There is an underlying current in the news coverage of the Occupy Movement. It has been about the, "What do these people want?" narrative.
It's not like the answer is complicated. BUT, I have to say, it isn't a single issue so the media has this stupid, deer in the headlights, look. They cannot handle a multifaceted answer to this core question. Yeah, one sign says, "Get the Money Out (of the political process)," while another might say, "We are the 99%," or another saying, "Jail the Banksters." That's doesn't translate to the easy message the 15 second nooz can handle. There is a lot of thought being put into the messaging, make no mistake about just how screwed up the country is. There are so many things wrong now that we have a broad set of issues to deal with. As Randi Rhodes has pointed out for a long time, "The baby is crying... we have to do something," is what the politician knows is happening. The nooz, at this point, is not so capable of generalizing and gets left behind.
Here we have the confluence of the issues and a common banner of the Occupiers. This is not "Astro turf" but grass roots protesting on a grand scale. Real revolution through peaceful means.
The vacuum of sucking the life out of the middle class has brought about the conditions of change.
You have to ask yourself at this point, why is the Occupy Movement happening now? When you look at a number of factors in the current world situation you get the feeling that your particular situation is beyond your control. When you pack rats closely together and shorten the distribution of food you get a very aggressive bunch of rats. We are at a nexus of known wrongs to our planet, our economic well being and our moral standards. This assault, for us in the U.S. started in earnest with Ronald Reagan but has been a Republican subtext, looking a long way back in history, to before the civil war. At the time the same arguments were made by people not called Republicans but the ideas were from the same point of view.
Loosely speaking it would be the "stuck in the mud" party. Recently I quit debating policy and politics with a group of conservative friends because you cannot really debate anything with the mentally ill. If there are no agreed to facts to discuss then there is no real discussion. It's as simple as that. There is a tendency to ridicule rather than debate. Getting to the lessons that history actually shows us is a useless exercise because you never get off the ground and get past the definitions of what, when and how things got the way they are now. The following link puts a change of view in front of the writer and he begins to see things differently... that's where debate becomes possible:
At a time when there are a lot of people looking for ways to live off the grid in homes of independent means through the use of solar panels, wells, local food production and so forth there is suddenly the connect-the-dots mentality that has awakened many to the need to overcome the banking system, the economy driven by fiat money controlled by a few banks (keeping the money supply defined and short of our needs) and paying the workers less and less. It is the worker and the inventor who make wealth and value. It is not the manager or "owner" of the plant who creates jobs. AND, it is certainly not someone trading the stock of a company who creates anything. Do not misunderstand me on this; the stock trader IS a necessary component of raising capital and moving the economy BUT that individual should not be paid disproportionately to the workers and inventors who create the opportunity. Corporate ownership of the labors of the inventor is one of the places that we need a course correction on payment. Innovation is worth a lot more to society than the manipulation of the capital to make it happen on a larger scale. A legal system that wrests control away for the people actually making a product is a broken legal system, almost by definition.
Having been pondering the state of things a lot lately there is a continuing disconnect between corporate media and the reality of the "boots on the ground". A demonstration is a legal right that we all have. When the Tea Party was "organized" they had media support because they were co-opted by the Koch brother type of money and the echo chamber from the Right. It was a Right wing based movement that had no roots, or at least a very small set of roots capitalizing on the irritation of people against government. I understand the irritation but, going back to Ronald Reagan, that has been the drum beat of the Right. It has a basic misunderstanding of what and where government resides. Government is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, making roads, educating our young and so forth... it is US.
The idea flows with a twist on what a "free" market looks like. The Right's current echo/voice says that a free market is supposed to be a completely unregulated marketplace. This is the market of the sociopath. Having a market without rules is to have the "right" to steal as much as to have a "right" to make a profit. That last was a line I heard as a sound bite from a media representative of Bank of America. That translates (for the Right) as they have a guaranty of profit regardless of how they treat people. That definition is wrong from the get-go. That definition is to ignore what makes a business grow. It is how the Right now defines the marketplace however. Regulations (rules) to any game are meant to make a fair, balanced playing field for all the players. That was the genesis of the rules put in place during the last depression (1930's). It worked until Ronald Reagan started to dismantle the rules. That shift takes away the rights and protections 99% of us had to keep the predators off our backs.
In the current environment we need to continue to regulate, MORE THAN EVER. We need to call the predators out and start to prosecute them for stealing the assets of the country... it was the large corporations that stole from us, not the government. Many of those corporations have been convicted of past FELONIES but, unlike people, continue to do business without penalty. The money behind the deregulation we have seen has built to the point that mirrors what America looked like in a similarly deregulated environment of the 1920's. It was after the prior crash that rules were put in place that protected us for almost 50 years.
One of the symptomatic changes that was hustled through about ten years ago was the insertion in the bankruptcy codes that a person's home was no longer protected. In other words, your home was now eligible to be taken away from you. Previously it was protected as an asset from the banks... witness what happened after the banks were further deregulated to create not just sub-prime mortgages but sell those debts in bulk as derivatives... massive displacement of former homeowners who were forced by the collapse that caused to declare bankruptcy.
Having gotten caught up in a few discussions where I end up wondering how such vitriolic nonsense got sooo off track. Well, it turns out that I was hitting all the buttons of the Righty re-definitions of the language!! Now there is help:
Thanks to friend Linde I have had a chance to see the rest of the buttons for the next "discussion"!! It's really fun to watch the veins pop out as I hit every one of their talking points (they often want to define what we can and cannot talk about) with fact filled Lefty talk!!
A favorite re-definition example:
Ronald Reagan: A fictional character based loosely on President Ronald Reagan.
Yesterday we (Sandy & I) joined in a march in support of the Occupy Movement. While we have a couple friends who argue that they cannot possibly BE 99%ers they are by definition in that category because they do not have $250,000 per year plus incomes. Well, who knows, maybe they do but have been loitering with the rest of us for the last few years.
Anyway, we joined in a march across the I-5 bridge from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington. It was all very civil and fairly well organized for such rabble as ourselves! The two most favored chants for the day were:
"Banks got bailed out, We got sold out"
"We ARE the 99%"
There was Union support for the march and the plumbers and longshoremen showed up. There were Postal Workers carrying support signs for the OWS movement as well as H.R. 1351 to save the postal system. We did indeed march across the bridge and regathered at Ester Short Park in downtown Vancouver for a brief session of speechifying.
As we crossed the bridge many drivers and passenger from cars in the traffic (the vast majority, in fact) honked or waved support for us. There were a few folks "flipping" us the universal sign of disrespect (I counted 4) but we smiled extra for them and waved respectfully back. The number of trucks giving us a boost from their air horns was a very fine thing as well.
We had a good day of showing support in a very excellent way and a chance to meet a few people along the way.
Oh, and there was a lone Republican in the crowd trying to cause a problem but we all gave him the freedom to do what he wanted to.
