Cannibalization of America

You and the rest of the rich can tak a long walk off a short peir with you fuzzy math BullShit.

so how much you contributing chi chi?

About a hundred thousand in loans after I get my degree ... Um you call that an edjumacation or something I think .... then I'll be contributing my time and sweat to the enterprise that is OUR nation. I'm sure you will still be trying to rig it for the rich few though.

oh gonna work for social welfare? have fun

and just like america it probably was because of a bunch of stoners goin to a plato rally

more like weep that it is still in the hands of economic rapists like yourself.

The stereotype of the welfare mother buying booze and cigarettes with her food stamps is ridiculously overplayed. Sure there are some bad eggs in the system but youll find waste in any system.

Now im sure that there are people out there that would love to see America become a socialist utopia but like you said they are wing-nuts that are not representative of all liberals/progressives.The fact still remains that the ultra-rich top 1% SHOULD have to pay more taxes because they really dont need to be making 100's of millions of dollars a year to survive. Most business executives are NOT producers nor do they deserve their absurd paychecks. Most deserve to be paid handsomely for their work no doubt, but when there are millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills every month they should have to help out.

many of the ultra rich work hard to achieve their wealth. and many of them donate millions to charities. to say they dont deserve it is wrong. and to tell them they should be responsible to support free loaders is unfair. everyone should pay their fair share in taxes but to target and over tax the rich is counterproductive. in that case where is the incentive to rise up and be productive. if after taxes a man loses 50% of his income in the tax bracket he is in, it might be more profitable to work and produce less making a smaller income in a lower tax bracket and in the end make the same amount of take home. the government then loses their tax base and americans lose overall.

economic rapists unite, I'm gonna start the economics rapist party! E.R.P. al gore and george soros can be our first candidates. yeehah!!!!

I am not sure where you are getting your skewed information, BUT most of the ultra rich came from money. In fact I would go as far as to say 95 % inherited the money that they have used to leverage more money. One other little point. No one has suggested that the top income bracket be taxed at 50% though they should be paying for these wars. The poor pay in blood. The rich should pay the same percentage as the rest of us. 30%. They should also have to pay into social security, just in case they blow all their money and wind up broke.

The thing is the ultra rich have been getting an ultra good deal at the expense of the deficit. Now they want everyone else to pay for their good fortune.

If you think that life is so much better as a poor person than give away all your fucking money and come down here with the rest of your fellow citizens and live this so called welfare life and tell us how peachy it is for your fucking ass.

so tell me, who's in charge of the bailouts that have been helping these rich folks that you been whining about? and plenty of conservative politico's kids have served proudly, including royal family off spring

im not a rich man and i dont mind workin hard and paying my FAIR share in taxes. just dont feel like redistributin my hard earned dollars to support vermin and lazy sloths who suck off of society are non productive and return nothin. if youre able bodied and on welfare then grab a broom and sweep some sidewalks or shovel some snow when winter arrives.

well if your not ritch then here is some news for you jack ass this has nothing to do with you. Stop being the rich mans bitch already.

BailoutS? What the hell are you talking about?

not the rich mans bitch. i just have more vision and stronger aspirations than you do. i also understand simple economics, without the rich man most americans would be out of work and the govenment could control everything. hey hasent that already been tried and failed countless times throughout history, including present times? naw i guess it was just a bad dream.

obamabailouts

What about the 700 billion Bush bailout? 2008 do you remember? Zero oversight! Do you remember? Obama and co. passed the stimulus package for the same money with oversight Spring 2009. Again what bailouts?

money in my pocket yeehah.

many of the ultra rich work hard to achieve their wealth. and many of them donate millions to charities. to say they dont deserve it is wrong. and to tell them they should be responsible to support free loaders is unfair. everyone should pay their fair share in taxes but to target and over tax the rich is counterproductive. in that case where is the incentive to rise up and be productive. if after taxes a man loses 50% of his income in the tax bracket he is in, it might be more profitable to work and produce less making a smaller income in a lower tax bracket and in the end make the same amount of take home. the government then loses their tax base and americans lose overall.

