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The First Amendment Upside Down. Why We Must Occupy Democracy
You’ve been seeing this across the country … Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed … Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly — protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top.
And what’s Washington’s response? Nothing. In fact, Congress’s so-called “supercommittee” just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.
And a revolving door has developed between official Washington and Wall Street – with bank executives becoming public officials who make rules that benefit the banks before heading back to the Street to make money off the rules they created.
Other top officials, including an increasing proportion of former members of congress, are cashing in by joining lobbying power houses and pressuring their former colleagues to do whatever their clients want.
Millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street and in executive suites aren’t contributing all this money out of sheer love of country. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations.
Why else do you suppose tax rates on the super rich are now lower than they’ve been in three decades, and why – even though the long-term budget deficit is horrendous – those rates aren’t rising? Why else do the 400 richest Americans (whose wealth is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million Americans) now pay an average tax rate of only 17 percent?
Why do you think Wall Street got bailed without a single string attached – not even being required to help homeowners to whom they sold mortgages, who are now so far under water they’re drowning? And why does the financial reform legislation have loopholes big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through?
And why else are oil companies, big agribusinesses, military contractors, and the pharmaceutical industry reaping billions of dollars of government subsidies and special tax breaks?
Experts say the 2012 presidential race is likely to be the priciest ever, costing an estimated $6 billion. “It is far worse than it has ever been,” says Republican Senator John McCain.
If there’s a single core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top endangers our democracy. With money comes political power.
Yet when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with all this, they’re told the First Amendment doesn’t apply. Instead, they’re treated as public nuisances – clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces.
Across America, public officials are saying Occupiers have to go. Even in universities – where free speech is supposed to be sacrosanct – peaceful assembly is being met with clubs and pepper spray.
The First Amendment is being stood on its head. Money speaks, and an unlimited amount of it can now be spent bribing and cajoling politicians. Yet peaceful assembly is viewed as a public nuisance and removed by force.
This is especially worrisome now that so many Americans are in economic trouble. The jobs recession grinds on, seemingly without end. Homes are being foreclosed upon. Qualified students cannot afford college. Or they’re forced to take on huge debt loads they can’t repay in a jobless economy. Schools are firing teachers. Vital social services are being axed.
How are Americans to be heard about what should be done about any of this if they are not allowed to mobilize and organize? When the freedom of speech goes to the highest bidder, moneyed interests have a disproportionate say.
Now more than ever, the First Amendment needs to be put right side up. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.
Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
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72 Comments so far
Show AllWe live in a topsy-turvy world. Only noticeable as such when one is not topsy-turvy oneself.
Robert Reich is a creature of the establishment who has sensed the shift in the political winds. Forget topsy-turvy; there is nothing clearer than the opportunistic flag Reich marches under. CD should cease posting his drivel. There are far more worthy economic voices that can inform the resistance of the 99%.
Mason C. You and others regularly trash Reich and I am beginning to think that you are a conservative troll that fears Reich's usually succinct essays.
Indeed, Reich's essays are succinct and on target...when talking in generalities or about the republicans.
But Reich suffers from the same profound disconnect as John Nichols. 'If only we voted out the bad guys...' 'if only the rich payed more in taxes...' if only...
I believe they are both well-intentioned men. But they have some cache in the MSM, therefore their ability to convince so many that the democrats are misguided, wrong, cowardly, et al.--when the truth is the democrats foster the very same policies Reich trashes in his piece--results in millions spending their energy railing against the republicans [and shouting down OWS so that O-BAM-A can speak!] when they should be marching with OWS against the very toxic status quo.
Reich teaches at Berkeley. I didn't see him doing much to actually defend the occupiers on his campus.
John Yoo, designer of the legal rationales for W's torture policies, teaches at Berkeley, something that Reich has been very quiet about. Does elite collegiality trump moral concerns about torture.here?
Reich says some good things and is among "the nicest of the damned," but he has yet to redeem himself for his complicity in Clinton's financial de-regulation, although he has expressed some remorese for his support of slick Willie's free trade legislation/devastaion.
Bring it on home Mr Reich, because it's coming anyway. The "crisis of democracy", about which you express serious concern, has come and gone, my oh my.
Did you miss election 2000? Do you know about Diebold and ESS?
How about 2004? Who killed Mike Connell, catholic conservative Republican cyber whiz? He reported election results for the Republicans in Ohio in 2008. He died in a small plane crash days before he was due to appear to give testimony regarding an election fraud lawsuit in Ohio. In the days before he died, he stated that Karl Rove was out to get him for his revelations.
So yeah, f-cking crisi of democracy is not recent news if you've been paying attention. Welcome to Camp Police State, Mr Reich.
Search on former US Senator (R-Neb.) Chuck Hagel and "Victor Baird", and see how the senate regulator retired shortly after uncovering revelations of Hagel's board membership on ESS, an electronic voting corporation that counted more than half the votes in the upset election that put Hagel in the Senate.in 1996.
-- dreamjoehill
According to Wikipedia, Reich was a member of Clinton's cabinet from 1993 to 1997. He was on Clinton's transition team for Clinton's first term and was Secetary of Labor in Clinton's cabinet during the first term. According to the same web site, Reich decided after Clinton's re-election, but before he was sworn in, to leave the Labor Department to spend more time with his sons who were in their teens at the time.
Also from Wikipedia, after leaving the department, Reich wrote a book on his experience in the Clinton cabinet entitled, "Locked in the Cabinet." In 2002 he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, being the first national candidate for major political office to publically suport same-sex marriage. He also pledged to support abortion rights and strongly condemned capital punishment.
According to the web site: World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org), [Clinton, Rebublicans agree to deregulation of US financial system, By Martin McLaughlin, 1 November, 1999], "An agreement between the Clinton administration and congressional Republicans, reached during all-night negotiations which concluded in the early hours of October 22, sets the stage for passage of the most sweeping banking deregulation bill in American history, lifting virtually all restraints on the operation of the giant monopolies which dominate the financial system."
If you have any insight as to how Reich, retired from the Labor department at the end of Clinton's first term in early 1997, was involved in the US financial system deregulation negotiations concluded between Clinton and the Republicans in the early morning hours of October 22, 1999, please let me in on it.
As for the free trade agreements passed in the first term I believe, I have no info on it. Reading Reich's book about his experience in Clinton's first term might offer some insight.
I wasn't defending Reich in the way that you imply. I was simply making a distinction between those 'lefties' who seem to believe in populism yet still find it necessary to defend the lesser-evil democrats and those toxic, actively deceitful democrats like hartmann who knowingly spin their bullshit to get the desired results.
George Orwell's prescient novel had the prophesy right; he merely missed the date by a few decades. Freedom is slavery. Lies are truth. War is peace.
The 99% should incorporate. That would make the movement a person, and they'd then have the right to free speech and assembly.
Great idea! They could set up a board of directors and hire a CEO. Publicity about the arguments concerning how much to pay the CEO would help focus attention on bloated salaries paid to CEO's for the big corporations.
"Money speaks" No, Bob Dylan said it best, "Money doesn't talk it swears."
I agree shadre, maybe the 99% should incorporate. And how about also forming
our own party. Call it the Occupation Party, whoever ran as its nominee would be
certain to get millions of votes.
Any suggestions for who to nominate?
Good name, zupan. I like that. Without a doubt there are many who would qualify to lead the Occupation Party. The only one that stands out in my mind at the moment is the cop named Lewis who wore the uniform and carried the sign, and talked to the camera. He was very impressive. Qualified leaders would rise to the top if we ever get organized. They always do.
Leaders pfffft, it was "leaders," ie hierarchy that got us into this mess in the first place. Everyone needs to be their own leader now in their own communities.
Serious though.
I keep hearing from those in the occupation that its power comes from not having
a leader and not making demands.
I believe that this mind-set will surely be the death of this movement.
How long do we truly think we can keep this thing going without "a plan" and
someone to articulate it?
We may have the media's attention (for the moment) but does anyone really
believe that we have our governments attention?
Show me a single indictment for what happened on Wall-Street---and maybe
I'll believe you.
You're missing the entire point of OWS and its vital strength: that 99% agree that the system isn't working. It doesn't want - or need - the government's attention (ah, but they are listening) because the government attends to its real masters and is impotent to make real change.
Once you try to narrow down an agenda, there will be disagreement, disillusionment and dropout. OWS is unstoppable only as long as it takes its energy from the universal unwillingness to continue the status quo. We don't have to agree on a program as long as we build on the agreement that enough is enough. There is no greater power than the People saying "we're not going to take this anymore and nothing you do to us will shut us up". That is the one message that the 1% cannot bear to hear: that we will no longer bow to their power.
I am thankful ...that this little NAFTA weasel no longer can influence policy. I've never understood CD's obsession with him. He's a big part of the academia & political cabal that brought us to this sorry situation.
