So, in the truly clueless category is this article from Slate:
A financial services lobbying firm floats $850,000 plan to undermine Occupy Wall Street protests.
That’s a lot of money to stop the efforts of people with no money. That’s about a dozen jobs right there. I’m reminded of the line from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”: “If he’d just pay me what he’s spending to stop me from robbing him, I’d stop robbing him.”
According to MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes,” lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford sent a memo to the American Bankers Association with an outline for the plan, which suggests, among other things, doing “opposition research” on the Occupy movement in order to help construct “negative narratives” about protesters and the politicians who support them.
Meanwhile, GOP presidential candidates are already doing their part. Newt Gingrich said the Occupy protesters need to “get a job” and “take a bath.”
“All the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything,” Gingrich said at the Thanksgiving Family Forum in Iowa, as noted by Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress. “They take over a public park they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything.”
As touching a sentiment this is for a presidential candidate to express at the “Thanksgiving Family Forum,” it seems to have a few fundamental problems: There’s the “us vs. them” mentality combined with the misrepresentation of the movement’s goals and the flat-out erroneous assertion that the protesters didn’t contribute to the public parks in which they are encamped. That’s why they are called “public” parks. Moreover, it’s disturbing to think that people can work and pay taxes for years but once they lose their jobs and dare to express frustration at a system that is not the least bit interested in fixing the economy it helped collapse, their so-called leaders will dismiss them as subhuman.
According to Gingrich, they should “get a job right after taking a bath.” It should reassure the unemployed in this country that it’s really that simple. All you need is a punchy cover letter and Dial.
Reading this NPR piece on the Occupy Wall Street protests, I came upon a true “let them eat cake” moment:
One man, who declined to give his name, but said he has worked on Wall Street for nine years, just shook his head. He was wearing a grey wool coat and his hair was neat and combed back. He stood at that corner for a while.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “I just don’t understand why they’re not out trying to find jobs.”
He said he works 75 to 80 hours a week, so he deserves to be part of the one percent. He says he chose a degree in finance so he could make a lot of money.
I told him what Nathan Storey had told me. He was laid off in 2008 and still couldn’t find a job.
The man shook his head.
“He could get jobs at McDonald’s,” he said. He conceded however that minimum wage isn’t much money and he said he was willing to pay more taxes.
But he said he truly believes if you want to make money in this country, you can work hard and do that.
“This is the land of opportunity,” he said.
There appears to be a disconnect in the anonymous gentleman’s statement that he entered finance so he “could make a lot of money” and his assertion that if you “want to make money in this country, you can work hard and do that.” Yes, “the land of opportunity” is the U.S.’s advertising slogan but that is as relevant in practice as “The King of Beers” is for Budweiser.
His McDonald’s comment is both unoriginal and condescending, as if working in the fast-food industry is a viable option for people who have trouble finding jobs. Sure, many companies are calluously choosing not to interview job applicants who are unemployed — their way of capitalizing further on the poor job market — but having McDonald’s on the resume won’t improve the situation.
He should also know that a bad economy usually doesn’t trickle down. It’s the jobs near the bottom of the 99 percent that are the first to fall. Why does he suppose there are all these job opportunities at McDonald’s? Or does he think any reasonably educated person is preferable to the usual applicants at the fast-food chain? If so, then what are they supposed to do if what used to be the middle class takes their jobs — find work as medical school cadavers?
But let’s propose that there are McDonald’s positions for anyone who wants one. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Even if you had the opportunity to work 75 to 80 hours a week (you won’t, as you’d be eligible for benefits and overtime), that’s about $30K a year. You’ll be exhaisted and won’t see your family but you’ll be content with the knowledge that you can provide them with so little.
Meanwhile, after nine years, our guy on Wall Street is possibly making around $300 to $500K. That breaks down to around $100 an hour at a 75/80-hour work week, which is slightly more rewarding. He can also get sick once in a while and send his kids to college.
Obviously, our economy can’t work if everyone is either in the finance or fry-making industry. It’s also telling that there’s no other default job that people like this guy can mention. The underlying message is “go away, stop bothering me with your problems, and serve me.”
There is a difference between having a middle-class work ethic and being an all-day, licked down to the center of the Tootsie Roll pop sucker. It’s like being the doting boyfriend while your girlfriend is fooling around with your best friend, brother, uncle, father, and family priest. It can get to the point that even the noblest person would rather die annoying the 1 percent than quietly serve them for the off chance of a pat on the head.
U.S. Senate candidate Clark Durant, during a fundraising event at Calvin College, said that the Occupy Wall Street protesters should “go find a job.” This is what frustrates me most about the opposition to the Occupy movement. If after 9/11, people had taken to the streets to express their fear and anger over their belief that the government could not keep them safe, any politician who had said they should stop whining and “go defend themselves” would have wound up on some celebrity boxing reality show. Yet, it’s OK for politicians to derisively dismiss the public’s lack of faith that the government is at all concerned for their financial, rather than physical, security.
