Change seems to present itself in strange ways. Call it selfish, call it lazy, but its true: When it comes to things that possess the potential to adversely affect our personal lives—especially our wallets—angry Americans are a clientele (and a force) to be reckoned with. . . . Whether you’re holed up in a tent in Iowa City, braving the cold weather and lack of running water, or staring angrily at newsprint on a Sunday morning, be proud and press onward.
Samuel Cleary, “A Definitive example of the ‘Occupy’ Influence,” Daily Iowan
6 You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, that you might send them far from their homeland. 7 “See, I am going to rouse them out of the places to which you sold them, and I will return on your own heads what you have done. 8 I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away.”
The LORD has spoken. 9 Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. 10 Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, “I am strong!” 11 Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, O LORD!
Joel 3:6-11
The First Amendment
— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Religion
The Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center operates several Religious Freedom Programs advancing the understanding of freedom of religion in public schools and other venues.
Free speech
The Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center presents several programs addressing aspects of free speech, including Freedom Sings and First Amendment on Campus.
Free press
The Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center provides a program for newspaper editors and other staff through a partnership with the American Press Institute.
Assembly
The First Amendment says that people have the right to gather in public to march, protest, demonstrate, carry signs and otherwise express their views in a nonviolent way. It also means people can join and associate with groups and organizations without interference.
Petition
The First Amendment says that people have the right to appeal to government in favor of or against policies that affect them or that they feel strongly about. This freedom includes the right to gather signatures in support of a cause and to lobby legislative bodies for or against legislation.
If anything, the Occupy embarrassment resembles a communist agenda. The Occupy crowd states, “We believe in the equitable and just distribution of all resources, opportunity, and wealth.”
America is the greatest country in the world simply because as a nation we unify against that statement. Americans pride themselves on the fact their country can allow them to fulfill their wildest dream if they work hard enough.
UI College Republicans, Daily Iowan
Income Gap Becomes Politicians' Latest Battleground
by Mara Liasson
November 4, 2011
There's been a shift in the economic discussion in American politics. For months, the debate was focused on government spending, regulations, debt and taxes. Now there's something new: income inequality.
PRIVATE GOVERNMENT VS PUBLIC GOVERNMENT~ THE CORPORATION IN CHARGE
Charles A. Reich I found my copy of Charles A. Reich’s Opposing The System (1995) on the discard shelf of ICPL, and have seen it listed on Amazon.com for as little as a penny. It is worth a million to any community organizer contemplating Occupying. Reading and plagerizing Chapter 2, The Invisible Government, I became estatic like the poetic voice in On Reading Chapman’s Homer—Eurika!
Time and tide would fail me if I paraphrased the text. After all, we are on a 24/7 news cycle in the 21st century and by the time I took “to do the right thing,” all may be over, so I am doing what Alice Walker suggested in Merridian, “the appropriat thing.”
The Invisible American Government
Charles A. Reich writes that the Invisible government hides behind two myths: the myth of the “free market,” and the myth of “big government.” In fact, the most important changes in America have been the disappearance of the free market and the ineffectuality of public government. Yet public government is all that we see and hear about. We are not told that the growth of public government was a response—a secondary phenomenon.
The primary trend has been the growth of private, corporate government. Public government has been repeatedly called upon to protect individuals and society from harm caused by private government, including the Depression of the 1930s. As private corporations and their operations became national and international in scope, state and local governments proved unable to regulate activities beyond their borders.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ldx6g#synopsis
Bill Winters
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Last broadcast today, 20:05 on BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).
Next on: Tomorrow, 02:05 on BBC World Service
Synopsis
Bankers saw their popularity plummet in the wake of the financial crisis, some were reduced to becoming hate-figures.
In the UK the government appointed a commission to recommend major banking reforms to help prevent future billion dollar bailouts by the taxpayer.
Hardtalk's Zeinab Badawi speaks to Bill Winters who sat on that commission and is also one of London's best known financiers.
Can the greed and ineptitude of the bankers that he speaks of be stopped and what about his own record?
Private economic government is a far more important factor in the lives of individuals than public government. Private government controls people by controlling their ability to make a living. In order to get a job, have a career, escape the abyss of being rejected or discarded, people will accept the dictates of corporate and institutional employers, even when these dictates go far beyond anything that public government could constitutionally impose.
