Occupy Everywhere & Economic News Round-Up

In this Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, photo University of California, Davis Police Lt. John Pike uses pepper spray to move Occupy UC Davis protesters while blocking their exit from the school's quad Friday in Davis, Calif. Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in pepper spraying seated protesters were placed on administrative leave Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011, as the chancellor of the school accelerates the investigation into the incident. [AP Photo]

Related and Recommended Reading on the UD Davis incident:

Matt Wells in The Guardian: UC Davis Police Placed on Leave After Pepper Spray Video Outrage.

Garance Franke-Ruta in The Atlantic: Too Much Violence and Pepper Spray at the OWS Protests: The Videos and Pictures.

CNN: California Campus Police on Leave After Pepper-Spraying.

In other Occupy News...

The Guardian crunches the numbers and finds it more like the 99.99% [via Andy]:


[Related article here. Video transcript is available here.]
In sweet news, Occupy Wall Street activists Jonathan Lopez, 19, and Ivan Cabrera, 18, exchanged vows, marking the first same-sex marriage at Zuccotti Park.

In shitty news, powerful DC lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford "has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests. ... CLGC's memo proposes that the [their client, the American Bankers Association] pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct 'opposition research' on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct 'negative narratives' about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead."

Speaking of Republicans, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich believes that secularism is responsible for the US' economic problems (of course he does): "A country that has been now since 1963 relentlessly in the courts driving God out of public life shouldn't be surprised at all the problems we have. Because we've in fact attempted to create a secular country, which I think is frankly a nightmare." Previously: Gingrich blames same-sex marriage for the country's economic woes.

Meanwhile, at Supercommittee Headquarters...

New York Times—The Deficit Deal That Wasn't: Hopes Are Dashed: "On Sunday, just one week after both sides had begun to feel hope, several members of the bipartisan panel conceded that their weeks of negotiations had failed. In the end the two sides could not agree on a mix of tax increases and spending cuts and—perhaps above all—on the fate of the tax cuts originally signed by President George W. Bush, which are now scheduled to expire at the end of 2012. While the panel's failure was in many ways foretold—President Obama and the House speaker, John A. Boehner, failed to reach a similar deal only this past summer—the deadlock offers fresh evidence for everyone frustrated with Congress, including its own members. ... Democrats and Republicans, as has been their wont throughout the process, could not even agree on what led the talks to slide into failure."

Washington Post—Debt supercommittee members brace for failure: "The congressional 'supercommittee' stumbled its way toward failure Sunday, with final staff-level discussions focusing mostly on how the panel should publicly admit that lawmakers could not meet their mandate of shaving $1.2 trillion from the federal debt. Rather than making a final effort at compromise, members of the special deficit-reduction committee spent their final hours casting blame and pointing fingers, bracing for the reaction from financial markets that are already jittery over the European debt crisis."

Speaking of the Eurozone...

The Guardian's live coverage is here.

New York Times—Europe Fears a Credit Squeeze as Investors Sell Bond Holdings: "Nervous investors around the globe are accelerating their exit from the debt of European governments and banks, increasing the risk of a credit squeeze that could set off a downward spiral. Financial institutions are dumping their vast holdings of European government debt and spurning new bond issues by countries like Spain and Italy. And many have decided not to renew short-term loans to European banks, which are needed to finance day-to-day operations. If this trend continues, it risks creating a vicious cycle of rising borrowing costs, deeper spending cuts and slowing growth, which is hard to get out of, especially as some European banks are having trouble meeting their financing needs."

Reuters—Warren Buffett: Euro zone not working, words alone won't fix it: "Buffett, dubbed the 'Oracle of Omaha' for his long track record as a value investor, said he had no idea how Europe's sovereign debt crisis, which started in Greece two years ago and rages on, would end, though he noted there were good valuations among companies in Europe. 'Not in the debt space, but in the equity space there are opportunities,' he said."

