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The Occupy Wall Street folks need to focus
Dan Foley
Let me start out by saying I agree with the Occupy Wall Street folks if they are against government bailouts. I also believe it is not the government’s role to pick winners and losers in businesses, so once again we are on common ground. But as I drive by the folks on the streets in Albuquerque and look at the signs the people are holding up around the country I am shocked to see their anger is pointed only at Wall Street and the business folks.
Why is it they are not equally as angry at the folks in Washington who got us to this point? Why aren’t they asking President Barack Obama to give back the money he received from the very industry that led us to this point? Why aren’t they angry that entities like Fannie and Freddie where giving big dollars to Democrats who were fighting the tough regulations being championed by President Bush and other Republicans?
How come they are not angry at people like Representative Barney Frank, who, while involved in a relationship with a high-ranking Fannie Mae executive, was fighting any increase in regulation of a GSE (government-sponsored enterprise)? The simple fact that President Bush tried, at least 17 times, to get Congress to strengthen the regulations governing these entities was answered by party-line votes from Democrats in Washington, but this seems to go unnoticed.
I will say the Republicans got this wrong as well. These entities didn’t need tougher regulations, they needed to be shut down, and the government should have left the mortgage business totally. The fact is the government was in the very business it would not allow the private sector to enter into. The bank regulators would never have allowed banks to loan money for the very types of loans the government felt the need to guarantee.
Maybe instead of creating another level of government to do something this crazy they should have worked with the private sector to better understand these risks and how to create private-sector programs to allow people to someday become home owners. Allowing people to offer loans based on stated value and stated income without ever checking was a recipe for disaster.
Keeping honest people honest
I am reminded at this time of my Marine Corps drill instructor, who made me go to the quarter deck for individual training because I failed to lock my foot locker.
He asked me during my private session, “do you know why you should lock your foot locker Foley?” I responded with, “to keep thieves from stealing from me?” His response was pretty colorful, but the important part was, “No Foley. Locks do not keep thieves from stealing; they keep honest people honest!”
Both parties should have asked my drill Instructor what to do with Fannie and Freddie; his advice may have prevented this problem from occurring. I am not going to suggest he visit the folks who are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement because I am sure they will find very little in common.
In the end, if these folks want real change, stop blaming only the players and get to the root cause of this problem. Start holding up signs that call into question the very people and party that ignored this crisis at a time it could have been prevented. Ask the Democrats in Washington why they chose to play partisan party politics instead of at the least joining President Bush in strengthening the regulations on a GSE that was clearly heading toward destruction.
I hope before this is over the Occupy Wall Street folks will get to the cause of this problem and stop focusing only on the bad actors. Our future depends on it.
Foley, a Republican, is a former House member and minority whip.
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What Is Occupy Wall Street About?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cpdpMjG5CmY#!
Warning on this one. Blue. But, it does have a good explanation. If you are easily offended don’t click on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=DjMcDXGkR8I
Dan, you’ve nailed it. And so did Rep. Paul Ryan in his speech last week to the Heritage Foundation when he said that the “true sources of inequity in this country are corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.” He added that “the real class warfare that threatens us: a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society.” The GSE’s fit this mold to the T.
Again, something that many Americans can all (or should) agree upon.
While Mr. Foley attempts to include some blame on the right for the OWS protests, his commentary is largely aimed at the democrats. The bottom line, Mr. Foley, is that money drives political decisions, and this distasteful business knows no boundaries. The OWS protests are appropriate, and even though it is not easy to define a focus, the mere presence and extreme level of dissatisfaction with Wall Street, banks and politics in general, is needed and warranted. To ignore it or hope it goes away is misquided thinking.
This is the storyline of the OWS – the corporate special interest is spoiling our party.
While looking in the past, the multi-factorial credit crisis did have part of its roots in
some nefarious support for the bipartisan deregulation (though this was by no means the entire story).
But the special interest angle is probably exaggeration.
Politicians are still beholden to votes of the majority.
