Did you think that the Occupy movement was moribund—dead, even? Hah! Like Count Dracula in the Hammer films, it just keeps coming back to life. And if you don’t believe me, then certainly you can take Adbusters’ word for it. That dauntless Canadian foe of capitalism and …whatever…originally summoned the Occupy movement into being, after all! So read, you greedy One Percenters, and tremble:

In its own sweet way, our movement is now moving beyond the Zuccotti model and developing a tactical imperative of its own: Small groups of fired up second generation occupiers acting independently, swiftly and tenaciously pulling off myriad visceral local actions, disrupting capitalist business-as-usual across the globe.

 

The next big bang to capture the world’s imagination could come not from a thousand encampments but from a hundred thousand ephemeral jams… a global cascade of flash encampments may well be what this hot Summer will look like.

 

Meanwhile, tents are up once again in Tahrir Square and youth from Quebec to Auckland to Moscow to Oakland are rising up against a future that does not compute.

 

Stay loose, play jazz, keep the faith … Capitalism is crashing and our movement has just begun.

 

for the wild,

Culture Jammers HQ

Just incidentally, who the hell writes a phrase like “myriad visceral local actions,” not to mention “a hundred thousand ephemeral jams”? Look out, Smuckers—you’re next!

Posted by tmg110 at 1:59 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 11 June 2012 2:03 PM EDT

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John Fund reports for NRO on NetRoots Nation, the annual convention of leftie bloggers and online activists. Let’s just say that he didn’t find a lot of happy campers:

[E]nthusiasm for Obama was decidedly absent from this year’s gathering. Administration officials weren’t invited to attend (Valerie Jarrett and others have appeared in the past), and President Obama limited his role to an unpublicized surprise video shown to delegates late on Saturday, when many people had already left. “Change is hard, but we’ve seen that it’s possible, as long as you’re willing to keep up that fight, I’ll be right there with you,” Obama offered. Not exactly a stirring call to arms, and the tepid applause his video garnered can’t have pleased Team Obama.

The Web-based Left is more than a little vexed with the President and his party. In their view, Obama and the Dems have abandoned the progressive cause. Though the focus of discontent was the disastrous (for them) outcome of the Wisconsin recall, the NetRooters voiced many additional gripes.

Does this mean that progressives will abandon Barry in November? Hardly. Where else are they going to turn? To the Green Party? Still, the online Left’s marked lack of enthusiasm for Obama/Biden 2012 can only help Mitt Romney. In 2008, all the energy was on the side of Hope & Change. But the times, they are a’ changing…

Posted by tmg110 at 7:45 AM EDT

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It seems to be a principle of American politics: When things start to go wrong for a president and his administration, anything can happen:

Commerce Secretary John Bryson accused in hit-and-run crashes

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Authorities are investigating a series of traffic collisions in the San Gabriel Valley involving U.S. Secretary of Commerce John Bryson, authorities said Saturday.

 

Bryson was found unconscious in his vehicle and has been hospitalized, officials said.

Bryson was driving a Lexus in the 400 block of South San Gabriel Boulevard shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday, when he allegedly rear-ended a Buick as it was waiting for a train to pass, according to a statement released by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and the San Gabriel Police Department.

 

After briefly stopping to talk to the three men inside the Buick, Bryson left the location in the Lexus and then struck the Buick a second time, authorities said. The men followed Bryson's car and called 911 to ask for police assistance.

 

Bryson continued to drive his Lexus into Rosemead, which is patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. There, he allegedly crashed into a second vehicle near the intersection of San Gabriel Boulevard and Hellman Avenue.

 

There authorities found him alone and unconscious behind the wheel of his car.

Bryson was treated at the scene by Los Angeles County firefighters. Authorities said drugs or alcohol do not appear to have played a role in the crash. They said Bryson was cooperative. He was cited for felony hit and run but was not booked into jail because he had been admitted to the hospital. His condition was not known.

