Summations Only

I hope it matters, but how many of these protesters, do you suppose, have ever written a letter to their Congressman? I guess I'm feeling the cynic today, but I think you dramatically underestimate the degree to which income inequality is a sustainable situation. Across the entire planet Earth, there's only one country that doesn't have a lower median income than the United States (adjusted to dollars), and it's Luxembourg, which is populated solely by bankers. I point this out because it makes it obvious how much room at the bottom there is for us all to get so, so much poorer.Don't get me wrong. Income inequality to this degree really is bad. But the average American still has quite a bit to lose. There isn't going to be the will for massive societal change and taking to the streets. For the forseeable future, that's going to be limited to college students hoping to get laid. Real political change won't be possible until we reform the Federal constitution to be more majoritarian. That's probably going to mean the end of state divisions of the country, the end of the electoral college, and so on. But what progressives are talking about that? Besides blogger Matthew Yglesias, I don't think it's on anybody's radar.

That mass protests have little to no effect, but mass communication with your congressman has been proven to have an effect. When a congressman's office gets deluged in letters expressing a viewpoint, it moves the needle. Just ask anybody who's interned for a congressperson. What doesn't move the needle is "raising awareness" or "freedom marching" or any of that stuff.Why do you think the interests of senior citizens are nearly untouchable in American politics, even though you've never seen a mass protest by senior citizens down at your Social Security office? Because they write letters and have a voter participation rate of 60% or more.In other words, they participate. These kids are demonstrating. Well, great. I hope they get some good press. I'm pleased by the news that unions are getting involved; maybe they can help take it to the next step. But the truth here is that even when the youth base has been the most energized anyone has ever seen, they can't get voter participation above 40%. It's not completely their fault; we still don't make Election day a holiday so some people have to work instead of voting. That's usually not a problem for seniors.The fact is, what really causes political change isn't very sexy. It's not a turn-on for sophomore girls, it won't piss off your parents, and you're not likely to meet anyone with the really good weed doing it. So, the vast majority of young adults simply won't bother. I know I sure as hell didn't.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

What was he supposed to do with it, exactly? Please be specific. Could you identify the provision of the constitution that allows the executive to pass legislation purely on the basis of having a "grass roots" movement?The Tea Party extracts concessions because they have a proven track record of successful primary challenges. Not only do Democratic primaries not work like that, but Democratic voters haven't ever proven that they can deliver a candidate. In fact, what they've proven time and time again is that you absolutely cannot count on the Democratic base to deliver votes for anything but a Presidental election. Special election? Dems won't go. Mid-terms? Dems won't go.Republicans can nominate a conservative ham sandwich and be able to count on a massive plurality of energized Republican voters, because they turn out for their own. Democrats eat their own. Everybody portrays the election of Scott Brown as some major repudiation by the voters of Massachussets of a health care system they resoundingly support, but the truth - which makes a lot more sense - is that Republicans turn out for elections and Democrats only turn out for Presidents. Even with the Senate's supermajority - and therefore the future of health care reform - on the line, Democrats couldn't be bothered to turn up at the polls.Obama's just one guy, and he kind of already has a job - running the country. Demanding that Obama somehow magically energize an un-energizable base is nothing but "I want a pony" thinking. Obama didn't create the "grass roots" campaign that put him into office; the roots picked him. It was the root's responsibility to keep the momentum going, but as soon as they won the election Democrats did what they always do - folded like card tables and forgot about every single election until 2012.

And what form does that "pressure" take, precisely? Because he didn't have enough votes in Congress. Remember Congress? The body that actually makes the laws? How many Democrats were there in the Senate the day Obama took office?57. How many votes does it take to break a Senate filibuster, a now-necessary condition for passing legislation?60. I trust you can compare numbers, yes? 57 is smaller than 60. And what form did this "letting go" take? It certainly didn't take the form of Obama not asking the grassroots to do things:

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President Obama urged his supporters to "get the message out" on his health care reform principles, calling a forthcoming organizing drive "our big chance to prove that the movement that started during the campaign isn't over."

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http://www.theatlantic.com/...ts-for-health-care-fight/18444That's from May 2009, only a few weeks into the health care fight. Or even earlier, on the stimulus fight:

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As President Obama heads back out on the road to sell his economic plans, he tells his grassroots army that his election wasn't change but only the chance to make change.

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In a video released today, he urges them to canvass their neighborhoods this weekend to build support for his $3.6 trillion budget that he says will "lay a foundation for lasting growth and prosperity" by investing in healthcare, education, and renewable energy.

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http://www.boston.com/...igence/2009/03/obama_seeks_gra.htmlOf course, because the Democratic base has no enthusiasm, these appeals had basically no effect on the actual body responsible for legislation:

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Democratic Party volunteers, trying to keep President Barack Obama's campaign spirit alive, blitzed Congress on Wednesday with thousands of pledges from voters urging support for his federal budget bill. The grass-roots drive is a major effort by Obama's team to change the way Washington does business.

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Members of Congress barely noticed.

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"I've never even heard of this," said Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, a key Democratic moderate.

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Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., saw the drive as just another stab by another group to influence him, hardly an Obama-era phenomenon.

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"We get bombarded all the time," the 12-term veteran said. "I haven't seen any big uptick in my e-mails since they knocked on doors. It's not that effective."

