I completely agree with your comment!!!!!! Listen to Michael Savage.....he knows so much more about this and the Obama Soros movement!!!!!!!! Why do you think these
people aren't outside the Whitehouse!!!!!!!!!

Oh no. More people blaming the woes of the world on Obama. :(

Not sure which is more disturbing...the fact that these folks listen to Glenn Beck and Mike Savage with such fervor or the fact that they blame the Obama administration for all the world's problems. The Occupy Wall Street movement is just getting started, people. These demonstrators are our fellow Americans who are finally fed up with corporate greed, no jobs, no healthcare, a polluted environment, collosal debt, no money for higher education etc. They are also tired of a "do nothing" government that includes the Republicans in Congress. Obama is not the best president we've ever had, but he's all we've got at the moment. The GOP should be doing more to pass the jobs bill and stop worrying about getting re-elected. Americans need jobs!

Maybe we should all just bend over as peter points out. Do you really think the republicans are the obstructionists? The dem's had control for obamas first 2 years - and we got obamacare. Seriously - the clowns that are on wall street protesting should do something constructive as opposed to loitering and littering. Many dems also said no to the jobs bill. How did that first stimulus work out? That is what I thought.

My intent is not to alarm you, Jerry and The Gorn...but ask Marie Antionette how the French Revolution worked out for her. When the peaceful protesters on Wall Street turn to pitchforks and torches, where will you be then with all of your corporate entitlements? Running for the hills? That is what I thought. Enough said.

The people that are protesting, rioting and confronting police like they did today are a disgrace. This has gone on long enough and should be shut down. The media have interviewed the people in the park and most of them inteviewed are clueless and would have trouble holding down a job at the fries station at McDonalds.

What about the rights of the people who live in the neighborhood? What about the rights of the company that owns the property? How about the rights of those who work there?

The mayor is a joke and let himself get used by these tools. NYPD needs to bring in the water cannons and tear gas and break this thing up ASAP.

Clarke, you don't get it...these people have no jobs and no future. People like you are what they are protesting against!

You live in a right wing town...you come home probably from Wall Street...turn on Fox News and listen to Bill "O'Righty's" political dribble. No wonder you're so out of touch with the needs of regular Americans.

The thing that I don't understand about this movement is that, to me, OWSers are looking for someone to hand them an opportunity. I get it that we're in a recession and the job situation is bad. I get it that there are really, really rich people out there. But, this group, with no leader, has managed to find property, arrange meals and organize activities - all they need is a product or service and they'd be in business. What stops them?

Instead of joining hands with malcontents, why not start a business? There's a guy in my town who services lawnmowers out of his garage (I doubt he is in the hated 1%, but he does a booming business), a woman I know operates a consignment shop, some people walk dogs, I write resumes . . . Don't stand around in the park and hand out cool leaflets you made-start a little graphic arts business on the side for yourself, network and hopefully you'll get a better job out of it.

Health insurance is a political issue, I'm not denying that. Everyone does deserve to receive medical care.

Before I hear about being an elitist. I'm not. My grandparents were not born in this country. Everything my family has has been hard-earned. I worked the entire time I was in college. My family came here for opportunities and I was raised with the mentality that you apply yourself, you look for opportunities, you live frugally and you make the best of your opportunities. Times are tough, but now is the time for innovation.

I take issue with those who comment that the Tea Party is not made up of regular Americans but OWS is. The Tea Party is trying to redirect the nation back to its founding principles. Many OWS are frustrated regular Americans who, just like the Tea Party, are upset that the banks were bailed out and we would welcome their joining our cause. However, a large percentage of OWS are not regular Americans because they seek to destroy our free markets and our liberty. Marxists and Socialists are not regular Americans. America is the opportunity to improve your lot in life through hard work in a nation of liberty. America is not about redistributing the fruit of people's labor. America is set up so that if a state or a group within a state wished to live in a communist fashion they can, but it was not intended to be for the whole nation. Those who want to dismantle the very foundations of America are not "regular" Americans.

If the OWS crew were as patriotic as the Tea Party Patriots™, they'd be packing some serious heat. I, for one, have not seen any awesome firepower at any of their events. And to Stephen Nash's point, Real Patriots™ never, EVER criticize or critique their country or its role in the world*.

If the Top 1%™ can manage, in our perfectly competitive economy, to capture and retain 98% of productivity gains made in the past 30 years (when Saint Ronnie was elected, PBOH) while shafting the worker bees who made that happen, well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Think of it this way: if it weren't for the top 1% owning/controlling so much of our economy, there would be no incentive for the working slob to work harder (176 hrs/week, anyone?) to achieve that success.

The essential question here is: Where is Saint Ronnie when we really need him? Let's all join hands and see if we can bring him back from the dead...

*Having lived in every country on Earth, I can say that we are, indeed, the greatest.

@The Gom: The last time we had such income/wealth disparity was just prior to the Great Depression. Oh, and many people (though a very small % of the population) made serious coin during this time. Let the apocalypse begin!

@Sharon: You'd be right, (or Right?) if the playing field were level.

Corporate America is sitting on record cash, yet many insist that only additional tax cuts will enable them to hire. News for those of you in this camp: DEMAND for their products/services is the ONLY thing that will lead to hiring, and that won't happen until the middle class is rescued or there is a massive government intervention to fill the demand void. Before you haters scream about the stimulus, remember that a bunch of the stimulus was...more tax breaks. Let's just cut taxes to ZERO and watch hiring go to infinity. Corporate Amerikuh is creating jobs: overseas.

I don't underestand all the commotion and rancor. Why don't we just give in to the liberal/progressive agenda.

Then we wouldn't have all these sit ins and the world would be a happy place. Men should live for others because they can't live their own life any better.

They "should," according to collectivists, because it gives collectivists power over men's actions, which is what all forms of collect ivism are about.

So, if you wonder about those who seek power over other men, it's instructive to recognize that all collectivist doctrines depend on the values that the able create.

Consider, for instance, the slogans of both socialism and communism. Socialists declare, "From each according to his ability; to each according to work performed." Communists declare, "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

There are middle road solutions. Right now I have no understanding of people in the middleclass who say "Let me give up my right to a livable wage so that the Top 1 percent can have more." Median income has dropped $3000.00 over the past 10 years while the top 1 percent has increased their wealth off of that drop in income. No matter how much you try only 1 percent can occupy that 1 percent. Most people in America just want a fair wage so that they can raise their families and advance generationly. They are being deprived of that opportunity now. College Grads are coming out with no prospects for a job and huge amounts of debt for their educations. The Top 6 tech companies don't employ 1/3rd of what just GM did a generation ago. The Right says go get a job in a job market with 9.1 percent unemployment and a 15-18 percent underemployment. It is a formula for upheaval and we are just beginning to see it. The Tea Party was a joke but a movement based on a lack of opportunity and no outlet for that is another matter.

Unemployment for people with degrees is 4%. Those recent grads who cannot find a job need to keep trying. They also might want to look at what their degree is in and what it qualifies them to do. Perhaps they should also look back at the last several years and see what jobs / internships they had over the last several summers? Or did they spend the summers traveling europe on daddy's dime and not work at anything meaningful?

@Clarke and Spokey...you are clearly part of the Uber rich 1%...Congratualtions.

Peter - let them bring their pitch forks. They will be met with Mr Smith and Mr Wesson. I'll take my odds.

