Take The Red Pill

2012-01-27T15:12:00.000-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: MLK, State of the Union, The Obama Record, Gingrich/Romney, Iran War?

Intro...and Martin Luther King

I’m so behind on this blog that I’m going to strip outvideos and articles, and just hit a few hottopics, like the State of the Union, some campaign analysis (which I don’t liketo do as much as I used to…because so much of it is a pointless game), and, ofcourse, the drums beating for a war in Iran…and ALL the lies and propagandabeing used – by both parties (though GOP worse) – to brainwash us into acceptingyet another illegal invasion.

But, since I missed Martin Luther King Day on this blog, I want to intersperse this post with some of his quotes…because theytruly provide an anchor of truth in the sea disinformation and moral ambiguitythat make up our current Matrix.

Here are a couple passages that sound as if he’s at anOccupy Wall Street Protest – which he would be if alive today (this is thelegacy we DO NOT here or see in the media and all the artificial celebrationsof his life)...let's remember this clarity as we delve into all the "unclear" coming:

“There are forty million poor people here. And one day wemust ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? Andwhen you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about theeconomic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask thatquestion, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply sayingthat more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the wholesociety.”

“We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars inlife’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice whichproduces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised.You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question,Who owns the oil? You begin to ask the question, Who owns the iron ore? Youbegin to ask the question, Why is it that people have to pay water bills in aworld that is two-thirds water? These are questions that must be asked.”

“I look forward confidently to the day when all who work fora living will be one with no thought to their separateness…This will be the daywhen we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yetunfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and propertywidely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities fromthe many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will notargue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; adream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselvesalone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of acountry where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the humanpersonality.”

“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It issocially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn ofcivilization…The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total,direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

Now that we have our moral compasses set towards truth, let's contrast these words, and his fight for social justice, with thejust released global rankings of countries based on their records on those VERYsocial justice issues…because we need and we must, start confronting the BIGLIE we are told about our “exceptionalism”…and about our absolute failure torealize his dreams and aspirations (in fact we’ve been going backwards since1980 in many respects).

"We're Number 27"

The rankings come from a foundation in Germany that analyzedthe social justice records of all 31 members of the Organization for EconomicCo-operation and Development (OECD), ranking each nation in such categories ashealth care, income inequality, pre-school education, and child poverty.

Iceland ranked No. 1…America…No. 27, fifth from the bottom(we lost to Poland and Slovakia even). “We’renumber 27” “We’re number 27”!!! C’mon, say it with me!!!

The overall performance by the United States — which never stops boasting about the American Dream and our color blind society — outranks only Greece, Chile, Mexico, andTurkey. And three of those countries performed better than ours in theeducation of pre-schoolers, and Greece did better than the United States on theprevention of poverty.

Again, as we are neck deep in our campaign season circus, I want to hone in on reality, versus the Matrix’s version of reality. It is where these "realities" clash that we can discover the greatest truths... and will be FAR MORE informative than any growth in GDP or rise in the stock market.

Now, here’s another one of MLK’s almost deleted quotes fromhistory, but a VERY VERY telling one (both in content, and in understanding WHYit’s never mentioned):

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care isthe most shocking and inhumane.”

Even if Obama’s plan is fully implemented (as I have said, it was Dole, Romney,Gingrich and Nixon’s plan…he just co-opted it, forcing them to call their ownplans socialist), the reality remains: a private, for profit health care system can NEVER provide adequate,universal, or humane service.

And, if you believe like I do, and King did, thathealth care is a basic human right, and need, not a privilege for those thatcan afford it, how do you reconcile the fact that health care premiums inCalifornia have gone up 153% - five times the rate of inflation – in just thepast few years? I’m going to refrain from going down my long lists of factoidstoday, as it will take just too long…but by now, you should know some of thefigures (like 45,000 people dying every year, 15 times the number in 9/11,because they can’t afford health care).

But, again, let’s go to the study by the 34-nationOrganization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) from last year on the health caresystems in its member countries, including the U.S., plus six others, for atotal of 40. What's important, particularly in light of the fact that we are the ONLY major democracy in the world that doesn't provide universal health coverage through a non profit system, is that we compare ours to theirs, right?

Here you go then: The OECD found that the United States spends two-and-a-halftimes more on health care per person than the OECD average - twice as much asFrance, which many experts contend has one of the best health care systems onthe planet.

Here are some reasons why: Hospital spending is 60 percent higherthan the average of five other relatively expensive countries (Switzerland,Canada, Germany, France and Japan); spending on pharmaceuticals and medicalgoods is much higher here than any of the other countries; and administrativecosts are more than two-and-a-half times the average of the others.

But we rank 29th in the number of hospital beds per personand 29th in the average length of a stay in the hospital. And we have highrates of avoidable hospital admissions for people with asthma, lung disease,diabetes, hypertension and other common illnesses.

When it comes to access to physicians, we're also near thebottom of the pack. We rank 26th in the number of physicians, especiallyprimary care or family doctors, per 1,000 people. In terms of life expectancy,we rank 28th, just behind Chile. The average age of death in the U.S. is 78.2,well below the average of 79.5 years in the other OCED countries.

The OECD study backs up the results of a report released bythe Commonwealth Fund last October, which showed that the U.S. is actuallylosing ground to other countries in assuring that its citizens have equalaccess to affordable, efficient care. We now rank last out of 16 when it comes to deaths that could have beenprevented by timely and effective medical care.

A big reason for the dismal results is the fact that moreand more Americans are falling into the ranks of the uninsured andunderinsured. As of last year, according to the Commonwealth Fund, 81 millionadults in the U.S. -- 44 percent of all adults under age 65 -- were eitheruninsured or underinsured at some point during the year, up from 61 million asrecently as 2003.

I bring this up because we're going to hear, ad nauseum this campaign season, about how superior America and the free market is the answer to all ills (even as it is the cause of most). Clearly, we are failing the people of this country in such a profound way if MLK was alive today he'd be risking his life to confront THESE injustices. On the positive side, I do see an awakening is underway, and that's why I want to highlight some of King's words and contrast them to present day realities...because his moral clarity is what's necessary, now more than ever...and its this clarity that is fundamental to the awakening that is taking place...because its all about JUSTICE.

The GOP and theircorporate paymasters of course have flipped reality on its head as the primary narrative of the last 30 yearshas been “empathy is bad”, “compassion is a sign of weakness”, “social justiceis code for evil communism”, “we spend too much on those greedy poor people”,“we need to cut spending”…and "regulations are burdening the free market."

Quite an ingenious way to rationalize selfishness, no? Actually get people to believe that by cutting investments in schools they will get better. By deregulating big oil the environment will get cleaner. By deregulating Wall Street everyone does better and the economy will "grow". By cutting taxes for the rich the deficit will go down. It's delusional, sociopathic, and patently absurd...but rest assured, millions upon millions of Americans have bought into these lies (though a minority), as has the entire GOP in Congress (or at least they know this is the only way they can hope to convince the masses to keep voting against their own interests)...and, of course, the media gives these delusions equal time without the required resistance.

Ironically, and tragically, the moral values we need to recover are thosethat have been demonized, and the values of selfishness, competition, andgreed...are the ones we have embraced and enshrined...and led us to the brink of becoming an almost Banana Republic with a psuedo fascist, neo feudal flavor.

Once again, MLK provides some light for us to follow: “The moralarc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” As for the moralurgency of OUR action and participation in this “bending”, I also look to King:“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of socialtransition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appallingsilence of the good people.”

This is probably as good a time as any to get a little in toObama’s State of the Union, because, on one hand, it was STRATEGICALLYalmost pitch perfect. And, it did show a “populist shift”, combined with a little “fight”I haven’t seen from him in the past, which of course, at least to a small degree,can be attributed to the Occupy Wall Street movement and the growing numbers ofAmericans catching on to our plutocratic corporatocracy.

State of the Union and the Campaign

So yes, it was a great speech in many way, and yes, he did, FINALLY (howlong have I been advocating him doing this here??!!!), start taking on the GOP,talking about income inequality, tax fairness, and of course, Wall Street accountability andtheir crimes. I won’t get into too many specifics, but clearly some of hisideas on tax policy were very good (though won’t pass…still…since nothing canpass that’s why he may as well fight for what’s right...). I am also cautiously hopefulfor the Wall Street investigative he asked to be led by the great NY AG…but, there arereasons to hold back from popping champagne just yet...(will get to this in future posts).

Suffice it to say, it was a pretty decidedly populist speechthat, by the least, painted the fascist knuckle draggers of the GOP in a hostof awkward positions and corners. This is all good news of course…because evenif its ONLY talk, and I suspect he means a lot of it too, it still demonstratesjust how radically, and positively, DIFFERENT the narrative is now (wealthdisparity, economic justice), compared to the past year or more, (austerity,cutting medicare, Medicaid, social security, etc.). This is HUGE....at least we're talking about reality...and things that are real...instead of the fantasy world we were in for too long.

Of course, on the other hand, I do get that feeling of “foolme once, shame on you, fool me 10,000 times, shame on me”.Let's remember, this is how he sounded in 2008...and its not by accident its election time again. And, there were a few points in the speech that were particularly problematic.

First, why, why in the WORLD would he again offer up SocialSecurity, Medicare and Medicaid to the GOP??? Now, perhaps you can say he’sdoing this because he knows they STILL won’t bite and give him, in return, thetax increases on corporations and the rich (like he's asking them in return for cuts). So, by doing this, helooks like he’s trying to reach out, and they won’t reciprocate.

But, this kind of Machiavellian negotiatingtactics fail to see the much bigger picture: A democratic President, for thefirst time in history, is arguing that those programs should be cut and are toocostly. This of course is untrue, and plays into the GOP’s narrative…and, as weall know, their decades long goal has always been to destroy and privatize those programs. Andto that end, this kind of rhetoric, and offers to "make a deal with them", help the GOP reach their ultimate goal sooner rather than later.

Second, I was gravely disappointed when he took thatgratuitous swipe at universal single-payer health care, saying, “I believe whatRepublican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people onlywhat they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” That’s like whenClinton said “the era of big government is over”…which is, again, trying tosound more like Republicans…and thus hurts Democratic core principles in a number of fundamental ways.

Plus,the quote makes no sense in this context. How in the world does that quote backup his bragging about passing a totally private health care reform package thatforces people to buy expensive, faulty products from a corrupt industry? And,he called it “universal coverage”!!! Ha!!! In fact, the quote says the opposite because health care is PRECISELY the kind of service that IS better left to the public sector, not private.

And let's also be clear: Even if the President's plan is fully implemented (and the Supreme Court may not let that happen), 30million still won’t have coverage…and we’ll still be paying HUGE amounts forthat coverage because he intentionally gambled away the public option, deridedsingle payer, sold out negotiating drug cots by the government (orreimportation from Canada and Mexico), and I could go on down the list of thereforms that he horse traded to big pharma and the health insurance industryin hopes they’d stay quiet.

Remember too, when he was running for President the first time, hesaid, “If I were starting from scratch,” I’d be for single-payer universalhealth care." Now he disparages it to score cheap political points. I say this because its this kind of disingenuous that undercuts his words in my eyes.

Also, though predictably, he was belligerent on Iran (though nothing compared tothe GOP), saying he would take “no options off the table,” which is easilydecipherable code for saying he’d threaten to blow Iran off the map if it gotone nuclear weapon, even though the United States has thousands of nukes andIsrael has hundreds. (will get to this later).

With that said, I’ll be very interested to watch how his trade enforcementunit and wall street investigation unit pan out…I’m not sold, but hey, intheory, they are good, necessary ideas. Of course, undercutting his tough talkon Wall Street and outsourcing is the fact that he’s simultaneously trying tocut a HORRENDOUS deal with Wall Street on what they owe homeowners in trouble(the negotiations going on with AG’s across the country…ours in California saidNO which is great)…and, he keeps surrounding himself with Goldman Sachsinsiders and people like GE’s former CEO (biggest outsource in the worldpractically) on his jobs committee! Why is Geithner still there? Why Immelt?

But I don’t want to turn this into a downer…it WAS his bestspeech in a longtime, it does make me even more sure he will win re-election,it does show he’s listening to what people are demanding…and yes, he made somePOWERFUL arguments for investing in our future, raising taxes on the rich (gotreal specific on the Buffett rule, a minimum effective tax rate of 30% formillionaires, and the alternative minimum tax for corporations), and much more.

Obama v. Romney Gingrich (assuming they’re fused together likesome kind of demon spawn)

If we’re going to get into this very confined (by theMatrix) what’s Obama’s real record, versus Bush’s…or versus what the GOP clown car of candidates are claiming, I want everybodyto be clear: there is no comparison.

When Obama took over the worst situation since FDR, with aneven more radical, obstructionist GOP dedicated to stopping him, the fact is, he'sSTILL created FAR MORE jobs than Bush ever did, contributed far less tothe debt than Reagan, Bush or Bush Jr. did. He rescued the auto industry (whichhis opponents opposed)…which could have saved a million or so jobs in itself(though unions had to take a big cut…wonder why Wall Street didn’t when webailed them out?), passed a stimulus that created/saved over 3 million more jobs...and jobs that were building and fixing things by the way.

On that note, here’s a few factoids just to be clear on the differences…eventhough none of these numbers come CLOSE to addressing the real threats likepoverty, inequality, wages, unemployment, etc.. What's important to know is that ALL THE JOB losses since he's been president are from the PUBLIC SECTOR (directly contradicting the GOP lie about big government)...and that has come largely from the states...something the stimulus helped prevent, but wasn't big enough. Clearly, we need to stop the hemorrhaging of public sector jobs...

Here's more:

2…the number of years of consecutive employment growth inmanufacturing, after not one single year of growth between 1997 and 2010.

8.5 percent…the unemployment rate, the lowest since February2009 just after President Obama took office.

22…the number of consecutive months of private sector jobgrowth - 12,000…the number of public sector jobs lost in December of 2011alone.

212,000…the number of private sector jobs created inDecember of 2011 alone - 280,000…the number of public sector jobs lost in 2011.

673,000…the number of private sector jobs lost during theentirety of the eight-year Bush presidency.

1,080,000…the number of net jobs created during the entiretyof the eight-year Bush presidency

VERSUS

1,600,000…the net number of jobs created during 2011, afteraccounting for job losses in the public sector - 1,900,000…the number ofprivate sector jobs created during 2011.

Let’s also consider, for a second, some other direct resultsof electing Barak Obama, rather than another member of the GOP crime family. Askyourself any of the following hypotheticals and you get an answer…

If you or your family member received health care afterbeing denied care by private insurance companies for a ‘pre-existingcondition’?
Are you or your kids one of the 2.5 million young adults whocan now receive their parent's health care due to the Affordable Care Act?
Can you or a friend now serve proudly as a gay or lesbianservice member?
Or do you know someone home from Iraq in time for theholidays? (though he tried to stay there)
Do you or your children get to go to college more easilybecause Pell Grants were significantly expanded?
Are you a Medicare recipient in the 'donut hole' who hassaved 50% on prescription drugs?

Now let’s consider JUST the tax plans of Romey Gingrich(that’s my name for if the two of these fucks were ever combined to make afascist super hero):

Citizens forTax Justice (CTJ) crunched the numbers on several of the candidates’ taxplans and found that on average they would give the wealthiest 1 Percent a taxcut up to 270 times larger than what the middle class would receive under theirplans. Here’s the rundown.

Newt Gingrich would give the wealthiest 1 Percent an averagetax cut of $391,330, or more than 190 times larger than what a middle incomeAmerican would receive under his plan.
Mitt Romney would give the wealthiest 1 Percent an averagetax cut of $126,450, or more than 100 times larger than what a middle incomeAmerican would receive under his plan. What’s more, a CAP Action Fund analysis of Tax Policy Center data foundthat Romney’s plan would actually raise taxes on half of middle class familieswith children.

I’m going to save all kinds of back and forth kind of datademonstrating Obama’s record compared to Bush’s (an admittedly REALLY LOW bar)…andcompared to the attacks being made by Tweetle Dee and Tweetle Dumb (Romney andGingrich).

But, and this is a big but, no matter how much better Obamais than these scum bags…it just can’t change the fact that he surroundedhimself with people that helped cause the crisis…that he gambled away (proof ofthis now), from the outset (and it was premeditated), things like the public option,breaking up the banks, ending the Bush tax cuts, and on and on and on. But,perhaps most shocking in his failure as a President is in the area of civilliberties and executive power.

As Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic laysout...and ask yourself as you read these “How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do thefollowing? What if Newt Gingrich inherits that power?"

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up asecret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate withoutdue process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4)prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpretthe War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressionaldeclaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7)institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in majorAmerican airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agentsare already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and busdepots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries thatdelegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians injeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits broughtby civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather thanlitigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medicalmarijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of Americantroops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (13) reauthorizethe Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former andfuture financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles inthe financial crisis.

All I’m saying is nothing is black and white anymore. Nospeech changes what I know to be fact. However, nor am I so blind with disappointment to not understand how much better he is than the GOP. Similarly,and this is probably most importantly, we must remember that change WON’T COMEfrom any party or leader, but from the people…working to change policies,peoples minds, our own lives, and fight to elect REAL representatives not beholden to corporate money (i.e. they should pledge to refuse it...as my friend Norman Solomon has in his run for Congress)…among a millionother things.

So while I don’t quite prescribe to Chris Hedges (who Ilove) opinion that voting is pointless and there is NO difference between the parties(see my op-ed on our scorecard for more evidence this isn’t true)…I agree withhim on everything else. And what we agree on is far more important whether I will vote for Obama or a third party.

Instead, I just look as voting as the beginning of myresponsibilities, not the end...and I'm very realistic about what it means now, unlike years in the past. IN California, maybe that means I vote Green orfor Rocky Anderson (Justice Party)…maybe Obama if I see him really fight forsome of the stuff he outlined on Tuesday. But, if I lived in Ohio or Florida, I would still, absolutely vote for the President...but again...I believe this is LESS important than building mass social movements now.

In the end, it’s about a system, a Matrix, that has been so corrupted, and it is that systemthat must change…which I will get to more in future posts (public financing STILL being the most important single reform we could have).

Iran Concerns…and the Drum Beats of War

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more moneyon military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Or this from Martin Luther King Jr.

“Any man’s death diminishes me because I’m involved inmankind…Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a wayto live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy intoa creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve forall human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.The foundation of such a method is love.”

Yet here we are, AGAIN. In light of the escalating drumbeats for war on Iran, the INCREDIBLY erroneous reporting by our media (Iraqwar anyone?) and the outright threats and lies coming from our government, bothCongress and the Administration (don’t even get me started on the GOP clown carof candidates), and Israel of course, I find I must, yet again, set the recordSTRAIGHT on this issue.

First, as this may be very difficult for some to hear, it isthe US and Israel that continues to perpetrate acts of terrorism around theglobe, and towards Iran. It’s not just our drone strikes, but it’s also obviousthat Israel, with our help, is murdering in cold blood, Iranian scientists (whohave families and have done NOTHING TO ANYONE)…nevermind the slaughter andimprisonment of the Palestinian people.

But let’s take a step back (and keep in mind, this is in noway an endorsement of the Iranian government or their system of government…justa detailing of facts), and consider the objective truth: America maintains OVER 10,000 nuclear weapons (and have usedthem twice…the only country that EVER has). Israel maintains some 200 readynuclear weapons (that we have supplied them with and they don’t even have toadmit they have!) and has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty (thesame one we often ERRONEOUSLY criticize Iran for breaking), thereby avoidingthe IAEA inspectors.

The inspection teams of the IAEA that monitor compliancewith the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran belongs, have enteredIran numerous times and, while remaining suspicious, have not been able to findthat country on the direct road to the Bomb. Let me say that again: there is NOevidence Iran is developing a SINGLE bomb.

When pressed (and that’s a critical point…only if pressedwill we come clean), just a few weeks ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panettahimself said while Iran was developing a capability for making nuclear weaponssomeday, was not yet building a bomb…this is important Orwellian wordplay tounderstand. Anyone could be said to be developing the “capability” to develop abomb…far different than “developing a bomb”. This, in fact, is their legalright…to enrich uranium for the purpose of energy.

It is also illustrative to know that it was America that fundedand orchestrated the overthrown of Iran’s democratically elected government in1953…(installing the dictatorial Shah who ruled tyrannically for the next 27years). Remember, all of that, and today’s efforts to take them out yet againis about controlling the world’s resources, making money for our bigcorporations, particularly oil, keeping people afraid, and rationalizing ourgiant military industrial complex (and unquestioning and undying support forIsrael)…among others.

It was America that bankrolled the 1980 invasion of invadedIran by Saddam Hussein, resulting in a million Iranian casualties…a country whohasn’t invaded ANYONE for 250 years.

Why are we being told to fear them then - a country with anational GDP smaller than Massachusetts? Iran is a nation WITHOUT a nuclearweapon, without having invaded anyone in nearly 3 centuries, and is COMPLETELYsurrounded by powerful adversaries, including the American military on three ofits borders.

It was George W. Bush who first labeled Iran, along withIraq and North Korea, one of the three "axis of evil," and thenimmediately bombed and destroyed their neighbor Iraq. Iran KNOWS that probablythe ONLY thing that has kept us from taking out North Korea is because they DOHAVE nuclear weapons.

And also…whyWOULDN’T Iran want a nuclear bomb when they are surrounded on every side bycountries threatening to destroy them? So why, in the face of American andIsrael thumbing its nose at nuclear non-proliferation treaties, be singled outas the threat? Why can’t they (though there’s all kinds of better ways tokeeping them from getting one…which is obviously preferable) have one, if allof us do, including India, North Korea, or Pakistan?

And, does anyone think that Iran, if they got a nuclearweapon would strike first? They’d be BLOWN OFF THE MAP by us and Israel. As Isaid, to what extent they MAY want ONE someday is so we won’t invade them, aswe have nearly every other country in their region.

And what of Israel’s continued murder and occupation ofPalestinians and their land? What of their failure to do ANYTHING for peace?When have they EVER taken legitimate steps, supported by the entire world (eventhe US supposedly) to adopt the 2002 Saudi Arabia peace proposal, reiteratedsince, that would open full diplomatic relations with some two dozen Arab andIslamic countries in return for an Israeli pullback to the 1967 borders andrecognition of a Palestinian state?

As Glenn Greenwald noted, the facts about our own nationsdeliberate efforts to prevent reconciliation with Iran tells the story, andhelps explain why these escalating drum beats for war was inevitable,orchestrated, and DESIRED, “Recently, Iran has experienced mysterious cybersabotage, drone violations of its air space, the slaying of its nuclearscientists and the blowing up of its military sites, including a major missileinstallation. Israeli and American officials are not trying too hard to concealthis low level warfare.

Israel military historian--strategist Martin van Creveldsaid in 2004, that Iranians "would be crazy not to build nuclear weaponsconsidering the security threats they face." Three years later he statedthat "the world must now learn to live with a nuclear Iran the way welearned to live with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China....We Israelishave what it takes to deter an Iranian attack. We are in no danger at all ofhaving an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us...thanks to the Iranian threat,we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany."

SNIP

The war-mongers against Iran have often distorted Iranianstatements to suit their purpose and kept in the shadows several friendlyIranian initiatives offered to the George W. Bush Administration.

Flynt L. Leverett, now with Brookings and before a StateDepartment and CIA official, listed three initiatives that were rejected. Rightafter the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran offered to help Washington overthrow theTaliban. The U.S. declined the offer. Second, in the spring of 2003, topIranian officials sent the White House a detailed proposal for comprehensivenegotiations to resolve questions regarding its weapons programs, relationswith Hezbollah and Hamas and a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel. Thisproposal was rebuffed and ignored.

Third, in October 2003, European officials secured anagreement from Iran to suspend Iranian uranium enrichment and to pursue talksthat Mr. Leverett said "might lead to an economic, nuclear and strategicdeal." The Bush administration "refused to join the Europeaninitiative, ensuring that the talks failed," he added.”

Yet here we are, with a Democratic President, puttingsanctions on Iran (as we did to Iraq…leading to the DEATH of nearly a millionCHILDREN), threatening a western boycott of Iran's oil exports (crucial to itsfaltering sanctions-ridden economy), and continuing to MISREPRESENT Iran andits nuclear ambitions.

Let’s be clear…invading Iran would be an unmitigateddisaster, probably dwarfing that of the illegal invasion – based on lies – ofIraq. Should the flow of oil be blocked out of the Straights of Hormuz we willsee the price of our gasoline, including heating bill and other relatedproducts, skyrocket.

And if we invade…let us all PRAY that Russia and China donot come to their defense. Let us PRAY that Israel does not enter the fray – orperhaps more likely, START THE WAR THEMSELVES. We are, in many ways, playingwith GLOBAL fire that could start a third world war…based, yet again, on LIES.

Once again, I turn it over to Glenn Greenwald: The drums ofwar should not move our country into a propagandized media frenzy that precededand helped cause the Iraq invasion with all the socio-cide in that country andall the costly blowbacks against U.S. national interests? It is past time forthe American citizenry to wake up and declare: Iran will not be an Iraq Redux!

I urge everyone to pay close attention to the kinds ofOrwellian framing of Iran and the “need” (remember Obama got a standing ovationwhen he said “all options are on the table”) to protect ourselves (HA!!!)…bypoliticians and their war stenographers in the media…we must be prepared in aBIG WAY to take to the streets again, as we did way back during the Iraqinvasion…we MUST BREAK FREE from the American War Machine Matrix that demandswe must ALWAYS be invading someone. It’s all a big lie…a giant waste of money,life, and our very souls…and a desecration of the planet itself

Greater minds than mine have said it better…so please, don’tbelieve the hype:

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness ofmilitarism.
- Martin Luther King

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children..."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
- Mahatma Gandhi

We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you willnever end terrorism by terrorizing others.
- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

War is a way of shattering to pieces...materials which mightotherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and...too intelligent.
- George Orwell

2012-01-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Polarization/Dualism, 2012 Awakening?, Austerity and Control, Income Inequality, Cordray

When you have a government beholding to corporate power anda corrupt banking system that denies basic human rights and dignity, you cannotbut have social injustice. When you have a common religious mythology(Judeo-Christian-Muslim) that implies sin, retribution and superiority asacceptable tenants of belief, you cannot but have social injustice. When you have a professional military that is ready toinvade any country, torture it’s enemies, turn on it’s own people and deviseincreasingly heinous means by which to kill, you cannot but have socialinjustice.

- Urmas Kaldveer (my father on his blog), 2011

Moving Forward…Balancing the "Spiritual" with the "Political"

I don’t like to discuss my own spiritual philosophies toomuch here, nor do I like to get into too much theoretical talk that takes meaway from the purpose of this blog – and its effectiveness. But, it is 2012,and I have always found an interesting polarization, even disturbing at times, betweenthose I know that are clearly “evolved” in numerous ways but don’t believepolitics or social movements matter at all (and I’m not talking about rigidorganized religion here…I’m talking about legitimate spiritual awakenings andconcepts), just as I see others that do care about such politicalpursuits, but are demagogic in their denunciation of anything outside of ourrigid, dualistic 3 dimensional reality.

Now, being that SO MUCH change is clearly taking place, fromOccupy Wall Street, to earth changes, to global uprisings in the Middle East,to progressions in attitudes and understandings (in a good way) on numeroustopics and issues, to the simultaneous CRACKDOWN on these very gooddevelopments from those powerful forces that have led us to the brink we nowface, be they multi-national corporations, organized religion, Wall Street, theGOP (and the slowly infected Democratic Party), Muslim extremists, to all thosethat want a piece of that pie around the world – rather than work for thegreater good (and many more), this is a worthy topic to contemplate today.

This INCREDIBLE polarization, and dramatic time we live in,with so much at stake, warrants a great merging of the initial polarization Ibegan with…and the need to convince, EVERYONE, to take a greater role in thisgrand clash…because, literally, the future of humanity is at stake (to varyingdegrees).

So, I’m not going to try, because that’s not the intent ofthis blog, to open people to spiritual concepts, butI do want to engage those that are spiritual, and open to those concepts, forthe need to become more engaged in the political and social realms (voting no longer enough). The factis, 60% of Americans DON’T EVEN VOTE. And, MANY of these people are naturalallies of justice and progressive ideals – not corporate, religious ones.

Therefore, I think, as we enter 2012…and for the sake ofargument, let’s just agree that certain "spiritual" awakenings are under way (don’tneed to believe in a higher power to understand this)…by that I mean,increasing rejection of materialism, increasing rejection of organized religion and its rigid tenets of guilt, sin, and fear, increasing connection to the earth and itscondition, increasing desire for economic justice and peace, increasing understanding (breakthroughs in physics and more) our deep connection to all that is, and so forth.These are "spiritual" (or you can define them as something else) concepts in a sense…not magical fantasies.