Employers can and do demand a degree of subservience and conformity that public government cold never require. Economic punishment is a more effective weapon than the punishment inflicted by law. Public government is limited in what it can do to individuals by provisions of the Constitution; private government is subject to no such limitations.
Reich posits that prior to WWII; the presence of private economic power was a major issue in American life. William Jennings Bryan’s populism, Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting, Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal were all responses to private economic power. Public government, labor unions, and small business were all viewed as a counterforce. Then, after World War II, the whole subject of private government vanished from public discourse.
During the past forty years, private power grew far beyond the size that had previously caused such concern, but it remained out of sight. Voters forgot why government existed and saw it, rather than private government, as the cause of problems facing the individual. We refused to recognize the basic change had taken place in American society—that access to wealth and position had come under tight control, and that the manager, rather than the public official held primary authority over people’s lives.
BBC WORLD SERVICE
3 November 2011
Oakland port reopens after Occupy clashes
The port of Oakland has reopened, after clashes in the centre of the city sent at least four protesters to hospital. The port - the fifth busiest…In pictures: Occupy Oakland leads protests in the US
As protesters from Occupy Oakland shut down the city's port, veterans aligned with the group marched in solidarity in New York.. …
Il Pleut. Greece has poured vinegar on the G20's frites.
Business / NEW 6 hours ago
Mark the date: 3 November 2011. In Oakland, California, protesters - including workers - have blocked the operation of a major US port; in New…
Several thousand protesters have gathered in Oakland, California, in a demonstration aimed at expanding on the broader Occupy Wall Street movement.
Protests have continued throughout the night in Oakland, California, as police clashed with demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street group. Police…
28 October 2011
Occupy Wall Street: Arrests in Nashville and San Diego
… without tents. 'We are all Scott Olson' The arrests follow 50 in Atlanta on Tuesday. Oakland's police department confirmed there were 102 arrests…
27 October 2011
Occupy Oakland seeks strike after Scott Olsen injury
Activists taking part in the the Occupy Oakland protests have called for a general strike in the city. The call to strike on 2 November emerged…
26 October 2011
'Unequal' US sees Occupy Wall Street clashes
… camps in Atlanta and Oakland. Some 50 people were arrested in Atlanta and 85 were held overnight in Oakland, California. After clashes in Oakland…
Occupy protests: US police fire tear gas at demonstrators
26 October 2011
Police have used tear gas to disperse anti-capitalism protesters in Oakland, California, after declaring the demonstration an "illegal assembly".
Private Government VS American Democracy
Reich quotes Charles Lindblom on the unholy alliance of corporate culture and government. Charles Edward Lindblom (born 1917) is a Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Economics at Yale University. He is a former president of the American Political Science Association and the Association for Comparative Economic Studies and also a former director of Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies.
Charles Lindblom
Lindblom writes that it has been a curious feature of democratic thought that it has not faced up to the private corporation as a peculiar organization in an ostensible democracy. Enormously large, rich in resources, the big corporations, we have seen, command more resources than do most government units. They can also, over a broad range, insist that government meet their demands, even if these demands run counter to those of citizens expressed through their polyarchal controls. Moreover, they do not disqualify themselves from playing the partisan role of a citizen—for the corporation is legally a person. And they exercise unusual veto powers. They are on all these counts disproportionately powerful, we have seen. The large private corporation fits oddly into democratic theory and vision. Indeed, it does not fit. (31)
Lindblom’s 1977 sublimation reads like a comment on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 08-205 (2010), which was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prohibits government from censoring political broadcasts in candidate elections when those broadcasts are funded by corporations or unions.
Concurrences
Chief Justice Roberts, with whom Justice Alito joined, wrote separately "to address the important principles of judicial restraint and stare decisis implicated in this case".[20]
Chief Justice Roberts wrote to further explicate and defend the court's statement that "there is a difference between judicial restraint and judicial abdication". The Chief Justice argued that there are times during which overruling prior decisions are necessary. Had the courts never gone against stare decisis, "segregation would be legal, minimum wage laws would be unconstitutional, and the Government could wiretap ordinary criminal suspects without first obtaining warrants". Roberts' concurrence recited a plethora of case law in which the court had ruled against jurisprudence. Ultimately, however, Roberts argued that "stare decisis is a doctrine of preservation, not transformation. It counsels deference to make past mistakes, but provides no justification for making new ones".
