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America Occupied by Wall Street

by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-10-13
© 2011 Peter Belmont


 
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The “Occupy Wall Street” movement is a new and exciting ground-up political expression in America. People outside the movement have been asking what the protesters, the Wall Street Occupiers (“WSOs”), want.

My best guess is that they want an America which is not “occupied territory”. They know that Palestinians live under Israel’s cruel military “occupation” and that the Palestinians want their freedom from Israel. They also know that the government(s) of America are, in essence, “occupied” by those with lots of money to spend on political manipulation.

Who has lots of money to spend on political manipulation? In a word, Wall Street.

In short, the protesters, the WSOs, know that America is “occupied territory”, occupied by “Wall Street.”

I propose a revised system of political expenditure in which corporations are allowed NO such expenditure and every USA citizen—whether CEO or homeless person—is allowed to spend no more than a grand total of $5000 per year for all political manipulations (campaign contribution, lobbying, political publication).

This system, if it could be achieved, would replace the Supreme Court’s system of “one CEO one billion political voices” with a system of “one woman, one political voice.”
 

The American system of governance is called “democracy”, meaning government of, by, and for the people. However, as practiced it is actually government in the service of big-monied-interests. Big banks, big insurance companies, big pharmaceuticals, big agriculture (and that’s not “family farms”, Virginia), big credit card companies, big armaments manufacturers, big oil, big coal, big gas, and many others, to say nothing of very, very rich individuals (collectively, the “bigs”)—have the nearly undivided attention of those who are elected (and also of those who administer the government) in the USA. The people (other than “bigs”) are heard by their “representatives”, if at all, only on issues of unconcern to the “bigs” or on issues of enormous emotional resonance (such as guns and abortions and death penalties).

The Supreme Court of the USA recently ruled that corporations as such (and not merely the rich people who own them and run them, acting as citizens and spending their own money) have an unlimited right to spend corporate money in the service of political manipulation—and without first receiving direction to do so by the shareholders whose money they would be spending![1]

Wall Street achieves its strangle-hold on American governance not by an occupation by armies of soldiers, but by an occupation by armies of well-funded lobbyists and campaign-funding donors.

Every Wall Street Occupier (WSO) knows that there is no reason, no reason at all, why any Congressman or President should listen longer or more closely to the President of a Big (PoB) than to herself—except the ability and readiness of that PoB to spend money to support the Congressman or President either personally (by what might be difficult to distinguish from a bribe) or electorally (by campaign contributions and “independent” political spending).

The Supreme Court has decided, first, that money is speech (that is, that the generally unrestricted freedom of political speech includes a generally unrestricted freedom to spend as much money as one commands on political manipulation; and, second, that the freedom of speech as so construed is enjoyed by corporations as well as by natural persons.

Each of these decisions is, to my way of thinking, quite wrong-headed and of anti-democratic tendency. I believe the WSOs feel the same way.

Imagine a political system in which people (citizens! the 99% as well as the 1%) talk to their representatives through lobbying organizations which they support by small contributions (not merely gun-rights and pro- and anti-abortion organizations, but environmental, anti-war, pro-war, human-rights, civil-rights, banking-regulation, and other groups) and contribute to political parties and campaigns through similar organizations, and that their

MONEY CONTRIBUTIONS FOR ALL THESE POLITICAL PURPOSES ARE LIMITED TO $5000 PER YEAR PER CITIZEN-PERSON.

Corporations would be allowed to make NO CONTRIBUTIONS AT ALL and their right to publish or make political presentations would be limited to a right to advertise their products and services. Their shareholders and employees, if USA citizens, would be allowed political spending up to a grand total, for all purposes, of $5000 per person per year. The CEO or PoB would have the same rights, in this system, as the homeless person, if both were USA citizens—to spend no more than $5000 per year on all political purposes, combined. It would be illegal to give or to receive money for the purpose of spending it for a political purpose.

Such a system would not put $5000 into every pocket, but it would require the CEOs and PoBs to limit their spending to $5000 each year. Those Wall Street bankers and hedge-fund folks might still receive their enormous year-end bonuses (at least as far as this discussion is concerned) but they could not spend more of it than $5000 in any year for political purposes.

Getting to such a system might require a constitutional amendment. Many details would remain to be worked out. But the goal would be clear—to make all citizens equal, politically, so that the idea of “one man one vote” would also mean “one woman one voice”—in considerable contradiction to the Supreme Court’s rule of “one corporate CEO, one billion voices.”

The WSOs are not yet trying to tie down their movement to a particular political purpose. They are making a noise, but have not yet made a clear statement of goals (or demands).

This essay is offered as a suggestion for discussion by WSOs wherever situated, even at home and far from the fray—but never far from the issues of the control of government by the PoBs.


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[1] It might be supposed that whatever a corporate CEO supports politically is in the service of all his shareholders, but this is not so. Shareholders are human, mostly, and have mixed motives. A shareholder in an oil company may be an environmentalist and oppose his CEO’s spending corporate money to weaken environmental laws.




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