Political Irony

Dramatic confrontations attract the headlines and certainly are motivational to one side or the other but real progress and the best lessons may come from more gentle showdowns. Judy Rebick’s account, full story here, of an Occupy eviction in Toronto caused my spirits to soar because of the triumph of steady determined good will over baser impulses.

Rebick reports that like many occupy sites (for example: Political Irony report on Occupy Boston}:

there was a growing number of homeless people, some with serious mental health issues, who arrived because Occupy created such a welcoming environment in which they could be fully part of the community. It wasn’t easy and there were incidents but from what I could see they were handled with compassion and intelligence.

Occupy Toronto was relatively clean, well behaved and attentive to communications with authorities so there was little justification for shutting down the camp:

The occupiers had every right to be angry. And they were angry but they behaved with amazing discipline, militancy and calm.
… It was agreed that there would be no effort to stop city workers from taking down the tents. And the workers were very respectful, folding and tagging clothing and other items found in the tents and carefully taking them down.
… Perhaps it is true that the police were trying to recover their reputation post G20 but I also think they had a lot of respect for what the occupiers were doing. I heard that a lot of cops were referring homeless people who won’t go to shelters to Occupy Toronto where they would be well treated. The police negotiated every situation with considerable skill.
… I like to think that it was really because of the atmosphere created in the camp, an atmosphere of love and compassion, an atmosphere of commitment and determination, an atmosphere of a loving accepting community. I think maybe the police were affected by it too. I know that I have been.

I believe everyone who reads Judy Rebick’s full report will be affected too. The loss of this camp was a win for Occupys everywhere because of the way Occupy Toronto behaved. It will rise again even stronger. Occupy Toronto taught a good lesson to the administrators, police and everyone.  Occupy Toronto is leading by example in a manner I haven’t seen Martin Luther King Jr.
– Iron Filing

Who is Grover Norquist, you might ask? Well, find out because he is destroying your Congress, your country and the Republican Party

©Bob Englehart

What do you call a person who vociferously hates our government and works tirelessly to destroy our government? A traitor? Perhaps. What if he also would defund the military, police and fire departments? An anarchist? No, he’s a conservative icon and one of the most influential political figures in America. He’s Grover Norquist, grand doyen of the anti-tax pledge ubiquitous on the Republican aisles of Congress.

Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, an organization promoting higher taxes on themselves, is now confronting Norquist head on:

[Norquist] raised an issue we get all the time which is, ‘Well there’s nothing stopping you guys from paying higher taxes, just send a check to the government!’ And this to me is frankly an absurd position; I don’t consider it to be a very serious argument. Government is not a charity and we can’t rely on voluntary contributions from people to support the things that government does. And I also said to him, ‘Look would you be willing to sign a pledge where you’re willing to forgo all the benefits that government provides? Are you willing to sign a pledge that says you don’t want the U.S. military to protect you? That you will refuse to contact the police if somebody steals from you? That you will refuse to contact the fire department if your house is on fire? Because that’s the equivalent! Why should you get a free ride? Why should you benefit from my willingness to support the government? Let’s do it together.’ And he said, ‘If I don’t have to pay any taxes for it, I would forgo all those things!’ To which my response was, ‘Well there’s an easy way to do that, move to Somalia!’ And his argument was, ‘Somalia doesn’t suffer from too little government, it suffers from too much government.’ I don’t even begin to understand what that means, but again there’s only so much you can go into in these conversations.

Thom Hartmann’s blog points out the overwhelming evidence that Norquist hyperbole is basically anarchist:

There is evidence of Norquist attempting to defund our government into bankrupcy. There are government records, interviews, articles, and books by Norquist that implicate him as an anarchist out to destroy America as we know it. He imfamously announced during a NPR interview (May 25, 2001) what his anti-government movement was planning, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years,” he says, “to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

Ironically, many Republicans are very upset about the small number of naive, youthful anarchists complicating the Occupy Movement yet worship at the feet of a truly dangerous anarchist in their midst.
– Iron Filing

Former AIG CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, on right in picture, sues government for protecting Snowball's inheritance

Talk about chutzpah! The government, rightly or wrongly, pulls AIG from the brink of bankruptcy and now the beneficiary cries foul. Former AIG chief, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, is suing our government for $25 billion claiming that the bailout/takeover of 80% of shares essentially robbed AIG shareholders without due compensation. If the government had not stepped in with $70 billion of our tax dollars plus $110 billion from the Fed, the shares would have become worthless. Do we need a good-samaritan rule to protect the government from frivolous banksters?

Read more at MSNBC Bottomline or a surprizingly balanced FOX piece.
– Iron Filing