Truthy Slips

Romney was making a speech in Illinois and I think the truth finally came out when he was quoting Obama.

"We are inventors, we are builders, we are makers of things. We are Thomas Edison, we are the Wright Brothers, we're Bill Gates, we are steal jobs...wait, I missed that, we are Steve Jobs. That's who we are. That's who we need to be right now. That's true. But the problem is: he's still Barack Obama."

Steal jobs. This coming from a vulture capitalist.

No Money to Pay the Bills

So, I took a little break from my blog because...well...I'm lazy. But, at any rate, I came back on today.

Anyway, I won't have a great deal to say today, except to point out that we're so far in the shithole as far as money goes that at least one city in Michigan can't even pay its electric bill so they've resorted to ripping out street lights.

And the Republicans still won't allow a tax increase to get through.

Spent

On the FSTDT forums, the user Smurfette Principle posted a link to the browser game Spent. In this game you apply for a job that will put you below the poverty line. It'll give you a random daily choice with the ultimate goal of being able to make it through one month.

I've played it four times so far, only ran out of money once and the other three times I've ended the month with triple digit funds. Even though I'd be able to make it through the month three times out of four, it's enough to give you an insight into what it is like to try and make it not just month-to-month, but paycheck-to-paycheck.

People go a long time without needed medical treatment, proper food or housing and basic necessities. Back in the '50's, the idolized time for Republicans, there was a 90% tax rate on the top earners and people lived.

These days, there's a 34% tax rate on the top earners and people can't even survive.

Florida's Welfare Drug Testing Halted

A law in Florida would have required anyone on welfare to submit to drug testing. The law, however, was blocked by a Federal judge.

Gov. Rick Scott, who signed the measure into law on May 31, touted it as a way to ensure taxpayer money isn’t “wasted” on those who use drugs. “Hopefully more people will focus on not using illegal drugs,” he said then.

But, in her order, Scriven issued a scathing assessment of the state’s argument in favor of the drug tests, saying the state failed to prove “special needs” as to why it should conduct such searches without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, as the law requires.

“If invoking an interest in preventing public funds from potentially being used to fund drug use were the only requirement to establish a special need,” Scriven wrote, “the state could impose drug testing as an eligibility requirement for every beneficiary of every government program. Such blanket intrusions cannot be countenanced under the Fourth Amendment.”

This is one of those things you'd expect the people who crafted the law to maybe give some thought to before drafting and passing it. Maybe, just maybe, being poor isn't reason enough to force needy people to piss into a cup.

But then again, that is the kind of mentality that views being impoverished as a crime. This is what they spend your tax dollars on.

Ahh, Kids; I Love How They Know Everything

When I was just popping into my teenage years, I remember being very, very upset when I would have some good advice or knowledge but adults would write me off out of hand just because of my age. I hated that, it constantly made me feel as though I didn't matter and that no one cared what I had to say just because I was young. After all, youth obviously equals stupidity in their eyes. As I got older, I promised myself that if anyone had something to say; advice, wisdom, a quote, whatever, then I would not form my opinion based on their age. And to that end, I have been very successful. So I can say with honesty, I have not formed my opinion of this person because she is young; I have formed my opinion because the things she's saying are fucking retarded.

If you've been following Occupy Wall Street then you've probably seen this girl; the 13-year old girl who's telling the dirty hippies they should have gotten a "useful degree" (even though many of them did) and to get a job at McDonald's and to live beneath their means. I'd rather not post a picture of her just because I don't want it on my blog; click the link if you want to see but I've pretty much summed it up.

At any rate, it seems she's back and bitching once again. It seems now she's pissed off at all of us unwashed liberals for daring to criticize her (and to be fair, if people were making violent threats: not cool, people, not cool) and she's also telling all of us poor ignorant folks that if we have time to trespass in a private park (that was created through negations with the city and is, in fact, a publicly accessible park) then we obviously have time to work. And she seems to wants to "take this country back!" Gee, how far back do you think she wants to take the USA?

