Trash A Bank

"Trash a bank if you got real balls"


From "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" by the Dead Kennedys


Apparently, the violent provocateurs who tried to start a riot Saturday here in Denver don't have real balls.  Not enough to hit a hard target, anyway.


So, instead, they trash a park and try to "storm" the state capitol.  Soft targets.  Anyone can trash a park, and it didn't hurt any Wall Street or Denver bankers one little fucking bit.  Of course, they had their little "march" first.  Went right by the Fed branch again, a couple of people gave short speeches, then move on.  "March" right past the brokerages and the big banks that they supposedly have the beef with.


Then they announce their intentions to storm the capitol.  Shoved police that stood in their way.  They knew what they were doing.  They knew what the reaction would be.  Many of them put bandannas over their faces before they started physically provoke the police.  Bandannas.  Like criminals who don't want to be identified, rather than protesters standing up for their rights.


Well, it didn't work.  Don't know why these people apparently wanted to start a riot, but they didn't get one.  20 of them were arrested, even though there were obviously more of them than that.


But really, what was the point?  If you wanted to get the attention of the POB, then why not storm the Fed or one of the big banks?  Why try to storm the capitol building?  Here's one of the only states that did everything possible to keep public employee pensions afloat, with no benefit cuts.  The state that regulates the insurance industry more tightly than all but maybe 2 or 3 others.  There's less favoritism towards big business in that building than almost any of the 49 others in this country.  


The CO state legislature isn't perfect or even all that progressive, for the most part, but there's a lot worse.  The capitol is a soft target, guarded by police that didn't even draw a baton or crack a tear gas canister.  Who tried not to hurt anyone who wasn't being violent.


Soft target.


The Fed, on the other hand, is a "hard target".  Real hard.  How do you suppose the FBI's tactical unit would have responded to the Fed branch being stormed?  I'm guessing that they may have used something a little harsher than pepper balls.


Trash a bank if you got real balls.


They won't, of course.  That would entail far greater personal risk.  Easy to be a big tough freedom fighting protester man by pushing a cop and getting a shot of pepper spray or a night in jail.  Not as easy to do it when the stakes include lead bullets and a few decades in jail.


I warned the Occupy people that they were going to start alienating the same people that they should have the support of.  Blocking traffic and trashing parks inconveniences working people.  Bankers and politicians, not so much.


Now they've gone and lost most of their support in a city where they had a lot of support.  Hitting soft targets is stupid.  People in masks shoving police is stupid.  Nothing constructive can arise from such activities.  Once your non-violent resistance becomes violent resistance you lose the high ground, and you lose the respect of others.  Once your peaceable assembly is no longer peaceful, it's no longer constitutionally protected.


This is costing the city a lot of money, which will have to come out of our parks budget.  It doesn't appear to be costing Goldman Sachs or Bank of America a dime.


To all of the protesters, I have a message.  I know that a lot of people agree with me on this, even if you reading this do not.  


If you're going to demonstrate, do it in an orderly and peaceful manner.  Make your voice heard, but obey the law.  Resist non violently.  You have a constitutional right to do this.


If you're trying to provoke a violent confrontation, leave.  Leave now.  If you're from here, go home.  If you're from somewhere else, go there. But just leave.  If you're trying to start a violent revolution, start it somewhere else. 


If you're going to stay here and play revolutionary, then at least change your focus to hard targets.  Target those who are actually causing the problem.


Trash a bank.


If you got real balls.

I Must Apologize

Here I've been wondering about the Occupy movement. Why so many people would put out so much time and energy for something that has no stated goals or message. I've been wondering when someone in the movement would take the opportunity to make a coherent point when a local TV reporter shoves a microphone into their faces. I've been wondering how blocking traffic furthers any sort of cause other than, well, keeping traffic from moving.

Many of us here are used to issue advocacy, so it's not always easy to wrap your mind around the idea of a non-specific protest. But that's my problem, not theirs.

