas Cabals jacking fuel prices beyond reason to suck the life blood out of the world economy.
Fats You don't know what you think you know.
My uncle was a top exec with Eastern Airlines at the time.
He didn't bitch and whine about unions but about the never ending rise in fuel prices,
Hard costs are relatively easy to factor in and compensate for but not rapidly rising fuel costs.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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The airlines were crashed primarily by terrible union contracts and a little bit of poor management. What? the price of oil didn't have anything to do with it?
9/11 didn't significantly reduce air travel for a couple of years?
Airline pilots and air crews shouldn't have limited work hours and minimum layovers?
De-regulation didn't lead to cost cutting?
Please be specific about the bad parts of the union contracts.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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I can't wait till Obama's second term and a rapidly stabilizing economy.
Then all these Corporate apologists and TeaBaglican'ts will have to whinee and complain about will be how Obama is putting all the Repo-men out of work.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Haha, now the Boston Tea Party and Declaration of IndependEnce are trivial?
Not the events, but having the dates of certain events memorized is.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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I'd like to think we could have a more or less reasonable discussion without dissing each other. With that I'll resort to the old schoolyard ploy: "THEY started it!"
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Yeah! And my dad can beat up your dad! So Nanny nanny boo boo state,
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I'm all for opposing gov't backed corp's, but the OWS clowns appear to be against wealthy people and ALL large corporations, which I'm not.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Skipt, your bias does not make the OWS supporters wrong.
That you do not understand them or their motivations does not negate their patriotism or righteous protest.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Quote Here I'm all for opposing gov't backed corp's, but the OWS clowns appear to be against wealthy people and ALL large corporations, which I'm not.
Which is it, bluering. Make up your mind.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Without unions, YOU'd not have company assisted (it used to be fully paid) health insurance, a 40 hour work week, social security, any kind of pension, not even 401k. There would still be child labor and garment factory fires that killed hundreds. There'd be no mine safety.
This is not necessarily true. I work in technology, and I have never been in a union, nor have any of the companies I work for ever had unions, yet I get many of the benefits that union jobs provide, because companies have to compete with each other to hire workers.
That said, I don't disagree that many industries have benefited from unions. Mining comes to mind. But most unions have outlived their usefulness, if they ever had any. Public sector unions are just a taxpayer shakedown. What are they trying to protect workers from? Dangerous office working conditions? Managers who freely spend other people's money?
Additionally, many of the benefits you describe are now albatrosses on our necks as we try to compete with labor in other countries.
And I agree that corporations should not have influence over politicians as well. The only way I see to accomplish this though is to not let politicians have the power to bestow benefits to special interests at all.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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This is not necessarily true. I work in technology, and I have never been in a union, nor have any of the companies I work for ever had unions, yet I get many of the benefits that union jobs provide, because companies have to compete with each other to hire workers.
Unions had a lot to do with your wages and benefits. Is it just a mere coincidence that non-union wages and benefits rose as union wages and benefits rose? And now the reverse is taking place. As unions become irrelevant in this country, wages are stagnant across the board, hence the widening gap in income.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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And because your company had to compete with unionized ones, obviously.
I get union scale on non-union jobs for this exact reason. Sometimes the non-union jobs actually pay better, because they have to compete. That situation obviously wouldn't exist w/o unions.
Yes, they have to compete with all of those unionized web startups!
So do you get Union scale wages in Vancouver, where a lot of film work is going?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Unions had a lot to do with your wages and benefits. Is it just a mere coincidence that non-union wages and benefits rose as union wages and benefits rose? And now the reverse is taking place. As unions become irrelevant in this country, wages are stagnant across the board, hence the widening gap in income.
You have your cause and effect in reverse. Unions are becoming irrelevant for one reason: The industries they have inserted themselves into have left the country, and taken the high paying jobs with them. This is obvious: Manufacturing as a share of the economy has been plummeting. In 1965, manufacturing accounted for 53 percent of the economy. By 1988 it only accounted for 39 percent, and in 2004, it accounted for just 9 percent. That is where our high paying jobs have gone, and that is why wages are lower. And this is mostly the fault of greedy labor unions.
Unions are still remarkably strong in government, because it is difficult to outsource government jobs. That is why the highest rents in the country are in D.C. now. It says a lot about the state of our country.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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And you still can't see who took them away for the obscene profits.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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And you still can't see who took them away for the obscene profits.
Those evil companies! They actually want to make profits!
Again, blaming companies for making profits is like blaming a dog for getting into your trash. You are wasting your breath.
Besides, what is wrong with profits? Without them, there would smaller tax revenues for all the social programs you espouse.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Dude your logic is as twisted as your thong.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Dude your logic is as twisted as your thong.
Should be easy to refute then, right? I guess not quite as easy as doling out some playground insult.
What grade are you in?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Public sector unions are just a taxpayer shakedown. I hope you're including prison guards unions.
And excluding teachers' unions. I've been closely associate with the operation of my local school district for 15 years. I wouldn't work for what the teachers AND administrators are paid and I don't think you would either.
Our country's labor problems, union AND non union, (I've never been union and my high-tech job has been shipped out of the country: to Mexico and China) are too complex to catch in a phrase. I believe the "struggle" between "labor" and "management" is eternal, complicated and both sides have plenty to crow about.....and plenty of crow to eat.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I'm all for opposing gov't backed corp's, but the OWS clowns appear to be against wealthy people and ALL large corporations, which I'm not.
Get it now, Gary?
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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And this is mostly the fault of greedy labor unions. '
Are you saying living wages are unreasonable in this country?
Unions are still remarkably strong in government, because it is difficult to outsource government jobs.
When does your job get outsourced?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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"Public sector unions are just a taxpayer shakedown."
I hope you're including prison guards unions.
And excluding teachers' unions. I've been closely associate with the operation of my local school district for 15 years. I wouldn't work for what the teachers AND administrators are paid and I don't think you would either.
Definitely prison guards, but also teachers. That is not to say that I believe teachers get paid enough. The problem is they are not paid for performance, and that is because unions have resisted this. They protect senior teachers at the expense of better qualified less senior teachers.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Which would have happened anyway, so your "one reason" is backwards and wrong. If there were no unions, we'd still have our manufacturing base, and corporations would have ignored cheap overseas labor? Laughable and wrong.
We would still lose jobs to competition, but not to the extent we have, because wages would be more flexible, which would have allowed us to keep an edge in manufacturing. America's Unions were God's gift to emerging markets. They wouldn't allow us to compete.
It is very simple math: if wages are 3 times as much here, there are likely to be a lot more people who can do the job cheaper, and hence a lot more jobs get outsourced. If they are only 2 times as much, with the cost of shipping goods, etc. there are not quite as many people who can do the job for cheaper and hence less outsourcing.
Would you do a simple one day website for $200? How about $60? Price is an important incentive.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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In other words, you're against all aerospace corporations, all air travel/transport corporations (gov't built, run and owned airports), all corporations dealing with ground transportation (gov't built, run and owned roads and bridges), all military equipment/infrastructure corporations...
That's misleading. Space Agencies are not corporations.
Infracstructure is a fundamental function of gov't (airports, highways, etc...).
Doing business with the gov't is not the same as gov't backed. It's more like a producer/consumer relationship.
Look to Fannie/Freddie as an example of what I was saying. And GM.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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If wages AREN'T 3X here than they are someplace overseas, then who's going to buy GM's cars, a computer on every desktop, and pay the taxes for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Union employees are taxpayers too.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Congress passed the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (P.L. 107-42) in response to a severe liquidity crisis facing the already-troubled airline industry in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Ultimately, the federal government provided $4.6 billion in one-time, subject-to-income-tax cash payments to 427 U.S. air carriers, with no provision for repayment, essentially a gift from the taxpayers.
note: already-troubled airline industry
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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When does your job get outsourced?
I have had my job outsourced before. So what? You update your skills, adapt, and go out and get a new job. I am sure it will happen again, that is the World we live in. I have the right to leave my job at any time, and I allow my employer the right to fire me whenever they need to do so.
I am sure that is not the answer you wanted to hear. You probably would have felt better if I got on Obamacare for a couple years, went to some OWS rallies, and bitched on Supertaco. Sorry for the disappointment.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Ultimately, the federal government provided $4.6 billion in one-time, subject-to-income-tax cash payments to 427 U.S. air carriers, with no provision for repayment, essentially a gift from the taxpayers.
That's different. That sounds like a system-wide (FAA-inspired) fix for everyone.
It's different that gov't picking winners and losers, or backing sole entities that should be allowed to fail.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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If wages AREN'T 3X here than they are someplace overseas, then who's going to buy GM's cars, a computer on every desktop, and pay the taxes for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Union employees are taxpayers too.
GM will have to make cars that we can afford. They make cheaper cars in China, do you think we are better educated, skilled, and more deserving?
Besides, look at your logic - if you are correct, all we have to do is arbitrarily raise wages across the board, and we would all be able to afford better cars, computers, etc. The reason that sounds so absurd is because it is not consumption that makes us wealthy, it is production.
It would be far better to collect taxes on all of those manufacturing jobs that we lost, even if the wages were lower. As it is now we get fewer jobs AND lower wages.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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CA
I'm pleased you're not one of the 9% unemployed or the 6% who've been unemployed for over a year. Seriously
Pew Memorial Trust.
Nearly 32% of the 14 million Americans who are unemployed have been out of work for more than a year, according to data from the Pew Charitable Trusts. More than 43% of unemployed workers older than 55 have been out of work for at least a year, according to the study.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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CA
I'm pleased you're not one of the 9% unemployed or the 6% who've been unemployed for over a year. Seriously
I bet you are! Think of how much more time I would have to troll the Taco!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Yeah those OWS whiners have no issues right CrackedAddy?
Yeah well like i mean the 1% is cool. How bad could they be when they have bling like this?
http://money.msn.com/ways-to-invest/articles.aspx?post=f3203c5d-5f9d-402a-bdec-0493e5029ddb
The $8 million prehistoric iPad
British designer Stuart Hughes, famous for super-luxury devices, has crafted a diamond-and-bone-encrusted iPad.
By Kim Peterson on Thu, Nov 3, 2011 2:27 PM
Stuart Hughes has taken ridiculous luxury to a new level with his latest iPad.
The designer, known for blinging up iPhones and other devices, has come out with a new iPad that contains shavings from the thigh bone of a 65 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex. I'm pretty sure Hughes is the only person in the world who could have thought this one up.
The Tyranno-pad comes with a hefty price tag: 5 million British pounds, or about $8 million.
Like other devices made by Hughes, this one is also heavy on the gold and diamonds. The back is covered with 4.4 pounds of solid gold. The Apple logo is formed with 53 diamonds.
How can the ninety-nine whine just cause the ones got it so fine?
I just gotsta get one a doz.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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So the OWS are just lazy, humanities folks who want a hand out from the productive people.
And the Tea Partiers don't care about the size of govt. they just don't want to pay any taxes.
All OWS are dirty commies.
All Tea Partiers are racist homophobes.
Right??
Because if you are going to believe everyone is bad on one side you gotta believe everyone is bad on the other side.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Because if you are going to believe everyone is bad on one side you gotta believe everyone is bad on the other side. Nope! The Tea Baggers and moral "majority" (I'm dating myself using that term) have God on their side. Well, at least the Christian God. The Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist gods need not apply.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Yeah if you're a bigot about politics you're probably a bigot about religion too.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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So the OWS are just lazy, humanities folks who want a hand out from the productive people.
And the Tea Partiers don't care about the size of govt. they just don't want to pay any taxes.
All OWS are dirty commies.
All Tea Partiers are racist homophobes.
Right??
Because if you are going to believe everyone is bad on one side you gotta believe everyone is bad on the other side.
Nope! The Tea Baggers and moral "majority" (I'm dating myself using that term) have God on their side. Well, at least the Christian God. The Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist gods need not apply.
You guys are wrong.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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So you consider the election of a rabid pack of ravenous weasels who, devoid of a clue regarding governance, then proceed to cripple the economic recovery of the nation in an act of blatant obstructionism, as an achievement?
Dude why do you hate America?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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And you base your latest absurd comment on what exactly?
How do you know the "mind" of the OWS protesters?
Please enlighten us you blowhard limpdick chanker.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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As usual, Donald is correct
Those are really weak people
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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are motorcycle riders mostly red state or blue state?
not easy riders, i mean like motocross and flat track guys, like dick mann and gary nixon and mert lawell? kelly slater?
Mert Lawwill is an American dirt-track and road racer, born on September 25, 1940 in Boise, Idaho.
He started his racing career as an amateur racer on the local TT track in Boise and, later, scramble races across the United States Northwest .
He turned professional in 1963 after moving to California and, in 1964, signed a contract to race dirt-track for manufacturer Harley-Davidson, with which he would stay for the rest of his racing career. He won his first AMA national race at the famous Sacramento Mile on September 19, 1965.
He won the 1969 A.M.A. Grand National Championship and was voted AMA's Most Popular Rider of the Year the same year. His popularity earned him a co-starring role in Bruce Brown's classic 1971 motorcycle epic, On Any Sunday with actor Steve McQueen, and off-road legend Malcolm Smith.
This film revealed Mert Lawwill's talents as a technician but unfortunately showcased a series of "DNFs".
But by the time he retired in 1977, due to an inner-ear disorder that affected his balance, he had amassed an incredible 161 career AMA Grand National finishes during his 15-year racing career.
He is now spending his time developing race motorcycles as well as mountain bikes. He also developed a prosthetic to allow arm amputees to ride a motorcycle.
He was inducted in the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Flat trackers are neither. They're just badass.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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so, joe owser had a good teaching job in nyc; but joe owser felt the job was too hard (big classes, overbearing bureaucracy, yada, yada, yada); so joe owser quit his full time job ("a few years ago"--i.e. when indicators clearly pointed to a downturn in the economy) to pursue a masters degree...in PUPPETRY; joe owser graduates with $35,000 in loans and a completely useless degree and must settle for a job as a "full time substitute" in nyc schools for half his original salary, which, need i remind you, he GAVE UP VOLUNTARILY; joe owser then decides to join the owsers where he has the opportunity to pursue his passion--WITHOUT PAY--making puppets and, apparently, demanding that we--the 57%--pay for his loans rather than spending all this free time LOOKING FOR WORK
boo-fing-hoo
http://www.thenation.com/article/164348/audacity-occupy-wall-street
oakland 1%: 1
oakland 99%: 0
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/03/BACM1LQ5FU.DTL&tsp=1
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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dirtbag
climber
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BW,
It delights me to no end seeing neo-fascists like you get your panties in a wad over this.
As you might say, boo-fing-hoo.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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So Donald if the typical "fleabagger" is an anti-capitalist who "deserves" a job, not a WWII vet that is against growing corporate greed and rising social inequality. Then "typical" Tea Baggers must be racist, homophobes, who want no "socialist" public education, fire, and police. Is that what you want? Or is it that like most "typical" right wingers you want a religious state like Iran, except of course your flavor of Christianity not Islam.
Why is that so many right wingers can't speak to the true positions of the center and left and must paint everyone not a conservative as a socialist/commie? They must love the visible radical lefties, because then they can claim everyone who doesn't agree with them is a radical left winger. Is it stupidity, cowardice, or do they know what they are doing?
Thankfully they are the minority. Unfortunately they have way too much say in the political process. They drive the Republicans too far right (with their talk of rinos etc.) so the republicans that get thru the primaries are fools who either can't get elected or screw things up royally once elected. Good job!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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^^^ Frickin' wicked ^^^
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Well I am proud to say I am of the 99%.
Yeah I am a hippie but under normal circumstances I am anything but lazy an unwashed.
I run what has been a successful business and I have had employees that were treated with respect.
But these are not "normal times". Having had a recent life saving four level cervical fusion I have been considerably layed up for months. I am my business. If I am not there I have NO business. Problem is I can't be there. I suppose I should get off my dirty lazy hippie ass and go get one of those six figure oil field jobs in the Dakotas. Ain't that right you rightwing AssHats. Just pull myself up by my bootstraps and go get a job. I just wish I could see my boot straps. Heck I wish I could just see my feet. That would make climbing ladders in a cervical collar easier.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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on the other hand, Tea Party people are only seriously interested in Federal Spending
but only the spending after 1/20/08
gee, wonder why that is?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Fattrad why are you such an anti-Semite?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Glenn Greenwald
25 Oct 2011
While the Founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasized -- over and over -- that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that “the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.” Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce “total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections” between rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against “counterfeit nobles,” those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.
After all, one of their principal grievances against the British King was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every Founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.
Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalized for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.
If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality -- acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world -- without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.
Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americans that the wealth of the top 1% is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunize themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions.
In lieu of the rule of law -- the equal application of rules to everyone -- what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunized while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.
The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimizing anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.
That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fueling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175458/
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Nohea
Trad climber
Living Outside the Statist Quo
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The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption.
What a crock! The author has no clue who the 1% are.
Do a little home work and you’ll see the truth about income mobility and the USA.
The summary…
• “There was considerable income mobility of individuals in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period as over half of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile over this period.
• Roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved up to a higher income group by 2005.
• Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 – the top 1/100 of 1 percent – only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005. Moreover, the median real income of these taxpayers declined over this period.
• The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged from the prior decade (1987 through 1996).
• Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period.
In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.
The degree of mobility in the overall population and movement out of the bottom quintile in this study are similar to the findings of prior research on income mobility.”
And the source.
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/incomemobilitystudy03-08revise.pdf
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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no criminality in the foreclosure process But of course not. There was no criminal investigation.
The Collateralized Debt Obligations were a specific Ponzi scheme. Grab a little profit and sell the instruments forward to let the guy holding the bag at the end eat all the losses in the chain. Everyone thought they'd get out before it collapsed. Definitely not illegal. Definitely dishonest and corrupt.
How many people at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley were prosecuted? none. They were taking advantage of a rigged system and knew they wouldn't go to jail.
There's the rub. If there's no investigation, there'll be no accountability.
Or if the wealthy and corporations have gotten the laws written in their favor. Then, by definition it's not illegal. THAT's what Greenwald is talking about.
Greenwald is quite correct that the people have the PERCEPTION that the rich and politically connected get away with criminal behavior, often legally.
Madoff didn't get away because he screwed the Rich and Famous and Connected. He should've taken my money instead. He'd still be free. Of course he'd have had to get money from millions of me.....like CitiGroup, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch.
While the people bought into Reaganomics and Clinton/Shrub pushing more housing ownership the "investors", speculators and "job creators" were stacking the deck in their own favor. Increasing the inequality in the playing field. So the people went along. Who could resist a ridiculously cheap mortgage when they'd been convinced that the Rich Guys were the Good Guys and the gov't would look out for the little guy's interests and that Owning Your Own Home was patriotic?
Ignore at your own risk. As the Republicans have proven since Reagan, perception is more important than fact. And a large number of the people perceive they've been denied economic and legal justice.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Ronald Reagen summed up the wall street protest crowd when he said this:
Reagan has been dead, and beyond commenting on OWS or anything else, since 2004.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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November 3, 2011 12:00 A.M.
Who Are These Fat-Cat Few at the Top?
A successful society neither idolizes nor demonizes its rich.
First lady Michelle Obama the other day railed at “the few at the top,” who do all sorts of bad things. A few months ago, we began hearing of the “1 percent” who are responsible for the current economic mess. “They” apparently make all their money at the expense of the other 99 percent. Are they the same as last year’s villains, who had not paid “their fair share” while making over $200,000 in annual income?
Do they include the greedy doctors, who, the president once asserted, recklessly lop off limbs and yank tonsils for profits? Is my urologist a dreaded one-percenter? He found out what was causing my kidney stones but probably makes good money. Was a nearby farmer one, too? I bet he makes over $200,000 but, like many other growers in this area, has found a way to produce beef and cotton more cheaply and efficiently than farmers in almost any other part of the world, thereby enriching his county, state, and nation.
I am writing this essay on a MacBook Pro laptop. So I wonder, was the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs a suspect billionaire? Should I be mad or grateful that he made billions by permanently replacing my old scissors, paste, and bottle of Liquid Paper of the 1970s?
Did Johnny Depp really have to earn $50 million last year alone — or Leonardo DiCaprio $77 million? Couldn’t they have settled for $2 million in salary in 2010, and thereby passed on a little bit of the savings to their ticket-buying fans? What kind of system would allow Oprah Winfrey or the late Michael Jackson each to accumulate nearly $1 billion? Is left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore — reportedly worth $50 million — a one-percenter? Why does such an enemy of capitalism need so much capitalist largesse?
Do this administration and its supporters really wish to separate millions of diverse Americans by a moral divide of the “few at the top”? Are liberals like Sens. John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein — among the richest in the U.S. Senate — in that elite group?
How about Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, together worth over $100 billion? They are certainly philanthropists. But their charities are predicated on two assumptions: They both apparently trust the private sector more than government to administer their vast estates, and neither sees much of a problem in avoiding billions in inheritance taxes that would one day be due to a now-broke federal treasury.
Is George Soros a “corporate-jet owner”? He nearly broke the Bank of England by shorting the British pound and was convicted in France of insider training. Rather than comply with new federal financial-disclosure regulations, he told some of his outside investors just to keep their money. Is Obama’s former director of the budget, Peter Orszag, a “fat-cat banker”? He left the administration to enter the “revolving door” of Wall Street, where he is now a rich banker for Citigroup.
So do we really want to go down this them-vs.-us road? Using a new financial red line to crudely divide us is a tricky business. Those most likely to fly in corporate jets are precisely the elite who show up at the president’s mega-fundraisers and play golf with him on the world’s most exclusive courses — or visit Martha’s Vineyard and Vail, where the first family sometimes vacations. They don’t all wear pinstripes and Gucci, but may hang out at Occupy Wall Street rallies as actors, rappers, and filmmakers in jeans and baseball caps.
In a larger sense, we should remember a few things about the new orchestrated envy of, and animosity toward, the better-off. Most Americans each day depend on our medical care, our retirement packages, our food, our gas, and our computers from exactly these “few at the top” who seem to enrich rather than prey on society.
The BMWs or Porsches of the one-percenters aren’t that much faster, quieter, or safer than our Chevys and Hondas. Damning the wealthy nonstop is often an embarrassing symptom of one’s own longing for, even obsession with, the perks and attention that wealth brings. And if we really want more tax revenue, there is far more to be had from the nearly 50 percent of American households that pay no federal income tax than from the 1 percent that now pays 37 percent of all the collected revenue.
In short, a confident, successful society neither idolizes nor demonizes its rich, but instead believes that wealth can be created rather than taken from others. And it simply judges the better-off by the content of their characters, not the size of their wallets.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom. © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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November 5, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Corporate Collaborators
Standing with “the 99%” means supporting the destruction of civilized society.
Way back in 1968, after the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Mayor Daley declared that his forces were there to “preserve disorder.” I believe that was one of Hizzoner’s famous malapropisms. Forty-three years later Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, and the Oakland city council have made “preserving disorder” the official municipal policy. On Wednesday, the “Occupy Oakland” occupiers rampaged through the city, shutting down the nation’s fifth-busiest port, forcing stores to close, terrorizing those residents foolish enough to commit the reactionary crime of “shopping,” destroying ATMs, spraying the Christ the Light Cathedral with the insightful observation “F**k,” etc. And how did the Oakland city council react? The following day they considered a resolution to express their support for “Occupy Oakland” and to call on the city administration to “collaborate with protesters.”
That’s “collaborate” in the Nazi-occupied-France sense: The city’s feckless political class are collaborating with anarchists against the taxpayers who maintain them in their sinecures. They’re not the only ones. When the rumor spread that the Whole Foods store, of all unlikely corporate villains, had threatened to fire employees who participated in the protest, the regional president, David Lannon, took to Facebook: “We totally support our Team Members participating in the General Strike today — rumors are false!” But, despite his “total support,” they trashed his store anyway, breaking windows and spraypainting walls. As the Oakland Tribune reported:
A man who witnessed the Whole Foods attack, but asked not to be identified, said he was in the store buying an organic orange when the crowd arrived.
There’s an epitaph for the republic if ever I heard one.
The experience was surreal, the man said. “They were wearing masks. There was this whole mess of people, and no police here. That was weird.”
No, it wasn’t. It was municipal policy. In fairness to the miserable David Lannon, Whole Foods was in damage-control mode. Men’s Wearhouse in Oakland had no such excuse. In solidarity with the masses, they printed up a huge poster declaring “We stand with the 99%” and announcing they’d be closed that day. In return, they got their windows smashed.
I’m a proud member of the 1 percent, and I’d have been tempted to smash ’em myself. A few weeks back, finding myself suddenly without luggage, I shopped at a Men’s Wearhouse, faute de mieux, in Burlington, Vt. Never again. I’m not interested in patronizing craven corporations so decadent and self-indulgent that as a matter of corporate policy they support the destruction of civilized society. Did George Zimmer, founder of Men’s Wearhouse and backer of Howard Dean, marijuana decriminalization, and many other fashionable causes, ever glance at the photos of the OWS occupiers and ponder how many of “the 99%” were ever likely to be in need of his two-for-one deal on suits and neckties? And did he think even these dummies were dumb enough to fall for such a feebly corporatist attempt at appeasing the mob?
I don’t “stand with the 99%,” and certainly not downwind of them. But I’m all for their “occupation” continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What’s happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: The government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class, and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest — the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the “scholars” whiling away a somnolent half decade at Complacency U — are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about “social justice” and whatnot.
But that’s all it takes to get the media and modish if insecure corporate entities to string along. Whole Foods can probably pull it off. So can Ben & Jerry’s, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch corporation Unilever that nevertheless successfully passes itself off as some sort of tie-dyed Vermont hippie commune. But a chain of stores that sells shirts, ties, the garb of the corporate lackey has a tougher sell. The class that gets up in the morning, pulls on its lousy Men’s Wearhouse get-up, and trudges off to work has to pay for all the other classes, and the strain is beginning to tell.
Let it be said that the “occupiers” are right on the banks: They shouldn’t have been bailed out. America has one of the most dysfunctional banking systems in the civilized world, and most of its allegedly indispensable institutions should have been allowed to fail. But the Occupy Oakland types have no serious response, other than the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by government-funded inertia.
America is seizing up before our eyes: The decrepit airports, the underwater property market, the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet curiously the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged “revolutionary” movement itself. It’s the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It’s more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don’t mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al., but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old “unemployed cosmetologist” with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it’s London, 1977, and she’s killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that’s three and a half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America’s revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can’t even invent their own hideous fashion statements? Last weekend, the nonagenarian Commie Pete Seeger was wheeled out at Zuccotti Park to serenade the oppressed masses with “If I Had a Hammer.” As it happens, I do have a hammer. Pace Mr. Seeger, they’re not that difficult to acquire, even in a recession. But, if I took it to Zuccotti Park, I doubt very much anyone would know how to use it, or be able to muster the energy to do so.
At heart, Oakland’s occupiers and worthless political class want more of the same fix that has made America the Brokest Nation in History: They expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous Western society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it. This is the “idealism” that the media are happy to sentimentalize, and that enough poseurs among the corporate executives are happy to indulge — at least until the window-smashing starts. To “occupy” Oakland or anywhere else, you have to have something to put in there. Yet the most striking feature of OWS is its hollowness. And in a strange way the emptiness of its threats may be a more telling indictment of a fin de civilisation West than a more coherent protest movement could ever have mounted.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2011 Mark Steyn
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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If you say all OWS are commies who want a hand out who demonize or want to punish success... Then you say all Tea Partiers are....
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jeebus Christo SkipDip you are as dumb as monkey crap. Beyond all your never ending BS and FoX talking point spew & spin I ask you to prove just one. This one
How he got into Harvard with the help of the Palestinian Authority.
Keep it up AssHat and your apt to end up in a cartoon. Send me a pic of your bad self so I don't mess up on the details. Oh wait never mind found one. Having an opinion, even a wrong one is fine. Spewing Rush Limbaugh / Karl Rove fat lies ad-nauseam isn't.
Verify your spew or go give yourself a rim job.
Here is the truth you can't handle.
http://www.barackobama.com/video/commit-to-volunteer-video?source=20111105_FB_BO
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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How he got into Harvard with the help of the Palestinian Authority. Prove it or retract it.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Prove it you ignorant little horse's ass
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Once again skip proves he is incapable of rational analysis of politics. When confronted with his blind one sided loyalty to a specific ideology he goes on the attack against Obama.
He can't handle it if you point out the Marxist background of Obama.
Great example. You claim to know what I think, but you obviously have no idea. You can't debate or handle reality so you must imagine in your mind what I am so it's easier to feel secure in your attacks and believe you are right.
Skip attack Obama all you want. I didn't vote for him last time and won't next year. But of course in your black and white word of good conservatives vs. evil liberals you see everyone not conservative as Obama drones. You aren't capable of objectively looking at anything in politics. You don't have the courage to see your failings and the failings of conservative ideology. Everything wrong is everyone's else's fault to you. Weak.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Here's a little help for you skip, it's not liberals or conservatives that are all bad, it's the blind allegiance to your ideology that is bad, especially the farther to the extremes your ideology. Everything you claim to hate about liberals you are equally guilty of, just on the other side. You are just like a far left liberal! Stupidly clinging to the idea that YOUR brand of extreme politics will fix things, when in fact it's wing nuts like you (left OR right) that screw things up.
Is it possible you could read what I wrote and learn and grow as a person? Or will you double down on your delusional views and spin this all into I'm a brainwashed liberal and you are a good conservative?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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The community organizer was influenced by a community organizer? Say it ain't so!
From your link Fattrad:
Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left."
also:
Alinsky did not join political organizations. When asked during an interview whether he ever considered becoming a Communist party member, he replied:
"Not at any time. I've never joined any organization—not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right.' If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide."
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Duh, gee I don't know why the women keep showing up at OWS event.
Maybe it is because they "hate" themselves, as women you know.
Women have always hated themselves, you just figured that out?
Why do veterans join the OWS events?
Oh yeah, they too hate themselves?
Christ what a dumb fuk
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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How Obama was educated in the finest of schools
And your problem with this is????
Status envy? Elitist?
Recent Presidents higher educations. Data from Wikipedia
Truman: dropped out of Kansas City Law School when he couldn't afford it
Eisenhower: West Point
Kennedy: Harvard
Johnson: Southwest Texas State Teachers' College
Nixon:"Nixon was offered a tuition grant to attend Harvard University, but Harold's continued illness and the need for Hannah Nixon to care for him meant Richard was needed at the store. He remained in his hometown and attended Whittier College, his expenses there covered by a bequest from his maternal grandfather." Duke Law School: graduated third in his class in June 1937
Ford:University of Michigan. Yale Law School
Carter: Georgia Southwestern College, Georgia Tech, Annapolis where he graduate 59th out of 820
Reagan:Eureka College
Bush I: Yale. Graduated in 2 1/2 years, Phi Beta Kappa
Clinton: Georgetown, Phi Beta Kappa. Oxford Rhodes Scholar. Yale Law School.
Bush II:Yale, no distinctions. Harvard Business School MBA
Obama: Occidental College, Columbia: BA, Harvard Law: editor of the Law Review. University of Chicago Law: Fellow and professor of Constitutional Law
So Truman, Johnson and Reagan are the only recent Presidents who didn't graduate from prestigious top rank universities. Unless you don't think West Point and Annapolis are top rank "elitist", then you can add Eisenhower and Carter.
Oh yeah, Obama's alma mater: U of Chicago. Perhaps best known recently as the post of Milton Friedman. O of C is hardly a bastion of socialist politics and economics.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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According to Booky, these women at OWS events "hate" themselves.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Seriously Fattrad? That is your source for information?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Obama bought his home with the help of a convicted Felon of Bribery Are you deliberately twisting the facts?
The purchase of an adjacent lot and sale of part of it to Obama by the wife of developer, campaign donor and friend Tony Rezko attracted media attention because of Rezko's subsequent indictment and conviction on political corruption charges that were unrelated to Obama. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
In 2005 Obama purchased a new home in the Kenwood District of Chicago for $1.65 million (which was $300,000 below the asking price but represented the highest offer on the property) Rezco is a squirrly character for sure. But the real estate transactions were all completely legal, there's no evidence of bribery or collusion. So two parties, knowing each other through political connections buy two pieces of land at the same time because
the previous owners decided to sell the land as two separate lots, but made it a condition of the sales that they be closed on the same date Since when do people NOT do favors when it's mutually beneficial. In the end Rezco's sold their parcel at a nice profit. Through cooperation, the seller and both buyers made a mutually successful deal.
In October 2006, Rezko was indicted along with businessman Stuart Levine on charges of wire fraud, bribery, money laundering, and attempted extortion as a result of a federal investigation known as "Operation Board Games".[11][12] Levine was once a top Republican fund-raiser who had switched loyalty in recent years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rezko
Of course if you want to believe this was more of the entrenched political quid pro quo, then you're right in there with most OWS.
I won't go into Shrub's military service (slackard at best) or deals with Arbusto Energy (all legal)......unless you force me to.
Unfortunately "they all do it" has become modus operandi in US politics.
And that's the point!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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By his own public admission fattrad is spreading his time and money around Rebublican circles to get appointed as western director of the NPS (Tsar of Yosemite in my words). This is perfectly legal as long as his contributions are reported. And a perfect example. I don't think any worse of fattrad for it.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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It is the truth, Obama was a student of Saul Alinsky, a self avowed socialist. Socialism is what Obama believes in.
Well Jeff, Obama is to the left of me. And I don't know but say Alinsky is a socialist. You then make the grand leap to Obama believes in socialism. Has Obama said that? No of course not. What have his actions been. Left of center at best. "Obamacare" keeps healthcare in private hands. IMO his actions show he is no socialist.
You are guilty of exactly what I have been saying. And what SO many on the right do. You take someone left of center and portray him as a socialist despite what he himself says he is and what his actions demonstrate. There is plenty of truthful stuff to attack Obama with, so why resort to ridiculous claims only fellow righties will agree with?
There's only a few liberal posters on the taco who do this. i.e. Paint all republicans as far right, evil or stupid. But it seems MOST conservative posters do this. Why?
Why is that so many on the right can't see there is a whole spectrum from far left to center to far right?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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"If you're not with us, you're against us." nicely sums it up.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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he is a socialist and wants every Uhmerikuhn to have affordable health care. And he's not a native born American and wants to kill jobs.
I've yet to hear from the Republitards how the big corporations are going to hire all the people laid off from the US Government as part of balancing the budget.
Speaking of the budget:
The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to terrorist attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. In fiscal year 2011 it was allocated a budget of $98.8 billion and spent, net, $66.4 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Homeland_Security
I'm waiting to hear if the Republican budget proposals reduce the 2012 budget by the $32 Billion not spent this year. Probably not.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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while giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Uhmerikuhns
Lie!
He lowered ALL tax brackets for taxpayers.
EDIT: I think you conveniently left out some of Obama's other mis-plays.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Ten years after their enactment, the Bush tax cuts remain expensive, ineffective, and unfair. As outlined in a new EPI policy memo, the Bush-era tax changes conferred disproportionate benefits to those at the top of the earnings distribution, exacerbating a trend of widening income inequality at a time of already poor wage growth.
A distributional analysis of the 2001-08 tax changes shows that the top 1% of earners (making over $620,442) received 38% of the tax cuts. The lower 60% of filers (making less than $67,715) received less than 20% of the total benefit of Bush’s tax policies.
The Bush-era tax cuts were designed to reduce taxes for the wealthy, and the benefits of faster growth were then supposed to trickle down to the middle class. But the economic impact of cutting capital gains rates and lowering the top marginal tax rates never materialized for working families. Inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings fell by 2.3% during the 2002-07 economic expansion, which holds the distinction for being the worst economic expansion since World War II.
http://www.epi.org/publication/the_bush_tax_cuts_disproportionately_benefitted_the_wealthy/
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Norton, if they were so wrong then why did Obama extend them?
I'm middle class and my tax-rates went down. Kick ass!!!!
Marx was a fukking genius.
His analysis of Capitalism is a masterpiece.
So Lovesgasoline also wants a communist Amerika??? Why not just move to North Korea?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Callie, Alinsky is a liar. All smart commies and socialists realize that their sh#t doesn't fly too well in the United States. Most people reject that crap, and they know it.
That's why they slowly creep it in. Baby steps. Obama is a good student.
Alinsky-ites are clever. They're devious, but clever.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Obama had no choice but to extend all tax cuts. The republicans wouldn't budge on anything but an extension of all tax cuts. He would have an wanted to and stated over and over he wanted to extend all but the top rates.
My taxes went down to. Kick ASS! For my short term gain. But what you fail to see is that this contributes to the deficit. I'd probably rather go back and eliminate ALL of Bush's tax cuts even though it would cost me personally. Because what's important is cutting spending in the long term. NOT cutting taxes, and increasing spending and creating a huge deficit which must be paid back with interest.
I'd like to work less, but then I'd bring in less money, which means I'd either have to cut spending or start racking up debt (or cut saving). It sound nice to pay less taxes or work less, but unless you cut spending FIRST it's a recipe for disaster.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Blue, I never stated my opinion on whether the Bush tax cuts were right or wrong.
I am a "higher" income earner, owning my own business, and so I personally saw my own income taxes go down, a lot, in 2003 when the Bush tax cuts went into effect.
One year ago, the Bush tax cuts were set to simply expire.
It was a very difficult decision as to extend them or not, because the loss of that income adds every day to the growing federal deficit and gets put on the National Debt.
