Y'know it's funny. Everyone seems to have advice for Occupy. Everyone seems to be talling them You're not protesting right. But it seems to me that bit by bit, they're getting done exactly what needs to be done. They're applying pressure and not only is the Left responding, so is the right as the Manchester Union Leader decided to endorse Newt Gingrich because Mitt Romney was a little too 1%-ty.
Here you've got the L.A. Times writing their own Manifesto For Occupy, wherein they suggest the kids really should focus on the Banks (as if they weren't already)
Protesters and their backers could make a difference by pushing the banks to modify defaulting mortgages and allow more "underwater" borrowers to refinance their loans.
Consumers demonstrated their power over banks when, by closing or threatening to close their accounts, they persuaded Bank of America to drop its plans to impose a charge on debit-card users; a similar economic boycott of banks that are too eager to default could get a new message across.
It seems to me that 600,000 consumers just didn't happen to drop the BofA accounts magically. They UnOccupy Big Banks movement was Inspired by the Protestors - when they announced National Bank Transfer Day on Nov 5th. It's not something they should do, it's something they did.
But the ignorant advice doesn't stop there.
Meanwhile, protesters could pressure Congress to explore a financial transactions tax — a fee on every Wall Street trade.
That would be the tax supported by Sen Tom Harkin and Rep Pete Defazio who both credit Occupy Wall Street for putting the wind at their banks for putting it forward.
Boosted by the Occupy Wall Street movement, two Democrats in the House and Senate are renewing a push for a transaction tax on speculative trades.
"The big threat that the Wall Street apologists have always used is, 'My God, all of our firms will move to Europe,'" Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the House sponsor, told HuffPost. He noted that London already has a small fee on some transactions, yet "I haven't noticed the people fleeing Fleet Street."
The OWS movement has been criticized for lacking specific demands, but the renewed push for the transaction tax undermines that line of attack. Specific solutions to economic inequality are not in short supply. What's been missing for years has been the political will to implement them.
Yeah, those Time's people - Geniuses I tell ya, Geniuses.
Similar to National Bank Transfer Day, and the Harkin/Defazio Transaction Tax, another House Democrat has put forward a much needed idea, a Constitutional Amendment, H.J. Res 90 to End Corporate Personhood and address the corruption of our political process by monied interests. He even calls it The Occupied Amendment.
Also via Think progress:
“No matter how long protesters camp out across America, big banks will continue to pour money into shadow groups promoting candidates more likely to slash Medicaid for poor children than help families facing foreclosure,” said Deutch in a statement provided to ThinkProgress. “No matter how strongly Ohio families fight for basic fairness for workers, the Koch Brothers will continue to pour millions into campaigns aimed at protecting the wealthiest 1%. No matter how fed up seniors in South Florida are with an agenda that puts oil subsidies ahead of Social Security and Medicare, corporations will continue to fund massive publicity campaigns and malicious attack ads against the public interest. Americans of all stripes agree that for far too long, corporations have occupied Washington and drowned out the voices of the people. I introduced the OCCUPIED Amendment because the days of corporate control of our democracy. It is time to return the nation’s capital and our democracy to the people.”
How's that for having an influence? I don't see a Tea Party Amendment on the docket, do you?
theoccupiedamendment.org actually includes a petition. If you care about this issue, please visit and sign it.
As I reported lost month, there is also another Senate measure to block Citizens United which is more narrowly focused than this amendment. That amendment has it's problems. Specifically it would could severely damage the 1st Amendment.
H.J. 90 seems to take a different tack.
Section 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.
Section 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.
Section 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or upon any ballot measure submitted to a vote of the people.
One could argue that Section 3 is quote serious. It's literally a financial cease fire not only for corporate contributions, but also for PACs and Union contributions to elections - or would this only apply to "private entities" and not public non-profit entities? Hmm...
The Times though, does have something to say about this even in it's own Dickish manner.
The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission was a prime example of the kind of judicial activism that conservatives hate, except when it benefits their cause.
...
Congress could undo part of the damage by approving laws that would enssure that shareholders, or rank-and-file union members, approve of their organization's political spending. There's also a movement afoot among a handful of Democratic senators for a constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United, but that's a quixotic quest. Feel free to back it, Occupiers, but prepare to have your hearts broken when it goes nowhere.
Yeah, I'm sure the fact that Roe V. Wade is still the settled law of the land is really breaking the heart of Family Research Council. That hasn't seemed to have stopped the growing Personhood Movement much.
But it 's actually on the issue of taxation that the Times goes completely off the rails and into the ditch.
For a model of how to fix taxes the right way, we look to the Reagan reforms of 1986, when loopholes and tax shelters were eliminated, top rates were reduced and capital gains (collected mostly by the wealthy) were taxed at the same rate as other kinds of income.
Spit Take!! (Coffee goes flying across the laptop!)
In 86 Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate to 25% and began the Explosion in the Deficit that we're struggling with now. They ignore that he also Payroll Taxes on working people, and this policy generated one of the first big spikes in Income Inequality.
If that's their solution to the income gap - They're Going the Wrong Way.
All they need to do is Let the Bush Tax Cuts Expire, and most of our budget, deficit and IMO economic problems would evaporate.
But what's even worse than the Times' suggestion are some of the comments.
Everyone keeps getting this backwards. The Clinton Administration threatened banks with criminal prosecution and massive fines (which they levied on a number of banks) if financial insitutions did not lend to minorities, regardless of creditworthiness. And so the banks made the bad loans. And the loans weren't paid back. And of course, America's real estate market collapsed. And our banks began to fail.
The Clinton Administration did what? Criminal Prosecution for not offering loans to minorities?
Not really. This is what they did.
The Justice Department Civil Rights Division filed a record 140 cases last year to enforce fair housing laws, a 35% increase from the number of cases filed in 1992.
The Department of Housing & Urban Development has aggressively fought to knock down discriminatory barriers, actively intervening to integrate a once segregated public housing complex in Vidor, Texas.
The Treasury Department, working with the Justice Department, ordered a Mississippi bank that denied loans because of race to implement a remedial lending plan for minority customers.
The Justice Department obtained an agreement from a South Dakota bank that charged higher interest rates to Native Americans to compensate minority borrowers and remedy its lending practices.
Whistling past the Graveyard of Bad Bush Policy and Regulatory Capture, the Right-Wing is continuing to spew forth this meme that somehow The Clinton Administration Forced the Banks to give Bad Loans To Minorities.
Just look at this from Answer.com:
BEST ANSWER: Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.
But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."
This is frankly bullshit. First of all it's the Community Reinvestment Act, not Redevelopement. Secondly, the Clinton Administration did push to End Mortgage and Lending Discrimination, that is true. But the argument that this Forced the banks to issue sub-prime loans is false. As has been shown Senate Report on the Financial Crisis minorities were actually targeted by the Banks for Hand-grenade Subprime Mortgages even when they fully qualified for a normal rate mortgage.
One memory particularly troubles Theckston. He says that some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers — those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English — and nudged them toward subprime loans.
These less savvy borrowers were disproportionately blacks and Latinos, he said, and they ended up paying a higher rate so that they were more likely to lose their homes. Senior executives seemed aware of this racial mismatch, he recalled, and frantically tried to cover it up.
That's not something that Bill Clinton made them do, but they seem more than eager to scapegoat minorities for the corrupt and fraudulent practices of the Banks.
You can watch this segment for 60 Minutes where the Executive Vice President in charge of investigating Fraud at Countrywide states that fraudulent behavior was Systemic at the Company.
Thirdly, the person who posted that answer claims to be a banker from Wachovia, who were up to their ears in the crisis and were eventually sold to Wells Fargo. From the Senate Report.
Had Goldman not securitized the $2 billion in Fremont and New Century loans, the Mortgage Department would likely have had to liquidate the warehouse accounts containing them and either sell the loan pools or keep the high risk loans on its own books.
On April 11, 2007, a Goldman salesman forwarded to Mr. Egol a scathing letter from a
customer, a Wachovia affiliate, which had purchased $10 million in RMBS securities backed by Fremont loans and underwritten by Goldman. The client wrote that it was “shocked” by the poor performance of the securities “right out of the gate,” and concerned about Goldman’s failure to have disclosed information about the poor quality of the underlying loans in the deal termsheet:
Goldman was selling Wachovia Toxic Securities, Lying to Them about their value, then short-selling them and making money on thier failure. Sorry, but Bill Clinton didn't make them do that in 2007.
If anything Clinton's fail was in massive deregulation and signing the Gramm-Leach-Blyly Act which tore down the firewall between Mortgage Banks and Investment Banks created by Glass-Steagall and allowed for Subprime mortgages that were Designed to Fail to become a cash-cow for the banks and investment houses to bet against.
It wasn't because he was pushing give houses to the darkies who didn't deserve them.
Rep. Deutch's Amendment does really address that problem - but it is showing that the pressure applied by #Occupy is being felt and Solutions are presenting themselves to the problems that they've dedicated themselves to highlighting.
As I type this President Obama is having a Press Conference calling for the extension of the Payroll Tax Cut to help the economy and put more money into the hands of the 99%. Y'know Consumers, who buy stuff - and Create Jobs.
Vyan