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Daily Beast: Occupy Wall Street Has Seized Control of Political Debate

Posted at 4:36 , May 8 2012

…OWS already has had a clear and demonstrable impact on both the Obama and Romney campaigns—arguably becoming the most important outside influence so far in this year’s election campaign dialogue.

President Obama and the Democrats have been increasingly echoing the central themes that OWS introduced last fall—emphasizing unfairness in American society, income inequality, and the need to redistribute wealth. Mitt Romney—who has struggled throughout this campaign on how to address questions surrounding Bain Capital, his overall wealth, the tax rates he pays, and what role Wall Street and business should play in promoting economic growth and job development—sought to tap into OWS themes at a rally in New Hampshire on April 24 with a speech centered around “the unfairness of America today.”

Moreover, the themes and rhetoric that Occupy Wall Street introduced have captured enough attention to go beyond the political hemisphere, to influence Wall Street itself. Nowhere was this clearer than last week when for the first time in Wall Street history, Citigroup shareholders united in opposition to a proposed $15 million pay package for its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit. The shareholder vote, which comes amid a rising national debate over income inequality, suggests that anger over pay for chief executives has spread from Occupy Wall Street to influence actual behavior on Wall Street as well…

Editor’s note: Shifting the window of dialogue is great, and a necessary first step. But if pressure does not sustain itself – and continue to build in favor of practical change – the effects such as those described in the article will be merely isolated events.

Read the full article at the Daily Beast.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged election, MSM, Occupy Wall Street, perspective.

Occupy Roundup: Feb. 18-22 – Finance/Banking Edition

Posted at 4:14 , February 22 2012

Wall Street has begun to speak for higher taxes on the rich. The article points out part of the catch (of course there’s a catch) – that it’s probably at least an attempt to avoid any further regulation. So this is a good first step! But there needs to be many more steps past this.

Meanwhile, an editorial from the Huffington Post points out that the Wall Street Journal is calling for breaking up the big banks (sadly, the article currently seems to be under paywall).

Occupy Milwuakee is pushing for a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. In a largely minority community (which has apparently been hit the hardest by both the recession and the foreclosures), this is a great push – hopefully it goes through.

Finally, one millionaire got on Fox Business to push for higher taxes for the rich, effectively demolishing the strawmen established by Fox in the process. Well worth the read and the watch.

And since we can’t just have one day of all-good news, today President Obama asked Congress to reduce the top tax rate to 28 percent, from 35 percent in exchange for closing some loopholes. Three cheers for our Card Table-in-Chief!

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged banks, fox, Milwaukee, MSM, occupy, taxes.

NYT: Economy Recovery “Wageless”, “Skewed in Favor of Corporate Profits”

Posted at 5:31 , January 26 2012

Not that anything needs to be added to that headline, but just to get the point across:

Economists at Northeastern University have found that the current economic recovery in the United States has been unusually skewed in favor of corporate profits and against increased wages for workers.

In their newly released study, the Northeastern economists found that since the recovery began in June 2009 following a deep 18-month recession, “corporate profits captured 88 percent of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1 percent” of that growth.

[...] “Aggregate employment still has not increased above the trough quarter of 2009, and real hourly and weekly wages have been flat to modestly negative,” the report concludes. “The only major beneficiaries of the recovery have been corporate profits and the stock market and its shareholders.”

Emphasis editor’s. Full text available at the New York Times’ website.

(Read that bolded paragraph over and over again until it’s burned in your mind, then tell everyone else about it until the same thing happens. It can’t be repeated enough—if the economy’s improving, it sure as hell isn’t for the workers. —ed.)

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged income disparity, MSM, unemployment.

New York Times: America’s Economic Mobility Already Small and Shrinking Further

Posted at 11:43 , January 11 2012

Jason DeParle has an article in the New York Times which blasts holes in the theory of bootstrapping your way to success:

[M]any researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

[...] One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.

[...] Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.“

All emphases editor’s. The article lays out the facts quite well; this is a journalistic piece, not an op-ed. The full text can be read here.

(Any of this starting to sound familiar? We can repeat the refrain as many times as it takes our leaders to finally starting listening to it. —ed.)

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged economic mobility, economy, income disparity, MSM, text.

[Op-Ed] Norman Lear: Occupy the New Year

Posted at 9:32 , December 30 2011

Norman Lear, active in both television production and political reform, has written an op-ed calling for further support of OWS:

To those many millions of Americans whose guts tell them the Occupy movement is on to something but aren’t the sort to camp out or protest in the street, I say find another way to let your voice be heard in the new year. Work with others who share your passion for equal opportunity and equal justice for all Americans, and find ways to channel outrage into productive action. …

Call it the American dream, the American promise or the American way. Whatever term you use, it is imperiled, and worth fighting for. It is that basic, deeply patriotic emotion that I believe is finding expression — bottom-up, small-d democratic expression — in the Occupy movement. We can, and I would say must, fully embrace both love of country and outrage at attempts to despoil it. What better cause? What better time?

Read the full opinion piece here.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged MSM, occupy, opinion.

Mayor Bloomberg Yucks It Up Over OWS Protests

Posted at 9:56 , December 9 2011

Via Young Manhattanite:

Some years ago, the Mayor of New York started the tradition of hosting an annual holiday party at Gracie Mansion for the media, mostly City Hall beat reporters (Room 9‘ers), that has the unspoken code of being kinda-sorta off the record. One could argue, though I wouldn’t, that there’s no real harm or impropriety in these things. (See: White House Correspondents Dinner.) But this year is different with Bloomberg. Very different.

After the NYPD’s recent treatment (obviously sanctioned by the Mayor’s Office) of the media covering Occupy Wall Street raids and protests, which included the “NYPD aggressively blocking journalists from doing their constitutionally protected work and in some instances is even targeting journalists for mistreatment,” it is highly inappropriate to yuk it up at a holiday party and give gag gifts at OWS’s expense.”

But how bad could it really be?

Mayor Bloomberg Shows Off His "Gifts"

Pretty bad, turns out. And the kicker, as Young Manhattanite points out, is that no one in the mainstream media sees this as fit for print.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged bloomberg, MSM, New York, photo, text.

The Word of the Year: “Occupy”

Posted at 3:13 , December 7 2011

NPR linguist contributor Geoff Nunberg has selected his word of the year, and not surprisingly, it’s “occupy”:

If the word of the year is supposed to be an item that has actually shaped the perception of important events, I can’t see going with anything but occupy. It was a late entry, but since mid-September it has gone viral and global. Just scan the thousands of hashtags and Facebook pages that begin with the word: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Slovakia. Occupy Saskatoon, Sesame Street, the Constitution. Occupy the hood.

[...] I was struck by a Thanksgiving op-ed in The Washington Times that said “The so-called ’99 percent’ have never had it so good.” The phrase doesn’t make a lot of literal sense — what else would you call them? But it suggests the right’s frustration. “So-called” is what people say when they’ve lost control of the conversation and have to use the other’s guy’s language, like the liberals who talk about “so-called family values.”

Full article available at NPR’s website.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged MSM, NPR, occupy, offsite.

[Op-Ed] Nick Hanauer Debunks 1% as “Job Creators” Myth

Posted at 1:36 , December 4 2011

Via Bloomberg (which has had some fantastic coverage during OWS, by the way) comes a fairly thorough dismantling of the “Job Creators” talking point by Nick Hanaeur:

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software.

[...] Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.”

Emphasis editor’s. The full article is here and well worth the read.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged jobs, MSM, op ed, text, Wall Street.

New Yorker Documents Life of Zucotti Protestor Ray Kachel

Posted at 1:29 , December 4 2011

The New Yorker currently has an incredibly moving piece on one of the Zucotti Park protestors. Ray Kachel has a story that is simultaneously heart-wrenching and uplifting. Normally, we’d provide summaries of the best part—but in this case, we’d have to quote the whole thing. This is the human face of OWS. This is what gets lost in the hoopla, and what the 1% can’t ever seem to see.

Read the article here.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged MSM, New York, text, Zucotti Park.

Pope Benedict Condemns “Scandal of Glaring Inequalities”

Posted at 1:21 , December 4 2011

Well, this is coming from a pretty high authority! Thomas Reese reports via NPR:

The Vatican released a document on the world economy on Monday that will cause heartburn in the Tea Party, but will be cheered by the folks occupying Wall Street.

[...] In [a released] encyclical, the pope decried “corruption and illegality” among economic and political elites in both rich and poor countries. He told financiers they must rediscover the ethical foundation of their activity and stop abusing savers. He wants a radical rethinking of economics so that it is guided not simply by profits but by “an ethics which is people-centered.”

Benedict notes that economic “inequalities are on the increase” across the globe. He does not accept the trickle-down theory, which says that all boats will rise with the economic tide. Benedict condemns the “scandal of glaring inequalities” and sees a role for government in the redistribution of wealth.”

