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.”

.  .  .

[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:

Continue ReadingWhat the Wall Street Occupation is about.

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.

Continue ReadingSenator Bernie Sanders proposes changes to America’s corrupt banking system

Martian Anthropologist Field Notes #1

A few months ago, my Martian supervisor sent me here to gather notes on human animals. I randomly chose the United States as my research base. I've had a good time for me here on Earth--human animals can be quite hospitable--but lately I've become too confused to tell any coherent story based on my field notes. Therefore, I'm publishing my field notes here at Dangerous Intersection with the hope that some of you Earthlings might help me out.   It seems that my disorientation with human animals intensified after I began watching television. I am aware that there is a big election coming up, but even though it's more than a year away, the people on your television can't stop speculating about who might win; they keep speculating but they won't discuss the issues, and it keeps happening. Apparently, the people who run the television stations don't like most of the Republicans, so they spent weeks running stories about how a man who doesn't want to run might run.  In the above news show, they showed that man looking like a soldier.  Apparently, in America, one needs to act like he or she likes wars in order to be elected.  But after Mr. Christie made it really clear that he didn't want to try to be president, the TV show needed to get people excited about another story, and that's what really has me confused. A "Christian" man who believes in invisible people and people who are alive even after they died called another man crazy for believing in the same sorts of things.   The TV show called it "Breaking News," and they talked about it all afternoon today.   They said it over and over and over and over.  The news apparently kept "breaking."  The "Christian" man kept smirking and saying that the Mormon man named Romney was part of a "cult," because he believed in strange things. Both these men sound crazy to me, because I haven't seen any evidence of any of the things these men claim to be true as part of their "religions."  You equipped me with the finest scientific monitoring equipment, and I'm never seen evidence for invisible people, or virgins having babies, or people suddenly able to speak new languages, or angels.   Yet most of the people here talk as though these things make sense. After they talked and talked, they took a "commercial," where the TV station allows people to try to sell things.   The commercial that most puzzled me was the one telling people to burn lots of a dirty fuel called "coal."  And get this:  The commercial called it "clean coal," even though there is no such thing. The TV stations also keep talking about "Michael Jackson," even though he has been dead for years.   Perhaps they think he is one of those invisible people.   I'll need to keep working hard to gather data, so that I can get to the bottom of this. I'll keep working at this, and I will try to write a coherent report someday, but for now, I'm finding human animals quite disorienting.

Continue ReadingMartian Anthropologist Field Notes #1