The 1970s set off a kind of a vicious cycle that led to a concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector, which doesn’t benefit the economy. Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power, which, in turn, arrives to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The physical policies such as tax changes, rules of corporate governance, deregulation were essentially bipartisan. Alongside of this began a very sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drives the political parties even deeper than before into the pockets of the corporate sector.
A couple years later started a different process. The parties dissolved, essentially. It used to be if you were a person in Congress and hoped for a position of committee chair or a position of responsibility, you got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, you started to have to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector and increasingly the financial sector—a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the literally top 1/10th of 1 percent of the population.
Meanwhile, for the general population it began an open period of pretty much stagnation, or decline for the majority. People got by through pretty artificial means — like borrowing, so a lot of debt. Longer working hours for many. There was a period of stagnation and a higher concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve. There’s always been a gap between public policy and the public will, but it just grew kind of astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.
Take a look at what’s happening right now. The big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on is the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not much of an issue. The issue is joblessness, not a deficit. Now there’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, if you want to pay attention to it, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls and the public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply during this stagnation period, this period of decline. The public wants higher taxes on the wealthy and to preserve the limited social benefits. The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. Either they’ll reach an agreement, which will be the opposite of what the public wants, or else it will go into kind of an automatic procedure which is going to have those effects. Actually that’s something that’s going to happen very quickly. The deficit commission is going to come up with its decision in a couple of weeks. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger in the heart of the country, and having negative effects.
Occupy $esame $treet 画
:)))
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
Best Political Cartoon I’ve Seen In a Long Time!
Cartoon by Phil Hands, artizans.com
Graphic: Follow the tweets of the Occupy movement
The Occupy movement began with a single tweet from Adbusters and has grown to more than 550,000 Twitter posts from around the world. Take a look to see where the hotspots are.
Cornel West Arrested (Again) in Harlem
The arrests, which occurred after marchers linked arms in front of a fortress-like NYPD station just off Frederick Douglass Boulevard, were a planned act of civil disobedience.
The march […] focused on the NYPD’s practice of “stop and frisk.” That refers to the controversial – and, critics argue, unconstitutional — practice of officers stopping city residents on the street and searching them.
The number of stop and frisks have soared under Mayor Michael Bloomerg, with 600,000 stops performed last year. 87 percent of those stopped last year were black or Hispanic, a number disproportionate to their share of the population. And just 7 percent of the stops resulted in arrests, meaning the vast majority of those stopped committed no crime. The NYPD argues the practice reduces crime, but it has been coming under increasingly intense criticism in recent months.
Speaking of share — we’ve noticed a lot of #OWS graffiti popping up. Have you? If so, we’d love it if you could share your photos with us.
E-mail the inimitable Tasneem at traja at motherjones dot com, if you’ve got a killer snap.
“Will You Occupy My Life?”
Beezy Douglas gets down on one knee to propose to his girlfriend Deb Zep in Zuccotti Park, while Occupy Wall Street protesters provide a “human mic” to amplify his words for the crowd. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen in this movement,” Douglas says, “but I hope it’s half as successful as our marriage is gonna be!”
Feminist author Naomi Wolf was arrested in New York outside an event that was awarding Gov. Andrew Cuomo. According to The Guardian’s account of the incident, there was around 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters who were gathered outside Skylight Studios to demonstrate against Cuomo’s opposition to a millionaires tax while he was inside being honored by the Huffington Post with a “Game Changer of the Year Award.” The police were apparently trying to keep the sidewalks clear. Read more.
