> The studies showed pretty thoroughly that the Tea Party crowd was -- despite their claims about representing a broad demographic
> -- predominantly white, old, male Republicans.

Ok, whatever. You have your studies, I attended a few events. I saw a pretty good spread of ages, pretty balanced as to gender overall, even though our local spark plug was a lady which might skew things. Mostly Republican but also most were doing their first overtly political acts by attending. I know it was my first try at making a sign and from the looks of things I wasn't alone. The left has a lot more practice at protesting. Up until the Tea Party they might have been registered R but they weren't DOING things, donating money, organizing, etc. Do have to he honest and admit they were pretty monochomatic events, but I live in the South and besides, with blacks everywhere still 90+% behind Cadet Zero it probably isn't too suprising a lot of em aren't ready to grab signs denouncing him, his policies or his Party quite yet. On the other hand, before ya denounce the lot of us a racists I'd like to note a data point. I have been reasonably active in the past, though mostly the occasional donation, keeping up with stuff, etc. The Mrs. not so much. But she has become active now, first as a cable news junkie (FNS, CNN, CSPAN1/2), then books and guess where her first political donation went. Yup, she boarded the Cain Train a few months ago. Me, I'm more for Rick Santorum even though I realize he has little chance.

> This is a false dichotomy wrapped up in a non-sequitur.

No it isnt. You say money in politics is bribery and I point out that bribery is not a logical way to do things. Unless you are using the word in a way not found in a dictionary.

> The point is not to "empower the little people". It's to DISempower the "big people", who currently have a vastly disproportional influence.

And I say there is no practical way to do the one without also doing the other. Your hatred of the evil rich is so strong you would silence the weak in the false belief it would also silence the strong... when we BOTH know it wouldn't. Who is the fool?

> Firstly by requiring individuals to "speak" for themselves, and not have their "speech" co-opted by the leaders
> of a group who may not actually represent them.

What? You are against forced unionization or something? Ok, lets fix that. Get to the root of the problem instead of treating symptoms.

> Thirdly by restricting the maximum amount of "speech" anyone can have, and making that level within the grasp of basically everyone.

Scare quotes aside, sounds like you are 'this' close to admitting money == speech and are willing to limit it for your own 'higher' goals such that everyone still has a right to speak... so long as nobody can actually hear them or it actually does any good. Unless of course they simply use their wealth to BUY A TV NETWORK. OR A NEWSPAPER? I can't do that, certain other people can. Rich people.

So let me put you the question I was burning for Senator McCain to get close enough (don't think he ever came within two hours though) to me in '08 for me to ask:

"What part of Congress shall make NO law... is beyond your English comprehension skills?"

> This is a straw man. No-one said anything about seizing assets.

Oh really? I could have swore I saw this with your userid upthread:

> Tax receipts are down because taxation is focused too much on income rather than wealth. This is particularly relevant
> to taxing the rich, since they tend to have relatively (to their overall wealth) low incomes

Perhaps I read the wrong thing in it? Or perhaps you would like to revise and extend your remarks?

> I think wealth past a certain point is absurd and pointless and doesn't benefit anyone.

But you can't limit how much wealth someone can have. At best you can limit how much someone can own/earn HERE. So once someone hits max level here you are just saying they have to move to the expansion pack... called Hong Kong. Care to ponder what would have happened in the 20th Century if the the thousand richest Americans had bailed out when they made their first hundred million and rebased their empire in whatever country was most welcoming? If Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Oracle, Intel, Dell, etc. were all foreign headquartered corporations?

> Hoarding should be discouraged.

It isn't like the rich are like Smaug or Scrooge McDuck with huge piles of gold and gems they sleep on. They own productive assets and if they aren't managing them better than their competitors they soon find themselves with a lot fewer assets.

> Imagine the literacy rate if all public schools were closed? *shudder*

Lets us imagine. Imagine if half the US student body were graduating from Catholic or other religious or not for profit schools, the other half from for profit schools. And every student was in a school their parents thought was the best option based on whatever criteria they believed important. We just might be back at the top of the world literacy rankings again.

> That's $180B per year....which means we'd pay of the debt in something like uhhhhh....85 years (assuming no interest) ? *sigh*.

