THE LOSS OF OUR DEMOCRACY

By Robert Murri  7-26-2012

Sorry I have not kept up with my blog. I speed too much time on FB with my rants. Guess I better catch up a bit.

I have been obsessed with this year’s presidential and congressional elections. I know I’ve sounded like I might be losing my mind and maybe I am. But as I see it lining up, it gives me great fear. It is like looking at the stars in astrology and reading the possible future, and it doesn’t look good.

Since the inception of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Christian Coalition, Koch brothers reincarnated Tea Party, aka the John Birch Society of old, and their Freedom Works, CATO Institute and the organization known as the Family or Fellowship, which is a radical Christian fundamentalist organization, and add to this the Ayn Rand disciples, and the growing Libertarian ideology of Ron and Rand Paul, … (I don’t know this as fact, it’s just an assumption on my part, but I might suggest that Ron Paul’s son, Rand Paul and a Senator might have been named after Ayn Rand, since she embraces many of the Libertarian philosophy.)  …these organizations have been on a decade’s long quest to obtain total power over the USA politically and culturally. All of these groups have slightly different final objectives, but they do have a common thread that has come together in a force like we have never seen before in the USA.

First all of these organizations are extremist of the far right of the political spectrum. By comparison, the Soviet Union was actually a right-wing conservative form of governance. They want total power, they abhor any opposing philosophy or political ideology, they purge members of the party who waver from the lock step order of the leadership, they will eat their young to maintain power, and they will use any method available, propaganda is one of their major tools to convince the public that they are the trusted ones, regardless if it is honest and true or not or downright lying and manipulative to gain and maintain that power.  They will manipulate and even commit voter fraud to insure they gain and retain power. The Soviet Union was really never a true socialist system, it was a pure communist system which has some socialist features, but communist centralized economy failed and cronyism replaced pure communism even before the coup d’tat in 1989. Communism is collectivism on steroids. 

The only difference between the Soviet Union and these organizations are two: 1) The Soviet Union rejected free market capitalism. The USA on the other hand grew out of merchant and agrarian economies into a highly industrialized capitalist economy.  2) In the Soviet Union the plutocrats of the oligarchy were not corporations, but communist party members whose position gave them wealth and power, even though there was not supposed to be any economic classes of their society or any individuals of privilege. In the USA our plutocrats of our oligarchy are major multinational corporations and very wealthy individuals who can buy their way into power via money to legislators of all levels of government and through their huge resources of funds to manipulate the messaging of an election.  In the USA we have a rather expanded power structure that is part of the plutocrats and that is our banking and finance institutions. And they are very, very powerful by having control over the Federal Reserve Banks and the Dept. of the Treasury. This gives them almost unlimited access to money and monetary policy making.

The financial sector of our economy as part of the GDP was held to about 9% in history, expect for the decade before the Great Depression and it only rose to 12%. Today it is reaching nearly 20%. When any institution reaches that level of GDP it gives them inherited power in governance. Goldman Sachs, Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, US Banc Corp, HSBC of America, and a few others hold the majority of Americas money assets. This has allowed them to dominate the seats on the various regional and nation boards of the Federal Reserve Bank. Since the Reagan administration, the Treasury Secretary has come from one of these major banks, primarily Goldman Sach. Most all of them sat on one of the Fed boards as well. This has compromised the separation of the Fed, with the Treasury Secretary and even the economic advisers to the president, regardless of what party or who is president. They all come from these banks. That is why you don't see economic scholars like Paul Krugman as a presidential adviser.

What we are witnessing is a Coup D’Tat by these groups either coordinated or that they just happen to be coming to power at the same time, for whatever reason that might be. But nevertheless, it is happening.

Since the 1970s, the USA has been under internal political and cultural assault. The conservatives want to eliminate any opposition party. The Christianists want to establish a theocracy. The corporate powers want unrestricted and unregulated markets with no labor laws, no safety laws, zero taxation and no environmental laws; nothing that would reduce profits. The wealthy upper 1% are attached to the corporate desires to maximize returns on their investments without paying any taxation. The Neo-Conservatives want an imperial nation that commands all other nations to adhere to their orders, much the same as it was with the British Imperialism 200 years ago. The banking and finance institutions also want unregulated and unrestricted ability to make money at the expense of the underclass.  We have been witnessing the biggest shift of wealth from the middle-class in the shortest period of time to the benefit of the upper 1% of the world. 

