So, what are the protesters so upset about, really?
Do they have legitimate gripes?
To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes.
And if America cannot figure out a way to address these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized," as sociologists might say. And in that scenario, the current protests will likely be only the beginning.
The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high.
In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between "labor" and "capital," there has rarely—if ever—been a time when "capital" was so clearly winning.
So that is the problem, which I think everybody can relate to, but what is the solution?
Journalist Mat Taibbi took a stab at offering a five step solution in Rolling Stone magazine.
No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands.
There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:
1. Break up the monopolies.
2. Pay for your own bailouts.
3. No public money for private lobbying.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers.
5. Change the way bankers get paid.
Well that is a start, and I think we can all agree that it is well past the time for all of us to get angry, get motivated, and get something done to take this country back from the corporations who have essentially marginalized average Americans, while taking advantage of a government that they have purchased lock, stock, and barrel.
(P.S. To get a more comprehensive idea of what Taibbi is suggesting just click the Rolling Stone link.)
How does one "take the country back"?
ReplyDeleteHint: VOTE.
You have to have the discipline to vote out your own congress critter to prove that they have to do what you say - or they'll lose their job.
Until then - it's all so much hot air.
Add to the list: send the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et al to jail for what they did to the world economy.
ReplyDeleteSomething also needs to be done to clean out the corruption in the SEC. As it is now, it is a revolving door between this toothless agency and the various financial institutions. Regulators work a stint at the SEC, then turn right around and work for the very firms they are supposed to regulate.
And yes, definitely break up the monopoly these giant banks have. Oh, and make it illegal for credit cards to charge more than twelve percent, IF THAT.
But whatever makes the list, my suggestion is to make it as bold as possible, instead of starting off with tepid proposals that will get even further watered down.
Rachel Maddow recently interviewed author Lawrence Lessig on his new book "Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress.. and a Plan to Stop It."
ReplyDeleteI am reading it now, and am very impressed. Part 4 is "Solutions" and I might jump ahead.
Politicians and the ultra-rich are addicts of money and power. They know the situation is out of balance, but asking them to walk away from their supply is not going to work. We, the people must lead the way forward. I am hopeful.
I'm still going to assert that it is the ratings agencies that are the fundamental problem here. We didn't learn a damn thing from the '90s.
ReplyDeleteA formation of a not for profit agency to take over the reviewing of creditworthiness of all traded financial instruments. This can be financed through a transaction fee, which in turn will also help stabilize the markets.
Market efficiency is determined by both quantity AND quality. I truly believe in the long run they can be made MORE efficient by focusing on the quality of traded instruments than the churning we see now.
The Family Research Council Tries To Pray Away Occupy Wall Street
ReplyDeleteIn the Evangelical Family Research Council website, there is a ‘Prayer Team’ page where what they perceive as the paradigm of righteousness in battling the evils of America typically centers on homosexuality, while defending DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] with vigor.
The FRC typically clumps together their stereotypical views of the vast gay community and vehemently they ‘doth protest too much’. But, now this religious right, tea party loving group has branched out, targeting the Occupy Wall Street protesters in an attempt to pray them away.
Their stance is usually one of, ‘liberals are attacking your family, values and freedoms‘ while they attack the freedom of anyone not like them — in actuality, their extreme group gives us more credibility with each and every hissy fit.
The best they can come up with is reminiscent of Michele & Marcus Bachmann’s clinic in which they attempt to cure homosexuality by praying it away:
“Days of Rage/Occupy Wall Street — The sixties-style tent city protest, which seemed to fizzle after its September 17 launch, now has momentum and is expanding to cities across the nation, including Washington, D.C. Organizers of the movement (e.g. ACORN, labor unions, and other far-left leaders and groups) have been given new life by the sycophant liberal media, Hollywood celebrities and leading Democrats in Washington, including President Obama. Six arrests were made when one hundred demonstrators conducted an illegal demonstration inside a Senate office building (see Gullible, Who’s Behind it?, Official Website, Senate Building).
• May God prevent these radical organizers from stirring revolution and distracting voters from the elections and keeping watch on our elected leaders (Num 16:1-14; Is 1:4-6; Pr 12:11-12; Mt 26:41; Eph 4:28; 1 Tim 6:3-10; Heb 13:5-6).”
