Romney: Occupy Wall Street 'wrong way to go'

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Democrats don't need to become radicalized to doom the country. They have already proven themselves adept at doing so.

I have to call you out on this one. There is no denial that the current economic crisis was preceded by 6 years of complete Republican Party control. If you are going to make a statement like that, be fair about it.

So? The deregulation occured on a bipartisan basis in the 1990's with a Democratic President at the helm. Most of it passed 90-10 or so. The biggest change to regulation under Bush was Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002/2003ish to respond to Enron and Worldcom. Bush also wanted higher standards on Fanny and Freddie in 2003, 2005 and again in 2008. He was blocked by a bipartisan group of Senators led by Chris Dodd and I beleive John Kerry until it was too late, 2008. Obama may even have helped block it in 2005, but I would need to look at that.  In what world is the DNC talking points about Bush being an ideologically driven deregulator, accurate? He was very pragmatic on it. 

And just to call you on your facts, the Democrats had the Senate from 2001-2003 because of Jim Jeffords. The Republicans only had complete control for four years from 2003-2007.

[DrScholl]

So? The deregulation occurred on a bipartisan basis in the 1990's with a Democratic President at the helm. Most of it passed 90-10 or so. The biggest change to regulation under Bush was Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002/2003ish to respond to Enron and Worldcom. Bush also wanted higher standards on Fanny and Freddie in 2003, 2005 and again in 2008. He was blocked by a bipartisan group of Senators led by Chris Dodd and I believe John Kerry until it was too late, 2008. Obama may even have helped block it in 2005, but I would need to look at that.  In what world is the DNC talking points about Bush being an ideologically driven deregulator, accurate? He was very pragmatic on it.  

And just to call you on your facts, the Democrats had the Senate from 2001-2003 because of Jim Jeffords. The Republicans only had complete control for four years from 2003-2007.

And there's the point, you can't unilaterally blame Democrats for problems. Republicans have had a seat at the table for most of the past couple of decades, they have to take some responsibility. It's not one sided.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Coincidental politics is also an annoyance and detriment to democracy, because it contributes ignorance of events and results of policies.

Lets take ole Bill for example. Clinton gets credit for creating more jobs then he otherwise would because he didn't have a recession in any of the 8 years he was in office thanks to the tech bubble pushing the next one till the year after he left. He didn't really engaged in any policies that impacted the economy, except to create an environment of stability politically speaking by compromising with Republicans. His tax increases at the beginning helped balance the budget later on, once he had a GOP congress fighting for lower spending. But it is really a stretch to say that creating a surplus in 1997, had an impact on starting a boom in 1993/1994. The effect of removing such a deficit would have put miniscule downward pressure on inflation in the later years of the expansion but the net detriment of the tax hike in 1993 probably was greated then any benefit from reduced inflation in 1998 or 1999. He was just a lucky SOB timing wise, in terms of his legacy. There is no 1990's policies that one can adopt or return to, that will bring you a 1990's economy. The policies coming out of the Clinton years that had the most impact are the ones you tried to shoove off on the Republicans just now. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 1999 and the repeal of Glass Steagall in 1997. They certainly made a big splash in 2007. 

Now as far as Governing model, the 1990's are a perfect example of how to govern a country, save for the missed long term opportunities on energy, education and the like. The Bush strategy regarding regulation is actually probably the model that should be looked to. Deal with problems as they come up like he did by signing Sarbox and try to get ahead of future problems like he tried to do with Fannie and Freddie.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So? The deregulation occurred on a bipartisan basis in the 1990's with a Democratic President at the helm. Most of it passed 90-10 or so. The biggest change to regulation under Bush was Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002/2003ish to respond to Enron and Worldcom. Bush also wanted higher standards on Fanny and Freddie in 2003, 2005 and again in 2008. He was blocked by a bipartisan group of Senators led by Chris Dodd and I believe John Kerry until it was too late, 2008. Obama may even have helped block it in 2005, but I would need to look at that.  In what world is the DNC talking points about Bush being an ideologically driven deregulator, accurate? He was very pragmatic on it.  

And just to call you on your facts, the Democrats had the Senate from 2001-2003 because of Jim Jeffords. The Republicans only had complete control for four years from 2003-2007.

