Red, White and Angry : Communist, Nazi parties endorse ‘Occupy’ protests

THE DAILY CALLER

12:31 AM 10/17/2011

In a move that may redefine the term “strange bedfellows,” the American Nazi Party issued an official endorsement of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement on Sunday afternoon. The announcement put the organization, a self-described “National Socialist” political party, in company with the Socialist Party USA, which explained its own support for the left-wing protesters in a nationwide conference call last Tuesday night, crediting organized labor with the protests’ strength and sophistication to date.

The American Nazi Party is the most politically sophisticated U.S. remnant — but by no means the only one — of white supremacist Adolph Hitler’s murderous 20th century movement, which sought to establish socialism for Aryans, and to subjugate non-Aryans. The party calls Hitler’s Mein Kampf “an ideological blueprint for healthy Aryan survival.”

In its statement on Sunday, the Westland, Mich.-based Nazi party wrote that the Occupy Wall Street protests are “TAYLOR [sic] MADE for National Socialists, as well as WN [White Nationalists] who are serious about DOING SOMETHING.”

“I urgently URGE all of you,” the statement’s unnamed author added, “to TAKE PART and JOIN IN when these protests hit your neck of the woods. Produce some flyers EXPLAINING the ‘JEW BANKER’ influence — DON’T wear anything marking you as an ‘evil racist’ — and GET OUT THERE and SPREAD the WORD!”

While Nazis seem unenthusiastic about visibly linking their flagship organization to the vocal protests that have popped up in dozens of U.S. cities, the same can’t be said of the Communist Party USA.

John Bachtell, an Illinois-based community organizer and Communist Party USA board member, addressed the “Occupy Chicago” protest on Saturday.

“I bring greetings and solidarity from the Communist Party,” Bachtell said to hoots and applause. “We are here, marching side-by-side. We’ll sleep here. We’ll be with this movement ’til the very – ’til we make all the changes that we know we have to make.”

Bachtell also organized the Tuesday evening conference call, with an online call to action that framed the Communist Party’s involvement as one part of a larger movement uniting the “Occupy” protesters with a “Week of Action for Jobs” organized by the AFL-CIO, and with congressional Democrats’ push to pass President Obama’s American Jobs Act.

“While there is a wide range of political and ideological trends,” he wrote, “there is a consensus against corporate greed, getting money out of politics, taxing the rich and putting people before profits.

“A big challenge for the CPUSA and left, progressive movements is to link these demonstrations with the labor led all-people’s coalition and help deepen understanding that the path to progress must be through electoral and political action including defeating Republican Tea Party reaction in 2012.”

Communist Party USA Secretary/Treasurer Roberta Wood moderated the conference call, which she announced halfway through had attracted 88 callers.

“’We are [the] 99 percent.’ What a beautiful idea. It re-draws the fault lines of society,” said Wood, a former executive board member of United Steel Workers Local 65 who has also been labor editor of the People’s Weekly World.

“We as communists are also part of that 99 percent. Our deep involvement in our communities and workplaces and unions and neighborhood organizations [will] strengthen a new national conversation that will no doubt impact the future of our country.”

Southern California Communist Party leader Arturo Cambron also addressed the call, praising “the growing of the occupying community.”

“We’ve been getting a lot of support from an unusual amount of very, very broad forces,” Cambron added. “The movement has gone [on] to get the endorsement of a lot of trade unions, including the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, which is I think one of the most powerful, most progressive labor organizations in the country.”

John Wojcik, labor editor for the People’s World, told the conference call that after a recent Occupy Chicago march, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka “was speaking to law students at the Chicago-Kent Law School just a few blocks away. And they heard him urge support for Occupy Wall Street, and offered them use of union halls [and] other resources. And he was using their language. He said we have an economy, a political process, that isn’t serving ‘the 99 percent.’”

Communist Party USA leader Jim Lane, calling in from Dallas, added that “the Texas AFL-CIO published contact information, urged participation everywhere, and sent their whole staff to the Austin action.”

