how to scare the shit out of the kochs

another stolen post: Fueled by a long simmering anger over the economic crisis, the continuing enrichment of a tiny corporate elite who brought this crisis on, and the lack of any political voice for the great majority of people, the Occupy Wall Street Movement has spread to hundreds of cities across the nation, mobilizing hundreds of thousands in an undeniable display of strength. The growing involvement of unions in these developments both testifies to how broad this discontent is and its potential power to mobilize and organize millions. The 99 percent have had enough, and growing numbers are now taking to the streets to make an impact. We are witnessing the birth of a social movement that has the potential to win economic justice. Having only recently exploded onto the scene, there are many directions this movement may take. The only certainty is that, since the conditions that fueled it are not going away any time soon, it is, at the very least, a harbinger of larger struggles to come. Some have argued that the Occupy Wall Street Movement has a relationship to the Democratic Party similar to the Tea Party's relationship to the Republicans. This is wrong on several counts. The Tea Party and its message was cooked up, funded, and molded by corporate interests such as the Koch brothers. It attempted to mobilize people by tapping into their fears of where the country is going while dressing up a corporate political agenda in populist rags. There was never a doubt that this would eventually strengthen the far right in the Republican Party who quickly identified with the Tea Party's cause. Relations stand very differently between the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Democratic Party. This movement has no big Wall Street interests channeling funds into their organizing activities. By targeting economic inequality and injustice brought on by Wall Street's rule, the movement has placed itself in direct opposition to the largest financial contributors to and policy makers of the Democratic Party. While Democratic Party politicians may mouth support for some of the issues that have united the movement, any measures they can effectively promote will not come close to adequately addressing working peoples real needs. To understand why that is the case requires that one follow the money. All the community organizations and unions combined cannot come close to matching the wealth of the corporate elite. The Democratic Party is a machine that has been built and is maintained by funds from their deep pockets. If any Democratic politicians seriously do try to support measures that address workers’ needs that the Occupy Wall Street Movement is putting on the table, it will be at odds with the Democratic Party's purpose. Of course, Democratic politicians will continue to voice support for issues raised by the Occupy Wall Street Movement, such as taxing the rich, but they only do this during election campaigns or when they know that there is no chance of passing any relevant bills. In an attempt at damage control, President Obama recently acknowledged that the Occupy Wall Street Movement "...expresses the frustrations the American people feel..." However, he still used the press conference to justify his massive bank bailouts. This is typical of President Obama, betraying his occasional populist posturing with policies that enrich the top 1 percent at the expense of everyone else. President Obama's recent support for a 5.6 percent tax on millionaires and the American Jobs Act will be spun as examples of his attempts to address the anger that gave birth to the Occupy Wall Street Movement. However, such claims cannot withstand serious scrutiny. The 5.6 percent millionaires’ tax is a paltry amount when compared to the overall enrichment the corporate elite has enjoyed under Obama's administration. With American companies sitting on $2 trillion in cash rather than investing in job creation, Obama's tax the rich gesture is peanuts. Much of the $447 billion slated for the American Jobs Act is in the form of corporate tax give-aways, and a large amount of its funding will come from cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. At best it will result in the creation of 2 million jobs while there are 24 million unemployed and underemployed. But aside from its paltry status, Obama’s millionaire tax increase will only fool those who have not had time to pay close attention. If Obama were serious, he would have introduced this measure when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. By waiting until the Republicans control the House to raise this proposal, when it has no chance of passing, Obama is revealing that he is simply playing politics and campaigning for the next election; he is parroting popular measures without having to worry about alienating his wealthy supporters since they all know the proposal is dead in the water. Given all this, President Obama's prediction that the Occupy Wall Street’s frustration will "express itself politically in 2012" appears to be wishful thinking when it comes to a flood of support into the voting booths. Many of the participants in this movement were enthusiastic supporters of candidate Obama in 2008. The bitterness of their disappointment cannot be forgotten and it is unlikely that they will embrace him again. The Occupy Wall Street Movement needs to remain independent of both Wall Street parties and corporate cash. While many participants, especially the unions, will endorse Democratic candidates in 2012, this movement should not allow itself to give into the habit of endorsing "the lesser evil" and restricting its activities and demands according to what corporate candidates say is possible. It must continue to speak to the experience and needs of working people with mass united action rather than be diverted by knocking on doors for the Democrats. The history of social movements in this country shows that getting caught up in the Democratic Party leads to paralysis, entropy, and even the death of hope of bringing about significant change. As the Occupy Wall Street expands to include unions and greater numbers of unorganized workers, it will be necessary to find specific concrete demands that the majority of working class people are ready to unite and mobilize around at this time. Demands focusing on government funded job creation, taxing the rich, no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and ending the wars are a likely good start, because all of them have huge support, according to the polls. If the Occupy Wall Street Movement is to grow, it will also have to transform itself. In the process of bringing in greater numbers, firming up greater unity with unions, and organizing larger actions, it will have to perfect its democratic practices, develop organizational structures on a national and local level, as well as put forward a leadership structure that is transparent and completely accountable to the general membership. In the process of evolving into a democratic movement, it will be possible to create an alternative to the parties of Wall Street and corporate America, that is, a Labor Party that fights on behalf of the vast majority. While such an outcome may not be likely at this time for the participants of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the logical course of its struggle may compel it to move in this direction. If so, it will be the product of a process that has the power to fundamentally change the political and economic structure of this nation.