Actually I think I can make an accurate guess as to the Secretary’s condition: He misses private life and will be resigning soon to spend more time with his family (and his lawyer). Personally, I can’t wait for the Obama Administration’s reaction to this story. Perhaps we’ll be told that the Secretary’s problems stem from being bullied in prep school by Mitt Romney. As Rahm Emanuel once quipped, never let a good crisis go to waste!

Posted by tmg110 at 7:20 AM EDT

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So how come the Left failed in its crusade to boot the fascist Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, out of office? Just ask Bob Scheer! Writing for Nation of Change, he has an answer that’s sure to warm the hearts of the citizens of the Badger State:

The electorate in Wisconsin…tat voted Tuesday against public employee unions were not expressing a rational response to the crisis, but rather a tantrum stoked by the lavishly financed demagogues of the right. The voters bought their story because the opportunism of the Democratic Party leadership has left progressives without a believable alternative to the tea party’s narrative. Indeed, job creation became a bigger issue than collective bargaining in the Wisconsin race, and the dismal national unemployment figures that came out just days before the election didn’t hurt the Republicans’ cause.

Once again, the dumbasses in Flyover Country have crushed the hopes and dreams of coastal progressives—and in the home state of such leftie luminaries as “Fighting Bob” Lafollette, William Proxmire and Russ Feingold!

Feingold, incidentally, was better at reading the tea leaves than wise guys like Scheer: He declined to run against Scott Walker in the recall election. Not that the latter is completely wrong in his commentary. It’s quite true that the Democratic Party had no believable alternative to Walker’s policies. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s candidacy was hobbled from the beginning by his inability to explain how he’d balance the state’s budget and boost its economy. It’s clear what Scheer wanted: a left-wing candidate standing on a radical platform, denouncing “Teabaggers,” “the extreme Right,” “greedy bankers,” “corporations,” etc. The likely result of such a campaign is not difficult to envision: an even more crushing Walker victory. But his diagnosis of the Democrats’ problem is spot on: no “believable alternative.”

Scheer is also correct when he points out that President Obama let the side down. And he’s understandably bitter about it:

[T]he president made two fundraising stops within 50 miles of the Wisconsin border last Friday, but studiously avoided entering the state he easily carried in the 2008 election. Instead of visiting, Obama tweeted: “It’s Election Day in Wisconsin tomorrow, and I’m standing by Tom Barrett. He’d make an outstanding governor. -bo.” Not a word of support for the unions that so slavishly support the president and spent millions propping up Barrett.

Angry contempt for the peasants and proles who failed to vote as required, dismay over a progressive president’s chicken-hearted punt—it isn’t easy being Bob!

Posted by tmg110 at 10:56 AM EDT

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I’m always bemused by op-ed and news analysis pieces that tout the brilliance of a political campaign organization. Because when you think about it, doing right thing to do in the course of a campaign is just doing the obvious. Is the economy circling the drain? Then the challenger should hit the incumbent on the economy. Did the incumbent succeed in killing a high-profile enemy of the country? Then the incumbent should take credit for the kill. It’s really not that complicated.

So I’ve been somewhat surprised by the stumbling, fumbling, bumbling course of the Obama campaign so far. True, he’s embarking on a rocky, winding road to reelection—but is that any excuse for the series of unforced errors we’ve witnessed over the last couple of weeks? After the brilliant campaign that Team Obama ran in 2008, I and most observers certainly never expected such a string of unforced errors.

But maybe Team Obama was never all that brilliant. Maybe 2008 was a fluke. Maybe the combination of an economic downturn, a financial crisis, war weariness and an erratic Republican candidate paved Barack Obama’s Yellow Brick Road to the White House. Maybe today, in a much different political environment, we’re seeing what the candidate and his campaign are really made of: smoke, mirrors, shiny objects, wind and hot air.

Posted by tmg110 at 10:29 AM EDT

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The Occupy movement has a long list of gripes, but it was apparent at a very early stage that one predominated: the ever-increasing burden of student debt. Unlike the movement’s adolescent whining about “capitalism,” “corporations,” “big banks,” etc., this is a genuine grievance. Young people are certainly entitled to ask why they had to borrow $25,000, $50,000 or more to obtain some basically worthless degree. True, they themselves bear a share of the responsibility for their plight, but it remains true that many college students got hosed by the higher education industry.

