TransCanada's deputies pepper spray 75-year-old woman in Texas who supports the anti-Keystone XL protesters

Pipeline Protest Draws Pepper Spray From Deputies

by Saul Elbein, The New York Times, November 23, 2012

WELLS, Tex. — The first construction workers to arrive at TransCanada’s Keystone XL construction site on Monday morning found climbing ropes tied to their equipment. Three protesters had hung platforms from pine trees, hoisted them 50 feet into the air and secured them to TransCanada construction equipment. Then they had shimmied up. The equipment could not be moved without pulling the protesters out of the trees.

Andrew D. Brosig/Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel, via Associated Press

A protester occupied a tree along the route of the Keystone XL TransCanada Pipeline during an October demonstration by the Tar Sands Blockade.

Related

• Times Topic: Keystone XL Pipeline

Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

Sections of pipe in Sumner, Tex.

At another site down the road, workers found four protesters kneeling on the pipeline easement, their arms locked through the treads of two bulldozers.

By 10 o’clock, a group of about 40 protesters had gathered along the shoulder of the highway. They chanted “Go back to Canada” and waved signs with messages like “TransCanada: No eminent domain for private gain” and “Don’t mix Canadian tar with Texas water.”

It is a scene that has become common in East Texas in the last two months. Since September, when construction began on the Keystone, the Tar Sands Blockade, a grass-roots coalition of East Texas landowners and environmental advocates from across the country, has been waging a nonviolent guerrilla campaign against the pipeline. About every week since construction began, blockade volunteers have locked themselves to construction equipment in protest. So far, 43 have been arrested. But on Monday, protesters who were not locked to equipment were pepper-sprayed as well, the first such incident, according to Ron Seifert, a spokesman for the Tar Sands Blockade.

The protesters have come from across the country. Some are young activists from the coasts, veterans of the Occupy movement and other environmental campaigns who believe that developing the Alberta tar sands will seriously aggravate climate change. Many are locals angered by what they see as TransCanada’s highhanded treatment of landowners.

“I don’t like how they’ve treated people,” said 75-year-old Jeanette Singleton of nearby Nacogdoches, who was worried about the Keystone’s effect on the Angelina River. “If you don’t want to sign, they just take your land from you. It doesn’t seem right.”

TransCanada has attracted particular ire for its use of eminent domain to take easements from landowners who did not want to sign. Many landowners who eventually did sign say they did so out of fear of having their land seized otherwise.

This widespread landowner resentment has created a fertile ground for the blockade’s resistance to the pipeline. The protests on Monday took place with the support of the landowners whose property the easement crossed.

TransCanada has fought back against the protests by hiring off-duty police officers to patrol its pipeline easements, arresting any trespassers. (That has included, in one case, the owner of the land the easement went through.) The company has also filed civil suits against protesters and the landowners who have supported them.

When TransCanada’s construction workers found the protesters on Monday, they called the police. Deputies from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department arrived at the site where the four protesters were locked to tractors and asked them to unlock themselves. When the protesters refused, the deputies administered pepper spray.

After the deputies cut the first pair free, they moved them over to a backhoe, where they left them for more than an hour while they tried to free the second pair. Unable to do so, they pepper-sprayed the second pair until they unlocked themselves.

Around noon, on the advice of a lawyer, the landowners hosting the sit-in revoked the protesters’ permission to be there. Sheriff’s deputies came with a cherry picker on a flatbed truck to remove the protesters from the trees. When other protesters blocked the truck, deputies warned them to get out of the road and then began firing pepper spray into the crowd. Ms. Singleton was unable to get out of the road in time and was hit in the face with the spray.

One by one, the tree sitters were arrested

After the police had left, protesters sat her in a wheelchair on the shoulder of the highway and dabbed her eyes with milk of magnesia to alleviate the burning.

“I don’t believe it,” Ms. Singleton kept saying. “I just don’t believe it.”

A TransCanada spokesman said the company had nothing to do with the police response.

“TransCanada doesn’t determine who to arrest or how to handle a situation,” said the spokesman, David Dodson. “When there’s contact with protesters, we contact law enforcement, and law enforcement takes appropriate action.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/us/texas-transcanada-protesters-are-pepper-sprayed.html

Congress Passes Whistleblower Legislation: Victory for Federal Scientists

Dear Tenney,

At long last, both houses of Congress passed whistleblower legislation that will protect federal employees who expose the censorship and misuse of government science. The bill (pdf) now goes to President Obama's desk. He's expected to sign it.

