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.
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10.You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
“Nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” Next time you hear someone say we need to tax the rich or something along that line remember these words.
A moral people does not conduct themselves by coveting the material goods of others.
The Occupiers’ complaints and demands are somewhat incoherent. Yet the one thing that seems to be consistent is complaints that the rich are making too much money at the expense of the middle class. I’m not a fan of the protest, since I think their ideology is misguided, but they do have some valid complaints. The one I agree with the most is the crony capitalism in Washington that is allowing rich people to get richer, not because of what they know, but who they know in Washington.
Al Gore is a prime example of this type of crony capitalism. He invests heavily in green energy companies, and then lobbies his friends in Washington to give those companies tax breaks and loans at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. Those breaks boost the stock price, allowing him to make money through his connections, whether or not the companies have sound business plans.
Al Gore is a target of the protests, both by the Occupiers and the Tea Party. He is a friend of neither.
Steve from Rockwood says:
“Why does a retired person need a seven figure portfolio? Did you earn it?”
While I agree that some CEO’s are overcompensated because shareholders have no real say in their pay, questioning a private citizen like you did is not only extremely rude, but it sounds like you want to confiscate his assets. I don’t hear anyone suggesting confiscating the enormous wealth of many pro athletes, or the Hollywood glitterati. Only buisnesses are demonized and targeted.
Coveting thy neighbor’s goods is immoral and tantamount to theft. It is that immorality that underlies and drives the “occupiers.” They all have enough to eat, they all have access to medical care, they all have cell phones, color TV’s, etc. But they are like ravenous hyenas when it comes to trying to steal the assets of private citizens.
DirkH says:
October 13, 2011 at 1:16 pm
“Matt, you don’t sound like a European; as a European would not have described the European democracies as socialist – ….”
======================================================
Dirk, I just wanted to say thanks. Its much better coming from people who live in the areas being spoken about.
Regarding The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
October 13, 2011 at 12:57 pm
“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.”
Jim I do not know where you read such garbage, but it is very false. Federal income tax rates run from 10% to 35%, state income tax rates run up to 8%, sales tax runs up to almost 9%, coorporate tax rates are some of the highest in the world.
Additional hidden taxes in fees are without end…
Food License Tax
Fuel permit tax
Gasoline Tax
Gift Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Local Income Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Payroll Taxes
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Road Toll Booth Taxes
Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
School Tax
Septic Permit Tax
Service Charge Taxes
Social Security Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax
Telephone usage charge tax
Toll Bridge Taxes
Toll Tunnel Taxes
Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
Trailer registration tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
The good news is that Americans only spend 7.6 billion hours each year doing their taxes. How’s that for a bargain?”
As our incomes continue to fall, the Government steps in to take more:
“The lowest bracket for the personal income tax is going to increase from 10 percent to 15 percent.
The next lowest bracket for the personal income tax is going to increase from 25 percent to 28 percent.
The 28 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 31 percent.
The 33 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 36 percent.
The 35 percent tax bracket is going to increase to 39.6 percent.
In 2011, the death tax is scheduled to return. So instead of paying zero percent, estates of $1 million or more are going to be taxed at a rate of 55 percent.
The capital gains tax is going to increase from 15 percent to 20 percent.
The tax on dividends is going to increase from 15 percent to 39.6 percent.
The “marriage penalty” is also scheduled to be reinstated in 2011. It is being estimated that the total cost of these tax increases to U.S. taxpayers will be $2.6 trillion through the year 2020.
According to an analysis by the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation the health care reform law will generate $409.2 billion in additional taxes by the year 2019.
Here are a few taxes that Americans already pay:
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
Capital Gains Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Court Fines (indirect taxes)
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel permit tax
Gasoline Tax
Gift Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Local Income Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Payroll Taxes
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Road Toll Booth Taxes
Road Usage Taxes (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
School Tax
Septic Permit Tax
Service Charge Taxes
Social Security Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal service fee tax
Telephone federal, state and local surcharge taxes
Telephone minimum usage surcharge tax
Telephone recurring and non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax
Telephone usage charge tax
Toll Bridge Taxes
Toll Tunnel Taxes
Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
Trailer registration tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
I dare say he would change his tune if the rabble showed up outside his door. After all, he is a rich guy with a zinc/germanium mine and 3 residences. Kinda qualifies him in my book as one of the rich guys that Warren is always complaining about. The morals of a hyena and the brains of a sea squirt after it has found its rock.
@David, it was plain taxing to read your list.
“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.”
I question this. Does social cooperation work on a large scale or does social cooperation get co-opted by psychopaths into large and oppressive tyrannies, like every time its been tried before?
“The way it should be” is a utopianism that most people as they get older, know instinctively that it leads to narrower and narrower freedoms in the name of “the common good”.
And I speak as a classical liberal, not a conservative or a libertarian.
