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This commentary on the BANKSTERS, to me is not only just `common sense`, it is pretty similar to the thinking of everybody i know--so how come we are not hearing and seeing Thom EVERYWHERE????
Thom had a radio show here in L.A. on an AM station that actually tried a Progressive format--for a minute--but now they are back to the standard Conservative blather. The Message needs to get out there!
You know, things are really at the fore front of being unsustainable in every way. Our lifestyle, technology, and futures are at the edge. Even the well to do probably don't realize the real peril they themselves are in. One can become too comfortable. I've heard it said somewhere that there is no greater motivation than captialism and no system more cruel or heartless when it is completely left unregulated. Greed is not a virtue yet we exalt it as one. While it is true we are a generous nation I think we pat ourselves on the back a bit too quickly. In the words of the late great George Carlin, we need to learn to take care of each other. We need a sense of shared responsibility for each and every one of us. Our political objective in this nation has been perverted by Greed. The young pay way to much for an incomplete education the less fortunate learn by experience. It's going to come to an end. You can walk out to the edge of a cliff and step off the edge or turn 180 and take a step forward.
The wealthy keeps pushing the rest of us in the gutters and it can only result in the same kind of actions that occurred against the Tzars of Russia and the Kings of France and Spain. It's happening all around the world now...people are fighting back against tyranny and oppression...kicking their criminal leaders out. The US is headed down that path.
It is desperately trying to bring back the cold war between the US and Russia. I guess the terrorist bogeyman is losing steam. The right wing ruling elite is salivating over the memories of HUAC that kept people too scared to even think anti-establishment thoughts. They dearly miss the old cold war.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/former_ambassador_russia_responding...
Kend: It's one thing if wealthy investors take a chance and risk their money and another thing when the government bails them out and puts the burden on the taxpayer. I believe that the government shouldn't do this.
Yes, a lot of people would lose their jobs...but then, the top executives of those companies would take the blame and lose their shirts... as they should lose their shirts. They would also get the blame for being bad business people...no bailouts!
Workers take risks too...that they have chosen a good company to work for or not...and they may have made a bad decision when they applied for the job. But mostly, workers don't have any say in running the companies and are mostly innocent victims of top management's bad decisions.
But when our government bails these companies out and puts the burden on the tax payers it just isn't fair to the tax payers. The companies should fail and the top execs should be shot in a firing squad. Oops! did I just say they should be shot in a firing squad? I mean they shouldn't get off so lightly. They should die penniless and destitute!
They claimed that it was to save American jobs. Bull$h1t!!!
Then why to they let these corporations send our jobs overseas? What they are more concerned with is bailing out the top execs and the wealthy investors. They deserve to lose...we don't!
This sets up a system of "too big to fail"..."too rich to lose". And they make the little people lose their money. Make them go through austerity...do without essential goods and services so the rich can continue their high life.
It's high time for a revolution in this country...not that I look forward to it...but what else can we do? Voting doesn't work because people keep voting for the same political crooks, both Republican and Democrat, owned by the ruling elite. Re-elect the good Democrats but vote out the bad ones...put Greenies or Socialists in their place. They'll vote the same way as good Democrats. But the Blue Dog Democrats won't!
Kend: What if the tables were turned? What if those who worked the hardest in the fields, or any other labor intensive job, like scrub women, ditch diggers, or even oil men, etc., were the highest salaried people who got the biggest bonuses...millions of dollars every year.... and the CEOs earned $10 dollars an hour with no bonuses...maybe a Christmas turkey. Would you still think that "it (the money..the bonuses) belongs to the people who earned it"? And how do you define "earning it"?
What about people who rob banks....do they "earn" it? Aren't these banksters and corporate executives and major investors robbing from other people? In effect, yes they are! Aren't they just as bad as people who put on masks and enter banks with guns to rob banks? Yes, they are! They're worse than bank robbers because the legal system is rigged in their favor....rigged by revolving door crook politicians and "law" makers who will, after getting their bribes, enter the private sector later to get the rest of their their filthy lucre. Why should these top execs get awarded all that money when they do very little labor...if you want to call bossing underlings around...labor. I'd say that they are more akin to the Mafia.
Mark and Alice. I don't like Wall Street anymore then you do. But I also believe that we should be free to do with what we want with what we have. people who invest in Wall Street Are not the working poor. They are investors and if they are stupid enough to but there hard earned money with those crooks then so be it. Alice I don't think those CEO's deserve a penny but they have a contract and the investors invested knowing that. I don't agree with the lady who deliveries my mail who only works 5 hrs a day and makes $60,000 a year with 6 weeks holidays but that here contract So be it.
Well put, Mark! You've just saved me the trouble of countering Kend's asinine comments.
So where do you think all that money comes from, Kend? The CEOs?! Don't make me laugh. The people doing all the work are the ones who earned those millions; otherwise the CEOs wouldn't have a pot to piss in. They are nothing but parasites. - AIW
"They stole it fair and square", eh Kend? Why, Kend, do you think that if something is legal that makes it legit or ethical? If corruption is legalized because corrupt politicians make the laws that doesn't make it less corrupt. This is democracy, Kend, there is no "divine right". If we don't like laws we change them. Property rights and how they are defined, what is letimately yours or someone else's are creations of the state. The legitimate function of government is to protect the weak from the strong, that's why the strong are against government because they want to be the government and put a tyranny over the weak.
