Occupy DC

(Hat tip to Crooks and Liars)

The Declaration of the Occupation of Washington, D.C.
Consented to in committee November 15th, 2011

We have been captives of corrupt economic and political systems for far too long. The concentration of wealth and the purchase of political power stifle the voices of the increasingly disenfranchised 99%. Corporate dominance subverts democracy, intentionally sows division, destroys the environment, obstructs the just and equitable pursuit of happiness, and violates the rights and dignity of all life.

Occupy D.C. is an open community of diverse individuals, founded on equality for the common good. We are peaceably assembled at McPherson Square, practicing direct democracy on the doorstep of K Street, the center of destructive corporate and governmental relationships. We insist that our political and economic systems serve the people’s interests. Now is the time to advance and complete the struggles of those who came before us.

We are assembled because...
It is absurd that The 1% has taken 40% of the nation’s wealth through exploiting labor, outsourcing jobs, and manipulating the tax code to their benefit through special capital tax rates and loopholes. The system is rigged in their favor, yet they cry foul when anyone even dares to question their relentless class warfare.

Candidates in our electoral system require huge sums of money to be competitive. These contributions from multi-national corporations and wealthy individuals destroy responsive representative governance. A system of backroom deals, kickbacks, bribes, and dirty politics overrides the will of the people. The rotation of decision-makers between the public and private sectors cultivates a network of public officials, lobbyists, and executives whose aligned interests do not serve the American people. 

The entrenched 2-party system overlooks public interests by pursuing narrow political goals. This climate encourages candidates to polarize voters for individual power and personal gain. Citizens’ meaningful input has been compromised by gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, and unresponsive politicians. Residents of Washington DC continue to lack autonomy and legislative representation.

Those with power have divided us from working in solidarity by perpetuating historical prejudices and discrimination based on color of skin, perceived race, immigrant or indigenous status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability, among other things.

Corporations broke the financial system by gambling with our savings, property, and economy. They needed the public to bail them out of their failures yet deny any responsibility and continue to fight oversight. They loot from those whose labor creates society’s prosperity, while the government allows them to privatize profits and socialize risk.

Corporate interests threaten life on Earth by extracting and burning fossil fuels and resisting the necessary transition to renewable energy. Their drilling, mining, clear-cutting, overfishing, and factory farming destroys the land, jeopardizes our food and water, and poisons the soil with near impunity. They privilege polluters over people by subsidizing fossil fuels, blocking investments in clean energy and efficient transportation, and hiding environmental destruction from public oversight.

Private corporations, with the government’s support, use common resources and infrastructure for short-term personal profit, while stifling efforts to invest in public goods.

The U.S. government engages in drawn-out, costly conflicts abroad. These operations are often pursued to control resources, needlessly overthrow foreign governments, and install friendly regimes. These wars destroy the lives of American soldiers and innocent civilians and are a blank check to divert money from domestic priorities.

Government authorities cultivate a culture of fear to invade our privacy, limit assembly, restrict speech, and deny due process. They have failed in their duty to protect our rights. Exacerbated by profiteering interests, the criminal justice system has unfairly targeted underprivileged communities and outspoken groups for prosecution rather than protection.

Corporatized culture warps our perception of reality. It cheapens and mocks the beauty of human thought and experience, while promoting excessive materialism as the path to happiness. The corporate news media furthers the interests of the very wealthy, distorts and disregards the truth, and confines our imagination of what is possible for ourselves and society.

Leaders are trading our access to basic needs in exchange for handouts to the ultra-wealthy. Our rights to healthcare, education, food, water, and housing are sacrificed to profit-driven market forces. They are attacking unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, creating an uncertain future for us all.*

A better world is possible. To all people,
We, the Washington D.C. General Assembly occupying K Street in McPherson Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble and reclaim the commons. Re-conceive ways to build a democratic, just, and sustainable world.
To all who value democracy, we encourage you to collaborate, and share available resources. We stand with you in solidarity.

*These grievances are not all inclusive.

Today's Pix

3 from Anthony Freda

And this one just for the hell of it.  

Somebody at AP either has a very high regard for the Grants Administrator at NC State, or a very low IQ not to spot this as a Snopesworthy hoax.

Electoral College Silliness

I don't really know where I stand on this. I do know that we have these little leftovers from when the thing got set up in the first place. I also know that Electors casting their votes is seen as very much a formality unless an election turns out to be way too close, and then it just gets weirder because there're so few who actually understand it.

There Are No Accidents

Why does it seem like we always hear a lot about non-fossil energy, but never get anywhere with it? Hmmm.

A mashup from DumFux News (from Media Matters via Little Green Footballs):

It Just Never Fails

Every time a good number of people get together to express disagreement with their governments, those governments always seem to go into Hyper-Authoritarian Mode. Nothing new in that. We've seen a bunch of reminders in the last several months. It just comes as a little jolt when it happens here in the US, even tho' our history is filled with the repeating pattern of Unrest leading to Demonstration leading to Violent Authoritarian Reaction.

Now let's add a little wrinkle by considering the fact that Zuccotti Park is a privately owned public space. Say that out loud a coupla times and let the 1984-ish-ness of it wash over you while you watch this clip:
(hat tip: Crooks and Liars)



The cops in NYC have to identify themselves as The Government - they wear numbered badges and name tags and everything. But Free Market Security Forces apparently aren't similarly restricted. With the cops, we can at least pretend there's a little accountability - not so when you call Rent-a-Goon to get a ready-made battalion of pud-knockers to do your dirty work.

And oh yeah - these guys have been very well trained; they have lots of experience (our tax dollars hard at work); and now that they're home and out of the military, we'll have to find something for them to do - so it makes perfect sense to use them to bring us a little law and order right here at home.

Put that together with all those unAmerican Terrorist Sympathizers who got their panties in a knot worrying about how red-blooded God-and-country patriots might abuse the powers of DHS and The USA PATRIOT Act.
From Wonkette:

Remember when people were freaking out over the Patriot Act and Homeland Security and all this other conveniently ready-to-go post-9/11 police state stuff, because it would obviously be just a matter of time before the whole apparatus was turned against non-Muslim Americans when they started getting complain-y about the social injustice and economic injustice and income inequality and endless recession and permanent unemployment? That day is now, and has been for some time. But it’s also now confirmed that it’s now, as some Justice Department official screwed up and admitted that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated the riot-cop raids on a dozen major #Occupy Wall Street demonstration camps nationwide yesterday and today. (Oh, and tonight, too: Seattle is being busted up by the riot cops right now, so be careful out there.)

What's It All About?

The Short answer is: Nobody knows what it's all about.  And that's pretty encouraging to me.

When the Tea Party thing first popped up, it had a kind of organic feel to it, but almost immediately, when Michelle Bachmann jumped in front of it - and then when Dick Armey slithered in - suddenly it was all about GOP talking points or some other templated 'conservative' nonsense.  The rallies had all the authenticity of an Up With People performance from 1970, and the original themes that grew out of a reasonable rejection of Tax Payer bailouts for the crooks on Wall Street morphed into the old familiar bits about Tax-and-Spend, Deficit Hawkery and National Debt Anxiety.  It was one of the slickest bamboozles anybody'd ever seen (and btw: it made Dick Armey a fuckload of money).

So along comes OWS.  Basically the same thing as the Tea Party (albeit without all the blue hair).  And while there have always been crazies of the type who always gravitate towards any kind of power center, OWS has maintained a very different feel to it.  They don't have a real org chart.  They don't have designated spokespeople.  They have a generally stated list (of sorts) of the things they want to see addressed and/or remedied, but they're resisting efforts to be defined and then co-opted by the very entities they're determined to push against.  By staying more or less passive and unconfined by conventional politicking, they gain strength while they wait to discover what OWS is to become.