Still, it's hard for me to tell my non-politically involved friends and clients exactly wtf this is all about, even though I've been reading the words of the protesters and their sympathizers, and I know their concerns to be, well, all over the place, but with significant overlap with each other and even me. But average Joe needs a fairly short and comprehensive answer to understand what's happening, and average Joe will not support what he does not understand.

But there it was. Posted a week ago on a discussion board, in response to a column by libertarian columnist David Harsanyi:

http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_19058290

These are a few of the issues people talked about at Occupy Wallstreet the last few days:
Legislators don't care what the people say, and this is true for both the Democratic & Republican parties, who have kept independents & other parties out of the status quo media & debates, and certainly this is both to keep a bad system & to prevent other options that they people would prefer
1% of the population owns most of the wealth, pays few taxes & Under the Supreme Ct. Corporations considered people & therefore they can pay the legislators to represent THEM without revealing it.
1% of the wealthiest people in the world & in history have much of all the benefits and the 99% of the population have too much of the sacrifices
Chant: Bailed out the banks & screwed the people
Loss of employment & homes
DPS: In some ECE classes, (Preschool to 3rd Grade) classes there are 30 students to 1 teacher & the snacks may have no warnings about the dangers of GMOs & the profits to the Monsanto Corporation (As Seen in "The World of Monsanto")
War Invasions & war too long & too much destruction & too many groups in countries
The blocking of Healthcare for all
Against providing $millions to an apartheid Israel country - since they are now on their feet & probably have less unemployment, more healthcare assistance from the U.S.-Israel Gov., & a larger percentage of young adults with their college degrees & even masters degrees paid.
Torture, innocent, falsely accused form bogus military trials, : Even for those without charges like over 700 people in secret prisons & Guantanamo-including under Obama U.S. Pvt Manning & under Bush-U.k. Father Shaker Aamer
Increased tuition costs
Few Jobs
Invasions
Having the Federal Reserve
Police State
Loss of rights with FISA, & Patriot
The president Bush never holding pentagon responsible for the $ 2 Trillion Dollars LOST the day before 9-11, nor did the public get to vote on the Trillions spent on the War & the military bases around the world
The U.S. having CIA around the world like Davies & people like the leader of Haiti deposed & held hostage from living in their own countries.
President Obama- invading other countries & assassinating, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen- Making deal with leader & ordering the bombing of 100 civilian men, women & children & then blaming al Qaeda & since this was released to public - of course trying to sensor news, especially Wikileaks & torture, imprison make false charges on anyone involved in the releasing of the truth
Bush should be like any of the 99% if we removed evidence from a murder crime without allowing the proper investigation to take place we would be arrested & so should he be, The Bitish & Canadian Gov. have paid $Millions of Dollars for the unjust torture of their people & the U.S. Pres. Bush was the most influential and responsible party for the torture.
Allowance on all people, the 99% to be able to access PUBLIC PARKS, including Denver's Lincoln Park & share picnic lunches & dinners. In Denver the Police never said, Please staY ON the sidewalk, their cars pretty much directed us into the street & then they cut the street off & then stood in a line in half the street blocking the Lincoln park, and actually the man with many hats that I formally so appreciated blocked the Occupy group from the park and the full city of Denver from the use of the street of Broadway for 1 block south of Colfax.
One of my friends who is a teacher, stood behind the Fox's Reader & said turn off your TV and come down here, and most of us watching were laughing & saying yes, yes.

There. That clears up a lot of things, in my opinion.

Now, for the official teabag rebuttal (this guy addresses the columnist personally):

