The #Occupy movement and the generations

Just a short note of gratitude and no small amount of incredulity at the cross-generational dialogues that have been fostered through and around the Occupy movement, which I and others view as largely a Millenial generation-driven thing.  I was just reading a well-done post by Charles B. Pierce at Esquire’s Politics Blog and noting his tone lamenting the political fecklessness of many of those from his generation now holding the reins of power:

How hard can this be? How hard is it to tell people to get angry at the people who really are making off with their country's wealth and their personal futures, especially when it's the god's honest truth? How hard is it to tell people that they are not the enemy, that to shoot pepper spray into the eyes of a college student is to spit in the eye of everyone else? Please do not hand me concerns for your "political viability." That makes you cowards. The protesters are doing the hard work. They're the ones living in a dozen tiny Argentinas all around this country. They're the ones getting beaten up and tortured, on TV, with chemical agents. They're the ones going to jail. All I'm asking is that you all have their backs, and all you have to do is get up and give a whole bunch of speeches saying so. Right now, they're pretty much out their on an island while empty charlatans like Newt Gingrich and prissy little shmoes like David Brooks are beating them over the head rhetorically, while the cops are more than happy — indeed, damned near gleeful — to do it in person.

Barney Frank wonders where the Occupiers were during the elections of 2010? Give them a politics worthy of their courage and they'll show up. This does not seem to me to be a difficult problem, but it does appear possibly to be the last chance for progressive politics for an awfully long time. You don't need an $850,000 contract to see that.

That second bolded sentence “Give them a politics worthy of their courage and they’ll show up” sounds like one of the best lines I’ve heard this year, for both its succinct razor-edge of truth, to its political astuteness.  This generation out protesting, my generation, is the one that greatly helped President Obama get elected.  We came out of the Bush era scarred (as I’ve noted previously) and looking for a change that Obama appeared to represent.  But more than that, he represented prudent judgment in correctly sizing up many of the true threats to our country (the undercutting of civil liberties domestically and human rights abroad, being cogent for me in particular) and, yes, a courage in his opposition to the Iraq War that was greatly lacking in the politics of those days, and even moreso today.  The reality of President Obama has been drastically different from the representation of Candidate Obama, but at the time, he showed a side of politics that people yearned for.  Show us courageous politicians taking stands that put them on the right side of popular sentiment, particularly in the face of a potential loss of big money campaign donors, and I bet my generation will show up.

So it is with that background in mind that I have been considering the amount of support I see and hear from older generations for the movement now sweeping America.  A close family member informed me that on her recent trip to New York she happened upon an Occupy Wall Street group at a public park (not Zuccotti, mind you) and was very impressed with the “human microphone” and the positive, steadfast energy the group displayed, despite it being an awful, rainy NYC November day.  The Facebook posts I see from Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers, and on up regarding the Occupy Movement evince a strong bond between the generations that I don’t think I’ve ever seen as clearly in my life. 

I had always feared that the elites’ plan to divide the entitlement program pie, and to set those of us in younger generations on a different retirement plan than our parents, threatened to separate the generations (which is probably the point!) and why you still hear many GOP candidates discussing giving young people the “option” of purchasing health savings accounts and the like.  The fact that we’re all working and saving towards a common fund, a common vision, means we’re all in it together, to some extent, despite the fact that the powers-that-be want all that locked-up Social Security and Medicare money to be released to the predations and speculations of Wall Street. 

But now, the elites have played their hand too far.  They’ve effectively united a strong bloc of people across the generations because, let’s face it, we’ve all been looted in some way or another.  We recognize a common enemy: the collusion between big business and big government that works to undercut our rights and to separate an already economically-stratified society into one where you have vastly different justice systems, depending on your standing and net worth (witness this egregious hit-and-run case from Colorado last year involving a “wealth manager” and a cyclist for a great/horrifying example).  There’s no justice for those on the top, but a harsh and exacting justice for those of us not at the top.  Witness the UC Davis pepper-spraying last Friday:

Glenn Greenwald’s take on the UC Davis situation adroitly points towards the larger issue at play in our society:

The UC-Davis Chancellor responsible for the pepper-spraying of her students, Linda Katehi, today went on Good Morning America and explained why she should not resign or otherwise be held accountable: “we really need to start the healing process and move forward.” On a radio program in the afternoon, she expanded on this view by saying: “We need to move on.” So apparently — yet again — the only way everyone can begin to “heal” and “move forward” is if everyone agrees that those in power with the greatest responsibility be fully shielded from any consequences and that their bad acts be simply forgotten. I wonder where she learned that justifying rationale?

We yearn for justice as a society.  The concept of justice embedded in the Constitution argues that those at the top and those at the bottom ought to be equal in the eyes of the law, and yet, the past decade has clearly shown how far our society has gotten from those founding principles.  Occupy, for all of its media-unfriendliness and potential to turn off the “median voter,” is a nascent attempt at reclaiming that original concept of justice.  Justice is anathema to the powers-that-be, as their gains are largely ill-gotten and their positions in society often depend on their being the the best operators within a system of legalized corruption.  The moment their hold on power slips, and they no longer control the levers of power and the judiciary, they will be subject to the comeuppance that has been long in coming, and much delayed. 