But that wasn’t the worst thing Durant said to the group of College Conservatives. (I’ve always applauded College Conservative for not wasting their 20s and 30s having their compassion and sympathy stomped out them. Best to get it out of the way early — like chicken pox — and use that free time for something more constructive, such as perfecting your golf swing.)
In regards to the wealth gap the movement decries, Durant said, “I think it should be wider.”
“Does anybody think Steve Jobs should not be (sic) in the 1 percent? He made life better for the 99 percent of the rest of us. You want to create opportunities for people with their unique gifts,” he said. “They have created value and wealth.”
I am forever grateful to Jobs for allowing me to have access to the entire Stephen Sondheim catalog when at the gym, but it’s not like the guy cured heart disease or developed an alternative energy source, ending our reliance on fossil fuels and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity. He didn’t even create a silent vacuum cleaner. He was a successful businessman who made billions. That’s fine and all but don’t try to claim he wandered the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.
Durant also demonstrates a common Republican misunderstanding of how our economic system works: The 1 percent might command the nation’s wealth but it’s the 99 percent that actually creates it. If Durant believes the iPad is the 21st century’s version of the soft drink you buy the world in order to live in perfect harmony because everyone’s too busy playing Angry Birds to pay attention to each other, then he has to understand that all Jobs had was an idea without the people in the 99 percent who helped him implement it. Code had to be written. Devices had to be manufactured. But if Durant has his way, the people who did that would not have the spare change necessary to buy a Coke.
Invoking the name of God several times, Durant described himself as a “nerdy” kid whose life was profoundly changed by the C.S. Lewis allegory “The Great Divorce.”
I sometimes think Randians pulled a large-scale prank on Republicans and replaced the insides of all their Bibles with copies of “Atlas Shrugged.” Also, it’s nice that “The Great Divorce” moved a young Durant but it seems like his political goals are to turn the United States into the “grey town” Lewis described.
Durant is not entirely without empathy — he “likened the fissures in the Republican Party of today as analogous to the implosion of the Whig Party in the 1850s over the question of slavery. He said the 2012 election is a ‘defining moment’ for the party, which must decide whether or not to ‘enslave’ a generation with debt and spending.”
Is metaphorical “slavery” comparable to actual slavery? Let’s see: Slaves working 18 hour days in 100 degree heat generating wealth in which they’ll never share for a small few. That does sound similar to circumstances today. But Durant might want to reconsider which side he’s own.
According to a CBS interview with Ruth Madoff, wife of petty swindler Bernard Madoff, she and her husband attempted to kill themselves on Christmas Eve 2008:
Ruth Madoff, in her first public comments on life with her husband, said they swallowed a large number of pills because they ‘couldn’t go on any more’.
The couple lay down on their bed next to each other… hoping to die, but woke up the next morning unharmed.
I guess it’s not surprising that Bernard Madoff could not even honor a suicide pact. It’s also not surprising that crushing guilt over having ruined the lives of people who trusted him did not lead them to this desperate act.
Mrs Madoff, 68, said she and her husband, 73, had been driven to desperation by the abuse they received since he confessed earlier that month to being behind the world’s biggest ever financial crime.
‘I don’t know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening.’
Yes, it is a bummer when people are upset that you’ve robbed them both blind and deaf. Unfortunately, the Madoffs survived and now Ruth is living in modest means in Florida. Considering all the Jewish victims of Madoff’s crime, it strikes me as odd that Ruth would choose the sunshine state for her exile. Idaho might have been preferable.
(Ruth Madoff) has exchanged the lifestyle of a billionaire for a modest £200,000 flat in Florida where she hands out meals to the homeless.
She is also now so poor that relatives are giving her handouts and she has been reduced to driving around a rusty 14-year-old car.
Someone should check to ensure how many of those meals actually get to the homeless. Also, her lifestyle sounds better than what many Floridians are experiencing, especially if she’s not actually living in the car. I also don’t get the conspicuous consumerism behind the statement that someone is “reduced” to driving a 14-year-old car. Does it have turn signals, brakes, and an engine? Air conditioning in Florida is close to a necessity but I’m fine with Ruth Madoff just sticking her head out the window when she comes to a traffic light.
Meanwhile, Bernard is in a North Carolina prison, where he is apparently happier than he was on the outside.
Walters quoted Madoff as saying: “… I have people to talk to, no decisions to make. I know I will die in prison. I lived the last 20 years of my life in fear. Now, I have no fear because I’m no longer in control.”
Are we certain Madoff was sent to prison and not some run-of-the-mill nursing home? He doesn’t seem to miss his wife that much — though who can blame him if you believe what his daughter-in-law has to say about her?
What was Madoff afraid of for the past 20 years? Just that his business was a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors – including charitable organizations — of about $20 billion, while he and his family enjoyed a lavish lifestyle right out of the Robin Leach playbook.
