NYT’s Keller wrong about Iraq, wrong about OWS

Posted on October 21, 2011 by oddmanout215

Many of us waited years for Bill Keller to own up to his key role in helping legitimize the disastrous Iraq War, but it never happened. So it’s no surprise that, instead of admitting he wrongly supported deregulation of the financial services industry, he chooses to ridicule the long-overdue public backlash against Wall Street crooks:

Funny, he doesn’t look like Marie Antoinette. But when former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller asks his readers if they are “bored by the soggy sleep-ins and warmed-over anarchism of Occupy Wall Street,” it displays the arrogance of disoriented royal privilege.

Perhaps his contempt for anti-corporate protesters was honed by the example of his father, once the chairman of Chevron. In any case, it is revealing, given the cheerleading support that the Times gave to the radical deregulation of Wall Street that occurred when Keller was the managing editor of the newspaper.

As the Times reported on its news pages in 1998, heralding the merger that created Citigroup as the world’s largest financial conglomerate: “In a single day, with a bold merger, pending legislation in Congress to sweep away Depression-era restrictions on the financial services industry has been given a sudden, and unexpected, new chance of passage…”

… One would think that the failure of The New York Times to cover this sorry tale as it was unfolding would leave Keller with some humble understanding of why protesters, undeterred by rain, should be celebrated rather than scorned. But such accountability has hardly been a hallmark of those in the media or in business and political circles, who with few exceptions got it so wrong.

It’s a law of nature: The most arrogant and rigid-minded fools are also the fools who are least likely to apologize for major errors, or even acknowledge them.

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, Iraq war, mainstream media, New York Times, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Fox balks, NPR fires somebody

Posted on October 20, 2011 by oddmanout215

It’s easy to joke about the level of self-censorship at NPR, as I did recently, but hard to exaggerate the uselessness of a news operation whose managers constantly bend to kiss the asses of the right-wingers aiming to kill government funding for public media:

Freelance broadcaster Lisa Simeone was fired from public radio program Soundprint yesterday after NPR took issue with her role as a spokesperson for the Occupy DC protests, despite the fact that she is not officially employed by the organization.

Simeone’s conflict with NPR was first reported by Roll Call and eventually ended up on Fox News before she was officially fired, evoking another infamous NPR termination. “The whole thing, right down to the firing-by-phone-after-pickup-from-Fox, has echoes of the Juan Williams debacle,” wrote Politico’s Keach Hagey, “and is likely to worsen public radio’s political woes, even if Simeone was not an NPR employee.”

Soundprint isn’t actually produced by NPR and airs on affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C., but WAMU news director Jim Asendio said that the station shares NPR’s code of ethics, which states that “NPR journalists may not engage in public relations work, paid or unpaid,” excepting “certain volunteer nonprofit, nonpartisan activities, such as participating in the work of a church, synagogue, or other institution of worship, or a charitable organization.”

As James Poniewozik pointed out last winter, one of the many ironies of the right’s war on public broadcasting is that eliminating government funding won’t kill “liberal programming” on “well-funded public outlets” in big population centers, but it might destroy public TV and radio outlets in sparsely populated areas.

Poniewozik noted that government-funded public broadcasting has already been neutered by the wing-nuts:

I actually do believe that public broadcasting — all of it — would be better, braver and more interesting if it had the independence that came from being entirely separated from the government and thus politics. But I can afford to believe that: I live in New York.

One of the problems is how to find a way to fund local public media in all parts of the country, not just areas densely populated enough to survive on donations from listeners and viewers.

Posted in Congress, mainstream media, Politics, taxes | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

You’d get jail. NYC cop gets slap on wrist.

Posted on October 19, 2011 by oddmanout215

I know, it’s part of the code. Cops have each other’s backs, just like the Three Musketeers or members of a motorcycle gang. You mess with one, you mess with them all, and risk being shot or used for a punching bag. You don’t even have to mess with them. All you have to do is be there.

But still, isn’t it brazen, even for the NYPD, to do nothing more than take away a few days’ pay from Anthony Bologna, aka Tony Baloney, the high-ranking cop who was spotted assaulting helpless women? Apparenty not:

NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna was disciplined Tuesday for pepper-spraying two female protesters in the notorious YouTube video seen around the world… The NYPD found that Bologna violated departmental guidelines and docked him 10 vacation days, or the equivalent amount of pay, police sources said.

The 29-year veteran makes $154,300 a year.

Protesters had demanded Bologna be arrested for spraying two penned-in women in the face and then quickly striding away during a Sept. 24 protest near Union Square… Bologna’s actions appeared unprovoked, and other cops at the scene were recorded expressing amazement at what he did. Video of that moment – which was viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube and played over and over on TV – helped turn Occupy Wall Street into a global phenomenon.

In other words, maybe we should thank this white-shirted sadist. If not for him and like-minded cops on the force — let’s hope they’re in the minority — the corporate media would have continued to ignore Occupy Wall Street, just as Wall Street wanted them to do.

Tony Baloney’s not hurting for money, but maybe he could make up the lost pay by working for the NYPD’s Paid Detail Unit — essentially, a service through which the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations rent cops to act as their personal protectors/enforcers. A modern-day version of the Praetorian Guard.

Footnote: Many historians have noted that the Praetorian Guard was an ultra-badass outfit, but not exactly trustworthy. Caligula got whacked by the Guard for nor showing them enough respect. I’m picturing Lloyd Blankfein as Caligula. He’s a bit old for the part, but just as vile.

Posted in Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

On lies and the lying liars quoted in the NYT

Posted on October 18, 2011 by oddmanout215

I was going to post some comments on a New York Times story in which Wall Street types were asked to comment on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thankfully, NYT columnist Paul Krugman beat me to it:

On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

This is deeply unfair to American workers, who are good at lots of things, and could be even better if we made adequate investments in education and infrastructure. But to the extent that America has lagged in everything except financial services, shouldn’t the question be why, and whether it’s a trend we want to continue?

For the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis.

Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. Wall Street made a large direct contribution to economic polarization, because soaring incomes in finance accounted for a significant fraction of the rising share of the top 1 percent (and the top 0.1 percent, which accounts for most of the top 1 percent’s gains) in the nation’s income. More broadly, the same political forces that promoted financial deregulation fostered overall inequality in a variety of ways, undermining organized labor, doing away with the “outrage constraint” that used to limit executive paychecks, and more.

More and more, Krugman seems an omsbudsman for the newspaper, I guess because no one else is honestly doing the job.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, New York Times, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Elected Dems to protesters — we’re with you, sort of

Posted on October 17, 2011 by oddmanout215

Chris Hedges, plainly stating why “liberal” has become a dirty word not only to right-wingers but to many thinkers and activists on the left:

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests…

… The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power. It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost. It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility. It is not interested in formal positions of power. It is not seeking office. It is not trying to get people to vote. It has no resources. It can’t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements. All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back…

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Freedom of assembly? Not in MY public space

Posted on October 16, 2011 by oddmanout215

From Michael Kimmelman’s thoughtful piece about… well, about America’s rediscovery that movements to effect social change are often sparked by large, sustained public gatherings of protesters:

THE ever expanding Occupy Wall Street movement, with encampments now not only in Lower Manhattan but also in Washington, London and other cities, proves among other things that no matter how instrumental new media have become in spreading protest these days, nothing replaces people taking to the streets.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the movement also seems to point to a conflict between our First Amendment rights of assembly and petition, and contemporary laws and notions regarding public space. As Kimmelman notes, public spaces in American cities — usually, small parks — often amount to “token gestures by developers in return for erecting bigger, taller buildings.” Most public parks in New York are closed to the public at night.

Zuccotti Park is “quasi-public.” Its owner, Brookfield Office Properties, must abide by a zoning variance that allows it to remain open the the public 24 hours a day, and that’s the only reason protesters were able to establish a camp there. Without the variance, no Occupy Wall Street and, probably, no similar movements in cities around the world.

However, the quasi-public Zuccotti Park is fundamentally no different from most so-called public spaces in cities, in that most of them ultimately are “controlled by landlords.” Zuccotti Park is still occupied, thanks to the zoning variance, but the occupiers are violating Brookfield’s prohibition of tarps and other personal effects and therefore are subject to legal eviction if and when the Brookfield decides to have them kicked out. Kimmelman writes:

The whole situation illustrates just how far we have allowed the ancient civic ideal of public space to drift from an arena of public expression and public assembly (Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, say) to a commercial sop (the foyer of the Time Warner Center).

It also illustrates how precarious the rights to assemble peaceably and petition for redress of grievances are in a country where police can chase people from public spaces because the sun is going down, or because users of the park are carrying bedrolls or other belongings. (BTW, this describes what happened to Occupy Denver this week when cops simply moved in and removed the protesters. So much for their right to assemble.)

