From Al Gore’s blog, a clear signal that he’s lost it. Like McKibben, he’s like a moth attracted to a flame, looking for it to jumpstart his own failed movement.
Thoughts on Occupy Wall Street October 12, 2011 : 5:07 PM
For the past several weeks I have watched and read news about the Occupy Wall Street protests with both interest and admiration. I thought The New York Times hit the nail on the head in an editorial Sunday:
“The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.”
“At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.”
From the economy to the climate crisis our leaders have pursued solutions that are not solving our problems, instead they propose policies that accomplish little. With democracy in crisis a true grassroots movement pointing out the flaws in our system is the first step in the right direction. Count me among those supporting and cheering on the Occupy Wall Street movement.
You can support the protests by clicking here.
Since Al Gore’s lowlife boss, Bill Clinton, and his administration repealed Glass-Steagal, allowing banks to go crazy with real estate investments risking everyone else’s money, his support of the protesters rings hollow indeed. If it weren’t for Clinton and friends, and an equal number of Republican bozos, the housing bubble would never have gotten off the ground, creating the worldwide economic crisis we are now facing.
These protesters may be mostly liberal and critical of conservatives (and vice versa), but the occupiers and the tea partiers are actually fighting the same thing. Instead of sniping at each other, they should be joining teams. The Wall Street banks should have been allowed to fail and drag down all their wretched executives, brokers, and unconscionable investors. They knew exactly what they were doing selling bad mortgages and then bundling them into investment products for suckers, or dumping them on the U.S. government via Freddie and Fannie. They laughed about it, swore there was no bubble, helped destroy millions of households, and never experienced an instant of reprimand. On the contrary, our crooked politicians rushed in to bail them out (because they themselves were heavily invested in the house-flipping Ponzi scheme), taking on all of their bad debt and throwing it onto the taxpayers. Meanwhile, the investment bankers have been living it up, with even bigger unearned bonuses and more outrageous golden parachutes.
Gore may be a fraud trying to cash in on yet another movement, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The people responsible for the housing bubble and crash–and this includes millions of flippers and refinanciers–should bear the brunt of their own greed and stupidity. Millions of liar loans went out during that period, but has anyone been arrested or prosecuted? Before the AGW scam, the housing bubble was the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the entire planet, and the very same financial interests who concocted and perpetrated that flimflam are heavily invested in the AGW/Green flimflam. The same people, the same banks, the same investment companies. These are the uber-selfish who want something huge at everyone else’s expense. And up till now, they’ve been getting everything they want.
If the occupy protesters could be shown that many of their supposed supporters are the ones who actually caused this mess in the first place and stand to gain trillions for further cheating with the AGW scam, it could change the dynamics overnight. The extremists do not represent the majority. Al Gore doesn’t represent anyone with a functioning brain.
Al Gore has always wanted to be “on the side of the Angels” or, preferably, the “head Angel”. Now, like any good politician, he sees a parade and jumps in front of it to lead it.
He is no angel; but rather a bent angle.
“Stupidity is the new normal. Those opposing us have Big Oil and rich people on their side. But we have something they don’t…
Insanity.
From Climate Reality to Primate Insanity — join us for another 24 hours of gripping television.”
Al Gore
(cartoons by Josh to follow…)
I don’t believe Gore has any genuine admiration for the protests of those much poorer and more insecure than him
Not only does Al have three JUMBO computer monitors, but he also has one flat screen TV burning away in the background.
A question for Al Gore:
Why would you exclude the media from your speaking engagements, if your message is so important ?
Sounds like the TEA party to me. Have you seen the list of proposed demands for OWS? Everything on that list is left-wing populist/anarchist/radical socialist. That’s why the “99%” moniker is so ridiculous. Anyone who thinks those demands represent 99% of the American populace needs to expand the circle of people they interact with.
What does Al know about being middle class?
Reminds me of a Ben Folds song…..
If you just have a look at the Soros networks – it is beyond shocking. They are virtually everywhere.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977
It seems very many countries have problems. We’ve certainly got ours here in the UK, but I am very surprised that many Americans cannot seem to see that the US cannot go on the way it has been going. Your highest rate of tax is a mere 17% (so I understand). This is totally inadequate. You WILL have serious unrest on your streets in the coming decade. You can point to our problems, or Europe’s all you like, but the US HAS to change.
These comments are hilarious! A few folks got it right, but most of you have utterly no idea what OWS is about, including the host of this blog. Progressives instinctly know what the rest of you cannot possibly conceive. This protest is about the fact that social defection is rewarded while social cooperation is punished, exactly the reverse of the way it should be. Most of the folks who frequent this blog are social defectors, and trying to get you to understand the merits of a cooperative society is like trying to explain color to someone born blind. You had your run and now your time has passed. Yes, Gore is a buffoon, yes CAGW is absurd, but the defector attempts to describe the priorities of social cooperators is even more pathetic. Here is a little tip for self-enlightenment: if you think the word “socialist” is a pejorative despite the fact that the modern socialist democracies of Europe are the most successful societies that ever existed on this planet, your soul has probably rotted away.
Ged says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:44 am
“Occupy, from what I’ve seen of it, is -not- a protest by the “left”, nor the “right”. That’s what pundits don’t get: this is a movement devoid of “left” or “right”. ”
That’s why George Soros supports it via TIDES, right? /sarc
(Soros -> Tides -> AdBusters -> OWS)
The Idiot Gore is a significant cause of the lost opportunities he decries. His policies choke a free economy and shackle creativity. What a jerk.
“We want an economy where people who start at the bottom can increase their earning power as they gain experience and contribute more.”
How ridiculous. Here in the UK we have had at least 2 decades of rich corporate types screwing down the wages of the average person whilst taking billions each year in profits. And instead of making these people pay a decent wage to thier workers the government under Gordon Brown introduced tax credits, so the tax payer tops up the wages of the average working man and woman whilst the corporate billionaires pay peanuts and manufacture their goods abroad and then sell them here using the roads, and other infrastructure paid for by everybody else, whilst paying the minimum taxes they can get away with.
And now these elites in the financial world have [snip] everything up so that even the pensions of the masses are now worth 30% less than they were only three years ago. But they are rich and recession is an opportuinty. The rest of us suffer.
WHy is it that only 40 years ago a single working wage was enough to buy a house and send a couple of kids to university? How did this change? Now both parents have to work their arse off just to stand still and god forbid that they can afford to send their kids to university. Meanwhile, the political and corporate elite who enjoyed free higher education have pulled up the ladders. Lets at least be honest about where we are. The baby boomers have had the best of everything – massive profits from housing, free further education, the last generation to get final salary pensions, and now they all sit about moaning how we should all pay for them. They took the lot and scorched the earth in the process. My own parents included.
Those at the bottom won’t ever increase their earning power. Those at the top will make sure of it.Look for a job in any part of the UK on Monster or TotalJobs – about 80% of them pay way way under the average wage. I live in Brighton – we have amongst the highest housing costs in the country but lower than average wages. Who is making money here? Not us, that’s for sure.
We will all eventually wake up to the fact that there is a vast majority of the human race in western societies who are being daily screwed by the elite – and that’s before you talk about green taxes or the cost of energy. There will be blood in the UK in the next 5 years if things do not change.
Tom in Florida says:
October 13, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Doug says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:20 am
” ” The average S&P CEO does not need 11 million a year to do their job. ”
And who are you to tell someone else what they should be paid? If you don’t like the company you have invested in, take your investments someplace else.”
I don’t know who he is but I am a stockholder who agrees with him as I am, by virtue of the stock I own, an owner of these companies and a previous corporate exec who knows how the game is played. Publicly owned companies are more poorly governed today to the result that non-exec shareholders have little influence on how their employees, the execs, are payed. Interlocking boards are a big part of that along with bonuses in voting stock for the execs which enhances their control. In the mid 1980’s highly paid CEO’s were in the range of $10mm total comp now they are in the $100mm or more range, with little relation to performance compared to in the 1980’s. And no matter where else you take you money the story is the same.
