"The Borowitz Report" - A Letter From Goldman Sachs

October 18, 2011

A Letter From Golden Sachs Concerning Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)– The following is a letter released today by Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of banking giant Goldman Sachs:

Dear Investor:

Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:

How can we make money off them?

The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.

The Rage Fund will seek out opportunities to invest in products that are poised to benefit from the spreading protests, from police batons and barricades to stun guns and forehead bandages. Furthermore, as clashes between police and protesters turn ever more violent, we are making significant bets on companies that manufacture replacements for broken windows and overturned cars, as well as the raw materials necessary for the construction and incineration of effigies.

It would be tempting, at a time like this, to say “Let them eat cake.” But at Goldman, we are actively seeking to corner the market in cake futures. We project that through our aggressive market manipulation, the price of a piece of cake will quadruple by the end of 2011.

Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus. As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, “Occupy this.” We haven’t felt so good about something we’ve sold since our souls.

Sincerely,

Lloyd Blankfein

Chairman, Goldman Sachs

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"Occupy Wall Street" - End the Federal Reserve

Watch this video here to learn more of what the people are saying @ Occupy Wall Street

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhXo2z7539hk1ZwzPb

"Margaret Kimberley" - Freedom Rider: Occupy Wall Street, Denounce the Democrats

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

If the Occupation Wall Street is to be truly independent of both banker-funded political parties, they will have to include the Democrats in their denunciations. There has been precious little direct criticism of the “other” pro-Wall Street party at Liberty/Zuccotti Park. “Words like breaking up the concentration of wealth and power will be meaningless without a more pointed critique of the political system, a critique which should be no respecter of persons or party.”

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“The only way to protest income inequality or bailouts of the financial services industry is to protest against the people in power, even when they happen to be Democrats.”

In 2009, the New York state legislature imposed a tax surcharge on residents earning

$1 million or more per year. This “millionaire’s tax” was passed with the proviso that it expire on December 31, 2011. When Democrats in the state capital proposed extending this tax on the rich, Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo said no, and the surcharge was history.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters held a march, dubbed the millionaire’s march, to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes. They marched past the New York City homes of billionaire David Koch, News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch, and Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase. For some strange reason, they did not march past the offices of the Democratic governor.

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"Tracy Sherlock" - Are Co-ops the Solution to Occupy Wall Street Woes?

Published on Monday, October 17, 2011 by Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/solution+Occupy+Wall+Street+woes/5560495/story.html

Alternative business model called mechanism for democratizing the economy

by Tracy Sherlock

It's a business model in British Columbia that controls more than $10 billion in assets, employs 13,000 people and returns all profits to members. The model governs enterprises in banking, housing, retail and health care. Fully one-third of British Columbians are members in at least one of the 700 operations operating in this model: the co-operative.

 For John Restakis, executive director of the B.C. Co-operative Association, co-ops are a mechanism for democratizing the economy, something the folks participating in Occupy Wall Street or Occupy Vancouver could turn to as a solution to their grievances.

"The whole point of Occupy Wall Street is reacting against corporate structure and the fact that people have no control over the economy is what's at the heart of it," Restakis said. "Co-ops are a concrete way to address that."

Co-op Week in B.C. runs from today until Sunday and the United Nations has declared 2012 the international year of the co-operative to raise public awareness of this alternative business model and its contributions to poverty reduction and job creation.

"Co-operatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility," UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon said on the UN website.

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"John Nichols" - Why Cornel West Was Arrested in Memory of MLK, in Support of the Occupy Movement

By John Nichols

http://www.nationofchange.org/why-cornel-west-was-arrested-memory-mlk-support-occupy-movement-1318868491

On the day that President Obama and others celebrated the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the dedication of Washington's King memorial, Dr. Cornel West was a few blocks away—celebrating King with activism on behalf of economic justice and the "Occupy" movement.

After attending the dedication of the King memorial, West joined a "Stop the Machine! Create a New World!" protest march.

On the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, with fellow activists, he called out the high court for making decisions that allow corporations to dominate the economic life and the politics of the nation.

