Members of outlaw motorcycle gangs used to refer to themselves as “one-percenters.” When we hear “one-percenters” these days, the reference usually is to establishment types who are obscenely wealthy and powerful. More here.
Tag: Occupy Wall Street
Has America begun to ‘get’ Bernie Sanders?
To understand how right-wing the major political parties in America are, it helps to read the foreign press. This from The Guardian:
… [Bernie Sanders’] beliefs… would fit comfortably in the middle left of Britain’s Labour party or Germany’s SPD. But it is impossible to over-state just how much of a political death sentence being called a “socialist” – never mind actually proudly proclaiming it – usually is in America…
You’d go to jail. Tony Baloney gets slap on the wrist.
Isn’t it brazen, even for the NYPD, to do nothing more than take away a few days’ pay from Anthony Bologna, the high-ranking cop who was caught on video assaulting helpless women? More here.
On lies and the lying liars quoted in the NYT
I was going to post a rant regarding an insipid New York Times story in which Wall Street types were asked to comment on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thankfully, NYT columnist Paul Krugman beat me to it:
On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”
Elected Dems to protesters — we’re with you, sort of
Chris Hedges, plainly stating why “liberal” has become a dirty word not only to right-wingers but to many thinkers and activists on the left:
Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart.
‘Public’ space laws vs. the right of assembly
Maybe I’m wrong, but the Occupy movement seems to highlight a serious conflict between our right to assemble and petition, and contemporary laws and notions regarding public space. All too often, it seems, these rights can be trumped by the power of landlords and city officials. More here.
Taibbi weighs in on how to fix Wall St.
Concise and sensible, and almost certainly unacceptable to the thieves who wrecked the economy:
1. Break up the monopolies.There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer’s own money to lobby against him.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break.
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later.
Right time, right place
“The message is coming out. It’s pretty simple. We are at Wall Street, and Wall Street controls our government, and we would like the people to control it. Simple.” More here.
It’s an occupation, not a picnic
Mayor Bloomberg’s ploy to end Occupy Wall Street tomorrow morning isn’t fooling anyone. It looks like the occupiers have no intention of voluntarily surrendering their First Amendment rights.
Uh-oh, ‘the help’ is marching in NYC
How would you like to make pennies cleaning up after the royalists who helped create one of the biggest financial messes of all time, or after people just like them? Workers in NYC don’t like it at all. More here.