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As the GOP Blames Obama for Wall Street “Mobs" the Occupy Movement Spreads Nationwide and Is No Friend of the President
Who is behind the Wall Street protests?
The Republican minority leader, Eric Cantor, has searched up and down in his usual rigorous manner and found the culprit.
In his knee-jerk view, it’s President Obama. His latest crime: encouraging these “mobs.”
photo: Francesco Fiondella
In one sentence, he blamed the President, who in GOP conspiracy think, is to blame for everything, including bad weather. He also not so subtly conjures up the memory of the Mafia, New York’s perennial bad guys.
In one phrase, Obama stood accused of encouraging these…. pause for righteous indignation -- MOBS!
Never mind that if you spend any time at Occupy Wall Street, you will encounter as many criticisms of the President’s policies -- save the questions about his birth and “real Americaness” -- as you would at a conclave of the Tea Party.
Only the criticism is different. In the latter world of make-believe, he is a hard line Socialist. In the former, he is, in effect, a Republican, a backer of the Wall Street capitalists the occupiers are battling.
And if my memory of history has not faded, wasn’t it the British who called the original Tea Party a “mob?”
Let’s not let the facts get in the way of a partisan smear.
The GOP is in trouble, unable to find a Presidential candidate they can agree on, unable to come up with any program to do anything about the country’s economic distress, and unable to erode the growing public disgust with the Congress they now control. All they can do is snarl like an attack dog.
Their blame Obama mantra may cheer their faithful, but convinces no new potential voters. The Wall Street protesters are their latest distraction, aided and abetted by the hardliners at Fox News, who wouldn’t be blasting away if the occupations weren’t successful in getting a counter narrative into the media stream.
The Occupy Wall Streeters don’t waste any time attacking politicians because they are estranged from all traditional party politics. There is danger of self-marginalization in this approach but it also reflects a certain purity of purpose.
Many in the Park fear co-optation or “capture” by Democrats. Occupy Wall Street Is not partisan but has now endorsed an October 15th Jobs march sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Richard Trumka, the president of the labor federation, visited Zuccotti Park and won their support. That nationwide action will be endorsing Obama’s compromised Jobs bill.
This does not mean that the protest will align with the Obamacrats. Al Jazeera spoke with Katie Davison, one of the activists who explained their way of looking at the world:
“A candidate is sort of the old way of doing things," she said. "We're looking for a new way of doing things that is more participatory and more meaningful. What that looks like we're still figuring out."
David Graeber, anthropologist, writer and protest organizer, told Al Jazeera why he thinks young people in the US have reached an especially frustrating point:
"In making a demand, you're essentially recognizing the authority of the people who are going to carry it out," he said.
"Our message is that the system that we have is broken. It doesn't work. People aren't even discussing the real problems Americans face."
So far, Wall Street firms have not commented on the protests but their condescension and arrogance is clear to anyone at the Park when employees at the big firms on “The Street” drop in at lunchtime as if they are going to a Zoo. (Police block the protesters from marching on Wall Street.)
Even as this movement swells nationally to over 1,000 cities, and even internationally, the media picks away at it with a combination of sarcasm leavened with growing respect. New York Times op-ed columnists and even the editorialists have been increasingly positive.
So far, the movement has not tried to directly impact on policy even though its marches are driven by signs and chants mounting a frontal assault on economic inequality, wars, phony bailouts, and the many ways they say the “1%” oppresses the 99%.
Simplistic or not this view has built a hard charging movement with its own newspaper, and scores of work groups and committees that provide opportunities for individuals to get involved in the nitty-gritty effort at building their structures and running a complicated but democratic community within a larger society dominated by top-down politics.
The energy and idealism is evident to anyone with the patience to look.
Not everyone has that patience. As some kind of fortune would have it, I sat next to a talkative Wall Street veteran at a dinner Saturday night to break the fast of the Jewish Yom Kippur New Year.
From his life behind a terminal, selling financial products, or, in his words, “making up stories that his customers like to hear,” the protests are a world away, unlikely to stop his life’s work of endlessly making money from money.
His view on the surface was upbeat. This past week marked, in his view, the end of Europe’s banking crisis. (He works for a company owned by two French banks.) He seemed to be gloating about a new TARP style bailout there that would fix everything.
For him life is about the “spreads” between what you buy and what you sell.
To him, the TARP bailout “saved the United States of America.” He backed McCain in the last election but praised Obama for backing it.
He blames Democrats like former House Finance chairman Henry Gonzalez and Barney Frank (who he acknowledges were and are sincere), for screwing up the financial system.
He blames the government for demanding that mortgages be affordable and sold on a non-discriminatory basis. When pressed, he admitted there had been predatory and racist lending practices in the past, and that the subprime mortgages were a disaster.
But the more he talked, the more it was clear that his real anger is reserved for Wall Street’s bosses, the people who run the firms and are, in his view, totally corrupt.
He was one of those who lost his pensions and shares when Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns when down. He was wiped out and had nothing good to say about the people at the top.
Curiously, he was as angry with these men in the suits as are the folks in the streets. He was just as alienated although he’s not about to turn on capitalism and instead sniped at a retired schoolteacher at the dinner for having a good pension that he now lacks. His resentment, insensitivity and sense of class entitlement were insufferable.
Yet, even though he works for a leading financial firm, he saw himself as a victim too -- in effect, a 99 per-center.
Where will he stand in the emerging “Mob War” when the “Occupy” Family confronts the Goldman Sachs “Family”?
As the financial crisis intensifies our social crisis, stranger bedfellows will emerge.
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100 Comments so far
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dreamjoehill (in reply to SEAGLASS) wrote:
Clearly you do not understand the term "ally."
Unions are the only organizations in the US that can even begin to make the claim of being of, by and for the working class. Unionists have been battered, arrested, tortured and killed by the capitalist class. There are some corrupt unions, but union ideals are essential to social change.
* * * * *
My Reply:
I agree.
What's more if allies are chosen wisely and powerful independent protest and civil disobedience continue, and specific demands arising from people actually participating in the occupations are added to what is already a coherent message, then #OccupyWallStreet and other similarly inspired occupations around the country will not be coopted.
To have your protest heard, you must join one of the OWS locations as they have no facility for reading online protests like yours.
Are you a liertarian stone?
Is that why you hate unions so much?
Unionism is a powerful organizing tool for the workers,
Unions are much less centralized than the other form of large scale organization, the corporation.
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Support Fee and Dividend, Oppose TransCanada's
Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
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Stone wrote:
Richard Trumka [President of the AFL-CIO] is not independent, he is a tool of the Democratic Party. Do not allow the [#Occupy] movement to be co-opted by anything that smacks of the Democratic Party or Republican Party. Remember, Trumka's unions support the building of the tar sands pipeline.
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Excerpt from "Canadian Arctic Loses Nearly Entire Ice Shelf" by Associated Press, September 30, 2011:
Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this northern summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in newly published research.
The loss is important as a marker of global warming, returning the Canadian Arctic to conditions that date back thousands of years, scientists say.
- - - - -
Excerpt from "Canadian Arctic Loses Nearly Entire Ice Shelf" by Associated Press, September 30, 2011:
Floating icebergs that have broken free as a result pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes.
The breaking apart of the ice shelves also reduces the environment that supports microbial life, and changes the look of Canada's coastline.
Article URL: www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/30-5
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Excerpt from "Ottawa Action Kills Notion of Ethical Oil", by Curtis Morrison, Waging Nonviolence, September 30, 2011:
According to Article 32 of the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Harper is required to cooperate in good faith to obtain:
free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting
their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection
with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other
resources.
“We’ve been informed and we do not consent.” said Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation, to the crowd during the rally. Her Nation is one of five nations making up the Yinka Dene Alliance. Enbridge Pipeline offered to give the Alliance a 10-per-cent ownership stake in the proposed $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline, and the Alliance declined.
Article URL: www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/30-6
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My Comment:
It would be great if the Barack Obama administration or the Stephen Harper government would put a stop to the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline or the pipeline was somehow blocked by other means.