And, speaking from a LOT of experience, I want these people whoare completely “spiritual” and open to all kinds of "potential and greater realities", and who meditate,do yoga, and so forth, yet somehow believe just visualizing what they want is somehow enoughin the face of the powers that are against us. Sadly, these people don’t followwhat’s happening right around them, with their tax money, and don’t even vote or certainly don't take the kind of increased action that will be necessary(and seem to believe they are somehow “above all that”), which I thinkcompletely contradicts their claimed “enlightenment.”

Did Jesus, Martin Luther King, or Gandhi sit back and justvisualize what they wanted in order to save themselves from the hard work ofengaging reality and the political and social order? Obviously not…

The Matrix maintains itself by too many siding in one campand not seeing the connection between their own personal beliefs and what's happening in our politics. Howcan people claim to be so compassionate and evolved when they don’t evenvote (or become more engaged...which is necessary) or care about the fact that 4 out of 10 or our tax dollars go to themilitary and wars, or that 50 million Americans are now living in poverty asthe wealthiest 400 families have as much wealth as the bottom 150 millioncombined, or that the 6 Walton (Walmart) children have more wealth than thebottom 30% of Americans combined yet pay half the tax rate as their cleaningladies, or that 50 million can’t afford health insurance, or that 1 of 5children go hungry in OUR COUNTRY every night as banks get trillions inbailouts, or that our climate is accelerating at a rate that could leave ourspecies GONE in a century or two.

You get the picture. I could go on forfour more pages of such examples that epitomize the way the reality we have allowed, on some level anyway, to manifest creates ENORMOUS suffering and injustice that flies in the face of who we really are and what we are capable of. And worse, it takes place with the direct aid of our money, and in many cases, with our quiet nods ofapproval…whether we know it or not.

It was Martin Luther King Jr. who said “He who passivelyaccepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He whoaccepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

There’s too much of that “easy way out” spiritualism thatyou hear from people like Oprah and so many other self helpers (much of whatthey say IS important too) that get us to think if we just “believe” thingswill all work out they will. Yes, that is PART of the path…but its also the hard work ofDOING that will create change...and change this world.

Its all too easy to sit back and say just visualize things will change. Tell that to all those struggling to find enough food to eat or are sick yet can't afford health care. Tell that to those living in abject poverty with no jobs available and their schools are falling apart. Tell that to those fighting in wars based on lies that have been physically maimed, dismembered, and disabled, with even more suffering permanent psychological and emotional scars, only to return home to a country with a weakened and underfunded social safety net facing annual budget assaults.

Watch this clip of Chris Hedges, as he discusses both RonPaul (see my last post…before I saw this clip by the way) and how thisnew ageism can serve to prevent change, not create it (again…I take some of it to heart)...and actually serve the purposesof the owners…NOT us. This of course is not to say that such beliefs can't be used to strengthen ones efforts, and improve their lives, rather, that we must be aware it can be used as the same kind of crutch that organized religion does for so many.

Please understand, as I make this case to so many that Icross paths with, and I do here now to you today, I am NOT SAYING that everyonemust become political advocates like myself – nor am I saying to become asengaged as I am. What I am saying is to become engaged in ways that YOU canmake the greatest difference or impact, while also becoming, perhaps, a bitmore so in this political/social realm as well.

I firmly believe that we change this paradigm through aMYRIAD of ways, with the political and social being one major component – but notthe only one (but a necessary one). It could be more and more people leavingtheir corporate jobs that are nothing more than cogs in this Matrix (I am notjudging…simply providing perspective…if such a job is what you must do fine…thenI simply would urge other ways to make an impact) to find something morerewarding to THEMSELVES. It could be through the work of physical and spiritualhealers, or it could be the work of psychologists alleviating pain, or it couldbe teachers finding ways to go outside these grotesque national “standards”coming down from above to create obedient workers, or, simply the spreading oflove, wisdom, and awareness…ALL of these are part of changing this paradigm…but,to change it, we must take on the power structures too…and this comes throughthe political and social activism. Each person must find what works for them…butI assure you, MORE is needed.

Now, regardless of if I think we’re going to turn thiscorner or not, I know it’s possible and that the joy is in the process itself.The “fight” as I call it, against forces and prejudices must be taken on,regardless of whether it may seem hard or insurmountable. And thereis contentment to be found simply in being a part of something that is so justand “right.”

The more we start creating a political reality that enhancesjustice and compassion, the better our chance is that we will open up to a muchlarger spiritual reality too (again, however you want to define that is fine, so I use that term in the broadest of ways…I’m not talking about higher powers necessarily…but rather, seeingEVERYTHING in a different, more profound way...like peace, sustainability, justice, connection to planet, etc.). The fact is, the social and political reality we create, and those effected by it, is a reflection of our current "spiritual" level...one can't be without the other. We must apply our beliefs and passion to changing the dark reality we've created...while working on our inner selves as well. The two go hand in hand.

I know that I often drop a TON of facts and figures on thisblog to reinforce the IMPORTANCE of this time, and the grand injustices ourspecies faces as a result of the few, and a Matrix that enhances the powers andwealth of those few to the detriment of the many…and the planet. But today, Iwanted to provide a little more of the picture – as I see it. With that, let mequickly get to some of the ways the Matrix continues to make us NOT SEE therealities I am talking about…and keeps us apathetic, impotent, ignorant, andambivalent.

Income Inequality and the FALSE American Dream

Paramount to this false Matrix continuing to exist in theface of what its doing to fuck us and this planet is the increasing myth that is "upward mobility". You've heard the story, that if you work hard you too will become rich and successful. Thismyth is at the cornerstone of where so many others (listen to EVERY GOPcandidate speech) come from…and what its designed to rationalize lowerand lower taxes for the rich, larger and larger cuts in the social safety net,and less and less investments in PEOPLE…like education, particularly higher ed,and making it affordable for everyone.

See, if you think just working harder and harder (what the owners want you to do) is going to getyou rich, or, that you in fact ARE rich, you tend, despite all evidence to thecontrary, its also ok to keep dismantling our country, privatizing it, andcutting taxes.

The fact is, the lower you are BORN on the economicladder, the less and less likely you can EVER get out…and the likely you are borninto the higher, the more and more likely, AND THIS IS DUE TO INTENTIONAL POLICIES, you stay there. Thisis the banana republic, neo feudal state we are creating – with consent fromtoo many – because they believe in the “American Dream” lie.

Now, this is NOTto say you shouldn’t work hard, believe in yourself, and keep striving…what itis saying is we need to create a system that maximizes JUSTICE, equality, andopportunity. Right now, we are creating the very opposite…becausethat’s what the “owners” want.

AS another blogger noted, “The United States, in the mythsof cock-eyed optimists everywhere, remains the land of opportunity, whereeveryone can get a fair shot at greatness. But that America hasn’t existed fora while. In fact, as Jason DeParle reports,upward mobility doesn’t really exist in this country anymore.

At least five large studies in recent years have found theUnited States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, aneconomist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raisedin the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level ofpersistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain(30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.

Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom roseto the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percentof the Danes.

Despite frequent references to the United States as aclassless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised inthe top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to researchby the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.

This is the old story. Conservatives don’t want anyone toknow that there’s a class war and the rich have won. So they paint thisportrait of America as a Horatio Alger paradise where everyone rises up fromnothing to live out their dreams. But that’s just not true anymore, if it everwas. Class matters in America. It determines the level of your opportunity. Andthis has gotten worse. Higher education has gotten prohibitively expensive. Ahollowed-out industrial base has savaged the middle class. Income inequalitymeans that there are wealthy executives and McJobs, and never the twain shall meet.Tax policy has been structured to make sure the wealthy hang to their money forgenerations to come.

People definitely have this impression – it’s part of whatthe Occupy movement is all about – but the evidence has been confined toacademic journals. In the media you instead hear grandiloquent, dramaticstories about how you can be anything you want to be in America. Sincecorporate-run media executives have an interest in spreading that myth, itrarely gets challenged. But it’s really not true.

Obama ACTUALLY Does Something!!!

Briefly, the really, really good news of the day, was ObamaFINALLY recess appointing Richard Cordray to head the new ConsumerFinancial Protection Bureau. This is something he almost never does – as heis a coward. In fact, Reagan did it over twice as often, and, he does it farless than any President in recent memory…even though he’s facing a GOP far, farmore obstructionist than ever before…so those numbers are even more jolting.

But, let’s give credit where credit is due…as my friendPedro Morillas of CALPIRG noted, “For months Wall St. has been using everytrick in the book to try and derail this nomination and ultimately underminethe entire consumer bureau. Today’s appointment is a bold and important step bythe President that will allow the CFPB to get to the important work ofprotecting consumers…Without a director, the CFPB would have remained asecond-class regulator without full authority over the Wall Street banks thatdestroyed the economy or the payday lenders seeking to pick consumer pockets."

Watch the Daily Show’s excellent piece on the GOP outrageover someone who’s sole purpose is to protect consumers from fraud:

Newsflash: AUSTERITY DOESN’T WORK!!!

As I have argued over and over again here…austerity is apowerful method of control and wealth distribution, taking from the bottom to give to the top, often utilized by corporate/banking/political interests around the world…usuallydemanded from such criminal enterprises as the World Bank and the IMF…but alsodemanded by the GOP, a significant portion of the Democratic Party, and thoseforces behind the EURO.

AS Richard Eskow notes, “It's easy to understand austerity'sattraction for power elites inside and outside of government. The people whosuffer from austerity budgets aren't the kinds of people they know personally,since they're typically public employees like teachers, police, firefightersand the administrators of social programs; people who need governmentassistance, like the poor; and middle-class people with the temerity to eithergrow old or become disabled.

Austerity's attraction became even greater in the U.S.because once it became conventional wisdom that tax increases on the wealthywas "politically infeasible." That made it a program whose solepurpose was to cut government spending, lowering the pressure to increase taxeson the wealthy from today's historically low levels.

The idea's been around in one form or another since that1921 paper, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been imposing it onThird World nations for decades. And it was more than an economic strategy to its backers.Austerity became a way to demonize those who had suffered most from the bankingabuses and self-indulgences of the wealthy, a totemic "blame thevictim" response that turned the political debate into a grotesqueinversion of morality.

It's not just that austerity has NEVER worked ANYWHERE inhistory...but Britain does provide yet another perfect case study: As many astwo million public sector workers went on strike in Britain recently, a numberwhich accounts for 1 out of every 30 citizens in the country (that would be theequivalent of 10 million people going on strike in America). This is thebiggest strike in Britain in 30 years, when the protests focused on anotherpurveyor of austerity, Margaret Thatcher. In this case, the main complaintconcerns cuts to public sector pensions, which threaten the retirement securityof British workers.

For good reason...thanks to austerity measures nearly sevenmillion Britons are risking a "spiral of debt" through using creditcards, overdrafts and payday loans to pay off their rent or mortgage, a majorhousing charity has warned.

Of those almost one million have taken out high interestpayday loans to meet housing costs...

In addition, we also know, as Keynes would have predicted,interest rates outside the euro area have remained low despite massivegovernment borrowing, inflation has been small despite huge increases in themonetary base, and fiscal austerity has deepened the economic downturneverywhere it has been put in place.

All of these results are DIRECT contradictions to what allpro-austerity (anti-human, pro-corporate) forces predicted throughout theglobe, be it Ireland, Greece, Austria and on down the line. The fact the Obamastimulus didn’t bring unemployment way down is again, what we Keynesianspredicted, as it was too small, had too many tax cuts, and was balanced out byall the austerity measures being implemented at the state level. What it diddo, was create/save millions of jobs and double GDP...the only problem was itwasn't enough in the face of the crisis our country faced.

As for the European debt troubles, these are most related tothe housing bubble and the global economic collapse - exacerbated by therefusal of the European central bank failing to act as a lender to those inneed.

The fact is, countries haven't created their debt crises dueto investing in stimulus, nor does austerity solutions EVER actually increaseinvestor "confidence".

Obama drank too much of this koolaide…but thanks to OccupyWall Street…the austerity delusion has largely faded here (though the battlewill continue). As we are seeing now, President Obama has dropped his austerityrhetoric, and adopted populism instead, no doubt largely because its electiontime…and he’s already proven to the owners he’s an ally not to be feared, sothey’ll let him do this for awhile.

And, economist Dean Baker elaborates on the alternative tostimulus, and the real world pain (to humans, not bankers) of austerity:

"Finally, what is the alternative (to stimulus)? Tens of millions ofpeople are supposed to go unemployed or underemployed. These are people unableto care for their children properly, unable to prepare for their ownretirement, and in many cases, unable to keep their homes. Absent majorstimulus, things are not going to get better for these people anytime soon. Andgiven the consistently overly optimistic track record of forecasters, it may beclose to a decade until we have fully recovered from the downturn.

It is important to remember that theunemployed/underemployed are not in financial trouble because they messed up.They are in financial trouble because people like Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke,and Robert Rubin messed up. They are in financial trouble because news outletslike the Washington Post only had room in their news and opinion pages forpeople whining about budget deficits. (This is back in 2004-2007, when deficitswere small.) They had no room for the people warning that the housing bubblewould inevitably burst and sink the economy.

But Samuelson (pro austerity writer) says that we have nochoice but to make these people suffer because if we don't then somethingreally bad will happen. It is difficult not to ask whether Samuelson'sassessment of this risk of the bad unknown may be somewhat different if it washis family that was facing unemployment and eviction."

VIDEO SECTION

Daily Show on “Republican voters go through a rite ofpassage wherein they desperately explore every possible option beforeultimately and unhappily voting for Mitt Romney.”

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/jon-stewart-mitt-romney-least-bad-chocolat

“KeithOlbermann and Dan Savage on Rick Santorum's Gay and Straight Bashing”

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/keith-olbermann-and-dan-savage-rick-santor

2011-12-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: EPA Acts, Ron Paul Reality Check, Banana Republic Facts, Bradley Manning, Gingrich Tax Plan

Finally…The EPA Acts on Mercury

Some good news for a change…while it took WAY to long to enact,we can celebrate the fact that the EPA announced the other day that it will FINALLYimplement a rule to restrict the level of emissions for several harmfulsubstances (this is another example of something that WOULD NOT have happenedin a McCain/Palin Administration). This rule will:

• Prevent release of approximately 90 percent of the mercury in coal from beingemitted into air as pollution, and cut emissions of other toxics such asarsenic
• Prevent 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year.
• Prevent 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 6,300 fewercases of acute bronchitis among children each year.
• Create up to 46,000 short term construction jobs and 8,000 permanent jobs

A Ron Paul Reality Check

I think its past time I set the record straight about RonPaul. For too many years, from too many people, I’ve heard, and even lauded himquite often myself, how great Ron Paul is. But, I think because we are now at atime of significant upheaval, and a growing desire for something different and new,we must not be fooled by false prophets pushing nothing more than the cultravings of a sociopath named Ayn Rand.

Now, let me be the first to say Ron Paul is the ONLYprincipled Republican left in that party. Let me also say I LOVE the fact he isa thorn in the GOP’s side, just as Ralph Nader has been for the Democrats (as hasoccasionally Bernie Sanders/Kucinich). Let me also say that the double edged sword that is today’s, andcertainly Ron Paul’s Libertarianism, is quite an extraordinary mishmash ofcontradictions, absurdities, and yes, some important principles and policystands.

Before I get to some of what makes Ron Paul so good, andsome of what makes him batshit crazy (and that’s partly why I’m writing thistoday…I fear too many young idealists and even disenfranchised progressives aredrinking his koolaide without knowing what’s really in it), I want to go to theheart of this Libertarian “conflict” and perverse view of “freedom”.

One must realize that as passionate, and correct, Ron Paulis about the inherent freedom the Constitution provides American citizens fromgovernment abuses like wiretapping, the drug war, indefinite detention, andfrom so much of our money going towards fighting aggressive wars for corporateprofit, he’s JUST AS PASSIONATE about the “freedom” of a corporation to dowhatever it wants without regulation, just as passionate in his believe thatsocial security and Medicare are UNCONSTITUTIONAL infringements on that “freedom” (comparing them to slavery),just as passionate that ALL regulations that keep our air and water clean andour food edible are encroachments on freedom, and he’s just as passionate thatwe should get rid of ALL social safety net programs, from food stamps tounemployment insurance to heating aid to poor families and on down the line.And, similarly, things like child labor laws and the minimum wage, in Paul’sworld, are infringements on the “freedoms” of the business owners.

This then, is the heart of Libertarianism…that being thatgovernment itself, and EVERYTHING it does (without making any distinctionspractically), is an inherent evil and a assault on liberty and freedom…whichcan be defined by something as legitimate as a suspected terrorists right to atrial (the good Ron Paul), to something as absurd as the freedom to pollute as muchas you want without interference from “big government”.

You can see where this kind ideology – from the insane mindof Ayn Rand – inevitably leads: privatize EVERYTHING, social Darwinism…all inthe belief that some magic, fairy like hand of the “market” will solve allsocial ills…and by cutting programs to the poor, deregulating wall street evenmore, and yes, even privatizing public education, the magic market fairy willmake it all turn out good…for everyone!!

The only problem is this theory not only doesn’t work, itNEVER HAS in the history of this planet, and every nation on it. In fact, theonly two true Libertarian nations on the earth today I believe are Somalia andHaiti.

Put another way, imagine trying to play a football game without goal lines or sidelines???? Or play baseball with no strike zone or bases? It would be chaos...and the fact is, we, collectively, must define and determine the rules of the game in order to create a society that works the best we can for as many as we can. Libertarianism can't work, because its not designed to.

So when Ron Paul talks, eloquently, articulately, andpassionately about the need to end the wars, protect privacy, stop the drug war….alsoremember, he wants to end medicare, social security, public education, foodstamps, aid to poor families…hell, he even wants to privatize OUR ROADS ANDBRIDGES.

So the question that will always stump Libertarians, andpeople like Ron Paul (though somehow he thinks abortion should be ILLEGAL…whichis totally against Libertarian orthodoxy), is the fact that no man's activityis so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way.

So freedom must be BALANCED…the freedom of Monsanto topatent all seeds is an infringement on the freedom of small farmers to own andplant their own gardens. The freedom of Wall Street to gamble our money away isan infringement on the freedom of the masses to live a secure life. AS you cansee, this contradiction lies at the heart of libertarianism, and shows that,every society, if it is to work for the masses (hence why Libertarianism hasNEVER worked ANYWHERE), must have certain rules in place to limit freedoms where necessary, by protecting others freedoms accordingly.

George Monbiot has a great description of Libertarianism(which as I have said, is more of a fantasy cult than a real world economic doctrine),saying, “In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks werepermitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for thesuper-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimumwage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress tothwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws;big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful toexploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

Surely the plant should be regulated in order to enhance thenegative freedoms – freedom from pollution, freedom from poisoning – of itsneighbours? Modern libertarianism is the disguise adopted by those whowish to exploit without restraint. It pretends that only the state intrudes onour liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich inmaking us less free. It denies the need for the state to curb them in order toprotect the freedoms of weaker people. This bastardised, one-eyed philosophy isa con trick, whose promoters attempt to wrongfoot justice by pitching itagainst liberty. By this means they have turned "freedom" into aninstrument of oppression.

I have only touched on Ron Paul’s long list ofVERY, VERY extreme positions. His view of “freedom” then also means he’s beenfiercely against civil rights protections (because those infringe on thefreedom to be a bigot in the marketplace). He's demonized gays, blacks, publiceducation, Social Security, while servicing as the John Birch Society'sfavorite congressman. He's been a booster of the Constitution Party, which hasa Christian Reconstructionist platform. As one blogger noted, “So, if you're amember of the anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen,anti-equality, anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt wing of the progressivemovement, I can see how he'd be your guy.”

SamSeder and Digby have a good discussion here about the sordid past of RonPaul and Libertarianism.

If you don’t believe me, here's an excerpt from Ron Paul's2004 floor speech about the Civil Rights Act, in which he explains why he votedagainst a House resolution honoring the 40th anniversary of the law.

Same goes for reproductive rights, as he sponsored of a billto overturn Roe v. Wade, with no-exceptions even if a rapist was the one tohave caused the pregnancy. While it's true that Paul advocates leavingit to the states to determine whether same-sex marriages should be legallyrecognized, it's not because he's a friend to LGBT people. Paul's position onsame-sex marriage stems from his beliefs about the limits of the federalgovernment's role vis-a-vis his novel interpretation of the Constitution. Let’sbe clear, “leaving it to the states” when it comes to the civil rights issuesof our time is a total and COMPLETE cop out…because that means that over half,at least, of the states in this country will deny basic human rights.

And, let’s be clear too, earlier this year Ron Paul declaredboth Social Security and Medicare to be unconstitutional, essentially sayingthey should be abolished for the great evil that they are - just like slavery. Yes,he compared SLAVERY to Social Security.

Believe me, I like Ron Paul better than any of the otherRepublican candidates because he is so good, and so articulate, on a number of “civillibertarian” type positions, from drugs, to privacy, to wars, to the FederalReserve (though I don’t think abolishing it altogether is really practical) andeven to corporate welfare. I relish watching him continue to drive the GOP establishmentnuts…and I hope he wins Iowa!!

All I ask is for you not to get to enamored with the man…and consider the entire platform he's pushing (and read up on Ayn Rand)....becausethere’s a whole lot more to the picture than meets the eye. At the end of the day,Ayn Rand Libertarianism is NOTHING more than one big rationalization andjustification for selfishness and greed. At its core, it’s almost trying toflip the kinds of things Jesus said, that compassion, empathy and collectivismare what leads to a health society, to instead, what is best for everyone is ifwe have no compassion, we strive only for our own selfish needs, and somehow,that leads to the best for everyone.

If we just had less environmental protections, theenvironment would be better! If we just had fewer programs to help the poor andmiddle class, they’d do better! If we just privatized everything everyone couldafford it! In other words…it’s an insane fantasy that rationalizes being asociopath.

America’s Economic Realities v. GOP "Solutions"

And this now leads us to the new study indicating that, dueto rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — hasfallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as lowincome.

The latest census data depict a middle class that'sshrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. Thenew numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that havehurt millions of workers and families.

From the study: Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it. Many middle-classAmericans are dropping below the low-income threshold — roughly $45,000 for afamily of four — because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or aspouse losing a job. Housing and child-care costs are consuming up to half of afamily's income. About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category,commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the povertylevel, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that isdesigned to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 millionwho fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure…Across the29 cities, about 27 percent of people needing emergency food aid did notreceive it. Many mayors cited the challenges of meeting increased demands forfood assistance, expressing particular concern about possible cuts to federalprograms such as food stamps and WIC, which assists low-income pregnant womenand mothers. Unemployment led the list of causes of hunger in cities, followedby poverty, low wages and high housing costs.”

Here are some other factoids to consider when you see the GOP fighting to cut taxes for corporations and the rich while cutting programs for the poor and raising taxes on the middle class:

Approximately 57 percent of all children in the UnitedStates are living in homes that are either considered to be "lowincome" or impoverished.
The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed inthe United States is now over 40 weeks.
There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today thanthere were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people tothe population since then.
Since December 2007, median household income in the UnitedStates has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of allU.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.
Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United Stateswere low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States arelow income jobs.
One recent survey found that one out of every threeAmericans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month ifthey suddenly lost their current job.
According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRockInvestment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in theUnited States is now 154 percent.
If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroitis now just $6000.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homesin the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent largerthan it was just ten years ago.
Electricity bills in the United States have risen fasterthan the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health carecosts accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Todaythey account for approximately 16.3%.
One study found that approximately 41 percent of all workingage Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying offmedical debt.
If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans hasat least 10 credit cards.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement,and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved forretirement.
Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives belowthe federal poverty line.
According to a study that was just released, CEO pay atAmerica's biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.
Today, the "too big to fail" banks are larger thanever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percentbetween September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.
The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a networth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.
Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percenthigher than it was back in 2007.
Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in thestate of California has increased by 30 percent.
Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stampsand one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

GOP Plans to Address Crises???

So how in the world, in light of these facts, can the GOP be fighting so hard to do the opposite of what's needed, and, how could Democrats like Obama be so willing to cut deals with them that would greatly exacerbate this pain and suffering? Well, before I get to some of the economic plans being thrown aroundby the GOP Clown Car, its important to remember why they will NEVER mentionthings like poverty, nor ever try to solve it.

As Robert Eskow notes, “…thereis a self-serving logic to the Right’s aversion to a systemic approach topoverty mitigation. Really serious anti-poverty strategies would require itscorporate benefactors to raise wages, dispense with union-busting, supportminimum-wage hikes, embrace national healthcare, and stop discriminating on thebasis of race, gender, age and disability. This burdensome outlook is whatangers conservatives. The truth threatens their worldview. ..Progressives tendto think more readily in terms of systems than conservatives. We see this inthe answers to a question like, "What causes crime?" Progressivestend to give answers like economic hardship, or lack of education, orcrime-ridden neighborhoods. Conservatives tend more to give an answer like"bad people -- lock 'em up, punish 'em." This is a consequence of alifetime of thinking in terms of social connection (for progressives) andindividual responsibility (for conservatives). Thus conservatives did not seethe president's plan, which relied on systemic causation, as a plan at all fordirectly addressing the deficit.”

These same differences in systemic thinking betweenprogressives and conservatives can be seen in issues like global warming andfinancial reform. We must understand these differing worldviews if we are tounderstand why THERE CAN NEVER BE true compromise with the GOP to solveanything. They must be made to be inconsequential in this country…and that maytake a long time…but it begins by recognizing their motives and nature.

Eskow continues, “Conservatives have not recognized humancauses of global warming, partly because they are systemic, not direct. When ahuge snowstorm occurred in Washington DC recently, many conservatives saw it asdisproving the existence of global warming -- "How could warming cause snow?"Similarly, conservatives, thinking in terms of individual responsibility anddirect causation, blamed homeowners for foreclosures on their homes, whileprogressives looked to systemic explanations, seeking reform in the financialsystem.

The not-so-hidden assumption in Gingrich's slur is that he'stalking about urban poverty and black and Hispanic kids. Actually, poverty isworse in rural areas than in cities or suburbs. Worse in Appalachia than inChicago. More poor children are white than black."

Romney and Gingrich Tax Plans

So, let’s take a step back here and look at the largerpicture: U.S.income gap is at its highest level since 1929. Now, in light of all thoseHORRIFIC numbers illustrating our transformation into a neo-feudal stateresembling a Banana Republic, Mitt Romney, the likely GOP nominee forPresident, announced his economic plan that would provide $6.6 TRILLION in budget-busting tax cuts to the wealthiestAmericans and corporations.

AS for Newt, he plans to give the rich even MORE, and itwould increase the federal budget deficit by about $850 billion – in a singleyear! Newt actually wants to ELIMINATE the capital gains tax altogether! Thatmeans, in a sense, wealth would no longer be taxed at all…while work wouldremain overtaxed (and most of us work…and don’t have huge amounts of wealththat makes more wealth for us doing nothing).

Here's more: The average millionaire would get a whopping $615,689 annual tax cut. That change would boost their after-tax income by 28.7 percent and put their average tax rate at 11.9 percent. Those in the wealthiest top 0.1 percent would receive an annual tax cut ofmore than $2 MILLION each — on top of what they’re already getting from theBush tax cuts. Millionaires would pay a lower tax rate than middle classfamilies making $40-50,000 a year. In the best year of his plan, 2015, the deficit would be awhopping $1.2 TRILLION — even after taking into account the draconian spendingcuts imposed by the Paul Ryan GOP budget plan.

Newt's would would increase the federal budget deficit by about $850 billion – in a singleyear! Newt actually wants to ELIMINATE the capital gains tax altogether! Thatmeans, in a sense, wealth would no longer be taxed at all…while work wouldremain overtaxed (and most of us work…and don’t have huge amounts of wealththat makes more wealth for us doing nothing).

He would drop the corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent from 35 percent, allow businesses to write off capital expenses and eliminate taxes on capital gains and estates, according to his website.

The publicly held debt would double by 2019 and triple by 2024.

Why you ask? Doesn’t the GOP want to cut the deficit???? NO,NO, NO. What they want is to explode it through tax cuts and war/military sothey can then decimate the New Deal, and privatize Medicare and Social Security(and public education). This has been the game plan since 1980…and they’ve beenmore successful than anyone could have dreamed.

The Progressive Alternative

The progressive alternative to Libertarianism (Paul) andcrony capitalism (Romney/Gingrich) is what people like Bernie Sanders andElizabeth Warren describe. You know...how America built the broad middle class,through unions, worker rights, high taxes on the super rich, and HUGE investmentsin infrastructure, education, the GI bill, research and development, whilestrictly regulating finance/Wall Street. For fifty years, since FDR, the WallStreet gamblers and speculators in investment houses were not allowed tocombine with banks carrying federally guaranteed consumer accounts. Progressivetaxes featured a top rate of 90 percent.

As Robert Reich points out, “During this time (i.e. 50's-70's), the economygrew and we all grew together. The rich got richer, but so did the middle andworking class. In fact, incomes on the bottom grew faster than those on thetop, building the broad middle class that was at the heart of what made Americaexceptional.

