LOL!
I’ve seen two interviews with white Occupy Wall Street protestors.
Both of them claim they had jobs that they quit in order to come and protest!
Then I saw this video.
A white man with his 10 paid (PAID!) Hispanic Occupy Wall Street protestors.
(He hedges, some of them are paid, some of them volunteered. BUT, what would you do if you realized all the other protestors in your car pool were paid while you were not?)
Well, at least he upped the color factor of the 99% by 25% from the photos/footage I’ve seen.
This is the biggest astroturf game Dems and the Left have played in months.
Remember the ”Coffee Party?”
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Cesar Chavez Park on Thursday to stand in solidarity with the growing nationwide demonstrations aimed at corporate greed, but some members of the peaceful event showed hostility to media members over basic questions about the goals of the protest.
The best part?
Organizer Anthony Bondi said he has what he referred to as a “message team” working on the primary goals of the local protests, which he admitted “was kind of vague.”
“That message team will reveal that tomorrow [Friday] morning,” Bondi said.
“So you guys are in the process of forming the reasons why you are here?” asked CBS13 reporter Tony Lopez.
“Exactly correct,” Bondi said.
Liberal1 (objectivity)
13 years ago
There are a couple of places on the web where the protestor’s rationale is defined–if you desire to look, and not just settle for rumors and innuendos:
USE CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY AND OVERSIGHT TO ENSURE APPROPRIATE FEDERAL AGENCIES FULLY INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE THE WALL STREET CRIMINALS who clearly broke the law and helped cause the 2008 financial crisis in the following notable cases: (insert list of the most clear cut criminal actions). There is a pretty broad consensus that there is a clear group of people who got away with millions / billions illegally and haven’t been brought to justice. Boy would this be long overdue and cathartic for millions of Americans. It would also be a shot across the bow for the financial industry. If you watch the solidly researched and awared winning documentary film “Inside Job” that was narrated by Matt Damon (pretty brave Matt!) and do other research, it wouldn’t take long to develop the list.
Except that they didn’t break the law. They used the laws democrats provided for them. It’s simple.
Rubin rewrites bank rules. Creates too big to fail.
Cuomo make predatory lending legal.
Clinton opts not to regulate derivatives.
democrats at Fannie securitize all the crappy loans.
Goldman packages and sells worthless debt as high value securities. Moody’s and S&P rules allow them to do it.
Goldman buys Obama.
Like I said- simple.
Nan G
13 years ago
I bet those union guys just love standing in solidarity with those white wimps who oppose all of the business in New York,
After all, union labor is what builds each and every one of those office buildings.
LOL!
Rich liberals like Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore and George Soros (the ultimate Wall Street insider) are not criticized by these fops.
Odd….not.
I had read that Soros’ front group Tides is supplying meals and stuff to these guys.
I bet the neighborhood wishes Tides would supply toilets.
another vet
13 years ago
The first images I saw of the protests featured a number of people walking around dressed and acting like zombies. If nothing else, they brought back memories of all those George Romero “Night of the Living Dead” movies I loved watching. It would actually make for an intersting installment in the series. You could have the protestors dressed like zombies being infiltrated by real zombies and by the time everyone finds out, it’s too late. Perhaps some of those who quit their jobs to protest could be cast as extras. Keep the entertainment coming, just leave the problem solving to someone else.
Budvarakbar
13 years ago
Dr. John @#4 — and who was it that Chelsea Clinton married?
Those who are demostrating are rediculous idiots who have no clue. Too bad Democrats support their idiotic actions. Take heart America, real change is coming with the next election cycle. Hopefully America will elect adults to run our country.
Greg
13 years ago
There are people on Wall Street whose personal greed came close to destroying the national and global economies, and precipitated the economic problems that we’re still struggling with. They deliberately concealed bad loans and knowingly misrepresented and sold unsafe investment instruments, robbing countless small and institutional investors of untold billions of dollars. They extorted taxpayer money to stave off a total calamity that their own actions nearly caused, and then had the temerity to reward themselves with multi-million dollar bonuses.
During the dismal years that have followed–dismal, at least, for ordinary Americans–corporate profits have been at record levels. Never in modern history have they raked in so much money, and never in modern history have their tax rates been so low.
All of this, and some people can’t figure out why angry citizens would be carrying signs on Wall Street?
Equally astonishing is how readily those same people will support Tea Party protester demands for less regulation and for lower taxes on the very forces that are already bleeding the country dry.
“Get a damn job you hippie” is the frickin’ stupidest comment I’ve seen in a month. The jobs aren’t there to get. That’s the problem. Those corporations reporting record profits, record levels of capital on hand, and tax rates at record low levels aren’t hiring. Instead, they’re whining about the need for even less regulation and even lower taxes. If they do make a capital investment, it’s as likely to be overseas as here. There’s no connection between increasing their profits and creating U.S. jobs.
They already had years of deregulation and years of tax cuts. How has that worked out?
Common Sense
13 years ago
@Greg: Greg, what’s your point?? The demonstrators don’t have a clue and their activities accomplish about as much as 0-bama has with all of his job creation efforts. Clue, that would be less than zero. He told America that with the stimulus our unemployment rate would not go higher than 8.7% and without it 9.2%. Well, he spent trillions on green jobs scandals, buying unions, and making sure illegal aliens got all they needed. All because Kool Aid drinkers like you and the MSM failed to tell America the truth about this unqualified genius. Brilliant!!
Cary
13 years ago
Let me help you out…
As we gather
together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must
not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people
who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we
are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the
reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of
its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon
corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their
own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government
derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek
consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no
true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic
power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit
over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality,
run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right,
to let these facts be known. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the
workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity
and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel
treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these
practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for
ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance. They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save
people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a
substantive profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.* To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space;
create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions
accessible to everyone. To all communities that take
action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer
support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard!