My colleague, Senior Washington Representative Celia Wexler, put it best:

"The [legislation] recognizes for the first time that censorship of federal information is as harmful to the country as other types of waste, fraud, and abuse in government…At a time when science seems to be routinely under attack in Congress, this legislative success is a breath of fresh air and a reminder that bipartisan cooperation is still possible."

Many organizations across the political spectrum worked for more than a decade to strengthen U.S. whistleblower law. But it was the Union of Concerned Scientists who pushed for protections for agency scientists when their work was suppressed or misused. Celia and other UCS staff spent hundreds of hours on Capitol Hill educating lawmakers on this critical issue.

And you were there with us. We first asked you to contact Congress about this issue in 2007. And your emails, phone calls, and donations made a big difference over the years, as we saw lawmakers begin to understand the importance of whistleblower protections and then advocate for them.

We particularly are grateful to representatives Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Steve Pearce (R-NM), Todd Platts (R-PA), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and senators Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). These elected officials saw the legislation through to the end, ensuring that it would not die with the end of this session of Congress.

Thank you for being with us—and speaking out—during the long haul.

Sincerely, Kevin Knobloch President

David Spratt: Serious talk about geo-engineering better than pious hand-wringing about 2 degrees

by David Spratt, Climate Code Red, November 22, 2012

Cambridge professor and Arctic expert Peter Wadhams

ABC TV's Lateline programme is schedule to discuss climate geo-engineering tonight, a debate that is long overdue.
     Suggesting that climate geo-engineering – such as top-of-atmosphere sulfate injections to reduce incoming solar radiation as a temporary measure until the world gets its act together to avoid the big global warming tipping points – might be necessary is as popular in the environment and climate movements as farting in the middle of a slow movement at a concert.
     Almost everybody is keen to rail against it, such as Climate Authority member Clive Hamilton in The Philosophy of Geoengineering. I have yet to hear a climate or environment advocacy group in Australia even say that we should at least consider the issues on their merits.
      There's lots of reasons to be worried about the ideas – and reasons why we need to consider them – as has been canvassed recently in Nature, on the BBC, on NPR, in the Guardian, and in many scientific papers including here,  here, here and here, for example.
     Yet some of those most willing to consider it are those scientists who seem most aware and forthright about where global warming is heading and why, when all things are considered, geo-engineering appears to be the least-worst option.
    For example, Chuck Greene, Bruce Monger, Mark Huntley find in Geoengineering: The Inescapable Truth of Getting to 350 that: "After evaluating the challenge of stabilizing CO2 concentration at 350 ppm, we conclude that society will only be successful in meeting this goal by supplementing aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions with geoengineering." So what's the choice?
    Ken Caldeira of the Caldeira Lab at Stanford says  we need to look closely at geo-engineering and pioneered research in the area. Discussion of his work may be found here, here, here and here, just for starters.
    Geo-engineering is no substitute for zero emissions and carbon drawdown, it has as yet not-fully-known side effects, there are huge political and governance issues, and some in the fossil fuel industry have shown an interest. All true. And it won't deal with ocean acidification even if it can slow global warming by reducing incoming solar radiation.
     But without it, we are screwed. Take professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, who is a world-leading authority on the Arctic and is scheduled to appear in tonight's "Lateline." We told his story in Big call: Cambridge prof. predicts Arctic summer sea ice “all gone by 2015”on 30 August this year as the Arctic melted dramatically.
     Wadhams, who heads the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, recently gave an off-the-cuff description of what is going to happen in the Arctic, as nations and political leaders fiddle and the planet burns: 

• Summer sea ice disappears, except perhaps for small multiyear remnant north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, by 2015-16.
• By 2020 the ice free season lasts at least a month and by 2030 has extended to 3 months.
• September sea surface temperatures are already elevated by 6-7 °C over continental shelves of Arctic. As shrink back continues, the newly exposed surface water over abyssal depths warms up less in a single summer (say 2-3 °C) because of deeper surface water layer (150 m) than over a shelf (50 m).
• The 6-7 °C warming over the shelves causes offshore permafrost to shrink back and vanish over about 10 years. During this time there is elevated methane emission from offshore and from onshore warming, and global warming rates increase by about 50%.
• Result is that bad effects forecast for end of century (4 °C warming worldwide, 10 °C in Arctic) actually occur by about 2060. Speed of change is catastrophic for agriculture; warfare and population crashes ensue.

