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Wall Street firms spy on protesters in tax-funded center

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Wall Street’s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1% knows no limits. How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”

At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents, Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

In addition to video analytics which can, for example, track a person based on the color of their hat or jacket, insiders say the NYPD either has or is working on face recognition software which could track individuals based on facial features. The center is also equipped with live feeds from license plate readers.

According to one person who has toured the center, there are three rows of computer workstations, with approximately two-thirds operated by non-NYPD personnel. The Chief-Leader, the weekly civil service newspaper, identified some of the outside entities that share the space: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, the Federal Reserve, the New York Stock Exchange. Others say most of the major Wall Street firms have an on-site representative. Two calls and an email to Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, seeking the names of the other Wall Street firms at the center were not returned. An email seeking the same information to City Council Member, Peter Vallone, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, was not returned.

In a press release dated October 4, 2009 announcing the expansion of the surveillance territory, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly had this to say:

“The Midtown Manhattan Security Initiative will add additional cameras and license plate readers installed at key locations between 30th and 60th Streets from river to river. It will also identify additional private organizations who will work alongside NYPD personnel in the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, where corporate and other security representatives from Lower Manhattan have been co-located with police since June 2009. The Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center is the central hub for both initiatives, where all the collected data are analyzed.” [Italic emphasis added.]

The project has been funded by New York City taxpayers as well as all U.S. taxpayers through grants from the Federal Department of Homeland Security. On March 26, 2009, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) wrote a letter to Commissioner Kelly, noting that even though the system involves “massive expenditures of public money, there have been no public hearings about any aspect of the system…we reject the Department’s assertion of ‘plenary power’ over all matters touching on public safety…the Department is of course subject to the laws and Constitution of the United States and of the State of New York as well as to regulation by the New York City Council.”

The NYCLU also noted in its letter that it rejected the privacy guidelines for the surveillance operation that the NYPD had posted on its web site for public comment, since there had been no public hearings to formulate these guidelines. It noted further that “the guidelines do not limit police surveillance and databases to suspicious activity…there is no independent oversight or monitoring of compliance with the guidelines.”

According to Commissioner Kelly in public remarks, the privacy guidelines were written by Jessica Tisch, the Director of Counterterrorism Policy and Planning for the NYPD who has played a significant role in developing the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. In 2006, Tisch was 25 years old and still working on her law degree and MBA at Harvard, according to a wedding announcement in the New York Times. Tisch is a friend to the Mayor’s daughter, Emma; her mother, Meryl, is a family friend to the Mayor.

Tisch is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch who built the Loews Corporation. Her father, James Tisch, is now the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was elected by Wall Street banks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until 2013 representing the public’s interest. (Clearly, the 1 per cent think they know what’s best for the 99 per cent.)

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is the entity which doled out the bulk of the $16 trillion in bailout loans to the U.S. and foreign financial community. Members of Tisch’s family work for Wall Street firms or hedge funds which have prime broker relationships with them. A division of Loews Corporation has a banking relationship with Citigroup.

The Tisch family stands to directly benefit from the surveillance program. In June of this year, Continental Casualty Company, the primary unit of the giant CNA Financial which is owned by Loew’s Corp., signed a 19-year lease for 81,296 square feet at 125 Broad Street – an area under surveillance by the downtown surveillance center.

Loews Corporation also owns the Loew’s Regency Hotel on Park Avenue in midtown, an area which is also now under round-the-clock surveillance on the taxpayer’s dime.

Wall Street is infamous for perverting everything it touches: from the Nasdaq stock market, to stock research issued to the public, to auction rate securities, mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, credit default swaps with AIG, and mortgage securitizations. Had a public hearing been held on this massive surveillance sweep of Manhattan by potential felons, hopefully someone might have pondered what was to prevent Wall Street from tracking its employee whistleblowers heading off to the FBI offices or meeting with a reporter.

One puzzle has at least been solved.

Wall Street’s criminals have not been indicted or sent to jail because they have effectively become the police.

 

Source: https://truthsquad.tv/?p=1008

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Income Inequality, Law, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Occupy, Police, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Surveillance, Taxes, USA

Majority of 1% don’t know they’re part of the 1%

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Think you’re part of the 99 percent? You may be wrong.

Half of the top one percent of earners, don’t think they’re part of that category, a new survey from wealth marketing firm, HNW Inc., finds. The survey, which polled 100 people making more than $350,000 per year, also found that two-thirds of the respondents don’t sympathize with the Occupy Movement.