But how do you not keep the tax cuts in place when the economy is in severe recession and Obama, correctly in my opinion, believed that money is spent better by private citizens than by government, and so when both the House and Senate voted to extend the tax cuts, well it was the "will" of congress, and so Obama signed it into law.
My ONLY personal "problem" with the tax cuts is that they add greatly to the deficit, and that the cuts did indeed go predominantly to the higher earners, like me.
I don't know how much you make, but I pay a LOT less in Federal income tax now.
And honestly, this big tax cut I get did not make me hire any more employees, it just goes into my bank account as extra profit over what I used to have.
Personally, I write a check out every year for the difference the tax cuts gave me and send it to the general fund of the US Treasury.
I just don't think it is "fair" that I should pay so little of what I used to pay, and I AM very concerned about interest rates eventually rising rapidly because of the interest on the national debt that the growing deficits puts pressure on
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Norton, if they were so wrong then why did Obama extend them? Because the Republican Congress made the budget and the President doesn't have a line-item veto. He fought hard to eliminate the tax cuts but had to sign the bill to get the other things he wanted.
The issue came to a head during the lame duck session of the 111th Congress. At the "Slurpee Summit" of November 30, 2010, President Obama appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Office of Management and Budget chief Jack Lew to help Republicans and Democrats hammer out an agreement on extending the Bush tax cuts.[14] President Obama wanted to extend the tax cuts for taxpayers making less than $250,000 a year. Congressional Republicans agreed but also wanted to extend the tax cuts for those making over that amount.[15] Indeed, all 42 Republican senators joined in saying that, until the tax dispute was resolved, they would filibuster to prevent consideration of any other legislation, except for bills to fund the U.S. government.[16][17][18][19] Note that Obama only wanted to eliminate the tax cuts for those making more than $250K per year. He wanted to extend them for you (presumably) and me.
Sorry, fattrad's (presumably) tax cut would have expired.
Remember, these tax cuts were signed by Shrub and WERE SET TO EXPIRE at the end of 2010.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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But what you fail to see is that this contributes to the deficit.
No, spending more contributes to the deficit. And borrowing more. And raising the debt-ceiling.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Any honest economist (or historian) would agree that Marx and Engels had some useful insights into such matters, especially at a theoretical level, although a lot of what they said was plain wrong. (Maybe JE is around and can comment.) All liberal democratic countries, including the US, have been strongly influenced by the emphasis that Marx (and many others) put on the importance of reasonably equitable economic policies, and decent treatment of the working classes.
The various brands of communists, once in power, invariably claimed to be practicing pure Marxism. Their policies were quite varied, however, and who knows what "real" Marxism or "real" communism would be. (China is allegedly a Marxist/communist nation, but what would Marx have said about its actual policies?) Most forms of supposed communism/Marxism that were actually practiced were eventually social, cultural and economic failures, and the only remaining states that claim to be communist/Marxist are Cuba, North Korea, China and a few others.
And no, socialist let alone social democrat does not equate with Marxist or communist - under standard communist doctrine, socialists and social democrats are their worst enemy. Indeed, pure communists seem almost as doctrinaire and inflexible as true Republicans.
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland
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Any honest economist (or historian)
HAH!
Please provide examples.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Hey, they hang out with the honest lawyers.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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But what you fail to see is that this contributes to the deficit.
No, spending more contributes to the deficit. And borrowing more. And raising the debt-ceiling.
How can you not see cutting taxes contributes to the deficit? It doesn't matter if you raise spending $1 or cut taxes $1 it does the same to the deficit.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of this chart without a lot of research I'm not going to do, but I've seen other similar charts. Taking the budget under Clinton with a surplus as a baseline and looking what has happened since then Bush's tax cuts are a major, if not THE most significant contributor to the deficit.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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We really need to look at all spending public and private and how they contribute to the economy.
Some government spending is good for the economy: smart, targeted - education, infrastructure, research.
Some government spending is a waste: bridge to nowhere, pork barrel projects on both sides of the aisle, the Iraq war.
Some tax cuts that keep more money in private hands is good: middle class tax cuts that go to spending.
Some tax cuts that keep more money in private hands doesn't benefit the economy: tax cuts for the wealthy that just increase their savings.
We should make policies that benefit the economy as a whole, not just for 1% of people. Which... is what OWS is primarily about IMO.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Lovesgas, you can try to dilute the message of the Communist Party USA all you like, but they are commies. The aren't a welcome form of gov't here. This is why they are small and trivialized.
CPUSA is very active, but they will never prevail as long as the US Constitution remains.
Wes is correct too about the corporate lobbying in Washinton. Gotta stop. But let's start with Jeff Immelt, Solyndra, and Fannie/Freddie. And Goldman.
EDIT: Good points FET. Except for this one;
Some tax cuts that keep more money in private hands doesn't benefit the economy: tax cuts for the wealthy that just increase their savings.
You assume they just hoard money? They don't put their money back into the economy?
I'd disagree.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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You assume they just hoard money? They don't put their money back into the economy?
Some do, some don't. But I think it would be safe to say tax cuts for the poor and middle class are more likely to go back into the economy as consumer spending versus tax cuts for the wealthy (above $250,000 income).
I'd also say that the poor and middle class have had more difficulty in economic downturn (wich the data confirms big time), but more tax cuts went to the wealthy. Doesn't make sense, except for Bush rewarding his base.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Well, my next door neighbor is an example.
She married well, and is worth some 30 million.
When Bush cut her taxes in 2003 she laughed and said that's all the more that is going into my bank accounts.
She is very typical of the very wealthy, she just sits on her money.
She does not create anything, does not employ anyone but banking lawyers.
The very wealthy either inherited their wealth or way back when tax rates were HIGHER they started a company and made it successful.
Their income comes from dividends and capital gains.
And they pay LESS percent tax on that income than the regular working person.
And that in my opinion is just flat wrong.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Bush rewarding his base equates to bribing the populace in trade for votes which leads to more power and corruption between the republican party and the monied interests...Meanwhile the common folk eat sh#t...The middle class eating sh#t is spun off as communism...Fannie Mae and Solyandra are weak examples of corruption thrust into the main stream media to divert blame from the biggest republican sponsored scandals..More media manipulation by the Conservatives....Meathead
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Fannie Mae and Solyandra are weak examples of corruption thrust into the main stream media to divert blame from the biggest republican sponsored scandals.
Don't forget MF Global.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Norton..greed is good...Tax breaks for the wealthy creates jobs for the peons...Middle class folks complaining about the lack of jobs is communism...RJ
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Middle class folks complaining about the lack of jobs is communism...RJ
Blame your gov't for that, not corporations seeking to remain profitable.
Once a corp isn't profitable it LOSES money and dies and cannot produce the goods that ungrateful people like you take for granted!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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This is so good it needs repeating.
Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 – June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left."
SkipDip why do you hate Playboy Magazine? Does it make your wee wee twitchy?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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I had a futures trading account at MF Global for many years, now am with Interactive Brokers.
The owners of MF Global bet (wrongly) on the Euro currency direction, and they did it with the company's money, including some accounts that were held by private traders.
What MF Global did was legally wrong and they lost some 6 billion dollars doing it.
I don't care. They as much as anyone, understand that they are big boys and they gambled in the free market, and they lost.
If the Euro had moved in the direction they thought it would, they would be very very wealthy.
They gambled and lost. What they did has nothing to do with politics.
They deserve bankruptcy and liquidation. Sh#t happens, deal with it.
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cliffhanger
Trad climber
California
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Here's an excellent article by Bill Moyers:
http://www.truth-out.org/how-did-happen/1320278111
short excerpt:
Barack Obama criticizes bankers as “fat cats”, then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 a person.
That’s now the norm, and they get away with it. The President has raised more money from banks, hedge funds, and private equity managers than any Republican candidate, including Mitt Romney. Inch by inch he has conceded ground to them while espousing populist rhetoric that his very actions betray.
Let’s name this for what it is: hypocrisy made worse, the further perversion of democracy.
Democratic deviancy defined further downward. Our politicians are little more than money launderers in the trafficking of power and policy – fewer than six degrees of separation from the spirit and tactics of Tony Soprano.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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YES!
Politicians DO accept money from lot of wealthy people.
In fact, there was an article just this past week that Mitt Romney, the leading Republican candidate for President, has raised MORE money from "wall street types" this election cycle than Obama.
Clearly, Wall Street is betting a Republican Administration will cut their taxes even more, and remove the transparency regulation that Obama has put into law.
Money always goes where it thinks will make it more money.
And the sun will come up tomorrow.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Obama is playing the same corrupt game as most federal politicians. We need broad election finance reform. But whenever we try it's "a freedom of speech" issue. B.S.
That's why OWS is a good thing. Exposing it as much as possible. Unfortunately as with any movement from the left the minority radical lefties are too visible and give the whole movement a bad name (happily exploited by right wing media), and they aren't organized enough to have a coherent simple message.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Yep, if you want to run for President, you have to raise at least 500 million some how.
In 2008 Obama raised almost 800 million, almost all of it from individuals giving online less than $100.
Personally, I would like to see ALL money removed from campaigns and "influence".
And we all know that is not going to happen.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Most OWS activities are happening in cities in the northern hemisphere, mostly north of 35 degrees. Which means that most will experience cold and rainy weather for the next few months, in some cases very cold. (Nobody seems to be lining up to occupy Saskatoon...) So most of the camps will dwindle if not vanish simply due to climate. And as they are expressing - however clumsily - ideals that have considerable resonance with the public, if anything are growing in support, and are causing few real problems, there's little to be gained for any politician or police chief forcibly evicting them.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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they aren't organized enough to have a coherent simple message. I think the overall message that "people are pissed at the 1% and their control of the economy and government" is coming across. That's about as simple a message as there is.
The solutions of course are complex.
It took the anti-Vietnam war protesters 8 years to get us out. Eight years of protests, marches, sit ins, draft counseling, draft avoidance, elections, Congressional Investigations (the Church Commission), 4 students deliberately shot and killed by the National Guard at Kent State (established by recent research). Nixon was elected in 1968 on the promise to end the war in Vietnam, which he kept 5 years later in 1973, largely because the protest movement continued.
Social change takes a long time and a lot of determination.
How long after the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education did the Blacks have to suffer discrimination until the Civil Rights act? How many Freedom Riders, how many non-violent demonstrations, how many arrests of Martin Luther King?
speaking of Nixon and the 1%: By 1976, prosecutors had convicted 18 American corporations of contributing illegally to Nixon's campaign
And of course the most egregious case of the law NOT applying equally to all citizens was Ford's pardon of Nixon for the Watergate Break-in. Watergate was a criminal act, for political purposes, ordered by Nixon and carried out by his closest advisors. The only one never indicted was Nixon.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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skipt you are a coward. You post a bunch of B.S. and when called on it you conveniently disappear for a few pages of posts, come back and post more B.S.
You just reinforce all the negative stereotypes of conservatives. No solutions. No ideas. Just attacks and negativity.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Once a corp isn't profitable it LOSES money and dies and cannot produce the goods that ungrateful people like you take for granted! "GOODS"? Like Global Warming and a toxic environment?
So DipSkip how do you feel about and justify the oil industry raking in huge record profits while still receiving billions of dollars of subsidies of US taxpayer dollars. Isn't that unjustified Corporate Socialism?
Don't worry your wittle pea brain DipSquat I don't really expect you to actually answer. I expect you to come page in a page or two and lay another steaming coiler of a lie like Obama is a Kenyan Marxist Socialist Communist Space Alien reincarnation of Hitler.
Your ancestors are so embarrassed that their seed went so astray.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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I keep hoping that FatTrad, or one of his fellow travelers, will inadvertently post that "greed is god".
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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LovesGasoline Ten questions is an awful overload for Blurring.
Try limiting it to two true or false questions at a time.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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OK, three questions
1: IS there a US Communist Party?
2: how many members does it have?
3: Does the 2nd Amendment give them the right to carry loaded weapons in church?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Sorry LG, I cannot tell one corn hole from another Dip & Blew seem almost like one AssHat to me.
I'll fix it.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Lovegasoline,
Blue Ring has also called me a Communist, among other things.
It doesn't bother me personally, he is just expressing a fear he must have of the dangers of Soviet Union style Socialism, and maybe confusing it with pure Communism.
Whatever
Anyway, you may want to post your questions to Blue on a couple different threads, or even start a new thread so he sees it and can answer to these Communism fears and questions.
Personally, I think if I met Blue and did not know him from here, I might like him.
He seems like a regular guy, wife and child, job he likes.
As always, it's either religion or politics that always seems to get between people.
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Some of the most educated well thought out people I have ever converses with, has been on this forum. And I ’am grateful for them, some of them I have climbed with over a thirty year time frame. By the same token. I have listened to a group who thinks that this is some kind of political forum. Which is cool, it’s a part of our lives, but don’t miss the point of the sport of climbing here on this forum. I was out of the country for a few years and was unable to participated in this forum. I can say it has changed a bit in that time. Less polotics and more climbing would be a good thing, I think. Don't you?
DT.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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My question #3 on the previous page was meant to be farcical and sarcastic. I cannot understand why people have to throw around such blatantly silly epithets. Hence my serious questions 1 and 2.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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"GOODS"? Like Global Warming and a toxic environment?
Philo, you're a dipsh#t. I wonder how many things you consume were produced by 'capitalists'???
LG, hold on, I'll answer you...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Bluering, I'm trying to understand your political taxonomy. Can you please answer the following so as to provide a better snapshot of your beliefs?
1) Who specifically are the commies on Supertopo?
2) Who on Supertopo is a member of the communist party?
3) What current USA elected government officials are communists?
4) Is President Obama a communist?
5) Is the USA banking industry comprised of communists?
6) Is C4 in Yosemite controlled by communists and/or communists sympathizers?
7) If someone disagrees with you, or if you take a dislike of their political views, is it because they are commies?
8) Is the Democratic Party communist?
9) Is TARP under G.W. Bush a communist plot to destroy free enterprise?
10) Was the USSR communist?
Edit: if you do not mind, a few more questions to help me get a clearer viewpoint:
11) Are liberals communist?
12) Is Lolli a communist?
13) Is democracy superior to communism?
14) If democracy is morally, socially, and economically superior to communism, then why did the the commies in Vietnam dominate and kick the USA's ass?
1 - You appear to be the only admitted one. Maybe Karl too.
2 - I dunno.
3 - Van Jones and Anita Dunn fo sho. I suspect Obama is too.
4 - If it walks like a duck...
5 - Possibly, but the higher levels.
6 - No. But commies may loiter there. Also known as dirtbags.
7 - Depends. Not usually.
8 - Clarify. There are some Dems that should call themselves commies.
9 - No. It was crony capitalism. Different.
10 - Yep. It started that way, then morphed into a benign socialism until it fell.
11 - No.
12 - No, a socialist bordering on a commie.
13 - Of course.
14 - Lack of will and utilization of our resources. Like Asscrapistan. Same thing.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Bluey
nice response. Clever mix of straight answers and fantasy. Unfortunately I can't tell which is which.
===
Current Communist nations, defined as one-party states with the party being Communist. North Korea, China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam.
To quote fattrad out of context: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.
So:
N Korea is certifiably looney, has nuclear weapons and a 1.2 million man starving army; and therefore dangerous. Especially to South Korea and Japan. China, for their own reasons, attempt to keep them on a leash. No successful country wants an armed and wacko neighbor. China is always playing off their interests between N Korea, Japan, South Korea and us. N Korea has delivered missile technology to Iran, Pakistan and Egypt. Does that make these countries "communist"?
Here's how afraid Shrub/Cheney/Rice were of N Korea: On October 11, 2008, the United States removed North Korea from its list of states that sponsor terrorism.[
China is balancing Communism with Capitalism to the best of their abilities. Beating the snot out of Tibet for which I will never forgive them. Our Capitalists are trading with China as fast as they can. So you can blame much of China's growth and power on Target, WalMart, Costco, GM (China is now GM's largest car buyer) and those who buy the Chinese goods, like you and me.
Cuba: Hasn't got a pot to piss in. Strangled by our sanctions which have distorted whatever economic success or failure they would have had on their own. Our Cuba policy is held hostage to the ex-patriot Cuban wackos in Florida. The same ones who convinced JFK to try the Bay of Pigs. The Soviet Union abandoned Cuba just before imploding itself.
Laos: Hasn't got a pot to piss in and are irrelevant to anyone but Vietnam and N Korea.
and Vietnam: another robust supplier of consumer goods to the US and the rest of the eager Capitalist consumer societies.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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can't speak for skippy.
Bluey climbs, fairly frequently.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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even in the most recent case when blurring claimed US citizens existed in 1773. The saddest part is they don't even climb
What??? We gained independance in 1776, when did I claim otherwise?
I climb all the time too.
Wes is full of crap or deviously misleading. I'm used to this shit!
EDIT:
You can always count on skippy and blurring to disappear for a few pages when they get called out on their bullshit and/or have their asses handed to them.
WTF are you talking about as#@&%e??? I answered LG's questions respectfully, even though I hate that kind of crap.
It's usually YOU who ducks away when you are disproven of your 'facts'.
You also have the typical tendency to change subjects or divert them when you are proven to be incorrect.
But you'll never admit when you're wrong because you're a snob and an as#@&%e.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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A Most excellent post War.
Posted by sandstone conglomerate
Nov 6, 2011 - 06:10am PT
My mom is in dire financial straits due to losing 3/5ths of her retirement through a f*#kup by AIG. She stands to lose her house at 65 yrs of age, a house she's had for 40 some years. AIG gets a big bailout, why not her? She wasn't gambling with her money, nevertheless, she suffers the consequences for someone else's actions. Saying the people are to blame for the banks' predatory mortgage practices is bullsh#t. Too bad the CEO of AIG doesn't drop dead from a brain anyeurism or something. I'd turn the LASD heatray on him, extra-crispy.
Sandstone I am so sorry for your Mom's unfortunate plight, She is the face of the 99%. She had NOTHING to do with Wall Street excesses and illegalities yet she is beeing made to pay the price of their failure. That is what the OWS is al about. Not dirty lazy hippies looking for handouts for free from the uber rich.
I can't wait for the next talking head Teabaglican't to spout off some imagined inanity about how wrong the OWS protesters are. Or how it's all the fault of the lowly home-buyers and not the Robber Barrons of Wall Street.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Bluering is NOT like skip. I am at odds with a LOT of his politics and world view, and he's an as#@&%e (like many of us here), but he does answer questions, he does listen, he does climb and post TRs, he's NOT an anonymous coward. He deserves WAY more respect than skip.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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You are right Fet.
Other than rabidly intrenched political perspectives Blue is light years ahead of SkipDip.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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BRITISH CITIZENS destroying BRITISH CORPORATE PROPERTY in order to protest preferential treatment of CORPORATIONS over PEOPLE i A very good summary.
I'll add a few details. The Tea Act was specifically levied by Parliament because the British East India Company was in financial trouble. Prior to this, the East India Company had been given trade monopoly over the major ports in the Colonies. So the Tea Act was specifically supporting a private monopoly company which had control of most international commerce in the Colonies.
Its principal overt objective was to reduce the massive surplus of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses. A related objective was to undercut the price of tea smuggled into Britain's North American colonies. Also see Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples, Abridged" Chap 39: Quarrel With America for a really good, brief history of the start of the Revolutionary War.
One of the best known smugglers was Thomas Hancock, uncle of John Hancock who was his heir.
There was great diversity of the homelands of the Colonists: England, Germany, Holland, Sweden but they were all British Citizens.
Earlier there was a comment about the Colonists partially rebelling agains the Church Of England.
This is patently not true: London did not make the Church of England official in the colonies—it never sent a bishop—so religious practice became diverse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_history_of_the_United_States
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-tv/arianna-talks-economy-jobs_b_1078604.html
Except for the fool George Will taking a nasty swipe at Obama on his second turn around the table, this is a very sensible discussion about the current economic situation as the populace sees it. Even Shrub's former political adviser spoke sanely.
But of course there was no meaningful content. Sorry Christiane Amanpour, you should have stayed with CNN where you could be a real reporter. At which you were VERY good.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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^^^ WINGNUT ALEERT ^^^
BrainWorm not HighTraverse
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Fattrad...Rental properties..? Sounds like a nuisance rather than an investment...RJ
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Cragman...Excellent comparison...RJ
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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yes, excellent
I did not realize we have recently been attacked by the Japanese and had Germany declare war on us.
And if you smoke a reefer, you WILL become a heroin addict
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Jesus would have sided with the 1%
He was a Socialist
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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the perfect owser symbol:
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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This movement is all about selfishness....on both sides.
OWS and/or Tea Party.
OWS wants handouts and wall street wants bail outs.
Tea Party wants to pay no taxes and the government wants all their income.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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The Tea Party defends Socialism.
Those SOBs would never consider giving up their Social Security or Medicare.
Nor would any one of them write a check to the general fund to help pay down the deficit
They are the least patriotic.
They suck off the Nanny State while wanting to pay no taxes to pay for their handouts
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Why am I a miserable example of human life, Jeff?
I own my own company.
I employ 12 people.
I pay my full share of taxes.
I also send an additional annual check to the US General Fund to help what little I can to contribute towards deficit and national debt reduction.
I participate in this Democracy fully, including having joined Volunteers in Service to America in the 1960s as part of President Kennedy's call to ask what I can do for my country.
Why am I a miserable example of human life, Jeff?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Norton, politicians and the news media care relatively little for the truth, as an objective thing, and they and the public have the attention span of a drunken gnat. You've probably fairly and reasonably summarized your contributions as a citizen, although no doubt it could be elaborated on.
The big lie is what politicians care more about. Say something often enough and loudly enough, and people believe it's true. They can't be bothered to examine things for themselves. The Republican/news media nexus, and declining standards of journalism, cement this.
In this case, if you were say a candidate for elected office as a liberal democrat, you'd get swift-boated. Attacked by innuendo, or on the basis of trivial or long-ago imperfections.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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NO!
Say that is not so!
Nah, people on the political "right" are far too fair minded for that.
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dirtbag
climber
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My complaint about OWSers
I feel obligated to say something about OWSers because, as the Talmud says, "Silence is akin to assent." For complete details, I refer you to my forthcoming book on the subject. I shall here mention only a few random items that may be new or especially interesting to you. For instance, I resent being pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, and numbered. No joke.
If you believe nothing else that I've written about OWSers, you can believe this: I have to wonder where OWSers got the idea that it is my view that its mistakes are always someone else's fault. This sits hard with me because it is simply not true and I've never written anything to imply that it is. OWSers uses its societal status as some sort of mystical talisman that immunizes its zingers from any sort of legitimate criticism. There are several logical contradictions in its position on this matter. For example, OWSers will stop at nothing to cause riots in the streets. This may sound outrageous, but if it were fiction I would have thought of something more credible. As it stands, if you look soberly and carefully at the evidence all around you, you will clearly find that OWSers is always willing to sacrifice somebody else's life, just not its own. Disguised in this drollery is an important message: If OWSers's shenanigans were intended as a joke, OWSers forgot to include the punchline.
OWSers is planning to exploit issues such as the global economic crisis and the increase in world terrorism in order to instigate planet-wide chaos. Planet-wide chaos is its gateway to global tyranny, which will in turn enable it to stonewall on issues in which taxpayers see a vital public interest. When I observe OWSers's attendants' behavior, I can't help but recall the proverbial expression, "monkey see, monkey do". That's because, like it, they all want to instill distrust and thereby create a need for its stiff-necked views. Also, while a monkey might think that OWSers's codices are not worth getting outraged about, the fact remains that if it can one day confiscate other people's rightful earnings then the long descent into night is sure to follow. I am sorry to have to put this so bluntly, but OWSers has frequently been spotted making nicey-nice with obtrusive used-car salesmen. Is this because it needs their help to strap us down with a network of rules and regulations? The complete answer to that question is a long, sad story. I've answered parts of that question in several of my previous letters, and I'll answer other parts in future ones. For now, I'll just say that neither it nor its apparatchiks have dealt squarely or clearly with the fact that you don't need a preschool diploma to understand that its bootlickers are the carrion birds of humanity. Get that straight, please. Any other thinking is blame-shoving or responsibility-dodging. Furthermore, OWSers is just trying to pick a fight. That's why it says that honor counts for nothing.
The law is not just a moral stance. It is the consensus of society on our minimum standards of behavior. OWSers wants us to believe that truth is merely a social construct. How stupid does it think we are? This is not a question that we should run away from. Rather, it is something that needs to be addressed quickly and directly because it serves as a conduit that carries the élan vital of commercialism. How much more illumination does that fact need before OWSers can grasp it? Assuming the answer is "a substantial amount", let me point out that OWSers's monographs have merged with ruffianism in several interesting ways. Both spring from the same kind of reality-denying mentality. Both turn us into easy prey for caustic long-haired hippies. And both level filth and slime at everyone opposed to its stances.
I feel this way because OWSers's habitués are quick to point out that because OWSers is hated, persecuted, and repeatedly laughed at, it is the real victim here. The truth is that, if anything, OWSers is a victim of its own success—a success that enables OWSers to steal our birthrights. While OWSers has a right, as do we all, to believe whatever it wants about interdenominationalism, it's an irrational blowhard. In fact, it's worse than an irrational blowhard; it's also a lazy hermit. That's why it feels obligated to remake the map of the world into an OWSers-friendly checkerboard of puppet regimes and occupation governments.
OWSers may steal the fruits of other people's labor right after it reads this letter. Let it. When you least expect it, I will begin the invigorating, rejuvenating process of exposing false prophets who preach that trees cause more pollution than automobiles do. What I take much more seriously than confused tightwads are disorganized mouthpieces for feral emotionalism. But that's not the end of the story. OWSers thinks it would be a great idea to hasten society's quiescence to moral pluralism and epistemological uncertainty. Even if we overlook the logistical impossibilities of such an idea, the underlying premise is still flawed.
OWSers's assistants argue that a richly evocative description of a problem automatically implies the correct solution to that problem. These are the same dotty, muzzy-headed ruffians who cast ordinary consumption and investment decisions in the light of high religious purpose. This is no coincidence; I can reword my point as follows. OWSers and the most scornful pettifoggers you'll ever see are cut from the same cloth.
I, hardheaded cynic that I am, must point out that while OWSers and other ruthless swindlers sometimes differ on the details and scale of their upcoming campaigns of terror they never fail to agree on the basic principle and substance. Hence, it is imperative that you understand that its most base-minded tactic is to fabricate a phony war between clueless, twisted mendicants and loathsome egotists. This way, OWSers can subjugate both groups into helping it impugn the patriotism of its opponents. I doubtlessly don't want that to happen, which is why I'm telling you that we must disentangle people from the snares set by OWSers and its partisans. If we do, then perhaps a brighter day will dawn on planet Earth. Perhaps people will open their eyes and see that if you study OWSers's irascible proposed social programs long enough, you'll come to the inescapable conclusion that it's possible that it doesn't realize this because it has been ingrained with so much of nihilism's propaganda. If that's the case, I recommend that we win the culture war and save this country.
Let me recite the following phrases as if I were showing you the rungs of a ladder leading upward towards increased ability to borrow money and spend it on programs that break down age-old institutions and customs: shambolic dolts; whiney varmints; priggism; OWSers's torchbearers; OWSers. My point is that ever since OWSers decided to manipulate the public like a puppet dangling from strings, its consistent, unvarying line has been that it's okay to plant the seeds of fogyism into the tabulae rasae of children's minds. So, why aren't our children being warned about OWSers in school? I guess it just boils down to the question: What accounts for OWSers's prodigious criminality and dissipation? Personally, I don't believe the answer has anything to do with anti-intellectualism. Rather, I believe it involves OWSers's tendency to use scapegoating as a foil to draw anger away from more accurate targets. OWSers has planted its advocates everywhere. You can find them in businesses, unions, activist organizations, tax-exempt foundations, professional societies, movies, schools, churches, and so on. Not only does this subversive approach enhance OWSers's ability to wreck our country, derail our civilization, and threaten the human race with extinction, but it also provides irrefutable evidence that its devotees tend to fall into the mistaken belief that it's the best thing to come along since the invention of sliced bread, mainly because they live inside an OWSers-generated illusion world and talk only with each other.
At no time in the past did cocky sideshow barkers shamble through the streets of cities, demanding rights they imagine some supernatural power has bestowed upon them. I undoubtedly have a hard time reasoning with people who remain calm when they see OWSers doing the entire country a grave disservice. People sometimes ask me why I seem incapable of saying anything nice about OWSers. I'd like to—really, I would. The problem is, I can't think of anything nice to say. I guess that's not surprising when you consider that OWSers wants us to believe that we can solve all of our problems by giving it lots of money. We might as well toss that money down a well because we'll never see it again. What we will see, however, is that unlike everyone else in the world, OWSers seriously believes that governments should have the right to lie to their own subjects or to other governments. Woo woooo! Here comes the clue train. Last stop: OWSers. The final thing I want to bring up in this letter is that I'll do what I can to drag OWSers in front of a tribunal and try it for its crimes against humanity, and each of you reading this letter should do the same. Let's be there for each other. Let's help each other. And let's shoo away OWSers like the annoying bug that it is.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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U.S. History Repeating itself Again and Again: How Wall Street Occupied America
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2245428
“… Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master… Money rules… Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The political parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us…”
"I’ll bet you thought that the above quote is a recent product of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s not. It was said by the populist Mary Elizabeth Lease in the late 19th Century, referring to the class war of the rich against the poor and the rest of us. What we are going through now is another repetition of that history. History has repeated itself over and over again in our country on this issue."
Same as it ever was.
It's time to rebalance.
GOD, "The Trinity," is with the 99%ers. Read your Bible.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Put this in your pipe and smoke it...
Less than three percent of shares in 173 publicly-traded, U.S.-based oil and natural gas companies are owned by corporate management, contrary to the perception that a very small number of wealthy people are the major beneficiaries.
An analysis released last month by the economic advisory firm Sonecon found that corporate management owns 2.8 percent of shares in those companies, while almost half – 48.9 percent – are owned by individuals, either through pension funds (31.2 percent) or Individual Retirement Accounts (17.7 percent).
The remaining shares are owned by asset management companies – mutual funds – which account for 20.6 percent, and by institutional investors (6.6 percent).
Co-authored by Sonecon co-founder and chairman Robert Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs in the Bill Clinton administration, the analysis is based on data from the Security and Exchange Commission as of October 2011.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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"Put this in your pipe and smoke it..."
How about some critical thinking skills? When dividends are <3% (let's use XOM as an example...2.4%) it's not like the big money is to be had via share ownership, especially when those same execs that you are touting as not benefiting are pulling down 7-8 figure salaries. Why on earth would they hold shares for a paltry return while gaining no diversification in the process?
I assume there is some point to you posting the study, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it's supposded to be.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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life imitates art:
orwell wrote, ". . . the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. . . . England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box."
boston herald reports, "Occupy Boston has been encouraging protesters to take showers, hot meals and shelter meant for the homeless, prompting a St. Francis House manager to ask the downtown campers to remove directions from their Internet newspaper.
The online publication that calls itself “Occupy Boston Globe” posts meal times and shower hours at St. Francis House on Boylston Street, which runs on private donations and state and federal funding.
“We don’t want there to be a message to other people that we’re offering something different to them,” said St. Francis services director Andrea Ryan. She said she asked Occupy Boston to take the posting down, but because the shelter does not turn anyone away, Occupiers are free to use the shelter’s showers and meal lines.
Occupy Boston Globe staffers, who declined to be named, said they were unaware St. Francis House wanted the information removed.
Andy Claude, in Occupy’s logistics tent, said he sees no problem with protestors using services intended for the city’s poor.
“It’s for anybody; they’ve opened it to anyone who is in need,” said Claude. He added a number of shelters have taken in older and unwell protesters.
Boston’s Emergency Shelter Commission gave Occupy a list of shelters. Mayoral spokeswoman Dot Joyce said it was aimed at homeless Occupiers: “Anywhere we can give services to homeless people, I think is appropriate.”
But Robb Zarges, of the youth shelter Bridge Over Troubled Water, said, “There’s a difference between choosing to sleep somewhere, versus being kicked out of your home.”
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Odd, I don't see anyone debating the facts of Jack Abramoff's crimes. The Republitards are unusually quiet on the topic.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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From WSJ.com:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190704577026194205495230.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Opinion
**
Europe's Entitlement Reckoning
From Greece to Italy to France, the welfare state is in crisis.**
In the European economic crisis, all roads lead through Rome. The markets have raised the price of financing Italy's mammoth debt to new highs, and on Tuesday Silvio Berlusconi became the second euro-zone prime minister, after Greece's George Papandreou, to resign this week. His departure may keep the world's eighth largest economy solvent for the time being, but it hardly addresses the root of the problem.
In Italy, as in Greece, Spain and Portugal and eventually France, the welfare-entitlement state has hit a wall. Successive governments on the Continent, right and left, have financed generous entitlements with high taxes and towering piles of debt. Their economies have failed to grow fast enough to keep up, and last year the money started to run out. The reckoning has arrived.
If the first step in curing an addiction is to acknowledge it, there is little sign of that in Europe. The solutions on offer are to spend still more money, to have the Germans bail out everybody else, or to ditch the euro so bankrupt countries can again devalue their own currencies. France's latest debt solution includes raising corporate, capitals gains and sales taxes.
Editorial board member Matt Kaminski discusses Italy's economic and political problems as Berlusconi fights to stay in power.
Yet Europe's problem isn't the euro. If it were, Hungary, Iceland and Latvia—none of which use the euro—would have been spared their painful days of reckoning. The same applies for Britain. Europe is in a debt spiral brought about by spendthrift, overweening and inefficient governments.
This is a crisis of the welfare state, and Italy is a model basket case. Mario Monti, who is tipped to lead a new government of technocrats, once described the Italian economy as a case of "self-inflicted strangulation." Government debt is 120% of GDP, making Italy the world's third largest borrower after the U.S. and Japan. Its economy last grew at more than 2% a year in 2000.
An aging and shrinking population is a symptom, but not a leading cause, of the eurosclerosis. A fifth of Italy's 60 million people are 65 or older and make increasingly expensive claims on state-paid pensions and other benefits. In fast-growing Turkey, only 6.3% fit that demographic. Italian women have on average 1.2 children, putting the country's birth rate at 207th out of 221 countries.
But the bulk of the responsibility lies with politicians. Mr. Berlusconi, Italy's richest man, promised a shake up each time he ran for office (in 1994, 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2008). He was the longest serving premier in post-war Italy, from 2001 to 2006, controlled parliament and could have pushed through reforms. He didn't. Promises to lower taxes and hack away at regulations and protections for Italy's powerful guilds—from taxi drivers to pharmacists to journalists—were broken.
"It is not difficult to rule Italy," Benito Mussolini once said, "it is useless." The so-called concertazione, or concert, of Italian coalition politics that brings together numerous parties in the Parliament makes for unstable and indecisive governments. So does the fear prominent in many European countries that any serious reform will provoke street protests. An unhappy byproduct of a welfare state is that it creates powerful interests that will fight to the last to preserve their free lunch, no matter the cost to the country.
But now hard choices can no longer be postponed. And the solution to Europe's debt crisis must begin with reforming, if not dismantling, the welfare state. Europe rose from the economic grave in the 1960s, it rode the Reagan-Thatcher reform wave to more modest growth in the 1980s-'90s, and it can grow again. A decade ago, Germany was called the "sick man of Europe," bedeviled by Italian-like economic problems. But a center-left coalition, supported by trade unions and German society, overhauled labor and welfare codes and set the stage for the current (if still modest) export-led revival in Germany.
The road from Rome may now lead to Paris, Madrid and other debt-ridden European countries. But this is no cause for U.S. chortling, because that same road also leads to Sacramento, Albany and Washington. America's federal debt was 35.7% of GDP in 2007, but it was 61.3% last year and is rising on an Italian trajectory. The lesson of Italy, and most of the rest of Europe, is never to become a high-tax, slow-growth entitlement state, because the inevitable reckoning is nasty, brutish and not short.
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cliffhanger
Trad climber
California
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End Corporate Personhood
As we’ve seen through the history of the Sherman Antitrust Act and other legislative attempts to control corporate behavior, the problem faced by citizens as well as directors and stockholders of corporations is systemic and rooted in how corporations are defined under the law.
Virtually every legislative session since the 1800s has seen new attempts to regulate or control corporate behavior, starting with Thomas Jefferson’s unsuccessful insistence that the Bill of Rights protect humans from “commercial monopolies.” Ultimately, most have either failed or been co-opted because they didn’t address the underlying structural issue of corporate personhood.
To solve this problem, then, new laws controlling corporations aren’t the ultimate answer. Instead what is needed is a foundational change in the definition of the relationship between living human beings and the nonliving legal fictions we call corporations. Only when corporations are again legally subordinate to those who authorized them—humans and the governments representing them—will true change be possible.
To bring this about will require a grassroots movement in communities all across America and the world to undo corporate personhood, leading to changes in the definitions of the word person.
much more here:
http://www.truth-out.org/end-corporate-personhood/1320725933
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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My mom is in dire financial straits due to losing 3/5ths of her retirement through a f*#kup by AIG. She stands to lose her house at 65 yrs of age, a house she's had for 40 some years. AIG gets a big bailout, why not her? She wasn't gambling with her money, nevertheless, she suffers the consequences for someone else's actions. Saying the people are to blame for the banks' predatory mortgage practices is bullsh#t.
Curious, how did this happen? Was she working for AIG? Was her retirement money in Credit Default Swaps?
Also, how is she losing her house? If she has had it 40 years, why was it not paid off? Did she take money out of it?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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#12 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.