If we suddenly decided that people who drive through a red light would not be ticketed, some people would do the right thing and stop. Others would drive through without consequence, and someone would get hurt. So what did we think would happen when we deregulated Wall Street? When people say that regulating is “bigger government”, I wonder how they’d feel with no law enforcement at all.
Cary
13 years ago
Curt,
I’m friends with police officers here, they need to do their jobs and keep order, but most agree with the protest. This country is turning from a Democracy into Corporatism, and none of us should be standing for that. Corporate sponsored politicians are the problem, not whether I have a job or not (and I have three that I’m quite happy with, btw.)
Liberty60
13 years ago
It is a bit ironic, the fact that the police officers themselves are the target.
Not of the “hippies’, but of the Wall Street corporations that desire to outsource their jobs to minimum wage private security firms.
I led a MoveOn protest a few months ago, where I asked the crowd to give a round of applause for the unionized cops standing behind us, to recognize we were fighting on their behalf as much as our own.
Richard Wheeler
13 years ago
Cary THANK YOU for your posting and your efforts. As a former employee of Merrill Lynch and Cushman and Wakefield I’m in agreement and support. Semper Fi
Wilson
13 years ago
It’s hillarious that almost 45 years later right wingers are still obsessed with hippies.
Nan G
13 years ago
Didn’t that hacker group ”Anonymous,” say they supported the Occupy Wall Street squatters?
If so, I wonder if there is a tie-in to this story?
A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.
The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say.
…..
[Obama] is now giving some of the state’s pot shops 45 days to close down.
The state’s four U.S. attorneys gave notice to at least 16 stores that they must close, or face criminal charges and the seizure of their property
……
Greg Anton, a lawyer for a pot dispensary in Marin, Calif., tells the AP that the shop’s owner “has been paying state and federal taxes for 14 years, and they have cashed all the checks.”
“All I hear from Obama is whining about his budget,” Anton said, “but he has money to do this — which will actually reduce revenues.”
Now, I know a couple of pot shop owners. They are real hippies.
And they wouldn’t be caught dead at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
Wm T Sherman
13 years ago
The protesters themselves are lackeys, cannon-fodder. That our society is producing such weak ignorant creatures, in many cases after years of higher “education,” is sad, but not the immediate point.
The thing that draws attention is the orchestrated, coordinated nature of the protests, and the connection to the Democratic Party and its allies. So far it is not the degree of the protests – which have been fairly minor to date – it is the “Hugo Chavez style government-organized mob disguised as a spontaneous protest” template that is being practiced.
These people are not fighting the establishment. They are the establishment.
Common Sense
13 years ago
@Wilson: Wilson, news flash idiot, right wingers can be hippies. Obviously you must have been in diapers when the hippy era began. I wan’t, I was in college. Just because you like to be known as a radical left wing idiot doesn’t mean you know all there is to know, obviously.
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
The top 400 Americans have as much total wealth as the bottom 150,000,000. In the 1970s, the average pay for a CEO versus a normal worker was $25 to $1. In Japan presently, that ratio is $11 to $1. Presently in the US: For every average worker that makes $1, CEOs make $275.
If you want the American dream — where the son of a mailman can become rich, you are far better off being born and raised in Denmark or Finland than in the USA, where we are nowhere near the top, with regard to upward mobility.
The total amount of student loan debt now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt. Our kids graduate from college with $50,000 (or much more) in debt but no prospects for well paying jobs. The new poor are going to be young people with huge educational debts and no prospects.
On and on and on.
That’s what it’s all about.
Reminds me of the early days of the Tea Party movement. No one could really give a coherent explanation of what it was all about, but everyone knew that they were just fed up with the direction of the country. This won’t really grow to Tea Party levels until after the GOP is firmly in power, but I think it will then be just as big a movement.
These people are not fighting the establishment. They are the establishment.
The original pre-Tea Party Express protesters and the people currently protesting the excesses of Wall Street corporatism might have a lot more in common than some would think.
Corporatism is rapidly becoming the establishment.
Cary
13 years ago
To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with anyone becoming successful and wealthy, or even inheriting success and wealth. It’s when some of those people are paying off our leaders to cater to their own need to become even more successful and wealthy with no responsibility, screwing over the rest of us, that I get pissed off. Question my character all you want, the outrage isn’t going away until the problem is fixed.
@Wilson: Wilson, news flash idiot, right wingers can be hippies.
You are totally clueless about the nature of the 1960s counter-culture.
Common Sense
13 years ago
@Greg: I was there dude. Clueless is a big word for you. Maybe you should go back to your Kindergarten class and tell the teacher you got lost coming back from the toilet, again.
Cary
13 years ago
Seems like catty insults are more fun than dealing with the issues raised. Have a blast with that…
another vet
13 years ago
This statement sounds much like some of the others being echoed here:
Democracy means equality. The great significance of the proletariat’s struggle for equality and of equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as meaning the abolition of classes. But democracy means only formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labor and wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing farther, from formal equality to actual equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.
Valdimir Lenin
His alternative to capitalism worked out so well. How many millions suffered living under it and how many more millions died implementing it?
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
I really wish that people would cease conflating progressive taxation with Marxism/Leninism.
Cary
13 years ago
Actually, Corporations running a country after buying out politicians who eliminate laws to regulate them is a far cry from Capitalism. I’m not sure what to call it, but it’s not that…
Reminds me of the early days of the Tea Party movement. No one could really give a coherent explanation of what it was all about, but everyone knew that they were just fed up with the direction of the country.
Utter baloney, Larry. I attended these events early on. Everyone involved knew exactly what the issues were: excessive and unsustainable size, scope, intrusiveness, and expense of government. How can you be reminded of something that never happened?
These projected deficits were not driven primarily by reduced revenues, but rather primarily by increased spending: about a 30% increase from 2008-2011. And the hectoring, demonizing tone adopted by the new administration and its allies toward the public most definitely added to the impression that their intention was to run hog wild and change the basic structure of our society; which they in fact attempted to do for the next two years as a priority over every other issue — over the economy, over unemployment, over national security.
