This girl thinks making over $200,000 makes a person ridiculously rich.

Pay my tuition? LOL

Hi Chris, I watched these videos. I still don't get the "we are the 99%" slogan. When Ralph Nader stood for President in 2004 he got 0.38% of the vote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nade ... aign,_2004 Last time I counted, the difference between 99% and 0.38% was 98.62%. But then, Nader's vote of 2.74% in 2000 was more than the difference between Bush and Gore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nade ... e_election

The Occupy movement has a valid point that American politics has been corrupted by money. What is needed is better regulation of capitalism. The anti-capitalist comments from these protesters are just a romantic dream. Capitalism is the only thing that reduces poverty.

An interesting paper by Michael Porter on Creating Shared Value exploresg how there is a need for reform of capitalism. It was published by the Harvard Business Review in January 2011.

Booktalk's current fiction selection, The House of the Spirits, explores the paradox of how conservative politics generates wealth but alienates the poor. I will shortly post about this in the thread on the second chapter, The Three Marias.

That's embarrassing. He should get paid something not to go to college, so as not to waste any more resources.

Hilarious expose of the elitist section of the protestors:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-n ... et-divided

I think I used to work with the guy with the black bandanna. These videos show that most people don't grasp the nuances of the problem.

I was taking care of the pool here at the YMCA a while back, and the pH was a bit high. The solution is to add a bit of acid, to lower the pH. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that, but I'll keep it simple. So I went to the pool to add the acid, and member walks up behind me and starts yelling at me out of the blue. Granted, this guy was a moron.

He said he didn't want to be swimming in acid. "What kind of an idiot are you that you think you won't be caught! That's terrorism!" But of course, adding a little acid is different from filling the entire pool with acid. In fact, the water would be healthier to swim in, after the pH was adjusted.


Asking for politicians to address inequality is not at all the same as asking for the entire country to be "equalized". An adjustment is what is needed. Yes, the adjustment is moving in the direction of a hazardous end of the spectrum, but only the foolish believe we intend to travel all the way to the end, rather than move a step at a time. Behind the gap-toothed mumbling of bandwagoners is a very real problem, and looking to these idiots to express that problem is a setup for misunderstanding.


It's extremely frustrating to see people thinking in terms of dichotomies. I understand it takes less brain power than to think of things in terms of spectrums.

Another nuance that's missed is that simply raising taxes on the rich is not the solution to inequality. Unseen within the 700 page monstrosity of our tax code are loopholes for every special interest in the country. I think some loopholes for renewable energy, scientific ventures, infrastructure, and perhaps food, are all that are needed. That "criteria" by which we pick the interests that get a break must be structured with an innate paranoia of corruption. Other interests that have no business receiving a tax break should not be able to buy an audience for their voice. Breaks should only be given to those industries where the general public will benefit as much or more than the "interest" receiving the break.

I agree completely. We definitely have some serious problems with how wealth is distributed in the United States. But these "Occupy Wall Street" people are hurting their cause more than helping it. I think the problem is that camping out in the park was just too much like Woodstock without the great music. The people out there are hippies, Socialists, and unemployed whiners. They're beating on drums, singing songs, flipping off cops, screaming at buildings, showing off for the media and generally looking like completely unproductive losers. They're making the real 99% look like idiots.

I think New York was wise to get rid of the tents, generators, tables, furniture, box houses, and camp stoves. These "occupiers" were enjoying the camaraderie and excitement of camping somewhere crazy and for no cost at all. But the fact is they are costing the city and local businesses money. They are harming their fellow 99 percenters because their senseless camping trip happens to be preventing local businesses from conducting their normal business activities. They are also costing the city and state plenty of money because law enforcement has to be provided to keep the place under control.

Again, we have some serious problems but we don't need a bunch of hippies abusing our law enforcement officers, dirtying our city streets and parks and blocking businesses from operating. There are better ways to get attention and get things done.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=600_1321731331

It really pisses me off to hear these losers calling police officers Nazis. These people risk their lives every day keeping our country safe and this is how these people show their appreciation. Disgusting. There is no correlation between Nazi Germany and the US need to keep people from camping in various parks as if they own the damn place. We have the freedom to speak out, blog, do interviews, say and publish whatever we want, but we don't have the right to light campfires and erect tents on Wall Street and verbally abuse the people that serve and defend us.

Watch these videos. These people are standing in cops faces calling them losers and terrorists. It is amazing one of these cops hasn't just flipped out and started shooting these people. Not that it would be right or justified but I am impressed with the constraint these police officers are showing in the face of such verbal abuse.

This is almost literally my two cents, not speaking to the substance of what you said. I think breaks, exemptions, concessions are written into the tax code. Loopholes I think of as features not in the code, but which represent ways that lawyers have found to legally circumvent the written code.

I think you're too optimistic. I think that even though there are Occupy protests all over the country, we will still not have meaningful change. Things are simply too entrenched. Where will change come from?

If you see the protestors as a sort of evil, do you rate them as a lesser or greater evil than the problems they're attempting to give voice to? I can't see how anything they could do would be worse than the injustices that are structured into the system. But those injustices are difficult to see and integrated into a complex system. How many hundreds of thousands of people have died in revolutions within countries in an attempt to root out corruption? It's almost as if Americans are so used to corruption, they no longer care about it. Money wins campaigns... yeah, that's just the way it is!

Occupy Grover Norquist might be a better idea, now that I think about it. The entire Republican party has signed a pledge of allegiance to Norquist. Perhaps that represents corruption in some form?

Socialism: When large companies get bailed out by the American people. It's socialism for the rich and the very poor but not for the working class? How is that fair? How can you blame the average American for wanting a more equitable distribution?

