Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Thursday September 01 2016, @07:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-back-what's-ours dept.

Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, creator of the Doug Jones Average, and perennially witty guy Jim Hightower writes via The Union Democrat of Sonora, California:

If tiny groups of Wall Street bankers, billionaires, and their political puppets are allowed to write the rules that govern our economy and elections, guess what? Only bankers, billionaires, and puppets will profit from those rules.

[...] They've rigged the rules to let them feast freely on our jobs, devour our country's wealth, and impoverish the middle class.

"Take On Wall Street" is both the name and the feisty attitude of a nationwide campaign that a coalition of grassroots groups has launched to do just that: Take on Wall Street. The coalition, spearheaded by the Communication Workers of America, points out that there is nothing natural or sacred about today's money-grabbing financial complex. Far from sacrosanct, the system of finance that now rules over us has been designed by and for Wall Street speculators, money managers, and big bank flim flammers. So--big surprise--rather than serving our common good, the system is corrupt, routinely serving their uncommon greed at everyone else's expense.

[...] A growing grassroots coalition of churches, unions, civil rights groups, citizen activists, and many others are organizing and mobilizing us to crash through those closed doors, write our own rules, and reverse America's plunge into plutocracy. The "Take On" campaign has the guts and gumption to say enough!

[...] The campaign has laid out a five-point [sic] people's reform agenda and are now taking it to the countryside to rally the voices, anger, and grassroots power of workers, consumers, communities of color, Main Street, the poor, people of faith... and just plain folks.

  • Getting the corrupting cash of corporations and the superrich out of our politics by repealing Citizens United and providing a public system for financing America's elections.
  • Stopping "too big to fail" banks from subsidizing their high-risk speculative gambling with the deposits of us ordinary customers--make them choose to be a consumer bank or a casino, but not both.
  • Institute a tiny "Robin Hood Tax" on Wall Street speculators to discourage their computerized gaming of the system, while also generating hundreds of billions of tax dollars to invest in America's real economy.
  • Restore low-cost, convenient "postal banking" in our Post Offices to serve millions of Americans who're now at the mercy of predatory payday lenders and check-cashing chains.

There's an old truism about negotiating that says: "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu". The "Take On Wall Street" campaign intends to put you and me--the People--at the table for a change.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday September 01 2016, @08:47AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday September 01 2016, @08:47AM (#396099) Homepage
    I was on a website the other day playing with "p-hacking" - I could select certain political-based inputs (you chose what you're interested in), and see how they corresponded to prosperity-based outputs (again, you chose how you want to measure that) - the website would work out the p-value, with a mocking "publish this!" if you managed to get a p<0.05.

    The funny thing was that even though I could easily contrive p<0.001 results (which are actually significant in the face of a ~2000-possibility p-hack attempt, which provides a p-value leverage of about 45 (please correct me if I'm wrong, it is a sqrt ratio, isn't it?)), if I ever decided to use "stock market prices" as the indicator of prosperity I got a p=0.5 flat line zero-correlation.

    Of course, I wasn't correlating measures of prosperity against each other, but the fact that certain political inputs could be chosen to lead to a clear (statistically significant, pfft) prosperity trend, but those same inputs didn't even show the tiniest of blips when it came to influencing (yes, CinC) stock market prices, it was easy for me to speculate that stock market price would in no way be correlated with the meaningful measures of prosperity.

    However, if you look at the press as the Dow powers past 10K - "D10K" - you'll see it all presented as if it was a measure of the prosperity of the country. I remember the news reports well. It was all bald eagles and shit. Explosions and pussy!! Touchdownnnnnnn
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @08:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2016, @08:57AM (#396103)

    it was easy for me to speculate that stock market price would in no way be correlated with the meaningful measures of prosperity.

    This rather depends upon whose prosperity is being considered.

  • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:22AM

    by fritsd (4586) on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:22AM (#396122) Journal

    A large number of suckers/speculators means higher profits for the owners of the stock market, that's for sure.

    Could you discover a constellation [xkcd.com] in the scatterplot?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday September 01 2016, @05:52PM

    by sjames (2882) on Thursday September 01 2016, @05:52PM (#396289) Journal

    Actually, I would say that's very much the crux of the topic. All that concern for the Dow in the news and in our government is exactly the system being rigged to provide prosperity for the very few while not giving a damn about the vast majority. You're looking right at the smoking gun.