Courtesy of New York Observer:
George Will: Mr. LaGreca, I hear a certain dissonance in your message: Your message which is that Washington is corrupt, Washington is the handmaiden to powerful, and a lot of conservatives would agree with that. But then you say that this corrupt handmaiden to the powerful should be much more powerful in regulating our lives. Why would you want a corrupt government bigger in our lives?
Jesse LaGreca: You know, I find that a lot of these conversations about government tend to deflect away from Wall Street, because let’s be honest: the lobbyists have enormous power, and they’ve shut out a lot of the voice of the American people. So I think we should demand a government that is listening to people, and I find it ironic that when people demand action from their government, suddenly people tend to overreact and say “That is uncontrollable government.” Our government is a function of our democracy; by attacking our government we are attacking democracy. So to me, yes, I think the government should represent the will of the people, and if the will of the people are demanding action, then they should follow suite.
Now THAT was beautifully said.
I urge you to listen to the entire clip as Jesse has proven to be perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson for this eclectic movement.
By the way, as I am sure many of you already know, that unfortunate pepper spraying incident in D.C. turned out to be the work of a Right Wing saboteur, and NOT the Occupy DC protestors.
This is still a very calm and peaceful demonstration directed by passionate Americans and NOT corporations paying people to start an astro-turf movement whose sole purpose is to attack the government and insult our President..
Last Monday, the Washington Post published a (long) article about CEO pay, which explains why CEOs are now making high-double-digit millions instead of the single-digit millions they did a decade ago.
ReplyDelete1) 90 percent of major U.S. companies expressly set their executive pay targets at or above the median of their peer group. This creates just the kinds of circumstances that drive pay upward.
2) Adjusted for inflation, cash compensation for line workers has actually decreased over the past few decades, and even when you include healthcare compensation it's grown only about 30% or so. In contrast, executive compensation over the same period has more than quadrupled.
This article failed to gain traction even with the “liberal” media (e.g., MSNBC, most bloggers), I think because it’s so long. It's well worth your time to take a peek at Kevin Drum’s (MotherJones) summary of the article, including an eye-popping chart (CEO pay literally goes off the chart while worker pay decreases).
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/10/ceo-pay-still-skyrocketing-still-undeserved
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cozy-relationships-and-peer-benchmarking-send-ceos-pay-soaring/2011/09/22/gIQAgq8NJL_print.html
And, in Palin news:
In case people care: Ivan Moore Research finds "sudden downturn" in Palin's #s in AK. 29% view positively, 61% neg. via web (tweeted by @MikeMemoli, LATimes)
http://twitter.com/#!/mikememoli/status/123481550644973568
How surprising? NOT! Right wing =evil assholes. Terrible,but true.
ReplyDeleteI love this guy and I'm so impressed by the peaceful activists that are standing up for the middle class - yeah!
We should have had protesters out in the streets when the Supreme Court right-wingers cancelled the Florida recount.
ReplyDeleteDon't think that the Koch brothers et. al. didn't notice the apathy.
Everyone can find their local Occupy group at Occupytogether.org
ReplyDeleteJust enter you zip code. Last time I looked over 1200 cities and towns. You can also start you own. Just set a time to go down to your town square.
Weren't there also some Right-Wing plants at the pro-union protests in Madison, WI earlier this year? And weren't quite a few of Breitbart's "scoops" based on some sort of deception?
ReplyDeletePretty odd behavior for people who yack about values. As Carl Sagan once asked: What do conservatives want to conserve?
Plus: I read a story online in which Nancy Pelosi reacted to some of Eric Cantor's comments calling the Occupy Wall Street people a "mob". She pointed out that Mr Cantor had no problem with Tea Partiers literally spitting on members of Congress.
MUST READ article, here's a taste. Krugman puts the hammer down on Wall Street and their Corporate media monsters.
ReplyDelete-----
Panic of the Plutocrats
It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.
And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.
Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.
Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.
And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”
The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.
Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”
What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is...
...So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/panic-of-the-plutocrats.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
I couldn't help but notice they've trotted out the old "dirty hippie" epithet, from its mothballed place of hiding.
ReplyDeleteThe kids now (finally) out there marching, are young enough to be the GRANDCHILDREN of "dirty hippies" like myself.
That phrase was the "N word" version of a putdown to those of us pushing for peace, equal rights for women and minorities, and respect for the environment--and its users were the nasty old codgers of the generation that preceded us, who were bent on destroying the world, and especially anyone in it that wasn't WHITE and PROTESTANT.
It appears the ugly head of that beast has risen from the graves of our deceased, angry til the day they died forebears.
Is it a coincidence that the movie "Footloose" has been copied recently? Or is it that the John Lithgow character of a self-righteous, intolerant bigot, so aptly describes a host of those whose voices are heard whining and bitching about kids not knowing "their place?"
