Occupy Wall Street purchases $15 Million of Americans’ Medical Debts

The Rolling Jubilee Project, a spin-off of Occupy Wall Street, has purchased nearly $15 million worth of personal medical debts, and has forgiven the debts.

The group spent $400,000 to buy the debts at a fifty-to-one ratio.  This random act of kindness has liberated 2,693 people who had been overwhelmed by medical expenses.  A message at the Rolling Jubilee website says:

“Think of it as a bailout of the 99 percent by the 99 percent.”

Remember:  Sixty percent of American bankruptcies are caused by medical bills.

Here’s another article that says “Occupy Wall Street’s debt buying strikes at the heart of capitalism.”

The article makes some interesting points.  It closes with:

“And if your instinct is to point out that $15 million is so small a drop in the ocean as to be insignificant, my response would be: not to the 2,693 people who received that letter. The sparkle of a lit fuse is, by its nature, humble.”

Shop Locally on Black Friday

Whatever one thinks of Occupy Wall Street, everyone should follow their advice for Black Friday:  Shop locally.  Patronize mom-and-pop stores instead of chains and Big Boxes.

As a downtown resident of a small town — for the past seven-plus years — I’ve been hearing this message constantly.  It’s probably less obvious if you live in a large city or the suburbs.

The numbers I’ve been hearing over and over are:  when you buy from a locally-owned store, sixty cents of every dollar you spend stays in your community.  When you patronize a Big Box store — Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc. — only six cents of every dollar stays in your community.  For non-Big-Box chain stores, the figure is somewhere between those two extremes.

Now that the economy is in the tank, and a larger share of the nation’s wealth is concentrated in fewer hands than ever before, this message is more important than ever.  Buy local.

Remember — politicians won’t help you.  They’re part of the one percent.  You have to vote with your dollars whenever possible.  If you hate Wall Street, don’t keep your money in one of the big banks.  If you hate Wal-Mart, don’t shop there.

Happy Black Friday.

Colin Powell on Occupy Wall Street

If anyone other than Colin Powell had said this, the Far Right would be pulling their hair out and yelling “Who IS that socialist parasite and why does he hate America?!?”

Colin Powell told CNN:

“I was born in Harlem to immigrant parents, and my parents always had a job.  And so, people are concerned now that there is not that source of an income. There isn’t that work source that I remember.  So, what you’re seeing with ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and the others are people who are unhappy, and they’re directing their unhappiness right now towards Wall Street and towards those they think are doing to well in our society.  And so, demonstrating like this is as American as apple pie. We have been marching up and down and demonstrating throughout our history.”

CNN’s Piers Morgan asked Colin Powell:

“Do you understand the anger particularly towards Wall Street, I think?  What really gets their goat is that a lot of these banks and bankers got bailed out by the taxpayers. The first chance they got, when they got back on their feet, to not give themselves huge bonuses again, they ignored that temptation and put their noses back in the trough.”

Colin Powell:

“…one of the things that is of concern to all of us is that there’s an increasing gap between those who are doing very well and I’m doing well, and those who are not doing as well. And those who are not doing as well are not seeing their lives improving. And so, there’s frustration and angriness there.  And so, it isn’t enough to scream at the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ demonstrators. We need our political system to start reflecting this anger back in to how do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again? How do we get businesses that have a lot of money stacked up, how do we get them to invest that money and create jobs?”

Occupy Wall Street Movement has Created Jobs

Especially in the private security industry.  Along with the unimaginable wealth and splendor comes the paranoia.  Protect me from the riffraff!  And as the linked article says, “as the mood on Main Street turns increasingly hostile, New York's financial titans are cranking their security measures up to 11.”

A cofounder of Risk Control Strategies said “We expect to more than double our revenue in New York this year.”  Another firm, Insite Security, has received dozens of calls since the Occupy Wall Street protests began.

That’s more new jobs than the GOP — the “Party of Jobs” — has created.

The executive protection industry, as it’s called now, has already been extremely lucrative ever since the 2008 Wall Street meltdown.  Gee, I wonder why.

One of Risk Control Strategies’ newest clients is a bank chief financial officer who received an anonymous e-mail message saying:  “You filled your pockets, and now I'm going to fill mine, starting with your family.”

A security firm CEO — and former Secret Service agent — said:

“If Zuccotti Park is tapping into resentment against wealthy people, that really changes the calculus.  It's not that far of a connection between what's happening now in that park and a more focused, research-based kind of attack.”

Squirm, Motherfuckers.

Occupy Wall Street: Today’s Version of 1930s Bonus Army Protesters

In 1932, the Bonus Army — aka the Bonus Expeditionary Force or the Bonus March — was comprised of 17,000 World War I veterans and their families.  Including family members, the group added up to 43,000 marchers.  They occupied Washington, D.C. during the spring and summer of that year to demand payment of the money they were still owed for their service during WWI.

Retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler visited their campground to offer them encouragement and reassurance.  (And if you’re up on your American history, you know that Smedley Butler became famous later for refusing to take part in a rightwing plot to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt.)

Anyway, General Smedley Butler’s endorsement didn’t do much good.  On July 28th, the U.S. Attorney General ordered the WWI veterans to vacate all government property.  During the ensuing clashes with police, two WWI veterans were shot and killed.  After that, President Hoover ordered the Army to clear out the campground completely.  All shelters and personal belongings were destroyed.

The following year there was a smaller march, which wasn’t squelched by police or the Army.  Three years after that, the WWI veterans received their pay.

Here are some more links.

Last night Rachel Maddow talked about the similarities between Occupy Wall Street and the Bonus Army; particularly the police crackdown in Oakland where an Iraqi war veteran was shot by the Oakland Police Department.

The more things change…

November 5th, 2011: Bank Transfer Day

On or before November 5th of this year, everyone who has an account with one of the Big Banks is encouraged to withdraw their money from that bank and transfer it to a credit union or a locally-owned bank.

(H/T to Reconstitution where I first learned of this, and to Jess for mentioning it in a comment at an earlier post here.)

Here are some links to Bank Transfer Day.

The idea for Bank Transfer Day came from somebody’s Facebook page and was immediately endorsed by the Occupy Wall Street movement.  As much as I’m in favor of Occupy Wall Street, I think voting with your dollars is a much more effective tactic than demonstrating.  If you’ve had it up to HERE with Wall Street’s scrotal grip on the entire country — and you have an account with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup or Wells Fargo — there’s something YOU can do right now to become part of the solution.

Vote with your dollars.  Too many people hate Wal-Mart while continuing to shop there; hate the Koch Brothers while buying their products in droves.  This means YOU.

If you need to be reminded of why you shouldn’t be patronizing the Big Banks — check this out.

OK, what are you waiting for?

U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO agree on something!

Hell has frozen over.  On one of those ubiquitous Sunday talk shows yesterday, Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, both said that Congress needs to provide funding to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure.

Richard Trumka said:

“We can’t be competitive in a global economy unless we have infrastructure that allows us to be competitive.  This is really a no-brainer.”

And that’s not all:  The Vatican has called for a sweeping overhaul of the global financial system.  The statement called for an end to “an economic liberalism that spurns all rules and controls.”

The Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton said:

“While conservative leaders and several presidential candidates want to eviscerate financial reform, the Vatican has sent a powerful message that prudent regulation of our financial system is a moral priority…It’s clear the Vatican stands with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and others struggling to return ethics and good governance to a financial sector grown out of control after 30 years of deregulation.”

So we have the Vatican, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO all standing together.  Gee, who could be against them?  Oh, that’s right — Republicans.  They don’t want any infrastructure work done or any new jobs created because that would make Obama look good with an election coming up.  And they don’t want ANY regulation of the finance industry — their Wall Street pimps have told them very explicitly not to let this happen, Or Else.

“Corporations Have Carried Out a Coup d’état in My Country.”

This quote is from Chris Hedges.  He’s written for the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor.  He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for a series of articles profiling al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks on the United States.

Over the weekend Chris Hedges spoke to one of the Occupy Wall Street rallies:

“I spent 20 years overseas, I’m a war correspondent.  I came back and realized that corporations have carried out a coup d’état in my country…

“I covered the street demonstrations that brought down Miloševic, I’ve covered both of the Palestinian intifadas, and once movements like this start and articulate a fundamental truth about the society that they live in, and expose the repression, the mendacity, the corruption and the decay of structures of power, then they have a kind of centrifugal force, you never know where they’re going…

“What happens, and it’s true in all of these movements as well, is the foot soldiers of the elite, the blue uniform police, the mechanisms of control, finally don’t want to impede the movement. At that point, the power elite is left defenseless. So, where’s it going? No one knows. Even the people most intimately involved in the organization don’t know. All of these movements take on a kind of life and color that in some ways is finally mysterious. The only thing I can say, having been in the middle of similar movements, is that this one is real … And this one could take ‘em all down.”

Or as somebody else once said, “the times they are a-changin’”

Deliberate Obtuseness

I got the phrase “deliberate obtuseness” from this column.  Those two words totally capture one of the Right’s favorite arguing tactics.  After reciting the exact same simple-minded talking points over and over and over, their second favorite gimmick is to throw a wrench in the gears by playing Dumber Than Dirt.  They’ll make a totally clueless statement, or ask a “Duh, I don’t get it” question, so that the other person has to stop and patiently explain — for the 800th time — “No, I don’t hate business” or “No, I don’t want Communist thugs to come in and nationalize American industries.”

