(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com)
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I wanted to link to Plutocracy Files, which has been doing great work aggregating information on the smaller protests across the country that don’t attract big-media punditocracy attention. Special props for Taryn Hart’s interview with Jeff Madrick, author of Krugman-approved The Age of Greed — YouTube clips at the link, for your weekend listening pleasure.
Per Charlie Pierce, a Very Relevant Celebrity will be visiting OWS:
The fact that Lech Walesa apparently is planning to come to New York to visit the Occupy site is just about the coolest thing that’s happened since the movement’s reach began to spread. I am looking forward to hearing David Brooks and George Effing Will and the rest of the people react to the presence of a genuine hero without whom the likes of Brooks and Will — and just about every conservative on the planet — would not be allowed to lie all the time about Ronald Reagan’s having won the Cold War. (Hint: It was far more the doing of people like Walesa and his fellow Pole, the guy who was sitting in the Chair of Peter at the time.) It would also be hilarious to hear someone call Lech Walesa a Communist.
Matt Taibbi, who also has some experience with the banksters, advises OWS to “hit the bankers where it hurts“. And Joe Coscarelli at NYMag‘s Daily Intel solicits the opinions of “protest historians” Mark Naison and Todd Gitlin on “What Will Become of Occupy Wall Street“.
Finally, Politico (you have been warned) reports that “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner suggested Friday that a new round of ‘dramatic enforcement actions’ against Wall Street wrongdoing is coming.“:
Asked on CNBC about the Occupy Wall Street movement’s frustrations over the lack of criminal charges related to the financial crisis, Geithner said action is on the way.
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“You’ve seen very, very dramatic enforcement actions already by the enforcement authorities across the U.S. government, and I’m sure you’re going to see more to come. You should stay tuned for that,” he said…
When promised future relief for an immediate problem, my country-born Irish grandparents had an old proverb referencing the difficulty of keeping the stock alive during the late-winter starvation months after the stores ran low and before the green shoots appeared: Live, horse, and you’ll get grass!
cathyx
Live, horse, and you’ll get grass! I guess it will pay to be a fat American after all.
beltane
Does Lech Walesa have granite counter tops?
Seriously, this is wonderful news. These protests are fuelled by real and highly justified anger. It is not surprising that someone like Walesa sees this even though the American establishment still reamins relatively obtuse regarding the subject.
S. cerevisiae
Walesa being there will make wingnut heads explode. Love the cartoon!
Cat Lady
Eat The Rich.
PurpleGirl
Really, Mr. Geithner. Can you please list them? (And I don’t mean insider trader cases; I mean the banksters and politicians who deregulated the industry and then thought up the risky financial instruments that brought down the economy.)
(Yeah, yeah, I know what they did wasn’t illegal at the time. Well, I want what they did made illegal. I want Glass-Steagall reinstated. Support that Mr. Geithner and I might — might — believe you.)
Jenny
Did you see Bill Clinton was on Letterman Tuesday night saying OWS doesn’t have a message.
Way to go, Bill.
And this is they guy the PUMAs worship.
JPL
@Cat Lady: So much fat is not good for the digestive system.
Taryn H.
Thanks so much for the shout out Anne. Just want to thank everyone at Occupy Missoula for all of their work. This really was a group project. And thanks to my Mom – Raenelle (for shamelessly plugging her daughter – that’s allowed, right?) It’s a great group that follows this blog and your thoughts are appreciated.
KCinDC
They won’t be calling Walesa a communist, since the current insult is soçialist. The wingnuts we have today will have zero trouble throwing some long-forgotten Pole with a vague association with Ronaldus Magnus under the bus.
beltane
@Jenny: Bill Clinton has always been a hippie puncher extraordinaire. The people who think Hillary would have been tough on the banks really do crack me up.
Anne Laurie
@JPL: Think of bankster as the Kobe beef alternative… housed in splendor, nourished on top-quality edibles and beer, and lovingly massaged on a regular basis by the tongues of the Media Village courtiers…
JPL
@Anne Laurie: Well the massage sounds good.
That would be so cool if Lech Walesa showed up.
Jenny
@PurpleGirl: I think Geithner got his terms mixed up and meant to say compliance to new regulation of the Dodd-Frank bill, a number of which are in the works.
But he also could be referring to the DOJ’s investigation of Goldman. reuters.com/article/2011/08/22/us-goldman-blankfein-idUSTRE77L5VK20110822
piratedan
@beltane: aye since Big Bill did his share to look the other way in helping the Banksters run free on the open marketplace, somehow people think Hilary would have picked a different group of finance faces? Would like to see the Big O start up some matches between a few toes and tell those grifters that they’re gonna have to pay the piper after giving him the finger post his election. He tried to play nice, let the proper conduits show up at the table and then they shanked him instead of thanking him.
Jenny
@beltane: You mean this Hillary: allfinancialmatters.com/Graphics/HillaryFortune.jpg
hilts
Not everyone who works for the New Republic is a flaming douchebag:
h/t thedailybeast.com/cheats/2011/10/13/new-republic-writers-revolt-over-occupy-wall-street.html
slag
Love the name. And the blog’s good too. RSSd it last time you mentioned it and glad I did.
suzanne
@hilts: Timothy Noah did that great Slate series a few months ago on income inequality.
I want every leftist with any platform at all to be talking about this.
hilts
@suzanne:
Thanks for posting that link. I’m glad to see some New Republic writers calling bullshit on their own magazine’s pathetic editorial.
burnspbesq
@PurpleGirl:
Wait, what? Geithner should commit a felony in order to assuage your fee-fees? Sorry, I rather doubt that’s on.
Raenelle
Thanks, Anne Laurie, for linking to my daughter’s blog, plutocracyfiles.com/
A couple of people who comment on her blog also have blogs about the protests: groobiecat.blogspot.com/ and amorphousthoughts.wordpress.com/
Dee Loralei
One of you front pagers neeeds to post the LO’D shows bit on the WeDo campaign, had me balling it did.
Jenny
What experience?
He has no background in finance, economics, law, or banking. That said, he did stay a Holiday-Inn express, so I guess that made him a Krugman-like expert.
MikeJ
@Jenny: He has as much experience with banks as Grandpa Simpson has with clouds.
existential fish
Fox is losing their shit: yfrog.com/nuv932j
This wasn’t the height of the absurdity either.
PurpleGirl
@burnspbesq: What felony would he be committing? He said there were prosecutions… then he should know who was involved. He can certainly use their names.
And if he got confused with regulatory investigations, he can still give a name. I’m not asking for the particulars. He wouldn’t even have to give a fact pattern.
Yes, I think Geithner was one of the worst appointments.
cynn
Here’s my anecdote. I got to Occupy Denver just after the Stormtroopers ran everyone off. 22 arrested. Helicopters since 1am, since I live nearby. People were shouting for a General something; I actually looked around for a General.
Cat Lady
Bo Diddley’s son arrested in Bo Diddley Park.
Heckuva job cops. Keep it up.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Jenny: That’s right! Unless you have at least a Master’s in economics and ten years experience in a brokerage, you just shouldn’t talk about your betters on Wall Street.
What could a reporter possibly know about his beat anyway?
On the same note, I must request that anyone here without a PoliSci degree never talks about politics again. It’s too weighty a subject for your primitive like.
Wee Bey
Calling Taibbi a reporter and finance his beat is to misunderstand both terms entirely.
Cat Lady
That cartoon makes me think that a good Halloween costume this year is to be a fat moneybags bankster complete with monocle, spats and stuffed burlap bags with $ on them. Be with someone in rags and in chains holding a 99% sign. Also.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Wee Bey: How would you know? Do you have a journalism degree? No? Well then, you’re unqualified to judge.
If Taibbi isn’t a reporter, then what the fuck is he? Does it not count as journalism is you use that naughty F-word?
handsmile
Directly related to the cartoon that was chosen to illustrate this thread, Digby/Hullabaloo has a great post (now there’s a redundant phrase) examining the wingnut compulsion to dehumanize liberals and Democrats, e.g., Ronaldus Maximus’s quip, ‘A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.’
What Digby said: “There is a strain of rightwing thinking that needs to see their rivals as traitorous, animalistic beasts who screw and defecate in public. They cannot even be acknowledged as human beings who observe the most basic levels of decent behavior.”
digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dehumanizing-protesters.html
Jamie
I guess seven years late is better than never.
boss bitch
@PurpleGirl:
Who cares if he supports it. CONGRESS needs to make those things illegal.
boss bitch
I hope no one thinks that what Geithner said has anything to do with the protests. Whatever he’s talking about was going to happen anyway. The media and some members of OWS might connect the two and anyone caught up in it might cry, “witch hunt” but really its not.
I find PurpleGirls statement curious. Since when is insider trading something to brush off? The people you all want to target knew how to keep their hands clean. Well, the vast majority of them anyway. You can’t just string up everyone on Wall Street.
This is going to sound right wingy but from the left I have seen more concern about due process and the rights of terrorists than I have of the rights of bankers.
piratedan
@boss bitch: well to be sure…. terrorists haven’t taken public funds used to save their jobs and places of businesses and then used those funds to lobby against policies that benefit their benefactors all the while rewarding the ethically impaired decision makers with bonuses for cratering the global economy.
I know that terrorists (of many varied religious stripes) are responsible for ending thousands of lives both here and abroad whereas these guys ruined millions of lives due to their sociopathic greed. If I thought that there was no recourse for due process ever being imposed on the banksters, I wouldn’t shed a tear if there was an unmanned drone strike on the next corporate board meeting of Goldman Sachs. I have the same indifference as to whether they live and die as they have for the people that made their larceny possible and those it was perpetrated against.
bob h
I’m sensing that a big government lawsuit against Goldman Sachs is coming, and that this will play well politically.
Elizabelle
@bob h:
Yup. We’ve already seen Lloyd Blankfein lawyer up.
Bring that lawsuit against Goldman Sachs on.
Elizabelle
@handsmile:
You know who else is dirty and smelly?
Our combat troops and their support, in harm’s way when they’re on their missions.
Fighting evil that threatens to “destroy our American way of life” overseas is more appealing to the conservative mind than fighting it here. (Extra points if you are fighting brown people.)
Young people in the military: cannot applaud them enough. (Can’t vote for a jobs bills that would help them on their return to civilian life, though.)
Young people who care enough to show up to protest and sleep rough in a park: vandals and hippies.
Samara Morgan
my Irish ancestors brought their horses into the kitchen and gave them oatmeal when when there was no grass. Even if they did without themselves.
The horse eats first was the motto of the Grahams.
WeeBey
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Actually, I do.
And the word you’re groping for is “polemicist.” The more apt post-modern phrase is “media personality.”
lawguy
@KCinDC: Drifted over to Luicenne Blog I think it was and of the 20 some commentators most called him a communist. Or a useful idiot. Or said that he had sold out. So do not think that they can’t easily do that. They do.
lawguy
@Wee Bey: What is he then. He does seem to know where of he writes. Are you saying that his analysis of the situation are flawed? If so how so?