I see Occupy as the direct result of the Supreme Court's Citizens United vs FEC .

I am pretty sure that Karl Rove and Injustice Scalia thought that they were being clever when they orchestrated this ruling. All they had to do was create a case to send to the Supreme Court. Have the Bush administration---the one that never enforced voting rights except to protect whites and which never enforced clean air rules and which never, ever enforced campaign finance rules---pretend to enforce an election rule against Citizens United and then watch the case work its way up to the SCOTUS where the final judgment was predetermined. How do I know that last part? Because the first SuperPac was announced as being open for business the very next day.

It took a few months for American voters to figure out what was going on. The press kept mum about the implications of the ruling. But in the fall of 2010, we saw MONEY in politics as we had never seen it before. The will of the electorate seemed to count for nothing. We got a House of Representatives that voted to end Medicare, that obstructed attempts to create jobs. A House that announced publicly that its number one mission was finding some way to impeach the president. As if that would put us back to work.

We Americans have our share of faults, but one of our virtues is our love of free speech. The Supreme Court attempted to take away our free speech by allowing MONEY---foreign as well as domestic---to overwhelm the airwaves. They bought politicians. They bought TV time. They bought the press. They created a government that answered only to the 1%. And as soon as working class Americans noticed that they no longer had a voice in Washington, they raised their voice.

That is why we Occupy. We may not have money. But we have the numbers. And numbers count.

I do not blame the police as a whole for what happened to Scott Olsen, although the 1% wants us to blame all policemen, the way we once blamed Vietnam veterans for the war Nixon/Kissinger escalated. Yes, at least one policeman fired a weapon inappropriately. However the police in general are working class Americans, just like us. They do the job they are told to do. They are given a set of tools and told to use them. I blame the government that was bought by SuperPac money. The 1% paid for this government and they intend to protect their investment, no matter who gets hurt in the process. (Portion in italics added to address the very good points raised in the discussion)

I blame Antonin Scalia, the most disgraceful American of our generation. From Bush v Gore to Citizens United vs. FEC he has violated the laws of the land in the service of the rich and powerful. His legacy will be mud. He is already walking on feet of clay . Unfortunately, at the moment, he still has the power to deprive us of jobs, homes, our lives---and even our right to be heard.

Since 1776, Americans have been willing to put their lives on the line in order to protect their free speech rights. Anyone born and raised in the U.S. knows this. Anyone who attempts to deprive us of those rights knows that we will fight back.

Antonin Scalia shot Scott Olsen just as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself.