Occupy Wall Street fades, but fight continues today

from lohead.com


Meghan Barr, Associated Press;10:26 p.m. EDT April 30, 2014


(Photo: Mary Altaffer AP)

NEW YORK – Glimmers of Occupy Wall Street will surface this week in a smattering of cities as activists join rallies for workers' rights, as they do every year on May Day.

Occupiers likely won't show up en masse, but they will hold signs and chant, railing against social and political issues, including one that recently captured the attention of world leaders: income inequality.

How much credit Occupy deserves for propelling the issue onto the political agenda is a matter of debate. Some economists maintain the same forces that sparked the protests would have eventually caught the attention of world leaders. Others credit President Barack Obama for making it part of his agenda after re-election.

But this much is clear: Occupiers ignited a global conversation, crystallizing for the public a concept long known among policy wonks and making their rallying cry of "We are the 99 percent" part of the global lexicon during the feverish autumn of 2011.

"There's nothing like a phrase for a bumper sticker to help," said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Would President Obama have chosen to take up this theme if Occupy Wall Street hadn't occurred? Who knows? But it didn't hurt."

Occupiers took up residence in a small granite plaza near the New York Stock Exchange in September that year and helped spark a movement that spread worldwide. It fizzled out after police broke up encampments that had grown into small cities of their own, splintering into smaller activist groups that now champion various causes.

On Thursday — International Workers' Day — Occupy activists in New York City will join labor groups for demonstrations, as they have every year since the encampments disbanded. The planned protests include a march to Wall Street and a gathering in Zuccotti Park, the site of the original camp. Protests are also planned in Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and elsewhere.

Occupy popularized the concept of the financially elite 1 percent, which was based on revolutionary tax research conducted by French economist Thomas Piketty. Using tax records, Piketty and his team had quantified how much money it took to belong to the 1 percent and what share of personal income that group controlled.

Piketty's research inspired Occupy's fixation on the wealthiest echelon of society, but he didn't attract renown until the publication of his recent best-selling book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century."

The gap between the richest Americans and everyone else is indeed widening, a trend that has emerged gradually over decades but accelerated with the Great Recession. The difference between the income earned by the wealthiest Americans and by a median-income household has risen 24 percent in 30 years, according to the Census Bureau.

For at least a year after Occupy's demise, there was little talk of the issue, a lag some experts believe was intentional.

Back then, many world leaders refrained from aligning too closely with Occupy, whose anarchist message and eccentric tendencies alienated some people. Many Americans as a whole were wary of the "scruffy-looking people" camping out in the street, said Robert Shiller, a professor at Yale University who won a Nobel Prize for Economics.

"Maybe their publicity was useful, but maybe it's better for the cause that they're not out there anymore," Shiller said.

Talking about inequality used to be taboo for major world leaders, relegated to "fringe-left" academics until that stigma faded a little over a year ago, said Laurence Chandy, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"It's a watershed. And I don't know why it suddenly became OK for everyone to talk about it," Chandy said. "But it now seems to be like those organizations, they feel if they're not talking about this, that they risk either irrelevance or being out of touch."

Experts say Obama's entry into the fray was a game-changer that steered the global narrative. At the same time, a drumbeat of reports about worsening income disparity sounded the alarm, with Pope Francis denouncing trickle-down economic theories for espousing an unethical "survival of the fittest" mentality.

The economy itself may have been the driving force behind the rhetoric. When ordinary, middle-class Americans are generally faring well, they tend not to notice how the wealthiest are doing, economists say. But when the economy goes south, so does sentiment toward the rich.

"The big change between 50 years ago and today is, back then we were looking down at the plight of the poor," Galston said. "Now we're looking up at the privileges of the wealthy."

The prevailing feeling among many original Occupiers is one of bittersweet vindication. They're happy people are talking about the wealth gap — and take credit for that ongoing conversation. But they're disillusioned by the lack of concrete economic reforms.

"You cannot be a person paying attention to the developments of the world any longer and not be familiar with the case that we have a massive income inequality and wealth inequality crisis," said Michael Levitin, 37, who lives in the San Francisco area and helps run Occupy.com. "In essence, it very much vindicates the work that Occupy Wall Street did. We were there to ring the bell."

THE SPOILED BRATS ARE BACK

from wnd.com

REAL AMERICA

Exclusive: Patrice Lewis hits Occupy activists for 'at the point of a gun' demands

So I understand the “Occupy Whatever” crowd is back. “An associated Facebook page announced a protest against the ‘regressive 1% agenda of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and for a truly progressive one that includes the basic needs and human and environmental rights of the people.’ Similar calls for Friday protests were issued by Occupy Philly and Occupy DC.”