And there's the point, you can't unilaterally blame Democrats for problems. Republicans have had a seat at the table for most of the past couple of decades, they have to take some responsibility. It's not one sided.

lol. Nice fail with "But you are too..." routine. See the bolded word. Uni means one, bi means two. I would love to be enlightened how you extracted the word "unilateral" from "bipartisan".

Next time look for words like "bipartisan" in posts before you come back with a response in ignorance of what the post you are responding to said.

[DrScholl]

lol. Nice fail with "But you are too..." routine. See the bolded word. Uni means one, bi means two. I would love to be enlightened how you extracted the word "unilateral" from "bipartisan".

Next time look for words like "bipartisan" in posts before you come back with a response in ignorance of what the post you are responding to said.

Wow, let me explain it a bit easier. What I was saying was that you proved the point I was trying to make that you can't blame Democrats alone for economic issues. It wasn't an attempt to twist your post, but whatever.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

lol. Nice fail with "But you are too..." routine. See the bolded word. Uni means one, bi means two. I would love to be enlightened how you extracted the word "unilateral" from "bipartisan".

Next time look for words like "bipartisan" in posts before you come back with a response in ignorance of what the post you are responding to said.

Wow, let me explain it a bit easier. What I was saying was that you proved the point I was trying to make that you can't blame Democrats alone for economic issues. It wasn't an attempt to twist your post, but whatever.

The problem is you never had such a point to prove, as my statement had nothing to do with "Democrats alone causing the economic problems" which is ridiculous. It was about destroying the country. Which by picking someone as not ready for the job, and as unfit for the times as Obama, they have done a pretty damn good job of. 

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

What oh what are the protestors trying to tell us, what is their way out, and does it make the slightest bit of sense?  Perhaps we should start from there. What I see is a rather pathetic and cosseted group, generally middle class, stoned (no problem with that), and compared to the protestors in my day a zillion years ago, just amazingly inarticulate and spacey. They don't have any coherent line of chatter at all. They must see it sucks, and somehow think that bashing Wall Street some more, will somehow move the ball somewhere positive. I think not.

Sure the government when they bailed out the banks should have taken all the stock too. So Obama/Bush screwed up. Blame them!

So I understand where Mittens is coming from, and am not ashamed to have written what I have written, because that is what I believe.

Why do the protesters need to have a specific way out when that should be the job of technocrats, think tanks and policy makers in Washington D.C.? It is supposed to be their job to propose and push economic policy, what do you expect OWS protesters to know what the Volcker rule is and be well versed in what Dodd-Frank does? That's so inane it makes my brain hurt.

I'm not saying that the demonstrators shouldn't educate themselves and that progressive econ/finance majors shouldn't make an effort to hold teach-ins or distribute streamlined literature but come on, the world of finance is incredibly complex far more so than the Vietnam War was and to compare the two is ridiculous.

Wall Street certainly deserves to be ridiculed because they had the gall to cause a financial crisis, get a bailout and then throw a temper tantrum because a weak, watered down regulatory bill was passed and then proceed to whine about a proposed minor tax increase after this:


Some falsehoods: these protesters aren't middle class, get real! The ones that come from wealthier backgrounds are often college graduates who are underemployed or unemployed. The rest are legitimate poors, they're just the kind of "alt" poors who aren't glamorized by the media as being hardworking.

Pathetic, well I can agree with that somewhat. I can also agree that they should be focusing their efforts on more political goals as opposed to this "apolitical" BS that is incredibly counterproductive. Yeah, I'm sure that chanting slogans for a days will change everything. It might make a few Democrats in the Progressive Caucus give them the lip service that they've already been giving to left-wing causes for decades but what they need is a network of local, state and national organization to get involved in elections, attend town halls, conduct voter registration etc. Too bad that will never happen...

[anvi]

What oh what are the protestors trying to tell us, what is their way out, and does it make the slightest bit of sense?  Perhaps we should start from there...

Sure the government when they bailed out the banks should have taken all the stock too. So Obama/Bush screwed up. Blame them!

