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What now? Well it's looking more and more like a society free from all that gosh darn Democracy, Govt, taxation, laws, regulation, "We The People", stuff. At least then the Tea Party citizens will be able to retire with the dignity of not having to deal with all that socialist FDR entitlement crap that destroyed our great country in the first place. Then and only then will they have all the free time that comes with old age, to actually sit and THINK, as they freeze to death, clutching their last spoonful of cat food about, HOW DID I GET HERE?
I wonder if the thought will be, Gee Whizz I might not be able to afford heating oil but the free market helped two more guys become billionaires in the recent artificial spike in oil commodities trading prices. Or instead will the thought be, damn, I should have listened to that Senator from Vermont!
I am confused by the responses to my post. I would like to clear up any misconceptions about my post. I am not sure how it could be taken this way or maybe I'm completely off base, but my comments was in no way in support of Ayn Rand or her self important philosophy.
I agree, 2 things we need immediately are to eliminate voting machines, and inact campaign financing laws. We trust these machines to much and we have allowed money to take over our elections.
I agree we need to fight back and take back our Democracy. We have the numbers to win we just need to focus and stand up for our rights. We need to be a monkey wrench to the facists, oligarchs, and royalty who serve other interests than the people's.
In addition to paper ballots, reversing the Citizens United decision, impeaching the Supreme Court Justices who have inflated and abused their powers. We can boycott and we can be civil disobedient. I think a organized national takeover of every state capitol, or the offices of our Legislators with significant numbers of concerned citizens demanding the American Dream Platform be inacted might be a possible first step. Bring sleelping bags etc and have 50 State Capitol's held hostage to listen and enact the Progressive Agenda. Fight Fire with Fire. They held us hostage with their Shock Doctrine tactics. We need our own leverage. I think if 50 states had actions simultaneously then perhaps the mass media would be forced to report the news for once.
I like what Tavis Smilely and Cornell West have done to fight back and hold government accountable. They give the poor a voice and bring the plight of the real America into the discussion. It took one straw to break the camels back, we need all the straws we can get and who knows which one will be the one to tip the scales in our favor. On Wisconsin, you are The Progressive Model too. We can see we can still Win you have shown us "what taking it to the streets means" nobody said it was gonna be easy. Now we must all get our courage and take it to the streets.
I
Subject: "Congressional Reform Act of 2011"
Hi,
The purpose of this petition is to reform government so that our elected representatives have the same rights as all Americans, to help them remember that ours is a citizen democracy of equals and that they are us.
So I signed a petition to The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate, which says:
"Congressional Reform Act of 2011
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.
All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all other Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health-care benefits -- until such time as health care is provided for all Americans -- and thus participates in the same health-care system as the rest of the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
"
Will you sign this petition? Click here:
http://signon.org/sign/congressional-reform-33?source=s.em.cp&r_by=51029
Thanks!
Thom, I'm sure you didn't really mean that the oligarchs have won. You're just frustrated, which is perfectly understandable. But you know, we actually did ok in Wisconsin. Didn't get everything we wanted, but we did ok, it was a shot across their bow, with more to come.
I'm going to prescribe a treatment for you: go watch a Marx Brothers movie, and talk to us in the morning.
Thom, I am tired of hearing the soft-step term "oligarchy". Let's call it by its true, ugly name: FASCISM. One of the reasons why this is happening is because people are unwilling to call it what it is. We don't want to scare people. Well, it IS scary. The most common tactic used by the Republican Party is to scare the people. They invent or twist stories to frighten those who do not do their homework. We don't even have to twist or invent. We just have to be willing to be forthright and tell it like it is.
As usual with Hartmann's polls, this one too provides no answer for any intelligent, well informed, honest person with good intentions to choose, and the question is deviously framed... implying that it's not oligarchy when Democrats are managing it.
If the eco-fraud Al Gore wasn't the obedient corporate party distraction he was, he would have publicly refused to take any corporate contributions in 2000, and from that received a massive popular vote mandate. If Howard Dean wasn't the corporate party tool he was, then he would have sought to eliminate money from elections (to make elections about ideas instead of money sums from bribery and extortion), but he didn't. The madman Howard Dean escalated the demand for greater sums in campaign funding. And then Obama's deep plastic astroturfed 2008 campaign MovedOn to more than double corporate party candidate demands for BIG Money to purchase elections. 3 of the top 6 "contributors" to Obama's ("historic" in its intensity of money-grubbing) 2008 corporate-state predetermined installation were the financials firms Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase. The banksters got huge short-term gain returns on their investments in the "change" banksters could believe in Obama... though not nearly as much as their long-term gain returns on their investments in the boy-POTUS Clinton.
If the corporate party's Democrat voters were actually concerned about money buying elections they would have used the leverage of their numbers to take money completely out of elections when they could have, but what the "progressive" voters instead chose to do was earnestly strive to have depraved Democrats get more corrupting money than retrograde Republicans. The liberals' answer to too much money in elections was to put far more money into elections. RESULT: Democrats didn't do the good they could have when they could have, because they were owned by their corporate donors... they never had any intention to do any good.
No truly good intentioned person would be a member — let alone a candidate — of the corporate (R) & (D) party. No good, sensible and sane person would vote for any of the corporate (R) & (D) party's candidates... ever.
The Devolution of Liberalism:
http://chenangogreens.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id...
Today on AlterNet, I read a letter written by Michael Moore on the death of the middle class (Thirty Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died). Its message is a call to "arms" for us to stand in solidarity against all that is going wrong with America, yet in the comments, I saw no one say, "I'm with you. Let's get started."
The apathy and willful ignorance of many people and the worship of the wealthy in this country makes me sick. In my red county, the capitol's newspaper's readers' comments are full of bozos kissing rich butt, spouting old tired conservative lies they heard on Fox and from Rush and his ilk. It seems to me if we held the American Revolution today, these bozos are the same people who would have sided with the corrupt power of the British.
And as I have said many times: WE NEED CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM--after we impeach the K-RATS (Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scailia). I read somewhere that the Supreme Court ruled (5 to 4) this summer to strike down Arizona's clean election laws: http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/mccomish_v._bennett/
The Revolutionary Granny is ready when "you all" are.
Good...Let the revolution begin!!!!!
It is not we who are pitting the people against the super wealthy. It is the government that is doing so by repeatedly giving tax breaks to large corporations and to the wealthy, while making the middle- and lower-classes pay an inordinate proportion of their income in taxes. No one is saying that the government should confiscate the wealth of the rich and redistribute it. We ARE saying that the wealthy should pay an equal share of their income in taxes, and that large corporations should not be given tax breaks when they are experiencing good profits and have millions to give to CEOs; and especially not if they are sending jobs abroad. If companies want to save on labor by sending jobs abroad, fine; but don't expect tax breaks here in the U.S.A.
I think we the people have three great concerns ahead of us before we ever see a fair election again.
1. The ones we do battle with.
2. voting machines
3. The surpreme court
I think we need to get a slick mouth piece to take them to court, and see if we can get an inJUNKtion that would put a hold on the first three until the 2012 election is over. What say ye, can it be done.
"Mythical" was the word used, not "Mystical"... framing your comments with the correct words makes a more intelligent argument.
Also, this is in reply to #20, not #21 as the incorrect data shows.
What would The Riddler do to win a pretend election? The oligarch investments in Wisconsin are easily worth the ruse despite their large (multimillion) cost numbers, shocking to the public but multiplied abundantly in returns when the investors’ minions are in power. The Democratic winners as mitigating token bones thrown to the desperate public, the TV ads and other PR that entertain the “strong” possibilities that Corporate Oligarchs and their favorites are good and that their side has the best chance and can and should win, help to make believable the reality of their beneficiaries winning when the “real reality” is that their best chance to win was the fact that voting machines can be, have been and are technically and undiscernibly rigged; and that clearly few or perhaps no one can or will figure out how to implement a change to that reality. MSNBC appears to have no reason to talk about the probability of hacked voting machines in the Wisconsin recall. Was Mr. Obama elected to do what he promised or was he “elected” to do what he has done or has not done?
In search of a fool proof method of casting and counting votes, one finds that we are much better off with carefully monitored Paper Ballots!
In case you haven’t seen this comment about hacked voting machines, by pahrumplife, posted Oct 15th 2010 15:14 here’s the URL:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2010/10/daily-topics-friday-october-15th-2010
Dem Win of 2 seats is not a loss ! Not when it was done is an area that went Republican for eons . This was a test . CON judges Citizens United vs We the people WE Must keep fighting hard Money talks loudy but votes & action talk louder ! Corps are NOT persons Money is NOT speech Speak out often www.whitehouse.gov www.congress.gov Hammer them till they listen Demand an End to : ALL wars - ALL Bush tax cuts- ALL Corp cuts and loopholes. End SS tax cap That will save trillions without gutting SS Medicare, education, disabled, old and sick on medicaid . GOP Tea Baggers forced a unfair bill under duress, threat of default, They have again tanked the economy, jobs and US values, the ones we used to live by .
Right on, Dylan Ratigan!!!
Dylan Ratigan loses it on the air....tells it like it is....good for him...good for us...no one else on TV is showing such explosive emotions over the corruption of both Republicans and Democrats and the current American Banking and Wall Street.
watch the youtube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z1XOBDbIy0
Nihilism
Ayn (rymes with mine) Rand's utopia is WORSE than fasicism. It's Nihilism, it's philosophical foundation mutes it's own existence. There is a reason why it's never been pulled off to their satisfaction. It can not exist, it's fantasy.
"Freedom of Speech" not freedom to speak.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2011/08/09/the-limits-of-constitu...
"when the elephants fight, the mice get trampled" ...but elephants can't trample on larks in flight! If we had enough larks and to peck out the eyes of the elephants they may fall over the precipice and no longer be a problem. Tale of the "Lark and the Elephant"..."Kubra wa Feel".
http://www.sunna.info/Lessons/islam_1353.html
Leighmf: you got talent...good poem...or "rap?" ...not that I am much into either...but that was pretty good...I liked it!
(Response to Gene Savory) Good on you, Gene. Has anybody been watching the news from the UK?
Good on you Gene. Has anybody been watching the news from the UK?
Thom, thngs are a bit diffrerent than in the 1930's depression,; big U.S. companies were not multi-national,, I believe. (??) Republicans perhaps fear U.S. cannot compete with foreign labor, so wages and taxes must be kept low.I am guessing here. (As I recall IBM had great German business in the 1930's. ) Or is it now that the PR is so on corparate agenda's side that they think the people will just believe anything....
I am referring to myself and others like me as the "normal" people. Normal is a much more all incompassing category as opposed to the working class, the average person, etc. I am not uberrich, I am not greedy, I live within the law, I pay my taxes, I work, I do not live in a gated community, I am not power hungry, I am in favor of the common good, etc. Those unlike me I consider to be "abnormal". They want and strive for all of those things that do not define me.
I recently heard, "In 1935, Monopoly is invented, where anyone can become a millionaire.”
We have, now, what I call, “The Monopoly Syndrome.”
By the 50s and 60s, we kids were all playing the game. We played for hours and hours... late into the night. It was fun to see names like, Fifth Avenue, to own Railroads and hotels and so many, many, houses.
I think this is one of the reasons so many poor people vote against their own interests —Taxing the wealthy, Estate Taxes... just waiting until the magic moment when we/they will become, "rich."
The Millionaires have become Billionaires... the poor are becoming poorer, and the middle-class, well, it is disappearing - not creating millionaires to fill in for the people who have advanced to billionaire-status.
Many have lost their way:
The US Congress
The Supreme Court
Judges
The media
Thanks to people like:
Karl Rove
Rudolf Murdock
The brothers - Koch...etc.
Now, we have manipulation, propaganda, ...
We should keep in mind the title of the Clash's third album...... London Calling