The significant thing to note here is how blatantly unions and ACCE were involved in these riots and actions against police officers. Back in November, I videotaped how ACCE and the unions — including the SEIU and UAW –choreographed the takeover of Bank of America using Occupy as their front group. The Examiner article contains a quote from an Occupier that does the plain truth about the involvement of ACCE and the unions.

I really don’t understand the controversy there,” said Stardust, a member of Occupy’s communications team. “They have been involved with Occupy since the beginning. The 99 percent includes labor.”

This plan, organize lawlessness raises disturbing questions. Do businesses in San Francisco’s financial district have any recourse to stop these acts of periodic terroristic violence perpetrated on them with malice aforethought by labor and community organizing groups? Are the leaders of these groups engaging in a criminal conspiracy and if so, is anything being done about it? Is anyone in the mainstream press even addressing who is really behind these protests?

With President Obama in the White House, Jerry Brown as the governor of California and Nancy Pelosi representing San Francisco, you can probably guess the answers.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – More than 100 police officers gave protesters at the Occupy encampment in San Francisco five minutes to gather belongings before authorities took down about 100 tents and arrested 70 people as the camp was dismantled in an overnight raid.

A few officers remained at daybreak Wednesday as trash crews raked up paper and plastic bottles, removed chairs and other belongings that accumulated at the camp over the past two months and pressure-washed the sidewalks.

Dozens of police cars, fire engines and ambulances surrounded the campsite at Justin Herman Plaza and blocked off the area during the raid, which began shortly after 1 a.m.

Police did not immediately release how many people were in the plaza at the time, but campers put the estimate at 150.

“Most of the protesters went peacefully,” but one officer received minor injuries when two people threw a chair that cracked his face shield, said officer Albie Esparza. They were arrested on suspicion of felony assault. Dozens of others were arrested for illegal lodging in the plaza and failure to disperse. In all, 70 people were taken into custody.

Richard Kriedler with Occupy S.F. said some protesters were also injured, but he didn’t have the details.

“This is a very emotional town. We have anarchists, we have very emotional people that this is not going to go over well with, and this could have been handled a lot better,” he said.

Read more here.

Ferry Building merchants and managers are fed up with the mayhem that has come with the nearby Occupy SF encampment.

A spike in shoplifting, break-ins and reports of abandoned human waste — and a reported drop in foot traffic — has management fuming about the Justin Herman Plaza encampment. There even are reports of occupiers using the building’s restrooms as washrooms — with folks taking sponge baths from toilets.

And last Monday, eight men were allegedly escorted out of the building after they attempted to use the bathrooms wearing nothing but their boxer shorts.

Property manager Jane Connors has written two letters to The City, one sent Nov. 1 and the other sent Monday. In both, she highlighted merchant complaints and asked police to increase their presence at the building.

But that hasn’t happened.

Police say they have not changed the way they patrol the camp since early October. Officers are stationed there and others conduct routine patrols in the area, spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said Thursday.

The inaction doesn’t sit well with building management. “When we report incidents we are told The City does not want to deal with the Occupiers,” Connors wrote.

One letter said Occupy SF members were overheard boasting about how much they were stealing from farmers and shops. It added that shoplifting suspects were seen returning to the encampment after attempted heists.

Read more here.

This Fourth of July weekend think about what truly represents freedom: Old Glory, the Liberty Bell, and an ice-cold glass of lemonade.

This month’s lineup of busybodies includes two regulars: the FDA, which is slapping new, more graphic, possibly counterproductive, warning labels on cigarette packs and the goldfish grabbers on San Francisco’s Animal Control and Welfare Commission.

But top dishonors go to the sour bureaucrat who put the squeeze on a group of kids for running a lemonade stand. Sure they were raising money for a worthy cause (pediatric cancer research), but they were doing it without a permit, and that’s why they got slapped with a $500 fine.

Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for June 2011: Jennifer Hughes of Montgomery County, Maryland’s Department of Permitting Services!

The episode sparked so much outrage that the county eventually backed off, but this is no isolated incident. Across America, the permit police are cracking down on pint-sized peddlers of liquid freedom.

Just over one-minute long.

“Nanny of the Month” is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Opening animation by Meredith Bragg.

Go here to watch past “Nanny of the Month” episodes.

Scroll down for downloadable versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

A recent San Francisco Chronicle article proves this point beyond doubt:

“San Francisco’s much-heralded ‘social justice’ requirements for city contracts are costing local taxpayers millions of dollars a year in overcharges, according to workers in departments ranging from the Municipal Transportation Agency to the Department of Emergency Management.

“In one case, a Muni worker said the city paid $3,000 for a vehicle battery tray. Such parts can be found online for $12 to $300, depending on the type of vehicle…

“Other city purchasing policies, if followed, would mean paying about $240 for getting a copy of a key that actually cost a worker $1.35 to get done at a hardware store on his break, the employee said. Another city worker called the use of catalog pricing for supplies ‘Pentagon-style purchasing.’

“Markups from approved vendors range from 10 to 150 percent, employees said, with one calling the city’s requirement that contractors provide health care benefits for domestic partners ‘the expensive white elephant standing in the middle of the room (that) no one wants to mention.’

“Some vendors are suspected of being little more than middlemen who comply with San Francisco’s very specific requirements for contractors – like disclosing historic ties to slavery and providing domestic partner benefits, a provision known as 12B because of its chapter in the Administrative Code – then turn around and buy the products from companies that don’t meet the restrictions, city officials acknowledge.

“An analysis by the General Services Agency found that in the last complete fiscal year, 2009-10, the city paid $9.8 million to ‘possible third-party brokers’ – vendors that may be pass-through companies.”

Imagine that, a city with a $306 million budget deficit, from a state with a $15.4 billion deficit, justifying the over-payment of taxpayer dollars to what is essentially special interest affirmative action groups in the private sector by claiming it satisfies the quest for “social justice.”

If this is the path to social justice, then we have to conclude that social justice and free market Capitalism are not compatible. If this is the path to social justice, then we have to conclude that it only creates debt and poverty but for the chosen few. But, then, this should be no surprise seeing as social justice is a product of the Progressive Movement; a movement founded in the ideology of socialism derived from Marxism.

One of the Four Pillars of the Green Party, an ideologically Progressive group, social justice is defined as:

“…based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution. These policies aim to achieve what developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity than may currently exist in some societies, and to manufacture equality of outcome in cases where incidental inequalities appear in a procedurally just system.”

The key words here are “progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution” and “more equality of opportunity than may currently exist.”

We are all familiar with the evils of the Progressive Tax. It unfairly and inequitably taxes the citizenry based on “classes”; that understood, it is fitting that it is named the “Progressive” tax system. One of the effective tactics of the Progressive ideology is the divide and conquer tactic, or at Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

By creating a tax system that divides the citizenry into classes, it is easier for the Progressives to demonize “the rich.” Once that is accomplished, the rationale is that “the rich” can afford to pay more in taxes. It becomes irrelevant that “the rich” are also “the productive” and “the job creators.” So, too, it becomes irrelevant that “the rich” are expected to pay a much greater percentage of their income so as to subsidize the class that is not productive; that contributes little to society.

So, we see that the Progressives have “picked” the class they identify as “rich” (by the way, who decides what “rich” is?), “frozen” it in the public eye, “personalized” it through demonization and effectively “polarized” the country using an “us against them” narrative that literally depletes the pool of job creators and the productive.

Where income and property redistribution is concerned, we need only look at the above scenario to understand why these two goals stand as intrinsic threats to a nation whose economy is based of free market Capitalism. By the government – through the Progressive Tax System – literally taking from “the rich” (by their definition) to subsidize “the poor,” our government is essentially redistributing wealth. As wealth – or earnings, or the property of earnings – is essentially property, we see that through this redistribution of wealth also comes redistribution of personal property. Remember, property doesn’t have to be presented as an object; it can be financial, intellectual, etc.

In the story about social justice not working in San Francisco, we witness the creation of special interest groups, via legislation and regulation, which are literally inserted into the free market process to create wealth for entities that would otherwise not be needed in the free market Capitalist economic system. By virtue of San Francisco’s social justice legislation and regulation, wealth has been extracted from the taxpayers, unnecessarily, via the process of government procurement, to reward the unproductive.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Progressive, Socialist, Marxist, wealth redistribution fashioned for the Capitalist economic system. It’s here and it is happening…right now.

But perhaps the most egregious perversion of our system of government at the hands of “social justice” comes in these worlds, “more equality of opportunity than may currently exist.”

“More equality of opportunity than may currently exist”? Doesn’t that equate to one group receiving “more opportunity” than another? Doesn’t this equate to providing more resources – resources derived from the taxpayers – to one group over another? How is this equal treatment under any definition but the perverted rational of moral relativism and the wealth redistribution ideology of Marxist Progressivism?

In the Declaration of Independence, one of the country’s founding documents, included in the Charters of Freedom and just as important to Americanism as the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we are guaranteed:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

What we are guaranteed by birthright, as Americans, are three things: Life, Liberty and the pursuit Happiness. Life and Liberty are self-explanatory, although the issue of Liberty, in the scheme of things today, is under siege. But Happiness, the pursuit of Happiness, means we are all born with an “opportunity” in life to pursue Happiness, to pursue our dreams, as human beings. We are not guaranteed “equality” in anything but those God-given unalienable rights; unalienable rights granted by the Creator to every man, woman and child on the face of the planet, not just to Americans.