Justice Scalia joined the opinion of the Court, but also wrote a concurring opinion which was joined by Justice Alito in full and by Justice Thomas in part.[21] Scalia addressed Stevens’ dissent, specifically with regard to the notion that the court's decision was not supported by the original understanding of the First Amendment. Scalia stated that Stevens’ dissent was "in splendid isolation from the text of the First Amendment. It never shows why 'the freedom of speech' that was the right of Englishmen did not include the freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including association in the corporate form."
He further considered the dissent’s exploration of the Framers’ views about the "role of corporations in society" to be misleading, and even if valid, irrelevant to the text. Scalia principally argued that the first amendment was written in "terms of speech, not speakers" and that "Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker."
President Barack Obama stated that the decision "gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington — while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates".[41] Obama later elaborated in his weekly radio address saying, "This ruling strikes at our democracy itself," and "I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest".[42] On January 27, 2010, Obama further condemned the decision during the 2010 State of the Union Address, stating that, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law[43] to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."
PROTECTING AMERICAN VALUES
Reich writes that the rise and transformation of the corporation parallels the public history of America since the Constitution was adopted. The earliest corporate forms appeared to pose no challenge to the newly established republic. The corporate form was narrowly restricted. But it was not long before the expansive drive of the corporation began to overcome first one limitation and then others.
ON POINT RADIO~PRIVATE GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2011
Will conservative Republicans back this man? Do they have to?
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, greets volunteers at a call center at the Fairfax County Republican Committee (FCRC) headquarters in Fairfax. Va., Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011. (AP)
Mitt Romney’s been running for president since before 2008. He’s accomplished, rich, and raring to go. His Republican rivals for the GOP nomination have so far risen and stalled out without denting his campaign.
Rick Perry on debate troubles. Michele Bachmann on fury. Herman Cain, now, maybe, on sexual harassment allegations. And still Mitt Romney’s GOP poll numbers don’t really pull out of the 25 percent support range. Why? And is he inevitable anyway?
This hour On Point: Mitt Romney and the GOP. Will conservatives back this man? Do they have to?
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests
Karen Tumulty, National Political Reporter for The Washington Post.
Michael Gerson, columnist for The Washington Post. He was a top aide to President George W. Bush as Assistant to the President for Policy and Strategic Planning. His recent column “The Conservative Case for Mitt Romney” ran on Monday.
Richard Viguerie, chairman of the conservative news and commentary site, ConservativeHQ.com.
Ryan Hecker, a Houston political activist who founded the Tea Party’s “Contract From America.”
From Tom’s Reading List
Forbes “Rick Perry’s campaign is in danger of “flaming out,” going down in a blaze of mean-spirited claims as he attacks and tries to trash Mitt Romney with only modest success. Perry is also the best thing that’s happened for Herman Cain, because he keeps trashing Romney, driving GOP voters his way. Newt Gingrich is also gaining ground thanks to his superior idea stream, and experience in staying above the fray.”
The Washington Times “Rick Perry incoherently trotted out an optional flat tax, hoping perhaps that it would slow his plummeting poll numbers, but his devotion to the flat-tax gospel is even more indeterminate than Romney’s.”
Red State “Hours after the Politico’s Roger Simon accused the GOP of being racist, the Politico begins a sincere effort to destroy the black guy running to be the GOP’s Presidential nominee. The opposition dump on Herman Cain has begun in earnest. Before getting into the details, let’s pay attention to what this means.”
The invisible government hides behind two myths: the myth of the “free market,” and the myth of “big government.”
THE WORLD TAKES TO THE STREETS
The City of London Corporation has "paused" its legal action against the anti-capitalist protest camp outside St Paul's Cathedral.
Protesters camped outside City Hall in Bradford have been told they must pack up their tents and leave.
… with the protesters. Occupy London Stock Exchange said it was "delighted" the two potential legal cases had been suspended. Mary Singer, an Occupy…
Editor's Choice
Clickable map highlighting the key locations of the campsite set up by protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral
Q&A: Protest outside St Paul's
News
A look at why protesters have camped outside St Paul's Cathedral since 15 October and the impact of the demonstration upon the church
In pictures: Worldwide protests over economic crisis
News
Images from 'Occupy' protests which have taken place in the capital cities of several countries including the USA, Italy, Germany, England and Spain....
Oakland or Syria?
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