Also note that he's fixing quite a few formatting errors (repeated numbers, misplaced lines), but yes, it is a visually stunning collection of hard information. The Eisenhower Interstate System being the most costly public works project in history is one profound point among many.
Anyway, I've been ignoring most of the last few pages of the thread, but here's some interesting news for the day. There was a time when I would have considered linking to a story on MSNBC to be inherently tilted (and it is anyway), but as much as I hate to say it, I think anyone here who would have been offended by that isn't reading this anyway. More importantly, it's first-hand journalism by an MSNBC personality, so it's not like there's anywhere else to look.
Whatever. Chris Hayes is beefing up his new show, and he managed to score some serious read meat. Namely, a leaked memo between a
lobbying firm and a banking coalition detailing their media plan for discrediting the notion of "Occupy Wall Street" (the name is getting a bit misleading at this point). As it turns out, the banking group claims they rejected the plan, but the key factor of the memo is where it came from and what it says, because it's hard to think this one lobbying firm is a lone voice in the Republican side of the woods. Yes, I said Republican and not conservative, because it has an inherently partisan origin and message.
According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”
The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
The CLGC memo raises another issue that it says should be of concern to the financial industry -- that OWS might find common cause with the Tea Party. “Well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where OWS protestors and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism,” the memo says.
Wall Street companies “likely will not be the best spokespeople for their own cause,” according to the memo. “A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.”
Part of the plan CLGC proposes is to do “statewide surveys in at least eight states that are shaping up to be the most important of the 2012 cycle.”
In other words, a Republican lobbyist is sending unsolicited communication to financial institutions, advising them that their safest way to approach the next election cycle is to lean harder on Republicans and convince Democrats not to capitalize on any popularity (as if they needed telling). If you look around for more of Hayes' reporting on the subject, you'll find things like
Karl Rove gearing a multi-million ad campaign against Elizabeth Warren focused on her taking credit for the Occupy message (from right before Oakland melted down). Reading the whole memo, you'll also find these ad-men talking about how they need to start treating "Occupy" as a political organization rather than an isolated street protest. The import is this: the Republican party's advertising brain trust is taking Occupy Wall Street seriously. Know yourself by your enemies - when you've made an enemy of Karl Rove, you're in the big leagues.
And as long as I'm talking about Chris Hayes, he made an interesting point in an interview today. If Michael Bloomberg wanted to silence OWS, all he really had to do was wait them out. Let it get cold, let them get tired, make them think no one is listening. By sending in some of the largest policing operations the city has seen since the 1970s, it tells the OWS people that they have a voice. It gives them a rallying point, and draws new membership, attention, and tangible support.
But more than any of that, it's dangerous for everyone OWS is mad at, namely the wealthiest movers and shaker in the country and the political system that protects them from economic reprisal. Because when people see a thousand NYPD officers arresting people en masse and deliberately smashing their property, or images like UC Davis with police in riot gear
pepper-hosing people huddled on the ground like they're watering plants, it raises a question in the mind of the average person who goes through life trying not to weigh themselves down with arguments like this. It begs them to ask, why would society's big institutions commit this level of force to roughing up a bunch of impotent incoherent shlubs doing nothing more threatening than taking up space?
And it plants the idea - What are they afraid of? Why are monied interests and some governments so concerned about something this harmless? Suddenly those shlubs in the street seem a lot more coherent, their arguments start to gain weight, and a person starts gnawing at the idea that maybe, just maybe, the social contract really is bankrupt. And they start listening for those shlubs to give them an option.
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Topic: Occupying Wallstreet (Read 297551 times)