The Intellectual Mosquito

OCCUPY THE VOTE!!!!

OCCUPY THE VOTE !!!!

This election will not be stolen.

Occupy Wall Street and its affiliated Occupy groups sprinkled across the country appear to have missed two historic axioms of grassroots activism. The first is that spontaneous uprisings, because they are unplanned, lack the stamina of long distance runners. And should a movement pause too long to catch its breath, it risks never getting up to speed again.

The political landscape is littered with the corpses of activist groups that  decided to cruise a bit thinking that their burst of popularity and surging momentum were enough to carry them to the finish line. They failed because they were neophytes who didn’t know that when a popular movement is riding high and fast then abruptly slows to a crawl, its camp followers get edgy, they feel that ebb of energy, take it as the first signs of failure and slip away. Once they lose their faith, you won’t get a second chance to round them.

Enter the Midnight Marauders

At 1:00 a.m. last November 15^th, exactly one month after OWS thought it had worked out a  cease fire with New York City and the owners of Zucotti Park, an NYPD riot squad hit the park like it was a sleepy Vietnamese village in 1968. The protesters hadn’t seen New York’s shock troops with their most intimidating game faces on until their arrival that night was announced by something like: “You‘ve got ten minutes to get your asses and all your shit out of here!”

Even minimal resistance by an occupier was met with the thwack of a police baton, a face first introduction to the pavement and a pair of zip cuffs pinning his hands behind his back. People who weren’t moving fast enough for officers were encouraged to do better with spritzes of tear gas or pepper-spray and stiff prodding with the ends of billy clubs. About two hundred protesters were arrested.

In the aftermath, anything left behind—the 5,000-book People’s Library, laptops, sleeping bags, tents, etc.—was tossed into dumpsters to be hauled off or they just disappeared. Had there been straw huts and water buffalo in the park, they would have been put to the torch and shot to death.

Aside from the lack of reasonable notice, official disregard for personal property rights and the unnecessarily harsh treatment of non-violent people exercising their First Amendment rights, there was the incredulity of watching the power of the state being used to seize and discard books, an action akin to book burning.         

Western society has always regarded books as close to sacred—symbols of a civilization with high intellectual values, values worthy of constitutional protection. The seizure of books under the cloak of darkness evoked memories of grainy black and white 1950s newsreels reporting on similar happenings in communist police states.    

In less than two weeks, Occupy encampments in cities across the country—Portland, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Orlando, Los Angeles, Berkeley and San Diego—were either cleared out by police or awaiting action on court orders directing the immediate eviction of protesters from public spaces.

That these unexpected offensives against Occupy left its members stunned and in disarray is largely attributable to the Movement’s absence of organizational structure. Whether the Movement’s been damaged enough to make it go away remains to be seen. Should that occur, Occupy would be responsible for its own demise.

The spontaneous support of thousands of activists flowing into the Big Apple late last summer and millions more pouring into the streets of other cities, may have given OWS the idea that it could ride its giant wave of popular protest all the way to “meaningful change.” 

Which brings us to the second axiom of grass-roots politics. A mass movement cannot survive without a network of strategists, planners, steering committees, fund raisers, group leaders and communications specialists. All are essential components for coordinating a large scale action, keeping it operating at peak efficiency and moving forward cohesively. Occupy views hierarchical structure as inappropriate in a "pure peoples movement" or as an  inevitable cause of deadlock, screw-ups and foot-dragging.

Of greatest concern is the Movement's betting on ironclad adherence  to a hyper form of non-violent action will generate such overwhelming public support that, ultimately, it will compel the powers that be to capitulate. But the actions of NYC authorities on November 14^th make the capitulation theory untenable. A month earlier, on October 15^th, the City was intent on ridding Zucotti Park of protesters that very day but backed off at the last moment. It appeared to onlookers that the battle had been won and popular support for OWS shot up like a rocket. Then came November 14^th.

That night the City proved how activists waste time pleading their case to powerless and corrupt officials. Elected authorities are bound by the laws they have sworn to uphold and ties to their political parties. The biggest factor is that office holders are engulfed in the tidal wave of money that flows through our electoral system where dollars, not votes, decide elections.  

You can inspire millions of angry people to take to the streets, hand each one a poster to wave, get them to sing protest songs and to march up and down the streets and clog intersections for months. Ultimately, these exercises are like rain dances. And when large scale political uprising like Occupy fails to achieve something concrete e.g., a reinstatement of overtime pay or collective bargaining agreement, it forfeits the confidence and loyalty of followers and supporters.

Here’s how one reader described his disappointment in a letter to the editor of Florida Today newspaper in Brevard County, Florida: 

        "Occupy movement not accomplishing goals"

What is the point of the Occupy Wall Street movement? What is really being accomplished, besides getting the attention of the news media?

Are Wall Street and American business changing because of Occupy Wall Street? The only way to truly affect Wall Street and corporate America is through their pocketbook.

Instead of gathering and protesting, I suggest we get together to determine which companies are gouging the public and boycott them. And also determine which companies are getting political protection at the expense of the American people, and vote those politicians offering that protection out of office.

 P. Remyn

Indian Harbour Beach

 

There's Something Missing Here

Occupy is doomed if it continues clinging to the belief that it can keep building political clout and maintain its public support by insisting members remain submissive to abusive treatment—being tear-gassed, herded like sheep, and assaulted by police officers who keep their jobs by doing what they are ordered to do. Occupy’s strategy of submissiveness creates a perception that the group is soft or timid and it reveals a misapplication of traditional concept of civil disobedience.

                                                                             
 A gentleman worthy of our respect and admiration stands out among the ranks of Occupy Wall Street heroes, proving that the Movement isn't just some extended college beer party.

 

The letter immediately below comes from a woman who knows more about what goes on in these social struggles than moderate whites like me do, addresses Occupy’s use of civil disobedience:

 midwestmountainmama:

you know what? I’m a the biggest weepiest most sentimental believer in non-violence organizing tactics. the BIGGEST. Practically, it is an entire community working together to keep each other safe. Sentimentally, it’s the most fucking courageous shit I’ve ever seen, the type of brave I work to be.

but even I—the biggest weepiest most sentimental believer in non-violence—don’t believe in this commitment to non-violence I’m seeing all over the OWS thing right now. whether it’s ‘peaceful’ marchers purposefully excluding the voices of anarchists or community members saying “as long as they keep it peaceful we support” or bystanders crying about how protestors ‘pushed’ the police to get attention—what I feel like what i’m seeing is a commitment to middle class values of “cleanliness” “orderliness” and ‘obedience’ hiding under the *guise* of “peaceful non-violence.”

if we do recall—in perhaps the most famous US led example of peaceful non-violence protest—MLK leading the marchers across the bridge—that was an act of civil disobedience. they KNEW they were going to get in trouble for marching, the KNEW they were going to get in trouble for crossing the bridge.

 . . . were they trying to get attention? absolutely according to the middle class white liberals of the time, who didn’t mind the colored folk singing church songs in their church basements, but openly wondered if it was “time” for the movement to be doing what it was doing when it was out marching and doing sit down protests. this effort to “get attention” vexed white folks so much, MLK felt the need to address it. see: letter from birmingham jail

those who are showing a commitment to middle class values have the process all wrong. the “peaceful” and the “non-violent” come in *reaction* to the violence of police retaliation against the deliberate disobedience against middle class values. the “non-violent” happened when the police started to beat the shit out of the marchers and the marchers fell on top of each other . . . non-violence was not showing a commitment to laws . . . .

                                . . . The tactics are useful but the direction it’s taken is sad. The tactics are used in a way that directly prevents any real change from occurring because people protest in only the ways deemed “acceptable” and in a way not to “alienate potential sympathizers” when in reality, those tactics alienate even more people. Violence gets a good tongue lashing when those oppressed commit the acts but not when the violent occurrences of our daily lives at the hand of our oppressors takes place. So yea. But I like everything you said.

                                                                                                  http://strugglingtobeheard.tumblr.com      

 

A Mission Statement Without A Stated Mission

 

We are American citizens dedicated to peaceful, non-violent, and positive actions to begin a dialogue addressing corporate greed and government corruption.
We welcome everyone!
We endorse no candidate nor political party or agenda.
We stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.!

 

The trouble with this mission statement is that it doesn’t offer people a reason to become a part of the Movement—the mission’s purpose is unstated. It fails to name a single “positive action” to be taken, but instead talks about establishing a “dialogue” with an unnamed entity. Who’s going to participate in the “productive dialogue” about corporate greed and government corruption? Will there be a plan of action? And, without endorsing a candidate, political party or agenda, what does Occupy stand for? What is it against? What is it proposing that people do about corporate greed and government corruption?

The point is that if you’re going to call out activists, you better have something for them to do. Activists are goal-directed, strong-willed individuals. They aren’t going to appreciate being called to the barricades just to shuffle around in a few patriotic parades.

 

A Letter from Birmingham City Jail

The template for nonviolent protests is “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” penned by Martin Luther King, Jr. while he was imprisoned there in April, 1963 for his participation in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation.  It was written in response to eight local white clergymen who had denounced King's nonviolent protest in the Birmingham News, demanding an end to the demonstrations for desegregation of lunch counters, restrooms and stores. King's letter had to be smuggled, a bit at a time, out of the jail by his attorneys. An intensely disciplined Christian, King molded a modern manifesto of nonviolent resistance out of the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi.

With regard to the Occupy Movement King's letter explains why Occupy is not a true nonviolent protest. To begin, it’s noteworthy that he named it “nonviolent direct action.” In answer to his fellow clergymen King said:

 You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.

. . . The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

The Occupy Movement appears stuck on the idea that nonviolence demands that protesters shall not engage in any violations of law. This is a misinterpretation of nonviolent resistance. Had the civil rights movement of the 1960s taken this approach the schools, lunch counters, movie theaters and restaurants would still be segregated.

My wife and I participated in the first local Occupy march. We weren’t looking for trouble and weren’t interested in starting any. The purpose of the march was to get a substantial number of citizens together and call public attention to the Movement by parading along the side of a major highway waving posters, American flags and banners and making some noise with a couple of drums and brass horns.

We wanted to alert other citizens that some of us had finally had enough of all the crap coming out of Washington and state capitols and were ready to do something about it. We were reaching out to people who were similarly irritated and, being energized or encouraged by our example, might come to one of our meetings and give the Movement a larger presence and louder voice by through their participation in future protest actions in our community and elsewhere.

The sheriff’s office was aware of plans for the march and several deputies were on hand to oversee the operation, keep traffic flowing, make sure that businesses along the route weren’t being disrupted and to ensure the peace. As we ambled down a sidewalk near the road’s edge (as instructed by law enforcement) we received a lot of positive feedback from the friendly honking of car and truck horns, cheers of riders, and approving whistles and applause.

The march was a mile or so long and ended at a major intersection of two county highways where we stood on the sidewalk (as law enforcement instructed us to do), waving our flags and posters at the passing traffic. We sang, cheered and hollered back and forth with a few passersby, all of it in good fun. People were vibrant and positive, nodding their heads approvingly. The demonstration ended about two hours later. There were no ugly incidents, but there were people who let us know they did not agree with us. At all.

Since then there have been a few other marches, protests and demonstrations. There are some very dedicated Occupy people out there, hanging tough week after week. They attend the General Assemblies, support other groups with similar objectives and stay active in what appears to be the embers of a promising movement.

Three months have passed and marching has become worn out, old hat and not a strategic tool anymore. Occupy has become a movement without an edge, without demands, without an agenda that’s addressing the financial conflict and social ills that divide 99% of us from the 1%. Public officials don’t act the least bit concerned about what Occupy is up to anymore. Their attention has turned back to hunting campaign financiers with deep pockets.

The problem is that there is NO ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR. NO NOISE. NO EXCITEMENT. NO TENSION. NO CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Without mass activity accompanied by noisy energetic people and blasting horns, people are concluding that Occupy is fading away. If protesters continue plodding along as they are and no one is inconvenienced or angered there will be no interest and nothing newsworthy to attract the media. There is NO DYNAMIC ACTION AND NO DEMANDS FOR CHANGE PROPELLING NEW MESSAGES TO JACK UP THE PROTEST. Is anyone one taking the Occupy Movement seriously these days?

