In the past couple of weeks, I've been following the local Occupy Wall Street movements that have sprouted up in the area. About fifty miles to the north, Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland have been causing big news with their clashes with the police and their large scale protests. I've been participating with protests closer to home, donating food to the Occupy San Jose encampment, and joining rallies in Occupy Palo Alto and Occupy Mountain View. I've been a fervent follower of the Occupy Wall Street protests because I share their fears about the growing economic inequalities in this country and agree with their criticisms of the financial institutions. As the holiday season gets underway, a perenniel Christmas chestnut is playing across the nation's playhouses and schools and it shares the same criticisms of economic injustice as the Occupy Wall Street protests. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol" shares with the Occupy Wall Street protests an indignation of economic injustice and asks us to help relieve the plight of the victims of our economic system.

In a truly unprecedented attack on federal law enforcement agents at the National Labor Relations Board, California Representative Darrell Issa and his Republican allies in the House of Representatives are doing the bidding of corporate elites in an effort to suppress the collective bargaining rights of private sector workers.

In June of this year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) commenced an enforcement action against Boeing based on a claim by IAM District 751, part of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, that Boeing broke worker protection laws when it told its unionized workers in Everett, Wash. it would transfer airplane assembly to its newly non-union facility in Charleston, South Carolina due to their past and possible future union activity.

Go back and read, Let's Get the Credit Downgrade Story Right. Peter Herbert did a good job of presenting some interesting observations on where he thought credit should be assessed.

We have a good mix of regular writers and commentaries. Without question, most of us lean to the liberal or progressive side of politics. But, we have a few in the comment area that honestly challenge and offer constructive conservative opinions.

We had one commentary to Peter's and some of the others' comments, who thought it was absolutely the Democrats and Barack Obama that were responsible for the downgrade. The commenter sarcastically pointed out his amazement that we all could have missed what was so obvious to him.

In the wake of the Standard and Poors downgrade of U.S. credit, our parties and pundits are racing to spin the story for their own benefit. Predictably, top Republicans and Democrats are taking bits of S&P’s explanation for the downgrade that fit their theories and ignoring the rest. So far, both are ignoring what S&P’s ratings head, John Chambers, called the “first” and “main” reason for his decision: our recent political debt ceiling crisis. Particularly, he cited (a) “political brinkmanship” over whether America would pay its bills, (b) the fact that Congress could not decide that we would pay our bills “until the last day before they had cash management problems,” and (c) the fact that “there are very few countries that separate the budget process from the debt authorization process [as the U.S. does].”

This leaves no question who is at fault concerning the downgrade: the House Republicans – particularly John Boehner.

On April 4, 2011 I drove to downtown San Jose, California to attend a rally for workers' rights. The rally was sponsored by We Are One, and it honored Martin Luther King Jr.'s support of the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968. The We Are One rally was a great event, with people from all walks of life supporting the workers in Wisconsin and the rights of workers everywhere.

I walked around the crowd asking people if I could take their photos and they were all very happy to oblige. What impressed me were all the different types of workers who attended, from teachers to fire fighters to electrical engineers to technicians. Many of the people that I talked to were inspired by the workers in Wisconsin and the protesters in Egypt and the Middle East. The speakers were great too, especially Cindy Chavez, who was in the San Jose City Council and now a teacher at San Jose State University. Interspersed in this blog are photos that I took of the event.

I previously posted on this topic. This has generated more discussion on Facebook. I have found this discussion to be interesting. It is enlightening to see how many Americans think and what they believe. I surely did not convince them of my points, but I think the discourse is educational. So I am going to do “Part 2" here. I hope this can be educational and enriching for you as well.

The key posts that took place after I posted the link to my article were:

"I personally believe in the Biblical and Third World models of national economics - "IF YOU DON'T WORK - THEN YOU DON'T EAT!"

I was on Facebook today. I saw something that a good friend of mine had written and the resulting comments.

Mr Obama: not all folks who have money inherited it from their rich parents like your Harvard classmates did.Some of us worked hard to succeed.To get where I am took lots of weekend nights in the library when I should have been out with friends.It took eight years of post graduate education and 12 years in the military,away from home,to finance that education.Demonizing people who work hard does not bring "Hope"!

On April 5 — one day after the We Are One rallies -- over 175 college campuses in 37 states will be participating in a national teach-in on debt, austerity, and corporate greed.

The teach-in is being organized by two long-time pro-labor public intellectuals, sociologist Francis Fox Piven and philosopher Cornell West.

Scheduled for April 5th at 2 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Savings Time), the event seeks to counter the drumbeat of right-wing propaganda. Content will be streamed live to teach-ins organized in local communities from the national teach-in at Judson Memorial Church in New York City. The local teach-ins will use the streamed material and add their own speakers that focus on their community. DSA has endorsed this program and is encouraging local groups and YDS chapters to organize local events that connect to the national teach-in. Jobs with Justice, the Student Labor Action Project, and others are promoting the teach-in.

Over the past month, the eyes of the nation has been transfixed by the fight going on in Wisconsin for workers to preserve their right for collective bargaining. Workers have gradually been losing bargaining powers as unions have been in decline for the past 30 years. As I read about the protests in Wisconsin, I began thinking of Charlie Chaplin's movie Modern Times.

When Chaplin was creating Modern Times, the United States was deep in the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Depression had its starting point in the Wall Street Crash of October 24, 1929. From October 24 to October 29, 1929, the market lost $30 billion in value. In July 1933 some $74,000,000,000, or five-sixths of the value of the stock market of September 1929 disappeared. The American Federation of Labor recorded the rise in unemployment: unemployment in October 1930 was 4,639,000; in October 1931 unemployment was 7,778,000; in October 1932 unemployment was 11,586,000; in early 1933 employment was over 13,000,000. The nation's industrial production in 1932 was 47 percent below normal. Between 1929 and 1932, farm values declined 33 percent and farmer's gross income declined 57 percent.

Are we all in a trance, both liberals and conservatives? We sit and watch the evening news, listen to our favorite talk show hosts: Fox, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Frog Pond Croakers, or whoever. No one seems to be able to differentiate between their BS and their own BS.

The budget wrangles in congress are not even close to addressing the issues with any sane and sensible plan. Wrangling over the difference of 6 billion or 60 billion is 'stuff and nonsense!'

It appears both sides of the aisle are content with targeting those in society, with cuts, who are least able to absorb those cuts without drastic reductions in their lifestyles. Most of those cuts won't touch the upper middle class, and will actually benefit the ultra rich.

I just read, in my local paper, what our U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp had to say about our economy and how we can deal with the deficits and long term indebtedness. His opposition in the next election is going to have to be extremely evil, before I choose Tim as the lessor of the two evils!