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with the 99% people out on wall street screaming for change that might be the bone thrown out to the people to try to calm it down.
The tip of the protest iceberg is at hand. I keep asking myself ...... am I too old to do this again ? Ah, what the hell .... the kids need us old f**ts for morale purposes. They really do. I'm with 'em. I hope the police do not open up the "pig" syndrome again ........ beating the hell out of their fellow Americans for a testosterone rush...... too late ..... here we go again. Defiance makes sense.
WOW! Sounds like the wall street movement is pushin' some buttons!lol The problem with the now "walled street" is the lack of ethic. Same with the banks, $5 DEBIT CHARGE?? CAN YOU SAY CHACHING? I wonder which crop of crooks is going to scim that money off the top. They use "our" collective whole of contributions and then using ellaborate calculations and likely some other underhanded criminal activities as well as just good ol cut throating to move the money back forth in an effort to make more. Same as going to the casino and trying a 100 slot machines. Also I have no problem letting them make money on my money but when the top hoods are taking monsterous bonuses and not really showing sizable recouperation on what they already lost then I have a problem with it. I am 48 and share a retirement account with the little missus and was targeted, base on my nieve faith in those running the show that we would be affording a life style similar to what we have now at retirement (its just working class but its OK) and while it has made some of it back even as we continue to contribute it is scary to think that without any gaurentee that it may all be heisted again. Its a catch 22 as social security even after the house is paid off won't be enough to keep me in my mac and cheese and pabst blue ribbon and congress has done scarce little in trying to pass anything in resopects to a bill that would allow us to pull it all out without penalization and yet...THEY BAILED OUT THE BANKSs! TO H E DOUBLE TOOTHPICKS WITH B O F A...AND WALL STREET. THE GOVERNMENT IS JUST BUSTED! NAYH!
It won't make that much difference unless information of this sort is made public to people like those in the streets around the country protesting the concentration of wealth in this country and the growing concern the American Dream is disappearing. There is simply no fair and balanced news reporting going on in this country as the sources are controlled primarily by the right. I think we also need a pledge and require all Democratic legislators sign same to find out who is with us and who is not with us and should be replaced in the next election. I for one am tired of hearing Republicans talk about the failed policies of Obama when Repbublicans filibustered 75% of all Democratic bills since Obama came into office and don't permit any improvement in the unemployment rate by firing almost 1 million workers in states with Republican governors.I say Thom Hartmann for V.P. in 2012 and President in 2016.
And how many people even pay attention to what the IMF says?
I don't know anyone who watches the news or listens to talk radio. My mother used to ask my father who to vote for.
If people would switch from Fox news, they could find out a wealth of information. Or, at least watch another station too. Check everyone out. See what others have to say. Like Laurence O' Donnell or Chris Matthews on MSNBC.
The American people have the wool pulled over their eyes, but with the Wall street march/protest, etc. peoples' eyes are opening. You won't hear that on Fox. All you hear is that the Wall Street protestors are filthy uneducated people. Talk radio hosts on KFI in Los Angeles are saying that these people are crazy. This is in addition to Rush. What a shame--- and O'Reilly says that you get fair and balanced on Fox and that they don't lie. I look in on O' Reilly just to see what he has to say for the day, and he INTERRUPTS and TALKS OVER WITH HIS LOUD ----NAH---anyone whose opinion differs.
Retired Engineer,
It is Not the job of Wall Street traders to create jobs. Wall Street traders make money, create wealth. And as a retired engineer, you need to be thankful they are good at there job. You 401(K), your IRA, and/or your pension would be worthless with out the traders. What have you done lately to create a job for someone?
Interesting how you opened your show spending less than one minute complaining how Apple founder Steve Jobs death took away the headlines from the Wall Street protesters. You ended your eulogy with, "I guess he was a good man but he sent his jobs to China".
When you have contributed one /one millionith to society that Steve Jobs has, let us all know. He directly or indirectly employed hundreds of thousands of people. Most were extremely well paid. Thousands of employees and investors became millionaires and consumers. Many went on to start their own business ventures and were successful in their own right. You could only hope to carry water for the likes of Steve Jobs. Thank you very much.
looking for a presidential candidate, would appreciate your opinion on Buddy Roemer. please. than you Steve h.
looking for a presidential candidate, would appreciate your opinion on Buddy Roemer. please. than you
Steve h.
Tom;
I listen to your show as often as time permits, and the one thing I come back to is that there are two types of people, the one’s that defend their position with carful thought and analysis (a good example: YOU) willing to concede a topic if presented with indisputable evidences or admit that they may be wrong when the facts are not readily available. Then there are those whose personality prevents them from ever conceding a possibility that they may be incorrect or have their facts distorted. This is the point at which critical thinking has ceased to exist and they begin to defend their theories with accusations and intimidation. I like to consider myself to be open minded, striving always to conceder all ideas. I have a saying that I came up with, many years ago, that whenever I find myself straying I use. I believe very much in these words and I hope that I can encourage others to believe in them also:
"Fixed ideas are monuments to man’s stupidity".
CFG
Carlos F. Garces
The protest is a Declaration for SEPARATION OF CORPORATION AND STATE.
OWS wants Congress to consider the PEOPLE they represent when considering legislation, rather than corporations - and their lobbyists. OWS is for repealing the Citizens United case (and its progeny) which gives US corporations an unfair advantage and unequal bargaining power over the PEOPLE, and allows foreign investment, in US elections.
It is FOR bailing out the PEOPLE with dignity, rather than the alleged "Too Big To Fail" banks (who refuse to help people with problem mortgages); and it is against privatizing the banks’ profits while simultaneously socializing their losses. It is for restoring the Glass Steagall Act (which prevents banks from using your and my bank deposits for high-risk speculative investments).
It is NOT anti-capitalism or anti-corporate; but it is against off-shoring jobs and it favors "Made in America," and rebuilding manufacturing in the United States.
It is for corporations & billionaires paying a fair share of the taxes (not everything, just a more fair share, so that the tax burden is not so great on the remaining 99% of us.)
It is for preventing insurance corporations from determining whether we can, or cannot obtain needed health care. It is for a living minimum wage that takes into consideration our geographic locations.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/detailed-list-of-demands-overview-of-tactics-for-d/
I watched that porcine cop (white shirt...again) swinging away at the demonstrators and kept thinking....the demonstrators far outnumber these stick and mace sadests and could just overwhelm them...there are so many demonstrators that the pigs would not have a chance...even with all of their clubs and mace. I know that would escalate the violence probably ending up in the calling in of the national guard..if there are any left in the US and not stuck over in the Middle East. Now wouldn't that be a pretty picture...Obama calling out the national guard?
It is beginning to look like the white shirts are like the Nazi brown shirts. I understand that the white shirts are the higher ranking cops...the bully boys that have posters of Hitler hanging on their walls at home.
Plutocracy: Government by the Wealthy.
Please don't demonize, "the wealthy" or talk about "Class Warfare".
Love the wealthy. Most of us want to be wealthy. When our children do bad things, we establish guidelines and limits to their activities. However, we still love them.
Fight Plutocracy. Fight what the wealthy do. They use Corporate money, and their own to buy legislation that benefits the wealthy without regard for the effects on, "We the people". When they buy legislation by Campaign Contributions, PACs to Attack their opponents, Lobbying, and hiring exPolitical Aids and Office Holders, use the word that describes what they do: Plutocracy.
Almost all legislation can now be traced to support for, or threat to withold support for reelection. Examples of Plutocracy:
Pink Slime is labelled a "Processing Agent"
Pipeline from Canada to Texas will be approveds even though, "We the People" oppose it.
Milk labels don't list growth hormones.
Unrestricted use of antibiotics (2/3 of US consumption are added to feed) by Corporate meat raisers,
Implementation of EPA rules delayed.
