The Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading across America and across the world. We the PEOPLE are no longer content to serve as a market of fools to be exploited for profit. #OWS on @twatter is blowing up! The message of corporate and government collusion written in Hulkipedia is motivating the masses to rise up!
Wall Street bankers are rewarded for failure as their firms mistreat customers investors and the public trust. At a time when teachers and other middle class government employees are derided for earning paychecks of taxpayer-funded "opium" (i.e. OPM - Other People's Money), the billions in Wall Street profits, made possible by enormous bailouts of the very same "opium," are ignored by the masses and celebrated by the elite. Profits for which the bankers rewarded themselves handsomely with bailout bonuses and golden parachutes - rewards for failure. Wall Street is now addicted to "opium," cheap capital from the government to cover their losses and erase the bad decisions of their risky bets. They claim to provide capital to businesses for job creation, but it is US who provide capital to them so they can make themselves rich.
When the 1% loudly cry "class war," they conveniently neglect to mention that they've been winning it for the past thirty years. They are money-changers, rent seekers, swindlers, economic royalists and robber barons. The American economy has been turned upside down through globalization from one of innovation, production, and exports to one of litigation, consumption and imports. Despite rampant consumerism's place as the foundation of our modern economy, the 1% are doing their best to destroy the consumer base. "Job creators" have brainwashed Americans into believeing social programs and collective bargaining rights are "expensive entitlements" while government throws money away on subsidies to factory farms and Big Oil. "Union" has become a dirty word, even among those who stand to benefit most from solidarity. The good of the many should always outweigh that of the few, but the captured politicians and corporate media have recast the many as the few.
There will always be those who choose to remain blind, who never leave their comfort zone in the selfish default mode of human thought, who wish to have their rights and and interests sold to them by swindlers, who take the easy path of passing judgement on those who defy the establishment. It is up to us to ignore their diversions and smokescreens and take back this country for the People.
Corporations and the politicians on their payroll treat us as commodities - dollars and votes to be captured. They won't even need us to actually vote any more once the rigged "money-goes-in/votes-come-out" voting machines are pushed on a majority of states. The oft-repeated noble-sounding goal of everyone owning their own home really means everyone should be in debt for life. You don't exist as a person unless you owe someone money. How much of the growth in corporate profits over the last five years has come as a result of layoffs? We want representatives who act in the interest of EVERYONE they represent, not just those who peddle money and influence. We want corporate leaders who RESPECT customers, employees, and the environment instead of strong arming all for personal gain.
Mass media struggles with our message because it's not one they provided for us. They believe we Americans are a mindless rabble to be advertised to and influenced with basic emotional appeals and brainwashing. They grope for a "unified message" so they can more easily dismiss it without having to confront the systemic corruption of our government and moral bankruptcy of our economy, along with every heinous source thereof. They want an identifiable leadership who can be discredited, labeled, defaced, and ridiculed with impunity. They are quick to point out protesters' hypocrisy of using corporate-produced computers and ATMs, but don't dare point out the daily hypocrisies (off-shoring jobs until Americans can't earn enough to buy your products, endless foreign wars to provide a market to "defense" contractors) that pass as "business as usual" on Wall Street and in Washington.
It's not about Left vs Right, liberals and conservatives.
Both sides have been captured and integrated into the system of
corruption. Stop trying to paint this as political - it is MORAL. It's
about greed, cheating, stealing, selfishness. There's no difference between the two major parties any more; R and D have become $ and $. Change
doesn't come through voting, we tried to elect change in 2008 and ended
up with the status quo, only harder. The false choice between
representatives of the same moneyed interests is no longer a suitable
venue for citizen redress. The People have to be heard.
The problems we face are too vast to be encapsulated in a soundbite-friendly corporate communications-style public relations "unified statement" or laundry list of demands. The movement is a conversation about ideas, and turning those ideas into action. Here are some of my ideas, regarding income inequality and political corruption:
CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE
Corporate personhood is an egregious exploitation of the 14th Amendment ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.") held up by 150 years of case law that has escalated into absurdity. By hijacking a law intended to ensure the rights of freed slaves, the doctrine of corporate personhood is a nineteenth-century mistake that perverts a noble proclamation of equality and must be reversed.
FAILURE IS NOT SUCCESS
Losers should not be paid like winners. The practice of Wall Street bankers enriching themselves with bailout bonuses and golden parachutes must end. Those of us in the real world are crippled by loss of income when we lose our jobs, even with unemployment insurance. It is unconscionable that corporate boards allow executives to get away with enormous severance contracts after doing great harm to the company and economy as a whole, all while claiming they deserve their riches for being so "talented" and "successful." We have to clean up the boardrooms, replace the cronies handpicked by CEOs with people of integrity and accountability.
INCOME IS INCOME
A favorite diversionary talking point of establishment parrots is that 47% of Americans pay no income tax. They don't mention it's because most of them don't have enough income to qualify, like single mothers trying to feed their children on a waitress' salary. Never mind that they still pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, and maybe property taxes. Never mind that the "53%" take advantage of the same deductions and exemptions, they just earn more in wages. Also among those who pay no income taxes: members the military. These "53%ers" would have our soldiers worry about 1040EZ forms instead of AK47 bullets. What a way to support our troops! While the 1% deploys their campaign of tax misinformation, they enjoy huge tax cuts and exemptions on their real sources of income - carried interest and capital gains - that their government pawns enacted for them. Taxes on real wages should be lowered, and taxes on unearned income should be significantly raised.
DEBT IS NOT WEALTH
Wall Street needs to be reined in by substantial regulation and real punishment for those who break the law. The creation of intentionally-sabotaged mortgage-backed securities and their sale to unwitting clients who were then shorted for profit is a crime. High-frequency trading, naked shorting, 3X leveraged ETFs, CDOs, Magnetar - if you don't understand what any of that means, it's because Wall Street doesn't want you to. They are operating in the shadows of arcane trades and complex derivatives, away from the public eye and regulatory oversight. Wall Street needs to go back to being about investment in companies that make products and services that enhance the public good. The original benefit to owning stock was paid dividends, not capital gains. Today, Wall Street is about bankers enriching themselves with overblown fees while investors, borrowers, and the public are hung out to dry. Government bailouts must never again allow banks to reap the rewards of their risky gambles while taxpayers cover their losses. America's economy must return to one of production and exports, not debt and financial market manipulation.
GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS
Washington and state capitals are all bought and paid for by the corporate plutocracy. Politicians are pandering beggars who spend most of their time and taxpayer's money panhandling for legalized bribes and unlimited anonymous campaign contributions. They throw out divisive wedge issues which the media inflate to distract the public from the laws they pass to favor their corporate benefactors. Elections all come down to two candidates who represent the same interests. We want leaders who act in the best interests of the people who ELECTED them, not the ones who BOUGHT them.
Occupy Wall Street is just getting started. The movement is reaching critical mass worldwide; we have become impossible for the power elite to conveniently ignore. We the 99% will no longer sit idly by while our future is stolen from us to further enrich the wealthy. We no longer accept the dogma and rhetoric spoon-fed to the public by the plutocratic establishment. Hulkipedia is the 99%! HULKKUPY WALL STREET!
