Tom Perkens Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Now it finally comes out. Tommy Boy hates democratic principles and our republic. Why not just bring back King George?

Tom Perkins suggested Thursday that only taxpayers should have the right to vote -- and that wealthy Americans who pay more in taxes should get more votes.

The venture capitalist offered the unorthodox proposal when asked to name one idea that would "change the world" at a speaking engagement in San Francisco moderated by Fortune's Adam Lashinsky.
"The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes," Perkins said.
"But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"

[Woodsman]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Now it finally comes out. Tommy Boy hates democratic principles and our republic. Why not just bring back King George?

"You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"

Isn't that how it works now? Taxes, graft, whatever juice it takes. Tom can pay it.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

"You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?"

Isn't that how it works now? Taxes, graft, whatever juice it takes. Tom can pay it.

Yup, and when he got hit with a manslaughter conviction, it was only $10k to make it go away. Liberty for the few; Justice for everyone else.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

One of the biggest and best lies that was told in the aftermath of most recent crash is that (using TARP data and TARP data alone) "the bailouts were paid back." (therefore defensible)

[verdo]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

i don't know what to call this guy, but its sad to see how generally incapable these wealthy guys are at putting themselves in the shoes of everyday people.

[loweyecue]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Yup, and when he got hit with a manslaughter conviction, it was only $10k to make it go away. Liberty for the few; Justice for everyone else.

Fourteen Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Source Free Inquiry.co
5-28-3

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each: 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. 4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. 5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution. 6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. 7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. 8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. 9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. 10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. 11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked. 12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations. 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. 14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections. From Liberty Forum

The resemblance to modern day right wing philosophy is unmistakable.

[vt]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

There is very little resemblance to the right wing today. Sure there are a few tiny groups of gun lovers that fear confiscation, but conservatives recognize they are way too far off the edge. There is just as much fascist threat from the left as from the right. Fascism is dictatorial, the right detests control of this nature.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelp...rty-rebellion/

The army could just as easily be used against left wing radicals as with right. Local polices forces are now militarized, as has been noted on this forum before. What is alarming is the arming of DHS. If it's for use against terrorists then that's proper. But there is extremely unlikely some right wind militia would cause trouble.

Any violence has come from left wing AND right wing radicals.

http://homegrown.newamerica.net/overview_nonjihadists

The real risk is a small number of individual extremists, left and right, that act out their crazy fantasies.

There is a cry from the liberal and left wing press of a huge increase in right wing militias, but this is just to fan their desire for more gun control. 99.9% of legal gun owners are not a threat, and only own guns to protect their homes and hunt.

This article has an FBI report on terrorism on our soil; threats come form all sides, few from the right.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/...-and-2012.html

We need more attention to mentally ill individuals and preventing them from gun ownership. The only form of gun control needed is to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill and felons in this country. We also need to infiltrate the few left and right wing militias out there.

The more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens the less crime:

http://www.examiner.com/article/two-...uns-less-crime

We need to stop demonizing people because they have conservative of liberal viewpoints. The press feeds on controversy and sensationalism. Fortunately independents are rising in numbers, and left wing broadcasters are fading in popularity (MSNBC, liberal talk radio). Right wing radio and TV is still around but attracts a small overall audience.

Left wing dictatorships murder far more people, and leave economies in far worse shape:

http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/20...-and-left.html

" The striking difference is that once a right-wing dictatorship disappears, it only takes civil society a couple of years to re-establish itself and for the economy to pick up where it left off (assuming that the economy suffered in the first place, which is not always a given, unlike with 'left wing' dictatorships), whereas with 'left wing' dictatorships, misery is guaranteed for decades (or centuries) to come while people bicker over who owns what; the bickering can cause as much damage as the original dictatorship."

[don]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

In light of the recent outcries by billionaire Tom Perkins for fair and loving treatment, I thought it might be interesting to explore the mindset that pictures the doyens of Wall Street, and those who have taken fortunes out of the dot.com and housing bubbles, as the real victims of the financial collapse and The Recovery™.

I think that part of this comes from the phenomenon that for some people, gratitude is their natural response to good fortune, even if it has come from hard work. Whereas others are possessed by a restlessness, an insatiable spirit, and their response to everything is 'I deserve more!.'

Tom Perkins not only wishes his wealth, and his banal collection of toys, but he wishes to have public adulation as well, or at least the power to compel people to defer to him.

Mr. Frank thinks that this time around the cultural response to a Great Depression is 'backwards,' as compared to that of the 1930's, and one might tend to agree. There certainly has not been the rising of a national sympathy for victims, or a proper outrage at the arrogance and excesses of the financiers.

