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Occupy CLT sounds like a huge waste of time.
You are following the plan completely and barking up the wrong tree.
The banks are certainly guilty of some serious financial mismanagement, so why didn't those responsible pay?
I am furious that after the biggest swindle and shell game ever perpetrated against a free people that someone, or some group, has not been held responsible.
The government spent trillions to protect entities they deemed 'too big to fail'.
IMHO, NOTHING, is 'too big to fail'.
The banks are only doing what Washington allows them to get away with.
If you want real change, change Washington, reduce the federal government to the levels spelled out in the Constitution.
Freedom is less taxes, & less government.
I am very disappointed in the class envy in this thread.
Too many of you are wanting to tax this fat-cat or that rich-guy, but how about we reduce government and wasteful spending and thereby reduce all of our overburdening taxes?
If you are capable of understanding or caring about history, look up The Stamp Act which spurred the colonies toward rebellion & later our independence from the British crown.
The taxes were theoretical pence on the pound, not 20-40% of wages.
Wake up!
You kids have fun, I'll be riding the Blue Ridge Parkway enjoying this glorious weather.
Not the kind of response I'd expect from a guy proclaiming "Save the Republic". Like so many, you'd choose to vilify those at least trying something and then take a ride ignoring it.
You blame the government and then want less of it - essentially giving freer reign to these financial institutions fleecing the middle class. It may be class warfare, but it certainly isn't class envy when you want those responsible to pay.
Taxing wages is very different then income taxes. So you're right, taxing wages is the problem. It disproportionately puts the onus on the middle class to support the bailouts. So when the "fat cat" or "rich guy" (your words) pays himself a salary of $1 and makes the rest of his huge "compensation" via other means (which are taxed at a fraction of the wages and riddled with loopholes), I'd hope you'd see the obvious imbalance.
"Less government" and "less taxes" are a straw man devised by those who don't really understand the big picture. They need to be accompanied by more revenue to have the overall desired impact. Otherwise it's as an empty of a dogma as most pretend the Occupy movement is using.
It's a game played perfectly by the 1% when disparate groups of people (many of which make about the same money and pay the same amount of taxes) want the exact same result and fight over how to get there.
It means that unions such as the transport workers union, the united federation of teachers, have already joined in these occupy wall street protests. Teachers unions, state employees associations, have done more than enough to cause unaffordable costs of living and assisting in bankrupting states...the opposite of what these occupy protests are supposedly against.
It's hard to go against greed to this extent yet still want to associate yourself with it at the same time.
I love a good anarchy myself but these protests are an enormous waste of time and city resources.
It's disingenuous for to say this when you never intended to participate anyway. So it was just a convenient way for you to subtlety get your agenda across... which is completely wrong BTW. Unrealistic pension obligations set many years ago are the contributing factor at the state level, but that doesn't give free reign to attack the current crop of unions who have lost all that by now. Your misplaced issues are with the unions of decades ago, not today's workers. Picking on the current teachers (as one of your examples) is hilarious since it's already become a profession nobody wants.
This may be a newsflash for you, but the middle class includes the unions and they are part of the 99% that the movement stands for. So the movement would welcome them.
Location: Some got six month some got one solid. But me and my buddies all got lifetime here
4,555 posts, read 10,404,562 times
Reputation: 2162
Quote:
Originally Posted by mullman
Freedom is less taxes, & less government.
I am very disappointed in the class envy in this thread.
Too many of you are wanting to tax this fat-cat or that rich-guy, but how about we reduce government and wasteful spending and thereby reduce all of our overburdening taxes?
If you are capable of understanding or caring about history, look up The Stamp Act which spurred the colonies toward rebellion & later our independence from the British crown.
The taxes were theoretical pence on the pound, not 20-40% of wages.
Wake up!
Absolutely.
I was all about lowering the debt ceiling. Not raising it a penny, not keeping it the same. Lowering it. We'd get a real good idea where elected officials truly stood when it really came time to make a hard decision. Years of compromise helped get us into a mess where now the EPA alone has to find 1.2 billion dollars in budget cuts. Years of media soundbytes such "it's for our health", "it's for the air we breathe" and "it's for the children" and God forbid you oppose ANYTHING that's "for the children", even though that money is lining too many pockets.
