Jack Balkin at Balkinization makes some really good points about the Occupy movement and its relation to the Constitution of the United States. His bottom line looks like this:
A broken government, unresponsive to the public, is more than a misfortune. It is a violation of our basic charter-- our Constitution.
Of course, the tea party movement also assailed a broken government until they joined a broken Congress and only made it less responsive. Occupy Together (not a little tea party but rather an international community) targets an increasingly corporatized government backed by (among others) financial titans who support things like -- you guessed it! -- the tea partyers.
More Balkin:
This self-perpetuating machine for extracting wealth and opportunity from the 99 percent and bestowing it on the 1 percent is a perversion of the American Dream.
Something happened to the American Dream in the middle of the twentieth century. The American system of government, which from the end of World War II to the middle of the 1970s, was fairly good at increasing prosperity, equal opportunity, and a reasonable range of income equality has been turned into a device for exacerbating inequality and undermining equal opportunity.
Perhaps more to the point, when this cycle of inequality turned into disaster for the entire economic system in 2008, nobody was held accountable...
But there's much more to what he writes. And at least one of his colleagues has chipped in with further thoughts.
I agree that problems caused by political and economic inequality have now reached constitutional dimensions. ...Frank Pasquale
Balkin teaches constitutional law at Yale Law. Pasquale is an attorney, a graduate of Yale Law, and professor in Health Care and Regulation at Seton Hall Law.
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Sound of one hand clapping at Political Animal where Steve Benen takes the Republicans to task for their quote jobs bill unquote even as economists say, no, the Republicans' claims about creating 5 million jobs are, well, BS.
One independent economist took a look at the plan and concluded that it would fail to help the economy in the short term, and some of the plan’s components might even “push the economy back into recession.”
But that’s just one credible, non-partisan analysis. How about a second opinion? The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler checked in with the office of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the three main architects of the alleged plan, and received more detailed information about the basis for the Republican claim. In this case, it didn’t help the GOP’s argument.
The 5 million figure cited by Paul, and echoed by other Republicans, is ludicrous. Even if one accepts the studies that came up with the figures, in most cases they indicate the GOP proposals would do little to create jobs in the near future.
And in the end...
... We’re left with a realization that should matter a great deal to the political world: Senate Republicans have put together a jobs bill that (a) objectively doesn’t create jobs; and (b) they’re shamelessly lying about.
Given the importance of the jobs crisis and the public demand for action, I’m not still sure why this isn’t a bigger deal. This isn’t just a question in the political fight over jobs; it’s the question. Which side is offering a jobs plan that works?
The answer is no longer in doubt, if it ever was. President Obama’s plan would, according to independent analysis, boost job creation. The Republican plan wouldn’t. It’s as simple as that.
As president, Obama has to come up with the data. As an irresponsible opposition party (is there the slightest doubt about that?) the Republicans don't even try for proof, just more palaver. With a largely irresponsible media refusing to ask tough questions, they get away with it.
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At Tom Dispatch, Rebecca Solnit describes a visit to Zuccotti Park and OWS.
According to an Ipsos poll, a startling 82% of Americans have heard of the movement, striking percentages are following it with some attention, and -- according to TIME magazine -- 54% of Americans have a favorable view of it, only 23% an unfavorable one. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising in a country in which 86% of those polled believe “Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington,” or in which median household income fell by 6.7% after the Great Recession of 2008 was officially declared over (9.8% since it began).
I was at the edge of Zuccotti Park the other day when members of SEIU 32BJ, the building workers union, arrived, a sea of yellow T-shirts and signs. With a new contract on the horizon, they had been demonstrating on their own in the Wall Street area and decided “spontaneously” -- so several told me -- to march to the park. (As one SEIU organizer put it, “Our members really get it, the connection between this and us.”) The energy was sky-high, the excitement palpable, the chanting and cheering loud as they looked down on what could only be described visually as a hippie encampment.
Had this been the 1960s, conflict would undoubtedly have followed. I found myself with a burly white guy wearing a red Communications Workers of America T-shirt on one side of me and a young black woman with a yellow SEIU T-shirt on the other. He promptly commented with indignation and accuracy: “You know, we were saying the 1% and the 99% for like five years and nobody paid attention because we’re unions, we’re the wallpaper!” I braced myself for the coming diatribe against the Zuccotti Park protesters for appropriating the slogan and grabbing the glory. Instead, he continued with unmistakable enthusiasm, “You know, it’s great that these kids have taken it and put it on the map!” At which point the young woman next to me chimed in with equal enthusiasm, “It’s not just the unions any more! It’s bigger than that!”
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Well, okay, but let's not forget the resident insanity and violence within the US, particularly on the right-hand side of America. All is not well. Jesus' General has the latest on "problem-solver" Edward Browning Bosley, "TeaMuricun."
One problem he apparently chose to solve was the conundrum of how to advocate for the President's assassination in a way that offers the author a form of plausible deniability.
By applying good old-fashioned American ingenuity to the problem, Bosley quickly came up with a solution: write a long rambling semi-coherent paragraph about the desirability of whacking the President, then use strike-through to distance yourself from your own words.
For example, he writes:
As much as the violence is condemned I can't help but think how much Obama really does deserve some of this...there is both good and bad in assassinating the president or any elected official.
And then distances himself from his words by striking out the text, like this:
As much as the violence is condemned I can't help but think how much Obama really does deserve some of this...there is both good and bad in assassinating the president or any elected official.
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Digby posts a gorgeous photo of a Bengal tiger and reminds us that there are only 1400 Bengals still extant in the whole world, 18 of which were downed yesterday in an inexcusable happening in western Ohio which has, apparently, no real laws about the import, ownership, and mistreatment of exotic wild animals. Our values are so topsy-turvy these days, what with the new fashion in Objectivism and Me and Greed, that most people will probably blow this off as a non-event.