[T]he Occupy Wall Street demonstrations picking up momentum across the country better embody the values of the original Boston Tea Party. In the late 18th century, the British government became deeply entwined with the interests of the East India Trading Company, a massive conglomerate that counted British aristocracy as shareholders. Americans, upset with a government that used the colonies to enrich the East India Trading Company, donned Native American costumes and boarded the ships belonging to the company and destroyed the company’s tea. In the last two weeks, as protesters have gathered from New York to Los Angeles to protest corporate domination over American politics, a true Tea Party movement may be brewing
Economist Ian Welsh, whose blog I have only recently begun to follow, disapproves of Elizabeth Warren’s debate performance last evening.
I’m confused with why Welsh has jumped on Warren with both feet in this matter. The question — “What do you think of the occupy protests and would you join them?” — comes up at 49:52 in the video and Warren’s answer (restricted to no more than 30 seconds) at 50:57. There she says:
Everyone has to follow the law. That has to be the starting place. But no one understands better what the frustration is right now. The people on Wall Street broke this country and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago and there still has been no basic accountability and no real effort to fix it. That’s why I want to run for the United States Senate. That’s what I want to do to change the system.”
But let’s be frank, [Elizabeth Warren] is a stalking horse for Obama. She is deep in his pockets, supported strongly by his organization. She is the spokesman for “saving the Middle Class”, saying things which Obama can no longer say and pass the laugh test. The problem with “saving the Middle Class” is that for the people in #Occupy movement, it’s too late. Most of the core people are no longer in the middle class. Saving those still in it will do nothing for them, even if the policies suggested would work, which they wouldn’t.
I don’t get stalking horse from her answer. I don’t even think it is a bad answer. Could she have said something like:
I fully support the people in their efforts to bring about grassroots’ change and I’m immediately suspending my campaign to join the protesters and to stand up to the brutal response by the Wall Street controlled New York Police Department. And, oh yeah, everyone should be free to light up a blunt anytime they want.
Of course she could have. I don’t think, however, that that would have been a great answer.
* There is such thing as fairness.
* But everyone sees everything through their own filter. Acknowledge that, let it liberate you. Let it regulate you.
* We are not guided by political identification, by ideology or dogma. But every decision we make, from what to cover to how to cover it, is made through our own subjective judgments.
* We are guided by an ability to be transparent and independent, to clearly assess what’s going on in our community and have the courage to plainly state the truth.
Now these are what I call real journalistic guidelines. Follow the link, there is much more of great value there.
The latest census numbers show that the median income in Washington County in 2009 was $41,345, lower than 10 or 20 years before, while a new report shows Ohio income is at a 27-year low.
With the local demand for food assistance up approximately 30 percent since 2009, local social services officials say they aren’t surprised by the new U.S. Census study that shows poverty in Ohio is rising while income is falling.
Yes, there are plenty of reasons for this — the population of Marietta is aging as young people leave looking for work is just one — but this is indicative of a whole part of the state that we in Cuyahoga County don’t talk much about.
I graduated from a high school in 1973 that was a high tech marvel of education because local factories paid so much tax money that families didn’t even talk about their property taxes. Jobs that paid a living wage left the country as corporations, in search of the ever demanding need to feed the shareholder value fix, and demanded that Americans by their cheap plastic crap from China in order to fuel the economy.
There is a trope loved by our oligarchy that says only the rich create jobs. I’m so tired of hearing that bull shit. The rich don’t create jobs, working people create jobs by spending their surplus income on goods and services that go beyond the capitalist ideal of survival and procreation for the working class.
Corporations aren’t hiring because there’s no demand for an increase for what their selling. If you want people to buy more of your products, pay them a living wage that they can dream with.
Rushing cars through the city as fast as possible on limited-access highways was the beginning of the suburban flight that decimated Cleveland. Now is the city’s big chance to begin reversing that. And it can’t even see it. That’s what discourages me.
But then, we are talking about Cleveland. Go Browns!
[President Barack Hussein] Obama has been urged by dozens of columnists, including Sally Kohn of the Washington Post and Chris Weigant of Huffington Post to take the language of class warfare seriously, and to fight hard on the side of the not-rich.
Why? Because there is a war going on, and the working- and middle-classes are losing. Last week America’s most widely read economist, Paul Krugman, gave us four reasons why “class warfare” is top down, rather than bottom up
The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. —Marge Piercy, For the young who want to in The Moon Is Always Female
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At day’s first light, have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that “I am rising for the work of man.” Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for and for the sake of which I have been brought into the world? Is this the purpose of my creation, to lie here under my blankets and keep myself warm? “Ah, but it is a great deal more pleasant!” Was it for pleasure, then, that you were born and not for work? —Marcus Aurelius
Let me respectfully remind you, life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken-- Awaken! This night your days will be diminished by one. Take heed. Do not squander your life. —Zen Evening Gatha
Take an ax to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. —Rumi, Quietness