The so-called stimulus was a payout to Democratic Party allies, to unions, state pension funds, and rent-seeking crony capitalists, and we have nothing to show for it:
I consider the early Tea partiers 100% vindicated.
another vet
13 years ago
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: I’m not confusing progressive taxation with Marxism. Re-read some of the statements made in number 12. While some of them have merit such as politicians selling us out, the overall theme is heavily slanted to the left as it is heavily class based. Their comment about democracy is a reworded version of Lenin’s.
BTW, what are their solutions to the problems they bring up or is it just a bunch of bitching about anything and everything because they think life is unfair to them because they couldn’t get a high paying job right after graduating from college? I have news for them, the economy is a mess, it’s not going to be getting better anytime soon because of a myraid of factors, some of which they touched upon others that they did not, and there people who have been in the work force long before most of them were even born who are now out of work.
Reality
13 years ago
“We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share.”
– President Ronald Reagan, 1985
That is EXACTLY what Obama says… but he’s a socialist, right?
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Sherm: The “sudden and unprecedented jump” occurred in fiscal year 2009. The FY 2009 budget was prepared by the George W Bush administration. The “sudden and unprecedented jump” was the combined result of the most severe recession since the Great Depression, combined with the measures initiated by the Bush administration to deal with the banking crisis and threatened auto industry collapse. Beyond this budget, there was the one time effect of the so-called “stimulus,” very little of which had an impact in FW 2009. As I’ve discussed before, this was a combined $700 odd billion in (1) tax cuts (supported by the GOP), (2) extended unemployment benefits (supported by the GOP until the Spring of 2010), (3) infrastructure, (4) aid to state and local governments, and (5) R&D. But this has to be compared to the proposed $500 billion stimulus (mostly tax cuts) which was the counter-offer of the GOP at the time. So you can blame Obama for $200 billion of the deficit. The effect of ObamaCare has been scored by the same CBO (as in your link — your downgoing bar graphs) as being revenue positive, i.e. deficit reducing. We’ll probably never know, alas, because ObamaCare will go down the drain with Obama.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.” Yeah right! Its more Gimme! Gimme! These kids will drift back home in time, and live with their parents and be inspired by people like Rosie Odonnel, and Moore. Sure there is the hardcore leadership with the lackey union support, but for the most part they are mostly kids who have that dream of Utopia right here, right now. Does anyone really think that people like Trunka, Obama, and the liberal elite are going to share their riches with them? These kids are just poorly trained liberal foot soldiers manipulated by the liberal elite. And now some desperate democrats who fear losing their own cushy jobs in the very near future. I would not be surprised if the Unions and politicans are not out there paying them with cookies and milk to protest.
Nan G
13 years ago
Larry, I was at one of the very 1st TEA parties.
TEA Party T
E A
Party
Taxed
Enough Already
Party.
Yes, our goal was clearly determined by the time Rick Santelli (sp???) finished his famous rant.
Wow. You really have no idea who is down there or what they’re demanding, do you? Clearly it’s easier to make stuff up than actually listen and find out… have fun with that. God forbid you should figure out that you agree. Scary, I know…..
So tarps and sleeping bags and tents are NOT supposed to be put up, much less kept up all day & night at the park.
And power washing, landscaping and trash removal have not even been done since Sept 16th because of the crowd.
But the last photo took the cake: a man going #2 on the side of a police car.
And now that these idiots have utterly fouled their ”nest” at that park, they are looking to squat on a publicly owned CITY park!
Somehow, after listening to Mayor Bloomberg, I don’t think it is going to happen.
Blake
13 years ago
@Greg: I agree that the jobs aren’t there, but it is Obama’s fault, as this problem could be solved in a minute if he allowed drilling on ALL coasts, as well as the ANWR- that creates 1-2 million jobs. These people make money, and begin to buy homes, which employs all the trades, (the UNCOUNTED in the unemployment rolls)- they, in turn, perhaps buy a home, or new refridgerator, or washer/dryer- and before you know it, the unemployment rate goes down.
Oh, and the gas and diesel prices go down also, so we can prosper while having the time to investigate alternative fuels.
Blake
13 years ago
@Greg: #24 I was in the hippie culture, but somewhere, along the way, I grew up and saw things for what they are. Too bad there are some who do not realize that their hippie philosophy has failed, and need to find a real reality, not a “wish upon a star” philosophy.
Nan G
13 years ago
@Blake:
Great place to start, Blake.
But, according to the latest figures we are now carrying 13.992 million Americans unemployed.
The U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers and marginally attached workers, increased to 16.5%; this is at the high for the year.
If you look at the unemployment recession graph here, you can see that no president, Democrat OR Republican has handled a downturn (since the Great Depression) as badly as Obama has.
One economic pundit described this particular employment recession curve as an “L” as opposed to the usual “V.”
We hit a bad bottom and have never turned back to the good.
We are only sliding upward slightly as people give up, retire early or stay in school to avoid even being in the job market.
Nan G
13 years ago
Others have touched on this: the Occupy Wall Street set ought to be railing against the “educrats hiding behind their ivy-covered walls; the ones hawking the notion that without a four-year college degree, you’ll end up the gutter; the ones exploiting fear to sell a product that grows more expensive, and more shoddy, every year.”
I just loved the way Stephanie Gutmann said it.
Read her essay here. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279511/theres-hope-these-occupy-wall-streeters-stephanie-gutmann
OUCH!
1. Who says everybody was happy with Bush and his deficits? You think you pinning a bad idea on him will turn it into a good idea?
2. More to the point, your attempt to assign responsibility to the “Bush Adminstration” for the 2009 one and a half trillion dollar deficit is factually incorrect. Both houses of Congress were controlled by the Democrats starting in 2007. As you know, the President only proposes a budget – Congress is not bound by the proposal. The 2009 budget proposed by the Bush Administration had a deficit of $400 billion, comparable to 2008. Congress modified it, and additional spending legislation, the ARRA or ‘Stimulus, ‘ was passed immediately after Obama took office. The 2009 budget voting was delayed and Obama actually signed it into law March 2011. (Interestingly, this delay initiated the process of the Democrat-controlled Congress failing to pass a budget at all for the next two years, and relying on continuing resolutions instead.)
