Certain Doubt

Occupy The Rich

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Today something happened I never would have expected. I found myself agreeing with Steve Forbes.

In an interview today the billionaire and one time presidential candidate intimated that the Occupy Wall street protestors were protesting in the wrong place.

I couldn’t agree more.

Of course Steve - “Mr. Flat Tax” – Forbes ruined it by going on to say the place protestors should be is the Halls of Congress… ostensibly to convince law makers to remove the few rules and regulations that allow him and his cronies to amass huge fortunes on the backs of hard working middle class workers.

Though I empathize and support the “Occupy Movement,” I’m also in agreement with those who think most of the protests are symbolic, undirected, and largely ineffectual, in part because they are “occupying” the wrong place. If the 99% really wants to affect change, they should take their protest to those truly responsible for their misery.

In other words, they should camp out on Steve Forbes’ lawn.

Plopping yourself down in the middle of Wall Street and chaining yourself to a lamp post might make you feel revolutionarily righteous. But it’s not going to do squat about changing the fundamental reasons you are homeless, jobless, and without healthcare. Why?

The 1% don’t care about you.

Why should they? They don’t even see you. At best you are an annoyance, like a wad of gum stuck to their shoe. You can keep marching in the streets all you want. You can join hands and wail about injustice till you’re blue in the face. It’s not going to do a thing to get assholes like Steve Forbes out of their plush country club comfort zones.

But if we start showing up on their lawns, if we can paint a color picture for the media of the disparity of wealth between young unemployed black men and white, entitled, Trust fund babies like Forbes, then and only then will we start to make them take notice and possibly change their behavior.

84 year old Dorli Rainey of Seattle got her 15 minutes of fame – in the form of an apology from the mayor and an interview with Keith Olbermann – when she was pepper-sprayed at a Seattle street protest. But imagine how much more effective that incident would have been if she had been sprayed on the grounds of the Koch brother’s Estate?

The sad picture of Ms. Rainey dripping with peppery goo that went viral was an effective symbol of police brutality and excess. But I can’t help but think the protest against Karl Rove – who was heckled recently at a speech he tried to give at the University of Virginia – was much more efficacious.

In my opinion, this is the direction the occupy movement should take. If you are suffering because of inequality and injustice, rather than meaningless confrontations with urban police in riot gear, why not take the protest to those who are responsible for your misery. Instead of protesting Bank of America at one of their branch offices, why not take the fight directly to the fat cats who own Bank of America?

The Koch Brothers made news with their secretive database of millionaires whom they can tap for campaign cash in 2012.

Why don’t we make our own database. A list of billionaires whom we can hound by showing up on their doorsteps till they stop acting like Oligarchic Emperors, till they quit hoarding all the money, and till they quit using their piles of cash to subvert the electoral will of the people?

The 1% need computers to compile their database. Ours can be more low tech. All we need to do is look for the mansions and country clubs.

By the Way, Make sure to check out Firedoglake’s effort to get warm clothes to occupiers: go to: https://donate.firedoglake.com/weatherize/contribute

Tags: 1%, 99%, 9gag, billionaires, economics, Forbes, inequality, occupy, protest, reddit, Thomas Vincent, Vincent, wall street
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Declaration of Independence… From Corporations

Friday, October 14th, 2011

In honor of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, I have composed the following updated version of our Declaration of Independence.

IN CONGRESS, October 14, 2011

The Unanimous Declaration of the 99% of the Population
of The United States of America.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to re-examine economic systems which have connected them with one another, it is only natural that should those systems fail to serve them with fairness and justice, the People would have just cause to rise up and demand change.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans, by virtue of their birth are due certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Citizens, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government or Economic system becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, or economic system laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to produce fairness and justice for all. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Economies long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and injustices evinces a design to reduce them under absolute oligarchy, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such tyranny and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the People; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to rise up against their former economic system. In specific, the history of Corporations is replete with repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute oligarchy, the purpose being to subjugate the People by concentrating all wealth in the hands of a few. By placing the pursuit of profit and the accumulation of capital over the welfare of the people, Corporations have demonstrated their gross unsuitability as institutions that serve the public good. To prove this, let the following facts be submitted to a candid world.

Corporations have fought against the right of workers to form free and open unions and to bargain for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

Corporations have repeatedly closed factories and shipped jobs overseas. They have caused untold hardship to thousands of unemployed workers in the form of lay-offs, reduced pensions, and lost health benefits.

Corporations have corrupted the electoral process, contributing large sums of money to legislators who will put the interests of corporations and the super wealthy over the needs of the people.
Corporations have repeatedly avoided paying their fair share of taxes by re-locating their headquarters in offshore tax havens, this despite gargantuan federal budget shortfalls.

Corporations have sought and continue to receive billions of dollars in tax payer money to bail them out for risky and speculative investments that failed, even while Corporate executives continue to receive millions of dollars in bonuses.
In a time of mass unemployment, lowered standards of living and reduced benefits, Corporations have raised the compensation for CEO’s till the average executive salary is 263 times that of the average worker.

Corporations have polluted the planet with impunity. They have repeatedly ignored laws and regulations meant to reign in the worst of their abuses. They have even written and pushed through legislation designed to water down and weaken existing environmental laws.

Corporations have routinely passed off the cost of cleanup for industrial pollution on the public taxpayer.

Corporations are leaders in denying the increasingly evident effects of climate change.

Corporate banks have illegally foreclosed on homes , despite not having the original mortgage.

Pharmaceutical Corporations have refused to research, develop and manufacture necessary drugs that could improve the health of the population because there wasn’t enough profit in it.

Corporations have sought to privatize, comodify, and limit access to the most basic services currently provided by government. They have worked to dismantle social programs, such as education, and health care, that should be the right of every citizen in a civilized society.

Corporations have fought to limit open competition and free markets through monopolistic practices such as consolidations and leveraged buy outs.

Corporations have sought to control public opinion and stifle dissent, through the monopolization and control of the media by a few large multinational companies.

Corporations have presided over the most lopsided and unfair distribution of wealth in our nation’s history. They have used this growing wealth imbalance to further influence government and tilt the board in their favor.

Corporations have sought to escape responsibility for malfeasance by influencing the courts to place limits on the amount of damages due to the public for corporate negligence.

Corporations have encouraged the government to engage in endless wars and military occupations. They continue to profit from the manufacture of billions of dollars of useless weapons of war despite a massive budget shortfall and a crushing national debt. Corporate war profiteers have stolen money that could have been used to improve the lives of the People by investment in domestic infrastructure, and fully funding public education and health care programs.

In every stage of these oppressions we, the People, have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions to our government have been answered only by repeated injury, police harassment, and imprisonment. Any institution who places profit and the private accumulation of capital above all, who’s every action is marked by the stain of greed, corruption, and injustice, must not be allowed to continue to compromise the welfare of the People.

Therefore, as representatives of the 99%, we do solemnly publish and declare our right to be free from corporate tyranny and to be absolved of all allegiance to laws designed to maintain that tyranny; that until such time as our elected leaders reign in and enforce regulations to curb the worst avaricious acts of Corporations, we assert our right to join together and occupy public spaces until our grievances are heard.

United we stand in our opposition to the runaway greed and lust for power that causes large multinational corporations to try and subjugate the People, to deny them justice and equality, and to subvert and undermine our democratic system of government. The continued health and welfare of the People is more important than maintain corporate profits.

Tags: 99%, blog, certaindoubt, corporations, declaration, economics, Independence, occupy, occupy everywhere, occupy wall street, Politics, reddit, Thomas Vincent, Vincent
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Marie Antoinette Bachmann

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

The ultimate Matriarch?

Tags: 9gag, Bachmann, certaindoubt, doubtful1, economics, government, jobs, Marie Antoinette, Michele Bachmann, Politics, queen, reddit, spending, Thomas Vincent, Vincent
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Capital Gains Scam

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

In an August 14, 2011 New York Times
editorial entitled: “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” Warren Buffett called on Congress – pleaded actually – to raise taxes on the mega wealthy.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

While on the surface this might seem like an admirable piece of altruism, Buffet’s call for higher taxes on the rich, as noble as it may be, does nothing to address the real problem in our society today: the inequities in our economic system that allow billionaires like Buffett to amass their phenomenal wealth in the first place. Raising taxes on the super rich, though it would help raise revenue and reduce the deficit, does nothing to change the rules of the game that give those same billionaires huge advantages over the average American.

