Excerpt: “You pay fired executives more in severance than the average American worker will earn in a lifetime. For most people on the outside looking in, this seems like it's from outer space, another world entirely. These numbers just do not exist to regular human beings, they cannot be fathomed. The ordinary American is not a class warrior or a woe-is-me whiner coveting the rewards of others - the ordinary American simply believes that extraordinary rewards should go to those who do extraordinary things, not to paper-pushing failures at parasite banks. So let me give you a hint that will save you countless hours and millions of dollars spent on consultants and the public relations morons you keep on staff: This is why they hate you. This very type of thing, while just a single example, epitomizes the piggish mentality that has set you apart from everyone else. This is why they're marching against you and calling for boycotts and writing their politicians. And this is why your whole model and way of life is on its way to being dead. Forever.”
“This Is Why They Hate You And Want You To Die” by Wall St. fund manager, Josh Brown
***
Chapel Hill's first Occupy Wall Street event is tomorrow morning, Saturday, October 15, at 10:30 a.m. - in front of the downtown post office.
You may learn about other OWS events -- including a surprisingly large number in Canada – at
If my intuition is correct, the Tea Party, tethered to its impossible anti-tax obsession, will be ancient history before Occupier energy is spent.
Perhaps I’m prey to wishful thinking.
But I don't think so.
Cowboy Capitalism has reached the end of the line.
Too many self-serving people have mastered the system, racking up ungodly profits whichever way the market moves.
These vile people profit even more by first “running the market up,” then “running the market down.”
Their nano-second investments have nothing to do with economic integrity, and everything to with stuffing their pockets while stiffing us all.
Their nano-second investments have nothing to do with economic integrity, and everything to with stuffing their pockets while stiffing us all.
It is time for socialized Capitalism. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-07/canada-s-jobless-rate-falls-to-7-1-as-economy-adds-60-900-jobs.html /// http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/04/22/socialism-thrives-in-north dakota.html
I am not against Capitalism per se. In fact, a disproportionate amount of my "disposable" income is invested in a single biotech start-up.
The problem is twofold. The United States no longer subscribes to a Social Contract, and The Common Good no longer rises to radar, not even as an academic category.
All over the world -- from “Arab Spring” to “Occupy Autumn” -- people have had enough.
… Enough reckless speculation, leading to boom/bust cycles in which “the little guys” always get creamed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_exuberance
… Enough unfathomably complex financial "instruments" whose selfsame complexity is constructed to confuse people so that crappy investments “look” valuable – Consider Michael Lewis' interview by “60 Minutes,” Part I - “If you pay people to not see the truth, they won’t see the truth”: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/video/60-minutes-michael-lewis-on-the-financial-collapse/403547/ /// Michael Lewis, Part II – “The leaders of Wall Street lost any sense of responsibility": http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/video/60-minutes-michael-lewis-on-wall-streets-future/403545/?tag=video-meta-single;do-next ///http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/14/mm-dear-wall-street-this-why-the-people-are-angry/
… Enough socialization of capitalist risk whereby reckless executives get golden parachutes to glide into their gated communities while taxpayers pay for the wreckage they leave behind.
… Enough automation and robotization resulting in ever greater profitability for ever fewer people, simultaneously diminishing the number of American jobs.
… Enough Cowboy Capitalists consolidating financial and political power within a system of governance that aspires, always and everywhere, to bloat the fortunes of Unimaginably Wealthy People whose full-time occupation is pillaging America, while degrading structurally-marginalized Americans who, in increasing numbers, are shoved outside the nation's continually contracting "circle of prosperity.”
… Enough Military-Industrial Complex, arguing the necessity of Endless War, while, in fact, each new war debases our character and digs our hole deeper - http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
Here is what I favor:
I favor legislation that designates a reasonable relationship between the amount of money spent on "national defense" relative to the amount spent by other nations of the world. (It is not only foolish but counterproductive and self-destructive that American defense spending amounts to a significantly larger sum than the defense spending of all other nations on Earth combined.
I favor legislation that assumes NO company is too big to fail. I favor legislation that will prevent companies from becoming “too big” thus provoking catastrophic side effects. Such "NOT too big to fail" legislation will insure that any company exceeding "too big to fail limits” be immediately sub-divided, just as AT&T was successfully sub-divided despite whiney predictions of doom by conservative naysayers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System_divestiture
I favor tax law that withdraws all "tax breaks" from fossil fuel companies while restoring every penny's worth so these same corporations might use them to develop their solar energy divisions.
Like it or not, solar energy will be cheaper than fossil fuel energy in fewer than 10 years.
Because “grid parity” is a near-term inevitability, such tax legislation will not only enhance-and-accelerate America's solar future, it will also impart "existential" advantage to fossil fuel companies, enabling them to become significant solar "players" before fossil fuels are little more than sources of very expensive contamination. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-17/democrats-plan-to-repeal-u-s-oil-tax-breaks-fails-in-senate.html
Generally speaking, I favor Ron Paul's defense posture which emphasizes the protection of national borders and the minimization of foreign intervention. When intervention is deemed necessary, it will take place with prior approval of Congress and clear definition of purpose.
I favor no-tuition education from Kindergarten through completion of college, and also advocate two years obligatory public service for every American as soon as s/he leaves school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Sweden /// http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/05/02/the-finland-phenomenon-inside-the-worlds-most-surprising-school-system/ /// http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland /// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlYHWpRR4yc
I favor an abundance of public service options so that anyone undertaking post-graduate work will be able to repay their debt through service.
I favor corporate tax rates that are primarily determined by the number of new "good jobs" companies create for American citizens.
