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"It is a rare case when a supervising District Attorney is the one actually prosecuting the case. Most trials are tried by Deputy DA's. This is the first case that we have seen Michael Cabral who has been in Yolo County for about a year, actually try a case.

Sources indicated that both the number of charges and the fact that the DA's office is using a supervising DA to try to case indicate the seriousness in which they are taking this matter."

Then again, these same "sources" could be totally wrong with this assessment and characterization of the District Attorney's Office.

Invariably, sources are anointed as being infallible and having wisdom beyond any of us mere mortals who hang on their every word. Surely, these undisclosed numbers of sources should be willing to give their identity. They apparently possess not only brilliance, but humility and modesty, too.

Yo, "Sources", please step forward and let us examine you while you examine everything else. We can then measure your credibility and give you accountability for your hearsay published words. We'll call it, "transparency."

Imagine somebody else having "sources" and these other sources assess the same foundation paragraphs quoted above. The other sources would say that the DA's Office has virtually ignored the relevance and importance of this case. They assigned some rookie who has never been seen in court before and and has been on staff in Yolo for just a year.

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Tomas Matzat received good news and bad news on Friday. The good news is that, in part thanks to the vigilance of his friends and fellow occupiers, he and his attorney met with those in charge of the College of Letters and Science, and it was determined that he would be able to be reinstated as a student so long as he follows some unspecified terms and conditions.

Let's hope this student begins to realize he needs to stick to his studies rather than wasting time protesting since he is a marginal student. He needs to get his priorities straight...

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Just as an aside, AFAIK, "protesting" is not a profession or way to earn a decent living...

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"Just as an aside, AFAIK, 'protesting' is not a profession or way to earn a decent living... "

Neither is becoming a lecturer. But I digress.

The best route, the most decent route, the highest paid route, would be to study law enforcement. That way, you can earn a decent living chemical spraying those who live indecently, and teach them lessons about authority, and improve society that way.

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"Why is this statement necessary?"

[edit]

civil: "The best route, the most decent route, the highest paid route, would be to study law enforcement. That way, you can earn a decent living chemical spraying those who live indecently, and teach them lessons about authority, and improve society that way."


no, no. law enforcement should take a lesson from the occupiers.... quit your job, drop out of school to pitch tents for an unknown "cause". which ultimately didn't go anywhere, seeing as how the tuition problem remains unchanged after the smoke cleared.

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I think he is, however these charges threaten to undermine that

Lets not place any responsibility with Matzat, it's easier to blame someone else.

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The case could have been assigned to a supervising D.A. because it might actually be hard to win, and no one else in the office wanted to handle it. We don't know exactly what the evidence is, nor defense.
If it weren't for protesters, we'd still be a British colony, we'd still have segregation, women couldn't vote, members of the military under 21 couldn't vote..........
Too bad Germany didn't have more protesters in the late 1930's.

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I think my point was if the goal is to help the kid get his life back on track twenty criminal charges are an obvious barrier. It seems the DA may be more interested in making an example out of him.


that isn't the goal. that is the problem with the vanguards thinking, and 9/10 of the problem with judicial watch. It is always about what's best for the defendant and how he can turn his own life around. Putting yourself in the defendants's shoes and noone else's. The perpetrator caused people at the US bank to lose their jobs working there - decided that his own political statement ought to come at their personal expense - both literally and figuratively speaking.

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eagle eye said . . .

"The case could have been assigned to a supervising D.A. because it might actually be hard to win, and no one else in the office wanted to handle it. We don't know exactly what the evidence is, nor defense.
If it weren't for protesters, we'd still be a British colony, we'd still have segregation, women couldn't vote, members of the military under 21 couldn't vote.........."

eagle eye,

In terms of broad societal impact how does the revolt of the colonies compare with having a bank branch on campus providing services that students have expressed a desire for?

In terms of broad societal impact how does segregation compare with having a bank branch on campus providing services that students have expressed a desire for?

In terms of broad societal impact how does women getting the vote compare with having a bank branch on campus providing services that students have expressed a desire for?

In terms of broad societal impact how does providing members of the military under 21 with the right to vote compare with having a bank branch on campus providing services that students have expressed a desire for?

My basic problem with what Mr. Matzat and his cohorts have done is that they have chosen to protest what is fundamentally a trivial problem, if it is even is a problem.

The absence of any Black Studies curriculum at Cornell or Columbia or Berkeley in 1969 had enough broad societal impact to be worth protesting. Protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has enough broad societal impact to be worth protesting. A bank branch on campus?

What is going to be protested next, the presence of a cafeteria on campus? Bonnie Raitt making money by singing on campus? Both of those are "privatized endeavors." How about sitting in at the dorm room doors of the privately run dormitories on campus? Shouldn't the students be denied access to those services just as the students who chose to use US Bank were denied access to the bank's services?

Bottom-line, IMHO the battles you are choose to wage need to rise to a higher standard.

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If it weren't for protesters, we'd still be a British colony, we'd still have segregation, women couldn't vote, members of the military under 21 couldn't vote..........
Too bad Germany didn't have more protesters in the late 1930's....

no, but Germany had its share of protestors in the 20's, one of which led the famous beer hall putch.....

we also had a major war protest in 1863, which led to the destruction of pieces of New York, the lynching of blacks.