 

A Perfect Example of How Nonviolent Direct Action Works

Nonviolent direct action doesn’t mean stones must be thrown or windows broken. It doesn’t call for vandalism or rolling cars over and setting them on fire, or setting off smoke bombs. It’s not an invitation to run through stores, knock over garbage containers or to frighten bystanders and shoppers.

It means having the courage and commitment to remain nonviolent while others are acting violently by kicking and beating on you. Nonviolent direct action involves having the capacity for confronting the opposition with the expectancy that they may physically attack you. Other than covering your head and using your arms to shield yourself, your response is to refrain from retaliation and remain nonviolent.

The best current example of this was last  October when students at the University of California at Davis, locked arm-to-arm and sitting, blocked a campus sidewalk and refused a police order to vacate the walkway. They remained quietly sitting and, apparently expecting it, leaned forward in a semi-effective pose while they were heavily peppered sprayed. The stinging red clouds of gas broke the group apart. As they became scattered about, coughing and choking, they did not  attack the police. More important, neither did the several hundred students who were standing nearby on the quad, chanting, "Shame on you! Shame on you!" as police moved in, handcuffed the limp, non-resisting students and carted them off.  

The conflict set off a nationwide firestorm of protest from ordinary citizens angered by the way the students were handled. The notoriety of the event forced school administrators to respect student protesters' rights to demonstrate. More important, new procedures have been put in place for managing similar protests non-violent conflicts at many campuses around the country.

Nonviolent direct action is a tactic whose adherents refrain from reacting to violence against them with more violence. The failure to retaliate raises tension among the observers, heightens public awareness of the protest and ultimately brings about change through the will of the people and authorities to end the tension.

  

"Bloody Sunday"

A Day in History That Should Put Today's

Voter Suppressionists to Shame

 

              
          

They started out on sunny Sunday morning, March 7, 1965. It was a civil rights march, a protest over the fact that black citizens who had been granted the right to vote over a hundred years earlier were still being systematically denied the right to cast a ballot in southern states.

About 600 marchers planned a three-day march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery, about 55 miles away. The group began in downtown Selma on a street leading to Route 80, the main road to Montgomery. The street was lined with loud angry, whites cussing and threatening the black entourage many of which were dressed in their Sunday best and carrying American flags and bibles. Other voices from somewhere among the bystanders, were shouting warnings about there being reprisals for this flaunting of white authority.

The marchers were six blocks out of town when they were forced to halt at a metal barricade  put in place to block their way across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the road to Montgomery. Standing behind the barricade were  local deputies, state police and Sheriff Jim Clark’s mounted posse. But for the rearing, stomping and snorting of nervous horses, the scene was strangely quiet, like the elements for making other sounds had been sucked out of the air.  

For a minute or so, the black protesters and white lawmen stood face-to face in the silence. Then a trooper with a bullhorn announced “. . .  I give you three minutes to disperse and go back to your church. This is an unlawful march and it will not be allowed to continue.”

With about a minute left to go, officers began slipping their gas masks on and without any further  order, gas canisters were tossed into the air so that each one  arced as it hurtled deep into the crowd of demonstrators. The canisters exploded as they hit the pavement and white clouds came hissing out of them. Seconds later the air began to fill with the moans and coughing of protesters trying to escape the stinging cloud of acrid smoke.    

Enshrouded and blinded by the gas, people were stumbling about and bumping into others while lawmen attacked on foot and horseback, moving quickly into the crowd, striking at them with billy clubs and rifle butts. The melee went out for several minutes. Over fifty people were hospitalized that day now remembered as “Bloody Sunday.”

The attack was broadcast worldwide to millions of viewers shocked and horrified by the surprising brutality police used in dispersing a crowd of black Americans who were peacefully assembled and pursuing their right to vote.    

The protesters were turned back that day, but international attention was now focused on black people and their right to vote in the world’s largest democracy. The tension created by the peaceful assertion of constitutional rights and rigid enforcement of the law did not disappear.

There were two more marches that month. The third, on Marct 21st succeeded in getting the marchers to Montgomery because President Lyndon Baines Johnson activated the national guard to escort the marchers who now numbered 3,200 people). Five months later he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 State Legislatures  Are Working Hard to Deny Your Right to Vote in This Year's Presidential Election and for Years to Come

The 15^th, 19^th and 16^th Amendments of our Constitution grant every American the right to vote. However, because state and local elections generally coincide with federal ones, it has been considered practical and economical to allow voter registration to be managed by the states. It is this facet of the election process that Republicans are seizing upon to defeat President Obama in November.

Funded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, new GOP governors and legislators across the South and Midwest are engaged in a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of young voters, minorities, elderly voters, students and low-income voters from exercising their right to vote.  There has never been a larger or more obvious attempt to derail the linchpin of American democracy. [At left is an activist symbol of the various enterprises through which the Koch brothers affect the economy, the environment and our lives.] 

In over 35 states Republican dominated legislatures have been busy rigging this fall’s election by passing new laws that: sharply reduce early voting (from 14 to 8 days in Florida and from 35 to 11 in Ohio); reducing the number of DVM offices, eliminating weekend work days and cutting weekday operating hours, all of which is intended to make tremendously difficult to get or renew drivers licenses which can be used to vote. They've created barriers to voter registration as in Florida where the League of Women Voters has backed off helping voters of both parties to register because its volunteers face a $1,000 fine and felony prosecution for every new voter registration card not submitted to the state board of elections within 48 hours of being collected.

The introduction of Early Voting laws initially drew bipartisan applause when they provided greater access to the polls and added convenience for the public, resulting in higher voter turnouts in many states. When in 2008, the turnout hurt Republicans and helped Democrats, the GOP stepped up its voter suppression campaign which had all ready been in operation for six years.                                                                                                       

Aside from stripping state workers of collective bargaining rights, the new Republican majorities devoted first year in office to creating laws that prevent income groups that  usually favor Democrats and Independents from voting. A new Wisconsin law, for example, does not allow college students to vote using their student ID as identification unless it has a current address and two-year expiration date—requirements that no college or university in the state currently meets. [At right Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an example of the supreme arrogance with which newly elected midwestern governors have chosen to "lead."]                                                                                                                           

In Texas, an “emergency” act passed Gov. Rick Perry's legislative majority approves concealed-weapon permits as an acceptable form of voter ID but denies of the use student IDs.

As Bob Herbert of The New York Times wrote, the U.S. goes through the motions of elections, but the reality is that behind the scenes, “the financial and corporate elites” run the country, buy off politicians and dictate policy to an astonishing degree. “It doesn’t matter what ordinary people want. What matters is the tens of millions of dollars that people like billionaire businessmen David and Charles Koch can dump into campaigns. They want Washington to lower taxes on the rich, cut services to the poor and sick, and ignore climate change.”

Between 15 and 20 million Americans are suffering due to government policies pushed through Congress by the rich. As for the poor and working poor, it has become a truism that neither party speaks up for them anymore.

  

Our Democracy is Being Dissolved By Money

Why is it that good advice never seems to permeate peoples' brains? We've heard it again and again. Thousands of times. Take somebody who's 45 years old, how many times do you think he or she's heard this: The more money you allow to be poured into election campaigns the greater the chaces will be for destroying elections.

Thanks to two recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings corporations have become people and money has become speech. Politics have ruined the court. You have to be concerned about that being the case when you see a lot of 5 to 4 decisions and the split is usually along party lines, meaning if a Republican justice is appointed by a Republican president, you can pretty well predict what side he'll come down on in politically flavored cases. The same rule applies to Democrats.

 It appears these days that we are mindlessly sliding toward becoming a sham democracy. We live in a country where we have freedom of speech. But what good is free speech if it never gets heard and has no effect on what Washington does? Everyone knows the voice of the people isn’t heard because special interest money speaks louder, far louder than words.

We also have the right to vote. But our votes are worthless in a system where the 1% can get away with manipulating election laws, blatantly misinforming voters through domination of the mass media and by booby trapping voter registration laws to disenfranchise the poor, blacks and Hispanics, students, senior citizens, those who are physically disabled and those who don’t own an automobile or live where a mass transit system doesn't exist.

From the moment the Republicans and Tea Partiers retook the House majority, they threw themselves into walking back every legislative gain President Obama made. These gains—like so-called "Obama Care"—weren't just in the best interests of Democrats, but all Americans, even though many of them didn’t understand or care how the new laws would benefit them. Many people chose to remain constant in their ridicule, hate and bigotry toward the president. Shamefully, their complaints aren’t economically or policy based but racist in a way that is indistinguishable from Old South 1950s. 

Too many of the phenomenally rich act is if they've misplaced their consciences. Too many people behave that their wealth or station in life has come to them as an incident of birth. Therefore, their good fortune shouldn't require them to provide a thing for the less fortunate. Hell, why should any of us earning over $50,000 a year worry about the very poor? That's why we pay taxes--to provide a safety net for them. If there's a hole in the net, the government is there to fix it.

Since the 2010 midterm elections the mishmash of Republicans, Conservatives, Tea Partiers and Libertarians have stymied every attempt at social and economic reform under the president’s leadership. The would rather see him fail than see America succeed. They made that clear in killing off the American Jobs Act and taking the nation to the brink of an even deeper financial crisis by withholding their assent to the national budget thus causing the country’s credit rating to be downgraded for the first time in our history.

Their actions make this election year look as big as 1776. Without exaggeration, it can be said that if Republicans and Right Wingers prevail, it will be the kill shot for the sweeping middle class democracy that emerged from the post World War II era. There will be no looking forward to 2016 and wresting the nation back from conservatives and the 1% Masters of the Universe. With the power of the vote gone, there will be no mechanism t0 change history. The show will be over, period.                                                                                                                                                                                    

As renown American historian and activist Howard Zinn  warned us, ". . . it is  up to the citizenry, those outside of power, to engage in permanent combat with the state, short of  violent, escalatory revolution, but beyond the gentility of the ballot-box."  

 

Many People Are Wondering: Is Our Brand of Capitalism Going Bad?

As we follow the news and listen to the talking heads these days, it's beginning to look more and more like America is becoming a capitalistic failure, a fast and lose venture turned against its people who feel trapped aboard a dysfunctional and corrupt ship of state captained by political pirates, an immoral, aggrogant self-serving minority that seeks to advance only its special interests. It is a nation that seems to have lost its values and false hope is the only hope left.   

If she could, I believe the Statue of Liberty would step down from her post and, standing there in the water, would turn east and begin waving her torch to warn immigrants away from these unfriendly shores.

Last September, when Occupy seemed to spring up from the nooks and crannies of Zuccotti Park, it brought life to the flickering hopes of millions of us that a powerful national uprising was suddenly on its way to taking down the overlords of banking and finance, business and industry, oil and coal, pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Included in our hopes was that this revolt would eradicate lobbyists and special interests from the halls of Congress and throw the empty suits out of elected office everywhere.

Occupy looked like a reversal of fortune for average people, a change of course for the nation, a new chapter in American political history. But it  looks to have lost its momentum and is marching in circles. The opportunity to save our democracy is being squandered.

So, Occupy, it’s time to get real, to get up on our feet. We had millions of Americans who came out for us, pulled for us and prayed that we’d deliver the kind of meaningful change the 99% needs if life is ever to be good for us again. We need to re-energize ourselves and the Movement, to join hands, raise our voices and protect our right to vote.

It’s February, so there’s time to get organized, rally the troops from all over the states and get hunkered down and into position to win the presidency again and retake the majority in both houses of Congress.

Start by forgetting about non-productive General Assemblies filled with passionate speeches about jobs, the environment, Medicare, Social Security, rebuilding the infrastructure, etc. Yes, they are all goals we aim to achieve, but if Obama loses and the Republicans and Tea Party take over Congress again, our goals may never be attainable again. Now is the time for a focused, unrelenting push to reinvigorate the American Dream—a time for real action.

UNTIL NOVEMBER THERE’S ONLY ONE BIG ITEM ON OUR AGENDA:

OCCUPY THE VOTE

  The Koch brothers, the GOP, the Mega-Corporations, Big Oil, King Coal and the pharmaceutical and medical industries are hammering away to stop millions of Americans —minorities, elderly, college students, naturalized citizens, the ill and homebound, the poor and those without drivers licenses and photo IDs—from voting. There are hundreds of thousands of Democrats, Liberals and Independent voters who not only outnumber the Republicans, they believe in a government that  helps all the people, not just the filthy rich. Our job is to get them to the polls on November 6th.

 

What Occupy needs to be working on:

1.  Occupy groups all over the country need to be welded into one giant voter protection machine. They need to organize rapidly and send out their best speakers and organizers to every major college and university. The purpose is to recruit members and coordinate future actions through a national coordinating committee. Simultaneously, at campuses where Occupy doesn’t have a presence, one must be established. An on-going effort must be made to link up with labor unions and other brothers in the spirit of Unity and Freedom who will, in turn, take an active role in Occupy’s pushback against voter suppression.

2.  It’s time to put Democrat and Republican office holders on notice that if Occupy perceives them as self-serving, on the payroll of lobbyists or corporations, opposed to plugging tax loopholes and increasing taxes for those earning $1 million or more annually, unwilling to protect the rights to collective bargaining for public and private workers, willing to cave in to cutbacks to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, millions of Occupiers and will vote them out of office irrespective of their party membership. The low hanging, rotting fruit on the trees of both  parties must be cut down.

3.   Occupy can easily turn itself into a PAC to provide campaign money for Independent candidates as well as Democrats and Republicans, candidates willing to stand with us will be  the only ones we help. The Movement can begin now to lay the groundwork for an Independent Third Party by demonstrating to the prospective voters of 2016 that Occupy is a force that will have to be reckoned with not just for today, but up the road as well.

4.  A crucial job that Occupiers at local levels must tackle immediately is to provide people assistance and financial aid in obtaining the new photo IDs  and voter registration cards they will need. Transportation—volunteers with trucks, busses, SUV’s and cars—should be lined up to transport voters to registration sites and later to the polls on Election Day.

5.   Throughout Spring and Summer, activists must be enlisted to join Occupy by walking city neighborhoods to hand out voter information and campaign materials for candidates we support. They should be willing to engage voters in their yards and on their porches to explain the importance of this election and make them understand why their vote counts now more than ever.

6.  The upcoming months should be a barrage of direct non-violent action: Loud marches that voice the importance of the campaign issues; gatherings on street corners and in parks to rally voters and educate everyone by putting leaflets filled with factual information in their hands. And to have platforms where candidates can speak to crowds of voters.Issues vital to the 99% cannot be explained too often. Likewise, the 99%’s objectives need to be stated over and over and over.

7.  Multiple demonstrations should be scheduled at the campaign offices of every opposition candidate and at their government offices as well. Candle-lit voter vigils, parades to call attention to our favored candidates, specials events of every kind from ice cream socials to picnics. There needs to be on-going people-to-people events, all-American patriotic flavored excitement in the air as often as possible. From Atlantic to Pacific, cities and towns should resound weekly with the message of the 99% and the presence of the Occupy  Movement must be visible daily.

The Occupy Movement stirred excitement among tens of millions, its challenge now is to turn to the crucial work of letting those people  know the Movement isn't going away, it's rejuvenated and needs them to pull off a big win for all of us in November.

The Koch brothers and the One-Percenters are smug.  They think they can call all the shots because they the money to buy this election. Let's show them: The may have a lot of money, but we have the votes.

 

Anthony P. Mario

Copyright 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AN UNEXPECTED CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON

     

Washington Crossing the Delaware

Charles Wilson Peale's iconic painting is known to everyone, but most don't know that it depicts a key event in American history, one that shows us what Washington and his men were made of.

 

What the Greatest American Gave Us for Christmas

 

George Washington was not an obvious choice for commander-in-chief of a revolutionary   army. He had no military education or training and, at age 43, he had all ready reached the   retirement age for men of his time when he assumed command of the Continental Army in the summer of 1775. Many of the firebrands at the forefront of the American Revolution were younger: John Adams was 40, Thomas Jefferson 33, Thomas Paine 38, John Paul Jones 28, and Benjamin Rush 30. Washington had served with distinction as a militia officer 20 years earlier during the French and Indian War, but he was not qualified to be a field general.

He had a reputation as a shrewd businessman before inheriting Mount Vernon in 1752. Seven years later he married wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis and by 1775 he had become one of the  richest  men in America. Why risk it all by coming out of retirement to take on the King’s formidable Redcoats and the invincible Royal Navy? 

Washington was what Hollywood loves: An Enigmatic Hero.

He was neither a learned man nor a notable speaker like many of his friends such as Alexander   Hamilton and Patrick Henry. Washington was, however, a man of high intelligence with a passion  for books who built a sizable library at Mount Vernon to house them all. He was a voracious reader, especially of politics and political theory. Biographer Richard Brookhiser says Washington read, “. . .  everything that came off the presses, knew many of the authors and enjoyed picking their brains.”

At six foot three he cut an imposing figure; he was handsome, exceptionally strong, athletic and an esteemed horseman. Today we'd say he had “charisma.” Back then “charisma” bore  a connotation of  “saintliness." Like many others in the forefront of the Revolution, John Adams was in awe of Washington writing about “[his] . . .  leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all, in the cause of his country.” With everything to lose,  Washington modestly accepted Congress’s appointment as Commander in Chief, but declined the handsome salary of $500 per month.

On the heels of his commission Washington rushed off to oversee the siege of Boston. About 112 British warships had filled Boston Harbor but the threat of their presence was minimized because they were pinned down in it. The Americans held the high ground   along the water's edge and easily repelled British troops time and again as they attempted to mount an assault from their sea of ships.

Looking  more like a stalemate than a British offensive,  it was hard to determine who was besieging whom. After being bloodied and beaten back from Bunker Hill earlier, the British, humiliated and angered, withdrew to the city. For eleven months each side warily eyed the other while considering alternative ways to attack without destroying the city or taking massive casualties. 

 

Colonel Henry Knox's Miracle

In November, Washington dispatched Colonel Henry Knox to Fort Ticonderoga. Knox's order was to take possession of artillery held there and transport it some 300 miles back to Boston where it could be used to dislodge the enemy and cripple its armada. Upon arrival at the fort, Knox found 58 mortars and cannon (60,000 tons in all) which were dragged to the banks of Lake George with great difficulty and loaded onto boats. From there they were rowed 40 miles to the lake’s southern shore and lifted onto huge sledges to be hauled through snow. It was a spectacular feat of strength and perseverance carried out during a particularly frigid spell of early winter in snow over a foot deep.

Knox and his cargo arrived at Boston to the cheers of his comrades in mid-January, 1776. Washington and his officers set to work planning an assault, taking great pains to keep the artillery hidden from the enemy while deciding how to put their new firepower to its best use.

The plan they devised called for more backbreaking labor. The cannons would be moved under cover of night to the unfortified Dorchester Heights, twin hills twice the height of and steeper than Bunker Hill, with a commanding view of the city and its harbor.

On the night of March 4^th, Washington ordered a diversionary bombardment of British positions. The fusilade continued for hours while 2,000 troops and 300 wagons and carts pulled by oxen and hidden behind bales of hay, surreptitiously laid in place several days before, silently crept toward the Heights. The cannon, pre-assembled fortifications called facicles and picks and shovels for building breastworks and gun emplacements arrived intact. Working through the night, the troops and workers built a bastion with over 20 cannon in place. It was a logistical feat second only to the miracle of moving the cannon from Ticonderoga to Boston.

At daybreak, the British commanders gathered to survey the harbor and when Dorchester  Heights came into view they could not believe their eyes. Stunned to a man, they realized that Washington had  checkmated them as they slept. General William Howe, Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s forces,  conceded that the city with its large Loyalist population, his army and the British fleet were in grave danger. Wanting to avoid unnecessary harm to American civilians and property, and to avoid destruction of the city (which Howe, in a note to Washington, promised to spare, provided his troops were allowed to depart unmolested), Washington ordered his men to standby and allow the British to pass.

Eleven days elapsed before the English entourage was fully aboard ship and favorable winds rose that allowed them to set sail. Washington surmised they were headed for New York, but Howe had chosen Halifax, Nova Scotia as a place to pull his forces back together and renew morale. It didn’t take long.

The British roared back, invading New York in July. They began by sailing a handful of   ships, laden with soldiers, munitions and supplies, into the vast New York harbor every three or four days. Suddenly a breathtaking 100 ships swept into the harbor in a single day. To the army of farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, carpenters, shoemakers, wheelwrights and laborers, armed mostly with old muskets and antiquated swords, it was a startling display of British naval and military power.  

While Washington proved to be a clever and resourceful leader at the Siege of Boston, he  was still an inexperienced field commander.  In the first major battle of the summer he was  indecisive and his army was soundly beaten when, unsure of whether the British were going to attack Long Island or Manhattan, Washington made the fatal mistake of dividing his forces in an attempt to defend both. More hesitation and mistakes led to a series of costly defeats. The Continental Army was reeling and, as summer turned to fall, its supplies were dangerously low and men were deserting in droves.

The final blow came November 20^th when the British launched a massive assault on Fort  Lee in New Jersey. Though alerted that an attack may be  imminent, the garrison was nonetheless taken by surprise and  fled rather than make a fight of it. Winter was at hand and with the abrupt fall of the fort, irreplaceable supplies were lost: provisions, stores, blankets, cooking utensils and three hundred tents fell into enemy hands.

The British next turned their guns on Washington’s nearby troops and the chase was on. It was an inexplicably leisurely pursuit on the part of the English under General Howe. Washington’s demoralized command slowly retreated 200 miles from New York and across New Jersey with the Redcoats proceeding languidly behind, looking more like disinterested followers than pursuers.

Then, with the gravely weakened Continental Army standing on the east side of the Delaware River and the British on the west, General Howe had an unexpected change of mind. Rather than finishing off what was left of the rebel forces, he diverted his attention to New Brunswick. He decided that city could be easily taken and from there he could swiftly move to capture Philadelphia, the colonial capitol. His change in strategy was ill-conceived as he unwittingly preserved the crumbling Continental Army from annihilation.

It was said that Washington was a man who learned from his mistakes quickly. This assessment of him would be tested in two short weeks.

The Battle of Trenton

While Howe was moving on New Brunswick, Washington took his army south and into Pennsylvania and set up camp opposite Trenton. It was December 16^th. Snow was on the ground where it remained in the frigid weather. The bedraggled army was  poorly supplied and ill-equipped for winter with many men still in summer clothing and all of them exhausted from months of exertion. Each day, the army withered a little more due to death from the elements, illness and desertion.

News of the summer’s defeats and the long, embarrassing retreat ending in Washington’s withdrawal into New Jersey was widely known. Many believed the war was over; one  additional deft blow from the British was all it would take. More than anyone, Washington understood just how close the end was. But he was not going to let the British win quite so easily and leave his men and the people open to the mayhem and anguish of defeat. He decided to strike back.

He wasn't content to merely to hit the British, he wanted to make a bold and defiant statement, one he felt necessary to restore the fighting spirit of his men and public confidence in the war. The British, having taken up winter quarters in New Brunswick, left a guard of about 2,000 well-trained Hessians mercenaries garrisoned at Trenton. Washington decided that was where he would  attack  and  he would strike when least expected. 

  

The Price Paid for the Fourth of July

It was nearly dark and raining when the first troops reached the banks of the Delaware River where the boats waited. Except for officers in uniform, they resembled an army of beggars in their threadbare summer coats and trousers. Men without boots were plentiful.  Their feet  bound in rags, they pushed on through a path of mud and slush. Here and there bloody footprints were seen in patches of  fresh snow. The march began at two p.m. Christmas Day with an icy wind lashing at the two columns of troops as they moved out.

Six hours later they were standing silently at the river’s edge while eighteen field cannon and fifty horses were loaded aboard flat-bottomed wooden scows. The largest boat, 60-feet long, could hold forty men standing up and tightly packed side-by-side. Around eleven o’clock a northeaster bore down alternately flinging rain, hail and snow at them. At midnight, the boats shoved off.

