Why the Occupy Movement Frightens the Corporate Elite | Chris Hedges
“The response of a dying regime—and our corporate regime is dying—is to employ increasing levels of force, and to foolishly refuse to ameliorate the chronic joblessness, foreclosures, mounting student debt, lack of medical insurance and exclusion from the centers of power. Revolutions are fueled by an inept and distant ruling class that perpetuates political paralysis. This ensures its eventual death.”
We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. The mechanisms of control are familiar to those whom the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” including African-Americans. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability—keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits—ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.
A change of power does not require the election of a Mitt Romney or a Barack Obama or a Democratic majority in Congress, or an attempt to reform the system or electing progressive candidates, but rather a destruction of corporate domination of the political process […]. It requires the establishment of new mechanisms of governance to distribute wealth and protect resources, to curtail corporate power, to cope with the destruction of the ecosystem and to foster the common good. But we must first recognize ourselves as colonial subjects. We must accept that we have no effective voice in the way we are governed. We must accept the hollowness of electoral politics, the futility of our political theater, and we must destroy the corporate structure itself.
How to Rebrand Occupy
Recommended read.
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Referring to Mitt Romney as “Mr. 1%,” Ruben said of the 2012 presidential contest, “There are real elections happening where people are choosing between candidates who want to cut taxes for billionaires and candidates who want billionaires to pay their fair share. And that’s a real choice.”
Many occupiers beg to differ. Sure, plenty say they will hold their nose and vote for Obama, but few think it will make a real difference. Perhaps, more significantly, economists beg to differ. None - left, right or center - think making billionaires “pay their fair share” by passing Obama’s Buffet rule will do anything meaningful to reduce inequality. But calling Romney Mr. 1 percent is a subtle way to imply that Obama represents the 99 percent. Bill Dobbs said, “If Obama is fighting for the 99%, I’m Greta Garbo. He’s running around the country selling the presidency to raise $700 million.”
The Occupy movement has created an opening in which millions of people in unions and organizations like MoveOn are receptive to the idea that only radical changes can solve America’s social and economic crisis. But Dobbs cautions, “We need a resistance movement, not more Democratic Party-aligned advocacy. This kind of relationship needs to be approached with healthy skepticism. There are benefits but also perils because … social movements often wind up in the Democratic Party junkyard. That’s where contemporary feminist organizing has ended up. That’s where civil rights struggles have ended up.”
For the Occupy movement, the question is where it ends up this November.
“The other day, Oakland declared umbrellas to be “structures” and ticketed the multi-faith “structure” that was there.”
Five Reasons Why The Very Rich Have NOT Earned Their Money
The wealthiest Americans believe they’ve earned their money through hard work and innovation, and that they’re the most productive members of society. For the most part they’re wrong. As the facts below will show, they’re not nearly as productive as middle-class workers. Yet they’ve taken almost all the new income over the past 30 years.
The problem with aggregate statistics is they suggest that everyone’s income is up a little when really a few people’s incomes are up a lot.
If you have or will have student loans, you need to read this.
Something potentially life-changing for millions of people has happened.
On March 8, 2012, Rep. Hansen Clarke introduced H.R. 4170, the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012. This act proposes that people with federal student loan debt pay 10% of their discretionary income for a period of 10 years, and then the rest of the debt would be forgiven. I’m not clear on the details, but I’m also hearing that somehow it proposes to roll private debt into federal debt so it would apply, too.
Student loan debt is financially crippling millions of people and having negative effects on the economic recovery efforts.
Suze Ormond gives a very good explanation here of why student loan debt is contributing to the economic crisis in America. Not to mention the personal cost for young people trying to start out in life with the double whammy of a poor economy and serious loan debt. What’s even less certain is how this will affect Americans for generations to come, with some calling young Americans “The New Lost Generation.”
When you can barely afford to pay your loans, you aren’t buying cars. You aren’t buying houses. You aren’t spending a lot of money on consumer items or vacations. You’re trying to scrape up enough money to pay that bill so Sallie Mae will stop sending you threatening letters.
Think what would happen if suddenly, all of the people sending most of their paychecks to student loan companies had hundreds of dollars more to spend on other things.
- Think how many people would move out of their family home and get a place of their own.