The tea pary movement was about our country's roots; our constitution; freedom of speech, enough taxes already and stop the spending. Is Wall St truly the problem or is it our billions being sent weekly to other countries; most of which hate us enough to want to eliminate most Americans while our own ppl suffer from drought; hurricanes; tornados etc while our Gov't fights over how to help them. It's funny how the TEA party was minimalized while this group is given massive media coverage; mostly pos coverage. Both movements are middle class American sick of carrying so much of the tax burden and being left behind. Our country hasn't been as divided as it is now; either racial divide; wealth divide or upper-middle to lower class divide as it is now. This is a very sad moment in U.S. history; & hopefully it can be turned around. Enough blame; time to own up and take resp for our own actions; we have allowed our government to run unchecked for too long; we have let them spend too much of our tax dollars for their pork barrel spending, for "foreign aid", for their own political gain; we all have to put a stop to it; get rid of Barney Frank who ran Freddie and Fannie into the ground; get rid of the tax cheats; like Gitner; get rid of the liars, like Eric Holder and get rid of the non-patriots like Janet Napolitano; who along with Holder blocks every state's efforts to get and keep jobs available for Americans and not illegals who come here knowingly breaking the law, protest that!

@hopenchange?: Really? Didn't know the Kock, er, Koch brothers were "about our country's roots." While I agree that we send too much aid around the world (though I'd rather see a billion in aid go somewhere than sending troops and depleted uranium), that's not the issue here. The issue is the fat cats keeping all the rewards of productivity gains that the middle class effected. The sad thing is the Americans who vote against their own self interest because they naîvely believe they have a shot at being in the top 1% "if they just work hard enough." Our roads and bridges are quickly falling to third-world status while we continue to offer billions in bailouts to banks and tax breaks to oil companies that shatter earnings records with regularity while the poor middle-class sucker who, after two decades of steady work and paying his/her mortgage, falls on hard times and the bank (without the actual mortgage paperwork) swoops in and forecloses. It's "survival of the fittest - this is CAPITALISM!" until it happens to you or someone you care about.

@HG: I believe giving money to government is going to do 1000x more to help unemployment and our economy than giving more tax cuts to corporations, who are already sitting on over two TRILLION dollars in cash and STILL won't hire. You act like money to government is a one-way street. When government spends money domestically (e.g., education, roads, etc.), it actually employs people AND pumps a lot of money into the economy (look up 'multiplier effect'). If you give a[nother] tax break to Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Banks, etc., they just stash it away or send it overseas. Tax breaks = money NOT spent on stuff that (a) results in a better quality of life, and (b) puts people to work. Same thing with the über rich: give a tax break to a multimillionaire (or billionaire) and what's he gonna do, buy even more stuff? He's gonna invest it in companies that are...wait for it...shipping jobs overseas, so he can make even more money.

Obama and the Dems as a group are a bunch of pansies who brought an olive branch to an RPG fight. First stim should have been bigger and sans tax cuts. Bush's tax cuts have done nothing good and they've been around for a decade. Oh, and TARP should have had strings galore, not the 3-page joke Paulson produced, but I digress.

So, back in your court: how do YOU propose patching the demand deficit until consumers and business start picking up the slack? Until there's equilibrium, there will be severe pain for most of us.

@Mike The only major section of the country where housing prices are strong is around Washington, DC, because that's where the money is.The reality is that people in government are just as self-interested as people everywhere else. They only cloak themselves as helping the down-trodden to get votes.
TARP didn't have strings for a reason, money and self-interested politicians. Everyone complains about all of the lobbying and campaign money in Washington, but it's there for a reason. We have let our so-called public servants have access to much of our wealth and that money has gone down a one-way street (at the federal level) to big money donors, large corporations, and, yes, old people. The poor and the young don't stand a chance.
If you total up all of the money spent on social programs and divide it by the number of people living below the poverty line, you'd have enough money per person to eliminate poverty in this country. Yet, poverty continues. Why? Because no politician in his right mind wants to eliminate poverty. Only by having poverty continue can he/she ever justify the continued assault on your wallet.
Amazingly, in the light of the abject failure of government to solve problems, the answer returned is that we need to do it bigger. The stimulus plan did NOT create a multiplier effect. Large, important groups got big payoffs and we stuck the bill to our kids. And don't get me started on the true meaning of "shovel-ready".

@Spokey, Jerry and Clarke....what Mike said is spot on.

@HG: I actually agree with much of what you wrote.

Parts of society have zero desire to work (though far fewer than many believe). I think some of the people complaining that "there ain't no jobs" also have virtually no skills to offer a potential employer, but no one has the cojones to say that. To them I say "you should have paid attention when the public was paying for your HS education." But for a lot of reasons (nation security, societal stability, crime prevention, humanitarian, etc.), we need to provide basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, basic healthcare) in exchange for something - even if it's picking up trash on the street. *Everything* after that (50" TV, tattoos, BlackBerry, etc.) is on them.

One thing that would make HUGE progress toward cleaning up the mess is campaign reform. Minimal PERSONAL donations (say, $250 limit) and NO others (corporations, lobbyists, etc.). Do SOMETHING to stop the revolving door where people in government positions can make millions working in the private sector after doing favors for their future employer. And for Allah's sake, no more GS alumni in government, period! Unfortunately, as long as the foxes are guarding the chicken coop, I don't see this happening.

As I said before, much of the stim was tax cuts, which have no multiplier effect (well, they multiply the wealth of the rich). And some the spending was too long-term. Not sure how to get the $ to the most effective projects, but that was part of the problem, too.

Anyone interested in learning more about the financial crisis:
Got HBO? Got an hour or more?
http://economyincrisis.org/content/hbo-films-creates-“too-big-fail”-movie
Got 11 minutes?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqUGoVez8xg

I wonder if Alex Decroce understands the protest on wall street? He has called those who collect unemployment insurance, " gaming the system". His campaign financers can create the jobs, ask him to run Trenton for them, and then refuse to debate me, Joe Raich , for victory on November 8,2011 in District 26's general assembly race. When will the people get to see and hear the issues???

@Mr Nash: Comparing $2T cash hoarde to public debt is a red herring. My point was that the cries for more tax cuts come with the faux rationale that it will stimulate hiring. If record cash caches haven't stimulated hiring, how will more money (via tax cuts) do it? And telling me I need a history lesson hardly qualifies as a potential solution. From your barbed response, it sounds like the start to your still-unarticulated solution to the unemployment debacle is to fire many of the government workers. Hrmmm. Private sector not hiring + fire government workers = lower unemployment? Maybe I missed that math in the history classes you imply I cut? Tell me, sir: what automatic weapons to you bring to Tea Party events?

@Mr Nash: Corporations have hoarded $2T because they can. Instead of sharing it with the society that enabled such success (via taxes) or the workers who largely made it happen (the middle class), they lavish obscene bonuses on top management and retain the rest. The incestuous circle-jerk that is many firms' board of directors is a big reason why.

Jobs will come back when wage equilibrium is attained (http://www.worldsalaries.org/china.shtml). As you pointed out, they're businessmen, not social workers. Therein lies the problem: like a virus, they will max out short-term profits (which is their legal obligation under current laws) until the host (middle class that buys the goods & services) is dead. Corporations may be people (ask Mitt Romney), but they are largely without conscience or long-term vision.

And you are absolutely right that regulations are part of what has pushed production to China and elsewhere. You know, pesky rules about dumping chromium and other heavy metals in/near water supplies, lead in toys, melamine in milk, etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China). @ALL: Watch this short documentary for more info on what we outsource other than jobs: http://www.storyofstuff.com/.

So, by extension, your Rx for unemployment is to turn the US into China? That's patriotic? Hell, why stop there? Let's go for truly minimal government and no regulations - Somalia, anyone?

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.
These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent examples of “expensive” consumption.
--Victor Lebow (1955)

@Mr Nash: Your beloved Saint Ronnie *agreeing* with Obama (only 59 seconds):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgbJ-Fs1ikA

And while we do have a high corporate tax rate, it is replete with enough loopholes to drive a truck full of TARP funds through, so the effective rate is much less.