#13 We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year.
#14 Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#15 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.
More food stamps are being given out, but it is not because there are more hungry people, it is an expansion of welfare.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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"An unhappy byproduct of a welfare state is that it creates powerful interests that will fight to the last to preserve their free lunch, no matter the cost to the country."
Excellent quote
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Crack,
Yes, there have been several studies that show out "poor" often have comfortable lifestyles.
links?
let's see these "several" studies you refer to showing the "poor" have quite comfortable life styles
drive nice cars?
live in nice comfortable housing?
don't have to budget food stamps to get by, have a "comfortable" food delivery?
how about healthcare, tell me about their "healthcare" matches up with the "comforts" of your healthcare
Show me the poor "folks" in the deep south, the homeless, that have "comfortable" lifestyles
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monolith
climber
berzerkly
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Helicopters over Berkeley most of the day. Apparently an occupy UCB was attempted.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Helicopters over Berkeley most of the day. Apparently an occupy UCB was attempted.
Why would the asshats 'occupy' UCB??
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Joe's right. Blame gov't, not banks.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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links to "several" studies that show that the poor have comfortable lifestyles?
second request
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 10, 2011 - 08:28am PT
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links to "several" studies that show that the poor have comfortable lifestyles?
third request
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 10, 2011 - 10:11am PT
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Norton - You should know by know by now the half a man is talking out his ass with that ""poor" often have comfortable lifestyles" shite...
the half man has no clue, never will.
Hey fatness, you should defect from your repuked party... But I know that Cain is your type a guy.
And here is more on your bumbling party, and their values....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhLXX0L-Tdk
You repukes are pathetic....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TumQyE5gE4
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 10, 2011 - 11:19am PT
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from the la times; based on data from the latest census:
"During the year 4% of the poor became temporarily homeless. Forty percent live in apartments, less than 10% in mobile homes or trailers and about 50% live in standard one-family homes. In fact, 42% own their own home.
The vast majority are in good repair, with more living space per person than the average non-poor person in Britain, France or Sweden.
Ninety-six percent of poor parents say their children were never hungry during the year due to an inability to afford food.
Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning and 92% have a microwave.
One-third of poor households have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV, 70% have a VCR and two-thirds have satellite/cable TV, the same proportion as own at least one DVD player.
Half of the povery households have a personal computer and one-in-seven have two or more.
And half of those with children have a video game system like Xbox.
Almost 75% have a car or truck and nearly a third have two.
Other than that, being poor in America is just like you thought."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/09/census-poverty-rate-record-2010.html
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 10, 2011 - 11:23am PT
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links to "several" studies that show that the poor have comfortable lifestyles?
forth request
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 10, 2011 - 11:42am PT
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here is again:
from the la times; based on data from the latest census:
"During the year 4% of the poor became temporarily homeless. Forty percent live in apartments, less than 10% in mobile homes or trailers and about 50% live in standard one-family homes. In fact, 42% own their own home.
The vast majority are in good repair, with more living space per person than the average non-poor person in Britain, France or Sweden.
Ninety-six percent of poor parents say their children were never hungry during the year due to an inability to afford food.
Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning and 92% have a microwave.
One-third of poor households have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV, 70% have a VCR and two-thirds have satellite/cable TV, the same proportion as own at least one DVD player.
Half of the povery households have a personal computer and one-in-seven have two or more.
And half of those with children have a video game system like Xbox.
Almost 75% have a car or truck and nearly a third have two.
Other than that, being poor in America is just like you thought."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/09/census-poverty-rate-record-2010.html
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Nov 10, 2011 - 12:27pm PT
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Note: Census officials define Americans as poor when family income falls below thresholds linked to family size. In 2009, a family of four was “poor” if annual cash income fell below $21,954.
amenities poor
Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, 2005
That seems odd...just sayin...
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Nov 10, 2011 - 01:27pm PT
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Jeff, your continued name calling attacks on Norton are total bullsh#t. Why don't you answer him? Do you think this is made up crap? It could be, I figured Norton was a young man, like teens or early 20's. You do him a disservice with the name calling if what he says is true here:
Norton said: Nov 7, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
Why am I a miserable example of human life, Jeff?
I own my own company.
I employ 12 people.
I pay my full share of taxes.
I also send an additional annual check to the US General Fund to help what little I can to contribute towards deficit and national debt reduction.
I participate in this Democracy fully, including having joined Volunteers in Service to America in the 1960s as part of President Kennedy's call to ask what I can do for my country.
Why am I a miserable example of human life, Jeff?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 10, 2011 - 02:09pm PT
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Blame gov't for deregulating Wall St (repealing Glass Steagal in the 90''s)?
Nobody seems to be able to explain how repealling Glass Steagal had anything to do with the financial crisis.
Also, Glass-Steagal is a regulation created because of another government regulation: FDIC. Depositors do not give a $hit what their banks do with their money as long as Uncle Sam insures it. Without FDIC banks would have to prove to depositors that they are not investing in risky assets.
Regulators weave a tangled web.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Nov 10, 2011 - 02:46pm PT
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Great thread posted over at DU.
Some 1%ers get it, think for themselves, and actually do understand. They usually started out as the 99%ers themselves. They know the truth and they are very empathetic.
There is hope when people actually think for themselves and actually do care.
It's all about "The Golden Rule," the second most important commandment by GOD.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2272480
Attended a gathering with some of the 1% last night at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts
and Sciences Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. This reception was in honor of a man named Vin Scully, who is better known as "The Voice Of The Dodgers," and was hosted by Russell Goldsmith, Chairman and CEO of City National Bank.
I only attended this gathering because Russell's dad, Bram, asked me to and I happen to love the old guy a lot. I'm not a big sports fan, but I do like tennis, and not being a big sports fan, I didn't know who Vin Scully was and had to google his name to find out.
Anyway, the reason for the thread is this, while mingling at the reception before the program, I was able to hear and partake in, several conversations about our 99% movement and I was pretty happy to find out that many of those attending were not only talking about it, but seem to be getting it.
I heard comments like, "you can only push people so far" and "the system has been rigged against the majority and it needs to change." One wealthy sports figure, matter of fact-ly stated, "I have enough for 50 life times, I don't need anymore tax cuts and the big corporations don't need them either, anymore than they need government welfare subsidies." Wow, and he said it so everyone in ear shot could hear it too.
Several people were discussing how to get the corporate influence and their lobbyists out of our government, and on more than 5 occasions, I heard the name Koch brothers used in very unflattering terms. Two well known actors shared their disgust with the Republicans and Democrats taking money from wall street and other corporations, and a super star singer, who I happen to love love love, said that her son had attended several occupy protests and she was very proud of that.
During a brief one on one with the host, I asked Russell Goldsmith right out, "how do you feel about the Occupy movement?" and he replied, "It's about time." He went on to say, "I'm on the side of the people, without them, no one could have the kind of successes that I have been able to attain....I couldn't have gotten where I am today all by myself, without the support of the people, no one can." He added, "put me in the, tax me more, Warren Buffet category." I laughed, he patted me on the back and I jokingly said, "can I quote you on that?" and he replied, "you know how I feel about being quoted, if you fear it being quoted, don't say it." Yep, I feel the same way.
Russell is a really nice guy, he's a Democrat and he never gives the impression that he thinks he is better than others. He treats people like he wants to be treated and is very approachable, I have always liked and respected the man, he is CEO of an organization that is solid because of the people it employs.
My partner and I do all of our banking and have all of our investments with their wealth management people because of how they treat their employees, and obviously, how they treat their clients. I think we're in good company, as many producers, directors, entertainment executives and big named talent trust their money and investments with City National as well.
It's nice to feel as important as any other person banking with City National Bank and it's nice to know the CEO is a decent and fair man who is on the side of the people. We like a smaller bank where they don't nickle and dime their customers, and their people treat you like they care, because they do, and I am one of those who firmly believes, that comes from the top down.
Just before the reception was about to end, I was introduced to Vin Scully, a very sweet man who was busy making his rounds taking pictures with those at the gathering, I'm not big on having my picture taken, so I casually moved to the side and mingled a while longer until the program began.
I guess what occurred for me at this gathering was, that some of those at the "top," have always gotten it, some are just starting to get it, and as we know, some will never get it...... but, I was cautiously encouraged.
Of course, it's always nice to know, that at many of the functions I attend, the majority of the people there are Democrats or Independents. But, as you know, in any group of 600 people, you are going to have your spoilers. Thankfully, I didn't meet or hear any of those windbags last night.
I guess I just wanted to let you all know, that many at this function were 1%ers talking about Occupy and the 99% movement, it seems to be happening everywhere I go lately, and I believe that's a really good thing for the future of our country, where I have always wished for a less politically motivated, and more people oriented America.
Lou
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Nov 10, 2011 - 10:27pm PT
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Some day the moonlit beached mackerel will shine upon your liberal ignorance. I wish you the best and hope a sound mind follows.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 11, 2011 - 07:53pm PT
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one reason he can afford homes like that is because he won't hire union workers for his films
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 11, 2011 - 08:44pm PT
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Michael Moore hired mostly union film workers on Capitalism: A Love Story.
Here's ABC on it
Michael Moore used some non-union crewmembers when union workers were available in the production of his latest film "Capitalism: A Love Story," a documentary that argues the capitalist system allows for greedy corporations to exploit working-class people.
"For all of the different jobs on the movie that could have used union labor, he used union labor, except for one job, the stagehands, represented by IATSE," said a labor source unauthorized to talk about Moore's decision not to hire members of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
In a statement issued to ABCNews.com, Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said the filmmaker wished the union included more documentary crew people -- but he did not deny that IATSE members were snubbed in favor of non-union employees.
"The sad fact is that documentary/verite theatrical films and the talented people who work on them are too often treated as second-class filmmakers, when they are among the most creative, talented and hardworking, and often produce our finest films," said Emanuel.
"Nothing would make Michael happier than for documentary filmmaking to get its due respect, and to have unions pursue the documentary film crews with the same energy they give to bringing feature crews into their membership and making it a viable option for them," he said.
"This is a Writer's Guild, Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild film, as all of Michael's films are. He is a proud, dues-paying member of all three of these unions," said Emanuel.
Moore is the sole writer, director and professional actor credited in the film.
It was unclear exactly how many union or non-union employees worked on the film. It appears there was a turf war between three of the unions and the IASTE documentary film makers.
did you have a different movie in mind? or are you overgeneralizing again when you imply he never hires union workers?
come on now, you're a bookworm, do your research before you spew.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 13, 2011 - 04:11pm PT
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Did you guys see this story about a 24 year old Iraq vet who served two tours in Iraq and was injured critically in the Occupy Oakland raids?
Yes I did. What intrigued me was the focus on this particular dilinquent because he 'served', and was susequentialy wounded in the fracas.
Civil disobedience sometimes gets you into trouble. Ya Know?
Do you think he was targeted? How does his service have anything to do with an accident?
So much news coverage though....
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 13, 2011 - 05:21pm PT
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particular dilinquent "delinquent"
fact or opinion?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 13, 2011 - 05:36pm PT
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"one reason he can afford homes like that is because he won't hire union workers for his films"
Idiot speak.
He makes the money he makes because plenty of people all around the world pay money to buy/see his movies that he has written, directed and stared in.
What, should the writer not get paid? The director not get paid? The actors not get paid?
What a moron....
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 13, 2011 - 06:09pm PT
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one reason he can afford homes like that is because he won't hire union workers for his films Riiiiiight......and he specifically went up to Madison Wisconsin to bash unions??
MM went up to Madison and spoke to 50,000 people specifically BECAUSE the Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was proposing a law to remove the right of unions to bargain collectively with the state.
from Todd Richmond, the AP, 6 Mar 2011
MADISON, Wis. — Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore urged Wisconsin residents Saturday to fight against Republican efforts to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights, telling thousands of protesters that "Madison is only the beginning."
The crowd roared in approval as Moore implored demonstrators to keep up their struggle against Republican Gov. Scott Walker's legislation, saying they've galvanized the nation against the wealthy elite and comparing their fight to Egypt's revolt. He also thanked the 14 state Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to block a vote on the bill, saying they'll go down in history books.
In bluey's link Breitbart pointed out that MM was there to oppose Scott Walker's union busting legislation.
you can't have it both ways.
By the way, Scott Walker won and the unions have lost the right to collective bargaining with the State of Wisconsin
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 13, 2011 - 06:19pm PT
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However, in Ohio this week the voters overwhelmingly voted down the Republican governor's legislative action to end public employee collective bargaining
And things are not over in Wisconsin, as Walker himself is subject to a recall vote after 12 months in office, which means a statewide recall vote effort can start in two months
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Nov 14, 2011 - 03:22pm PT
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With Apologies to Allan Sherman
Hello Faddah
Hello Mama
I'm Occupying
Camp Obama
I'm protesting
Wall Street grabbings
And trying to avoid the hobo stabbings
On my iPhone
With my last tweet
I down-twinkled
Jews on Wall Street
Please don't worry
About psychosis
'Cause my Guy Fawkes mask repels tuberculosis
We are saving
This whole nation
With some squad car
Defecation
We went marching
in Zucotti
And got applauded by the Nazi Party
There's a raping
Every day now
Some are straight and
Some are gay now
Latest outbreak
Dysentery
In the food tent over by the Ben & Jerry's
Taaaake me home
Oh Dad and Mama
Taaaake me home
From Camp Obama
Don't leave me
Out in the plaza scent
Made by
The 99 percent
Cosign loans
Oh Dad and Mama
Don't make groans
Oh Dad and Mama
'Cause Van Jones
Assures me that it's cool
For me
To go to graduate schooooool
Just a minute
Dad and Mama
Got a message
From Obama
He doesn't like the
way we're livin'
So our student loans are hereby all forgiven
No more worries
No more bothers
All thanks to our
Founding fathers
Our dear leaders
won't let me fail
Dear Mom and Dad please disregard this email
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/11/with-apologies-to-alan-sherman.html
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 03:54pm PT
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He makes the money he makes because plenty of people all around the world pay money to buy/see his movies that he has written, directed and stared in.
What, should the writer not get paid? The director not get paid? The actors not get paid?
I see nothing wrong with this logic, except that it flies in the face of "occupy" philosophy. Doesn't this reasoning apply for anyone else selling something for which people are willing to pay a very great deal -- including most of "the 1%?" Many of those folks are professionals, including lots of doctors. Is it OK to pay entertainers a bundle, but not OK to pay docs? Or are entertainers good, but entrepreneurs bad?
Or is it that if you employ a few people, like MM, you're good, but if you employ many thousands, like Walmart, you're evil?
Again, your logic is right. Its application, however, seems too narrow.
John
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 14, 2011 - 04:21pm PT
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John
including most of "the 1%?" Many of those folks are professionals, including lots of doctors That's factually incorrect. That would apply to perhaps the top 2% but not the top 1%
According to the most recent IRS data, between 2007 and 2009, the 99th percentile income (AGI, not inflation-adjusted) fell from $410,096 to $343,927. The 99.9th percentile income fell from $2,155,365 to $1,432,890. During the same period, median income fell from $32,879 to $32,396. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2011/10/rich-getting-poorer.html
Gross income is sales price of goods or property, less cost of the property sold, plus other income. It includes wages, interest, dividends, business income, rental income, and all other types of income. Adjusted gross income is gross income less deductions from a business or rental activity and 21 other specific items. Deduct the car lease, deduct the cell phone, deduct the business trip to Hilton Head. Deduct the home office expense, deduct 1/2 of the cost of business lunches and dinners. So their gross income is likely much much higher.
How many deductions from business or rental activity do you think someone making the median income, $32K, gets?
anyway, how many lawyers, doctors and professionals do you know who have $340K AGI from their professional services? (not from their investments or business interests).
Is it OK to pay entertainers a bundle, but not OK to pay docs? Or are entertainers good, but entrepreneurs bad?
Or is it that if you employ a few people, like MM, you're good, but if you employ many thousands, like Walmart, you're evil? Red herring arguments again.
Few Americans mind that even fewer Americans do well. They don't even mind that entertainers and athletes get paid a bundle. I certainly don't mind although I think it's silly. After all it's the consumers who are buying the tickets (I don't). It's the unique "American Dream" that everyone has the opportunity to get as wealthy as they can. It's a great dream that appeals to everyone's greed.
The problem is when the lower 99th percentile of Americans are doing worse than before, and perceive that the system is rigged by the 1%. When they no longer have access to the Great American Dream. When a great many of them realize that they're doing much worse today than three years ago. When they can't get a job, are losing their mortgage, can't afford an elite education for their kids, the public schools are chronically underfunded, the public universities charging higher and higher tuition, health insurance premiums keep going up, the Republicans keep threatening social security, medicare and unions. When their previous guaranteed benefit pension plans have been turned into private retirement investments which have lost 20 - 40%. When the union workers see their collective bargaining rights repealed while their jobs go to China.
None of these worries apply to the top 1%. Oh wait, maybe the wealthy doctor's kid at Harvard will have to drive a Volvo instead of a Porsche and have a winter break ski vacation at Vail instead of Switzerland.
That is the problem. Whatever "fairness" the system had has been eroded.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Nov 14, 2011 - 05:59pm PT
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Mr. Burns: Oh, here we go with the fat cat bashing.
Uncle Pennybags: Well, what do you expect? These yokels are pure Baltic Avenue.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 14, 2011 - 06:16pm PT
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oh fattrad
you stepped right into this one
Nothing is rigged, can you give me an example of something that is "rigged" Try Jack Abramoff (convicted lobbyist) and Bob Ney (convicted Congressman) coming clean on 60 minutes two weeks ago
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57319075/jack-abramoff-the-lobbyists-playbook/?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo
Abramoff brags he had "very strong influence" on 100 Congressmen.
Leslie Stahl, Jack Abramoff and Bob Ney:
Stahl: How many congressional offices did you actually own?
Abramoff: We probably had very strong influence in 100 offices at the time.
Stahl: Come on.
Abramoff: No.
Stahl: A hundred offices?
Abramoff: In those days, I would view that as a failure. Because that leaves 335 offices that we didn't have strong influence in.
Stahl: Did he own you?
Bob Ney: Oh, I don't believe Jack Abramoff owned me. But were we involved in the culture of corruption together? Absolutely.
Former Republican Congressman Bob Ney was ambitious and looked at Abramoff as a way to build alliances with the White House and the majority leader.
Ney: I wanted to be speaker of the House and Jack Abramoff was the beautiful light of day for me to get to the person who I had had some conflicts with, Tom Delay.
Abramoff began inviting Ney on golf trips including one to Scotland and to his restaurant Signatures, __where Ney was given food and drinks on the house, a violation of the congressional gift limit laws. Ney says he was hardly the only one crossing the line.
Ney: But I will still tell you, at that point in time, in order to get a drink at Signatures you had to shove White House staffers of George Bush the heck away from the bar.__ And it was packed with people. And there were members. Now that doesn't mean everybody did everything for Jack. But if you wanna talk about strict interpretation of violation of the-- of-- of the laws of drink and food, Katey bar the door, she was wide open, two shotguns blarin'.
Stahl: Was buying favors from lawmakers easy?
Abramoff: I think people are under the impression that the corruption only involves somebody handing over a check and getting a favor. And that's not the case. The corruption, the bribery, call it, because ultimately that's what it is. That's what the whole system is.
Stahl: The whole system's bribery?
Abramoff: In my view. I'm talking about giving a gift to somebody who makes a decision on behalf of the public. At the end of the day, that's really what bribery is. But it is done everyday and it is still being done. The truth is there were very few members who I could even name or could think of who didn't at some level participate in that.
Abramoff prided himself on being a man who did good. He was devoutly religious and exorbitantly charitable and he says he gave away 80 percent of his earnings. When he fell from grace, his reputation was in tatters because it was not just that he had corrupted Congress - it was found he had cheated his clients, like the Indian tribes.
Abramoff: Most of the money I made I gave away, to either communal or charitable causes. So I thought frankly I was one of the most moral lobbyists out there.
Things began to unravel for Abramoff when the Washington Post published a largely unflattering portrait of him in 2004, reporting that he charged his clients 10 times more than any other lobbyist in town.
Abramoff: My first response was, "What's the big deal? I don't understand what this is about. This is what lobbyists do.
What he didn't understand was the part that said he and a former aide to Tom Delay had overbilled four of his Indian casino clients by $45 million.
In the end, he was brought up on federal charges of tax evasion and ripping off Indian tribes. On the day he went to court and pled guilty, Abramoff looked grim. The judge sentenced him to four years.
Stahl: I really think what you were doing was-- was subverting the essence of our system.
Abramoff: Yes. Absolutely right. But our system is flawed and has to be fixed. Human beings populate our system. Human beings are weak.
Stahl: And you preyed on that?
Abramoff: I did. I was one of many who did. I did. And I'm ashamed of that fact. Abramoff: The reform efforts continually are these faux-reform efforts where they'll change, they'll tweak the system. They'll say, "You can have a meal with a congressman if they're standing up, not sitting down."
Stahl: Is that serious? Or are you joking?
Abramoff: Oh no, I'm not joking at all.
Stahl: So, it's okay if you pay for lunch as long as you stand up?
Abramoff: Well, it's actually worse than that. You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak of something like that. But you can take him to a fundraising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fundraiser. And have all the same access and all the same interaction with that congressman. So the people who make the reforms are the people in the system.
The 99% have the perception that the legislative system is rigged.
And they are correct.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 14, 2011 - 06:43pm PT
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Nice try fattrad
But no banana for you on that one.
Sure Abramoff is barking and bragging. So why did he and Ney and Volz and DeLay go to Federal prison?
Would you like a full list of Abramoff associates who resigned, pled guilty or were convicted and spent time in prison?
It's WAYY too long to post it, so here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff
These people Broke The Law. Even though according to Abramoff the laws were easily evaded.
I count 18, not including those who were indicted but not convicted.
Odd, they're ALL Republican. And prosecuted during the Shrub administration. Was corruption rampant or what?
OK
One example:
Steven Griles, (R) (former Deputy Interior Secretary) the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the scandal, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. He admitted lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with Abramoff, who repeatedly sought Griles' intervention at Interior on behalf of Indian tribal clients. Aren't you trying to buy your way into the same office? Careful you don't lie to a Senate committee.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 14, 2011 - 08:44pm PT
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Wall Street is not the 1%. They are the 2-52% depending on their occupations on WS.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 14, 2011 - 08:51pm PT
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It's when real cash is handed over that a problem happens, and Abramoff handed over cash. I figured you'd come up with the narrowest possible definition of influence peddling. Kind of like Clinton saying "I didn't have sex with that woman". Except Bill and Monica were having consensual sex. Not corporation-congress incest.
And, I just joke about the NPS, couldn't afford to take the pay cut. So a Deputy Secretary of the Interior isn't paid enough to compete with private business?
Can I quote you next time the barking rats complain about Fed salaries?
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 02:42am PT
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anyway, how many lawyers, doctors and professionals do you know who have $340K AGI from their professional services?
HT, even in friendly Fresno. I know plenty of lawyers and doctors who make that kind of money from their professional practices. If I were still practicing law, I'd be among them. I'm sure there are many more in the Bay Area, and probably a few doctors and lawyers in the People's Republic of Berkeley that fit that criterion.
I realize that OWS orthodoxy says that the 1% rigged the system, but like all religious beliefs, it requires belief without evidence.
And Wes, I discern corporations' constitutional rights the way the law always did -- by treating them as people acting in concert. Suppose that instead of a corporation, we were dealing with a partnership. If you take that partnership's property, the Fifth Amendment requires due process and just compensation, just as if you were taking it from the individual partners. If, on the other hand, the partnership wanted to vote in an election, it has no such right because the individuals already have the right to vote individually.
Without according corporations constitutional rights, freedom of the press would be a mirage. We could take things from coporations at will. The law always said otherwise.
How, then, can one argue as Justice Stevens did in his novel disguised as a dissent, that if individuals band together to have their views heard more effectively, they have no right to free speech? (Remember, the plaintiff, Citizens United, was a non-profit corporation). What policy behind the First Amendment guaranty of freedom of speech would that serve?
If only media corporations have freedom of speech, wouldn't that rig the system more than unlimited freedom for all to spend as much as they want? How would that comport with equal protection, when Congress decided that some corporations could have freedom to air, print or otherwise distribute their views and others don't.
If, in fact, only individuals acting alone have freedom of speech, then only the most wealthy would have an effective mass media access. I don't think any rational reading of the Bill of Rights gets you there.
So to answer your question, yes, corporations have constitutional rights, and those rights include not only the right to due process and just compensation, but freedom of expression. Anything else puts the government in charge of what people hear. Nothing could be further from the intent of the First Amendment.
John
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 08:44am PT
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 15, 2011 - 08:46am PT
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It's not freedom of the press, it's freedom to own a press. Political speech has always been limited in this country.
As for Wall Street, we are guided by the Golden Rule: those with the gold, make the rules.
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Nov 15, 2011 - 10:47am PT
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So assign the same liabilities to corporate owners as is with partners and I will be fine with 'bbbbut corporations are people too. Right now they are paper constructs designed to skirt liability. Why would we allow people who are not responsible for their own actions an equal voice under the law? That would be stupid!
Would a sole-proprietor of a small business loses his freedom of speech as soon as he asked you to sign a waver to climb in his gym? Connecting liability to the Bill of Rights doesn't seem to make much sense because the arguments that you make might apply to individuals in many cases and no individual should lose their rights.
The system is designed to suck but to also protect individuals from losing their rights. As soon as you try to take away the suckiness, you will start to take away rights of individuals.
Sort of like the patriot act designed to only take away the rights of terrorists but we all lost a little. New laws to make stock-holders liable will result in some individual, like you or me, get screwed by the law.
I do like the idea of making stock holders more liable for the corporations that they invest in. Sort of as you suggest, corporations could have a choice to be a group of individuals acting in concert, all equally liable in all ways for actions of the corporation, or a new style limited liability corporation where the corporation is not individuals acting in concert that does not have any individual rights. At least a choice removes the possibility of me having my rights lost because of a corporate law meant to help me.
Dave
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:01am PT
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I think this movement is at a crossroads.
Early on the message was the 99%. That message was heard loud and clear, the political dialog has changed, and as a moral movement it has been a huge success.
I think that message is starting to get lost. The message that is getting out now is more about confrontations with cops, local governments, arrests, etc. The original message is morphing into some kind of "free speech" movement. By and large, protestors have been able to get their message out, but protestors are flat out wrong when they assert they have a right to camp in city parks all night. They just don't have that right, nor does anyone else.
I really hope the focus gets back to the 99%, because I don't think the latest focus is working.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:10am PT
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Good post Mr Bag.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:49am PT
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and odd take on it gary,
considering the us governments post office immediately subsidized the distribution of newsprint
They jailed Eugene Debs for making an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. He spent three years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
Victor Berger was refused his seat in the House after winning election.
Robert G. Thompson, awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, was jailed for violating the Smith Act. He was at first refused burial at Arlington.
Striking a dissenting chord days after his death, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Kempton wrote:
"And so, an American who was brave has been judged and disposed of by Americans who are cowards of the least excusable sort, cowards who have very little to fear. Yesterday the Army called Robert Thompson's widow and said that it would send his ashes wherever she wished. Wherever those ashes go, the glory of America goes with them."
Gus Hall, a Navy veteran of the South Pacific, was jailed for over 5 years under the Smith Act.
Then there were the Palmer Raids.
So it goes.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 15, 2011 - 12:37pm PT
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They use government but then they complain about Government. Nothing but a
bunch of whiny babies...
These guys act like they are Republicans or something.
Worth repeating.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 15, 2011 - 01:02pm PT
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War,
What the F did they expect?
OWS spends a couple months demanding more bigger government, and today they got what they were asking for.
More Bigger Government showed up in the form of the riot police, swinging truncheons and cracking skulls.
You didn't have be Nostradamus to see that one coming.
You want the laws on Wall Street enforced, do you?
Looks like they're starting by enforcing the laws banning camping/smoking/pissing/shitting in the parks.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 02:14pm PT
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In NYC, where for decades (and long before the current housing crisis) there has been too little housing supply, exorbitant rents across the board, and a plethora of homeless yet the landlords would 'warehouse' apartment buildings
you should add, Lovesgasoline, that this situation represents government failure, i.e. the government doing a worse job than the market. New York City enacted "temporary" rent control after WWII, and the symptoms you describe are exactly what economists predicted would happen. Rent control failed, continues to fail, and always will sooner or later, just like any other price control.
John
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 02:17pm PT
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OWS spends a couple months demanding more bigger government, and today they got what they were asking for.
More Bigger Government showed up in the form of the riot police, swinging truncheons and cracking skulls.
You didn't have be Nostradamus to see that one coming.
Good point. "A government big enough to give you everything you want can take away everything you have."
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 15, 2011 - 03:59pm PT
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The best part about these thread is the entertainment value of seeing how people's ideology so thoroughly colors their view of a topic. It makes me imagine the word "Idiot" tattooed on their foreheads.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 04:18pm PT
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Another clueless demagogue.
I could respond in kind, but the appropriate word is "ideologue," not "demagogue." I am unaware of any successful long-term price control in any western economy, ever. Perhaps you can enlighten me by pointing out a counter example.
Thanks.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 04:29pm PT
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You mentioned upthread about the plethora of doctors and attorneys in your town making $340+. Can you provide some proof? What makes you think you'd be making $340,000+ if you were an attorney? And if you'd bank that much, why aren't you an attorney?
No, I won't provide proof because of privacy concerns. As to why I am not an attorney, I posted the story several years ago, and re-post it here. This was in a thread where I was trying to convince one of our late ST members that treatment for depression exists and works. By the way, I was making $200,000+ twenty years ago, which at the time was close to, if not in, the 1%.
Here's an excerpt of what I wrote. Incidentally, as I said elsewhere in that thread, if anyone reading this is dealing with depression, I would be happy to help in any way I can. It almost destroyed me, but if I can be saved, I suspect anyone else can,too.
Sorry to get off-topic on what's already an OT thread, but here's the excerpt from the post:
"I'm not saying that antidepressants always work. I'm saying that professional help almost always makes things better, and I'm quite certain it will help you.
I might as well tell my full story, because I hope that if you see how low depression took me, and therefore how far I've recovered, you'll see that what looks hopeless is not so.
Since 1991, I've had the highest legal peer-reviewed rating (Martindale-Hubbell "AV") and through the 1990's, at least, had a very admired, successful and lucrative law practice. Although I had momentary bouts of depression since at least 1994, they always went away on their own, so I didn't think I had a medical condition.
That changed in about 2002. Gradually, over the next few years, I grew unable to accomplish even the simplest of tasks at work without monumental effort. In addition, I slowly stopped climbing (a sure sign of illness!), playing the piano, cycling, and just about everything else that I formerly enjoyed. In addition, by then, my wife said I'd become very withdrawn. I slept inordinately. Both my wife and my secretary worried that I was suffering from depression, but I blew them off. I thought that I'd just snap out of it, and anything that was behind in the office would be cured by a couple of extra Saturdays of work.
I was wrong. Finally, in 2005, one client for whom I started litigation, but then stalled, had enough. She said she was coming to my office to see the results of the litigation I'd promised her. I knew it would take her about 45 minutes to get there. Desperate not to be confronted with my inaction, I made up a pleading, and even faked a court order. That latter act was one of forgery and counterfeiting under federal law, and something no sane lawyer would do. I gave her the "order," hoping to shut her up long enough for me to do my job.
Well, the good news was that the immorality of my action really did wake me up. Within a few minutes of her leaving my office, I was so appalled with what I'd done (or to my way of thinking, what I'd become -- a liar) that I immediately sought professional help. A few days later, I went to the court to tell them what happened. Unbeknownst to me, my client was already there, and the court clerk suspected what I'd done before I fessed up. My client had also already gone to the FBI, and my legal goose was cooked.
By then, though, I was hooked up with a physician and a psychologist, each of whom shared my Christian faith. I got good medication and good therapy. I also hooked up with a group of lawyers dealing with mental health and substance abuse issues (although the latter has never been an issue for me, the two often go hand-in-hand. Probably a form of self-medication.)
Talk about an inopportune time to regain my sanity! I saw in my immediate future at least the following: (1) the end of my career; (2) the destruction of my reputation; (3) abject poverty; and (4) no discernable way out. In fact, reality was worse in all respects except no. (4).
My wife had not worked outside our home or my office for almost 20 years, and had let her nursing license lapse. I knew my law license wouldn't remain for long, and I had already decided that I could not take any more new clients, and that I needed to refer all of my existing ones out so that I could end my practice. Unfortunately, our debts still remained. I had to file personal bankruptcy. I resigned from the Bar. I was indicted for forgery, pled guilty, and was sentenced to six months in federal prison. Had I known all this when I first went for help, i certainly would have seen no way out.
Nonetheless, several amazing things started happening then. First and foremost, friends started coming out of the woodwork. Virtually all of the legal community lined up to help me. My church rallied around us. My family did the same. Instead of rejecting me, they came to me. It was like being at my own funeral, and hearing all those nice things people say about you. Perhaps as importantly, they all knew that something had been wrong with me, and were delighted that I was finally doing something about it. Although I cannot excuse my dishonesty, everyone I care about has foregiven that dishonesty.
As my mental ability returned, so did my business opportunities. I had been, in addition to an attorney, an econometrician since 1973. My old roommate from college needed econometric help, and came to me. We're still working together. In addition, after serving my sentence (which I treated like a vacation, but that's another story), two lawyers I'd trained 20 years before hired me to be a sort of in-house scholar. The combination of these two jobs, plus my wife rejoining the nursing profession, is providing sufficient income. More importantly I am the happiest I have been in decades. Even though I'm 58 and had to start over at age 56 when I got out of prison, I see a good future for us.
I hope you conclude that whatever is in your future, it can't be much worse (and, I hope, it is much less worse) than what I went through. We all can help. You're not facing a hopeless battle."
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 04:51pm PT
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Lovesgasoline,
How do you think rent control will lower vacancy rates? I've studied and worked in the economic field since 1969. I'm quite familiar not only with the history of rent controls, but with that of price controls generally in western economies.
I've given you a very simple challenge: provide one example where price controls have worked long-term. Just one. If I'm wrong in my ideology, then surely it would be easy to provide me the counterexample to my contention. If I'm right, then perhaps it would be worthwhile to relax the rhetoric long enough to engage in some actual debate and dialogue.
John
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 15, 2011 - 05:21pm PT
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Devestation? Here in America?
"...Americans we consider poor are among some of the world's most well-off. As Milanovic notes, "the poorest [5%] of Americans are better off than more than two-thirds of the world population." Furthermore, "only about 3 percent of the Indian population have incomes higher than the bottom (the very poorest) U.S. percentile."
"Today, of Americans officially designated as 'poor,' 99 percent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television, 88 percent a telephone, 71 percent a car and 70 percent air conditioning. Cornelius Vanderbilt had none of these." Nor does much of the world."
"And there are few better places to be born than America -- even if you end up poor by American standards. If there is inequality in opportunity, those born in America are the ones with the unfair advantage."
http://news.yahoo.com/attention-protestors-youre-probably-part-1-153806044.html
It always baffles me when people who should be counting their goddamn blessings, instead sit around and bitch about everything/nothing.
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Nov 15, 2011 - 07:02pm PT
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Just a human interest tidbit. My accountant tells me I've fallen into the top 1%. Who knew? I don't feel very rich. Something most people are unaware of is there are many small time entrepreneurs out there whose income puts them in the top 1% but who have a ton of debt to service with after tax income, debt necessary to grow a small company. We pay lots of taxes and lots of debt but have little cash.
Mind you, I'm not complaining. I feel very fortunate to have been able to pay all my bills and make all my loan payments on time in these last few very erratic years.
My tax bill for this year is going to be a doozy though. Something like 150k. And where does it go? Bombs and other tools of gunboat diplomacy, an unending number of federal bureaucrat's life time pensions and health care benefits, and all manner of pork barrel projects. I don't object to social security because people have been paying into it, and I don't object to medicare and medicaid for people who truly need help.
What I do find annoying though is a bunch of obviously smart but also obviously unemployed people whining about the injustice of the system. Sure the wall street guys ripped off taxpayers. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. We need better laws and we need them enforced. Elect people who will prosecute fraudsters including politicians.
But really, if you want to address your own plight, stop blaming other people, and go out and get a job and if no jobs are available, make one. Difficult economic times are boon times for small business startups because of necessity. People with temerity, sac, suck it up and make it happen. People with less mental fortitude, or a sense of entitlement, whine.
OWS protesters, stop whining and get out there and do something that has value to someone else so you can make money and build a life rather than complaining about how you can't get the fat job with the fat benefits you wanted. Hanging around the park, smoking weed, and complaining isn't going to get you much other than a good swift kick in the butt from the overzealous NYPD.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 07:17pm PT
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OWS protesters, stop whining and get out there and do something that has value to someone else so you can make money and build a life rather than complaining about how you can't get the fat job with the fat benefits you wanted. Hanging around the park, smoking weed, and complaining isn't going to get you much other than a good swift kick in the butt from the overzealous NYPD.
Clearly you are naive. There is no way they can get jobs or make money. The "Banksters" are keeping them down.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 07:18pm PT
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There are entire communities which are now devastated due to an epidemic of foreclosures resulting in an abundance of vacant properties which has invited vandalism, theft, and a host of crime where heretofore there was no crime of consequence.
