for your appraisal

[de...@comcast.net]

Just thinking. The constitution was written by and for the 1%. why not through it right back at them???????

MISSION STATEMENT

We the 99%, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Occupy Movement for the abolition of the dominance of the 1%.

ABOUT US

We are here because of the endless wars.  War is a business in this country run by the military-industrial complex.  They are wars for profit, fought by our children, in order for the 1% to get richer.  The war profiteers make a lot of money while our children are killed, wounded, dismembered, toasted and psychologically damaged.  I have seen projections that state that these wars will eventually cost two to four trillion dollars down the line, all on the cuff, and the Pentagon cannot even tell us where all the money has gone.  This is the major factor in driving up our deficit.

We are here because of the prison-industrial complex. The United States is the lock-em-up capitol of the world. We are only 5% of the world’s population and yet we have 25% of the world’s prison population.  Our prison system has become a multi-billion dollar business. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.  We condemn other countries for far less.

We are here because our economy is in decline for the bottom 99%.  Corporate profits are booming for the malefactors of great wealth who drove us into this mess.  Yet, there are no indictments and no one goes to jail.  If corporations are people why are they not incarcerated like the rest of us?  The 1% get bailed out while the 99% get left out.  The problem with “too big to fail” are the words “too big.”  We need to down-size these corporations in order to share the wealth.  Why does a billionaire need another billion?  They have stolen our jobs, our homes, and our pensions.  With their wars, they steal our children.  The rich get richer, the middle-class gets drastically reduced, and the poor get the street or jail.  They have tried to pacify the 99% with bread and circus, but that has come to an end.

We are here because our federal government is corrupt to the core.  Corporate money floods into Congress and they suck it up like a vacuum cleaner.  Then Congress has the gall to tell us that money has no influence while they repeatedly pass legislation that makes corruption legal and favors the corporate regime.  Congress lives like fat cats off corporate money while the rest of us are suffering in economic servitude.  We now work longer hours for less money with fewer benefits and ever decreasing collective bargaining protections.  State governments think they can solve their fiscal problems with casino gambling.  This is nothing but a stock market for the poor.  Gambling never solved anything.  We need to get the money out of politics.  As it stands now, we have a system of legal bribery in place, nothing less.

We are here because our main stream media is owned and operated by the same corporate powers that have bought our government.  The fourth estate is what we are supposed to rely on for honest information; truth and hard questions about what is going on with our government and our economic institutions.  Instead we get lies, distortion and fluff.  How can we expect a media owned by corporations and sponsored by corporations to speak out about corporations?  The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News & Entertainment Corporation with its plethora of far right programming dishing out propaganda for the 1% is the best example that no one group should dominate a vast media empire.  Their so-called pundits and program hosts have sold their souls for their paychecks.  

This is why we are here.  This is why “we the people” have taken to the street.  Our government and economic systems have failed us.  The solution these systems offer to the problems we, the 99%, face are to attack our safety nets -- social security and medicare -- while they protect the profit margins, tax breaks and exorbitant compensation rates of the 1%.  We need a new “New Deal”.  It is time to reshuffle the stacked deck and fix it so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall be restored.  We will be in the streets until it is done. 

[cc2...@verizon.net]

to Deh. {?}

 

I'm a very left leaning history prof, and I strongly contest your statement that "the const. was wrtitten by and for the 99%." The picture is much more complicated than that, as a couple dozen radical historians would tell you. Howard Zinn called it as you say; Zinn  was a great guy, but he got this wrong. Read, Gary Nash, Eric Foner, Josephine Appleby, JGA Pocock, Sean Willenz-- shit-load of others.

Other-wise the mission statement looks OK, but don't we already  have a whole lot of mission statements and pre-ambles, etc. out there? Our mission statement should work to recruit new members from the 99%; this one here looks  too much like "preaching to the choir" of clued-in progressives, who already know who we are and where we're coming from. Our message and rhetoric should  ring true and clear for the millions of plain everyday working folks in whose interest we claim to be organizing.

In Solidarity and Dialogue,

 

Joe Cugini from OccupJP

[Terra Friedrichs]

I'll have a piece soon about how we, the 99%, actually got ripped off as way back as that.  I'll be citing Thomas Paine and others...citing specific writings. Stay tuned.  I just need to locate the actual docs online.  I have them in hard copy, but don't want to have to scan them all. 

