The Difference Between A Bank And A Gun

Income equality?

OK, all us wealth redistributors (And we are all wealth redistributors--depending on whether you want to see the wealth accumulate on the top or be more equitably redistributed).

This little clip comes from the BBC show Mongrels and tells of the benefits of everyone becoming middle class!


When every one is middle class, there will be no poverty or starvation!



Try the game make Vince Wince if you check out the show's website.

Nothing like a show featuring urban foxes!

Still don't get the occupation movement?

Yee Haa!

Business as usual: top directors get 49 per cent pay rise

Stephen Foley

The Independent, Friday, 28 October 2011

The directors of Britain's largest companies were last night condemned as "elite greedy pigs" for pocketing a 49 per cent pay rise in the past year, while average workers failed even to keep up with inflation.

Unions exploded with fury after the publication of figures that showed how boardroom pay soared in the last financial year, thanks to rising salaries, bonuses and in particular the swelling value of directors' long-term share plans. The statistics, compiled by Incomes Data Services, provide an annual snapshot of executive remuneration, as reported in companies' most recent reports to shareholders, and show that the chief executives of the FTSE 100 largest companies earned an average of £3,855,172 last year. That is an average 43 per cent rise and, adding in other directors, total earnings rose by an average 49 per cent.

And from the USA

Yet More Grim Inequality News from the CBO

—By Kevin Drum

| Tue Oct. 25, 2011 3:54 PM PDT

The Congressional Budget Office is out with a timely new report on income inequality, which you can find here. Nickel version: The rich are getting richer, and the rest of us are just kind of drifting along.

The main summary chart is the one on the right. Since 1979, adjusted for inflation, incomes of the broad middle class (solid blue line labeled "21st to 80th percentiles") have increased about 40 percent, which comes to a sluggish 1 percent per year. During the same period, the incomes of the richest 1 percent have increased about 280 percent, or 7 percent per year. This is a pretty familiar chart by now, but one thing to note is that the incomes of the rich are pretty volatile: They drop a lot during recessions, but they also bounce back pretty quickly and regain their high growth rates as soon as the recession is over. This chart only goes through 2007, but the same dynamic has been at work in the aftermath of the Great Recession: a steep drop followed by an equally steep recovery.

Murder at Occupy Wall Street

This image demonstrates that murder has been happening at occupy Wall Street.

Note the feet protruding from the garbage toward the centre front of the picture!

These protesters are evil! Murdering other protesters and dumping the bodies in garbage.


Give me a break.

Some people miss that people can lie with photographs: they can be photoshopped, cropped, misrepresented, etcetera.

See:

• The Camera Never Lies...or does it?

Why I Support Occupy Wall Street

An official NYPD Statement on the Photo of the OWS protester?

OK, I contacted Ofcr. William Jenkins at the 81st precinct, Community Affairs: (718-574-0433). He could not verify that this was a real picture.

He suggested I contact NYPD, Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information (646-610-5000) for an official statement and they were unable to verify the photo. They did not have an official statement. They said that the person who took the photo was the person we should contact.

I contracted the mayor's office with this query:

I am trying to verify a photo that was alleged to have been taken of an Occupy Wall Street Protester allegedly defecating on a NYPD Car (2361) from the 81st Precinct that was published in the British Newpaper: the Daily Mail. I have contacted the NYPD, but unable to help me. Is there anyone in the Mayors office who can provide an official statement regarding this photo?

As of now, the only person who can verify that this was a true picture would be the word of the photographer. That means we have to put any reliability on this photograph to the credibility of the photographer, its source: the Daily Mail, and the general reliability of the picture.

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Occupy Wall Street: Outing the Ringers

Here's a few words from Jay Smooth, the host of New York's longest running hip hop radio show, WBAI's Underground Railroad. Jay has a great video blog, ill Doctrine, check it out!
Jay:



http://twitter.com/jsmooth995
A few thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, I've been watching it and going down there for a while now but hadn't had a chance to speak on it.

