Occupy Miami and Occupy Wall Street: what next? by gimleteye

Listening last night to NPR's Marketplace, I was curious about comments / suggestions from business and political professionals about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Grover Norquist, arguably the most powerful person in Washington, slyly suggested that the OWS'ers follow the Tea Party that gained popular support by advocating for limited government. Norquist is one of the main architects of "government-designed-to-fail". The OWS'ers have a different agenda, although the question-- what is that agenda?-- occupied other commenters, who one by one criticized the fuzzy "branding" of the protests.

I came of age in the 60's through the politics coursing through campuses and streets. What we know, today, is that the populist movement of that time energized and focused a conservative movement that eventually cemented the power of leaders like Norquist. Their target--overreaching government--grew from the fear and paranoia of wealthy business interests. So much has changed since then. For one, the false promises of globalization had yet to materialize. In the 1960's, the great middle class was swept along by the military draft and the Vietnam war. 

It is a vastly different landscape today. Most Americans are fed up with paying for wars waged to secure oil supplies, costing billions of dollars per week. The economy has passed through profound structural changes. Only the aspirations of citizens in China, Asia and India seem immune to the ratcheting down of expectations. 

What is similar is the energy of young protesters. The higher pitched calls to "smash the system" are part of the amped up hormones we ought to recognize from our earlier selves. Here are two observations: first, removing the OWS'ers from their encampments across the country was a lousy idea. What the mayors of American cities have done is to take away an escape valve for public pressure. It will express itself, one way or another. As a parent, I never expected my children to always behave like angels and I was always more pleased to have them and their friends at home where I could see and hear them than out somewhere, where I couldn't.

The Tea Party started out in a populist direction but was quickly usurped by a corporate agenda and funding by business interests advocating the Grover Norquist line of limited government. The OWS'ers have been adopted by the unions and shell-shocked opposition to the conservative wave that capitalizes on fear and greed. This gets a second observation; the point of a simplified message.

Last Sunday CBS 60 Minutes broadcast an investigation that exposed how members of Congress are permitted by law to trade on inside information of stocks and industries members regulate. Add to this, news that Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich received millions in fees from Freddie Mac, a key corporate player in the debt crisis that is swallowing the US economy.

 

The OWS'ers need to focus on the role of corporations in elections and reform the campaign finance system. I have been on the front lines of the 40 Year War Against the Environment-- one of the gauges of the health of our democracy-- for more than two decades. We are not making headway. Florida Governor Rick Scott set back environmental protection by generations. Corporations are too powerful. Corporations dominate elections. Change the campaign finance system and there is a chance that democracy can right itself. 

Keep it simple. Keep the pressure on. Don't give up.

The Politics of Wetlands Destruction: US Century Bank, Sergio Pino, Ramon Rasco, and Jeb Bush ... by gimleteye

In the United States, Occupy Wall Street protesters are taking aim at the vast inequity of wealth created through financial engineering, without knowing how the small gears link up to the big ones. The engine of destruction starts with home mortgages linked to financial derivatives matching up to credit default swaps: leveraging small errors into a blizzard of money raining billions in compensation. It all depended on speed of execution.

The evidence in Florida piles up. It manifests through the carnage of housing markets, especially where low-cost, production housing turned wetlands into petri dishes for the particular culture of suburban sprawl. In South Florida, the last fumes of the housing boom consumed vast acreage in former Everglades wetlands. Its results permanently etched the landscape as lifeless ghost suburbs where foreclosure rates have soared. They were pushed through local zoning and permitting processes as "what the market wants". In fact, they were what the financial markets could sell to gullible and greedy investors, seeking better return with risks comparable to government bonds.

The insatiable demand for financial derivatives tied to mortgages was met by willing suppliers: builders and developers, lobbyists, traffic engineers and planners. Everyone needed to execute quickly, carelessly and rampantly. At public hearings in Florida, at the base rung of the step ladder of approvals for planned developments, dissenters during the run-up of the housing boom were relentlessly opposed 99 percent of the time.

