Robert Reich: Wall Street is its own worst enemy. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it’s busily shredding new regulations and making the public more distrustful than ever.
What Ron Paul, Occupy Wall Street, Lech Walesa, Tahrir Square, Tiananmen Square and Many Tea Partiers Have in Common
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Brent Budowsky: One reason Ron Paul has been on an upward and steady curve is that he speaks, with integrity and honor, for one segment (though far from all) of this unrest in an age of protest and demand for change.
I Am the Spokesperson for #OWS: These Are Our Demands
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David Kristjanson-Gural: The general assemblies of New York, Oakland, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas and 350 communities across the United States have appointed me spokesperson for the Occupy Wall St. movement. I am hereby empowered to submit the following demands.
Who Will Be the Un-Bloomberg? What Mayors Should Say About Wall Street
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Tom Hayden: In light of the police actions in New York, Berkeley, Oakland, Denver, Portland and beyond—and as massive national demonstrations are about to take place—it’s not too late for the mayors to use their political stature to speak out about the crises befalling their cities.
Two Ways to Destroy “Occupy Wall Street”
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Bruce Reilly: The classic method of the powerful to distract the masses is to get them to fight amongst themselves. The easiest one is via racism, and the other is class warfare pitting the Middle Class vs. Lower Class.
What Occupy Wall Street Has Accomplished in Two Short Months
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Mark Naison: While Occupy Wall Street and its spinoffs around the nation have certainly not developed “leaders” who articulate its goals to the media or negotiate with public officials, it has already registered a formidable list of accomplishments for a movement this young.
Occupy Wall Street: American as Apple Pie
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Those loud right-wing voices in our political discourse that are trying to make Occupy Wall Street look like something “foreign” to American culture are barking up the wrong tree. When David Crosby and Graham Nash recently showed up at Zuccotti Park for an impromptu sing-along with the protesters they linked OWS with the long American tradition of resistance to [...]
Occupy Wall Street: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
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Joseph Palermo: Out in the real world people are showing a spirit that hasn’t been around since the 1930s; a genuine feeling of solidarity like we’re all in it together and to hell with the elites that stand in our way. The illegitimacy of a rigged economic system is beginning to sink in.
Occupy Wall Street’s “Gullible” and “Unsophisticated” Protesters
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Joseph Palermo: Prosperity never “trickles down.” And people are finally catching on. The housing bubble went too far. It destroyed too many lives and livelihoods to go unquestioned and unpunished, as Wall Street (and Washington) would like it.
Jesus Blesses “Occupy Wall Street”
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Gary Corseri: Screw the MSM! Screw the religious wars! You got this one little planet! You got this one little marble—and marvel—of a planet! That’s all you’ve got!
Occupy Wall Street: Separating Fact from Media
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Walter Brasch: Even the most oblivious recognize the protestors as a large cross-section of America. They are students and teachers; housewives, plumbers, and physicians; combat veterans from every war from World War II to the present.
Fuel for Occupy Wall Street’s Fire
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Shamus Cooke: Ultimately, the Occupy Wall Street protests have already succeeded. The movement has successfully re-focused the nation’s debate on who ruined the economy and who should be targeted, shifting blame away from immigrants, unions, and other groups of working people, like public employees.
Labor Occupies Wall Street, But Democrats Go in Reverse
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As the grassroots campaign against Wall Street grows, Democratic politicians are moving in the opposite direction. President Obama has secured the House Republican support necessary to pass three trade bills strongly opposed by organized labor and most Democrats. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who like Obama was elected with huge labor funding and ground support, [...]
Behind Europe’s Debt Crisis Lurks Another Giant Bailout of Wall Street
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Robert Reich: Republicans and Wall Street executives who continue to yell about Dodd-Frank overkill are dead wrong. The fact no one seems to know Morgan’s exposure to European banks or derivatives – or that of most other giant Wall Street banks – shows Dodd-Frank didn’t go nearly far enough.
What Activists Can Learn From Occupy Wall Street
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Randy Shaw: The greatest lesson of Occupy Wall Street is hard to dispute: many have not given up hopes for real progressive change, and are now more likely to focus outside the electoral process.
From Casey Anthony to Wall Street: Crime Pays
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Brent Budowsky: One of the great sources of outrage in our age is that again and again, crime pays. The victims, from young girls who die while vermin eat their corpse to embezzled investors who lose their money, from tortured prisoners to jobless workers to homeless victims of mortgage fraud, pay the price.
The Poor of New York: Old-Fashioned Melodrama New Again
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Ed Rampell: Although, as this highly recommended play rightfully reminds us, poverty – then and now – is serious business. Greed was not good when perpetrated by Wall Street’s Gordon Gekkos of 1837, or today.
The Republican Shakedown
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Robert Reich: As long as Democrats refuse to talk about the almost unprecedented buildup of income, wealth, and power at the top – and the refusal of the super-rich to pay their fair share of the nation’s bills – Republicans will convince people it’s all about government and unions.
What Happened to Our Money? Oliver Stone Returns to Wall Street
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Robert Brent Toplin: More than any other current Hollywood director, Robert Stone has dramatized American political, social, and economic history of the past fifty years.
Wall Street’s Global Race to the Bottom
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Robert Reich: So the race to the bottom is now official. Wall Street will set up its casino wherever financial gambling is least regulated.
Wall Street: Oliver Stone’s Das Kapital-ist
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Ed Rampell: Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a bold, visually stunning movie and the best critique of the capitalist system and its 2008 financial meltdown since Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story.
Pardon Me, Scooter?
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On July 2, 2007 George W. Bush commuted the sentence of convicted felon and former top White House staffer Scooter Libby for his convictions on five felony counts of perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice. He didn’t pardon Libby but, instead, issued a Grant of Executive Clemency before Scooter Libby even served a single [...]
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Friday Feedback: Occupy Wall Street’s Gullible & Unsophisticated Protesters
Friday Feedback: This week, Hollis Steward comments on Joe Palermo’s article, “Occupy Wall Street’s “Gullible” and “Unsophisticated” Protesters,” followed by rejoinders by hwood007 and Cindy-Roy.