MOONPIE: Every one of your comments on these threads is designed to disparage what's going on in this new (global!) movement, and plant the message that it will not succeed. And as for "Zupan" above, for all the seeming advice he offers to the movement, his subtext also reinforces this message: failure. As if the types of changes necessary to heal the planet and society are going to come about in the blink of an eye! That level of thinking is about as credible as those who say that Fukushima caused no deaths! As if Cancer doesn't take YEARS to develop!
Reich is growing. I admire people who grow. He may or may not do a public "mea culpa" on his PREVIOUS policies; but at least he's speaking up now! Being a member of the Insider Club and telling the truth about what's going on is important. He may not be a radical, and he may not be willing to burn himself as a monk on principle, but nothing he said in this excellent article is off the mark. And I, for one, am glad he said it... better late than never!
And Jesus had some good advice for the likes of you: "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone."
Everything Reich wrote is true, and we already know all about it. For me there are too many articles here and on other sites that come from a good heart but stop short of using a good mind. Why does RR ask 'Why?' so often and not answer? Maybe because the answer would demand naming names, something gentlemanly academic Democrats can't bring themselves to do (Obama is an example). And where is RR's solution to the problem: what should the demonstrators and occupiers do? What should the rest of us do to support their (and our) right to assembly and speak?
It's not good enough to just list the ways our democratic rights are being torn away. This article is a nice little waste of time.
Agree, and to name names, Reich may lose his Sunday morning news talkshow invites.
"Why does RR ask 'Why?' so often and not answer? "
Perhaps because he assumes a thinking readership.
This is a shameful attempt to deflect accountability on Reich's part, quite ironic because the 99% are demanding fresh analysis of recent history. We are in this atrocious, possibly terminal crisis because ideology and/or social standing blinded us from dealing with the truth. It's happening again, here on this website.
I share moonpie's disgust over CD's continued endorsement of this charlatan, but the uglier truth is that's what liberals do: take bold hacks at the outer periphery of a problem, then issue self-congratulatory pronouncements about a world with no sharp edges. Social change halts at the liberal doorstep because it might clash with careers or hierarchy. Were CD to cease giving a platform to Reich, he wouldn't become homeless or hungry, but it would allow space for another, more worthy voice on economics. Here's to it.
And Mason C........just in case you missed it...... You and others regularly trash Reich and I am beginning to think that you are a conservative troll that fears Reich's usually succinct essays.
This is another standard liberal tactic - whatever you do, don't deal with the substance of the criticism. It's too bad you don't apply your keen perception toward policy analysis.
But to address your troll concern, let's compare Chris Hedges with Robert Reich: participate out in the streets, or pen some boilerplate from academia. Reich is exactly what Hedges describes in his "The Death Of The Liberal Class," a careerist trading on public confidence. Reich probably knows that he's overshot and is teetering on the edge of irrelevancy; without credibility, how can he sell out? To the easily-swayed, Reich's marquee name voids critical thinking and that opens the door to further betrayal. Lastly, no fascist troll would recommend CD replacing Reich with William Black or Michael Hudson. Read them and you'll better understand what Robert Reich is and represents.
That's because the substance of your criticism is not as clear as you suspect it is. jadams does not seem like a troll to me at all, is it that jadams disagrees with your opinion that makes you lash out? RR has a freaking Master's degree in Public Policy and has worked for two Presidential Admins, including a stint as Secretary of Labor. RR has actual qualifications to back up his writing, which is probably why he has a "Marquee Name" as you state. So what exactly makes your Public Policy analysis more valid than his?
Moonpie. I too tire of your one note chant. Please give it a rest.
Moonpie is an angry Baby-Boomer, and probably also a libertarian IMO based on previous rants.
Well, Moonpie, I hate to be in the position of defending Robert Reich for all his past transgressions ...
Yes, he was part of the Clinton team and tends to cut Democrats a bit too much slack. And yes he thought NAFTA was a super keen idea.
However, how about giving someone some credit if they come up with good ideas and courageous statements such as supporting OWS and the students on campus?
Reich is certainly on the money when it comes to the topsy-turvy interpretation of the First Amendment. Corporations and money have it -- students and citizens don't.
Or do you detect a sinister hand behind Reich's current stance?
Maybe instead of vilifying him for his past mistakes, maybe we could credit him for being on the right side of history this time around?
No?
Or better yet maybe we can have one of those circular firing squads so beloved on the left, and get rid of any public intellectual who has not behaved up to our highest standards in the past.