The working people, the "working poor", work harder than anybody, they work very hard, very difficult and unpleasant jobs for nickels - so they have to work two or three of them. They should be paid more than anybody some of those jobs are so unpleasant.
Don't talk about "earning" money, Kend. The working people make it possible for the CEO to have what he has. He doesn't deserve the bonus while his producers are so undercompensated.
"The gamblin' man is rich,
the workin' man is poor
and I ain't got no home in this world anymore."
-Woody Guthrie
What do you expect.
We have a president who let's them do as they please. I thought Obama was a Democrat but he will be the first president to retire as a billionaire.
Keystone xl? He will let them have that too. That is a done deal. It is all over except for the crying.
BP allowed to drill in the gulf? He let them start bidding on new leases just this week.
Honestly what do you expect. Obama still thinks a plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11.
ckrob ~ Well said!!!
Off topic:
The Citizens United decision may not prove the right-wing of the Supreme Court is corrupt, however, continued failure to reverse the decision does.
Aliceinwonderland ~ Very true! However, like so many things 'there is a season, Turn! Turn! Turn!' Thom is right. We need to double the minimum wage first. Worker-Owned Co-ops will not improve poverty income until they can survive in the "free market." You cannot pay yourself a decent wage competing with poverty slave labor that is subsidized by our social safety net. One thing at a time.
Like with gun violence and control we need to address mental health and poverty first. Like with immigration reform, we need to repeal free trade and increase wages and the number of jobs first; or, address poverty first. With all three currently popular issues, poverty is the common denominator that has to be addressed first and foremost. It is the main obstacle to any real progress. Everything else is a Red Herring. 'For everything there is a time under heaven.'
By the way, if you haven't given that autobiography of the Mayor of Oakland, John L. Davies, a look you might want to. Besides defeating the railroad and winning back Oakland's waterfront for the citizens, battling railroad pirates on the SF Bay with his ferry fleet, inspiring and winning riots in both Oakland and San Francisco, surviving numerous assassination attempts, building his own lake by hand, serving 5 terms as the most popular Mayor in the history of Oakland, helping Jack London sell books and make Jack London Square a reality--amongst other legendary feats, he also joined labor and business by founding the first California Consumer Co-op. My personal all-time hero; and a genuine inspiration to us all. One of the most unsung heros of all time if you ask me. His true story makes the legendary Biblical story of David and Goliath look like a school yard fight. (No offense intended against King David)
http://oaklandwiki.org/His_Honor,_the_Buckaroo
http://www.amazon.com/His-Honor-Buckaroo-Autobiography-Davie/dp/0943077125
They should get their bonuses in very high velocity spent uranium.
This is why we have to make a movement towards human standards in america and the world, this meaning that the standards being of each individual and being the standards used of humans, humans as a value is evolving that each individual having as a value until they die, but their children carry on and their children for millions more generations so society is always evolving,so that being said the individual of today his or her value is unlimited. now if you look to my blog of people\human standards then you will understand how it works and evolves, so this casino type GDP, labor, and products and services type casino will eventually fail because you can't go on forever manipulating a product or service. people\human standards is the answer.
It will have to get worse before it gets better: I guess. We need a massive occupation of Washington DC; the sooner the better or fix voter suppression. The pen can be mightier than the sword.
It will have to get worse before it gets better: I guess. We need a massive occupation of Washington DC; the sooner the better or fix voter suppression. The pen can be mightier than the sword.
It will have to get worse before it gets better: I guess. We need a massive occupation of Washington DC; the sooner the better or fix voter suppression. The pen can be mightier than the sword.
Thanks Thom for all you do. I am reading Mike Lofgren's book, The Party is Over - How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class got Shafted. Seems things haven't changed much...
In 1892, the People's (Populist) Party met in Omaha, Nebraska and their platform called out the U.S. Supreme Court (which in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad laid the foundation for "corporate personhood" and the 2010 Citizen's United decision), along with the rest of the political apparatus as rotten and corrupt. “We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized...The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages...The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind, and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of government injustice we breed the two great classes - tramps and millionaires.”
What are we to do?
WOW really
The bonuses are given with private funds. It is none of anybodies business what they do with it. I would suggest to quit putting your money into wall street. They would have nothing to bonus.
Why is it that Thom thinks all money in America belongs to all Americans. It belongs to the Americans that earn it. They choose how much of it goes to the government by elections and the rest is theirs to choose what they want to do with.
Near the end of today's extraordinary interview with Mr. Bolden (seriously, I was rivited to my phone), he gave out an email address for an autographed copy of his book The Echo From Dealy Plaza. It passed so quickly I couldn't write it down (the subway'll do that; i already looked like a weirdo gasping at what he was saying). I tried accessing his website, but it sets up an email to "author"@website etc. The email Mr. Bolden mentioned was something like "a.bolden" something @ something.
It truly was an honor to hear Mr. Bolden tell his incredible experiences. To have such a brave and important person in autograph a copy of those experiences would mean a lot to me. Thanks for your help.
I don't think we should punish citizens for not voting; I think we should just count the abstentions. That way, politicians would have to campaign positively.
You can afford to count abstentions if you use proportional-representation districts, like this.
I agree, PD. Thom's a brilliant media messenger, the kind that is sorely needed in today's neocon-fascist environment. And frankly, I don't give a rat's ass if KW accuses us of thinking he "walks on water". KW can just kiss my... well never mind. - AIW