Well, perhaps the reaction is heavyhanded? The UN's envoy on freedom of expression seems to think so: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02…

Mulert gets it right on all counts.

occupy didn't dictate the terms of the expenses so how can they be held responsible?

When you want to have one cop per protester it get's expensive. Even when Westlake was nearly empty the SPD still kept half a dozen officers (at least) in the park to monitor...I guess the leaves falling off the trees at that point.

Maybe they should be more like Nelson, BC or some other cities and not overreact?

Ya think?

Rights are not something that have a price. So stop trying to suppress them.

Or, conversely, the police understaff the event, something happens to someone (fight, riot, etc.). The affected person or persons sue the city for millions because they did not staff enough police, and thus the city spends even more. Not really as cut and dry as "oh, they just sent too many cops there".

$500K...so roughly 16 days of take home pay for your average CEO 1%'er. Sounds like a reasonable deal to me.

Exactly, @7.

Impose a surtax on Millionaires to pay it.

Good. I hope that takes resources away from the gang of thugs that is the SPD.

$500k = 1/3 a human life (John T. Williams family settlement). Considering 1%'s shrug towards the $1.5mil and otherwise lack of accountability, seems minimal.

i believe the wisconsin governor is trying to make future protesters pay for all city expenses related to said protests. why do we even have a bill of rights again?

Said it before:
Occupy is a de facto jobs stimulus program for the SPD!

@8 -- Um, no. Everyone should just be taxed equally. The attitude that millionaires should pay for everyone else who wasn't ambitious or smart enough to make their own millions is the exact type of entitled whining that's kept a lot of people from embracing the Occupy movement.

The overtime pay for SPD is well deserved. I hope a few of their spouses will wake up to Cadillac Escalades with a bow on the roof sitting in their driveways Christmas morning.

Freedom *is* free - it's Security that's expensive.

@13 Here is a little math problem for you. Someone makes 5 dollars an hour, works 40 hours a week, and makes, before a flat 10% tax, $200 which would mean they take home $180 a week, $720 a month. Total tax in a month is $80. Assuming they live in Seattle, we will say their rent is $400 a month (could be lower or higher, but that is the number for this scenario). That leaves $320 for gas and food and everything else.

Now, someone else makes the equivalent, for the sake of this argument, $500 an hour. Over a 40 hour week they make 20,000 and over a month $80,000. This doesnt even put them into the millionaire (at least per year) category. Their total tax per week is 2,000 and their total for the month is 8,000. This makes their total monthly pay 72,000. Now lets assume this person pays more in rent, lets say 5K a month for that nice Bellevue high rise apt. That leaves 67,000 for gas, food, bills, subscriptions to Conservatism Monthly, etc.

So, now I ask you, is it fair for both of the people in this scenario to pay a 10% tax? Because from where I am sitting that 10% for the $5/hour person is way more significant than the 10% for the $500/hour person.

Maybe you should think beyond the theoretical here. A flat tax doesnt make any fucking sense and it only hurts poor people. End of discussion.

Don't you just love that this was posted by "Unpaid Intern"?? All these people that are occupying should get out and get a job, otherwise they're going to be finding other ways to get money, like cashing in their structured settlement or something. Actually maybe not, if any one even knows what that is. (this explains: http://www.legalcapitalcorp.com/2011/11/…) Maybe half the protesters will have lawsuits in their near future. Time will tell!

@13
My friend's autistic son's intelligence and ambitions, amazing as they are at 20, probably aren't going to earn him a standard of living that will be a significant tax source, if ever. Sometimes the winners of the trust fund lottery have to step up to more than equal. This is my entitled presumptive whining on his behalf, because generally he's pretty happy. He doesn't know he relies on govt subsidies.

@13 It would great if millionaires were taxed at as high a rate everybody else. They currently aren't.

Anyone looking at this can see that this action is costing the city money. However, it is disingenuous to present the total to date in relation to the current number of people actively involved in the camps. The trend is that these costs have dropped week-over-week as expected.

