When $243 Billion is the cost of doing business

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$243 Billion is the total amount of fines that major banks have paid for criminal behaviour since the start of the 2008 crisis. That's more than the GDP of Portugal.

It’s important to note that the banks don’t just send a check for their fines to federal and state governments. Many times they get credit by making loans and supporting debt restructuring. For example, a Goldman Sachs GS, +1.09% commitment for $1.8 billion of loan forgiveness and financing for affordable housing was considered as part of a $5.1 billion “fine” the bank had to pay.

At least it was $243 Billion in February. The fines have continued up to this very week.

“Bank of America Merrill Lynch went to astonishing lengths to defraud its own institutional clients about who was seeing and filling their orders, who was trading in its dark pool, and the capabilities of its electronic trading services,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday.

RBS got fined $5 Billion just a month ago.
Back in 2015, five of these huge banks plead guilty to felony fraud. All of them have been hit with fines for fraud since then.

It's not all American banks doing it. European banks with branches in the U.S. do it as well.

The Dutch bank allowed hundreds of millions of dollars in "untraceable cash" to be deposited at its rural bank branches in California and then withdrawn via wire transfers, checks, and cash transactions, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a statement on Wednesday.

The bank also pleaded guilty to obstructing the investigation in an attempt to avoid the repeat of sanctions it received in 2006 and 2008 for "nearly identical failures," the DOJ added.

"When Rabobank learned that substantial numbers of its customers' transactions were indicative of international narcotics trafficking, organized crime, and money laundering activities, it chose to look the other way and to cover up deficiencies in its anti-money laundering program," Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan said.

Rabobank CEO Wiebe Draijer said the "violations that took place are serious, regrettable and unacceptable."

So how does Wall Street feel about being caught red-handed engaging in fraud, theft, and general corruption over and over again.
Consider the jokes they tell.

However, to Souleles’ surprise, the single largest group of jokes focused on “class, position in society, wealth, power and the possibility for social action”. At one conference, the audience collapsed in laughter when a financier suggested that private equity funds were like pirates, preying on innocents. At another, they laughed when a participant asked: “How long will the IPO window stay open so that everybody in PE could get richer than they already are?”
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gulfgal98's picture

I am serious about this. Where does the money paid in fines go?

What I am getting at is that all the fines in the world do nothing to help the people damaged by these criminal enterprises that we call "banks."

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98

Where does the money paid in fines go?

I think it varies depending on the judicial rulings.

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@gulfgal98

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

boriscleto's picture

@gulfgal98 In the form or interest paid on the national debt...

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

@gulfgal98

I am serious about this.

Q: Is there a case to be made for bringing back public executions?

A: Yes, but I think it would be a mistake to get into killing people.
Better to sentence these swine to life at hard labor. Televise them working all day every day.

Now that's entertainment.

plus Bernie goes off script. (courtesy RT)

https://www.rt.com/usa/428556-bernie-sanders-disney-abc-iger/

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It's correct but it ignores a long-term trend

Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities.

“This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty,” Alston told the Guardian.

Millions of Americans already struggling to make ends meet faced “ruination”, he warned. “If food stamps and access to Medicaid are removed, and housing subsidies cut, then the effect on people living on the margins will be drastic.”

Asked to define “ruination”, Alston said: “Severe deprivation of food and almost no access to healthcare.”
...
As one of the world’s wealthiest societies, the US is what Alston calls a “land of stark contrasts”. It is home to one in four of the world’s 2,208 billionaires.

At the other end of the spectrum, 40 million Americans live in poverty. More than five million eke out an existence amid the kind of absolute deprivation normally associated with the developing world.

the cruel math

The 2017 U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measures reports that within the country, 40 million people — more than one in every eight Americans — live in poverty. Almost half of them are categorized as indefinitely in “deep poverty,” living with less than $2 a day.

Put that together with the fact that in the U.S., about 2.6 million people die every year — and most of those deaths are associated with poverty.

That changes U.S. politics. Research has shown that the haves have different political positions from the have-nots. By living longer and healthier lives, the haves have more opportunity to influence the politicians who craft the policies and programs that distribute public goods and services.

