Sometime-HuffPost blogger, and Nation contributor Dave Zirin has written a brilliant barn-raising response to my last HuffPost piece. Please read all of it, but here's the bit I want call out. Zirin states: "But by going to Occupy sites and arguing for a Tea Party alliance, Professor Lessig, to put it mildly, isn't helping."
Helping what, exactly, Dave?
Helping the Left rally the Left? Agreed. That isn't my aim. The #Occupy movements are doing that quite well on their own. As a Liberal, I celebrate that rally.
Helping the Left lead a movement for real reform? You tell me how your path does that better.
Here's the fact about America: It takes an insanely large majority to make any fundamental change. You want Citizens United reversed, it is going to take 75% of states to do it. You want public funding of public elections? It's going to take 67 Senators to get it. You want to end the corruption that makes it impossible to get any of the things liberals push? It's going to take a broad based movement that cuts across factions, whether right (as in correct) or Right (as in not Left).
So you tell me how calling people you disagree with "racists" (which you predicated of the Tea Party because of the behavior of some of its members, even though an ABC analysis has concluded that views on race "are not significant predictors of support for the Tea Party movement") is going to get us to 38 states? Or 67 Senators? Or 80% of the public's support, which any fundamental change is going to require? Explain how chest-thumping self-righteousness about how hateful "they" are "is helping" that?
Maybe you don't think such fundamental reform is needed, Dave. Maybe you think the political system is just fine. That the poor do perfectly well in a system where the rich fund political campaigns. That the middle class can hold its own in a world where corporations are free to spend endlessly to push the most ridiculous bullshit as "public" policy.
But if you think that, you're from Mars. I'm from Earth. And here on Earth, here in America, our political system is f*cked, and your self-righteous indignation "is not helping" us to get it fixed.
It's great to rally the 99%. It is a relief to have such a clear and powerful slogan. But explain this, because I'm a lawyer, and not so great with numbers: Gallup's latest poll finds 41% of Americans who call themselves "conservative." 36% call themselves "moderate." Liberals account for 21%. In a different poll, Gallup finds 30% of Americans who "support" the Tea Party.
So who exactly are we not allowed to work with, Dave? 30% of America? 41% of America? All but 21% of America? And when you exclude 30%, or 41%, or 79% of Americans, how exactly are you left with 99%?
Talk about wanting to have it "both ways"! How can you claim to speak for 99% but refuse to talk to 30%? (And just to be clear: the 30% of Americans who support the Tea Party are not the 1% "superrich." I checked. With a calculator.)
And finally as to one of the commentators on Dave's essay who finds me "poisonous," and said I said: "OWS needs to drop the 'We are the 99%' slogan because it might hurt the feelings of the rich." What I said was not that the movement should give up the slogan 99% because it offended. I said it should instead talk about the 99.95%. That's the percentage of Americans who did not max out in giving in the last Congressional election. That is the percentage that becomes invisible in the money-feeding-fest that is DC.
So if you really want to rally the 99%, you might begin by identifying those things that 99% might actually agree about. That the 30% of Americans who call themselves "supporters" of the Tea Party are racists is not a statement likely to garner the support of at least that 30%. (And again, as ABC found, it's not even true).
On the other hand, 99% of America should be perfectly willing to agree that a system in which the top 1% -- or better, .05% -- have more power to direct public policy than do the 99% or 99.95% is wrong. And must be changed. Before this nation can again call itself a democracy (for those on the Left) or a Republic (for those on the Right). This "Republic," by which the Framers meant a "representative democracy," by which they intended a body "dependent upon the People ALONE," is not.
That, too, must change. Meaning, in addition to all the things we Liberals want, we must change that as well. And my view is that if we changed that corruption first, we might actually find it a bit easier to get those other things too.
Follow Lawrence Lessig on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lessig
The AIPAC (American Political Action Committee) American puppet in the UN Security Council will be the only vote besides the Israelis that will vote against establishing a Palestinian State in the UN and the same votes were cast when the UN voted to drop the embargo on Cuba, in other words, the U.S. Government has become an arrogant, belligerent, stupid bully ignoring the wishes of all the nations on earth.
The U.S. Government has become so corrupt that it has allowed AIPAC during the last 40 years to dictate foreign policy and this policy has proven disastrous for the American people and the other peoples of the Mideast.
I disagree it takes 75% of the states to reverse "Citizen's United". Faithful execution of the laws belongs to the president (Article 2, section 3), he has only to declare it unconstitutional and DEMAND the Supreme Court to revisit that decision.
By the reading of Amendment 12 Public Elections require a minimum of funding, taxes would be the means of notifying the citizens who the candidates are, the same would be implemented for congressman.
