Forum Post: Let's bring in the Libertarians en masse!
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 6:56 p.m. EST by provojoe
(7)
from San Jose, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The Libertarian Cato Institute is creating a philosophical basis to merge the good in our movements!!
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/tea-party-meet-occupy-wall-street-ows-tea-party/
I can't imagine that will work in the long run. There may be tactical alliances on specific issues with Libertarians, like recquiring Fed. Reserve to be more transparent, ala Bernie Sanders works, but they will part company with the populist left, and the rest of the left on future reforms of the FED, like those Bill Greider has been outlining for two decades or more. I concede they may also back breaking up the major Wall Street firms and their European counterparts, but so do otherwise conservative business school professors.
Next Quick test: will Liberatarians support FDR's Second Bill of Rights from 1944, with the first Right being that to a job - a universal right that needs to be global in this current state of the world to be effective here too? Go ahead, pop the question. See if they will back the first Right or any of the next seven.
More than happy to be proven wrong on this; and this is no argument against working with Libertarians for tactical alliances of a temp nature, just a long run caution that their view of an ideal future economy is unlikely to mesh with the majority of the encampted.
The ONLY person in congress to battle, for his entire time there, for auditing and ending the Fed is Ron Paul. He authored the legislation (numerous times) but it never got support until after the TARP bailout. It was Bernie Sanders, in the senate, who torpedoed Ron Paul's bill by watering it down. Paul's bill would have made ALL Fed activity transparent and subject to regular audits. Sanders amended the house bill by making the audits only under special circumstances and extremely limited (TARP). That one, limited audit, all thanks to Ron Paul's decades of diligence on this matter, revealed that the Fed gave TRILLIONS of TARP funds not just to American corps and banks but to European banks. Now, imagine if Sanders hadn't betrayed Ron Paul and we could see it ALL.
The Fed has to be phased out in short order if we are to re-gain control over our own money supply and economy.
END THE FED
Dear End the Fed:
I'll take Bill Greider's reforms of the Fed over Paul's "abolitionist" views, but this really involves a more expansive story of what a better "political economy" would look like. In very brief form, Greider wanted to bring the Fed under greater political accountability, broaden its membership so that it included more diversity than just banker's and certified banker's friends and academics, re-emphasize its mission to balance fighting inflation with achieving something close to full employment...well, that's heresy enough...I certainly don't want to go back to the panics and depressions of the 19th century, and attribute the fed's clear role in the current one to its 30 year plus drift to the far Right shores of economic thought...
It's the constitution, prisoners451, and about obeying it's restrictions on government - the very entity that defied it's collective oath and gave control of the People's currency to a cabal of elite banking families.
The Fed does, in fact, control inflation and booms and busts. They practice the Keynesian economics of debt as money. That system does nothing but transfer the real wealth of the People to the elite money masters. If you prefer that system, perhaps you should apply for a job with the IMF. You, too, can be part of the 1%! In the mean time, many of us are working to return the People's money to the People, 100%.
The Fed Res and comparable European central banks were set up to conservatively contain the universally bad fall-out from the panics and depressions which resulted from the abuses of accumulated private economic power, which, correct me please, our Constitution failed to set up checks and balances against - see rise of the robber barons - since the equivalent economic oligarchs of the Const. day in 1787 were shipping merchants and large land owners and land speculators, not RR barons and oil oligarchs. To believe that the Constit. of that era, 1787 could deal with America's econ. future as it unfolded is to believe in the self-healing qualities of the market place - even in situations like today or the 1930's. That's Amity Shlaes fantasy and history re-written in "The Forgotten Man."
As wise and profound as our Constitution was to prevent political abuses and concentrations of power, its asking too much of a small and old document to deal with the evolution of capitalism successfully. Not that it couldn't be amended, mind you...
The Fed Res and comparable European central banks were set up to conservatively contain the universally bad fall-out from the panics and depressions which resulted from the abuses of accumulated private economic power
COMPLETELY mistaken. The Fed and the banking dynasties of Europe were set to up funnel the wealth of the people into the hands of the few, primarily the Rothschilds.
Karl Polanyi says, in "The Great Transformation," that their real function was to apportion the pain, the rational allocation from the austerity which resulted from precisely the type of depression/deep recession we are now experiencing, ration the austerity on a more equitable national basis. Was that not the function of the famous/infamous J.Pierpont Morgan in the wake of the 1907 crisis? Pure private power trying to contain the vast private triggered calamity from damaging more businesses - and oh yes, by the way, the public... the citizens...? The FED of today is deeply deeply flawed, but thinking that a more private power, like JP Morgan is the answer rather than a more democratized and public banking system...doesn't seem to me to hold much promise.
You are actually advocating that the wealth of the People of the United States remain in private hands and control, as long as you support the Federal Reserve Bank. Funny you should mention JP Morgan as it was on his property, at Jekyll Island, that the private central bank of the U.S. was hatched.
You might further your knowledge on this topic by reading The Creature From Jekyll Island:
http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212
Or, you can get the cliff notes by watching a Youtube:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6507136891691870450
I have recommended that both William Greider and Kevin Phillips be given the honor of addressing OWS; they've earned it and represent the left and center of independent American populist thinking on economic matters. I'm sure Bill will have something to say about the Federal Reserve and how it might be reformed.
Hate to admit it, considering the source, but: Truth.
kewl. so long as we stay clear. this movement is not a libertarian movement.
http://www.oligarchyusa.com/
http://www.istockanalyst.com/finance/story/5390832/some-fascinating-stats-about-our-corporate-oligarchy
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/category/21st-century-challenges/ethicsandeconomics/
According to a 2008 article by David Rothkopf, the world’s 1,100 richest people have almost twice the assets of the poorest 2.5 billion (Rothkopf, 2008). Aside from the obvious problem – that this global elite has their hands in everything from politics to financial institutions – …
http://theprogressiveplaybook.com/2011/09/occupywallstreet-an-american-tahrir/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ght22PnCXy0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/wisconsin-is-ground-zero_b_825321.html
http://last-lost-empire.com/blog/?tag=global-corporate-oligarchy
To the extent that we, the people, are removed from control over our lands, marketplaces, central banks, and media we are no longer empowered. In practice, those few who do control the land, central bank, media and "free market" are the real rulers of our corrupt and declining "democracy."
Due to propaganda from a corporate-owned and edited media we are kept from knowing, much less debating, the nature of our system. Due to a central bank owned by bankers, media owned by a few global concerns, and trade regime controlled by global corporations (i.e., one designed to remove the people from control over their markets and environments) the vast majority have become little more than latter-day serfs and neo-slaves upon a corporate latifundia.
To restore a semblance of effective democracy and true freedom Americans, and people around the world, need to re-educate themselves as to the true nature of their political and economic systems. Toward this end, OligarchyUSA.com is dedicated to providing old and new information, books, links, reform ideas and debates not easily found or accessed today in establishment media.
OligarchyUSA.com is but one more site and sign of the times as ground-up counter-revolutions arise around the world... all in response to a forced and freedomless globalization of a ruling global elite perfecting their top-down plutocracy and revolutions of the rich against the poor. In short, democracy is no longer effective today. For this reason, it is toward a restoration of truly effective and representative democracies, and natural freedom, that this site is dedicated.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/organizational-map-2/
Like
Yep. OWS needs to focus on the relationship between government and business more than they have been. I see a lot of attacks against banks, Wall Street, corporations, etc. but much fewer attacks against the government officials that not only allow this behavior, but promote it.
The thing is, that one of these two are things that you can change. That thing is the government. You are not going to change corporations, no matter how hard you try. Corporations look out for their own best interest, but are not responsible to the public. They are only responsible to their shareholders.
Government, on the other hand, has to abide by the rules set forth in the Constitution. Americans can change the government by voting. Vote for those that have the balls to change the status quo, and you end up with a new system.
The Tea Party has been calling for campaign finance reform and lobbying reform since their inception. If OWS were to recognize this common ground and pursue it, they will definitely be taken more seriously and can have a profound effect on the nation.
It's an uphill battle. However sympathetic some local Tea Partiers are, the national Tea Party mechanism -- the Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity fanbase as well as most of the GOP mainstream -- has been mobilized to demonize OWS. These sources explicitly make OWS out to be nothing less than a Neo-Nazi-Socialist-Fascist-Anarchist-babyraper vanguard, and we've got to recognize that problem.
Local outreach is the answer I see here -- there are a lot of embattled Tea Partiers who are frustrated with their groups' co-option by the same old Moral Majority blowhards. We ought to be able to find them if we seek ways to bypass the big national soapboxes. Visiting local Tea Party meetups could be one way to find these people. They're not hard to find.
Many in OWS have no clue that all of the corruption is due to government. Corporations only get away with what government allows (i.e., is bribed into).
Wow, extremely well said, which is why what we most immediately need is a comprehensive strategy, and related candidate, that implements all our demands at the same time, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management System of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategic Legal Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
if you want to be 1 of 100,000 people needed to support a Presidential Candidate – such as myself or another you'd like to draft – at AmericansElect.org in support of the above bank-focused platform.
I firmly support the idea. If we want to have reforms, we need to be as inclusive as possible. Any reform ideas that the majority of Americans wouldn't support will be torn apart and the movement will die. The more we balance ourselves between liberal and conservative, the stronger we are. It is balancing on a knife's edge, but that knife can be used to cut out the corruption eating away at our government.
*I do consider myself a Libertarian
I came upon a slogan for the response to Wall Street and some of our elected officials
II (eye eye) which means (I= Ignorance & I=Intentional) that is a clear and simple statement that every citizen can relate.