I think, and of course I could easily be wrong, since it's true the protestors don't have a coherent agenda, but I think their frustration stems from a feeling that government no longer defends the interests of the individuals that are struggling in a faltering economy, but instead defends at every turn the interests of corporations and Wall Street.  They don't know how to address it, but they think it's a fundamental problem that no one in government is sufficiently addressing, and in fact has no incentive to address given how moneyed interests drive the political process and how policies benefit the economy for economic players and not for them.  Are they going to get what they want by screaming at highrises?  No. But they're obviously not going to get what the want by staying submissively silent either.  I do agree with something jmf is implying, I think, in the sense that the TEA Party has a much smarter political organization; they protest, but they also have at least a clear agenda (lower taxes, smaller government, deficit reduction ect.) and they mobilize to get candidates elected.  Lefties are rarely that well organized, but they also are rarely as intellectually and politically homogeneous as the movements that gave rise to the TEA Party.   Incidentally, based on what I'm hearing, I think the protestors do blame Bush and Obama both; most are saying that, when it comes to economic policy that benefits business and not individuals, the two are practically the same person.  My point is that we're being very selective about whose anger we deem worthy of legitimacy here, and if our inclination is to just blow off people who are on the other side of the political divide, then we don't get to sing songs about "pitting Americans against Americans."  If Mittens wants to be the leader of the country and not just the captain of his own team, then he has to show those people in the streets the goods too.   

[Simfan34]

I maintain that these protests are composed of hipsters, college students, and ex-hippies, and I've not seen evidence to the contrary sans a few singular examples.

[Torie]

If Mittens can restore confidence, and get the economy moving again, it will all get better. What we are arguing about now are which prescriptions to use, assuming that there are any. That is what political debate is all about. I would like to believe something positive will happen after the next election, one way or the other. It clearly ain't happening before.

[anvi]

I maintain that these protests are composed of hipsters, college students, and ex-hippies, and I've not seen evidence to the contrary sans a few singular examples.

I was in St. Louis the other day, where Occupy protests have begun to be staged, and there were a fair number of teachers with doctoral and postdoctoral degrees out there who had lost jobs after one-year term contracts and are now unemployed, as well as some veterans and families that had recently lost their houses to foreclosure.  So, do these peopmle not matter in America anymore, or if economic circumstances have conspired to decimate their lives and they're having a hard time making it on their own, then to hell with them?  Call them hipsters and dope-addicts and social waste and get one with the business of austerity and reducing corporate taxes, right?   Make sure to plaster those messages on the campaign bus, they're real vote-getters.     

[pbrower2a]

I maintain that these protests are composed of hipsters, college students, and ex-hippies, and I've not seen evidence to the contrary sans a few singular examples.

You need to watch something other than FoX Newspeak Channel and listen to people other than Rush Limbaugh.

The college students? I understand. They have the most to lose in an economy that looks like that of a fascist dictatorship, a plantation society, or a resuscitation of a feudal order. Today's college students who are buying into the American Dream with a huge burden of debt fear that they may get the debt without the Dream.

Economic inequality in America is now as severe as it was in the late 1920s. The economic elites are on the brink of creating an economic order in which most people compete with each other to see who make the greatest sacrifices on behalf of elites that believe that they owe the rest of humanity nothing except the bounties of their own selfish indulgence. 

America solves that problem or it has a revolution or a civil war in its future -- and the opposing sides in a civil war might not be the gentlemanly types who faced off between 1861 and 1865. Our economic elites certainly aren't gentlemen.

[Simfan34]

I maintain that these protests are composed of hipsters, college students, and ex-hippies, and I've not seen evidence to the contrary sans a few singular examples.

I was in St. Louis the other day, where Occupy protests have begun to be staged, and there were a fair number of teachers with doctoral and postdoctoral degrees out there who had lost jobs after one-year term contracts and are now unemployed, as well as some veterans and families that had recently lost their houses to foreclosure.  So, do these peopmle not matter in America anymore, or if economic circumstances have conspired to decimate their lives and they're having a hard time making it on their own, then to hell with them?  Call them hipsters and dope-addicts and social waste and get one with the business of austerity and reducing corporate taxes, right?   Make sure to plaster those messages on the campaign bus, they're real vote-getters.   

And the rest of them? I don't deny that this movement had the potential to attract many. But at this point, it's composed of those who have already been radicalized. Perhaps it's movering fastert than I thought it would.

[Sam Spade]

If Mittens can restore confidence, and get the economy moving again, it will all get better. What we are arguing about now are which prescriptions to use, assuming that there are any. That is what political debate is all about. I would like to believe something positive will happen after the next election, one way or the other. It clearly ain't happening before.

Since neither Romney nor any of these other folks is going to "get the economy moving again" any time soon, where does that leave you? 

And if you think that Mitt can restore confidence outside of that occurring (or perhaps even with that occurring, but there's no need to discuss irrelevant hypos), well, lol...

[Politico]

Much of the "Occupy Wall Street" gang are the usual suspects: malcontents who think the world owes them a living, young adults of privilege who want to "be cool," and the economically illiterate (And, yes, I am sympathetic to the latter's concerns and struggles, but the second group needs to grow up and most people who fall into the first category are write-offs). Believe me, everybody on Wall Street and everybody who works for a corporation in America would like the same thing as everybody else in America: A return to normalcy. Unfortunately, we are not likely to see that with the continued inept leadership of the Obama Administration. They had their chance, their change, and their hope, but the results do not lie: the experiment failed miserably.

If you want four more years of malaise, if you want to be worse off four years from now than you are today, you know who to vote for. If you want a return to normalcy, vote for Mitt Romney. When it comes down to the choice between Romney and Obama, only Romney actually knows how to deal with tough situations, fix things and inspire confidence.

Romney: The Right Results

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

malcontents who think the world owes them a living, young adults of privilege who want to "be cool," and the economically illiterate

What an accurate description of the Tea Party!

[Politico]

malcontents who think the world owes them a living, young adults of privilege who want to "be cool," and the economically illiterate

What an accurate description of the Tea Party!

An accurate description of the Tea Party: A group of individuals who argue the government has grown far beyond its desired scope, and they believe liberty has suffered as a result (i.e., taxation without representation, a sclerotic regulatory environment, etc.). I am not a member of the Tea Party, just like I have no affiliation with the "Occupy Wall Street" types, but that seems to sum it up from my viewpoint. I mean, they got their name from the Boston Tea Party. It is pretty easy to see they are just the fervently anti-tax/pro-liberty types...

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

malcontents who think the world owes them a living, young adults of privilege who want to "be cool," and the economically illiterate

What an accurate description of the Tea Party!

An accurate description of the Tea Party: A group of individuals who argue the government has grown far beyond its desired scope, and they believe liberty has suffered as a result (i.e., taxation without representation, a sclerotic regulatory environment, etc.). I am not a member, just like I have no affiliation with the "Occupy Wall Street" types, but that seems to sum it up from my viewpoint. I mean, they got their name from the Boston Tea Party, so it is pretty easy to see they are the fervently anti-tax/pro-liberty types...

No, the Tea Party loves their handouts.  Their handouts.  No one else's.  They act like know-it-alls going out there in their silly-looking costumes, looking like Thomas Paine and such, but really they have no basic knowledge on economics.  They are totally oblivious to the income inequality that exists in this country.  "Pro-liberty" is just an appeal to emotion/rhetoric.  They don't support liberty for anyone but themselves.

[Politico]

malcontents who think the world owes them a living, young adults of privilege who want to "be cool," and the economically illiterate

What an accurate description of the Tea Party!

An accurate description of the Tea Party: A group of individuals who argue the government has grown far beyond its desired scope, and they believe liberty has suffered as a result (i.e., taxation without representation, a sclerotic regulatory environment, etc.). I am not a member, just like I have no affiliation with the "Occupy Wall Street" types, but that seems to sum it up from my viewpoint. I mean, they got their name from the Boston Tea Party, so it is pretty easy to see they are the fervently anti-tax/pro-liberty types...

No, the Tea Party loves their handouts.  Their handouts.  No one else's.

I have never heard of a Tea Party member who is in favor of handouts. Here I thought they were all about free enterprise, open competition, and getting government out of the way. When did they become proponents of a welfare state?