Using poles and oars, the boats were eased into the dark, fast moving water. The river was about 240 yards wide where they entered it and choked with chunks of ice being pulled    along by a strong current. It was three a.m. before the last of the scows completed the crossing. The storm, incredibly, grew worse as the men were forming back into columns to begin the nine-mile trek to Trenton where they hoped to surprise 2,000 the Hessians before daybreak.

Along the way, two of the men fell out of formation and shortly froze to death.

Just before eight o’clock the troops converged on the town from the surrounding hillsides.    On their feet all night, the troops stood wet and cold, shivering before their target. Many of their muskets were soaked and   inoperable. Washington gave the order “Fix bayonets!” which was quietly passed down through the ranks. The Hessians, who celebrated Christmas Day in a drunken revelry, were still asleep. They awoke to the explosion of cannons and the sounds of destruction crashing around them.

As the Hessians flew out of their barracks they were jolted by the sight of hundreds of shouting Colonials, rushing at them from every direction through the town's narrow streets with fixed bayonets. Amidst the chaos the Germans somehow managed to regroup enough of their troops to put up a fierce resistance. The fighting was house to house, bloody and savage. But in less than an hour an elite enemy force was overwhelmed by an army that had become a joke—the “rabble army” as the British condescendingly referred to them.

After the jubilation over the collapse of the British siege at Boston, there had been little to cheer about through a long summer and fall. There was scant reason to believe that a new nation could emerge from the subsequent morass of defeats and the long embarrassing retreat of the Continental Army from New York and across New Jersey.

The stunning victory at Trenton welded Washington’s army together and galvanized the  will  of the people to see the war through. The gallantry of the small army restored the colonists’ belief in themselves and the “grand perhaps” of the revolution. The Battle of Trenton became a key turning point in the war and remains a testament to how political will, asserted from the bottom up by ordinary citizens can shape the destiny of nations.

While unintended, the timing and daring of Washington's attack on Trenton gave the colonists an unexpected Christmas present: Unwavering faith that they could indeed establish a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Merry Christmas to all from The Intellectual Mosquito

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT THE RICH AND POWERFUL BETTER REMEMBER ABOUT OCCUPY WALL STREET

Oaklnd Police had an all night standoff with Occupy protesters and later broke up their campsite.

The Occupy Movement

Could Go From Lamb to Lion

 

The Occupy Movement isn’t going to go away. You can’t stomp it out or beat and gas the protesters forever. You can’t steal people’s jobs, homes, life savings, retirement dreams, and their children’s college educations and expect them to just walk away.  

Sooner or later, you won't be able to gather safely on the terraces high above Wall  Street sipping cocktails, smirking, and snapping pictures as you make fun of the waves of scruffy people singing and chanting for change in the street below. [See video left column.]

Whatever you think about the Occupy Movement, you’re wrong about its people. They aren't a bunch of boisterous college kids, Hippies or Flower People from the 1960s.

They're war vets, a number of whom have been wounded or disabled in Iraq or Afghanistan; union members who've been shafted out of their benefits, jobs and rights to collective bargaining; worn out men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s who are grinding it out  daily in minimum wage jobs with little hope of retiring; they are teachers, small business owners, public and service industry workers, construction workers, truckers and homeless people who are seeking reentry to mainstream society.

At right, a U.S. Marine who is among thousands of vets who support Occupy and turn out to participate in its events, leads a protest march in the San Francisco Bay area. Below left, retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis believes he was arrested last week for carrying a sign that city officials felt was unfairly critical of NYPD officers.

Lewis, who retired in 2004, says he was living a peaceful Walden-like existence in a secluded area of the Catskill mountains. He followed Occupy via computer streaming for a couple of weeks, then became so inspired by the courage and spirit of the New York demonstrators he was compelled to join them.

On his release from jail, he apologized for the "poor wording" of his sign and explained that it was intended to warn fellow policemen against being manipulated into becoming corporate mercenaries. "All the cops, he said, "are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they're being exploited." 

So forget it. The Movement isn't going away. People are demanding a return to equality in America, or what they were willing to settle for before you declared war on the Middle Class: decent pay--meaning a living wage--good homes for their families, affordable health care and pharmacy costs, the ability to save for the future. And respect. They would have accepted these  modest rewards for hard work—things they thought had been fought for and won sixty years ago--and a return to fairness. Their demands can change.

 You're  mistaken if you think Occupy will go away. You've stirred this mess up and now there is something in the air:

 

Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now

Lock up the streets and houses
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

Last week I watched police at the University of California at Davis pepper spray Occupy  students who were protesting a steep tuition hike. Linked arm in arm, they were quietly sitting down, blocking a sidewalk at the edge of the school's quad. A couple dozen of them  leaning forward, heads tilted to shield their eyes and lungs from the stinging, choking red clouds of pepper gas. Lt. John Pike (at left) in  black uniform with helmet and face shield, stepped forward holding up a red aerosol can. He walked toward the students brandishing the can flamboyantly, as if it was a ceremonial sword of some kind. Whatever his intended message, his gestures transformed the scene into a surrealistic one. [See video left column.]

Slowly, he strolled down the line of students, shooting powerful bursts of thick reddish mist down on them, taking care to coat their heads and shoulders. The submissive position of the students’ bodies was reminescent of the position assumed by thousands of men and women who received a bullet to the back of their heads seventy years ago in Europe. 

There were dozens of officers, members of the UC Davis police force, in small phalanxes strategically spread along the edge of  a crowd of several hundred angry students who began  chanting, “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!” as they watched fellow students and friends being sprayed. They were incensed but, amazingly, their outrage never neared any level of violence.

Momentarily, a second officer, aerosol in hand, stepped into the now sprawled and broken line of students who were writhing on the sidewalk, coughing and choking, but determined to sit or lay where they were. He opened up on them with his pepper spray. More members of the riot squad began moving in on the dazed students, turning over bodies, zip-cuffing their  hands behind their backs and dragging them off by their arms or feet, to waiting transport units several yards away from the quad.

Hundreds of students standing near and on the edge of the quad began chanting “Who do you serve! Who do you protect! Who do you serve! Who do you protect!” As the arrest process began drawing to a close, the crowd started inching towards police who wisely, but slowly and guardedly began pulling back. Each step the officers took backward was inches long and matched by an equal step forward by protesters. Tense moments passed like hours. The police stood shoulder to shoulder as they pulled back, then formed a concave protective front as they completed their pullback.                                                                                                                                 

As it became apparent that the confrontation was about to end peacefully, the students began chanting “This is our quad! This is our quad! This is our quad!” When the officers' retreat became complete the protesters' chant switched to a victorious "This is our university! This is our university! This is our university!" And that is how the confrontation ended for the day.

That evening when UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi left her office, she was escorted to her car through a long and silent cordon of students.[See video at left.] Their tent encampment was up again by Monday when Katehi addressed them from an outdoor stage to apologize for the pepper-spraying which she said was not authorized by her. She ended her remarks with an appeal for student protesters to work with her to restore the previous calm and congenial atmosphere of the campus. The crowd was unmoved and stood firm in calling for Katehi's resignation.  

The rich and powerful believe they hold all the cards, have all the power. They own Congress thanks to their lobbyists. The Supreme Court has ruled they can now plow billions of dollars  into smothering the voice of the people during elections and influencing the passage of  laws favorable to their special interests. They control thousands of state and national office holders whom they pay well to abuse their powers by clamping down hard on protesters of their heavy-handed tactics. The elitists are gambling that they can rely on law enforcement and the National Guard to protect them, their wealth, their homes and businesses and to maintain the status quo.

Conservatives want to see the degree of force police use against the Occupy Movement cranked up. They want Constitutional rights to free speech and public assembly narrowly interpreted and restrictively applied to Occupy by state and federal courts. They are pushing states and communities to strictly enforce local laws and ordinances to minimize or eliminate the use of public spaces by the people of Occupy.

There have been pepper-sprayings and police clashes with Occupiers in Seattle, Portland and other cities, but Oakland has the longest record for unleashing the most brutal responses to activists. This year its police force used rubber bullets, bean bag pellets and tear gas in attacking the Occupy Oakland encampment and a subsequent protest march. The first police assault resulted in a skull fracture to Marine vet Scott Olsen who served two tours of duty in Iraq.

There is an on-going lawsuit from 2005 against the Oakland Police Department for excessive use of force against non-violent anti-war demonstrators. Police Chief Howard Jordan was recently deposed about his command of the department during that period. He testified that he defines peace demonstraters as "anarchists" who oppose any kind of government action including requiring people to pay taxes. [Video at left shows a conflict at  UC at Berkeley.]

Robert Reich,  well-known economist, holder of the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy Chair at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the books Supercapitalism and Aftershock, argues nothing less is at stake in the Occupy Movement than the First Amendment. What we've been seeing across the country, he says, is Americans being assaulted, clubbed and pepper-sprayed for exercising their right to free speech and assemnly--for protesting the ever increasing concentration of income, wealth and political power among the top one percent.

"And what's Washington's response? Nothing. . . the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people." There's a revolving door between Washington and Wall Street  where bank executives become public officials who make laws that benefit the banks and then head back to the Street to make money off the rules they created."

The core message of the Occupy Movement, Reich says, is that the  concentration of income and wealth in the hands of the top 1% endangers our democracy.                                              

"When real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with all this, they're told the First Amendment doesn't apply. Instead, they're treated as public nuisances--clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces."

As the recession grinds on Congress remains deadlocked over passing legislation that would put about 100 million people to work. Banks continue foreclosing on homes. Qualified students cannot afford college without taking on huge loan debt they will not be able to repay given the likely continued downward spiraling of wages, even if the economy improves.

Meanwhile, public schools are firing teachers and vital social services are being cut off.

The right wingers' objective is to break up Occupy Wall Street, hence the uptick in resistance and state sanctioned violence toward the Movement. The Right is desperate to destroy their most visible, widely supported and strongest opponent while it can. It thinks that if it can drive Occupy underground, it will be silenced or forced out of existence. This logic is contradicted by  history which tells us that once a resistance faction is forced underground, the enemy deprives itself of the ability to know what it's opponent is saying, doing or planning. And it has no sure way of knowing where the Movement is or who its members are. 

The rich and powerful are ignoring history at their peril. If they don’t like studying history, I suggest they pick up two novels: Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities or Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago.  Because there is a second course to the famous song whose lyrics are printed here. It goes like this:

 

We have got to get it together  
We have got to get it together now

Hand out the arms and ammo
We're going to blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right

We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together

 

Song performed on video above left:

Something in the Air: Thunderclap Newman

(John Keene) Courtesy of MCA Records, Inc.

 

 

Copyright 2011

Anthony P. Mario

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL: JOIN THE FIGHT TO RENOVATE WALL STREET

KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL.

JOIN THE FIGHT TO RENOVATE WALL STREET.

 

It's 10:46 p.m., Saturday night, October 1, 2011 in Cocoa, Florida. I should be in front of my TV watching the Florida vs. Alabama game, but at half-time I came into the den and logged onto my computer to see what was happening in the world. What was happening was that about 1300 miles north, in New York City, on the Brooklyn Bridge--a testament to the good that comes from the interworking of labor, management and government--the cops are arresting hundreds of the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters and anyone else who resembles an "undesirable loud mouth" wearing jeans and a work shirt or some other combination of urban-style street fashions, head bands, rock n' roll t-shirts, bandandas, etc.

                                                                                                                                                         
"Occupy Wall Street" began as a clarion call from the anti-consumerist magazine AdBusters for people to step out and protest the Corporatocracy that has taken over our lives, wrapped  itself around the middle class like a giant boa constrictor and is legislating away those  portions of the Constitution the founding fathers put there to guarantee us a democracy of the people.

The protest bubbled up as a peaceful gathering of a broad spectrum of New Yorkers of all ages, ethnicities, occupations and lifestyles. There was the usual fare of singing, slogan chanting, poster waving, folk rock music and dancing. It has been centered at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan since September 17th and the campsite there could almost make you believe that the Movement Spirit of the 1960s has emerged from the past in full bloom

  
 

AdBusters encouraged people to camp out in the park to draw attention to a collective protest against the financial establishment that had met with media skepticism and was generally ignored by it. The group's intent was to stay until they attracted public attention and generated broad support for their cause. Today, thanks to the NYPD and city authorities, they have achieved their goal and anti-Wall Street protests have flared up across the country like a prairie fire spreading to Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and other major cities. And it looks like they are going to be on-going protests, not ones likely to die out when the weekend is over.