The current level of greenhouses gases is just over 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent, enough for two degrees of warming. Losing the Arctic sea-ice in summer will add another half a degree, as I discussed recently in "After the Arctic big melt: A hotter planet."
     And that's without any more greenhouse gas emissions, which are now churning into the atmosphere at a record rate.  Two degrees is not a safe target, but without regional geo-engineering over the Arctic it now seems out of reach. So what's the choice?
     As NASA climate science chief Jim Hansen keeps on telling us, it is hard to argue that anything above the Holocene maximum (of around 0.5 degrees above the pre-industrial temperature) can preserve a safe climate, and that we have already gone too far.  The notion that 1.5 °C is a safe target is out the window, and even 1 °C looks like an unacceptably high risk.

    In recent rivetting and disturbing presentations here and here, Professor Kevin Anderson has shown that the 2 °C target now requires advanced-economy, high-polluting nations like Australia to reduce emissions by 10-20% per year if there is to be an equitable global effort to get there. [This concurs with Copenhagen reality check: 25% by 2020 isn't in the ball park.] And that's assuming the Arctic warming does not feed back into the system.

    None of this, of course, is mentioned in polite company when people tut-tut about the latest report from the World Bank, or whomever, showing we are heading for 4 degrees, accompanied by vague exhortations to hold to 2 degrees, without ever honestly talking about what that means.
     As Anderson points out, even holding warming to 4 degrees requires emissions peaking by 2020 a 3.5% p.a. reduction in CO2 from energy from then on.  Meanwhile Australia's emissions will be greater in 2020 than now due to dodgy carbon permit imports, as the prime minister and the climate minister oversee the massive expansion of coal exports and LNG, all the while mouthing platitudes about a 2-degree target.
     Their policies are not consistent with two degrees, but with four.
     In his presentations, Anderson has pointed out that

For 4 °C global mean surface temperature (that means)
      5-6 °C global land mean
            … and increase °C on the hottest days of:
                6-8 °C in China
                     8-10 °C in Central Europe
                          10-12 °C in New York

 He says that "In low latitudes 4 °C gives up to 40% reduction in maize and rice as population heads towards 9 billion by 2050" and concludes that:

There is a widespread view that a 4 °C future is incompatible with an organised global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of eco-systems and has a high probability of not being stable (i.e., 4 °C would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level).

If the Arctic sea-ice goes in a few years and events unfurl as Wadhams and the peer-reviewed science suggests, 4 degrees will  be difficult to avoid, to put it politely.
     Then it will be too late to talk about geo-engineering, and the billion or so people left on a hot planet will be wishing like crazy we had taken the idea more seriously. Not because it's win-win, but because our collective stupidity over the last two decades now makes it the least-worst option.

http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/11/serious-talk-about-geo-engineering.html

The 16 scariest maps from the E.U.’s massive new climate change report

by Philip Bump, Grist, November 21, 2012

Thinking about a Mediterranean vacation? Might want to go sooner rather than later.

The above map shows how the “tourism climate index” — a calculation of how amenable the climate in a location is to outdoor activity — will be affected by climate change during the summer in Europe. Blue areas will see climatic improvements; yellow, moderately worse climate; brown, significantly worse climate. So if you want to visit, say, Italy or Spain — book your flight.

Earlier today, the European Environment Agency walked into the room and, plunk, dropped a 300-page report on the anticipated effects of climate change on the continent. Three hundred pages, chock-a-block with maps far more terrifying than that one up there. It’s a road map on minute details of what Europe can expect on temperature, flooding, forest fires, soil quality, sea animals. It’s the Grays Sports Almanac of the continent through the year 2100.

Here are some of the more alarming maps and graphs, because terror is a dish best shared. (A blanket note: All images from the full report [PDF]; on most, click to embiggen.)

Temperatures

We’ll start with the big one. Temperatures in Europe have increased across-the-board over the last 50 years.

As the report notes: “The five warmest summers in Europe in the last 500 years all occurred in the recent decade (2002–2011).”

