"...Americans know a rigged game when they see one. They understand how much money is flowing into politics from the super rich, big corporations, and Wall Street — in order to keep their taxes low and entrench their privileged position.
The Occupy movement is gaining ground because it’s hitting a responsive chord. What happens from here on depends on whether other Americans begin to march to the music — and organize."
Above Quote from :OWS has transformed public opinion by Robert Reich via Salon.com October 31, 2011
So what would Jesus Do???
According to Pat Robertson and other uberconservative Evangelical leaders & other Phony Christians in their twisted self-serving version of Christianity argue that Christians must aspire to be like the Rich 1% . That avarice, greed, materialism, commercialism, prosperity are the true Christian values along with "The Winner Take All " mentality which they claim is at the basis of Jesus' message.
As Cenk Uygur points out even Jesus protested against the "money Changers" and others who had in his view corrupted the Temple in Jerusalem.In fact Jesus got angry and turned over the tables of the "money changers" and caused a public disturbance.
Pat Robertson is worth a couple of hundred million so what would he know about the hard times facing average Americans. His solution would be to tithe more that is donate more money to Pat's corrupt unChristian Church.
Pat even misses the point of the protests or is he just sticking to right-wing GOP Tea Party's Rovian Talking Points is he as simple minded as he sometimes appears to be or is this part of his schtick.
The #ows are in fact a plea for more justice for the average American and for those unemployed or are poor or soon may end up being poor while rich people like Pat Robertson are doing better than ever..
Christians: Don't Join Occupy Wall Street - Pat Robertson
Allegations that the Oakland police department intentionally used undercover police as Agent Provocateurs ie committing destructive or violent acts to incite others to commit such acts so that the police can be provided with an excuse to use brute force to end the protests or at least give the public the impression that majority of protesters are committing acts of violence against the police or destroying public property.
As discussed before these were part of the tactics used by the police force and those in positions of authority in Toronto 2010 at the G20 Summit.
OWS Oakland Degenerate Despicable Police Provocateurs , why people don,t trust police
TheSunsLight
Uploaded by TheSunsLight on Nov 1, 2011
this is why people can,t trust police ever again ,watch occupy wall street Oakland Despicable Degenerate Police Provocateurs
Police Use Bulldozers To Break Up Occupy Richmond #OWS Brutality
NWONEWS666
Robert Reich argues in an article at Salon.com that the Occcupy Wall Street Movement has already made a difference in the conversation Americans are having and the conversations and news items on the Mainstream Media.
OWS has transformed public opinion
For the first time since the Great Depression, the majority of Americans favor wealth redistribution by Robert Reich via Salon.com October 31, 2011
...the movement has already changed the public debate in America.
Consider, for example, last week’s Congressional Budget Office report on widening disparities of income in America. It was hardly news – it’s already well known that the top 1 percent now gets 20 percent of the nation’s income, up from 9 percent in the late 1970s.
But it’s the first time such news made the front page of the nation’s major newspapers.
Why? Because for the first time in more than half a century, a broad cross-section of the American public is talking about the concentration of income, wealth and political power at the top.
Score a big one for the Occupiers.
Even more startling is the change in public opinion. Not since the 1930s has a majority of Americans called for redistribution of income or wealth. But according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an astounding 66 percent of Americans said the nation’s wealth should be more evenly distributed.
A similar majority believes the rich should pay more in taxes. According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, even a majority of people who describe themselves as Republicans believe taxes should be increased on the rich.and he further argues that finally many Americans are no longer convinced in the Reaganesque "Trickle Down Theory" because in fact very little trickles down as the rich just get richer and when things go bad for them they get a big Fat Welfare check from the government they claim to despise.
...The old view was also that great wealth trickled downward – that the rich made investments in jobs and growth that benefitted all of us. So even if we doubted we’d be wealthy, we still gained from the fortunes made by a few.
But that view, too, has lost its sheen. Nothing has trickled down. The rich have become far richer over the last three decades but the rest of us haven’t. In fact, median incomes are dropping.
Wall Street moguls are doing better than ever – after having been bailed out by the rest of us. But the rest of us are doing worse. CEOs are hauling in more than 300 times the pay of average workers (up from 40 times the pay only three decades ago), as average workers lose jobs, wages, and benefits.
Instead of investing in jobs and growth, the super rich are putting their money into gold or Treasury bills, or investing it in Brazil or South Asia or anywhere else it can reap the highest return.
...Americans know a rigged game when they see one. They understand how much money is flowing into politics from the super rich, big corporations, and Wall Street — in order to keep their taxes low and entrench their privileged position.
The Occupy movement is gaining ground because it’s hitting a responsive chord. What happens from here on depends on whether other Americans begin to march to the music — and organize.
Sacrilege: Wall Street Worship
Americans have been worshiping a bull. Too many citizens, and particularly politicians, prostrate themselves to Wall Street’s bronze idol.by Leo Gerard atAlternet.org, November 1, 2011
They revere financial titans who pay themselves and their minions millions to manipulate money and gamble recklessly. Politicians gave tribute to the financiers with tax breaks and bailouts when the bankers’ bad bets threatened to bankrupt their institutions.
This false idolatry produced a nation gripped by massive unemployment, a nation in which destructive income inequality has risen beyond robber baron levels, a nation where greed has been perverted from sin to good, a nation where politicians genuflect to money changers, not majority citizens.
Salvation for the majority is not more failed trickle-down economics or more deregulation so that Wall Street can resume committing unfettered wagering. Redemption is political and economic systems devoted to serving the common good, not the affluent few.
These concepts — that governments should protect majorities and that the international financial collapse is an opportunity to transform the system into one supporting a more fraternal and just human family — are contained in a report released last week by the Pope’s Council for Justice and Peace. It says:
“The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence.”
Those values mandate economic and political systems that transcend “personal utility for the good of the community,” the report says, then adds:
“The primacy of the spiritual and of ethics needs to be restored and, with them, the primacy of politics, which is responsible for the common good – over the economy and finance.”
This is exactly what the 99 percenters — the Occupy Wall Street activists of every faith — have been saying. They want systems that work for the vast majority of citizens, not just the 1 percent at the top.
And it appears the disparity between the average citizen and the 1% is not unique to the USA. The growing gap between the 1% and the 99% is the trend in a number of developed 1st world countries so it is not isolated to the US and is therefore a Western and a global problem . And he warns that if the gap continues to grow and if essential services are cut back there will be not just peaceful protests but violence by those who have been pushed too far.
...This pattern is consistent internationally. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development determined that from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s income inequality increased in three-quarters of the 30 developed countries studied.
If basic morality fails as a reason to reverse these trends, then the Pontifical Council suggested another. Such inequality leads to instability and violence:
“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid.”
and sums up :
...Yet conservative politicians continue to demand changes that would make matters worse. Candidates Herman Cain and Rick Perry, seeking the Republican nomination for president, have proffered flat tax plans that would compound the burden on the middle class and poor. On being informed that his would increase income inequality, Perry said, “I don’t care about that.”
When Democrats on the debt-reduction super committee suggested raising $1.3 trillion in tax revenues, including levies on the rich, a measure consistently supported by huge majorities of the American public, Republicans summarily rejected the proposal, calling it absurd.
The answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” in this case is clear. The only gospel story in which Jesus engaged in violence is the cleansing of the temple of moneychangers. Morality demands an end to Wall Street worship and a new era in which both politics and financial markets work for the majority, for the common good.
and so it goes,
GORD.
-----------------
No comments:
Post a Comment