The clearing of Zuccotti Park struck a deep blow to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which had used the site as its physical and spiritual heart. But as the newly ousted protesters gathered in Foley Square to decide what to do next, many residents, workers and business owners near the park felt deep relief. ” Super ecstatic,” said a young office worker. “Definitely relieved,” said a young woman working behind the counter at Panini & Co., a cafe overlooking the park.
Paul Bruno, 54, who lives in the Bronx but has serviced elevators in Lower Manhattan for 30 years, had lunched daily in the park. He agreed with the protesters’ message, he said, but not their means. “The movement is the right movement,” he said, “but the movement got lost.”
Another man, who worked nearby and said he could not give his name because it was against his company’s rules, said it was time for the park to be cleared.
“It started out as a cool grassroots movement, he said, ” and then it turned into a big homeless camp.”
Still residents described a frightening scene last night, with police rushing into the park, bright lights glaring and helicopters whirring above. Mark Scherzer, a lawyer who lives half a block from the park, said he found the clearing deeply upsetting.
“I think the protesters were doing a valuable service,” he said, “And I think it was lawful for them to be there.”
Readers know I like Gibson guitars. They may have read when I tried to do the company a favor by successfully pressing the Washington Post and others to drop website ads selling Chinese counterfeits of the iconic brand.
But it’s been increasingly hard to not be turned off by Gibson. And this is all due to its CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz.
With his company raided twice by government agents — the first time for buying blackmarket protected wood from Madagascar, the second time for impropriety with Indian imports — Juszkiewicz decided to go extreme right wing and cry about the alleged tyranny of the US government.
At one point, the Wall Street Journal tries to imply the real reason the US government may be after Gibson is because Juszkiewicz is a conservative businessman. This is done with the full knowledge that the investigation which led to the first raid was started during the Bush administration.
In the interview, Juszkiewicz is the very epitome of the bigshot from corporate America, the kind a great deal of the country is coming to visibly detest in street protests.
Juszkiewicz apparently believes in favors for corporate America. So what did he do, according to the WSJ?
Try to get President Obama to let him off the hook. And the Prez ignored him. The nerve of the man. Even his daughters have Gibson guitars, he said.
“[I] will say this: I wrote a letter to President Obama. I spelled out what happened. I said: You know, we got raided and here are the facts, I think it’s unfair. What do you think we should do? No response.”
Maybe the president is not a music lover? “He knows who we are,” Mr. Juszkiewicz says. “His daughters have a couple of Gibsons. [Mrs. Obama] gave a guitar to [the French president’s singer-songwriter wife] Mrs. Sarkozy. And we called up to make sure that he saw the letter, and he did. No response.”
You read this blog or just about anything else these days and you know this attitude. Laws are for little people, not for the wealthy, those who think of themselves as the drivers of job creation in China and capitalism.
At one point Juszkiewicz inexplicably goes into a riff where he tries to explain that guitars are too hard to play for average people while implying the company will expand into consumer electronic products for those who don’t.
Juszkiewicz presides over a company where all the everyman instruments are now made in China. This leaves the domestic end of the market priced so high in relation to, say, the wages of music store workers, that his instruments are now mostly only for the wealthy hobbyist or musician who can put it on the record label advance.
From the WSJ:
“Consumer electronics is a big target of ours because it’s a much bigger market than the M. I. [musical instrument] industry. . . . Right now we have a brand that people recognize and value. But only 5% of those people can buy something with the Gibson brand. . . In order to buy a guitar you actually have to play guitar. . . . You may say, ‘Wow that’s pretty cool to do,’ but . . . it’s like learning Greek. It’s not intuitive to sit down and start playing rock and roll. So guitar players reflect one in 20 consumers. But high-fi speakers [can be used by] 20 out of 20, so it’s a much larger market.”
So what does Juszkiewicz think is the next hot product? Expensive speakers. I can hear the air going out of the balloon six months to a year from now.
For the Journal, Juszkiewicz emits even more dipshit quote.