I hope Kimmelman or someone else in the corporate media directly addresses this apparent danger to the OWS movement, and to our First Amendment rights. Where’s Nat Hentoff when you need him?

Posted in economic collapse, Great Recession, livable cities, mainstream media, New York Times, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Don’t judge me by my shoes…

Posted on October 16, 2011 by oddmanout215

The Band was peaking as a creative force when “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” appeared on their second album. The song’s subject is a rural victim of the Great Depression who joins a labor union to avoid starvation. His plight seemed awfully remote to most young listeners in 1969, but the economy has changed in a big way since then. What goes around, comes around…

Richard Manuel sings like an impassioned modern-day Job — My horse Jethro, well he went mad/And I can’t remember things bein’ so bad — and Robbie Robertson is at his tasteful and funky best as a guitarist and a writer of songs that, as Greil Marcus noted in Mystery Train, “were made to bring to life the fragments of experience, legend and artifact every American has inherited as the memory of a mythical past.”

Posted in arts, economic collapse, Great Depression, pop music, The New Depression, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Toomey puppet paraded at Occupy Philly

Posted on October 15, 2011 by oddmanout215

“Follow the puppet!”

The oversize papier-mache likeness of right-wing Sen. Pat Toomey stood tall among hundreds of Occupy Philly sympathizers marching from City Hall to Toomey’s Philly office with a petition for job creation. Coordinators shouted again when some marchers veered to the north, away from the destination.

“Follow the puppet!”

This sounded to me like a description of what many working people do when they vote for guys like Toomey, one of the Congresspeople on the so-called Super Committee that will decide how to cut the federal budget. Toomey used to work for Club For Growth, the job-killing pro-corporate advocacy group.

I shared my thought about the puppet chant with Jacob Russell, 70, a South Philly poet and Occupy Philly volunteer, who replied, “The irony is not lost on me.”

Russell explained that each Occupy group — there are roughly a thousand now in the U.S. and abroad — isn’t a protest group at its core, but rather a decision-making body constantly incorporating new ideas proposed by individuals and committees within the group. He said the goal is to organize communications so that the Occupy movement can build a structure beyond the local groups that is still democratic and inclusive.

“We’re going to have to do that to survive,” Russell said in noting the powers-that-be and their political puppets never concede anything without an organized fight by those seeking fundamental change — in income disparity, in regulations regarding lobbying and corporate bailouts, and so on.

As we talked, the crowd swung back around and started the long march to Independence Hall, to be part of what is being called the OccupyWallStreet Global Day of Action, involving marches in hundreds of cities. The marchers waved signs and chanted, “We are the 99 percent.”

Watched from all sides were cops in squad cars, traffic cops, plainclothes cops with walkie-talkies and armbands, husky bike cops wearing shirts bearing the ominous message “Police Strike Force.”

A middle-aged man from Wynnewood, PA, who didn’t want his name used said, “I’m here because the country is headed in the wrong direction. There are too many of us who want to have jobs but don’t, and too many of us who don’t have health care but should. And there are too many people making too much money, and it’s becoming more and more disparate as we go along.”

Posted in City Hall, Congress, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Philadelphia, Politics, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

As sure as the sun will shine…

Posted on October 14, 2011 by oddmanout215

This was ripped right from the movie, I think. It simmers. Great rhythm section. The whole band is the rhythm section.

Check out the sinister bosses sizing up Cliff’s commercial potential.

Posted in arts, movies, pop music | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Bloomberg backs off plan to sweep away OWS

Posted on October 14, 2011 by oddmanout215

Weary looking Russell Simmons, answering a reporter’s question about Occupy Wall Street after the movement survived a threat by NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg to “clean up” its camp in Zuccotti Park:

The message is coming out. It’s pretty simple. We are at Wall Street, and Wall Street controls our government, and we would like the people to control it. Simple.

I hear Russell, but it’s not that simple, and he knows it. First you have to find a way to separate government from the corporations and big investment banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which Matt Taibbi famously described as

…a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

This won’t happen while Obama and politicians like him continue to be elected. However, the fact that people like Simmons are on the streets protesting the unchecked power of the vampires and attracting long-overdue media attention is a big step in the right direction.

Update: According to Mediaite.com:

Hip Hop mogul and progressive activist Russell Simmons told CNN that Occupy Wall Street protestors will remain at Zuccotti Park possibly until Congress passes a constitutional amendment that says “money is going to leave Washington.”

Hmm… You want to run that by me again?

Posted in economic collapse, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment