http://www.thechristianleftblog.org/1/post...

America has enemies. Not just abroad, but within our shores as well. And our domestic enemies, as it turns out, are MORE dangerous and destructive than the terrorists could ever hope to be. Because while the terrorists want to destroy us, the following people and their organizations are doing far more damage.

1. Roger Ailes: The President of Fox News keeps the right-wing mouth piece biased and unbalanced. He literally proposed a right-wing news network as a propaganda tool to use during the Nixon Administration. And now, Fox News makes every effort to slander Democrats, lie to the public, and support conservative groups, activists and politicians at all costs.

:snip:

2. The Koch Brothers: Yes, there is more than one Koch brother, but rather than jotting down the same paragraph twice, it makes more sense to combine the two. Charles and David Koch are the owners of Koch Industries, a private oil and chemicals company. They have spent big money in elections and have pretty much bought and paid for all of Republicans that sit on the energy committee. They also have ties to The John Birch Society, of which their father was a founding member, and several other conservative think tanks and organizations including, Americans For Prosperity which David Koch leads as chairman, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the Cato Institute. They helped create and fund the Tea Party and have been very influential in the watering down of environmental laws and the destruction of unions. If you really want to see the scope of their influence look at what is happening in Wisconsin and in the U.S. House of Representatives.

:snip:

3. Dick Armey: His FreedomWorks organization helped to create the Tea Party and he has worked closely with the Koch brothers. Armey’s organization seeks to deregulate and tear down reform. He opposed health care reform and is largely responsible for hatred, paranoia and anti-government sentiments displayed at town halls during the health care debate.

More at the link --

This info needs to be spread far and wide, imo.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/0...

On Monday afternoon this week, Rachelle Grimmer went into a Department of Health and Human Services in Texas with her two children, Timothy, aged 10, and Ramie, aged 12, and asked for a new case worker who could assist her application for food stamps. She had first applied in July but had been told she hadn't provided enough information and, by most accounts, had been struggling to get by and get help since she moved from Ohio.

She was taken to a small room, where she pulled a gun, sparking a seven-hour standoff with police. Shortly before midnight, three shots were heard. Rachelle had shot both herself and her kids. Police rushed in to find the mother dead and Ramie and Timothy in critical condition. Earlier that morning, Ramie had posted a Facebook message, saying: "may die 2day". She actually hung on until Wednesday. Timothy's condition remains critical.

The tragic unravelling of this particular episode is hardly typical. But the desperation that underpins it is. For, in this period between Thanksgiving and Christmas (when many Americans are worrying about what overindulging will do to their waistline), a significant number is wracked with an entirely different concern: not having enough to eat.

This is no marginal group, no handful of unfortunates and ne'er-do-wells in a time of crisis. Indeed, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, food insecurity is a common, growing and enduring problem. According to Gallup polling, one in five Americans reported not having enough money to buy food in the past 12 months – the highest level since the month Barack Obama was elected. Around the country, food banks are feeling the pinch of market forces: as poverty climbs, demand is rising and supply is falling as people who would have donated have less left to spare.

More at the link --

http://prospect.org/article/fanatics-cente...

The political center has an undeserved reputation as the home of the most dispassionate and reasonable people. According to a strain of thought that stretches back to the 18th century, parties endanger democracy; partisans see only their side of the truth, pursue their own narrow interests, and aggravate tensions and conflict. The rational course supposedly lies in the middle, where champions of civic virtue counsel compromise and invite us to put the public good first.

The anti-partisan story is a seductive myth, and a dangerous one. Those who represent themselves as standing in the center have their own partialities. Many people who call themselves nonpartisan or independent actually lean left or right but for one reason or another resist coming out of the closet as Democrats or Republicans. Some people who tell pollsters that they’re independents don’t follow politics closely or care about it enough to risk taking sides. They’re hardly model citizens.

Besides this muddled middle, there are centrists by conviction, who can be just as ideological as people to their right and left. Moderation has its zealots, so convinced of their righteousness that they ignore the probable consequences of their actions. And these days, some fanatics of moderation seem to be afflicted by a strange combination of blindness and amnesia that has made them likely to do harm even to the values they profess.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is a leading exemplar of the species. Frustrated by the failure of Congress and the president to reach a deficit deal last summer, Friedman called for support of a third party of the “radical center,” Americans Elect, which is running an online primary to choose candidates for a ticket that will go on the ballot in all 50 states. “The only rule,” Friedman noted, “is that a Democrat must run with a Republican or independent, and a Republican with a Democrat or independent.”

More at the link --

CONTACT all of them!

From a FB posting.

FB photo!

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/...