Now let’s fast forward to 2012. What we have today is the force and power of these groups to manipulate the upcoming elections so they can complete their cop d’tat. Except for the Christianist, the other groups of the oligarchy have the man they want for President, Mitt Romney. He is one of them. He will follow their orders because it would be in his own financial benefit to do so.

When a black man named Barack Hussein Obama won the election in 2008 was a big surprise. They truly thought that John McCain having being a household name and some appeal to the independents because he bucked the party a few times, that would be the winner. They didn’t use their system of manipulating the vote count that election and they thought that if they did when the polls were showing Sen. Obama with such a huge lead, that if McCain had won, there would be major unrest in the country, especially minorities that would cause a revolt in the streets.

They didn’t want that, so instead the Republican leadership in Congress pledged to not participate in any governance of the country, unless absolutely necessary. They will stand firm and vote against any Democratic and Pres. Obama’s bills. That is my Mitch McConnell stated right after the inauguration that his primary goal was to make Pres. Obama a one term president. It was not to help the country recover from the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, it was not to stimulate the economy to create jobs, it was not to insure that our credit rating remained at AAA to keep the lowest interest rate on our debt, it was not to negotiate for a better health care bill, it was not to do anything that would give Pres. Obama and the Democrats any credit for saving the nation from disaster or benefit those who were losing their jobs and homes. If thing improved, then Pres. Obama was sure to be reelected for another 4 years and that was way too long to wait to complete their coup d’tat.

Karl Rove made it very clear both when he was a student at the University of Utah in Political Science and when he was remaking G.W. Bush for the presidency, he stated that he wanted a permanent conservative Republican government in all branches and to create a system that insured that any opposition could be diminished quickly. Part of that move was to capture as many state legislatures and governorships so they can redraw districts to reduce or eliminate opposition strong holds, pass laws restricting voting that would impact those who lean more heavily toward Democrats, pass laws to eliminate labor unions, since these are the last major supporter of the Democrats with their money for TV ads and their organizational skills to get Democrats out to vote. Once they are eliminated, then the big money of the party can drown out any opposition message with false propaganda.

The next step was to gain control of both houses of Congress. In 2010 they were able to take over the House, but didn’t quit make it in the Senate, but they did reduce the majority’s margin so that the filibuster could be used to stop all legislation proposed by the majority, thus the minority controls the Senate.  If it hadn’t been for just a few moderate Republican in the first year of Pres. Obama’s administration, the ACA and Stimulus bills would not have passed. But that changed in the second year when the Republican leadership whipped their members into line to oppose everything. Since then the only bills that have been proposed by the Republican are about abortion, prayer in public meetings and schools, birth control restrictions, and other Christianist objectives.

This current congress has passed the fewest bills EVER in our nation’s history.  It is the least productive and least responsive to the needs of the nation that ever before. The Republicans are not the loyal opposition; they are the radical, non-loyal opposition. The very statement by many that the only compromise they will consider is if the Democrats come to their way of thinking. Otherwise there is no point in even talking about it.

When the chairman of the health and human services committee in the House called the minority ranking member on the committee to talk about the ACA bill, the Republican responded that there was not going to be any negotiation or compromise so there was no reason to meet and talk it over, period.

Now we are at a stage that it is very likely that Mitt Romney will become the president, not because he actually wins the true and actual votes, but my the voter restriction laws and by the possible rigging of the voting tabulation machines that testimony states are very vulnerable to hacking and manipulation with a simple USB thumb-drive and 2 seconds of access to the machine. An executable worm would change the outcome of the vote to Mitt and then eat itself in such a way that it would be impossible to forensically find it. In fact one retired computer programmer for NASA testified that he did just that for a law firm in Florida to test the security of their voting equipment. Actually the law firm was an agent for the Florida Republican Party Central Committee. 