We basically fought the Amerikan revolution so we could be ruled by a different King... the elite white minority land owners.  Which set the stage for corporate rights to dominate human rights at every level or our government.

Terra

*~*~*~*
Terra Friedrichs
978 808 7173 (cell)
978 266 2775 (desk)
978 266 2778 (home/messages)

[cc2...@verizon.net]

T

 

Looks like we've found something to disagree about. But that adds spice, no?

We oth like gardens, sweets, and non-violence..., and Tom Paine! He's the best! Unfortunately , he was in France when the const . got drafted, he could have sugested a lot of improvements; like, more direct democracy, more taxes on the rich, more social welfare for those who needed it, and  more restrictions to keep the miltiary from getting too big fer its britches...But-- it's not too late to make some of those upgrades now...

 

By the way;  for  a "food -----", you're admirably trim. How do you do that?  Myself, I'm obsessed with keeping  the extra off.. It crept up on me bad this winter.

 

I am 58 yrs old. Aquarius.

 

Joe!!

 

On 03/12/12, Terra Friedrichs<ter...@compuserve.com> wrote:

 

I'll have a piece soon about how we, the 99%, actually got ripped off as way back as that.  I'll be citing Thomas Paine and others...citing specific writings. Stay tuned.  I just need to locate the actual docs online.  I have them in hard copy, but don't want to have to scan them all. 

We basically fought the Amerikan revolution so we could be ruled by a different King... the elite white minority land owners.  Which set the stage for corporate rights to dominate human rights at every level or our government.

Terra*~*~*~*Terra Friedrichs978 808 7173 (cell)978 266 2775 (desk)978 266 2778 (home/messages)

[Terra Friedrichs]

Thanks for the correction, Joe...

I just sent you private note telling you my secret to staying "reasonably" thin...

I've seen you.  Come clean.  You can't POSSIBLY be THAT old! 

Terra

*~*~*~*
Terra Friedrichs
978 808 7173 (cell)
978 266 2775 (desk)

978 266 2778 (home/messages)

[cc2...@verizon.net]

T

 

Aww, I didn't intend anything as a "correction". I don't have the right!

T. Paine was a part of the making of a constitution, for the state of PA. It was a doosie! One legisl. assembly, directly elected by males, (no racial restr. at that point, but  vote for "free" men only- not slaves or indentured servants. PA had as many free as slave blacks. They adopted a formula for abolition of slavery over a period of about 20 yrs. {Paine was an anti-slavery absolutist, but he couldn't always get his way} All laws passed by the leg. were sent to the people for their thumbs up, thumbs down. Free public ed for all, early social welfare ideas and provisions for public employment in economic slumps, No "governor", just a sort of "chairperson"  wiht minimal powers, chosen by the legi9sl. Progressive taxes on land.

Paine had a circle of   ardent supporters, mostly the plain working men of Philly who'd read a lot and clued themselves in.  But Paine himself did not serve as an official or pol; his only power was the power to persuade, which he possesed in abundance. But, as I said, he did not always get his way; Quaklers were the social and $ elite of the state; they had good values, were anti-slvery in their hearts, and many of them freed their slaves after the revol, so slavery in the state was fading out fast. But, they had also become rich men by then in many cases; so, their consceineces and their wallets were not in synk. By our standards and even those of Paine, they were ...."semi-hyupocties".  But, if every state with slaves had slaveholders like those of PA, slavery in America would not have lasted beyond the early 19 c.  A lotta broken hearts,  bodies, lives saved.

AND; very relevant to Occupies present dialogue about "tactics"..... Paine and his men were of course revolutionaries, and accepted that you did not get rid of the Brits without a bit of shootin'. Paine arrived in America about 6 mos. before the revol. broke out, and saw all kinds of what we'd call "Direct Action" against the Brits. Well, he believed in the natural right of revolution against tyranny. A couple years into the revol, events in Philly took a turn toward chaos. War-time inflation was rampant,  esp bread prices, the poor were starving and some rich men of the city, like revol. financier  Robert Morris, were getting fat. Paine targetted this problem and men like Morris with his wicked pen.  But, some men in the city reverted to the direct action tactics they had used before the revolution, rioting, burning, etc.  Paine sympathized, but he condemmed them.  His position was that such tactics were appropriae under the undemocratic tyranny  fo Britain; but that in the new PA, the plain folks had other and better remedies-- the ballot, free speech, the right to petiton the govt., etc. Paine wanted the new democratic constitution of PA to be a model for other states, even the world.  As he saw it, his fellow cits now had something- democracy- that they should not want to loose, even in the name of a just cause. If PA could not hold on to its democracy in those "times that try men's souls", it would not endure in a world where trouble is always around some corner.

And the lesson for Occupy  in the present? Yes,  those who pay attention are so often dissapointed in our "democracy". It can seem like our fellow cits are sleeping, numb, have been bought out by beer, pizza, and You-tube. And yet, who could deny, we still do have the power to vote the rascals out, to lay the facts before the public and ---  to yell loud enough to wake them up!   Rotten, old, stale, inhuman ways of doing things have become entenched habits- but the "powers that be" DO NOT HOLD THE POWER TO STOP AN ELIGHTENDED PEOPLE.  Especially if we want a more democratic, freer and juster America, Occupy's challenge, should our initial campaigns fall short, is to intensify our effrots to  arouse the American people. If we  loose patience and vent our frustration in a campaign of trashing, we will lose most of America,--our immaturity, our comtempt for them and for a deeply flawed but evolving democracy , will be impossble to miss. We will lose, and we will deserve to lose.

And so, you see, I am a teacher-- I hope not one of those pontificating ones. Ahhh, maybe somewhat.

Do you think this little Tom Paine tale would help enlighten anyone?

 

I am 58 yrs old. While I sleep, I hang by my ankles, thus fighting gravity. It's helping. That, and ---- thinking impure thoughts.

 

regards and affection,

Joe

 

 

On 03/12/12, Terra Friedrichs<ter...@compuserve.com> wrote:

 

Thanks for the correction, Joe...

I just sent you private note telling you my secret to staying "reasonably" thin...

I've seen you.  Come clean.  You can't POSSIBLY be THAT old! 

Terra*~*~*~*Terra Friedrichs978 808 7173 (cell)978 266 2775 (desk)978 266 2778 (home/messages)

[cc2...@verizon.net]

 T

PS; did you know I was arrested for "tagging", couple weeks ago? I spray painted "Stop the Cuts" , etc, nr the Stony Brook T station.

Caught red handed, the Transit cop and everyone else I dealth with was soo gentle and polite!!

Best thing they did, in filling out my description, they said---- "thin build"!!!!  I was sooo happy, I slept like a baby overnite in the cell, on a concrete shelf with no pillow and one lousy blanket.

Seriously!

 

J

[Terra Friedrichs]

Thanks, Joe.  I don't mind being corrected.  Especially, if the correct is as gentle and accurate as yours.

I took a course in this and it was 8 hours long. and a lot of material was thrown my way.  So hopefully you'll edit my piece before I send it out to everyone and make a food out of myself.

What about the house where everyone was sequestered and some of our founding fathers stormed out and refused to sign?  Was that Pennsylvania, too?

Terra

*~*~*~*
Terra Friedrichs
978 808 7173 (cell)
978 266 2775 (desk)

978 266 2778 (home/messages)

[cc2...@verizon.net]

 T

hey, you said-- "make a food outa myself.." Must be the brownie talking...

 

Shucks, I'm so pleased you'd ask for some editing --- I did that as a side job for a short time. {there's no dough in it!}

 

Maybe we can work on the "4 evil snakes" together some time this week??

We'll need a whip for St. P to drive out the snakes with. I wore out my last one.....

 

J

 

 

On 03/12/12, Terra Friedrichs<ter...@compuserve.com> wrote:

 

Thanks, Joe.  I don't mind being corrected.  Especially, if the correct is as gentle and accurate as yours.

I took a course in this and it was 8 hours long. and a lot of material was thrown my way.  So hopefully you'll edit my piece before I send it out to everyone and make a food out of myself.

What about the house where everyone was sequestered and some of our founding fathers stormed out and refused to sign?  Was that Pennsylvania, too?

[cc2...@verizon.net]

t

 

Ps--yes the sequester place was in Phiily in 1787- some folks stormed out 'cause it was a sweltering July, and old Ben Franklin refused to shower....

 

J

 

 {this is also not true...}

[Terra Friedrichs]

no really. pls tell us the story of how some of the signers refused to sign.  i need your take on it. the course i took obviously left me with the wrong impression about dear thomas.

Terra

*~*~*~*
Terra Friedrichs
978 808 7173 (cell)
978 266 2775 (desk)

978 266 2778 (home/messages)