Occupy Wall Street has gone global. Protests are breaking out in Tokyo, Sydney, the Philippines, Taiwan and London. Reuters is reporting riots in Rome. Of course Greece has been protesting for years now, so why riots are suddenly news is anyone's guess.
What a surprise. Citizens of nation-states are finally demanding finance and economies be for their well-being, instead of an elite group of super-rich. Trickle-upon economics just globally pissed up a rope.
Even Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke gets it on Wall Street protests.
In two hours before Congress' Joint Economic Committee, Bernanke painted a gloomy picture of the economic recovery, describing it as "close to faltering." He predicted there would be no quick pickup in new jobs and again urged lawmakers to come up with a credible plan to deal with federal deficits.
There are loads of complaints about what occupy Wall Street really wants. One thing we hope they do not want is special interests co-opting the movement. That's disaster in the making and will destroy any chance of positive change. Occupy Wall Street, is clearly about economies and finance for the citizens, the rest of us, or as they put it, the 99%.
Just like the Tea party started with disgruntled real people, eventually they were taken over by the Koch Brothers and other special interests, twisting and turning their outrage over Bank and Wall Street bail outs into the same corporate lobbyist generated talking points that have been going on since the 1960's.
In Occupy Wall Street here comes the SEIU, along with moveon.org, Van Jones and other special interest agenda groups and their corresponding cohorts. The usual suspect special interest money and of course ACORN is also being tied to the protests. These groups are notorious to push for open borders, unlimited migration, and other agendas which are extremely unpopular with a large segment of America. More importantly, these agendas belie the real economics, labor economics, statistics and theory on how to bring about income equality and prosperity for all. Indeed, the unlimited migration people are showing up at protests and already you guessed it, unlimited migration or amnesty is popping up as an official demand. Beyond the fact this would turn off most of America, by labor economics 101 such an agenda would also put global labor arbitrage on the fast track to de facto slavery:
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
The good news is the movement is fighting back to not be co-opted into promoting agendas by special interests. Note this OWS sign:
This is the problem. Most of America is outraged over Banks getting bail outs, Corporations writing legislation, all the while offshore outsourcing our jobs. Yet these issues above actually divide the nation, as badly as the agenda to destroy social security alienates most people.
What a shame! But this should alarm OWS more than anything. President Obama is planning to co-opt the protests to fight against Republicans. Assuredly this should outrage the protestors since many are protesting Obama and his policies.
President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy.
David Cay Johnston comments on how so far, OWS has managed to stay clear of political and special interest groups:
Occupy Wall Street differs fundamentally from the many demonstrations I have covered over more than four decades. Instead of people with similar specific interests — anti-war, anti-rape, Tea Partiers — these demonstrators come with widely varying views, experiences and backgrounds, yet unite around a common theme: bankers are ripping off America.
Two secondary themes also emerge in talking to some of the hundreds of people occupying Zuccotti Park. One is that the super rich own the politicians. The other is that the news media, almost across the board, view events through the eyes of the rich.
Folks, there are certain issues where over 80% of Americans, time and time again, poll they want something. One is a limit on CEO pay, another is taxing the rich and yet another is securing the border. Divided we fall. Can people just agree to fight for laws and policies that over 80% of the country want and they make economic sense by the theory and statistics? Leave the rest and just choose to disagree. Face it, America is literally being destroyed and while that's happening, folks just argue and argue as if there are blue and red people in America.
That's what this protest is all about and let's face it, 99% of us can agree we're getting our jobs offshore outsourced, sold down the river, our nations run by corporate greed and we're getting nothing. Keep the focus on those basic facts and corresponding policy subscriptions, we might just get somewhere. Throw in special interests agendas, be they tagged red:blue, and yet once again, corporate puppet masters can tie in their strings by dividing the populace.
This detailed study, aptly titled Who Rules America shows the strong correlation between Wealth and Power:
This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.
Some of the information may come as a surprise to many people. In fact, I know it will be a surprise and then some, because of a recent study (Norton & Ariely, 2010) showing that most Americans (high income or low income, female or male, young or old, Republican or Democrat) have no idea just how concentrated the wealth distribution actually is.
The question becomes can Occupy Wall Street keep with it's simple message and keep out special interests with their divisive, dividing agendas? One of the biggest black magic corporate lobbyist tricks is to spin a disastrous policy as something that is beneficial and have over 60% of the public believe the lie. 99%, don't let them take over your message!
