Free Republic

Occupy may be gone, but it is clearly not forgotten. The people protesting Eric Garner’s death in New York City were marching to a slightly different drum beat in 2011, but they seem to have returned, having learned something from their previous mistakes.

During Saturday´s protests about the lack of indictments in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, CUNY adjunct professor and creator of erotic poetry Eric Linsker picked up a trashcan and tried to throw it at police officers. Two police lieutenants were attacked by the crowd when the officers tried to arrest Linsker. Newsday described the incident: They were on the roadway of the [Brooklyn] bridge about 8 p.m. when they heard reports of "debris being thrown on the walkway" at police officers who were walking alongside demonstrators involved in Saturday´s New York City rally against police shootings of...

A part-time CUNY professor faces a slate of charges accusing him of sparking a violent run-in with police during Saturday's protest demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge. Eric Linsker, 29, was allegedly spotted by police carrying a large garbage can on walkway of the bridge above the traffic lanes during the protests against the police killings of unarmed black men. Protesters had been tossing debris at police on the bridge's lower level at the time, police said. Police Lt. Philip Chan ordered Linkser to put down the trash can and attempted to arrest him, according to court records. A small group...

In a development that may portend extended disruptions, veteran street organizer Lisa Fithian, previously dubbed “Professor Occupy,” recently trained Ferguson protesters how to “simulate chaos.” Fithian is a legendary organizer who once announced she seeks to “create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.” She was one of the luminaries of the Occupy Wall Street movement and was a lead organizer in the infamous 1999 Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization that descended into violence. The 1999 WTO event in Seattle devolved into widespread rioting in which more than 40,000 protesters, some using violent tactics, descended...

Have you ever wondered what happened to all the POWIES, the People of Occupy Wall Street? You know, all those pathetically sad people who signed on to the Progs’ last populist class warfare movement?It was the story of the year in 2011, and you may recall it was also the story that gave MOTUS her international creds. My post, The People of OWS: like the people of Wal-Mart, only not as smart, was Instalanched and picked up by the Daily Mail Online and read ‘round the world: I’ve been kind of a big deal on the Internet ever since. A...

Establishment Republican Neel Kashkari (R) has pulled ahead of controversial California state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R) ahead of Tuesday's all-party primary, according to a new poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times. ADVERTISEMENT Kashkari leads Donnelly among likely voters with 18 percent of the vote to 13 percent, the first time the former assistant Treasury secretary has had a lead in the Republican field. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) was at 50 percent in the live-caller poll, conducted for the Times and the University of Southern California by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. Some Republicans have been panicked about having Donnelly...

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly on Wednesday lashed out at the GOP elite that is rallying around rival Neel Kashkari, saying they are scared of his own candidacy.. "I'm a threat to the country club Republicans,” Donnelly, an assemblyman from San Bernardino County, told the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board. “I'm a danger -- because I might bring a little more country into the club." Donnelly is the front-runner among GOP candidates to win a spot on the fall ballot to take on Gov. Jerry Brown in the fall. He is running an insurgent campaign on a shoestring budget that...

We released a new web video today, entitled “Out of Touch,” exposing Elizabeth Warren’s weak stance on illegal immigration. The video highlights Warren’s opposition to the border fence and her support for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. From her Ivory Tower and the comfort and safety of her multi-million dollar home, Professor Warren insists that Massachusetts taxpayers turn a blind eye to illegal immigration and even subsidize college tuition for illegal aliens.

The big political news from last week was David Brat’s upset win over Eric Cantor for Congress. Brat is an economics professor at Randolph Macon and from his research it’s clear that he has strong political views embedded in his economics. It’s perfectly fine to be a political economist, but when it leads to an obviously flawed understanding and presentation of reality then it becomes a real problem in my opinion. For instance, in his website Brat says the following: “Our national debt has skyrocketed, reaching over $17 trillion dollars. What our leaders in Washington fail to mention is...

