Steve Bates is recommending the The Coming of the New Deal by Arthur Schlesinger, part of Mr. Schlesinger series on FDR.

Earlier in an op-ed in the New York Times, The 1930s Sure Sound Familiar, Joe Nocera recommends looking for a history of the era that was published in 1940, Since Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen.

Mr. Schlesinger concentrates on what was happening in the government, while Mr. Allen’s work is more general.

Mr. Nocera had a sense of how close we are tracking to what happened during the Depression.

[Note: the link for Mr. Lewis’s book is for Gutenberg Australia, where the copyright has expired. I don’t know if it has expired in the US, but it doesn’t seem to be in print any more, so you need to look at used book sellers.]

Yves has a a look at some of what the NYPD has been up to: As Many as 24 People Arrested for Trying to Close Accounts at Citibank.

I looked at the video and read the reporting, and someone needs to buy the NYPD a few copies of the Penal Law of the State of New York.

The initial reporting said people were arrested for ‘Criminal Trespass’. I don’t see a fence, and it isn’t a school or public housing project, so that is just bad reporting.

The only thing they could be charged with is Section 140.05 Trespass: A person is guilty of trespass when he knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in or upon premises.

That is a ‘violation’, so it doesn’t qualify as a ‘crime’ under the definition in the NYSPL.

Let’s look at the law and add in the definition of terms, because words have definite meanings when the are used in the law.

The ‘culpable mental state’ for this offense is ‘knowingly’. The NYSPL says in Section 15.05, subsection 2: “Knowingly.” A person acts knowingly with respect to conduct or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware that his conduct is of such nature or that such circumstance exists.

Now we look at ‘enters or remains unlawfully’. Section 140.00 subsection 5: “Enter or remain unlawfully.” … A person who, regardless of his intent, enters or remains in or upon premises which are at the time open to the public does so with license and privilege unless he defies a lawful order not to enter or remain, personally communicated to him by the owner of such premises or other authorized person.

Why would anyone who had an account at Citibank think they were trespassing when they enter a location during business hours to withdraw their funds, and are met with a refusal by the bank to comply?

How can the woman who was picked up outside the bank be charged with anything, when she obviously was no longer in the bank?

How can anyone be charged with not leaving when the bank locked the doors?

What on earth was a Captain or above [white shirt] doing at a scene where the highest crime available was a ‘violation’? Do they have so many ‘white shirts’ in NYPD that they show up for traffic tickets?

The NYPD has not shown itself to be as professional as mall security when dealing with the Occupy Wall Street movement.