Not to step on Chris Hedges, but Bill Maher said years ago, "We shouldn't be so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance."

Palindromedary, although Bill Gates is a billionaire now, he certainly never belonged to the class of the 1% (he follows no hidden agenda) at anytime. Therefore, not even now do we consider him part of that class of people. And when finally the wicked Government in Washington approached him to design certain weaknesses into the Windows operating system so that Government-paid hackers would have an easier time to penetrate it for stealing personal data from the people, he was forced into a choice of either comply or go under with his business empire.

They cornered him like a rat, and we may say he made the wrong choice, which by all standards of ethics is probably so, however, we will not hold this business decision against him to the point where one should group him to be one with all those of the 1% who freely blackmail governments into stealing funds from the taxpayers to waft those billions without concern or conscience into their own offshore bank accounts through a corrupted, monopolized banking system.

Therefore, the fault lies not with successful business enterprises, but with a financial system which easily lets these businesses fall under control and ownership of all who control the system of finance, including the community of opportunistic, thieving "investors" who purchase the industry with all their stolen, unearned money. -Cygnus1

"Historically, Top Down Management has been the primary method of control in most organizations. That it has been the acknowledged "standard" can be traced from humans all the way back into the most primal members of the animal and insect kingdoms."

And it is also historically accurate to say that Top Down Management has always been corruptible and has failed to remain true to the people who held those "management" in esteem. Top Down Management is corruptible and often elusive.

Hi Thom!

I'm ALL for restructuring the budget because the military-industrial complex is way out of control, however, slashing defense spending will have actual repercussions-- not just for Mr Attached-Servents'-Quarts-- but for the people who work in the defense biz. Sadly, it's one of the few things that we produce anymore and cuts could really impact unemployment.

Yes, there are other places we could spend much of that money (infrastructure!) but a simple slashing will decimate jobs in that sector. Philosophically, they are arguably jobs that we shouldn't be reliant on, but, sadly, that's how we're structured. I would love to see those resources and minds applied to improving solar power, for example, but since this isn't Sim City (regardless of Herman Cain's worldview) we can't just easily reallocate military materiel development and production to peaceful development

Also, if there was even a chance that these cuts were going to go through (this is cynical me talking now), don't you think that Lockheed-etc.-etc. would be restructuring preemptively?

I hope I'm wrong here...

We can see Thom anytime. We need to see Higgins. He knows how to handle Republicans.

Occupy The Bottom

The other night, an Occupy caller asked a vital question on Mike Malloy's Show: Should the Occupy Movement become politically active? This critical question danced around through days of online discussions. I listened intently and now want to my inject my thinking on the subject.

Historically, Top Down Management has been the primary method of control in most organizations. That it has been the acknowledged "standard" can be traced from humans all the way back into the most primal members of the animal and insect kingdoms. One of the most vital aspects of any management process is communications and most communications are currently relayed from the top to the bottom. However, with the advent of our present day technology, we are able to not only reverse the communication paths, but to expand them horizontally, as well.

The Occupy Movement is ideally positioned to create a new, powerful and efficient Bottom Up Management system that would replace the out-dated Top Down paradigm. Here is how I envision it working:

A person who wants to join the Occupy Movement would log into a secure website and provide a few, necessary details about themselves: name, email address and zip code. Access to, and even expansion of, this information would at all times be monitored by the individual. Upon hitting Enter, as most of us have experienced, we would be advised to check our email and respond to a confirmation link. Once a member has securely registered and again logged in, they will join other members who have the same zip code. All of the members with a common zip code can create, debate and vote on local issues/candidates in their exclusive forum. Additionally, they will all have access to their county, state, National and International forums with the same abilities to create, debate and vote on issues/candidates. The real time votes will be automatically and continually maintained in numerical and chart formats. The site would also list current political representatives as well as their actual voting records. Additionally, registered as well as non-registered site visitors will be allowed access to all of the voting results.

Of course, the over-riding and long-term value of this whole system is contingent upon an un-encumbered, reliable and accurate public electoral process, but it would be a step toward providing ALL of us with the ability to provide input into a technologically advantaged, 21st Century, Bottom Up, process of self-determination.

I found Sirota to be obnoxious and rude to callers at times. Just because a caller has a difference of opinion from Sirota doesn't mean he should laugh or talk over the listener. I think he was wrong about Chelsea Clinton. I don't think I'll waist my time next time he subs for Thom.

Totally agree AlRod! Who cares what limpballs thinks, as soon as Sirota used him as his reference he lost credibilty. What is next, I agree with george bush about ... who cares??!! The OWS movement is NOT about Clinton gettig a job possibly because of who her daddy is, its about crooks stealing tax dollars and not being held accountable. If a news network wants to pay Clinton as a reporter, that's on them. If she doesn't do a good job she'll be down the road.

Distribution of Wealth (not income):

Wealthiest 20% owns 84.6%
Upper Class owns 11.1%
Middle America owns 4.0%
Working Poor owns 0.2%
Poorest 20% owns 0.1%

SaltoftheEarth, I am not as you say, "into" listmaking. That is for others to do. We all have our places, our duties to complete the whole. I am "into" the making of Paradise for the People, guiding them through the process of taking down the present-day system and how to replace it in detail with the next.

The 1% consist of families plus sub-groups, and I can tell you, without going into every name that these 1% do have their side-arms such as Henry Kissinger, sitting over each nation, whose leader has been compromised, and working in the background in order to create as much chaotic mess as possible, in following the 1%'s people-hating agenda.

