Occupy What?
Playing With Fire
Occupy Wall Street follows three years of sloppy presidential name-calling — “millionaires and billionaires,” slurs about Las Vegas and the Super Bowl, profit-mad, limb-lopping doctors, introspection that now is not the time for profits and at some point we should cease making money, spread the wealth, punish our enemies, and all the old Obama boilerplate. Someone finally got the message about the evil 1%.
When Ms. Pelosi and President Obama voice support for the protestors, we enter 1984. Does that mean that the Pelosis now pull their millions out of Wall Street, that the First Family eschews the 1% at Martha’s Vineyard and Vail? That Obama turns his back on Wall Street cash, and, for once, accepts public funding for his 2012 campaign? Postmodern class warfare is an insidious business, and hinges on its advocates not looking in the mirror.
No wise politician should invest in the bunch like those rampaging in Oakland. Their nocturnal frolics are a long way from Woody Guthrie’s Deportee, the Hobos’ “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” and the world John Steinbeck fictionalized. It is the angst of the wannabe class, overeducated and underemployed, which chooses to live not in Akron or Fowler, but in tony places like the Bay Area or New York, where annual rents are far more than a down payment on a starter house in the Midwest. Being educated, but broke and in proximity to the wealthy of like upbringing and background, are ingredients for riot.
I saw videos of youths burning things in Oakland, but was told that it “was a small minority” and atypical of the protest. Not long ago I saw no clips of anyone spitting at black congresspeople wading into the Tea-Party demonstration, but was told they did and that it was typical of tens of thousands of racialists on the Mall.
But Some Are Less Equal Than Others
I don’t think the protests are really much over the Goldman Sachs bailout, or jerks like revolving-door Budget Director Peter Orszag starting back up at Citigroup, or Solyndra crony capitalism. Apparently, most middle-class and upper-middle class liberals—many of them (at least from videos) young and white—are angry at the “system.” And so they are occupying (at least until it gets really cold and wet) financial districts, downtowns, and other areas of commerce across the well-reported urban landscape. As yet there is no definable grievance other than anger that others are doing too well, and the protestors themselves are not doing at all well, and the one has something to do with the other. I am not suggesting union members and the unemployed poor are not present, only that the tip of the spear seems to be furious young middle class kids of college age and bearing, who mope around stunned, as in “what went wrong?”
Then there is a wider, global phenomenon of the angry college student. In the Middle East, much of the unrest, whether Islamist, liberal, or hard-core leftist, is fueled by young unemployed college graduates. Ditto Europe in general, and Greece in particular: The state subsidizes college loans and the popular culture accepts an even longer period between adolescence and adulthood, say between 18 and 30 something. Students emerge “aware,” but poorly educated, highly politicized, and with unreal expectations about their market worth in an ossifying society, often highly regulated and statist.
The decision has been made long ago not to marry at 23, have two or three kids by 27, and go to work in the private sector in hopes of moving up the ladder by 30. Perhaps at 35, a European expects that a job opens up in the Ministry of Culture or the elderly occupant of a coveted rent-controlled flat dies.
Students rarely graduate in four years, but scrape together parental support and, in the bargain, often bed, laundry, and breakfast, federal and state loans and grants, and part-time minimum wage jobs to “go to college.” By traditional rubrics—living at home, having the car insurance paid by dad and mom, meals cooked by someone else—many are still youths. But by our new standards—sexually active, familiar with drugs or alcohol, widely traveled and experienced—many are said to be adults.
Debt mounts. Jobs are few. For the vast majority who are not business majors, engineers, or vocational technicians, there are few jobs or opportunities other than more debt in grad or law school. In the old days, an English or history degree was a certificate of inductive thinking, broad knowledge, writing skills, and a good background for business, teaching, or professionalism. Not now. The watered down curriculum and politically-correct instruction ensure a certain glibness without real skills, thought, or judgment. Most employers are no longer impressed.
Students with such high opinions of themselves are angry that others less aware—young bond traders, computer geeks, even skilled truck drivers—make far more money. Does a music degree from Brown, a sociology BA in progress from San Francisco State, two years of anthropology at UC Riverside count for anything? They are angry at themselves and furious at their own like class that they think betrayed them. After all, if a man knows about the construction of gender or a young woman has read Rigoberta Menchu, or both have formed opinions about Hiroshima, the so-called Native American genocide, and gay history, why is that not rewarded in a way that derivatives or root canal work surely are?
The protesters themselves aren’t nearly as bad as their enablers in the commentary elite, who opine that it really is some ‘cosmic injustice’ that some have more than others. To them, the notion that one percent of the population “controls” 90% or more of the “Wealth” is evidence of an injustice, rather than an acknowledgement that those who create wealth tend to have more of it than those who don’t.
Adam Smith’s observation that a mutually beneficial exchange actually enriches *both* parties has been discarded in modern economics, replaced by the age-old notion that wealth is only taken from one group by another, just as though it were a commodity dug out of the ground, or picked off a tree. Econ 101 probably repeats such drivel these days, on PC-campuses nationwide.
ET – even worse now, on CBC Radio Canada (ahem) nearly every interview ends with “do you sympathize with the OWS protestors”? (Which ones – the rapists, the drug addled, the disruptive and violent?). I feel bad for young people who can’t get jobs, but I feel even worse for them if they don’t understand why their hip hop major indebted them without a certain promise of a six figure job right out of the chute.
VDH is brilliant as usual.
The problem as I see it is corrupt institutions of liberal knowledge.
Currently the game is a corrupt govt. feeding corrupt colleges and universities with the Mother’s milk of liberalism, money.College tuition is based on one and only one thing.How much money can students borrow from govt. backed institutions?
This amount gets bumped up by scared to death,gutless politicians every year and the moment the bump occurs colleges and universities miraculously increase their tuition.What a huge coincidence.
Merge that little tidbit of info with the fact that we no longer teach Ayn Rand,Milton Friedman or the Wealth of Nations but counter with intrinsic underwater basket weaving and the psychology of gay moneys in Indonesia as majors with minors in the eclectic study of African wildabeasts yet another sure fire winner in the world of making a living.
Couple the two together and you have the making of an educational disaster for entitled youths who expect a four year college degree in the psychological study of Peruvian ants to yield 80k per year, a fat 401k and early retirement at 55.They are crushed to find that the HR clerk at their local capitalist corp. all but laughs as they present their resume into their initial entrance into the real world.
You just can’t beat the free market and the capitalist trade of an eight hour day for a paycheck for work that is actually needed.
The spoiled youth of today will eventually leave Oakland, NYC or where ever they are occupying and get in line at the local Burger King, Starbucks or where ever they can find work. They will start at the bottom and hopefully work their way up and wake up along the way.
By age 50 they are one of us if all works out.
Yes, today’s liberal education is at fault, but so is the predominance of Jeffersonian nostalgia for an agrarian way of life, together with hostility to “the money power.” One most decorated professor is Gordon S. Wood, whose first book trashing “natural aristocrats” in support of the New Deal and the progressives in general is dissected here: http://clarespark.com/2011/10/30/collectivism-in-the-history-establishment/. I strongly recommend too Stephen F. Knott’s book Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth.
Problem is, a great many of the scientific/technical/engineering/math jobs go to h-1b and other foreign visa holders, or are offshored. Even graduates with those degrees find fewer prospects. And older people with that same background – forget about it; they’re too expensive to insure. See: The Occubaggers, the education bubble, and YOU
To a point. If your willing to move and hold one of those degrees, you can get still get a good job.
The notion that one person’s wealth robs another derives from the myth of the pie. The presumption is that an economy is static, and that what one consumes another cannot have. Patently false. An economy is dynamic by its very nature. The appropriate metaphor is an ecology. Where activity abounds, as in the rainforest, more and more energy–sunlight, plant carbohydrates and animal proteins, manufactured goods and offered services–enters the system and becomes available for trade. Niche livelihoods are created. Life increases. Where activity is sparse, as in the desert, less energy is captured and traded, niches disappear or become fiercely competitive. Life decreases. A free market economy like America’s is a rain forest; a socialist economy like Soviet Russia’s is a desert.
Thomas, that is an awesome analogy! I’ll be repeating it, trust me. :o)
Perfect metaphor. One issue should be of great concern to conservatives and anyone interested inthe rescue and preservation of the form of government established by the founders of this nation: The monopoly of liberal thinkers over higher education and their easy access to the minds of those who,as Rush Limbaugh refers to them, are nothing but ‘skulls full of mush’, just waiting to be ‘molded’ as they try to prepare themselves for the real world. Allowing this monopoly to continue will seal the fate of the Republic, and the prognosis could not be worse.
As immigrants, my husband and I are dismayed at the mentality of ‘entitlement’ which has permeated even institutions of higher learning. My husband, a former electrical engineer, and a professor since the age of 59, has faced accusations from students who failed to achieve even minimum standards, and pressure from the highest level administrators (pressure which he ignored) to give these students a passing grade. These individuals are doomed to fail because they are neither able nor willing to compete under normal conditions, much less under highly competitive ones. Their only recourse to survive is to demand a ‘share’ from those they consider ‘luckier’
Beautiful metaphor, Thomas. Businesses, both large and small are the trees that create the canopy which shelters and promotes the growth of all the plants and animals, the symbionts represented by individuals, families and communities. Statists are the short sighted and ignorant ones clear-cutting the forest, armed with the ridiculous notion that they can improve on the natural order by controlling and “managing” the subsequent rounds of growth. Only it never works out that way, and by the time the fools realize their folly (if they ever do), it’s too late. They have destroyed the once thriving the ecosystem.
Let me expand the metaphor for one more step. As the driver of a forest or desert ecology is sunlight, the driver of a human economy is human creativity and energy. People want to make things, do things, fix things, for themselves and their chosen group of family, friends, or society. That’s human nature shaped by a million years of evolution.
A free market economy offers many more opportunities for individuals to contribute, either as inventors, artists, and thinkers devising improvements to what exists, or as ready hands to make those inventions and ideas come alive. A closed, command-and-control economy strangles that creativity and energy by denying its power–except to a chosen class of government bureaucrats. All the rest is sunlight falling on sand. People provided the necessities of life without the opportunity to expand and build meaningfully soon sink into boredom and mischief. Eventually, the struggle over crusts consumes all their energy, like scorpions grappling in the desert.
– as with others earlier, time to leave PJMedia. Will follow and read you at your Private Papers site.
The misguided Occupy Wallstreeters have simply been Community Organized .
“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on Paul” J. Adams.
A government which robs the productive to redistribute to the unproductive can always depend on Obama, Chavez, Castro, Bernie Saunders, Democratic Party, New York Times and every communist entity around the globe.
The OWSers call themselves the 99% to indentify with the poor which gives them ideological cover. But with some exceptions, the OWSers are really part of the 20% and need to spend some effort figuring out the economy and how to get a job which isn’t easy the first few times. As part of the 20%, they Occupy a fairly advangtaged part of the economy.
Their argument appears absurd when you realize that it is the 20% which protests the appparent numerous 1%-ers they see all around them in NYC or SF.
Envy has become the most powerful force in the world, and the one that is easiest to exploit.
The president of the United States is effectively basing his entire re-election campaign on pissing people off at other people who have more, even though the people he is pissing off live better in many ways than anybody could have lived a few decades ago.
Not envy, but spite.
“even though the people he is pissing off live better in many ways than anybody could have lived a few decades ago.”
Indeed, they live better in many ways than most people on the planet live now.
Pretty true and devastating comments. Unfortunate how what was once considered belaboring the obvious and common sense now requires essays.
I think we’re giving more attention to OWS than it deserves; it is a meaningless affair really, conspicuous more for who sponsors and sides with it than the people on the ground.
