Political & Elections

john doe · Guru

RE: Occupy Wall Street versus Tea Party

jazzy · Senior Member

This is no surprise. Look at 2008. You don't imagine that the Republican candidates are any different do you?

From page one of this thread it's been acknowledged that BOTH parties are too deeply intertwined with deep pocket donors and lobbyists. If you look at the list of OWS suggestions that you posted, you'll see that there's a plague-on-both-your-houses disgust with how much campaign fundraising and large donations have come to dominate the election process.

The issue is whether there's any hint of reform. Will either of the party's candidates propose some sort of disclosure rule that at least requires that the ads bought by special interest money as a result of Citizens United be identified as to their source so that the general public can have a clue as to who is trying to buy their vote and why.

It's not that any one party is corrupted as to campaign financing....it's that the whole system is corrupted because of the expense of mounting a campaign and the need to constantly fund raise and the way issues are framed --- often in the most extreme tones --- in order to inflame potential donors. Both parties do it.

And it goes beyond presidential politics, which is bad enough, but the need for campaign money and the drive to find it from Deep Pockets, from powerful special interests, is what subverts the process for finding solutions to complex problems in Congress.

I heard recently about a book that is a good read on this. I'll post it later. (Gotta go watch the last inning of recorded World Series game.)

Poetsheart · Senior Member

Read my lips: Obama is a PO-LI-TI-CIAN, and politicians don't stand a chance in Washington if they aren't savvy at playing by the established rules set forth in that town long before Barack Obama arrived on the scene. It's a blood sport, and you have to being willing to bring at least as much fire power to the battle as your opponent. That includes playing coy with the nomenclature, and slicing your rhetoric as thinly as you can get away with. If you expect me to defend Obama as some kind of saint, incapable of getting down in the mud with his political opponents, you clearly have no idea of my views. I'm sure you would love it if Obama would let his brain leak out of his ears and politically hang himself on a cross while the GOP takes gleeful advantage of the Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to openly and unabashedly own that town and all its lawmakers, but, Oh well....

As for me, I have no dillusions. I just believe that Obama's duplicity happens to be less damaging to the working, and middle class than that of the current crop of GOP politicos gunning for his job. So shoot me. hmm

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Friday 28th of October 2011 08:51:51 PM

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Friday 28th of October 2011 08:53:15 PM

hope · Guru

"the lobbyists stranglehold on Washington."

Indeed, it won't be handed to anyone on a platter, but O has some 'splainin' to do:

Barack Obama Does Not "Take" "Money" from "Lobbyists"

You've got to admit. It was pretty commendable of President Obama to promise not to take any money from lobbyists for his 2012 reelection campaign, wasn't it? Everybody knows that K Street and the influence of corporations, via Washington lobbyists, are eroding the foundations of middle class America.

That's why I'm so glad that Obama opted instead to take his corporate money through bundlers…

At least 15 of Mr. Obama’s "bundlers" — supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others — are involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies. They have raised more than $5 million so far for the campaign…
[T]he bundlers are in many ways indistinguishable from people who fit the technical definition of a lobbyist. They glide easily through the corridors of power in Washington, with a number of them hosting Mr. Obama at fund-raisers while also visiting the White House on policy matters and official business…
Take Sally Susman. An executive at the drug-maker Pfizer, she has raised more than $500,000 for the president’s re-election and helped organize a $35,800-a-ticket dinner that Mr. Obama attended in Manhattan in June. At the same time, she leads Pfizer’s powerful lobbying shop, and she has visited the White House four times since 2009 –twice on export issues. But under the byzantine rules that govern federal lobbying, Ms. Susman has not registered with the Senate as a lobbyist.

Welp, there you go. She hasn't registered as a lobbyist, therefore she is not a lobbyist. Ipso facto, Barack Obama does not take money from lobbyists! Lorem ipsum dolor sit, the White House wins!

Hey, you can complain all you want, but Obama never promised to not take money from people providing money for a politician's campaign in exchange for said politician entertaining the interests of a multinational corporation. He promised to not take money from "lobbyists." Unless you can show me a piece of paper, notarized by a member of the Senate lobbyist notarizing office or whatever, that says that Sally Susman is a lobbyist, then we really have nothing else to talk about.

I'm certain that if someone would just explain all of that, just like I did right there, to all those Occupy Wall Street people, they'd stop protesting and go home. Why has nobody done that yet?

Also, this (sorry for the "righty" link, but no one else seems to be reporting on it):

Michelle to hold fund-raiser at Enron trader’s mansion

October 27, 2011 by Don Surber

John D. Arnold, whom the New York Times described as “a former star trader at Enron who is now an energy hedge fund billionaire,” will host a fund-raiser at his mansion in Houston for Michelle Obama on Tuesday. John Arnold was one of the top bundlers for President Obama, raising $176,400 in the 2008 campaign. He has donated $114,900 personally to Democratic candidates and the party in recent years, including $28,500 to Obama’s victory campaign, according to Federal Elections Commission records.

Tickets start at $10,000 and the campaign will collect contributions up to the legal maximum of $35,800 for the appearance by Missus Obama.

After Enron collapsed (the Bush administration successfully prosecuted its president, Ken Lay on 10 counts of securities fraud and related charges) John Arnold founded Centaurus Advisors, LLC, is a Houston-based hedge fund that specializes in trading energy products. He used his final bonus from the bankrupted Enron to start the company. He has received salary and bonuses as high as $1 billion in a single year. His fortune is estimated at $4 billion. His company now owns 10% of National Coal Corporation.

The Houston Federation of Teachers is protesting the visit. Not because of the Enron connection.

Not because he is a hedge fund trader.

Not because he is one of “the 1%.”

The union protests against his funding of an effort to convert pension plans for government workers in California to a 401-k style plan. His profession rakes in billions every year in fees for managing 401-k portfolios. Arnold and his wife set up the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility to push this cause. In August, spokeswoman Meredith Simonton told Bloomberg: “Our attention to pension reform is not California-specific. We chose to get involved there because there are people who are engaged and choosing to illuminate the problems and address possible solutions.”

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, told the Houston Chronicle that the plan advocated by John Arnold is “very frightening for teachers.”

She also told the Houston Chronicle: “My people supported Obama big-time in 2008. This is not helping.”

She also told the newspaper: “We need street action that will make Wisconsin look like a picnic.”

That referred to the takeover of Wisconsin’s state capitol in February by teacher and other government unions.

Pretty much this is the trifecta of hypocrisy for President Obama: a hedge-fund billionaire who owns 10% of a coal company. I would love to see how Occupy Wall Street rationalizes supporting Obama after this.

-- Edited by hope on Friday 28th of October 2011 08:34:02 PM

jazzy · Senior Member

Hope, until the Republican nominee starts making his case to the general electorate, I don't know that he is not a TP candidate.

Is the platform and candidate's position going to be that the only way to reduce the national debt is to slash Medicare and Social Security and AFDC and DOE and EPA ---- but no cuts in defense ---- rather than raise a tax or close a loophole?

If that's how it turns out, then the Republican candidate WILL be the TP candidate and the Rs are going to have to "own" that as they say.