Greenwald quotes Rosa Luxemburg’s epic comment to wonderful effect:

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

If you look askance at the Occupy movement, and you see nothing but a bunch of rowdy young people lacking drive and ambition, ask yourself how you’re constrained in your own life.  What cutbacks have you had to make to your hopes and dreams, let alone your financial position?  How many of those setbacks are due entirely to your own poor judgment or over-extension, rather than being at least in part the shock wave from a system of willfully-created asset bubbles and legislatively-endorsed corruption imploding upon itself?  If you trace the origins of your own problems back to their logical starting points, do they solely originate from your decisions?  That is the line of thinking the powers-that-be hope you’ll take away.  Heaven forbid you should look up the food chain to discover how usury has been made legal and how student loans are no longer discharged in bankruptcy; how insolvent banks are allowed to claim the full face value of toxic assets to bolster their bottom lines, and yet how lying to get food stamps to feed one’s two children can net you 3 years in federal prison.  “Justice,” these days, comes at the expense of the rest of us.  We can see this fact in all its harsh reality and find a unity in it, or we can deny deny deny that the mirror the Occupy movement is holding up to our society reflects far more of our collective life experiences of brokenness and unnecessary misery than we’d care to admit. 

Thank you to those of the older generations who see the Occupy movement not as a threat, but as the opportunity for a rebirth.  We need you, and you need us.  We ARE in this together.

#OccupyWallStreet: The precursors to the occupations?

I was just reading Christina Romer’s very well-done piece in Sunday’s New York Times, making the case that announcing nominal GDP targeting should be the Federal Reserve’s next policy move (I encourage you to read the article for the details).  Here’s the key section I’d like to highlight:

HOW would this help to heal the economy? Like the Volcker money target, it would be a powerful communication tool. By pledging to do whatever it takes to return nominal G.D.P. to its pre-crisis trajectory, the Fed could improve confidence and expectations of future growth.

Such expectations could increase spending and growth today: Consumers who are more certain that they’ll have a job next year would be less hesitant to spend, and companies that believe sales will be rising would be more likely to invest.

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Though announcing the new framework would help, it probably wouldn’t be enough to close the nominal G.D.P. gap anytime soon. The Fed would need to take additional steps. These might include further quantitative easing, more forceful promises about short-term interest rates, and perhaps moves to lower the exchange rate. Such actions wouldn’t just affect expectations; they would also be directly helpful. For example, a weaker dollar would stimulate exports.

How many of you reading this article feel that our government is “willing to do whatever it takes” to get us out of this persistent unemployment crisis, with all of its attendant suffering and economic misery?  I’d bet not a one of you – I certainly don’t think our government is trying its best to fix things.  Of course, it depends on how one defines “government” I suppose, but if you initially think of our elected branches, since we voters have the most direct control over the executive and the legislative, then no, the “government” in that sense is definitely not working on our behalf! 

And really, how ridiculous is it that the government of the wealthiest country that has ever existed can’t even act in a coordinated manner to stem the suffering of a massive segment of its population?  Or perhaps even more sinister, it appears that the government won’t act to stem the suffering.  Our elected officials have abdicated virtually any and all responsibility until after November 2012 in order to best position themselves politically and rhetorically for the electoral battles to come.  Sure the President is still hammering away on his newfound populist message, his “jobs proposal,” and is taking actions on behalf of homeowners, student loan borrowers, and prescription drug patients, among others, but let’s be honest folks, his track record on the “following-through-on-populist-sentiments” score ain’t that great…(see option, public for an example).

So now we face the absurd reality that the Federal Reserve, the quasi-governmental entity that is perhaps the least-democratic, most-opaque, and most removed from the basic economic reality of most Americans is being pushed to solve our jobs crisis through pure monetary policy.  The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of preserving price stability as well as maintaining full employment, and the main critique of the Fed for many years has been that it has focused virtually exclusively on the former (in the form of interest rate targeting) while wholly neglecting the latter.  Despite the fact that it has been broadly apparent that allowing interest rates to rise somewhat would facilitate the creation of more jobs, the interest rate hawks within the Fed have consistently put a stop to any of those practices, warning of mythical “bond vigilantes” who will decide that US Treasuries are no longer worth investing in if the interest rate rises even a smidge, despite massive evidence to the contrary.  (The counterpoint, of course, is that investing in Treasuries represents the safest investment one can make in the troubled and volatile world markets, as while the state of the US debt and economy overall might cause debt holders concern if the rest of the world were in better shape, the relative position and strength of the US economy in the current world economy makes it a better investment vis a vis other sovereign bonds.)  But I digress.

Why are people occupying so many public spaces in so many cities across the United States and abroad?  I think it is precisely as a response to the massive systemic failure we’ve witnessed at all levels of our government to actually make a positive impact on the vast majority of Americans’ lives.  This is not to say that Americans en masse are waiting for government aid or action or anything like that, rather that the silliness we are witnessing playing out on Capitol Hill and in the White House, the constant tit-for-tat, is leading Americans to see their government as willfully sitting on its perfectly-capable hands, rather than deigning to lift a finger to tilt the scales of justice even minutely back on their side. 

