Oakland is no longer occupied; London and New York continue to suffer

It was a dirty job but someone had to do it:

Before dawn Tuesday, at least 200 police, many in riot gear, tore down the Occupy Oakland encampment in front of City Hall and arrested dozens of people. A smaller camp near Lake Merritt was also dismantled.

Early reports from police say the raids went smoothly, with all protesters cleared out of the downtown Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in less than 30 minutes.

After police surrounded the plaza about 4:45 a.m., they began moving in and taking down tents and barricades erected by the group, which had been camped there since Oct. 10 in support of the Occupy Wall Street effort.

Many protesters were handcuffed and led away by police from the camp at 14th Street and Broadway. Many others left on their own.

Meanwhile, St. Paul's Cathedral in London has had to close its doors for the first time since WWII, because the Right Reverend Graeme Knowles naively allowed the rabble to get their collective foot in the door. Charles C. W. Cooke reports:

Never mind that St. Paul’s is not the London Stock Exchange, and that its management is supportive of OLSX’s goals. (The same goes for Zuccotti Park; as one lower-Manhattan resident told me, “They aren’t occupying Wall Street!”) Never mind that the cathedral is one of Britain’s national treasures and is desperately in need of money for maintenance. Never mind that for many of the 99 percent that the “Occupy” movement claims holistically to represent, St. Paul’s is a place of pilgrimage and sanctuary and keen historical significance. As long as the performance continues, all is well. The show must go on!

As it does in NYC, where some local businesspeople employers capitalist pigs get what they deserve:

“If this doesn’t stop soon I will be out of business,” said Marc Epstein, 53, president of Milk Street Cafe on Wall Street, less than a block from the New York Stock Exchange. Sales have dropped about 20 percent since the protests began last month and the 103 jobs created by the cafe’s opening in June are now at risk, said Epstein, who’s not alone. Caroline Anderson, general manager of Boutique Tourbillon, a Wall Street jewelry store, said customer traffic is down about 20 percent, and Vincent Alessi, a managing partner at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse on Broad Street, said his lunch business has been cut in half.

They just "don't understand"?

“These protesters don’t understand the consequences of their actions,” Epstein said. “Who’s going to create the jobs they’re banging their drums for?”

I'm sure some of them certainly do understand. But most of them probably don't give a darn. Mayor Bloomberg's criminally negligent, open-ended tolerance for the OWSers is a business-killer:

“Not only is it affecting my general trade, it’s also affecting my future business,” Jacobs said. “We’ve got inquiries for weddings and exclusive hirings who are now considering taking their business to other restaurants because of the uncertainty of how long this may carry on.”

At what point, if ever, will the mayor decide it's time to do his duty? If I were a New Yorker (heaven forbid) I'd be calling for his impeachment.

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