A Sunday Dedication

For -just dave-

My First Christmas Present

Today is Black Friday and thousands of Americans have descended (and likely still are) on department stores and shops around the country. Someone out there got me an early gift and I feel like there is some justice in the world. Actually, it was several someones. Remember the law firm of Steven J. Baum and Associates?

Say buh-bye!!

Apparently all the recent press hasn't been good for his business and now they are through. Normally, I wouldn't do an end zone celebration dance for people going out of business but this whole company deserved exactly what they got, especially Mr. Baum. Have they learned their lesson? Based on the letter Mr. Baum sent to Joe Nocera, the New York Times columnist who published the photos of the company Halloween party in which people dressed up like the people they robo-foreclosed, it appears they have not.

Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices. Mr. Nocera — You have destroyed everything and everyone related to Steven J. Baum PC. It took 40 years to build this firm and three weeks to tear down.

So, it's Nocera's fault that Baum was a duplicitous foreclosure mill and had the Halloween Party? I love Joe's reply.

I think that’s what they call shooting the messenger.

I hope this whole affair will make some people in the financial sector think twice about how they do business. This is what happens when you go to far.

Today, I Am Thankful For...

...the rest of America starting to wake up...

...the support that the Occupy movement is giving to local businesses...

...Elizabeth Warren, current running for Senate against Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

....and our nation's 26th president for stating something so eloquently that is sadly still true today.

Mr. President, you and I are on the exact same page, sir!

Let Them Eat Cake

I wonder if these three ass hats have ever studied 18th century French History.

81 year old Dorli Rainey after being pepper sprayed by police at Occupy Seattle.

I wonder who she raped and what drugs she did?

Why Can't More Americans Be Like These Folks?

All of the debate about the role of government would be null and void if more Americans were like this guy. And these folks.

Truly amazing stories and great examples of how the little guy does actually have some power if they dedicate some time and patience to this stuff. But this brings up a larger issue.

Certainly, the right wing media industrial complex would applaud these individuals for assuming responsibility for themselves and their circumstances and getting the job done. I'm wondering why they aren't that way with the Occupy Wall Street Movement? Up to this point, the right has largely painted the OWS folks as socialist hippies who want the government to run everything. Yet, this movement has essentially been saying the same thing as the Tea Party and, like Patrick Rodgers, Wayne Nyerges, and Maureen Collier have taken it upon themselves to work outside of the government and stick it to the banks.

In the past month, 650,000 people have transferred their money from the big banks that the OWS movement are protesting to smaller banks and credit unions. Part of this is due to the new fees that banks have been adding but the other part is due to the OWS movement. Early estimates indicate that the banks have taken a couple of billion dollar hit from this change. This isn't a large amount when you consider all their transactions but it's not chump change either.

So, I'm wondering...what's the problem? Pastor Ed and Doctor Sean were absolutely apoplectic about the OWS movement calling for people to transfer their money. "Our economy will collapse!!!" they both screamed at me last weekend at the gum. I don't get it. The government wasn't forcing anyone to do anything. This is simply a movement of people exercising free will and participating in a free market choice.

Why Can't More Americans Be Like These Folks?

Let Them Eat Cake

I've been talking for quite awhile on here about the one percent of this country and how they really seem to be tone deaf when it comes to the other 99 percent. Worse are the folks who scream about socialist revolutions and yet shit all over the people (the president, many Democrats in Congress) trying to prevent such an uprising.

But I never thought that the wealthy of this country would stoop to a level as low as this. Take a look at these photos.

These images are from a Halloween Party last year at the law firm of Steven J. Baum in New York. Party goers dressed up like people who have had their homes foreclosed amid a "tent city" that was set up in the office for people to go flap to flap and trick or treat. Baum represents banks and mortgage servicers in their foreclosure proceedings. It is the largest firm in New York and represents Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

At first, I simply couldn't believe that people would be this heartless. Then I realized that this these modern day Marie Antoinettes are really that fucking awful. And clueless. Who the fuck do they think caused all of this to begin with? THEIR clients. If anything, they should be dressing up as bankers and financial sector "whizes" who busted our country out like the mafia.

