How much fun is it to listen to right-wing radio pundits — such as gasbags Rush Limbaugh, Mike Rosen and Dan Caplis — whine about the protesters at Occupy Denver in Civic Center Park?
Hey, guys, don’t complain. Do your own protest. Gather a thousand or so of your millionaire/billionaire pals and stage your own occupation. You could call it the “one percent movement” and have it at Cherry Hills Country Club or some other fancy place. You’d be among friends there and they wouldn’t snitch on you to the cops for trespassing.
And you wouldn’t have to mingle with the Great Unwashed in downtown Denver.
It’s always the same old story with the righties: The protesters are all “long-haired, college kids” or “lazy, anti-American, refugees from the ’60s who ought take a bath and go find a real job,” even though — thanks to George W. Bush — there are no real jobs to find.
But what really pisses them off is that the protesters are criticizing America’s glorious capitalistic system, which, it seems to me, is a bit off track at the moment.
Proof of the pudding is the American government giving tax breaks to so-called American corporations for shipping thousands of American jobs to foreign countries. Those were real jobs.
The rightwing apologists for wealthy Wall Street manipulators apparently don’t see any problem in the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States. The middle class is being squeezed out of the equation and that portends a huge problem for the corporations and small businesses, which the right-wing reveres. Where will consumers’ buying power come from when there is no middle class? I doubt our form of capitalism can survive without a middle class.
Huge tax cuts for the rich, passed during the administration of George W. Bush, haven’t created a single job. In fact, they have actually helped to widen the gap between rich and poor.
I have no idea if this occupation strategy, which is now underway in many states, will last, or if it will have any effect on the politicians who are charged with making decisions on the nation’s economy. But, the last real citizens’ uprising in this country — the Vietnam War protest — had great impact on the politicians at that time. Remember, it forced President Lyndon Johnson to opt out of running for a second full term.
While the war protesters didn’t stop the war, they probably shortened it and exposed how wrong-headed it was. Too bad we didn’t learn.
But the elimination of selective service (the draft) and the advent of the all-volunteer military services effectively got politicians — and their draft age kids — off the hook. We haven’t had any serious war protests since, not even today when we need them most.
If right-wing Republicans don’t believe there is a problem when unemployment is 9.2 percent, but is really much higher, when other factors, such as underemployment, are considered; when about four million families have their homes in foreclosure; and when workers’ earnings (adjusted for inflation) are less than they were 10 years ago, that is a huge problem for the country.
I understand why the so-called “mobs” in New York, Denver and other cities are protesting the system. If the blowhard radio critics don’t get it, it’s because the system is their system.
It makes me proud as an American to witness the strength the Occupy Wall Street protesters have shown to all of us, and in my opinion even the cops ordered to arrest them have to respect their loyalty to this country. They they have stayed strong and grown across the nation in the month since beginning the occupation. Unity does make change and most of us are part of the 99%, so they are speaking for us, letting their voices be ours. We should all be grateful and stand together with them for the better good of all.
There are 25 million Americans that do not have jobs that want to work, yet our government passes three new free trade deals, after knowing how NAFTA has impacted our nations “good” jobs, instead of passing legislation for creating “good” jobs in the United States.
We all know about the economic crisis we are facing and how much trouble our government is having finding solutions. Here is just one idea that may assist in chipping away at the national deficit. Install a sales tax on those on wall street who buy trillions of derivatives and stocks without paying a penny in sales tax. Taxing wall street speculators just a 1/2% sales tax on financial speculation would generate 100′s of billions in tax revenue. Have you ever been to the grocery store and purchased your weekly groceries without having to pay a much higher sales tax?