His current lifestyle, though, is somewhat preferable to the state he left many of his elderly victims:
I am an 80-year-old man in poor health whose remaining years have been totally devastated by Bernie Madoff. My wife and I have lost every dollar of our life savings in Madoff’s fraud scheme with no hope of recovery. We have had to sell every asset that we own in order to survive, and we don’t know how long the proceeds will last. I cannot begin to describe to you the toll that Madoff’s actions have taken on us financially, physically and emotionally…. Mr. Madoff is a ruthless and unscrupulous man with no conscience or remorse.
Leonard Forrest Port Saint Lucie, Fla.
These people know fear, Mr. Madoff. You only know cowardice.
“Atlas Shrugged” is Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel in which rich people, upset because they aren’t rich enough, go on strike and society collapses as a result. It’s an absurd premise: The rich and powerful tend to have too much to lose to walk away from it all. It’s the same mentality you see when a game show contestant refuses to settle for his winnings so far and instead risks everything for a shot at the new car.
The reality is that the wealthy are easily replaced. Actually, I should clarify: The truly wealthy — those who live off the income derived from property or investments — are definitely disposable. Anyone can have a staff of financial advisers briefing you on your portfolio over breakfast. It’s the type of job you can do from home. However, the merely rich — those who still have to go into the office on a daily basis if for no other reason than to escape their spouses — are also not the treasured commodity everyone seems to think.
For example, if your boss went on strike, you’d probably take his job for half of what he makes, and you’d still see a significant raise. That’s because most corporations compensate its employees according to an inverted pyramid — with those at the top making significantly more than those at the bottom. The supervisor of the mail room probably makes a couple dollars more per hour than his staff — at least before they downsized the mail room. Meanwhile, the CEO of the company makes 343 times more than the average worker. This disparity was not always the case: In 1980 — yes, the year before Ronald Reagan took office — CEO pay was equal to 42 times the average worker’s pay. This is probably why the 1970s was known as the Great CEO Famine.
The tricky thing about an inverted pyramid is that it’s only a matter of time before it topples. The jobs held by those in the top 1 percent — heck, even the top 20 percent — are desirable not just because they pay well but because of the associated perks, power, and prestige. Unless you’re a schoolteacher, it’s more likely to find careers that are described as “callings” in the top 20 percent. In Rand’s fictional world, the top architects walk and there’s not a line down the street to replace them. This is silly. It’s a faulty syllogism of believing there’s just the best and the worst. If businesses don’t pay a highwayman’s bounty for the best, then the businesses will suffer. It’s the same line that A.I.G. offered upset taxpayers when it gave out bonuses in 2009 after receiving a government bailout.
“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” (Edward M. Liddy) wrote Mr. Geithner on Saturday.
This is nonsense of course: It’s not like A.I.G. actually tried to retain its staff without paying bonuses. The sentiment also seemed to imply that A.I.G.’s “best and brightest talent” still lived in the U.S. economy of the 1990s, when you could consider leaving your job for another one just because it had better coffee in the break room. And it takes a healthy amount of gall for Liddy to refer to anyone at A.I.G. as the “best and the brightest talent.” These are the same guys that ran the company so well it needed a taxpayer-funded bailout. To borrow from Woody Allen, maybe A.I.G. should consider hiring “some stupid people.” They’re cheaper and the results couldn’t have been much worse.
Yet at the same time, countless companies suspended compensation increases for average employees — apparently not fearing an inability to “attract and retain” them. Viacom even added insult to injury and rewarded its CEO Phillipe Dauman for “increasing cost effectiveness” by almost tripling his salary ($34 million to $84 million). Keep in mind that “increasing cost effectiveness” usually means firing people or not granting raises.
Earlier this year, on the road to Occupy Wall Street, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker removed collective bargaining rights from public employees. Everyone should see this as the inverted pyramid beginning its inexorable tumble. As Rand would say about a different tax bracket, how much abuse and exploitation are people expected to take?
Let’s reverse the question Rand posed in “Atlas Shrugged.” What if the people at the bottom of the pyramid said enough all ready? Their government has little interest in whether they live or die and has become even more brazen in its clear preference for protecting the interests of the wealthy and powerful. What’s the point? Even those who can find jobs will probably never erase the debt they accumulated when they were unemployed. Banks will come up with new fees to siphon off what’s left (the new “it’s currency” fee — we charge more for currency). Who’s going to rush to perform their tasks? Is Dauman going to take out trash or wait tables or even answer his own phones? Until replicant technology is perfected, those at the top of the pyramid need those at the bottom far more than the reverse. True “rational self-interest” would be keeping those at the bottom content enough so that the wheels of society continue to turn. What we’ve instead experienced in the past 30 years is the slow, steady strangulation of the country’s golden goose — the working class.
The fabulous perks and prestige associated with working at Wal-Mart have been reduced, as the world’s 18th largest public corporation announced on Friday that it was scaling back its employees’ health benefits package:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc will no longer offer health insurance to new part-time U.S. employees who work fewer than 24 hours a week and will charge workers who use tobacco more for coverage as healthcare costs rise.
I’m sure moving foward Wal-Mart would never cynically hire predominately part-time workers and actively keep them below 24 hours a week, and the tobacco penalty probably makes sense — even if it’s a bit shady given Wal-Mart’s relationship with the tobacco industry.
Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. retailer and the nation’s largest private employer, is also slashing the amount that it puts in employees’ healthcare expense accounts by 50 percent.
OK, that’s a lot. However, Wal-Mart’s a struggling small business that only cleared a quarterly profit of $3.4 billion. Still, that wasn’t enough to calm Wal-Mart’s nerves:
The poorer customers who shop at the nation’s biggest retailers are still on tight budgets. They wait inside the store at the end of each month with full shopping carts until the clock strikes midnight. Then, their electronic-benefit transfers from the government go through, and they pay for their groceries and other staples. They buy items in small packages, which cost less than big ones.
See, poor people insist on ruining things for large corporations. If they weren’t so broke, they could buy more cheap crap and make Wal-Mart even richer but they insist on not doing their fair share so Wal-Mart has no choice but to cut costs where it can — not in the DWI bail fund for its billionaire heiress but in the health coverage for its employees.
If I understand trickle-down economics and “job creation” correctly, it is lunacy to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires because they create jobs but it’s a reasonable business practice to effectively reduce the income of the people who are most likely to shop at Wal-Mart. Perhaps they’re gambling on the employees who are no longer covered (because they don’t work enough hours and don’t have much money anyway) playing Russian Roulette with six bullets and going without insurance.
But no one regrets this more than Wal-Mart:
“The current healthcare system is unsustainable for everyone and like other businesses we’ve had to make choices we wish we didn’t have to make,” said Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter. “Our country needs to find a way to reduce the cost of healthcare, particularly in this economy.”
A sound argument backed up by Wal-Mart’s PAC and the Walton family’s choosing to make political contributions predominately to the GOP, which openly states its intentions to repeal President Obama’s health reform legislation and replace it with a brand-spanking new nothing.
No, really:
Hermain Cain is basically only alive now because he’s wealthy and connected. His position is basically you should be, too, silly poor person. Romeny is busy running away from the fact that he ever at one point cared whether U.S. citizens had access to affordable health care, which is kind of depressing if you think about it.
Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke earned $18.7 million in 2010 — basically taking home more in an hour than the average associate makes in a year — but his employees will see their health care diminished during a time when they are least likely to afford it and — strictly coincidentally – least likely to find better options elsewhere. It’s the plantation owner’s market.
The latest polls show Herman Cain beating Barack Obama in the 2012 general election. This is based on a complex, scientific process of predicting how people will vote a year from now (i.e. “guessing”).
This is exciting: Two blacks fighting for the title for the amusement of a mostly white audience and it’s not Ali vs. Frazier. Let’s hope the build-up to the big bout is at least as entertaining.
Unfortunately, if Cain does win, he doesn’t get to be the first black president. Sure, the second black president is sort of impressive — he probably still gets to make a speech, kind of like the salutatorian at high school graduation, but few people listen. This is probably why Cain supporter Laura Ingraham claims that he would in fact be the first black president.
INGRAHAM: And what happened with Obama is that he gets this job that he’s not qualified for… OK, so [Obama is] Constitutionally qualified for but he’s not really qualified for. And guess who pays the price? All of us. Because we had such a yearning for history.
Well I have a question. Herman Cain, if he became president, he would be the first black president, when you measure it by — because he doesn’t — does he have a white mother, white father, grandparents, no, right? So Herman Cain, he could say that he’s — he’s — he’s the first, uh — he could make the claim to be the first — yeah, the first Main Street black Republican to be the president of the United States. Right? He’s historic too.
See, Obama, who was a U.S. Senator, was not qualified to be president and only won because we wanted to have a black president (it was on everyone’s wish list in 2008, along with the iPhone) but Obama has white relatives so isn’t really black in which case, if we act quickly before our warranty expires, we should be able to exchange him for Cain, CEO of a profitable pizza company and thus perfectly qualified to be president, who does not have any white relatives because obviously Ingraham would have researched something like that and not just talk out of her ass.
I’m not sure how far back in the family tree Ingraham is willing to go, but Cain is from Georgia and it was pretty hard for blacks to get through the antebellum South sexually unscathed. Slave masters weren’t that picky. They couldn’t have been because — putting it bluntly — having sex with a slave was probably like having sex with a homeless person. I’m sorry. Hate me all you want but you’ve been watching too many movies with Halle Berry or Jasmine Guy if you think otherwise. Slaves didn’t get access to the quality deodorant, moisturizers, and bath soaps. You think they got to shave their legs? Take all that away from even Beyonce and you’ve got something nasty in a weave. Now take away the weave: Scary, isn’t it?
Even the house slaves were probably legally required to be sufficiently less attractive than the mistress of the house. And the mistresses weren’t Vivien Leigh, either. Look at some paintings from the period. We’re talking about 4s or 5s to be kind, so Mammy is probably a 2 at best and the slave master is still putting on some Rolling Stones and violating her because the guy owns human beings, you expect rationality?