I will give to you a few names to get you started, and then perhaps, as you are so interested in acquiring their ages, amongst your other questions, you could accumulate all the data and send it in to Brave New Foundation.

Names: Bilderburgers, Rothchilds, Rockerfellers, just to name a few. Sub-committies: Club of Rome; Gold Club; Trilaterals; Skull & Bones; Council on Foreign Relations and sundry other secret organizations (not all are secret.) to give you a start. You should have all the data on the Bush family, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condolesa Rice, etc., so I will not even bother putting them in. That is for you, yourself, to work on.

Worker eyes and side-arms who know the agenda of the 1%: Peter Sutherland (re:Goldman Sacs), Gordon Smith (former Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs), Henry Kissinger, Jusuf Wanandi (center for strategic and international studies in Jakarta, Indonesia), Mike Moore (not Michael Moore) (Director of WTO); Fritz Bolkestein (of the European Commission); Toru Kusukawa (former delegate to the Asia-Pacific Commission); Brent Scowcroft (former assistant to Ronald Reagan for national security affairs); Richard Holbrooke (U.S. Ambassator to the United Nations; Wolfowitz (former head of the World Bank); Joseph Nye Jr. (Dean of the Kennedy School of government at Harvard University), only to name a few......to make this list complete many heads all over the nation will need to come together.

Here is an example of the cold-blooded thinking of a side-arm:

""[The Laos operation] is something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our money there ... is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective." -- U. Alexis Johnson, US Under Secretary of State in 1971 about American carpet--bombing of Laos which killed hundreds--of--thousands of civilians" quote from www.whateverhappened.com - Cygnus1

US population was about 307,006,550 in 2009. The top 1% would be just over 3 million people.

On Wealth:
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)

On Inheritance:
According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000). Thus, the attempt by ultra-conservatives to eliminate inheritance taxes -- which they always call "death taxes" for P.R. reasons -- would take a huge bite out of government revenues (an estimated $253 billion between 2012 and 2022) for the benefit of the heirs of the mere 0.6% of Americans whose death would lead to the payment of any estate taxes whatsoever (Citizens for Tax Justice, 2010b).

It is noteworthy that some of the richest people in the country oppose this ultra-conservative initiative, suggesting that this effort is driven by anti-government ideology. In other words, few of the ultra-conservative and libertarian activists behind the effort will benefit from it in any material way. However, a study (Kenny et al., 2006) of the financial support for eliminating inheritance taxes discovered that 18 super-rich families (mostly Republican financial donors, but a few who support Democrats) provide the anti-government activists with most of the money for this effort. (For more infomation, including the names of the major donors, download the article from United For a Fair Economy's Web site.)

Actually, ultra-conservatives and their wealthy financial backers may not have to bother to eliminate what remains of inheritance taxes at the federal level. The rich already have a new way to avoid inheritance taxes forever -- for generations and generations -- thanks to bankers. After Congress passed a reform in 1986 making it impossible for a "trust" to skip a generation before paying inheritance taxes, bankers convinced legislatures in many states to eliminate their "rules against perpetuities," which means that trust funds set up in those states can exist in perpetuity, thereby allowing the trust funds to own new businesses, houses, and much else for descendants of rich people, and even to allow the beneficiaries to avoid payments to creditors when in personal debt or sued for causing accidents and injuries. About $100 billion in trust funds has flowed into those states so far. You can read the details on these "dynasty trusts" (which could be the basis for an even more solidified "American aristocracy") in a New York Times opinion piece published in July 2010 by Boston College law professor Ray Madoff, who also has a book on this and other new tricks: Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead (Yale University Press, 2010).

On Taxes:
"...taxes are progressive for the bottom 80%. But if we break the top 20% down into smaller chunks, we find that progressivity starts to slow down, then it stops, and then it slips backwards for the top 1%."

On CEOs:
"The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, when CEOs were cashing in big stock options. It was at 411:1 in 2005 and 344:1 in 2007, according to research by United for a Fair Economy. By way of comparison, the same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe."

"As to the claim that CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they "create wealth," he describes that rationale as a "joke," says the New York Times (Morgenson, 2005).

Here's how it works, according to Woolard:

The compensation committee [of the board of directors] talks to an outside consultant who has surveys you could drive a truck through and pay anything you want to pay, to be perfectly honest. The outside consultant talks to the human resources vice president, who talks to the CEO. The CEO says what he'd like to receive. It gets to the human resources person who tells the outside consultant. And it pretty well works out that the CEO gets what he's implied he thinks he deserves, so he will be respected by his peers. (Morgenson, 2005.)

The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the outside consultant is an "expert" on such matters. Furthermore, handing out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator.

As for why the consultants go along with this scam, they know which side their bread is buttered on. They realize the CEO has a big say-so on whether or not they are hired again. So they suggest a package of salaries, stock options and other goodies that they think will please the CEO, and they, too, get rich in the process. And certainly the top executives just below the CEO don't mind hearing about the boss's raise. They know it will mean pay increases for them, too. (For an excellent detailed article on the main consulting firm that helps CEOs and other corporate executives raise their pay, check out the New York Times article entitled "America's Corporate Pay Pal", which supports everything Woolard of DuPont claims and adds new information.)"

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Ratings agencies had this scam with the Wall Street Crooks too...saying junk deserved a triple A rating and suckering retirement funds into buying them.