Goldman Sachs’ Trader Finds a New Occupy Tactic
By nemo | March 19, 2012
Wake Up Congress; Before the Next Collapse
by PAM MARTENS
In the last decade, Wall Street has evolved from predator to organized crime with a speed dial to Washington. Instead of Washington reforming Wall Street, it has seduced and corrupted Washington. It didn’t have to come to this.
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By nemo | March 19, 2012
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Occupy Wall Street supporters march in NYC to mark 6 months since movement's start Washington Post NEW YORK — A day after police broke up a rally at Manhattan's Zuccotti Park and arrested dozens, Occupy Wall Street protesters said Sunday that their movement for economic justice would pick up momentum with the spring. See all stories on this topic » |
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Dozens arrested at Occupy Wall Street rally Chicago Tribune NEW YORK (Reuters) – Dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested during the weekend as police cleared New York's Zuccotti Park, where demonstrators had gathered for a rally to mark that it had been six months since the struggling movement … See all stories on this topic » |
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Witness: Occupy protesters beaten during arrests BusinessWeek By KAREN MATTHEWS An Occupy Wall Street protester says police gave demonstrators little warning before kicking them out of a New York City park overnight and that officers beat several of them during the arrests. The protester, Chris Casuccio, … See all stories on this topic » |
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By nemo | March 18, 2012
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Occupy Wall Street supporters march in NYC to mark 6 months since movement's start Washington Post Some demonstrators locked arms and sat down in the middle of Zuccotti Park near Wall Street after police announced on a bullhorn at around 11:30 pm Saturday that the park was closed. Officers then poured into the park, forcing most of the crowd out and … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street celebrates 6 months since start Boston Herald By AP NEW YORK — Chanting and cheering down Wall Street on Saturday to mark six months since the birth of the Occupy movement, some protesters applauded the Goldman Sachs employee who days ago gave the firm a public drubbing, echoing the movement's … See all stories on this topic » |
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Dozens arrested at Occupy's 6-month anniversary rally Reuters By Chris Francescani | NEW YORK (Reuters) – Police arrested dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters on Saturday night during a protest marking the movement's six-month anniversary at its birthplace in New York's Zuccotti Park. See all stories on this topic » |
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Protesters back in NY park for Occupy Wall Street anniversary Reuters By Chris Francescani | NEW YORK (Reuters) – More than 200 protesters gathered on Saturday in New York's Zuccotti Park to mark the six-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement and clashed with police, resulting in several arrests and three … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street celebrates six month anniversary HeraldNet AP John Minchillo / AP Occupy Wall Street demonstrators march near Wall Street while holding signs to celebrate the protest's six-month anniversary on Saturday in New York. Associated Press An Occupy Wall Street protestor chants in Zuccotti Park after … See all stories on this topic » |
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Protesters, Police Return for 'Occupy' Milestone Wall Street Journal (blog) By Jessica Firger Protesters returned to Zuccotti Park on March 17, a half-year after the inception of Occupy Wall Street, and met a swift response from police. Protesters, police and barricades returned to Zuccotti Park on Saturday night, … See all stories on this topic » |
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By nemo | March 17, 2012
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Occupy 2.0: Protesters Go High-Tech Wall Street Journal By JESSICA FIRGER Occupy Wall Street's open-air encampments and spontaneous demonstrations through New York City have been largely organized through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Now, protesters said, those tools are no longer enough. See all stories on this topic » |
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Denouncing duo? Occupy Wall Street seeking ex-Goldman director for Manhattan march InvestmentNews By Bruce Kelly Occupy Wall Street wants to team up with the investment industry's latest antihero, ex-Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith. The protest group, which famously took over Zuccotti Park near Wall Street last September and drew … See all stories on this topic » |
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Summary Box: 6 months in, Occupy Wall Street takes stock of successes, gears … Washington Post SPRING REVIVIAL: Occupy Wall Street protesters are planning renewed demonstrations six months after the movement was born in lower Manhattan. Organizers have set May 1 as a global day of “economic disruption.” CHANGE OF FOCUS: The Occupy movement has … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street revisited London Free Press By Lorrie Goldstein, QMI Agency A senior Goldman Sachs executive caused a stir on Wall St. last week when he publicly resigned from the firm, calling it “morally bankrupt.” In a column in the New York Times, Greg Smith, executive director and head of … See all stories on this topic » |
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By nemo | March 16, 2012