By the way when I say some news media people are "ringers," I don't necessarily mean that they deliberately obfuscate, or get orders from some shadowy figure to do so. I think they'll often just have a personal investment in the system and status quo that's being critiqued/threatened, so they'll naturally--without any need to conspire--have their perception skewed by an instinct to protect the status quo they're invested in. So though it's quite possibly not their intention to play the ringer, it's the function they wind up serving nonetheless.

"Rainbow in the Dark" instrumental provided by Das Racist

(Thanks Microdot)

No need to call the 81st Precinct...

Here's the photographer's side of the story:

Around 4ish I decided to head to the office of the Mail Online and file my pictures. As I left the north side of the park I heard a man running to catch up with two police officers, who where walking in the opposite direction to me, yelling: “Officer, you've got do something, there's a guy taking a shit on a patrol car”. In less that 10 strides from the park facing the McDonalds was indeed what appeared to be a middle aged man emptying himself with no great haste, up against the back end of an NYPD police car.

The two Police Officers who had been dutifully informed by a member of the public simply shrugged their shoulders and walked away. I ducked into a phone box and snatched a few shots of the scene playing out before me. The defecating man, oblivious to my presence, then wiped himself accordingly and strolled into the Mcdonalds as if nothing was the matter.

I was expecting a Police response any second, but it never came.

I'll start by saying this wasn't a set up. I didn't hire some random guy to pebble dash a patrol car. This isn't a cut and paste photoshop job. This isn't staged in any way. And this isn't a right wing/Tea Party conspiracy. Seriously! The bare fact is a grown man of his own accord, really did empty his bowels on a Police car in broad day light on the peripheral of a political protest. And by sad coincidence I was there to capture it. (The time of the incident was approximately 4.30pm)

and a better copy of the picture.

Note the van does have the 718 prefix on it. Area code 718 is a New York City telephone area code (overlaid by area codes 347 and 917) in the boroughs of the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, as well as the Marble Hill section of Manhattan.

I don't see any visible signs of protesters either.

Of course, the only true test is to contact the 81st Precinct.

One Picture Worth 1000 Words

Refutation of the picture on the left which explains the movement.



If you graduated from university with debt...
If you are part of the long term unemployed, or underemployed and struggling to get by...
If you have a family member who is one of the above...
If you realise that you are a layoff away from being one of the above...

Then you are part of the 99%

FAKE?

This photo purports to show an Occupy Wall Street Protester taking a shit on a police car.


Note on back of the Police Car:

81 PCT

Wouldn't that be NYPD's 81st Precinct? If it is an NYPD car--since the NYPD shield is blocked from sight. Although googling 81st Precinct only turns up the one in Brooklyn.

The 81st Precinct is located in the north central area of the borough of Brooklyn. This neighborhood is known as "Bedford Stuyvesant." A small section along the southern border is referred to Stuyvesant Heights.

Zucotti Park is at 1 Liberty Plaza, New York, NY 10006, in the 1st Precinct, which Google maps estimates as being close to 6 miles away!

I'm curious as to what a car from the 81st Precinct is doing in the First?

Does this really show what it claims to show? Somebody needs to check where car # 2361 from the 81st Precinct was stationed on the day this phot was alleged to have been taken. Although, it does stink that a car from a Brooklyn Precinct (especially from a high crime area such as Bed-Stuy) would be in Manhattan.

It seems I'm not the only one to have noticed this:

Only one problem - the NYC police car is clearly marked that it's from the 81st Precinct - and the 81st Precinct is in Brooklyn, not Manhattan. Now before someone decides that the officer must have been there helping with crowd control, standard operating procedure for big city police departments like NYC, Chicago, LA, etc. is for police to be called in to that duty off-shift, and to provide their own transportation to the area - they do not take patrol cars from other parts of the city, or other boroughs, to do crowd control somewhere else - and they wouldn't be parking them on the street if they were there for a long term assignment like that. Also, notice the green post office storage box. Unless they put them back, the Post Office removed them from Wall Street and environs after 9/11 so that they couldn't be used to hide a bomb. The shoes are quite a bit out of date as well - frankly, the guy looks to be a homeless guy and not a protester. Allegedly, the police ignored people who told them some guy was defecating on their car - does that sound like any police officer you know or have heard of? It appears someone is playing fast and loose with the facts here.