I guess the capacity to blame the victim is infinite.

Nice

Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these...

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' "He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

Meet the 99 Percent (Part 1 of Many)

Now that the Occupy Wall Street is getting national attention and support from a substantial number of Americans, it's time for the douche bag propaganda machine to go to work. The 99 percenters are violent drug dealing fornicators bent on redistributing income and creating a socialist regime that will send us all to reeducation camps.

In reality, they are this.

ATLANTA
Oliver Beinlich, 29 | Unemployed

"There are a lot of issues in this country that need to be addressed. This is one way of voicing our concerns - there are many interests represented here, but I think the overarching message here is that we want to get our country back from the overwhelming power that corporations have."

Far more than they should, Oliver.

William The Eloquent

Bill is really snarky and mean most of the time but he's quite eloquent here in describing exactly what most Americans now feel. His slides at the end of this piece ARE Americans. As Bill says (and I agree completely),

They don't hate capitalism. They hate what's been done to it.

Me too, Bill. Me too.

Maybe the Tea Party IS Different From OWS....hmmm...

Yeah, Pretty Much

Still Not Getting It

I've been chuckling and shaking my head over the last few days as I watch the right continually not get the Occupy Wall Street movement. CNN has a pretty good take on all of this. It reminds me of an elderly person trying to work their new iPhone that their grandson got them.

What's truly hilarious is how similar this movement is to the nascence of the Tea Party. Both groups bitched about government bailouts and cronies in DC. The right (for whatever reason) can't see that this group of people have given up on the government just like they have. In fact, the Occupiers have called for citizens to voluntarily move their back accounts from big banks to credit unions and local banks. They aren't asking the government to do anything and have declared vehemently that it's up to the people. Why does the right have a problem with this? Can't a group of people decide on their own what to do?

More importantly, this is the first concrete demand followed by action that we have seen from the group. It's going to be interesting to see what happens as a result of this. Will the big banks bleed?

Naturally, there is a ton of anti-Occupy propaganda out there now. Take a look at this photo.

If anyone has seen this photo in their friend's status updates, as I have recently in several, kindly ask them any or all of the following questions.

1. What is the source for this photo? (You won't be surprised when you find out)

2. How accurate is the math? (Check it, it's not)

3. Where does scholarship money come from?

4. Why does such a large group of people in this country persist in blaming the victims of the Collapse of 2008 and give the actual perpetrators a free pass?

5. Did the United States build itself into an economic superpower, unlike any this world has ever seen, by being a nation of rugged individualist libertarians? Or did we do so with much higher taxes and actual regulation?

Then show them these photos.

The derision that is floating around out there (courtesy largely of the right wing blogsphere) isn't working. There are too many people that identify with this movement and it has now gone global. The Tea Party can't even boast that.

I think the right needs to be very, very careful their commentary on this movement. They've got a pretty good hold in the House that will be hard to erode in the 2012 election. They have a real chance at picking up some more Senate seats. But if they ally themselves with Wall Street, they will have forgotten what mobilized resources on their side back in 2009. The public could see them as very pro corporation and they will lose some of their populist base.

We Are

Over the last few weeks, a growing group of people have occupied Wall Street in protest of the greed and corruption that has run rampant there in the last few years. They have rightfully pointed the spotlight on the organizations most responsible for our economic malaise at present.

Behind all of this is the We Are The 99 Percent movement. . This is their credo.

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

What we are seeing here is the beginning of a minority block that will likely eclipse the conservative base. Hell, some conservatives may end up joining them. We've had unemployment for quite a long time in this country and it was clearly a simple matter of time before they organized into a force with which to be reckoned. We may even be seeing the beginning of the end of the self defeating plutocracy that has grown over the last decade.

Now, I've got a few issues with these people that I'd like to get out of the way. First, they remind me a great deal of the WTO protesters (see: Protectionism). VERY bad idea. Look at the world 50 years ago and look at it today. Overall, we are better off. Lifespans are longer in Global South countries and it is because of liberal trade practices. If these people are concerned about world hunger and poverty, the best way to solve it is free trade. No tariffs, quotas, non tariff barriers, or any other government restrictions that impede the global market. This means that the labor pool is going to grow which means demand will be lower thus the growing pains. They are going to have to accept this if they want the world to be better off.