Gibson guitars do well during hard times, he says, neglecting to mention that if his high end guitars are indeed selling now it’s precisely BECAUSE the wealthy who buy them haven’t seen hard times at all.
“We did really well in the Great Depression,” the Gibson CEO tells the Journal. The company and its instruments were then nothing like now.
“Because everybody wanted to be like Woody Guthrie?” asks the paper, generating unintentional hilarity.
In answering the newspaper reporter’s question about sales during the Great Depression being good, maybe because everybody wanted to be like Woody Guthrie, Juszkiewicz seems to realize he’s dangerously close to stepping in excrement:
“No, I would guess not,” comes the reply. “He did play our guitar, though.”
Reading an interview like the one in the Journal can cause you to lose all faith in a brand. One can imagine the company would only improve if a criminal charge caused Henry Juszkiewicz to step down.
The CEO also plugs his newest offering, the Firebird X, a robot-tuned guitar equipped with, no joke, Bluetooth, priced for the princes at $5,500.
Woody Guthrie, of course, wouldn’t have been able to afford it. (He did say he was for “singing for the plain folks and getting tough with the rich folks.”)
“Twelve most overrated jobs” includes “physician” and “surgeon.”
It works under the assumption that all doctors in the US got into the career because they wanted to make lots of money. And there’s … like … too much stress and responsibility and “regulation” and not enough lucre to make it worthwhile anymore.
If you are someone with a sense of human decency you won’t object to imagining the people who turned in this poisonous dreck suffering a public horsewhipping.
“CareerCast.com cites ‘increased regulations, lower compensation, and the required need to stay abreast of medical developments’ as factors that make the job overrated,” it reads.
Yeah, all good reasons why being a doctor isn’t quite worth it. Fuck the sick. Go into finance and government capture through massive bribery. We need more of that.
Then there’s the last most “overrated” job. It’s the corporate douchebag, the American trademark, the guy organizing and administering the efforts to make everything into fee-based ripoffs, automated pickpocketing, human drone misery and outsourcing trips over the last fifteen years:
A senior corporate executive would seem to have it all. He or she is responsible for the operations, people, and policies of private and publicly traded companies. It’s hard to imagine more complex or prestigious responsibilities than those, and the average salary of $161,141.
Despite the positive attributes of the job, it earns the top spot on CareerCast.com’s list of Most Overrated Jobs. The firm cites “high stress, shaky stability, and long hours that affect family time” as factors that come with the territory, and make the position much less rewarding than it may seem.
From the wails you here from corporate America and Wall Street on the misguided anger of OWS, it must be true. And certainly if you were one of the PSU corporate executives fired for overlooking the depraved Jerry Sandusky for the last twenty years, you’ll agree, too. Finally, you’ll get to spend more time with your family.
Most notably last week, it was in national news for being proud property of one of the members of the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang.
Rather than a symbol of patriotic American defiance, the Gadsden flag has been adopted as the elegant rattlesnake-emblazoned colors for the worst us.
And as often as not it is the favorite towel of hosts of really unpleasant and often frankly repugnant people: angry bigots, whites who want to re-fight the Civil War, precious metal fanatics who wish to blow up the Fed, local GOP politicians interested in grass roots legislation to allow state secession or nullification orders, removers (violent, if necessary) of the reproductive rights of women, heavily armed survivalists, advocates of laws allowing people to appear intimidatingly armed in public, hoarders of improvised homemade weaponry, pro-lifers, theocrats, militia men …
I could go on. If you’re one who is interested in the roots of domestic terrorism, the Gadsden flag is almost always there, somewhere.
The Gadsden flag is a very visible symbol of a vile part of the 2011 United States.
The “Don’t Tread on Me” lovers have come to be known for their bleak philosophies, usually involving direct attacks or persecution of others not exactly like them. And intertwined with this is a hatred of all government because it gets in the way of waging such a patriotic war.
Naturally, they don’t see themselves in this light.
I have the best song for the new tourism trade association campaign to boost America overseas. It’s “The National Anthem!”
What better way to show off our best side than to indicate that after a long time, yes, some of us still do have a grim but inviting sense of humor. And that we’re able to ridicule ourselves.