3. You focus on 2009, but obviously the giant deficits projected in the chart extend into the distant future, basically going on forever. Fundamental change.
4. As I stated, the deficits were one part of the cause for alarm. There was much more. The redistributionist talk, the gigantic economically damaging proposals such as constraining the availability of energy and government takeover of the health insurance industry (Hillary Clinton’s 1994 plan redux), the focus on pleasing foreign nations at the expense of American citizens, etc. Obama and the top Democrats made all this known in 2007-2008.
5. When scoring legislation, the CBO is bound by law to use the assumptions provided to them by the sponsors, no matter how unrealistic those assumptions might be. For this reason, CBO scoring is easy to game and the Democrats have done so aggressively. The scoring is something of a joke and everybody knows it. Other evaluations of Obamacare, including more recent CBO scoring, show Obamacare to the expensive turkey that skeptics said it was from the beginning.
Justice
13 years ago
@Cary: I believe that’s called plutocracy, or ‘government by the rich’.
openid.aol.com/runnswim
13 years ago
Hi Sherm: Congress never does more than nibble at the President’s budget. This goes for GOP congresses as well as Dem congresses. They always tack on a little pork or, once in a awhile, cut a program they don’t like, but it’s really small potatoes stuff. That’s the way it has to be, because the Executive Branch runs the government and Congress really can’t micromanage spending.
With regard to the big deficits, it’s not that Obama has massively increased spending. Spending always goes up, along with population and along with GDP. Obama hasn’t done anything to massively increase spending, above the trend line of spending growth, going back decades. He put in the one time “stimulus,” which, as noted before, was a $200 billion spending jolt above that proposed at the time by the GOP and not a multitrillion jolt, as it is so often depicted. The biggest things which has added to the deficits were the extension of the Bush tax cuts, which were supposed to sunset last year, along with the stagnant economy.
Nan or someone said that Obama has “managed” the current recession more poorly than any President, going back ages. The best thing which happened to the GOP was McCain losing the last election. There are systemic things wrong with the economy that no President or government can really fix. All of the economic growth during the early Bush years was consumer spending, fueled by debt — especially housing debt (2nd mortgages, equity lines of credit, etc.). Now 25% of American homeowners are underwater and no one is able to use their home as a piggy bank anymore. The housing sector traditionally leads recoveries, but the housing sector won’t recover until the foreclosure backlog runs its course. The biggest mistake which the Obama administration made (Mata predicted this in advance; I didn’t agree; she was right; I was wrong) was the home purchase tax credit. This artificially delayed the bottoming out of the real estate prices. Until a firm bottom has been reached, housing won’t recover and until housing recovers, the economy won’t recover.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
liberalmann
13 years ago
My god, you just don’t get it. Stop watching Fixed News and think for
yourselves. Wall Street is making huge profits and only the middle class
is suffering. Jobs continue to plummet and the GOP still won’t support a
jobs bill or create their own, Banks have been bailed out and are still
refusing loans, Corporations are making obscene profits and continue to
lay off workers or send jobs overseas.
This protest a far more grass roots than the Dick Armey funded Tea Party. The protestors
actually DON’T want Obama’s support as they feel he hasn’t done enough.
It you have any brains or if the Tea Party was truly interested in ‘taking our Government back, they’d be part of this!
Nan or someone said that Obama has “managed” the current recession more poorly than any President, going back ages. The best thing which happened to the GOP was McCain losing the last election. There are systemic things wrong with the economy that no President or government can really fix. All of the economic growth during the early Bush years was consumer spending, fueled by debt — especially housing debt (2nd mortgages, equity lines of credit, etc.). Now 25% of American homeowners are underwater and no one is able to use their home as a piggy bank anymore. The housing sector traditionally leads recoveries, but the housing sector won’t recover until the foreclosure backlog runs its course. The biggest mistake which the Obama administration made (Mata predicted this in advance; I didn’t agree; she was right; I was wrong) was the home purchase tax credit. This artificially delayed the bottoming out of the real estate prices. Until a firm bottom has been reached, housing won’t recover and until housing recovers, the economy won’t recover.
– Larry Weisenthal
No, Larry, not every other president would have made so many poor decisions regarding the economy.
Most all Republicans would have insisted on PERMANENT tax fixes that engender confidence about taking action in the future.
Obama took many temporary tax fixes.
All they did was reward his friends and engender trepidation in the business community about making any future investment/hiring plans.
Most all Republicans would have held off a gov’t takeover of 1/7th of our economy (more trepidation about the future) while Obama rammed ObamaCare through a Dem House and Dem Senate, signing it without even allowing it to be read!
Most all Republicans would refrain from regulating businesses into paralysis.
Obama has made borrowing money, starting a new business, drilling for oil, mining, creating energy, even exhaling requiring a mass of new red tape.
Most all Republicans would be familiar with the broken window fallacy of economics.
None of them would push a requirement to destroy a perfectly good car just to qualify for a rebate on a new one.
Obama did.
Most all Republicans would have dealt with the unemployment numbers honestly.
They would have hired and fired honestly.
Obama padded the numbers with his ”hire, fire, re-hire, re-fire” policy for thousands of US Census workers.
Obama’s fraud is so bad that charts point it out specifically.
You are correct that Obama has a REAL problem with the banks not foreclosing in a timely manner.
It is his own fault.
He wanted non-payers to be allowed to stay.
He set up all sorts of hurdles to banks doing their jobs,
He is still making it difficult for banks to foreclose.
This is all preventing the ”bottom” of the housing market to be reached.
Not too many Republican leaders would have made those same mistakes.
I could go on.
