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Shantastic Marie

FAST FACTS: Connecting the Dots | Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - 0 views

www.policyalternatives.ca/...fast-facts-connecting-dots

Occupy Politics Thesis CCPA inequality

shared by Shantastic Marie on 23 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • rise in attention being paid to the growing poverty and inequality in Canada
  • The Occupy movement can be credited for much of the recent attention but it is the data being released by mainstream institutions and ‘think tanks’ that have made it politically acceptable to challenge the dismal reality. Most recent is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising (Dec. 2011). It shines a spotlight on the growing inequality in OECD countries, including Canada, which is shown to have income inequality above the OECD average
  • significant coming from the OECD
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • recognition that significant change is in order
  • economic policies are at the root of the problem. The report acknowledges that the policies that have given us an increasingly low-wage economy, inequitable tax policies and a shrinking social safety net are not serving us well
  • OECD appears to be realizing
  • For the OECD, this is a major shift in thinking
  • Neoliberalism was supposed to make the world a better place for us all.
  • The OECD Jobs study had a significant influence on policy reforms in Canada through the 1990s, many of which were first outlined in the Liberal government’s 1994 policy paper Agenda, Jobs and Growth. This document provided the template for a restructuring of social policy in Canada throughout the 1990s – a template that continues to guide policy today.
  • “Canada spends less on cash benefits such as unemployment benefits and family benefits than most OECD countries. Partly as a result, taxes and transfers do not reduce inequality by as much as in many other countries. Furthermore, their effect on inequality has been declining over time.”
  • “publicly provided services fulfill an important direct redistributive role” and that the scaling back of employment protection, something that the Jobs Study advocated for “ had an overall disequalizing effect.” The OECD report leaves us with hope because it demonstrates that we need to rethink neoliberal economic theory.
  • begin a process of reversing the damage done
  • As recommended by the OECD, this will require that we return to a more equitable taxation and redistribution model, and invest in education and social programs
  • latest mantra—austerity
Shantastic Marie

The Monitor | Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - 0 views

www.policyalternatives.ca/...index.php

Thesis inequality CCPA Politics

shared by Shantastic Marie on 23 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Shantastic Marie on 23 Feb 12
     
    Read later if need more info on previous revolutions, covers Latin America Revolutions & Middle East Revolutions in many part series
Shantastic Marie

Politics - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

m.theglobeandmail.com/...article2343558

Thesis Politics Kevin

shared by Shantastic Marie on 23 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • NDP leadership hopeful Nathan Cullen wants wealthy Canadians and corporations — particularly oil and gas companies — to pay more taxes.The British Columbia MP is proposing to create a new tax bracket for individuals earning $300,000 or more.And he's calling for a new corporate tax rate of 25 per cent for oil and gas companies.
  • reverse recent corporate tax cuts, raising the tax rate to 20 per cent from the current 15 per cent
  • need to raise revenue and promoting a healthy climate for business
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Mr. Topp has proposed creating a new 35 per cent tax bracket for individuals earning more than $250,000. And he's called for rolling back the corporate tax rate to 22 per cent
  • get the balance right
  • proceeds into incentives to support Canada's flagging manufacturing sector, another third into post-secondary education and the rest into general revenues
  • attempt to reap some broader, cross-country benefits from Canada's non-renewable energy industry before the resources run out
  • He accused the Harper government of living “in a fantasy world where the golden goose will be forever.”“Right now, we're being irresponsible. It's a wild West attitude.”
  • Shantastic Marie on 23 Feb 12
     
    "NDP's Cullen pitches higher taxes for rich Canadians, oil companies "
Shantastic Marie

Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination | David Graeber | Comment is fre... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...occupy-wall-street-protest

OccupyMovement Import

shared by Shantastic Marie on 21 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt
  • working-class
  • college
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates
  • colossal social failure
  • demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008
  • There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.
  • Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument
  • t seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for
  • Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before.
  • real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism
  • flaws are irrelevant
  • economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away
  • exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity"
  • rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below
  • entire political classes
  • target
  • This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged
  • beginning with the Arab Spring
  • opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire
  • consider the collapse of the European colonial empires
  • creation of the modern welfare state
  • But if the occupiers finally manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination, as in those first weeks after September 2008, everything will once again be on the table – and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can.
Shantastic Marie

