Nationswide protests-will they spread?

[jstoesz]

I guess the contrast is what is startling. There are lots of stupid self interested blue hair types at tea party rallies, and lots of worthlessly educated knownothings at OWS rallies. But at the end of the day, it is the contrast in stewardship that is startling. Remember all the claims of racism at the tea partiers? Was there the kind of violence and shabbiness at the tea party rallies? I wasn’t there, but I doubt it . Maybe it is a function of youth vs seniors, but I think ideology plays a role too…

Btw, I support the general frustration, but so far I am not impressed by the prognosis of the OWS folks. If you hate government collusion with greedy crony capitalists, why would you support more government. That strikes me as naive to put it mildly.

Trying to end lobbying is impossible, read some history for goodness sake. We will never be rid of that plague. We can only render it ineffective.

[KSMountain]

There’s already a Green party, right? OWS could hijack that and get some real candidates going. They could propose some legislation and some platform planks. if Michael Moore and the SEIU ponied up say 5% of their wealth, they’d have some real advertising/campaign funds behind them.

[UCGal]

[quote=KSMountain]There’s already a Green party, right? OWS could hijack that and get some real candidates going. They could propose some legislation and some platform planks. if Michael Moore and the SEIU ponied up say 5% of their wealth, they’d have some real advertising/campaign funds behind them.[/quote]
If the system is broken and rigged – does it make sense to stay within the system.

Look at the civil rights movements and free speech movements of the 60’s – it was messy. All sorts of press coverage about the dirty hippies not staying quiet and those uppity dark people who weren’t satisfied with status quo. Sometimes you have to make noise and work OUTSIDE the political party system to get real change.

If there hadn’t been protests, marches, free speech assemblies in violation of the wishes of the powers that be – the civil rights movement would not have happened.

I remember my parents clucking at the nightly news about the riots in Berkeley. More so because my mom had a part-time gig with her former sorority and was the adult in charge of her sorority houses in CA. She had to deal with the riots in Berkeley and later Watts – as it affected some of her students. (She had one student arrested and another caught up, and injured)

Change is often messy. Especially when the change requires some structural shifts. It seems like the underlying message of the OWS movement is that the political and financial systems are rigged to benefit the few. That we socialize losses on the masses, and privatize the gains among the elite. It will take structural changes to fix that. And that involves working outside of the system that is rigged against the many.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

UCGal: What a great post. Somewhat ironically, most Americans seem to forget that we got our start fighting against the status quo ante and another group of elites: King George III and the British empire. We were also told to keep quiet and to play along and that it wasn’t for us to decide what was right: That’s what the “divinely inspired” King George was for.

I think things happen in cycles, and I believe we are in another such cycle, and not just here in the US. Regardless of ethnicity, religion or country, you are seeing protests on a massive scale, where entire populations are rising up against various rigged systems, be they political, economic or religious.

[Anonymous]

At the (original) Boston Tea Party, the protesters destroyed private property. Not by accident either – it was their plan.

They also wore silly costumes.

It’s likely they were drunk as well.

Just a bunch of drugged-up hippies that had no respect for the law.

[UCGal]

Wow – I got props from Allan. Today is a good day. 🙂

[KSMountain]

I liked your post too.

If the system is rigged, and there is no mechanism within the system for redress, you may have to go outside the system. Fine.

The civil rights movement is a good example of a case where the status quo needed to change and change wasn’t happening.

It’s not clear to me though that our system is rigged, and that there is no mechanism for redress. Yes there are some hedge fund guys that are getting a better tax deal than the rest of us – that loophole could be closed.

But many folks are able to start businesses and is there really any structural limit to their success? Look into the story of the Burt’s Bees lady. How about Dell computer? Dude started it in his dorm room.

Anyone can get student loans *and* grants. The more disadvantaged you are, the more you’ll get. How is that rigged?

I don’t know that the plight of the folks in the parks really matches those of folks that were under the same dictators for decades. Is it *really* as bad here as it is in Libya or Egypt or Tunisia? If we did a comparison of average daily income and hardship versus comfort, I think life would be looking pretty cushy even for the poor here.

If we compare their “mechanisms for redress” versus our system with term limits, a rule of law, a history of regular transfers of power, and an amendable, religion free constitution, are we really in a comparable situation here?

Nevertheless, I suppose Allan could be right and folks could “feel” disempowered and justified in protest. Seems though that there needs to be a large basis in truth before there is enough widespread support to reach a tipping point.

A few folks trying to get out of having to repay their student loans ain’t gonna do it.

[KSMountain]

I read up on the civil rights movement and civil rights act a bit.

I thought this photo was interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lyndon_Johnson_meeting_with_civil_rights_leaders.jpg

[paramount]

With the OWS crowd kicked out of various parks among other stated reasons for a lack of sanitary conditions, it’s been pointed out the real filth is on Wall Street along with those MFers.