The Eric Cantor debacle in Virginia last week demanded a storyline, which was no heavy lifting. In the GOP primary a political newbie had wiped the floor with the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Bring on the analysts to find the narrative in the rebuke administered, a rather remote if hard-working political power broker linked more frequently -- here comes the dichotomy -- with Wall Street than Main Street. Cantor, on these terms, updated Cardinal Wolsey's Shakespearean lament from "Henry VIII": "Had I but served my district with half the zeal/I served the Chamber of Commerce...

Pope Francis has called on "greedy" bankers to establish a stricter ethics code, and stop getting rich through financial market speculation. He attacked the practice of hedging as ‘intolerable’ equating it to stealing food from the poor. "It is increasingly intolerable that financial markets are shaping the destiny of peoples rather than serving their needs, or that the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences," Pope Francis said at an investors ethics’ seminar at the Vatican on Monday. Specifically, the pope denounced the practice of betting on the price of commodities...

Like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Dave Brat sends a shock through the New York/Washington axis. His victory shows a classic denial of political reality by the political establishment. It comes because the establishment holds fast to "the way we were" and won't let go. 'Twas ever thus, but all the money, all the influence, all the mainstream propaganda from Hollywood and the Eastern press cannot hold it back. The new century rises to new themes; the old falls away to ruins. I have been saying here that what we have been seeing...

With its cover story [1] on Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, The New Republic has hit an all-time low. Written by TNR Senior Editor Alec Macgillis, it reads as a commissioned hit job meant to lessen Walker’s chances of entering the GOP presidential race.Let’s start with the cover: superimposed over a photo of the governor standing by his desk is the title: “Scott Walker is So Hot Right Now: Too bad he owes his success to a toxic strain of Racial Politics.” Inside the issue, the title becomes: “The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker: A Journey Through the Poisonous,...

It’s now clear why the primary defeat of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, came so completely out of the blue last week: Beltway blindness that put a focus on fund-raising, power-brokering and partisan back-and-forth created a reality distortion field that obscured the will of the people. But that affliction was not Mr. Cantor’s alone; it is shared by the political press. Reporters and commentators might want to pause and wipe the egg off their faces before they go on camera to cluck-cluck about how Mr. Cantor, Republican of Virginia, missed signs of the insurgency that took him out. There...

The primary election defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor by the little-known Tea Party conservative David Brat has shocked business and financial elites as well as politicians and pundits. Conservative intellectuals such as Tim Carney have been arguing for a while that the right should adopt a new populism that targets “crony capitalism” and the collaboration of public and private elites at the expense of workers and small businesses. Brat is the first conservative candidate to have achieved a major electoral success by taking this line. He denounced Cantor for being too close to Wall Street and K Street,...

Slovyansk, Ukraine (CNN) -- In a forest of pines to the east of Slovyansk, Prapor and his seventy men were digging in Thursday. A man in his late-fifties with a magnificent beard and four different weapons, Prapor freely admitted he was not a local. But he was here -- he said -- to resist the "Ukrainian fascists" in Krasny Liman, a nearby town just recaptured by government forces. He was dismissive of the group that had fled Krasny -- "Cossacks," he sneered. He had already lost seven men, but his fighters were the bravest. They would not run away. Meeting...

There has been a lot of talk in the blogs and in local and national news about the heckling and boos that Eric Cantor received when he gave his speech at the 7th District GOP convention this past Saturday. Many felt it was unseemly and disrespectful. I personally don’t like booing even when a referee makes a bad call, but I think you can better understand the response from this past Saturday if you have context: Eric Cantor has made it abundantly clear to all his constituents that town hall meetings are beneath him. His consultant, Ray Allen, once told...

Big Journalism has learned that the Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement. Someone has made the emails from the Occupy D.C. email distro public and searchable. The names in the list are a veritable who’s who in media. Journolist 2.0 includes well known names such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear.

The rich are not the problem, the greedy are not the problem, the crooked are not the problem - the problem is the system that brings them about. If the system is ours, the system means by the people, of the people, for the people, then now it is time to take it back. Now it is time to demand that it would be changed.

We're better than those damned Russians and their Putin; we have democracy! Well, maybe not. Quote: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Lots of big words in that paragraph. Let's distill it down -- the argument presented is that America is really no different than...