I need an email address that I can send a working document too.
joesproules@tri-dyne.com
Well, what about this link from a Mr. Tanner of the Cato Institute, which appeared in National Review, the conservative magazine, here at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13763 It is my sense that the natural philosophical allies of Libertarians, as expressed by Cato, lie to the right, not the left of the political spectrum. But folks on the ground there will have to make up their own minds, issue by issue.
I have a proposal to make to the broader OWS community, and the General Assembly in NY, esp. It is to invite William Greider and Kevin Phillips, if they are still able to travel, and would agree, to visit and share their thoughts on your work. No two Americans of the past 30 years have done more to warn the American people about the coming troubles than they did: Greider esp. in "Who Will Tell the People," and Phillips in "Arrogant Capital."
This movement isn't libertarian, but it's not liberal either. This movement should only be about getting money out of politics!!! We can all agree on that!
I'm very happy to welcome libertarians - they are staunch defenders of civil liberties (currently being abused by the cops on WS) and opponents of corruption in government.
No. Don't accept any statements or offers from PACs or groups funded by political parties. This must be an organic, grassroots movement or it will just be co-opted.
The Cato institute? That's good news... I think.
Present
Libertarians believe in maximum freedom for all Americans. No laws governing behavior between consenting adults. A govt that is limited by the constitution. No activism by the govt. No interference in the everyday lives of Americans. I have a problem with their foreign policy and open borders ideas, but the rest is pure gold. As much freedom and as few laws as possible.
Why would ANYONE oppose this?
Isn't that exactly the philosophy of "free markets" that Wall Street and the Hedge Funds demanded of regulators over the past 30 years, esp. since the election of Reagan? They got what they wanted from a "libertarian" federal reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, and we are all dealing with the havoc. Now I'm sure that libertarians would deny that Greenspan was one of them/theirs, but he sure is was closer to being that than any other clear category on the political economy spectrum
"Isn't that exactly the philosophy of "free markets" that Wall Street and the Hedge Funds demanded of regulators over the past 30 years"
what they said they wanted and what they made of what they got are two VERY different things. add the govt acting as their silent partner (we give you insane allowances and breaks, you give us campaign $$$) and it became exponentially worse.
which brings me back to my original problem with the movement. why the F are you people at wall st and not the white house and capitol hill?
they make the laws, they take the bribes, they allow the system to be perverted, they are ultimately responsible. protesting wall st. is pointless because they dont give a crap and can't change the rules if they wanted to.
if you are against maximum freedom, what is the point?
What allowed the Wall Street folks, and the mortgage originators, like countrywide to run wild with dangerous designs and products? The sad fact that the regulators in the govt agencies, all but those driven out like Brooksley Born and Michael Greenberger, had the very same notions of libertarian bliss? If the free market had the right answers to everything, which was the claim, who was closest to that market's insights than Wall Street? And who, like a mere "govt worm/regulator," could stand a chance posing their "standing" agaisnt those closest to this market? These were not govt employees who were independent intellectually, they were captive in the most damaging way: with the ideas in their heads which were laissez-faire market worshipping notions, the basis for libertarians faith in the private sector.
"What allowed the Wall Street folks, and the mortgage originators, like countrywide to run wild with dangerous designs and products?"
the federal govt.
they regulate the industry and they've done a horrendous job of it.
try to resist the temptation to view everything you oppose in the most extreme caricature possible.
no one is asking for no regulation.
good regulation is what is needed. smart and effective regulation, and as little of it as possible.
"The federal gov't....they regulate the industry and they've done a horrendous job of it...?
Sure, by invoking the term federal government, it literally implies a body whose regulators are confirmed by our federal elected officials, someone/some agencies stands independently over and from the most powerful private economic forces in our society, and in the global economy, and has substantial authority over their actions.
But what is the philosophy of those holding the regulatory power? I submit it is no different in assumptions - neo-liberalism, market rationality - markets the highest source of truth and understanding - the same philosophy as those they were to regulate. Bill Clinton and Bob Rubin marching arm-in-arm with Phil and Wendy Gramm, to get very specific. Where are the checks and balances against the accumulation of private economic power in the Libertarian universe, as opposed to a populist-left-labor one (and implying a very different labor movement than the one we have now)?
On freedom of speech and dissent, on foreign policy libertarians can strike tactical alliances with left populism. On matters of economic importance, and I'm thinking of the Cato Institute here, I'll believe the synergies when I see them emerge.
It will be interesting to see how the OWS folks in the Assemblies deal with these gulfs.
And I might add this link which I found front and "center" on the Cato website just now, thurs, Oct. 13, an editorial about OWS which was posted by one of their own in National Review! at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13763
I'm not surprised at the contents or the criticisms of OWS.
how far off the mark is that article? makes a lot of sense to me.
http://wac.0873.edgecastcdn.net/800873/blog/wp-content/uploads/OWSvsTP.jpg
An image that should be on the banner of this site!
United we stand and to hell with the dividers.