The Stone Street Press

I mentioned in my previous post, the talk I saw on CSpan delivered by Catherine Crier at the NYRW Club. She is an attractive woman with a razor-sharp non-partisan intelligence –a think-for-herself intelligence that was distinguished by an utter absence of blame!

I’m sure the matrons of the NY Republican Women’s Club are right now holding an emergency meeting to figure out how such a bomb-thrower had been welcomed into their midst in their sofa’d sanctum.

[Here is an excerpt from her blurb for her new book, which was the subject of her talk:

That –writes Catherine Crier– is my rallying cry for the protestors on Wall Street, for the millions of citizens who are unemployed, for the anti-government Tea Partiers and for the nation’s small business owners and entrepreneurs. It is time to expose the imposters and reclaim capitalism for the American people.

Today, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is considered a Bible for capitalism, but when published in 1776, it was a blasphemous challenge to the big business, big government mercantilism in Europe. Smith’s free market theories expanded economic opportunity, promoted competition and encouraged innovation, in large part, by attacking the “concentrated wealth and power” of Britain’s commercial elite.

More than taxation without representation, it was the corrupt British economic system that ignited the American Revolution–just read the entire Declaration of Independence. This
insidious corruption was a major focus of Smith’s economic treatise. Smith’s theories dovetailed beautifully with Thomas Jefferson’s political manifesto, and his writings became the framework for our capitalist philosophy. But as both men learned in their lifetime, theory and practice are rarely in sync.

In a Faustian bargain, our leaders pay homage to Smith’s ideals, but from the outset, they have ignored his model in favor of rapid national expansion and global economic power. What we call capitalism is, in fact, the American version of mercantilism. Ludwig von Mises, a libertarian economist, summed up its benefits rather nicely: “Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a growing population.” Measured thusly, the results have been successful for quite some time, but if the goal is the long-term viability of our economic and political democracy, we are in serious trouble.

Just as Jeffersonian democracy operates best on a small scale, Adam Smith believed his self-correcting free markets were ideal for small businesses in a domestic economy. Integrated in their communities, these businesses would be influenced directly by the needs and demands of consumers, and any dangerous or abusive conduct would rarely affect the broader economy. But Smith treated large, powerful companies very differently. He said big business was led by “an order of men…that generally have an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public”, and he referred to powerful corporations (then known as joint stock companies) as “unaccountable sovereigns” that were as dangerous to free markets as tyrannical governments. Unrestrained, they had the power to shape society and governments for their own purposes, and consumers would pay for “all the extraordinary profits” while suffering from “all the extraordinary waste”, the inherent fraud and abuse, that accompanies such immense economic power.”

[LET ME REPEAT THAT LAST –And tell me if it doesn’t exactly describe the sorry state we have reached today!:

” (Adam Smith) said big business was led by “an order of men…that generally have an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public”, and he referred to powerful corporations (then known as joint stock companies) as “unaccountable sovereigns” that were as dangerous to free markets as tyrannical governments.
Unrestrained, they had the power to shape society and governments for their own purposes, and consumers would pay for “all the extraordinary profits” while suffering from “all the extraordinary waste”, the inherent fraud and abuse, that accompanies such immense economic power.”

WHAT a two-by-four! No wonder that matron was disturbed.

Without spending TOO much time monitoring the political coverage of the media, this weekend (7th-8th January, 2012) furnished yet more evidence that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is going from strength to strength in capturing the attention, the interest, and more and more the admiration and even support of the nation. (And I suspect that there are even some 1-percenters in there with the rest of us 99-percenters.)

I was reminded of the role of the police around the OWS protesters: for the most part they were extremely well behaved and considerate of them, and many of the protesters’s signs said as much. [There were some exceptions on either side of the barriers, but they were VERY rare. It was clear that the vast majority of the police --in the midst of massive police layoffs-- regarded themselves as being part of the 99 percent.]

Yesterday I reported in this blog the strong support that author Chris Hedges had expressed: for him, OWS represented the very top, the essence of participatory democracy –the energy vital for tackling the ills of our abused and broken system.

We KNOW that the system is broken when we consider NOT JUST that no one from Wall Street responsible for the Financial Reckless Speculation and Collapse of 2008 has been indicted, but that IF IT HAD BEEN UP TO MOST OF US, we would not even have demanded indictments. Or, possibly, even known that a crime had been committed at our expense!

Yes, I am afraid so!

That is how passive we had become. Let’s face it, we are incredibly naive about the workings of these interconnected systems, and that very naivete is an absolute boon, an open invitation to the big banks and corporations to ride roughshod over the niceties of civilized behavior.