The example that Ben Adler gives in this column is the numerous rightwing talking heads who act confused about the “99%” label:  “So 99% of us are aging hippies who just left a Phish concert, huh huh huh huh uh uh uh uh.”  Ben Adler says:

“This is deliberate obtuseness. Of course it’s true that the dreadlocked campers at Zuccotti Park do not represent the cultural values of 99 percent of Americans. But they do not clam to. They say they represent the economic interests of the 99 percent of Americans who have been left behind by growing inequality and plutocratic policies.”

There was an Occupy Wall Street rally in our town over the weekend; about 200 people showed up.  Here’s a write-up from the local paper.  If you want to see deliberate obtuseness, check out some of the comments at the end of the article.  Several commenters have given very precise, articulate statements about what the protest means and why the public is furious at the financial robber barons who have the rest of the country by the shorthairs.

And the same tinfoil-duncecap-wearing teatards keep coming back and back and back with “What do you people want anyway?” “You just hate everybody who’s successful,” “You just want to get something for nothing.”  Etc.

Some of the other “99%” commenters have clearly explained that they themselves have jobs and own their homes, but they’re scared to death of what’s happening around them.  And again, the teatards’ only response is “Get a job!” or the sooo-funny “Why don’t you ‘occupy’ a job instead of the local park?”

Deliberate Obtuseness.  Now that we have a name for it, you’ll be seeing it everywhere.

Adbusters

I’ve never known anything about Adbusters other than a few vague references to them as the group that organized the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Here are some links.

According to their online magazine (which is completely ad-free), “We are a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.”

Works for me.  The magazine is based in Vancouver, B.C. and has an international circulation of 120,000.  Other campaigns launched by Adbusters, besides Occupy Wall Street, include TV Turnoff Week and Buy Nothing Day.  Maybe they should launch a “Take Your Money out of Bank of America and put it in a Credit Union” Day.

According to Wikipedia, Adbusters was founded in 1988.  The two founders had created their own TV commercial against excessive logging and clearcutting.  TV stations refused to air the ad because it was too “controversial,” i.e. it might offend their pimps in the logging industry.  This media censorship inspired them to start Adbusters.  As the Wikipedia article says:

“Adbusters was born out of their realization that citizens do not have the same access to the information flows as corporations.”

Occupy Wall Street — and the guerilla approach of Adbusters — has been an effective weapon against the trillion-dollar Wall Street empire.  Obviously it’s an uphill David-and-Goliath battle and there’s still a lot of work to be done.  But as you’ll remember, David won.  Adbusters’ campaigns have a certain ingenuity, a Young Turks quality, that’s completely lacking among the Wall Street barons.

It’s like rock-scissors-paper.  Sometimes this combination of fury and ingenuity is able to trump a billionaire’s wealth and influence.  Sometimes a 110-pound martial arts expert will disable a 300-pound attacker.

Earn up to $650 a Week, Just for Demonstrating Against Wall Street

If you hate America and everything she stands for, George Soros has a big fat paycheck for YOU.

And if you actually believe the above sentence — or the title of this post — I can get you a fantastic deal on some oceanfront property in Nebraska.

Supposedly, a liberal group called the Working Families Party has a Craigslist ad offering $350 to $650 a week for demonstrators who will “fight to hold Wall Street accountable…immediate hires…must be outgoing, articulate, dedicated, determined, and energetic communicators…”

Anybody seen Andrew Breitbart and his skanky girlfriend James O’Keefe lately?  This “exposé” has their fingerprints all over it.

I have no idea whether or not somebody is contributing money to Occupy Wall Street.  In any case, these demonstrators are reflecting the rage and frustration of tens of millions of Americans.  Three years ago, taxpayers “contributed” a trillion dollars to bail out Wall Street.  So far the bailed-out banks have used this taxpayer money to purchase more congressmen and judges, fund more Astroturf organizations and pay their senior executives record bonuses.

Three years of unarticulated fury have finally crystallized.  Occupy Wall Street isn’t going away.  It’s spreading to more cities every day.  Whether or not somebody is contributing money to Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent Movement — the fact remains, these organizations are reflecting the anger and fury of most Americans.

As far as being suspicious of where someone’s money is coming from — how about those huge “demonstrations” two years ago against health care reform?  Tens of thousands of hardworking everyday Americans suddenly flew into a white-hot rage at the thought of HMOs’ profits being jeopardized.

Riiight.

“Should Democrats Distance Themselves from Occupy Wall Street?”