That could be because many of the survey respondents’ views are at odds with those of the protesters. Nearly 45 percent of respondents said they think they pay too much in taxes and only 37 percent think the wealthy should pay more in taxes. Still, more than half of respondents said they think the financial industry needs more regulation.

Two-thirds of those surveyed also said they believe Occupy Wall Street is a “flash in the pan” - an assessment the protesters are attempting to defy even after New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered police to clear Zuccotti Park of protesters and their belongings early Thursday morning. The majority of New Yorkers believe the protesters should be allowed to stay in the park, according to a Siena College poll released Tuesday.

Still, some one-percenters are throwing their weight behind the 99 percent movement. Fifty sevenmembers of Congress fall into the top 1 percent of earners, according to a USA Today analysis, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has said she supports the Occupy movement. In addition, celebrity one-percenters such as filmmaker Michael Moore, actor Alec Baldwin and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons have also publicly backed the protests.

Though nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents said they believe there is a wealth gap in the U.S. - one of the many rallying cries of the movement — only 25 percent see it as a problem. That could be because it’s the rich that have been the primary beneficiaries. The one percent saw their incomes rise 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while Americans in the bottom fifth of earners saw an income boost of only 20 percent.

Even if all of the one percent realize they’re rich, their kids probably won’t find out. One-third of parents worth $20 million or more discussed their wealth with their children, according to a survey released earlier this month.

 

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/one-percenters_n_1095837.html

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Consumerism, Democracy, Economy, Family, Income Inequality, Media, Money, Occupy, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Taxes, USA

Lessons from Iceland: The people can have the power

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As early progress in Iceland shows since the banking collapse, the 21st century will be the century of the common people. Of us.

The Guardian

The Dutch minister of internal affairs said at a speech during free press day this year: “Law-making is like a sausage, no one really wants to know what is put in it.” He was referring to how expensive the Freedom of Information Act is, and was suggesting that journalists shouldn’t really be asking for so much governmental information. His words exposed one of the core problems in our democracies: too many people don’t care what goes into the sausage, not even the so-called law-makers, the parliamentarians.

If the 99% want to reclaim our power, our societies, we have to start somewhere. An important first step is to sever the ties between the corporations and the state by making the process of lawmaking more transparent and accessible for everyone who cares to know or contribute. We have to know what is in that law sausage; the monopoly of the corporate lobbyist has to end – especially when it comes to laws regulating banking and the internet.

The Icelandic nation only consists 311,000 souls, so we have a relatively small bureaucratic body and can move quicker then in most countries. Many have seen Iceland as the ideal country for experimentation for new solutions in an era of transformation. I agree.

We had the first revolution after the financial troubles in 2008. Due to a lack of transparency, corruption and nepotism, Iceland had the third largest financial meltdown in human history, and it shook us profoundly. The Icelandic people realised that everything we had put our trust in had failed us. One of the demands during the protests that followed – and that resulted in getting rid of the government, the central bank manager and the head of the financial authority – was that we would get to rewrite our constitution. “We” meaning the 99%, not the politicians who had failed us. Another demand was that we should have real democratic tools, such as being able to call directly for a national referendum and dissolve parliament.

As an activist, web developer and poet, I never dreamt of being a politician and nor have I ever wanted to be a part of a political party. That was bound to change during these exceptional times. I helped create a political movement from the various grassroots movements in the wake of the crisis. We were officially created eight weeks prior to the election, and based our structure on horizontalism and consensus. We had no leaders, but rotating spokespeople; we did not define ourselves as left or right but around an agenda based on democratic reform, transparency and bailing out the people, not the banks. We vowed that no one should remain in parliament longer then eight years and our movement would dissolve if our goals had not been achieved within eight years. We had no money, no experts; we were just ordinary people who’d had enough and who needed to have power both within the system and outside it. We got 7% of the vote and four of us entered the belly of the beast.

Many great things have occurred in Iceland since our days of shock in 2008. Our constitution has been rewritten by the people for the people. A constitution is such an important measure of what sort of society people want to live in. It is the social agreement. Once it is passed, our new constitutionwill bring more power to the people and give us proper tools to restrain those in power. The foundation for the constitution was created by 1,000 people randomly selected from the national registry. We elected 25 people to put that vision into words. The new constitution is now in the parliament. It will be up to the 99% to call for a national vote on it so that we inside the parliament know exactly what the nation wants and will have to follow suit. If the constitution passes, we will have almost achieved everything we set out to do. Our agenda was written on various open platforms; direct democracy is the high north of our political compass in everything we do.

Having the tools for direct democracy is not enough though. We have to find ways to inspire the public to participate in co-creating the reality they want to live in. This can only be done by making direct democracy more local. Then people will feel the direct impact of their input. We don’t need bigger systems, we need to downsize them so they can truly serve us and so we can truly shape them.

The capital city of Reykjavík has launched a direct democracy platform, where everyone can put in a suggestion in a community forum about things they want to be done in the city. The city council has to take the top five suggestions and process them every month. Next step is to have a similar system for the parliament, and the logical step after that is to have the same system for the ministries.

From conversations I have had with people from Occupy London it is obvious we are all thinking along the same lines. All systems are down: banking, education, health, social, political – the most logical thing would be to start a fresh system based on values other than consumerism, which maximises profit and self-destruction. We are strong, the power is ours: we are many, they are few. We are living in times of crisis. Let’s embrace this time for it is the only time real changes are possible by the masses.

Source:

https://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=29907

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Human Rights, Income Inequality, Law, Media, Money, Politicians, Politics, Protests, Rights

Paying for health: The cost of Organic food versus conventional

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Whenever discussing the importance of buying organic, there is one objection that is stated 100% of the time. That objection is: I can’t afford it; I don’t have the money.

I’m here to tell you that you can’t afford NOT to eat organic.

The specifics will be covered below, but here is why you should absolutely buy organic and ditch what you’ve probably been eating.

Health is the Most Important Aspect of Life

Some people, for some reason or another, may not feel this way. But when it comes down to it, your health affects every aspect of your life.

It should be your top priority.

In today’s society, if you aren’t eating organic, you are seriously compromising your health.

Here’s how:

  • Pesticides used on conventional food are a hazard to your health.Substances in conventional food such as high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and aspartame slows down your brain and reduces cognitive ability. They also cause a whole host of other problems discussed in-depth on other pages of this website.
  • Growth hormones and antibiotics, in addition to thegenetically modified feed fed to livestock, cause various health problems.
  • Nutritional value of the food is compromised, leaving you with less vitamins and minerals your body thrives on. This is caused partly by synthetic fertilizer which is used for conventionally grown foods.
  • Many foods are genetically modified. These foods with altered DNA are unsafe for consumption. This is covered extensively on the Genetically Modified Foods page.

It is hard to measure how much money you save buying organic in terms of your health. But one thing is for sure, you DO save money. By buying organic, you won’t be subjecting your body to all the negative aspects of conventional food. Thinking will be enhanced, and you’ll notice your health problems disappear one by one, assuming you are eating a nutrient-rich diet full of organic superfoods and fresh produce. I think you’ll find this very enlightening – the money you actually save by making less visits to the drug store and feeling better.

You’ll save money because:

  • Prescription drug use will lessen.
  • Drugs you buy at the drug store to “fix” headaches, stomach aches, and pains may no longer be needed.
  • You’ll feel better and could find yourself turning to alcohol or cigarettes less.
  • Organic and whole foods fill you faster, and therefore you will not need as much food to satisfy your physical hunger.

So what is the difference in cost?

The Difference in Costs

It is true, SOMETIMES organic food costs more directly than conventional food, which is often bought from large food manufacturers. However, there is a a reason for the price difference, and it often has to do with quality. Certified organic foods with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) seal will often be the foods that cost more than conventional products and even other organic foods that do not qualify for the seal.

Certified organic foods may cost more for these reasons:

  • Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are prohibited. This leaves organic farmers with more expensive methods for controlling pests, diseases, weeds, and providing more nutrients for crops to grow.
  • Organic farming is more labor intensive and takes more time.
  • Yields for organic farmers are typically lower than those of conventional farmers. They end up with less crops while putting out more time and using more expensive means of growing.
  • Ultimately, organic farmers make less money than conventional farmers, and must increase price to make some profit and survive. The organic farms are usually smaller and don’t benefit from the economies of scale that larger growers get.
  • Organic farmers don’t receive federal subsidies like conventional farmers do.