The Yinka Dene Alliance has rejected Enbridge Pipeline’s offer to give the Alliance a 10-per-cent ownership stake in the proposed North Gateway pipeline project from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat, British Columbia. But that is unlikely to deter Enbridge.
When the Arctic Ocean becomes largely free of sea ice year round, there will also be an incentive to build a tars sands pipeline from Alberta to Port Churchill, Manitoba on the Hudson Bay.
On August 20, 2009, the U.S. State Department issued a presidential permit for an Alberta Clipper Pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin. The pipeline will be capable of carrying up to 450,000 barrels of crude oil a day to refineries in the U.S.
Clearly, a more comprehensive approach to preventing extensive exploitation of the Alberta tar sands, as well as reducing our dependence on other fossil fuels energy sources, is needed.
Canadians and USans need to overcome the opposition within their respective countries to government action to counter global warming, catastrophic climate change and the direct destruction of the environment, and force their governments to enact Fee and Dividend legislation.
.
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Support Fee and Dividend, Oppose TransCanada's
Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
,
Excerpt from "A Primer on Class Struggle" by Michael Schwalbe, Common Dreams, March 13, 2011:
"The most important arena outside the workplace is government, because it’s here that the rules of the game are made, interpreted, and enforced. When we look at how capitalists try to use government to protect and advance their interests -- and at how other groups resist -- we are looking at class struggle."
Article URL: www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/31-4
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My Comment:
Support Fee and Dividend
How about getting nasty and forcing the U.S. Congress to pass Fee and Dividend legislation that puts an economy wide premium on the cost of fossil carbon products collected at the point of importation or extraction, where the proceeds from the fee are periodically returned to the people throughout the year?
Placing a premium on the cost of fossil carbon products through a Fee and Dividend system is the best approach to reducing fossil carbon emissions.
Fee and Dividend is specifically designed to protect the poor and the middle class (what's left of it) from the rising cost of fossil carbon and to enable them more directly to participate in the choice of alternatives to fossil carbon consumption, including their own efforts to manage their consumption through conservation and lifestyle changes, by adding a large premium to the cost of fossil carbon through the payment of a fee by corporations that import or extract fossil carbon, and then distributing the proceeds of that fee as a dividend to the people in the form of periodic payments during the year.
Sure, corporations may still obtain windfall profits on steeply rising oil prices as the market price changes due to fluctuations in "available" supply, speculation, and the dynamics of peak oil; but the large premium added to the cost of fossil carbon products as a result of the fee is transferred from corporations to the people as a dividend. Corporate windfall profits on fossil carbon based energy should be taxed separately.
The fee adds a stable and predictable premium to the cost of fossil carbon. Usually, Fee and Dividend proposals include provisions for the steady increase in the amount of the fee on fossil carbon importation and extraction with the passage of time. Presumably, the increase in the fee per unit of fossil carbon will correspond with reductions in fossil carbon consumption as more alternatives are developed. The initial fee should be large enough to make current alternatives economically attractive and to encourage the development of new alternatives.
Rather than simply letting large corporations manage the increase in fossil carbon costs and the development of alternatives for consumers in ways which perpetuate corporate control, Fee and Dividend puts money in the hands of the people, who can then more easily make their own choices regarding alternatives to fossil carbon consumption including conservation and lifestyle changes.
Instead of a "trickle down" approach Fee and Dividend transfers money from corporations to people; giving people the "carrot" that works with the fee based premium on the cost of fossil carbon "stick" to generate market incentives for the development of innovative alternatives.
Given what was once a consumer driven economy, the great disparities in wealth and income in the United States, and the fact that large corporations are essentially withholding $2 trillion in liquid assets from the real economy, just about any transfer of the ill gotten gains of wealthy people and wealthy corporations to the middle class and the poor is more likely to stimulate the economy and generate jobs than another tax break for wealthy people, the super rich and large wealthy corporations. When that transfer of funds also puts a premium on the price of fossil carbon, then there is an additional incentive favoring the development of a healthy economy.
Fee and Dividend in a Nutshell
1. Corporations and other types of businesses that import or
extract fossil carbon pay a fossil carbon fee per unit of fossil
carbon and choose whether or not to pass on the increased
cost to consumers or possibly develop a new line of business.