The GOP/TP candidates banding together with their various GOP/TP elected officials are verbally intimidating and lashing out at a specific segment of Americans BUT they are not to be considered a 'mob' or accused of class warfare pitting Americans against Americans.
ReplyDeleteLarge groups of dissenters unhappy with their government banded together in public rallies in public places as the TeaParty BUT they are not be considered a 'mob' or accused of class warfare pitting Americans against Americans.
Right-wing and MSM media have joined voices lobbing false and inflamatory verbal and written attacks against a specific segment of Americans BUT they are not to be considered a 'mob' or accused of class warfare pitting Americans against Americans.
But let a group of unemployed and frustrated Americans peacefully gather to ask when jobs might be available again or to demand that the tax code treat all a bit more fairly and OMG!!, Katy bar the door, it's a mob!! --- call the cops!!!
I was almost ok because I realize IOKIYAR has become the temporary rule of the day until I heard Glenn Beck spew his usual venomous fear mongering scare tactic on anything he perceives as progressive, fair or liberal. I fear it's going to take a lot of Mr LaGrecas to get us thru this one.
The latest word is that Bloomberg says the OWS can stay indefinitely. That's what I call good news.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this. While I Adore Christienne and Donna Brazille, I usually make a conscious effort to not watch anything with George Will in it. Seeing him at a loss for words was worth watching, alone.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, Jesse does an excellent job at distilling and explainging the movement in words even a three year old can comprehend, which is why George Will seemed befuddled and at a loss for words.
Did I mention I loathe George Will?
A couple of commenters linked to the site that tracks incoming activity to your wonderful blog: http://live.feedjit.com/live/theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/0/
ReplyDeleteIt's now 5:30 pm Monday Alaska time (9:30 pm Eastern) and I noticed quite a few incoming from Seoul South Korea (tee-hee) where it's now 10:30 am on Tuesday morning.
Thanks Jesse, somehow I missed this. I love listening to the "other" Jesse talk.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWe should have had protesters out in the streets when the Supreme Court right-wingers cancelled the Florida recount.
Don't think that the Koch brothers et. al. didn't notice the apathy.
2:30 PM
And the march you organized and led was --- ?
I guess you weren't in DC on inauguration day 2001. There was a huge anti-Bush protest.
It's wonderful that the movement is being discussed on one of the Sunday morning shows. I would like the see OWS calling for action on corporations aren't people and general election reform.
ReplyDeleteSo for those of you keeping score at home:
ReplyDeleteSpitting on U.S. Congressman
Tea Party - 1
Occupy Wall Street - 0
Jesse's composure may be his best strength ! I love how he maintains a sort of calm bemusement, just like in his original "man-on-the-street" clip with the Fox news guy.
ReplyDeleteCalm. Reasonable.
AWESOME !!
Alan Grayson Defends Occupy Wall Street On Rachel Maddow: ‘They’re Doing The One Last Human Thing Left’
ReplyDeleteWhile the Occupy Wall Street movement continues leaderless and clearly with little working in the PR department, former Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson has taken on part of the burden of explaining and defending the movement in public. Having received a standing ovation on Real Time with Bill Maher Friday night, Grayson appeared on MSNBC tonight with Rachel Maddow, arguing that Occupy Wall Street was the logical conclusion to the stagnating economy.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/alan-grayson-defends-occupy-wall-street-on-rachel-maddow-theyre-doing-the-one-last-human-thing-left/
George Will's question is a variation on the libertarian viewpoint that since government enables the financial industry, we should eliminate government. What they refuse to acknowledge is that this would only make the financial industry even more powerful, as they would completely fill the void of power afterward.
ReplyDeleteThe answer is to reform our government, not do away with it. And by reform, I mean eliminating the ability of Wall Street and other huge corporations to influence our politicians with their dirty money.
The money quote from Paul Krugman's column about the negative reactions to the protests:
ReplyDelete"The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is."
Indeed. Keep this quote in mind the next time someone shrieks "Class warfare" if you have the temerity to cite the stunning statistic that a tiny percentage of people own the vast majority of wealth in this country, in fact, in the world.
To 4:03 PM:
ReplyDeleteYou're right. Attempting to demonize people with various phrases like "dirty hippie" or "communist" or whatever is as old as humanity no doubt.
"Plus ca change, plus la meme chose." "The more things change the more they stay the same."
This is not new. Power grabbers have a record of destroying their own societies and cultures. They accrue undue wealth and power and impoverish, even detroy, their own countries. The histories of Rome, France, Russia and China illustrate what happens when wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few.
Let's hope we can reform this country through legal means. For starters put back bank regulations like Glass Steagal and undo the law granting personhood to corporations.
We need to stick together and insist on economic justice as well as accountability from elected officials to us, the people, not the corporate elite.