commonspublishing

[commonspublishing-blog]

The entire Occupy Wall Street movement can be summed up with a yield curve.

shano on Oct 11, 1:10 PM said: "The entire Occupy Wall Street movement can be summed up with a yield curve. Rich borrow at 0% (or less), poor borrow at 30% - Financial apartheid Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10#lets-start-with-the-obvious-unemployment-three-years-after-the-financial-crisis-the-unemployment-rate-is-still-at-the-highest-level-since-the-great-depression-except-for-a-brief-blip-in-the-early-1980s-1#ixzz1bu9DPU7E

[commonspublishing-blog]

media bias on oakland troubles - raw footage vs the BBC

raw footage from occupy oakland strong arm tacticshttp://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html vs bbc footage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15458163

[liberationfrequency-blog]

[commonspublishing-blog]

liberationfrequency:

Marine Takes On 30 Cops In Wallstreet Faceoff

Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, squared up to the New York Police Department. The brave New York Cops are not very eager to restrain a trained fighter like Shamar are they?

[commonspublishing-blog]

[stoweboyd]

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens. Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families. This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren. So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

- Paul Krugman, Panic of the Plutocrats (via stoweboyd)

[commonspublishing-blog]

Occupy London - October 15th

#OccupyLSX

http://occupylsx.org/

On October 15th we will be Occupying the London Stock Exchange. At the same time thousands continue to occupy Wall Street and hundreds of cities from Paris and Madrid to Buenos Aires and Caracas are staging actions and occupations together for a global day of action.

By reclaiming space in the face of the economic systems that have caused terrible injustices across the world, we can open up and engage our communities into public discussions. These assemblies will allow people to voice their ideas for how we can work towards a better future and help us create concrete demands to be met. A future free from austerity within a context of growing inequality, unemployment, tax injustice and a political elite who ignores its citizens. So it’s time for citizens to represent themselves. To work together to resist the government’s plans and to do this in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of others around the world on the same day.

The problems we face in the UK echoes across the world. We are linked by the same root causes, so we cannot solve these problems in isolation. October 15th will be a global day of action calling for global change. 

‘O-15: Unite for Global Change’ has been called by the ‘indignants’ movement in Spain, where thousands camped out in the squares for weeks, building massive popular pressure on the government. It inspired the current Wall Street occupation in New York, providing a space for the majority to resist the wishes of the greedy minority.

Join us at the London Stock Exchange to reclaim space and take part in workshops on topics ranging from Debt and The Spanish Indignants Movement to Fuel Poverty and Climate Justice. Contribute in the Open Assemblies and chant songs of solidarity with Samba bands. Exact times and locations to be announced soon.

Block the Bridge: General Assembly Join us for a General Assembly to plan for Occupy LSX, on Sunday 9th Oct, 1pm, on Westminster Bridge as we ‘Block the Bridge’ with UK Uncut http://ukuncut.org.uk/blog/block-the-bridge-block-the-bill

If you would like to run a workshop, or have any questions, please contact us at: [email protected]

Lets make the UK part of an international movement!

OCCUPATION START: Saturday, Oct 15th (Location to be confirmed)

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Sunday Oct 9th @Westminster Bridge at the ‘Block the Bridge, Block the Bill’ protest (please be there at 1pm and listen out for the annoucement / look out for our banner/poster. BTB event page: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=277040145648345)

Banner making session: Saturday, October 8th, 12-5pm @Passing Clouds (Event page: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=297127830302586)

OccupyLSX Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/occupylondon Twitter: @OccupyLSX (www.twitter.com/OccupyLSX) hashtags #OccupyLSX #OccupyLondon IRC Chat – http://chat.indymedia.org/?chans=occupyLSX Email: [email protected]

[commonspublishing-blog]

Elliot Spitzer Praises Protests and Supports Transaction Tax

Out of all the demands from the Occupy movement the "moderate financial transaction tax" is the most doable in the short term and targets exactly the right people. Basically it is a tax on stock transfers, they have this in the UK and it's called stamp duty.

Here's what Elliot has to say:

There are so many benefits to imposing [the stock transfer] tax. One, it generates a lot of revenue that we need for a jobs program, education, all the other things. Two, it would stop some of the high-speed trading that serves no good public purpose. Computer-driven trading, which is — according to some estimates — half to two-thirds of the volume, it’s all Goldman trading to Bank of America, buying it back. It does nothing for society, and yet, it is what is driving the market and the volatility, hurting the real investors like you and me or hundreds of thousands — millions of others. Taxing that would be good for the market on top of everything else.

A bit hard to imagine a focus on a policy that specific, or a chant about the transfer tax, perhaps. Spitzer was also enthusiastic about the protests:

This is organic, it is genuine, it is amassing more and more support day by day. It has touched a nerve and I think this could really begin to say to the Obama administration “Hey, you don’t understand what we, the public, are saying to you.” He’s off there — you know, he has been so flat on this issue of Wall Street and the economy. Maybe this will finally push the president to speak with a new, more aggressive, dynamic voice.

This is also covered on the Daily Kos with over 150 comments

[wearethe99percent]

[commonspublishing-blog]

wearethe99percent:

My name is Allison, I’m a 13 year old 8th grader. I only get a few hours of sleep at night, but I don’t tell my parents because they don’t need to know that I need sleeping pills. I’ve been showing symptoms of Schizophrenia but we can’t afford for me to go see a doctor about it. My parents get really scared when they have to pay the morage because it really cuts down on our money. I’ve stopped eating alot so there’s more food for everyone else.

My parents don’t know that I know we’re the 99%. 

[thepoliticalnoteboo1deac]

[commonspublishing-blog]

thepoliticalnotebook:

More photos from #OccupiedManchester, which is reportedly drawing around 30,000 now, up from the 20,000 reported when I covered it this morning. It is meant to coincide with a Tory Party conference, so you can also follow the hashtag #torycon. Above are pictures at Albert Square from Twitter users @andymlockhart and @Emily_James. 

The twitter account of the Greater Manchester police (@gmpolice) has been tweeting the protests. The most recent tweet as of this post reads “No arrests so far.”

This story is emerging even though there appears to be a media blackout.

[commonspublishing-blog]

99% Advertising emerges weeks after the movement

This is a polished ad with reasonable suggestions for reform. Interestingly this "ad" emerged 2 weeks after the movement had started which is interesting. 

One of the easiest measures it suggests is adding a modest financial transaction tax. 

Unnecessary Austerity, Unnecessary Shutdown By Chuck Collins, Alison Goldberg, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati Reversing tax giveaways to the super-rich and the nation's largest corporations could raise $4 trillion within a decade and avert possible government closures. "We're broke." Or so claim governors and lawmakers all over the country. Our states and our nation can no longer afford, their plaint goes, the programs and services that Americans expect government to provide. We must do with less. We need "austerity." But we're not broke. Not even close. The United States of America is awash in wealth. Our corporations are holding record trillions in cash. And overall individual wealth in the United States, the Credit Suisse Research Institute reported this past fall, has risen 23 percent since the year 2000, to $236,213 per American adult. We have, these indicators of overall wealth suggest, survived the Great Recession quite nicely. So how can average families — and the national, state, and local governments that exist to serve them — be doing so poorly? Why do "deficits" dominate our political discourse? What explains the red-ink hurricane now pounding government budgets at every level? This Tax Day report identifies two prime drivers behind our current budget "squeeze." One, we have indeed become wealthier than ever. But our wealth has become incredibly more concentrated at our economic summit. U.S. income is cascading disproportionately to the top. Two, we are taxing the dollars that go to our ever-richer rich — and the corporations they own — at levels far below the tax rates that America levied just a few decades ago. We have, in effect, shifted our tax burden off the shoulders of those most able to bear it and away from those who disproportionately benefit from government investments the most. These two factors — more dollars at the top, significantly lower taxes on these dollars — have unleashed a fiscal nightmare. Can we wake up in time to avoid the crippling austerity that so many of our political leaders insist we must accept? This report offers both an analysis of our current predicament and a series of proposals that can help open our eyes to a far more equitable — and brighter — future. Key Tax Facts 15,753: The number of households in 1961 with $1 million in taxable income (adjusted for inflation). 361,000: The number of households in 2011 estimated to have $1 million in taxable income. 43.1: Percent of total reported income that Americans earning $1 million paid in taxes in 1961 (adjusted for 2011 dollars) 23.1: Percent of total reported income that Americans earning $1 million are likely to pay in taxes in 2011, estimated from latest IRS data. 47.4: Percent of profits corporations paid in taxes in 1961. 11.1: Percent of profits corporations paid in taxes in 2011.