That’s the title of this article.  My answer is NO.  And not just “No” but Fuck No!  Democrats who try to “distance” themselves from Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percent Movement are the exact same politicians whose constituents will stay home on Election Day.

Hasn’t this simple fact already been made crystal clear over and over during the past two and a half years?

Every time Obama has compromised and folded and yielded to the Republicans, he’s alienated a few more of the people who voted for him in 2008.  Number of new rightwing converts Obama has gained every time he bent/folded/yielded:  Zero.  Nada.  Zip point shit.

Same goes for all of the “moderate” “Blue Dog” Democrats in Congress.  The Right doesn’t hate them any less for being moderate and not wanting any trouble.  The only thing these DINOs are accomplishing is alienating the people who voted for them.

Like it or not, the 99 Percent Movement — which includes the “Occupy” movements that are spreading to more cities every day — has become a Litmus Test.  Take a side.  Take a stand.  Speak out.  Or get voted out.

The Republicans understand this.  They’ve been told by their corporate pimps to get out there NOW and start their smearing and name-calling.  And their useful idiots have complied.  Eric Cantor (R—Prostitute) has expressed his “concern” about those unruly “mobs.”  Peter “Kill All The Mud Races” King is whining that if the media keeps covering and “glorifying” the protesters, it’ll be like the 1960s all over again, and “we can’t allow that to happen.”

Democrats who squirm and try to sneak out of the spotlight will only be sabotaging their own careers.  Three years of unarticulated public rage and frustration have finally crystallized.  As the 99 Percent Movement spreads and gets more coverage, more and more Americans will be lining up on one side or the other:  Wall Street powerbrokers — and this includes the “legislators” and “regulators” who keep going down on them — versus the other 99 percent of the population.

As someone in the linked article said, “Democrats can either lead or get left behind.”

Or as Steppenwolfe sang a few decades ago:  “If you want to retire, get out of the way.”

Occupy Wall Street is Growing, Spreading

And it’s here to stay.  Occupy Wall Street started on September 17th, and it took at least a week for the mainstream “media” to even notice.  Even then, they mostly just poked fun at the demonstrators’ funny clothes and the fact that their message was “incoherent” and “inarticulate.”

When one tenth that many teabaggers gather in a park with their dorky costumes and misspelled signs, the media are all over them like stink on shit.  “The American People are rising in anger!”  But I digress…

Now several unions — including the New York Transit Workers Union (TWU Local 100) — are taking up the cause.  They’re organizing a massive rally next Wednesday, October 5th.  A spokesman for TWU Local 100 said:

“While Wall Street and the banks and the corporations are the ones that caused the mess that’s flowed down into the states and cities, it seems there’s no shared sacrifice. It’s the workers having to sacrifice while the wealthy get away scot-free. It’s kind of a natural alliance with the young people and the students…They just seem to be hanging out there getting the crap beaten out of them, and maybe union support will help them out a little bit.”

And the New York Metro 32BJ SEIU, with about 70,000 members, will be showing their solidarity with Occupy Wall Street at a rally on October 12th.

Occupy Wall Street has spread to other cities as well, including Chicago and Boston.

Matt Taibbi is hopeful that Occupy Wall Street will continue to grow into a much larger movement and create the necessary public awareness.

If you aren’t familiar with Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone articles and his book “Griftopia,” you don’t know what you’re missing.  He might be the only person on the planet who can take an excruciatingly complicated and boring subject like derivatives and translate it into a Hunter Thompson-esque Gonzo writing style that’ll have you on the edge of your seat.

Occupy Wall Street

That’s the name of this website.

Over a thousand demonstrators are protesting on Wall Street.  (Here’s another link.)

This is supposed to be a long-term civil disobedience campaign to draw the public’s attention to Wall Street’s crimes (whether these crimes are technically illegal or not).  This isn’t getting much coverage from the “media,” and most of their coverage is coming from corporate useful idiots blubbering about “class warfare.”

Granted, it does seem a little too 1960s-ish — a thousand people demonstrating against Wall Street, the mightiest empire in history.  But unlike the corporate-funded teabaggers, these protesters at least believe in something.

And speaking of Wall Street and the one percent of Americans who control everything, our NetFlix movie last night was The Company Men.  It stars Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Craig T. Nelson, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello and Chris Cooper (who???), who played the wackjob Marine Colonel in “American Beauty.”  The movie is about high-ranking corporate mucky-mucks who get downsized.  In spite of what you’d expect, these downsized corporate bigwigs are actually quite sympathetic in the movie.

I don’t think the movie got much fanfare.  Maybe the public has gotten jaded from too many movies about corporate corruption — Wall Street, Boiler Room, Money Never Sleeps, etc.  But the root cause of most of our problems is the corrupt corporate ownership of America, Inc., so let’s hope the public will get interested.