Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Peter Lemkin]

Occupy Wall Street Objects to the Occupy Wall Street PAC

John Hudson 1,397 Views Feb 17, 2012

The formation of an Occupy Wall Street super PAC by an activist in Decatur, Alabama is sparking a backlash from the movement's organizers in Washington, D.C. and New York City.

This week activist John Paul Thornton opted to fight fire with fire, filing paperwork with the FEC to establish The Occupy Wall Street Political Action Committee, allowing it to raise unlimited corporate funds for federal candidates pledging to get money out of politics. The irony was not lost on a number of Occupy activists who've long protested the very existence of super PACs following the controversial 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court case.

"This caught us completely by surprise," said Bill Csapo, an activist affiliated with the Campaign to Occupy Wall Street in New York. "I don't think any of us would agree that a super PAC is the right way to go."

Csapo, a volunteer organizer who handles communications for the the campaign, said he has contacted Thornton to change the name of the Occupy super PAC or else disassemble it completely. "Thornton has no connection whatsoever to Occupy Wall Street or the New York General Assembly," insisted Csapo.

He added that Occupy Wall Street organizers in New York City planned to issue a statement on OccupyWallSt.org to officially condemn the use of super PACs.

In Washington, Legba Carrefour, an Occupy DC activist who handles communications for the group, said his organization has never supported using a super PAC to advance its cause. "Been done, been blocked," he said, referring to meetings where members suggested starting a super PAC and the group swiftly voted it down."It went nowhere, no one would support it."

"I think this points to a larger problem with the branding of Occupy," he said. "People have started using the word Occupy very loosely."

To be sure, Thornton has been feeling the heat. "I didn't know this thing was going to blow up as soon as it did," he tells The Atlantic Wire. "There are stronger feelings about it than I originally envisioned."

Thornton said since yesterday he's fielded a number of complaints from activists, some of which he hasn't responded to because of their "accusatory" tone. When asked if he would change his PAC's name or shut it down, he pledged to continue his efforts.

"If this results in some kind of factioning, fine," he said. "There needs to be a diversity of tactics to achieve success. What works is money. We all know this."

[Keith Millea]

John Paul Thornton needs to be vetted to see who he really is.Occupy should turn up the heat on this rat!Shut him down!

[Peter Lemkin]

John Paul Thornton needs to be vetted to see who he really is.Occupy should turn up the heat on this rat! Shut him down!

I'm sure many are trying to figure it out and if that is even his real name etc. Here is how he portrays himself.....

Interview with John Paul Thornton, founder of the Occupy PAC

On 11:31 , February 17 2012

It's been rather controversial news since its announcement yesterday, but the Occupy PAC has gotten a lot of coverage, both from "credentialed media" and barely-literate, anonymous paranoids (It's spelled Tattler, for the record). Mr. Thornton was kind enough to answer some of our questions, despite the barrage of interviews he had yesterday.

…

TDO: First off, tell us a bit about you, where you're from, what you do, and what got you involved with the Occupy movement.

JPT: I was born and raised in Decatur, Alabama, with time elsewhere for school/ travelling and what not. I currently work in the mental health field, and before that was an army contractor in the Huntsville area. I got involved with Occupy because it was the right thing to do. Anyone (hopefully) can see the litany of injustices, the vast disparity in income, elected officials only working for those with money, etc. This has to stop, as soon as possible, and it is a worthwhile goal to strive for.

TDO: What got you thinking about starting a SuperPAC, and why one for the Occupy movement at all?

JPT: Colbert. Literally, I was watching his thing about his Super PAC and said Gee, it would be nice if OWS had one of those', and here we are.

TDO: How did you go about doing this in the first place? What kind of requirements do you have to meet? Did it cost anything? What kind of things can Occupy get from a SuperPAC?

JPT: I got on the FEC.gov site and followed the instructions, for the most part. I had to fill out all paperwork accurately, there was no fee, and what CAN'T Occupy get from a superpac? This is long overdue. If we really want to impact the political process and not just bitch about it, it's things like this that we have to do.

