UNDO THE DAMAGE DONE

grok: corporate party electoral politics is a dead, decaying corpse. Get over it.

In fact, I must agree with you. Let’s hope, after its last SubPrime Debacle, that the handwriting on the wall announcing its demise is true.

Politics - like fads - happen in waves, though at longer intervals. Reagan came in upon the demise of the Great Society. Since the 1980s America has embarked upon Ayn-Randian individualist politics (“what’s in it for me, me, me”) which favored the few over the better good of the many.

Let’s hope, after all the false hopes (Clinton, for instance), that the Ayn-Randian Era of political excess on behalf of a select minority is coming to its well-deserved end. It is time, 30 years on, and the hurt in America is widespread.

The Great Society was a decent egalitarian idea, even if it was empty of political implementation. We must move on to more Progressive Values that better the lives of all Americans and not just a select class of “plutocrats”.

MY POINT

That objective is a long row to hoe, so let’s start weeding out those elements that have prevented egalitarian policies to take root and flourish. (Like a Public Option Health Care system in a country that so badly needs one.)

And we know who those scoundrels in Congress are because they are too brazen and too ignorant to hide their misdeeds.

We must elect more progressive candidates to both Chambers of Congress in order to undertake the reforms necessary - which should start immediately with Income Unfairness. For that to happen, we must touch a very sensitive nerve, that of marginal and capital gains taxation. They both must rise to be placed back at levels they existed before Reckless Ronnie occupied the Oval Office. (See info-graphic here.)

Which also means we need a simple and clear Progressive Agenda upon which grassroots America can hang their hopes and desires for a better way-of-life.

IMax, I never suggested that a coup was desirable or necessary. All I’m suggesting is that electoral politics as it is today with one two-headed corporate party is slow, torturous death with an end result much as you described in your comment.

grokker,

I believe your basic premise of throwing a teenage tantrum and breaking everything will cause countless millions of living and breathing human-beings to suffer horribly all over the globe.

I’d be willing to wager that no more than 1% of Americans (roughly 3 million) would subscribe to anything like what you desire. - NEVER happen is right! - but I’ll defend your right to voice your opinion.

All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

The above intimates that one-third of the American population is either below the poverty line or also above it, but fretfully - whatever fretfully means.

I find that very, very difficult to believe.

A Census Bureau report last year said this:   

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 ? the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 ? the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

So there are another 60 million living “fretfully”? No, that doesn’t seem correct. It is much to large a number.

Payson - And the prices of food and fuel are not
included in the Consumer Price Index - too volatile? -
and not included, the CPI will indicate a much smaller
increase, which will then be the excuse for labor not
getting a cost-of-living raise.  There’s always a
scurrilous method to their madness. 

The airy-fairy ‘middle-class’ category, however, is at
least not as bad as the ‘working poor’ category - one
labors his entire adult life at wages which make him
poor? What’s wrong with this picture.

Americans have been indoctrinated into the myth of the great “middle class”
with its “American Dream” and endless opportunities if you just work hard
enough.  Any American with a full-time job, regardless of their income, will
profess to be middle class.  Only in America can you profess to be exceptional
without any effort or middle class when you are actually poor.

Yes, compared to (pick your choice of supposedly worse off far away country),
America’s “poor” or “near poor” seem better off.  However, if you are poor and
live in America, you are increasingly at the mercy of political and corporate
efforts to undermine or eradicate American policies that created our
diminishing middle class in the first place.

If your income is $23,000 per year, or even quite a bit more, it isn’t as if that is
all cash you can put away for hard times.  The cost of living, even very
modestly, eats up that level of income quickly.  The cost of fuel, rent, food, etc.
affects the “middle class” greatly.

I am a public school teacher in a big city, so I guess if someone wants to label
me, “near poor” is far more accurate than “middle class.”  I managed to avoid
student debt, but the cost of living in a tiny apartment within subway distance
of work and maintaining an austere existence wipes out my earnings every pay
day.  America’s “exceptionalism” has resulted in the most fitting moniker for an
American with a full-time job and ability to avoid homelessness: “lucky.”

The majority of Americans won’t get involved in protests even though they should - after having lost their jobs, house, maybe their marriage, their way of life etc. because they are taught to celebrate other Americans’ success - but you have to know how a lot of people get successful in America - it is by exploiting others, bribing government officials who then make more laws to favour the rich and so it goes. Why identify with the rich when you’re poor or close to it? Yet that’s why there’s apathy - the poor and unemployed blame themselves. The poor also fear the law too as the police or FBI or CIA will come after those who ‘step out of line’ and protest. It reminds of the Buffalo Springfield song ‘For What It’s Worth’ ...
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away”

Charlie1877 - Written like a true “economist.” Sure, you’re right, Americans are, compared to Somalis, Bangladeshis, Tibetans and many other people, “wealthy.”

Here’s the problem: once the income standards of Americans continue to fall lower than they are (and have been for the last 30 years), purchasing power will decay, demand will drop and there will come a time when there will be little to no rejuvenation of our infrastructures and vital systems.

Sure, corporations will continue to register “growth” because they can produce cheap shit off-shore and sell that crap to people somewhere else in the world….they can then influence government so as to pay little in taxes for the process thus increasing the GDP without actually contributing anything to domestic issues. Ultimately, this will lead to regular Americans making even less….

So, although you’re fundamentally right…...you’re also ignoring the fatal problem with the “race-to-the-bottom” economic trajectory we are on.

Take a long hard look at a preview of Americas future….

The political system of this country is a failure, the Republican party and the corrupt
Democratic party, have done this…Now the Republican party in disguise as the
Teaparty, wants to take social security, and your pension…the supercommitte is just
another disguise, to hide legislation that will implement a corporate wish list of
larcenies….

Suppression and repression, and all those laws that were put place to thwart terrorism in
this country, will be revealed in their true purpose, to create a police state, bent on the
continued destruction of this country for the corporate elite.

There will never be any reform under our present political system, only more pain, and
lies and serfdom for all.

IMax says: Occupy Congress
Unless you are talking about OWS staging a complete coup and replacing the system with something entirely new(which will never happen), corporate party electoral politics is a dead, decaying corpse. Get over it.

I bet if you calculate “the poors” income @ 75% of the official rate it would go even
higher. Maybe we should should conclude that the poor aren’t that poor and the rate
should be lower. The official rate is about 2 thousand a month, not including the food
stamps (which can be sold for at least 50 cents on the dollar) not to mention paying no
taxes and receiving an earned income tax credit.

The average income in the us is 31,000 so yes adding 11000 to the 22000 poverty rate
makes average income POOR.  What this means, is that the poor do pretty well here,
making 3 times the average household worldwide.

We live in the most peaceful and prosperous time in human history, stop complaining.

Occupying Wall Street, I believe, misses the point. Little to no change will be in our future by ‘Occupying’ streets and parks.

Peter Orzag, the last OMB Director, moved immediately to making his fortune at CitiBank.

Occupy Congress!

And everybody knows the “near poor” are simply THE POOR
by another name.