Not all foods qualify for the organic seal, however. The reason I’m mentioning this is that some organic foods don’t have to follow such strict rules. So, many times organic food may only cost a little bit more, the same, or even less!

It is often just a matter of good, better, and best. At least TRY to buy organic and see how much more you’re spending. Prices vary based on the food and the area you buy in, so the only real way to know is to do the experiment for yourself.

If you find you’re spending too much in your eyes, don’t buy all organic. Another great way to consume high quality organic foods on a budget is home gardening. Purchase some 100% organic non-GMO seeds, and get to work!

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/paying-for-health-cost-of-organic-food.html

Filed Under: Consumerism, Education, Environment, Food, Health, Income Inequality, Money, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Rights, Self-Sustainability

How Conservatives exploit the myth of “Wealthy Elderly” to justify gutting social security

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Right-wingers somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget

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The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare has been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There were two reports released last week that call this view into question.

The first was a report from the Census Bureau that used a new experimental poverty index. This index differed from the official measure in several ways; most importantly it includes the value of government non-cash benefits, like food stamps. It also adjusts for differences in costs by area and takes account of differences in health spending by age.

While this new measures showed a slightly higher overall poverty rate the most striking difference between the new measure and the official measure was the rise in the poverty rate among the elderly. Using the official measure, the poverty rate for the elderly is somewhat lower than for the adult population as a whole, 9 percent for the elderly compared with 14 percent for the non-elderly adult population. However with the new measure, the poverty rate for the elderly jumps to 14 percent, compared with 13 percent for non-elderly adults.

By this higher measure, we have not been nearly as successful in reducing poverty among the elderly as we had believed. While Social Security has done much to ensure retirees an income above the poverty line, the rising cost of health care expenses not covered by Medicare has been an important force operating in the opposite direction.

The other report suggests that this situation could get worse in the years ahead. The Pew Research Center released a study on wealth by age cohort. While many observers (including me) focused on the change in wealth over the last 25 years, what is perhaps more striking about this study are the levels of wealth it reported.

The report showed that the median wealth for a household over age 65 is $170,500. This measure includes everything that they own, including equity in their home. With the median house selling for roughly $170,000, this study implies that the typical household over age 65 would essentially have enough money to pay off their mortgage. They would then have nothing else to live on except their Social Security.

The situation looks even worse for the near elderly: the cohorts between the ages of 55 to 64. (Wealth typically peaks in these years, so these people are unlikely to have more wealth when they cross age 65.) The median wealth for this group was reported as $162,000. Using the Pew findings, the typical household in the 55 to 64 year old cohort would fall 5 percent short of the money needed to pay off the mortgage on the median home.

Alternatively, if they were to use this wealth to buy an annuity at age 65, it would be sufficient to get them an annuity of roughly $10,000 a year or just over $800 a month. This would supplement Social Security income that comes to less than $1,200 a month for a typical worker. The monthly premium for Medicare Part B is $100, which would leave $1,100 from a monthly Social Security check for a typical retiree.

Note that this calculation assumes that they have no equity in their home so they would either being paying rent or still paying off a mortgage out of this money. It is also worth remembering that the Medicare premium is projected to rise considerably more than the cost of living each year. This means that as retirees age, rising Medicare premiums will be reducing the buying power of their Social Security check each year. And this is the median; half of all seniors will have less income than this to support themselves.

This is the group that the Very Serious People in Washington want to target for their deficit reduction. While the Very Serious People debate whether people who earn $250,000 a year are actually rich when it comes to restoring the tax rates of the 1990s, they somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget. There is a logic here, but it ain’t pretty.

 

Source: https://www.alternet.org/story/153079/how_conservatives_exploit_the_myth_of_%22wealthy_elderly%22_to_justify_gutting_social_security/?page=entire

 

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Consumerism, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, Health, Income Inequality, Law, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Taxes, USA, Welfare Benefits

Crackdowns reach epicenter of Wall Street protests

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

JUDGE RULED THAT THEIR FREE SPEECH RIGHTS DO NOT EXTEND TO PITCHING A TENT AND SETTING UP CAMP FOR MONTHS AT A TIME

NEW YORK (AP) — Crackdowns against the Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country reached the epicenter of the movement Tuesday, when police rousted protesters from a Manhattan park and a judge ruled that their free speech rights do not extend to pitching a tent and setting up camp for months at a time.

