Today is the day for Fox News commentator Glenn Beck to share his dream on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
King delivered his “I Have A Dream” exactly 47 years ago and will now be the scene of Beck and his followers offering their own “dream.” The article below describes supporters wearing telltale teeshirts with Palin’s name that the legend “Babies, Guns, Jesus.”
Here is another tee-shirt from the rally:
Some accounts are almost biblical of Beck’s role in reshaping America. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey explained “[w]e see Glenn Beck as a guy who is bringing revelations of understanding to the American people.”
Revelations by St. Beck will commence this afternoon.
Source: Bloomberg
“Other than the Manson Family showing up, how was the party, Ms. Tate?”
“Other than than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
“Except for the bribes”
I really can’t believe you wrote something that manifestly stupid.
“How can you blame the banks? Except for the bribes, the rest is squarely at the feet of the local politicians.”
The bribes tendered by banks. So yeah, you want to hold one side accountable but not the other.
Bullshit, Byron.
And that’s always been the problem with your stance on graft.
Offer and acceptance are required for agreements, even illegal ones. Pols wouldn’t be able to accept bribes (campaign contributions or otherwise) if businessmen didn’t offer them.
Byron,
They are exactly equivalent.
We also put tax evaders in prison. Ask Al Capone and Wesley Snipes. Thieves too. Steal with a gun, steal with a pen, it’s still stealing. But the graft driven inequities are such now that stealing with a pen means you get a bonus and a huge bailout when you lose a bunch of other people’s money at the Wall St. Casino and Whorehouse.
Buddha:
to prevent murder is the proper use of government force because the murderer is using force against an individual. The 2 concepts are not equivalent.
Elaine:
did you hear what he is saying? It sounds like it was corrupt politicians that caused the problem. It sounds like everyone was screwing the tax payer. I am sorry it sounds like it goes back to government malfeasance.
Why is it the bankers that are the problem? It sounds like the local government caused the problem. It sounds like a good number of people in government have no idea about finance. It makes government and politicians look like fools.
It is a terrible failure of government. I am horrified by the politicians behaviour with public money. They refinanced 23 times. It sounds like people should be voting for people who can balance their checkbook and have some money in the bank.
How can you blame the banks? Except for the bribes, the rest is squarely at the feet of the local politicians.
Let’s look at another component of your assertion, B.
“You cannot institute “social justice” by way of force.”
Yes, we can. It is socially unjust to commit murder and we use institutional force against murderers all the time in the form of arrest, trial, conviction, incarceration and/or execution.
You can do the same thing to wealth by limiting inheritance and taxing the Hell out of it.
Social justice is not just inexorably tied to equity, it’s tied to the basest concept of justice itself. And one of the prime functions of government is to ensure justice (social and otherwise) to keep people from seeking it through self-help, a state which bears a striking resemblance to anarchy.
Bryon,
In the real perfect world, the FRB sets the interest rates. However, WallStreet has perfected the supply side imbalance that
anymore the interest rates are set to balance the inequities created by the corporate banking greed. Its called the lending ratio….whatever they have on the books at the end of the day better equal what the FRB says they can lend.
Higher interest rate to borrow less money to lend.
And I don’t really have to tell you that criminal laws and regulations are legal now, do I? Because if I do, your myopia may have grown to intractable proportions.
“again my point is that both he and Milton Hershey did it voluntarily. You cannot institute “social justice” by way of force. If you have great wealth it is yours, it does not belong to society unless you choose to give it. Whether you choose to do so is your decision.”
Myth again.
Taxation is perfectly legal under the Constitution. Taxes are the means by which government finances social justice and social utility through infrastructure.
Might I add to Elaine’s comment, “[U]nscrupulous and greedy people . . . who used their money and magical powers of graft to make any regulatory and/or criminal legal restraints vanish in the years leading up to the Crash.”
Blouise:
again my point is that both he and Milton Hershey did it voluntarily. You cannot institute “social justice” by way of force. If you have great wealth it is yours, it does not belong to society unless you choose to give it. Whether you choose to do so is your decision.
If I were worth hundreds of millions of dollars I would spread some out to my workers in the form of large incentive bonuses and would want all of my workers to have health care, etc. But that is my choice, the government should have no part in any of it. From what I can see the only way to have “social justice” throughout all of society is for the government to do it by force. I have not read any works by Mr. Rawls so I do not know if he is a proponent of government sponsored “social justice”. If he is, I fundamentally disagree.
Matt Taibbi and The Looting of Main Street (April 2010)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK4TE266Xcs&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Byron,
You’ve got tunnel vision on this issue. You’re only looking at a part of what caused our financial disaster. Subprime mortgages were a part of it…sure. A lot of people also got balloon mortagages. A big part of the problem was unregulated derivatives–and unscrupulous and greedy people!
Elaine:
all of that stuff was a result of the low interest rates. People who should not have gotten mortgages got them and these bad loans were bundled with good ones. The low interest rates were because of the Federal Reserve. The idea that people who cannot afford a house should have one has been promoted since at least Jimmy Carter. I guess you could call it “social justice”.
It was a bad thing to do and both republicans and democrats were front and center in this. And yes I blame lenders as well. Some took advantage of people but some did not. I believe BBT bank behaved honorably during that entire debacle, they even tried to refuse the bail out money but were made to take it by Henry Paulson (aka POS Paulson) POS = piece of shit. If I could have my way, I would put his back to a wall for what he did.
Sounds like you’re boxed in there, B.
Or to put it in terms of late 20th Century comic books, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Carnagie knew this.
He paid for his exploitation with the way he decided to dispose of his wealth (his great power).
Those venal assholes at AIG and GoldmanSachs can’t even spell “responsibility”.
But they can sure spell CEO bonuses.
There is a huge difference to take and then give back and to take and keep. Both of which are possible legally. Therein lies the problem. Equity and social justice are inexorably intertwined. Equity is the prime value of our Founding Fathers (“We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men are created equal. . .”). But Equity is contrary to your version of free market capitalism. Your version is social Darwinism – the strong take and screw the rest. Our Founding Fathers knew the inherent folly of this position as they saw it come to fruition in their lifetime as they watched the inequities of the French aristocracy toward the French people bring an end to Louis XVI in 1793. They knew the inequities of a royal class as they themselves had been subject to the whims of King George II, driven mad by porphyria.
Matt Taibbi with Ed Schultz
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfKqAUzM-b8&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Byron,
I wasn’t talking about interest rates. I was talking about Credit Default Swaps and Collateralized Debt Obligations and cutting up and bundling good mortgages and bad mortgages together and selling them as securities. Goldman Sachs helped to bring the economy of Greece to the brink of disaster.
Here’s are links to two of Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone articles that you might find interesting reading.
The Great American Bubble Machine: From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they’re about to do it again
(July 9-23, 2009)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64796
Looting Main Street: How the nation’s biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece
(April 15, 2010)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64833
Byron
1, September 1, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Blouise:
he was free to do whatever he wanted with his money. That is the point. Your money is your money, you earn it. It is part of your life to which no other man has a right.
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I’m sorry for not making my point clearer. I was not talking about the money itself but rather one’s view towards money.
Carnegie’s view, “the man who dies rich dies disgraced,” is far more radical than Rawls’ view.
Hershey was not a philosopher. He never wrote and seldom talked about his beliefs but followed a set of principles consistently in that wealth should be used for the benefit of others. He was quite famous for “making work” and could honestly boast that no one was laid off in Hershey during the Depression years.
From these examples I suggest that Carnegie and Hershey would have disagreed with your fundamental disagreement with Dr. Rawls and would not have viewed social justice as theft.