Blue Mass Group

Small edit made to ensure that no one thought this is happening tonight.  Worth keeping in stream, thoughl What you can do: What a friend did: I just called Mayor Menino’s hotline (617-635-4500). An actual person answered. I explained that I had been there today and had been impressed with the seriousness and dedication of the people there, that they were standing and speaking for what is best in this country and that it would be an act of profound shame for the Mayor to have them arrested and evicted. I also called, gave my name, contact information, etc. and stated that I would be gravely disappointed and consider it a failure by Boston if action is taken against Occupy Boston, especially in the “dead of night” BROADSIDE FROM OCCUPY BOSTON – REQUEST FOR YOUR PRESENCE AND ATTENTION* – Posted by request from Occupy Boston: All: today’s march saw thousands of participants and contentious police blockades. A few brave occupiers were arrested for doing nothing other than walking down a bridge sidewalk ahead of the protest group. The police have given us an ultimatum that we must leave our expansion (onto the extra grass at “Dewey Square North”) by midnight [...]

According to occupyboston.com the Boston Police have laid down an ultimatum.  From the site: At approximately 18:00 the Boston Police Department informed Occupy Boston that if they did not clear the site by nightfall, they would be forcibly removed. In response, Occupy Boston has issued a renewed call for any and all people to join the occupation as soon as possible. From the beginning, occupiers have worked tirelessly to maintain a positive working relationship with city officials. Today’s threats by the Boston Police Department represent a sudden shift away from that dialogue. Since making camp on September 30, Occupy Boston has maintained that it will non-violently resist any attempt to end the protest before we have achieved the change we seek. The Globe is reporting the same…  http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/10/boston-police-warn-protesters-leave-greenway-tonight-moved-out/AS0JWIbXTp9Gn4jZKmfo2J/index.html

One can’t help but sympathize with the protestors even if one doesn’t approve of their methods or personal hygiene choices. This group is not dissimilar to the original Tea Party folks who were aroused more than anything by the TARP bill that bailed out the firms the current demonstrators so loathe. The only real difference between the two groups is that the Tea Party crowd places the blame about 200 miles southwest of Wall Street. If Rick Santelli hadn’t given them their name, they could have just as easily been called Occupy Constitution Avenue. Occupy (insert your city here) blames the bribers while the Tea Party blames the bribees. One thing both groups seem to agree on is that the Federal Reserve deserves a large share of the blame and that is reason for hope. We may never be able to agree on whether politicians or corporate lobbyists are the more loathsome characters in this American economic passion play but the Fed could provide a focal point for the anger felt by people of all political persuasions. http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2011/10/09/weekly-economic-market-review-3/ Weekly Economic & Market Review Joseph Calhoun Alhambra Investment Partners

Kudos to NPR’s Benjamin Arthus and Robert Krulwich for their excellent recent piece “What’s A Smoot?” where they note that the local unit of measurement has been adopted as a worldwide standard by Google Earth: A Smoot, of course, is the length of Oliver Smoot, an 18-year-old MIT student in October 1958, when he and some friends were ordered to measure the Harvard Bridge in body lengths as part of a frat pledge. (The Harvard Bridge — oh, irony — connects MIT and Boston). In 1987, according to NPR and journalist Warwick Cairns, “the Massachusetts Metropolitan District Commission (the folks in charge of the bridge) went on record in support of smoots. “We recognize the smoots’ role in local history. That’s not to mean that the agency encourages graffiti painting. But smoots aren’t just any kind of graffiti. They’re smoots!” [And so...] the Continental Construction Company of Cambridge paved the bridge with slabs that were five foot seven inches long (smoot length) instead of the usual six foot increments. Annual smoot painting continues to this day.” Smoot, in a further instance of magnificent irony, or justice, later became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute and President of the International Organization for Standardization. [...]

Paul Krugman offers a 35,000 foot view of the frantic attacks on Elizabeth Warren by extremist Republicans who back Scott Brown: And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.” What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far [...]

Been a while since I’ve posted here, but just spotted this article as I logged out of my e-mail account– glaring evidence of just how far the right-wing will go to discredit/bring down the Occupy Wall Street protests going on around the country. According to the article: A reporter for the American Spectator–who says he “infiltrated” a Washington, D.C., faction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, “in order to mock and undermine” the demonstrators’ “cause” in his magazine–claims he helped incite a riot at the National Air and Space Museum on Saturday afternoon and was pepper-sprayed in the process. The Spectator is a right-wing magazine– like a print version of FOX, so the Breitbart-style character assassination attempt should really come as no surprise. The amazing thing, though, is that even after his attempt thoroughly failed, earning him little more than a blast of OC spray, this guy only twisted his own failure into a mark against the protestors! “As far as anyone knew I was part of this cause — a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator — and I wasn’t giving up before I had my [...]

I just got an email from Elizabeth Warren’s campaign that says she’s raised more than $3 million for her Senate run.  The email says 96% of contributions were below $100 and 11,000 contributions came from Massachusetts residents.  While Scott Brown has yet to release Q3 numbers, this give Warren almost 3X of the haul of her closest fellow Democrat, Alan Khazei. UPDATE: Noah Bierman at the Globe is reporting that Scott Brown raked in $1.55 million, & has $10.5 million on hand.  Although we cannot compare cash on hand w/ Warren as she has not released her full report (we’ll know by the 15th), this means that Brown spent $600,000 during Q3.  While spending money at this point is not unusual, it does seem odd that Brown is spending so much so far ahead of the actual election.  On second thought, there were lots of “Defend Scott Brown” ads after Warren announced & her social contract video came out.

Congressional redistricting is a perilous political process even in the best of times, when no seats are going to be eliminated. There is so much at stake for different groups and the fortunes of the politicians themselves that it can easily turn into a lightning rod for controversy- so the process needs to be cleaner than clean. State Senator Stanly Rosenberg is the co-chair of the committee the will be redrawing the districts and has to determine which of the 10 congressmen will be the odd man out when the number drops to 9 next election. It’s well known that Rosenberg used to work for Congressman John Olver, is his close friend and hopes to inherit his seat. He was asked about a possible conflict of interest in this channel 5 interview and responded (about 6 min mark) that that is a “When did you stop beating your wife type question,” that all legislators would like to move up if they got the chance, and that he is close friends with all the congressional members. While it’s seems unlikely that he is equally close to Olver as he is with, say, Steve Lynch, there is a sliver of truth to [...]

Mike Mokrzycki has some ‘in the weeds’ polling and analysis in Huffpo concerning Warren vs. Brown. Offered here without comment.

I wrote at Ryan’s Take about my experience yesterday at Dewey Square’s Occupy Boston this morning, but wanted to post on Blue Mass Group about the big marches going on today. Students will be gathering at the bandstand on the Commons to march at 2pm toward Dewey Square, then meet up with those camping out at the Square for a much bigger, labor-sponsored march at 3pm starting at Dewey Square. Dewey Square is across the street from South Station, which can be reached from the Red, Silver and Commuter rail lines on the MBTA. This is going to be a big one, so it should be pretty exciting and a great opportunity to get involved if you’re in the city and can make it. If you can’t make it, but want to be involved, check out Occupy Boston’s calendar every few days to see what’s going on, or read about other ways to get involved, including from your home if you can’t make it to the city. There’s lots of ways to help out, from donating food and water to volunteering in one of their working groups. This is a true organic movement and will be whatever we make of [...]