It was a potentially devastating setback. If crowds of demonstrators return to Zuccotti Park, they will not be allowed to bring tents, sleeping bags and other equipment that turned the area into a makeshift city of dissent.

But demonstrators pledged to carry on with their message protesting corporate greed and economic inequality, either inZuccotti or a yet-to-be chosen new home.

“This is much bigger than a square plaza in downtown Manhattan,” said Hans Shan, an organizer who was working with churches to find places for protesters to sleep. “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.”

State Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman upheld the city’s eviction of the protesters after an emergency appeal by the National Lawyers Guild.

The protesters have been camped out in the privately owned park since mid-September. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he ordered the sweep because health and safety conditions had become “intolerable” in the crowded plaza. The raid was conducted in the middle of the night “to reduce the risk of confrontation” and “to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighborhood,” he said.

By early Tuesday evening, some protesters were being allowed back into the park two by two. But they could each take only a small bag.

Still, some protesters believed the loss of Zuccotti Park may be an opportunity to broaden and decentralize the protest to give it staying power.

“People are really recognizing that we need to build a movement here,” Shan said. “What we’re dedicated to is not just about occupying space. That’s a tactic.”

But without a place to congregate, protesters will have a harder time communicating with each other en masse. The leaders of the movement spent most of Tuesday gathering in small groups throughout the city — in church basements and on street corners — and relaying plans in scattered text messages and email.

Robert Harrington, owner of a small importing business in New York, stood outside the barricade with a sign calling for tighter banking regulations.

“To be effective it almost has to move out of the park,” Harrington said. “It’s like the antiwar movement in the ’60s, which started as street theater and grew into something else.”

“The issues,” he added, “are larger than just this camp.”

Protesters milling around Zuccotti Park said they were dismayed by the court ruling.

Chris Habib, a New York artist, said he hoped the group could settle on a new protest site during a meeting later Tuesday evening. He was confident the movement would continue even if its flagship camp was dismantled.

“A judge can’t erase a movement from the public mind,” he said. “The government is going to have to spend a lot of time in court to defend this.”

Pete Dutro, head of the group’s finances, said the loss of the movement’s original encampment will open up a dialogue with other cities.

“We all knew this was coming,” Dutro said. “Now it’s time for us to not be tucked away in Zuccotti Park, and have different areas of occupation throughout the city.”

The aggressive raid seemed to mark a shift in the city’s dealings with the Wall Street protests. Only a week ago, Bloomberg privately told a group of executives and journalists that he thought reports of problems at the park had been exaggerated and didn’t require any immediate intervention.

The New York raid was the third in three days for a major American city. Police broke up camps Sunday in Portland, Ore., and Monday in Oakland, Calif.

The timing did not appear to be coincidence. On Tuesday, authorities acknowledged that police departments across the nation consulted with each other about nonviolent ways to clear encampments. Officers in as many as 40 cities participated in the conference calls.

When New York police began their crackdown at 1 a.m., most of the Occupy Wall Street protesters were sleeping.

Officers arrived by the hundreds and set up powerful klieg lights to illuminate the block. They handed out notices from Brookfield Office Properties, the park’s owner, and the city saying that the plaza had to be cleared because it had become unsanitary and hazardous.

Many people left, carrying their belongings with them. Others tried to make a stand, locking arms or even chaining themselves together with bicycle locks.

Dennis Iturrralde was fast asleep on a cot when the shouting woke him up. Dark figures were running through the tents in the dim orange light of streetlamps. Something slammed into the cot, flipping him to the ground.

“They came in from both sides, yelling, ‘You have 20 minutes to vacate the premises!’” said Iturralde, a Manhattan cook.

Within minutes, police in riot gear had swarmed the park, ripping down tents and tarps. The air was filled with the sound of rustling tarps, rumbling garbage trucks, shouts and equipment crashing to the ground.

“They were tearing everything apart,” Iturralde said. “They were hitting people, spraying people if they didn’t move fast enough.”

Around 200 people were arrested, including a member of the City Council and at least a half-dozen journalists. The arrested journalists included a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press who were held for four hours before being released.

Earlier in the day, another judge had issued a temporary restraining order that appeared to bar the city from preventing protesters from re-entering the park, but it was unilaterally ignored by the police and city officials.

In contrast to the scene weeks ago in Oakland, where a similar eviction turned chaotic and violent, the police action was comparatively orderly. But some protesters complained of being hit by police batons and shoved to the ground.