Planned Post Office Shock Doctrine fiscal crisis.
Support Plutocracy, Vote Republican.
Marshall
Exactly right...except for the initial raising of capital for start-ups, what is Wall Street but just a giant gambling mecca where for any "investor" (gambler) to win....others have to lose. And most people, even if they are fairly knowledgeable about trading and can understand all of the signs of how well businesses are doing, and even if they have their own computer financial analysis programs on their "home" computers, they still do not have much of a chance against the large traders who pretty much can clean our clocks in the trading game.
And when these mega-gamblers end up losing they can get bailed out by our ineffectual and corrupt politicians essentially stealing from most of us who did not even gamble. It's like some arrogant, punch-drunk, wealthy gambler who loses big at the roulette tables in Vegas and then he demands that everyone else bail him out. Or perhaps the Casino bosses pat the guy on the back, robs everyone in town to give to the gambler, and then says..."there, there, here's your money back from the good people of Vegas....don't feel so bad...better luck next time...come back anytime...you can't lose...we won't let you lose...we have a good thing going here, don't we?"
I appreciate you're comments about Steve Jobs this morning Thom. I was starting to think I was the only one who wasn't thinking of him as some sort hero. I didn't know that he was anti-teachers union, nor had I really ever considered that he was producing hardware oversees that he could have done here in America. What bothered me about Jobs, and continues to bother me about Apple, is its complete anti-choice and exclusive way it sells its products. If you want new hardware for an Apple whatever, you have to buy it from Apple, if you want software for an Apple product, you have to buy it from Apple. The business model had always struck me as anti-democratic (I'm not a big fan of Microsoft either, but that's a different story).
I know you don't know much about computers Thom, but if you get a chance I'd like to recommend that you get someone on who knows about the "Open Source Community" Unix/Linux software and the philosophy behind it. Basically the all the software is free, and anyone who can write a program is allowed to contribute, and those contributions can then be modified by other programmers. Not unlike wikipedia. I think you'd find the subject quite interesting, it doesn't have to apply only to software, and now with the passing of Steve Jobs, I think it would be a great time to talk about the subject.
N
Wall street aside...I heard you talking with Mr. Gaynor on thurs in regards to the over regulation issue and how the companies then can't affor to pay people, some jive like that. I'm sick of hearing that excuse when just the other day you were discussing the % differenc between what CEOs made way back vrs. what CEOs make today. Seems to me if a CEO can take a wage of $10,000,000 or $100,000,000 then regulation is far from the issue. I would like to hear your show some day make that point. I mean seriously just how much is being a CEO worth when someone makes an idiodic point like to much regulations. Seems to me the regulation should be on just how much CEOs can make. You know minimum wage and maximum? Just wondering...
Two days ago you did an excellent job of pointing out the distribution of people in this country that actually own Wall Street investments. The one thing I don't think that most people understand is this: If I purchase a new car that money goes back to the manufacturer as profit and pays to support jobs. If I buy a used car that is no longer the case and money is just exchanged from the buyer to the seller. The stock market is the same. If an investment is an initial offering, and that happens very seldom, then the money helps raise capital to create jobs. However 99% of all the money exchanged on Wall Street is just the sale of existing shares of stock from a buyer from a seller, no jobs whatsoever created. So how in the world can one call the Wall Street traders “Job Creators”. Letting them pay only 15% taxes is a total rip-off to the American citizen. If we allow congress to lower the tax rate on capital gains and dividends to zero, as many of them are purposing then we are creating an monarchical class of people that pay no taxes. Millionaires & billionaires earn most or all of their income from investments.