With its embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Nazis’ path has become remarkably similar to that of organized U.S. communists, with its primary distinguishing feature being the white supremacists’ near-universal blame of Jews for what they see as the worst features of capitalism.

“The pro-white movementites should be JOINING this Occupy movement and supporting it!” read a statement published Thursday on the American Nazi Party-affiliated “White Honor” website.

“Even Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP had to vote with open communists on some issues to achieve their goals. WE need to utilize and support every movement of dissent against this evil American empire, regardless of which end of the political spectrum it originates from.”

The NSDAP was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, rendered in English as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

On the same website, American Nazi Party chairman Rocky Suhayda wrote Thursday that it was “time to pull WN [White Nationalists’] heads out of their collective ass’s [sic], and JOIN IN the attack on Judeo-Capitalism.”

In a 2009 feature exploring why some white supremacists supported the newly inaugurated President Barack Obama, Esquire magazine noted that Suhayda’s claim to fame was “Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: ‘If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.’”

While the Occupy Wall Street movement has become a radical kitchen sink of left-wing social gripes focusing most of its rage on bankers and capitalism, anti-Semitic insinuations are now more common than when protests first began September 17 in New York City.

Speaking to Reason TV on October 12, Occupy Los Angeles protester Patricia McAllister said that “the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government — they need to be run out of this country.”

McAllister introduced herself to the cameraman as an employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

As the “Occupy” protests gather steam, nearly all of their momentum is still provided by organizers on the far left end of America’s political spectrum. But the entry of real-life Nazis indicates an unprecedented broadening of a U.S. protest movement.

The American Nazi Party’s official Twitter account proclaimed on Saturday that “The Protests Are Going To Become Much More Frightening…. One can only hope.”

Steve Jobs on Education

By Jay P. Greene 10/06/2011

Everyone is talking about Steve Jobs this morning.  The acknowledgement of how he improved the human condition while also making billions in profits for himself and others almost makes the Al Copeland Humanitarian Award unnecessary this year.  Steve Jobs embodied the entrepreneur as humanitarian — not because he gave away his wealth as if to cleanse himself of the sin of having earned it, but because he created and promoted consumer items that significantly improved our lives while justly generating enormous wealth for himself, his employees, and shareholders.

In addition to embodying the spirit of “The Al,” Jobs had quite a lot of smart things to say about education reform.  I’m grateful to Whitney Tilson for reminding me of this.  Here are some selected remarks from Steve Jobs on education:

[On Unions]

I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education. Maybe even more important than a great family life, but I don’t know how to do that. Nobody knows how to do that. But it pains me because we do know how to provide a great education. We really do. We could make sure that every young child in this country got a great education. We fall far short of that…. The problem there of course is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.

[On Vouchers]

But in schools people don’t feel that they’re spending their own money. They feel like it’s free, right? No one does any comparison shopping. A matter of fact if you want to put your kid in a private school, you can’t take the forty-four hundred dollars a year out of the public school and use it, you have to come up with five or six thousand of your own money. I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to get students. Secondly, I think you’d see a lot of new schools starting. I’ve suggested as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School, they have a public policy track; they could start a school administrator track. You could get a bunch of people coming out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college, very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they’d start a school. I believe that they would do far better than any of our public schools would. The third thing you’d see is I believe, is the quality of schools again, just in a competitive marketplace, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. Alot of the public schools would go broke. There’s no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years

DM: But deservedly so.

SJ: But far less painful I think than the kids going through the system as it is right now.

[On Digital Learning]

The market competition model seems to indicate that where there is a need there is a lot of providers willing to tailor their products to fit that need and a lot of competition which forces them to get better and better. I used to think when I was in my twenties that technology was the solution to most of the world’s problems, but unfortunately it just ain’t so… We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46 year old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn’t be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer….