A significant portion of these Occupiers likely played a large role in electing President Obama in 2008 – the sense of triumph in that election was not simply due to the historical nature of electing the first African-American president, but because Obama appeared to represent a turn of the page, or perhaps, a close of the book, from the utter depredation of the Bush Administration, hollowed out to a shell of itself in the end due to its sheer lack of competence.  Post-Katrina America had scars, deep scars affecting the national sense of whether the government was truly acting in our interests or not if it could bungle emergency management so completely. 

Obama represented a shift towards competence, towards smart folks who looked at the data to get things done and make decisions…and yet, after the health care debate, the pyrrhic victory of an apparent giveaway to the health insurance industry, combined with the Wall Street-friendly nature of the new Administration, and the declaration that many of the high-level prosecutions that many desired for actors both inside and outside of government were to be strictly off-limits by Obama and Attorney General Holder marked a certain continuity between the Bush and Obama Administrations: elites are coddled, bailed out, and constantly regaled, no matter their transgressions.  The little people, the 99%, have no place in this insular Washington-Wall Street-Pentagon calculus.

The election of Obama, in this narrative, represents not the shift, the hope, the change that people were hoping for, but the continuation of the perpetual insult to the nation’s sense of values and fairness – an insult that, prior to the rise of the Occupy movement was largely undefined and nameless for many Americans.  Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, bank bailouts, auto bailouts, the death of the public option, no Wall Street prosecutions, no torture prosecutions, warrantless wiretapping, unmanned drone strikes on countries and civilians we aren’t at war with, wars that are declared against enemies that are largely undefined…whose heads roll for any of these awful decisions? 

The failure of our institutions, and the growing widespread understanding of that fact, as I alluded to a few weeks ago, and more obliquely, in the title of my last blog post “Don’t think it’s not bipartisan, it is,” is profoundly bipartisan.  It had to be to manifest itself so clearly to so many at just this point in time.  Just as you would likely not have a Tea Party had John McCain won, the nature of the Occupy movement, if it were to exist in an alternate world under a McCain Administration, would be very different to what we see today.  It took the failure of Obama, the landslide-elected change agent to bring justice, to bring accountability to the corrupt elites of this country, for the Occupy movement to spring up.  In this case, perhaps the Change that is thus far unrealized will be the catalyst for the realization of the true Change, whatever that may be. 

The bipartisan failure is a wholesale indictment of the entire construct of democracy in this country, and has likely soured many in the Millenial generation on the act of voting itself.  Perhaps democracy, as it is now constructed, is not in fact the method for enacting the change we wish to see in the world?  Could it be that the leverage points upon which the entrenched interests and powers can bring their influence to bear on candidates and nominating parties in our democratic system are simply too numerous and too porous?  The vast constellation of special interests funding candidates these days ensures the ascendance of a certain type of candidate: one who must be conversant in the ways of money, though preferably not “of” money (they’re easier to control with the promise of high-paying post public service jobs, you see) and who have hewn lines that conform to the dominant economic and social memes of the day, thus ensuring the continued preservation of the entrenched classes.  Any “change” will thus be marginal, minimal, the scraps thrown to those too poor to afford their own public affairs divisions or hired-gun lobbyists to press their case in the halls of power. 

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter whether Obama speaks the right words, or even whether he follows through on his newly populistic leanings with actual substantive legislative victories; the narrative is no longer his to drive, nor is it the GOP’s or the Tea Party’s.  They are reacting, all of them.  Consider:

Occupy Wall Street has already achieved a stunning victory – a victory that is easy to overlook, but impossible to overstate. In just one month, the protesters have shifted the national dialogue from a relentless focus on the deficit to a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street: the lack of jobs -- and especially jobs with decent benefits -- spiraling inequality, cash-strapped American families' debt-loads, and the pernicious influence of money in politics that led us to this point.

To borrow the loosely defined terms that define the Occupy movement, these ordinary citizens have shifted the conversation away from what the “1 percent” -- the corporate right and its dedicated media, network of think-tanks and PR shops -- want to talk about and, notably, paid good money to get us to talk about.

What were you reading about daily in the newspapers as recently as 6 weeks ago?  Austerity austerity austerity.  What did the Occupy movement bring to the table?  Non-manufactured talking points that actually speak to people.  Something you can bring home to your family and discuss at your kitchen table as a concept that everyone understands, intuitively.  Fair wages, decent jobs, non-criminal banks, supporting your neighbors and your community.  These are American values, no matter what the cable news pundits say who myopically search for the “demands” of the Occupy movement despite the hundreds and thousands of protest signs shouting demands right at them. 

People want a fair shake, for themselves, their children, their coworkers, their neighbors, their fellow churchgoers.  That’s pretty much all I’ve come up with, at the end of the day, and it’s pretty simple.  How we get to the fair shake for all is the more complicated problem.

We don’t need a redistribution of wealth, we need a redistribution of speech (#OccupyWallStreet)

 

Bank Consolidation; h/t Angry Black Lady

As noted in last night’s post, Occupy Wall Street is an inchoate (I haven’t seen that word used as often in the popular press as I have these past two weeks) movement that drives the mainstream media kind of nuts with its inchoateness.  What are they protesting?  Why are they occupying?  What are their demands?  WHICH SIDE OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM CAN WE CLAIM THEY INHABIT???

