The Occupy Jacksonville protest was held during a Northeaster with 35 to 40 mile per hour wind gusts and bands of rain, but the weather didn’t seem to affect the turnout or the commitment from those who attended. And it was hard to find a misspelled sign in the bunch.
Pictures are from the WJXT web site.
FOX News is having a poll. You know what to do! (Hint: Vote early and often)
Do ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protests Represent Your Views of the Economy?
Update: The option, “Yes. These folks are right about corporate greed and what’s happening to the little guy” has pulled out ahead with 63.73% of the vote!
When the #OccupyWallStreet protestors get tired of the financial district, they can always hoof it over to Madison Avenue, where in one of life’s little ironies, Advertising Week is kicking off.
Even as runaway greed is lambasted on Wall Street, festering consumerism is encouraged at the eighth annual seminar/festival/networking event for more than 70,000 advertising professionals and major clients.
As in every past year, multiculturalism in advertising will be applauded yet rarely utilized. One workshop entitled, “Where Are All the Black People?” shows that at ad agencies, things haven’t changed very much since the days of Mad Men. The biggest difference, of course, is that the early Madison Avenue types didn’t have to sit through endless discussion groups about social media “solutions.”
As the #OccupyWallStreet folks choke on tear gas and wave signs about bailouts and being in the 99 percent, ad industry types, who facilitate the consumer desire that lines Wall Street pockets, will be entertained by Andrea Mitchell and Brian Williams of NBC News, along with Steve Harvey, Jennifer Hudson, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Justin Timberlake.
The futility of the entire situation might have been unwittingly captured in this tweet from @KYColChad:
Writing in Roll Call, Stan Collender, author of “The Guide to the Federal Budget,” calls out Republicans in Congress for rebooting their threat to shut down the federal government this fall by reopening the debate over the 2012 budget.
This move is especially irksome, says Collender, because the “House, Senate and White House all agreed to the spending level for fiscal 2012 when the president signed the Budget Control Act on Aug. 2, almost two months before the fiscal year starts.”
Rebooting shutdown threats now would appear to be political suicide. A spate of polls has found Congress’ approval ratings at all-time lows. For example, at the end of August, Rasmussen, which is notoriously in the bag for the GOP, just 6 percent of voters said Congress was doing a “good” or “excellent” job. (Five percent said “good.” Just 1 percent said “excellent”). Two-thirds said Congress was doing a “poor” job.
Nonetheless, says Collender, Republicans will be proposing a short-term continuing resolution, or CR, for the fall:
Democrats are pushing back on the Republican spin that raising taxes on the wealthy is “class warfare,” noting that, under the sway of the tea party, Republicans have been waging war on the middle class and poor, particularly on services for children and families, since they took control of the House in January:
Ryan Nickel, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee’s Minority Staff, sent an email to Democratic press secretaries on Monday calling attention to dramatic cuts that Republicans have proposed to programs benefiting low- and middle-income Americans: “Are GOP cuts to WIC [Women Infants and Children], Pell Grants, Meals-on-Wheels, Low-Income Legal Services & Head Start ‘Class Warfare’?”
Some of the GOP cuts highlighted in the email:
Earlier this summer, an annual report on wealth accumulation worldwide found that, despite the financial collapse of 2008, the ensuing Great Recession and the grindingly slow recovery we’re experiencing now, the number of millionaires in the United States has actually grown:
According to the annual World Wealth Report from Merill Lynch and Capgemini, the U.S. had 3.1 million millionaires in 2010, up from 2.86 million in 2009. The latest figure tops the pre-crisis peak of three million.
Merrill and Capgemini define millionaires as individuals with $1 million or more in investible assets, not including primary home, collectibles, consumables and consumer durables.
The wealth held by these millionaires also hit a record. North American millionaires had a combined wealth of $11.6 trillion, up from $10.7 trillion in 2009.
The number of Americans with $30 million is still slightly below the pre-crisis peak. In 2010 there were 40,000 North Americans with $30 million or more, up from 36,000 in 2009.
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
