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

[Peter Lemkin]

Just pychobabble in the article above. Of course [for example] no local authority needs permission of the Federal structures nor agencies to arrest Occupy protestors, BUT the coordinated, similar manner and timing of the arrests/attacks [along with the other evidence] is IMO persuasive. Any half-witted person would also see that these peaceful Occupiers are a greater threat to the powers that be than any armed external foes.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

[h=1]We Are the 99.9%

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: November 24, 2011

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/opinion&pos=Frame4A&sn2=f8475720/9aad5d74&sn1=789bc813/e6144acb&camp=FSL2011_articletools_120x60_1629907c_nyt5&ad=120x60_descendents_NOW&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efoxsearchlight%2Ecom%2Fthedescendants"]
[/URL]



"We are the 99 percent" is a great slogan. It correctly defines the issue as being the middle class versus the elite (as opposed to the middle class versus the poor). And it also gets past the common but wrong establishment notion that rising inequality is mainly about the well educated doing better than the less educated; the big winners in this new Gilded Age have been a handful of very wealthy people, not college graduates in general.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

If anything, however, the 99 percent slogan aims too low. A large fraction of the top 1 percent's gains have actually gone to an even smaller group, the top 0.1 percent the richest one-thousandth of the population.
And while Democrats, by and large, want that super-elite to make at least some contribution to long-term deficit reduction, Republicans want to cut the super-elite's taxes even as they slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the name of fiscal discipline.
Before I get to those policy disputes, here are a few numbers.
The recent Congressional Budget Office report on inequality didn't look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, did. According to that report, between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted, after-tax income of Americans in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. The equivalent number for the richest 0.1 percent rose 400 percent.
For the most part, these huge gains reflected a dramatic rise in the super-elite's share of pretax income. But there were also large tax cuts favoring the wealthy. In particular, taxes on capital gains are much lower than they were in 1979 and the richest one-thousandth of Americans account for half of all income from capital gains.
Given this history, why do Republicans advocate further tax cuts for the very rich even as they warn about deficits and demand drastic cuts in social insurance programs?
Well, aside from shouts of "class warfare!" whenever such questions are raised, the usual answer is that the super-elite are "job creators" that is, that they make a special contribution to the economy. So what you need to know is that this is bad economics. In fact, it would be bad economics even if America had the idealized, perfect market economy of conservative fantasies.
After all, in an idealized market economy each worker would be paid exactly what he or she contributes to the economy by choosing to work, no more and no less. And this would be equally true for workers making $30,000 a year and executives making $30 million a year. There would be no reason to consider the contributions of the $30 million folks as deserving of special treatment.
But, you say, the rich pay taxes! Indeed, they do. And they could and should, from the point of view of the 99.9 percent be paying substantially more in taxes, not offered even more tax breaks, despite the alleged budget crisis, because of the wonderful things they supposedly do.
Still, don't some of the very rich get that way by producing innovations that are worth far more to the world than the income they receive? Sure, but if you look at who really makes up the 0.1 percent, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that, by and large, the members of the super-elite are overpaid, not underpaid, for what they do.
For who are the 0.1 percent? Very few of them are Steve Jobs-type innovators; most of them are corporate bigwigs and financial wheeler-dealers. One recent analysis found that 43 percent of the super-elite are executives at nonfinancial companies, 18 percent are in finance and another 12 percent are lawyers or in real estate. And these are not, to put it mildly, professions in which there is a clear relationship between someone's income and his economic contribution.
Executive pay, which has skyrocketed over the past generation, is famously set by boards of directors appointed by the very people whose pay they determine; poorly performing C.E.O.'s still get lavish paychecks, and even failed and fired executives often receive millions as they go out the door.
Meanwhile, the economic crisis showed that much of the apparent value created by modern finance was a mirage. As the Bank of England's director for financial stability recently put it, seemingly high returns before the crisis simply reflected increased risk-taking risk that was mostly borne not by the wheeler-dealers themselves but either by naïve investors or by taxpayers, who ended up holding the bag when it all went wrong. And as he waspishly noted, "If risk-making were a value-adding activity, Russian roulette players would contribute disproportionately to global welfare."


