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The Cronyism Behind a Pipeline for Crude – NYTimes.com

4 Oct

FOB used to mean Friend of Bill (Clinton). Has it now become Friend of Barry (Obama)? Is the federal government run by a circle of friends who are enemies of the environment and thus enemies of their children and grand children and of ours?

But instead of listening to bright people like Mr. Hansen who know what they’re talking about, our government’s staffers are blowing kisses at lobbyists. That’s exactly why cronyism is such a problem. The people writing these e-mails don’t have expertise — they have connections. If this is happening in the State Department, why should we not assume it’s also going on in the Treasury Department’s dealings with the big banks, and just about everywhere else in government?

It really does seem extra shocking in the Obama administration. Dick Cheney’s sitting down with the energy barons was almost expected — he’d just quit as chief executive of the drilling company Halliburton, after all. But Barack Obama said he would “end the tyranny of oil”; he also said he was going to end back-room dealing. His decision about the Keystone pipeline project, which is expected by year’s end, seems like one last chance to show he actually meant it.

via The Cronyism Behind a Pipeline for Crude – NYTimes.com.

“Occupy Wall Street,” today’s Whiskey Rebellion – The Labor Movement – Salon.com

3 Oct

Like it or not, though, it is Occupy Wall Street that has the most in common, ideologically, not with those Boston merchants and their supporters but with the less well-known, less comfortably acknowledged people who, throughout the founding period, cogently proposed and vigorously agitated for an entirely different approach to finance and monetary policy than that carried forward by the famous founders. Amid horrible depressions and foreclosure crises, from the 1750′s through the 1790′s, ordinary people closed debt courts, rescued debt prisoners, waylaid process servers, boycotted foreclosure actions, etc. (More on that here and here.) They were legally barred from voting and holding office, since they didn’t have enough property, so they used their power of intimidation to pressure their legislatures for debt relief and popular monetary policies. Their few leaders in legit politics included the visionary preacher Herman Husband, the weaver William Findley, and the farmer Robert Whitehill.

via “Occupy Wall Street,” today’s Whiskey Rebellion – The Labor Movement – Salon.com.

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George Soros Says He Sympathizes With Occupy Wall Street Protesters

3 Oct

Soros says he understands the frustrations of small business owners, for instance those who have seen credit card charges soar during the current crisis.

via George Soros Says He Sympathizes With Occupy Wall Street Protesters.

Occupy Wall Street — Crooked Timber

2 Oct

Here’s a bunch of interesting comments on Occupy Wall Street from various points of view. Here’s one I like:

Lemuel Pitkin 10.02.11 at 4:16 pm

The protests are great. I hope they continue, and get bigger.

Good for the country—we’ve had far too little anger for too long—but bad for blog threads. Because disagreement is usually what makes these things run.

One thing, tho: I think the lack of concrete demands or positions is fine. There’s a division of labor. Some people need to come up with alternatives, and some people need to establish that the status quo is unacceptable.

via Occupy Crooked Timber — Crooked Timber.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Why OccupyWallStreet beats Save the Middle Class

2 Oct

A shrewd analysis by Stirling Newberry, whom I first met online in the “old days” at Salon’s Table Talk.

The grind of reality is going to coöpt occupy. The police are not their friends. They have no one to vote for, and so must get more radical until a candidate finds them. Occupy is the meme that takes in the unemployed, the working, the disaffected. Many young people rebel against the very values that “middle class” presupposes.

via The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Why OccupyWallStreet beats Save the Middle Class.

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Obama as Seen by a Youth Organizer

2 Oct

William “Upski” Wimasatt is the son of a philosophy professor who grew up in the streets of Chicago and painted graffiti (hence hisnick name, Upski, which derives from graffiti slang where “to get up” means to paint. His dance with graffiti got him a dance with the juvenile authorities, yet somehow he made it to college and came out the other side as a youth organizer. And a successful one at that (Google his name).

Last year he published a book, Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs (Akashic Books 2010), which is part autobiography, part manifesto, part organizing manual, and all call to action. I’ll be saying a bit more about the book later on, but I wanted to blog some brief remarks about Obama.

On a trip back to Chicago Upski, who now lives in NYC, hooked up with some old friends who chatted about Obama (pp. 109-110):

Chris remembers in the 90s as Michelle’s somewhat ordinary husband who struggled to quit smoking and didn’t appear to be in any way her equal. My friend’s brother went to high school with him in Hawaii as a teenager. He said: “No one would have believed that Barry Obama would go on to become president of the United States.

This is someone who one night slept outside on the streets of New York City. This is someone who went door-to-door in the projects, who spent time collecting petitions at a community college. Continue reading →

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The Bankers and the Revolutionaries – NYTimes.com

2 Oct

Arab Springs comes to Wall Street:

“This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. “Enough is enough!”

The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.

This is big (boldface mine):

In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.

We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it — and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?

via The Bankers and the Revolutionaries – NYTimes.com.

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Missing the Populist Moment – NYTimes.com

2 Oct

This cycle of populist disappointment has probably raised the Republican Party’s odds of taking the White House in 2012, by making a swift coronation for Mitt Romney more and more likely. (So long as a certain New Jersey governor doesn’t lumber into the race, that is.) But it’s a missed opportunity for American conservatism. Republican primary voters deserve a better class of right-wing populist, and the country does as well.

In many ways, the ideological divisions between populist and establishment Republicans have narrowed since the days of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford….

But amid the bombast and identity politics, it’s still possible to discern a serious populist critique of how the Republican establishment does business — one that links Pat Buchanan’s primary campaigns in the 1990s to figures like Palin, Huckabee, Cain and Ron Paul today.

via Missing the Populist Moment – NYTimes.com.

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Flouting the Law, Pastors Will Take On Politics – NYTimes.com

1 Oct

Hmmmm. . . .

The alliance and many other advocates regard a 1954 law prohibiting churches and their leaders from engaging in political campaigning as a violation of the First Amendment and wish to see the issue played out in court. The organization points to the rich tradition of political activism by churches in some of the nation’s most controversial battles, including the pre-Revolutionary war opposition to taxation by the British, slavery and child labor.

The legislation, sponsored by Lyndon Baines Johnson, then a senator, muzzled all charities in regards to partisan politics, and its impact on churches may have been an unintended consequence. At the time, he was locked in a battle with two nonprofit groups that were loudly calling him a closet communist.

Thirty years later, a group of senators led by Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, passed legislation to try to rein in the agency a bit in doing some audits. While audits of churches continued over the years, they appeared to have slowed down considerably after a judge rebuffed the agency’s actions in a case involving the Living Word Christian Center and a supposed endorsement of Ms. Bachmann in 2007. The I.R.S. had eliminated positions through a reorganization, and therefore, according to the judge, had not followed the law when determining who could authorize such audits.

via Flouting the Law, Pastors Will Take On Politics – NYTimes.com.

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Occupy Wall Street: FAQ | The Nation

30 Sep

Some news reports have been painting the protesters as unfocused, or worse, as hopelessly confused and uninformed. Is there any truth to that?

Sure. In a world as complex as ours, we’re all uninformed about most things, even if we know about a few. I remember a police officer remarking of the protesters on the first or second day, “They think they know everything!” That’s how young people generally are. But in this case, noticing the over-concentration of wealth around Wall Street and its outsized influence in politics does not require a detailed grasp of what a hedge fund does or the current selling price of Apple stock. One thing that distinguishes these protesters is precisely their hope that a better world is possible. I might add that, for many Americans, such nonviolent direct action is the only chance of having a political voice, and it deserves to be taken seriously by those of us in the press.

How many people have responded to the Adbusters call? How large is the group? And how large has it ever been?

The original Adbusters call envisioned 20,000 people flooding the Financial District on September 17. A tenth of that probably ended up being there that day. Despite a massive Anonymous-powered online social media blitz, lots of people simply didn’t know about it, and traditional progressive organizations like labor unions and peace groups were uncomfortable signing on to so amorphous an action. Over the course of a difficult first week, with arrests happening just about every day, new faces kept coming, as others filtered out to take a break. The media coverage after last weekend’s mass arrests and alleged police brutality has brought many more. Now, during the day and into the night, one finds 500 or more people in the plaza, and maybe half that sleeping over.

via Occupy Wall Street: FAQ | The Nation.

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