Of course, this doesn't mean that MNCs (multinational corporations) have leave to pillage and burn the world. A completely unrestrained free market easily slides into this due to the basic human impulse of greed. So, there does need to be consequences for those that abuse this freedom. Obviously, this is a very complex issue and I don't think the occupiers fully understand the various intricacies of it.

This brings us to another issue I have with the occupiers of Wall Street. Are they so anarchistic in nature that they can't see the benefits of banks and investments? They are the very backbone of our culture. No doubt, they have been abused by people but that simply means that they should be put in "pound me in the ass prison" for 6 months. That would end this bullshit immediately. That means regulators are going to have to grow a pair and get it done. Tearing down the whole system will make things worse.

The occupiers also seem to not have a central message or leader. That's fine for now, I guess. But they do need to figure how exactly they are going to effect the change they desire. The best way for them to do this is vote and, more importantly, get the 40 percent of the people in this country that don't vote out at the polls every year-including the odd years! It's pretty clear to me which party has more in common with them and that's who they should support. Certainly, there are some Democrats who have supported our slide to malaise in the last decade but it's the near entirety of the conservative base that is fighting tooth and nail to support our plutocracy. Their blind anger (similar to the Tea Party's) is keeping them from seeing this simple fact.

In his piece, "Keeping America's Edge," Jim Manzi talks about the importance of social cohesion. An entire section of his treatise on the sad state of our affairs is entitled "Inequality as a Symptom."

Economic inequality is likely to cause problems with social ­cohesion — but far more important, it is a symptom of our deeper ­problem. As the unsustainable high tide of post-war American dominance has slowly ebbed, many — perhaps most — of our country's workers appear unable to compete internationally at the level required to maintain anything like their current standard of living. And a shrinking elite portion of the American population, itself a shrinking fraction of the world ­population, cannot indefinitely maintain our global position.

There it is in a nutshell, folks. We will not continue to maintain our position in the world unless we take very serious steps to support the 99 percent. And by "we" I mean EVERYONE, not just the government (federal, state, local). Giving more tax breaks and less regulation to the wealthy people in this country is going to make things far worse. As Robert Reich said recently,

This isn't a zero-sum game. A lot of wealthy people are beginning to understand that they would do better with a smaller percentage of a rapidly growing economy than with a big chunk of an economy that's dead in the water.

Indeed they are. The Patriotic Millionaires Club is a fine example of what needs to be front and center in the discussion. People like Doug Edwards, a former Google executive, who stood up at a recent town hall with the president and said, "Will you please raise my taxes?" also need to come forward and demand common sense. Edwards was right when he expressed great concern for the future of federal student loans, infrastructure projects and job-training programs if the government does not obtain new revenue. We're not simply talking about our economy here. We're talking about the erosion of our hegemonic power in the world that has guided the global marketplace towards an LIEO (liberal international economic order).

Imagine if a country like China, for example, was the hegemenon. There's no way to sugar coat this, folks, and this isn't hyperbole: freedom would be lost. The intransigence against spending must stop. Clearly, we can't afford to spend like we did post World War Two but we can't go to the exact opposite of that and become maniacal cutters. We also have to cease the daily beat downs of government because this is the entity that has kept us a major power in the world and will continue to do so in the future. Without our federal government, the freedom of the global market that we created at Bretton Woods will be threatened.

I'm not sure that the 99 percenters see themselves as the large turning point that I do. Thankfully, I'm not the only one. E.J. Dionne, from his latest column

The anti-Wall Street demonstrators have created a new pole in politics. Americans have always been wary of concentrated power. The Tea Party had great success in focusing anxieties on what it argues is an excessively powerful federal government. Now an active and angry band of citizens is insisting that the concentrated power Americans most need to fear exists on Wall Street and in the financial system.

It's going to be very interesting to see what happens next.