In those terms, nationwide, there are probably fewer people involved in OWS than a single major league baseball game and you can multiply that by 81 times all the teams.
No one considers the size of the crowd at a major league game a seminal event nor should OWS be considered as such. It’s fringe lunatics.
I’m paying attention to the OWS because they have been organized by the creators of our neo-aristocracy for the purpose of serving as the big stick it theorizes will cause us to believe said bureaucracy has been speaking softly.
The proffered narrative is intended to ratchet the so-called mainstream consciousness even further toward the glorious future dystopia championed by the left.
@6 Jane Air:
“It’s fringe lunatics.”
I’m surprised, no one’s quoted Willy Tip o’the Spear:
“It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.” — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 26-28)
Brilliant, beautifully written piece! Thank you.
Along with all of this comes ever stranger thinking. Everywhere I turn I see this newthink. What’s that you ask? Goes like this. We are having an argument at Western Michigan U. right on the front page of the Kalamazoo Gazette between the University administration and a few green students about 15 new solar powered Electic Car charging stations (size of a couple of large refrigerators from the looks of it) that cost $700,000 from a grant from the DOE’s part of the Stimulus. They’ll be used to charge the University Ford electric vans (this would make sense as it is highly unlikely that there is even one electric car on a campus of 20 some thousand students or in our city of 180,000).
Unfortunately the admin cut down 9 locust trees in order to insure that the solar panels had enough sunlight. Well the students are in an uproar about this. They are scolding the president and administration about the carbon absorbtion they have lost by cutting these trees down. But the Admin is fighting back with their own statistics on carbon units saved with the vans and they plan to plant 18 trees to make up for the loss of the locust trees. Sounds like these young environmental studies students aren’t buying into it though. It could get ugly here in Kalamazoo.
I am still sitting and re-reading this Gazette article trying to understand how the hell we got to this point.
I guess what confonds me is how asleep at the wheel I/we have been as this insanity of OWS movements, the incursion of the left (communists) into all facets of our society has happened with what I thought incredible speed (and still somewhat think that), but I am not at all sure we can turn this tide back. The story I just relayed is only one of many I have that are occuring everywhere, all the time, and it seems a lot of people look and listen nod their head and go about their business. No big deal.
We have way too many uninformed citizens, who accept what they are told by the left through the MSM media and recite verbatim the “millionare/billionare, anti-capitalist, anit-american rant” everyday, all the time, as the truth. Yes surely our young are in the game, but many older people are caught up in these rants of the left as well.
We are in very serious trouble unless there is a major shift come November 6, 2011. I have no doubt, personally, that most likely the republicans will take the presidency and both houses. What scares me is that I am not at all sure that will make any difference as we continue our march into the valley of decline.
We will see.
“…the incursion of the left (communists) into all facets of our society has happened with what I thought incredible speed (and still somewhat think that), but I am not at all sure we can turn this tide back.”
History has shown that in times of deep economic stress, worried citizens can turn to extremes.
Here in the U.S. during the 1930s during the Great Depression, you had the Communist Party, the German-American Bund, Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and other radicals and demagogues all becoming more popular day by day.
And of course in Germany, where the Depression was if anything worse than in America, the people trashed their democratic constitutional Weimar Republic to follow a lunatic who took all their freedom away and plunged their country into war.
Democracy keeps the support of the people only as long as it is perceived to deliver on its economic promises. If it doesn’t, you’ll be surprised (though I wouldn’t be) how quickly the people can be persuaded to dump it. All those brave words about liberty and justice and opportunity for all suddenly sound pretty hollow when you’ve been unemployed for over a year.
And so turning this tide back requires exactly what it required in the 1930s: A strong leader of our democratic system who will be doing his utmost to restore a growing economy and full employment. Rather than the weak and almost nonchalant approach we’ve gotten from Obama. That’s the only way to convince young Americans and poor Americans not to follow the radicals and the anti-American subversives. They have to believe that our current system can work. We have to show it can work.
As I always say: Nothing succeeds like success.
“Democracy keeps the support of the people only as long as it is perceived to deliver on its economic promises. If it doesn’t, you’ll be surprised (though I wouldn’t be) how quickly the people can be persuaded to dump it.”
Interesting thought. But the US has been through numerous depressions. I wonder how close this country has come to succombing to demagogues in the past.
One thing for sure, our current demagogue is working overtime to persuade the people to dump democracy for him. He’s a sweetheart, isn’t he.
Ever heard of FDR? The only American President to ever serve more than 2 terms? We succumbed 70 years ago, we are just now reaping what was sowed during the “New Deal”.
There’s some truth in that, since FDR did his share of lashing out at Wall Street, but I don’t think it’s unconditionally true. Huey Long would be a better example.
Wrong! FDR’s excesses were the warning bell.
Now, 70 years later we’ve got the doom gong.
And stop the “we” business about ignoring the signs.
You “we” sneeringly despised the Jeremiahs like myself since the 50s.
I went Galt in 1969 after they started burning our cities and putting drugs and porn into my kids’ school.
How wonerful you’re *surprised*.
Just wait for the surprises waiting round the corner!
There has been a radical populist side of American politics longer than there has been a United States of America. Bacon’s Rebellion, a hundred years before the Revolution, was a populist revolt against indenture and the fact that the claims of large aristocratic landowners prevented the freed or escaped from indenture from acquiriing land. Of course, the net result was a lot less immigration on someone else’s dime in exchange for a term of indenture and later a great unpleasantness in large measure over the African slaves that replaced the indured English and Irish.
All through the last third of the 19th Century and well into the 20th Century in The South, e.g., William Jennings Bryan and Georgia’s Tom Watson, populist rebellion simmered just below the boil in US politics. My father and grandfather, Hardshell Baptist Southern yeoman farmers, worshipped Watson and his protege Eugene Talmadge. Both Watson and Talmadge are best known for their racism but that’s because History is largely written by Yankees who never understood the Southern yeomanry. That Native populism came to be supplanted by communism in the early 20th Century and there is a good argument that we were only just the right inciting incident away from our own “October Revolution” from the ‘teens up until WWII. Some argue and with some justification that FDR’s New Deal was the Marxist Historic Compromise. The communists were driven to ground after WWII and we who know that Progressive was just a polite word for communist fellow traveller have become older and fewer. The communists showed up in force again, albeit mostly surreptitiously, in the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements of the ’50s and ’60s but with the end of the Draft went to ground again, appearing only in the more radical enviromentalist actions. We joked when Jerry Rubin did that stockbroker commericial, but we should have paid more attention. Jerry might have become a broker, but he was still a communist. Lots of ’60s radicals took the lesson of becoming “Clean for Gene” and knowingly or not followed Gramsci’s prescription for a communist takeover in the industrialized West. They’d had the media and the Academy since the 20s and 30s and during the ’30s and ’40s got a firm grip on the unions and entertainment. HUAC, McCarthy, and the Taft-Hartley Amendment ended the public face, but they stayed busy and just when we thought the wall had fallen, the USSR was no more, and the menace was done, Soros and the public employee unions gave us Comrade Obama.
We’ve been here before. Under Carter we were told our best days were behind us. That we were an America in decline. Back then it was the Japanese that undercut us and unemployment was in the double digits along with double digit inflation.
Then came Ronald Raegan. The left said he would destroy the world. The entertainment industry provided us with movie after movie of a world blown up. Music videos showed a dottering old fool blowing up the world. Yet we prospered. A decade long depression lifted and he gave us hope. Made us feel good to be Americans. Made us believe we could do anything we wanted to.
That’s what we are lacking. A leader that inspires. We can point fingers at obama all day long – but WE put him there, just as we put Carter in before him. Perhaps we can thank our commie institutions that just don’t educate like they used to, but then again Abraham Lincoln had no formal schooling and he inspired.
We can hope there is a Cincinnatus out there, but we’d best prepare to defend ourselves with lesser men.
We all need to run the numbers on these green scams.
$700k grant to charge how many electric vans?
The Fisker and the Telsa run $100k and the Chevy Volt sold something like 32 units the first month.
I suspect that even with the DOE grant, the electric car deal at W. MI Univ. is not economically.
In other words, run the numbers on the green scams and see if they make economic sense with and without subsidies.
My alma mater, Creighton, got some free government money to put up some solar panels. The student newspaper printed some of the numbers and, while I can’t recall the exact number, the project made no economic sense even with the government grant.
Translation: The Green Movement is a complete scam. We have reached Max Environmental Improvement (“MEI”). MEI and a Green Freeze is our key to economic prosperity!
My Fellow Bloggers
Sorry about the second post, I didn’t know it was possible on this site. Punched once and left, punched again with additions and now this. Apologies to all.
Cornhead FYI, grew up in Nebraska on a farm and have been working and traveling with no bounds since the age of 21, U of N graduate. Seen most of what the world has to offer. It can be pleasant and damned and there we have it.
Ain’t it Grand.
Regarding locust trees: Tell the agitators not to worry, the natural range of honey locust includes the entire Mid West, and goes east to include most of the eastern seaboard states, down into Florida, and west to the edge of the Great Plains. There are plenty. The wood is heavy, dense and very durable.
@8. Larsky
Electic Car – love it!
Comes with Western Women’s FGM Studies?
The MSM Discovers the OWS
The mainstream media, currently Barack Hussein Obama’s mainstream media, has long specialized in selective reporting and commentary, highlighting stories and events which comfortably mesh with their liberal slant, overlooking or otherwise minimizing those that don’t.
The liberal print media has perfected that science of unethical journalistic malpractice by squeezing non-meshing stories into inch and a half boxes on pages 49 or 71 which few people read while the liberal broadcast and cable media simply ignore them since, after all, their time is limited.
Matt Drudge unearthed and publicized the whole, sordid Bill-Monica tale weeks before the MSM ever mentioned sleaze in the Oval Orifice and stained blue dresses. Bubba was their boy and they would do nothing to tarnish his aura. Sound familiar? Time reporter Nina Burleigh even offered Clinton a Lewinsky during his impeachment saga to thank him for keeping abortion legal.
Bubba wisely passed, I think.
Former presidential hopeful Jumpin’ Johnny Edwards didn’t pass on much in his pursuit of the 2008 Democrat nomination, least of all with Rielle Hunter. While his wife lay dying, he was kicking up his tarheels for months with Rielle, fathered her child, and paid her off, all under the unknowing noses of the keen investigative staffs of the MSM who didn’t want smarmy facts to get in the way of Edwards’ candidacy.
Ultimately, it took the National Enquirer to expose Edwards publicly after he exposed himself privately.
Yet, two years later, the mainstreamers were all over Republican Mark Sanford’s scandal when he was caught doing an Edwards with an Argentinian floozie instead of governing South Carolina or hiking the Appalachian Trail.
To paraphrase the motto of the degraded Old, Grey Lady, The MSM covers all the news it sees fit to cover.
In the latest example of skewed reporting, mainstream newsers covered the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations from Day One, but there’s MSM coverage and then there’s honest coverage.
Since the protests against greed were occurring in the belly of the greed beast–where at least half of Americans have invested their futures–and were taking place in the economic capital of the world and spreading like a plague throughout the country, the MSM could hardly avoid noticing, even if it was noticing selectively.
Now seven weeks old in New York, from the outset the demonstrations had an anarchic streak. Within days they began attracting more and more dregs of civilized society and as they contaminated the land they drew more and more neo-Nazis, neo-Communists, and those good, old-fashioned stalwarts of every social upheaval: revolutionaries, anti-Semites, cop-haters, skinheads, perverts, thieves, and vagrants.
