I was recently thinking about the dichotomy in the way support for the Occupy Wallstreet movement and the Tea Party has panned out. Perhaps expected, but at the same time what we have, as far as the media is concerned, is a right-wing movement, followed by a left-wing movement.
I don't really see it like that.
Here we see (a biased but informative piece) on how the two are separated. Consider Cenk's own take on the Tea Party in the past and his support for the Occupy Wall Street movement:
Now, what I find interesting is that when I look at the baseline of both movements, they're very similar. They're both anti-corporatist in nature, with the difference being one focuses on the governments role in the machinations of the Corporate Capitalism and one focuses on the Corporations. They're still opposed to the same system.
I don't understand why we can't recognize the fact that both movement actually have valid points, and are share a lot of similar ground. It's the two main political parties and the media that puts the distance between the two and misinforms the public about what each really is. So many people have this visceral knee-jerk reaction to both movements on both sides of the spectrum that I feel like any real conversation gets lost in the political rhetoric of "liberal-conservative".
I personally support both movements for various reasons, and draw lots of fire from friends who support one and disparage the other for my stance.
I suppose I just want to know if I'm alone in this reasoning, because it feels like everyone else I know is so caught up in the left-right politics of the day, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I really do need to "pick a side".
Edit: Just to clarify, I do think there are key differences between the two movements, however I feel most of that is generated by which party chose to adopt the movement after it was started. Yet they clearly exist. Edit 2:I'm not saying that the movements should "unite" but rather that the public should acknowledge the similar ground they're trying to cover and recognize that they both have valid points to their protests instead of pigeon holing themselves into the division of left/right politics and supporting one movement over the other because the TV/Internets told them so.
I never really expect the movements as they exist now to coalesce in any substantive way given the demographic make ups of each. That's just silly.
I agree with OP. Both movements should unite on common ground and take down the corporatism system we have in the USA right now which I think the great majority of americans are against(or would be against, if they were more informed).
The moment OWS tries to achieve its goals through the existing political process is the moment that it fails. The Tea Party has already been swallowed by the system, and that's a sad thing.
The movements can't really combine because they have different targets and objectives. The Tea Party's ire is focused on the federal government. The Tea Party believes that the federal government, its policies, and its regulations are responsible for the current mess that we are in. Yes, the Tea Party is mad about the bailouts and the money that went to Wall Street, but they don't necessarily blame the banks for playing by the rules that the federal government set for them. Instead, the Tea Party blames the corrupt/establishment politicians that sold us out. The Tea Party is also very concerned about the national deficit. As such, the Tea Party wants to slash federal spending, pare back the role of the federal government, and commensurately cut taxes.
OWS, on the other hand, is focused on Wall Street and the banks that got bailed out. OWS sees the same corruption from the other side of the same coin. Oddly, OWS seems to largely be giving the federal government a pass. Unlike the Tea Party, OWS sees the current situation as a systemic failure of our capitalist/Constitutional system. Accordingly, many elements of OWS are looking to replace that capitalist/Constitutional system with something else, which is something that the Tea Party does not support (and quite frankly, it's an idea that the Tea Party reviles).
Personally, I agree with the Tea Party. Moreover, I don't understand why OWS gives the federal government a pass. Let's be honest here: the subprime market emerged because, during the 1990s, federal government politicians decided that everyone deserved a house, regardless of whether they actually could afford it. As such, the feds leaned on banks to give out bad loans, which banks did. Then, presto! The birth of the subprime market, which led to all of the derivatives trading as banks tried to make something of value out of the bad loans by bundling them into other financial instruments. It's a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences and why it's usually better for the federal government to simply not get involved.
Long story short, it's fine that OWS is giving hell to Wall Street and the banks. However, they also need to go after the federal politicians who enabled and encouraged the banks to engage in these risky practices in the first place. Furthermore, they should start with the two greatest enablers who oversaw the unfolding disaster over the past decade: Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
The last thing we need in America is two new groups to form one new one. The Tea Party is already analogous enough to Republican efforts, which makes it not even it's own deal.
We need more ideas, we need more parties, we need more options.
Also, this should have been in the OWS thread, IMO
On October 20 2011 01:40 bonifaceviii wrote: The moment OWS tries to achieve its goals through the existing political process is the moment that it fails. The Tea Party has already been swallowed by the system, and that's a sad thing.
The Tea Party hasn't been swallowed up by anyone. It's still out there and it's still giving the republican establishment fits. Sure, there aren't the same types of mass protests that were seen in 2009 and 2010. Instead, the tea party has become more organized and is working more behind the scenes at a local level. If you have any doubts, I have two words for you: Mitt Romney. The fact that he can't get more than 25-30% of the vote in the republican primary, and the fact that Herman Cain has vaulted to the top, is all of the evidence that you need.
TP tried to solve our problems with government thru conventional means and became what they sought to destroy. OWS can't unite with them because the moment they do it's another protest lost at sea. But if the Tea Party can redeem itself maybe we can see something.
I have a bit of a problem with the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street is that while they have noble goals and OWS is still using noble means to achieve those goals. However what we may see is the problem in government intensifying. Let's not forget that a big problem is that there's such a big gap between Democrats and Republicans in Congress that they cannot agree on ANYTHING. Radicals on both sides of the spectrum might just make the problem worse.
On October 20 2011 01:53 xDaunt wrote: The movements can't really combine because they have different targets and objectives. The Tea Party's ire is focused on the federal government. The Tea Party believes that the federal government, its policies, and its regulations are responsible for the current mess that we are in. Yes, the Tea Party is mad about the bailouts and the money that went to Wall Street, but they don't necessarily blame the banks for playing by the rules that the federal government set for them. Instead, the Tea Party blames the corrupt/establishment politicians that sold us out. The Tea Party is also very concerned about the national deficit. As such, the Tea Party wants to slash federal spending, pare back the role of the federal government, and commensurately cut taxes.
OWS, on the other hand, is focused on Wall Street and the banks that got bailed out. OWS sees the same corruption from the other side of the same coin. Oddly, OWS seems to largely be giving the federal government a pass. Unlike the Tea Party, OWS sees the current situation as a systemic failure of our capitalist/Constitutional system. Accordingly, many elements of OWS are looking to replace that capitalist/Constitutional system with something else, which is something that the Tea Party does not support (and quite frankly, it's an idea that the Tea Party reviles).
Personally, I agree with the Tea Party. Moreover, I don't understand why OWS gives the federal government a pass. Let's be honest here: the subprime market emerged because, during the 1990s, federal government politicians decided that everyone deserved a house, regardless of whether they actually could afford it. As such, the feds leaned on banks to give out bad loans, which banks did. Then, presto! The birth of the subprime market, which led to all of the derivatives trading as banks tried to make something of value out of the bad loans by bundling them into other financial instruments. It's a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences and why it's usually better for the federal government to simply not get involved.
Long story short, it's fine that OWS is giving hell to Wall Street and the banks. However, they also need to go after the federal politicians who enabled and encouraged the banks to engage in these risky practices in the first place. Furthermore, they should start with the two greatest enablers who oversaw the unfolding disaster over the past decade: Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
They didn't so much lean on them, as allow banks and insurance companies to merge with one another (Gramm-Leach-Bliley act of 1999 which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prevented these kinds of mergers). At that moment they opened the floodgates where everyone's, supposedly safe, investments were being thrown into much more risky markets than they should have been.
Do you blame the government for not thinking far enough ahead, or the banks for being the ones that personally risked other people's livelihoods for a quick buck?
The tea party is sponsored by corporations. There ain't much to discuss. The people are used and unrealistic hopes are installed in them (for example that a system can change through it's "democratic means" (=voting)). The conservative agenda plays into this too, I would never demonstrate with people who have that much prejudice against gays and closet racism.
Cenk Uygur makes me want to punch him in the face every time I see him. I'm amazed at how many people watch his show on youtube.