What happened to that little program is unknown as the law firm and the party says they never ordered such a program and the programmer is lying about it. However the programmer has proof that he received payment from the law firm at the time he claims to have written the hacking program. This all took place in 2003 and the programmer surmised that it was used in Ohio since the exit polls are so far off from the tabulation of the votes for Bush that it was statistically impossible to have such a large spread with Bush winning when exit polls showed Sen. Kerry won by a small margin. 

Also a programmer and computer engineer that worked on the voting machines and tabulators testified that they are plat formed on windows 98 OS and was full of holes for hacking. He testified that nothing has been done to update the OS and secure them from hacking. There was never any intent to secure these machines from the day the company received the contract to make them. However, the companies testified to Congress that the machines were secure and near impossible to hack into or to change the vote. They stated that the paper trail would prohibit this from happening. However, no one has challenged the count and ordered a hand count of the paper trail to the tabulator outcome and the engineer said that even that could be manipulated because as the voting machines communicate with the tabulator, the tabulator could cause printing of votes on the machine that were not actually cast by real people. So unless they take the huge amount of time to not only count the paper printouts, they would have to research the name of every voter to determine if they are real or not. The cost of doing that is so astronomical that no one has even contemplated that possibility.

So with all that said now, you can see that the USA has become a banana republic that has rigged elections so the ruling plutocrats and oligarchy retain power.

We have lost our democracy. The return to the Noble cause of a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people will be a very difficult and most likely a bloody one.

The 10 Step Republican Plan (To Destroying Our Country)

By Xenocrates

This computer generated image released by the SITE Intelligence Group on May 28, 2008, shows Washington, DC, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. A video entitled, “Nuclear Jihad: the Ultimate Terror” released on May 25 has inspired jihadists on al-Ekhlaas and al-Hesbah, two password-protected al-Qaeda-affiliated forums, to discuss the possibility, permissibility, and risks for a nuclear strike in the United States or Great Britain, according to a SITE statement. SITE has translated several chatter sessions taking place on al-Ekhlaas and al-Hesbah sites discussing the topic of a nuclear bomb in the US and the west. One of the sessions posted the computer-generated picture depicting what would be the aftermath of the destruction of the capital building located in Washington, DC. AFP PHOTO/SITE Intelligence Group = GETTY OUT = (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)

If there is one thing that no one can take away from the right-wing, it is that they are organized and led from the shadows by a group of very intelligent people. The GOP is good at politics, even if their policies are not good for the country. With that said, I present to you the unofficial “Ten Step Plan to Power: Ruining the Country AND Getting Re-Elected”:

Step 1:  Support Among the Rich and Powerful

Anyone who has ever watched the news can tell you that the Republican party would bow down and kiss the shoes of the rich if they were asked to, that is how devoted they are to their masters. Therefore, the first step in any Conservative plan to ruin a country must be: to gather support among those with the money to finance their campaigns. The problem with the Conservative agenda is that it is not very popular among the people. Polling from ABC and the Washington Post showed that 78% of people are opposed to cutting Medicare as a way to cut the deficit. So why is the GOP able to push on and still continue to get elected? On to step 2!

Step 2: A Propaganda War
It must be asked, what the purpose of the right-wing making friends with the rich is if they don’t expect something in return? Obviously, the right-wing needs money to finance their politics; and they need more of it than the Democrats because, simply, their message is less popular. Therefore, the right-wing uses war tactics to win such as, propaganda.

Over the past few decades, the GOP has slowly been transforming from the party of somewhat noble values to a party controlled by far-right activists, the “Tea Party.”  The important aspect of this is that the party’s voting base hasn’t changed; it’s the same as before.  So how are they kept voting on party lines for a party they should, by all measures, no longer support?  The answer, and always will be for situations like this, is propaganda.  The Right bounces from enemy to enemy but the pattern is clear, to maintain your electorate you must: demonize the enemy to the point where even your ideas are more acceptable than “the other side’s.”

Take the Tea party’s relentless attacks on President Barack Obama.  Posters of him bearing “Hitler’s Mustache” and the swastika on an arm band, or where he’s given the likeness of Stalin, are everywhere.  Very few men can claim the title of “More Evil Than Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin”. You can’t simply out-murder them; their policies led to the deaths of millions, even when they were not intentionally killed.  The message clearly is that Obama is evil, and he must be stopped!  The demonizing of Health Care Reform as “socialism” is another example of these unfair attacks.