you can shout that Bull Shit as loud as you want from the highest rafters and no one BUT the rich will ever sympathize or even listen to you. You are an Elitist and a Monarchist Keep up this Bullshit and the people who do the actual work of these corporations are gonna break out the guillotine out for you and your friends.

my only regret is that i have only one head to give for my country

No, No, we start with the small one first.

you mean there are black people in america, where?

not where you live I'm sure you white sheet friends saw to that.

you got me pegged chi chi, you get an A+

Apparently you know nothing of Paul Harvey... Good day!

there is a very clear relationship. but it is agreed there are a few anomalies as with everything.

"There is no clear relationship between ambition, success and earnings"
I disagree. I also think you need to work intelligence and/or creativity into the equation as well as combine earnings and success into one item. Anyway, just because all ambitious people are not successful does not mean their is no relationship between success and ambition. For example, just because a river doesn't flood ever time there is heavy rain, doesn't mean that heavy rain and flooding are not related.

Galileo died at home. He was persecuted by an oppressive theocratic government. A type of government that Rand despised.

Telsa, despite living a modest, though by no means poor, later life, enjoyed plenty of money and success from his inventions and ideas. Just because a person dies in debt, that does not make them penniless. There are plenty of rich people in debt.

Oppenheimer certainly died wealthy and as prestigious as a man can be for being, in his own words, the "destroyer of worlds.

And Rosy, she also died happy and wealthy enough. She seen fruits from her work in virology in her life time. As for her work on the DNA double helix, it is a source of contention for me, especially when labeling her a victim and Watson a villain. First off, she refused to work with Watson in the first place. Second, she sat on photo 51 for at least a year without putting fourth a model herself and for all we know she never would have. Third, they worked in the same university, Kings, and her data was not confidential and was subject to be shared with other researchers at the college. Lastly, according to friends and relatives, she was never sore or offended by the little amount of credit she was given for the discovery. No harm, no foul. She always struck me as a person who was more interested in advancing science than receiving personal praise. While I do think that Watson should have been more upfront about how much of Franklin's work contributed to the DNA model, it is not surprising that he didn't considering the abrasiveness between her and him. In the end they both got what they wanted. Watson was lauded and praised by the scientific community and Franklin significantly helped advance science.

"Just because a person dies in debt, that does not make them penniless. There are plenty of rich people in debt."

Okay. Many of the founding fathers died in debts that could never be paid. Thomas Jefferson spent a great deal on his library, but today his library is priceless. James Wilson, a contributing author to the Constitution went to prison for debts. They did that in those days. His investments in Ohio land weren't paying off as hoped. Some of the others, Roger Sherman and Samuel Adams were never rich. Sam Adams had to have John Hancock purchase outfits to wear in public.

Still, in a way, if a rich person has debts that can't be paid - are they truly rich?

BTW, nice studies.

I almost brought up Jefferson.

"Still, in a way, if a rich person has debts that can't be paid - are they truly rich?"

Hard to say. I imagine if they live like they are rich and are considered upper-class they would be considered rich. One also has to consider people that should be rich, but made bad financial decisions. They can't really be counted as anomalies. A person who is ambitious and successful can then lose their fortune gambling or through a bad investment. So for at least a little bit they enjoyed the fruits of their labor. Then in the same way they also suffered the misfortune of their bad decisions. Taking on debts one can't afford is normally a bad decision.

Some finanicial risks can pay off post-mortem.

+^'d

fuck tyr, youre such a drama queen. no one wants to go back to that shit but there is a happy middle somewhere. just gotta keep searchin and workin

wah wah wah

yes that middle ground still lies far to the left, you right wing asshole.

Back in the days where the rich were taxed 90% of their income. What would you do if you worked for two weeks and only got 10% of your pay?

Well if my pay was many degrees higher than the average worker and i already had a massive fortune i really doubt i would care.

