Occupy Wall Street - Page 117

On October 27 2011 08:16 DeepElemBlues wrote:


Sure.

First of all, our standard of living increased from 1945 to approximately 1958 because of two factors:

1. The people had had a large savings rate during the war and had lots of saved-up disposable income.
2. The United States was the only industrialized country in the world that not had its industrial base substantially destroyed.

These two factors combined to make the perfect consumerist boom.

In 1958-1960 there was a recession that partly helped Kennedy win the 1960 contest (along with massive - tens of thousands of fake votes at the least - vote fraud in Texas and Illinois, but that's beside the point).

Kennedy cut taxes and the economy improved. Johnson raised taxes and entitlement spending and regulation and Nixon added more entitlements and regulation. The result? The stagflation of the mid-late 1970s that resulted in Ronald Reagan and his sensible tax-cut (the amount of taxes he "raised" from 1981-1989 doesn't even come close to how much he cut in 1981 alone), monetary and regulatory policies caused the biggest jobs boom since just after the war, 17 million jobs from 1983-1989.

High taxes retarded the economic growth of 1940 to the mid-1970s; it would have been even better without them. And government heavy-handedness culminated in the economic misery of Jimmy Carter.

Raise taxes to 45% on every dollar above 2 million in yearly income and capital would flee this country faster than almost everyone in Europe did from Attila the Hun. Capital in massive numbers would go to other countries with lower tax rates and the American economy would simply collapse.

You can't just imagine that you can take huge amounts of capital out of the market with no effect. Confiscatory tax rates have a double whammy - first what the government takes and then misallocates, and then second all the other the money that is sent to Europe or Asia or India or Africa because the governments there won't take so much.

Raising taxes on personal income to that rate would make such a small difference in the deficit anyway that the damage would far outweigh any benefits.

The only way to fix the debt at current spending rates is to raise taxes on everyone making more than the poverty level a year - middle-class and rich alike. This is an unacceptable solution, so people will continue to push the fantasy that we can fix the problem simply by soaking the rich.

It doesn't work. The rich don't have enough to be soaked, they only get soaked for a short time before they move their money to a place where the government can't get at it, and you end up fiscally and economically worse than you did before.

The State of California is a perfect example of what the soak-the-rich attitude results in when implemented as policy. Capital - and people - have been leaving California for years. The government's finances are fucked up almost beyond repair. The economy is in a shambles. The standard of living has fallen for everyone but the super-rich. The state of New York and the State of Illinois are less extreme examples.

Saying we'd go back to the 1930s was a little bit of hyperbole, but we've tried at the state level what you are suggesting we do at the national level, and it has been disastrous.

On October 27 2011 10:05 Tien wrote:
Capitalism is the reason why they were able to collect 2.1+ Trillion in taxes in the 1st place.

Entitlement programs / wars / government bureaucracy is draining America's wealth away.

On October 27 2011 10:58 DrainX wrote:

What the point in having all that wealth if it is all in the hands of a tiny minority? Capitalism is a good engine for creating wealth but without a good system around it, controlling it and directing it, it is more akin to a house on fire than a well managed furnace.

On October 27 2011 11:01 Kiarip wrote:


In capitalism you get to keep all the wealth you've created, unless you've contracted that wealth in exchange for something else ahead of time.

Capitalism is only effective at creating wealth in the first place because we have the incentive of keeping the wealth we create. Redistribution or "direction" of wealth like you're suggesting shuts down capitalism's productivity significantly.

On October 27 2011 11:20 semantics wrote:

And yet for some reason i don't care about productivity when 1 in 4 children in the US live off food stamps. If productivity means more then people in the USA then that's just a large moral decay that is quite sad. And if you knew anything about productivity happy workers are productive workers just take a look at productivity of union works vs non union workers, you don't actually mean productivity you mean profits at the top. =p

On October 27 2011 11:01 Kiarip wrote:In capitalism you get to keep all the wealth you've created, unless you've contracted that wealth in exchange for something else ahead of time.