Occupy Wall Street will die when the first snows come, or the people of New York have had enough of the garbage left by the demonstrators – whichever comes first. If there’s ever an opportunity to fumble a chance to reform Wall Street then OWS is it. It could make Wall Street’s shysters into victims when they least deserve it.
Its amazing that Al Gore has waited this long to give OWS his political kiss-of-death, but maybe he fancied a break from counting his money.
If I worked on Wall Street I’d be handing out coffee and doughnuts to as many demonstrators as possible. The longer they are there, the less likely that the US Government will impose reform on the financial industry.
On Al’s blog there’s this little tidbit..
“… Aspen Skiing Co. will feel the impacts of climate change directly; a lack of snow affects the entire $66 billion-per-year industry that depends on skiers and other winter sports enthusiasts for financial survival.”
….Looking a little closer at Aspen Skiing, we stumble on this from Business Week under Little Green Lies:
“..Schendler grits his teeth over the failure of modest proposals, such as his plan last year to refurbish one of the resort’s oldest lodges to use less energy. He estimated the $100,000 project would have paid for itself in seven years through lower utility bills. But the money went for new ski lifts, snowmobiles, and other conventional purchases. “The availability of capital is not infinite,” says Donald Schuster, vice-president for real estate.
Beaten back frequently, the environmental executive concedes that he made a mistake last year when he pushed the resort to make audacious green claims based on the purchase of “renewable energy credits.” RECs are a type of financial arrangement that companies increasingly use to justify assertions that they have reduced their net contribution to global warming. But the most commonly used RECs, which are supposed to result in a third party’s developing pollution-free power, turn out to be highly dubious (BW—Mar. 26). Aspen Skiing relied on RECs in declaring it had “offset 100% of our electricity use.” Schendler now concedes the boast was empty…”
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056001.htm
I’m betting Gore gets free lift tickets.
Absolutely mystified. I think Gore’s barking mad when it comes to global warming, but I see nothing wrong with the rest of what he’s written above. The middle-class is getting screwed, and Washington has been bought and paid for by lobbyists. That includes both parties…Obama proposes a jobs plan that most economists agree would help, and the obstructionist Republicans who would rather burn our once proud country to the ground than do anything that might help him politically vote “NO.”
There should be protests in the streets. Something must change or we’re done for as an economic powerhouse…
My First thought is HYPOCRITE!
Al Gore supports OWS while at the EXACT SAME TIME the company he is President of (New Forest) PAYS an Africa government to toss people off their land and burn down their houses. GRRRRrrrrrr.
The whole They had to burn the village to save it from global warming makes me so angry especially when he has the GALL to try to paint himself as concerned with the poor. How the heck anyone can ever support this man especially after he is directly responsible for burning a child to death is completely beyond me.
I really would like to see that guy up on charges of conspiracy to commit manslaughter or what ever.
RE: Al Gore supports “occupy”
Why am I NOT surprised?
Take a look at the groups supporting a SF March in support of Occupy Wall Street. There is an easy to spot pattern to these groups:
http://occupywallst.org/article/occupywallstreet-union-march-foley-square-wall-str/
Don’t you mean “Wreckers”, the ones who are Counter-Revolutionaries and won’t give their all to the Commune? That’s what Stalin called them (us).
As for
Har-Ho-De-Har! Those most successful societies are on one of the steepest slipperiest slopes to Hades you’ve ever witnessed. I suggest you move there for a first-hand look-in and a share of the fun.
Hi Smokey – I get what you say about coveting (although I have no religion myself). However, we are WAY beyond covetousness. We are talking about people who have made billions off of the backs of all of us through corruption, plain and simple. Fabulous and uneeded wealth. It is beyond what is reasonable for a man to earn, or whether others are jealous. It is now a matter of urgent concern for people all over the world, not least those in developing countries held in the grip of poverty by policies such as the EU Common Agricultural Policy, etc. etc.
Our banking system is a perfect example. We, and our children and grandchildren, are now in hock to the banks for decades to come. The men and women who sit at the top of that pyramid are still and wil remain fabulously wealthy. Their profits are private, their losses are socialised. It is theft, pure and simple, as is recent US and UK QE.
At the same time we have a political elite made up essentially of parasitic suited millionaires who here at home, in the US, and particularly in the EU live a life of luxury whilst enforcing a democratic deficit that grows day by day and at the same time appear now to do very well indeed ot of public office. How did Blair, or Mandelson or Kinnock become so wealthy? How did that happen? DId Thatcher or Wilson or Major or Callaghan or Heath end their political careers so obviously rolling in money? Whatever we think of them all they were public servants first and foremost – they did not end their political lives as millionaires – nowadays almost all politicians do.
We all have our memories of politicians of the late 20th century that we disagreed with. Thatcher, Wilson, Carter, Reagan. But nothing since the war of independence in your wonderful country comes close to what we are enduring today. It is amazing how history repeats itself, but we are at that point, in my view. We actually do, all of us – the US, the UK, Australia, the EU, etc., live in a world where we have taxation without representation. You, our good and faithful friends in the US, have been there before and you remember what happened.
pokerguy says:
October 13, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Obama proposes a jobs plan that most economists agree would help
====================================================
Then why has he sat on it for the past three years?
