''Regimes become corrupt when the propertied rich manipulate the laws.'' -- Thomas Paine, 1776
Thomas certainly would understand the workings of today's Wall Street-on-the Potomac.
From Tom Paine: A Political Life by John Keane:
If, as Paine thought, regimes become corrupt when the propertied rich manipulate the laws to grind down the poor, then a young republic like America could easily suffer the same fate, especially if its citizens fell under the influence of self-interested men of property. "A rich man makes a bonny traitor," he told his friend Joseph Reed, quoting James I. If that was so, then republican principles must be extended to the sphere of economic life. Men of wealth must be tamed by public ethics. Property and its corresponding "liberal" values must be subject to the universal "civic humanist" rule of civil and political rights. That would not fully eliminate disparities of wealth. But the availability of rights to all adult, male citizens, not just to property owners, would ensure ongoing controversies about how to divide that which is divisible. Such controversies would ensure that existing patterns of wealth and inequality would never be seen as natural, as reflecting the will of God, or as a brutal fact of economic life.
SOURCE:
http://goo.gl/IUHrKR
I wonder if he would recognize the place.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The guy was liberal for his day. For too many, he still sounds like a revolutionary.
How Corrupt Is the American Government?
See For Yourself
Posted on January 5, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog
Government corruption has become rampant:
Senior SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day surfing porn sites instead of cracking down on financial crimes
Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watch porn instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants
SNIP...
A high-level Federal Reserve official says quantitative easing is “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time”
SNIP...
Congress recently told the courts that Congress can’t be investigated for insider trading
SNIP...
The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war
CONTINUED...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/corrupt-american-government.html
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/summary.php?cid=N00000528&year=2013
vs.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-03/every-hillary-and-bill-clinton-speech-2013-fees
You ever hear how Phil Gramm and Bill Clinton, the two key figures in the repeal of Glass Seagall, now work together in Wealth Management at UBS? That's a $24 Trillion can of worms.
by Paul Buchheit
Published on Monday, December 01, 2014 by Common Dreams
Just 70 individuals now own as much wealth as half the world. In the U.S., the richest 40 individuals own as much as half the country, and the 16,000 American households in the top .01% have accumulated an average net worth of over a third of a billion dollars. As extreme wealth continues to grow out of control, inequality worsens for the rest of us, plaguing our country and our world, spreading like a terminal form of cancer. It should be a major news item in the mainstream media. But the well-positioned few are either oblivious to or uncaring about its effect on less fortunate people.
The data and charts (citations here) come from Forbes, Credit Suisse, and a recent study by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
1. Just 70 Individuals Own As Much Wealth As Half the World
halftheworld.jpg
Less than a year ago, Oxfam reported that the richest 85 individuals owned as much wealth as half the world. But recently updated calculations reveal that the richest 70 individuals now own $1.842 trillion, more than the poorest half of the world.
We're drawing nearer to the fulfillment of Charles Koch's dream: "I want my fair share and that's all of it."
2. Just 40 Americans Own As Much Wealth As Half the United States
40americans.jpg
About a month ago it was 43, and a month before that it was 47. Now the richest 40 Americans (The Forbes 40) own a little over $1.092 trillion, about the same, according to calculations based on Credit Suisse data, as the poorest half of the country.
The national wealth that was created by all of us over many decades is quickly being redistributed to fewer and fewer incomprehensibly rich people.
One of the causes for this pathological transfer of wealth is revealed in the final image..
3. Stock/Equity Wealth of the Richest 12,000 Households Has Surpassed the Housing Wealth of 108,000,000 Households
stockequity.jpg
Just 35 years ago, the percentage of national wealth in middle-class housing (net of mortgages) was about seven times more than the percentage of national wealth in equities owned by the .01% (12,000 families). Now middle-class housing is only about half the value of those equities.
Saez and Zucman report that the total of corporate equities, bonds, and savings deposits owned by the .01% amounted to 2.2 percent of total U.S. household wealth in the mid-1980s, rising to 9.9 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, housing for the bottom 90% dropped from 15 percent of total household wealth to 5-6 percent. Since the bottom 50%, according to the authors, own almost zero wealth, the housing figures pertain to the 50-90% families, which can be described as "middle class."
Possible solutions are becoming clearer:
(1) A Financial Speculation Tax to slow down the flow of money to the takers
(2) Occupy Wall Street, Phase II
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
SOURCE w/links to details: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/01/slap-face-wealth-gap-images
Perhaps only the propertied slavemaster can find a moral way to go along with that one.
uponit7771 having something substantive to say? Wouldn't that be a novelty? 
la Terreur is the another way from the bottom up revolutionary types.
The Reign of Terror (6 September 1793 – 28 July 1794),[1] also known as The Terror (French: la Terreur), was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution incited by conflict between two rival political factions, the Girondins and The Mountain, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of the revolution". The death toll ranged in the tens of thousands, with 16,594 executed by guillotine (2,639 in Paris),[2] and another 25,000 in summary executions across France.[3]
The guillotine (called the "National Razor"
became the symbol of the revolutionary cause, strengthened by a string of executions: King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, the Girondins, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans), and Madame Roland, and others such as pioneering chemist Antoine Lavoisier, lost their lives under its blade. During 1794, revolutionary France was beset with conspiracies by internal and foreign enemies. Within France, the revolution was opposed by the French nobility, which had lost its inherited privileges. The Roman Catholic Church opposed the revolution, which had turned the clergy into employees of the state and required they take an oath of loyalty to the nation (through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). In addition, the French First Republic was engaged in a series of wars with neighboring powers, and parts of France were engaging in civil war against the republican regime.
The extension of civil war and the advance of foreign armies on national territory produced a political crisis and increased the already present rivalry between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins. The latter were eventually grouped in the parliamentary faction called the Mountain, and they had the support of the Parisian population. The French government established the Committee of Public Safety, which took its final form on 6 September 1793, in order to suppress internal counter-revolutionary activities and raise additional French military forces.
Through the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Terror's leaders exercised broad powers and used them to eliminate the internal and external enemies of the republic. The repression accelerated in June and July 1794, a period called la Grande Terreur (the Great Terror), and ended in the coup of 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), leading to the Thermidorian Reaction, in which several instigators of the Reign of Terror were executed, including Saint-Just and Robespierre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
