@Anarcissie:  I had a long response w/flagged highlights for Marc Nuttle’s talk, but then it got erased when I cued up anlther link on this thread. 
Bummer.
So just watch and listen, Ozark Michael’s synopsys is a great guide. 
Probably all of part IV will do for you if you want to shortcut it.
We are, each of us, slaves to our prejudices. 
Freedom is gained by watching, listening and reading widely.

—-

@Ozark Michael:  No, I didn’t find Nuttle by accident. 
He was recommended by a friend (she’s probably in the top 5% income-wise and top 1% in net worth.  (Who are the 1%?  $1.2M+ net worth or $344,000 AGI.) 
Like many of the “rich,” my friend is afraid.
Not of revolution, but of hyper-inflation and world debt default. 
(The rich in the world of business are afraid to hire, afraid to spend, afraid to invest.)
Thus the Nuttle.

—-

@Lafayette: you write “If anyone is prepared to stop bitching-in-a-blog and has some cogent ideas as to
how the OWS movement can precipate into real reform of our nation, the moment to trot them out is NOW!”

I like the idea of using Anti-Trust action to break up the Too-Big-To-Fails.  Broken up small enough, you wouldn’t have to worry about high CEO pay—let the stockholders pay as much as they dare, but no more bailouts.
We’ve gone through this before.  I’ll bet somewhere in the OWS movement there’s a newly-minted bar-passing lawyer who’d love to make his/her mark with this. 

And we need to make corporate (including union) contributions to political causes illegal. 
We’ll probably need to reverse the Citizens United decision which was based upon a bogus precedent set by a court clerk writing a “header” that was askew from the court ruling.(Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific RR)
Another young lawyer from OWS out there??

it’s just a golden opportunity for Obama and the Democrats to lie to us some
more.

Now we have a real alternative, the 99-Percent Populist Party:

WHEREAS THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
PROVIDES:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of
the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE,
shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4,
2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.

see
https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
for the 20-point platform.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that IF the PETITION OF GRIEVANCES approved by the
870 Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY in consultation with the
PEOPLE, is not acted upon by Congress, the President, and Supreme Court, to
the satisfaction of the Delegates of the NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, said
Delegates shall organize a THIRD, COMPLETELY NON-PARTISAN, INDEPENDENT
POLITICAL PARTY to run candidates for every available Congressional seat in
the mid-term election of 2014 and again in 2016 until all vestiges of the
existing corrupt corporatocracy have been removed by the ballot box.

?THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT?

This site went online on October 7, 2011

The Democrats may move boldly to claim, as long as they can do so without doing anything substantial that might offend their money base.

“... Democrats should be moving boldly, not timidly, to claim the issue of economic justice as their own. ...” 

Should be, could be ,would be.  But will they ? I doubt it very much. It’s time to vote Independent across the board in every election, on every level.

So what Mr. Robinson characterized as “inept” and “incoherent” along with
“quixotic”  is now a windfall.  Now that’s a tad inconsistent.

The frustrated left and right only agree on the undeniable, that the economy is
in shambles.  Their proposed solutions are a dichotomy—one wants greater
government regulation to remedy it, while the other insists less government
and with fewer restrictions on the financial sectors. 

I recall that Wall Street bailout by Bush was endorsed by candidate Obama.  His
later implementation offered little change from the original.  Well, we know the
rest.  The money and its amounts could barely be tracked and the majority of
the trillions of the taxpayers’ money remains unaccounted for according to
Elizabeth Warren.  The largesse of it, not to mention its coddling, couldn’t have
been much more magnanimous for Wall Street had it come from Bush.

The majority of us have little to no say in what the treasury does with our tax
dollars.  In contrast, the ones who abuse and collude with the Treasury have the
greatest leverage.  Both parties enable that to a lesser and greater degree.
Though some could argue well that’s too generous a statement.

The democrats have been enablers taking us to this out of whack place. Not all democrats but enough of them. Corporations control virtually all the republican party and enough of the democratic party.

It’s time for real structural change in how we do things and how we acquire funds and how we spend those funds…and how we elect people, money has to be taken out of the picture and we must end the insanity of regarding corporations as people.

It’s a bit late for Democrats to claim the mantle of economic justice, given their
longstanding attachment to big money.  This is not the Democratic Party of FDR,
who would have been railing against Wall Street from the start.  It is the Party of
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who serve Wall Street and the corporate world. 
The OWS people are not shy about pointing out this fact and insisting that they
will not be co-opted by phony reformists who don’t want to be left behind. 
Obama missed his chance to be the champion of real reform.  Now he will
struggle to find a way to appear relevant.