Warren then described how this system was dismantled, withthe election of Ronald Reagan providing a good marker. Wall Street wasderegulated—and we suffered one banking crisis after another. Investments ininfrastructure were starved. Colleges were gradually privatized, with more andmore of the costs placed on students. Taxes were lowered on the top end, andAmerica moved back to the extreme inequality that we had not witnessed since1929. The result was the wealthiest few captured literally all therewards of growth. And 90% of America struggled to stay afloat with stagnantwages, rising prices and growing debt. "

VIDEO SECTION

Robert Reich on Gingrich’s insane tax plan:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/robert-reich-gingrichs-tax-plan-raises-bar

Aasif Mandvi (Daily Show) explains why, without Lowe's, thejihadist goal is unachievable.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-13-2011/kabulvision---a-new-lowe?xrs=synd_facebook

Enjoy one of the best Reps in Congress we've got: Jan Schakowsky call the GOP grinches out:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rep-jan-schakowsky-republicans-are-grinche

ARTICLE SECTION

A Christmas Message From America's Rich, by MattTaibbi

A FEW CLIPS:

It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse.They’ve decided to speak out. True, they’re doing it from behind the ropeline,in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaningthey don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us allimbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being sosuccessful.

SNIP

The Blackstone billionaire, remember, is one of the more uniquelyabhorrent, self-congratulating jerks in the entire world – a man who famouslysymbolized the excesses of the crisis era when, just as the rest of America washeading into a recession, hethrew himself a $5 million birthday party, featuring private performancesby Rod Stewart and Patti Labelle, to celebrate an IPO that made him $677million in a matter of days (within a year, incidentally, the investors whobought that stock would losethree-fourths of their investments).

SNIP

But it seems to me that if you’re broke enough that you’renot paying any income tax, you’ve got nothing but skin in the game. You've gotit all riding on how well America works.

You can’t afford private security: you need to depend on thepolice. You can’t afford private health care: Medicare is all you have. You getarrested, you’re not hiring Davis, Polk to get you out of jail: you rely on apublic defender to negotiate a court system you'd better pray deals witheveryone from the same deck. And you can’t hire landscapers to manicure yourlawn and trim your trees: you need the garbage man to come on time and you needthe city to patch the potholes in your street.

And in the bigger picture, of course, you need the state andthe private sector both to be functioning well enough to provide you withregular work, and a safe place to raise your children, and clean water andclean air.

SNIP

Most of us 99-percenters couldn’t even let our dogs leave adump on the sidewalk without feeling ashamed before our neighbors. It's calledhaving a conscience: even though there are plenty of things most of us couldget away with doing, we just don’t do them, because, well, we live here. Mostof us wouldn’t take a million dollars to swindle the local school system, orput our next door neighbors out on the street with a robosigned foreclosure, orsteal the life’s savings of some old pensioner down the block by selling him abunch of worthless securities.

But our Too-Big-To-Fail banks unhesitatingly take billionsin bailout money and then turn right around and finance the export of jobs tonew locations in China and India. They defraud the pension funds of stateworkers into buying billions of their crap mortgage assets. They takezero-interest loans from the state and then lend that same money back to us atinterest. Or, like Chase, they bribe the politicians serving countries andstates and cities and even school boards to take on crippling debt deals.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/24-4

Theintellectual cowardice of Bradley Manning’s critics, Glenn Greenwald

A FEW CLIPS:

After imprisoning Private First Class Bradley Manning foreighteen months, the U.S. Army last week finally began the preliminary stage ofhis court-martial proceeding, and that initial process ended on Thursday.Manning faces over 30 charges; the most serious — “aiding the enemy” — carriesa death sentence (though prosecutors are requesting “only” life in prison forthe 24-year-old soldier). The technical purpose of this week’s hearing was todetermine if there is sufficient evidence to warrant a full court-martialproceeding; the finding (that there is such evidence) is a virtualinevitability. Manning’s counsel, Lt. Col. David Coombs, spent the weekchallenging the Army’s evidence, suggesting that his client may have suffered“diminished capacity” by virtue of his gender struggles and emotionalinstability, and finally, forcefully arguingthat the leaks were an act of political conscience and that the Army hasseverely “overcharged” Manning in an attempt to coerce incriminating statementsagainst WikiLeaks (KevinGosztola and The Guardian were at the hearing and have recaps ofwhat happened over the last week; my general view of Manning was set forth inan Op-Ed in The Guardian last week, and my specificview of the gender defense is here).

SNIP

When President Obama declared Manning guilty, he made the same claim: “No itwasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way.”

One problem for those wishing to make this claim is thatEllsberg himself has been one of Manning’s most vocal defenders, repeatedly insisting that the twoleaks are largely indistinguishable. But the bigger problem for this claim ishow blatantly irrational it is. As Ellsberg clearly details in this Al Jazeeradebate, he — Ellsberg — dumped 7,000 pages of Top Secret documents: thehighest known level of classification; by contrast, not a single page of whatManning is alleged to have leaked was Top Secret, but rather all bore a muchlower-level secrecy designation. In that sense, Obama was right: “Ellsberg’smaterial wasn’t classified in the same way” — the secrets Ellsberg leakedwere classified as being far more sensitive.

To the extent one wants to distinguish the two leaks, Ellsberg’swas the far more serious breach of secrecy. The U.S. Government’s own pre-leakassessment of the sensitivities of these documents proves that. How can someone— in the name of government secrecy and national security — praise the releaseof thousands of pages of Top Secret documents while vehemently condemning therelease of documents bearing a much lower secrecy classification?

SNIP

The clear reality, though, is that those who condemn Manningnow and want to see him imprisoned for decades are the direct heirs of thosewho, in the early 1970s, wanted to see Dan Ellsberg imprisoned for life. Thosewho now condemn both Ellsberg and Manning — like those who support theexecutive power abuses and secrecy of both the Bush and Obama administrations —are authoritarians to be sure, but at least they’re sincere and consistent intheir views; it’s those who support one but condemn the other who areincoherent at best.

As Ellsberg himself makes clear, everything that is beingsaid now to condemn Manning — everything – was widely said about Ellsbergat the time of his leak. Back then, Ellsberg was repeatedly accused ofbeing a traitor, of violating his oath, of endangering America’s nationalsecurity, of aiding its enemies, of taking the law into his own hands; he wassmeared and had his sanity continuously called into question. Had it not beenfor the Nixon administration’s overzealous attempts to destroy him by breakinginto the office of his psychiatrist — the primary act that caused the chargesagainst Ellsberg to be dismissed on the grounds of government misconduct —there is a real possibility that Ellsberg would still be in a federal prisontoday. He’s viewed as a hero now only because the passage of time has proventhe nobility of his act: it’s much easier to defend those who challenge andsubvert political power retrospectively than it is to do so at the time.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/24/the_intellectual_cowardice_of_bradley_mannings_critics/

2011-12-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Wealth Disparity, Health Care Costs, Banks/Bailouts, Colbert, Holland, Greenwald, Obama

Every week new data comes out that perfectly illustrates whythe Occupy Movement continues to grow, and why so many people are sacrificingso much, just to make their voices heard. We must realize that we are the proverbial frog in theslowly heating water…and have been for quite sometime (same goes for climatechange). The fact is there has been an unstoppable, steady trend, since 1980, of more andmore wealth, influence and power going to the top, and less and less tricklingdown to the rest of us. At some point, and clearly we’re seeing it in someways right now (i.e. Occupy), things are going to implode. There’sonly so much economic injustice that can be tolerated, even in a country withas many apathetic and misinformed citizens as ours.

So today I’m going to offer up a bunch of this new data…from wealth disparity to health care to the bank bailouts...foryou to both consider, and also perhaps keep on hand so you can use it in futurediscussions with others.

Latest Banana Republic Facts

Let's begin then with the issue of our time: wealth disparity. Before I go down the long list of mind boggling factoids let's begin with the big picture: the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americas is$33,666. This is in contrast to the top 1 percent of households sitting on anaverage net worth of almost $14 million, according to a study by theEconomic Policy Institute.

And chew on this: between 1949 and 1979, thoseat the top 1 percent took in 10 percent of our pretax income. In Reagan's final year in office, they grabbed 15.5 percentof the nation's income. By thetime George W. Bush was elected, they were taking in 21.5 percent. And in 2007,the year before the crash, they were pulling in 23.5 percent of our pretaxincome, leaving the other 99 percent to share just 76.5 percent of the fruitsof America's economic output.

In other words, the top 1 percent of American households arepaying abouthalf the rate that they had to pay in 1980 (REMEMBER this fact when people say we're being "overtaxed"these days). But while the top 1 percent hasdoubled its share of income over the last 30 years, the top tenth of the top 1percent have made a real killing. In 1980, they took in 3.4percent of the nation's income. By2007, the year before the crash, they were grabbing over 12 percent. Theiraverage incomes, adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars, had risen from $1.4million to $7.4 million during the same period.

In 2007 (the most recent SCF) the cumulative wealth of theForbes 400 was $1.54 trillion or roughly the same amount of wealth held by theentire bottom fifty percent of American families. This is a stunning statisticto be sure.

These numbers are just the beginning…but the trend line isall too clear…and shows NO SIGNS of changing course…and this is why we face thecrisis we do, and this is why I keep saying, and now we’re seeing, that we’reheaded towards some serious collapse/conflict…

So, let me run through more of this data…because we arerocketing towards becoming a legitimate Banana Republic, and quasi feudalstate. Here’s some Californiaspecific info:

The gap between California'supper- and lower-income families-which has been larger than in the rest of thenation for decades-grew twice as wide as it was in 1980.
California's major corporations have rung up hundreds ofbillions of dollars in profits in recent years, but have paid only a fewpercentage points of those profits in income taxes here and in other states,according to a new nationwide study by several liberal organizations.
Nationwide, 265 firms (of the Fortune 500) had acombined $1.33 trillion in profits during the three-year period but on average,paid just 3 percent of those earnings in state corporate income taxes.
The 33 Californiacorporations' tax bills ranged fromminus-1.5 percent (McKesson Corp.) to 8 percent (Apple). The California corporation with the largestprofits during the period, Wells Fargo Bank at $49.7 billion, paid $344 millionor 0.7 percent in state taxes. Second-place Intel Corp., with $23.3 billion inprofits paid no state income taxes, the study found.(SacBee)

MEANWHILE

A new Rutgers University study out last week documents that just 7 percent of those Americans “who lostjobs after the financial crisis have returned to or exceeded their previousfinancial position.” Two million construction workers have lost jobs since thehousing collapse began. The industry has hired back only 47,000.That housingcollapse keeps collapsing. Over a quarter of American mortgages, 28 percent, have now sunk “underwater,” up from 23 percent last year.
The Forbes list revealed that six Waltons—all children (onedaughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart—combinedworth was $69.7 billion in 2007—which equated to the total wealth of the entirebottom thirty percent! 93 million Americans, collectively, have the same amountof money as six members of the Walton family.
The top 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of our country’s wealth while the bottom 80percent owns only 7 percent.
The richest 1 percent earned $1 out of every $4 in 2007. Thirty years earlier therichest only made one out of every $11.
The top 1 percent is taking in more of the nation’s income than at any time since the1920s.
The average income in the top .01 percent is now $27 MILLION.
A typical CEO used to earn 30 times more than his or herworkers now earns 110 times more.
Millionaires are making more money and paying fewer taxes –their taxes declined from about 31 percent in 1995 to about 22 percentin 2009.
One in four millionaires pays a lower tax rate than 10MILLION middle-class Americans.
Tax rates for the richest 400 Americans were sliced in half as their income quadrupled. Now they’repaying just 16.6 percent.
Nearly 1,500 millionaires paid NO income taxes in 2009.

The Flip Side and the Face of Economic Injustice

Fourteen million Americans are unemployed.
Nearly one in two young adults are not employed. This is thelowest rate since the end of World War II.
Corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash—more cash than at any time in nearly ahalf century—instead of hiring more employees.
While the richest 1 percent saw their incomes triple between 1974 and 2007, most Americans’ incomes didn’t grow at all.
The bottom 90 percent are responsible for paying 73 percent of all credit card andmortgage debt.
College tuition and fees increased 274.7 percent from 1990to 2009. That’s faster than any other goods or services besides cigarettes. Whyis this so important? Because according to Gallup, educational attainment is “thegreatest difference between the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and everyoneelse. The Gallupanalysis reveals that 72 percent of the wealthiest Americans have a collegedegree, compared with 31 percent of those in the lower 99 percentiles.Furthermore, nearly half of those in the wealthiest group have postgraduateeducation, versus 16 percent of all others.” (It'slikely that those in the upper reaches of the "99 percent also tend to beeducated, but Gallupdoesn't break this down further.)
Almost one in four American children are growing up in poverty.

Health Care Crisis: The Elephant in the Room

We hear a lot about what are the causes of our deficit...but what we don’t hear enough of inrecent years, and sadly, this is in part due to Obama’s (or should I say Dole’splan?) health care plan being signed into law (so the issue is largely off thetable in our political dialogue now), is the fact that there is no biggerdriver of deficits, and personal bankruptcies, than our corrupt, privatizedhealth care system.

And now, as expected, the new data is in…and just as withthe wealth disparity info, it points to a coming DISASTER…that is not being addressed:

From 2003 to 2010, the combined average amount that California families andtheir employers paid for health coverage shot up 52 percent, reaching $13,819annually, according to a recently released study by the Commonwealth Fund.Meanwhile, family income rose a mere 4 percent. Single people didn't fare any better.
While wages stagnated, the amount paid bythe average working family for its share of health premiums jumped 68 percent,from $2,282 annually in 2003 to $3,845 in 2010.
It more than doubled for single people, rising to $1,048 in2010. And, inadequate funding of Medicaid and Medicare, combined with recordnumbers of uninsured people because of the faltering economy, caused hospitalsand doctors to shift costs to those with private insurance. Some estimates saythe shift adds $1,792 annually to the premium of each insured California family.

In other words, health care costs continue to skyrocket aswages remain stagnant…where does this end? Obviously, there is one solution tothis: a single payer, Medicare for All, health care system…instead, we didn’teven get a public option.

As PaulKrugman explained the disconnect between public v. private health insurance:

Medicare actually does a better job of controlling coststhan private insurers -- not remotely good enough, but better...If Medicarecosts had risen as fast as private insurance premiums, it would cost around 40percent more than it does. If private insurers had done as well as Medicare atcontrolling costs, insurance would be a lot cheaper.

Banks, the Fed, and Bailouts

I know I’ve got a lot of data today…I’ll get to more of mythoughts next post…but this again, when combined with the health care costnumbers and wealth disparity figures, points to our dying paradigm in thestarkest of terms. Consider this: The Fed provided banks the equivalent of over $25,000 per American.

Sam Pizzigati has more: “All the TARP dollars came with modest strings on executive pay. To end run the strings,big banks rushed to pay back their TARP bailout and then loudly proclaimedthemselves healthy and stable enough to resume business as usual.

Meanwhile, at that same moment, these “healthy” banks weretaking advantage of the secret Fed loans to register billions in new profits —with no executive pay strings attached.

Some context for these numbers: The $107 billion in Fedloans that one bank alone, Morgan Stanley, pocketed in September 2008 wouldhave been enough, notes Bloomberg, “to pay off one-tenth of the country’sdelinquent mortgages.

So what ought to be done? For starters, former New Yorkgovernor Eliot Spitzer urged last week, Congress ought to require banks to use theprofits they made investing their almost interest-free money from the Fed “towrite down the value of mortgages of those who are underwater.” No one at acompany that would require a taxpayer-financed bailout if it failed, says Taleb, should “get a bonus, ever.”

SNIP

Resisting illegal foreclosures is a good first step. Itbrings attention to Wall Street'scriminality, venality, and plain old inhumanity toward the people they calltheir "customers" - but treat like serfs.

It does something else important: It counteracts thebrainwashing, driven by Wall Street and dutifully echoed by the media, whichhas demonized the victims of bank misbehavior….What about the millions ofpeople who have suffered because of the banks'predatory mortgage lending but aren'tbehind in payments or in the foreclosure process? We need to re-open the debateabout the fairness of forcing any underwater homeowners to pay underwaterprincipal on homes that their banks knew, or should have known, were going todecrease in value. After all, the same conglomeration of banks and corporatemedia that demonize homeowners as "greedy" and"irresponsible" spent most of the last twenty years convincing peoplethat real estate was a sure-fire investment.

Banks made an extraordinary amount of money off the bubblethey created. The total mortgage amount outstanding in this country went from$6.2 trillion in 2002 to $11.9 trillion in 2009, a meteoric rise. And whilebanks feed off the Federal Reserve's unusually low rates, they've renegotiatingvery few home loans.

Consumers also owe nearly three quarter of a trilliondollars in credit card debt, much of it being paid at unconscionable rates of12 percent to 29 percent - while their banks enjoy rates from 0 percent to 3percent, thanks to the government institutions created by those same consumers.

VIDEO SECTION

Bernie Sanders speech on the Senate floor announcing his constitutionalamendment to overturn citizens united and make it clear corporations aren’tpeople:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G9qZZVqSQdo

You can watch him discuss it with Wolf Blitzer (epitome ofthe corporate media knuckle draggers):

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/bernie-sanders-saving-american-democracy

FROM C&L: Stephen Colbert couldn'tquite figure out at first whether current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich wassupposed to be the hero or the villain of an episode of a James Bond movie ...CLASSIC!

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/stephen-colbert-gives-tip-his-hat-villain

Tom Tomorrow…always clever:

http://www.truth-out.org/sites/default/files/cartoon120711.jpg

The Senate passes a defense appropriations bill that allowsthe government to detain an American citizen indefinitely without a trial.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-7-2011/arrested-development?xrs=synd_facebook

ARTICLE SECTION

The Absurd Zombie Lie About the Economy Right-WingersDesperately Cling To -- And Why It's Totally Wrong, By Joshua Holland

A FEW CLIPS:

The entire subprime mortgage market was worth only $1.4trillion in the fall of 2007, and that includes loans that were up-to-date. Asformer Goldman Sachs trader Nomi Prins noted in her book, It Takes aPillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington toWall Street, the federal government could have bought up every singleresidential mortgage in the country – good, bad and in between – and it wouldhave cost a trillion less than the bailouts.

Short of that, notes Prins, if the crisis were really aboutpeople buying McMansions that they couldn'tafford, “we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce theirloan principals. It would have cost about 3 percent of what the entire bailoutwound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.”

What brought down the global economy was as much as $140trillion worth of financial gimmickery built on top of the mortgage industry.It was the alphabet soup of the credit meltdown – the CDOs, default swaps andother derivitaves that made less than a trillion dollars of foreclosed loansinto an economic weapon of mass destruction that would cost the Americaneconomy alone $14 trillion in lost wealth.

SNIP

Its successful campaign against regulations on derivativesin the mid-1990s was only one battle in a long campaign to deregulateinvestment banking that dated back to the 1960s, when lobbyists reportedlybragged that the effort was putting their kids through college. Their primarytarget was the Glass-Steagall Act, a depression-era law that created a firewallbetween investment banking and the commercial banks that hold deposits and makeloans. Their first victory came in 1986, when, under intense lobbying from WallStreet, the Federal Reserve reinterpreted a key section of the act, decidingthat commercial banks could make up to 5 percent of their gross revenues frominvestment banking. After the board heard arguments from Citicorp, J.P. Morganand Bankers Trust, it loosened the restrictions further – in 1989, the limitwas raised to 10 percent of revenues; in 1996, they hiked it up to 25 percent.

According to a reportby PBS Frontline, “in the 1997-98 election cycle, the finance, insurance, andreal estate industries (known as the FIRE sector), spends more than $200million on lobbying and makes more than $150 million in political donations.Campaign contributions are targeted to members of congressional bankingcommittees and other committees with direct jurisdiction over financialservices legislation.”

In 1999, after 12 unsuccessful attempts, Glass-Steagall,which would have made the crash of 2007-2009 impossible, was finally repealed.And it was only then that the explosion in shaky mortgage-backed securitiesbegan. “Subprime” loans made up 5 percent of the total the year before repeal,but skyrocketed to 30 percent of all mortgages at the time of the crash.

SNIP

But, contrary to the conservative spin, University ofMichigan law professor Michael Barr told a congressional committee thatalthough there was in fact quite a bit of irresponsible lending in low-incomecommunities in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, “More than half of subprimeloans were made by independent mortgage companies not subject to comprehensivefederal supervision; another 30 percent of such originations were made byaffiliates of banks or thrifts, which are not subject to routine examination orsupervision, and the remaining 20 percent were made by banks and thrifts[subject to CRA standards].” Barr concluded, “The worst and most widespreadabuses occurred in the institutions with the least federal oversight."

The reality is that no bank has ever been “forced to complywith government mandates about mortgage lending” – it'sa bald-faced lie. There are no “government mandates,” and there never were. Inorder to qualify for government-backed deposit insurance—a benefit that banksaren’t forced to accept but enjoy having—the Community Reinvestment Act – andsimilar measures designed to prevent discrimination in lending (to qualifiedindividuals) – only encourage banks to lend in all of the areas where they dobusiness. And Section 802 (b) of the Act stresses that all loans must be“consistent with safe and sound operations”—it’s the opposite of requiring thatlenders write risky mortgages.

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/153217/the_absurd_zombie_lie_about_the_economy_right-wingers_desperately_cling_to_--_and_why_it%27s_totally_wrong/

Obama: I can’tcomment on Wall Street prosecutions, By Glenn Greenwald

A FEW CLIPS:

So the White House, and the President himself, publiclyharangued the DOJ for months not to prosecute Bush officials (once the damagewas done and controversy erupted over the White House’s constant pressure onthe “independent” DOJ, Obama cursorily acknowledgedthat it was a decision for the DOJ to make). Beyond that, the White House applied constant, intense political pressure on theAttorney General not to proceed with plans to try the 9/11 defendants in acivilian court.

In April of this year, President Obama, while charges werepending, publicly decreed Bradley Manning guilty even though it is his directmilitary subordinates who will be judging Manning’s case, possibly jeopardizing that prosecution on the ground ofundue command influence. And it was recently revealed that Obama officials are pressuring the New York State Attorney General to signonto a full-scale settlement agreement with banks rather than continue toinvestigate Wall Street’s mortgage fraud. Even in this interview with Kroft,Obama observed from what he called “40,000 feet” that “some of the mostdamaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethicalbehavior on Wall Street, wasn’t illegal.”

Does this sound like a President who actually believes thatit’s improper for him to “comment on the decisions about particularprosecutions” to ensure “there’s no political influence on decisions made byprofessional prosecutors”? Or does this sound like a President who appliesexactly that kind of political pressure on the DOJ when it suits him, and isnow cynically invoking this excuse to avoid having to take responsibility forthe virtually full-scale immunity given to the financial-crisis-causing WallStreet criminals under his watch?

http://politics.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

2011-12-03T13:36:00.001-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Occupy Evolving, Foreclosures, Occupy Statement, Tax Debate, GOP Clown Car, Bank Bailout

"There's a time when the operation of the machinebecomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. Youcan't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon thegears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you'vegot to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, tothe people who own it that unless you're free and unless others are free, themachine will be prevented from working at all."

- Mario Savio, 60’sBerkeley Student protest leader

Occupy Evolving and Inspiring

Briefly, I want to say just how much I’ve beeninspired by the Occupy Movement. This realization crystallized inmy mind and heart yesterday as I watched the Occupiers evolve their efforts (asI’ve been saying they’d have to…as the “tent” fight is taking away from themessage) into occupying homes of people (also brilliant are the "mic checks"...in which they disrupt political events) that are being foreclosed on by thevery banks who’s fingerprints, DNA, and wallets are strewn across the crimescene that brought the world’s economy to the brink.

As I watched the numerous, often tearful, owners of the homesthe banksters were coming to get, talk about how powerful and moving it was tosuddenly have a large group of strangers offer their help in “occupying” theirbackyards, and REFUSING to leave when the criminals and their pawns come, hitme like a bolt of lightning! We are being SHOWN what it means to band together and literally“fight the power” by this movement. These families, and homeowners, arestrangers to these protesters, but their stories are universal (after all, 3.6million homes have been foreclosed since August 2007).

And then came the kicker…in one home after another, theoccupiers efforts, and the sheer problems they were causing the banks, inPublic Relations alone (because the stories of these people are tragic…yet theyare being evicted after bailing the banks out for the crimes the bankscommitted against them…say fucking what???), were resulting in the banks backing down and ostensibly agreeing to negotiate the modificationof the loans and allowing, for the time being, these people to stay in them. Watch Rachel Maddow's coverage of this!

I’m not saying every story will end happily, but I amsaying, on a PROFOUND level, the Matrix is starting to be exposed, and thepower of the people is starting, for the first time in my life, beginning toexert itself. Not exert itself within the constrained confines of a corrupt twoparty system election, but in the sense of real, direct, social movementdemocracy.

And let’s be clear about just how critical, not just from ajustice perspective, but an economic one, the foreclosure crisis is: There simply is NO WAY to address the economiccrisis our country and state continues to face, be it the recession,unemployment, wage stagnation, poverty, wealth disparity or debt, if we don'tdeal with the foreclosure "problem".

And that doesn't mean letting people - usually through nofault of their own (actually due to an intricate ponzi scheme that went all theway from the broker to the appraisers to the banks to Wall Street and toratings agencies) - continue to lose their homes, jobs, credit scores, andsavings. If we continue to give banks everything and people nothing, we willcontinue to see families facing extraordinary economic pain as Wall Street andbig business make record profits (you're welcome for the bailouts too).

And the foreclosure crisis is nowhere close to being over. Anew report by the Center for Responsible Lending indicates that nearly 9percent of California homes are at immediate risk of foreclosure. It alsostates, "Additionally, seriously delinquent California homeowners andthose currently in the foreclosure process are about half the foreclosures thestate could expect to see."

Add to those facts that nearly a third of homeowners inCalifornia are underwater...and it becomes obvious why Occupy Our Homes is soneeded and just. We gave far more in bailouts to the banks that orchestratedthe crash and this crisis than it would have taken to ACTUALLY help out thosescammed and facing foreclosure...both of which are HUGE dragson the economy. And, by helping these homeowners, banks would STILL at least be getting mortgage payments...which is more than most deserve.

The question is - as Occupy continues to ask - are we tryingto create an economy that works for people and the public interest, or one thatonly works for the corporations and wealthy elite?

As for this particular campaign, David Dayen makes acritical point too, stating "...it’s up to activists to stop waiting for asavior and start doing this for themselves. And they have been. This evolutionwith Occupy...is more of a merger. There’s been a years-long movement for bankaccountability that has targeted the foreclosure crisis with direct actions.Many of the groups involved in that movement, like The New Bottom Line and NewYork Communities for Change, are also spearheading efforts for Occupy Our Homes.The Occupy movement provides more shock troops and a higher profile for thateffort. Already it’s winning results. Occupy Rochester in New York justsucceeded in stopping a foreclosure, by securing a 30-day suspension of theeviction notice. This builds on other successes in Cleveland and Minneapolis.

The courts have been another arena for those fightingillegal foreclosures, with varying degrees of success. The case of Lillie MaeWashington, age 96, is inspiring. But often success depends on the judge or thejurisdiction. Foreclosure defense is difficult work. It’s great to have peoplein the streets advancing the ball. And it emboldens other efforts. Giving ahigh profile to the attempted eviction of an 103 year-old woman in Atlanta ledsheriffs and movers to refuse the order to evict.

The banks are clearly stealing homes. It’s a classic exampleof the 99% being brutalized at the expense of the 1%, in this case the bigbanks. It’s a fertile ground for protest and direct action. And the Occupymovement is picking up the mantle, merging with the already existing activismthat has been taking place for years, and providing additional energy andsupport. Maybe now we will stop hearing about how the protesters lack anagenda."

I’ve never been quite so moved or hopeful after seeing thecommitment and intelligence of this movement, and how it’s evolving. And, ifthat wasn’t enough, the movement came out with a message…and statement that Ithink is just as impressive as their actions have been…I hope a lot of thissounds like my blogs have over the years...

Occupy Movement Statement

“We recognize that inequality and injustice systemicallyaffect every aspect of our society: our communities, homes, and hearts. Tobuild the world we envision, we commit ourselves to overcoming our personalbiases so we can successfully challenge systems of oppression in solidarity.