(The same demonization that has taken a bit of the wind out of the tea party sails by being branded as a racist group. The one group doing precisely what they were voted in to do.)
Compromise my a$$.
I love this administration with it's "we all have to share the sacrifice yet still run wild with your tax dollars" mentality. Ridiculous.
Location: Some got six month some got one solid. But me and my buddies all got lifetime here
4,555 posts, read 10,404,562 times
Reputation: 2162
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeyKid
It's disingenuous for to say this when you never intended to participate anyway. So it was just a convenient way for you to subtlety get your agenda across... which is completely wrong BTW. Unrealistic pension obligations set many years ago are the contributing factor at the state level, but that doesn't give free reign to attack the current crop of unions who have lost all that by now. Your misplaced issues are with the unions of decades ago, not today's workers. Picking on the current teachers (as one of your examples) is hilarious since it's already become a profession nobody wants.
This may be a newsflash for you, but the middle class includes the unions and they are part of the 99% that the movement stands for. So the movement would welcome them.
If you don't believe that a union such as the NJEA hasn't and doesn't continue to play a huge part in the rising cost of living in that has sent folks in droves to places such as Charlotte (which in effect assists in slowly driving up the cost of living here as well) then there's absolutely no further discussion to be had here. Period, end of story. The occupy movement loses even more credibility in my eyes and becomes even more of a sideshow.
Not the kind of response I'd expect from a guy proclaiming "Save the Republic". Like so many, you'd choose to vilify those at least trying something and then take a ride ignoring it.
I am certainly not vilifying you, I just said it seems like a waste of time.
You are only going to frustrate the guy trying to get to work who earns a meager hourly wage to mop the floors.
The people you are vilifying do not work on Saturday, and rarely Friday.
Quote:
You blame the government and then want less of it - essentially giving freer reign to these financial institutions fleecing the middle class. It may be class warfare, but it certainly isn't class envy when you want those responsible to pay.
Not true. Less government would mean that the institutions who made poor financial decisions would have already failed.
A victim of their own financial slight of hand.
No.Bailout.
And all the gnashing of teeth over the $5/mo debit card fees.
Guess what? Using cash cost you nothing, and many times at independent shops will get you a great discount - always ask.
Quote:
It disproportionately puts the onus on the middle class to support the bailouts. So when the "fat cat" or "rich guy" (your words) pays himself a salary of $1 and makes the rest of his huge "compensation" via other means (which are taxed at a fraction of the wages and riddled with loopholes), I'd hope you'd see the obvious imbalance.
Will not argue with that, but do prepare your own taxes?
Do you do it haphazardly, or do you really sharpen your pencil per se, or use an accountant to make sure you pay the mimimum allowed by the letter of the law?
We fix this whole ridiculous system by going to a flat-tax or a consumption-only tax.
I can't fault the multimillionaire just because he is using a system you & I have voted (through our representatives in Washington) into place.
Quote:
It's a game played perfectly by the 1% when disparate groups of people (many of which make about the same money and pay the same amount of taxes) want the exact same result and fight over how to get there.
Of course.
The status quo can only be maintained by keeping the people divisive and blaming each other, missing the elephant in the room.
If you don't believe that a union such as the NJEA hasn't and doesn't continue to play a huge part in the rising cost of living in that has sent folks in droves to places such as Charlotte (which in effect assists in slowly driving up the cost of living here as well) then there's absolutely no further discussion to be had here. Period, end of story. The occupy movement loses even more credibility in my eyes and becomes even more of a sideshow.
How do you figure that the New Jersey teachers union drove up my cost of living here in North Carolina? That doesn't make any sense.
The biggest factor in my cost of living is housing, and that was driven up by pro-banking policy.
Second biggest is healthcare, and that is being driven up by Medicare.
If you don't believe that a union such as the NJEA hasn't and doesn't continue to play a huge part in the rising cost of living in that has sent folks in droves to places such as Charlotte (which in effect assists in slowly driving up the cost of living here as well) then there's absolutely no further discussion to be had here. Period, end of story. The occupy movement loses even more credibility in my eyes and becomes even more of a sideshow.