If you want a fair parallel, go back and watch The Social Network again, and pay close attention to the conflict between Zuckerberg and Saverin when facebook was still just a college campus thing.  As facebook was starting to take off, the 'normal' next step was to figure out how to monetize it - to make it make money.  But Zuckerberg resists, saying they don't know what it is yet - that they may have created something that fundamentally changes the way people interact; on a truly global scale.  Trying to shoehorn the thing into the standard Harvard Biz School model would be like Secretariat pullin' a plow.

So there's absolutely no need to make OWS fit neatly into whatever frame of reference we have on hand right now today.  In fact, I think what OWS needs is to resist all efforts to rein it in and to make it into something it's not.  I get a weird feeling that OWS is a very close approximation of what democracy is supposed to look like.  Maybe that's why we're having such a hard time recognizing it.

Today's Shitty Little Fact

Of the 100 biggest economies in the world, 53 are corporations - which is up from 51 a year ago.

The Story Of Stuff

"Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our ego satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate." --Victor Lebow

Let's figure out how to move from a linear system to a circular one, but let's try to be careful about the disruption that must always accompany such great shifts.

We Are So Fucked

I'd like to think there was a time when this shit didn't go on.

The next national election is now less than a year away and congressmen and senators are expending much of their time and their energy raising the millions of dollars in campaign funds they'll need just to hold onto a job that pays $174,000 a year.

Few of them are doing it for the salary and all of them will say they are doing it to serve the public. But there are other benefits: Power, prestige, and the opportunity to become a Washington insider with access to information and connections that no one else has, in an environment of privilege where rules that govern the rest of the country, don't always apply to them.

Watch the video from 60 Minutes at CBSNews.com.

Obama Meets The GOP Women's Caucus

Always looking to connect a few dots - even when they seem pretty far apart.



At about 30:00, talking about The Unibomber and Eric Rudolph - "As a side note, I have no idea what it is with white folks and the woods - but whatever it is probably explains why black folks don't do a lot of camping."

Verterans' Day

"We wear our widow's weeds like nuns, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifice"

Turd Blossom Rides Again

Elizabeth Warren scares the holy bejeebers outa some folks. Kinda like bleach scares a fungus.

Penn State Update

From Michael Collins at The Agonist:

The relentless deviate, former PSU defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, is accused of sexually assaulting children for years. According to the grand jury, he gained easy access to children and early adolescents through a foundation he founded in 1977, the Second Mile Foundation. He continued the assaults at his home and in the PSU showers on at least one occasion. The foundation serves over 100,000 at-risk youth. Sandusky started the foundation as a group home for "troubled boys" in 1977. Since hiring Jack Raykovitz, PhD, a licensed psychologist, as president, the foundation has grown into a multimillion (sic) enterprise serving over 100,000 children throughout the state.

I'm not advocating violence - don't kick him in the nuts and don't throw anything at him - but if you see this Sandusky guy out in public, he needs to be made to feel as small and unwelcome as it is humanly possible to feel.

Today's Pix

From Funny Or Die

Hat Tip - Daily Dawdle

Herman Cain’s Campaign Promises with Mike Tyson from Mike Tyson

Having It Both Ways

Art vs Life

One way to put it:
"Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it." --Vladimir Mayakovsky

I don't know what that really has to do with anything right now, but I got to thinking (usually kinda dangerous for me) about parallels and coincidences and intersections, and I can't help but assume that there's no way I'm the only one in the world who wonders about the eerily converging similarities between the Duke brothers from the movie Trading Places and the Koch brothers.

Mortimer and Randolph Duke

Chuckles and Davy Koch

Olbermann On Joe Pa

It's one of the saddest things ever. Joe Paterno has been a hero for a lot of us for a very long time. And while I think this is something that happened as much in spite of his management rather than because of it, I also think this is a good example of what can happen when somebody stays in a position of great power for way too long.

