Jason Cherkis' and Sara Kenigsberg's latest entry in the 'Occupy Y'All Street' series that examines some of the lesser-known Occupy encampments is maybe the most important thing they've posted yet. It asks the question of what happens when the initial enthusiasm of the protests starts to wane. It asks, what happens next.
The article focuses on Occupy Charlotte member Vic Suter, a key organizer who has dedicated her life to the issues related to Occupy Wall Street and is going above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to making sure that Charlotte is occupied and that the rallies and marches in the city don't die.
A month earlier, the Occupy activists in Charlotte had drawn more than 500 to their first march uptown, a noisy success that included a stop at Bank of America's North Tryon Street headquarters, where the throngs chanted up its 60 stories. The building -- the tallest in the state and a dominant spear in the city's skyline -- had been a force for civic pride. But since the Great Recession, the bank has become one of the country's great villains. The Wall Street of the South now had its own potent occupation.
The early general assemblies could number in the hundreds. The meeting participants were drawn by growing income disparities, rising college tuition costs, the region's environmental decay. They were among the metro area's double-digit unemployment rate. They realized they were everybody.
Vic had joined on the first night and had been charged with welcoming newcomers and teaching them the movement's hand signals. Soon she began organizing three marches each day to one spot. This was her work week. Charlotte's downtown had grown rich with examples of injustice wrapped in glass and outfitted with bad public art. Vic filled up to-do lists with ideas for future marches.
For years, she had searched for her place. She tattooed "Restless" in black cursive script on her shoulder. But at Occupy, she thought she might have found her calling, and her very own tribe in the buckle of the bible belt. She fell hard. "When you're throwing yourself into something," she explained to us, "you don't have a lunch break. You don't have time off. You don't get a vacation from a long-term protest."
I don't see any upside to this - except political. Is President Obama still chasing those mythical independent votes by acting like a hard-liner on immigration? Does he really not get how badly this undermines his support in the Latino community?
I'll give kudos to the Huffington Post for doing this kind of story, one that's far too often ignored:
WASHINGTON -- On a single day this past fall, the United States government held 13,185 people in immigration detention who had not been convicted of a crime, some of whom will not be charged with one, according to information The Huffington Post obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Instead, at a cost of roughly 2 million taxpayer dollars per day, the men and women were detained while immigration authorities sorted out their fates.
This case stands in stark contrast to the stated goal of immigration policy under the administration of President Barack Obama: to detain and deport unauthorized immigrants who've been convicted of crimes.
"ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes the removal of convicted criminal aliens, fugitives, recent illegal border crossers and egregious immigration law violators, such as those who have been previously removed from the United States," Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nicole Navas said in a statement. "ICE's enforcement approach is enhancing public safety in communities around the country."
[...] The FOIA request for information on all immigrants in detention on Oct. 3, 2011, turned up a list of nearly 32,300. Forty percent of those held by ICE had not been convicted of a crime, nor were they awaiting criminal trial. Despite what the term "illegal immigration" implies, simply being in the country without status is a civil, not a criminal, offense.
Rapists and murderers, frequently cited as the main unauthorized immigrants ICE is trying to remove, made up a far smaller percentage of those held that day than the innocent, traffic violators or low-level drug offenders, according to ICE's crime breakdown.
"The fact is, we're not deporting huge numbers of rapists and murderers," said Emily Tucker, director of policy and advocacy for the Detention Watch Network, which pushes for limiting detention and deportation. "They would like us to think that, but that isn't what is going on."
Jason Cherkis and Sara Kenigsberg at Huffington Post have launched a brilliant new series, Occupy Y'all Street, that takes a look at Southern Occupy cities that are not being covered much by the mainstream media. The first episode takes a look at occupiers in Gainesville, Fla.
The video highlights the stories of Ed Speanburgh and his girlfriend and of a restaurant owner named Maya. Speanburgh's story is heart-wrenching:
"I watched a lot of good district managers get cut before me," he says. "I watched a lot of sales people get cut before me. And I watched 500 electricians go out of work. And watched 1,300 welders go out of work. What do you do at that point when you can't make any money? I watched them lose their homes. I watched them lose their cars. I watched them lose their families, their wives, their marriages broke apart, their kids taken away -- everything. And I didn't know what to think. I knew something was wrong."
