"Occupy Wall Street" is a movement that bears more similarity to the original Tea Party than the political party nurtured in its larval stage by the GOP and its biggest corporate funders. The mainstream press chose to ignore "Occupy Wall Street" for its first week and a half, but the protesters haven't gone away and protests are growing in American cities. As a result, the media can no longer report on the protests as a nameless, faceless response to economic hardships.
On evening news last night, the message frame of the protests painted "Occupy Wall Street" as a generation of leaderless young hippies who don't have a platform or know what they want. That is not true, at least to anyone who has been following the growth of citizen anger or the way the promise of the Tea Party dissolved in the solvent of GOP intervention. The real Tea Party is standing up.
What the protesters want is to limit corporate power under laws that give corporations the same rights as people. These laws have been fixed in place by Congress and US politics since the late 19th century. Corporate power is a central issue of our times, but as news it only bubbles up through the media (owned by massive corporations) infrequently, as during the Citizens United case in which the Bush led US Supreme Court affirmed the huge distortions of the campaign finance system. It doesn't take a lot of searching to find sober eloquent voices who have argued for many years that corporations are too powerful and have deformed democracy.
Eyeonmiami has blogged along this line for the past four plus years; focusing on the role of local permitting and zoning advocated by lobbyists for powerful developers as the small gears meshing into the Wall Street mortgage and derivatives disaster that plunged the US economy into the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Clearly we are not alone.
10 comments:
Gimlete, then I'd say the same limits and access should apply to Unions, including publicly funded employee Unions.
I do not support the Tea Party, but I support free & FAIR markets. One of two mistakes was the Bush bail out, the second one was the Obama bail out. Both benefited the banks and/or special interests with a lot of lobbyists.
The Frank/Dodd legislation has been watered down so badly and/or so badly written, it's useless.
As to the Supreme Court decision regarding corporations, it also serves unions too. So, let's just get rid of both in the political process and get on with free & fair elections, which I haven't seen in my 50 yr lifetime because as long as public officials are elected, they need big money and it isn't coming from you & me or any other regular citizen.
Those modern day hippies will occupy Wallstreet for a while and look around them and see whats going on. Then they will go home shower, shave do some shopping at Brooks Brothers and come back for a job screwing the rest of us, just like most of the old hippies did.
Lending more credence to the old adage "if you can't beat em be them?"
Their other message - consistent with the anti-corporate power message - is the environment. The Republican pressure (and Obama's capitulation) to abandon air and water regs designed to protect health & environment is appalling and it's being noticed. I hope this movement grows. They can hijack the tea baggers but this might be tougher to undermine - there are not enough Wall Street jobs to buy out these kids (although if the economy were better, Cato would be right, sadly)
Cato,
your comment shows your ignorance of the current practice of employers refusing to even accept the resumes of the unemployed for consideration. If you are not already employed, employers have no interest in hiring you.
Coupled with a 25% actual unemployment rate, and the fact that "job creators" like the Koch Bros. aren't creating anything, where are these kids supposed to find employment?
Free and fair election, yes. Free markets, no. Free markets mean no regulations. That's what we have now and it is not working for us or the environment. No corporate money should go to campaigns/PACS or any other shadow organization with a sexy name. Individuals can give on ther own. Only then will elections be returned to the people.I do support matching government funds.
They should blame the Democratic Party for that Wall Street Bailout. Most Republicans in Congress voted against that bill.
Okay, so how do we get Occupy Wall Street Miami started. Location? BOA building downtown?
lets get violent!! YEAH!
You can protest in the Federal Reserve branch of Atlanta in Doral
Their are alot of Tea Party members and republicans infiltrating the movement .
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