And since you brought him up, let's go back to the tax rates under Reagan.

Mike, do you mean the 15% and 28% rates that Reagan pushed through in return for eliminating the ability to use passive losses to offset active income, the limitation of deductions and other reforms? I'd go back to that, too.
Oh, by the way, that reform means that comparisons of adjusted gross income between the rich now and in the 1970s and early 80s are somewhat misleading since the rich did not show their income in the 1970s and early 80s but offset much of it with paper losses. There has been growing income inequality but its magnitude has also been overstated.

The only jobs the government creates are tax payer funded jobs. Enough is enough with the waste in DC. $16 for a muffin at a recent government meeting???? No thank you. I'd rather give my money back to the people through tax breaks. Now what to do with the 50% that pay no taxes. Let's ask the 99% ers as they seem to have a lot of time on their hands.

jerry Their are about 520000 US Postal workers who are not tax payer funded. The postal service actually funds the tax payer and this is the real reason the US postal service is BROKE.NOT THE INTERNET. Let me explain, in 2006 congress passed a bill requiring the PO to prefund retirement benefits for the next 75 years. The cost 5.5 BILLION a year or a tad over a 100 MILLION a week. Now some people might say well whats wrong with that? Here is the PROBLEM the money never made it where it was suppose to go it went STRAIGHT to the FEDERAL RESERVE and was used to pay down the defecit.Now I know 5.5 billion is nothing when you are talking trillions but it is putting the PO out of business.
These are the type of SCAMS run by both parties, that are DESTROYING our country and then we LIE to the public about the real reasons somthing is wrong. The right blames left and the left blames the right and everyone in the MIDDLE gets SHAFTED. When the country crummbles both PARTIES will be to BLAME

The money that is owed is from that bill that was passed in 2006 and is for future benefits and it was passed to bankrupt the usps. If you think this is a good idea you are whats wrong with the country. Put a bill in front of congress to do this to the 500 companies in the S and P and lets see how many Republicans vote to pass it, That would fix the defecit 500 x 5.5 billion.It would kinda be like taxing the rich when the market cashes, but of course all the guys in DC would have shorted the market

Chuck is right on the USPS. I believe they were given 10 years to fund the next 75 years of pension liabilities and the desired effect is coming true.

@clarke: Thanks for the suggestion. Which is better: Liberty or Beck University? BTW, I agree with the rest of what you wrote. Still waiting for a constructive suggestion, or are you fine with all those overseas holdings? See if you can come up with a wittier barb than "you need an education". I understand; listening to FOX has that effect on people.

@Jerry: Sounds like you are very pro-privatization. If you eliminate 30,000 government workers' jobs, how much of that should be done by the private sector? Blackwater, Parsons, or Halliburton ring a bell? I'll take a $16 muffin over this (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62392.html) any day of the week.

Sounds like most on this board would like the see everything done by corporations, with the executive management paid millions and the workers paid minimum wage with no benefits. I've seen no concrete solutions debated here, and more than a few personal attacks. As I said before: the virus will kill its host. You have all the cheap goods you could want, courtesy of all this "free trade" and your fellow Americans who weren't omniscient enough to learn to be hedge fund managers will likely die young as medical coverage is slowly but surely withdrawn.

Why don't you paint a picture of what YOU want to see in the US in 5, 10, and 25 years?

Great president or greatest president? You decide...
"You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." —GW Bush to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005

The airlines were notorious for declaring bankruptcy to get out of pension obligations (yet managing to still fund executives' parachutes). This will certainly extend to other industries and the public sector. Race to the bottom while top management laughs all the way to the bank. This cannot go on indefinitely.

AGAIN, I challenge the Tea Party Patriots and others on this thread to tell what they want to see in the future - how the see this great country in 5, 10, and 25 years. And how that will be achieved.

