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Occupy Wall Street

September 17, 2012
Occupy Wall Street’s Messages Resound a Year Later
by Jeremy Leaming

Yeah it’s Constitution Day, and we have a blog symposium for that. But today also marks the anniversary of a gathering of protests aimed at blasting the risky ways of large financial institutions that brought on a global meltdown and America’s Great Recession. Occupy Wall Street protests also railed against the increasing corporate control of politics, and helped raise awareness of economic inequality that undermines democracy.

When those protests gathered steam and formed organization in places like New York’s Zuccotti Park, many right-wing pundits, like some on Fox News, belittled the protests as run by brain-addled youngsters and aging hippies with no real message. (Some on Fox News also expressed amazement at why any person would care about economic inequality.) But like so much of what spews from cable news carnival barkers, they were wrong.

As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick put it, many of the OWS protesters were exceedingly clear in their messaging. “They are holding up signs that are perfectly and intrinsically clear: They want accountability for the banks that took their money, they want to end corporate control of government. They want their jobs back. They would like to feed their children. They want – wait, no we want – to be heard by a media that has devoted four mind-numbing years to channeling and interpreting every word uttered by a member of the Palin family while ignoring the voices of everyone else.”

In a Sept. 14 post on OccupyWallStreet, website the “common villain” is Wall Street, which “is robbing the 99% blind on behalf the 1%.”

Likely a little hyperbole, but part of its message centers on the fact that for far too long, economic policy has been driven by lawmakers who cater to the superrich, ignoring a growing wealth gap and larger numbers of people falling into poverty.

In So Rich, So Poor, Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman explains how right-wing economic policy has created a wholly ineffectual social safety net.

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Tags:
Corporate governance, Economic inequality, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Great Recession, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, Peter Edelman, poverty, wealth gap, William Forbath
March 7, 2012
Congressional Measure Takes Aim at Political Demonstrations
by Jeremy Leaming

The Occupy Wall Street protests helped amplify discussion of the nation’s growing economic inequality. They highlighted the fact that conservative economic policy has made a tiny few in the country extremely wealthy, while shoving many more people into poverty.

Not surprisingly, however, those demonstrations have also prompted Congress to react with legislation that as The Daily Agenda reports would undoubtedly work to harm free speech. In its first post on the legislation, H.R. 347, The Daily Agenda dubbed the measure the “anti-Occupy law,” because it is aimed at keeping many federal buildings and grounds free of protestors. The measure is not law yet, but it easily passed both chambers of Congress and has been sent to the president.

The measure, euphemistically dubbed the “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act,” would alter federal criminal law barring persons from “knowingly” wandering onto “any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority.” Those places include the White House, the vice president’s residence, “a building or grounds where the President or other persons protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting,” or federal buildings or grounds that are hosting a “special event of national significance.”

The anti-free speech measure’s chief sponsor is Florida Republican Rep. Tom Rooney, who has railed against President Obama’s landmark health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act. Rooney is also supporting a federal lawsuit lodged by a religious university against a part of the health care reform law that will require insurance companies to pay for contraceptives for workers at religiously affiliated institutions.

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Tags:
Economic inequality, Speech and expression, First Amendment, anti-Occupy law, H.R. 347, Occupy Wall Street, political speech, President Obama, Rep. Tom Rooney, The Daily Agenda
February 1, 2012
Police Reaction to Occupy Demonstrations Spark Scrutiny of Tactics, Training
by Joseph Jerome

Last fall’s Occupy protests had the unintended consequence of drawing media attention to the increasing militarization of local police departments. But even as questions have been raised as to whether police departments, large and small, actually need tanks, a larger examination of some police decision-making at the top would likely be helpful.

For the young, the poor, and people of color, individual encounters with police are becoming more and more uncomfortable and increasingly abusive despite historic lows in the incidence of crime In the wake of an AP investigation into the New York Police Department’s aggressive surveillance of Muslims, the takeaway is that if you are a young Muslim, “the government has you in its crosshairs,” writes Sahar Aziz, Associate Professor at Texas Wesleyan School of Law and former Senior Policy Advisor at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Police decision-making, according to Norm Stamper, former head of the Seattle police, is the product of “archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets.” Stamper argues that the top brass treat their departments like unruly children rather than professionals charged with serving the public, explaining why police misconduct refuses to go away “no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided.”

Leadership -- or lack thereof -- has long been identified as a primary challenge to maintaining police discipline. Stamper should know: he resigned in the aftermath of his violent response to World Trade Organization protests in 1999.

