Jill Stein “Fire Wall Street!!!”

Jill Stein appeared on Bill Moyers this week and the first thing she said she would do is to “fire Wall Street!”
Bill Moyers responded by saying that she can’t do that and that they can fire her!

This is a virtual admission of the fact that Wall Street owns the government and that we no longer live in a democracy.

BILL MOYERS: If you made it to the White House what would you do on the first day?

JILL STEIN: For starters I think we would fire Wall Street because Wall Street is all over the White House from the Treasurer's office to--

BILL MOYERS: Jill, you can't fire Wall Street.

JILL STEIN: However --

BILL MOYERS: You can't fire the people who provide the money.

JILL STEIN: If you are dependent--

BILL MOYERS: They can fire you.

JILL STEIN: If you are dependent on that money, and that is exactly the point. That is exactly why you want to be a part of a political party which is not being held hostage by its Wall Street funders. And that's why I think, you know, you don't want to go into the voting booth and give them a mandate for four more years of the same with two candidates who are fundamentally being funded by Wall Street and corporate America that is raking us over the coals.

BILL MOYERS: But America is a capitalist democracy. You have to deal with the realities and power of capital and the needs of institutions that feed capital into the system, right?

JILL STEIN: Of course, and unfortunately our current capitalist system doesn't do that. You know, it provides capital to the very tippy top that's already got plenty. You know, small businesses have been absolutely crushed by this system. And the stimulus packages that the president and Congress have provided have been entirely inadequate to the job. They've provided mostly tax breaks which as we know is an extremely expensive way to create jobs.

And I think the American people object to what's called the realities, those political realities which are essentially the backroom deals that those politicians make in order to get the campaign contributions. So they come to office owing return favors. We don't come to office owing those favors. We have nothing but public interest support.

So we owe favors actually to the public to implement the agenda that they want, a Green New Deal to create jobs, health care as a human right, forgiving student debt, bailing out our students and our homeowners and not our bankers. We do have the money to do this. We're just squandering trillions on wars, Wall Street bailouts and tax breaks for the wealthy. Complete interview and Transcripts

At this point Bill Moyers changed the subject.

The Democratic Party has at times attempted to portray themselves as the party that stands up to Wall Street while the Republican Party is totally under the control of Wall Street. This is pure propaganda and a relatively quick look at the details clearly indicates that they’re also in the pockets of Wall Street and with the record breaking amount of fund raising from Wall Street it is clear that both parties are in the pocket of Wall Street. If this was a real democracy then the government would respond to the public's will and hold Wall Street accountable; the fact that Wall Street can “fire” politicians by using unlimited campaign contributions to buy propaganda and manipulate the public but sincere members of the public can’t fire politicians, CEOs or hold them accountable is clear evidence that the democratic system has broken down.

Obama has made this perfectly clear when he hired so many lobbyists and fund raisers that represent Wall Street and adopted one policy after another that is clearly designed to benefit his campaign contributors; including the bail out of the banks, relaxing regulations on the environment even while the BP oil spill was at its peak, continued escalation of support for the outsourcing of jobs to countries that rely on sweat shop labor to drive down labor costs at home as well and many other things.

Joshua Hedlund made a list of 218 reasons not to vote for Barack Obama and it included a long list of the Wall Street lobbyists and fund raisers that Obama hired to positions in his administration. This is a clear indication of the overwhelming power that Wall Street and the traditional media acts as if this is normal and that Wall Street is the only segment of society that should have much if any power. They act as if the only candidates that the majority of us should consider are those that completely sold out to a small segment of society.

There is no reason to “fire Wall Street” from the job that they’re supposed to do but they need to be fired from their entrenched position in the government which is presumably what Jill Stein means.

Jill Stein has been getting more coverage than many people previously expected and it is much greater on the internet than it is on the mainstream media. With the massive grass roots protest continuing to go on despite the minimal coverage in the corporate media I suspect that she could get much more support than most people ever expected possibly even winning if the two corporate parties have nothing constructive to say and rely on attacks against each other as they’ve been doing.

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The following are the original replies when this was first posted on Open Salon.

This is the first time I have been able to access Open Salon without a large amount of crashing in a week; it is still a little slow and there are still a lot of crap ads on the latest post page but not nearly as many. If they fix their problems fine but I’m not counting on it.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be checking out other Blog sites and creating a new Blog; I will continue to blog here and cross post them in the future if OS works reasonably well. If OS continues to allow the massive amount of spam to destroy this Blog I will assume that they don’t want to allow people to blog here anymore since for all practical purpose that is what they will be accomplishing and they have adequate information to figure it out if they want to.

I’ll be posting a new address soon; if OS crashes and I can’t come back I will post it at my other sites including the old Tripod page and my list of Alternative media outlets.

zacherydtaylor September 11, 2012 09:55 AM

Great post. I am very suspicious of opinion polls that show only 2% of registered voters supporting the Green Party. The majority of big pollsters have yet to figure out a way to generate random cell phone numbers. Thus nearly all the people they poll are people with landlines - which excludes people under 35, the poor and minorities - who form the largest proportion of cellphone only households.

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall September 13, 2012 03:28 AM

You're objections to the polls are only the tip of the iceberg; there are of course, many more problems that make them unreliable. On top of that the fact that they decline to even include grass roots candidates in the pols or to provide them any coverage is a clear indication that the corporate media will do any thing they can get away with to rig the elections.

This is all the more reason why we need to ignore the crap they shovel out and vote for independent candidates that actually address issues.

zacherydtaylor September 13, 2012 09:29 AM

Zachd!!! Great post! Thanks. Fire Wall Street ABSOLUTELY -- those parasites feasting away on what used to be the common good and the public trust! I'm glad she at least broke the sound barrier on Bill Moyers! Thanks for focusing on her!

Best, libby

libbyliberalnyc September 13, 2012 09:34 AM

Libby, I suspect that you know that prior to the discussion about firing Wall street she discussed the fact that the voters of Massachusetts voted 2 to 1 for public financing of campaigns, which isn't as good as the public financing of an interview process that I favor but it is better than what the political establishment and the corporations want.

The legislature stalled then when they thought no one would pay attention they over ruled the democratic will of the people.

Now they're trying to continue to rig the debates so that sincere candidates not under the control of Wall Street can't participate.

Which is why I think we need to speak out; for more see my latest post.

zacherydtaylor September 13, 2012 10:31 AM