The Commentariat -- October 8

President Obama's weekly address:

     ... The transcript is here. Reuters story here.

I've posted an Open Thread for the weekend on Off Times Square.

Erik Wasson of The Hill: "The Congressional Budget Office on Friday confirmed that President Obama’s jobs bill would be fully paid for over ten years and also gave its seal of approval to Senate Democrats' version that includes a surtax on millionaires. The CBO said that the original Obama stimulus bill would involve $447 billion in tax cuts and new spending — the same estimate given by the administration. It said the bill would raise $450 billion over ten years. The result is a $3 billion decrease in deficits over ten years. The Senate Democrats' bill, which replaces Obama’s taxes on the upper middle class with a 5.6 percent surtax on those with annual incomes above $1 million, raises $453 billion over ten years and reduces deficits by $6 billion. The tax kicks in in 2013."

Occupy Wall Street

CUNY Prof. Frances Fox Piven, in a Guardian op-ed, contrasts Occupy Wall Street protesters and Tea Party members. ...

... Mark Egan of Reuters: the Occupy Wall Street movement may be the start of a new protest era akin to that of the 1960s. While interim protests against foreign wars were largely ideological, the protests of the '60s against the war & against racial inequality were personal; i.e., people were protesting what was happening to them. The same is true of Occupy Wall street. ...

... Thom Hartmann talks with Andy Kroll of Mother Jones & Joshua Holland of AlterNet about the economics behind the Occupy America movement:

... David Maris in Forbes: "There has been a lot said about the lack of vision, lack of specific demands, and a disparity of beliefs and goals among the Occupy Wall Street protesters in the media in the past several weeks. A survey of the protestors shows that none of these criticisms are true. ... The protesters, knowingly or not, are fairly unified a few basic beliefs. ...

... "If white people catch a cold, we get the flu":

... David Dayen of Firedoglake: "The billionaire mayor of New York City can blame his own police department for the growth of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which surged after incidents of police brutality and illegal arrests and will only continue to grow as his police continue to use nightsticks and pepper spray. But now, he’s claiming that the protests are costing municipal workers their jobs.... [CW: see Friday's Ledes.] Bloomberg ... [is] protecting oligarchs by holding up the jobs of sanitation workers and firefighters and transit workers as a kind of human sacrifice." ...

... The "C" in CNBC must stand for "Clueless":

... It’s no real surprise that the same pundits who derided subprime lending victims as 'suckers,' vigorously defended the righteousness of bailed-out banks paying million dollar bonuses, believe tax havens prevent tyranny, and cited Glenn Beck as a new economic indicator would find the Wall Street protests offputting. But their comments merely highlight how out-of-touch they are with the common American, as they cater all day, every day to the Wall Street crowd. -- Pat Garofalo of Think Progress

Now for a word from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor:

     ... So, um, what was Cantor himself doing when he endorsed the Tea Party movement? Wasn't that "pitting Americans against Americans?" ...

... Even Jay Carney, President Obama's maddenly measured & mild-mannered press secretary, gets Cantor:

I sense a little hypocrisy unbound here -- what we're seeing on the streets of New York is a an expression of democracy. I think I remember how Mr. Cantor described protests of the Tea Party -- I can't understand how one man's mob is another man's democracy. -- Jay Carney

... I see the president's rhetoric of envy inflaming the public and saying, 'Go get yours because rich people don't deserve it.' I see [Obama's words] as inflaming this Paris mob that I hope doesn't result in a lawlessness where they say, 'Well, gosh, those nice iPads through the window should be mine and why don't I throw a brick through the window to get them because rich people don't deserve to have them when I can't have them. -- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) ..

... Justin Sink of The Hill: "Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Friday that he believes the Occupy Wall Street protests stem from divisive rhetoric from President Obama, who has called for the richest Americans to pay increased taxes to help close the budget deficit." CW: we have a two-fer from Li'l Randy today. See also Right Wing World.

Welcome Back to Tennessee, Jim Crow. Ansley Haman of the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Times Free Press: Dorothy Cooper, a 96-year-old black woman who lives in public housing, provided "a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate" to the state's drivers license bureau in order to get the picture ID that is now required at Tennessee polling places. The state worker turned down Cooper's request because Cooper didn't provide a marriage license verifying her married name. Cooper has been voting regularly for decades. "In Nashville on Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of organizations announced an effort to repeal the [Tennessee 'voter fraud'] law. Groups such as the ACLU of Tennessee, various chapters of the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and Tennessee Citizen Action announced a petition drive and get-out-the-vote effort." Via Think Progress. ...

