The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (40 page)

We filed suit. This past week, the St. Paul and Minneapolis police and the Secret Service have settled with us. In addition to paying out $100,000, the St. Paul police department has agreed to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the First Amendment rights of the press and public with respect to police operations—including police handling of media coverage of mass demonstrations—and to pursue implementation of the training program in Minneapolis and statewide.

As we move into the next conventions and cover protests like Occupy Wall Street, this largest settlement to come out of the 2008 RNC arrests should be a warning to police departments around the country to stop arresting and intimidating journalists, or engaging in any unlawful arrests. We shouldn’t have to get a record while trying to put things on the record.

But do police actually pay the price? Before the 2008 Republican and Democratic national conventions, each party bought insurance policies to indemnify the convention cities from any damages resulting from lawsuits.

Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, told me: “St. Paul actually negotiated a special insurance provision with the Republican host committee so that the first $10 million in liability for lawsuits arising from the convention will be covered by the host committee. . . . It basically means we (the city) can commit wrongdoing, and we won’t have to pay for it.”

Jump forward to today. The bailed-out Wall Street megabank JPMorgan Chase gave a tax-deductible $4.6 million donation to the New York City Police Foundation, which has protesters asking: Who is the NYPD paid to protect, the public or the corporations? The 99 percent or the 1 percent?

Marina Sitrin, part of Occupy Wall Street’s legal working group, told me that the protest was going to be based at Chase Plaza, but the NYPD pre-emptively closed it. The protesters moved to Zuccotti Park, which they renamed Liberty Square.

According to an undated press release on JPMorgan Chase’s website, in response to the $4.6 million donation: “New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing ‘profound gratitude’ for the company’s donation.” Given the size of the donation, and the police harassment and violence against the protesters, we must question how Kelly shows his gratitude.

January 26, 2012

Obama’s Late Payment to Mortgage-Fraud Victims

In his State of the Union address, many heard echoes of the Barack Obama of old, the presidential aspirant of 2007 and 2008. Among the populist pledges rolled out in the speech was tough talk against the too-big-to-fail banks that have funded his campaigns and for whom many of his key advisers have worked: “The rest of us are not bailing you out ever again,” he promised.

President Obama also made a striking announcement, one that could have been written by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly: “I’m asking my attorney general to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”

Remarkably, President Obama named New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as co-chairperson of the Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses. Schneiderman was on a team of state attorneys general negotiating a settlement with the nation’s five largest banks. He opposed the settlement as being too limited and offering overly generous immunity from future prosecution for financial fraud. For his outspoken consumer advocacy, he was kicked off the negotiating team. He withdrew his support of the settlement talks, along with several other key attorneys general, including California’s Kamala Harris, an Obama supporter, and Delaware’s Beau Biden, the vice president’s son.

In an Op-Ed penned last November, Schneiderman and Biden wrote, “We recognized early this year that, though many public officials—including state attorneys general, members of Congress and the Obama administration—have delved into aspects of the bubble and crash, we needed a more comprehensive investigation before the financial institutions at the heart of the crisis are granted broad releases from liability.”

When news of Schneiderman’s appointment surfaced, MoveOn.org sent an email to its members declaring: “Just weeks ago, this investigation wasn’t even on the table, and the big banks were pushing for a broad settlement that would have made it impossible. . . . This is truly a huge victory for the 99 percent movement.”

The stakes are very high for the public, and for President Obama. He relied heavily on Wall Street backers to fund his massive campaign war chest in 2008. Now, in this post–
Citizens United
era, with expected billion-dollar campaign budgets, Obama could find himself out of favor with Wall Street. For the public, as noted by the Center for Responsible Lending: “More than 20,000 new families face foreclosure each month, including a disproportionate percentage of African-American and Latino households. CRL research indicates that we are only about halfway through the crisis.”

Unanswered at this point is whether or not Schneiderman’s appointment signals his willingness to go along with the multistate settlement now said to be nearing completion. Details are not yet public, but the deal is said to involve a $25 billion payment from the largest banks as a settlement for charges surrounding problematic mortgage-loan practices like robo-signing documents and grossly inadequate loan servicing, making foreclosures more likely.
Rolling Stone
’s Matt Taibbi, who has been doing essential investigative reporting on the financial crisis, told me: “It doesn’t make sense for companies to settle without New York or California, since the potential liability from those two states alone could put them out of business, could cripple any of the too-big-to-fail banks.”

Obama is aware that those at the Occupy Wall Street protests around the country include many who were his most active supporters during the 2008 campaign. Does the formation of the new task force signify a move to more progressive policies, as MoveOn suggests?

Longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader doesn’t hold much hope: “This financial crimes unit, that’s like putting another label on a few doors in the Justice Department without a real expansion in the budget.” Delaware’s Biden expressed similar concerns about the task force, asking: “How many FBI agents are being put on it? How many investigators? How many prosecutors?”

This is the Occupy Wall Street conflict distilled. Will Eric Schneiderman’s new job lead to the indictment of fraudulent financiers, or to just another indictment of our corrupt political system?