I know this implies that it was predominately Southern men going after slave women. I’m sure some bored antebellum housewives fooled around with male slaves but in a more sexist period, it was certainly risky. If she gives birth to a kid who looks like Obama, maybe she can pass him off as the master’s kid with a suntan and curly hair. If she gives birth to a kid who looks like Cain, it’s her ass unless she then claims that she was assaulted because she wouldn’t willingly have sex with a slave, she’s a good Christian woman, after all. So, her husband rounds up all the male slaves and orders her to identify the guilty one. She goes down the line, winking surreptitiously at the Shemar Moore-looking slave and then points at one of my ancestors, Jebediah Robinson.
Mistress: Yes, darling, that’s the one! I’ll never forget. It was horrible.
Jebediah: Really? Oh come on! (turns to Shemar Moore-looking slave). Dude, I thought we were friends. Look, when I said I’d be your wingman, I didn’t think I’d wind up in actual wings.
However, let’s say Ingraham’s correct and Cain is 100% black — much like the lady who flipped out on Jeffrey Dahmer in court. This would mean that the United States had gone “all in” on a black president. It’s like the guy who is bisexual in college but when you meet him a few years later, he’s dating men exclusively. If we elect Cain, we’re not pussy-footing around. We’ve gone all the way.
And it’s not even about skintone: As Cain says, Obama’s never been part of the “black experience.” Obama, after all, cowardly chose to not even be born when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, whereas Cain bravely followed his father’s advice to “not start trouble” and sit in the back of the bus.
“…If I had been a college student I probably would have been participating.” (Cain) said that, as a high school student, “it was not prudent” for him to be involved.
“Not prudent”? Well, if Cain’s elected, Dana Carvey can stage a comeback by impersonating him. Apparently, Cain’s father advised him to keep his focus on education and presumably the promising career in janitorial services he would have had without the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement.
“Did you expect every black student and every black college in America to be out there?” Cain said. “…You didn’t know, Lawrence, what I was doing…maybe, just maybe, I had a sick relative!”
If the Civil Rights Movement was the black Vietnam — although blacks fought in Vietnam, as well, but just try to follow me on this — then Cain marched not in Martin Luther King’s path but Dick Cheney‘s and avoided service with, maybe, just maybe, a lame excuse.
But that’s all in the past. Let’s see who winds up king of the U.S. empire when Cain and Obama step in the ring! If my analogy holds, this means that we’ll probably wind up with a brain-damaged president regardless of who wins but we’ve been there before.
I read this piece in the Economic Times, which states that “many see lack of focus in growing Occupy Wall street movement.”
The protests that began on September 17 by a small group of people in Manhattan have snowballed into a movement against the financial institutions, income inequality and corporate bailouts with thousands taking to the streets and courting arrests.
However, the protesters are yet to ask local and federal governments to adopt specific actions to address their grievances.
I suppose the pun (“see” and “lack of focus”) is unintentional. However, the criticism is not new. Bill Clinton mentioned it recently in an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman.
“They need to be for something specific, and not just against something because if you’re just against something, someone else will fill the vacuum you create.”
I know the protestors have a lot of free time — as many don’t have jobs — but why is the onus on them to fix the problem? And maybe I’ve being even more cynical than usual but wouldn’t any specific policy recommendations be dismissed as uninformed anyway?
I thought widespread protests against “financial institutions, income inequality and corporate bailouts” would be a good place to start, right? That is if politicians genuinely want to resolve these issues. So far, they sound like a really bad boyfriend:
“I don’t get it, baby, why are you leaving me?”
“You slept with my sister and you maxed out my credit cards playing full-tilt poker.”
“Yeah, but all that aside, what specifically is wrong?”
It’s possible to infer from the political realm’s reaction to the movement that it has failed to accomplish more than some front-page media coverage. Let’s look back at the beginnings of the Tea Party movement. Everyone, Democrat and Republican, was in a hurry to either embrace them or not piss them off. Clinton’s position is almost eerily identical:
“I think that, first of all, the tea party insurrection … that you see in these Republican primaries, reflects the feeling of a lot of Americans that they’re getting the shaft,” Clinton said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “That the people who caused these problems …the banks that were responsible for the financial meltdown, they’ve gotten well again. And everybody has got money again who is in that business, but ordinary people don’t.”
“So there is a general revolt against bigness Which in the case of the Republicans is always directed more against the government than the private sector,” Clinton said. “It’s totally understandable.”
The Republicans meanwhile have no concern about giving the movement a united golden shower:
Cantor slammed the movement on Friday in a speech in Washington at the 2011 “Value Voters Summit” intended to energize social conservatives.
“I’m increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and other cities across the country,” said Cantor at the event sponsored by the Family Research Council Action, the American Family Association, and other evangelical Christian groups.
“And believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans,” he said.
Oh no! Americans against Americans! Brother against brother in a vicious blood battle! These agitators are stirring up the otherwise peaceful peasants against their benevolent corporate masters! Where’s J. Edgar Hoover’s ghost when you need him?