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The poorest American has it better than the vast majority of the rest of the world, including the wealthiest in a majority of other nations. This would not be the case if not for our adherence to free enterprise. Obviously there is income inequality, but that does not mean a poor man cannot become a wealthy man nor can a wealthy man become a poor man. Both possibilities exist in America, and this will always be the case so long as we adhere to free enterprise and the Constitution. The list of self-made individuals in American history is endless: John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Ross Perot, Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, Larry Ellison, Sam Walton, Walt Disney, Ralph Lauren, Dick Cheney, Harry Reid, and on and on and on the list goes. No other nation can even come close to this sort of record. Indeed, in most other nations you stay poor or rich based solely upon what you were born as.

Bill Clinton used to say in the 1990s that "the era of big government is over" and "if you work hard and play by the rules, you should get ahead." That's really not much different than what you hear from Tea Party folks these days. If somebody does not like their income, they should try to find a way to increase it. Nobody is going to give it to them obviously, and government is certainly not some sort of panacea that can do something as modest as increasing employment by 1% (e.g., current fiscal policy's failure), let alone erase income inequality. People have to earn their way one way or another. With that said, I am sympathetic to the plights of the unlucky and those who were not raised properly by their parent(s) for whatever reason(s). I am not necessarily defending income inequality, or at least the current level (an intense subject beyond the scope of this message board), but I think it does nobody a favor to resort to emotionally-driven rhetoric that amounts to class warfare. If you ask me, class warfare does not belong in America. The Europeans can have it, which is funny considering that many parts of Europe still resemble feudalistic arrangements, with no chance of the poor ever getting ahead like you see in America all of the time.

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You are the one who is being a bit emotional here...

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

malcontents who think the world owes them a living, young adults of privilege who want to "be cool," and the economically illiterate

What an accurate description of the Tea Party!

An accurate description of the Tea Party: A group of individuals who argue the government has grown far beyond its desired scope, and they believe liberty has suffered as a result (i.e., taxation without representation, a sclerotic regulatory environment, etc.). I am not a member, just like I have no affiliation with the "Occupy Wall Street" types, but that seems to sum it up from my viewpoint. I mean, they got their name from the Boston Tea Party, so it is pretty easy to see they are the fervently anti-tax/pro-liberty types...

No, the Tea Party loves their handouts.  Their handouts.  No one else's.

I have never heard of a Tea Party member who is in favor of handouts. Here I thought they were all about free enterprise, open competition, and getting government out of the way. When did they become proponents of a welfare state?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The poorest American has it better than the vast majority of the rest of the world, including the wealthiest in a majority of other nations. This would not be the case if not for our adherence to free enterprise. Obviously there is income inequality, but that does not mean a poor man cannot become a wealthy man nor can a wealthy man become a poor man. Both possibilities exist in America, and this will always be the case so long as we adhere to free enterprise and the Constitution.

Bill Clinton used to say in the 1990s that "the era of big government is over" and "if you work hard and play by the rules, you should get ahead." That's really not much different than what you hear from Tea Party folks these days. If somebody does not like their income, they should try to find a way to increase it. Nobody is going to give it to them obviously, and government is certainly not some sort of panacea that can do something as modest as increasing employment by 1% (e.g., current fiscal policy's failure), let alone erase income inequality. People have to earn their way one way or another. With that said, I am sympathetic to the plights of the unlucky and those who are not raised properly by their parent(s) for whatever reason(s). I am not necessarily defending income inequality, or at least the current level (an intense subject beyond the scope of this message board), but I think it does nobody a favor to resort to emotionally-driven rhetoric that amounts to class warfare. If you ask me, class warfare does not belong in America. The Europeans can have it, which is funny considering that many parts of Europe still resemble feudalistic arrangements, with no chance of the poor ever getting ahead like you see in America all of the time.

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You are the one who is being a bit emotional here...

Really?  Oh.  Is that so?  That's the thing with these people.  They hate their "handouts" so much, they don't even know why they hate them.  If you're in the Tea Party, you believe that government handouts to you are great, but you don't think twice about how to pay for them.  If we did everything the Tea Party wanted, we would have a welfare state and zero taxes: all the benefits, none of the costs.  That's more of a socialist attitude, if you ask me.  The Tea Party is like the child in the store who grabs his daddy's leg and screams "I WANT A PONY!  I WANT ALL THE TOYS!".

