Matt Taibbi on His Advice for Occupy Wall Street Protesters
Matt Taibbi joined the set of Countdown with Keith Olbermann to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. After weighing in on whether Mayor Michael Bloomberg might be playing right into the movement's hands with the upcoming move to try to clear Zuccoti Park, Taibbi discussed his recent article at Rolling Stone where he had some advice for those out there protesting.
My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters:
No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.
as much as i ckeck out 'video cafe',this story ain't on the main page?..........many folks here don't always go here,on a regular basis. my two pesos worth .too important,me thinks.
....the fools do not realize,a population that can ,..... not paticipate .............in the 'economy'...,can not keep it viable!..........."we are listening,.......and we're not blind.,......this is your life....this is your time."
Great clip.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
Recently I've taken to checking the footer of your page since there's some great stuff in the Video Cafe I was missing. Any way to integrate it a little better?
Great stuff here, as usual, from Taibbi. After the continuing "what do they want" "they're all DFH's" "they don't even know x, y or z about politics or Wall Street" coverage in the media it'd be nice to see some clarity like this more prominently. Maybe we can play the Fox "but, but Soros" game with them and point them to something coherent like this when they try to mock us. They're probably beyond hope but I'd like to think the people who root for them might start to wonder if they've been had. I know, a dog can dream!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8hDXZoEkbo
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
A show of force speaks volumes. Forget "deadlines" and "rapidly approaching" that's what got this country into trouble to begin with be it Saddam's Mushroom Cloud or The Collapse of U.S. Banks and Finance Companies. Hurrying got us into even a deeper mess. Got to go to war and get Saddam, got to bail out Wall Street and Banks, with urgency! No more urgency we want real results. None of this pointless running around in circles in the hope that sheer motion will be an adequate substitute for conscious action.
The corporate fascists' have had a 30 year head start on OWS. No need to hurry, you are right. just be persistent. Everyday a few more people get fucked over by our fascist economic system and start to open their eyes. Unfortunately that's the way it is, so we must take time to build momentum.
Secondly, and just as important IMHO, is that we need to start an OGOPMSM occupy the GOP main stream media movement as well. Most americans have no idea just how Orwellian and propagandized our airwaves have become. Hell, many think we have a liberal media. Wonder where they got that idea from? Hmmmm?
Finally, we may need a third occupy movement. The ODLC occupy DLC and let them know we are sick of their embrace of GOP fascist policies. What's the diff if you eat Sarah Lee wheat bread, or sarah Lee wheat bread with 45 calories per slice?
Either way your eating Sarah Lee wheat bread. You just won't get quite as fat so quickly.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
It won't be easy. The snooty corrupt are not going to like hearing . . . We want Wall Street to stop gambling with our futures. We want the wars to end. We want manufacturing jobs brought home. We want the rich to pay their fair share. We want the energy companies to stop looting the public. We want real investment in the things that matter here. We want a lower cost of living. We want REAL JUSTICE.
I'm also frustrated by all the arbitrary immediacy. It occurs to me that a horizontal movement needs to be allowed to develop organically, in order to spread out sideways as much as it wants to, before insisting that it move up. Whose agenda is served by immediate action? Not OWS. We need to dig in and expand. The tea party didn't spring up organically overnight, it was nurtured by thinktanks who networked with local activist groups over a course of decades. It takes longer to grow real turf :)
Xavier Onassis
www.medic343.wordpress.com
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
far left loon >.<
Well said, Matt Taibbi.
Which party will push this agenda? lol
The protests in NY are about Wall St. And big banking (especially Goldman Sachs) draining Americans savings. It also costs each one of us over 5000.00 a year. Congress is now run by Wall St and the rest of these thieves to the tune of billions per year in campaign donations etc. When is this country going to wake up.
Start with the banking monopolies, for sure.
But it goes beyond banking. I recently watched a discussion with Ravi Batra on Thom Hartmann. Batra pointed out the enormous increase in Self-Employment Tax (under Reagan, I recall) that made it very difficult for Small Businesses (real, actual, small businesses) to survive, paving the way for the takeover by Large Corporations.
So we got WalMart pushing all the small retailers out. And building supply super stores pushing out the small independents. And global super market chains pushing out small grocery stores. Etc etc etc.
And it was those small independent stores that hired many more people per dollar of sales. Inefficient from a corporate standpoint, but far more efficient in terms of keeping the wealth in the community and providing a better standard of living over all.
How to break up the banks seems relatively simple by comparison (after all, We The People are major shareholders after the bailouts, right?) but .. how to roll back the Big Box Super Stores that have killed Small Businesses in America?
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani told Sean Hannity on his talk show yesterday that, if he was still mayor, he would have told the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters, “You are not allowed to sleep on the streets.”
On his show, Hannity asked Giuliani how he would have dealt with the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement if he was still mayor of New York City - to which Giuliani replied, “Well I had a rule and I enforced it as best I could and pretty effectively. The rule was: You’re not allowed to sleep on the streets. Sorry, not allowed to sleep on the streets. Streets are not for sleeping.”
“Sleeping on the streets is a dysfunctional act. It harms the person, it harms society, it leads to unsanitary conditions that affect public health,” added Giuliani. “The first one who decided to sleep there should have been removed and then the second one, and the third one, and the fourth one and the fifth one.”
making it illegal to lobby public representatives of the people?
And, if corporations are people, then they must live up to the responsibilities of people.
Such as reducing 'Limited Liability' on issues such as pollution of the environment.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Although they couldn't have foreseen the rise of lobbying as a business, the founding fathers *did* think it was pretty important that people be able to take their complaints to the government.
to keep this alive. Because you know the elites are going to lose their patience before the people do in this situation. Strategies to keep people ON the street. What they going to do jail everyone for being on the street? You can't stand here, you can't stay here, you can't do this, you can't do that - you know it's coming.
The powers that be will try to dream up any idiotic thing they can besides doing the right thing. They are thinking, what do we have to do to get these misfits-losers (Americans) off the street?
Duh think hard now!
Just got back from the Occupy St. Louis protest. There was quite a large police presence, but there were no problems at all. It was all quite peaceful. After some time in Kiener Plaza, there was a march over to Bank of America, or, as one sign I saw said, "Bend over America."
Heather, I took a lot of pictures...would you want any?
Another white shirt pig went postal on an occupier today. Punching and swinging. Knocked the person to the ground. Possibly knocked him out cold, not sure - there were people in the way. It's on video, so i'm sure it will show up soon on youtube.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
It's interesting. Taibbi's list is reasonable, but it's certainly not Obama's list.
More to the point, neither the problems, nor the protestors, will disappear before November 2012.
:)
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
lambert strether in good form
Corrente here
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
if it has become the job of the OWS protesters to provide solutions to the problems created by republicans and wall street banks, why bother having elected public officials representing us? last i checked, it's the job of those public officials to come up with solutions for the country's ills, and work to implement them, on behalf of their constituents. it's horribly unfair to drop that responsibility on people who didn't get elected, and don't get paid to do that job.
mr. taibbi should know better.
If you want their answers that is just fine. However, If you want to shape the future you are going to have to start thinking, at least as far as concepts if not implementation.
First, he said it's fine that the protesters don't have demands right now. Second, there's a big difference between just saying "you guys should have some demands" and actually writing up demands in some detail to suggest to them, as Taibbi did.
You *do* realize that one reason we have these problems is because too many people were willing to just let elected public officials do the thinking & decision making, don't you?
his ideas to a millionaire host and expect the General Assemblies to run out and ratify them. He should offer them in person and experience what Tina Dupuy called real democracy in action as people silently voice their opinions on his proposals.
"Folks, this is not your father's Republican Party."
Joe Biden
wall street is full crooks
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