And as I've said before, please please encourage your Republican candidate to sound like winchester --- early, often and to as wide an audience as possible --- ignoring the corruption on Wall Street and the lobbyists stranglehold on Washington and espousing the firm belief that Medicare and Social Security should be cut deeply rather than ask the wealthy to pay higher taxes.

This election isn't going to be handed on a platter to anybody.

Poetsheart · Senior Member

The idea that the players of the game should be the object of blame and not the rule makers defies reason.

Oh, come on Winchester. You don't honestly believe that the "players" (the big corporations, banks and investment powerhouses) aren't the real rule makers, do you? They have bought and sold the "rule makers" ten times over, and slaves are wont to do the bidding of their masters. Let's be real here.

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Friday 28th of October 2011 07:46:02 PM

longprime · Guru

Flat, Flat.

hope · Guru

Occupy Wall Street versus Tea Party

jazzy · Senior Member

Hope: You should really tell it to winchester if references to the Tea Party bother you. Singing the virtues of the TP (the only true believers in the constitution apparently) is one of W's major themes in this thread. My comment was aimed at him.

-- Edited by jazzy on Friday 28th of October 2011 05:23:30 PM

hope · Guru

Seriously, most R's are not tied to the Tea Party. Even "Evangelicals" are supporting Romney, based on the latest polls. Give yourself a breather and stop focusing on the Tea Party.

jazzy · Senior Member

How do the Tea Party supporters keep their heads from exploding once they absorb the knowledge that one revered hero, a Founding Father, would have been appalled to know that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax but it was another revered hero, Ronald Reagan, who proudly signed the law that took the working poor off federal tax roles?

Reagan was a deluded liberal/progressive?

Or.....maybe it's possible that one can love America, revere and respect the Constitution, yet still believe in progressive income tax.....and even use tax policy to alleviate poverty.

More food for thought.

-- Edited by jazzy on Friday 28th of October 2011 04:40:39 PM

longprime · Guru

posted by BusD:" A flat, fair simple tax would be awesome. "

Steve Jobs (deceased), who had a salary of $1 at Apple, would have paid 9 cents in fed taxes under Herman Cain's proposal. Would pay no taxes on Cap Gains on his Pixar>Disney stock, pay no taxes on dividends.

winchester · Guru

But the target of the occupy protest has been mainly Wall Street, symbolically the center of power and wealth that has used its money to corrupt government. And rightly so.

The idea that the players of the game should be the object of blame and not the rule makers defies reason. Unless, of course, the objective is to tear down "the rich" and make them more "equal" to "the little guy" as collectivist movements have always sought to do. Then it makes perfect sense because it's the rule makers in government who can make that happen. If OWS actually went after the real cause of the problem - government - they'd be shooting themselves in the foot.

The Progressive Era pretty much killed any notion of the equality and justice of negative liberty – freedom from government coercion – that this country was founded on, and replaced it with the Frankenstein monster of positive liberty – “social” justice and equality by coercion – that we see in today’s liberalism and the OWS movement.

The recent edition of City Journal:

With independence won, the Founders struggled to create a “free government,” fully understanding the novelty and difficulty of that oxymoronic task. James Madison laid out the problem in Federalist 51. “Because men are not angels,” he explained, they need government to prevent them, by force when necessary, from invading the lives, property, and liberty of their fellow citizens. But the same non-angelic human nature that makes us need government to protect liberty and property, he observed, can lead the men who wield government’s coercive machinery to use it tyrannically—even in a democracy, where a popularly elected majority can gang up to deprive other citizens of fundamental rights that their Creator gave them. In writing the Constitution, Madison and his fellow Framers sought to build a government strong enough to do its essential tasks well, without degenerating into what Continental Congress president Richard Henry Lee termed an “elective despotism.” It’s to ward off tyranny that the Constitution strictly limits and defines the central government’s powers, and splits up its power into several branches and among many officers, all jealously watching one another to prevent abuse.
…
In framing the Constitution, once the Revolution had stopped the tyranny of taxation without representation, Madison realized that even in a self-governing republic, taxes remained the chief source of potential abuse. “The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property, is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality,” he wrote, “yet there is perhaps no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party, to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.” A steeply “progressive” tax system, in which the rich pay not just a higher amount but pay at a higher rate than the less affluent, would have troubled him as much as a system whose loopholes allow some rich citizens to pay proportionally less, and he would have heard with dismay—though not with total astonishment, since it was just this kind of danger he knew the country faced—that 47 percent of tax filers now pay no income tax.
http://city-journal.org/2011/21_4_tyranny-and-liberty.html

What we really need to do is teach the true history and ideas of this country’s founding in our public school system instead of indoctrinating our kids into progressivism/liberalism as we currently do.

Cartera · Guru

Check out the movie, "Margin Call." It is On Demand on Comcast. It is loosely based on a day in the life of Lehman Bros after they determined that they were on there way down if they didn't unload the toxic mortgage backed securities.

busdriver11 · Guru

I agree. There is plenty of blame. Can't believe they all got away with it.

Cartera · Guru

Had the only problem been that people borrowed mor than they could afford, it would have been a painful blip on the radar.

Chaos ensued when the bad loans were bundled, sold, insured and then then sold again. That is what brought us to our knees. Had those loans just been left with the original lender to be dealt with, then the lenders would have put the brakes on at some point.

-- Edited by Cartera on Thursday 27th of October 2011 08:33:05 PM

busdriver11 · Guru

There's alot of fault to go around. And yeah, all those, of any race, who took out liar loans and mortgages far beyond what they knew they could afford just because somebody was willing to give them the money are at fault also. Greed and stupidity aren't traits just limited to bankers. A large part of the system was fraudent, from the top down.

Poetsheart · Senior Member

Widespread lack of regulation contributed mightily to this meltdown and yet, the banking and financial community continue to fight tooth and nail against any tougher regulations to prevent another TBTF fiasco. Bank of America just shifted trillions in risky investments from a subsidiary that didn't have FDIC protection to a subsidiary that does ---- spreading their risk to the taxpayers.

Are conservatives up in arms against this, considering that it is, has been proved to be, very very dangerous for the economic health of the "hive" as a whole?

No. They are not.

Of course they're not. They're too busy blaming the real source of the global financial meltdown: Barack Obama and all 'dem immoral baby makin' ghetto dwellers who obtained home loans they couldn't pay back evileye

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Thursday 27th of October 2011 07:56:46 PM

jazzy · Senior Member

No, his answer is not 100 percent correct. Far from it.

You can blame government for lack of regulations. You can blame government for poor enforcement of the regulations that did exist.

OWS has targeted the government for failing to regulate and for being in bed with special interests, including Wall Street. The top four or five of their recommendations (they don't label them "demands") have to do with preventing the revolving door between Wall Street and government, preventing Big Money interests from buying politicians through campaign donations, preventing highly paid lobbyists from influencing legislators to favor special interests instead of the American people who can't afford to buy a lobbyist.

The government's duplicity has not been ignored. But the target of the occupy protest has been mainly Wall Street, symbolically the center of power and wealth that has used its money to corrupt government. And rightly so.

Anyone who claims that banks, lending institutions, and financial firms didn't take an active hand in crafting and selling the toxic securities not only here but all over the world ---- knowing that the bubble would burst but not before they made themselves billionaires --- is, in a word, delusional. Either that or an infatuated apologist for these self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe.

The speculators knew the bundled mortgages they were turning into arcane "securities" to sell (er, gamble with) were toxic and that they would collapse in time ---- they knew they were selling highly leveraged crap investments to the world and didn't care. And they had to know that when the bubble burst, a lot of average investors and mortgage holders and working people would lose their homes and jobs in a collapsing economy. Didn't care. As long as they made their fortunes.

Not a book, not a movie script, I mean, you can't make THIS stuff up:

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's 10 Major Findings

First Posted: 01/27/11 04:47 PM ET Updated: 03/29/11 05:12 AM ET

In a report released today, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission found that "reckless" Wall Street firms, an abundance of cheap credit and "weak" federal regulators caused the crisis.

The report also revealed that Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group (AIG) as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue, according to the FCIC.

The 662-page report, available online, and as a book, offers 10 main conclusions:

"This financial crisis was avoidable."
"Despite the expressed view of many on Wall Street and in Washington that the crisis could not have been foreseen or avoided, there were warning signs," the report reads."The tragedy was that they were ignored or discounted."

"Widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved devastating to the stability of the nation's financial markets."
"Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not," the report reads.

"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other regulators could have clamped down on Citigroup's excesses in the run-up to the crisis. They did not. Policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train. They did not.

"Dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions were a key cause of this crisis."
Financial institutions acted recklessly and depended too heavily on short term loans, the inquiry found. "Compensation systems--designed in an environment of cheap money, intense competition, and light regulation--too often rewarded the quick deal, the short-term gain--without proper consideration of long-term consequences," it reads.

"A combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency put the financial system on a collision course with crisis."
The inquiry found that in the years leading up to the crisis, American households, and institutions, borrowed too much and saved too little.

"When the housing and mortgage markets cratered, the lack of transparency, the extraordinary debt loads, the short-term loans, and the risky assets all came home to roost. What resulted was panic," the report reads. "We had reaped what we had sown."

"The government was ill prepared for the crisis, and its inconsistent response added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets."
Key government agencies, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York were behind the curve, the report concluded.

"They were hampered because they did not have a clear grasp of the financial system they were charged with overseeing, particularly as it had evolved in the years leading up to the crisis."

"There was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics."
Many borrowers lied about being able to pay mortgages, lenders made loans they knew borrowers couldn't afford, the report said.

"Countrywide executives recognized that many of the loans they were originating could result in 'catastrophic consequences.' Less than a year later, they noted that certain high-risk loans they were making could result not only in foreclosures but also in 'financial and reputational catastrophe' for the firm. But they did not stop."

"Collapsing mortgage-lending standards and the mortgage securitization pipeline lit and spread the flame of contagion and crisis."
The report found irresponsible lending was prevalent, and there were warnings, but "the Federal Reserve neglected its mission," and mortgage lenders passed the risk along.

"From the speculators who flipped houses to the mortgage brokers who scouted the loans, to the lenders who issued the mortgages, to the financial firms that created the mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations... no one in this pipeline of toxic mortgages had enough skin in the game."

"Over-the-counter derivatives contributed significantly to this crisis..."
Speculating on devices like collateralized debt obligations fanned the flames, with everyone from farmers to corporations to investors betting on prices and loan defaults. When the housing bubble popped, these were at the center of the fallout.

"The failures of credit rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction..."
But, the report found, those bets wouldn't have been possible without the seal of approval from ratings agencies.

"This crisis could not have happened without the rating agencies. Their ratings helped the market soar and their down- grades through 2007 and 2008 wreaked havoc across markets and firms," the report reads.

Widespread lack of regulation contributed mightily to this meltdown and yet, the banking and financial community continue to fight tooth and nail against any tougher regulations to prevent another TBTF fiasco. Bank of America just shifted trillions in risky investments from a subsidiary that didn't have FDIC protection to a subsidiary that does ---- spreading their risk to the taxpayers.

Are conservatives up in arms against this, considering that it is, has been proved to be, very very dangerous for the economic health of the "hive" as a whole?

No. They are not.

But just by being out there protesting, OWS has managed to bring these issues to light again and to make media and politicians pay attention to them. They are in the right place for the right reasons.

busdriver11 · Guru

Definitely not getting too serious. Especially since I just drank my third glass of wine (a rare occurance) due to the stress of finding out our new tenants in a 3 bedroom condo we have, just moved TWELVE family members into there. They are going to get us in trouble for sure.

We definitely need a better healthcare system, perhaps one that encourages people to live to those golden years in the utmost of health, not just being maintained in a state of bad health forever....at least for those who can help it. Not everyone can stay healthy based on effort alone, sometimes the genes and pure bad luck strike us. And I'm afraid all these tax proposals will go nowhere, it's just trying to get votes. A flat, fair simple tax would be awesome.

longprime · Guru

Bus, you're getting way too serious. evileye

We got a healthcare problem. We're living too long. And we think that money will solve it.

Perhaps we need a "better" system of healthcare. But please wait until 2012 when DW gets on Medicare or better still wait until 2015, when I get on it. Let's not get into any Health issues until we solve some of the tax proposal issues. evileye

Which kinda irks me, The R's tax proposal issues. Cain has the 9-9-9 program which hopefully he has thought about for more than a few months. Perry comes out with a program in two weeks. The MOC R's are looking foolish because the candidates are wagging the elephant.

I just hope that OB or Congress will bring up tax reform in 2012. It will be fun. evileye

winchester · Guru

In this video Peter Schiff went into the middle of the occupy crowd in NY to speak for the one percent. He was asked what role Wall Street played in the economic crisis. His answer is one hundred percent correct:

“Wall street drank the alcohol that the Federal Reserve poured. But if there was no Fed pouring the alcohol, if there was no Freddie and Fannie guaranteeing all these mortgages, Wall Street wouldn’t have originated them. So it was Wall Street working with Government, but the source of the problem was government. “
http://mrctv.org/blog/peter-schiff-takes-99-part-2

OWS crowd is barking up the wrong tree.

-- Edited by winchester on Thursday 27th of October 2011 04:45:18 PM

busdriver11 · Guru

"It more like 85/15%

and some graying to 75/25%"

But what does that mean? 15% are profiting on the backs of the 85% (or 25/75), playing the financial shell games with the bank? Or the other way around? Or do you mean the senior citizens who are getting social security, medicare and prescription drugs paid for by the others? Those who have paid into the system should be getting some of the money back that was forcibly confiscated from them, social security isn't a problem, it's the medicare that is killing us. If that is what you're referring to.

Shoot, my parents paid into that system forever, are getting their meager benefits and barely use the medicare (extreme health nuts, never been hospitalized or had major surgery in their lives). They ought to get a bonus payout for forty years of fruits, vegetables, tofu and no alcohol or caffeine (except what I force down them). On that note, time to go drink some wine. Some one has to pick up the slack!

longprime · Guru

"That whole 99%/1% is just garbage"

It more like 85/15% evileye

and some graying to 75/25% evileye

-- Edited by longprime on Thursday 27th of October 2011 01:47:48 PM

busdriver11 · Guru

" I'm among the 99 percent that sit anxiously in the middle class, watching our prospects for continued prosperity get eaten away in slow increments by deck stacking policies that overwhelmingly favor a finance structure that creates no jobs, but sure is expert at creatively manipulating money within a make-a-killing shell game; a shell game whose rules brought about the '08 Banking cataclysm, and which the 1% seem more than happy to continue to play by.

Sure, there are wall street protesters who believe Capitalism, full stop, is evil. There are Tea Partiers who believe Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ, too. But Neither group represents the majority. Not by a long shot. I happen to be in favor of Capitalism, and believe it's the best wealth and opportunity building system on the planet. But what passes for Capitalism today ain't the sort that made America great."

See, this is part of the problem. That whole 99%/1% is just garbage. Yes, a great slogan, but garbage. I know, I know, jazzy will say stop focusing on that...but it's pretty much one of the main cries that are coming out of the OWS protesters....so you can't conveniently ignore that. 99% of the people aren't in the middle class. Not even close. 1% of the people aren't taking advantage of everyone else for their own gain. There just aren't that many high priced CEO's and overpaid bankers. There isn't a specific number that designates you are now part of the problem because of your income or savings. They need to drop that line and quickly.

And I think the few stray nutcases that believe the president is the Anti-Christ are alot different than a very large number of people who are anti capitalism. Look at what the organizers say, look at the signs at every protest, look at what they say, they have their lists of "demands" online, and it's a pretty long list. Sure, the right may cherry pick the extremists to display, but the left is not looking at the whole, they are cherry picking also. If these people want to be effective, they had better pick a coherent message quickly, tell the nutjobs to leave. The tea partiers at least coalesced pretty quickly to a one liner, "Stop Deficit Spending."

hope · Guru

Al Gore (sigh) still doesn't get it

August 14, 2002|By WILLIAM SALETAN

WHEN A VICE president backed by a roaring economy runs a class-warfare presidential campaign and loses, most people would call the experiment a failure. Not Al Gore.

"Standing up for 'the people, not the powerful' was the right choice in 2000," Gore asserted in a recent New York Times op-ed. "The suggestion from some in our party that we should no longer speak that truth, especially at a time like this, strikes me as bad politics and, worse, wrong in principle."

The targets of Gore's indignation are his ex-running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and other Democrats who found Gore's message inauthentic and grating. Whether that message makes for good policy will be a topic of debate for years. What's certain is that it was lousy politics and that Gore's defense of it illustrates his ineptitude.

Gore thinks populism is a winner because it worked for his boss. "Bill Clinton and I were right to maintain, during our 1992 campaign, that we should fight for 'the forgotten middle class' against the 'forces of greed,' " Gore writes. The quote is from Clinton's first acceptance speech, which Gore likens to his own. But the two are as different as the outcomes.

Clinton didn't impugn the motives of Republicans. He accused them not of siding against ordinary people but of failing to help. His campaign was about solving problems, not picking sides.

That isn't the populism Gore preached in 2000. Gore's message was all about us and them. Republicans were sinister, he implied: "They're for the powerful. We're for the people."

Like Clinton, Gore said he would fight to help ordinary people. But Gore seemed more interested in fighting than helping.

"I've taken on the powerful forces, and as president, I'll stand up to them, and I'll stand up for you," he proclaimed. In the environmental war, he boasted, "I've never backed down, and I never will." To Gore, conflict seemed noble - but this love of fighting was exactly what Clinton criticized in 1992.

A few weeks after the 2000 election, the Institute for America's Future, a leftist think tank, released a poll designed to show that Gore's populism hadn't cost him the election. The survey, conducted by Gore pollster Stan Greenberg, offered people who had voted in the election a choice between Gore's "populist" message and Bush's "anti-government" message.

The populist message, as read to respondents, began with the words "Al Gore says" and went on for 100 words about prosperity, values and balancing the budget. Nowhere did it mention "the people" and "the powerful." The poll didn't show that Gore's populist rhetoric had worked. It showed that his own pollsters suspected it had failed.

And they were right. Buried in their report were a pair of findings that underscored the failure of Gore's business-bashing. Given a list of 15 reasons to vote for Gore, of which each respondent could choose three, 12 percent chose "his willingness to stand up to the HMOs, drug and oil companies." But given a list of 16 reasons to vote against Gore, 17 percent chose "his attacks on HMOs, drug and oil companies."

So Gore is wrong. His angry populism helped cost him the 2000 election. He doesn't understand this because he can't see the differences between Clinton's populism and his own.

He's still arguing about it because he thinks fighting is noble. And he's doing it in such a pious way, quoting himself and selectively quoting others, because, as the 2000 presidential debates demonstrated, his driving imperative is to prove that he's right and his opponents are wrong.

Any one of these flaws would be sufficient to justify denying him the 2004 Democratic nomination. Take your pick. *

William Saletan writes for Slate (www.slate.com), where this first appeared.

Seems that Obama is not a student of history. Of course, times are worse than they were in 2000, but I am betting Obama's strident, angry "populist" message, and utter demonization of Republicans will ultimately turn swing/moderate voters off.

-- Edited by hope on Thursday 27th of October 2011 12:50:33 PM

Cartera · Guru

I think that when there are quotation marks used within the quote, the boxed quote will end there. I've tried removing those quotation marks and it has solved the problem

Poetsheart · Senior Member

But I do hope the eventual Republican nominee shares your cluelessness about the anger and frustration that underlie the OWS movement and the Americans who share that frustration, if not their space on the sidewalk.

I particularly hope the nominee aggressively refuses to deal with the concerns that even a writer for the Washinton Examiner has brought up about the danger to the rest of the economy of big banks arranging taxpayer protection for their riskiest speculative schemes.

Maybe this Red Scare tactic ---- they want to destroy capitalism!!! ---- will work on the low-information voter who doesn't realize just how far Wall Street's favor-buying and manipulations have gotten into their paychecks and pockets.....but the internet has given millions of people access to facts ---- as opposed to theory and opinion --- they can find out on their own.

So good luck with the red baiting.

Exactly what I was thinking as I've been reading Winchester's self-righteous bloviations, jazzy. I'm among the 99 percent that sit anxiously in the middle class, watching our prospects for continued prosperity get eaten away in slow increments by deck stacking policies that overwhelmingly favor a finance structure that creates no jobs, but sure is expert at creatively manipulating money within a make-a-killing shell game; a shell game whose rules brought about the '08 Banking cataclysm, and which the 1% seem more than happy to continue to play by.

Sure, there are wall street protesters who believe Capitalism, full stop, is evil. There are Tea Partiers who believe Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ, too. But Neither group represents the majority. Not by a long shot. I happen to be in favor of Capitalism, and believe it's the best wealth and opportunity building system on the planet. But what passes for Capitalism today ain't the sort that made America great.

Oh, and has anyone noticed the OWS movement isn't comprised of "folks from the hood" popping out all 'dem babies out-of wedlock? Nice red-herring, though.

***Sidenote*** I still don't understand how it happens, that only the first paragraph of any quote I attempt to enclose within quote/unquote code actually ends up in a quote box. hmm

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Thursday 27th of October 2011 10:37:59 AM

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Thursday 27th of October 2011 10:38:44 AM

-- Edited by Poetsheart on Thursday 27th of October 2011 10:40:23 AM

jazzy · Senior Member

American Thinker has someone saying what you've been saying all along?! Gosh, really???

Hey, I'll bet you could find people who agree with everything you say on Red State too. And Rush Limbaugh's website. I'm sure there's a transcript you could copy and paste. Why, I'll bet there's hundreds of ultra-conservative, right-wing, Libertarian blogs that will agree with everything you've been saying all along.

So what? That slant-filled opinion writing is no surprise.

But I do hope the eventual Republican nominee shares your cluelessness about the anger and frustration that underlie the OWS movement and the Americans who share that frustration, if not their space on the sidewalk.

I particularly hope the nominee aggressively refuses to deal with the concerns that even a writer for the Washinton Examiner has brought up about the danger to the rest of the economy of big banks arranging taxpayer protection for their riskiest speculative schemes.

Maybe this Red Scare tactic ---- they want to destroy capitalism!!! ---- will work on the low-information voter who doesn't realize just how far Wall Street's favor-buying and manipulations have gotten into their paychecks and pockets.....but the internet has given millions of people access to facts ---- as opposed to theory and opinion --- they can find out on their own.

So good luck with the red baiting.

winchester · Guru

Right On! (fist pump)

up until a few, short years ago, I believed all of it. Before Obama came on the scene, I could have been interviewed, mumbling and bumbling, just like those other frothing-at-the-mouth leftists.
…
So how did I fall so deeply into the progressive chimera?
…
Indoctrination: While I thought I was an independent thinker, it never occurred to me to look outside the moveon.org box. All of my media was leftist; the so-called independent bookstores (the ones that celebrate "Banned Books Week") ban conservative books. So while Noam Chomsky is always welcome to give a book reading, Ann Coulter would never be invited within 50 miles of here.
…
The Cool Factor: Obama was elected, in part, because he was viewed as cool (though most of us on the right saw him not as cool, but cold). Being a leftist/revolutionary/radical type is viewed as hip and trendy. Simply consult your thesaurus to see the negative words associated with being a "conservative" versus a "liberal." And aren't we a society enamored by anything and anyone who is considered cool?

Alienation and the Search for Meaning: People of all ages, but particularly youth, have an inherent need to find meaning. With spirituality shunned, people look to the secular religion of progressivism to fill the existential void. By fighting against "The Man," capitalism, and America, the radicals believe that they are good people who live lives of value in an otherwise nihilistic world.
…
60s Fever: There's a hunger to relive the 60s, even though the Hollywood, sanitized version didn't exactly happen. I've heard young people bemoan the fact that they were too young to enjoy San Francisco, adorned with flowers in their hair.

Of course, the Bay Area in the 60s was besieged by drug overdoses, rapes, the gangster Black Panthers, and radical terrorist bombings. But given that the Baby Boomers wax rhapsodic about the good-old days, both grey haired and youth take to the streets to relive a reality that never happened.

Delusion: The radicals misunderstand the nature of reality. They believe that life should be fair, that hierarchy and differences among people shouldn't exist. It is a form of delusion to embrace utopia and perfection in this human realm.

But, again, this secular society has trashed religion and deconstructed history, the realms of which would explain the way life works. Instead, people on the left live in a fantasy world; and they go ballistic on opponents because truth threatens their dreamworld.

Control: Occupying the streets allows participants to feel good about themselves, noble, as though they are saving the world. In contrast, it's a buzz kill to realize how little control one has over this life. To feel insignificant, like a little cog in the wheel, is depressing. How much more exciting to elevate oneself into the role of some revolutionary involved in a movement to radically transform America.

Generation Me: Scores of studies show the same thing: that today's youth are more narcissistic than ever before. While previous generations of the l8 to 24-year-old crowd prioritized family and meaning, today's young want six figures and they want it now. They have been raised to feel special and entitled, particularly those in supposedly disenfranchised groups (which, incidentally, is most of the American population). And if they have to take some of your hard earned dough to live the good life, no problemo.

Greed: Despite the leftists' lofty claims about fairness, isn't socialism all about greed, about coveting thy neighbor's house? Can't the essence of progressive politics be distilled to this: wanting money, money, and more money?
…
Of course, Obama, Pelosi, and the left are masters at pointing fingers rightward, and insinuating that conservatives are racist/Nazi-like subhumans. Whenever there's a lunatic out of control somewhere in the world, the left impugns conservatives. It's no wonder that there's such anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and anti-conservative vitriol all over the airwaves. Not surprisingly, a mob mentality ensues, with angry, violent, and demonic mobs taking to the streets.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/anatomy_of_an_occupation.html

winchester · Guru

As I’ve been saying all along…..

The media are mistakenly characterizing the Occupy Wall Street movement as unemployed Millennials with a legitimate gripe against Wall Street consistent with the Tea Party, or as a rag-tag group of unemployed stoners with no coherent message, not to be taken too seriously. After spending hours interviewing protesters in Oakland, California, both characterizations are way off base. If either scenario were apt, these folks would be marching on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and storming Congress. Instead, they're taking on Wall Street and storming the homes of the wealthy and the buildings of large corporations.

Each person interviewed in Oakland had the same story to tell, and if you listen carefully to the video from the main stream press, it's this: capitalism is the root of all evil.

According to the Occupiers, Big Business has corrupted our government, corporations exploit workers, the rich control everything, the top 1% own somewhere between 30% and 60% of all wealth, the disparity between the rich and the remaining 99% is growing and the property-owning bourgeoisie is responsible for that. The workers need to take control of the means of production and mount a revolution to overthrow capitalism by expropriating property from the bourgeoisie. The workers need to rise up (fist pump), redistribute capital more equitably and establish a Marxist paradise -- slaying the neo-liberalism dragon and enthroning the worker, all in the name of "economic justice."
…
How grassroots can this movement be when a simple scroll through the internet reveals that Big Labor and Big Community Organization are openly supporting it, organizing it, taking donations for it and drafting petitions for it? Some of those organizations are MoveOn, SEIU, AFL-CIO, National Nurses United, Working Families Party, Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream, Adbusters, US Day of Rage, Take the Square, October 2011, We are the 99%, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, CREDO and MoveOn's very own Avaaz.org -- the international progenitor of the Arab Spring.
…
Emails from MoveOn.org have consistently focused on demands for income equality and forcing corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes. The Bay of Rage website unabashedly explains that they are "an anti-capitalist initiative" that will "function during this period of austerity" as a "clearing house" for information and action. At the bottom of the home page, the stakes are clearly laid out: "austerity or civil war."

Still don't believe me? From the Bay of Rage website:

“This Friday, Oct 14th, the 5th day of Occupy Oakland, an anti-capitalist bloc led the first march out of Oscar Grant Plaza (Frank Ogawa Plaza). A diverse crowd of at least 200 chanted "F*** the police, we don't need 'em. All we want is total freedom", "Burn the Banks", and " 1, 2, 3, 4 - organize for social war" throughout the demonstration.
From MoveOr.org emails: “

“They're called "the 99%," because they stand for all of us left behind by the massive concentration of wealth among the richest 1%. The protesters' unrelenting campaign against the corporate takeover of our democracy is being fought in the best traditions of nonviolent resistance.”

The signs, placards, and chants focus on standing up for what the protesters are calling "the 99%" of us who are suffering while Wall Street bankers grow richer by the day.

Peruse the sites: references to the Arab Spring, calls for an American Fall (pun intended with all seriousness) and envy for uprisings in Egypt, Greece and London are ubiquitous, as are demands for revolution, resistance and the abolition of capitalism.

Marxist rhetoric plays like a broken record: bourgeoisie, oppressed workers, inequality, redistribution, capitalism and solidarity. Fortunately, MoveOn is there to define for us the "oppressed":

"The 99% protesters represent all of us who are being left behind: union workers, public servants, the poor, the unemployed, seniors, the disabled, young people graduating off a cliff to no jobs."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/the_revolutionaries_revenge.html

catahoula · Guru

It's a pretty big list, poet, just for the "don't value an education" crowd...

Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 in 2007 dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called "a persistent high school dropout crisis."

... so it'd probably be easier to just tally those who either re-enrolled or ending up getting their GED on their own.

For the "societal mores" group, insert last years illegitimacy number.

The FDR quote was one of those beauties that glorify goverment's role in protecting and uplifting the needy, which was the point of my post, not their role as recession villain. (Shame FDR's not still around, btw because I'd dearly love to hear him explain either why so many of the needy refuse to be uplifted or why government is so miserable at doing the lifting.)

-- Edited by catahoula on Thursday 27th of October 2011 07:41:56 AM

longprime · Guru

new AARP advertisement, and I'm a cardholder. evileye

55 million strong and growing. We do vote. evileye

-- Edited by longprime on Thursday 27th of October 2011 01:09:31 AM

jazzy · Senior Member

Sure, cat, Obama has to answer for 9 percent unemployment, a sore point --- even though, as busdriver has pointed out, for the employed the economy has rebounded nicely, with corporate profits up, stock market up compared to the abyss of 2008, restaurants full and many companies thriving.

Don't count any chickens yet, though. The American public isn't happy with Obama's performance, but they dislike Republicans' performance even more. Polls are fluid things, but if there's anything that's clear, it's that the majority of people aren't leaning in the direction that Tea Party Republicans would take them. Majorities favor higher taxes on the very wealthy rather than cuts in Medicare and Social Security to bring down the debt......that's an amply documented fact.

And the majority is not in favor of the rigged system banks and financial institutions have put in place for themselves ---- which candidate is going to talk convincingly about putting in reforms?

The election is still to come --- interviews, town halls, debates (assuming the Republican nominee is up to it) and we'll see which party puts out a plan for creating prosperity for a wider swath of the American people.

IMO, here's what's not going to play well:

My tax plan increases income inequality? "I don't care about that."

"Corporations are people."

Greed is natural...greed is good. If the laws and regulations are rigged in the favor of Wall Street, to protect their speculative schemes while creating instability in the rest of the economy, that's fine. Leave it be.

We don't need to cut a dime from defense.

The thing that could help Obama the most is a Republican nominee and platform tied to the far right wing of the party.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/10/americans-and-inequality.html

David Brooks assured us yesterday that Americans are moving away from - not towards - redistributionism. But here's a poll question from his own paper today

Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel that momey and wealth should be more evenly distributed among more people?

66 percent back more even distribution of wealth, compared with only 26 who don't. I do not believe this is some great ideological move leftwards. I think it's a pragmatic worry about what is happening to American society and culture, and about how we reduce our debt of those with the most money continue to get away with paying historically low levels of tax. The data are increasingly indisputable, as Jeff Weintraub elaborates on here.

On the question of whose policies favor the middle class, 23 percent say that of the Obama administration, compared with only 9 percent saying it of the GOP. A staggering 69 percent say that GOP policies favor the rich, not a great position for a party in these times. And a reminder of why Romney is trying hard to avoid some of the policies more egregiously indifferent to inequality, like those of Perry and Cain. He's not stupid. Just shameless.

Something is happening in America, and I feel it within myself. A moderate and calm embrace of reducing inequality is not the electoral killer many assume it is. Times have changed. And Obama's more populist pitch has some serious data behind it.

-- Edited by jazzy on Wednesday 26th of October 2011 09:39:57 PM

Poetsheart · Senior Member

There's a villain in there, true, but what about the rest of it? We're floating those who don't give a crap about anything that smells of societal mores and wouldn't value an education if God himself bestowed it in a burning bush.

And exactly who might "those" people be, cat? And how exactly are they responsible for the global financial meltdown we're witnessing?

catahoula · Guru

Income equality, along with global warming and gun rights, are the kind of issues the left has been beating for years. They're the kind of things that pretty much screw their heads on so tight, it's a wonder they don't simply leave the Prius at home and skitter to work on the skateboard.

The movement isn't much other than a distraction for O's record, jazzy but with the abysmal economy he's responsible for, the "equality" issue will get a little more traction than it has in the past.

jazzy · Senior Member

Hope: Who knows if anything will be accomplished politically from the OWS efforts, but you know what, they've had a positive impact in that the issues of income inequality and rigged financial system ---- which damages the "hive" by creating economic instability ---- are being brought forward for national discussion instead of being ignored.

This story for example:

Sleight of hand: BofA moves dodgy Merrill derivatives to bank

By MARK DECAMBRE

Last Updated: 4:44 AM, October 21, 2011

A plan by beleaguered Bank of America to foist trillions of dollars of funky Merrill Lynch derivatives onto its depositors is raising eyebrows on Wall Street.

The rarely used move will likely save the bank millions of dollars in collateral but could put depositors’ cash behind the eight ball.

The move also brought to light fissures between the nation’s top banking regulators, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve, in the wake of new regulations meant to curb the free-wheeling habits that fostered the worst crisis in decades in 2008.

At issue is BofA’s decision to shift what sources say is some $55 trillion in derivatives at Merrill Lynch to the retail bank unit, which houses trillions in deposits insured by the FDIC.

Critics say the move potentially imperils everyday depositors by placing their money and savings at risk should BofA run into trouble.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/sleight_of_hand_uy96iNSbW99JHMRnbxgvfL#ixzz1bnB0ycKt

And this angry commentary, which was not in a lefty liberal progressive publication but in the Washington Examiner:

Bloomberg news reported that FDIC officials don't like the move, which puts depositors' money at risk and taxpayers ultimately on the hook if risky derivatives blow up. But Wall Street insiders like the move for precisely that reason: If Bank of America melts down, these hedge fund managers or other big-time investors want their money in a division of the bank propped up by government.

In short, big-time investors in risky financial products want taxpayers to bear some of their risk, and Bank of America has come up with a clever way to do that.

The OWS protests are targeted at the right place at just the right time for all kinds of right reasons.

-- Edited by jazzy on Wednesday 26th of October 2011 04:59:02 PM

hope · Guru

Spent a lovely long weekend at my son's university. It so happened Eric Cantor was supposed to speak there, but he canceled. The Occupy Philly people were therefore on campus. Probably about 100 or 150 people or so--complaining about Eric and the 1%. Frankly, it was comical. Only a handful of students actually participated (one with a sign reading "I'm a recovering Whartonite"); the majority were aging hippie types. Most kids (like my son) were getting a kick out of it--chuckling at how ridiculous it was. I heard many express frustration that the people were blocking the walkway to class.