Smokey says:
October 13, 2011 at 1:42 pm
“Coveting thy neighbor’s goods is immoral and tantamount to theft. It is that immorality that underlies and drives the “occupiers.” They all have enough to eat, they all have access to medical care, they all have cell phones, color TV’s, etc. But they are like ravenous hyenas when it comes to trying to steal the assets of private citizens.”
=================================================================
This is how we know the majority of the people there are disingenuous. If they really cared about the corruption and the governments complicity and facilitation of obscene personal wealth, then they would have been marching with the TEA party in protest of the bailouts and political payback of the stimulus packages. Where were they? My guess would be in mom’s basement waiting for marching orders.
Has any of them even spoken about this?
As to the posit that it is neither left or right………… from a post I made the other day.
Karen Livecchia, 49, agreed. “For now, it’s a lot like the Internet — leaderless, spaceless,” she said as she collected signatures at the march, spurred to action by an email from the liberal group MoveOn.org. “It’s hard to tell what it will lead to. But I’m not concerned that we don’t have specific demands — that will come.“
If they truly are neither left nor right, then they should distance themselves from people such as our friend Karen.
You can read the rest of that here.
Ralph says:
October 13, 2011 at 11:46 am
…….If Al Gore wants poor people to have jobs, he should be campaigning for import duties and controls.
____________________________________________________
You can say that again!
Also get us out of the “Free Trade” agreements like NAFTA and WTO and while you are at it get rid of the idiotic Red Tape and bureaucrats whose only purpose is to strangle small business. (Big Business has the money to pay the bribes)
Gore refers to “the rich” as if he were an outsider, looking in.
“”””” 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.
You say you are “retired, with a portfolio of investments in the seven figures.” Perhaps the government should intervene because no one needs a seven figure portfolio. “””””
Well I’m not retired, and likely never will be with the charlatans currently pulling the strings. But I have read Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals.” So I’m fully aware of what Obimini and his fellow scoundrels are up to.
But I don’t worry about seven, eight or nine figure “salaries” either because I don’t invest in Companies; don’t know anyone who does either (cept Doug; whom I don’t know.).
Most people invest in market opportunities, and wouldn’t risk their life savings to any corporation or board of directors.
Look at Eastman Kodak; once one of the true golden companies (maybe still is); but the tide will come in and wash over them, if they don’t move their chair.
The OWS don’t upset me; leaves even more opportunities for MY kids; so I don’t have to chase off any other old worn out lions; their offspring will get chewed up by the jackals and hyenas.
I can see I have been right all along; intelligence is simply Mother Gaia’s latest gimmic for survival testing; and so far it doesn’t look like it has much of a future.
Matt Skaggs says:
“…the modern socialist democracies of Europe are the most successful societies that ever existed on this planet…”
============================================
Matt, what people fail to realize is that going socialist was a step up for those countries…..
Our country did not start out that way and going socialist would be a step down for us.
Almost everything the OWS people want involves taking other citizens money. They either think it should be stolen directly or funneled through the government first. The name isn’t original with me but I think it’s totally appropriate that the OWS change its name to THE TEAT PARTY! The only thing they’re good for is sucking on the government tit.
Jim G says:
October 13, 2011 at 1:05 pm
(In reply to : Tom in Florida says:October 13, 2011 at 12:25 pm)
“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.”
Sorry Jim, but cry me a river. If you do not like the game, do not play. It’s your money to invest where you want so it is your choice whether to go along or not. No one is holding a gun to your head to buy stock in companies you see as playing the game. Invest in something else or is your stock investment too good to let go? If so, then what are you bitching about?
On the same day Al Gore throws his weight behind the Occupy occupations, the Ayatollah in Iran did so as well.
In the Ayatollah’s words, the protests will bring down the capitalist system and the west.
Gore is keeping good company these days.
“”””” David says:
October 13, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Regarding The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
October 13, 2011 at 12:57 pm
“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.” “””””
Where can I find such a garden of eden to move to (from California).
Federal Income tax 35%
State income tax 11%
State sales tax (or import duty) 9 1/4%
Social security taxes 12%
Plus a gaggle of other taxes and fees, like unemployment tax.
And please don’t try telling me that I don’t pay these; or my employer pays them; or half of them. They are ALL paid on behalf of my service to my employer; and could ALL otherwise end up in my pay check. If I don’t work for an employer, NONE of these taxes get deducted from MY pay, and delivered with my blessing to some government or another.; so yes I DO pay them all.
Al Gore and Warren Buffet lament that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Are you kidding me? They aren’t the biggest hypocritical jokes on the planet today?
I guess they are trying to distract the cold hungry masses so that they will be spared when the masses rise up and roll out the guillotine.