In August 2009, Speanburgh was laid off. He came back to a Gainesville neighborhood that had been hit by the recession. "I noticed that over 200 units in here were up for sale on the same day," he recalls. "It was like, 'Holy [sh*t]. This is hittin' close to home.'"
A job painting for the Veterans Affairs saved Speanburgh. But even that job ended. In the two years since, he has used up his unemployment benefits, and his $6,000 in savings. He sold his kayaks and his painting equipment.
Speanburgh and his girlfriend have started sleeping at Occupy Gainesville three nights a week.
Speanburgh is a perfect example of the reason that the Occupy movement exists. He was someone who played by the rules, did the right things, worked hard and still couldn't make it. The 1 percent have created an economy that creates too many people in Speanburgh's situation.
I used to be an executive recruiter and I can tell you recruiting firms usually promise clients they will go out and find top-notch candidates who are already employed and not looking for work (that's what makes them "recruiters" -- they recruit people). But I can also tell you most clients don't pay that much attention to what the recruiting company tells them, they just want to fill the position. So I'd have to say recruiters are probably the ones pushing the "no unemployed" language, because they promised the clients.
But I'm a little surprised if staffing companies are doing the same thing, because staffing tends to be entry or mid-level jobs, not executive or professional career-track positions, and those clients are a lot more concerned with filling the position quickly, with competency and reliability the main criteria.
A recent report by the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, called out 73 businesses for asking in job postings that applicants be currently employed. "This perverse catch-22 is deepening our unemployment crisis by arbitrarily foreclosing job opportunities to many who are otherwise qualified for them," NELP said in the report.
The Huffington Post reached out to half the organizations cited in the report, and 19 responded. While several staffing firms defended the ads, employers disavowed them, saying they'd been written by a person outside the company and that they were completely unaware of the language used.
Arianna Huffington -- who represents the "professional left" about as well as anyone -- says the president is "not all that into" the middle class. I don't think she's being very original or very funny. Worse, I put that sort of rhetoric in the firebagger category, as it isn't useful. There is nothing anyone can do about the president until 2012 at the earliest -- and as I have said consistently throughout the body of my work, Congress is where most of the blame lies for any progressive disappointment.
Sorry if you're turned off by the music in the video; it's loud and angry because I want the righteous anger of the just focused where it belongs, which is not on the man least responsible for legislative reform. Much more after the jump...
If I were a Freudian, I'd think that Tucker Carlson is overcompensating big time for one major inferiority complex. However, I think it's more likely he's just overcompensating for something much smaller and manifestly more inferior: his basic humanity:
“We plan to make The Daily Caller the one-stop online shop for Keith Olbermann commentary,” said Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson. “We will be THE Keith Olbermann superstore.”
“This is part of our long-term growth strategy,” added Publisher and CEO Neil Patel. “Our future acquisition targets include several other annoying cable news commentators.”
What a classy, classy guy that Carlson is. Given his long and disgusting career as a TV pundit, it's amazing that he can sleep at night. Of course that gives him credit for having decency, something that a quick glance at our archives shows is very generous. As for "Tuckie" as Olbermann referred to him in his Twitter response?
Meanwhile, “Tuckie” tells The Upshot’s Michael Calderone, “I woke up this morning with a smile on my face,” and that he plans to use the email address Keith@KeithOlbermann.com.
Hope Tuckie has a good lawyer versed in copyright and intellectual property law.
If you haven't seen this video yet, you should. Jane Hamsher's put it up at FDL, Dave Johnson's got it up at Our Future, and I've shown it on The Huffington Post. Alan Simpson of Wyoming sounds a lot more like Bart Simpson of Springfield in it - except without the humor. It's worth watching for sheer outrageousness, but remember: Simpson's one of two chairs of a bipartisan commission created by President Obama to study the Federal deficit.
His co-chair, the Democratic "counterweight" to Simpson's radical hostility toward the social safety net, is Erskine Bowles. Bowles was finalizing a deal with New Gingrich to cut Social Security when the Monica Lewinsky scandal derailed their agreement.
Here's what Simpson's comments reveal, besides an irascible personality: That he wants to create a sense of crisis around Social Security, that raiding Social Security to pay for other government expenditures is perfectly fine with him ... even though he's supposedly a "small government" conservative, that he's entered an Orwellian world where cutting Social Security isn't really "cutting" it, and that he'll use absurd rhetorical games to defend his position.
As you watch it, you'll see that Alex Lawson, Simpson's questioner, is well-informed, unfailingly polite, and a nice guy. Simpson, on the other hand, is raving like your drunken right-wing uncle at a Thanksgiving dinner gone wrong. What's he really saying here?
SIMPSON (regarding Social Security): It'll go broke in 2037.
LAWSON: What do you mean by 'broke'? Do you mean the surplus will go out and then it will only be able to pay 75% of its benefits?
SIMPSON: Just listen to me instead of babbling ...
Simpson then goes on to affirm Lawson's statement (without apology, of course.) But he resumes the fearmongering a minute later:
SIMPSON: ... There is not enough in the system by the month ... to pay out what comes in. In other words there is more going out than coming in. That happened 3 or 4 weeks ago.
LAWSON: ... Social Security is separate, though, from the general budget, right? It's totally in the green.
SIMPSON: But it wasn't. Just four weeks ago, there wasn't as much coming in as going out.
LAWSON: Except you're not calculating the interest paid on the bonds, because, if you do include that, it's still in the green this year.
SIMPSON: Well you can go through all the sophistry of babbling that you want to.
LAWSON: It's not sophistry. It's just what the SSA says. So I'm just going on the numbers.
Alex is absolutely right, and Simpson's the one engaging in sophistry - if by "sophistry" you mean, to use Simpson's word, "bulls**t." And it's fascinating to watch Simpson suddenly defend big government expenditures, even when (make that only when) people's own insurance payments - money they've paid to cover their retirement is borrowed and then left unpaid:
LAWSON: ... (W)hat about the $180 billion in surplus that (Social Security) brings in every year?
SIMPSON: There is no surplus in there. It's a bunch of IOUs.
LAWSON: That's what I wanted to actually get at.
SIMPSON: Listen. Listen. It's 2.5 trillion bucks in IOUs which have been used to build the interstate highway system and all of the things people have enjoyed since it has been setup.
LAWSON: Two wars, tax cuts for the wealthy.
SIMPSON: Whatever, whatever. You pick your crap and I'll pick the real stuff. It has to do with the highway system, it was to run America. And those are IOUs in there. And now there is not enough coming in every month ...
Simpson asserts that Social Security wasn't originally intended to pay for people so far into retirement because life expectancy was low in 1935, when SSI was created. That's true ... but the program's been modified since then to adjust for increased life expectancy. That leads to this whopper:
LAWSON: ---(I)t's my understanding from actually looking at the 1983 commission (which revamped Social Security), they actually started prefunding the retirement of the baby boom by building up that huge surplus.
SIMPSON: They never knew there was a baby boom in '83.
Really? They didn't there was a baby boom ... in 1983?? They didn't know how many babies had been born in the years 1948-1964? Here's the real reason Alan Simpson says outrageously false things like that:
Here's the bottom line. Simpson doesn't want to force the government to pay those bonds back, because it will probably require new taxes to pay for them. The Commission's likely to recommend some new taxes, but the Simpson crowd wants those increases to be a small as possible. Here's an example of that ideology in action:
LAWSON: The government doesn't actually own the bonds, it's the government owing...
SIMPSON: Let me say things in a way so your fans will understand this, so you can go and be a hero. There is not enough in the system ... So, what do they do? They go to that trust fund and say, 'We need the IOUs out of it.' And they say, 'You can have them, but you have to pay for them' ...
Paying for them ... which means more taxes ... is exactly what Simpson and his comrades don't want.
There's more - you can read the entire transcript at Jane's place or read a longer version of this post here. But you get the idea. Alan Simpson isn't just a cranky old man ... he's a cranky old man gunning for the financial security of older Americans.
