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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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 Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 9:00 pm Post subject: Re: Oops! Messed up my hand drum beat at OWS |
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Drum circles are usually associated with the weed.
Just so you guys know.
edit: I watched the link Kuros supplied of the Imus interview, and I agree with one of the commentators who pointed out that it was Tiabbi who was one of the main dudes promoting the charge/angst against the Banksters for the last few years and was practically inciting people to take to the streets, but yet when they finally do he sits backs giving interviews while he brings up how he has "alot of friends on Wall Street".
If you can't trust Tiabbi, who you gonna trust? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2011 9:32 am Post subject: Re: Oops! Messed up my hand drum beat at OWS |
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| caniff wrote: |
Drum circles are usually associated with the weed.
Just so you guys know.
edit: I watched the link Kuros supplied of the Imus interview, and I agree with one of the commentators who pointed out that it was Tiabbi who was one of the main dudes promoting the charge/angst against the Banksters for the last few years and was practically inciting people to take to the streets, but yet when they finally do he sits backs giving interviews while he brings up how he has "alot of friends on Wall Street".
If you can't trust Tiabbi, who you gonna trust? |
Taibbi can be trusted. He's just admitting he's not one of the people suffering. He's not going to sit there and pretend he's a revolutionary when he's also an arm-chair pundit. Yeah, I mean his punditry is really anti-establishment. But journalists cease to become journalists once they cross a certain line, and Matt Taibbi is admitting he's a journalist, and he has to cover the full story.
Anyway, Taibbi is also admitting that the problem isn't banking or capitalism per se. Its the current leadership and the regulations. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:43 pm Post subject: Re: Oops! Messed up my hand drum beat at OWS |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| caniff wrote: |
Drum circles are usually associated with the weed.
Just so you guys know.
edit: I watched the link Kuros supplied of the Imus interview, and I agree with one of the commentators who pointed out that it was Tiabbi who was one of the main dudes promoting the charge/angst against the Banksters for the last few years and was practically inciting people to take to the streets, but yet when they finally do he sits backs giving interviews while he brings up how he has "alot of friends on Wall Street".
If you can't trust Tiabbi, who you gonna trust? |
Taibbi can be trusted. He's just admitting he's not one of the people suffering. He's not going to sit there and pretend he's a revolutionary when he's also an arm-chair pundit. Yeah, I mean his punditry is really anti-establishment. But journalists cease to become journalists once they cross a certain line, and Matt Taibbi is admitting he's a journalist, and he has to cover the full story.
Anyway, Taibbi is also admitting that the problem isn't banking or capitalism per se. Its the current leadership and the regulations. |
I see the divide, and you are right that I shouldn't be holding out hope that those covering this shipwreck might take on a more active role.
I guess journalists are like lawyers in that they just suck off of the process rather than actually doing something (and this is largely true despite some ancillary benefits to society that I would agree have been happy surprises along the way).
I would submit that at this point in our history we really don't need any more powdered ninnies in our face purporting to hold up a mirror when all they really want is recognition and moola. Tiabbi is an excellent journalist, but clearly no savior. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:53 am Post subject: |
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While I enormously enjoyed the smackdown of lawyers (ethics for sale is not my thing, sorry K!...journalists have been no higher on my scale of respect since about '81 or '82 when Reagan scared the bejeezus out of them).
It seems to me that we are entering a phase where the traditional 'polite society deference to traditional subservience to privileged class preferences are not respected in 'polite society'.) Hurray! At long last!
It's about time!
Social systems are designed by people for the benefit of some of the people. Honesty demands that we openly acknowledge WHICH people those are. It is only honest.
THEN we can have a conversation.
It is perfectly OK to have a system where stolen property is hallowed above all else IF everyone admits that is what is going on. Until that happens, no conversation is honest. Naturally, you can have a system where stolen property is hallowed above all else, but no one admits it. We have had that system for the last 30 years. All that is required is a corrupt court system and enough money to buy cops to enforce the system.
OWS is finally bringing the concept into the open.
Hallelujah!
Capitalism may be a better system than all others, but that does not obviate the problems of capitalism. Society needs the tension between a crappy system and open and sharp criticism of the crappy system. What the system does NOT need is a hoard of rah-rah up with the crappy system cheerleaders, which is all we've had for the last 30 years. |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:29 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
Capitalism may be a better system than all others, but that does not obviate the problems of capitalism. Society needs the tension between a crappy system and open and sharp criticism of the crappy system. What the system does NOT need is a hoard of rah-rah up with the crappy system cheerleaders, which is all we've had for the last 30 years. |
Why is it that it feels like you and I are always disagreeing on things, when I believe exactly what you've said here?
Oh, I remember... it's the way you usually glorify one group of corrupt politicians and denigrate another group of corrupt politicians. I hope we can both agree to denounce any attempts by either corrupt party establishment to co-opt and destroy this basic principle of OWS.