The movement to get government to listen to the people rather than lobbyists is Amendment 10, what OWS should be using. Those things the Constitution has already addressed.
However, Dave does comes on like he's sided with IF NOT the 1%.
Just like the article says.
Did you not read the front page of this post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/income-inequality_n_1032632.html
So as you say it was not the day Obama got elected you have the wrong guy it was REAGAN and his voodoo economics that Bush senior had to eat his words of NO NEW TAXES.
Seeing that you are no doubt from Texas good hairs your man .
Ronald Reagan started an all-out class war that has raged upon all of us ever since.
After all, is that not what makes the Constitution so magnificent? Not the powers it grants the Government, or the rights it guarantees to the People, but the compromise of both mighty and weak so that all might prosper. Compromise.
As the article points out, the numbers needed in order to make the changes that have to be made require that enough people come to an agreement that it can happen.
That's the way a democracy has to work.
There is no particular reason why the OWS and the Tea Partiers could not agree on these changes, given that both are really angry about much the same thing, and both (I think) realize that these are serious problems that could be solved with collective action.
Will it happen? I doubt it, because the real power behind the Tea Party doesn't want it to happen. Maybe the rank and file TPers will figure that out, but I doubt it.
So, there you have it. We're probably out of luck and out of time. I hope not, but ...
If you have no debt and just $10,000 in the bank your net worth is higher than the bottom 75% of Americans combined !!
My wife and I have incomes that put us in the bottom 50% of all income earners...but becuase we are frugal...never borrowed...and always saved.....at age 52 we have enough money that we could stop working if we wanted to. It appears that these protestors do not like my wife and I because we have no debt and we have saved each and every year for over 30 years now.
You can't win support from those who have a different phylosophy but who actually agree on the key issues, namely End-the-Fed and Glass-Steagall to stop the bailouts once-n-for-all.
It's like Obi-Wan-Kinobi, in Star Wars told Annakin Skywalker before they were to about to fight Count Dokoo: "...this time we'll do it together".
To bring down the Federal Reserve and Wall Street with End-the-Fed/Glass-Steagall, requires that efforts of both Tea Party and OWS, because both movements have sincere fighters within them.
There are so many corrupt people in BOTH sides of congress..people who voted us into Iraq war,gave us nafta ( any of them left ? ) took our rights and put us in a dangerous position to be abused Legally by gov..taking habeaus corpus,allowing a president to asassinate American citizens..( people including children were brutallly tortured in Afghans detentoin centers WE sent them to)..the fed,credit Unions and Politicians working together to Screw over millions through Fanny and Freddy ( when you read what Ron Paul told them would happen,and that it was a scam..why didn't they listen ? could they have known he was right,but didn't care ? read and decide for yourself
in 2003 !!! he told them and tried to protect us Read about it here
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul128.html
also read what he said about Nafta..( A Few would get rich the rest be out of JOBS) ..
he protected us against "privatizing social security" even though he wanted to let those in their 20's "Opt out" and eventually end it
backIn 2004 the Bush Neocons wanted to end it too BUT Rip us off while AT IT....
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul215.html
Furthermore, who would decide what stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or other investment vehicles deserve government approval? Which politicians would you trust to build an investment portfolio with billions of your Social Security dollars? The federal government has proven itself incapable of good money management, and permitting politicians and bureaucrats to make investment decisions would result in unscrupulous lobbying for venture capital. Large campaign contributors and private interests of every conceivable type would seek to have their favored investments approved by the government.
prt 2
Totally false!
How can anyone advocate this, given what happened in 2008?
There are two fundamental problems with privatizing retirement accounts:
1. Who takes care of those who mis-invested?
I've worked on our retirement investments for years, and I still don't have a good solution. I have a graduate degree in engineering. What about those even more ignorant? What will we have to do, when they bet on the wrong pony?
We'd have to support those who guessed wrong and bought General Motors or AT&T. Or would you rather tens of millions starve because they can't pick stocks or bonds?
2. Time horizon. This is the true killer. You can be an investment genius, but if you are unlucky and get caught in a big bust, there may not be sufficient time to recover in your lifetime. After 1929, the stock market didn't recover until 1954. What if you retired in 1930?
Modern times? Look at Japan. The Nikkei peaked at 38,915.87 in 1989. The ticker right now quotes 8926.54.
What will YOU do, if YOUR portfolio drops 77%, just when you need it? Now multiply that by millions of others like you.
Privatizing social security is about the dumbest idea I have heard in my lifetime.
I agree. I'm tired of people pretending to speak for the silent majority at the expense of real coalition building.
The actual Tea Party movement (not the Koch Brothers straw-man the progressive media likes to beat up on) and the OWS movements have a lot in common. Certainly enough to build an anti-corporatist/anti-corporate welfare movement.