A letter to the editor in today’s Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal:

Wall St. should be occupied

I’ve been hearing a lot about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that’s going on across the country. As someone who runs stock and bond portfolios, I have my own stories to tell.

One is about IDT, the long distance phone card company which has two classes of shares, one the founders hold that gets one vote on company matters and one the public holds that gets 1/10th of a vote.

Then there is Health Management Associates which offered a $10 special dividend and loaded up the company with debt, all so the top five in management could retain their jobs by making the stock unattractive to potential acquiring companies.

And one of my favorites, 4Kids Entertainment, which instituted a “poison pill” which would add additional shares to thwart the shareholders from outing the CEO for his horrible performance.

Yes, I can assure you that there are problems on Wall Street. The top five people in management will do anything to retain their power, all to the detriment of stock shareholders, mutual fund share holders, college endowments, pensions, and rank and file employees.

Holmes Osborne, CFA,

Osborne Global Investors Inc., Odessa

Holmes Osborne (D) is an announced candidate for the Missouri House. He ran against Mike McGhee (r) in the 122nd Legislative District in 2010.

“…all to the detriment of stock shareholders, mutual fund share holders, college endowments, pensions, and rank and file employees…” And even an investment professional tells us that the Occupy Wall Street folks have it right.

Previously: Occupy Oakland: that didn’t go very well, did it? (October 26, 2011)

Apparently tear gas is considered some sort of beneficial lawn treatment. At the Great Orange Satan:

…Most of all, however, the revolution will not be allowed to interfere with a nice, pretty lawn. I admit, I never saw that one coming. If told me that politicians around America would choose “we need to protect that lawn” as their most insistent argument against prolonged public protest, the one requiring the most aggressive police intervention, I would never have believed you.

The Occupy Wall Street movement apparently has inadvertently (or, at this point, intentionally?) managed to stumble upon the one thing that is absolutely most intolerable to local government officials throughout the nation: protest all you want, but for the love of God don’t camp. Who knew? For decades protesters have been holding up signs, marching down streets, singing songs, making giant puppets or what-have-you, but they never figured out that if they really wanted attention, all they had to do was sit their ass down on a sleeping bag and all the hellfire of the American political and law enforcement infrastructure would come down upon their heads.

It demonstrates, I think, just how viscerally uncomfortable governments are with any protest that is seen as seriously threatening to the status quo. As long as the protest is transient-that is, it goes away the next day, leaving nothing of itself behind but some full trash cans and discarded signs-it is fine. As long as it makes demands that are either decently in line with the status quo or so not in line with the status quo that they have zero chance of altering a political outcome, it’s also fine. But staying overnight somewhere suggests a commitment to your cause that truly, truly unnerves politicians. It implies that you might still be there tomorrow, and the next day, and that is when the boundaries of free speech seem to find themselves well and truly tested.

The Occupy movement is seen as making an outrageous demand to alter the status quo by reducing the advantages wealthy Americans and corporate America have constantly been given by government, which is an unspeakable sin right there, and especially unspeakable because it would be quite simple to accomplish, practically speaking. A few laws repealed, a few laws reinstated, and you’re there. But Occupy compounds the sin with the audacity of apparently meaning it. If they just left after a while it would be fine, but staying, day after day? That smacks a bit too much of a direct challenge to authority, and that is where local and state political leaders begin to get very, very antsy.

We are not worthy.

Of course, the Occupy movement deserved this response because they’ve been openly carrying firearms. Oh, wait…

You’ve got to wonder if the police in Oakland, California secretly sympathize with the movement. They had to have done this to generate sympathy for the protesters. It’s the only logical explanation.

Update:

Narration: I think everyone should see a few moments from the police crackdown of the Occupy Oakland demonstration. The police say that they cleared the demonstrators using non lethal force. But a tear gas canister can be lethal if it hits you in the face.

It’s hard to see from this video exactly how this demonstrator was wounded. But if you doubt that the police were deliberately aiming at the protestors watch this policeman when a group of protestors attempt to come to the aid of the injured person.

Watch that again.

Voice: What happened, what happened?

Second voice: He got hit.

Third voice: He got shot.

Voices: What’s your name? What’s your name? What’s your name? What’s your name? Did he say anything? Shit. Did he say anything? Medic. Medic. Medic.

Welcome to the wholly owned corporate subsidiary that used to be America.

An Occupy Wall Street commercial (think about that for a moment):

I want to see more serious political conversation starting to happen.

I want corporations out of the government and I want people back in.

I want peace rather than militarization.

