OWS Changes the Conversation

The payroll tax cut used to be a Republican idea, but now that President Obama is for it, they're against extending it. That is, until Occupy Wall Street made clear the division between the 1% and the 99%:

If Republicans block the measure, as expected, Democrats would paint them as the party of the rich.

Trying to get ahead of the game, McConnell proclaimed Republican support for the payroll tax cut extension and told reporters his party would soon propose its own ideas for covering the cost of the tax cut.

"The Democrats put them in a box," said Andrew Taylor, a North Carolina State University political science professor. "I think many Republicans realized this is a bad side of the argument to be on."

Thanks to the protesters, there's media buzz highlighting the GOP's behavior and allegiances. It's common knowledge now, nothing anyone can obfuscate with rhetoric. And you know #OWS matters when the new GOP frontrunner, Newt Gingrich, calls on President Obama to repudiate the movement and its message of wealth inequality.

As Robert Reich tells us, the Basic Bargain holding our society together and creating growth in the 20th Century has been torn apart by greed and must be restored:

For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.

That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages.

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The latest data on corporate profits and wages show we haven't learned the essential lesson of the two big economic crashes of the last 75 years: When the economy becomes too lopsided -- disproportionately benefiting corporate owners and top executives rather than average workers -- it tips over.

In other words, we're in trouble because the basic bargain has been broken.

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Corporations don't need more money. They have so much money right now they don't even know what to do with all of it. They're even buying back their own shares of stock. This is a bonanza for CEOs whose pay is tied to stock prices and it increases the wealth of other shareholders. But it doesn't create a single new job and it doesn't raise the wages of a single employee.

Nor do the wealthiest Americans need more money. The top 1 percent is already taking in more than 20 percent of total income -- the highest since the 1920s.

American businesses, including small-business owners, have no incentive to create new jobs because consumers (whose spending accounts for about 70 percent of the American economy) aren't spending enough. Consumers' after-tax incomes dropped in the second and third quarters of the year, the first back-to-back drops since 2009.

The Dems are proposing to pay for the payroll tax cut with a surtax on millionaires -- affecting 0.2% of the U.S. population.

I hesitate to ask what 1%-favoring counterproposal GOP will come up with themselves.

Flashpoint: UC Davis

Fascinating chain of events starting on Friday when a police officer blanketed a row of sitting protesters on the University of California Davis campus with military-grade pepper spray. This video has now been viewed over a million times -- the spraying is near the start:

It's not quite Kent State -- no students were shot to death -- but appalling in its own right. These were peaceful protesters, not throwing rocks or threatening anybody, and the now famous Officer John Pike chose to douse them like roaches. No doubt the students who endured this silently are heroes to their classmates now.

Even move compelling is this video from later the next night, when the Chancellor who is responsible for putting the police on this, Linda Katehi, does what is essentially a perp walk past silent students. She had been in the administrative building for a meeting, this after various faculty called for her resignation, and evidently claimed the students outside were preventing her from leaving. In response, the organizers promised her safe passage and, as you can see in this video, called upon the protesting students for peace:

The walk of shame. Katehi has put out a statement today that's rather different from the day before, acknowledging what she's learned of the atrocious police action and promising some sort of change.

I wonder if she'll be able to keep her job, but it will only be by showing total growth and bending to the will of the people. If so, I believe she may become a model for others.

If not, she stands condemned with the 1% and their enablers.