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...er-obama-grassroots-drive.htmlThe truth is that Obama exhorted his grassroots base to continue the work after the election, and like always, the Democratic base figured that they'd won the Presidency and could therefore all kick back. Obama did exactly what you're complaining he didn't, and it had no effect - not because Obama is a bad president or a fake liberal but because you're a bad voter. You, and me, and our Democratic peers. You're right. But as I've demonstrated, it certainly wasn't for want of Obama asking his base to keep up their participation in politics. He asked, and throngs of Democrats answered back - the hills resounding with "uh, whatever" and "naw, feeling rather nappish." Jesus Christ, Rahvin. The guy was running the largest Executive Branch in the western world. Do you honestly think it's appropriate for the President of the United States - the whole United States, not just the Democrats of the United States - to be spending all that time on enormous spectacles and rallies? Who was going to pay for those rallies? Was that just supposed to come out of tax dollars?Don't you think our Republican peers might have had legitimate objections to that? Wouldn't you have objected if Bush had spent 70-80% of his time at massive Republican rallies trying to gin up support for the war in Iraq or the privatization of health care?You don't seem to have any notion of what actually happened when Obama won the election. When he won the election, several things happened, for instance:1) He became President of the United States of America.
2) His campaign ceased to exist.
3) His campaign staff took jobs in the Federal government.Not only did Obama have a new full-time job whose obligations and responsibilities basically forestall a pre-election campaign schedule; not only did he suddenly gain legal obstacles to conducting such a campaign; his campaign staff all suddenly had exactly the same obstacles - they had a country to run. Because he needed their fucking permission! There weren't enough Democrats and Independents in the Senate to pass legislation without Republican votes. Only as the result of the completely unforeseen defection of Arlen Specter was Obama able to assemble a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, which of course was immediately undermined by the Blue Dogs and DINO's, since the defection of even a single legislator would scuttle any legislation, giving potential defectors enormous power to extort concessions and pork. You don't recall the "Cornhusker kickback"? Do you recall that its architect was a Democrat? Do you recall that the public option was taken out of the Senate's version of the health care bill because Senate Democrats didn't want it there?You've somehow mythologized the first two years of the Obama administration as his immediate capitulation to Republicans, but the actual truth - which I feel like I'm the only one who remembers - is quite different. We didn't get the public option or a larger stimulus because Democrats didn't want those things. It was the Democrats that Obama capitulated to, and why wouldn't he? Who else was possibly going to vote for his agenda? Because his base was made out of Democrats! How does the "public mandate" pressure Congressmen? Please be specific.

You're aware that Articles of Impeachment are brought by Congress, yes?

The "liberal" media is a myth, part million:Conservatives are the country's largest recipients of affirmative action. In almost every arena announcing yourself as a "conservative" is enough to wind up starting at the finish line.

No, I don't think that's true. Recall that the Tea Party was originally started by the media:Almost immediately, the media was not only covering the Tea Party protests as a perfectly legitimate and grassroots groundswell of opposition to Obama's stimulus and health care reform initiatives, they were actually inflating attendance of these minor demonstrations:

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Accounts vary, but it seems that a few hundred thousand people attended one of about 500 Tax Day Tea Parties on April 15. In the aftermath, politicians on both sides of the political aisle were energized.

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http://www.forbes.com/...-opinions-columnists-ear-marks.htmlIn fact, only about 90,000 people attended April 15 Tax Day Tea Party events across the country; even those in major metropolitan areas had attendance no higher than 4,000 people or so. You can read the rest of the Forbes article and see - this isn't by any means an article about loony Tea Partiers chanting "get your government hands off my Medicare". It was several months before the media was willing to portray the Tea Party as primarily conservative, instead of as a "bipartisan" movement that "cut across ideological lines"; it was a year and a half or so before the media stopped pretending that Tea Partiers were anything but the traditional Republican base, just with a new name.Here's another example; Sarah Palin's Tea Party rally was reported as being attended by more than ten thousand people:Glenn Beck's "9/12" rally was reported as two million in attendance, and the following picture was disseminated to illustrate that:One problem - the missing buildings!

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There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago.

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Right out of the gate, the Tea Party had media legitimacy and a pose that allowed Tea Party organizers to overinflate attendance and portray themselves as a groundswell of the common people (who just coincidentally happened to favor the exact conservative Republican policies that had lost in the last election). Occupy Wall Street has enjoyed no such advantage.

I don't follow. Maybe you misunderstood the graph? It's "nth day of protest", as in, from the respective beginning of each protest.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Sorry for the digs. I've taken them out of my post.

Ha-ha!

What about the legal actions he's already supported?Or were you talking about criminal prosecutions? It turns out, in fact, that it's actually not against the law to destroy the American economy.

By Obama?

Touche!

I've heard it floated that Congress should pass a sweeping measure to forgive a substantial portion of Federal student loan debt, which I think is a great idea. At such time as there's a proposal on the table to do that, OWS protesters should urge their congressman to vote for it. OWS protesters in other states should do the same. Let me just stop you right there. While it's true that someone working on Wall Street may be paid a substantial amount, why should I believe that they've earned it?What did they make? What did they do, besides move a large sum of money to and fro and charge both sides a percentage for doing so?That one is wealthy is not evidence that what one is going is something that benefits society as a whole, or is particularly valuable. One may be a very successful thief, for instance.

It's certainly true that, if you were a Fox News listener or viewer, you would have heard this lie.But it's certainly a lie. There was absolutely no requirement under the Community Reinvestment Act that banks make loans to people who could not meet the income and asset requirements for payment. And, in fact, loans made under the CRA program have had a higher repayment rate than the average loan in that income class.The sole requirement of the CRA program was that banks could not racially discriminate in financing by the practice of "redlining"; in other words, saying "we won't make loans under any circumstances to people who live in minority areas." Could you point out the "inflation of the people's money" on this graph, please? LOL! Most Tea Partiers are retired folks on Social Security or on some form of disability - its estimated that as much as 75% of the Tea Party movement is comprised of people on the public dole. In one instance, a Tea Party rally was funded by taxpayers to the tune of $14,000; approximately $2000 for every participant. (As a taxpayer myself: you're welcome.)