TASS has been authorized to report that the glorious People’s Protesting Collective (West Coast, Bay Area) has been successful in stopping the day to day operation of  capitalist activity at the Port of Oakland in the worker’s paradise of Northern California.  Many petit bourgeois operators of freight hauling trucks were either kept from leaving the port with cargo or entering it in the first place.  Cries that they were only small businessmen themselves went unheeded as our brothers and sisters in socialism exthorted them to burn their trucks and take their place on a barricade.  Local officials of the running-dog city government have continued their wise cooperation with the will of the proletariat, even to the point of allowing a large banner extolling the wonders of a people’s revolution to be hung from the walls of City Hall.

Loyal allies in the labor movement have taken to the airwaves provided by the People’s Propaganda and Information Bureaus, expressing their support for the brave revolutionaries:

The members “are supporting the concerns raised by Occupy Oakland and the Occupy movement to speak up for the 99 percent and against the corporate greed that is wrecking America.”

Protests are sweeping across America in sympathy with the brave revolutionaries of the Bay Area.  In New York, protesters took time out from their valuable drumming activities to smoke a bowl in solidarity with their West Coast brethren.  Michael Moore, glorious veteran of the hearts and minds campaign, has announced the he will be fasting for three consecutive minutes this weekend in protest of the reactionary response of the Oakland police department in breaking up a peaceful bonfire in the public square.

In unrelated news, peaceful protesters peacefully broke windows at several banks and an upscale grocery store before peacefully spray-painting peaceful slogans calling for the peaceful death of capitalists while peacefully gathering trash receptacles to create the peaceful bonfire mentioned earlier in this report.

Tonight, as we listen to the Internationale and read our nightly passage from Marx, let us all keep our heroes of the Occupy movement in our thoughts as they fight against those who want to make and keep the filthy lucre that they ‘earned’ by choosing a paying occupation, working hard, and investing wisely.

The Federal Reserve announced today that it believes that while the economy will continue to grow over the next two years, it will do so at a very slow rate.  They’ve dropped their estimates for economic growth to about 1.6 percent this year and about 2.5 percent next year.  Unemployment is expected to stay above 8 percent for the foreseeable future.

The Fed has pretty much shot its bolt on anything other than psychological help anyway.  With interest rates already at or near zero, there’s really nothing they can do to give an incentive to the private sector to produce and consume.   Look for Bernanke and friends to keep doing their rhetorical human pyramids and backflips for the next few quarters, or at least until the people who actually produce figure out a way to create jobs and make money without their help.

Remember, folks, these are the government’s economic cheerleaders talking here.  Part of their job is to help boost confidence in the economy and health of the nation.  They’re probably feeling heat from the rest of the government to give as rosy a picture as they can.  If they’re expecting the economy to stay sluggish for at least the next couple of years, we’re probably boned.

The high-speed rail project that would allow someone to get on a train in San Fransisco and get off in San Diego got re-planned and re-costed recently:

The California High-Speed Rail Authority released a new business plan Tuesday that stretches out construction time and triples the project’s estimated cost.

Service from San Francisco to Anaheim was originally scheduled to begin in 2020 but that could be put off until 2034, with other parts of the system completed first.