Truth in advertising, but OWS has it wrong. Government needs to be the one to step up and make the change. Until the rules are changed, big business will continue to do what it needs to do to compete/survive/profit/etc. Yet Obama and the dems applaud OWS and belittle the Tea Party.

What happened to all that "change" we were promised?

In short, those kids should be marching on Capital Hill and not Wall Street. Wall Street doesn't make the rules.

I have a guess about the change obama promised.

he got into office, then realized that it was impossible to make change, because change was needed.

almost noone would vote for removing lobbyists and campagin contributions. just imagine, if you were to vote for that and the bill didn't pass, then you would not be able to win your next election as any other candidate would get all the funding.

it is like trying to convince you to give away your house, because if I manage to convince 99% of the population, then it will be much better for everyone, but if i don't manage to convince 99%, then you will be without a house.

also, maybe thraxle, people have always tried walking on capitol hill, and it changes nothing, because elected officials don't have the guts, because they have to be elected. while if you march on wall street, maybe some congressmen will grow some guts, believing they can gain enough votes for reelection, not needing donations.

I think what would really help would be that on every ballot box, on every vote card, it was a list of the source of every donation higher than say 1K, or if there is not enough room, just the top 30 contributers.

that would probably help, so people can see what coorperations congressmen they vote for.

Kreuz, www.opensecrets.org

pretty sure there were a lot of protest on capitol hill over the iraq war, among other bush policies (far larger than any tea party protests or OWS) and they accomplished nothing. if nothing else, OWS is highlighting the root of the problem, which is that the government doesn't make our laws anymore, the guy with the most money does (and that's been wall street since they repealed glass-steagal).

but yes this holds true in other industries as well, the revolving door between regulatory agencies and high positions of those regulated industries themselves leads to complete dysfunction. We don't need to make the government more weaker and thus more susceptible to corporate interests, frankly, i dont care how powerful the government is - as long as its run transparently and there is little to no room for corruption. but maybe that's an impossible dream.

The reason I agree with OWS and not the Tea party, is that large corporations will find ways to manipulate the government, so long as it can be manipulated. there is a certain level of power the government needs to be able to regulate certain industries, as such, we can't just take away this power - lest we suffer the consequences (The Jungle by Upton Sinclair?). What we can do is make the process by which companies deal with law makers and their staff transparent and tax the fuck out of them if they are extremely successful. Success breeds mediocrity, taxing companies like Microsoft and Shell a little bit more may be exactly what we need for them to become innovate or to give the little guys a chance to come up with something innovative on their own.

-sorry bit of a ramble but i'm on my phone

also Mr. Kruez, a lot of powerful companies donate to both opposing campaigns in a race. so ultimately there is no choice in cases like that. certainly during the presidential elections this is the case.

So what is the proper tax rate? Should the richest .0011% have like a 75% tax rate since they'll still be multimillionaires after paying their taxes? Why would any millionaire keep their money in this country with tax laws like that? You'll simply drive even more businesses away from the U.S.

what do you think of this thrax: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4112936