From the Wall Street Journal
A group of business leaders—including Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg—are planning to pour substantial funds into the Occupy Wall Street movement in hopes of sustaining the protests and fostering political change.
From Fox Nation
ANCHOR: Drivers in this neighborhood definitely know the president is here. Traffic was at a standstill here on Wilshire for about 20 minutes, as the president’s motorcade pulled on through. And this visit is all about raising cash.
President Obama is kicking off his three-day visit to California in the Southland. his first fundraiser at the Holmby Hills home of soap opera producer Bradley Bell is the first of six campaign events to raise serious cash. To attend an intimate party with the Foo Fighters performing, tickets were up to $38,000 per person
PROTESTER: He should be out here with the people, not in that big fancy house.
ANCHOR: Occupy protesters who gathered near the President’s hotel say he is catering to the 1% to try to get reelected.
PROTESTER: Get out of these fund-raisers and get back to the streets. Remember where you came from. Remember who you said you’re going to serve. And it is not the people you’re having dinner with tonight.
From Daily Caller
Here’s yet another sign, if you need one, that Occupy has outlived its political usefulness. Via the Washington Free Beacon (welcome, by the way!):
Politico Influence reports that House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and minority whip Steny Hoyer raised $400,000 last night at a fundraiser held at the home of Democratic lobbyists Heather and Tony Podesta. Heather Podesta runs the firm Heather Podesta and Partners.
Heather Podesta’s clients include liberal bogeymen such as the for-profit education industry and Brookfield Asset Management, the real-estate company that owns Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan and which ultimately gave the NYPD the green light to evict the Occupy Wall Street movement from its grounds in November 2011. Pelosi is a vocal supporter of the occupiers, having once said, “God bless them.”
Well, maybe she figures if God blesses them, she doesn’t have to. And what are they gonna do, rape each other in front of the Capitol Building in protest? The important thing is that Nancy got that cash. Money is bad unless it’s in the hands of Democrats.
From CBS
Last week, John Paul Thornton of Decatur, Ala. filed to create a PAC for the Occupy Movement. “PAC” is an acronym for a political action committee, or an organization that campaigns for or against candidates, legislation, and ballot initiatives.
Thornton is an active member in the Alabama Occupy movement. He said he came up with the idea when he was laying in bed.
“[I was] watching [The Colbert Report] and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t be nice if Occupy had a PAC,’ and … like a lightbulb, it came to me!” he told CBS Atlanta.
The money that will be raised can be used by Occupy as a whole, from branches in Huntsville, Ala. to ones in New York City or Oakland, Calif.
From Fox News
A re-branded ACORN branch in California is raising money to help fund an upcoming “Occupy” protest in Sacramento, FoxNews.com has learned.
The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment sent out letters this month pleading for contributions of up to $20,000 for buses, food, printing, sound and other supplies for an upcoming event dubbed “Occupy the Capitol.”
“Thousands of us are arriving in Sacramento on March 5 to Occupy the Capitol with our demand that the 1 percent pay for jobs, education, essential services, and a better future,” reads a copy of the letter obtained by FoxNews.com. “We need your activists and staff to join us. …We also urgently need funding.”
Someone within the OWS movement must have attended the John Corzine School of Financial Management. Here’s an excerpt directly from the OWS General Assembly blog (we also captured an image of the blog in case they decide to remove the contents now its public):
This topic was initially posted 12/2011.
The issue of $350.000 being lost with the working groups Media and Live-stream involved.
The allegation was made by a Spokes at a Spokes meeting and appeared to be strongly supported by members of her cluster.
She identified a male who was actually live-streaming the meeting as associated with the allegation.
She insisted, she could not be in the room with this individual without the issue being addressed.
The facilitator, took a temper check and it was agreed, the issue would be place on spokes agenda.
But, the issue was never addressed.
The young lady who brought this to Spokes, as since been threaten, intimidated and verbally abuse and told if she spoke of it with anyone she would be banished from Occupy Wall Street.
At The Atrium, the next day, the subject came up again, and it was alledged the amount of money Three-Hundred and Fifty, Thousand dollars($350.000).had been lost through (on the internet)…
This issue stayed on the Spokes Council’s Agenda for more than five (5) meetings, it never was addresses.
From WND
Billionaire George Soros predicted protests by the Occupy Wall Street will turn violent, while warning the U.S. financial system may collapse.
In an interview with Newsweek writer John Arlidge, Soros reportedly said riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable.
“‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he says, almost gleefully,” when asked about the prospect of Occupy turning violent, writes Arlidge.
Soros claimed the riots will “be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”
From NY Post
The cash is burning a hole in their pockets.
As the Occupy Wall Street movement loses steam, protesters are pitching new and creative ways to spend the $300,000 remaining in the kitty.
The group now raises just a few hundred bucks a day, down sharply from the tens of thousands that poured in daily at its height in November.
All told, it took in $706,855.91 in donations between Oct. 1 and Jan. 4. Much of what was already spent went to food, laundry, supplies and MetroCards.
Among the suggestions aired at recent OWS meetings on how to slice up the Occu-pie were to withdraw all the money in hundred-dollar bills, stuff the Benjamins in canvas bags and torch the cash in a bonfire on Wall Street.
From Gawker
Meet Robert Halper, a retired trader and former vice chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Like a lot of wealthy Wall Street-connected 52-year-olds, Halper gave the maximum contribution of $2,500 to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. But this guy also wrote a $20,000 check to help launch Occupy Wall Street.
Halper, a one-percenter who made his fortune as a Wall Street trader, happens to be one of the largest donors to the anti-corporate magazine Adbusters.
Read the rest here.