Brad DeLong—Yet Another New York Times Fail: Ross Douthat Department:"Does Ross Douthat really believe that there ought to be a law saying that lenders must lend to a country's government whenever that country wants to borrow on terms that the country's government sets? He simply has not thought any of this through."

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to what you've been reading/writing in comments.

Occupy Wall Street Open Thread

[TW for violence.]

Police in Seattle cracked down on peaceful protesters last night, pepper spraying a pregnant 19-year-old and an 84-year-old woman.

A Seattle police spokesman said he didn't have details on the incident, but he noted that pepper spray is "is not age specific. No more dangerous to someone who is 10 or someone who is 80."

Okay then.

Discuss this and other Occupy-related stories. And share your links!

Occupy Everywhere & Economic News Round-Up

[Trigger warning for violence.]

Below is video of an Occupy Oakland protester being shot with a rubber bullet while filming the police line in the early hours of November 3: "While filming a police line at Occupy Oakland after midnight on Nov. 3 following the Nov. 2 general strike, an officer opens fire and shoots me with a rubber bullet. I was standing well back. There was no violence or confrontations of any kind underway." [Via Zaid at Think Progress.]


CNN—A roundup of Occupy protests: "On Monday, a hearing will be held [in Atlanta] for a protester who was charged Saturday night with aggravated assault and obstruction after police said he assaulted a motorcycle officer patrolling the area. However, demonstrators said the officer 'accelerated into a demonstrator.' ... Riverside [California] police arrested 11 people Sunday after a group of about 40 demonstrators formed a human chain to prevent officers from pulling down tents near City Hall, Occupy organizers said." Etc. Meanwhile, in Chicago, police have installed surveillance equipment near Occupy Chicago HQ.

Welcome to America 2.0!

Here's some of the other stuff I've been reading this morning...

NPR—What Do Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want?: "Occupy Wall Street is in its second month of protest, and the frustration with financial big wigs continues to grow. Tomorrow's protesters will track 11 miles from Upper Manhattan to Lower Manhattan, ending in Zuccotti Park, the place where it all started seven weeks ago. They're calling the walk End to End for 99%."

The Guardian—US entrepreneurs cash in on Occupy movement: "The revolution could be trademarked in the US as more entrepreneurs seek to profit from the Occupy demonstrations. T-shirts began to appear days after the first protest on 17 September, a march through lower Manhattan. Now T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise are being offered on the campsites that have sprung up in cities across the US. The US patent and trademark office has received a spate of applications." Perfect.

Barry Ritholtz in the Washington Post—What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral: "A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair. Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault. Indeed, the arguments these folks make fail to withstand even casual scrutiny. But that has not stopped people who should know better from repeating them."

WaPo—Wall Street's resurgent prosperity frustrates its claims, and Obama's: "President Obama has called people who work on Wall Street 'fat-cat bankers,' and his reelection campaign has sought to harness public frustration with Wall Street. Financial executives retort that the president's pursuit of financial regulations is punitive and that new rules may be 'holding us back.' But both sides face an inconvenient fact: During Obama's tenure, Wall Street has roared back, even as the broader economy has struggled. The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data."

New York Times—The Next Fight Over Jobs: "The way the job market is going, it will never be robust enough to bring down the unemployment rate, now at 9 percent, or 13.9 million people. Monthly job growth has slowed to an average of just 90,000 new jobs a month over the past six months, a pace at which growth in the working-age population will always exceed the number of new jobs being created. High unemployment and low job growth, which have plagued the economy all through the current 'recovery,' hurt both consumer spending and economic growth. But don't count on government to do the obvious and urgent thing—intervene to create jobs. Tragically, the more entrenched the jobs shortage becomes, the more paralyzed Congress becomes."

Paul Krugman in the New York Times—Here Comes the Sun: "Let's face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire GOP, is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers' money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar. So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true. Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we're willing to let it in."

In Eurozone news...

The Guardian's live coverage is here.

CNN—Greece's prime minister to quit in deal to salvage bailout package: "Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou will step down as his government's leader, the country's president announced Sunday night—agreeing to do so on the condition that the controversial 130 billion euro bailout deal is approved. The announcement follows a meeting on Sunday in which Papandreou and Antonis Samaras—the leader of the New Democracy party, Greece's leading opposition party—agreed to form a new government."

The Guardian—Italy hails businessman a hero after he launches appeal to save the economy: "A businessman has become an unlikely national hero after urging Italians to buy up government bonds to help drag the country back from the brink of an economic meltdown. As the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, scrambles to deliver key reforms, the Tuscan financial services entrepreneur Giuliano Melani announced his appeal with a full-page ad in the leading daily Corriere della Sera, complete with his telephone number and email address. Melani says the bill for Italian government bonds expiring annually is €260-270bn (£223-232bn), a sum which would be taken care of if every Italian paid €4,500."

CNN Money—Europe: The worst-case scenarios: "That upheaval [in Greece] serves as just another reminder that the the crisis is far from over. ... Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, put the odds of Greece leaving the eurozone at zero in the near term. Global Insight, another consultancy, puts it at about one in three. But UBS's Magnus puts it at 50-50 in the next year or two, and 80% by 2016."

This is not good:

The Guardian—Far right on rise in Europe, says report: "The far right is on the rise across Europe as a new generation of young, web-based supporters embrace hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to examine the phenomenon. Research by the British thinktank Demos for the first time examines attitudes among supporters of the far right online. Using advertisements on Facebook group pages, they persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires. The study reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men. Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU, their generalised fear about the future is focused on cultural identity, with immigration—particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence—a concern."

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to what you've been reading and/or writing in comments.

Occupy Everywhere & Economic News Round-Up

An Occupy Oakland protester spraypaints the side of a building during a march on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011, in Oakland, Calif. [AP Photo]

San Francisco Chronicle—Iraq vet injured in Oakland in critical condition:

The most seriously wounded [in the Oakland clash with police] was Scott Olsen, 24, of Daly City, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who was listed in critical condition Wednesday at Highland General Hospital in Oakland.

The antiwar group said Olsen, a systems administrator at a San Francisco software firm, suffered a skull fracture when he was hit by a "blunt object." Olsen joined the U.S. Marines in 2006, served two tours in Iraq, and was discharged in 2010, the group said.

Video footage distributed on the Internet shows a protester, identified by the antiwar group as Olsen, being carried away by others with a head wound. The cause was unclear. While he lay wounded, the footage appears to show an officer tossing something - perhaps a tear gas canister - toward people trying to help him.

"I think it is a sad state of affairs when a Marine can't assemble peacefully in the streets without getting injured," said Jose Sanchez, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The Guardian—Olsen "has a fractured skull and brain swelling after allegedly being hit by a police projectile."

The Guardian spoke to people with Olsen at the hospital. Adele Carpenter, who knows Olsen through his involvement with anti-war groups, said she arrived at the hospital at 11pm on Tuesday night.

Carpenter said she was told by a doctor at the hospital that Olsen had a skull fracture and was in a "serious but stable" condition. She said he had been sedated and was unconscious.

"I'm just absolutely devastated that someone who did two tours of Iraq and came home safely is now lying in a US hospital because of the domestic police force," Carpenter said.

But don't worry—there's going to be an investigation by "Oakland's independent police review body" and I'm sure they'll totally get to the bottom of this is a very responsible way, just like the jurors in the Oscar Grant trial. The one thing that definitely helps curb out-of-control police forces is a total lack of accountability.

Here's some of the other stuff I've been reading this morning...

