Tea Party wants same treatment as Occupy Atlanta
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/tea-party-wants-same-1210273.html
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
It’s no secret that washington is in bed with wall street. So when Wall Street fucked up big, and used the best government money can buy to give themselves lots of taxpayers money, you don’t think something is owed to those taxpayers whose money was esentially stolen from them? Not even a new set of rules to make sure it can’t happen again?[/quote]
Well, sure I do, but you have to get the facts right - the “bailout money” was borrowed money, and has mostly been repaid (and is expected to net a $20 billion in profit). So, I don’t like the bailouts, but there is nothing really “owed” w/r/t to that money.
[/quote]
Bullshit there isn’t anything owed. Giving corporations very low rate loans using taxpayers funds when they are desperate and about to go under means they owe their very existence to the taxpayer.
What about all the homeowners who were in peril? Did they get amazingly low rate loans from the government when they needed them? Nope. They were told “too bad…you made your bed…”.
There is nothing at all free market or capitalist about it. It was 100% screw the poor + middle class and protect the rich.
[quote]phaethon wrote:
Bullshit there isn’t anything owed. Giving corporations very low rate loans using taxpayers funds when they are desperate and about to go under means they owe their very existence to the taxpayer.[/quote]
And they have paid the taxpayer back what was loaned. So what is owed, exactly?
What does that have to do with Wall Street? Take that up with the men and women in Washington DC, not Manhattan’s financial district.
Well, the ripple effect of not bailing out the banks was too risky a proposition. I don’t like it either, and I think it should have been handled differently - but I’m not sure there was much of an alternative: government policy created a systemic crisis (in large part), so government was required to apply a systemic band aid.
That said, if you feel that way, then your anger is misdirected at Wall Street.
How about an easy one, cast in easy left-liberal terms - how about instead of an ill-timed, outrageously expensive health care bill that was doomed to fail from the moment it was passed we take half that money and do a consumer equivalent of TARP?
I’m not saying I think that is a good idea, but if it’s a consumer bailout you’re looking for, go protest 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The legacy-starved vanity and complete lack of prioritization of the current occupant caused him and his Congressional teammates to insist on fiddling on health care while Rome was burning.
Thunder, did you have a chance to check out the OWS protest yesterday?
» Armed Citizen Militia Shows Up At Occupy Phoenix Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!
http://www.infowars.com/occupy-phoenix-with-ar-15s/
I apologize in advance if a lot of the stuff below has already been posted. I don’t have time to go back and read the entire thread.
I think a lot of you are unfairly painting the protests as a bunch of pot smoking whiny hippies who don’t want to work. No, most of the noise being made is NOT about eliminating college debt (come on, that’s a bunch of right-wing spin and you know it). It’s more fundamental than that. That whole video fo the kid saying he wants his tuition to be free is a bunch of bullshit propaganda to distract the naive laymen from the core message of the OWS movement. That kid himself is an imbecile and it was just a convenient sound bite for the conservatives to pass along.
Pat:
There are plenty of demands. None of which have really gotten attention in mainstream media, at least not that I’ve seen.
At first, I thought the same as most of you, that this OWS was some flash mob of MFA students who tweet about anarchy and legalizing marijuana from their iPads, but then a friend of mine who’s been traveling to different OWS movements, to write and speak about what’s going on, sent me this:
http://coupmedia.org/occupywallstreet/occupy-wall-street-official-demands-2009
In particular, #7 and #8 I think are key.
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CONGRESS PASSING “Revolving Door Legislation” LEGISLATION ELIMINATING THE ABILITY OF FORMER GOVERNMENT REGULATORS GOING TO WORK FOR CORPORATIONS THAT THEY ONCE REGULATED. So, you don’t get to work at the FDA for five years playing softball with Pfizer and then go to work for Pfizer making $195,000 a year. While they’re at it, Congress should pass specific and effective laws to enforce strict judicial standards of conduct in matters concerning conflicts of interest. So long as judges are culled from the ranks of corporate attorneys the 1% will retain control.