2. Corporations and other types of businesses choose whether
or not to pay the increased cost of fossil carbon and
other products and pass on the increased cost to consumers or
find more suitable alternatives.
3. People periodically receive the proceeds from the fossil carbon
fee as dividend payments, which buffer the impact on them of
the increase in fossil carbon prices due to the fossil carbon
fee and enable them more easily to purchase alternatives.
4. People choose whether or not to pay the increased cost of fossil
carbon and other products or find more suitable alternatives
using what funds they have available including funds from fossil
carbon dividend payments as they see fit.
By the way, Fee and Dividend is the approach to putting a premium on the price of fossil carbon that is favored by NASA climatologist James Hansen and many economists.
If Canadians get nasty too, maybe they can force their government to enact Fee and Dividend legislation.
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Alcyon (in reply to Puffin Thrush) wrote:
Excellent points, PuffinThrush. There are multiple benefits to be derived from a carbon tax based on a "fee and dividend" model, while addressing the biggest crisis of our times. This proposal from experts and supported by so many experts and activists needs to become mainstream, although I can easily foresee how it would be attacked and using what arguments. Maybe CD should publish some articles from time to time to get a buzz going here.
- -
Previously posted in the Comments thread under the article “Obama's Pipeline Quagmire” by Ralph Nader, Common Dreams, September 13, 2011.
Article URL: www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/13-10
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Support Fee and Dividend, Oppose TransCanada's
Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
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What should Bill McKibben and 350.org do?
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Bill McKibben, the rest of the folks at 350.org, along with other environmentalists and other people concerned about global warming, catastrophic climate change, mass extinction, massive releases of methane, and the possible complete destruction of life on Earth, need to do the following:
.
1. Demonstrate that they have a sound understanding not only of the
ecological catastrophe we face, but of how power actually works in
the United States and around the world.
2. Act on that understanding (with extreme politeness if that is their
preference or fetish) by not simply declaring that the approval or
disapproval of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline is the defining
“litmus test” moment for Barack Obama regarding his supposed
commitment to seriously addressing global warming, but also at
the same time clearly and loudly indicating what must be done in
order to begin the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions into the
atmosphere and to hold politicians in the United States and
elsewhere, including Barack Obama, accountable for their
failure to act.
3. Loudly proclaim that the current political system is illegitimate and
clearly state that Plurality Voting is unconstitutional and must be
replaced by Category Scale Power Voting, that the Buckley v. Valeo
and Citizens United v. FEC United States Supreme Court decisions
are unconstitutional and must be overturned, that the enormous
power of large corporations, particularly large energy and financial
corporations, is incompatible with democracy, a healthy economy,
and a healthy environment; and that these corporations must,
through anti-trust laws or other means, be broken up now into
smaller corporations.
4. Clearly state that no one should support Democrats or Republicans
in 2012 who do not act now, with consistency and intensity, to revive
the economy, to protect the planet from global warming, and to
establish genuine democracy in the United States; and that the safe
alternative is to support the Green Party of the United States in the
2012 elections, and that the 2012 elections should and will be
closely monitored by the people.
5. Join and support the rest of the working class protesting and
rebelling against corporate power and the power of the wealthy
1%.
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Team Obama will find some devious way to coopt this movement, at least they'll try very hard. It starts with Trumka, Obama's friend and labor's foe, since labor has no real friend at the top of any organization, and certainly not at the federal level. And that guy Schechter had dinner with will never come around to supporting OWS, no matter how much he resents the top honcho criminals on the Street. He's completely brainwashed with ultra-capitalist values and there's no turning around such people. He'll just keep on with his contradictory life, hating and resenting the assholes at the top of his profession, but resenting even more the schoolteachers who haven't YET lost their pensions to these thieves. And he'll never make the connection or understand the deep absurdity of his life.
Ephraim 10:27, I would not bet against you, but it does happen, often on deathbeds.
It seems the person alluded to in the article is really only pissed off that HE wasn't the kleptocrat at the top - pathetic.