The story first broke on NPR’s seminal news program, “All Things Considered.” The full recording and text can be found here.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged audio, international, MSM, pope, religion, text.

[Op-Ed]LAPD used “media pool” to manipulate coverage of Occupy LA eviction

Posted at 7:10 , December 1 2011

During the Los Angeles Police Department’s forcible removal of the Occupy LA protest last night, they chose 12 reporters and photographers to represent the media as a whole.* This is called a “media pool” — and it used to be a fairly time-honored, if oft-derided, way of dealing with very specific types of situations. The original idea was that a select group of mainstream media journalists go into a military engagement, report their observations to a larger group, and then everyone could write from the same observed facts.

Growing beyond its military borders, the media pool concept has been deployed during political conventions, high-profile trials, and in a few other cases. In all cases, though, as summarized in the Encyclopedia of Television, the pool “offers those who employ it a way to manage media coverage.”

It strikes me as significant that the compromise developed in the 1980s after the media was barred from covering the invasion of Grenada. It also strikes me as significant that we use the term “compromise” to describe it. The first and second meanings of compromised come into play: “to settle a dispute by mutual concession” and “to weaken (a reputation or principle) by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable.”

All of that brings us to last night’s media pool. The LAPD deployed this old-school method in a decidedly 20th-century way. First, they didn’t select a single web-based publication or alternative news outlet. Instead they allowed the Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, the big four television outlets, and a two radio reporters. Anybody not in that group — which would include reporters for every website not affiliated with a newspaper in Los Angeles, not to mention all citizens performing acts of journalism — were told that they would be arrested if they came too close to the eviction area.

[Op-Ed] Al Jazeera’s OWS Inspired Editorials

Posted at 11:17 , November 30 2011

A Modest Proposal for Occupy Wall Street: Inspired by satirist Jonathan Swift, a plan for turning the tables on Wall Street and offering ourselves as a sacrifice. (By Steve Fraser)
American Deceptionalism: Under the growing influence of the 1 per cent, American exceptionalism has become American deceptionalism. (By Paul Rosenberg)
Is it Time to Occupy the World?: If the Occupy movement hopes to achieve anything, they must organise and create a proactive strategy. (By Danny Schechter)

(Al Jazeera English has been cranking out some pretty heady stuff lately in their editorials section.The three listed above were passed along to us by an alert reader; there will probably be more as OWS rolls on. Al Jazeera has been particularly noted for staying on top of things during the Arab Spring, and their reporting has, in this editor’s humble opinion, been top-notch all year round. —ed.)

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged Al Jazeera, MSM, op ed, text.

[Op-Ed]New York Times: Police “Punched, Tossed a Barrier at” Reporters

Posted at 12:59 , November 28 2011

The aide, Stu Loeser, said that he had heard of journalists “supposedly” wearing police press badges who “allegedly encountered problems on the streets of New York.”

As I sling nouns and verbs for a living, I almost admired his artful euphemisms. A less refined sort might phrase it this way:

Over several days, New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers.

[...] At least since the Republican National Convention of 2004, our police have grown accustomed to forcibly penning, arresting, and sometimes spraying and whacking protesters and reporters. On Monday, The New York Times and 12 other organizations sent a letter of protest to the Police Department. “The police actions of last week,” the authors said, “have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory.”

Their letter offered five examples. I’ll mention one: As the police carried off a young protester whose head was covered in a crown of blood, a photographer stood behind a metal barricade and raised his camera. Two officers ran at him, grabbed the barrier and struck him in the chest, knees and shins. You are not permitted, the police yelled, to photograph on the sidewalk.“

(Emphasis editor’s.)

The mainstream media is finally catching on to the fact that these NYPD guys may not be fine, upstanding citizens after all!

We already knew about the protest letter, but it’s illuminating—and infuriating—to hear such a stark eyewitness account. For all their faults, the press ought to have a right to document whatever’s in the public eye, or else things have really gone wrong with this country. –ed

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged MSM, New York, Police, police brutality, text.

Interview with Retired Philadelphia Police Captain Ray Lewis

Posted at 3:43 , November 24 2011

Fresh from his arrest in New York, retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis gave an interview on Countdown with Keith Olbermann about why he supports the movement, and his feelings on recent events in New York and Davis, and Michael Bloomberg. Watch the full interview at Current TV.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged interview, Michael Bloomberg, MSM, police relations, Ray Lewis.

