A Challenge To Occupy Detractors: Watch and Let's Discuss

reply to post by OutKast Searcher

-Money in Politics
*Problems:
- Politician who spends more wins
- Lesser of Two Evils

We've gone beyond the lesser of two evils to seeing no difference between the two. It doesn't matter what any particular official says his/her beliefs are or how they say they represent the people that voted for them or appointed them, they will act in the interest of those who fund them.

*Solution:
- Imagine a world where a single voice carries as much weight as goldman sachs
*How:
- ???

Getting money out of politics is the easiest answer here. How? Overturn Citizens United, impose term limits... those are the two I hear and read most often. The biggest part here though is, if you think about exactly how much we as a nation are on life support at the moment, we need public space, we need 24/7 participation from the people or at least it's availability to converse (problem solve) and demonstrate (to "them" we're awake and taking to task as well as raise awareness of more people).

-Bank Foreclosures
*Problem:
- Lack of Government Regulations
- Govermnet bailouts
*Solution:
- If you live in a home, you should be able to stay in a home
*How:
- ???

For the sake of having minor knowledge on how your mind works, I won't bring up the massive amount of illegal foreclosures and will to stick to legal.

Way too often, foreclosure proceedings begin after 2 missed payments and even sometimes because of bank errors (not making an auto-withdrawal for the mortgage for example). At this time in our economy where there is no such thing as a secure job, I think 2 missed payments is a little extreme. Banks won't renegotiate in most cases where people can make partial payments. In some cases, say those two months have gone by but the mortgage holder has resumed work and can pay again, the lenders aren't interested they want the house... empty, so they can re-sell it when the assumed next bubble comes.

Yet it was the banks that got the bailouts so that they could continue throwing families onto the street. Couldn't some of that money been set aside for families to use as stipends to pay their mortgage for a couple of months? Wouldn't that be less of a drain on tax dollars than increasing the homeless population?

As far as lack of Regulation goes. I think another thing Americans need to have a conversation on is what Regulations actually mean. I think Regulation is something we need to be very careful with, we need correct common sense Regulations that are clear cut and set in stone. And that goes across the board not just banks.

I'll get to more later. I appreciate that you took the effort.

ETA I should amend my first statement to most of us see no difference between the two party's and add that the main reason we do not (we do actually have a candidate for the House out of New York) participate in the political system is because we largely view it as broken. The Tea Party did elect some people but most of those elected for lack of a better word, betrayed their constituents. I wouldn't consider that effective.

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


I agree with the sentiment that the Tea Party has been more 'effective' at influencing politics than the 'occupy' movement. But let's not forget that the majority of politicians they helped elected turned out to be the same old RINO's the were originally complaining about. So obviously just embracing the current political mechanisms isnt quite as effective as you claim.

Furthermore, I disagree with the notion that the only way for Occupy to be effective is to assimilate into the system. While i do certainly agree that we need more motivated, OWS-minded folks running for local office, one of the real involved in ows (or any brad social movement) is that it allows people to see that we can create alternative foundations of support that exist beyond or parallel to the current government power structure. People helping people. Your analysis seems to miss that vital point.

Lastly, you have far more faith in the DNC and the american political system than do most activists. Sure, we need to affect change from within, but if you think that is the only real method, then you are msising half the picture.

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


Continued from my last post.

-Healthcare Reform
*Problem:
- Healthcare access
*Solution:
- Medicare for All
*How:
- ???

The first thing we need to do, is end the wars. The second thing we need to do is to realize as a Nation that insurance companies and Big Pharma are draining tax dollars faster and deeper than if we cut them out and truly socialized healthcare. While it is true that we are a much larger country than most others that have socialized medicine... it will basically work out the same.

By allowing these corporations to set the price of coverage, drugs and care, which they do at rates that they know the lower middle class and down can't afford... they know that they will have money flowing in from both directions, the well off and the government. They know this because we are the "leader of the free world" and it wouldn't look very good on us if the super majority of our population had zero access to medical care.

