It was definitely a great rant. I think he was serious. And this is what we should all be focusing on.

@ETpro, I think it would be ironic if the Occupy Wall Street movement lasar focused on the rantings of a Lexus liberal like Ratigan whose net worth is over $9 million with an annual salary of $1.5 million whose money is earned with a show that focuses on finance and economics. Maybe I’m missing something. Wouldn’t be the first time though.

I wonder if Dylan Ratigan is going to vote for Ron Paul since he said pretty much the exact same thing Ratigan ranted about at tonight’s debate.
Ron Paul on Occupy WallStreet CNN Las Vegas Debate 10/18/2011

Btw, if anyone has not seen the movie Network, do so ASAP.
Here’s one of the best scenes in the movie.

@bkcunningham
It’s not about who he is. Its about what he says. Words are more important than the person.

Yeah, the “Occupy” movement is focusing on money in politics, but that’s a battle that was already lost. They need to focus on electing folks who represent them who can’t be bought. Maybe, in the first stage, they ramp up the rhetoric and get attention and hopefully recruit people who are mad as hell, but in the end, they have to elect members of Congress who represent their views.

If the movement can be turned into an electoral movement, they may have a chance, because ultimately, to get rid of money in politics, there will have to be a constitutional amendment. That will require something like two-thirds of the state to ratify it, which means you’ve got to get “Occupy” movements going in a lot of states in a lot more cities.

Unfortunately, I seriously doubt this movement will have staying power. In one or two dozen years, we’ll see some of the leaders from this group… if there are any… being elected to Congress. This is how politicians cut their organizing teeth. People I worked with thirty years ago began to get elected to Congress a decade or so ago. This is how it goes.

I wish them luck, and if they manage to run people for Congress before I die, I might vote for them. However I doubt if they will do much. They are urban folks, and urban areas have no power because all the rural red states block everything that would help the cities.

@wundayatta, I was following you right up to, “urban areas have no power because all the rural red states block everything that would help the cities.” What? Is that something from Urban Archipelago?

@Blackberry Thanks. I’m quite sure he was serious.

@bkcunningham If you think their anger is directed at all who drive good automobiles, you are so out of step with the bulk of American thought it is impossible to imagine how we would ever bridge the gap. Do you still refuse to understand that if we allow the Shylocks to drain off all the assets of this nation and put them in the hands of multinationals that represent less than 1% of the population, they will invest that capital elsewhere where returns are greater and they can harvest what’s there as well. Nobody will drive a Lexus here if we sit back for another 20 or 30 years and let them run that course.

@SquirrelEStuff I like Ron Paul and he says a lot that’s speaking truth to power. But the classic Republican idea that government can do nothing right and the solution to every problem is to do nothing is flat wrong. The Free Market brought us wondersul ideas like the Great Depression, 2 savings and loan bailouts in the 80s which cost US taxpayers more in real terms than the TARP, the Enron criminality, the fall of Lehman Brothers and the great recession of 2007–2010. Deregulate everything and let Wall Street and corporations like Enron do whatever they want is NOT the answer, it’s the problem.

@wundayatta Teddy Roosevelt confronted run away frree market freebooters who were wrecking the economy and the nation, and he took his appeal to the people, ignoring a bought Congress he knew would be no help. The people responded and the cartels and trusts were reigned it. Another way to take it to the poeple is to push for a Constitutionl Convention to propose an amendment to get big money out of politics. Perhaps a combination of public financing plus contributions limited to a reasonable amount per person, say $250. And since the Supremes have now informed us that when the Framers wrote “people” they also meant Corporations (never mind that the corporate structure and Wall Street did not exist in 1776), they would be limited to $250 as well.

Right now, Washington is literally awash in lobbying money, $3,508,118,135 in 2010. Imagine the money if we toss in all the state and local governments. Everyone is bought. You can’t get there unless you have billions of your own money to spend, or are willing to sell yourself to those who do.

@ETpro, I’ll take you at your word that you are the expert on the subject of Occupy Wall Street. So what was up with the group not allowing John Lewis to speak. Why did they all keep repeating what the speakers were saying?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI

@bkcunningham Where did I claim to be the expert on the OWS movement? I just haven’t observed them do anything that indicates they hate good automobiles and their drivers. You seem dedicated to directing this discussion anywhere you can instead of addressing the issues Ratigan raised. Even if he were a convicted mass murderer, what he said was either right or wrong. Who is in the OWN protest, who speaks there, and what sort of car a TV personality drives have NOTHING to do with whether money is corrupting politics or is not.

And for the record, that crowd was in Atlanta, and not Wall Street. I suppose some had difficulty hearing the speaker, so they came up with the repeating method. But not having been there, I have no honest idea why the Atlanta crowd selected that method of communication.

I blessedly have not listened to, watched or otherwise availed myself of the Occupy Wall Street Sludge.

@bkcunningham Urban areas are in populous states, generally. Red states tend to be less populous, yet all states get the same two senators. This gives rural states an unequal advantage when it comes to blocking legislation. You only need 41 senators to block something. You need 60 to get it passed. This means that is basically only takes 21 senators to block the will of the vast majority of people in the nation.

Please….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv61zBZacpo

@bkcunningham The good times don’t have to be over. But being 67 years old, I know exactly what Merle Haggard is singing about. If we keep playing push-me-pull-you fighting among ourselves—if we leave our government in the hands of the well-heeled lobbyists, then yes, the good times are over.

The billionaires behind the change, and the mega corporations will harvest what used to be here for themselves and move on to harvest elswhere. They just want it all. Nothing short of that will do.

@ETpro Maybe you will get a good rant out of this. Maybe not. I realize you may despise this woman, but I honestly think she has something to say to all of us here.
I’ll be interested in your comments if you read it

@plethora I already read it. I subscribe to Human Events. Ann Coulter is nothing but a water carrier for the billionaires and mega corporations who are behind the problem She is one of the mercenaries fighting their class war against the 99%. The OWS protests pose a potential problem for her oligarch bosses, and so she and dozens of other talking heads on the right will be trotted out to insult them at every turn. We will see how successful she will be at convincing average Americans to continue to vote to be robbed by billionaires.

But crying about the OWS movement derailing anger at Wall Street? Give me a f***ing break. That’s a long stretch even for the likes of Ann Coulter. What was the Republican mantra throughout this? They filibustered and tried to defeat Dodd-Frank and every move to bring back any meaningful regulation of Wall Street that the Republican signature legislation of 1999, “Gramm-Leach-Bliley”;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act gutted. They want to repeal even the watered down regulations that did make it through. Deregulate Wall Street completely and let it all play out again.

Herman Cain says that the OWS crowd is wrong to blame Wall Street. They should blame Obama—for an economic collapse that started building before he even got elected to public office and broke under Bush, before Obama was elected. And the Republican crowd cheers wildly.

“Yes, yes”, they reason, “it’s not our sponsors on Wall Street. The poor stole $16 trillion from the US economy (that’s what the FED had to pump in to keep us from going completely over the cliff) and they are so stupid they are still poor.” I know you are an intelligent guy. How can you honestly believe this drivel?