Hallucinogenically Optimistic

motherjones:

With #OccupyWallStreet entering a second month, still wondering what’s behind the outrage? We’ve got you covered (hint: the banks weren’t always too big to fail).

Great links to articles

kungfucarrie:

pantslessprogressive:

A Message to the 53 Percent

Congratulations on successfully mastering a condescending tone. I have some news for you, though: you are part of the 99 percent. I am part of the 99 percent. My neighbor in his brand new Prius is part of the 99 percent. Our grievances are wide-reaching. Our stories and backgrounds are vastly different.

Don’t believe me? Here’s some anecdotal evidence for your taking: according to my income, I am the 60 percent. I am young like many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. I have a full-time job and will soon be a salaried employee. I make enough money to live in DC with roommates, pay my bills, pay my student loans and still have a little money left over each month. I have worked damn hard but I am also incredibly lucky. Hard work is not universally successful. Just because my hard work and your hard work eventually paid off doesn’t mean hard work pays off for everyone.

So I guess you and I are the same, no? I’m just outside your “53 percent” range, but I also have a job and also “actually pay taxes“… as though someone working a minimum wage job barely surviving on their paycheck doesn’t pay taxes.

The purpose of “I am the 53 percent” seems to exist solely to say, “I didn’t have an easy life either, but I worked hard and now my life isn’t so bad, so stop complaining.” Despite the inherently condescending nature of your grievances, your stories are important, too. Yes, even you, Erick Erickson (pictured above). We don’t all agree. Erickson might try to throw salt on me and brandish a cross any time my progressive being crosses his path, but I don’t wish for the complete destruction of capitalism. Being part of the 99 percent means our ideas for solutions to our nation’s problems will not be the same. And you’re rolling your eyes because we’re outraged at Wall Street? Actually, no, I’m not sure you’re rolling your eyes; you’re merely keeping your eyes shut:

• How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis
• The People vs. Goldman Sachs
• Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour As a Middle-Class Household Makes In Over 47 Years
• The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes
• The new “Let Them Eat Cake!”
• Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
• Obama Seeks to Win Back Wall St. Cash
• Revolving Regulators: SEC Faces Ethic Challenges with Revolving Door
• “The richest 5 percent of households obtained roughly 82 percent of all the nation’s gains in wealth between 1983 and 2009. The bottom 60 percent of households actually had less wealth in 2009 than in 1983, meaning they did not participate at all in the growth of wealth over this period.”
• Q: “Are you comfortable with the fact that several of your member companies have engaged in large-scale criminal activity?”; A: “You’ll have to be specific.”

Oh, look…these are all white dudes! SHOCKING. /sarcasm

But, seriously, why is okay that anyone has to work 2 jobs and still not have health insurance to just sort-of get by? 

Ooooo…great links in the comments. And ya, shocker. Bunch of white dudes

(Source: pantslessprogressive)

wespeakfortheearth:

TrendsMap Proves Scary Twitter Censorship Of #OccupyWallStreet From Trending Topics

A Trends map of trending twitter hashtags shows #OccupyWallStreet tweets surging in nations around the entire world, except in the United States, while Google Trends shows a corporate media blackout.

JP Morgan has invested $400 million dollars into twitter and in return [See image above].

Yet when the Freedom of Information Act Request is submitted to explain this, we will find the Feds ordered it to be censored due to national security, hence covering up Wall Street bankers commanding twitter to censor the hashtag.

Then, shortly after this article received a lot of attention, it comes back on the world map but still not allowed to be shown on the right hand side of trends.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.

— 

Albert Camus, “Reflections on the Guillotine”

Troy Davis Execution Stay Denied—ABC NEWS

(via ataxiwardance)

(Source: nerbles)

WASHINGTON POST: "Of last year’s 100 highest-paid corporate executives in the United States, 25 earned more in pay than their company recorded as a tax expense in 2010. Those 25 firms reported average global profits of $1.9 billion. Among the 25 were Verizon, Bank of New York Mellon, General Electric, Boeing and eBay." →

inothernews:

Yes, by all means, let’s continue to give corporations and the wealthiest tax breaks.  Because they’re creating jobs with all that cheddar.