Education and Healthcare were both born out of socialism, that is their nature. By imposing the rules of "Capitalism" (slamming a round peg in a square hole), we have created a huge mess that has allowed the money pigs to play on both our sense of human rights and our aversion as a Nation to socialism, to their advantage and no one else's. Education and Healthcare for profit cannot work, as we are seeing now.

Meanwhile Socializing both, would be less of a drain on taxes and less of a strain on people and the economy.

I've been subscribed to Dennis Trainor for probably 2.5 years. He believes in a number of the Left's fairy tales, (he tends to cite MLK a lot, among other things) but he's fundamentally a good man.

I'm only at 3:21 in this movie so far. I will write more when I've watched it.

Originally posted by Kali74
reply to post by OutKast Searcher

 

The first thing we need to do, is end the wars. The second thing we need to do is to realize as a Nation that insurance companies and Big Pharma are draining tax dollars faster and deeper than if we cut them out and truly socialized healthcare. While it is true that we are a much larger country than most others that have socialized medicine... it will basically work out the same.

You won't get any argument from me on these points, Kali; but I hope you realise that if you want to end foreign wars, you'll likely need to have a domestic one. The military-industrial complex (MIC hereafter) is dug in nice and tight, as Colonel Quaritch would say, and they're not about to let the civilian population keep the gravy train from running. The Department of Defense had a 2010 budged of nearly $700 billion, and I've seen estimates of the black budget run as high as $2-$4 trillion after that.

This is the reason why the country first got into its' current mess with war. During WW2, the MIC was allowed to begin running the place. They liked that, as soldiers generally do, and so they decided that they needed to come up with a continuing stream of justifications as to why they had to be allowed to maintain that state of affairs.

America IMHO needs to do a number of other things, to get back on the right track.

a] Find some sort of fixed reserve commodity, as a lynchpin for the economy. I don't necessarily advocate gold, because its' use value as a commodity is minimal; but there does need to be one particular commodity. The gold/silver/copper denomination has worked in the past, at least to a degree.

b] Put Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, and all of their ilk at the end of a rope, quite literally. Washington is highly overdue for a very large, communal hanging. I am completely serious about this. I could recommend AIPAC and most of the legislative branch as guests of that event, as well.

c] Get the country's industrial infrastructure back from China, or wherever else it has been lost to. The only thing that matters in an economy, is the production of real, physical wealth.

d] Get rid of OPEC, ignore any treasonous atheist vermin who say it can't be done, and throw back and shoulder into developing a means of energy generation that will end all dependence on the Middlle East.

Education and Healthcare were both born out of socialism, that is their nature.

Education as we currently know it, was born out of the Industrial Revolution. As it has been said earlier, the entire reason why they wanted to end apprenticeship, is because it works.

I'm at the point where Senator Bernie Sanders is asking how anyone can be proud that they are a multi-millionaire and are getting richer, while the various statistics on child mortality exist; I can answer that question.

I've seen Wall Street; and more, Michael Douglas is actually a fairly close physical likeness of my own father. Dad has always been obsessed with money. He has never succeeded, but the one thing he has spent his entire life seeking, is how to become rich.

The one overwhelming thing that I was taught, not only by him directly, but indirectly during our membership in the Amway Corporation while I was a teenager, was this:-

That becoming a billionaire is literally the only acceptable justification you can have, as a human being, (and particularly as a male) to exist.

Dad believed, and imparted me with the same idea, that if you are not rich, and if you are not historically memorable in some way, (as an important secondary objective) then you are worthless. You are utterly disposable.

The other thing that's worth pointing out about this film, is that it is overwhelmingly a case of Leftists, not only presenting a fundamentally Leftist perspective, but using distinctly Leftist modes of presentation to do so.

In this film I've seen street bands, and after listening to Bernie Sanders, we're now presented with a woman with a guitar. After having stayed in Australia's answer to Woodstock for six months, I can tell you right now, that that is as archetypically hippie as it gets.