But this might overlook the fact that the US was a bit of an outlier back then, as only a few countries turned towards progressive reforms, while other developed nations embraced the hardness of totalitarianism, and even went so far as systematically murdering the weak.

But it is a mistake that the US is some sort of paragon, if one recalls John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The allure of selfishness and evil is a natural tendency that we overlook in our economic models, among other things. And we certainly ought not overlook the consecration of the country to the principle that 'greed is good,' or more plainly to Mammon, in the latter part of the last century.

[vt]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Great chart! Exactly what I've been advocating.

Left and right extremes are poison to personal liberty. The independent New Majority Party will be the solution to human oppression, and the vehicle for the growth of middle classes across the world.

[jk]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Great chart! Exactly what I've been advocating.

Left and right extremes are poison to personal liberty. The independent New Majority Party will be the solution to human oppression, and the vehicle for the growth of middle classes across the world.

the last time a new party became an important and persistant part of the u.s. political process was with the emergence of the republican party in the mid 19th century. so don't hold your breath for a serious 3rd to emerge.

[Woodsman]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

There is very little resemblance to the right wing today. Sure there are a few tiny groups of gun lovers that fear confiscation, but conservatives recognize they are way too far off the edge. There is just as much fascist threat from the left as from the right.

So you continue to assert despite all the evidence to the contrary. We have yet to see the rise of left wing militias or an upsurge in red banners at the local gun shows. I'm open to the possibility that it might happen at some point in the future as yet unrealized but expect to be waiting for some time.

The sources you cite support the opposite of what you assert. They support the opinion that the threat locus is planted firmly on the right wing. Take for instance the Forbes piece:

...nine days after Obama’s reelection, petitions for secession have sprouted in all 50 states, gun sales have soared for fear of what a second term means for gun owners, and white nationalist groups are elated over Obama’s victory.

If your opinion reflects what is real, then we should expect just as many petitions for secession from left wing groups as there are from those on the right. Can you point us to any? I'm sure there is at least one. Accepting it for argument's sake, I'm still finding it a bit harder to envision a "left wing case" for secession in the wake of Obama's election.

But what about the record gun sales the Forbes piece references? And all those gun owners fearing an Obama second term? If we accept your assertion, then shouldn't half of all those guns be owned by people identifying themselves as left wing and politically left of center? Half of all those people cleaning their newly purchased guns bought in reaction to Obama's election should identify themselves as left wing, left-liberal, no? Same for the elated white nationalists groups, half of them presumably elated because their left wing socialist black president was elected?

The Forbes article goes on to state as a matter of fact that "except that insofar as there are heavily armed groups in America that dispute the authority of the federal government, they do tend be right-wing." It further castigates "the old gun lobby line that a pack of civilians with hunting rifles will stop a tyrannical federal government" as silly.

Now we might dismiss Forbes Magazine as just another "liberal media" rag but it won't change the fact that the "old gun lobby" is pretty static over time in their support of right wing candidates and pundits. There isn't any time I can recall that it was identified as 30% left oriented, much less 50%. Can you?

The article from "The New America Foundation" doesn't do much to advance your idea either, particularly when it boldly states that "if a chemical, biological or radiological attack were to take place in the United States, it is more likely that it would come not from a Islamist terrorist but from a right-wing extremist or anarchist." Of the the five cases cherry picked as examples in the piece, two thirds of them are identified as right wing or white supremacist.

A look at the database they provide is even more instructive:

39 anti-government
25 animal rights/environmental
23 ethnic and/racial supremacy
13 religious/societal
9 N/A

The N/A option piqued my curiosity, so I did a bit more work on it. It seems most of the persons the study categorized as "N/A" belonged to a right wing group out of Alabama known as "The Free Militia". Of the remaining, one was president of local chapter of the self-described "patriot" organization known as "Oathkeepers," another was a member of the "Pennsylvania Citizens Militia" and the last affiliated with the "New Jersey Militia." None of these groups are considered left wing, liberal or center left.

Now why the study authors chose to organize these as "N/A" is a mystery to me, as clearly they all hail from right wing groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers them a bit further to the right than mere "N/A". Then again, SPLC does take Soros money (DOJ money, too) so I understand if you dismiss them out of hand.

Putting that aside for a moment, if we were to accept your assertion that there is just as much of a threat of violence and reaction from the left as from the right, we must also accept that half of the perpetrators in the study you cite should also be left wing and left of center. Me, I find this difficult to see in the data, least of all since I am a loss to recall the last case of terrorism committed by right wing environmentalists or left wing religious groups. And while the study you cite does little to advance your opinion, I question its overall validity in terms of advancing any position since the authors can't seem to tell right wing from chicken wing here.