Demand The Impossible | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters - 0 views

www.adbusters.org/...demand-impossible.html

OccupyMovement Import

shared by Shantastic Marie on 21 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Some Occupiers feel strongly that the movement should demand absolutely nothing from the economic and political system it’s rising up against. After all, the argument goes, the strength of the Occupy Movement thus far has been its potent indictment of the ruling class, coupled with its refusal to make any discernable demands or empower any official spokespeople
  • However, by taking direct aim at the relationship between capital and the state, Occupy has raised the issue of class struggle in the U.S.
  • Having raised the level of political awareness, the movement must now fashion class consciousness into political action
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • The legitimacy of the system failed, revealing its true nature. The democracy of the 1 percent is a sham; their police are but armed mercenaries.
  • Repression!
  • And to this end, we do need demands, not to explain ourselves to the 1 percent, but rather to anchor Occupy in the daily lives of the people whom we aspire to involve in our movement.
  • determination to squelch free speech and the right to assembly
  • violence of the police
  • Occupy is the anvil of the people
  • The coordinated repression against encampments nationwide speaks to this–as well as the 1 percent’s penchant for answering a challenge with blunt force.
  • misstep made all too often in the movement
  • draw new people into the movement
  • message that has the potential to resonate within the awakening consciousness of the 99 percent
  • demand of “Tax the rich” implicitly operates beyond the scope of this current capitalist economic system
  • dialogue of wealth redistribution beyond the scope of the 1 percent’s project of capital accumulation.
  • “Where’s our bailout?” directly calls into question the bank bailouts of 2008 and begs the question of why the 99 percent were expected to sacrifice under this tremendous recession, while those responsible for crashing the economy have raked in billions of taxpayer dollars.
  • “Where is our bailout” is a fair statement in favor of both wealth redistribution and for a just and equal society
  • Giving the proverbial bird to the existing power structure in the face of unbearable living conditions the world over isn’t enough at the end of an equally unbearable day.
  • demands for reforms may also germinate broader, more radical platforms
  • CAN THE historic task in front of Occupy be accomplished in its current form? It cannot.
  • This presupposes a unity that the heterogeneous ideologies that flow under the surface of the movement have yet to achieve.
  • It is necessary to articulate demands, and grievances that are bound under a unified set of independent political principles. We cannot ignore the 1 percent–who control the media, poison our skies and seas, and whisper consumer nothings in our ears. We must topple them
  • What is needed is a more potent injection of politics, reclaimed history and the fortitude to continue to fight back
  • heal the fissures of the left
  • solidarity
  • The success of concrete political tactics is measurable.
  • “Going off the grid” isn’t an option
Shantastic Marie

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters - 0 views

www.adbusters.org/...occupywallstreet.html

OccupyMovement Import

shared by Shantastic Marie on 21 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.
  • greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America
  • It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • ending the influence money has over our representatives
  • cleaning up corruption
  • Our government would be forced to choose publicly between the will of the people and the lucre of the corporations.
  • dismantling of half the 1,000 military bases America has around the world to the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act or a three strikes and you're out law for corporate criminals
  • separate money from politics
Shantastic Marie

The Tyranny of Stuctureless - 0 views

www.jofreeman.com/...tyranny.htm

Thesis Occupy

shared by Shantastic Marie on 22 Feb 12 - Cached
  • During the years in which the women's liberation movement has been taking shape, a great emphasis has been placed on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main -- if not sole -- organizational form of the movement. The source of this idea was a natural reaction against the over-structured society in which most of us found ourselves, and the inevitable control this gave others over our lives, and the continual elitism of the Left and similar groups among those who were supposedly fighting this overstructuredness
  • intrinsic and unquestioned part of women's liberation ideology
  • main goal
  • Shantastic Marie on 22 Feb 12
     
    Feminist ideals
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