Another strategy in the right-wing propaganda war is, word association. To many people, the term “liberal” is now something of a curse; the unfair, absurd use of the word is an effective tactic. Socialism too, is a good thing that has been destroyed by association with “death panels” and Stalin. Tax reform, according to them, is class warfare: destroying our country because it is putting an unfair burden on our “job-creators.” Enough people actually believe these things that it is difficult to use the terms, while the exact tactic the Left is accused of is used by the Right. Class warfare is alive and well in the tactics of the Right, but it is associated with the Left.

This is where the rich have always been essential to the GOP.  It is difficult to organize a rally no one should support or to put campaign ads on TV, without a significant chunk of money.  Take the Koches, for example, it has been estimated that they have donated upwards of $85 million to right-wing think tanks and Political Action Committees, all to advance their allies’ radical, pro-business agenda.

Now, with a suitable base established among those won over by images of heroic veterans cowboys (I’m talking to you, Rick), step 3 can be initiated.

Step 3: Elected for Jobs
The Republican Party has a carefully crafted image. In many ways, it resembles the kid in High School that knows he’s different but just wants to fit in and be accepted. The difference is that the GOP is willing to do what it must to get into power and then its true colors will show. George Bush did this, Govs. Rick Snyder (Michigan) and Scott Walker (Wisconsin) both did this, and the freshmen Tea Party officials elected to Congress have done this.

Everyone remembers the pledge of the GOP in 2010: Jobs, with a capital J.  The Republicans campaigned, saying that their focus would be creating jobs for the struggling economy. Hell, I don’t remember an election cycle with so unified a message. Of course, this fits right in with the general tactics of radical conservatives, everywhere. Confirming Godwin’s law a second time in only 800 words, this tactic is the same that was used by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. This is, undoubtedly, a good tactic; so its success here is hardly a surprise.

This is the shortest, and the easiest, step for the GOP.  With many businessmen and women running for office on the Republican/Tea Party platform, it was easy for them to cast the image of being about the economy and creating jobs; which has, clearly, not been the case since.

Step 4: Shock Doctrine and Social Policy
There is no longer a doubt about where the GOP stands on politics. Social issues take precedent over actually helping the economy, end of story. “We have a deficit? Good! We can use this to end Planned Parenthood, PBS, and NPR!” This tactic is called Shock Doctrine, and has been used for centuries by dictators to seize more power. The theory is simple: when a catastrophe or something of the sort occurs, then the people are willing to be subjected to a more powerful government to help them. We’re seeing this all over the country: Michigan has the, now-infamous, Emergency Financial Manager law, Wisconsin was bullying public unions, and the Bush Administration’s Patriot Act and massive grab for power over the Executive Branch.

We have seen the use of the crisis to grab national attention. Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann is using both a social platform (God called me to run….and to stop gays from getting married) and an economic platform (no new taxes! Cut! Cut! Cut) to run for President, an office he and she is much, much too dangerous to hold.

However, a combination of good propaganda and an energized base has given Santorum, Bachmann, as well as  Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, large amounts of support. Mitt Romney is a very, very wealthy person and his interest in the Presidency is interesting. He has money, so what is his motivation? That is yet to be seen. However, he has shifted his propaganda from a "Progressive Republican" when he ran for Massachusetts governor, a 'Severe Conservative."

The party loyalists are not so excited about Mitt, but he has huge support from the very wealthy and large business constituency. The reason he has won the states he has during the primaries is because the wealth have been showing up at the polls in much larger numbers than ever before. If it was not for them, Rick Santorum would be the front-runner. Romney has been able to purchase more media time than the other candidates so he is more able to get his propaganda pushed into the minds of Republican base and attack his opponents unmercifully, the scorched earth campaign that Karl Rove and Lee Atwater perfected; that is destroy the opposition at all costs with lies if you have to, create fear and demonize the opposition so they are the anti-Christ.

Very few people in this country support any type of government other than a Republic, or, as it is so often called by the Right, our “democracy.” According to an A.P. U.S. Government book sitting on my bed, 93% of Americans consider democracy to be the best type of government. With such a high number of people honestly believing in democratic principles it must be asked; how are the people letting their rights be infringed?  Some laws have thin veils of being “for the greater good” (Michigan and Wisconsin). While some snubbing of our system is done without any reason at all: confiscating cameras at town hall meetings, congressmen refusing to meet with constituents with whom their views differed.