... CW: Cooper is exactly the kind of voter these draconian state laws -- passed by Republican legislatures throughout the country -- are trying to suppress; i.e., someone who is likely to vote Democratic. But these laws aren't just anti-Democratic; they're anti-democratic. Earlier this week [in a story I linked a few days ago], President Obama said he had directed the Justice Department to take "a look at what’s being done across the country to ensure that people aren’t being denied access to the franchise." Here's hoping those DOJ lawyers are smart enough to look at not just what the laws say but also how they are being applied against people like Dorothy Cooper.

Floyd Norris of the New York Times: "Two months ago, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the bond rating of the United States government. So far, at least, the move has done wonders for investors in the very bonds that the rating agency disparaged. The rating downgrade, along with continued turmoil in European markets and fears that the United States might be entering a new recession, caused a flight to safety among investors. And, notwithstanding the agency’s opinion, money flooded into Treasuries and the demand for American dollars grew. Since then, Treasury bonds have been one of the few investments that have produced good profits."

Right Wing World *

Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "At the Values Voters summit in Washington, prominent evangelical leader Robert Jeffress told reporters that Mormonism was a cult and that Romney was not a Christian.... Speaking with reporters later,Jeffress made his allusion clear. 'Mormonism is not Christianity,' he declared. 'It’s not politically correct to say, but Mormonism is a cult.'” The New York Times story is here.

Philip Rucker: "Calling for a new 'American century,' Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney laid out a muscular agenda for promoting U.S. interests abroad, saying [in Charleston, South Carolina] Friday that he would expand naval and missile defense systems and repair relationships with Israel, Mexico and other U.S. allies." ...

... Greg Sargent: Mitt Romney keeps telling lies, and news media are letting him get away with it. "... readers of these accounts could easily come away believing that Obama has apologized for America and doesn’t think it’s an exceptional nation. In short, they may very well come away deceived — with the unwitting help of the news orgs that are meant to be serving them." CW: if you read Philip Rucker's account above, you will have to conclude that among those news media letting Romney get away with lies is the Post, for which Sargent also works. ...

... Steve Benen: "If someone makes a bogus claim, he or she is merely wrong. When someone repeats the bogus claim after learning the truth, they’re lying. When someone builds a national campaign message around the obvious falsehood, they’re shamelessly lying.... The underlying point of the 'apology' attack, though, is far more insidious — Romney desperately wants Americans to question the president’s love of country. The 'apology' claim is a lie, but it’s also an ugly smear.... The fact that Romney repeats this incessantly says a great deal about his character, or in this case, the lack thereof. Romney will never apologize for America? Fine. But how about an apology to America?" ...

... ALSO from Benen: "In September, the U.S. economy added 103,000 jobs overall, but the private sector added 137,000 jobs. The total was dragged down by the loss of 34,000 jobs.... As government at every level cuts spending, this necessary leads to public-sector layoffs, affecting, among others, teachers, police officers, and firefighters. For Republican policymakers, this is a feature, not a bug. In the GOP worldview, the economy will improve when hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers lose their jobs....The only thing standing in the way [of a better jobs outlook] is a major political party that’s convinced unemployment will get better after they fire a lot of teachers and cops." ...

... Okay, even more from Benen: "Leading Republican officials — including [Eric] Cantor, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry — believe Americans who don’t make enough money to be eligible for income taxes should see their tax burdens go up. It’s the kind of far-right class warfare conservatives prefer not to acknowledge.... For the Majority Leader [Cantor], activists who want millionaires and billionaires to sacrifice are guilty of 'pitting Americans against Americans.' But Republicans, including Cantor, who want the middle class to face a tax hike are just being sensible. Here’s a simple follow-up for Capitol Hill reporters: ask Cantor to explain the difference."

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) put a hold on a bipartisan, paid-for Iraqi refuge aid bill because he

(a) is stupid
(b) is xenophobic
(c) is cruel
(d) can
(e) all of the above.

* Has co-opted real-world media.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators streamed across the threshold of Washington Square Park on Saturday afternoon after a spirited but conflict-free march from the financial district. As a throng of protesters filled the historic public space, at the heart of Greenwich Village, a chant rose up — from voices young, old and in-between — casting their movement as an intractable majority fed up with the nation’s financial inequities."