I favor an expanded Credit Union system so all Americans can enjoy these exemplary institutions. My own experience with the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina has been happy in every way. I am provided a raft of free services in a welcoming environment that makes me feel like I’m the co-owner I am. For years, my family's SECU money market funds have paid much higher interest rates than commercial banks would have done - usually two to three times as high. Not only are credit unions great places to do business – and to do it more profitably than commercial banks – credit unions are also proof positive that cooperative, not-for-profit enterprise provides services that are superior to commercial counterparts. Because Credit Unions are not reckless organizations like America’s commercial banks, every American can lay rest assured that NO Credit Union required federal bailout money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_union /// http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_unions_in_the_United_States
And finally…
Every federal income tax form will include a “vacant” pie chart segmented into every major category of government spending. If taxpayers wish, they may write the percentage they would like to see spent on each category. This exercise has no binding power. However, results will be tabulated and published so citizens can see how they want their money spent and how government actually spends it.
***
What we are witnessing in the United States is a Crisis of Confidence in Authority.
The economic “experts” who have always guided American Industry-and-Investment now populate a den of thieves.
Here’s the rub.
The cornerstone of The Conservative Psyche is Belief in Authority.
Since conservatives are existentially invested in this belief, it is scrape-off-your-face difficult for them to “give up” on “vested authorities” - people who are wedged in their lives, not by virtue of any virtue, but by virtue of K-Y jelly.
The following "60 Minutes" interview with Michael Lewis will eliminate any residual faith in the Wall Street sociopaths who would just as soon see you dead. In fact, they would prefer to see you dead if they could only devise a way to profit from it.
Part I:
Part II:
http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/video/60-minutes-michael-lewis-on-wall-streets-future/403545/?tag=video-meta-single;do-next /// http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/14/mm-dear-wall-street-this-why-the-people-are-angry/
“This Is Why They Hate You And Want You To Die” by Wall Street fund manager, Josh Brown. http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2011/10/09/this-is-why-they-hate-you-and-want-you-to-die/
Here’s Josh Brown’s October 15 interview with “Marketplace” http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/14/mm-dear-wall-street-this-why-the-people-are-angry/
Please read the following list of pertinent quotations.
You will be astonished at least once.
Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris
25 Dec. 1783
"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.
All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it." http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html
Reagan Budget Director, David Stockman, who oversaw the biggest tax cut in the history of humankind: “In 1985, the top five percent of the households – the wealthiest five percent – had net worth of $8 trillion – which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.” Elsewhere in this same CBS “60 Minutes” interview, Mr. Stockman describes America's obsession with tax cuts as "religion, something embedded in the catechism," "rank demagoguery, we should call it what it is," and "We've demonized taxes. We've created... the idea that they're a metaphysical evil." And finally, this encompassing observation: "The Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves." - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n&tag=contentMain;contentAux /// http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/obama-gop-agree-to-tax-breaks-but-%22we-need-major-tax-increases%22-david-stockman-says-535688.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,GLD,DIA,TBT,TLT,UUP /// http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/david-stockman-lack-of-middle-class-jobs-low-growth-alleged-recovery-yftt_535691.html /// http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009246n&tag=contentBody;housing (There is a self-resolving glitch near the beginning of this final clip.)
Teddy Roosevelt: “Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses —whether these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless of the working men, whom they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type, and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the country." Theodore Roosevelt - February, 1895 - http://books.google.com/books?id=2wIoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=%E2%80%9CToo+much+cannot+be+said+against+the+men+of+wealth+who+sacrifice+everything+to+getting+wealth.+%22&source=bl&ots=tlzVCZMAuz&sig=DZ9KUKiPiBTUlThoSVs6KzQTvF4&hl=en&ei=OxibTcHrCIGdgQev_o2eBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CToo%20much%20cannot%20be%20said%20against%20the%20men%20of%20wealth%20who%20sacrifice%20everything%20to%20getting%20wealth.%20%22&f=false
Abraham Lincoln: "In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life. Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Read more: State of the Union Address: Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861) — Infoplease.comhttp://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/73.html#ixzz17XlRsbev /// http://www.dailykos.
"War is a Racket" - Marine Commandant, Major General Smedley Butler
(Excerpts from a 1933 speech)
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope…. [and] the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
In his lifetime, Major General Butler was the most decorated Marine ever.
Following his retirement, General Butler, a life-long Republican, ran for a Pennsylvania Senate seat
"War is a Racket" - Marine Commandant, Major General Smedley Butler
(Excerpts from a 1933 speech)
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope…. [and] the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described as something that is not what it seems to the
majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It
is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.
Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that
war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it…. I
must face it and speak out.
There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military
gang is blind to. It has its ‘finger men’ (to point out enemies), its ‘muscle
men’ (to destroy enemies), its ‘brain men’ (to plan war preparations), and a
“Big Boss” (super-nationalistic capitalism).
It may seem odd for a military man to adopt such a
comparison. Truthfulness compels me to.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am
sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a
thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in
suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups.
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American
oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the
National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half
a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record
of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international
banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras “right”
for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that
Standard Oil went its way unmolested….
I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell
racket…. I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was
operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three
continents….
Our exploits against the American Indian, the Filipinos, the
Mexicans, and against Spain are on a par with the campaigns of Genghis Khan,
the Japanese in Manchuria and the African attack of Mussolini.
No country has ever declared war on us before we first
obliged them with that gesture. Our whole history shows we have never fought a
defensive war.”
The entire text of
"War is a Racket" is freely available at http://www.ratical.com/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Smedley Butler's Wikipedia page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler In his lifetime, Major General Butler was the most decorated Marine ever.
Following his retirement, General Butler, a life-long Republican, ran for a Pennsylvania Senate seat
Adolf Hitler: "All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying." Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
***
"Why was it not class warfare when the bankers got bailed out by the middle class?" Arianna Huffington - http://www.foxnews.com/us/
See the award-winning documentary, “Inside Job” - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/
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