However, what has become curiouser and curiouser in the past week is the liberal mainstreamers’ awakening to the growing chaos, not to the anarchic elements of that chaos but mainly to the rapes, the molestations, and the thievery going on in various OWS encampments when representatives of the so-called 99% took time outs from protesting and disupting to violate the human rights of their fellow ninety-nine percenters.
Those attacks on individual rights and safety were considered newsworthty, radical efforts to undermine the foundations of the nation were not. . . (Read more and see OWS photos at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5895.)
Exactly right. Everyone knows that the OWS protests are about venting juvenile frustrations and nothing more—except for the violence.
But the lib media sees it differently. They hope that what they’re saying about the OWS protests will convince people that what Obama has been saying for three years is true and this will help save the Democratic Party from another crushing election defeat. Some lib journalists are so emboldened by the protests that they have even declared Obama a winner next year and that a big dem win will finally convince people that this country really is center left—just as they see it.
These are indeed weird times.
There IS something that we can do about this.
Yes, it’s lawful.
Along with all of this comes ever stranger thinking. Everywhere I turn I see this newthink. What’s that you ask? Goes like this. We are having an argument at Western Michigan Univeristy right on the front page of the Kalamazoo Gazette between the university administration and a few green students concerning 15 new solar powered electic car charging stations (size of a couple of large refrigerators from the looks of it) that cost $700,000 from a grant from the DOE’s part of the Stimulus (the grant had all sorts of restrictions and conditions that the administration had to adhere to in order to get the moneeeyyyy). The charging stations will be used to charge the University’s Ford electric vans (this would make sense as it is highly unlikely that there is even one electric car on a campus of 20 some thousand students or for that matter in our city of 180,000, I know for sure I’ve never seen one). I thought this sort of nonsense only happened in Dr. Hanson’s California (I commuted to LA every other week on a project for a year and a half recently and believe me I get it, Doc please get out while you can, I grew up on a farm too, I understand the connection, but we need you).
Unfortunately the admin cut down 9 locust trees in order to insure that the solar panels had enough sunlight. Well the environmental studies students are in an uproar about this (I’m surprised the local OWS crowd hasn’t stormed the gates yet). They are scolding the president and administration about the carbon absorbtion they have lost by cutting these trees down. But the Admin is fighting back with their own statistics on carbon units saved to STOP global warming with the vans and they plan to plant 18 trees to make up for the loss of the locust trees. Still it sounds like these environmental studies students aren’t buying into it just yet. Folks this could get ugly here in Kalamazoo.
Meahwhile here I sit, just an old business guy of 62 fumbling around re-reading this Gazette article trying to understand how the hell we got to this point.
I guess what confonds me is how asleep at the wheel I/we have been as this insanity of OWS movements, the incursion of the left (communists) into all facets of our society has happened with what I think incredible speed. I suddenly find myself asking how the hell do we turn this tide back. The silly story I just relayed is only one of many I have tuned into over the past year that are occuring everywhere, all the time, and it seems a lot of people look and listen, nod their head and go about their business. No big deal. Meanwhile many of my like minded friends are furious and frankly confused.
We have way too many uninformed citizens, who accept what they are told by the left through the MSM media and recite verbatim the “millionare/billionare, anti-capitalist, anit-american rant” everyday, all the time, as the truth. Yes, surely our young are in the game, but many older people are caught up in these rants of the left as well.
We may be in very serious trouble unless there is a major shift come November 6, 2011. I have no doubt, personally, that most likely the republicans will take the presidency and both houses (if they don’t I am even more happy to be 62). What scares the hell out of me is that I am not at all sure that the republicans will make any difference as we continue our march into the valley of decline.
We will see. Thanks.
Get this. My daughter’s middle school has eliminated advanced classes because the NAACP brought suit and won, effectively saying advanced classes were racist. The Left won again, and the like-minded administration, incentivized only to raise minority scores on state-wide tests, made the change without public announcement. How did we get here, with a nod to the “conservative” George W. who brought us No Child Left behind.
This little story fills me with visceral anger. Are we *really* that far gone? Wasn’t there a story about one of the big communist leaders demonstrating that cutting off the tall stalks of grain to make them all equal made the population controllable? How much farther do we go before we start hearing calls for all people who wear glasses to be executed? (like in Cambodia)
Racist??? I hope the people of that down rose up with anger and FIRED that entire school board.
Wow. I can’t believe how much that worked me up. How awful. That story takes the cake. Racist??? aack.
whoops – typo above: should be “people of that TOWN” instead of “people of that down”. Sorry – was emotional and missed the typo!
How VDH manages to produce one of these gems practically every day is almost beyond comprehension. Writing this good is not common. Writers this good and this prolific are beyond rare. I can’t think of anybody else who comes close to this man. He is a treasure. Now and then, that has to be acknowledged. I think many readers take his genius for granted.
Professor VDH is indeed a gentleman and a scholar. His unique talent for bringing reasoned analysis of our confusing times to the common folk(like me) are without equal. Thankyou Sir!
I agree and one thing we can do in addition to thanking him on these pages, is to buy more raisins. I’m serious.
Funny you should mention raisins. I just bought a big sack of California raisins and thought of VDH as I did so.
I too have no idea how he does it. Sir, you are the one author whose unconventional writing doesn’t read like it was forced. When most of us try to write cleverly it comes across as a please for attention. But your meditations seem to zip to the blog straight from your mind as you gazed at the Walmart parking lot or rolled your eyes at faculty committee meeting.
Schools at every level, whether intentionally or unintentionally (because the teachers can’t do it either) no longer teach the skill of thinking for one’s self. Why did so many supposedly intelligent people crowd into the housing market in the past decade when a little rational analysis and history would’ve told the such manias don’t last? Why does a purportedly “educated” teacher quit his job and take out thousands of dollars in loans to pursue a college degree in PUPPETRY? Did he ever stop to think about the likely costs vs. the unlikely benefits? These are not isolated examples. You can find people who simply do not know how to think every day. Why did so many centrist voters vote for a left wing idealogue in 2008 when his history indicated there was little reason to expect he would pursue anything but radical leftist policies? It’s like people substitute reading a media article or watching TV for actually sitting down and considering their choices and the likelihood they are workable. People no longer know how to think. And the sad thing is, they don’t know that they don’t know.
This is my choice for winning post here.
I don’t know how I escaped the non-thinking upbringing that seems to have also entered my own generation. Things that make you go, “Hm”.
And, I often got sour looks from my “peers” when discussing some issue. Their angst was that I sounded too much like our parents and they said it like it was a bad thing. I chalked it up to their desire to remain ignorant and learn things the hard way.
While active duty as an enlisted guy, the vast majority of my “peers” chose to party, drink their paychecks, get in trouble, act like they were in the military “against their will” and be general ne’er-do-wells. On the opposite side, there were also the “cool guys” who cliqued up and snubbed their noses at me and guys like me who went to night-school, saw their ridiculously slobbering worshipfulness of the higher ups as simple brown-nosing and moved on.
One day, when asked about why I took care of my uniform, pressed it, shined my shoes, etc., I was both annoyed and a little surprised. We all went through the same basic-training, signed the same contract. But I could not figure out what it was about these “peers” who saw their military service as some sort of punishment.
Then it dawned on me. Not unlike the OWS crowd, they were either kicked out of the house, or mom and dad got tired of them being around and said, “you’d better go DO something…I’m not paying for you to suck up our air and food around here anymore”. Well, ok, dads more likely than moms. But geez.
Then, once they realized that mom and dad weren’t around, they decided to let loose with bad behavior. Many was the night I came home after class to the barracks and found vomit all over the floor, the latrines in shambles, water left running, people’s property and clothes thrown about in the hallways, etc.
No, didn’t happen all the time but often enough. Unfortunately, I got to pay the penalty along with everyone else in the building simply because I was a resident. The actual culprits never being found and no one wanting to rat them out.
There is no arrogance quite like youthful arrogance. But while I passed by the people I worked with by getting my education while they partied until their last day in the military, I wonder…sometimes…what became of some of them. Some…I actually ran into after I had earned my commission and they were often in a very bad state. Some blatantly resented me because, in spite of their belittling me for my hopes and dreams, they were twenty times more angry because I had actually done it.
On conversation went like this:
“You think you’re such hot s**t and you think you’re better than me”
“Well, you said it, not me. But let me remind you, while you thought it was a great big joke that I went to night school and really truly WANTED something out of this career, you spent your nights at the NCO club, spending every dime you had on crap. You had the same opportunity as I did…but, you made a choice and I made a different choice.”
That happened more than once and usually left my agitator speechless.
But the OWS’ers are little different. They are now facing the fact that they’ve been had and they have pretty much no one to blame but themselves. But it dovetails in with the fact that people may reach 22 in the same amount of time as they did 30-40 years ago…but they mature much more slowly. Maybe it’s TV, permissive parents, no keeping score on soccer-day, “play-dates” and all the squirrely, touchy-feely BS that has replaced working to win good grades, become an achiever, earn some self-respect, etc. When you put no challenges in front of a child, the child learns to expect reward for doing nothing.
A great object lesson in your story.
I agree completely with you SG-1. The only reason I did not pursue retirement in the Navy was simply because I feared for my life regarding my coworkers. I am / was a submariner, and it takes all 150 people onboard to be on their A-game at all times so that we didn’t die from a fire or some other incident. Thanks to being a politically correct military, the submarine force is no longer allowed to disbar someone who has not earned their qualification pin. In other words, the idiots that came were ordered to stay with us even if they were a liability to everyone else. Like a certain cook I know who couldn’t even tell you where his fire fighting equipment for the GRILL IS. Going out to sea for 6+ months with someone like that? No thank you!
Also, another comment I’d like to make regarding OWS. I just attended Friday Fest, a huge car gathering in the panhandle of Florida, last night. OWS was present handing out numerous different signs to whoever would take one. The irony in this is that their “vendor booth” was located directly next to the biggest Corvette Club in the entire Panhandle. I counted approximately 13 fully restored antique Corvettes sitting next to the “99%”.
Figured that’d be good for some laughs. :)
Evidently, that particular drama teacher forgot that state and local governments have already run out of other people’s money. That means there was nothing left for him when he tried to go back to work.
Those people who tell you to “pursue your passion” and you’ll eventually make money … they’re idiots, and dangerous idiots at that.
Correct. I am a employment counselor. You would not believe the lack of guidance from the so-called guidance counselors in the highschools and colleges. I have problems with schools who admit someone who can’t even declare a major. Would it be so bad to require a paper to be written that states why you want to attend a particular school AND list the steps it takes to actually get a job in that chosen field? It wouldn’t hurt either to list the typical salaries of their chosen occupation. All this is availble from BLS and from O*NET…..from our own gov’t for free!
The OWSers are the 99% – of the “Wah! It’s all about Me!” (WIAAM) class. Their motto: “Ask not what you can do for yourself or your country, demand what the country must do for you.”
John Kennedy famously said — “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”.
Kennedy was paraphrasing several prior historical quotes, but this one sums the wisdom up most bluntly — (paraphrasing) “Are you asking what your country can do for you – or asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.” – Khalil Gibran, The New Frontier (1925).
Over the last 20 or so years the left has pushed and the middle and right allowed, the denigration and rationalized rejection of the values and virtues upon which America was founded and that sustained us for so long.
Benjamin Franklin said something that is very pertinent and a bit frightening:
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
The OWSers already have masters. Were they themselves capable enough to organize the OWS movement, they would be capable of getting jobs – and from the evidence at hand it’s clear that most of them aren’t.
The left have been waging lawfare against us for almost a century. Once the baby-steps were made they began leap-frogging over the will of the people in the last forty years. We didn’t ALLOW this to happen. It went to court and they won. Our courts – which were meant to be the great equalizer between the haves and have-nots have become one of our greatest enemies and destroyers of our culture.
