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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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 02 2016, @05:51AM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday September 02 2016, @05:51AM (#396563) Journal

    I am very much a woman, thank you. This body just got done forcefully reminding me of that not even a week ago. If it helps, I have what I suspect are past-life memories that seem to indicate I was male last time, and have heard theories to the effect that gays are people who switched genders between incarnations and didn't fully make the transition. It makes as much sense as anything else, right? My own mother says she could tell at age 4 I was going to be into girls, somehow.

    And, yeah, Uzzard is so completely easy. I wasn't even *trying* to troll him up there and he bit anyway. He's just such a rotten person i can't help but slap him around for it, and he neeeeeever knows when to cut his losses and shut up, which means the longer any exchange goes on between us, the more likely he is to let his guard down and say something that makes *everyone* look side-eyed at him.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday September 02 2016, @06:31AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday September 02 2016, @06:31AM (#396570) Journal

    So you see, Azuma, that you are equally easily trolled? I am on your side in all battles, but as little as it takes to bait the Utter Lizzard, it only takes slightly more to get a response from you. Of course, I am well beyond the age of ever being reminded of what gender I might once have been. This is a perspective that I encourage others to take. Equality, that is the main thing, we are all human.

    And I seem to recall the ancient myth, was it of Aesclepius, the ancestor of all healers? You will notice that on the Caduceus there is a pair of intertwining snakes. You can find this on the badges of EMTs, for example. Sign of medicine, or healers. Why? Did early physicians only treat snake bite? OK, here is the story.

    Aesclepius, walking down a road, come across two snakes intertwined. (For the children among us, and jmorris, they were copulating. Oh, for jmorris, that means they were having sex. Are we good on that?) He struck the snakes with his staff, because, you know, they might be SJWs! Snakes, it turns out, are sacred to Hera, the Queen of the Gods, wife to Zeus (do you remember the whole "Heracles in the crib" episode? No? Is your degree from ITT?). So Hera turns Aesclepius into a woman. He lives as a woman for a long time, I think it was seven years, and then Hera relents, and turns him back.

    So later, people as Aesclepius, "who enjoys sex more, the man or the woman?" I mean, he should know, right? His response: "The woman enjoys it nine times more than the man." So there is that. Now I feel sorry for the Buzzard, because birds, you know, like Catholics, only have sex to reproduce, and to create a libertarian paradise by having relations with Ayn Rand, who is dead, and whom we are not really sure was actually female.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 02 2016, @06:43AM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday September 02 2016, @06:43AM (#396573) Journal

      Uh...that was the blind seer Tiresias in that story, not Aesclepios. And the doctor wand is supposed to be a single snake; the double-snake wand is the symbol of Hermes, specifically of Hermes in his aspect of a sneak-thieving son of a bitch =P

      The rest of this post...is Kurenai-off-her-meds-level WTF.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday September 02 2016, @06:51AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Friday September 02 2016, @06:51AM (#396577) Journal

        See? Easily trolled! Which means, thanks for the corrections, as they were what I meant for you to find. Now if only the Mightly Condor were so easy to direct! And you may be right about Hermes. But I always thought he was kind of a metro-sexual.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 02 2016, @07:00AM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday September 02 2016, @07:00AM (#396581) Journal

          That was a troll? I couldn't tell. You're known for posting quirky stuff, though usually more coherent than that. I actually like your posts.

          Uzzard's very easy to direct: he only goes in one direction, that being straight to Hell riding on a flaming exhaust plume of his own sociopathic flatulence.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday September 02 2016, @07:25AM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Friday September 02 2016, @07:25AM (#396584) Journal

            That was a troll? I couldn't tell. You're known for posting quirky stuff, though usually more coherent than that. I actually like your posts.

            Like yours, too! So compliment returned. But that is the point, real trolls are not seen to be trolls. Trolling is the art of putting out bait, but the main quality of bait is that it not be seen as bait. So you bit. No harm, no foul. But if we can get people to bite who have to change their ideas as a result of being hooked and dragged through waters unfamiliar to them, that is what trolling is all about. So here we are, in a thread about shared prosperity, trying to share the prosperity by hooking up the libertarian chum, and pointing out that there is a a world beyond their myopic vision. We are agreed?

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 02 2016, @07:32AM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday September 02 2016, @07:32AM (#396587) Journal

              I thought the point of trolling was to be a useless jackoff who delights in the pain and misery of others...?

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday September 02 2016, @07:45AM

                by aristarchus (2645) on Friday September 02 2016, @07:45AM (#396588) Journal

                Common misconception! Trolling is to hook someone in a way that they know they have been hooked, after the fact, of course, in order to educate them about the error of their ways. You may remember a FA a while ago, allegedly by the philosopher Aristotle? https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/05/09/0326228 [soylentnews.org] It came to me when someone suggested that Socrates was just a pre-internet troll. It rang true.

                Now most of our neo-con, alt-right trolls fit your description, but I never thought the pain and misery of others is something one should delight in, unless it led to greater wisdom, self-awareness, and less need to be to be trolled. So I appreciate this, Azuma, very infrequently I can catch you in a troll! And even better, I have learned in the process.

              • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 02 2016, @10:27AM

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday September 02 2016, @10:27AM (#396620) Homepage Journal

                You should change your sig to make sure everyone knows that's what you are. Your trolling skills aren't up to the job.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 02 2016, @05:04PM

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday September 02 2016, @05:04PM (#396700) Journal

                  You seem upset.

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday September 03 2016, @02:42AM

                    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday September 03 2016, @02:42AM (#396872) Homepage Journal

                    So you can neither troll nor read people over the Internet? Noted. You want to see me upset, get some Python included in the codebase. Silly comments playing doesn't even come close to evoking any emotion from me besides a very mild amusement.

                    --
                    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 04 2016, @04:22AM

                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday September 04 2016, @04:22AM (#397263) Journal

                      If you weren't upset, you wouldn't continue replying to every...single...post. And you wouldn't be devolving into crude sexual insults, either.

                      You let your guard down, AGAIN, and did something that's making everyone reading your posts give you the side-eye, AGAIN. God, you suck so hard at the internet.

                      --
                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 04 2016, @01:06PM

                        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday September 04 2016, @01:06PM (#397371) Homepage Journal

                        Really? Had you paid attention you'd have seen by now that I pretty much reply to every comment here directed remotely my way, regardless of source. You're not special, snowflake.

                        As for saying you're a cunt? Well, stop being a cunt and I'll stop saying it.

                        --
                        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday September 05 2016, @12:13AM

                          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday September 05 2016, @12:13AM (#397579) Journal

                          Nope, you're madder than hell, and every response gives it away. It's not THAT you're responding alone; it's HOW you respond, what words you choose to use, and the intent behind them. You're making yourself look worse and worse every time, and the best part is, I don't need to do a thing but exist! You're burning from the inside.

                          --
                          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 02 2016, @10:24AM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday September 02 2016, @10:24AM (#396618) Homepage Journal

            That would be because he's good at it. Unlike you.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday September 02 2016, @05:07PM

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday September 02 2016, @05:07PM (#396702) Journal

              You reply to eeeeeeevery siiiiiingle oooooone of my posts. You're mad as hell. You can't hide it. And yet you're going to insist I don't get to you?

              I *am* a poor troll in the sense that *that's not what I'm fucking doing.* And yet...you're getting so upset still. It's like some kind of autoimmune disease of the mind. Or have you gone insane like J-Mo? Are we gonna see a news story about you going up a clock tower and sniping random people?

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...