BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 04 Mar 11 - 06:08 AM

I also remember that if a denim jacket or leather jacket looked too new it had to be beaten around a bit but it wouldn't have been bought that way.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 03 Mar 11 - 10:12 PM

The degeneration of blue jeans apparently began ca. 1948 - the first date I remember when my mother took a new pair of mine back to Mongomery Ward and demanded a refund because the leg seams were too crooked to be ironed with a proper crease. (Recollection is that they were almost $5 a pair.)

Since I usually wore a few holes in them before they needed it, there were only a couple of times I recall that she re-dyed a pair or three of them when they got more than a little faded but still had fairly good cloth left; but re-coloring was simple with pure cotton - impossible with the mostly synthetic "stuff" that passes as denim now.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 11:44 PM

Funny...I always tried to keep mine as dark blue and new looking as I possibly could, and I always found it quite disturbing when they started getting faded. I thought my contemporaries back then were idiots for deliberately bleaching and fraying their jeans. ;-) And I still think so.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Maryrrf
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 08:12 PM

Ebbie, back in the days of my youth we bought the jeans at the Army Navy Store - Levis and Wranglers were cheap back then. But we didn't want them looking new when we wore them - we bleached them and frayed them and there were all sorts of techniques for breaking them in. I saw a pair of "distressed" jeans in an upscale department store window for $300 - looked a lot like the jeans I used to wear when I was a teenager but we never dreamed they'd turn into expensive high fashion.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 07:50 PM

It's a shame that professional athletes who bring such joy to the masses of people should be in the precarious shape that the NFL players are facing with their upcoming contract negotiations.

One can only feel pity:

NFL owners won't run hurry-up offense vs. players

With so many players stretching their finances, time is on management's side in labor dispute

By Bill Briggs
3/2/2011

Though a lockout has been threatened for years — and despite an apparent rise in the number of football stars safeguarding their millions — roughly 380 of the NFL's near 1,700 players still live paycheck to paycheck, according to financial experts familiar with the league.

"Therein lies the leverage these owners have to potentially use as an excuse to force the Players Association … to sneeze first," said Reggie Wilkes, a 10-year NFL linebacker and now a financial adviser who preaches "lifestyle management" to more than 20 NFL clients. "If (union chief) DeMaurice Smith doesn't have guys saving their money, it's going to be difficult for them to withstand a potential lockout."

Many players are "going to be hurting," agreed New York Jets linebacker Bart Scott, 30, a Wilkes client. Scott, who stands to earn, or lose, $6 million next season, is frugal by NFL standards, driving his 2002 Lincoln Navigator "into the ground" and purchasing a $700,000 home — relatively modest by football star standards. Scott said some "young guys" in his locker room "see what the older guys have, and they're not there yet. They're trying to catch up and keep up with the Joneses" by buying $2 million mansions.

There is a wide variation in NFL players' salaries. The average player salary for the 2009-10 season using USA Today's numbers is $1,870,998. But the number isn't particularly meaningful since superstars can earn far more and second- or third-stringers far less. The league rookie minimum salary is $320,000.

Barring a late agreement between the union and owners, players could be locked out of NFL facilities as soon as Friday.

To bolster solidarity — and, as Scott says, to "protect the players from themselves" — the NFL Players Association has been urging its members to stockpile cash for two years. The association also withheld union dues and royalty checks to build an emergency fund that will pay members about $60,000 each over the course of next season if their game checks stop coming, said players association spokesman George Atallah.

Many players have, indeed, heeded the union's warnings by hiring money managers, sticking to precise monthly budgets, living with roommates, and postponing big buys (new homes) — or even small ones (new neckties), said several NFL players and their accountants.
Perhaps it's the fear of going months without pay, or maybe it's the notoriously high bankruptcy rate among retired NFL players — estimated at nearly 80 percent by Sports Illustrated — but "athletes are really starting to buckle down a lot more than they did 10 years ago," said Steve Piascik, president of Piascik & Associates, a Richmond, Va.-based tax adviser to about 65 NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball players.

,,, ,,,

Many NFL stars have made headlines because of their financial problems.

