If you look around the MSM and the blogosphere--not to mention, in many cases, right outside your front door these past 48 hours--you’ll see it’s now all around us, thanks in no small part to the tens of thousands throughout America that have demanded to have their voices heard as they speak up for the rest of the 99%.
Many know of it as #OccupyWallStreet, but many others are looking at it from 32,000 feet--including Paul Krugman, Elizabeth Warren and even the editors of the NY Times, today--and they’re referring to it in words similar to the phrase used by former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich on his blog on Sunday, as our “Reawakening.”
Then again, for many on Main Street, it’s hard to “reawaken” when you’ve never gone to sleep because you're lying awake at night wondering how you’re going to make it through the next day…
The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America
Robert Reich
RobertReich.org
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.
We are going to battle once again.
Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.
Regressives take the opposite positions…
Reich talks of “…Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right…” And, he notes they’re not conservatives in the sense that they wish to conserve anything.
We’re told, it’s their goal to take us backwards, to the 1920’s – “before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.”
In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.
But, Reich notes that if today’s Wall Street Masters of the Universe and their bought-and-paid-for minions in Washington could really have their way, they’d go farther back than that, to “…the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few. “
Yes…it really is little more than Credit Mobilier writ 1,000 times larger, isn’t it? (Got my first “A” on a term paper in Professor Barbara Kellerman’s Intro to Poli-Sci class at Tufts, thanks to those Wall Street bastards’ misdeeds going back to the years, 1864-1872.)
And, right now, I’m thinking about Tufts as a result of Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed in Sunday’s NY Times, entitled: “America’s ‘Primal Scream,’” where he quotes (Tufts’) Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy finance expert Amar Bhidé…
America’s ‘Primal Scream’
Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times
October 16, 2011
…The banks have gotten away with privatizing profits and socializing risks, and that’s just another form of bank robbery.
“We have a catastrophically bad misregulation of the financial system,” said Amar Bhidé, a finance expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “Its consequences led to a taint of the entire system of modern enterprise.”
Economists used to believe that we had to hold our noses and put up with high inequality as the price of robust growth. But more recent research suggests the opposite: inequality not only stinks, but also damages economies…
Kristof continues on to discuss Robert H. Frank’s “…important new book, ‘The Darwin Economy,’ Robert H. Frank of Cornell University cites a study showing that among 65 industrial nations, the more unequal ones experience slower growth on average. Likewise, individual countries grow more rapidly in periods when incomes are more equal, and slow down when incomes are skewed."
Interestingly, Kristof also mentions in his column this little fascinating tidbit, where he notes that, here in the U.S…
…the critical issue is economic inequity. According to the C.I.A.’s own ranking of countries by income inequality, the United States is more unequal a society than either Tunisia or Egypt.
And, we all know what happened in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year, now don’t we?
Kristof also notes “…that inequality is linked to financial distress and financial crises. There is mounting evidence that inequality leads to bankruptcies and to financial panics,” as he points to a piece published by Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry over at the International Monetary Fund, last month, where the authors state…
“The recent global economic crisis, with its roots in U.S. financial markets, may have resulted, in part at least, from the increase in inequality”… …“equality appears to be an important ingredient in promoting and sustaining growth.”
Kristof reminds us that we’re not just “…talking not about data sets here, but about human beings," as he provides annotation which tells us that inequality “…leads to early deaths and more divorces.”
And, speaking of "people,” here’s Kristof’s conclusion…
…Some critics think that Occupy Wall Street is simply tapping into the public’s resentment and covetousness, nurturing class warfare. Sure, there’s a dollop of envy. But inequality is also a cancer on our national well-being.
I don’t know whether the Occupy Wall Street movement will survive once Zuccotti Park fills with snow and the novelty wears off. But I do hope that the protesters have lofted the issue of inequality onto our national agenda to stay — and to grapple with in the 2012 election year.
And, that brings us to Krugman this morning, in Monday’s NY Times…
Losing Their Immunity
Paul Krugman
NY Times
October 17, 2011
…Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry’s money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry’s behavior, no matter how gently — as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry’s shock over recent events.
You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.
And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans…
Bold type is diarist’s emphasis.
Which then delivers us to the lead editorial in Monday’s NY Times…
Elizabeth Warren’s Appeal
Editorial
New York Times
October 17, 2011
For a few years now, politicians straining against all of the antigovernment demagogy have been searching for a way to energize public interest and remind voters of the essential government services and protections they rely on and all too often take for granted.
President Obama has struggled to find that language, only recently beginning to draw a clear contrast between his goal to revive the economy and put Americans back to work and the stagnation that is the inevitable result of the Republicans’ antitax, antispending policies.
While most other Democrats are afraid to talk about the need for higher taxes and are running away from the problem, Elizabeth Warren, the leading Democratic candidate for a Senate seat in Massachusetts, has engaged the fight and is beginning to rally supporters.
Ms. Warren talks about the nation’s growing income inequality in a way that channels the force of the Occupy Wall Street movement but makes it palatable and understandable to a far wider swath of voters. She is provocative and assertive in her critique of corporate power and the well-paid lobbyists who protect it in Washington, and eloquent in her defense of an eroding middle class.
It is an informed and measured populism, and it helps explain why she immediately became the leading Democratic contender in the race to challenge Senator Scott Brown, the Republican who is up for re-election next year…
Bold type is diarist’s emphasis.
Hmmm… “…politicians straining against all of the antigovernment demagogy have been searching for a way to energize public interest and remind voters of the essential government services and protections they rely on and all too often take for granted.”
Well, guess what? Elizabeth Warren’s figured it out. And, so have scores of millions of Americans!
As Reich noted on Sunday…
…the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.
Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.
In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform…
Reich speculates as to whether or not that’s what we’re witnessing across America, right now.
Perhaps.
He calls it our “Reawakening.”
But, meanwhile, we’re just now hearing, via the Wall Street Journal blog, of how another 2.153 million of us will lose their unemployment benefits (extensions) by early February 2012.
…The extension expires at the end of the year and President Barack Obama‘s jobs plan — shot down in the Senate this week — seeks to keep it going through 2012. The proposal doesn’t extend the maximum beyond 99 weeks, but it would allow those unemployed beyond 26 weeks to continue accessing the current program next year.
More than two million people eligible for benefits under the current plan would fall off the unemployment rolls by mid-February if no extension is passed, according to an estimate from the Labor Department.
Buried deep in the piece, the folks over at the WSJ tells us that long-term unemployment is at a record high.
Read that last sentence again, please. Let me explain it in more stark terms…this is the highest rate of long-term unemployment that’s ever existed since they first started implementing reliable metrics for this statistic.
…The number of Americans out of work for more than six months rose by 208,000 to 6.2 million in September, the Labor Department said last week. Some 44.6% of all of those who are unemployed have been sidelined for at least six months. Most of those individuals — nearly 4.4 million — have been out of work for a least a year.
In past recessions, unemployment extensions continued until the unemployment rate dropped below 7.5%. That’s a long way from the 9.1% rate recorded for September. Indeed, economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey see the rate still elevated at 8.2% in December 2013.
Patience for such extended benefits is waning on Capitol Hill, though…
Patience on Capitol Hill?
Let’s talk about patience on Main Street. Let’s talk about what’s going to happen to that “patience” if unemployment is still at 8.2% in December of 2013, two years from now.
Let’s talk about the $200 billion-plus, per year, that our country is still pissing away in stealthy Wall Street bailouts, as you read this. From one of my many posts on these inconvenient facts…
ONGOING WALL STREET BAILOUTS: More and more folks are discussing the possibility of “another” Wall Street bailout, which in and of itself is propaganda, since taxpayers have been spending an easy $200 billion-plus per year on stealthy Wall Street bailouts since 2008. This time it’s M.I.T. economist Simon Johnson at the NY Times’ Economix blog, from early Thursday.
According to the WSJ blog post, they note a Congressional Budget Office estimate that it will cost the U.S. government $44 billion to extend unemployment benefits through 2012. It’s, basically, either that or watch 2.153 million more of us drop off of the unemployment roll in the first six weeks of 2012.
Yeah, America is “reawakening,” alright. In fact, many on Main Street aren’t even going to sleep, because they’re staying up all night worrying how they’re going to make it through the next day.
Maybe some folks in Washington will “reawaken,” too…before it’s too late.
This weekend, Krugman speaks to us about how those on Wall Street are whining right now. Kristof focuses upon ”primal screams” on Main Street.
What will they be writing about in December 2013 when unemployment’s still at 8.2%?
By then, our society will be begging for a “return” to these days of “primal screams” and “whining.”
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Click on THIS LINK for more information on protests throughout the U.S. as well as appropriate messaging guidance from the OWS organization.
Get the message out! In a battle of wits, Wall Street is defenseless because we have the nuclear weapon: THE TRUTH.
Make a donation to the WeAreTheOther99%'s media fund.
Go to OccupyWallSt.org and make a donation to their General Fund.
Participate!
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(I know. A bit of a rant, tonight. But, as they say: “It’s better to be pissed-off than pissed-on!”)