The first fundamentalist I ever met was a way-over-there liberal Democrat.  (He was sort of a follower, although not the slave, of Karl Barth.)  Another I knew gave up a good job to go South in the mid-1960s and put himself in a certain amount of discomfort and danger to work in the Civil Rights movement.  So I’m not writing off fundamentalists as all right-wingers, conservatives, and morons.  However, a lot of the material they find fascinating bores me, as I have a very different view of the world.  And videos usually bore me anyway, since it usually takes much longer to watch one than to get the same material in print.

SOMETHINGS GOTTA GIVE

OM: His statement “those in the military… exempted from cuts” hopefully does not refer to the entire military budget or its a non starter, even with me.

Something has gotta give and that biggest piece of the pie that is the most wasteful is very obvious. (See here our Budget Expense pie-chart.)

At least 5 to 7 percent can be found in reduction of that budget, which buys us little but does much good for the captains of the M-I-C industries. Another wasteful pot is Homeland Security that was established due to a fluke of history and protects no one from a concerted effort to do real harm to Americans at home, if terrorists really wanted to do so. (Less than 1% of containers entering our ports are scanned for nuclear material ...)

No doubt our nation needs a National Defense. But as a budgetary matter, it has got way out of hand. Like Switzerland, the DoD should not have as its hobby-horse strategic objective the necessity of policing the world. We should have learned by now the huge cost in lives (both in terms of death and disability) that is modern terrorist warfare.

And for what? To bring some people a sense of democracy that is utterly strange to them? Let them learn as we did, the hard way.

POST SCRIPTUM: The New American Plutocracy

Besides, the onus should be upon “the communal sacrifice” of enhancing tax receipts by asking more of those profiting most, that is, our New Plutocracy. Marginal and Capital Gains taxation should be put back to pre-Reagan levels (70 to 90% over a threshold of $500K of income.)

Which would also serve to de-incentivize Top Management of American corporations from the rip-off that they presently enjoy and many of the stupid management decisions that they undertake.

THE MOMENT IS NOW!

ER: Enter the Occupy Wall Street protesters with their simple demand for “economic justice”

Bingo! Bravo, ER - This is the point of it all.

The protests will eventually fade away. America is not France and has no real cultural heritage in demonstrating. So, what next?

The above statement identifies what is next. The present movement of outrage and indignation must transform into a political movement. How’s that?

Many people think this is the moment for a third-party Progressive Party. Believe me, I wish it were. But we are running up to elections next year using the same old same old process of the past.

Money is flowing briskly into the coffers of both parties, even worse than before due to the Robert’s Court idiotic ruling that corporations are “individuals” and have the right to free speech. Even worse, because the gerrymandering of congressional districts still benefits the two principles parties.

So, what would be a viable alternative is to coalesce congressional elections around a Progressive Agenda towards electing as many candidates (who adhere to it) as possible. That agenda will outline a goal towards making it possible that electoral reform is undertaken.

What Progressive Agenda. It is time to start talking about one. The time is very ripe. (My contribution to that effort is here.)

If anyone is prepared to stop bitching-in-a-blog and has some cogent ideas as to how the OWS movement can precipate into real reform of our nation, the moment to trot them out is NOW!

oddsox said:

Keep in mind, there are Christian Fundamentalist overtones that might upset some TruthDig readers and the producers and interviewers are not professionals (understatement!).

Ok, oddsox, how did you find this? Nuttle is not that well known. Random people dont randomly find Nuttle.  Please send me a Private message.

The interview starts off very slowly, the interviewers are not helpful. Awful. Marc Nuttle starts with American exceptionalism based on his international experience, which is nothing exceptional. You have heard it before. Even i found it boring. Skip it.

Part 2 is where Nuttle gets to economics, about which he marshals some facts that I found interesting. The interviers just try to keep up and nod their heads.

Part 3 introduces his pet term, the ‘Debt Wall’, which he figures we hit in a year or two.
I found him to be a little off, but the general direction of his talk is accurate.

Part 4 is where Nuttle presents the stakes and the solution. he discusses ‘shared sacrifice’.  I am not sure about his solution, but its better than anyone else’s solution becaue at least he is addressing an oncoming, looming problem.  His statement “those in the military… exempted from cuts” hopefully does not refer to the entire military budget or its a non starter, even with me.