If democrats were really interested in supporting the 99% they wouldn't go around calling their base fucking retards - they would instead support the election reform known as Instant Runoff Voting which would Increase Voter turnout. Instead Obama has done Everything Possible to decrease lefty voter turnout.
I'd call Obama a corporate whore but why denegrate ladies of the night.
As soon as the dems steal this movement it'll die - which is Exactly what those DLC punks want.
Because this OWS has been so un-lead, I doubt that anyone will fall for any attempts by any leaders, either side of the aisle, to flourish. This is precisely the revolutionary movement we have needed...IN THE STREETS...yea.
The Rebellion will continue, no matter what, because it is fueling by suffering ! The empire will continue to cause suffering, until the oppressors are overthrown.IT will happen!
I find it quite hilarious that these pathetic right wingers call this a mob. The funny part is that the right wing is themselves the 'mob', as in organized crime, stealing from each other, ratting out their co-workers, killing innocent people, and jailing the the very people attempting to point out the crimes by these whorporate pigs. Amazingly ironic. As for blaming Obummer, are you kidding me? He's just as culpable at this point as the rest of the right wingers...and sorry, but I must include the majority of the democrats in that right wing category.
Anyone who supports the 1% and goes against the 99%, is criminal intent...period.
So right. Whether you talk about a mob or "the" mob, Wall Sters have no more morality than gangsters or any criminal.
I believe it was the Tories who called the Founding Fathers the 'mob' - after which we proceeded to tar and feather them.
See 'John Adams' the hbo mini- series for a nice video of it.
Yes its time we got to what democracy is about. It came from the six nations!!! It meant, "we the people" including women children and elders who passed this to the clan mothers to the elders to the chiefs...and they only were chief of a particular thing like of harvest or hunting..The bastardization of this by Jefferson and Arnold et al...turned this into an oligopoly.
This is not about sides, its about putting our heads together and come up with a new plan.
What a piece of work humanity is! Imploding on itself.
Reply to Danny Schechter:
I think you're overconfident in estimating the GOP's trouble. Their prospects for
election -- and their potential for making a bad financial sector worse -- are really
quite high. If the Republicans do get power I expect that they, and especially the
the Tea Party partisans, will "re-deregulate" the banks and the financial sector
generally. That will leave all of US in the same danger that we sustained in
2007-2008. Never mind if that might ruin the Republican party: It would ruin the
nation first ... for the financial sector will then remain rapacious. Those individuals
that run and profit from the financial sector love only accumulation of wealth.
They may think that their falsely-free-enterprise is serving the best interests of the
nation: As though THEIR accumulations of wealth equals the nation's accumulated
wealth. That is not so, because their accumulated wealth does not circulate, and
thus DOES NOT create employment. In fact, their accumulating eliminates jobs.
I have posted comments on what you term " ... the real problems Americans face."
See my post of Oct. 10, under the article: " ... more Ruthless Businesses and
Hungry People," www.commondreams.org/further/2011/10/09. They're taking ALL
OF OUR INCOME. We spend all we have, just to stay where we are. THAT'S
the problem.
The nation is already ruined beyond repair, absent a complete renovation, economically, politically and culturally. The bloated 1% are still deregulated.
This is about a radical restructuring not fruitless partisan politics.
Someday the greedy bastards will understand the disastrous consequences of their malfeasance and corruption. A lot of good that will do us.
I see no need for one Super Group when it comes to protests. Give The Man a dozen, fifty, a hundred different groups to contend with and 'manage'. A death by a thousand cuts, I say. One Super Group could be prone to be hijacked & destroyed. Keep the forces on their heels. Strategically disperse, and don't attack your brothers & sisters. Just an option and an opinion.
The infestation by dubious democratic subversives and their monied interests needs to be thought out. They want what they want, not what's good for the general citizenry. If they did, they'd already be there.
What about casual quiet protests? A hundred/hundreds of protesters fan out and dispersed in the general population with only t-shirts, no signage needed. No permit needed. Infiltrate. Be a billboard throughout the city.
Let us hope and pray that no one is hurt during these demonstrations. Plutocrats when threatened are liable to use violence and legitimize it later.
