Occupy Wall Street - Part 3

We need to be clear that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are addressing very serious issues concerning corporate influence over American public policy and America’s growing economic inequality.  The right has decided that the way to cut this movement off at the knees is to turn them into a joke.  “Conservative” commentators say the OWS folks are hippies, they are dirty, they will be gone when the first snow falls, they are backed by liberal fat cats (George Soros), they have sex in their sleeping bags, they play in drum circles & chant, etc.  The right hopes that by turning OWS members into a joke they will essentially diffuse the serious message they bring forward, it is a cowardly means of avoiding these very complex and critical issues.  The left should recognize this technique; they used it to attack the Tea Party, find the idiot with the placard of Obama made up as Hitler or dressed as an African bushman and paint them as racist.  This shit is easy; we are human and thus full of hypocrisy, illusions and inconsistencies.  Yes, I am sure that there are as many OWS protesters with (corporate) smart phones as there is social security and Medicare recipients railing in favor of small government in the Tea Party, but none of this necessarily invalidates or should invalidate the serious matters raised by both groups.   

The Tea Party missed the larger issue of our dangerous corporate crony capitalism that underpins our current “democracy.”  This situation has yielded our new American plutocracy.  This fact gets lost in their odd dialogue about socialism and big government.  The OWS protesters think that additional government regulation is the order of the day.  Any additional government regulation will be of the “Swiss cheese” variety.  Written by corporate lobbyist with holes big enough for the rats to crawl in and continue to eat, in this case the physician cannot heal itself.  Asking our government to legislate solutions to the problems OWS see will not work; it is like asking the fox to make the laws governing safety at the hen house.

At the end of the government cannot legislate economic equality, it can only ALLOW for economic equality by staying the fuck out of the way.  Allowing Americans, the businesses and institutions they create to be responsible for their own destinies, to stand and fall based on their own merits with no superfluous interventions from the government - that is (or should be) the American way. 

Occupy Wall Street – Part 2

On Bill Maher’s HBO program this past Friday he stated that the folks involved in Occupy Wall Street was “not against capitalism but against what capitalism has become.”   If you have a hard time grasping the concept of the dialectic, this should help – a statement that is both true and false at the same time.  Clearly the OWS protesters abhor capitalism, but Maher is correct that modern big business and Wall Street represents a complete corruption of free market capitalism.  No individual that respects the natural function of the free market can embrace big business in this county with its statutory dependence on the government.  Legislation like Dodd-Frank and government “investments” in private business are a mockery, lobbyists writing actual legislation and our tax code bloated with thousands on special interest tax breaks often written in for 1 specific company.  These are all things that OWS mentions in their various manifestos, but these are not an indictment of real free market capitalism but of the brazen crony capitalism that has overrun our country and threatens its very existence.

Sever years ago Ralph Nader commented that the only true capitalist in our country were the small business men and women because they were allowed to fail.  I have hundreds of small business clients in my practice and I can tell you that other than their families, employees, vendors and (hopefully) their customers nobody cares if they fail – THAT is free market capitalism, anything else is a sham.          

Occupy Wall Street

The new Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is sprung from exactly the same anger impulse as the Tea Party.  Both movements express the overarching feeling that the government is not working for the citizenry or the common good of America.  As the modern American plutocracy solidifies there is an odd brazenness about this governmental apathy (broken only briefly during the election cycle). 

While the Tea Party comes at this situation from a more conservative (small government) position the new Occupy Wall Street movement engages the problem from a more (pro-Government) progressive angle.  The underlying root of this problem is clearly the corrupting marriage of big business and big government, but the OWS participants do not grasp that the government is (at least) half of the problem.  The inequity that they rail against is not the isolated product of corporate greed but those corporations and giant Wall Street investment firms working in harmony with a big and intrusive government.   Politicians need massive amounts of money to run for office and the plutocrats who run these big businesses provide those funds and thus gain the legislative influence (you had a rather stark example of this yesterday as Barney Frank voiced his sympathy with the OWS movement as he headed out to a major fund raising dinner in New York at the house of Charles Myers, a banker at Evercore Partners).

The root of this problem is money; campaign reform is not going to happen, neither major party wants it, and the current Supreme Court is simply not going to allow it so the only solution is a smaller government.  You cannot fix this problem thru additional government intervention but only thru the removal of government from both the business and the personal life of its citizens, i.e. a libertarian model.  It is only thru the elimination of points of contact between business and government that you might start to ameliorate our current mess, if there are less points of contact than there is less opportunity for the corrupting complicity between big business and big government.    

