The baby boomers had everything – free education, free health care and remarkable personal liberties – but they squandered it all. Now their children are paying for it. —The New Statesman
Joseph Fouche first quotes Lex‘s reaction to the Occupy* protests:
My hatred of the Boomers, who have brainwashed and wasted these kids is boundless. There is nothing wrong with them. They have just never been taught anything but bullshit. They have been betrayed by their parents and their teachers. It is very depressing. The country has been shamefully dumbed down.
Reading all this with just a little partisan bias, I’d say that he then blames left-wing Baby Boomers for both the intellectual vacuity of their young epigones and for the country’s inability to reform its policies and effectively address the current crisis.
They say they want a revolution. To have a revolution, you must have a secular social catechism that accumulates the sort of strategic effects that will trigger a fatal split in our current set of societal elites. In the crisis so far, we’ve only seen dusty formulas trotted out by ancient and creaky Boomers yearning re-fight the glorious battles of youth.
Again.
And again.
Here’s an unintended side-effect of extended human lifespans: ideological stasis. To butcher Max Planck: a political notion does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. Boomers, given unnaturally long biological life by historical developments they barely comprehend, give unnaturally long life to their foolishly destructive notions. Society may stagnate in some areas while progressing in others with unforeseen effects. This may make the process of sorting out of what’s needed to grapple with our current predicament prolonged, painful, and prone to triggering frustration and outbreaks of corrective violence.
Go tell the Boomers that, in the words of Oliver Cromwell and Leo Amery:
You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
A memorial to mounted US troops who accompanied Northern Alliance forces in the conquest of Afghanistan, providing direction and support to fighters allied with the US in avenging the 9/11 attacks, will be installed in the vicinity of Ground Zero on Veteran’s Day.
Afghanistan demonstrated that the world features plenty of terrain impracticable for motorized transportation, proving that the age of horse-mounted military operations will never really be over. The closing of the US Army Cavalry School at Fort Riley in 1947 was proven in 2001 to have been premature.
A rare original draft printing, one of one hundred printed in 1861, and one of only four copies known to have survived of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, presented to the Convention in Montgomery, Alabama on February 28, 1861 is to be sold by Heritage Auctions at a sale to be held at the Ukrainian Institute of America at The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, 2 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075 on December 8-9, 2011.
This copy must have belonged originally to one of the delegates from Louisiana, Alexandre de Clouet, Charles M. Conrad, Duncan F. Kenner, or Henry Marshall. It is most likely the Kenner copy, as Kenner’s home was confiscated and his personal effects looted when New Orleans was captured May 1, 1862.
This copy descends from the estate of one Albert Gaius Hills, a Boston Journal correspondent, who was present during the capture and subsequent occupation of New Orleans.
Heritage is not posting an estimate of the sales price at the present time, but it will probably command an impressive price.
That’s what this Occupy Wall Street protestor learned in college, and he says that you should pay his tuition for him… just because that’s what he wants.
Besides, he knows that billionaires are getting a lot of money, just out of greed, and he’s learned on-line that “they pay twenty five cents in taxes for every dollar we’re taxed.” Except this young man undoubtedly doesn’t pay income taxes. But what does that matter, you can say whatever you want, he has his couple of sound bites and he wants free tuition.
The left is protesting Wall Street while Barack Obama continues to whip up popular resentment of the US financial industry, but the massive regulation of that industry effectuated by Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank are already making sure that liberals are not going to have the world center of finance capitalism based conveniently in Lower Manhattan when they feel like kicking it around some more.
As the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, Wall Street is in serious decline. Jobs are evaporating.
New York City’s securities industry could lose nearly 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012, New York state’s comptroller predicted, a painful blow to the area’s economy and government budgets.
New York City’s securities industry could lose nearly 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012, New York state’s comptroller predicted, a painful blow to the area’s economy and government budgets, Aaron Lucchetti reports on Markets Hub. Banks in the New York area are also poised to shed jobs. Photo: AP.
In a report set to be released Tuesday, Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli also said bonuses are likely to shrink this year, reflecting lower profits on Wall Street.
Since January 2008, the securities industry in New York has seen 22,000 jobs evaporate. If Mr. DiNapoli’s prediction of 10,000 more jobs losses between August 2011 and year-end 2012 comes true, that would represent a decline of 17%. About 4,100 jobs have been eliminated since April, and deeper cuts are widely seen as inevitable given a recent flurry of corporate expense-trimming announcements.
There is a 1:1 relationship between recent federal regulations and Wall Street’s decline. Disgruntled lesbian rockers who think that capitalism has not been properly compensating them will soon have to go demonstrate in London and Abu Dhabi.
There is a new Tumblr site responding to the people claiming to be the 99% featuring responses from members of the 53% who actually pay taxes. Some of the postings are pretty eloquent. Good going, Brittney.
