There is a reason it is called Labor Day

This day isn’t for the rich guys. It isn’t for the pretty guys.

It is for the working guys.

“Will you be a gun thug or will you be a man?”

or a more modern version:

or from across the ocean:

or  this one sung by the son of our greatest folk writer/singer singing his Dad’s greatest song, accompanied by another great folksinger, accompanied by his son. I also believe Arlo’s family also accompanies him:

 

How about austerity for Wall Street?

by Mon Labiaga Ferrer

Bankers will take $5 trillion from American economy over the coming decade
[Via Boing Boing]

How to succeed by failing: be a banker. From CNN World:

For the American economy – and for many other developed economies – the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. In the United States, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion. Extrapolating over the coming decade, the numbers would approach $5 trillion, an amount vastly larger than what both President Barack Obama’s administration and his Republican opponents seem willing to cut from further government deficits.

That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees. Such transfers represent as cunning a tax on everyone else as one can imagine. It feels quite iniquitous that bankers, having helped cause today’s financial and economic troubles, are the only class that is not suffering from them – and in many cases are actually benefiting.

[More]

Nothing is being done against these guys. we are continually being divided over pretty inconsequential things so that these guys can continue the same policies that already destroyed the economy.

Best comment I’ve read: “Why are you screaming about Mexicans when silk-suited frauds on Wall Street take all your money?”

I firmly believe that America can never be put back on the right path until these guys are reined in, hard.

Hyping mental illness

Mental disorders affect more than a third of Europeans
[Via News at Nature - Most Recent]

Mental disorders affect more than a third of Europeans

Nature News , 05092011 doi: 10.1038/news.2011.514

Kerri Smith

Treatment of those afflicted is ‘unusually deficient’.

[More]

I’m sure the media well be all over this, making it sound like 40% of Europeans are nuts. But the actual report states that the most common mental disorders are anxiety and insomnia, not the usual things conjured up when terms like mental disorder are used.

Anxiety and insomnia are responsible for about half of the 40%. And while nothing to ignore, they do not have the debilitating effects on individuals and on society that other problems present.

The disorder with the greatest effects both on the individual and on society – depression – affects 7% of the population in any one year. Very high but not as shocking at the 40% number.

Something to get the morning hopping

(ht to balloon-juice]