All,
As it's clear my opinions are decidedly cast in an extrapolation of my general character by some (even some who agree with those opinions); it';s hard to say that I can offer new information that would be persuasive to the message originated in this thread, prompted by the information in the interview.
What I can say that is the as far as the negative reactions to my post(s), is that the very character of many of them highlights an aspect of a deeply held thesis of the class warfare sharpened in the last 25-30 years.
The wealthiest .05% have culturally bribed, inculcated, facilitated and honored the next wealthiest .95% to protect the glut of their wealth. It has been cast through entertainments, advertising, media stories, disposable consumerism, patriotism and so many labyrinth, complex methods (some of which may be the more serious subject addressed by Tom Paul and I in future engagements) that it can make your head spin.
These "Next.95%" are the Nottinghams, the Gisbournes, the helmeted dukes and coarse marauders who do Prince John's bidding. If they are provided their mutton, wenches, horse, helmet and hearth (in contemporary times, their ballgames, their internet, their HDTV and IPads) they will put out the eyes and tongues of other human beings with glee. If they do not, they will have their own eyes put out--somehow this ethos has been re-cast as capitalism, the free-market and the foundation of the American dream. Who controls that message and its byzantine products - not just liberals, not just conservatives, just the wealthiest .05%. In plantation times (and how much of today's wealth was retained and/or opportunized from the end of that ante-bellum culture) there was the Master, the Oveseer, the House N**** and the Field N***** . The next wealthiest .095%, the bourgeoise, come from the second and third categories. Our governmental and legal class comes from the first and second group
The preceding was a metaphor; a stylistic analogy. No humans were harmed in the making of it.
One example won't do, of course it is facile in its solitariness in the face of a complex issue, but anyone who watched 60 minutes last night about the fall of Lehman Bros in 2008 would find the unanswered question worthy of answer. How come there is this mountain of evidence that a fraud was perpetrated and not one prosecution tallied? How come Ernst and Young's top global accountant, who is on record as both REFUSING to sign off that the Repo 105 movements of $50 billion dollars as accurate accounting and said, in essence, "there's fraud here" on May 16, 2008...how come he --who occupied the same building as the SEC was not given immediate airing? This wasn't some guy in the mail room discovering a smoking gun, this was Lehman's top GLOBAL accounting contractor from one of the dozen most prestigious global accounting companies.
While I wouldn't even cast a wide net that equates all financial/corporate/inherited wealth with criminality (the same percentage of felons exist in the general populace as do in board rooms and country clubs) the problem is when they go off the rails, everyone suffers, the world comes down.
What penalty or sanction is great enough to justify what the act did, when they are in the possession of such wealth and therefore access to these levers. The Death Penalty? That's if (as is not happening in the Lehman case,)we can get the .95% imbedded in the SEC, the legal community and government to even prosecute. It still doesn't get the money back and the lubricant back that all of society relies on.
The Next .95 percenters: the small-business owners, floor traders; $200K salesman, managers, real-estate lawyers, PR puffs and Advertisers, car dealers, and so forth...the .o5% has gotten them to believe they are like them...when the difference from them to the .05% (of whom TEP is speaking) are a hundred times that of their difference to the 99%. The bourgeoisie never look up, they look down, teachers are bad, welfare collectors are bad, unions are bad, Bolsheviks all.
Living Well is the best revenge, I'm told and so what do you do with Bernie Madoff, Richard Fuld, Michael Milken, Enron, BP, the Exxon Valdez and the next 5000, multi-billion dollar/multi thousands of miscreants, all men and enterprises that enabled the men to live a good life free of burden - put them in jail for a number of years? Where are the American aristocrats handling this? No where to be found.
It is a Biblical murderer who answers: "I'm not my brother's keeper"
cheers
vk