Exactly. There isn't enough money in the world to sustain the level of government spending currently happening. Not in the US, not in Europe. It is a worldwide problem.

There is exactly one way out of this if we are going to survive without a total collapse of civilization; we have to do two things and we have to do both of them before we go over the cliff.

1. Drastically cut government spending.

2. Drastically cut regulation. We have to jump start the economy and we can't cut taxes. If we raise taxes we will trigger the crash. I don't think we can cut enough spending in time to save ourselves honestly, but there really ain't a chance of cutting enough to balance the budget AND do a drastic tax cut so regulation it is if we want to change the game. Revenue neutral tax simplification could also have a big stimulative boost, depends how it is done.

Then 3. Pray to whatever deity you believe in that the capitalists seize the opportunity and run with it bigtime. Wealth creation on a scale unseen in a long time. New industries. Biotech perhaps? Something that can double GDP in a decade.

We are in a lot of trouble but there aren't any problems YET we couldn't claw ourselves out of if GDP doubled. Just inflating the currency would solve the debt problem but that solution would be worse than the problem. Growth on the other hand would be real wealth.

To fix things longterm we still have a lot of problems that just growing the economy can't fix, but it would buy us some time. We would still have a country in a decade where we could still be arguing about problems like fixing the schools.

Aw crap, second reply because I forgot this one....

> With approximately 3 million US millionaires, that's 3,000,000 * $1,000,000 * .01 = $30 Billion.

Yup, and you end up with a rounding error on a deficit the size of ours. The rich look like they have a lot of money, and they do. But there just ain't enough of em to pay off a deficit this big. You want to tax your way out and the middle class is screwed because that is where the real money is to be found. Seize every dollar of Bill Gate's stash and you can fund the deficit for a few days. And then what, that wealth is destroyed. Seize and sell off Microsoft itself and you could fund the deficit for a little longer. But then what, now you have a big sucking hole in the economy, the whole Seattle economy is a smoking hole in the ground consuming government transfer payments instead of full of taxpayers and what do you do for an encore?

The rich are an asset. Yes you can mine them but ya can't run em off or totally demoralize em or the economy dies. It is a great thing when somebody gets rich. Everyone around is a little richer when it happens so I'd prefer it happen here instead of Hong Kong.

* tax loopholes - i get the whole global argument, but this [reuters.com] is ridiculous.

Yes they play games. That is why I'm not objecting to flattening the tax base so long as we flatten to a lower level and remain revenue neutral on a static scored basis. In a real world dynamic model that would almost certainly mean more revenue to the government and I can live with that. But don't allow cherry picked numbers to enrage you. Remember that a handful of corporations, those making $250M or more, still fork over 75.4% of the corporate taxes collected (2009 figure) so it isn't like they are dodging their duty and small mom and pop outfits are paying the bill. Same for personal income tax, the hated 1% paid 38% (2008 fixgure) of the income taxes collected.

I will now pose a question I always ask when I find a semi sane person of the left. Define 'fair share'. What percentage of the product of a person's labor is the State entitled to? I say it crosses the line to slavery way before we hit the magic 50-50 split, where do you draw the line?

> Having an educated populace is an incredible privilege. Uneducated people are *such* a drag.

Agreed. Which is why I want the government schools razed. Take a look around, how many educated folk do YOU see lately? I have a book on relativity by Einstein on my bookshelf. In the introduction he asserts that he wrote it for a general audience, anyone qualified to matriculate into a university should be able to understand it he says. What say you, would the average college entrant of today at your 'prestigious college' have a prayer of understanding general relativity? Hell, McDonalds can't find people who can make change or even work a register... after they bought special keyboards with pictures of the menu items on the keys. The guy at the DMV probably IS a total idiot. Something has to change and doing the same failed things, only once more with feeling, isn't the answer.

> I'm a member of the 1% and I damn well support the OWS movement because this country needs fixing for all 100% of us
> and they are the only people even trying to talk about it.

Well since one of the few demands that seem to be consistent with the OWS crowd is that the wealth of the 1% needs to be redistributed, and seeing as you are part of the 1% and agree with them.... why haven''t you divested your ill gotten gains yet? I'm not going to wait for an answer because I already know it. Socialists don't believe in charity, they believe in the government being generous with someone ELSE's money.

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."

It is old, but it is still a good idea.

> Money is bribery

This is a popular notion but it completely mistakes cause and effect. While some outright bribery does occur, the vast majority of political giving is exactly the opposite. Think it through. Which is more likely to be successful, bribing someone who disagrees with your position to change their vote (and piss off their previous supporters) or dumping money into electing someone who already agrees with your philosophy?

> About the only fair and reasonable way one could go with the "money == speech" thing is if only individuals (not corporations, unions, or other collectives) could donate

Oh right. That will empower the little people. NOT. The two groups I cites, the NRA and AARP, are the two most feared outfits on the hill. You might call it undue influence but their millions of members call it the power of numbers. Granny donating $50 to a congressional campaign doesn't mean jack, AARP on the other hand commands everyone's attention.

> Tax receipts are down because taxation is focused too much on income rather than wealth.

As it should be. Funding ongoing expenses of the government by seizing assets is a suicidal short term solution. Most of the assets held by the rich are not in the form of mansions and sports cars, they are stocks, bonds, farms, real estate, factories, productive things. And even if the government seized that stuff, unless we are going full socialism and seizing the means of production, etc. they would just be selling it back to different rich people and raking off a percentage. And more importantly, at the first whiff of a movement to go something that crazy most of the nation's liquid wealth would disappear overnight. Rich folks have the luxury of mobility, ain't a nation on the planet will turn away a political refugee with a sack of cash and a few dozen priceless works of art in their luggage. That 'plastic surgeon to the stars' can do just find in the Bahamas, his clients won't mind the flight. Look in your history books, happened lots of times and would happen again. You can tax income and they holler, but you start on the accumulated wealth and the smart people (who tend to be wealth creators) bail because they know how that story ends.

> Ohio was watershed type rejection of the GOP laws.

Not exactly. My takeaway was to not to try and do too much at once. In WI Walker wisely excluded police and fire from the union busting. Most folks didn't seem to mind faceless government drones and incompetent overpaid teachers getting thwacked but most folks, especially Republicans, like the cops and firemen. Of course their insane pensions are doing about as much to bankrupt cities as the other government unions but apparently that is too much to ask voters to do all at once. So divide and conquer. First peel off the teachers and drones and in a few years as the pension crisis is a little more visible take on the police & firemen... by then the rest will be mostly non-union so they won't all be united in opposition with zillions in cash on hand to buy ads so with some luck they will make concessions instead of street theater.

> Except Hillary was _exactly_ that stupid..

Not exactly. The Clintons did try a national heath care scheme about as ambitious but when they got their asses handed to them in '94 made a smart pivot to the center and even with some major scandals erupting around them handily won reelection in '96.... with the assistance (again) of Ross Perot that is. Obama, not so pivoty, not so smart, probably not so reelected in '12. Even though Obama has managed to keep his splooge off his interns, the economy is going to be more important than that detail.

> there are specific demands that sound entirely reasonable

Not exactly. Lemme take em one at a time:

* close tax loopholes for corporations

So long as we pair it with a general lowering of rates I'm for it. The rest of the world has been lowering corporate rates to attract em. Just jacking their rates will only force more offshore. We live in a global economy ya know.

> * investigate bankers responsible for bank collapse and either criminally prosecute those who committed fraud or enact reasonable
> legislation like the Dodd-Frank act [wikipedia.org] which will mitigate business practices that lead to unstable markets.

I'm ok with that if you will ALSO investigate the politicians who did as much as or more. Such as Dodd and Frank, along with Chuckie and Nancy. And a certain Acorn lawyer that made it to the bigtime. And for balance who can forget Shrubbie pushing the 'affordable housing for all' line as well. For that matter I think a certain lizard who dreams of greater things was just fine with it. News flash, when you put people who can't afford a house into one eventually something bad will happen. The banks who were regulated into doing it tried to pass the hot potato and Freddie and Fannie were more than willing to take it. The CDS business was all about trying to hide the salami, nobody wanted to be holding the stuff when it all went Foom!