Somehow I don't think this particular college generation is buying into this. This is the "Organization Kid" generation, after all.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-kid/2164/

But hey, if Obama wants to try to buy their votes with promises he may or may not keep, they'll probably be okay with the results--even if they don't vote for him. ;)

winchester · Guru

The OWS movement is missing the forest for the trees. This affliction has been characteristic of liberalism ever since it broke away from the mainstream of political thought in late eighteenth century France where “The Ninety Nine Percent” took it upon itself to massacre the “One Percent.”

The fact that it misses is that human nature does not change. It cannot be changed.
Human beings will take advantage of every means available to improve their situation – for example, to make a profit - as much as possible, in whatever environment in which they operate, just like every other species on the planet. Saying that it is wrong for people to do that makes about as much sense as saying it is wrong for a bird to make a nest.

It happens in every walk of life, at every level of society. To think otherwise and single out one particular level of society or walk of life for the problems society faces it naïve. Attacking “Wall Street” or “Big Pharma” or “Big Oil” or whatever is the villain du jour, is missing the forest for the trees.

OWS is occupying the wrong place, for the wrong reasons.

If they really wanted to make a difference they would occupy Washington, and they would demand that their representatives would change the environment, the system, in which “Wall Street” operates.

But they don’t. Why?

Because the liberal mentality is fixated on protecting “the little guy” against “the rich,” or, as in the sixties, “the man” and its preferred method of achieving this protection is through the coercive power of the state. So if liberalism went after the state, the people who actually make the rules in which “Wall Street” or “the rich” or “the man” operates it would be biting the hand that feeds it.

We don’t see OWS railing against the Welfare “bailout” of “the little guy” to the tune of sixteen trillion dollars to date, and the increase to seventy percent in the illegitimacy rate among inner city welfare recipients because the father was replaced by a Welfare dole do we? No. Of course not. Because Welfare is protecting “the little guy.”

And we don’t see OWS “occupying” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the coercive power of government that was brought to bear on “Wall Street” to make loans to so many “little guys” who had no business getting loans in the first place, do we? No. Of course not. Because those loans were intended to help “the little guy.”

And we don’t see OWS “occupying” Washington for its incessant reliance on the failed principles of Keynesian economics and the massive debt that has been accrued because of it, do we? No. Of course not, because all that debt was incurred on behalf of “the little guy.”

So, who are OWS’s villains? Why, “the rich,” of course. Just like in the French Revolution.

You can copy and paste all the lists of salaries and profits you want, and you will be still be missing the forest for the trees, and shooting yourself in the foot, as you have done throughout this entire thread, every bit as much as the liberal OWS movement is doing now, and liberalism has done since before 1799 when novelist Charles Brockden Brown observed that the “enlightened” philosophes

imagine themselves laboring for the happiness of mankind, loosening the bonds of superstition, breaking the fetters of commerce, out-rooting the prejudices of birth, … they may, in reality, be merely pulling down the props which uphold human society, and annihilate not merely the chains of false religion, but the foundations of morality – not merely the fetters of commerce, and federal usurpations upon property, but commerce and property themselves.

The real root of the problem lies in the mentality of liberalism, and the OWS solution is more of it.

jazzy · Senior Member

So GSK manages to come out with a groundbreaking vaccine and pays its CEO a fraction of what American pharma companies pay theirs --- any connection?

For U.S. companies, FiercePharma's numbers are based on total compensation reported in their proxy statements. The numbers include base salary, bonus and "other" compensation in 2007. For overseas companies not required to file proxies in the U.S., we gleaned executive pay information from various press reports. Though we did as much due diligence as we could to make sure these reported totals were apples-to-apples comparisons, there's a chance we may have missed something. Feel free to let us know.

1. Miles White - Abbott - $33.4M

2. Fred Hassan - Schering-Plough - $30.1M

3. Bill Weldon - Johnson & Johnson - $25.1M

4. Bob Essner - Wyeth - $24.1M

5. Robert Parkinson - Baxter - $17.6M

6. Daniel Vasella - Novartis - $15.5M

7. Richard Clark - Merck - $14.5M

8. Frank Baldino - Cephalon - $13.5M

9. Sidney Taurel - Eli Lilly - $13M

10. Jeff Kindler - Pfizer - $12.6M

11. Jim Cornelius - Bristol-Myers Squibb - $11.3

12. Franz Humer - Roche - $11.1M

13. Robert Coury - Mylan - $8.5M

14. Jean-Pierre Garnier - GlaxoSmithKline - $6M

15. Werner Wenning - Bayer - $4.77M

16. David Brennan - AstraZeneca - $4.3M

17. Gerard Le Fur - Sanofi-Aventis - $3.27M

Read more: Top 17 Paychecks in Big Pharma - FiercePharma http://www.fiercepharma.com/special-reports/top-17-paychecks-big-pharma#ixzz1bli3hfeQ
Subscribe: http://www.fiercepharma.com/signup?sourceform=Viral-Tynt-FiercePharma-FiercePharma

-- Edited by jazzy on Wednesday 26th of October 2011 10:40:53 AM

jazzy · Senior Member

2000 Financials for U.S. Corporations Marketing Top 50 Drugs for Seniors

Chart 1

Company	. Revenue Net Sales in millions of dollars: .	Percent of Revenue Allocated to:
Company	. Revenue Net Sales in millions of dollars: .	Profit: (Net Income)	Marketing/ Advertising/ Administration	Research and Development (R&D)
Merck and Co., Inc	$40,363_	17%	15%	6%
Pfizer Inc.	29,574	13%	39%	15%
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company	18,216	26%	30%	11%
Pharmacia Corporation	18,144	4%	37%	15%
Abbott Laboratories	13,746	20%	21%	10%
American Home Products Corporation	13,263	-18%	38%	13%
Eli Lilly and Co.	10,862	28%	30%	19%
Schering-Plough Corporation	9,815	25%	36%	14%
Allergan, Inc.	1,563	14%	42%	13%

Five Highest Paid Drug Company Executives Salaries
2000 Annual Compensation Exclusive of Unexercised Stock Options

Chart 2

Executive	Company	Compensation
William C. Steere, Jr. Chairman	Pfizer Inc	$40,191,845
John R. Stafford Chairman and CEO	American Home Products Corporation	$27,008,927
Edward M. Scolnick Executive VP	Merck and Co., Inc.	$26,454,600
Richard Jay Kogan Chairman and CEO	Schering-Plough Corporation	$21,444,020
David W. Anstice President, the Americas	Merck and Co., Inc.	$19,600,975

The Five Drug Company Executives Salaries
with the Largest Unexercised Stock Options in 2000

Chart 3

Executive	Company	Compensation
C.A. Heimbold, Jr. Chairman and CEO	Bristol-Myers Squibb Company	$227,869,513
Raymond V. Gilmartin Chairman, Pres., and CEO	Merck and Co., Inc.	$181,252,976
William C. Steere, Jr. Chairman	Pfizer Inc.	$130,944,439
K.E. Weg Vice Chairman	Bristol-Myers Squibb Company	$84,282,547
John R. Stafford Chairman and CEO	American Home Products Corporation	$81,847,569

originally posted on FAMILIES USA

jazzy · Senior Member

RE: Occupy Wall Street versus TeaParty

winchester · Guru

Occupy Wall Street versus Tea Party

soccerguy315 · Guru

can't make this up... OccupyWallStreet not happy that some people aren't pulling their weight:

"We have compassion toward everyone. However, we have certain rules and guidelines," said Lauren Digioia, 26, a member of the sanitation committee.