If 10% of my pay was still a million plus after taxes what I would do is live large..You see that's the difference for people like Bill Gates... tax increases, even huge ones, do not affect their life styles, Warren Buffet has spoken about this at length.

This is the best you can do?

I keep telling you I dont want your crack... jeesh!

Some such as you never fail to vomit their classic Alinsky tactical vitriol, no matter what is posted. . . no surprise at all.

I wish I could vote this post up 20 times it is so true...

You're just as trapped in the Left/Right paradigm as the Obama supporters. Last time I checked, the United States greatest strategic disaster was started by the Bush Administration. I also believe there was a guy named Nixon in that 30-45 year time frame. You remember him, the guy that took us off the gold standard and finished what FDR started. Hand in hand, two sides of the same coin. Until you abandoned Left/Right, you're trapped in doublespeak, my friend. They own you.

touché
Yet that we are in fact involved in class-warfare in this country is beyond rational denial, be it politics, religion, race or income, we are now in a national class warfare struggle of economic ideologies and their now onerous results that we've brought on by our own elected representative governments follies. . . rather pathetic results these past number of years don't you think?

Oh, absolutely. But I also think that it's always been class warfare. The difference being that the upper class has always held most of the cards. America is kind of like the movie Total Recall. (Follow me on this. I have a point.) In Total Recall, Arnold is actually a mercenary paid to infiltrate the Mars resistance. Only to do it right, they wipe his mind and replace it with a guy who is an ideal. A true blue, believer in the resistance. In the end, Arnold chooses that guy's personality over his own. America started with this idea. This new personality. But there were plenty of rich guys who went along believing that they would always, really, control everything. But the idea of America was stronger. Overwhelming. Now we have this idea that everyone is equal taken to the ridiculous extreme, while, ironically, in the law, the one place where we are supposed to be equal, has completely eroded.

But most of that erosion is due to the corporate class. Their constant pressure on the government to give them more and more leeway. Now we literally have a government that is so lawless, it won't prosecute anyone unless its politically viable to do so and a Congress that has all but abandoned any pretense to protecting the people from fraud. So you can't blame those at the bottom from wanting to get SOMETHING from the government, when they no longer get its protection. The money is better than nothing.

Yes it is class warfare and the rich will win, at first. And then, rather than being gracious in victory, the rich will turn around and try to punish the rabble. When the rabble have nothing, they will finally stand up and crush the rich, as so happens every few hundred years or so. As they say, "Hungry people don't stay hungry for long."

People in power need to use George Washington as a model. Here was a guy that had everything and was offered the monarchy of America, but refused. There is no one in the Republican or Democratic parties, I believe that would do that. Maybe Ron Paul. Maybe.

I think that no matter how much the media demonizes the Tea Party movement, it is the start of the revolution of awareness and activity of the citizens, and I hope that it grows into a national fervor of pride in rebuilding our nation out of the now near rubble we are in.

I'd like to see that too, but the Tea Partiers need to do a few things. 1) They need to ostracize the RNC hacks that keep clinging to their movement: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrinch, Fox News, etc. That they let these people in shows you that they're still too willing to go down to the polls, hold their nose and vote Republican. Flipping the coin will not work.

2) They need to stop supporting the rampant militarization of America and stop equating it with patriotism. It's anything but and its the primary reason we're going broke.

3) They need to face up to facts that the Bush Administration was one of the most disastrous and inept that's ever held power. Although previous administrations laid the groundwork, it pales in comparison to what the Bushies did.

4) They need to support indicting Bush and his cronies. You can't begin to indict Obama and his cronies until you admit where the problem really started (at least in the short term). In the long term, you have to go back at least as far as Regan, who screwed us royally by rigging the unemployment figures in the government's favor, amongst other things.

Tea Partiers originate from the Right and they cannot build credibility until they clean their own house or break free of it. Personally, I'd prefer they break free completely. The Ross Perot movement notwithstanding.

I think they are aware of the need for cohesive growth and direction and are not nearly as one sided in their partisanship as their opposition and media would have you believe.
I guess time will be the telling tale.

even if we begin as the smallest of ripples the movement has begun and will turn into a tsunami that will engulf the country toward a better future

Hmmm. A nice sentiment, but as the Founders believed, never trust anyone. The model they are pursuing is the same as the RNC and DNC. Another political party. If it's already compromised now, how can it effectively change things? And it's icons aren't just flawed, they are the same icons that were in the RNC five minutes ago.

I believe the Tea Party is the prototype of the next movement, which must be virulent anti-interventionist.

What exactly makes you think the left have anything to do with Marx? Marxism is a fallacy and will never work in the real world. I think almost everyone can agree on that. Also Marxism =/= communism if you didnt know. The mere fact that you think the left unquestioningly supports Marx's theories just shows how much of "your" opinion you borrow from right wing talking points.

Also what makes you think the "left" has dominated political thought in the United States for the last 30-45 years? What about Bush Jr and Sr, Reagan or Nixon? Were they leftists too? Those same Presidents have had more to do with making the Rich richer and the poor poorer than any of the Democratic Presidents weve had during that time period. Tax cuts on the ultra wealthy does nothing to help the lower and middle classes since WE are the ones who have to pay more to make up for that lost revenue.

BOTH Liberals and Conservatives have crazy conspiracy theories so dont even go there. Or do you really think Obama is a Kenyan, anti-freedom anti-American, Muslim terrorist sympathizer born outside the country and using a fake birth certificate?

The fact is our leaders both Democrats and Republicans are fucking this country up for their own benefits. If you can remember a few months back the CONSERVATIVE Supreme Court eliminated restrictions on outside financing of Political candidates and gave Corporations the rights of people. The real question is what are we the people going to do about it?

What has been unfolding inside of the time frame previously mentioned is quite obvious;
1.) You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2.) What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3.) The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4.) When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.
5.) You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

If you have a nation of producers you have a prosperous nation. If you have a nation of producers that are out numbered by non-producers who only survive on the sweat of the producers then you have a failed or failing nation.
Note:
Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft. They must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy rather than admiration of success reigns.

In contrast, Western civilization began with a very different ancient Greek idea of an autonomous citizen, not an indentured serf or subsistence peasant. The small, independent landowner — if left to his own talents and if his success was protected by, and from, government — would create new sources of wealth for everyone. The resulting greater bounty for the poor soon trumped their old jealousy of the better off.

Citizens of ancient Greece and Italy soon proved more prosperous and free than either the tribal folk to the north and west, or the imperial subjects to the south and east. The success of later Western civilization in general, and America in particular, is testament to this legacy of the freedom of the individual in the widest political and economic sense.for some reason America is returning to a peasant mentality of a limited good that redistributes wealth rather than creates it.
The more this administration castigates insurers, businesses and doctors; raises taxes on the upper income brackets; and creates more regulations, the more those who create wealth are sitting out, neither hiring nor lending. The result is that traditional self-interested profit-makers are locking up trillions of dollars in unspent cash rather than using it to take risks and either lose money due to new red tape or see much of their profit largely confiscated through higher taxes.

No wonder that in such a climate of fear and suspicion, unemployment remains near 10 percent. Deficits chronically exceed $1 trillion per annum. And now the poverty rate has hit a historic high. We are all getting poorer in hopes that a few don't get richer.

What do I really think of Obama? . . well since you asked;
~ Much of what Obama says is not believable. To workers in the Rust Belt, he said he would redo the North American Free Trade Agreement. His economist told the Canadians that it was a fib ... and, of course, it was.
Many had voted for Obama because they were tired of Republican wars. Now they have a Democratic war ... and a commander in chief ill at ease with the military and with military questions.
Americans weren't about to elect an open leftist. Millions of Obama voters had little interest even in his mainstream liberalism. His health care law alarmed them. They were happy with the care they had.
Many voted for Obama because the Republicans were in charge when Wall Street imploded. Evidently, the GOP did not know how to run the economy. Now a New York Times poll says 57 percent of Americans think Obama doesn't know, either.

Americans are mostly passive law-abiding individuals who wish to live their lives with minimal intrusion of government as the Constitution intended. If right-wing extremism did exist, it would be in the form of individual anarchy, not as some coercive organizational conspiracy. Conservatism is individualistic, not socialistic, and that's exactly why the revolutionary collectivists find it intolerable. The existence of any right-wing, capitalist threat to the rule of law and our constitutional sovereignty is simply a "bogeyman-under-the-bed" ruse contrived by the Left to deflect attention from its own agenda to "fundamentally transform America."

It's deadly clear that Obama's progressive and revolutionary left have near-zero tolerance for the civil rights of any individuals who choose to live in opposition to the liberals gestating collective. It's also clear that there is nothing on the conservative, yet-to-be-defined "far right" that represents a threat to the constitutional fabric of the country in the way of the activist, ideologically driven left and their postmodernist relativism.

There is so much wrong with your comment. People want to work. Our jobs were sold away by conservatives and corporate worshipers. The upper income group is being over compensated. Criminal behavior by banks and corporations goes unchallenged by our corrupt excuse for a justice system.

Not one of your five points stands up to the least amount of critical thinking.

What makes you think 1/2 the country want to live off the wealth of the other 1/2? Thats absurd. The poor working class families that get welfare generally work harder and get less pay than they are entitled. Surely there are some bad seeds in the system but waste is a part of any project.

To call Obama Progressive is a joke. The man is a centrist to the extreme. Even his "Progressive" Health Care bill is riddled with concessions to the Republicans which make the whole project less effective than it could have been. Whats worse is you say that the "Revolutionary Left" cares not for civil rights. I'm sorry did you sleep through all your history classes? Without the Progressives we wouldnt have proper protection from big business nor would colored people or women have equal rights. Hell its the right that are STILL fighting against equal rights to this day! Just look at the LGBT debates and you will see conservatives standing in opposition claiming they dont want Government to mandate who can be married. And yet on the other side they want the Government to ban stem cell research and make Abortion illegal! The hypocrisy is astounding.

And please dont even bring up ancient Greece and Rome because you obviously have no knowledge on the subject. Not only were the times completely different back then, those same "landowning productive free men" you mentioned were all slave owners who had dozens if not hundreds of slaves doing all their work for them. THEY were the wealthy privileged few of their time while the common man got shafted like usual.

Hell part of the reason the Roman Empire fell was because their entire economy was based off of conquest and exploitation of others and over time the Patricians(aristocrats) grew apathetic and lazy due to the magnificent splendor they lived in. I would even argue that the same thing is happening today in America. Were the richest, most developed nation in the history of the Earth and yet the American people are some of the most ignorant people on the planet, we have some of the lowest turnout rates for voting in the Western world, were in trillions of dollars worth of debt and falling behind in almost every field besides military technology.

This isnt a left/right thing by the way. This whole country is fucked from the ground up.

Much of what we both believe is true, we have lost control of the government that supposedly we elected to represent us, both the left/right paradigms have failed us miserably, but when the dust settles and all the shouting and crying is over, whose fault is that? . . like it or not, it falls into our own laps.

I agree 100%. So again the question arises... what are we gonna do about it?

Term limits with diligent oversight by citizens, get govt out of private enterprise (regulation is necessary, but it must be sound and pragmatic), re-instate the Glass–Steagall Act, do away with pork and lobbyists, abolish public sector unionism (after all they represent our interests, not their own) re-establish the gold standard so our money actually represent real value instead of fiat [good faith and credit] dollars with fiscal responsibility, abolish "entitlement based ethics" (you owe me because it's my right to have everything you have) programs, and much more.
I think the real question is: Do we have the wisdom and guts to do it? . . I seriously don't know.

might want to check with barney "limpwrist" frank. somehow i believe he and many democrats are tied into the banking industry

Surely you're not implying they are so bureaucratically encumbered with special interests (not to mention their near virtually guaranteed voter base) that it will most definitely be the very last to be swept clean, is that not so?