TDO: Given the strict rules concerning "cooperation," how can this PAC serve Occupy without violations? Would Occupiers talking to you be considered "cooperation?"

JPT: I'm not sure on that, I'm not entirely done reading over the vast sum of info regarding PACs that the FEC puts up. We will of course take care to remain compliant.

TDO: Who are you looking to as donors? Do you have any fundraising goals in mind?

JPT: I don't care if it's Joe Schmoe or his CEO, they both can donate. No goals as of yet….though anything is better than nothing, si?


TDO: What will you do with the money? Will you try to educate people about important issues, like the foreclosure fiasco? What kind of things do you want to do?

JPT: I envision that the soon to be [appointed] board members will review submissions, pick the ones most viable and worthy and then perhaps create a vote thingy and make this thing a little more democratic. That alone, I think, will be revolutionary. No, the PAC's job is not educate, it's to affect political change. If [people] want education, fire up Google and get to it. I am soliciting ideas on what ALL of us want to do. This isn't a dictatorship, I just happen to be the guy who filed/is in charge for now. I think I would like to pass the reins over to someone more qualified on down the road, once this thing is rolling along well.

TDO: When you said "pick the ones most viable and worthy" what were you referring to? I'm guessing commercials, or ad spots, or something to that effect, yes?

JPT: Funding requests. We aren't just gonna throw money around just because someone wants it. That would be irresponsible. And yes, possibly those too, as other PACs seem to be doing that for their candidates.

TDO: Do you intend to publicly put forth a set of goals/an agenda? How will you prove the PAC is "remaining honest," so to speak?

JPT: Pure transparency. All records will be available. We will have nothing to hide; it's the internet era, ya know? This is very doable. I'm not sure as to an agenda; see above about still soliciting ideas.

TDO: Some people have claimed that this is an attempt to hijack the movement for your personal/political gain. How would you respond to them?

JPT: I politely say "I am not hijacking anything. You don't like it, don't participate/donate; but don't stand in the way or criticize people who are trying to affect real change via methods you don't agree with."

TDO: Do you have any specific candidates you want to assist in mind?

JPT: No.

TDO: Finally, how can we stay updated with the PAC?

JPT: Subscribe to the OWS PAC Facebook page for now… Actual website with donation mechanism to come soon.

TDO: Again, thanks so much for the opportunity to speak with you.

JPT: Thank You.

[Keith Millea]

JPT: I was born and raised in Decatur, Alabama, with time elsewhere for school/ travelling and what not. I currently work in the mental health field, and before that was an army contractor in the Huntsville area. I got involved with Occupy because it was the right thing to do.

Contracting for what in the Army?Then on to the mental health field.I'm smelling Rat shit.......

[Peter Lemkin]

Can't vouch for this, but....."So who's Thornton? If he's the same fellow in this article from the Decatur Daily (same name, same age, same location) he's a mental health worker with serious alleged mental health troubles himself. The Thornton described by the Daily is a former member of the Alabama National Guard. Upon coming out from the National Guard, he apparently began acting erratically so erratically that his family tried to have him involuntarily committed. A local doctor wrote a note to the court explaining, "He has become verbally aggressive, verbose, talking rapidly, changing topics quickly, and (he) describes grandiose adventures in his duties as a current member of the Alabama National Guard."In 2008, John Paul Thornton of Decatur, AL was sentenced to 60 days in jail for a DUI, and also allegedly violated a protection order. Thornton's father wrote a note to the police chief telling him he was afraid his son might hurt somebody; the jail put him on suicide watch. The family believed he wasn't getting the proper mental health treatment. Thornton's mother promptly nailed a cross to the top of the fence in backyard and sat on a ladder next to it to protest his lack of mental health treatment."