Last night I wrote that:

This protest, the fact that people from all walks of life feel that the most effective method of expressing their outrage is a purposely undefined and undirected occupation of a public space, reflects the profound disillusionment in and failure of institutions in our society.

I think I dropped the thread of that argument a little bit prematurely, forgive me.  Why would so many people feel such a disillusionment with the institutions of our society?  My claim is that many of the institutions of which Americans at one time felt themselves to be a part of, both public institutions (as voters, taxpayers, and citizens) as well as private (as mortgage-holders, investors, or lessees) have systematically become more and more invested in conducting business for each others’ good, rather than for the common good.  The collusion between government and private institutions, to the detriment of the voter/consumer, has been rampant in the past decade.  From government officials leaving their posts to immediately go work as lobbyists, to government “regulators” proving their total capture to the interests they are supposedly regulating, and actively covering up negative information on behalf of their industry friends, there appears to be no separation between those who theoretically represent taxpayers and the industries they oversee.  Everybody is bought off.

While I would never claim to speak for the OWS movement, I think that the inchoate anger expressed in this movement is at least in part fueled by such resentments.  Who does government actually work for, anyways?  I have focused a lot of attention on this blog to the housing market, but allow me to address a timely blog post by financial analyst Barry Ritholtz:

This is no accident. Indeed, it was by design that execs in the banking sector, and their outside accountants, hatched a scheme in 2008 to hide their balance sheets from public view. The bankers had been lobbying the Financial Accounting Standards Board to change the rules that governed “Fair Value Measurements” also known as FAS157 (September 2006).

You may recall during 2008 this was referred to as “Mark-to-market” accounting.

Banks loved m2m during a boom period. M2M made the more unusual balance sheet holdings  — derivatives, the mortgage-backed securities (MBS), exotic liabilities, and other assets — look fantastic. The fair value measurements of these items — essentially, yesterday’s closing price — allowed the accounts to show enormous profits. Those were the underlying basis for huge bonuses, stock option grants and of course, company share prices.

The reality was quite a bit different. These were not equities or treasuries or corporate bonds — they were thinly traded items whose prices were ramping upwards on a sea of delusional optimism. As soon as the credit bubble ended and housing began to retreat, these assets would free fall like an Acme anvil in a Roadrunner cartoon — and the bankers were the Coyote.

Uh-oh, this was gonna be a problem. So the bankers began to lobby FASB to change the rules governing Fair Value Accounting. Sure, it was hugely helpful on the way up, but now, reporting actual holdings — previously marked at all time highs — was becoming problematic.

I had referenced this little-noticed, but highly significant accounting standards change in a posting from last year, which provides a fascinating segue into the point of this post:

As Eskow said above, the bankers just want to make it seem that they’ve actually produced some semblance of profits for their shareholders so they can continue to collect their exorbitant bonuses.  That greed leads the bankers to convince regulators to help them avoid realizing the losses they should rightfully incur for such terrible investments.  That dynamic then leads to continued uncertainty in the market, which causes the banks not to lend to businesses, individuals, or even to each other. Greed has never run so rampant in the streets, and it is now manifestly clear that it is the greed of the privileged few that is genuinely handcuffing any sort of economic recovery for the rest of us.  Government regulators have bought into this system for years – when Eliot Spitzer began to make a stink, he was publicly disgraced and muzzled quickly, lest his accusations about the rotting core of the financial system lead people to look too closely so that the house of cards fell. 

Government has been complicit in this scheme since day one, which is the real reason none of the fraudsters have been put in prison yet – the circle would likely extend too widely and might ensnare some of those who are supposed to be on the “good” team.  We can’t have change in this country until we have an honest accounting of the mistakes of the past, and I surely hope that the state Attorneys General are allowed to run their investigations as they see fit, with no White House interference.  The President’s actions in confronting this crisis, including the actions of his deputies, will show just how committed to change he really is.  (emphases mine)

Okay, well the incredibly flawed 50-state Attorneys General settlement deal appears to be fatally wounded, despite the Obama Administration’s best efforts to protect the precious constituents banks from having to own up to the rampant fraud they perpetuated throughout the mortgage market in the 2000s.  My hope last year was misplaced, truly.  Ritholtz on mark-to-market again:

The bottom line is this: Investors do not really have a clear idea of how healthy any of these banks truly are. We do not know the state of their balance sheets. We do not know what their exposures are to mortgages, to Europe, to Greece, etc. They could all be technically insolvent, as far as any investor can tell.

And that is exactly how the bankers wanted it.

But given the trouble in Europe, and the likely problems in housing if the US goes into a recession, Investors have decided they cannot take the risk of a holding an opaque, possibly under-capitalized probably over-leveraged financial firm blindly. They are telling the banks no thanks, we are not interested, we are going to be prudent and we have to assume the worst. Hence, for the second half of 2011, they have been selling off their holdings in these opaque, potentially insolvent too big to succeed entities.

