ThinkProgress Logo

Special Topic

Meet The 99 Percent: Boston Electrical Worker Was ‘Fed Up,’ So He Came To Occupy Wall Street

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 6, 2011 at 5:26 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York City.

Yesterday, well over 10,000 people in New York City marched in support of a group of around a thousand people occupying Zuccotti Park near Wall Street in order to protest economic inequality.

Today, hundreds of people remain encamped at Zuccotti Park. ThinkProgress spoke to one of them, an electrician and International Brotherhood of Electric Workers (IBEW) union Local 103 member named Bob Broadhurst Broadhurst came to join the occupation early last week, when almost no unions had yet endorsed the demonstrations. He explained that he was “fed up” with the political and financial systems. He noted that since then most major unions have backed the demonstrations.

He said he’d like to see the Glass-Steagall Act re-instated, which would separate commercial and investment banking. When ThinkProgress asked him about how the rich were able to get away with paying less and less in taxes, he noted that this was another reason he’s protesting and that taxes on the rich were much higher under Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Watch the interview with Broadhurst :

Since the start of the protests — which were led primarily by students and younger Americans — the nation’s unions have slowly come to support their cause. Ranging from the Writers Guild East to the National Nurses United to the SEIU, organized labor has taken up the cause of holding corporate America accountable and standing up for the 99 percent of Americans who are getting less and less out of the economy as the richest one percent get more.

Broadhurst described the union and wider American support for the students in Zuccotti Park as an “arrow” formation. He said the students occupying the Financial District are the tip of the arrow, but that the protests around the country among a wide section of Americans forms the base — a base that has been drawn by the power of their cause.

Related Posts

Yglesias

Legalizing Crowdfunding

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 6, 2011 at 5:25 pm

Seems like a good idea:

Imagine a Kickstarter 2.0 where, for a sum of around $250, you get part-ownership in a company instead of a thank you note and t-shirt. There are already a small handful of companies lining up to facilitate crowdfunding, some flying under the radar of regulations and others chomping at the bit and pushing for change. [...]

Most investing rules—like the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, which bans crowdfunding—date to overhauls that followed the 1929 stock market crash. They are designed to protect unsophisticated, generally low-income investors from fraud. Among those rules is a limit on the number of people who may invest in a private company before it must subject itself to the increased scrutiny of the public markets; the federal cap is 500 investors. Obama wants to remove that limit.

You could imagine nothing much coming of this, but alternatively it might be a promising way for start-ups to get funding that circumvents a lot of the existing bank architecture.

Alyssa

The Death Of ‘Free Agents’ — And Of Grown-Up Romantic Comedy

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 6, 2011 at 5:21 pm

It was inevitable, given its low ratings, but I remain sorry that NBC has cancelled Free Agents, one of the shows that felt most promising to me (in an admittedly weak season). As I wrote when the show first began, what was so appealing about it to me is that Hank Azaria and Kathryn Hanh’s characters felt like actual grown-ups. They had been through some seriously rough stuff, and the show didn’t try to pretend that sleeping together minimized the impacts of a devastating divorce or the untimely death of a fiance. The characters had definitive preferences, priorities, and personalities that didn’t vanish the minute they met someone new. Work matters to both of them. Romance is not the ultimate value, though it’s not unimportant, either. There was no clear answer or destination here, but watching them negotiate each episode, each encounter, was a pleasure — it would have been find for the characters not to end up together, and it still would have been interesting.

Maybe that just speaks to the poverty of romantic comedy thinking today, where no character has traits or preferences that can’t be sacrificed when true love, the highest value of all, comes along, where the prospect of not ending up with somebody is the biggest obstacle anyone can dream up. Relationships happen at a lot of ages, not just when people are in their 20s, and at a lot of different stages in life. Part of romance is negotiation, and mutual self-actualization. That Free Agents felt so comparatively fresh says much more about the market than about the quality of the show itself.