Paul Ryan is guilty of the last mentioned, but he will be re-elected.  Why?  Because he is the golden boy of the Republican Party right now.  His now defunct “Path to Prosperity Bill” is a bill that not only symbolized everything the GOP stands for today, but spelled it out as well: tiny cuts to military, “entitlement” spending cuts, and no new taxes on the rich.  That this can be done and then Ryan can be re-elected all goes back to the second step, the propaganda war, but it also links to the next step…

Step 5: The Domino Effect

Once power is gained, steps must be taken to ensure that it can be held, or at least retaken in time. This is where the true agenda of the right-wing begins to finally show through the cracks in their facade. No longer veiled in the shadows of economic recovery or foreign wars, the true agenda is clearly seen. This is especially obvious in the form of exclusionary voter ID laws, once again in Wisconsin. Once in power, the GOP has no intention of leaving without ensuring they have made it too difficult for anything to be reversed. By enacting policies that make it difficult to oppose their agenda, the GOP is initiating a sort of domino effect with the first domino being the election; after that the progress can’t be stopped.

Step 6: Coordinate Legislation In States
Back in the 1970, the Goldwater conservatives where so angry that they had lost the 1964 presidential election the Pres. Johnson that they formed an organization call ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council. Today's leadership of ALEC are: Rep. Noble Ellington Louisiana, Rep. Dave Frizzell Indiana, Rep. John Piscopo Connecticut, Rep. Linda Upmeyer Iowa, Rep. Liston Barfield South Carolina, Rep. Tom Craddick Texas, Sen. Curt Bramble Utah, Rep. Harold Brubaker North Carolina, Sen. Jim Buck Indiana, Sen. Kent Cravens New Mexico, Rep. Jim Ellington Mississippi, Sen. Billy  Hewes III Mississippi, Speaker Bill Howell Virginia, Sen. Owen Johnson New York, Sen. Michael  Lamoureux Arkansas, Rep. Steve McDaniel Tennessee, Sen. Ray Merrick Kansas, Sen. Dean  Rhoads Nevada, Sen. Chip Rogers Georgia, Sen. William Seitz Ohio, Rep. Fred Steen II North Carolina, Rep. Curry Todd Tennessee, Sen. Susan Wagle Kansas. There are many more members that are not in the board.

Some of their private sector membership consists of , Mr. W. Preston Baldwin, Centerpoint360; Mrs. Sandra Oliver, Bayer Corp.; Mr. John Del Giorno, GlaxoSmithKline; Mr. David Powers, Reynolds American; Ms. Maggie Sans, Wal-Mart Stores; Ms. Sano Blocker, Energy Future Holdings; Mr. Don Bohn, Johnson & Johnson; Mr. Jeffrey Bond, PhRMA; Mr. William Carmichael, American Bail Coalition; Mr. Derek Crawford, Kraft Foods, Inc.; Mr. Robert Jones, Pfizer Inc; Ms. Teresa Jennings, Reed Elsevier, Inc.; Mr. Kenneth Lane, DIAGEO; Mr. Bill Leahy, AT&T; Mr. Kelly Mader, Peabody Energy; Mr. Richard McArdle, UPS; Mr. Mike Morgan, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC; Mr. Daniel Smith, Altria Client Services; Mr. Randy Smith, ExxonMobil Corporation;
Mr. Russell Smoldon, Salt River Project; Mr. Roland Spies, State Farm Insurance Co. There are also many more private sector members who are not in the board.

If you have noticed, the states that are controlled by Republicans are submitting and generally passing similar laws from immigration, anti-abortion, anti-union, lowering taxes on business and the wealthy, reducing regulation and oversight of corporations, anti-climate change, voter restrictions and anti-women's rights. The money behind these laws are the private sector members. This is the oligarchy that is now governing our states and the Congress.