[Allan from Fallbrook]

[quote=KSMountain]
Nevertheless, I suppose Allan could be right and folks could “feel” disempowered and justified in protest. Seems though that there needs to be a large basis in truth before there is enough widespread support to reach a tipping point.

A few folks trying to get out of having to repay their student loans ain’t gonna do it.[/quote]

KSM: I wasn’t endorsing OWS (or the Tea Party), but rather was applauding the sight of Americans getting off their collective asses and getting involved. For far too long, we’ve ceded OUR country to not only the “elites”, but to a venal and corrupt cadre of politicians and technocrats (both parties) who assured that they “knew” what was/is best for us and this country. They were obviously wrong and now people are fed up and pissed off and taking to the streets. Good for them.

As far as OWS goes: I agree with your thoughts as far as a lack of coherent message. Unlike the protests over Vietnam and/or the civil rights marches, this one hasn’t really come together. But, in some ways, that’s a good thing. I think that we, as a country, have grown too complacent and apathetic and its about damn time we get out there and start yelling. Who knows? Maybe it leads to an actual discussion about actual issues!

[UCGal]

The protests even have Paul Ryan (about as conservative as they come) discussing the income inequality.
http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CBOInequality.pdf

I don’t think he’d even acknowledge the income inequality if it weren’t for the protests the last two months.

A picture referenced in his paper says it all.
[img_assist|nid=15573|title=CBO Income inequality|desc=Cumulative Growth in Average After-Tax Income, by Income Group|link=node|align=left|width=431|height=450]

[an]

[quote=UCGal]The protests even have Paul Ryan (about as conservative as they come) discussing the income inequality.
http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CBOInequality.pdf

I don’t think he’d even acknowledge the income inequality if it weren’t for the protests the last two months.

A picture referenced in his paper says it all.
[img_assist|nid=15573|title=CBO Income inequality|desc=Cumulative Growth in Average After-Tax Income, by Income Group|link=node|align=left|width=431|height=450][/quote]
If I read that graph correctly, in mid to late 80s, the top 1% was seeing 50-100x more growth than the 21st-80th percentile. While in 2000-2007, it was probably between 3-7x more. So, wouldn’t the income growth inequality be more in the 80s, when the 21st-80th percentiles were at 0-5 while the top 1% were at 50-100? It’s also interesting that the graph end at 2007, right before the market and RE crash.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=KSMountain] …It’s not clear to me though that our system is rigged, and that there is no mechanism for redress. Yes there are some hedge fund guys that are getting a better tax deal than the rest of us – that loophole could be closed……Nevertheless, I suppose Allan could be right and folks could “feel” disempowered and justified in protest. Seems though that there needs to be a large basis in truth before there is enough widespread support to reach a tipping point…….A few folks trying to get out of having to repay their student loans ain’t gonna do it.[/quote]

KSM, if you truly believe that your reference to “some hedge fund guys that are getting a better tax deal” reflects the extent to which the system’s been “rigged” (for lack of a better term), you need to open your eyes. It is rumored that professional lobbying firms in Washington outnumber the population of the District of Columbia. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had to cut lobbying expenses from my family’s budget.

The wealthy and powerful in this country know enough not to make the same mistakes as have been made elsewhere. They’re more subtle. Instead, they’ve been very busy using the courts to systematically strip ordinary citizens of essential rights. They have been aided in this effort by citizen-elected holders of public office who have been wonderfully cooperative in stacking the courts with sympathetic jurists, and by the media, whose executives make deliberate decisions to withhold news coverage on “sensitive topics”.

For instance, the noble-sounding “tort reform” was a “movement” conceived and paid for by malpractice insurance companies: they are the *only* ones that benefit. Neither health care costs or malpractice premiums have decreased as a result (in fact, they’ve risen); even worse is that incompetent and impaired practitioners are free to continue inflicting harm on patients. The fact is, much of the so-called tort reform that has been passed severely curtails the rights of citizens to seek any form of redress through courts that were originally set up to ensure those rights.

The doors that offer the average citizen accessibility to the justice system are being irreversibly blocked off, one by one. “Arbitration” is another of those words that sounds eminently reasonable: the dispute between you and a corporation is hashed out, not in court, but before an uninvolved third party intermediary; the decision is final, and binding on both parties. More much-needed reform? Corporations can now intentionally deceive you, and you will have no other form of redress than arbitration. Who selects the arbitrator? One guess.

Think this doesn’t affect you? Look at your credit card/lending agreements, car rental contracts, product warranties, insurance policy binders – virtually everything you purchase, every contract you enter into, lists arbitration as the sole form of dispute management. You hand over your credit card or cash, and voluntary surrender your constitutional rights in one convenient transaction. Now THAT’S business innovation!

