January 04, 2012 05:25 AM
Occupy Wall Street Media Team Evicted From Rented Studio, 6 Arrested
By Diane Sweet

If you had any remaining doubt that we're now living in a police state here in the U.S., what happened early this morning at the Occupy Wall Street Livestream office should make it painfully clear.

Ever since September 17th, 2011 and Zuccotti Park, Global Revolution Media has been a large supplier of the media coverage has been covering the Occupy Wall Street movement both here in the U.S. and internationally, providing followers of the movement with raw video footage and keeping their viewers informed.

Monitoring livestreams coming across the internet, the media team picks the best ones for rebroadcast. This small team of dedicated media broadcasters serving the Occupy movement makes finding information quick and easy, making following a plethora of events and breaking occupy news possible for followers. The Global Revolution media team operated out of a leased studio office at 13 Thames Street in Brooklyn, but continuing to do so is in doubt at this time, and the future of the operation in jeopardy.

Via Liberating Flames:

Earlier this morning, Global Revolution Studios was ordered to vacate from their building by the NYPD in conjunction with the building department. It took three separate departments visiting 13 Thames to finally come up with a reason to remove the Global Revolution team with a posted notice despite having all applicable paperwork for the department of buildings in order. The reason given to me by the Global Revolution team is "A made up sprinkler condition." Supporting this allegation of falsified conditions is that the very same building passed the same inspection standards back in 2011 in the month of November with no comments or concerns as to the buildings integrity or its sprinkler system.

It's also odd how the first floor and cellar is imminently perilous to human life, and the floors directly above are perfectly fine. Even the person living illegally in the basement is perfectly fine where he is, meaning it's specifically the area that Global Rev occupies and nothing else. One could accurately allege that this was a direct attack against one of the major voices of the movement and considering Global Revolutions direct affiliation with the Occupy movement; has made it an obvious target for this attack on free speech. The overreaching plan of these actions has been to suppress the ability of Occupy to communicate and to share the movements' collective stories as they unfurl. By being a nexus of streams and information, authorities are attempting to do a top-down decapitation of the movements' media coverage by once again isolating the information to the general public.

Six key members of the team were arrested at the Thames Street location, "charged with Trespass, Obstructing Governmental Administration and Resisting Arrest. They are likely to remain in jail overnight," according to Global Revolution's TV blog.

"We can do all of this from laptops"Vlad Teichberg, GlobalRevolution.TV, after the #OccupyWallStreet and international live news protest channel was evicted from its NYC base.

Thames Street isn't the first home occupied by Global Revolution, and doubtful it would be it's last. In the beginning, activist Vlad Teichberg of Global Revolutiona worked in a small, dark, second-floor room in a clapped-out building on Lafayette at Bleecker. (His neighbors include the War Resisters League, the Socialist Party USA, and the Libertarian Book Club.) This is the original home office of globalrevolution.tv, which channels vérité video from occupations around the world through hosting sites such as Livestream.com.

Via NYMag:

Teichberg is a 39-year-old Russian immigrant with stooped shoulders and a mop of brown hair who grew up in Rego Park and is so jacked in to the electronic grid that he comes across like a character out of Neuromancer. But what makes him so interesting is that you could just as easily imagine him making a cameo in The Big Short. A math prodigy who was a Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalist before matriculating at Princeton, he left college (temporarily) after his sophomore year and went to work for Bankers Trust, the first in a string of Wall Street gigs at firms including Deutsche Bank, Swiss Reinsurance Corp., and HSBC. And what did he do in those places? He created, modeled, and traded derivatives, including some of the first synthetic CDOs. As he told the London Times, he was "one of the people [who] built that bomb that blew up the whole economy."

Teichberg's time in the Wall Street armament factory gave him a close-up view of everything wrong with the place: the culture of greed, the insane levels of risk, the corruption of the credit-rating agencies. "By 2001, it was obvious to me it was going to blow up," he says, "and I wanted to be nowhere near it." But he didn't leave. Instead, hopping from job to job, he tried to put brakes on the process, devising new ways to value risk more accurately, only to be rebuffed by his bosses. At the same time he starting taking the money he was making on Wall Street and funding ways to undermine it.

