Despite what happened in Occupy Oakland to the hero Scott Olsen(tear gas canister or smoke canister shot by an officer making a bloody curved gash and skull fracture on his head causing brain swelling he may need brain surgery for) who is an Iraq war veteran now a class war veteran in critical condition this movement is stronger than ever.
Mayors like Oakland Mayor Jean Quan would like to see it go away but it's not going to happen.
BTW I agree with Keith:
The OWS movement has spread nationally and globally. Despite some truly naive calls by some to play the bought and sold game of electoral politics using this movement(an rightfully ingnored), OWS has already had two major successes Democrats in office have failed at since Hubert Humphrey was undercut by President Carter who scoffed at the idea of full employment using the government directly to provide jobs like the Democratic President after him.
OWS has finally cut through this neoliberal narrative with two major victories already:
1. OWS has truly crashed through the corporate owned media gate though it took the beautiful brave women pepper sprayed by Anthony Bologna raising OWS from a point of curiosity to a national movement. That is a major victory considering something else Bill Clinton did in 1996; The Telecommunications Act of 1996 creating the mega media conglomerates we know and hate today, at least those of us who know how damaging propaganda is. At least those living under the iron curtain knew their media was lying to them. We tell ourselves since this is the US our media only lies sometimes.
2. The most significant victory is that OWS has changed the narrative back to jobs and income inequality from deficits which was the prevalent issue talked about in the beltway media supported by both Democrats and Republicans fighting about "shared sacrifice" and how to do it. Even Eric Cantor is now using the words income inequality.
So that is huge and worth noting, as I think 2. is the most significant victory. OWS has cut down majorly on what I call deficit stupidity because Democrats have adopted a truly stupid and poisonous narrative they don't understand very well about deficits and have for years. President Obama has continued this trend.
Despite saying we can't have the same Clinton people and ideas during the primary and recently after initially "feeling OWS's pain" with some supporting statements we need only look at his latest actions to see where he stands on the poisonous narrative of deficits taking precedence over jobs. Hint: under these conditions you cannot worry about deficits and then claim to want to solve the unemployment problem(Someone buy David Plouffe a clue).
And yet the wonderful jobs plan we are hearing about is to adopt all Republicans ideas, and scale back Medicaid because of this bipartisan deficit stupidity so prevalent in Washington these days.
Yeah, why isn't OWS excited about elections and electoral politics?
The new standard on Capitol Hill, though, is that all legislation other than permanent tax cuts for wealthy people must be paid for — typically with cuts to federal programs. So Republicans have selected a provision from Obama’s deficit reduction recommendations that would limit Medicaid eligibility for people who also receive Social Security benefits.
Here’s how it works: The government uses a measure known as Modified Adjusted Gross Income to determine Medicaid eligibility. Currently, though, it only incorporates the taxable portion of Social Security income in that calculation. Under this proposal, it would factor in all Social Security benefits. That means some seniors who currently qualify for Medicaid would no longer be eligible. Doing this would save about $14.6 billion over 10 years — more than the cost of repealing the 3 percent withholding compliance measure.
In sum: make it easier for big contractors to cheat on their taxes, and covering the cost by limiting Medicaid eligibility for sick old people.
Indeed, this is another one of the big string of Obama sellouts and I'm just mentioning it in order to talk about deficit stupidity on a more grand historical economic scale because they don't surprise me anymore. However this is endemic of the problem of deficit stupidity. And no, it's not just about the president.
It's about a party that is supposed to be the party of FDR(at least for FDR Keynes's General Theory hadn't came out yet when he fully went this route fully in 1932 despite the 1937 mistake) and the New Deal while New Democrats adhere to pseudo economics to the detriment of society. Some will say, "Fine well at least Democrats like Nancy Pelosi are going to do what it takes to fight for jobs so why don't we fight and use our precious unemployed dwindling micro economic resources to reelect them?
Well I hate to break the bad old news:
Pelosi Statement on Proposals to Reduce the Deficit, Avoid Default
July 25, 2011
Washington, D.C. – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement on proposals announced today to reduce the deficit and avoid default:
“It is clear we must enter an era of austerity; to reduce the deficit through shared sacrifice."
Now I don't think Pelosi is malicious in this statement, she just doesn't understand what she is advocating for and how destructive and incorrect it is even if it's long term deficit reduction. In fairness neither did I in my early twenties but I wasn't House Speaker and I'm not in Congress. Every letter I would get from her was all about how Clinton balanced the budget and that is why there was such prosperity. Hell, I bought it once but I grew out of it and researched the issue. It's time for all Democrats to do the same instead of accepting pseudo economic narratives that hurt the 99%.