Come on David, don't be a heartless jerk! They're not asking for much. They just want to be handed everything they feel they deserve and they want the rest of us to cover the costs. I mean seriously, they've been hurt for so long.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to grow up in a home worth half a million in a gated community and go to a selective private school and then be accepted to one of the junior ivies to get a liberal arts degree only to try to get a job later and find that without work experience, it's tough to land a six figure salary with a degree in philosophy and fine arts?
You have obviously never lived with the stress or hassle that comes from growing up in the upscale suburbs of the East Coast and you can't speak to the struggles facing many of these young people who can't get food stamps for their cats, have to turn tricks to make ends meet, and have to live in coffin factories with other artists because they can't afford to live any other way and because of the greed of Wall Street, they have NO other options whatsoever!
They are ENTITLED David, you heartless _! They've given at least 20 years of their life to a private school and a private university and their parents have gone into debt to provide them a better future outside of the slums of the Hamptons and the Upper East Side. Give them what they demand, they aren't asking for much, just free higher education, a guaranteed living wage, minimum wage of $20/hr and all past debts forgiven. The 1% of the nation can surely handle that cost and everyone of the rest of the 99% who make up to $585,000/yr (and are CERTAINLY not rich) will benefit from that shared sacrifice of that 1%.
C'mon David, you know better than your typical right-wing spewing of tripe on these pages! You are lying through your teeth and trying to convince people that the son or daughter of bankers, lawyers, accountants, and consultants don't deserve a better life. Everyone deserves to be equal, after all, just like these kids, everyone can live in a McMansion in a gated community and afford to go to a junior ivy on the East Coast. They are the 99%, just like the rest of us David!

So, there you have it. Occupiers still need to do a bit of work on communicating the broader message. Teabag conservatives need to lighten up and have some empathy.

Fucking Update 

First, I'd like to make it clear one last fucking time. I am not complaining about being inconvenienced by the traffic. I live several miles away from that part of town, and go there relatively infrequently. For myself on a day to day basis, it doesn't make a difference to me.

Got it? I am not pissed off because of the traffic disruptions.
On a very personal level, I could give a flying fuck about the fucking traffic disruptions.

But that particular intersection is perhaps the second busiest intersection in the city, and almost everyone who works in or near downtown--stock brokers and waitresses, rich bankers and poor janitors, lawyers and retail clerks--has to negotiate that intersection or one of several other intersections that are also affected.

But it's not such a problem for the fat cats, who aren't punching any time clocks.
It can be a real problem for people who work on an hourly basis and have to punch a clock.

My concern is not about myself. My concern is that any and all messages will be lost if these protests cause more harm to the 99% than to the 1%. It seems counterproductive.

Have you seen the latest response to this?

The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised

It will not be shown on CBS, ESPN or the Food Network.  You won't hear about it on any Clear Channel or NPR stations.  It won't be in your local newspaper.  You won't even get a paper that day, anyway.


However, live streaming video will be available on YouTube.


They just won't stop.  They keep telling us over and over that the world is going to end any day now.  Yet every day I wake up and the world is still here.  No demons, no pestilence, no frogs raining down from the sky.  Just the same old shit.  Still, they just won't stop.


History has shown us over and over again that Apocalypses don't happen according to any sort of schedule.  I remember one year when we had two of them.  Then none at all for maybe three or four hundred years.  I forget.  It was a long time ago.


But every time I turn around, some TV preacher proclaims that the end of the world is nigh.  They even send people out to tell me about it. Apparently, when the world does end, I'm going to be cast into a lake of fire to writhe in agony for all eternity.  That sounds pretty mean.  God sucks if he does that kind of shit. Eternity is a long fucking time.


If anyone tells you that he knows when it's coming, he's a lying sack of shit.  Definitely do not give him all of your money and possessions.  Think about it.  What would he do with them?  Even the charities will be fried or raptured or something.  Don't drink anything he offers you, either.


But you don't have to be religious to enjoy the end of the world.  Secular doomsayers are hardly rare, and they frequently want your money, too.  There's a guy out there selling containers specially designed for burying money in your back yard.  He also sells bags of "junk coins".  I didn't read his newsletter far enough through to figure out where the junk coins come into the picture.  What do junk coins have to do with societal Apocalypse?


Let's see.  Society has broken down and the movie "Mad Max" is starting to look more and more like a documentary.  Roving bands of brigands are going house to house, looking for all of those dried beans these survivalist guys told you to buy.  Junk coins are just what you need in this situation!  Somehow or other.


Maybe you can use sacks of junk coins as weapons.  Maybe they'd take the gold that you buried in your backyard and make jewelry out of it.  After they finished eating your dried beans and canned food.