There are so many of us here on the 'purified' left after all.
Whoops... looks like I am out, too, for saying a kind word about the NAFTA weasel...
"All the world old is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer."
Robert Owen
Randy: Did you ever stop and consider that this idea might be itself planted in the heart of the "Left" for a reason:
"Or better yet maybe we can have one of those circular firing squads so beloved on the left, and get rid of any public intellectual who has not behaved up to our highest standards in the past."
My point is that it's not that the TRUE left institutes a circular firing squad, it's that those planted inside it, those made to appear sympathetic with Progressive causes actually are purposely planting fear, suspicion, and other negative postures. One tactic I see HERE all the time is undermining the key figures who still have podiums or voices on the Left. Instead of getting behind them (for the Greater Good), they talk about what purposed investments they hold, whether they formerly supported Democrats, or otherwise LOOK FOR the singular flaw in their persona... and boy do they use that as a bludgeon.
Now do you HONESTLY think those with sincere Left sensibilities would do this? Essentially slaughter their own? I think not.
In reading the book I've recently recommended, "Dangerous Dossiers," the several hundred page files on people like Ernest Hemingway, didn't just happen in a vacuum. Loads of data were gotten from people that famous writers, poets, artists, and activists ROUTINELY worked with. Obviously these people are good at what they do, virtual chameleons, they learn how to fit in... for how better to influence thought or undermine promising ideas then to fake one's support, while, like Shakespeare's "Iago" all the while planting memes intended to take the air out of the tires, and bring CHANGE to a halt. They are the Keepers of the Status Quo and PAID to sew the seeds of divisiveness. Oh, and when persons like myself point it out, they quickly project onto the whistleblower their own mission. It's slick, sinsister and repugnant all at once.
America has become a corporation. We are no longer being run as a country. Like any corporation we now have a bottom line. Profit above all else. Obama is the CEO. Congress is the Board of Directors. Wall Street is Research and Development. The media is its Public Relations Department. The military is its Legal Department. The universities are the Human Resources Department. Hollywood is its Marketing Department. Lobbyists are the Sales Department. Big Pharma is the Medical Department. The Judicial System judges are the shareholders. And the Supreme Court is the father of the first corporate citizen, Wall Street Jr. We the people are now the employees. Corporations don’t have citizens. To increase those profits all of our infrastructure is for sale as the corporation privatizes America.
It hasn't become, it always was. Go to thrivemovemnt.com and see the agenda and who is behind it.
I always knew this, but seeing it is something else.
No, America was not always subservient to corporations. In fact, the American Revolution was fought as much against the "Free Trade" forced upon us by the Crown-supported East India Corporation as it was against the Crown itself.
Initially, corporate charters were time-limited, had to serve a public need, could be revoked for transgression, did not allow consolidation or buyouts of other corporate entities, and "lobbying" was prosecuted as bribery of a public official.
This began to change following the consolidation of federal power that the Civil War was fought for and the judicial activism of corporate justices granting 14th Amendment rights to "artificial persons".
Agreed, good comment. The legal vehicle of the corporation has changed over the years to where now the corporation is used as an execution of political power (not just to create money) exercised by the rich whose identity is masked and whose voice comes from an "artificial person".
But "judicial activism" is just a euphemism for the politically powerful getting there way.
The "agenda" and "who is behind it" at the "Thrive" website is is simply a modernized and gussied up New Age version of an ancient theme.
Of course "you always knew this." The hucksters are playing on a pervasive and enduring prejudice.
Here it is:
There is a powerful force that's getting in the way of our thriving.
It's a select group of financial elite who are centralizing material wealth and power for their own benefit, while destroying the lives of billions of others. Their worldview is riddled with fear and ignorant of the abundance of nature and the love and interconnectedness that is our essence.
In this section you can follow the money to see how the same people are gaining financially in every sector of human life. You can also see how an agenda for global domination is being accomplished, and the kind of deceptive strategies and tactics that are being used to further our suppression.
It can be challenging to confront the cruelty of this global domination agenda, but it’s only by recognizing the true nature of the threats to our freedom that we can be empowered to act effectively.
Not "employees;" we are "human resouces," to be mined until we give out.
New Hamshire High School Students:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/index
After the president's speech, one of the hecklers handed Obama a note criticizing his "silence" over the arrest of "over 4,000 peaceful protesters" at Occupy Wall Street-type movements across the country.