I go to Albertson’s or Walmart …one of those places…and I see little shopping carts with a flag that says “shopper in training”.
The OWS “movement” reminds me of that, “protestors in training”. The small c communists were getting very, very frustrated that nobody had “taken to the streets” to offset the very real, very heartfelt, very spontaneous outpouring of emotion that sprouted the Tea Party.
They were furious that they had zero grassroots movements of their own. So, the fabricated one. With the Workers Party and the ACORN and the fringe radical defecation mindset…they built an astroturd uprising.
Leave it to the home of the Raiders to make it violent and meaninglessly destructive.
But, there is no there, there. It’s a load of crapology…phony sociology with no real aim, no goal, no focus, no intent…except to protest and “show trial” capitalism.
It is a haven for the bizarre and the twisted. Paul Krugman, the knighted Sir Dancelot, has been itching for a spark to ignite against capitalism, Soros has been buying media outlets to promote it and Obama has been pouring kerosene on it…but, it’s simply fiscal flatulence. It makes some noise and it stinks…but, that’s about it.
Small c communism has tanked the economy and the faculty lounge can’t figure out how to start a riot in the streets to point the finger of blame at the free market.
Frankly, I’m sick of them, I’m sick of the protest culture that spawned them and I am sick of the propaganda machine that covers for them. They want to overthrow the system and they are willing to tank it to achieve their goals. They want a war. And…I’m getting to the point where I am willing to espouse giving it to them.
This could have been written in 1969…and I mean that in the most positive way possible.
The Greatest Generation that had spawned the hippies were as annoyed, angry and disappointed in the social miscreants as we are in the OWS losers.
They did have Vietnam to bitch about but their peripheral “issues” were all pretty much “let’s hump on the lawn”-based idiocy. But they used Vietnam to co-opt their “message” of “peace, love, man”. It was as much a load of crap back then as it is now.
Only now, in true Inspector Clouseau fashion, they think they have their target in their sights but they missed the whole point and their anger is sorely misguided. Unlike the beloved Pink Panther films though, all will not end well in spite of Clouseau’s misguided pursuits. They are setting themselves up for more failure and self-dilusional lives. They will find many like-travelers and may of them are very angry as a natural feature of their personality and that will result in people getting hurt, badly.
They want a war. And…I’m getting to the point where I am willing to espouse giving it to them.
Ditto.
The main thing holding me back is that I don’t want to fulfill the “small c’ers” wet dream.
I have a story for you. It’s called the Paris Commune. Basically, Occupy Paris in 1870. There is a very nice treatment by Alistair Horne entitled, “The Fall of Paris, The Siege and the Commune, 1870-71.” Human nature remains the same, we repeat the same themes with different costumes. The French historical comparisons are rich, Michael Moore and the Girondin before the ‘enraged ones’ but them to the blade. You would recognize all of the OWS characters in Paris, 1870. And then there is the ending…the Occupiers would do well to study the ending. Cathartic…
Merci.
I’m a great believer in the wisdom of…
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The “war” needs to be at the ballot box.
1968′s silly tantrums by the same scruffy crowd led to an electoral landslide — 301 to 191 — …for Nixon.
In 1972 it got even better: a 49 state sweep, 520 to 17 electoral votes.
Keep it up, OWS. You’re making Herman Cain look better every day.
“….They want a war. And…I’m getting to the point where I am willing to espouse giving it to them.”
I’m with you cf. The time is coming soon when it needs to be us, the producers, who ‘man the barricades’ and stamp out this mob.
cf: they HAVE overthrown the system!
” But the US has been through numerous depressions. I wonder how close this country has come to succombing to demagogues in the past”
There are many references for business and political leaders desiring to wrest control of US government during severe economic times, the most public was the “Business Plot” in 1933. How much is true is difficult to confirm, but there were hearings and investigation of the nations business and bank leaders to a plot to overthrow the Republic of the United States.
(There are many references to this nation being a Democracy in these posts which is not accurate. The US political system is a Representative Republic, not a Democracy).
It is very easy to label something as Leftist…the problem is we Label social programs as Leftist, while the same program applied to business and banking is called a rescue package and promoted as saving the capitalist system.
In a true capitalist system banks no longer viable are allowed to fail, the government take them over, sell off their assets and holdings to pay depositors and chips fall where they may. The fact we continue to support corrupt banks and their business dealings only multiplies the coming economic crash.
The continued support of a broken global banking system is the root cause of all the themes we are discussing, for some reason completely avoided by writers of this website.
“The continued support of a broken global banking system is the root cause of all the themes we are discussing, for some reason completely avoided by writers of this website”
“broken banking system” is code for Jooos, every demagogues favorite whipping boys.
While the targeting of Jews is both stunning and appalling, I do think it not entirely outrageous to speak of a “broken banking system”. Because some things have gone seriously awry.
I am a gazillion miles from an expert in finance, but as a total amateur trying to make sense of things, it seems that the entire problem can be boiled down to one concept: we have somehow diluted or removed the consequences of failure (i.e. dumb decisions) by financial institutions. Thus, being human, they were adding up costs/benefits and risks, and acting accordingly.
There are ten reasons for the terrible state of the US/global economy: they are, alphabetically…. debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, and debt. The natural mechanism that keeps debt under control is fear by the lender that they will lose their money. (It sure ain’t fear by the borrower of debt slavery, people have bought into that for millenia.) Somehow, that fear has been diminished, and we have the result. It appears to me (the amateur) that the housing bubble was as follows: banks (et al) made a bazillion stupid martgage loans, then “bundled” them and sold the bundles to institutions, who bundled the bundles and sold them up the line, everyone no longer having to fear default as they passed it up, until the massive bundles got to the level of “too big to fail”. And everyone apperently figured on this all the way down the line, and acted accordingly. (If I have it wrong, please tell me.) Something similar applies to our governement debt, and even Chinese et al willingness to loan it.
So, no mention of Jews. Our banks and financial gurus totally screwed the pooch, and here we are. On THIS, I might even be agreeing with OWS (ugh!).
But the answer is to bring back the pain of failure, and make banks and similar pay through the nose for stupid lending practices. They need to HURT if they blow it. And there I assume we and OWS may part ways, though in the end they are incoherent, so who really cares about that anyway.
I should add “Our banks and financial gurus…. AND idiot politicians across the board, but hello Barney Frank, I’m talkin’ to yoooo…. totally screwed the pooch”
Banks loaned money to deadbeats at the point of a gun.
Do you think they suddenly woke up one day, in unison, after practicing conservative lending practices for 50+ years, and decided to make a trillion dollars in loans to people they knew couldn’t pay it back. Just the thought of it is outrageous. Mortgage bankers were the most conservative people in the world.
It was 100% a libwit government forced situation.
I don’t have any particular love of financiers, but if I had been in their situation, with a choice between going along and bankruptcy, I would have chosen to make the best of a bad situation as well. Other than the ones that were already owned or already criminal (i.e., Goldman Sachs, Soros, Countrywide), I don’t blame any of them.
I’m still not sure who’s at fault on the bottom-most line: the realtors, who pushed up the prices of homes to make more money, the consumer, who went to the bank to take out the loan for the overpriced home, or the frenzied mortgage lenders, who signed off on the bad loans on overpriced homes — or the bankers who sold it all up the pipeline — all of which was fueled by greed. I think there’s a lot of blame to spread around, frankly, which begs the question: who should we be mad at? I say we be mad at US. Back in the late 1980s, when I was wishing I could afford even a condo, people were lining up submitting sealed bids for homes in tony communities of Pasadena, Calif., where I lived and those who sold the homes got rich, richer and very rich. I recall paying the realtor who spent 2 weeks doing the paperwork to sell my average bungalow in California in 2004 at least $20,000. Just food for thought.
Occupy Sparta? Too bad those that plow the fields and drill oil wells and catch the fish and make everything that our society consumes are too busy to protest. Reading the sad “we are the 99%” website I’ve not seen one letter that said “I got a degree in welding and now I can’t find a job with full benefits and ludicrous salary to pay off my $200,000 in student loans”, so where are those people? Who tricked half the people in America into getting a degree that is only worth something to the government, not to other people? Would you toil in a field all day or fix someone’s car in exchange for an hour of their time spent administering the office of whatever b.s. government program got a grant to hire them? If you think of trading work for work, it really puts things in perspective. Why should a social worker make the same starting wage as an engineer or an architect, who create things that are actually marketable to other humans? If you want a social justice job, the reward is your smug feeling of self importance, you don’t deserve a high salary too. I was in school with a girl that was in her seventh year of a four year art degree, who had turned down her chance to graduate for three years because she was getting pell grants and other aid, didn’t want to work too much because she didn’t want to lose her ability to get subsidized housing, all because she realized she “wasn’t at a place yet where she could make a good living doing sculpture because people didn’t appreciate her art”. This is the type of person protesting at occupy rallies across our nation, anyone with any real skills is working. Liberals stop maturing emotionally in high school, start a discussion with one about something of consequence if you don’t believe me. Believing the world is fair and we can regulate and legislate a fair and equal outcome for everyone is an immature viewpoint that is uninformed by history.
I love your comment – re “degrees worth something only to the government”. That says it all, fantastic!
The comment at #16 (“Who tricked half the people in America into getting a degree that is only worth something to the government, not to other people?”) reminds me of this, from the California Code of Education:
(i) Career technical education designed and conducted for the
purpose of preparing youth for gainful employment in the occupations
and in the numbers that are appropriate to the personnel needs of the
state and the community served and relevant to the career desires
and needs of the pupils.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=edc&group=51001-52000&file=51220-51229
As a homeschooler in California (located about 30 miles away from VDH), I am required to provide a “course of study” that meets the State Code of Education–meaning that, theoretically, I (and all other educators, whether at public school or at home) must prepare our children for gainful employment that meets the “personnel needs of the state” above anything else. So, not actually a “trick,” but a REQUIREMENT of our state. And that’s where the trouble starts.
I am required to provide a “course of study” that meets the State Code of Education…must prepare our children for gainful employment that meets the “personnel needs of the state” above anything else.
Bureaucrats in training.
Maybe you ought to get your kids down to Oakland so they could meet the recommendations of the California Teachers Assn:
CTA supports Occupy Movement
Interesting site. It seems that most important of all to the teachers is that “corporations” should pay their fair share (thank you, Barack, for the terminology; I wonder if the teachers could have come up with it on their own).
These teachers are presumably educated. So WHO do they think pay those corporate taxes? Is it the customers (higher prices), the owners/stockholders (lower dividends, even for those owners via their retirement accounts–which includes teachers), the employees (lower salaries), or is it the people who don’t get hired because the corporation uses its cash to pay taxes rather than expanding and hiring more people? There IS no one else to pay those taxes.
“This is the type of person protesting at occupy rallies across our nation, anyone with any real skills is working.”
How do you know this?
VDH has clarified something for me: I listen to the socialist liars, from Obama to Paul Krugman, and sputter in frustration that their assertions are accepted as sensible discourse. They seem to be delivering dispatches from a parallel universe not quite in sync with our own. The disconnect between reality and the world as portrayed by leftists, whether in politics, media, academia, or other of their fellow-traveler institutions, is a vast chasm; yet, through the looking glass of political correctness, seemingly rational people respond to their hollow pronouncements as if they were true, factual and had substance. And to the extent that these charlatans hold power, their fantasies define and animate the rest of us. Having perfected Goebbels/Chomsky/Alinsky propaganda techniques while constructing a vast counter-culture within our culture, they have succeded in corrupting our language and skewing our worldview. VDH says it all in one word: surrealism. Unfortunately, those of us with rational perspectives are compelled to live in the “Animal Farm” universe of the Marxists — a place as disconcerting and twisted as any landscape of melting Dali watches.
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
- Orwell
So you’re saying that these protesters are not revolutionaries?
I think the American people have a right to know how many maxi-pads and tampons have been flushed from the Peoples House to that garden. All those women, all that cotton, we want to know.
Mrs. Carter
The problem with everything in the world is that men have been allowed to vote. They created Marxism/Socialism/Communism in the first place. Was Karl Marx a woman? Were any of the various psychotic dictators in the world women?
Where is the outrage against men who vote Democrat?
Why do men rape and pillage in the first place?
Are men inherently violent because of testosterone or because they are a genetic mutation do to testosterone flooding their systems with hate?
Why can’t this world find reality?
Let’s see this country run by ALL women for once. That would be at least an interesting experiment, wouldn’t it, good ol’ boys?
Farrah, your point is well taken.
Marxism, Communism and Socialism were created by men who coveted other men’s wives, property and ultimately other men’s livelihood. Men have enslaved both men and women throughout history for their own personal gain or perversions.
Not to get too biblical on you but “Coveting” was a sin for a reason and it was noted in the bible for a reason.
War was in essence coveting what someone else has and wanting to fight them for it. In current days, war is for oil or jewels or supposedly to keep the ‘peace’ which is of course a lie.
Men who rail against women having the right to vote are laughable considering it’s ‘their’ system ‘they’ set up that women have ONLY had the ability to vote for.
Time to grow up and face who you are, men. YOU created this mess. Not women.
“Marxism, Communism and Socialism were created by men who coveted other men’s wives, property and ultimately other men’s livelihood.”
Say, how do you get that way? I’ve coveted other men’s wives on a daily basis almost since I could walk. It is a simple biological disease [is there any other kind?]. I don’t blame anyone for this, most especially myself. But shouldn’t there be disability payments from some government agency to me for my disability?
Now don’t get snotty with me either. The American Psychological Association in their scientific wisdom quite a while ago made the amazing breakthrough discovery that what used to be called moral lapses were actually simple synapses lapses. I thank you in advance for your support for my unending quest for proper compensation.
PS. My thanks to Victor for tirelessly and creatively pointing out that rich communists like Obama, many Hollywood celebs, and all the rest are nothing but selfish hypocrites to be laughed at and despised.
Farrah dear, put the wine away. You’re making as ass of yourself.
Farrah, more than a few have noted that when women were granted the vote, it began the slow but inexorable rise of federal spending and involvement in our lives cradle to grave, a situation which may very well be reaching a catastrophic denouement in what is the great reality of our time. In essence, it was not men that made “Health and Human Services” writ large the responsibility of the Almighty And Ever Growing State, rather than of individuals and communities.
Not to say either gender should “rule”, but let’s keep a smidge of perspective, shall we?
@Andrew X
Many men LOVED the welfare state and they voted for it because they didn’t wan’t to pay child support.
Men LOVED the idea of abortion too. It freed men and women from the inexorable results of ‘free love’.
And, in case you’re mentally retarded or just not very well schooled, ‘rape’ was a HUGE part of war.
Are you proud of your rapist brethren who fought and raped in order to ‘conquer’?
If so. F*CK YOU.
Charming Anelnnia, but maybe you ought to ramp up the meds a bit.
I did not even mention rape, which you appear to be obsessed with for reasons I will not begin to ponder. What you are saying is utterly non sequitur to what I wrote. Assuming you know what that word means. (See, I can be gratuitously insulting for utterly no reason whatsoever too! Gosh, what fun.)
No one syllable of what you wrote negates a word of what I said, and not one syllable of what I wrote negates what Farrah said. She and I were are having what is called by civilized people, “a discourse”. Then a pinheaded little troll interfered.
As for your last line to me — I saw a great list of the 20 wittiest comeback insults through history one the web recently. Amazingly, yours was not on it.
war is never going away
rape is never going away
it is part of the muck and mire we must tread through as we exist on planet earth
to suppose that these horrible things could go away is one of the first steps towards a totalitarian end…
is this where you want to go?
Well Jesus coming back would put an end to war and rape, but that’s probably not what these people were thinking of.
Pay child support?? Naww as soon as a woman opens up to annother guy all bets are off as far as child support is concearned.
Ah, “Feminist Derangement Syndrome.” All men are the enemy, and any perversion that has occurred throughout history must be directly traceable to men as a group.
Sucks to be you, I guess.
Hmm, I read Farrah’s comment as satirical humor, even though there was a dash of truth in it. (Anelnnia, on the other hand, fits your description.)
Much as I dislike the way The Men are governing us, I have no reason to believe The Women would be better. What we need is a voting population that is capable of rational thought. Probably won’t happen in my lifetime, if ever. Sad. Our representative republic w/free enterprise was a fantastic, successful experiment. What kind of people want to destroy a thing like that?
The National Organization of Women (NOW) lost a huge amount of credibility when it continued their support for one Slick Willie after the Monica story broke.
Their rationale, such as it was, was that Slick Bill was such a hotshot for their “issues”, like daycare provided for working women, a woman’s right to choose (choose what?) so on and so forth.
Reportedly, Obama still enjoys widespread support among women, ostensibly for similar reasons.
Since liberal chicks are torn up their required obeisance to “multiculturalism” and the multiculti requirement to respect each culture’s boundaries (whatever), they lose immense credibility in their failure to universally condemn treatment of women under Islam.
Many many moronic women have entered politics through getting an artificial leg up on the basis of their gender, and the moronic-ness is rearing its ugly head in public life.
Farrah, what do you have to say about Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and Sheila Jackson Lee?
Actually, Farra makes an interesting point.
Men claim to create everything and then complain when their ‘everything’ fails epically.
Men created Communism. Men created Marxism. Men Created Socialism.
Men are ultimately far more jealous of other men than women are of other women. The typical green-eyed monster affixed to ‘women’ could be affixed to men in spades.
You desire other men’s land, other men’s women and other men’s life-force. That is why you enslave, that is why you tax, that is why you enforce regulations, that is why you have crony capitalism and that is why you lie, cheat and steal.
Face it boys, you are bad, bad, bad boys and women are waking up to your evil deeds.
Because women are morally pure, logical beings that never, ever do bad things to good people.
Wow.
What a pathetic, racist, moronic and sexist viewpoint that is.
Last time I checked, women murder, lie, cheat, and steal, just as much, and as often, as men do.
It’s called being human. Deal with it, feminazi.
I give you, Nancy Pelosi, Janet Reno, Hillary Clinton.
Just for starters.
I find the argument “men baaaad….women goooood” to be moot.
Discussing a corrupt and broken bank system is equated with targeting Jews..??
this is the reason solutions cannot be arrived at or provided…people have become so bigoted and paranoid just discussing the problem is considered politically incorrect.
Enjoy the view, your paying for it.
Just like the last 2000 years. It’s the Jooos.
If you are interested in rooting out corruption, wallow in the filth of the Obama administration ($5 trillion in new wasted spending in less than 3 years)…then come back and complain about the Joooos.
Your comment is along the lines of the people who blame Social Security (senior citizen deadbeats, of course, preying on the young), and the tax code (it’s all because I have to pay too many taxes while the rich Jooos get by scot free). Both may be problems, but they explain about .000001% of the disaster the country faces.
The real problems are sitting in DC, licking their fingers.
Greed, envy, jealousy and human nature – go figure……
I do not support the OWS nonsense. And I think they all need a swift kick in their saggy pants.
But let us remember:
1)They are what we made them.
My entire school career, I was force fed this formula:
Go to college > go in debt > get a diploma > ? > Profit!
No mention of alternatives was made. No consideration that not everyone would benefit from a college education was even mentioned. MY own parents were horrified at the notion that anyone would opt out of College in favor of, for one example, a garage computer company that was already worth millions. The OWS ninnies bought the gag, but WE sold it to them.
2)We’re not exactly setting a stellar example ourselves.
The 99% spent and spent and spent and dug themselves into monstrous debt, and now are whining and crying at the bottom of the hole they dug.
Tell me, why does that sound familiar?
The OWS didn’t start the credit card companies. The OWS didn’t create a plethora of government grants and loans that shovel money out the door wholesale to people who were unlikely to repay it. The OWS didn’t create the subprime mortgage crisis. The OWS didn’t ring up a MULTI TRILLION DOLLAR national debt, nor a trillion-dollar deficit. The OWS didn’t make debt consolidation companies and bailout programs a growth industry.
WE did.
And we, as a nation, still expect someone else to solve the problem.
And yet we’re surprised when our young throw the tantrum in public that we throw in private whenever the credit card bill comes due?
Apparently, most middle-class and upper-middle class liberals—many of them (at least from videos) young and white—are angry at the “system.”
In the 1960′s, protesters were angry at the “military-industrial complex”, a slightly (only slightly) more specific object of trumped up scorn.
Multimillionaire Michael Moore dresses like a buffoon, spouts his usual silly Flint, Michigan, shtick, and earns an indulgence?
Few know it, but a large part of Catholic Michael Moore’s motivation is, nuttily enough, earning the right creds to get him into heaven. I don’t think God is amused by his blatant hypocrisy in the realm of cold, hard cash.
…a Hawaiian prep school, Ivy League graduate, with contrived black cadences, is the better representative of the African-American experience.
Obama’s a better representative (than Cain) of the race hustling story line and thus more popular with that vast swath of race baiters that feeds off it.
Protesting is a sacred ritual to the far left. Because they consider it their ritual, the Tea Party enraged them. How dare common citizens protest–did they not know that it was sacrilegious for them to use the left’s sacred ritual? But with the dominance of the political left in the form of Obama-Pelosi-Reid, the ritual was abandoned for a couple years as the left tried to figured out how to protest against the state of the world but not against the government that influenced that state. They finally figured it out and the release of being able to engage again in the sacred ritual of protest has resulted in performance that is bigger and better than it has been for forty years.
Symbolism is very important to the left, often more important than results.
…. Never have Americans’ prospects seemed brighter—vast new energy reserves, an unmatched military, disarray in Russia, the Middle East and Europe ….
Never have Americans’ prospects been brighter. Vast new energy reserves, an unmatched military, disarray in Russia, China, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East, South America, Australasia and Europe!
Thank you, Doctor Hanson. I’m an immigrant (a “hyphenated,” if you like, I’m an AMERICAN-) American! A truly blessed man already thrilled beyond belief at having achieved his life’s ambition – that he be American — and you and a tiny handful of your colleagues and peers – Doctor Sowell springs to mind – make me more proud to have become an American than I would ever have dared imagine.
Well, from one American to another let me say you made a great choice! So long as you want to improve yourself you are a shining example of what the American people stand for!
Oh, and I loved your jab at the “hyphenated American” BS. Brilliant! :)
Wonderful essay Dr. Hanson. Just one point, if I may – An $850,000 house, plus a salary of $150,000 does not equal $1,000,000 of net worth. The person in question is worth $850,000. Full stop.
Only worth $850K if the house is PAID FOR.
One day, it will occur to this generation of coddled children who were granted inflated grades and unending praise that they were lied to by the academia/administrative complex. I think we are already starting to see it with the backlash against college costs.
I have not seen any backlash “against college costs,” only a backlash against students’ having to pay the costs themselves.
Their professors taught them well — and certainly never hinted that a professor’s services were overpriced!
VDH, you have missed the real problem.
You list the wealth of solidly middle class examples, but you forget that there are so many people who are well below middle class and sinking.