Today Florida has the highest foreclosure rate in the nation. And still in local and stage legislative arenas, demagoguery persists that land use and environmental regulations, such as those that protect wetlands, are barriers to job creation. It is the mantra of Republicans mainly: knock down regulations as fast as possible so the scrapers, the bulldozers, and stick frame and particle board can fly off the shelves the way they did in 2004.

The landscape can't speak for itself in Florida. Wetlands can't exchange business cards at political fundraisers with promise of new opportunities. That is the problem with wetlands. And it the problem that Jeb Bush, policy tinkerer of the conservative right, imagined he could solve through "wetlands mitigation banking".

In 1996, still smarting from his loss to Gov. Lawton Chiles, citizen Jeb Bush used his Foundation for Florida's Future to outline his case for "free market" environmentalism. The foundation publication, "Outside The Lines", led toward an essay by Denver Stutler, who would be Bush's chief of staff and later, secretary of the Florida Department of Transportation. Stutler laid out the case for mitigation banking of wetlands.

In a Senate hearing in 1995, then US Senator Bob Graham introduced Stutler and ECOBANK as "one of the older of those programs and... we will have the benefit of his extensive experience." Graham-- who claims Everglades restoration among his signature achievements--didn't even know ECOBANK had not obtained its first permit. Wetlands mitigation banking turned out to be all myth. It all sounded good on paper: match the need to protect wetlands with the profit principle, never mind that when it comes to wetlands protection, future commitments are worth the paper they are printed on. 

Best 'Occupy Miami' Video I Found. By Geniusofdespair

Occupy Miami and Occupy Wall Street: it's all about messaging ... by gimleteye

Click 'read more' and two news reports worth reading, for those interested in how the media is reporting Occupy Miami and how the OWS'ers need to think about their action and message to a wider audience. The first is a Miami Herald report about a group that "turned out" to the Society of Environmental Justice annual meeting. It is not a very focused picture. The second, is by George Lakoff-- whose work on message framing virtually covers the spectrum of modern American politics. Pay attention to Lakoff, OWS'ers. And if you want to find some sharper points of focus on the environment in Miami, there are plenty to be found right on this blog. Start with an archive search on "US Century Bank", "housing crash" and "UDB".

Occupy Miami and Occupy Wall Street: The 99 Percent Declaration...by gimleteye

The media continues to paint the Occupy Wall Street and Miami and elsewhere, as a leaderless, directionless movement. The following is from the website, The 99PercentDeclaration. I'm not convinced on some of the points, but some seem ripe for movement. First and foremost: immediate and meaningful campaign finance reform. Let's hope that commentators and journalists with access to print and television journalism catch on. Limiting the power of corporations.

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." Thomas Jefferson

WHEREAS THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION PROVIDES THAT:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

Occupy Wall Street Police-Demonstrator Violence. By Geniusofdespair

FDIC: Shut down US Century Bank, now ... by gimleteye

The astounding report by ProPublica on US Century Bank shows the nation's banking regulator, FDIC, asleep at the switch when the largest distribution of TARP funds in Florida was made to politically connected directors of the Miami-based bank who substantially shaped the state's political landscape. (Every county commissioner in Miami-Dade County, who solicited for money through US Century Bank, its friends and family as the housing boom metastasized in wetlands and farmland in West Dade and historic Everglades, knows exactly what I mean.)

"It is hard to imagine a more obviously reckless and foolish use of TARP funds than U.S. Century in 2009," said Richard Newsom, a former FDIC bank examiner who has looked at the bank's public financials. "Contrary to TARP guidelines, this bank was in deep, likely fatal, trouble when it received TARP funds. It should have been subject to an enforcement action in mid-2009, not awarded $50 million in taxpayer dollars."

US Century Bank would have been closed down years ago, if not for the cash infusion of tax payer-backed dollars through TARP. The question is not answered: how did FDIC miss the disaster at US Century? With respect to the TARP moneys, either US Century lied in its filings and "cooked the books", or, it received a political push from its friends in DC. Whatever the answer, the public deserves to know. To ProPublica, the bank issued blanket "no comment" and refusal to answer phone calls.