Thank you Community Reinvestment Act! The problem is not lack of regulation, it is ACTIVE government policy which caused this. Social programs for affordable housing and artificially depressed lending rates. Of course the private sector jumped in and tried to make a buck from these programs, what would you expect them to do? Regulation in such a distorted market is feeble. There is always a way around it.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 15, 2011 - 08:26pm PT
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fuking facts
I hate em
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 08:39pm PT
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You are NOT entitled to a house. You must EARN it. I don't have one yet,ya know why?
I thought it was unwise at the time to engage in those loans. Now that dipshits have tanked the market, I may be able to get in.
Not everyone is worthy of home-ownership. Stop living in a silly liberal Utopia.
Especially in the Bay. Very hard for mid-class folks like myself to own a home. Do I bitch? NO! You have to pay a price to live here. I'm working on it.
Fannie/Freddie gotta go.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 09:02pm PT
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blurring, do you remember that it was DEregulation that brought the house down? Of course not, you want LESS government regulation and big corporation driven free market capitalism. Morain.
How can anyone remember that, since it isn't true. The housing bubble came about through governmental market manipulation. First, through artificially low interest rates. Second through subsidized, low down-payment financing through Fannie and Freddie that would not have been available in an unregulated and non-governmentally manipulated market.
War,
We're entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have no entitlement to things from the government.
John
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theHammer
Sport climber
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Nov 15, 2011 - 09:45pm PT
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why don't you stop typing on the forum and climb a few NYC buildings to have fun while you protest?
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Jorroh
climber
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Nov 15, 2011 - 10:31pm PT
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Thats complete rubbish John.
The demand for motgages was fueled by the big investment banks. They were hell bent to buy up as many mortgages as they could, and most even started subsidiaries with the sole purpose of writing as many mortgages as possible with no, thats no not little, regard for the possibility of default.
The banks made tons of money collateralizing and selling off the resultant CDO's. The lower quality tranches that they couldn't sell were then repacked and magically appeared with AAA ratings to be more easily unloaded.
When there simply weren't enough mortgages to collateralize, the use of swaps and synthetic CDO's...(collateralized swaps for christ sake.) were used to keep the fees flowing at the cost (to society that is ) of a huge ratcheting up of leverage.
Are you really an economics professor? you seem badly uninformed about this. The banks just couldn't write loans quickly enough, the reason that they were all functionally insolvent is that they were sitting on so many mortgages, CDO, swaps, synthetic Cdo's etc.. waiting to be pushed through their fraudulent system onto unsuspecting pension funds, etc.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:18pm PT
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Jorrah,
What you saw differs greatly from what I saw. If the governmental manipulation had not occurred, none of the private secondary markets would have been around. If this stuff was so profitable, how come so many financial institutions were in trouble?
I realize leftist orthodoxy requires you to believe that all of this was a plot by "the 1%" to rob everyone else, but that's not my religion. The facts that I saw, that caused me to predict the meltdown in writing to clients years before it happened, had a lot more to do with fundamental market distortions.
And it wasn't just a few of us that saw this. The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages had warnings of what was happening for years, with particular warnings about the Fannie and Freddie. I find it ironic, to put it mildly, that the alleged cure to the economic and financial ills is legislation named after Dodd and Frank, two of the lawmakers most responsible for the excess.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 15, 2011 - 11:39pm PT
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There are, um, some evidentiary problems with your source, Dr. F. The housing bubble started long before any federal preemption of housing laws in 2004.
Glass-Steagall's repeal had nothing to do with the problem, despite the repeated insistance of the leftists. I am unaware of any peer-reviewed empirical study showing any connection whatsoever between those two events.
But then again, whenever we start with statements to the effect that "Wall Street is feeding you all a big lie," I see reason enough to be suspicious. Where were all these geniuses in, say, 2003, when I put my money where my mouth was and we put our house up for sale? 20/20 hindsight is wonderful because it relies on counterfactuals.
Nice try, but no cigar.
John
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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F*#king amazing to see that people can't see blame for the housing crash lies on both sides.
Yeah get rid of govt. programs to help people get houses...
I bought my last house with over 20% down. My current house was FHA and with a seller concession I got into it for very little out of pocket. My credit is impeccable and thanks to government programs I was able to buy a distressed property that otherwise would have sat on the market unoccupied bringing down the market. Sure some people should not get loans, but in my case the FHA benefited me and the market.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 12:29am PT
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So to answer your question, yes, corporations have constitutional rights, and those rights include not only the right to due process and just compensation, but freedom of expression. Anything else puts the government in charge of what people hear. Nothing could be further from the intent of the First Amendment.
John
I'm sorry, John. As your side is so famous for stating: Please QUOTE where in the Constitution the word "Corporation" appears, and quote where the Constitution specifically enumerates those rights.
As your side so often likes to say, if it is not in the Constitution, it is not a Constitutional Right. Your buddy Scalia says so all the time.
If that is the test your side uses, then lay it out.
What is hard to swallow is the repeated accusations of conservatives that liberals are "constitutional activists" that make up constitutional rights that are not obviously and clearly written there, but then turn around and simply make things up, like they did in Bush v. Gore.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:10am PT
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I'm sorry, John. As your side is so famous for stating: Please QUOTE where in the Constitution the word "Corporation" appears, and quote where the Constitution specifically enumerates those rights.
A year before I started law school, Mr. Justice Blackmun was one of the judges in our moot court competition. One of the advocates was arguing for a particular consitutional position, and Justice Blackmun interrupted him to ask "and just where do you find that in the Constitution, counsel?" The hapless competitor responded "The same place you found a right to privacy in Roe v. Wade, your honor," and then paused long enough for the full, terrible, impact of what he said to sink in.
Fortunately, I don't need to make the same argument.
United States Constitution, Amendment I:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemple, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
You will note, Ken, that nowhere does the First Amendment restrict freedom of speech or freedom of the press to individuals, to citizens, or to anyone or anything else. It says, simply, that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech, or of the press."
I think the onus is on those who claim that Congress may make a law abridging freedom of speech or of the press to show where the Constitution authorizes such action.
John
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Jorroh
climber
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:17am PT
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Hard of reading John?..how come the banks got in trouble...
I restate
"Are you really an economics professor? you seem badly uninformed about this. The banks just couldn't write loans quickly enough, the reason that they were all functionally insolvent is that they were sitting on so many mortgages, CDO, swaps, synthetic Cdo's etc.. waiting to be pushed through their fraudulent system onto unsuspecting pension funds, etc."
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:35am PT
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A year before I started law school, Mr. Justice Blackmun was one of the judges in our moot court competition. One of the advocates was arguing for a particular consitutional position, and Justice Blackmun interrupted him to ask "and just where do you find that in the Constitution, counsel?" The hapless competitor responded "The same place you found a right to privacy in Roe v. Wade, your honor," and then paused long enough for the full, terrible, impact of what he said to sink in.
Fortunately, I don't need to make the same argument.
United States Constitution, Amendment I:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemple, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
You will note, Ken, that nowhere does the First Amendment restrict freedom of speech or freedom of the press to individuals, to citizens, or to anyone or anything else. It says, simply, that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech, or of the press."
I think the onus is on those who claim that Congress may make a law abridging freedom of speech or of the press to show where the Constitution authorizes such action.
John
Well, this sounds exactly like the reasoning used in the lawsuit just filed, alleging that Seaworld has abridged the 13th amendment by ENSLAVING orcas. They state that there is nothing in the amendment that restricts that amendment to humans. Sounds like you would support that legal action.
Every legal scholar I've heard comment on it finds the argument laughable.
But of course, you quoted PART of the amendment. It actually says, NOT so simply:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
No doubt the founders wanted to avoid the confusion that you apparently have, as to whether a block of wood is what is intended to have the right to free speech. So they told us:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is there REALLY any doubt who the founders were establishing these right for???
It says it in about as black and white as I can imagine: The people and their descendents. Not a block of wood. Not a corporation, which certainly did not exist at the time of the founding......you canNOT advocate that they meant that, when it did not exist.
Not if you are a "strict constructionist".
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:35am PT
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I am, apparently, hard of both reading and spelling, Jorroh, since I not only missed your explanation (I stopped reading when the "are you really. . ." language started-- my bad), but misspelled your handle. My apologies.
I don't buy your explanation for the simple reason that if these products were so lucrative, there should have been enough earnings to weather the loss on the last go-round. The institutions that failed (or should have failed if we didn't bail them out) bet too heavily on the junk they and others peddled, and did so over extended periods of time.
I also agree that the rating agencies had a lot of culpability here, too. That's one of the reasons I find the restrictions on which ratings agencies to employ in Dodd-Frank so curious. Why entrench by legislation and regulation the very "watchdogs" who were blind to a risk that a simple economist (and, at the time, bankrtupcy lawyer) from Fresno clearly saw, viz. that the major risk was from a stop in real estate inflation, not just from flakey borrowers? The loan pools diversified the latter risk, but did nothing for the former, and much greater, one.
Ultimately, though, I guess I'm just tired of the facile allegations of criminal activity and fraud, in the face of zero prosecutions and convictions. If you read my explanation of why I no longer practice law, you know that I had to face the federal prosecution juggernaut. If you think a federal prosecutor in this administration has evidence of criminal wrongdoing on Wall Street and is exercising prosecutorial discretion not to bring charges, then we really do live in different worlds. The prosecutors with which I am familiar would all give their eye teeth to bring such a prosecution. If they haven't done so, it's because they don't have the goods.
And contrary to what some have inferred, existing securities laws have more than sufficient criminal and civil penalties to exact retirbution and compensation for any alleged wrongs. The theory you espouse isn't flawed theoretically, but empirically, the evidence underwhelms.
Again, sorry for my lazy reading, and for my misspelling of your handle.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:48am PT
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Ken, as you know, I quoted the entire First Amendment, and then excerpted the part with freedom of speech and of the press. If the First Amendment is restircted to natural persons, why does it read "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, rather than place "the right of the people" before the prohibition on abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press?
Your meaning requires a Constitutional re-write; mine does not. More importantly, the intent of the restrictions on communication is precisely to prevent the spread of political ideas. Nothing could be more inimical to the spirit and letter of the Amendment.
To answer your Thirteenth Amendment/Orca argument, the definition of a "slave" is, according to Webster, "A person who is the property of and wholly subject to another." [emphasis supplied] The Orca suit loses because the amendment, which states that slavery shall not exist in the United States, by definition does not apply to non-human organisms.
John
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:50am PT
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Just a human interest tidbit. My accountant tells me I've fallen into the top 1%. Who knew? I don't feel very rich. Something most people are unaware of is there are many small time entrepreneurs out there whose income puts them in the top 1% but who have a ton of debt to service with after tax income, debt necessary to grow a small company. We pay lots of taxes and lots of debt but have little cash.
What kind of debt related to the operation of a company is paid with after-tax dollars? It is paid with pre-tax dollars.
You need to fire your accountant, and get one who is competent. The 1% is not based upon gross earnings. It is based upon NET earnings, and cash in the pocket. Your guy doesn't know his business.
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apogee
climber
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:58am PT
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I know this is a silly oversimplification, but it's feckin' funny. And maybe a little bit true?
John, you take a high road, but politics strives for the lowest possible. And that means $. Which means your ideals will be left to rot on the side of the road as the politicians ride in the pocket of the corporate megarich as they fly in their private jets to the next post-G8 summit meeting party.
Corporations are not people. They really, really aren't.
People are people.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:58am PT
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War,
We're entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have no entitlement to things from the government.
John
John, you need to take some continuing education. You're forgetting things:
We the People of the United States, in Order to
1.form a more perfect Union,
2.establish Justice,
3.insure domestic Tranquility,
4.provide for the common defence,
5.promote the general Welfare, and
6.secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The Gov't of the United States was SPECIFICALLY FORMED to provide those 6 things to it's citizens. WE ARE ENTITLED TO ALL OF THOSE THINGS.
The CONSERVATIVE BIBLE SAYS SO. Take out your pocket copy and check it.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:08am PT
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What you saw differs greatly from what I saw. If the governmental manipulation had not occurred, none of the private secondary markets would have been around. If this stuff was so profitable, how come so many financial institutions were in trouble?
Well, think about this for a second, and see if it makes sense. Government politicians don't create regulations just for kicks. The create them because important constituents influence them to support such things.
As they say, follow the money.
When deregulation occured, who made (literally) billions? Was it low and middle income people, or were they only the instruments used to do it?
Did they become filthy rich? No.
Did they put millions and millions into politicians re-election funds to influence the creation of de-regulation? No.
Follow the money.
WHO was responsible for getting this deregulation? WHO wanted it?
Answer: the banking and other oligarchs. The Kochs. The 1%.
The real power brokers got what they want. And when the sh!t hit the fan, who got bailed out? They did.
Who is eating it? The instruments.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:40am PT
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Ken, as you know, I quoted the entire First Amendment, and then excerpted the part with freedom of speech and of the press. If the First Amendment is restircted to natural persons, why does it read "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, rather than place "the right of the people" before the prohibition on abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press?
Your meaning requires a Constitutional re-write; mine does not. More importantly, the intent of the restrictions on communication is precisely to prevent the spread of political ideas. Nothing could be more inimical to the spirit and letter of the Amendment.
To answer your Thirteenth Amendment/Orca argument, the definition of a "slave" is, according to Webster, "A person who is the property of and wholly subject to another." [emphasis supplied] The Orca suit loses because the amendment, which states that slavery shall not exist in the United States, by definition does not apply to non-human organisms.
John
John, I expect more of you.
In the Orca issue, you CANNOT use a twenty-first century book to define what the founders meant, when you reject anything except the plain words of the Constitution in interpreting another amendment.
That's intellectual dishonesty.
it never occurred to the Founding Fathers to directly address corporations in America when they wrote the Constitution. While we can only speculate, it is not hard to understand why this would be the case. The Constitution speaks to control of government by the people…for the people…and of the people. Why would it even occur to the Founders that a corporation would ever be perceived as one of ‘the people’? History makes clear that they viewed these entities as forces that preyed on people (see The Boston Tea Party.) Indeed, but for a legal determination made in a perverse Supreme Court holding in 1886, who would rationally see a legal entity as a person? Is a trust a ‘person’? Does it eat, breathe, etc.?
Still, since we are forced to speculate, there is evidence of how the Founders, and the society they created, viewed these legal entities.
After the nation’s founding, corporations were, as they are today, the result of charters granted by the state. However, unlike today, they were limited in how long they were permitted to exist (typically 20 or 30 years), only permitted to deal in one commodity, they could not own shares in other corporations, and their property holdings were expressly limited to what they needed to accomplish their corporate business goals.
Do any of those attributes and limitations apply to people?
Neither the Constitution nor laws of any governmental entity ever limited our lifetimes to a set period of time, never required that we trade in only one business or commodity, never attempted to limit our ability to buy shares in a variety of companies and never limited how much property we can own, or for what purposes.
Clearly, the society created by The Constitution did not see people as the same as corporations or vice-versa.
But here’s the biggie.
Back in the early days of the nation, most states had rules on the books making any political contribution by a corporation a criminal offence.
Over time, these restrictions have changed. BUT NOT BECAUSE THEY WERE UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
The founders were pretty clear on this.
If the First Amendment is restircted to natural persons, why does it read "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, rather than place "the right of the people" before the prohibition on abridgment of freedom of speech and of the press?
Figure of speech. They'd already made it clear that the Constitution applied to people, not blocks of wood.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:42am PT
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John I'm also surprised at your partial quotes, leaving in what you agree with, and leaving out what doesn't agree with you:
WEBSTERS DEFINITION OF SLAVE:
1: a person held in servitude as the chattel of another
2: one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence
3: a device (as the printer of a computer) that is directly responsive to another
4: drudge, toiler
So if we are using your reference, an Orca would fit the definition that you have cited.
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Nov 16, 2011 - 06:15am PT
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Ken M, Do you own a corporation? What kind?
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Nov 16, 2011 - 09:52am PT
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Jorroh
climber
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Nov 16, 2011 - 10:02am PT
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"I don't buy your explanation for the simple reason that if these products were so lucrative, there should have been enough earnings to weather the loss on the last go-round"
On the last go around, mortgages were going bad at a rate of around 30%, on top of which the banks borrowed money to finance these operations, on top of which was the leverage created by the swaps and synthetic CDO's (remember the derivatives market was something like 600 trillion on paper compared to a mortgage market in the 2-3 trillion range) on top of which, have you seen the percentage of bank profits that go towards bonuses?
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 12:33pm PT
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This will be my first and last post to this thread...
At around 1:20 this morning SFPD removed "The Bridge" - which was the newly formed "link" between the large encampment at Justin Herman Plaza and the smaller encampment in front of the Federal Reserve Building 2 blocks away.
Police dismantle part of Occupy SF, arrest seven
The SF Gate comments have always been extremely entertaining, and often give more info than the stories themselves. This one in particular was simply too good knott to share. Still LMAO!!!!!!!1111
(from page 3 of comments)
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:01pm PT
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I am still really stunned that a few, seemingly intelligent folks, want to insists that 150,000,000 million Americans are just lazy rather than 400 families being unacceptably greedy.
I can't for a minute believe that anyone here in TacoTown is of the 1%. Even those of you who are doing well are not. I grew up around Multi, multi millionaires. My Maternal Grand Father was one of the founders of Motorola. He actually named the company. And at one point owned over 15% of the stock There are pics of my mom being bounced on Bill Lear"s (LearJet) knees. My Dad was an American Bicycle racer of some renown who later was an executive for Schwinn Bicycles. The Schwinn family members were frequent guests at our place in Colorado. And I am here to tell you they are not US.
Ron Reagan started and accelerated this free fall into Oligarchical dominion over a population of landless serfs.
But go ahead and sling poo from your monkey cages at the simians who demand to be free.
What is ironic is that much like the original American Rebels and minute men these brave souls are fighting for the loyal Royalists as well.
Too bad those folks can't see through the rigid anti-American dogma that controls them.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:05pm PT
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"Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."
President Of All the People Bush
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:09pm PT
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All the OWS protesters wants is high paying jobs for their worthless degrees, student loans, and unwashed piercings.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:09pm PT
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but they have presented no viable solutions, just complaints. But hey Fats that method has worked so well for Rush DimFlaw.
No Solutions only complaints... Who knew the OWSers were really Republican'ts at heart.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:35pm PT
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All the OWS protesters wants is high paying jobs for their worthless degrees, student loans, and unwashed piercings.
Please prove that inflammatory statement The Fet.
I believe it is more that the realize how out of balance and unsustainable this system has become when Michael Eisner can get hundreds of millions in pay and bonuses from Disney while forcing the Janitorial staff to accept pay and benefit cuts.
Then you few defend Eisner's rights to obscene profiteering while deriding the poor shmuck at the bottom as being a Dirty, Lazy Hippie. If Walt had been around he would have kicked Eisner's ass and showed him the exit.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:37pm PT
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I think the picture proves it quite completely.
The movement isn't about limiting the very wealthy's control over our government or the increasing and unsustainable income and wealth inequality, it's about people wanting $100,000 jobs for humanities degrees.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 01:55pm PT
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What kind of debt related to the operation of a company is paid with after-tax dollars? It is paid with pre-tax dollars.
Interest on business debt is a business expense and deductible (i.e. paid with pre-tax dollars). Principal repayment of loans is not deductible (and not paid with pre-tax dollars) for the same reason that receipt of loan proceeeds is not income.
His accountant does his or her job just fine.
And on a slightly different note, that sfgate comment is absolutely hilarious. Thanks, HK, for posting it!
John
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:01pm PT
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I think the picture proves it quite completely.
The movement isn't about limiting the very wealthy's control over our government or the increasing and unsustainable income and wealth inequality, it's about people wanting $100,000 jobs for humanities degrees.
Again with the unsubstantiated claim. And again I ask you to PROVE it. That picture proves nothing of your base assertion. What about the US service Vets protesting? Or the retired elderly? Or the clergy from all denominations?
Why are you such a c*#ks@ckingf*#khead that you have to blanket denigrate 99% of the population.
If you are trolling then I apologize. If not I hope you get vacuum sealed to your toilet seat so you can be left alone with the crap that comes out of you.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:04pm PT
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Ken M, Do you own a corporation? What kind?
Are you asking if I am a slaveowner? :)
I am not an closely-held owner of any corporation, such as a professional corporation, or the general partner in a limited liability corporation.
I am a limited partner in a couple of corporations.
I own generally traded stock on the stock exchange, mainly in mutual funds, which technically makes me an owner.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:09pm PT
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Sheesh Philo, it's almost like the picture proves the opposite of what I (and the right wingers on this thread) was saying. ;-)
Edit to add: from what I've read about Walt Disney he would have been firmly against OWS. He took credit/profit for what a lot of people under him did. And a lot left to to go places like Warner Bros.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:12pm PT
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It does. It shows a peaceful protest with a diverse group in attendance. It even takes a solid shot at President Obama. The wrongwingers should be gleeful. So why the hate?
Edit to add: from what I've read about Walt Disney he would have been firmly against OWS. He took credit/profit for what a lot of people under him did. And a lot left to to go places like Warner Bros.
He knew by name almost everyone from top to bottom on his production lot.
A great client of mine started working at Disney as a 15 yr old laborer. He worked his way up to upper level management during Walt's tenure. He told me many wonderful stories about Walt. The one that strikes me now is about when he was digging a ditch in 100+ temps. Walt walked up and saw him struggling badly and told him to come up for a shady break and a cool drink. My client balked afraid he would get fired by his grumpy supervisor. Walt said "do you know who I am?" Of course my client did and when asked his name by Walt the exchanged a formal greeting. Well Walt convinced him it was OK to climb out of the ditch for a break, Then he called the supervisor over and told him in NO UNCERTAIN terms to get this hard working man shade and water. Yes sir was all the supervisor said before personally getting a cooler and an umbrella for my client. From that day on Walt always remembered this skinny kids name and from that day on he said hello to him by name every time they met. Walt cared a great deal for all his employees. He treated them very well.
Those that you mentioned leaving did so because they were bribed away with promises of bloated salaries. In those days NO ONE could compete with the artists of the Disney production team. So there were always lots of underhanded deals being presented to them to leave.
Walt Disney despised big bankers with a nearly unrivaled disdain. When he was starting Disneyland and obtaining funding the fat cat bankers would only lend him the money under nearly impossible repayment terms. In spite of their efforts to break him Walt paid off the note ahead of time and NEVER went back to the banks. The bankers hated him for his successes he hated them for their unrivaled greed. I believe Walt Disney would be front and central at the OWS events.
People like Walt Disney and Charles Schultz made personal fortunes by working their asses off making other peoples lives a little better and a little brighter every day. I admire that completely.
But tell me please what does an Eisner (who can't even draw) or an Wall Street investment shill really do to warrant the money they steal?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:21pm PT
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I don't get how the picture takes a shot at Obama.
I guess it does look like the capital hill politician just crapped out an African American's head.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 02:36pm PT
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If you don't get it may I suggest you pull your head out of your ass because the view through your belly button is restricting your perceptive abilities.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 03:02pm PT
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Yes, MY perceptive abilities are lacking. LOL
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 04:47pm PT
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Here's another one of those latte sipping, iPhone/iPad toting, live in the parents basement, commies, who want to leach off society. The police had no choice except to pepper spray such a dangerous threat.
P.S. She looks like she could be Batso's sister.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 04:49pm PT
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Was that before or after she was pepper sprayed?
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 16, 2011 - 05:34pm PT
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Well crack she just came out of one of those tents and you know what goes on at those OWS camps.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 16, 2011 - 06:41pm PT
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As the "occupations" are generally taking place in urban areas, in the full glare of the news media, governments and the courts, police departments will generally be careful not to use excessive force. As with the "occupiers", there'll no doubt be exceptions.
However, they will turn a heatray on PhatTrad. Way more fun than a taser.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Nov 16, 2011 - 06:53pm PT
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SF OWS has taken over a B of A branch, no crying when the heavy tooling happens.
Taken over. Really?
I see a news story says 7 were arrested outside a BoA after setting up an encampment.
If THAT is your idea of "taking over" BoA....how can you ever expect anyone to take anything you say seriously?
Seriously!
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:16pm PT
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The Mayor of SF is derelect of his duties. As is the Governor.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:19pm PT
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Yes, I agree with Blew. The Mayor and the Governor should be camping on the streets with the real Americans.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:24pm PT
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The Mayor of SF is derelect of his duties.
Hmmm, aren't right wingers in favour of free speech, even if it sometimes means a little inconvenience for others? Or is it only free speech for corporations?
The "occupiers" have been occupying for some weeks now, and aren't posing any problem or nuisance that they weren't posing yesterday. There's no need to do anything about them - in most US cities, advancing winter weather, and boredom, will gradually weed them out.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:32pm PT
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Hmmm, aren't right wingers in favour of free speech, even if it sometimes means a little inconvenience for others? Or is it only free speech for corporations?
The "occupiers" have been occupying for some weeks now, and aren't posing any problem or nuisance that they weren't posing yesterday. There's no need to do anything about them - in most US cities, advancing winter weather, and boredom, will gradually weed them out.
Peaceful assembly may not be known in the Canadian Constitution, but it is here. This is not a "free-speech" issue.
Did you know that SF cops were recently cut with razors? Tuberculosis, scabies, and ringworm has broken out in various camps.
Small, local businesses (not the 1%) are suffering in some locations. Grafitti is more rampant than usual. Jew-hating is up.
No, these people are a public nuisance. If these dirtbags aren't dealt with appropraitely now, it will escalate. As will the necessary use of force.
The blame will be put unfairly on the LEO, but it rest with the people charged with the DUTY to protect the public they serve. The city/state leaders telling cops to do nothing.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:33pm PT
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:33pm PT
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Please provide objective, factual sources for your claims. Anecdotal allegations don't prove anything.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:34pm PT
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Free speech for them means carrying assault rifles to political rallies carrying placards threatening to "water the tree". Oh that and putting Bull's Eyes on congressional district maps of politicians"targeted for removal". Some who just happen to end up being shot in the head.
But peaceful protests by a wide diversity of citizens who's biggest crime is having set up a free People's Library well they need to be driven off like cattle..
Why do you wrongwingers hate America so?
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:42pm PT
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The right loves America when it conforms to and serves it's ulterior motive. (dollars)
The left loves America, but bitches incessantly when it doesn't do everything perfectly.
I love America. Period.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 16, 2011 - 07:44pm PT
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Mobs are one of the less attractive features of democracy, whatever their beliefs. It seems unlikely that there's a significant difference between teabag mobs and OWS mobs, in terms of the nuisance they cause. Every mob is likely to encompass some mischief and foolishness, usually minor. Mobs seem a necessary part of freedom of expression, one that it's good to have a robust attitude about.
And if you think that teabagger mobs were somehow superior to the OWS variety, I have a bridge that you might be interested in. Birds of a feather.
I promise not to over-generalize and stereotype if you do.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 08:01pm PT
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TWO cops got scratches! BFD! Give them the Purple Pork Chop award for valor in the heat of battle.
What about the Iraq Vet with the crushed skull from being shot point blank with a tear gas canister by a COP just to mention one case of police brutality? Give that COP the same award.
What about the documented fact that when other protesters went to the fallen vet's aid they were driven off by a hail of rubber bullets from the COPS.
How conveniently you use and abuse the value of others to fit your lame argument.
So in your twisted world a couple of scratched cops are enough for you to condemn a whole movement.
Dude you are on the wrong side of a critical moment. The revolution will not be televised.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 16, 2011 - 09:07pm PT
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Fact is "No taxation" should mean no representation.
Because I pay my taxes I should be represented.
But I feel I am not.
I say give all the rich people to Sandusky and let him have his way with them!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 09:11pm PT
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I am still really stunned that a few, seemingly intelligent folks, want to insists that 150,000,000 million Americans are just lazy rather than 400 families being unacceptably greedy.
I can't for a minute believe that anyone here in TacoTown is of the 1%. Even those of you who are doing well are not. I grew up around Multi, multi millionaires. My Maternal Grand Father was one of the founders of Motorola. He actually named the company. And at one point owned over 15% of the stock There are pics of my mom being bounced on Bill Lear"s (LearJet) knees. My Dad was an American Bicycle racer of some renown who later was an executive for Schwinn Bicycles. The Schwinn family members were frequent guests at our place in Colorado. And I am here to tell you they are not US.
Ron Reagan started and accelerated this free fall into Oligarchical dominion over a population of landless serfs.
But go ahead and sling poo from your monkey cages at the simians who demand to be free.
What is ironic is that much like the original American Rebels and minute men these brave souls are fighting for the loyal Royalists as well.
Too bad those folks can't see through the rigid anti-American dogma that controls them.
Edit
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 09:12pm PT
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Sling Poo. heh heh he said poo.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 09:55pm PT
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So in your twisted world a couple of scratched cops are enough for you to condemn a whole movement.
Yep. When YOU chose to compare it to the Tea PArty, yes!
Tea Partiers do not sh#t in public or on police cars. They do not urinate inside banks. They do not generate an environment of disease in public parks. They do not cut police officers with razors. They do not invade private businesses. They do not blame Jews for being good businessmen and hard workers.
In short, Tea Partiers are respectful while being outspoken.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Nov 16, 2011 - 10:27pm PT
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were gonna start tearing up the schools next,
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Nov 16, 2011 - 10:33pm PT
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When you literally have nothing to say, post other people's pictures over and over.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:01pm PT
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:02pm PT
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Fattrad..Did you ever heat your twinky with the heat ray? RJ
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:22pm PT
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Okay Donald, you've proven your point, we now agree with you that you're an idiot.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:30pm PT
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I'll reiterate;
Tea Partiers do not sh#t in public or on police cars. They do not urinate inside banks. They do not generate an environment of disease in public parks. They do not cut police officers with razors. They do not invade private businesses. They do not blame Jews for being good businessmen and hard workers.
In short, Tea Partiers are respectful while being outspoken.
OWS bumbs need to be swept up with a broom like the scum they are. If they really want change and reform???? Talk to Tea Party activists.
I'm serious. We fight for similar causes, but you f*#ks just do it totally wrong!!!!!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:38pm PT
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We are beginning to see the pattern of free time at the sanitarium where DonnieBoy lives.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:42pm PT
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Tonight on Fox News, Bill O'Reilly said the Occupy Wall Street movement was finished.
You know what that means...
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:47pm PT
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I am still really stunned that a few, seemingly intelligent folks, want to insists that 150,000,000 million Americans are just lazy rather than 400 families being unacceptably greedy.
I can't for a minute believe that anyone here in TacoTown is of the 1%. Even those of you who are doing well are not. I grew up around Multi, multi millionaires. My Maternal Grand Father was one of the founders of Motorola. He actually named the company. And at one point owned over 15% of the stock There are pics of my mom being bounced on Bill Lear"s (LearJet) knees. My Dad was an American Bicycle racer of some renown who later was an executive for Schwinn Bicycles. The Schwinn family members were frequent guests at our place in Colorado. And I am here to tell you they are not US.
Ron Reagan started and accelerated this free fall into Oligarchical dominion over a population of landless serfs.
But go ahead and sling poo from your monkey cages at the simians who demand to be free.
What is ironic is that much like the original American Rebels and minute men these brave souls are fighting for the loyal Royalists as well.
Too bad those folks can't see through the rigid anti-American dogma that controls them.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:55pm PT
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Hey Philo, have you gone out too? And Occupied?
Be honest, if you can.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 16, 2011 - 11:59pm PT
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Yeah!
OCCUPY
my Bed.
OCCUPY
Cabin Fever.
Occupy
Insomnia.
"Hello McFly"
Dude I am in a cervical collar after a 4 layer ACDF 2 1/2 months ago. Where you been? WTF are you thinking?...
Getting roughed up by COPS is probably not a good idea for me. YET!
I live in terror of little blue haired ladies popping up around corners at the grocery store.
It's a victory if I can OCCUPY control of my sphincter when someone walks behind me.
What about you? Have you been out ousting any Real Americans?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:08am PT
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Why are our domestic cops better equipped than our soldiers overseas in the wars the neo-cons made for them? Who do the Neo-cons think is the real enemy?
I think the OWS-ers should be equally protected with body armor. Although theirs should be tie-died. If they really are as "non-leathal" as law-n-order cretins say they are then protesters should also be able to have as many tasers as they can carry.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:25am PT
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Maybe "Village Zombie People" would be more correct.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:27am PT
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Donnie, be honest, you still have Eric Estrada pin ups in your gym locker don't you?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:36am PT
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What about you? Have you been out ousting any Real Americans.
I have a job, a family, and responsibilities. I do not sympythize with losers.
These idiots should pray that my justice isn't unleashed. I have plans for them. We'd see how willing they were to do some work for money.
F*#king losers....
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:39am PT
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These idiots should pray that my justice isn't unleashed. I have plans for them. We'd see how willing they were to do some work for money.
Spoken like a true goose stepper.
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apogee
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:39am PT
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For you, DT...
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:45am PT
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DT, are you on drugs?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:47am PT
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Apogee too funny! Can you add a cop cap and a badge?
He already has his taser packed. Ooooh Donnie sweet dreams Mr Delusional.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:49am PT
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:51am PT
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Seriously. Are you on drugs? Mental illness? How else to explain you?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:54am PT
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Here Dirtbag let me answer that...
Shill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A shill, plant or stooge is a person who helps a person or organization without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with that person or organization . ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:55am PT
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I think you're on to something...
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:59am PT
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No Donnie the village people didn't look good in BROWNSHIRTS.
And since you can not notice - the protesters are not the ones inciting violence.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:04am PT
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Dude I live in the People's Republic.
If I did that the cops are apt to give me a ride to the nearest MedMary shop.
Hey thanks that's a good idea.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:06am PT
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I do not sympythize with losers.
Oh, yes you do, bluering, yes you do.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:15am PT
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Phiio, why not come out as a Jew-hater?
You know you and yer peeps hate those rotten jew bankers, right???
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:28am PT
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Phiio, why not come out as a Jew-hater?
You know you and yer peeps hate those rotten jew bankers, right???
Well Blewboi just because you keep letting me get under your skin with the truth doesn't mean you need to continue to fabricate slanderous comments about me. I have several Synagogue going family members who would find your comment amusing if it weren't so lame.
Butt BoiBlue any time you want to sack up and admit you are an anti-semite we will all listen.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 17, 2011 - 02:32am PT
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philo: 150,000,000 million Americans
If there are 150,000,000 million Americans, even including everybody that lives in the Americas but outside the US, I'll donate $1,000 dollars to the Access Fund.
The last census, there were only about 300 million (300,000,000) of you.
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Degaine
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 04:15am PT
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DT wrote:
Thank you OWS for providing a reminder to the American people of just how abysmally unpopular radical leftism really is.
Could you please articulate what you think is radically left about the OWS protestors?
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Degaine
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 04:23am PT
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bluering wrote:
They do not blame Jews for being good businessmen and hard workers.
Honest question, who has been blaming Jewish people?
Most of the anti-semitism I have personally experienced has come from the right, and most of that from the religious right and neo-nazi/skinheads (who are part of the right, and yes, vote Republican).
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 07:44am PT
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Just Like the Tea Party: A List of Occupy Mayhem Sorted by Type
Verum Serum on November 16, 2011 at 7:04 pm
Rather than just an unordered list, I was thinking it might be helpful to categorize the mayhem by type.
•Arson
■Occupy Fort Collins – Member arrested, $10 million in damage
■Occupy Portland - Member arrested for throwing Molotov Cocktail
■Occupy Seattle – Suspicious fire at Bank of America 2.7 miles from camp
■Occupy Portland – Three men arrested with homemade grenades
•Assault/Threats
■Occupy SF – 12 assaults in 24 hours
■Occupy LA – 4 assaults including two with knives
■Occupy Philly – Man punches woman in the face
■Occupy LA – Two assaults including setting someone on fire
■Occupy Berkeley – Police respond to three assault calls per night
■Occupy Wall Street – Three men threaten the life of a sexual assault victim
■Occupy Lawrence – Punch thrown
■Occupy Orlando – Knife fight sends man to hospital
■Occupy Portland – Multiple assaults within a 24 hr. period
■Occupy Toledo – Man assaults police officer after arrest
■Occupy San Diego – Woman assaults cameraman
■Occupy Victoria – Man dumps urine on city worker
■Occupy Vancouver – Two police officers bitten during near riot
■Occupy Oakland – Death threats
■Occupy Austin – Man in Joker make-up arrested for brandishing knife
■Occupy Oakland – Man sets his dog on reporter
■Occupy Oakland – Man pulls a knife in camp
■Occupy Wall Street – Photographer assaulted
•Drugs/Dealing
■Occupy Boston – Two drug busts in a week
■Occupy Boston – Another drug arrest
■Occupy Boston – Heroin dealers busted were living with 6 year old boy directly behind welcome tent
■Occupy Portland – First hand account “Drugs. Selling…Heroin. Meth.”
