[WS:] Excellent point. This is something that I suspected too, comparing the reactions to OWS in places trying to attract business (like Oakland or Atlanta) and the ones that do not (NYC). This is a better predictor of the local government reaction to OWS (or similar protest actions) than political party affiliation. Based on professed politics, one would expect Quan, a liberal Democrat with professed sympathy toward OWS goals, allow the protest to go uninterrupted, while Bloomberg, a pro business Republican, use any means necessary to quash it. In reality, the opposite happened - the liberal Democrat unleashed her police dogs on the protesters at the first opportune moment, whereas the pro-business Republican allowed the protest to go more or less uninterrupted. However, given the generally supine stance of the so-called 'elected representatives' toward business, it is far more fruitful to take into consideration the locally specific relations between politicians and businessmen. That consideration would lead to a thus far accurate prediction that localities that bend backwards to attract reluctant business are far more likely to go hard on protesters than localities that are not so desperately dependent on the will of businessmen to do business there.
This is yet another example why looking at the local specificity and power relations is analytically superior to grand global scale generalizations about the "logic of capitalism."
Wojtek