Those details could be disclosed in a FDIC enforcement action against US Century and its directors, including Ramon Rasco-- key figure in the Homestead Air Force Base fiasco--, or shareholder lawsuits. If there are investors gullible enough to take over US Century now, the details could be buried for a considerable length of time.

US Century Bank became popular as "local boys made good". Depositors have no idea. Bank directors bet the farm on land speculation; manipulating local government processes, turning a federally chartered bank into a personal piggy bank (US Century Bank is rated "zero" by Bauer Financial. Measured against peers, its ratio of insider lending to standard banking metrics is off the charts. So far, there is no way to know exactly what loans, for mortgages in what areas of Miami-Dade, those ratios connect to.), tying up environmentalists and citizens and neighborhoods in knots, from Doral to Homestead. When environmentalists cry "foul" and say the playing field isn't level, this is exactly the example: civic groups cobble together a few dollars to support outreach efforts like "Hold The Line" on the Urban Development Boundary (the target of US Century Bank directors/speculators while regulators in local and state agencies cower in their foxholes) while the lobbying effort of insiders is funded by manipulating banking rules and laws.

From a 30,000 foot view, all the environmental skirmishes -- from water quality to wetlands to the Urban Development Boundary, Everglades Restoration and the fiasco of Homestead Air Force Base (Ramon Rasco and partners) that tied up the 2000 presidential election in Florida -- were for naught. It was about the crack cocaine of the housing boom and the massive wealth transfer grounded in arrogance and greed.

The public was taken for fools then, but the tables are turning in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

To find a symbol of what went wrong, and is still going wrong: take a close look at US Century Bank. Earlier this summer, the FDIC issued one of the toughest Consent Orders ever. While the FDIC isn't required to publicly disclose an update, the public should demand one now.

The difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Miami and everywhere else? Fear ... by gimleteye

The Occupy Wall Street'ers around the nation and the world have presented an awkward situation for the Tea Party, now primarily institutionalized as a wing of the GOP. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard University Law professor, made an interesting comment on the NPR Diane Rehm show yesterday (carried locally on WLRN): that the Tea Party had started out as a movement to end business as usual and to demand improvement in the operation of government but had quickly dissolved to represent the extremist wing of the GOP that wants to eliminate government, regulations, enforcement altogether.

The Tea Party has not made the leap, at least on the institutional level, to question the role of corporate power and authority. That is the bedrock of the OWS'ers protests. Where the OWS'ers tie politics and elections to the abuse of corporate wealth and authority, the Tea Party is silent. Indeed, billionaires like the Koch Brothers (whose profits depend on lax regulatory authority regarding clean air and clean water) are substantially funding the Tea Party, elected officials and its candidates.

Why? Because they are afraid. "Tea Party voters are more likely to fear change and harbor negative attitudes toward immigrants," reads an August AP report of a 4,500 telephone poll conducted with registered voters in North Carolina and Tennessee and presented to the annual conference of the American Sociological Conference. "Tea Party supporters also overwhelmingly viewed President Obama as "not at all" like them and 66 percent of conservatives who support the tea party movement say he is not a Christian.

While there are plenty of OWS'ers who are protesting the policies of President Obama, there are none to observe hating Obama or fearing him. Fear is a great fault line of any economic upheaval. It is proven time and again throughout history. It has also been one of the great achievements of the radical right that now dominate the GOP: the messages of fear have been carefully cultivated through Fox News and its commentators, as well as the entire panoply of paranoid talk show hosts on radio and TV. Fear pulls ratings and voters.

Occupy Wall Street, Miami and elsewhere grasp that "the only thing to fear is fear itself", the words of FDR during the depth of the Depression. It took the Second World War to ignite the US economy, but we are far past that now: our economy is already exhausted by the costs of wars on multiple fronts. We should not be afraid to confront the costs of Reconstruction.

Occupy Wall Street and Miami: Jeb Bush, the Mortgage Bankers Association, and the Chicago banker boyz ... by gimleteye

In Miami it is not considered polite or politic to criticize resident and former governor Jeb Bush, whose entire career was fueled by the mad housing boom and its campaign money that is now crashed to cinders. Bush spoke in Chicago last week to the Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention.