Here, let me enter a sincere plea: please, let us NOT blame the banks and the corporations!
Rather, let us blame ourselves for letting them get away with it. We begin to address these ills by taking responsibility ourselves. Nobody MADE us do anything –we were often too willing, and blind, participants. We have come too far to surrender the power back to The Perps. Justice will be administrated. We will insist on it. And it will be a huge education for us all.

There will come a time –and I feel it will be quite soon– when the Wall Street Perpetrators are subjected to the embarrassment of being paraded through the Public Square.

And how very fitting it would be for that Public Square to be Zuccotti Park!

What a sweet roosting spot for chickens to come home to!

My friends: Save those banana peels and that rotten pizza: we will build old village-green stocks in Zuccotti Park and clap those Wall Street Perps into them.
My sense is that it is not the huge fines (that they no doubt deserve to pay) but the Public Embarrassment visited on them that will be the most effective deterrent.

[I had intended to reproduce here –but will save it for the next blog– another piece from Sunday’s CSpan –a talk that I saw by an author, Catherine Crier, who had written a recently published book. ( She had been a judge in Texas, but then went to work in Television –working both sides of the media-aisle, i.e. with CNN AND FOX.
She was visiting the rareified space of the New York Republican Women’s Club, where the mostly matronly audience sat in comfortable and handsome flowery sofas.

The unnerving Din of Pindrop was utterly eliminated by thickly piled carpetting.

One gracious and softly spoken matron rose afterwards to “thank our guest” for her “most interesting” presentation, but when it came to the nitty-gritty of her question for Catherine Crier (who, it turned out, was a treacherous turncoat from a Republican family ), she began to speak of The Evil of President Obama –and of George Soros! Our matron made no mention of the Koch Choirboys!

Quite a performance!

I strongly recommend to your attention the piece I reproduce in the next blog-item –it is a very powerful Non-Partisan piece.

As you know, CSpan does a 3 hour interview with authors it judges to be significant. Today it was the writer Chris Hedges –ex NYTimes reporter who has made a name for himself as a political/cultural critic with strong anti-war views.

One of the things that impressed me about Hedges was that though one could say his politics were generally to the left of center, a tendency to speak his mind (and, apparently, KNOW his mind) could land him outside that GPS zone.

He mentioned that he had no TV, and did not tweet. He preferred to read. I found his list of favorite books more than a little daunting, with titles that sounded like symposiums, or some elite pretentious course of “higher learning”. [People who read this blog are familiar with my feelings about teaching and teachers. Some teachers seem to want to impress you with their superior knowledge; with their big words they do not lend themselves to easy communication and comprehension. My assumption that "the effect created is what the creator actually wants to create" has shown me time and again that superior knowledge must be combined with simple communication.]
I am not accusing Hedges of this but I am saying that his complicated titles make me a little uneasy. The desire to impress is important but is often a sign of a certain immaturity, and perhaps my sense of “not being drawn” (see my blog title above) to Hedges comes from a hint of superiority in how he presents himself.

But I was at the same time drawn to known more about him, and was pleased to discover in myself a positive reaction to many of the things he was saying.

One thing very much in his favor was the fact of how much he supports Occupy Wall Street. Indeed, you could say (or I should say, I could say)
that OWS seemed to him to be the answer to so many things that upset him about our political, economic and cultural decline.
[The myriad disagreements that we both might discover that we have do completely EVAPORATE in the face of this one huge area of agreement. That is how important I --and presumably Hedges-- see Occupy Wall Street.]

I imagine that there are many Chris Hedges speeches to be found on YouTube and other places.

I will just quote a section from Wikipaedia’s biography of CH that gives a good sense of what he is about]:

” Hedges, an outspoken critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, was also an early and vocal critic of the Iraq War. He questioned the rationale for war by the Bush administration and was critical of the early press coverage, calling it “shameful cheerleading”. In May 2003, Hedges delivered a commencement address at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois, saying:

“We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security.”
His employer, The New York Times, criticized his statements and issued him a formal reprimand for “public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper’s impartiality.” Shortly after the incident, Hedges left The New York Times to become a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, write books and teach.

In his December 29, 2008 column for Truthdig, Hedges identified himself as a “socialist” in contrast to what he sees as “ruthless totalitarian capitalism.” On November 4 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration.”

[I will leave it at that for now. I am sure that you can still find that whole 3-hour CSpan interview with Hedges. They will probably rebroadcast it a few times over the weekend.

I will certainly be looking at it again. See you back here later?