The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is asking people to “support” the Occupy Wall Street Movement by signing a petition that they will deliver to Congressional Republicans:
Sign our petition right now standing against Republican economic policies that hurt the middle class and working families while protecting loopholes for multi-millionaires and Big Oil companies.
This is yet another attempt by the Democratic Party to harness the movement for electoral victory in 2012. While I agree that you should support the occupy movement, I don’t see how this comes close to doing that. This is merely political Ju-Jutsu. Now I won’t tell you that I’m against closing loopholes, but just closing loopholes isn’t going to cut it. I’m for rolling back the Reagan tax giveaways. Democrats are adopting an appearance of solidarity with the agents of change while acting as the tepid defenders of the status quo.
I’m not saying you should never donate to any Democratic candidate (or any candidate of any party for that matter), but I would advise against donating to the DCCC as you lose power over which candidates receive the benefits of your donations.
If you really want to support the protests, get out into the streets. Even if you can only get out for an hour, get out there. If you can’t make it at all, you can donate to keep the protests going.
That said, the fact that some politicians feel that they need to acknowledge the protests or that there is gain in appearing to support the occupy movement means that movement is succeeding. However, the 1% will not tolerate even the appearance of support for the 99%:
From Politico:
After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a recent email urging supporters to sign a petition backing the wave of Occupy Wall Street protests, phones at the party committee started ringing.
Banking executives personally called the offices of DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and DCCC Finance Chairman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) last week demanding answers, three financial services lobbyists told POLITICO.
“They were livid,” said one Democratic lobbyist with banking clients.
The Democratic Party as a whole has yet to do anything other than adopt a public posture while still soliciting donations from the financial service and other sectors. What we have now is just a facade, but even that is too much for Wall Street to bear.
Politicians live with the reality that they have to solicit what are essentially bribes to afford to run for office. Senators, for example, need to raise tens of thousands of dollars per week just to be able to afford to run for reelection. So it’s no surprise that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is saying one thing publicly and saying something else when it privately asks for cash from the top 1%. Now with a corrupt Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, things will get worse. We need 100% publicly funded elections and we need to amend the Constitution to say that corporations are not people and money is not speech.
For now, politicians will have to decide if they’re going to continue to take bribes and participate in a system that serves the powerful or if they’ll take a chance and stand with the 99%.
Tags: campagin finance, Democratic Party, occupy wall street