The protesters' grievances make for a long list: the windening gap between the filthy rich and the intolerably poor; environmental issues and what conservatives like to call the "Global Warming Hoax"; globalization and the outsourcing of both industries and jobs; the loss of pension and retirement funds caused by the Wall Street mortgage scam; the deterioration of public services; the concerted efforts of business and state governments to eliminate employee rights to collective bargaining and to push through deep cutbacks to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

The burning issue is the lack of jobs which protesters blame on Republicans for holding the American Jobs Bill hostage in exchange for cuts to social services programs and a guarantee of no tax increases for millionaires and billionaires.

The movement is fueled by the disdain that conservative officeholders display toward liberal constituents and the dismissive arrogance with which right wing elected officials like governors Rick Scott of Florida, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan treat workers,  labor leaders and Democratic voters.

The protesters came out, according to their Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, to express their feelings of mass injustice at the hands of the corporate forces of the world and frustration with a government paralyzed by unyielding partisanship and cowed by the massive sums of money donors can plow into election campaigns under a recent Supreme Court decision. [The movement's Declaration of Occupation appears at the end of this article.]

 

When the group set up camp in Zuccotti Park, their relationship with police officers was generally congenial until an ugly incident a week ago when a short tempered police inspector pepper-sprayed several young women during a protest march. From then on police-protester relations turned tense and fragile as hand-lettered placards expressing outrage at police as well as banks and bankers began showing up.

On Saturday the Occupy Wall Street peoople started out on a planned march in which the route and destination were known only to organizers and a handful of guides who would give marchers last second instructions on when to turn and in what direction.The secrecy is believed to have been a reaction to the pepper-spraying incident.

 

The marchers moved along the sidewalks as police requested and all went smoothly as they passed City Hall and then began turning onto the Brooklyn Bridge. It turns out the march was to be from Wall Street to the bridge and maybe into Brooklyn itself. The bridge has two levels, one for pedestrians and the other for motor vehicles. The walkway entrance to the bridge is narrow and the two to three thousand marchers had to slow considerably in order to pass through it.

There was confusion. And starts and stops in the lines of protesters. Then more confusion. One of the marchers, 33- year-old Joshua Stephens says, "As we started going up the pedestrian part of [the bridge], there were lots of middle-aged and retirement-aged people who ended up down on the  motorway. . . ." That's when the orderly march broke down as police suddenly mobilized and went after anybody and everybody--young or old--who was on the motorway. The crowd panicked and people began frantically trying to avoid police by shimmying  up cast iron poles to reach the safety of the pedestrian walkway.

  Stephens, who was on the walkway, reports, "We didn't get far on the bridge before I saw the cops mobilize behind us. There was a formation. I could see maybe 15 to 20 cops all with like reams of flex-ties--a square formation standing and then marching towards Brooklyn. And they had paddy wagons going onto the bridge in reverse. They were backing up onto the bridge so they could go forward toward Manhattan."

The police, says Stephens, had the marchers boxed-in. "The march basically stopped below us. We stopped. I could see people beginning to sit down because they were blockaded in.  They saw they were blocked so they just sat down. I didn't see any scuffles, antagonizing or resisting."

The NYPD's account clashes with that of Stephens. They say that the crowd wound its way toward the bridge through streets crowded with shoppers and tourists without incident.  But when they arrived at the bridge the group broke ranks and 500 to 1,000 people walked up the Brooklyn-bound roadway where they burst into cheers and began chanting, "Who owns the bridge? We do!"

When protesters linked arms and prepared to stand their ground, police moved in to make arrests for disorderly conduct. A newsfeed.time.com story reported there was a brief pause as the two sides eyed each other. Then one officer tried reaching into the crowd to yank a mask off of a protester's face. One of NYPD's department chiefs grabbed the officer by the back of his belt and hauled him back. Moments later, another policeman leaped into the crowd and chaos took over.

I don't think it matters whose version of these events anyone believes. We've been headed down this road since 2008 and both sides, police and protesters, effected by the continous antagonism of our national political environment, lapsed into a confrontational mode, stirred by their personal frustrations, sense of loss and anger over a deadlocked government, a disintegrating society, the lack of trustworthy leaders and a nation in a rapid decline. 

And let's not hear any homilies from anyone about this not being a time for finger-pointing. It's sure as hell way beyond that time. It's time for sweeping collective action. And I can accurately point my finger at all those responsible for ripping at the seams of American society.

They include, but are not limited to: self-serving,  unqualified politicians; irresponsible corporate liars and lobbyists; the politicized U.S. Supreme Court; the Christian Supremacists; the Insurance Fraudsters; the Banksters; the Right Wing media personalities who believe they are always right and want us to believe they really care about people; the Big Pharma cartel that kills and disables us with their snake oil medicines; Big Oil who operate their wells recklessly and whose profits climb ever higher while they refuse to lower prices at the pump; and Big Business and Manufacturers who cheat, steal, pollute and enslave.

I hope that what's taking place on the streets of New York City is a genuine and lasting protest, a revolution. It's time to rip the grasping fingers of Big Business from the throat of America and to recover the flavor and feel of 1950s America where, while everything wasn't perfect, banks didn't see themselves as licensed predators and huge businesses didn't think they were free to increase profits by subjugating their employees and driving down their wages and benefits.

For more than two years I've been urging people to rise up, to get on their feet and go out into the streets and resist being manacled to low-paying worthess jobs and lives devoid of joy. It's time for a nationwide army of marchers to visit corporate  big shots and their minions where they work, where they live, wherever they come and go from daily, where they vacation--wherever they may be found. It's imperative that they and Congress hear the raging sound of thousands of voices and the loud, steady tramp of feet very close to where they live and breathe.

 

   Anthony P. Mario

   Copyright 2011

 

 Declaration of the Occupation of

New York City

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on

 September 29, 2011

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As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

 

Losing Jesus in America

No trumpet sounded. No voice of an archangel was heard. Jesus did not ride down from Heaven on a bank of clouds.

  

 

Sadly for millions of misguided people, the world did not end in apocalyptic grandeur on May 21st as predicted by religious huckster Harold Camping.

  

 

After the 6:00 p.m. deadline passed, Camping, who runs the 66-station Family Radio network, double-checked his math, discovered an error and extended his Death Watch. The End-of-Times is rescheduled for October 21^st.

We should consider ourselves lucky. Very lucky indeed to have a little more time to make the necessary corrections to our lives. I do not claim to be a religious or pious man. So what I’m about to say shouldn’t be taken as coming from a “holier than thou” source. This piece is intended to hold a mirror up to the politicians (who know better) and mainstream Americans who think we're a “Christian nation”, and explain why I don't think we are.

Had the cataclysmic End come on May 21^st there would have been hell to pay (no pun intended) for legions of us.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, 76% of us indentify ourselves as  Christians. We all know that even if we don’t go to church very often or not at all, we still     call ourselves Christians. It’s a loose religious affiliation, one we don’t want to give up  because we believe in the core teachings of Jesus as spread across the pages of the Gospel. We just find it tiring, a little annoying and financially inconvenient to practice what Jesus taught.

Jesus distilled his religious philosophy into a single maxim:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

            John 13:34-35

The trouble with America is that for a country where so many profess to be Christians and believe they really are, our public discourse, politics, and the national debate say just the opposite about us.

As I’ve said many times, this is the greatest country that has ever been. Common sense tells me that there is absolutely no reason why, in the richest country in the world, every citizen isn’t entitled to food, shelter, healthcare, education and security from falling through the cracks if he becomes physically or mentally disabled or too old to make it on his own. These convictions have nothing to do with my religious beliefs: They are the foundation of my political philosophy.

Providing all people access to fundamental needs doesn’t turn our country into a communist or socialist state or a “welfare society.” It is a way of guaranteeing what generations of  Americans have worked hard for, sacrificed, fought and died for—an opportunity to live a fulfilling life—a promise we were implicitly led to believe was part of the social contract between citizen and country. It is also what Jesus admonished his believers to do.  

Given the sacrifices made by millions of our ancestors to build this nation, most of them believing they were making a better future for us, shouldn’t we have a right to expect, if not demand:

 1. That none of us, regardless of race, color, creed, age, sex or social status, should go to bed hungry.   

 2. No American should be without a safe and secure roof over his head.

 3. Money should never separate anyone from the right to medical care, prescription drugs and other medical and psychological services.

 4. Every American should have the right to a solid basic education: effective public schools, vocational schools and a chance to rise as high as they can academically, vocationally and professionally.

 5. No one, due to age or misfortune, should be abandoned to live in poverty or be denied life’s necessities.

I’ve heard it before: “Are you crazy! We can’t afford it, the country’s broke.” That is the weakest argument of all.

Since 2001, we’ve spent over $1.2 trillion on wars. We’ve squandered lives of thousands of our servicemen and women and tens of thousands of innocent civilians as we ignorantly  claimed to be “bringing democracy”, as President Bush put it, to peoples who have no idea    what a democracy is, don’t care to know, and have long histories of resisting invaders such as the powerful Russian army that was mercilessly pounded then pushed out after ten bloody years in Afghanistan.

The past decade proves we learned nothing at all from our experience in Vietnam (58,209 dead, 153,303 wounded). Democracy is not an export item, even when delivered with overwhelming military might. It is embraced but only after it is understood.

We can’t recover lost lives or money, but we can cut our losses. We should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately, not fourteen months from now, but tomorrow morning. No    residual forces left behind to be picked off one by one by snipers, or in clusters by suicide bombers or IEDs. Ten years from now both countries will be right back to where they were before we attempted to bring them freedom and liberty.

The tax money we’re using to pump bullets into people and blow up their homes, can be better used here this very minute. Think of how many lives can be saved or improved with the $200 billion we waste annually warring in distant countries that want no part of us. Our federal budget is proof of how far we live from the words of Christ.

Our federal spending today is about 24% of the GDP.  The budget for 2012 has $1.2 trillion allocated for Social Security and Medicare—programs that help not just seniors but the disabled and children and spouses of deceased workers. Under the government label of “national defense” it’s argued that the military portion is only 20% of the budget. That number, however, doesn’t include foreign military grants, other military assistance or other military-related dollars. Add those and the number is 36%.

U.S. military spending is $515 billion a year which equals the spending of the next 15 countries’ combined. We spend $390 billion more than China and $465 billion more than Russia who are number two and three behind us.

How much money must we pour into our War Machine before this Christian nation feels safe?

In this time of scrawny tax revenues Democrats and Republicans are considering cutting most, if not all, Medicaid funds, a move that would snatch vital medical services away from 68 million people. Medicaid provides federally funded health care to low income people at  risk due to disability, age, chronic illness or other circumstances. In 1997 it was expanded to cover children through low cost government medical insurance, an expense shared by the states.

The present danger is that many states want out of funding Medicaid, period. If they get their way, and they are pushing Congress really hard on this issue, Medicaid could become a shadow of itself for people who must rely on it.

If it happens, the demise of Medicaid won’t be a surprise. After a firestorm of a summer ignited by the ruckus over healthcare reform, America turned its back on 38 million uninsured people in voting down the public option. We let a timid and unscrupulous Congress get away with caving in to health insurance companies.

Elected officials, many of whom use Christianity as a springboard to office, arrogantly defy their constituents, cutting healthcare and retirement benefits for public employees,  spending   for disadvantaged or mentally and physically handicapped children and adults. Saying “No” to families living on annual income of about $43,000.00, they curry favor with millionaires and billionaires who dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into their election campaigns.

Homeless people flood our streets. In many cities they aren’t permitted to sit on downtown sidewalks because business owners worry about their panhandling and offending customers. They are rousted from public parks and charitable organizations in some places are forbidden from feeding them there. Many of the homeless are mentally ill, drug addicts or alcoholics whose appearance and erratic outbursts can be scary. Among them are beached war veterans (some dating back to Vietnam), the perennially unemployed and unemployable and a few are just lost souls.

