The coverage and commentary of the Occupy Wall Street protests has been exactly what could be expected from people who alarmed us with Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and placated us with a housing market that is only going up.
The Decentralized Demands
The common denominator running through the “journalism” covering this entire Occupy movement is the snide derision and outright lies that seems a prerequisite for covering the story, all the while missing the point about the very real outrages that have motivated the protesters. The country can survive some Civil Disobedience en masse and it can survive the occasional pot-smoking protester stereotype that actually does something harmful. The country as we know it is in serious trouble if we let the outrages which provoked these protesters to begin with stand.
A man who goes by the initials J.G. has said-“Capitalism, despite its magnificent virtues in the short term – above all, its ability to adjust to changing conditions has several weaknesses… The finiteness of natural resources is simply ignored, and pricing is based entirely on short-term supply and demand. More generally, because of the use of very high discount rates, modern capitalism attributes no material cost to damage that occurs far into the future.” (Call this Quote 1).
There will be more on J.G. later. But before we talk about J.G. and “class warfare” and sharpen our pitchforks while yelling “commie”, let’s take a look at Occupy Wall Street (or at least Occupy Chicago’s) list of demands. Is there really anything that’s out of line in these requests?
1. Pass H.R.1489 and reinstate Glass Steagal!
Eliminating Glass Steagal-the Depression era safeguard that separated investor banks and commercial banks is directly to blame for this crisis and the misery it caused. It was repealed as a final act of a lame duck Congress in 1999 and led us over a cliff very fast. This is not an unreasonable demand!
2.Repeal Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy.
The 1% had quite a party for a decade thanks to an illegitimate Presidency. Deficit concerns are lessened when we increase the tax base. Warren Buffet feels they should pay their fair share. This is not an unreasonable demand!
3. FULLY INVESTIGATE AND PROSECUTE THE WALL STREET CRIMINALS!
This one might be problematic. When you make fraud (like Goldman Sachs hyping the very Securities that it was shorting) legal, prosecuting someone for a crime is problematic. But the fact that it is problematic is inexcusable. When former CFTC head Brooksley Born first met Alan Greenspan (the villain at fault for this mess) whether or not fraud should be illegal, Alan Greenspan replied that he did not feel Fraud was a priority (at about 16:00). When massive scale Fraud is legal, that needs to be changed. That’s not the fault of the pot smoking hippie the news media has singled out as representative of this movement, it is the fault of paid off Congressmen who allows it and the lobbyists who bribed them!
4.OVERTURN CITIZENS UNITED v. US.
This horrible piece of Judicial Activism has already proven cancerous to our democratic electoral process. In a state of the Union Address, President Obama cited the negative effect of having foreign corporations able to influence our elections and “Justice” Scalia famously shook his head and said “Not True”. If it is not true, then why did the exact thing warned against come into existence, give money to Mitt Romney and then evaporate? This decision was a horrendous injury to the American People by the Supreme Court and needs to be overturned fast!
5. PASS THE BUFFET RULE ON FAIR TAXATION, CLOSE CORPORATE TAX LOOPHOLES, PROHIBIT HIDING FUNDS OFFSHORE.
I have no problem with that. Neither does Mr. Buffet. And I am still waiting credible Point A to Point B evidence that inconveniencing corporations costs jobs. Where there is demand, there is hiring to meet the demand. Demand is what needs to be nourished and the Buffet Rule can help.
Let’s return to J.G. at this point. J.G. says that "If we want to dig out of our current morass,
don’t we have to change this equation and isn’t the most direct way of doing this to divide the pie more evenly?
That would mean lower income and sales taxes for the bottom 75% of earners and higher taxes for the top 10%!
We have allowed the vagaries of globalization and the plentiful supply of cheap Chinese labor to determine our
income distribution, which has become steadily steeper, to the point where we have become one of the least
egalitarian developed societies. Wouldn’t it be better for us to decide deliberately and by ourselves that income
distribution which creates the best balance of social justice and incentive to work? " (Call this Quote 2)
He adds that“The wasteful status quo has powerful allies in the present corporate and political system. We do not easily accept bad news, nor do we easily deal with long horizon problems. …we are not particularly good with numbers, especially when it comes to probabilities, compound growth, and discount rates. We have a capitalist system that reflects our weaknesses; one that is fine-tuned only for the present and immediate future” (Call this Quote 3) I agree with J.G. which is why I quoted him.
And, kind reader I will reveal more of J.G. as we go on. Even though you may have an image of J.G. at this point with a knit rasta cap carrying an OCCUPY sign in one hand a Guy Fawkes mask in the other, please hear him out. Maybe you can envision the tents set up around the park and a hint of marijuana smoke in the air as I quote him. But do bear with me. J.G is worth quoting.