NBC News: "Washington's National Air and Space Museum was closed Saturday afternoon after sign-wielding demonstrators tried to storm the building on the National Mall. At least one person was pepper sprayed when the crowd pinned a guard against a wall and another guard came to his rescue, Smithsonian spokesperson Linda St. Thomas told NBC station WRC." The Washington Post has a short piece here.

San Diego Union-Tribune: "About 1,500 protesters kicked off Occupy San Diego ... Friday as they marched from Children’s Park to Civic Center Plaza downtown, chanting 'We got sold out. They got bailed out.' The demonstration, which is planned to last indefinitely, reflects similar protests that the Occupy Wall Street movement started a few weeks ago in New York and have spread to other cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Seattle."

New York Times: "... new e-mails provide further evidence of high-level cheerleading on behalf of Solyndra, a maker of innovative tubular rooftop solar panels that declared bankruptcy last month and laid off 1,100 workers.... [Steven Skinner,] a senior Energy Department official, pushed hard for the government’s $535 million loan to the now-bankrupt California solar energy company Solyndra even after he had disclosed that his wife’s law firm represented the company and he had promised to recuse himself from matters related to the loan application, according to e-mails provided to Congressional investigators by the administration." ...

... Washington Post: "Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration. The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted."

AP: "Federal authorities in California vowed to shut down dozens of pot growing and sales operations in a major crackdown, saying the worst offenders are using the cover of medical marijuana to act as storefront drug dealers."

Reuters: "Germany and France were split ahead of crucial talks on Sunday over how to strengthen shaky European banks and fight financial market contagion to prepare for a possible Greek default. Under strong U.S. and market pressure Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy will try to bridge differences on how to use the euro zone's financial firepower to counter a sovereign debt crisis that threatens the global economic recovery. A ratings downgrade on both Italy and Spain by Fitch Ratings on Friday underscored the grim climate."

AP: "In what could mark a turning point in U.S.-Pakistani relations, Pakistani forces have arrested a handful of al-Qaida suspects at the CIA's request and allowed the U.S. access to the detainees, U.S. and Pakistani officials said."

AP: "Activists say clashes between security forces and protesters have broken out in a city in northeastern Syria as thousands of people turn out for the funeral of a slain Kurdish opposition leader. Mashaal Tammo was killed Friday by masked gunmen who burst into an apartment in the city of Qamishli."

Reuters: "Ivy League professors dropped by anti-Wall Street protest camps in Boston and New York on Friday to school the demonstrators on theories that bolster their demands to end inequality in the American economy."

Yahoo! News: "The leader of the [Westboro Baptist] church, Margie Phelps, has declared her group intends to picket the funeral of [Steve] Jobs as way of 'condemning him for teaching sin to others.' ..."

AFP: "The US ambassador to the Philippines has apologised for his controversial remark that 40 percent of male tourists visit the country for sex, according to the foreign department. Harry Thomas sent the apology through a cell phone text message to Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario on Friday, a spokesman said." CW: this guy is a diplomat?

The Commentariat -- October 7

Paul Krugman: "It may have taken a while to gain respect, but Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point." ...

Dana Milbank, writing on the Occupy DC & Take Make the American Dream rallies in Washington, concludes, "... liberals should by now know that a nuanced president cannot be a movement’s mouthpiece." ...

... I've posted a page on Krugman's column for today's Off Times Square. See also videos & links to stories below on Occupy Wall Street & related protests.

Is the Hostage Crisis Over? David Corn of Mother Jones: in his press conference (yesterday), President Obama once again signaled he was through "negotiating" with Hill Republicans who won't take "yes" for an answer. Still, inquiring reporters wanted to know, "Mr. President, why aren't you bending over backward to negotiate with a political opposition that threatened economic default in order to get its way?" (Corn's translation.) ...