Bankers, enjoy your beds. You made them, now lay in them . . .(emphasis mine)

And not to put too fine a point on it, but in the same post from last year I had quoted at length economics blogger Steve Waldman about a meeting he attended with Treasury officials and other prominent bloggers in Washington, which touched on the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, or HAMP, the mortgage-modification program:

The conversation next turned to housing and HAMP. On HAMP, officials were surprisingly candid. The program has gotten a lot of bad press in terms of its Kafka-esque qualification process and its limited success in generating mortgage modifications under which families become able and willing to pay their debt. Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least. There were murmurs among the bloggers of “extend and pretend”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. This was extend-and-don’t-even-bother-to-pretend. The program was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a. the banks. Policymakers openly judged HAMP to be a qualified success because it helped banks muddle through what might have been a fatal shock. (emphases mine)

Sad to say, we know VERY WELL now that the patient has not even begun to “heal” – as noted in Ritholtz’ quotation from above.  Well-functioning markets require some measure of transparency in order to facilitate price discovery; the banking and housing sectors are far from transparency, even to this day.

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And yet, it was quite distinctly government actions, government interventions, which have helped prop up the zombie banks, despite the very real possibility that a number of them may be effectively insolvent.  Those banks have rewarded their executives with exorbitant bonuses and have lobbied hard against any regulations to rein in their excessive risk-taking, despite all of the government help they have willingly received (and asked for!) 

That our government, which supposedly is voted into power by us and represents us, is actively working against the interests of a broad range of Americans in perpetually siding with the banks is, I believe, a strong part of the Occupy Wall Street movement’s anger.  The people have no voice any longer in this schema – the “change agent” we voted into power in 2008 is perhaps as captive, if not even more so (and more subtly, I might add) to the moneyed interests of the country than was his predecessor.  And that’s saying something; something deeply unsettling. 

The conversation in this country between the institutions and the masses has been one-way for far too long, and I believe therein lies the power of Occupy Wall Street; they do not seek to add to the cacophony of voices that fill up the perpetually dead air of cable news, but rather simply, to be.  That is their protest, the being en masse, as I referenced last night.  It is to reclaim public spaces, and through their continued and determined presence, public discourse. 

JW Mason spoke to this dynamic movingly yesterday:

Most of us very seldom experience ourselves as political agents, in the sense of being active participants in the collective decision-making of our community. For better or worse, most of the time we delegate collective decision-making to specialists who represent us more or less faithfully, as the case may be. The only reason for protest -- for any kind of mass politics -- is that this system has broken down. The message of any protest is: There is a political subject, a We, that is not being represented. This, in the broadest possible way, is what the "99%" rhetoric is saying, and why it resonates. At some point, if a when movements like this are successful, some new more legitimate form of representation will be established, as people form new collective identities and new norms of collective action. But it's foolish to criticize an assertion of the failure of representation for not itself being an effective representative, with a specific set of demands and a strategy to carry them out. (emphasis mine)

The 99% want justice, we want rules to govern fair play, and we want to regain the sense that the odds are not stacked against us, as they have been for so long.  We cannot rely on elected officials to do our bidding, as their competing interests (primarily the overriding interest in re-election) will guarantee that the peoples’ interests are not fully represented.  The interests of the few tend to run counter to the interests of the many; how much more is this dynamic amplified when we are talking about the interests of the 1% in relation to the interests of the 99%?  “Policy” as currently constructed, is not working in favor of the polis, as one might hope, and the failure is so widespread, so systemic, that it is difficult to put the diagnosis into one coherent message. 

The inchoateness of the Occupy Wall Street “message” stems from that sheer magnitude of failure in our society, at all levels.  If we are going to vote and be taxed to pay for “representation” we better damn well get some adequate representation.  Alas, that is most definitely not happening at this stage in history. 

I plan on going to the local Occupy LA gathering tomorrow evening; I will share my thoughts afterwards on what I hope will be an inspiring event. 

We are here (#OccupyWallStreet)

Apologies for the extended radio silence (almost a full year since the last post, in fact.)  Blame finishing up graduate school, getting married this summer, and starting a new job recently.  All wonderful, joyous life-events; I am blessed.

So what’s changed in our world since November 2, 2010?  Anything much?

h/t Mike Konczal

Chances are you may have heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests currently going on in New York.  At the risk of opening myself to later ridicule if suddenly the occupation falls apart and nothing more comes of it, I believe that these protests happening all over the country are the start of something new (and yet quite certainly old) in our political/social/economic discourse.  The Occupation is, in the very broadest sense of the term, a great showing of people power. 

What have these protesters done?  They have reclaimed, at least in miniature, a part of the commons: those public spaces that are free and open for all to use.  They have reclaimed Zuccotti Park (renamed Liberty Park by the occupiers) and are holding it, occupying it by the simple act of gathering together en masse, in an ad hoc community of equals.  In the midst of the most powerful globalizing force in this world, the colossus that bestrides the world through its use and abuse of capital in pursuit of more capital, Wall Street, the occupiers have recreated a locality, a community of human persons, rather than corporate persons.  The physical act of being is, perhaps, the means and the end of their protest; the thumb in the eye of those who would subjugate others to modern debt peonage by a systematic deindustrialization, de-unionization, debasement of those who were at one point hopeful and perhaps even comfortable in their lives. 

h/t JW Mason

This protest, the fact that people from all walks of life feel that the most effective method of expressing their outrage is a purposely undefined and undirected occupation of a public space, reflects the profound disillusionment in and failure of institutions in our society.  Business, government, the media, various levels of education, healthcare…somehow all of these institutions have conspired to make Americans’ lives collectively far worse than they have been at any time in recent memory. 