Meanwhile, because low socioeconomic status leads people to be sicker and to die earlier, poor Americans have far less chance of shaping political life — or of pursuing the policies that would help improve their health and lengthen their lives, such as improvements in health care, education, child care, neighborhood safety, nutrition, working conditions and so forth.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

@gjohnsit ...but the UN is little more than a tool for the American Empire to keep its client states in line.

Speaking of GDP, how much of the US GDP is wages? I doubt it's very much at all given how bad wealth disparity and social mobility are at the moment.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@The Aspie Corner finishing up what was started long ago, if indeed poverty worsens further.

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dfarrah

@The Aspie Corner for the UN to be worried the trends in the US.

Did the UN do this during the Obama or Bush admins?

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dfarrah

karl pearson's picture

@gjohnsit

The 2017 U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measures reports that within the country, 40 million people — more than one in every eight Americans — live in poverty.

I don't think the Trump administration cares what the world knows or thinks about our poverty rates. For example, during the Civil Rights era, the U.S. government was motivated to become a defender of human rights, since there was a big struggle between Communism and Capitalism.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union, the sworn enemy of the U.S., had a lot to gain by showing that American democracy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Capitalism won and now it has turned into crony capitalism with lots of oligarchs running a lot of things everywhere.

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@karl pearson
Just looking for some number of the effectiveness of the War On Poverty.
Was it any more effective than the War On Terror?

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness

Was it any more effective than the War On Terror?

Look at the poverty rate in the 1950's and compare it to the 1970's.

The War on Poverty wasn't a glorious success, but it did some good. Unlike the GWOT.

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karl pearson's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness IMO Johnson's War on Poverty (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing etc.) has helped people for decades, but the Republicans would like to dismantle it, along with FDR's programs (Social Security). The War on Terror was an excuse for neo-cons to muscle their way into power and control foreign policy. It's not working, either.

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@karl pearson
Not a challenge but an honest search for data.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

karl pearson's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness This link has some figures.

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@The Voice In the Wilderness

Poverty rate in the United States from 1990 to 2016

George H. W. Bush 1989–1993
William J. Clinton 1993–2001
George W. Bush 2001–2009
Barack Obama 2009–2017
Donald J. Trump 2017–present

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@The Voice In the Wilderness
provided by karl pearson (shout out: karl, baby, love your correlation coefficient!):

To measure poverty since the late 1960s by today’s living standards, the researchers took the 2012 SPM poverty line and adjusted it for inflation back to 1967. Under this measure, overall poverty fell from 26 percent to 16 percent between 1967 and 2012, it fell among children from 29 percent to 19 percent, and it fell among the elderly from 47 percent to 15 percent.

inflationary adjustments are always dubious, but it's nonetheless hard to argue with the change that has been wrought amongst the elderly population of the US, mainly due to Medicare and, I believe, some modifications in the social security system. Presumably, the now-disappeared high-wage union jobs were also a big factor for the blue collar population -- especially if they managed to keep their pension benefits semi-intact.

Though in the interest of intellectual honesty, it may be that many of the non-impoverished elderly are boomers (and Depression and WWII babies) who scored big when the wage-price inflation of the 70s negated their mortgages and then left them sitting pretty with hugely appreciated home values. If you bought a house in California for 5K in 1960 and by 1980 you were making just 12K/year (twice the minimum wage at the time), you were in really good shape ( can you imagine having an annual salary more than twice what you paid for your home? 20 years after buying my current home, i'm earning about 3/5 what i paid for it, or maybe 2/5 of its current market value ) -- and now in 2018 you can take out a reverse mortgage on the $500,000 "value" of that same house and live quite well indeed (as long as you don't live too long). Nonetheless, without Medicare, they'd have lost those nest eggs to medical expenses.

BTW, California destroyed itself as a modern society when those same outraged folks demanded that they be taxed, not on the value of their homes, but on what they had paid for them. This made it impossible to properly fund the California school system, which is why it sucks so very very much. And to the extent that there anybody was sustaining the California school system, it was the young families who had bought homes after the inflation. The preceding generation, which had done very nicely for itself, sending its own children through one of the most effective state systems in the country with the help of earlier generations, pulled the plug and said Fuck You, both to their own kids who now had families, and to the influx of workers from across the country, whose wages and consumption created the inflation that enwealthened the preceding generation.