Romney vs. Obama or where did we find that barrel!

America is apparently looking at a possible Presidential election choice of Mitt Romney vs. Barak Obama.  All I can think of is where we found the barrels from which bottoms we were able to scrape up these two guys.  Here we have a corporate democrat and a classic corporate republican, each possessing virtually NO discernable personal values, standards or ethics.  I guess on the other hand that is the point, perfect corporate stooges, guys who do not have any personal vision to get in the way of performing their duties to their corporate/special interest donors.  I mean, think of how problematic it would be if they actually cared about America, the constitution or its citizens – that could really get in the way of business as usual.

I implore republicans to pick either a real conservative, such as Ron Paul or at least someone interesting such as Herman Cain so the election might actually be about something (Michele Bachmann is correct when she says the republican party needs to nominate a real conservative, she has recognized that neither Romney and Perry are actually conservative).  It is already very clear that a 1^st Romney term and a 2^nd Obama term would be very similar.  Romney has already embraced a hand off approach to Medicare, he wants a large and archivist military with its associated foreign involvement and corporate welfare and has refused to address solutions for social security (any of this sounding familiar).  This means that the very serious subject of controlling government spending and deficit reduction is off the table (apparently) for both of these contenders.   

If republicans don’t make a bolder choice then Romney we will have an elections choice just like the one comedian Lewis Black spoke of during the Bush vs. Kerry race.  He said that you walked into the voting booth and there was to piles of shit…..     

Happy Columbus Day 2011!   

The Genius of Steve Jobs

As an accountant I have never been a user of Apple products, they were never designed for accounting/tax environment where PC’s and Windows dominate.  As a business man what most impressed me about Apple products was its user’s absolute compulsion to show me what their devices could do.  It was most apparent on iPhones but has continued unabated with iPads.  The subject would come up when interviewing clients on potential tax deductions for the year.  Even in tax season with its short appointment time’s clients simply HAD to show me their favorite cool app. 

The book editor/author that loved the app that recognized font names when you held the phone up to any typeface, or the recording studio owner who loved the app that could identify a recording (artist, song title, record label, etc) when the phone was put up to the speaker.  The studio owner made me pick the most obscure CD I had in the office so he could demonstrate (and, of course in both instances you were able to purchase said font or recording right from your phone).  I would joke when I interviewed clients that told me they had purchased an iPhone or iPad how folks HAD to show me something that the device could do in an attempt to circumvent the coming demonstration, but it was always to no avail.  The compulsion to show and demonstrate something the device was capable of was just too powerful! 

I can’t think of any other product made by any company that fosters such a compulsion, or a piece of technology that people feel so connected to and love (we PC/Windows users have always had a clear love/hate relationship with our technology, love it when it is working well, hate it when it isn’t - which happened regularly in the pre-Window’s 7 environment).  There are products I like that if you ASK me about them I will tell you what I like, but a product that I HAVE to tell you about and demonstrate whether you ask or not, that is the result of genius.  RIP Steve Jobs   

Tax Policy and the American Economy 2011

Nearly half of all American households, or 48.5% of the population, is receiving some type of government benefit, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report.  The figure reflects the amounts of assistance U.S. families were receiving last year, and it's the highest percentage ever. 

This is coupled with another alarming statistic (which I have written about often):  The Tax Policy Center (an independent organization that monitors tax policy) has reported that 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year.

Still, most of those households will be liable for payroll taxes; just 18.1% of households pay neither payroll nor federal income taxes, the Tax Policy Center said, as they comprise the nation's most needy and poorest households.

So there you have it in 2011, almost half of American citizens receive some form of government benefit and almost half pay no income taxes, most assuredly many of the same individuals populate both groups. 

This is not a conservative or liberal issue; this is a question about free and effective democracy.  You cannot have a properly functioning and engaged citizenry when this is the economic reality for almost half of the country.   

Will Rogers on politics and politicians

·       The Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt where money is concerned. It's only in the amount where the Republicans excel.

·       Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.

·       Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke, when it used to be vice versa.

·       A Republican moves slowly. They are what we call conservatives. A conservative is a man who has plenty of money and doesn't see any reason why he shouldn't always have plenty of money. A Democrat is a fellow who never had any, but doesn't see any reason why he shouldn't have some.

·       America has the best politicians money can buy. (my personal favorite!)

·       Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.
- Mark Twain in an Op-Ep in the New York Sunday Mercury 4/21/1867