Capitalism is only effective at creating wealth in the first place because we have the incentive of keeping the wealth we create. Redistribution or "direction" of wealth like you're suggesting shuts down capitalism's productivity significantly.

On October 27 2011 11:36 Zorkmid wrote:
This whole Oakland situation is looking pretty damned crazy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/26/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-review?newsfeed=true

Story about an Iraq vet (2 tours) had his skull fractured by headshot by gas cannister. (Warning - Pic in article is graphic)

On October 27 2011 12:46 ckw wrote:


I live in San Francisco and heard nothing of this from the media, only after searching YouTube did I find the video related to this. How is it that America calls other countries on these sort of issues and yet we let it happen here.

On October 25 2011 14:30 mmp wrote:
Chris Hedges is a boss. SS4 bloodlusting stimpacked vorpal boss.

“In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers. . . . They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.”

—Howard Zinn, from “The Coming Revolt of the Guards,” A People’s History of the United States,

For those of us who have demonstrated and marched in the Occupy movement, it is obvious that the police and the corporate press serve as guards—buffers between the vast majority of the American people and the ruling “corporatocracy” (the partnership of giant corporations, the wealthy elite, and their collaborating politicians). In addition to the police and the corporate press, there are millions of other guards employed by the corporatocracy to keep people obedient and maintain the status quo.

Even a partial revolt of the guards could increase the number of protesters on the streets from the thousands to the millions. When did Zinn predict the revolt would occur, and how can this revolt be accelerated?

The Other Guards

I am a clinical psychologist, and Zinn is correct that mental health professionals also serve as guards who are given small rewards to keep the system going. The corporatocracy demands that psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other mental health professionals assist people’s adjustment to the status quo, regardless of how dehumanizing the status quo has become. Prior to the 1980s, mental health professionals such as Erich Fromm (1900–1980) were concerned by this “adjustment to what?” problem. However, in recent years there has been decreasing awareness among mental health professionals about their guard role, even though today some of the best financial packages offered to us are from the growing U.S. prison system and U.S. military.

Most guards also perform duties besides “guard duty.” The police don’t just protect the elite from the 99 percent; they also provide people with roadside assistance. And mental health professionals also perform “non-guard duty” roles such as improving family relationships. Guards certainly can perform duties helpful for the non-elite, but the elite would be foolish to reward us guards if we didn’t serve to maintain their system.

Many teachers went into their profession because of their passion for education, but they soon discover that they are not being paid to educate young people for democracy, which would mean inspiring independent learning, critical thinking, and questioning authority. While teachers may help young children learn how to read, they are employed by the corporatocracy to socialize young people to fit into a system that was created by and for the corporatocracy. The corporatocracy needs its future employees to comply with their rules, to passively submit to authorities, and to perform meaningless activities for a paycheck. William Bennett, U.S. Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, was clear about the role of schools, “The primordial task of the schools is transmission of the social and political values.”

If you are comfortably at the top of the hierarchy, you reward guards to make your system work. In addition to the police, the corporate press, mental health professionals, and teachers, there are clergy, bureaucrats, and many other guards in the system, all of whom are given small rewards to pacify and control the population. Some guards have rebelled from their pacification and control roles, most have not.

When Will the Revolt of the Guards Occur?

Howard Zinn predicted the revolt of the guards would occur when guards recognize that they are “expendable.”

Historically, the elite’s strategy is to pay what is necessary to fill guard jobs, and when the time is ripe, reduce the rewards of guards and ultimately eliminate the guards. Union teachers—similar to union prison guards who’ve been replaced by non-union guards in for-profit prisons—have discovered that they too are expendable. It is logical for the elite to first use teachers to pacify young people, then use corporate-collaborator politician guards to reduce the rewards of teachers, and finally replace teachers with various technologies (such as computer programmed instruction) that the elite can profit from.