Luther Elliss, who earned $11.6 million with the Detroit Lions from 2000 to 2004, filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and has recently relied on friends and local churches to pay his bills. Raghib "Rocket" Ismail, who pulled in an estimated $18 million during a 10-year career, lost much of it through bad investments. Mark Brunell, now a New York Jets backup quarterback, filed for bankruptcy in June 2010 despite contracts that paid him $50 million during his career.

These high-profile cases are one reason for open concerns among some fiscally conservative players that their lavish-living teammates will become a weak link for a union that aims to hold out for gains in its collective bargaining agreement.

… …

In his first conversations with NFL clients, Wilkes always broaches the topic of retirement to get them mulling that eventuality. He sends his players cash-flow reports every 30 days to record — or correct — spending habits. And he said he helps them move "a certain percentage of their assets" into an emergency fund meant to provide them with a three-year cash reserve.

Such steps, Wilkes believes, help players survive during and after NFL careers that, on average, last just 3.3 seasons.
Despite that typically short taste of pro ball, more than 20 percent of NFL players live check to check and fail to put money into savings, both Wilkes and Piascik estimated.

For that fast-living slice of the league, "there's going to be a shock factor" if the lockout interrupts their income, Piascik said.
"It could be trouble for them," agreed Cleveland safety Piscitelli. If salaries are held up for a full season, he expects unprepared players to "start selling off stuff, liquidating stuff, like the properties they have."

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of "The Third Miracle."


Don't we feel #@%$! sorry for them?

John

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 05:12 PM

Ebbie, some jeans run as high as a few hundred dollars a pair.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Mar 11 - 01:25 AM

Speaking of things that are wontonly wasted- every blasted time I see a new pair of blue jeans on some young'un old enough to know better that has the legs carefully scored and unraveled it makes me steam. Not only is it a slap in the face of the truly needy but some 60 years ago no non-brain dead person in this country would have so flippantly spent their hard-to-come-by money- and jeans today cost anywhere from 15 to 40 dollars.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 01 Mar 11 - 11:08 AM

Perhaps we should all stand up in a world protest. The same feelings seem to be pretty much the same all over it's not just a coincidence. I think it is obscene that the cost of a bottle of champagne at a star bash could probably feed a starving child for a week or two. It would certainly unnerve some so-called stars who have far too much than they deserve and that is even before we start on the Royal family or the children of entrepreneurs who have virtually done nothing. Grrrr!

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 01 Mar 11 - 09:15 AM

You are correct Les, and therein lies the problem. (one of them)

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Les from Hull
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 08:29 PM

It's ok mentioning higher tax rates but the super rich don't pay 'em. It's all sent through a chain of companies registered in some tax haven they've never ever been to. And it's even legal!

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Stringsinger
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 06:06 PM

Here is an amazing well-thought out solution to the problems of dictatorship. It's heavy reading but this was considered to be a blueprint for what happened in Egypt.

http://www.hermanos.org/nonviolence/dictodem.html



http://www.hermanos.org/nonviolence/dictodem.html

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 05:12 PM

I agree with you, 999. The opposition to Hugo Chavez comes mostly from the wealthy people in Venezuela (with help from their buddies in the CIA and the USA corporate sector), and that tells you right away what's going on in that country...he's obviously doing something for the poor people in the majority, because they are the ones supporting him.

This also, of course, makes him the Antichrist to the rich folks who are running the USA political system and the USA mass media. Like you say, "C'est la vie".

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: number 6
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 03:33 PM

"The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today."

biLL .... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 02:55 PM

With respect to both Ebbie and LH: It's happening as we type. There are revolutions happening in South America, thanks to Hugo Chavez. Revolutions in the Middle East. Iran soon to go. At present, the National Post's prognosis is as follows.

In a page the Post had a number of columns with country names to the left, and other columns that included ripe for result and would they succeed.