... Yesterday, the Republican Majority Leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now he won’t even let this jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives. This is what he said. Won’t even let it be debated. Won’t even give it a chance to be debated on the floor of the House of Representatives. Think about that. I mean, what’s the problem? Do they not have the time? They just had a week off. Is it inconvenient? -- Barack Obama, Tuesday, October 4 ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "A new ABC-Washington Post poll suggests that, so far, Obama's campaign is working. The public still think that the president, like Congress, is doing a lousy job overall. But public support for the elements of his jobs bill is high. And, more important, Obama has opened up a substantial gap with the Republicans over which party voters trust more to handle 'job creation.'" The efforts of the Senate leadership to get ConservaDems on board may not be enough to get a filibuster-proof majority, but if Senate Democrats get more than 50 votes for the American Jobs Acts -- which they should be able to do -- "then the obstacle to enactment won’t be Democrats."

Oh, Look. Scott Brown wants a jobs bill. He urges Senate Leaders Reid & McConnell to "set aside politically driven legislation and focus on a jobs bill that can pass both chambers of Congress and be signed into law." Thank you, Elizabeth Warren. Via Greg Sargent. ...

... M. J. Lee of Politico: "Two words uttered in seeming jest by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) about Elizabeth Warren on Thursday have infuriated women’s rights groups, with some even calling for the senator to drop his reelection bid. In an interview with WZLX radio, Brown had laughed and said, “Thank God,” in response to Warren’s recent comment in which she said she didn’t have to take her clothes off to pay for law school — a reference to Brown having posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine in his 20s." ...

... Here's more from Noah Bierman of the Boston Globe. CW: see also yesterday's Commentariat. Glad to see I'm hardly standing alone on this. ...

... AND, not that it matters, but here's Warren in a photo taken when she was probably in her 40s or 50s. If you don't think she looked great at 20, Scott Brown, with or without clothes, you're an even bigger idiot than your remark would suggest:

Elizabeth Warren. Harvard U. photo.

Diane McWhorter has a fine tribute in the New York Times to the Rev. Fred Shuttleworth, a rough-edged civil rights leader who prodded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to get with the program.

Occupy ...

     ... Related Al Jazeera story here.

... Prof. Anne-Marie Slaughter, in a New York Times op-ed: "... the twin drivers of America’s nascent protest movement against the financial sector are injustice and invisibility, the very grievances that drove the Arab Spring.... People abroad with long experience of disenfranchisement and trampling of their dignity may in fact understand the fissures in our society better than we do ourselves." ...

... If one of your know-it-all friends tells you Occupy Wall Street is "just like" the Tea Party ...

Occupy Wall Street sign.

     (... And another kudo to the signmaker for learning from Rick Perry how to cover over objectionable material so as not to offend. ...)

     ... You might suggest there is some difference:

Tea Party sign.

... FINALLY, Don't Worry. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Is Ready for the Joker. John Hudson of The Atlantic: "... Kelly has had to walk back even further his eye-opening claim on 60 Minutes last month that the NYPD has the authority and technology to shoot down an aircraft in the event of an emergency." In explaining his latest position to the New York City Council Thursday, Kelly said,

What we didn't want to be is totally helpless, at 2 o'clock in the morning, [with] a small plane disseminating anthrax over Manhattan and waiting for somebody to come from an Air Force base in Massachusetts.

      ... which, as Hudson notes, is the plot of Batman 4. From the Comics.org synopsis: "... the Joker mounts a crop duster plane to spread poisonous gas over Gotham Square" on New Years Eve. ...

... ** On a Related Note: "Charging Debit Card Fees Is Robbery." Lloyd Constantine in a New York Times op-ed: "The [decades-long] practice of deceiving stores and forcing them to accept overpriced debit transactions was challenged in a 1996 antitrust lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, in which I was the lead attorney for the plaintiffs." Under the Dodd-Franks Act, the Fed, "after initially deciding that debit interchange fees should be lowered from 44 cents to 7 to 12 cents..., in yet another huge handout to big banks, revised the fee range to 21 to 24 cents. That is the change ... which Bank of America cites as it attempts to begin charging a large new fee to its debit cardholders.... Retail customers of Bank of America and of any other banks that follows its lead should swiftly move their business." Read the whole essay; it isn't long, and it's a fascinating look at one tiny piece of robber-baron sleight-of-hand.

Ben Smith & Maggie Haberman of Politico have a story about how Chelsea Clinton is working toward a Ph.D. in public policy, raising speculation that the nation's most guarded First Daughter will step into the political spotlight on her own. CW: sorry, but little Miss Chelsea's first career decision was to become a hedge fund manager, which was one more reason I didn't vote for her mom in 2008. I won't be voting for Chelsea O-Is-for-Opportunist Clinton for anything, ever.

