thenatureofmind

Occupy 2.0

Occupy 2.0 Demands Worksheet

Please read, discuss, copy and pass along. Check those things you agree with, put an X beside those you don’t agree with. Write in those you want that are not here. Pass it on....

Government:

1. End the militarization of police. No military equipment or military type equipment to be used by police. No pepper spray, mace, rubber bullets, tear gas or ultra sound equipment to be used against citizens exercising their constitutional rights to redress grievances by the government. 
2. The complete restoration of the protections of the 1st amendment. The end of restrictions on protests and the end of harassment of protesters by police. Police have no role as to when and where people may exercise their 1st amendment rights.
3. End the direct hiring of returning soldiers from war zones into the police force. If a soldier is hired, require a minimum 2 year training period in which their understanding of police duties and how those duties differ from military duties are learned and their progress approved by their superiors.
4. All police budgets to be subject to the same constrains as schools, medical care and hospitals. When school budgets are cut, police budgets will be cut. 
5. The establishment of a citizens truth commission to allow citizens to bring forth their stories of mistreatment at the hands of the police and courts and lawyers to represent them to redress their grievances. 
6. The restoration of the protections of the 4th amendment with respect to illegal search and seizure. An end to searches of citizens or their effects without a court order.
7. An end to spying on US citizens. An end to tapping of phones and computer communications of US citizens. 
8. End the racially based “stop and frisk” in all its forms throughout the country, 
9. Repeal the Patriot Act.
10. The establishment of a basic universal income. 
11. End the foreign wars that are draining the economy
12. Close most of our foreign military bases
13. The restoration of the constitutional war making power to the congress. No war actions to be allowed without a congressional declaration of war. 
14. Cut the military budget in half
15. End the attacks on our unions by reinstating the Taft-Hartley Act.
16. Allow ALL citizens to form unions based on a simple majority vote. 
17. Prosecute union busting in all of its forms. 
18. Appoint a national commission to completely re-write the tax code, no politicians or corporate lobbyists allowed. Remove the industry written loopholes. Craft it to favor small businesses and not large businesses. 
19. Do everything that needs to be done to make starting and running a small business as easy as possible with special loan programs and mentorship programs specifically for small businesses. 
20. Re-instate and re-write the Glass-Steagall act to prevent bubbles in the economy and prevent recessions and depressions.
21. Close the CIA and appoint a special prosecutor with a large team of investigators to uncover the illegal actions of the CIA and prosecute the criminals. Prosecute all who violated the Geneva convention on torture. Document and prosecute all illegal activities of the CIA since it’s inception. The CIA now represents an illegal unrestricted 4th branch of government that is a threat to our freedoms. It was originally chartered to gather information. It has become an illegal army making war wherever and whenever it wants without the declaration of war by the congress. 
22. An end to torture, REALLY!
23. Close Guantanamo and give it back to the Cubans.
24. A constitutional amendment to ban unlimited campaign contributions.
25. A real congressional code of ethics preventing any Senator or Representative from voting on a measure affecting one of their campaign contributors.
26. Restoration of the equal time law that specifies that all broadcast media must provide free equal time for any partisan broadcasts.
27. Eliminate the so called “political debates” being run by for profit media organizations. Have them run by non political non-profit organizations. Allow all registered candidates to participate. 
28. The establishment of special government channel(s) like C-span for public political debate. ALL candidates would have free air time and would not be allowed to buy air time on the non-government channels thus eliminating the largest political campaign expenditure significantly reducing the need for large sums of money in politics.
29. Close the capital building to lobbyists. 
30. No lobbyist shall be eligible to run for elected office for 10 years after their last paycheck.
31. No congressperson or senator shall become a lobbyist for 10 years after leaving congress.
32. The acceptance of anything from a lobbyist, even a meal shall be grounds for expulsion from the congress.
33. No bill shall be presented to congress that is not written in the congress by paid congressional personnel. 
34. End the US government war against Julian Assange and Pvt. Bradley Manning. Reward the whistle blowers.
35. End the government secrecy policies and allow the citizens to know what is really going on in government. Publish the Warren Commission report. After 50 years we deserve to know the truth.
36. End the war on illegal immigrants. No person is illegal. 
37. An end to the economic blockade of Cuba.