We are assembled because…

It is absurd thatthe 1 percent has taken 40 percent of the nation’s wealth through exploitinglabor, outsourcing jobs, and manipulating the tax code to their benefit throughspecial capital tax rates and loopholes. The system is rigged in their favor,yet they cry foul when anyone even dares to question their relentless classwarfare.
Candidates in ourelectoral system require huge sums of money to be competitive. Thesecontributions from multi-national corporations and wealthy individuals destroyresponsive representative governance. A system of backroom deals, kickbacks,bribes, and dirty politics overrides the will of the people. The rotation ofdecision makers between the public and private sectors cultivates a network ofpublic officials, lobbyists, and executives whose aligned interests do notserve the American people.
The entrenchedtwo-party system overlooks public interests by pursuing narrow political goals.This climate encourages candidates to polarize voters for individual power andpersonal gain. Citizens’ meaningful input has been compromised bygerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, and unresponsive politicians.Residents of Washington, D.C., continue to lack autonomy and legislativerepresentation.
The 1 percentbenefits from economic, political, and legal structures that oppresscommunities long targeted by displacement, denial of sovereignty, slavery, andother injustices. These persecuted but resilient communities continue to sufferthrough generations of disproportionately higher rates of unemployment,poverty, criminalization, and homelessness. Facets of the 1 percent campaign toblame these groups for these problems while obstructing healing andrestoration.

More Status Quo Extremism

In just the past couple days I’ve been struck by a fewstories that when juxtaposed highlight perfectly my “status quo extremism” (seelast post) meme…and perfectly illustrate WHY Occupy exists, WHY I do what I do, and why so many others are fighting sohard to change this paradigm too.

First, I saw these three stories (which I'll contrast with another):

1) American Airline is blaming workers for its economic problems, and through bankruptcy, seek to break up the unions and force drastic pay cuts…yet, thisis light of the fact that flight attendants protested against American earlierthis year in response to the big bonuses given to top executives despitethe company having troubles and while workers earned less than $40,000 a yearon average while working schedules of over 70 hours a week. Meanwhile, the topfive execs at American have reaped $100 million in bonuses since 2005, while thecarrier lost more than $4.2 billion. In 2003, the flight attendants agreed tocuts in pay and benefits worth $340 million annually, which they say keptAmerican out of bankruptcy.

2) Then I saw a story about new estimates from the U.S.Census Bureau showing the number of school-age children living in poverty inCalifornia swelled by 30 percent from 2007 to 2010. But its not just here ofcourse, the number of poor children from age 5 to 17 grew by nearly 2 millionduring that time nationally, up to 20 percent.

3) And then I saw that the US and NATO killed nine children backin a March 1 airstrike, which resulted in ONLY two network news stories on theevening or morning newscasts, and two brief references on the PBS NewsHour. Andthen, on November 25, the New York Times reported - on page12 - that six children were killed in one attack in southern Afghanistan onNovember 23. There were, on the other hand, several pieces about U.S. soldierseating Thanksgiving dinners. Of course, these are two example of many that gototally unreported...regarding the hundreds of thousands of civilians WE AREKILLING, and have killed, over the last decade…and yes, its thanks to your and mytax dollars at work.

As Glenn Greenwaldobserved, “We're trained simply to accept these incidents as though they carryno meaning: We're just supposed to chalk them up to regrettable accidents(oops), agree that they don’t compel a cessation to the war, and then get backto the glorious fighting. Every time that happens, this just becomes morenormalized, less worthy of notice. It's just like background noise: Twofamilies of children wiped out by an American missile (yawn: at least we don'ttarget them on purpose like those evil Terrorists: we just keep killing themyear after year after year without meaning to). It's acceptable to makearguments that American wars should end because they're costing too much moneyor American lives or otherwise harming American strategic interests, but pilesof corpses of innocent children are something only the shrill, shallow andunSerious--pacifists!--point to as though they have any meaning in terms ofwhat should be done.”

VERSUS $7.7 TRILLION BANK BAILOUT

Now juxtapose those HORRIFIC stories, that are COMMONPLACEnowadays in this country, with the revelation (though I’ve been saying this iswhat happened for years…including on my interview on KGO back when TARP firsthappened) that the Fed didn’t just give $700 billion through TARP, but rather $7.7trillion (always keep in mind how we are treating the victims of this crimeversus these perpetrators).

And of course, the six criminal syndicates that havedestroyed the lives of millions - JPMorgan, Bank of America, CitigroupInc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), GoldmanSachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley - accounted for 63 percent of theaverage daily debt to the Fed.

But it gets worse…as we know, these banks didn’t use theseinterest free loans to renegotiate mortgages and lower principals, nor did theyuse it to invest in communities or loan to small businesses. No, what they didinstead was buy up smaller banks, foreclose even MORE on the people theyscammed, buy up their OWN STOCK to inflate its value, spent MORE OF THAT MONEYto lobby congress and buy influence through larger and larger campaigncontributions (to weaken regulations and protect their crimes) and lavish evenmore benefits and bonuses to the criminals at the top of these syndicates.

Worse than that, this LITERALLY secret banking government,kept the size and use of these loans/bailouts even secret from Congress…at thevery time they were debating the Dodd/Frank Act.

As Robert Eskrow points out the real moral hazard (incontrast to the Big Lie that the moral hazard is in helping homeowners), “Thecost of borrowing for so-called too-big-to-fail banks is lower than that ofsmaller firms because lenders believe the government won’t let them go under.The perceived safety net creates what economists call moral hazard -- thebelief that bankers will take greater risks because they’ll enjoy any profitswhile shifting losses to taxpayers. Byron L. Dorgan, a former Democraticsenator from North Dakota, says the knowledge might have helped passlegislation to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which for most of the lastcentury separated customer deposits from the riskier practices of investment banking.

Total assets held by the six biggest U.S. banks increased39 percent to $9.5 trillion on Sept. 30, 2011, from $6.8 trillion on the sameday in 2006, according to Fed data. Employees at the six biggest banks made twice the averagefor all U.S. workers in 2010, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics hourlycompensation cost data. The banks spent $146.3 billion on compensation in 2010,or an average of $126,342 per worker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.That’s up almost 20 percent from five years earlier compared with less than 15percent for the average worker. Average pay at the banks in 2010 was about thesame as in 2007, before the bailouts. Lobbying expenditures by the six banksthat would have been affected by the legislation rose to $29.4 million in 2010compared with $22.1 million in 2006, the last full year before credit marketsseized up -- a gain of 33 percent, according to OpenSecrets.org, aresearch group that tracks money in U.S. politics. Lobbying by the AmericanBankers Association, a trade organization, increased at about the same rate,OpenSecrets.org reported.”

If these contrasting stories…from rapidly increasing childpoverty to more American murders of children abroad to Airline workers thatmake $40,000 a year being attacked as their management makes record salarieswith the $7.7 trillion bailout of the banks so they could use it AGAINST US and to enrich themselves doesn’tPERFECTLY illustrate why Occupy is happening, must happen, and must besupported, I don’t know what does.

The Tax Debate and GOP Crime Family

First, let me just say, as I watch the fascist GOP Clown Carbigots and knuckle dragging contestants lie, cheat, sexually assault, and bumbleand stumble their way out of their parties nominations, at the same time theGOP Congress is trying to simultaneously BLOCK a payroll tax cut extension(that helps WORKING PEOPLE…though I don’t like its being taken out of socialsecurity…AT ALL) and the extension of unemployment benefits (which WILL killpeople), I keep asking myself the question: How does this fucking party remainviable? Do they have to eat puppies on live TV to finally lose that criticalmass of support?

I’m being serious here…this is the party of the 1% by the 1%and for the 1%...while being ignorant bigots, liars, sociopaths, and yes,terrorists. And they don’t even hide it anymore! My god, Gingrich is going around advocating ending child labor laws so poor children can become janitors at their schools!! Santorum and Bachman are nothing more than wanna be cult leaders. Herman Cain should be in jail for sexual assault. Mitt Romney - a schizophrenic Ken Doll, and world class liar with no discernible convictions except his lust for power. And Rick Perry is the Stupid version of W. Bush...only he's put a lot more people (many innocent) to death.

I have to think that aspeoples' economic security continues to decline, there will have to be a biglight bulb (and Occupy is helping turn that on…for both parties in fact) thatturns on. Thankfully, after I posted this blog, I found this clip from Rachel Maddow entitled "The GOP's 1% problem..." Ya think??? Still, great to see her on this...

I mean, here they are, after DECADES of supporting every tax cut forcorporations and the rich without paying for it, suddenly demanding that apayroll tax cut for workers be offset by (thanks to David Dayen for listingthese like this) 1) firing hundreds of thousands of people, 2) freezing theirpay (the opposite effect of a payroll tax cut, which operates as a wageincrease), 3) putting no-strings, volunteer peer pressure on millionaires topay additional taxes (I’m sure there will be a high takeup for that), 4) meanstest a number of programs to ghetto-ize them as welfare, including unemploymentbenefits, which is particularly cruel, because once federal benefits kick inand you’ve been out of work 6 months, it doesn’t matter what you earned before,you’re in trouble.

As for these Republicans…it does appear that Gingrich iswinning the most important endorsement of all…Fox News and Rupert Murdochs. WatchMaddow’s outstanding breakdown of the power and influence of this networkand man…

And whatever you say about Democrats, at least they’retrying to extend unemployment, and they’re trying to pay for the payroll taxcut (which does benefit the economy and help working Americans) by taxingmillionaires. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post got some new data fromCitizens for Tax Justice on this millionaire surtax being proposed and thepayroll tax extension:

The surtax would impact around 345,000 taxpayers, roughly0.2 percent of taxpayers, or one in 500 of them. Those people would pay onaverage an additional 2.1 percent of their overall income, or just over 1/50thof that overall income, in taxes. In a majority of states, only one-tenth ofone percent, or one in 1,000 taxpayers, would pay this surtax.

And how many people would benefit from the payroll tax cut?According to the group, around 113 million tax filing units — either singleworkers or families that include more than one worker — would see their payrolltax cut extended. That’s a lot of people — well over 113 million workers, infact.

The Democrats better stand strong on this...just as they would do well to stop taking the payroll tax cut out of social security too. There's no reason to do that...the time is over, as it should have been for a long while now, to continue to give Republicans (domestic terrorist network) gifts in hopes of support.

VIDEO SECTION

Watch one of the Dylan Ratigan’s greatest rants…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI_P3pxze5w&feature=player_embedded#!

Robert Reich on CEO’s now being paide 300 times the averageperson’s salary:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/robert-reich-ceo-pay-now-300-times-pay-ave

Olbermann on Obama’s CRITICAL threat to veto (but he must doit, not just threaten it) of the most civil liberties destroying legislationsince the Patriot Act…that would allow for the government to indefinitelydetain American citizens…for simply being SUSPECTED of having ties toterrorists (I will write about this in a future post…but see Will Pitt’sarticle I have for you today):

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/countdown-president-obama-threatens-veto-d

A great new theme song for the Occupy movement...

http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/new-song-occupy-wall-street-ill-occupy

FROM C&L: Stephen Colbert takes a shot at the talkingheads at Fox complaining that President Obama supposedly left Jesus out of theThanksgiving holiday and at Mitt Romney for his lying campaign ad which tookPresident Obama's words out of context as only he can.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/colbert-report-tipwag-barack-obamas-omissi

Scott Olsen, the Iraq War veteran nearly killed at the OccupyOakland by cops has since been released from the hospital...while he still has a speech impediment, he's right on...listen to him talk with Rachel Maddow:

http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/scott-olsen-interviewed-after-hospital

ARTICLE SECTION

A Gut-Check Moment for Mr. Obama, by William Rivers Pitt

A FEW CLIPS:

When George W. Bush left office, and John McCain went downto defeat, there was a sense among a great many Americans that a tremendouslydangerous nightmare was over, that years of wildly violent,constitutionally questionable, unbelievably expensive and morally appallingover-reaction to 9/11 were behind us, that an America which didn't use the NSAto spy on virtually anyone, an America that didn't indefinitely detain peoplewithout due process of law, that didn't torture, that didn't consign millionsto death and maiming by way of wars based on lies and the desire to make moneywhile winning elections...a lot of people thought that America might show itsface again.

But that was Hope and Change and all that stuff. The drearyfact of the matter is that the slash-and-burn attitude taken towards the USConstitution by the Bush administration did such tremendous damage to the mostbasic underpinnings of this society that it was widely feared there would be nogoing back. After all, any politician who has gotten to the point where theoffice of the President is even a possibility is a politician absolutelydrenched in hubris, ego, and a desire for personal power.

SNIP

The gut-check moment has been set in motion [4] by Senators Levin, McCain, and the SenateArmed Services Committee… Amnesty International makes it plain as day [6]:

The new National Defense Authorization Bill (S1867)presented to the Senate by the Armed Services Committee is such a disaster forcivil liberties and human rights it is difficult to know where to begin.

The Bill does not set any territorial limits on where thisconflict is being fought. The presumption is that US forces can engage terrorgroups with kinetic weapons systems wherever they find them - London,Copenhagen, Istanbul and Kampala are all fair game and to hell withconsequences for any citizens of those countries who get caught in the middle.

SNIP

Even if an individual is exonerated of any wrongdoing,Section 1033 of the Bill requires that they continue to be held in Gitmo ifthere is a confirmed case of detainee recidivism in that individual's countryof origin. Imagine if your personal freedom depended on the lawful behavior ofevery single one of your fellow 350 million US citizens - we'd all be in jail.

SNIP

So there it is. If this bill finishes wending its waythrough the Senate and passes, it will be greeted by the warm embrace of theRepublican majority in the House, and will then be on its way to Mr. Obama'sdesk, where his veto threat will be waiting for it. Whether or not he followsthrough on his threat and slaps this dreck down is the question now before usall. One way or another, we will soon learn a very large truth about the man inthe Oval Office, and whether he has the integrity to do what is right andfollow through on his word. We shall see.

http://www.truth-out.org/gut-check-moment-mr-obama/1322618578

6 Shocking Revelations About Wall Street's "SecretGovernment", By Les Leopold, AlterNet

A FEW CLIPS:

We now have concrete evidence that Wall Street andWashington are running a secret government far removed from the democraticprocess. Through a freedom of information request by Bloomberg News, the publicnow has access to over 29,000 pages of Fed documents and 21,000 additional Fedtransactions that were deliberately hidden, and for good reason. (See here andhere.) These documents show how top government officials willfullyconcealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailoutsthat enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms.

SNIP

So what does this all mean?

1. The big banks and hedge funds were in much more troublethan we were led to believe. As many of us suspected, all the big banks were on theirknees begging for help – secretly – while telling their investors, the publicand Congress that all was well. They had gambled and lost. Under the rules ofideal capitalism, they should have suffered some “creative destruction,” andseen their shareholder value eliminated through bankruptcy, and their managersreplaced. The entire banking system should have been reorganized from top tobottom as well. Instead, these colossal failures were secretlyrewarded.

2. Wall Street’s secret government made sure the largestbanks would grow even larger, aided by the secret funding. While Congress was debating legislation to break up thelarge banks and reinstitute Glass Steagall (to separate risky investmentbanking from insured commercial banking,) the secret government was usingpublic funds to grow even larger through mergers and acquisitions. BecauseCongress and the public were unaware of the secret funding and ill-health ofall the banks, the legislation was easily defeated. As the chart below makespainfully clear, too-big-to-fail banks grew even bigger.

SNIP

5. Wall Street is a clear and present danger to democracy. Usually, I am not an alarmist. In fact, I often argueagainst facile conspiracy theories. I want to believe that our democracy stillhas promise. But, the Wall Street-induced crash and the government’s responseto it has me very worried. The Bloomberg News revelations suggest that WallStreet’s secret government has enormous disdain for what remains of ourdemocracy. The financial elites obviously believe that Congress cannot be trustedto do the right thing even when it is bought and paid for by the verybanks it supposedly regulates. As for the rest of us? We’re just afinancially illiterate mass to be manipulated through the mass media. Our mindstoo can be bought and sold through careful marketing.

This financial arrogance and corruption is enormouslycorrosive to our democratic values. Already, many Americans, and for goodreason, no longer trust their government. Already, many Americans, and for goodreason, no longer vote. Already, many Americans, and for good reason, believethat democracy as we know it is a sham. Wall Street couldn’t have written abetter script to maintain its domination.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/153274/6_shocking_revelations_about_wall_street%27s_%22secret_government%22/

2011-11-29T16:36:00.001-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Status Quo Extremism, Students, Higher Ed/Occupy, Income Inequality, Unions

"The term radical can be understood as 'to the root,'but what it conveys to most of the public is that we are extreme and the statusquo isn't. But look at the hugedisparities between rich and poor, catastrophic climate change and destructionof ecology, inflicting massive suffering, extreme violence of war, and on andon. I would say the status quo is extreme."

- Norman Solomon

Status Quo Extremism

I just read the above quote inan article about my friend Norman Solomon’s run for Congress (in Marin…check him out) and came up with thephrase “Status quo extremism”…a phrase I’m going to start using a lot, because itperfectly encapsulates the insanity and injustice that our current “norms”perpetuate and even accelerate while it marginalizes just and practical opposition to that same, destructive status quo. It of course is these kinds of “norms”, extreme inevery way, that led to the launch of the Occupy movement and that has led me to believethere is SOME hope. Because history tells us that extremes, and extreme injustices,are what create the space necessary for fundamental changes, be it women’ssuffrage, civil rights, or anti-war.

What’s interesting now is that the “extreme” I’m talkingabout has infiltrated, like a virus (as Agent Smith calls us in the Matrix),nearly every facet of our lives. Whether it’s the extreme wealth disparity, theextreme poverty, the extremely criminal health care system, the extreme wasteof money and lives we spend on the military and wars, the extreme crisis facingour species very survival in climate change (and all the other extremes relatedto toxics in foods and products, agribusiness, and big pharma), or the extremeprejudice that gay, Muslim, and Latino Americans in particular face everyday (AfricanAmericans too).

It is this “status quo” that is defended and celebrated bythe Matrix…and it is a growing number of Americans, even in the face of thispropaganda assault, on issue after issue, that ironically, and ludicrously - - according to this Matrix - continue to be qualified as “radical extremists” (I'm not talking about knuckle dragging teabaggers).

It is this great contradiction, this great clash between ourcurrent dying paradigm on one hand, and a more just and compassionate world that increasing numbers of Americans agree is needed and deserved, that lies at the heart of our current struggles. And it is this clash, between this Matrix(and those powers that control it) and what is fair and sustainable, that will decide the longterm future of our species.

As always, we are told that we can't afford to take care of people. We are told "there's not enough to go around, and its us versus them!" Of course, the reality is that we CAN provide enough food, a job, a home, and cleanair and water…and those in power, and those brainwashed by that power (see "Republicans"), are the ones living fundamentally at odds with this true reality: there’s plentyfor everyone if we change our ways (and who owns everything), and there’splenty of wealth too (we just need to tax it fairly and correctly, and spend on things that benefit people, not just the owners).

Income Inequality, The Democrats, and Occupy

I have obviously focused less on electoral politics herethan I did years ago – and a lot more on in depth issue analysis and critiques of ourlarger paradigm instead. This evolution of course was inevitable in the face of how clear it became that the "game was rigged" (though voting still mandatory), and the system (Matrix), asis, needed a FAR greater restructuring and radicalism than I ever thought. Similarly, it was in organizedsocial movements that challenged this status quo that became more important than any political party, any election win, or that any Democratic Party politician, couldever provide (see last 3 years).

Nonetheless, being that we have a deeply corrupt andentrenched two party system, and one of those parties still has at least SOME footin the door of basic decency (i.e. Democrats), its still worth trying toget that party to realize this moment in history and understand its IN THEIRBEST INTEREST to start tackling the real issues, and confronting the realcrises. Or, if the party as it is can’t do that, then we need to find ways to take it over,from state houses to congress to the white house (in addition to the outside movements and more radical efforts, like Occupy).

I still don’t see a betterway (i.e. third party, total revolution, or giving up, etc.)…then a combination of these two tracks together....which leads me all to Occupy and the Democratic Party…and how theywill, or will not, relate and converse.

Overall, it is clear that the movement’s message is havingsome positive effect on Democrats. Certainly, even the Democratic leadership seesthe advantage in addressing income inequality.

Clearly too, the GOP crime family, nothing less thanlobbyists for the plutocrats and Wall Street, serve as the PERFECT foil. Thisis not to say I am not deeply skeptical now anytime I start to hear Democratssaying what I want to hear…but saying it is part one, and saying it again andagain, with passion and conviction is another, and then attempting to DO IT,over and over, is yet another (granted…the GOP can pretty much block MOSTeverything in Congress).

David Dayen gives just one of many examples of why we SHOULDbe skeptical of most Democrats (not the real progressives) when they suddenlystrike a populist tone, noting, “When Democrats were in a position to dosomething about inequality, such as when they could have eliminated the carriedinterest loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pretend that their incomeshould be taxed as capital gains, they shrunk. And there aren’t that manyexamples in the Democrats’ two-year control of all three branches of governmentin 2009-10 of them actually trying to arrest rampant inequality. So I’d waituntil Democrats actually have the opportunity to pass something before sayingthey turned the corner.”

Still, Occupy has created that “space”, and thoseconditions, that can help force the Democrats hand, or, let them see that itstheir best hand to play on their own…and in fact, that political advantage doesgo hand-in-hand with anti-inequality policies.

To demonstrate this, the polls still tell the tale, andpoint to the disconnect between what people want, and what government is givingthem, including a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll in which 60 percent ofrespondents strongly agreed that America’s economic imbalance comes frompolicies that favor the rich over the rest of the country. Additionally, 55percent said income inequality is a significant problem in the country.

If that doesn’t tell you there’s a winning message incommunicating to people that something is deeply wrong when the rich and Wallstreet are doing better than ever while everyone else is struggling…and the GOPis a party that would throw their own mothers under a bus to protect a hedgefund managers tax rates, you start to see a pathway to victory…and change. Ofcourse, the actual “change” is the real point in question…and that, clearly, is going totake a long, long time…but at least the REAL fight has begun…not just another con joblike the one perpetrated on us in 2008 (yes...OBVIOUSLY Obama is better than McCain and Palin...but that's no answer).

Occupy, Students, and Higher Education

For a few years now I’ve talked about the way our youngpopulation was INACCURATELY being construed…as lazy do-nothings that didn’tpay attention to the world around them. As I have pointed out, one of thelargest polls ever done of young people (about three years ago) actuallyshowed they were the most PROGRESSIVE of any age sector…and not just on socialissues…but economic and environmental and military too.

As I’ve also been telling people for sometime, and wroteabout it in my published White Paper that I did with Robert Greenwald’s BraveNew Films (who contributed a short film with my paper) entitled “California’sGreat Recession and the Costs of War”, one of the great crimes of our timewas the increasing un-affordability of higher education…and what I predicted could very well be the next bubble to burst (i.e. student debt). So, the fact thatstudents are protesting across the country, and Occupy is overwhelminglyyounger in nature (though spans all ages), is predictable…and HOPEFUL.

As I wrote in that White Paper, “Doors will slam shut this year on as many as 35,000 applicants to the California StateUniversity system. Both university systems approved 20% tuition and fee hikessince the start of 2009 – and UC Regents has just approved an additional 30% hike thisyear - ending too many students dreams of a higher education, and burdening toomany more with high interest debt. The news for educators is no better. More than 23,000 teachers recently received “pink slips”,unlikely to return to the classroom next fall.”

And then I added this little nugget that PERFECTLYepitomizes my “status quo extremism” theme today: Consider these stark examplesof misplaced priorities: The cost of 1 soldier for 1 year in Afghanistan is $1million; while the cost of college tuition at a California State University is$9,285. The cost of a single anti-tank missile in Afghanistan is $85,000; whilethe cost of providing 1 year of college books and supplies is $1,608 (averagefees). And the cost of 1 predator drone in Afghanistan is $4.5 million; while 1full Pell Grant for a college student in California is $5,350.

Since I wrote that piece a year and a half ago things haveactually gotten much worse for students. Not only is the student debt bubble atOVER $1 trillion now (with high interest rates and no job prospects) – thebiggest debt bubble of them all – but, as Juan Cole points out, “The deliberatepepper-spraying by campus police of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis on Fridayhas provoked national outrage. But the horrific incident must not cloud thereal question: What led comfortable, bright, middle-class students to join theOccupy protest movement against income inequality and big-money politics in thefirst place?

The University of California system raised tuition by 9percent this year, and the California State University system upped tuition by12 percent. The UC system is seriously contemplating a humongous 16 percenttuition increase for fall 2012. This year, for the first time, the amountfamilies pay in UC tuition will exceed state contributions to the universitysystem.

University students, who face tuition hikes and state cutsto public education, find themselves victimized by the same neoliberal agendathat has created the current economic crisis, and that profoundly endangersdemocratic values.”

He then goes to the heart of the matter: by making college unaffordable we are essentially dismantling what’s leftof the American dream…while essentially debt enslaving a whole generation (atleast those that could afford to even try to pay for college) to thebanks/lenders…while stratifying the have’s and have not’s at an even more rapidand pronounced rate. This is all at the heart of the Occupy movement. Cole continues:

“The assault on publicly funded higher education is wrappedup in the discontents that provoked the Occupy Wall Street movement.Inexpensive state universities are central to the ability of young people fromdisadvantaged backgrounds to move up in the world. The United States used to beknown as a society where those at the bottom could hope to get ahead, and wherebeing born with a silver spoon in your mouth was no guarantee of lifetimeprosperity. Now, upward mobility has gotten harder, the rich more often stayrich, and Europe is the land of opportunity. European state support forinstitutions of higher education is key to that mobility. The United States ofAmerica, born in a rejection of an aristocracy by birth, is increasingly a landof hereditary oligarchs.

Not only is a more rigid class structure implied by thedecline of public support for state universities, but more fixed raceboundaries are, as well. State universities are the most important vehicle forminority students in attaining a degree. While 800,000 minority students attendpublic universities, fewer than 200,000 can be found on private campuses. Ifthe state universities become as expensive as the privates, the impact onminorities could be severe. It should be noted that the choices made byCalifornia are not “natural” or “inevitable.” Maryland dealt with therecent crisis in a progressive way, by freezing tuition and raising thecorporate tax rate to create a Higher Education Investment Fund.”

And then the final point to understand…the simultaneouscollapse of our higher education funding over the past 30 years with the rapidincrease spent on prisons to jail nonviolent offenders…in fact, since the early1990s, crime in the state has fallen, whereas the prison population has gonefrom 25,000 to 175,000.

So Cole concludes, “Stiffer penalties have been set even forvictimless, nonviolent drug-related crimes. California is also one of thosestates with a “three strikes and you’re out” law, which fills prisons withpetty shoplifters while setting more lenient penalties for massive white collarembezzlement. The Legislature has removed judges’ discretion in releasingprisoners early for good behavior. The clout of the California CorrectionalPeace Officers’ Union and what has been called the “prison-industrial complex”has played a big role in pushing irrational legislation that has swollen theprison population.

Nationally, the emphasis on supposed law-and-order issuesand the epochal mistake of a “war on drugs” that has criminalized a largelyinoffensive and medically useful substance like marijuana have gone hand inhand with a militarization of law enforcement. That is, the defunding of highereducation in favor of an enormous gulag dovetails with a rise in theparamilitary repression of the population as one of America’s premier industries.

Not only are UC Davis students being hit with massivetuition increases to pay for the penitentiaries and their policing, they arealso being treated like unruly inmates by a militarizing police force. In themeantime, the country is taking giant strides toward the future Jeffersonfeared, of poorly educated citizens at risk of being manipulated by risingoligarchs.”

To bring home my point further, I point you to a new Pew Research Center report that makesit even MORE CLEAR why young people are leading this historic charge. The new study tracks how younger voters are now stronglyrejecting traditional American hubris in favor of more empirical viewson foreign policy (like let's stop wasting so much money killing people in other countries. For instance, it finds that while older citizens embrace Americanexceptionalism in insisting our culture is inherently superior, younger votersdo not. As Pew reports:

Two-thirds of Millennials (66 percent) say that relying toomuch on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads tomore terrorism. A slim majority of Gen Xers (55 percent) agree with thissentiment, but less than half (46 percent) of Boomers agree and the number ofSilents who share this view is 41 percent. A plurality of Silents (45 percent)believe that using overwhelming force is the best way to defeat terrorism and43 percent of Boomers share that view.

As David Sirota notes, "...the younger generation, whose foreignpolicy views were shaped not by World War II triumphalism but by grindingquagmires like Iraq and Afghanistan, has a far more realistic view of America’srole in the modern world. While that position may shift somewhat over theyears, the numbers are striking enough to suggest an impending cultural breakfrom the past. As the younger generation assumes more powerful positions insociety and more electoral agency in our democracy, the possibility of such abreak gives us reason to believe America can create a new foreign policyparadigm in our lifetime."

As I concluded in in my White Paper:

It’s time to change our priorities. It’s time to choose life…Warningsfrom past American icons are worth reconsidering. The late Five-Star General,and Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower forewarned, "Every gun thatis made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the finalsense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold andnot clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending thesweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of itschildren..."

Just a few years later, a young minister and Nobel PeacePrize winning human rights champion, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., implored, “Anation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defensethan on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

We would do well to heed their words today. Foreclosing onour future to fund an endless occupation on the other side of the worldshouldn’t be confused with “national defense”. It’s time to end the war, bringthe troops home, and invest those resources on the health and well being of thecitizens of California.