Thanks to Associated Press photographer Charles Dharapak, we can read the entire note: (check bottom link for copy photo)
"Mr. President: Over 4,000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While bankers continue to destroy the American economy. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out."
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/11/occupy-protesters-decry-obamas-silence-on-arrests/1
Why is our blind dedication so wet blanket heavy that we, as Democrats, can not ask our own elected Democratic President why under his watch...Corporations get a voice, but University students get pepper sprayed in the mouth?
Did someone ....once upon a time....tell us he was a Constitutional Authority?
If we start with the first amendment and move through executive orders to support an American Citizen Assassination (no matter what the excuse, it is precedent setting...) and then as the poem might go for his concern for Constitutionality?
How do I offend thee?
...let me count the ways!
Well, this is just a thought...
If the Supremes have decided, essentially, that money is "speech" under the 1st amendment, then you have a right to "speak" by putting your money where your heart is.
Might not the opposite also be true?
Logically, isn't NOT giving your money ALSO protected speech?
As in NOT giving your money to the gov in the form of taxes?
Seems a legal argument might be made.
sj
It matters little whether a legal argument can be made because the courts have never - and will never - accept such arguments.
It is, never-the-less, our inalienable right to withhold our complicity and acquiescence in government's abject failure to serve the common good, and we must do so regardless of the consequences. I have refused to pay federal income taxes for 32 years. You can choose the same. If enough of us do just that, the false government will collapse.
Thomas Paine believed that the fruits of one's labor should not be expropriated, but only the exclusive use of the public commons - our land and natural resources - and the wealth that such things generate can legitimately be taxed to distribute equally to all. He proposed an estate tax to pay for a universal social security program for both the young and the old as well as the blind and lame.
Stop crying about the global conspiracy to enslave us all and START DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT:
Ideas:
www.thrivemovement.com
Stop using CD to huckster for a commercial enterprise.
"Thrive" is a fast-buck scam, and the "solutions" are all extreme right wing ideas - privatize everything.
Curious why you would say that? Have you watched the movie? It keeps being removed from YouTube, but people keep reposting it. Search Thrive full movie on YT and watch it. I honestly don't understand why you think it's a commercial enterprise with extreme right wing solutions. Total opposite of what I and everyone I know who has watched the movie took away.
I can only think that you are just trying to discourage people from watching it or checking out the website because the information and solutions would spread like wildfire it it were more widely available for people to watch.
Actually, I think I may encourage people to "check it out" since it is such a perfect example of the commercial spirituality hustles that have become so popular, and such a perfect example of how extreme right wing politics can be packaged in a way that sucks in liberals and progressives. I have been sending the links to people the last few days so they can see it for themselves. It truly is a masterpiece of deception.
The video keeps getting removed from Youtube by the producers because they want people to buy it. Their clever sales pitch has been a little too successful, and they now have a small army of true believers acting as unpaid sales people for them. As believers, the marks are trying to share this as widely as possible, and are so zealous that they keep posting pirate copies online.
We can go into this in more detail, but here is a quick answer to your question. You asked why I called the operation commercial and right wing. That question is answered at their website.
The "solutions" consist of advocating privatization of everything - including the judiciary. That is extreme right wing politics.
A commercial enterprise is an organization that is selling stuff.
The "information" is a nonsensical grab bag of everything from UFOs and alien visitors to crop circles to fake science to the "ancient wisdom" theme that the "The Secret" was promoting. I objected to "The Secret" being promoted here for the same reason I am objecting to "Thrive" being promoted here. It is a commercial sales pitch disguised as something else.
The only thing they hope will "spread like wildfire" is their sales pitch.
Yes, I freely admit to trying to prevent people from being ripped off and misled.
Do you agree then with the total privatization of everything? That is what the Thrive Movement (not a movement at all, but a clever commercial marketing scheme) advocates.
The Thrive Movement is pure extreme right wing politics, packaged to appeal to gullible liberals and progressives.
Reich is joined at the hip with Washington. His in the box thinking gives him a clownish aura.
Tell the SEIU and CWA to Occupy the White House, because the fish rots from the head!
The question now arises. Might not the crisis we're in and especially with regard to democracy itself be even more serious than either the writer or any of us would want to contemplate?
The question now arises. Might not the crisis we're in and especially with regard to democracy itself be even more serious than either the writer or any of us would want to contemplate?
"Money speaks..."? Mr Reich.
No, money screams. Time for the masses to start screaming back.
Why? Why fractional reserve banking not even mentioned? Ssshhhh....