What The Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want!

Last week we looked at the question all of main stream media seemed to be asking - "What Do The Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want?"

Clearly, "Occupy," "The Other 98 Percent," and "The 99 Percent" activists want a fair and balanced playing field that the federal government's system of oversight and regulation provided to American society, before conservatives dismantled it in their fervor for deregulation and elimination of taxes payed by billion dollar corporations and the richest 1 percent of Americans.

We observed that an obvious way to recreate that fair and balanced American field of play would be to reverse the deregulation of Pres. Roosevelt's New Deal protections for the American financial system and middle class Americans, and to reverse the unbalanced and unfair tax cuts given to the richest Americans and multinational multibillion dollar corporations who have used their tax cuts to offshore tens of millions of American jobs.

Earlier today, Mother Jones published an article titled, "Occupy Protesters' One Demand: A New New Deal:"

"What is our one demand?"

That question, put forth by one of the original and most iconic posters advertising the occupation of Zuccotti Park, still hasn't been answered. Many veteran occupiers believe that making specific demands would be counterproductive, while others are working hard to craft concrete proposals they think everyone can agree on.

One of the latter is Daniel Lerner, a middle-aged physicist and active member of Occupy Wall Street's Demands Working Group, which on Sunday voted to push for a New Deal-style program...

... "We are talking about direct public employment, where you are working for the government—everything from wielding a shovel to educating engineers," says Lerner, who drew inspiration from the Depression-era Civil Work and Works Progress Administrations.

The 35 members of the Demands Group will vote Tuesday afternoon on how to build support for the plan before taking it up with the General Assembly, the open-ended group that serves as the protest's governing body.

Communicating through a Yahoo Groups site to draft a list of demands, the Demands Working Group did publish a list draft Tuesday afternoon on their Google sites website. Along with the draft list of demands the Working Group also calls for a National Convention to convene next July:

Congressman Barney Frank To OWS: Vote!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On her MSNBC show Monday night, Rachel Maddow asked Rep. Barney Frank whether the ever-growing Occupy Wall Street movement has "energized Democrats at all."

The Frank said the protesters need to suggest legislative policies to address their grievances and show up at the ballot box the next time the opportunity arises.

The longtime critic of financial system deregulation says he is sympathetic to the movement but also says, "I'm unhappy when people [who] didn't vote last time blame me [congress] for the consequences of their not voting.”

Related:

• Van Jones Calls For Progressive Push Back Against Tea Party

Pew Finds Extreme Conservative Bias In Media

A study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, in the past five months, the American main stream media has given Pres. Obama the most unremittingly negative press of any of the presidential candidates by a wide margin, while giving Republican candidates extremely positive press coverage.

Liberal Media Bias -- You’ve probably heard it used to describe the American main stream media hundreds, if not thousands of times. One of the most often made claims of the right-wing messaging machine is that the mainstream media are composed almost entirely of liberals who work in concert to promote progressive viewpoints and elect Democrats, while portraying conservative viewpoints, Republicans, and the Tea Party AstroTurf movement with contempt.

Liberal Media Bias is a useful red herring, in that it fires up the faithful conservative base and provides a convenient scapegoat for when the American public rejects conservative policies and/or politicians. Right wing political pundits regularly regurgitate the term to bully the main stream media into giving evermore air time and print space to conservative messaging, without ever questioning it’s authenticity or reporting alternative viewpoints

Pew's Excellence in Journalism study found a marked conservative bias in coverage the main stream media has given to the presidential candidates over the past five months. The American press gave Pres. Obama unremittingly negative press by a four to one margin, while giving Republican candidates extremely positive press coverage.

The GOP Lies, The Economy Suffers, And The Media Does Nothing About It

AmericaBlog: The Republican response to the President's radio address was an outright lie. Practically every credible expert, including economists on Wall Street even, agree that the stimulus did save/create jobs, boost GDP, and help cut back on unemployment. Everyone. But the Republicans keep outright lying and claiming the stimulus didn't do a thing. And the media just quotes them diligently and doesn't explain to the reader that it's a lie. WSJ:

Offering the Republican response, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy criticized what he called the continuation of a "stimulation strategy that's led to more debt and fewer jobs."

Both the CBO and Moody's concluded that the stimulus did work - the only problem was that it wasn't big enough, not that it was too big. Had we done what Kevin McCarthy is saying, we'd be in a depression right now - Moody's has already said the GOP plan won't work. But the President's stimulus, Moody's says it was absolutely worth it because it worked:

All this help comes at significant cost. While the fiscal stimulus has been vital, it helped produce a $1.4 trillion budget deficit this past fiscal year and will lead to another $1 trillion-plus deficit in the current one. Yet the cost to taxpayers would have been measurably greater if policymakers had not acted aggressively. The recession would still be in full swing, undermining tax revenues and driving up government spending on Medicaid, welfare, and other income support for distressed families. It is a tragedy that the nation has been forced to spend so much to tame the financial crisis and end the Great Recession. Yet it has been money well spent. The fiscal stimulus is working to ensure that the recent dark economic times will soon be relegated to the history books.

As for government regulations hurting jobs, AP concluded the other day that it too is a lie. This talk is dangerous.

And the lie grew worse over the past few months. As we pointed our previously, the new Republican talking pint, that I first hear on Fox, of course, is that the stimulus actually CAUSED the economy to worsen.

Outright lie. And the media still doesn't sufficiently call them on it. How about a story asking the Republicans why they think lying is an answer to our economic troubles? Why their party so easily, and willingly, embraces lies instead of facts? Reporters should be asking Kevin McCarthy if he's a liar, crazy, or just stupid.

This why our political system is broken. Because the checks and balances are broken too.

Read more @ AmericaBlog

Framing The Message

What's said is just as important as how it's said when it comes to influencing voters. Just as framing a picture focuses attention on what is enclosed within that frame, framing a message focuses a reader's or listener's attention on the idea within the frame.

Message frames are the shorthand context that set a specific train of thought in motion, communicating why an issue might be a problem, who or what might be responsible for it, and what should be done about it.

Audiences rely on frames to make sense of and discuss an issue; journalists use frames to craft interesting and appealing news reports; policymakers apply frames to define policy options and reach decisions; and experts employ frames to simplify technical details and make them persuasive. The most effective frames touch the emotional, rather than the intellectual, part of our brain.

In his book, "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," Drew Westen says there is overwhelming evidence that three emotional frames determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.

Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

The "Occupy Wall Street" protests are gaining momentum, having spread from a small park in New York to marches to other cities across the country.

So far, the protests seem fueled by a collective sense that things in our economy are not fair or right. But the protesters have not done a good job of focusing their complaints—and thus have been skewered as malcontents who don't know what they stand for or want.

(An early list of "grievances" included some legitimate beefs, but was otherwise just a vague attack on "corporations." Given that these are the same corporations that employ more than 100 million Americans and make the products we all use every day, this broadside did not resonate with most Americans).

So, what are the protesters so upset about, really?

Do they have legitimate gripes?

To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes.

And if America cannot figure out a way to address these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized," as sociologists might say. And in that scenario, the current protests will likely be only the beginning.

The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high.

In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between "labor" and "capital," there has rarely—if ever—been a time when "capital" was so clearly winning.

Read the full story @ Business Insider

What the New Deal Accomplished

During the years of the New Deal, America’s government built as it never had before—or has since.

Slate

The New Deal physically reshaped the country. To this day, Americans still rely on its works for transportation, electricity, flood control, housing, and community amenities.

The output of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, represents a magnificent bequest to later generations. The WPA produced, among many other projects, 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings built, rebuilt, or expanded. Among the latter were 41,300 schools.

Read the full story @ Slate

More on History's New Deal Lessons

The GOP Is Advocating A Tax Increase On The Middle Class

In recent months, nearly every major Republican candidate has name-checked a popular statistic that 47% of Americans who file taxes paid no income tax in 2009. Given the GOP’s anti-tax zeal you’d think they’d be celebrating. Nope! Republicans now complain that the entire bottom half of taxpayers’ don't pay enough taxes even as they proclaim [rich] Americans are “Taxed Enough Already.”

“Right now we know that 53% of Americans pay income taxes and 47% do not,” Michele Bachmann told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “I think we definitely need to change the tax code. We need to get more in line. Everybody benefits from this magnificent country. Everybody pay something.”

Republican presidential candidates are explicitly making the argument that the poor don't pay enough taxes on the same fairness grounds that progressives like Elizabeth Warren have used to demand greater taxes on the rich. The idea isn’t just that tax breaks for the rich trickle down the poor — it’s that they also deserve them more than freeloading Americans. Rick Perry made this moral outrage a key line in his campaign kickoff.

“We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax,” Perry said in his announcement speech. “And you know the liberals out there are saying that we need to pay more.”

Now the 47% number only tells part of the story: most of those “non-payers” pay payroll taxes, gas taxes, state and local taxes, etc. And in an ironic twist, the phenomenon is almost entirely a result of Republicans’ own enthusiasm for tax cuts. In the 1980s and 1990s, GOP lawmakers demanded that any programs aimed at helping poor and middle-income households be structured as refundable tax credits, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, rather than as direct payments like welfare. President Bush added to the trend by lowering marginal rates across the board. Then Obama structured large chunks of the stimulus as tax breaks in order to garner bipartisan support. The non-payer rate, which had hovered around 20% - 25% since the 1950s, shot over 30% in 2002 and never looked back. And because the tax credits are refundable, many taxpayers aren’t just paying nothing, they’re actually gaining a net positive on their income tax.

But now that Obama is playing hardball on raising revenue, Republicans are rethinking the idea.

Read the full story @ Talking Points Memo

Journal/NBC Poll: Perry’s ‘Ponzi Scheme’ Rhetoric In Tune with GOP Voters

Rick Perry isn’t the only one who considers Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

WJS:

Fifty-four percent of likely Republican primary voters agree with the Texas governor that the retirement program resembles a Ponzi scheme, or fraudulent system designed to collect more money than it pays out, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Forty-one percent of GOP primary voters disagree with that view.

Mr. Perry provoked an outcry from Democrats and Republicans alike during his first presidential debate when he restated his belief that younger Americans have little to gain from Social Security. Mitt Romney immediately seized on Mr. Perry’s rhetoric to attack the Texas governor, who was then soaring in the polls. Mr. Perry’s support has since cratered, following a string of shaky debate performances, but it appears his views on Social Security resonate with most GOP voters.

The same can’t be said for the electorate as a whole. Sixty-four percent of all adults interviewed for the poll said they disagree with Mr. Perry, while only 29% support his view.

Read the full story at the WJS

Collin Co. Election Precinct Redistricting For 2012

Sharon Rowe, Collin County Elections Administrator, sent out a press release last week stating the county has redrawn election precinct boundaries in the wake of the 2010 census driven Congressional, State Senate, State Board of Education, and State House redistricting changes made by the 2011 Texas legislative session. Collin County Commissioner precincts lines have also been redrawn for the 2012 election cycle.

The new plan splits several of the current 179 election precincts into 23 new precincts creating a total of 202 precincts for the 2012 election cycle. (click on the map right to enlarge - precinct split table at bottom of this article)

According to Collin County Elections Administrator Sharon Rowe: