Forum Post: Beware Donkeys in sheep's clothing
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 8, 2011, 3:30 a.m. EST by OldCrow
(22)
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Occupy Wall Street and the Democratic Party
8 October 2011
As the Occupy Wall Street protest enters its fourth week, it confronts increasingly sharp political pressures and choices that center on the question of the Democratic Party….. ….The protest that began on Wall Street and has now spread across the US has a very different origin and, unlike the corporate-funded and media-promoted Tea Party, is a genuine expression of mass popular discontent. The fact that it is correctly targeting the bankers and speculators reflects a growth of anti-capitalist sentiment.
This has produced growing alarm in the US corporate and political establishment. The aim of the Democrats is to politically emasculate this movement and somehow harness it behind the reactionary policies of the Obama administration. They want to turn it into a harmless safety valve for popular anger while at the same time using it to “energize” the Democrats’ base….
...The millionaire congressman from Harlem may be “mad as hell,” but not too angry to continue to rake in Wall Street money. The financial sector accounted for the lion’s share of his campaign cash this year, nearly $69,000. It was money well spent, as Rangel, then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, emerged as one of the key supporters of the Wall Street bailout.
…“Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance,” wrote Krugman. “The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president. Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken.”
What, precisely, is Obama to “do over?” The agenda for a second term has already been set by a $4 trillion deficit-reduction program that will be translated into devastating cuts to core social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, continuing record unemployment, and even deeper reductions in real wages for the working class.
What the Democrats really want to “do over” is their 2008 election victory, using populist demagogy to mask policies that uphold the interests of the banks, corporations and super-rich…
We MUST have deficit reduction. As long as that debt is there we are DEBT SLAVES. End the wars, end the Fed, abolish agencies and departments, fire bureaucrats, and return power to the people through LOCAL government where accountability resides.
We are not aligned with any party.
We are being co-opted as you speak.
Do Not Speak To The Unions. Do Not Speak To The Parties Pick A Speaker to Address the Press Engage, Do Not Intimidate The Public. They are our base, we NEED their support.
And Please Stop Defecating and Urinating in Public!! Find a "Friendly" business, or Resident. Use a bucket, just practice some basic field sanitation.
Agreed
kick every last dem and republican out and replace them ALL with a new party.
I don't agree that we need deficit reduction right now, it's not so simple as that. This is just playing into the hands of the people that want to slash Social Security and Medicare. The deficit is not the number people should look at. It's the deficit as a percentage of GDP and we have had bigger of those in the past. In 1946 we had the biggest debt to GDP ration we have ever had and right after that we two solid decades of economic boom with rising living standards that included the middle class and even the some of the poor. On the other hand we cut federal spending during the last half of the 1920s and the 1990s pretty drastically and what happened after that? Depression and recession. Like I said it's not so simple as the idea that the Democrats, Republicans and Big Business are pushing these days, that deficits or even big deficits are always bad. Sometimes they aren't.
First, we need to resurrecct the concept of social interest which republicans of lat have correctly but absurly identified as their nemesis. There is a clear social interest of course in education, transportation, healthcare & meicine, worker's rights etc. but more fundamentally in capital formation and investment. Over here in Austria (and other European countries) they invented what is called the Social Market 60 years ago to contain the rapacity of free enterprise without squelching private investment, by inscribing it into governmental policy and constitution. Contrary to what you might hear, businesses get to make money in socialist economies. Yes, there is a social interest in economic inovation and expansion. The middle class bureons because in all other enterprises which involve a clear social interest, salaries are adjusted. Doctors, for example, earn more, just not 300x more than the hospital janitor. The so-called insurance industry and legal profession are kept pretty much at bay because the framework of the Social Market provides security and clearly defines rights and obligations in the marketplace for employers and employees. Pioneers of such a Socail Market must come to the fore in America to re-invigorate the Democratic Party, one that increasingly falters in its rear-guard defense of the social interest. A Social Market system is economically efficient and feasible, in contrast to our currrent dual economy which combines a so-called Free Market system (another form of piracy) with governemtn overlay which produces redundancy, inefficiency and injustice. Keep up the pressure. Rise for the milennia.
It is the Democrat party, there is nothing democratic about it. They want to create the illusion that they support the 99%, but they, and the Republican don't care.
DNC's website: http://www.democrats.org/