The Only Good Welfare is Corporate Welfare

Thinkprogress points out that It’s Not ‘Anti-Capitalist’ To Protest An Industry That Was Saved By Trillions Of Taxpayer Dollars.

But the actual organizing principle of the demonstrations is to speak with moral clarity of the economic inequality of our current system. The purpose is not to attack capitalism but rather an industry whose wealth was guarded to the hilt by government intervention — backed up by trillons of dollars of taxpayer money through programs like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and near-zero interest Federal Reserve lending — a form of government intervention that the banking industry received but millions of foreclosed on homeowners and debt-laden students did not get.

This shit's maddening, that unless you're for the unrestrained tactics that leveled our economy to continue you're somehow "against capitalism."  No one's more of a commie-pinko lefty liberal than me.  And I know plenty of other people who are the same way.  And exactly nobody at any time has said "you know what we need to get rid of? Capitalism!"  Hey, I wanna be rich!  I want EVERYBODY to have the problem of wondering if buying a third yacht is a wise investment.  But it doesn't mean I need to be in love with throwing myself under the bus so that the uber-wealthy can get uber-wealthier just so I can be on "Team Capitalism", either.  There's a lot of space in the middle where the rich can get richer without so many people having to suffer for it.

But that's what we do - we walk around with "We're the 99%" posters, but come election time we keep voting in the fuckers who make it so easy for the 1% to piss all over everyone else.  And you can't blame those people for getting what they can get, it's not their job to worry about what sweetie-pies they can be to everyone else; it's us who continue to demand their tax cuts and loopholes and taxpayer-funded bailouts exist in case we wake up tomorrow with the ability to throw a 98-mph sinker, outraged that we'll then hafta pay more taxes than we did as the part-time Wal-Mart day manager (electronics section.)  So while I appreciate the Wall Street protester's doing what they're doing, it really doesn't mean anything without a seismic shift come election day, for which I won't hold my cinnamon-flavored breath.

Besides, the guy that took my job over as Nobel Laureate correctly points out the hypocrisy of calling what Wall Street's doing "capitalism" in the first place:

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz explained that what Wall Street is practicing is “not capitalism.” “We are bearing the costs of their [bankers'] misdeeds,” he said. “There’s a system where we socialize losses and privatize gains. That’s not capitalism. That’s not a market economy. That’s a distorted economy, and if we continue with that, we won’t succeed in growing.” 

A "teach-in"? How much pussy is this guy getting?!?!?!?