Preoccupied?

Greetings good citizen,

Markets are up slightly after trading sideways for the past three days…and I have absolutely no friggin’ clue what to make out of that.

So we shall turn our attention to this little tidbit that provides some follow-up on the more or less defunct OWS ‘movement’.

The security threat is very real here. At least 30 percent of the crowd is a mix of chronically homeless, drug-addicted people, some of whom suffer from "psychological issues," as several protesters put it delicately. Among other rules, the pastor has demanded that the Occupiers station at least one mental health expert "within easy reach" of the church every night.

Even some of the church dwellers themselves are fed up with their fellow pew mates. Chris Allen, 36, is working on a backup plan in case they get kicked out. "I feel people are messing up the church and we're not gonna have it much longer, so I'm worried about putting money in my pocket," said Allen, an unemployed construction worker from Long Island who lives here with his wife. "Because when it snows and I have nowhere to go, I'm not gonna be stuck on the streets like everyone else for being idiots."

Who is allowed to stay at the church is a source of contention and perpetual infighting. If you're not on the official list kept by Occupy organizers, you're not allowed inside. But it's unclear what distinguishes the general populace from an Occupier.

One night in December, police officers were called to the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew when people who weren't on the list came to the door and refused to leave. "I was turned away one night in the cold and rain," said David Everitt-Carlson, a 55-year-old unemployed former advertising executive who lived in a tee-pee at Zuccotti Park. "And I slept at Grand Central Station. I found a place behind a Christmas decoration."

The ‘kiddies’ in the movement were reabsorbed (for the most part) back into their former living arrangements with their parents, as we can see here.

The ‘remains’ of the movement, the ‘hardcore’ occupiers appear to have had no place else to go.

Not that there’s any shame in this, they are the detritus of social system that no longer has a productive use for them…it is NOT their fault.

And they number in the tens of millions! (Placing a significant strain on the rest of society.)

Who is this set of circumstances more stressful for?

It may be a ‘nuisance’ to the relative caring for these ‘abandoned people’ but it is far more stressful for the people who have no choice but to accept this, er, charity that they want no part of.

But them damn few, they NEED to be RICH! and tens of millions of people living in a gutter don’t mean a damn thing to ‘em!

In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New York socialite might know the weight of an Army pack. Now, the military is for suckers from the laboring classes, whose subprime mortgages you just sliced into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to employ Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. Courtesy of Matt Taibbi, we learn that the sentiment among the super-rich toward the rest of America is often one of contempt rather than noblesse; Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, says about the views of the 99 percent: "Who gives a crap about some imbecile?"

Steven Schwarzman, the hedge fund billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group who hired Rod Stewart for his $5 million birthday party , believes it is the rabble who are socially irresponsible. Speaking about low-income citizens who pay no income tax, he says: "You have to have skin in the game. I'm not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system." But millions of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes pay federal payroll taxes. These taxes are regressive and the dirty little secret is that over the last several decades they have made up a greater and greater share of federal revenues. In 1950, payroll and other federal retirement contributions constituted 10.9 percent of all federal revenues; by 2007, the last "normal" economic year before federal revenues began falling, they made up 33.9 percent. By contrast, corporate income taxes were 26.4 percent of federal revenues in 1950; by 2007, they had fallen to 14.4 percent. Who has skin in the game now?

As we can see, the ‘statistics’ can be twisted to support whatever argument you’re trying to make…but the people in the streets, they’re real.

How ironic is it that Mr. Schwarzman is correct, those he so callously refers to as ‘rabble’ SHOULD have ‘skin in the game’…but assholes like him won’t hire them!

It is somewhat ironic that assholes like Mr. Schwarzman have people who do nothing but make sure that they don’t have even one more person on his payroll than is absolutely necessary…which is truly ironic all by itself!

But let us return to the ‘point’ of this particular article, have the ‘truly wealthy’ already, er, ‘withdrawn’ from (and this is a pretty loose fitting adjective) normal society?

Which is in itself a rhetorical question because the rich have ALWAYS lived apart from the…er, ‘rabble’ (perhaps more commonly known as 'the hired help'…)

Worse, good citizen, it only takes a tiny bit of wealthy for people to start thinking they’re ‘better’ than the rest of us.

What do you think makes up the Republican base?

That said, shit rolls downhill…

The difference between them and us is at least we have enough sense to not eat it!

But I am unable to conclude this piece here so bear with me for a while longer…

If we posit that the ‘center’ of the OWS movement is a long overdue protest by those, er, ‘displaced’ by globalization then the ‘occupy’ piece of the puzzle was only phase one. The Homeless have been ‘camping out’ in public spaces for decades now and it hasn’t done them a single lick of good!

The next phase…(and it will likely get you ‘disappeared’ if you try it) will be to shut down our imported economy by crippling the seaports.

Coupled with the, er, ‘spanking’ our lying media by knocking out large swaths of the communications network. It won’t be until people are forced to decide that they will free themselves from their ‘electronic babysitters’ (to take part in the time honored tradition of burning and looting!)

They’ll ‘Barbados’ you for sure for pulling their ‘security blanket’ off of the sleeping sheep…and I use the ancient term Barbados to demonstrate that there is nothing ‘new’ about ‘extraordinary rendition’.

The ‘mistake’ good citizen lies in thinking it can’t happen to YOU!

You can bet the rebellious Irish never saw that one coming…

But hey, Barbados is nice this time of year, no?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner