AAUP Leaders Voice Support for ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Movement

Why am I not surprised?  These are the people who vote for fake higher education too.

Yikes!  What’s this ‘solidarity’ nonsense?  

I’ve been a union member, and have always wondered what academics know about the working class – whatever the background of individual professors, the academy is about as far removed as one can get from that world of the worker [only gated communities are further removed.]  The Communist class war rhetoric is too much to take … as if the colossal failures of the Communist economic model in the 20th century weren’t readily apparent to all – even China has adopted western capitalism!  Why communist propaganda still appeals to idle young Americans & academics & so-called ‘liberals’ is beyond me – their conditions are so far removed from the abject poverty of Russian serfs and Chinese peasants, or, for that matter, many working folks.This whole ‘movement’ has got me questioning whether anyone has actually got any particular beef here, other than the periodic adolescent angst in a time of economic retrenchment.  It seems no one involved has actually analyzed any of the various claims being made. The ’99%’ complaining about the “1%”?  Using IRS income data, apparently the “1%” is anyone making over $385,000/yr/AGI.  Other definitions would include households with more than a million $$ in net worth.  This obviously includes folks like … Steve Jobs … but with all the accolades recently, apparently he is an exception.  And then there are … the Obamas, and the Clintons, far over the limit with book deals, among others.  Are they exceptions too?  Who isn’t an exception in DC?  And what is it that these ’1%ers’ are doing, that protests are going to change?  What is the point, other than releasing some steam?Many Americans are going to find themselves in the top “1%” of the world’s wealth – including those in ‘solidarity’, where $1/day is considered above the poverty level.  I’ve gotten an email today describing Irish who are coming to the US today, having gone bankrupt recently, because there are -more- opportunities here in the US!  Just check other country’s unemployment rates – we are relatively employed, compared to much of the rest of the world.  With jobs going begging in North Dakota, and on farms around the country … .  Things may seem bad here, but relatively speaking, they ain’t -that- bad.Finally, if we are arguing about failures to regulate ‘Wall Street,’ our increasing wars, or prosecute malefactors, why aren’t protesters focusing on DC & state capitals?  If they are following other ‘revolutions,’ they would be seeking the heads of state (literally, in the case of guillotine happy French Revolution Terror, or the Russian Communist Revolution; figuratively in the case of Egypt, Libya, Yemen, … ).  Shouldn’t they be seeking the ouster of Obama?  Our commander-in-chief and chief executive?  Only if they were consistent and coherent …Sigh … plenty to criticize about capitalism & ‘Wall Street,’ but I’d like to expect more than knee-jerk sympathy from professors.

I cannot make the connection with AAUP and this group of individuals.  Am I missing something?  Is it that AAUP thinks that students should be receiving free (government paid) college education?   I do not believe that  AAUP needs to give this their attention.  Poor decision by AAUP. 

1. the protesters are non violent.  They do not seek a revolution, they seek regulations.  These protests are on Main Street rather than in DC, they are symbolically aimed at Wall Street because, our this symbolic Wall Street owns our politicians.  That’s where the source of the continuing Great Recession lies.

They are not anti-capitalist.  They seek the return of the regulations put in place during the Great Depression to avoid a repeat.  Those regulations were gradually eliminated during all administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, starting in the eighties (remember the Savings and Loans scandal?).  So there are now practically no financial regulation.  So members of our financial elite are free to gamble with the wealth the middle class  has accumulated since WWII.  They are gambling with our resources and our children’s future but not with their own money.  MIddle class members who have/had IRAs have never recouped their losses and many of us have been forced to withdraw our money and take huge penalties because we got laid off.

Your buddies run up a huge deficit by waging wars on credit and at the same time lowering taxes.  Bush Jr’s wars were the first in US history when we did not raise taxes. On the contrary we lowered them.  Have you already forgotten that Bush Jr. inherited a budget surplus from Clinton? 

It does seem that one of the purposes of running such a huge deficit is to use it as an excuse to eliminate the social safety net, destroy the rest of the middle class by among many other things closing the doors of higher education in their faces. 

2. I am heartened that there are members of the 1% who do want to pay more taxes, including some like Warren Buffet (who has for years demanded that income earned through investment or through playing roulette –as he puts it “owning stocks for 5 minutes”), and Bill Gates, and many others.  Not all human beings have turned selfishness and shortsightedeness into virtue.,

3. Why am I not surprised that you’re admiring present day China just because it has the same sort of capitalism we had during the nineteenth century (remember the “robber barons” , now replaced by the “banksters”?).  China is a dictatorship, just the way it was when it pretended to be Communist just the way it was when it was ruled by an emperor with absolute powers.  There has been no change in regime.  If you are under the delusion that when the Chinese onepercenters were spewing Communist propaganda/idelogy they didn’t line their pockets, you’re deluded.  The clearest case is of course the Soviet Union where just about all its ruling one percenters used to be high up in the Communist party.    The difference is that we have democracy and HAD a striving middle class.  It doesn’t matter what economic system you have or claim to have, what matters is democracy.

4.  As for your bringing up the misery of the Third World where our jobs have been outsourced, I suspect from your rant that you don’t care.  Stats show that when there was a concern among our politicians about poverty (“the war on poverty” instead of the present “was on the poor”), there  was more charity and volunteerism at all levels of society.  I suspect your income is a lot higher than mine but I am certain I give more to the food banks than you do.

5. I got news for you:  agricultural labor is a skilled occupation.  Even picking berries or apples requires both skills and physical conditioning and endurance, otherwise there’s no way to make money at it.  Go try it for a day, or even one hour, and tell me how you did. 

As for jobs in North Dakota:  a) they are minimum wage jobs, not enough to support one person let alone children.  and b) Do you have no idea what it costs to move from one part of the country to another?  Or even just travel?   Well, I’m sure you know, but you don’t want to know that most unemployed people don’t have the resource to do this, not to mention the proper clothes to wisthtand the cold and long North Dakota winter.

Ooops, I’m getting hard of hearing!  Did you say “let them eat cake”?

NO, the AAUP does not believe that students should receive a free education. 

YES, it believes they should have a reasonable prospect of getting jobs upon graduation so that they could pay off their students’ loans. 

YES, It also believes that the doors to higher ed should not be closed to the middle class as they were prior to WWII and the first GI bill.   

So you think that the much admired American system of higher ed is fake?  This must mean you believe the earth to be only 6,000 years old, that all of geology is an invention, and that there is no such thing as cancer treatment (because you’d have to accept the existence of genetic mutations for that, therefore evolution), that all of NASA is a hoax, that we had/have no achievement in science (oops, you don’t believe in science”), medicine, philosphy, literature etc etc etc etc etc etc,  and last but not least, that foreign students who pay exhorbitant tuition to study in the US are deluded. 

If you really think that lack of education and jobs are not two of the real problems facing Americans, try this:  according to Moody’s, the average jobless rate in the 50 most educated metro areas is 7.3%.  In the 50 least educated, it’s 11.4%.  For people with a four-year degree, it’s 4.3%.  Please try to become informed before spewing right-wing nonsense.