NJ... haha - yeah, that's the problem! You can't (and shouldn't) use state specific issues and espouse national austerity / union killing. It makes no sense to me. If NJ has an issue, go tell it to Christie who's already on your side sending his kids to private school while working to crush the teacher's union and ruin public education in that state. That's why people are leaving.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mullman
I am certainly not vilifying you, I just said it seems like a waste of time.
You are only going to frustrate the guy trying to get to work who earns a meager hourly wage to mop the floors.
The people you are vilifying do not work on Saturday, and rarely Friday.
Not true. Less government would mean that the institutions who made poor financial decisions would have already failed.
A victim of their own financial slight of hand.
No.Bailout.
And all the gnashing of teeth over the $5/mo debit card fees.
Guess what? Using cash cost you nothing, and many times at independent shops will get you a great discount - always ask.
Will not argue with that, but do prepare your own taxes?
Do you do it haphazardly, or do you really sharpen your pencil per se, or use an accountant to make sure you pay the mimimum allowed by the letter of the law?
We fix this whole ridiculous system by going to a flat-tax or a consumption-only tax.
I can't fault the multimillionaire just because he is using a system you & I have voted (through our representatives in Washington) into place.
Of course.
The status quo can only be maintained by keeping the people divisive and blaming each other, missing the elephant in the room.
But less government isn't the same unless we talk about a central bank (aka The Federal Reserve). You can chop as much government as you want and if you don't touch the Fed / Treasury (which never is singled out), they still won't let the financial institutions fail. In fact, you'd be playing into their hands by chopping the already joke of regulatory bodies. The bailouts are not happening because we subsidize NPR, Planned Parenthood, education, and the arts/sciences. So, unless you tell us what you mean by "less govt" we have to assume you think that means killing the stuff I mention or the grand generalization of "spending", which once again is a straw man because that never includes the ponzi like big entitlements and the fact that we print our own money to pay our bills.
TARP and stimulus are overt so we hear about them. The central banking cartel (IMF, EU, etc, etc) have their own covert bailout system right under our noses... but I'll stop there and not put on my tinfoil hat.
Remember, cash does "cost you more" when they lower its value through inflation... and a "flat tax" better not be a wage tax. That's exactly the whole point of "paying your share".
If you don't believe that a union such as the NJEA hasn't and doesn't continue to play a huge part in the rising cost of living in that has sent folks in droves to places such as Charlotte (which in effect assists in slowly driving up the cost of living here as well) then there's absolutely no further discussion to be had here. Period, end of story. The occupy movement loses even more credibility in my eyes and becomes even more of a sideshow.
The NJEA is not the problem. They agreed to contracts which paid them at or below the cost of living in NJ. They in return were to be given better Healthcare and penision. During the 2000's every Gov. used the rising stock market assests in the pension to cover the monies that were suppost to be put in and the Pension Admin. also bought into those great Mort.DS. So the Gov. were able to balance there budgets.
In comes Christie and he follows the Repub. class warfare and tries to kill the union. The man will not be re-elected because in NJ He cut the Corp. Income Tax forceing the Property tax to go higher by 28%.
The People in the Occupy wall street are at work during the day and they come down to protest during the evening. Yes there are some strange people there,just as that other movement. I would advise all to watch and listen and not to assume.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,670,113 times
Reputation: 10256
Oh lord. . . just a few points.
Concerning unions. Unions did not kill Detroit. There were many factors involved. Unions did not kill the American automobile industry. Management did that all by themselves. When I graduated from college in 1973 I wanted a small car. The American choices were the Vega, the Pinto & the Gremlin. I bought a German made Opel (GM subsidiary in Germany) Then there was the diesel debacle. The Europeans were building good diesel cars, the American versions were god-awful. Ford finally figured out that they could sell small cars if they made a decent one, so they brought one over from Germany. It is not the union's fault if the management could not figure out that the way to compete with the foreign car manufacturers who were selling small cars was to build a decent small car.
The public unions in NJ have nothing to do with the 2 main problems there. One is the Abbott districts, & the other is Christie Whitman's voodoo economics that put a giant hole in the budget & they have been using pension money to plug the hole for all of these years.
People buying houses that they can't afford. . .that's a case where both parties are to blame. When I bought my first house I was told that I could afford more, based on projected future wages. I said no. Sh*t happens. I bought based on what I could afford at that time. I knew what I could afford & they could not force me to do otherwise. I felt no need to get greedy about what might happen.
Quote: Rein in Wall Street and rescue the middle class
It's time for us to end the financial oligarchy so destructive to our economy. If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
The protest movement called Occupy Wall Street has struck a nerve. The demonstrators' goals may be vague but their grievances are very real. If our country is to break out of this horrendous recession and create the millions of jobs we desperately need, if we are going to create a financially-stable future, we must take a hard look at Wall Street and demand fundamental reforms. I hope the protesters provide the spark that ignites that process.
The truth is that millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings because of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street. Even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke agreed when I questioned him this week at a joint economic committee hearing that that there was "excessive risk-taking" by Wall Street. Bernanke also said the protesters "with some justification" hold the financial sector responsible for "getting us into this mess", and added, "I can't blame them."
The demonstrators and millions of sympathetic Americans understand that odds are stacked in Wall Street's favor because of the extraordinary economic and political clout of the big banks. Believe it or not, the country's six largest financial institutions (Bank of America, CitiGroup, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs) now have amassed assets equal to more than 60% of our gross domestic product. The four largest banks issue two-thirds of all credit cards, half of all mortgages, and hold nearly 40% of all bank deposits. Incredibly, after we bailed out the behemoth banks that were "too big to fail", three out of the four are now even bigger than they were before the financial crisis.
Not only do these financial institutions have enormous economic clout, their wealth makes them an extremely potent political force. From 1998 through 2008, in order to achieve their goal of repealing Glass-Steagall and other financial regulations, they spent more than $5bn on lobbying and campaign contributions. They also spent hundreds of millions to water down last year's Dodd-Frank reform bill. After the law was passed, hundreds of millions more were spent to repeal provisions and weaken regulations. They never give up.
Where do we go from here? How do we convert the protesters' enthusiasm into concrete results?
For starters, we should break up the giant financial institutions. Left to their own selfish devices, Wall Street bankers will continue to gamble with other people's money. Sooner or later, when their bets go wrong, they will come back to Congress asking to be bailed out again. Why not nip that in the bud? There also is a sound economic argument against too few owning far too much. The idea that six giant financial institutions can exert such enormous control over the economy should frighten anyone who believes in a competitive free-market system. Good Republican presidents like William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt broke up Standard Oil, the railroad trusts and other huge monopolies a century ago.
Now is the time for us to end the financial oligarchy that has been so destructive to our economy. If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
Wall Street reform also must address the powerful and secretive Federal Reserve. A Government Accountability Office audit that I requested found that the central bank provided $16tn in revolving, low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, multinational corporations and some of the wealthiest people in the world. The Fed even helped bail out other central banks around the world. When Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the Fed acted boldly. Today, with the middle class collapsing, the Fed must act with equal vigor.
Under emergency provisions already in law, the Fed has the authority to provide low-interest loans to small businesses that are starving for capital so that they can create the millions of jobs our economy needs. It should do so. The Fed also has authority to make credit card issuers stop bilking consumers with sky-high fees and interest rates of 30% or more. Especially in a recession, working people use credit cards to stretch their paychecks for basic needs. Usury is already regarded as a sin in the eyes of every major religion. It should be a crime. The Fed has the authority to limit interest rates and fees. It should do so.
The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are shining a light on one of the most serious problems facing the United States: the greed, recklessness and power of Wall Street. Now is the time for the president and Congress to follow that light – and act. The future of our economy is at stake.
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I bought a German made Opel (GM subsidiary in Germany) Then there was the diesel debacle. The Europeans were building good diesel cars, the American versions were god-awful. Ford finally figured out that they could sell small cars if they made a decent one, so they brought one over from Germany. It is not the union's fault if the management could not figure out that the way to compete with the foreign car manufacturers who were selling small cars was to build a decent small car.