Doug says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:20 am
Well, Al and I agree on something. I am retired, with a portfolio of investments in the seven figures.
———————————————————
Why does a retired person need a seven figure portfolio? Did you earn it?
Perhaps Al and his supporters could occupy the Sun.
After all, it is cooler than the centre of the Earth.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Al Gore.
Matt Skaggs says:
October 13, 2011 at 12:59 pm
“Here is a little tip for self-enlightenment: if you think the word “socialist” is a pejorative despite the fact that the modern socialist democracies of Europe are the most successful societies that ever existed on this planet”
Matt, you don’t sound like a European; as a European would not have described the European democracies as socialist – most are social-democrats or conservatives. (I am German, so I know what I’m talking about.) Nor would he have described them as “the most successful societies that ever existed” (except for when he himself sits in Brussels, is a top Eurocrat and very happy with himself indeed, maybe having led a Maoist student uprising in Portugal in his youth). We might be having some seriously imploding Southern European economies soon, and the protestors in Spain and Greece would be HAPPY if they had American unemployment levels.
I think you’re SERIOUSLY deluded.
I’ve been fascinated by this event since it got off the ground and have spent far to much time researching it in the hope of understanding the underlying catalyst that supported the pitch.
Guerrilla marketing has been a facet of numerous campaigns, I was first exposed to it in the early ’90s and its amazingly cost effective.
Knowing the preplanning necessary to deliver a Guerrilla marketing swag, I still doubt its a grass-roots movement. Its current concoction of simplistic messaging designed to compel the foolish media et. al. to set it viral was and is, IMO, the intent. The interesting question is, who did the preplanning.
Who said you can’t get something for/from nothing ; )
I’m getting plugged into #OccupyGISS, #OccupyEPA, #OccupyWWF, and #OccupyUN
Taxes are an issue but not the issue.
Close to 0% interest rates (starting in the 90s under Clinton/Gore) created the credit bubble and turned speculators and hedgefond owners into billionaires. Savers and the real economy were the losers
They may easily pay higher taxes, but socialist low interest rates would continue to make them richer.
And people like Soros with assets on foreign Caribbean islands wouldn’t even bother about taxes.
Matt Skaggs says:
“…the modern socialist democracies of Europe are the most successful societies that ever existed on this planet…”
Matt, get a grip on reality. Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Slovakia, etc., etc. are real successful, aren’t they? And U.S. taxpayers are once again bailing out EU banks, to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars. The EU VAT makes everything much more expensive than in the U.S., and EU gasoline averages around $10 a gallon. That is not any sane person’s definition of a “successful society”. It is a failed, unsustainable welfare state, and the chickens are coming home to roost.
Re: “Occupy”
Occupants they are. They occupy our life, our efforts, our resources, our ambitions and hopes — without giving back anything substantial.
There is a certain truth in the notion that talent, success, special abilities and, generally, genetically or financially inherited advantages bring additional responsibility.
But a primitive and thievish “re-distribution of wealth” (read: robbing people of their efforts, of their strength and health, of their life and hopes) created obstacles preventing those few who make live easier for everybody to function productively, thereby making the poor and the unhappy poorer and more unhappy.
Is this so difficult to understand, parteigenossen Obama, Pelosi, Gore and Reid?
And the gods of the copybook headings
With terror and slaughter return…
In all fairness, it was the Republican-led Congress that passed the law to repeal Glass-Steagal. But you are right, this deregulation took place during the Clinton administration.
Anger over the bailouts is about all they have in common. The TEA partiers want less government, not more. Many of the occupiers want personal bailouts.
The occupiers aren’t asking for prosecution of people who took out fraudulent loans or took mortgages they couldn’t afford. One list of demands called for the end of credit reporting agencies. Their Democrat supporters in Congress passed the Dodd-Frank bill, which made ‘too big to fail’ permanent policy.
I don’t know if 99% of the people agree with this last statement, but I sure do.