I AM NOT MOVING - Short Film - Occupy Wall Street

This is a very compelling video and patently shows the hypocrisy of our own governments. Most everyone in this nation cheered and supported the demonstrations in the northern Africa and Middle-Eastern nations that over through their oppressive governments. Not only did Sec. Clinton and Pres. Obama make statements about the right to free speech and assembly, but others from both parties said the same thing. Now we see in America, the security forces, i.e. the police departments, using the same violent tactics to prevent American citizens from peacefully and freely assembling to exercise their constitutional right of free speech, free assembly and petitioning those who have ultimate power over them of their grievances. (Foot note: most violence attributed to the OWS camps has been provoked by the police departments very aggressive behavior to intentionally insight a violent response.)

The Occupy Wall Street movement is directed at those who have bought and corrupted our process of governance, the mighty mega banks, financial institutions, stock exchanges and the huge corporations that are traded on that exchange. After all these are the people who now have ultimate power over every citizen. We may have the vote, however, if they use their huge sums of money to sway your vote to the one they want elected, they buy them off as soon as they arrive at capital hill, with check in hand. No matter the political party, no matter how sincere the politician is when they campaign that they will change the way business is conducted in Washington DC, they can't compete with the lobbyist that demand they represent them and not the citizens, in exchange for campaign donations.

When the speaker of the house, the senate majority and minority leaders, as well as the president are now captive to these lobbyists and their money, the lobbyist control what legislation is presented for consideration and in fact they write the legislation to insure it benefits them and not the people of this country.

Consider this, look at graph below, the upper 1% have seen significant increase in income and the middle-class has seen a very little, almost flat, income over the same period.

The early 20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes stated that it is demand that drive an economy. If there is no demand because people don't have disposable income, then the business cycle will fall and there will be large unemployment. In order to stabilize employment during these business cycles it requires a participation between the private sector, the central bank, financial policies established by the central bank and Congress to properly respond with government money through jobs programs to stabilize employment and drive demand for goods and services. He understood that such intervention should only be used for a short term and not a long term solution to the economic problems that caused the economic downturn. In the long term, financial policy would need to be modified to address the underlying cause of the downturn. A nation's debt is a major concern, but it can be dealt with through stabilized employment and demand that would then generate sufficient revenues to the treasury to lower the total debt, combined with appropriate reduction in expenditures that would not harm the economic recovery or reduce needed services to the people.

 He said that when the business cycle can't stimulate the economy to create more jobs, i.e. new innovations that create demand or to retain current jobs, then it is the responsibility of the government as the entity of last resort to expend huge sums of money on projects such as infrastructure and other projects that have a general benefit to all citizens. This expansion of employment puts disposable income into citizens hands to purchase more goods and services, which in turn drives the need for more workers and you end up with a growing economy and low unemployment. This has been shown to work several times during the 20th century, even Ronald Reagan, the GOP's conservative saint, used this model to deal with the recession in the 80s, so why not now? He did it though huge defense budget increases to develop new weapon systems, such as the Star Wars missile defense system, and more aircraft carriers, battleships, submarines, etc. People just didn't know that it was a major stimulus plan to infuse huge sums of government money into the private sector to create jobs during the recession that started with the oil embargo.

However, the GOP changed their believe to the economic models of the Chicago School of economics by Freedman and the Austrian School of economics that believe that the market will always recover by itself, if left alone. They believe that government is the handicap in the ability for the market to correct past bad behaviors and build its own growth. Unfortunately, there is no empirical evidence that a market will recover and improve on its own.

Hoover tried it in the beginning of the Great Depression. No recover was even indicated by any market. It took the New Deal to get it to start to recover, then Roosevelt fell victim to the GOP pressure to roll back the New Deal recovery money, we then slipped back into the depression.

Ultimately it was the huge government stimulus expenditure for the war that put the country back on course of a recovery. Also, our economic competitors, Europe and Asia, were destroyed and unable to compete with us. We owned the world at that moment. But they did recover and now a formidable competitor in the world economies.

It should be noted that under all the variations of the GOP economic model, unemployment is not considered a problem. It is just a response to the business cycles. As soon as the market, without government intervention, recovers, job growth will naturally occur. They also accept that there will be permanent high unemployment; because technologies can increase productivity without human labor involved. The ultimate goal of the GOP is not to create more jobs, but to let the market do what it does best - create profit for its shareholders and huge wages for its managers, no matter what the individual consequences are of the working public. Have you noticed that since the GOP took over the House of Representatives last January, not one jobs creating bill has been presented to any committee or for a vote on the floor. Instead they have worked on eliminating any funds for family planning, passing more laws that do the same thing as the Hyde Bill, that prohibits tax dollars for abortions. They spent a week working on legislation to reaffirm the Moto "In God We Trust." They constantly use the term "Self Reliance" to state that if you're not in on the market as a major player, then tough, that's your problem, not societies or the government. So you can see jobs are not an issue for them, just something to use in their prescribed list of words to make you think they care about you.

Mitt Romney validated that claim when he said that government should not assist homeowners to keep their homes from foreclosure, but to let the foreclosures to continue unchecked until it reaches the bottom, whenever that is, and then the housing market will improve on its own. But how many people will then be homeless or living in rented apartments? To them, it doesn't matter if a person owns a home or not. If you are not rich enough to buy one, then rent. Besides, landlords don't like private home ownership because they don't make any money from them. Rental has always been the choice of those of wealth who own or invest in apartment buildings. In the Salt Lake Tribune 11/18/11, an article in the business section stated that as home sales continue to fall, apartment rentals are at an all time high. One job stimulus in the Wasatch Front area is in the area of apartment building construction. There was a time a few years ago that some apartment owners were having to turn their units into condos because purchasing was so easy and no one wanted to rent. Now condos built as condos are being converted into apartments to rent as more people loose their homes.

Some of the bottom feeding equity fund companies, like the one Mitt Romney was part of, are buying up as many condos that can be converted to apartments and they are investing large sums in mortgages or development of apartment complexes around the nation. They don't see the housing market returning anytime soon to the level it had been. It will be a decade or more before a majority of Americans will be able to get credit and purchase a private home.