Mike - encourage companies to invest in America with long term certainty over tax policy and regulation and they will. That will create jobs and I think you can figure out the rest.

Make the corporate tax rate the same as or lower than in low tax rate jurisdictions and watch as companies establish more operations here rather than overseas.

As long as it makes sense financially to put an operation in another country, companies will do so. They have a duty to their stockholders to maximize the profit generated. They don't have any duty to the public in general.

@clarke: 1) Not sure either party can guarantee long-term certainty over tax policy (or much else). 2) Regulation: maybe not more regs, but ditch the dumb ones and enforce the smart ones with a lot more consistency and vigor, and anything related to national security (see "too big to fail") needs a major-league babysitter and/or to be broken up. 3) I'm for lower rates with fewer loopholes (simple, consistent), and ditching subsidies for industries like oil. 4) Even if we lower taxes to zero, it won't offset the slave wages in other countries. 5) The old theory was the rest of the world would rise to our standard of living. The reality is the equilibrium point will be a lot closer to theirs than ours. Watch thestoryofstuff to see why.

@All: Traitor???
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/he-made-it-on-wall-st-and-used-it-to-help-start-the-protests/

I want the citizens of this country to be able to decide how they spend their own money. Yes, we should be taxed - all of us should (yes, even the 50% who pay no federal need to pay into the system), but the government is notorious for waste and as a result they should get less money, not more money from the American people - yes, even the wealthy. As a result of the $16 muffin, the $500 hammer and the $5,000 toilet I have ZERO confidence in providing the governement any additional dollars.

mike The problem with this country is simple,Winston Churchill once said Democracy is not a very good form of Goverment its just better than all the rest that have been tried.Our Goverment is based on 2 things Honesty and Integrity.You want to fix this country put it FIRST,the politions dont,the business people dont,workersdont,and the bums who have never worked a day in their lives dont. Every body thinks of themselves 1st and everybody tries to beat the system and alot of people are very good at doing just that rich and poor,and everyone who beats the system makes it harder on the next generation.basically what im saying is the country is becoming hopeless honesty and integrity can not be fixed by passing policies and this is not only and AMERICAN problem it is a GLOBAL problem

Mike, you suffer from what I call the "If I Were the King of the World" problem. You look at solutions as if you were (or anyone else were) the king of the world and could affect what they think is best. The problem is that any government run program has to go through the same politicians that you and I believe are part of a corrupt system. These are the same politicians that write so-called campaign finance reform which is designed to make it hard for incumbents to get re-elected but also makes it nearly impossible for non-incumbents to get elected.
My point is that the only "solution" that I see is to take the money, hence the power, away from the politicians in Washington, certainly not give them more money. You might not like the "multiplier effect" of that, but you've already seen that if we give them $800 billion to play with that they'll just funnel it to their union buddies at the state and local level. They talk about helping the poor, but they wind up helping their friends, so, if I were king of the world, I'd set up the world so that Washington was no longer full of princes. I'd de-fund DC and watch the house prices fall in Alexandria and rise everywhere else. I'd depend upon the ingenuity non-politically connected Americans. Sounds corny. (My friends say that we gave all that up in the 1820s.) But I don't see the direction that we're heading leading to any real solutions, no matter who is king of the world.

And, lo and behold, Washington has become the richest metro area in the country. Why would we send more of our money there?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-14/washington-d-c-metropolitan-area-is-wealthiest-most-educated-u-s-region.html

Do the 99% realize the 1% they are targeting pay 45% of all federal taxes? Be careful what you wish for.

the problem is the 1 percent that pays 45 percent of the taxes has 70 percent of the money

Please explain how taxing the wealthy will help the middle or lower class. Almost 50% in this country do not pay federal taxes. Are we suggesting that additional tax revenues from the rich be provided to those who already pay nothing? We have become a land of entitlement as opposed to a land of opportunity.

Yes - federal income taxes. Half of the country is on a scholarship.