up to date political achievements of the occupy movement.

What the occupy movement has managed to change up to now, with peaceful protests planned to keep going throughout the year and even more changes hopefully to be made..


''President Obama is moving to energize the Democratic base for his re-election campaign, but in the case of a dozen battleground states, he’ll have to work harder than four years ago to find it.

Since the heady days of 2008, a new USA TODAY/Gallup Swing States Poll finds the number of voters who identify themselves as Democratic or Democratic-leaning in these key states has eroded, down by 4 percentage points, while the ranks of Republicans have climbed by 5 points.

Republican voters also are more attentive to the campaign, more enthusiastic about the election and more convinced that the outcome matters.

The contrasting conditions of the nation’s two major political parties — discouraged Democrats and resurgent Republicans — underscore how different Obama’s re-election campaign is from the contest four years ago.

Consider the math: In 2008, when Obama carried the swing states by 8 percentage points, Democrats there swamped Republicans in party identification by 11 points. Now, that partisan edge has tightened to a statistically insignificant 2 points.

And the “enthusiasm gap” that helped fuel a Democratic victory last time has turned into a Republican asset. Sixty-one percent of Republicans say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for president next year, compared with 47% of Democrats.

Among the most enthusiastic are some of the GOP’s core voters: conservatives, middle-aged men and those 50 to 64 years old. Those who are least enthused include core Democratic groups that were critical to Obama’s election in 2008, including minorities and younger voters.

An entire field of economics, known as “public choice,” studies how small, concentrated groups with similar interests generally prevail politically against larger groups of diffused interests. And, in our society, these concentrated interests – like unions, defense contractors, religious groups, farmers , etc. – are not necessarily part of the “one percent” Occupy talks about, and several have even joined or co-opted the Movement. But they are part of the broader one-percent problem.

I recently participated in a debate about the Occupy Movement at the university where I teach. The representative from Occupy Chicago claimed to be speaking on behalf of the 99 percent, but the problem is that there is no single coherent 99 percent.There are many 99 percents depending on the issue at stake, and any successful 99 percent movement must be more nuanced and draw finer lines than the Occupy Movement has so far.

When focused broadly on just income or wealth, the message of Occupy is too radical to represent anything close to 99 percent of Americans. The representative of Occupy in the debate identified himself as a Marxist,claimed that the American dream is dead and buried, and argued the only way to solve our problems is for the government to overturn Citizens United and dramatically regulate political speech. The problem with this, of course, is that 99 percent of Americans do not support any of these assertions, let alone all of them together.

Even during the height of the recent financial crisis, about 60 percent of Americans still supported capitalism. Most Americans believe the American dream is still alive, and in a 2009 Gallup poll, nearly 60 percent agreed with the Supreme Court that spending on political issues is political speech. At best, about 40 percent of Americans share some of the views of Occupy.

The timing of the Movement is also a bit too convenient to be inclusive of Republicans and Democrats who make up the 99 percent. In 2009, the top one percent took a smaller share of national income than in each of the four years of President Clinton’s second term.''

These changes dont really amount to much so far but with the movement still going strong hopefully a bigger change will be made soon. The occupy movement has still given serious people no reason to believe that it possesses any special insights into the socioeconomic system, and has provided no workable answers to the pressings challenges of the day. It really doesn’t get any lamer than this.