NEWS FLASH

Fischer Doubles Down On Hate Rhetoric Ahead Of Appearance With Romney | People for the American Way and the New York Times have challenged Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on his decision to share the stage this weekend with the American Family Association’s resident hate-spewer, Bryan Fischer. Fischer, who has said that the First Amendment does not apply to Mormons (like Romney), commented on the growing controversy by saying that he only speaks “the truth” about groups like the gay community, Muslims, and Mormons. He couched this so-called “truth” in his faulty belief that gays aren’t “animals that are forced by nature to respond to whatever impulses arise,” but sinners who can and should change. Watch the clips:

Security

Many Of Romney’s Foreign Policy Advisers Helped Push The U.S. Into War With Iraq

By Ali Gharib on Oct 6, 2011 at 5:10 pm

Today former Massachusetts governor and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his campaign’s foreign policy team. Many of the names are drawn from the foreign policy establishment and prominent Republican-associated security circles. “Their remarkable experience, wisdom, and depth of knowledge will be critical to ensuring that the 21st century is another American Century,” Romney said in a statement. Notably, several of Romney’s advisers were among the most forceful proponents a “new American Century” already, one that involved primarily pushing for war in Iraq.

ELIOT COHEN

Cohen, who was a member of the short-lived Committee for the Liberation of Iraq that agitated for an invasion in 2002 and early 2003 and now directs the Johns Hopkins international affairs school, stuck to the theme that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction right up until the eve of the U.S. invasion. Though he eventually walked-back his support for the war, in February 2003, Cohn told NBC Nightly News:

I would suspect that if there’re going to be heavy civilian casualties, they’ll mainly be caused by the Iraqis and would flow from the use of chemical weapons or biological weapons.

ROBERT KAGAN

Kagan, a founder of the Project For A New American Century (PNAC) and the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), argued for the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein beginning in the mid 1990s. In late 1998, after President Bill Clinton launched airstrikes against Iraq, Kagan complained on NPR that the attack didn’t go far enough and that Hussein needed to be overthrown:

I would agree that firing even several hundred cruise missiles into Iraq cannot be the end of the story. You really do have to go to the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is Saddam Hussein himself, and any strategy the administration undertakes has to have a practical goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power.

PNAC, one of the groups Kagan founded (along with neoconservative don Bill Kristol), made statements and wrote a series of open letters to Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush from 1998 to 2003 that referred to Iraq, often calling for the military overthrow of Saddam Hussein and accusing him both of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to Al Qaeda. Among the signatories to the letters were a bevy of those listed today as Romney advisers, including Kagan himself, Cohen, Paula Dobriansky, Vin Weber, John Lehman (a National Security Advisory Council member of the Islamophobic Center for Security Policy), now-super-lobbyist Vin Weber.

After the invasion, Iraq fell under the control of L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. viceroy in charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority that is widely blamed for botching the early days of the occupation. Two of Bremer’s top advisers — Meghan O’Sullivan, who later served as a Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan in the Bush administration and is now a Harvard professor, and CPA spokesperson Dan Senor, now with the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative (think PNAC 2.0, formed in 2009 by Senor, Kagan and Kristol) — are now with Romney’s team.

NEWS FLASH

99 Percent Movement Targets Health Insurers, Pharmaceutical Companies | The protesters carrying out the 99 Percent Movement that started three weeks ago on Wall Street are speaking out against the political and financial system that rewards the richest 1 percent at the expense of the other 99 percent — including sectors of the powerful health care industry. As Inside Health Policy’s Sahil Kapur notices, a Sept. 30 manifesto — titled Declaration of the Occupation of New York City — specifically singles out insurers and pharmaceutical companies for spending “millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance” and blocking “generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.”

NEWS FLASH

Pelosi Supports The Message From 99 Percent Movement Protesters | House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) voiced her support for the protesters behind the 99 Percent Movement today. “The message of the protesters is a message to the establishment everyplace,” she said, according to a tweet from Felicia Sonmez. She called the protest “focused,” adding that “it’s going to be effective.” Her comments echoed those of President Obama and Vice President Biden who both empathized with the protester’s frustrations earlier today.

Update

In praising the protesters, Pelosi said, “No longer will the recklessness of some on Wall Street cause massive joblessness on Main Street.” “God bless them,” she added. Watch it:

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Oct 6, 2011 at 5:05 pm

Politics

Top 10 Things Herman Cain Doesn’t Want You To Know About Him

By Scott Keyes on Oct 6, 2011 at 5:00 pm

After just six weeks, ever-fickle Republican presidential primary voters are cooling to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), setting their sights instead on a Tea Party favorite: former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain (R).

Though Cain has been running since January, his recent debate performances and straw poll victories have created a boomlet for the former pizza executive. Now, Cain is leading state polls from North Carolina to West Virginia to Nebraska and surging nationally as well. Taking up the mantle once occupied by the likes of Donald Trump and Rick Perry, pollster Tom Jensen declared yesterday that “Herman Cain is the new GOP frontrunner.”

Now, as Cain enters the Republican top tier, it’s worth taking a look back at the former CEO’s policy positions. During his nine months on the campaign trail, Cain has repeatedly shown a lack of understanding on foreign policy matters, a lack of empathy for immigrants and poorer Americans, and a lack of respect for religious liberty.

ThinkProgress has put together the top 10 hits from Cain’s presidential bid:

(1) PLEDGED THAT HE “WILL NOT” APPOINT MUSLIMS IN HIS ADMINISTRATION: In an interview with ThinkProgress earlier this year, Herman Cain declared that he “will not” appoint a Muslim in his administration if he were elected president. In the months that followed, Cain qualified his position a number of times – at one point even telling Glenn Beck that he would appoint Muslims but only on the condition that they take a special loyalty oath – before finally recanting this unconstitutional stance and issuing an apology to Muslim-Americans. Unfortunately, since that time Cain has continued to peddle the ridiculous notion that Sharia law is a threat to the American legal system.

(2) TOLD THINKPROGRESS, “I DON’T THINK THE CURRENT MINIMUM WAGE IS NECESSARY”: During his time as the top lobbyist for the restaurant and fast food industry, Cain fought against an increase in the minimum wage. During a recent ThinkProgress interview, Cain went further, saying “I don’t think the current minimum wage is necessary.” As Greg Sargent noted, not even conservative icon Barry Goldwater supported eliminating the minimum wage.

(3) CONFUSED BY BASIC CONCEPT OF ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE PROCESS: In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Cain was asked his opinion on the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Cain was clearly confused by the question, responding, “The right of return? [pause] The right of return?” When host Chris Wallace explained the issue to him, Cain suggested that Israel wouldn’t have a problem “with people returning,” a prospect Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu fiercely opposes. The incident was not the first time Cain displayed lack of familiarity with international affairs. Previously, Cain said he doesn’t know enough to say what he thinks about the war in Afghanistan.

(4) IMMIGRATION PLAN INVOLVES A “GREAT WALL OF CHINA” AND A “MOAT [WITH] ALLIGATORS”: In a speech to Iowa Republicans, Cain called for building a fence along the entire U.S.–Mexico border, comparing the effort to the Great Wall of China. Building a fence along the nearly 2,000-mile border not only wouldn’t work, it would cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars in the process. Cain also suggested building a moat next to the fence and filling it with alligators.

(5) BELIEVES “WE ALREADY RECOGNIZE” THE GOVERNMENT OF TAIWAN: Discussing U.S.-Chinese relations with ThinkProgress, Cain confirmed fears that he lacked a firm grasp on foreign policy matters when he declared that “we already recognize” the government of Taiwan. In fact, the United States stopped recognizing Taiwan in 1979. Cain, visibly confused about relations between the U.S, China, and Taiwan, refused to say whether this belief meant he planned to send an ambassador to Taiwan, saying instead, “President Cain will get back to you!” Lest the matter seem trivial, Chinese-Taiwanese relations are extraordinarily tense and the matter of diplomatic relations with the United States carries enormous implications for the billions of people living in southeast Asia.
Read more

Older

Newer

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up