Voting doesn't work anymore. If it did, Americans would get what they want -- or at least some of it -- from Washington.
But they don't.
Instead of the people's priority, which is jobs, country club conservatives in Congress stubbornly fixate on deficits. Instead of ensuring millionaires and corporations pay their fair share, House Republicans passed a budget that would destroy Medicare and Medicaid.
Corporate and clandestine campaign contributions have undermined the power of traditional voting, the kind done at polls on election day. Rather than voters, politicians now serve donors -- billionaires and banksters -- who invest untold millions and demand returns in the form of self-serving policy.
This is demoralizing to those who cherish democracy and the sanctity of one person, one vote.
Hope, however, arrived with the debit card fee victory. The 99 percent forced Bank of America to back off its proposed fee. Average Americans accomplished this by voting differently, not at the ballot box but at the twitter account, the Occupy march and the teller window, where 1 million depositors went to move $4.5 billion from the big Wall Street banks to community banks and credit unions. They found another way to exercise their franchise and force the powerful to respond.
The 99 percent must exploit the method of this triumph to get what they need. Because politicians sure as hell aren't giving them what they want.
The numbers don't lie. Coin-operated conservatives in Congress have rejected President Obama's jobs plan, parts of the jobs plan and Obama's pitch to raise taxes on the rich to pay for it.
And yet, the electorate strongly supports both surtaxing millionaires and the elements of the jobs plan. In a CNN poll in October, 75 percent favored sending federal money to the states to hire teachers and first responders and 72 percent favored infrastructure investments.
A whopping 76 percent wanted millionaires to pay higher taxes.
In that same CNN poll, there's another compelling statistic. Sixty-one percent said reducing unemployment was the most important issue. Reducing the deficit didn't even come close at 35 percent.
The numbers aren't flukes. Another survey, taken a week later by CBS found the same thing.
At a time when companies are hoarding $2 trillion in reserves, failing to create jobs and demanding tax cuts, the CBS poll provided a snapshot of public opinion on corporate responsibility. It found 67 percent opposed shrinking big business tax obligations.
That is a result of the public knowing intuitively what a report released last week proved: corporations aren't paying their fair share. Citizens for Tax Justice conducted a comprehensive study that showed 280 of the nation's largest publicly-traded corporations paid only 18.5 percent of their profits in taxes over the past three years. That is little more than half the official rate of 35 percent, and it is lower than the rate paid by their competitors in other industrialized nations.
Thirty of the companies paid nothing. For three years.
Numerous polls over time found Americans, including Tea Partiers by a two-to-one margin, strongly oppose cutting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare benefits. Yet, what is the Congressional super-committee talking about? Cutting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
If only the public could get their elected representatives to listen. If only they could walk into those plush Congressional offices -- the way corporate lobbyists do -- grab those lawmakers and get them to understand the sentiment of all those polls, the feeling of the vast majority of the electorate: Tax the rich; don't cut the social safety net; create jobs now; worry about the deficit when the economy improves.
Traditional balloting has failed to get country club conservatives to listen to the public. To the majority. To the people who a democratically-elected government is supposed to serve.
The Bank of America debit card fee reversal suggests, however, that the majority can win with non-traditional balloting. In this case, a big bank that had been bailed out by the public after it engaged in excessively-risky betting, a bank that gave its CEO a $9 million bonus after he lost billions, announced that it had "the right to make a profit" off the backs of poor people by charging them a new $5-a-month fee to use their own money with their debit cards.
Other Wall Street banks indicated they would do the same.
Fed up, depositors said they wouldn't take it anymore. They began transferring their money out of the Wall Street banks, participating in the "Move Your Money" campaign that urged citizens to deposit their savings in community banks and credit unions. YouTube began featuring outrageous videos of Wall Street bank branches denying depositors access to their accounts when they tried to withdraw their money to move it.
The effort was tweeted and blogged. It was cheered by Occupy Wall Street protesters who marched to bank headquarters buildings in New York City carrying thousands of letters of complaint.
Wall Street banks began backing off their new fee plans. One by one they abandoned Bank of America. Finally, it too cancelled the fee, meanwhile refusing to disclose just how much businesses it lost.
Last Saturday was the big, official "move your money" day. Of course, the Wall Street banks won't tell how many more customers they lost. But depositors, more than 78,000 of whom pledged to make the move, made their point.
They voted differently. They voted with their feet and their wallets. And they won. They cast ballots in the only way coin-operated politicians and big banks respond to.
Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger
Fed-up consumers planning for 'Bank Transfer Day'
Correction: Bank Transfer Day story
Bank Transfer Day And Occupy Wall Street: Fundamentally Different Approaches ...
Occupy San Francisco bank transfer day
Bank Transfer Day protesters act out their frustrations
Occupiers march in observance of Bank Transfer Day
Protesters Arrested Outside NYC Courthouse on Bank Transfer Day
Bank Transfer Day: Struggling Smaller Banks Can Use the Boost
That's good. It's time.
Progressive unionism has a major role to play in the ongoing struggle.
I marched in the 1960's and 1970's. Now I'm marching again, with my grandchildren!
Solidarity!
-Mike Olszanski, Past president, Local 1010 USW
But they don't."
We don't know this to be the case. Mostly because Americans don't show up to vote very often at all.... unless it's for American Idol.
The easy part of my view to explain is the "particular" one: Simply, I wouldn't target someone from the textile industry, iconic or not. Even if they did react, which I think is very unlikely, these are no high- value, high- paying jobs. I'd rather go for something like the computer- chip industry.
I think it's a better strategy to focus on preventing the closing of plants, especially in strategic industries. If a plant remains open, sooner or later investments will follow, the plant might be enlarged and logistics will settle around it. Besides, it's much easier to keep people focused.
Secondly, even if you can't prevent such closures, at least at first, it can send a message to industries, making them more cautious. Ask Nokia in Europe, for example.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,529218,00.html
http://www.telecompaper.com/news/nokia-loses-6-market-share-on-german-mobile-device-market
Had the libs won the elections in 2010 in a landslide, like the conservatives did, they would be partying likes its 1999.
them than a punishment. The average small account costs a bank which is only profitable if
the account uses other services. At the moment the banks are awash with cash as few borrowers
qualify for such low rates. Who would want to loan money for 30 years at 3.9%, especially when the administration views repayment as optional? Blaming the banks because the Fed has flooded
the market with funds at zero interest rates to disguise the instability of the economy, is totally
misguided. The villains are the administration and Congress who continue to spend recklessly.
The refusal of the media to recognize the subversive forces hiding behind the legitimate protestors
is putting the police and the entire country in clear and imminent danger. WAKE UP. Lawless
mobs are a threat to us all.
In 2012 I will be voting and organizing for the Green Party in San Antonio. Hopefully by 2016 there will a coalition of alternative parties, organizations that will form the base of a genuine people's party. The Occupy Movement that has swept across the nation has shown us who our enemy is. Now we must do what is needed to build a political party that is comprised of and for the 99%!
Besides, most people have taxes taken out of their paycheck automatcially so it's an academic issue, unless you owe.
Again, how do we get the attention of our elected officials prior to the elections? The media abc, cbs, nbc, cnn, cspan, faux do not tell the story, they do not challenge the liars, they do not expose the liars and people that lie, lie, lie. Point in case the Sunday Talk Show hosts let almost all lies going unexposed. The media killed Howard Dean campaign! The media did edit his scream speech and Ed Gillespie was able to lie about it again. They don't out their own, they all edit the screams of the crowd and left only Howard Dean talking. Shameful! We need a media representative of the people but no they have to appease their corporate mafia media.