I’ve been following (mostly online) the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Boston protests since nearly the beginning. They got traction and coverage on blogs and Twitter long before the media was covering it - in fact, before the unprovoked pepper spray incidents that made the news, the only place to read about what was happening was online.

The media complained that they weren’t cohesive enough and there wasn’t news to cover. Well, that has quickly changed and evolved. For starters, there were some very bad decisions from the NYPD - both institutionally, and by some idiot individuals - which put the protests on the map for the media, and solidified the motivation of participants and supporters. What’s more, it seems the organic sort of organizing that has sprung up has - and I have to use the word evolved again - to meet the challenges of running a protest, dealing with the media, finding a set of demands to articulate why they are angry and not going to take it any more. OWS has spokespeople and media tents and a strong online presence - all while being relatively leadersless in the traditional sense.

In some ways, my personal cynicism alert flag is up. (Yeah, I know, I’m too young to be truly cynical…) I spent years organizing with the peace movement against the Iraq war, butting my head up against the sheer stubbornness of the Bush administration and, later, Obama’s. After all, GitMo is still open, the USA PATRIOT Act was reauthorized and is being used to spy on Americans without due process, we’re still in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan though with some troop drawdown, and Obama even unilaterally bombed, for right or wrong, Libya, without the consent of Congress.

The only satisfaction we got out of our fight was that most of the American public got on our side after a while. But it still reelected Bush and let itself be lied to about Kerry’s war record and ability to lead, and we never got a truly different kind of leader to replace him in 2008, either. Obama put Wall St executives in charge of the economy even after it was evident they were full of shit.

But there is something really interesting happening with Occupy[America]. For one thing, it’s just average citizens (not diehard liberals or extremely informed people like me) who are protesting. Photo after photo, interview after interview, this is very evident.

There are so many people in this country who have been foreclosed on, laid off, unable to move forward, that a segment of them, with nothing left to lose, are truly taking the fight to the streets. Since they have nothing left to lose - no middle class lifestyle, no prospects - they have a lot to fight for. I always said the worst part about being an anti-war protester is that most of our citizens, even when sympathetic (and the majority was by the time I left that movement) are busy with their lives, making their livings, feeding their families, going to soccer games, and being generally content that things aren’t that bad for them, personally. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s totally human, and what’s more, a legacy of the last century of American progress. We built the middle class. A country with a middle class able to make ends meet is a relatively politically stable country. It’s a good thing.

Which is why I think there is something different in the air.

Gradually, we’ve seen the erosion of the buying power and the salaries of the middle class. For so many decades before, our children did at least a little better than their parents. Then, since the Reagan era, we started to see the slide. We began to only tread water…then occasionally swallowed some. Then we began drowning, but we as a people were the last to see it happen.

Even in the 2008 economic meltdown, we failed to notice our lungs filling with something other than air.

This generation of young people really are the first who truly believe - nay, who know - they are not destined to do better than their parents. Unlike the spoiled kids of my generation (raised largely in the 80s and coming of age in the 90s), they see the coming tide sweeping over them and pulling them under the water before they even get a chance to begin. They are left behind. And they know that if they do nothing, it will only get worse. They have nothing left to lose.

They join every one of their older siblings, parents, grandparents who have lost a house, a job, a future, despite being of the generations born with more promise. For some of us older ones, we’ve experienced firsthand how it’s gonna be going forward if there are no changes. For the rest of us older ones, we are beginning to understand how fragile our position of comfort is. The OccupyWallSt movement presents this to us in bas-relief - the notion that the middle class is under siege and has been for quite some time.

The thing that is different from now from these previous movements is that the situation that has caused these long term problems is not going to be alleviated by last generation’s leaders. Obama is cut off at the knees to even patch a pathetic temporary band-aid (the jobs bill) on our economic slide by Republican intransigence. And even Obama’s half-measures would probably only prove to elongate the stagnation, not solve the underlying problem. We’re now seeing the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us reach the levels seen right before the 1929 crash. Eventually, this was going to get noticed by someone. By everyone.

Even the Tea Party movement, while misguided to the extreme, is an expression of this loss of power by the average person. Why did they catch fire? Despite being such a minority of even the Republican party? Because poor and middle class Republicans too are suffering in this economic climate, this class warfare on us by the super-wealthy. They just aren’t right on who to blame for this.

Most of America, on the other hand, already knows what and who is to blame. They already overwhelmingly want to see taxes raised back up on the uberwealthy. They know that Wall St needs taking down a peg or three, and that we need to go back to regulating our economic system so that the playing field becomes level again. They just need the energy to look up from their day to day struggles against the tide, to look up, and see that horizon again.

I don’t know where the Occupy movement is going to go. It seems to change and swell bigger by the day, though it could have an upper limit, I suppose. But if this truly is the moment where the American people reach the tipping point, if this is the straw that, finally, after 30 years of straws, breaks the camel’s back, then maybe we can make the changes without the economic crash that I have been foreseeing for years. That crash (which will make 2008 look like cakewalk) could still be coming. But if we organize enough in advance, if we can offer an alternative to the American people now, perhaps we will not lose a decade like they did in the Great Depression. After all, we have history to inform us how best to rebuild the American middle class and spread prosperity around to everyone.

So, occupy on! There may not be an immediate result, but it could offer a long term solution. Hats off to the most powerless among us.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” - V

Yesterday, the lower body of the Massachusetts state legislature passed the casino gambling bill. Yesterday, we took a step closer to allowing predatory gambling in our state, affecting thousands of families that otherwise would have not been torn apart by gambling addiction. It is a well-documented outcome that within a 50 mile radius of slot parlors and casinos, you increase the level of addiction. Proximity to slots means new addicts.

There has not been a true cost-benefit study, nor will there be. The proponents constantly cite job numbers and state revenues, stats which come direct from the casino lobbyists and their paid consultants. We have never heard of the estimated costs associated with predatory gambling in our backyard - such as mitigating increased crime rates (and there will be increased crime, and from the unlikeliest of people). Affecting public institutions, churches, nonprofits, and small businesses especially.

In CT, a state-commissioned study showed that the rate of embezzlement has gone up 10 times the national average there.

Among other associated costs (such as the millions needed to create an oversight agency), is the loss of state revenues from other sources which are taxed, as some people spend their discretionary monies on slots and gambling instead of other goods and services. There’s only so many ways to slice the pie. You can’t create more pie matter out of thin air.

The costs only go up over time. A decade from now, the number of addicts who commit crimes to support their habit, tear their families apart, and/or require addiction services from the state will only go up. Businesses in the vicinity of a casino may well not be able to compete and shut down. Cultural institutions closest to CT already have a hard time attracting the best acts to their stages, and this will also spread and worsen. This won’t happen all in the first year the casinos begin operating. But over the next two decades we’ll see increased effects from the life-sucking casinos and slot parlors.

Casino proponents say that you get increased tourism when you open a casino. This is only true if every state doesn’t already have one. We will not pull people from NV, or CT, or PA, or RI, or anywhere where else gambling is already accessible, with our shiny new casinos. This is a false hope and gets more false with every new state that adds casinos. We’d be better off focusing on our historic and cultural offerings to attract more visitors.

They say we’ll be adding jobs. But that is finite, the jobs are mostly low-paying, and the numbers they cite are usually overblown.

Think about your disposable income. You might go out to eat, buy a new couch, or go the the movies. Each one of these things supports a whole host of services and goods (farmers, small business owners, chefs, fabric companies, woodworkers, gaffers, costume designers, camera operators). Now, decide whether or not you can afford to buy a couch, or lose a thousand at a casino. What does the casino income support? A few paltry (mostly low paying) service jobs locally, a trickle to the state, and the rest pulled out of the state but not to support other producers - no, the bulk of the money goes straight to the pockets of the casino profiteers. Casinos are empty calories, like the guy who consumes a 2-liter bottle of Coke a day, is 50 lbs overweight, and wondering why.

Never mind the questionable morality and sustainability of the state being in the position of needing to create more gambling addicts to raise funds for schools. Studies show that at least 50% of the profits a casino makes are from the problem gamblers. That means 50% of the state revenues we get from casinos is sucked from people who cannot help gambling and will do so until they destroy their own lives and the lives of others. And slots, in particular, are rigged to make them particularly addictive (similar to adding chemicals to cigarettes to increase their addictiveness).

Casinos are going bankrupt and losing money in many states. States with casinos have huge budget problems as those revenues go into the tank, whereas Mass, with its infrastructure and high-level industry investments (such as in green and biotech) has seen amazing job and economic growth compared to other states. And we want to tie our future to those same gambling stars? Connecticut just raised sales and use taxes this summer to patch their big budget deficit. Oh yes, those casinos saved CT from economic ruin. (That’s sarcasm. Revenues for CT’s casinos are dropping alarmingly.)

So in sweeps DeLeo and his race track slot parlor mentality. And he begs, borrows, and twists arms to get enough votes to pass a bill includes a racino (an element that sank the last gambling bill in the Senate). But this time, closed door compromises between the Senate president, House Speaker, and Governor Patrick all but ensure there’s no hope now in the Senate, unless we see an upset.

Of course, we expect such short-sighted voting from some of our elected officials, such as Rep Tom Golden and Dave Nangle, as they have a history of such. However, my biggest disappointment is reserved for those who at least ought to know better about rosy projections that never have panned out in the past in other states. Who are smart and should be keenly interested in an independent, thorough evaluation before we commit an irreversible act to allow predatory gambling.

Politicians like Governor Deval Patrick, who I know is way smarter than this.

Progressive state reps that I have long supported, like Representative Jen Benson, who was a Yes vote on this bill.

And other progressives around the state, like Rep. Lori Ehrlich of Marblehead.

I call on our new state Senator Eileen Donoghue to vote NO on this casino bill. Donoghue, who is Chair of the Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development, pointed out on Facebook, the other day, a Sun article outlining some meager possible protections for cultural institutions.

I hope this does not mean she is already a “Yes” vote. Senator Donoghue, you are not only Chair of that committee, but you are also on the committees for Community Development and Small Businesses, and Economic Development and Emerging Technologies. I entreat you to look at the casinos bill with your small business, cultural institution, and constituent eyes. Question what you have been told about the revenues for the state and the jobs numbers - look at what is happening to casino states all over the country right now. Understand that allowing casinos comes at a huge cost - not only to our citizens and our economic development, but to our politics, which will be further spoiled by the corruption that comes with the casino lobby parking itself permanently in our state.

Do you want to be noted in history as a person who enabled our state go from the strong economic engine that we are, which invests in its own people and businesses, to a state with many of the serious problems of others, states who thought they could make a quick and easy buck…by gambling? It doesn’t work for the poor schlub who thinks buying a lottery ticket every week is a good retirement plan, and it won’t work for Massachusetts, either.

We burned through the free cash by keeping taxes artificially low.

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I’ve been pointing out the shortcomings of the pizza delivery guy, so it’s doubtful Sal Lupoli and I are gonna be paisans. But I gotta admit, I bet this guy is alright. Just ask Kendal Wallace:

I also had a brief telephone chat with businessman Sal Lupoli, who called to thank The Sun for the special section on his success in redeveloping mills in Lawrence. Sal is one of those people who can squeeze every minute out of life. Besides running two big businesses, he’s back in school in an intensive master’s program at MIT and helping to coach youngsters in Chelmsford Pop Warner and Chelmsford High. He thanked The Sun’s newsroom by sending over 10 pizzas Wednesday night.

If the stupendous, now infamous, insert in a recent edition of The Sun wasn’t enough of a pledge of Wallace’s civic amore to Lupoli, you now have the close of today’s chat. Good thing Sal is Italian. If his name was John Joseph Smithwick, Wallace would have to wear a claddagh ring.

The red carpet has been rolled out, by The Sun. It runs down Andover Street, all the way to Lawrence. That’s all well and good, I guess. Except, Sal wants the Lowell end to stop in the Council Chamber.

Will old Lowell just roll over?
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I feel like I’ve used a similar title recently. ;-P

Anyway, who needs steenkin’ poor people to make a living wage, anyway? Especially when your vote against working people is…totally moot.

Saying that the minimum wage kills jobs, yesterday New Hampshire’s Tea Party-dominated legislature abolished the state’s rules on the issue. As is so often the case, however, it was a meaningless move.

The change takes effect Sunday, but it will have no consequence for employers or employees because New Hampshire’s minimum wage was the same as the federal wage, which remains in force. During the fight over the removing the state law from the books, Republicans insisted the wage law not only makes it harder to create jobs, it kills them.

[snip]
First term GOP state Rep. Carol McGuire, the repeal’s sponsor, says young workers aren’t worth the minimum wage anyway: “It’s very discriminatory, particularly for young people. They’re not worth the minimum.”

Corporations don’t kill jobs. Minimum wage kills jobs. *facepalm*

That’s why Massachusetts, which has a higher minimum wage than the federal’s $7.25 (MA is at $8.00), has one of the slowest rates of economic growth in the nation - oh, wait.

Just for comparison, NH does have a low unemployment rate of just 5.2%:

But you’ll note that VT also has a very low rate of 5.7% as well, and their minimum wage is higher than ours ($8.15). And to add to that, between workers working in MA, VT, ME etc, fully 19% of NH’s workforce don’t work in NH.

Just sayin’. Not that we don’t welcome the 13% of NH’s citizens paying our income tax, mind you.

There’s reality, and then there’s the redneck leaders of NH’s ginormous volunteer legislature…

[HT to the Mr.]

635. Can we safely say now that the Republicans are not serious about jobs, the economy, or anything else pertaining to solving the problems this country faces right now?

‘K, thanks.

If you haven’t already had your “duuuuuh” moment, please watch this. If simple freaking facts can’t sway you, then nothing can, except maybe if god talks to you or something. I’m told he does to Rick Perry.