And then they bitch(ed) about their impecunious offspring.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Citizen Of Earth's picture

@karl pearson
"Is the most dangerous organization in human history."

"While trump is distracting you, "the wrecking crew is working. Ryan, McConnell, guys in the cabinet that write executive orders. What they are doing is systematically dismantling every aspect of government that works for the benefit of the population. From workers rights to pollution to the environment, consumer protections... All efforts are being devoted to enrich and empower their actual constituency which is super wealth and corporate power who are delighted..."

This video is 8 minutes well spent.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

@Citizen Of Earth

Wouldn't you think the world would start making citizen's arrests or something? Although really, at the latest, this should have started with the Bush 2 Admin... on the other hand, now the basic facts are undeniable - and many of us can still think of nothing to do, and do it repeatedly.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Citizen Of Earth's picture

@Ellen North
will be with us for decades. He has been rapidly replacing all positions of government power with sociopathic neoliberals -- the courts and all the alphabet agencies. Trumps favorable rating is at 40%. That tells us 40% of voters are dumb as fuckin rocks. They have been conned by a worldclass con artist.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

@Citizen Of Earth

Unfortunately, as we know all too well, propaganda too-often works exceedingly well on those not inoculated by more accurate information and understanding, and Trump's more blatant bludgeoning of everything that matters to humanity is, of course, merely the next step in an long-running agenda which depends upon manufactured consent from a suitably pathologized population.

We desperately need to more rapidly advance in the already ongoing process of breaking free of inculcated false perceptions calculatedly 'othering' and dividing people into fragmented groups, in order for us to reach each other on a human level to allow the attribution of the actual causes of our destruction - pathological greed within a psychopathic, power/wealth/human rights-stealing group - to be recognized, rather than redirected onto other victims of this.

We may have been conditioned to respond to differences and dissent with repressive anger or repudiation, as do our self-proclaimed overlords, but the human spirit must and will out.

The People United Will Never be Defeated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHKTAyaWVqU&list=RDcHKTAyaWVqU&start_rad...

Gary Clark Jr. - The Healing (Live At Arlyn Studios)

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Hawkfish's picture

@Citizen Of Earth

I don’t know who people like Muller (sp?) are or even who’s “side” he’s on. The real issues in this country are being decided at the local level these days. DC is just a circus. In the Roman sense.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

@Hawkfish

still hold stolen control and the ability to warp law and civil forces into a weapon against democracy and survival...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@Hawkfish
in the various ALEC-ravaged states, the same Republicans who once blathered about the importance of leaving local concerns to local governments have passed ALEC-provided laws stripping communities of the right to do things that the paymasters don't like.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Hawkfish's picture

@UntimelyRippd

We just passed a progressive business tax to fund public housing. We have the wealth and a fairly humane electorate. If only our mayor wasn’t in Amazon’s pocket...

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

thanatokephaloides's picture

..... never spake truer .....

True then,
[video:https://youtu.be/bMehSfTmnbY]

and still true 20+ years later!
[video:https://youtu.be/ndODHKL1LEA]

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

detroitmechworks's picture

@thanatokephaloides Sorry, every time I hear that name, this song runs through my head. Feel free to ignore this...

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyaK3jo4Sl4]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

I believe those fines are also tax deductible.

Can any mafia match the wreckage that White American Banksters (WAB) inflicted on the world?

It is interesting if all this crap happened in some Central or Latin American country, Americans would just grouse about the low moral nature of Latin countries. Imagine HSBC. The country's lead prosecutor slaps a fine on bank money laundering for the violent vicious drug gang equaling one month of bank's earnings. Wanna bet charges of bribery would fly? And the lead prosecutor gets a job in a company run by corrupt bank officials. And the lower prosecutor letting HSBC off on criminal charges becomes the Boss. Oh and also, a guy becomes a Director of HSBC (Comey), later becomes the head of internal security for the entire country. Sounds to me like the drug cartels purchased themselves a government.

I still go back to Obama who praised several of these banksters who by the way needed bailout money. And then exactly a monthly later supports the mass firing of minority teachers. You know, they needed some accountability.

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@MrWebster getting richer and buying those with no morals off.

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dfarrah

@dfarrah You know, I think he believes it.

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@MrWebster

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

thanatokephaloides's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

His God is Mammon!

