General Interest > Tacitus' Realm
Tea Baggers Shut the fuck up.
Horatio:
--- Quote from: "Paul St. John" ---Personally, I think that the system will change, and I think that it will be in my lifetime. I certainly hope so. I do not thinjk, however, that it will be due to the actions of thoise who refer to themselves as the 99%. they lack direction, and sensibility. Just to start, the location of the protest. It should have been Washington. To me, in my mind, this is so clearly obvious, ande it just taints i9n my view, right off the bat, the credibility of this group, most of who in my opinion, at this point, are just looking for justification, to escape from life for awhile. I also do not like the term "occupation". -LMAO! I hope someone else picked up on that. "Occupation" implies force, and militant action, and the truth is, that 99 percent of the punks, could never back such things up. Additionally, does anyone else realise that while there a handful of people who live in the 99 percent, most of whom have earned it, 99 % of the 99% will no longer be in the 99 % in ten years. It is ever fluctuating. And if someone does succeed in getting the 99 percent, do they suddenly become evil?
For it to really happen, will require first vision, and understanding, then persistence, and perseverence.. And will require the types of individuals, of which there are very few of on the earth- individuals who would probably never associate themselves, with these 99 percfent quacks. Anyone who thinks that a bunch of nearly meaningless protests is going to put an end to a machine that has been going for so long, is crazy.
Are there some real, real bad guys in politiocs? Absolutly! But do you think that they give a fuck about protests? LOL! hell NO! They do not care if it is in the constitution or anything else. The laws of the land serve one purpose and one purpose only to them. They use them to carry out their will.. that is it. Corruption in the government goes so deep it is almost unfathomable. Some of it is very, very intentional. Some of it is well-meaning, but still leads to overall loss- great overall loss. These are my thoughts anyway.
But again, I do think that there will be a change in my lifetime. Unfortunatly, I do not know that everybody will be ready for it.
Paul St. John
--- End quote ---
Paul, I sense a lot of discontent here. I am not clear on why exactly you would not get behind the 99% but hey, you have your right. We can make change and will. Maybe as you said it will not be now or in a few years but I will not stand by as we are marginalized by the greedy and all powerful.
I do believe in a person being able to build a company, flourish and reap the profits. So long as the person knows they did not do it all by themselves. The country they are living in participated, greatly.
Horatio:
The Supercommittee Failed. Hooray!!!!!
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/ ... _have.html
Excerpt from article:
Today’s the day when Washington officially comes to terms with the fact that the “Supercommittee”—a bipartisan, bicameral group charged with reducing America’s long-term fiscal deficit—won’t agree on anything. This is being termed a “failure,” and by the standards of D.C.’s fetishization of bipartisanship, it is one. But in terms of deficit reduction, failure is actually better than success.
Paul St. John:
--- Quote ---Paul, I sense a lot of discontent here.
--- End quote ---
It runs deeper then discontent. I have had these thoughts for a very long time. It is a situation which NEEDS to be remedied. It is an evil that exists in a land that I love on a planet that I love- my planet. Certain things are right. Certain things are not. However, I live within the system, and have to make the best of what is available to me. The change that I am looking for may not be coming for some time, and as much as I owuld like to fast forward right to that time, instead, I have to hope that the world simply makes it long enough to get to that time, without too much disaster and unnecessary bullshit, for myself, and the world at large... so I back the things within the system which are the most sensible rational, and reasonable.. For example, the tea party is "if-y " at best, but at this point in time, I think that we would benefit immensely , form getting a decent amount of these people into office. I think many of them are full of shit as well, to be honest, but I think it is the right direction. I am tired of republicans, and I am tired of democrats. I want thinkers who will simply try to do what they think is right.
--- Quote --- I am not clear on why exactly you would not get behind the 99% but hey, you have your right.
--- End quote ---
I appreciate your recognizing my right, and I do not mean that sarcastically. The reason that I will not get behind them, is because they are a bunch of idiots. They are stupid.. and they have no foundation. Most of them want to solve the problem with more of the problem, and they are so naive that they are ripe for any crazy MFer who comes along making promises. These people not only cannot be taken seriously, but to the extent that they are, they hurt any real progress towards greater liberty, and honesty in government. They not only do not have the answers.. but most of them are not even "in the Know" enough , to have the questions. I would bet that if you spent some time around them Horatio, things that they would and do would probably rub you the wrong way, and just not click with you. Perhaps, I am wrong with that.. In NY, right now, there are so many different fractions of them, that they do not even agree on wnat they want, and they each seem a b it like their own special interest group. Society's hatred for Wall Street has given them license to do this, while others keep society going.
There list of demands, not only , would all be approved of by Karl Marx, but they are also literally i9mpossible, and if we tried them , the very structure of our society would implode, i a very short amount of time... These things, which they want (LOL), simply cannot be done. When we are kids many of us view the government, as this like omnipotent power, much like how we view our parents.. These people still think like that. It is pure irrationality. .. and the truth is it is very dangerous. I don t fuck around Horatio. I don t play games. I am very serious about my viewpoints and this country as a whole. I have things I want to do in my life, and I d like to have a world in which I can do them. I have a deep inner conviction that I have a right to live my life to the fullest, and that is my fuel, which keeps my mind ever going.