Step 7: Stack the Courts
In order to insure their agenda is not overturned by the federal courts, the Republicans have constantly delayed and obstructed the appointment of federal judges during Democratic administrations. This has left a huge shortage of judges and has slowed down any legal action a citizen might have, both civil and criminal. This obstruction is intended to hold the appointment open until they can capture control of the White House and the Senate, then they can continue to stack the court will conservative ideologues that will rule in their favor.

This is evident in the Supreme Court and their ruling of Citizens United that overturned decades of election finance laws and opened the door for the corporations above and others to spend unlimited amount of money on propaganda to sway the vote in their favor.

They are hoping that they win in 2012 and have the opportunity to replace the very elderly justices who happen to be more centrist or liberal, Ginsberg and Breyer are both due to retire in the next 4 or 5 years. If they are replaced with very conservative loyalists, then the court will have a 7 to 2 majority conservative that could change American law and policy for decades to come. It could ultimately establish a permanent conservative government, prohibiting progressives from any legislative changes. That would mean voter restrictions would not be found unconstitutional and therefore restrict those voters who vote more for Democrats or Progressive. They have done some in-depth analysis to know how to write these restrictions so that they restrict the voters they don't want to vote, mainly the poor, college students and the elderly (because of Medicare and Social Security, but otherwise tend to be conservative).

Step 8: Repeal The New Deal and Great Society
As soon as they have control of both houses of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court, they can dismantle these two major programs. Not just changing them, but actually doing away with them completely. In their place would be mandatory savings accounts with private banking institutions that then get to invest your money in high risk investments so they can obtain high returns without any risk to themselves, and either you win with them or you loose it all, it doesn't matter to them, because they will insure their loss with credit default swaps, so they are held whole and you loose your retirement.

Medicare will be privatized, meaning senior will have to try to find an insurance company that will insure them first and that they can afford with their fixed incomes. That was the reason Johnson created Medicare, because no insurance company would insure people over 60 years old because they cost too much. If they priced the premium to cover these high costs, they premium would be in excess of any reasonable retirement income for the average worker. Thus no buyers for these policies.

Step 9: Privatize All Service Now Performed By Government
All public services will be replaced with private enterprise. You will be charged separately by each company, electronically, for every mile you drive on any given road, including the street in front of your home. Also for police (actually they will be private security companies, no a police force for the entire community. Each person or family will hire their own security service for any violence or civil action that someone had done to you. You will have to have your case submitted to private arbitration, the courts would be eliminated. So you have to pay for this arbitration and if your are imprisoned, then you or your family must pay for your imprisonment at a privately owned prison.  If you have no money, then you must work for the prison or some other company contracted with the prison company to pay for your imprisonment. If that is not enough money, then the victim can choose to pay for the imprisonment or agree to let the convict released. Everything that is now performed by local and federal government will be private and a separate fee for each thing. Have credit card ready...

Step 10: Eliminate all elected offices
The final step is to do as Michigan has done, the oligarchy will appoint a manager to every city and town to manage all these private companies and to insure they and the people are following the mandates established by the oligarchy. The final solution will have been completed.

All gays will be imprisoned or deported, all Muslims will have tracking bracelets attached and monitored, all non-Christians will also have tracking bracelets and monitored. everyone will be mandated to attend an approved Christian church every Sunday, every person will have to register with the Manager of that city or town and carry an electronic ID card, your entertainment will be restricted to only that approved by the oligarchy. All education will be private and only those who can afford it will be educated. Schools will be prohibited from teaching certain subjects that are in conflict with Christian theology, such as evolution.

Welcome to the new America.

The Party People of Wall Street

January 30, 2012

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

 

from the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University - American Gilded Age Cir. 1899

A week or so ago, we read in The New York Times about what in the Gilded Age of the Roman Empire was known as a bacchanal – a big blowout at which the imperial swells got together and whooped it up.

This one occurred here in Manhattan at the annual black-tie dinner and induction ceremony for Kappa Beta Phi.  That’s the very exclusive Wall Street fraternity of billionaire bankers, and private equity and hedge fund predators.  People like Wilbur Ross, the  vulture capitalist; Robert Benmosche, the CEO of AIG, the insurance giant that received tens of billions in bailout money; and Alan “Ace” Greenberg, former chairman of Bear Stearns, the failed investment bank bought by JPMorgan Chase.

They got together at the St. Regis Hotel off Fifth Avenue to eat rack of lamb, drink and haze their newest members, who are made to dress in drag, sing and perform skits while braving the insults, wine-soaked napkins and petit fours – those fancy little frosted cakes — hurled at them by the old guard. In other words, a gilt-edged Animal House, food fight and all.

This year, the butt of many a joke were the protesters of Occupy Wall Street. In one of the sketches, the bond specialist James Lebenthal scolded a demonstrator with a face tattoo, “Go home, wash that off your face and get back to work.” And in another, a member — dressed like a protester – was told, “You’re pathetic, you liberal. You need a bath!”

Pretty hilarious stuff. The whole affair’s reminiscent of the wingdings the robber barons used to throw during America’s own Gilded Age a century and a half ago, when great wealth amassed at the top, far from the squalor and misery of working stiffs. Guests would arrive in the glittering mansions for costume balls that rivaled Versailles, reinforcing the sense of superiority and the virtue of a ruling class that depended on the toil and sweat of working people.

That’s consistent  with the attitude expressed by several of these types after Occupy Wall Street sprung up; bankers told the Times on the record that they could understand the anger of the protesters camped on their doorstep;  but privately, a  hedge manager said, “Most… view [it] as ragtag group looking for sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.”

So sayeth the winners in our winner-take all economy.  The very guys who were celebrating at the St. Regis because they were too big to fail. Even when they fell flat on their faces, the government was there to dust them off, bail them out and send them back to fight the class war with nary a harsh word or punishment. Talk about a nanny welfare state.

None of this was by accident. The last three decades have witnessed a carefully calculated heist worthy of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in “The Sting” — but on a massive scale. It was an inside job, politically engineered by Wall Street and Washington working hand-in-hand, sticky fingers with sticky fingers, to turn the legend of Robin Hood on its head – giving to the rich and taking from everybody else. Don’t take our word for it – it’s all on the record.

The biggest of the big boys was Citigroup, at one time the world’s largest financial institution. When the meltdown hit in 2008, the bank cut more than 50,000 jobs and you and other taxpayers shelled out more than $45 billion to save it. And how are Citigroup executives doing? Nicely, thank you. Last year, its CEO, Vikram Pandit, took home $1.75 million in base salary, and was awarded $3.7 million in deferred stock.
According to the Times, “Citigroup is expected to disclose the rest of his pay, cash, be it upfront or deferred, in March. In addition, while not necessarily for work performed in 2011, Mr. Pandit last year was awarded a $16.7 million retention bonus, plus stock options that could add $6.5 million to the package’s overall value.” Makes you want to cry out, “Retain me! Retain me!”

To be fair, Vikram Pandit was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, where he told Bloomberg News, “It’s important for the financial system to acknowledge that there’s a great deal of anger directed at it… Trust has been broken. Banks have to serve clients, not serve themselves.” What’s more, he has said that the “sentiments” expressed by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were “completely understandable.”

This, in contrast to the financial industry official who told a reporter that the protesters’ issues were “a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Or, as they used to say while partying down at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, let them eat petits fours.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Thank you Bill and Michael, great comparison.

It is amazing that we are repeating history, which means we have forgotten the lessons learned from the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties in America, which ultimately led to the "Great Depression." In response to these excesses by the rich and the huge disparity of wealth between the rich and working class, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act that keep the investment banks, commercial  banks, mortgage banks and insurance business entirely separate.

Why?

• So that the commercial banks, those banks that took in deposits from ordinary citizens to hold for them and to loan that money to low risk borrowers, could not take your savings deposits and use them on very speculative and high risk investments for the bank that have a high risk of loss of your money, not theirs, but they kept all the gains when they performed well, which occurred in the 1920s. 
• Investment banks and brokerage firms took peoples money who wanted to invest in all levels of risk investment, like company stock trading, government and corporate bond trading, currency trading, foreign stocks & bond trading, commodities trading, and so on and so on...  
• Insurance companies were mainly what was called mutuals, that meaning the policy holders were the share holders and received the benefits of any gains on the premium money they had paid, but not used, thus the insurance company invested that money in safe to moderate risk investments, like real estate loans for large commercial projects, like office building, shopping centers, etc. 
• And up until the 1980s, there were what was called Savings and Loans that did nothing more than accept deposits from ordinary citizens as certificates of deposits or pass-book savings (no checking or other services were allowed) and with that money they loaned it to home buyers as mortgages. The buyer had to have good credit and sizable down payment to receive a mortgage from them. The interest they received from these mortgages, they used to pay operating costs pay the interest on the CDs and Pass-book savings accounts depositors had with them. They didn't have access to the "discount window" at the Federal Reserve. They were completely dependent on depositors for money to loan. Many of these Saving and Loans operated like Mutuals and Credit Unions, in which the depositors were the share holders of these companies. Most of these were small local saving and loan companies, a few national ones were publicly traded companies.