Here, the number of summers in the 95th percentile of temperatures over the last 500 years, by decade.

That’s summers past. In the future: more of the same.

Precipitation

Over the past 50 years, warmer areas have gotten drier while colder areas have gotten wetter.

In the future, that trend will be exacerbated. During the summer, precipitation will drop almost everywhere, with the exception of the far north.

The same holds true for the winter: Snowfall will also drop.

Sea level

As you undoubtedly know, sea levels have risen around the world.

The effect in Europe has been distributed — sea levels have been dropping somewhat around Finland and Sweden, but going up dramatically near Denmark and, in a bit of very bad news, the low-lying Netherlands.

That sea-level rise is one component of a massive projected increase in “100 year floods” in certain parts of Europe. Note the 2080 projection in the U.K., below.

Fire danger

Drier conditions mean more fires. Across the continent, there has been an increased danger of wildfire.

By the end of the century, that danger will have increased dramatically for parts of the continent, and increased everywhere to at least some extent.

Agriculture

Again, drier conditions mean more need for irrigation — but also less availability of water with which to irrigate.

And, as a result, drier regions will see significant drop-offs in food production.

Even in more moderate climates, production will drop.

Impact on population

No one in Europe will be spared some environmental impact; nearly everyone will see an economic effect as well.

In summary:

Source

• Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012, European Environment Agency

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

http://grist.org/news/the-16-scariest-maps-from-the-e-u-s-massive-new-climate-change-report/

Andrew Freedman, Arthur Smith: Sea Ice missing from Beaufort Sea in November for first time in recorded history

by Andrew Freedman, Climate Central, November 19, 2012

The consequences of the record loss of Arctic sea ice this past summer are becoming clear to the 4,000 or so residents of Barrow, Alaska, who have seen a much milder and snowier-than-average start to their typically long and bitterly cold winter season.

Temperature departures from average during the past month in Barrow, AK. Click to enlarge the image.  Credit: NWS Alaska Region.

As is typical for this time of year, much of Alaska has already been plunged into winter conditions, with temperatures below 0°F in some locations. Yet Barrow, which from its perch on Alaska’s North Slope is the country’s northernmost town, has had a downright balmy start to the Alaskan winter. (Well, balmy for Barrow, at least.) 

According to the National Weather Service, Barrow has seen “almost continuous above-normal temperatures” since September “due to a lack of sea ice” formation until last week. Along with the above-average temperatures has come above-average snowfall. Snowfall since July 1 has been more than a foot above average, the Weather Service said, with 31.4 inches of snow having fallen through Nov. 17.

The record melt of Arctic sea ice this summer resulted in a broader expanse of open water in the Arctic Ocean. The darker ocean waters absorbed more incoming solar radiation, warming the sea and the lower atmosphere, thereby helping to warm lands that border the Arctic Ocean, such as Barrow. Open water also provides a ready moisture source for precipitation, be it in the form of rain or snow, and this accounts for much of Barrow’s recent snowy spell.

Temperature outlook for December 2012, showing a likelihood for continued above average temperatures along Alaska's North Slope (blue arrow). Credit: NWS/CPC.

As the Arctic climate has warmed in recent years, fall sea ice cover has often formed later in certain areas, and when it does form, it has tended to be thinner than average. After setting a record low in September, sea ice extent doubled during October but still only managed to recover to the second-lowest extent on record for October, ranking just above 2007.

Studies show that sea ice loss can speed warming of parts of the Far North, thereby helping to melt permafrost and unlock the greenhouse gases currently locked in such frozen lands.

The National Weather Service had predicted the early winter warmth in far northern Alaska. Back in October, when the National Weather Service released its initial winter weather outlook for the winter of 2012-13, forecasters assigned this region the highest odds of any part of the country to have warmer-than-average conditions, due to the lack of sea ice.

In October, Mike Halpert, the deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said, “Right now there is no ice at all there. We would certainly expect the early winter to be above average [temperature-wise]." More recently, sea ice has rapidly increased around Barrow, which should cut off some of the available moisture for the above average snows that have struck the region, and cut temperatures to more typical levels.

Comment by Arthur C. Smith:

By Arthur C. Smith III (Kaktovik, Alaska, 99747)
on November 20th, 2012

I’m glad to see in print, the report of what we have experienced up here and how significantly these details relate to a changing climate. 