Among the Christian Fundamentalists, just as any other group, you can always find a few people with impressive intellectual ability. Our viewpoint genuinely connects with the old Christian gestalt which is our(and I mean everyone’s) shared heritage, and from which much good sprang which we enjoy today. We offer a rather different vantage point from your own, we are like living ghosts from the past, a past that is the root of much that is good. Since most Truthdiggers repudiate that fact, and Chris Hedges would have you believe such people are fascists, you are cut off from us.

We might be boring, but try to listen. If you cannot treat us as equals, it is your loss.

oddsox—I don’t find fundamentalists upsetting but rather boring and pretty loose with the facts.  Could you give, say, time points where this fellow says something interesting?

Leefeller

Try this link. I offer it only as an interesting look at the mind-set, reportedly, of a couple of hundred OWS attendees as reported by democratic pollsters and “insiders” Penn, Schoen, and Berland.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66228.html

Jimmy, we don’t need any stinking unions to co-opt with OWS. The people in the streets are shunning all of the hypocrisy flavors.

IMax in fairness, my response was to the quote by Scholen, in reality I have no idea what you stand for nevertheless support, I may have misapplied the fact you supported the quote by Scholen since it was in large, bold red letters and the fact I could not access the link!

Clearly OWS would be better served by not being bilked in bedding down with either party, the Democrats nor the Republicans, for I see the handwriting on the wall, who is really represented in this alleged bought and paid for republic!

‘We must get the money out’, which most politicians may not find beatifically enamoring to their cash cows.

Mr. Robinson:  You end by saying “The Republican Party is trapped on the wrong side of this issue.”
But, but, but ... the Democrats are also trapped on the wrong side of this issue—and it’s the same Wall Street money that has trapped them—that, and our beloved not-so-Supreme Court.

HALLOWEEN COMES TO WALL STREET?

Here’s something not many people see, as evidenced by the viewcount.
But take a moment to watch this—#1 of 4 parts, Keep watching if you care to.  About 10 min each.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CiVNf1CuHU&feature=related

Keep in mind, there are Christian Fundamentalist overtones that might upset some TruthDig readers and the producers and interviewers are not professionals (understatement!). 
But the numbers are all correct as far as I can see.
The interviews are from March 2011, before OWS, yet something like it was vaguely predicted.

This, I beleive, is truly scary for the Rich.
And for the rest of us as well.
But a solution is offered.

Would be intrested in hearing feedback from those who view all 4 parts.

Once again, the president wants to lead by behind.  In case he and all the other
lawmakers in D.C. are both deaf and blind, ows is made up of people that have
been calling, emailing, writing, tweeting and subjecting themselves to polls that
in short say we are tired of this b.s.  What the occupiers are pissed about is
what we’ve all been pissed about for years now.  The trouble is nobody listens
and nobody cares because people are only people, they aren’t corporations.

I think a principal demand should be that elected officials voluntarily stop
taking money from special interest industries that they are supposed to be
legislating on.  What Citizens United fails to address is the issue of Conflict of
Interest. 

I disagree with ER in that ows is a boon to Democrats.  They’ve been as much a
part of the problem as anyone.  They’ll treat you like a $10 trick, once they’ve
got your vote, they’re out the door and have forgotten your name.

Leefeller,

I think your issue is with either OWS participants or study coordinator, Doug Schoen.

Perhaps this is more to your liking?

What do Wall Street execs fear most?

It’s not OWS—that’s part of the humor pictured on the New Yorker cover ER references.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/17/the-new-yorker-cover_n_1015280.html

Not Obama, either.  As many TruthDig posters have noted (with varying degrees of civility), he’s a buddy.

IMHO, a breakup of the big banks and a prohibiton on corporate political contributions are the double-dose of medicine needed to make things right on Wall Street. 
It’s a safe bet that anti-trust action and fundamental campaign funding reform would shake things up—changes not meant to be punitive, but for the betterment of all.

I am reminded by Robespierre115’s remarks below of a scene from “Lawrence of Arabia”, where Claude Rains (as Dryden) says to Lawrence “If I have told lies, you have told half lies. And a man who tells lies merely hides the truth, while the man who tells half lies has forgotten where he put it.”

Mr. Robinson and his compatriots in the media would do well to remember that little gem.

Thanks Imax, and I thought Occupy Wall Street was against inequality and abuses, yeah they are a bunch of pinko commies!

Guess they are not against corporations are people too! They want to get rid of Social Security and Medicare?

Damn, I bet they may even be against war?

Then there is me, who is a real pinko commie, who wants the money out and believes in one person, one dollar and only one vote!