- Think how many people would buy a car.
- Think how many couples would decide to get married.
- Think how many people would be able to start saving for retirement, or be able to afford health insurance.
- Think how many people would buy clothes, shoes, electronics, or better-quality food.
- Think how many people would stop considering suicide as the only way out of an apparently impossible financial crisis.
- And now think how all that money flooding into the economy would improve things in America.
This is one economic problem that is not going to get better over time without action. It’s actually getting worse. It’s not only students themselves suffering. With nowhere else to go, many have moved back in with families and are relying on family support. That’s making it very hard for their parents to retire.To date, the government has done little to nothing to help out people with existing student debt, despite economists screaming from the rooftops that student loans are a bubble about to burst and when it does, it could tip the country right back into another full-blown recession or even depression. At the very least, it’s likely hampering efforts to get the economy back on track.
It’s telling when you consider where the government chooses to help. The government bailed out the banks. It bailed out the auto industry. It put in place measures to help people facing foreclosure. It’s looking at addressing credit card rules. But what has it done to help people with student loans, which – again – is now a larger problem than credit card debt?
This is a groundbreaking measure and it needs people to get behind it immediately and show their support, to let Congress know what such a relief could mean to a generation of young people struggling under a mountain of debt unlike anything our country has seen before.
I fully support The Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 as a way to help stimulate the economy, remove a financial and emotional burden from millions of people, and help pull the country out of the sinkhole it entered nearly four years ago.
The Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 will stop the bleeding. We need other things to happen, too.
- We need representatives to call for student loan reforms to stop the problem for future generations.
- We need representatives to call for colleges and universities to bring down tuition for current and future students.
- We need representatives to support community and technical colleges.
- We need to change the tenor of conversation about higher education in America.
- We need media to start asking the hard questions about why this happened in the first place.
But first, we have to put a tourniquet on the debt that is bleeding Americans dry.
If you support this bill, contact your representatives and senators and tell them so immediately. Call them. Email them. Write letters.
For more information, check out http://forgivestudentloandebt.com/
You can track the bill through GovTrack here.
Sign the petition here!
And SPREAD THE WORD!
Corporate Campaign Spending: They Get What They Pay For
Will corporate spending determine the outcomes of the 2012 elections? Academic research shows that when companies spend money on politics, they earn a significant financial return. For America’s corporations, it pays to play politics.
How high corporate political spending will go in 2012 is anyone’s guess. According to the Supreme Court, the sky’s the limit.
How the Right-Wing Brain Works and What That Means for Progressives
There really is a science of conservative morality, and it really is vastly different from liberal morality. And there are key lessons to be drawn from this research.
/—/ Clearly, you shouldn’t try to persuade your ideological opponents by citing threatening facts. Rather, if your goal is an honest give-and-take, you should demonstrate the existence of common ground and shared values before broaching anything controversial, and you should interact calmly and interpersonally. To throw emotion into the mix is to stoke automatic, moralistic, indignant responses. /—/
Why Have Levels of Income Inequality Risen So Much?
The fact that the average American household today has an income of $50,000 instead of $100,000 can be attributed entirely to the fact that inequality has risen over the past four decades instead of declining.
/—/ Total US national income per person has more than doubled over the past forty years (adjusting for inflation). Why then have incomes for most Americans been stagnant or falling? Why do American families now need two incomes to have the standard of living they used to have with just one? Why aren’t today’s young adults making twice as much as their parents did were when they first entered the labor market thirty years before?
The answer is that all of the growth in the American economy over the past forty years has gone to the top 50% of American households. Most of it has gone to the top 20%. In recent years, it’s gone to the top 1% only. In other words, the US income distribution has become much less equal. /—/
The Problem Isn’t Growth — The Problem Is Inequality
While the economy has taken off, jobs and wages are still below 2008 levels. Economic growth is feeding into corporate profits and CEO pay, not into ordinary people’s paychecks.
Salvatore Babones is a senior lecturer in sociology & social policy at the University of Sydney and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He holds both a master's degree in statistics and a Ph.D. in sociology from the Johns Hopkins University. Before moving to Australia in 2008, he worked in financial risk management and taught sociology and statistics at several universities in the United States.