We should be expected to pay an extra cost for additional public safety in reaction to an 'unplanned' event and this response should and appears to be in proportion with the number of participants.

The comment on the 11 Nov SPD line item in the last report is that the cost is largely associated with other events and that is was only grouped into this report because "Occupy Seattle join in events". Stripping that out of the totals, the cost has dropped significantly.

Directly from the last report: This is the breakdown week by week:

14 Oct $154,068
21 Oct $214,589
28 Oct $120,689
4 Nov $51,875
11 Nov $15,784

There are no figures for the last 2 weeks but I would bet that they are close to if not less than the 11 Nov totals.

@13 And dont even get me started on the GIANT assumption you are making that eveyone that has millions of dollars actually earned it. That assumption makes you a fucking idiot of the highest caliber. It isnt even worth explaining. Instead, I will hope you are never in a position that involves making any kind of important decisions as you will certainly fuck that up.

@21 That makes too much sense, you will get nowhere with that kind of logic on Slog.

Based on the chase bank incident on Broadway a month ago, the protesters cannot be trusted not to tresspass or disrupt traffic. So the cops are indeed needed to ensure the protesters not act like a wild bunch of jackinapes hell bent on squating in a bank lobby.

@ 13 - Yes, because anyone who isn't a millionaire by now just wasnt ambitious or smart enough. So soup kitchens for them!

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? While you're at it, why not call for all the surplus population to just go ahead and die already and get it over with?

How DARE those occupying people believe that they are "entitled" to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness here in America!

Harrumph, I say! HARRUMPH!!

So, is the complaint about overly generous union contracts? If you want to pay people a decent wage with decent overtime, then don't complain when you see costs like this...

@13 I think we should return to the tax rates that made America great.

90 percent income tax on Millionaires.

50 percent capital gains tax rate.

And a much smaller military.

I like Ike.

And Reagan.

Both had this tax rate.

If you don't like it, move back to Somalia. Or Russia.

Half a million dollars from the actions of Occupy Seattle is nothing compared to the lost revenues and increased demand on city services since the banksters crashed the economy.

@28, Somehow I don't think the complaint is so much about union contracts as about the wastefulness of policing the protesters at the level we've seen.

So what? This is how America works.

How much money have the Glenn Back rallies and the Tea Party ones cost? How much did the Million Man March cost? How much did it cost to conduct MLK's I Have A Dream speech?

This is a bullshit statistic in any context. It's the background static cost of society.

@20 -- That's exactly what I said. They *should* be taxed equally.

@24 -- I'm not making the assumption that all rich people earned their wealth. Many people are just born into wealth. Financially successful, hardworking people have kids who inherit their wealth, just like poor people have kids they can't afford to take care of. That's just the way the world works.

Now that you bring up assumptions, I think that a lot of Occupiers are operating under the assumption that MOST rich people DIDN'T earn their money, but lied, cheated and stole their way into it, stepping over homeless people and orphans along the way. They've vilified millionaires. They've also vilified anyone who's lucky enough to have been born to a millionaire, which is as stupid as hating someone for being born poor.

@29: Reagan-Era tax rates. If Dems would just hire someone like Frank Luntz, Obama would have been calling tax increases "A Return to the Reagan-Era tax rates that made this country great" for the last three years.

@21: Thanks for your excellent analysis of the costs.

@34- So it's not okay to hate millionaires that were born millionaires, even though they needn't be ambitious or smart to collect their inheritance, but the poor kid born to the poor family "wasn't ambitious or smart enough to make their own millions ", so fuck the slacker? Logic fail.

@34 - Please read @16.

And, if you could, please tell us how it is that you know exactly why all those occupying people are out in the cold right now - because they hate the rich? Really? How do you have this information?

It's not because, oh, say, they're just fed up with a system that is rigged to support the very wealthy, at the expense of the rest of us? It wouldn't be because they're annoyed that special interests now determine legislation, or anything like that, would it? Couldn't POSSIBLY be because corporations are now people???

Nah, they just hate rich people. Because they themselves were not ambitious or smart enough to make their own millions.

GOTCHA.

@37 -- Um, no. The poor kid born into a poor family can grow up to make something of himself. Or he can succumb to the shitty circumstances he was born into. We all know people who have risen above terrible circumstances. Some people have it in them, others don't.

Actually, I filed that public records request in response to several reports, including Vanessa Ho's.

I found this e-mail that was disclosed particularly interesting:

Hall,

Here is SPD's latest update on Occupy Seattle expenses. This week's numbers for the Occupy folks are actually pretty small if you strictly take what was charged to that activity. It's about $11,500. However, they did join two other events which cost an additional $70K. At this point SPD feels it is appropriate to include these costs with the Occupy costs. What I am unclear on at this point is how much Occupy really added to those other events. I am have some questions in to SPD at this point trying to figure this out, but wanted to get this to you today. I will keep you updated on what I find out.

Mike

Oops. I post comments for CDC sometimes, and was still logged in to that account. @41 pertains to me, not the CDC.

The whole thing was hyped by the cops so they could loot the City's coffers. a half a million dollars in overtime bilked by the SPD. Its protection money for the 1% and gets the cops a little closer to having the same interests. Where else do folks with junior college degrees make 150k?

Amanda, thank you for your stunning silence regarding my post @38.

Your silence is ever so much more eloquent than your words.

Here's a free lesson in civics for you.

We owe citizens reasonably safe streets, and protection from foreign threats. We owe them a court system and police to enforce the internal issues and regulate business and personal contracts and a Federal executive to oversee our relations with foreign nations. We owe them regulation of interaction between states or citizens of other states. We owe them federal oversight of constitutional provisions on the various state governments. We owe them a few other explicitly stated duties within the federal or various state constitutions.

As a governmental matter, we don't owe our fellow citizens housing. We don't owe them medical care. We don't owe them clothing or food or a college education. Basically, we don't owe them protection from their own ill advised decisions like buying a home at a bad price or under bad contractual conditions or getting a useless college degree with no market value. Come to that we don't owe the banks protection from their decisions to underwrite mortgages for anyone with a pulse.

The government acts as a referee and rule making body on the game of life within the provisions of federal or state constitutions. How you choose to play is your call, not mine.

BTW, this time of year Dickens famous "are there no workhouses" and the general Christian injunction to charity will be cited by those who've never read Dickens and hate Christianity ad nauseum.

Those are private charities, and a private obligation to help others. Or do you believe that the beliefs of Christians should be enshrined in law? If you do, kindly stop agitation for the destruction of marriage and unlimited infanticide of the unborn.

@45: Who are you to say what is and isn't the purview of the Federal government? You have previously stated such opinions, and I have rebutted them by pointing out the considerable leeway given to the Federal government by the Elastic Clause. Your answer to this was to call for the removal of the Elastic Clause from the Constitution of the United States and to curse the day that Mr. F.D. Roosevelt set foot in the Oval Office. What you are trying to do is set yourself up as ultimate arbiter of what is right and just. We do not need you to do that; we have a Constitution.
I should point out that government aid in the form of unemployment benefits, food stamps, college aid, or the like is not charity, but rather an investment. (And an investment that is more often than not recouped, believe you me!) Without Federal college aid, many highly intelligent children would receive no higher education for want of tuition. When you advocate an end to Federal college aid, you advocate allowing America to fall behind in research, development, and industry.
Now, paying taxes is not the same as paying charity, even if some of the taxes paid goes to causes that could be considered charitable. Taxes are a debt owed for the protection and services rendered by the Federal government. Charity is voluntary; taxes are not.
Finally, your comments on Christianity. I shall barely address your ridiculous and uncorroborated assertion that sharing the rights and rites of marriage with homosexuals would lead to its destruction. However, I must correct your terminology on the abortion issue. Infanticide is the killing of an infant, which is a stage in human development starting at birth and ending several weeks later. Abortion is embryocide, if performed early on, or feticide, if performed later on. And just to put a zinger cherry on the you-just-got-told cake, the legalization of abortion led to a drop in the rate of infanticide, since fewer unwanted children were being born.
Seattleblues status:
[  ] Not told
[  ] Told
[  ] Knights of the Told Republic
[  ] No Country for Told Men
[  ] Gary Toldman
[  ] Toldeneye
[  ] Batman: The Brave and the Told
[  ] Told Spice
[  ] Toldal Recall
[  ] War and Peace by Leo Toldstoy
[  ] Told Navy
[  ] Toldlerone
[√] ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOLD

@44 -- Honestly, I just didn't know you cared so much, but here's a response:

My original post was in reponse to a guy (@8) who suggested that millionaires be charged a surtax to pay for all the costs of the Occupy movement. He might have been joking -- in fact, I hope he was -- but his post struck me as pretty bratty and entitled. I don't think all the Occupiers are entitled brats who hate the rich. A lot of them just want the wealthiest percent and the corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, which I totally agree with. Then again, a lot of them are like this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrPGoPFRU…

People with this attitude are part of the movement, and they're a significant part.

@44

And the fact that I didn't reply to you right away was "stunning"? Really? Your threshold for being stunned by stuff must be incredibly low.

@43

Keeping anarchists from disrupting critical community infrastructure is exactly what I want the police to be doing, and I can assure that I do not represent "the 1%" any more than a bunch of pissed of squatters represent "the 99%."

@Everyone else
The more you say, essentially, "some people have money and I don't, so that somehow means I get to do whatever I want," the brattier you look. Everyone who isn't bankrupt isn't a millionaire, as some of you seem to believe. You have this dichotomy in your head where everyone who got lucky and/or made good decisions has somehow taken something from you or is wealthy. I'm sorry, but it sounds extremely-- well, yes-- "bratty and entitled" sums it up. "Oh look, someone mentioned money. I'll spin off into some discussion of taxation as though that's relevant to the scope of this article and as though I'm not very very obviously completely ignorant to how taxes even work."

50
@43

Keeping anarchists from disrupting critical community infrastructure is exactly what I want the police to be doing, and I can assure that I do not represent "the 1%" any more than a bunch of pissed of squatters represent "the 99%."

@Everyone else
The more you say, essentially, "some people have money and I don't, so that somehow means I get to do whatever I want," the brattier you look. Everyone who isn't bankrupt isn't a millionaire, as some of you seem to believe. You have this dichotomy in your head where everyone who got lucky and/or made good decisions has somehow taken something from you or is wealthy. I'm sorry, but it sounds extremely-- well, yes-- "bratty and entitled" sums it up. "Oh look, someone mentioned money. I'll spin off into some discussion of taxation as though that's relevant to the scope of this article and as though I'm not very very obviously completely ignorant to how taxes even work."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perfetct comment from a real twit.

Nice, pally.

I understand if you don't have any actual retort. I know sometimes it's the really obvious stuff that hurts the most.

52
I understand if you don't have any actual retort. I know sometimes it's the really obvious stuff that hurts the most. f you are
.
.
Posted by shblash on December 4, 2011 at 7:04 PM

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If you are so obviously ignorant of what the OWS and 99% Movement is about, if you care nothing about the big really important issues that we as Americans and World Citizens have to deal with...then we have nothing to talk about.

Go back to "Glee" or the Kardashians or whatever you anesthetize yourself with.

@47 + @50
RIGHT ON. This movement quickly devolved into a mess of anti-corporate/anti-rich people self centered whining. When it was originally a noble stand against corporate CRIME, I had no qualms. Then I witnessed people holding signs daily saying "eat the rich" and blocking rush hour traffic trying to prevent the working class from getting home after a day's work... That's not peaceful protest, it's like watching an upset toddler throw a tantrum. They want what they want, and they're going to sit there or make a scene until they get it. Laws don't apply to them, they can do what they want because life isn't fair.