Tag: Politics

Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly  with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.

Spirits were high last night as occupiers were joined by 92-year-old folk legend Pete Seeger for a late night march to Columbus Circle, where a midnight performance featuring Seeger’s grandson Tao Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, composer David Amram, bluesman Guy Davis and others.

A live stream of the action offered millions an opportunity to view the transcendental nature of the moment that was unfolding. The march was one of the most inspiring yet because the repetitive chants were abandoned for folk songs Pete Seeger & others are known for singing. “Ain’t Gonna Study War No More,” “O Mary Don’t You Weep” & “This Little Light of Mine” were all sung by people while marching to Columbus Circle.

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It was truly a spiritual experience and opportunity for younger generations to hear some of the best folk/protest music in the history of America. Songs like “This Land is Your Land” have become patriotic songs yet the song written by Woody Guthrie is actually a song for revolutionaries. That is why a sanitized version of the song is often sung. Pete Seeger actually sang the version with lost verses during a “We Are One” concert at the Lincoln Memorial that was part of Obama’s Inauguration.

This is one of the typically absent verses:

“As I went walking I saw a sign there

   And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”

   But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,

   That side was made for you and me.”

Pete Seeger, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Guy Davis, Tom Paxton, Tom Chapin and David Amram joined Occupy Wall Street on a march from Broadway and 95th Street in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, down to Columbus Circle at Broadway and 59th Street. When we got there, this is what happened.

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman celebrates the Occupy Wall Street movement’s ability to refocus the country’s and Washington’s attention from deficits to jobs when economists like Krugman could not. “It turns out that no number of learned papers on how we’re doing this wrong, no number of sober editorials on how we’re doing this wrong was making a dent.”

I visited Zuccotti Park yesterday. Michael Moore gave a short speech, transmitted by the human microphone. I gather that right-wingers are claiming that OWS is anti-Semitic; someone forgot to tell the excellent Klezmer band.

Overall, what struck me was how non-threatening the thing is: a modest-sized, good-natured crowd, mostly young (it was a cold and windy evening) but with plenty of middle-aged people there, not all that scruffy. Hardly the sort of thing that one would expect to shake up the whole national debate. Yet it has – which can only mean one thing: the emperor was naked, and all it took was one honest voice to point it out.

As for how the emperor got that naked: read Ari Berman’s article on the austerity class, and its dominance in Washington.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – When “Occupy Wall Street” protesters took over two parks in Portland’s soggy downtown, they pitched 300 tents and offered free food, medical care and shelter to anyone. They weren’t just building, like so many of their brethren across the nation, a community to protest what they see as corporate greed.

They also created an ideal place for the homeless. Some were already living in the parks, while others were drawn from elsewhere to the encampment’s open doors.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Guests are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Guests are Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

The Chris Matthews Show: This weeks panel guest are Gloria Borger, CNN Senior Political Analyst, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor, David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist and Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Guests are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is getting around. Other guests are Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Spencer Ackerman: The Iraq War Ain’t Over, No Matter What Obama Says

President Obama announced on Friday that all 41,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq will return home by December 31. “That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end,” he said. Don’t believe him.

Now: it’s a big deal that all U.S. troops are coming home. For much of the year, the military, fearful of Iranian influence, has sought a residual presence in Iraq of several thousand troops. But arduous negotiations with the Iraqi government about keeping a residual force stalled over the Iraqis’ reluctance to provide them with legal immunity.

But the fact is America’s military efforts in Iraq aren’t coming to an end. They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas.

David Sirota: The Choice Between Democracy and Autocracy

Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that in this 10th month of the first year of His Majesty King John Hickenlooper’s reign, the sovereign governor of the Kingdom of Colorado handed down an edict closing the grounds of the Capitol palace to the public and ordering his praetorian guard to arrest the peaceful Occupy Denver protesters assembled at the castle gates.

This royal order, which made international headlines last week, was all about intimidating imagery. Just as King John had hoped, the iconic photograph to emerge from the sweep was a front-page Denver Post photo of a heavily armed police officer menacingly guarding the Capitol-a deliberate visual message telling the despot’s subjects to retreat or face consequences. He later told a reporter that he was aiming to preemptively crush “something that could easily catch on.”

Back on the East Coast, it was much the same, as His Majesty King Michael Bloomberg issued a decree stating that as a benevolent despot, he would “allow” his Manhattan subjects to occupy Wall Street (as if the mayor has the power to grant-or withhold-democratic rights). But then King Mike quickly sent his police force in for mass arrests, standing down only after a wave of outrage from the larger serfdom watching on television.

Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly  with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.

