The occupiers have the wrong focus

We (well, most of we) are angry with the unrestrained power of big business and their overtaking of our political system, country, and economy.  So there have been a bunch of people who have taken this anger and fear and begun camping out around the financial centers of the country (wall street, the federal reserve, etc).  We are angry with Wall Street and big business, but we have absolutely no recourse against them.  The purpose of a business it to make money.  The objective of Wall Street is to take our money.  They figure out ways around the rules in order to maximize their gain.  They have even managed to re-write the rules to even further increase their advantages.  They are horrible, greedy, despicable people. 

But that is their job.  The Supreme Court ruled that a corporation's first duty is to maximize profits.  Wall Street is out of control and they CANNOT and WILL NOT control themselves.  That is what government is for.  We have no recourse to Wall Street.  They do not have to listen to the public- only their shareholders.  The government has to listen to us.  So while it is fine to be upset with the greed, occupying Wall Street is not the answer.  We need to OCCUPY CAPITOL HILL and all our local government buildings.  We need to insist that they create rules to protect the public from the greed of Wall Street, or else we'll kick them out of office and put in others who will do that.  It worked for the Tea Party. 

Being angry at Wall St is like being angry at the basketball player who gets to the free throw line too many times on bad calls.  That player is not going to say, "you're right, I forfeit my free throws because they are not earned".  In that scenario, we need to be mad at the referee's.  Our government is supposed to ensure the level playing field.  It is they who have let us down.  It is towards them that our anger and protest should be directed.  And I think some politicians like the fact that we are distracted away from their culpability. 

OCCUPY YOUR GOVERNMENT!

Herman Cain's advice for the economy

If you worked for a company and they screwed you over, that is your own fault.  If you believed that they would protect your job, your pension, your retirement, etc, then it's your own fault when those things are taken away from you.  If you were the CEO, then you'd get to make the calls.  Everyone in the country should be a CEO.  No one should ever work for anyone else.  And if they are lazy and stupid enough to work for someone else, then they should not be surprised when they get screwed.  Hell, they deserve it.

And if you are a CEO and you are not screwing your employees, shame on you too.  That is the responsible thing to do.

Changing the story on Trickle Down

"I'm rich.  But everyone should let me keep more of my money.  That will do the most good because the more I have, the more will naturally trickle down to the lower spectrum of the economy.  If you let the poor keep more, then it may not ever benefit me.  But if you let me keep more, it will benefit everyone." 
- Years Later-
Q: "Why didn't that money ever trickle down"
A: "Those lazy-ass, good-for-nothing moochers at the lower spectrum of the economy didn't deserve it."

Trickle down is an excuse to hose the middle and lower class.  It hasn't worked and I can't believe they are still trying to sell us this bullshit.   

If the economy does not recover, there is no one to blame but Obama

Obama is running this country right?  He makes all the decision, therefore he gets all the blame and all the credit.  The republicans in congress have steadfastly said, "we don't think that this is a good idea, but you're the President, so we'll try it out.  If it fails, though, then that will show that your policy did not work."  Really, everything that the President has suggested has been green-lighted by congress and implemented.   Everything from the public option, to the full-sized stimulus, to the raising of the debt ceiling, to the jobs plans have been passed.  Oh wait, that's not quite true.  Actually, most of what Obama has tried to do has been stalled by the Republicans in congress.  And short of proposing more tax cuts for the wealthy and less protection for the people, the Republicans have not introduced any legislation to try and fix the economy.   So maybe the economy is not a true reflection of Obama's policies.  You may argue that things would be much worse if Obama's policy's were implemented, but you can't say that this current situation is because of him.  

The EPA kills jobs?

So I guess the argument is that the only way to create jobs is by killing the environment.  There is no way that a big company like Georgia Pacific (a division of Koch Industries) could do business without destroying the environment and causing cancer for those who live around their plants.  So that is your choice, either you can have jobs or you can have a liveable planet.  It is absolutely impossible for Koch to exist if they had to safeguard the environment (well, it's not quite impossible, but it would cost them a small percentage of their HUGE profits, and that is unacceptable, so for all intents and purposes, it is impossible).

The EPA kills jobs just like the police kill jobs by arresting the drug dealers in my neighborhood.  Those are some good paying jobs, similar to bank robbing.  But the cops kill the industry.  But, you say, that's different.  We don't need to protect the drug dealers or the bank robbers because they don't pay taxes on that money.  Well, the same goes for GE.    

