Occupy the Future

Word on the street is that the Occupy Baltimore protesters are going to be IMMINENTLY routed from McKeldin Square. A couple of days? A week? Maybe two? Nobody knows, but the Mayor is rumored to be getting fed up with the occupation, and I’m sure that the Occupy protesters calling attention to the man behind the curtain, M.J. Brodie at the real City Hall, down on Charles Street (BDC), did not endear them to the city’s power structure.

Other cities have already ejected their occupations. Baltimore has employed an outwardly tolerant approach, but in reality, it’s almost certainly because our local occupation has been so ineffectual and silly that the politicians are laughing at the protesters behind the scenes. If they were a threat, they would be gone by now, and their lame applause at the BDC event probably reassured Mr. Brodie that they were no such thing. Still, even acknowledging that the man behind the curtain exists is itself a threat.

Me, I gave up on the local occupation a couple of weeks ago, after they were snowed by Brodie’s bullshit and actually applauded the little monster.

Revo, who was more enthusiastic about the Occupy movement from the beginning, only gave up hope last night, after attending the G.A. and realizing that in the face of imminent disaster for the camp at McKeldin Square, they were discussing bumper stickers and their triumphant glee over their YouTube hits for a video showing them acting like noisy children during Karl Rove’s recent talk at Hopkins. At the G.A. last night, the imminent eviction from McKeldin Square was apparently never discussed.

I’ll continue going to some marches. Most of the marches are actually organized by the unions, anyway, so they’re somewhat effective. The unions know how to organize.

I’ll continue to support the national Occupy movement too, as long as it stays focused on economic demands. I would like it to get more specific about those. Some of the reforms I would like to see:

A constitutional amendment clarifying that a corporation is not a person.

A constitutional amendment clarifying that money is not speech.

I happen to believe that the founding fathers never intended for corporations to be people or for money to be speech, because they probably had a dictionary, and they probably understood what the meaning of “is” is. Some federal judges need these things spelled out, though. Next we’ll have to be telling them that war is not peace and thought is not a crime.

The above two amendments to the constitution would, if enacted and enforced, go a long way toward reforming the system. They would clarify that the rights of the people supersede the rights of corporations, and that the right of individuals to free speech supsersedes the right of corporations to drown out their speech with money that speaks louder than words.

Others in the movement have also come up with very good ideas for reform. The original Occupy Wall Street group came up with this statement of purpose, which notes some specific problems that need to be addressed. One of the working groups of the New York protest has come up with the 99% Declaration. It contains a list of suggested reforms, which the group hopes to have representatives from all over the country vote on in a national convention on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia. I agree with the ideas expressed therein, some more than others, but I certainly agree that all of these issues deserve to be part of the national debate.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine has been investigating the corruption on Wall Street since long before the Occupy movement began. His advice to Occupy Wall Street contains a specific list of reforms to the financial industry that would “hit bankers where it hurts” and would help return our government to serving the people. I particularly like the one where a tax on all trades would make the financial industry pay for its own bailouts, and return our tax money to us.



I think between these documents listed above, there is a useful start to getting our country back.

The Occupy movement, and the local occupation in particular, have also discussed some ideas that I consider really silly. Chief among them is this “consensus democracy” model that consists of endless discussion, open balloting via wiggly fingers (snap, twinkle, pop!), and where decisions are only made when a clique of people who all agree with each other manages to shout down or intimidate all other participants. It doesn’t work among 20 people. How is it going to work nationwide?

The worst aspects to the “consensus democracy” model being used in the Occupy movement are the lack of secret ballots, which means that individuals are easily intimidated by self-appointed leaders into going along with whatever the mob decrees, and also the fact that, since decisions effectively only seem to happen when some individual or group manages to dominate everyone else, there is real danger, if this ever became the national model, of it leading to dictatorship and authoritarian rule, complete with slaughter of dissidents.