See this from another New Yorker questioning that this shows what it purports to show. In fact, New Yorkers are sceptical that this show what it claims for the basic reason stated: an 81st Precinct Officer wouldn't be in Manhattan.

It should also be noted that this photo first appeared in a British Paper, The Daily Mail, with a reputation for poor journalism, rather than a paper from New York, such as the Daily News or New York Post, for which this type of story is their bread and butter.

In short, this isn't passing the smell test.

The Occupy Movement Explained

Dumb people need pictures.



If some people read and understand what they have written here, they would understand they have far more in common with the occupy movement than the Tea Party.

Many officials of the Democratic Party have either personally appeared at Zuccotti Park to express support or sent statements of support for the protesters. Likewise, a number of union leaders joined a large protest rally held in New York City’s Foley Square on October 5 to show sympathy for the protesters.

Then there are the liberal political pundits and media outlets such as the New York Times that are also trying to build bridges between the Democratic Party and the Occupy movement in an effort to channel the protesters’ energy to the party’s electoral machine. For example, New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman recently wrote: “And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today’s Republicans. . . . But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies. . . . Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over.”

On the face of it there is nothing wrong with the Democratic Party officials or union leaders expressing support for the protesters. In light of their actual economic policies, however, that support can be characterized only as hypocritical. The Democrats are as much responsible for the economic problems that have triggered the protests as their Republican counterparts. The Obama administration has played an especially destructive role in pursuing a devastating neoliberal austerity agenda in terms of bailing out the Wall Street gamblers, extending the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy, expanding the US wars of choice—and then cutting vital social spending to pay for the financial resources thus usurped.

Equally blameworthy are union bureaucrats who have enabled the White House and the Congress in the implementation of such brutal austerity programs. Hollow posturing aside, the AFL-CIO has opposed neither the neoliberal austerity policies at home nor the imperialist wars of aggression abroad. Well-paid union officials have not even seriously challenged factory closures; nor have they earnestly resisted brutal cuts in workers’ wages and benefits.

In projecting sympathy for the Occupy Movement, the Democrats are essentially trying to have their cake and eat it too! Their efforts to express support for the protests can be interpreted only as opportunistic and utilitarian: to identify themselves with the rapidly spreading popular protests against the status quo, to mask the Obama administration’s neoliberal devotion to Wall Street, and to harness the energy of the protesters in order to garner their vote in the 2012 elections.

If successful, this would not be the first time the Democratic Party would have derailed and dissipated social struggles for change; it has a long record of such policies of betrayal, going back all the way to the Populist Movement of the late 19th century. Barack Obama’s promise of change in the 2008 elections in pursuit of garnering the grassroots’ vote was only the latest of the Democrats’ strategy of playing the good cop in order to contain radical energy. Two years earlier they had managed to undermine a vigorous antiwar movement by voicing the protesters’ demands to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if they won the majority seats in the Congress. Having thus gained the control of both houses of the Congress in the mid-term election of 2006, they shamelessly backed away from their promise to antiwar voters.

One can only hope that the Occupy Movement is armed with the knowledge of the Democratic Party’s record of cooptation and betrayal of radical movements; and will therefore chart a political movement of the working people and other grassroots independent of both parties of big business.

A Guide To The Smear Campaign Against Occupy Wall Street

Media Matters has come up with A Guide To The Smear Campaign Against Occupy Wall Street. The right-wing media have engaged in a relentless smear campaign against the Occupy Wall Street movement, including calling the protesters socialists and Marxists, saying they represent the "fringe of the fringe of the fringe," and claiming they "sound like the Unabomber," among other attacks.