If some policy is popular, politicians will fall all over themselves to pass it.
The problem going forward, one that threatens to turn us into Greece,
is entitlement spending with a declining number of young taxpayers supporting
an increasing number of old beneficiaries.
This is not a matter of special interest, because even though when we’re young we think it will
never happen, we all get old.
The average entitlement recipient receives much more from the public than they contribute.
The solution is easy – contribute more and receive less, but this is not popular because of
individual greed, not corporate greed. While democrats play one side of this ( we shouldn’t have to
receive less ), republicans play the other ( we shouldn’t have to contribute more).
The problem is not how the parties divide the questions, the problem is the public lacks
sufficient appetite for real solution because of short term self interest trumping longer term national interest.
It is the COMMON interest, not the special interest that is the problem.
@Qui Tam
Please read my initial posting if you haven’t – or again if you have.
You are right in saying this to Mr. Foley:
“The Occupy Wall Street folks need to focus”
“Foley, the OWS doesn’t “need” to do anything.”
But if you are still in the dream that there are substance differences between the duopoly power of the Demopublican two-headed party occupying the same corporate body politic, then I would suggest you expand your reading toward books that explain the monopoly power of the State. Mr. Foley would like to see OWS get more “focus” in order for the Republican party to co-opt its message to the party’s advantage as Obama wishes to co-opt the same group for his advantage.
Again, these two parties are two wings of the same bird of prey.
Libertarian Vs. Tea Party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4BY5ZGurCU&feature=player_embedded#!
I found greater understanding of the OWS movement from this interview by Charlie Rose with Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman that starts on marker 28:40.
“It is catching on like wild-fire all over the world.”
“These people are very clear about what they want. It is a reaction to the collapse of Globalization or neo-feudalism. Workers conditions are a race to the bottom. American workers having to be globally competitive means they have to be competitive with prison labor in China (and now here). We have degenerated into an oligarchic corporate state. We cannot sustain ourselves as a society or even as a species if we don’t confront the corporate state.”
“There are different forms of capitalism. Small businesses are whacked by corporations. Corporate capitalism is super-national, has no loyalty to the nation state and hollowing us out from the inside. ”
Regarding leadership in the OWS movement…
“It’s uniting many different movements and that is it’s strength. They see all of the issues as linked. It is the same story all around the world.”
“We live in a system that is no longer democratic. It is an “inverted totalitarianism” where corporate forces pretend to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution, the iconography of American patriotism and yet have so corrupted the levers of power as to render the citizen impotent. We see this in one piece of legislation after another.”
“Most Americans support OWS and yet the MSM ridicules the movement.” This is supported by grassroots media.
As for the list of demands…
“The non-hierarchical structure is it’s brilliance. It goes beyond the cult of personality. It gives everybody a sense of empowerment and make it very difficult of the authorities to decapitate it.” The protests are infiltrated by undercover cops who can’t find the core leadership. To the frustration of the authorities, the movement is completely transparent. This makes the movement resilient. There is such a de-centralization of power.
“It is about the recognition that the formal structures of power are tone deaf. The ability for Liberal institutions to carry out reform is extinguished and there is no way to appeal to the system.”
http://www.hulu.com/watch/292982/charlie-rose-paul-volcker-a-discussion-about-occupy-wall-street?src=h&kme=Link+Html+Queue#play-queue
I wonder if Foley ever gave Dennis J. Kintigh the House District 57 License Plate.
I haven’t seen it in Rio Rancho.
Mr. Foley….This is an honest and fairly accurate commentary. It gives nobody a break and calls all those responsible for the mess we are in onto the carpet. I like the way you have found common ground to build upon. This is what the entire nation needs, commond ground. The current polarization of extremists on both sides, has created a division that must be mended by responsible, common folk. Good commentary.
I’ve taken Democrats to task for blaming Republicans.
The same should hold for Republicans blaming dems.
Yes, Bush and John McCain pushed for oversight of
Fannie and Freddie, before the meltdown.