We can only hope while millions camp out, march with their smart phones, they also are finding out about economics 101. It's one thing to protest and it's another entirely to understand which policies, which laws would actually restore the middle classes and bring about overall economic prosperity, not only nationally, but globally as well.
Comments
Here's a look at just how
Here's a look at just how successfully American corporations can avoid paying taxes at the same time as they are paying their corner office dwellers record amounts:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2011/09/ceo-excess-how-to-make-more...
The playing field definitely needs to be leveled so that everyone is paying a fair share.
I have another one on CEOs
Why is it perfectly ok for executives to be over the age of 35 yet none of their employees? Notice that? When it comes to age discrimination, they all are perfectly fine yet employees are magically "not up to snuff" the minute they turn 35.
Well researched, cited, economics related articles we do cross posting, although following the rules and correctly formatting an article is key critical.
We've had more than one get upset over this, when it should be a "copy and paste" when a few modifications. Email me if you're interested.
OWS Says a Mouthful: "Neoliberalism"
From an entry at the occupywallst.org website on October 14, 2011:
"Over the last 30 years, the 1% have created a global economic system - neoliberalism [link to Wikipedia entry here in original] - that attacks our human rights and destroys our environment. Neoliberalism is worldwide - it is the reason you no longer have a job, it is the reason you cannot afford healthcare, education, food, your mortgage.
Neoliberalism is your future stolen.
Neoliberalism is everywhere, gutting labor standards, living wages, social contracts, and environmental protections. It is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It is a system that ravages the global south and creates global financial crisis - crisis in Spain, in Greece, in the United States. It is a system built on greed and thrives on destablizing shocks.
It allows the 1% to enrich themselves by impoverishing humanity.
This has to stop!
We must usher in an era of democratic and economic justice.
We must change, we must evolve."
This group -- full of young, discontent people worried sick about their economic futures in America -- is about the best audience for the NumbersUSA-type groups out there that favor immigration reduction they'll ever get. I saw Mark Krikorian, a spokesman for one of the immigration reduction groups, refer to the Occupy Wall Streets with disdain.
HUGE mistake. Look at hostile and deliberately humiliating and defiant message to liberal groups who are trying to ride on their wave and maybe take it over.
THanks for putting that up by the way, I hadn't seen that before and I really love it. The longer the group can stay as is, with a general message and sincere effort to be inclusive, the more they will grow, I think.
The desire to be fair and inclusive could lead them to support immigration positions that are self-defeating. I hope they don't do that.
there is this mass economic fiction as "belief"
Where they "believe" that unlimited, unfettered global migration makes people "free". It's the opposite. Plus it breaks up family ties, a sense of community. But in terms of labor economics, it's all about supply/demand and when you flood a particular labor market, that supply goes up, wages goes down, worker displacement happens, worker rights go away.
They are playing right into the hands of the globalists with this agenda.
Unfortunately a few labor economics equations shall not enter their brains and this is because between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plus various ethnicity-based special interest groups, if any of those equations appear, the bringer of reality will be labeled a "racist xenophobe".
It's a real problem. If they bothered to look at any global migration maps from the slave trade, you'd get the picture clearer, but unfortunately labor history, labor market history is not investigated either.
I Am Confused
Are you saying that the Occupy Wall St group is for unlimited migration?
Based on the Wikepedia article, I would have thought you would have agreed that neoliberalism is bad for most Americans.
I saw some statement about their beliefs that mentioned they were against outsourcing of jobs but nothing mentioned about immigration.
hard to say
This post is about special interests trying to "move in" as it details but I'm not sure if those beyond OWS or the general consensus is.
Protesting income inequality, power, governments in the hands of the few, neoliberalism, all of that is one of the main reasons this site was started.
I'd say if they start promoting unlimited migration, then their movement is corrupted.
But so far, the message I'm hearing is 1% own 40% of the wealth plus our governments and this has to stop with side issues being "we need jobs right now".
These crowds are getting huge so assuredly there is now "noise in the machine" but as far as I know their message is still on target.
The Sons of Liberty
Something very big is happening here, that you have heard. What you will not here from the Mainstream media are some crucial points of history. The path the OWS follows was traced by the Sons of Liberty from 1775 to 1777. Sons of Liberty took their message to join the American Revolution from village to village, town hall to town hall. In the process, Sons of Liberty won over almost all town halls of America and in the process made the illegitimate government of the rag-tag patriots into the legitimate government of America. Essentially, the American Revolution was won. The war that followed was the futile attempt at re-establish military occupation of the American Colonies.
Today, the Occupation has changed from a colonial one to Occupation by the blood thirsty gods of Wall Street. Do not say, Wall Street folks are your neighbors. Such neighbors will cut out and devour your beating heart.
In both cases, the Movements were viral and the paths the movements followed are laid down by politics, culture and the way the Land is built and wired. This movement will not go away for the same reasons we predicted its birth in 2008 on these pages. It is all about history and the demise of the Doomed Regime. The one relevant piece of news since 2008 was the failure of any kind of reform both frustrated by the knuckle-dragging Retrograde Mutants, and hyped by agents of the Bush-Lite Administration.
Failed reform movements, in times of great crisis, are a very big deal historically.
Burton Leed
Roemer, Martensen among visitors to OWS
Presidential candidate Buddy Roemer visited OWS last Tuesday (11 October 2011). Here's from Buddy Roemer for President 2012 'Weekly Campaign Update" (14 October 2011) --
Another recent visitor to OWS (Zuccoti Park, NYC) was Chris Martenson (investment-economics researcher and writer). There's no particular connection between Roemer and Martenson -- at least not that I know of -- but I have considerable respect for both of them. Martenson visited on 7 October 2011, with a video crew of two others. Here's from his Newsletter (13 October 2011) --
Martenson has declared his intention to return to OWS after completing his current California tour.
Obviously, corporate media and 'wingnut blogdom' are doing all they can to discredit what's happening at OWS. While there are efforts to co-opt OWS as well as efforts to popularize distorted caricatures of what's happening there, it appears to me that some of the best people grappling with what is happening throughout America are visiting the event, coming away with a positive impression that what's happening is serious discussion.
Those who label OWS as "radical" or "hippies" and so forth reveal much more about themselves than about OWS. "It's the First Amendment, Stupid!" People exchanging ideas without the mediation of TV, people thinking for themselves ... that's probably pretty scary to some.
Martenson --
Roemer should appeal to OWS
First, he's getting a complete media, GOP black out, so that should be a great sign and second, he seems to have a cross section of positions that are truly "Populist". Glad to see this too.
OWS "Occupies" G.E.'s Immelt's House
This is good, they went to Jeffrey Immelt's house. article link.
In Fairfield, no doubt he had at least a half dozen houses but singling out Immelt should also send a message to President Obama about his "Jobs Czar".
OWS tied to ACORN
I'm not surprised but FOX news will pound this into the ground.
The minute a movement is perceived to be connected with either special interest "unlimited migration/amnesty/immigration" or taxpayer funds for "political" groups like ACORN was.....it's the kiss of death.
Great message, great cause and this is how it will be all discounted. Expect FOX to turn into the "ACORN channel" now, 24/7 slam of this organization and past agendas.
McCarthy Era:ACORN Signed The Signed the Register at the Meeting
This is the oldest trick ever from the McCarthy era. You get the stooge to sign the register at the Communist Party meeting. You then can get the stooge who signed the register book to rat out every one else. Naming names so it was called. In this version, just having the plant there works. Jon Kest does not own OWS. New York does not own OWS anymore.
This is a known trick from police and intelligence circles. This was done by government operatives and is an obvious conspiracy. Jon Kest is a plant. Whatever and whoever he works for needs to discredit OWS.
Just like Oswald.
Burton Leed
nice point
I wrote up this piece knowing they would try to tear this movement to pieces and/or take it over via special interests, so we'll see.
Fox Got Right On ACORN Story: I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI
Fox wasted no time crowing about ACORN. To their credit, they point out that all ACORN members are former, but the money is all new and current. Following the money will lead to the usual sources.
The question, to repeat, is how govenrment money
is used to manipulate and discredit OWS and how this is not a conspiracy? The is the worst of the the McCarthy days. Even, the 'get a job, bum' rhetoric.
I am going to re-watch 'I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI'.
In the late forties, this was a serious flick taken quite seriously.
Burton Leed
tin foil hats
Look, it's probably true there are some former ACORN people running around in there as well as some others with the most despised and alienating agendas. But don't put on your tin foil hat without evidence.
I've seen some agendas for "unlimited migration" popping up as official agendas, so if OWS gets compromised, taken over and off message, well, that's what this article is warning about in so many words.
Got a link for that video? I might consider it a candidate for FMN, never heard of it.