Tag Archives: debt

September 21, 2011, 12:49 pm

Police Violence Escalates: Day 5 on Wall Street

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: “In a just world, with a just economy, we have to wonder: Who would be out in the cold? Who would be getting arrested?”

Chanting “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” the protesters occupying Wall Street are digging in for a fifth day and circulating graphic images and video of escalating police violence and harassment.

There are several reports of injuries, including at least one hospitalization due to brutal arrest tactics, such as this one showing a protestor tossed headfirst to the pavement from atop a pile of equipment. Police were using the pretext of protesters’ having covered their media gear with a tarp to claim they’d illegally erected a tent on city sidewalks.

Never mind that it wasn’t a tent, wasn’t on a sidewalk, and that every media professional in New York covers their gear when it rains without the police uttering a word, much less…

September 13, 2011, 4:12 pm

What Are You Doing for the Next 2 Months?

By Marc Bousquet

Thousands of students and educators will join the 9/17 Wall Street occupation

On Saturday September 17th, movement organizers hope to funnel 20,000 protesters into Manhattan’s financial district, set up kitchens and tents, and occupy Wall Street for the next several months. Proclaiming we are the 99 percent, many of the 7,500 persons who have indicated an intention to participate are the highly educated working poor, underemployed with graduate degrees, or even fully employed but unable to meet their education bills like this woman (see her blog and related stories),who writes, “I have a masters degree & a full-time job in my field—and I have started selling my body to pay off my debt.”

After a September 1 test run resulted in nine arrests, Adbusters and Alexa O’Brien of US Day of Rage…

August 10, 2011, 7:33 pm

Still Standard, Still Poor

By Todd Gitlin

I posted the other day on the mysteries of the Standard & Poor’s US government credit demotion, and marveled that it was taken seriously in the light of S&P’s well-known and grotesque part first in inflating the housing bubble and then in accelerating the crash. The subsequent discussion in this space, as is its wont, was soon enough hijacked by one-note ranters who always have an all-purpose speech ready to the effect that all that matters are deficits—a subject that did not transfix the right when Reagan and George W. Bush were heaping up deficits; but I digress. It’s worth getting back to the subject of credit ratings, not only because they play a part in the actual world but because they point to a huge failing both in public understanding and in the journalism that’s hypothetically interested in elevating that understanding.

Commenter suomynona is (as it were) on the money,…

August 5, 2011, 5:55 pm

Confused and Misled

By Todd Gitlin

Americans who talk to pollsters are a sadly confused bunch. Here’s Finding #1, from today’s New York Times:

The Republicans compromised too little, a majority of those polled [by NYT/CBS] said. All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.

So, by a small margin, those polled prefer the Democratic approach to the debt-ceiling talks to the Republican. They run 50-50 on Obama’s approach. As for the Tea Party, (Finding #2), it

is now viewed unfavorably by 40 percent of the public and favorably by just 20 percent, according to the poll. In mid-April 29 percent of those polled viewed the movement unfavorably, while 26 percent viewed it favorably. And 43 percent of Americans now think the Tea Party has too much influence on the Republican Party, up from …

February 27, 2011, 7:16 am

What to Look for at the Oscars

By Laurie Essig

With the Oscars tonight, many people mistakenly believe that the important question is who will win? Annette Benning for The Kids are All Right or Natalie Portman for Black Swan? But the awards at the Oscars are just smoke and mirrors. What we really should care about is not who wins, but what they look like. From the fashion victories and faux pas to the far more important question of whether they look “old” or “too plastic,” we will study the faces and bodies of our Hollywood gods and goddesses, especially the goddesses, the way other tribes study the entrails of ritual sacrifices: as a sign of how we should behave.

More than 75 years ago, anthropologist Marcel Maus wrote that ordinary humans were beginning to imitate film stars. Maus saw this as part of a universal human trend of “prestigious imitation.” In other words, we always imitate the people in our tribe with the…