99%? 1%? Divisive? Class warfare? Newt Gingrich says so, but maybe that's the pot calling the kettle black?

I had a conversation this morning about how the "we are the 99% fighting the 1%" mantra of the Occupy Wall Street movement is itself a divisive idea.  It's pitting one group against another group.  It's a demonization of rich people.  It's painting reality with too-broad of a brush.  Just because someone is rich doesn't make them evil.  Not all corporations are evil.  Not all poor people are saintly.  The 99% meme is too simplistic, even though it's a very catchy idea.

The conversation went to developing a "we are the 100%" idea .. and searching for others discussing 100% I learned that Newt Gingrich discussed this exact idea in an interview with Larry Kudlow on Tuesday.  Okay, gag me with a spoon to find myself in agreement with Newt on anything.

“I am for 100 percent,” he said. “I think this idea of 99 percent and 1 percent is grotesque European socialist class warfare baloney.”  And President Obama is playing right along with that class warfare by expressing sympathy for the protesters, he added.  “I repudiate anybody who wants to divide Americans and I think that that there is a fundamental destructive quality to this 99 percent idea,” Gingrich said. “I think that it is shameful the president of the United States would engage in class warfare and pit Americans against each other in way which can only be destructive of the fabric of American society.”

See - while I somewhat agree with Newt's assessment, I believe he's using this meme to then slam Obama.  He's using a rhetorical/spin/twist to pivot from this idealism that 99%/1% is divisive, to then slam Obama for supposedly agreeing with the Occupy folk.

In other words - Newt himself is being divisive in that he's using this inclusive rhetoric as a weapon to slam someone.

Is the 99%/1% thing class warfare?  Maybe from the 1% perspective that Newt occupies it is.  Maybe he's feeling threatened.  Fact is that those 1% people are, well, people.

Gingrich: Idea of 99 Percent & 1 Percent is ‘Grotesque’

This Is George Bush's Recession: Why Doesn't Anybody Talk About That? | Politics | AlterNet

If the partisan tables were turned, the GOP would waste no time laying the blame on Democrats. According to the article "We" (aka "progressives"?) need to do the same to build political capital for key fights ahead. Modern conservatives "are descended from monarchists,” and have a "natural instinct to follow the king." Presumably, then, progressives are descended from rabble that can't agree? The article discusses a failure of the Democrats to do as the Republicans would do, there is a failure of Democrats to fall in line with President Obama's leadership and instead they are left free to kvetch. My question is whether it's better for the party in charge to practice message discipline and order in the ranks, or for free reigning democracy to engender an open and frank discussion from all quarters.

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http://www.alternet.org/politics/144225/this_is_george_bush's_recession%3A_why_d...

Nine killed as Myanmar soldiers fire at protesters

Nine people have reportedly been killed after Myanmar's security forces opened fired with machine guns on protesters gathering on the streets of Yangon... A Japanese video journalist was among those found dead after protests... Soldiers told residents they had 10 minutes to clear the city centre streets or risk getting shot.... International condemnation of the government crackdown also grew, with the US demanding the military rulers "stop this violence against peaceful protesters now."... Late on Thursday, Myanmar agreed that Nyan Win, the country's foreign minister, would meet Ibrahim Gambari, the special envoy that the UN secretary-general has dispatched to the country....

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Myanmar intensifies crackdown

Nine killed as Myanmar soldiers fire at protesters

Violent Crackdown Launched in Myanmar

Troops fire on protesters in Myanmar

Soldiers fire shots at 70,000 crowd

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Shots fired on Myanmar protest

Reports from Myanmar say government troops have opened fire on a crowd of about 1,000 protesters in the city of Yangon... The move has led to speculation that the government may be trying to isolate Buddhist monks who have led the recent wave of protests while it focuses on hunting down other dissidents.... activists on the ground in Myanmar...are reporting a death toll of nearly 200 since the government crackdown began on Wednesday, with several hundred more wounded...."Some people have been trying to provoke the army, but older protesters have been trying to calm them down and not provoke soldiers."...The correspondent also says that the authorities have been photgraphing and filming protesters. This has "raised speculation that the authorities wanted the protests to go on for four to five days, let all the protesters come out, be identified and then move in to round them up."... Among those confirmed killed on Thursday was Kenji Nagai, a Japanese news photographer who some witnesses say was shot at point-blank range as he raised his camera.... One monk, Uppekha, speaking to Al Jazeera from a monastery in the northern city of Mandalay, said he planned to join fresh demonstrations on Friday afternoon. "We will ask the entire people and monks to join our demonstration," he said, adding that several protests had been planned around the city....

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Shots fired on Myanmar protest

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Myanmar soldiers fire weapons, tear gas into crowds of protesters

Soldiers fired automatic weapons into a crowd of anti-government protesters Thursday as tens of thousands defied the ruling military junta's crackdown with a 10th straight day of demonstrations....Some reports said the dead included monks, who are widely revered in Myanmar, and the emergence of such martyr figures could stoke public anger against the regime and escalate the violence....Shots were fired after several thousand protesters on the west side of the river ignored orders to disband.... A monk at Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery pointed to bloodstains on the concrete floor and said a number of monks were beaten and at least 100 of its 150 monks taken away in vehicles. Shots were fired in the air during the chaotic raid, he said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "Soldiers slammed the monastery gate with the car, breaking the lock and forcing it into the monastery," the monk said. "They smashed the doors down, broke windows and furniture. When monks resisted, they shot at the monks and used tear gas and beat up the monks and dragged into trucks."

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Myanmar soldiers fire weapons, tear gas into crowds of protesters

Myanmar Troops Kill 9 More Protesters

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Burmese Junta Warns Monks of Crackdown as Protests Widen

...Speaking on state television, the junta’s minister of religious affairs told senior Buddhist clerics to rein in the tens of thousands of monks who have marched through several cities in recent days....the monks who have led the protests for the past week were outnumbered by civilians, including prominent political dissidents and well-known cultural figures....Setting out in the morning from the gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda, a crowd estimated by The Associated Press to be as large as 100,000 marched unopposed in separate columns through the city.... Until now, the government remained silent and mostly out of sight, giving over the streets to the protesters with virtually no uniformed security presence in evidence....

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Burmese Junta Warns Monks of Crackdown as Protests Widen

Myanmar monks chant "democracy", junta threatens

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Police Clash With Monks in Myanmar

The government of Myanmar began a violent crackdown today after tolerating more than a month of ever-larger protests in cities around the country, clubbing and tear-gassing protesters, firing shots into the air and arresting hundreds of the monks who are at the heart of the demonstrations....But it appeared that an attempt by the military to halt the protests through warnings, troop deployments and initial bursts of violence had not succeeded. Analysts said that the next steps in the crackdown might be yet more aggressive and widespread.... Yangon, police officers with riot shields dispersed up to 100 monks who were trying to enter the temple, firing tear gas and warning shots and knocking some monks to the ground. As many as 200 monks were reported to have been arrested at the pagoda.... That earlier peaceful uprising [in 1988] was crushed by the military, which shot into crowds, killing an estimated 3,000 people. It was during the turmoil a decade ago that the current military junta took power in Myanmar, and it has maintained its grip by arresting dissidents, quashing political opposition and using force and intimidation to control the population....

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Police Clash With Monks in Myanmar

Odds Against Monks Facing Myanmar Troops

Myanmar military arrests monks in midnight raids

Police raid Myanmar monasteries

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Burmese Junta Sets Curfew to Combat Protests

The government in Myanmar imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the two major cities of Yangon and Mandalay...and said they would be placed under the control of local military commanders, after tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and supporters defied a warning by the authorities and held an eighth day of peaceful antigovernment protests.... The protests have swelled into a huge outpouring that has filled the streets of several cities... Official vehicles were on patrol calling on monks to return to their temples... “People are not to follow, encourage or take part in these marches,” the announcements said. “Action will be taken against those who violate this order.”... “The government has ordered the 22nd Division troops to pull out of Karen state and return to Yangon,”... The 22nd division has been fighting a decades-long guerilla war in the remote province of Karen, and... “We believe the troops will be used as in 1988.”

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Burmese Junta Sets Curfew to Combat Protests

Myanmar Bans Gatherings, Imposes Curfew

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U.N. urges calm amid Myanmar clashes

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to send a special envoy to Myanmar...Unconfirmed opposition reports put the death toll at five..."[U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon] calls on the senior leadership of the country to cooperate fully with this mission in order to take advantage of the willingness of the United Nations to assist in the process of a national reconciliation through dialogue," said a U.N. statement....any violence used against monks could draw more of the population into the protests...

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U.N. urges calm amid Myanmar clashes

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Myanmar abbots tread fine line

Buddhist monks have been at the forefront of the recent anti-government protests in Myanmar...some commentators believe the presence of the abbots, or Sayadaw, on the streets could provide the tipping point for the overthrow of the military government.... In just a few days, as the monks took up the vanguard of protests, their silent marches turned into chanting and eventually to three key political demands: that the government lower commodity prices, free political prisoners and open dialogue with the opposition.... Zawana, a Myanmar monk who has been in Malaysia for two years, said senior monks cannot join the protests because they are kept under tight surveillance. "It is impossible for the senior monks to join demonstrations," Zawana said. ...The military government meanwhile has been quick to seize on the fact that many of the country's 600,000 monks have not joined in the protests, with state media painting a picture of disunity among the monkhood....But the abbots appear to be treading a fine line between detachment from temporal affairs and compassion for people - both core tenets of Buddhist teachings....

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Myanmar abbots tread fine line

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Myanmar forces swoop on protests in two cities, Internet cut

Security forces moved to crush protests in Myanmar's two biggest cities...Up to 10,000 demonstrators surged onto the streets of the main city of Yangon... In ...Mandalay... young people on motorbikes rode down a major thoroughfare towards a blockade set up by security forces who unleashed a volley that witnesses believed could have been rubber bullets....Monks... helped transform what began as a scattershot series of protests over a hike in fuel prices into the stiffest challenge to the junta's military rule since 1988....at least three monks have been killed and hundreds arrested...about 100 Buddhist monks were arrested and eight people shot dead after protesting the action...."We heard that some soldiers have refused to obey orders and that others were even willing to stand alongside the demonstrators,"...

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Myanmar forces swoop on protests in two cities, Internet cut

Burma forces storm cities

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Junta Shuts Down A Saffron Revolution

The military leaders of Myanmar have shut protesting monks in their monasteries and tried to seal the country's information frontiers by cutting public Internet access...Participation of the saffron-robed monks has lent some immunity... Buddhism is the dominant religion in Burma (Myanmar) and the mililtary leadership has in the past given deference to the Buddhists. However by separating the Buddhist Monks from the protesters, this frees the military to take tough action. ...soldiers occupied some of the key monasteries and blocked surrounding intersections with barbed wire, and there seemed to be no sign of the monks on the streets...five of the monasteries had been declared no-go zones... soldiers and riot police quickly dispersed one gathering of 300... several multiples" of the 10 fatalities acknowledged by the authorities may have been killed by troops in Yangon...

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Junta Shuts DownA Saffron Revolution

Protesters Again Gather in Yangon; Myanmar Forces Raid Two Monasteries

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What's in a Country's Name?

The last week a protests have risen to world attention in Burma / Myanmar. Until 1989 the southeast Asian country of more than 47 million people was known as Burma. Since then, however, the ruling military junta has called the country Myanmar. It even renamed the capital from Rangoon to Yangon....That year the military regime...lost landslide elections to the main opposition party. It refused to hand over power and instead jailed many opposition leaders....

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What's in a Country's Name?

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The Road to Clean Elections

In the U.S. candidates for office are routinely bought and paid for. For years and years U.S. Presidential campaigns, and especially news media coverage, have been more about who raised the most money, and not about issues and reaching voters. In the 2000 election cycle on the Republican side the candidates were clearly chosen based on their money raising, with George W. Bush having a home-grown advantage in that regard. This is dirty, and it leads to politicians who owe favors to the lobbyists who've brought them their money. When a politician meets with a lobbyist who is pushing for some legislation etc, that politician knows that in 2 yrs when its time to run again they may have to go to that lobbyist for more campaign money.

Is this democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people? Nope. It's pandering.

If we are going to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the election system must change. There's a number of important changes, and election finance is one of them.

Election finance reform to remove any form of private donation may be the vital change to make. If a candidate takes any private donations, the candidate may feel some obligations to the donors. Possibly only by removing private donations will candidates be free to actually represent the people they are supposed to represent. Otherwise they are, as today, clearly feeling pressured to represent corporate interests because they're the ones with the money.

This video covers a "clean election" system put into place in Arizona and Maine. The same system is on the ballot in California as Proposition 89.

89now.org is the home of the California ballot initiative.

buckthesystemnow.org is doing fund raising for proposition 89.

publicampaign.org is the national movement.