The poor have it good in this country?  Hmm.  Well, I suppose if you think growing up in crappy neighborhoods, learning in crappy schools, getting arrested for drugs all the time, and being raised by deadbeat, sometimes single parents who are in court all the time for breaking the law so they can feed their family is "good", you may be onto something.  It is possible, but very difficult for a poor person to become rich and successful.  The free market alone will not fix that.  Long ago, we didn't have this much income inequality.  If you've seen any charts or read any economics articles, you would know that the gap has been increasing for a long time.  Now, the term "class warfare" is another appeal to emotion used to make people ignore what we really have in this country.  Asking for better opportunities and more equality in the economy is no different from the civil rights supports who asked for better opportunities and more equality in society.

Personally, I don't believe government should try making people rich or intervene all the time, but that government is an instrument that can and should provide safety nets for people who desire to work hard.  The Tea Party takes it to the extreme and preaches that all government is bad... even though as I've previously said, they're hypocritical in what they are saying.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Here's a nice cartoon that I felt was very appropriate for this discussion.

[Politico]

I still fail to see how those two links, which show opposition to Social Security and Medicare cuts among the Tea Party faithful, make the Tea Party any different than Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. What does the Tea Party want that is any different than what Bill Clinton aimed for in the late 1990s? Like Clinton, they want a balanced budget, elimination of government waste, ensuring the solvency of Medicare and Social Security rather than expanding government to such a large size that nothing is affordable anymore, etc.

That cartoon is ridiculous. Nobody is saying that people who are suffering should just be silent. Everybody knows what is happening, and the type of suffering that is going on. But when it gets to the point where people are pitting Americans against Americans, talking about how we must raise taxes to steal from one group of people to give those funds to another group, that is just what it is: class warfare. It's Eurotrash that does not belong in America (And time and time again, it is shown that when such policies are conducted they have the exact opposite effect that is desired: They create barriers to upward social mobility and essentially lock almost everybody permanently into the situation they were born into regardless of merit or lack thereof). By the way, Mr. Monopoly is fiction. The real-life wealthiest American in history was John D. Rockefeller, a man who made his way without being born into privilege. His philanthropic legacy continues to help people more than countless bureaucratic agencies at home and abroad.

The Welfare State is not coming back, so get over it. Things will eventually get better, and in the meantime it is prudent to scale government back to a manageable and efficient size...

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

I maintain that these protests are composed of hipsters, college students, and ex-hippies, and I've not seen evidence to the contrary sans a few singular examples.

You need to watch something other than FoX Newspeak Channel and listen to people other than Rush Limbaugh.

I visited Occupy Philadelphia this weekend. Hipsters, college students, and ex-hippies is a pretty accurate description of who was there. Not a whole heck of a lot of "normals," though there were a select few.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I still fail to see how those two links, which show opposition to Social Security and Medicare cuts among the Tea Party faithful, make the Tea Party any different than Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. What does the Tea Party want that is any different than what Bill Clinton aimed for in the late 1990s? Like Clinton, they want a balanced budget, elimination of government waste, ensuring the solvency of Medicare and Social Security rather than expanding government to such a large size that nothing is affordable anymore, etc.

That cartoon is ridiculous. Nobody is saying that people who are suffering should just be silent. Everybody knows what is happening, and the type of suffering that is going on. But when it gets to the point where people are pitting Americans against Americans, talking about how we must raise taxes to steal from one group of people to give those funds to another group, that is just what it is: class warfare. It's Eurotrash that does not belong in America (And time and time again, it is shown that when such policies are conducted they have the exact opposite intended effect: They create barriers to upward social mobility and essentially lock almost everybody permanently into the situation they are born into regardless of merit or lack thereof). By the way, Mr. Monopoly is fiction. The real-life wealthiest American in history was John D. Rockefeller, a man who made his way without being born into privilege. His philanthropic legacy continues to help people more than countless bureaucratic agencies abroad.

The Welfare State is not coming back, so get over it. Things will eventually get better, and in the meantime it is prudent to scale government back to a manageable and efficient size...

