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Occupy Seattle Participants Lament The ‘Injustice Of Our System’

By Guest Blogger on Oct 20, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Our guest blogger is Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Public Lands Project, Center for American Progress

Protests associated with the 99 Percent Movement are springing up in hundreds of cities in the United States and the world. Occupy Seattle has been occupying both Westlake Park and City Hall downtown this entire month, and, despite some issues with the permit that have since been resolved, plans to indefinitely occupy the park are being put into place.

ThinkProgress was on site at Westlake Park to interview participants about why they joined the protest, or at least came down to observe it. When asked why she was drawn to the protest, Dianne (no last name given) told ThinkProgress that it was because of the “injustice of our system.”

Well I think for me personally it’s the injustice of our system. And I am so sick and tired, so completely sick and tired, of those people in this country who can the least afford to carry the burden are forced to carry it even more. So, you have people for who the services are just cut dramatically. It’s so unfair, it’s the poor and the working poor who get impacted. I just don’t know how they survive. Mental health, social programs that are so necessary and so important. And these are the things that are slashed! And in the face of people who are fabulously wealthy — the top 1 percent — saying “no taxes.”

Watch it:

Dianne is not alone in her sentiments that the wealthy in America should be paying their fair share. A new poll from the National Journal released yesterday found that a “whopping” 68 percent of people polled support a 5 percent surtax on millionaires to pay for a jobs plan, including 71 percent of independents, a coveted voting bloc.

A column in last week’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave advice to keep the movement from withering: continue to pressure the state’s congressional delegation, in particular U.S. Se. Patty Murray (D-WA) who has been granted a place on the super-committee. The newspaper wrote:

Our state’s congressional delegation — Republicans but also Democrats — has grown increasingly insular. Reps. Dave Reichert and Jaime Herrera Beutler, two GOP House members from Western Washington, go before picked audiences. They don’t release schedules. Open town meetings, vehicles for Tea Party protest two years ago, have been shut down.

The Democrats are little better: They do scripted dog-and-pony shows on pet issues, at which a couple ordinary citizens get trotted out to thank the officeholder for his/her beneficence. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is Democratic co-chair of Congress’ “super-committee” charged with making budget cuts and — maybe — identifying new revenue sources. She’s keeping a very low profile on the home front.

Smoke these people out. Don’t occupy their offices and hastle young interns. Catch up with “the member.” Ask party activists to share invites to their fundraisers. Bat aside attempts to blame the other side.

Security

UPDATE U.S. Predator Drone, French Jet Stopped Qaddafi Convoy Before Capture

By Ben Armbruster on Oct 20, 2011 at 5:25 pm

This afternoon on Fox News, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), presumably thinking he was attacking President Obama, seemed to leave out one important element when discussing the NATO campaign against Muammar Qaddafi: the U.S. military. “Let’s give credit where credit is due,” Rubio said, adding, “It’s the French and the British that led on this fight. And probably even led on the strike that led to Qaddafi’s capture or to his death.”

While of course the U.S. military played a major role in the Libya air war, particularly at its outset, it turns out that it was most likely an American drone that initially attacked Qaddafi’s convoy just outside Surt which ultimately led to his capture. Reuters reports on the incident:

France said its aircraft struck military vehicles belonging to Gaddafi forces near Sirte at about 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) on Thursday, but said it was unsure whether the strikes had killed Gaddafi.

Some two miles west of Sirte, 15 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns lay burnt out, smashed and smouldering next to an electricity sub station some 20 metres from the main road.

They had clearly been hit by a force far beyond anything the motley army the former rebels has assembled during eight months of revolt to overthrow the once feared leader.

But there was no bomb crater, indicating the strike may have been carried out by a helicopter gunship, or that it had been strafed by a fighter jet.