Happy Two Month Anniversary

At two months in, Occupy Wall Street is now occupying the world, especially today, after being kicked out of Zuccotti Park but taking over NYC and parts of other cities as well. Some of the highlights include:

• Journalists being arrested (nouveau fascism?) for reporting on police crackdowns on protesters
• Retired police chief getting arrested for his protesting
• Movie star Anne Hathaway showing up, smart and low-key
• New Jersey voters now favoring a millionaire's tax
• Huge message projections on the Verizon building by the Brooklyn Bridge:
• A message to Mayor Bloomberg:

And, best of all perhaps, now to morph the movement into political demands - what Jesse LaGreca calls PHASE 2:

It is time to TAX THE RICH

It is time to END THE WARS

It is time to restore Glass-Steagal

It is time to repeal Citizens United

It is time to get the money OUT OF POLITICS

It is time to invest in infrastructure and education

It is time to STOP busting labor unions, whether private or public

It is time to defend Medicare and Social Security tooth and nail from phony reforms or baloney cuts

It is time to STOP the spending cuts and start investing in America, and if we have to raise taxes on the rich and corporations in order to force them to invest in America, then so be it.

It is time to make higher education affordable, to offer students debt relief, and to provide funding for education, and stop blaming honest teachers and educators and for the failures of an underfunded system.

It is time to STOP the racist and discriminatory practice of "Stop and Frisk" and other tactics of racial profiling

It is time for civil rights for ALL, and that means equal rights for LGBT Americans to serve our military and marry whom ever they will

It is time for ACCOUNTABILITY for the men who lied us into war and crashed our economy

It is time for immigration reform that does not punish workers, but provides a clear pathway to citizenship for everyone

It is time for investigations that lead to prosecutions on Wall Street in response to the crimes that have been committed in the last decade.

It is time for a serious discussion about the Federal Reserve and it's role in this economic disaster

It is time for universal health care that everyone can afford. It is time to talk about Single Payer Health Care.

It is time for alternative green energy instead of Oil and Coal.

It is time to protect our civil liberties and our constitution.

It is time for a discussion about free trade and how it has undermined the working class while enriching only the wealthiest among us.

It is time to end corporate personhood.

I'd say Mayor Bloomberg did the movement a favor. Time to move on from tents -- by moving it all on up to the legislative bodies.

Occupy the Holidays

I was hoping to take the kids to see Occupy Wall Street in NYC next week, but that tourist attraction is now undetermined. It turns out the Federal government colluded with over a dozen cities to set the movement of the parks today, most notably NYC where the 12th richest man in America, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, must be cleaning up in advance of the first wave of holiday tourism next week.

The good news is that it isn't working everywhere and, more importantly, the protesters have already changed the national conversation from the GOP deficit talking points. Deficit reduction is for the 1%; taxing the rich is for the 99%.

To top it off, the movement occupied the offices of the owners of NYC's Zuccotti Park tonight in Washington, DC:

The conversation continues.

Mic Check: Eric Cantor

I have disagreements about interrupting speakers, but if you're going to do it, this is the way, with an exit after you make your point. My God, the #OWS movement is public in a way the same kind of protest action never could be in the past, thanks to the wonder that is YouTube.

So to me, this is all kinds of awesome:

Eric Cantor put the full faith and credit of this nation at risk for his ideological goals and for his billionaire classmasters. As the protesters say, voting against the interests of the people. No one believes the job creator myth anymore, not when guys like Mitt Romney have a raw capitalist history of coming into a company and reaping monstrous profits before downsizing or offshoring it.

We've entered a new Robber Baron age and the economy can't support it. The people don't want the end of capitalism, they just want it to work properly, which ended under Bush. Labor has a different face now, white collar or flannel collar, but it's Labor rising up just as it did a hundred years ago when the rich went too far.

The biggest threat to Capitalism right now is not #OWS or Anonymous, it's Climate Change. That's the phrase Republican communications guru Frank Luntz invented to stave off Global Warming, and it's actually worse for the GOP because it's more accurate. Catastrophic early winter may not be quite as bad as a tsunami or a fracking-caused earthquakes, but it's all part of how our collective appetite for things and comfort is so ravenous and, currently, so critical to the economy, that unregulated Capitalism is essentially riding straight at a series of cliffs, and nobody really knows how far down's the fall.

Earth: Too big to fail?

Global 99%

Noted economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz had this to say about the Occupy Wall Street movement in an article in English language Al Jazeera this weekend:

The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt and then to Spain, has now become global - with the protests engulfing Wall Street and cities across America. Globalisation and modern technology now enables social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can.