For some elucidation of this point, at least in part, witness the media’s sudden interest in Occupy Wall Street, despite the ostensible lack of media savviness in the occupiers’ ranks.  Much of the media coverage has focused on the lack of a coherent message from the occupiers, or attempts to fit OWS into accepted “protest paradigms;” witness this sad example of both at once:

A question was asked of me yesterday about the Occupy Wall Street movement that has been a presence in lower Manhattan since Sept. 17. Are there any parallels between it and the Tea Party movement? Yes. But if it doesn’t do four things — 1.) broaden its base of support to include those who share its values or goals; 2.) get specific about what the goals are; 3.) bring the protests to Washington; and 4.) get support from members of Congress — it could squander its momentum.

I have problems with all four of the author’s points he makes, but I’d like to draw out what I see as the overall tone of this response – bring it to Washington or it doesn’t exist.  Present the powers-that-be with a specific set of legislative goals you’d like to achieve and let them VOTE on them; that’s how you define and achieve success.

This movement does not fit into the left-right paradigm that is necessary for the media to comprehend it, except to the extent that in many of the occupiers’ state opinions, re-establishing some semblance of justice in this country tends to require what are considered “liberal” policy responses.  BOTH parties in this country are bought off by the money machine, enabled by our Supreme arbiters of justice, for whom speech and money are equivalent in the political sphere (thus ensuring that those with more money by definition have more “speech”).  Washington is a morass of corruption, legalized.  When politicians say that Washington is “broken,” they simply mean that their political donors are not able to extract as much legislated wealth as before due to the gridlock that is currently wracking our nation’s political process.  What OWS is saying with their physical presence is that yes, Washington is broken, and it’s time to clean house and re-establish the norms so that they work for all, not just those at the top.  The failure is bipartisan in nature:

Occupy Wall Street and its spin-offs have found little support so far among Democrats, outside of a few lawmakers on the left of the party.
“The message of Occupy Wall Street is we think both political parties are owned by the same guys,” said David Graeber, a former professor of anthropology at Yale who joined in the protests. “If democracy is to mean anything, it means that everybody has to weigh in on this process of how money is created and promises are renegotiated.”

Democratic politicians don’t want to upset their precious campaign donors, so they stay studiously away from the most authentic outpouring of the populism that their party claims to represent in years.  That fact exemplifies the outsized role of money in our politics – if you hew to the party line, you get campaign bucks; if you deviate, we take it away and give it to your opponent, simple as that.

What will this Occupation come to in the end?  Who knows?  I am thankful it is occurring though, and I will have more to say about this topic in coming days.  Where do you stand?  Support or oppose?

New layout, and some good reading

I’m experimenting with a new site layout to try and make my blog more reader- and user-friendly (and more orange!)  Please feel free to comment and/or make suggestions about the design in the comments section if you’re so inclined.

While I have a more substantive post in the works concerning my personal suggestions for the upcoming November 2 elections here in California to be posted later this week, I figured I’d throw some great articles/blog posts I’ve been reading out there in case people are interested.

Election Polling: For the past couple months this election season I’ve been closely following DailyKos’ Steve Singiser for his nightly Polling and Political Wrap.  As I’ve noted previously, there is no doubt that DailyKos is a liberal site, but the fact is, Singiser provides an invaluable service in collecting the day’s polling data and providing some analysis of the results in an easy-to-read format.  From what I can tell, Singiser posts the Wrap each evening (aside from weekends) around 7-8PM PST, so if you’re excited about/dreading the elections this year and you’d like to follow the polling action as it develops, I can’t recommend a better source.

Speaking of election polling, the Pew Research Center for People & the Press released a groundbreaking study today documenting the fact that many pollsters rely on a fairly outdated polling methodology that tends not to contact voters whose sole telephone in their home is a cell phone (including yours truly and many other young voters).  This may be skewing polling data in favor of Republicans by 4-6 percentage points according to Pew’s research.  Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo picks up the thread:

I would strongly recommend that Democratic enthusiasts not start adjusting the polls they're seeing by a 4-6 point margin. I will, shall we say, believe this one when I see it. It's also important to note that a number of national pollsters are already incorporating cell phones. Where the real vulnerability comes is in state and district polls and robo-pollsters -- like Rasmussen, PPP and SurveyUSA.

Again, in the past the differences usually seemed too small to figure significantly into the prediction equation. But this could be the cycle where that changes.

So yes, we’ll see what happens this election, and if pollsters have to make major alterations to their sampling models going forward.  It may seem trivial, but there’s nothing like polling to set the tone of an election season, and if those polls are incorrect (think Dewey defeats Truman) people could stay home because they think their team will lose, when in fact the opposite may be true.

UPDATE II: Health Care Reform to be Killed?

Updates below...

Today is a tough day across for liberals.  Whether that is a positive development in you opinion or not, health care reform is something that, if done right, could help so many people in so many ways that any setback in the reform movement should be cause for concern among many. The health care bill in the Senate has been diluted by special interests (read: moneyed interests) and their lackeys in Congress to the point where it appears to be more beneficial to the American people to simply start over with a fresh bill. Howard Dean, one of the foremost experts on health care in American politics today, argues to kill the bill too:

"This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," Dean said. "Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill."

Ah yes, the specter of reconciliation rears its controversial head again. The main bone of contention amongst liberals is that the cost-saving measures (the public option, for instance) have been either weakened to the point of irrelevancy or stripped out entirely, so that enforcing a universal mandate for Americans to purchase insurance without adequately affordable options beyond private insurance will anger many citizens (and voters). A development on that level could be disastrous for the country's health care system and,in an electoral sense, for the Democrats more generally. The Obama Administration is interested in getting a bill passed, no matter what the cost, to ensure an electoral "win" for the President on his signature domestic initiative, health care reform, but the repercussions of a bad bill getting passed could reverberate for many years. As I had written earlier, if the reform bill falls too heavily on young people's pocketbooks, then you can be sure that their allegiance to Obama's policies will be quite fleeting, and in fact could result in a backlash. Let's hope that cooler heads prevail, and the rush to pass something doesn't overwhelm the desire to enact a more-perfect bill.

UPDATE: Timothy Noah of Slate has a key writeup of what health care reform's failure could mean for the American public, and it's not pretty, as contrary to what many have come to believe (myself included) the reform bill would have effects beyond the uninsured:

A reasonable summary would be: health reform would make life easier for just about every person who needs to buy his or her own health insurance. It would also reassure those of us in the lucky 59 percent who didn't have this problem but could easily imagine acquiring it, especially amid the current economic turmoil. That's just about everybody. Health reform lends, says Hacker, the "security of knowing there's somewhere to get insurance outside of employment." Should it fail to pass, you would not have that security.

As I've mentioned before, it's difficult to put a price on the security that comes with knowing that even if you were to lose your job you would be able to have health insurance at a relatively affordable price (that's what the subsidies are for).  This bill may not be everything liberals want, but this is still farther than the American people have ever come before, and the effect passing it would have would be humongous.  We can tweak it later, once 31 million fewer people are uninsured.

UPDATE II: Okay, now I'm depressed.  Glenn Greenwald of Salon argues that Obama is simply using the intransigence of the Senate, and especially Sen. Joe Lieberman, as a foil to enact the handout to the health insurance industry he always intended.  The argument is that the Democrats will reap the benefits of the healthcare industry's deep pockets for campaign donations down the road if they help out the industry now by not reforming too much.  Sad, sad, sad.  Industry is poised to win again against the needs and desires of average Americans.  Are we entering a new Gilded Age, or have we already been in one for the last decade or more?  More on that theme presently...

Where the jobs at?

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is up for confirmation to a second 4-year term right now, giving Congress the chance to ask some tough questions of him and to assess his job performance over the past 3 years. While one might imagine that a reputed "expert on the Great Depression" would be eager to spur job creation in the United States to help out the little guys, how disappointed would you be to find out you're dead wrong in that assumption? Not only is Bernanke not interested in using the substantial monetary might of the Fed to stimulate job creation, but his concern over the US' long-run deficit is such that he now is signaling to Congress that the members ought to consider cutting Social Security and Medicare. Let's think about this for a minute. The elderly who may have been fortunate enough to have 401ks have presumably had those savings wiped out in this financial crisis, and now Bernanke wants to cut those entitlements they've earned through years of hard work during their lives? For those who never had investments on the stock market, and are solely reliant upon Social Security and Medicare, reducing their benefits would have devastating effects. This is fair how?

Bernanke worked to assure the committee he had nothing against old people. "I'm not in any way advocating unfair treatment of the elderly, who have worked all their lives and certainly deserve our support and help, but if there are ways to restructure or strengthen these programs that reduce costs, I think that's extraordinarily important for us to try to achieve," he said.

So for those of us who have been working and contributing to Social Security for our own future someday, we're just supposed to sit back and take another cutback, all in the name of long-term fiscal "responsibility?" If there's ever an appropriate time for kicking the can down the road on an issue, now is that time when it comes to Social Security, as it is the backstop for a lot of people who are suffering these days. Social Security and Medicare are two of what economists call "automatic stabilizers" that "dampen fluctuations in real GDP without any explicit policy action by the government." What all that means is that the stabilizers kick in during recessions to help people (i.e. welfare or unemployment benefits) and taper off during better times (more people are employed, so fewer people receive unemployment). These stabilizers help to keep recessions from getting too bad because they funnel money to people who need it and thereby increase spending (keeping GDP, and hence, the economy as a whole up more than it would be without them). So yeah, let's just cut, cut, cut away!

Thankfully, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is on the case:

Sanders said he sees it for what it is. "That's the solution? To cut back on the middle class and the elderly? That only adds fuel to the fire," he said. "Look, let's be clear. The middle class in America today is collapsing. Within the confines of the Beltway, we don't talk about that too much. But that is the reality. It's not just unemployment or underemployment. People are working longer hours for lower wages. People are unable to send their kids to college. People are losing their homes. People's jobs are going to China. That is the reality."