The local occupation has already been shouting down anyone they don’t agree with. In their Google group, when Revo started speaking up, they couldn’t handle even one dissident. How would they tolerate real democracy, if they ever got into power? The answer is, they wouldn’t.

Give me the U.S. Constitution any day, folks. Its three branch system with its checks and balances and its bill of rights have been emulated the world over. That’s because, until the system gets badly corrupted, as it is now, it works about as well as you can expect a system that governs millions of people to work.

Occupy the Constitution. Occupy Wall Street. Occupy our Government. Occupy the Future.



Previous posts in my series on Occupy Baltimore:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Book review: Making Money (Terry Pratchett)

If laughter is, as they say, the best medicine, then I think the doctor might prescribe a Terry Pratchett book from time to time, at least if the doctor is a cynic who thinks it particularly healthy to laugh at the foibles of this world through the lens of a snarky imaginary one. Unfortunately, doctors today are too busy prescribing expensive patented pharmaceuticals, guaranteed effective by the salesman who takes them golfing.

Pratchett's Discworld is a carnival fun house mirror image of our own, but with fairytale creatures like dwarves, golems, and Igors (yes, that's plural) thrown in for good measure.

Making Money (Harper, October 2007) is typical Discworld fare in which Moist von Lipwig, "an honest soul with a fine criminal mind," follows on his success with reinvigorating the Post Office (in Going Postal), becomes the head of the Royal Mint and invents paper money. He also inherits the guardianship of the Chairman of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, and takes him for walkies every day (the Chairman is a dog).

Anyone in control of the money supply is naturally a bit of a target, so it must come as no surprise that complications ensue. Among other threats, the board of the bank is composed of a hereditarily wealthy family, the Lavishes, who are not exactly pleasant sorts.

The family's default leader seems to be Cosmo Lavish, who, like many of those born into the upper classes, has been trained by the Assassin's Guild. He also has an unhealthy admiration for Ankh-Morpork's ruthless, but sometimes beneficent dictator, Lord Vetinari. The chief cashier of the bank, Mr. Bent, is forbidding, ominous, and dull, and there may be something quite unnatural about him. It seems some sort of plot is afoot against von Lipwig and the Chairman.

A year ago, before this was published, I might have questioned the timely relevance of a satire about taking a banking system off the gold standard. That was a done deal long ago, and would seem to be mostly uncontroversial. With recent scares within the banking industry, however, an examination of the value on which our money is based, if any, seems timely. It's also much more palatable with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and preferably stuck there with toffee. It may even be fair to say, as Pratchett does, that "whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms, in the dark and based on bullshit."

Crazy as Pratchett's Discworld might be, it does ring frighteningly true. I ask you, who hasn't encountered a banker much like Moist von Lipwig?

" 'Well, I'm going to do my best to get my hands on your money!' he promised.

This got a cheer. Moist wasn't surprised. Tell someone you were going to rob them and all that happened was that you got a reputation as a truthful man."

If you haven't yet encountered Pratchett's Discworld series, I recommend it as light, enjoyable reading that will sometimes make you laugh out loud. I wouldn't rate Making Money as one of his best, but it's possible that's because I've now read several of his books and maybe the humor doesn't seem quite as fresh to me now. It must be extremely difficult to keep writing novels that deliver laughs on every page.

His earlier Witches Abroad, a delightful send-up of fairytales, which proposes that perhaps it's not always good for the heroine to marry the prince, is one of my favorites in the series. (The Discworld series does not need to be read in any particular order.)

Making Money is still well worth reading if you want a good chuckle at just how shaky the financial industry really is, or if you want to laugh in the face of possibly losing your shirt. With the economy seeming more uncertain every day, at least we can find some humor in it.

Making Money is currently available in hardcover from bookstores and all of the major online booksellers. It is due to come out in a mass-market paperback edition in October, and that can be pre-ordered now.

Sad note: In the course of writing this review, I discovered that Mr. Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. You can read his speech to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust Conference in the UK here. I hope that if you like his books, you’ll consider a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association, to help fund Alzheimer’s research.