I live in Kaktovik, Alaska, which is on a small island in the Beaufort Sea, approximately 350 miles to the east of Barrow.

I believe for the first time in human history, the entire north coast of Alaska was ice free on November 1st;  the Arctic Ocean was open and had reached a new record minimum for that date.

The world cannot underestimate the impact upon climate presented by such a large, newly opened body of water.  Personally, I believe that the 2012 record Arctic sea ice minimum has crossed a threshold: the “tipping point” has been reached.  The change in weather speaks to it, the change in animal behavior speaks to it, life in the arctic screams it…  but will we listen?

Here in the Arctic, there is no choice but to listen, to see that daily life is changing in real time.  I have lived here only nine years but in that short period of time, the change that I’ve witnessed is profound, to put it mildly.

Speaking of mildly, just to clarify the relative nature of the reader’s interpretation of the word “mild” being used to describe the start of the Alaskan Arctic winter.  It is true that we’ve had a record warm September, warmer than normal temperatures in October and November, but the mitigation of temperature by open water has paled in the face of raging blizzards, one after another, week upon week, winds blowing in the 50s mph for days upon days, gusts in the 70s, record snowfall, aviation grounded, life at a standstill.  Only here, can this scenario pass as quasi normal and equally pass unnoticed by the outside world.  Anywhere in the lower 48, these conditions would merit national news coverage and likely some emergency relief. 

But… the water is warmer, it is open.  The air temperatures are warmer and the resultant increase in atmospheric energy has defined a fall, here in this part of the world, that no man living has ever seen; that no recorded history has ever documented.  If not already on notice due the course of world climate events, be assured that the current exception of the Arctic experiencing “what no man has ever seen” will soon be shared by all man.

Arthur C. Smith III

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/as-sea-ice-declines-winter-shifts-in-northern-alaska-15266

Breaking: SUNY Buffalo Shuts "Frackademia" Center, Shale Resources and Society Institute

by Steve Horn, DeSmogBlog, November 19, 2012

Today, SUNY Buffalo closed the doors of its Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), what we at DeSmog have described as an epicenter for "frackademia" and a public relations front for the oil and gas industry to promote hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") under the guise of scientific legitimacy that a university offers.

A letter from SUNY Buffalo President Satish K. Tripathi said that the nail in the coffin for SRSI was what we coined its "shill gas study," the first paper published by SRSI. All of the co-authors of this paper had direct ties to the oil and gas industry, as did four out of five of its peer reviewers.

Tripathi explained his rationale behind slamming the door shut on SRSI, writing:

The university upholds academic freedom as a core principle of our institutional mission. With that being said, academic freedom carries with it inherent responsibilities...The May 15, 2012, report...led to allegations questioning whether historical financial interests influenced the authors' conclusions. The fundamental source of controversy revolves around clarity and substantiation of conclusions. Every faculty member has a responsibility to ensure that conclusions in technical reports or papers are unambiguous and supported by the presented data. It is imperative that our faculty members adhere to rigorous standards of academic integrity, intellectual honesty, transparency, and the highest ethical conduct in their work.

Because of these collective concerns, I have decided to close the Shale Resources and Society Institute.

Tripathi's announcement comes on the heels of the upcoming SUNY Board of Trustees meeting set to take place in Albany, NY, on Dec. 3-4.  

New Yorkers Against Fracking proclaimed the announcement a "victory for real science over junk science peddled by the gas industry." 

http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/19/breaking-news-suny-buffalo-ends-frackademia-center-shale-resources-and-society-institute

Peter Wadhams: "The Arctic Death Spiral': Geoengineering May Be Our Best Chance to Save Sea Ice

Geoengineering may be our best chance to save what sea ice is left 

by Peter Wadhams, Scientific American, November 14, 2012 

I first went to the Arctic in the summer of 1970, aboard the Canadian oceanographic ship Hudson, which was carrying out the first circumnavigation of the Americas. The ship was ice-strengthened and needed to be. Along the coasts of Alaska and the Northwest Territories, Arctic Ocean ice lay close in to land, leaving a gap of only a few miles to do our survey. Sometimes ice went right up to the coast. That was considered normal. 