It looks like he was just trying to copy the Daily Show by splicing video clips together to make people look like hypocrites. Sadly he failed miserably. Being for one movement and against another doesn't make someone a hypocrite. Saying the Tea Party is awesome and the OWS are bums that need showers doesn't make someone a hypocrite. How retarded does someone have to be to even hold such a belief? The two groups of people have very little in common. One group wants less government and less taxes and the other wants more government services and higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for it. The 2 groups are even further from each other on the political spectrum than the current Democrat and Republican parties, so why should they come together?
The Daily Show actually did this successfully by showing Sean Hannity saying that the act of protesting was patriotic and commendable and then go on to trash talk the protests on Wall Street. That's hypocrisy because he is talking about the act of protesting in both instances. It's not hypocrisy to say one group of protesters have good values and one doesn't because their values are different!
I'm not saying that the movements should "unite" but rather that the public should acknowledge the similar ground they're trying to cover and recognize that they both have valid points to their protests instead of pigeon holing themselves into the division of left/right politics and supporting one movement over the other because the TV/Internets told them so.
I never really expect the movements as they exist now to coalesce in any substantive way given the demographic make ups of each. That's just silly.
On October 20 2011 02:09 BlackFlag wrote: The tea party is sponsored by corporations. There ain't much to discuss. The people are used and unrealistic hopes are installed in them (for example that a system can change through it's "democratic means" (=voting)). The conservative agenda plays into this too, I would never demonstrate with people who have that much prejudice against gays and closet racism.
And this is exactly the problem I try to address in my post. No, the Tea Party isn't "sponsored by corporations", it was ideologically hijacked by the GOP because of the internal threat it represented to the status quo of the right. The core of the Tea Party is still the same.
Ron Paul in the House Financial Services Committee, September 10, 2003
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on the Treasury Department's views regarding government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). I would also like to thank Secretaries Snow and Martinez for taking time out of their busy schedules to appear before the committee.
I hope this committee spends some time examining the special privileges provided to GSEs by the federal government. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the housing-related GSEs received $13.6 billion worth of indirect federal subsidies in fiscal year 2000 alone. Today, I will introduce the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act, which removes government subsidies from the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and the National Home Loan Bank Board.
One of the major government privileges granted to GSEs is a line of credit with the United States Treasury. According to some estimates, the line of credit may be worth over $2 billion. This explicit promise by the Treasury to bail out GSEs in times of economic difficulty helps the GSEs attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital. More importantly, the line of credit is a promise on behalf of the government to engage in a huge unconstitutional and immoral income transfer from working Americans to holders of GSE debt.
The Free Housing Market Enhancement Act also repeals the explicit grant of legal authority given to the Federal Reserve to purchase GSE debt. GSEs are the only institutions besides the United States Treasury granted explicit statutory authority to monetize their debt through the Federal Reserve. This provision gives the GSEs a source of liquidity unavailable to their competitors.
The connection between the GSEs and the government helps isolate the GSE management from market discipline. This isolation from market discipline is the root cause of the recent reports of mismanagement occurring at Fannie and Freddie. After all, if Fannie and Freddie were not underwritten by the federal government, investors would demand Fannie and Freddie provide assurance that they follow accepted management and accounting practices.
Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.
Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government's interference in the housing market, the government's policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary, but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.
No less an authority than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has expressed concern that government subsidies provided to GSEs make investors underestimate the risk of investing in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to once again thank the Financial Services Committee for holding this hearing. I would also like to thank Secretaries Snow and Martinez for their presence here today. I hope today's hearing sheds light on how special privileges granted to GSEs distort the housing market and endanger American taxpayers. Congress should act to remove taxpayer support from the housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again forced to bail out investors who were misled by foolish government interference in the market. I therefore hope this committee will soon stand up for American taxpayers and investors by acting on my Free Housing Market Enhancement Act.
The political spectrum isn't actually a line that goes left and right. Technically it's a circle that goes clockwise and counterclockwise. If you keep going to pure liberalism and pure conservativism what you get is totalitarianism (Nazis vs. Communists, the two had radically different ideals but probably had more in common than the Dems and Reps we have in Congress). If they manage to converge on the other side of the circle then there's no reason for them not to unite.
One of the biggest beliefs of the OWS movement is that wealth distribution is unfair in America. The Tea Party is firmly opposed to this line of thinking.
Also, OWS wants corporations to have less say in government. The Tea Party movement wants the government to have less say in corporations. I dunno why you'd think they're so similar.
So many people are missing the point and only reading what they want to read -_-
"I'm not saying that the movements should "unite" but rather that the public should acknowledge the similar ground they're trying to cover and recognize that they both have valid points to their protests instead of pigeon holing themselves into the division of left/right politics and supporting one movement over the other because the TV/Internets told them so.
I never really expect the movements as they exist now to coalesce in any substantive way given the demographic make ups of each. That's just silly."
Again.
On October 20 2011 02:21 overt wrote: One of the biggest beliefs of the OWS movement is that wealth distribution is unfair in America. The Tea Party is firmly opposed to this line of thinking.
Also, OWS wants corporations to have less say in government. The Tea Party movement wants the government to have less say in corporations. I dunno why you'd think they're so similar.
In both cases doesn't that demonstrate a common understanding that the two entities are far too embedded with one another? There's your similarity.
Ron Paul in the House Financial Services Committee, September 10, 2003
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on the Treasury Department's views regarding government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). I would also like to thank Secretaries Snow and Martinez for taking time out of their busy schedules to appear before the committee.
I hope this committee spends some time examining the special privileges provided to GSEs by the federal government. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the housing-related GSEs received $13.6 billion worth of indirect federal subsidies in fiscal year 2000 alone. Today, I will introduce the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act, which removes government subsidies from the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and the National Home Loan Bank Board.
One of the major government privileges granted to GSEs is a line of credit with the United States Treasury. According to some estimates, the line of credit may be worth over $2 billion. This explicit promise by the Treasury to bail out GSEs in times of economic difficulty helps the GSEs attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital. More importantly, the line of credit is a promise on behalf of the government to engage in a huge unconstitutional and immoral income transfer from working Americans to holders of GSE debt.
The Free Housing Market Enhancement Act also repeals the explicit grant of legal authority given to the Federal Reserve to purchase GSE debt. GSEs are the only institutions besides the United States Treasury granted explicit statutory authority to monetize their debt through the Federal Reserve. This provision gives the GSEs a source of liquidity unavailable to their competitors.
The connection between the GSEs and the government helps isolate the GSE management from market discipline. This isolation from market discipline is the root cause of the recent reports of mismanagement occurring at Fannie and Freddie. After all, if Fannie and Freddie were not underwritten by the federal government, investors would demand Fannie and Freddie provide assurance that they follow accepted management and accounting practices.
Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.
Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government's interference in the housing market, the government's policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary, but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.
No less an authority than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has expressed concern that government subsidies provided to GSEs make investors underestimate the risk of investing in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to once again thank the Financial Services Committee for holding this hearing. I would also like to thank Secretaries Snow and Martinez for their presence here today. I hope today's hearing sheds light on how special privileges granted to GSEs distort the housing market and endanger American taxpayers. Congress should act to remove taxpayer support from the housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again forced to bail out investors who were misled by foolish government interference in the market. I therefore hope this committee will soon stand up for American taxpayers and investors by acting on my Free Housing Market Enhancement Act.
On October 20 2011 02:21 overt wrote: One of the biggest beliefs of the OWS movement is that wealth distribution is unfair in America. The Tea Party is firmly opposed to this line of thinking.
Also, OWS wants corporations to have less say in government. The Tea Party movement wants the government to have less say in corporations. I dunno why you'd think they're so similar.
In both cases doesn't that demonstrate a common understanding that the two entities are far too embedded with one another? There's your similarity.
Libertarians, Neo-Nazis, Communists, and Anarchists all dislike our current form of government and would want to replace it with something else (or nothing else). That doesn't make them similar.
Both groups dislike how intertwined corporations and government are but they have radically different opinions on how to handle them. In the same way, both Pro-Lifers and Pro-Choicers would agree that teenage pregnancy isn't a good thing but they'd differ pretty heavily on how to handle the situation.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zAGTj.jpg)
