Occupy Goes Global

Another great American export, from the people. All this past weekend, all over the world.

More on the Good Guys

Jimmy Breslin, 10 years into retirement, comes out to cover #occupywallstreet:

This was the start of a moving day that has not been seen in this city in a great many years, back when the unions were large and nasty to those who opposed the war in Vietnam back in the '60s and '70s.

Now yesterday, they joined hands with the young, and people were mostly orderly and all for the idea that the troops be pulled out of Afghanistan and that we need jobs for the young unemployed around here.

They were angry, and they shouted about the injustice of a tiny percentage of the rich getting richer, while the middle class endures foreclosures, dwindling savings and sudden losses in employment with the jobs going to places like China.

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, on people finally standing up after the banks destroyed the economy in 2008:

Naomi Klein: Occupy Wall Street Oct. 5th Demo from The New Significance on Vimeo.

Ever wonder why we got into this crisis?

Twenty golden years of consolidation and concentration of ownership.

The 1%.

Who are the 99%?

Great post by Ezra Klein on this movement, including:

These are not rants against the system. They’re not anarchist manifestos. They’re not calls for a revolution. They’re small stories of people who played by the rules, did what they were told, and now have nothing to show for it. Or, worse, they have tens of thousands in debt to show for it.

...

But this is why I’m taking Occupy Wall Street -- or, perhaps more specifically, the ‘We Are The 99 Percent’ movement -- seriously. There are a lot of people who are getting an unusually raw deal right now. There is a small group of people who are getting an unusually good deal right now. That doesn’t sound to me like a stable equilibrium.

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy -- work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- has been broken, and they want to see it restored.

Here's a rapidly growing Tumblr with faces and messages from the 99%.

Of us.

Wild Monday Roundup

Amanda Knox should never have been tried in the first place, and the prosecution's allegation of motive was Medieval and misogynistic, literally something out of a 14th Century witch trial. I'm sure it must be as hard to believe that she's finally free after nearly four years - 20% of her life -- but the relief must be epic as well. Great thanks to the Italian legal system, where the appeal is something more of a do-over than here in the U.S. Of course, in Rick Perry's Texas, she'd be executed already:

As one of the prosecutors in the case, Manuela Comodi, no friend of Knox, implied last week in his remarks: were Knox being tried in the United States, she might well be on her way to an execution. The case of Troy Davis, killed by the state of Georgia last month despite the fact that most of the witnesses in his case later recanted their testimony, should linger as the Knox saga is reviewed.

Speaking of Gov. Perry, I don't think the news about the name of the ranch leased by his family means that he's a racist. As our President would say, it's a distracting sideshow. But it does reinforce my prediction that an Obama-Perry duel would look very much like the aged battle for Abolition, and would expect to see rhetoric surrounding the candidates on all sides that mirrored that. I do like the discussion of language that's sprung up around this, like a rather unusual and admirably frank discussion today on The View.

What I do think is that he's a mindless corporatist who, like Bush from Texas before him, thinks the government treasuries are meant for the rich. Which takes us to Wall Street where a very articulate young man, Jesse LaGreca, makes the #occupywallstreet viral video of the day as he takes down Fox News to its face and lays out the real issues:

For example, the ultra-Right Koch Brothers seem to be getting away with having violated the Iran trading embargo. Because they can? Isn't that...treason?

And want to see the opposite of the guy in the above video? Isn't rich, aggrieved, entitled Hank Williams, Jr., born lucky like the Koch Bros albeit with less talent, just the Id of their rightwing Super-Ego:

Ha ha ha his theme song was cut from Monday Night Football tonight and hopefully forever.

Turn, tide, turn.

99%

Gotta love #occupywallstreet as the anti-Tea Party protest with real truth behind it -- that an unbridled Wall Street serving the 1% at the top got us into the current financial mess and they have paid no real price for it, not one that counts. Not one that will keep them from doing this again.

This weekend it spread to other cities and also intensified in NYC, with 700 arrests at the Brooklyn Bridge. People of all ages are represented and one has to wonder if the cops really want to be doing this where there's real crime going on all the time in NYC, and not just in the those towers being protested. Not to mention that those cops are the ones who get hurt when those big money-backed Republicans like those in Wisconsin start taking away public union rights. And how come 700 people have been arrested for protesting, yet not one indictment has been handed down to the high finance crooks themselves.

In the age of online social media, there is a huge amount to look at, to learn from, to help connect with the organizing. The Facebook page, the Twitter handle, the Tumblr. Here's some great pics at The Atlantic showing the sweep of the protest. Help pay the movement's media costs here.