February 2, 2012

Romney’s 1% Nation Under God

Although Mitt Romney has yet to win a majority in a Republican primary, he won big in Florida. After he and the pro-Romney super PACs flooded the airwaves with millions of dollars’ worth of ads in a state where nearly half the homeowners are underwater, he talked about whom he wants to represent. “We will hear from the Democrat Party the plight of the poor, and there’s no question, it’s not good being poor,” he told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. “You could choose where to focus, you could focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You could focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.” Of the very rich, Romney assures us, “They’re doing just fine.” With an estimated personal wealth of $250 million, Romney should know.

Romney’s campaign itself is well-financed, but his success to date, especially against his current main rival, Newt Gingrich, is driven by massive cash infusions to a so-called super PAC, the new breed of political action committee that can take unlimited funds from individuals and corporations. Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating their activities with a candidate’s campaign. Federal Election Commission filings made public January 31 reveal that the principal super PAC supporting Romney, Restore Our Future, raised close to $18 million in the second half of 2011, from just 199 donors. Among his supporters are Alice Walton, who, although listed in the report as a “rancher,” is better known as an heir to the Walmart fortune, and the famously caustic venture capitalist and billionaire Samuel Zell, the man credited with driving the Tribune media company into bankruptcy. William Koch, the third of the famous Koch brothers, also gave.

Juxtapose those 199 with the number of people living in poverty in the United States. According to the most recent figures available from the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million people lived in poverty in 2010, 15.1 percent of the population, the largest number in the fifty-two years the poverty estimates have been published. 2010 marked the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty.

Romney, in his victory speech in New Hampshire, said: “This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success. . . . We are one nation under God.”

The next morning, NBC’s Matt Lauer challenged him, asking: “Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?” Romney doubled down, claiming: “I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent—and those people who have been most successful will be in the 1 percent . . . [it’s] entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”

And not caring for the poor is consistent? Romney presents a confusing critique of President Barack Obama and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Put aside for the moment that Occupy Wall Street is generally very critical of President Obama, and especially of his appointees like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (who switched from Republican to independent in order to serve under Obama, but did not switch his politics) and former economic adviser Larry Summers. Romney clearly has no idea what the Occupy Wall Street movement is about if he thinks that the tens of thousands protesting, often facing police violence and risking arrest, are there because of envy. It is, as Lauer put it in his question, about fairness.

In the same New Hampshire speech, Romney said President Obama “wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society.” Curious words from a man who salted $3 million into a Swiss bank account. His hastily closed UBS bank account stands out as its own form of European entitlement. Coupled with investments in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, Romney’s effective tax rate was 13.9 percent in 2010, a fraction of the 35 percent paid by average middle-class families that he claims to care so much about.

As Romney campaigns across his 1 percent nation under God, he moves from Florida, the state with the highest foreclosure rate, to Nevada, the state with the highest unemployment rate. Expect him to increasingly care, if not for the very poor, then for the votes they will likely cast against him.

February 23, 2012

New Obama Campaign Co-Chair: “The President Is Wrong”

“The president is wrong.” So says one of the newly appointed co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

Those four words headline the website of the organization Progressives United, founded by former U.S. senator, and now Obama campaign adviser, Russ Feingold. He is referring to Obama’s recent announcement that he will accept super PAC funds for his re-election campaign. Feingold writes: “The President is wrong to embrace the corrupt corporate politics of Citizens United through the use of super PACs—organizations that raise unlimited amounts of money from corporations and the richest individuals, sometimes in total secrecy. It’s not just bad policy; it’s also dumb strategy.” And, he says, it’s “dancing with the devil.”

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt said to Congress, “All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.” He signed a bill into law banning such contributions in 1907. In 2012, this hundred-year history of campaign-finance controls died, thanks to five U.S. Supreme Court justices who decided, in the 2010 Citizens United case, that corporations can use their money to express free speech, most notably in their efforts to influence federal elections.

After eighteen years representing Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate, Feingold lost his re-election to self-funded Republican multimillionaire and tea-party favorite Ron Johnson. Since then, Feingold has been teaching law, started Progressives United and, while supporting the effort to recall Wisconsin’s embattled Gov. Scott Walker, has steadfastly refused to run against him or for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl.

Feingold was the sole member of the U.S. Senate to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act. He was a fierce critic of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Although Obama, as a senator, originally threatened to filibuster any legislation that would grant retroactive immunity to the telecom corporations involved with the wiretapping, he reversed himself on the eve of the Democratic Convention in 2008 and voted for the bill. Feingold remained adamantly opposed. On the war in Afghanistan, Feingold told me: “I was the first member of the Senate to call for a timeline to get us out of Afghanistan. Even before Obama was elected, when it was between [John] McCain and Obama, I said, ‘Why are we talking about a surge?’ . . . Sending our troops over there, spending billions and billions of dollars in Afghanistan, makes no sense. And I think it was a mistake for the president to do the surge, and I think he’s beginning to realize we need to get out of there.”