Regardless of the rationale used, the government’s providing of anything but a level playing field for all, regardless of skin color, regardless of gender, regardless of any variable that allows Progressives to successfully Balkanize the nation into classes for use in their divide and conquer class warfare agenda, is for government to enter into the realm of social activism and that literally destroys the guarantee of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness for everyone and to no one’s exclusion.

Quite frankly, what stands in the way of everyone’s “opportunity” to be “equal” are Progressives, their elected toadies, their labels and their intrusive anti-American, anti-Capitalist agenda.

Social justice…you can keep the change.

In recent years, San Francisco government has passed numerous laws to make us healthier, greener, and — in the city’s eyes — all-around better people. Whether we like it or not. This includes banning the sale of cigarettes in drugstores, and, later, supermarkets; banning plastic bags in large chain stores; banning bottled water in City Hall, and the sale of soft drinks on government property; banning the declawing of cats; making composting mandatory; and forbidding city departments from doing business with companies that were involved in the (pre–Civil War) slave trade, yet haven’t publicly atoned.

The city may yet ban the sale of any pets except fish, and the sale of bottled water during events on public property. Banning foie gras, meanwhile, didn’t catch on, even here. Neither did allowing the city to prosecute anyone who depicts images of animal cruelty if they set foot in San Francisco — essentially the same niche Belgium has carved out for itself with accused war criminals.

San Francisco’s acumen for imposing bans has grown so pronounced that when an anticircumcision zealot began disseminating a petition to criminalize the practice within city limits, observers nationwide didn’t write it off as fringe lunacy but, instead, saw it as just another day at the office in San Francisco.

That ban didn’t make the cut. And San Francisco does not have a monopoly on banning things. But nowhere else can you ban so much with such ease and so little political blowback.

It would take an advanced degree in sanctimoniousness to shed a tear for the loss of your freedom to choose paper or plastic. And will someone really nail himself to the cross of individual liberties over the loss of a plastic My Little Pony toy commemorating the day you were outdebated by a 10-year-old? It would, however, be equally hard to claim that any one of San Francisco’s bans has really had its intended substantive effect on local lives.

But when you put San Francisco’s laundry list of bans alongside New York City’s fatwa against trans fats, Chicago’s slavery disclosure ordinance (they beat us to it), or Seattle’s mandatory composting laws (beat us again, damn it!), it becomes clear that a left-leaning pack of cities is fundamentally changing the role — and pushing the limits — of local government. It’s a movement fueled by the perception that state and federal government are unable or unwilling to tackle big problems like pollution or rampant obesity. So municipalities are marching headlong into the void, attempting to save the world one plastic bag, Big Mac, cigarette butt, or water bottle at a time. And San Francisco is leading the parade.

“The assumption, at least in academic literature, is that cities shouldn’t be doing any of this,” says USF political science professor Corey Cook. “It’s sort of astonishing to me what these cities are doing; it dives headfirst into the question of where the lines for local government are drawn.” City progressives say that’s just the point. “I think that we’re picking up the ball because for whatever reasons, the state and federal systems are not responding to these issues,” Supervisor David Campos says. “We see the need to do something, and are not afraid to do that.”

As is so often the case in San Francisco, everyone has the best of intentions. But now that we’ve reached the point where city officials have meticulously worked out what quantity of multigrains and fruits must be present in a meal in order for a restaurant to earn the privilege of including a toy with it, it’s reasonable to wonder if San Francisco’s elected leaders believe there’s anything they shouldn’t be deciding for you.

City legislators haven’t just saved you from the perils of the Happy Meal. They’ve also supersized the role of local government.

Read the whole thing here. And, consider yourself lucky if you live in a city with an alternative paper. While individual results may vary, they very often provide far better journalism and fairness than their mainstream brethren.

They touch our lives in so many ways, and now Reason.tv acknowledges those who tell us that if it looks good, tastes good, or feels good, it should be illegal.

Live (to tape) from the fourth floor of the Sepulveda Center in Los Angeles, California—it’s the 2010 Nanny of the Year Awards!

Over the past year, Reason.tv has recognized plenty of busybodies who relish minding other people’s business, but who deserves to succeed 2009’s winner (Meddlin’ Mike Bloomberg), and take home the 2010 Nanny?

Will it be the heartland mayor who sacked the Lingerie Football League? The Peach State pol who sued a man for growing vegetables in his own yard? A member of the food police?

Remember, it’s a dishonor just to be nominated. So get your awards season started off right, and tune in to the only black-tie ceremony that delivers busybodies, bikini babes, and bacon!

Approximately 1.53 minutes.

“Reason.tv’s 2010 Nanny of the Year Awards” is written and produced by Ted Balaker, who also hosts. Animation: Austin Bragg; Camera: Zach Weissmueller and Hawk Jensen; Voice Over: Rin Palmer

To learn more about our nominees and to watch more Nanny of the Month (and Year) videos, go here.

Scroll down for downloadable versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.