But you'll still have those junk coins to do whatever with.


All of this will definitely not be televised.


The world ending via environmental disaster just doesn't have that kind of zip and pop like the demons and the brigands have.  It's being televised.  It's too slow a process.


Apocalypses and societal meltdowns don't have such a long lead time.  Urgency is the key.  The key to the wallets of the gullible, the paranoid,and the faithful.


Maybe  the Apocalypse will be televised after all. Maybe it will be on FOX News and MSNBC and TV Land.  Maybe it will be on NPR and Clear Channel stations after all.


No matter what else happens, though, you can bet that someone will be live blogging it.  There will most definitely be streaming video as well.

Nukes For Peace Update

Nuke Canada!


By Karl Will, Jr., President, National Association of Smart Conservatives and Republicans


Nuclear weapons have been a major force for world peace for decades now.  Hiroshima showed the world that you do not want to fuck with a nuclear power.  Nuclear power, as in country with nuclear weapons.  A country gets special status for having nukes.  They let you into the special "Nuclear Club" at the UN.

It's worked for decades now.  Fry a couple of cities and a few hundred thousand civilians, that gets someone's attention.  But the effect doesn't last forever.  Eventually, religious nuts start flying planes into tall buildings.  You can't nuke 'em, 'cause they're already dead.  So it's past time to nuke somebody. You know, as a reminder.  Besides, what good is having nukes if you can't use them to maintain world peace?


Canada is definitely getting uppity about our oil.  They want money for it.  Screw that.  They've never even thanked us for not invading them.  President Polk campaigned for office using the slogan "54-40 or fight!", which referred to us getting all of Western Canada up to the Alaska border.  But the British wouldn't give us all of Alberta and British Columbia, and now there are hosers sitting on our oil.  Our oil, not theirs.  If it was their oil, they'd just waste it, anyway.  


Polk was a wussie.  He just gave the sissy British pretty much everything they wanted, and never did do that fighting he promised.  He did invade Mexico, though, so he wasn't all bad.


But I digress.  It is time to launch the Nukes For Peace program.  Just a gentle reminder that we didn't fight them then, but that we just might be reconsidering now.

See, that was easy now, wasn't it?  Now give us our oil, hoseheads, and stop sending us crappy beer! We want everything up to 54 40 latitude or Edmonton's toast!


I realize now what was wrong with JMadison's earlier nuclear proliferation done right proposal.  If everybody had nuclear weapons, then nobody could ever use them without fear of retaliation.  We need to be able to continue to use them without fear of retaliation.  After all, we're only using them for humanitarian purposes.  Nothing bad.


We still need to be able to invade smaller countries without getting nuked ourselves.  Otherwise, all of our wars since WW2 would not have been possible.  Our invasion of Iraq wouldn't have been nearly as easy if Saddam Hussein really did have WMD's.  But he didn't, and we did.


Shock and awe!


We really don't want to nuke Russia, China, or France, no matter how tempting it may be at times.  They might nuke us back.


Canada seems like a much better target.  It's not our fault that they never started their own nuclear weapons program.  It's not our fault that they won't give us our land and our oil.


Namby pamby commie socio-fascists will complain about things like setting unarmed people on fire just for demonstrative purposes.  To them, I say, "Stuff a sock in it!"  If it was good enough for Harry Truman, then it's good enough for me.  Even if he was a Democrat.  Frying a couple of cities is a good object lesson.  Showed them.


Another interesting advantage to nuking Canada is the fact that you don't have to worry about killing children or the elderly.  Canadians don't get old or have children, since they're all evil socialist robots.  Sociobots.  That makes it OK to nuke them.  Well that, and the fact that they're sitting on top of our oil.  In addition, there is increasing evidence of Canadian hostility towards the US.

We have to do something before they use up all of our oil!


Brought to you by:


The Nukes for Peace Foundation

                     

                       AND


          The National Association of 
      Smart Conservatives and Republicans

                         

Money and Taxes--Who Makes It, Who Pays Them?

