A plan for occupation

LITTLE ROCK — Politicians of both stripes tend to agree that this Occupy Wall Street consternation, if it is to take the next step toward becoming an actual political movement, must get specific on policy.

I don’t know why, though.

The anti-war movement did not concern itself with the logistics of getting out of Vietnam. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached a prophetic religion for the morality of civil rights. He didn’t negotiate the Voting Rights Act.

The Tea Party wanted its country back. Don’t we all? It wanted constitutionally limited government. Me, too. It wanted to get out of debt. Amen, brother.

Anyway, isn’t it specific to want government to stop imposing policies that extol corporations over people and widen the otherwise naturally occurring gap between the rich and the rest?

Isn’t it specific to observe that the future of a democratic society is threatened when 1 percent—or, really, two-tenths of 1 percent, as a new study says—comes into almost all the money?

Isn’t it specific to decry the everincreasing economic burden on the middle class of sending kids to college, or buying gasoline, or rebalancing assets because the main one, the house, isn’t worth what it once was?

Isn’t it specific to blame the wealthy elite for gambling elaborately on housing’s inflated worth and losing, only to get bailed out with the vital help of the 99-plus percent?

Conservatives will put down the Ayn Rand book only long enough to scoff at the “flea party” and lament the unwashed nature of these lesser human creatures with an entitlement mentality. They will deride the notion that these people are accomplishing anything by camping out on a parking lot.

Actually, though, movements require getting noticed, which can entail making a spectacle of oneself.

And while the occupiers with whom I visited outside the Clinton Presidential Center on Tuesday morning indeed appeared mildly unkempt, that was perhaps to be expected of persons who had spent the night in a tent and were busy obliging the police in a most law-abiding way by picking up and moving a few blocks.

Conservatives will tell you that this gap between the rich and not-rich is the meritocratic way of capitalist markets with free opportunity.

They will say that some people will succeed lavishly by their own accomplishment, creating jobs from the “supply side,” and should be applauded.

Remember, conservatives will say, that the ultimate greatness of America is that it permits the guy mowing the grass for a low wage to invent a better piece of sod himself and get filthy rich.

That fails to address the injustice by which the government would begin to favor him in policy only after he’s made his new sod and his fortune.

So I’m working, without invitation, on a mission statement and agenda by which these occupiers might meet this seemingly prevailing mandate to be more specific. Here’s a draft of that mission statement:

“A gap between the wealthy and the not-wealthy is a natural and not necessarily destructive consequence of a market economy. It has to do with skill, merit, good fortune and circumstance. But a problem arises for the credibility and vibrancy of the American democracy and way of life when the gap widens dramatically, as has been the case lately, to the point of polarized interests that erode a vital sense of cohesive community.

“The problem worsens when politicians impose policies resulting from the inordinate influence of the well-to-do and when those policies inevitably expand artificially the already inordinate advantages of the well-to-do.

“Our purpose is to use our rights as free citizens to call attention to this peril and bring pressure on the politicians to stop widening this gap arbitrarily, unfairly and destructively.”

Here is the mere start of a specific agenda: Undo the George W. Bush tax cuts for the highest incomes. Raise inheritance taxes on the most-vast estates. Cut payroll taxes. Provide job stimulus. Require corporations to identify themselves when contributing to dummy political organizations that spend veiled and extravagant sums to influence elections.

If any of that is too complicated, the occupiers could always say they want their country back.

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John Brummett is a regular columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com.