Satan appreciates your not assigning Lloyd Blankfein to Him during the life of the said Blankfein, as doubtless he will become a significant part of Satan's workload after he is dead!

Wink

/snark

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@thanatokephaloides @thanatokephaloides

Edit: Or, with any luck, both before and after!

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

snoopydawg's picture

Paul Street wrote Obama's presidency epithet

“Progressive” Obama: He’s Melting, He’s Melting

Priceless

Beneath progressive pretentions, Barack Obama the national political phenomenon has never been anything other than a tool of the United States’ corporate and financial ruling class. Obama rose to power in Washington with remarkable, record-setting financial backing from Wall Street and K Street election investors.

And answer to the lobbyist’s question came less the three years later: priceless. In his book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (2011), { link } the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind tells a remarkable story from March of 2009. Three months into Obama’s presidency, popular rage at Wall Street was intense and the leading financial institutions were weak and on the defensive. The nation’s financial elite had driven the nation and world’s economy into an epic meltdown in the period since Silverstein’s essay was published – and millions knew it. Having ridden into office partly on a wave of popular anger at the economic power elite’s staggering malfeasance, Obama called a meeting of the nation’s top thirteen financial executives at the White House. The banking titans came into the meeting full of dread only to leave pleased to learn that the new president was in their camp. For instead of standing up for those who had been harmed most by the crisis – workers, minorities, and the poor – Obama sided unequivocally with those who had caused the meltdown.

“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” Obama said. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem. And I want to help…I’m not here to go after you. I’m protecting you…I’m going to shield you from congressional and public anger.” For the banking elite, who had destroyed untold millions of jobs, there was, as Suskind puts it, “Nothing to worry about. Whereas [President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt had [during the Great Depression] pushed for tough, viciously opposed reforms of Wall Street and famously said ‘I welcome their hate,’ Obama was saying ‘How can I help?’” As one leading banker told Suskind, “The sense of everyone after the meeting was relief. The president had us at a moment of real vulnerability. At that point, he could have ordered us to do just about anything and we would have rolled over. But he didn’t – he mostly wanted to help us out, to quell the mob.”

People love to say that Obama's presidency was the best one since FDR. These same people are making fun of Trump's voters because they can't see how he is hurting them economically. They also love to say that "Republican voters vote against their self interests."

The blindness is staggering!

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

karl pearson's picture

@snoopydawg Theme song for these Obama groupies:

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snoopydawg's picture

@karl pearson

Detroit posted this in an essay earlier this week and I've spent the last week listening to their music. If I wasn't listening to it my brain was playing it in my head. "Quick, name this tune." And the song would play on and on .....

Smile

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

The Aspie Corner's picture

@snoopydawg [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWEoJ65gPo]

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@snoopydawg

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

snoopydawg's picture

IMG_2204_1.JPG

Of course they do this on purpose. It's how they get to reset the economy and take away any economic progress that we little people made. Plus they get to buy the stocks that they helped crash for pennies on the dollar. How many little people have enough money left to take advantage of the steals deals?

After the millions of houses were foreclosed on banks bought up many of them again for pennies on the dollar as did other wealthy people and even foreigners who then rented them out after raising their rents and they became slum landlords. Sorry something is broken? Either fix it yourselves or move out, there are many other people who will rent the houses. Of course with this many homes off the market it caused a housing shortage and that has helped see home prices skyrocket. Same thing happened with rental prices.

Now just imagine if Obama had held the bank CEOs accountable for their actions and instead of bailing out the banks he helped main stream Americans instead? This is just one more part of Obama's legacy that will affect the country for decades. Just like Bill Clinton's policies are still affecting us.

The banks think that the weak protections that congress passed with Dodd-Frank were getting in their way and so they paid lobbied congress to undo. Of course there were just enough democrats who voted for the legislation to get it passed.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

gulfgal98's picture

@snoopydawg but it is far more about increasing their share of the pie while doing so continues to decrease what is left for the rest of us. In other words, it is this classic case of "he who has the most toys wins." I used to laugh at that bumper sticker until I started to realize just how tragically true it is.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98

Their sickness includes a resentment of anybody else having anything at all, whether money/possessions, health or human rights. To them, vulnerability marks easy prey.

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0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

@snoopydawg

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0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.