Author says she is 'disgusted' that Obama and other Democrats did not act to stop Zuccotti Park evictions

Author Barbara Ehrenreich accused Barack Obama and the Democratic establishment of betraying the Occupy movement on Tuesday by failing to stop the evictions from Zuccotti Park.

Ehrenreich, who has championed the struggles of working class Americans in books such as Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America said her outrage at the police crackdowns was magnified by the acquiescence of Democratic leaders.

"One of the appalling things here is that there are so many Democratic mayors involved in these crackdowns or in Bloomberg's case, someone who is seen as a liberal," Ehrenreich said in a telephone interview. "And where in all this was Obama? Why couldn't he have picked up the phone at some point a couple of weeks ago and called the mayors of Portland and Oakland and said: 'go easy on these people. They represent the anger and aspirations of the majority'. Would that have been so difficult?"

More at the link --

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011...


Class warfare is a politically charged term these days, from the Wall Street protests to the Capitol Hill negotiations over curtailing the nation’s debt. But a new congressional analysis, obtained by Newsweek, may fuel populist outrage by showing the extent of government subsidies that go to the wealthiest people in America.

From unemployment payments to subsidies and tax breaks on luxury items like vacation homes and yachts, Americans earning more than $1 million collect more than $30 billion in government largesse each year, according to the report assembled by Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, who is so often at odds with members of both parties that colleagues call him “Dr. No.” The Internal Revenue Service provided the data showing how much money was going to the much-referenced top 1 percent.

In all, millionaires receive hefty help from Uncle Sam. The $30 billion in handouts, to put it in perspective, amounts to twice as much as the government spends on NASA, and three times the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. On the other hand, it would only cover the cost of fighting about three months in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, eliminating them would help make a small dent in the $1.5 trillion congressional leaders are trying to find by Thanksgiving.

Jon Bon Jovi, the millionaire rock star cited in the report, took federal dollars to raise honeybees on his property. Together billionaire moguls David Rockefeller and Ted Turner have also accepted more than half a million dollars in farm payments. Basketball legend Scottie Pippen took $210,520 in agriculture subsidies while making his fortune playing for the Chicago Bulls. To make matters worse, the government disclosed to Coburn that some recipients of farm subsidies got it by mistake. Tax records show that more than three fourths of high earners collecting farming money list their primary residence in a city—land unsuitable for farming.


More at the link --

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/0... /

As protesters around the country take to the streets to protest the excesses of Wall Street banks that benefited from a federal bailout and quickly returned to profitability, new data from the financial industry has shed light on just how profitable those banks have been since the financial crisis brought the American economy to its knees three years ago.

Wall Street banks experienced years of unprecedented growth under President Bush, at least until the crisis of 2008. But in the two-and-a-half years since President Obama took office, the largest Wall Street banks have grown even larger, and profits at banks and trading firms have risen even faster than they did under Bush, the Washington Post’s Zachary Goldfarb reports:

:snippage:

The relatively quick recovery on Wall Street has been bolstered not only by the policies of Washington politicians, but by questionable business practices. Banks have begun profiting off public goods such as unemployment benefits and food stamps, issuing those benefits to unemployed, impoverished Americans on debit cards that carry heavy fees. Cash-strapped state governments, meanwhile, have addressed budget shortfalls by shifting pension plans to Wall Street-run private accounts, further boosting the banks’ bottom lines.

Despite this evidence that banks haven’t suffered under Obama, Republicans and Wall Street traders and lobbyists are attempting to make Wall Street’s windfalls even larger. Industry analysts told the Post that the Dodd-Frank financial reform law will stabilize the future of the financial industry even as it has “crimped bank profits” slightly. But that hasn’t stopped lobbyists from spending millions of dollars to make its rules and regulations more Wall Street friendly, and it hasn’t stopped Republican presidential candidates from lining up to support the law’s wholesale repeal, even if they aren’t always quite sure what the law actually does.


More at the link --

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/24/fa... /



Sometimes there isn’t a mountaintop high enough to shout out the obvious: SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS HAS BEEN AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER! Period, end of discussion.

The facts are as clear as the nose on your face. Not only has this bastard-child of an economic scheme been responsible for the bulk of the U.S. debt over the last three decades, which the vaunted defenders of the faith fail to even acknowledge, it has been responsible for the biggest upward redistribution of wealth in this country since the 1800s – the time of the great land barons.

Just take a gander at the data from the chart above. Read it and weep. It’s easy to understand how Republicans can continue to sell a failed and morally bankrupt economic philosophy to the American public; it’s all they have left. What still befuddles the mind is how the American public keeps on buying it.

http://www.propublica.org/article/cheat-sh...