In the Appalachians of West Virginia, working families earning less than $20,000/year are living on land that’s been in their families for generations. Heavily dependent upon local natural resources, they’re finding that the once-clear water rivers are filling up with sludge, flash-flooding is on the rise, and the decreasing numbers of game animals are undernourished and diseased. This evidence of serious deterioration and environmental decline is due to another “innovation” of today’s corporate “job creators”: “mountaintop removal” of coal. Another innocuous-sounding description by great PR masterminds of a safe, clean, technologically-advanced methodology for coal mining. In reality, gigantic corporations like Massey Energy opted, instead, for instant gratification: the awe-inspiring CEO skills and intellect of Don Blankenship are clearly visible in his interpretation of “research” and “innovation” as union-busting and blowing the tops off ancient mountains.

Horrifying as this sounds (picture someone using explosives to lop the peaks off the Sierra Nevada range), the exponential environmental effects are worse. The Appalachian biosystem, aeons in the making, is – poof! –gone overnight. And the likelihood that these corporations are being responsible about the disposal of the mining byproducts would depend on your interpretation of “responsible”. The methodology routinely used consists of stripping the land of all plant/animal life, removing/storing the topsoil, using the cheapest explosive to remove the rock/ expose the coal seams. The topsoil and “waste” is supposed to be used in the “reclamation” of the mountain; in reality, it is dumped indiscriminately, where it almost always buries numerous mountain streams. However, even indiscriminate dumping was considered to be too much of a pain in the ass, an opinion apparently shared by the compassionate folk of the Bush administration, who, in 2008, eased the rules to allow Massey and others to dump mining waste directly into West Virginia’s rivers. However, let it be clearly stated that contamination of West Virginia’s environment, and destruction of its beautiful mountain ranges is a bipartisan group effort, with Democratic and Republican state and U.S. representatives and Senators, and state and Federal judges all eager to carry out the mission of Massey Energy and other mining corporations.

To date, over 1.5 million acres of Appalachian mountaintop forests have been mined in this fashion. Keep in mind that degradation of the Appalachian watershed affects those in many states; communities 1000 miles from these minesites will be negatively affected on a major scale as a result of MTR. Proponents repeatedly refer to the jobs provided by MTR mining, while stressing the “reclamation” aspects. In reality, “reclamation” amounts to the landscaping that a contractor performs upon completion of a housing development: fill, sod, a few half-dead 8-foot trees. No action is required to remediate the collateral environmental damage. As for the jobs, in 2003 there were 25,000 miner jobs, compared with 38,000 in 1993, and 65,000 in 1983. And due to Massey’s “innovative” union-busting tactics in the 80s, those remaining jobs were paid at a much lower scale to miners working longer hours in unsafe conditions (no unions = no pesky gov regulations).

This, and the other two examples, are but a very few illustrations of the dangerous shift in our nation’s power equilibrium. Wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations aren’t brilliant and innovative business executives, or benevolent job creators hog-tied by government regulation. The vast majority either inherited their wealth, or fast-talked their way into the “CEO Secret Society” and their game of Musical CEO/Board of Directors Chairs. With very few exceptions, I haven’t seen anything approaching creativity or innovation, or even competent management or leadership, from a corporation in decades. Any evidence of “success” is actually due to economic trends or to marketing; when those fail, profits tend to come out of the hides of employees and customers.

Over the past 25 years, there has been an increasing acceptance of law-breaking as business strategy. Worse yet is that this “strategy” appears to have been adopted as a competitive sport in the business world. Many of those pointed out as corporate leaders or “job creators” are, in fact, benefitting from conditions that create mental, physical, and economic hardship for many others. The beneficiaries aren’t successful by “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” or through hard work and ingenuity or self-sacrifice. They’re achieving even more power, and acquiring even more wealth, by breaking the law (often with the full or tacit cooperation of those charged with making, interpreting, or enforcing the law). And they’re not doing it by creating jobs that allow workers a chance to work with pride, and earn a living wage in safe conditions livelihoods. Instead they are using the courts of the land to exploit their workers and customers, and keep them from claiming their rights under the law. And it’s this systematic reshaping and abuse of the justice system that represents the gravest threat to our way of life.

KSM, you need to go back in the history books to a time long before the Civil Rights Movement. The late 19th century was a time during which a very few individuals held virtually all of the wealth and power. For most of them, it was never enough. While maintaining a sympathetic public facade, they maintained employees whose jobs consisted of finding and enforcing ways to increase a worker’s utter dependence upon his or her job. While many today promote a hazy nostalgic vision of the benevolent factory or mine owner taking care of his workers, and church-based groups taking in the less-fortunate, the actual picture was horrifying. The hungry starved, orphaned children went homeless, the sick suffered and died, and many workers (including 5 and 6 year-old children) worked 65+ hours per week under horrendous conditions. They had no recourse: the rich owned the politicians, the courts, and the media of the day. The formation of unions was due to a growing sense of desperation resulting from hunger, fear, humiliation, and physical and emotional pain. It wasn’t an overnight occurrence; it took several decades and many lives. But prior to that, there was no such thing as a level playing field.