City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, who has been supportive of the Occupy movement, was among those arrested outside of the park. Police Commission Ray Kelly said Rodriguez was trying to get through police lines to reach the protesters.

“The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” Bloomberg said. “Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with, as the park has been taken over by protesters, making it unavailable to anyone else.”

The police commissioner said officers gave the crowd 45 minutes to retrieve their belongings before starting to dismantle tents, and let people leave voluntarily until around 3:30 a.m., when they moved in to make mass arrests.

“Arresting people is not easy,” he said, adding that he thought the officers “showed an awful lot of restraint in the face of “an awful lot of taunting, people getting in police officers’ faces, calling them names.”

The ouster at Zuccotti Park came as a rift within the movement had been widening between the park’s full-time residents and the movement’s power players, most of whom no longer lived in the park.

Some residents of the park have been grumbling about the recent formation of a “spokescouncil,” an upper echelon of organizers who held meetings at a high school near police headquarters. Some protesters felt that the selection of any leaders whatsoever wasn’t true to Occupy Wall Street’s original anti-government spirit: That no single person is more important or more powerful than another person.

 

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/crackdowns-reach-epicenter-wall-street-protests-235327049.html

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Corporations, Corruption, Economy, Income Inequality, Law, Media, Money, Occupy, Police, Politicians, Politics, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Surveillance, Taxes, USA

At last, the super rich get their own bank

November 16, 2011 By 1 Comment

Because the economic divide in this country can never get big enough, Wells Fargo is starting a new bank just for those 10,000 U.S. households with over $50 million in “investable assets” - total: $1 trillion - to spare.

Launching in about 15 cities, the Abbot Downing brand “goes beyond traditional wealth planning analysis by focusing on clients’ values, goals and vision” - including, presumably, never again having to mingle with the likes of you or me.

 

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/11/14-0

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Economy, Income Inequality, Law, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, USA

For US Bishops, economic justice isn’t on the agenda

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Catholic leaders, meeting in Baltimore this week, fail to put society’s main problems front and centre

At a time of staggering poverty, rampant unemployment and growing income inequality, Catholic bishops will gather for a national meeting in Baltimore today and remain largely silent about these profound moral issues. A recent Catholic News Service headline about the meeting — “Bishops’ agenda more devoted to internal matters than societal ills” — is a disappointing snapshot for a church that has long been a powerful voice for economic justice.

The U.S. bishops’ relative silence contrasts with a recent Vatican document that urges stronger regulation of the financial sector and a more just distribution of wealth. Urging reforms to the left of even the most liberal Democrat in Congress, the Vatican spoke in stark terms about a global financial system that is unhinged from moral values. It’s a thoughtful critique of free-market fundamentalism, in keeping with centuries of Catholic teaching as articulated by several popes. A Vatican cardinal even acknowledged that the “basic sentiment” behind the Occupy Wall Street movement aligns with Catholic values on the need for ethical corporate practices and humane financial systems.

Twenty-five years ago this month, Catholic bishops were anything but quiet. They helped drive attention to poor and working families with a landmark pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All,” that offered a subtle but sober critique of the Reagan administration’s embrace of tax cuts for the rich and draconian cuts to government protections for the poor. The bishops spoke not as policymakers but as moral leaders in touch with the needs of the unemployed and concerned about conservative political leaders’ efforts to strip workers of basic union rights. As a longtime staff member at the U.S. bishops’ conference, I was so proud of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and his colleagues, who insisted that a Catholic vision for human dignity did not stop with concern for the unborn but must include a commitment to economic fairness, peace, care for the environment and opposition to the death penalty.

Where are the bishops’ priorities today? In recent years, church leaders have opposed historic health care reform, lashed out at the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Barack Obama to give a commencement address, and publicly chastised pro-choice Catholic politicians even as they give a pass to Catholic lawmakers who push economic policies antithetical to Catholic teaching about the common good. The bishops’ decades of advocacy for comprehensive health care took a detour last year when they opposed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because of concerns it would provide taxpayer funding of abortion — a flawed policy analysis, according to independent experts, some pro-life lawmakers and even the Catholic Health Association.
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In recent weeks, the bishops have augmented their campaign against same-sex marriage, appointing a “defense of marriage specialist” to a top position at the U.S. bishops’ conference, and challenged the Obama administration to create a stronger exemption for Catholic organizations that oppose insurance coverage of contraception.