People are in my office frequently, complaining about the government and having to pay for it.  They ask me what I think of something that they heard.  People hear stuff all of the time.  Sometimes it was some talk show or their brother in law's plumber or maybe even FOX News.  What do I think about the “fact” that 47% of households don't pay any tax?


Well, I looked into it:


The 47% Myth


Things are always more complicated than that.  But even people who pay no income tax are still paying other taxes.  There are lots of taxes.  It adds up to well over 50% of your income, right?  Maybe not:


The 50% Myth


I am told by some that the top 10% of income earners pay 3 / 4 of all taxes.


I am told by others that this same top 10% makes as much as 80% of the income in the US.


Both are somewhat off.  But neither is terribly far from the truth, either.


Tax cuts can eventually lead to lots of people not paying tax.  At least not income tax.  The payroll tax is flat (regressive), so it's harder to escape, unless you start making six figures.  Then you don't have to pay the Social Security portion.


I will be referring frequently to data from two publications.  The first is the Congressional Budget Office's compilation of tax and income statistics from 1979-2007.  It has to be a huge undertaking, because they are gleaning the data from the IRS, the Census, and various other Treasury and Interior agencies.  Which helps to explain why they're only finished through 2007.


CBO Income and Tax Data, 1979-2007

This chart is from the CBO report

The IRS also publishes an "abstract" of Federal tax returns, which includes data on both income and income tax paid.  This one is complete through 2008.

IRS Abstract of Individual Tax Returns, 2008

This chart is from the 2008 IRS abstract

The top 10% of Americans by income earn about 42% of the country's reported income, which is up from 31% in 1979, but still quite a bit less than 80%.


They pay about 73% of total income tax revenues, which is where the infamous 3/4 figure probably comes from.


But there are more taxes than just the income tax.  There is also the payroll tax, for Medicare and Social Security.  These people don't pay SS tax on earnings above $108K/yr, so that dilutes their share of the payroll tax, which they pay a little more than 25% of.


Putting it all together, including investor's shares of the corporate income tax, each individuals share of income, payroll, and federal excise taxes, and this same 10% that makes 42% of the country's income pays about 55% of all Federal tax revenues.


In 1979, when they had 31% of the income, their share of the income tax was 48%, and their share of total Federal Tax liabilities was about 41%.


So, in the pre-Reagan era, while income was distributed more evenly than it is today, the wealthy actually paid a lesser share of both the income tax and Federal taxes overall.


Why?


The two biggest reasons are the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and EGTRRA 2001.  The first eviscerated tax shelters for the wealthy, and the second showered everybody below median income with not only rate cuts, but also enough  refundable tax credits that most people in the bottom 50% pay little to no Federal income tax.


Both rich and poor had their taxes slashed dramatically.  The middle class above median income?  Not quite so much.


So what about most of us?  The lower 60%.


This group has an average income of about $45K/yr.  They make about 26% of the country's income.  Yes.  The lower 60% make just over a quarter of the US total personal income.


They pay just over 1% of Federal income tax revenues.  That's no mistake, folks.  1.3%, to be more precise.


Their share of Federal payroll taxes is 32%, and they pay a total of 14% of all Federal tax revenues.


In effect, what has happened over the past 30 years or so is that wealth and income have become more concentrated, but so has tax liability.  On the other hand, rates are lower, so even though their share has increased, it's a bigger share of a smaller pie.


In 1979, the average effective income tax rate (overall tax, as opposed to marginal tax bracket) for the top 1% was 21%, and it was 7.5% for people in the middle quintile.  In 2007, those had dropped to 19% and 3.3%, respectively.


But before calling for anything as simple as a return to pre-Reagan tax rates, remember that that would also double the income tax for much of the middle class.  Rather, we should be calling for an end to tax favored treatment of some investment income, and an increase in top marginal rates to over 50% again.

What we don't need to do is go to consumption taxes, which are very regressive.  But that's exactly what Ron Paul and other prominent libertarians are proposing with their "Fair Tax".  Fair to who?  That's always the question, now, isn't it?  One that I'll be exploring soon.  But not today.