Thanks Imax for representing ‘Shrills R US’  placing their their heads right up their grasp of enlightenment!

Cripes!  Another DNC shill trying to co-opt the OWS movement for his DNC masters on a DNC website.  Take your “lesser evil” and ram it, Robinson you DP huckster.

Robinson leaned toward the Democratic Party because he is a veteran shill for the Democratic Party.

I thought Mr. Robinson sounded very level-headed. That’s horse racing for you. I suspect that he leaned toward the Democratic Party because we currently do not have any alternative to the eregeous Republicans in power. Cut him some slack and take your meds.

I don’t think there is any doubt that, if the Dems play
their cards right, they can reap some rewards from the
ripples that are moving out across the populace as a
result of OWS.  This doesn’t mean that OWS will be co-
opted however.  That is a separate issue. 

Most of the “99%” are not ready to confront the full
catastrophe of the current political status quo and
still cling to the idea of change via the ballot box
that many among those camped on on Wall St. reject. 
Most of those among the general population who are
sympathetic to the protests will nontheless go to the
polls and make whatever decision they choose to make. 
Voter turnout being what it is, it may not even matter
whether anyone actually protesting votes at all. 

Many, as ITW expresses below, will still choose the
“lesser of two evils”.  That this movement may clarify
the picture for them and thus have an impact on the
final vote does not, in and of itself, speak to large
scale co-option and thus denigration of the movement and
the message.

The message will remain the same and continue to inform
subsequent decisions.  Hopefully the options available
for Joe and Sally Mainstreet will improve in the
meantime.

robinson writes ab. the wall street as existing in total isolation from everything that
happens in u.s.
he wld have us to evaluate that not a single msm owner/editor/columnist, congress
person [includes lobbyist, W.H member, cleric, general cia/fbi agent, judge,
thinktanker, teacher, educator, lawyer, actor/singer knew anything ab. wall street
activities [such as its unbounded greed] or even one of its members/participants; thus
was unable to find out what WS had been up to and what it actually did?

i wish i cld do anything i wanted and nobody wld even know me let alone know what i
had been doing. and my unbounded greed not even checked by any law of the country!!
even the mafia in u.s never had it that good!

the fact is, wall street-politicos-judges-shareholedrs-et al breathe with one lungs,
walk with two legs, think with one brain, have one and ONLY AIM: get rich anyway u
can and then blame it on AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE,  and avarice of ?all the u.s pop for
being also avaricious.

but, then, who isn’t too greedy [ethical greed is ok, natural] in a society that is
structured in an extreme immoral way; in which everybody is scared shitless of being
left behind and staying ahead of others and feeling of being s’mbody the only value.

and trumpeted to children and naive adults as the american or western values. more cld
be said. also spricht bozhidarevski und alle weiser in dieser welt. tnx

Ok…Truthdig…GAME OVER.  You let this mainstream media hack write utterly offensive
“truthinness” time and time again.  Seriously?  WE took out too many college loans and
somehow the Dems are less to blame for the ridiculously high cost of education in this
country than the Reps and should reap some political harvest as a result?  Seriously?

I can” t blame Mr. Robinson too much for his completely out of touch articles. But I can
blame Truthdig"s editors for allowing him to vomit nonsense all over the actual TRUTH.

So done.

Robe:

The answer is: I’d rather take my chances with Obama that he MAY waiver than simply drink the Romney kool-aid and KNOW we are finished as a nation.

Look, the Powers that Be in the GOP were FORCED by the TeaParty to bend to the TPs agenda.  Why shouldn’t the PTB in the Democratic party be force to bend to the OWS agenda?

“We spent money we should have saved, we bought bigger
houses than our families needed, we took out too many
student loans.”

No sir, we spent money on medical bills, which are the
Number One cause of bankruptcy in the United States. We

Go away, Robinson, you political shill. And take all the Democrats with you. Obama and the Democratic cheats want to glom onto the movement for political gain, when it’s THEM and their bellyful of campaign contributions we’re protesting against. Just go away.
Yesterday Chris Hedges wrote:
“The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.”
Seems the “fu**ing re***ds” on the left have someplace to go, after all, doesn’t it, Robinson? And you and your Democratic idols aren’t invited.

Mr. Robinson presented a very skewed analysis here, though I am sure he means well and that this was not his intention.  He simply trusts the Democrats more than the Republicans as far as helping out those who are not billionaires.  In other words, Robinson wants the Democrats to politicize the OWS movement to their advantage.  Hopefully, the “99%” will not fall for this and won’t be fooled again by the vicious Republicans and the feigned modesty and fake compassion of Democrats.

