---
Poll finds Americans angry about pretty much everything
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/05/poll-finds-americans-angry-about-pretty-much-everything/#ixzz1amMSS8Ky
No wonder David Bowie was afraid of Americans.
A new Newsweek/Daily Beast poll finds that Americans are angry about…pretty much everything. From President Obama to congressional Republicans to even God (who has a 33 percent approval rating), everyone needs to watch out for an angry mob coming their way.
Unemployment is at 9.1 percent, gas and grocery prices are skyrocketing, the housing market is in the dumps, and people aren’t happy. Three quarters of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and 81 percent say the job market is not where it needs to be. Half of respondents don’t think Obama has a plan to balance the budget, and 58 percent think Republicans aren’t doing their part to balance the budget either.
The poll finds that Americans are being affected by their anger in other parts of life as well. Fifty-six percent are so angry that they can’t even sleep and 13 percent say the anxiety has affected their sex life. Twenty-six percent of married respondents claim the country’s economic problems have affected their marriage, with more than half of those people saying it has made their marriage worse.
---
And this from investmentwatchblog
America is getting very angry: Poll shows 90 percent of Americans believe that the economy is performing poorly and approximately 80 percent of Americans believe that it is “difficult” to find a job right now.
October 11th, 2011
(Click this link for the source post with many good embedded links on investmentwatchblog)
The Occupy Wall Street protests and the rise of the Tea Party movement have both changed America, but you haven’t seen anything yet. You better buckle up, because America is getting very angry and as the economy continues to decline the economic protests are going to become much more frightening in the years ahead. Americans have become very accustomed to prosperity. Now that our prosperity is vanishing, people are starting to become very angry. The scary thing is that the vast majority of our population now lives in tightly congested urban areas. That makes the potential for mass rioting and civil unrest much greater. Back in 1910, 72 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, only 16 percent of Americans live in rural areas. So what happens when you have millions of incredibly angry people crammed into tightly congested metropolitan areas? Well, we are about to find out.
Over the past 4 years, we have seen some unprecedented things happen in America. First we witnessed the rise of the Tea Party movement. Initially it pretty much was a true grassroots movement but now it has been mostly taken over by establishment Republicans. Now we are witnessing the rise of Occupy Wall Street. While there are some grassroots elements to it, the reality is that Occupy Wall Street seems to be pretty much controlled by the Democrats. In fact, one individual was recently told that “Ron Paul signs are not welcome here” at a recent protest.
So we have the left and the right fighting with each other like cats and dogs. The Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street both pretty much hate each other.
Meanwhile, those that control both political parties are enjoying the view.
But the people that are expressing their anger through protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street are not going to be content with the status quo for long.
The truth is that there is a lot of anger in the United States today, and that anger is rapidly growing. Millions upon millions of Americans are deeply upset about the economy and about our financial system.
Right now, protests by both the Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street have been mostly peaceful.
But that will not last indefinitely.
In fact, there are already signs that Occupy Wall Street protesters are not content with simply sitting in the park and banging on drums.
For example, protesters stormed the Senate Hart Office Building in Washington D.C. today. A handful of protesters were arrested.
Also, more than 50 protesters from the Occupy Boston movement were arrested today when they would not do what police were ordering them to do.
But most notable of all was the march to the homes of certain millionaires up in New York. Earlier today, Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to the homes of Jamie Dimon, David Koch, John Paulson, Howard Milstein, and Rupert Murdoch.
Needless to say, that is going to seriously upset some people.
The home protests were not spontaneous. The truth is that they were highly organized. Organizers such as SEIU board member Stephen Lerner have been talking about them for quite some time. In fact, you can hear him discussing plans for the upcoming protests at the homes of these millionaires back on October 3rd right here.
There is a lot about Occupy Wall Street that can be criticized (just check out this article), but one thing that Occupy Wall Street is actually doing right is that it is focusing on the role of money in politics.
The big financial powers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political campaigns. Just check out this infographic. All of that money buys a lot of influence over the political process. If it didn’t, the big financial powers would not be spending that kind of money.
But the big financial powers are not just spending money on political campaigns. It has now come out that the big Wall Street banks can order New York City police officers just like they would order pizzas. In fact, over a million dollars is going to be spent this way just this year alone.
A recent article that was posted on counterpunch.org detailed how this works….
One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.
The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.
So expect the big Wall Street banks to be sending in orders for huge numbers of New York City cops to protect them from the half-crazed Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Sadly, if recent poll numbers are any indication, the anger of the American people is not going to abate any time soon….
*According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that lack confidence in U.S. banks is now at an all-time high of 36%.
*According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, 90 percent of Americans believe that the economy is performing poorly and approximately 80 percent of Americans believe that it is “difficult” to find a job right now.
*According to a recent Rasmussen survey, 48 percent of all Americans believe that reductions in government spending are “at least somewhat likely” to result in civil unrest inside the United States.
*Another recent survey found that 73 percent of all Americans believe that the nation is “on the wrong track”.
*According to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, Congress has a disapproval rating of 82%.
*A recent Rasmussen survey found that 85 percent of Americans believe that members of Congress “are more interested in helping their own careers than in helping other people”, and that same survey found that 46 percent of the American people believe that most members of Congress are corrupt.
*According to a different Rasmussen survey, only 17 percent of all Americans now believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed.
*A recent Washington Post poll found that 78 percent of Americans are dissatisfied “with the way this country’s political system is working” and that only 26 percent of Americans now believe that the federal government can solve the economic problems that we are facing.
So what does all of that add up to?
It adds up to a U.S. population that is very frustrated and that is looking for outlets for that frustration.
As the U.S. economy continues to fall apart, that frustration is going to continue to rise.
What we are seeing all across America is only the beginning. We are going to see protest movements and explosions of anger that we can’t even imagine right now.
Dark days are coming for America.
You better buckle up.
- TAD
---
This is a fear I have had for some 2 years now..
That violence WILL come, it has to, it's only a matter of time until someone, somewhere, blows up a bank or two. Count on it.
Why would I say such a thing?
Well not because I WANT it to happen..
But here's the thing..
It involves numbers and percentages..
As reported above, in the first story on this post "Fifty-six percent[of Americans] are so angry that they can’t even sleep."
One piece of data that I am having a difficult time finding is what percentage of the American population may be violence-prone?
I have found that the average number of murders in the United States per year is somewhere around 16,000.
Here are is a portion of the United States Crime Rates for 2010
2010
Population 308,745,538
-
Violent 1,246,248
-
Murder 14,748
All I'm saying here is that there ARE violent people out there, in society. They do obviously exist as we can clearly see based on these numbers.
Now I'm going to make the assumption that the great majority of people who commit a violent act, including murder, are likely angry at the time.
Now when we see "Fifty-six percent [of Americans] are so angry that they can’t even sleep." And that anger for the most part is currently directed at Washington, politicians, politics, banks, corporations and our currently dire economic situation.
Well hell this math is EASY!
56 percent of 308 million people = 172,480,000 (more than 172 MILLION people are so angry that they can't sleep!?)
And then we have the Occupy Wall street movement..
It has grown from hundreds of people participating to thousands of people to tens of thousands and it very well may continue to grow to hundreds of thousands of people.
All of whom very well may be the most angry of the angry..
My nagging, as yet unanswered, question for some time now has been..
Given a population of very angry people what percentage of that population might be prone to participate in violent activity?
I can't seem to find this number without it being a sub-category of the total.. ie; domestic violence, school violence, work place violence..
Here are the common PERSONALITY DISORDERS but it doesn't say how many people are affected by them.. Though I did see somewhere that a full 1% of the population is affected by schizophrenia (more than 3 million people there alone).
My bottom line point here is that violence is most certainly unavoidable in this situation merely because of the numbers involved..
So I'm going to use a completely manufactured number pulled out of my own {...}
Lets say, for the sake of argument, that 0.005% of angry people are violence-prone.. Is that fair? one half of 1%
If we work with our 172 million people who have polled as "too angry to sleep" and calculate 0.005% of that number (as potentially violent) we get 860,000 people!
So I simply say to myself at that point THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT! So slash that 1 half of 1% by another 90% and we still get 86,000 people!
Cut it by another 90% and we STILL get 8,600 people!
Keep in mind there are an average of 15 or 16 THOUSAND murders in this country every year..
My conclusion is that, based on numbers alone, violence CANNOT and will not be avoided. In reality I am rather shocked that we have not already seen a lot more violence than we have..
Question is.. Then what?!
Martial law and FEMA camps?
i have always felt and said that in the case of a truly rebellious uprising the actions taken by our own government will be indistinguishable from the actions of regimes under siege in the middle east.
Mark my words
Good luck everyone
Greg
No comments:
Post a Comment