* reduce defense spending, especially no-bid contracts like those given to Halliburton

I think we can all agree we could find some savings in the Pentagon budget but you guys have to get over Halliburton and Darth Cheney. Most of the stuff Halliburton got contracted to do was stuff there aren't too many other entities can do.

* increase spending on education

Why piss away even more borrowed money chasing the bad we are already wasting? None of the problems in education can be solved with money.

Step One, short term: End tenure. Tenure is a system to promote diversity of opinion in an academic/research setting. K-12 teachers are expected to teach a government blessed corpus, not create new knowledge so tenure is nothing but a sop to the unions which makes it impossible to fire incompetent or burned out teachers.

Step Two, longer term: End the government monopoly on education. If we as a society believe in universal education that is a goal that can best be achieved through vouchers.

* reduce the influence of money on elections and the influence of lobbyists on policy

No. Money == Speech. You don't have to like it to realize you can't avoid it, especially in the current environment. Make the government too weak to need lobbying and the congressional seats not worth spending millions to obtain. I like the idea of citizens pooling their money and petitioning their government for redress. What else is something like the NRA or AARP? And if they can petition why can't the American Petroleum Association?

* increase taxes on wealthy individuals in order to pay down federal debt

Nice simplistic notion. Too bad it won't work. First there just ain't enough wealth amongst the wealthy, assuming they would sit still and allow a life's work to be pissed away. See above about that global economy thing. Remember the rich have a lot of money, but there is a very finite number of them. If you want to raise serious scratch you have to move down and tax the shit of the middle class. And anyway, in case you haven't been watching the news, there is a bit of a recession on right now. Tax receipts are down because we already depend on the rich for the vast majority of the taxes and they ain't doing too well at the moment. Raise the rates and history tells us receipts would probably go down more... along with employment as the rich moved to survival and flight to preserve capital instead of worrying about earnings.

You guys are always pissing and moaning about income inequality. I understand it is a blessing. Why? Because nobody is actually falling behind (once you correct for social factors) the rich getting richer is just a side effect of wealth creation, and that wealth doesn't tend to stay concentrated beyond the second generation of the creator and even before it spreads out from inheritence it tends to enrich everyone around. Remember that when compared to the world, the median income in the US falls in the top 1%. And pretty much every American who isn't a homeless crackhead is in the top 2% so look on the bright side dude!

Really. Take everyone's favorite example right now. Before Steve & Steve there was nothing. Now there is several hundred billion dollars of NEW wealth, much of which has already spread around and created hundreds of 1% folks, employed thousands of people, etc. Who cares if they got filthy rich in return? I certainly don't. The people of California shouldn't, when considering how much business and tax revenue has flowed into their state.

Where were they when Bush was running up the record defecit? Why did they wait until Obama was Prez to come out of the woodwork?

Interesting view of history you have there. Utterly wrong though. We were pissed off at Bush over the spending like a drunken sailor among other things. The country did the only thing it could, tossed the Republicans out of Congress in '06 then the President in '08. Then the spending went beyond drunken sailor territory into vocabulary failure. THAT was when the Tea Party started, when people figured out neither party was going to be responsible without some grass roots pressure. Any fool should know trying to make Democrats shrink the government is a fools errand so we are trying to work on the Republicans first. But if (cynics say when) that fails a third party will arise because we simply can't keep this spending up much longer and things that can't continue don't.

> they probably won't get it right the first time.

The Tea Party was mostly new to politics as well. They managed pretty well. Difference was most of them were older grown ups with a little real world experience instead of college students and hippies. The problem is more in what each group wants. The Tea Party (see all those Gasden Flags?) mostly wants the government to stop screwing things up and return to the jobs it was designed to do. The OWS people want to finish the job and go the rest of the way to a People's Republic.

> The Tea Party was bankrolled by billionaires and given nothing but positive press by certain news outlets.

Which is totally unlike OWS which was bankrolled by different billionaires and given nothing but positive press by every news outlet that wasn't Fox News until they body count got too high to ignore any longer. So even accepting your defective premise your point is?

> No, it isn't.

I think the original poster meant public campground, as in state and federal parks. And he is right, I have seen the signs myself.