The Lonely Lunacy of David Brooks

A Brooksian Nightmare

New York Times columnist David Brooks looked at Occupy Wall Street today, and liked not what he saw. The protesters are a "flamboyant fringe" getting all the media attention. Normal people are suffering in silence, living lives of quiet desperation simply because it is the right thing to do. According to him, people are having fewer children because they are pessimistic spoil-sports about the future, not because of financial hardship. They are cutting up their credit cards, not because their credit scores are in the toilet, but because they have experienced the sudden epiphany that thrift is a virtue in and of itself. And they're sticking with their jobs, not because they have no other choice, but because they have discovered the value of loyalty. It's a "Values Restoration" to combat the OWS radicalism!

A few years ago there was a celebration of Free Agent Nation. But now most people, even most young people, would rather work long-term for one company than move around in search of freedom and opportunity.... This values restoration is reshaping the way Americans see the world around them. Many economists say the cutback in consumption will hurt the economy in the short run. But, according to the Heartland Monitor poll, 61 percent of Americans said the decline in consumption would “help the economy as it would create more savings that could be invested to create or expand business.”

Yep, the 99ers of the unemployment rolls are just sitting around telling pollsters that they're saving their benefit checks to invest in a booming business someday rather than blowing their cash on food or shoes for the kids. Pay no attention to the 80 percent of disgruntled souls who say they have no faith in government and that income disparity is grossly unfair. The Americans of David Brooks's addled imagination are hunkered down and saving for the future. They have patience.  Never mind that patience, as defined by Ambrose Bierce a century ago, is "a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue".

Brooks waxes nostalgic about the past:

If, in the 1960s, you had tried to judge America by looking at the sit-ins and Woodstock, you would have had a very distorted picture of where the country was heading. You wouldn’t have been able to predict that Richard Nixon would win the youth vote in 1972, which he did. You wouldn’t have been able to predict that Republicans would go on to win four out of the next five presidential elections, a streak only interrupted by Jimmy Carter, who ran as a conservative Democrat.

He doesn't seem to get that OWS is not a three-day love in, nor is it made up solely of disaffected youth, nor does it have much of anything to do with partisan politics. The poll he didn't see fit to mention was the one conducted by Time showing that 86 percent think that “Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington” and another 79 percent believe that “the gap between rich and poor in the United States has grown too large.”

Brooks obviously got the info that more people know about the Amanda Knox case and the death of Steve Jobs than the protest from a poll conducted in the first week of OWS, when the movement wasn't even being covered by the mainstream press. According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, even the majority of Republicans believe the protesters have a right to be in Zuccotti Park.

Poor David. The Republican Party has sunk so far from the heyday of beloved felonious Vice President Spiro Agnew and his angst about the "nattering nabobs of negativism" in a mainstream media that was then policed by the Fairness Doctrine.  Brooks strives to be the voice of the restoration of the always-mythical "Silent Majority" -- but he just can't do it like Spiro (or his speechwriters Pat Buchanan and William Safire) who railed against the "pusillanimous pussyfooters" and the " hopeless hysterical hypochondriacs of history."

The best alliteration he can come up with is "flamboyant fringes."  Pretty sad.  But what more can you expect when your 2012 party platform revolves around killer electric border fences and 9-9-9 numerology?

Plutocrap

OWS is not going away. (Aren't you glad we can abbreviate it now, and everybody understands what it means?  No more Occupy Wall Street, #OccupyWallStreet, We Are the 99% -- just OWS.  We have arrived!)

Now that the mainstream media can no longer ignore this worldwide uprising, the powers that be are running themselves ragged trying to find ways to diminish and demonize it.  One of the chief spokesmen of the We Shall Overreact counterinsurgency is New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Himself a member of the elite Forbes Billionaires Club, Bloomberg's main concern has been sanitation. Alas, there are no toilet facilities in Zuccotti Park. And nearby eateries are complaining the hippie campers are using their bathroom sinks to take showers -- and worse!  No Port-a-potties allowed in the park, either. So you can imagine how offended the sensibilities of Bloomberg must be, with the wastrels and their waste.

Bloomberg and friends have balked at providing toilet facilities or dumpsters at the site.  The protesters undertook a mass cleaning on their own late last week in hopes of staving off a threatened eviction.

The New York Times broke the story about the bathroom crashers of OWS when the encampment was entering its third week.  The paper of record still can't seem to make up its mind whether to jump on the revolutionary bandwagon and celebrate the movement, or continue siding with the oligarchs over how stressed the whole thing is making them feel.  Everybody is talking about the article yesterday that had a slew of anonymous Wall Streeters griping: 

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.” He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

According to Bloomberg News (yeah, that ubiquitous Bloomberg again), Mr. Money Manager has a right to be outraged.  In all likelihood, he makes about $1 million a year -- about twice the salary of a brain surgeon or four times as much as a four-star general. 

The bottom line is all the people in investment banking understand that they work harder and are under more stress,” said Jeanne Branthover, a managing director at Wall Street recruitment firm Boyden Global Executive Search. “Many don’t think they’re paid enough.”

But unlike the OWS'ers, the million dollar wunderkinds don't have to worry about their next bathroom break. Again, from the New York Times (HT to Christina Vining) comes the story of a luxury toilet called the Numi.  According to reporter Sam Grobar, who tried it out for a month in exchange for a free ad review: 

The Numi features a touch-screen remote control. The Numi washes and dries its user. The Numi costs $6,400, or 81 times the price of the basic throne at Home Depot.
Such extravagance may put the Numi within reach of only plutocrats and Pentagon purchasing managers. (Oh, goodie, now the general can achieve parity with the oligarch!) All the Numi controls are handled through a touch screen remote control that is somewhat larger than an iPodTouch. That remote controls flushing, cleaning, drying, music, heating and other settings and preferences; combinations of preferences can be stored in user profiles for different family members. When not in use, the remote docks in a magnetic charging cradle that can be mounted on the wall. There are backup buttons at the rear of the toilet just in case the remote is not working.

The only problems with this plutocrapper, according to Grobart, are that the lid pops up whenever you come near it, regardless of whether you have to go.  And the music can be annoying.  And the aesthetics leave a lot to be desired. Grobart compares the Numi to a giant Lego building block -- see for yourself:

From the Numi Website: This is How You Market Toilets to Millionaires

One really nifty feature of the Numi is that if you're a guy who loves to pee in the dark, a lovely blue light will align directly with the flow to help you avoid those annoying misses that plague the OWS john-crashers. It brings a whole new meaning to the term "trickle down."

I wonder if Mike Bloomberg owns a Numi.  I wonder if he ponders his next Zuccotti Park move as he relaxes on his throne.  I wonder if he regrets ever having bought himself a third term.

(Graphic by Kat Garcia)

Plan 9-9-9 From Outer Space

Since today seems to be National Pile On Herman Cain Day, I thought I would join the fray before this latest in a long line of fake Republican candidates implodes and Mitt Romney is crowned the winner and makes Ambien obsolete.

 Today is the day that Paul Krugman wrote that the thought of a Herman Cain presidency "terrifies" him. And to think it was only a few months ago that Michele Bachmann was terrifying everybody with her imminent accession to the White House in the new Theocracy of America. It was only last week that editorialists were warning of Rick Perry Armageddon. Before that, it was Donald Trump casino-izing and birtherizing and overcombing the world. And Sarah Palin was primed to put her manicured red fingernail on the Big Red Button. 

The Republican cavalcade of lunatics is an infinity of mirror images, each one more grotesque than the last.  They have served their purpose by deflecting attention away from what passes for government in Washington. Liberal pundits in general and MSNBC in particular have used their public arenas to shoot fish in a barrel every single day to save them the trouble of thinking, and to make the failure that is Obama look good.


What will happen when only Mitt Romney is left standing, and Lawrence O'Donnell can't open every show with ridiculing the latest Gingrichism and spending hours every week waxing shocked at Michele Bachmann's crazoid utterances? Gail Collins will be reduced to repeating her dog-on-the-roof Romneyisms without the comic relief of Ron Paul. The weekly game shows known as the Republican Debates will come to a crashing halt. Whatever will the punditocracy talk about then?


The inconvenient truth is that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are mirror images of each other. Each panders to his supposed base.  Each is a right-of-center fiscal conservative.  Their insurance company giveaway health plans are identical. No matter who is elected, each man would serve as apparatchik of Bush's Fourth Term.  


But back to the Hermanator. It's a lazy Friday, so I'll just add my voice to the thousands of others in saying his 9-9-9 Tax Plan is a joke. It seems to have been stolen from a video game called Sims City 4. It will crush the lower classes. It has no basis in reality. Even Cain can't explain it. But this week he's at the top of the polls. So the Serious People are pretending to take him seriously aimply because he is so seriously nuts and might be the next president! Seriously!

Now Playing. Limited Engagement Only.

Co-Optation Station

One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind as the Occupy Wall Street protests gathered steam and media attention was: Will the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party attempt to co-opt the movement, and if so, will they succeed? The answer to the first question is a qualified "Yes" and to the second -- if there is a God, No.

As others have already pointed out, the movement is as much about protesting Obama's big sell-out and raging against the corrupt and inept two-party system as it is about anger at the unfettered capitalism that destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.  But that hasn't stopped various offshoots of the Democratic Party from attempting to glom onto it, and ever so subtly (or not), frame it to their own specifications.


The Center for American Progress (CAP), a D.C. think tank with direct ties to the White House, has set up its very own website on the mass demonstrations. But they refuse to call it "Occupy Wall Street" or occupy-anything.  That connotes a state of siege, and might cause the banksters to feel even more uncomfortable or petrified than they are already.  So CAP has renamed it, innocuously, The 99% Movement -- much safer, given that Goldman Sachs has been Obama's biggest contributor, and Lloyd Blankfein is the guest of honor at many a White House luncheon and state dinner.  (He is said to be fleeing the Big Apple for Washington today, in light of threatened demonstrations against his for-profit talk at Columbia U.  Do you think he'll be asking Barry for Secret Service Protection?  Do you think he'll get it?)



Wall Street-Upon-Potomac: The Blankfeins

 But back to CAP: its founder and leader is John Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff who helped push through the repeal of Glass-Steagall and turned banks into gambling casinos. Podesta also was in charge of the Obama Transition Team and had a role in bringing in another banking deregulator (Timmy Geithner) to head up Treasury and bail out his buddies. 

The Boss and The PR Guy (Obama, Podesta)

The main thrust of the Podesta/Obama website is to cast aspersions on the GOP challengers who cast aspersions on the protesters.  Today's headline crowed about Mitt Romney's flip-flopping on the protesters, rather than discussing what the protests are all about.  It made hay out of Eric Cantor's "mob" characterization.  It gloated over Fox News' Geraldo Rivera getting heckled. Anything and everything to point out that Obama and the Democrats suck a lot less than the Republicans. 


Of course, CAP was founded during the reign of Bush II for the express purpose of establishing a Democratic War Room with a thrust on opposition research. From Wikipedia:

Podesta laid out his plan for what he likes to call a think tank on steroids. Emulating those conservative institutions, he said, a message-oriented war room will send out a daily briefing to refute the positions and arguments of the right. An aggressive media department will book liberal thinkers on cable TV. There will be an edgy Web site (ThinkProgress.org) and a policy shop to formulate strong positions on foreign and domestic issues. In addition, Podesta explained how he would recruit hundreds of fellows and scholars -- some in residence and others spread around the country -- to research and promote new progressive policy ideas. American Progress is slated to operate with a $10 million budget next year, raised from big donors like the financier George Soros.

CAP has come under criticism for refusing to divulge its list of donors, and also for cheerleading Obama's war escalations and drone attacks -- in stark contrast to its raison d'etre during the Bush years, which was to excoriate torture and bellicosity.  According to an article by Jeremy Scahill, CAP and other "veal pen" offshoots such as MoveOn and Media Matters, are nothing more than "pseudo PR flaks targeting liberals" to advance the White House agenda. 


Since the protests began three weeks ago, I have gotten a steady stream of emails from MoveOn, 21st Century Democrats and any number of veal pen shops, seeking my signature to show "solidarity" with Occupy Wall Street. A few have even blatantly tied their fund-raising campaigns to the mass movement. These organizations all belong to the Common Purpose Project, which meets at the White House every week to make sure the members stay in line with what Obama wants. And what he wants, apparently, is simply to use the Occupy uprising to make the Tea Party and GOP look bad, at the same time he "gets" our frustrations.

And according to The New York Times, The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s powerful House fund-raising arm, has even started circulating a petition among the crowds of protesters, seeking 100,000 party supporters to declare that “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”


The Obama for America re-election outfit itself has remained largely silent on OWS. I imagine they are feverishly reworking their marketing to jibe with the current climate.  Somehow, I believe that even they won't be clueless enough to continue pretending they are a "grassroots movement made up of people just like me."  I haven't, for example, heard another word about entering for a chance to win a meal with Barry.


They know that we know about the true agenda of the Democratic Party, which has nothing much to do with us. I don't believe there is a veal pen large enough to contain all the millions of people thoroughly disgusted with the corruption of our government. And the politicians are likely as scared as the plutocrats.

**Update: Glenn Greenwald has more.

Report from "Occupy Tampa"

Story and Photos by Neil Gillespie

The Justice Network

America is broken. That was the message of the Occupy Tampa protesters in Gaslight Park Thursday.  The peaceful assembly was attended by several hundred diverse protesters. Although the park is located right across from Tampa Police headquarters, no officers showed up in the park, and only a handful watched from afar. Protesters expressed their complaints on signs, and chanted "We are the 99 percent" while marching to a beat provided by a young man with a drum. Some of the messages on the homemade signs included "Rise Up! The System Is Broken", "Healthcare Not Warfare" and "Hang The Bankers".

"Robert", a French national, complained about corrupt politicians in Europe and America. His gray hair and business attire lent credibility to his complaints about the insurance, oil, and banking industries.



Robert of France: They Know How to Demonstrate!



News organization helicopters hovering over the park created a deafening racket, making conversations difficult. The day-long protest included several marches around downtown Tampa. One such march began at 5:00 PM, went past the Bank of America building at Kennedy Blvd. and Tampa Street, then down Ashley Avenue past the art museum and library. The marchers turned at Zack Street, and again on N. Florida Ave., and continued to march past the Sam M. Gibbons US Courthouse. A few blocks further the protesters stopped and gathered on the steps of the old Federal Courthouse.

The protesters in Tampa included many older people. This "Occupy" movement is no longer a youth movement, it is now mainstream, or as they say, the "99 percent" of Americans. I saw babies in backpacks. One man marched in a wheelchair. People of all ages, races and backgrounds marched and chanted side by side.

One woman wore a Ron Paul shirt. A sign proclaimed "Governments Stage Terror To Take Away Our Rights, Infowars.com". Another read "Stop The Creed Of Greed", and one said "Stop Killing Kids In Afghanistan". "End The Federal Reserve", "Capitalism is destroying our lives!" and "Corporate America You're Fired" were messages too, along with "Save the American Dream" and "For the People not Corporations".

They chanted slogans before returning to Gaslight Park. The mainstream and alternative news media were present. Shanna Gillette energetically snapped photos for "Creative Loafing".  A reporter from WMNF, 88.5 Community Radio joined in the march. News vans parked near the police building, and a mainstream reporter stood by with a bored look on her face, while the cameraman panned the scene.  

One protester said it best: "When Injustice Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty".

Greetings and Solidarity from Occupy Tampa

Extra, Extra -- Read All About It!

The second issue of "The Occupied Wall Street Journal" is hot off the presses.  You can read it here.


And if you missed the first issue, here it is.


The on-site, 50,000-circulation broadside is produced by the weekly Indypendent. ("A Free Paper for Free People.") The publishers point out that the new journal is not to be construed as the "official" paper of the movement: "This is one attempt by a group of journalists who support the occupation to offer a way for the general public to hear the stories, perspectives and ideas from inside the movement. We think the more voices, ideas and media the better".

Obama Jobs Czar Whines About Not Being Liked

Did anybody catch the segment on Jeff Immelt on "60 Minutes" last night?  The CEO of G.E., who helped the president craft his American Jobs package, unashamedly admits he's a global kinda guy, his first priority being profits to please his investors.  And so what if he hires only a few thousand workers here at $13 an hour?  He's got thousands and thousands of desperate people to choose from. He thinks we should all be cheering for him! (And his own $15.2 million compensation package). From the show's transcript:

Immelt: I want you to root for me. You know, everybody in Germany roots for Siemens. Everybody in Japan roots for Toshiba. Everybody in China roots for China South Rail. I want you to say, "Win, G.E."

Stahl: Do you not see any reason that maybe the public doesn't hold American corporations up here in the highest...

Immelt: I think this notion that it's the population of the U.S. against the big companies is just wrong. It's just wrong-minded and when I walk through a factory with you or anybody, you know, our employees basically like us.

Stahl: They do. I saw it.

Immelt: They root for us, they want us to win. I don't know why you don't.

You can read the transcript and watch the entire segment here.

Immelt is holding another meeting with the Jobs Council this week, and plans to give Obama some more great advice, having nothing whatever to do with jobs.  Regulations, for one thing -- they are so annoying. (Immelt was among those urging Obama to scrap the EPA ozone standards last month).
More free trade -- Immelt loves the free trade deal expected to rocket through Congress this week with little to no debate, despite the fact that it will bleed even more thousands of jobs from the American economy. Repatriation of profits in exchange for another huge tax break is a must.  Yeah, he admits, we tried that once and it didn't create any new jobs, but the second time might be a charm.  But he can't guarantee anything.

You probably remember the big uproar when it was revealed that G.E. not only paid zero taxes this year, but it actually got a refund from the government because of all the money it loses not being able to keep its money in the United States. (Immelt's head tax lawyer used to work in Treasury and literally wrote that law in G.E.'s favor).

Then it came out that G.E. Capitol got a bailout from the U.S. treasury to help it recoup losses it "suffered" in the 2008 meltdown.  We never would have found out about the last bit unless Bernie Sanders had insisted on getting the info. Sanders calls G.E. one of the 10 worst corporate tax evaders of all time: "Over the past five years", he said, "while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS."'

Last March, a petition drive called "Immelt Must Go" was launched by former Senator Russ Feingold. After garnering thousands of signatures, it was presented to Obama.  He dug in his heels.  Immelt Must Stay, decreed Barry. Press Secretary Jay Carney explained at the time that the president would be keeping Immelt at the helm because he enjoys hearing a "diversity of opinion."

The latest G.E. outsourcing extravaganza is the removal of its 115-year-old X-Ray business headquarters to Beijing, taking several billion dollars out of the U.S. and investing it in China. But Immelt doesn't understand why American lawmakers are making such a big deal out of China and its currency manipulation anyway. "I'm not afraid of China!" he boasted to Lesley Stahl last evening.

Body Language Says It All