Friday, October 28, 2011

Occupy Wall Street and Global Calls for Economic Justice


It is good to see that people around the world are finally beginning to understand the situation and are trying to make themselves heard. The problem, unfortunately, is that the powerful 1% do not listen and, even if they listen, do not believe or even understand. In fact, the 1% could care less. They live in their very own insulated world.

What this means, I'm afraid to say, is that we will see nothing happen as a result of the protests. Most likely, as a matter of fact, the protestors will begin to dwindle as cold weather begins to set in. And probably there will be fewer and fewer genuine protestors and more and more homeless and schizophrenics who just want a free lunch. Since that is what the 1% think this is all about anyway, the end game does not look good for our side.

It seems to me that the 1% will budge only after the 99% begin to achieve something that hurts. On one extreme, there could be random assassinations of the rich&powerful. This is the traditional road of revolutionaries, and it can be effective. On the other extreme, we can continue with pacifist demonstrations of discontent. This has been effective in the past in certain situations but it requires leadership and imagination. Simply camping out in cities across the country has no hurtful impact on the 1%. Someone needs to imagine a way in which this social power can be channeled in a way that hurts. During the civil rights movement of the '60s there were some very effective suspensions of work or consumption, for instance. Begin to deny services to the rich&powerful. Another tactic would be to show very publicly all of the channels through which the 1% manipulate and control local, state, and Federal governments. Embarrass the hell out of our wonderful "law makers." 

The 1% will, of course, begin to retaliate in every way they can. That, and only that, will be an indication of success. Thus far, there is no real retaliation, just the usual reactions of poorly informed and ill trained police departments. 

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Baseball

We have watched a great deal of baseball this year. I like baseball. I consider it the best sport around. It is complex and intellectual.

But there is one big problem with baseball these days. It's the spitting. Why do baseball players have to spit so much? It's constant and annoying, and it makes you wonder what the dugout looks like after a game. They might as well put a big trough right in front of that fence!

No other sport that I know involves spitting at the frequency and volume of baseball. I haven't seen it in soccer, football, hockey, or hurling. What would boxing be like if the fighters were spitting like that. The ring would become too slick to prance in.

Maybe all of this was OK once upon a time, but now that we have High Definition TV cameras that can bring up head shots from across the field we need the spitting to stop.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Anti-Occupy-Wall-Street Blog


I just came across a Web Site called "We're the 53%" at http://the53.tumblr.com/

It's full of wonderful stories about people who have worked hard, kept their employment, and are proud of it. Much of it is devoted to telling the Occupy Wall Street people to shut up, stop complaining, and do what they did. 

The sad thing about these "53%" people is that, like most Conservatives (so called), they do not look around. They look straight ahead and they look at themselves and they have no sense whatsoever of the world that other people face. If they really are 53% or more of Americans, then America is a thoroughly selfish society. These are people who would flee from a burning airplane and then tell reporters, "We all got out fine, just used the exits and shoots," when in fact 40% of the passengers died in flames. 

Occupy Wall Street


A lot of us have been wondering how long Americans would remain unconcerned and unquestioning about the economy and issues of social justice in this country. But now a movement has actually started. The only question is where will it (can it) go from here. 

It is unfortunate that the movement took the name "Occupy Wall Street" since there is nothing inherently evil about Wall Street and, in fact, Wall Street serves an important role in the functioning of our economy. If they literally took down Wall Street, they would cause enormous damage to the economy and to themselves; and I don't know what they would put in its place. The real issue here is how the Great Recession of 2007, from which we still suffer, was caused by individual and corporate greed miss-using not only Wall Street but also the entire banking and lending system. On top of that, and running over a much longer period of time, is the way in which the political system has been miss-used in order to favor the production of extreme wealth for a very small number of people at the expense of most people. It is this very chasm of wealth that cripples the nation now since the residual buying power of the 99% is so small that it cannot possibly stimulate investment and job creation. 

I hope that the Occupy movement will begin to take a position of political power. So long as Congress (as well as state houses across the country)  is owned by the 1%, there will be no basic changes in the situation. They will refuse to tax wealth and they will do nothing to promote job creation. They will, instead, waste their time on legislation aimed at taking abortion rights away from women and jeopardizing women's health. The Republicans, at this point, do not want to do anything constructive toward solving our economic problems since they hope that voters will blame everything on Obama in November 2012. That means Americans will be held hostage by the Republicans for more than one more year! But we can't say that they didn't tell us so. Remember in 2010 when they swept into power how they all declared that their primary goal was making Obama a one-term president? Wouldn't it be nice, though, if the Republicans could see service to the people as part of their political obligations?