So many of you still don't get it.

[mmonk]

But I understand. The money that controls the politics and information of a nation, controls it's mind. We've had a few moments of enlightenment through the predominance of darkness. We were blessed when we were plunged into worldwide depression in the late twenties with FDR. We also had one when the founders broke with Great Britain. But it's been sparse in between to be quite frank. I hold no illusions. A better life for my progeny as stands is very unlikely. They are now 24 and 30 respectively. And the wisdom of my old ass having lived through a lot of bad and good doesn't hold a candle to those that now control the message. But it doesn't mean I have to surrender. I have only one life. I will give it all for my children. As a voter who had power until a few years ago and that now has been taken away due to gerrymandering, I'm only left with the pen (keyboard) and the street. I have nothing to lose but all to gain for my children. That's enough to die fighting for. I ain't going to go along with wrong ideology for political victories or appearances that took hope away from my family. I apologize for insistence but not my determination.


Peace to you.

[daleanime]

1. Hell yes....

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. I understand what you're saying here in your OP, but...

I don't see your ultimate point.

What are you getting at? What don't we understand?

[hifiguy]

3. Better to die on one's feet

than to live on one's knees licking the boots of the corporatists, Turd Wayers and their oligarch puppetmasters/owners.

[jwirr]

14. Yes. Because our children's freedom is at stake here.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

20. +1 n/t

[seveneyes]

4. No turning away

[olddots]

5. this depression we suffer was manufactured by the greedy

N.T.

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. .

We get it.

When we decided to stop watching TV 7 years ago, the clarity increased exponentially. Once you stop the ads, turn off the propaganda - it does clarify. It isn't really a very pretty thing to behold...but it's a hell of a lot better than just being played.

[RufusTFirefly]

11. Yes! As someone who has also unplugged...

... it makes the unwitting victims of propaganda much easier to recognize.

[haikugal]

7. ..

YES!!!!

[hootinholler]

8. Fear is the mind-killer... n/t

[WillyT]

9. + 1,000,000,000... What You Said !!!

[blue neen]

10. Honestly, you really don't have any idea what I do or do not get.

.

[Octafish]

12. Many can't afford to get it.

Michael Froman and the revolving door

By Felix Salmon December 11, 2009

Michael Froman is one of those behind-the-scenes technocrats who never quite makes it into full public view. But according to Matt Taibbi, he’s one of the most egregious examples — up there with Bob Rubin, literally — we’ve yet seen of the way the revolving door works between business and government generally, and between Citigroup and Treasury in particular.

I’m not sure how much of this information is new, but a lot of it was new to me, especially the bit about Froman “leading the search for the president’s new economic team” — while he was still pulling down a multi-million-dollar salary at Citigroup, no less. Apologies for quoting at length:

Leading the search for the president’s new economic team was his close friend and Harvard Law classmate Michael Froman, a high-ranking executive at Citigroup. During the campaign, Froman had emerged as one of Obama’s biggest fundraisers, bundling $200,000 in contributions and introducing the candidate to a host of heavy hitters — chief among them his mentor Bob Rubin, the former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton. Froman had served as chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, and had followed his boss when Rubin left the Clinton administration to serve as a senior counselor to Citigroup (a massive new financial conglomerate created by deregulatory moves pushed through by Rubin himself).

Incredibly, Froman did not resign from the bank when he went to work for Obama: He remained in the employ of Citigroup for two more months, even as he helped appoint the very people who would shape the future of his own firm. And to help him pick Obama’s economic team, Froman brought in none other than Jamie Rubin, a former Clinton diplomat who happens to be Bob Rubin’s son. At the time, Jamie’s dad was still earning roughly $15 million a year working for Citigroup, which was in the midst of a collapse brought on in part because Rubin had pushed the bank to invest heavily in mortgage-backed CDOs and other risky instruments…

On November 23rd, 2008, a deal is announced in which the government will bail out Rubin’s messes at Citigroup with a massive buffet of taxpayer-funded cash and guarantees… No Citi executives are replaced, and few restrictions are placed on their compensation. It’s the sweetheart deal of the century, putting generations of working-stiff taxpayers on the hook to pay off Bob Rubin’s fuck-up-rich tenure at Citi. “If you had any doubts at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street,” former labor secretary Robert Reich declares when the bailout is announced, “your doubts should be laid to rest.”