Fortunately, presidential candidate Herman Cain was able to make Cantor’s statements seem benign in comparison:
Republican presidential contender Herman Cain amplified his criticism Sunday of the growing Occupy Wall Street movement, calling the protesters “jealous’ Americans who “play the victim card” and want to “take somebody else’s” Cadillac.
Yes, the protestors do want to “take somebody else’s Cadillac” — so they can sleep in it. Wow, Cain sounds about as rational as two angry ladies at a beauty salon in the Bronx.
“Girl, did you hear what those Occupy Wall Street protestors are saying about you?”
“Oh, Laquita, they just jealous. Just jealous of how fine I am and how nice my Cadillac is.”
On CBS, Cain suggested that the rallies had been organized by labor unions to serve as a “distraction so that many people won’t focus on the failed policies of the Obama administration.”
Huh? Labor unions organized this? How many of the demonstrators were actually members of unions? Wouldn’t they possibly still have jobs if they were? The biggest union presence at the protests is arguably the police — the guys with the solid health insurance and retirement plans.
The banking and financial services industries aren’t responsible for those policies, Cain said.
OK, so the Obama administration forced Bank of America to screw its customers? I guess it is Obama’s fault that the economy is sputtering along so that banks can only make jillions instead of gajilions. They have no choice to charge fees that would shame your average loan shark — though a loan shark actually loans you money, rather than charging you for the burden of using yours to play a riskier version of full-tilt poker.
And if the labor unions are pulling the protestors’ poverty-stricken strings, then we all know who is the ultimate puppet master.
Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, who appeared on the program with Cain, offered a more measured response, but blamed the White House for the discord.
“There a lot of people in America who are angry,” Gingrich said. “This is the natural product of President Obama’s class warfare.”
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, also pointed a finger at the president, whom he accused of fear-mongering.
“He’s preying on the emotions of fear, envy and anger. And that is not constructive to unifying America,” Ryan said. “I think he’s broken his promise as a uniter, and now he’s dividing people. And to me, that’s very unproductive.”
I’m sure privately Republicans are shaking in their boots over Obama’s Army of the Destitute. They will collectively knock down the pillars of our economic system with their massive student loan debt.
So what if companies openly discriminate against the unemployed during a period of record unemployment? It’s unproductive and divisive to get upset. Stay home and come up with some specific policy positions that your elected officials can ignore. Better yet, watch some bad reality TV instead and let Wall Street continue to steer the country in the swell direction it’s currently going. These are busy people. They don’t need your jealous whining.
Cain later conclusively proved the Occupy Wall Street movement’s threat to national security:
“To protest Wall Street and the bankers is basically saying you’re anti-capitalism,” he said.
I sort of thought that this was a protest of Wall Street excess, which did play a part in leveling the economy, rather than an outright broadside against capitalism as a whole, but unlike Cain, I never ran a pizza chain named after a mafia figure.
Wait a minute: If you’re anti-capitalist, aren’t you essentially a communist? And the terrorists also attacked Wall Street, so maybe these demonstrators are communist terrorists or, depending on whether you’re a Northern or Southern Smurf, terrorist communists!
In fairness, Cain was equally protective of Muslims as even though a small minority of extremists were threats to U.S. security, he realized that they weren’t reflective of Islam as a whole and to protest Islam is basically saying you’re anti-religious freedom.
(Yeah, you see where I’m going here: To the YouTube Mobile!:)
When Steve Jobs died on October 5, there was a flood of condolesences online. “Online” here generally defined as Facebook and Twitter. According to the people Twitter hires to measure such things, its users commented on the Apple co-founder and former CEO’s death at a rate of 6,049 tweets per second. That’s more that the Twitter-verse cared about the death of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden (around 5,000 tweets per second) but significantly less than the comments on Beyonce Knowles’s pregnancy during the MTV Video Music Awards (8,868).
It’s hard to imagine any other CEO’s passing receiving such attention. Warren Buffett might but only if you factored in the people on Facebook and Twitter who confused him with the “Margaritaville” singer.
Jobs was practically as popular as Barack Obama once was and even the president’s fame took a nosedive when he actually became the country’s chief executive. However, the iPad was arguably a more successful product launch than health care reform.
It would probably not offend Jobs to state that he himself was a product, perhaps Apple’s most effective. In his death, he’s been repackaged as a “visionary” and “innovator,” which are nice ways of saying he was more than just an extremely competent businessman. After all, the executives we don’t like wear suits not turtlenecks and jeans. It’s safe to assume the protestors at “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations took time to mourn Jobs.
Maryann Johanson of Flick Filosopher stated how hearing Jobs say in the unaired 1997 “Crazy Ones” commercial that “the people who are crazy enough to change the world are the ones who do” makes her cry now. That’s quite an impact. And the morning of his death, my Facebook feed was filled with inspirational quotes from Jobs. He was not merely a guy who made a hell of a lot of money (reported net worth of 8.3 billion). He was one of the “crazy ones.” Keep in mind that the commercials featured artists (John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Maria Callas, Alfred Hitchcock, Pablo Picasso, and Jim Henson), trailblazers (Muhammad Ali, Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King, Jr), and true geniuses (Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison). The only businessmen featured were Richard Branson and Ted Turner — the latter perhaps because they wanted to include at least one figure who was not just metaphorically “crazy.”