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Tags:
Criminal Justice, Norm Stamper, Occupy Wall Street, pplice militarization, Sahar Aziz
January 25, 2012
President Urges an End to Obstruction of Nominations
by Jeremy Leaming

In a State of the Union address that was largely focused on promoting policies intended to tackle the nation’s festering economic inequalities, President Obama found a moment to urge an end to destructive delays of his selections to federal offices, including his nominations to the federal bench.

“Some of what’s broken has to do with the way Congress does its business these days,” Obama said toward the latter end of his lengthy address. “A simple majority is no longer enough to get anything – even routine business – passed through the Senate. Neither party has been blameless in these tactics. Now both parties should put an end to it. For starters, I ask the Senate to pass a rule that all judicial and public service nominations receive a simple up or down vote within 90 days.”

According to JudicialNominations.org, there are 84 vacancies on the federal bench, 32 of which are considered judicial emergencies by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. A recent study by the Brookings Institution’s Russell Wheeler shows that vacancies on the federal bench have jumped during the president’s tenure, in part due to the mounting delays in the Senate of consideration of judicial nominations.

In an ACS Issue Brief, UNC School of Law Professor Michael Gerhardt and University of Minnesota Law School Professor Richard Painter, citing the rising rancor over judicial nominations, called on lawmakers to renew efforts to end the obstruction. The authors decried the use of “judicial filibusters, among other means of obstruction within the Senate,” saying they are creating a federal judiciary that is not “operating at full strength.”

The bulk of the president’s address, however, centered on the nation’s growing wealth gap, which the Occupy Wall Street protests have helped propel to the forefront of the nation’s attention.

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Tags:
Executive power, Economic inequality, Federal judicial selection, Judicial Nominations, executive branch nominations, Occupy Wall Street, President Obama, Senate obstructionism, State of the Union, wealth gap
January 24, 2012
Hard Facts Animating Discussion over Economic Inequality
by Jeremy Leaming

It may be hok um to some conservative pundits, but government policies that coddle the nation’s super wealthy, have sparked what some economists say are long overdue and legitimate protests, such as the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

In his Jan. 24 column for The New York Times, David Brooks blasts lawmakers for taking up the concerns of the OWS protestors, writing that they are obsessed with “pounding down the rich.” But Brooks seems to have missed what is animating those protests – the fact that conservative economic policies in the United States have been aimed heavily in favor of protecting a powerful few.

Columbia University professor Joseph E. Stiglitz has written about this nation’s growing wealth gap, while acknowledging that the top 1 percent has contributed to society. Nonetheless, Stiglitz notes the policies protecting the top 1 percent are shrinking middle classes in numerous countries, and creating disconcerting gaps, between the top 1 percent and everyone else.

“But, around the world, political influence and anti-competitive practices (often sustained through politics) have been central to the increase in economic inequality. And tax systems in which a billionaire like Warren Buffet pays lower taxes (as a percentage of his income) than his secretary, or in which speculators, who helped bring down the global economy, are taxed at lower rates than those who work for their income, have reinforced the trend,” Stiglitz wrote in a piece republished by Slate.

Stiglitz goes on to note that many of the bankers who helped trigger the Great Recession, and were later bailed out by taxpayers, are “now back at their desks, earning bonuses that amount to more than most workers hope to earn in a lifetime, while young people who studied hard and played by the rules see no prospects for fulfilling employment.” (In a recent piece for The Times, Susanne Craig reports that large bonuses have already returned for top executives of two Wall Street titans. For example, Craig notes that despite a “rough year,” JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, “was awarded $17 million in equity-linked stock for his work in 2011, according to a regulatory filing.”)

Stiglitz says the “rise of inequality is the product of a vicious spiral: The rich rent-seekers use their wealth to shape legislation in order to protect and increase their wealth – and their influence. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its notorious Citizens Uniteddecision, has given corporations free rein to use their money to influence politics. But while the wealthy can use their money to amplify their views, back on the street, police wouldn’t allow me to address OWS protesters through a megaphone. The contrast between overregulated democracy and unregulated bankers did not go unnoticed. But the protestors are ingenious: They echoed what I said through the crowd, so all could hear.”

Some lawmakers, despite conservative pundits’ derision of the OWS protesters, are listening.

In his Dec. 6 address in Osawatomie, Kan., President Obama cited the statistics, widely reported by Stiglitiz and others, saying “the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year. I’m not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I’m saying people who make a million dollars every single year. For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decades the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.”

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Tags:
Economic inequality, Economic, Workplace and Environment Regulation, David Brooks, income inequality, Occupy Wall Street, President Obama, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, wealth gap

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