It is bad enough that one of Bob Rubin’s former protégés from the Clinton years, the New York Fed chief Geithner, is intimately involved in the negotiations, which unsurprisingly leave the Federal Reserve massively exposed to future Citi losses. But the real stunner comes only hours after the bailout deal is struck, when the Obama transition team makes a cheerful announcement: Timothy Geithner is going to be Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary!

Geithner, in other words, is hired to head the U.S. Treasury by an executive from Citigroup — Michael Froman — before the ink is even dry on a massive government giveaway to Citigroup that Geithner himself was instrumental in delivering. In the annals of brazen political swindles, this one has to go in the all-time Fuck-the-Optics Hall of Fame.

Wall Street loved the Citi bailout and the Geithner nomination so much that the Dow immediately posted its biggest two-day jump since 1987, rising 11.8 percent. Citi shares jumped 58 percent in a single day, and JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley soared more than 20 percent, as Wall Street embraced the news that the government’s bailout generosity would not die with George W. Bush and Hank Paulson.

How much influence did Froman have over the appointment of Geithner as Treasury secretary? Geithner, who wanted to become Treasury secretary and who as New York Fed president was a central (if not the central) figure in orchestrating the massive Citigroup bailout just after the election, knew what Froman’s job was in the Obama transition team, and knew that Froman was a senior executive at Citigroup.

CONTINUED...

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/12/11/michael-froman-and-the-revolving-door/

[Indepatriot]

13. Apologize for nothing Mmonk. You speak with wisdom and compassion and MANY of us do indeed

understand. I have two very young kids who will be here long after I'm gone and they are the reason I'm fighting for a chance at a society that values us a citizens, not as consumers.

We can do this!

To the other DUers who've unplugged, I'm going on 12 years without the Boob Tube and It ROCKS. It's like getting an extra 2-3 hours of living in every day. KILL YOUR TELEVISION and save your life.

[greytdemocrat]

15. Cosmic...

[Snobblevitch]

16. If people "...still don't get it."

Your OP is doing nothing to help anyone to "get it".

[passiveporcupine]

17. A few of us discovered the world of internet information and entertainment

and stopped the TV propaganda and garbage shows.

Not enough did. Those that are still glued to their TV, are probably not very knowledgeable, and accept what passes for news and information on TV and the radio. They are also very willing to believe the lies if it means they can blame someone else for all their problems (like illegals, imagined welfare queens, muslims, and gays), instead of realizing that they have given up their responsibility for staying tuned in and active in the way this country and democracy works (or doesn't). They vote because they think they are engaged, but they don't really understand a lot of what they vote for. They just follow the herd. And, that is intentional, and driven by the wealthy elite.

For most of these people, unfortunately, it will take the bread lines and joblessness and insecurity of another great depression to finally wake them up. They may not like the way things are going, but they aren't in enough personal pain yet. And it will take a lot longer to get to that state of depression, because we do have safety nets in place now, that were not in place the first time. None of us lived through that, except maybe as children, and we just don't know how hard it was. Until then, or unless the younger generations and those of us who are awake and aware can bring about significant change, they will just watch as everything spirals down the drain, including our planet.

Bernie is one of the few who are trying to wake people up. And as you all know, he's been at it for many years; and yet it's taken this last recession to finally start waking up enough people that there is actually a conversation going on now...still, not enough people are engaged in it yet.

I don't know what it will take. I am glad I'm getting old. I don't want to stick around too much longer to see how things go. I have no children or husband, so I only need to outlive my furbabies. I've only got to hang in here for about ten more years. I do feel badly for my younger relatives. We are leaving them in quite a mess.

[brooklynite]

18. You're right...I read your OP and I don't get it.

[Octafish]

19. What Louis Armstrong said.

Question: "What's jazz after all?"

Answer: "Man, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."