Do you think she knows that people are protesting in pretty much all 50 states? And that the reason they have time to protest is because they can't find a fucking job? Do you think she knows that on average there are 6.3 applicants for every job opening? Do you think she cares, or do you think she's enjoying being a republican shill?

Also, she seems to have a real hate-on for Apple products. I'm a PC guy myself, but seriously, what gives? I can find all sorts of apple stuff on Craig's List for around $125 to $400 bucks; a lot of people can afford that.

I know that at the age of 13 a lot of people are forming their own opinions, but I can't help but think she's just parroting her conservative parents' talking points.

What Color is the Sky in Your Reality?

Let's have a look here, shall we?



[Click to enlarge]

Keep this in mind, boys and girls. This is known as the Wealth Gap. Notice how the average wages started stagnating around 1980 as productivity rose sharply? Hmm...what else happened in 1980...ahh well, not important. What is important is what's happened to the richest fucks in the country.



[Click to enlarge]

See that, everyone? Notice how their income's shot up to around 23%? Why, there must be a shit-tonne of them, right?!

Hahaha, if you think that, you're an idiot.



[Click to enlarge]

See kids? In 2007, 1% of people controlled 42% is all financial wealth in the nation. And the bottom 80%? They collectively controlled 7% of the financial wealth in the country. Maybe now it'll be a little more clear as to why people are protesting on the streets. Clear to us collective 80%ers, maybe, but obviously not to that 1%. As reported in an article by the New York Times;

Publicly, bankers say they understand the anger at Wall Street — but believe they are misunderstood by the protesters camped on their doorstep.

But when they speak privately, it is often a different story.

“Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” said one top hedge fund manager.

“It’s not a middle-class uprising,” adds another veteran bank executive. “It’s fringe groups. It’s people who have the time to do this.”

Could it be that they have time to protest because they can't find a fucking job, you fuck?

If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

Gratitude? Okay, how's this: Thank you for making so many bad choices that you were on the verge of destroying the NATION'S ECONOMY so we, us lowly taxpayers, had to bail your asses out so that, in addition to not destroying America's economy (too big to fail, remember that?) you could start using that money to make proper loans again but instead used it to pad your CEO's wallets for doing such a "good job." Thank you, you ignorant, out-of-touch douchebags. Thank you so fucking much.

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Hmm...yes...who is their constituency? 1% of the voting public, or the other 99% of the voting public?

Remember that, everyone. These people may be off in their own little world where money is dispensed on toilet paper rolls and the rivers run yellow from liquid gold; and while they have control of 42% of the wealth, they control only 1% of the vote.

Do the Commies Have a Point?

A personal saying I try to follow is; "If advice is good, its good, regardless of where it came from." This is true of quotes, as well. So to that end, I have to ask; do the damn dirty commies have a point when it comes to Occupy Wall Street and the American government's reaction to it? For clarification, I have to point to two clips, one from the Chinese state news agency Xinhua and the other from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

Protests reveal US 'messy house'
Xinhua said they showed "a clear need for Washington, which habitually rushes to demand other governments to change when there are popular protests in their countries, to put its own house in order."

Gorbachev calls Wall Street protests just; Flaherty says they have a point

The Americans, he [Gorbachev] said, need to ensure that everything is right in their own country "before trying to put the house in order in other countries."

In Ottawa, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the American protesters decrying the income gap between rich and poor have a point.

Stop and give thought to the dawn of the Arab Spring. Remember when we first started hearing about the uprisings in Iran? The USA told them to listen to the people. Same then happened with Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. When the people there started taking to the streets and demanding a change to their systems, the USA was behind them every step of the way whether they wanted it or not. And now our own people are rising up, demanding change and equality and economic security so loudly and so passionately that the fires of anger we've started have spread to every state in the USA and has kindled on the other side of the Atlantic to spread through Europe...

...and the American government is turning a blind eye to the suffering and demands of it's own people.

How to Legitimatize a Movement

It seems that Occupy Wall Street is, far from my expectations, not dying out but actually growing. As it turns out, it's growing to the point that it's going international. There are protests cropping up in New Zealand, London, Frankfurt, as well as all over the USA. With this profound of a political movement cropping up it was only a matter of time before someone got the bright idea to call it the "Tea Party of the Left." Privately, I have to roll my eyes at pundits trying to associate the two , but it seems to have struck a nerve with the Teabaggers.

[Link]
The tea party isn’t about to make room for the new protesters on the block.

Big tea party groups have launched an attack against the Occupy Wall Street protests, challenging the line that the anti-corporate uprising is the “the tea party of the left.”

Tea partiers and their allies are looking to de-legitimize the protests circulating in the anti-Wall Street crowds, hunting for evidence of union ties, fringe rhetoric and bad behavior — ranging from news of arrests, to recordings of incendiary speeches, to tales of littering, drug use and debauchery.

They’re posting what they find online, like a photograph of a demonstrator apparently defecating on a cop car that has circulated widely, and are accusing the mainstream media of ignoring extremist elements.

This actually makes me chuckle a little. The idea of such an astroturfed movement getting a bug up their asses over another movement is hilarious in its own right, but what is just rib ticklingly funny is what one commenter pointed out;

Michael DiZazzo
"Nothing legitimizes a protest movement nearly as much as it's opposite number attacking it. True believers are terrified by the sight of their opposite pole."

Rarely do I find myself in agreement with a comment on Yahoo News. as I said before, the Yahoo News comments section seems to be a bastion of conservative knuckle draggers. However, this seems to be one of those rare comments that cuts right to the truth of the matter. What happened when the Arab Spring started sweeping the Middle East? They were largely written off until people started to actively attempt to discredit them or put down the movement through force. So guess what Mayor Bloomburg tried to do.

"If Bloomberg really cared about sanitation here he wouldn't have blocked portapotties and dumpsters."

On Thursday afternoon Occupy Wall Street called an emergency General Assembly down at Liberty Plaza to deal with the announcement that Friday will see a cleanup of the park by the City, starting at 7 am. Representatives of Brookfield, the company that owns the park, said in the clean-up notice that everything left behind will be thrown away. On Thursday it was also revealed that Brookfield had sent a letter to police commissioner Ray Kelly asking the NYPD help clear out the protestors. A group of New York civil liberties lawyers warned the CEO of Brookfield that forcing protestors from the park violates their first amendment rights, stating, "Under the guise of cleaning the Park you are threatening fundamental constitutional rights. There is no basis in the law for your request for police intervention, nor have you cited any. Such police action without a prior court order would be unconstitutional."

And guess what he failed to do?

A planned cleanup of the Lower Manhattan park that has been home to the Occupy Wall Street movement since September 17 was delayed just hours before it was due to begin by Brookfield Office Properties, which manages the publicly accessible park.

The move averted a possible showdown between police and protesters who viewed the cleanup as a ploy to evict them. Protesters loudly cheered the decision, and several hundred set off marching toward the city's financial district.

Police arrested 14 people, but there were no widespread disruptions.

"This development has emboldened the movement and sent a clear message that the power of the people has prevailed against Wall Street," Occupy Wall Street said in a statement, estimating more than 3,000 people had gathered in the park.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his weekly radio address on Friday, said his office was not involved in the decision to postpone the cleanup.

"My understanding is that Brookfield got lots of calls from many elected officials threatening them and saying, 'If you don't stop this, we'll make your life much more difficult,'" said Bloomberg, who added that he did not know which officials had called the company.

So thank you, Teabaggers, 1%ers, and righties of all stripes. You've done more to validate OWS than anything the left ever could have done.

Fun With Math

Hey kids, wanna see something fun! Pull out your calculators, get a #2 pencil and a sheet of paper and use the graph on the blackboard here:


Now for the problem: In the lowest paid non-agricultural field of work, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the "Leisure and Hospitality" industry. The average weekly worker pay there in September 2011 was $343.95 dollars. Using the table above, what is the average weekly pay for a CEO in the Leisure and Hospitality industry?

If you said $163,376.25 a week, you get an A+ and a feeling of seething anger at the inequality (assuming you're not a deluded conservative). But, okay, let's say that is a worst case scenario. Let me switch charts:

From AFL-CIO:



Now, let's try this problem using the same $343.95 dollar base, shall we? If your second answer is $117,974.85 a week for the CEO, you get another A+, a gold star and a handful of Goldfish crackers that you're probably too poor to afford.

Lower or Higher Standard of Living?

Shortly after I woke up I hopped onto YIM and checked my mail when I noticed one of the articles was entitled: "Unemployed seek protection against job bias". The article itself was talking about how many companies, when looking at applicants for a job opening, will automatically discard any one of them who is either unemployed or has been unemployed for longer than 6 months. This is not something that is unheard of for me, I've known for a while that this is fairly common practice and it seems to be so well known that President Obama has even included a provision in his jobs bill that would ban companies from excluding the unemployed when considering applications. But that is actually just background for the real thing I want to address in this post.

A while back I heard someone asking in confusion about the general attitudes of the common person during the Wisconsin protests; "Why" they asked, "is it that when they hear about union and government employees making X amount of money an hour and get Y days off and Z benefits that instead of demanding equal treatment by their own private sector employers they instead demand union and government employees to take cuts?"

It was a question that I couldn't answer. I puzzled over it for a long while and honestly, I could never find any answer that didn't sound like some variation of "Fuck the right wing." I didn't want another outlet for my contempt of most things conservative, I wanted a real damn answer. Eventually I gave up and put it out of my mind. Until today.

When reading the Associated Press article linked to above, I made the mistake of looking at the comments. I'd almost forgotten that YahooNews has become a bastion of right-wing knuckle draggers. As I was reading, quite a few of the comments were, surprisingly, agreeable. And then I found one from the user 1Spirit;

The point I am trying to make in my post is that we, the unemployed, are trying to hit a mercurial moving target in regards to jobs in our respective ares of expertise. Yes, we can
accept a jobs below our personal income requirements but, this only slows the ratcheting down of our standards of living. The probability of losing our homes, our marriages are only minimally diminished. Many, if not most of us, will still have thousands of dollars in student loans to pay for to which have no effective value. Collectively, this affects us all through the cascade effect.

This actually strikes me as quite a reasonable post. Why should we, the majority of America, have to sacrifice our standard of living so the richest fuckers out there can keep hoarding their cash? And why should we be excluded from employment because we can't find work in an economy where 65 year-old's are still working full time and unemployment is still hovering around 9%? And then I find some oh-so intelligent [/sarcasm] replies to this post.

Jim
Your standard of living? Are you kidding me. You are worried about the pride of losing your standard of living.Get out there and get a job and take care of your family. If they don't have a job in your area, move. You do what you have to to take care of your family you idiot. You lazy moron, get out there and go to work. Do anything you can. Businesses hire people that are willing to do what ever it takes. I delivered pizzas when I had to. My son told me the other day, Dad, you taught me a valuable lesson with that. The pride is in taking care of your family. You can't accept a job that is below your personal income requirements. You lazy sot. And your spouse buys that crap? I paid every dime of my son's tuition and housing because I worked second jobs. I had yard sales, I did what it took because that is who I am. You are part of what is wrong with this nation now, it does not meet your personal income requirements and ratchets down your standard of living. You moron. You voted for Obama didn't you.

Charles B
Took a job that pays less than 1/2 of what I was used to being paid.... it is a regular paycheck.

I then cut out completely ANY AND ALL entertainment expense. I no longer have steak for Dinner (maybe 1 X /month). There is about 50X of ground beef in the feezer, and some chicken breast.
Before I lost my job and took the new one, I hadn't had a hamburger at home in ayear.... Now it is on the table 3 of 5 nights, disguised as manwich or salsbury steak..... or tacos or what have you.

SO I stepped down on all of my standards of living to be able to SUPPORT MY FAMILY!

I have "NO" sympathy for any of you that will not take something less to delay to lowering of the standard of living. GROW UP..... HAVE PRIDE.... ANS SUPPORT YOURSELF. We went from a 4 BR 3BA home that had 4.5 acres of land to a 3 BR 2 BA home that looks like a shack.... and well... it protects us from the elements. BUT WE DID IT!

BTW; I have TWO DEGREES.... and I am working in a field that only mildly corresponds to one of them..... BUT I AM WORKING!!!!! Adapt and overcome- stop being a poor pitiful pearl that expects others to supply your life's needs. YOU ARE AN AMERICAN.... You have the opportunity to succeed and fail.... now that you have had the failure, pull up your pants get on your shoes, and get back up on that first rung and begin moving back up...... IT CAN BE DONE BY EVERYONE BUT THE ENTITLED!
Stop hating those who have made it (RIch)- Stop demanding that they pay more so that you can continue to work less....... GET UP AND REACH FOR IT.... expect many steps, expect to have to give things up, expect to have to struggle.... expect to wonder what is happening next week...... but above all do not allow the government to take away that freedom!

Kevin E
I gotta cut my standard of living! Oh noes! Really? Well here's a dose of reality for you, sometimes when times get rough you have to cut out things that aren't necessary so you make ends meet until you can afford the luxuries. That's the problem with Americans today, they can't make cuts themselves and survive without nanny government to look out for them.

Ilona
The good jobs are long gone sorry that is the reality right now, get off your high horse and work a crappy job like most everyone else does before they all disappear too. maybe good jobs will return maybe not, whining won't help

I read these and went off to get dinner started. As I was heading to the kitchen I has a eureka moment. People don't want to admit that they are being taken advantage of. To see others who are fairly well off but not in the top 5% of income earners seems to gall them. Another person who is doing fairly well off but by no means rich seems to be an insult to those who're pissed off at their crappy job but can't seem to grow the stones needed to demand better conditions.

This is the sort of thing I find to be not only really sad, but is also an insight into why people will actively vote against their own interests by, among other things, supporting union busting legislation.

One Demand

One of the biggest questions about the Occupy Wall Street is; "What is their one demand?" It seems a lot of people *coughrepublicanscough* just can't understand why all these people are pissed off enough to get out and protest, much less protest without having a specific reason in mind. But it seems to be difficult for them to understand that you can protest injustice, even if you don't know exactly what that injustice is. Only, these protestors do know what injustice they're facing; greed.

We are living in an era where the vast majority of wealth in the USA is controlled by an insultingly small number of people. Over 95% of Americans are struggling to make ends meet, many aren't. People are going to college, coming out with crushing debt and finding out that if they're lucky enough to find a job it won't likely be much better than minimum wage. And gods help them if they have to use a credit card to buy anything. In many cases people are only able to pay the minimum, but often the monthly minimum is less than the fees and interest rates so even though they're paying, they're finding their owed balance growing. But while people are being bled dry of everything they own, the banks aren't exactly crying in their beer knowing that some poor (literally) sap out there will be paying them off for the rest of their lives.

How bad does it have to get when you have lawyers telling you to just stop paying credit card companies?

The way the fees are now imposed, "people would be better off if they stopped paying" once they get in over their heads, said T. Bentley Leonard, a North Carolina bankruptcy attorney . Once you stop paying, creditors write off the debt and sell it to a debt collector. "They may harass you, but your balance doesn't keep rising. That's the irony."

Now we have an influx of people getting out of college and can only buy food on credit and they're quickly finding out they're likely worse off than if they're just stuck with a high school education; by and large the only jobs out there are low-level minimum wage jobs which they can't get hired for because they're "overqualified" and it's hard to find work in their field because they don't have enough experience. They're caught in an endless cycle of You're-Fucked.

