Dylan Ratigan is leading town hall events in various cities to help spur the establishment of a job creation movement. The goal is to push for policies that foster higher employment than the ones we’ve seen over the last thirty years, which instead promoted financialization, the use of consumer debt to paper over lack of wage growth, asset inflation and speculation, and increasing income and wealth disparity.
Ratigan wants to create a dialogue among key political groups, including ordinary citizens, investors, small business operators, and corporate leaders. His sessions will focus on four issues, as he outlined in in the Huffington Post:
Promote “fair trade” not “free trade”
Require banks to focus on lending, rather than gambling or parking funds in Treasuries
Rein in health care and college tuition costs
Reform the tax code
These meetings will start with his session at 7:00 PM tonight, which will be streamed live below, in Seneca Falls, New York, the birthplace of the women’s suffrage movement and where George Bailey’s bank (in It’s a Wonderful Life) was located.
To make suggestions and vote on proposed solutions, please visit SteelOnWheels.
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Interesting to see you highlight this here.
I’m a huge fan of his show, I only wish that he’d invite Yves on as a guest.
But with that said, it’s interesting to me that there’s enough ferment in the culture at the moment to start this conversation. I hope that it goes well, because heaven only knows I personally don’t see solutions coming out of D.C. nor Wall Street (or did I just repeat myself…?)
I’m glad Dylan is pushing this. It’s beyond partisan at this point and will require a big coalition of people willing to endure some deflation to make things change.
Banks, health care, college tuition and the tax code. All things primarily controlled in the halls of Congress and the Fed. Fed gov alone is 25% of health care spending, is goosing consumer credit via student loans and still is lowering taxes for all along the way. All to save the big banks.
The unspoken but firmly held position of the mainstream media/government/academia is that progressive ideas are discussed, but not implemented. Note the recent fog of unreality woven around the recent “compromise” Republican tax cut. All talk of how it was to be done, not if it was a wise thing to do.
We as a nation have to breach the knowing/doing barrier. The vast majorities who want single payer health care, strongly progressive taxes, fair trade, etc. are a better direction to the future, not the shadings of greed discussed among the elite. If Brother Dylan’s revival tour helps us break through, fine and good.
Tell him to remember we love the rich, we hate the things the rich do.
Re: The unspoken but firmly held position of the mainstream media/government/academia is that progressive ideas are discussed, but not implemented.
Well, you need progressive Party if you want progressive ideas implemented. Not sure why this is so hard to understand.
You’ve got two crony-capitalist parties now. What do you expect?
Thank you, Yves. The SteelOnWheels site has great common sense resolutions. It’s a good movement worth supporting for real change.
Dylan Ratigan is becoming a great American hero. It’s uplifting to see strong, honest voices on major media. I’m glad he left CNBC. He’s a promising, charismatic antidote to Glenn Beck and he may be able to tap a huge and hungry audience in this country. I wish him well.
I love Ratigan’s passion and willingness to call it as it is too. I just wish he’d edit himself a bit at times; guests have a hard time getting a word in edgeways on occasion and by the time Dylan has finished summing up who they are and where they’re coming from there’s either not much time left or nothing else to say! I exaggerate, but he can be a bit overpowering. Perhaps you need to be to take on the Limbaughs ansd the Becks.
Pedantic point, but:
Seneca Falls may have been the model, but it was the ficticious Bedford Falls in the film. (which always gave me a bit of a chuckle as a Westchester resident since Bedford (home of Martha Stewart and her classmates) is contiguous with Bedford Hills (of correction facility fame), which is a bit more like Potterville than Bailey Park.
And since you’ve brought it up, I refuse to be ashamed of weeping like a schoolgirl every time I see that movie.
It was dismissed as too sentimental at the time by folks who were already exhausted by the simple truth of the story.
Today I weep because its orders of magnitudes worse, and people can’t see that the current story is as simple to understand as that one. Substitute Magnetar for Potter, film it, and watch it every Christmas season with your kids and grandkids.
My favorite Christmas movie is “The Family Man” with Nickolas Cage and Téa Leoni. And curiously, it also deals with Wall Street a bit.
Who needs a job when the rich get by with money? Yes, people should stay busy (to a point) but that could easily be accomplished with voluntary work.
So why aren’t most Americans independently wealthy? How could they be when most Americans have been paid with their own stolen purchasing power? The banks create money when they loan but the purchasing power is stolen from all existing money holders.
Without the counterfeiting cartel to borrow from, the corporations would have long ago been forced to issue their common stock as money. And without the boom-bust cycle fueled with counterfeit, temporary money, it is to be expected that the country would have experienced steady prosperity with little socialism necessary.
What could be done?
1) Put the banks out of the counterfeiting business with a 100% reserve requirement.
2) Bailout the entire US population (including savers) with an equal distribution of new debt and interest free full legal tender fiat, United States Notes. To prevent deflation with the 100% reserve requirement, the bailout should be big enough to eliminate ALL personal debt. This would be the equivalent of a Debt Jubilee except savers would receive an equal amount too.
3) After the debt has cleared then eliminate legal tender laws for private debt and allow private currencies that would only be good for private debts.
ref: “Thou shall not steal”,
Deuteronomy 15 (Debt Jubilee),
Deuteronomy 23:19-20 (usury forbidden between fellow countrymen),
and
One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind. Ecclesiastes 4:6
Re: Ratigan’s nascent Chataquah, _this_ is how most all important social reform has had its inception in American history, when informed citizens who believe in their community get out and push the wheel themselves amongst those of like minds. There is the de/illusion current in media and meme that ‘Congress does X,’ or ‘the Court does Y,’ or, most meritricious, ‘the President did [anything useful at all].’ None of this is so. Those in those institutions talk to power and are made of power. The only deal with _real problems_ when pushed to it. Reform doesn’t come from within the system because the system is the typically the cause of what needs reform, or at least the enabler of the cause.
So that is why I’m gladened so see those with a clue, a heart, and a platform begin to take on the pressing issues of our time. This is the American Way, so to speak. More of this people power and its power to the people. Enough with this babbling about the ballot box: that’s where it ends, not where it starts.
An Alternative to Capitalism (which we need here in the USA)
The following link takes you to an essay titled: “Home of the Brave?” which was published by the
Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
John Steinsvold