■Occupy Portland – Video of open drug use in the camp
■Occupy Portland – “I get high“
•Fraud
■National Lawyer’s Guild member Ari Douglas pretends to be run over by a police scooter
•Illness/Death
■Occupy Santa Cruz – Ringworm outbreak
■Occupy Atlanta – TB outbreak
■Occupy Wall Street – Zuccotti lung outbreak
■Occupy New Orleans – Man discovered in tent had been dead 2 days
■Occupy Portland – Body lice outbreak
•Murder
■Occupy Oakland – Fatal shooting
•Public disturbance
■Occupy Dallas – Protesters block bank entrance, 23 arrested
■Occupy Vancouver – Mob with bullhorn enters bank
■Occupy Wall Street – Protesters block bank entrance, four arrested
■Occupier takes a bathroom break in the street
■Occupy Vancouver – Occupiers disrupt debate, threaten riot when asked to leave
■Occupy Long Beach – Group disrupts city council meeting
■Occupy Boston – Three arrested for occupying Burger King
■Occupy Oakland – Yelling and nonsense at Burger King
■Occupy DC – Group storms AFP event, traps attendees inside
•Rape/Sexual Assault
■Occupy Philly – Man arrested for alleged rape
■Occupy Wall Street – Two sexual assaults unreported to police
■Occupy Wall Street – Man arrested for sexual assault, suspect in rape
■Occupy Dallas – Sex offender allegedly rapes 14 year old
■Occupy Ottawa – Sexual assaults go unreported to police
■Occupy Lawrence – Sexual assault reported
■Occupy Toronto – Foot sniffer arrested
■Occupy Seattle – Man exposes himself to young girls
■Occupy Portland – Sexual assault
■Occupy Wall Street – Drunk gropes women in Zuccotti Park
■Occupy Cleveland – Rape reported after an overnight stay
■Occupy Glasgow – Possible gang rape
■Occupy Baltimore – Multiple reports of harassment
■Occupy Chicago – Man arrested for child porn
■Occupy LA – Man charged with exposing himself to a child
•Sedition
■Occupy DC – Let’s have a coup by taking over the military
■Ted Rall wants occupiers to choose the path of violence
■Occupy DC – Mike Malloy incites crowd to cheer for President Bush’s execution
•Suicide/Overdose
■Occupy Burlington – Man kills himself with handgun
■Occupy Salt Lake City – Man found dead with syringe in his tent
■Occupy Vancouver – Young woman dies of cocaine and heroine overdose
■Occupy OKC – Young man with history of drug abuse found dead
•Theft
■Occupy Portland – Theft is ongoing
■Occupy Boston – Store owner suffers 4 break-ins since camp began
•Vandalism
■Occupy Eureka – Protesters use local bank as a toilet
■Occupy Portland – Two banks vandalized, promises of more to come
■Occupy Oakland – Bank windows broken, Whole Foods vandalized, broken windows
■Occupy Boston – Banks vandalized with anarchist, OWS graffiti
■Occupy Portland – Spike in vandalism near camp
■Occupy SF: ATMs being smeared with feces
■Occupy Santa Fe: Banks vandalized with OWS-themed graffiti
■Occupy San Diego – Vendors cart vandalized with bodily fluids
■Occupy graffiti found on PA governor’s mansion
I’m leaving some out, but these are the ones we’ve covered on the blog so far.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 17, 2011 - 08:25am PT
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 17, 2011 - 08:51am PT
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Could you please articulate what you think is radically left about the OWS protestors?
Of course he can't. He's never thought about any of this on any sort of real level. It's all about posturing.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 17, 2011 - 09:19am PT
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Actually,
The White House shooter is much more Tea Party than OWS
News reports say he hated Obama and hated the "government".
VERY much the same as Tea Party good old regular Americans.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 17, 2011 - 11:58am PT
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It's ok to hate on the government and Obama.
Spoken like a true right wing christian.
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new world order-
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:07pm PT
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If there's 3 things Mighty Hiker hates, (strong word) it's Christians, Republicans, and conspiracy theories.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 17, 2011 - 12:35pm PT
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A bunch Occupy L.A. fools have set up tents in the middle of the street in Downtown L.A.
What's the point of that?
EDTI:
The LAPD has started dragging their asses out of the street. It appears OWS chose their biggest, fattest** protestors especially for this opperation, probably an effort to double the work of the cops.
** Or maybe The Unions are involved, that would explain the over-excessive girth of these people.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:33pm PT
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Could you please articulate what you think is radically left about the OWS protestors?
he OWS protesters I've heard speak of being anti-capitalist. That, essentially, defines the modern left-wing.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:36pm PT
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This Statement of Beliefs is now posted on www.OccupyTheConstitution.org
That Statement of Beliefs is surely in the running for the ward for least content in the most words.
John
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:37pm PT
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Norton: what say ye?
Fattrad posted:
"Norton,
I would feel very badly taking your money, so I must decline your offer. Tell you what, if Obama wins, I will donate $5k to the climbing non-profit of your choice.
The evil one "
I see this as win. Norton, you wanted to bet Jeff $10000 on the election, are you gonna pony up $5000 to a climbing non-profit if a republican wins? It's cheaper than giving Jeff $10,000 and more productive as well.
Thinking win-win:-)
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 01:38pm PT
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Still curious, what grievances do corporate lobbyists wish to have redressed? And are huge campaign donations an acceptable form of petition?
Corporate lobbyists are individuals, so I assume you meant corporations. They would have the same grievances as any other collection of individuals, and make the same sorts of "huge campaign donations" as any other aggregation of individuals, except that corporations tend to be bipartisan in their largesse, unlike unions, that have placed all their members' bets on a donkey.
John
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 17, 2011 - 02:13pm PT
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Interesting ( but not alltogether surprising ) that The Movement would choose as the symbol of their movement the cheap, Chinese-made WalMart tent.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Nov 17, 2011 - 03:05pm PT
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It's funny to see folks see all the positives of OWS and the Tea Party but none of their faults depending on which "side" they are on.
I think the OWS grievances are much more important than Tea Partiers given the current state of the economy and how we got here. But the OWS are generating a lot more negative press than the Tea Party does. But then again the Tea Party helped get the current crop of idiot, obstructionist, ideologue House Republicans in office so they'll pay the price for that next election.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 04:21pm PT
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Three questions, lovesgasoline:
By whom were the msm siezed so long ago?
What evidence do you have of this siezure?
Why is the fact of this siezure known only to so few?
John
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 17, 2011 - 06:08pm PT
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JE has a valid point. The so-called "main stream media" (largely right of centre) is mostly owned (shares or bonds) by pension funds, IRAs, and other small investors. They usually have little say in corporate policy, even when aggregated, but are the owners/beneficiaries. Certainly there is no shortage of larger investors, often rapacious in their tactics, but the ultimate owner of a lot of big corporations is nominally "small" or better still "99%" Americans.
The actual control of the big corporations is largely limited to a self-serving managerial class, who don't necessarily have a significant ownership interest. They tend to retain control as long as the stock and dividends hold their own, and no raider comes along to disturb them. Corporate governance and accountability is a very real issue.
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new world order-
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 06:19pm PT
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Three questions, lovesgasoline:
By whom were the msm siezed so long ago?
What evidence do you have of this siezure?
Why is the fact of this siezure known only to so few?
John
Try not to consider the source, John. Read this, and keep an open mind. Afterall, you're not going to find views below, on mainstream media sites, for it is the corporations who own, mainstream media.
A parachute (like the mind) works better when it's open.
http://www.infowars.com/who-are-their-prey-all-of-us-from-the-left-and-right/
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new world order-
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 06:24pm PT
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I've found the more a person works for the Man, the less likely he is to believe in OWS, 9/11 being an inside job (and the whole host of so-called conspiracy theories).
So, folks like Mighty Hiker (a lawyer), doctors, dentists, government employees, police, teachers, etc. etc., would never even consider investigating said, conspiracy theories, let alone believing them. They are....the Man. Their minds are made up. They have been programmed. Sad, that.
Come on! Could you picture Mighty Hiker at an Occupy Wall Street event? Lols.
John? With all due respect, do you work for The Man? I can almost bet, you do.
Ed Hartouni, healyje, what say you?
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new world order-
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 06:55pm PT
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but the ultimate owner of a lot of big corporations is nominally "small" or better still "99%" Americans.--Mighty Hiker
Quote du jour, Anders. Quote du jour!
Where DO you come up with this nonsense? Too funny.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 17, 2011 - 07:13pm PT
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Umm, actually I did visit the Occupy Vancouver site, and walk around. I have sympathy for the original demonstrators and at least some of their causes, whatever the quality of their demonstration. (I didn't actually demonstrate.) The demonstration here has gradually been co-opted by others, such as the homeless/poverty lobby, which hasn't helped it. However, after the Canucks riot in June, and with a civic election this Saturday, our (moderately liberal) city council has only cautiously asserted itself. Assuming that it doesn't snow over the weekend, I expect a city crackdown next week.
As for ownership of corporations, add up the total value of assets held by pension funds, IRAs (mutual funds) and social security. It's almost all in shares and real estate, and overall a high percentage of both are so owned. Nominally it means that fund managers, on behalf of individual investors, should have a strong voice. Which they do - for profit, to benefit the individuals. It doesn't quite work that way in reality, as the fund managers and management seem to benefit more, not to mention those with the resources to invest on their own.
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new world order-
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 07:26pm PT
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(I didn't actually demonstrate.) --MH
^^^I wouldn't think so. You just "walk around" and feel pity for the homeless/poverty lobby.
It doesn't quite work that way in reality, as the fund managers and management seem to benefit more, not to mention those with the resources to invest on their own. --MH
^^^Oh! So, which statement of yours do you reeeally stand by? the ultimate owner of a lot of big corporations is nominally "small" or better still "99%" Americans. Both, I reckon.
I expect a city crackdown next week.--MH
^^^ Oh, there will be a crackdown all right. By the very government and corporations who co-opted the entire OWS event from the very beginning.
Funny how the media and corporations sympathized with OWS from it's onset, but today are all for dismantling it.
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new world order-
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 08:56pm PT
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war, your anger speaks volumes.
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new world order-
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 09:01pm PT
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Cedar wood! That shite constantly gets caught up in my mtn. bike gears!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 17, 2011 - 09:42pm PT
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Thanks New World Order. My mind is open, but epistimologically, it works like Bayesian probability: my "prior distribution" has significant weight. I haven't had a change to read and digest your source, and need to go to a rehearsal now, so I'll comment later.
By the way, I work for myself, and my clients range from banks (clearly "the man") to consumers (clearly not "the man.") to governmental entities (you decide what that is).
I also need to come to the defense of my fried Mighty Hiker. If he hates me (I am a Christian), he hides it well. I think he hates injustice, as do I. We just have different prescriptions for its end.
John
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Jorroh
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 09:48pm PT
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And what better way to end injustice than to enable corporations and the wealthy to completely dominate the political process. You're a real man of the people John.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 10:12pm PT
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The protests are losing my support.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 17, 2011 - 11:57pm PT
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please describe this slide of your support
I'm having doubts it's still about addressing growing economic inequality and economic justice. A lot of the energy is now spent on camping in parks for weeks on end and that kind of, frankly, pointless crap.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 18, 2011 - 12:15am PT
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I feared from the beginning what is happening now, the message of the original OWS being layered over by the lunatic fringe out to have a party good time raising hell
Just like an English soccer game with the 20 year old males get stupid crazy.
The message is now spent. Continued "protests" now only harm the original peacefully civil gatherings with clear message.
Yes Dirtbag, the media concentrates only on what sells advertising and that is sensationalism and sex.
And so the media focuses now exclusively on the outliers, the dirtbag campers, the crimes by obviously not seriously protesting as#@&%es.
I support the movement and the message, but not what the public spectacle has become.
The Tea Party was well organized and funded and comparatively small public gatherings with the Beck one in DC the lone exception.
OWS has no funding, no central leadership that came about by consensus, and as such no "control" over whatever message is being portrayed.
Grass Roots Democracy is a bitch, all types present, often ugly.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 18, 2011 - 12:24am PT
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what your take on activist history and previous suscess......
doesnt change occur when the cost of settling with the protestors is less than cost of what their protests intransigence incurs?
I think Americans have a limited stomach for civil disobedience. Most of the time I don't think it works very well. It's one thing when cops beat the sh#t out of black people marching peacefully during daylight hours back in the 60s, or sit in bus seats they can never sit in. I think civil disobedience in that situation works and really, they had no other recourse. The absolute injustice is highlighted. It's persuasive.
OWS should be, IMHO, about getting support and awareness of the economic justice and inequality issues. That was it's original message. Cool, I'm with that. But now, as I said, that message is getting lost. The message is now about showing up cops, or camping in parks. That kind of nonsense. I don't know of very many instances where cops, city officials, etc. have come in and said "Get the fukk out, you can't gather here at all." (And those folks are not the problem, btw.) OWSers can still express their view points, and many have done so legally, but they do not have the right to assemble at any god damned hour, at great expense to cities, surrounding businesses and residences, and squat in parks for weeks on end. No one else gets to do that--why are OWSers special? I just don't have much sympathy for that. By and large, there isn't much legal support for that either. Free speech does not mean you get to assemble whenever and wherever you want.
I'm sure a lot of this is exaggerated by a media that thrives on conflict, which drives ratings. But a lot isn't. If the movement is losing people like me--and I know at least one like minded friend who feels as i do--it is in real trouble. It's really too bad.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 18, 2011 - 12:38am PT
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Is that going to achieve the goal of real, tangible change for the 99%?
I don't think so.
"Stick it to the f*#kers"
That sh#t is just not going to work/
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Nov 18, 2011 - 12:58am PT
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you mean,
you could not think your way out of a cardboard box
not card board.
if it were card board, then you want a hyphen in there, like
card-board.
but hyphens, and hymens, went out in the 70's.
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Nov 18, 2011 - 01:02am PT
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i was sayin,
"war, huh, what is it good for, absolutely nuthin,"
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Nov 18, 2011 - 01:14am PT
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you have a list of the 1 percent types, i could use a new microwave oven,
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 18, 2011 - 01:57am PT
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So did you guys hear about the riot in Pennsylvania?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 18, 2011 - 02:03am PT
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A crowd of thousands of people, who made a big mess and destroyed a lot of property, and created a lot of problems for the public and the police. Disgusting!
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 18, 2011 - 02:11am PT
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Yo, skipt, you won't believe this, but I agree with Sarah Palin.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 18, 2011 - 08:12am PT
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Nov 18, 2011 - 02:09pm PT
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You betcha! ;-)
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Hilt
Social climber
Utah
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Nov 18, 2011 - 03:12pm PT
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First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Martin Niemöller-
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Nov 18, 2011 - 03:20pm PT
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OWS has crossed the line and become domestic terrorists! Homeland Security
is surely getting ready to do mass arrests, process and transport the lot of them down to Gitmo.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 18, 2011 - 03:55pm PT
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Yes, there was a big riot in Pennsylvania just the other day. Thousands of entitled young people protesting against the status quo. They caused a lot of damage, and negatively affected the public and the police.
I'm referring, of course, to the university students who rioted when their football coach was fired, for not taking appropriate action to respond to pedophilia. The yuppie scum seemed to think that football was more important than criminal law, or higher education.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 18, 2011 - 05:17pm PT
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You missed it because yesterday was Thursday.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 18, 2011 - 05:56pm PT
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The Declaration of the Occupation of Washington, D.C.
Consented to in committee November 15th, 2011
We have been captives of corrupt economic and political systems for far too long. The concentration of wealth and the purchase of political power stifle the voices of the increasingly disenfranchised 99%. Corporate dominance subverts democracy, intentionally sows division, destroys the environment, obstructs the just and equitable pursuit of happiness, and violates the rights and dignity of all life.
Occupy D.C. is an open community of diverse individuals, founded on equality for the common good. We are peaceably assembled at McPherson Square, practicing direct democracy on the doorstep of K Street, the center of destructive corporate and governmental relationships. We insist that our political and economic systems serve the people’s interests. Now is the time to advance and complete the struggles of those who came before us.
We are assembled because...
It is absurd that The 1% has taken 40% of the nation’s wealth through exploiting labor, outsourcing jobs, and manipulating the tax code to their benefit through special capital tax rates and loopholes. The system is rigged in their favor, yet they cry foul when anyone even dares to question their relentless class warfare.
Candidates in our electoral system require huge sums of money to be competitive. These contributions from multi-national corporations and wealthy individuals destroy responsive representative governance. A system of backroom deals, kickbacks, bribes, and dirty politics overrides the will of the people. The rotation of decision-makers between the public and private sectors cultivates a network of public officials, lobbyists, and executives whose aligned interests do not serve the American people.
The entrenched 2-party system overlooks public interests by pursuing narrow political goals. This climate encourages candidates to polarize voters for individual power and personal gain. Citizens’ meaningful input has been compromised by gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, and unresponsive politicians. Residents of Washington DC continue to lack autonomy and legislative representation.
Those with power have divided us from working in solidarity by perpetuating historical prejudices and discrimination based on color of skin, perceived race, immigrant or indigenous status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability, among other things.
Corporations broke the financial system by gambling with our savings, property, and economy. They needed the public to bail them out of their failures yet deny any responsibility and continue to fight oversight. They loot from those whose labor creates society’s prosperity, while the government allows them to privatize profits and socialize risk.
Corporate interests threaten life on Earth by extracting and burning fossil fuels and resisting the necessary transition to renewable energy. Their drilling, mining, clear-cutting, overfishing, and factory farming destroys the land, jeopardizes our food and water, and poisons the soil with near impunity. They privilege polluters over people by subsidizing fossil fuels, blocking investments in clean energy and efficient transportation, and hiding environmental destruction from public oversight.
Private corporations, with the government’s support, use common resources and infrastructure for short-term personal profit, while stifling efforts to invest in public goods.
The U.S. government engages in drawn-out, costly conflicts abroad. These operations are often pursued to control resources, needlessly overthrow foreign governments, and install friendly regimes. These wars destroy the lives of American soldiers and innocent civilians and are a blank check to divert money from domestic priorities.
Government authorities cultivate a culture of fear to invade our privacy, limit assembly, restrict speech, and deny due process. They have failed in their duty to protect our rights. Exacerbated by profiteering interests, the criminal justice system has unfairly targeted underprivileged communities and outspoken groups for prosecution rather than protection.
Corporatized culture warps our perception of reality. It cheapens and mocks the beauty of human thought and experience, while promoting excessive materialism as the path to happiness. The corporate news media furthers the interests of the very wealthy, distorts and disregards the truth, and confines our imagination of what is possible for ourselves and society.
Leaders are trading our access to basic needs in exchange for handouts to the ultra-wealthy. Our rights to healthcare, education, food, water, and housing are sacrificed to profit-driven market forces. They are attacking unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, creating an uncertain future for us all.*
A better world is possible. To all people,
We, the Washington D.C. General Assembly occupying K Street in McPherson Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble and reclaim the commons. Re-conceive ways to build a democratic, just, and sustainable world.
To all who value democracy, we encourage you to collaborate, and share available resources. We stand with you in solidarity.
*These grievances are not all inclusive.
http://crooksandliars.com/
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 18, 2011 - 05:58pm PT
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So, how do they plan on fixing it?
How do we know their solution isn't worse than the problem?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 18, 2011 - 06:05pm PT
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Just wondering...
Anybody have any good ideas where this thing will end up?
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 18, 2011 - 06:34pm PT
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Some ended up in the hospital.
Some ended up going out of business, because occupiers displaced normal commerce, and replaced it with feces.
Some ended up being raped, so now they'll have a lifetime of emotional demons they otherwise wouldn't have had to deal with.
And at least one occupier ended up being deported back to Mexico, because he was foolish enough to get arrested on purpose, and they found out he was an illegal.
See, they really are making a difference!
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 18, 2011 - 07:11pm PT
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How's this reform going to look?
How do we know the occupier's solution won't be worse than the problem?
They don't exactly earn any kind of trust, trashing places and associating with lunatic radicals.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Nov 19, 2011 - 01:15pm PT
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Looks like Nixon back in town or actually House Speaker John Boehner
Lobbying firm's memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street
By Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky, MSNBC TV
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”
The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”
The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker; Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.
Jeff Sigmund, an ABA spokesperson, confirmed that the association got the memo. “Our Government Relations staff did receive the proposal – it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way,” he said in a statement to "Up."
CLGC did not return calls seeking comment.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel declined to comment on the memo. But he responded to its characterization of Republicans as defenders of Wall Street by saying, “My understanding is that President Obama is the single largest recipient of donations from Wall Street.”
On “Up” Saturday, Obama campaign adviser Anita Dunn responded by saying that the majority of the president’s re-election campaign is fueled by small donors. She rejected the suggestion that the president himself is too close to Wall Street, saying “If that’s the case, why were tough financial reforms passed over party line Republican opposition?”
The CLGC memo raises another issue that it says should be of concern to the financial industry -- that OWS might find common cause with the Tea Party. “Well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where OWS protestors and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism,” the memo says. “…This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.”
The memo outlines a 60-day plan to conduct surveys and research on OWS and its supporters so that Wall Street companies will be prepared to conduct a media campaign in response to OWS. Wall Street companies “likely will not be the best spokespeople for their own cause,” according to the memo. “A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.”
Part of the plan CLGC proposes is to do “statewide surveys in at least eight states that are shaping up to be the most important of the 2012 cycle.”
Specific races listed in the memo are U.S. Senate races in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Mexico and Nevada as well as the gubernatorial race in North Carolina.
The memo indicates that CLGC would research who has contributed financial backing to OWS, noting that, “Media reports have speculated about associations with George Soros and others.”
"It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.”
end
And we try to tell other countries what a democracy is?God bless Unamerica
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 19, 2011 - 02:35pm PT
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Read and understand that post. Amazing. Thx...
The pepper-spraying of innocent, peaceful students at UC Davis yesterday will not have the effect intended by the authorities.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 19, 2011 - 03:40pm PT
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What's this Fairey dupe thinking?
Obama is the ringleader of the Wall Street One Percent!
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Nov 19, 2011 - 03:49pm PT
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"Since the Middle Ages, Limbo has been for Catholics a place (in Dante's vision, a castle) where the souls of unbaptised children go. Aborted foetuses, too. But a 30-strong commission of theologians established by John Paul II concluded that a nicer destiny was necessary - namely that all children who die do so in the expectation of "the universal salvation of God", whether baptised or not. "In effect, this means that all children who die go to Heaven," a papal source told the Times five years ago.
The Pope's announcement ended centuries of heartlessness typified by Pope Pius X (1903-14), who declared Limbo to be a place where the unbaptised "do not have the joy of God but neither do they suffer . . . they do not deserve Paradise, but neither do they deserve Hell or Purgatory". What a revolting invocation of deserts! Instead, the Catholic church now believes that God wishes all souls to be saved.
Five years ago Limbo's children were able to scamper with their satchels and protractors towards Heaven, where - fingers crossed - God made Heavenly sandwiches for packed lunches."
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 19, 2011 - 03:49pm PT
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Yeah right
That's why he signed the Financial Reform Bill in to law, that for the first time puts limits on derivative trading.
That's why "Wall Street" has already given MORE to the Republican candidates than Obama
That's why Wall Street does NOT want to see him re elected, because they fear he will continue to aggressively pursue financial reform that directly limits their "profits"
Get your god damn facts straight PRIOR to forming an opinion.
Campaign donations so far show Obama gets his money from SMALL individual donors,
compared to the much higher "maxed out", wealthy, fewer in number for the Repubshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-outpaces-gop-rivals-and-his-own-2008-results-in-small-donations/2011/11/04/gIQANhTJWN_story.html
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 19, 2011 - 03:54pm PT
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Pew: Obama Approval Ticks Up, Bests All Challengers Nationally
A new Pew poll confirms a trend that’s been surfacing for a few weeks — with the constant changes in the GOP presidential primary race, President Obama has seen an uptick in a few key metrics, maintaining a slim lead against former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney and a larger one against other possible challengers.
Pew’s numbers shows that the President’s approval rating, which has been consistently underwater during a difficult summer in Washington, is now even at 46 percent. It also shows that his favorability rating, a point of particular strength for him, continues to be positive. 52 percent of those Americans polled holds him in a positive light, versus 45 percent who see him unfavorably.
In a large sample of nearly 1,600 registered voters, Obama also leads the GOP challengers by varying levels, although the matchup versus his chief rival in Romney is close: Obama garners 49 percent against Romney’s 47. The rest of the field doesn’t fare well at all — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, businessman Herman Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are all down by double digits to Obama.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 19, 2011 - 09:32pm PT
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United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, "I know it when I see it," referring to hard-core pornography.
And that was good enough for the Supreme Court.
How about you. Would you know fascism if you saw it?
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cintune
climber
Midvale School for the Gifted
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Nov 19, 2011 - 10:54pm PT
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Sonic
Trad climber
Hilly, but no rocks Folsom, California
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Nov 20, 2011 - 12:20am PT
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That pepper spray incident happened the other day at UC Davis. Was pretty eye opening
Here's a video called Occupy mountains- if you want some nice big mountain skiing, skip to 1:30
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 20, 2011 - 02:01am PT
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Obama is the ringleader of the Wall Street One Percent!
Chaz if that were even remotely true you and Skipt would be taking turns giving him blow jobs and gargling his man seed instead of condemning him as a non native American, socialist, muslim, communist, clown or what ever Rush, Beck And Hannity tell you to think and say today.
So what is it? Make up your minds. Is he the top dog of the 1% or the antichrist.
Do you wingnuts every realize how ignoRANT you sound?
I love the "doublespeak" that states the concern for the health and welfare of the protestors is why we needed to pepperspray, billyclub and rubber bullet them.
OCCUPY POLICE STATIONS!
F*#K THE BROWNSHIRT FACISTS!
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Nov 20, 2011 - 02:32am PT
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Pile-o -Seriously????
Its probably Putin helping Obama on this.
Think of it as payback for the success the CIA has had with the Arab Spring. So its just your typical tit for tat fake unrest generated by covert commie assets over here.
The message the commies are sending is: You screw with our arab pawns we'll mess with you. Although in this case Obama is happy to cheer on the OWS rioters. Go figure.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 20, 2011 - 12:07pm PT
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Open Letter to (U.C. Davis) Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.
What happened next?
Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
--Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis
The emperor's cloths are beginning to fall off.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Nov 21, 2011 - 02:23am PT
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openchannel.msnbc.msn.com
Open Channel:
Lobbying firm's memo spells out plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street
By Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky, MSNBC TV
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by …
http://news.yahoo.com/top-0-1-nation-earn-half-capital-gains-172647859.html
Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US-- and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want to even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.
Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.
It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.
The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation to 28% . Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20%-- raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms-- the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent."
Make no mistake; the battle that is to be fought over the coming attempt to reverse this reduction in capital gains will be bloody and intense. The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains. In fact, you can go so far as to claim that "Capital Gains income is the most unevenly distributed-- and volatile-- source of household income," according to Laura D'Andrea Tyson, University of California business professor and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.
No wonder the super wealthy plutocrats obtained the largest share of national income-- 25% of the nation's wealth- greater than any other industrial nation in the the period of 1979 to 2005. Make no mistake; after unemployment-- this disparity between the 1%-- 3 million-- or the 0.1%-- the 300,000-- and the other 312 million citizens of the U.S. has become the major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement-- and an important national debate.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 21, 2011 - 11:14am PT
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bookworm, your posts do not point out anything other than your inability to address any of the issues that OWS raises.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 21, 2011 - 11:19am PT
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that is surprising
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 22, 2011 - 02:10am PT
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You will need to make a distinction between the action of a few rogue actors and the rest.
You will need to cut through the propaganda so you can see the issues clearly.
You will need to use your intelligence to discern that.
The problem is that the rogue actors seem to be in charge, and they are adopting the techniques of anarchy.
Look at the last week. what has occured to wake people up to the evils of corporatism? Nothing.
the evils of corrupt gov't? Nothing.
The approach appears to be the provocation of violence. Note that protesters carry many, many video cameras. They are looking for "the shot" which they so carefully have contrived.
I do not believe the shot of the "protester" crapping on the police car came from the right, I believe it came from the OWS movement, that is trying to incite police to do bad things.
They PRETEND that they are outraged at arrests, when THAT IS THE GOAL. They CELEBRATE arrests! Arrests are a publicity tool, and have been in civil disobedience forever.
The controlling interest seems to be ancharist goals. "Helter-Skelter"
But the real problem is shown by the frequent poster here: Avatar is a masked person, who hides identity.
Think back to Gandhi, to MLK. These icons of non-violence NEVER hid their faces or identities. Nor did their followers.
I am very concerned by this "Black Bloc" element, sometimes calling themselves Black Shirts. The flavor of that is very sour in my mouth. It harkens to extremes of violence and fascism.
This is not a movement that America will be comfortable with, and will demand be stopped.
There is no activity, such as the Vietnam War, to stoke the fires of discontent among the middle class, but this movement is increasingly scary. The 99% will demand protection.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 22, 2011 - 02:12am PT
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Well, perhaps the point is that there is no controlling interest. The Occupyers represent a wide range of discontented constituencies, some now opportunistic. Not a hard situation for others with less pure motives to take advantage of, whether it's the police or anarchists.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Nov 22, 2011 - 03:02pm PT
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"We" Fattrad? Capitalist running dogs? LOL
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Nov 22, 2011 - 04:09pm PT
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This is not a movement that America will be comfortable with, and will demand be stopped.
There is no activity, such as the Vietnam War, to stoke the fires of discontent among the middle class, but this movement is increasingly scary. The 99% will demand protection.
you speaking for or about the 99%?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Nov 22, 2011 - 04:24pm PT
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Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 22, 2011 - 07:51pm PT
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New York - Occupy Wall Street protesters launched the "Occupy Student Debt Campaign" in Zucotti Park on Monday. They hope to have one million people pledge to stop paying their student loan obligations collectively.
I hope the rich start an "Occupy the IRS" campaign and stop paying taxes so there will be no more student aid.
That is how you help the economy! Default on your debts. Live in your house free! Don't pay your credit card company! Create another credit crisis, and then blame it on the banksters, they are evil for loaning so much money to deadbeats anyway!
What a bunch of pathetic losers. I hope everyone who stops paying back their loans gets a shot of pepper spray right in the face.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 22, 2011 - 08:08pm PT
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And if you smoke a reefer, you will become a heroin addict.
And another one joins Fattrad in spreading the Slippery Slope
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 23, 2011 - 11:10am PT
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OWS is over, the major encampments have been displaced, We Won.
Here we see a small, ugly mind at work.
Who is the "we" referenced here? How is victory declared?
Idiot, you will claim victory only when all the OWS protesters are killed, because the movement is only just beginning.
You are certainly a pathetic fool.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 23, 2011 - 11:13am PT
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"The officers were doing simply what they were instructed to do by upper management there," Dammeier said, referring to police, not university, management. "So the officers are getting beat up pretty good out there, but they were simply doing what they were instructed to do."
Pass the blame to a nameless "upper management."
But it was the cop who made the decision to use spray against the sitting protesters.
John Pike, U.C. Davis Pepper-Spraying Police Officer, Previously Honored
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 23, 2011 - 11:18am PT
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This is where the rubber hits the road:
'Occupy' Protests Cost Nation's Cities At Least $13 Million: Survey
All this military-style response to the encampments are costing cities money they don't have. To whom will they turn next.
It might happen in secret, but you can guess that the riot-clad response will be propped up by those whom they defend.
Come on fattrad, donate 10% of your earning to the Oakland police and such. They're the ones defending your sorry greed.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 23, 2011 - 12:20pm PT
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How old are you Jeff?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 23, 2011 - 01:42pm PT
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If OWS is against Wall St., they should be attending meetings with their congressmen to enact legislation.
You see Mr. fattrad, one of the things that OWS is protesting is the corrupt legislative process.
Like the signs that express the concern that the 99% can't afford the lobbyists that buy our politicians.
All attempts to address this in the normal, legal process have been given the circus treatment.
Over and over, we see it happening yet are powerless to change it. Powerless, that is, if you don't count civil disobedience.
But I am sure you know this.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 23, 2011 - 01:45pm PT
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How old are you Jeff?
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atchafalaya
Boulder climber
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Nov 23, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
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"Powerless, that is, if you don't count civil disobedience."
Civil disobedience is the ultimate expression of powerlessness.
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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Nov 23, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 23, 2011 - 07:24pm PT
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Jeff's family owns a bank
what does that tell you?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 24, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
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Here you go...
The ballots have been counted....
http://whoarethe1percent.com/
These folks have been voted the worst of the worst...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 24, 2011 - 01:03pm PT
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The sign above is absolutely accurate.
But who is derelect of their duties, the bankers or the regulators and gov't?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 24, 2011 - 04:28pm PT
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"That is about all you need to know about what Jingy and the other Drones think of a large swath of America.
This stupid clown is of the opinion "he" and "his ilk" are the ones "we have been waiting for."
They are the ones who should take care of America ... take care of America ... and all those other c#&%s....
Yeah: "America and all those other cunts"
Who the f*#k would ever want to listen to him? Stay the f*#k out of our lives Jingy poodle.
You hate America. Worse, you hate a large portion of Americans.
Worse, if you don't get your way .... everyone else is a female body part.
Delusional doesn't even begin to describe the Obama drone's desire to help other people.
Real Americans don't want you. Real Americans don't need you. Real Americans don't take help from people who hate them.
Learn that little boy.
Skip"
I'm no expert...
but doesn't this look an awful lot like daddy issues?
I'm proud of you son.... no matter what anyone may say about you and even when you hate yourself.
Message to Skipt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hFp8JMDcAU
Janeane Garofalo: The double standard of Republican rhetoric.
Tell me how different your rhetoric really is?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 24, 2011 - 04:52pm PT
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Hey, good question Blew - "But who is derelect of their duties, the bankers or the regulators and gov't?"
What if it was the case that the bankers were doing everything they possibly could "within the law", but it was also ultra-lax regulators who have been bought off directly from the banks they are supposed to regulate writing the laws that are supposed to regulate the banks, hence everybody is well within the law. But the law is so meaningless.
So legally, bankers and Government run poorly can ruin an entire countries economy.
I understand the republican stand that "if its not illegal" its all ok.
I see things a little different and would go way farther than you in correcting the issue. I'm not sure that you even 'see' an issue to be corrected. You have a tendency to not ask these types of questions, which is why it caught my eye... way out of character for you.. you feeling alright? Did you miss your last fattratty pub-repub-boob meeting?
I'm sure this was just an anomaly.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 24, 2011 - 05:04pm PT
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More Skip Dip-isms...
Obama and the Feds took direct control of the banks. Many years ago....
They haven't gotten around to the parks yet.
Give it time. You'll have to donate to the Obama campaign in order
to get into Yosemite soon enough.
Skip
So Cleatus the Fetus Eater what's on the menu tonight?
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 24, 2011 - 06:41pm PT
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We are the worker bees.
The top 1% will always exist in some form or other.
There's no escape.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 25, 2011 - 10:45am PT
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 25, 2011 - 11:02am PT
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^^^ Monkey see monkey doo ^^^
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Nov 25, 2011 - 11:36am PT
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There is a day of reckoning coming. A day of judgement. A day of justice.
The rich of this World will want to trade places with the Lazarus's of this World, and they won't be able to. An impassable void will exist between them.
"The Meek shall inherit the Earth." -- Jesus Christ
It is best to choose sides, and then measure up to your Earthly responsibilities and do the right thing now, and always thereafter.
Luke 16:10-31 (KJV)
[10] He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
[11] If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?
[12] And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?
[13] No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
[14] And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him.
[15] And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.
[16] The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
[17] And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
[18] Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
[19] There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
[20] And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,
[21] And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
[22] And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
[23] And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
[24] And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
[25] But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
[26] And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
[27] Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house:
[28] For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
[29] Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
[30] And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
[31] And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 25, 2011 - 11:38am PT
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Credo of the 1%...
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what more your country of serfs can do for you.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 25, 2011 - 11:48am PT
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Would that stand for c*#k stimulant donut boy?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 25, 2011 - 12:12pm PT
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no that's his special blend C#m sauce...
He would go from home to honky-tonk collecting the ingredients in SF and the east bay....
Then spend time savoring his own personal special blend.
P.S. "Our regulators were lax and the banks/lenders went too far and the government, Dems and Repubs, were cheering them on. Fingers should be pointed at just about everyone, including the socialist Jingy."
Regulators were lax? I tend to think that regulators were not paid by the republican/democrat president to do the job thoroughly, not to mention the very people who were being regulated being able to steer the car.
"and the banks/lenders went too far'
Right.. there was no market incentive to do the right thing. They just created this vehicle to make money and lit the fuse without anyone looking.
"and the government, Dems and Repubs, were cheering them on"
do I have to say it again?
The very people who are being regulated are being put in jobs of being regulators. If you take a chairman from the banks and put him in the job of regulating the banks then he really has no job to do, he's not working for the people, even though he has a title, and he will be getting paid by the very corporation that he was supposed to be regulating once his year of regulation is up at the state department and he heads back to work for the banks....
"Fingers should be pointed at just about everyone, including the socialist Jingy."
Wow... it almost sounds as if I had a hand in the banking/housing bubble...
Have I ever mentioned my families long standing bank? Have I ever mentioned my privileged upbringing as the son of a wealthy bankers child?
Right...
I never have, because that is not my upbringing. That is your fatty. And pointing a finger at me would get everybody nowhere (which may just be exactly what you'd want) when the extended middle finger should be pointed in your direction. You, after all, have mentioned plenty of times your families bank. Leads me to believe that you may not have made all your money yourself. I'm thinking that you may have a person reason why America should do away with inheritance taxes. Which is more that likely the reason that you vote cons into office.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 25, 2011 - 01:07pm PT
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I'm not sure that you even 'see' an issue to be corrected.
Jingy, you just never seem to hear what I've been saying for a while. You think this is a republican, rich-guy problem.
Think of Uptick rules, Glass-Stiegal, and most importantly, Fannie/Freddie. And SEC dudes actually prosecuting people.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 25, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
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Jingy, free markets are absolutely corruptable. This is why we have regulated markets. The problems arise when barriers and regulations are revoked or not enforced.