Admittedly, there are many today who have unrealistic expectations, but this condition is evenly distributed in the U.S. today, across age, gender, economic level, and political affiliation lines. The fact is, fear and desperation are increasing, and may result in forcing change, just as they did a century ago. Everyday citizens like myself are disgusted that the entities who rashly decided to play blackjack with the world’s economy, appear unbowed and unchastened. Instead, with impunity and arrogance, they continue to gamble with the world’s future, one jackbooted foot on our collective necks, attempting to elicit those last drops of sweat and blood. And our legislators are either too uneducated in the basics of economics and finance to understand WTF’s going on, or they’re too morally bankrupt to care. When I think of the sacrifices made by Americans who came before me – those who suffered pain and deprivation, who fought wars and shed blood and endured all forms of hardship – to ensure that there would be an America for future generations, I, too, want to find a way to get rid of the soulless bastards in Washington and on Wall Street who would risk what rightfully belongs to all of us on a throw of the dice.

[SK in CV]

wow eaves, beautiful.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=UCGal]The protests even have Paul Ryan (about as conservative as they come) discussing the income inequality.
http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CBOInequality.pdf

I don’t think he’d even acknowledge the income inequality if it weren’t for the protests the last two months.

A picture referenced in his paper says it all.
[img_assist|nid=15573|title=CBO Income inequality|desc=Cumulative Growth in Average After-Tax Income, by Income Group|link=node|align=left|width=431|height=450][/quote]

Indeed this is noteworthy, UCGal. It took them a while, but I think even the Congressional Neaderthals couldn’t fail to recognize the message behind the recent Ohio election results.

That being said, have you read the entire report yet? A more in-depth perusal led me to a lot of defensive verbiage by Mr. Ryan. There was certainly a lot of justification of earlier statements, bills, etc. going on.

However, did anyone else notice Mr. Ryan’s statement, “One underreported conclusion from the CBO study is that shifts in government transfers and federal taxes have contributed to increasing inequality over time.” He followed this up with an intriguing analysis, “This shift reflects a growth in programs that focus on the elderly population and are not for the most part income-adjusted, such as Social Security and Medicare. In other words, the structure of some of the nation’s largest entitlement programs has decreased the share of government transfer payments going to lower-income households and directed an increasing share of government spending to wealthier seniors.”

Lesson 1: When old people get pissed off at you, and poor people have always been pissed off at you, tell the poor ones that the government used to give them extra money 30 years ago, but that it’s now giving the money to rich old people who don’t think they’re rich enough. Then step back and have your legislative assistant take pictures of the poor people beating up on the old ones, and post them on Facebook. The old people are dead, the poor ones are in jail….Everyone wins!

Lesson 2: Try to sound smart and insightful, while being dismissive of the CBO’s report: “This trend, accelerated by the retirement of the baby-boom generation, contributes to an increase in inequality.” Hold on a minute: This report covers the period June 1979 thru June 2007. The first Boomers didn’t turn 65 until January 2010. Tell me again how the retirement of those rich, avaricious Baby Boomers is responsible for income inequality?

Lesson 3: Don’t miss an opportunity to plant yet another nugget of suspicion in the minds of voters that President Obama is making the government withhold information from them, “One underreported conclusion from the CBO study is that shifts in government transfers and federal taxes have contributed to increasing inequality over time.” With any luck, they’ll pick up on the hint that he’s also responsible for income equality.

There was one additional statement that gave me pause: “These economic trends (trade and technology) have also contributed to increased inequality in most other advanced industrial economies around the world, not just the United States (see Figure 7). In fact, of the few countries that have seen decreasing inequality over the past thirty years, one of them, Greece, is in the midst of a severe debt crisis and is teetering on the edge of economic collapse. This underscores the point that increased equality does not always mean better economic outcomes for all.”

Okay, the description of Greece as having an “industrial economy” might have been a teensy bit of a stretch”. But I admit to being disturbed by his inclusion of the information that income inequality in Greece is decreasing, and following that up, not only with a(n unnecessary) reminder that Greece is in the economic hopper, but also an example of logic so twisted that it violated the laws of physics.

I’m not sure if I’m upset because of
1. his inclusion and distorting of the information about Greece to try to sell his constituents on the idea that income equality will tip the U.S. over the economic brink, just like it did in Greece…..did it? It didn’t? What? Who’s on first?

2. or if it’s because there’s a distinct possibility that he really believes it, and that, in his fertile mind, it makes absolute sense. Which would explain a lot of things about Mr. Ryan.

[Author]

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