As you’ve pointed out I’ve helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world and I absolutely convinced that is by no means the most important thing. The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can. The elements of discovery are all around you. You don’t need a computer. Here – why does that fall? You know why? Nobody in the entire world knows why that falls. We can describe it pretty accurately but no one knows why. I don’t need a computer to get a kid interested in that, to spend a week playing with gravity and trying to understand that and come up with reasons why.

DM: But you do need a person.

SJ: You need a person. Especially with computers the way they are now. Computers are very reactive but they’re not proactive; they are not agents, if you will. They are very reactive. What children need is something more proactive. They need a guide. They don’t need an assistant. I think we have all the material in the world to solve this problem; it’s just being deployed in other places. I’ve been a very strong believer in that what we need to do in education is to go to the full voucher system. I know this isn’t what the interview was supposed to be about but it is what I care about a great deal. (Source: Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories)

The above interview was from 1995, but it is clear that Jobs did not significantly change his mind over time.  In 2007 he reiterated that unions and lifetime employment for teachers were at the heart of the problem.  This is from PC World:

During a joint appearance with Michael Dell that was sponsored by the Texas Public Education Reform Foundation, Jobs took on the unions by first comparing schools to small businesses, and school principals to CEOs. He then asked rhetorically: “What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in, they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good? Not really great ones, because if you’re really smart, you go, ‘I can’t win.’ “

He went on to say that “what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.”

After Steve Jobs made these comments I wrote an op-ed for the NY Sun, which stated:

There is a price to be paid for this kind of frank analysis and Steve Jobs knows it. “Apple just lost some business in this state, I’m sure,” Mr. Jobs said. Of course, Apple sells a large portion of its computers to public school systems. By taking a stance against school unionization, Mr. Jobs may lose some school sales for Apple.

Sharing the stage with Mr. Jobs was Michael Dell, the chief executive officer of Dell, a competing computer manufacturer. By comparison, according to the description of the event, Mr. Dell “sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap,” during Mr. Jobs’ speech while the audience at an education reform conference “applauded enthusiastically.”

Mr. Dell followed Mr. Jobs by defending the rise of unions in education: “the employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good. … So now you have these enterprises where they take good care of their people. The employees won, they do really well and succeed.”

Whether Mr. Jobs or Mr. Dell is right about the role unions have played in public education, one thing is perfectly clear – attacking the unions is a controversial and potentially costly choice for corporate CEOs.

The safe thing is to make bland declarations about the need to improve the quality of education without getting into any of the messy particulars that might be necessary to produce a better education. Changing the status quo in education almost certainly requires ruffling someone’s feathers, but doing that is almost certainly bad for business.

In part this is why we see highly successful entrepreneurs who survive in a world of ruthless competition abandon these business principles when they turn to education philanthropy. People who would never endorse the idea that businesses should be granted local monopolies, offer workers lifetime tenure, or pay employees based solely on seniority, embrace a status quo public system that has all of these features.

While some CEOs may sincerely believe that education is somehow different from the rest of the world in which they live, others have been cowed into submission. Teachers are a very large, well-organized, and relatively affluent consumer and political bloc….

Steve Jobs has embarked on a perilous path, but with solid evidence and persuasive arguments, he can move all of us toward higher quality schools. He should be applauded for having the courage to say out loud what scores of other business leaders are too sheepish to say.

Unfortunately, Steve Jobs will no longer be with us as we try to advance on this perilous path of education reform.

-Jay P. Greene

Solar Energy Lobby Calls For Extending Obama's Stimulus Grants for Solar Power

By Elizabeth Harrington October 12, 2011

(CNSNews.com) - The head of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the trade association that advocates for the the solar energy industry, said Wednesday that the solar industry is “rock-solid” and that a program included in President Barack Obama's 2009 economic stimulus law that provides federal grants to the solar energy industry should be extended.

Under current law, the stimulus program is set to expire at the end of this year.

SEIA CEO Rhone Resch also said it would be a “huge mistake” to blame the entire industry for the problems at Solyndra, Inc.

