Free Republic

To those people paying only casual attention, the Occupy movement has become nothing more than a footnote in history. Their ragtag encampments have been removed for the most part, and there is little to indicate they made much of an impact. In Madison, Wisconsin, however, the Occupy movement has suddenly resurfaced, but with a totally new mission: addressing the basic needs of people who are homeless. As issues around collective bargaining rights for public employees and other significant alterations to the social contract were initiated by Governor Walker and the Republican-dominated legislature, Madison became famous for very loud and angry...

The undercover narcotics cop accused of assaulting the driver of an SUV in the highly publicized incident of road rage last month infiltrated the Occupy Wall Street group for police, according to law enforcement sources. He was even "arrested" at one of their protests, one member of the group says. Police this week charged the cop, Wojciech Braszczok, 32, with gang assault, assault and criminal mischief in connection with the Sept. 29 attack in New York City on SUV driver Alexian Lien. But new details have emerged about Braszczok's apparent double-life as a member of the New York City Police...

Is a new, young left really on the rise? A few weeks ago, Peter Beinart wrote a long online essay which argued strongly in the affirmative. It drew a lot of attention—20,000 “Likes” and almost 5,000 tweets, at last count. And it made a lot of the progressives who read it feel better about politics than at any time since Mitt Romney learned 47 percent was actually the percentage of his popular vote. Beinart cobbled together an impressive set of poll results to show that Millennials (Americans under 30) swing left on a broad range of issues—from such obvious ones...

I’d like to propose a toast to Occupy Wall Street, which celebrated its second birthday this September 17 with protests, marches, puppet shows and ballet lessons atop the Financial District’s iconic Charging Bull. Not quite ready to join me in celebration? You’re not alone. Popular sentiment today largely wavers between ignoring, dismissing, making fun of and lamenting the death of Occupy. Nor has the view from the left been a whole lot cheerier. With an old and familiar penchant for criticism, its many tendencies — from liberal to progressive to socialist to anarchist — have caught Occupy in a veritable...

Nothing about the political battle between conservatives and liberals is new — not the passion, not the beliefs and not the absolute certainty on both sides that the country is doomed. You could go back to the nation’s founding, and you would find similar disputes such as we are engaged in today. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson waged a fierce fight over the notion of a central bank, for instance, and the same underlying themes were apparent then that are now being discussed regarding the need for federal oversight of health care, education, law enforcement, marriage and virtually every other...

Occupy Wall Street activists in New York City are to gather in lower Manhattan on Tuesday to mark the second anniversary of their movement against social and economic inequality in the US. The Occupy Wall Street Movement began on September 17, 2011, when protesters began camping in Zuccotti Park near the New York Stock Exchange.

Many of the highest paid CEOs are profiting at the expense of their stockholders – and at the expense of American taxpayers, according to a study released Wednesday morning by the progressive Institute for Policy Studies.A surprising 38 percent of these corporate titans were either fired involuntary, led companies that were penalized for fraud, or received a taxpayer bailout after the 2008 financial crash.“This report should put an end to any remaining sense that we have ‘pay for performance’ in corporate America,” said Sarah Anderson, a co-author of the report and a director at the Washington-based think tank.Most CEOs defend...

(MoneyWatch) Employees of fast food restaurants are striking in cities around the country, bolstered by support from labor unions, churches, and other groups, demanding $15 an hour wages and a greater ability to unionize. Many consumers have complained that the expectations are unreasonable, given the type of work and the skills and drive they assume must be lacking in the workers.

Last week, the SEIU helped organize employee walk-outs at fast food restaurants in seven major cities, with the promise that more would follow in the future. The strikers demanded a $15 minimum wage, which represents a greater than 100 percent increase over the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Today, many stores are also turning to robots to do the jobs that employees would otherwise do. This isn’t science fiction: San Francisco-based Momentum Machines recently announced a new robotic burger-flipper that does the work equivalent of three full-time kitchen employees. That’s 360 burgers per hour—and there’s no SEIU to organize a...

NEW YORK (AP) — Fast-food customers in search of burgers and fries on Thursday might run into striking workers instead. Organizers say thousands of fast-food workers are set to stage walkouts in dozens of cities around the country, part of a push to get chains such as McDonald's, Taco Bell and Wendy's to pay workers higher wages. It's expected be the largest nationwide strike by fast-food workers, according to organizers. The biggest effort so far was over the summer when about 2,200 of the nation's millions of fast-food workers staged a one-day strike in seven cities. Thursday's planned walkouts follow...