To think this is solely a Republican thing is naive. You think Dems don't have lobbyists getting them to relax rules and modify regulations? How do you think Fannie/Freddie were established?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Nov 25, 2011 - 04:23pm PT
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"The Free Market, with resonable regulation is the best economic model."
So I guess you and I have a difference of opinion on the definition of "reasonable regulation".
Sounds to me like you and blew are coming around to my way of thinking.
Republican (cons) lines have always been total de-regulation, and here you both are talking about regulations being needed…
Please, put a little more thought into this tiny part of the lopsided discussion and get back to me with specific
You are correct in that it was not all cons acting to undermine the American public.
But I recall that it was Bush who appointed Paulson to Treasury Secretary… Paulson was the CEO of Goldman/Sacks when this occurred, so.. yeah… it wasn't entirely repukes fault…. but they certainly had a huge hand in setting everything up to fail…
Blewme, you might want to look up that stuff about Fanny/Freddie…
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 25, 2011 - 04:31pm PT
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The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists [during OWS protests]. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
They want your first amendment.
It gets worse:
In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.
Question:
But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarized reactions against its own peaceful constituents?
Eye opening:
The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 25, 2011 - 05:08pm PT
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philo,
You'll be happy to know that the IDF uses CS on Palestinian protesters.
The evil one
No surprise there DaftRat, The IDF is a criminal organization run by radical religious fundamentalists who are guilty of war crimes. Just your kind of bigboys eh Fatty.
You barf on about Muslim Clerics. Well they are the ones who stopped the Egyptian violence recently by being able to talk to both sides.
Meanwhile the rabid Zionists Rabbis won't even let Male and Female soldiers attend the same dances. Now who are the progressives and the peace makers?
And who are the whack jobs?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 25, 2011 - 05:15pm PT
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In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. Yes clearly violent dirty hippies who want their student loans paid off for free.
When will the SkiptDipts and BlewBoyz turn off FuX Noise and wake up.
I find it appallingly funny that big bad climbing mountain men like Fattrad think walking around the edge of a sidewalk would be so inconvenient. OhNo I got my Ugs wet and dirty. Ewwwwe.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 25, 2011 - 08:05pm PT
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Welcome to the Hotel Occupy! You can check out any time, and you had better leave.
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Klimmer
Mountain climber
San Diego
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Nov 26, 2011 - 12:56am PT
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K-man,
Yep.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2380642
The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy
The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence.
by Naomi Wolf
November 25, 2011
But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."
In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.
For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president.
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
Read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/25-7
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 27, 2011 - 07:23pm PT
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Everything is corruptible because everything reflects the human nature that inhabits it.
That's why systems of Checks and Balances are good, because they keep any particular interest or power from getting full control and prone to full abuse
PEace
Karl
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Nov 27, 2011 - 07:46pm PT
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Looks like Phillie OWS has decided to become sitters locking arms and blocking a public sidewalk. Bad move.
Why are they so anxious to be entertained by Mr Pepper Spray!
Hope that the video is as good as the last one!
..and it will be seen as a public service message to show that our police will protect the civil rights of citizens to walk down a street without being prevented by nut cases anarchist underachievers.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 27, 2011 - 09:18pm PT
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The Senate has been incapable of getting anything done for years. What makes you think this will be the one thing they'll be successful in doing?
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Nov 27, 2011 - 09:50pm PT
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Why are you all upset?
I'm quite happy I live in America.
Life is good and it is up to me to fail or succeed, go USA!!!!
I ignore the talking heads and have a good time, so quit bitching".
Life is up to you not them.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Nov 27, 2011 - 10:19pm PT
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Why are you all upset?
I'm quite happy I live in America.
Life is good and it is up to me to fail or succeed, go USA!!!!
I ignore the talking heads and have a good time, so quit bitching".
Life is up to you not them.
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Nov 27, 2011 - 10:55pm PT
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No intelligent thoughts? Makes sense. I hope you realize that America is AWESOME!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 27, 2011 - 10:57pm PT
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Is there any reason not to make America more awesome?
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Q- Ball
Mountain climber
where the wind always blows
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Nov 27, 2011 - 11:01pm PT
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Philo, why would you not want America more awesome? I know I do.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 28, 2011 - 01:28am PT
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So is Anxiety only good for US? And wouldn't it have been good to show that picture to increase that good anxiety? Do those other world locations not have enough good anxiety?
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 28, 2011 - 02:00am PT
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Urban camping is all the rage!
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PAUL SOUZA
Trad climber
Central Valley, CA
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Nov 28, 2011 - 02:56am PT
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 28, 2011 - 06:50am PT
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Hmmm 28 meaningless posts to the same thread in under 3 minutes and no other history.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 28, 2011 - 06:55am PT
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And interesting perspective.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/if-the-social-protest-dies-out-israel-to-see-a-new-feudalism-1.398151
Published 02:44 28.11.11Latest update 02:44 28.11.11
If the social protest dies out, Israel to see a new feudalism
The U.S. has a tradition of civil protests that lead to significant changes: women's suffrage, equal rights for blacks, pulling out of Vietnam. There is reason to fear a social protest that is rapidly catching on. In Israel there has yet to be a social protest that led to a policy change.
By Merav Michaeli
Full text below.
After being arrested when helping nonviolent demonstrators to realize their freedom of expression and their right to protest, the well-known writer Naomi Wolf discovered that freedom of expression and protest in America is not what it used to be ("The shocking truth about the suppression of protest in the United States," by Naomi Wolf, The Guardian, November 27.)
In addition, she discovered that in violation of U.S. law, the Department of Homeland Security advised 18 cities as to how to suppress this protest. In fact the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were suppressed with pepper spray, beatings and arrests, which led Wolf to wonder why such a popular, hapless protest led the federal government to react with such violence.
She discovered that although the media described the Wall Street protest as unfocused, its demands are actually very focused on three legislative changes that are highly threatening to legislators and their allies: limiting the sums of money that interested parties can donate to candidates in elections, a reform in the banking system that will prevent fraud and manipulations for which small depositors pay the price, and canceling the ability of members of Congress to legislate laws concerning corporations in which they have investments. According to Wolf this third demand is the most threatening, since more and more Congressmen entered the political system as members of the middle class and emerged very wealthy - and she claims they have no intention of endangering that.
Here too, the elected exploit their status to enrich themselves and their friends. The list of MKs and ministers who have become wealthy - or at least well-off - is a long one, and here they are doing it even though it is in violation of the law.
Changes in legislation won't improve our situation. Civil servants also exploit their status to enrich those who will soon be giving them the tools to enrich themselves. The list of CEOs, senior executives and advisers of tycoons impressively coincides with the list of former regulators and senior government officials. Therefore, here too both groups are interested in seeing the socioeconomic protest disappear.
But here there is no need for violence. In the United States there is a tradition of civil protests, which have led to significant changes: women's suffrage, equal rights for blacks, pulling out of Vietnam. There is reason to fear a social protest that is rapidly catching on. In Israel there has yet to be a social protest - peaceful or violent - that led to a policy change. From the Black Panthers to the encampments this summer, in Israel the protests are only another tool with which the government can divide and rule. The government managed to split even the most recent protest, which clung to solidarity, and presented it as a hostile factor with vested interests.
In this way the Israeli controllers of money and power can simply ignore one tenth of the population, which took to the streets to express a heartfelt protest about life that is becoming increasingly hard and burdensome here - and neither their power nor their money will suffer. Also thanks to the media, which may have provided broad coverage of the protest when it was too big to ignore, but is once again describing it as unfocused at best and bizarre at worst. The media moguls are also among those who find it convenient to exploit the majority for the benefit of their own wealth.
Yale anthropologist Prof. David Graeber claims that capitalism is falling apart, and the only question is what will follow it: a system of authoritarian rule of minorities over the majority, or "a genuine democratic system, in which we will all have a genuine opportunity to decide?" ("Capitalism is based on constant growth, and we have reached the limit," Asher Schechter, TheMarker Hebrew website, November 26 ).
In Israel, already now the system is National Capitalism. If the social protest really does die out as did its predecessors, Israel will probably be the first country in which the concept "neofeudalism" will turn from an expression used by leftist economic philosophers to the name of the type of regime practiced in it: Neo-National-Feudalism.
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SarahHarris
Big Wall climber
LA, USA
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Nov 28, 2011 - 07:35am PT
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I think these people did the right thing. If it was the only way to make other listen to them and hear what they say then why not!
__
Free PDF Editor http://pdfeditor.me/
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Nov 28, 2011 - 10:46am PT
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Either the worst spammer to exist or (tin hat theory) one of the paid Occupiers Occupying the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I had a typo just now and it has helped me coin a term for those who are attempting to minimize/deflect attention from the OWS movement by posting misinformation/twisting facts and such:
Occupigs!
Upthread, the essay from Ms. Wolf was quite good, as her work always is. I have to say it made my heart very heavy to see my fear of what is coming put in writing by someone like her. (the massive, organized, crackdown having been the first battle in a civil war). I believe it is true; the bullshit that OWS is protesting is not going to stop, and the awareness of the masses to it is not going to go away. At least not without some serious infringements upon liberties. Which will likely have the effect of only throwing gas on the fire.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 28, 2011 - 11:05am PT
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Occupigs sounds like an apt description of the folks trashing our city squares in the name of the Wall Street occupation.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 28, 2011 - 11:12am PT
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or one of the paid Occupiers Occupying the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Yeeah, what she said.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 28, 2011 - 12:56pm PT
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every "movement" has its fringe elements who are there for the fun of being in a group
and have no real interest in the meaning behind the protest/movement
I suspect that the men who brought their loaded guns to Tea Party events had zero
knowledge of the federal budget's revenue and spending, but just liked wearing their guns in public and being a part of something.
They gave the Tea Party a bad rep, just like the fringe idiots are doing to OWS
----
Sadly, by far most people focus on the "fringe" elements and use them to define and
label ALL members of the movement
------------
The above people are not "fair" in their perception, and as such are dumb fuks
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 28, 2011 - 01:04pm PT
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Dr F.,
Occupigs ( thanks, Happie-G! ):
Anyone who leaves a campsite looking like that is a pig. Occupig.
Weschrist,
You should know by now, that's NOT a job for the Federal Government. Read your Constitutiom.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 28, 2011 - 01:09pm PT
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Does this guy at a Tea Party represent the meaning and spirit behind the movement?
I personally do not think so.
And so I would not make up blanket statement that ALL Tea Party people are dumb fuks.
But, there are many here on supertopo who will not extend the same "fairness" of perception when they see only the "fringe" idiots of OWS
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 28, 2011 - 01:11pm PT
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Google "tea party feces", and then do the same with "occupy wall street feces". Compare and contrast what you find.
Occupigs.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 28, 2011 - 01:15pm PT
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Shoppers walked over and around the body of this dying man at a Target store on black Friday.
Does this mean ALL "shoppers" are heartless ass holes?
I don't think so, but the dumb fuks who base the entire OWS movement on SOME people would.
Is that "fair"? NO it is not.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 28, 2011 - 01:22pm PT
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Weschrist,
One of things the Occupigs seem to be asking for is that the Federal Government crack down on those they think are in violation of the law.
They ( the Occupigs ) don't seem to be asking for smaller government, it seems like they're all in favor of More Bigger Government.
Now, the More Bigger Government they asked for is on their ass.
It seems the protestors who were roughed-up were roughed-up while they were resisting arrest, not exactly a *peaceful* activity.
But like 90% of what the Federal Government does, this is something it ought not be doing.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 28, 2011 - 01:26pm PT
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Actually Jeff, OWS DOES offer some "solutions".
I am sure you know this from your readings of their position statements.
Now that you have learned how to do internet searches just recently, surely you know this
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 28, 2011 - 03:01pm PT
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from the lA Times:
The complaint accuses the city of engaging in "arbitrary and capricious action in violation of the 1st and 14th Amendments by first approving the Occupy presence for 56 days before suddenly revoking permission through the unilateral action of defendants."
The protesters' complaint points out that the City Council passed a resolution of support for the protesters and states that an aide to Villaraigosa told two of the plaintiffs, protester Mario Brito and Jim Lafferty of the National Lawyers Guild, that the municipal code section prohibiting overnight camping in city parks would not be enforced.
The complaint also pointed out that the city has made other exceptions to the anti-camping provision, including for people waiting at Exposition Park to be eligible for free medical services and for an estimated 500 fans of the "Twilight" vampire movies who "camped out on the sidewalks of Westwood Village for several days to be first in line for the midnight showing of the first 'Twilight' sequel."
Earlier this month, protesters did give notice that they would seek an emergency restraining order on Nov. 18. But the issue was put on hold when protesters failed to show up in court to file for the request.
On that day, civil rights lawyer Carol Sobel, a legal advisor for Occupy protests across the country, appeared in court and said she planned to argue that the protesters seeking the injunction did not represent Occupy L.A. Sobel is listed as the attorney on the new complaint.
Villaraigosa and Beck said that the 12:01 a.m. deadline marked the time when the encampment became illegal, not when eviction would occur.
Although protesters said they were happy with the outcome, officials stressed that the encampment cannot continue.
"We will enforce the park closure," Villaraigosa said in an interview with KTLA-TV. "We thought talking through this was the best way to proceed and we've done that. But it's become crystal clear … that it wasn't sustainable to be there indefinitely."
Villaraigosa praised the protesters for shining a light on problems facing the middle class and forcing people to listen.
"My hope is that we will be able to conclude this chapter peacefully," he said.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 28, 2011 - 03:09pm PT
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I am sure you know this from your readings of their position statements.
Norton, I have great trouble determining a position for OWS, partly because of the anarchy implicit in the movement. Having a position implies the existence of someone who can determine that position. As a mathematician, I see no proof of the existence or uniqueness of any OWS position.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Nov 28, 2011 - 05:45pm PT
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Lovegasoline,
Believe it or not, you and the Wall Street Journal see eye-to-eye in celebrating the court's rejection of the SEC's proposed settlement, although your world views differ.
The Journal thinks the SEC position was nonsense from the beginning, and wants it defeated rather than allowing the SEC to save face in a purported "settlement."
If what the SEC said was remotely true, this settlement is an outrage to those relying upon SEC regulation. Otherwise, the suit was a bunch of baloney, and the "settlement" represents nothing more than extortion. Either way, the SEC ends up looking rather bad.
On an unrelated note, Norton's statement implies that there exists a unique position of OWS. Existence and uniqueness are the sorts of things I used to look for and prove (or disprove) in the days when I indulged in mathematics.
Of course, whether I exist, or am merely some metaphysical entity (like Citicorp) doesn't change the implication of Norton's statement. How can one determine the position of OWS on anything?
John
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Nov 28, 2011 - 05:52pm PT
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You've posted the 'LASD Heat Ray' joke 30+ times...give it a rest...
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Nov 28, 2011 - 06:03pm PT
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every "movement" has its fringe elements who are there for the fun of being in a group
and have no real interest in the meaning behind the protest/movement
You mean there is a "non-fringe" wing of OWS?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 28, 2011 - 06:06pm PT
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John, given that there is no leadership, no single or group spokespeople for OWS,
then YES, you are correct that OWS has no "position" that can be defined/determined.
However, and I think you know this, there certainly is a consensus of thought that does
seem to define the OWS people's mentality, frame of mind.
That consensus appears to me to be that there is an aggravating disparity between the ultra haves and the have nots in America.
That the "ultra haves", called the 1%, are "favored", favored with golden parachutes, huge incomes, as wealthy individuals, and are again "favored" by government (TARP) bailing them out and making them more than "whole" again when they "fail", the obvious example being the 08 financial derivative (wall street creations).
John, it seems to me a strong general sense that many Americans just don't like the growing gap between the "classes", very human emotion, and are simply expressing themselves by protesting.
Given that , and only that above perception, they are protesting what they see as a fundamental, and celebrated, "unfairness" in American's capitalism.
These people, by far, ARE employed, and are really just regular working people, and they fully know that capitalism provided the structure for their own incomes,
They are NOT anti-capitalism, they just don't like some things about it.
They have no leadership or spokespeople and very little organization, they just hold rallies in various cities.
VERY unfortunately, the "spirit" of this sentiment is now badly corrupted by fringe elements who join the protests for other reasons, just as stupid young men go to English soccer games to be seen, and raise hell.
It all gets thrown into the public protest mix, and the national media focuses on what rivets the viewer for advertising dollars, the sensational and the emotional.
And so the media concentrates not on the above "message"(income/asset favoritism,etc) but on the actual protesters in all their good and bad, and the bad ones tarnish the message, just like the gun toting fringe did to the Tea Party "image".
You have asked me to better define how i see this, this is my honest assessment.
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bparry
Trad climber
New Haven, CT
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:19am PT
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Right on Cragman/Marybeth Hicks.
Nice article, occupy reality.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 29, 2011 - 09:52am PT
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It's official. Cragman is a grumpy old man.
"HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFFA MY LAWN!"
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 29, 2011 - 10:05am PT
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Cragman
That will apply to 1% of the OWS.
But Marybeth Hicks missed the real point of OWS and the whole thing went right over the top of her head.
And that happened because that 1% of the OWS took all the limelight and focus which sidetracked and screwed their whole movement.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 29, 2011 - 11:53am PT
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Here’s the financial overview: the top 1% of Americans now take in more than 25% of the nation’s income and control at least 40% of its wealth. (A quarter of a century ago, the figures were 12% and 33%.) To make it into that top 1%, according to economist Emmanuel Saez, your family needs to make a minimum of $368,238 a year (based on 2008 income figures); for the 15,000 families that make up the top .01%, average annual income is $27,342,212.
Big deal.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 29, 2011 - 12:07pm PT
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A sinister bill has quietly been introduced, so expansive in scope and dangerous in nature that it makes the PATRIOT Act look like the Bill of Rights.
This bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012, or S. 1253, has received tragically sparse coverage and I must admit that I was not aware of it until a reader emailed me about it.
If you think the PATRIOT Act is bad, just wait until you check out sections 1031, 1032, 1033, and 1036 of this horrific bill.
S. 1253 will allow indefinite military detention of American civilians without charge or trial
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 29, 2011 - 01:21pm PT
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All across the country, a war is being waged. This isn't a battle over parks and tents and sleeping bags. Though many of our leaders don't seem to realize it, this is a battle about their credibility, about how they represent us, about whom their real allegiance is to. Their misguided response to the Occupy protests has actually proved the point of the protesters more than any sign or chant could.
The Occupy movement has been a test -- a national MRI -- that has allowed us to check in on the health of our democracy by allowing us to see what's going on underneath the surface of America's power structures. And the results are dire. What the movement, and the response to it, has shown is a government almost completely disconnected from those it purports to represent.
Let's see. Without the movement, Congress has an approval rating of NINE PERCENT. Gosh, thank heavens for the movement, who will raise the awareness of the population, that has NO IDEA that the gov't is dysfunctional!
We're saved!
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 29, 2011 - 01:34pm PT
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A sinister bill has quietly been introduced, so expansive in scope and dangerous in nature that it makes the PATRIOT Act look like the Bill of Rights.
This bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012, or S. 1253, has received tragically sparse coverage and I must admit that I was not aware of it until a reader emailed me about it.
If you think the PATRIOT Act is bad, just wait until you check out sections 1031, 1032, 1033, and 1036 of this horrific bill.
SEC. 1031.
(a) In General- The Armed Forces of the United States are authorized to detain covered persons captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) as unprivileged enemy belligerents pending disposition under the law of war.
(b) Covered Persons- A covered person under this section is any person, including but not limited to persons for whom detention is required under section 1032, as follows:
(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
(d) Constitutional Limitation on Applicability to United States Persons- The authority to detain a person under this section does not extend to the detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.
SEC. 1032.
(b) Requirement Inapplicable to United States Citizens- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.
SEC. 1033.
(e) Definitions- In this section:
(1) The term `individual detained at Guantanamo' means any individual located at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as of October 1, 2009, who--
(A) is not a citizen of the United States or a member of the Armed Forces of the United States; and
SEC. 1036.
(a) In General- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report setting forth the procedures for determining the status of persons captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) for purposes of section 1031.
Which once again said:
The authority to detain a person under this section does not extend to the detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.
SEC. 1035
a) .....for individuals detained at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, .......
which, once again, was defined in Sec 104:
(e) Definitions- In this section:
(1) The term `individual detained at Guantanamo' means any individual located at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as of October 1, 2009, who--
(A) is not a citizen of the United States or a member of the Armed Forces of the United States
So, don't see the problem that is so alarming?
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Nov 29, 2011 - 05:51pm PT
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On my travel cross country this last month, I came across a woman who had been with the Occupy DC group for a month or so and was heading back home. We had some discussion on the OWS movement. She referenced a quotation"
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mohandas Gandhi
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:03pm PT
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To make it into that top 1%, according to economist Emmanuel Saez, your family needs to make a minimum of $368,238 a year
well, my wife and I are not quite in the 1%. Maybe we are in 2 or 3. and as much as i can sympathize with some of the OWS idea's we did not get to the 2-3% by bitching or protesting...it was a lot of education (the right kind that is marketable) and hard work.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:06pm PT
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Hey Hawkeye, ever consider spec building? I can build a hell of a green structure.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:32pm PT
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brandon, your work is outstanding! right now lots of money going to three kids in college!
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:34pm PT
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Thanks, just goofing anyway.
Be well.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:42pm PT
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OWS is finished, the last camps will soon be dismantled. The dinosaur has spoken
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:50pm PT
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3365 posts to this thread and some still don't understand the right to free speech and peaceful assembly.
There will always be the stupid few who cause trouble, but in all it seems as if the occupiers kept their sh#t together and played nice.
What's not to like about people speaking their minds? Maybe it undermines some people's sense of superiority?
Agree or disagree, they should be applauded for speaking their minds without bringing guns to do so.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Nov 29, 2011 - 07:50pm PT
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maybe fattrad inhaled too much pepper spray when he was a tool?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:02pm PT
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OWS partners up with the Soylent Green Corporation.
A good business plan? We'll see.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:04pm PT
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Crag,
Civil Disobedience should be respected. Violence should not.
It sounds like a cliche within a cliche, but the minority of protesters are there to stir up trouble and the majority are there for genuine reasons.
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karodrinker
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:08pm PT
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you wise up cragman. when the people are left with no recourse when banks ruin our lives, what other option remain? cynics and critics like you allow the corrupt status quo to continue.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:08pm PT
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Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that.
Wait, might that ethic be a helpful one?
Hope you're well.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:17pm PT
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How do they rationalize costing hard-pressed municipalities over $30 million?
Last I checked not too many municipalities had much to do with Wall Street.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:25pm PT
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How about this version:
Through a series of political machinations, a night at Camp 4 goes from $5 to $50 over the course of a few years. People wishing a spot still have to get in line for a first-come, first-served spot. But exceptions to the rules have been made....A section of Camp 4 is bull-dozed and turned into a Mini-Awahnee type hotel, where those with connections to certain park employees may stay at very reasonable rates($5o for a night in Camp 4!)
The hotel types don't like the idea that there are tent-people playing hackysack outside their windows at 9:59pm and do what they can to restrict that sort of thing. Fines higher than a BoA overdraft fee are handed out(and taken from the banlk accounts automatically, as the tenters had to post a CC to get their spot). Add a bunch more BS....
THEN the Camp 4 tent people set up in El Cap Meadow to protest.
That's more close an analogy than what you posted CM.
And makr MY word OWS will not be remembered as you believe, unless the crackdown comes to Marchall Law and history is revised.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 29, 2011 - 08:59pm PT
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Lovegas,
Since many of said munis are run by the Democrats, well known for police-state
excesses, I can only assume the good burgers deemed the trash pickup, police
investigations of crimes committed, and sundry other nonsensical expenses
somewhat justified. Perhaps the OWS crowd should concern themselves with
big government overspending?
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 29, 2011 - 09:31pm PT
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As a knowledgeable Dutch observer said about the Greek financial mess, in particular false financial statements published by its conservative government until 2009: "In our country, people would go to jail for this".
So who's going to jail in the US for the corporate frauds that threatened the world in 2008, aided and abetted by government malfeasance and incompetence?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 29, 2011 - 09:38pm PT
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Look, we can all agree the financial system is broken. However, you do not effect change by defying posted laws and authorities tasked with upholding those laws.
All that is being created is anarchy, and no society will tolerate that.
OWS in it's present form is just a suck on all of us taxpayers, and ALL will suffer the consequences of this movement that has no leadership.
Yes you Do effect change that way! Tell it to Gandhi and MLKing. The Vietnam war might have claimed tens of thousands More americans if there had been no protest.
And I'd say the pressure is already saving americans money. I wouldn't be surprised if the following events weren't influenced by the spotlight on elite money power
A judge on Monday used unusually harsh language to strike down a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission over toxic mortgage securities, saying he couldn’t tell whether the deal was fair and criticizing regulators for shielding the public from details of the firm’s wrongdoing.
http://www.ajc.com/business/citi-plan-to-settle-1244202.html
Democrat Calls for Hearing on 'Secret' Bank Loans from Federal Reserve
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/28-4
Rep. Deutch Introduces OCCUPIED Constitutional Amendment To Ban Corporate Money In Politics
http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/18/372361/rep-deutch-introduces-occupied-constitutional-amendment-to-ban-corporate-money-in-politics/
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Sparky
Trad climber
vagabond movin on
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Nov 29, 2011 - 10:59pm PT
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gf, your premise is that two wrongs make a right?
It seems the OWS mantra is, "You f*ed us, we're gonna f* you!"
So pathetic.
Wrong.
Classic misunderstanding between retributive justice and restorative justice. OWS is looking for restorative. If they were looking for retributive, violence would have broken out by OWS.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Nov 29, 2011 - 11:33pm PT
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 29, 2011 - 11:35pm PT
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The Tea party Movement, however misguided many of us felt it was/is, brought out a base which swayed the last election.
No matter what you think of OWS, get ready for it to do the same for the next one
Peace
Karl
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Binks
climber
Uranus
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Nov 29, 2011 - 11:37pm PT
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The anger on the street is growing at the corporate shills that run the government. The grass roots is Occupy. It's gonna grow and grow.
Here's some nice myth busting from MoveOn:
MYTH #1: The congressional Super Committee failed because both sides refused to compromise.
REALITY: It failed because the Republicans in Congress, following the Party Line, now refuse ANY compromise on ANY issue offered by the Democrats.
Reaganist Republicanism has become a rigid ideology, as Stalinism was.
To be a Republican politician now, you must be, literally, politically correct.
If you don’t correctly parrot the Party Line, you will be exiled to (shudder!) Liberal Siberia.
MYTH #2: Nobody knows what Occupy Wall Street is about.
REALITY: Everybody knows what Occupy Wall Street is about.
But some people are so frightened by the trouble our country is in that they’re in denial about it. The goals of the Occupy Movement make these people morally uncomfortable, threatening their complacency — and so they deny that it has any goals at all.
MYTH #3: Occupiers should stop protesting and just get a job.
REALITY... And the American children who go to bed hungry every night should stop whining and just go buy a supersized burger with fries at MacDonalds, and the homeless should get off the streets and move into a nice house, and the old retired people who are losing medical insurance should ah, umm, well, they should just shut up and get a job. Or die. Or something.
MYTH #4: Occupy Wall Street is intent on provoking violence, especially against banks and the police.
REALITY: A few people have used the Occupy movement as a front for their antisocial behavior, just as a few people have used Republican hatred of Obama as a front for their psychopathy.
The Occupy movement, facing a violent police force in several cities, has so far remained nonviolent. If they can hang on to their nonviolence, they will have made a moral statement comparable to that of Gandhi, or the Freedom Riders, or the young people of Tiananmen Square.
MYTH #5: The biggest crisis facing our country is out-of-control government spending.
REALITY: Our crisis is a loss of active citizenship — a weakening of confidence in democratic ideals and principles. This loss, this weakening, is directly aggravated by Reaganist ideology and propaganda.
Reaganism, seeing extreme inequity as the engine of capitalism, says that the poor should be taxed heavily, the rich more lightly, and the very rich should not have to pay taxes at all. Democracy seeks to share the cost of maintaining government (taxation) equitably, each contributing according to income.
Reaganism says that the government is the enemy. Democracy is the idea that the people are the government.
So, are we our own enemy?
Pogo, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 30, 2011 - 01:08am PT
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Hey !!!!!
I just hit genius level!
All OWS should take a dumb at wall trading center in the morning before the bankers go to work.
They'll have to step in sh'it or go home?
What genius I am ......
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 30, 2011 - 01:51am PT
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Acorn!
I just love calling up bogeymen to give our righty friends a scare.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 11:39am PT
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I was taught to always leave a campsite cleaner than it was when I found it.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/occupy-la-trash.html
It's hard to have any respect for anyone who would do this.
When your group is built on "to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability", you'll find nobody has the ability to take out the trash.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 30, 2011 - 12:29pm PT
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Fatty
Karl,
Loans from the Fed window must be secret or the capital markets would destroy the borrowing firm.
I thought markets were supposed to have valid information to be real and efficient
Those banks claimed to their shareholders they were doing fine and dandy while at the same time receiving secret bailouts from the Gov.
Remember when Enron was saying everything was great just before they crashed and took their employee's life-saving pensions with them
Foul, shame
Peace
Karl
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 30, 2011 - 12:47pm PT
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Posted on the OCCUPY LA facebook page by an organizer:
Occupy Los Angeles
3:40am City Hall can't fix the roads or shelter homeless, but damn can they close down a park. ~pj
LAPD demonstrated how to do this. Peaceful, controlled, overwhelming force.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
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fatty, you've been saying that for months now, once again proving you don't know sh#t.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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NOrton,
You are a miserable piece of crap.
The evil one
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 30, 2011 - 01:49pm PT
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They're not finished. They're off to join Don Quixote.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 01:49pm PT
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Fattad: Do you think Obama will beat Romney in an Electoral Landslide?
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 02:05pm PT
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"Fattad: Do you think Obama will beat Romney in an Electoral Landslide?"
Obama couldn't win by landslide numbers when he ran against McCain-Palin. That was before we knew what a skunk he is.
Take the bet, Fattrad.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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Really Chaz?
What was the 2008 electoral vote?
and then compare it to previous Presidential elections
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 02:39pm PT
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Not every presidental victory is a "landslide", Norton. Look it up.
As far as I can tell, Warren Harding, both Roosevelts, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan were the only presidents to win by landslide margins.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 02:44pm PT
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I never said "every" election is a landslide, you did, and you were wrong to do so.
However,
Senator Obama won the presidency with 365 electoral votes versus Senator McCain’s 173.
That is a whipping, a thumping, a "landslide"
Imagine what the margin would have been if only McCain had been Black
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Nov 30, 2011 - 02:48pm PT
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 04:15pm PT
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Norton,
If Obama ever earns 500 electoral votes ( Nixon - Reagan numbers ), then we'll be talking landslide.
365 doesn't make the list.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 04:16pm PT
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Ok Chaz, but remember how much better John McCain would have done if he were Black
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 04:17pm PT
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Obama may have done better if he were black, too.
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giegs
climber
Tardistan
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Nov 30, 2011 - 04:23pm PT
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Repost...
By various estimates, there were about 500 to 800 people camping in Chapman and Lownsdale Squares as part of Occupy Portland. A similar range of estimates suggests that between 4000 and 6000 people showed up to protest the eviction. And approximately 10,000 people attended the initial demonstration in which the camp was established. Thus I think it's a bit inaccurate when people use the words "Occupy Portland" as though they only refer to the camp. Clearly the network of supporters that the camp represented is much larger than the camp itself. Other than housing some homeless people, the camp basically served three functions: 1.) It was a persistently concrete and visible symbol that turned what might have been a sporadic or incidental protest into a "movement" with a public identity. However, I think what you might call the "brand" is now pretty well established--people will know what you're talking about if you say the words "Occupy Wall Street" or "Occupy Portland" even without the camp there. 2.) It served as a staging ground for demonstrations, but this can mostly be done via networking now that the relevant networks exist. 3.) It served as a gathering point and a meeting place for both planning/etc. comittees and members of the general public who wanted to attend General Assemblies. Most of the committees were already meeting offsite before the eviction order was even publicized, and discussions were then and are now still underway about leasing or otherwise acquiring non-residential office space in which the committees can meet. [pesquisa: here is where you make an Animal Farm joke] General Assemblies happen on the same schedule as before, but have been moved to another public square which is something like 6 blocks from where the camp was.
A lot was made of how protesters in Iran, Egypt, etc. were using social media and portable internet technology to organize and mobilize supporters without having a readily identifiable "center" dispensing information and marching orders, and I think OWS started with an intent to emulate this to some degree. In Iran, this kind of organizing has the obvious advantage that if your movement depends on a "center" (a leader, institution, party, etc.) that center becomes a visible and high-value target for your opposition to attack with communications censorship, pre-emptive arrests, etc. A "repost this" message on Facebook is much harder to stop.
In the U.S. the analogous obstacle isn't the same kind of overt repression--no one, to my knowledge, has tried to block or shut down the OWS website for "instigating unlawful assemblies"--but rather a kind of "soft power" equivalent in which your "center" will be subjected to public smears and ad hominem attacks* to obfuscate your message, while government bureaucrats will manipulate "Time, Place, and Manner" regulations to minimize the impact of your demonstrations.**
OWS rather skillfully circumvented this machinery and succeeded in elevating its ideas to front-page status by showing that a large number of people who agree with those ideas can simply decide to converge on a targeted location and refuse to leave. Whether or not the entity "Occupy Wall Street" will amount to a successful political movement, the tactic has clearly sent some anxiety running through the halls of power.*** The adoption of a more guerrilla-style method of employing this tactic is probably feasible and perhaps more effective at this point--basically, "You know we're out there--don't piss us off or you'll get [cue sinister music] ... occupied."
I was at the OP camp for the eviction deadline. Basically we held the police off for a couple of hours through sheer force of numbers. Yes, they came back after everyone left and cleared the camp anyway, but a point was made for those who cared to see it. The city doesn't have enough jails to house 4000 people on the same night, so arresting us wasn't an option and they knew it. With really remarkably few exceptions (I heard of maybe one or two verifiable instances of protester aggression in that whole crowd all night) it was a very large and entirely nonviolent assembly of citizens simply claiming the right to be there by being there. The only way to make us stop would have been to lay into us with clubs en masse or start lobbing canisters of gas into the park--which would have a.) made them look like supreme as#@&%es under the circumstances and b.) probably resulted in a bunch of lawsuits--oh, and the department was already under federal investigation for civil rights violations.
So they did the smart thing and backed off. With enough turnout, you can do this anywhere. (And you,, and you, and you!) Hopefully the signal-noise ratio in the message being broadcast this way starts to improve, but "you can't evict an idea."
I've seen this sign around at OP rallies-- "F*#k Us and We MULTIPLY"
*Look up reports that a DC lobbying firm was soliciting Wall St. banks who might be interested in paying for a smear campaign against OWS supporters. Reportedly there have been no takers as of yet.
**Bush, for example, rather infamously did the latter to antiwar protesters--at his request, city authorities would often declare everything within a few miles of any public appearance by the President to be a "Security Perimeter" within which they could control public entry, exit, and movement based on whatever criteria they deemed appropriate. To comply with the "Time, Place, and Manner" doctrine of First Amendment interpretation, they would declare small areas somewhere in the vicinity-- completely enclosed by fences and typically located some distance from the event or personage being protested--to be "Free Speech Zones," meaning anyone anticipating a need to invoke 1st amendment protections for what they wished to do had to do it inside the fence. Journalists were sometimes told by authorities that if they wished to enter the "protest cage" (e.g. to interview demonstrators about their views) they would not be allowed to leave it. If you ever see someone at a protest toting a weathered-looking sign with an outline of the United States labeled "Free Speech Zone" it was probably made in response to this policy. (And its implicit argument that government authorities get to determine when and where the 1st Amendment exists, rather than members of the public exercising their 1st Amendment rights--the free speech arguments around OWS campsites are non-trivial, IMO, for this reason, although the campers would have a low likelihood of prevailing in most courts at present.)
***I don't think the violent crackdowns are part of a conspiracy so much as a generalized pissing contest--no government anywhere wants its citizens to get the idea into their heads that compliance with laws is in any way voluntary. Clearly there has been excessive force employed, but it's kind of part of the psychological game theory involved--if protesters comply with an order to stop protesting, they're conceding a victory to "the system;" if "the system" doesn't succeed in gaining compliance it feels it has let someone undermine the authority which is the essence of its existence. Hence pepper spray and rubber bullets come out over offenses that are roughly the equivalent of jaywalking. I seen it.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 30, 2011 - 04:42pm PT
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Movers And Sheriff’s Deputies Refuse Bank’s Order To Evict 103-Year-Old Atlanta Woman
By Zaid Jilani on Nov 30, 2011 at 11:15 am
103-year-old Vita Lee. (Photo credit: WSB TV)
Yesterday, a Deutsche Bank branch in Atlanta had requested the eviction of Vita Lee, a 103-year-old Atlanta woman, and her 83-year-old daughter. Both were terrified of being removed from their home of 53 years and had no idea where they’d go next.
But when the movers hired by the bank and police were dispatched to evict the two women, they had a change of heart. In a huge victory for the 99 Percent, the movers “took one look at” Lee and decided not to go through with it. Watch WSB TV’s Channel 2′s video report about the incident:
The stress of the possible eviction made Lee’s daughter ill; she was rushed to the hospital the same day. Lee had one message for Deutsche Bank: “Please don’t come in and disturb me no more. When I’m gone you all can come back and do whatever they want to.”