More via SuperChief:

A resident has confirmed 5 arrested, one of whom is Vlad Teichberg operator of the livestream. He also claims that police damaged camera equipment upon entering the building Tuesday afternoon.
...
Residents are reporting to Superchief that they suspect the order to vacate is a targeted attack likely towards a Global Rev organizer Vlad Teichberg, and his 4-month pregnant wife. They report that they were able to remove an 800 pound server containing their video archives and their important documents last night.

Police did not specifically issue an order to vacate last night. Rather, they are enforcing a year-old order to vacate which may or may not be selectively enforced now based on the Occupy presence in the space.

Those arrested were first taken to Central Booking on Centre Street, and are now at the 90th Precinct in Brooklyn at at Union St and Montrose Avenue.

Will update as more information becomes available...

Update 1: Video footage of the police arrests show that no one from Global Revolution was "resisting arrest" as claimed. Arrests begin around 4 minutes into the video, and continue until the end when with no reason given NYPD arrest 2 people who were down the street observing on the sidewalk, view here.

Update 2: [URL="http://globalrevolution.tv/blog/162"]See the post here.

Most complete information here.
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12 Reasons You'll Be Hearing More About the Commons in 2012
We Power stands at the convergence of economic and cultural trends
By Jay Walljasper

(Credit: Photo by Jaxxon under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com)

About Jay Walljasper

Jay Walljasper, Senior Fellow at On the Commons and editor of OnTheCommons.org, created OTC's book All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons. A speaker, communications strategist and writer and editor, he chronicles stories from around the world that point us toward a more equitable, sustainable and enjoyable future. He is author of The Great Neighborhood Book and a senior associate at the urban affairs consortium Citiscope. Walljasper also writes a column about city life for Shareable.net and is a Senior Fellow at Project for Public Spaces and Augsburg College's Sabo Center for Citizenship and Learning. For more of his work, see JayWalljasper.com

The continuing economic crisis shows the foolishness of promoting selfish individualism as the chief operating principle for our society.

1. The Commons is Essential to Our Health, Security & Survival

The commons comprises valuable assets that belong to all of us. This includes clean air and fresh water; national parks and city streets; the Internet and scientific knowledge; ethnic cuisines and hip-hop rhythms; the U.S. Weather Service and blood banks. But it's more than just thingsit's also the set of relationship that make those things work. When you stop to think about it, most essential elements of our lives exist outside the realm of private property.

2. Discovery of the Commons Signals a Shift from "Me" to "We" in Modern Society

The continuing economic crisis shows the foolishness of promoting selfish individualism as the chief operating principle for our society. People today are rediscovering the value of what we share in common. Everyone's net worth includes a number of valuable jointly-owned assets that enrich our lives as much as what own privately. Public services like libraries, recreation centers and public transportation are there for us when we can no longer afford new books, health clubs or another car.

3. The Commons is Not an Abstract Theory, But Rather an Organic Organizing Principle of Human Civilization

The commons is more than just a nice idea; it encompasses a wide set of practical measures that offer fresh hope for a saner, safer, more enjoyable future. At the heart of the commons are four simple principles, which have been practiced by humans for millenia: 1) serving the common good; 2) ensuring equitable use of what belongs to us all; 3) promoting sustainable stewardship so that coming generations are not cheated and imperiled; 4) creating practical ways for people to participate in decisions shaping their future.

These goals foster a spirit of cooperation that results in commons-based solutions to major problems. One longstanding commons-based solution is the North Dakota State Bank, which supports worthy projects and saves taxpayer money. It's one reason the state is enduring the current economic crisis better than any other. A dozen other states are now looking into the idea.

But commons-based solutions extend far beyond public policy. Wikipedia arose from a group of Internet activists who saw the potential of people sharing what they know. New Yorkers hungry for more greenery in their neighborhoods planted flowers and trees in abandoned lots, many of which flourish today as community gardens. A minister in Cleveland, Tracy Lind, opened up Trinity Episcopal Cathedral as a gathering place in a community that suffered a lack of public spaces. More than 80 thousand people come for public events each year.

4. The Commons Faces More Threat Than Ever

The commons are under threat in two serious ways.

First is the rampant growth of privatization, which snatches valuable assets away from us and put them in someone's pocket. This can mean a corporation finagling mineral rights on public lands for almost nothing or taking control of essential public services to make money rather than serve the greater social good.