New York Daily News—Occupy Wall Street protesters in NYC proclaim solidarity with demonstrators in Oakland, Atlanta: "Protesters stormed through downtown Manhattan on Wednesday night to proclaim solidarity with fellow demonstrators who were forced out of encampments in Oakland, Calif., and Atlanta, Ga. ... At least 10 people were arrested as the wild mob took to the streets towards Union Square chanting, 'Oakland to NYC, stop police brutality'." (lol your "wild mob.")

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times—Crony Capitalism Comes Home: "[W]hile alarmists seem to think that the movement is a 'mob' trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability. To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists."

Richard Wolff in the Guardian—How the 1% got richer, while the 99% got poorer: "The CBO numbers teach some basic lessons. First, the last 30 years of ideological preaching about the superiority of private, deregulated, market-driven capitalism served to enable and mask one of the largest and fastest upward redistributions of income in modern history."

New York Times—Europe Agrees to Basics of Plan to Resolve Euro Crisis: "European leaders, in a significant step toward resolving the euro zone financial crisis, early Thursday morning obtained an agreement from banks to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their Greek debt. ... The leaders agreed on Wednesday on a plan to force the Continent's banks to raise new capital to insulate them from potential sovereign debt defaults. But there was little detail on how the Europeans would enlarge their bailout fund to achieve their goal of $1.4 trillion to better protect Italy and Spain."

US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis—National Income and Product Accounts: Gross Domestic Product, 3rd quarter 2011: "Real gross domestic product—the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States—increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the third quarter of 2011 (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter) according to the 'advance' estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis."

That's an improvement on second quarter numbers, which saw a real GDP increase of 1.3%, and, in a healthy economy, 2.5% growth would be fine, but, during a long and deep recession with high unemployment, we need something a lot more robust than that to achieve meaningful recovery in a reasonable timeframe. Slow growth just means more people fall off the edge.

Speaking of falling off the edge...

Liz Dwyer at Good: What Do Obama's Student Loan Reforms Mean for You? "While the income-based reform is a step in the right direction projected to help around 1.6 million students, Radhika Singh Miller, a program manager for educational debt relief and outreach at the nonprofit Equal Justice Works, notes it will only benefit students who are starting college next year or later. 'For those of us who've already borrowed and are buried in student debt,' she says, the plan offers no help. ... [N]one of the reforms will reduce the total amount you owe, and they won't affect loans borrowed directly from a bank to help with college expenses. 'People still need to be proactive about avoiding those private loans,' she says, because they aren't eligible for income-based repayment plans or consolidation. If you don't, you're really 'at the mercy of a private lenders. All the things you see that come with federal loans—like deferments and forebearance—aren't standard with private loans.' If the Obama Administration put some consumer protections back into the private loan industry, Miller says, that would help millions."

If.

Meanwhile, in GOP Primaryland...

CNN/TIME Poll: Romney Leads Republican Rivals in First Four Primary States. Yikes.

Not that any of the rest of 'em are any better, of course.

Occupy Oakland Conflagration

In this morning's Economic News Round-Up, I linked one story about the police action against Occupy Oakland protesters last night, but I also wanted to provide a dedicated thread to that serious incident, at which more than 100 people were arrested and many injured by the "non-lethal weaponry," i.e. concussion grenades, beanbags, and rubber bullets, that were used to disperse the crowd stop people from making use of their rights of assembly and free speech.

Aaron Bady has an excellent timeline and firsthand account of events here.

Malia Wollan and J. David Goodman have a great, comprehensive compilation of video and images here, where I direct you with the warning that there are graphic images of injuries sustained by protesters.

Raw Story details, with video footage, the story of the Marine veteran who was injured "after being shot at point-blank range with bean bags or rubber bullets by police."

This Burrito's got a gallery of images from the past couple of days here.

Also see: David Atkins.

There's not a whole lot I've got to say about this authoritarian bullshit at the moment, but I will note the increasing absurdity of conservatives who call Obama's tax policy "class warfare" while 99 percenters are literally being brutalized in the streets by agents of the state.