Upon reflection, this commercial makes me want to cry, as well, but for different reasons. It’s all rather cynical name dropping for a commercial whose ultimate aim to get you to buy something that most likely would not figure prominently in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Did Jobs really “change the world”? Everyone seems to think so, including President Obama, who said that Jobs “was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”
It would deny logic to claim Jobs did not alter our society, but this did not occur on a philanthropic level. According to Fortune, Jobs had “had terminated all of Apple’s long-standing corporate philanthropy programs within weeks after returning to Apple in 1997, citing the need to cut costs until profitability rebounded. But the programs have never been restored.” No, Jobs’s true legacy would be what Bud Tribble at Apple referred to as his “Reality Distortion Field” or what I consider his ability to crank up the public’s conspicuous consumption volume to 11. (The RDF might also explain why Jobs’s replacement Tim Cook came off during his first product launch like Doug Henning to his David Copperfield.)
Middle school teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron wrote on the Huffington Post that she told her students that Job’s death was as if “Willy Wonka has died.” I consider this a not-unreasonable comparison: Wonka was not a farmer who used his factory to revolutionize means of feeding the population. He sold junk food to children and later punished a select few of them for demonstrating the very same gluttony that made him a wealthy man.
We buy a new phone every year. When I was a kid, there was one phone in the house and it was only replaced when it broke — not when Wonka showed up with a new, cooler one a few months later.
The question was posed recently as to whether the U.S., which barely has two nickels to rub together, can afford to provide aid to Somalia — a country that ranks low on iPod penetration but high on famine penetration. It’s an astounding cognitive dissonance that anyone would ask that question during a time when Apple has revenue approaching $10 billion (although, apparently the company was not profitable enough for Jobs to resume its philanthropy programs).
But no one knows who Bob McDonald is and no one cares about the “hot, new” toothpaste, even if it might help prevent gingivitis. We all want to be able to make a phone call while posting to Facebook that we’re making a phone call while posting to Facebook.
President Obama immediately agreed with Buffett’s argument. Mitt Romney immediately disagreed, trotting out the old Vaudeville act that high corporate tax rates is the primary motivator for businesses either not hiring or sending jobs overseas (this has also been said about minimum wage laws and employee health insurance benefits). You could remedy this, of course, with tax breaks that benefit those companies that invest in American jobs but who has time for that?
Romney had to say something but he’s on shaky ground contradicting Buffett. It’s not like the guy made his money starring in action movies or kicking field goals. He most likely knows a thing or two about the financial world. Romney’s entire campaign is that the country needs a president with both experience and proven results in the private sector. Buffett’s success in that area makes Romney look like the assistant manager at the local Shop Rite.
Of course, Romney’s position was the epitome of rationality compared to Michele Bachmann’s, who openly and unabashedly attacked Buffett at a campaign event in (of course) South Carolina — to borrow from “Kiss Me Kate,” GOP primary campaigns “open in South Carolina/We next play Texas/Then on to 1950/Lots of closeted gays in 1950!/Our next attack is illegal immigrants/That stingy, dingy menace…”
“We also believe, unlike Warren Buffett, that taxes are high enough already,” said Bachmann … “I have a suggestion. Mr. Buffett, write a big check today. There’s nothing you have to wait for. As a matter of fact the president has redefined millionaires and billionaires as any company that makes over $200,000 a year. That’s his definition of a millionaire and billionaire. So perhaps Mr. Buffett would like to give away his entire fortune above $200,000. That’s what you want to do? Have at it. Give it to the federal government. But don’t ask the rest of us to have our taxes increased because you want to have a soundbyte. We want to have real job creation in this country and that’s what we’ll stand for as fiscal conservatives.”
We might claim that taxes are “high enough” already but evidence — such as our crippling debt — might demonstrate otherwise. This brings us to the two separate views of how the U.S. taxpayer relates to the national budget deficit. There is the conservative view that the government is an employee of the U.S. taxpayer. In that scenario, it’s inappropriate for an employee to demand a raise just because he’s behind on the car payments for his Mercedes and, worse, has a $200-a-day cocaine habit that might result in his dealer breaking his legs if he doesn’t pay him on time. His employee’s debts aren’t his issue. But the country’s debts are our issue. They have a direct impact on us and our way of life, and thus stating “our taxes are high enough” is in many ways tantamount to saying that you’ve paid American Express more than enough already even if your credit card is maxed out.
However, Buffett is not suggesting everyone’s minimum payments be increased in order to reduce the credit card balance — just those in the best position to do so. The vast majority of our debt is attributible to our imperial presence in Iraq and Afghanistan (by the way, it’s wise to consider what caused the fall of the British empire). As Buffett points out, it’s usually the poor and middle class who sacrifice the most in blood for these wars. It would then be in the spirit of “shared sacrifice” for the wealthy to chip in more to pay for the tanks.