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 04:46pm PT
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How do you live in a house for 53 years, Philo, and not have it paid off?
Is there a 60-year mortgage I don't know about?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 30, 2011 - 04:46pm PT
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I don't know Chaz. Maybe all the years of republican down turned economies caused them to require refinancing to pay for medical care of a 103 year old and an 83 year old. Ya think?
Or are you content to juggle Koch balls?
Hey Fats Vita Lee wasn't moving when ordered to. Should she be gassed?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 30, 2011 - 05:59pm PT
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Fatty writes
Karl,
The Fed and it's lending windows are not part of the government. The Fed is the bank to the other banks, the Fed makes a determination if the borrower is worthy and takes collateral on the loan, these are short term loans.
Would you want runs on banks that just need a few days of liquidity??? Just today, the world's largest central (Fed) banks offered short term loans to Europe's largest banks.
Do you wish for 1929?????
Some banks will go under, but better for it to happen in an orderly fashion.
The evil one
Oh come on. You really want to support companies deceiving their shareholders? We already knew things were jacked.
And this BS about the Fed being private? Sure but let's take away their power to create trillions out of nothing with no accountability then!
Geez, it's like trying to defend why rape is wrong
Peace
Karl
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 06:09pm PT
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Well, what do you think Fatty?
Obama in a minnie landslide, say over 300 electoral votes?
Or are you thinking a real ass kicking, like the 365 electoral votes he got versus McCain?
And seriously, Jeff, Newt or Mitt, which one do you think will lose to Obama the most?
Your political savvy and opinions are so spot on!
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 30, 2011 - 06:26pm PT
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This is the thing about OWS, why it's so threatening. It's not the politicians, they are employees. The masters own and rule the money in secret. Duh!
The light is finally shining where we were previously distracted
False info the reasons for invading other countries, secrecy in how our economy and banking system works: a Democracy cannot function under such conditions. Politics has become a shadow game and American Democracy is as good as dead. America has been usurped.
OCCUPY WALL STREET!
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Nov 30, 2011 - 06:31pm PT
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Human nature being what it is the Occu-poo'ers don't realize that they are
silly and what they're doing is pointless i.e. living in tents filled with
bottles of pee and bags of feces. Not an inspiring message.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Nov 30, 2011 - 06:46pm PT
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Occupy Fatty's family bank
Oh the genetic socialism!
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division
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Nov 30, 2011 - 06:47pm PT
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How do you live in a house for 53 years, Philo, and not have it paid off?
Is there a 60-year mortgage I don't know about?
H.E.L.O.C.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Nov 30, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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Wonder what violent act a member of the press like this would take, putting two expensive cameras at risk which most likely are his own and tools that he cannot do his job without, that got him this treatment.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 08:07pm PT
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The cops are well-groomed, with
Muscled physiques in Butt Town
Their tan uniforms are tailored in chic
In Butt Town
Any young Black male who walks down the street
Is gonna get stopped by a car full of meat
BUt the girl with the hair
Flies by in her underwear-
She's done nothing so far to deserve that car
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Nov 30, 2011 - 09:11pm PT
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The press are not allowed to break the law.
Oddly enough in America neither are the cops.
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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Nov 30, 2011 - 09:20pm PT
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From Bill Herbst:
What will be required to truly shake up things is the abandonment of
civil obedience and the radical shift toward civil disobedience. The only
activities that will provoke real change are those that accelerate collapse by breaking out of passive acceptance through overt challenges to the fetters
of “lawfulness.”
By and large, the Occupy protesters are not currently breaking any laws
or risking significant personal harm. By contrast and for example, refusal
to pay taxes (and thus risk incarceration) would be a real (rather than
symbolic) protest. Simple gathering in public spaces to bitch does not
qualify. All the First Amendment blather aside, such protest is only an
initial baby step---necessary, perhaps, but ineffective.
...
Occupy---and other rebellions of more provocative civil disobedience
likely to follow soon---represents the end of the de facto marginalization
of those who know that radical change is not only necessary but
inevitable, and that such change will very shortly be upon us. This is the
beginning of a broader awareness that the jig is up, that we’ve burned the
candle at both ends, and that the way we live on this planet must change
if humanity is to survive. ...the Occupy uprising---with its
narrow focus on economic inequality, however urgent that may seem---is
definitely not the vehicle for promoting such an encompassing view
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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Nov 30, 2011 - 09:25pm PT
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Herbst again...
What’s important about the Occupy uprising is not whether it achieves
the goal of punishing or even restraining the rampant criminality of Wall
Street, since that would require a wholesale purge of the Ruling Elites,
both among those powerful individuals visible to us (such as politicians
and CEOs) and many others exerting influence invisibly from behind the
scenes. Despite the intentions of the protestors, such long-overdue reforms
are now functionally impossible. The orderly “political process” has
neither the power nor the will to initiate, legislate, or enforce any such
sweeping reforms, not as long as the megalithic institutions of commerce
and society remain intact.
What the Occupy uprising can do, however, is to act as a harbinger by
galvanizing a dawning awareness in the larger populace that breakdown
and collapse are indeed coming, right around the corner. This is the
function of the electric cattle prod, to awaken by shock.
There is, as far as I know, hardly any
civil disobedience at all in the viral Occupy phenomenon yet. Everything
about the protests carries the tacit assumption (intentional or not)---or at
least the hope---that a public appeal to authority in government and/or
corporate boardrooms might effect some reform or redress of grievances.
This is a complete fiction. A hopeless fantasy.
I’m not castigating the protesters or accusing anyone in particular of
naivete. People are joining the protests in part because this is the first
collective opportunity that has materialized to vent frustration with the
status quo policies created by those in power. People suffered in silence
up until recently
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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Nov 30, 2011 - 09:32pm PT
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Actually it's pure Democracy, which is why Republicans by and large don't get it. Government by the people for the people, instead of by corporations for corporations.
Something is happening here but you don't know what it is... do you Mr. Jones
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Nov 30, 2011 - 09:49pm PT
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Oddly enough in America neither are the cops. allowed to break the law.
where HAVE you been? There is no correlation between legal and allowable police behavior. In many cities the cops do as they dam*ned well please. Generally without significant legal consequences.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Nov 30, 2011 - 09:55pm PT
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Actually it's pure Democracy
In search of what righteous goal?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Nov 30, 2011 - 11:15pm PT
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It's socialism-communism when the OWS protestors ask for econmic justice and the lifestyle that our parents enjoyed...Tax cuts for the wealthy and bank bailouts is free market capitalism , apple pie , and the new American Dream so says the trust funders dying under daddies cap....
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Nov 30, 2011 - 11:47pm PT
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Wall Street....Too big to fail....Too big to go to jail....
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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does this mean owsers are just as racist as the tea party, whose critics claim ALL criticism of barry is "racist"?
does this mean owsers are just the latest cog in the machinery of the vast right-wing conspiracy?
or does this mean owsers are simply committed to protesting anything as long as it gives them an excuse (to libs, anyway) to avoid looking for a job?
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/occupy-protesters-mobilize-for-obamas-visit/
i'm open to other suggestions
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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no you are not
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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What jobs?
Hard to pick up litter when the SWAT team is evicting you.
Besides that wasn't even a good effort for a Mardi Gras parade and no body whines about those.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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OH MY F*#KING GOD!
Do those of you who keep posting the same old tired BS(like "they don't want to work" when ALL the people I KNOW who have been party of OWS HAVE at LEAST ONE JOB already, as an example) or obvious fabrications like"they're NAZI's!" - it's pretty clear that you are scared. Scared that this movement just might not go away as easily as originally expected. That -horrors! - change might actually come about, that it already HAS begun changing for the better, and the fear is that somehow your own little piece of the pie is somehow going to be sneezed on or nibbled at.
Please - do NOt try to suggest that you are spending the vast amount of your busy day repeating that bs because you think it is all a joke. If that were really the case - you definitely would need to get a life.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Hi, I'm fattrad and I'm a confused hippo - "Good bank analysts can spot problems in banks balance sheets without any official notices from the Fed."
As anyone knows... any good analysts can be bought to not spot problems in bank balance sheets, hence the need for official notices from the Fed.....
Do you need more spoon feeding?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Hi everybody, I'm fattrad and I'mhalf-tarded
Once again you seem to want the government to protect you from everything, are you a baby???
No, I'm just another retard, like you, how would rather not have a group of crooks cooking books run free without any regard to all. But I know that this is strictly against your world view, so I don't see us seeing eye to eye on this.
Do I need to drive over and change your diaper??
Oh, could you? Hey, it's not happening yet, bet when it does can I call on you to lend a hand to a guy in need?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk
Fattrad..... you should know by now that the more you (and others) make these simple minded statements the more I realize that I have made a good point, and that maybe you know that I have made a good point....
so, yes... you can change my dirty diapers, if that's what you're into. With you being an ex-cop I'm sure the list is long on "strange", most of which we don't need to know too much about
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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OWS is not only naive but silly to think we'll let them change the rules
when there is money on the table and the cards have been dealt.
Even a moron can get lucky but skill and intelligence usually pay off
in our little game of civilization. You either train up for it or not.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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happie, unfortunately those morans [sic] are not joking. I realize that is a Tea Party misspelling, wes, but as Bugs Bunny would tell you, the proper spelling and pronunciation is "maroon."
John
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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"OWS is not only naive but silly to think we'll let them change the rules
when there is money on the table and the cards have been dealt."
Brilliant analogy... Like OWS is part of a card game.....
bwaahhahahha
Post Read Edit: And JE feels better reciting Bugs Bunny quotes....
How can I possibly taken any of these fools seriously?
See... this is why the left feels superior to the right... game analogies and cartoons are what y'all are into...
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Jingy voluntarily admits he's a cheater.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Corgi Clapper
freely admits he has no point
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Happiegirl says:
OH MY F*#KING GOD!
Do those of you who keep posting the same old tired BS(like "they don't want to work" when ALL the people I KNOW who have been party of OWS HAVE at LEAST ONE JOB already, as an example) or obvious fabrications like"they're NAZI's!" - it's pretty clear that you are scared. Scared that this movement just might not go away as easily as originally expected. That -horrors! - change might actually come about, that it already HAS begun changing for the better, and the fear is that somehow your own little piece of the pie is somehow going to be sneezed on or nibbled at.
Please - do NOt try to suggest that you are spending the vast amount of your busy day repeating that bs because you think it is all a joke. If that were really the case - you definitely would need to get a life.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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The ones in L.A. were sleping in their own - and each other's - feces.
Nobody is scared of these people.
Last night, TV news was showing all the crap Occupy L.A. left behind. Unbelieveable. Sanitation workers said it was the worst thing they had ever seen, and they work with trash.
If they can't clean up their own campsite, I'm not interested in their political arguements.
It's hard to imagine any of them ever getting elected if they're not organized enough to dispose of their own waste.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Occupy LA leaves behind 60,000 lbs of garbage (plus their feces and urine)
but most shocking is how these people failed to sort it into recycle
trash, and compost bins! WTF Occupy?
Add environmental criminal to Occupies nefarious activities.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Carrying on from skipt's comment, maroon is a combination of blue and red. There are morans of all political stripes and colours. More right wing, of course - inbreeding, ignorance and lack of education have that effect.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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We'll soon see if Occupy San Francisco is responsible enough to clean up their campsite.
My guess is they'll trash the place.
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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OWS will live on in one form or another. I'm in, but too busy to occupy on a daily basis since I'm working right now. However I would gladly sit in with them on the weekends sometimes.
Some of you GOP sock puppets guys act like not working is such a big deal. As if work solves everything. The whole "get a job" jab is stupid. I had some guy yell "get a job hippie" at me once when I was pulling in 100K. I guess he thought having long hair means I wasn't employed. Several times in my life I have chosen not to work for extended periods and always got back into good jobs when I was tired of hanging out.
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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I'm sure they'll have time to clean up as the cops bust their asses and haul them off.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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"especially for a Climber"
anyone able to make the comment noted above.. is not a climber..
Just trying keep it real.
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malabarista
Trad climber
Portland, OR
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Let's see. Some trash left in the park versus 8 years of Bush malfeasance. One takes an afternoon to cleanup the other takes a lifetime.
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BrianH
Trad climber
santa fe
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You should fly out for the OWS LA roust, I have a couple of friends on LAPD who could give you the full experience.
O'Brien: If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. 1984, George Orwell.
In jest, we see the real agenda, scared people blindly worshiping power.
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BrianH
Trad climber
santa fe
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Could be any one of a hundred code sections, how about failing to obey the lawful order of a peace officer. The press are not allowed to break the law.
Neither are the cops. Responding with overwhelming force and violence, destroying personal property, demanding unreasonable bonds, and unnecessarily long detentions during arraignment (all well documented throughout the country) is not a lawful response. If anything, our heavily armed police officers have a higher obligation to obey the law then anyone, something they have consistently failed to do.
Winston Smith: I know you'll fail. Something in this world... some spirit you will never overcome...
O'Brien: What is it, this principle?
Winston Smith: I don't know. The spirit of man.
O'Brien: And do you consider yourself a man?
Winston Smith: Yes.
O'Brien: If you're a man, Winston, you're the last man. Your kind is extinct. We are the inheritors. Do you realize that you are alone? You are outside history. You unexist. Get up.
[Winston gets up and O'Brien shows him his reflection in a mirror. Winston is disheveled and beaten]
O'Brien: *That* is the last man. If you are human, *that* is humanity.
Fattrad, is this your vision for the future? It sure sounds like it.
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BrianH
Trad climber
santa fe
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typical ad hominem attack, the resort of the scoundrel who's thoughts are bankrupt. Unlike you fattrad, I work hard at my job, which is why I post here only occasionally.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oh, the list of "conservative" failures is endless.
Why right here in this country, we are fighting our way back out of the Republican RECESSION started under Bush 2007.
Remember that one?
When we were LOSING 700,000 jobs a MONTH?
And the stock market LOSt 50% of its value?
All turned around now under Democrat Obama.
Now gaining hundreds of thousands of jobs a month.
The stock market now UP over 40% since he took office.
But, don't them them pesky, bookwormy learned facts hit you in your ignorant ass.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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No, he never gave them the chance. You're an idiot.
I'm surely not a scholar of history, and I have always been particularly appalled at what Jewish and other endured/succumbed to/ran from in nazi Germany, but when fattrad wrote the above, I wondered about it and entered the google search of "did nazi's ever suggest jews leave germany?"
One thing that I found(very shallow attempt on my part to research) was this...
The pressure on Jews to leave Germany intensified. Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich organized a new programme designed to encourage Jews to emigrate. Crystal Night took place on 9th-10th November, 1938. Presented as a spontaneous reaction of the German people to the news that a German diplomat had been murdered by a young Jewish refugee in Paris, the whole event was in fact organized by the NSDAP.
reference link: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERjews.htm
So.... it may have been a very ugly suggestion to leave but apparently, that was the intention.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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I think you need to move from our wonderful country.
Isn't that what Hitler said to your people not too long ago?
No, he never gave them the chance. You're an idiot.
Well they should have known better and moved along.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Top GOP Strategist Admits He’s ‘Scared’ Of Occupy Wall Street Because It’s ‘Having An Impact’
By Zaid Jilani on Dec 1, 2011 at 10:15 am
Pollster Frank Luntz
The Republican Governor’s Association met in Florida this week and featured pollster Frank Luntz, who offered a coaching session for attendees about how they should communicate to the public. Yahoo! News’ Chris Moody was there, and captured some of Luntz’s comments on Occupy Wall Street.
Luntz told attendees that he’s “scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death.” The pollster warned that the movement is “having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” So the pollster offered some advice for them about how to fight back. Here’s a few snippets of what he said, according to Moody:
– Don’t Mention Capitalism: Luntz said that his polling research found that “The public…still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”
– Empathize With The 99 Percent Protesters: Luntz instructed attendees to tell protesters that they “get it”: “First off, here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ … ‘I get that you’re. I get that you’ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.”
– Don’t Say Bonus: Luntz told Republicans to re-frame the concept of the bonus payment — which bailed-out Wall Street doles out to its employees during holidays — as “pay for performance” instead.
– Don’t Mention The Middle Class Because Americans Don’t Trust Republicans To Defend It: “They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers,” Luntz instructed the audience. “We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.”
– Don’t Talk About Taxing The Rich: Luntz reminded Republicans that Americans actually do want to tax the rich, so he reccommended they instead say that the government “takes from the rich.”
Frank Luntz is no minor pollster. He is considered to be one of the top political communications experts in the world, having provided consulting to many of the world’s top corporations, politicians, and special interest groups. That Luntz is admitting the impact of Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent and telling closed-door meetings of Republicans that it frightens him is a huge victory for the movement.
http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/12/01/379365/frank-luntz-occupy-wall-street/
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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He's skeered of a disorganized rabble of unwashed unemployed hippies, malcontents and miscreants. What a whimp! Send in the GasBaggers and bitch about the litter.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Sunday Reflection: The higher ed bubble is bursting, so what comes next?
By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds | 12/03/11 8:05 PM
A couple of years back, I suggested in these pages that higher education was facing a bubble much like the housing bubble: An overpriced good, propped up by cheap government-subsidized credit, luring borrowers and lenders alike into a potentially disastrous mess.
Subsequent events have proved me right as students have begun to think twice about indebtedness and schools have begun to face pressure over tuition. For higher education, costs have skyrocketed even as the value of their product has been declining, and people are starting to notice.
Just last week, the New York Times, normally a big fan of higher education, ran an article on "The Dwindling Power of a College Degree." In our grandparents' day, a college diploma nearly guaranteed a decent job.
Now, not so much: "One of the greatest changes is that a college degree is no longer the guarantor of a middle-class existence. Until the early 1970s, less than 11 percent of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them could get a decent job. Today nearly a third have college degrees, and a higher percentage of them graduated from non-elite schools. A bachelor's degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability."
This is a simple case of inflation: When you artificially pump up the supply of something (whether it's currency or diplomas), the value drops. The reason why a bachelor's degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that the government decided that as many people as possible should have bachelor's degrees.
There's something of a pattern here. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we'll have more middle class people.
But homeownership and college aren't causes of middle-class status, they're markers for possessing the kinds of traits -- self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. -- that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class.
Subsidizing the markers doesn't produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. One might as well try to promote basketball skills by distributing expensive sneakers.
Professional basketball players have expensive sneakers, but -- TV commercials notwithstanding -- it's not the shoes that make them good at dunking.
If the government really wants to encourage people to achieve, and maintain, middle-class status, it should be encouraging things like self-discipline and the ability to defer gratification. But that's not how politics works.
Passing out goodies generates more votes, even though doing so undermines the character traits upon which prosperity depends. That may change as the global political class, pretty much everywhere, runs out of other people's money, but it hasn't quite changed yet.
For higher education, the solution is more value for less money. Student loans, if they are to continue, should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy after five years -- but with the school that received the money on the hook for all or part of the unpaid balance.
Up until now, the loan guarantees have meant that colleges, like the writers of subprime mortgages a few years ago, got their money up front, with any problems in payment falling on someone else.
Make defaults expensive to colleges, and they'll become much more careful about how much they lend and what kinds of programs they offer. China, which has already faced its own higher education bubble, is simply shutting down programs that produce too many unemployable graduates.
So far, Sinophile pundits like the New York Times' Tom Friedman don't seem to be pushing this idea for America. I wonder why not.
Another response is an increased emphasis on non-college education. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, skilled trades are doing quite well. For the past several decades, America's enthusiasm for college has led to a lack of enthusiasm for vocational education.
That may be changing as philanthropists ranging from Andy Grove of Intel to Home Depot's Bernie Marcus work to encourage the skilled trades. We need people who can make things, and it's harder to outsource a plumbing or welding job to somebody in Bangalore.
Of course, the thing about skilled trades is that they require skill. Even with training, not everyone makes a good welder or machinist any more than just anyone can become a doctor or lawyer.
And there are dangers in focusing too narrowly on a career path that looks good right now: The biggest constant in the global economy of the past several decades has been wrenching change. Jobs that look great today may not look so good in a few years.
The answer to that, I think, is adaptability. Whether their training is liberal arts, engineering or a trade, most people getting out of high school today will probably have to navigate multiple career paths over a lifetime.
How do we teach adaptability? That's a subject for another column, but you might ask yourself: Are tenured professors the best people to do that?
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/12/sunday-reflection-higher-ed-bubble-bursting-so-what-comes-next/1969376#ixzz1fgHrWlFc
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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sell-out or citizen:
Occupier gets an occupation
By CYNTHIA R. FAGEN
Last Updated: 4:44 AM, December 5, 2011
Posted: 12:51 AM, December 5, 2011
She’s gone from Occupy Wall Street to occupying a job on Wall Street.
Down-on-her-luck protester Tracy Postert spent 15 days washing sidewalks and making sandwiches at Zuccotti Park — then landed a dream job at a Financial District investment firm thanks to a high-powered passer-by who offered her work.
“I never thought I would be doing this,’’ Postert admitted to The Post.
The Upper West Sider, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical science specializing in pharmacology, was unemployed and had all but given up on finding work in her preferred field of academia when she joined the movement in October.
She held signs that read, “Reagan sucks,” and, “I’ll vote after the revolution.”
But she said she still needed to get a real job. So she made a new sign.
On the front, she wrote, “Ph.D. Biomedical Scientist seeking full time employment,” and on the back, “Ask me for my resume.”
It caught the eye of Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst for John Thomas Financial Brokerage. The exec wasn’t looking to hire, but he took Postert’s résumé anyway.
That was Oct. 22, Postert’s Day 10 as an Occupier.
The next day, Kaufman, impressed by her CV, sent her an e-mail asking if she’d like to come for an interview.
It wasn’t far — only two blocks from Zuccotti Park at 14 Wall St.
“I had been unemployed for so long, I thought why not?” said Postert, adding that she is in her 30s and has no background in finance or business.
Her last paying job was as a lab assistant at Touro College making $2,500 for the one semester she worked there, she said.
Kaufman offered her a job as a junior analyst evaluating medical companies as potential investments.
Postert said the decision to accept was painful.
But practicality won out.
The starting salary as a junior analyst is near minimum wage, but in time, she can earn a cool six figures, assured Kaufman.
Postert has now just completed her third week as a Wall Street geek.
She’s already studying for her exams to be a certified financial analyst.
“I want to get a perfect score,” she said.
Life has definitely changed for the former Occupier.
She’s in the office by 8 a.m., and she still has to get used to Kaufman’s rallying cry of “Go! Go! Go!” blaring over the speakers in the morning.
CEO Thomas Belesis said he believes Postert will be a great asset.
“She was ranting about Wall Street, and now she’s working on Wall Street. Banks are not so bad. I hope we have opened her eyes,” he said.
cynthia.fagen@nypost.com
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/occupier_gets_an_occupation_o8x0D8DkpsWB60rSMhcEgP#ixzz1fgma0s3H
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Upon serious reflection, the question emerges as to whether the Christian church has a message for OWS or whether the movement has a message for us. Of course the answer is “yes” and “yes.” Occupy Wall Street’s message to the church is, “If you were doing your job we wouldn’t be necessary.” The message of the church to OWS is, “There is an ally in the liberal progressive Christian community, and not all Christians are on the right.”
OWS pushes us to re-examine our fundamental understandings of Christianity to discover what our role is in this historic moment. When it comes to greed the Christian message should be pretty clear across the board. Jesus quite clearly said, “Blessed are the poor”—not the rich.
Good stuff, war. I particularly like your statement of ows to the Christian church, although I suspect we may interpret "doing your job" differently. I have opined on these pages before that the deeply flawed welfare system we have is a direct result of the failure of the church to take care of the poor. Instead of compassionate, loving care that leads both to spiritual and monetary richness, we have an inadequate materialistic system that merely impoverishes and perpetuates that poverty -- often moral as well as monetary.
Your last quote, however, misses a key part of the quote: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." While Jesus had plenty of frightening things to say to the rich (e.g. it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."), He never took the approach of the "protest pastors," whose theology seems to be "make someone else do it." Jesus had rather harsh things to say about that, in fact.
To me, the moral bankruptcy of the Christian right is that they seem to want to impose external conformity, and fault-finding in others, in place of righteousness, contrition and compassion. The moral bankruptcy of the Christian left is that they place heavy burdens on others, but not on themselves. When the crowd was hungry, Jesus told the disciples, "You give them something to eat." He never said "You tell the rich to give them something to eat."
Concentrating on what the rich should do is simply another side of the same die (it has more sides than a coin) that the right plays when they comment on, say, sexual morality or the lack thereof, or tell the poor to "get a job" but do nothing to help them. Both responses are hypocritical -- and Jesus used His harshest criticism on hypocrites.
John
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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From bookworm's link:
The starting salary as a junior analyst is near minimum wage.
What a deal.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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The idea is to impress your employers, and work your way up to Senior Analyst.
Nobody starts at the top.
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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They should get a nine year old kid to do that job.
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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Another reason to have those kids picking cotton at six.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Huntsman will come back from the dead and save the Republican Party.
And then will lose to Obama in an electoral landslide
make it $15,000
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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And, that's not what Newt meant.
Then you tell us what Newt meant when he said current child labor laws are stupid.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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The current child labor laws are stupid.
Gotta give it to Gingrich on that one.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Chaz, just to help ME out, do you have a link to the federal child labor laws?
I want to be as knowledgable and up on them as you are.
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Gary
climber
That Long Black Cloud Is Coming Down
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The current child labor laws are stupid.
How?
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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So if we thought about what Jesus would do, He would do the only thing possible, raise taxes on the rich, and redistribute the wealth back the people it was stolen from, the middle class.
You don't know your Bible well enough. He would create what people needed and have his disciples distribute it.
I do agree that in the absence of effective church action to alleviate the plight of the needy, we need government action to take care of the needy. Sinful people that we are, there would be too many freeloaders relying on others to do the work.
And yes, Jesus would be quite harsh on those who stole from others in the name of God. In addition, the entire Bible -- both Old and New Testaments, is very severe in its denunciation of those who exploint the poor.
I question, however, whether "the rich" are really the only ones doing that. If I were cynical (as I often am), I would point out that there are entire industries whose existence depends on keeping the needy down. In a way, it's like Nathaniel Hawthore's writing. Hawthorne was against sin, but without sin's existence, he'd have nothing to write about (with apologies to Richard Armour in American Lit Re-Lit.
John
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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hey dickless,
"Jingy,
You don't know sh#t about anything:"
I thought this was a given. It certainly has bn proved over and over again on this site. Which begs he question "Why do you give a sh#t? Why is it so important for you and your pansy-posse of thoughtless twits point out how uninformed,ignorant or just plain fatard-stupid I am.... Seems like a giant waste of your time. You may be losing. After all you are a big time mover and shaker (even after you've sat down) with all the top brass of the right wing.... I'm just a lib loser socialist/marcist pig....
Tax the rich scum.
The problem in science education begins in elementary school, according to Wim Wiewel, Portland State University's president.
"We're not getting enough kids with the right math and science skills to even get in the pipeline," Wiewel said. "You see that reflected in engineering schools filling their slots with a lot of foreign students."
Indeed, 48 percent of PSU's engineering and computer science students aren't U.S. citizens.
http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2011/08/academics_scientists_and_intels_ceo_convene_at_por.html"
(you point this out, and you fail to mention how incorrect I was when I said that republicons want to cut spending on education... that's because I am correct, right?)
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Just because this thread has been stuck for over 18 hours
Triumph The Insult Comic Dog at OWS
Especially starting at minute 8:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-253uBJap8
This blatantly political sculpture of the Bull gives a one sided perspective of "The Markets".
Someone needs to commission a new sculpture directly facing the Bull(shizz): a Grizzly on his hind legs with claws and teeth bared.
To illustrate the tension and repeat cycles between Boom and Bust.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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I didn't say the rich did anything,
the tax code is the problem, not the rich
Some (a select few) of the rich have influenced the tax code, which is the source of the problem
You mean the tax code under which "the rich" pay the overwhelming majority of federal taxes, Dr. F? That's how they're robbing the poor? Pretty clever of them to disguise it like that!
'I question, however, whether "the rich" are really the only ones doing that.'
then you need to shut the f*#k up,
Yes, war, that dissent stuff needs to be suppressed. Questioners need to keep quiet.
John
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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http://www.politicususa.com/en/ows-everywhere
Instead of Going Away Occupy Wall Street Will Be Occupying Everywhere
When OWS first started, the corporate media ignored it hoping it would just go away. When that didn’t work, the 1% turned to propaganda. First they mocked the occupy movement describing them as lazy kids who don’t know how the world functions. Occupy got stronger. The propaganda got uglier, but was discredited. OWS still gained popularity, surpassing the 1% astroturfing Tea Party.
That’s when the 1%’s minions and supporters turned to creative applications of the law, while overlooking legal niceties like the first amendment. Property was seized. Scott Olsen and Dorli Rainey became national symbols of the violence that Occupy protesters endured.
Olsen survived two tours of Iraq, only to be seriously injured, when a tear gas cannister hit him in the head, while peacefully protesting in Oakland, California. He is still recovering from the injuries he sustained and he is still an Occupy supporter. In a recent, on the Ed Show, Olsen explains why he continues to support the Occupy Movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NftnCk87Qes
Eighty four year old Dorli Rainey was pepper sprayed in Seattle. During an interview with Keith Olbermann, Rainey compared the media situation in the U.S. today with her experiences while growing up in Nazi Germany:
“I see the same thing happening here. We have really no more free media that will bring you the issues instead of just the soft fluff entertainment.”
At this point, I would like to restate an important observation by Jason Easley in a recent post:
Police departments by definition are supposed to keep the peace, but in the hands corrupt, terrified, or weak politicians, the mission to keep the peace has morphed into a violent suppression of speech. Not all police officers and police departments have engaged in this activity, but those who do are disgracing an entire profession and soiling the reputation of law enforcement.
Despite the best propaganda that money can buy and despite the efforts to intimidate and brutalize, the protests continue.
There are several events planned for this month. Here are just a few examples.
Today (December 4th) is occupy farms day in New York City. There will be a march between 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. For more information, go here.
December 6th is occupy our homes day. Salon’s Peter Rothberg describes the goal of this action.
Hopes are riding high that the day can galvanize a new frontier for the occupy movement: the liberation of vacant bank-owned homes for those in need.
The new Occupy Our Homes movement also aims to shed light on the housing and mortgage crisis which precipitated the great recession in 2008. Activists say that the Obama Administration’s efforts to help homeowners with “underwater” properties is woefully inadequate and drastic action is needed to prevent more human suffering from this persistent recession.
On December 12, the occupy movement is planning to shut down the west coast ports.
The details can be seen in the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGqncu3wlEI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicususa.com%2Fen%2Fows-everywhere&feature=player_embedded
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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I know many on ST are sad, but this is a failed revolution. The dinosaur speaks again.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Occupying everything but jobs:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/occupy-movement-taunts-law-home-183142437.html
Sorry, but if you have no equity on your home and you haven't made any payments, you have no right to stay in it. Read the papers you signed.
Banks (and pension funds, etc.) absorbed virtually all the losses of the housing market crash, and continue to do so. How many people do you know who are upside down on their homes by more then $30K who have not gotten some sort of modification, write down, short sale, or simply walked away? This is part of the reason the housing market crash has been more damaging to the economy than the tech crash, in which private investors absorbed the losses.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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in the last days it amounted to banks hiring particulary unscupulous loan agents to canvas skid row handing out homeloans to anyone whos hands was stead enough to sign a loan document
these banks turned around and added the full value of 30 years of such loans profits to their accounts then went begging to the government for the payout difference between what the drunkin homie payed on the morgage and what they would have earned had same drunkin homie made 30 years of monthly payments
There is a grain of truth to this, but the problem is not solved by nuking banks. The problem comes from the moral hazard created by government sponsored securitization. Most of these loans were either bought or insured by Fannie/Freddie. There would have been no housing bubble without them. Fannie and Freddie insured over 50% of the loans made in the boom years, and purchased more subprime than any other company (including Countrywide). The market for subprime came almost entirely from artificially low interest rates pushed down by the Fed, which forced investors to move to risky assets for yield.
The notion that poor people were "taken advantage of" is silly though. I knew hundreds of people who bought homes at that time, most of them lied on apps, put nothing down, etc. just to get into the market. "Poor people" got zero down loans. They gambled and lost, but what did they lose? Nothing, and most of them got years of free rent in the deal. I also knew many people in the mortgage industry - in general, they all thought they were making money for everyone. I was ridiculed for believing the market would crash. Everybody thought they were going to be rich - that is how a bubble works.
Where laws were broken, people should be prosecuted, but aside from that we need to look at who was managing the punch bowl, the Fed and the Government. Beating down banks that are sitting on hundreds of billions of bad debt is counterproductive.
they made you all pay for the crimes they got away with exploiting the poor
The only people they exploited were taxpayers, but only because we foolishly allowed ourselves to be on the hook for the losses in the name of more homeownership. That is what needs to be reformed. Occupy D.C.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Hey DelCross this sounds like you are describing the GOP.
I think they aren't a very productive group, focused on occupation and disruption rather than viable strategies for positive change. I no longer have sympathy for them and I suspect they will lose more hearts and minds as time goes on.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112271316280749.html
Americans are being lied to about the deficit
Republicans want to gut social safety nets, not cut the US deficit.
Heather Digby Parton Last Modified: 22 Nov 2011 11:01
And sadly, Democrats were more than willing to go along with this lopsided demand, labouring under the bizarre illusion that they would be rewarded by the people for doing exactly what the people didn't want them to do. The only thing standing in their way was the Republicans' unreasonable refusal to consider raising any taxes at all on highly profitable corporations and the greedy 1 per cent. In the end, even that small concession to allow the Democrats to save a tiny bit of face was too much and the negotiations fell apart.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Certainly, Occupy San Francisco will be the one occupation to leave their campsite cleaner than it was when they moved in.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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k-man wrote: Pentagon is offering free Military Hardware to every police department in the US.
It will go well with the software [Not CIA or NSA made but have their own] for future sites for where the OWS protestors will be next through cell phones, Facebook and Twitter accounts; add Google Earth, tag it and they will be there 6 hours early. OWS protestors just need to change their words from “OWS protest and Occupy Seattle on Jan 10 2012” to “Christian Gospel Concert on Jan 10 2012” and they will not show up. It is all in the coding of the words.
In the past with Viet Nam War long and gone, now that they have the hardware and software just quicker in getting names and putting them on a list. Match it up with SSN, driver licenses, home addresses, bank accounts, family members and known associates. They will get a few wrong 1% but it will take years for you to get off the list since the spelling of your name matches 100-200.
Oh! yes and then the smaller, really small cheaper drones to take notes.
God Bless America or God Bless UnAmerica.
Edit: And by the way watch out for the 100 to 200 undercover cops, agent provocateurs to text and call in the shots where they need be.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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They will help getting the message out. GOP and Wall Street have something to worry about in the months to come even the police.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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California Code
Penal Code
Chapter 8. Conspiracy
PENAL CODE
SECTION 182-185
...185.] Section One Hundred and Eighty-five. It shall be unlawful
for any person to wear any mask, false whiskers, or any personal
disguise (whether complete or partial) for the purpose of:
One--Evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification
in the commission of any public offense.
We're all eager to see the 'Active Denial Systems' let loose of the Occupiers when they step over the line from protester to criminal.
So don't expect much sympathy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmuyLIrSjxI
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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i'm so grateful that i escaped the education system before the liberal juggernaught corrupt all the progress my parents made...although, as a teacher, i'm now suffering the consequences of the progressive agenda
from russell meade
How To Ruin Your Life
Alert reader Dan Shea drew Via Meadia‘s attention to an unusually depressing article in the Boston Globe. It is one of those fluffy and airheaded “lifestyle” pieces, the print equivalent of empty calorie junk food and like many such articles it provides a horrifying glimpse into the vacuous nature of the modern American mind. In this particular case, the reporter, who hopefully is affecting rather than spontaneously producing prose redolent of relentless stupidity, shares her view of 10 “awesome” classes at Boston area colleges that she thinks her readers would like to take.
A couple of them, we hasten to observe, look both useful and good. The MIT course taking first year mechanical engineering students through the entire process of toy design seems a bit out of place on this list. And we also note that the actual classes may have more substance than our chipper journalist reports. But some “awesome” courses look like the kind of academic malpractice that help so many American kids emerge from four years of “education” with massive debt loads, major attitude problems, and no marketable skills. Consider:
“Staging American Women: The Culture of Burlesque”. Burlesque is a complex and alluring underground culture — and sexy, too, of course. Think about tassels for a moment — are you blushing? Then you might want to skip out on a course that involves discussing pin-ups and early sexploitation films. Your loss.
It is hard to know which is more disturbing, here: that a college can accept student loan money for a course like this without being charged with financial fraud or the vapid thinking and limp prose that Globe editors evidently think belongs in their newspaper. Or consider this piece of awesomeness from the same college (Emerson, where tuition and fees run to more than $30,000 a year, and almost half of those who apply are admitted):
“Puppetry”. “The course culminates in the construction of puppets for in-class presentations,” which is really all you need to know. Plus, puppets are pretty popular right now. I’ll be the first to say it: This class will make you a hit with the ladies.
Or there is our fatuous writer’s top suggestion, a useful course on the history of surfing:
“Surfing and American Culture“. As a Massachusetts native, I have a bit of trouble picturing the impact surfing has had on American culture beyond that Beach Boys song and Point Break. This class will take the uninitiated through the history of surfing up to the present day, as well as examine its role as a major economic force. And include field trips? Just a suggestion.
