Earlier I read Keith’s response and was struck by his mood which concerned me.
Now I will discuss the article and Keith’s comments about retribution. I don’t find Taibbi’s response to be retributive at all. What is extreme about. 1. breaking up monopolies in a capitalist system that claims monopolies to be regressive, 2. What is wrong with making them pay for their own insurance on their gambling. 3. Are you saying that public money should be available for lobbying the government? 4. Are you saying that risky practices that effect the health of the entire nation should not be taxed to protect us in the event of their collapse? . 5. Do you agree with the current bonus payments where people rewarded for screwing everyone else but never kissing them even once? If we were talking about the Taliban advocating what Wall Street bankers say about the right to ravage America for their shareholders and steal for their management’s salaries [as the CEO’s salaries which went up almost one quarter last year] wouldn’t America would be jumping on the stump to talk about the heathen retrograde Muslim fanatics taking advantage of the rest of the world and especially poor and middle class Americans? But because they are our thieves we tolerate them. Don’t tell me they aren’t thieves. Don’t tell me they aren’t racist either. We are in a Cold Civil War over here. They are tearing down our magnificent educational Institutions and returning the money for them as block grants to the states where the corrupt locals will further feather their pockets. There would have been no civil rights in this country if the states would have had their way. I got this plea from the Organization of American Historians today: URGENT ACTION IS NEEDED BY 2PM ET *TODAY* TO PRESERVE HISTORY EDUCATION FUNDING! October 14, 2011 Dear Ray Harrell, We apologize for the short notice, however we have just learned from the National Coalition for History (NCH) that the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP) released the draft of a bill reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as No Child Left Behind. Sen. Tom Harkin, (D-IA), the committee chairman, and Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY), the ranking Republican, have been engaged in negotiations since early this year in crafting the bill. The comprehensive legislation decentralizes educational funding from Washington to the states. States would be given block grants that in turn would be allocated to local school districts through competitive grants. History education will have to compete at the local level for scarce resources. This bill does not include the concept of a “Well-Rounded Education†offered in the White House’s original ESEA plan, which would have included competitive grants for history, civics, social studies, foreign languages, and arts education. We learned very late yesterday that a small window of opportunity has opened to address this oversight. In the past, Senator Harkin has strongly supported funding for history education and Teaching American History grants. If he hears from the historical community immediately there is a chance that some version of “Well-Rounded Education†funding that includes history might be included in the bill. The ESEA draft bill is scheduled to be considered by the Senate HELP committee on Oct. 18. Senator Harkin is planning to file a “Manager’s Amendment†to the bill to address concerns that have been identified since the draft was released earlier this week. Under committee rules amendments must be filed by 2:30 p.m. EDT TODAY (Friday, October 14) in advance of the markup next week. We need you to act NOW! Please call Senators Harkin and Enzi as they are the key players. A sample script and more information may be found on the NCH Web site: http://historycoalition.org/2011/10/14/urgent-action-needed-today-to-preserve-history-education-funding/ A list of Senate HELP Committee members is also listed on the Web site as well. If you are constituents of any of these Senators, please contact them. You should ask for the staff person that handles education issues. Leave a voice mail if you cannot reach the person immediately. Remember, PLEASE CALL, not e-mail, the Senators no later than 2:00 p.m. (EDT) TODAY. All Senator’s offices can be reached via the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. We apologize for making such a last-minute appeal, and we thank you for your support! If an enlightened Federal Government hadn’t acted we wouldn’t have stopped organized crime. We would have no civil rights for minorities and we would have crap for research from the private sector and no educational standards. No state would have done anything. America’s states are pre-pubescent entities that are as provincial as hell. Rick Perry is the norm. We either get hicks or sleaze. Only the federal government keeps these alleged “states” from collapsing in the world. These “States” condone the richest people in America stealing Indian oil from poverty stricken Indian children as “wealth producing” and pass laws that say that the only ones who should have the right to vote are the “wealth producers.” When the Indian people were rich they murdered them and made white folks their “guardians” and, like the Koch Brothers, they stole them into the poor house. Taibbi’s suggestion make immanent sense to me. Just retribution would be vendetta but America would never understand the responsibility of a Corsican Serf named Mateo Falcone as written by Merimee. There is little honor abroad in the world these days. Just piracy. So I ask the same questions I asked of the list and got no response to four day ago: How involved were the corporatists with 1930s Germany and Spain under the Fascists and Nazis? I have a book that indicates that Hitler was close with Henry Ford. I also have heard the term Neo-Corporate in reference to Fascist in Italy and Spain. 1. Does anyone on the list have any information on how this all fitted together? 2. Does anyone on the list know if there are parallels in the private sector today? It smells like the world I was born into on Dec 3rd, 1941 as all hell broke loose. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 11:27 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] From Rolling Stone At 13:27 14/10/2011, Ed wrote: Great ideas, but what are the chances of any of them being implemented? Not very good, I'd say. I agree. Besides, a lot of this is just retribution. A few dollops of retribution is no bad thing and I wouldn't mind seeing more than a few bankers and city traders in the stocks or breaking rocks but Matt Taibbi's suggestions don't really answer to the really serious underlying trends. One is that most advanced (money-printing) governments and their (excessive credit-making) sidekicks, the banks, are now deeply in debt and there's little prospect of any recovery from this unless there's superabundant economic growth (based on what?), or taxation over many years or high inflation. Another is that we're now moving into a far more specialized world than ever before with a consequent yawning skills gap between the value-adders and the rest. Also, because of automation we're moving into an economy which simply doesn't need so many adult workers. Yet another is that we're all becoming largely locked into a dense urban way of life with a standard repertoire of consumer goods. In short, the last 300 years of the industrial revolution has now come to an end and an altogether new type of society and government has to emerge. Keith My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters Hit bankers where it hurts by: Matt Taibbi Protesters with the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement demonstrate in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty Images I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal. But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war. Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls. That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year. No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five: 1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks. 2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow. 3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress. 4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year. 5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world. To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant. This story is from the October 27, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/10/
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