Right Wing World *

I’m hoping that the ‘ living’ Constitution will die. -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Dim Shafts of Light Threaten to Penetrate Right Wing World. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "On Tuesday, Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, took to the House floor for a rare excoriation of the anti-tax activist Grover G. Norquist and his strictly worded pledge, which has been signed by almost the entire Republican caucus as well as a few Democrats.... Anti-tax pledges are beginning to worry lawmakers, fund-raisers and others because of fears that they hamstring efforts to rewrite the nation’s tax code.... To be sure, the majority of Republican lawmakers are not running away from Mr. Norquist. All the Republican presidential candidates other than Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, have gotten on board."

* Where 1789 was a very good year. And it still is.

News Ledes

The protests that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city aren't productive.... What they're trying to do is take away the jobs of people working in the city, take away the tax base that we have.... We're not going to have money to pay our municipal employees or anything else. -- NYC Mayor Michael von Bloomberg ...

... Village Voice: "Mayor Bloomberg fired a warning shot Friday at the city unions who have backed the Occupied Wall Street protests...."

AP: "The federal government asked an appeals court on Friday to halt an Alabama immigration law considered by many as the toughest in the United States, saying it invites discrimination against foreign-born citizens and legal immigrants. The federal government filed the challenge to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. It claimed Alabama's new law 'is highly likely to expose persons lawfully in the United States, including school children, to new difficulties in routine dealings.'"

The AP reports that the U.S. added 103,000 jobs in September, & the unemployment rate remains at 9.1 percent. No link. Update: the Bloomberg News story is here. ...

... Yahoo! News: "The average unemployed American has now been out of work for a longer period than at any time since records began being kept more than 60 years ago -- more evidence, as if any were needed, that the jobs crisis is in reality a crisis of long-term unemployment."

Leymah Gbowee, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, & Tawakul Karman. Photos by the New York Times, AFP & Reuters, respectively.New York Times: "The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three campaigning women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner."

NEW. TPM: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) threw her weight behind the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations Thursday, showering praise on a movement that has so far spread to dozens of cities, including Washington, D.C."

Occupy Wall Street -- A First-Hand Account

Regular Off Times Square commenter Meredith joined the Occupy Wall Street protest yesterday. Here is her story:

Re: Krugman blog on the Wall Street protest yesterday:

Thanks, Paul. Seems that if journalists take this movement too seriously, and don’t mention the required dismissive phrases, they might get scorned by their fellow journalist/pundits? In all of it’s articles the Times has included at least a few of the required words of condescension. When will it end, and proper respect be paid?

I marched yesterday for 1st time in decades, now as a retiree, from non union corporation job. I was neither exquisitely tailored or oddly dressed. I looked quite nice thank you, in casual clothes, not business attire. But I wore my beautiful red beads with a red shirt, navy pants and t shirt. My hair was nicely styled and I wore makeup. I think I looked very acceptable to any society. No one would take me for a slovenly hippie radical, or for one of the top 1 percent!

I was in the MIDDLE. And that’s the key—there were thousands of people their from the MIDDLE. Sociologically, financially, philosophically and sartorially.

There were many like me, middle aged or older, middle class/working class people with no tattoos or outlandish costumes. I saw no one take off any clothes. We were almost sedate, as we slowly walked, sometimes listening to the terrific bands from the musicians union.—so enjoyable. Also enjoyable were very nice conversations with many intelligent people—teachers, union people, retirees, an Israeli journalist living in Brooklyn, an ex bank employee, a worried father of an adult child who may lose job, on and on. All amiable and intelligent.

Mainly, the sight of that huge crowd of many thousands spread out and filling all of Foley Square, was tremendously impressive. I was thrilled when I saw it. They also filled the streets running in spokes out of the square and filled the huge staircase of the govt building.

The dismissive attitude here is actually ridiculed in the rest of the world. In Europe the middle class join demonstrations about govt policies, with people of all ages and occupations. They are respected and taken seriously by the press. They wonder what has taken Americans so long to even start putting pressure on our govt to be responsive to them. They think we are stupid for NOT marching. Our govt doesn’t even know what real pressure is, so they keep doing whatever they want. I urge anyone to come out and enjoy participating in future demonstrations. I got at least some satisfaction in doing something besides writing comments to newspapers. I added to the big crowd that will be shown on TV. The financial security of all of us is directly involved.