My apologies (sarcastic title)

I got laid off because the CEO of my company wanted to take 4 million more dollars out of the US economy.  2 million went to workers in China, 2 million went into his Swiss bank account.  So although I want to work, and have worked hard for 25 years, I lose my job.  I thought that just sucked for me.  But now I am told that I amd the problem with the US economy because I am not paying taxes.  So I'm sorry to my fellow citizens for being so selfish as to be laid off and being so poor as to not be able to contribute.

The Republicans and the right wing pundits love to rail about how 50% of US citizens pay no federal income tax (they say no tax because they intentionally ignore sales, property, and payroll taxes; the things that the poor pay a much higher percentage of their income towards).  But they never point out how many of those people don't pay taxes because the current economic climate has pushed them down so far that they have nothing left to tax.  It's like you stab me in the chest and then complain that I am ruining your carpet.  You break my legs and then complain that I am not running fast enough.  You defund my school and then call me ignorant.  You steal my money and call me poor.  When I ask for it back, you accuse me of class warfare.    \
This is bullshit.

last thoughts

I graduated with a bachelors degree and took a job with a union shop knowing that I would have the job for the 30 years that it would take me to pay off my student loans.  I bought a house and had some kids.  But then my company's CEO learned that he could get tax breaks if he moved the company overseas, I got laid off.  So I got my unemployment insurance to tide me over while I found another job.  I applied to 300 different companies and could not find anything.  I couldn't even get a minimum wage job.  My state's governor called me and other like me "lazy" and signed a bill to shorten the weeks that my unemployment would last.  I got 26 weeks of assistance, but it was not near what I had been making, so I had to dip into my savings to keep up my mortgage and student loan payments (and everything else).  We asked the bank to reconfigure our loan.  They asked for a bunch of paperwork and took six months to say "no".  When I could not find a job, it became apparent that we could not afford to stay in our house so we put it on the market.  We dropped our asking price to below what we owed, but none of the people who were interested could secure a loan to buy it.  My 401k had been healthy, but my investment worth disappeared due to deregulation and risky behavior of the banks.  So eventually I could not make the payments and we were put out on the streets.

Then I learned that because of the EPA and department of energy's lack of concern, the chemical plant in town had been spewing carcinogenic chemicals into our air.  The doctors don't know if it was the chemicals or the tainted groundwater due to the fracking that caused my cancer.  Because I had no health insurance, I could not get treatment, and now I will soon die.  But on my deathbed, I will not be sad or angry.  The only thought I will have is "thank god that gay's can't marry".    

Seriously North Carolina?  With all the terrible things happening to American's you are going to focus on gay marriage? 

How we measure value

We have a way that we can measure and judge someone's relative worth as a person- it's called wealth.  If someone is rich (according to Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the uber-class-defenders) that that means that they are DE FACTO producers.  That they are the greatest influences on our economy, and the rest of us are completely dependent on them.  Their wealth is proof that they are necessarily more intelligent, motivated, and deserving.  And the more you have, the more deserving you are of that.  If you get rich by stealing all of my money, that makes you an even better person and me a worse one, because only an undeserving, lazy, weak, dumb, non-contributing member of society would be fool enough to let his money be stolen.  This is why Bernie Madoff should not be imprisoned, he should be enshrined. 

This is the same old "Manifest Destiny" argument that American imperialists tried to float back during the Westward expansion.  Just because someone is rich, does not mean that they are deserving.  Just because someone is poor, does not mean that he is not.   Anyone, if given the opportunity, could be a producer.  That does not mean that everyone will choose that.  But it is pretty hard to become a producer if you don't have the opportunity to try because all the resources are concentrated in the hands of the few. 

And I am NOT anti-capitalist.  I think the hoarding of wealth is killing our capitalism. 

Henry Ford was The Man. He got it.

from Wikipedia:

By 1916, the Ford Motor Company had accumulated a capital surplus of $60 million. The price of the Model T, Ford's mainstay product, had been successively cut over the years while the cost of the workers had dramatically, and quite publicly, increased. The company's president and majority stockholder, Henry Ford, sought to end special dividends for shareholders in favor of massive investments in new plants that would enable Ford to dramatically grow the output of production, and numbers of people employed at his plants, while continuing to cut the costs and prices of his cars. In public defense of this strategy, Ford declared:

"My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business."

When money is all that matters

In our current climate:
If a corporation can make one million dollars by helping people and supporting the environment, then that's all good.  But if that same corporation could make one million and one dollars by killing people and poisoning the environment, then that's what they should do (assumuing they may incur some fines and lawsuits from the damage, the one million and one is what is left over).  In fact, that's what the supreme court said they HAVE to do.  Their primary goal must be to maximize profits; and that one dollar is more important than the social or environmental impact.  Does anyone else see a problem with this configuration?