Algeria    maybe and maybe
Bahrain    yes and yes
Egypt       maybe and maybe
Iran       yes and no
Iraq       no
Jordan      maybe and yes
Kuwait      no
Lebanon    maybe and no
Lybia       yes and yes
Morocco    maybe and maybe
Oman       maybe and no
Qatar       no
S Arabia    maybe and no
Sudan       maybe and no
Syria       yes and maybe
Tunisia    maybe and maybe
UAE         no
Yemen       yes and yes

As poor people (shades of Martin Luther King) get poorer, what will be left for them BUT to revolt. imo and fwiw

BTW, I think one of the better rulers out there today is Hugo Chavez. I expect THAT will piss off a few folks. C'est la vie!

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 02:21 PM

I'd bet the same way, Ebbie. It's much more likely to happen in the poorer nations first.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 02:06 PM

If I were a bettng person I would vote on the side of my not being here when it really hits the fan. Mostly because it can take a
L O N G time for normally-reasonable people to cast it all aside and go on a rampage.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 01:50 PM

Hard to say. But if you are alive when it happens, you'll know it. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 11:31 AM

To be alive and present when this kind of thing occurs- what are the odds.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 08:20 AM

"...its a wonder we don't have a world revolution..."

Well, Eb... Actually, we do... The mere fact that we have as much information out there is what brought about the overthrow of Mubarak, and others in North Africa and the Middle East...

And it will make it to a neighborhood near you in time...

With what we are seeing in Wisconsin and capitol cities around the country, and what you read like on the Washington Post discussions, we are in a pre-revolution stage right now... Boss Hog is spending a load to try to hold off the inevitable but there will come a time when Redneck Nation figures out that his kids school teachers aren't the e3nemy and educated (elitists) are not the enemy... When that occurs??? Game on!!!

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 07:32 AM

Robert Reich gets it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-republican-strategy_b_825206.html

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 08:12 PM

They believe what their favorite mass media sources are telling them, and have been telling them ever since they were children.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 05:31 PM

Bet the Tea Partiers are completely unaware of this...
The typical Tea Partier pays more in taxes thant the corporations they are in the streets defending against socialist communist fascist homosexual muslims....


http://www.truth-out.org/you-have-more-money-your-wallet-than-bank-america-pays-federal-taxes68094

Idiots.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: gnu
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 11:42 AM

200 countries, 200 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 10:25 AM

That's for sure. However, the privileged position of the very rich can be further strengthened by busting labor unions, and that's why you see it being done...ever since the Ronald Reagan presidency.

Remember the bailout? It's criminals who get bailed out, not honest people. The very people who effectively bankrupted the USA with their phony money bubble were bailed out by the government instead of being arrested and put in jail. That's because those very people control the government itself...and the mass media. It would be no exaggeration to say they own it, having bought it all a long time ago with their phony money bubbles.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 27 Feb 11 - 10:03 AM

The Tea Party/Republican math is a fraud.
Tax breaks on the hideously rich cannot be balanced by busting labor unions.

http://www.truth-out.org/attacks-unions-barking-up-wrong-money-tree68063

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 26 Feb 11 - 09:55 AM

It's happening in the Arab World, the Midwestern USA, and Canada.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/why-i-support-people-of-thompson-canada


"As Justice Louis D. Brandeis noted more than 60 years ago, "we can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.""



http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/63-63/5084-budget-crisis-duh-tax-the-rich

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: TIA
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 03:35 PM

If you are in the USA, go to your state capitol building tomorrow (Saturday, February 26, 2011). We are going to flood all of them in support of WI, IN and OH.
I am lucky - only 40 miles out.
Tell your friends, carpool, shout (politely).

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 02:37 PM

I went totally nuts at South West Water yesterday, as they're putting their prices up again...and we already pay twice as much as the rest of the country down here in The West Country....I completely lost it...

"No, you DO NOT understand...WE do NOT have any MORE money to pay out to you!".....We, being the collective National 'We'..

I mean HOW much longer are we going to put up with this shite?????

I am now so fumingly angry that I just want to light the blue touch paper and get everyone out on the streets, but how the fuck do you do it, when the bastards have created a system where everyone's so terrified of being sued that no-one speaks their mind, or The Truth any longer????

This is NOT what my Dad went to war FOR!! THIS IS WHAT HE WENT TO WAR.....***AGAINST!***

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: TIA
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 02:26 PM

Mryrrf-

You are correct about the complications. But for the young, it would not hurt to go to college somewhere else and try to morph that into a life in a better place.

For me, I am staying and fighting to the end. But the kids don't need to be here when the shit hits the fan...and I fear that it will.

Best!

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Maryrrf
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 01:15 PM

TIA, yes I know what you're saying and yes there are countries with better priorities, but there are issues like residency visas, work permits, etc. It isn't so easy to just move to another country. Most of us US citizens will have to stick it out here in the USA, and do what we can to make things better.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 01:09 PM

Uh-huh. Lots of food for thought there, allright.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: TIA
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 12:55 PM

If you want your head to just explode, spend some time reading articles by Richard Wolff.

http://www.rdwolff.com/

Too many to link to any particular one.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 12:51 PM

Okay. ;-) I thought you had, but maybe I got you confused with somebody else.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: TIA
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 12:48 PM

LH;
I hope I never called you a conspiracy theorist. If I did, or implied it, so sorry. I am (and have been) right with you on this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 12:48 PM

I wonder if ... the Tea Partiers will look back and say, "What the hell were we thinking?"

Thinking??

Mouse, if the TeaBaggers & their fellow-traveller Repubs. were capable of intelligent thought, we wouldn't be in the current situation (i.e., in the crapper)

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 12:45 PM

Bingo! Right on the mark, TIA.

Well, it is somewhat gratifying to me to see people who had been labelling me a "conspiracy theorist" for saying the same kind of things Ray McGovern is saying now finding it more acceptable from the pen of Mr McGovern and Truth Out.

It is indeed a "worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank". It is indeed corporatism, imperialism, and it bears the typical hallmarks of fascism. It is accomplished through mass marketing, a mostly controlled mass media, ever-increasing police powers, aggressive militarism, and the Democratic and Republican parties (at the higher levels) are absolutely complicit in cooperating with and enabling this imperial order.

That doesn't necessarily mean that most of the good folks in America who innocently went out and voted for them wanted any of this to happen! Certainly not. They just didn't really have anyone else to go out and vote for, did they? In practical terms, I mean...

And they weren't told what they were really voting for either. They are very seldom, if ever, told what they are really voting for. That's the case in Canada too, by the way, and probably just about everywhere else as well. We are not told what we're really voting for. If we were, there might be a revolution.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: TIA
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 11:11 AM

And, let's connect the dots between this discussion, the War in Iraq, the revolts in the Arab world, and the revolt in Wisconsin:

snip---
The revolt in the Arab world is not merely against a resident dictator, but against a worldwide economic tyranny designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries like Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with half the population earning less than $2 a day. The people's triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.
How did such extremism take hold in the liberal West? "It is necessary to destroy hope, idealism, solidarity, and concern for the poor and oppressed," observed Noam Chomsky a generation ago, and "to replace these dangerous feelings with self-centered egoism, a pervasive cynicism that holds that ... the state capitalist order with its inherent inequities and oppression is the best that can be achieved. In fact, a great international propaganda campaign is underway to convince people - particularly young people - that this not only is what they should feel but that it's what they do feel."
snip---

http://www.truth-out.org/behind-arab-revolt-a-word-we-dare-not-speak68036

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 10:58 AM

This is the most important conversation the USA should be having, so I am going to keep this thread alive. Thanks Ebbie for starting it.
Here is Robert Reich saying it out loud...

http://robertreich.org/post/3476451774

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 04:44 PM

Day in and day out FOX news uses rhetoric like "rich greedy teachers". public workers stealing from taxpayers etc.

Get the poor to squabble among themselves and the rich win by diversion.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 04:32 PM

Virtually all countries are in reality plutocracies.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 04:03 PM

Oops
My rant at. 9:03 above.
Go where?
How bout Costa Rica or Denmark or lots of places with better priorities.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,999
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 03:10 PM

The rich best grab one fact and understand it with thoughts about the poor: when ya got nothin', ya got nothin' to lose. (With regards to BD.)

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: gnu
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 03:05 PM

MT... well said.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 01:13 PM

Here's another: Budget cuts compared to Tax breaks graphic

Note especially the bottom: the total of the program cuts is about the same as the revenue lost to one year of the Bush tax cuts for the upper income brackets -- way less than the total of the tax breaks.

