By OcJim
How is it that we allow misanthropes like Republican Representative Paul Ryan, city mayors, and other such actors for plutocrats abuse our law-abiding citizens for speaking out against them and their master class of the one percent?
Before the Occupy movement became an annoyance for one-percenters, they could buy the offending party for a pittance, put them in prison, bomb it if a country they could pillage, or pave Rove’s Crossroads with money against populist Democrats like Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts.
What do you do to occupiers who are peaceful, reasonable and intelligent? That’s easy. You enlist your paid agents into a huge police force in full riot gear to teach them a lesson: you destroy their tents, confiscate their property, including hundreds of books; you bully them; pepper spray them; hit them with clubs, and drag them off to jail.
We are so used to figuratively being kicked in the groin by representatives of the master class that we tend to look the other way when it happens physically. In case you didn’t notice, innocent and peaceful citizens, no threat to anyone, are being manhandled by police and private bodyguards. Their offense? Speaking out against the tyrants who subjugate us in so many ways.
Do you need examples of average people who take exception to the tyranny of the one percent? Polls show a majority of Americans support the Occupy Movement, but once again being in the majority can get you brutalized by the police or other agents of the rich.
Paul Ryan was speaking to a crowd of his constituents, slanting his comments to suit his policy of killing Medicare and reducing programs that help people. A 71 year old man believed none of his distortions and lies, yelling out his displeasure with Ryan. He was wrestled to the ground and kicked out of the meeting. YouTube captured the moment below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBhdXfCdaA8
Then there was Dorli Rainey, an 84 year old Seattle activist, who was pepper-sprayed by Seattle police when she joined Occupiers on Seattle sidewalks (picture above). Interviewed on the Keith Olbermann show, she related the story and her own background simply and objectively. She was not detained by the police, supposedly too embarrassed, and proceeded home on the bus, where fellow passengers saw the damage done to her eyes. She explained her demonstrations regarding war and munitions plants nearby, speaking of a nun friend whose life was shortened due to imprisonment because of her activist positions. She experienced similar injustices in Nazi Germany, mentioning Goebbels as a propaganda minister who had similar restrictions on his media.
If you think the privileged one-percent are not pulling the strings behind the scenes, we should review some of the activities of monolithic corporations and financial moguls.
Wall Street occupiers know that the top 1 percent has gotten away with something – that no amount of malfeasance on the 1 percent’s part could endanger its status, cemented in luxurious, albeit legal, pilferage. They have batted away even the most anemic attempts to regulate their behavior after they ruined the economy and got trillions in taxpayer bailouts. That is well known.
Non-financial company executives make up a bigger share of the 1 percent, and they are quite active in manipulating all activities that could be injurious to their fat profits. The attendance of the Koch brother meeting of plutocrats by two Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Scalia is well known as well, Thomas, accepting payment for his attendance. It happened just before they joined with other court conservatives to give rich corporations, including Koch Industries, the right to spend unlimited, undisclosed amounts against candidates that didn’t support them.
In addition, the legal arms of plutocrats in the Supreme Court eviscerated class-action lawsuits in voting for WalMart against a group of women charging gender discrimination at stores nationwide. The collective fortune of $90 billion for the Walton family took the day. Joining poor WalMart with an amicus brief were the US Chamber of Commerce and a wide array of monolithic corporations, from Altria to Bank of America to General Electric, whose CEO is helping Obama with jobs. Giant corporations like The American Bankers Association also sided with AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, a ruling which entirely forbids consumers to file class-action suits for fraud.
These cases make mega-corporations and executives with obscene pay not accountable if their products damage or defraud customers or if they discriminate against employees. As we probably realize by now government leaders who abuse power and lie to citizens are not accountable either.
Medical professionals make up the second-biggest share of the 1 percent. Their money is active too in limiting malpractice suits, something for which the AMA spent more than $20 million to influence in 2009.
Over 800 paid lobbyists were registered to work on the patent reform bill, which Obama signed into law in September, Obama saying it would “make it easier for entrepreneurs to patent a new product or idea.” The Huffington Post said the real idea was to protect the patents of powerful corporations, something that assures we pay more for everything affected, including drugs. Inflated prices of prescription drugs alone assure fat profits for pharmaceuticals.
To do pillage to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How do they screw you, I only begin to count the ways.”
Not only can you be defrauded, overcharged, deceived, robbed, evicted, and brutalized, you are supposed to learn to look the other way: Denver and Seattle motorists were ticketed for honking in support of the Occupiers.