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"I think my point was if the goal is to help the kid get his life back on track twenty criminal charges are an obvious barrier. It seems the DA may be more interested in making an example out of him. "


People who break the law purposely, publicly and repeatedly get arrested and convicted and sentenced to some kind of punishment. The kid wont't get "his life back on track" until he has some desire to do that. He says he got hurt from the plastic cuffs when he was arrested. Did that encourage him to stop law-breaking? The charges were dropped; did that encourage him to try to get his life back on track? Instead, he joined the bank blocade, knowing he was breaking the law. He intentionaly destroyed university property, vandalizing repeatedly.

He is encouraged in his illegal behavior by Professors Clover and Brown, who are using the demonstrators to advance their personal anarchist ("we are the law here now") views of a university run by professors rather than evil administrators.

Have either of these two professional troublemakers considered helping Mr. Matzat keep his grades up while egging him on to break the law?

Too bad for Mr. Matzah and the other blocade demonstrators that the Clover and Brown objectives are just as effectively advanced by students being arrested and expelled. Anything that troubles the UCD administration is a big plus for Clover and Brown. To think we pay them to educate our children. Shame.

Why do you think Mr. Matzat has the slightest interest in turning around his life at this particular point in his hoodlum life? And why do you think that discouraging potential future lawbreakers isn't a good reason to aggressively prosecute someone who spent most of two months purposely breaking the law nearly two dozen times?

If the two professors would volunteer to do some public service or jail time on behalf of the kids they've so terribly mislead, I'd say give him one more break. I'll lay money that all three of them will be out trying to break the law again before this semester is over.

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Tomas Matzat suffered nerve damage when he was one of 10 arrested for misdemeanors during the camp clearing operation back in November 2011.

This seems like a self-serving claim by the alleged criminal and his supporters. Why does the Vanguard report it as if it was a fact? Has a doctor's report been entered into evidence? Does dmg have expertise in evaluating nerve damage?

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Apparently this is part the standard description of Mr. Matzat, like his first name, that keeps appearing for no apparent reason. I read about in the Vanguard on April 18, leading off a story about how he "Faces Felony Charges and Possible Expulsion For Vandalism."

"Thomas Matzat suffered nerve damage when he was one of 10 arrested for misdemeanors during the camp clearing operation back in November 2011. On Friday, he will be one of 12 arraigned on misdemeanor charges...."

Then, I read it again on April 20 when I read another Vanguard story on "Student Faces Arraignment, Hearing on Student Status on Friday":

"The hearing was finally confirmed by the Yolo County Public Defender's Office. Thomas Matzat suffered nerve damage when he was one of 10 arrested for misdemeanors during the camp-clearing operation back in November 2011."

After I read it again today in this story--for the third time in as many days--I decided it must be true or David wouldn't be saying it over and over. Maybe the medical reports just came in. The question I have is: "Why?" Maybe his lawyer wants us to feel sorry for him for some reason.

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Part of the problem is that you don't sit in a courtroom. In almost all matters that do not involve one party being physically injured, one of the chief goals of the judge is to figure out the best way to get the person out of their present circumstances and how to be a productive member of society.


there you go again. the judge according to you, is supposed to think about the situation in terms of how to help the defendant. Again, its always about him and noone else. By the way, the bank and its employees were negatively affected by this, so that claim about non-injury to another party doesn't apply here.

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David, how do you feel about my points posted above that:

1) the choice of a local bank branch on campus rather than in off campus is trivial when compared to historical protests of note, and

2) if the protesters are balanced in their efforts they should be blocking privately run dormitories and privately performed music events as well as privately run banking services.

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Reasonable response, but where do you draw the line between a protest and a nuisance?

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You have answered my first question. How about the second one? Shouldn't the protesters out of a sense of fairness be blocking privately run dormitories and privately performed music events as well as privately run banking services?

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Not trite at all.

I realize that my perspective at 64 is a whole lot different than my perspective was at 21, but I guess it all boils down to the fact that I don't find the Occupy Movement's message targeting the banks' involvement in educational finance as a compelling one. From a very practical perspective, if it weren't for the Federal Student Loan Programs and the willingness of the banks to lend money under those programs, how many of the protesters (or students as a whole for that matter) would even be in college?

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I understand David, but how does the interest charged to students raise the costs for educational institutions like UCD? Those interest costs are external to UCD, not internal.

If you are talking about the total fiscal burden that a college education places on the students then I have to ask, are the banks not charging the interest rates that the government has set as standard?

Said another way, what is the gripe that anyone has with the banks in this scenario?

One can object to the way that universities and colleges manage their budgets, and the resultant tuition and fees that are charged as a result. One can object to the fact that (unrealistically) universities and colleges went for years and years charging tuition and fees that were unsustainable. But bottom-line, how have the banks contributed to any of the legitimate complaints about how universities and coilleges manage their budgets?

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David M. Greenwald said . . .

"I would argue it's more a matter of deferring supply and demand."

I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean by "deferring." If the loan programs have any effect on the higher education supply/demand curve, I would say that they increase the demand side substantially, just the way that the presence of the mortgage market increases demand for ownership housing.

I would also say that in large part the microeconomics of the education marketplace are unique. In effect the workings of the supply side and the demand side work independently of one another. Universities don't price their products on the basis of market demand, but rather (much like healthcare reimbursement prior to the implementation of the Prospective Payment System [PPS] in 1982) the pricing of education is effectively on a "cost plus" basis. The educational institutions or systems tally up their costs of operation, and then set the price of the service (education is after all a service rather than a product) at a level that covers the costs with a small margin to account for budget overruns.

The burden that the loans to students adds to the overall functioning of the educational marketplace really only operates on the demand side.