Not only does our old friend Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King think it’s a bad idea to allow the poor to vote and have a voice in government, his friend New York Republican Rep. Peter King thinks it’s a bad idea to allow the poor to have a voice period and has an issue with Occupy Together coverage.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is upset at the growing movement and the media’s coverage of it, hoping that a modern day version of protests from five decades ago isn’t being recaptured now.
“It’s really important for us not to give any legitimacy to these people in the streets,” said King on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Friday evening. “I remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen.”
Let’s think about that. If it were up to Steve King, only property owners would be allowed to vote. If it were up to Peter King, there would be no coverage of Occupy Wall Street or anywhere else. Republicans are publicly running on a platform to disenfranchise tens of millions at the voting booth and in the media. They are absolutely terrified of the common people having a voice. Everything they are trying to accomplish legislatively is about stifling that voice, about ending the discussion, about rolling back rights, about the most base definition of conservatism: the unchanging prevention of progress in favor of not the status quo, but the status quo ante.
“We can’t allow that to happen,” King says. What, exactly, can he not allow to happen? Dissent against the Republican agenda? Minorities voting? The people taking to the streets to protest against his real employers? King is begging Americans to be part of his collective “we” here as well. Who is the “we” here? The 1% at the top? Why does King get to make that call? He certainly seems to think he has that power.
So yes, Occupy Together is now much more than a thorn in the side of the corporate Republicans and their mouthpieces. It’s a legitimate threat to them, and the GOP is treating them as such for a very real reason.
Maude
Maybe Peter King is afraid of some Mooslims being part of the protests.
arguingwithsignposts
Fuckin’ First Amendment, how do it work?
gogol's wife
“somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy” Tea Party, anyone?
4tehlulz
@Maude: It’s the Mosslim-Soros axl of evil.
SiubhanDuinne
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings.
4tehlulz
@gogol’s wife: True dat, though the first thing I though of was “Nixon”.
arguingwithsignposts
@gogol’s wife: Also, I don’t recall the hippies having much of an impact on policy, unless you count helping LBJ not to run for a second term as “shaping policy.” Nixon still bombed the shit of of southeast Asia for years.
atlliberal
We can’t allow 99% of the population to actually influence policy on our government. Government of the people, by the people, for the people, only counts if you agree with Peter King on everything. Perhaps he wishes his name was his title?
spartacus
It’s a royalist conspiracy!
(You know, with all the KINGS….)
Samara Morgan
its a bad idea to allow the stupid to vote.
but the founders and framers dealt with self-representation of the stupid as best they could.
Thus the Tea Party.
MeDrewNotYou
Stupid questions. Do you know how many t-bone steaks and Cadillacs the young bucks and welfare queens would vote themselves if they had half a chance?
Seriously, though, I’ve really been enjoying your posts. Keep up the good work!
chopper
there’s a third dude named King who would disagree with this.
AA+ Bonds
Oh, yes, I remember in the 1960s there was another man named “King”, but on the left, and eventually his street movement started influencing policy with TERRIBLE RESULTS that I’m sure Peter King opposes.
At least we know what Peter King stands for, now: rolling back the Civil Rights Act and resegregating America by race.
THE
@spartacus:
Someone should tell him the last King to rule New York was called Kong.
AA+ Bonds
@chopper:
This isn’t coincidental. It’s a dog whistle – King is appealing to white racists in New York, and there are enough that it matters.
The question is: will he get treated properly for it like Trent Lott, or have we forgotten how to do that in just a few short years?
amk
Typical rethuglican tactic. Accuse the opposition of what you yourself are engaged in.
Fucking lying assholes and fucking stupid voters who enable them.
AA+ Bonds
Here’s your talking point, NY:
Republican Peter King thinks the Civil Rights Act was a bad idea.
or maybe
“Peter King vs. Martin Luther King on race policy in America”
drkrick
@arguingwithsignposts:
True – but he was also driven paranoid enough by the protesters to do some of the things that got tagged as “Watergate” and that got him thrown out of office early. The hippies didn’t get him to stop the war as soon as they would have liked, but Nixon’s policies were not what they would have been if the hippies hadn’t been around.
