The Occupy newspaper, in discussing the movement’s consensus process, suggests it is itself surprised at how well this experiment continues to  work itself out: No one has ever managed to pull off something like this before–groups of activists organized into separate affinity groups, each representing a single spoke. Direct democracy has been a hallmark of previous movements, most vividly during the civil rights movement. OWS organizers credit this to its commitment to direct, consensus-based democracy: that in the same way human beings treated like children will tend to act like children, the way to encourage human beings to act mature and responsible adults is to treat them as if they already are.

Anyone suggesting this is a mob or a ragtag group needs to be taken to task.  I doubt Eric Cantor or any of his ilk have spent any time among the protesters–Zuccotti or elsewhere.  The occupants of the park are educated, committed, and unemployed for the most part. Some, who can arrange their hours, leave work for periods of time to help out.  We spoke at length with a Wall Street employee who spends his daily lunch hour reaching out to the reachable.  He feels awkward sneaking his poster out of the office but, to quote him, Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Might such expectations be applied to the participants at the Teapublican debates?  Where is the element of direct democracy or consensus-building in taking an oath to never raise taxes?   Seems to me that any elected official taking such an oath, superseding one’s oath of office, treats his/her constituents as children.  Reprehensible.  May as well remain at home and just call in one’s votes.

On the train ride home I recalled a conversation of several days ago outside Peter King’s office.  Having not received the return of any of my several calls (might they have a do-not-call list?) I decided to venture over and wait for a staff member to emerge.  Long story short, I informed the staffer that I had called repeatedly to inquire why Cong. King was not supporting the Occupy movement (silly me, I acted naive).

The response rolled off her tongue as though repeated many times, Cong. King considers the movement’s demands vague. How do you expect him to respond? My rejoinder, The protesters are demanding legislation that corrects a system that encourages disproportionate wealth among Americans; they are demanding legislation that reacts appropriately to the greed and malfeasance of the big banks.  They may have not yet written it out but it is as apparent as the noses on their faces.

I remained surprised that she allowed this back and forth to continue, but not by her retort: The expectations of the protesters are too vague to be translated into legislation.  Cong. King does not yet understand the demands.

An aha! moment if ever there was one. I responded, The protesters should not be expected to write law.  That’s the legislator’s job.  If Cong. King is unable to translate a message so apparent that it resonates with four of every five Americans then he continues to be totally tone deaf to the people. . .  You know, King Kong ultimately met his end from a great height.  This could be the moment when King Cong. finds a similar fate awaiting him.  Please remind him, or a surrogate of his choosing, to return this constituent’s calls.

She wrote my name and phone number on a card.  Let’s see if I get a call back. I’m still waiting. Big surprise.

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Haircuts–Visitors Get Cropped to Remind Banks of Their Obligations to Millions of Foreclosed Americans

**********

It got pretty chilly this weekend. Next week will surely be cooler.

The protest – which has focused the eyes of the world on corporate greed and economic inequality – is free speech in action. But without shelter, the protesters occupying Wall Street down at Zuccotti Park could be frozen out and forced to an early end.

Occupy protests from Boston to Philadelphia to Seattle have been allowed to put up tents to provide shelter and warmth. But down at Wall Street, tents are against the rules. Even the protest’s medical tent was nearly removed before the activists’ impassioned defense saved it.

Tell Mayor Bloomberg: Let the protesters stay — let them set up tents.–

Bill Lipton
Deputy Director, WFP

Why bother?

These people are irrational. Present them with evidence and they ignore it. Denial is easy to come by.

Why bother?

These people are incapable of changing, stubborn beyond explanation.
They will never admit to being wrong. They’ll just fabricate more stuff. As the b.s. gets weirder, they become more defensive.

Like I said, why bother?

Each of these people, like us, has one vote. They would never have cast that vote for this man anyhow. They didn’t the first time. So nothing has changed.

So, why bother?

Fault goes to the media who continue to give attention to these people. Parents and teachers know the worst thing you can do to people who want attention is to give them attention. The attention just adds fuel to the fire.

Leave them alone with their thoughts. That’s their problem. Save your breath.

Why bother?

Whereas we have been taught to understand it as a foundation principle of a great capitalist system, it has been bastardized to misdirect and segment the working/middle class. The word is used much as Reagan’s ‘trickle-down’, so often in the media that it becomes part of American lexicon. It misleads too many people of the working/middle class. More recently the term ‘privatize’ has taken its place or, more accurately, supplemented that phrase. We have to fight trickle-down privatizing with the same energy and steadfast commitment that the workers in Madison brought against the loss of their right to collective bargaining. Big media is not our friend because they too readily adopt these code words and phrases. In time they become part of everyday language. They words are divisive. They are vulgar. They are anti-American in their sentiment and in their ability to wreak damage.

There, But for the Grace of My DBP, Go I

The next round of rancor awaits us. Throughout the coming months the most frequently used word in the English language will be privatize.

Proposals will be radical, draconian, skewed to benefit the super-wealthy and the uber-corporations, exploding the economic gap between the wealthiest Americans and all us others.

As the working/middle class struggles with how to pay its bills, set aside money for their kids’ education, and budget sufficiently for a reasonable retirement, the far-righties will be looking to decrease personal taxes and increase corporate profit at our expense.

One example of many. Suppose all workers with pensions were moved from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans? There is no way to sculpt an argument in favor of such change. That is, unless you are a CEO of an insurance company or an investment bank.

They continue to kick out, one at a time, each of the legs of the three-legged model needed to prepare for a reasonably comfortable retirement. Social security is designed to supplement retirement income. Setting aside monthly savings for retirement is near impossible when there is no discretion left in one’s take-home pay. That leaves a worker’s pension as the lynchpin of financial independence for years 65 through 90.

If their pension savings was all retirees had, would they take that bankroll to Vegas or Atlantic City? I don’t think so. They would invest it very conservatively, annuitizing it for the remaining years of their lives.

Shifting pensions from defined benefit plans (DBP) to defined contribution plans (DCP) is just that–gambling with one’s future. If the economy tanked (when have we last experienced that?) when a worker is thirty years old, contributions would be relatively small and there would be three-and-one-half decades to replenish some or all of the pension account. If, however, a worker is nearing or in retirement and has significant money in a pension with only a short interval to replace it, theree would be no opportunity for replenishment.

The shift is now in its fourth decade and three-quarters of worker pensions are in defined contribution plans. Most of the owners will be agonizing over the anticipation of their accounts’ depletion for the balance of their lives.

And of the other twenty-five percent who are fortunate to still enjoy the benefit of defined benefit plans, almost all are in public sector employment. There, but for the grace of DBP, go I.

I do not share this to gloat. I say it because I too often hear workers in the private sector complain that public employee pensions are often greater than those in the private sector. This may or may not be so.

However, the righties use this argument to further divide us, turning employee against employee. recognize that pensions are deferred wages–not entitlements. Where they exist they are the result of a negotiated trade of today’s wages for the only remaining leg of the stool.

The Koch’s and their ilk continue use this issue as a wedge to turn worker angainst worker. You can bet on one certainty over the coming months. The most often encountered word will be privatize. And it won’t be us raising the issue.

He has two daughters studying at SUNY-Binghamton. His home is under water and he has been working two part-time jobs since being laid off as a civil engineer three years ago. He had stopped at the supermarket on his way home from a newspaper delivery route (in addition to the part-time jobs he worked).

I was immediately exhausted and, by the time my bags had been placed in a cart, emotionally drained. I sat in the car for a short time realizing, but for the grace of circumstance, that could have just as readily have been me and my wife, our kids, our home.

That is, if I had not been fortunate enough to retire with a defined benefit pension. Friends with corporate 401K plans have seen their retirement investments shrink to a fraction of their not-so-long-ago value. Those nearing retirement will not see the values return to levels of accounts prior to the recession. Then there are those who never had a pension plan to serve as third leg of the “three legged stool’ model.

Leg one: family savings. What savings? How many members of the working/middle class have enjoyed discretionary income (not frivolous I say, discretionary) to set aside over the last decade? Whatever money had been carefully saved had most often gone to cover college tuition. Rainy day savings had gone to unexpected home/auto repairs, etc. The beat(ing) goes on.

Leg two: Social Security. Roosevelt’s program was never intended to provide a major part of retirement income. It is intended to be a ‘set aside’ of employee and employer matching payroll taxes to keep the average retiree and spouse from eating cat food in their later years. Workers get it the hard way–they earn it–throughout the duration of their working years.

Leg three: a personal retirement plan. Give me a break. As in the case of my recent confidante, the private-sector, unemployed engineer and his wife–forget about it. Corporate profit motives far outweigh their worker-families’ needs. Often enough insufficient funds have been contributed to plans by employers (public and private) to keep them viable. State and local government pensions are increasingly under-funded. This, in turn, necessitates raising taxes and laying off public workers–frequently union members. Well, of course! Who better to ask to pay for the obscene profiting of the (see below) robber barons?