I want the top wealthiest Americans to be taxed higher and that money to go to education.

I want economic justice.

I want to be able to speak my voice without jeopardizing my job.

I want a greater regulation of the banks and the markets.

I want my kids to have a job and health care.

I want true Democracy for the ninety-nine percent of us who don’t have it anymore.

[OccupyWallStreet

http://www.occupywallst.org]

Why, that’s mainstream America:

Topline Results of Oct. 9-10, 2011, TIME Poll

TIME MAGAZINE/ABT SRBI – October 9- 10, 2011 Survey

BASE=1,001 Adults Except Where Noted

….Q12. DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THAT POSITION?

B. THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IN THE UNITED STATES HAS GROWN TOO LARGE

BASE: FAMILIAR WITH PROTESTS (787)

AGREE 79%

DISAGREE 17%

NO ANSWER/DON’T KNOW 3%

Q12. DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THAT POSITION?

C. EXECUTIVES OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN IN 2008 SHOULD BE PROSECUTED

BASE: FAMILIAR WITH PROTESTS (787)

AGREE 71%

DISAGREE 23%

NO ANSWER/DON’T KNOW 6%

Q12. DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THAT POSITION?

D. THE RICH SHOULD PAY MORE TAXES

BASE: FAMILIAR WITH PROTESTS (787)

AGREE 68%

DISAGREE 28%

NO ANSWER/DON’T KNOW 4%

….

The media emphasis in the conversation has certainly changed from a few months ago. It used to be deficit scolds around the clock, now we’re talking about how they broke the economy and the people who benefited from that redistribution of the wealth upward in the last decade.

It’s a start.

Slate’s David Weigel seems to have just discovered St. Louis’ Dana Loesch whom he designates his temporary, “accidental nemesis.” Today he is taken by the alacrity with which the right-wing St. Louis scold has jumped on the trumped-up claims of anti-Semitism in the Occupy movement that are currently being worked up by the right.

Weigel’s point, which is that all new social movements attract a few looney-tunes,  is illustrated with a video of David Duke endorsing the Tea Party. I admit that I’m still not convinced that a healthy dose of Duke’s KKK-type philosophy does not animate at least some segments of Tea Partydom. This opinion was reinforced after I read Colin Woodard’s recent article in the Washington Monthly on the geographic distribution of the Tea Party, which notes that its area of greatest strength corresponds to what we traditionally think of as the South – where the conflict over issues of race may be more hidden than in the past, but arguably still run very deep.

Be that as it may, I think Weigel misses the real silliness of Loesch’s comment:

They have the blessing of Nancy Pelosi. They’re also endorsed by the Nazi Party of the United States. They’re also endorsed by Communists. These are things that we did not see with the tea party movement.

Weigel deals very effectively with the Nazi and Communist endorsements, but he ignores the presence of Nancy Pelosi on this list. Dana Loesch is evidently either so ignorant or so blinded by right-wing rhetoric that she thinks that Nancy Pelosi’s support for Occupy Wall Street is the equivalent of a lot of hot air from Nazis. We’re talking about the Nancy Pelosi who is the House Minority Leader, the first female Speaker of the House, and a respected California politician who was elected to office over and over again during the past 24 years. If you ask me, Loesch is trying to hit two birds with one  stone, both the Occupy movement and Nancy Pelosi, an outspoken and proud progressive.

Bear in mind that Loesch is paid by CNN to express her opinions in a public forum. Does this fact leave you feeling as embarrassed about the state of public discourse as I do right now?  

A few days ago I noted that the reactions to the Occupy movement by Missouri’s senators, Democrat Claire Mcaskill and Republican Roy Blunt, ran true to their usual form. But what about the gaggle of GOPers who are vying to be the Republican candidate for McCaskill’s Senate seat?

Two of those in the running, Sarah Steelman and Rep. Todd Akin (R-2), are both currently on the record with a few predictably dismissive comments. The third and newest contender, St. Louis businessman John Brunner,  has, so far as I can determine, not made a public statement on the Occupy movement. However, since he doesn’t seem to have said much of anything about anything in public, that’s not especially surprising.

