Bill Moyers explains the concerns of Occupy Wall Street

Bill Moyers recently gave the keynote speech at Public Citizen's 40th anniversary Gala. In addition to the video of that speech, I have transcribed various excerpts from his excellent speech. During his speech, he made it quite clear that he fully understands the concerns of the occupy Wall Street protesters. Except for the bracketed material each of the following is a quote by Bill Moyers at the Public Citizen 40th Anniversary Gala: While it's important to cover the news, it's more important to uncover the news. One of my mentors at the University of Texas told our class that "news" is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity. And when a student asked the journalist and historian Richard Reeves for his definition of real news, he answered, "The news you and I need to keep our freedoms." - [We now have what historian Lawrence Goodwin has described as] "a mass resignation of people who believe the dogma of democracy at a superficial level, but who no longer believe it privately." - We have a decline of individual self-respect on the part of millions of people. - We hold elections knowing that they are unlikely to produce the policies favored by a majority of Americans. - The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly feared as an unseemly veneration of wealth are now openly enforced, and the common denominator a public office, including for our judges, is a common deference to cash. - Barack Obama criticizes bankers as fat cats and then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 per person. And that's the norm. They get away with it. - Let's name it for what it is: Democratic deviancy, defined downward. - Politics today is little more than money laundering in the trafficking of power and policy. - Why are the occupiers there? They are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied America - Citizens United: Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. - [At the 12 minute mark of the video, Moyers discusses corporate personhood and the laws damaging public welfare resulting therefrom] - The Roberts Court has picked up the mantle: Money first, the public second, if at all. - [At the 14 minute mark: the damage done by Citizens United]

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High school pundits and candidates

A television was installed in my workplace cafeteria this year and it has been an immense source of irritation and revelation regarding the garbage that passes for TV news. Today, I heard a few minutes of discussion by these three women at CNN: What did these CNN pundits discuss today? 1) Horserace politics--who is polling well at the moment, and how will the various candidates do in the various primaries, with barely a mention of how they stand on the issues; 2) An allegation that a candidate flip-flopped; 3) A claim that Candidate A dissed Candidate B, and 4) Did you see that strange  latest campaign ad by Candidate D? This is what passes for serious political commentary today on a major television network.  It's high school all over again. Not only are the pundits engaging in this stunning shallowness, but the candidates are responding in kind. These people remind me of those vapid adolescents who thought it was a life and death matter to win a seat on student council, even though they didn't actually know why they were running other than to be cool. The pundits are like the high schoolers who endlessly swap gossip in the halls. The candidate students end up turning high school elections into personality cults, and that's exactly how we are running our media and our country today. Everywhere we look we see lots of emotionally and intellectually stunted people awash in money and basking with their BFF's in front of camera lenses. Here's what happens when we allow elections become tribal: The voters ease into candidates like they adopt a sports teams and they fight for their candidates out of loyalty and in-group cravings, blinded by the confirmation bias roaring full blast. They get all exercised by the pundits, who are acting as though they are conveying meaningful news, and the networks dress it all up with slick graphics, music and sets to make it look like the information is "news." Many of those who watch this garbage assume that they are informed on the issues of the day. We need to change our ways. We need to start choosing candidates like we shop for consumer goods that have no prestige. I''m not referring to our purchases of cars or clothes, but rather consider the way we shop for things like water heaters and dishwashers. In choosing political candidates, we need to get past all of the brand name loyalties and pettiness and we need to start insisting on well-informed answers to tough questions about how our candidates plan to run the country. We need to turn off the TV when high schoolish pundits try to manufacture conflict that distracts from serious issues. We need to leave all of these high schoolers, candidates and pundits, in the dust, because we have a big complex country to run, and none of them appear to be up to it.

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Unaccountable billions

What kind of idea is this: Let's send $40 billion in paper cash to Iraq on military airplanes and then quickly lose track of how it is being used. What do you think of this idea? Here's the beginning of this surreal story, as reported by Common Dreams.

“Wait, one person?” Shays asked. “One person received $40 billion?” Asked what he thinks about that, Shays said, “It just blows you away.” The enormous undertaking of moving the billions began in the heavily guarded Federal Reserve compound on 100 Orchard Street in East Rutherford, NJ. There, carefully screened employees loaded pallets of cash into tractor-trailers for their journey down I-95 toward Washington, DC. The money came from an account held at the New York Fed called the “Development Fund for Iraq” which was made up of billions of dollars in Saddam Hussein’s financial assets that had been frozen under various US and global sanctions regimes. They weren’t taxpayer dollars, but the US government was responsible for making sure they got where they were going. A typical pallet held 640 bundles, which the handlers called “bricks,” with a thousand bills in each bundle. Each pallet weighed 1,500 pounds, and they were separated by color. Gold seals were used for $100 bills, brown seals held $50 bills, purple seals $20, and so on.

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Iraq vet injured while participating in #occupy Oakland.

As reported by Huffpo, an Iraq veteran who was protesting as part of #Occupy Oakland was injured by the Oakland Police:

Scott Olsen, 24, remains sedated on a respirator, in stable but critical condition at Oakland’s Highland Hospital after being hit in the head with a police projectile.
According to the article Olsen served two tours of duty in Iraq, which he eventually announced that he opposed. He did not suffer any injuries while serving in Iraq.

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Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges discuss #Occupy with Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose recently discussed the #Occupy movement with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now and writer Chris Hedges of Truthdig.com. This was a thought-provoking show in which all of the participants take the #Occupy movement seriously. What follows are some of my notes regarding the interview. Amy Goodman indicates that we are in the midst of a revolution. Chris Hedges describes this revolt as one that strives to regain democracy and is opposed to the current system of "inverted totalitarianism." It's not "classical totalitarianism. It doesn't find its expression through a demagogue or a charismatic leader, but through the anonymity of the corporate state. . . . [In a system of inverted totalitarianism, "corporate forces purport to pay a fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution, the iconography and language of American patriotism, and yet have so corrupted the levers of power as to render the citizens impotent. We see that in one piece of legislation after another. . . . The formal structures of power are tone deaf. . . [Under the corporate state] there is no way to appeal to the system. It doesn't matter what the citizens want." Amy Goodman points out that while most Americans support the #occupy protests, the protesters are portrayed by many as merely engaging in class warfare. At 14:50, Goodman points out that the #Occupy protesters and the Tea Party have many overlapping concerns. At 21:00 Hedges indicates that there are stark differences with the Tea Party which, he claims, has deep elements he would describe as fascist. Another difference is that the Tea Party targets government because "the corporations want government to become more anemic; it speaks in the language of violence and the gun culture" and they direct their rage toward "vulnerable people such as Muslims, undocumented workers, homosexuals and intellectuals, all sort of the classic rubric that one finds in a fascist movement." Goodman also discusses the importance of citizen journalism. "When police tell people to turn off their video camera, that's exactly when they need to turn their video cameras on. . . . We need media in this country that allows people to speak for themselves. Ultimately, the media can be the biggest force for peace on earth." Goodman believes that this movement will be sustained through the winter and beyond, and that "the organized parties, the Democrat and Republican parties are running scared."

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