Second, many commons are now grossly neglected or mismanaged because it's assumed that anything that does not make money is not worth caring about. That's why so many school buildings are in disrepair, and why a lot of public spaces are rundown and empty.

5. A New Commons Movement is Emerging to Create a Brighter Future for Everyone

But there's good news, too. More people are realizing the central importance of the commons which inspires them to seek collaborative ways to solve problems and seize opportunities. Not everyone doing this thinks of it as commons work, or even knows the word "commons", but they are all "commoners".

Bolivians poured into the streets to successfully demand that deals leasing their water supply to foreign companies be scrapped. Facebook users quashed the company's sneaky plan to claim copyright on everything posted to the site. And folks everywhere are pioneering new ways of sharing with one another, from open source software to public bike programs to informal arrangements with the neighbors. New networks dedicated to protecting and expanding the commons are popping up all over an upsurge that On the Commons is helping fuel and proud to be a part of.

6. The Commons Offers Practical Solutions to Daunting Economic, Environmental and Social challenges

Modern society's constricted focus on what belongs to us privately plays a big role in ecological destruction, economic inequity and social breakdown. In looking to the commons, we can find practical solutions to these problems. As just one example, proposals to address climate change through a Cap-and-Dividend approach, applying the principles of the commons, offers a remedy that curbs CO2 emissions without imposing burdensome energy costs on low- and middle-income people.

7. The Commons is Not Just History; It's Central to Our Lives Today

The commons touches our lives throughout the day from tap water we use to brush our teeth in the morning to the fairy tales we tell our kids at night. While the phrase comes from the medieval era, describing lands that were open to commoners for grazing and foraging, the bigger idea of the commonsall that we sharenever went away. We just forgot about it.

Today, people are yearning for something more meaningful than the greedy, harried, disconnected life they see around them. They want to restore common decency, common sense, the common gooda different way of thinking about how the world works. The Internet, for instance, showed a generation of tech-savvy youth how creative and valuable it is to freely share information and culture. Concern about environmental devastation, mounting poverty and social isolation spurred many other to discover the new ideas embodied in the commons.

8. The Commons is No Longer Seen as a Tragedy

A famous essay of the 1960s targeted the commons as the cause of environmental and economic ruin, arguing that when no one owns a particular resource, no one takes care of it. But in realityas the work of Elinor Ostrom, a winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics, showspeople devise ingenious systems to ensure that community use does not destroy cooperative resources. She found this to be the case in communities around the world from Kenya to Guatemala to Nepal to Switzerland to Turkey to Los Angeles.

9. The Commons is Not a New Name for Communism or Government Control

Private enterprise can flourish alongside a healthy commons sector. Indeed, a market economy would be impossible without commons institutions such as the legal system, corporate charters and financial regulations. And while government-run institutions such as schools, parks and emergency services are certainly part of the commons. So are Civic groups, non-profit organizations, community organizations, informal meeting placesindeed, any gathering of people for the common good is a crucial elements of the commons.

10. The Commons is a Key Ingredient to Human Happiness

Happiness itself is a commons to which everyone should have equal access. That's the view of Enrique Peñalosa, who is not a starry-eyed idealist given to abstract theorizing. He's actually a politician, who as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia enacted ambitious plans to provide poor people with first-rate government services and pleasant public places.

"The least a democratic society should do," he continues, "is to offer people wonderful public spaces. Public spaces are not a frivolity. They are just as important as hospitals and schools. They create a sense of belonging. This creates a different type of societya society where people of all income levels meet in public space is a more integrated, socially healthier one."

11. Commoning Will Be a Hopeful New Trend

At a neighborhood meeting in Bostonone of many discussions held around the U.S. to find ways people can help each other get along in these insecure economic timessomeone raised the idea of a tool exchange. Neighbors could take inventory of who owns a snow blower, wheelbarrow, extension ladder, hedge shearers, shop vacuum, drills, shovels, rakes and other stiff that folks could share. One man in the group who had grown up in the Virgin Islands said that if he knew that a neighbor back home owned a ladder, he naturally assumed he could use it. No one would think of buying something new if someone they knew that someone already owned one.

