Tag Archives: politics

#Occupy

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  So here’s the deal: The guys (and gals) who work on Wall Street and for brokerage houses know that they’ve been complicit in the largest redistribution of wealth to the top 1% since before the Great Depression. They’re not stupid. They know the damage it’s doing to our economy, the middle class, heck even themselves. I know a few folks that work for brokerage firms and they sincerely acknowledge that the repeal of Glass-Steagall and other financial deregulation was horrible for their industry and the economy.  And it made a select few of them obscenely rich; they joined the 1%. They see that and many get sucked in to the game. They want to be the guy who makes that multi-billion-dollar score, to move up the ladder, to be one of the 1%.  You can’t blame them, wouldn’t you?  It’s all the more difficult because their jobs, their future, depends on joining the culture that enables this kind of greed.

Imagine you were let loose on the floor of a casino with somebody else’s money and you get to invent game.  You get to make the rules of the game – rules that are so complicated most humans cannot even understand them.  In fact, you don’t even have to tell anyone what the game is.  You make wild crazy bets.  When you win you keep the money, and when you lose, well, it’s not your money so who cares?  That’s EXACTLY what our financial system is.

It’s a system destined ultimately to fail but the greedy just want to extract as much as they can before it implodes. Then they say “The money’s gone. Nothing I can do.” It’s legalized robbery, plain and simple.

No matter how they try to spin it our lawmakers – both Democrat and Republican, Executive and Congress, even the Judicial – have done virtually nothing to change it.  In fact they promote it because they are complicit themselves.  They don’t represent you or me, they represent those who fund their campaigns.

But most people in the financial industry are not part of that. They are honest professionals who know that proper and strong regulation is not only necessary to keep things humming along profitably, as it did for the more than half a century before Glass-Steagall was repealed, but in all reality essential to keep the system from blowing up completely. Again.

But what can those good & honest folks in the financial industry do?

They can add their voice. Speak up against the corruption from the inside.

Get on the right side of history and be proud to tell your kids you took a stand to help make our country great again.

That trickling down you feel…

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Even George HW Bush knew that tax cuts for the rich was the worst possible return on economic growth. He called it “Voodoo Economics”. It destroyed our economy in the 80s and, golly geewhilikers, did the same thing in the 2000s. And yet the Republicans are convincing Americans that unless the richest 2% of citizens get to keep the Bush giveaway of our economy then we are in for disaster. Uh, I got news for you: We are in a disaster and you guys caused it.

It’s a robbery, plain and simple. They are robbing you to give to their campaign donors. Keep repeating that until it sinks in. These robbers have engineered the biggest shift of wealth from the middle class to the top 1% in a century. It is recreating the conditions that led to the first Great Depression.

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When the rich are taxed our economy grows because they would rather put their earnings back into growing and expanding businesses than pay it in taxes. All economists know this. Don’t let the Richie Rich Party sell you on the myth that someday you will be in the top 1% of income earners. You won’t be, I won’t be, not if we let them push the middle class down.

That trickling down you feel is the GOP pissing on you.