On NPR I heard these statistics so I can’t link to them, and I think some may be off by a percent:
Black people have lost 85% of their wealth in the downturn
Hispanics have lost 75% of their wealth in the downturn
by comparison, white people have lost an average of 1/3 of their wealth in the downturn.
Now consider that QE2 means that older people no longer can find any safe investments.
I’m not talking about race, it’s just that the statistics were taken by race, race will have to be a stand-in for class, for wealth.
The total wealth of the lower half or so of the country is quite low, I heard it recently but I’m afraid I forgot the number… And there’s the problem.
If half the country can’t afford houses, can’t get jobs that afford them reasonable hours and enough money then they won’t be spending, the economy won’t ever be back.
Yes, this story entails suffering but it also entails entrenched problems with our economy making it so weak that the house of cards has finally fallen for the lower class. In short the story for decades was outsourcing, globalization and finally automation really making human beings superfluous.
Half of the population is below average by definition. And intelligence isn’t necessarily the deciding factor – but that’s another discussion. As someone who lost opportunity to illness, it does hit home for me. But my point is that as we’ve lost manufacturing jobs, what is left for average people to do? What career affords them respect and a good life? Retail certainly isn’t that! It’s not even a good job since the low paying chains destroyed the market for what used to be traditional retail business.
You can’t make 90% of the people into professionals. There isn’t even a need for that many professionals.
As I said the poor have lost 90% of their wealth. Many of them won’t be back in the economy. We bailed out the lenders, but we didn’t bail out the poor people who make up half the country so we don’t have customers anymore. You know, the poor half of the country has so little that I bet we spent more on the banks than their total worth!
Forget about your old enemies the liberal arts majors, and take a wide look at America.
Mr. Hanson, do the hard thing, consider the whole picture and have a do-over on this article.
I agree with you that America has serious problems. But they have little to do with what the OWS protesters are ranting about.
The loss of manufacturing jobs has been going on since the 1950s. It’s due mostly to automation. An assembly line turning out silicon chips has robots for workers.
The OWS protesters have nothing of value to contribute to the discussion you want to have. None of them is interested in a manufacturing job. (You don’t believe me? Go find some of them on Facebook or Twitter and ask them if they would work on an assembly line or some other blue-collar job.) Some of them are professional protesters who once rioted against globalization and then marched against the Iraq War and now they’ve glommed onto this “cause.” Actual surveys of the protesters have confirmed this.
The OWS protesters are angry because Wall Street got bailed out while middle-class Americans continued to struggle. I’m angry about that too. So is the Tea Party. (In 2008, the only real opposition to the TARP bailout was coming from hard-left congressmen *and* conservative Republican congressmen.)
But what’s done is done. We could throw every single Wall Street CEO in jail right this very moment, but it wouldn’t create any jobs or get any Americans out of bankruptcy court.
The swindle that robbed the middle class, though, was not merely Wall Street greed. It was our Progressive overlords political and cultural leaders selling us on the Biggest Lie of All:
All you need to do is show up for work or go to school; we have experts who have the answers to your housing needs, your health care needs, your financial needs … no need to plan for your future or actively manage your career, since we can do a better job than you can; just trust us to solve those problems FOR you.
And we bought into it … hook, line and sinker.
The facade of that Lie is now disintegrating before our eyes, as millions of people find that they have been left high and dry by the promises of these “experts” …
… the promise to working-class Americans that they can work the same job for a lifetime in the same place …
… or the promise to our college graduates, that they can turn WHATEVER they find “fulfilling” or “noble” into a viable means of support, even if they have to do it on a dime taken by force of law from another who might not see the value in whatever they are doing — or even if the problem they see as their “cause” is a parts-per-billion probability instead of a clear-and-present issue …
… or the assertions to the underclass/less-privileged that they CAN’T get ahead without “expert assistance”, leaving them with the impression that their best choice is to just scrape by on government-mandated “generosity” until the “experts” solve their problems FOR them through even more government intervention …
… all to be fulfilled by leaving the hard work of managing their own socio-economic destiny — from contingency planning to continuous personal improvement to firing their management and finding a new employer when called for — to the “experts” of government/unions/employers; the same positions that the college graduates aspire to — Wall Street sees as their allies in crony capitalism.
This … not mere greed … is why we stood by and watched as our own wealth and opportunities diminished, as others accumulated the wealth and the jobs left. This ENCOURAGED dependence upon our “betters” at higher and higher levels, flew in the face of the self-reliance, personal initiative and “neighborly” interdependence that is the hallmark of the American experience … the characteristics that would, if not discouraged and diminished, would have spurred us on to do the hard things needed to keep those jobs and protect/expand our own wealth, even as we helped others who couldn’t do so.
Those who didn’t buy the Lie and instead kept control of their destiny, are the ones better off today … yet even some who kept that control and therefore are better off, still think that keeping that control isn’t for everyone, and that the Lie needs to be perpetuated (which is, of course, in the interest of many of these, since they aspire to be, or already are, some of those “experts” that are made “indispensable” by the Lie).
The light at the end of this tunnel, though, is that more and more people that bought the Lie before, are seeing it now for the Lie it is. They are coming to the understanding that, while experts are good for advice, it is best to leave the decision-making to the 300 million problem-solvers who are closest to the problems … not to a few Best and Brightest in DC to make our choices FOR us on the basis of the socio-economic morality of that select few.
The underlying message of all the Occupations … that we must INCREASE government intervention in our economy in order to make things “fair” … is precisely the wrong solution. It is the latest manifestation of the Biggest Lie of All … and will lead to MORE opportunities for the very crony capitalism that sucked down our tax dollars, misdirected our innovators, and created the very monsters the Occupiers are protesting against.
If they prevail, the Occupiers will be trading one set of perceived overlords, for another, quite-real, and more intractable set. And all your appeals to economic authority do not change that fact.
“the promise to working-class Americans that they can work the same job for a lifetime in the same place “
I’m gonna take up this one.
The fact that companies stopped offering their employees any loyalty and outsourced the country was a moral failing of American society. The fact that we don’t allow any conscience at work or in the board room is a bit unusual, and is a moral failing that the whole country is suffering from. I grew up in Canada and I feel that back in that country, people aren’t so cut-throat. There is a more morality at work.
Greed greed greed greed is not the highest good, because it’s not the only value. Ayn Rand was a moral midget and we’ve gone too far in her direction, not too far away.
Greed isn’t so wonderful, there are other values: what about loyalty?
What about supporting families – by which I mean that people shouldn’t be worked so many hours that they can’t raise their kids and people should have the job security so they can raise their kids in one neighborhood with the same school, the same friends – you know the stability that kids need – and their salaries shouldn’t be dropped so low that they can’t raise their kids.. you know what I’m saying?
Josh … where is the loyalty of the employees, to continuously improve their productivity as their employer faces tougher and tougher competition … instead of bringing in a union to simply beat their employer over the head for raise after raise and bennie after bennie … or bring in regulators to “guarantee” some sort of minimum income/benefits that have no relation to the economics of the business at hand.
Where is the sense of the “99%” in demanding more and more from their Federal government, leading to businesses being taxed into un-viability because they are seen as being able to “afford it” … when those same needs can be met, more efficiently and effectively, at lower levels of government or even through private cooperation outside of government … that is, if those needs are real, instead of some Utopian ideal or parts-per-billion probability of harm?
And where is the responsibility of the employee to think like a businessman themselves, to protect their own interest? Like, say, save some money for that rainy day (instead of expecting the government to bail them out with unemployment insurance while they buy their iThingys with today’s money) when their management fails them, and they are either laid off or see the need to fire their management and find another employer who, working in their own interest, will compensate and/or provide working conditions that are better.
Your attitude is reflective of the Biggest Lie of All … that responsibility is solely a function of expertise and pocket depth.
Let me tell you the unintended consequences of what you advocate.
I work for a very rich man, with about 250 other people. He not only pays us competitively, he shares a good chunk of the company’s annual profits with us, which can amount to several weeks of pay.
You tax him to fund your ideals, you reduce those profits, and thereby OUR income … and not just the senior, high-salaried guys at the top … EVERYONE that works here.
The problem with Progressives jamming their morality down our throats, is that they do so with a mile-broad brush, with no regard for the unintentional consequences … and no regard for the soft, cuddly fascism they are enabling simply because they agree with the current crop of fascists at the top.
So your thesis is that we have a bad economy, our companies have outsourced, automated, made America superfluous because we’re horrible people who don’t deserve jobs.
Just great, run for office on that platform!
Admit it Josh,
You aren’t a scholar and you are completely ignorant of all things economic.
Businesses are not Government Programs, and they do not exist to provide people Jobs. One of the first lectures I sat in during my college days the professors said something foundational, “If you are ever going to understand how Economics work, you will have to understand the most simple and basic truth regarding the relationship between the customer and the business. No one Ever bought a car for the purpose of providing another person a job, every person who ever bought a car did so in order to have a car!”
The attitude you exhibit shows you to be completely devoid of understanding that concept. Businesses are NOT created, nor do they operate in order to provide jobs. They provide jobs as a by-product of filling a need that exists among society that can thus be filled by being in business.
Further, Human Nature is such that when people do something it is done in the self interest of garnering a return for having done so. During the California Gold Rush it was said of those who participated, “Never before in history have men worked so hard to get rich without working.”
Had the Federal Government issued an edict that anyone who hits the mother lode shall have all income above and beyond the amount earned by a Cowhand at Assay, it is easy to determine that you would have seen next to no one in the gold fields in 1849.
When you remove the reward, you remove the incentive to take a risk. Therefore, you have no one willing to start a business, or expand a business, when the climate coming out of Washington is that we will punish you if you make money, or we will regulate you into the ground if you get an operation up and running.
And finally, No one will take the risks if they see someone else garnering all of the benefits as a result of Government Siding with Unions to the tune of driving the cost of employees beyond the Market Rate for the good or service offered.
The health of an employee’s career depends on the health of the company, and to ignore that health of the company for short term gain of higher salary leaves people competing with workers in other countries who will do the work at a fraction of the cost.
Deserve’s Got Nothing to do with it.
I realize this is all over your head, as you engage in MSM platitudes and Big Government oriented views of business, but it’s the real world.
Had the Federal Government issued an edict that anyone who hits the mother lode shall have all income above and beyond the amount earned by a Cowhand at Assay,
Should Read;
Had the Federal Government issued an edict that anyone who hits the mother lode shall have all income above and beyond the amount earned by a Cowhand at Assay Confiscated,
No, Josh … not because we are “horrible people”.
Because we fooled ourselves … and were lied to by our supposedly Best and Brightest … on many levels.
We fooled ourselves in thinking that, simply because someone was not working for/in an entity that had publicly declared an intent to make a profit, they could be trusted to watch out for our best interest … and that we didn’t need to keep a close watch on what they were trying to do FOR us, but could just let them “handleit-handleit-handleit” as we went about buying our iThingys and Starbucks and watching Oprah or whatever.
We lied to ourselves that responsibility is primarily a function of pocket depth … and that the “rich” can bear any burden FOR us, even the burden of maintaining our societal prosperity in a competitive world with little or no help from us beyond showing up for work … that we had no need to think like businessmen ourselves, both to stand with our employers to maintain that prosperity and to stay prepared for socio-economic changes as individuals.
We lied to ourselves about the value of “experts”, and believed they could solve even our most individual-specific problems FOR us … as if they were omniscient beings who could see every detail of our lives, including the motivations that drive us to make the choices we make … and execute their “solutions” in a society where equal-protection-under-the-law and other civil-liberties concerns make it real hard to “discriminate” between the slackers and the truly needy, much less get inside our heads to figure out just WHY we make the choices we make. In such a society, government only has two tools to effect socio-economic change … a bag of money, and a set of “regulatory” handcuffs.