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ELIMINATE “PERSONHOOD” LEGAL STATUS FOR CORPORATIONS. The film “The Corporation” has a great section on how corporations won “personhood status”. THE CORPORATION [2/23] Birth - YouTube . Fast-forward to 2:20. It’ll blow your mind. The 14th amendment was supposed to give equal rights to African Americans. It said you “can’t deprive a person of life, liberty or property without due process of law”. Corporation lawyers wanted corporations to have more power so they basically said “corporations are people.” Amazingly, between 1890 and 1910 there were 307 cases brought before the court under the 14th amendment. 288 of these brought by corporations and only 19 by African Americans. 600,000 people were killed to get rights for people and then judges applied those rights to capital and property while stripping them from people. It’s time to set this straight.
Another good slide shows: What the protestors are angry about
See slide #12: CEO pay is now 350X the average worker’s, up from 50X from 1960-1985.
See slide #30: So, what have banks been doing since 2007 if not lending money to American companies? Lending money to America’s government! By buying risk-free Treasury bonds and other government-guaranteed securities.
See slide #33: When you can borrow money for nothing, and lend it back to the government risk-free for a few percentage points, you can COIN MONEY. And the banks are doing that. According to IRA, the “net interest margin” made by US banks in the first six months of this year is $211 Billion.
And I disagree with the protestors in some cases re: the allegation that the rich “don’t pay their fair share,” but I think that’s been misconstrued from the beginning. Yes they pay plenty in terms of overall dollars. I think the argument is that the top 1% have so many goddamn loopholes that many of the middle class don’t have. I don’t know too much about why the whole thing about the rich not paying enough started, but I know it’s deeper than an ignorant teenage whining.
For example, I know part of it is due to top earners whose income comes mostly from investments, because then their “income” tax is essentially the capital gains tax, so their effective income tax rate is lower than what the middle class pays. You could say, “Well, the middle class should invest more,” but it’s not that simple. The rich pay more because they make SIGNIFICANTLY more, but they weasel out of the same progressive income tax rate that applies to the rest of us.
One more comment in the slides of the last link I posted:
“Yes, GoldmanSachs sold the Greek gov. a slug of the worthless derivatives (which GS and Merrill Lynch had paid the rating agencies to give Triple A ratings to when they should have been junk bond status). Then, when the market began to collapse GS sent in some of its auditors to help the Greek Treasury adjust its books to make it look better than it was. The EU eventually determined what happened, but GS has never been prosecuted or charged because the Obama administration has put pressure on the EU to leave them alone. Just like at present, where Obama and Holder are pushing for a civil settlement with the Wall Street banks that caused the collapse, to include the major actor GS, and trying to stop any and all criminal investigations. There is a committee of US AG’s and State AG’s working on this matter which included the AG for NY who vehemently opposed the settlement. Obama and Holder had the NY AG removed from the committee. Before you get your panties in a bunch, I was a rabid Obama supporter, not so much anymore.”
There’s a lot of detail missing, but the above illustrates the frustration with the Wall Street players–they are way too influential.
No, I didn’t post this from my iPad while sipping on a soy latte across the street from the OWS movement.
Take care.
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Thunder, did you have a chance to check out the OWS protest yesterday? [/quote]
No, I won’t be visiring NYC for a few more weeks. If it is still going on then (and I’d expect it to be), I’ll go then.
The Occupied in turn beginning to bristle over themselves becoming occupied.
Occupy movement has some success in Israel
Israel to shift tax burden to the rich and corporations
Just came across this somewhere else, you might have seen it
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers”, he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20”. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share?”
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!” “That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!” “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Author Unknown
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
And they have paid the taxpayer back what was loaned. So what is owed, exactly?
[/quote]
I hesitate to start this as I doubt I will have time to defend my position. However…
TB, can you truly justify this statement? The taxpayers were paid back. In total. Really.
In the most obvious of ways this is not true, not to mention all the payoffs made with other loans made of government. What about the trillions that were never disclosed until the recent revelations of the partial Fed audit concerning TARP, etc.
I do not see how you can justify this statement.
this: It’s the Inequality, Stupid – Mother Jones
well sourced liberal bias i tells yuH!
Appears the OWS crowd is looking to have a drain the banks event on the 5th. The idea is to take funds from a large banks and instead deposit them into a credit union or smaller bank. Overall doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, as the once small bank will become large with new funds. Thought this articles mention of what is really going on probably true. It’s another idea to distract blame.
“Draining Banks Is A Fool’s Errand”
http://news.investors.com/Article/590189/201111011900/Draining-Banks-Errand-Of-Fools.htm
excerpt:
"…But the real aim is to put big banks out of business ? the same agenda of Big Labor, which in the early months of the Obama administration dispatched SEIU mobs to bank locations to disrupt business, and then to bankers’ homes, terrifying their children.
Fortune reporter Nina Easton witnessed one such siege in her neighborhood last year. SEIU was $4 million in hock to the bank and wanted to unionize its employees, she noted in her report.
It’s also the same agenda that Huffington launched with her “Move Your Money” media campaign, which drove states and cities to move money from big banks to credit unions regardless of their needs.
This is also a bid to lay the blame for the economic crisis at the feet of bankers instead of Obama and congressional Democrats who are backing the radicals as a means of deflecting attention from their own failures. It’s time to put the blame where it belongs."
[quote]JEATON wrote:
I hesitate to start this as I doubt I will have time to defend my position. However…
TB, can you truly justify this statement? The taxpayers were paid back. In total. Really.
In the most obvious of ways this is not true, not to mention all the payoffs made with other loans made of government. What about the trillions that were never disclosed until the recent revelations of the partial Fed audit concerning TARP, etc.
I do not see how you can justify this statement. [/quote]
Well, take it piece by piece. That is what I am doing. Phaethon insists that Wall Street, I guess, banks owe the taxpaying citizen huge as a result of the bailout (TARP, essentially). The bailout, however, was a loan program. If that loan has been paid back, what exactly does Wall Street owe the taxpayer in that regard?
Now, if there are issues, be my guest to raise them - I tried to follow your examples, but I am not sure what you meant.
If there is a general complaint that Wall Street banks owe money in the form of debt held by the Fed, well, that is a different issue, because that is - by design - one of the things that the Fed does.
Colbert bringing the epic LULZ to Occupy WS.
[quote]UtahLama wrote:
Colbert bringing the epic LULZ to Occupy WS.
That girl-bodied person done called her-bodied self a “female-bodied person,” with a straight face…
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]UtahLama wrote:
Colbert bringing the epic LULZ to Occupy WS.
That girl-bodied person done called her-bodied self a “female-bodied person,” with a straight face…[/quote]
She called herself Ketchup with a straight face.
After that I kind of blanked out…
Also, TB would totally hire me before he hired Ketchup, even if I had a 2m bong in my office…
[quote]PonceDeLeon wrote:
Pat:
There are plenty of demands. None of which have really gotten attention in mainstream media, at least not that I’ve seen.
At first, I thought the same as most of you, that this OWS was some flash mob of MFA students who tweet about anarchy and legalizing marijuana from their iPads, but then a friend of mine who’s been traveling to different OWS movements, to write and speak about what’s going on, sent me this:
http://coupmedia.org/occupywallstreet/occupy-wall-street-official-demands-2009
[/quote]
I had to LOL at some of this, so they want to enact laws and retro actively enforce them to punish the people who caused this recession? What about the deadbeats who didn’t pay their bills?
If the asshole bankers broke the law they would have been arrested. I favored letting them go under. Nope, to big to fail…which is an epic fail. I have already explained why bailing these dicks out was a bad idea.