Posts tagged ows
Freenet or die
If more people would participate. They can use the Internet.
Fix the Debt is the most hypocritical corporate PR campaign in decades
Fix the Debt is an ambitious attempt to convince the country that another cataclysmic economic crisis is around the corner and that urgent action is needed. Its strategy is pure astroturf: assemble power players in business and government under an activist banner, then take the message outside the Beltway and give it the appearance of grassroots activism by manufacturing an emergency to infuse a sense of imminent crisis.
Behind this strategy are no fewer than 127 CEOs and even more “statesmen” pushing for a “grand bargain” to draw up an austerity budget by July 4. With many firms kicking in $1 million each on top of Peterson’s $5 million in seed money, this latest incarnation of the Peterson message machine must be taken seriously.
Austerity, ‘cause the wealthy need more.
Who Do These Cowards Serve
No deal would be better than a bad deal.
The current debate over the so-called “fiscal cliff” is just the latest in a long string of GOP-manufactured crises designed to whip up public hysteria and put the Democrats on the defensive. I urge you to reject the right wing’s “fiscal cliff” scare tactics and keep your promise to preserve the social safety net.
Democratic offers to strike an alternative budget deal and avoid the “fiscal cliff” have demonstrated a willingness to continue balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. No previous Democratic president has agreed to cut Social Security. And the presidential election delivered Democrats a solid mandate to ensure the wealthiest 2% pay their fair share of taxes. Turning your backs on these commitments to basic fairness can only serve to deepen economic inequalities Black families have experienced for decades.
Don’t settle for a bad deal that both doubles down on decades of failed tax policy favoring the super-rich and punishes our communities for a deficit we didn’t create. Please stand up for our communities and protect the social safety net.
Obama, You Asshole..Look for Work.
We The Cattle
The Elites Will Make Gazans of Us All
“Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world’s elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in the planet’s largest internment camp. These sacrifice zones, filled with seas of pitifully poor people trapped in squalid slums or mud-walled villages, are increasingly hemmed in by electronic fences, monitored by surveillance cameras and drones and surrounded by border guards or military units that shoot to kill. These nightmarish dystopias extend from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan to China. They are places where targeted assassinations are carried out, where brutal military assaults are pressed against peoples left defenseless, without an army, navy or air force. All attempts at resistance, however ineffective, are met with the indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes modern industrial warfare.
In the new global landscape, as in Israel’s occupied territories and the United States’ own imperial projects in Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan, massacres of thousands of defenseless innocents are labeled wars. Resistance is called a provocation, terrorism or a crime against humanity. The rule of law, as well as respect for the most basic civil liberties and the right of self-determination, is a public relations fiction used to placate the consciences of those who live in the zones of privilege. Prisoners are routinely tortured and “disappeared.” The severance of food and medical supplies is an accepted tactic of control. Lies permeate the airwaves. Religious, racial and ethnic groups are demonized. Missiles rain down on concrete hovels, mechanized units fire on unarmed villagers, gunboats pound refugee camps with heavy shells, and the dead, including children, line the corridors of hospitals that lack electricity and medicine. “
(more of this article by Chris Hedges here)
We’re Not Broke
WE’RE NOT BROKE is the story of how U.S. corporations have been able to hide over a trillion dollars from Uncle Sam, and how seven fed-up Americans from across the country, take their frustration to the streets … and vow to make the corporations pay their fair share.
America is in the grip of a societal economic panic. Lawmakers cry “We’re Broke!” as they slash budgets, lay off schoolteachers, police, and firefighters, crumbling our country’s social fabric and leaving many Americans scrambling to survive. Meanwhile, multibillion-dollar American corporations like Exxon, Google and Bank of America are making record profits. And while the deficit climbs and the cuts go deeper, these corporations—with intimate ties to our political leaders—are concealing colossal profits overseas to avoid paying U.S. income tax.
GOP is SHIT
Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, Finding New and Creative Ways to Fuck Americans
A new report reveals how wealthy individuals and their families have between $21 and $32 trillion of hidden financial assets around the world in what are known as offshore accounts or tax havens. The actual sums could be higher because the study only deals with financial wealth deposited in bank and investment accounts, and not other assets such as property and yachts. The inquiry was commissioned by the Tax Justice Network and is being touted as the most comprehensive report ever on the “offshore economy.” It also finds that private banks are deeply involved in running offshore havens, with UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs handling the most assets. -James Henry, economist, lawyer, board member of the Tax Justice Network, and author of the report, “The Price of Offshore Revisited.” He is former chief economist at McKinsey & Company.
We’re broke? No, we have been ripped off. Our debt problem is not a debt problem it is a tax problem.
Walmart workers march in LA, saying ‘no thanks’ to new stores
July 5, 2012More than 4,000 union members and community supporters, including many Walmart workers, marched in Los Angeles Saturday June 30. They opposed the chain’s bid to bring its tornado of destruction into urban centers.
The march was led by 100 current and former Walmart workers, members of Organized United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart), who carried the lead banner: “Walmart = Poverty.”
Amanda Greiner, a Walmart worker for seven years in northern California and now a full-time organizer for OUR Walmart, told Labor Notes that Walmart workers are fed up with poverty wages, lack of benefits, part-time hours, and disrespect from management.
Most of Walmart’s workers “are on welfare,” she said, and work “such low part-time hours that we can’t qualify for health insurance.”
Walmart’s pitch to the public is that it has the lowest prices anywhere, offers “competitive” pay, and aids local communities.
Greiner disagrees, pointing to an independent study saying the average wage is $8.81 an hour—not the $12.66 the company claims.
