Stop Corpocracy ! view full

January 2, 2012.  Facing hard times and an out-of-touch, tea-party Congress, the country was ripe for an anti-greed movement, and who better to target than the fat cats that caused the mess, got bailed out and thumbed their noses at us. Occupy Wall Street got the country talking about the real problem instead of the tea-party's manufactured debt crisis.

But OWS needs to focus—it needs a "cause." To get people talking is one thing. Camping en masse in NY City will do that. But scoring a victory against the 1% is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. In fact we'll be lucky if we can even elect Elizabeth Warren, who's strong on her own and is fighting in Massachusetts—OWS territory.

What's to be done? Listening to OWS and to what the country is asking for, some points are obvious. But these points get lost in confrontations with police.

• "99%" is brilliant, because it's true, on point, and inclusive.
• [#The 1% problem] is the crony-capitalism problem.
  • Cronies use politics to gain wealth and wealth to control politics.
• The Supreme Court decision:  Corporations are people too. Wrong!
  ----------------------------------------------------
• The 1% problem  =  crony capitalism  =  "Corporations are people"

Corpocracy is the root of the problem, and most of the country agrees, including many in the tea party. The tea party has taken up crony capitalism as a cause, but it has long been a cause of Democrats. And the Supreme Court decision flies in the face, not just of democracy, but also the right wing view that the Court follow the thoughts of the founding fathers. There is no way James Madison was thinking of corporations when he introduced the Bill of Rights. So even extreme-right tea partiers will have a hard time arguing that corporations are people.

Focus on corpocracy and OWS could go down in history as more than a flash in the pan.

The original OWS blog post (July 13, 2011) says "The most exciting candidate [for a single demand] that we've heard so far is ...

that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it."

But I suggest it not be a "demand," which implies that we are handing power to someone who will grant the demand, and that OWS is not taking responsibility for the hard work needed to achieve this goal. The end of corpocracy is a "cause;" it is cause that will make all other progress possible. It is what [#America] wants now, and it is much bigger than any demand that can be granted.

Some links:

The original OWS Blog Post.
How it started:   SF Chronicle,  New Yorker
Top GOP strategist is scheming.
Bank Lobbyists plan to undermine Occupy.

12/01/11.  Luntz figures how to defeat Occupy 

12/07/11.  Lakeoff explains to Dems that Luntz is smart 

[#PopNotes]