Publictakeover's Weblog

Michele Bachmann Gets Mike-Checked

Occupy Updates: Extreme Police Violence in Berkeley, With Calls for a Strike; Harvard Protesters Shut Out of Harvard Yard | AlterNet

I’m not sure what Mayor Bloomburg did to earn the status of University Presidents, but I heard the tv show in the morning yesterday when I was flipping channels before Democracy Now.

What Lauren Kelley overlooks, however, is one glaring implication.  Bloomburg dismisses the Occupiers with one grand gesture of dismissal.  He then blurts out the real reason:  he doesn’t believe in democracy.

It’s a whole bunch of people that are just disinf-disaffected. They don’t know what’s wrong. They say, ‘we don’t know what we want but we want it now,’ which I think is as good a way of saying it as anything. That it’s not their job to solve the problems, it’s the job of the government and the press and those of us that have some insight on how policies affect people.

Just because he disagrees with the protesters, doesn’t mean they don’t know what’s wrong.  Bloomburg is in the 1%.  It’s painfully obvious he’s dismissing the movement in Liberty Square from a combination of hubris, honest ignorance, and deep fear.  He’s not offering anything like principles in defense of his criticism of the protesters.

What’s more, by saying that the protesters want the elites to–or the elites rightfully should–solve our problems without any input by the 99%, he’s only emphasizing the veracity of the occupiers’ stance.  He’s admitting not only that he doesn’t understand the occupiers’ demands, but that he doesn’t care.  Like the blind leading the blind, Mayor Mike insists that he and his 1% cronies are the only ones with the “insight” to work out society’s problems for the common good.

The more he slimes over toward “shut up the dumb demonstrators,” then the more he shows the world just how much he and “government and the press and those of us that have some insight on how policies affect people” are the real obstacle to equality.

He doesn’t believe in it.

via Occupy Updates: Extreme Police Violence in Berkeley, With Calls for a Strike; Harvard Protesters Shut Out of Harvard Yard | AlterNet.

Stop the Senate from gutting the Clean Air Act!

Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky is trying to ram through an obscure rule to gut the Clean Air Act and stop the EPA from doing its job. Paul’s legislation, flying under the radar, would handcuff the EPA from protecting our health and lead to up to 34,000 premature deaths a year.

This dangerous Dirty Air Act could pass and it’s up for a vote this week

I just contacted my Senators — will you join me in making sure they stand up for clean air and vote down the Dirty Air Act?

To take action on this issue, click on the link below:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/Advocacy?s_oo=4tg-hBcH1Usgkrl7mkHm7g&id=7323
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If you no longer wish to receive email messages sent from your friends on behalf of this organization, please follow the link below:
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“Super Committee” Blows Up New Deal

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, we find the corporate train we’re all riding is heading straight for “Palookaville,” and Obama is its Conductor.

10-28-11bud.pdf application/pdf Object.

Move to Amend

This group is trying to ignite a movement for a Constitutional Convention to Amend the Constitution against corporate personhood.

Their latest plan is Occupy the Courts!.

Bernanke takes on Occupy Wall Street

If the Fed hadn’t stepped in, things would have been much worse, Bernanke said.”The consequences would have been dire,” he said. “Not everyone understands that, and so sometimes people misunderstand our motives.”

Except, Honorable Chairman, the way the Fed stepped in enabled the investment banks to avoid changing their behaviors, even the slightest little bit.  Consequently, the Fed will be compelled to bail them out again next time … soon.

This, of course, raises the issue of, are the Fed’s actions on a par with the criminal behavior of the banksters?

via Bernanke takes on Occupy Wall Street – The Hill’s On The Money.

The Meaner the Spin …

… the more it assuages my guilt.

I thought of Mark Twain’s line, “The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”

This guy Chris Ketcham has a knife under the table, between the lines. I can read his diatribe and glom onto the hate without having to utter a syllable, or move a muscle aggressively.

His Orion article about The Reign of the One Percenters is hitting me right where it feels good to feel like I’m hitting somebody else.

What makes the desperation of this time so hopeful, though, is that our backs really are against the wall. We don’t even have to fight, per se, just to stop playing the same game by the same rules.

If it’s going to really be up to us to change ourselves, we have to stop paying so much attention to the problem.

We’re the solution: local, egalitarian, sustainable, democratic.

No matter how ugly The Picture of Dorian Grey becomes, we don’t have to look at it. It’s not our portrait any more.

Thirty Years of Unleashed Greed

Robert Scheer writing via Truthdig, thinks the Occupy Wall Street movement could justifiably be enlarged commensurately with the growth rate of the after tax income over the last 3 decades of the top 1%.

In the face of the evidence that class inequality had been rising sharply in the United States even before the banking-induced recession, it would seem that the Occupy Wall Street protests are a quite measured and even timid response to the crisis.

The .01%

Robert Greenwald is a revolutionary.

Why We Support #OccupyWallStreet

If this doesn’t go viral in record time, then there ain’t no such thing!

“This Powerful Clip Is Exactly Why We Support #OccupyWallStreet | MoveOn.Org” can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/vnzveq