Say hello to “the United States of Awesome Possibilities” as it looks to visitors from abroad to help lift it out of the economic doldrums.
By soft-pedaling patriotism, the newly-formed US national tourism board tasked with getting more tourists — and their money — onto US soil is reinventing the nation as a hip new land of diversity and possibilities.
“We’re rebranding America for the first time,” said Jim Evans, chief executive of the Corporation for Travel Promotion, ahead of the World Travel Market that opened Monday in London.
“Over the last 10 or 12 years, people have seen America as unwelcoming as we’ve focused on security …
Central to that message is a pixelated “USA” logo, unveiled Monday in London and a world away from the Stars and Stripes, that is meant to represent what the corporation calls “the United States of Awesome Possiblities.”
“It is not about patriotism, flag-waving or chest-beating,” says the corporation in a capsule explanation of the design. “It is meant to be welcoming, unexpected and inclusive.”
“We have to rekindle the romance with the United States,” Chris Perkins, chief marketing officer at the Corporation for Travel Promotion, told AFP.
“It pains me, as a proud American, but we’re viewed as arrogant and brash …
Of course, in addition to curbing the national image as brash and arrogant, we could do with a lot less of the patently phony and stupid, too.
Welcome to the US of Penitentiary … we all get here, eventually.
We lock up the poor for all the rich. And we do it right, without no hitch!
Welcome to the United States of Greed. It’s the only country you’ll ever need! If you’re into frauds and useless devices, Uncle Sam — the best of choices.
Welcome to the United States of Security! We’ll check you now for purity!
If you have gold and your ass don’t smell, we won’t bomb you straight to Hell!
I’ve commented on the durability of the poison recipes from the neo-Nazi survivalist extremist right in the United States.
Starting in books, the recipe is now on handwritten papers copied from digital copies, passed down through the years.
And they all serve as tickets to prison and personal ruin in a certain very unique and queer American demographic.
The ricin recipe is self-destructive flypaper for militia members, “sovereign citizens,” agonizingly excessive ammo and gun hoarders, raging anti-Semites, alleged defenders of the sanctity of the Constitution, Gadsden flag fliers, gold and silver bugs, pro-lifers and tax resisters.
As must-have lore, the Saxon ricin recipe and its derivatives have seemingly penetrated into every nook and cranny of the violent white power far right in this country. It speaks directly to an ineradicable crazy white man’s compulsion/obsession ( one held by an always surprising number of people) with having an arsenal for striking back at the government and locals they despise.
It arguably marks a singular and unpleasant flaw in our threadbare national character, one surely not held by the majority but always visible upon closer inspection.
In another manner of speaking, now there’s always some nut sitting at the table, in a quiet rage, convinced he’s a patriot defending against evil and collecting stuff that comforts him in this lonely task.
And if the ricin recipe could have been copyrighted in the way of best-sellers, it would have made the owner a great deal of money.
Mary Ann Morgan, the Kenai Peninsula “sovereign citizen” militia member arrested at the Canadian border in October after trying to enter the country with a handgun, also possessed bomb-making documents and instructions on how to make the poison ricin and carry concealed weapons, according to federal court documents filed Friday in Fairbanks …
The documents [found in Morgan’s pickup] included the following:
• A note, apparently in Morgan’s handwriting, with detailed directions on how to build pipe bombs.
• Information downloaded from the Internet on ricin, a deadly toxin derived from castor beans.
• A “plethora of information” on the possession and use of firearms.
• A list of common household poisons and a reference to a “poisonous plants database.” …
Morgan is associated with Fairbanks militia leader Schaefer Cox, currently jailed with others on federal weapons and murder conspiracy charges.
The assassination of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney was part of the terrorist plot hatched by four North Georgia men, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in a bond hearing for the accused. (Both are African-American and Democrat.)
The four men accused of planning to bomb federal buildings, disperse the toxin ricin in major U.S. cities, and assassinate federal judges and prosecutors pleaded not guilty at the hearing in U.S. District Court in Gainesville.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert McBurney said law enforcement officers seized 52 weapons and 30,000 rounds of ammunition from [Ricin Beans Gang member Dan Thomas’] home. The weapons included assault rifles, shotguns, pistols with extended magazines and revolvers, and “sniper round” bullets and “sub-sonic??? ammunition designed to be used with silencers, he said. McBurney did not say where the guns and ammunition were kept in the home.
But defense attorney Jeff Ertel countered that Thomas is an avid gun collector and hunter. He said all of the weapons were legally owned, a point McBurney conceded.
It’s quite a legal arsenal/gun collection but probably not all that remarkable in heartland red state America.
The Great Divide (or the new Civil War) quote of day:
“I think (the Occupy movement) makes the Tea Party look a lot better. We’re not playing drums, masturbating on the street, or defecating on cars. I don’t think there’s anybody (out on the street) who is for American [sic] the way it was founded. They are like from another planet or something.”
The feeling’s mutual, although I’d vouchsafe my belief that Tea Party members would never indulge in a bit of a polish in public.
And who says “defecating on cars” in the heartland? It’s “s——- on cars.” Everyone knows that. Elitist snobs.
But how do you follow quote alleging your foes are subhuman aliens who jerk off in the roads and take dumps on cars? Everything you follow it with is anti-climactic.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution had someone call today in order to discuss the literature of ricin-making in the US.
I’m the expert. Hit Google with “ricin recipe” or “recipe for ricin” and the I Feel Lucky button and all roads lead to stuff I’ve written.
What’s remarkable about ricin recipes — all those pertinent here originate in the neo-Nazi survivalist backwoodsman far right — is how durable they have been.
I told the newspaper’s reporter that Kurt Saxon had coined it without knowing much about ricin at all in 1984 for his pamphlet, The Weaponeer. And it had been published again in 1988 in The Poor Man’s James Bond.
And there is some real disgrace in the hard fact that Saxon’s legacy is one in which his work has some responsibility in the sending of many people he wrote his materials to advise — to jail.
However, in spite of this and the passage of decades it has persisted. Although sent around the world and copied into many different digital forms, in this country it has remained signal in the unusual subculture of exclusively white guys who are really angry with the government.
Young, middle-aged or old, they all share a virulent and deeply entrenched common paranoia.
The government is taking away their rights in many ways, threatening their existence, and inevitably expected to come for them.
The irony in this is that post-9/11 and the expansion of homeland security domestically, the acquisition of improvised weaponry — in particular castor seeds and the recipes from the extremist far right — seem to guarantee that their belief will come true.
When the US government finds out you’ve been talking about ricin and fiddling with a few castor seeds, it will come for you.
Historically, whenever a Democrat is in power, their presence in the land becomes much more visible. And the Presidency of Barack Obama, for the obvious reason that he is black, has brought them out like never before.
Frederick Thomas is a man of clear loyalties. In his yard, deep in the woods of White County, a yellow flag with the image of a snake warns: “Don’t Tread On Me.??? Nearby, affixed to the wall of his imposing wood home, a sign proclaims: “Frank Sinatra Fan Parking Only.???
So, which is he? An ordinary American of advancing years who calls his Sinatra-loving wife of 51 years each night from jail to say he misses her? Or the angry, alienated man who emerges from federal affidavits, his own heated rhetoric online and the pages of a novel he allegedly took as a blueprint for revolt?
One thing is certain — until last week, local officials had no reason to suspect him of leading a plot to assassinate federal officials, blow up buildings or murder innocent Georgians with deadly nerve toxins.
In [on-line militia forums], Thomas broadcast his determination to resist a government of “the Obummer,??? which he accused of destroying the Constitution.
“Most of my adult life has been spent in service to America, and here in the twilight of my years I find that my sacrifice and the blood I’ve shed for this country has led to the enslavement of me and mine,??? he wrote in January 2009 on a forum maintained by the Militia of Georgia.
“I’ve decided I can sit idly by no longer, and so I freely join with you to do something about this intolerable situation.???