I'm no expert. I see people protesting. Why are they protesting today when they weren't protesting yesterday? Is it because they all woke up one day and realized they could prosper by taking from the rich? Why didn't they realize this yesterday or back when Benjamin Franklin commented, "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic." Personal property is protected by more than parchment barriers - most all Americans have a strong respect for personal properties.

The 'people' have just been smacked across the face, tied, and made to witness banks and large corporations get their money without their express consent. The Government and Big Business has set the example of socialism!!! Not this rabble. They have shown the people the way. If you control the legislature you can vote yourself money. Would this have happened if every American were asked if they wished to bail the banks out??? Is any of it fair?

Nevermind the reasons for it all or where we could be if we hadn't bailed these companies out. These people are pissed because they feel they've been robbed. There are precedents in America for this type of tyranny.

To look with disgust at protestors who are angry that their money can be taken from them without their immediate consent is to deny American history, freedom, personal property, popular sovereignty, and what this country is about. Our Founding Fathers warred over just about any tax increase. They didn't feel their interests were being fairly represented in the island of England and I feel many people today feel their interests aren't being considered on the island of Washington.

The Representative system is broken. Was it ever meant to be permanent? I don't know. Here's what John Adams has to say about it (complete with spelling errors), " This expedient is only an equivalent for the suffrage of the whole people, in the common management of public concerns. It is really nothing more than this, the people chuse attornies to vote for them in the great council of the nation, reserving always the fundamentals of the government, reserving also a right to give their attornies instructions how to vote, and a right, at certain stated intervals of choosing a new, discarding an old attorney, and choosing wiser and a better."

If you read that carefully, you'll get mixed messages regarding the actual role of the representative but I think it's made very clear in the first sentence what the fundamental purpose of the representative is - the collected will of the people. How do our representatives know this when they don't ask us our opinion and don't give me any crap about "we vote 'em in and then we cut 'em loose" shit... That's stupidity and if you don't agree that it is you're missing an opportunity to keep from being exploited.

Why did the Founding Fathers do this to us???? "This popular power (the people of the U.S.) however, when the numbers grew large, became impracticable to be exercised by the universal and immediate suffrage of the people: and this impracticability has introduced from the feudal system, an expedient which we call representation." - John Adams

Universal and IMMEDIATE suffrage of the people! They couldn't do it back then. We can do it today. There's no excuse why we shouldn't do it.

Now, if you think that the American people are too stupid to vote for themselves then you need to do your part to educate them and contribute to our nation's education system. I can already see in my mind's eye mass debate and mass dissemination of information!

Lincoln: "Let the people know the facts and the country shall be safe." No more closed door sessions and no more panels of wolves deciding how to police other wolves in defense of the sheep. Let them fight for our vote!



As to the police... maybe you wouldn't be so surprised at the restraint the police officers showed if the protestors were armed as well as the police were. The protestors are fighting on behalf of the police in my opinion and the state is using the cops to quell their benefactors. It's almost like the Persians hiring Greeks to fight Greeks. It's disgusting. And please don't get too proud of the police - watch the Berkley video in which a 4' Asian lady is battered repeatedly with a baton... that's hard to watch.

Reference to Nazis - any buzz word like this (remember the word socialism conservatives love so much and spin for their own ends?) is used to illicit an emotional response. The buzz word is appropriate as law makers are sending the police out in the middle of the night to make secret arrests and dismantle the protestors.

The protestors are being shooshed away. What would you think of the American Back Bone if they just shrugged their shoulders and went home? They're all fighting for something legitimate - to be heard. Whether they want something as stupid as a pair of new sneakers from a rich person... who cares... they still want to be heard and they deserve to have their vote count. (and I hope you trust that the American people will see the folly in property reappropriation as almost all of them ultimately do! By far the VAST majority.)

Athens is a perfect example of the closest form of government to Democracy that there has ever been and there is not a single reference in history that I can recall in which the citizens of the city voted to confiscate the property of other citizens. So there is a little extra nudge of assurance.


More ranting:

What type of individual would most easily react to the injustices of the current mass inequality of our system and form a protest? Ok... they're probably going to be a little radical and desperate. Right?

Of course you're going to have radicals that can, it seems, be easily exploited for some good Tea Party propaganda. No one is contemplating, or should contemplate, armed revolution. Only one significant change and a couple minor ones need changing. In my opinion these are more popular sovereignty and a shift in taxes.

Ask yourself... will the American people vote for a road to nowhere? Will they vote to give Big Tobacco subsidies? Will they vote to pay for large corporations not to grow food? Will they vote Congress luxuries? WILL THEY VOTE TO MAINTAIN PEOPLE WHO ARE ABLE TO WORK BUT REFUSE? No.... no,no,no,no.

These radical anti-capitalists are a sliver of the population who will be outvoted.

http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/_ ... reet-video

"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."

That's really an interesting question. I don't follow politics that closely (probably just a little more closely than the average citizen, which isn't saying much), but I do vote in EVERY election and I have my senators, congressman, state legislators, and county officials on my email contact list and I send them emails all the time. They probably have me marked as "KOOK", but so what? At least I am telling them what I think and what I want. I'm even polite to them . . . mostly. How many people actually contact their representatives on a regular basis? Really, I'm curious, chime in.

I don't, but that's cool that you do that. Do you ever get anything other than a form letter back?

Mostly it is a form letter, which I understand, but sometimes, yes, a hand-written note. Of course, it's more personal on a state and local level - I get personal emails from one of our state legislators any time I write to him, and generally when I ask the county judge for something (here in Arkansas the county judges aren't judicial judges, they just take care of county business, like road maintenance, libraries, etc.), it is usually addressed right away.