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Occupy Wall Street: 6 Months Later, What Has Occupy Protest Movement Achieved? Huffington Post By MEGHAN BARR 03/16/12 03:03 AM ET NEW YORK — As spring approaches, Occupy Wall Street protesters who mostly hibernated all winter are beginning to stir with plans for renewed demonstrations six months after the movement was born. See all stories on this topic » |
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6 months in, Occupy Wall Street activists take stock of successes, gear up for … Washington Post NEW YORK — As spring approaches, Occupy Wall Street protesters who mostly hibernated all winter are beginning to stir with plans for renewed demonstrations six months after the movement was born. The global protests against corporate excess and … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street Protesters Arrested Outside Bank Of America, Others Amass … Gothamist Approximately 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters rallied outside Bank of America this afternoon, as part of a nationwide demonstration to symbolically "foreclose" on the giant predatory behemoth. Activists intend to target Bank of America on the 15th of … See all stories on this topic » |
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The Purpose of Occupy Wall Street Is to Occupy Wall Street The Nation. Zuccotti Park during an Occupy Wall Street protest in New York, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) Occupy Wall Street. What other political movement in modern times has won the sympathy and/or support of the majority of the American … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy-inspired movement puts families in vacant homes Kansas City Star The Occupy Wall Street movement turned its attention to the housing crisis last fall, and groups around the country have worked to keep people in their homes, place the needy in properties that are seemingly abandoned and rid neighborhoods of blight. See all stories on this topic » |
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Rediscovering American Poverty
By nemo | March 15, 2012
Published on Thursday, March 15, 2012 by TomDispatch.com Rediscovering American Poverty
How We Cured “The Culture of Poverty,” Not Poverty Itself
by Barbara Ehrenreich
It’s been exactly 50 years since Americans, or at least the non-poor among them, “discovered” poverty, thanks to Michael Harrington’s engaging book The Other America. If this discovery now seems a little overstated, like Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was because the poor, according to Harrington, were so “hidden” and “invisible” that it took a crusading left-wing journalist to ferret them out.
Harrington’s book jolted a nation that then prided itself on its classlessness and even fretted about the spirit-sapping effects of “too much affluence.” He estimated that one quarter of the population lived in poverty — inner-city blacks, Appalachian whites, farm workers, and elderly Americans among them. We could no longer boast, as President Nixon had done in his “kitchen debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow just three years earlier, about the splendors of American capitalism.
At the same time that it delivered its gut punch, The Other America also offered a view of poverty that seemed designed to comfort the already comfortable. The poor were different from the rest of us, it argued, radically different, and not just in the sense that they were deprived, disadvantaged, poorly housed, or poorly fed. They felt different, too, thought differently, and pursued lifestyles characterized by shortsightedness and intemperance. As Harrington wrote, “There is… a language of the poor, a psychology of the poor, a worldview of the poor. To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.”
Harrington did such a good job of making the poor seem “other” that when I read his book in 1963, I did not recognize my own forbears and extended family in it. All right, some of them did lead disorderly lives by middle class standards, involving drinking, brawling, and out-of-wedlock babies. But they were also hardworking and in some cases fiercely ambitious — qualities that Harrington seemed to reserve for the economically privileged.
According to him, what distinguished the poor was their unique “culture of poverty,” a concept he borrowed from anthropologist Oscar Lewis, who had derived it from his study of Mexican slum-dwellers. The culture of poverty gave The Other America a trendy academic twist, but it also gave the book a conflicted double message: “We” — the always presumptively affluent readers — needed to find some way to help the poor, but we also needed to understand that there was something wrong with them, something that could not be cured by a straightforward redistribution of wealth. Think of the earnest liberal who encounters a panhandler, is moved to pity by the man’s obvious destitution, but refrains from offering a quarter — since the hobo might, after all, spend the money on booze.
In his defense, Harrington did not mean that poverty was caused by what he called the “twisted” proclivities of the poor. But he certainly opened the floodgates to that interpretation. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan — a sometime-liberal and one of Harrington’s drinking companions at the famed White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village — blamed inner-city poverty on what he saw as the shaky structure of the “Negro family,” clearing the way for decades of victim-blaming. A few years after The Moynihan Report, Harvard urbanologist Edward C. Banfield, who was to go on to serve as an advisor to Ronald Reagan, felt free to claim that:
“The lower-class individual lives from moment to moment… Impulse governs his behavior… He is therefore radically improvident: whatever he cannot consume immediately he considers valueless… [He] has a feeble, attenuated sense of self.”
In the “hardest cases,” Banfield opined, the poor might need to be cared for in “semi-institutions… and to accept a certain amount of surveillance and supervision from a semi-social-worker-semi-policeman.”
By the Reagan era, the “culture of poverty” had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused, not by low wages or a lack of jobs, but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles. The poor were dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to “defer gratification,” or possibly even set an alarm clock. The last thing they could be trusted with was money. In fact, Charles Murray argued in his 1984 book Losing Ground, any attempt to help the poor with their material circumstances would only have the unexpected consequence of deepening their depravity.
So it was in a spirit of righteousness and even compassion that Democrats and Republicans joined together to reconfigure social programs to cure, not poverty, but the “culture of poverty.” In 1996, the Clinton administration enacted the “One Strike” rule banning anyone who committed a felony from public housing. A few months later, welfare was replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), which in its current form makes cash assistance available only to those who have jobs or are able to participate in government-imposed “workfare.”
In a further nod to “culture of poverty” theory, the original welfare reform bill appropriated $250 million over five years for “chastity training” for poor single mothers. (This bill, it should be pointed out, was signed by Bill Clinton.)
Even today, more than a decade later and four years into a severe economic downturn, as people continue to slide into poverty from the middle classes, the theory maintains its grip. If you’re needy, you must be in need of correction, the assumption goes, so TANF recipients are routinely instructed in how to improve their attitudes and applicants for a growing number of safety-net programs are subjected to drug-testing. Lawmakers in 23 states are considering testing people who apply for such programs as job training, food stamps, public housing, welfare, and home heating assistance. And on the theory that the poor are likely to harbor criminal tendencies, applicants for safety net programs are increasingly subjected to finger-printing and computerized searches for outstanding warrants.
Unemployment, with its ample opportunities for slacking off, is another obviously suspect condition, and last year 12 states considered requiring pee tests as a condition for receiving unemployment benefits. Both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have suggested drug testing as a condition for all government benefits, presumably including Social Security. If granny insists on handling her arthritis with marijuana, she may have to starve.
What would Michael Harrington make of the current uses of the “culture of poverty” theory he did so much to popularize? I worked with him in the 1980s, when we were co-chairs of Democratic Socialists of America, and I suspect he’d have the decency to be chagrined, if not mortified. In all the discussions and debates I had with him, he never said a disparaging word about the down-and-out or, for that matter, uttered the phrase “the culture of poverty.” Maurice Isserman, Harrington’s biographer, told me that he’d probably latched onto it in the first place only because “he didn’t want to come off in the book sounding like a stereotypical Marxist agitator stuck-in-the-thirties.”
The ruse — if you could call it that — worked. Michael Harrington wasn’t red-baited into obscurity. In fact, his book became a bestseller and an inspiration for President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. But he had fatally botched the “discovery” of poverty. What affluent Americans found in his book, and in all the crude conservative diatribes that followed it, was not the poor, but a flattering new way to think about themselves — disciplined, law-abiding, sober, and focused. In other words, not poor.
Fifty years later, a new discovery of poverty is long overdue. This time, we’ll have to take account not only of stereotypical Skid Row residents and Appalachians, but of foreclosed-upon suburbanites, laid-off tech workers, and America’s ever-growing army of the “working poor.” And if we look closely enough, we’ll have to conclude that poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money.
© 2012 Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. She won the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize. Her seventeenth book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books), has just been published. Her bestselling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, 10th Anniversary Edition, has just been released by Picador Books.
more Barbara Ehrenreich …
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By nemo | March 15, 2012
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Occupy NY protesters: Romney's out of touch Wall Street Journal AP NEW YORK — Occupy Wall Street activists targeted a Mitt Romney fundraiser, circling a luxury Manhattan hotel that hosted the candidate and his supporters. Several hundred protesters walked around the Waldorf Astoria on Wednesday behind a black urn … See all stories on this topic » |
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Mitt Romney Waldorf-Astoria Fundraiser Sparks Occupy Wall Street '1% For … Huffington Post A Mitt Romney fundraiser brought Occupy Wall Street protestors back from the depths of winter for a protest outside the Waldorf-Astoria, where the presidential hopeful was scheduled to host a fundraiser lunch. This will be a fun filled 1%ers for Romney … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Romney! Washington Post (blog) Organized by Occupy Wall Street, the satirical protest had united a hodgepodge of progressive activists who had found a common enemy in the former Massachusetts governor. Much of the crowd took aim at Romney's business background: Leading the march … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street Pickets Mitt Romney's Fund-Raiser Village Voice (blog) 14 2012 at 3:34 PM Mitt Romney was in town this morning for a fund-raiser at the Waldorf Astoria, and a crowd of about 200 Occupy Wall Street protesters, activists, and union members were there to welcome him. The Romney event was hosted by Gristede's … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy: Romney is the one percent (0:51) Washington Post 14, 2012 – Occupy Wall Street activists targeted a Mitt Romney fundraiser at a luxury Manhattan hotel on Wednesday, denouncing the Republican presidential candidate but also taking shots at all the contenders. (/The Associated Press) Correction: … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street St. Patrick's Day event to recognize Irish history of … Irish Central The Occupy Wall Street movement is recognizing the 'Irish History of Oppression by the British Empire' on St. Patrick's Day, to mark the six month anniversary of their call to action. During this Saturday's event at Zuccotti Park, potatoes will be … See all stories on this topic » |
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By nemo | March 14, 2012
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Share the Wealth: Occupy Wall Street Movement needs leader to reclaim relevance LSU The Reveille The Occupy Wall Street movement was once a front-page story. Now, it's an afterthought in the minds of Americans. It captivated our nation, placing a spotlight on our vast income inequality, the corrosive power of too-big-to-fail banks and … See all stories on this topic » |
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Modernize Wall Street Regulation Instead of Occupying the Industry Forbes Will the federal regulator finally reach out to the hardcore industry interests of Wall Street, to the dissenting voices of Occupy Wall Street, to public investors and industry interests with skin in the game, and, yes, even to so-called gadflies and … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street protesters will rally outside a Manhattan fundraiser for … amNY Wednesday's fundraiser is “a who's who of Wall Street executives and the 1% and a bevy of billionaires who think they can get democracy just by being the highest bidder,” Shan said. A spokesman for Romney's campaign did not return a message for comment … See all stories on this topic » |
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The intellectual foundations of the Occupy Wall Street movement OUPblog (blog) By Frank J. Vandall One of the chief attacks on the Occupy Wall Street Movement is that it has no articulated rational basis. It's just a bunch of unwashed neo-hippies who are wasting time, public resources, and park space while not looking for a job. See all stories on this topic » |
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How the Fed Steals for the 1% Huffington Post It is ironic that Occupy Wall Street is reportedly very low on cash. This is something that Wall Street itself never has to worry about. They have ready access at all times to as much cash as they need. The Occupiers mistakenly blame capitalism, … See all stories on this topic » |
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By nemo | March 13, 2012
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Have You Occupied Wall Street? NYC Wants Your Twitter Data Mashable If you've taken part in Occupy Wall Street, then the New York County District Attorney's Office might want to take a peek at your Twitter data. The DA's office has sent subpoenas to Twitter asking for the data of a handful of people arrested last year … See all stories on this topic » |
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Occupy Wall Street almost out of money United Liberty The grievances that Occupy Wall Street put forward certainly do deserve a spot in the marketplace of ideas in the public discussion, but I reject them almost entirely. But my personal experiences with them make me, on the whole, take them much less … See all stories on this topic » |
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Another Occupy Wall Street activist's Twitter account subpoenaed Boing Boing By Xeni Jardin at 11:35 am Monday, Mar 12 Just one month ago, the Manhattan District Attorney's office subpoenaed the Twitter account of Occupy Wall Street participant Malcolm Harris, aka @destructuremal. Today, Jeff Rae received word of the same. See all stories on this topic » |
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Can an Upstart Occupy-Supporter Compete with Michele Bachmann? TIME But the fact that Nolan, an anti-abortion Democrat, counts herself as a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement has already drawn Bachmann's attention. The congresswoman sent out a fundraising letter on Friday, telling her mailing-list that Nolan … See all stories on this topic » |
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Oligarchy in the USA
By nemo | March 11, 2012
The wealth defense industry protects the richest of the rich.
by Jeffrey A Winters
In These Times (February 27 2012)
In 2005, Citigroup offered its high net-worth clients in the United States a concise statement of the threats they and their money faced.
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