Thomas’ wife and acquaintances were interviewed for the story. They say only that he was very old and seemingly harmless, so aged “He can hardly walk.”
We should treat elderly people more respectfully,” adds the neighbor.
Over the years, mental and physical fitness have never meant beans in cases such as this. The US government has jailed a troubled autistic man, an enfeebled drug addict who couldn’t get ricin but indicated he had tried to make it from castor oil (you can’t) and others who fair people would judge to be impaired in one way or another.
My briefing of the Atlanta newspaper resulted in an article asserting ricin could not have been used as the Ricin Beans Gang envisioned. I told the newspaper the same thing last week. So the newspaper went out and found a couple of other experts to buttress it.
In any case, blog readers know all there is to know on the issue:
George Smith, who analyzes bioterror threats for GlobalSecurity.org, said the men were “steeped in poison lore” spread through the Internet.
“What is absurd about it is how this lore has become so solidified in a certain subculture,” Smith said. “People are utterly convinced of the realness of it.”
He added he thinks the people who subscribe to these beliefs have let their imaginations outpace their ability to accomplish their goals.
He believes the men lack the training to convert castor beans into a weapon of mass destruction.
“Ricin is a protein … the more you purify it, the harder it is to keep it around. People don’t understand that,” Smith said, explaining that proteins are easily broken down by heat, ultraviolet light, acids or elements such as lye.
The Ricin Beans Gang discussing their (actually quite ludicrous) plan to use the poison:
Sam Jerry Crump: What I’d like to do is make about ten pounds of that … Give you 2, me 2, Ray (Adams) 2, Dan (Roberts) 2 and somebody else 2. Put it out in different cities at the same time: Washington DC, maybe Newark, Atlanta, Jacksonville, New Orleans. Dump that little (unintelligible) … that’s all you gotta do is lay it in the damn road, the cars are gonna spread it.
FBI Informant: Yeah, but what’s it take to make it? I haven’t got a clue.
Sam Jerry Crump: Just some seed. I got the, got -uh — one more ingredient, and I’ll get it today …
Other statement concerning ricin from Samuel Jerry Crump:
“Ya got, ya can’t let none of it get on your skin. Got to be a closed environment when it’s made. No wind. If it gets up your nose there’s no cure.”
[Ricin is not a contact poison.]
Samuel Jerry Crump also mentioned another toxic substance, probably botulinum toxin:
“That other kind, 1 pound can kill 30 million people … We need somebody to back us with money so we can make that other shit … This is worse than anthrax … That shit’s deadly! There ain’t no damn, there ain’t no cure for it. And it works, I think, in 2 hours.”
Finally, on prodding, Ray Adams names the more deadly toxin.
Crump: “Kills about 30 million people at one time, one pound of it. It’s caused from dead food.”
Ray Adams: “Oh, botulism.”
Crump goes onto to roughly describe the ricin recipe devised and distributed by Kurt Saxon in his pamphlet, The Weaponeer, back in 1984.
Further along, he goes into details on his plan to disburse it. First the castor powder should be mixed with charcoal to make it black. Presumably so it would be hard to see at night, one guesses.
Later, Sam Jerry Crump makes one astute observation:
“[But] if they find that shit on your computer you’re hung.”
Crump later mused on “going to Africa” to get “botulism”:
“Well, I thought you can’t make that botulism (unintelligible) … got some good backers … go to Africa, uh, and get some of that to make.
“We’d bring it back over here. Ya don’t make it over there. You just get the samples of the stuff out of the soil. It comes from dead animals, from rotten meat. That’s where botulism comes from. It’s more potent than the stuff (ricin) … I know somebody can make it.”
Ray Adams, another member of the Ricin Beans Gang, alleged to a lab technician at one time, discussed making ricin:
“Well, I’ve never done it (made ricin) but I have laboratory experience and once you extract that stuff enough just splashin’ it on your skin can kill ya. Once it dries, while it’s wet, any kind of solvent, like anything, it just takes water solution to soak through your skin. It’s highly permeable through the skin. There’s no antidote.
“I’ve handled all kinds of deadly stuff, pesticides and that kind of stuff, so … ”
[To emphasize the level of knowledge on display, it’s worth repeating that ricin is not a contact poison.]
Like many states and local governments struggling to cut costs, Michigan hopes to replace some government employees with contract workers who will do the same job for less.
Ginny Townsend, a nursing assistant under a state contract, attending to Harold Sundberg at a veterans facility in Michigan.
Ginny Townsend, 41, took a job in January as a nursing assistant in the state-run home for veterans here. Technically, she works for a private company that supplies some employees to the veterans home under a state contract. She makes $10 an hour, about half the wage of the public employees working at the facility.
With the national unemployment rate at roughly 9 percent, Ms. Townsend says she feels lucky just to have a job. But on her low wages, she is barely scraping by. She said she was raising four randchildren under 11 with her unemployed sister and could not support them without the $300 in food stamps she collects every month …
The lower wage, she says, has left her strained to cover $675 a month in rent, along with basics like food and child care. So Ms. Perttu collects $400 monthly in food stamps and child care assistance, programs administered by the state but largely financed by the federal government. She has not been able to buy winter coats for her children, she said, and often avoids calls from credit card bill collectors.
At the veteran’s home, “one check was enough to pay all the bills,??? she said. Drawing on public assistance, she added, “is not helping our economy.???
This is so immoral it is difficult to know where to begin.
First, it deprives people of what was formerly a middle-class living in the name of austerity, rationalized that corporate America can do it better and cheaper by paying labor much less for the same work. And at the same time getting the workers out from under the protections and contracts which they are afforded by working for the government, the last place where unions can still sort-of-reasonably survive.
Second, it shoves the cost of slashing wages to just eking by off on the government, and taxpayer, by necessitating hunger be kept from the door through food stamp subsidization.
Third — corporate America vulture contracting makes its profit on the money the federal government must then make up with increased food stamp enrollment.
There is nothing efficient or free market about this. It’s economic parasitism and the stealing of labor, pure and simple.
And it’s using a bad economy, one in which people are desperate, to make corporate profit by making things worse. When the state slashes its payroll, it also loses more tax revenue, increasing the potentially downward spiral.
It is indeed remarkable that more people aren’t in the street with OWS.
What governments save in salaries and benefits often “ends up on the government books through all sorts of programs,??? Paul C. Light, “a professor at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University” told the newspaper. He meant “unemployment insurance, Medicaid and other public assistance for workers earning low incomes.”
“Outsourcing becomes more popular during tough economic times as states and municipalities transfer the operations of facilities like prisons, school cafeterias and sanitation departments to private contractors,” it continues.
None of this makes any sense. It is merely expedient, momentarily superficially convenient and predatory. Repugnant on so many levels, it merely shows how failed and unfair the United States is at every level one cares to examine.
The census report found that the poverty rate for all groups would have jumped to 18 percent — or 6 million more people — if it weren’t for the earned income tax credit, a safety net program which offers credits to low- and moderate-income families as an incentive to work and to help offset the burden of Social Security taxes. Temporary expansions to that program are slated to expire after next year.
Without food stamps, the poverty rate would have risen to 17.7 percent, which translates to about 5 million more people. That program was expanded in 2009 as part of the federal stimulus plan; the expansions are now phasing out gradually and will expire completely in 2014.
Because of the drive to private contract for workers in state health care facilities engendered a lawsuit stopping it in Michigan.
The Times interviewed the person who levied the suit who explained it in this way:
The lawsuit, filed by Anthony Spallone, a resident, says that fill-in contract workers have, among other things, repeatedly dropped residents and left them in urine-soaked beds, and once fed a resident solid food despite specific instructions not to.
Tim Frain, the chief executive of J2S [the company furnishing the reduced wage contract workers], declined to comment.
Mr. Spallone, a 64-year-old Vietnam veteran who said he had served “12 months, eight days, four hours and 22 minutes??? as an Army engineer, described the state’s caregivers as “like family.??? He suggested the government “drop one less bomb overseas and pay these guys’ salaries.???
“We’re just driving everybody down,” someone adds.