Furthermore, I hope we can begin with a conversation about how non-Capitalistic elements of our current system are causing problems, such as planned inflation creating artificial wealth for the top while destroying the poor and middle class. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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2 interesting articles related to OWS:
Conservative pundit:
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...if you look only at the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements that have been getting so much coverage in the news media, you know very little about the wider America. Most Americans seem to understand this. According to data from the Pew Research Center, they are paying less attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement than any other major story � less than Afghanistan, Amanda Knox, the 2012 election, the death of Steve Jobs and far, far less than news about the economy.
While the cameras surround the flamboyant fringes, the rest of the country is on a different mission. Quietly and untelegenically, Americans are trying to repair their economic values. |
Liberal pundit's response (v. entertaining):
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...He does, however, interview some very well-spoken poll results, and proceeds to interpret them in ways that make you wonder if he's dropped in from Alpha Centauri. He notices that poor people are having fewer babies, which makes him sad. But, things are looking up! People have stopped using their "bank-issued" credit cards as much. (These would be the cards they used so as to support the overstuffed suburban lifestyle that David Brooks so celebrated in his earlier, funnier work.) This means, to Brooks, "Quietly but decisively, Americans are trying to restore the moral norms that undergird our economic system."
Jesus H. Christ in a fking Volvo, no, it doesn't. It means people are broke. People are broke because the end product of 30 years of economic theorizing and political action that you supported has resulted in a shattered middle-class. People are broke because the Wall Street casino that your politics created and celebrated and enabled finally broke the entire country and took the rest of us down with it. People are broke because you and the rest of your "conservative" pals latched onto a crackpot scheme called supply-side economics, married it to a deregulatory frenzy and free trade, and then pitched it to the Bobos as economic liberty. You got rich. You got important. Now people are not using their credit cards because they can't afford to buy the overpriced, Chinese-made crap that you once proposed as the new staple of American society. That is not a conscious mass moral choice. You've got to be on mushrooms to believe that.
<snip>
What American capitalism knows about "moral norms" is that they are for other people. The people who did all the real damage are not in any way interested in "repairing the economic moral fabric" that "is the essential national task right now." They are interested in keeping the money they stole and in stealing as much more of it as they can.
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The OWS movement wants the people who wrecked the US economy to be held responsible, because to date no one has done so and nothing in the system has been changed to prevent catastrophes from happening all over again. |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:13 am Post subject: |
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| Privateer wrote: |
The OWS movement wants the people who wrecked the US economy to be held responsible, because to date no one has done so and nothing in the system has been changed to prevent catastrophes from happening all over again. |
The profound irony of the media reporting them as "anti-Capitalism protests" is that personal responsibility (for both success and failure) is the very heart of Capitalism. And as you've said, that's exactly what OWS wants.
Though I think there's a lot of demand for a fair monetary system as well, there are usually quite a few "end the fed" signs mixed in... |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 3:05 am Post subject: |
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| Privateer wrote: |
The OWS movement wants the people who wrecked the US economy to be held responsible, because to date no one has done so and nothing in the system has been changed to prevent catastrophes from happening all over again. |
I think that's the perfect one sentence description of OWS. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:11 pm Post subject: |
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| comm wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
Capitalism may be a better system than all others, but that does not obviate the problems of capitalism. Society needs the tension between a crappy system and open and sharp criticism of the crappy system. What the system does NOT need is a hoard of rah-rah up with the crappy system cheerleaders, which is all we've had for the last 30 years. |
Why is it that it feels like you and I are always disagreeing on things, when I believe exactly what you've said here?
Oh, I remember... it's the way you usually glorify one group of corrupt politicians and denigrate another group of corrupt politicians. I hope we can both agree to denounce any attempts by either corrupt party establishment to co-opt and destroy this basic principle of OWS.
Furthermore, I hope we can begin with a conversation about how non-Capitalistic elements of our current system are causing problems, such as planned inflation creating artificial wealth for the top while destroying the poor and middle class. |
You are entitled to your opinion, but I see things differently. From my perspective, you are a nihilist seeing both parties as equally corrupt. From where I was sitting in '09, I saw the Dems working hard but only partially successful in passing Dodd-Frank against nearly unanimous GOP opposition in defense of Wall Street. Distinctions matter in my book. As my favorite philosoper of the 20th Century said:
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo. Look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What's that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
If both parties are hopelessy corrupt then there is nothing left to do but to get a gun and head for the ramparts. Short of that, the only thing anyone can do is work through the system, corrupt as it is. It's telling that Ron Paul chose to work through the system by joining the protect Wall Street party. |
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Ineverlie&I'malwaysri
Joined: 09 Aug 2011
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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^ Only in that parallel yataverse does ending the Fed = protecting Wall Street.  |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| comm wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
Capitalism may be a better system than all others, but that does not obviate the problems of capitalism. Society needs the tension between a crappy system and open and sharp criticism of the crappy system. What the system does NOT need is a hoard of rah-rah up with the crappy system cheerleaders, which is all we've had for the last 30 years. |
Why is it that it feels like you and I are always disagreeing on things, when I believe exactly what you've said here?
Oh, I remember... it's the way you usually glorify one group of corrupt politicians and denigrate another group of corrupt politicians. I hope we can both agree to denounce any attempts by either corrupt party establishment to co-opt and destroy this basic principle of OWS.
Furthermore, I hope we can begin with a conversation about how non-Capitalistic elements of our current system are causing problems, such as planned inflation creating artificial wealth for the top while destroying the poor and middle class. |
You are entitled to your opinion, but I see things differently. From my perspective, you are a nihilist seeing both parties as equally corrupt. From where I was sitting in '09, I saw the Dems working hard but only partially successful in passing Dodd-Frank against nearly unanimous GOP opposition in defense of Wall Street. |
You were sitting in the Partisan Democrat seat.
Matt Taibbi explains.
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Dodd-Frank was never going to be a meaningful reform unless these two fateful Clinton-era laws � commercial banks gambling with taxpayer money, and unregulated derivatives being traded in the dark � were reversed. The story of how the last real shot at reining in Wall Street got routed tells you everything you need to know about how, and on whose behalf, our government works. It was Congress at its most cowardly, deceptive best, with both parties teaming up to subject reform to death by a thousand paper cuts � with the worst cuts coming, literally, in the final moments before the bill's passage. |
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| Throughout the debate over finance reform, Democrats had sold the public on the idea that it was the Republicans who were killing progressive initiatives. In reality, Republican and Democratic leaders were working together with industry insiders and deep-pocketed lobbyists to prevent rogue members like Merkley and Levin from effecting real change. In public, the parties stage a show of bitter bipartisan stalemate. |
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Senate sources I talked to insist that Chris Dodd, the powerful chair of the Senate Banking Committee, was just using Brown as a cover to gut the Volcker rule. "It became far more than accommodating the Massachusetts banks," says one high-�ranking Senate aide. "It became a ruse for Treasury trying to get as far as they could, with Dodd's help."
From the start, Dodd had been opposed to the ban on proprietary trading. "Hey, I would gladly dump the Volcker rule," he reportedly told industry lobbyists. "But I can't, because of the pressure I'm getting from the left." Now, with Brown pressing for concessions, Dodd agreed to let Merkley-Levin be spattered with a wave of loopholes. If you can imagine a 4,000-pound lizard pretending to cower before a Cub Scout clutching a lollipop, then you've grasped the basic dynamic of a grizzled legislative titan like Dodd caving into Brown, the cheery GOP newbie with the Pez-�dispenser face.
First, in what amounted to an open handout to the financial interests represented by Brown, insurers, mutual funds and trusts were exempted from the Merkley-Levin ban. Then, with the floodgates officially open, every financial company in America was granted a massive loophole � one that allowed them to skirt the ban on risky gambling by investing a designated percentage of their holdings in hedge funds and private-equity companies.
The common justification for this loophole, known as the de minimis exemption, was that banks need it to retain their "traditional businesses" and remain competitive against hedge funds. In other words, Congress must allow banks to act like hedge funds because otherwise they'd be unable to compete with hedge funds in the hedge-fund business. With the introduction of the de minimis exemption, Merkley-Levin went from being an absolute ban on federally insured banks engaging in high-risk speculation to a feeble, half-assed restriction that will be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.
The driving force behind the exemption was not Scott Brown, but the Obama administration itself. By all accounts, Geithner lobbied hard on the issue. "Treasury's official position went from opposed to supportive," one aide told reporters. "They may have even overshot Brown's desires by a bit." Throughout the negotiations over the bill, in fact, Geithner acted almost like a liaison to the financial industry, pushing for Wall Street-friendly changes on everything from bailouts (his initial proposal �allowed the White House to unilaterally fork over taxpayer money to banks in unlimited amounts) to high-risk investments (he fought to let megabanks hold on to their derivatives desks).
Geithner went all out for the de minimis exemption; one Senate aide was told flatly by "those who are in charge of counting noses" that the proposal was not subject to negotiation. This was the horse-head-in-the-bed moment of the Dodd-Frank bill � the offer that couldn't be refused. "We were told that there needed to be de minimis or there would be no bill," the aide says. |
(Ya-Ta is likely to attack the source; but he should be warned I have others waiting) |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:13 am Post subject: |
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You were sitting in the Partisan Democrat seat.
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Really?
Why do all the GOP candidates want to repeal Dodd-Frank?
I've never argued that it was all it should have been. But it was something. In real world politics, that is about all you can hope for...incremental steps in the right direction.
OWS seems to be heading in the direction of pressuring Congress to do something stronger (as they should). Without partisan blinders on, which party is more likely to adopt that position? The party that says all regulation is evil and anti-capitalist, or the party that is accused of backing too many 'job killing regulations'? |
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comm
Joined: 22 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:08 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
Really?
Why do all the GOP candidates want to repeal Dodd-Frank? |
I'll let Ralph Nader explain that one. I'd be happy to entertain this idea that Democrats are interested in effectively eliminating systemic risk in the financial sector if they'd actually done that when they had control of government.
Since that didn't happen, and since it can be shown that Democrat candidates receive as much support from financial institutions as their Republican counterparts; It's clear that you're seeing a show of "good cop/bad cop" where the major regulatory issues aren't being addressed.
This leads to a situation where regulation exists, but only for the less powerful players in the system... which actually leads to less competition and more power for the big donors of Democrat and Republican campaigns. |
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