So let’s CELEBRATE what students and young people are doingnow, just as they have throughout history…this isn’t by accident…thesepeople are more idealistic, they have MORE at stake when it comes to jobs,climate change, costs of war, and now, sickeningly, even debt.

As David Dayen notes, “An early leader in the Occupymovement’s list of grievances was the crushing burden of student loans. Thosestudent loans have only become bloated and unaffordable in this era of tuitionincreases, forcing students who want to pursue higher education to borrow moremoney. The soaring cost of public education is pricing college out of reach fora large class of people, which depresses their potential for upward mobility.The 99% cannot ascend without the type of education being denied to them, asthe 1% and the corporations they inhabit evade paying their fair share intaxes. This is going to be a continuing feature of Occupy movementprotests over the next several months; how could it not be? The crisis inhigher education is part and parcel with the two-tiered country that has beenmolded over the past several decades.”

One Big Answer to Inequality: Unions!!

And, if you were wondering why unions have joined forceswith students and others at the Occupy rallies…remember that it was unions that BUILT themiddle class in America, and it’s the DESTRUCTION of unions since the Reaganrevolution that has served to dismantle that SAME middle class.

As Mike Lux perfectly illustrates, “The reason that economicinequality, as well as the depth of the unemployment problem, is so much worsein the United States than in virtually every other modern, developed economy inthe world is because labor unions are so much weaker here, and because ourindustries — especially our financial institutions — are so much more concentrated.The fact that countries like Germany, Sweden, Canada, Denmark, and Australiaall weathered the worldwide financial crisis better than we did is becausetheir unions kept wages relatively high so people had money to buy things, andbecause their big banks were not nearly so dominant a party of their economy.If globalization and technology were the big and inexorable causes of economicinequality, then every country would have the USA’s bad numbers on that score,but they don’t.

Those two causes, which are so popular with conservativeeconomists, are certainly a factor, but concentration of wealth flows more thanany other thing from concentration of power. It was true in the ancient RomanEmpire, as wealth basically flowed from the size of people’s armies and theirfriendship with the Caesars. Throughout the middle ages, the same patternsremained true. In the late 1800s in this country, concentration of wealth cameabout partly because of industrialization, but mostly because the big corporatetrusts of the robber barons ran government through open bribery. In the 1920s,concentration of wealth rose to incredible new heights again, as theconservative pro-big business Republicans controlled government and bigcorporate trusts paid little in taxes, broke unions viciously, and speculatedin the stock market with impunity.

Today, with unions as weak as they have been since the 1920sand major industries as concentrated as they have been since the 1890s, we havetremendous inequality and a disappearing middle class. That disappearing middleclass includes a breakdown of small business in sector after sector as well, asthe small guys have more and more trouble competing with big business. Fourcompanies now control 70 percent of general retail sales; four grocery chainscontrol 55 percent of grocery sales; three firms control 80 percent of beersales, and two control 70 percent of toothpaste sales; five big oil companiescontrol 60 percent of retail gas stations; four accounting companies lock down 70percent of the accounting work done in this country. I could go on and on, inindustry after industry, from telecom to agribusiness, from technology topharmaceuticals. These huge conglomerates have destroyed tens of millions ofsmall businesses, and even more jobs. They have broken unions and driven downwages. Their power is breaking the middle class in this country."

So we should all be VERY clear on why unions, students, and the younger generation are our most important and natural allies (and WHY they are) in this new battle, civil war even (but hopefully non-violent), that will decide whether we continue to devolve into a kind of quasi-fascist neo-feudal state (or plutocracy, kleptocracy...lots of ways to describe it), or blossom into something much more just and egalitarian.

VIDEO SECTION

Ed Schultz on the FANTASTIC news that Wisconsin has already garnered over 300,000 signatures(in just 12 days!) in the effort to recall Governor Scott Walker (one of the point people for the oligarchs):

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/scott-walker-opponents-collect-over-300000

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced he isretiring (he'll be missed)...and then he slams scum bag, criminal and liar, Newt Gingrich (which is always fun):

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/frank-slams-gingrich-i-will-neither-be-lobby

Sarah Anderson, co-author of a new report from the Institutefor Policy Studies, “America Isn’t Broke: “How to Pay for the Crisis WhileMaking the Country More Equitable, Green, and Secure.” visits Amy Goodman:

http://www.truth-out.org/americas-not-broke-solving-debt-crisis-making-nation-more-equitable-green-secure/1322061973

Tom Tomorrow cartoon…

http://www.truth-out.org/sites/default/files/cartoon112311.jpg

Chris Hayes on torture advocate, and Cheney'sCheney, David Addington, actually asking a question at the GOP presidential debate...who's next, Manson?

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/chris-hayes-slams-cnn-allowing-torture-adv

2011-11-22T17:33:00.001-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Super Committee, Defense Cuts, BizarroUniverse, Michael Moore, Greenwald, Taibbi, Police Brutality

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed theymust rely exclusively on force.

- George Orwell

Super Committee, Triggers, False Equivalencies, and Doing Nothing

From the beginning the Super Committee has operated in itsown bizarre universe. Unfortunately, this universe happens to represent theprevailing inside the beltway wisdom. By that I mean its sole focus has beenupside down: we don’t have a spending crisis, we have a revenue crisis. And,even worse, austerity (i.e. draconian cuts to social safety to appease WallStreet investors and right wing nut jobs) costs jobs, rather than creatingthem…and jobs generate tax revenue, which thereby reduce the deficit (why doyou think Clinton had surpluses??? We had less than 4% unemployment).But itgets worse, because the ACTUAL CRISIS is a jobs crisis…a wealth disparitycrisis…and a poverty crisis, so cutting spending on the things that alleviate andaddress these REAL CRISES (as was proposed) is the very definition of insanity.

I suppose what is all the more ass backwards about the SuperFraud Committee is that they weren't even tasked with doing ANYTHING aboutthose real crises I mentioned, which in more specific terms include collapsingwealth, underwater homes, student loan debt, credit card debt, our collapsingschools and infrastructure (among others), and Wall Street going back to itsfree wheeling criminal ways (they never actually stopped).

It is in this insane “universe” that the Super Committee has been operating –made all the more out dated by the explosion of the Occupy Movement and therefocusing on, well, a reality that is FACT and HUMAN based, rather than deceitand profit based one. In some ways this committee, and the entire debate itsengaged in, PERFECTLY exemplifies the dying paradigm I keep talking about...thesame one that Occupy Wall Street is out protesting. So I suppose, looking at itthat way, it is useful.

It’s interesting that FINALLY Obama drew a line in the sandand promised a veto of any attempts by the Congress to override the triggers.Of course, where was this strength when it came to things like the publicoption and the Bush tax cuts? So while I like to see him stick it to the GOPand stand up for something, he needs to do a whole lot more of it on a wholelot more important issues.

And let’s look at those triggers. We’re hearing a lot offear mongering from the military industrial complex, but in reality, what we’relooking at is around a 9% cut in the non-defense discretionary programsimpacted by the trigger (programs for the poor are mostly exempted), and a 9%cut in defense. A 9% cut to a military budget larger than the rest of the worldcombined isn’t exactly the Armageddon being proclaimed.

Plus, consider the context: Since President Barack Obama took office thedefense budget has actually grown from $513 billion to $530 billion, accordingto The Associated Press. Additional spending on wars in Iraq andAfghanistan has increased from $153 billion to $159 billion. TheCongressional Budget Office estimates(PDF) that the total base defense budget will increase to $665 billion by 2028if there are no cuts. Because the triggered cuts are spread over a 10-yearperiod, overall defense spending would still grow each year, albeit at a slowerrate.

As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Larry Korbwrites, “Panetta grossly exaggerates when he says it would bedisastrous if projected levels of defense spending are reduced by an additional$500 billion if the bipartisan “super committee” deadlocks and automatic cuts gointo effect…Since the defense budget has grown by more than 50 percent over thepast 10 years, it can easily absorb a 15 percent reduction — which would beabout half the defense cuts of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon and less thanthat of George H. W. Bush.”

So, as I have argued, I wanted the Super Committee to failbecause the Democrats tried, unsuccessfully, to do just about anything to reacha deal, including cuts to social security and Medicare (which is criminal)…butwithout the defense cuts we’ll at least get in the trigger.

To look at it more closely, in 2013, when these cuts takeeffect, you’re talking about a reduction of around $109.3 billion per year fromthose agency budgets. There is no back-loading of the cuts; it’s a straight$109.3 billion per year for 9 years. The reduction in interest payments on thedebt get you to $1.2 trillion. If you take into account inflation, you couldsay that the cuts are front-loaded, actually. There are also a few cuts tomandatory spending. Granted, this isn’t good…particularly when people arehurting already. On the other hand, anything the super committee would haveagreed upon would have been worse, particularly in giving Defense a free pass.

Media False Equivalencies and Doing Nothing

One of the big, huge lies coming out of the Matrix since thefailure of the Super Committee to reach a deal is that both sides were equallyto blame (and if Obama talks about “Washington” being broken again I’m going toscream…it’s the GOP who are recalcitrant). Let’s be real clear, say what youwant about Democrats, and I do here all the time, one thing they are NOT isagainst compromise!!! My god, they may as well have had their pants down withthumbs in their mouths…but even THAT wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t more than a few years ago that Democrats wouldNEVER have offered up Medicare and social security – particularly in light ofthe fact that deficits were caused by wars, tax cuts, and Wall street. Yet,here they are, offering just that, and yet, here are the Republicans demandingMORE TAX CUTS for the rich AND deep cuts…and anything less than that issocialist. And, here’s the media talking about how “Washington can’tcompromise” anymore. What a crock of shit.

Again, the context is what’s critical yet never provided:this all proves how DRASTICALLY our government has moved to the right, with theGOP in stone cold fascism/corporatocry/plutocracy land, and the Democratsinching closer to where the GOP was just 30 years ago (not to say they want thesame things as that GOP wanted, but that they advocate it in order tocompromise with the GOP…which is no excuse).

As David Dayen notes, “There’s an undercurrent oftut-tutting of liberals who rooted for failure on the Super Committee to becareful what they wish for. You see, unemployed people will be hurt now becauseof the failure to cut benefits for Medicare and Social Security. The “grandbargain” was so important that the demise of it will harm the economy. TheSuper Committee was a terrible, anti-democratic idea based on the notion that12 legislators could be compelled to reach agreement for an entire Congress,and be given a fast-track process to implement that agreement without inputfrom the other 523 elected members of Congress. Its defeat is actually atriumph of democracy, because it signals that the people can still impact aclosed process of elites.

The emergence of Occupy Wall Street along with thePresident’s unveiling of the American Jobs Act changed the conversation in thecountry and de-fanged the media bias toward budget deficits. The cuts arepainful and arguably front-loaded, and will have a major impact if the economydoesn’t fully recover by 2013, when they would take effect. In the near term,the expiring stimulus measures, which run out in six weeks, are the mainpotential fiscal drag on the economy (and no, I don’t think they were pre-ordainedto be extended by a Super Committee agreement). Over the next year, thesequester will provide a fiscal drag of its own. Combined with the $900 billionin cuts from the spending cap, you’re talking about over $2 trillion ofausterity, which really will start to hurt in 2012 and especially come 2013.It’s not clear the economy will be ready."

Here’s the key point, and we should all be watching for whatthe President and the Democrats start saying on this soon…and that’s the Bushtax cuts expiring. Remember, all we have to do is let them do just that and thedeficit is largely addressed – more so than either party’s proposals in thisbogus committee would have ($1.3 trillion to be exact…more than that if youcount other taxes that are going to expire like the alternative minimum)!

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t want my taxes increased,nor do people of less economic means. But again, it’s about choices. If thechoice is between Bush’s tax cuts expiring or draconian cuts to what’s left of thesocial safety net, that’s certainly the better option.

The problem is that the President is still talking aboutextending almost all of the Bush tax cuts, except for those above $250,000 ofincome…but the problem is there’s no real way to split the taxes out….whichtells me he’s not committed to ending those tax cuts at all (yet another falsepromise). Yes, if all things were equal, he would support raising them on therich…but that’s just not going to happen.

By the way, the GOP was demanding a ration of 181:1 inspending cuts to tax increases…so we should be THANKFUL the Democrats rejectedit…ChrisHayes offers some important points on this wholecharade…sadly missing fromthe rest of the corporate media (aside from most of the MSNBC nighttime lineup.

Banana Republic Facts…and More Context

Let me just again provide some economic REALITIES that stand in stark contrastto the Super Committee kabuki dance and the media’s reporting of it all:

In just the last generation, the richest 1% almostquadrupled their incomes.
The average wealth of the 1% is 225 times biggerthan the wealth of the typical household - the highest its ever been.
Three decades ago, CEOs made about 40 times as much as anaverage worker now CEOsmake almost 200 times as much as regular employees.
Last year, half of Americans earnedless than $26,000 while CEOs at top 500 companies raked in an average of $11million.
Over the past decade, earningsfor middle-class Americans actually fell. In fact, working Americans wagesare now a lowerpercentage of our economy than theyve ever been.
The dividebetween the richest and the poorest is worse in America than it is innearly all of Europe and Asia and much of Africa. Its about as bad as in Rwandaand Serbia and its badfor our economy.
The1% is not an accident it is the result of policies our government chose topursue.

Let me make one more point: the top 0.1% of this countryearn HALF of all capital gains - which are taxed at just 15% (this again is howwealth is ALREADY REDISTRIBUTED...but upwards in this country). If the SuperCommittee was actually designed to address the need of people and the qualityof life in this country then this would have been at the top of the agenda?

The fact is capital gains are one of the key forces driving income disparity inthe US. As detailed by Robert Lezner, "Income and wealth disparitiesbecome even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%- about 315,000 individuals out of315 million- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of sharesor property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the incomemade by the Forbes 400.

Surveillance State Irony

This is from my Privacy Revolt post,but I think its worth pointing out here too:

All the incredible video documenting grotesque police abuse ofpeaceful protesters across the country provides a bit of irony: Just as wecitizens are being increasingly watched by both commercial and governmentalinterests (like the UC Davis pepper spraying), so too can we now watch them -and use it to our advantage.

Consider the bigger picture...whether its the knowledge that everything we doon the internet is followed and stored, that we can be wiretapped for no reasonand without a warrant or probable cause, that smart grid systems monitor ourdaily in home habits and actions, that our emails can be intercepted, that ournaked bodies must be viewed at airports and stored, that our book purchases canbe accessed (particularly if Google gets its way and everything goes electronic),that street corner cameras are watching our every move, and that RFID tags andGPS technology allow for the tracking of clothes, cars, and phones (and thelist goes on)...what is certain is privacy itself is on life support in thiscountry...and without privacy there is no freedom. I also fear how such asurveillance society stifles dissent and discourages grassrootspolitical/social activism that challenges government and corporatepower...something that we desperately need more of in this country, not less.

The result of this video has been millions of hits, callsfor the firing of the Chancellor and cops responsible, an investigation of theincident, and even greater resolve in students across the state and country tocontinue to speak out against ever increasing tuition costs and fee increases(among MANY legitimate complaints). Granted, we will see if justice is served,and we all know that video alone isn't enough to convict even the mostglaringly abusive and illegal tactics. Nor does video guarantee real, systemicreforms to what is clearly an increasingly authoritarian, and militarizedpolice force.

But certainly, it VASTLY improves the potential that justicewill be realized -and reforms will be instituted. More than anything though,what this kind of peoples surveillance offers is the ability to educate thelarger public about what is really going on in this country - particularly whenyou have the temerity to speak out against "the elites". Thiseducation opportunity, and how it might serve to motivate and inspire morepeople to get involved with their democracy and demand change (as well as makecops think twice about their actions) shouldn't be discounted.

If you want to see what I mean, check out Joshua Holland's Caught on "Camera:Ten Shockingly Violent Police Assault on Occupy Protesters"andconsider whether it impacts your opinion on these matters.

Bank Transfer Day Success

Just an update on the documented success of that effort: During “Bank TransferDay” earlier this month, 40,000Americans moved their money from the nation’s biggest banks to creditunions, voicing their distaste with the action’s of America’s financialbehemoths. About 650,000 Americans joined credit unions in October, which ismore people thanin all of 2010 combined. According to cg42, a consulting firm that doeswork for the biggest banks, “the nation’s 10 biggest banks could stand to lose asmuch as $185 billion in deposits in the next year due to customerdefections.” Of the banks, “Bank of America is the most vulnerable and couldlose upto 10% of its customers and $42 billion in consumer deposits in the nextyear.”

Michael Moore Proposes 10 Demands to Occupy WallStreet

Honestly, theseare all fantastic and DEAD ON…while I don’t necessarily think there’s ahurry to create this platform, I think this is as good as anything I’ve seen todate, and goes the heart of THE REAL CRISES we face…including our “democracycrisis”

I would go check them out individually for yourself, buthere’s the overall vision statement of the movement itself (at least the onesubmitted to the General Assembly by the committee Moore is in)…couldn’t say itbetter myself:

We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society;[2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus;[3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibilityand participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony andembrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differingviews of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all fromviolation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political andeconomic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7]where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobsbut to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs overmonetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effectivedemocracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the globalenvironment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air,water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty ofnature that past generations have enjoyed.

VIDEO SECTION

From Up With Chris Hayes: Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to UndermineOccupy Wall Street:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/chris-hayes-lobbying-firms-memo-spells-out\

Stephen Colbert let the Super Committee and the Congress have it for agreeingon cuts to veterans’ benefits…once again, taking it out on the foot soldiers…

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/stephen-colbert-slams-super-committee-and-c

Occupy Wall Street protester and blogger Jesse LaGreca, visits Ed Schultz, andonce again proves himself to be an EXCELLENT spokesperson (he’s the guy thatdismantled that Fox news reporter):

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/jesse-lagreca-discusses-ows-movement-ed-sc

No Deal Is The Best Deal…watch the great Bernie Sanders EDUCATE Wolf Blitzer…andviewers on what REAL democratic party values are (irony being he’s anindependent):

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011114721/no-deal-best-deal

More from Bernie Sanders on the GOP getting everything theywant…but its never enough…just as no amount of money is ever enough for WallStreet:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/virtually-everything-they-wanted

One of the women beaten and pepper sprayed by cops while PREGNANT just had amiscarriage:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/pregnant-seattle-protester-miscarries-after-

And, Keith Olbermann’s Worst Persons…including MayorBloomberg and Gingrich:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/worst-persons-bloomberg-and-kelly-hype-ter

ARTICLE SECTION

Here’s what attempted co-option of OWS looks like, By Glenn Greenwald

A FEW CLIPS:

That said, people I respect and who are well-intentionedhave advanced reasonable arguments as to why the Occupy movementwould be well-advised to start demanding specific legislative changesand/or backing candidates, and some have even proposed ideas for how they can and should do that. Some of those arguments arecompelling (though ultimately unpersuasive to me for the reasons I justdescribed), but everyone participating in the Occupy protests can and should —and ultimately will — decide for themselves if they think their grievances arebest addressed through that tactic.

But whatever else is true, the notion — advanced by SEIU —that it’s the Democratic Party and the Obama White House working to bring aboutthese changes and implant these values of the 99% is so self-evidently false asto be insulting. Agitating for passage of the jobs bill is a perfectlyreasonable and sensible step, but how can casting that in such starkly partisanterms be justified when numerous key Democratic officials opposed the bill andprevented its passage (just as an always-changingroster of numerous key Democrats — the Villains of the Moment — almost alwaysact to protect the interestsof Washington’s permanent ruling factions)?

Beyond that, and more important, does SEIU think that peoplewill just ignore these key political facts? How does anyone think theseprotesters will be convinced that it’s exclusively the GOP — and not theDemocratic Party and the Obama WH — who “protect the rich” when: Wall Street funded the Democrats far more than the GOP in the 2008 election; the Democrats’key money man, Charles Schumer, is one of the most devoted Wall Street servants in the country;Obama empowered in key positions Wall Street servants such as Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Bill Daley, Rahm Emanuel, and an endless rosterof former Goldman officials; JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been dubbed “Obama’s favorite banker” afterObama publicly defended his post-bailout $17 million bonus;the President named the CEO of GE to head his jobs panel; the DCCCand DSCC exist to ensure the nomination of corporatistcandidates and Blue Dogs whose political worldview is servitudeto the lobbyist class; the Democratic President, after vocally urging an Age of Austerity, tried very hard tousher in cuts to Social Security and an increase in the age for Medicare eligibility; and the Obamaadministration has not only ensured virtually no accountability for the rampant Wall Street fraudthat precipitated the 2008 financial crisis, but is actively pressuring New York Attorney General EricSchneiderman and others to agree to a woefully inadequate settlement toforever shield banks from the consequences of their pervasive mortgage fraud.

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/19/heres_what_attempted_co_option_of_ows_looks_like/singleton/

Woman Gets Jail For Food-Stamp Fraud; Wall Street Fraudsters Get Bailouts, byMatt Taibbi

A FEW CLIPS:

Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record ofcriminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federalban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drugconvictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she liedabout her past in order to feed her two children. The total "cost" ofher fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money backwas not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.

SNIP

Compare this court decision to the fraud settlements on WallStreet. Like McLemore,fraud defendants like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, andDeutsche Bank have "been the beneficiary of government generosity."Goldman got $12.9 billion just through the AIG bailout. Citigroup got $45billion, plus hundreds of billions in government guarantees.

All of these companies have been repeatedly dragged intocourt for fraud, and not one individual defendant has ever been forced to giveback anything like a significant portion of his ill-gotten gains. The closestwe've come is in a fraud case involving Citi, in which a pair of executives,Gary Crittenden and Arthur Tildesley, werefined the token amounts of $100,000 and $80,000, respectively, for lying toshareholders about the extent of Citi’s debt. Neither man was forced to admitto intentional fraud. Both got to keep their jobs.

SNIP

Here’s another thing that boggles my mind: You get bustedfor drugs in this country, and it turns out you can make yourself ineligible toreceive food stamps. But you can be a serial fraud offender like Citigroup,which has repeatedly been dragged into court for the same offenses and hasrepeatedly ignored court injunctions to abstain from fraud, and this does notmake you ineligible to receive $45 billion in bailouts and other forms offederal assistance. This is the reason why all of these settlements allowingbanks to walk away without "admissions of wrongdoing" areparticularly insidious. A normal person, once he gets a felony conviction,immediately begins to lose his rights as a citizen.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/woman-gets-jail-for-food-stamp-fraud-wall-street-fraudsters-get-bailouts-20111117

2011-11-16T17:12:00.001-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: American Authoritarianism, OWS, Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Corporations v. People, Olbermann, Super Fraud Committee

American Authoritarianism and the OWS Movement

On one hand, the continuing focus on whether tents qualifyas speech and the ongoing debate over use of public space is a distraction fromthe more important issue of the 1% versus 99% message. On the other hand, we’reseeing, first hand, just how totally warped our interpretation of theConstitution and rule of law has become in terms of the treatment of humanbeings speaking out against the elites versus corporations buying influence.

As I have commented before here and on my privacy revoltblog, one of the defining trends of the past decade is the emergence ofcorporations as not just “people”, but in fact “supercitizens”…that have fargreater rights than do people but with none of the responsibilities. CitizensUnited put the stamp on this transition, in which MONEY, the unlimited use ofit to bribe politicians and purchase influence, is considered free speech.

Consider the irony in that: as the corporations can hidetheir crimes behind the 4th Amendment, and buy political influence using the 1stAmendment, American citizens are being beaten, shot, pepper sprayed and teargassed for simply SPEAKING OUT against those crimes committed against them.

As Robert Reich, Berkeley Professor, correctly noted, “Afunny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum.According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are nowpeople. But when real people without money assemble to express theirdissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated aspublic nuisances and evicted.”

It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote my op-ed entitled “ThePatriot Act and the Quiet Death of the US Bill of Rights”. Who would have knownmy thesis would be totally and completely validated by what we’re seeing on thestreets across America?

As I wrote then, “the precedent set by the Patriot Actappears to be serving to accelerate the rapid disintegration of civil libertiesin this country…The Patriot Act was sold as an indispensable weapon in the government’sarsenal to fight and “win” the “War on Terror”. We were assured that the solepurpose of these unprecedented powers granted government were to locate andcatch terrorists - not raid the homes of pot dealers and wiretap peaceactivists. Monitoring political groups and activities deemed “threatening”(i.e. environmentalists, peace activists), expanding the already disastrous andwasteful war on drugs, and spying on journalists isn’t about fighting terrorism, it’sabout stifling dissent and consolidating power – at the expense of civilliberties.

How ironic that the very “tool” hailed as our nation’sprotector has instead been used to violate the very Constitutional protectionswe are allegedly defending from “attack” by outside threats. What was promisedas a “temporary”, targeted law to keep us safe from terror has morphed into arewriting of the Bill of Rights.”

Now, we’re seeing the stark reality of this new Americanauthoritarianism first hand. If you haven’t watched the footage ofphotographers getting shot, students beaten, an 84 year old women pepper sprayed, booksburned/destroyed, disabled people being tear gassed, Iraq war veterans thatsurvived that occupation only to be nearly killed on the streets of their owncountry, New York City Councilman being assaulted by cops, and the incredible Orwellian wordplay being utilized by Mayors likeMichael Bloomberg you should check it out…because we're seeing what happens when people actuallychallenge the status quo and fight the power.

Clearly, our rights only apply when we stay quiet and obedient. Thankfully, the ACLU, among others, are suing the Oakland police department.

Brad Blog has more, including videos, of theGROTESQUE police brutality…writing “Some of thepolice brutality that has occurred at Occupy demonstrations around the countryhas been appalling. It'sparticularly upsetting to watch as those cops seen violating the law and theConstitutional rights of demonstrators are also part of the "99Percent" themselves.

One of them --- Officer Fred Shavies of the Oakland PD, whowas revealed as an undercover infiltrator at Occupy Oakland --- now concedes asmuch in an extraordinarily moving interview in which he condemns the violenceby his fellow cops and says he sees the Occupy movement as a possible"turning point, the tipping point" for our generation.

"It looks like...police shot tear gas into it, right?,"says Davies, referencing the October 25 violence in Oakland at the intersectionof 14th & Broadway that TheBRAD BLOG has documented in great detail here (see here, here and here for example).

"That could be the photograph or the video for ourgeneration. That’s our Birmingham," he explains, alluding to the policebrutality that occurred during the otherwise peaceful fight for voting rightsin the South during the 60s. "So, twenty years from now this movementcould be the turning point, the tipping point," Davies says during theinterview, as he identifies with the protesters in the "99 percent"movement, adding that he is one of them.

We're not amongthe anti-cop folks around here. We have, however, reported in great detail onthe lawlessness demonstrated by some of the "law enforcement"officials in Oakland, referenced by Davies, as well as the serious injuriesthey've inflicted on peacefuldemonstrators and even some who weren't demonstrating at all.

You've seen someof the videos of NYPD officers violently pepper spraying peacefuldemonstrators, and the videos from Oakland as seen in the articles linkedabove. Here are two more recent examples of appalling police behavior aswitnessed on video tape…"

Read More Here.

In the end, perhaps the benefit of all this will be that nolonger will the public keep denying that our civil liberties are under assault,or, that this assault has ANYTHING to do with preventing terrorism. The factis, the 1st and 4th Amendments no longer apply to people, but rather, only toocorporations and the protection of their crimes. Instead, we the new ENEMY…and,even if the movement has been taken off message (largely not their own fault…butbecause the Matrix is attempting to assimilate and destroy it), these constitutionalquestions are being pushed to the forefront for the WORLD to see.

With that said, let’s remember what this movement is reallyall about.

As Time magazine of all places pointed out awhile back: “you pick up a disproportionate share of America’stax bill. You pay higher prices for a broad range of products from peanuts toprescriptions. You pay taxes that others in a similar situation have beenexcused from paying. You’re compelled to abide by laws while others are grantedimmunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do not.You’re barred from writing off on your tax returns some of the money spent onnecessities while others deduct the cost of their entertainment. You must runyour business by one set of rules, while the government creates another set foryour competitors… In contrast the fortunate few who contribute to the rightpoliticians and hire the right lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of theirspecial status. Make a bad business deal; the government bails themout. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government providesthe means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the governmentgives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, thegovernment gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must complywith, the government gives it approval. If they want to kill legislationthat is intended for the public, it gets killed."

And, for more evidence of this GRAND disconnect between corporations and the rich and the rest of us, check out the latestreport from Citizens for Tax Justice that shows that anti-union telecomcompany Verizon not only paid no taxes in the last three years, the companyreceived nearly $1 billion in rebates from the government.

Verizon enjoyed some $14 billion in federal and state corporateincome tax subsidies in the 2008-2010 period even though it earned $33.4billion in pre-tax U.S. income during that time.

At the federal level, Verizon should have paid about $11.4billion at the statutory rate of 35 percent during the three-year period.Instead, it got $951 million in rebates, putting its federal tax subsidies at$12.3 billion. Its effective federal tax rate was -2.9 percent.