Their encampments are a junk collector’s dream—a jumble of red, yellow, green, blue and camouflage tarps. Grocery carts, wheelchairs—motorized and not—bicycles, shopping carts, small wagons, handcarts and homemade rickshaws. Blankets, sleeping bags and clothing hang everywhere. There are giant cardboard boxes for shelter, impromptu lean-tos, tents of all sizes. Peppered throughout and closely guarded, are old tools, cookware, pots and pans, glassware, bottles and eating utensils.

They try to carry everything they own on their backs, in trash bags, handcarts  or, if necessary, a grocery cart. If they’re arrested or a squad of police officers are sent out to break up their illegal camps, what little they have often disappears.

There are ways we can help them—practical, creative, innumerable ways. But we’re told that we don’t have money.

On May 23^rd the Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision ordering California to release tens of thousands of inmates from overcrowded prisons. The court took action because the living conditions—including lethally inadequate healthcare—were so intolerable as to constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the 8^th Amendment. The day before this ruling, four prisoners were seriously injured in a dining hall riot at San Quentin.

The event was foreseeable. In 2008 NPR reported on massive overcrowding at San Quentin where it was discovered that 360 men were caged in what was previously a gymnasium. “Most of these men,” NPR said, [spent] 24 hours a day, seven days a week in [lockup].”

Gang fights, stabbings, random beatings, sexual violence and extortion are widespread throughout America’s prisons. The brutality of prison life is nothing new to the Supreme Court or any judicial body, lawyers, state and federal legislators and prison officials. Violence and fear permeate jails and prisons leaving little room for rehabilitation or personal safety.

For years the attitude has been, “Forget wasting money on rehabilitation. Keep them locked up as long as possible and build more prisons.” That has gotten us nowhere other than to create an atmosphere where recidivism is a given. Released inmates are restricted from living in such an array of places that affordable housing is hard to find. Moreover, the vast majority have no vocational skills, making it difficult find a job, stay off the streets or resist the temptation to resort to criminal activity for money.

The absence of sympathy for criminal offenders (both men and women) keeps them locked up whether they’re in or out of prison. We’ve created a model for persistent failure and ostracism and then blame them for bad outcomes. It’s convenient to forgive our hardheartedness towards them by hiding behind the dearth of funds argument.

Point to the poor, the elderly, people without healthcare, the homeless, the unemployed; study the ecological and environmental warnings, our crumbling cities, bridges and highways; read about our  defective public school systems, the absence of vocational training for non-college bound  students, our shameful national illiteracy rate. There are dozens if not hundreds of pressing needs we can ignore simply by using what I call the “Money Rationale.”

International corporations whose annual profits exceed hundreds of millions—even billions—of dollars pay not a penny of corporate income tax and have no remorse about coming up short as “corporate citizens.” They keep their lack of contribution to the national revenue “legal” through lobbying that leaves the tax code opaque and full of holes at the same time.

Many of their CEOs and other executive officers are, no doubt, among the 76% of Americans who identify themselves as Christians but tap dance behind legalities to escape social duties that encompass Christian values. So do lobbyists, businessmen, professionals, politicians, elected officials and ordinary citizens. The “Money Rationale” is their escape hatch from societal obligations.

Similarly, the super rich keep the tax collector away from the gates of their mansions with amazingly generous contributions to members of Congress. As the country teeters between deep Recession and  Depression, they want Congress to extend and increase their tax cuts. Certainly many of them are Christians who, with clear consciences, pray that Congress kills the new healthcare law, eliminates Medicaid, privatizes or shreds Medicare and trims Social Security mightily. The “Money Rationale” convinces them they’re all ready paying too much in taxes.

We have an epidemic of icy indifference, intolerance, hate, deceit and selfishness in our nation. It flows from Rampaging Capitalism that has spawned a pervasive everyman for  himself attitude which we all are tacitly approving by failing not only to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves, but failing to stand up for our country.

There are mobs of Christians out there, millions of them. But I don’t see much of Jesus.   

 

 

 

Anthony P. Mario

Copyright June 25, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Time to Bust Big Business

Right In the Mouth

 

 

 

SAVING AMERICA

Parts III & IV

The Third and Fourth in a Series of Ten Things We Must Do in the

Next Eight Years to Restore Our Nation

 

Exxon-Mobil, Bank of America, AstraZeneca, Chevron and Johnson & Johnson, among many other giant corporations think that eyewash can wipe away their public sins.The eyewash is TV commercials—P.R. fakery—intended to distract us from their deplorable anti-social behavior while they drone on about what warm and fuzzy companies they are.Corporate moguls want us to believe that they’re really a bunch of good guys at heart,all for the American family, the redwood forest, the New York island and the Gulf Stream waters.

 

 Amusingly, Chevron is pushing this chestnut: “Finding a newer and cleaner way to power the world.” BP hired Kenneth Feinberg, notorious fixer for Monsanto (maker of Agent Orange)and A.H. Robins (maker of the Dalkon Shield IUD),at $1 million a month to  administer its claims compensation fund. A federal judge recently ordered Feinberg to stop representing himself as an independent contractor of BP and tell the truth, i.e. he's a corporate lackey. Payments due suffering Gulf Coast businesses and residents  have slowed to a trickle akin to maple tree sap in January.

 

Feel like your early evening TV viewing is chopped up by idiotic commercials for ED, “restless leg syndrome,” weakened urine flow, sinus headache, etc.? That junk is on your tube because pharmaceutical companies don’t want to be pioneers—they prefer pushing meds that are quick and easy to make. In 2004 the industry spent $57.5 billion on marketing and $31.5 billion for R&D. Eighty percent of the marketing budget was devoted to pandering to the nation’s 770,000 practicing physicians, an average $61,000 per doctor at a time when the median household income was $43,318.

 III

 Too Big to Be American. As unscrupulous as these companies are, they aren’t the absolute worst of the lot—the manufacturers are.  Beginning in the 1980’s American manufacturing companies began relocating overseas to boost profits by cashing in on  lower wages and production costs. It was an  almost unnoticeable trickle. Then the 90s gave way to a deluge. 

By 2008 the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, lost 2.2 million manufacturing jobs. These were the good-paying jobs that grew our top earning workers of the middle class, jobs in electronics, aerospace and auto industries.

With globalization and since passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, the country has lost 4.9 million jobs altogether.  Americans are quick to blame NAFTA for our economic problems, but “free trade” alone isn't responsible for the Great Recession we’re in, Wall Street is.

The other culprits responsible for our trade deficit and jobs lost, however, are the manufacturers who’ve shown no sense of loyalty or duty to the country and the people whose taxes and brand loyalty, made them successful.

Rather than prepare and strategize for the challenges of free trade  that the country faced, they dumped loyal workers and relocated. There was a ton of money to be made in doing so but there were also great opportunities here. The overseas cash was quick and easy money while revamping their overall marketing and redeployment strategies here would have involved too much time and innovation.

So, the corporations effectively abandoned America like an old farm that was no longer profitable to run.

 

Ridding the Country of the Abuses of Big Business

 These companies have been banking on making their products cheaply “over there” and selling them at a good mark up in the U.S. while developing new overseas markets. They forget that no matter how ingenious they think their strategy is, the United States is and will  remain their biggest market for a long time. And that's why we have them cornered if Congress acts with some courage.The actions of  these turncoat companies can be countered by slapping tariffs on all products they manufacture abroad but bring back for sale here.

When the breast beating CEO’s of  mega corporations boast that they run “multinational” companies, not national ones and as they relocate their headquarters to the Caribbean to  dodge paying corporate income taxes, we have  justification for treating their businesses as foreign ventures and applying the laws regulating imports to their products and taxing them accordingly.

Next, federal and state governments should offer tax and other incentives to foreign manufacturers willing to establish new plants here and create jobs to replace those lost to outsourcing by U.S. firms. Especially attractive propositions could be extended to businesses who are creating new, innovative products, run on clean energy and make quality goods that compete with inferior ones whether made here or imported.

There’s no reason to be protective of corporations that fly the red, white and blue when it’s convenient but have no real commitment to this country. Even when called upon to accept  social responsibility for manufacturing disasters or for deaths and injuries caused by defective products, they resist. They hide behind their corporate personas arguing they are not “citizens” but legal “entities” whose first obligation is to their stockholders. It’s a bogus argument, one that big business has had mixed success with in the courts.

 It’s also a protestation that blithely ignores this fact: pick almost any corporation and you’ll find that the majority stockholders are its company executives,   members of its board of directors, banks and other corporations that own stock in the subject company and the heirs of probably hundreds of deceased shareholders from the nation’s richest families.

 It’s time to treat these corporations for what they are: mere legal entities that are not  American companies, but international corporate islands that don’t use American workers, do their manufacturing overseas, maintain their headquarters offshore to avoid paying taxes and are always motivated by profit and never the common good.

 

 IV

 

Seal Loopholes That Allow Big Business to Weasel Out

of  Paying it’s Fair Share of Income Taxes

 Bring up the issue of corporate taxation and the Captains of Industry begin sobbing. They blubber about being forced to cut jobs, whimper about being unable compete with imported   goods and ultimately sniffle that they may have to move some operations overseas.

 To begin with, recognize that they aren’t whining, they’re threatening. And many of the most profitable companies have all ready acted on their threats.

 So why are they still operating here? Because not only does America remain the biggest market they have, it is the best place in the to world to live, it is also the safest place to do business, protect personal wealth and raise and educate a family. What’s more, corporate executives recognize (to the detriment of the rest of us) that here is where they can control the government, make the laws and regulate themselves by means of their money, influence and lobbying. 

 Now, here is a fact their corporate majesties would prefer you didn’t know: The highest level of corporate taxation is 35%, which is 15% lower than the top rate you’d pay on personal income. And no corporation ever has and never will come close to paying anything near 35%.

As previously remarked, many corporations have expatriated themselves by moving their headquarters offshore to avoid taxation. They call this practice “corporate inversion” which sounds like a high breed of business administration when  it's actually a euphemisim for “tax evasion.” *

Imagine you own a small business—a pizza shop. You'd be using the same public services and facilities a large manufacturer does: police and fire services, water and sewage plants, waste and trash removal and street maintenance and cleaning. Then there would be human resources: the roads and highway maintenance crews, the highway patrol, emergency and ambulance people and hundreds  of public  employees who provide social services and care for parks, woodlands, lakes and rivers.

Large corporations rely on our shipping harbors and the Coast Guard, airports with their runways, hangars, security personnel and air traffic controllers. They use the postal service, railroads and   public  facilities built to accommodate rail service and truck inspection and weigh stations. They  depend on an army of  state workers who are in public administration or maintain roads, bridges, dams and dozens of other state-owned buildings and facilities that business needs access to daily.

The money necessary to operate and repair all this “infrastructure” comes from taxes, the primary source being state and federal income taxes paid, for the most part, by small businesses and the citizenry. 

If we continue letting mega corporations making hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a year to avoid taxes, then the remaining businesses, big and small, and you and I will  be giving  the likes of General Electric and Exxon Mobil a free ride into some distant time. And, no matter how much the rest of us pay, it won’t be enough, because our public buildings, roads, bridges, harbors, etc. are going to continue to crumble. Then our glamorous multinational corporations won’t have to move to a third world country because we’ll have one right here.

 

 *At the end of 2009, ten big businesses had moved their headquarters abroad for tax purposes. They are:

Halliburton (Dick Cheney’s former Houston-based company); Accenture (Bermuda-based arm of Arthur Andersen LLP, accounting firm involved in Enron Corp scandal.); Foster Wheeler Ltd. (headquartered in Bermuda with most of its main offices in New Jersey.); Ingersoll-Rand Co. Ltd. (Also in Bermuda, but a New Jersey-based company that makes Thermo King refrigerated trucks.); Tyco International Ltd. (New York operation reincorporated in Bermuda and into everything from healthcare services to telecommunications and electronics.); Cooper Industries Inc. (Moved from Houston to Bermuda. Maker of electrical products and tools that had $3.6 million in government contracts in 2002.); Noble Drilling Services Inc. (The fourth-largest U.S. offshore oil and natural gas drillers. Claims Cayman Islands as home but operates out of Sugarland, Texas.); Global Crossing (Is based in Bermuda where it provides telecommunications services to the world and has its administrative offices headquartered in New Jersey); Seagate Technology LLC (California designer/maker of popular Barracuda 750GB hard drive, headquartered in Caymans.); Nabors Industries Ltd (World’s largest onshore oil and gas-drilling contractor, moved from Texas to Bermuda and Barbados.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

  

 

 

  Say Goodbye to Capitalism

  

If anyone has been thinking I've painted a grimmer picture than need be to show just how bad the plight of the Middle Class is, here's the low down from Michael Snyder (shown at right), a graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce at the  University of Virginia, holder of two law degrees from the University of Florida and writer/editor of The Economic Collapse Blog at http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com.

  In my last post I described the blistering pace at which the rich became filthy rich, all at the expense of the Middle Class, through the purposeful redistribution of income to those at the pinnacle of  annual income and accrued wealth. In 2009 according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the household median income, adjusted for inflation, was $49,777. Do you know what it was in 1975? $42,936! That's 13.8% over 34 years.

The cost of wheat shot up 60% last year.Yesterday, a loaf of fresh baked sourdough bread cost me $4.99 at Publix. Last month economists announced that the price of a bag of family groceries is up 29% this year. It makes me wonder how a family of four trying to make it on $49,777 ($4,148 a month  before state and/or federal taxes are deducted, paying $3.85 a gallon for gas, $550 a month for health insurance, $950 mortgage/rent and $555 a month for  groceries are doing.

The numbers I've tossed out don't include a car payment, car insurance, water, electricity, TV and internet cable, telephone, entertainment and a plethora of other things    many of us don't think twice about when we purchase them. How much has the quality of life changed for families forced to do without life's small luxuries--a  trip to the book store, replacing a broken TV or iPod,  taking the family out for dinner, keeping a supply of the kids' favorite treats on hand?

Our big, global corporations are profiting magnificently while exploiting third world workers and they're salivating over the rapidly approaching day when jobs and wages will bottom out here and they’ll have us all at the mercy of their soulless black hearts. Then we'll have what Arianna Huffington has chosen for the title of her new book, Third World America.

"Proletariat? What Proletariat?"

Here are Snyder's 22 statistics that leave no room for doubt that the Middle Class has been in the the process of systematic erosion for decades. 

1.    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
2.    61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from   49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
3.   66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
4.   36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
5.   A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
6.   24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
7.  Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
8.   Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
9.   For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
10.   In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
11.  As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
12.  The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than   one percent of the nation’s wealth.
13.  Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
14. The average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
15. The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
16. In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
17. More than 40 percent of Americans who are currently employed are working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
18. For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
19. This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes  approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents  an hour.                                                                                                                                           
20. Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty    line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
21. Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
22. The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

 

 Hear That Giant Sucking Sound?

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people on the other side of the globe who happily put in 10 to 12 hour days  for less than a dollar an hour. What corporation will pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world labor market  has  been flipped. The mega corporations are making massive amounts of money paying foreign workers  pennies on the dollar. In time, after the will of the American Middle Class is completely exhausted, U.S. workers will be merged into the new "global" labor pool. And they will learn what it was like to be a galley slave.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that the Great Recession has made them absolutely dependent on someone giving them a job. U.S. workers are "less attractive" than those overseas because their wages and benefits make them extremely expensive. But are these wages and benefits unreasonable demands or necessities in the country they helped build?

Corporations argue that the costs of labor and a coalescence of financial events they had no control over--the transformation of the world economy--make it impossible for them to continue to do business in the U.S. and make a profit. But that is not true. What's more likely is that the time has come to pull the plug on capitalism.

                                                                            

 "Keep Your Capitalist Hands Off of My Internet!"

Capitalism is no longer a viable economic system because it is an inward-looking, closed-ended means of serving selfish corporate interests while disavowing any social responsibility and working against the ideals of a democratic society. For example, as I write this, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable are  scuffling amongst themselves and with the FCC to take over the internet and turn it into their personal, money-making enterprise.

These corporate egotists have the audacity to presume they can acquire ownership of what has been a free and open marketplace for worldwide communication, the exchange of limitless  information, thoughts, opinions, news and ideas and sell it back to us.

The internet as it exists, is democracy in its purest form. No governmental, philosophical, religious, economic, political or revolutionary entity owns or censors it. Until just a  few  years ago it was a non-existent place, a dream world of possibilities and promise beyond technology's reach.

Today it's where people who can read and write go to acquire vast amounts of knowledge, explore  all manner of things previously inaccesible to them, and form their own notions of what the world is and what its inhabitants--man and animal--are all about. The net is a limitless Garden of Eden brimming with  free roaming  thoughts about everything--both known and yet to be discovered--and it's always in full bloom. It is the history of Man and the World, uncensored and free of charge.

Now some misanthropes are using their money and political influence to convince the government to grant them license to package and sell it. Their initial proposal is to turn the internet into two lanes: a fast one and a slow one. The fast lane will cost more. And we can all ready see where our future lies: the fast lane will cost more and more until it becomes the exclusive superhighway of big business, political interests, and monopolistic entities that will control news, entertainment and information.

Free speech will disappear and there will be little or no competition in the marketplace of goods, services and, most important, ideas.

 Capitalism Has Outlived It's Usefulness 

 The End Time is near for capitalism because it requires corporations to look after their own interests at all times. Profit comes before god, people and country. The cheaper you can make a product and the more you can sell it for, the better. In America, to keep labor costs down, workers were as expendable as old draft horses. That's why it took over a hundred years--from 1830 to 1950--and dozens of bloody clashes between workers and hoodlums hired by corporate employers to get to a minimum wage, an 8-hour work day and five-day work week, paid holidays, paid sick time and personal leave days, safe work places, health benefits and paid vacations.

Today, with minimal resistance from Washington and no labor unions to intervene, workers' historic gains are disappearing like sandcastles drifting into the sea with the tide.

From the onset of the economic bust in 2008 till now, hugely successful corporations like General Electric and Exxon Mobile have continued making billions of dollars, but they've  evaded paying corporate taxes by moving their "headquarters" to tropical islands in the Carribbean. Wells Fargo is taking its billions in bailout money and using them to construct dozens of branch banks in China where the grass is greener. The muckety-mucks of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs, the criminals who brought down the economy, continue to wallow like pigs in million-dollar salaries and millions more in bonuses. 

The capitalist system is a close-ended, circular one. The wheel grinds round and round, pumping billions of dollars out of the earth, oceans, woodlands, lakes and rivers. Corporations suck natural resources out of every nook and cranny, despoil the environment and give as little back to the cities, states and workers as they can get    away with, frequently leaving critical infrastructure aged and deteriorated,  a large element of widespread urban decay.The cream, or profit, is divided among corporate directors, upper tier executives and rich stockholders. 

Many American cities no longer pulse with the sounds of manufacturing but live with the silence of depressed neighborhoods strung around the destitute edges of empty industrialized areas.Vacant factories, standing side by side, lean like drunken derelicts trying to hold each other up. You see them huddled along  the streets and roadsides throughout New England and the Mid-West. Empty knitting cotton and textile mills squat in small towns dotting the Appalachians from Upstate New York south through the Carolinas.

The hills of Pennsylvania and West Virginia bear the furrowed scars of mountain top mining and the streams often flow bright orange with drainage from the mines. Where western New York and Pennsylvania meet, the steel mills have been dead silent for decades, the only sounds  being the eery whistling  made by winds that occasionally blow through them. Somehow, these old towns hang on and you wonder where the money comes from that puts food on the tables of residents.

Polluting For Profit

When I say capitalists look inward only, here's what I mean: In corporate minds, there is never a limit on profits so there is never a reason to let up on the money throttle and treat workers fairly  or humanely by turning some of those extra dollars into higher wages, benefits and retirement pensions; the environment we all share can be damned  as businesses go about concealing their polluting ways in order to keep profits growing; they knowingly injure the public by giving us cancer and other diseases through contaminated factory runoff water; chemical and manufacturing plants routinely  dump poisonous waste anywhere they're not likely to be seen. Besides, even if caught  dumping hazardous waste, they know profits can always offset most fines.

 Supposedly reputable companies kill and maim people through defective products--exploding automobile tires, faulty brake systems and hazardous prescription medications--lie about it then drag their victims through courts for years on end, hoping to beatdown their resolve to be compensated for a death or injury. Manufacturers bristle when juries return huge verdicts against them, blame their legal problems on personal injury lawyers and turn to lawmakers to restrict access to the courts by plaintiffs and to cap damage awards to the people they've injured.

As our national economy moved into globalization, big business began bolting the country. Rather than taking the time to prepare for a future they foresaw and contemplating strategies for taking on foreign competition or helping the government develop policies to cushion the economic blow, corporations took their money and jumped ship, taking the life boats with them. By fleeing overseas they avoid government regulation, free themselves from fair labor practices, pursue new and cheaper sources of raw materials, and are permitted exploit foreign workers in nations where leaders look for personal gain and not after the welfare of their people.

What makes capitalism close-ended is that corporations see themselves as rightfully amoral--responsible only to their stockholders--and their horrendous history proves it.

 

 " Dyin' Just Tryin' to Make a Livin' "

Last April's explosion killing 25 West Virginia miners in the worst mining disaster in more than a quarter century is ugly proof of capitalism's profits-at-all-costs philosophy. The media reported on how the Massey Energy coal company had received dozens of warnings and citations concerning its reckless operations, yet the mine was never shut down  until  all conditions that threatened the lives of workers were corrected. The miners' deaths were foreseeable and avoidable.

The conditions in the Appalachian coalfields have, except for easily absorbed  fines here and there, been ignored for decades. Drive through these gray, desolate hills and you'll see the  mining sites are little changed from a century ago. The history of coalmining is replete with stories of multimillionaire mine operators, exactly like the ones at Massey Energy, who ignored elemental safety concerns while demanding that miners work 12-hour shifts under hazardous conditions for the sake of maximizing profits.

Other labor problems exist in the cozy relationships between businessmen and public officials.  An example of such unhealthy ties went almost undetected during the political standoff  between Republican Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin teachers union. The issue there was much larger than labor unions and balanced budgets. While the conflict appeared to be centered on the proposal to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of state employees, it wasn't. Hidden in the new legislation was a proposal that would allow Walker to sell off or lease the state's several dozen energy plants to private companies, with or without the approval of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission and--get this--with or without a competitive bidding process!

Here's some fun facts to go along with the Walker story. Standing in the wings, hoping that the Democrat Senators would scurry back from Illinois in time for a quick vote on the bill were billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Although ideologically and financially "invested" in Walker through their $43,000 campaign gift (the second largest one he received) and a multi-million dollar attack ad campaign against his opponent (which was run through through their political action committee, Americans for Prosperity), nothing exists to prove that the Kochs would directly benefit from privatizing the state's power plants. What is widely known, however, is that they own Koch Industries, the largest privately held company in the U.S. with extensive coal interests in Wisconsin.

Today, in this historically deep Recession, big corporations, the Republicans and their symbiotic Tea Party appendage are looking to cut away every last sliver of gains Working Class and Middle Class Americans have made since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal created in 1934. President Obama and the Democrats haven't given us any solid reasons to believe they can handle the onslaught. We all need to do whatever we  can to let the White House and our Congressmen and Senators (whether they are Democrat or Republican) know that we don't just expect a good fight  to keep Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid intact,we demand nothing short of victory.

Mega-corporations claim it was capitalism and sound business management that brought this country to the heights of greatness and prosperity, forgetting they didn't do it alone. Not by a long shot. From 1830 on, it's been the muscle, hard labor and dedication of Working and Middle Class people who actually ran the plants, turned out the products and  transformed the capitalists' investments into profits. 

Capitalists have never given workers a thing without forcing them not  merely to work for it, but fight for it. Now that the time has come to help workers and the country meet the challenges of globalization, and what have the major corporations done? They 've cut and run.

But the biggest question begs for an answer: What are we going to do about it?

 

THE MIDDLE CLASS SHRINKS: IS THE AMERICAN DREAM DEAD?

      
The danger this country faces today is no less threatening than that created by the Attack on Pearl Harbor or the Nazi's swift conquest of Europe. It is a danger that pre-existed the 9/11 terrorist attack and gave rise to our national fear of  a second, similarly horrifying event such as a maniacal Jihadist carrying an anthrax bomb into a Manhattan subway station. The danger in this instance  comes from America's monied aristocracy, people who are as passionate their desire for money and power as Islamist terrorists are to bring down Western society.