On August 29th, the day after the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, fast-food workers around the nation are planning to strike for better pay and working conditions. Workers going on strike are demanding $15 an hour wages, mirroring the demand for $2 an hour the organizers of the 1963 march made.

Florida Sit-In Against ‘Stand Your Ground’ By LIZETTE ALVAREZ TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The college and high school students arranged themselves in the colonial-style chairs and on the green carpet, a portrait of the state’s Old Capitol building above them, as they exchanged stories about their lives and the travails of the “black and brown youth” in Florida. One young woman whose parents were both drug addicts spoke about how she had defied the odds; she will graduate from college next year. A young man mentioned that he was one of the few in his family who had not ended up...

**SNIP** Jurors heard closing arguments, then deliberated four hours before returning their verdict. Their decision: Officers did not violate Elizabeth Nichols’ free speech rights. Nor did they use excessive force when they shoved her in the throat with a baton, pepper sprayed her open mouth and dragged her by her hair.

As states consider fundamental tax reform this session, misconceptions about sound tax policy abound. Perhaps one of the most popular misconceptions is the notion that raising tax rates on the rich will not harm the economy. In Tax Myths Debunked, co-authors Dr. Eric Fruits and Dr. Randall Pozdena use extensive evidence to demonstrate that taxing higher-income earners will certainly not generate economic growth and will not close the gaping budgetary gaps that plague many states governments as well as the federal government. Dr. Pozdena, former vice president of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Dr. Eric...

Jiamei Tian, 58, was arrested Monday afternoon after allegedly covering the National Cathedral's organ inside the historic Bethlehem Chapel, as well as the Children's Chapel on the main level, with green paint. Tian, of no fixed address, was found in the Children's Chapel Monday. Sources say she was found with paint on her clothing and hands and a container of paint in one of her bags. She got loud during the arrest but did not resist and was charged with defacing property.

Tallahassee, Fla., July 28 — In response to the freeing of George Zimmerman, the killer of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was stalked and shot to death simply because he was young, Black and male, the students of color group — the Dream Defenders — have been sitting in and sleeping over in the Florida Statehouse here since July 16. Initially calling this action, #takeovertuesdays, the Dream Defenders seized the outer office of Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s 12 days ago. They are calling on Scott to convene a special session of the Florida Legislature, “to repeal the state Stand Your Ground...

In an ironic twist, the Occupy Wall Street movement, which, two years ago, galvanized resentment against Wall Street and gave birth to the phrase “the 99%,” has given birth to something new: a financial institution. Or, as they call it — the Occupy Money Cooperative. “We launched [the Occupy Money Cooperative] because we felt that the way the for-profit banking industry operates in the U.S., it intrinsically exposes the U.S. economy to risk and makes us vulnerable to the consequences but, above all, fails many millions of Americans who don’t have bank accounts and are denied banking services,” founder and...

Here’s a video documenting how the U.S. Dept. of Justice helped the Dream Defenders — a bogus “student group” run by paid activists with links to ACORN and Occupy — target George Zimmerman and the Sanford police chief in April, 2012. It includes excerpts from an 82-minute audio recording of an April 19, 2012, meeting headed up by the DOJ official................. Highlights: 1. The DOJ official called Dream Defenders a “student group” and referenced the “students” talking at the meeting. (5:45 to 6:10) Yet none of the three members of Dream Defenders who were at the event is a student....

UPDATE: 7:55 PM EST: The march ended without any major acts of violence. There were tussles, but the Houston Police Department did a great job keeping things from escalating. At one point there was a disagreement between the New Black Panther Party and fellow marchers from the Occupy movement. One of the Occupy protesters began marching in front of Quanell X, so a few Panthers asked the man to move--to let Quanell lead. The Occupy member said he didn't see why Quanell X had to be in the front. At the end of the event, people recognized Breitbart News' Brandon...

<p>In the wake of Saturday’s not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial, demonstrations to protest the outcome have erupted all across the country, with more scheduled Monday and throughout the week. Most have been peaceful, others not so much. We’ve collected a handful of tweets, photos and videos from some of them here.</p>