If you have to ask , you haven’t been listening

Cenk Uygur and “The Young Turks” are at Occupy Wall Street in New York City all week.

In this interview, writer Jesse LaGreca tells Cenk about becoming Fox News public enemy No. 1 after he called out a producer’s biased questions in a clip that made it online, if left on the cutting room floor.

A campaign against arbitrary searches by the NYPD gets a boost from Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street headed to Harlem Friday afternoon in a solidarity march that ended with the arrests of a few dozen protesters including Princeton professor Cornel West – just days after his arrest in Washington, D.C., at another demonstration.

The arrests, which occurred after marchers linked arms in front of a fortress-like NYPD station just off Frederick Douglass Boulevard, were a planned act of civil disobedience.

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Finally, here is West’s speech just a few minutes before he and other protesters were arrested:

The New York Post reported there will be more arrests of Occupy Wall Street participants, who do not abide by New York City laws for demonstrations. Bloomberg also warned that a crackdown was coming.

The Post quoted the Occupy Wall Street media coordinator Thorin Caristo, who stated:

  “His inability to create a clear and definitive opinion or position on OWS just shows he’s being tossed around like a bird in a storm. We all know what that storm is, that storm is the growing concern in the higher factions of Wall Street, that this movement might actually be making a difference…The mayor’s statements sound hardline and I have no doubt he may actually try to enforce those. But we all know that every time excessive police force is used in this situation the movement grows exponentially.”

The city should not take this point lightly. Use of excessive police force or any effort to disperse the encampment will only invigorate the occupation with renewed support. It will only lead to more marches and gatherings that the police will be deployed to babysit. It will only amplify scrutiny of New York City and its police force by the media and the people of the world.

After Bank of America was downgraded by the ratings agencies and over the objections of the FDIC but with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s blessing, the Bank of America transferred millions of dollars of its worst derivatives to its Merill Lynch unit where they would be insured:

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

Three years after taxpayers rescued some of the biggest U.S. lenders, regulators are grappling with how to protect FDIC- insured bank accounts from risks generated by investment-banking operations. Bank of America, which got a $45 billion bailout during the financial crisis, had $1.04 trillion in deposits as of midyear, ranking it second among U.S. firms.

“The concern is that there is always an enormous temptation to dump the losers on the insured institution,” said William Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former bank regulator. “We should have fairly tight restrictions on that.”

So why is the FDIC concerned and the Federal Reserve giving its blessing? masaccio at FDL explains:

Of course, the Fed loves it. Bank holding companies can do no wrong as far as the Fed is concerned. The risk to taxpayers, and the moral hazard issues are utterly irrelevant to Ben Bernanke and his buddies. Of course, given the vast conflicts of interest at the Fed, this isn’t a surprise.

There are reasons to be worried about this. First, BAC moved the derivatives at the request of counterparties. The counterparties have a right under their derivative contracts to demand collateral from BAC, as they did after the company’s rating was reduced earlier this year. BAC estimates that would require an additional $3.3 billion in collateral. The downgrade was due to judgment by the ratings agencies that the government was less likely to bail out BAC if it got into trouble. Thus, the effect of the downgrade was to increase the direct risk to the FDIC, by forcing it in effect to guarantee the derivatives of Merrill Lynch. Nice opinion, ratings agencies. I wonder who paid them for it?

Second, if the FDIC has to liquidate BAC, it will have to borrow from the Treasury to pay depositors, and it will have to bill the largest banks for additional fees to pay off the Treasury loans to the extent of actual losses. We have no idea of the interlocking relations of these giants, so we have no idea whether the collapse of one would wreck others. Media reports say there are concerns about the relationships between European banks and US banks, so there is reason for concern about the relations among US giants. If one collapse could lead to others, where is the money coming from to repay the Treasury? []

Third, 82% of derivatives in notional amount are interest rate swaps. Interest rates are at historic lows. What happens when they go back up to normal levels? []

Fourth, BAC has a huge position in credit default swaps, with a notional value of $4.1 trillion. . . . . as we saw with AIG, when CDSs go sour, the counterparty has the right to demand collateral right up to the moment the entity fails. In this case, that collateral would be cash, and it would directly reduce the amount of cash in the Bank. That would be a disaster for the FDIC, which would have to pay off the depositor losses up to the insured limit.

As Yves Smith explains this has an air of criminal incompetence with the tax payers having to foot the bill in the end:

This move reflects either criminal incompetence or abject corruption by the Fed. Even though I’ve expressed my doubts as to whether Dodd Frank resolutions will work, dumping derivatives into depositaries pretty much guarantees a Dodd Frank resolution will fail. Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs. So this move amounts to a direct transfer from derivatives counterparties of Merrill to the taxpayer, via the FDIC, which would have to make depositors whole after derivatives counterparties grabbed collateral. It’s well nigh impossible to have an orderly wind down in this scenario. You have a derivatives counterparty land grab and an abrupt insolvency. Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.