I wish I had the full text of Bush's speech. These days, the speechifying of Jeb! can be interpreted for the direction of the Republican message machine. What was reported was that Bush urged the audience to climb out of their fetal position and go on the offensive. "Who better to advocate a policy to get us out of this mess?" Bush implored the same businesses that got us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with their taxpayer trillions, sent nearly two hundred fifty executives to Chicago where they rubbed shoulders with the same mortgage rating agencies and mortgage execution companies that used speed in execution as the housing market inflated and speed in execution as the housing market collapsed to "move product" while tens of millions of Americans suffered the consequences. Speed in execution means diminished or eviscerated regulations; one of the GOP's chief goals whether for the environment or for zoning and development.

Jeb Bush is an elder statesman in the Republican Party these days. Why, is a mystery to me. On the other hand, who can deny the vanishing trick at the heart of American politics, tied to campaign finance that Bush mastered and resulted in the destruction of so much equity and hope. That is what the Occupy Wall Street'ers in Manhattan, Miami and elsewhere are protesting. Corporations are too powerful. Corporations are NOT people. But not to Jeb Bush (and his chosen presidential candidate, Mitt Romney).

"Business has gotten way too timid," said the former governor whose first consulting contract was with Lehman Brothers, the biggest pusher of complex derivative debt to the state of Florida. Bush continued with the banker boyz in Chicago, "The natural inclination is to cover. I would encourage you to stand up." Stand up to the protesters, hinted Bush without also mentioning that between Enron and Lehman, his appointees cost Florida and money held in trust for policemen, firemen, and state and municipal employees nearly a billion dollars.

There is where the 1933 inaugural speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt can be mashed with the whines from Wall Street and the renewed competition for its campaign cash by both Democrats and Republicans. Roosevelt, speaking to America at the height of the Depression, condemned an earlier generation of bankers; "Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers."

It bears pointing out that the same protections advocated by Roosevelt and built up through the safety net protecting banks, American business and consumers are the target of the GOP, now swept up in a kind of madness aimed against the victims. It is partly President Obama's fault-- he neither presided during the incipient stages of the housing bubble nor had the acuity to understand the nature of its creators -- that he cannot say today as President Roosevelt did then, "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization... there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live."

In Chicago, Jeb Bush faced the money changers and what he told them was in effect; put more tricks up your sleeve, more pigeons to fly from top hats, more beautiful women to saw in two, to materialize wholesome and Christian with the swipe of a magic wand.

Kind of like this: "One of the things that we've got to do is to address problems straight on and deal with them in a way that helps us meet goals. And so I want to talk about a couple of goals and -- one goal and a problem. The goal is, everybody who wants to own a home has got a shot at doing so... And so what are the barriers that we can deal with here in Washington? Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. People take a look at the down payment, they say that's too high, I'm not buying. They may have the desire to buy, but they don't have the wherewithal to handle the down payment. We can deal with that. And so I've asked Congress to fully fund an American Dream down payment fund which will help a low-income family to qualify to buy, to buy. (Applause.) ... (the problem is) that the rules are too complex. People get discouraged by the fine print on the contracts. They take a look and say, well, I'm not so sure I want to sign this. There's too many words. (Laughter.) There's too many pitfalls. So one of the things that the Secretary is going to do is he's going to simplify the closing documents and all the documents that have to deal with homeownership."

That was from a June 2002 speech by President George W. Bush. The speech is still available on the HUD website. At the time Jeb Bush was governor of Florida, the same Jeb Bush who says, though a dismal decade has passed, that what is hindering the economic recovery are "regulations" and that the banker boyz need to get up out of their Fox Holes. Occupy Wall Street, take note.

More Than 500 people showed up for "Occupy Miami" October 15th. By Geniusofdespair

 

The Police estimated the crowd to be at 1,000. Who am I to argue....I didn't see any police there so you know how observant I am.