Environment:

37. Craft environmental policy based on science and not on corporate propaganda
38. End all fossil fuel subsidies. 
39. Stop the Tar Sands project. The negative environmental consequences of this project will affect every man woman and child on this planet. It must stop
40. Ban fracking in the entire US. It is a dirty polluting technology. Concentrating any energy in this technology delays the finding of alternative energy sources.
41. Treat alternative energy the same way we undertook the space race and the national highway system. Give it top priority.
42. Allocate money and create jobs retrofitting the older buildings in the US to make them energy efficient. 
43. Tax cars based on size: the larger the car the higher the tax. Encourage the driving of smaller cars.
44. Tax gas to the same level as Europe so that people will buy smaller cars.
45. End strip mining

Economy:

46. Tax money earned through investment at the same tax rate as real labor. 
47. Restore the top tax rates to their levels in the 1950’s.
48. Our monetary system was devised over 100 years ago before the advent of computers. Create a national commission with the best of our economists and ordinary citizens (no politicians, no lobbyists) to address the problems and inequities in our monetary system. Eliminate the Fed or Federalize it.
49. Nationalize the Banks and create many local banks which will serve local communities. Too big to fail: too big to exist.
50. Allocate money and create jobs fixing the decaying infrastructure of the US
51. Allocate money and create jobs building a nationwide high speed train system.
52. Allocate money and create jobs building better local mass transit systems. Get people out of their cars.
53. Create a WPA type project to get people back to work rebuilding the decaying infrastructure and refurbishing our public parks and creating new green spaces.

Health Care:

54. Institute a single payer health care system guaranteeing health care for all. Decouple health care from employers. Free health care for all.
55. Examine drug company pricing and allow the selling of generic drugs when necessary to lower the cost of medicines.
56. Restore the patent system to its original time frames and not allow extensions.
57. Make the “drug problem” a health issue not a police issue. Set up centers where drug addicts can get the drugs they need at low cost and provide support services for health and for drug rehabilitation. Use Portugal’s program as a model.
58. Legalize non-addictive drugs: marijuana and psychedelics

Education:

59. Free education at all of our state universities and community colleges. Make a college education affordable to all students.
60. Free teachers’ education. Pay teachers what they should be paid. Make sure that our children are getting the best education possible.
61. The establishment of a special schools act that will use government money to address the inequality of education. All schools to be funded at the same level and that level to be determined by studying those schools of countries that have the highest standard of education. Use the lessons learned to determine curricula and to address the need of students to be able to have a marketable skill upon graduation. Forget testing, put the money where the students are.

The Situation In The Markets Is Much Worse Than You Realize

It’s about time that I share with you all a little secret.  The situation in the markets is much worse than you realize.  While that may sound like someone who has been crying “wolf” for the past several years, in all honesty, the public has no idea just how dire our present situation has become.

The amount of debt, leverage, deceit, corruption, and fraud in the economic markets, financial system, and in the energy industry are off the charts.  Unfortunately, the present condition is even much worse when we consider “INSIDER INFORMATION.”

The Situation In The Markets Is Much Worse Than You Realize

The Poisoned Chalice: From Eurozone to Dead Zone

James Galbraith’s articles and interviews collected in his book Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice trace his growing exasperation at the “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), IMF and EU bureaucracy – which refused to loosen their demand that Greece impoverish its economy to a degree worse than the Great Depression. The fight against Greece was, in a nutshell, a rejection of parliamentary democracy after the incoming Syriza coalition of left-wing parties won election in January 2015 on a platform of resisting austerity and privatization.