Today a ship entering the Arctic from the Bering Strait in summer finds an ocean of open water in front of her. Water extends far to the north, stopping only a few miles short of the pole. From space the top of the world now looks blue instead of white. Things are worse than appearances would suggest, however. What ice is still left is thin—average thickness dropped 43% between 1976 and 1999, sonar measurements show. By 2015, at this rate, summer melting will outstrip the accumulation of new ice in winter, and the entire ice cover will collapse. Once summer ice goes away entirely, the physics of latent heat will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to get it back. We will have entered what Mark C. Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, calls the Arctic “death spiral.”

Once ice yields to open water, the albedo—the fraction of solar radiation reflected back into space—drops from 0.6 to 0.1, which will accelerate warming of the Arctic. According to my calculations, the loss of the remaining summer ice will have the same warming effect on the earth as the past 25 years of carbon dioxide emissions. Because a third of the Arctic Ocean is composed of shallow shelf seas, surface warming will extend to the seabed, melt offshore permafrost and trigger the release of methane, which has a much greater greenhouse warming effect than CO₂. A Russian-U.S. expedition led by Igor Semiletov has recently observed more than 200 sites off the coast of Siberia where methane is welling up from the seabed. Atmospheric measurements also show that methane levels are rising, most likely largely from Arctic emissions.

To avoid the consequences of a collapse of summer ice, we need to bring back the ice we have lost. That will require more than merely slowing the pace of warming—we need to reverse it.

Reducing carbon emissions and replacing fossil fuels with renewables, including nuclear power, are the most sensible long-term solutions, of course. But these measures are not going to save the Arctic ice. After decades of our trying, CO₂ levels in the global atmosphere continue to rise at a more than exponential rate.

It is time to consider a radical course: geoengineering. By this I mean techniques to artificially lower surface temperatures by blocking the sun. One proposal entails “whitening” low-level clouds by injecting fine sprays of water into them; another involves releasing solid sulfates into the atmosphere from balloons, causing radiation-reflecting aerosols to form. A simpler step would be to paint roofs and pavements white. Such measures are sticking-plaster solutions. They would have to be continuously applied, given that any cessation would bring warming back at an accelerated rate. Nor do they counter direct CO₂ effects such as ocean acidification. But they might buy us time.

Is there a geoengineering technique that would cool the entire planet? Is there a way to cool only the Arctic in summer, to keep sea ice from disappearing? What effect would cloud whitening or chemical release over the Arctic have on precipitation patterns and on temperature? Finding out will require much research and modeling. This must be done urgently. We can no longer afford the luxury of talking about reducing CO₂ emissions by some conveniently distant date in the future. We need action now.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geoengineering-last-chance-save-sea-ice

Mayor Bloomberg owes OWS an apology

by Cynthia Kouril, FireDogLake, November 12, 2012

We Got This (Occupy Sandy) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

Mayor Mike has a lot of egg on his face, so does Ray Kelly. Despite being derided, kettled, pepper sprayed, and generally treated like subhumans by the NYC government, Occupy Wall Street continues to rise above the pettiness that  characterizes the behavior and assumptions of “various serious people.”

Continuing to think outside the box, OWS has two new initiatives: Occupy Sandy and Rolling Debt Jubilee.

Occupy Sandy

I live on the North Shore of Long Island, walking distance from the beach, in an area full of very old tall trees and very old overhead wires. Oh, and spotty cellphone coverage. I have been virtually incommunicado for the past couple weeks. No electricity, no internet, no landline phones, no TV, no voice over cellphone and very limited texting over cellphone.

What little information I had access to, came from the car radio, and it told a tale of stranded victims on Staten Island and the Long Island South Shore and Brooklyn, left unaided by the City. No police doing door-to-door searches for the trapped and stranded elderly or infirm, no social service agencies coming to their homes to make sure they had a meal, nadda.

So, OWS called upon its stupendous logistical skills and filled the void left by Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg.  Bloomberg holds daily press conferences, but for people with no access to mass communication, he was  a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. Did it really take him 2 weeks to figure out that squad cars have speaker systems on them and could be deployed like sound trucks?

BTW, Con Ed, LIPA and PSE&G:  Would it have killed you to hire some sound trucks to make announcements, since people without power or internet cannot use your hopeless websites?

