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Edited on Thu Oct-27-11 04:04 PM by sabrina 1
that plague countries, this one included, around the world.
Money in Politics.
The loss of jobs is a direct cause of that. Laws favoring Corporations made it possible to move jobs and most of our manufacturing industry out of the country.
When Corps went Global it was to make use of the slave labor available to them in countries run by oppressive governments.
If Corps did not have a hold on our elected officials, that could have been prevented by passing laws that made it illegal for US based Corporation to go somewhere else and avoid whatever labor laws we have here, which aren't great, but there are some standards.
When we make the movement about jobs alone, the far right can and does use that to claim that the protesters are 'spoiled brats' who want things handed to them and won't pull their bootstraps and go start their own businesses, or 'look hard enought' etc.
There are so many issues that we often try to attack individually, eg, the ongoing privatization of public funded programs, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Health Care, Education, Prisons, War where we now use private armies which transfers public money for the military into private hands. Deregulation of the Financial industry, the Media etc. The list is long.
Every democratic initiative that favors the people has been under attack since Corporate funded Candidates have taken over the government.
It's like a tree. The issues we try to deal with individually are really like the rotting branches of a tree caused by rotting roots so they are going to die no matter what chemical or other effort is used to try to save them. And that is the goal, to let all democratic, publicly funded programs die and to transfer the money that pays for them to Wall Street. So saving them can't be done, as we have seen.
That is why we did not get even a PO in the HC bill, it never was possible because there are enough Wall Street employees in Congress to make sure it would not be.
Even our police departments no longer work for the people which becomes apparent when the people's issues come into conflict with Corporate Interests.
So when you hear anyone in government talking about how our social programs 'are in trouble' and need to be cut in any way, they are working for Corporate interests. Because they do not need to be cut. They need to increased if anything.
But because we waited too long to stop the takeover of our government, we will never get any laws passed that could begin to change things. Not with the current makeup of Congress. So that is where we have to begin. If the people continue to join this movement, then the strength of their sheer numbers can overcome the billions Wall Street spends. And once we accomplish taking back our government then we can start dealing with laws that need to be changed.
One of the most important weapons in the hands of the Corporate State, is the two party system as it is constructed right now. They use it to divide the population. Eg, wars are opposed by the left when the Republicans start them. But when the Democrats are in power, the anti-war movement all but disappears even though the mar machine has not slowed down one bit. We are now in more wars than when Bush was there. He ran out of time.
The reason the OWS movement is opposed by the right is because it is supported by a majority of the people, which means that it crosses those party lines they need to keep people divided. Anyone on the Left who oppose it, recognizes that their party also has been part of the problem and desperately needs reform and they are afraid this would mean the other side will win.
The movement is scary because the bigger it grows the more the right/left lines begin to disappear and partisanship is replaced with aiming at the real problems often ignored by both parties for political reasons.
We can help the democrats by not supporting those who are taking huge amounts of money from Corporate interests and fully supporting those who are not. We have not done that in the past, we have gotten on board with people we knew were not really on our side, just so our Party could win.
Our party can still win in the OWS era if they take advantage of the huge popularity of eliminating money from our political process. And it will serve a dual purpose, create out of the DLC/Third Way Way party, a real party of the people.
But, for some, that is a scary thought.
I think it is an exciting opportunity that we have not had for as long as I've been paying attention.
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