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Occupy America and Change History

20 Oct

Let Occupy Wall Street become a permanent well of political discontent.

Occupy Wall Street HAS changed political discourse in America. It remains to be seen, however, what fruit will come from this change, if any.

That the OWSers have yet to come up with a set of concrete demands has often been noted. On this I side with those who do not see this as a problem. On the one hand, as many have noted, it’s not as though their central issue—massive income inequality—hasn’t been obvious for years, if not a decade or two, and it’s not as though it is difficult to come up with proposal after proposal that addresses the problem.

Everyone Must Eat

It is more important, at this point, simple to recognize the problem and to see it as deep and fundamental.

America, with all our problems, remains the world’s richest nation. That being the case, it is disgraceful that anyone should lack the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, education, and health care. Everyone, WITHOUT qualification, MUST have access to the means of living a decent life. Just how that is to be done, yes, that is a problem. But let us first state, and accept, the principle:

Everyone, WITHOUT qualification, MUST have access to the means of living a decent life.

It is not the OSW movement’s job to come up with proposals to achieve that end. That is a job for think tanks, Congressional staffers, lobbyists, and universities.

The Well of Our Discontent

Moreover, I rather like the existence of a somewhat amorphous well of ‘WE AREN’T GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.’ Perhaps that should become a permanent feature of our political ecology. Continue reading →

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Occupy Wall Street Hits K Street | The Nation

19 Oct

Lessig on the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street:

Now my belief is if this movement can take that message and carry it from Occupy Wall Street here, to Occupy K Street, and to look down K Street to all the other places where exactly the same kind of corruption is practiced, and talk about this problem as a problem of corruption, then this movement has the opportunity to unite people of very different views.

I spent time at a Tea Party convention in Arizona talking to people who were deeply concerned about this country. They didn’t talk about gay rights. They didn’t talk about abortion. They talked about getting our government back in control. Those grassroots populist members of the Tea Party—forget their leaders–would agree with this point about the corruption of the system. And if this movement can begin to speak about these issues in a way they can hear, where the focus is not against policies they agree with, for example against the free market, but instead against a corrupted market.

via Occupy Wall Street Hits K Street | The Nation.

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Lawrence Lessig: Occupy Movement Should Join Forces With Tea Party

19 Oct

WASHINGTON — Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig urged OccupyDC protesters to join forces with the Tea Party Tuesday evening during a teach-in with disaffected Obama supporters in McPherson Square.

Lessig, author of the newly-published book “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It,” argued in front of a crowd of more than 100 people that the two groups should work together to push for campaign finance system reform — moving to a small-dollar funded system — so that politicians aren’t beholden to their biggest donors.

via Lawrence Lessig: Occupy Movement Should Join Forces With Tea Party.

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Major News Corp Shareholders Vote to Replace Directors | The Nation

18 Oct

It’s showdown at the OK corral:

Earlier this month the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which owns more than 6 million shares in News Corporation, voted to replace the entire board of directors. At the same time California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the country’s largest pension fund, said it would be pushing for Murdoch to step aside in favor of an independent chairman. Glass Lewis, an advisor to major institutional investors in the United States, recently advised its clients to vote against both Rupert Murdoch and his son James, while Pirc, a British advisor, told its clients to vote against the Murdochs, as has the British group who manage local government pension funds.

Of, course, the  News Corporation is huge and it owns the Fox network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and local newspapers from here to Dunady, not to mention all the British media they own. And, as we all know, they’ve got dirt on everyone. So bringing the company to shareholder justice

Yet Friday’s meeting is more than just corporate theatre. News Corporation also faces a tsunami of legal troubles: hundreds of potential phone-hacking victims in Britain lining up for cash settlements generate the most headlines, but there are also shareholder lawsuits attacking the way the Murdochs run the company “like a wholly owned family candy store,” and ongoing criminal investigations in Britain and the United States.

via Major News Corp Shareholders Vote to Replace Directors | The Nation.

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MARK CUBAN: ‘Tax The Hell Out Of Wall Street And Give It To Main Street’

18 Oct

n a world of High Frequency Trading and black box trading that does nothing but create a platform for “financial hackers” to turn the market into their own proprietary financial playground, we need to figure out a way to revert the Stock and Bond Markets, and the derivative instruments created from these equities, back to their original purpose, a place to raise capital for growing business. Instead, today its a platform for financial engineers and hackers looking to exploit every and any opportunity. When 60pct or more of trades are from High Frequency/Algorithmic traders and the correlation for every market index rushes past .7, the market is no longer a market, its a platform.

The simplest way to change this is to place a very simple per share tax on every transaction. 10 cents a trade. Every share. Every option. Every Bond. Every currency transaction. Every trade.

The obvious response is that trading volume will plummet. So what? Let it. The next response is that traders will merely move their trades to foreign exchanges. Yes they will. Will transaction costs go up? Duh.. that is the point. The market thrived when spreads and transaction costs were much higher just a few short years ago. It will survive now.

via MARK CUBAN: ‘Tax The Hell Out Of Wall Street And Give It To Main Street’.

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Occupation and realignment – Salon.com

18 Oct

The Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to help the center-left, even if some of its activists despise the center-left the way that the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s dismissed progressive-liberals like the Kennedys and Johnson as sinister “corporate liberals” promoting the “warfare-welfare state.” The reemergence of a radical economic left can create a fourth point on the political spectrum, changing the relative position of all other points. The Tea Party right, now the mainstream right, would become the far right. Today’s center, shared by Clinton and Obama with Reagan and the Bushes, would become the new center-right. And the new center-left would be something like New Deal liberalism — to the left of Clinton and Obama, but to the right of an anti-capitalist left. Better yet, if the public tired of Tea Party conservatism, the far right could implode and the new “far right” would be moderate economic conservatism of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Obama variety. What until recently has been the left — old-fashioned social democratic reformism in the New Deal tradition — might once again be the center.

via Occupation and realignment – Salon.com.

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Jesse Jackson embraces Washington occupation – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

18 Oct

“Our message is that this is a movement that is leader-less and leader-full,” said West, who was arrested Sunday for displaying a sign on the grounds of the Supreme Court. “We take very seriously the idea of lifting every voice and we listened very closely to the people who we met inside the racist criminal justice system.”

The emotional meeting in front of the Carl Moultrie Courthouse symbolized how divergent traditions in American protest have converged in the occupation movement.

via Jesse Jackson embraces Washington occupation – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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The progressive debate we need – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

18 Oct

Frankly, cutting the military budge is a no-brainer.

America’s long-term debt needs to be addressed, but not the way the President is doing it. He wants to lop $4 trillion off the budget over the next ten years. This almost certainly means sacrificing education, job training, food stamps, and everything else now listed in the so-called “non-defense discretionary” budget, as well as cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

What about halving the military budget instead? It doubled after 9/11, and military contractors are intent on keeping it in the stratosphere. So is Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Result: Defense cuts this size won’t be on the table unless progressives vociferously demand it.

via The progressive debate we need – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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Come Together, Right NOW! Music on the March

18 Oct

Yeah, Dylan was cool. But today we have marchin’ music that would burn his protestin’ butt.

Last Saturday Salon published an article by Stephen Deusner on protest music: Will a new Dylan emerge from Occupy Wall Street? For better or worse it struck me as a bit of a lament for the Good Old Days when they had Good Old/New Protest songs, but, alas, kids today don’t write ‘em like they used to:

As Occupy Wall Street has gained momentum, it has been compared to the anti-war and civil rights protests of the 1960s by commentators as diverse as comedian Dick Gregory, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and scores of newspaper columnists. Yet, as Mangum’s performance demonstrates, they are very different in at least one regard, however minor: Music is not quite the central force today that it was 40 and 50 years ago, when a song like “We Shall Overcome” or “Fixin’ to Die Rag” could communicate certain motivating ideals and reinforce solidarity among a great throng of participants. Instead, it remains peripheral.

Things get moderated toward the end:

The lesson of the 2000s seems to be to approach politics obliquely instead of head-on, to make it one concern among many. If protest songs are largely absent from Occupy Wall Street, it’s not that they aren’t being written. It’s that they no longer serve the same purpose they once did — and are so spread out across genres and audiences that they don’t register as broadly as they once did. …

On the other hand, protests inspire music, not vice versa. Perhaps the artists participating in or even just witnessing the Occupy Wall Street gatherings will be moved to write about their experiences. Perhaps the next great wave of radicalized pop is just a few months or years away.

Well, maybe.

People’s Music

But I have a somewhat different take on the whole business. Back in the day the most important music was the music sung in black churches, mostly traditional hymns and gospel. That’s the music that summoned, organized and energized the civil rights movement. The anti-war movement was a different group of people and, of course, a different issue, but it emerged in a public arena that had been activated by the civil rights movement. Continue reading →

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Bloomberg Says Occupy Wall Street Tent City Is Not Covered By Freedom Of Speech

18 Oct

Bloomberg is 100% in favor of CYA.

“I’m 100 percent in favor of protecting — 1,000 percent in favor — of giving people rights to say things, but also we have to protect those who don’t want to say anything,” he said according to Bloomberg News. “There are places where I think it’s appropriate to express yourself and then there are other places that are appropriate to set up a tent city, and they don’t necessarily have to be one and the same.”…

Two-in-three New Yorkers back the protests, with an even larger majority supporting the continuation of the protests, according to a Quinnipiac Poll released Monday.

via Bloomberg Says Occupy Wall Street Tent City Is Not Covered By Freedom Of Speech.

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