Mobilize TOMORROW!

From movement action alert: None of these facts changed overnight and the 99 PercentMovement will continue to demand an economy that works for everyone:

The top 1 percet of Americans still own 40 percent of our country’s wealth while the bottom 80percent owns only 7 percent.
The richest 1 percent earned one out of every four dollars in 2007. Thirty yearsearlier, the richest only made one out of every 11 dollars.
One in four millionaires pays a lower tax rate than 10million middle-income Americans.
Fourteen million Americans are unemployed.
Corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash – more cash than at any time in nearlya half century – instead of hiring more employees.

Keep these kinds of numbers in mind when you hear the bobbleheads on tv blather on about the need to punish seniors that make less than$30,000 a year in order to balance the budget - while seeking to give TAX CUTS to the rich and corporations. “Shared sacrifice” my ass!!! Weshould be talking about companies like Verizon and hedge fund managers payingTHEIR FAIR SHARE, not the poor paying more of what they don’t have.

Tomorrow is a big day for the movement…if you can, join aprotest near you.

If you can't be on Wall Street tomorrow you are still neededout in the streets: Join the Movement.

Deficits, the Super Committee and Mitt Romney

One argument you CONTINUE to hear on the right is that Obamais the cause of our deficits and that we need to gut social spending to addressthe problem. As a Kos blogger noted, here are a few facts about the percentage ofdebt we can rightfully attribute to the Obama administration:

Bush Tax Cuts: $3 Trillion

Bush Unfunded Medicare D: 300 Billion

Bush 2008 Stimulus including TARP: 200 Billion

Bush Domestic/Defense Spending: 1.7 Trillion

Bush Afghan and Iraq Wars: 1.4 Trillion

Bush additional policies (e.g., Farm Bill): 400B

Bush Total: $7 Trillion

Obama Recovery Act: $800 Billion

Obama 2010 Tax Cut Deal: 250 Billion

Obama One-Time emergency costs (sm. bus., etc.): 400B

Obama Total: $1.4 Trillion

Super Fraud Committee

Again, we should all be PRAYING that NO DEAL is reached bythis group. I’m not going to go into the latest proposals and counter proposalsbecause they are BEYOND criminal (obviously the GOP’s is worse). As pointed outby the Campaign for America’s Future, “I thought I had worked out all theworst-case scenarios for the supercommittee (there was never a best-case). But thisis even worse than my worst imagining: a deal to undermine key socialinsurance programs in return for a promise that Congress will come up with aplan for raising revenue at some future date. If you think that promise has anycredibility whatsoever – if you have any doubts that the end result would be togut Social Security and actually cut taxes for the wealthy – I have thisNigerian bank account that can be yours if you send me $100,000 in expenses. Theworst of it is that Democrats might actually go for it.”

And let me reiterate just how bad an idea it is to raise theMedicare retirement age…an idea that keeps coming up as a potential componentof these deals (and mentioned by Obama too!). What’s so extraordinarilynonsensical about it is that not only does it represent a drastic cut inbenefits to people already hurting, it also saves next to NO MONEY because thecosts just get shifted.

See here: A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation said thatmuch of the cost savings from raising the age would be eaten up by theconsequences. (The Kaiser study compresses the eligibility change to one year.Most proposals that have been floated in various deficit-cutting reports ornegotiations would phase the change in over 10 years or longer.)

But Kaiser found that with the new health care law in place,gross savings would be $31.1 billion — but net savings would be one-sixth ofthat, about $5.7 billion in 2014. That reflects the higher costs of subsidizingsome of the recipients in the exchanges or covering them under Medicaid, aswell as other cost shifts. Seven million people would be affected, and costswould shift to them and their employers, and to state governments throughMedicaid.

The Kaiser study also found that the effects would ripplethrough the private insurance market, affecting younger people. Taking older,more expensive people out of Medicare and putting them in the private insurancemarket would change the risk pools and raise premium costs by about 3 percentfor adults in the private market.

Can it be more obvious then this is NOTHING MORE than yetanother step towards dismantling the program – as privatizing social securityis to that program?

The Romney Plan

Now, with all of this info to consider…let’s take a look at Romney’sEconomic Plan…and sit back in awe of its criminality:

$6.6 TRILLION in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations
$6.5 TRILLION added to the deficit
Cuts to Social Security
The end of Medicare as we know it
Cuts to Medicaid more draconian those in the House GOPbudget plan
Repeals the Affordable Care Act — eliminating health carecoverage for 32 MILLION Americans

Specifically outlines cuts in funding for:

Planned Parenthood and Title X women’s health programs
Amtrak
NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
National Endowment for the Arts & Humanities
Foreign aid
Repeals the New Deal-era law that ensures governmentcontractors pay their workers a fair wage
Throws more than 400,000 federal employees out of work
Increases defense spending

Romney’s plan to completely eliminate the estate tax wouldmean an $8.7 BILLION windfall for each of the billionaire KochBrothers.

Restoring Reagan Era Tax Rates

Just an example, again, of the fact that there is plenty ofmoney out there, and the problem is revenue, not spending. Here in California,as we find out today that we’re already another $13 billion in the whole, totaltaxpayer income between 1987 and 2009 increased by $219.4 billion, $77 billionof that income gain was concentrated among just 1 percent of Californians.That’s just 144,000 Californians getting a lot richer.

As Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner pointed out in an articlesubmission to me for the California Progress Report (she wants to reinstitutethe Reagan era taxes in California on the rich), “How else are the super-richdifferent than you and me? Their income tax rates are plummeting. The top UShouseholds paid 16.6 percent of their incomes in federal income taxes in 2007,down from 26.4 percent in 1992.

Add to that the California Budget Project’s estimate that in1978 CEO’s annual pay was 35 times that of average workers, but in 2007 CEO paywas 275 times the average worker’s, and it’s even clearer if there is a war onwealth, wealth is winning big.

Today California’s wealthiest pay a lower state income taxrate than they did under Governor Reagan. That’s right, it’s not only the 45thanniversary of Governor Reagan’s election, we’ll also soon be marking theanniversary of Governor Reagan’s decision to set income tax rates for thewealthiest Californians at a responsible rate. In honor of that anniversary Iwill again be pursuing AB 1130, my legislation that would return California’supper income tax bracket to the level set by Governor Reagan.

Restoring the Reagan Rate would bring $2.3 billion more intoCalifornia's coffers. Thatcould help roll back fees at our UCs, CSUs and community colleges, and take ahuge financial strain off middle class students and their families. Itwould also help undo damage to our hard-hit K-12 schools.”

VIDEO SECTION

Olbermann’s Special Comment DESTROYING scum bag MayorMichael Bloomberg:

http://www.truth-out.org/keith-olbermann-special-comment-we-need-bloomberg/1321462304

Daily Show on the latest from the GOP Fascist Clown Carcomedy show…starring Herman Cain:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/jon-stewart-after-herman-cains-libya-gaffe

Ed Schultz talked to The Nation'sJohn Nichols about the recall drive of Gov. Scott Walker that just started thisTuesday in Wisconsin:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/recall-drive-scott-walker-begins-wisconsin

Another Iraq war veteran injured by police:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/second-iraq-war-vet-injured-police-occupyo

SNL on another one of the GOP Clown Car Occupants…knuckledragger Rick Perry and his latest meltdown…

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/snl-pans-rick-perrys-cnbc-debate-performan

And this was AWESOME…a couple weeks ago (and why wasn’t thisin the news???), Chris Hedges, Cornel West and others held a mock trial ofGoldman Sachs in Zuccotti Park:

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/the_people_vs_goldman_sachs_20111108/\

FROM C&L: Just in case anyone ever had any doubts wherethe campaign of Herman Cain would go with his defense against allegations ofpast sexual harassment, there was little doubt left when they began to attackthe accusers.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/herman-cains-lawyer-accusers-they-should-th

ARTICLE SECTION

GOP Hits Shameless New Extremes to Protect Interests ofWealthy at the Expense of Everyone Else, David Sirota

A FEW CLIPS:

According to the most reliable counts, the United States’invasion and occupation of Iraq has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, 650,000 Iraqi civiliansor more than 1 million Iraqi civilians. In other words, we’ve vaporizedthe equivalent of Billings, Mont. (pop. 104,170), Memphis, Tenn. (pop. 646,889)or San Jose, Calif. (pop. 945,942).

Horrifying as these statistics are, imagine how much moredisgusted you would be if a foreign power actually did vaporize those cities,and then followed up that annihilation by having its leading politicians andpundits demand that Americans pay reparations for the privilege of experiencingsuch devastation.

SNIP

While the Iraq discourse is probably the most pronounced,there are many other examples where the blame-the-victim’s twin dynamicoperates in similar fashion — just as Republican tacticians hope.

For instance, despite a tax code that lets Warren Buffet paya lower effective rate than his secretary and lets a quarter of all millionaires pay lower rates than the middleclass, the GOP has organized itself around demonizing the hardest-hitvictims of the recession — those so crushingly destitute that they don’t makeenough to pay federal income levies.

SNIP

Ignoring the indisputable fact thatthe overall tax code (i.e., federal income, federal payroll, state and localtax systems combined) is so flat that Americans pay almost exactly the sameshare of taxes as their share of national income, the GOP’s nonsensicalblame-the-victim posture posits that the American economy would still beexceptionally terrific, if only those lazy leeches at the bottom started payingtheir “fair share.” In the process, the narrative works to undermine anyinitiatives that might return tax rates to the higher levels (when the economywas better, FYI) that forced the ultra-rich and big corporations to pay just abit more.

Along these same economic lines, Republicans (in tandem withthe financial industry and its media apologists) have been working hard to blame victims of the housing market collapsefor the recession. In this fantastical version of the disaster, irresponsiblelow-income homebuyers — with the help of liberals in Congress, of course —somehow forced the most powerful multinational banks on the planet to give themloans they knew they couldn’t pay back and when they defaulted, the wholeeconomy collapsed.

http://www.alternet.org/news/153078/gop_hits_shameless_new_extremes_to_protect_interests_of_wealthy_at_the_expense_of_everyone_else/

U.S. takes the lead on behalf of cluster bombs, By Glenn Greenwald

A FEW CLIPS:

Slightly more than two months after he was awarded the 2009Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama secretly ordered a cruise missile attack onYemen, using cluster bombs, which killed 44 innocent civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, as well as 14 peoplealleged to be “militants.” It goes without saying that — unless you want RickPerry to win in 2012 — this act should in no way be seen as marring Obama’spresidency or his character: what’s a couple dozen children blown up as a partof a covert, undeclared air war? If anything, as numerous Democrats have ecstatically celebrated,such acts show how Tough and Strong the Democrats are: after all, ponder themassive amounts of nobility and courage it takes to sit in the Oval Office andorder this type of aggression on defenseless tribal regions in Yemen. As R.W.Appel put it on the front page of The New York Times back in 1989 whenglorifying George H.W. Bush’s equally courageous invasion of Panama: “mostAmerican leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate theirwillingness to shed blood” and doing so has become “a Presidential initiationrite.”

But one aspect of the December, 2009, attack that perhapsdid merit some more critical scrutiny was the use of cluster bombs, weapons which “scatter hundreds of bomblets over a largearea but with limited accuracy and high failure rates.” The inevitability of“duds” — “unexploded ordnance” — poses a great risk to civilians, often wellafter the conflict has ended, since — like land mines — they often detonatewhen stumbled into by children and other innocents long after they disperse. Accordingto the Cluster Munitions Coalition, cluster bombs “caused more civiliancasualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system.” AsWired pointed out, while the U.S. used these weapons in both Iraqand Afghanistan, “neither the Taliban nor Saddam used cluster bombs againstU.S. troops.”

SNIP

But now the Obama administration is moving far beyond a mererefusal to join the convention banning these munitions. According to The Independent, the U.S. is playing the leading role “totorpedo the global ban on cluster bombs” through a “proposal that would permitthe use of cluster bombs as long as they were manufactured after 1980 and had afailure rate of less than one per cent.” The paper also reports that despiteBritain’s long-time role in supporting the ban, its conservative government isnow backing the Obama administration’s efforts to codify their use. ThePentagon claims that newer cluster bombs can be used more safely, but activistshave documented that “many modern cluster bombs have far higher failure rateson the field of battle than manufacturers claim.”

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/12/u_s_takes_the_lead_on_behalf_of_cluster_bombs/singleton/

This Is What Revolution Looks Like, by Chris Hedges

A FEW CLIPS:

Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland,Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise.They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language ofpersonal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we willall go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime andgovernment policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America,including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting orpreserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollarsare permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, humancapital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workersdo not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation wherethe consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.

Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return towatching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast systemof popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Bethankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy,greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your youngmen and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that providecorporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressionalsuper committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges youinto a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits.Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.

SNIP

Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once thefoot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as theclearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obeyorders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictatorErich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds inLeipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomedthe communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on tocrush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia’s Ben Ali andEgypt’s Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on thesecurity forces to fire into crowds.

The process of defection among the ruling class and securityforces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through arigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation anda verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can bewhile wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/15-8

2011-11-11T10:09:00.001-08:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Sexism, Election Victories, Story of Broke, Populism, Transaction Tax, Romney, Generational Divide?

“You capitalize on dividing Americans, claiming that peoplethat disagree with you are unpatriotic and you promote discrimination. Youparade as a grassroots candidate but your campaign is funded by Americans forProsperity, a group that takes advantage of legalized money laundering. Youcater to the 1 percent. You oppose paying hardworking Americans a living wageand refuse to promote realistic solutions to economic problems. We are the99%.!”

- OWS group Protesters to Michelle Bachman at a campaign event (shouted her down!)

Outrageous American Sexism

I’m not going to belabor this point as I’ve got too much elseto try and post today…but I’m blown away about just how sexist the right wing,and our media, remains in this country. As one woman after another is found tohave been sexually harassed – and assaulted – by Herman Cain we’re still in the“women ask for it” or “women always lie about it” mindset…with the premise being thatthe man is the victim.

What a crock of shit. And the fact that Republicans in thecrowd at the debate actually booed the one question to Cain about ethics shouldreally tell you all you need to know about this party and its base. How ANYwoman could EVER vote Republican is beyond me…but to see the way Cain and hisdefenders talk about, and treat these women is truly reprehensible.

Tuesday’s Election: Good News…But Keep in Perspective

I want to briefly provide some context to what were clearlysome important “victories” on Tuesday. But, let’s remember, as has been thetrend for over 30 years now, what qualifies as a left wing victory is simplystopping something horrible and outrageous, rather than say, gaining somethingtruly important and beneficial to the people.

For examples of what I mean, let me go through a few of themajor Tuesday “victories”, and what a “real” victory, at least that I willcelebrate, would look like instead.

Let’s begin with the most important: Ohio overturning a law thatwould completely strip public employee unions of the right to collective bargain.Granted, the fact that 62% of Ohio voters rejected this is heartening. Moreimportantly was the way Ohio voters did it…by immediately getting enoughsignatures to put the measure on the ballot and then successfully overturning arogue Governor and his fascist cohorts in the GOP. In that sense, it’s a victoryfor organizing itself, but not so much for labor...unless its BUILT ON.

Remember how the right wing operates. They go SO EXTREMEthat they always keep us on the left on the defensive. In this case, even whenthey lose, they are keeping the focus on unions having “too much”…rather thenwhere the focus should be: workers deserve more. The last thing we want tostart “celebrating” is simply the prevention of the worst of the GOP attacks,and the preservation of what little is left for workers, and unions, in thiscountry. So yes, this is a good victory, but a REAL victory in my mind will bewhen we pass a card check law so its easier for workers to organize, andTaft-Hartley is repealed, allowing unions the right to strike.

IN other words, let’s keep things in perspective, and startgoing on the OFFENSE.

Similarly, there was the case of Mississippi, where votersrejected GOP attempts to define life at conception – essentially making mostforms of birth control illegal. This, obviously is good…but, just as with Ohio,this is INSANE that we’re even having this discussion in the 21st Century. Areal victory for women in this country to me will be when an Equal RightsAmendment is passed and signed, and women start receiving the same pay for thesame work as men, and abortions will be COVERED by government health insurancejust like ALL OTHER legal medical procedures are.

Again, let’s keep things in perspective, and start going onthe offensive.

Then there was the successful recall of racist Arizona StateSenate President Russell Pearce, architect of the draconian immigration lawthere (by the way, in states that are doing this entire FIELDS are dyingbecause of the lack of workers that will pick). This again is a victory, but hewas replaced by a Republican (a better one of course), not a progressive.Similarly, the attack on Latinos and undocumented workers continues unabated…whichis a waste of resources (Obama has deported record numbers), designed to playon xenophobic fears to keep people from focusing on the REAL culprits(corporations, super rich, corrupt election system, etc.), and HURTS theeconomy.

So, real victories in my mind will consist of not justrecalling nut jobs, but electing progressives and instituting immigrationreform that includes a path to citizenship.

And finally, in Maine, voters restoreda four decade-old law that allows for same-day voter registration,repealing a Republican-passed bill changing that law.

This too was a victory worth noting. But, real change, andreal victories would be, again, when we go on the offense and actually achievePOSITIVE things, not just stop negative ones. In these cases that would be realelection reforms, like ridding ourselves of e-voting machines, allowing aholiday for election day (or a weekend), ending voter id laws, and making iteasier to register (like on the internet) to vote.

Polling Reaffirms Populist Messaging Success

For years I’ve been making the case for a populist platformwith populist messaging. One thing the Occupy Wall Street movement has providedis a blueprint for this, and it is being picked up on by more Democrats. Now,we find that the two “frames” that were MOST effective with voters wereprecisely this kind of populism…in fact, in some cases over 80% agree!

See here…and keep an eye out for how many Democrats startusing this kind of language (but more importantly is if they ACT ON IT):

Q.65 Now I am going to read you a few statements about theAmerican economy and government. After I read each one, please tell me whetheryou agree or disagree.

Question: The big banks got bailed out but the middle classgot left behind. Our economy works for Wall Street CEOs but not for the middleclass. America isn't supposed to only work for the top one percent.................................

Strng Agree 54
Smwt Agree 21

Question: Young people are coming out of school saddled withstudent loan debt, most of which is financed by big banks who make billions ininterest on this debt. This generation already faces high unemployment. Theywill never be able to get on track unless we reduce young people's debtburden.....................

Strng Agree 50
Smwt Agree 23

Addressing Poverty: A Moral Imperative

Another issue that is FINALLY cracking the Matrix is poverty.And, the good news, for lack of a better term, is that the US Census Bureauchanged its formulation of poverty for the first time in over fifty years (somethingI’ve been advocating for here for years), taking into account reductions in thecost of food while including rising costs in health care, child care, housingand transportation. In addition, non-cash government aid like food stamps andtax credits were finally included in the formulation.

The bad news is this will inevitably show poverty is WORSE than we thought. Consider how bad these numbers are (not even taking intoaccount the number who are on the verge of poverty or living month to month…whichis approximately 60% of ALL Americans)…and then consider why, in the face of adeficit CAUSED by tax cuts for the rich, Wall Street crimes, and wars/military,we’re looking to decimate programs that help people avoid poverty, and surviveit.

The fact is, addressing poverty is paramount to addressingour economic crisis…and is the very epitome of justice. Here are the numbers:

The ranks of America’s poor is now 49.1 million — or 16percent — due to rising medical costs and other expenses that make it harderfor people to stay afloat, according to new census estimates.

Moreover, in 2006, interest payments on consumer debt hadalready put more than four million people, not officially in poverty, below theline, making them “debtpoor.” Similarly, if childcarecosts, estimated at $5,750 a year in 2006, were deducted from gross income,many more people would be counted as officially poor.

AS David Dayen notes, “Nor are these catastrophic levels ofpoverty merely a temporary response to rising unemployment rates or reductionsin take-home pay resulting from the great economic meltdown of 2008. Thenumbers tell the story and it’s clear enough: poverty was on the rise beforethe Great Recession hit. Between 2001 and 2007, poverty actually increased forthe first time on record during an economic recovery. It rose from 11.7%in 2001 to 12.5% in 2007. Poverty rates for single mothers in 2007 were49% higher in the U.S. than in 15 other high-income countries. Similarly,black employment rates and income were declining before the recessionstruck.

The biggest increase in poverty rates came from elderlyAmericans aged 65 or older. It was always a point of pride that the combinationof Social Security and Medicare drastically reduced elderly poverty. Under theold statistics, just 9% of seniors were seen as living in poverty. However,because the new formula takes into account out-of-pocket medical costs,particularly rising deductibles and prescription drugs, that number has jumpedby 2.7 million, and now represents 15.9% of all seniors, roughly 1 in 6. Thisis consistent with the rest of the population.

This is an important finding. What we’re seeing is thatSocial Security and Medicare are NOT ENOUGH to keep millions of seniors out ofpoverty. This comes at a time when the elites in Washington are trying to findways to cut Social Security benefits or phaseout Medicare. These new poverty statistics should stop that dead in itstracks. But it won’t.

Frances Fox Piven elaborates, “…It’s amazing that this isonly known intuitively – as seen in the Occupy Wall Street protests – and itnot the only basic set of statistics every American should have handy torecite. The story goes that Wall Street destroyed the economy with excessiverisk and inflation of a housing bubble, destroyed the lives and jobs ofmillions of Americans when it all came crashing down, got nursed back to healthby a pliant set of government bureaucrats, spending taxpayer money torehabilitate them, and now they are doing as well as or better than any sectorin the economy.

The poor -- and blacks -- were an endlessly usefulrhetorical foil, a propagandistic distraction used to win elections and makebigger gains. Still, the rhetoric was important. A host of new thinktanks, political organizations, and lobbyists in Washington D.C. promoted themessage that the country’s problems were caused by the poor whoseshiftlessness, criminal inclinations, and sexual promiscuity were beingindulged by a too-generous welfare system.

Genuine suffering followed quickly enough, along with bigcuts in the means-tested programs that helped the poor. The staging ofthe cuts was itself enwreathed in clouds of propaganda, but cumulatively theyfrayed the safety net that protected both the poor and workers, especiallylow-wage ones, which meant women and minorities. When Ronald Reagan entered theOval Office in 1980, the path had been smoothed for huge cuts in programs forpoor people, and by the 1990s the Democrats, looking for electoral strategiesthat would raise campaign dollars from big business and put them back in power,took up the banner. It was Bill Clinton, after all, who campaigned on theslogan “end welfare as we know it.”

The Economic Policy Institute has more on the REAL victimsof this economy, reporting that the typical working-age household, which hadalready seen a decline of roughly $2,300 in income between 2000 and 2006, lost another $2,700between 2007 and 2009. And when “recovery” arrived, however uncertainly,it was mainly in low-wage industries, which accountedfor nearly half of what growth there was. Manufacturingcontinued to contract, while the labor market lost 6.1% of payrollemployment. New investment, when it occurred at all, was more likely tobe in machinery than in new workers, sounemployment levels remain alarmingly high.

Banks and Need for Financial Transaction Tax

This is an idea I’ve been pushing for a few years too, andits an example of going on the offense, as I feel we must do more of. And thankfully, in part due to OWS, the idea is gaining steam (and has been implemented in the UK already).

Let’s remember the reality of the bank bailout and itseffects. A recentstudy by Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura of University of Michigan shows thatbanks did not increase their lending after getting bailed out by the governmentafter the crisis. Similarly, the economy did not come roaring back to lifeafter the crisis, and is now stuck at an unacceptable level of unemployment.

Clearly, we are in desperate need of new revenue, and wherebetter to get it than from the EXACT kind of stock trading that was responsiblefor the bubble bursting in the first place?

The idea is simple: Every time someone buys or sells astock, bond, or derivative, a tax of 0.03% is applied to the transaction. Thisis a minuscule tax in real terms. If someone gave you $100,000 in stocks or bondsas a gift, it would cost you thirty bucks. It would only cost $300 if they gaveyou a million dollars' worth. You'd spend more than that on dessert when youwent out to celebrate that night. This would generate as much as $350 BILLION ayear.

Again, the concept is economic justice: Criminals should payfor their crimes. The wealthy should pay their fair share. The ones who ruinedthe economy should help bear the cost of fixing it. And we must make sure thatthis sort of reckless greed is brought under control once and for all.

As Richard Eskrow notes, "Electronic traders make their moneyfrom billions of high-speed trades, most of which are conducted without humanintervention. These aren't reasoned judgments about the worth of a stock or thestate of the world economy. They're mob panics, conducted at high speed, wheresoftware programs try to figure out who's buying and selling and getting aheadof the wave -- without ever knowing what it means in real-world terms. Thesetrades don't contribute anything of value to society. They don't create jobs orgrowth, and they don't create wealth - except for the traders, who are drainingmoney out of the productive economy with every mindless, robotic mass trade.It's gambling, pure and simple, and the financial transactions tax will slowthis electronic fun fair down once and for all. It will apply a touch of thebrakes to the Wall Street Crazy Train.

That might, just might, help prevent the next financialdisaster. And it will bring much-needed money into the Treasury."

The fact is the largest banks are larger than they were whenObama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making beforethe depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.

Wall Street firms are doing even better. They earned more in the first21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eightyears of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.

Behind this turnaround, in significant measure, aregovernment policies that helped the financial sector avert collapse and thengave financial firms huge benefits on the path to recovery. It’s obviously WAY PAST time to start making the banks workfor the people, not the people work for banks.

Corporate Tax Dodgers and the Estate Tax

This from an action alert I received from Roots Action: Anew report finds that during the past three years, GENERAL ELECTRIC paid a taxrate of negative 45%. Among 30 major corporations paying negative taxes(they are richer after taxes than before, often receiving rebatechecks) were WELLS FARGO and VERIZON.

Big corporations want the rights of “persons” but don’t want to pay any taxes.Instead, they get the public – actual persons – to pay their taxes andsubsidize them . . . even as these businesses amass huge profits.

Corporations are supposed to pay 35% in taxes. But Wells Fargo received$17.9 billion in tax breaks. Verizon got $12.3 billion. G.E. took$8.4 billion."

As for attempts to eliminate the estate tax (and successfulefforts to cut it), another way of redistributing wealth to the rich, despiteRepublican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to theso-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percentof estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010compromise.

Now, the TaxPolicy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted.Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute"less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax willcollect."

Again, we AREN'T BROKE, there's plenty of money out there...the question is priorities...

Super Committee and The Benefits of Failure

I have said, over and over, that we should all be praying thesupercommittee fails, because at least in the case of the so called “trigger”,there’s more defense cuts in it, and, the fact is, if Congress doesn’t have thestomach for those trigger cuts, they can simply not enact them...which is alsoa better option.

Remember, ANY agreement by the SuperCommittee necessarilymeans at least one Republican AGREES with it…and of course, they vote in unison…thusit would have to be something they’d likely all support, which means disaster,particularly for Medicare and Medicaid.

As for influence, consider this: According to a September2011 report by Public Campaign and National People’s Action, the 12 members ofthe Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction have received $41 million from thefinancial sector during their time in Congress and at least 27 current orformer aides for the committee members have lobbied on behalf of financialfirms.

As Robert Borosage notes, “the misbegotten offspring of thesummer’s debt ceiling deal, is charged with reducing the deficit by a minimumof $1.2 trillion over 10 years by cutting spending or raising taxes….If itfails, then $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts in discretionary spending, splitbetween domestic and Pentagon budgets, kick in.

In fact, the economy already faces a severe hit from thefolly of the deficit hawks. Republicans have obstructed every portion of thepresident’s modest job plan. Spending from the Recovery Act is ending. Thefirst of the enforced spending cuts from the deficit deal are kicking in.Extended unemployment insurance is due to expire at the end of the year, as isthe payroll tax cut. JP Morgan Chief U.S. Economist Michael Feroli estimatesthose measures will cut gross domestic product by about 1.7 percent in 2012,virtually driving the U.S. into recession. With companies sitting on $2trillion in profits looking for customers, there is no indication the privatesector will replace the jobs or demand.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted that thedeal offered Republicans was about 6 to 1 in spending cuts to tax hikes, and farto the right of even the Senate’s bipartisan gang of six proposals. Inevitably,committee Republicans rejected the proposal out of hand, refusing to considerany tax increases or defense cuts, offering a smaller alternative plan of some$2.2 trillion, featuring deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare and a tokenfigure of $4 billion in tax cuts.

If this is success, failure looks more attractive. If theCommittee fails to agree automatic cuts kick in on the discretionary side ofthe budget—$1.2 trillion over ten years, split between the military budget anddomestic programs beginning in 2013. In the first year, $54 billion will be cutfrom each, or about 9 percent from core budgets.

Exempted from the domestic cuts are many of the core socialprograms the most vulnerable rely on—Social Security, Medicaid, veteran’sbenefits, Pell grants, food stamps, children’s health (CHIP), and childnutrition. Cuts in Medicare payments to providers are limited to a 2 percentcut in payments to providers. The cuts in other programs—public health,education, the environment, renewable energy, disease prevention, healthresearch and more—would be brutal. But the programs for the poor and vulnerableare likely to fare better in event of failure, than in event of a grand bargain.