Both the Boston group and the Caribbean community represent examples of "commoning", which means putting the ideas of the commons into practice in your personal life. Commoning is built upon on a network of social relationships (based on the implicit expectation that we will take care of each other) and a shared understanding that some things belong to all of us and must be used in a sustainable and equitable waywhich is the essence of the commons itself.

12. The Commons Needs Our Help. Here's What You Can Do.

Start by noticing the commons all around you. This includes valuable assets we all need like ambulance service and the protection of watersheds. It also means recognizing the way people work together for the common good, such as Wikipedia or volunteer community groups.

The next step is to start talking about all that we share and how we share it. From there, it becomes natural to claim the commons, challenging threats to the common good in your community and around the world. After that you're ready to strengthen and expand the commons in many capacities as a neighbor, citizen, activist, voter, parent, artist or social entrepreneur.

As an organization, On the Commons is involved in launching animateur work to help the commons flourish. This word is used by community organizers in Africa and Europe to describe how good things come to life and it is now being adopted by the commons movement. As a website, OnTheCommons.org is devoted to chronicling the rediscovery of the commons in many shapes and forms around the world .

Posted January 4, 2012

What Are the Rights of Reporters Covering Protests?
Jonathan Peters
January 4, 2012

Reporting on protests is no easy jobjust ask the thirty-six reporters arrested while covering the Occupy movement, from New York to Boston to Nashville and beyond. Amid clashes between protesters and the police, the reporters ran afoul of the law. They went places where they weren't supposed to go, and they did things they weren't supposed to do. Or so claim the police.

OWS might not signal the high-water mark of press freedom, but it's brought that freedom into sharp focus, through the prism of protest. What rights do reporters have to gather the news? Do they need credentials? Do reporters have the right in public places to record police activity? If a police officer unlawfully interferes with a reporter while she's gathering the news, can the reporter sue the officer? Below, Jonathan Peters, an attorney specializing in First Amendment law, explains.

Does the First Amendment provide reporters a general right to gather the news?

Eh, sort of. The First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of speech and press, among others, and their protections focus mainly on the right to communicatethe right of newspapers to publish, the right of radio stations to broadcast, the right of ordinary citizens to criticize the government. Less clear are the protections for gathering information.

The First Amendment emerged at a time when the press did little newsgathering, and the amendment's legislative history, sparse as it is, doesn't suggest that press freedom includes newsgathering. But gathering is related to communicating, because you can't communicate what you can't gather. Justice Byron White put it this way, in the 1972 case Branzburg v. Hayes, "without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated."

Although the Supreme Court has acknowledged that newsgathering is important, it has not determined the extent to which the First Amendment protects it. The cases in this area make just one thing clear: reporters do not enjoy greater rights than members of the public to gather information.

In large part, reporters enjoy First Amendment protections as agents, the "eyes and ears of the public," as Chief Justice Warren Burger said when announcing the judgment in the 1980 case Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia. The idea is that most people can't get for themselves the information they need to be informed and to participate in the political process. They have to rely on the press, whose right to gather and publish is the public's right to do the same.

Okay, so, what rights do reporters have to gather the news at OWS protests? Do they need credentials?

Most of the OWS protests have unfolded on public sidewalks and in public parks, the favored children of First Amendment law. (Zuccotti is privately owned but dedicated for public enjoyment.) In those places, which are called public forums, the press is free generally to gather the news. What makes public forums so special is their historical significance, noted by Justice Owen Roberts in a concurring opinion in the 1939 case Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization: "Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions."

In public forums, then, the protesters can do their thing, and the reporters can do their thing, documenting and recording what easily can be observed, free from government interference. However, they can't do whatever they want. The government may impose reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on the use of public forums (e.g., the city council may pass an ordinance requiring a permit to use sound amplifiers; hence the OWS human microphone).

Assuming the protest is in a public forum, reporters don't need credentials to cover itthey enjoy a right of access along with the public. They don't need permission to be there, nor do they need permission to engage there in newsgathering activities. Still, credentials are a good idea, though I hesitate to say they can't hurt. The NYPD used them, after all, to corral reporters during the Zuccotti raid.