(Again, one wonders when the Globe decided that soggy, tasteless mush like this was publishable content. Either the writer or the editor of this piece and quite possibly both clearly spent much too much time in college taking classes like the ones being praised here.)
As Via Meadia looked at these course descriptions, and reflected that all over America students are borrowing tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend expensive schools and then blowing the money on glittering fripperies like these, we were reminded of a book title we came across in our long vanished youth: How to Make Yourself Miserable. It occurs to us that there is an infallible recipe for making yourself miserable, and that many young people in this country are following it — some, perhaps, without knowing that that is what they are doing.
So, inspired by this list of awesome courses, here is a sure-fire way to make yourself miserably unhappy in your twenties.
First, enroll in a college that you cannot afford, and rely on large student loans to make up the difference.
Second, spend the next four years having as good a time as possible: hang out, hook up, and above all, take plenty of “awesome” courses.
Third, find teachers and role models who will encourage you to develop an attitude of enlightened contempt for ordinary American middle class life, the world of business, and such bourgeois virtues as self-reliance, thrift, accountability and self-discipline. Specialize in sarcasm and snark.
Fourth, avoid all courses with tough requirements, taking only the minimum required number of classes in science, math and foreign languages.
Fifth, never think about acquiring marketable skills.
Sixth, when you graduate and discover that you have to repay the loans and cannot get a job that pays enough to live comfortably while servicing your debts, be surprised. Blame society. Demand that the government or your parents or evil corporations bail you out.
Seventh, expect anyone (except for other clueless losers who’ve been as stupid and wasteful as you) to sympathize with your plight, or to treat you with anything but an infuriating mixture of sorrow, pity and contempt.
If you follow this recipe faithfully, Via Meadia promises that you will achieve all the unhappiness you want. And don’t worry; anytime you feel sad and blue, just read some “lifestyle” journalism in the Boston Globe. It will be sure to cheer you up.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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By Philo's definition of "hero", Rodney King has earned himself the Congressional Medal Of Honor.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Please explain your logic on that absurd statement.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Who's been arrested more times than Rodney King?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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What? Where is any connection to reality in your fetid mind?
Just because you are too much of a coward to stand up for what you believe in doesn't mean those who do are criminals.
Were your family members of the Vichy French?
Do you always capitulate to the forces of oppression?
You really diggin' on the POLICE STATE?
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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You don't know what a "police state" is.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Good article on Corporate Personhood
http://www.alternet.org/story/153345/the_real_history_of_%27corporate_personhood%27%3A_meet_the_man_to_blame_for_corporations_having_more_rights_than_you/
The Real History of 'Corporate Personhood': Meet the Man to Blame for Corporations Having More Rights Than You
The real history of today's excessive corporate power starts with a tobacco lawyer appointed to the Supreme Court.
December 6, 2011 | The following is an excerpt of Jeffrey Clement's Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It.) Click here to order a copy.
In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America.
Lewis Powell, like the Citizens United dissenter Justice John Paul Stevens, was a decorated World War II veteran who returned to his hometown to build a most respected corporate law practice. By all accounts, Powell was a gentleman — reserved, polite, and gracious — and a distinguished lawyer and public servant. Commentators and law professors cite Powell’s “qualities of temperament and character” and his “modest” and “restrained” approach to judging. At his funeral in 1998, Sandra Day O’Connor, who had joined the Supreme Court in 1987, said, “For those who seek a model of human kindness, decency, exemplary behavior, and integrity, there will never be a better man.” Even the rare critic will cite Lewis Powell’s decency and kindness.
Much about these accounts must be true, but none tells the whole story of Lewis Powell. All of them, and even the principal Powell biography, omit the details of how he used his gifts to advance a radical corporate agenda. It is impossible to square this corporatist part of Powell’s life and legacy with any conclusion of “modest” or “restrained” judging.
Powell titled his 1971 memo to the Chamber of Commerce “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” He explained, “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.” In response, corporations must organize and fund a drive to achieve political power through “united action.” Powell emphasized the need for a sustained, multiyear corporate campaign to use an “activist-minded Supreme Court” to shape “social, economic and political change” to the advantage of corporations.
There are about 7 more pages, so it is in depth.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/11937/corporations_are_not_people/
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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You don't know what a "police state" is.
Another vapid response from Chaz.
Does he offer any information? From this do we assume that Chaz knows what a police state is?
No, all we know from this is that Chaz spews.
Go ahead and read though his posts. Nothing of any value, other than to deride others.
So Chaz, please explain how Rodney King and a retired police captian are the same, you f'tard.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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OK, I got a question for y'all.
I know a lot of people criticize the Chinese Gov't for their abuse of human rights. You know, they jail dissidents and house as political prisoners those that oppose the state. I think most Americans hold this out (human rights) as a key difference between our "free" state and the "non-free" communist state.
OK, here's the question:
What do you think keeps the Chinese-style human rights violations from happening here in the U.S.?
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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You don't know what a "police state" is.
Another vapid response from Chaz.
Does he offer any information? From this do we assume that Chaz knows what a police state is?
No, all we know from this is that Chaz spews.
Go ahead and read though his posts. Nothing of any value, other than to deride others.
So Chaz, please explain how Rodney King and a retired police captian are the same, you f'tard.
Agree. Sounds like this guy (cheez) does "know what a police state is".
Is he writing from America outside the branch dividian or ruby ridge? Is he currently part of OWS? In that case, he knows as much as I do about "police state".
No, he offers no information on police state.
BTW - King and retired captain..... I think even the characters would beg to differ with Cheez on that one...
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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http://www.politicususa.com/en/bernie-sanders-citizens-united
Bernie Sanders Proposes A Constitutional Amendment To Overturn Citizens United
December 8, 2011
By Jason Easley
Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed a constitutional amendment today that would overturn Citizens United and make it clear that corporations are not people.
Sen. Sanders’ proposed Saving American Democracy amendment states,
SECTION 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.
SECTION 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.
SECTION 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.
SECTION 4. Congress and the States shall have the power to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own spending, and to authorize the establishment of political committees to receive, spend, and publicly disclose the sources of those contributions and expenditures.
In a statement Sen. Sanders said, “There comes a time when an issue is so important that the only way to address it is by a constitutional amendment.” Sanders said of the effort to override the court decision that he labeled “a complete undermining of democracy.”
There is one interesting component to the Saving American Democracy Amendment that makes it different from all of the other proposed amendments and remedies designed to overturn Citizens United. Section 4 of the amendment strikes at the basis for every Supreme Court decision related to campaign finance. Sanders is also taking aim at the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision where the Supreme Court ruled spending money to influence elections was a form of protected free speech, and struck down limits on expenditures.
The amendment proposed by Sanders changes this by giving Congress the power to set expenditure limits on individuals, organizations, and candidates themselves. The Saving American Democracy Amendment would return the government back to the people by shutting off the money pipeline from the wealthy and special interests. It is also significant that the amendment limits the amount of money a candidate can give to their own campaign. This means that candidates would no longer have to be millionaires, or grovel at the feet of corporate America and the 1% in order to be able to run.
If this amendment was passed and ratified, anyone could run for office. The electoral process would once again be open to the candidates with the best ideas, not the biggest bank accounts. The Saving American Democracy Amendment would not only get rid of the corrupt Citizens United decision. It was also right a series of decades old wrongs that are based on the Buckley decision.
The odds of the amendment getting the support of the required two thirds majorities in the Senate and House, and ¾ of the states needed for ratification are slim, but that isn’t really the point. It is important to keep calling attention to this issue. Campaign finance reform is the only way for the American people to take back their elections and government.
Sen. Sanders is trying to wake America up with this amendment. The politicians aren’t going to fix it, the one percent isn’t going to kill their golden goose, and the Koch brothers own a majority on the Supreme Court, so it is up to the American people to take back the government that by constitutional design belongs to them.
Sounds like a good idea to me!!!!
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Jingy and k-man,
The juxtaposition of your arguments has a delicious irony. K-man asks how we avoid being a police state or stifling dissent, while Jingy wants to restrict political speech. I love the reasoning [sic] of the Left!
John
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Anonymous is a group of hackers just a few of successors to WikiLeaks. They don’t need no–stinking masks.
They are concentrating on the enemy [the state] and exposing their vulnerabilities.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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December 08, 2011 Dailybreeze
Anonymous takes credit for LAPD info leak
Members of the group say they posted officers' home addresses and names of their children.
Personal Info on LAPD Command Staff Leaked
A member of a hacking group affiliated with international hacking group Anonymous told a radio station today that the group was responsible for posting the personal information of more than two dozen members of the Los Angeles Police Department's command staff.
The hacker group @CabinCr3w sent out a Twitter message Monday that provided information on officers' backgrounds, including home addresses, campaign contributions, property records, and in some cases names of their children.
A member of the group wrote to KPCC-FM (89.3) in an online chatroom that the group posted the information because of the LAPD raid on the Occupy LA encampment and the treatment of protesters.
"It all comes from those (LAPD) actions and how the protesters are now being treated like criminals for practicing a fundamental right," a member of the group wrote.
The member of @CabinCr3w wrote that the local group is associated with the Anonymous group that shut down four Bay Area Rapid Transit stations in San Francisco after BART police shut off cellphone service to prevent a planned protest about the shooting death of Charles Hill, a homeless man killed by BART police in July.
BART officials said they tried to prevent the protests because it would lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions.
Police are investigating the publication of personal information about more than two dozen LAPD captains and some command staff.
The website published anonymously obtained officers' property records, campaign contributions, biographical information and some names of family members, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The department is conducting a risk analysis that will determine whether police or their families need extra security, LAPD Lt. Andrew Neiman told City News Service.
Neiman said he had not seen the website, but said it was a concern "any time someone involved in law enforcement has personal information accessible to the public, which has a criminal element as well, and subjects them and their family to additional threats."
Most of the information published on the site was publicly available, and the department's secure severs do not appear to have been hacked, the Times reported.
The LAPD publishes detailed biographical information about some of its command staff and captains on its website, www.lapdonline.org/lapd--command-- staff. The information includes details about commanders' and captains' careers, and in some cases, their hobbies, marital status and the number of children they have.
LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said publishing such legal information is legal, but it is a safety concern for officers and their families."It's a creepy thing to do, but it's not against the law to cull something from a website," Smith said.
"We deal with a lot of bad people in this department ... and bad people sometimes hold a grudge," Smith said. "Why would somebody put that together? I can think of no good reason to want to do that, but I can think of a lot of bad reasons...Anybody can reach anyone in our department by phone, email or by sending a letter."
So who needs to be ready Fattie, might want get a new PC [do not add a printer] rather than being on the street beating theses guys up.
"I could be sworn in at any time, I'm ready to do some tooling."
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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JE,
I see you side-stepped my question.
Yeah, it's a tough one, I admit.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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http://www.towardfreedom.com/activism/2637-this-changes-everything-how-the-99-woke-up
This Changes Everything: How the 99% Woke Up
Monday, 05 December 2011 17:35 Sarah van Gelder
“We fail to understand why we should have to pay the costs of the crisis, while its instigators continue to post record profits. We’re sick and tired of one injustice after another. We want human dignity back again.
This isn’t the kind of world we want to live in, and it’s we who have to decide what world we do want. We know we can change it, and we’re having a great time going about it.”
—From #HowToCamp by the Spanish indignados, whose occupations in cities throughout Spain helped inspire Occupy Wall Street
***
Something happened in September 2011 so unexpected that no politician or pundit saw it coming.
Inspired by the Arab Spring and uprisings in Europe, sparked by a challenge from Adbusters magazine to show up at Wall Street on September 17 and “bring a tent,” and encouraged by veteran New York activists, a few thousand people gathered in the financial district of New York City. At the end of the day, some of them set up camp in Zuccotti Park and started what became a national—and now international—movement.
The Occupy movement, as it has come to be called, named the source of the crises of our time: Wall Street banks, big corporations, and others among the 1% are claiming the world’s wealth for themselves at the expense of the 99% and having their way with our governments. This is a truth that political insiders and the media had avoided, even while the assets of the top 1% reached levels not seen since the 1920s. But now that this genie is out of the bottle, it can’t easily be put back in.
Without offices, paid staff, or a bank account, Occupy Wall Street quickly spread beyond New York. People gathered in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Atlanta, San Diego, and hundreds of other cities around the United States and claimed the right of we the people to create a world that works for the 99%. In a matter of weeks, the occupations and protests had spread worldwide, to over 1,500 cities, from Madrid to Cape Town and from Buenos Aires to Hong Kong, involving hundreds of thousands of people.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is not just demanding change. It is also transforming how we, the 99%, see ourselves. The shame many of us felt when we couldn’t find a job, pay down our debts, or keep our home is being replaced by a political awakening. Millions now recognize that we are not to blame for a weak economy, for a subprime mortgage meltdown, or for a tax system that favors the wealthy but bankrupts the government. The 99% are coming to see that we are collateral damage in an all-out effort by the super-rich to get even richer.
Now that we see the issue clearly—and now that we see how many others are in the same boat—we can envision a new role for ourselves. We will no longer be isolated and powerless. We can hold vigils all night when necessary and nonviolently face down police. We are the vast majority of the population and, once we get active, we cannot be ignored. Our leaders will not fix things for us; we’ll have to do that ourselves. We’ll have to make the decisions, too. And we’ll have to take care of one another—provide the food, shelter, protection, and support needed to make it through long occupations, bad weather, and the hard work of finding consensus when we disagree.
By naming the issue, the movement has changed the political discourse. No longer can the interests of the 99% be ignored. The movement has unleashed the political power of millions and issued an open invitation to everyone to be part of creating a new world.
Historians may look back at September 2011 as the time when the 99% awoke, named our crisis, and faced the reality that none of our leaders are going to solve it. This is the moment when we realized we would have to act for ourselves.
The Truth is Out: The System is Rigged in Favor of the Wealthy
One of the signs at the Occupy Seattle protest reads: “Dear 1%. We were asleep. Now we’ve woken up. Signed, the 99%.”
This sign captures the feeling of many in the Occupy movement. We are seeing our ways of life, our aspirations, and our security slip away—not because we have been lazy or undisciplined, or lacked intelligence and motivation, but because the wealthiest among us have rigged the system to enhance their own power and wealth at the expense of everyone else.
Critics of the movement say they oppose the redistribution of wealth on principle. But redistribution is exactly what has been happening for decades. Today’s economy redistributes wealth from the poor and middle class to those at the top. The income of the top 1% grew 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, according to the Congressional Budget Office. For those in the bottom 20 percent, income grew just 18 percent during those twenty-eight years.
The government actively facilitates this concentration of wealth through tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, and bailouts for giant banks and corporations. These entities also benefit from mining rights, logging rights, airwave rights, and countless other licenses to use common assets for private profit. Corporations shift the costs of environmental damage to the public and pocket the profits. Taxpayers bear the risk of global financial speculation while the payoffs go to those most effective at gaming the system. Instead of investing profits to provide jobs and produce needed goods and services, the 1% put their wealth into mergers, acquisitions, and more speculation.
The list of government interventions on behalf of the 1% goes on and on: Tax breaks favor the wealthy, global trade agreements encourage offshoring jobs, agricultural subsidies favor agribusiness over family farms, corporate media get sanctioned monopolies while independent media gets squeezed.
The people who go to work producing things we need—the middle class and working poor—pay the price for all this. Speculative profits act as a drain on the economy—like a hidden tax. This hidden tax is one of the many reasons the middle-class standard of living has been slipping.
This lopsided division of wealth corrupts government. Few among the 99% now believe government works for their benefit—and for good reason. With the 1% commanding an army of lobbyists and doling out money from multimillion-dollar campaign war chests, government has become a source of protection and subsidies for Wall Street. No wonder there isn’t enough money left over for education, repairing roads and bridges, taking care of veterans and retirees, much less for the critical transition we need to make to a clean energy future.
The system is broken in so many ways that it’s dizzying to try to name them all. This is part of the reason why the Occupy movement hasn’t created a list of demands. The problem is everywhere and looks different from every point of view. The one thing the protesters all seem to agree on is that the middle-class way of life is moving out of reach. Talk to people at any of the Occupy sites and you’ll hear stories of people who play by the rules, work long hours, study hard, and then find only low-wage jobs, often without health care coverage or prospects for a secure future.
And many can find no job at all. In the United States, twenty-five million people are unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work. Forty-five percent of those without jobs have been unemployed for more than twenty-seven weeks. Some employers won’t hire anyone who is currently unemployed. Meanwhile, the cost of health care, education, rent, food, and energy continues to rise; the only thing that’s falling is the value of homes and retirement funds.
Behind these statistics are real people. Since the Occupy movement began, some who identify themselves as part of the 99% have been posting their stories at wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. Here’s one: “I am a lucky one. I have enough money to eat three of four weeks of the month. I have been paying student loans for fifteen years and still no dent. My husband lost his job...Last year I took a 10 percent pay cut to ‘do my share’ and keep layoffs at bay. I lost my house. I went bankrupt. I still am paying over one thousand dollars in student loans for myself and my husband and that is just interest. We will not have children. How could we when we can’t even feed ourselves? I am the 99%.”
Another personal story, by a sixty-year-old, reads, “Got laid off. Moved two thousand miles for new job. Pays 40 percent less than old job. Sold home at a loss. Filed Chapter Eleven. Owe IRS fifty thousand dollars. Fifteen thousand dollar per year debt for son’s tuition at state university. Seventy-five percent of retirement funds shifted to the 1%! I am the 99%!”
The website contains thousands of stories like these.
Now that we know we are not alone, we are less likely to blame ourselves when things are hard. And now that we are seeing the ways the system is rigged against us, we can join with others to demand changes that will allow everyone to thrive.
We the People Now Know That We Have the Right, and the Power
The power of the Occupy Wall Street movement is rippling out far beyond the people camped at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, and even beyond the occupation sites springing up in cities around the world. This movement is reaching people who are carrying a protest sign for the first time, including some conservatives, along with union members who have been fighting a losing battle to maintain their standard of living.
Hundreds of thousands have participated in the protests and occupations, millions support the occupations, and tens of millions more support their key issues. Polls show that jobs continues to be the issue that most concerns us, yet the national dialogue has been dominated by obsession with debt. While just 27 percent of Americans responding to an October 2011 Time Magazine poll held a favorable view of the Tea Party, for example, 54 percent held a favorable view of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Of those familiar with the protests, large majorities share their concerns: 86 percent agreed that Wall Street and lobbyists have too much power in Washington, DC, 68 percent thought the rich should pay more taxes, and 79 percent believe the gap between rich and poor has grown too large.
The movement has been criticized for its diversity of people and grievances, but in that diversity lies its strength. Among the 99% are recent graduates and veterans who can’t find work, elderly who fear losing their pensions, the long-term unemployed, the homeless, peace activists, people with a day job in a corporate office who show up after work, members of the military, and off-duty police. Those involved cannot be pigeonholed. They are as diverse as the people of this country and this world.
The movement has also been criticized for its failure to issue a list of demands. In fact, it is easy to see what the movement is demanding: quite simply, a world that works for the 99%. The hand-lettered protest signs show the range of concerns: excessive student debt; banks that took taxpayer bailouts, then refused to help homeowners stay in their homes; cuts in government funding for essential services; Federal Reserve policies; the lack of jobs.
A list of specific demands would make it easier to manage, criticize, co-opt, and divide the movement. Instead, Occupy Wall Street is setting its own agenda on its own terms and developing consensus statements at its own pace. It’s doing this in spaces that it controls—some in parks and other public spaces, others in union halls, libraries, churches, and community centers. On the Internet, the movement issues statements and calls to action through Twitter, Facebook, and its own Web sites. From the start it was clear that the movement would not rely on a mainstream media corrupted by corporate interests.
The Occupy Wall Street movement does not treat power as something to request—something that others can either grant or withhold. We the people are the sovereigns under the Constitution. The Occupy Wall Street movement has become a space where a multitude of leaders are learning to work together, think independently, and define the world we want to live in.
Those leaders will be stirring things up for years to come.
This Is What Horizontal Power Looks Like
When political parties talk about building a base, they usually mean developing foot soldiers who will help candidates win election and then go home to let the elected officials make the decisions. The Occupy Wall Street movement turns that idea on its head. The ordinary people who have chosen to be part of this movement are the ones who debate the issues, determine strategies, and lead the work.
Working groups take care of practical matters like food, sanitation, media, meeting facilitation, and receiving packages from supporters. Other groups discuss the issues, create arts and culture, debate tactics, and consider whether to issue demands. In Zuccotti Park, the Consciousness Working Group set up a permanent sacred space for prayer and meditation; spiritual leaders from various faiths show up to lead observances.
The early weeks of the occupation coincided with Yom Kippur, and a thousand Jewish activists participated in services across from Zuccotti Park. They erected in the park a sukkah, a temporary hut built to represent the impromptu housing Israelites used in the desert when escaping Egypt. Because the building of structures at Zuccotti Park is forbidden, this was an act of civil disobedience.
At the center of this movement are general assemblies, where decisions are made by consensus. Facilitators are charged with managing the process so that all have a chance to be heard and everyone has a chance to express approval, disapproval, or to block consensus by means of hand signals.
The use of the people’s microphone is a central feature of the general assemblies. To use the people’s mic, a person first grabs the attention of the crowd by shouting, “Mic check!” Then, he or she begins to speak, saying a few words at a time, so that others can shout the words on to those behind them in the crowd.
Originally developed as a way to circumvent bans on amplification at many occupation sites, the people’s mic has developed into much more than that. It encourages deeper listening because audience members must actively repeat the language of the speaker. It encourages consensus because hearing oneself repeat a point of view one doesn’t agree with has a way of opening one’s mind. And it provides a great example of how community organizing works best when it’s people-powered and resilient. This technique allows crowds of thousands to communicate, and also allows groups involved in direct street action to make democratic decisions on the fly.
The occupation zones are not just places to talk about a new society. They are becoming twenty-four-hour-a-day experiments in egalitarian living. Without paid staff or hierarchies, everyone gets fed, laundry gets done by the truckload, disagreements get facilitated, and those arrested are greeted by crowds of cheering supporters when they get out of jail.
Cynics might question the importance of this deepening sense of community. But people who have lived in a competitive, isolating world are tasting a way of life built on support and inclusion, in some cases for the first time. They are sharing the risk of police beatings, arrests, and pepper spray, and the hardship of sleepless nights in a rainy or snowy park. The resulting bonds create strength, solidarity, and resolve. Visitors report being surprised to see smiles instead of anger. This is a movement where you often hear the words, “I love you.”
That experience of community is not easily forgotten, and it deepens the yearning for a new culture; one that is radically inclusive, respectful, supportive, and horizontal.
What Next?
The organizers of the September 17 occupation say they weren’t planning for an occupation that would go on week after week. It just hadn’t occurred to them. And no one can say where things will go from here. Harsh weather could drive people away. Other hazards could undercut the movement. Police violence could frighten away would-be protesters, or it could galvanize the movement, as did the pepper spraying of unarmed women in Manhattan and police violence against occupiers in Oakland.
Another threat to the movement is violence on the part of the occupiers themselves, which would be used to justify police action and likely turn press coverage against the occupations. With increasing tensions and exhausted protesters, the nonviolent discipline of this movement will be severely tested.
Violence could also come from provocateurs seeking to discredit the Occupy movement. Within a month of the movement’s launch there was a case of an admitted provocateur, an assistant editor at the right-wing magazine American Spectator, who tried, without success, to get Occupy and anti-war protesters to join him in pushing past security guards at the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space in Washington, DC. Fortunately, the crowd refused to follow. Security guards responded by pepper spraying protesters, and the museum was closed for some hours. Most news reports attributed the scuffle to Occupy Wall Street protesters.
But the movement has important strengths that add to its resilience. It is radically decentralized, so a disaster at any one occupation will not bring down the others; in fact, the others can take action in support. There is no single leader who could be co-opted or assassinated. Instead, leadership is broadly shared, and leadership skills are being taught and learned constantly.
What’s more, the autonomous groups within the movement that plan and carry out direct actions of all sorts are extremely difficult to contain. By choosing the targets of their actions wisely, they can further draw attention to institutions whose behavior calls into question their right to exist. When the legitimacy of large institutions crumbles, it is often just a matter of time before the support of government, stockholders, customers, and employees goes away, too. There is no institution that is “too big to fail.” This is one way that nonviolent revolution happens.
New support is flowing in, some from unexpected sources. A group of Marine veterans has formed OccupyMARINES, which will work to recruit police and members of other branches of the military to support the occupations, and to nonviolently protect protesters from police assaults. The Marines also plan to help the occupations sustain themselves through cold weather. The group was inspired by a viral video showing Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas dressing down the police for brutalizing protesters. “There is no honor in this,” he shouted at the police. The wounding of Marine veteran Scott Olsen, who at twenty-four years old had already served two tours in Iraq, has further fired up fellow Marines. Olsen was critically injured by a police-fired projectile in an Oakland police action against occupiers.
Police, though often shown cracking down on occupations, have also expressed sympathy with the movement. In Albany, New York, state and city police declined to follow orders from the mayor to arrest and remove peaceful protesters. “We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” an official with the state patrol told the Times Union newspaper.
Will there come a time when there is no one willing to enforce orders to evict members of the 99% from occupation encampments—or from their homes, for that matter? And if popular support grows, will elected officials look to ally themselves with the movement, rather than suppress it? The fact that these are even questions shows how radically things have changed since a few hundred people occupied Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011.
Whatever happens next, Occupy Wall Street has already accomplished something that changes everything. It has fundamentally altered the national conversation.
“A group of people started camping out in Zuccotti Park, and all of a sudden the conversation started being about the right things,” says The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. “It’s kind of a miracle.”
Now that millions recognize the injustice resulting from the power of Wall Street and giant corporations, that issue will not go away. The central question now is this: Will we build a society to benefit everyone? Or just the 1%?
The world becomes a very different place when members of the 99% stand up. The revolts in Egypt, elsewhere in the Middle East, and in Europe belie the story that popular uprisings are futile. The people occupying Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan and in cities across the country have showed that Americans, too, can take a stand.
People who’ve experienced the power of having a voice will not easily go back to silence. People who’ve found self-respect will work hard to avoid a return to isolation and powerlessness; the Occupy Wall Street movement gives us reason to believe that we the people can take charge of our destinies. The 99% are no longer sitting on the sidelines of history—we are making history.
For more http://www.yesmagazine.org/products/this-changes-everything/this-changes-everything
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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jingy -No one is concerned with the Occu-pies anymore.
First we ignored them
then we laughed at them
and when we started to smell them
we evicted them
and cleaned up the mess.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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^^^^^^ Yet a f*#k-hole will continue to post to an Occupy Wall Street Thread Reposted thread? ^^^^^^
What do you think keeps the Chinese-style human rights violations from happening here in the U.S.?
K.... what makes you think they are not already happening here in the US?
I agree. If left to their own devices... the republicon party will indeed make the US into the worst of all parts of China.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 8, 2011 - 06:56pm PT
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Telling that there is the defense appropriations bill going through congress now that allow indefinite detention of US Citizens without due process or trial just on suspicion of terrorism in any form or support of terrorism in any form.
I have little doubt that Law enforcement and certain politicians could place this label on OWS or even Tea Party protesters. We gotta contact our congress and Obama to fight this. I did
Peace
Karl
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Yes! Isn’t it great “Revenge”: Israel making sure to kill 10 of their enemy for one of theirs. Double for LAPD? LASD.
Everything will be photographed making it easy for the Chinese to say “See, you do it as well so why are complaining of human rights abuse with our country?’
Bet you do not know what “coke shells” are, if you do I would say you were actually informed about something. You should know since your ties with the Mossad.
Hey! Don’t get me wrong I like Israel but the moderates and left, plus when you get something manufactured there and delivered it comes in a plain paper bag, actually box, with “Delicate Instruments Handle with Great Care”
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
Novel idea... I say we try it!!!!
How about the right wing tells me how much worse the humans of the US would be if this amendment went through?
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 11, 2011 - 03:40pm PT
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The money establishment conditions the people to respect authority, money and power. Then the Real Estate gal and the guy at the bank say you can buy a home and, no problem, sell it after some time for an almost guaranteed profit.
Of course you do it. They are professionals right!? What do you know?
Later they blame you while foreclosing on your home and while the economy crashes, saying you should have known better than to believe them.
so, pissed off, you join OWS and protest in the streets. The same establishment then tells you to quit questioning authority
Peace
Karl
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Dec 12, 2011 - 02:47pm PT
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So now that OWS has been redefined as domestic terrorists by Homeland
seems we'll see more clubbing and pepper spraying of these anarchists
on the 6 o'clock news.
Just because arabs go off on a dime does not mean civilized people will do the same and that the socialist masters behind OWS thought we would is a bit insulting.
Check out this global terrorism event/warning map.
Just another day of corralling the crazy people.
http://www.globalincidentmap.com/
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Dec 12, 2011 - 02:53pm PT
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^^^ ^^^
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giegs
climber
Tardistan
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Dec 12, 2011 - 04:17pm PT
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An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports
December 12, 2011
Tweet
We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.
We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face. One of us is a mother, the rest of us fathers. Between the five of us we have 11children and one more baby on the way. We have a combined 46 years of experience driving cargo from our shores for America’s stores.
We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.
Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?
We love being behind the wheel. We are proud of the work we do to keep America’s economy moving. But we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part time at a fast-food counter. Especially when we work an average of 60 or more hours a week, away from our families.
There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.
We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.
Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.
You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.
Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.
There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs. An Oakland driver was recently banned from the terminal because he was spied relieving himself behind a container. Neither the port, nor the terminal operators or anyone in the industry thinks it is their responsibility to provide humane and hygienic facilities for us. It is absolutely horrible for drivers who are women, who risk infection when they try to hold it until they can find a place to go.
The companies demand we cut corners to compete. It makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are “starved out.” That means we are either fired outright, or more likely, we never get dispatched to haul a load again.
It may be difficult to comprehend the complex issues and nature of our employment. For us too. When businesses disguise workers like us as contractors, the Department of Labor calls it misclassification. We call it illegal. Those who profit from global trade and goods movement are getting away with it because everyone is doing it. One journalist took the time to talk to us this week and she explains it very well to outsiders. We hope you will read the enclosed article “How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers.”
But the short answer to the question: Why are companies like SSA Marine, the Seattle-based global terminal operator that runs one of the West Coast’s major trucking carriers, Shippers’ Transport Express, doing this? Why would mega-rich Maersk, a huge Danish shipping and trucking conglomerate that wants to drill for more oil with Exxon Mobil in the Gulf Coast conduct business this way too?
To cheat on taxes, drive down business costs, and deny us the right to belong to a union, that’s why.
The typical arrangement works like this: Everything comes out of our pockets or is deducted from our paychecks. The truck or lease, fuel, insurance, registration, you name it. Our employers do not have to pay the costs of meeting emissions-compliant regulations; that is our financial burden to bear. Clean trucks cost about four to five times more than what we take home in a year. A few of us haul our company’s trucks for a tiny fraction of what the shippers pay per load instead of an hourly wage. They still call us independent owner-operators and give us a 1099 rather than a W-2.
We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America. Every year it literally goes from bad to worse to the unimaginable. We were ground zero for the government’s first major experiment into letting big business call the shots. Since it worked so well for the CEOs in transportation, why not the mortgage and banking industry too?
Even the few of us who are hired as legitimate employees are routinely denied our legal rights under this system. Just ask our co-workers who haul clothing brands like Guess?, Under Armour, and Ralph Lauren’s Polo. The carrier they work for in Los Angeles is called Toll Group and is headquartered in Australia. At the busiest time of the holiday shopping season, 26 drivers were axed after wearing Teamster T-shirts to work. They were protesting the lack of access to clean, indoor restrooms with running water. The company hired an anti-union consultant to intimidate the drivers. Down Under, the same company bargains with 12,000 of our counterparts in good faith.
Despite our great hardships, many of us cannot — or refuse to, as some of the most well-intentioned suggest — “just quit.” First, we want to work and do not have a safety net. Many of us are tied to one-sided leases. But more importantly, why should we have to leave? Truck driving is what we do, and we do it well.
We are the skilled, specially-licensed professionals who guarantee that Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart are all stocked with just-in-time delivery for consumers. Take a look at all the stuff in your house. The things you see advertised on TV. Chances are a port truck driver brought that special holiday gift to the store you bought it.
We would rather stick together and transform our industry from within. We deserve to be fairly rewarded and valued. That is why we have united to stage convoys, park our trucks, marched on the boss, and even shut down these ports.
It’s like our hero Dutch Prior, a Shipper’s/SSA Marine driver, told CBS Early Morning this month: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
The more underwater we are, the more our restlessness grows. We are being thoughtful about how best to organize ourselves and do what is needed to win dignity, respect, and justice.
Nowadays greedy corporations are treated as “people” while the politicians they bankroll cast union members who try to improve their workplaces as “thugs.”
But we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12. Our friends in the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports created a pledge you can sign to support us here.
We drivers have a saying, “We may not have a union yet, but no one can stop us from acting like one.”
The brothers and sisters of the Teamsters have our backs. They help us make our voices heard. But we need your help too so we can achieve the day where we raise our fists and together declare: “No one could stop us from forming a union.”
Thank you.
In solidarity,
Leonardo Mejia
SSA Marine/Shippers Transport Express
Port of Long Beach
10-year driver
Yemane Berhane
Ports of Seattle & Tacoma
6-year port driver
Xiomara Perez
Toll Group
Port of Los Angeles
8-year driver
Abdul Khan
Port of Oakland
7-year port driver
Ramiro Gotay
Ports of New York & New Jersey
15-year port driver
http://cleanandsafeports.org/blog/2011/12/12/an-open-letter-from-america%E2%80%99s-port-truck-drivers-on-occupy-the-ports/
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 11:40am PT
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That is a good letter. Hard to argue with a lot of it. I have a friend who
owns a small independent trucking company so I hear both sides of the story.
He certainly feels for his drivers as he was one once. He is squeezed by the
same forces. If he were to unionize or pay his drivers by the hour he would
be out of work in a heartbeat too. To hear him talk it is the mega-trucking
companies who are in cahoots with the Port of LA to force the clean diesels
upon everyone on a schedule only they can afford in an attempt to force out
the small independents.
As for the poor working conditions at the ports it seems to me that most of
the ports are government run so their targets should be those entities. You
know the longshoremen have nice sanitary restrooms, why can't they share?
On that subject I question the Occupiers' priorities. The notoriously corrupt
longshoremen have for years thwarted most attempts at port modernization and
efficiency which would certainly benefit the truckers. The whole port of
Hamburg is run by about 20 people and moves more volume than the Port of LA.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Dec 13, 2011 - 12:01pm PT
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Reilly,
That was an excellent reply. I've done quite a bit of econometric work related to shipping and virtually every independent or small-firm trucker I interviewed (and I've interviewed hundreds) says exactly what your friend said about the proposed regulations for LA-Long Beach.
I also find it interesting that the official Longshoremen's position regarding Occupy's actions yesterday is, essentially, "Let us take care of our own issues. Don't interfere." While I could draw many conclusions from that, I personally think that confirms, to me, that Occupy and ILWU leadership remain independent of each other. That, at least, seems like a plus for the Occupiers, given the history of ILWU corruption.
John
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Dec 15, 2011 - 10:00pm PT
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Yea didn't you also say buy stocks. Good place to invest.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Dec 16, 2011 - 10:23pm PT
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For the fleabagers about
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Mar 11, 2012 - 11:13am PT
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As you say, the Occupy movement may not be in the media spotlight, but it is still active. Even in my small Wisconsin home town, there is a faction that my nephew is involved with and updates on efforts are posted daily. They are out there with protests, letter-writing campaigns and fact/stat/news dissemination via the web.
The movement has done what was intended - knocked the blinders off the masses. I don't know how anyone can truly dispute that simple fact. OWS was the first domino on an organic pathway.[Click to View YouTube Video]
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
www.climbaddictdesigns.com
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Mar 11, 2012 - 11:34am PT
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Yes - I think the video is excellent in and of the effrot and effect, but also poignant in this thread.
As worker bees within the hive, They thumbed their noses at expected protocol befitting their status and - oh, my god - had some fun! Probably on the company dime, too. Uh ohhhh....THIEVES!!!!
The first little shove started off a far-spreading topple - corporate brand after brand being nicked.
The locale - corporate place of business.
The domino was not perfect. They had a few missteps, and talked about how to better achieve in future.
This domino run provides an apt analogy for a microcosm of the OWS movement.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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They're baaaaaaaaaaaack.
And the weather just turned nice.
Must be purely coincidental.
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michaeld
Sport climber
Sacramento
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Jobless people, trying to stop people with jobs from trying to get to work.
Useless people...
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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It got ugly in Seattle today. Huge crowd of Occupiers held a parade, but a subgroup (mostly wearing black, whatever that means), broke away and started smashing storefront windows.
Not real helpful, no matter what side of the parade you're on.
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WBraun
climber
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The Huge crowd of Occupiers should have kicked the sub groups asses that where smashing windows ......
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michaeld
Sport climber
Sacramento
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Occupiers are scum.
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Russ Walling
Gym climber
Poofter's Froth, Wyoming
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F'n hippies!!!! GET A JOB!!!!!
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pc
climber
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It's a conspiracy. A popular movement turned unpopular by the 1% planting a few bad seeds. If I was an Occupier I'd be pissed.
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salad
climber
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^^^^^lmao^^^^^
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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