Hightower: Conservatives Are Blind, Deaf and Dumb to Class Warfare

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

~ John Kenneth Galbraith

As does John Kenneth Galbraith nail David Brooks to the wall.

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Sometimes I do regret voting twice for Nixon and twice for Reagan. I remember when my wife finally lightened me up and got me to switch to Independent for a change. It felt great voting for Ron Paul in 1988, Perot in the 1990s, and then Nader this decade. It's so sad that conservatives actually have a solid lock on both parties. The Democrats are nowhere close to being liberal or progressive, at least most of them anyway. Hell, they even make the Republicans of the 1970s and some of the 1980s ones look liberal in pale comparison. Conservatives ain't dumb. They just want us to pity them as such and let them screw us. Don't give up fighting for real progressives and liberals even if it means voting 3rd party.

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I think they're trying to make anything fair seem like communism or welfare state. And they manage to bring in a lot of middle class to their point of view.

I can only take a few minutes of Bill O'reilly, but it's pretty obvious that his persistant and unending drumbeat has a lot of people dancing. To hear him tell it, the Washington Post and New York Times are ultra-leftwing propaganda outlets.

In truth, the greedmongers are succeeding in making their propaganda seem reasonable and anything else un-American - at least to a lot of people, enough to make a difference.

In that sense, we're still in CheneyLand.

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http://blog.badtux.net/2009/03/bobos-girlfriend.html

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Conservatives want us all to be poor so they can stay rich, whereas the liberals want to force socialism on us to make everyone poor. Misery loves company.

Thank goodness I'm Libertarian. We may not come close to having a Libertarian in the White House any time soon, but at least we won't be to blame for anything. Powerless, yet guiltless.

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is going to be a war between two or more elite groups struggling for power. Just like the last one! The poor and "middle class" will suffer despite there race or legal status. The elite despises you no matter what color you are!

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Like all our rightward friends today, Brooks is suffering from a profound and devastating grief. This explains his depressed tone.

And us without a health care system. (If Brooks is a gun owner, it's all over.)

Remember that conservatives have just watched reality sh*t their ideology down the toilet, so to speak.

To change metaphors, they had control over all three branches of government and proceeded to shoot themselves in the foot--over and over and over again. Score one for the working class. :)

Even though they are barely sentient and can never understand what has happened to them, conservatives know they're screwed. They are in a profound state of grief--almost insane, as a matter of fact.

To refresh your memory, here are Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' Five Stages of Grief:

1. Denial and Isolation.
2. Anger.
3. Bargaining.
4. Depression.
5. Acceptance.

There you go. Brooks is at No. 4. By right-wing standards, the man is a genius.

Of course, most wingers get stuck at the anger stage and stay there forever. Republicans hold grudges like sopranos. Most of them are still mad about FDR.

Video: Dr. Sigmund Freud reveals the psychosexual dynamics behind The Great Republican Depression.

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Another one out of the ball park, Buster!

Why isn't the entire country reading John Hightower? Whenever I mention his name, most people don't even know who the hell he is. This is a situation which should be corrected immediately.The country - the world - must be mane aware of the name of John Hightower.

You rock, Johnny. You absotively, posilutely rock.

Weekend at Franklin's

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

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I prefer "class struggle" to "class war".

I prefer "class anger" to "class resentment".

I prefer "bourgeois" or "capitalist" to "the rich".

I prefer "direct producers" or "workers" to that amorphous and multifarious "middle class".

But here, from birth, we are fed along with all those nutritious options and choices from our agrindustrial sectors, the calm trick of Denial: if you ignore it, don't acknowledge it, pretend it's not there -- well...... it isn't!

But it is.

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Is really tiring. I just wish the rethugs would go away. Until they stop trying to push their segregation and intimidation and scare tactics, they'll remain in exile. The majority don't give a ish, what they think or complain about. Just as they didn't care enough to take care of us. They created this enormous mess, with their rubber stamped Bush/Cheney dictatorship. No pouting happened then. AS AN INDEPENDENT, WE VOTED HOW WE WANTED ON NOVEMBER 4TH. Just shut it, we already know what you're about.

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come on What do you call the Union busting efforts of Reagan? The beloved economic stratedgy of Monarchs & Dictators Renamed 'Trickle Down'. The Repeated increase in middle class taxes 'Read My Lips'. The assault on the Stop gaps to Wallstreets reckless gambling developed after the Crash of '29. Corp take over of every essential Resource and Services- Food, Energy, Education, healthcare, Military. Logo's are merely Modern day Family Crests.
When a Repug accuses a Dem of something you can be sure it is Them who has committed the Transgression (Treason).socialism? Communism? Please, not only did they creat a situation leaving only the Gov't to clean up their economic mess- they had handed our country lock stock & barrel over to the Corp Czars! We work for the Corps,We buy from the Corps, We owe the Corps.we are born into Corp owned Hosptials,Send our time producing, consuming for (and owing) the Corps and then we are buried by a Corp Funeral home.When the government has relinquished all it's responsiblities and powers over the Citizens to such a all consuming entities- Has it not essentially created a communist state where once stood a 'For the People & By the People' Doctrine?
There is no Free market if an average citiizen is not able to put up their own 'shingle' because the Corps have cornered and dominate the Market place. Even Good ideas and innovations are now reliant on a Corp 'sponsor'- at which point they can buy you out and scape your idea if it conflicts with their business model or goals (electric car).Family Farmers are a prime example of How corps have destroyed the free market.Yet these Corps have not made food cheaper,or safer. In fact the opposite. Not to mention the abuse of their livestock and workers.Americans literally live and Breath "For the Corps and By the Corps"....Just like those under Communist Rule.
FYI Socialism assures all citizens the Basic needs and Equal acces to opportunities- not Domination by a particular Set of Brick and Mortar entities....'We the People' and '"For the People and By the people' are socialist concepts.

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--the granting of royal charters to an elite. William the Conquerer granted the first one in 1067 (he was crowned on Christmas Day 1066).

The invader-occupier mentality persists to this day. Criminals fear the loss of their ill-gotten gains and are impelled to fortify themselves with more and more wealth and power. Fear of justice underpins greed.

A basic platform of security (derided as "socialism") would help the rich as well as the poor. In our capitalistic society, you can fall and fall and fall, the electric chair after decades of brutal imprisonment being perhaps the worst possible destination.

Do away with poverty and brutality and restore the secure possession of everyone's primary residence and the psychological "need for greed" will be reduced.

Most Republicans (and way too many Democrats) are just Norman-English monarchists with American accents who don't have much of a clue about where their idea of entitlement comes from.

Being American is about being created equal, not superior.

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This establishment bootlicker ignores the cruel and regressive tax that Gore and Obama Daniel shays rebellions.
Like Gore, Brooks can afford to cruise around in limos that will be heavily taxed. The rest of us aren't so lucky.

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There may be some real conservatives in the world. Real conservatives don't believe in high government spending, and they have values.

However, most of the media is owned by corporate wingnuts. They believe in socialism for the rich alone, and in government kickbacks in exchange for campaign funds. Under the banner of "delivering a coherent message" to the idiots, hundreds of "conservative" hired pundits and politicians will all regurgitate the same "talking points" every single day.

What's missing is the potential for any independent thought whatsoever. They come off like a bunch of ideologue culties. Coherent talking points, but boy have they got a lot of dum-dum smiling robots when you really talk to them.

It's not just class vs. class, although that's a particular blind spot that the pundits will never, never tell their masters. It's how stupid they act in public. It's how full monty hypocritical they can be. It's how easy it is to mock Archie Bunker without him ever knowing it.

I'm a loose thinker (not necessarily free, but pretty loose). "Class Warfare" is absolutely an unreal term. The lower classes do not all have machine guns leaning next to their computers. A few of the wackiest wingnuts are actually ready for war tomorrow, and of course the drug cartels are all set, but that's it. "Class warfare" is a bunch of largely nonviolent war poseurs who have no intention of actually killing random American citizens in the name of war. I could accept "class nonviolent struggle".

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This 'class warfare' posturing is the same tactic as the rapist who claims his victim 'really wanted it'. They are oblivious to the misery they have created because they don't suffer from it. They are insulated.

Rather than frame the discussion in a way that exposes their abuses, it must be framed in a way that blames their victims. They're desperately trying to avoid the inevitable socialist backlash that happens every time a people are economically abused.

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No one is claiming that class warfare never existed in this country. The argument now is that Obama is fueling it again and masking the problems - lack of government oversight, corrupt politicians that can be bought out with money .. (or sex in the case of our friend Barney Frank) .

We have criminals in corporations, union leadership and obviously government. THAT should be the focus, not that a person who can make a successful business is stealing from the poor which is why they poor. The two have nothing to do with each other!

The rich can just as easily say why doesn't the poor get off their ass, use their brains and make some money so the rich doesnt always have to support them.

While that argument is obviously way off base, it is no more so than the mindless class war Obama is starting in this nation.

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Without a "class war," liberal / socialism, communism thinking serves no constructive purpose. it is in the interest of the left to insure the existence of economic inequality.

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Way back in the Nineteen Eighties, before some of you were even born, I was elected at my precinct caucus to be an alternate delegate to my county Democratic convention. I'm thinking this was around 1984 because the words "Mondale-Farraro" are floating round the periphery my memory of the incident I shall describe below.

Anyway, I'm at the Democratic county convention and the topic of a one-cent increase in the state sales tax comes up. Innocently--and I say innocently because I didn't understand the ramifications of a sales-tax increase--I was initially for the sales tax increase.

My rock solid logic for my decision was, "At least the rich will pay some taxes."

Now standing next to me was a gentlemen, a little older than me at the time but not by much, nattily attired in a suit and tie, identifying him as one of the county Democratic Party bigwigs. He overheard my outburst, and proceeded to explain to me the difference between regressive taxation, i.e. sales tax, and progressive taxation, i.e. income tax, and why a sales tax adversely effects the income of the working middle class and poor more that that of the wealthy.

At the time this was new information to me at the time yet I readily grasped the concept. So saying, in continuing our conversation, I proffered the argument that perhaps, in order to right the state's budget--my home state's finances then, under a Republican governor and legislature, were in dire straits as it seemingly is now, under a Democratic governor and legislature--the state income tax rates on the wealthiest of my states' citizens should be increased.

The finely dressed, county Democratic Party bigwig recoiled in horror, "That would be class warfare! We can't win with class warfare!"

Thus ended our conversation.

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Uh, This may seem petty, but I take exception to the use of the term "dumb" with blind and deaf. As a deafblind person (okay, I have some hearing and vision), I am not dumb, afterall I am reading Alternet. Oh, did you mean not talking? The correct term is mute. Well, the conservatives are certainly not being mute! Come on you headline writers at Alternet, Hightower didn't use that phrase in this article!

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Under the Patriot Act and RICO, we the people can arrest.them, seize all their assets, take over and manage their companys, and toss them in jail for years....while tossing their family's into the street!! it needs to happen!! Though i do favor the "French Solution to a number of them starting with Madeoff ,Paulson, Greenspam...
You know the French Solution? After seizing all their assets, and holding them in jail for months , they get a reading of their crimes, loaded into a tumbrel and go to Mdm. Guillotine
oh, and a tumbrel is made specifically to haul pig poop??
grins!!

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Tar and feather, my Abzug--"Illuminatus".

Let's bring back the guillotine.

The people have no bread? Let them eat the rich!

Extreme? You betcha.

"The time for justice is always right now."--from "The Great Debaters".

With love under will,

Bob, Adastra,
The Wizzard of Jacksonville

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While waging a conscious, relentless and never-ending class war. They only pretend to be blind when someone on the OTHER side mentions class.

Free MP3 lecture
Noam Chomsky: Class War

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True enough, but tell that to all the employees whose savings were/are being funneled into the stock market via 401K's and IRA's.

The scam was put in place just so the wealthy could come along and skim off the top, leaving the little guy holding the worthless paper.

The really big money grab was through that gambling casino called the stock market, where the gaming rules were changed while our money was already on the table (invested there).

And, with government there to penalize you for early withdrawal, they knew that the money wasn't going anywhere until they wanted it.

Then, the casino crashed and burned, and they came to us for money to rebuild the same crooked casino.

After years of telling us don't worry be happy, everything is fine and dandy.
Now they are telling us, "Buyer Beware"?

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SO ,by your thinking there would be no rapes,robbery's and murders if there were no laws against them,Right?

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DEFEND THE COMMONS. What is in the Public Interest must be defended against Private malfeasance.

Should we make 100 processing plants safe? Or distribute 300,000,000 food testing kits THREE TIMES A DAY so that each and every one of 300,000,000 people can know the food they eat is safe?

When you know you have a "predator" killing your food, you FIND AND KILL THE PREDATOR. If a Fox invades your Chicken Coop, you don't give the Chickens guns. You KILL THE FOX because you operate at a higher level than the chickens and they have other work to do than DEFEND THEMSELVES. In our context, FOOD CANNOT DEFEND ITSELF and WE (hundreds of MILLIONS of consumers) have better things to do than spend a portion of EVERY MEALTIME, INSPECTING THE FOOD FOR POISONS, especially as we know WE DIDN'T USED TO NEED TO BOTHER AS WE NOW DO.

So you INVESTIGATE and PROSECUTE the people who LET OUR FOOD GET POISONED, and when a politician tries to rescue food industry profits by weakening requirements or inspections, you FIRE THAT POLITICIAN with an immediate recall when possible - to make the point to the MONEYGRUBBERS: DON'T F**K WITH OUR FOOD - OR GET A BIG FAT "ELSE".

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The other week on 60 Minutes there was an interview with the Fellow who tried for years to get the SEC to look at Bernie Madoff showing them his Financial Analysis . We all know how useful that was .
The fellow said the SEC is Populated with Lawyers who know how to check forms but have NO
understanding of Finance.

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Jim Hightower is one of the giants of our time and a warrior in our simmering revolution. But this time I pry and work to ensure we can put an end to the grab all at any cost to anyone and thing business model of mindless greed and cancerous growth. I love the cartoon caricature "mom and pop's gone out of business"; it is too revealing and so to the point. I have been noticing for years how the greedy huge conglomerates have taken the very means of money making out and away from the ordinary folk and transformed it into their domains, i.e. almost all gas stations have small grocery stores and there are 4 to 5 Subway sandwich stores everywhere I look, the burger business, coffee shops, hotels, motels, gas stations, shoe stores, clothing stores, even our farm land has been taken away from us. The Home Depots and Wall Marts have driven away millions of family owned local businesses at a high cost to the average American. I just hope that we have time to take what is rightfully ours without bloodshed and a hot revolution, but the wealthy bastards are already preparing to quell any eventual American popular uprising by directing the military assistance to the local "law enforcement" agencies we are not far from witnessing the inevitable clashes. So wrong again, they think they will win?

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"There is a fury in the countryside toward these plutocratic purse-snatchers who are being allowed to keep their exalted executive positions, draw fat paychecks and get trillions of dollars in bailout money from common taxpayers."
. . . . . .

Fury, indeed; and some of it may be coming from people who are beginning to ask the question: "Just where IS that 'change we can believe in'?"

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You're good, Dude. You're good.

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Tom,

Look into Hightower when you get a chance. He started down here in Texas with a small populist publication called "The Texas Observer," where he was editor--I think shortly before the great Molly Ivins took the reins as editor of the same publication. He was Commissioner of Agriculture down here, too, but his push for honest labeling of organic produce pissed off the chemical industry and they spent millions to replace him with an empty suit--who is, saddly, now our Governor.

