I share Robert Reich’s opinion of the corporate kingpins who are working to drive a stake through the ailing heart of our democracy:

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted…

The Supreme Court’s rulings that money is speech and corporations are people have now opened the floodgates to unlimited (and often secret) political contributions from millionaires and billionaires. Consider the Koch brothers (worth $25 billion each), who are bankrolling the Tea Party and already running millions of dollars worth of ads against Democrats…

If there’s a core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth poses a grave danger to our democracy. Yet when Occupiers seek to make their voices heard – in one of the few ways average people can still be heard – they’re told their First Amendment rights are limited…

However, Reich’s suggestion for undoing the harm done by Michael Bloomberg, the Koch brothers and other corporatists needs to be more specific:

… If Occupiers are expelled from specific geographic locations the Occupier movement can shift to broad-based organizing around the simple idea at the core of the movement: It’s time to occupy our democracy.

Reich presumably means “Occupiers” should focus their energies on installing genuine campaign finance reform, on pressuring the government to create jobs, stop further foreclosures, bring charges against Wall Street frauds, and other worthy goals. All good, but I think it would be a big mistake to completely quit the encampments around the country that have made the Occupy movement a genuine force for change.

The Bloombergs of the world, and their friends in the federal government, figure the mainstream media will go back to sleep and the backlash against them will fade if they make the encampments disappear. They know it’s the physical presence of large groups of defiant citizens that has focused attention on how badly we are being used by the wealthy and powerful.