David DeGraw on progress toward getting the money out of politics

One of the most popular 99% Movement and Occupy Wall Street issues is getting money out of politics. In a country where the candidate who spends the most money on their campaign wins the election 94% of the time, it is blatantly obvious that our electoral process is dominated by the richest global financial interests. By saturating the campaign finance and lobbying system with an endless supply of cash, Wall Street has rigged the political and economic system against hard working Americans. In unprecedented fashion, they have consolidated wealth into the hands of one-tenth of one percent of the population, at the expense and suffering of the American people.

If you’re wondering why we have the most severe inequality of wealth in American history; if you’re wondering why we currently have an all-time record number of Americans living in poverty, while we have all-time record profits and bonuses on Wall Street, it is primarily the result of the richest members of society being able to manipulate and control the legislative process through a system of legalized political bribery.

For us to take the first crucial step in solving the many problems we currently face, we have to create an amendment to the Constitution to get money out of politics. Thankfully, there is huge momentum building on this front. Here’s a brief summation of the newly proposed amendments, courtesy of the Get Money Out campaign. Hopefully, with your leadership, one of these amendments, or elements of a few of them, will soon become the 28th amendment to the US Constitution....

Read the rest at Washington's Blog

Occupy the Constitution: Get Money Out of Politics!

by David DeGraw (one of the initial organizers of Occupy Wall Street)

Amy Goodman interviews Bill Black at Democracy Now on Occupy Wall Street and control fraud

The video and transcript is available at Democracy Now,

Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud

Follows up on Dylan Ratigan's interview of David DeGraw and Bill at MSNBC

Video

David invites Bill to stand for Attorney General at the General Assembly, and Bill responds positively.

Matt Stoller gets it right about Occupy Wall Street

A lot of pundits are pontificating that the Occupy Wall Street protest is unfocused and needs clear goals expressed as political demands. Matt Stoller disputes this, saying essentially that the protest is actually about the hope and change that President Obama promised and then promptly caved on. It's a grassroots movement, not an orchestration by political activists.

That Yves Smith chose to post Stoller's piece at Naked Capitalism acknowledges not only the political significance of the protest movement that is gathering steam across the US, but also it's economic significance. The protest is, after all, about The Big Rip-Off, in which a few profited wildly on the backs of the many, with many of the many suffering horribly for mistakes in which they were not involved.

Read Stoller's post at Naked Capitalism, Matt Stoller: #OccupyWallStreet Is a Church of Dissent, Not a Protest. Kudos to Matt for writing it and to Yves (Susan) for posting it.

Also interesting is a report by David DeGraw of AmpedStatus on "How Anonymous, AmpedStatus, the NYC General Assembly, US Day of Rage, Adbusters and Thousands of Individual Actions Led to the Occupation of Liberty Park and the Birth of a Movement." Read it at Washington's Blog, A Report from the Frontlines: The Long Road to #OccupyWallStreet and the Origins of the 99% Movement.

While the Tea Party fades into the background, except as pushed by Fox News and astroturf organization like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, there is a grassroots movement rising up that seems to transcend ordinary categories, at least so far, precisely because it is amorphous and unfocused, except on eliminating corruption. If there is a demand, it is for accountability and restitution.

But mostly it is about changing course. About 80% of Americans agree that the country is veering off course. So it is conceivable that this movement will have strong legs and could even go viral if conditions do not improve or worsen.

This is very much the trend that was predicted to arise at around this time by economist Ravi Batra in The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos (2007), and historians/social scientists William Strauss and Neil Howe in The Fourth Turning (1007). Although Batra's most recent book was published in 2007, his initial published work dates back to The Downfall of Communism and Capitalism (1978).