On the topic of the Occupy protesters, Sarah Steelman observes that:

Yes, they have a right to be angry that there are no jobs. But they shouldn’t sit back and act like somebody should do something about it. They need to do something about it

Hunh? She thinks it’s just another symptom of apathy when protesters take a stand in order to articulate the essential powerlessness so many Americans feel in the face of a corporate culture gone off the rails and taking our government with it? If she means that they should go out and get a job, of course, maybe somebody ought to remind her what unemployment figures actually mean about the availablity of jobs.*

Steelman also wags her metaphorical finger at the protesters, declaring that the poor babies are “misguided and they don’t understand what capitalism is.” But isn’t this the kind of thing lazy thinkers always say when they aren’t willing or capable of of responding to an argument, in this case the Occupy movement’s critique of the laissez faire capitalism that is favored by Steelman and her GOP cohorts? Greed and its effects  aren’t really hard to understand – especially for its victims.

The best that one can say about Rep. Akin’s logically tortured contribution to the discussion is that it is, as are so many of his utterances, at least unique:

The thing that I find sort of amusing about it is it is the liberal whole philosophy which destroys the average person,” Akin said. “They’re screaming about there’s rich and poor, and they’re the ones that create that more than anyone else by just taxing the hide and regulating the dickens off of an average American.”

This is coming from a man who has actively supported the mislabeled “fair tax,” which would increase the tax burden of the poor and middle class while decreasing taxes on the wealthy. Tell me again who it is who wants to tax “the hide” off of the average person? As for “regulating the dickens off an average American,” does that maybe have something to do with protecting that average American’s food, air and water from greedy corporations? Makes you wonder just who Akin thinks “average Americans” really are.

What we really learn from these comments is that the Occupy movement is getting harder and harder for politicians to ignore, no matter what ideological hidey-hole they inhabit. As Eugene Robinson observes in his column today:

The biggest impact of the Occupy Wall Street protests has been to provide a focal point for generalized economic and political discontent. Frustrated voters on the left and the right may disagree on, say, immigration policy or health care reform. But they can agree on a critique of the financial sector – and, potentially, on specific measures to bring about necessary change.

Ms. Steelman to the contrary, I’m willing to bet that that a viable critique of the financial sector that will satisfy the Occupy folks and their myriad sympathizers will not include a sermon on the sanctity of the untrammeled market and its Wall Street acolytes. Nor, despite Todd Akin’s liberal-hating spleen, will many of these folks endorse his efforts to force the 99% to pay for tax cuts for the 1%.

*Sentence added.

Tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. there’ll be a labor solidarity march with OccupySTL which will be held in Kiener plaza; according to what I’ve heard, numerous progressive groups will be represented there. It should be big, so be there, as the saying goes, or be square (note: honesty compells me to admit that I will be unable to attend, hence square).

It’s not surprising that folks are rushing to join the 99% – it seems to be a movement whose time has come.  After two years of listening to the Tea Party dead-enders claim the mantle of “We the people,” while providing cover to a GOP intent on gutting our hard-won American social contract, a real populist alternative is actually overdue.  The Occupy movement just might be that alternative – it certainly seems to be taking off. Polls released today show that Americans favor Occupy Wall Street by a two-to-one margin. Even more revealing, only 28% of those polled have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party.

And everybody wants in. Just consider that even Pittsburg, Kansas (population ca. 20,000, located in a hard-core, hard-bitten, red zone), has its own Occupy Pittsburg demonstrators. In Missouri, there’s Occupy Joplin, Occupy Springfield. You name it, seems like somebody’s occupying it.  And this in spite of the fact, as per Matt Taibbi, that it isn’t an intrinsically easy sell:

… it’s extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can’t be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn’t going to be an iconic “Running Girl” photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.

Taibbi suggests that the generalized focus on financial malfeasance and government corruption rather than on specific demands has been a good strategy that has enabled the movement “to build numbers and stay in the fight.” He adds, though, that the time will come when greater specificity will be necessary, and to that end he offers what he characterizes as an example of a “short but powerful list of demands” – read it and see what you think.

From my perspective – which loses some legitimacy since I’m not out on the streets with the demonstrators – I think Taibbi is totally correct when he suggests that the Occupy movement’s goals should be few in number, and focused on the financial malfeasance that got us in this situation – although, to my mind, his suggestions may be almost too specific, and he fails to mention the most important aspect of that malfeasance, which is the role of money in government (although he does suggest that companies that receive bailout money not be permitted to lobby politicians). As long as Wall Street and big business can purchase politicians, nothing will change.

Previously:

The Occupation of Kansas City: Day 9 (October 8, 2011)

Occupy Kansas City (October 8, 2011)

The picture I didn’t take (October 8, 2011)

Occupy KC, Day Ten: The day the occupation came to me (October 9, 2011)

Occupy Kansas City: a concert, a few speeches, and a march (October 9, 2011)

A few more photos from yesterday’s Occupy Kansas City rally and march:

People were using the solar charger (bottom, right) for their cell phones and cameras.

