Letter to a Friend who is participating in an Occupation Location

The media is looking for the easy answer,  the finely honed sound bite and the airbrushed press release.  When Occupy Wall Street produced  a list (created and voted on in their General Assemblies) of their goals, the media ignored it, except for Keith Olbermann formerly of MSNBC who has now found a home at Current.TV.  If the insipid talking heads with good hair and million dollar salaries are clueless, the people aren't.  

In recent polls, the great majority of the population agrees with the complaints of the Occupiers of Wall Street. The people want the banksters and hedge fund sociopaths go to jail for screwing up the economy.  The people want to see production of goods gain momentum in this economy.  The people want to stop the free ride for the wealthy.  The people want to end the choke hold that the corporations have on our electoral processes and on our government.
The majority of the people want to see the end of personhood for corporations, and want to see jobs come back to the US.

    Sometime during the summer,  Mike Bloomberg announced that he had a fear of a populist uprising, mentioning it weeks before OWS.  He probably based this fear on guilt of knowing how he's been getting away with major theft, paying the lowest taxes as a member of the 1% since the robber barons paid taxes preceding the Great Depression.   He knows that index finds social unrest at the intersect point where food prices are high and income is low.  This is a world wide index, and our country is still relatively cushioned against widespread famine.  But, as our infrastructure is disassembled by the wealthy who pay practically nothing in taxes, and by multinational corporations posing as American companies who have no production in this country,  we devolve into a third world consumer nation. We may, for the first time since the Great Depression, have to deal with these issues ourselves.

According to Thom Hartmann, radio commentator on WWRL1600.com, if we adjusted the money for inflation, and compared it to 1961 levels, we would find that corporations paid 43 percent of their profits to tax, while now they pay 17 percent.


We, the USA, in the 1950s and 1960s manufactured 60 percent of the world's goods, with 6 percent of the worlds population.  In the 1970s, 37 percent of our GNP was from manufacturing, now it's 11 percent.  Something's gotta give.

  If the corporations were paying into the tax base at 1960s levels, all would be well. If we taxed imports, we may not have so many 99c stores, but we'd have a whole lot more jobs. If Mayor Mike was paying 50 percent corporate tax, he would be paying 750,000,000 this year in taxes, since his corporation Bloomberg earned 1.5 billion this year.  Perhaps his fear is based on his knowledge that he is getting away with murder.  
That kind of money would repair all the potholes on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.  (Next year, he could pay for the Belt Parkway).


  If our tax base was righted, Charlie Sheen would be paying 50,000,000 in tax, as would most CEOs of bigger corporations, and sports stars given to hosting pit bull fights and hiring under aged prostitutes.   Instead of going into yet another mansion that will be abandoned as soon as the addicted and addled get thown out of the game and off the screen, the tax money could go to rehabs for crack addicts and could build new factories to produce solar panels.  Why are we letting these fools get away with this crap??

If Exxon Mobil lost their subsidies...If Apple began to manufacture in the USA ..if the government taxed imports....

 Note to Occupation Sites:  Make sure you have the Portosans..the kids here have been going to the local Burger King, McDonald., but they've been getting turned away..now the local churches are helping, I was told, but I haven't seen it.

.I suggested the Ironworkers donate facilities, the guys who are working on WTC, since their brotherhood says they support the OWS... Someone should reach out to the unions to find if they can rig up some facilities..

The first week of OWS, the kids were about 40 or 50 during the day in the rain and even NPR wouldnt cover the story. They eventually relented, but only Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann will give decent coverage to the mushrooming of 900 international Occupy events

The kids here are doing a class action suit, since they feel the police lead them onto the Brooklyn road way, only to box them in and arrest them en masse. 

You might want to call into WWRL1600. to tell them of Occupy Albany and the lack of media coverage. they stream at wwrl1600.com.  Mark Reilly is a progressive radio host,  on the air from 6am to 9am M-F, has broadcast from OWS, to mention the media blackout on the rest of the Occupy protests.  Their number is 212 868 0975

Stay strong, and know you're doing the right thing.