[Peter Lemkin]

Occupy the SEC Pitches An Extreme Makeover of Wall Street
by PAM MARTENS

"Too big" failed on Wall Street in 2008 in a tumultuous explosion that wiped out century old iconoclastic institutions in a week's time. In their infinite wisdom, Congress and the regulators repaired "too big" with "much bigger," bundling giant insolvent institutions with the merely teetering. We're now at the third stage: "much, much crazier to regulate."

To attempt to oversee the unwieldy bloated tyrants, Congress passed 848 pages of financial reform legislation in 2010. But it was so difficult to comprehend that to implement just one piece of it, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) together with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency filed a 530-page public proposal seeking comment on how the legislation might impact the markets. The deadline for those comments came last week.

To hear the New York Times tell it, a less than dazzling few hundred public comment letters were filed. The Times tally was off by a mere 16,000 letters. Apparently, the Times does not believe form letters should count, even though they were signed individually and filed electronically with the SEC by the February 13 deadline. (I think anytime 16,442 members of the public take the trouble to comment on a notoriously complex 530-page proposal from the SEC, they deserve to be counted.)

The rule proposal pertained to the adoption of the Volcker Rule the namesake of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker that would nix the ability of Wall Street banks that hold insured deposits to place billions of dollars in speculative trades for their own firm's account (proprietary trading or in Wall Street vernacular "prop desk") instead of focusing on the interests of their customers.

The Volcker Rule constitutes Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law on July 21, 2010. In addition to proprietary trading, also impacted will be the ability of Wall Street banks to own hedge funds and private equity funds. The new rules are scheduled to take effect on July 21 of this year if Wall Street lobbyists lose their bid to derail the implementation.

Hoping to derail the derailers is a new SEC sheriff: Occupy the SEC, a spinoff of Occupy Wall Street. Going forward, it will be tougher for right-wing corporate media to spin the Occupy movement as smelly hippie radicals desperate for a cause; any cause. Last week, Wall Street spin doctors just got chewed up in the spin cycle and hung out to dry with Occupy the SEC's filing of a mesmerizing 325-page treatise on redesigning Wall Street to meet the Nation's needs rather than its perpetuation as a wealth extraction scheme by lawyered up 1 percenters. (The number of lawyers providing public comment was exceeded only by Wall Street firms.)

Far removed from the unstructured demands of the overall Occupy movement, the 325-page tome is precise, hard hitting and essentially nails the core corrupting elements of the current system and lays out what must change. It shows an uncanny insider's grasp of the minutiae in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. And, it is more than 171 pages longer than the collective rant of Wall Street's own sycophant trade groups, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), American Bankers Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and the Clearing House Association. The trade group letter called the proposal "absurd" and lectured the regulators that they should first "do no harm." There is striking and arrogant amnesia in this letter regarding the staggering harm done to this Nation by their constituents.

Occupy the SEC was able to convince the SEC to schedule it for a telephone conference on January 12 to discuss the proposed rule prior to filing its weighty volume. Unfortunately, its one meet-up with the SEC was outflanked by a total of 20 SEC confabs with big Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and their trade and lobby organizations.

The letter from Occupy the SEC was signed by Akshat Tewary, Alexis Goldstein, Corley Miller, George Bailey, Caitlin Kline, Elizabeth K. Friedrich, and Eric Taylor. The group calls itself "concerned citizens, activists, and financial professionals with decades of collective experience working at many of the largest financial firms in the industry. Together, we make up a vast array of specialists, including traders, quantitative analysts, compliance officers, and technology and risk analysts."

One member of the group is Akshat Tewary, an employment law expert who is admitted to the bar in New York and New Jersey and has standing to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Tewary got his background in securities law at his former employer, the international law firm of Kaye Scholer.

Tewary explains how he came to be involved in the Occupy the SEC group:

"I shared a deep frustration with other Occupiers stemming from the fact that major banks had caused a world-wide recession due to their excessive risk-taking. It's one thing if a bank bankrupts itself due to speculation and greed, but it becomes a matter of public concern when those excesses hurt virtually every person in the country and many abroad.