It’s disturbing that avid supporters of the Tea Party find dissent to be ‘radical’ and unfortunately it’s not atypical. Our Constitution protects us in order that we can speak freely and assemble. Selective memory is not lacking with this group while forgetting the rallies in which enraged voters descended on Washington carrying guns while wearing revolutionary garb, with teabags hanging off the brim of their hats. Yet, the FRC perceives OWS protesters as ‘radical’.
Their religious right based rhetoric which they would love to implement into American politics and the government is nothing short of their desire to create their own theocratic utopia.
Creating and perpetuating falsities in order to demonize the OWS movement is behavior not unusual to them, but OWS is not organized by the nonexistent ACORN, labor unions and ‘other far left groups’ which they threw into the mix expressly for the fear factor. In fact, all were and are welcome to join the protest in order to combat the greed we are witnessing on Wall Street and in politics.
Blatant lies are perpetrated, which are seen in comment threads and as expected, it’s infested and possibly created by their favorite cable news show, which is indeed ‘radical’. Fox News, the GOP campaign machine, promoted the Tea Party daily as if they were the proponents of the movement.
OWS was born on the Internet, namely Twitter and Facebook, not George Soros, unions or ACORN. We are disillusioned with what we’re witnessing. What defines ‘radical’ is that they see no cause for this movement, yet we should accept the Tea Party when they went into a fury immediately after President Obama was sworn in – not before when George W. Bush brought this country to its economical knees. The reason for Tea Party anger was expressly, Obama raising taxes when in fact he did not.
What is radical is the Family Research Council, who thought the GOP’s ‘Pledge to America’ didn’t specify the supposed dangers of same sex marriage enough.
What is radical is
more...
http://www.politicususa.com/en/pray-away-occupy-wall-street
The Attempt To Evict Occupy Wall Street Has Only Made It Stronger
ReplyDeleteAfter thousands of people turned out to help clean Liberty Plaza, New York City backed off their plan to evict the protesters, and learned that attempts to muscle the 99% only make them stronger.
Mayor Bloomberg announced his retreat via a statement from Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway, “Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park – Brookfield Properties – that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation. Our position has been consistent throughout: the City’s role is to protect public health and safety, to enforce the law, and guarantee the rights of all New Yorkers. Brookfield believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation.”
On their official blog Occupy Wall Street declared victory,
“We are winning and Wall Street is afraid,” said Kira Moyer-Sims, a protester from Portland, Oregon. “This movement is gaining momentum and is too big to fail.”
http://www.politicususa.com/en/occupy-wall-street-stronger
Rachel Maddow At Occupy Wall Street (PHOTOS)
ReplyDeleteRachel Maddow journeyed down to Occupy Wall Street in the early hours of Friday morning, just as the protesters in the Lower Manhattan encampment were preparing to face off with New York City police trying to eject them from the park they have been occupying for weeks. (The protesters won their battle with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had tried to get them to leave on the grounds that the park needed cleaning. Eventually, police arrested five protesters.)
Maddow said she saw a substantial police presence, and she snapped pictures of large crowds preparing, in her words, to "defend" the encampment. Below, see a series of Maddow's tweets from the scene.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/rachel-maddow-occupy-wall-street_n_1010622.html
The very first thing that should be done is this: Put all the lobbyists -you can add some rethuglicans too - in an air tight room and suck the oxygen out.
ReplyDelete'Occupy' protests go global
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66024.html
Gryphen,
ReplyDeleteTo our American friends: many of us here in Canada are fed up with the huge income disparity, and the outright thievery of our pensions through the destabilizing actions of Wall Street.(which saw our pension investments lose 35% during the last debacle in 2008.)
We're on our way to Toronto to join in the protest today. It's windy and cold, with periodic rain, but as with our letter carrier...neither snow, nor rain...
We have to get active and not let those bastards get away with this yet again.
Occupy Wall Street demonstrations planned worldwide today
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/15/1026535/-Occupy-Wall-Street-demonstrations-planned-worldwide-today?via=user
Thanks for posting this important links. My son is home for college this weekend, and he's been assgned an essay in his comp class on the Occupy Wall Street movement. I've been helping him collect information, and I've told him he should gather with the Occupy movement in Chicago, where he goes to school. It's important for us all to support this.
ReplyDelete@3:28 Yes, we need to see the rule of law enforced. The revolving door from Goldman-Sachs, Federal Reserve Banks, and our Government needs to end. If we had capitalism operating correctly the too-big-to-fail banks would have gone under, and the depositors would have been made whole under FDIC. What we got was the Government propping up the banks at taxpayer expense. This is not capitalism. Voting alone will not change this, as Dylan Rattigan said, the candidate with the most financial backing wins 94% of the time. Congress was bombarded 300-to-1 against TARP, but Hank Paulsen threatened them with tanks in the street if they didn't pass it. The best things we can do as individuals is get out of debt, cut up all the damn cards (I use only cash/checks), buy things at thrift stores and yard sales, join a credit union. OWS has gone global now, and the shit could really hit the fan if military and police refuse to side with the banks/governments. This has gone beyond reforms and voting, and you might need more than popcorn to watch this play out.
ReplyDeleteWe also need to return to the Glass-Steagall regulation that separated banks from investment banks.
ReplyDeleteRandall said...
ReplyDeleteHow does one "take the country back"?
Hint: VOTE.
You have to have the discipline to vote out your own congress critter to prove that they have to do what you say - or they'll lose their job.
Until then - it's all so much hot air.
3:20 AM
~~~~~~~~~~
I suggest you go to the BradBlog (on the left is sure to be a link. There is a lot of bullshit that is going on with the electronic, hackable voting systems to make you realize that voting isn't going to be all that.
These protesters are doing what people in Wisconsin did last winter when it needed to be done. Let's not dismiss them for bringing this to the forefront when our media, Congress, DOJ, Supreme Court, President AND the BROKEN FINANCIAL SYSTEM are complicit.
Below is from a retired Wall Street lawyer who is a contributor to the Village Voice and Zero Hedge among other things:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/visual-combat-daily-101511-99999999999999 for people who get it more from pictures rather than words.
....look at his twitter feed too:
http://twitter.com/#!/williambanzai7
and his blog:
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/
Please get educated--it's more than "hot air."
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13078
ReplyDelete“There is growing concern about the part money plays in deciding our elections. Recent decisions that equate cash with free speech have turned our electoral processes into spending free-for-alls that fail to do justice to our system, no pun intended. Of equal concern should be the increasing emphasis on religion in our political world. However we came to occupy this twisted historical moment it is surely time we took ourselves out of the unhealthy fusion of religious fervor and ideological tumult.
Once again instead of dealing with more pressing concerns Congress is spending its time on abortion and other social issues, wasting its energy on singular ideological talking points that have nothing much to do with how we actually live our lives. It's all well and good to stand before a kindly disposed audience and speak forcefully about the rights of the unborn. But for millions already suffering under the onerous judgmental approach the mix of religion and politics has introduced into our society the issue is not whether we should be enacting behavioral standards for everyone else but rather how we are to deal with every-day bread-and-butter issues - - decision-making processes that are basic to our ultimate well being and don't require a statement of political conviction before we act.”
Matt Yglesias at ThinkProgress.org wrote a blog post titled "The Terrifying Plausibility Of 9-9-9," in which he states:
ReplyDelete"further reporting and analysis has made it clear that 9-9-9 is roughly equivalent to a flat 27 percent consumption tax... []This is actually quite close to Paul Ryan’s plan to peg federal revenue at 18 percent of GDP. It’s not a nonsense number dreamed up by some pizza guy. It hits the target."
And the MSM is confused as to why the shrinking middle class is unhappy with the status quo?
Also, Joe Klein's blog post at Time is worth reading too (although for some reason he brings out the worst in FDLers) which summarizes his recent road trip from Laredo, Texas, to Iowa.
"The most important conclusion seems obvious, but it isn’t much appreciated by our political class or by those of us in the media: Most Americans are sane moderates, even in the most conservative areas through which I wandered."
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/10/14/343817/the-terrifying-plausibility-of-9-9-9/
http://swampland.time.com/2011/10/13/the-end-of-the-road/
15,000-50,000 Occupy Wall Street Protesters Have Flooded Times Square
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politicususa.com/en/occupy-wall-street-times-square
Watch Live: 3,000 Occupy Wall Street Protesters Hold A General Assembly
http://www.politicususa.com/en/watch-live-3000-occupy-wall-street-protesters-hold-a
-general-assembly