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Reading Paul Krugman the other day made me think. He said, 'even the wealthy will regret this' and I was thinking on that note that we should appeal to their sense of greed. Remind them that everything wonderful about USA was built from the middle class and it's enormous tax base that it provided, fantastsic sports arenas, music venues, museums, libraries, parks . . . The list goes on and on. They won't have those things and if we don't turn this around they'll be prisoners in their gated communities because there won't be police for normal neighborhoods and the 'have nots' will be in areas ruled by hooligans and thugs and won't be safe for wealthy. We need to really project out the true consequences of these choices.
Paul Krugman, Nobel prize in Economics wrote in his blog today that of thev five points of Ryan's budget proposal, two might be possible and three ere fraufulent suggestions.
"1. Savage cuts in programs that help the needy, amounting to about $3 trillion over the next decade.
2. Huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, also amounting to about $3 trillion over the next decade.
The fake points are:
3. “Base broadening” that makes those tax cuts revenue neutral. Ryan has refused to name a single tax preference that he would, in fact, be willing to get rid of; all he and his party do is keep repeating “revenue-neutral” in the hope that people believe them.
4. Unspecified cuts in spending outside Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that would shrink the government — including defense! — back to 1920s levels.
5. Replacing Medicare with vouchers that would leave most seniors unable to afford insurance."
Personally I have more faith and respect for Paul Krugman than I have for any GOP members of Congress and some Dems.
The letter posted previously is a chain letter for political action with the intended outcome that those who normally sit on the side lines can be enticed to participate. There is a wide margin of registered voters who have given up. This is my attempt to get them to wake up and make the difference.
A call to action!
What you can do to change our country and restore the balance of power to the people, instead of Wall Street.
First-
Copy the vote-by-mail ballot forms included.
These can also be found online (longdistancevoter.org).
Second-
Give them out to ten people who you know can get to a mail box (or leave them in places where they can be found).
Third-
Convince others to make ten copies and pass them out also.
There are two political parties in this country.
One of them is trying to serve the interests of everyday people and the other party serves the wealthy and powerful who can donate millions to their campaigns.
The time has come to stand up and be counted.
Fourth-
After we get a super majority in congress, we demand the passage of Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV).
This will prevent politicians from splitting the voters and more people will get involved when they are confident that their votes can never be wasted. It will greatly decrease the influence of money on campaigns and politicians will be forced to actually run on the basis of ideas rather than insults.
This letter is going out all over the country. Pass it on!
Romina Boccia instantaneously and unequivocally equated "community", consideration for fellow man and (in my opinion) the definition of WeThePeople to "charity" in direct and knee jerk response to Thoms point of a founding principle for inception of America ie: barn builders, etc...
It appears obvious her (sheeple gop mind set) mental capacity is incapable of realizing the contradiction of the chase ethics that she bases what little cognitive synapse scurry about desperate for continuity in her brain and proudly boasts of, but defines her identity by . Isn't it rather, when a human is incapable of consideration for apathy or empathy (equality, humanity or mere opportunity), saving props for deception, hypocrisy or worst mere ignorance, there is a deficit or absence of definition of human.
Since when did consideration for fellow human being, equality and founding principles of this country (no less) equate to "charity!?"
I suggest we petition gop to qualify themselves as human or not, after all, definition of humanity or humane is not ambiguous.
signed,
fittobetied, zjas
Watch about the first 10 minutes of Max Keiser report>>>> Murderer of the middle class, and how the wealth effect equals the poverty effect.> http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/poverty-wealth-gold-dollar/
I loved your angry moment Thom. The humanity in it. It felt justified to me. It also reminded me of myself, especially with the guilt that you felt afterward. I respect your wanting to do a show that is from a constructive and peaceful place but a little anger here and there can sometimes be cathartic if it doesn't get out of control. That's just my take. I also loved your processing it. I wish that you would devote a segment on anger as it is a hard thing to control in political times like these and you hold so much wisdom.
I generally only listen to you and Mike Malloy and if you keep this up, I won't need Mike. Just kidding. You both are do fantastic shows.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shinning, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain... Mark Twain... >>> A bank is a place that will lend you money if you prove that you don't need it. Bob Hope.
I believe that the banking institions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.. Thomas Jefferson .
Obama seems to be saying "Take the Republican Road!!
A resounding Thank you for the link! Their attacks cannot escape scrutiny!
Awesome Hedges quote Making Progress... The Arendt formulation applies to any of us who bite our tongue (which is fair enough) but the Hedges formulation makes it clear who the really bad actors are.
Link for the Progressive Caucus People's Budget: http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70§iontree=5,70
Today I voted my hopes not my fears - The US will take the Progressive road but not before 2012.
Links on the progressive caucus budget
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70§iontree=5,70
and a review of their budget
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011041511/progressive-caucus-altern...
Does everyone fall into this left - right paradigm? It is the old divide and conquer routine that is being played on the fuedal masses while the real real rich and powerful play the game of world control and domination. They need conflict to press forward with their agenda and manipulate changes. They feed both sides what they want to hear and have them constantly nipping at each other like a bunch of little dogs. The easy one to create is the rich against the poor battle which has been going on for years. The other is racism. The media, both radio and TV thrive on these differences and work it all the time for ratings. Its all about ratings in that world. Turn off the TV and radio and interpret what is going on through other sources. We are being hurded like a bunch of sheep. It is not the millionares that deserve your wrath they have just learned to navigate the system, they did not steal your money and wealth -- it is the few at the very top which would include the Federal reserve and the global banks. Just follow the money to uncover the secrets of how and why things happen. What is the endgame? Can we reverse this tyranny?
I had a realization yesterday, that super wealthy people who want more wealth hoard money just as other people hoard things. Does anyone else recognize that? Some super wealthy people hoard money just like other people hoard books, or food, or tools, or cars, or dogs, or cats, or plants, or fabric, or anything else you can think of. What kind of therapy do hoarders get to stop hoarding? Super wealthy people could use that sort of therapy.
One banner, criminal inequity. Grass roots Tea Party is no way in lock step with the Bankster gangster regardless of what color the Neo Con spinners try to paint it.
The tea party has suffered from a Neo Con take over of the movement. Rounding up the maverics.
Cheating is debt granted by the truth. Pay back is hell and the interest is leathal. Thom take heart.
Spring (cleaning time) is here. Why doesn’t the breeze delight me?
The wasichu (i.e., greedy dishonorable person, per the Lakota language) in greed took the buffalo from the first Americans, who in some number eventually succumbed to eat, instead, the wasichu’s beef, not from the wild but broken, enslaved, acquiescing and to those in touch with the earth, lacking in spirit and vitality. Now first Americans and wasichus of the world including banksters will give up seafood and perhaps all related food as the sea with it’s beginning to end food chain, by greed, has been sacrificed; after all how much crude oil, Correctsit and now failed so-called fail-safe radiation - as is purported by oligarchs and their Toryish promoters as harmless to living things - has contaminated the sea beyond repair in all our current human lifetimes in common. Will the greedy corporatists all continue to count their billions and trillions like Scrooge McDuck as they “not so slowly” but miserably die of hunger, malnutrition and/or cancer from food that they have toxified with their greed, or from the miserable “puke, hangover and puke again” alcohol, their exclusively and purposefully cheap and “legal for America” drug of choice?
Remember the story of the farmer and his wife who were granted three wishes by a genie. The hungry farmer, ecstatic, immediately said I wish I had a big plate of sausages. A big platter of sausages appeared before them. The farmer’s wife berated the farmer saying “that’s all you’re going to wish for is a plate of sausages? That is so stupid; you didn’t even say Italian sausage.” In spite, she said “I wish that you had one of those sausages stuck to your nose.” A sausage flew from the platter and stuck fast to the farmer’s nose. No matter how hard they tried they could not remove the sausage. The farmer’s wife then of necessity (she did love the old gas bag) had to use the last wish and so wished that the sausage was off the farmer’s nose. Moral: Be careful what you wish for, and poor planning on the part of humans can mean panic on the part of other humans.
Although the powers that be scheme in so many ways to prevent education – low salaries for teachers but extravagant contracts to education administrators, architects and builders, harsh sentences for victimless crimes by youth to feed the industrial prison machine and keep the kids out of school, rewriting curriculums e.g., a history class that downplays the founding fathers but extols Reagan, the absence of humanities and health, etc. while some crimes (child molesters, white collar embezzling) with victims are minimal jail time – “The Meek shall inherit the Earth” is a good plan, the intricacies of which are in process. Now however, time is of the essence because it appears that in a very short time the Earth will be thoroughly unaccommodating and non-supportive for life forms.
Energy hogs have a new plan and are now perched to take away the last wilderness, the last remaining elk, bear and bison ranges in Utah to process sand with ravenous water usage and the building of more possible nuclear plants for bitumen for oil. It has been only a little over one hundred years since the Native Americans fought wars to save that wilderness and a life in tune with the Earth. Check it out on Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_oil_sands
So these greedy energy hogs continue unrestrained to rub out the Earth. There must be a legal way to erase them from our lives and put them where we can monitor their activities with the light on in the corners of prisons. We need to change the law, but with help from their friends offering legal lobby bribes these powers are making the laws. What do you do when someone is killing you and yours; and you are out of resources and legal moves? Defend yourself? Fight fire with fire? Incorporate? “When in the course of human events………..” we Americans are called upon, we naturally want to contribute to the common good. Pens are swords not only used in great literature and the “maybe not so great” mainstream media but pens are also in the communications, ledgers and journals of the banksters, corporate bribsters and their helpsters (congressters, governsters?) and their attorneys. In theory do not we the people, collectively, have the most money? Why aren’t we making the laws?
Thanks Thom. The clear answer to your question for the majority of Americans is The Progerssive Road. The truth is our economic and industrial corporations are being run by criminals, for the benefit of the criminals only. The only "giant sucking sound" we hear is the criminal class sucking the life out of all of the earth. They have polluted our planet to the point of near destruction. They have caused the extinction of too many species of flora and fauna to list here. They have stolen the earth's natural resources. They have commited many heinous acts of genocide to millions in the name of profit. They have enslaved a majority of the human race. The have poisoned our homes, our water and food sources. Topping it all off they then deny their responsibilityfor causing their messes and pass on their blame to the majority of us. We cannot afford to allow the criminally insane to make the rules by which we live by anymore.
“The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.” Hannah Arendt
http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410/
As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think. Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing themselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.” - Chris Hedges
Once again, the Obama bargaining strategy is to first concede to the most draconian Teaparty demands and proceed from a position of weakness.
It has been reported that he will now be offering up Medicare ad Medicaid to the republicans as a pre-bargain gift. I have no doubt that Social Security will follow soon.
When will we progressives realize that he has always been a Trojan horse,. his record clearly shows that he has, from the beginning, been working for corporate interests alone. We must start now looking for a progressive candidate to challenge him in his upcoming election bid.
In his term in office, he will have done more than Ronald Reagan to destroy the middle class in the name of bipartisan governance.
Wow! I was surprised to hear about IKEA, since they are a Swedish based company.. I wonder how their corporate headquarters feels about this... Are the U.S. stores owned by them or is the brand name franchised here by an unscrupulous American comany?
Hey! watch out gerald......you might be called a GOPer for thinking like that.That's what the Obama sycophants are saying about dissenters.
What Would You Call It?
I'm no fan of a flat tax. I will describe a plan that uses a flat tax only for a reference point.
If you researched and researched to come up with a "total cost of everything" for the next 40 years and divided that by the number of all income earners, present and future, you could come up with a flat tax rate for the next 40 years, which would bring us out of debt in 40 years.
What I mean by "total cost of everthing" is the national debt, the cost for all health care, environmental control costs, military, infrastructure, alternate fuel energy research and adaptation, education, IRS, police, fire, prisons, courts and everything else government provides.
If you found the "center of income", present and future, indexed annually, which is a point at which all income above that point is equal to all the income below that point, and apply the flat tax rate there at that point, and rotated the flat tax line at that point until all "livable income" earners pay zero tax, and from there all other income earners would pay an ever-increasing rate of tax, you could accomplish the same thing as if all income earners paid the same flat tax rate. You would be out of debt in 40 years, exactly the same result.
We could stop arguing day after day about tax rates, and be free to use our infrastructure, education, talents and ambition to make our lives and our children's lives better. No one would lobby Congress for tax breaks, because the tax rate would stay the same, and only income earners (natural persons) would be taxed, and only U.S. citizens could operate a business here.
I think if we did this, our generation would take over the title of "The Greatest Generation". Our plan would be called "The Greatest Change".
But what would you call it?