Mark Vorpahl is a unionist and anti-war activist and writer for Workers Action. He may be reached at portland@workerscompass.org

why we occupy, what we know

by John Bellamy Foster

Occupy Eugene rally, 15 October 2011

We are here as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which in a few short weeks has become a global movement in hundreds of cities around the world.  We are part of the 99 percent not only in this country but the world.

I have been reading the mainstream, corporate media.  I have been listening to the pundits, the power brokers, the politicians.  They criticize our movement, saying we don't really know why we are here.  They claim that we are simply angry; that all we are is an "emotional outcry."  House majority leader Eric Cantor calls us "a growing mob."

Wall Street bankers interviewed by the New York Times say that we are "fringe groups"; that we will "thin out" and disperse when the weather gets colder.

A New York Times article reported yesterday that we were confused "liberal activists" fed up with partisan politics but with no real ideas of your own.  An editorial in the same paper said we were just protestors, with no clear demands.  We are well meaning, they conceded, but it is the politicians, not the people in the street, who have the job -- so they say -- of determining the future course of things, not us, not the 99%.

Foreign Affairs magazine, the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that Occupy Wall Street is critical of Wall Street, but not of capitalism; they say that we do not question the system itself.

They are wrong.  We are part of the growing army of the Occupy Wall Street movement worldwide.  And we know why we are here.

• We know that U.S. society has become fundamentally unequal.  We know, though we may not all know the exact numbers, that the top 1 percent of income recipients receives almost 25 percent of all income in the society (including capital gains), and the top 10 percent receives almost 50 percent.

• We know, though we might not be able to quote the figures precisely, that, between 1950 and 1970, for every additional dollar made by those in the bottom 90 percent of income earners, those in the top one hundredth of one percent received $162 dollars.  But that was back when things were more equal!  Between 1990 and 2002, for every added dollar made by those in the bottom 90 percent of the population, those in the top one hundredth of one percent made an additional $18,000.

• We know about the Forbes 400.  That in the United States 400 individuals (a number far less than those here today) own as much wealth as the bottom half of the U.S. population, some 150 million people.

• We know that when it comes to financial wealth (which excludes houses) the top 1 percent of the population in the United States owns four times as much wealth as the bottom 80 percent of the population.

• We know, though we may not know the precise details, that according to an audit by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Federal Reserve Board provided more than $16 trillion in financial assistance in the latest financial crisis to the largest corporations in the United States and the world.  The rich were bailed out while the majority of the population was made to pay the cost!  And you are still paying!

• We know that there is over 9 percent official unemployment in the United States, while the real number of people who want full-time employment and don't have it is around twice that.

• We know that official unemployment for adolescents is 25%; for blacks 16 percent; for Latinos and Latinas 11%.  And if you double these numbers you are closer to reality.

• We know that poverty is growing and being "feminized."  We know that many people in this country are unfairly branded as "illegal immigrants."

• We know, though we may not realize its full extent, that there are 2.4 billion people globally who, according to the International Labor Organization, are unemployed, underemployed, economically inactive, or engaged in subsistence labor.  That 39 percent of the world's workers live on less than $2 a day.

