Tuesday, October 4, 2011

My Occupy Wall Street

While I don’t have the means to get to New York city or any of the other cities holding and Occupy protest I am there in spirit and support the cause. I keep hearing the news point out there is no message or exact reason why people are protesting, and even one network mocks the event. I think one of the great things is that there is no leaders, no corporate backing like the Tea Party and no single message. While most people don’t get the fact that these protesters aren’t right winger or left winger but just people who have had enough and they don’t realize that is the majority of the country.

While I can not be there, just thought I would share what the protest would mean to me. What would I want to see come out of this?

1. EQUALITY - The rich who get that way by starting a business and hiring Americans are one of the things that make this country great, the ones who get rich by being born with the right last name or lucking into a job on wall street are a different story. These rich people used to pay over 70% of their income in taxes and still have a really good life, they did what was right for the country not what made them richer. In the 80’s they had their taxes cut in half and then begin to write their own tax codes, why should you get a tax break for buying a jet or 3rd home when the rest of us don’t get one for buying our kids cloths or putting food on the table? It’s time to do away with all tax breaks, you don’t have to raise the rates just make them pay what they are supposed to. If you are born into a poor family then it’s almost impossible to get ahead, you can go to college but when you graduate you’re already 50-100K in debt with no insurance or hopes for the future.

2. JUSTICE - When the great depression hit we saw bankers, wall street managers and others who helped cause it either go to jail or jump out of windows. When the great recession hit in 2008 no one went to prison for their crimes and the ones who jumped out the windows landed softly because of their golden parachutes. If I pull a scam and steal 20.00 from an elderly person it’s off to jail for me, if Goldman Sachs sells them a shady mortgage and steals their life savings and leaves them homeless it’s just business. Mitt Romney said corporations are people, then it’s about time that laws apply to them and heads start to roll.

3. ENVIROMENT - I keep hearing the political parties say that we can not leave crushing debt on our children and grand children, even though when each party is in charge “debts don’t matter” as both Reagan and Dick Cheney pointed out. These same people have no problem leaving air we can not breath or water we can not drink for their children and grand children. Crushing debt won’t rally matter much when we are fighting wars over clean water and spending all our time in the hospital from the dirty air we are breathing. Maybe debts do matter, but to me my kids health would always come first.

4. HEALTH CARE - We pay more then any other country in the world and have one of the worst health care systems, and the solution is to put more people into free market insurance. These companies number one job is to make money and they have testified before congress that they knowing let people die to help their bottom line. This is murder plain and simple, to allow someone to die so you get a better bonus and you should be in prison not in charge of making life or death decisions. Until we take the free market out of health care, like every other civilized society has done, then it will be about profits and not about you or me. I like the idea of a doctor making the decision on my health, not some fat cat whose next check depends on if he can do everything to prevent me from getting an expensive surgery to save my life. If you expand Medicare for all then costs will come down because we can move to a real health care system, not the for profit Sick Care we currently have.

5. MONEY IN POLITICS - Right now the candidates who raise the most money win 94% of their elections, this means they have to whore themselves out to big business and wealthy people, who they will owe favors to. Speaker of the House John Boehner once handed out checks from the tobacco company on the floor of congress the same time they where voting on tobacco legislation, so of course the people who received the checks voted with the tobacco companies over the health of their own people. As long as politicians are allowed to sell their souls and prostitute themselves out then there will always be corruption and no one will represent the American people. The solutions to this are simple GET THE MONEY OUT - If every American puts in 20.00 we can have a public financed campaign and by putting in term limits then politicians can worry more about America then keeping their own jobs.

Again those are just why I would be with the people on Wall Street, others have different reasons and that’s what’s great about the movement. It’s fluid and not just about one thing or another but it’s everyday people who want real change in the way things are done for this country and all the benefits that are received by the top 1% which are paid for in sweat, blood a

No comments:

Post a Comment