But it’s even worse than that. During the savings & loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors. No Congressman would dare vote against that. This move is Machiavellian, and just plain evil.

It is well past time to do something about regulation and oversight of the Federal Reserve.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Paul Krugman: Party of Pollution

Last month President Obama finally unveiled a serious economic stimulus plan – far short of what I’d like to see, but a step in the right direction. Republicans, predictably, have blocked it. But the new plan, combined with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, seems to have shifted the national conversation. We are, suddenly, focused on what we should have been talking about all along: jobs.

So what is the G.O.P. jobs plan? The answer, in large part, is to allow more pollution. So what you need to know is that weakening environmental regulations would do little to create jobs and would make us both poorer and sicker.  

Ari Berman: How the Austerity Class Rules Washington

In September the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan deficit-hawk group based at the New America Foundation, held a high-profile symposium urging the Congressional “supercommittee” to “go big” and approve a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 trillion mandate. The hearing began with an alarming video of top policy-makers describing the national debt as “the most serious threat that this country has ever had” (Alan Simpson) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-government” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt continues to rise, predicted former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A looming fiscal crisis was portrayed as being just around the corner.

The event spotlighted a central paradox in American politics over the past two years: how, in the midst of a massive unemployment crisis-when it’s painfully obvious that not enough jobs are being created and the public overwhelmingly wants policy-makers to focus on creating them-did the deficit emerge as the most pressing issue in the country? And why, when the global evidence clearly indicates that austerity measures will raise unemployment and hinder, not accelerate, growth, do advocates of austerity retain such distinction today?

Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly  with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.

One of the groups that Health Care for the 99% is planning a major event on October 26, Get Wall Street out of Healthcare!! March Against the Health Insurance Industry. There is a planned march to the offices of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, WellCare and St Vincent’s Community Hospital which closed earlier this year due to bankruptcy. St Vincent’s is a casualty of profit-driven insurers and a healthcare system that leaves 50 million Americans uninsured. There are now no hospitals on the westside below 57th st. I am planning on participating in that march. Stay tuned.

Disgruntled Verizon Communications and Verizon Wireless workers and members of the labor union Communications Workers of America will be joining the “Occupy Wall Street” protest Friday in protest of “Verizon’s corporate greed.”

In a press release issued Thursday afternoon, the CWA said that about 1,000 Verizon workers will meet at Verizon’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street at 4 p.m. ET and march past Liberty Plaza/Zuccotti Park where “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are gathered. The march will end at a Verizon Wireless dealer on Broad Street. Many of the protesters are then expected to return to Liberty Park and stay through the night.

NYers:

LISTEN UP!

Please come to the meeting tonight or send our messages or write about people coming to the meeting of the combined Quality of Life and Financial District subcommittee

Real Estate Board of New York asking the city to prohibit Occupy Wall Street-style use of public space.

In fact, the Real Estate Board of New York is reportedly preparing to ask the city to endorse universally applicable rules prohibiting future Occupy Wall Street-style use of public space, along with the automatic right to close all spaces at night.

REBNY is the 1%.

The Board’s ranks consist of 12,000 owners, builders, brokers, managers, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, real estate investment trusts, utilities, attorneys, architects, marketing professionals and many other individuals and institutions involved in New York realty.

It didn’t sound like this was as bad as they expected. The Board of Realtors would still have to go through the city council process to get any changes and that won’t happen anytime soon.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Robert Reich: The Austerity Death Trap

Ron Paul’s newly-unveiled economic plan — promising to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget in year one (presumably that means 2013) — is only slightly more ambitious than what we’re hearing from other Republican candidates. They’re all calling for major spending cuts starting as soon as possible.

What are they smoking?

Can we just put ideology aside for a moment and be clear about the facts? Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping because consumers are losing their jobs and wages, and don’t have the dough. And businesses aren’t hiring because they don’t have enough customers.

The only way out of this vicious cycle is for the government — the spender of last resort — to boost the economy. The regressives are all calling for the opposite.

Cenk Uygur: {How To Regain Our Democracy http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Our politicians are bought. Everyone knows it. Conservatives know it just as much as liberals do. And libertarians have probably known it all along. The Democrats are bought and the Republicans even more so. They don’t represent us. They represent their donors. We have taxation without representation. Our democracy is in serious trouble.

