The OCCUPY Movement

[creep]

It looks more like bodypaint, but if they were really tats, I'm sure he wouldn't kick her out of the bed...

go to :40...i think it's a tattoo

http://vimeo.com/30476100

[Pandemonium]

I'd OCCUPY that!

He shoots, he scores!

[Pandemonium]

go to :40...i think it's a tattoo

http://vimeo.com/30476100

"It made me want to pack my bags and pitch a tent on Wall Street"

Yeah, that woman makes me pitch a tent too.

[creep]

this is crucial information though about the tattoo. we need to find out if it's real so jasper can decide if he finds her attractive or not. someone needs to go down there and find her.

[Hokahey]

Its clearly body paint. There's a smudge by her elbow.

[Hype]

[Jasper]

[ellis]

And here's a story that shows exactly why the OWS movement is demanding a fair playing field.

Congressman Peter DeFazio smelled a rat and boy did he find one. A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars, went to foreigners, brought over on H-2B guest worker visas, instead of unemployed Americans. DeFazio fought and obtained funding for those forest projects and jobs in the 2009 Stimulus bill. DeFazio assumed with so many unemployed and desperate U.S. Citizens in his state, of course those jobs would go to them. He was wrong.
A local newspaper in Bend Oregon, actually did their job and started investigating how forest thinning work was going to foreigners instead of unemployed loggers in the area. Defazio read the newspaper.

In 2010, the Forest Service awarded Stimulus Recovery Act contracts to four employers totaling$7,140,782 for forestry work in Oregon. These four employers in turn hired 254 foreign guest workers. This is when unemployment in Oregon was hitting 15% in rural areas and loggers were hard hit.
Believe this or not, even with taxpayer dollars, supposedly to create jobs, employers are not required to recruit U.S. workers. That's right, you can be unemployed, pay taxes which in turn import foreign workers and deny Americans employment. Below is a local KATU news segment where one logger tells KATU the real unemployment rate in forestry work was over 40%.
Read the rest: Stimulus Money Used to Employ Foreign Guest Workers Instead of Americans at Economic Populist.

http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com ... reign.html

If you are against this movement... and against all things 99%... and can actually JUSTIFY what occurred in this article... you seriously need to have your head examined. This article should piss everyone off.

Here's a link to the article referred to from the blog above.
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content ... -americans



Behavior such as this is happening all over the country.

So yeah, go ahead and keep your head in the sand about everything.... nothing to see here. Everything is a joke. Move along. blah, blah, blah.

[MYXYLPLYX]

A friend posted this, and I think it's helpful for some folks to understand the common cause that exists... too many folks are hung up on minor distinctions and miss the big picture:

[Hype]

The bit in the rectangle in the bottom right hand corner is probably the thing I find most disturbing about it all.

[Hokahey]

A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars

That's where the problem began.

[Pure Method]

A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars

That's where the problem began.

began is an interestingly subjective word to fit your argument so sure

[Hype]

A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars

That's where the problem began.

began is an interestingly subjective word to fit your argument so sure

Is that a sentence? I know those words, but that makes no sense.

[Pure Method]

A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars

That's where the problem began.

"began" is an interestingly subjective word to fit your argument, so, sure

Is that a sentence? I know those words, but that makes no sense.

[Hype]

A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars

That's where the problem began.

"began" is an interestingly subjective word to fit your argument, so, sure

Is that a sentence? I know those words, but that makes no sense.

I don't understand this fragment: ""began" is an interestingly subjective word to fit your argument"

I don't understand why "began" is supposed (by you) to be interestingly subjective, and I don't know what it means for a word to "fit [an] argument"... Fit? How does it fit?... I'm probably on your side in this debate, but I really don't understand what you mean, and it's bugging me.

The "so, sure." part affirms Hokahey's statement, right? That seems fine.

[kv]

soooo glad you don't post as much here

[Artemis]

A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars

That's where the problem began.

"began" is an interestingly subjective word to fit your argument, so, sure

Is that a sentence? I know those words, but that makes no sense.

I don't understand this fragment: ""began" is an interestingly subjective word to fit your argument"

I don't understand why "began" is supposed (by you) to be interestingly subjective, and I don't know what it means for a word to "fit [an] argument"... Fit? How does it fit?... I'm probably on your side in this debate, but I really don't understand what you mean, and it's bugging me.

The "so, sure." part affirms Hokahey's statement, right? That seems fine.

Maybe he meant that a problem with no clear beginning or cause is open to interpretation and thus, subjective. if pure method started his sentence with "interestingly "it may have made more sense to you? i think he meant that hoka arbitrarily chose the begining of the problem to strengthen his confident position. i am just guessing, but i think that's what he meant.