McCain is a weird man who is very moderate compared to most Republicans.
But even he would not have made so many of the mistakes Obama made.
Nan G
13 years ago
One more, Larry.
Phantom or zombie budget ”cuts.”
Obama is famous for these.
Where or how do we ”save” $80 billion in 10 years IF we never actually begin a supposedly wonderful ObamaCare program?
CLASS (or the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program) turned out to be so expensive to start that Obama has put it on ice.
IF he ever did really start the program it would have not saved us a dime, but cost us tremendously.
So, Obama decided to not start it up.
His phony accounting tricks made it look to the CBO like it would ”save” taxpayers $80 billion over its 1st ten years.
Obama knows those numbers are a joke.
However, Obama is counting the $80 billion in ”savings” in all his budgeting.
LOL!
Are you really foolish enough to swallow that?
Obama hopes so.
The answers you hear at these protests reminds me of a liberal protest several years ago. While they were arriving, one reporter asked one of them, “What are you protesting?” His answer was, “I don’t know. They haven’t told us yet.”
LOL!
I’ve seen two interviews with white Occupy Wall Street protestors.
Both of them claim they had jobs that they quit in order to come and protest!
Then I saw this video.
A white man with his 10 paid (PAID!) Hispanic Occupy Wall Street protestors.
(He hedges, some of them are paid, some of them volunteered. BUT, what would you do if you realized all the other protestors in your car pool were paid while you were not?)
Well, at least he upped the color factor of the 99% by 25% from the photos/footage I’ve seen.
This is the biggest astroturf game Dems and the Left have played in months.
Remember the ”Coffee Party?”
Some ‘Occupy Sacramento’ Protesters Lash Out At Questions
The best part?
There are a couple of places on the web where the protestor’s rationale is defined–if you desire to look, and not just settle for rumors and innuendos:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/oct/3/picket-occupy-wall-street-protesters-post-manifest/
http://www.mangeorge.com/the-wall-street-protesters-manifest/
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
Except that they didn’t break the law. They used the laws democrats provided for them. It’s simple.
Rubin rewrites bank rules. Creates too big to fail.
Cuomo make predatory lending legal.
Clinton opts not to regulate derivatives.
democrats at Fannie securitize all the crappy loans.
Goldman packages and sells worthless debt as high value securities. Moody’s and S&P rules allow them to do it.
Goldman buys Obama.
Like I said- simple.
I bet those union guys just love standing in solidarity with those white wimps who oppose all of the business in New York,
After all, union labor is what builds each and every one of those office buildings.
LOL!
Rich liberals like Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore and George Soros (the ultimate Wall Street insider) are not criticized by these fops.
Odd….not.
I had read that Soros’ front group Tides is supplying meals and stuff to these guys.
I bet the neighborhood wishes Tides would supply toilets.
The first images I saw of the protests featured a number of people walking around dressed and acting like zombies. If nothing else, they brought back memories of all those George Romero “Night of the Living Dead” movies I loved watching. It would actually make for an intersting installment in the series. You could have the protestors dressed like zombies being infiltrated by real zombies and by the time everyone finds out, it’s too late. Perhaps some of those who quit their jobs to protest could be cast as extras. Keep the entertainment coming, just leave the problem solving to someone else.
Dr. John @#4 — and who was it that Chelsea Clinton married?
@Budvarakbar:
Good catch!
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-05-10/gossip/29544307_1_marc-mezvinsky-mezvinksy-pennsylvania-congresswoman-marjorie-margolies-mezvinsky
Chelsea Clinton’s husband Marc Mezvinsky opts to start his own private hedge fund this year: source
Mezvinksy will team up with “two guys from Goldman Sachs,” the investment banking mammoth where he worked from 2002 to 2008
Those who are demostrating are rediculous idiots who have no clue. Too bad Democrats support their idiotic actions. Take heart America, real change is coming with the next election cycle. Hopefully America will elect adults to run our country.
There are people on Wall Street whose personal greed came close to destroying the national and global economies, and precipitated the economic problems that we’re still struggling with. They deliberately concealed bad loans and knowingly misrepresented and sold unsafe investment instruments, robbing countless small and institutional investors of untold billions of dollars. They extorted taxpayer money to stave off a total calamity that their own actions nearly caused, and then had the temerity to reward themselves with multi-million dollar bonuses.
During the dismal years that have followed–dismal, at least, for ordinary Americans–corporate profits have been at record levels. Never in modern history have they raked in so much money, and never in modern history have their tax rates been so low.
All of this, and some people can’t figure out why angry citizens would be carrying signs on Wall Street?
Equally astonishing is how readily those same people will support Tea Party protester demands for less regulation and for lower taxes on the very forces that are already bleeding the country dry.
“Get a damn job you hippie” is the frickin’ stupidest comment I’ve seen in a month. The jobs aren’t there to get. That’s the problem. Those corporations reporting record profits, record levels of capital on hand, and tax rates at record low levels aren’t hiring. Instead, they’re whining about the need for even less regulation and even lower taxes. If they do make a capital investment, it’s as likely to be overseas as here. There’s no connection between increasing their profits and creating U.S. jobs.
They already had years of deregulation and years of tax cuts. How has that worked out?
@Greg: Greg, what’s your point?? The demonstrators don’t have a clue and their activities accomplish about as much as 0-bama has with all of his job creation efforts. Clue, that would be less than zero. He told America that with the stimulus our unemployment rate would not go higher than 8.7% and without it 9.2%. Well, he spent trillions on green jobs scandals, buying unions, and making sure illegal aliens got all they needed. All because Kool Aid drinkers like you and the MSM failed to tell America the truth about this unqualified genius. Brilliant!!
Let me help you out…
If we suddenly decided that people who drive through a red light would not be ticketed, some people would do the right thing and stop. Others would drive through without consequence, and someone would get hurt. So what did we think would happen when we deregulated Wall Street? When people say that regulating is “bigger government”, I wonder how they’d feel with no law enforcement at all.