   They are wealthy businessmen, investment giants, bankers and corporate moguls whom I regard as Upper Class sociopaths. The worst of them are Wall Street bankers who cooked up the greatest fraud in history and promoted it worldwide.  In the U.S. it surfaced as the "housing mortgage" crisis that turned neighborhoods, teeming with families, into three-bedroom ghost   towns throughout the country. The scheme was so far flung, it rocked the national and global economies and plunged us all into a deep Recession, which may yet become a Depression.  

  The irony is that the giant investment firms that emerged from this self-made mess were considered "Too Big To Fail," meaning that if they went down, the country would go with them.  There was no choice for President Obama but to feed the wolves in order to save the flock. That's why the government was compelled to put billions of dollars in bailout money into the dirty hands of Wall Street bankers. The money was intended to be put to immediate use by lending it to failing businesses. If we could save the businesses, so the thinking went, we'd also save millions of jobs.

  Once the money arrived the bankers lost their  interest in making loans, at least they didn't want to do that right away. They noticed, however, that the government's bailout contracts had no small print prohibiting it, so they seized the moment and paid themselves millions of dollars in bonuses! Then, instead of moving quickly to using the money to pull thousands of businesses back from the edge, they sat on it. There is no memorable explanation for their delay.

As time stretched out, the money accrued enormous amounts of interest. When billions of dollars are involved, even piddling interest rates yield millions of dollars. Hence, the banks had gone into a four-corner offense or stall, like  basketball teams do when trying to run out a game clock. The money grew interest as fast as a newly sodded lawn grows grass. When they finally swung into action, the first thing the bankers did was skim the millions of dollars in interest off the top and declare it profit!

The story has the feel of a bad imitation of Hollywood's 1987 hit movie "Wall Street". But this  was a true-life blockbuster with much more evil and many more victims in it than the movie had. It remains incomprehensible and nightmarish: Rich and influential bankers smoking cigars and   having drinks while thousands of businesses and millions of jobs were being swept away.

  The events of the past eighteen months have outraged people and focused their anger on business, financial and corporate leaders. However, the Middle Class, the ones who absorb the brunt of these economic beat downs, never seem to make this connection:     

wealth=class=business=politics=power

They fail to see periodic financial chaos as part of an on-going depletion of theMiddle Class by the alliance of Big Money and the Republican party.The failure to this relationship is disturbing.  
What has been eroding the number of the Middlde Class families is nothing less than economic and political warfare waged by the minority of the rich and powerful against the majority: people who believe that playing by the rules and working hard, might not get them rich, but at least they could provide food, clothing, shelter, education and health care for their families. That  was the promise America held for every citizen, it was the foundation of the social contract between working people and capitalists called The American Dream. 

  With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Republicans unleashed a highly successful political and legislative campaign that, beginning with the firing of all striking PATCO air traffic controllers, broke the  labor unions. The  intervening eight-year Clinton administration did nothing to slow anti-union efforts in Congress. By the mid-1990's the labor movement was in shambles. In fairness, however, it must be said that the unions themselves had a hand in their  demise. Between 1960 and 1975 the corruption of various labor leaders and their persistent, overreaching demands on employers turned public opinion staunchly against them and even alienated their members.

  Despite anti-labor sentiment, by 2008 the value of the output of an average worker, adjusted for inflation, was almost 50% higher than in 1973. Workers, however, have not shared in the economic gains they helped create. If gains in productivity were were evenly shared across the workforce, workers income would be roughly 35% higher than in 1973. Instead, there has been an upward redistribution of wealth where today the top 1% of Americans have  incomes five to seven times greater than they did in 1973. During this period, the rising cost of living led huge numbers of women to enter the workforce, creating a nation of two-income households. Even so, median household income, adjusted for inflation, has grown only 16% since 1973. The wages of men ages 35 to 44, adjusted for inflation, are a shocking 12% lower than they were in 1973! (Paul Krugman,  The Conscience of A Liberal  [W.W. Norton & Company, 2009], 234-241)

Smart Crooks Wear Armani

    I am not a communist or a socialist. I’m an idealist -- a Populist -- one of the hardcore believers who thinks the first responsibility of government is to look after the interests of all the people. Commitment to their welfare is the sole factor that legitimizes the right to govern.

     After eight years of Republican in-your-face lying and breathtaking incompetence, we learn once again that all men are not created equal. How equal we are depends on who controls the Whitehouse and Congress.  

      The Republicans have shown us they don’t buy into the concept of “One for all, and all for one.”  Their passion is money and their creed is, “If you have money – real money - it’s the super rich for all the super rich.”

     No matter how some smooth talker tries to slide it by, when I hear the phrase “trickle down economics”, it sounds like unacceptable class distinctions are being made. When I remember that one-percent of Americans own more than fifty-percent of the stocks on Wall Street, and I put that together with  “trickle down economics,” I see an image of loose change being brushed off a table and on to a carpet where the help can gather it up for themselves.

     The Wall Street meltdown and housing collapse of 2008 pulled the curtain back on how lavishly corporate and banking businesses unjustifiably reward their executives and enrich their CEO’s. The AFL-CIO has released the facts on its web site www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch where the annual salary of the 100 highest paid CEO’s are printed. The top money maker is Bruce Wasserstein of Lazard Ltd for 2008: $133,708,650.; Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle Corporation, 2008: $84,598,700; Mario J. Gabelli, 2007, GAMCO Investors, Inc.: $70,931,633; Richard C. Adkerson, 2007, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, Inc.: $67,817,112; Leslie Moonves, 2007 CBS Corporation, $67,734,016.

    The next ten CEO’s received a low of $41 million to a high of $57 million. The next ten rose from a low of $30 million to $38 million. The following forty-seven ranged from $21 million to $29 million.  The last twenty-four went from $20 million down to $17 million.

         You have to wonder what supreme knowledge and set of super skills these CEO’s have that make them worthy of such massive compensation. Given the many mysteries of the IRS code, how much in real tax dollars is paid on their income? After the amount paid to executive level management is added to that of its CEO’s, what percentage of the company’s gross profit is it? Net profit?

      The comeback argument is that what CEO’s are paid is no one’s business except theirs and that of the stockholders. But should this rebuttal be passively accepted when the country is so strapped that it can’t afford the goods and services it needs right now? And why should workers’ wages and benefits continue to erode while corporate management is having their pay delivered in armored cars?

     Is it reasonable that the stock market should be the money machine of a select few when needed public works projects get shelved?  Schools, roads and bridges go on lacking maintenance? That environmental concerns get back-burnered while the medical and drug needs of the low income elderly and homeless are left unaddressed?  With the national debt about to pass $11 trillion, why isn’t there a call for an economic public duty and sense of nationalism that goes beyond thinking that paying the minimum income tax due is our only responsibility to our country at this time?

      If those of us who could afford it contributed more, would the government be willing to find creative ways to use future tax credits or new tax incentives to offset future taxes paid today?

      The gap between former middle class Americans who can no longer meet basic needs and the wealthy ones inhabiting the top tiers of society is widening faster than before. In 2004, the average family income, adjusted for inflation was $70,700. The median income level was $43,200.  Half the families earned more than $43,200 and the other half made less. How long will those standing on the lower rungs of society forego their needs and comforts while the rich get richer?  [Note: The above figures are from an MSNBC.com story by the Associated Press, “Average American Income Declines”, February 23, 2006. The accuracy of the Associated Press numbers are supported by the U.S. Bureau of the Census which reported the median annual income for a four-person family in 2005 was $67,019. The Associated Press did not indicate the size of the family in its 2004 story.]

     When CEO compensation is compared to the amount of TARP received through the government bailout, the AFL-CIO report referred to above, makes the numbers astounding. Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram S. Pandit received $38,327,437 for 2008 ; the company received $50 billion in TARP; Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis was paid $9,857,723 in 2008 and the company got $45 billion TARP; American International Group, Inc. paid CEO Martin J,. Sullivan $13,960.382 and the company was given $40 billion Tarp money; James Dimon CEO at JP Morgan Chase & Co. received $28,887,532 and the company $25 billion; Wells Fargo & Company gave CEO John Stumpf $8,768,935 and the company received $25 billion in TARP funds; Richard G. Wagoner, General Motors Corp. CEO was paid $19,761,874 and TARP handed the company $14,284,024,131; Lloyd C. Blankfein, CEO at Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. was paid $53,966,198 while the firm received $10 billion TARP money; Kenneth I. Chenault , American Express CEO was paid $43,393,172  while the company got $3,388,890 from TARP.

    The AFL-CIO’s input is contained in three tiny print 8/12x11 pages filled with more names and numbers than are worth reproducing here. However, you can go to the web site and see for yourself just how far apart performance and compensation looked to be when these businesses were receiving truck loads of TARP money. One has to wonder: What was the financial health of these companies before the government stepped in? And if these businesses appeared  so mismanaged and destined for disaster, why were their CEO’s still being paid huge amounts of money that had to have vastly outdistanced the value their performances?

Money Saving Tax Tips From Big Business: Dress Well and Cheat

Image via Wikipedia

      

     Corporations enjoy looking like the jolly uncle who hands out $30 bucks to the kids for mowing his yard and another $15 for washing his Cadillac. These companies look like good citizens because they employ a lot of the hometown folks, give what appears to be large amounts of money to charity and sponsor community events.

         But their generosity isn’t genuine. It’s part of what they call “smart business” or public relations. Often it’s a smoke screen for corporate slight of hand.

           In his article, “Where Have You Gone, Gordon Gekko? Oh Right, You’re Still Here,” (www.StateofNature.org) Summer,2008 writer Paul Buchheit makes several revealing points most Americans have missed because they’ve been too busy running up their credit cards and borrowing off the equity in their homes. Easy access to money created a false sense of affluence that proved to be a distraction while the following was happening:

   1) For the past 30 years, income has dropped for 90 percent of American households. (But credit was much easier to get.)

  2) While productivity was on the rise since 1980, compensation for workers has almost been at a standstill. (But people hardly noticed because credit cards they didn’t even apply for were flowing into their  mail boxes.

   3) Amazingly, over 60-percent of US companies reported no tax liability from 1996 to 2000.

  4) During the 2000 Presidential Election, corporations complained they were unfairly disadvantaged  by having to compete with foreign business and couldn't make money without shipping jobs overseas. Then, during the first three years of the Bush administration, eighty-two of the country’s largest corporations enjoyed at least one year where they paid no taxes at all.

For thirty years big business has kept the lid on meaningful pay raises, learned how to use less material while making more product to sell, benefited from hefty reductions in tax liability and cut employees loose on a sea of unemployment while shipping their jobs overseas. They tell us they had to take these actions or they could not compete in the world of globalization and turn a profit.

“Greed is good,” said Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street. But what moviegoers took for comic hyperbole, was an accusation of what the real motivating force behind our  Captains of Industry was.

 If this strikes you as liberal-over-the-top exaggeration, return to Paul Buchheit’s piece,“Where Have You Gone, Gordon Gekko?” (www.StateofNature.org) Summer, 2008. There Buchheit tells us how many corporations have dodged taxes by moving their headquarters to tax-free paradises suchas Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. American oil and gas companies have almost 900 subsidiaries, similarly located overseas to evade taxation. Merck, Pfizer, Microsoft and Google are among others who report profits as "offshore earnings", thus out foxing  the taxman. The worst group is Halliburton, Ingersoll-Rand, Accenture and Tyco who have left the country to escape taxation even though they benefit from hundreds of millions in U.S. government contracts. Because of their legal status, they   do not see themselves as citizens, unless it comes to seeking the use of American military power and influence to fatten their wallets and otherwise protect their interests. Not being citizens but business entities, they say they owe no loyalty to anyone other than their shareholders. Moreover, they have been sticking it to workers while using public utilities and other facilities to lessen their costs of doing business.

Big business has moved out of the country to avoid taxes and escape government regulation. It has no interest in giving back to the country nor has it shown any care for the welfare of the people. Taking a responsible role in improving the common good, it maintains, is not a business obligation. The shareholders are the only people who count. And their corporate executives, for the most part, are the shareholders.