The Defense Department would similarly face cuts of about 9percent, which added to the trimming already in Pentagon projections, would cutnearly $1 trillion from the department’s ten-year budget. This leads generalsto fulminate about “catastrophic” and “doomsday” measures. “We talkinghundreds of airplanes and thousands of people” warned Air Force Chief of StaffNorton Swartz. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has vowed this “won’t happen onmy watch.”

But coming at the end of two wars, cuts in the military arelong overdue. In fact the reductions include savings on the wars that couldeasily amount to $700 billion or so over 10 years. And the Pentagon’s corebudget has doubled since 2001. As the Project for Defense Alternative reportnoted, the Pentagon would suffer a cut, in inflation-adjusted terms, from $5.99trillion over 10 years to $5.18 trillion. This would return it, in realdollars, all the way back to its fiscal 2007 budget, hardly unilateraldisarmament. We would still be spending on the military almost as much as therest of the world combined.

VIDEO SECTION

You’ve got to LOVE Elizabeth Warren!! This is the future ofthe Democratic Party…if it has one at all:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/warren-not-backing-occupy-support-after-rove

The Story of Broke: The United States isn’t broke; we’re therichest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us aredoing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producingmore pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. Watch!

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-broke/

FROM C&L: Ed Schultz talked to USPS letter carrier and Rep. Joe Walsh(i.e. TEABAGGER) constituent Melissa Rakestraw about her encounter with Walshat a recent meeting he had where he basically melted down and started screamingat Rakestraw and some of the others who were unfortunate enough to be attendingthat event.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/ed-schultz-talks-usps-letter-carrier-who-w

Rachel Maddow on Herman Cain as a "performance artistand "the practical joke no one is getting"…

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/artist-known-herman-cains-koch-brother-tie

FROM C&L: musicians David Crosby andGraham Nash made an appearance (AFTER PLAYING AT OWS) on Democracy Now and treated the audience thereto another a cappella performance of Crosby's new song, "What Are Their Names"in studio.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/legendary-folk-duo-crosby-and-nash-soundtr

ARTICLE SECTION

Why Mitt Romney's Entitlement-Privatization Plan is Crazy,by Matt Taibbi

A FEW CLIPS:

Your typical Medicare/Social Security recipient mightalready have been ripped off three different ways in this era. He might havebeen sold a crappy mortgage or a refi by a Countrywide-type firm (which oftentargeted the elderly). He might then also have unwittingly become an investorin such mortgages and seen the value of his retirement holdings devastated(many of the banks sold their crappy mortgage-backed securities to statepension funds). Lastly, if he paid taxes, he saw part of his tax money go topay off the bets the banks made against these same mortgages.

So now that Wall Street has ripped off this segment ofsociety three times, it makes all the sense in the world that Mitt Romney – aformer Wall Street superstar who was a chief architect ofthe modern executive-compensation-driven corporation – is coming backand telling us that we need to cut their Medicare and Social Security benefitsin order to defray the cost of the previous three scams.

SNIP

We’ve just witnessed an episode of industry-wide financialmismanagement that surely has no parallel in history. From Lehman Brothers toAIG to Goldman and Morgan Stanley (which in 2008 needed the unprecedentedemergency granting of a commercial bank charter to avoid bankruptcy) toCitigroup (which needed a $25billion bailout and $300 billion in federal guarantees to survive) toBear Stearns (dead) and Merrill Lynch (dead) and so on, virtually every singleone of America’s leading financial institutions from the last decade is eitheralready out of business or functionally insolvent and living off governmentlife support and cheap cash from the Fed.

SNIP

So the mere hint that these banks might be deniedfuture bailouts caused a company as massive as Bank of America to be downgradedto just above junk status. That means, in other words, that without theimplicit promise of government aid, Wall Street considers these banks to bejunk or below-junk businesses. Evaluated purely on their own merits, withoutthe implicit attachment to the taxpayer, these companies actually have negative trustworthiness.

And these are the people we want managing the nation’sSocial Security accounts? If there wasn’t such a very real chance that this couldhappen, it would be worth laughing about, but unfortunately it’s no joke. It’sa testament to the tenacious idiocy of our national media that an idea likeSocial Security privatization could continue to be publicly contemplated, inthe wake of a disaster on the scale we’ve just gone through.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/08-11

Pew Report on Young-Old Wealth Gap is Misleading andDivisive; Could Fuel Intergenerational Class War, By Joshua Holland

A FEW CLIPS:

As a result, whereas older families had 10 times theaccumulated wealth of those headed by people under 35 back in 1984, that ratiohas now risen to 47-to-1. The authors acknowledge that people accumulate wealthas they get older, and that young people didn't have a lot of it back in 1984,but economist Dean Baker told AlterNet that this fact renders the findinglittle more than a bit of trivia. “The idea of using a ratio is reallyproblematic in this context,” he said. “Young people have no wealth. They hadno wealth in 1984 and they have no wealth now. The fact that the ratio of thewealth of older households to younger households has increased hugely tells usalmost nothing.”

It tells us even less because, as Baker noted, the studycontains a serious flaw. Back in the 1980s, traditional, employer-managedpensions were the primary means of saving for retirement in the United States,but during the intervening years there was a huge shift toward 401(k)s (andsimilar accounts), which now represent over80 percent of private retirement savings. Traditional pensions weren’tcounted as part of a household’s net-worth, but 401(k)s are. So comparing thewealth of older households that didn’t include their nest-eggs in 1984 tothose in 2009 which count the money people have socked away as partof their net worth is like comparing apples to oranges.

SNIP

Most of the difference between older and younger families'net worths relates to housing wealth. Half of homeowners over 65 bought theirhomes before the run-up of the housing bubble began in the late 1990s, whilemany younger families with homes bought while the bubble was inflated and werebadly hurt when it popped. Almost two-thirds of those over 65 who have a homeown it free and clear with no mortgage.

So, stripping away the sensational headline numbers, whatyou get is that the median household headed by people 65 and over saw thevalues of their homes increase by about $50,000 over the past 25 years, butwere able to accumulate little in the way of other assets. Somewhat buried inthe study is the fact that when you exclude housing wealth, the median networth of households headed by older Americans is a third lower today than itwas back in 1984.

SNIP

The real story here is that younger families in the middleof the pile have fallen way behind, as thoseat the top have grabbed an ever-increasing share of the nation's income. AsDean Baker put it, “the ratio of the wealth of the top one percent to the restof the population has risen by much more than that of people over 65 and thoseunder age 35.”

The way these findings are being interpreted can only stokeyoung people's sense of resentment and divide the vast majority of Americanswho are suffering through the same economic catastrophe. It can only feed thepolitics of grievance, which is ultimately just what the “granny-bashers” want.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/153012/pew_report_on_young-old_wealth_gap_is_misleading_and_divisive%3B_could_fuel_intergenerational_class_war/

2011-11-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: OWS Thoughts, Chomsky, Moyers, Banana Republic Facts, Corporate Tax Cheats, Moore/Maddow

Before I begin, I've got two AMAZING speeches (as articles) in the article section PERFECTLY laying out how and why we got to this point - as in the right wing movement begun in the 70's that has brought us back to the Gilded Age. I speak of Noam Chomsky at OWS, and Bill Moyers at Public Citizens 40th anniversary. I've included large clips of them on this blog in case you can't read all of each (both are over 10 pages). And, please be sure to MOVE YOUR MONEY...(if a Bank of America customer go here)...I did about a year ago...best decision I ever made...F*** the big banks...they don't deserve your business.

Also, read about my friend's FANTASTIC documentary called "Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?" on the Huffington Post.

OWS Thoughts…

Obviously since last I posted the Occupy Movement has onlygrown…and this is a really good thing. In fact, the city I live in has been afocal point (Oakland) for this growth, and attention. Clearly, the fewanarchists and trouble makers that are simply looking for opportunities to vandalizeand cause havoc have found a home here in Oakland, and likely in other protestareas across the country in months to come. This, sadly, will continue to be achallenge…because such actions only hurt the movement in the eyes of thepublic, especially in light of the way the corporate media so desperately wantsto disparage it.

With that said, don’t fall prey to the meme that the movement is violent or out of control, because in fact, its OVERWHELMINGLY peaceful, and anyone who isn’t, by definition, is not a partof it. Moving forward I hope that the movement will work WITH police and localgovernments to catch and apprehend these perpetrators – something that hasalready happened in Oakland but went largely unreported. Similarly, I hope themovement will continue to pass through General Assemblies across the countrydeclarations of non-violence.

On that note, I was glad to see Michael Moore on Rachel Maddow's show make this very same point.

I would also urge that protesters do their best, and I thinklargely they have, to avoid demonizing or spending too much ire and energy onlocal mayors and police. This only gets off message, and say, in the case ofMayor Jean Quan of Oakland, while her leadership has been a little confused andweak, she is NOT the enemy. If we start calling everyone that doesn’t doexactly as we like evil, or the "enemy", we will start to lose credibility whilesimultaneously pushing away potential future allies.

As for the media and pundits that are clamoring for demands, and criticizing what they perceive as a lackof message, I will say again…the message is clear, its what I’ve been writing abouton this blog, day in, day out (though only weekly lately), for 7 years now.There are also PLENTY of demands that have been enumerated, some more general(like greater economic justice), and some more specific (like restoring GlassSteagall), in Occupy gatherings throughout the nation.

It’s telling to watch the corporate media trip all overitself in an endless loop over the “message”. Is there a better example of theMatrix’s confusion…and desperate need for an easy to understand, corporateapproved, digestible sound bite…with clear leaders and spokespeople spellingout for the stenographers exactly what they “want”?

As I have said, the message is on sign after sign, themessage is in every new study that comes out showing students falling intodebt, college becoming unaffordable, record corporate profits in the face ofrecord numbers in poverty, never ending wars and 25 millionunemployed/underemployed, and increasing dependence and burning of fossil fuelsas our climate continues to cause untold damage across the planet (see lateststudy that shows the global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped thispast year by the largest number in history…so we’re going BACKWARDS)…and ofcourse, the list goes on and on.

As attorney Dahlia Lithwick described it, “It’s a movementthat feels no need to explain anything to the powers that be, although it isdeftly changing the way we explain ourselves to one another.”

Reasons for Occupy Wall Street: Our Banana Republic

As I am keen to keep doing, here’s some more factoids tokeep in mind ANYTIME someone asks why these protests are happening…which also directly illustrate whyour capitalist system is clearly broke and in need of STRUCTURAL REFORMS:

America's median wage fell by 7% over the last decade -- asincomes for the top 1% tripled.
One in four children -- or 16.4 million overall – live inpoverty.
Last year, another 2.6 million people sank beneath thepoverty line, rendering the number of Americans now official impoverished at46.2 million, the highest number in 52 years.
In California, unemployment hovers around 12 percent, andone out of four children suffers from hunger as their families struggle to feedthem.
Just147 companies control 40% of global corporate wealth.
The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their shareof the nation’s income over the last three decades

Specifically the new GAO report no less made these points:

The most affluent fifth of the population received 53percent of after-tax household income in 2007, up from 43 percent in 1979. Inother words, the after-tax income of the most affluent fifth exceeded theincome of the other four-fifths of the population.
People in the lowest fifth of the population receivedabout 5 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, down from 7 percent in1979.
People in the middle three-fifths of the population sawtheir shares of after-tax income decline by 2 to 3 percentage points from 1979to 2007.

And what of Big Oil?

Exxon Mobil just reported quarterly earnings of $10.3billion, a surge of 41% from last year and Shell's net income rose to $6.98billion from $3.46 billion in the same period in 2010. Chevron announced $7.83billion in profits, and BP earned nearly $5 billion.

But do you know the worst part? While the Big Oil companies rake in obsceneprofits, they’re also getting billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies.

Over the past decade, the big five oil companies -- BP, Chevron,ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell -- have enjoyed more than $900 billion inprofits. At the same time, these oil companies benefit from more than $4 billion inspecial tax breaks and other giveaways every year. Why are we subsidizing oneof the most profitable industries? Why does ExxonMobil get a tax break while somany Americans are struggling to make ends meet and get stuck paying higher gasprices?

Corporate Tax Cheats

(Most of this summary is from Sam Pizzigati of the Campaign for America's Future): A comprehensive study released by Citizens for Tax Justice(a group I specifically highlighted WAY BACK in my original Take the Red Pillop-ed) found the 280 profitable companies grabbed a combined $1.4 trillion inprofits over the three-year 2008-2010 time span.

These 280 corporations could have paid, under the tax code,over $473 billion in federal corporate incomes taxes. They actually paid only$250.8 billion, a tax discount of $222.7 billion.

That means these companies faced federal income tax billsequal to 18.5 percent of their profits during the last three years — littlemore than half the official corporate rate of 35 percent and lower than theircompetitors in many industrialized countries.

The tax subsidy “discount” for 2010 alone: $85.1 billion.Over a decade, that annual tax avoidance savings adds up to well overthree-quarters of a trillion dollars, enough to fill all sorts of holes in thefederal budget — and “avoid” massive cuts in public services.

In the 1950s tax dollars from corporations offset about aquarter of federal outlays, while last year, corporate tax dollars covered only6 percent of federal expenditures. That’s A CRITICAL STAT…because it lays waste to the argument that our budget problems are spending on social programs thathelp people, but rather, the real cause is that those that have it all are failing to pay their fairshare.

The study said that the shelters and loopholes in thecurrent tax system rewarded companies that aggressively avoided taxes at theexpense of those that did not. A quarter of the companies in the study had afederal tax bill of 35 percent of their profits, while a similar number had aneffective rate of less than 10 percent.

General Electric recorded $5.1 billion in American profitsin 2010, but claimed a federal income tax benefit of $3.2 billion in itsregulatory filing.

The company that recorded the biggest reduction in taxes wasWells Fargo Bank, which is a large holding of Mr. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway.The banking company reported a total of $49 billion in profits in 2008 through2010, yet received a tax benefit of $651 million.

American companies with significant profits overseasactually paid more in taxes to foreign governments than they did in the UnitedStates. Rather than lowering the corporate rate more, the study said, thefederal government should end the subsidies and shelters that favorcompanies that game the system.

Reasons for Optimism: People are Catching On

As the Occupy Wall Street protest and growing 99 PercentMovement enters its second month, poll after poll shows public support for themovement. Here’s the rundown.

70… percent of Americans have heard “a lot” or “some” about the 99 PercentMovement.

67… percent of Americans think it would be a “bad idea” to lower taxes on large corporations.

66 …percent of Americans think the distribution of money andwealth in this country should be “more evenly distributed among more people.”

65 …percent of Americans think taxes should be raised on millionaires.

66 …percent of New York State voters support a millionaire’s tax.

58 …percent of New York State voters agree with the views of the Wall Street protesters.

46 …percent of Americans think the 99 Percent Movement “reflect[s] the views of most Americans,”compared to just 34 percent who say it does not.

43 …percent of Americans agree with the views of protesters, compared to just 27 percentwho disagree.

The 1% Wants Higher Taxes on Millionaires Too

68 …percent of millionaire investors support raising taxes on millionaires.

61 …percent of investors with a net worth of more than $5million support raising taxes on millionaires.

Obama, the Super Committee, and the Fascist GOP Clown Car

Let me begin by a brief overview of the President, who, as Isaid would happen for years, if he just started taking up the populist mantle(though its largely just words…but some actions) he could VASTLY improve hischances of re-election (which I also have said will happen). But, while himtalking populism is better than him not, there remains some deep concerns on mypart.

But, let’s start with the good. By finally going after theGOP, day in and day out, particularly on his jobs bill, people are finally, atleast getting an inkling of the GOP’s real endgame: sabotaging the economy inorder to beat Obama in 2012.

Consider the last 3 filibusters of his jobs bill:

Oct. 11: 100 percent of Senate Republicans voted againstmillions of American jobs in order to protect the very wealthiest Americans —the top 0.5 percent — from having to pay their fair share.
Oct. 20: 100 percent of Senate Republicans voted against nearly400,000 jobs for teachers, firefighters, and copsin order to protect the verywealthiest Americans — the top 0.5 percent — from having to pay their fairshare.
Yesterday: 100 percent of Senate Republicans voted against450,000 Americans jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, airports, andother critical infrastructurein order to protect the very wealthiest Americans— the top 0.5 percent — from having to pay their fair share.

Similarly, Obama has begun to do another thing I’ve beenadvocating FOR A LONG TIME: using executive orders to at least do something.The modest help (though he could do MORE on this front…using TARP $$) he’sgiving to homeowners is better than nothing. His order to help studentsconsolidate loans will help some too. These moves also highlight keydifferences between the parties, as the GOP wants to increase foreclosures andEND student loans altogether (or privatize).

So, what ELSE could the President do without Congress’shelp? David Dayen lays out some specifics…keep an eye out if any of these arefollowed…because remember, NOTHING will pass the GOP house or overcome thefilibuster in the Senate: “He can issue executive orders mandating that thefederal government’s contractors and suppliers of products pay their workersgood wages and have decent benefits. He could create a White House on improvingjobs and income for the middle class that aggressively works with each agencyto figure out ways to create more good jobs. He could toughen up the BuyAmerica provisions on procurement. He could really begin to squeeze the Chineseon currency manipulation. There are a lot of things the President can do tohelp the middle class and those trying to climb their way into it where hedoesn’t have to wait for Congress. He is not the Legislator-in-Chief: theexecutive branch has enormous powers it can use to help people. I hope the newmessaging strategy coming out of the White House is a sign of more things tocome. Because us 99 percent sure do need the executive branch to be on ourside.

You know where the executive branch has the most ability tohelp the middle class right now? It is in the area of housing and bankingpolicy, which was the topic of Monday’s media announcement. I am very happy thePresident has become increasingly aware of the huge problems in this area, andthat he wants to do something about them. The problem is that it isincreasingly obvious that really big things are needed, because the problems wehave in the banking/housing sector are deadly serious. So while I am happy withsome of the changes the White House announced Monday, such as removing barriersto mortgage holders getting assistance and figuring out how to reduce oreliminate some fees for homeowners wanting to restructure their mortgage, Istill fear that the White House is thinking way too small given the scale ofthe problem.

SNIP

We are not living in a conventional economic moment. Thehousing bubble and subsequent collapse has created wreckage we cannot dig ourway out of with the modest-sized steps the administration laid out…Whilepositive, they are not big enough or bold enough. The only way to solve this iswith a massive writedown of housing debt, and by moving to resolution authorityon the worst of the big banks — doing what the FDIC does all the time withsmaller failing banks, taking them over and selling off the assets in orderlyfashion. However painful, however much the bankers and Republicans in Congresswill scream in outrage, it really is the only answer to fixing our dead in thewater economy.

So that’s some of what he is doing and could do…but, ofcourse, there’s also the bad. There’s his efforts to push an agreement betweenthe state attorney generals and the banks that’s so utterly criminal and sickit pains me to write about. We should all be thanking the Attorney Generals ofNew York, California, and Rhode Island for pulling out of this sham of aproceeding and launching REAL investigations of the criminals that CAUSED thegreat recession we’re now all being asked to pay for.

And of course, all indicators point to the PresidentAPPROVING the Keystone pipeline, which most climatologists believe could justbe the proverbial NAIL in our collective coffin. As George Carlin used to say(I’m paraphrasing), “It’s not the planet that’s going to die, it’s us. Motherearth doesn’t need our help; she’s going to shrug us off like a bad cold.” Well…thefever that we are causing will reach its end point…and we’ve got our foot downon the accelerator.

So, while he’s doing small things better, and talking a muchbetter game, its still the BIG THINGS he’s clearly on the wrong side of…andlikewise, the wrong side of history.

The Super Committee Sham

Not to say I told you so…but I did. The Super Committee ideais proving itself to be the utter useless scam it is…and again, we can thankthe President for this (yes, the GOP is always part of the problem…my focus isless on them). To think that the Democrats initial proposal was FURTHER TO THERIGHT than the Deficit Commission AND the Gang of Six proposals (which includedsuch scum bags as Joe Lieberman)!??

One wonders what in god’s name are theythinking? Do they not see the protests across the country? Do they not see thestudy after study proving the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer…whilethe middle class withers on the vine?

Well, you wouldn’t know it by their proposal to DRASTICALLYcut social security, Medicare and Medicaid. Yes, the Democrats are proposingtax increases on the rich…which is good…but we’re talking about a 5 to 1 ratioof spending cuts to tax increases…when it should be about 1 to 1 - and no cuts in the big three.

Of course, the GOP immediately rejected it and proposed something far worse...and without a single tax increase on the richunder ANY circumstance while decimating what’s left of the New Deal. Notexactly two options I want to be forced to choose from.

So, let’s all hope that they FAIL to come to an agreement…becauseany one they do come to will be criminal.

Perry’s Tax Plan and the GOP Clown Car

Consider the context: As the income gap is atits largest in 80 years, and even as the total federal taxburden is at its smallest in 60, the2012 Republican presidential field is proposing to give tax cuts to the rich and corporations, increases taxes on the poor, create mountains of debt, and decimate investments and safety net programs (and thereby jobs). In other words, the oligarchs are doubling down on oligarchy.

The good news is that because Americans are feeling the economic pain more directly every day, two-thirds ofthe public now say that wealth should be distributed more evenly in the country. Sevenin 10 Americans think the policies of congressional Republicans favor the rich.Two-thirds object to tax cuts for corporations and a similar number preferincreasing income taxes on millionaires. 9 percent of Americans think that the policies of theRepublicans in Congress “favor the middle class and 2 …percent of Americans (who apparently still reside in Bizarro Universe)think that the policies of the Republicans in Congress “favor the poor.”

And look no further than this graph illustrating theDISASTROUS and almost comical effects of Perry’s flat tax:

VIDEO SECTION

Daily Show: Fox News defends the real victims of the epic battle betweenbusinesses and Occupy Wall Street protesters: the demonized 1 percent.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-men-certain-wage

Daily Show skewers some of the most recent blatant GOP race baiting:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-conservative-minorities-vs-libe

Chris Hayes on OWS:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/hayes-we-will-know-ows-working-when-even-r

Glenn Greenwald on his DEAD ON thesis that it’s not justabout wealth injustice that is driving the protests and discontent…it’s a disparityin justice under the law:

http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/karoli/ows-about-justice-not-wealth-or-class

Senator Paul Wellstone died nine years ago last week…andremains my favorite politician in my lifetime. Watch some clips of him:

http://crooksandliars.com/murshedz/open-thread\

Paul Krugman…analysis always worth listening to:

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/paul-krugman-gets-it

Jon Stewart slammed Republicans for their hypocrisy whencriticizing President Obama for agreeing to pull all U.S. combat forces fromIraq, just as George W. Bush signed an agreement to do.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-end-opotamia

Daily Show clip...:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-25-2011/indecision-2012---the-great-right-hope---the-180-club

The GREAT attorney general from New York (the one actuallygoing after the banks instead of kowtowing to them) visits Rachel Maddow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-wkEPY8zudM

Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges on Charlie Rose to talk Occupymovement…about 20 minutes long…excellent stuff:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11961

ARTICLE SECTION

Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy Wall Street

A FEW CLIPS:

The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. Infact, it's spectacular. It's unprecedented; there's never been anything like itthat I can think of. If the bonds and associations that are being establishedat these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead-- because victories don't come quickly-- this could turn out to be a verysignificant moment in American history.

The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quiteappropriate. It is an unprecedented era -- not just this moment -- but actuallysince the 1970s. The 1970s began a major turning point in American history. Forcenturies, since the country began, it had been a developing society with upsand downs. But the general progress was toward wealth and industrialization anddevelopment -- even in dark and hope -- there was a pretty constant expectationthat it's going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

SNIP

The 1970s set off a kind of a vicious cycle that led to aconcentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector,which doesn’t benefit the economy. Concentration of wealth yields concentrationof political power, which, in turn, arrives to legislation that increases andaccelerates the cycle. The physical policies such as tax changes, rules ofcorporate governance, deregulation were essentially bipartisan. Alongside ofthis began a very sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drives thepolitical parties even deeper than before into the pockets of the corporatesector.

A couple years later started a different process. Theparties dissolved, essentially. It used to be if you were a person in Congressand hoped for a position of committee chair or a position of responsibility,you got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, youstarted to have to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead. Thatjust drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporatesector and increasingly the financial sector--a tremendous concentration ofwealth, mainly in the literally top 1/10th of 1 percent of the population.

Meanwhile, for the general population it began an openperiod of pretty much stagnation, or decline for the majority. People got bythrough pretty artificial means -- like borrowing, so a lot of debt. Longerworking hours for many. There was a period of stagnation and a higherconcentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve. There’s alwaysbeen a gap between public policy and the public will, but it just grew kind ofastronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.

Take a look at what’s happening right now. The big topic inWashington that everyone concentrates on is the deficit. For the public,correctly, the deficit is not much of an issue. The issue is joblessness, not adeficit. Now there’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As faras the deficit is concerned, if you want to pay attention to it, the public hasopinions. Take a look at the polls and the public overwhelmingly supportshigher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply during this stagnationperiod, this period of decline. The public wants higher taxes on the wealthyand to preserve the limited social benefits. The outcome of the deficitcommission is probably going to be the opposite. Either they’ll reach anagreement, which will be the opposite of what the public wants, or else it willgo into kind of an automatic procedure which is going to have those effects.Actually that’s something that’s going to happen very quickly. The deficitcommission is going to come up with its decision in a couple of weeks. TheOccupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts toa dagger in the heart of the country, and having negative effects.

http://www.alternet.org/story/152933/noam_chomsky_speaks_to_occupy%3A_if_we_want_a_chance_at_a_decent_future%2C_the_movement_here_and_around_the_world_must_grow/

"Our Politicians Are Money Launderers in theTrafficking of Power and Policy", By Bill Moyers

A FEW CLIPS:

How did this happen?...on August 23, 1971, a corporatelawyer named Lewis Powell – a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giantPhilip Morris and a future Justice of the United States Supreme Court – sent aconfidential memorandum to his friends at the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the topdown. Let’s recall the context: Big Business was beingforced to clean up its act. It was bad enough to corporateinterests that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had sustained its momentum throughHarry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. Suddenly this young lawyer named Ralph Nader arrived on the scene, arousingconsumers with articles, speeches, and above all, an expose of the automobileindustry, Unsafe at Any Speed.

Young activists flocked to work with himon health, environmental, and economic concerns. Congress was moved toact. Even Republicans signed on. In l970 President RichardNixon put his signature on the National Environmental Policy Act and named aWhite House Council to promote environmental quality. A few monthslater millions of Americans turned out for Earth Day. Nixon then agreedto the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress actedswiftly to pass tough new amendments to the Clean Air Act and the EPA announcedthe first air pollution standards. There were new regulations directedat lead paint and pesticides. Corporations were no longer getting awaywith murder.

And Lewis Powell was shocked – shocked! – at what he called“an attack on the American free enterprise system.” Not justfrom a few “extremists of the left,” he said, but also from “perfectlyrespectable elements of society,” including the media, politicians, and leadingintellectuals. Fight back, and fight back hard, he urged hiscompatriots. Build a movement. Set speakers loose across the country. Take on prominent institutions of public opinion – especially the universities,the media, and the courts. Keep television programs under “constantsurveillance.” And above all, recognize that political power must be“assiduously (sic) cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be usedaggressively and with determination” and “without embarrassment.”

Powell imagined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a council ofwar. Since business executives had “little stomach for hard-nose contestwith their critics” and “little skill in effective intellectual andphilosophical debate,” they should create new think tanks, legal foundations,and front groups of every stripe. It would take years, but these groupscould, he said, be aligned into a united front (that) would only come aboutthrough “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency ofaction over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing availableonly through joint effort, and in the political power available only throughunited action and united organizations.”

SNIP

Even as the Chamber was doubling its membership and triplingits budget in response to Lewis Powell’s manifesto, the coalition got anotherpowerful jolt of adrenalin from the wealthy right-winger who had served asNixon’s secretary of the treasury, William Simon. His polemic entitled ATime for Truth argued that “funds generated by business” must “rush bymultimillions” into conservative causes to uproot the institutions and “theheretical strategy” [his term] of the New Deal. He called on “men ofaction in the capitalist world” to mount “a veritable crusade” against progressiveAmerica. Business Week magazine somberly explained that “…it will be abitter pill for many Americans to swallow the idea of doing with less so thatbig business can have move.”

I’m not making this up. And so it came to pass; came to pass despite your heroicefforts and those of other kindred citizens; came to pass because those “men ofaction in the capitalist world” were not content with their wealth just to buymore homes, more cars, more planes, more vacations and more gizmos than anyoneelse. They were determined to buy more democracy than anyone else. Andthey succeeded beyond their own expectations. After their 40-year“veritable crusade” against our institutions, laws and regulations –against the ideas, norms and beliefs that helped to create America’s iconicmiddle class – the Gilded Age is back with a vengeance.