And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: A sense that the "system" has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things right - at least not without strong pressure from the street.

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The rise in inequality is the product of a vicious spiral: The rich rent-seekers use their wealth to shape legislation in order to protect and increase their wealth - and their influence. The US Supreme Court, in its notorious Citizens United decision, has given corporations free rein to use their money to influence the direction of politics. But, while the wealthy can use their money to amplify their views, back on the street, police wouldn't allow me to address the OWS protesters through a megaphone.

The contrast between overregulated democracy and unregulated bankers did not go unnoticed. But the protesters are ingenious: They echoed what I said through the crowd, so that all could hear. And, to avoid interrupting the "dialogue" by clapping, they used forceful hand signals to express their agreement.

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The protesters have been criticised for not having an agenda. But this misses the point of protest movements. They are an expression of frustration with the electoral process. They are an alarm.

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On one level, today's protesters are asking for little: A chance to use their skills, the right to decent work at decent pay, a fairer economy and society. Their hope is evolutionary, not revolutionary. But, on another level, they are asking for a great deal: A democracy where people, not dollars, matter, and a market economy that delivers on what it is supposed to do.

The two are related: As we have seen, unfettered markets lead to economic and political crises. Markets work the way they should only when they operate within a framework of appropriate government regulations; and that framework can be erected only in a democracy that reflects the general interest - not the interests of the 1%. The best government that money can buy is no longer good enough.

Amen, brother. And how about Stephen King in Florida a few months back:

#OWS is about speaking truth to power. If markets are not regulated properly, if the disparity between rich and everybody else gets too great, if the wealthy seek only to protect their own capital and bleed the rest of us, we know historically that empires fall and revolutions arise. For example, the American Revolution.

So, leaving aside a noble sense of civics: will greed or self-preservation win out?

Tucking in for a Long Winter

Here's how much I love the young activists at the core of making Occupy Wall Street work:

Winter Time Woes: Occupiers Solve Power Problem

I know there was violence in Oakland (subsequent to earlier police violence). My instinct is that the troublemakers are government or rightwing plants. We've seen as much before, going back to the 1960's in the U.S. and the 1930's in Germany.

In any case, it doesn't discredit the entire movement, it's goals or general innovations in democracy. And with guys like this one inventing their winter power source, I feel a glimmer of hope for this country politically down the line.

Most of all, I'm excited to see where this particular protest goes.

Warzone Oakland

WTF, Oakland? WTF, Mayor Jean Quan? Last night in Oakland you unleashed the cops on Occupy Oakland and the resultant news is bad news for the powers that be -- as well as for the injured Iraq War vet:

An Iraq war veteran has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile.

Scott Olsen is in a "critical condition" in Highland hospital in Oakland, a hospital spokesman confirmed.

Olsen, 24, suffered the head injury during protests in Oakland on Tuesday evening. More than 15 people were arrested after a crowd gathered to demonstrate against the police operation to clear two Occupy Oakland camps in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Jay Finneburgh, a photographer who was covering the protest, published pictures of Olsen lying on the ground.

"This poor guy was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up," Finneburgh wrote.

Damning video here:

The irony:

"He survived two tours in Iraq," said Adele Carpenter, a friend of Olsen's and a member of the Civilian Soldier Alliance. "This struggle has high stakes, I really respect the fact that Scott was standing up for what he believes in. He's really passionate about social justice causes."

Olsen appears to be the first serious injury nationwide of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread to virtually every major American city -- and several smaller ones -- as millions of people continue to express their rage and disappointment with the country's banking, regulatory and health care systems.

Well, Mayor Quan, I guess the movement can give thanks that you've highlighted their cause with your own police overreaction. It worked to help publicize the movement when a cop pepper-sprayed some young women protesting in NYC, so this should do wonders. If Olsen dies, it's like Kent State May 4, 1970 revisited.

Let's see how you handle the return of the protest tonight.