That helicopter gunship then, was most likely an American drone, the AFP reports:

A U.S. defense official said Oct. 20 a U.S. Predator drone along with a French fighter jet had attacked a convoy of vehicles in Libya that Paris believed was carrying Moammar Gadhafi. [...]

The U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the unmanned Predator aircraft had struck “the same convoy” but could not confirm that Gadhafi was in one of the vehicles.

A French official said Qaddafi’s convoy “was stopped from progressing as it sought to flee Sirte but was not destroyed by the French intervention.”

So if Rubio won’t give the U.S. any credit in NATO’s Libya campaign, at least perhaps he’ll acknowledge he was wrong in thinking American assets had nothing to do with Qaddafi’s capture?

Update

The New York Times reports that NATO is backing off the claim that they had anything to do with Qaddafi’s capture:

The French defense minister, Gérard Longuet, said that French and other NATO warplanes had overflown the colonel’s convoy, but refused to go beyond that. The Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said that the action that led to Colonel Qaddafi’s death was an operation by the rebel fighters “and no one else.”

Alyssa

The Year of the Woman on TV — And In Politics

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 20, 2011 at 5:22 pm

We’ve got no fewer than four women running for public office at all levels of government on network television this year — Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation, Britney S. Pierce and Sue Sylvester on Glee, and Claire Dunphy on Modern Family — and two shows where women are at the core of big policy discussions — Carrie on Homeland and Anna on A Gifted Man. The awesome Chloe Angyal and I got together to discuss them all on this week’s Bloggingheads:

One thing we discussed that I think is interesting about Homeland is that by putting a woman in the role of violating other people’s civil liberties and by going to far in the war on terror, the show establishes an interesting cross-gender complicity. It isn’t just men who did this, it isn’t just the military. It’s all of us. Carrie may be feminine and fragile (and she has the best wardrobe of a CIA agent I have ever seen, I would die for her closet), but she’s entirely capable of bugging a man’s house and watching him sleep with his wife.

Economy

Sen. Sessions Wants To Cut Food Stamp Program, Claiming It Has ‘Surged Out Of Control’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Oct 20, 2011 at 5:15 pm

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is pushing a new amendment that would make it more difficult for people to receive food stamps by restricting eligibility requirements and eliminating a planned $9 billion funding increase for the program. Sessions says his plan is intended to reduce the deficit and combat fraud, which he claims is rampant. From ABC News’ Top Line today:

SESSIONS: No program in our government has surged out of control more dramatically than food stamps. And nothing is being done about it. [...] Multimillion dollar lottery winners are getting food stamps because the money is considered to be an asset not an income. One of the fast and furious gun buyers –

HOST: But hold on, for ever lottery winner that has food stamps, there’s probably a lot more people who really need them who have them, right?

SESSIONS: Well look, do you think there are four times as many people who need food stamps today as in 2001. That answers itself. [...] We cannot do this. We do not have the money. Congress doesn’t understand that we can’t afford to double the program every three years.

Watch it:

It’s shockingly ignorant at best and dishonest at worst for Sessions — the ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee — to completely ignore the role the economy has played on food stamp usage. The cost of the program has jumped because more Americans are out of work and wages are down, thus more people need assistance. Food prices have also gone up, adding additional costs. But the cost of the program will come down on its own as the economy recovers and more people can afford to feed themselves.

In fact, the food stamp program has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies during the down economy, so cutting it now would not only take food out of peoples’ mouths, but could slow down the recovery. No one is trying to “double the program every three years” as Sessions claims. (Currently, nearly one in five Alabamians is on Food Stamps.)

And while the senator suggests the program has grown due to fraud, in fact, errors in the food stamp program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) –are currently at an all-time low, accounting for less than three percent of the program’s cost. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

To ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible households and in the proper amounts, SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program and, in recent years, has achieved its lowest error rates on record. In fiscal year 2009, even as caseloads were rising, states set new record lows for error rates. The net loss due to errors equaled only 2.7 percent of program costs in 2009. There is no evidence that program errors are driving up SNAP spending.

It’s worth noting that while Sessions claims the country can’t afford to feed the hungry, he has fought to preserve the Bush tax cuts for wealthy, subsides for big oil companies, and demanded new tax cuts for corporations, all of which also contribute to the deficit.

Yglesias

The New Strategy On Pakistan

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 20, 2011 at 4:44 pm

I have no particular insights on Pakistan policy, but I’m pretty sure that having “[t[he Obama administration’s senior diplomatic, military and intelligence officials deliver[] the bluntest warning to Pakistan’s leaders to date on Thursday, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that Pakistan would face serious consequences if it continued to tolerate safe havens for extremist organizations that kill Americans” isn’t going to punch the ticket.

Here’s the shape of the problem, as I see it. Pakistan’s major national security threat is India. Pakistan’s interest in the United States is in obtaining support that can be used to guard against this threat. Based on the fundamentals, it would seem more likely for the US to side with India than with Pakistan both because of democracy and because of China. The reason the US tends to tilt toward Pakistan is that we want Pakistani cooperation against these safe havens. But that means that if Pakistan ever succeeded in solving the problem, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot and would lose our support. Stern warnings aren’t going to resolve the basic underlying dilemma.

LGBT

Anti-Gay Groups Insert Marriage Issue Into Iowa’s Special Senate Election

By Igor Volsky on Oct 20, 2011 at 4:40 pm

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the FAMiLY LEADER have announced an independent expenditure in support Cindy Golding, the Republican in Iowa’s special Senate election in District 18. The seat could change the balance of power in the state Senate — Democrats have a 25-24 advantage, and Gloding’s victory would tie the chamber at 25 — and potentially allow conservatives to push through a constitutional amendment outlawing the state’s marriage equality. The groups’ flyer:

The Leader came under intense criticism earlier this year for asking the presidential candidates to sign a controversial 14-point marriage fidelity pledge. The document caused a rift within the Republican party and led several GOP insiders and 2012 presidential candidates to raise concerns about the group’s extreme conservative ideology and social beliefs. Aside from asking the party to affirm that homosexuality is a choice and that African American children enjoyed stronger families during the period of slavery, the group’s president — three-time failed gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats — has also been caught suggesting that President Obama was born in Kenya and breaking out in laughter at an offensive anti-gay joke.

Golding herself has not yet endorsed a constitutional ban against same-sex marriage and is instead focusing on jobs and the economy.

Related Posts

NEWS FLASH

Chicago Traders Mock Protesters: ‘We Are The 1 Percent Paying For This, You Are Paying For 1 Percent Of It’ | Today, demonstrators from Occupy Chicago continued to protest economic inequality, undeterred by the arrests of 175 of their members by the city for staying overnight in Grant Park. As demonstrators marched past the Chicago Board of Trade, financial traders above dropped flyers upon them that said, “We Are The 1 Percent Paying For This, You Are Paying For 1 Percent Of It.” Here are some snapshots of both sides of the flyers:

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 20, 2011 at 4:37 pm

Security

Lindsey Graham: ‘Let’s Get In On The Ground. There’s A Lot Of Money To Be Made In The Future Of Libya’

By Eli Clifton on Oct 20, 2011 at 4:30 pm

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has had no shortage of criticisms for Obama administration’s handling of NATO air support for Libyan rebels. But with news this morning of Muammar Qaddafi’s death, Graham offered a new set of criticisms for the administration’s policy of working with a NATO coalition in Libya. Graham, appearing on Fox News, said:

One of the problems I have with “leading from behind” is that when a day like this comes, we don’t have the infrastructure in place that we could have. I’m glad it ended the way it did. It took longer than it should have. If we could have kept American air power in the fight it would have been over quicker. Sixty-thousand Libyans have been wounded, 3,000 maimed, 25,000 killed. Let’s get in on the ground. There is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya. Lot of oil to be produced. Let’s get on the ground and help the Libyan people establish a democracy and a functioning economy based on free market principles.