Doubtless you remember the Occupy crowd’s collective temper tantrum a couple of years ago when thousands of young people assembled in various public places, camped for weeks, stank to high heaven and demanded equity of resources and paychecks regardless of whether or not they wanted to work for a living. Most of America had a good chuckle at their expense.

But now they’re baaaack. According to organizer David Swanson, “Awareness has grown, education has spread, and ideas have sunk in. People now know that we can’t lift up the poor without pulling down the plutocrats. It’s understood that we can have democracy or billionaires, not both. The notion of shifting priorities is even making headway; behind the screaming of ‘no cuts!’ and ‘less spending!’ there’s a steady, rising voice – ebbing and flowing like the ocean – insisting that we can move the money from the military and the oil corporations and the bankers to green energy and schools and trains and parks and actual aid to everyone on earth, with plenty of tax cuts to spare.”

Wow! That message is completely different from the last time these yahoos decided to have nationwide urban love-ins on other people’s dime.

Mr. Swanson’s rant embraces many things he finds objectionable – health-care inequity, weapons sales, international political interference – and somehow he feels camping in Zuccotti Park and other locations will correct these issues.

I’d like to make one thing very clear: I don’t necessarily object to many of the issues the Occupy crowd wishes to address. I believe America interferes too much in international affairs. I believe there is an incestuous and unholy alliance between big bankers, Wall Street and the government. I believe there is a horrific amount of domestic spying going on.

But if you look at the root cause of all these complaints, the one unifying factor is government.When Occupiers say they want health care for all, or wealth to be redistributed, or social justice, or fairness, or any other complaint they feel can best be expressed by breaking windows, what they don’t say is that the only way these goals can only be achieved – literally the only way – is at the point of a gun through government coercion and at the expense of freedom and liberty.

When it comes down to brass tacks, the Occupy solutions call for more unconstitutional government regulations … not less.

It’s gotten to the point where neither Democrats nor Republicans, neither Occupy brats nor Wall Street executives, will admit the depths to which our government has departed from the original, streamlined, minimal role it was supposed to play.

Occupiers blame government corruption on corporate and wealthy elites. In their psychedelic worldview, the poverty-stricken (but progressive) politicians are being seduced by the evil banksters. The reality is the reverse. Politicians have unconstitutionally created legislative loopholes, sweetheart deals, backroom agreements, defacto monopolies and other shady arrangements. If we returned to the limited government envisioned by the founders, within a short time these abuses would correct themselves. After all, there’s no point in bribing someone to do something they can’t do.

Remember, bankers and corporations cannot hold a gun to my head and force me to comply with their wishes. The government can, and does. (Health care, anyone?)

The government is doing its best to ensure future generations of useful idiots (such as the Occupy crowd) by instigating such farces as Common Core, which informs sixth graders that the Bill of Rights is “outdated and may not remain in its current form any longer,” and encourages children to “prioritize, revise, prune two and add two” amendments to the original document.

This is what happens with government schools (government again!). Frankly, any time Washington gets involved in private affairs such as education, health care, welfare, corporate assistance, etc., the result is corruption, monopolies and manipulations on an unimaginable scale.

In short, if the Occupy protesters want the wealth in this nation to be redistributed more “equitably” (or any other social justice claptrap) by increasing the power of government and placing morechains on the individual, then they’re just as evil and mistaken as the banks and politicians they claim to protest.

Now remember what the Occupy crowd was like two years ago. They had to be booted from public places because the garbage and human waste was so bad. Disease spread. Rapes were reported. They weren’t another Woodstock; they were a laughing stock.

And above all, the Occupiers didn’t understand the ideals they purported to endorse. They stuttered and hemmed and hawed and demanded the usual progressive cadre of unrealistic and unconstitutional twaddle (all of which are proven historic failures) and then applauded their own eloquence. After all, “Every liberal idea is so good that it has to be mandatory and enforced at gunpoint; just ask a left-winger and he’ll tell you so,” noted Phil Elmore.

The difference with the Occupy crowd versus the capitalists they profess to hate is the Occupiers want equal outcome, not equal opportunity (which already exists). They want money and health care and housing and a college education, but they don’t want to work for it. They want the government to “do” stuff for them or “give” stuff to them, whereas capitalists want the government to get out of the way so they can get stuff done themselves.

If the Occupy crowd really wants to work toward reform, they should work toward reducing the size of government and re-establishing free-market capitalism. We need government interference out of businesses, out of education, out of medicine, out of health insurance and out of everything not specified in the Constitution.

There is no other way America can survive. Occupy that.

Media wishing to interview Patrice Lewis, please contact media@wnd.com.