During a conference call briefing, CNSNews.com asked Resch: “Why should U.S. taxpayers give another penny to the solar energy industry?”

He replied: “Well, you know, first of all the solar industry was invented here in the United States, it is now the fastest growing industry here in the U.S.”

He continued: “But due to the economic downturn in this country itʼs still very difficult to finance projects, which are going to deliver electricity at a lower cost to the taxpayer than what exists today, without programs like the 1603 program.

“The solar industry has proven itself as a rock-solid, economically viable industry here in the United States. Weʼre growing faster than any other industry right now, and itʼs important at this juncture with the economic conditions that exist in this country, that we keep smart policies like the 1603 program in place,” Resch said.

Resch held a briefing with reporters to address the impact of extending the Section 1603 Treasury Program, which was a part of President Barack Obama's $825 billion economic stimulus law.

The program “allows the owner of commercial solar property to receive a 30 percent grant, in lieu of taking the solar Investment Tax Credit,” according to SEIA.

As of June 29, the Section 1603 Treasury Program had awarded 2,657 grants totaling $1.18 billion for more than 6,300 individual solar projects in 45 states.

“Ultimately this is the kind of policy that makes sense,” Resch said. “This is the kind of policy that actually gives a positive return to the taxpayer.”

The 1603 treasury program will expire on Dec. 31, and would cost over $1 billion if extended, according to President Obamaʼs 2012 fiscal year budget, that takes into account the programʼs extension.

The tax credits are designed “to reimburse eligible applicants for a portion of the cost of installing specified energy property used in a trade or business or for the production of income,” according to the Treasury Department.

During the briefing, Resch cited a study by EuPD Research that said a one-year extension of the program would result in an "additional 37,000 jobs."

“That is what is at stake if Congress extends the program,” he said. “The flip side is if they donʼt, obviously these jobs wonʼt be created and the industry will contract and will face a very difficult time going forward.”

Resch was asked if the unfolding Solyndra scandal has “poisoned the atmosphere” in Washington for him and SEIA. The solar panel manufacturer filed for bankruptcy last month after receiving $535 million loan guaranteed by a Department of Energy program in 2009 over the objections of federal analysts.

“We support the investigation into Solyndra bankruptcy and the hearings, I think, are designed really to shed more light on to what happened," Resch said.

“If they were found to have broken any laws, they need to be held fully accountable. So, you know, for our position here, information is not the enemy. But we think that itʼs a huge mistake if one tries to--letʼs just say, view the entire solar industry through the Solyndra lens.”

He added: “They in no way represent the overall health of the industry.”

President Obama visited Solyndra in May 2010, commending the now failed company: “The promise of clean energy isnʼt just an article of faith.”

Solar power as a whole accounts for less than 1 percent of electricity production in America, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administrationʼs most recent statistics on renewable energy consumption and electricity.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/solar-energy-lobby-calls-extending-obamas-stimulus-grants-solar-power

What's Occupying Wall Street?

The protesters have a point, if not the right target.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - OCTOBER 14, 2011

In the matter of Occupy Wall Street, the allegedly anticapitalist movement that's been camped out in lower Manhattan for the past few weeks and has inspired copycat protests from Boston to Los Angeles, we have some sympathy. Really? Well, yeah.

OK, not for the half-naked demonstrators, the ranting anti-Semites, Kanye West or anyone else who has helped make Occupy Wall Street a target for easy ridicule. But to the extent that the mainly young demonstrators have a valid complaint, it's that they are trying to bust their way into an economy where there is one job for every five job-seekers, and where youth unemployment runs north of 18%. That is a cause for frustration, if not outrage.

The question is, outrage at whom? On Wednesday, Occupy Wall Street marched on J.P. Morgan Chase's headquarters, after having protested outside CEO Jamie Dimon's home the previous day. That's odd, seeing that J.P. Morgan didn't take on excessive mortgage risk and didn't need (although it was forced to take) TARP money. The demonstrators also picketed the home of hedge fund mogul John Paulson, who made much of his recent fortune betting against the housing bubble, not helping to inflate it.

As for Wall Street itself, on Tuesday New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli issued a report predicting that the financial industry will likely lose 10,000 jobs by the end of next year. That's on top of the 4,100 jobs lost since April, and the 22,000 since the beginning of 2008. Overall New York-area employment in finance and insurance has declined by 8.9% since late 2006. Even Goldman Sachs is planning layoffs.

So much for the cliche of Wall Street versus Main Street, the greedy 1% versus the hard-done-by 99%. That may be the core conviction of Occupy Wall Street and its fellow-travelers, and it may be a slogan in nearly every Democratic campaign next year, including President Obama's. Whether or not that's smart Democratic politics, the voters will decide.

Still, if anyone in the Occupy Wall Street movement wants an intellectually honest explanation for why they can't find a job, they might start by considering what happens to an economy when the White House decides to make pinatas out of the financial-services industry (roughly 6%, or $828 billion, of U.S. GDP), the energy industry (about 7.5% of GDP, or $1 trillion), and millionaires and billionaires (who paid 20.4% of all federal income taxes in 2009). And don't forget the Administration's rhetorical volleys against individual companies like Anthem Blue Cross, AIG and Bank of America, or against Chrysler's bondholders, or various other alleged malefactors of wealth.

Now move from words to actions. Want a shovel-ready job? The Administration has spent three years sitting on the Keystone XL pipeline project that promises to create 13,000 union jobs and 118,000 "spin-off" jobs. A State Department environmental review says the project poses no threat to the environment, but the Administration's eco-friends are screaming lest it go ahead.

Then there are the jobs the Administration and its allies in Congress are actively killing. In June, American Electric Power announced it would have to shutter five coal-fired power plants, at a cost of 600 jobs, in order to comply with new EPA rules. Those same rules may soon force the utility to shutter another 25 plants. Bank of America's decision last month to lay off 30,000 employees is a direct consequence of various Congressional edicts limiting how much the bank can charge merchants or how it can handle delinquent borrowers.

These visible crags of the Obama jobs iceberg are nothing next to the damage done below the waterline by the D.C. regulations factory, which last year added 81,405 pages of new rules to the Federal Register, bringing the total cost to the U.S. economy of regulatory compliance to an estimated $1.7 trillion a year.

Less easy to quantify, but no less harmful, are the long-term uncertainties employers face in trying to price in the costs of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the potential expiration next year of the Bush tax cuts, the possible millionaire surcharge, the value of the dollar and so on. No wonder businesses are so reluctant to hire: When you don't know how steep the trail ahead of you is, it's usually better to travel light.

This probably won't do much to persuade the Occupiers of Wall Street that their cause would be better served in Washington, D.C., where a sister sit-in this week seems to have fizzled. Then again, most of America's jobless also won't recognize their values or interests in the warmed-over anticapitalism being served up in lower Manhattan. Three years into the current Administration, most Americans are getting wise to the source of their economic woes. It's a couple hundred miles south of Wall Street.

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Parents Form 'Unions' For School Reform

By CHRISTINA HOAG • Associated Press | Posted: Monday, October 10, 2011 12:30 am

LOS ANGELES • Shoehorned into a small living room in a south Los Angeles apartment, a dozen parents discuss why their children's school ranks as one of the worst in the nation's second-largest school district.

The answers come quickly: Teachers are jaded; gifted pupils aren't challenged; disabled students are isolated; the building is dirty; office staff treat parents disrespectfully.

"We know what the problem is — we're about fixing it," said Cassandra Perry, the Woodcrest Elementary School parent hosting the meeting. "We're not against the administrators or the teachers union. We're honestly about the kids."

School parent groups are no longer just about holding the next bake sale fundraiser. They're about education reform.

The Woodcrest mothers and fathers, all wearing buttons saying "parent power," are one of the newly formed "parents unions" that are springing up from San Diego to Buffalo, N.Y., with the same goal — to push schools to improve academic achievement.

Behind the parent empowerment movement is a feisty Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Parent Revolution, which in 2010 pushed through a landmark law giving parents authority to force turnarounds at failing schools through a petition.

Known as the "parent trigger," the California law was the first of its kind in the nation. It inspired Texas and Mississippi to adopt similar laws, and legislation is under consideration in 20 other states. Two states have voted down parent trigger bills.

"Parents have a different incentive structure than anyone else," said Ben Austin, Parent Revolution's executive director. "They're the only ones who really care about kids."

It's a compelling argument for many parents.

San Diego mother Teresa Drew founded United Parents for Education after her daughter's reading and math scores fell below grade level for two years. The district is not doing enough to ensure that teachers are effective and weed out bad educators, she said.

"I talked to other parents and found they had the same experience," Drew said. "I have nothing against the PTA, but the problem for me is there's a T in PTA. This is parent-led."

Unions say it's overly simplistic to blame teachers. Parents should enlist educators in the solution, not dismiss them, they say.

"It's well meaning, but misguided," said Frank Wells, who heads the Southern California chapter of the California Teachers Association. "Parents shouldn't be acting with authority in a vacuum."

Parents already have a tool to leverage policy change — school board elections, Wells said.

Unions have mobilized against parent-trigger laws. In July, the American Federation of Teachers posted a slide presentation on its website detailing how it successfully won a dilution of the Connecticut parent-trigger proposal so parents can recommend change but have no authority to enact it.

After ensuing media coverage of "Plan A: Kill Mode," the union took down the document and disavowed it.

For Austin, union opposition to parent trigger underscores what's wrong — unions reject reform efforts such as charter schools, tenure changes and new performance evaluation measures in order to protect jobs, but at the same time many schools, especially in the inner cities, are failing.

"The system is calcified," he said. "It's designed to go against change."

In somewhat of an ironic twist, Parent Revolution is organizing parents using old-school, labor organizing tactics. So far, more than 20 unions have been formed.

Protests Peril For Obama

By DICK MORRIS

Published on TheHill.com on October 11, 2011 

As the early '70s repeat themselves with the chaotic Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in lower Manhattan, we need to grasp what a peril this movement is to President Obama and the entire Democratic Party. It is like the Obama campaign run wild without Obama in it. It is as if the bandwagon has taken off and left the president behind. And he and his party are racing to catch up. "There go my followers," they seem to be saying, "and I must go with them because I am their leader."

Just as the civil rights movement of the late '50s and early '60s and the youthful enthusiasm that animated JFK's candidacy in 1960 energized a generation, so the Obama campaign did in 2008. But just as frustration with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and the entire political system turned the idealism of the young into sour cynicism, so the Obama campaign's young enthusiasts have become cynical, bitter opponents of the entire political/economic system. If the Obama campaign harkened back to memories of the civil rights demonstrations of the '60s, so the Occupy Wall Street effort reminds us of SDS, SNCC, hippies, yuppies, the Chicago Seven and Jerry Rubin.

The fact is that Obama is less a socialist than a corporatist. His objective is not government ownership, but government management. To control the economy -- and all of our lives -- he needs to get rid of small banks and small business and consolidate it all in a few big banks and big corporations; hence his friendliness to Goldman-Sachs and General Motors. When wealthy tycoons go to dinners and give Obama $35,000 donations, they know what they are doing. It is not liberal Democratic masochism at work, it is a conscious investment in central planning where big labor, big government, big business and big banks meet and divvy up the pie, just as they do in Germany and France. That is Obama's game.

His former supporters have taken to the streets to protest his corporatist alliances. Sure, they oppose the Republicans and the conservatives, but they have more in common with the Tea Party than they realize. Both are acting out against big business. Wall Street is as much the enemy of Main Street as it is of college campuses.     

The unions and the professional left are scrambling, along with Obama and the Democrats, to head off the stampede among their followers in the Occupy Wall Street movement. They are trying to make up for their pro-Wall Street policies by seeming to take on rich people in their tax program. But the young demonstrators will not be fooled. They invested their dreams for Obama in 2008 and, since then, have gotten only compromises, half-measures, incompetence and a ruined economy in return.

The conservatives and Republicans no longer own the anti-Obama movement. They have to share ownership with disenchanted liberals, those who recognize incompetence when they see it, and the many who are turned off by the growing perception of corruption in the wake of Solyndra. The bad economy has led to an impression of presidential weakness and inability akin to that which took over the image of Jimmy Carter in the late '70s. More and more, the opposition to Obama is based on the outcomes of his policies, not on their ideological bias or their liberal intent.

Will the Republicans drive these new converts to the anti-Obama cause back into the arms of the Democrats? The likes of Mitt Romney won't. Rick Perry might, particularly as he explains his designs on the Social Security system. But even if they are worried by the possibility of a Republican victory in 2012, their more likely reaction is to vote with their feet and stay home. Obama cannot muster the same enthusiasm he did in 2008. It's out there, but it is now opposed to him, not for him. That's what Occupy Wall Street is all about.

__________________________________________________________________________________

GO TO DICKMORRIS.COM TO READ ALL OF DICK'S COLUMNS!

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO FRIENDS & FAMILY AND INVITE THEM TO RECEIVE OUR FREE COLUMNS BY SUBSCRIBING HERE. THANKS!

http://www.dickmorris.com/subscribe.php?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=email&utm_content=link&utm_campaign=Dickmorris%2BReports%2BSignup

With Union Help, Occupy St. Louis Planning Major Rally, March

By Jo Mannies, Beacon political reporter

Updated 3:05 pm Tue., 10.11.11

Labor and community groups are supporting what they hope will be a major Occupy St. Louis rally and march Friday afternoon that is targeting Bank of America.

But in the meantime, a march is scheduled for 6 p.m. this evening to show solidarity with Occupy counterparts arrested in Boston and elsewhere.

According to organizers, tonight's march will be "from Kiener Plaza through downtown in support of those Occupations that have brutally repressed by the police, especially those members of Occupy Boston."

However, the statement added, "Occupy St. Louis wants to reaffirm that the St. Louis Police Department has treated people with dignity and respect, and affirm that the St. Louis Police Department will continue to do so."

As for Friday's event, Bob Soutier, head of the Greater St. Louis Labor Council, is among the speakers slated to kickoff the 3:30 p.m. rally in Kiener Plaza, the chief turf of the Occupy St. Louis movement since it began just over a week ago.

Organizers say that the rally will be followed by a 4 p.m. march to the nearby offices of Bank of America, one of the targets of the national "Occupy" movement that began -- and continues -- with Occupy Wall Street.

Bank of America was among the institutions that received federal bailout money during the economic meltdown in late 2008 and into 2009. Occupy activists and labor groups are now citing the nation's largest bank as an example of corporate greed.

The event also appears aimed at galvanizing the Occupy St. Louis participants.

The Missouri AFL-CIO said in a statement directed at members:

"All over the country, people are saying 'enough is enough' and taking to the streets. When we filled Kiener Plaza last March to rally against out-of-control corporate greed, we demonstrated our unity to the entire community. Now that jobless workers, students, construction workers and senior citizens have Occupied St. Louis to call out those that have been outsourcing our jobs, foreclosing on our homes and wrecking our economy, let's join together in a demonstration of unity from Kiener Plaza to the big banks that aren't lending to one of the many bridges left crumbling."

Labor participants are asked to wear attire that identifies their union. "This jobs crisis requires action from politicians, from corporations and from the banks," the AFL-CIO said. "Janitors and social workers, painters and bus drivers, cashiers and teachers make this country work, we're the 99 percent."