Most importantly, the grievances. Peaceful and damning. We have yet to see if it lasts or fizzles, if it leads to change or fractures, if the authorities start sending in undercover thugs to turn things violent as they did regularly in the 1960's and the repressive Middle East regimes have done during Arab Spring, to discredit the movement.

If nothing else, it does the heart good to see there are protesters in America who aren't carrying posters of President Obama with a black toothbrush mustache.

NYC Police Brutality

While clearly not indicative of all police even on the scene of the crackdown on the Wall Street protesters, this video shows one of their member, probably of rank due to his white shirt rather than patrolman blue, pepper spraying several unarmed female protesters in clear violation of NYC police rules:



Once again, I wonder why the ridiculous Tea Partiers aren't on the front lines protesting Wall Street but instead focus their anger on the President and Democratic Party. Just identity politics at its worst, I guess. As for these protesters:

Since Sept. 17, a few hundred protesters have occupied Zuccotti Park on Liberty Street and Broadway, seeking attention for what they say is a financial system that is unjust and flawed. They have embarked on a series of daily marches near Wall Street, but their march to Union Square on Saturday was their largest and most ambitious.

Returning to the financial district from Union Square, many protesters used University Place, and the demonstration spilled into the street with protesters walking against traffic. The police put up mesh nets to prevent them from going any farther down University Place, and many of the demonstrators ended up on East 12th Street.

Well, it's not the first time the NYC cops have started some trouble. They did created the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988.

And 1874.

Banks: Guilty

Investigation results, courtesy HuffPo:

A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post.

The five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general and examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, the sources said.

The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government. The audits were completed between February and March, the sources said. The internal watchdog office at HUD referred its findings to the Department of Justice, which must now decide whether to file charges.

New York State's Attorney General to take his own action?

Officials in Eric T. Schneiderman’s, office have also requested meetings with representatives from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The inquiry appears to be quite broad, with the attorney general’s requests for information covering many aspects of the banks’ loan pooling operations. They bundled thousands of home loans into securities that were then sold to investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies.

It is unclear which parts of the byzantine securitization process Mr. Schneiderman is focusing on. His spokesman said the attorney general would not comment on the investigation, which is in its early stages.

I'm not betting on justice, but I'm hoping some pain, maybe, to act as a future deterrent? Or, more likely, more gutting of protective laws thanks to the all-powerful Wall Street lobby...

Primary Results

There is no GOP wave. It's a myth. There's a huge civil war going on in the Republican Party, whether the establishment coheres to fight their insurgency or not. There is no false equivalency on the Democratic side as progressives are far from a radical insurgency, in large part they're members of the angry middle as much or more than teabaggers.

I'm interested to see if the establishment GOP can recapture the Wall Street campaign money thanks to their opposition or weakening of the bank reform legislation. I've only seen the Left picket and protest on Wall Street -- where are the t.partiers? Can they remain bought off by an unregulated Libertarian approach to capitalism? Even if it cost them their pension fund?

I'll also be looking how insurgent KY GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul's public image develops. His father seems like a gentleman. Rand just called out Obama like a punk. Offering to pay for his ticket.

Vestiges of condescension.

From the Inside Out

According to the creators of the new SyFy show, Caprica, the premise of the series is that Caprica is beautiful and technologically advanced on the outside, but completely corrupt to the core on the inside.

Think maybe that might be a comment on our times?

I just watched The Daily Show report on how banks are jacking up credit card fees right and left, in advance of new regulations going into effect. They can even charge you for underutilizing your credit card -- charging you for not buying things!

Good luck to Obama attempts to reform Wall Street, which is clearly rotten on psychotic profiteering and won't change their ways without a deathmatch loss.

And I just watched the moron who made a name for himself by moronic behavior, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) repeating over and over again that we have the best health care system in the world, when that is demonstrably false. (Credit to Dylan Rattigan for calling him out.) Meanwhile the GOP is playing pouty games over the possibility that we actually get comprehensive reform, saying instead there should be either no real reform or, worse, piecemeal reform -- the kind that doesn't work because it doesn't address all the interrelated elements of the existing system.

Hey, but the health insurance companies are currently -- I kid you not -- exempt from anti-trust laws! So we must have the best system!

Then we've got red states going nuts expanding gun rights for nuts, playing on the fear that Obama will someone take their guns away -- even though he doesn't talk about the issue and has neither proposed nor offered support for any new gun restricting legislation. This, as more guns go off in Littleton, CO schools.

And can you believe that the U.S. military is riddled with private mercenaries, i.e. armed contractors? Good luck to House Dems trying to phase them out -- when the Republicans in the Senate have bottled up 290, count 'em, 290 pieces of legislation passed by the House.

Per BAGnewsNotes, you just can't deal with these people. It's all about money, that and inability to synthesize new information and grow with it. It's a recipe for disaster for America's future, and that includes any Democratic enablers.

It'll leave us to continue rotting from the inside out.

Greedy Greedy Greedy

So AIG wants to reward themselves for deep-sixing the economy:

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.

The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.

I'd say, I've got your blessing right here.

The greed of Wall Street predates Gordon Gekko, as Matt Taibbi hilariously and pointedly nails Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, who claims that it "has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression," and lays out:

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

But there's three greedies in the title of the post, and the last one for tonight is a couple, Doug and Cindy Hampton, which is increasingly looking like an Indecent Proposal variation where the reveal is looking like Doug pimping out his wife to Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) for a long period of time in hopes of the big score:

Senator John Ensign’s wealthy parents gave almost $100,000 to his former lover and her family, ostensibly out of concern for their welfare and as part of a “pattern of generosity,” his lawyer disclosed Thursday...

...“After the senator told his parents about the affair,” the statement issued by Mr. Coggins said, “his parents decided to make the gifts out of concern for the well-being of longtime family friends during a difficult time. The gifts are consistent with a pattern of generosity by the Ensign family to the Hamptons and others...

...The disclosure of the $96,000 gift came a day after Doug Hampton said on a Las Vegas television program that Mr. Ensign had paid Mrs. Hampton more than $25,000 in severance pay.

Y'know, a good couple is a good team. Working together towards common goals. And not too possessive -- his wife was bending the marital contract for nine months (December 2007 - August 2008).

On the Ensign side, isn't he getting a little old for his folks to be bailing out his adultery?

Grifters, grifters everywhere. Wall Street and Washington.

Who could have predicted that?

Now?

So is Obama a hero now, and Geithner o.k?

• They release their toxic asset, er, "legacy loan" plan to reasonable acclaim, save Paul Krugman.
  
  
• The stock market jumps 7 percent on the news of the plan.
  
  
• February home sales had an unexpected uptick.
  
  
• Some AIG execs are returning the bonus money.
  
  
• And more Madoff assets are found.

I guess the same cable news geniuses that were starting to blame Obama for the situation he inherited are going to start praising him now?

Tell me when it happens...

Circuses of Bread

Concerning the AIG bonus tax, I agree with this Andrew Sullivan reader:

It's stupid, and probably unconstitutional, sure. But it's great because it gets us past what is, in the big picture, a trivial issue. If the bill becomes law, Americans can feel like the government did something to get their money back and we can move on to dealing with real problems. A lawsuit challenging the bill will follow, and in a year or two, it will get struck down, and no one will care, because we'll either be on our way to a recovery, or so deep in shit that we'll have much bigger problems on our mind.

I'm glad people have gotten angry, and it's good for the powers that run this country -- both Wall Street and Washington -- to remember that class war starts with them.

But the thing to remember is that fascism starts at home and it's based solely on populist rage, always borne of fear. Those who harness that rage in America can get pretty far -- Huey Long, Joe McCarthy.

Currently Governor Sarah Palin and whoever that guy is who's playing Joe the Plumber appear to be top contenders, vying for it. She's having her political action committee, Sara PAC, determine policy in Alaska, turning down Obama's stimulus (like education) money so she can run against him and for the GOP nomination on it. Endlessly. And as for Joe, with his soft-spoken dogwhistle to the rage, I contend he could be our next face in the crowd:



The fact is that there is ample reason to be angry with the capitalist class of money manipulators who take such a high percentage of our nation's wealth but diminishing responsibility there at the top of the food chain. But these banks are going to take a lot of dollars -- much or most of which will be in reserve so they can legally open their doors every day -- and it'll take at least a year to winnow through all the bad instruments. And maybe eight years until it's all cleaned up -- if Obama gets to enact enough controls.

John McCain is right: lay off of Geithner. Especially on the left. He's a regulatory guy who's finally working for an honest President, and he's working on the biggest economic meltdown since 1929 without a full staff yet. Schwarzenegger is right:

Schwarzenegger, along with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, met with President Barack Obama today in a closed meeting to discuss how to shore up federal spending on transit systems and renewable energy projects.

After the meeting, Schwarzenegger said the trio let the president know that "we are 100 percent behind him on this, to go out and to sell this to the American people.

" I think there is a tremendous demand out there for this,'' he said. "Not only does it help us make our economy function better, but also it helps us in creating jobs."