In an August 30th 2011 piece in US News and World Report,
Tom Sightings presents as clear a summation as you will find of what I’m talking about. In examining Warren Buffet’s investment in Goldman Sachs for example Sightings notes:

You, too, could have invested in Goldman Sachs in 2008. But here’s the difference between you and Buffett. If you had an extra $12,000, you could have purchased 100 shares of Goldman common stock at $120 a share. Considering that Goldman had been worth over $200 a share the year before, you might have thought you were getting a pretty good discount. You also would be receiving the Goldman dividend of $1.40 a share, a rate of just over 1 percent.
But Buffett had more than $12,000 to invest. He had $5 billion. So he negotiated a much better deal. He bought preferred stock that came with a special dividend. Instead of 1 percent, he negotiated a 10 percent dividend. So now every year he receives a check for $500 million. Then, only after he gets paid, do common stockholders get their paltry 1 percent.

This is the real secret to the success of investors like Warren Buffett. With billions of dollars to throw around, they are able to negotiate sweetheart deals that not only guarantee them a high rate of return, it also guarantees that they will get paid before ordinary folks see a dime in dividends.

It’s almost as though you are playing Monopoly and as soon as one player begins to amass a fortune, the game board begins to actually tilt such that money, houses, and property deeds actually physically slide into their lap.

So now, three years later, how have we done? Goldman is selling at roughly $110 a share, slightly below its 2008 price. If you had invested with Buffett, you would have lost about $1,000. Buffett’s lost some capital too, but he’s collected $500 million a year in his special dividend.

Raising taxes on the super rich is itself a red herring. The real secret, the real scam behind modern Capitalism, is not whether the tax rate on capital gains is 15% or 20% (or even zero% as one republican presidential candidate has proposed). The real crime is that once you get to a certain level of capital accumulation, you are almost assured of amassing an even more staggering fortune by virtue of the fact that your vast wealth allows you to not only dictate to banks and corporations what your rate of return will be, but also to demand that you will be paid before ordinary shareholders thus reducing your risk to practically nothing.

The rigged nature of the game is even more insidious than it appears. As Sightings shows in his analysis of Buffett’s recent “investment” into Bank of America:

Now Buffett is investing in beleaguered Bank of America. He invested $5 billion in a special preferred stock and will be getting a 6 percent dividend, while the regular stock you can buy pays less than 1 percent. Now I don’t know whether Bank of America is a good deal at current prices. Maybe it is. But the point is, if you buy now, you’re not getting the same terms as Buffett. You’re just pumping money into his dividend payment and hoping for the best.

Think about that the next time you open the financial pages. If you’re fortunate enough to own stock in Bank of America, the fact that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary should not be nearly as galling as the fact that he gets a 6 times higher rate of return as you do and is guaranteed to receive his money before you see a dime. Still having trouble with this? Consider the numbers in the BOA deal. The math here is not difficult. $5 billion at 6% means Warren is getting $300,000,000. If you invest even $10,000 at 1% you’ll only receive a whopping $100.00! Even after taxes (15%) Warren gets $255,000,000 to your rather pitiful $85 bucks!

This is not to say that Buffet’s plea for higher taxes on the rich is not valid. But where is Buffett’s call for fairness in the game of making money itself? It is certainly not fair that, as he has noted, his secretary pays a higher tax rate – and a higher percentage of her income – than he does. But I don’t hear Buffett – or any other billionaire – complaining about the fact that they are able to command six times the rate of return that ordinary investors receive and even less complaints that they get paid before everyone else.

Thus Warren Buffett, while he may seem altruistic, is really not saying a word about changing the rules of the game which give him an unfair advantage to amass a vast fortune in the first place.

Tags: Buffett, capital, capital gains, certaindoubt, economics, finance, government, investing, monopoly, taxes, Thomas Vincent, Vincent, Warren Buffett
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