Month: November 2011

Against corruption

I actually agree with this:

We need equality under the law. From now on, laws that apply to the private sector must apply to Congress, including whistleblower, conflict-of-interest and insider-trading laws. Trading on nonpublic government information should be illegal both for those who pass on the information and those who trade on it. (This should close the loophole of the blind trusts that aren’t really blind because they’re managed by family members or friends.)

No more sweetheart land deals with campaign contributors. No gifts of IPO shares. No trading of stocks related to committee assignments. No earmarks where the congressman receives a direct benefit. No accepting campaign contributions while Congress is in session. No lobbyists as family members, and no transitioning into a lobbying career after leaving office. No more revolving door, ever.

This call for real reform must transcend political parties. The grass-roots movements of the right and the left should embrace this. The tea party’s mission has always been opposition to waste and crony capitalism, and the Occupy protesters must realize that Washington politicians have been “Occupying Wall Street” long before anyone pitched a tent in Zuccotti Park.

Remarkably, this is coming from Sarah Palin in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

I do think there’s opportunity for the populist movements of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party to come together and oppose government corruption and the two-tiered justice system. Of course in this instance by Tea Party, I mean the grassroots base and not the Koch Brothers or Dick Armey front groups used to support any old Republican.

Of course, Palin’s complaints against government corruption would be much more believable if she hadn’t used her powers as governor to fire or intimidate personal enemies. Or if she and her staff didn’t obstruct FOIA requests by using personal email accounts for state business. Or if she didn’t pay herself to live at home while flying her children around the country on the Alaskan taxpayers’ dime. As an Alaskan taxpayer while Palin was governor, I’m not going to forget her own corruption and her own use of public coffers for personal enrichment. In short, the woman is a hypocrite, but what she’s saying today isn’t wrong, she just has no standing to make the argument against corruption.

N17 Action Updates

Today is the two month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and there is a national day of action. In New York, the day is broken up into three separate movements at breakfast, lunch and dinner:

7:00am — Shut Down Wall Street
We will gather in Liberty Square at 7:00am, before the ring of the Trading Floor Bell, to prepare to confront Wall Street with the stories of people on the frontlines of economic injustice.

3:00pm — Occupy the Subway
We will gather at 3:00pm at 16 central subway hubs and take our own stories to the trains, using the “People’s Mic”. Details here.

5:00pm — Take the Square, Festival of Lights on Brooklyn Bridge
At 5:00pm thousands will gather at Foley Square in solidarity with laborers demanding jobs to rebuild this country’s infrastructure and economy. They will encircle City Hall and march across the Brooklyn Bridge, carrying thousands of handheld lights, as a festival of lights to celebrate two months of a new movement to reclaim our democracy.

OccupyWallSt.org is hosting both live text updates from New York and multiple live video streams. Already there have been over 100 arrests reported, as well as incidents of the police using LRAD sound weaponry against peaceful protesters. The NYPD also has blocked reporters from accessing or filming arrests. The scale of response from Bloomberg to protect Wall Street bankers is truly astonishing, even for a billionaire.

If you’re not in New York, you can find events near you at November17.org.

Lambert Strether on the attacks on the Occupy movement

Lambert Strether has a guest post up at Naked Capitalism that looks at the violent raid on Occupy Wall Street and how the movement has responded to coordinated attacks on it from around the country. Lambert is an old hand in the lefty blogosphere and has always brought an incredibly rich moral perspective to his writing. This post is no different.

Whatever. Because a library is more than its holdings. As soon as Zuccotti Square was re-occupied, Occupiers began immediately began to self-organize the library again. Here’s the library at 7:00AM today. And here’s the address where you can send donated books.

And that’s the story: Occupier self-organization. Self-organization is how the Tahrir Square organizers beat Murbarak’s baltigaya, and self-organization is how the Occupiers will beat the 1%. Because look what Bloomberg bulldozed: Not only a library, but:

None of what Bloomberg bulldozed was or is about violence. All of those institutions are about solidarity, people helping people. (For the homeless or the hungry, these institutions are helping people who can’t get help anywhere else.) Perhaps that’s really what Bloomberg didn’t like?

Lambert goes on to make the point that it is these institutions of human support which are what makes the Occupy movement powerful. He notes that it is because of this power that mayors representing the 1% around the country have violently displaced Occupy encampments, using the same tired lies of uncleanliness and dangerous violence near the encampments. Never mind that these encampments are rigidly clean and that the incidents of violence haven’t actually be related to the Occupations at all.

As the frequency and violence with which local governments are trying to destroy the Occupy movement increases, the power of this movement only becomes more clear. Yesterday, following the eviction of Liberty Square, a number of people pointed out that this harsh eviction, done in the dead of night with no warning or humanity, would actually add fuel to the growing Occupy movement. Fortunately for organizers, November 17th (tomorrow) is a major national day of action. I expect whatever turnout would have happened without the eviction of Liberty Square will be substantially bigger, especially in New York City, as a result of this reckless crackdown. Generally speaking, putting out fires is hard to do when you’re using gasoline instead of water.

