Occupy and the Sleeping Giant

Bill O'Reilly has declared the Occupy movement dead. Of course Bill has always had trouble distinguishing reality from wishful thinking. He has suffered from magical thinking at times - thinking he can create reality just from his pronouncements alone. The day after his declaration 1,000 Occupy protestors marched in New York. As of November 26 the meet-up page "Occupy Together" listed 2,668 Occupy communities worldwide.

I don't know how long the occupy movement in its present form will continue but here's what I do know:

400 individuals in the US now possess the same amount of wealth as 150 million Americans combined. Their effective federal income tax rate fell from about 30 percent in 1995 to 18 percent in 2008, the most recent data available. The top 1% of the richest Americans have enjoyed a 300% increase in income in the last thirty years of trickle-down economics. Middle class America, in that same time, has had zero growth. Something is trickling down - but it’s not wealth or even opportunity. 

Thirty top corporations paid no tax last year. The Supreme Court has declared that corporations are individuals and money is free speech. Our republican leadership, with a straight face; demand extension of tax breaks for the most wealthy, and huge subsidies to oil companies despite them having recently reported quarterly profits of approximately 8.5 billion dollars each - each - all the while demanding cuts in social spending as a means to 'fiscal responsibility'. 

We have suffered ten years of undeclared war at a cost of over 1.2 trillion dollars - money that goes not just to bombs and bullets but into the pockets of those that make them, war profiteers all. If you counted one dollar every second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 40 years to just count that much money. In the meantime our bridges and roads and rail are crumbling. Our schools in decline. The gulf between the haves and have-nots widening. Hunger and poverty increasing - 43 million of your fellow Americans now live in poverty, 15 million in severe poverty. 

8-10 million American families stand to lose their homes as a result of the sub-prime-mortgage/derivative/world recession fiasco. Despite this - nothing has changed, the crooks responsible completely free to do it all again.

Occupy protesting? Mild compared to what could happen when the people finally wake up to the colossal rip off put in place by 30 years of trickle-down economics, cronie capitalism, government corruption-dysfunction and corporate control.  Millions have suffered. There is a sleeping giant out there. Continue the unbelievable greed and corruption and it will wake. Continue to fix the game in attempts to channel all the wealth to the few and it will wake. For some in wall street, big banks, and government I’d be listening very carefully for the footsteps - even if Bill O'Reilly pronounces they are not really there.