Hmm, there seems to be a common theme of the middle class being under assault these days. What kind of future can we Millenials expect to have if the social safety net on which our society has relied for the past 60 years is being cut out from under us, string by string?

Kids, time to support your forebears

The original concept of this blog was to discuss the major political and social issues that face my generation, the generation which has been defined by researchers Morley Winograd and Mike Hais as the "Millenials," born between 1982 and 2003 (I don't quite fit in that category, being an '81 baby, but I'm definitely not a Gen-Xer!) While previous postings may have strayed from that theme somewhat, today is a different type of day.

Following yesterday's posting regarding health care reform, a timely article by Jim Angle at Fox News (no, not kidding) caught my eye. Probably the most underreported aspect of health care reform is that for a reform effort to be successful, it must rely in large part on the participation of the roughly 18 million young, healthy, uninsured people to buy into the health insurance market. As Angle reports

the health care reform bills in Congress require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and prohibit them from charging sick people any more than others. That would force up insurance rates unless healthy young people buy insurance and in effect dilute the impact of older, less healthy people.

By having millions of previously uninsured, healthy, younger people start paying premiums while not using as much care as those who are sick or older, the insurance companies (and a public option, if it comes to fruition) would be able to mitigate the additional costs they will incur through expanding coverage.

For many years, health insurers have used certain methods to hold their costs down that were used at the expense of their customers, including denying coverage to people with "pre-existing conditions" ranging from mental illness and chronic conditions to the insurers denying coverage due to some rather more creative "conditions". Another tool of the insurance companies is called "rescission," a truly nefarious tactic of dropping a paying customer from their insurance plan when they need major or long-term treatment (think cancer, lupus, etc.) by claiming that the customer lied on their application form by not listing certain pre-existing conditions. What could those pre-existing conditions be? Some common ones are not listing occasional back pain or previous acne treatments in one's application for health insurance, although one would assume there would be some actual fraud caught once in a while...or is it? This from the Washington Post article above:

In the past 18 months, California's five largest insurers paid almost $19 million in fines for marooning policyholders who had fallen ill. That includes a $1 million fine against Health Net, which admitted offering bonuses to employees for finding reasons to cancel policies, according to company documents released in court. (emphasis added)

Rooting out pervasive fraud amongst the insurance customer base became such good business that a bonus structure was built on top of it for the most "effective" employees.

Now that the insurers will no longer be able to drop peoples' insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions and rescission will be largely curtailed under any sort of health care reform plan, the companies will need to find a new cost-saving mechanism, and it is the 18 million uninsured healthy young people they are targeting. It is the insurers who pushed hard for the universal mandate that every American must buy health insurance or be penalized; that provision ensures that the customer base will be swelled by the millions, and it also ensures that the low-cost segment of the population (younger folks) would be part of the system as well.

So why is it that young people are the ones being manipulated in this proposed new system? Naturally, it is the same as with any other political question; most younger people aren't paying attention, and furthermore, they aren't regular voters. When you have retirees threatening elected officials to "keep your government hands off my Medicare” those electeds sit up and take notice, since older folks vote in large numbers. On the other hand, federal legislators can then pull stunts like this with impunity:

"In most states, there actually isn't a limit on how much older people can be charged vs. younger people," said Anne Kim, director of Third Way Economics. "So in some states, older individuals pay six or seven times in premiums what younger people do."

But the Senate would take that down to 3-1. The House would make it 2-1.

That means older people will pay less but young people will pay more.

"If you limit the amount premiums can vary based on a person's age, that can result in premiums increasing by 50 or 60 percent for workers under the age of 30," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans.

In fact, a study by the Urban Institute found that going to a 2-1 age rating would push up premium costs for the youngest adults by almost $1,100 to just under $3,000 dollars a year.

I have been without insurance a number of times in my life. I've see the premiums I could be paying under COBRA when I've left jobs that provided me with health care, and they were far beyond what I would consider affordable. It seems quite doubtful that many Americans in their 20s will be able to afford an extra $3,000 a year, but the politicians are betting that we aren't paying attention. And they are betting correctly.

Why isn't there an outcry from the younger generations that will have to pay taxes and/or premiums to support whatever reforms come out of Congress, successful or not, for the rest of their lives? Perhaps the intricacies of House/Senate committee deliberations aren't the most riveting dramas for young people to follow compared with the dramas unfolding on their Facebook pages, but this time it's personal. Perhaps there needs to be a youth lobbying organization, akin to the AARP for seniors; we have youth-oriented organizing groups like Rock the Vote, and Campus Progress (a group I must admit I'm not familiar with, but funded by the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group) but seriously, we need LOBBYISTS! Until some serious campaign finance reform gets passed that creates public funding of elections, young people need to get into the Beltway and into the offices of members of Congress the same way the big players do, with issue advocacy and influence-peddling, combined with grassroots organizing. Lobbying is a four-letter word to me, but I see no other way to get our issues addressed fairly in a health care reform plan. The older generations and the insurance companies need us to keep health care affordable. Congress and the President need us to continue to vote for them. So why don't we use that leverage to get the changes we want and need in the reform bill? More to come on this later.