Linda Featheringill
The folks demonstrating aren’t the only angry people in the US. They may represent just the tip of iceberg so to speak.
At least the kids are peaceful. As we on this blog demonstrated last night [But why wonder why], their elders are contemplating much more violent remedies, at some level anyway.
Occupy is giving the country a form of protest, a matrix to contain pain and anger, that is peaceful. If the stupid assholes succeed in suppressing Occupy, the pain and anger just might explode.
“We the people” have developed a very peaceful means of expressing ourselves. It could be a mistake to take that away from us.
geg6
@SiubhanDuinne:
Heh. Ol’ Will is always appropriate.
If only they could find their own Bosworth Fields and take all their buddies with them and end our winter of discontent.
Urza
These are the commercials that should be run, asking if they really want to roll back civil rights among other things. Make them do all the backpedaling. Ask it about every conservative as they aid and abet this behavior by not forcefully denying it.
MeDrewNotYou
@AA+ Bonds: At least Rand Paul was brave enough (or stupid enough, probably both) to come out and say the CRA is/was bad. It reminds me of something Malcolm X said: At least southern racists are up front about hating blacks; you know where they stand.
chopper
@AA+ Bonds:
beat you by two minutes.
seriously tho, isn’t that paragraph just loaded with irony? some dude named King says all the demonstrating and shit in the 60’s was a bad idea because it shaped american policy? am i on crazy pills or something?
JPL
Has Peter King been asked about his support of the IRA lately?
MariedeGournay
@AA+ Bonds: How about “Peter King: insufferable fucking idiot and terrorist sympathizer doesn’t known what he’s talking about…ever.”?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@arguingwithsignposts: Yea, you are right. If I had to do it all over again I would not have gone to Washington, camped out in the shit and lobbied my reps to stop the war. I would have just come home from Vietnam and kept my mouth shut.
JPL
@MariedeGournay: He’s just not into peaceful demonstrations.
Linda Featheringill
Question:
So what is going to happen if/when the City of New York decides to shut down Liberty Park?
bjacques
2012: Farewell to Kings (I hope).
PhoenixRising
@geg6: Why thank you you ma’am / sir.
jprfrog
It’s really funny that the OWS and related actions are not really doing anything but existing. They aren’t disrupting Town Halls, or threatening voters, or any of the intimidating things that characterized the summer of the Tea Party last year. (The only violence was from the police whose actions helped make the protest grow exponentially — IMO, blocking the Brooklyn Bridge so soon was a tactical error.)
They are just trying to speak out, and now occasionally getting (and more often lately) heard on MSM. That the very fact of their being is throwing some people into hysterics shows that the situation is unstable. When some of the duped Tea party folks realize that they are among the 99% is when things will get really interesting.
In how many cities are there now similar actions?
arguingwithsignposts
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Don’t mistake my attempt at historical accuracy for disagreement with the protests themselves.
ETA: to be clear, it’s akin to the anti-war protests in 2002-03. They didn’t change GWB’s policies, but they definitely made the point that there were a lot of people who weren’t co-signing.
Dustin
@28: that’s easy, things get ugly because such a shutdown certainly won’t be peaceful. We’ve already seen what the NYC police will do when they think they can get away with it. My advice, if the cell towers get shut off for “routine maintenance” either stay the hell away or go help, because those kids’ll be in trouble.
joe73112
I get your drift, and I agree, but I missed the part where he mentioned property owners.
curious
“these people in the streets”? that turn of phrase reveals a lot.
Dustin
@joe: he did that earlier. Someone else’ll have to get you the link, I’m on my iPhone.
Linda Featheringill
@Dustin: #33
Good advice.
joe73112
if anybody shouldn’t vote, perhaps it should be psychopaths and sociopaths…
http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/07/how_to_stop_the_political_insanity/
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@arguingwithsignposts: As you know, history is subject to interpretation and revision. The wingnuts will tell you the press over-represented the anti-war movement and caused the failure of the military effort. So, if the anti-war movement had no impact on policy just how did the war end? The policy of supporting the ARVN stopped.
joe73112
@Dustin, all I am saying is if it was said by King it should be referenced in this article… nothing in the quotes provided gave that impression.
Skeeter
@Linda Featheringill:
I guess tourists wouldn’t be able to see the Statue of Liberty.
Wrong park, no?
Dustin
@Joe: ahhh, ok, you’re just being pedantic. got it. King’s property owners line is well known on this site, base knowledge. There’s no need to rehash all the details of his previous statements when talking about new ones; it’s enough to just reference them.
joe73112
sorry, I missed it…don’t doubt that he said it. and yes, I am often pedantic in the mornings. LOL
Amir Khalid
I am very sad to see Peter King disrespecting the legacy of an illustrious member of the King family.
John D.
@joe73112: Um, it is the first link in the post – “Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King think it’s a bad idea to allow the poor to vote” takes you to a previous post where Steve King is quoted.
B W Smith
What both Kings want is a return of America to the early 50’s. I can’t tell you how many rank and file conservatives have expressed that to me. To them that represents a time of perfect social order. White men had the final say on all things. The 60’s and early 70’s were much more than anti-war and the Civil Rights movement. It also included the Women’s Movement, a loosening of sexual mores, environmental concerns, and a time when the youth chose not to remain silent. All of this was and is frightening to conservatives. They have fought long and hard to return to Ozzie and Harriet. OWS proves they are outnumbered and that scares the crap out of them. The one and only thing conservatives wish to preserve in our country is the current tax rates. Everything else they wish to reverse.
handsmile
@Linda Featheringill: (#28)
I strongly suspect that efforts to close Zuccotti Park/”Liberty Park” by New York City municipal and police officials will occur in the next several days. Their efforts will be predicated upon issues of petty crime and public sanitation, reports of which are increasingly appearing in NYC broadcast and print media. The real estate development firm Brookfield Properties, which manages the site under a public/private partnership, will be pressured to prohibit access as a means to maintain public order
Over the weekend, several local NYC television reports focused upon personal hygiene and garbage accumulation at the protest site, as well as the disruption to the daily life of local residents caused by the on-going protest.
(As a longtime NYC resident and one very familiar with the area, I cannot overstate that this latter claim is a blatant canard. There are NO residences in the immediate area adjacent to Zuccotti Park. Co-op and condominium apartment buildings are located several blocks away, and there is ready access via a network of main and side streets. Never-ending construction projects are a far more chronic impediment to daily life in the area.)
In today’s New York Posttprint edition and website may be found this story: “Sex, drugs, and hiding from the law at Wall Street protests” [headline]
The article begins: “The criminals are crashing the party.” The first several paragraphs focus upon and quote a man who claims to have outstanding warrants from Connecticut and seeks to elude the police by mingling among the protesters.
Post reporters next address a different issue of public order and safety, e.g., “Zuccotti Park smells like on open sewer, with people urinating and defecating in public”; and “Some couples have taken advantage of the free condoms distributed by the organizers to do the nasty in full view of other protesters.”
As Dustin alluded above (#33), efforts to remove OWS protesters from Zuccotti Park and prohibit future access will result in significant civil disobedience and, in all likelihood, incidents of aggressive confrontation and resistance. The behavior of the NYPD, with the explicit approval of Emperor Mike Bloomberg, during the 2004 Republican convention, offers a chilling precedent for what may be expected if the protest area is shut down. And we can be certain of just who will be blamed in the coverage by the corporate media.
Epicurus
When is this fuckhead going to get kicked out of Congress? He is simply an embarrassment at this point, but then he is in good company. Seriously, Suffolk County, give this asshole the boot, please. He is becoming a complete parody of himself at this point. As another commenter already stated, Fucking First Amendment, how does it work?
Waldo
I guess this means the Teatards on the corner are through protesting … um, whatever it was they were protesting.
Snarla
If it were up to Steve King, only white male property owners would vote. As a non-male, I do not approve.
the dude
@bjacques: Two Rush references. Cool. Although for more points: “2012: A Farewell To Kings”.
And a Go West/Pretty Woman reference in the title. Not so cool.
Anarchaeologist
We two Kings be stealin’ the vote…
Ash Can
Right-wingers do not like democracy. Period. They will do whatever they can to undermine it so that they guarantee themselves perpetual power. (I know everyone here knows that, but it can’t be overemphasized.)
And, as I said a couple of days ago, it’s exactly this parallel with the 60s movements that’s made OWS grow on me. Protesting — ur doin it rite.
PIGL
@joe73112: Absolutely right…no franchise, no right to hold office, unless certain personality traits are established.
The Enlightenment notions of universal suffrage did not account for the systematic structure of the population, 5% psychos, and 25% authoritarian followers aching to follow them. That built in minority is sufficient to guarantee a downwards ratchet towards fascism. The only solution is political disempowerment.
patrick II
And what policies that ended up being shaped? The demonstrations in the sixties were about two things — civil rights and the Vietnam war.
The civil rights demonstrations were the primary reason for the end of segregation in this country. The anti-Vietnam war demonstrations went on for years because the war went on for years, but finally a democratic congress reined in Nixon and the war ended.
The frustration of black people and their dissatisfaction with the voting process is obvious. The frustration of everyone when it came to Vietnam is less so. This country voted for peace twice. Johnson ran against Goldwater and promised to not send “”American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves”. Johnson lied and won.
Then Nixon beat Humphrey because he had a “secret plan” to end the war, and Humphrey had been allied with Johnson’s war policy too long. It turned out Nixons secret was that he was going to escalate and even considered going nuclear, not the end of the war most had hoped for.
Once again the man elected to end the war did not.
People today don’t understand the utter frustration. We voted twice clearly to end the war and the votes meant nothing. And that war cost 58,000 dead. For guys from middle class high schools like me, it meant we knew classmates who got killed. I lost two good friends to that war that we voted to stop.
And this country would be a much, much worse place if the policies that King regrets ending — legal segregation and the escalation of the Vietnam war — had continued. I have no idea why King would think otherwise other than actual insanity.
Elie
@handsmile:
They need to be very very careful..
As Linda commented above, this is an outlet for a lot of pressure. Seal it up and things go a whole lot differently.
My guess is that they will make an attempt (NYPD), the attempt will fail in some hopefully NOT horrible way and then it becomes a really big deal…
jimmiraybob
Peter King, supporter of the violent Irish Republican Army then: “We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.”
Peter King, supporter of the corporations/banks now – paraphrased: “We must pledge ourselves to destroy those men and women, our citizens, who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against economic imperialism in the streets of New York and Washington.”
I find Peter King to be wholly consistent and credible. /rolling eyes
I presume that he would have supported the East India Company against the colonists.
chopper
@handsmile:
cause NYC is normally such a clean city. and disruption? a block away is the WTC site which has been under construction, and swarmed by tourists, for a fuckin decade.
Tony J
@Dustin:
And with Blackberry currently undergoing certain unexplained problems with their network across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, a suspicious person – might – think that the groundwork was being laid to justify exactly what you’re talking about.
OWS got zero coverage from the MSM before footage of NYPD brutality towards protestors forced it onto the front-page. If a window of opportunity appears for the NYPD to deal with “an outbreak of violent protest and criminality” without having any pesky little cameras beaming the reality of their actions to the Real World, they’ll likely take it.
And the MSM will get to publish their already written stories about how Obama’s inflamatory ‘class warfare’ rhetoric ignited it all.
So yeah, people need to be careful.
sukabi
Peter King is also the critter who said this prior to the 2004 elections…. “It’s all over but the counting, and we’ll take care of the counting.”
Peter King likes to channel Stalin…
Montysano
@geg6: Sometimes the beauty of that language just stops me in my tracks; thanks for posting it.
Just previous to that excerpt:
What a sublime metaphor…
Dougerhead
@the dude:
Come, on that was a good song in its own way.
DanielX
@B W Smith:
A-men! I’ve commented before that what many of them seem to want is a return to that Golden Age when:
1. white men ran everything
2. white men had decent good paying jobs for the asking
3. women, children and black/brown people knew their place and bigod kept to it, or else.
Unfortunately, that age came to an end when the civil rights struggle gave black folks the vote they were supposed to get a hundred years earlier, and Vietnam gave notice that the white men running things were both incompetent and lying their asses off.