BY MATT DONAGHY
In 1968, U.S. Steel decided that it didn’t like the New York zoning laws. The company was building its headquarters, but they were limited to a certain height. So, to make the building taller, they struck a deal with the city. If they purchased and maintained a park, Liberty Plaza, they could bend the law for their own benefit. Over the years, the park has changed hands, names and purposes (it was once used as a staging center for September 11 recovery efforts), but none as ironic as the one you would find right now. Liberty Plaza, used as a bribe between a massive corporation and the government, is now home to Occupy Wall Street, an anti-corporate movement.
Because this park is not owned by the government, it’s free from government interference. Occupy Wall Street is a grass-roots movement to equalize the rights between the top one to two percent of America and everyone else. Of the many things they want, their biggest demands are to revoke corporate personhood, increase taxes on the rich, and abolish corporate lobbying.
Politically speaking, what is the difference between a massive group of people from various walks of life with the sole purpose of accumulating money and power, and a single mother of two? According to the United States Supreme Court, there is none. In the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the government declared that corporations can give unlimited money to campaigns without interference. Many Occupy Wall Street protestors believe that on the basis of human nature, that distinction is unacceptable.
Generally, Joe Schmoe’s $1,000 donation to a candidate is chump change compared to a $50,000 check from Allstate. With their vast resources, corporations can wield more “influence” (spend more money) than any one person or group of Americans, and can disproportionately affect public policy. It’s simply unfair to the American people to be placed behind the rich and self-serving.
Corporate personhood becomes nothing more than a way to legally give campaign bribes and take rights away from the American people. The idea of the rich paying more taxes is a simple one, especially in these times. Why should they get a tax cut when many working people are starving? If you have more money, you pay more taxes. If you don’t, you pay less. It’s that simple. And, with the unemployment rate so high (and with another recession looming along with the ‘car-teetering-off-a-cliff’ state of Europe’s economy); it might not be the worst idea to have America’s wealthiest help everyone else under the burden. And it’s not fair to say the tax rate would be so high as to cause so called “job-creators” to discontinue hiring.
In the 1950s, under Republican President Eisenhower, the marginal tax rate was 90 percent. Asking for an additional five percent on the wealthy’s low tax rates is not insane. Taxes feed into the government. The government feeds most of the money into creating new jobs, either indirectly (a jobs plan) or directly (policemen, firemen, construction men – the interstate highways didn’t build themselves!). The only bad thing that could come of it in the long run is the rich not having quite as much money, and when college-educated hard working people are starving in the street, I honestly don’t care about that.
Some would say that the biggest issue with our political process is lobbyists. These are the men and women who try to affect the farthest reaches of the government with huge names and bigger bankrolls behind them and get things done for corporate America. They can reserve face-to-face time with some of America’s most important men and women, affect the content of bills, boost or downplay upcoming legislation and fight to reject the ones they can’t change. If the face of America, to our government, is corporate individuals whose sole purpose is to serve their company, how does the little man get represented? He doesn’t. Again, I’ll go back to the “people are starving” argument: a government that spends money bailing out banks and corporations instead of the working person isn’t a government for the people. In fact, it’s a government against them. Change needs to happen.
But the somber truth of America is that change is hard to come by, no matter what politicians say. We fight for it and vote for it and still nothing gets done. When the people decide to go onto the streets in the thousands, it may be a lost hope. But the fact that, at least for a moment, the national discussion has turned back to the money in Washington is a good thing. Whether or not it will have an effect is something that we really can’t say, but as long as we notice it, think about and talk about it – this movement will be a success.
Think about New York City – the grand metropolis full of life, the peak of human society, a symbol of the power of America. Tonight, in what some may consider the center of the world, 40,000 people will sleep in a homeless shelter and15,600 of them will be children. If any of you have younger brothers and sisters, imagine them in a shelter. This is what driving the economy into a wall has done. This is what the consequences of corporate America are. In 2010, the average bonus for an executive was $128,530. Sixty-two percent of Wall Street workers said they’re expecting a bonus that’s in line with their bonuses from last year, or higher. Wall Street bonuses add up to more than America’s financial aid to Africa. This is unacceptable. This is why we have to Occupy Wall Street.