Occupy Toronto evicted

Posted at 5:44 , November 23 2011

The Occupy Toronto encampment appears to have come to a peaceful end with protesters vacating the last occupied tent in St. James Park after a negotiated settlement with police.

Police began dismantling the last of two yurts (large tents) in St. James Park just after 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, a move that spelled the end of the Toronto Occupy encampment that began on Oct. 15.

The camp’s final day began in the early-morning hours when police re-issued eviction notices and began removing tents on the fringes of the park.

Tents continued to come down throughout the morning and it appeared a handful of protesters — some of whom had chained themselves inside one of the yurts being used as a library — would leave only by force.

A “peaceful” eviction is still an eviction; here’s hoping Occupy Toronto follows through with their plan to Occupy elsewhere — ed

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged eviction, MSM, Toronto.

Mic Check! Obama interrupted by people’s mic at a New Hampshire high school

Posted at 4:32 , November 22 2011

The Occupy movement trailed President Obama to New Hampshire today, where protestors briefly interrupted his jobs speech at a Manchester high school.
Using the so-called “human microphone” method, protestors shouted Obama down just minutes into his speech, calling attention to the arrest of peaceful protestors at Occupy movements around the country.
They were quickly countered by students, who began chanting, “Obama! Obama!”
But after the speech, a member of the movement got close enough to Obama as the president was shaking hands with members of the audience pass him a note, which was photographed by the Associated Press’ Charles Dharapak…

Read the rest, view a close-up of the note, and watch the video at Yahoo News.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged high school, mic check, MSM, New Hampshire, Obama.

“Mobile Occupation” finishes journey from Zuccotti Park to Washington, DC

Posted at 8:07 , November 21 2011

Almost two weeks ago, 21 Occupy Wall Street protesters decided to take the movement on the road, in a march from New York’s Zuccotti Park to the White House. Their goal: to spread the movement to the 12 cities and small towns they would pass through along the way, and to protest the supercommittee’s likely decision to retain Bush tax cuts “for the rich,” or the “one percent.”

…

While some of the original 21 marchers dropped out because of missing toenails, shin splints or fevers, new marchers have since joined, so that more than twice as many protesters will arrive in Washington Tuesday.

Read the rest of the article, with photo gallery and more scare quotes, at the Washington Post.

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged MSM, Occupy DC, Occupy Wall Street.

Tiny Occupy Springfield, MA rallies nearby support to Occupy Bank of America

Posted at 5:51 , November 21 2011

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – More than a dozen people were arrested as hundreds of demonstrators descended on a Downtown Springfield bank Monday afternoon….

…Springfield Police Commissioner William Fitchet told 22News that a total of 15 people were arrested; seven when they entered the bank for a sit-in, four who were sitting inside the lobby of the Monarch Place building, and four more who were inside an ATM booth. Fitchet said that the arrested protestors did not resist, though they continued their protest inside the police van.

The commissioner added that despite the arrests, the protestors were allowed to continue their demonstration outside the bank. “We’re allowing people to exercise their First Amendment rights, I think that’s important,” Fitchet said. “The people who were arrested, they trespassed and they disrupted business here and that’s the reason they were arrested.”

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged arrests, Bank of America, Boston, MSM, Springfield.

MF Global trustee: $1.2B missing from accounts

Posted at 4:53 , November 21 2011

(AP) WASHINGTON – The court-appointed trustee overseeing MF Global’s bankruptcy says up to $1.2 billion is missing from customer accounts, double what the firm had reported to regulators last month.

[...] Regulators are investigating whether MF Global tapped money from clients’ accounts as its own financial condition worsened. That would be a violation of securities rules. The FBI is investigating whether New York-based MF Global violated any criminal laws.

[OP-ED] Occupier working with pro-democracy activists in Egypt criticizes President Obama’s deafening silence

Posted at 3:23 , November 21 2011

The Tahrir Square demonstrations are heating up again and the President of the United States, previously nominally supportive of the Egyptian Revolution, hasn’t had much to say this time. In this opinion piece, an anonymous Occupier demands answers.

President Obama, where are you? Are you not watching the same images that the world is watching of the massacres in Tahrir? Are you too busy preparing for Thanksgiving to take a minute to make a strong statement about what’s happening in a country in which your government has invested so much money and support?

Read the rest at Al Jazeera English

This entry is filed under Occupy and tagged Egypt, MSM, Obama, opinion, Tahrir Square.