• We know that multinational corporations exploit the differences in wages between countries, taking advantage of the enormous global reserve army of the unemployed, to generate humongous profits, and to hold down wages worldwide.

• We know that there is no real economic recovery; that we are in a period of economic stagnation, where only the rich are prospering.  That economic growth in the United States has been slowing down in each successive decade since the 1960s and is now virtually stagnant.  That the rich are getting bigger slices of a non-growing pie while the slices for almost everyone else are less.

• We know that the planet is being destroyed.  That the future of all species and of humanity itself is being cut off.  That, as James Hansen, the world's leading climatologist puts it, this is "our last chance to save humanity."  And that none of the governments in the rich economies are doing anything at all about it!  That oil companies and coal companies are more important to those in power than the planet itself.

• We know that the United States and its allies have been engaged recently in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.  That an intervention is being planned for Iran, and possibly Venezuela.  That U.S. military bases dot the entire globe and are increasing in numbers.  We know that the United States spends around half a billion dollars officially on the military each year, and in reality a trillion dollars a year.

• We know that we live in a plutocracy rather than a democracy, where money outvotes public opinion at every point in the political process.

• We know that unions are in the defensive in this country.  That they have been smashed by unfair legislation.  That they are struggling to find a way to fight back.

• We know that our elementary and secondary educations system in the United States is being privatized and destroyed.

• We know that we have by far the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

• We know that all of this is related to the system of economic power, to a society that believes in the Wall Street principle, "greed is good," the signature of capitalism.

• We know that we are the necessary, the last defense of humanity.  That you are the world's 99%.  That we will not "thin out" when the weather gets bad.  That we are not a mob.  That we are the earth, we are democracy, we are the future.  The world has been occupied too long by a tiny minority.  It is time for the people to reoccupy it.  To take it back.

In 2009, I participated in a discussion about the global financial crisis on Democracy Now!  I said then that we were in a period of long-term economic stagnation (of which the financial crisis was simply a symptom).  The closest historical precedent was the Great Depression.  I pointed out that it took about four years after the 1929 stock market crash before there was a revolt in the United States in the 1930s -- what we know as the Great Revolt from Below -- which resulted in the industrial union movement, the rise of the CIO, and the second New Deal.  The revolt didn't come in earnest until a year or more after the economic recovery had started in 1933, when people suddenly realized that the recovery was false.

I said that a similar Great Revolt from Below was likely in the United States today, given a deep and lasting economic stagnation.  But that we might have to wait three or four years, just as in the Great Depression, for it to get off the ground, and for the people to ignite.  That, just as in the Great Depression, the revolt would not materialize until people had learned that the promise of economic recovery was false, that they had been lied to and systematically robbed.  Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Eugene, Occupy the United States is the Great Revolt from Below in our time.

But what we are witnessing this time is the growth of something much larger still.  In a matter of a few weeks we have watched the emergence of an Occupy the World movement.  Everywhere people are uniting in struggle.  When I was in Australia at the beginning of October, when this all was getting started, radical activists were absolutely glued to the events in Occupy Wall Street -- even before it was being reported by the mainstream media in this country.  Why?  Australia is on the other side of the globe.  Why should they care about a resistance movement in New York?

The reason is that we in the United States live in "Fortress America," the heart of a world empire.  Revolts are not supposed to happen here!  If a break in the wall appears, if massive protests occur, here, "Inside the Monster," as José Marti called it, the whole world is suddenly uplifted and encouraged to resist.  Because then they know that the empire is crumbling.  Our struggles here are opening up space for resistance for all the people of the world.

What does occupy mean?  Why is an occupation so important?  Why is this movement so different?  It is because it means we are not going away.  We will not disperse.  We will remain.  We will win.  The world requires it.

Thank you.

 .....
reposted here without permission

the rise of the regressive right and the reawakening of america

Sunday, October 16, 2011 blatantly plagiarized from RobertReich

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward. 

We are going to battle once again. 

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy. 

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards. 

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act. 

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few. 

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age:  Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy. 

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they’re conservative jurists. But they’re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states’ rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on  local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action. 

Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.  

In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.

Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America.