Bachmann should know that Buffett has already written a “big check.” She also ignores the actual substance of Buffett’s editorial when she talks about the “redefinition” of “millionaire” and “billionaire.”
Buffett did not suggest no one could make more than $200,000. President Obama has said he wants Bush-era tax cuts for those individuals making more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000 to expire after next year. But those people would not have to hand over every dollar made over $200,000, just a higher percentage of that income. And, if the Bush-era tax cuts expire, they’d have to hand over a higher percentage of money made on the stock market.
In 2009, roughly 2% of U.S. households had reported taxable income of more than $250,000. They earned 24.1 percent of all income, and paid 43.6 percent of all personal federal income taxes. Here again we have two separate views on wealth in the U.S. One side believes it’s unfair that 2% of households would earn 24% of all income. While the other side believes it’s unfair that those who earn just 24% of all income should pay almost half of all taxes.
Bachmann would “prefer to lower tax rates for the rich and broaden the tax base, making more Americans pay tax. Currently, nearly half of Americans – those at the lower end of the economic spectrum – do not pay income tax.”
If that’s the case, Bachmann is actually running on a “higher taxes” platform — just one that she would deem more equitable and, curiously enough, would affect more of her potential voters than Buffett or Obama’s proposal would. The only problem is that Americans at the bottom of the income ladder are arguably “too small to fail” — increase their taxes and you don’t cut into disposable income, you cut into basic survival. You might be able to reduce expenses in the former category (less iPods) but in the latter category (food, rent), you are less flexible, so then you might wind up running up debt, which would benefit credit card companies and banks (all those interest rates! All those fees!) and would result in healthy profits and bonuses for the executives at those companies who I’m sure will create jobs or re-invest in the economy or whatever else it is they do that makes things so neat for the poor.
serhasacomplaint 
Let them work at McDonald’s…
Reading this NPR piece on the Occupy Wall Street protests, I came upon a true “let them eat cake” moment:
One man, who declined to give his name, but said he has worked on Wall Street for nine years, just shook his head. He was wearing a grey wool coat and his hair was neat and combed back. He stood at that corner for a while.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “I just don’t understand why they’re not out trying to find jobs.”
He said he works 75 to 80 hours a week, so he deserves to be part of the one percent. He says he chose a degree in finance so he could make a lot of money.
I told him what Nathan Storey had told me. He was laid off in 2008 and still couldn’t find a job.
The man shook his head.
“He could get jobs at McDonald’s,” he said. He conceded however that minimum wage isn’t much money and he said he was willing to pay more taxes.
But he said he truly believes if you want to make money in this country, you can work hard and do that.
“This is the land of opportunity,” he said.
There appears to be a disconnect in the anonymous gentleman’s statement that he entered finance so he “could make a lot of money” and his assertion that if you “want to make money in this country, you can work hard and do that.” Yes, “the land of opportunity” is the U.S.’s advertising slogan but that is as relevant in practice as “The King of Beers” is for Budweiser.
His McDonald’s comment is both unoriginal and condescending, as if working in the fast-food industry is a viable option for people who have trouble finding jobs. Sure, many companies are calluously choosing not to interview job applicants who are unemployed — their way of capitalizing further on the poor job market — but having McDonald’s on the resume won’t improve the situation.
He should also know that a bad economy usually doesn’t trickle down. It’s the jobs near the bottom of the 99 percent that are the first to fall. Why does he suppose there are all these job opportunities at McDonald’s? Or does he think any reasonably educated person is preferable to the usual applicants at the fast-food chain? If so, then what are they supposed to do if what used to be the middle class takes their jobs — find work as medical school cadavers?
But let’s propose that there are McDonald’s positions for anyone who wants one. The federal minimum wage is $7.25. Even if you had the opportunity to work 75 to 80 hours a week (you won’t, as you’d be eligible for benefits and overtime), that’s about $30K a year. You’ll be exhaisted and won’t see your family but you’ll be content with the knowledge that you can provide them with so little.
Meanwhile, after nine years, our guy on Wall Street is possibly making around $300 to $500K. That breaks down to around $100 an hour at a 75/80-hour work week, which is slightly more rewarding. He can also get sick once in a while and send his kids to college.
Obviously, our economy can’t work if everyone is either in the finance or fry-making industry. It’s also telling that there’s no other default job that people like this guy can mention. The underlying message is “go away, stop bothering me with your problems, and serve me.”
There is a difference between having a middle-class work ethic and being an all-day, licked down to the center of the Tootsie Roll pop sucker. It’s like being the doting boyfriend while your girlfriend is fooling around with your best friend, brother, uncle, father, and family priest. It can get to the point that even the noblest person would rather die annoying the 1 percent than quietly serve them for the off chance of a pat on the head.
Posted by Stephen Robinson on November 19, 2011 in Capitalism, Social Commentary
Tags: McDonald's, Occupy Wall Street