Every time you think of a bank getting bailed out, think about all the pension funds and municipalities that can't afford for our banking system to collapse. That's the gun those behind the derivative business grafted onto AIG's good name are holding to our nation's head.

It's going to be a rough ride, but I can't imagine anyone better equipped than our current President to navigate us through it.

Can you?

Jonathans

It was all anybody could talk about today, and it was pretty intense because clearly our big expensive news media can't do their job. CBS felt that Murrow blood running through their veins and ran Jeff Greenfield's excellent piece:


Watch CBS Videos Online

Time media critic James Poniewozik gets to the core of the modern television journalism problem -- and how Cramer was trapped by it under Stewart's questioning:

"These people were my friends." Cramer said that, or something like it, repeatedly: that longtime friends flat-out lied to him. So problem one: coziness with sources is death for the information business. Now, Cramer is a commentator, not a reporter, and I don't begrudge him friends per se. But it is a problem when reporters either become too close to their subjects to treat them skeptically, or become so obsessed with access that they are leery of being too skeptical: i.e., "If I do that, they'll never talk to me again."

Journalists prize getting people to talk to them, with good reason, but they shouldn't be hostage to it. Part of the problem is a culture in which interviewing is privileged over research: "reporting" is defined as getting a person to talk to you, preferably a famous person. But as the original Daily Show CNBC clip showed, research can be pretty powerful—then it created a situation where Cramer pretty much had to talk.

So what I heard today was that Jon Stewart is doing CNN and MSNBC job for them, that it's only the court jester who can speak truth to the emperor as he reveals him to have no clothes, and that he's essentially our century's Mark Twain.

Or maybe our Jonathan.

Ponzi Network

I'm not sure how long this video will be available, since Viacom always pulls them from YouTube, so go to this HuffPo link if it disappears below, but Jon Stewart's evisceration of CNBC in the wake of Wall Street mouthpiece Rick Santelli's Daily Show guest appearance cancellation is one of the finest and most visceral explanations of everything wrong with today's financial cable news ever created -- better than any created by any news organization:



And to think it was on a "comedy" show...

Bully Pulpit

At 3:00 in, the President gives it to the Wall Street bonus gang:



Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) goes all the way to offering a bill capping their salaries. If that doesn't scare the high capitalist class, I'm not sure what will. Yes, regulating prices, wages and productivity is what the GOP would call Socialism. But at an average of $2,600,000 in executive pay for the execs at banks bailed out by taxpayers -- $18 billion worth -- they deserve nothing less. In fact, I'd like to see if any of it is actionable. Like, prison actionable.

As for the Republicans trying to win by standing in the way of Obama's stimulus package or maybe twisting it into another tax giveaway to the wealthy, Frank Rich has the goods:

If anything, the Republican Congressional leadership seems to be emulating John McCain’s September stunt of “suspending” his campaign to “fix” the Wall Street meltdown. For all his bluster, McCain in the end had no fixes to offer and sat like a pet rock at the White House meeting on the crisis before capitulating to the bailout. His imitators likewise posture in public about their determination to take action, then do nothing while more and more Americans cry for help.

The problem is not that House Republicans gave the stimulus bill zero votes last week. That’s transitory political symbolism, and it had no effect on the outcome. Some of the naysayers will vote for the revised final bill anyway (and claim, Kerry-style, that they were against it before they were for it). The more disturbing problem is that the party has zero leaders and zero ideas. It is as AWOL in this disaster as the Bush administration was during Katrina.

While the GOP likes to complain about "class warfare" the fact is that they have brought it on and it is plain for every American to see. The plutocratic class in this country has derivative-ized the financial assets of the masses to the point that the Middle Class are losing their homes, their jobs, their life savings all in one fell swoop -- while those at the top reward themselves with taxpayer money, i.e. more dollar from the very classes they have shat upon. They're lucky there aren't guillotines on Wall Street, but then again this ain't over yet.

The face of the 2009 Republican Party isn't Michael Steele, it's Rush Limbaugh. If an elected Republican criticizes him he is forced to turn around and grovel for forgiveness. Rush is the voice of the GOP in openly articulating the desire for Obama to fail -- and, hence, for this economic meltdown to metastasize all the way into a second, even more devastating Great Depression. But they'll still have their radio contract money, their bonuses, their Oxycontin.

But the ads using Rush are coming now, being used against the GOP by progressive interest groups:

That face, I've seen it somewhere before...on HBO Sunday nights for almost a decade.

And maybe, like Tony himself, he won't see what's coming.