In short, we fooled ourselves into thinking that we were fundamentally different from the “rich” … that we COULDN’T do the things they did to get ahead, for whatever reason … and therefore we DESERVED to get a pass on the hard work of living in that unique mix of self-sufficiency and neighborly interdependence that is the hallmark of the American experience.
Instead, we just waited around until a few, well-credentialed people promised to solve those problems FOR us, put them in positions of power, subordinated our authority and resources to them, and let them do their thing … including collusion with the “rich” to further both their agendas, at our expense.
THAT … not merely corporate “greed” … is how we got in the mess we are in today.
And continuing to lie to ourselves … or have others perpetuate the lies to win elections … isn’t going to change things for the better.
Grow up.
@Ritchie The Riveter
Well Said!
On NPR? I seem to remember some videos…O’Keefe wasn’t it? Soros must be stepping up his game, eh?
As I observe the violence in Occupy SanFrancisco and Oakland I cannot help thinking to myself; isn’t it ironic that the victims of the looting and violence are immigrants (mostly Asian) who are working hard to own and maintain the targeted shops, while the rioters consist of upper class white kids, living on daddy’s largesse, who want to eliminate capitalism?
It’s not surprising to see that the right is using the same rhetoric and attacks on it’s ideological opponents as the left used against them less than two years ago. Cut and paste the nouns from any piece of agitprop from the right, change a few adjectives and adverbs, and you have the same agitprop commonly used by the left…and vice-a-versa. That’s a sad and dangerous state of affairs to anyone who has objectively studied mankind’s history.
The last iteration of a populist ‘uprising’ in America was the T.E.A. Party. Now, two years later, it’s OWS. What the left said about the T.E.A. Party is now said by the right about OWS. (Each side wants the other to stop all of the violent rhetoric, of course.)
In approximately eighteen months to two years from now, we’ll see yet another such populist ‘uprising.’ There’ll be one of two short-term outcomes at that time:
1.) The right will ‘push back’ against the left with another populist ‘uprising.’ – with more violence than now shown by and to the OWS.
2.) The next populist ‘uprising’ may be a pox on both of your houses. When and where the violence ends, no one can presently know for certain.
The TEA party has been pushed from the headlines by the OWSers, but as I recall, the TEA partiers were begging that our legislators make some attempt to adhere to the Constitution, the principles of which all of them swore to uphold (even if many of them crossed their fingers as they did so). They wished to NOT become like Greece.
The OWSers, on the other hand, demand that we seek to be more like Greece — and do it now!
The TEA partiers got a bit loud at some townhall meetings (yup, they too were frustrated), but for the most part, policemen policing their gatherings were bored to tears. And the TEA partiers left their gathering places cleaner than they found them.
The OWSers have chosen to violate laws, attack the police and defecate on their cars, destroy the property of others, rape and steal from each other, ruin “their” occupied spaces, and generally become a pain in the a$$ to citizens working or living in the areas they occupy.
Yeah, I see how you might equate the two… if you only read the New York Times.
Except the rhetoric against the tea party was a lie and th eOWS is a faux movement by an envious left that CAN’T rise a grassroots protest. The tea party wa peaceful and respectful. The OWS is a bunch of spoiled brats that don’t even know why they are there. There was never a single arrest at a tea party. There have been hundreds of arrests at the OWS. The tea party broke no laws. Everything about the ows is unlawful.
These movement are not on equal footing and don’t deserve equal treatment.
Don’t worry, the OWSers aren’t getting “equal” treatment. Nope, they’re getting preferential treatment. Turns out fear is a stronger weapon than is respect for focused determination.
Not to mention that finally there’s a movement that the Democrats, the professors and the MSM can get behind! A movement reminiscent of the ’60s. A group of protesters willing to destroy and cause mayhem. Ahhhhhhh!
There’s a big difference.
Not a single one of the TEA Party rallies ever turned violent. No Tea Partiers ever battled with cops in the streets. Not even once. Instead, the TEA Party works within the system to elect their preferred candidates to office.
OWS has turned violent. They have genuinely insurrectionist elements in their ranks: Self-described Communists and anarchists. They don’t want to work within the American political system. They see themselves as revolutionaries trying to smash the system.
Even a blind person who couldn’t see what these two movements were doing, would have no trouble telling the TEA Party protesters apart from the OWS protesters, provided he hadn’t lost his sense of smell as well.
To be fair, there *has* been violence at tea party rallies. Of course it has been violence directed *at* tea partiers by leftists (union thugs beating black conservatives, moveon.org supporters biting off fingers, you know, just more of the left’s compassionate “dialog”). Still, even that has been infrequent (after all, you never know how many of those salt-of-the-earth people in their red white and blue shirts might be packing. :-) )
Also, the rhetoric that Mr Hanson is decrying does have a responsible reason.
I recently calculated the average top income tax rate over every year there has been an income tax. It came to about 60%. The current rate, 35% is nearly an historical low.
It’s a shock to no one that the government is taking in less money than ever. Obama, and frankly a majority of the population, would like to see the top rate Bush tax cut expire. What was that, 5% more?
It was a totally reasonable policy position he was taking. Decrying it as irresponsible rhetoric seems excessive.
Given the stakes and the mood and finances of the people, i would want to be certain that revocation of the tax cuts would augment govt income on a net basis –on the bottom line, IOW, not the top –before i would declare that rhetoric excessive.
Beyond the easy reminder that though addends always summarize and there’s always a differences between minuends and subtrahends, and that any –all –old numbers plugged into the rules of Arithmetic will show results than can be truthfully claimed are true, ‘according to the arithmetic’, because ‘numbers don’t lie’.
Tes, we hear it ten times every day, that the price of the Bush tax cuts + IRS recpts = IRS recpts + the price of the BTC. We hear it ten times a day from folks who know better, but who know better than to say so.
No, the truth is, that number we need is not even a function of addition at all –it is, rawther, a *subtraction* function: the difference between the *cost* and the *value* of the Bush tax cuts
To frame the question as an addition rather than a subtraction, a guzonto rather than a takeaway, is to subordinate (or even, replace if you get get ‘em to set still fer it) reality to fantasy. This of course is well-known as the propaganda imperative itself –and stone cold proof (depending on whether or not the speaker himself believes what he is saying) of his ignorance and/or indoctrination.
Not to pick on you specifically –for all i know, you may be the guy who has those true numbers and therefore knows that they belie the common sense that the guy who earned that dollar is revaluing it upward by the making, while the guy who takes it from him is ipso facto devaluing it by the taking (even before he idly tosses it in with all the other trillions of owner-sweat-damp green paper candy confiscations & confectionaries and dumps the whole slop bucket on top of the gigantic Washington DC self-licking federal ice cream cone).
I’m sorry, but I’ve heard respectable (not crackpot) economist after economist say that the Republicans are (conveniently) lying. That there is no evidence that giving the rich tax cuts helps the economy – and that there is evidence that there are more effective people or places to use that money.
The rich save. The economy needs spending to bring back demand.
Also jobs do not come from the personal savings of the rich, they come from companies not only having business capital but also having demand.
We baled out the banks till they have more money than they know what to do with, but you know, there is a lack of places to safely invest that money in a slow economy.
So your assumption that getting rid of those cuts would harm the economy is based on a lie. What you should ask yourself is, “why didn’t I know that?”
But the rich your deride, do invest the money they “save” in investments that earn income from profits….in instruments like stocks, bonds, etc. And companies use that capital to fund their operations, expand into new markets, develop new products, and shockingly – they usually create new jobs while doing this.
Seriously – do you not understand this? if you confiscated all the wealth and possessions of the top 1% (hell, let’s make it the top 2%) you still wouldn’t put a dent in our current debt, create new jobs, or solve the problems of the poor. There just isn’t enough of the “1 percenters”. How does acquiesence to the class warfare argument solve any of the problems you identify?
No need to answer – it’s a rhetorical question we already know the answer to.
And you seriously never realized that this has less effect on the economy than other uses of the money.
Ask an economist. I am totally serious. Ask an economist whether the Republican party is telling the truth that giving money to the rich creates jobs.
They did a segment on this on Market Place, there have been article elsewhere.. economist after economist says there is no evidence that lower taxes on the wealthy would help the economy. There IS evidence that getting money to poorer people helps the economy but that is anathema to the Republican party, so Economics is ignored.
After all Economics is a science, and Republicans don’t get their information from science. Science exists to be abused and used and lied about by Republican leaders.
Josh, Josh, Josh.
Let us at least establish terms for the purpose of discussion.
To Take;
…1. To get into one’s possession by force, skill, or artifice,
…2. To capture physically; seize.
…3. To seize with authority; confiscate.
To Give;
…1. To make a present of: We gave her flowers for her birthday.
…2. To place in the hands of; pass: Give me the scissors.
…3. To deliver in exchange or recompense; pay: (i.e. gave five dollars for the book.)
With this in mind let us postulate;
1) You Cannot TAKE from someone that which they never possessed!
2) You Cannot GIVE to someone that which they already possess!
Therefore, it is impossible to Give anything to the Rich that they already possess. As in a Tax Cut Gives them nothing, it ceases to Take something from them!
It is also impossible to Take from the poor by not giving to them.
Those are facts! They are Indisputable! Possession and property are codified int the 3rd 4th 5th and 6th ammendments to the Constitution. (that they are ignored by the government is not germain to these facts.)
No one ever gave anything to a Rich person by not taking from them. That’s like saying I’ve donated thousands of dollars to the Salvation Army because I didn’t steal the kettles that were in front of all the shops I entered last Christmas Season. It’s Bolshevik plain and simple.
Unless and until you understand those facts, there really is no basis for discussion with you.
Having done it several times, I know that I can buy an economist with a Ph.D from a fancy indoctrination center who will say anything I want him/her to say. If a Ph.D Economist wants to teach, s/he will be a leftist because the bulk of the “academy” will not tolerate anything but leftism. And as to the Nobel Prize for Economics, it means about as much as the Peace Prize and you will only get it if you’re a leftist.
Uhm, replacing some percentage (less than 50% i’d wager) of academic prostitution with the total dishonesty of believing political pundits and politicians (99% political prostitution) is no solution.
There IS such a thing as science in academia, there is NO SUCH THING as science in politics.
@Josh “Scholar” Some small percentage of academics are engaged in a “search for truth” in some field or another. If that truth is “inconvenient” when they find it, it will be the last truth they ever find as a member of the “settled” community of academics.
If you do not believe that there is truth in politics, you deny the very basis of self-government. If the people are not capable of discerning the truth, then we must have “educated” and “expert” politicians and bureaucrats to discern the truth and tell the people what they should do. In other words, if you believe that, you’re at best an authoritarian and at worst, something much worse.
The basis of democracy seems to be that we vote for liars and idiots who belong to corrupt cults, who promote the bigotry and ignorance of the public to put them in office, who make money off corruptions. BUT they’re kept somewhat in check by the fact that we will vote them out when they overreach.
As Churchill said, “democracy is the worst system except for all the others”
My current take on our parties is: on domestic issues the Republicans are now totally dishonest or incompetent, while the Democrats are merely totally lazy and complacent. During the G W Bush, the Democrats were too prejudiced against Bush (because “he talks stupid”) to bother to find out what our foreign policy was for. With only slight exaggeration I can say nearly half the public is dumb enough to believe that “Bush did 9/11″ and nearly half the public is dumb enough to believe that lowering taxes on the rich won’t make us too broke to have medicare, social security, safe food and water, libraries and schools… That leaves approximately none of the public that is competent to vote.
And you know, something like half of Republicans are in favor of letting those top Bush tax cuts go.
The leadership can spin spin spin, but there comes a point when even the Republican voters refuse to play dumb.
you mean like the economist’s from this pantheon of thought?
http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/
I didn’t make the argument to give more money to rich people (recognize that most of them earned it first) – but I did suggest that taking more from them will not solve the problems we face, nor drammatically improve the economy. How do you advocate “getting” this money to the poor people? what is the definition of poor? (or rich for that matter) Will you regulate what they spend it on (no drugs, alcohol, or unhealthy foods, right?). Who determines if what they spend the “rich peoples” money on, is spent wisely? You, the Federal government, republicans, democrats? Do you have to be a legal citizen, or just be able to sign ‘x’ in a box to qualify? So many questions – so few answers.
And as far as assuming everyone on this site is a Republican, as a “scholar” I suggest you look at some of the past blogs and postings by many of the people here, and you’ll quickly see many are as dissatisifed with republican politics as they are with democrats. It’s the hypocrisy of the left that’s most exasperating (but funny in a strange way).
Dear Josh Ignorant;
Do not confuse Tax Rates with Revenue Rates.
When you say, “It’s a shock to no one that the government is taking in less money than ever.” you are displaying your ignorance of how the economy actually works.
When the top Tax Rate was 90% the Revenue Stream was roughly 18% of GDP.
When Ronald Reagan dropped the top Marginal Rates to 28% the Revenue Stream was roughly 18% of GDP.
Today, the Revenue Stream to the Federal Government is Roughly 18% of GDP.
It is not Tax Rates that will dictate Revenue Streams but Economic Activity. What Reagain taught was that when it is cheaper to pay taxes than to shelter income, people will stop sheltering income and start paying taxes. The Reagan Boom in Revenues was due to the Economic Growth that ensued (18% of 200 is bigger than 18% of 100).
Therfore if you want investments and growth, taxes have to be lower. Mind you there are other factors such as over regulation and certainty involved (all of which Obama is being sure to heap onto the business community so they won’t invest) but The facts don’t bear out your opinion which is based soley on a static model in which all factors remain the same regardless of tax policy.
I suggest you learn a little bit of economics before you place your ignorance on display.
Economics isn’t the simple catechism of simple simple principles you Republicans have been miseducated into believing it is.
It is a complicated technical discipline.
It’s time for you to stop repeating stupid slogans and find out what actual, respected economists are saying about policies in our current situation.
In as much as my degree is in Economics;
I AM an Economist fool.
Oh really?
Are you really gonna tell the folkes here that say, a flat tax like 999 that includes a value added tax, raises taxes on the poor enough to lower their income 20%, raises taxes on the middle class (on 83% of households) and lowers taxes on the wealthy by huge amounts wouldn’t harm the economy?
And if you are willing to say something as odd as that, can you find a mainstream economist who agrees with you?
You can’t. I’m sure of it!
NO!
A VAT would be the greatest knife in the heart of the Economy that could ever be wielded.
And any Consumption tax would need to be limited in scope and rate by constitutional ammendment before any implementation could be permitted to prevent total regression.
Josh, you want to perpetuate the delusion that “corporations pay taxes”.
WE pay those taxes … in the price of everything we buy.
9-9-9 lowers those taxes, and competition will assure that we realize that benefit.
And it is NOT a VAT, like the Euros have burdened themselves with … because businesses get to deduct the sales tax, and the prices they pay (which include the 9% business tax) as an expense.
If you are so aware of economics … why did you ignore that in the equation, as well as the serious reduction in compliance costs a system like 9-9-9 will produce?
I know why … you’re just another Progressive, prone to intellectual dishonesty if it means greasing the skids for getting “what you deserve” from the productive.
It’s time for you to stop hanging your hat on appeals to authority and Progressive boilerplate …
… and explain to us how that “a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”, as one wise man put it a while back …
… and how subordinating our decision-making authority and resources to that select few can guarantee fairness, prosperity, and liberty, for EACH and EVERY citizen (anything less risks infringement upon their unalienable rights, BTW), given the limits of human perception and the frailty of human nature …
Because at the most fundamental level, that is what you are asking for.
Our government’s primary mission — indeed, that of ANY legitimate government — is to secure our unalienable rights … to ask it to do anything MORE than that, as Progressives are so predisposed to ask, has historically compromised government’s ability to execute that primary mission, and avoid trampling on our lives, liberty, and ability to pursue happiness.
The fallacy of Progressives like you, is that you believe that top-down compulsion by government is the ONLY way you can realize “social justice” … when there are other ways to realize that without compromise of our government’s primary mission.
Your refusal to consider alternatives to the State, leads the rest of us to believe that all you are interested in is jamming your socio-economic morality down ALL our throats, with a fundamentalist self-assurance and zeal that makes the Religious Right look like lassez-faire libertines at Mardi Gras.
From Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue to Main Street, Progressives bring forth the very monsters they decry.
For the rest of you out there (as I’m sure this will be over Josh’s head) let me paint the economic engine this way…
Think of Taxes as the Mixture control of a carburator. We know that there must be both Air and Gas for the Engine to Run. Therefore there is a degree to which Taxes MUST be collected. (before Josh throws up the straw man accusing me of wanting to eliminate all taxes)
Now then, when you engage the choke and make the mixture Rich (high fuel less air) in a startup the engine can get running. But when you want ot establish a Load on the Engine you need to Lean out the blend. (Reduce the Fuel to Air Ratio) The same is true with Taxes. While the Economy will run and sputter with a High Tax Rate, Leaning out the Blend (lowering taxes) allows the Economy to operate at its Optimum Efficiency and Carry a Maximum Load (full employment).
That’s how Revenue increases with Tax Cuts. And it will continue to increase until you reach the Ideal Mixture (Around 18% tax rate) after which lowering the taxes will start to Lower Revenues.
If you claim that you’re working as an economist I’m going to call you a liar.
If you claim to have even a fundamental understanding of Economics I call you a Liar.
Just for fun, Provide a Real World example of an ‘inelastic demand threshold’ based on price.
I am not an economist – I will say that at the start. Let me speak for many non-economists and make the following observation:
Most of us hear the word “economist” and stop listening. When a lunatic like Krugman gets a Nobel prize for it, and when we see the sad devotion of so many with that label to the sad little discredited religion of Keynesian economics, and when all arguments start sounding like global warming arguments: “oh yeah, well 66.74% of all the smart economists think that you are a doo-doo head!”, many of us have come to place the same confidence in the title “economist” as “witch doctor” or “Feng shui practitioner”.
My heartfelt apologies to any feng shui experts who feel insulted by the analogy. Also, I am sure that economics is an interesting and intellectual study field, and that a lot of good comes from it, so all you economists, please don’t take this as a broad-brushed insult at your hard work. There are a lot of important principles that should be taught (and that the 99 percenters should learn) like the laws of supply and demand, the importance of a legal structure to protect commerce and capital, how wealth is created, etc. I guess that my message is the same as with AGW: the moment that your argument consists of saying that “everybody agrees that you are wrong”, or
“16,000 scientists said this is true” or “80% of ‘real’ economists say that this is the truth” you lose me. I’m not interested in scientific ‘democracy’. I am interested in arguments.
Up to this moment in my life as I listen to economists throw mud at each other and call names I have reached the point where I would agree with William F Buckley Jr who said “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
Actually I’ve had little or no affinity for John Maynard Keynes, I tend to follow the teachings of Paul Zane Pilzer and Thomas Sowell.
Pilzer incorporates an added element so instead of just Land, Labor, and Capital; he advocates the concept of Land, Labor, Capital and Technology as the foundational elements for the production of wealth.
I also believe whole heartedly that No One will ever seek to create wealth without the genuine hope that they will be able to retain posession of the fruits of their labors.
I am too busy to respond to the many points brought up, but I wanted to say I wasn’t surprised to see Libertarian Tomas Sowel mentioned.. Yeah, not a mainstream economist, rather a tea party favorite…
Funny thing, I could swear that a few weeks ago the wikipedia article on him was largely critical, now it glows like he’s Jesus Christ, the father, son and holy ghost, and all of the angels.
Well I suppose that’s what you should expect on a political figure on the wiki.
“I wasn’t surprised to see Libertarian Tomas Sowel mentioned.. Yeah, not a mainstream economist, rather a tea party favorite…”
Once again you exhibit your Colosal Ignroance about Economics.
Every one of these books I read, I read before Bill Clinton was Elected President; (Hint, that was 1992)
Economics: Analysis and Issues
Classical Economics Reconsidered
The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective
Marxism: Philosophy and Economics
Knowledge and Decisions
They were written by Stanford Professor Thomas Sowell, and I read them because he WAS a Mainstream, and Leading Economics professor.
I really love houw somehow your unnamed vague media loved economists are all Mainstraem and Well known, but an economist who has been around and writing books since the early ’70s is somehow no longer valid because an organization you don’t like (the Tea Party) agree with him.
And yeah, you’re too busy to respond, sure, sure!
Truth is you’re in over your head and you know it!
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/canada-in-afghanistan/least+they+seem+care/5648850/story.html#ixzz1csC96HuI
Don’t let history repeat itself,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXSI4RxVWoQ&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
Folks finding a huge inconsistency on the right in regards to ”Wall Street” are missing a major point –conservatives blame insiders for abusing the system, while the OWS blames the system itself. Yes yes, the system and its two-party operators cross-breed and create ever more baroque policy gargoyles that tend to mask and blend the matter of fact that tho the left may not be the ruin of us, that’s undeniably still the way to bet it.
This marginal chaotic subsystem, identifiable in hindsight as a system-order law breaker as early as the early 90s, won what was either a battle or the war depending on election 2012, with a captured MSM’s weaponized invocation of “racism” on three major failed efforts to reform Fannie & Freddie –the ammunition being the decadent suicidal fear of being publicly branded ‘racist’.
Thus the *unexpected* *crisis* of 2008, and now, with OWS attentive, and just in case some folks have forgotten their lesson, MF Global comes along to refresh. How perfect it is, too, a fractal no less of 2008, brought to us by the same Dunbar Number of NWO creepy-crawly Heros-of-the-People.
But point is, tho the left is unable by its own testimony to distinguish between two different furies at ”Wall Street”, conservatives –made dispassionate via comprehension of the meaning of history –well understand the difference.
A couple of months back, the BBC World (on NPR) had a rather long segment about the hippie movement / summer-of-love, focused on one of the participants. They had an encampment / commune in Colorado, fed by outsiders donating food & junk that could be used to cobble together shelters. Over time, the popularity grew, and began to draw tourist buses. The interviewed character said that they came to the stark realization that they were literally zoo-animals, on display for the public. And that was the end of the commune.
Unlike that event, the OWS tribes want the attention. But, I wonder what similar trigger could awaken them? They seem devoid of reason – completely emotional; could they even comprehend such an event (like the zoo realization), I doubt it?
Middle Class are poorer now.
California is the example and leader.
Greed.
1. Immigration
Every single employer in California tis looking to replace every employee with cheaper illegal , new legal immigrants, or H-1-B immigrants . Screw the old middle class white or otherwise.
Greed
2. Off-shore manufacturing and buying from China…basically world trade screwed us. (see Pat Buchanon)
Manufacturing sent of shore:Now we only do service industry. We need to manufacture here like Germany and China.
Greed
3. Outsourcing every job we can to other countries
4. Government Unions: Cal owes $500 billion to current and future employee pensions. Govt. Unions are theives, Workers should never get more than 30-40% pension and no high salaries. Govt Unions are robbing the treasury..PS Greece’s rioters are all govt employees…that is the secret the media won’t tell you…It is Wisconson.
Dem and Repubs did this to us.
Dems on Immigration and govt unions and both for the other two.
Greed is the big overall factor.
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