Why Occupy Wall Street Makes No Concrete Demands

Commentators on the right and the left have criticized the Occupy Wall Street Movement for not presenting concrete demands. My own Republican representative Leonard Lance made the point two days ago in a telephone "town meeting" in answer to my question. Yet John Nichols defends them for this and says they have it exactly right, in the current Nation magazine.

An even more thoroughgoing explanation for this position, however, comes from Thomas Frank's brilliant and disturbing book, The Wrecking Crew (Henry Holt, 2008), where he describes the right's deliberate campaign to dismantle and privatize government, with disastrous results all around, except for the "privateers" (my term).

Here are two illuminating quotes:

“The needs of business stand like a rock; all other else is convenience, opportunism, a bit of bushwah generated by some focus group session and forgotten the instant it is no longer convincing. Fundamentally amoral, capitalism is loyal to no people, no region, no heroes, really, once they have exhausted their usefulness—not even to the
nation whose flag the wingers pretend to worship.
“Hence the eternal frustration of the conservative rank and file with their leaders. Unless you are solely interested in the welfare of business, Washington
conservatives will all turn out to be ‘imposters’ to you, always ready to
compromise on family values or their adherence to the Founders’ ‘original
intent.’ Every ally is an ally of convenience for them, every ironclad
principle subject to revocation without notice, every noble ideal advanced merely to shore up popular support. Although there is no central command barking out the talking points, the movement nevertheless seems almost naturally to behave like an agitprop
bureau.” p. 100

“It is a basic principle of conservatism—an axiom, a cornerstone, an immutable law of human nature, world history and all the planets and stars—that turning over government operations to private businesses is the most efficient way to get things done. In reality, the conservatives’ outsourcing system has been a
ripoff of such massive proportions that it deserves a Grace Commission all its
own. In each of the Bush administrations’s great initiatives—anti-terrorism,
the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, and the administration of Iraq—privatized
government has played a starring role and has proven itself a gold-plated
botch. Again and again, and despite a veritable river of dollars, it has failed
to deliver what it promised. The Department of Defense and Homeland
Security routinely accept contracts so ill-crafted they seem to have been designed more as a way to sluice billions in to the contractors’ pockets than as a device for getting something done. And, being private, the contractors are largely shielded from
oversight and accountability. Indeed, a favorite conservative tactic has been
to shut down offices that supervise the outsourced operations—in 2006, the
General Services Administration actually to contract out the job of supervising
contractors—allowing the market to perform its miracles without any scrutiny
from government at all.” pp. 138-39