There was a cracked article yesterday that had the good sense to link to the following video by former Labor Secretary Robert Riech. The rest of the article had some feir criticisms of the OWS movement, but IMHO, is not really owrth cehcking out. This, OTOH is:



You tell 'em, Robert!

And the soloution to these 6 points?

1) Tax the rich
2) Tax the rich
3) Tax the rich
4) Tax the rich
5) Get a Progressive Candidate who isn't afraid to tax the rich, and lead from a progressive agenda.
6) Vote for said Progressive, and his progressive agenda. (And tax teh rich.)

Funny how that works out, huh?

Gladstone was right about one thing: the OWS people could learn to simplfy the message a bit.

Another Brilliant Piece from Cracked....

It suffers rather a bit from the "false balance" problem... I don't care what they say, you simply cannot compare Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck objectively and conclude that both are "full of shit," implying an equality there.  That's just nonsense.  One makes a well-reasoned argument, based on evidence and principles, while the other just MAKES SHIT UP.  Beck's problem is not that he's Conservative, but rather that he's a PARANOID PSYCHOTIC.  Being CONSERVATIVE is the LEAST of his mental illnesses!

All the same, I think this article does a pretty darned good job at showing WHY WE SUCK SO BAD AT DEMOCRACY.

The Redistribution of Wealth?

I wanted to do something on taxation.  I wanted to look into what Presidents ACTUALLY had the lowest tax rates and for who.  So I went looking for some kind of bell-curve or data that showed me year-by-year how many people were making what, and who was REALLY paying more or less in taxes.  And I may still do that, but in my search I came across something that drove home the age-old point about how fucked up we are as a country and as an economy in terms of wealth and income distribution.  It's a bit old, and I couldn't use the 'zoom'  function with my browser, but please check it out.  It does a much better job that I could illustrating the problem, and saves me the trouble of trying to:

The L-Curve

Consider this the next time you find yourself in a discussion with some idiot who's on the 50-yard line and talking about how he wants the government to "cut spending," "lower taxes" and all that.  Because Obama's only put the 99 and 100 yard lines in play.  And just look at those guys.  THOSE are the guys who benefit from reduced spending and taxes.  The guys to the left of th 99 yard line?  Every single one of them ought to be ADVOCATING for a little INCOME re-distribution.  (From the to 1-2% to the bottom 98.)

(And that's another thing - let's stop these fools on the Right from talking about redistributing wealth, huh? WEALTH isn't taxed.  This is about INCOME.  You know... that whole, "An honest days pay for an honest days work" that they kept yapping about as they destroyed the Unions? 

Apparently they meant that to apply to Chinese Workers.

And if you never considered how this might be done without screwing over the middle class, I'd like to offer a few ideas that you should consider that the Right, as well as what passes for the Left in this country, would never consider:

An Argument for Proportionate Payhttp://eddiecabot.blogspot.com/2010/03/argument-for-proportinate-pay.html

and

In defense of Progressive Taxation