And we're all going to be older Americans, if we're lucky enough to live that long.
Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who was an enthusiastic Obama supporter, isn't very happy about the Google-Verizon agreement:
The word from Washington is that the White House is pressuring, or more diplomatically, “signaling” the F.C.C. to go slow on Barack Obama’s promise to protect “network neutrality.” The depressingly familiar reason why this might be so is that the White House has finally awoken to the huge political costs that this vital economic principle would incur. The less depressing, but also familiar reason is that senior economic policy types in the White House are continuing on their deregulatory crusade, facts notwithstanding.
[...] As much as anything else, the economic success of the Internet comes from its architecture. The architecture, and the competitive forces it assures, is the only interesting thing at stake in this battle over “network neutrality.” And yet, the most senior economic advisers in the White House don’t seem to know what that means. They could, if they took the time. Barbara van Schewick’s extraordinary new book, "Internet Architecture and Innovation," is perhaps the best explication of this point so far for those who should be studying these hard, new policy questions.
But instead, policymakers, using an economics framework set in the 1980s, convinced of its truth and too arrogant to even recognize its ignorance, will allow the owners of the “tubes” to continue to unmake the Internet — precisely the effect of Google and Verizon’s “policy framework.”
Oblivious and arrogant. Where have we seen this before?
News of this deal broke this week, sparking a public outcry that's seen hundreds of thousands of Internet users calling on Google to live up to its "Don't Be Evil" pledge.
But cut through the platitudes the two companies (Googizon, anyone?) offered on today's press call, and you'll find this deal is even worse than advertised.
The proposal is one massive loophole that sets the stage for the corporate takeover of the Internet.Real Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers can't discriminate between different kinds of online content and applications. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies.
It's what makes sure the next Google, out there in a garage somewhere, has just as good a chance as any giant corporate behemoth to find its audience and thrive online.
What Google and Verizon are proposing is fake Net Neutrality. You can read their framework for yourself here or go here to see Google twisting itself in knots about this suddenly "thorny issue." But here are the basics of what the two companies are proposing:
It appears that Target's anti-gay PR problems are getting bigger by the day. Looks like they have themselves a few "the Bible tells us it's wrong" fundies at the helm:
Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel wants us to believe that when his company threw money into Tom Emmer's campaign for governor last month, it wasn't because Emmer's a raging homophobe, but because he's a raging pro-business tax-cutter.
But Steinhafel's limp non-apology apology last week hasn't satisfied his critics, and now it's getting harder to take his "no homophobe" plea seriously.For one thing, the apology came out the same day that the Huffington Post pointed out that Target employees had put quite a bit of money behind California's Proposition 8 measure. It's not really fair to hold a company responsible for the actions of individual employees, but the news served to muddle Steinhafel's message of (sort-of) contrition.
It's gotten worse from there. This weekend, The Awl noted that Target's work against gay equality goes well beyond the $150,000 it gave to the Pro-Emmer MN Forward fund. Steinhafel sent his daughter to Wheaton College, a Christian institution where being gay will get you expelled. The younger Steinhafel also studied at the Focus On the Family Institute, one of the leading proponents of therapy to cure gayness.
Meanwhile, one of the other executives with his hands on Target's political donation purse-strings has an even stronger homophobic pedigree: Matt Zabel, the company's VP of government affairs, is a former staffer for Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota senator who supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and sought to outlaw gay adoption.
When the Awl tried to ask Steinhafel directly whether he personally supported the legalization of gay marriage, this response that came back: "Unfortunately, we are unable to address the points or the questions in your e-mail to Mr. Steinhafel."
John Conyers asks the question: ...Today we have a paid government propaganda machine and a largely compliant press, although we do have a blogosphere attempting to lead –- or shame –- the MSM into dong the right thing. read on
What a classy, classy guy that Carlson is. Given his long and disgusting career as a TV pundit, it's amazing that he can sleep at night. Of course that gives him credit for having decency, something that a quick glance at our archives shows is very generous. As for "Tuckie" 