These are important issues, properly addressed by the bishops. However, at a time of economic crisis and growing anti-government ideology embodied by the tea party, Catholic bishops would do well to once again offer a compelling moral response to radical individualism and unbridled capitalism.

Most Americans probably don’t know that Catholic bishops helped lay the groundwork for the New Deal as far back as 1919, when they advocated for a minimum wage and insurance for the elderly, disabled and unemployed. Much of this proud legacy is under threat today from lawmakers, including prominent Catholics like House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Paul Ryan, who think tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are more important than funding nutrition programs for low-income women and children.

The U.S. bishops deserve credit for their participation in an interfaith coalition defending government safety-net programs that save lives and provide a measure of dignity to the most vulnerable. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, was right to recently urge pastors to address poverty from the pulpit. And the bishops’ national anti-poverty initiative, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, is a vital resource that helps community-based organizations empower those living on the margins of society. But I fear the church’s revered social justice witness is being crowded out by divisive culture-war battles at a time when Americans need a stronger moral message about the dignity of work and economic justice for all.

A new generation of bishops must find their voice.

 

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/15-5

Filed Under: Banks, Catholic, Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Economy, Income Inequality, Money, Paedophilia, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Religion, Rights

Occupy Wall Street: Police violence reveals a corrupt system

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Better-off Occupy Wall Street protesters are learning something about the relationship between citizen and state

At four in the morning in lower Manhattan, as what remains of the Occupy Wall Street encampment is loaded into trash compacters, some protesters have still not given up on the police. Kevin Sheneberger tries to engage one NYPD officer in a serious debate about the role of law enforcement in public protest. Then he sees them loading his friend’s tent into the back of a rubbish truck. Behind him, a teenage girl holds a hastily written sign saying: “NYPD, we trusted you – you were supposed to protect us!”

The sentiment is a familiar one. Across Europe, over a year of demonstrations, occupations and civil disobedience, anti-austerity protesters have largely shifted from declaring solidarity with the police – as fellow workers whose jobs and pensions are also under threat – to outrage and anger at state violence against unarmed protesters. Following last month’s police brutality in Oakland, and today’s summary eviction of the Occupy Wall Street camp, American activists too are reaching the conclusion that “police protect the 1%”.

The notion that law enforcement is there to protect a wealthy elite from the rest of the population is not news to those protesters from deprived and ethnic minority backgrounds, many of whom have been subject to intimidation in their communities for years, but for those from more privileged backgrounds, the first spurt of pepper spray to the face is an important education in the nature of the relationship between state and citizen in the west. “Who do you guys work for?” Shouts one Manhattan protester, as police load arrestees into a van. “You work for JP Morgan Bank!”

In times of economic and democratic crisis, it makes sense for faltering governments to use police violence and the threat of arrest to bully citizens into compliance. In the context of protest, however, police harassment has three other, important effects. The first and most important of these is consciousness-raising.

The spectacle of police beating and brutalizing unarmed civilians for the crime of sitting on the pavement and demanding a fairer world brings home the point of the struggle to public and protesters alike. The second is galvanizing: attacks on peaceful protesters rarely make the police or government look anything but weak and cowardly, and have tended only to increase public support for civil disobedience. “This is going to explode now,” 26-year-old Katie tells me, as we watch demonstrators marched out of Zuccotti Park one by one. “They don’t realize what they’ve done.”

Fighting the police can focus the energy of a movement – but it can also drain that energy. In Britain, a year of arrests and vicious crackdowns have left anti-cuts protesters debilitated and depleted, and the challenge for the American movement will be to remember its purpose in the face of police brutality. “That’s the whole point of violent resistance,” says Sheneberger. “It exposes the corruption of the power that’s resisting you.”

 

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/15-1

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Employment, Income Inequality, Law, Martial Law, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Occupy, Police, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Psychology, Revolution, Rights, Surveillance, Taxes, USA

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the World has ever seen

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That’s why we’re nearly bankrupt

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.” Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. “The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture.”

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses’s scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you’re likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you’re likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. Chief executives now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they’ve captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth’s natural wealth and their workers’ labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world’s common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I’m sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots’ labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2,000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses’ self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people’s wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

 

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/08-7

Filed Under: Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Consumerism, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Income Inequality, Law, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Surveillance, Taxes, USA, War
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