6. GIVE THE SEC STRICTER REGULATORY POWER, STRENGTHEN THE CONSUMER PROTECTION BUREAU, AND PROVIDE ASSISTANCE FOR OWNERS OF FORECLOSED MORTGAGES WHO WERE VICTIMS OF PREDATORY LENDING.
The new Consumer Protection Bureau has had an uphill battle since it was proposed, despite the fact that one of the key factors in the Real Estate Bubble was the way in which sub prime mortgages were sold to people. A predatory sell of an ARM to someone who cannot afford it is a devastating event in his or her life. Shrugging and saying “caveat empor” to someone who is suckered into dumping a lot of money into one of these crooked deals is callous, drains the tax base, and leaves parasites in high places.
7.TAKE STEPS TO LIMIT THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS AND ELIMINATE THE PRACTICE OF LOBBYISTS WRITING LEGISLATION-
This mess was started by the repeal of Glass Stegal. Which was dropped in at the last minute by a lame duck Congress. The creation of “Too Big to Fail” Banks was directly related to this repeal. This didn’t just magically happen. Banks had been working to repeal Glass Stegal since the 1980’s. We need to not only correct the mistake, but remove the mechanism by which it happened. There is no reason something too big to fail (and exist) should be able to influence Congress to this malevolent degree! The protesters are not out of line with this demand.
8. ELIMINATE RIGHT OF FORMER GOVERNMENT REGULATORS TO WORK FOR CORPORATIONS OR INDUSTRIES THEY ONCE REGULATED.
J.G says that “Capitalism does not address these very long-term issues easily or well. It seems to me that capitalism’s effectiveness moves along the spectrum of time horizons, brilliant at the short end but lost, irrelevant, and even plain dangerous at the very long end.” (call this Quote 4)Well said J.G. If Timber executive write the forest regulations, if Oil executives write the oil safety guidelines, if military contractors write their own checks and if private prisons influence immigration and drug laws, we don not have a democratic republic-we have a legal looting of the wealth of the United States of America.
9. ELIMINATE CORPORATE PERSONHOOD
We are coming up upon an event Science is terming “the Singularity”. It is referencing hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. It is absolutely vital that we recognize our first attempt at creating a “person” although merely a legal one has resulted in creating a monster. I’ve addressed this issue in my piece- “We should implement Asimov's 3 laws to protect us from our inhuman creations-not robots but corporations.”
10. INSIST THE FEC STAND UP FOR THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN REGULATING PRIVATE USE OF PUBLIC AIRWAVES to help ensure that political candidates ARE GIVEN EQUAL TIME for free at reasonable intervals during campaign season.-
We are witnessing the need for this in the unfair and dishonest coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. And if you wish to comment on OWS, it seems to be a prerequisite that you adopt a snide, derisive and condescending tone. We need the Fairness Doctrine back! I addressed that in “We’re feeling the effect of treating mass Libel and Slander as protected Free Speech right at this moment."
11. REFORM CAMPAIGN FINANCE WITH THE PASSAGE OF THE FAIR ELECTIONS NOW ACT (S.750, H.R. 1404)
Bought and paid for prostitutes to K Street are unfit to lead us through the daunting challenges ahead of us. The current campaign finance system requires that our elected representatives become these prostitutes. So I’m all in favor of reforming it.
12. FORGIVE STUDENT DEBT-
Want stimulate the economy, y’know increase demand so there is more hiring and more jobs? This is a great way to do it. The burden of debt for a college education is a major drain on many people throughout there adult lives. (Particularly if the degree was worthless in the job market.) What’s more the interest and structure on many of these loans means that they wind up being paid back in a very unfair and lopsided manner where the amount paid over decades is greater that the tuition. I say, after 2 decades, you’ve got your return on investment for this loan and what remains can either be forgiven or restructured to reasonable payments. What’s more, after we do that, that frees up the money that would have been servicing a loan to purchase goods and services!
There is nothing in these demands that I disagree with!
And as to J.G., I have a bit of a surprise. He’s not part of the 99%. He is very firmly a part of the 1%! Jeremy Grantham(Quote 2 is on page 5) is the Co Founder and Chief investment Strategist of Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo-a Boston Based Asset management firm that directs investors on a “return to mean” basis. That means he steers investment money way from bubbles and still makes money for them. The piece I quoted from him also has an excellent bit on how these short term bubble machines justly protested by Occupy Wall Street will kill our species eventually through soil erosion!(Quote1 was on page 2-Quote 3 was on page 3-Quote 4 is on Page 1)
Now is the time to admit they don’t work and fix our mistake!
We are at a turning point in our species. A minority of traders with a history of destruction in the name of short term profits has control of our media, our fortunes, our resources and our world (One of them recently boasted as much on the BBC-at about 2:38) and if left unchecked will kill humanity in the name of short term profits. That is the relevant issue not the caricature of protesters and victims of the system drawn by elitist pundits!
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