Ronald Reagan deregulated Savings and Loans, "So they could become competitive with commercial banks and commercial banks could capture more of the residential mortgage business. In the end, the cooruption that followed the deregulation led to the financial ruin of these savings and loans, having the government bail them out in billions of dollars of tax payer money.

This in turn taught a lesson to the banking industry, the nanny state will take care of them and they will be covered for any losses from risky practices.

So in the 1990 Citibank and Travlers who wanted to merge, went after Congress with big, big money and lobbied to repeal Glass-Steagall, which by law kept them apart. Congress of both parties said yes and Bill Clinton signed the repeal act.

Now the race was on to hype their investments with all sorts of derivatives, as they called them, such as the "Mortgage Back Security" that had been created because these banks were giving out mortgages to any willing borrower, regardless of their ability to repay them. 

These were the interest only for the first 10 years and then a big balloon payment of the principal, or variable interest loans that start out very low and grow over time with a big balloon at the end. Then these banks went to AIG and purchased default insurance because they knew in time they would go bad and just be junk. They paid the investment rating companies to give them AAA rating, but should have been rated as EE junk investments.

Lehman Brothers, Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, all sold them around the world, knowing full well they were to about bust into junk. In September of 2008, that is exactly what happened and the deepest recession since the Great Depression hit the entire world. G.W. Bush with the help of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who came from Goldman Sachs, came up with trillions of dollars to bail out these banks because they were "Too Large To Fail." Henry Paulson convinced Congress to authorize this money, as well as G.W. Bush. There was no strings attached, no required pay it back, unless you want to.

This is exactly what the banks knew would happen after seeing what the Treasury did for the Savings and Loan collapse. However, this time, these large banks submitted claims to AIG to cover their loss from these bad derivatives. AIG didn't have enough reserves to pay these billions of dollars, so they got bailed out by Sec. Paulson to the tune of tens of billions of dollars to pay these policies to the very banks that got bailed out by Paulson also. So you the tax payer were paying twice for this reckless behavior of the banks.

So these banks, plus Wells Fargo, Chase, and other used the billions they got from Congress to buy other banks and companies that were in weaker position, because they didn't have a connection to Sec. Paulson. The mega mergers then completed the restructuring of the entire banking and financial industry into the hand of just a few very large companies that are now even more too big to fail.

The banks and Wall Street titans are now in control of everything in America. If it doesn't benefit them in any way, then don't bother with it, is the attitude of them and that is how Congress is behaving, on both sides of the isle.

Now do you understand what's happening during this election cycle and the prior ones as well? They are wanting to finally eliminate any variables that you the citizen might cause in their quest to obtain as much wealth as possible, regardless of the long term consequences to the rest of the world population.

So for those who vote Republican, you are speeding this process along for them because the candidate are all bought and paid for by these titans. For those who vote Democratic, you are slowing the process, because there is still some resistance in that party to what is happening and are more willing to pass a constitutional amendment and laws to change thing back to the power of the people. But the longer this is delayed and the more power given to Republicans, the more likely the reversal can ever happen.

That is what is at stake, in addition to who is in the White House that will appoint the next couple of Supreme Court justices. If they are in line with the Robert's court, then whatever these banking titans want will be approved by the Supreme Court, as was Citizens United case was.

Once the three branches of power are bought and paid for by these people, they have absolute control over everyone. Any glimmer of democracy will be gone totally. Any public elections, like in the old Soviet Union, will be for show and nothing else. The outcome will be predetermined by this oligarchy.