I do agree with you when you say the "real risk is a small number of individual extremists, left and right, that act out their crazy fantasies." But the record to date shows significantly more crazy right wing fantasies being acted out through violence than any other flavor and this would be true even if the only source of data we had was the admittedly flawed study you cited.

Look at the Washington's Blog piece you posted. It started hopeful but sank your argument by the fourth paragraph when it stated that the analysis on which it relied was:

"...misleading in several ways. For example, it labels “Extreme Left Wing Groups” and “Communists”, but not “Extreme Right Wing Groups” or “Fascists”. It should have either discarded all partisan labels, or included labels for both ends of the spectrum."

So in support of your opinion that there is just as much of a threat of violence and reaction from the left as from the right you cite a piece that admits straight away that it purposefully labels “Extreme Left Wing Groups” and “Communists”, but avoids labels of “Extreme Right Wing Groups” or “Fascists”. I understand why you chose it, but we're not on Infowars or Town Hall. This is iTulip.

The Examiner article on the Pew "more guns, less crime" survey was more promising. I've followed this work since the early 90s when first introduced to Gary Kleck and Dave Bordua. I'm convinced that their argument is sound, but it's not the argument you make. While their work and that of the cited article does much to advance the more guns/less crime thesis, it does nothing to advance your opinion that there is just as much of a threat from the left as from the right.

And while I agree with you that we should "stop demonizing people because they have conservative of liberal viewpoints" I'm not clear on how revisionism helps us here or why it is even desirable. Why tiptoe around the fact that a majority of the actual and threatened acts of violence and extremism are committed by people expressing right wing viewpoints? The culture that sees violence as a positive force and uses violent metaphors to advance its positions is overwhelmingly rightist.

To deny this requires quite a leap of faith that inevitably brings us to similarly nonsensical conclusions such as right wing radio and TV attracting "a small overall audience."

[jk]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

the last left wing violence that i can recall was committed by the weathermen and - at least in name - the symbionese liberation army. this was a looong time ago. of course, more recently there were those lefty occupy people who put their faces in front of the police's pepper spray. funny, i can't recall any right wing tea party people getting pepper sprayed....

[vt]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Woodsman, you make some reasonable observations. I'll clarify further:

First, there is at least one left leaning group that favors secession:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vermont_Republic

I agree that there are more right leaning groups that want to secede, but none are calling for doing so by force; we are not about to enter a 2nd civil war.


Here is a more detailed review of left vs. right wing violence:

http://markhumphrys.com/left.right.violence.html

The salient point is that some initially identified right wing violence turned out to be left wing. The leftist press loves to take any gun violence as right wing:

The Boston Marathon was first suspected to be a tax protest as it occurred on tax filing day.

The Denver theatre bomber was first identified as a Tea Party member by an ABC reporter because a Facebook poster had the same common name as the killer.

The Holocaust killer was called a right winger when he was really towards the left: anti semitic, anti Israel.

Gaby Giffords attacker was initially called right wing when in fact he leaned left.


Do you deny that radical eco terrorism groups and the Black Panthers are more towards the left? While the Panthers have not been violent, they do encourage it:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informe...-panther-party (Credit to SPLC for this)


A key point is that the great majority of violence from the right and left in the past 15 years and longer has been the providence of lone wolf nut cases that have radical views. Of course there is the example of the Oklahoma FBI bombing that was radical right.

I do take umbrage at those that equate Fascism with Conservatives. This is a knee jerk response of left leaning liberals. Calling the Tea Party racists or any critic of Obama by that label is a lie. The tea party is incorrect in trying to rapidly reduce spending while in a slow economy, but there is nothing racist about them. Character assassination is too prevalent on the left, though the right has engaged at times.

The attacks on Clarence Thomas and Antonio Gonzales years ago were more true examples of racism. The attack on Herman Cain, Dr. Ben Carson, and any black or Hispanic conservative are racist. (I am not a rightist or leftist. The center is the only solution)

The key problem I have with the chart and the whole right left spectrum is that the real picture is Freedom vs. Tyranny. Democrats try to restrict economic freedom, Republicans social freedom.

The ideal government platform is identified by the labels at the bottom of the chart. Words such as:

Primacy of the individual

Respect for Property

Decentralization

Respect for others

Consensus

Broad Meritocracy

Growth

Factual

Cooperation

Transparency

Openness

Respectful

Justice

These all ring true for many of us who oppose the views too often held by radicals in each political party. Neither party is open to true compromise, which is why the New Majority Party in needed now.

[jk]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

funny, i thought gaby gifford's shooter leaned psychotic.

[vt]

Re: Tom Perkins Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Yes, but the liberal press was calling him right wing at the very beginning of the reports. They assume that any attack on a Democrat is from a right wing nut.
A rush to judgement. Yes the shooter is crazy, but he also leans left not right as thought from the initial media reports.