So there’s a lot of yammering out there about OWS, and what it means, or doesn’t mean, and even some opinions that OWS protestors are less grateful than a panhandler, and perhaps more immoral, too, since they are capable, presumably, of working…but aren’t even looking.

What does OWS mean to me? This:

And: This:

Will’s Sign at Occupy Times Square, quote by Conor Friedersdorf from John Grace on Vimeo.

Read more about the genesis of the quote in the Atlantic.

And what’s that sign all about? Listen to this Planet Money podcast.

When you’re finished, head back here and let me know: Are you angry about this too?

Observed:

No comment required, really.

The single most common misconception about [the Texas governor] is that he has been running a large state for the past six years. Texas has what is known in political science circles as “the weak-governor system.” You may think this is just a Texas brag, but our weak-governor system is a lot weaker than anybody else’s.* Although the governor does have the power to call out the militia in case of an Indian uprising, by constitutional arrangement, the governor of Texas is actually the fifth most powerful statewide office: behind lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, and land commissioner but ahead of agriculture commissioner and railroad commissioner.

Via “The Marketplace Morning Report:”

JEREMY HOBSON: Global stock markets are still excited about what the Federal Reserve said yesterday afternoon. That interest rates for banks that borrow from the Fed will remain near zero percent for the next two years. That’s the Fed’s way of influencing the rates we pay for everything from student loans to mortgages.

Keeping rates that low for that long is unprecedented and making such a bold statement… carries its own risks…

Via “This American Life:”

Alan Greenspan: The FOMC stands prepared to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy for as long as needed to promote satisfactory economic performance.

Adam Davidson: You might not believe me, but that little statement, that is central banker’s speak for, hey, global pool of money, screw you.

Alex Blumberg: Come on, that’s not what he said.

Adam Davidson: It is. I speak central banker. Believe me, that’s what he said. What he is technically saying is he’s going to keep the fed funds rate– that’s when you hear, the fed interest rate– at the absurdly low level of 1%.

And that sends a message to every investor in the world, you are not going to make any money at all on US Treasury bonds for a very long time. Go somewhere else. We can’t help you.

And so the global pool of money– which does speak central banker. They understood what he was saying– they looked around for some low-risk high-return investment. And among the many things they put their money into, there was this one thing that they fell in love with. To get it, they called Wall Street, a guy like this.

Mike Francis: My name is Mike Francis. During the beginning of the mortgage implosion, I was an employee, executive director at Morgan Stanley on the residential mortgage trading desk.

Adam Davidson: Mike was one link in a chain that connected the global pool of money to its new favorite investment, residential mortgages, the US housing market, and guys like Clarence Nathan. Think how attractive a mortgage loan is to that $70 trillion pool of money.

Remember, they’re desperate to get any kind of interest return. They want to beat that miserable 1% interest Greenspan is offering them. And here are these homeowners paying 5%, 9% to borrow money from some bank. So what if the global pool could get in on that action?

Pretty sure if John Rawls asserts a good economy should benefit this at the bottom at least as much as those at the top (latest booms haven’t), then he would also assert that working our way out of a downturn should inconvenience those at the top at least as much as those on the bottom.

Via NPR:

Raising the debt ceiling “simply authorizes Treasury to pay the bills Congress chose to incur when it passed years worth of spending increases and tax cuts that are now law.”

So Congress voted for programs and tax cuts and now is whining about the bill coming due.

See also: Government, drowning in bathtub.

I don’t know how people can hear stories like This American Life’s Game Changer:

PROLOGUE.
Host Ira Glass tells the stories of two professors, each making a calculation that no one had made before. One gets acclaim. One ends up out of a job. The first, Terry Engelder, a geologist at Penn State, was estimating the amount of natural gas that’s recoverable from the Marcellus shale, a giant rock formation that’s under Pennsylvania and several other Eastern states. The second, Conrad “Dan” Volz, at the University of Pittsburg, estimated how much toxic crap—chemicals and pollution from gas exploration—might be getting into water supplies. (6 1/2 minutes)

ACT ONE. YOU’VE GOT SHALE.
Producer Sarah Koenig continues the story Terry Engelder and Dan Volz, their rival calculations about natural gas in Pennsylvania, and how each was treated by his university. She explains how Pennsylvania’s universities, politicans and industry have united to develop natural gas. Other states have been more cautious. (26 1/2 minutes)
ACT TWO. GROUND WAR.

Sarah takes us to Mt. Pleasant, PA, where a gas exploration company called Range Resources has leased 95% of the township’s land. This led to a standoff between Mt. Pleasant and Range, starting with zoning disputes and ending in a full scale PR war—a war in which the town was seriously outgunned. (23 1/2 minutes)

Or a report like On the Media’s “Hot Coffee“:

We all think we know the story of the woman who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself and then sued the fast food chain for millions.  But in the new HBO documentary “Hot Coffee”, filmmaker Susan Saladoff shows how the media got the story all wrong, and often demonizes civil litigation, using phrases like “frivolous lawsuit” and “jackpot justice.”  She says the distortion of civil cases is part of a big PR push to discourage people from suing big business.

And not be concerned about the concentration of corporate power and influence in our country.

Absolutely ecstatic to find out that our possible new home will be in Mike McCaul’s district. I thought I was leaving good old CD10 behind.

Also – absolutely chicken shit of the GOP to stop at just five districts in Travis County. Why not 10?

OK. So this is from the 2008 budget [link to spreadsheets], but I heard Boehner wants to cut spending to 2008 levels, so maybe using the 2008 budget is more appropriate it might have first appeared.

Rationale for cuts included:

• Not a core function of federal government
• Should be funded by State governments
• Should be funded by Local governments
• Industry can police itself
• These funds can be invested in the market for better return
• Can be subcontracted to private sector
• I don’t know what this is, or what constituency it is serving. I’m assuming they don’t vote.

Sorry about the formatting.

Amount Cut         Agency name
$5,000,000 Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
$307,000,000 Affordable Housing Program
$83,000,000 Appalachian Regional Commission
$6,000,000 Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
$4,000,000 Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation
$663,000,000 Broadcasting Board of Governors
$9,000,000 Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
$2,000,000 Commission of Fine Arts
$9,000,000 Commission on Civil Rights
$5,000,000 Committee for Purchase from People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled
$114,000,000 Commodity Futures Trading Commission
$63,000,000 Consumer Product Safety Commission
$1,000,000,000 Corporation for National and Community Service
$350,000,000 Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$4,137,000,000 Corps of Engineers-Civil Works
$7,000,000 Delta Regional Authority
$74,000,000 Denali Commission
$54,772,000,000 Dept. of Agriculture
$6,159,000,000 Dept. of Commerce
$71,272,000,000 Dept. of Defense--Military
$62,952,000,000 Dept. of Education
$6,728,000,000 Dept. of Energy
$951,929,000,000 Dept. of Health and Human Services
$571,000,000 Dept. of Homeland Security
$47,828,000,000 Dept. of Housing and Urban Development
$148,000,000 Dept. of Justice
$55,005,000,000 Dept. of Labor
$8,189,000,000 Dept. of State
$13,223,000,000 Dept. of the Interior
$5,738,000,000 Dept. of the Treasury
$65,914,000,000 Dept. of Transportation
$12,000,000 Election Assistance Commission
$100,000,000 Electric Reliability Organization
$9,033,000,000 Environmental Protection Agency
$327,000,000 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
$14,000,000 Executive Office of the President
$82,000,000 Export-Import Bank of the United States
$8,126,000,000 Federal Communications Commission
$444,000,000 Federal Drug Control Programs
$58,000,000 Federal Election Commission
$24,000,000 Federal Labor Relations Authority
$22,000,000 Federal Maritime Commission
$44,000,000 Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
$84,000,000 Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board
$3,000,000 General Services Administration
$3,000,000 Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation
$7,000,000 Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development
$299,000,000 Institute of Museum and Library Services
$18,440,000,000 International Assistance Programs
$2,000,000 James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation
$3,000,000 Japan-United States Friendship Commission
$489,000,000 Legislative Branch
$2,000,000 Marine Mammal Commission
$38,000,000 Merit Systems Protection Board
$5,000,000 Morris K. Udall Scholarship & Excellence in Nat'l Environmental Policy Foundation
$17,278,000,000 National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$8,000,000 National Capital Planning Commission
$3,000,000 National Council on Disability
$128,000,000 National Endowment for the Arts
$144,000,000 National Endowment for the Humanities
$254,000,000 National Labor Relations Board
$12,000,000 National Mediation Board
$6,028,000,000 National Science Foundation
$120,000,000 Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation
$11,000,000 Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
$11,000,000 Office of Government Ethics
$8,000,000 Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation
$2,000,000 Office of the Federal Coordinator for AL Natural Gas Transport. Projects
$66,000,000 Other Defense Civil Programs
$81,000,000 Postal Service
$12,410,000,000 Railroad Retirement Board
$751,000,000 Small Business Administration
$815,000,000 Smithsonian Institution
$635,674,000,000 Social Security Administration
$23,000,000 Standard Setting Body
$464,000,000 Tennessee Valley Authority
$29,000,000 Undistributed Offsetting Receipts
$46,000,000 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
$30,000,000 United States Institute of Peace
$2,000,000 United States Interagency Council on Homelessness

Total Savings: $2,069,325,000,000

I believe these to be accurate enough for you to find your closest early voting location – any omissions are my fault.

If the location is wrong…I blame Google Earth.