Watch it:

TPM’s Brian Beutler reports that Graham is eager to build infrastructure in Libya, even while opposing a bill to improve infrastructure in the U.S.

Just last week, the administration announced it was planning to dispatch dozens of former military personnel to Libya to track down surface-to-air missile stockpiles but that doesn’t seem to be where Graham is focusing his concern. Instead, Graham says “leading from behind” — a go-to criticism for congressional hawks who wanted a greater U.S. military involvement in Libya — is now preventing the U.S. from moving quickly enough to profit from a post-Qaddafi Libya. The Senator is quick to point out that plenty of profits can be made from Libya.

Graham is accurate in his assessment that Libya has a lot of oil and potentially could make a lot of money for U.S. and other western oil companies. But the crudeness of observation and the clear ties between “get[ting] in on the ground,” “lot of oil to be produced,” and helping Libya establish “a functioning economy based on free market principles” make it sound like Graham’s eagerness for U.S. boots on the ground has more to do with economic interests than with securing a democratic and stable country for Libya’s citizens.

Justice

Republican Gov. Sandoval Flatly Refuses To Consider Alabama’s Immigration Law For Nevada

By Lee Fang and Scott Keyes on Oct 20, 2011 at 4:30 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At a conference for Western Republicans in Las Vegas this week, GOP governors had varied reactions to Alabama’s radical anti-immigration law. Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), who signed Arizona’s infamous SB17070 law, told ThinkProgress that she would like to implement the Alabama model, which goes further than her state by targeting school children and even making it illegal for undocumented immigrants to get water in their homes.

Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV), however, said Alabama’s law would not be right for his state:

KEYES: What about Alabama’s immigration law?

SANDOVAL: That’s in litigation right now, so–

KEYES: Is that something you see as a model that Nevada might be able to use?

SANDOVAL: I don’t. I don’t.

KEYES: You don’t think it’d be appropriate?

SANDOVAL: I don’t see it as being a model.

Watch it:

Nevada and Arizona are both states with a large immigrant population. The two divergent policy positions between Brewer and Sandoval highlights the larger schism in the Republican Party in terms of immigration and the Hispanic population.

Despite a federal court blocking parts of the Alabama law for now, including the schools provision, hundreds of Hispanic children have refused to show up at school and many families are fleeing the state.

Climate Progress

Groundbreaking Energy Efficiency Bill Introduced With Bi-Partisan Support, Ignored by Mainstream Media

By Stephen Lacey on Oct 20, 2011 at 4:23 pm

When mortgage lenders consider whether or not to give a homeowner a loan, they look at a variety of factors like income, value of personal assets, taxes and property value. (At least, they do now after poor lending standards helped create the financial crisis.)

But underwriters are still completely ignoring another very important factor in valuing a mortgage: energy costs.

With the average homeowner spending around $2,000 on energy costs — more than on real estate taxes or home insurance, according to the Institute for Market Transformation — properly accounting for energy use can give American consumers a better picture of how much they’re using. That, in turn, can help homeowners make better choices about what kind of home to buy, and help them determine if they need an efficiency upgrade.

A new bill introduced in the Senate yesterday by a bi-partisan pair of Senators — Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson and Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet — will require mortgage providers to factor energy costs into mortgages. Called the SAVE Act (Sensible Accounting to Value Energy), the law would instruct the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to develop new guidelines for appraisal that include energy.

In addition to receiving accurate information that will help them with a purchasing decision, the SAVE Act would allow homeowners to finance energy efficiency retrofits through their mortgages.

The economic impact of the SAVE program could be huge. According to an analysis put together by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy and the Institute for Market Transformation, these simple guideline changes could help create around 83,000 net jobs and over $1 billion in energy savings over the next decade. All with no cost to the taxpayer.

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