"In October 2011, I was preparing a comment letter on my own for another part of the Dodd-Frank Act, and attended several Occupy Wall Street events as well. It was around this time that the SEC and the banking regulators' proposed implementation of the Volcker Rule was issued. It became clear to me very quickly that many of the concerns of Occupiers meshed naturally with the objectives of the Volcker Rule. I saw several signs asking to Bring Back Glass-Steagall' and the Volcker Rule was a clear chance to actually do that (to a certain extent)."

One of the most impressive aspects of the Occupy the SEC letter is that it asks, courteously but firmly, that the SEC and other regulators remove their myopic lenses, particularly on the topic of market making by the banks holding insured deposits.

The SEC defines market making as a firm standing "ready to buy and sell a particular stock on a regular and continuous basis at a publicly quoted price. You'll most often hear about market makers in the context of the Nasdaq or other over the counter' (OTC) markets." Indeed, we heard a great deal about those big Wall Street firms as market makers back in 1996 when the U.S. Department of Justice charged them with coordinating a price fixing scheme on Nasdaq. The SEC found the practice had been going on for years. Then we heard more about market manipulation in 2003 when regulators brought and settled charges that some of the biggest Wall Street firms were inducing the public to buy stocks, potentially with the same firms as market makers, by issuing laudatory research on companies they internally labeled "dogs" and "crap."

On January 18th of this year, SEC chairman Mary Schapiro testified to Congress on the SEC's Volcker Rule proposal, noting that "the proposal recognizes the important benefits provided by market making activity, including customer intermediation and market liquidity, and would permit market making activities in different markets and asset classes." Schapiro has a long history of cozying up to Wall Street's demands.

It's "nonsensical" says Occupy the SEC to believe that smaller competitors to the Wall Street Goliaths couldn't fill this market making gap if the big firms were prohibited under the Volcker Rule. "It is well-known that the major dealers have always fiercely guarded their dominance of market making, particularly in the less regulated OTC markets. Firms that attempt to enter this business are regularly strong-armed through anti-competitive arrangements with inter-broker dealers. Again, this is unsurprising: market making desks allow a firm to take proprietary advantage of unparalleled access to valuable customer flow information in the name of customer service.' "

In case you think Wall Street has cleaned up its act and can now be trusted with market making, think again. The big press conference less than two weeks ago heralding the $25 billion settlement by the U.S. Department of Justice and 49 state attorneys general against Wall Street's illegal foreclosure and mortgage servicing tactics had barely turned off its mics when news broke that more lawsuits are on their way for Wall Street collusion in rigging one of the most important interest rate benchmarks in the world, the London Interbank Offered Rate known as Libor. That rate is tied to literally trillions of dollars of financial products, including the rate at which many adjustable rate mortgages reset. Would the Florida state attorney general have included loan origination charges in Florida's foreclosure settlement if she had been aware of potential collusion in fixing the interest rates of those mortgages?

Occupy the SEC also warns against allowing the big firms to game the system by simply moving their proprietary trading out of the investment banking area and into an Asset Management affiliate. "In their allowances for the continued provision of Asset Management and Investment Advisory services to covered funds by banking entities, Congress granted a boon to the financial industry at the expense of the American public. While the intent of the statute's allowances for Asset Management may have been justifiable, in reality these anticipated allowances are being used by the banking entities to simply shift proprietary trading from inside their walls to outside, with a healthy amount of ownership interests maintained to keep their involvement profitable."

Another passage from the Occupy the SEC document highlights the Wall Street banks use of an investor's "safe" money placed in insured accounts as the firm's own bankroll to place speculative trades: "When depositors post money at banks, that money does not remain in a vault. Rather, it is utilized by banking entities to make loans, pay off expenses, and otherwise create an infrastructure through which to conduct proprietary trades. Thus, banks stand to gain from the leverage provided to them by depositors. Unfortunately for depositors, this provision of leverage remains uncompensated. This point was cogently recognized by Congressman Keith Ellison during the Congressional House Committee on Financial Services' recent hearing on the Volcker Rule:

In the absence of something like Volcker Rule, we have a heads I win, tails you lose system in which, if I'm a bank I can go out and buy mortgage-backed securities (Triple A rated') . . . they make a bunch of money, I keep that, I do not give that to those depositors, [whose money] I use. . . . But if I lose a bunch of money, I'm coming to the taxpayer to save me. And it seems so unfair.