There were a number of Guy Fawkes masks and references to the movie V for Vendetta.

Crooks in pinstripes.

Marching out from Penn Valley Park.

Remaining silent isn’t an option.

On Broadway.

“Wall Street stole my retirement fund…”

Obviously didn’t mind waiting in traffic.

On Broadway. “Here is the outrage! Where is the justice?!”

Previously:

The Occupation of Kansas City: Day 9 (October 8, 2011)

Occupy Kansas City (October 8, 2011)

The picture I didn’t take (October 8, 2011)

Occupy KC, Day Ten: The day the occupation came to me (October 9, 2011)

Occupy Kansas City started out the day in Penn Valley Park, across from the Federal Reserve Bank, with music and a few speeches and continued with a march down Broadway to the Plaza. Approximately five hundred people participated in the march.

Approximately five hundred individuals with Occupy Kansas City marched south on Broadway toward the Plaza.

The band set up in front of John Salvest’s “temporary public monument” IOU/USA.

About an hour before the march started I was standing toward the back of the crowd engaged in a conversation with a print reporter (not working this story and on his own time). A young man, probably high school age, approached us with a pen and notebook and started asking me questions. He had seen my credentials. He explained that he had been involved in the protest via Twitter and had decided that he wanted to report on the story. I asked him if he had a blog. He told me he started one this morning. He handed me his video camera and asked me if I could tell if it needed a charge. He had just checked it out from his school. I couldn’t help him. After the nice young man left to charge his camera the print reporter and I commented on the various ironies of this new continuum. We’re moving up the food chain.

Listening to the music in Penn Valley Park before the start of the march.

Contrary to the sniffing of the pundit class, the Occupy folks had their act together when it came to the logistics for dealing with a larger crowd:

Hotflash, this picture is for you.

The water station.

Staffed by a volunteer nurse.

There were a number of Guy Fawkes masks. Doesn’t some corporation own that trademark?

Nope, no DFHs here.

Throughout the afternoon there were small groups of individuals, sometimes from different backgrounds, sharing their views on a number of political subjects:

Painting a sign before the march.

A common refrain throughout the afternoon.

Access to education was another common refrain.

Working people.

The marchers line up to leave Penn Valley Park.

Marching up the hill past the Federal Reserve Bank complex.

At one point in the march I was on the west side of Broadway photographing the crowd as they marched south on the east side of the street. An individual from old media, seeing my credentials, said, as he was setting up his equipment, “Half these fuckers don’t even pay taxes.” As if that individual is in the top one percent? Right. Corporate propaganda certainly has reach. I didn’t reply and I continued walking south.

Filming b-roll for the evening news?

Taxpayers marching.

Even more taxpayers marching, at Broadway and Armour.

Working people.

Crossing Broadway, stopping traffic.

The vast majority of the marchers were well disciplined and stayed on the sidewalks except when crossing at intersections or to cross the street.

A few youngsters in the street.

As the march proceeded down Broadway people stepped outside of businesses, restaurants and bars to watch and take pictures with their cell phones. Some asked questions as we passed. “What’s this about?” “Occupy Wall Street.” “Yeah, I heard about that.” Drivers of passing cars sounded their horns and some waved in support of the marchers.

A peace sign from an apartment balcony.

Approaching the Plaza.

Throughout the march there were individuals passing out leaflets to bystanders and to passengers in cars stopped at traffic lights.

Leafleting on 47th Street, heading into the Plaza. His sign reads, “One day the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich.”

will be along with real coverage soon, he came up and covered the rally and march. I stayed home and wrote a paper.

But we live in a totally kick-ass universe, and it always manages to deliver for me.

About twenty minutes after Michael and our friend Dennis, the editor of a small newspaper in Central Missouri, left my house, about 250 people came marching down my street, chanting and waving signs and making their voices heard.

Like I said, Michael will be along with much better coverage in a bit, but until then…

I heard them coming

Michael estimated the original march south to be about 500-strong. I would guess that about 250 came marching down my street on their way back to the camp at Penn Valley Park, behind the KC Fed.

It took between five and ten minutes for the entire group to go past.

I’ve done a bit o’ marching in my day, and any 30-block march that holds  half the marchers together going the opposite direction is a group of dedicated people who aren’t going to be moved off their positions.

It seemed like they just kept coming. I kept saying to myself “this is so awesome!”

Finally, the tail end of the group made it past, and the person who had been patiently waiting in their car for the marchers to pass stuck her arm out the window for a flyer.

I love this neighborhood.