Occupy Wall Street: signs of the times ... by gimleteye

These photos are from Occupy Wall Street yesterday. There is something disconcerting about the way the NYC police have reacted to the protests, contained within a tiny pocket park near the Trinity Church. The entire area is locked down for many blocks surrounding the protest area, including the access to the NY Stock Exchange. Crowds of workers, tourists; everyone is made to walk single-file on sidewalks edged by barricades.

Yesterday the powers-that-be were ready to clean out the square and the protesters camping out. The response of right wing media (from Fox News to the NY Post) has been predictably rabid. At the same time, hand-outs from the Occupy Wall Street'ers (or OWS'ers) grafts language of old protests onto this new branch, opening up the old (tired) line of attack from the conservative right.

I say, good for the kids but really, anyone living on fixed income or counting on a pension plan with defined benefits should be part of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Those savings (and their declining worth) are funding an illusion of economic prosperity. But for how long will those savings, hold? I hope the protests hold until Congress enacts both real reform of banking regulations, to undo the damage of Wall Street financiers who persuaded Congress to unravel the Glass Steagall Act (separating commercial banks from speculative Wall Street investment banks) and reversing the corruption behind the Citizens United decision of the US Supreme Court. Corporations are not people and until this distinction is put into federal law, Americans will suffer the consequences.

Occupy Wall Street and Joseph Stiglitz ... by gimleteye

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz: “We have too many regulations stopping democracy and not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving... we are bearing the cost of its misdeeds. There’s a system where we’ve socialized losses and privatized gains. That’s not capitalism.”

The GOP, the Media and Occupy Wall Street ... by gimleteye

When the media finally began to pay attention to protests gathering under the banner of Occupy Wall Street, the GOP response recalled how the 1960's protests against the Vietnam War energized American conservatives. Until the demonstrations by assorted students and labor and political activists (socialists, communists, etc.), the right wing had been defined by racism (southern and Democratic) and the stigma of the John Birch Society.

The counter-response came from the US Chamber of Commerce and wealthy industrialists. They invented a new political machine that now, nearly half a century later, has turned out to be the most successful in US history. It is a GOP dynamo incorporating the imperatives of the Christian right and the "free market". The juggernaut owes its success to a message machine book-ended by Fox News and the Murdoch empire.

The way that current media accounts of the Wall Street protesters focus on the "hippie-like" quality of the protesters recalls the 1960's. While this generation of disaffected youth have little in common with their predecessors, (deserves a longer explanation), the defenders of the status quo look very much like the same vested interests who organized in response to the perceived threat of the 1960's disorder in America.

Over the weekend, GOP House leader Eric Cantor appeared on the nightly news reading from a script that might have been cribbed from the 1960's: he darkly inveighed against the "mobs" that, he worried, could disrupt the economy. Cantor is too young to have experienced the 1970's and the aftermath of a failed cultural revolution. But he is a political offspring of its result, and in his remarks he appeared to be laying the case for "law and order" to sweep the streets clean.

The media hasn't picked up on the Cantor/GOP Morse Code, or has but is not revealing. That would not be a surprise. There is a certain Kabuki-theater like quality to the response of the media. On 60 Minutes, a brave effort by Lesley Stahl with GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to spring open the views of one of America's most powerful corporate spokesman was deftly parried. The interview ended abruptly with Immelt wondering why Stahl was "rooting against GE". Actually, all Stahl was trying to do was to channel some of the questions, concern and anger about the behavior of corporate America in recent decades. Immelt gives a polished interview, but his last comment -- delivered reflexively-- spoke volumes about the sense of power and privilege that not only dismisses the Occupy Wall Street'ers out of hand but is ready to move aggressively in its own defense. Ergo, Cantor.

Over the weekend, I stumbled upon a long essay I wrote in 1995 and unsuccessfully tried to publish. (Pre-blogger days) Bill Clinton was president. Jeb Bush was mounting an effort, that would eventually be successful, to be governor of Florida. The essay was shaped around a weekend planning charrette in Broward County to determine the fate of wetlands that were eagerly sought for development. Its title was: "Suburban Sprawl: In The World Series of Unfunded Mandates in Florida, Some Think The Bases Are Loaded In the Bottom Of The Ninth".