I can t back the supposed 99 percent, the chosen name of which turns my stomach, because my enemy's enemy is not my friend just as such, and I waste not time of my life knowingly playing games. I believe in getting shit done and making things happen.. I am all about the real thing.. not translucent, wannabe hippy- "we wanna be heard"- bullshit. [/quote]
--- Quote --- We can make change and will.
--- End quote ---
Thus far, they have accomplished nothing, except obstructing the normal functioning, of , in my opinion, the greatest city in the world.
--- Quote --- Maybe as you said it will not be now or in a few years but I will not stand by as we are marginalized by the greedy and all powerful.
--- End quote ---
I am never marginalized. I hold my head tall, and I am proud of myself. This is something that evil people can never know.
--- Quote ---I do believe in a person being able to build a company, flourish and reap the profits.
--- End quote ---
It is a right which needs be recognized.
--- Quote ---So long as the person knows they did not do it all by themselves. The country they are living in participated, greatly.
--- End quote ---
Of course, I have to do some inferring, to know what you mean here, but I don t think that I agree.
I can say this, nobody owes me nothing.
Paul St. John
Horatio:
"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand are banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a REVOLUTION before tomorrow morning."
- Henry Ford
"Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women their right to join the union of their choice."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Were not from the left, were not from the right, were from the bottom and were coming for the top."
- anonymous
Horatio:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opini ... .html?_r=1
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 20, 2011, on page SR11 of the New York edition with the headline: Occupy The Agenda.
Occupy the Agenda
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: November 19, 2011
The Occupy protests might have died in infancy if a senior police official had not pepper-sprayed young women on video. Harsh police measures in other cities, including a clash in Oakland that put a veteran in intensive care and the pepper-spraying of an 84-year-old woman in Seattle, built popular support.
Just in the last few days, Bloomberg — who in other respects has been an excellent mayor — rescued the movement from one of its biggest conundrums. It was stuck in a squalid encampment in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park: antagonizing local residents, scaring off would-be supporters, and facing months of debilitating snow and rain. Then the mayor helped save the demonstrators by clearing them out, thus solving their real estate problem and re-establishing their narrative of billionaires bullying the disenfranchised. Thanks to the mayor, the protests grew bigger than ever.
I watched in downtown Manhattan last week as the police moved in to drag off protesters — and several credentialed journalists — and the action seemed wildly over the top. Sure, the mayor had legitimate concerns about sanitation and safety, but have you looked around New York City? Many locations aren’t so clean and safe, but there usually aren’t hundreds of officers in riot gear showing up in the middle of the night to address the problem.
Yet in a larger sense, the furor over the eviction of protesters in New York, Oakland, Portland and other cities is a sideshow. Occupy Wall Street isn’t about real estate, and its signal achievement was not assembling shivering sleepers in a park.
The high ground that the protesters seized is not an archipelago of parks in America, but the national agenda. The movement has planted economic inequality on the nation’s consciousness, and it will be difficult for any mayor or police force to dislodge it.
A reporter for Politico found that use of the words “income inequality” quintupled in a news database after the Occupy protests began. That’s a significant achievement, for this is an issue that goes to our country’s values and our opportunities for growth — and yet we in the news business have rarely given it the attention it deserves.
The statistic that takes my breath away is this: The top 1 percent of Americans possess a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
A new study by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University polled Americans about what wealth distribution would be optimal. People across the board thought that the richest 20 percent of Americans should control about one-third of the nation’s wealth, and the poorest 20 percent about one-tenth.
In fact, the richest 20 percent of Americans own more than 80 percent of the country’s wealth. And the poorest 20 percent own one-tenth of 1 percent.
It would be easier to accept this gulf between the haves and the have-nots if it could be spanned by intelligence and hard work. Sometimes it can. But over all, such upward mobility in the United States seems more constrained than in the supposed class societies of Europe.
Research by the Economic Mobility Project, which explores accessibility to the American dream, suggests that the United States provides less intergenerational mobility than most other industrialized nations do. That’s not only because of tax policy, which is what liberals focus on. Perhaps even more important are educational investments, like early childhood education, to try to even the playing field. We can’t solve inequality unless we give poor and working-class kids better educational opportunities.
The Occupy movement is also right that one of the drivers of inequality (among many) is the money game in politics. Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who shares a concern about rising inequality, told me that we’ve seen “an evolution from one propertied man, one vote; to one man, one vote; to one person, one vote; trending to one dollar, one vote.”
James M. Stone, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said in a recent speech that many members of Congress knew that banks needed to be more tightly regulated, perhaps broken into smaller pieces.
“So why was this not done?” he asked. “One obvious piece of the answer is that both political parties rely heavily on campaign contributions from the financial sector.”
The solution to these inequities and injustices is not so much setting up tents at bits of real estate here or there, but a relentless focus on the costs of inequality. So as we move into an election year, I’m hoping that the movement will continue to morph into: Occupy the Agenda.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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