Is this the new Marie Antoinette?
Sometimes it is scary when I turn out to be right.
Remember a couple of posts ago when I wrote this:
The only way that things are going to change is if we have an economic French Revolution where their businesses suffer as a result of people not giving them their custom and effecting their bottom line. If their precious profits are being hurt by us boycotting them and giving what money we have to their competitors – particularly foreign competitors – then maybe they will begin to realize that their strategy has backfired.
Maybe.
I honestly believe that we are headed towards a second round of the recession if not an outright Depression, and that it will take some economic heads being lopped off before the Rich-wing gets the message that what they are doing to the workforce in this country isn’t working. I’m simply waiting for someone to utter the “Let them eat cake” line or whatever the modern-day equivalent is going to be in order for the masses to start grabbing their pitchforks, lighting their torches, building the Guillotines and mapping out directions to the Bastille.
Well we may be seeing that very same “Economic French Revolution” in its early days happening right now with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.
People have been gathering on Wall Street since Sept. 17th, at first it was a few dozen protesters that has now grown into a few thousand on Wall Street and has now spread to other cities across the country. If you wish to join in at a protest in a city near you you can go to Occupy Together which is “an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.” Look to the right of the page and scroll down where you will find a list divided by region and then by state and city to find an “Occupy City” protest near you. Unfortunately there are no protests near where I live so until someone comes up with “Occupy Whitmore” or even “Occupy Redding” I will have to live vicariously through the rest of you who are able to get out there.
As Occupy Wall Street says on their own website:
Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.
As we saw from the success of the Arab Spring this has tremendous potential to bring about drastic and much needed economic change for the better in this country, which can then be felt around the world as other economies subsequently improve as a result. This is the beginning of the peasantry grabbing the pitchforks people!!! As soon as the movement becomes mature enough to consolidate a list of goals for the economy and demands that they be implemented - that will be the moment when the first torch has been lit. I am hoping that part of those goals and demands involves the hiring of the millions of people who are Unemployed, underemployed and underutilized in this country to good, decent-paying jobs so that they may contribute to the economic recovery by the increased purchase of goods. Politicians and business leaders can talk about creating jobs all they want, but if those created jobs continue to go unfilled then it makes no difference as to the economy. I would hope that this will be part of the goals that are eventually worked out.
I would also hope that the Occupy Wall Street Movement does not fall into the same trap that the Tea Party Movement eventually found themselves in. Keep in mind that the Tea Party received funding from the Religious Right and the Koch Brothers and were then turned into a “pro-corporate Republican party rebranding astroturf” group as outlined in “An open Letter from a former Tea Partier to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.” If you follow that link and read that letter, he makes some very salient points about what the Tea Party started out as and what it eventually became.
I would also hope that some people would pay more attention to the potential “Let them eat cake” moment that we seemed to have had recently. I had been thinking that it occurred at one of the GOP debates where some in the crowd cheered the death of a hypothetical uninsured 30-year-old man. But after reading a quote given by Republican state Sen. Sharon Runner of Lancaster (CA) I’m starting to rethink that.
Sen. Runner recently posted an article on her website, which can be found here in which she responded to California’s plan for remanding thousands of “low-level” convicts from state prisons back to county jails. The reason? The state is out of money. Sen. Runner stated that “Now is the time for Californians to get a dog, buy a gun and install an alarm system. The State of California is no longer going to protect you.”
Yyyyyyyyeah!!!!!
There are so many problems with that line of reasoning that I can’t even begin to go into it, so I will let Tom Elias, who wrote a brilliant column about “The GOP’s version of do-it-yourself government” in which he said:
Runner did not go further than addressing some public safety aspects of the latest cutbacks and the further reductions likely to come in January. But she could apply the same self-sufficiency message much more widely.
Chop the public school budget any more than it already has been and maybe she’ll tell all parents to home-school their kids, or at least buy their own shoulder pads and kicking tees if they want them to play football. Never mind if they don’t have the money. Or she could tell parents without health insurance of their own to make sure they have good coverage for their kids, because not many school nurses are left.
Cut millions from state parks and close 70 of them, as is already happening, and maybe she’ll tell Californians to make sure they have big backyards to camp in, because the state won’t be providing anywhere near as many campgrounds as before. Get a fire extinguisher or a swimming pool full of water and a good hose and pump, because there will be far fewer firefighters.
Like he says earlier in his article:
no one had pierced to the core of what politicos really mean when they say “no new taxes.”
I guess they have now.
I would submit to the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street Movement that in addition to my desire to have the underutilized hired to fill some of those created jobs that we have heard so much about, that they would also add a goal that public safety not be compromised in the name of “fiscal responsibility” In other words instead of firing Cops, Firefighters, Teachers and shutting the doors on public schools in this country, how about ensuring that the fire houses, police precincts and schoolhouses remain open?
In the meantime I will continue to follow along on Current TV, MSNBC and Twitter as to the various goings on with this movement. I hope that they can bring about the change that we all voted for when we cast our ballots for president Obama back in 2008.
For all of our sakes.
Until next time…
