In The Tradition of Great American UnAmericanisms

Herman Cain is the latest in a long line of political mouths calling a populist movement UnAmerican. He says Occupy Wall Street is an assault on capitalism and that capitalism and the free market system are what have made America what it is. Can’t argue with that, but his intended meaning is other than reality. Setting that aside for a moment, though, it’s his statement that protests in the street are UnAmerican that I take greatest issue with. I’ve been hearing that from more or less conservative people since I was old enough to be aware of political issues. During the Vietnam era, the antiwar movement gained the hatred of Middle America not because they were wrong but because they were unruly, in the street, loud, and confrontational. “You should work within the system,” people said, “that’s not the way to do it.” Except it was clear that working within the system was not achieving results. The system is so constructed that those who understand where the controls are can make it respond regardless of general public sentiment. The system is often The Problem, and today we have another example. But more fundamentally than that, it was a failure to recognize that people in the street is very much a part of the system. What do we think “freedom of assembly” is all about?

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What the Wall Street Occupation is about.

The Wall Street Occupation is several weeks old and building up steam.   The overall meaning seems to be a frustration with the direction in which America has been moving, but the occupation has cross-cut the American political spectrum.   Many Democrats, but also some Republicans have spoken out in support of the occupations, but the occupation is still somewhat serving as a real life Rorschach.  Naomi Klein recently visited the occupation and offered her interpretation of the situation:

If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over. And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”

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[Deregulation] was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world. The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.

Alan Grayson has also offered an analysis: And here's where lots of leaders from disparate backgrounds (Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul) are now seeing eye to eye:

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Senator Bernie Sanders proposes changes to America’s corrupt banking system

At Huffpo, Senator Bernie Sanders, who remains one of my heroes, points out that the secret bailout by the Federal Reserve makes the better-known bailout look tiny:

More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis. As a result of this audit, the American people have learned that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, huge foreign banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world. In other words, when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the federal government acted boldly, aggressively, and with a fierce sense of urgency to save our financial system from collapse with no strings attached.
The huge backdoor bailout is a slap in the face to American taxpayers, especially since the big Wall Street banks are bigger than ever and because they are taking more risks than ever, presumably emboldened by the fact that they are "too big to fail," and that the federal government will come bail them out yet again. Here's what Bernie Sanders proposes to clean up this despicable situation: 1) Break up the big banks. 2) Cap credit card interest rates ("Today, more than a quarter of all credit card holders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 59 percent.") 3) Force the Federal Reserve to make low interest loans directly to small businesses. 4) Put an end to speculation that jacks up the price of petroleum products. 5) Demand that Wall Street invest in real businesses instead of "gambling on derivatives." 6) "Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures. Both the economic crisis and the deficit crisis are a direct result of the greed and recklessness on Wall Street." Sanders points out that there was such a fee (.2% tax on all sales and transfers of stock) from 1914 - 1966. Sanders points out that getting these measures passed will be enormously difficult, given that these Wall Street banks spent $5 billion on lobbying over the past decade.  Which leads to another enormous need: to get money out of politics.

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Paul Krugman sums up the epicenter of the Wall Street Protests

Paul Krugman applauds the protesters who, in his words, are "angry at the right people." Here is the short story of the reason for the protests:

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis. Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand?

Continue ReadingPaul Krugman sums up the epicenter of the Wall Street Protests