Sympathetic lawyers also are slated to attend or observe the rally to assist any protesters who are arrested.

Not a Single Christian Church Left in Afghanistan, Says State Department

By Edwin Mora October 10, 2011

(CNSNews.com) -- There is not a single, public Christian church left in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department.

This reflects the state of religious freedom in that country ten years after the United States first invaded it and overthrew its Islamist Taliban regime.

In the intervening decade, U.S. taxpayers have spent $440 billion to support Afghanistan's new government and more than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in that country.

The last public Christian church in Afghanistan was razed in March 2010, according to the State Department's latest International Religious Freedom Report. The report, which was released last month and covers the period of July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010, also states that “there were no Christian schools in the country.”

“There is no longer a public Christian church; the courts have not upheld the church's claim to its 99-year lease, and the landowner destroyed the building in March [2010],” reads the State Department report on religious freedom. “[Private] chapels and churches for the international community of various faiths are located on several military bases, PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams], and at the Italian embassy. Some citizens who converted to Christianity as refugees have returned.”

In recent times, freedom of religion has declined in Afghanistan, according to the State Department.

“The governmentʼs level of respect for religious freedom in law and in practice declined during the reporting period, particularly for Christian groups and individuals,” reads the State Department report.

“Negative societal opinions and suspicion of Christian activities led to targeting of Christian groups and individuals, including Muslim converts to Christianity," said the report. "The lack of government responsiveness and protection for these groups and individuals contributed to the deterioration of religious freedom.”

Most Christians in the country refuse to “state their beliefs or gather openly to worship,” said the State Department.

More than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in the decade-old Afghanistan war, according to CNSNews.comʼs database of all U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. A September audit released jointly by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the State Departmentʼs Office of Inspector General, found that the U.S. government will spend at least $1.7 billion to support the civilian effort from 2009-2011.

According to that report, the $1.7 billion excludes additional security costs, which the report says the State Department priced at about $491 million.

A March 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service showed that overall the United States has spent more than $440 billion in the Afghanistan war. Christian aid from the international community has also gone to aid the Afghan government.

Nevertheless, according to the State Department, the lack of non-Muslim religious centers in Afghanistan can be blamed in part on a “strapped government budget,” which is primarily fueled by the U.S. aid.

“There were no explicit restrictions for religious minority groups to establish places of worship and training of clergy to serve their communities,” says the report, “however, very few public places of worship exist for minorities due to a strapped government budget.”

The report acknowledged that Afghanistanʼs post-Taliban constitution, which was ratified with the help of U.S. mediation in 2004, can be contradictory when it comes to the free exercise of religion.

While the new constitution states that Islam is the “religion of the state” and that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam,” it also proclaims that “followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of the law.”

However, “the right to change oneʼs religion was not respected either in law or in practice,” according to the State Department.

“Muslims who converted away from Islam risked losing their marriages, rejection from their families and villages, and loss of jobs,” according to the report. “Legal aid for imprisoned converts away from Islam remains difficult due to the personal objection of Afghan lawyers to defend apostates.”

The report does note that “in recent years neither the national nor local authorities have imposed criminal penalties on coverts from Islam.” The report says that “conversion from Islam is considered apostasy and is punishable by death under some interpretations of Islamic rule in the country.”

Also, in recent years, the death punishment for blasphemy “has not been carried out,” according to the State Department.

According to the State Department report, the United States continues to promote religious freedom in Afghanistan--even though the country no longer has even one Christian church.

“The U.S. government regularly discusses religious freedom with government officials as part of its overall policy to promote human rights,” according to the report.

According to the State Department report, more than 99 percent of the population, estimated between 24 and 33 million people, is either Sunni (80 percent) or Shia (19 percent) Muslim. Non-Muslim religious groups, including the estimated 500 to 8,000 strong Christian community in the country, make up less than 1 percent of the population. Other non-Muslim groups in the country are Sikhs, Bahais, and Hindus