Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Ed Jewett]

Conservatives Support Protests

Posted on October 7, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

Conservative Groups Support Protests

Last month, I called on conservative groups to endorse the Occupy Wall Street protests:

It is time for some big conservative endorsements, to rally around the non-partisan issues important to all Americans.
The Tea Party should endorse the protests, but so should the Oath Keepers, taxpayer rights groups, conservative Christians, limited government groups, and all other conservative groups.

Yesterday, the Oath Keepers and a founding member of the Tea Party announced that they are supporting the protests:

Oath Keepers sees good reason to stand in the streets with these awakening souls and protect their right to free speech, to peacefully assemble, and to redress their grievances to their government, as the Constitution prescribes for all Americans. That is one thing. Another facet of our initiative is to use these public gatherings to reach and teach many who now hunger for the truth we can show them how the Constitution will protect them better than an oversized, bloated Federal behemoth hell-bent on controlling every aspect of each citizen's life.
To point this out to the masses, Oath Keepers is organizing a joint effort along with Alex Jones of Infowars dot com (who himself called for an Occupy the Fed movement); Steven Vincent of End The Fed; Danny Panzella's Truth Squad TV; Brandon Smith of Alt-Mkt.com; Gary Franch of Restore The Republic; and others as quickly as we can contact them. Remember Bob Dwyer, the guy who started the first Tea Party to launch the Ron Paul revolution? He's in. The forces of Constitutional rule of law must muster now to deflect the bile being belched forth by the socialist/statist extremists …. Oath Keepers has the message American youth need. If we do not go out into the street and give them the truth, can we really say we're still honoring our Oath?

Common Ground Between Conservatives and Liberals

As I've previously noted, both liberals and conservatives hate corporate socialism (where the federal government favors giant corporations at the expense of the little guy) . The Oathkeepers announcement zeroes in on this issue in a way that both conservatives and liberals can agree on:

When a corporation becomes larger than is useful, and seeks to concentrate financial power into the political and governmental spheres, its likeness is no longer the King Snake, but instead is more like a Rattlesnake. At a point we call such corps "Monopoly Capitalists". By the time a grouping of such Monopoly Capitalist corps are setting U.S. foreign policy, which the arms industry certainly does nowadays, the problem becomes unbearably apparent. Bechtel comes to mind, along with Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, Monsanto, General Electric, et al.
That part of Wall Street is certainly to blame. But that is not "Capitalism". Instead, it is "Monopoly Capitalism", and it is now observably moving America into a new world order with intent to place America under the alleged authority of a one-world government. As such, Monopoly Capitalism is un-Constitutional and must be opposed.

Karl Denninger one of the founders of the Tea Party supports the protests (even if he doesn't agree with some of the positions taken by some of the protesters) Denninger posted the following letter today:

You know what the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is?
It is all the things that were in the original Tea Party, but were steadily ignored as the TP became a Republican booster club.
The Tea Party is a contradiction. They want a balanced budget, but they also want the US military to intervene everywhere …. Individual rights are important too, but don't push it too far. After all, republicans came up with today's policies.
There are a few nuts in the OWS crowd, but from what I hear "Occupy Wall Street" is about bringing the fraudsters to justice. Its about changing the banker/government dynamic that runs this country. It's about free markets. It's about ending endless debt. It's about stopping the wars. It's about the rule of law. It's about the libertarian soul of America.
Since the TP lost the focus of addressing the root problems of America, they remain unresolved.
***
Pete Blome
Chair, Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County

Michael Moore Doesn't Speak for the Protest

While Michael Moore says that capitalism itself is the problem, Mr. Moore is wrong. Indeed, one of the main organizers of the protests told me that Moore's statement is very counter-productive.
As I've previously noted:

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilization, heanswered:

I think it would be a good idea.

I feel the same way about free market capitalism.
It would be a good idea, but it is not what we have now. Instead, we have either socialism, fascism or a type of looting.
If people want to criticize capitalism and propose an alternative, that is fine . . . but onlyif they understand what free market capitalism is and acknowledge that America has notpracticed free market capitalism for some time.
***
People pointing to the Western economies and saying that capitalism doesn't work is as incorrect as pointing to Stalin's murder of millions of innocent people and blaming it on socialism. Without the government's creation of the too big to fail banks, Fed's intervention in interest rates and the markets, government-created moral hazardemboldening casino-style speculation, corruption of government officials, creation of a system of government-sponsored rating agencies which had at its core a model ofbribery, and other government-induced distortions of the free market, things wouldn't have gotten nearly as bad.
As Justice Louis Brandeis said:

In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipotent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If government becomes a lawbreaker it breeds contempt for law: it invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.

[Confirmed here.]
If there has been lawlessness and corruption among Wall Street players, it was partially simply modeling the lawlessness and corruption of the Executive Branch and Congress members. I've written elsewhere about how the government lied by saying Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was behind 9/11 (when he didn't and wasn't), that we don't torture (when we did), that we don't spy on Americans (when we did), etc. Just like kids model what their parents do as well as what they say, Wall Street modeled the unlawful and corrupt actions of our government employees.
Being against capitalism because of the mess we've gotten in would be like Gandhi saying that he is against Western civilization because of the way the British behaved towards India.

Corrupt Politicians Enable Wall Street Corruption

The Oathkeepers and conservative alternative media powerhouse Alex Jones also zero in on the Federal Reserve system as a core problem. As Oath Keepers notes in its announcement:

Oath Keepers is planning to "Occupy The Fed Now!" and publicize this to remind the Occupy Wall Street people that the Fed is the source problem, without which the Wall Street criminals would be set back a hundred years. I will be posting our press release and a longer list of groups and orgs who will be joining Oath Keepers in this initiative.
We are currently drawing up our press release regarding our own response to the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, which will be Oath Keepers' official statement. We are now planning an official Oath Keepers project which we've named "Occupy The Fed Now!".
Yes, Oath Keepers has seen the need to block the attempted takeover of the populist movement generally referred to as Occupy Wall Street.
In an extensive phone conference on the evening of October 04, 2011, we heard from Oath Keepers who have attended Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston, Occupy Los Angeles, and Occupy Seattle. The overall consensus from our people at these rallies is that most people attending the rallies are very open-minded to the Oath Keepers mission/message, and that they are hungry for answers. Indeed, our reports indicate that many Americans right now are awakening, in droves it seems, and they are full of questions for which we have the answer the Constitution for the united States of America.

While progressives might assume that the Fed has helped the economy from getting worse, or that the importance of ending the Fed is being overhyped, top economists and financial experts disagree. Seethis, this and this.
As I pointed out Monday, whatever people think the government should do, the D.C. politicos have actually been a large part of the problem:

Because government policy is ensuring high unemployment, it is not surprising that the American protesters are angry at the Federal Reserve and other government institutions, and not just the big Wall Street banks.
Remember, Bush and Obama's economic policies are virtually indistinguishable. Indeed,Obama actually likes high unemployment.
And as I noted in 2009, the government created the giant banks:

As MIT economics professor and former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson points out today, the official White House position is that:

(1) The government created the mega-giants, and they are not the product of free market competition

(2) The White House needs to "regulate and oversee them", even though it is clear that the government has no real plans to regulate or oversee the banking behemoths

(3) Giant banks are good for the economy

Of course, the government has also made it policy to cover up fraud and protect the fraudsters, and so the free market has no chance to punish fraud or cleanse wrongdoing from the system.
Without government-created moral hazard emboldening casino-style speculation,corruption of government officials, creation of a system of government-sponsored rating agencies which had at its core a model of bribery, and other government-induced distortions of the free market, things wouldn't have gotten nearly so bad.
Indeed, the government is so corrupt that the head of the economics department at George Mason University says that D.C. politicians are worse than prostitutes … they are "pimps", since they are pimping out the American people to the financial giants.
And while co-option of government by the big banks is a huge problem, it is also true that corruption in government leads to corruption in the private sector. See this and this. The U.S. has truly become a banana republic, just like the worst Latin American countries.
So anyone who thinks that government would solve all of our problems if it were only freed from obstructionists is only seeing half the problem, and is falling for the oldest trick in the book … the ole' divide and conquer strategy.