"…We know of no bank that repays FDIC-insured depositors for usage of their money in the form of participation interests on the proceeds from proprietary trading. This is an exploitative situation wherein the resources of one party are utilized by another, without just compensationa clear divergence of interests.' Thus, simple logic dictates that depositors must be granted some monetary participation in any gains achieved by a banking entity from exempted activities…"

Another infinitely sensible recommendation of Occupy the SEC is the idea of bumping up the pay and stature of the internal compliance officers that skulk among the $3,000 suits and mahogany corridors of power in their polyester button-downs and no-iron trousers fearful of ever reporting illegal conduct less they be told to remove themselves from the premises an outcome that happens regularly. "A two tiered approach could 1) bring the general level of compensation of compliance professionals to be more in line with those in the front office, to more accurately demonstrate the importance of these roles to the quality of the banking entity itself, and 2) require a compensation design which explicitly rewards quality practices and their implementation."

Contrasted against the public interest focus of Occupy the SEC, Allen & Overy LLP filed multiple letters with the SEC on behalf of industry interests. Allen & Overy is the very law firm that created the off-balance-sheet Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) that were loaded with derivatives that played an integral role in the implosion of Citigroup, tens of billions in losses to shareholders, and the subsequent $345 billion bailout and backstop of the institution by taxpayers. (See "The Rise and Fall of Citigroup.")

One letter from Allen & Overy urged: "We join other industry groups and market participants in expressing grave concern about the broad implications and unintended consequences of the Proposed Rule on the ability of multinational financial institutions to function effectively and efficiently and give our support to the arguments contained in the Industry Responses. We believe that the Proposed Rule poses significant problems for swap dealers and banking entities that engage in derivatives activity generally." Now that is raw arrogance.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street's private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She maintains, along with Russ Martens, an ongoing archive dedicated to this financial era at http://www.WallStreetOnParade.com. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

[Keith Millea]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/22-1

Published on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 by Common Dreams

Warrantless Surveillance?: Gov't Subpoenas OWS Activist's Twitter Records

Malcolm Harris: Subpoena dangerous because it might "produce a chilling effect and discourage people from using Twitter while protesting."

- Common Dreams staff

A government subpoena requesting an Occupy Wall Street protester's Twitter records raises questions about the government's use of warrantless surveillance and attempts at squashing activists' use of social media.



Hanni Fakhoury of EFF explains the case involving request for Malcolm Harris' Twitter records:

On October 1, 2011, over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Most of the protesters, including Malcolm Harris, were charged with the mundane crime of disorderly conduct, a "violation" under New

York law that has a maximum punishment of 15 days in jail or a $250 fine.
And yet on the basis of a charge no more consequential than speeding ticket, the New York City District Attorney's office sent a poorly worded subpoena to Twitter requesting "any and all user information, including email address, as well as any and all tweets posted for the period of 9/15/2011-12/31/2011" regarding Mr. Harris' Twitter account, @destructuremal. Unsurprisingly, the government wanted to keep it quiet, but thankfully Twitter didn't listen. Instead, as it has consistently warned law enforcement, Twitter notified Mr. Harris, who through his lawyer, Martin Stolar of the National Lawyers Guild, has moved to challenge the subpoena in court.