It's important to understand that credentials, even those issued by the police, won't immunize reporters from arrest. Rather, they can grant the right to cross police lines, at the discretion of the on-site officers, and they can establish why the reporter is there (i.e., to gather the news rather than to participate in the protest). In many cases, the police will respect the rights of credentialed reporters and give them the space they need to work. Too often, though, the OWS protests have been a different story.

What happened to the reporters arrested while covering OWS? Can they use the First Amendment as a defense?

Josh Stearns, associate program director at Free Press, has for over three months tracked reporter arrests at OWS protests, and as of this writing the total is thirty-six. In all but a few cases, prosecutors dropped the charges, and the reporters didn't have to appear in court. Of course, that the charges went away does not mitigate their seriousness. The arrests alone can send a chilling message: Gather the news at your peril.

For the reporters still facing charges, the First Amendment wouldn't be of much help, not to excuse a crime or to invalidate a charging statute. The Supreme Court has ruled consistently that laws applying to the public also apply to the pressreporters may not hide behind the First Amendment if they commit crimes while gathering the news. Often, the best defenses are those available generally in criminal cases (e.g., challenging the basis of the arrest). However, if the charges failed or were illegitimate, the reporters could file civil suits against the government based on the First Amendment. More on that later.

In most of the OWS cases, the reporter arrests fell into two categories: trespassing and disorderly conduct. They're the McDonald's of protest arrests, the garden variety. Typically, trespassing covers the intentional entry onto land without the possessor's consent, while disorderly conduct covers a wide range of acts, including the failure to obey lawful orders from the police. Every year, reporters face those charges. Some of them are legitimate, and others are deliberate attempts to censor the press. The OWS cases, taking them as a whole, appear to be a little of both.

To avoid charges, reporters should be mindful of where they go, they should obey all legitimate orders and they should be careful not to interfere with the police. But they don't have to walk on eggshells. For example, in most jurisdictions the police may not arrest a reporter for disorderly conduct just because the reporter's behavior is annoying or distracting; the behavior must be truly obstructive.

Do reporters have the right in public places to record police activity?

Yes! That was the very question addressed in the 2011 case Glik v. Cunniffe, decided by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Attorney Simon Glik was arrested for using his cell phone to record three police officers arresting a teenager in the Boston Common. The charges against Glik, among them a violation of the Massachusetts wiretap statute, were dismissed.

Glik filed a civil suit against the city and the police officers, claiming in part that his arrest violated the First Amendment. The officers claimed immunity from the suit. They argued that when Glik was arrested, it was unclear that the First Amendment guaranteed the right in public places to record police activity. The federal appeals court disagreed.

Judge Kermit Lipez, writing for the panel, said recording police activity promotes the discussion of government affairs; that such discussion is important because the police enjoy discretion that might be "misused to deprive individuals of their liberties"; that recording police activity "aids in the uncovering of abuses"; and that the police "are expected to endure significant burdens caused by citizens' exercise of their First Amendment rights."

Lipez noted that the right to record police activity "is not without limitations. It may be subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions." But he said that in Glik's case the recording "fell well within the bounds" of First Amendment protections. Glik recorded the officers from a distance and did not interfere with them. Plus, he was in the Boston Common, "the apotheosis of a public forum," Lipez wrote.

What happens if a police officer unlawfully interferes with a reporter while she's gathering the news? Can the reporter sue the officer?

Yes, but success isn't guaranteed. The reporter would file a "1983 action," under federal statute 42 U.S.C. § 1983. It allows people to sue government officials in civil court for depriving them of constitutional or civil rights. The reporter would be the plaintiff, and the police officer would be the defendant. Basically, the reporter would claim that by unlawfully interfering with her newsgathering (e.g., denying her access to a public forum for no good reason), the police violated her First Amendment rights.

The reporter would ask the court for a declaration to that effect and for money damages. She might also ask the court to require the police to implement procedures to ensure that the press can gather the news free from interference (i.e., she would demand formally of the police what the New York Times and others demanded informally of the NYPD, in late November). So the effect of the lawsuit would be to crystalizeto say who's right, who's wrong, what should be done in the future.

But I said success isn't guaranteed. First, it can be difficult for a reporter to establish that by interfering with her newsgathering, the police violated her First Amendment rights. In the example I gavedenying access to a public forum for no good reasonthe court would consider whether denying access to the forum infringed the right to be there. Public forums make an easy example, but in other areas the courts have to make closer calls. Second, it can be difficult for a reporter to establish that the interference harmed her. She'd have to explain intangibles like timeliness and newsworthiness, which to many people lie somewhere between abstractions and inside baseball.

