Posts from — October 2011

Over at Naked Capitalism they put up this action request – NYC Residents: Please Attend 6:00 PM Meeting Today to Bar Real Estate Board Plan to Block #OccupyWallStreet Protests. [Update: via Steve Bates, Cynthia Kouril blogged it. Looks like an own goal for the Board.]

The problem for the 1% is that the Occupy Wall Street group keeps abiding by the rules and the laws. That’s why the Казаки have to keep attacking them and setting up traps – these DFH keeps ‘coloring within the lines’. So now they are attempting to change the rules to force them out.

An earlier post explains what is going on – David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet.

Graeber, an anthropologist and one of the earliest members of the OWS movement, discovered that the central cadre of the movement is made up of university educated 20-somethings who have always ‘played by the rules’, and now want to know why they haven’t achieved any success, and can’t find jobs. These aren’t DFH radicals, these are ‘American Dreamers’, i.e. they worked hard and went to school as their parents and guidance counselors advised them to do. Now they are worse off than high school dropouts, because they have huge student loans in addition to being unemployed. You can imagine how they react to politicians talking about ‘job training’ to solve the unemployment problem.

Bryce Covert of New Deal 2.0 looks at The Economics Behind Occupy Wall Street: Shameful Income Inequality. While the 1% are making money hand-over-fist, everyone else is going backwards. We have corporate profits and poverty going up at almost the same rate. The system is broken.

Today we have a prime example about why NPR is not worth supporting.

Ted Rall tells us what NPR did to Lisa Simeone.

It is the same crap as always – a wingnut blogger makes a big deal out of something, and NPR rushes to throw someone under the bus without verifying what the facts are.

A freelance announcer on a classical music program, on their own time, can’t attend an anti-war protest without being fired, but actual news employees can give speeches to corporations and appear on Fox News. That’s NPR’s version of ‘fair and balanced’.

There is no point in supporting NPR, they aren’t interested in a any view to the left of Genghis Khan, because a Republican might complain.

When Tsar Michael announced that Zuccotti Park would be cleared for cleaning [implying that the people in the park were DFH/slovenly pigs], Libby Liberal decided to go to the park and stand with the protestors.

She put up pair of posts at Corrente [Part 1 and Part 2] providing a first hand account of what was going on there.

It is worth the read for it’s own sake, but taken with Naomi Wolf’s article on her arrest, some things become very clear. One of them Naomi Wolf nails – permits are being used by the City to restrict free speech.

Libby Liberal talks about the lack of bathrooms in the area, and when she pursued it discovered that the City requires a separate permit to bring in Port-a-potties. In my area if you are building, you are required to have one on site. Actually, if you are doing almost anything that will bring together a lot of people, you have to have bathroom facilities available. The City refuses to give a permit to Occupy Wall Street. This is called ‘selective enforcement’, and it is not according to the rules.

As for hygiene, based on what Libby Liberal saw in Zuccotti Park and what Naomi Wolf saw in the NYPD holding cells, the NYPD has a lot of damn gall citing cleanliness as a problem. This is just harassment, plain and simple.

In one final burst of stupidity before the reality of what can happen to them, the Казаки pulled this bone-headed stunt, Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street. “Last night I was arrested in my home town, outside an event to which I had been invited, for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown.”

I don’t guess it occurred to the “white shirt” in charge of this farce that arresting authors who are media personalities and have invitations to events that feature the governor of New York just might be a bad idea.

In her account she mentioned seeing about 40 ‘white shirts’, which is an astoundingly high number in a department with only 35,000 total uniformed personnel. The NYPD seems to be extremely ‘top heavy’, and should be slimmed down.

This report was via Jams O’Donnell in comments who has a great catch at his place. That means that Occupy Wall Street has representation on every continent.

Everyone seems to carrying the AP report that Deputy Inspector Anthony ‘Tony Boloney’ Bologna was fined two weeks of vacation for violating NYPD policy when he used pepper spray on several women.

Ten days is a paycheck, probably more than $2K. This will also take him out of consideration for promotion, so he may as well retire now if he has his time in to spend more time with his attorneys.

The NYPD threw him under the bus because the City doesn’t want to be on the hook for the massive civil damages that will follow. The problem for the investigation is that the policy is actually written down and publicly available, and the other officers present are not going to put their jobs on the line trying to spin what happened when they know that nearly the entire world has seen one or all of the many videos of the incident.

His union will appeal the decision, but Bologna just lost his best defense against criminal charges [unlikely] and civil suits [absolutely certain]. This should rein in the other ‘white shirts’ as they know that their actions can actually be investigated, and all of the video evidence will make what they do a matter of record.

I welcome the introduction of the ‘white shirts’ to the corporate world. The corporation protects itself, not its minions.

CBS says that Wall Street protesters plan march on DA’s office

Protesters’ attorneys met with aides to [Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R.] Vance to demand the dismissals, and if the district attorney balks, they say they’ll occupy the courts by going to trial on each and every case.

“Given the nature of the arrests, the number of people who say, ‘I’m not guilty of anything, I want a trial here,’ is likely to be very, very high,” [attorney Martin] Stolar told reporters. “We’re prepared to try every single case where somebody wants to have a trial, even if it’s only for blocking a roadway.”

The idea that the protesters would put pressure on the already overloaded court system didn’t sit well with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“I don’t think that our court system should be a political football,” Bloomberg told reporters. “It’s hard to reconcile that with what America stands for to say we’re going to deliberately keep the court system from working.”

Officials said everyone who wants a trial will get one.

Yo, Tsar Michael, if you didn’t want the courts involved, you shouldn’t have arrested so many people on trivial or non-existent charges.

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Via Corrente, a Naomi Klein tweet that the San Francisco police gathered up the equipment from the Occupy area and took it to the dump, however the Sanitation workers returned it noting that they are the 99% too.

After watching too many videos of what is going on in NYC, it looks like the ‘blue shirts’ are not getting with Tsar Michael’s program, and don’t do anything that isn’t specifically ordered by the ‘white shirts’. The ‘white shirts’ are playing the role of Казаки [Cossacks], in this attack on the peasants. I’m guessing that the ‘blue shirts’ are acting based on the advice of their union attorneys.

The Боярин [Boyars, 1%] must be feeling threatened in their кремль [kremlin, fortress] on Wall Street, to have requested the Tsar attack the peasants.

Why use Russian terms, because anyone named Bloomberg should be ashamed of ordering a pogrom. The tactic wasn’t limited to Jewish settlements, but it would be a rare Jew who didn’t know what it meant. It is a reference to the ‘thunder’ of the horses hooves before the attack.

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.

There are a lot of people stumbling around making pronouncements about the US economic system, and talking about capitalism and the ‘free market’, but don’t seem to understand that the first requirement for either is the elimination of corporations. As long as the government is allowed to create corporations neither capitalism nor a truly free market is possible.

Corporations have limited liability, so they have an immunity to risk that other businesses don’t have. If you really want to try capitalism, and to have ‘free markets’, outlaw corporations and then we can talk about it.

Somewhat in response to many of the complaints about the Occupy Wall Street movement, Mike Konczal at New Deal 2.0 asks Who are the 1% and What Do They Do for a Living?

His opening paragraph is decent snark – “Look, a crazy anti-capitalist anarchist carrying a bizarre sign incompatible with the basic tenets of liberals:” followed by a wonderful picture of the ‘sign’ of one of those DFH who don’t know what they want. You have to see it to understand.

‘Noz provides a defense of John McCain and his claim that the Republican “jobs” plan will creat ‘billions’ of jobs. Basically – give McCain a break, he didn’t say the jobs would be created in the US.

That was the signature line used by Sergeant Phil Esterhaus at the end of roll call in the old TV show, Hill Street Blues. It’s good advice.

When I’m working on a house I always have two pieces of safety gear on, wrap-around safety glasses and a hard hat. There are a lot of good reasons.

The glasses aren’t just about saw dust or metal chips from using tools, I use a lot of chemicals and don’t want them on my regular glasses, or in my eyes. Some of the things I use are caustic, and others are oily, but neither kind is anything you want to deal with. Even latex paint, especially the tiny splatters from using a roller, are not benign.

The hard hat is to protect my head. I’m bald, so if a board falls, or the guy helping me accidentally whacks me with hardwood closet rod, or galvanized pipe, it is going to open a gash that will bleed like crazy. There isn’t a lot of cushion between the skin and the bone on your skull, so the skin breaks easily and bleeds profusely. The hard hat stops that from happening.

Having watched what is going on in NYC, I think that both items would be a good idea for the people at Occupy Wall Street. I graduated from a police academy in New York State, and know what the procedures are for the use of force, specifically chemical weapons and the baton. The NYPD is not following the normal procedure, in fact, they are doing things that I was specifically taught not to do.

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Photo Shoot

Are we done?

[Editor: Ringo is actually being very patient, as I took a dozen shots before I got one of her actually looking at me… almost.

Friday Ark

The BBC notes that one of the world class bit-fiddlers, Dennis Ritchie has died at age 70.

Back in the days when US corporations actually spent money on research and development, Dennis was part of the group at Bell Labs that wrote UNIX, and then created C to make porting UNIX to other machine architecture easier.

Ken Thompson, Dennis, and some others had a machine [I think it was a DEC PDP-7] that was available, but didn’t have an operating system, so they wrote one.

Since AT&T wasn’t in the software business, they essentially gave UNIX to universities for the cost of a letter requesting it in the early days. That’s a primary reason why UNIX and it’s derivatives are such an integral part of the Internet and so widespread in the university system.

As the name implies, UNIX was initially a single-user operating system, but, well, ‘anyone’ can write a single user system, so …

If you like graphs and charts that show what has been going on, and why the 99% are in such trouble, I have two links for you.

The Business Insider has a collection that relies on the FRED [Federal Reserve Economic Data] tools that Krugman uses frequently.

Connect the Dots USA has more colorful charts, but their slide show is a PDF file. Individual slides are available on the site as JPEGs.

Yes, things are as bad as you thought, and the politicians aren’t going to do anything as long as the MOTU are allowed to buy elections.