The subpoena is astonishing not only for its poor grammar, but also for the breadth of information the government wants for a trivial crime that hardly requires it. The government's request that Twitter hand over Tweets is unlikely to succeed because consistent with the Stored Communications Act, Twitter releases "contents of communication" (effectively Tweets and private messages between Twitter users) only with a search warrant. In any event, Mr. Harris' account is "public", meaning the government could obtain Tweets simply by checking out Mr. Harris' Twitter feed. Plus, requesting Tweets only highlights the absurdity of the entire situation: why would the government need Tweets from both before and after the October 1 protest to prove he was obstructing traffic on the bridge? In any event, government fishing expeditions like this raise serious First Amendment concerns. Mr. Harris was very outspoken about his support of and involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement. With this overbroad subpoena, the government would be able to learn about who Mr. Harris was communicating with for an extensive period of time not only through Tweets, but through direct messages. And with the government's request for all email addresses associated with @destructuremal, they could subpoena Mr. Harris' email provider to get even more information about who he communicated with. The First Amendment shouldn't be trampled with only an expansive subpoena in a case that barely registers as "criminal."

Given that much of Mr. Harris' Twitter information (like Tweets and followers) is already public, it's very likely that the government was really after something else: location data. By attempting to subpoena these records, the government can get around the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against warrantless searches by requesting information that includes IP addresses. Twitter keeps track of IP address information regarding every time a person logged into Twitter, as well as the IP address information related to a Twitter user's direct messages to other users, and the date and time information related to these log ins and direct messages. Armed with IP addresses, the government -- without a warrant -- can go to an ISP to determine who was assigned that particular IP address. And if that person connected on a mobile device -- which is where the majority of Twitter users access their accounts -- the ISP will hand over to the government the specific cell tower (and its corresponding geographic location) which that person used to access Twitter. This allows the government to piece together a map of where a person physically is when he opens Twitter on his smartphone, sends a direct message to a friend, or Tweets. And with that information, the government could get a record of Mr. Harris' movement over the three months it requested from Twitter. Its no surprise then that the government singled out Mr. Harris for this request: he currently has over 1,500 followers and 7,200 Tweets.

Allowing the government to gets its hands on this data with nothing more than an administrative subpoena renders the Fourth Amendment meaningless. Only with the protection of a search warrant, and the heightened judicial supervision that comes along with it, can the voracious appetite of law enforcement be curbed. As we've consistently argued, the Fourth Amendment protects this information.

(photo: Adrian Kinloch)

Writing on Reuters earlier this month, Harris says the ultimate goal of the subpoena is to discourage activists from using Twitter as a platform:

The biggest danger that comes from this subpoena isn't that it'll help convict me I don't think a judge will have any trouble understanding what happened on the bridge but that it will produce a chilling effect and discourage people from using Twitter while protesting. It's a win-win for prosecutors: Either they use Twitter archives to build cases against demonstrators, or they scare us away from using the platform.

Wildly casting prosecutorial nets around the Twittersphere and hoping to bring in something about anything is panicked behavior not fit for a government that represents all its people, including its dissenters. At the very least the federal government can make sure U.S. companies treat dissenters in Boston or Oakland the way it ensures they're treated in Tehran or Damascus.

Reports from Cairo to London to New York show that social media have served an important, sometimes vital, role in helping demonstrators keep safe and organize effectively. That's why the State Department intervened in Iran in 2009, and that's why the District Attorney's office is requesting my records now.

[Peter Lemkin]

Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Occupy to hold national conference in Philly

PHILADELPHIA (AP) A group of protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to elect 876 "delegates" from around the country and hold a national "general assembly" in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July as part of ongoing protests over corporate excess and economic inequality.

The group, dubbed the 99% Declaration Working Group, said Wednesday delegates would be selected during a secure online election in early June from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

In a nod to their First Amendment rights, delegates will meet in Philadelphia to draft and ratify a "petition for a redress of grievances," convening during the week of July 2 and holding a news conference in front of Independence Hall on the Fourth of July.

Any U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident who is 18 years of age or older may run as a nonpartisan candidate for delegate, according to Michael S. Pollok, an attorney who advised Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last year and co-founded the working group.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]