Curt,
I’m friends with police officers here, they need to do their jobs and keep order, but most agree with the protest. This country is turning from a Democracy into Corporatism, and none of us should be standing for that. Corporate sponsored politicians are the problem, not whether I have a job or not (and I have three that I’m quite happy with, btw.)
It is a bit ironic, the fact that the police officers themselves are the target.
Not of the “hippies’, but of the Wall Street corporations that desire to outsource their jobs to minimum wage private security firms.
I led a MoveOn protest a few months ago, where I asked the crowd to give a round of applause for the unionized cops standing behind us, to recognize we were fighting on their behalf as much as our own.
Cary THANK YOU for your posting and your efforts. As a former employee of Merrill Lynch and Cushman and Wakefield I’m in agreement and support. Semper Fi
It’s hillarious that almost 45 years later right wingers are still obsessed with hippies.
Didn’t that hacker group ”Anonymous,” say they supported the Occupy Wall Street squatters?
If so, I wonder if there is a tie-in to this story?
>>>>>>>>>REPORT: VIRUS HITS US DRONE FLEET<<<<<<<<<<<
@Wilson:
I wouldn’t call them ”hippies,” Wilson.
But it is Obama who is clamping down on pot-smokers in CA.
NPR: U.S. Tells California’s Pot Shops To Close Down, Or Face Charges
Now, I know a couple of pot shop owners.
They are real hippies.
And they wouldn’t be caught dead at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.
The protesters themselves are lackeys, cannon-fodder. That our society is producing such weak ignorant creatures, in many cases after years of higher “education,” is sad, but not the immediate point.
The thing that draws attention is the orchestrated, coordinated nature of the protests, and the connection to the Democratic Party and its allies. So far it is not the degree of the protests – which have been fairly minor to date – it is the “Hugo Chavez style government-organized mob disguised as a spontaneous protest” template that is being practiced.
These people are not fighting the establishment. They are the establishment.
@Wilson: Wilson, news flash idiot, right wingers can be hippies. Obviously you must have been in diapers when the hippy era began. I wan’t, I was in college. Just because you like to be known as a radical left wing idiot doesn’t mean you know all there is to know, obviously.
The top 400 Americans have as much total wealth as the bottom 150,000,000. In the 1970s, the average pay for a CEO versus a normal worker was $25 to $1. In Japan presently, that ratio is $11 to $1. Presently in the US: For every average worker that makes $1, CEOs make $275.
If you want the American dream — where the son of a mailman can become rich, you are far better off being born and raised in Denmark or Finland than in the USA, where we are nowhere near the top, with regard to upward mobility.
The total amount of student loan debt now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt. Our kids graduate from college with $50,000 (or much more) in debt but no prospects for well paying jobs. The new poor are going to be young people with huge educational debts and no prospects.
On and on and on.
That’s what it’s all about.
Reminds me of the early days of the Tea Party movement. No one could really give a coherent explanation of what it was all about, but everyone knew that they were just fed up with the direction of the country. This won’t really grow to Tea Party levels until after the GOP is firmly in power, but I think it will then be just as big a movement.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach
P.S. Your federal tax dollars at work –>
http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2011/10/07/fcc-aims-to-blanket-rural-america-with-high-speed-internet/
@Wm T Sherman, #19:
The original pre-Tea Party Express protesters and the people currently protesting the excesses of Wall Street corporatism might have a lot more in common than some would think.
Corporatism is rapidly becoming the establishment.
To be clear, I have absolutely no problem with anyone becoming successful and wealthy, or even inheriting success and wealth. It’s when some of those people are paying off our leaders to cater to their own need to become even more successful and wealthy with no responsibility, screwing over the rest of us, that I get pissed off. Question my character all you want, the outrage isn’t going away until the problem is fixed.
@Common Sense, #20:
You are totally clueless about the nature of the 1960s counter-culture.
@Greg: I was there dude. Clueless is a big word for you. Maybe you should go back to your Kindergarten class and tell the teacher you got lost coming back from the toilet, again.
Seems like catty insults are more fun than dealing with the issues raised. Have a blast with that…
This statement sounds much like some of the others being echoed here:
Democracy means equality. The great significance of the proletariat’s struggle for equality and of equality as a slogan will be clear if we correctly interpret it as meaning the abolition of classes. But democracy means only formal equality. And as soon as equality is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of production, that is, equality of labor and wages, humanity will inevitably be confronted with the question of advancing farther, from formal equality to actual equality, i.e., to the operation of the rule “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.
Valdimir Lenin
His alternative to capitalism worked out so well. How many millions suffered living under it and how many more millions died implementing it?
I really wish that people would cease conflating progressive taxation with Marxism/Leninism.
Actually, Corporations running a country after buying out politicians who eliminate laws to regulate them is a far cry from Capitalism. I’m not sure what to call it, but it’s not that…
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Utter baloney, Larry. I attended these events early on. Everyone involved knew exactly what the issues were: excessive and unsustainable size, scope, intrusiveness, and expense of government. How can you be reminded of something that never happened?
A sudden and unprecedented jump in these things had just occurred. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.html
These projected deficits were not driven primarily by reduced revenues, but rather primarily by increased spending: about a 30% increase from 2008-2011. And the hectoring, demonizing tone adopted by the new administration and its allies toward the public most definitely added to the impression that their intention was to run hog wild and change the basic structure of our society; which they in fact attempted to do for the next two years as a priority over every other issue — over the economy, over unemployment, over national security.
The so-called stimulus was a payout to Democratic Party allies, to unions, state pension funds, and rent-seeking crony capitalists, and we have nothing to show for it:
9.1% Unemployment – the New Norm
I consider the early Tea partiers 100% vindicated.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: I’m not confusing progressive taxation with Marxism. Re-read some of the statements made in number 12. While some of them have merit such as politicians selling us out, the overall theme is heavily slanted to the left as it is heavily class based. Their comment about democracy is a reworded version of Lenin’s.