That was more than fifteen years ago. "Escalating taxes, congested roads and highways, overburdened schools, and deterioration of the natural world are driving Americans in metropolitan regions to distraction, pitting neighborhoods and communities against each other. Then, there are the ghostly features of the suburban landscape; broken families, alienation of individuals from public institutions, and evasion of personal responsibility, all tangled in the costs of sprawl. These are the facets of the debate on unfunded mandates, although you are unlikely to hear them discussed in Congress soon; how sprawl, encoded in planning and building codes, creates external costs that are recaptured as taxes or debits to quality of life whether the public wants to pay them or not. The pressure is on to find solutions, any solutions, to a dilemma that knows no boundaries."

The essay was written when a Democrat, Lawton Chiles, was governor. Chiles was under immense pressure-- and caved-- to development interests in West Broward and Miami-Dade. And that was before the dot.com boom and bust and the political juggernaut that pushed Jeb Bush in Florida and George Bush from Texas to the White House. Before a housing boom and bust delivered by the Chamber of Commerce and corporate power as "what the market wants"; a cliche that the media papered over while millions of Americans followed speculators driving the US economy into the deepest ditch since the Great Depression. In 1995, I hoped that the Democrats could be persuaded to do the right thing in Florida: protect our environment, our Everglades, and give more than lip service to the need to provide the right incentives and penalties for destroying wetlands; the excuse to pave over what was left of an environmental ethic that was, then, scarcely a decade old.

As to it being the "bottom of the ninth inning"; I hoped for a rally to save the day. Maybe that day is now.

Occupy Wall Street fills the Tea Party vacuum and here is why ... by gimleteye

Some study is warranted by the Tea Party affiliated with the GOP. The 1773 Boston Tea Party-- in which crates of tea were thrown into Boston Harbor, an event leading to the American Revolution-- was not against taxation. taxation being one of the key rallying cries of the current GOP Tea Partiers.

The original tea party rebels were enraged by taxation without representation. The political candidates who swept into Congress through Tea Party support in 2008 are against taxation of any kind. They have signed pledges that dovetail with key Republican strategist, Grover Norquist, whose goal is to drown government to the size it would fit in a bathtub. Colorful, but diversionary. The substantial support of the Tea Party is from corporations and executives with an axe to grind against regulations like those protecting the environment. (On October 3, POLITICO published an analysis of the big money contributions to the GOP Tea Party.)

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, is a spontaneous movement arising out of the fundamental belief that corporations are too powerful: one percent, they claim, controls most of the wealth of the nation and political power. When Occupy Wall Street call themselves "99 percent"; what they mean is much more closely allied with the complaint of the original American revolutionaries and the Boston Tea Party insurgents: taxation without representation.

While GOP quickly now claims the Tea Party as an affiliate, a kind of Junior League for Republicans, Democrats and organizations commonly associated with the party are going to have a harder time claiming the energy and protests of Occupy Wall Street for their own. When it comes to the abuses of Wall Street and Main Street that led to the worst economy since the Great Depression, Democrats had their hands in the Wall Street till. How else can any member of Congress win election (unless he or she is independently wealthy), other than to pander to Wall Street and the corporate power it represents?

The facts need to be made clear by Democratic leaders, should they have any interest in tapping into the energy of Occupy Wall Street: corporate control of elections reinforced by the Bush Supreme Court imposes taxation without representation on Americans.

Long ago, journalist and commentator Bill Moyers called the American campaign system, "a nuclear arms race". If I were a Wall Street banker or many-tentacled corporate executive, facing down the long tunnel of daily protests and a very sick economy, I would think to myself: much better to be free to earn a living than to be hung in the town square for dealing nuclear weapons. America is not at that point yet, but a few bankruptcies in Europe and a few days of rage, and we won't be far. (For the POLITICO report, click here)

Wall Street. A Closer Look. By Geniusofdespair

Occupy Wall Street: what stories are not being told ... by gimleteye

The mainstream media first ignored and now can't afford to ignore the mass protests organized as "Occupy Wall Street". Fox News "unfair and unbalanced" is out front with what could quickly emerge as a counter-revolt led by Rupert Murdoch. The seedlings are growing at a quickening pace, in ways that are likely to manifest in more police brutality.



American politics is slowly responding to this unaccustomed intrusion. Few in positions of authority will confront media advertisers and big campaign donors.

So Fed Chair Bernanke's comments to Congress yesterday are noteworthy: he acknowledged legitimate grievances of ordinary Americans. Interesting times, given the role the Fed and especially Bernanke's predecessor Alan Greenspan played in arranging the deck chairs on the economic Titanic. Bernanke also pinned the blame on Congress for policies that are prolonging the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Another story is the absence of the Tea Party, whatever figment of imagination that is in the minds of Fox News, from the protests. It would be fair to say that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations call into question exatly what is the Tea Party and who are their leaders and who are their followers. But the media can't focus on that part of the story because -- at least in the Fox News universe -- the Tea Party are "good" protesters.

The New York Times has an interesting story today about another constituency having a hard time working into the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon: unions that have been badly weakened in the United States. Democratic groups like Moveon.org are scrambling to catch up. Fox is trying to fill the vacuum, but it is possible that a real Tea Party will emerge with its own candidates demanding changes to federal laws that grant corporations the same rights as people. Those are the rights, by the way, that allowed the Murdoch empire to consolidate and fierce resistance can be expected to any challenge from any quarter.

Occupy Wall Street: will the real Tea Party please stand up? ... by gimleteye

Yesterday's New York Times coverage of the protest movement, Occupy Wall Street, ends with a quote: "... there is a tension between this emotionally powerful movement... and the emptiness of the message itself so far."

The message isn't empty. The live stream feed of the movement has a compelling video, "Which Side Are You On". The video shows the massive police / robocop response to the protesters at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. It recalls one of the most shameful moments in recent Miami history: the police response to the FTAA protests in 2003 when school teachers and retirees and students were herded on the streets downtown.

On the one hand, the police -- armed to the teeth-- were only doing their job. But what was that job? It wasn't just to enforce law and order. It was also to lend authority to suppression of a populist movement challenging a political and economic status quo that deformed our democracy.

In contrast to the free trade opponents, it is noteworthy that the Tea Party -- a political movement that presumably arose after the 2008 election -- is mainly the Republican Party and has been nowhere visible in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. As currently constructed, the Tea Party responds to funders from the radical right, including the Koch empire (that was featured in two fascinating news reports yesterday. One, in Counterpunch, deserves wide distribution: Koch Entertained Justice Thomas At His Private Club.)

Yesterday in Huffington Post, Josh Silver writes, "For the past forty years, the expansion of unchecked corporate power has taken over Washington and state capitals. Armies of industry funded lobbyists, PR firms, think tanks, fake "Astroturf" groups and billions in campaign contributions have quietly corrupted a vulnerable system of government and seized control.

This juggernaut has decimated basic consumer protections and created the biggest gap between rich and poor since the Great Depression. It created the financial meltdown and the Great Recession. It is why nearly 50 million Americans lack health insurance. It has created a political system that is more like a heroin addict: dependent on billions of dollars that determine who gets elected, which laws get passed, and which don't. Both major political parties are addicted and beholden."

Silver finds hope in a meeting last week, sponsored by Harvard Law School: "Conference on the Constitutional Convention". The co-chairs of the meeting, Larry Lessig and Mark McKinnon write: "Even if 34 states don’t call for a convention, history teaches that a real threat is often enough to get Congress to act. The only amendment in our history that changed the structure of Congress (the 17th, making the Senate an elected body) was proposed by Congress because the states were close (just one state short) to calling for a convention. If nothing else, the possibility of a body they can’t control is enough to get Congress to pay attention." (Watch Lessig's "Are Corporations People?" on YouTube.)

Citing that 76 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats opposed the Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court-- that unleashed a tsunami of special interest money into a campaign and electoral system that is already badly deformed-- Silver calls for "the right and left (to) abandon the polarizing rhetoric from our leaders and our TV screens and join hands in support of a 21st century democracy reform agenda that reclaims our government from moneyed special interests. The future of our nation depends on it."

There is a message of hope and it is not an empty message.