OCCUPY WALL STREET

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by SoNotHer

Does anyone figures on emergency services and response? How much typically is being spent?

This is one of my morning emails. Does anyone know about this either?

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Tim Geithner, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, has a long history of enabling Wall Street misconduct.

Yet President Obama is allowing Secretary Geithner and other top officials in the Obama administration to pressure state Attorneys General to agree to a horrible settlement deal with banks that would let them off the hook for massive amounts of mortgage and foreclosure fraud.2

In exchange for meager penalties, the banks get immunity from future prosecution, even for misconduct that has not been fully investigated and misconduct that might still be ongoing.3

Any settlement like this would amount to little more than another bank bailout4, and according to published reports we might only have a small amount of time to stop it.

Call President Obama and tell him not to sell us out to Wall Street. Click here for the number to call and a sample script.

Americans are paying a heavy price for Wall Street greed. Millions are out of work, millions face foreclosure, and millions more are feeling the pain in some other way. But not one of the Wall Street crooks who drove our economy off a cliff has gone to jail. And without aggressive investigation and prosecution of misconduct, none of them will.

President Obama's political advisors have said that he plans on running against Wall Street as part of his reelection campaign.

But if President Obama really wanted to hold the banks accountable, he'd ensure his administration does nothing less than support investigating, prosecuting and punishing unscrupulous banks to the full extent of the law.

Top officials in the Obama administration cannot act in their official capacity without the backing of President Obama, who is ultimately responsible for what they do. The buck stops with him.

President Obama must stop his administration from pushing this terrible deal.

Call President Obama and tell him not to sell us out to Wall Street. Click here for the number to call and a sample script.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

There have ben figures thrown around about Occupy Oakland- at nearly a half million dollars spent just at the start of the occupation and the "raids" to move protest tents, etc. - for one month. But, there was no break-down of what this represents in terms of line items and how the city earmarks for possible needs out of the ordinary. I have no idea of the accuracy of these figures and when a "range" is given, I question it. Most likely, a month-end accounting from a municipality would be the only way to have some accurate figures. I do believe that with a good 3 years of revenue decreases due to the recession cities are dealing with tight budgets and that having to contract out for services is taking its toll. Much less expensive to have the lost positions in a budget. And well, think of those that were laid off. There have been so many public employment job losses that many cities are running on empty. But they still have an obligation to provide safety and emergency services- no matter the nature of an event or activity.

I have been thinking about how a lot of city workers that have seen their co-workers be laid off or have more to do because cities are not hiring when someone retires could get upset at seeing added costs to the very budget their job depends on. The "will I be next?" phenomenon at work. Here in CA, cities have had several sources of both state and federal funding sources dry up simply due to deficits caused by drops in all kinds of tax revenues. The monies really are not there. Hell, my county just had to float a measure to keep a county emergency hospital open that serves the public and loads of people that are homeless and uninsured. And the fact is that we have a huge population that still exists that tries to stay under the radar due to immigration status that has no other place to go for medical emergencies or care- especially for their children- what can they do?

One of my fears is that there will be a big backlash by municipal employees that are laid-off in the future and will blame in part, extra spending on the Occupy movement- even if that line of thought is faulty when all is considered. The 98/99% is getting screwed on a multitude of levels.