"If you're going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back," Digioia said. "There's a lot of takers here and they feel entitled."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/occupy_wall_street/2011/10/23/2011-10-23_where_vagrants_excons__takers_find_a_home.html

catahoula · Guru

Declining tax revenues = less government spending.

Or at least it should, given the last pig-out indicated the Keynesians among us should be eradicated root and branch.

john doe · Guru

" they want it adjusted to something more suitable for the double-dip it looks like the administration has brought to us."

How so??

jazzy · Senior Member

Another view on why the OWS protesters are aiming at the right target.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/all-sides-should-agree-down-big-banks

Liberal protesters "occupying" Wall Street hate the big banks, which they see as the engine of capitalism. But conservatives ought to hate the big banks because they are the enemies of capitalism.

Three events last week cemented how the bailed-out subsidy sucklers of Wall Street continue to profit, not from the free exchange and risk-taking that embodies the market, but from cronyism and offloading their risk onto the taxpayer.

First, Bank of America, which would have collapsed if not for the 2008 taxpayer-funded bailout, moved a reported $55 trillion in derivatives from its investment banking arm, Merrill Lynch, to a subsidiary that is backstopped by taxpayers through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Bloomberg news reported that FDIC officials don't like the move, which puts depositors' money at risk and taxpayers ultimately on the hook if risky derivatives blow up. But Wall Street insiders like the move for precisely that reason: If Bank of America melts down, these hedge fund managers or other big-time investors want their money in a division of the bank propped up by government.

In short, big-time investors in risky financial products want taxpayers to bear some of their risk, and Bank of America has come up with a clever way to do that.

Banks play the same public-risk-private-profit game in the mortgage industry, where lenders and Realtors have successfully pushed a measure to expand taxpayer insurance for mortgages to include big-dollar homes. Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., last week passed through the Senate a measure to expand the size of a loan that the federal government can insure, up to $729,750.

The Menendez-Isakson measure would allow government-owned mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy loans of that size off of lenders, and the Federal Housing Administration could insure loans that big. If a loan owned by Fannnie or Freddie (or insured by the FHA) fails, taxpayers take it on the chin while banks still get paid.

Assuming a 20 percent down payment, this proposed new bailout limit would have taxpayers subsidizing homes worth more than $910,000. Even in pricey Potomac, Md. -- plush with the wealth of lobbyists, government consultants and dual GS-15 incomes -- that sum could buy you a five-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath home with a two-car garage on a cul-de-sac.

Finally, last week we learned how much self-dealing was involved in the 2008 bank bailouts. A Government Accountability Office report highlighted plenty of conflicts of interest at the Federal Reserve. New York Fed official Stephen Friedman was on the board of Goldman Sachs and actively buying up shares of Goldman while the Fed moved to give Goldman special access to its lending windows.

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon sat on the New York Fed's board while the Fed was pouring billions of bailout dollars into JP Morgan and granting JP Morgan special regulatory exceptions.

Meanwhile, the banks keep hiring the "public servants" who help steer bailouts their way, further corrupting both the market and the government. Fed bailout honcho Brian Madigan, who, according to the New York Times, "played a leading role in the emergency lending programs during the financial crisis," cashed out to Barclays this year.

Senate Banking Committee counsel Amy Friend, who helped pass the summer 2008 housing bailout (dubbed the "Bank of America Bill"), now works for a leading financial consulting and lobbying firm. And FHA Commissioner David Stevens, who helped craft a handful of mortgage bailouts, cashed out to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That's just naming a few.

And all of these big banks still profit from an implicit bailout. The credit ratings agency Moody's recently downgraded Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup because the agency saw the likelihood of a bailout decrease from certain to "very high." These banks' credit is rated higher than they would be in a free market, meaning they profit from the expectation of a bailout, if necessary.

So banks profit largely through activities that do not create value or efficiencies. They profit through financial games that rest on government favors. Many Occupy Wall Street protestors demonize all profit. Conservatives defend profit-seeking as the engine that creates prosperity for all of society.

But the big banks have rigged the game so that they profit without creating value. In fact, they profit from activities that weaken the economy by creating instability.

Today, big banks give capitalism a bad name. Believers in the free market should stop giving banks cover.

This is why the highest priorities outlined by OWS so far have been to get Big Money out of the equation --- out of our political campaigns, and out of the halls of government. Highly paid lobbyists serve special interests ---- they don't serve the average worker bee and they are not looking out for the health of the "hive" as a whole.

The OWS wants ALL big money ---- corporations and unions --- to be prohibited from financing campaigns that put politicians in their pockets and from being able to buy influence and favors through lobbying.

The conservatives only want to block the unions.

Food for thought.

-- Edited by jazzy on Tuesday 25th of October 2011 03:10:09 PM

jazzy · Senior Member

Talking about government largesse and rewarding irresponsible behavior.

Scroll through this slide show depicting why the protests are centered on Wall Street and don't miss the last five or six focusing on the banks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10#lets-start-with-the-obvious-unemployment-three-years-after-the-financial-crisis-the-unemployment-rate-is-still-at-the-highest-level-since-the-great-depression-except-for-a-brief-blip-in-the-early-1980s-1

Banks get zero percent money from the Federal Reserve, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, and not only that but they're getting paid interest by the Fed on the money they're NOT lending out ----- that's "largesse" for the wealthy and powerful. As for rewarding bad behavior ---- see charts 31 through 35.

The charts do show that the richest 20 percent of earners pay 64 percent of total taxes (they also are making nearly 60 percent of the money), but taxes on the highest earners are close to the lowest they've ever been. (Chart 24 and 25.) The top 1 percent keeps a larger percentage of pre-tax income than at any time since the 1920s.

I think that's why this New Yorker magazine cover is so apt. Especially the guy in the top hat on the right ("I'm Good, Thanks.")

http://www.newyorkerstore.com/2011/new-yorker-cover-10242011/invt/137438/

-- Edited by jazzy on Tuesday 25th of October 2011 02:27:10 PM

-- Edited by jazzy on Tuesday 25th of October 2011 02:43:04 PM

longprime · Guru

was doing my last post, on DW new Ipad from DS. Ipad keyboard isn't the best but a whole lot better than my jumping Dell's kboard. bleh

----

"The notion that the "rich" do not pay their "fair share" is not connected with reality. In fact, they subsidize everyone else."

IOW, the 1% has ALWAYS paid the larger share of taxes. They pay the share because they can, and because it is in their best interest to pay. Only in times of World War does the lower economic classes pay a increased share of taxes-USA didn't in GWB's administration. Hence, now that the War's bill and other unfunded programs are coming due, are the so called OWS, TP's, D's and R's complaining about taxes when they should have paid their "fair share" long ago. evileye

-- Edited by longprime on Tuesday 25th of October 2011 08:45:31 AM

catahoula · Guru

In about the plainest English possible, what the OWS crowd is really saying is that the "riot tax" rate is currently set way too low and they want it adjusted to something more suitable for the double-dip it looks like the administration has brought to us.

Otherwise, the government won't be able to perform it's prime function, that of being able to protect the productive... the wealthy that is, from the... poor.