Why Occupy? An American Autumn

Occupy is definitely about more than just Wall Street. It's a protesting against the 1% creating, essentially, a feudal system in which the 99% will no longer have the economic or political clout with which they can stop the 1%. They've been privatizing government (control over power), education (to create an uneducated populace that will no longer be capable of questioning them), prisons (for slave labor), etc. They've pushed legislation to repeal minimum wage, child labor and collective bargaining laws. They've reduced the wages, pensions and benefits of non-union labor and are trying to break the remaining unions so they can do the same to those workers. They're trying to reduce, eliminate or privatize Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid so the social safety net is shredded and they can control our money. They've used "tort reform" to reduce the people's access to the courts, just as they're going to use "education reform" to ultimately reduce our children's access to education. They've bought SCOTUS and used them to pass Citizens United so they control elections. They've gotten deregulation and policy changes put in place to benefit their corporations at the expense of the environment and our health. They've spent millions in a propaganda campaign to create doubt in people's minds about climate science and global warming in order to maintain their hold on fossil fuel industries to the detriment of the environment and mankind. They purposefully deregulated the financial industry and created mortgage fraud to enable them to steal the wealth of the 99% via the largest transfer of securities, property and "bailout" monies in history. There's more, but I won't go on. This whole thing has been a well-conceived chess game that they're currently winning. Now that the 99% have finally awakened from their apathy and are protesting, they're going to do whatever is necessary to protect their own position of power.

Taking Our Countries Back from the Recession

People should take responsibility for themselves and their actions. This also goes for those who created the "recession" in which we now find ourselves. Taking a judgemental position of superiority and entitlement is what created the foundation for the problems many countries now face. The problem began, not with the unemployed, but with the greed, abuse of power, and purposeful financial deregulation by politicians and top CEO's (who now earn approximately 540% more than the average American, compared to the approximately 56% more that top European CEO's earn over the average European worker) to enable exponential increases in monetary acquisition, along with the greatest transfer of wealth and property to banks in history...paid for by the average citizen in taxes, loss of jobs, foreclosures, furlough days, reduced wages and benefits, reductions in funding for necessary things like education and basic health care, teacher layoffs, etc.

Don't blame the victims of this abuse of power and greed. The abusers' refusal to take responsibility is why those who created this mess should be tried and held accountable in a court of law. Those who are allowed to abuse with impunity will continue to abuse. In fact, our failure to hold accountable those responsible will encourage more abuse.

Taking back our countries should be about demanding ethical behavior of those in power, free and fair elections, justice for those who abuse their power, paying living wages, and adequate educational and health care funding for a start. It should be about empowering all people to rise to their highest ability level and giving a helping hand up to those who are down so they can once again contribute to society. Those who have a sense of superiority and entitlement should walk a mile in the shoes of those whom they judge. Life is very different from another's perspective.

How can we empower ourselves and each other to take our countries back to responsible leadership in politics and business? How can we take on greater responsibility and more effective leadership in our own lives as individuals and as citizens?

Corporate Lies and Influence Used to Maintain Profit and Power at a High Cost to Humanity and the Environment

We have all seen corporations use product defense, the hiring of public relations firms and use of dummy "'pro'-environmental" groups used to promote their products that are actually deleterious to the health and lives of people, animals and the environment. They also have very deep pockets with which they can bribe lawmakers and use the threat of pulling their advertising dollars from media outlets to prevent them from airing/printing fact-based news and documentaries that would harm their products and, therefore, profits. US corporate executives are extremely concerned about maintaining their corporate profits and product viability because they now earn 500x more than the average worker, as compared to executives in other countries who earn up to 57x more than their average worker.

We know their high-level executives go back and forth between jobs at corporate headquarters and the very government agencies entrusted with the task of protecting that which their product destroys, in order to write policy and influence the drafting of laws that favorably protect their product and profits. This has been done, for example, by 1) tobacco companies pushing addiction to their products that cause misery to and the death of millions due to lung cancer and/or COPD; 2) chemical companies pushing gmo's into the world food supply, reducing crop diversity, increasing destruction of the environment by increased use of their toxic chemicals, and maiming and killing millions of living beings, people included, by pollution-caused illness; 3) financial and mortgage industries pushing deregulation, mortgage-backed securities, and the writing of bad loans, which have caused poverty, homelessness, an increase in national debts, and brought world governments to their knees; and 4) the big three of energy: oil, coal and nuclear who do anything for profit, even with massive pollution, toxic waste, the illness and death of billions of living beings, and global warming as a by-product.

Why have laws not been passed at every level of the legal system, local through international, to make illegal the false information and lies pedaled like mind-altering drugs by corporate "pushers" in defense of their product(s)? There has to be some way to stop huge corporations from using their billions in profits to garner influence and lie to the public in order to maintain their status quo of enormous profits, power and influence. Why is "job-sharing" (recusal doesn't happen - get real) between corporate and government jobs still legal?

These corporate entities, and the people who control them, are bullies on the world "playground" whose "games" are being enabled by legal systems, governments and mainstream media. This is happening on all fronts because unsubstantiated, non-independently researched "facts" - that are flat out lies - are legally permitted in product defense. We need truth, nothing but the truth, and if they're caught lying, the top echelon and all others responsible should go to prison, lose everything, and be forced to jump out of their position of power with their golden parachute peppered with holes. The philosophy of, 'Ethics, schmethics, the greater good be darned. It's all about me! Power, profit and influence at any cost!' must be bulldozed. These people are literally committing crimes against humanity and the environment, including genocide. They should be held accountable and prosecuted for these crimes! Enough is enough!!!

The Financial Crisis: Recession or Depression?

The current administration has done a great job of distraction. They have formed committees to study problems in order to purposefully and in all actuality get nothing done. They are giftedly performing wholesale obfuscation of the truth through the use of lies, distraction, and dissemination of disinformation. Just because the government doesn't want to tell us the truth doesn't change the facts, challenges and hard reality of the lives average Americans lead. Thanks to Phil Gramm, his Enron loophole and deregulating the banking industry, as well as all the other authors of this new financial reality, I guess we really are now a "nation of whiners" in their eyes.

Our reality is that we have moved from a recession and are rapidly entering a depression (the financial kind, not the mental, implying it's in our imagination kind, Mr. Gramm). I know the rich don't say this and that our government says the inflation rate is only 5.4%. I honestly don't see where they get this number because the average American is seeing much different numbers and could probably relate to the term depression much more readily.

Americans have seen 605,000 jobs disappear just since the beginning of this year. We have experienced a 35.6% increase in gas prices, a 17.3% increase in household energy costs, an increase of 7.5% in food prices, a decrease of approximately 20% in home prices and a record amount of foreclosures, and only a 3.3% increase in the average salary, all over the past year. Our two major mortgage lenders and leading insurance firm had to be taken over or bailed out by the federal government to prevent a further collapse of our economy. Former blue chip banks have gone bankrupt or are about to be bought for pennies on the dollar. The Dow has dropped nearly 1,000 points in two days, and this has lead to a domino effect to other world markets. The Russian market has collapsed and had to be shut down to prevent further damage.

If this financial crisis is not a depression, I don't know what is. And all through this economic crisis...our President, George W. Bush, has remained conspicuously absent and silent. Not one appearance before the American people. Not one word spoken to explain his take on the situation, what he plans to do to rectify it, or information about what American citizens should do to make it through this crisis. Nothing. Absolutely nothing!