There are about 10,000 stock companies on the New York, American and Nasdaq markets. Each company has from 4 to 20 Excessively Compensated officers. Last time I checked, the average (yes average) CEO pay was above 5 million dollars per year. This pay includes stock options, bonuses and standard salary. It does not include various perquisites (perks). The president of the United States receives a million or less and some perks. Now, who has a more important and total involvement job than the president? How do these officers get their salaries etc? Theoretically by merit, but in general, through a system of cronyism and mutual back scratching by board members. So how do their salaries affect the American People? They do so by the company having to charge more for their individual products in order to show a proper profit. How much does this cost the average American Family? Well, 10,000 companies times 30 million in excess pay equals 300 Billion Dollars, divided by 100 million American Families equals $3000 per family per year, or stated the way the government does, $30,000 every 10 years. Or over an average family life time; $150,000. And if invested at an average return of 5%, about $400,000. This is more than twice the amount of an average families savings.Question: If this excess salary was divvied out to the people who would spend it, wouldn't that create more jobs?PS Having been an investor for some 45 years, I was dismayed with the disparity 40 years ago and wrote letters to the SEC about it. They did nothing. And probably couldn't.
Please pass along this song to Thom. It was written by a friend of mine and sounds like it would be perfect for one of your little audio song clips when you are coming back on after a break during discussions about the 99% movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk17MNTCBB4&feature=player_embedded
You can rationalize with 99% of the people, some of the time.
And you can rationalize with some of the people, most of the time.
But you can't rationalize with the 1%, any of the time.
First, it should be be made clear that insatiable personal profligacy of the American "middle class" consumers resulted in their becoming what should be more accurately referred to as the indentured class — the banks own them, like indentured servants, because they spent wildly beyond their means... they spent as mindlessly as they voted.
The last thing any sane and sensible person should want is a strong "middle class" resurgence. The American "middle class" over consuming consumer of annual mountains of unnecessary disposable stuff has been the prime factor accelerating global climate change — a climate change that can and will (if not immediately seriously mitigated) make the Earth unfit for human habitation (extinction sooner, rather than later). Are liberals so obsessed with their own comforts and so depraved that they do not care if their children have a future?
People who need to work for a living, but consider themselves to be "middle class" rather than working class, are people who consciously or subconsciously aspire (like lottery players) to become members of the ruling class that they envy and admire. That's why they vote for the corporate party's (R) & (D) gangsters, rather than for working class representing real person non-corporate candidates.
There is a class war, and everyone who has voted for the corporate party's Republicans and Democrats has waged class war against the working class, with every (R) or (D) vote they cast.
What's needed for our children's survival is an ecologically sustainable economy — **NOT** economic growth!
http://www.chenangogreens.org
I am heartened by the growing protests in this country and I have been waiting for years for it since I've seen it coming for a very long time. Unfortunately, we have way too many who are only listening to corporate media who tell either outright lies or so distort the truth that I am as yet uncertain as to the outcome in next year's election. I will pray for the whole truth to come between now and then and that President Obama will continue to lash out and stand up for the 99% against the incredible odds he is facing. The alternative is unthinkable not only for this country, but the people everywhere who are standing up against oppression and greed.
Nothing short of an armed revolution will get the attention of the top 1%. They have the ability to live and travel almost completely isolated from the general population. I doubt that they care for anything beyond amassing as much wealth as possible and enjoying the fruits of their labor. People like Buffet and Gates are the rare exception.
Do you really think you can affect a Hedge Fund manager? The only way to get their notice is by a significant tax increase. Put a limit on capital gains exemption, say a million dollars a year and put an income tax increase on income more than 5 million at about 55%, that will get their attention.
Money talks, b.s. walks.
Most of us know trickle down republican-style destroys the economy, while trickle down democratic- style, where the rich pay their fair share of tax, grows the economy. The wealthy benefit either way, but everyone benefits the democratic way. Maybe the top 1% would pay attention and be more willing to close the wealth inequality gap if we simply change the word taxation to business reinvestment. Tax payments really do trickle down and create jobs which in turn creates economic growth. In fact, I just paid my local school district well over $4000 in property tax and view it as an investment in our community's future. I know those taxes create good jobs and also prepare young people to become wealth creators for the so called job creators.