I digress.  OWS did what they do best, rallied compassionate people, started cooking meals and gave them away, just like at Liberty Plaza (it’s hard to get me to call it Zuccotti Park). They organized blankets and flashlights and charging stations (including the Green Peace solar truck and those cool Gilligan’s Island bicycle generators), just as they did at Liberty Plaza. They knocked on doors to ask the stranded residents what they needed. They sent out tweets for “needs of the occupiers” and supporters from all over the world sent supplies, just like at Liberty Plaza. They even improved on that with an Occupy Sandy “wedding registry” on Amazon that helps donors ship supplies quickly and easily. Genius!

So complete is their logistical competence that they are now holding training for the National Guard troops who have been sent in to help and…wait for it…for the Mayor’s Office representatives. Considering how poorly they have been treated by this administration, they could have refused to aid the government efforts and played tit-for-tat, but their goal is to help by any means.

The press has always had trouble covering OWS because it doesn’t play into their preconceived notions and because there is no self promoting “face” of OWS. So, the story of this movement has been consistently misreported and under reported. OWS transcended the typical media narrative and has left the press behind, left the government behind, and focused on just getting the job done on the ground.

They transformed the political dialogue in a presidential election year and without a single Super PAC ad, probably contributed more to the defeat of  Mitt Romney than any deep-pocketed donor. Now they have are demonstrating the power of horizontal organizing to fill the void left by the City government, FEMA and the utterly underwhelming Red Cross. Another aside, a celebrity-studded telethon to raise money for the Red Cross did not result in the Red Cross being effective. I don’t know what they are doing with that money, but it is not being spent on Long Island, I can tell you that. Next telethon should direct donors to make purchases on the Sandy wedding registry.

Rolling Debt Jubilee

In another episode of thinking outside the box, OWS has discovered that an industry exists to buy distressed debt at pennies on the dollar. The companies that buy this debt then try to collect it and when successful, make their money on the spread.  OWS has set up a fund to create capital to buy the debt, but intends to forgive it rather than collect it. There is going to be a telethon on November 15^th at 8 p.m.

Some have hollered that it creates a taxable event. However, if OWS is even more clever, they will contact the debtors, and stipulate to “settle” a pre-litigation case over the debt and the debtor will waive counterclaims and defenses in exchange for cancelling the debt. Since value is given, no taxable windfall. Since the most deeply discounted distressed debt has already passed through the hands of prior debt collection agencies, who no doubt have engaged in sketchy debt collection practices, it will not be a farce to say the debtors have counter-claims and defenses. This idea came from Masaccio.

OWS did a test run of this concept and was able to buy $14,000 of debt for only $500. This model should be used by the federal government to force the modification of mortgages, instead of bailing out the big banks, TARP money should have (and still could be) used to buy up the mortgages directly, reset the principle balance to reflect the current market value of the homes, and then reset the payments to fit the homeowners’ current incomes. Does that mean some homeowners, even with principle reduction, will end up with VERY long debt repayment terms? Yes, but it also means they can now sell those houses and get out from under if they choose, or they can pay for a long time and slowly rebuild equity.

The Triumph of Doing Over Talking

Over and over the MSM has whined that OWS doesn’t have a platform, it doesn’t have stated goals, it doesn’t have a message. Well, first of all, that tripe just demonstrates how lazy the MSM is. OWS has devoted many pixels to creating websites and online commercials explaining the programs and goals. The MSM is just too damn lazy to Google. OWS has devoted many pieces of cardboard and many yards of banners full of signs carried up major roadways full of slogans and demands. MSM couldn’t be bothered to show up and watch.

Nonetheless, OWS spends less time on messaging than any arm of government or any traditional interest group or charity.  OWS doesn’t spend their donations hiring the “right” consultants who spoon feed puff pieces to reporters over meals at fancy restaurants.  They don’t do ad buys for commercials with patriotic sounding music.

I’ve seen a ton of Red Cross commercials since my TV came back on, but not one Red Cross truck. OWS doesn’t play the game. Unlike the Red Cross, they don’t spend their time talking about what they would like to do or could do or did once before, they just go do it. It doesn’t matter if the “it” is changing the political dialogue to talk about the 1% vs. the 99%, or feeding a hungry person, or buying up student loan or medical debt.  They spend much less effort talking about doing it and more effort getting it done.

http://my.firedoglake.com/cindykouril/2012/11/12/mayor-bloomberg-owes-ows-an-apology/