Washington, DC, USA. If you took all the money and assets from the top 1%, if you took the 1% life’s savings and everything they own, you still would not have near enough money to do everything the 99% want done without cost to them and theirs.

Taxing the rich or confiscating their assets isn’t going to work.


And someone is lying to you to capture your vote if they tell you it will. How did that work when the people’s revolution overthrew Czar Nicholas II in 1917? Who ended up with the power and the glory, and in control of all the assets then? Here’s a hint, it wasn’t the 99%.

If we want to solve our annual budget overdraft, we’re going to need to do it for ourselves without the loud wisdom of our self-appointed political leaders. They are in the game for personal power, not for us. The House and Senate are filled with One Percenters. The White House is serially occupied by them. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink it, especially if they wallow in the Méthode Champenoise (for us ordinary people, that is Champagne).

As Eldridge Cleaver said in front of me and twenty thousand others: if you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem. We are all part of the problem. Every last one of us wants a free lunch and I can’t blame us. Who wants to spend money on something you can con the government into giving you for nothing?

I do not trust Nancy Pelosi’s true intentions any farther than I can throw Rick Santorum. As my ancestors would have said:

Politicians speak with forked tongue.

Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, Tea Party and Occupy, they are all sisters underneath the skin. Communists, Socialists, Capitalists, Divine Righters, and Anarchists, damn them all. They are all out for number one once they have the votes. Once they are in power it’s all for one and none for all. Damn them all.

They will promise anything if it helps them rise to power. The solutions they offer are bandaids for the moment until the next election. Tomorrow they may be out office and no one gives a damn. And I mean all of them, damn them all.

One fact remains: The federal government does not have official definitions for such terms as “middle class,” “middle income,” “rich,” and “upper income.” Even the currently favored 1% and 99% lack consistent terms to define them. Do we mean gross income? Net income? Total Revenue? If we mean profits we need to consider losses. No one ever defines what all the commotion is about, they’re all too busy shouting bumper sticker slogans and thirty second sound bites.

Don’t trust leaders, follow parking meters. (sayeth Robert Dylan)

And still we all live beyond our means. I do not need this computer to exist. Nor the broadband connection for my computer, television, ground line telephone, and smart phone.

Or a modern stove and refrigerator. I could make do with the old icebox in the basement. For that matter I do not actually need a basement. It’s just a nice to have convenience to store stuff. I don’t need the stuff to live.

But who is to say what my minimum needs are and what is accumulated wealth that should be dispersed to others? Who should draw the line? Occupy Wall Street and all its unsupported children says they are the ones to draw the lines. They are ones who should ultimate make the decisions. I know this is true because they texted me from their iPhones and sent me photos of them demonstrating in their North Face™ Denali jackets.

If we took all the income and money from the top 1% of American citizens, rendered them unable to conduct their business, we would still not have accumulated enough Yankee dollars to pay off a single year’s worth of accumulating debt. And the President of the United States would be reduced to living on his actual salary (although that too is well in the top 1%).

But no, never mind, those are the decisions that Occupy Wall Street will make once they seize power. Or problems the Tea Party will ignore when they seize power.

London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair first lady.

Silver and gold will be stolen away,
Stolen away, stolen away,
Silver and gold will be stolen away,
My fair first lady.

I am not communist. I am not a socialist. I do not believe in the divine right of kings and popes. The great chain of being is a social myth constructed by those at the top of the power structure to make it easier for them to govern. We can’t let the masses just live on their own. We must give them form and meaning. We must provide them leadership for they know not what they do without us. Out with old scoundrels, in with the new.

Vote for me, vote for me, vote me.

I would prefer god, if there is one, to run the universe as a democracy. From what I’ve read, She non-concurs with the proposal.

At best I am a capitalist with doubts. I trust neither the owners nor the workers to act in my best interests. I trust less all those who claim to speak for the owners or the workers. Who appointed them God?

Vladimir Lenin said that the goal of socialism is communism. I am not sure that is always true but the primary goal of the Occupy Movement seems to be the destruction of capitalism and the total redistribution of wealth from those they define as rich to those they define as their own masses, the 99%. I am not sure if the redistribution will include iPhones, iPads, or North Face™ Denali Jacks. I have my doubts.

At the beginning of the New Year and a presidential election looming in November, I do not know who I will vote for, only those I will vote against. I doubt that I’m the only one who finds herself without a viable choice.

There is no Lincoln among the rabble running to sit in his chair. No Roosevelt or Truman, no Eisenhower or Reagan, no Richard Nixon even. There are no Bobby Kennedys with the potential to be great waiting to enter the presidential race.

Only the stumble bums who parade before us, one of whom will become our the next President of the United States.

If Vladimir Lenin really thought that the best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency, it only means he never had the privilege of listening to the current set of candidates running for the presidency.

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