Video update: Aaron Sorkin’s Crystal Ball? Is it creepy or are the GOPers just this lame?

“Frankly, your speaker has it. Am I dealing with him, or am I dealing with you?”

Taegan Goddard, a national blogger type, puts out a bit on the current debt ceiling/deficit talks that strike me. For those following, House Majority Leader and young gun Eric Cantor has aggressively asserted himself in the current talks being held at the White House. The whole thing struck me as odd, because it is Obama that should be the young petulant one in the room. pssst. I heard he is a ….radical.

Anyways, the 2010 election is not likely to redefine decades of brokering between the two political parties. So, why is the gristled John Boehner making a hole and making it wide for Cantor?
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In the ongoing struggle to stop the vandalism, proposed by Enel, to Lowell’s unique and prestigious Pawtucket Dam; we have found a strong ally. Below the fold is a stunning argument for FERC to reverse its leanings towards a ruling of “no adverse impact” to a solid ruling of - “no action.” Meaning STOP THE BLADDER DAM, dead in the water. The arguement is asserted by Patrick Martin, President of The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage.

I’d like to expound upon this point by Dr. Martin:
The Pawtucket Dam is a critical element in the ensemble of resources that make up the Landmark district. This is a waterpower and industrial production system, not a random collection of architectural elements, and the preservation of system elements is essential to maintaining the integrity of the site as a whole. The dam is certainly eligible for listing on the National Register in its own right, but in this case is included in the broader listing of the full District. While there may have been intrusions in the past, as your assessment notes, they have not had the degree of impact that this undertaking will impose. And of course, past sins should not be used to justify current acts.

Martin correctly states that the Pawtucket Dam is a component, a part, of a larger historical footprint. That footprint extends well into the heart of our City. That historical footprint has directed and dictated what could and could not be done, in terms of construction and renovations, in Lowell for decades. The whole, being greater than the sum of its part, has brought new economic life into Lowell. Those that have invested in this compact with history are shareholders bonded to the integrity of the historical wholeness of Lowell. To harm the Pawtucket Dam is to harm these shareholders, those that have invested their sweat equity into the labor of renewal, into saving Lowell. It is clear to all that victims within the flood plain will be burdened with the costs that Enel can willfully defer to them, should FERC rule so. The pollution of flooding water is an industrial hazard not yet recognized as such by regulators.

But what of the harm done to those Lowellians downtown? To vandalize the Pawtucket Dam destroys their investment. They shoulder, now and the many years before, the added burden of living and working in a Landmark district. To disregard their sacrifice in holding up their end of the bargain would be a shame.

Who wants to see the crown jewel of corporate greed cemented over the snapped backbone of a city’s history?

Know this, it will be more than just the unfortunate souls in Pawtucketville wontonly troubled by our city’s defiled legacy, if it goes that far. The cobblestone streets and the hopes and dreams that grow there will wither, dry as a bone.

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I really like to use Facebook. That may not shock you, denizens of the blogscape or “Boggers” as Armand Mercier calls us, but suffice to say FB is often scoffed. Scoffed as a frivolous fad, and it may be. For me, however, it acts as a news aggregator. My “friends” on FB are mostly fellow polinerds. So my “wall” is a constant stream of videos, editorials, jokes and rants. My best “friends” can ball all those things together. ;v)

This morning, I found this: New Jersey Must Return $271 Million Spent on Hudson Tunnel, U.S. Insists

..
On Friday, the Transportation Department flatly rejected the state’s arguments for refusing to repay $271 million that was spent on a project, canceled last year, to build a pair of rail tunnels under the Hudson River. The message to Gov. Chris Christie was blunt: Repay now or we will collect the debt the hard way. Plus interest.
-snip
When federal transportation officials demanded that New Jersey repay money already spent on the project, Mr. Christie hired Patton Boggs, a Washington law firm, to challenge that demand. The lawyers, who reportedly have billed the state and New Jersey Transit about $800,000, argued that the state stopped the project because of unforeseen costs that were beyond its control. …

So Gov.Christie has found a conservative principle upon which he can crawl atop and strike a curious pose. Curious, I maintain, because of the unemployed construction workers languishing on “the dole,” skyrocketing fees to DC law firms and reported $50,000/day interest charges on the unpaid debt that is claim by DOT. Damn, Gov. Christie! That adds up to a lot of teachers, cops and firefighters.

If just the $50,000/day was considered, you could envision a line of NJ low salary workers walking out on a plank. Each day, one worker would step off into oblivion. How long that line is, is up to Gov.Christie and his principles.

I say this because locally we are faced with decisions to create our city and school budgets. Please consider, as our elected folks strike curious poses, what the hell the consequences will be.