Media Matter analyses the criticism here.

The Occupy Movement summarised

From

Why Does the GOP Hate the Occupy Movement So Much?

It’s generally accepted by the GOP and their allies that Wall Street trading had nothing to do with the 2008 economic downfall. Instead, they often find themselves blaming a host of boogeymen: the then-Democratic Congress, Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, President Clinton, President Barack Obama and the “losers” who got the shaft on their home loan.

But Wall Street did start this mess. And they were able to do so because of 30 years dedicated to dismantling Great Depression- era bank regulations. If the Occupy protests can get this message across to voters the way Tea Partiers got the “Obama is a fascist” mantra into peoples’ heads, that could mean trouble for the GOP in 2012.

“I think when people say they’re the 99 Percent,” says Robin, “they’re reclaiming that we’re all in this together and it’s really just this small minority that’s [destroyed the economy]. It reminds me of the way gays and lesbians have reclaimed the word ‘queer.’ We’re all in debt and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not our fault. It’s an economy that’s built on debt and subsidized by debt, and there needs to be a new way of organizing things.”

Joseph Stiglitz Said...

American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Greetings from the front line!

I wanted to take a picture of the French Tourists photographing the Demonstration, but you're going to have to do with a couple of pics from my cell phone. So forgive the quality and paucity of the photos.




As I said, I've been to the demonstration and can say that the trolls have no idea of what they are talking about. But we knew that already.

I will say that the protestors are in it for the long haul.

Although, thoughts of when Labour controlled councils used to allow for the homeless to sleep in tube stops (e.g., Tottenham Court Road) or other areas (such as near the South Bank Centre) come to mind when I see these protests.

Hundreds arrested in Wall Street Protests

New York police have arrested more than 700 demonstrators involved in protests against banks by a movement known as Occupy Wall Street.

Wall Street Protests Grow

As the protest endures and grows in NYC, it is also expanding to other cities. More well known people are turning up at the protest, and now five or six unions are joining in and lending their support. This is getting larger, it is growing, changing, but most of all - it is enduring. And finally domestic media is catching on to a story which has received more international attention than it has received in the U.S.

For those who don't understand and appreciate the significance of my earlier post about the Koch letter in the von Hayek archive (a problem for the single issue low information voter types), appreciate that these protests, if they continue at all as they have progressed in the past two weeks, are going to make a difference in the 2012 elections.


From MSNBC.com and Today and Reuters::

Wall Street protesters march on NY police headquarters

Demonstrators say cops used heavy-handed tactics at earlier rally

Below

1. • • 

     Jump to video The NYPD pepper-spraying incident

Louis Lanzano / AP

A several blocks-long crowd of "Occupy Wall Street" protesters Friday march up Broadway toward One Police Plaza in New York.

By Ray Sanchez

updated 10/1/2011 2:32:57 AM ET

NEW YORK — Protesters who have camped out near Wall Street for two weeks marched Friday on police headquarters in Manhattan over what they viewed as a heavy-handed police response to a previous demonstration.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, whose members have vowed to stay through the winter, are protesting issues including the 2008 bank bailouts, foreclosures and high unemployment.
More than 1,000 people marched past City Hall and arrived at a plaza outside police headquarters in the late afternoon. Some held banners criticizing police, while others chanted: "We are the 99 percent" and "The banks got bailed out, we got sold out."
Workers from the financial district on their way home watched as the marchers passed, with some saying it was not obvious what outcome organizers of the Occupy Wall Street movement wanted.
Police observed the march and kept protesters on the sidewalk, but no clashes were reported. Police said no arrests were made before the protest dispersed peaceably by 8 p.m. after the march.

Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street campaign hold signs aloft as a protest march enters the courtyard near the New York Police Department headquarters.

Familiar refrain: Wall Street protest lacks leaders, clear message "No to the NYPD crackdown on Wall St. protesters," organizers had said on their website, promoting the march. Other online flyers for the march read: "No to Stop-and-Frisk in Black & Latino neighborhoods" and "No to Spying and Harassment of Muslim Communities."
The protest came less than a week after police arrested 80 people during a march to the bustling Union Square shopping district, the most arrests by New York police at a demonstration since hundreds were detained outside the Republican National Convention in 2004.
A police commander used pepper spray on four women at last weekend's march and a video of the incident went viral on the Internet, angering many protesters who vowed to continue their protests indefinitely.
Story: Wall Street protesters target NY cops next The protest encampment in Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan is festooned with placards and anti-Wall Street slogans. There is a makeshift kitchen and library, and celebrities from filmmaker Michael Moore to actress Susan Sarandon have stopped by to show solidarity.
Asked on his weekly radio show on Friday whether the protesters could stay indefinitely at the private park they call their base, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "We'll see."

Bloomberg added: "People have a right to protest. But we also have to make sure that people who don't want to protest can go down the street unmolested."

Similar but smaller protests have also sprouted in other cities in recent days, including Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.

If There Was Any Question of the Wall Street Protest Gaining New Life ...

No Phony Baloney!
It's Tony Baloney..........inadvertently, helping the Wall Street Protest to Gain Momentum and Attention!

From the inimitable Jon Stewart!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Democracy on the Lurch - Wall Street Pepper Spray Incident
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

From Labor Notes by way of Truth Out:

"Occupy Wall Street" Protest Links Up With Locked-Out Teamsters

Thursday 29 September 2011

by: Michael London, Labor Notes | Report

Expanding their reach beyond the confines of Wall Street, a dozen activists from the ongoing Occupy Wall Street action disrupted an art auction at Sotheby’s last week.

The protest supported 43 union art handlers, members of Teamsters Local 814, who were locked out August 1 by the tony art seller.

Occupy Wall Street, organized mostly through social media, began protests in lower Manhattan 12 days ago, calling on “the 99%” to confront the “greed and corruption of the 1%.”

Disguised as potential bidders, the activists entered the building and interrupted the auctioneer one at a time as bidding on an item reached $130,000.

The protesters staggered their interruptions through a period of 75 minutes with shouts to “end the lockout” and “make Wall Street pay.”

They were escorted off the premises by security with no arrests.

“What’s being done to the art handlers is plain wrong,” said Will Russell, a Hunter College student. “Sotheby’s made $690 million in gross profit last year—but they can’t afford to pay their workers a fair wage?”

Actress Ashley Straw also participated. “The greed in this building is a direct example of the corporate greed that has ruined our economy,” she said.

Blockbuster Takeaways

Sotheby’s is demanding that all new hires have no collective bargaining rights, no health benefits, and no job security. The company is operating with scabs and a non-union subcontractor.

Occupy Wall Street supporters said, “Sotheby’s art auctions epitomize the disconnect of the extremely wealthy from the rest of us.”

Sotheby’s also wants the art handlers to give up their 401k plan, take a 10 percent wage cut, cap overtime, and eliminate certain job titles that pay more. In initial bargaining, the company wanted workers to give up their right to sue over discrimination.

Teamsters have been busy fighting the lockout, too, crashing Sotheby’s parties and handbilling its events.

Two Sotheby’s board members are also on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board, and when they hosted a “diversity gala” last week, Local 814 members showed up to let the celebrity-studded crowd know the people throwing their party are attacking a union that’s 70 percent Black and Latino.

“We thought it was pretty ironic they were patting themselves on the back for their diversity when they’re trying to send families of color back to the 1950s,” said Julian Tysh, an organizer for Local 814.

Last year was Sotheby’s most profitable year ever in its 267 years of business. The union says its CEO, Bill Ruprecht, is paid about $60,000 a day.

The action last week marked the first time the dispute at Sotheby’s has spilled from the street onto the auction floor—but protesters promised it wouldn’t be the last.

This story was originally published on Labor Notes.