Over at the Huffington Post, Adrian Nazari has been blogging about the student loan bubble. Citing a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he notes that the total student loan debt burden now exceeds $1 trillion, and that 27% of people with outstanding student loans have past-due balances. With the economy stalled and the job market weak, this problem is certain to get worse—worse even, perhaps than the housing bubble whose bursting caused the Great Recession.

Colleges and universities, of course, are sitting pretty. They’ve pocketed all that money and continue to demand more in the form of ever-increasing tuition and fees—secure in the knowlege that the public will blame government for the high cost of college. But something clearly has to give, and probably it will be the progressive fantasy that every person has the “right” to a college education.

Posted by tmg110 at 2:49 PM EDT

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...and now this: "Links to Obama campaign show fashion industry’s political clout is growing"

 Remember now: Mitt Romney is some out-of-touch white guy who just doesn't connect with Mr. & Mrs. Average American. Why, he wouldn't know a Vera Wang from a Tracy Reese!

Posted by tmg110 at 2:19 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 8 June 2012 2:24 PM EDT

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Well worth reading: Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, on the significance of the Wisconsin recall election:

Tuesday, June 5, 2012, will be remembered as the beginning of the long decline of the public-sector union. It will follow, and parallel, the shrinking of private-sector unions, now down to less than 7 percent of American workers. The abject failure of the unions to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R)—the first such failure in U.S. history—marks the Icarus moment of government-union power. Wax wings melted, there’s nowhere to go but down.

Krauthammer notes that the real, though necessarily unspoken, objective of the unions was to rescind the one Walker reform that was, for them, the kiss of death: elimination of automatic collection of union dues. Before Act 10, the state collected dues on behalf of the unions by deducting them from employees’ paychecks. No more. Now it’s up to employees to decide whether they want to belong to a union and pay dues. The result? Well, to take a single example, since the passage of Act 10 AFSCME, the second-largest public-sector union in Wisconsin, has lost more than half of its membership.

Can the public-sector unions mount an effective counteroffensive against this wave of conservative reform? Perhaps, but the outcome of the recall election in Wisconsin inclines me to think that their future is bleak.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:32 AM EDT

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Here’s a sob story for you: “Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts.”

This gut-wrenching tale of woe comes from a column by Ellen Brown in the online leftie squealer, Nation of Change:

 I’m a 68 year old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00. Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.

 

At no time during the 6-7 year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee [sic] my SS check to the tune of 15%.

 

I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents . . . .  I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3500.00 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/20,000 before they attempted to collect.

Toss out the wet hankies and what left of this story?  She borrowed $3,500 to go to college at the ridiculous age of 56. After graduating and discovering that she’d simply been wasting her time, this woman blew off the $3,500 debt. Over the years she “forgot about it,” see? Now she’s whining because the lending institution wants its money—plus accumulated interest and penalties. Well, isn’t that too bad!

Lest you condemn me as a stony-hearted bastard, I will say that the lending institution would be well advised on both compassionate and pragmatic grounds to settle her debt for less than $20,000. Let’s say $7,500, just to make the point that there ain’t no free lunch.

Don’t tell that to Ms. Brown, though. Here’s her solution to the senior citizen student debt problem:

Estimates are that tuition could be provided free to students for a mere $30 billion annually.  The government has the power to find $30 billion -- or $300 billion or $3 trillion -- in the same place the Federal Reserve found it: it can simply issue the money.

 

Congress is empowered by the Constitution to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and no limit is set on the face amount of the coins it creates. It could issue a few one-billion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.

How can you parody progressivism when it so perfectly parodies itself?

Posted by tmg110 at 7:59 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 8 June 2012 8:04 AM EDT

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I forgot to note that yesterday, June 6, was the anniversary of D-Day. But that oversight had its upside, for it caused me reflect on the fact that June 6 was merely the first day of the battle for Normandy, which stretched into August of 1944. The story of that battle—one of the most decisive in world history—is well told by Max Hastings in Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy (1985). Highly recommended.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:14 AM EDT

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