IS IT REALLY STARTING?

I have long wondered why the American electorate has been so docile under the present economic climate. Where are the demonstrations? In past downturns more mild than the present, there have been marches on Washington, D.C., particularly by farmers driving tractors into the Reflecting Pond and the like.

Seemingly a revolution of sorts was started by the so-called Tea Party group. I have found that group rather surprising in that many of the early members were unemployed; yet, their cry against the government was that it was too large and running up too great Federal deficits. They have had a lot of success in electing like-minded people to congress. Certainly the size of the Federal deficits is scary, but I have to wonder if they misread the electorate? It seems to me that a lot of the new people elected to congress were actually elected with expectations that they would do something about the job situation* rather than to try to cut down the size of government. Not much has been done so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if many of the Tea Party congressmen are returned to their private lives in the 2012 election. I'm also surprised by Tea Partiers willingness to eliminate such programs as Social Security and Medicare as many of the members are middle aged and not wealthy.

The Tea Party has been followed by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement that is mainly objecting to economic inequality of incomes, high unemployment, the huge wages of those on Wall Street and the lack of any prosecutions of those responsible for the economic fiasco we have been undergoing since late in 2007, and the influence of corporations on the government.** One other message stood out to me in that many seemed to want their student loans to be forgiven. This has not been done although President Obama has lowered the percentage of income to 10% of discretionary income that must be devoted to paying off the student loans and reduced the number of years to 20 from 25 until the residual of the loan is forgiven (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-administration-announces-plan-to-ease-student-loan-burdens/2011/10/25/gIQAGbKrGM_blog.html). By an large, however, it appears to me that the OWS is still in a disorganized state although it has expanded across the country and even abroad. So the movement has struck a cord that seems to have considerable staying power. So far as I know, OWS is not yet backing certain candidates for election to congress with the possible exception of Elizabeth Warren. Whether this movement can get organized to have any real affect, remains to be seen.

* Also see: http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2011/01/whatever-happened-to-jobs-jobs-jobs.html

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street. Perhaps the most significant influence came with the Supreme Court ruling that companies are people. The Chairman of the Board therefore can give not only his own donations, but also donations from the company no matter what the employees or the stockholders might think.