Word is that Paterno will resign at the end of the season. I have to agree with Keith on this one (fire his ass today), but I'd go one more step and say that Paterno should be in front of a judge right now, trying to make a case for why he should not be in jail.

NYT Late To The Party - Again

Some pretty decent analysis from Numerian at The Agonist, on the main reason our 4th estate is in the middle of an Epic FAIL.

As an ex-subscriber to The New York Times, I too have been outraged by such stories, but not because I read them in the paper of record, which is not simply very late to the game of reporting on this phenomenon - it is too late. I’ve been outraged by these stories because I have been reading about this for years on internet blogs. Some of the most persistent reporters and analysts who write about this problem include Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, Yves Smith at the Naked Capitalist blog, and Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker blog. All three of these writers have no doubt lost some readers over the years because they write about these stories over and over, and manage to maintain a sustained fury over the debasement of the rule of law that is evidenced by the way the big banks operate, and the inability or refusal of the government to do much about it.
These are the sort of people who have been criticized for years by The New York Times for sloppy reporting because they don’t have to live by the strict journalistic standards that are upheld every day by the mainstream media.

Whether or not this is true – and for the most part these writers have been careful about ensuring that the facts they present are verified – it is definitely the case that mainstream media reporters and analysts have not taken the angry, vituperative, and in some cases vulgar tone that bloggers take when talking about the collapse of the rule of law.

Therein lies a problem, and it is one that the mainstream media is only now beginning to comprehend. The undermining of the US Constitution and the laws as passed by Congress, and the refusal by government to investigate or prosecute these violations, which are now rife, represent some of the most serious challenges imaginable to a democracy based on a republican form of government. Anyone who takes their responsibilities as a citizen of the US seriously should be outraged by these circumstances.

Maybe we're starting to see some signs of revolt from inside the closed-loop crony-driven system which has tied Business, Government and Press together into a neat little bundle. We need that rebellion because we've allowed our little experiment in self government to slip into the oldest game in the world - ie: once everybody's guilty, nobody can be held responsible.  We have to figure out how to split it all up again, and put clearly discernible dividers back into place.  Balance has gone out of the system and must be reestablished.

Let Herman Be Herman

The allegations of sexual misconduct against Herman Cain will win him the nomination.

And here's the frame-up:  "It's just another instance of racist America's eagerness to condemn a black man for daring to approach a white woman.  The Democrats have a shameful history of this, you know.  All that Jim Crow stuff was because the Democrats were in charge of things in The South for way too long." (that's in quotes because it's what I expect to hear - not what anybody has actually said)

It doesn't matter what Limbaugh and all the others said about how Clinton's philandering exposed a character flaw that made him unfit to serve - this is the age of Confirmation Bias after all.  We can cherry pick the coverage and the analysis, and just choose what we wanna believe.

It just seems so fucking weirdly typical.  The leading lights for the Repubs and 'conservatives'  do, in fact, display a veiled racism on a pretty consistent basis.  Welfare Queens; Barack The Magic Negro; Food Stamp President; etc.  But now they've decided to play some kind of intra-race game.  They look at Obama, and they see a guy who's done almost exactly what they always say everybody should do.  He came from humble beginnings; he dreamed big; he worked hard; and he made it all the way to the White House.  He's devoted to his wife and kids; he loves his job; and he wants to serve his country.  What have the Repubs been telling us they want in a president that's any different from ANY of that?

Well - here it is: Plenty of people in general (and Repubs in particular) believe the crap about a big chunk of the 'black community' being anti-smart.  They're expecting a lot of black people to look at Obama and think, "he needs to back off a little - he's acting too white".  Cain fits their frame because he's their anti-intellectual black guy, which makes him the perfect anti-Obama.

Like Ann-The-Man Coulter said: "Our blacks are just so much better than their blacks".