The Hermanator telling it like it is!

[Xavier_Onassis]

Cain is a blowhard. He is either playing dumb or he is dumb,

[Kramer]

Cain is a blowhard. He is either playing dumb or he is dumb,

you forgot to mention he has cancer too.

[Michael Tee]

<<I'm not sure that is true.  [that U.S. voters have no way to vote against the banks and the financial industry generally]>>

I'd be happy to argue the point with you, but only after I'm reassured that you listened to the Hedges video I linked to - - he makes the point so well and so convincingly that I'd just be repeating what he's already said if you hadn't watched it.

<<Wall Street may have tremendous influence over Washington, but i am not convinced that publicly traded corporations are responsible for the unemployment levels in this country.>>

The demonstrators' grievances against the big corporations are not limited to causing unemployment.  A large part of the grievances seem to consist of allegations of reckless mismanagement, gambling and/or speculation, leading to insolvency, leading to bail-outs; war-mongering, leading to huge deficits, leading to "belt-tightening," leading to public-sector layoffs (bad in themselves) leading to demand-side weaknesses leading to private-sector layoffs; and failure to produce any meaningful health-care reform, leading to more government subsidization of the insurance industry and the needless waste of hundreds of billions of dollars.  I'm sure there are other grievances that I just can't think of right now.  There seems to be a fundamental belief that due to pandering to the corporate sector, the public Treasury is bare, leading to or threatening curtailment of public health, welfare, education and social security benefits that effectively represent a transfer of national wealth from "the people" (a.k.a. the 99%) to the corporations and their fat-cat owners.

But even limiting the grievances to "the unemployment levels in this country," I think one of the most obvious culprits you could look for would be the free trade agreements, including those still in the pipeline, that push American workers into a race to the bottom against the poorest and most exploited workers on the planet.  The demonstrators seem to believe that it was corporate America that pushed for these treaties and that they have resulted in an unmitigated disaster for the American working class.  The decline of the working class purchasing power of course would have a ripple effect on the supply side of the equation.

<<I would suspect that the vast majority of employees work for sole proprietorships or llc's.
IE small businesses. >>

This seems to be in line with what I have been reading too.  But why would small businesses be immune to a loss of purchasing power in the working class?  Why would they be immune to the declining value of the dollar internationally?  When big business lays off, do you think small business starts to hire?  I don't have figures on this, but I'd think that a sinking economy causes across-the-board layoffs, not just Fortune 500 layoffs.

<<Good to see you . Hope you are well. >>

Thanks.  I'm well.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Nice to see you here again, Michael. Glad to hear you are well.

[Kramer]

A large part of the grievances seem to consist of allegations of reckless mismanagement, gambling and/or speculation, leading to insolvency, leading to bail-outs; war-mongering, leading to huge deficits, leading to "belt-tightening," leading to public-sector layoffs (bad in themselves) leading to demand-side weaknesses leading to private-sector layoffs; and failure to produce any meaningful health-care reform, leading to more government subsidization of the insurance industry and the needless waste of hundreds of billions of dollars.

2 questions:

Why aren't they in jail?
Why did Congress give them the money?

If that is what the protesters are there for then I am with them!

[Michael Tee]

<<Wall Street doesn't make law.>>

Well if they don't, you better write 'em right away and tell them that all the billions they've been spending on lobbyists and donating to campaigns and paying to hookers and hotels and airlines for these bozos was a total waste.  I'm sure they'll be furious when they find out.

<<Cain is correct about protesting 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Going to the front of the WH tells everybody in Congress we know where the problem lies. >>

No, it would tell everybody in Congress that Cain and the other lying scumbags like him have once more fooled a whole bunch of idiots into believing that the problem is with the monkey and not with the organ-grinder.

<<All the lawmakers have to do is make laws that work, that they will abide by, and deals with the problems.>>

ROTFLMFAO.  If "laws that work" mean laws that benefit the 99% rather than the corporations that suck up bail-outs as a reward for bad bets, that lay off thousands of workers so that production can be off-shored, etc. etc., you have to ask yourself this question:  WHY on earth would legislators who are bought and paid for by corporations and special interests suddenly decide to vote for laws that go directly against the interests of those corporations and special interests?  Why?  If they are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, perks and benefits annually, why on earth would they ever want to piss off their benefactors?  Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

<<Changes to tax law, dealing with corruption, bribery, and other crimes by Congress will go a long way in fixing the probes with Wall Street; and since Wall Street can't do what Congress does then clearly the problem is with Congress not Wall Street. >>

Think about it, Kramer.  Why would legislators who are in Wall Street's pocket do any of the things you are suggesting?  And if they were so inclined, why haven't they done so before now?

<<Here's my question for you. If Wall Street broke laws and were criminal then do you expect them to arrest themselves? Obama's justice Department, FBI, ATF, CIA and the BFD should have been all ov>>

The problem starts with your word, "If . . . "

 I am not claiming that Wall Street DID break any laws.  (They may have broken some laws we don't know about and covered it up, and the FBI, etc., may have been told by their bosses to look the other way, but that's a whole different issue, which we don't need to get into at this point.)

So here's my question to you:  if everything that Wall Street has done up till now is legal, and nothing that they have done is illegal, and yet they have, through recklessness, greed and or neglect, caused the loss of trillions of dollars to ordinary citizens, how is it that no laws were ever drafted that WOULD have prevented these outrages from occurring?  How is it that the ONE law that might have prevented the worst of their outrages (Glass-Steagall) was repealed?  Doesn't the absence of oversight legislation and the repeal of Glass-Steagall indicate to you that these developments (which brought no advantage to Congress and unlimited financial advantages to Wall Street) were in reality dictated by Wall Street to the corrupt legislators who they had bought and paid for?

[Michael Tee]

<<The reason Wall Street can buy DC is because current law gives DC politicians something to sell. >>

"The current law" doesn't suddenly give politicians something that they can sell.  ANY law-maker in ANY society at ANY time in history has had and always will have something to sell.  Since laws by necessity impose limits or obligations on individuals, presumably for the benefit or relief of other individuals, the law-maker by the very exercise of his or her legislative function will benefit some citizens and infringe upon others, which of course gives the law-maker "something to sell."  You can't point to a single legislature in the history of the world in which legislators had nothing to sell, if they were so minded.

<<Change the law.>>

You tell that to your Congressman or Senator.  Who are they going to listen to?  You or their biggest donors?  (Of course, I'm assuming here that you're NOT their biggest donor.)

<<End of story.>>

The REAL end of story is that as long as you have representative democracy, you have the opportunity for special interests to bribe the elected representatives.  When you combine that with a near-total control of those same special interests over the media and the judiciary, you've got a lock on power that nothing, and I mean nothing, except a People's Revolution, is ever going to dislodge.  I really hope you watched the Chris Hedges link I posted.  He lays it all out for you.  It's unanswerable.

[Michael Tee]

<<Nice to see you here again, Michael. Glad to hear you are well.>>

Thanks, XO.  Glad you're still fighting the good fight.

[BT]

I am retired on Social Security and my wife, who is 63, suffers from MS and four other incurable diseases.  She can’t get Medicare or health insurance.  She was in and out of the hospital five times during April-June of this year, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills.  She is now in a nursing home, confined to bed.  We certainly can’t afford this care, but we were able to apply for Medicaid by liquidating all of our savings, investments, and life insurance policies.  I have an MBA and a PhD and have been a director of a successful design firm, I but have been forced into a desperate situation by CORPORATE GREED.     We are the 99%

From the we are the 99% tumblr.

You read his story. Explain how corporations are responsible for his plight?

BTW when you talk about special interests corrupting the the governments of this nation are you also referring to unions?

[BT]

BTW i listened to Hedges. He is wrong about tea party.

It isn't an organization that boogeymen like the Koch brothers can control. It's an idea.

[Michael Tee]

<<2 questions:

<<Why aren't they in jail?>>

It's basically a defect in the existing legislation, IMHO.  Leaving aside for the moment any possible misdemeanours or felonies that we don't know about, the laws are drafted in ways that make it virtually impossible to prove criminal wrong-doing.  This of course is no accident - - the legislators who draft the laws are corrupt, receiving many kinds of benefits, cash included, from the special interests and the corporations.  They want to appear tough on corruption to the voters at home and want even more to draft legislation that WON'T piss off those who are greasing their palms.  Ideally, the legislation will look and sound like tough anti-corruption law, but the donors won't be too pissed off because they know how badly their corrupt legislators need to LOOK tough to the folks at home, and are happy if they know that the law really has no teeth, something that the folks at home, who aren't lawyers, have no way of knowing, but the corporations and special interests have a very clear understanding of because of the legions of lawyers in their employ.

<<Why did Congress give them the money?>>

Well, if you're talking about the TARP program and the bank bail-outs, I think a lot of the legislators were genuinely panicked and really believed that without a massive bail-out, the country would slide into a massive depression that would rival that of 1933, so they rushed to approve the overall AMOUNT of the bail-out.  From there I kind of lost track of the money trail.  Who got what, and why, I really don't know.  The big boys got a lot of public scrutiny but when the smaller pay-outs went to the smaller institutions, I don't know what the real story was.  The question I ought to look into was how was the panic created and stoked?  My recollection is that some very highly placed Bush administration officials, formerly in charge of Wall Street firms, were stoking the panic, but I'm sure that by now there are detailed books out on the subject which any public library would have that could give a much better account of the panic than I ever could.

<<If that is what the protesters are there for then I am with them!>>

The protestors are out there for a wide variety of reasons, some of which you would probably agree with, others not.  IMHO, although I didn't talk with any of them while I was in New York, from what I've seen and read, a lot of them are there because they don't believe in the electoral system any more.  They think that anyone, Republican or Democrat, who is part of the system, is a part of the problem.  Although it seems pretty clear to me that if they refuse to participate in the election, either as organizers, activists or voters, that it will be the Democratic Party which will lose the most from their inaction.  Overwhelmingly.  And that's OK with me.  I want to see Obama go down so badly that I don't care anymore who will win.

[Amianthus]

...

[sirs]

*snicker*

[Michael Tee]

<<BTW i listened to Hedges. He is wrong about tea party.

<<It isn't an organization that boogeymen like the Koch brothers can control. It's an idea. >>

LOL.  My bad.  I shoulda added a caveat because I KNEW you'd object to his tea-party take.  He had a lot of reasons for characterizing TPs as fascists, not just Koch brothers funding.  He went through a whole litany of TP positions on many issues and in his opinion (which I mostly agreed with) those positions were mostly fascist positions.

I was more interested in Hedges' view of how the super-rich have an unbreakable lock on power within the existing system and why the American voter will never be able to vote against the banks and the financial institutions.  I thought he explained that very well, and made a virtually irrefutable argument for it.

[BT]

I was more interested in Hedges' view of how the super-rich have an unbreakable lock on power within the existing system and why the American voter will never be able to vote against the banks and the financial institutions.  I thought he explained that very well, and made a virtually irrefutable argument for it.

I disagree with his assessment. Being the optimist that i am , this whole system of cronycapitalism and corruption can be turned around in an election cycle or two. Right thinking voters simply need to remain focused on the economy and economic issues.