From Denny: This new American Revolution, Occupy Wall Street, caught fire across America in less than one month of protests. OWS is spreading to 25 cities like an oozing peanut butter sandwich overflowing with jam - and is now international too. There is just something so appealing about this protest movement because of its common ground that cuts across the spectrum of race, gender, lifestyle, generations, education and economic class.
Occupy Wall Street Protests Mantra
Occupy Wall Street protesters have been smart in targeting the lynch pin of American society: the financial sector. It is the financial sector that buys the politicians to pass the laws to unleash business to have free rein and never enforce what laws are on the books.
It's the financial sector that buys the police force to intimidate ordinary citizens like those incidents of pepper sprayed women during the protests. Notice they didn't go after men who could pummel them; they went after women.
Media coverage of OWS
There are those in my fellow media who just plain whine this movement is supposedly difficult to cover because there is not one leader, a spokesman, for the cause. And why do you require one leader? So you can get those easy lobs over the net for the sound bites? I call that lazy journalism and just plain lame.
The more people you talk to the more you will find a pattern of attitude and beliefs. This is not difficult; it's called interviewing - and regularly. The Vietnam War protests began much like this and slowly built into a critical mass that finally ended the war. This is no different. When American citizens take to the streets then things have to be bad, really bad, just like it was during the 1930's and the Great Depression.
How our national leaders have failed America in both political parties
By culture Americans are a patient lot and give our politicians a chance. But now it is clearly evident our politicians are just not connected to the people. Nor are they doing anything significant about job loss. We have a president and a Congress that has thrown political food fights for three years - trying to get the next presidency - while ignoring the economy was melting down.
None of them did anything about disallowing Big Business to send jobs overseas by the millions, for decades now. Shedding jobs by the millions was bound to finally create an economic meltdown. Why no one with an ounce of common sense could not predict the obvious is beyond me.
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt duplicitous about jobs creation by creating job loss
What's worse, the so-called Jobs Czar, GE's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, is the same corporation that made billions in America and paid absolutely no taxes into the American treasury. Yet, this is the guy Obama turns to for growing jobs in the economy? You have got to be kidding me. He just sent tens of thousands of jobs to China, moving the headquarters of his 115-year-old X-ray imaging business from Wisconsin to Beijing.
Obama has several of the same greedy CEOs on various councils advising him, the same Big Banks that throw people out of their homes and refuse to hire folks over the age of 40 or minorities or women. What's wrong with this picture? Plenty, say the folks in the OWS protests.
From Sen. Feingold (D-WI) about GE CEO's statement when interviewed on CBS The Early Show, "Well, Mr. Immelt is not recognizing thst you root for corporations when corporations are making sure your jobs stay here in the United States. His corporations has had more to do with shipping jobs overseas than almost any corporation in the world."
"And, so the deal here is, we root for corporations and we support them if they are fair to us. But these people who are protesting are recognizing that just about everything that has happened to working people has been unfair in recent years. you have the greed on Wall Street. You have the very wealthy insisting they not contribute at all to solving our deficit and our debt problems. You have corporations buying up the political process through secret donation. People have had it."
Is there truly a recession recovery - but is it for you or just the corporations?
For those who contend the OWS movement does not have a recurring theme, think again: "The 99 percent are taking action against the greed and corruption of the 1 percent."
The OWS - and most Americans - are fed up hearing about how we are "in a recession" or have "recovered from a recession." Who believes that? Then there's the usual political rhetoric about how great is the recovery of corporate America, most notably for Wall Street and the Big Banks. Yeah? So, where does that leave the average worker? Out in the cold, that's where and people are angry they are not able to participate in the so-called recovery.
Big Business and the politicians are busy running their media campaigns to counter the OWS perception before the rest of America - and the world - wakes up to the truth. Ol' Greedy Man Himself, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), is accusing OWS of all sorts of sins.
The real sin is that Cantor, and plenty of his fellow politicians, laid Wall Street bets - buying shorts - when they were stonewalling Obama this summer. Basically, Cantor made money because of his stonewalling efforts - and that's legal? Insider trading, unethical, odious for starters. Observing this kind of profiteering off the woes of the country make Americans angry, now angry enough to take to the streets.
Check out fellow Republican, Herman Cain, accusing the unemployed of "being lazy."
New study bears out OWS protests assertions
But is there any study or data to back up the conclusions of the OWS protesters besides perhaps anecdotes? Well, yes, actually. A couple of former Census Bureau guys did a study about household incomes during this so-called economic recovery. It backs the OWS protesters.
Real median annual household income:
From June 2009 - June 2011: Income fell down 6.7 percent to $49,909
Check out how it breaks down:
* For a single parent or single person, their income fell by 7.3 percent, from $39,321 to $36,465
* For married-couple households, income fell 4.5 percent, from $76,783 to $73,324
* For unemployed, income fell by 18.4 percent, from $41,037 to $33,487
* For those looking for work that were head of household, income fell by 5.1 percent, from $72,104 to
$68,454
* Blacks head of household income fell by 9.4 percent, from $35,072 to $31,784
* Whites head of household income fell by 4.7 percent, from $59,111 to $56,320
* Hispanics head of household income fell by 4.9 percent, from $41,945 to $39,901
During the recession from December 2007 - June 2009: Income fell down 3.2 percent to $53,518
From December 2007 - June 2011: Income declined by 9.8 percent. An income crush on this level signals a serious reduction in America's standard of living.
What about the corporations? How did they do during the economic recovery?
These statistics will make your blood boil and make you want to make your own sign and join the protests. Check it out: In the second quarter of 2009, when the recovery started, guess what happened to the corporate profits? It's astounding. They soared up to "88 percent growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1 percent." Most of that money just went into CEO pockets.
What's more obnoxious and odious is all that money those corporations earned - just during the recovery period - stayed within the company. The corporations refused to translate this sudden surge in wealth into higher wages or new jobs creation for the over 20 million jobless. As it is corporate America is sitting on a lot more than $2.2 trillion.
So, was this economic recovery really a recovery? Not from the point of view of American workers who didn't see a dime of it for it is considered a wageless recovery. From the point of view of corporate America it was time to wine and dine at the finest restaurants and celebrate with champagne while their fellow Americans were looking for employment.
And Wall Street has to scratch their heads and wonder why their fellow Americans are unhappy, out of work and taking to the streets to protest their greed?
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