Newt Gingrich earned $1.6m+ from Freddie Mac

Originally posted at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right’s Field

Rut-roh. Bloomberg is reporting that Newt Gingrich “made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac.” Gingrich worked with Freddie Mac from 1999 to 2002, as the housing bubble was beginning to rapidly expand.

What’s remarkable about this is that Gingrich viewed Freddie Mac as a vehicle for the Republican Party to gain support from the Hispanic community.

“I spent about three hours with him talking about the substance of the issues and the politics of the issues, and he really got it,” said Delk, adding that the two discussed “what the benefits are to communities, what the benefits could be for Republicans and particularly their relationship with Hispanics.”

This pretty strongly undercuts some of the political arguments waged by pro-bank Republicans who seek to blame the GSEs for inflating the housing bubble. Gingrich was pushing them to do it to help Republicans! It makes Gingrich’s call for Barney Frank to be jailed – instead of banksters – for the financial collapse even more insane.

And while Gingrich has claimed that he advised Freddie Mac that they were creating a housing bubble, Bloomberg reports, “None of the former Freddie Mac officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gingrich raised the issue of the housing bubble or was critical of Freddie Mac’s business model.”

Oh Newt, I have a feeling that it’s going to be fun having you near the top of the polls.

Billionaire Bloomberg violently evicts Occupy Wall Street from Liberty Square


In the middle of the night last night, Mayor Bloomberg had the NYPD violently evict Occupy Wall Street from Liberty Square. The police used physical force, including sonic weapons and pepper spray, to force protesters out. They destroy the 5,000 book library. They destroyed tents and tarps that people have been living in. They arrested reporters and prevented news helicopters from flying to cover the violent eviction.

The latest statement from Occupy Wall Street shows their commitment to keep the Occupy movement moving forward:

Last night, billionaire Michael Bloomberg sent a massive police force to evict members of the public from Liberty Square—home of Occupy Wall Street for the past two months. People who were part of a dynamic civic process were beaten and pepper-sprayed, their personal property destroyed.

Supporters of this rapidly growing movement were mobilized in the middle of the night, making phone calls, taking the streets en masse, and planning next steps. Americans and people around the world are appalled at Bloomberg’s treatment of people who peacefully assemble. We are appalled, but not deterred. Liberty Square was dispersed, but its spirit not defeated. Today we are stronger than we were yesterday. Tomorrow we will be stronger still. We are breaking free of the fear that constricts and confines us. We occupy to liberate.

We move forward in the grand tradition of the transformative social movements that have defined American history. We stand on the shoulders of those who have struggled before us, and we pick up where others have left off. We are creating a better society for us all.

Occupy Wall Street has renewed a sense of hope. It has revived a belief in community and awakened a revolutionary spirit too long silenced.

Join us as we liberate space and build a movement.

The fight isn’t over and the Occupy movement will only grow stronger from here.

Already a judge has ordered protesters to be allowed to return to Liberty Square. Bloomberg, to this point, hasn’t complied with the order, denying its existence in a press conference this morning. Clearly the billionaire mayor is going all-in to protect his friends on Wall Street and the 1%. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Bloomberg comes out of this as anything other than a disgraced stooge for Wall Street.

…Also, the photo above is from Canal Street and 6th Street, where Occupy has taken a new park, which is privately owned by Trinity Church.

Banks still adding new fees to customers

Originally posted at AMERICAblog

There was a lot of rightful celebration when Bank of America and other major banks were forced to drop planned debit card fees following major protests from the Occupy Wall Street movement and other community groups. But, not shockingly, the major banks are still finding ways to squeeze money out of customers. The New York Times has a report at the more subtle ways banks are using to extract more wealth from the 99%. Citing the need to make up billions of dollars in lost overdraft penalties and swipe fees that were eliminated by Congress, banks are trying to make up the difference in other areas.

For consumers, the result is a quiet creep of new charges and higher fees for everything from cash withdrawals at ATMs to wire payments, paper statements and in some cases, even the overdraft charges that lawmakers hoped to ratchet down. What is more, banks are raising minimum account balances and adding other new requirements so that it is harder for customers to qualify for fee waivers.

Even the much-maligned debit usage charges have effectively been bundled into higher monthly fees on checking accounts. Bank of America abandoned its $5 a month debit card usage fee in late October amid a firestorm of criticism. Yet, it more quietly raised the cost of its basic MyAccess checking account by more than $3 a month earlier this year. Monthly maintenance fees now run $12 a month, up from $8.95.

The Times’ report notes that Senators Dick Durbin and Jack Reed are pushing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to have banks “adopt a more consumer-friendly disclosure form, akin to the nutrition label on food packaging, for all the fees attached to a checking account.” This is a pretty good idea, in that it would make decision making by consumers easier. But the whole problem consumers are facing today is that they already have accounts with banks and the banks are changing the fee structure on them. While the Move Your Money campaign is a great start, it’s also clear that a complete banking shift isn’t the same thing as switching from Frosted Flakes to Cheerios.

Most importantly, what’s clear is that when you fight the big banks, you can win, but no win is final. Stopping the $5 debit card fee was a great victory for the Occupy movement and consumer advocates, but it’s hardly the whole war. Banks will keep trying to extract every penny possible from consumers in the absence of regulation which prevents them from doing it and regulators committed to enforcing the regulations. Consumers need to stay wary and consumer advocates have to keep fighting back against bank greed. As the banks continue to find new and innovative ways to screw their customers, credit unions will keep gaining customers as people stand up and say, “Enough!” To put it differently, the more banks abuse their customers, the more the market will speak and tell them that this is not a behavior consumers are interested in supporting.

A Millenial loses faith in the Boomer generation

This piece by Thomas Day in the Washington Post about how the Penn State child sex cover-up is the final straw for one Millenial in terms of his loss of faith in his parents’ generation. It’s incredibly damning, going beyond the failure to protect children to the failure to grow the economy, build our infrastructure, and create promise and hope for the Millenial generation.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited. They inherited a country of boundless economic prosperity and the highest admiration overseas, produced by the hands of their mothers and fathers. They were safe. For most, they were endowed opportunities to succeed, to prosper, and build on their parents’ work.

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th. I remember telling my college roommates, in a spate of emotion, that I was thinking of enlisting in the military in the days after the attacks. I expected legions of us — at the orders of our leader — to do the same. But nobody asked us. Instead we were told to go shopping.

The times following September 11th called for leadership, not reckless, gluttonous tax cuts. But our leaders then, as now, seemed more concerned with flattery. Then -House Majority Leader and now-convicted felon Tom Delay told us, “nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” Not exactly Churchillian stuff.

Those of us who did enlist were ordered into Iraq on the promise of being “greeted as liberators,” in the words of our then-vice president. Several thousand of us are dead from that false promise.

The indictment goes on, but the point is clear. Now is the time for Millenial leadership. In fact, I think we’re seeing an attempt of that through the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is seeking to throw out the power structures created by elites, for elites alone.

The world that emerges as my generation takes the reins could be radically different from the one created by our parents’ generation. It has to be, for as Day notes, the great things built by our grandparents have been neglected or deliberately torn down. If we are to ever have the strength, the hope, and the possibilities of generations past, we have to change course and it’s going to have to be the Millenial generation which stewards this change.

Sell Taiwan for Debt Forgiveness?

Paul Kane must have been wearing a pair of bad idea jeans when he penned his op-ed in the New York Times calling for the US to trade Taiwan to China for $1.14 trillion in debt forgiveness by the Chinese government. Kane thinks that the US’s commitment to defend Taiwan in the event of an attack by China is a vestige of the Cold War that should be left behind, in exchange for the Chinese government forgiving all the US debt they currently hold. Kane is worried that debt is a drag on our economy, though he just asserts this without evidence beyond a quote from retired Admiral Mike McMullen asserting the same.

Debt hawkishness is bad enough. It’s infected elite discourse and genuinely prevented actual steps that would create jobs and right the economy from being enacted. But debt hawkishness paired with the idea of selling out an ally democracy? This is just a horrible idea and one that I hope finds no traction in political discourse.

Konczal on Obama, spending, & Klein’s apologia for economic failures

Mike Konczal has a good post looking at Ezra Klein’s recent apologia for President Obama’s stewardship of the economy. Konczal goes back to the President’s 2010 State of the Union speech:

It’s clear from the speech: President Obama announced the freeze and veto threat, and didn’t sound alarm bells, because he believed that the potential risks associated with not signaling to the bond market that deficit reduction was coming outweighed the reality of high unemployment and trying to expand the deficit immediately. 20+ million people not finding full-time work with certainty is bad, but just the possibility of the confidence fairy getting angry is far worse.This stands in for policy more generally, and it leads directly to all the failures of Grand Bargains and two-deficits cartwheels when it came to plans for dealing with the unemployment crisis. It splits the party between those who have to argue for bond vigilantes and those who have to argue against. The deficit hawkery negates the most powerful market indicator we have for what the government should do – the interest rate. This approach puts boundaries on the range of acceptable ideas on what can be done for the economy – and places getting stimulus out the door through discretionary spending, outside of Congress, out of bounds. And meanwhile current interest rates have never been lower – they are negative in real terms for 10 years out. This was exactly the wrong call to make in early 2010. [Emphasis added]

I think Konczal is exactly right in his critique of the 2010 State of the Union, and the policy decisions which followed from it.

But it’s not just that the President was wrong as we look back almost two years later. It’s that he was clearly wrong at the time. Plenty of people have been accurately describing the depth of the economic challenges facing us. Hell, Duncan Black has probably posted a couple hundred times over the last three years about the high unemployment, the lack of action, and the groundless fear of the bond vigilantes. The President and many of his advisers simply are not listening.