Notably, the "1983 action" has been used in the protest context. Consider the 1995 case Fordyce v. City of Seattle, decided by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Jerry Edmon Fordyce recorded a protest march for a public-access channel (he said he was participating in the protest too). After recording the police and bystanders on the sidewalk, Fordyce was arrested for violating a state wiretap statute. The charges didn't stick, so he filed a "1983 action," and the federal appeals court ruled that police officers could be held liable for interfering with a reporter's ability to videotape a protest march.

Have the Super-Rich Seceded From the United States?

By Mike Lofgren, CounterPunch

05 January 12

t was in 1993, during congressional deliberation over the North American Free Trade Agreement. I was having lunch with a staffer for one of the rare Republican members of Congress who opposed the policy of so-called free trade. I distinctly remember something my colleague said: "The rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their own fellow American citizens."

That was just the beginning of the period when the realities of outsourced manufacturing, financialization of the economy, and growing income disparity started to seep into the public consciousness, so at the time it seemed like a striking and novel statement.

At the end of the cold war many writers predicted the decline of the traditional nation state. Some looked at the demise of the Soviet Union and foresaw the territorial state breaking up into statelets of different ethnic, religious, or economic compositions. This happened in the Balkans, former Czechoslovakia, and Sudan. Others, like Chuck Spinney, predicted a weakening of the state due to the rise of Fourth Generation Warfare, and the inability of national armies to adapt to it. The quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan lend credence to that theory. There have been hundreds of books about globalization and how it would break down borders. But I am unaware of a well-developed theory from that time about how the super-rich and the corporations they run would secede from the nation state.

I do not mean secession in terms of physical withdrawal from the territory of the state, although that happens occasionally. It means a withdrawal into enclaves, a sort of internal immigration, whereby the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well-being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension - and viable public transportation doesn't even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call, who cares about Medicare?

To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; for example, their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy's palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education "reform" is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than one-half trillion dollars in federal, state, and local education dollars into private hands, meaning themselves and their friends. A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of Andrew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie's is presently lacking among our seceding plutocracy.

In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New York socialite might know the weight of an army pack. Now the military is for suckers from the laboring classes whose subprime mortgages you just sliced into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to employ Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. Courtesy of Matt Taibbi, we learn that the sentiment among the super-rich towards the rest of America is often one of contempt rather than noblesse; Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, says about the views of the 99 percent: "Who gives a crap about some imbecile?"

Steven Schwarzman, the hedge fund billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group who hired Rod Stewart for his $5-million birthday party, believes it is the rabble who are socially irresponsible. Speaking about low-income citizens who pay no income tax, he says: "You have to have skin in the game. I'm not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system." But millions of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes pay federal payroll taxes. These taxes are regressive, and the dirty little secret is that over the last several decades they have made up a greater and greater share of federal revenues. In 1950, payroll and other federal retirement contributions constituted 10.9 percent of all federal revenues; by 2007, the last "normal" economic year before federal revenues began falling, they made up 33.9 percent. By contrast, corporate income taxes were 26.4 percent of federal revenues in 1950; by 2007 they had fallen to 14.4 percent. Who has skin in the game now?

As is well known by now, Schwarzman benefits from the "Buffett Rule:" financial sharks typically take their compensation in the form of capital gains rather than salaries, thus knocking down their income tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent. But that's not the only way Mr. Skin-in-the-Game benefits: the 6.2-percent Social Security tax and the 1.45-percent Medicare tax apply only to wages and salaries, not capital gains distributions. Accordingly, Schwarzman is stiffing the system in two ways: not only is his income tax rate less than half the top marginal rate, he is shorting the Social Security system that others of his billionaire colleagues like Pete Peterson say is unsustainable and needs to be cut.

This lack of skin in the game may explain why Willard Mitt Romney is so coy about releasing his income tax returns. It would also make sense for someone with $264 million in net worth to joke that he is "unemployed," as if he were some jobless sheet metal worker in Youngstown, when he is really saying in code that his income stream is not a salary subject to payroll deduction. The chances are good that his effective rate for both federal income and payroll taxes is lower than that of many a wage slave.