(N.B. I have a problem with one item on the tax breaks list: the "tax breaks for oil companies" as listed there do sound like a legitimate cost of doing business, which is what a corporation should be able to write off. The problem is that they have so many other tax incentives and loopholes.)

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 12:52 PM

I agree, Mousethief. If we as a society condone and accept it, the great divide can only widen. Greed has no definable limits. The difference between an individual or family that can claim 'only' 341 million dollars and an individual or family that claims 500 million may be enough to make the lower figure seem paltry.

I think that one - maybe, the primary - symptom of the great chasm between the 'classes' is when CEOs started garnering salary packages so much higher than what their workers earned. They used to think it acceptable when they earned perhaps 10 times the amount the line worker did- now they 'earn' easily 400 times the amount.

There are more millionaires in this country than has ever been before- quite likely the already-rich think of that as justifying their own inflated wealth- in order to maintain the gap between the traditionally moneyed and the new-rich.

It often occurs to me to wonder if we have not already returned to the days of the feudal system and don't even realize it. In those days, the people went about their own daily lives unmolested until they were reminded of their responsibilities to the powers when the powers declared war or instituted rationing or issued edicts that changed the rules.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: mousethief
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 12:36 PM

I wonder if, after we are all reduced to penury (except the top 2%), the Tea Partiers will look back and say, "What the hell were we thinking?"

Bad thing about neofeudalism is, back under the original feudalism, the lords acknowledged certain duties to their underlings. I see no sign of that today. We're in for a rough ride if we can't turn this around.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Maryrrf
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 12:33 PM

Get the hell out of dodge? Move out girls??? Um, and go where???

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 12:08 PM

Dying, yes. Dead? Not so sure. I have hopes. Look at Wisconsin!

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 09:03 AM

American Democracy is dead.

The wealth disparity is large than in many third world countries…larger than in Egypt (and we see what just happened there).
The numbers do not lie. Look at Ebbie's link, and also here:

http://www.lcurve.org/

As Ebbie's link points out, very, very few people comprehend these numbers.
Here is some help:

http://www.truth-out.org/nine-pictures-of-the-extreme-incomewealth-gap67743

Under Eisenhower, the tax rate on millionaires was over 60%. The tax rate on multi-millionaires was over 90%. Back then, the economy thrived, and we were not completely in debt to China and Saudi Arabia. And the economy was not dependent on constant war…and Eisenhower knew that.

Then the Republicans decided that the system was burdensome for multi-millionaires (go look at the second link again if you have just started to feel some pity).

After 30-some years of cutting taxes on the wealthy (many of whom make a lot of money when the US is at war), here we are (now go look at link 1 again).

After the abominable "Citizens United" Supreme Court Decision, there is no hope that a candidate who is not in the pocket of the super-rich can possibly win an election. When Obama shamefully caved on expiration of the tax cuts, this was proven. Over 75% of elections are won by the candidate who spends the most. Now go look at link 1 again.

It is fooking depressing.

The Tea Party is a front for the super-rich. The poor shmoes waving their fiscal responsibility (and "Obama is a fascist communist homosexual muslim") signs have no idea that they are dupes for the Koch brothers and about 400 other people who actually run the USA.

I will be okay. I will be dead in a few, to few dozen, years. I have already told my kids, and my students (yes I am one of those scary liberal academic left wing nuts...and a fascist communist homosexual muslim btw…) to get the hell out of Dodge.

American Democracy is dead.

A large portion of Americans are brain dead.

Move out girls.

The Mass is ended, go in peace.

Subject: RE: BS: Talk about Hideous! (Rich vs.Not So)
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 Feb 11 - 06:54 AM

I wish that I could say that the situation was any different here in the UK ... but it isn't. For the past few decades politicians of all parties have shamelessly put the interests of Big Business and the rich before anything else - we vote for them and they work tirelessly to make the rich, richer and richer and richer! In this country the excuse is that if they don't support the rich they will all go and live in Switzerland (!) ... what has Switzerland ever done to deserve that?