Well, Bill Clinton sure as hell didn't spit on old men suffering with Parkinson's, like one teabagger did.  He wanted balance, not extremism.  And he pushed for universal health care, which the Tea Party is strongly opposed to.  You're using the Tea Party to divide people into two groups, it seems: people who are with it, and people who are not.  Everybody wants those things you mentioned, but let's not forget that the Tea Party will stop at nothing to make Obama a political loser.

Phrases like "class warfare" and "putting Americans against Americans" is silencing people.  It discourages them from speaking out against income inequality and telling them to accept it.  Like I said, that's like telling civil rights protestors that they were responsible for the violence in the streets and that their actions"stirred racial conflict".  And OWS is no more divisive than the Tea Party, which has also "turned Americans against Americans", using your logic.

I have no idea what "Welfare State" you're talking about.

[Politico]

I still fail to see how those two links, which show opposition to Social Security and Medicare cuts among the Tea Party faithful, make the Tea Party any different than Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. What does the Tea Party want that is any different than what Bill Clinton aimed for in the late 1990s? Like Clinton, they want a balanced budget, elimination of government waste, ensuring the solvency of Medicare and Social Security rather than expanding government to such a large size that nothing is affordable anymore, etc.

That cartoon is ridiculous. Nobody is saying that people who are suffering should just be silent. Everybody knows what is happening, and the type of suffering that is going on. But when it gets to the point where people are pitting Americans against Americans, talking about how we must raise taxes to steal from one group of people to give those funds to another group, that is just what it is: class warfare. It's Eurotrash that does not belong in America (And time and time again, it is shown that when such policies are conducted they have the exact opposite intended effect: They create barriers to upward social mobility and essentially lock almost everybody permanently into the situation they are born into regardless of merit or lack thereof). By the way, Mr. Monopoly is fiction. The real-life wealthiest American in history was John D. Rockefeller, a man who made his way without being born into privilege. His philanthropic legacy continues to help people more than countless bureaucratic agencies abroad.

The Welfare State is not coming back, so get over it. Things will eventually get better, and in the meantime it is prudent to scale government back to a manageable and efficient size...

Well, Bill Clinton sure as hell didn't spit on old men suffering with Parkinson's, like one teabagger did.  He wanted balance, not extremism.  And he pushed for universal health care, which the Tea Party is strongly opposed to.

Obviously I am talking about post-1995 Clinton, not pre-1995 Clinton. When you get down to it, The Tea Party is pretty much espousing exactly what Clinton espoused in the late 1990s: End the Era of Big Government. That means getting rid of waste and getting spending back in line with reality.

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That is because they oppose the expansion and increase in government spending that started before Obama and has accelerated to an uncomfortable level with Obama. Regardless of whether or not Obama is a political loser, he is an economic loser. The results do not lie. Furthermore, it is impossible to run trillion dollar deficits on annual basis forever. The man thinks there is no consequence to such reckless behavior...

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Well, some people have a word for taking something from one group of people and giving those proceeds to another group: Theft.

Yes, there is income inequality, but America is still the best nation on earth to get ahead, and one of the few nations where somebody who is born into extreme poverty can eventually rise to become a Ross Perot, for example, or even just a successful, small businessperson, which there are millions of examples of in American history. The best thing a privileged person can do if they want to help is donate to charities. But it is un-American to force anybody to do anything they do not want to do so long as they are not harming anybody (other than potentially them self)

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The Tea Party is not in favor of stealing from one group of Americans to give to another group. There are legitimate political differences, and then there's a line in the dirt that can be crossed. A lot of the "Occupy Wall Street" types cross that line. I am not sure I see that with Tea Party members who essentially want a limited federal government, unlike the OWS types. They may not know it, but what the OWS types really want is to destroy our entire economic system, and all of the great goods/services and advancements that come with it, so that most everybody enters the ghetto and never gets back out. I mean, look at these people. Would you even trust them to manage your personal financial budget? 

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I am talking about the whole Welfare State mentality, such as the old welfare system to give a specific example of a byproduct of this mentality. The Welfare State was prevalent as recently as the 1970s, and even had quite a bit of support up until Clinton and the GOP basically buried it in the past around 1995/1996. Those days are never coming back.