The real joke is on the rest of us. After the biggest financial meltdown in 80 years - a meltdown caused by the type of rogue financial manipulation that Romney embodies - and a consequent long, steep drop in the American standard of living, who is the putative front-runner for one of the only two parties allowed to be competitive in American politics? None other than Mitt Romney, the man who says corporations are people. Opposing him, or someone like him, will be the incumbent president, Barack Obama, who will raise up to a billion dollars to compete in the campaign. Much of that loot will come from the same corporations, hedge fund managers, merger and acquisition specialists, and leveraged buyout artists the president will denounce in pro forma fashion during the campaign.

The super-rich have seceded from America even as their grip on its control mechanisms has tightened.

[video=vimeo;34451942]http://vimeo.com/34451942[/video]

Citizens United Backlash Picks Up Official Support From Occupy Wall Street, New York Chapter

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3485[/ATTACH]

Efforts to amend the Constitution to declare that corporations are not people and money is not speech gained support in two notable New York forums this week. The New York City General Assembly of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Tuesday officially called for a constitutional amendment to overturn a controversial Supreme Court decision from 2010 . On Wednesday, a similar resolution passed the New York City Council.
Such an amendment would reverse not only the Supreme Court's 2010 opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that corporations have the constitutional right to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections, but also its seminal 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which first established that money constituted speech for First Amendment purposes.
Beyond New York, the Los Angeles City Council almost a month ago and several other city governments across the nation have supported anti-Citizens United resolutions. MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan has launched a petition calling for an amendment that has pulled in nearly 300,000 signatures, and members of Congress have proposed various joint resolutions in the House and Senate to start the process from Washington.
The OWS NYC resolution states, "Be it resolved that the New York City General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street joins the millions of citizens, grassroots organizations and local governments across the country in calling for an Amendment to the Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights, and that the rights of human beings will never again be granted to fictitious entities or property."
On Dec. 30, the Montana Supreme Court added its authority to the Citizens United backlash by upholding the state's century-old ban on corporate cash in campaigns. The majority decision, written by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, described Montana's own history of corporate control over state government as sufficient justification for the ban's constitutionality. This fact-bound determination defied the U.S. Supreme Court's conclusion that independent electoral spending can never give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to reverse its Montana counterpart -- and any other court that chooses to follow Montana's lead. Unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court's composition changes in favor of those challenging Citizens United, the amendment process now gaining momentum remains a better option than litigation for those who want corporate money out of politics.

[URL="http://InterOccupy.org"]InterOccupy.org
[/URL]

Our Mission:

We at InterOccupy seek to foster communication between individuals, Working Groups and local General Assemblies, across the movement. We do this in the spirit of the Occupy Movement and general assemblies which use direct democratic and horizontal decision-making processes in service to the interests of the 99%.

We are currently hosting weekly conference calls using the Maestro conference call technology that allows up to 500 people to interact productively on phones. Maestro allows for smaller group breakout sessions so people with shared interests can connect in the middle of a large call. Our Weekly General Call is every Monday night.

> Find out more about InterOccupy's Weekly Monday Night General Call on Monday nights at 7pm PST/8pm MST/9pm CST/10pm EST.

> For more information about upcoming calls, please visit our Upcoming Call Page.

> For shared information from occupations, please see our Resources or Announcements page (coming soon).

> For upcoming Mass Actions, please visit our Occupy Actions page

The following information is a digest of information regarding the recently signed NDAA.

CONSIDER FOR NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION: Amnesty International and over 45 other organizations will protest the NDAA and Guantanamo in front of the White House on January 11the 10th anniversary of the "war on terror" prison. Sign up (see below they kicked off with guantanamo bay costume protests, arrestees gave names of gitmo prisoners as a symbolic day in court' in DC) at
http://www.amnestyusa.org/jan11

congrats on event yesterday .. impressive turnout and media coverage despite short notice and cold … let's keep the momentum going…!!!

There have been many occupy NDAA protests: see some clips on youtube and some articles below. VERY LITTLE COVERAGE OF THESE PROTESTS IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA
(SANTA CRUZ, LA, SAN DIEGO, TAMPA, AND MORE)
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_qu...py+protest