[url=http://occupyblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/democracy-now-occupy-everywhere.html][/url][/h]

[Peter Lemkin]

[Ed Jewett]

Who is this Naomi Wolf, and what can be said definitively about her, her previous writings, her allegiances and her source of support?

[Peter Lemkin]

Who is this Naomi Wolf, and what can be said definitively about her, her previous writings, her allegiances and her source of support?

One word: IMPECCABLE! She wrote End of America and other books on the coming and present fascism in America. End of America can also be found as a video on the internet under the title and her name. I have read the book a few times and each time it brings tears to my eyes. It is full of strength, righteous indignation, and the power of emergency and yet hope. Don't fail to get the book or sometimes one can find it on the internet for download in the nooks and crannies.

For the introduction to End of America, download it [URL="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-09-10-EOAIntroductionnocover.pdf"]here.
If this 22 page intro doesn't convince you, nothing will.



[/URL]

[Peter Lemkin]

Would Jesus Join the Occupy Protests?

November 26, 2011

In the holiday season, many Christians take pride in helping the poor by donating food and toys but U.S. religious leaders have stayed in the background of challenges to an inequitable economic system, leaving that Jesus work to mostly secular young people of the Occupy movement, the Rev. Howard Bess observes.
By the Rev. Howard Bess
When the Martin Luther King Jr. monument was dedicated recently in Washington DC, I was reminded that the civil rights movement in America was led not by a politician fulfilling campaign promises, nor by a popular evangelist bent on saving souls, but by a highly trained theologian who put his religious teachings into practice with a demand for justice for those who had suffered at the hands of the rich and the powerful.
The Rev. King was a Baptist preacher who took his religion into the arena of racism, economics and social disparity. However, hatred caught up with him, and he was killed.
Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Washington DC

Now, nearly a half century later, there is another broad-based protest that is gaining momentum. The Occupy Wall Street protests echo some of King's complaints about economic inequality and social injustice and the message can no longer be ignored.
The significance of this latest public protest movement, erupting all over the country, may eventually rival the impact of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, yet when comparing the two movements, there is one glaring difference: priests, pastors and clergy of every stripe are rarely in the forefront of Occupy protests.
Instead, secular young people are doing the very work that Jesus from Nazareth would urge us to do. Just as Jesus condemned the injustices of his own day and overturned the money-changing tables at the Temple the Occupy protesters are challenging how Wall Street bankers and today's rich and powerful are harming the masses of people.
This week, religious people have felt proud of giving turkeys to the poor, but they should be joining the protests against the haughty rich. I maintain that Jesus would be a part of the actions in Portland, Denver, New York and many other cities. For Christians, the crucial issue should be "what would Jesus do"?
Today, Christian theologians and Bible scholars agree that the Jesus trip to Jerusalem at the end of his life is essential to understand what Jesus was about. Yet, Christian tradition has brainwashed followers of Jesus about the realities of his trip south to Jerusalem. We have all been exposed to the worship services in which children march waving palm branches and singing "Hosanna."
Traditionally we have called the event "the triumphal entry." However, put into the political and social context of Jerusalem in the early first century BCE, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was probably more like a protest march that mocked every leader in the city.
Political and religious "leaders" of the day probably would have ridden into town on a prancing horse, certainly not a humble donkey. So, Jesus's choice of transportation was more street theatre than triumphal entry. It triggered a week of confrontations and arguments with the leaders of state and Temple.
The key event of the week was the incident in the Temple. Once again church tradition has given us a special name for the incident, "the cleansing of the Temple." But It was more likely another piece of street theatre that became a bit physical.
To better understand the Temple incident, we need to understand its context. The Temple had become a lot more than a religious temple. It had become a tax collection agency and a bank. The Temple held large sums of money accumulated by collecting tithes from the faithful.
In reality, the tithe was a tax, not a freely given gift to God. In addition, fees were charged for participation in the Temple's religious exercises. So, the Temple collected lots of money.
With that fat treasury, the Temple had entered the banking business and regularly made loans, primarily to poor people. Poor people were the victims not only of a flat tax, but also high-interest loans. So, the gap between the haves and the have-nots was growing rapidly. The poor were getting poorer, and the rich were getting richer.
Yet, equity was a key concept in the Israelite tradition. Torah (the law) had very specific rules demanding systematic redistribution of wealth. But those who controlled the Temple operation completely ignored their own religious teachings. The banking operation that had developed was very good to those who controlled the system.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the whole world. However, from the perspective of history, Jesus died because he challenged a banking system that passed itself off as being righteous.
Today, bank buildings are the temples of America and the financial industry is a key pillar of an increasingly inequitable economic system. Although banks and their controlling officers claim to be upholders of orderly American life, a growing number of people know better.
Recent surveys have asked people "who in the banking business do you trust?" Credit unions came out on top, followed by locally controlled banks. Then, came regional banks. Large national banks came in dead last.
Christians should thank the current Occupy Wall Street protesters for their message and their activism. They are doing our justice work for us. The current crop of national bank leaders are being shown to be just as corrupt as the Temple bankers were in Jesus's day.
If Jesus were present among us today, he would be moving from Portland, to Los Angeles, to Kansas City, to Dallas, up to Chicago and on to Wall Street in New York City. He would join the protest in every city. He would be demanding an overhaul of our financial and banking system. He would be standing with the poor and their allies and against the rich and their protectors.
When Jesus pursued the corruption of his own day, the representatives of the religious and political status quo killed him. And Jesus said to his followers "take up your cross and follow me."
The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

[Lauren Johnson]

Who is this Naomi Wolf, and what can be said definitively about her, her previous writings, her allegiances and her source of support?

One word: IMPECCABLE! She wrote End of America and other books on the coming and present fascism in America. End of America can also be found as a video on the internet under the title and her name. I have read the book a few times and each time it brings tears to my eyes. It is full of strength, righteous indignation, and the power of emergency and yet hope. Don't fail to get the book or sometimes one can find it on the internet for download in the nooks and crannies.

For the introduction to End of America, download it [URL="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-09-10-EOAIntroductionnocover.pdf"]here.
If this 22 page intro doesn't convince you, nothing will.

[/URL]

I got Joshua Holland's critique from a re-tweet from @NaomiKlein, which implies she approved of it. I put it up because for those interested. But I would have to say, I have come to see Wolf's thesis as being kind of loosey goosey. She may be correct, but her case is kind of weak.

[Peter Lemkin]

Who is this Naomi Wolf, and what can be said definitively about her, her previous writings, her allegiances and her source of support?

One word: IMPECCABLE! She wrote End of America and other books on the coming and present fascism in America. End of America can also be found as a video on the internet under the title and her name. I have read the book a few times and each time it brings tears to my eyes. It is full of strength, righteous indignation, and the power of emergency and yet hope. Don't fail to get the book or sometimes one can find it on the internet for download in the nooks and crannies.

For the introduction to End of America, download it [URL="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2007-09-10-EOAIntroductionnocover.pdf"]here.
If this 22 page intro doesn't convince you, nothing will.

[/URL]

I got Joshua Holland's critique from a re-tweet from @NaomiKlein, which implies she approved of it. I put it up because for those interested. But I would have to say, I have come to see Wolf's thesis as being kind of loosey goosey. She may be correct, but her case is kind of weak.

Sorry, I don't know exactly which 'case' you are referring to, but if it is the one in No Logo or End of America, I find nothing wrong with her analysis, alarm, nor suggestions on how to save America and the Planet. Her views are basically those much covered [though in more depth by Klein] now by the Occupy Movement.

[Peter Lemkin]

Seems that Occupy LA is next......tonight [now] or very, very soon! Lawyers plan to file a restraining order in the morning.....but that may be a bit too late, as it was in NYC...but not without some effect - and would allow a legal temporary re-ocupation. The political situation in LA is very complex. The city Council has endorsed the occupation, the Mayor and Police [and no doubt DHS and FBI] are trying to have them removed.