And Barney Frank infamously rebuffed them ( whilst having a conflict of interest ).
And all of this is on You Tube for the curious.
But why did it take until the the Republicans lost the House in 2006 to start asking?
Why didn’t they fix Fannie and Freddie when the oversaw the committees?
There is more than enough blame to go all around.
As to the “bailouts”, we should be HAPPY for TARP – not for the damage that necessitated TARP,
but happy none the less because the banks repaid ALL of the TARP loans WITH INTEREST.
Meaning we MADE money on the bailout!
Of course we LOST money because of the damage, but still, the bailout was the right thing to do.
We are in the hole hundreds of billion$ to Fannie and Freddie – money that we WON”T get back.
Remember Lehman Brothers? Bear Stearns?
When the Fed and Treasury decided NOT to bailout Lehman is when the problems started getting worse.
I believe you are right that the OWSers are off blaming wall street and not Washington.
They are also a little late. Did they just now start reading about the credit crisis?
There was an election in 2008 and 2010 to weigh in on these matters. THAT’s what democracy looks like.
But rather that read, raise these issues and vote accordingly then, they are protesting now.
“I am shocked to see their anger is pointed only at Wall Street and the business folks.”
Perhaps that is because you and the Republican Party seem out of touch with reality?
When are you and the Republican Party going to apologize for the lies of the Bush Administration that led the Nation into economic destruction and invading a soverign Nation illegally?
“In the end, if these folks want real change, stop blaming only the players and get to the root cause of this problem”
Who are you blaming and why?
“The Occupy Wall Street folks need to focus”
Foley, the OWS doesn’t “need” to do anything. Maybe you and the Republicans need them to so that you can spin them and point more fingers at them and try to crush them and dismantle the movement, but no they don’t “need” to do anything.
“I hope before this is over the Occupy Wall Street folks will get to the cause of this problem and stop focusing only on the bad actors. Our future depends on it.”
I hope you are not so out of touch with reality that you think you can wish this away. Our Nation’s future depends on the citizenry and those who usurp it I think need to get out of the way.
@IP
Yes, you are right. Everyone pays consumption taxes on their purchases at the local level and state income taxes if they are employed. I’m talking about what feeds and grows the federal government. I should be more specific, sorry. 50 percent of the population do not pay any federal income taxes. I am talking about the federal government which is funded by a federal income tax – and 50 percent pay 96 percent of this collection. I am not “anti-citizen” as you say. In fact, I am very much a Jeffersonian advocate on behalf of citizens. Which is why I advocate for an equal-rate federal income tax in which everyone pays 10 percent with no exemptions, privileges, or deductions (unlike the flat tax which allows people to game exemptions). If 50 percent of the population do not pay any federal income tax then this creates an “infinite demand for government services.” Why not promise them everything. After all, they don’t have to pay for it. Which I’m sure you know runs up an unpayable federal deficit.
And Mr. Molitor has been caught in an outright lie again. If you had said “The other 47 percent don’t pay Federal income taxes at all,” you would have been accurate. However, since I know you know the difference between income tax and all other form of taxes, I can only assume that even you know that your inability to do basic mathematics means that your entire economic philosophy is demonstrably anti-citizen, and are thus forced to lie about it in hopes that no one will notice that the forty-seven percent in question still pay sales taxes, Medicare and Medicaid taxes, property taxes, state and local taxes, and gross receipts taxes, among other things. Indeed, due to the very nature of our tax system, the fact that such a large portion of Americans make so little money that they are exempt from Federal income taxes hardly speaks well of the anti-citizen tax policies that you are so fond of, and that we as a society have been toying with for forty years now, with demonstrably disastrous results.
“In the end, if these folks want real change, stop blaming only the players and get to the root cause of this problem. Start holding up signs that call into question the very people and party that ignored this crisis at a time it could have been prevented. Ask the Democrats in Washington why they chose to play partisan party politics instead of at the least joining President Bush in strengthening the regulations on a GSE that was clearly heading toward destruction.”