This is completely unavoidable if this movement is going to have any effect. Power like this is never given away without violence.
"The Occupy Wall Streeters don’t waste any time attacking politicians because they are estranged from all traditional party politics. There is danger of self-marginalization in this approach but it also reflects a certain purity of purpose."
Utter bullshit. There is a much bigger danger of cooptation and hijacking than "self-marginalisation". Purity of purpose my ass. This is the only practical thing to do at this moment. As soon as moneyed power gets involved and gets to claim "leadership", the movement is fucked and will have to start again.
"They are estranged from all traditional party politics", come on, don't be an ass. It's party politics that's fucked up, completely unrelated to people, as one public opinion survey after another will show. They're not "estranged" from party politics, party politics is worthless shit and people seem to at least have a hunch about that. It's an accurate judgment on traditional politics, not a mistake.
It's easy to "occupy" an outdoor space when it's 60 or 70 degrees. I've attended my local occupation a few times and met alot of cool people. I am all for any movement that will at the least shake up the status quo (and hopefully do much more than that). My question is what will happen to the occupy movement when late December turns to January and it's bitterly cold day after day? Does everyone break out and occupy Hawaii? I mean I was a bike messenger for several years, so brutal winter conditions don't phase me too much. However not everyone is as impervious to the weather as I may be. How do we sustain the momentum created by our "American Autumn" (and yes I know "American" is a loaded term, but it sounds better than "USAn Autumn")?
"USAn" sounds perfectly good.
The Tea Party president is in trouble now with the Occupy Wall Street Movement going strong.
The "mob," Mr. Cantor? You've belonged to it all your life. The mob is you. The mob is GoldmanSachs, AIG, BigPhrama, MIC, MSM, Monsanto, Exxon, Kochroaches, and all other mega-corporations, monopolies, cartels who play by the maffia book of bullying, torturing, practicing extortion, and "making offers no one can refuse." Look in the mirror, Mr. Cantor and you will see who the real mob is. Look closely, Mr. Cantor---the mob is WALL STREET!
These people feel no shame. Cantor wouldn't even understand the post.
"Our message is that the system that we have is broken. It doesn't work."
This is where I would urge a distinction. The comment reminds me of the old Reagan claim that government isn't the solution, it's the problem. Actually, it's not government, but the way people are operating, or misusing, our government. Similarly, the system we have isn't broken; it's not being used constructively or properly. In other words, the seeds for the reforms we need are already in the system. They're just not being cultivated -- yet.
Amen, Manning!
Nothing wrong with accepting support from groups that are more politically mainstream, as long as it's on OWS terms. OWS people are savvy - limits can be set. If mainstream walks away, then they're stupid. As far as keeping things going through the winter: not everyone has to be there all the time, but enough people need to be there all the time. Work out a roster; gives people a break, but ensures that people are there 24/7. Make sure that there's big gathering events every week or so during the winter to keep morale going, but if an effective roster is filled out, then people only need to be there a few hours at a time and then can go and get warm. Unlike in the 1980s when we tried to do this in anti-nuclear vigils, we've now got the technology. People can be notified in an instant if there's trouble and the park needs support, or if there's something going on Congress-wise, but a continual presence is not a problem to sustain if enough people can be co-opted to coordinate things. Watching from afar, OWS looks amazing - hope when I get back to US in November that things are still going - will pack my long johns!
The parable at the end of Danny Schechter's piece was the most telling part of the entire piece, as it relayed the gripe of corporate drone whom his sociopath bosses had screwed. The one thing that is keeping said drone from completely siding with Occupy Wall Street is resentment toward public sector pensions. Therein lies a prime strategy of division the right wing noise machine has been using as the depredations of their bosses becomes more rampant. Resentment of a fellow sufferer instead of those at the top is a classic example of ghetto thinking, and the corporate elite have been very good at fostering this. They know well from history that once enough of the oppressed put aside their real and / or mostly imagined differences and direct their anger upwards, then the elite get very scared. OWS has so far managed to do this...and the lackeys and shills of the elite are acting very scared. Once their own office drones whom they have screwed stop drinking the class / pension Kool Aide offered up by the likes of Fox Noise (and that is not far off), all bets are off.
Atomsk at 1:27 PM:
I fear you may be right about violence. Any business that would play fast and
loose with other peoples' money, and lose it, and then demand that it must be
saved because it is too big to fail [and the government DOES save it] -- will do
anything. Think back in history: When labor unions were first getting started,
big businesses hired gangs of thugs to beat up the union members. I don't
think they are much different today ... neither the big businesses (& big B. men)
nor thugs. The only thing that's "new" is the history you don't remember.
The only way to get anything but a a single marginal difference in policy is a complete and total regime change. That won't happen by request. The elite privatized government will gladly kill as many peasants as possible on a lame excuse and declare themselves pure as the driven snow.
We must up the ante with bank boycotts. Everyone should move their money to credit unions and local banks. It is the ONLY ANSWER. We must quit them like a bad relationship. We must write charters for state banks and keep on until we get them. We must have no spend days every Wed, for example, where no one spends a single dime. We must boycott big box stores and fast food chains like the plague.
We must create a new party and turn our noses up at the Dems and Repubs and make everything about us, what serves us, what we need, and most of all we need to stand in solidarity. They are nothing without their slaves. Most of them are not even smart and can't do a single useful thing.
Eric Cantor, Karl Rove, the Tea Party wingnuts, and Faux News all know in their heart of hearts that there's no way in hell that Barack Obama is "behind the mobs" of the growing Occupy Wall Street mass movement. So why do they raise this obviously ludicrous claim, singing in unison from the same page of this preposterously silly hymnal?
I think they are trying to frame for the future, months from now. They are betting on the likelihood that the OWS gatherings will evolve, or can be baited, into some violent street clashes with the cops. Perhaps the 1:30 am police action in Boston is a harbinger of things to come.
Nothing would serve the purposes of the GOP, the Tea Partiers, and the 1% plutocrat crowd more than the prospect of a beleagured President Obama forced to deal with citizen versus law enforcement unrest in the streets of major US cities in 2012. Heads they win. Tails we lose, in terms of the right wing's immediate prospects for re-taking control of the House, the Senate, and the executive branch of the federal government simultaneously.
I think Danny Schecter misses the mark when he sees this bizarre, long term issue framing tactic as evidence "the GOP is in trouble, unable to find a Presidential candidate they can agree on....... unable to erode the growing public disgust with the Congress they now control. All they can do is snarl like an attack dog." I think there's method to their madness.
Assume through agent provocateurs infiltrating the OWS demonstrations, or courtesy of police crowd control incitements, or due to genuine spontaneous mass street protest dynamics, that footage of violent "mobs" start making the evening news. That socialist community organizer Obama started all this agitation. Now, it is clearly President Obama's responsibility to stand up shoulder to shoulder with the forces of law and order, and put this riotous, leaderless riff raff back in their place.
Heads they win. Tails we lose. Obama and the Dems lose too of course, but that's at the center of the neocons' agenda anyway. The table is being quietly set. All that's needed are some mob riots in the streets stirred into the mix between now and election day to insure the center cannot hold.
Bill from Saginaw
Both of these parties mean nothing but more of the same. The answer is not A. Dems or B. Repubs. The answer is C. None of the above.
That's right. We too often forget that we have more choices than the policies that come out of the two faces of the Republicrats. Moderate or centrist does not mean a position half way between them. What we need is for elements of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall St. movements to merge into a Radical Middle or maybe it should be called a Radical Neither. It would be radical only in the sense that it would propose a different set of solutions than the same old tired policies.
The Goldman Sachs' Family. Well, now isn't that the problem.. We have the Democratic party always positioning itself as the party of working people and that is not the case any more. Not to any *real* degree. Lip service doesn't count for anything any more.
Working class and middle class do not have a presidential candidate. Obama is solidly in the Goldman Sachs Family and we have no candidate. The right and left are both part of the Goldman Sachs's Family and we are suppose to chose.
What the hell is going on?? I will not vote for Obama again no matter how bad the right is. He works with them and is only slightly and immaterially different as planned. Not fooled and not falling for it.