"We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions," West declared. "We want to send a lesson to ourselves, to our loved ones, our families, our communities, our nation and the world, that out of deep love for working and poor people that we are willing to put whatever it takes (on the line)—even if we get arrested today—and say we will not allow this day of Martin Luther King Jr's memorial to go by without somebody going to jail. Because Martin King would be here right with us, willing to throw down out of deep love."

Then, the author of "Race Matters," "Democracy Matters" and other groundbreaking books written in the King tradition sat down on the steps of the court with at least 18 protesters.

"We are here to bear witness, in solidarity with the Occupy movement all around the world because we love poor people, we love working people, and we want Martin Luther King Jr. to smile from the grave that we haven't forgotten," said West.

Moments later, West was cuffed by the police and led into the court building as a crowd chanted: "We're with you, Dr. West!" and "We won't forget!"

"Pictures of Signs" @ Occupy Wall Street

There are some signs included in this slideshow of OWS signs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/13/occupy-wall-street-signs-_n_1009798.html#s393050

“Zaid Jilani” - The Other Occupation, How Wall Street Occupies Washington

Sunday 16 October 2011

by: Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress [3] | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/other-occupation-how-wall-street-occupies-washington/1318774400

As ThinkProgress has previously noted [5], the 99 Percent Movement has been set off thanks to long-standing economic inequities and and a recession caused primarily by Wall Street’s misdeeds.

Wall Street did not engage in reckless financial behavior — which plunged 64 million people worldwide into extreme poverty [6] — in a vacuum.

In order to engage in these practices that brought the world’s economy to its knees, Wall Street had to make sure that the federal government based in Washington, DC would both de-regulate the financial industry (and provide lax oversight) and that Congress and the Federal Reserve would bail out banks with few strings attached if they were in danger of failing

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"Eliot Spitzer" - Why Occupy Wall Street Has Already Won

By Eliot Spitzer, Slate

Posted on October 15, 2011, Printed on October 16, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152746/eliot_spitzer%3A_why_occupy_wall_street_has_already_won

Occupy Wall Street has already won, perhaps not the victory most of its participants want, but a momentous victory nonetheless. It has already altered our political debate, changed the agenda, shifted the discussion in newspapers, on cable TV, and even around the water cooler. And that is wonderful.

Suddenly, the issues of equity, fairness, justice, income distribution, and accountability for the economic cataclysm–issues all but ignored for a generation—are front and center. We have moved beyond the one-dimensional conversation about how much and where to cut the deficit. Questions more central to the social fabric of our nation have returned to the heart of the political debate. By forcing this new discussion, OWS has made most of the other participants in our politics—who either didn’t want to have this conversation or weren’t able to make it happen—look pretty small.

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"Rabbi Michael Lerner" - The Message and Strategy that is Needed by Occupy Wall Street

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Message-and-Strategy-t-by-Rabbi-Michael-Lern-111016-579.html

October 16, 2011 By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan's Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations on the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest 1% o f people who are writing the rules of the global economy and are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality.

I'm particularly proud that young Jews have created Sukkot, the temporary huts that Jews are supposed to live in for 7 days (the holiday started Wednesday night) in order to detach from the material security provided by our homes, to re-identify ourselves as a people that has mostly been homeless for most of our history, and to remind ourselves that all the accomplishments of material security are meaningless unless shared with everyone else. So on this Shabbat of Sukkot Jews around the world read King Solomon's biblical Book of Ecclesiastes with its message that all the striving for power and wealth is pointless, that we are here for a very short while, and that all we can do while here is to maximize love and generosity (ok, that last part was more Lerner than King Solomon, but I'm hoping he would agree). Tikkunista Jews are challenging the establishment Jews, some of whom run the very institutions that all of us supporting Occupy Wall Street hope to see replaced by a more just order.

The media, trying to discredit us, says we don't know what we are for, only what we are against. So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound byte for "what we are for."

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"Chris Hedges" - A Movement Too Big to Fail

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_movement_too_big_to_fail_20111017/

Posted on Oct 17, 2011

By Chris Hedges

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do—fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice.

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