This is the primary tactical reason that OWS needs to clearly articulate that it is a movement “Against Empire”——which includes being against Wall Street, against vast economic inequality, against social injustice, against imperialist wars, against environmental destruction, etc. etc. etc…....

By clearly saying that it is Against Empire——the hidden corporate/financial/militarist Empire that now controls the government, banks, media, etc. of our former country——Occupy would be making it absofrigginlutely impossible for the lacky Demos, or MoveOn, or NYT/WaPo, or any of these collaborators and slugs to ever say anything about OWS being in the same boat as these shills, BECAUSE none of these slimy co-opters of Occupy dares to say that they are also Against Empire!!

The deceivers, co-opters, and similar phonies trying to hang onto Occupy’s coat tails can not ever, ever, dare to even imply that they are in solidarity with an Occupy goal, demand, agenda which is overtly “Against Empire”—- because they DARE not even whisper the word ‘empire’ since they ARE IT!!!

Best luck and love to Occupy

Alan MacDonald

Liberty & democracy
over
violent/Vichy
empire

Douglas Schoen warns White House: Don’t back ‘Occupy Wall Street’

“President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election,”

Schoen presents what he touts is probably “the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion,” including data that he says demonstrates the fact that the protesters represent “an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence,”

OWS is protesting against corrupt bought government for which Obama is a poster child.

If OWS says the following to Moveon.org, it certainly applies to Obama.

http://dailybail.com/home/photo-of-the-day-dear-moveonorg.html

RE: No, Wall Street shouldn’t be made the scapegoat for all the nation’s
woes. But it was the financial Masters of the Universe whose shocking
irresponsibility and unbounded greed triggered the 2008 crisis, which almost
sent the global economy into the abyss.

______________

Damned tootin’ it was their fault, for sending 1.5 quadrillion in kited derivatives
out into the financial universe - whose ‘scapegoating’ them - simply apply the
law:

INVESTIGATE
INDITE
PROSECUTE
EXECUTE punishment to the full measure of the law

then reinstate Glass Steagall - force settlement of existing derivatives and TAX
them 1% on all investment turnover - Wall Street Sales Tax - decades over due

Bloody hell! Everyone pays sales tax but those bleeding sods - make it the law
and make them pay

OWS: don’t let the Democrates steal this movement - don’t let foundation funded Left Gatekeepers in to direct the energy back to Obomber - he needs to be primaried

Yeah and no whining at ‘scapegoats’ - Christ, Robinson, what a woos

The current system is a rotten corpse, only a clown like Eugene would suggest that Obama and his cronies should embrace the movement, which they will…the manipulate it and turn it into voting cadres. If OWS allows itself to turn into a Democratic Party tool then whatever promise it had will be dead. So Eugene, go fuck yourself.

@Inherit The Wind, I don’t see how you people can convince yourselves Obama is any different from that Romney quote you shared, the man is cut from the same cloth. I almost prefer a Republican in the sense that with them the enemy makes himself crystal clear, Obama is worse because he carries out the same policies at home and abroad but with a cynical smile and fluffy rhetoric masking reality.

Undeserved windfall for Obama?  You betcha, ER, definitely undeserved.  But he is now, CLEARLY the better choice than any of the GOP clones, especially the corporate liquidator, heir-apparent Mitt Romney…“Corporations are people!”

Ditto all the comments to this point. Obama will get little support from the OWS movement. Only the true progressive politicians will get support and that will probably be tepid at most. This movement is against Wall Street and against the current governing process. All politicians are suspect until they prove their commitment to making radical changes in how we do government. The Dems would be advised to be very careful in how much they identify with this movement. If they get too close, they just might get bitten. This pit bull means business.

The problem with the idea that Democrats can co-opt Occupy Wall Street is that the movement is happening because of Obama’s failure.

If young people had not felt betrayed by Obama they would not be on the street now.

Occupy Wall Street is an indictment against Obama.

would it be too “Limbaugh-esque” to say “ditto” to Emile’s comments above?

the fact is: Obama is owned, just the same as the rest of the Democratic party in which Robinson (for reasons which utterly mystify me) still holds hope.

maybe it’s something in the air back there…

Hmmm…

You think they couldn’t agree on single payer health care???

Seriously Mr. Robinson…

Let us hope the movement perseveres and makes at least a few demands that the corporatist Democrats can’t stomach.

I don’t know who is living in La La land… you or me.

Oh yeah, it’s you.

....or is it???          AAAAHHHHH!!!!