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Definitely in touch with the feelings of a lot of Americans.

However, I have heard people talking about this crisis we are experiencing, and saying that people would like to tar and feather these thieves is a bit of an understatement.

A lot of people seem to be waking up to the fact that this isn't just a crisis, it's been a systematic robbery of intrinsic human rights and it has been going on for decades if not longer.

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It's been noted that this country has been built on socialism for the rich. The reichwingers get upset when the rest of us ask for a share of the action.

The rich have been waging class warfare on all of us for the past thirty years. Finally, the return volleys are starting to have an effect.

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Guys like David Brooks' license plates are on record somewhere. When the pipe brigade begin to go out looking to give the owning class a much deserved beat-down, Mr. Brooks will get to add pain to his heavy sighs.

Fucking psycho rich pricks!

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The more I hear whining from bastards like Brooks the more I like Obama. Hearing these guys bluster all day about stealing makes me laugh.

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The RNC thought that one would fly also. And they thought they could lock-step NO vote the stimulus. And they've tried spreading the lie that FDR's New Deal caused the Depression not solved it.

Cut regulation / cut taxes / prosperity trickles down, is after 3 decades of it officially now a failure.

Married to Reagan, stuck in 1981, bankrupt of new approaches, demograpically decending and approaching political irrelevance / today's GOP -- found a cool site; Balkingpoints.com -- incredible satellite camera view of earth

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Why's it only class warfare when we the people fight back?

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I'll show them class resentment. Were it up to me, there'd be a genocide in America against the rich and many members of the upper-middle class for their parasitic ways.

A few tens of millions would die, and they'd deserve it. Their sacrifice would spare the world vast amounts of grief.

If such eliminations could occur on a global scale, we'd be making real progress.

The prevalence rate of whatever genetic disorder affects these people to make them so selfish could be greatly reduced.

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Hightower has become my favorite Texan.

Funny how some posters are talking about how a large lower class is needed in order for socialism to take root. I ask, why are they so intent then on creating a large lower class and sabotaging the middle class in this country. Some people's children.

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Yeah, the GOP sucks, I think we all know that after George Bush's tenure. However, this "progressive" article is unfair to conservatives simply because the GOP is not a "conservative" party. In fact, they are probably just about as fiscally liberal as the Democratic party. On the other hand, the Democratic party is not a "progressive" party either. Plain and simple, people are not educated about political candidates morals and quite frankly view all politicians as "crooks", therefore they tend to vote with their pocket books. There are exceptions of course such as single issue voters, "evangelicals", and people who are actually convinced by rhetoric and/or people who become infatuated with a candidate simply for their looks, charm, or whatever it was George Bush had and Barack Obama has. This bickering over partisanship simply drives me crazy. We have one party trying to "regulate" our morals. We have another party trying to "regulate" how we spend our money. Whatever happened to free trade, and a self regulating free market economy? I guess the Rothschilds grabbed that away from us since we are so "stupid" we cannot possibly drive an economy into the ground as well as the several banks they have set up over the years? By the way, how is it "progressive" to try and solve problems by printing more money? If I could print money to solve all my problems, then I would do it, but I do not think it would work. What happened to individual freedom? Oh yeah, we had to give that up because of racist ideology arguably one hundred years ago but most notably due to the recent "terrorist threat". Is it orange right now? I feel I need my gas mask and bio. warfare suit if so? Why is it "progressive" to want a bunch of skilled actors who have mastered rhetoric to control every aspect of our lives as this would be the result of a fully socialist government? However, despite popular opinion, the U.S. is probably more of a socialist regime than a democratic regime in its current state. Last time I checked, I can get arrested for selling merchandise without a license. Where are the trading posts? As sad as it is, self proclaimed Republicans hold on to their belief in civil religion. I thought that the military industrial complex was bad, but both parties are literally sleeping around with the media, and lower class citizens do not have internet nor do they want internet. Therefore, they repeat history just as you guys do. History does not have to repeat itself. The government also goes to bed with drug companies, and churches quite frequently as well. I was taught that according to Christian belief, it is one of the ten commandments not to take the lord's name in vain. What are these churches really doing? Why are there sermons telling people how to vote? What are politicians doing when they run campaigns based on their religious ideology? I feel this is a little worse than saying "God damn it". What happened to separation of church and state? Oh yeah, there's money in both. Why and how is this money still worth anything? What the hell does the Fed do and why do we need it? Is Ben Bernarke really a good guy? If you think so, then go "progressive" and make him the dictator, if you have not already.

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Republic (of which republicans consider themselves) comes from Latin res publica: which refers to a "thing that is NOT considered to be private property that is held in common by many people." Republicans ought to reflect on that especially as they kept trying to break down or SELL OFF the public sector in favor of the private, we must fight to keep OUR commons!

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Does it occur to you that conservatives are neither blind nor deaf nor dumb to class warfare but rather lying when they say it doesn't exist? They know full well it exists - hell, they've been deliberately fomenting it! - but the shrewdest way to get away with it is to convince the world that there's no such thing. Marx said the genius of the bourgeoisie was to persuade the proletariat that its own narrow class interest was actually the universal interest. That's what's going on here.

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Most people are irresponsible.

Our leaders are more responsible, even if they don't get it right every time (no one does).

The irresponsible whine about the responsible when they should be looking in a mirror.

This guy explains it best:
Social Reality: Class War

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In this country the rich have always fought a war against the poor and middle class and on the whole they have won at least 90% of the time.

There is no way that we will ever stop condoning bribery in the form of campaign contributions. No legislature will ever cut off a cashflow stream unless another one is nearby and easily accessible.

The simple fact of the discussion of Estate Taxes as though they affected any more than a miniscule portion of the citizenry demonstrates clearly that the rich can easily buy any legislator who has minimal brains and as we all assume neither ethics nor morals.

David Brooks imagines that most of America's rich are benevolent. That has never been true. I don't think it ever will be true.

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Hightower remains in a class by himself.
The 1930's gave us a rash of violent robbers who themselves were economic victims of the era.
That in too many instances these types were elevated to folk-heroes says a lot about the feelings of the population. Whether we approve of their violent methods or not, these robbers, in their own way, were involved in class warfare...
Look up Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson or Pretty Boy Floyd in Wikipedia.

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What is it about the Rich? They want to deny your right to form a union, negotiate a living wage and have a decent house to live in. They want all the real subsidies to flow to themselves and to ensure that the entire system reinforces the selection of their children for positions of power and influence. Anyone who dares to suggest that the deck is stacked is waging "war"? They've been waging war for two thousand years - and winning. Alinsky was right - power never concedes power voluntarily.

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......have been the people (left) rebelling aginst the establishment (right)............

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As I see it, a Spaniard, 65, 9 years in the Netherlands, the best political-social system in known history is social-democracy Scandianavian and Dutch style. The US is many decades behind in political and social evolution, if not centuries. And also behind many other countries in Europe. In some things, like health, the last one or nearly of all industrialised countries. You are dominated by your elite.

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The lower 50% of households own 2.5% of the national wealth according to Federal Reserve report Survey of Consumer Finances, 2006, or Currents and Undercurrents by Arthur Kennickell. And with earnings, the lower 50% earn about 15% according to State of Working America, 2006/2007, page 79, from a Brookings/Urban Institute report.
Extremeinequality.org can fill in details if one wants to see them. We need a wealth tax, and pronto. Also read Jack Rasmus at Z Magazine for details on the Recession.

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Jim you are way too kind to these criminal low life bastards on Wall street and their lap dogs in Washington.
Why not arrest all of them.
And start a new.

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alternet.org — Rock On, great homework references as well. The battle seems to be how we seize CONTROL of the wizard ’s charade. As one blogger said the redistribution will go right back in most cased to the same card dealers. So once again Reagan was right about one thing Trust but Verify. Transparency, quality, and don't get fooled again. Truth commision.

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