Widespread demonstrations in support of Occupy Wall Street have put the financial crisis back into the national spotlight lately.

So here’s a quick refresher on what’s happened to some of the main players, whose behavior, whether merely reckless or downright deliberate, helped cause or worsen the meltdown. This list isn’t exhaustive -- feel welcome to add to it.
Mortgage originators

Mortgage lenders contributed to the financial crisis by issuing or underwriting loans to people who would have a difficult time paying them back <1>, inflating a housing bubble that was bound to pop. Lax regulation <2> allowed banks to stretch their mortgage lending standards and use aggressive tactics to rope borrowers into complex mortgages that were more expensive than they first appeared. Evidence has also surfaced that lenders were filing fraudulent documents to push some of these mortgages through <3>, and, in some cases, had been doing so as early as the 1990s. A 2005 Los Angeles Times investigation of Ameriquest <4> – then the nation’s largest subprime lender – found that “they forged documents, hyped customers' creditworthiness and ‘juiced’ mortgages with hidden rates and fees.” This behavior was reportedly typical for the subprime mortgage industry. A similar culture existed at Washington Mutual <5>, which went under in 2008 in the biggest bank collapse <6> in U.S. history.

More at the link --

Mayor Kasim Reed is going back on his word and is going to try to remove the occupiers TONIGHT.

From the facebook page --

GET DOWN TO TROY DAVIS PARK!!!! WE NEED PEOPLE TONIGHT.

The mayor is fed up, says screw the Nov. 7 deadline, they are coming in tonight.

Please spread the word. We need you now more than ever.

Mayor's contact numbers can be found at:

http://www.atlantaga.gov/Mayor/Default.asp...

his office number is:

404.330.6100

PLEASE start calling IMMEDIATELY! PLEASE rec this to keep it out there! The group is sending women and children away -- because they don't know how bad it potentially could get.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/stephen-pi...

In the summer of 1991 I got a call from Rep. Ed Markey's office. Markey wanted me to come back to Washington to testify at a hearing, and oppose the repeal of the Depression era Glass-Steagall Act.

The act was passed in the wake of the Wall Street and banking collapse that led to the last Great Depression, barring commercial banks from speculating in the stock markets.

In order to get people to put their money back in banks they no longer trusted, congress also established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) insuring the safety of their deposits.

And that stabilized banking until Ronald Reagan started dismantling the bank regulatory regime that led to the S&L crisis within five years. Then, in 1991 Wall Street and the big banks spent millions buying the political support need to launch what would prove a successful attack Glass-Steagall.

More at the link --

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/2...

President Barack Obama is no longer running unchallenged in all the major primary states, thanks to activists in Iowa who are focusing their Occupy Wall Street activism onto the headquarters of the Obama for President campaign office this Saturday, October 22, in Des Moines.

The "Occupy Obama" event is being organized in part by veteran rabble rouser Hugh Espey and his highly effective Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a grassroots force that has been fighting for economic and social justice since the 1970s. CCI members are already participating in Occupy Wall Street actions in nine Iowa towns. Occupy Obama seems a logical next step to escalate the movement further into national view and create the potential for debate and organizing within the Iowa presidential caucuses in January.

Espey criticized Obama by name in a Des Moines Register guest editorial of October 6, 2011 announcing CCI's support for Occupy Wall Street actions in Iowa. "Our political leaders are too busy asking big banks and Wall Street corporations for campaign contributions to push the 'put people first' policies that this nation needs," he wrote. Occupy Des Moines members will march on Obama's campaign headquarters in Des Moines on Saturday. This Occupy Obama action could catch fire nationally, especially given the frustration widely voiced that not one prominent Democrat is willing to oppose Obama in the Democratic Party's primary races. Occupy Obama could partly fill that void. "We'll deliver a simple, powerful message to Obama staffers, and do a speak-out as well. We want regular folks telling the Obama staffers what they think. We want Obama to understand that the 99% demand action from him to put communities before corporations and people before profits," says CCI.

Obama's social and economic justice rhetoric, and his opposition to the war in Iraq, won him the 2008 Democratic nomination and the presidency. Millions of independents, young and ethnically diverse voters found him a compelling agent for the "Change" and "Hope" he extolled as a mantra. But the failure of Obama's policies to adhere to his campaign rhetoric should not really be surprising. Candidate Obama in 2008 beat every other Democrat in collecting the most campaign contributions from the wealthiest funders of the Democratic Party, the 1% as opposed to the 99%, aka Wall Street. He has announced his goal for 2012 of raising one billion dollars which again will require the firm support of the very wealthiest Democratic Party interests.

More at the link --