Girshriela Green, who works at the Baldwin Hills Grenshaw Plaza Walmart in L.A.’s Black community, told the LA Wave, “I’m a manager in one of their biggest consumable departments. I make $9.80 and have to depend on county health care and food stamps to make ends meet.
“I’m neglected on a daily basis, but that’s not just my story, that’s the story of Walmart workers nationwide,” Green said. “When I complain to managers they just say there’s a hundred people waiting in line for my job.”
The capitalist class rules but does not govern: it contents itself with ruling the government.
Karl Kautsky (via antistate)
Corporate Ruled Supreme Court: Citizens United
(via thehauntingspecter)
A Petition to Support the Saving American Democracy Amendment
The Saving American Democracy Amendment states that:
- Corporations are not persons with constitutional rights equal to real people.
- Corporations are subject to regulation by the people.
- Corporations may not make campaign contributions or any election expenditures.
- Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.
Support for reversing the Citizens United decision
President Barack Obama:
“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”
Justice John Paul Stevens:
“The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court¹s disposition of this case.
“In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it.
They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters.
“The majority¹s approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907.
“The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution.”
Justice Elena Kagan (then Solicitor General):
“When corporations use other people’s money to electioneer, that is a harm not just to the shareholders themselves but a sort of a broader harm to the public that comes from distortion of the electioneering that is done by corporations.”
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield:
“I’m Ben, I’m a person. I’m Jerry, I’m a person. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream? Not a person.”
Russ Feingold:
“Citizens United was so extreme that unless we take action to stop it, America will return to the Gilded Age — on steroids.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.):
“We are not going to let this decision to go unchallenged…At a time when Americans are worried about special interests having too much influence, this decision opens up the floodgates and allows special interest money to overflow elections and undermine our democracy.
“If there’s one thing that Americans from the left, right and center can all agree on, it’s that they don’t want more special interests in our politics.”
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)
“This decision enables larger financial interests to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens, allows foreign corporations to spend money through their domestic subsidiaries, and permits major recipients of taxpayer dollars to funnel these funds into political activities.”
Tell Jamie Dimon to resign from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Under the watch of CEO Jamie Dimon, J.P. Morgan Chase just lost $2 billion in dangerous trading practices similar to those that caused the 2008 financial meltdown. This once again illustrates the need for strong, enforceable financial reform.
The Federal Reserve is currently working on crafting and implementing some of the most important aspects of the 2010 financial reform bill. Unfortunately, Jamie Dimon is also a director at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a position which he has used to become the leading voice against increased regulation of Wall Street.
There is no way Jamie Dimon should be a part of the ongoing reform process. Sign the petition calling on Jamie Dimon to resign from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
JPMorgan Bank CEO Jamie Dimon should explain why a megabank that accidentally loses billions is good for the economy.
Jamie Dimon gets very mad when you say that his bank got bailed out by the government, and he insists that the government made him take all that free money. Then his bank somehow accidentally lost billions of dollars last week, whoops! And he is really embarrassed, but not embarrassed enough to fire himself. So, let’s put him on trial and force him to explain what good he and his bank are.
The SEC is investigating the massive loss, but that will take a lot of time and the eventual report will probably be very difficult for novices to understand and probably they won’t put anyone in jail. Dimon might have to be hauled before Congress to answer questions, but no one watches congressional hearings, and no one likes members of Congress. I think a big televised prime-time tribunal would be best. And then maybe some JPMorgan shareholders, unemployed people, journalists and angry bloggers can just ask him some really simple questions about why he thinks JPMorgan shouldn’t be regulated at all.
Big Banks With Legislatewhores = America Is a Shithole.
From 2009 to 2010, 93% of all new income went to the top 1%
If we are going to change the conversation about deficits away from giving even more tax breaks to millionaires while cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, then we have to make a strong opening bid.
Join with Senator Bernie Sanders by becoming a citizen co-sponsor of Bernie’s progressive budget alternative. Support Bernie’s Progressive Budget.
Bank of America aka Proxy Fraud by US Legislatewhores
At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they’ll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world’s worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt’s funeral. They’re out of control, yet they’ll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.
Bank America is in deep trouble, but they won’t die, because our current president, like the last one, apparently believes it’s better to project a false image of financial soundness than to allow one of our oligarchic banks to collapse under the weight of its own corruption.
Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
Greg Smith
TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.
Goldman Sachs Loses $2.15 Billion in One Day After Publication of Employee’s Scathing New York Times Op-Ed
Yesterday’s much discussed New York Times op-ed by now-former Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith has cost Goldman Sachs more than some bad PR, it seems. Bloomberg reports that the company has lost an astounding $2.15 billion for its shareholders since Smith’s piece went live a mere one day ago.
Goldman Sachs is Barack Obama’s Alma mater and Barack’s baby, ACTA is Barack’s proof that Barack doesn’t consider the people an important participant in the affairs of America.
Goldman Sachs of Shit: Financial Institutions Own Obama
84 Percent of San Francisco Foreclosures Fraudulent—Why are Bankers Still Getting Away with Crimes?
Last week, five of the nation’s largest banks and 49 of its attorneys general announced a $26 billion settlement that essentially let the banks off the hook for the widespread use of fraudulent documents in the foreclosure process. Thursday, the San Francisco County assessor released an audit suggesting that many, many more demonstrable crimes were committed during the foreclosure bust of the past few years. My use of passive tense is not accidental; the audit doesn’t name names, though it’s long past time we start doing so.
…and this after the taxpayers bailed the banks out for how many $TRILLIONS$??
Obama is Owned, Ineffectual and about as dim as, dare I say it….George Bush.
