A Letter from Montana, by Jerry Straka .
The Boston Tea Party was a protest against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. It was a protest against corporate interests condoned and imposed by “dynastic” government.
Fast forward 235 years and we have “Occupy Wall Street,” a “real” tea party. Not a tea party promoted by corporate media (Fox News) and funded by a handful of “billionaires behaving badly” and their corporate money (FreedomWorks). Occupy Wall Street is not contrived over false issues (TEA: Taxed Enough Already? Really? Taxes had just been reduced for 98 percent of Americans. Taxes are at their lowest level in over 60 years. Death panels? Voted the biggest lie of 2009 by numerous non-partisan media groups. Socialism? More like corporate “scareism”).
No, Occupy Wall Street is real, spontaneous and multi-faceted. It is a response to those same corporate interests, condoned and imposed by government, that were the basis of the original Boston Tea Party. This movement is very real, and long overdue.
The dynamics of capital vs. labor and of laws of supply and demand have been around for centuries. Multi-national corporations, and their “dynastic” ownership — the “financial elite” — understand these and have devised long-term plans (decades long) for their sole benefit. First, through political influence (bribes) they increased the tax on U.S. labor by 50 percent and cut in half the U.S. tax on capital (Reaganomics).
Second, with these windfall profits they consolidated and merged to concentrate wealth and reduce market participants under the guise of deregulation. Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-trust provisions were gutted in the 1980s and 90s. Many markets are now dominated by anti-capitalistic, oligopoly rule, with fewer and fewer competitors, just what Roosevelt fought against.
The “elites” then sought the untapped labor in the Third World burgeoning markets. Trade deals were developed and promoted that benefitted their pursuit of this labor, albeit to the detriment of the remaining patriotic others. Why would we negotiate trade deals where our exports are taxed at rates up to 10 times higher than their counterpart foreign imports (China, Mexico, India, etc.)? Because politically powerful multi-nationals had the resources to move and export, and had no desire to compete against remaining American competitors, so they hamstrung them with trade barriers. And their paid politicians (both parties) promoted and passed it.
This forced normally patriotic U.S. companies to relocate to compete (50,000 factories have closed and relocated overseas since 2001). Recent trade policy has nothing to do with opening markets for American made goods shipped abroad, rather for opening markets for American companies to relocate abroad while maintaining their current share in a mature American market. As Ross Perot described it in 1992, it is “…a giant sucking sound…” of American jobs being exported. This is shameful, un-American, despicable behavior that was devised decades ago by the wealthiest of Americans.
The biggest obstacle for these “dynastic” families has always been, “how do you get regular Americans to vote against their own economic self-interests?” How do you get the 99 percent to support policies that benefit only the top 1 percent? How do you do it? Simply put, you lie. You fund think tanks whose research goals result in pre-determined, false outcomes that heavily favor corporate interests. Then you pay (bribe) politicians through campaign donations and lobbying efforts (more bribes) to sell these pre-determined, false outcomes to the masses. You promote unproven, now failed, policies like supply-side economics and financial deregulation while blaming the woes on the poorest Americans.
Through media consolidation and its deregulation (90 percent of all media is owned by only five corporations) you limit the impact of any opposition, any independent journalistic voices, by buying them out and replacing them with “personalities” who spew ideology, not fact. These “personalities” are paid well and are fully scripted to pit average American against average American. They are paid to manufacture false conflict amongst the masses, while the top 1 percent robs us blind. And it’s working.
Idiots don tea bags, tote guns, and scream of “income redistribution” while their own incomes decline (for the last 30 years), while their homes/personal wealth are stolen through corporate mortgage fraud, while their prepaid health and retirement benefits are being taken away to fund unpaid, unnecessary wars, and while their jobs and children’s future are shipped abroad. All this, while the top 1 percent tripled their income and hoarded trillions in cash overseas. I really think the Tea Party acronym should stand for Take Everything Away, not Taxed Enough Already. Somehow they have become willing soldiers for the Godless money-changers Jesus despised. They blame and malign the poor for the excesses of the wealthy. That is not Christian. Not by my Bible.
That is why there is an “Occupy Wall Street.” They are “on” to the incessant lies and false promises. They are tired of the constant deceit and fear-mongering. They are saying, “ENOUGH!” They don’t believe that the bottom 50 percent have caused this problem. The bottom 50 percent have neither the financial means nor organizational capacity to commit the fraud for which they are blamed by the Tea Party and their corporate masters. Occupy Wall Street doesn’t believe corporations are persons and that money is speech. C’mon Tea Party, this is right up your alley. Foreign? born, un-naturalized (they live in mailboxes on islands?) citizens with no birth certificates? And they’re not even mentioned in the Constitution, even though they were abundant in 1776 and were primarily responsible for the protest called the “Boston Tea Party.” They were excluded from the Constitution on purpose. On Purpose! Please, Tea Party. Get on the right side of this one.
“Occupy Wall Street” sees through the corporate dominance of our government and our media. It is the real manifestation of the misplaced anger of the Tea Party, put to proper use against the real villains of our financial malady – the top 1 percent and their corporate shields and shills, those who control 40 percent of our wealth and tens of trillions, not those (the bottom 50 percent) who control only 2.5 percent of wealth with cumulative holdings of only $1.5 trillion.
Call them mobs (Rep. Eric Cantor), call them un-American (Herman Cain), call it “class warfare” (Mitt Romney and others), call it whatever you want. These people are used to being called names. But don’t expect them to leave until Wall Street thieves go to jail for mortgage fraud and repay their victims, until corporate money is removed from politics and corporate citizenship is rescinded, until fair trade deals are adopted that benefit capital AND labor AND the environment, or until investment is made in American roads, bridges, energy/power grid, schools, and in its OWN people rather than in those countries we just destroyed.
I have 10 beautiful, intelligent nieces and nephews of employment age and another three recently adopted young ones. Most have college degrees, some advanced degrees. I worry about their future everyday. But I cannot, and will not, tell them that a jobless future was the result of “income redistribution” to the poor when it was exactly the opposite. I cannot, and will not, tell them that over-regulation caused the housing crisis that gutted their parent’s wealth and their inheritance when even Alan Greenspan says it was quite the opposite. I cannot, and will not, tell them that overpaying teachers, nurses, firemen and union members caused our financial crisis when these wages actually declined over the last 30 years. I cannot, and will not, blame my middle-class America friends and neighbors for this. Except for trusting corporate America. They shouldn’t have then, and they shouldn’t now.
And that’s what Occupy Wall Street and its growing participation is all about. The truth. Putting the blame where it belongs by putting an end to state-sanctioned, politically corrupt, corporate rule by the “elite” few “dynastic” families. Just like the Boston Tea Party.