Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Commander in chief of Occupy Wall Street

Richard Baehr

For three years after college, U.S. President Barack Obama was a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side. In September, his former green jobs czar, Van Jones, who left the White House after his radical background and views were exposed by Glenn Beck, promised that America would take to the streets in October, expanding Occupy Wall Street to a mass movement around the country. The president’s adviser, Elizabeth Warren, who helped form the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and is now a U.S. Senate candidate in Massachusetts, claimed she created the intellectual foundation for Occupy Wall Street, remarks she has since backed away from a bit as the movement has turned violent, and others have challenged her proclaimed role. Democratic members of the House and Senate, and the president himself, have shown some affection or sympathy for the growing movement, and certainly for its message of the 1 percent versus the 99%. Since the Republicans took back control of the U.S. House, the president has led the charge with the mantra of “us (the great majority of Americans, asked to make sacrifices due to reduced federal spending) versus them (the rich and the corporations, who need to contribute more through higher taxes).” The president’s message has been divisive and stark -- that the choice facing the country was whether to continue tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, corporate jet owners, oil companies and hedge funds, or to hire police, firefighters and teachers. Put simply, the president’s message was public need versus greed. The facts that the top 1% pays 38% of the income tax burden, and that its share of the tax burden has been rising faster than its share of national income, are not allowed to get in the way of the inequality demagoguery. The president’s proposals call for a top income tax rate of 45% on wages, interest and dividends, a top capital gains tax rate of 24%, a 2.5% Medicare tax, plus state and income taxes (as high as 10% in some states). The near 60% marginal tax rate would be almost double the top combined rate established 25 years ago by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s agreement with then New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley.

With polls showing the Democratic base dispirited and upset with the president for concessions to the Republicans in the debt ceiling compromise on deficits and federal spending, it should have been no surprise that the Occupy Wall Street movement was created to energize the Left, and make sure that its message of rising inequality (and the need for higher taxes on the rich and more redistribution) drove the debt ceiling/ deficits/federal spending debate off the front pages and cable news shows. Not surprisingly, the national media reports on Occupy Wall Street have whitewashed the ugliness (the rapes, thefts, violence, bad hygiene and anti-Semitism), giving full throat to the cause that the rich are getting richer, and the masses are stuck in place, and it is all the fault of the evil Wall Street bankers and other corporate villains. The liberal op-ed columnists have been busy releasing studies that purportedly show that rising inequality is suppressing jobs growth (the issue on which the president’s clear lack of success for the past three years is his greatest campaign vulnerability), and bad for the nation’s collective psyche. Presumably, class warfare and taking it to the streets are an elixir for the national mood.

When the Tea Party became a national phenomenon in 2009, largely in opposition to the healthcare reform effort and rapidly rising federal spending and deficits, the media focus was very different -- quick to spot any evidence of bigotry or threats of violence by the party, and to highlight the lack of racial diversity among its members. The Tea Party message was of course, viewed as unimportant, since it challenged the liberal/Keynesean consensus. It is also true that when older, white Americans rally to a cause, their group identity alone makes their cause less important than one with more colors among the membership.

In recent weeks, it has become more difficult for the media to completely ignore some of what is going on at various Occupy Wall Street sites. The multiple attacks on women in Zuccotti Park has led to the creation of a women-only tent, with female security personnel, to stop the groping, harassment and rape that have been going on fairly routinely for weeks. The national media would probably prefer to blame Herman Cain for these attacks.

The Occupy Boston group found time to occupy the Israeli Consulate to protest the latest failed flotilla effort. Occupy Oakland trashed a good part of downtown, as its protest turned violent. Occupy Atlanta may be in bed with the Nation of Islam. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., Occupy mobs interrupted conferences to spout their messages of class warfare.

That a far-Left movement is hostile to Israel and prone to violence and disruption should not come as any great surprise. The Occupy Wall Street movement has become in a sense a tapestry of much of the Obama coalition: unions, college students and professors (the Marxist-spouting philosopher kings of the movement), racial minorities, the homeless, and other walking wounded on the street. This is Obama’s real army, a big part of the grand coalition that carried him to victory in 2008 and that he needs again next year. As the president prepares to withdraw from Iraq this year and possibly Afghanistan next year, one gets the sense that the former community organizer may be more comfortable serving as commander in chief of this “army” now occupying the streets of cities across America, an army broadcasting the same class warfare message he delivers in a suit and tie.

No comments: