Nobody wants to turn this into a "lynch the rich" situation. It's just about ******* time things were fairer. There are more moms in jail trying to get their kids in better school districts than bankers who caused 2008 through fraud. You should cut spending too (especially on corporate welfare---gas subsidies, military contracts etc.), but you better be sure that tax rates rise as well. Republicans want to cut science funding. They want to cut engineering funding. They want to cut education, subsidies, everything. They don't want to raise taxes a dime. It's about time Americans reminded them how ******* stupid that idea is. You want shared sacrifice? How about 100,000 homeless veterans duking it out in the cold vs. Blankfien being sheltered in his luxury condo? How about 15,000 uninsured Americans dying every year? Oh the poor and middle-class have paid for the folly of Wall Street. This is a generation of lost hope, of Harvard graduates waitering at tables, and a drastic decrease in value of the principal asset of the working class; their homes---and these are the kind of people who aren't insulated from having three or four principal residences, and a jet to boot. This is an age of declining wages for the middle class, and exploding wages for the upper 1%. It's about time someone got pissed about all of this.
It wasn't my experience. I would say it was if anything the opposite. They are unrealistically optimistic. Striving for moderate contentment and picking in ocd fashion at the small mistakes and or inaccuracies or foibles of folks basically on the right side who are actually taking action out of some misguided sense of even handedness, honesty or whatever as Obama and perhaps you advocate can lead to cynicism and a feeling of helplessness.
Allegedly an old East TX definition of a Republican: "A person who can't enjoy a good meal unless they know someone else is hungry"
Maybe this deserves its own thread? Fox News went to Occupy Wall street to do a special report with Geraldo... this is how it went: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jc2Vtjoo5sc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> FOX NEWS LIES!
To be fair, this thing could go like the J14 protests did in Israel. Or...it could continue to be ignored by the most of you as a stunt by spoiled children and political radicals with nothing better to do. J14 started out as a stunt by some university students who weren't exactly setting the world on fire with their rhetoric. They didn't have a leader, they didn't have a real agenda other than frustration with the nation's oligarchy. And to be honest, the early interviews were pretty embarrassing. Politicians and journalists berated them as ignorant kids and belligerent leftist extremists, but what happened that made it work, is that people from every segment of society began to join in, religious, right-wing whacko settlers, anarchists, African refugees, policemen, Arabs, anarchists, small business owners...pretty much everyone. At peak, it got 7% of the entire population of the country demonstrating. Anyone that has issues with Wall Street has a reason to demonstrate and complain. Eventually politicians had to take it seriously and address their concerns. This movement is only as good the people who represent it, and many of you belittling it don't have anything to contain by doing so. And yes...as long as it is "hundreds" of people in cities around the country it won't be taken seriously.
You can smell it in this thread...hehehe 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. … 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. … 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. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/panic-of-the-plutocrats.html
Yep. http://www.businessinsider.com/jamie-dimon-lloyd-blankfein-mark-carney-capital-requirements-2011-9 they scared
My opinion has changed. I used to think FOX was a complicit conspirator for a political movement, a propaganda machine with motive. Now I think they are just conviction-less capitalist seeing an exploitable niche and making tons of cash with it. They don't care about the movement, they just pander to it. They just want to keep stoking the emotions of it to sell more soap (and Viagra). They knowingly feed the fools the tripe they want. It doesn't change my disdain but it does explain the relentless stupidity.
This is exactly false. Both the Tea Bagger and the Occupationists believe this, but it's wrong. It's not true that different people (wall street for one side, people on welfare for the other) are unfairly taking all the money. Truth is, we don't have enough money to fund our long- term promises to ourselves.
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you know whats ****inng BS!!!!!!?!?that really pisses me off ive been watching coverage of these protests on and off, and i remember watching the news the very first day these protests began. I recall on CNN that afternoon- that douche bag on CNN don lemon was making jokes about the protestors with some other bimbo on air laughing about how there facebook page originally said 60 thousand people were going to show up and that only 700 were present at the protest... that number quickly changed as we can see, and has since then gained increasing national attention. its the TONE the media has chosen to portray this movement which has really sickened me. now dont get me wrong, for the most part i ****1ng hate hippsters, and i think im not the only person who does. but i think the media has (and has a consistant record of doing) CHOSING who to put on the air. they always grab some guy out of these protests who is stoned as **** or dumb as a brick and all he can say is "corruption" "the corporations" "wall street" and "starbucks coffee" (or if there real liberal they'll protest starbucks as well) but aside from that they got there list of demands which are BS. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT AT LEAST THEY HAVE THE BALLS TO ****ING STAND UP AND SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CORRUPTION ON WALL STREET. AND THATS WHAT SCARES THE OLIGARCHS AND THOSE IN POWER. so what do they do, they make a joke out of them. lets talk about hank paulson (ironically a conservative) giving the largest welfare checks in american history to his buddies on wall street under both bush and obama while the world suffers, lets talk about 1% of the population owning 33% of the wealth, lets talk about 20% of the population owning 80% of the wealth, lets talk about 400 individuals in this country owning more wealth than 150 MILLION americans. im not gonna lie, im no economics buff, and you know what i dont think many americans are, and that should not be a basis for delegitimizing a movement that reads through the lines and understands that there is corruption in our system. it is evident that de regulation (both in our country and in england, iceland) aided in this economic catastrophe, the private sector was given rope and they ended up cutting the people off when times got rough and saved themselves. among other things n but there is a fundamentally weak aspect of our democracy that is- money or Lobbying in Washington and its connection to 3rd party corporate interests who seek to make profit off of tax payer dollars. i think what intimidates people from rising up is, that ppl do not know how to change the mechanisms within the system. its like our system is too big to fail and whats done is done and there can be no change. i mean lets be honest here, in america they pretty much teach you that we have the most efficient way of running an economy and america has the greatest economy and blah blah blah. its fundamental and institutionalized in our education system from the very top economists down, we want our finance and economic students knowing american economics and nothing else. i do agree that this movement needs a plan, i think there needs to be change in the way money flows through washington. there is far too much money in washington in both parties, and we can only really chose from those two parties which is also bull ****. i didnt know a democracy was black and white, or should i say more like mustard and lemon. well thats my rant for today, have a nice day.... oh yeah... the corporations!
were you sickened by the TONE of the coverage of the Tea Party (ie, the portrayal of them as nothing but racists?) if not, why not?
Its been almost 3 years of the policies many of these people wanted. They got the very liberal guy in the White House that gave preferences to labor, unions, social services and green projects and virtually all the desires of the liberal groups. Now that income disparity has increased and the unemployment rate hasn't turned in years, Wall St. and Corporate America is being blamed?? Shouldn't they be blaming the current Administration for their failures to entice and understand how the government can help as opposed to standing in the way of commerce and employment. Now the new term is 1%ers. I think many in the lower classes have smoked the opium of the democratic party and their race-baiting and class warfare for long enough. The poor and minorities have voted democrat and democrat for years and years and their plight is not getting better. I say they need to find new representation.
You are so full of crap Social services and green projects didn't create wealth disparity and you know it.