We must regain our ability to make a difference, to have our votes count. Right now, corporate interests and special interests dominate our politics because they can spend unlimited money. Unfortunately, in this current system money speaks louder than words. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the checkbook is far mightier than the pen. In the congressional races in 2008, the candidate who had more money won more than 93% of the time. Our representatives don’t serve us; they serve the people who pay them — their corporate funders.

Click on image to enlarge

One of the key activists behind Egypt’s “Facebook Revolution” is now giving advice to a new group of protesters: the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The protesters in New York’s Zuccotti Park – and their offshoots around the country – often cite the mass demonstrations earlier this year in Cairo’s Tahrir Square as their inspiration. So maybe it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Ahmed Maher, one of the leading figures in those Egyptian protests, has been corresponding for weeks with the Occupy Wall Streeters, whom he calls “our brothers.”

Maher is one of the founders of the April 6 Youth, which used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to galvanize Egyptians against President Hosni Mubarak. Recently, however, his attention has turned toward America, where he’s been chatting online with Occupy activists. Those conversations center around practical advice from a successful Egyptian revolutionary. Usually, they occur through Facebook. On Tuesday, for the first time, they happened face to face.

“We talk on the internet about what happened in Egypt, about our structure, about our organization, how to organize a flash mob, how to organize a sit-in,” Maher tells Danger Room, and “how to be non-violent with police.”

The “30 Rock” star and newly minted podcaster, Baldwin has, during the protesters’ occupation of Wall Street, advocated for tighter bank regulations and more strict enforcement of those regulations. Arriving around midnight, he tweeted at 1:37, “My thanks 2 Aaron from Brooklyn and Sean from Winnipeg for this evening’s OWS tutorial. My first. A lot of dedicated people at #ZuccottiPark.”

He sent out a series of tweets following his departure, saying, “OWS needs to coalesce around some legislative policy. The ‘occupy’ strategy may be an effective one. But what can each entity agree on?” and “Campaign finance reform remains the linchpin of our democracy’s many problems.”

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The star then followed that defense of banks’ existence, saying, “We need a healthy banking system in this country. We need strong capital markets. What is missing are regulations with teeth.”

Two weeks ago we conducted an anonymous poll on this website to learn more about our visitors. We asked Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán Ph.D, sociologist of the City University of New York to look at the data, which he analyzed to create an original academic paper titled “Mainstream Support for a Mainstream Movement” (pdf).

His analysis shows that the Occupy Wall Street movement is heavily supported by a diverse group of individuals and that “the 99% movement comes from and looks like the 99%.” Among the most telling of his findings is that 70.3% of respondents identified as politically independent.

Dr. Cordero-Guzmán’s findings strongly reinforce what we’ve known all along: Occupy Wall Street is a post-political movement representing something far greater than failed party politics. We are a movement of people empowerment, a collective realization that we ourselves have the power to create change from the bottom-up, because we don’t need Wall Street and we don’t need politicians.

Since our humble beginning a few short weeks ago, we’ve helped inspire people around the world to organize democratic assemblies in their own communities to take back public spaces, meet basic needs, make their own demands, and begin building a better world today.

Below is Dr. Cordero-Guzmán’s executive summary of his findings along with a link to his full academic paper.

Author was arrested alongside Occupy Wall Street protesters after she disputed police claims that they had to clear sidewalk

The feminist author Naomi Wolf has criticised the erosion of the right to public protest in the United States after she was arrested alongside Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in New York.

Wolf was led away in handcuffs after addressing protesters outside an awards ceremony held to honour New York’s governor, at which she was a guest.

Reports are coming in from Sirte, Libya that Muammar Gaddafi has been killed trying to flee rebel troops. This has not been confirmed by the US State Department.

Muammar Gaddafi killed in Sirte

NTC military chief says toppled leader died of wounds following capture near his hometown of Sirte

Abdul Hakim Belhaj, an NTC military chief, has confirmed that Muammar Gaddafi has died of his wounds after being captured near Sirte.

The body of the former Libyan leader was taken to a location which is being kept secret for security reasons, an NTC official said.

“Gaddafi’s body is with our unit in a car and we are taking the body to a secret place for security reasons,” Mohamed Abdel Kafi, an NTC official in the city of Misrata, told Reuters.

Earlier, Jamal abu-Shaalah, a field commander of NTC, told Al Jazeera that the toppled leader had been caught.

“He’s captured. He’s wounded in both legs … He’s been taken away by ambulance,” Abdel Majid, a senior NTC military official said.

A photograph taken on a mobile phone appeared to show Gaddafi heavily bloodied, but it was not possible to confirm the authenticity of the picture.

The news came shortly after the NTC captured Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, after weeks of fighting.

News Agency Al Arabiya has said [they are to be given access to his body to take pictures.