Is OWS a rebellion in search of a cause? To some extent, it is. But never fear, I am here to help.
As I said I would in my previous column, I have spent some time hanging out with the Detroit OWS crowd. No, I have not been camping out in Grand Circus Park. I am not committed enough to my craft to sleep in a drafty tent in October. But I attended the group’s initial meeting and have spent some time visiting the “occupation” site. Based on that experience, I have learned a few things:
First, some of the hangers-on in the OWS crowd really are the sort of garden-variety radical nuts one sees selling communist newspapers on college campuses. But for the most part, the OWS crowd is not crazy, not anti-American and not particularly anti-capitalism. They are just ticked off.
Second, the OWS movement, which is moving into its second month, is pretty clear about what it is against. In a nutshell, most OWS participants think the roughly 1 percent of Americans who can afford to buy members of Congress have rigged the economy in their favor. They want that to stop.
What’s less clear is what OWS (aka the 99 Percent Movement), isfor – other than, say, a basic restoration of the old-fashioned social contract that created the American middle class. How to get there? That’s not so clear.
In fairness, it’s not surprising that a brand new grassroots movement like OWS lacks a detailed platform. But, to some extent, I think critics are right when they say OWS needs very soon to start making some specific suggestions. So, I decided to help.
What follows are eight points I have circulated among the Detroit OWS crowd – to a fairly good response. I was so encouraged that I also e-mailed these ideas to OWS in New York. If I hear back from them, I’ll let you know.
- Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which created a healthy separation of commercial and investment banks. The repeal of Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 made possible some of the worst abuses that caused the banking crisis of 2008. Clearly, repeal was a failure and we need to go back to what works.
- Pass a real jobs bill. The proposed American Jobs Act contains a lot of good ideas, but is insufficient. Congress should pass a bill that spends even more on infrastructure, devotes more money to education and includes direct hiring modeled after the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Projects Administration.
- Commit to letting the Bush tax cuts expire. The tax rates of the 1990s worked well and produced federal surpluses. The Bush tax cuts didn’t. We should re-impose those tax rates – first on the wealthy and, over time, on everybody else.
- Get the big money out of politics. There are a lot of ways in which this could be done. One of the best ways would be to create a system for public financing of campaigns. But less-dramatic, intermediate steps that move us in the right direction should be supported.
- Overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. This will probably require a constitutional amendment declaring that the Constitution of the United States protects only the rights of natural persons. The rights of corporations should be limited to those outlined in statutes passed by Congress and state legislatures.
- Review all trade agreements and renegotiate the bad ones. Free trade can be a good thing, if it is thoughtfully set up with the interests of American workers in mind. Too often, it isn’t. Trade agreements that pit American workers against low-wage foreign labor in a race to the bottom need to be altered or eliminated.
- Rebuild America. Future generations need this one to leave them with a strong national infrastructure. If we are going to do that, we need to get started with all deliberate speed.
- Protect health care reform and build upon what has been passed. The Affordable Care Act is far from perfect, but scrapping it is a recipe for decades of further inaction. Let’s instead concentrate on making it better over time, establishing access to good health care as a right for all Americans.