[Pure Method]

Artemis hit the nail on the head. I was trying to be dismissive of hoka's assertion that the problem started with the American Recovery Act. If it did (conclusively or actually or factually or whatever), it would suit his overall argument very well. however, he makes no clear linkage to the aforementioned legislation and the genesis of "the problem", he just says that's where it all began.

[Hype]

Artemis hit the nail on the head. I was trying to be dismissive of hoka's assertion that the problem started with the American Recovery Act. If it did (conclusively or actually or factually or whatever), it would suit his overall argument very well. however, he makes no clear linkage to the aforementioned legislation and the genesis of "the problem", he just says that's where it all began.

Ah. I would've gone with: "No it isn't."

[Pure Method]

Artemis hit the nail on the head. I was trying to be dismissive of hoka's assertion that the problem started with the American Recovery Act. If it did (conclusively or actually or factually or whatever), it would suit his overall argument very well. however, he makes no clear linkage to the aforementioned legislation and the genesis of "the problem", he just says that's where it all began.

Ah. I would've gone with: "No it isn't."

While that also voices general disagreement, I wanted to (lazily, for effect) express my view of Hoka's statement as needlessly self-serving. I stand by my original statement.

[Hype]

Artemis hit the nail on the head. I was trying to be dismissive of hoka's assertion that the problem started with the American Recovery Act. If it did (conclusively or actually or factually or whatever), it would suit his overall argument very well. however, he makes no clear linkage to the aforementioned legislation and the genesis of "the problem", he just says that's where it all began.

Ah. I would've gone with: "No it isn't."

While that also voices general disagreement, I wanted to (lazily, for effect) express my view of Hoka's statement as needlessly self-serving. I stand by my original statement.

Carry on. I just really didn't understand what the sentence actually said, even though I thought I knew what you meant. Forgive me, I have to read hundreds of assignments full of gibberish so often that I sometimes forget how to make sense of anything anymore.

[Pure Method]

well, I am an undergrad

[Hype]

well, I am an undergrad

I suspect you'll go further than that.

[Hype]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/2 ... From-the-1

Fri Oct 21, 2011 at 12:48 PM PDT
A Voice From the 1%

by GaiusFollow
Share14.4K
permalink 264 Comments

The impetus behind the Occupy Wall Street movement - a vague sense that the rich are getting ever richer while everyone else suffers - was confirmed by a recent report from the Social Security Administration showing that while total employment and average wages remained stagnant, the number of people earning $1 million or more grew by 18% from 2009 to 2010. Those figures give real substance to the "We are the 99%" slogan, yet Republicans continue to insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that if anything those "job creators" deserve an even greater share of our national income. The Tea Party, meanwhile, has launched its own "53%" movement, inexplicably rallying the working class to the defense of the wealthy. The one group rarely heard from in this rancorous debate is the 1%, whose incomes and taxes are its focus. I am one of them, and here is my perspective, which may surprise you.

First let me note that I am not part of the yacht and private jet set, which represents an even smaller subset of incomes than mine. The threshold for inclusion in the top 1% of income earners in 2008, the most recent year for which published data is available from the IRS, was $380,354, enough for an extraordinary life but nowhere near enough for a harbor berth in St. Moritz. Nevertheless, I am - for now - comfortably ensconced in that demographic. Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan would save me roughly $400,000 a year in taxes, and President Obama's tax proposals would cost me more than $100,000, yet I support the latter and consider the former laughable.

Thus you can imagine my amazement this summer when I watched the Republicans in Congress push the United States to the brink of default - and the world to the brink of ruin - over whether to repeal a portion of the Bush tax cuts and raise my taxes by 3.5%. I know a lot of people with high incomes and even the conservatives among them were confused by that sequence of events. Here is a secret about rich people: we wouldn't have noticed a 3.5% tax increase. That is not only because there isn't a material difference between having $1 million and $965,000, which is obvious, but also because most of us don't actually know how much money we are going to make in a given year. Most income at that level is the result of profits rather than salary, whether it comes in the form of bonuses, stock options, partnership distributions, dividends or capital gains. Profits are unpredictable and they tend to vary wildly. At my own firm, the general rule of thumb is that if we are within 5% of our budget for the year, everyone is happy and no one complains. A variation of 3.5% is merely a random blip.

I was not amazed but disgusted when John Boehner and his crew tried to justify the extremity of their position by rebranding the wealthy as "job creators." While true in a very basic sense, it obscures the fact that jobs are a cost that is voluntarily incurred only as a result of demand. Hiring has no correlation at all to profits or to income - none. Let me keep more of my money without increasing customer demand and I will do just that - keep it. Perhaps I will spend a little more of it, though probably not, but even if I do it won't help the economy very much. Here is another secret of the well-to-do: we don't really buy much more stuff than everyone else. It may be more expensive stuff, sure, but I don't buy cars, or appliances, or furniture, or anything else more frequently than the average consumer. The things I do spend more money on are services such as travel, entertainment, restaurants and landscaping, none of which generate well-paying middle class jobs. There, in a nutshell, is the sad explanation of what has happened to the American economy over the last 25 years of "trickle down" economics.

That's why I was so pleased when the Occupy Wall Street protests began. I support them wholeheartedly, for several reasons. First, because I fervently believe in the exercise of first amendment rights, and I have been waiting for years for the American people to wake up from the torpor of the Bush years, when they were seemingly cowed into submission to corporate authoritarianism. Second, because I am dismayed by the thuggish tactics of the NYPD. I would have expected as much from Michael Chertoff or Dick Cheney, but not from the Bloomberg administration. Third, there is no question that the increasing income inequality in our society is a bad thing, in the short-term and the long-term, for both workers and for business. It is bad in every way and for everyone, with the sole exception of Wall Street itself. Fourth, I love the hysterical reaction it has provoked from arch-conservatives such as Eric Cantor and Glenn Beck. As George Orwell wrote in "Homage to Catalonia" about fighting fascists, I don't always need to know what I am fighting for when it is clear what I am fighting against. Fifth, and most important, it changed the national media narrative and sucked almost all of the energy out of the tempest that was the Tea Party.

It is the Tea Party's effort to recapture that energy, through the "We Are the 53%" movement, that has truly bewildered me. I have spent far more hours than I should have these last few weeks puzzling over the postings on that website, trying to understand who these people are and why they would possibly care about my taxes. I don't really have an answer to those questions, but I do have a few insights.

To begin with, a fair number of the posters there don't seem to understand the actual issues, or even the meaning of "53%," which is supposed to refer to the percentage of people in recent years who actually owed - and paid - federal income taxes. From their own descriptions of themselves as unemployed, underemployed, or struggling to raise families, it seems likely that many of these posters actually AREN'T part of that 53%, but rather, like most of the 47% they complain about, receive full refunds of their taxes each year, or perhaps even more thanks to the Republican-sponsored family tax credits. I suspect they think that because they work, and have taxes withheld, and file a tax return, they are different than the "47%" they decry as lazy layabouts. Of course they are not, but sadly they don't even realize it.

Next, ALL of the posters there seem quite proud of themselves. No doubt they should be, but they seem to have derived very different conclusions from their life experiences than I have from mine, which could read like an exaggerated version of one of their posts. My family is from one of the poorest counties in the country, in rural Appalachia. My grandfather was a coal miner who left school after 5th grade to help support his impoverished family. My grandmother wasn't allowed to attend high school because according to her parents women didn't need an education. I never knew my father. My mother and I subsisted on food stamps for several years. I got my first job at 13, working as a bus boy for $2 an hour, and I have never been unemployed in the 37 years since. I worked my way through college, which I paid for myself. When I started my career I worked 60+ hour weeks every week for nearly 15 years before that effort began to pay off. I employ nearly 20 people, I have no debts, and I have no doubt that I have earned every penny I have.

And yet, I am living proof of Elizabeth Warren's maxim that no one gets rich on their own. If not for the UMWA helping to secure a living wage for my grandfather, I would probably have had to leave school to help support my family, as he had done. If not for my grandmother's passionate belief in the value of the education she was denied I would never have aspired to go to college at all, and if not for my mother teaching me to love books, I would never have been able to succeed there. If not for my wife I would never have been inspired to work as hard as I did to see what I could become in life. How many smart, talented children don't have those positive influences? How many have exactly the opposite?

My good fortune did not end there. It was sheer luck, rather than moral virtue, that I never had the criminal record many of my less fortunate friends did when I was young. It was sheer luck that neither I nor any of my family members ever had a major illness, or accident, or disability, despite lacking health insurance much of the time. How different my life could easily have been! How different the lives of others still could be.

I understand too that but for food stamps, I would have gone hungry as a child, that but for public subsidies and federally guaranteed loans I could never have afforded college. I know that without the internet and airports, both of which were developed with federal taxes, I could not earn an income even close to what I make today. That all seems so obvious to me that I don't understand how anyone could question it, and those are just a few of the many reasons I am happy to pay my fair share of taxes, whatever that share maybe. Paying a lot of taxes just means you make a lot of money, and it is hard, frankly, to complain about that.

One last observation. Many of the 53% crowd seem quite proud of their Christian faith. I am not religious myself, but I am reasonably certain that Jesus would not respond to the poor and unemployed with shouts of "Get a job!" I vividly remember what it was like to be poor. To be concise, it sucked, and my heartfelt sympathies automatically go out to anyone who has to experience it, especially children who are blameless for their circumstances. Whenever I meet someone who has not been as lucky as I have been, I recognize how easily our roles could have been reversed by the random forces of fate. And despite my lack of religion, I instinctively think "There but for the grace of God go I." If only those who actually believe in God would think the same thing more often they might not be so eager to cut my taxes

[mockbee]

Oh, no.....more text!!!!!

Summary for Creep: Capitalism is good, Crony Capitalism is not good. USA looking more and more like a Crony Capitalist state. Vast income inequality should be of concern to everyone, including the 1%, for it creates an unstable society if half the people struggle to make ends meet.

Crony Capitalism Comes Home
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 26, 2011

Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public.

The answer is no. That alarmist view of the movement is a credit to the (prurient) imagination of its critics, and voyeurs of Occupy Wall Street will be disappointed. More important, while alarmists seem to think that the movement is a “mob” trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability.

To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists.

I’m as passionate a believer in capitalism as anyone. My Krzysztofowicz cousins (who didn’t shorten the family name) lived in Poland, and their experience with Communism taught me that the way to raise living standards is capitalism.

But, in recent years, some financiers have chosen to live in a government-backed featherbed. Their platform seems to be socialism for tycoons and capitalism for the rest of us. They’re not evil at all. But when the system allows you more than your fair share, it’s human to grab. That’s what explains featherbedding by both unions and tycoons, and both are impediments to a well-functioning market economy.

When I lived in Asia and covered the financial crisis there in the late 1990s, American government officials spoke scathingly about “crony capitalism” in the region. As Lawrence Summers, then a deputy Treasury secretary, put it in a speech in August 1998: “In Asia, the problems related to ‘crony capitalism’ are at the heart of this crisis, and that is why structural reforms must be a major part” of the International Monetary Fund’s solution.

The American critique of the Asian crisis was correct. The countries involved were nominally capitalist but needed major reforms to create accountability and competitive markets.

Something similar is true today of the United States.

So I’d like to invite the finance ministers of Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia — whom I and other Americans deemed emblems of crony capitalism in the 1990s — to stand up and denounce American crony capitalism today.

Capitalism is so successful an economic system partly because of an internal discipline that allows for loss and even bankruptcy. It’s the possibility of failure that creates the opportunity for triumph. Yet many of America’s major banks are too big to fail, so they can privatize profits while socializing risk.

The upshot is that financial institutions boost leverage in search of supersize profits and bonuses. Banks pretend that risk is eliminated because it’s securitized. Rating agencies accept money to issue an imprimatur that turns out to be meaningless. The system teeters, and then the taxpayer rushes in to bail bankers out. Where’s the accountability?

It’s not just rabble-rousers at Occupy Wall Street who are seeking to put America’s capitalists on a more capitalist footing.

“Structural change is necessary,” Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said in an important speech last month that discussed many of these themes. He called for more curbs on big banks, possibly including trimming their size, and he warned that otherwise we’re on a path of “increasingly frequent, complex and dangerous financial breakdowns.”

Likewise, Mohamed El-Erian, another pillar of the financial world who is the chief executive of Pimco, one of the world’s largest money managers, is sympathetic to aspects of the Occupy movement. He told me that the economic system needs to move toward “inclusive capitalism” and embrace broad-based job creation while curbing excessive inequality.

“You cannot be a good house in a rapidly deteriorating neighborhood,” he told me. “The credibility and the fair functioning of the neighborhood matter a great deal. Without that, the integrity of the capitalist system will weaken further.”

Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist, adds that some inequality is necessary to create incentives in a capitalist economy but that “too much inequality can harm the efficient operation of the economy.” In particular, he says, excessive inequality can have two perverse consequences: first, the very wealthy lobby for favors, contracts and bailouts that distort markets; and, second, growing inequality undermines the ability of the poorest to invest in their own education.

“These factors mean that high inequality can generate further high inequality and eventually poor economic growth,” Professor Katz said.

Does that ring a bell?

So, yes, we face a threat to our capitalist system. But it’s not coming from half-naked anarchists manning the barricades at Occupy Wall Street protests. Rather, it comes from pinstriped apologists for a financial system that glides along without enough of the discipline of failure and that produces soaring inequality, socialist bank bailouts and unaccountable executives.

It’s time to take the crony out of capitalism, right here at home.