OWS should put up a candidate and promote a regime change. The people that are in now WILL NEVER EVER CHANGE and that includes both sides of the phony isle. They might say they will change and then come up some weird version of reality that translate into serving Goldman Sachs and Wall Street. That would just be the Obama strategy rerun.
"So far, Wall Street firms have not commented on the protests but their condescension and arrogance is clear to anyone at the Park when employees at the big firms on “The Street” drop in at lunchtime as if they are going to a Zoo. (Police block the protesters from marching on Wall Street.)"
I remember seeing the same kind of thing, in San Francisco's Financial District. When five o'clock came around and the "Wall Street of the West's" workers were out on the street on the way home. The Financial District's janitors were out on strike, mostly Asian immigrants, picketing some of the buildings, walking back and forth with their signs before the highrise buildings. Not one of the suited executives I saw pass by even deigned to look at them. They walked right by.
Let's hope the crazies don't take over. Enter into the OWS movement. Using Black Bloc tactics and the like. Or that the cointelpro types don't move in. This being an open movement open to all who knows who might arrive to bollox the whole thing up?
Why can't we hold O responsible? Regardless of the mob's displeasure with him, he's still egging them on. As are other dems.
And yes, it is a a mob. The entire list of demands is gimme gimme.. OR ELSE. We see rioting and lawbreaking continualy associated with leftist protests. Their wall street poster shows figures emerging from the smoke with weapons in hand. We're told if we don't give people what the left demands, they'll riot. Of course they will...leftists excuse it and tolerate it. When you continually tell someone they're owed someone elses property and they're not getting it, having them turn violent is no big surprise.
When you can't keep behavior resulting in mass arrests from occurring in your gatherings, it exhibits the basis of the ideas they are gathering for.
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah . . . .
Why don't you just post old Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck transcripts, they're more colorful.
Awesome idea! These trolls are so far left behind with their medieval ideas that I don't even know why bother to respond to their insignificant rants. Even the majority of Faux News viewers agree that the Occupation is about greed and corruption. Thank god you can only dumb down people so much :-()
What riots are you talking about? What sanctioning of violence from the left? Aren't you just making shit up? Aren't you tired of lying all the time? It's not worth it, no one believes this crap, not even the shits you learn it from, just you.
"When you continually tell someone they're owed someone elses property and they're not getting it, having them turn violent is no big surprise."
The bankers are the real mob. They looted through fraud and then looted the taxpayers with the bailouts. So how are their criminal gains considered property?
You have a fascist mentality. I hope someday you see the light od truth.
Do not take on the system, transcend it with common visions. Just leave it behind to rot.
Dear PeterP---
Why are you even here, at a liberal-left site, spewing your "someone elses [sic] property" drivel?
A good society seeks to actualize the dreams of the many, not of the few.
You see yourself as among the few, the privileged. You have no idea what it means to lose a third of the "value" of your home, or watch your 401(k) tank, or see your college graduate kid $20,000 in debt while he/she can't find a job or even create one because there is no "purchasing power."
Your Social Darwinism is in line with your psychopathology. It is also called Denial. Your, "gimmee gimmee" mantra is actually nearly pure "projection" as you are of the "take take" class, or hope to become same.
You are utterly useless. And I'd bet that your wife secretly hates you. Your entire life is a lie.
-30-
The only "mobs" I can detect are the ones comfortably seated in Senate and Congress - as for Obama...too busy creating "change" for the elites.
Obama R Goldman Sachs.... Time to throw all the bums out. Of course that guy saw himself as a victim because he is. Capitalism run amok would destroy grandma for a buck. This is why the dividing line in this class war need to be reserved for those making more than 250/300K a year. Young professional couples are middle class, once you throw in kids, college, and retirement savings.
Obama R Goldman Sachs.... Time to throw all the bums out. Of course that guy saw himself as a victim because he is. Capitalism run amok would destroy grandma for a buck. This is why the dividing line in this class war need to be reserved for those making more than 250/300K a year. Young professional couples are middle class, once you throw in kids, college, and retirement savings.