To talk about the Clinton years this way ignores facts about public and private sectoral balances via deficits put money in the pockets of the private sector and balancing the budget sucks this income away. The balanced budget of the Clinton years was really an anomaly and should not be represented this way.
The US Congress passed a deficit package in 1993 and then there was a recovery from the early 90s recession that began in 1994. Going by the logic we heard from Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign long term interest rates should have fallen but instead they rose. Oops.
Anyway, the reason for the recovery had nothing to do with balancing the budget. Alan Greenspan raised the short term interest rate which is usually contractionary measure, but the circumstances in 1994 were unique; banks were near insolvent for half a decade slowly rebuilding their balance sheets by milking the government through high interest rates on long term bonds while paying very low rates to their depositors.
The steep yield curve (difference between short term and long term interest rates) meant that banks could do this and make a modest profit without lending. Anyway the rise in short rates squeezed the banks forcing them to make riskier commercial and industrial loans which they did ending the credit crunch(leading up to this) and this was all inadvertently expansionary monetary policy, job growth resumed. This saved the Clinton administration down the road too. After the deficit reduction package of 1993 passed job growth resumed.
The 1997 Asian crisis caused capital to fly into US Treasury bonds strengthening the dollar while the trade deficit rose but the budget deficit did not this time. Why? There is only one way:
The private sector of the economy took over the budget deficits previously run by the state. Private households and businesses for the first time in post war history chose to move into deficit via the housing bubble drivers; mortgages, credit cards and home equity loans. This was the Keynesian devolution.
And then the Housing boom took off to unprecedented levels as interest rates were lowered especially after 9/11 by Greenspan. Many were allowed to borrow against the margin of their stocks and the equity of their homes. The ratio of private debt to income soared to unprecedented levels, in 1999 and 2000 capital gains paying the higher 1994 rates added to incomes and boosted revenues and then the much talked about surpluses by (D) and (R) were realized but it was a vice not a virtue.
Surpluses do what they do and that is subtract taxes from private spending more than payments to income forcing the economy to be built up on private debt and unlike government debt, private debt has its limits and it ended with the bust of the tech bubble in April 2000. Revenues plummeted, states like CA reached a fiscal crisis and the deficit returned and then the Bush years happened, the Housing bubble popping and the Great Crash of 2008 sucked trillions out of the economy and unemployment soared.
This jobless recovery has the 99% making less income than during the recession among other things. Who needs a recession with this recovery indeed.
TARP happened, it didn't start lending again as advertised because credit is a contract not a clogged pipe, and is only a paltry sum of the real bailout which is 16 trillion when you count where the Fed sent funds all over the world. Banks also get free money for not lending and there was no accountability. no one was significantly fired or arrested except for an insider trading case that has nothing to do with these much worse crimes. SO YES, In Summation: WE GOT SOLD OUT! BANKS GOT BAILED OUT!
The stimulus was too little and too short with 2/3rds shitty multipliers which are what you pay attention to which Krugman, Dean Baker and pretty much everyone who knew their multipliers knew while others said "OOO! look at the pretty dollar amount!"
Galbraith had right though as usual. We need to spend for much longer than a short term stimulus which the word "stimulus" is a connotation of.
Monetary policy, I don't care how creative Bernanke gets, will not be sufficient when we are at the zero bound as we are now. Direct hiring is off the table when we need to fiscally pump this economy to life. That's the only way to do it. Do we hear Democrats talking about it? Nope. That's why they are kind of worthless. They could at least take a cue from OWS and pitch the right narrative but they are stuck on deficit stupidity whether in the long run or short run.
There is no deficit constraint, there is only an inflation constraint and you would have to employ everyone at every OWS type occupation and keep spending past full employment for hyperinflation to happen. We're not on any type of gold standard anymore since the fall of Bretton Woods and no gold has to be mined to keep in reserves. Apparently our Representatives have no earthly idea about this(while they scale back Medicaid and old poor people needlessly die) because only in this situation do deficits matter so it's deficit stupidity and deficit cruelty by the powers that be.
OWS just needs to keep doing what it is doing which is in itself fighting this deficit of intelligence regarding fiscal and monetary policy or any economic solutions our so called Representatives seems to have and keep fighting for jobs and income equality and never stop.
In the meantime, I'm doing my small part as a long term unemployed person for the movement.
If you want to help me out a little bit while wearing this protest on your sleeve you can order any of my illustrations on T-shirts.