While the corporatocracy once paid us mental health professionals fairly well to provide therapy to help people adjust to the status quo, we now receive relative chump change for therapy, and it’s clear that psychotherapists and counselors are expendable. Mental health professionals are increasingly pressured by insurance corporations to treat the “maladjusted” with drugs, which create wealth for drug corporations and reduces labor costs for health insurance corporations. Today, a psychiatrist can still make good money prescribing drugs, but in the future, the corporatocracy will likely reduce rewards to its drug dispensers. That future is here in the U.S. military, as troops in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan are, without prescriptions, given psychiatric drugs by military medics.

So, law enforcement officers, beware. Cameras and other surveillance technology are becoming increasingly inexpensive, and law enforcement labor costs will increasingly be replaced by inexpensive Orwellian surveillance.

How to Accelerate the Revolt of the Guards

For guards, it is not easy coming out of denial of our role and our fate. As Upton Sinclair observed, “It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

To accelerate the revolt of obedient guards, I recommend two strategies: (1) create unpleasant dissonance about their role as guards; in other words, put guards in some pain for their unquestioning obedience that maintains the system. (2) offer encouragement for even small acts of rebellion against their guard role; small acts of rebellion may well be major financial risks.

It is my experience that guards are far less defensive when they are “off-duty.” So, if you are at protest demonstration, don’t try to lecture police about their role as a guard for the system or stroke them for any act of humanity. When we guards we are on duty, we are extremely vigilant about being manipulated. Off-duty, we are more receptive.

If you have social contact with off-duty law enforcement officers, you might ask them “Wouldn’t it be more satisfying putting the handcuffs on some billionaire tax dodger than arresting some small-time pot user?” I’ve asked police officers if they’ve heard of Jonathan Swift’s quote, “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” On-duty police will respond with “no comment” or a blank stare, but some off-duty cops will smile and even agree. And should off-duty police ever tell you an anecdote in which they ignored a law designed to catch a small fly, give them encouragement.

For off-duty corporate journalists, you might talk to them about how much you admire journalists such as Bill Moyers, former press secretary of Lyndon Johnson, and Chris Hedges, former New York Times reporter, for their rebellion from the their guard role. Remind journalists of their expendability, as the corporate media is increasingly eliminating reporters for the sake of profitability. And if they give you anecdotes in which they created tension with their editor by challenging the system, be encouraging.

If you know any mental health professionals, ask them if they think insurance companies care at all about either patients or providers. They will likely laugh, and say that insurance companies care only about their profits, and most will agree that other giant corporations care only about their profits. You might ask them, “Just how unjust does a society have to become before helping people adjust to it with behavior modification and medication is immoral?” If they have validated their patients’ pain over an increasingly undemocratic and authoritarian society and helped them constructively rebel against a dehumanizing system, encourage these stirrings of rebellion.

Most teachers despise the tyranny created by “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” with its fear-based standardized test preparations and computerized learning programs. Ask teachers, “Is it possible that you, like manufacturing workers, are also expendable?” You might also ask them, “Have you ever told parents of a disruptive kid that it is possible to effectively teach their child without any medication if there were fewer children in the classroom, which would allow their child to receive the attention and structure necessary?” Certainly give teachers encouragement if they have put their job in jeopardy by explaining the purpose of schools in the corporatocracy to any of their anti-authoritarian and alienated students.

In order to rouse more guards to revolt, we should not let obedient guards “off the hook” for their refusal to question, challenge, and resist illegitimate authority. Do not say, “Hey, I understand, you are just doing your job.” Guards must be confronted with the reality of the misery that results from blind obedience. Guards must deal with the reality that history looks unkindly on those who “just followed orders.” And guards must be given confidence that there are revitalizing satisfactions and new community that will emerge for them when they join the revolt of the guards.

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green, 2011). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net.

This is a breath of fresh air. Democratic New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who should know better, wanted Occupy Wall Street protesters out of the park at the NY State Capitol. If they refused to leave, he wanted arrests.

He pressured Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings, who had earlier said he had no problem with the occupiers camping out, and Jennings changed his tune. Orders also went out to New York State Police. Cuomo and Jennings both said, “Get them out of here.”

But the police said no, and stood by the occupiers.

And as the Albany Times Union reported (full disclosure: I used to work for the Times Union):

“We were ready to make arrests if needed, but these people complied with our orders,” a State Police official said. However, he added that State Police supported the defiant posture of Albany police leaders to hold off making arrests for the low-level offense of trespassing, in part because of concern it could incite a riot or draw thousands of protesters in a backlash that could endanger police and the public.

“We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” the official said. “The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.” (via)

The occupation now looks to be settling in and could go on indefinitely. Here’s the backstory…

There are two parks, side by side – one owned by the state, one by the city of Albany. When Cuomo had initially stood firm on an 11 pm curfew for the state park, Jennings had said he was cool with the occupiers tenting in the city park.

But Cuomo wasn’t. We’re not sure what his beef is, but since taking office he’s been governing as GOP-lite, axing spending and taking a hammer to union rights, using austerity as an excuse.

It’s not just that Cuomo has taken big bucks from the Wall Street banksters… he’s pretty much a member of New York’s power elite himself. He’s refused to extend a millionaires tax - in a classic “let them eat cake” moment he responded to the 72% of New Yorkers who support an extension, “The fact that everybody wants it, that doesn’t mean all that much”. It’s a tone-deaf move which has earned him the nickname “Governor one percent“. And with them freaking out, I suppose it makes sense that he would freak out, too.

Cuomo put pressure on Jennings, and Friday night Jennings issued the order: Curfew would be enforced.

The occupiers helped out; at the 11 pm state park curfew, they moved across the line dividing the parks onto city land. The Times Union’s state police source says they had a civil disturbance unit standing by… but with that accomodation, they decided to stand down, rather than provoke a possible riot.

It also helped that the occupation was a mixed crowd of young people, elderly, and families with children.

“There was a lot of discussion about how it would look if we started pulling people away from their kids and arresting them … and then what do we do with the children?” one officer told the Times Union.

Jennings told the NY Post’s hippie-bashing Fred Dicker, “Some of the governor’s people were pretty firm about our not doing this, letting them stay in the park, but basically, we had allowed this before . . . and my counsel said we’d be opening ourselves up to civil liability if we forced them out”.

Albany’s District Attorney was also involved in defusing the issue.

Meanwhile, Albany County District Attorney David Soares on Sunday said that over the weekend he had conversations with Jennings, Albany Police Chief Steven Krokoff and State Police officials about his concerns regarding prosecution of “peaceful protesters.”

Soares said protests at the state Capitol are common, and historically anyone arrested for trespassing generally faces a low-level charge that’s later dismissed.

“Our official policy with peaceful protesters is that unless there is property damage or injuries to law enforcement, we don’t prosecute people protesting,” Soares said. “If law enforcement engaged in a pre-emptive strike and started arresting people I believe it would lead to calamitous results, and the people protesting so far are peaceful.”

This is what happens when people work together. When people act out of respect for the constitution rather than in fear of chaos. When official’s first reaction isn’t. “OMG protests we better start arresting everyone”!

Nobody ever said Democracy wasn’t messy. But it sure beats all the alternatives.

Albany police leaders to hold off making arrests for the low-level offense of trespassing, in part because of concern it could incite a riot or draw thousands of protesters in a backlash that could endanger police and the public.

“We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” the official said. “The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.” (via)

On October 27 2011 15:48 No_Roo wrote:


Ignoring them wouldn't be terribly effective. The police presence is the only thing preventing peaceful protesters from civil disobedience such as indefinitely blockading roads and businesses (banks) which would be incredibly satisfying activity for any movement. In a situation where protesters like these have such strong public support, they really have the local enforcement by the balls.

On October 27 2011 15:12 caradoc wrote:
Guards of the status quo:



http://www.zcommunications.org/how-can-we-rouse-police-and-other-protectors-of-the-corporatocracy-guards-of-the-status-quo-to-join-the-ows-rebellion-by-bruce-e-levine