Big-media appears to lament that private workers’ wages have dipped below that of public workers. You can do a lot with statistics, but this is a “Bachmann-esque” fabrication (see Sachs below). The media (other than the New York Times for the most part) repeatedly insists on using the term ‘entitlements’ like the money falls down from the heavens falling only into the outstretched hands of unionized public workers.

Setting the record straight: Pensions are not entitlements. Workers’ pensions are deferred wages derivative of collectively bargained negotiations. Workers give up current wages in favor of future income. Nor are benefits e———s. They are not found under a pillow, a gift from a fairy godmother (Oh, look what I found!). Workers trade present-day wages for health care coverage.

We must stop repeating the term ‘e———-s’. Take it out of your vocabulary and correct others when they use the word. This term is as intentionally destructive as is the phrase ‘death panels’. ‘trickle-down economics’, and the other flim-flam terminology invented by Lee Atwater, Carl Rove, and their ilk. Their strategy: Repeat the term often enough and it becomes part of the American lexicon. Unfortunately, it is a very effective propaganda technique that has corrupted the current debate.

I really wish I could have done something to help out my new acquaintance at the checkout counter. Imagine how terrible things must be to cause a grown man with an advanced degree in engineering to break down in front of a line of total strangers in a supermarket. He was not embarrassed. He was way beyond that emotion. I returned his hug, expressing my regrets for his situation and wishing his family well in the months ahead. I was reassuring, Things will get better, I’m sure”. Likely not.

Time to fight back. This is Class Warfare, seeded decades ago and flowering today. And such blossoming cannot occur without having applied a lot of fertilizer.

I have been told that there are 400 billionaires and a finite number of millionaires in America. They collectively own “Republican governors, backed by the Koch Brothers, (in turn) backed by extreme right-wing money”. Sen. Dick Durbin has described the status more succinctly, “They own this place”.

But–and this is a big ‘but’–the working/middle class has the numbers on its side. Hundreds of millions of working/middle class Americans who will need to fight for ourselves, our children and grandchildren. We witnessed the fight in Wisconsin. Hopefully recall elections will help the situation there. We have watched the battle in Cairo. Hopefully, Egyptians will gain human rights in return for putting their lives on the line. It will be done with numbers–but not dollar signs.

A must read/listen: Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University brilliantly portrays the New Robber Baron period:

* Since 1973, the median take home pay of full-time workers is virtually unchanged on an inflation-adjusted basis.
* The top 11,000 households in America have more income than the bottom 25 million.
* Since 1976, 58% of real income growth has gone to the top 1% of Americans.

“We’ve reached the greatest income [and] wealth inequality in history,”

“This is a new ‘Robber Baron’ era, of course.”

This is a New Robber Baron Era

Alternative Site: Jeffrey Sachs, Daily Kos

Our need to fight back is undeniable. We will need to use every bit of energy, every resource, In every village, town, county and state throughout America. The working/middle class is ‘being forced to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy, corporate giveaways, wars, and economic crashes caused by Wall Street. Money continues to flow upward, and our already undemocratic level of inequality is worsening.’

This is just the beginning of a populist movement that will, over the next few years, diminish the power of the super-wealthy and see a re-growth of the labor movement in America.

The liberal class is discovering what happens when you tolerate the intolerant. Let hate speech pollute the airways. Let corporations buy up your courts and state and federal legislative bodies. Let the Christian religion be manipulated by charlatans to demonize Muslims, gays and intellectuals, discredit science and become a source of personal enrichment. Let unions wither under corporate assault. Let social services and public education be stripped of funding. Let Wall Street loot the national treasury with impunity. Let sleazy con artists use lies and deception to carry out unethical sting operations on tottering liberal institutions, and you roll out the welcome mat for fascism. ”

Read the full article by Chris Hedges.

One helluva week–make that a month. Not one that I’ll want to experience going ahead.

Denying workers their earned right to bargain collectively is an act of denying human rights to the American working/middle class. I will not recite at length that which you already know–that the Republican party and its most lavish supporters are hell-bent on destroying labor unions, marginalizing the strength of the working/middle class, and exhausting every opportunity derivative of the financial crisis to increase the economic gap between the super-wealthy and average Americans.

Conservatives will, I believe, need to revel in this current state of affairs. Their battle victories will not endure. The war for working/middle class rights is far from over. And the hardworking multitudes will prevail. The time is about right. The ingredients are coming together. The will is emerging.

It is my expectation that events in Wisconsin and parallel sinful actions in states focusing on a similar political agenda are galvanizing the working/middle class. It is my premise that progressives (mild and ardent), liberals (left and right of center), moderates (Democrats and Independents), and reasoning (reasonable) conservatives need to embrace the practices of Republican political strategists.

I’m not talking about fabricating, stretching, and outright lying to the electorate. Rather, I envy the far-right’s ability to remain Johnny-One-Note–resolutely adopting a singular mantra and repeating it over and over without straying for the fear of the consequences of ideological betrayal.

Collectively, progressives-liberals-Democrats-Independents, remain committed to too many goals. We have too many causes. We have too many demands. While each goal may be super worthy, their collective range dilutes our efforts, exhausting our energy and our resources. We become distracted our singular advantage–numbers. Numbers that turn to votes. Votes that result in change.

To my mind the groups of reason and democracy need to come together to focus on class warfare. This phrase has often been held in contempt (and I have been among those reticent to utter it). It seems to go against the grain of a truly capitalist democracy.

Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights.

But where has capitalism, as we have understood it, gone? More important, where is it taking us?

Conservative and far-far-far-right efforts to erase collective bargaining tear at the fabric of capitalism–presumptively and historically a more-or-less level playing field on which employers and employees meet to create an economy that benefits the people. There was a time, not so long ago, when owners and workers metaphorically sat at a round table to negotiate a balance between corporate profits and workers’ earnings. The negotiating table was round, until not so long ago, an indicator of the two sides’ willingness to talk with one another with an understood purpose of coming to accord on mutually acceptable outcomes via negotiation.

Today’s negotiating table has been transformed to a rectangular shape consisting of two expanding sides (employers, public and private) and two shrinking sides (where the vast number of working/middle class Americans are increasingly wedged together). And, wedged apart in the process. (Recall you r high school math. The area of the table remains a constant as its length and width–the variables–can be worked dependently to maintain the fixed area–think the American economic pie. Actually, in such a model, both sides benefit as the area of the pie grows in reasonably proportion.

I stray for a moment. I am reminded that we must stop using the term ‘entitlements’ to describe the mix of pension and benefits workers gain via negotiation. Those jealous of workers with pensions hear ‘entitlements’ as something that falls from the heavens on a particular subgroup of ‘entitled’ people. Pensions and benefits are earned. Pensions are deferred wages. Benefits are trade-offs of wages. They are contractual agreements that both parties arrive at legally and appropriately. It is a bedrock principle of capitalism–again, a social system based on the principle of individual rights.

What has happened in Wisconsin and is occurring in other states and municipalities are immoral actions benefiting ultra-wealthy greedy people perpetually dissatisfied with their share of the economic pie and corporations with the singular goal–maximizing shareholders’ profit.

I stray again. When we read that private sector employees often earn less than public employees and that their respective benefits/pensions are unfair, recognize what this means. It is not that unionized public sector employees have bled the system to their advantage. Rather, the non-unionized private sector employees have been unable to bargain collectively to their advantage.

Friday morning’s NY Times charted ‘Pension Rates and Collective Bargaining’. The data identifies the percentages of public employees covered by collective bargaining agreements. In New York, 73% of employees enjoy the human right of collectively negotiating wages and deferred wages with employers. In New Jersey the precent is 61%; California, 60%; Illinois, 53%; Ohio, 46%. At least in these states, the working/middle class maintains considerable political muscle.

So it is in those states (forget the South) that class warfare may begin. Seeds have long been planted. Governor Walker and his ilk have been (thank you) nurturing the beds. I see signs emerging, very much like the crocus and daffodils currently sprouting in flower beds, like forsythia budding on the Island’s branches.

And like these perennials which emerge every spring as the conditions for them are just right, now is the time for us to prepare to spring ahead–akin to a law of Mother Nature.

To remedy the unconsionable ‘goal of the greedy’, a minority by definition and by design, reasonable people in a capitalist democracy need to rally around a singular goal–returning an equitable share of the economy to working/mioddle class Americans.

I am suggesting that, for the foreseeable future, we rally around the singular goal of ‘class warfare’. Americans are increasingly recognizing that they must engage this battle. The time is right.

The conservative strategy of preserving and growing wealth and power in the hands of the few is so overwhelming that all issues need be set aside. What happened to the Republicans’ promise of focusing on job creation? They are committed to setting brush fires all over our country with the purpose of distracting Americans from the greatest economic problem tof our time–the rapidly expanding gap of income and profit separating the super-wealthy from all the rest of us.