BTW, what are their solutions to the problems they bring up or is it just a bunch of bitching about anything and everything because they think life is unfair to them because they couldn’t get a high paying job right after graduating from college? I have news for them, the economy is a mess, it’s not going to be getting better anytime soon because of a myraid of factors, some of which they touched upon others that they did not, and there people who have been in the work force long before most of them were even born who are now out of work.
“We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share.”
– President Ronald Reagan, 1985
That is EXACTLY what Obama says… but he’s a socialist, right?
Hi Sherm: The “sudden and unprecedented jump” occurred in fiscal year 2009. The FY 2009 budget was prepared by the George W Bush administration. The “sudden and unprecedented jump” was the combined result of the most severe recession since the Great Depression, combined with the measures initiated by the Bush administration to deal with the banking crisis and threatened auto industry collapse. Beyond this budget, there was the one time effect of the so-called “stimulus,” very little of which had an impact in FW 2009. As I’ve discussed before, this was a combined $700 odd billion in (1) tax cuts (supported by the GOP), (2) extended unemployment benefits (supported by the GOP until the Spring of 2010), (3) infrastructure, (4) aid to state and local governments, and (5) R&D. But this has to be compared to the proposed $500 billion stimulus (mostly tax cuts) which was the counter-offer of the GOP at the time. So you can blame Obama for $200 billion of the deficit. The effect of ObamaCare has been scored by the same CBO (as in your link — your downgoing bar graphs) as being revenue positive, i.e. deficit reducing. We’ll probably never know, alas, because ObamaCare will go down the drain with Obama.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.” Yeah right! Its more Gimme! Gimme! These kids will drift back home in time, and live with their parents and be inspired by people like Rosie Odonnel, and Moore. Sure there is the hardcore leadership with the lackey union support, but for the most part they are mostly kids who have that dream of Utopia right here, right now. Does anyone really think that people like Trunka, Obama, and the liberal elite are going to share their riches with them? These kids are just poorly trained liberal foot soldiers manipulated by the liberal elite. And now some desperate democrats who fear losing their own cushy jobs in the very near future. I would not be surprised if the Unions and politicans are not out there paying them with cookies and milk to protest.
Larry, I was at one of the very 1st TEA parties.
TEA Party
T
E
A
Party
Taxed
Enough
Already
Party.
Yes, our goal was clearly determined by the time Rick Santelli (sp???) finished his famous rant.
Parks and Demonstration
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-5-2011/parks-and-demonstration?xrs=share_copy
@Gary G. Swenchonis:
Wow. You really have no idea who is down there or what they’re demanding, do you? Clearly it’s easier to make stuff up than actually listen and find out… have fun with that. God forbid you should figure out that you agree. Scary, I know…..
Nice little array of photos of the filthy conditions at New York City’s privately owned Zuccotti Park posted by the The Last Refuge at the Conservative Tree House blog.
So tarps and sleeping bags and tents are NOT supposed to be put up, much less kept up all day & night at the park.
And power washing, landscaping and trash removal have not even been done since Sept 16th because of the crowd.
But the last photo took the cake: a man going #2 on the side of a police car.
And now that these idiots have utterly fouled their ”nest” at that park, they are looking to squat on a publicly owned CITY park!
Somehow, after listening to Mayor Bloomberg, I don’t think it is going to happen.
@Greg: I agree that the jobs aren’t there, but it is Obama’s fault, as this problem could be solved in a minute if he allowed drilling on ALL coasts, as well as the ANWR- that creates 1-2 million jobs. These people make money, and begin to buy homes, which employs all the trades, (the UNCOUNTED in the unemployment rolls)- they, in turn, perhaps buy a home, or new refridgerator, or washer/dryer- and before you know it, the unemployment rate goes down.
Oh, and the gas and diesel prices go down also, so we can prosper while having the time to investigate alternative fuels.
@Greg: #24 I was in the hippie culture, but somewhere, along the way, I grew up and saw things for what they are. Too bad there are some who do not realize that their hippie philosophy has failed, and need to find a real reality, not a “wish upon a star” philosophy.
@Blake:
Great place to start, Blake.
But, according to the latest figures we are now carrying 13.992 million Americans unemployed.
The U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers and marginally attached workers, increased to 16.5%; this is at the high for the year.
If you look at the unemployment recession graph here, you can see that no president, Democrat OR Republican has handled a downturn (since the Great Depression) as badly as Obama has.
One economic pundit described this particular employment recession curve as an “L” as opposed to the usual “V.”
We hit a bad bottom and have never turned back to the good.
We are only sliding upward slightly as people give up, retire early or stay in school to avoid even being in the job market.
Others have touched on this: the Occupy Wall Street set ought to be railing against the “educrats hiding behind their ivy-covered walls; the ones hawking the notion that without a four-year college degree, you’ll end up the gutter; the ones exploiting fear to sell a product that grows more expensive, and more shoddy, every year.”
I just loved the way Stephanie Gutmann said it.
Read her essay here.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279511/theres-hope-these-occupy-wall-streeters-stephanie-gutmann
OUCH!
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Your scenario has a few problems, Larry.
1. Who says everybody was happy with Bush and his deficits? You think you pinning a bad idea on him will turn it into a good idea?
2. More to the point, your attempt to assign responsibility to the “Bush Adminstration” for the 2009 one and a half trillion dollar deficit is factually incorrect. Both houses of Congress were controlled by the Democrats starting in 2007. As you know, the President only proposes a budget – Congress is not bound by the proposal. The 2009 budget proposed by the Bush Administration had a deficit of $400 billion, comparable to 2008. Congress modified it, and additional spending legislation, the ARRA or ‘Stimulus, ‘ was passed immediately after Obama took office. The 2009 budget voting was delayed and Obama actually signed it into law March 2011. (Interestingly, this delay initiated the process of the Democrat-controlled Congress failing to pass a budget at all for the next two years, and relying on continuing resolutions instead.)
