Tom : I don't know what you have been reading, but I just finished Kevin Phillips' 2008 book, published a few months before the election, Bad Money. You won't believe all the c#&p that the financial sector has been doing. It is a pure horror story. Obviously we cannot speak of all of the people in megabanks and hedge funds, etc, but a helluva lot of them. Avarice with just about no limits. No morality whatsoever. Phillips also discusses Fannie and Freddie, both of which he criticizes strongly, but to the extent he is right, and I suspect far more right than wrong, "Wall Street" abandoned all pretext of responsibility in the Clinton years and ever since has simply run hog wild, no thought to consequences. In 2007 - 2008, when Phillips wrote his book, he blamed most of the excess ( admitting how much Clinton had done , which was a lot ) on GW Bush. Think it is safe to say that we are still in the same situation, with only cosmetic changes and some modest reforms that don't begin to address the most serious problems, all we have to show for it, and even more trillions down the drain. ANY thought of Capitalism as Savior of Mankind is a sick joke like nothing else. Actually corporate Capitalism is pretty good. But Capitalism writ large includes finance capital , and that is where the vast majority of the problems exist. And the problems are not going away, especially with the need for campaigns to spend hundreds of millions. Wall Street has the two parties over a barrel. Laissez-faire ideology must be attacked for what it is, a con job. Not to eliminate corporate capital, but to elevate it to where it once was and to eliminate the dominance of high finance. My humble opinion. Billy =========================================================== 10/22/2011 4:21:48 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
This is a movement that does not bode well for either party if Chicago's OWS is any measure. There seem to be almost as many people who consider themselves conservative and other who take a more liberal tac. Either way both parties will be in trouble if they continue with the status quo approach, as they have for the past some decades. It appears that this, along with the tea party is a sign that we have passed the "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time" to stage three or that is to say "but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." I hope with these two movements that we can finally end the massive corruption we have been living under for so long. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? --- On Sat, 10/22/11, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: [RC] Occupy Wall Street --Democrats fumble the ball To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Date: Saturday, October 22, 2011, 4:11 PM New Republic ____________________________________ Democrats Beware! Occupy Wall Street Could Sink Obama’s Re-Election * Franklin Foer * October 21, 2011 | 12:00 am This article is a contribution to _‘Liberalism and Occupy Wall Street,’ A TNR Symposium._ (http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/96296/liberalism-and-occupy-wall-street) Occupy Wall Street is a carnival. Both detractors and supporters say so. The most amusing part of the show is watching the rush to join it. When Deepak Chopra and Suze Orman endorse the cause, you have to wonder about its revolutionary bona fides. Democrats have also flung themselves in the direction of Zuccotti Park—but in their pursuit of the movement they may damage themselves and hinder the protests’ potential to do tangible good. The catastrophic misdeeds of bankers should have been political gold for Democrats—the strongest case for a robust regulatory state one could make; an opportunity to corner Republicans into defending banks that have inflicted so much misery. But the Democrats’—or rather Obama’s—strategy strangely didn’t point in that direction. At best, we can describe Dodd-Frank as a marginal step in the direction of reform. And in the course of the ongoing battle over implementing the law, the legislation will likely be reduced to a marginal half step. When the Obama administration whispered that it had some qualms with Wall Street’s behavior, the bankers acted as if they were being led to the gallows—a response that spooked the administration into refraining from any further forays into populist rhetoric and provoked it to send envoy Valerie Jarrett on peace-making missions to Wall Street. It is, indeed, maddening enough to make you rush to the barricades. (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-new-republic-for-ipad/id454525980?mt=8) With just over a year until the election, Democrats have finally realized that they have a major problem on their hands. Where the Republican base is fired up and ready to go, liberals are despondent about the dissipation of their messianic hopes. By failing to speak to the public’s anger, the president has given ample space for Republicans to grab that fury and, amazingly, turn it against Washington. Or to pan wide on the scene: Obama has annoyed both his political base and his donor base, while doing not enough of substantive value on the underlying issue. The Democrats have aimlessly meandered into dire political circumstances—so they are desperate for any cause for hope, no matter how implausible. Protests movements, with their outpourings of camaraderie and idealism, often lead to lyrical writing and wishful thinking. Some Democratic politicians and think tanks apparently now see a scenario for salvation in Zuccotti Park—a possibility that the protests could morph into the Democratic answer to the Tea Party. Perhaps Washington operatives could descend on the movement and drive it in that direction. But that seems like an awfully daunting task, given the scene on the ground and the ideological tendencies of Occupy Wall Street—and it misreads the symbiotic relationship between liberals and the left. Let’s say Occupy Wall Street can overcome its self-limiting strategic philosophy, develop some concrete goals, and blossom into a full-fledged social movement. Over the long-term, then, liberals will want to position their reforms as the most reasonable mechanism for staving off the radicals. That’s how FDR played it—“Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.” But you can’t triangulate against a social movement if you fully embrace it. On one level, the protests have already wildly succeeded. They have helped remind the public of how blame for the crisis should be properly apportioned. And when Eric Cantor mouths the words “income disparities,” you know the conversation has shifted. But as the protests drag on, will they continue to be beneficial? To answer that, the protestors need to answer, at least for themselves, the question: Will they work to actively undermine Barack Obama’s reelection? Under the best scenario, this moment emboldens Obama to rhetorically cudgel Wall Street, lock arms with Elizabeth Warren, and make symbolically potent appointments to his economic team. His turn towards populism reassures his political base and helps him paint Mitt Romney as the tribune of the economic royalists. While the movement continues to harp on Wall Street, and maintains useful pressure on him to overcome his cautious instincts, it does nothing to actively campaign against his reelection. This shift would set the stage for a second term that would further financial reform and take other measures against income inequality. There is, however, another, plausible possibility: that Occupy Wall Street is poorly timed. After all, there’s no legislative debate to usefully prod at the present juncture, but there’s a chance to scupper the president’s re-election. As _John Nichols_ (http://www.thenation.com/article/163942/99-percent-rise) cheers in The Nation, the “movement might well develop into a virtual primary challenge to Obama.” Even if Obama attempts to co-opt the message of Occupy Wall Street, the movement will likely continue to harp on his inadequacy. (Many of the complaints with Obama unfairly view him as a central villain in the crisis, rather than a disappointingly ineffectual foe of it.) Protests might erupt at the convention in Charlotte that overshadow his case for reelection; all this further diminishes enthusiasm for his candidacy. Or worse, a third-party candidate emerges and we know how that story goes. Indeed, much of the gripe with Obama reflects the canard that a Republican president wouldn’t be worse. I hope the protesters are surrounded by allies who remind them it actually can get much worse. Franklin Foer is an editor-at-large for The New Republic and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. ____________________________________ -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