Now add insult to injury; the wealthiest people in the country are sitting on trillions of dollars and a rich republican congressmen is whining that he only has $400K ($400,000) a year left to live on after taxes and expenses. Cry me a motherfucking river, he's got it so hard, doesn't he?

Contrast that with 13 year old Allison who's parents can't afford for her to see a doctor after showing signs of Schizophrenia and whom has been hiding her need for sleeping pills and going without enough food because she knows just how poor her family is. No kid should ever have to face that kind of reality, much less before they've finished middle school.

This is supposed to be the greatest, richest country on earth so how can we allow our kids to go hungry and without medical care?

So what is the One Demand from Occupy Wall Street? They'll release lists of their demands, but whatever it is, it will be variations on the same thing; we want economic security.

I never believed in the American Dream, but it is still shocking to see that people are perusing it overseas. In a first world nation like America, nobody should ever have to work two jobs and still have to resort to prostitution to make ends meet. No one should ever have to work 80 and 90 hours a week just to pay for their own chemotherapy.

That is the One Demand; we want this injustice to stop. How can any government leader or millionaire look at themselves in the mirror and not be horrified by what they see when things are allowed to become this bad?

Teabagger Default

I've been hearing a lot of talk about how the Teabaggers actually want the government to default on it's debts rather than raise taxes on the rich. And if they do raise taxes in one spot, they better cut them in another so government revenue stagnates. And you know what?

I hope they get the default they want. I hope the Republicans keep screaming No and the government defaults for the first time in history. And then I hope these old, wrinkly, shriveled up prunes see their social security checks stop coming, their medicare stops getting paid for, their disability checks dry up. I want to see them suddenly stripped of all these government programs they take for granted and are left flapping in the breeze by the same party they'll support until their dying, oxygen-tanked breath escapes their bearded lips as the Republican bus runs them over.

And then I'll laugh as they blame Obama.

Read My Lips! New Taxes!

So, it looks like Republican leader Boner Boehner and the rest of the Reich Wing are going to stomp their feet and hold their breath and allow the government to go into default to prove...what? That spending is out of control? That we "can't afford" new taxes? That they are somehow anything other than a hollow shell of their once touted "Fiscal Responsibility" former selves? And isn't saying that we "can't afford new taxes" like saying "I'm dying of thirst, so don't give me any water"?

It's well known that the goal in spending cuts has been knocked back from $4 Trillion to around $2 Trillion but every time the Democrats try to kick up taxes a little bit, the Republicans swell up with a Holier Than Thou morality and refuse to even consider it without more spending cuts. Now they're wanting to pick away at Medicare and Social Security.

My question is, where was this morality when funding the wars overseas came up? Those always got rubber stamps. In fact, any time the military asks for more money then it gets a rubber stamp. Hell, the Marines have asked Congress to kill development funding for the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) and when Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed with them, the Republicans fought it. The EFV is a concept dating back to the '80's and didn't start getting underway until the '90's. It is a concept who's time has come and gone, the Military knows the EFV is something that was conceived of during the Cold War and designed when computers were in their adolescence. The simple fact is that it has no purpose on a battlefield in 2011 and if that weren't bad enough, it was projected to cost $15.9 billion dollars a unit. Why would the party of "fiscal responsibility" and "spending cuts" want to fight that cancellation?

And why are Republicans now acting like raising the debt ceiling is some kind of unthinkable notion when they voted to raise it 19 times and actually got it raised 7 times. So, who pays for Republican short-sightedness? It seems we will with yet another recession. Of course, you know what else we can do to avoid this? Eliminate the fucking tax breaks for the rich that the Republicans kicked and screamed for until they got. Without those, we wouldn't be in nearly as bad a situation as we are now. Or maybe, ya know, just returning taxes to what they were under Clinton? Or taxing luxury items, like yachts and things of that sort?

You know, I think the Republicans do, in fact, hate America.