Posted on 10/09/2011 1:56:58 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The struggle for America is financed by the most successful people in the country, working through some of the most worried.
Occupy Wall Street, and its campout demonstrations by underemployed Americans, is backed by labor unions and armed with share-the-wealth ideas from the liberal-advocacy groups financed by George Soros, the currency speculator who ranks high on the new Forbes magazine list of the richest Americans.
The tea party cut-the-government movement, born from similar if better-dressed rallies a few years back, is funded by other wealthy Americans, like the industrialist and antiregulation brothers Charles and David Koch, who rank just above Soros on Forbes' top 10.
President Obama, who said he wanted to bring Americans together, is blamed by both sides for failing to end the long slump and get more Americans working.
Two roads. How did we get here? How do we get out?
Win and lose
The United States won World War II. Everybody else's factories got bombed, leaving us to sell and finance cars, planes, power plants, and movies for all nations. U.S. workers demanded higher wages and spread the wealth, buying homes, cars, and college degrees, and fast food and cable TV. Government retirement and medical programs made it less ugly to be old or poor.
Then rising costs drove investors abroad. In the sluggish '70s, President Jimmy Carter warned Americans that the party was over. Time to live within our means. Work more, vacation less. Study engineering.
Heck with that, we said, and elected Ronald Reagan, a man who wasn't afraid to borrow piles of money to stimulate growth.
For the next generation, under both parties, U.S. policy let nasty factory jobs move to Mexico and China, while expanding our role as the world's financier.
Beyond the investment pros and financial engineers and CEOs hugely compensated by other CEOs sitting on their boards, the people who made the most from the debt explosion, Americans whose parents built Chevys and bent steel became stockbrokers, real estate salespeople, and suburban builders, and rode the boom.
But in 2008, we ran out of borrowers. The government had to rescue the banks. The economy stalled. Construction, bank, and real estate jobs dried up. People looked to Washington and asked, "What next?"
Left and right
Economists like Nobel Prize winner Dale T. Mortensen, who spoke last week at Villanova University, say that private- sector demand is likely to stay weak and that greater government spending is the only thing likely to get the economy growing and bosses hiring anytime soon.
Would-be Obama replacements like Texas Gov. Rick Perry say government needs to step out of the way, cutting not just the Environmental Protection Agency, but also Medicare and Social Security and extended unemployment benefits. That way, natural market forces can reassert themselves, and businesspeople can grow us out of this mess.
That's roughly happening in Perry's state - where increased oil and gas exploration and cheap immigrant labor continue to feed a growing economy - and in Gov. Corbett's Pennsylvania, where Amazon.com is quietly hiring thousands of temporary workers at the low-wage warehouses that are replacing retail stores. At the same time, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell sink concrete drilling pads in upstate farms and forests, delivering cheap fuel, though not yet the hoped-for industrial renaissance.
But even in Perry's Texas and Corbett's Pennsylvania, a lot of Americans aren't ready to do many of the unpleasant jobs a government-free labor market would force on them.
In petitions filed this fall with federal courts and the Labor Department, landscapers, farmers, lumbermen, and food processors complain that they can't get reliable U.S. workers, even with 9 percent unemployment, even at above-minimum wages. They are still bringing in foreign workers under government special visas, for jobs Americans won't take.
Stale, mate
Will we go left or right? In 2012, we'll likely elect either Obama, who has been unable or unwilling to win support for a spend-more recovery, or Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, whose record as Massachusetts governor doesn't make him look like the man who would cut Social Security to promote a balanced budget and freer labor markets. (Though military cuts will likely continue, under a rare bipartisan consensus.)
The likely result: more of the Washington threats and paralysis that businesspeople say discourages investment. Big companies can adjust to high or low tax rates, but they hate not knowing when the rules will change again, wrecking plans and projects.
More muddle won't calm the tea party and libertarian activists who started mobilizing on Independence Mall and other public assembly sites in 2008, or the Occupiers now hanging out at Wall Street and Philadelphia City Hall.
They'll be with us - they will grow - until business, or government, starts spending and hiring for real.
It's just more projection, brought to you by your local Liberal local and dozens of Federal grants to foundations and "community organizations".
They're trying to legitimize anarchists -- morph them into the Tea Party (which they will call racists and mean spirited w/o needing to be prompted anymore) so people will not understand that these protests are being tested out for the 2012 election.
COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONARY groups...
You know, this cannot be understated; viewing their live, streaming video source I saw Van Jones addressing part of a group in NYC and after him they had a guy who had helped organize the ruckus in Spain ... this has _some_ level of organization and purpose to it ...
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
Note the program content rotates on that feed, sometimes (mostly live) but some pre-taped stuff too.
Of special note are their General Assembly (GA) sessions,conducted like this one, with group repetition of the speaker's words (Francis Fox Piven in this case):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsK2WeO7VbQ
Note the words "mic check" precede the bulk of the speaker's delivery ... used to get attention of the crowd and set mic levels for AV equipment ...
Comparing the dweebs from OWS to Tea Party patriots tells me the author is full of caacaa.
You know, this cannot be understated; viewing their live, streaming video source I saw Van Jones addressing part of a group in NYC and after him they had a guy who had helped organize the ruckus in Spain ... this has _some_ level of organization and purpose to it ...
It has a LOT of organization and purpose to it. But the scum behind it want to make it APPEAR as though it's a spontaneous uprising. The commie-left are always looking for opportunities to launch their long-awaited 'revolution'.
They didn’t have to have extra police on overtime either.
Just curious — Why do they capitalize “Occupiers” and not “tea partiers”?
“Can someone please tell me where/how the Kock brothers spend their money, regarding the tea party? I can imagine those guys might want to help out, and maybe they do, but where and how? What is alleged? What is true?”
I think they are bringing the Koch brothers into the mix because they helped start a group “Citizens for a Sound Economy” that later became part of “Freedom Works” (Dick Army’s group) who claim they are part of the tea party. I can’t find any evidence that they are funding any tea party activity though.
And...I seriously hope that this never becomes a military matter in a civil war.
I saw that to. I guess it’s adolescent snots who write headlines.
The line about Reagan borrowing “piles of money” to stimulate growth betrayed this dolt as a typical leftist ignoramus who lucked out and got a job scribbling for a leftist rag. His misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies are one of the chief reasons the country is in the state it is. I seriously doubt he’s ever attended one Tea Party gathering or bothered to talk to one Tea Partyer.
The only good commie...as it has always been.
I don’t see where the author mentions once about out of control gubmint spending or those who permanently suck on the public tit and only vote for a living.
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