Adult Onset Liberalism ( Advanced Stages)......

This is an editorial that was posted in the local paper. Here is where you can
take an inside look a a very troubled mind. My cohort "TheFuriousFrenchman" is 
preparing a response.. We ask what would you like to say to this moooonbat?


I urge that you read the following after removing any sharp objects from your reach.....

Forty-five years ago, Buffalo Springfield wrote a song, "For what it's worth" that could just as easily been written for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both speak to the injustice in our ordinary life. But Occupy Wall Street is a real protest movement unlike the tea party financed by the billionaire Koch brothers.

Occupy Wall Streeters don't show up with guns strapped to them like tea partiers did at events featuring politicians. Nor do they tell a crowd at a rally that "if ballots don't work, bullets will," as a radio host said at a rally for then-tea party candidate and now-Congressman Allen West of Florida. The tea party worked with an implied threat of violence that sets it apart from OWS. And before you yell, "James Hoffa," know that Fox News edited the tape to make it appear the labor leader was exhorting violence when he was talking about winning elections.

The tea party was fueled by a horrible Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, that allowed corporations to pour unlimited money into our elections. On the other hand, Occupy Wall Street started as a tiny movement that was even perceived by many progressives as a fringe movement.

What OWS is protesting is that the American Dream is just that. It has become unattainable for most Americans. No longer can a guy with a high school diploma find a good factory job, buy a home and pay for his kids to go to college. College itself is so expensive that all but the wealthy emerge with a mountain of debt as they enter the workforce, if they're lucky. The corporations are flush with a record amount of cash but are refusing to hire people.

Contrary to what conservatives think, OWS isn't opposed to capitalism or protesting rich people. Rather, OWS is against the corporate cronyism that dominates our economy. Wall Street plays too big a role in our lives. The buying and selling of pieces of paper to see who can get a bigger dividend is totally divorced from the company and the people that created the wealth you are buying and selling.

The larger role that Wall Street has played in the economy, the standard of living for the middle and lower class has declined. The Dow Jones never cracked 1,000 until the early '70s; now, it hovers around 11,000.

It wasn't like companies didn't make money prior to the failed experiment known as Reaganomics. The difference is that companies have squeezed larger profits by forcing employees to do more. Major corporations pad their profitability by firing workers while giving executives bonuses. Even when the company is run into the ground, like Home Depot, former CEO Bob Nardelli still walked away with a $200 million golden parachute.

Crony capitalism allows companies like Halliburton/KBR to get a separate $150 billion contract after overcharging taxpayers for as much as $1 billion on a previous contract. But that's not even the worst part, because company officials then were awarded more than $80 million in bonuses for completing the job under budget. Sounds ordinary, right? It's actually tragic, because Halliburton/KBR earned the bonus using shoddy materials and cheap, inexperienced Iraqi laborers who managed to electrocute 18 soldiers in the showers.

Occupy Wall Street would probably have never appeared in the public's consciousness if not for an unfortunately named New York City cop named "Tony Baloney" who courageously pepper-sprayed four peaceful female protesters. The video went viral, and the media that had ignored OWS since it started was suddenly covering the developing story. Media interest was starting to wane until the NYC cops managed to arrest 700 peaceful demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge.

By that point, the movement was starting to metastasize across the country with OWS protests taking place in more than 250 cities nationwide. At some point, though, OWS needs to declare victory and go home. The only way to make the corporations change is to take your money out of the big banks and instead put it in a credit union. I'm sure those six banks that control 60 percent of the Gross National Product of the United States will notice when people start investing their hard-earned money back into their local economy rather than feed the Wall Street beast.