SNIP

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wanted to find out “howour economy stopped working to provide prosperity and security for the broadmiddle class.” They wanted to know: “Who dunnit?”

They found the culprit: “It’s the politics, stupid!” Tracingthe clues back to that “unseen revolution” of the 1970s – the revolt triggeredby Lewis Powell, fired up by William Simon, and fueled by rich corporations andwealthy individuals – they found that ‘Step by step and debate by debateAmerica’s public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics andthe American economy in ways that have benefitted the few at the expense of themany.”

There you have it: they bought off the gatekeepers, gotinside, and gamed the system. And when the fix was in, they let loose theanimal spirits. turning our economy into a feast for predators. And they won – as the rich and powerful got richer and more powerful – theynot only bought the government, they “saddled Americans with greater debt,tore new holes in the safety net, and imposed broad financial risks on workers,investors, and taxpayers.” Until – write Hacker and Pierson - “TheUnited States is looking more and more like the capitalist oligarchies ofBrazil, Mexico, and Russia where most of the wealth is concentrated at the topwhile the bottom grows larger and larger with everyone in between just barelygetting by.”

http://www.truth-out.org/how-did-happen/1320278111

2011-10-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Occupy Wall Street, The Flat Tax, Greenwald, Hedges, Colbert, GOP Clown Car

I’ve got two phenomenal articles today, one from GlennGreenwald the other from Chris Hedges (who I still think focuses a little too much of his ire on the liberal "elites"...but brilliant nonetheless)…and both are about the Occupy Wall Streetmovement….must reads…

I'm going to discuss Iraq and Libya next post...

Occupy Wall Street, the Media and the Message

Let me begin with a couple more factoids illustrating WHYprotests are breaking out across the country…and in fact why this is the ONLYway change will come. I also keep putting these up in hopes some will stick...because this is the kind of "ammo" we will need to convince people they need to get more active and engaged.

Corporate tax revenue in 2010 was 27% lower than 2000, eventhough corporate profits are up 60% over the last decade.
Since 2000, over 12 million Americans have lost theirhealth insurance.
Since 2000, nearly 12 million Americans have slippedout of the middle class and into poverty.
1% of Americans own 42% of thecountry's wealth
24 million people in this country can't find a full-time job
50 million people can'tsee a doctor when they're sick
47 million people in this country need government helpto feed themselves
15 million families owe more on their mortgage than thevalue of home

For all these reasons and more, it should be more thanevident that real change can no longer be expected simply through the ballotbox. As the saying goes, there are only two kinds of power in America: Organized money andorganized people.

And as Chris Hedges consistently points out, correctly, we onthe left have focused too much of our time on electing Democrats that sell usout, and not enough time on social movement building, protests, and directlychallenging the Matrix – which includes large swaths of the Democratic Party.

This is not to say that voting isn’t critical, andwe still must do it, and there are still fundamental differences between theparties. These truths are self evident…but they simply shouldn’t be our primarymission and focus anymore (ala Hedges constant criticisms of groups likeMoveon…though I think he overdoes it).

Nonetheless, while real differences remain between theparties, we should also be very clear that the Democratic Party as it standstoday is wholly inadequate and unwilling to even talk about, let alone fightfor, the things that are really needed. I won’t go into the long list of whythis is right now, but suffice it to say, while they score very high on say,our consumer rights legislative scorecard, this can be misleading (thoughimportant in light of the dismal GOP scores). We must remember the REALLY goodand important ideas aren’t even tried or discussed…therefore the bills theyscore high on are ones that anyone in their right mind would support and votefor.

In other words, the Matrix itself limits the scope of thedebate, and the actions that can ever be discussed, let alone taken. This iscritical…and points to the structural changes that are needed, and that canonly be achieved, by MASSIVE SOCIAL STRUGGLE and civil disobedience…as almostall successful movements, and paradigm shifts in the past have been, be itwomen’s suffrage, labor rights, or civil rights…and that’s just in America…thesame struggles were necessary around the world and throughout history.

What Difference Has the Movement Made to Date?

One of the criticisms from some in the Democratic party of the movement has been "where were these people when we were trying to reform wall street!" Or, "protests do nothing, only voting will change things." First, there is an assumption here that those protesting didn't vote in 2008, or won't in the future. Similarly, there is an assumption that they have never been active in the past. No proof of these assertions is of course offered. Even if correct on the not voting, the issue now is where do we go from here?

I'd also argue that such mass demonstrations DO make a difference on a number of fronts, from changing the narrative, pushing the debate left (and Democratic leaders), educating the public, and forcing corporate and GOP forces to expose themselves due to panic and fear. While its true that this movement, to be fully effective, must reach the ballot box, let's review what has already been accomplished.

For evidence, consider the past year: Remember the constant talk from theausterity class, including our President, about the “deficit crisis” and theneed to cut social security and Medicare? Remember the deficit commission(newsflash…they’re deadlocked…let’s hope it stays that way) and the debt limit "crisis"? Even in light ofALL known respected economists and documented history that pointed to the need for jobs…andSPENDING/INVESTMENTS to create them, all we got was one big criminalcompetition between right wing fascists and Democratic Party cowards andcorporatists about who could cut desperately needed spending and publicprograms the most! How much can we give the rich and stick it to everyone elsewhile keeping a straight face as they talked about deficits, rather than say unemployment? Do you hear this debate now?

That was the nightmare, bizarro world we had been living in, and the OccupyWall Street movement has completely and totally reframed the discussion…whichnow, finally, focuses on the core issues that truly matter…economic injustice,wealth disparity, wall street deregulation, corporate crime, unemployment,wages, and on down the line.

The media and political debate has fundamentally changed…theGOP is in retreat…they are confused and scared…Democrats, as per usual, arelargely in favor, with the corporate wing tripping over themselves to disownit. But its all about the discussion…and the Matrix, on this front, has beenpunctured.

But don’t take my word for it, as ThinkProgress cataloged, the corporate media sought earlyon to attack the Occupy Wall Street protest and the 99 Percent Movement as awhole. Right-wing outlets like Fox News and The Daily Caller continue to do so,but the 99 Percent Movement appears to have had a profound impact on the mediaat large.

A ThinkProgress review of the media coverage of the lastweek of July found that the word “debt” was mentioned more than 7,000 times onMSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, and “unemployed” was only mentioned 75 times:

Yet now, things have changed. With the debt ceiling debatesbehind the country and thanks partly to the pressure being brought uponpoliticians and the media by the 99 Percent Movement and the occupations takingplace all over the country, it looks as if the press is finally focusing on thejobs crisis and the behavior of Wall Street instead. A ThinkProgress review ofthe same three networks between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16 finds that the word “debt”only netted 398 mentions, while “occupy” grabbed 1,278, Wall Street netted2,378, and jobs got 2,738:

Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellencein Journalism released an analysis of 52 different major media outlets andfound that coverage of Occupy Wall Street dominated news coverage the week ofOctober 10th, as stories related to the 99 Percent Movement filled 10 percent of the total “newshole.”

And, as the Center for American Progress also details, the combination of increased attention and a message that resonates has led the movement expanding too: "Thereare large occupations in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, and other major cities. On Oct. 15, the movementearned global solidarity as hundreds of thousands of people reach upwards of 1,233,000. The occupations across thecountry are persisting despite very aggressive action by city officials andpolice to try to restrict overnight protests in public parks. Well over a thousand Americans have been arrested formisdemeanors related to sleeping overnight in parks or obstructing traffic — anumber that is in stark contrast to the almost no senior executives at majorbanks who have been arrested for fraud related to the global recession." rallied for social justiceworldwide, with “99 Percent” signs showing up in countries as far apart asCanada and South Korea. By last week, the number of Facebook “Likes” on themore than 500 Occupy Facebook groups

Again, let’s look at some of the specific reasons why it’s expanding:

Fifty-four percent of Americans agree with the protesters,versus 44 percent who think President Obama is doing a good job.
Seventy-three percent of Americans want prosecutionsfor Wall Street executives for the crisis.
Seventy-nine percent think the gap between rich and poor istoo large.
Eighty-six percent say Wall Street and its lobbyists havetoo much power in Washington.
Sixty-eight percent think the rich should pay more in taxes.
Twenty-five percent of the public considers itself upset, 45percent is concerned about the country and 25 percent is downright angry.

We’re such a conservative country, right? The fact is, themovement is making A LOT of Democrats (GOP are a criminal enterprise, not aparty) choose between - in large part anyway - their biggest donors and what’sright, and what the people want. This is VERY important.

Of course, this energy and activism still must be translatedto the voting booth…though we’ve seen what elections get us…not all that much.Yes, vote…but more important is to keep pounding the pavement and changingpeople’s minds and the media’s narrative. In some ways, this movement IS THEPRIMARY CHALLENGE to Obama many of us wanted…but without some of the potentialfor damage to his general election campaign.

I especially love how this movement has cornered andconfused all those centrist Democrats out there that are bending over backwardsto straddle the middle here…which there really isn’t one.

As noted by Matt Stoller, “This movement hasheightened the contradictions of both parties, the Wall Street funding of theDemocratic Party and its associated institutions, as well as the faux populismof the Tea Party-infused Republican. The main message of the occupiers is thatthe government and Wall Street are one tangled corrupt mess screwing everyoneelse. Centrists, many of whom live in the Democratic Party, at the Fed, inbanks, and in law firms and think tanks, are the key linchpin of this system.They make the trains run on time, shuffling between the various institutions ofnational power. And they have a long history of dancing in between popular legitimacyand corrupt financial elites. An example is the Democratic embrace of FannieMae as an institution that broadens access to housing. This company was corruptto the core, and the people profiting from it have gone on to senioradministration positions in the White House -- Tom Donolan in NationalSecurity, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Daley, Peter Orszag, etc. These are the people whoare centrally implicated by Occupy Wall Street.

Centrists dealing with the occupiers are suffering becausethey must now choose between their funding stream and their popular legitimacy.Michael Bloomberg, the centrist mayor of New York, is perceived of as weak byhis friends, but he is alsoincreasingly unpopular in the city. Rahm Emanuel, Chicago mayor, must nowopenly arrest the people he used to badmouth and bully while in the WhiteHouse.”

Obama Can Thank GOP and Flat Tax Plans for Second Term…

Perhaps most comical, is the way in which "Occupy" has exposed theGOP for what they are, and just how totally and completely beholden they are tothat 1% and Wall Street. In fact, the Republican candidates for President seemto be more in a competition to “out crazy” each other than to win higher office.

We now have three of the top five potential GOP challengersproposing (which bringing back the “birther” nonsense) the most regressive,reverse Robin Hood, flat tax plans in the history of the country…the DIAMETRIALOPPOSITE of what is needed, what is wanted, and what is being advocated for in protests acrossthe country and world. Truly astounding…the sheer tone deafness and criminalityof these people…Obama should be thanking each, with a personal call and giftbasket, for literally GIVING HIM a second term (I always have predicted he would win won...but this is getting ridiculous).

I’ll discuss some of theoutrageous components of Perry’s plan next post (I detailed Cain’s last post). And now, the morbidly obese, serial liar and scum bag Newt Gingrich is also on board, and the all time waffle king, Mitt Romney, who oncesaid flat taxes weren’t fair to the middle class said “I love the flat tax”just a few days ago…

Remember, the inherent argument of all flat tax plans isthat the huge income gap between the rich and poor isn’t widening fastenough…with the only solution being to tax the poor more while DRASTICALLYcutting taxes for those who already have it all.

Here’s the rundown of the candidate economic greatest hits from Center for American Progress...are these not the POSTER CHILD'S for the Occupy Wall Street movement???

Mitt Romney: Romney’s tax plan includes a $6.6 TRILLION giveaway to corporations and the wealthiestAmericans. Meanwhile, Romney’s Medicaid cuts are even more draconian than theones in Paul Ryan plan. Both of their plans also end Medicare.
Rick Perry: Perry’s tax plan would not only lower income taxeson the wealthy, it would also completely eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends(currently taxed at 15 percent). In other words, Perry would dramaticallyexpand the loophole that already allows millionaires (like Mitt Romney) andbillionaires to pay a lower tax rate than many middle class Americans. Whenasked about this egregious giveaway to the wealthy, Perry responded: “I don’t care about that.” In addition, Perry’s plan also embraces the privatization of Social Security (a program hehas referred to in the past as an unconstitutional “Ponzi scheme” that is a “monstrous lie”).
Herman Cain: Cain’s now infamous 9-9-9 Plan would raisetaxes on most Americans, while slashing taxes for millionaires by an average of $487,300each.
Jon Huntsman: Huntsman’s plan would introduce new taxes onveterans, seniors, the working poor, middle class Americans, students, and manyothers in order to give the top 0.1 percent an annual tax cut of nearly $500,000each.
Michele Bachmann: Bachmann’s plan includes a massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthy paid forin part by increasing taxes on the working poor.

This GOP clown car of knuckle dragging fascists is likenothing I’ve ever seen. They can’t speak in full sentences, nothing they say istrue, and they are advocating huge giveaways to the rich and corporations that ship jobs overseas while advocating for the dismantling social security and medicare and increasing taxes on the poor (in the midst of a horrific recessionand protests across the globe against these very policies)...not to mention they continue tofocus on things like Obama’s birth certificate, Sharia Law, those scare Mexicans, and the threat posed by gaymarriage…and on it goes.

I realize the American public isn't the most educated or politically astute populace in the world...but this platform won't fly with a majority of Americans, particularly when considering the amount of money Obama will have to dismantle these proposals...and he's REALLY good at doing that when he's in campaign mode. I think a lot of these schemes will only appear more out of step and outdated the more people suffer and the larger the Occupy protests become.

If only the American public could remember what this Partystands for for longer than a couple months…if they did,we could all be confident in the knowledge that we are indeed watching theimplosion of one of the two major political parties. Regardless, I've always predicted Obama would win re-election, and its more apparent now than ever (though election fraud and voter suppression will make the race closer than it really is).

So with all that said, let's recap: the short answer for while he win is the GOP is batshit crasy, he's a great campaigner and finally changed his tone and focus, and has a TON of money. The long answer is the GOP is totally and completely fucking batshit crazy, he's a great campaigner and finally changed his tone and focus, and has a TON of money. With that said, CLEARLY, electing Obama is not an answer to this country's problems...and should not be our primary focus...

VIDEO SECTION

Nurses union rep talks with Keith Olbermann about beingtargeted and arrested by cops for helping people at the Occupy Wall Streetprotests:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/director-national-nurses-united-union-resp

This is a week or so old…but if you haven’t watched it…YOUMUST…Colbert at his best…with accompanying video of troops actually burningO’Reilly’s books that he sends them as a “gift to the troops”…no fuckingjoke…hilarious:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/stephen-colbert-defends-patriot-papa-bear-o

A great illustration of how some of the New Deal regulationsthat were repealed directly correspond with the bubbles and scandals that we’vewitnessed since the 1980’s…with the help of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sandersand some great footage of the Occupy Wall Street protests…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wK1MOMKZ8BI

ARTICLE SECTION

Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal SystemWas Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land, by Glenn Greenwald

A FEW CLIPS:

Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality wasjustified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the richwere rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, inventedtechnologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found waysto improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, itwas in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible becausethat would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us evergreater life-improving gifts.

We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge themultimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we shouldadmire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. Itwas in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest butless, as their enhanced wealth -- their pocket change -- would trickle down invarious ways to all of us.

This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in incomeand wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in theway of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s notthat Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income andwealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was theperception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as legitimate.

Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered suchinequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, ascheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as thelegitimizing anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law -- that most basicof American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all --has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.

SNIP

It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the lawequally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality --acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around theworld -- without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giantfinancial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud toforeclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by theObama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather thansubmit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical,democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control theprocess of writing those rules and how they are applied.

Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americansthat the wealth of the top 1% is the byproduct not of risk-takingentrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems.Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than toabolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the1990s. They can retroactively immunize themselves for crimes theydeliberately committed for profit, as happenedwhen the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role inBush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/25

Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent, by Chris Hedges

A FEW CLIPS:

The power elite have desperately tried to tar the movementwith a series of calumnies, branding protesters as hippies, anti-Semites, drugaddicts, leftists, anarchists and communists. They have so far been unable toblunt the fundamental truth the movement imparts: We have undergone a corporatecoup. It has to be reversed. But this truth has yet to resonate among those whofor decades have been betrayed and ignored by white liberals.

SNIP

The power elite are frantically searching for theideological weapon that will discredit the movement. But the clarity of theprotests, the painful personal stories of dislocation that are the heart of itsmessage, and, most important, the self-discipline, despite police provocation,which has kept these protests nonviolent have advanced the movement anddiscredited the forces of control. The power elite, held together by the glueof force and fraud, are seeking ways to communicate in the only language theyknow they can master—unrestrained force. And as we enter the second month ofdemonstrations, the power elite fear that the core message and the calls forresistance, which resonate with a majority of Americans, will lead to a directconfrontation with the corporate state. If the movement starts to pull hundredsof thousands of people together, if it leaps across class lines, as I sawduring the peaceful revolutions in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, then thecorporate state is probably finished. Our corporate overlords know this. Andthey are doing everything in their power to make sure this does not come topass.

SNIP

The only effective tool for change will come throughmovements such as those that stand in direct opposition to state power and seekthrough the sheer force of numbers and civil disobedience to discredit andweaken the corporate state. The corporate state cannot be the repository of ourhopes and dreams. And the liberal establishment has, by making concession afterconcession, merged itself into the corporate apparatus and has nothing left tosay to us. It is part of the elaborate and hollow political theater that hasreplaced genuine political participation. The dismantling of our radical socialand political movements in the early and even middle part of the 20th centuryin the name of anti-communism left the liberal class, as well as the widersociety, without a repository of new ideas. The utopian fantasies of globalismand naive acceptance that the dictates of the marketplace should be permittedto determine human behavior became not just the creed of the corporatists butfinally the creed of liberal apologists such as Thomas Friedman and mostprofessors in university economic departments. And the strength of the newmovements is that they have exposed this lie.

What we are witnessing in parks and squares across theUnited States is not simply widespread revulsion over the greed and cruelty ofcorporate capitalism, but the articulation of a new and potent radicalism. Thisradicalism challenges the right of corporations to poison our ecosystem andturn greed and self-promotion into the highest good at the expense of humanlife. If this movement can cross class lines, if it can articulate its visionto those in marginalized communities, especially poor people of color, it cantap into a force and power that was never part of the New Left. It can makepossible the shaking of the foundations and, let us hope, the toppling of thecorporate state.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/24-1

2011-10-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

TODAY'S TOPICS: Wealth Disparity, Graphs!, Cain's 9-9-9 Plan, Hedges, Olbermann, Daily Show, The Banks

Wealth Disparity…and Graphs!

I really want to keep hammering away at our oligarchiceconomic system and our rapid descent into Banana Republic land. This timehowever, I come with a host of graphs (due to popular demand), most that illustratepoints I made in my last post, but stand on their own.

There really is no bigger issue than the widening gap betweenthe super rich and everyone else because no other factor is more important indetermining what constitutes a democracy. You simply can’t have a democracywhen the gap in both wealth, influence and power between people...andbetween corporations and people...as we have today…and its only getting worse…every year.

So, let me stay on this point…and then add in anothercritical component: the power and influence of the banking industry…and how thefinancialization of our economy is so integral to our nation’s 3 decade longcollapse that has led to the door of a kind of pseudo fascist, feudal like state…orat least we’re headed there (obviously our own version…we still have a lot ofwealth and credit…and a pop culture that keeps us distracted and amused…but thenumbers and the signs tell a different story).

Before the graphs, a few more factoids to drive my pointhome…then let me get to the Herman Cain and Rick Perry plans…the EPITOME of ourdescent into a corporate/fascist state…the plans are so insane they’re almostcomical:

An economic snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute showsthat inflation-adjusted incomes of the top 1% of households increased224% from 1979 to 2007, while incomes for the bottom 90% grew just 5% inthe same time period. Those in the top 0.1% of income fared even better, withincomes growing 390% over that time period.
The average tax rate for the top 1% of households has fallensince 1979, even as their incomes rose. High-income households paid a tax rate of about 37% in 1979 and about 29.5% in2007.
The National Priorities Project, in partnership withCitizens for Tax Justice, has released a new site tracking the ever-growing cost of the Bush taxcuts. They found that the tax cuts for only the richest 5 percent of Americans“cost the U.S. Treasury $11.6 million everyhour of every day.”
About 25 percent of millionaires in the U.S. pay federaltaxes at lower effective rates than a significant portion of middle-incometaxpayers, according to a legislative analysis.
Preferential treatment of investment income and the reducedimpact of payroll taxes on high earners lets about 94,500 millionaires paytaxes at a lower rate than 10.4 million “moderate-income taxpayers,”representing about 10 percent of those making less than $100,000 a year,according to the report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Servicedated Oct. 7.
The richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150million combined and globally 1% of the world's population has more wealth thanthe bottom 40%.
In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.
In 1981, the average salary in the securities industry inNew York City was twice the average in other private sector jobs. At lastcount, in 2010, it was 5.5times as much. (In case you want to gnash your teeth, the average is now$361,330.)
Of the 100 highest-paid chief executives in the UnitedStates in 2010, 25took home more pay than their company paid in federal corporate incometaxes, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Now some graphs...the ones that are too small just click on them and click on Ctrl and then start pressing the "+" key and it will get bigger...unfortunately if I make some of them bigger on this screen the resolution gets too poor to read them...not sure why the quality isn't that great, but I took them right off these websites:

Bank Facts: Bailouts, Crimes, and Protests

There factoids were compiled by the Center for AmericanProgress…and should, combined with the data on wealth disparity (and poverty,foreclosure rates, childhood hunger, the uninsured, etc.), once again answerthe question as to why people are protesting in the streets across the countryand world. Similarly, these facts illustrate why I said 3 absolutely CRITICAL reforms that must be a part of any demands are breaking up the biggest banks, restoring Glass Steagall, and instituting a financial transaction tax:

– Bank profits are highest since before the recession…:According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., bank profits in the firstquarter of this year were “the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned inthe second quarter of 2007.” JP Morgan Chase is currently pulling in record profits.

– …even as the banks plan thousands of layoffs: Banks,including Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, they’re planning to lay off tens ofthousands of workers.

– Banks make nearly one-third of total corporate profits:The financial sector accounts for about 30 percent of total corporate profits, which isactually downfrom before the financial crisis, when they made closer to 40 percent.

– Since 2008, the biggest banks have gotten bigger: Due tothe failure of small competitors and mergers facilitated during the 2008crisis, the nation’s biggest banks — including Bank of America, JP MorganChase, and Wells Fargo — are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggestbanks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.

– The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo andCitigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out ofevery three credit cards in America.

– The 10 biggest banks hold 60 percent of bank assets: Inthe 1980s, the 10 biggest banks controlled 22 percent of total bank assets.Today, they control 60 percent.

– The six biggest banks hold assets equal to 63 percent ofthe country’s GDP: In 1995, the six biggest banks in the country held assetsequal to about 17 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Now theirassets equal 63 percent of GDP.

– The five biggest banks hold 95 percent of derivatives:Nearly the entire market in derivatives — the credit instruments that helpedblow up some of the nation’s biggest banks as well as mega-insurer AIG — is dominated by just five firms: JP Morgan Chase, GoldmanSachs, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.

– Banks cost households nearly $20 trillion in wealth:Almost $20 trillion in wealth was destroyed by the GreatRecession, and total family wealth is still down “$12.8 trillion (in 2011 dollars) from June 2007 — its lastpeak.”

– Big banks don’t lend to small businesses: The New RulesProject notes that the country’s 20 biggest banks “devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfoliosto small business.”

– Big banks paid 5,000 bonuses of at least $1 million in2008: According to the New York Attorney General’s office, “nine of thefinancial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout moneypaid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008.”

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9…and the Flat Tax

The Tax Policy Center putout a distributional analysis of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, and it wouldraise taxes for 84% of the population, cost those in the lowest quintile 20% oftheir income, and save millionaires something close to $300,000 a year.

As HowardGleckman notes, "under Cain’s plan, multi-millionaires making over $2.7million a year would pay a smaller share of income in federal taxes thansomeone making $18,000.

According to a new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, if999 was in effect today, “the richest one percent of taxpayers would each pay $210,000 less in annualtaxes on average, while the poorest 60 percent of taxpayers would each payabout $2,000 more in annual taxes on average, than they do now.”

As David Dayen notes, “The first thing to say is that thisis the logical outcome of any flat tax. Right now our system is progressive atthe federal level, and flattening it out will invariably mean that the poor paymore and the rich pay less. Flat taxers often make their appeal on the basis offairness, but it’s a completely unfair plan relative to current law.

The second thing to say is that this is the goal of allRepublican tax policy. There’s a flat-taxer in every single RepublicanPresidential primary, from Kemp to Forbes to Huckabee to Cain. They may alwayslose; the other candidates last night jumpedall over Cain, with Santorum actually using the TPC numbers.”

In fact, as Kleinbard shows, Cain's plan doesn't replace thepayroll tax — it is a payroll tax, or more precisely a wage tax, amounting tothe equivalent of about 27% on wage income. Wage earners would pay 9% incometax and 9% sales tax on income from first dollar to last. Because theiremployers would lose the existing tax deduction for their wages, in economicterms that would amount to an effective additional 9% tax on the worker.

Kleinbard estimates that 9-9-9 would cut the after-tax disposable income of afamily with gross wage income of $120,000 by $541 compared with current law; afamily with $50,000 in wages would be poorer by $4,848. On the other hand,entrepreneurs and other business owners would have a convenient option to cuttheir own tax bill, simply by paying themselves not in wages but in dividends,which would be tax-exempt.

I’ll get to Perry’s tax plan next post…

Here's the greatest graph of all time...Herman Cain's plan in a nutshell...

Media Coverage of Candidates…and the Top 5 Lobbyists

Before I deal another death blow to the BIG LIE that the media isliberal…consider who’s on the list of the top five lobbyists in Washington.Here's whatthe Center for Responsive Politics is reporting so far in 2011:

1. U.S. Chamber of Commerce — $31.8 million
2. General Electric — $15.4 million
3. AT&T Inc. — $11.7 million
4. Blue Cross/Blue Shield — $11.1 million
5. Comcast Corporation — $10.7 million

Nice to know the telecom/media conglomerates are so liberalno?

Well, take a look at this graph…and notice the kind ofcoverage President Obama gets versus the Republican challengers:

VIDEO SECTION

Classic…from C&L: After some obnoxious partisan clipsfrom Fox News of early reaction to the capture and subsequent death of Libyandictator Muammar Gaddafi, Jon Stewart asked “Is there no Republican that can begracious and statesmen-like in this situation?"

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/jon-stewart-gop-reaction-gaddafis-death-wha

Scum bag “democrats” and “independent” Ben Nelson (Neb.),Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Joe Lieberman (Conn.) helped the GOP block the passage ofa portion of President Obama's jobs bill…CRITICAL funding that would havehelped hire new teachers and cops…Maddow goes after them:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/republicans-block-second-attempt-jobs-bill

Jon Stewart: GOP 'Loves' America But 'Hates' Most Of ItsPeople

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/daily-show-scorn-usa

The great Bernie Sanders urging the President to keepfighting for jobs…and use the Occupy Wall St movement to that end…better, thisis on Olbermann’s show:

http://current.com/shows/countdown/videos/sen-bernie-sanders-urges-president-obama-to-use-occupy-momentum-to-push-jobs-act

And, my current favorite comic (as in comic who’s alive…Hicksthen Carlin are still my favorites), Jamie Kilstein, also visits Olbermann…who’sclearly MORE free to do what he wants, and get even more subversive, now thathe’s free of network news:

http://current.com/shows/countdown/videos/comedian-jamie-kilstein-talks-occupy-times-square-bloombergs-unlikely-heroism

I thought this was touching…Chris Hedges is taped by OccupyWall Street protesters share some of his thoughts. As I have mentioned before,I think he’s an astonishingly good writer, and I agree with so much of what hesays, but I think he goes a little over the top in his constant attacks on “liberals”and groups like Moveon. Here he even calls Moveon “reprehensible”. Yes,mainstream liberal “elites” and groups like Moveon have been too in the pocketof the Democratic establishment, have failed to see the kind of fight that wasneeded, and have been too concerned with electoral, rather than movementpolitics…but they’ve done a lot of good too…and while I have problems with themand their failings…reprehensible is a strong word…I think a lot of peoplethere, some who I have met, are trying to do good and what’s right…but theMatrix has a way of neutering people and even thought.

At any rate, this is a great interview:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/chris-hedges-movement-too-big-fail

Rugged individualism….except when it comes to taxing richand class distinction…this is an excellent clip of one of my FAVORITE newwriters, Joshua Holland, and radio host Mike Papantonio:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/papantonio-and-holland-what-shared-sacrifi

And check out the marine sergeant that went down to protectprotesters from cops…powerful stuff:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/sgt-shamar-thomas-discusses-his-experience