Hi Dick,
I like your choice of words. "...have nothing better to do so they are joining in 'protesting' the system that has allowed them to exist."
Allowed them to exist. Is that what America is coming to? We are to be allowed to exist? Does the president's proclamation declaring a Blind Equality Day mean that we blind will be allowed to exist?
Interesting thought. Didn't we allow the Negroes to exist, too? Not to participate, but to exist.
Serfs, Peasants
and those other low born folks could exist, also.
and those other low born folks could exist, also.
Of course we did not feel quite the same way toward the Native Americans. You recall them? The folks we ran into when we "Discovered" this Land of Plenty?
And today we don't want to allow the children of illegal folks to exist, even if they came here before they knew what illegal meant.
Next we'll probably begin shipping all those sneaky Muslims back to wherever Muslims come from. And I noted that one good Preacher, a Presbyterian by trade, in supporting Rick Perry, cried out that Mormons are a Cult. So what does that make his denomination in the eyes of the Catholic Church? And that's funny, too. I knew a preacher who told me that the Catholics were a cult. Aren't we all!
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----From: R. E. Driscoll SrSent: Friday, October 14, 2011 9:21 AMSubject: Re: Panic of the Plutocrats By PAUL KRUGMANIt seems to me that Mr. Krugman is predicting a massive collapse of our system and a grass roots revolution that is eventually to be patterned after the recent occurrences in Egypt. I do not personally hold with these theories. My continued study of the matter in question (The Wall Street Revolutionists) indicates that it will soon die down and our activists will find another item of protest. I personally think that most of the persons participating in the New York activity have nothing better to do so they are joining in 'protesting' the system that has allowed them to exist.
As an example I just received a prepaid, automated phone call tell me that if I did nothing we would collapse by reason of having the word 'God' prohibited in this country by court action. I listened to the entire call and decided all that they wanted was a donation from me.
On 10/14/2011 10:19 AM, Charles Crawford wrote:Hi Richard,
I am not sure I fully understand your response to this article? I think I'd rather hear your comments that you were going to write. For my part, I am very impressed with Krugman's understanding of what is happening.
-- Charlie.
At 03:42 PM 10/10/2011, you wrote:
After reading this I thought I would write a few comments but then I decided the best thing that I could do is try to find my old safety hat (all metal) and protect myself as surely the sky will fall today or at the latest sometime tomorrow.
On 10/10/2011 1:56 PM, Claude Everett wrote:
_______________________________________________
October 9, 2011
Panic of the Plutocrats
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change
America's direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably
hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and
politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest
hundredth of a percent.
And this reaction tells you something important - namely, that the
extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called "economic
royalists," not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if
growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the
police - confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police
overreaction - but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been
nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of
2009.
Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced "mobs"
and "the pitting of Americans against Americans." The G.O.P. presidential
candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of
waging "class warfare," while Herman Cain calls them "anti-American." My
favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that
the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people
don't deserve to have them.
Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor and a financial-industry titan in his
own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of
trying to "take the jobs away from people working in this city," a statement
that bears no resemblance to the movement's actual goals.
And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the
protesters "let their freak flags fly," and are "aligned with Lenin."
The way to understand all of this is to realize that it's part of a broader
syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged
in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged
the system is.
Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild
over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as
being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which
would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in
risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a
loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes - well, Stephen
Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler's
invasion of Poland.
And then there's the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth
Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts.
Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth
case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was
radical - it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes's
famous dictum that "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."
But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you'd think that Ms.
Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she
has a "collectivist agenda," that she believes that "individualism is a
chimera." And Rush Limbaugh called her "a parasite who hates her host.
Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it."
What's going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street's Masters of
the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is.
They're not John Galt; they're not even Steve Jobs. They're people who got
rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear
benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose
aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their
fellow citizens.
Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by
taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit
and implicit federal guarantees - basically, they're still in a game of
heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes
that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower
rates than middle-class families.
This special treatment can't bear close scrutiny - and therefore, as they
see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious,
no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the
stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more
urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth
Warren.
So who's really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply
trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America's
oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their
wealth.
More in Opinion (4 of 16 articles)
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Read More >
Close
Regards,
Claude Everett
"Labor is prior to and independent of
capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if
labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln,
Congressional address 1861
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