The Poisoned Chalice: From Eurozone to Dead Zone

Chris Hedges: Recalled to Life

I am sitting in the Red Oak Diner outside Princeton, N.J., with Christine Pagano and her friend Jeannette. They have just finished attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a small room in a strip mall behind us. Many who were at the meeting struggle to make rent or car payments. Those with jobs worry about being laid off. Some live in terror that creditors, or the state, will electronically empty their meager bank accounts for debts they owe. Some fear outstanding warrants will land them in jail. One small tremor and the fragile stability they have achieved will crumble to dust. During AA sessions they admit there are times when they want to blunt the pain again, at least for a moment, by getting drunk or high. And when the meetings are over, everyone stands up, holds hands and says the Lord’s Prayer.

Recalled to Life.

Gar Alperovitz and Michael Albert: A Conversation on Economic Visions

Gar Alperovitz and Michael Albert have been at the forefront of efforts to design and build an economy beyond capitalism for decades - efforts that have become even more relevant in our age of economic and ecological crises. Albert’sParticipatory Economics (Parecon), developed in collaboration with Robin Hahnel, outlines a comprehensive vision of an ethical economic system, in which bottom-up democratic decision making takes the place of market-driven competition. Gar Alperovitz’s Pluralist Commonwealth model extrapolates from existing experiments in the democratization of wealth to build a systemic and multilayered answer to the urgent systemic challenges we are facing as a society. While both share a fundamental commitment to real democracy and true economic justice, the differences between Alperovitz and Albert’s respective models help illuminate what’s really at stake in system change. They recently sat down to better understand where their trajectories intersect or diverge; below is a transcript of the highlights of their conversation:

Gar Alperovitz and Michael Albert: A Conversation on Economic Visions.

The Pluralist Commonwealth - Introduction

The Pluralist Commonwealth is a systemic model, developed and refined over the last forty years by political economist and historian Gar Alperovitz, which attempts to resolve theoretical and practical problems associated with both traditional corporate capitalism and traditional state socialism. A central emphasis is the reconstruction of communities--and the nation as a community--from the ground up. Hence, it might also be called a Community-Sustaining System.  The term “Pluralist Commonwealth,” however, is offered to stress the inevitability—for functional as well as scale reasons—of different (plural) institutional forms of wealth democratization. This is something not commonly recognized in discussions of alternative systemic models which often tend to focus narrowly on the simple polarity of state ownership versus worker-ownership, or state versus self-managed firms.

The Pluralist Commonwealth - Introduction.

Blaming the Victims: Media Bias Against Struggling Millennials

It has become a common refrain in the mainstream media: The economic problems that young people face are the product of generational laziness and a sense of entitlement. People between the ages of 16 and 24 have an unemployment rate of 16.3 percent, more than twice the national average, and an alarming 36 percent of adults age 18-31 are living with their parents.

"Word that six million young people are not working or studying comes as no surprise to anyone with a millennial in the basement," writes Jennifer Graham in an op-ed titled "A Generation of Idle Trophy Kids," for the Boston Globe. Millennials' describes, loosely, the generation born between 1980 and 2000. "It's young people who don't leave the house at all, not because they're scared like agoraphobics, but because their needs are met and they're content."

Blaming the Victims: Media Bias Against Struggling Millennials.

The default has already begun

The big question in Washington this week is whether, in the words of the NYT, we’re going to see “a legislative failure and an economic catastrophe that could ripple through financial markets, foreign capitals, corporate boardrooms, state budget offices and the bank accounts of everyday investors”. In this conception — and I have subscribed to it just as much as anybody else — the sequester is bad, the shutdown is worse, and the default associated with hitting the debt ceiling is so catastrophic as to be unthinkable. 

The default has already begun | Felix Salmon

1% vs. 99% Class Warfare | Brainwash Update

The U.S. is Now More Unequal than Much of Latin America

The vast gap between rich and poor in Latin America has long been notorious. In fact, it grew even more during the 80s and 90s. But over the last decade, income inequality in Latin America has been rapidly decreasing, while inequality in the U.S. has skyrocketed in the other direction, as the top 1 percent of earners pulls further and further away from the middle class and poor.

The U.S. is Now More Unequal than Much of Latin America