Occupy Wall Street: A Manifesto

Oh goody... they've got a list of demands! Let's take them one at a time-

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Well, I guess my question is: did we ever have a living wage to begin with? I think it'd be nice to have the minimum wage keep pace with inflation at the very least, so raising that, I'd be OK with. As for the tiresome free trade versus protectionism thing, well, I can honestly say I come down on the side of free trade. Presumably, cows from California (happy ones, the pot smokers!) imported to Iowa or Wisconsin would undercut existing cow market prices here. Does that mean we start intra-state protectionism? I'm confused. And leveling the play field for domestic family farming? What are farm subsidies for? (I'd be in favor of ending subsidies for corporate farmers and corporations in general- if you don't need the cash, you shouldn't getting them.) The bigger issue is though, how many people actually want to farm? When the bespectacled hipsters who started this mess come see what cornfields actually look like, then we can talk. Unless of course, our glorious collective leadership is going to send us all down to the farm, just as Mao or Che did. Wonderful.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Ummmm... then why aren't doctors, nurses and hospitals piss poor? Apparently insurance companies are taking the money and giving it to Wall Street. I've seen a little bit of the NHS in the United Kingdom and it didn't impress me. Free does not equal good- the quality of care would go down in a big way, waiting lists for the simplest outpatient procedures would go up and it would necessitate the creation of a massive government bureaucracy to pay for it all. It wouldn't give us more Doctors, Nurses or a better quality of care. Just a shitload of paper-pushers- that we'd have to pay for somehow. Pass.

No doubt, we need to do something about health care and I support government backed health insurance (or tax credits or vouchers or something) for people that actually need the help. If you don't need the help, you should be paying your own way. (Tort reform and breaking the insurance monopolies would help with this in a big way. Why are we not asking to break the insurance monopolies? Hmmm... I'd like to know.)

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Fuck that. If I wanted to live in France, I'd move to France. If you want money, you can damn well find a job doing something and earn it. No freeloading.

Demand four: Free college education.

Hahahahahahahahahaha! I don't even know where to start with this one. What are these people smoking!? What we should be asking for here is a reduction in bloated higher education administrative positions nationwide with the savings passed onto students in the form of tuition cuts. We should be demanding an end to all private college student loans nationwide and a greater emphasis on job shadowing, internships and technical education so that instead of making idiotic, naive demands, these people could graduate and get jobs. Oh and P.S. Iowa students, if you start preaching at me about how you are the 99% and show up at the shiny new rec center on campus that has jacked up student fees (you only think it's free, kiddies) then guess what- you're helping making college more expensive. Practice what you preach, y'all.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

I can't totally argue against this, but solar, wind- all the alternatives aren't there yet. Fuel cell technology is coming- slowly. How about more investment in that? But I'm sorry kids, oil companies make too much money and all the baby boomers have their retirements invested in oil companies to bring fossil fuels down soon. Not gonna happen.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

What are we schilling for the Obama Campaign now? Did you lift this from their talking points? Not very anti-establishment, OWS. I'm disappointed- and besides, aren't we doing this with the Obama Administration's shovel ready jobs already?

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

Ah, so the Sierra Club is writing your talking points. Awesome. Selling out to special interest groups, OWS? Uncool. I'm down with planting trees and re-establishing wetlands, but hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants aren't coal power plants, so I think they can stay until we find something better. In the wake of Fukushima, I'm less pro-nuclear than I have been, but do we want nuke plants that might blow up or coal plants that are pumping tons of carbon into our atmosphere every single day? We can't have both- and I'm inclined to think that hydro and nuke power are the perfect stopgaps to help us transition away from fossil fuels. Someone needs to invent fusion power. Do y'all want to get on that?

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Didn't we try the ERA already? What about the 14th Amendment? How about demanding enforcement of the rights we already have as Americans? Lord knows the Establishment likes to ignore those whenever and wherever they can.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Can't we do this already? Or do you mean internationally? I think a guest worker program is a must- we had the bracero program back in the day. Maybe we should look into that.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Jesus. That's it? No abolishing the electoral college? No term limits for Congress? No end to gerrymandering and independent redistricting nationwide? No cut in Congressional pay and benefits? Somehow, you've got a national platform and you had the opportunity to call for something truly radical and you failed, OWS. Epic, epic, epic FAIL.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Oh wow. OWS, I'd like to know who your dealer is, because I really need to get my hands on some of the sweet, sweet mary jane you must be smoking. I don't believe in something for nothing- the public service debt forgiveness options asks for 10 years of on-time payments and public service before they give you any forgiveness. And I'm OK with that, but I believe in paying off what I accrue and working for what I earn. You ask for a handout if you want too- but leave me out of it.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

I'm OK with this. Go right ahead.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

Schills for Obama, Schills for the Sierra Club and now schills for the Unions? Pass, pass, pass... whether you agree with unions or not, the decision should be taken free of any chance of intimidation on the part of either side in the discussion. Secret ballot elections are a must. And as it seems in Wisconsin, once automatic deduction of union dues was ended, nobody wanted to pay, I'm not sure unions have the support they think they have.

On balance, I find this disappointing. There's nothing remotely resembling an attack on the establishment- and a lot of comments point out that our corrupt government is the problem, Wall Street is just the symptom and I'm inclined to agree with that. This was an opportunity to do something truly radical and they ducked it.

There's some criticism from the right over here, including the following snarky quote that pissed me right off:

The second theme is entitlement. Other people should pay for my health care. Other people should pay for my college education. I shouldn’t have to pay back my credit card balance. In short, gimme. How millennial.

How millennial? Not so much, I'm afraid- I don't want other people paying for shit. I want to be left alone, because the writer's generation has fucked so much of this country up already. I want to carve out a life for myself and the Missus, work damn hard for whatever we can get and stay the hell away from the mess that's being made out there. It was the older generation that insisted on universal home ownership and universal education. It was the older generation that stood by as the value of the high school diploma was reduced to little more than a piece of paper. It was the older generation that stood by while college costs shot through the roof and Wall Street grabbed more and more and the government grew more and more corrupt and the gap between government and the governed grew ever wider.

Millenial? Hell no. My generation isn't entitled- we're just pissed off, because we know we're not going to get shit and we're going to have to make sure the older generation gets theirs as a price. We'd like something-- but we're not going to get it.