3. You focus on 2009, but obviously the giant deficits projected in the chart extend into the distant future, basically going on forever. Fundamental change.
4. As I stated, the deficits were one part of the cause for alarm. There was much more. The redistributionist talk, the gigantic economically damaging proposals such as constraining the availability of energy and government takeover of the health insurance industry (Hillary Clinton’s 1994 plan redux), the focus on pleasing foreign nations at the expense of American citizens, etc. Obama and the top Democrats made all this known in 2007-2008.
5. When scoring legislation, the CBO is bound by law to use the assumptions provided to them by the sponsors, no matter how unrealistic those assumptions might be. For this reason, CBO scoring is easy to game and the Democrats have done so aggressively. The scoring is something of a joke and everybody knows it. Other evaluations of Obamacare, including more recent CBO scoring, show Obamacare to the expensive turkey that skeptics said it was from the beginning.
@Cary: I believe that’s called plutocracy, or ‘government by the rich’.
Hi Sherm: Congress never does more than nibble at the President’s budget. This goes for GOP congresses as well as Dem congresses. They always tack on a little pork or, once in a awhile, cut a program they don’t like, but it’s really small potatoes stuff. That’s the way it has to be, because the Executive Branch runs the government and Congress really can’t micromanage spending.
With regard to the big deficits, it’s not that Obama has massively increased spending. Spending always goes up, along with population and along with GDP. Obama hasn’t done anything to massively increase spending, above the trend line of spending growth, going back decades. He put in the one time “stimulus,” which, as noted before, was a $200 billion spending jolt above that proposed at the time by the GOP and not a multitrillion jolt, as it is so often depicted. The biggest things which has added to the deficits were the extension of the Bush tax cuts, which were supposed to sunset last year, along with the stagnant economy.
Nan or someone said that Obama has “managed” the current recession more poorly than any President, going back ages. The best thing which happened to the GOP was McCain losing the last election. There are systemic things wrong with the economy that no President or government can really fix. All of the economic growth during the early Bush years was consumer spending, fueled by debt — especially housing debt (2nd mortgages, equity lines of credit, etc.). Now 25% of American homeowners are underwater and no one is able to use their home as a piggy bank anymore. The housing sector traditionally leads recoveries, but the housing sector won’t recover until the foreclosure backlog runs its course. The biggest mistake which the Obama administration made (Mata predicted this in advance; I didn’t agree; she was right; I was wrong) was the home purchase tax credit. This artificially delayed the bottoming out of the real estate prices. Until a firm bottom has been reached, housing won’t recover and until housing recovers, the economy won’t recover.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
My god, you just don’t get it. Stop watching Fixed News and think for
yourselves. Wall Street is making huge profits and only the middle class
is suffering. Jobs continue to plummet and the GOP still won’t support a
jobs bill or create their own, Banks have been bailed out and are still
refusing loans, Corporations are making obscene profits and continue to
lay off workers or send jobs overseas.
This protest a far more grass roots than the Dick Armey funded Tea Party. The protestors
actually DON’T want Obama’s support as they feel he hasn’t done enough.
It you have any brains or if the Tea Party was truly interested in ‘taking our Government back, they’d be part of this!
@liberalmann: BINGO!
Larry, @openid.aol.com/runnswim:
No, Larry, not every other president would have made so many poor decisions regarding the economy.
Most all Republicans would have insisted on PERMANENT tax fixes that engender confidence about taking action in the future.
Obama took many temporary tax fixes.
All they did was reward his friends and engender trepidation in the business community about making any future investment/hiring plans.
Most all Republicans would have held off a gov’t takeover of 1/7th of our economy (more trepidation about the future) while Obama rammed ObamaCare through a Dem House and Dem Senate, signing it without even allowing it to be read!
Most all Republicans would refrain from regulating businesses into paralysis.
Obama has made borrowing money, starting a new business, drilling for oil, mining, creating energy, even exhaling requiring a mass of new red tape.
Most all Republicans would be familiar with the broken window fallacy of economics.
None of them would push a requirement to destroy a perfectly good car just to qualify for a rebate on a new one.
Obama did.
Most all Republicans would have dealt with the unemployment numbers honestly.
They would have hired and fired honestly.
Obama padded the numbers with his ”hire, fire, re-hire, re-fire” policy for thousands of US Census workers.
Obama’s fraud is so bad that charts point it out specifically.
You are correct that Obama has a REAL problem with the banks not foreclosing in a timely manner.
It is his own fault.
He wanted non-payers to be allowed to stay.
He set up all sorts of hurdles to banks doing their jobs,
He is still making it difficult for banks to foreclose.
This is all preventing the ”bottom” of the housing market to be reached.
Not too many Republican leaders would have made those same mistakes.
I could go on.
McCain is a weird man who is very moderate compared to most Republicans.
But even he would not have made so many of the mistakes Obama made.
One more, Larry.
Phantom or zombie budget ”cuts.”
Obama is famous for these.
Where or how do we ”save” $80 billion in 10 years IF we never actually begin a supposedly wonderful ObamaCare program?
CLASS (or the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program) turned out to be so expensive to start that Obama has put it on ice.
IF he ever did really start the program it would have not saved us a dime, but cost us tremendously.
So, Obama decided to not start it up.
His phony accounting tricks made it look to the CBO like it would ”save” taxpayers $80 billion over its 1st ten years.
Obama knows those numbers are a joke.
However, Obama is counting the $80 billion in ”savings” in all his budgeting.
LOL!
Are you really foolish enough to swallow that?
Obama hopes so.
http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/10/08/2569020/govt-claims-zombie-program-is.html
http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9Q84JSO1%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1018
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/10/08/govt_claims_zombie_program_is_reducing_deficit/
The answers you hear at these protests reminds me of a liberal protest several years ago. While they were arriving, one reporter asked one of them, “What are you protesting?” His answer was, “I don’t know. They haven’t told us yet.”