If we do not get our collective act together–and soon–we will have met the enemy. And the enemy will be us.

The primary causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980′s were political and economic. Another factor was the lack of that government’s honesty with the people. Secrecy and propaganda were operational–themes, at any time and at any place, common to the culture of war.

John Boehner ‘s response to the loss of 200,000* public sector jobs, “So be it!“, resonated along with Khrushchev’s admonition, ‘We will bury you’. The Speaker’s words took me back to an ominous time when Khrushchev banged his shoe at the UN General Assembly in an act of intimidation. That outburst was in response to a Philippine delegate having proclaimed that the Soviet government was depriving its population of “the free exercise of their civil and political rights”. What a coincidence! So be it!

Boehner and his ultra-conservative comrades are presently joined in an unforgivable attack on American workers. Aligning with him are the governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Jersey (among others), conservatives in Congress, lobbyists headed up by the likes of the Koch brothers, and those who directly benefit from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

We realize that Boehner’s off-handed comment is not a reaction to a budget crisis–although budget crises continue to staged by conservative electeds in order to grow assaults upon the working/middle class of America. This is part of a perverse plan to undermine a critical segment the American economy. These are actions designed to set neighbor against neighbor for the purpose of removing the spotlight from the escalating gap between the working/middle class and the super wealthy. Collectively, these are actions of people intent on harming a president whose goals remain in conflict with theirs.

The provocateurs believe that it is easier to set people off against others who are doing marginally better because the common folk–our neighbors, our kids’ teachers, our parent pensioners, are real to people. The lifestyles of the super-wealthy are so far out of reach that the average person tends to perceive them as fictitious characters in a novel. The tangible vs. the intangible. And foolishly we too often turn on each other because we are within reach. No tilting at windmills here.

Such, then, was the behavior of the dictators of the Soviet Union. Such, now, as Boehner makes us realize, is the behavior of a SoBeIt Union.

As the turnout in cities across the nation portrays, Americans are increasingly cynical about the propaganda and venom spread by the SoBeIt Union. In the largest protest rally at Wisconsin’s state capitol since the Vietnam War, union members and their supporters continue to brave frigid temperatures to voice their anger against a provocative and intimidating governor. The tide is turning and it is now clear that Americans increasingly support union workers’ –public and private–rights to bargain collectively. This human right is the centerpiece of the working/middle class’ ability to succeed in a capitalist, and unfortunately, increasingly corporatist, society.

Almost by definition the phrase ‘So Be It‘ is an expression of acceptance, particularly of an unfavorable situation. The man says, So Be It! It resonates with me. It infuriates me. He shows not the slightest sense of remorse. No hint of regret as he takes aim at cutting jobs at a time that unemployment devastates families, local and state governments, and the national economy.

2011′s version of ‘Let ‘em eat cake.’

Outrageous! So Be It!

On the other hand, Joe Beaudoin, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association gets it:

America’s federal workforce understands the importance of fiscal responsibility – federal employees are already doing their part to reduce the deficit by undergoing a two-year pay freeze . . . On behalf of the 4.6 million active and retired federal workers, we must make sure that federal employees who are doing their jobs for our country don’t get caught unfairly in the middle of these consequences.

Wisconsin public employees get it. They agreed to givebacks, painstaking compromises that will impact their families for years to come. However, making the concessions the governor requested is not good enough. That , after all, is not the game plan

Having staged a budget crisis by giving huge and unnecessary corporate tax cuts, he has positioned himself to demand the end of collective bargaining. So Be It.

Collateral damage they say. Again, returning to recent history, the term “collateral damage” originated as a euphemism during the Vietnam War, referring to friendly fire and the killing of non-combatants.

Friendly fire. So Be It.

*************************

* Boehner has refused to cite his source for this number. It was stated cavalierly-a Beckovian misstatement, his intention designed to intimidate workers and rally those who blindly accept his pernicious exaggerations. When pressed, he admitted not knowing an estimate of the number of jobs lost due to the Republican budget cuts.
Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post reported a few months ago that there were only 20,000 more federal employees under Obama in 2010 than under George W. Bush in 2002 — and that, on a per capita basis (federal employees per 1,000 Americans), it’s at the lowest level at least since 1962.

So Be it? Damn it!

“The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein’s best-selling book “The Shock Doctrine,” which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.”