Estimates of crowd size range from 7,000 - 10,000 ... We the People electrified the energy in the heart of the city.. we even got some confetti rained down on us from one of the office buildings (but I missed getting pic of that - drat).
The march and occupation has neither sought nor received and permits for any of it's activities. City Hall, to it's credit, did not over-react to this and in fact seemed to kind of "get it", that it shouldn't require a "permit" to simply associate publicly to exercise our rights to freedom of assembly and speech.
At last minute cops said we could march in the streets (not confined to the sidewalks as we were originally told) which hugely helped to set cooperative tone for the march. The police to their credit, had very low key presence along the march route per se. However, there were reports of armored vehicles, storm troopers, etc. just a few blocks away "just in case". But all went smoothly without a hitch. It was a beautiful sight to behold and be a part of.
FIRST WE GATHERED ON THE WATERFRONT PARK FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY & ORIENTATION & ANNOUNCEMENTS
THEN WE MARCHED DOWN BROADWAY TO PIONEER SQ., THE CENTRAL CITY OPEN SPACE FOR SUCH EVENTS,
THEN MORE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND SUCH ONCE WE GOT TO PIONEER SQ.
THEN MOST MARCHED AGAIN TO ANOTHER NEARBY PARK, LOCATION OF ACTUAL 'OCCUPATION' WITH TENTS & SUCH.
I have a dear friend with whom I was in a Rhythm and Blues Band called the Invaders (in Portland) 50 years ago, who in the meanwhile worked for various banks and financial institutions, and he flatly states that "it was Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA" (all "gov't backed entities") who "CREATED" the financial crisis in the first place, by "insisting" that banks adhear to only minimalistic requirements to qualify for a home loans, and that said evil quasi-gov't entities actually "forced" private banks to knowingly execute bad loans, and that they (and only they) had the clout and were well positioned enough to make the banks do those shitty loans. And so the poor banksters simply had no choice really, because crappy loans were the ONLY ones that Fannie Mae, et. al.. would back-up (buy) on secondary market ... unless of course the bank was willing to simply keep the loan itself (shelve it) internally, which banks don't like to do.
... And .. that THAT is the ONLY reason our economy collapsed ... NOT because of lax SEC oversight, NOT due to Bankster fraud, etc. ... that the entire reason for the economic collapse was because of these evil quasi-gov't secondary lenders and their overly lax underwriting guidelines.
What Do I say to someone who is totally fixed in their views about this, due to their "professional" experience in the banking industry.
I know he's spouting total bullshit, but I could use some input on exactly how deep his bullshit goes, and how to respond to this pro-bankster meme in a way that is convincing and compelling.
Thanks to all in advance who reply with something useful.
I am covered by Medicare, and was covered in Feb. of 2010 when I had open heart surgery. I just received a statement from my insurer (United Health Care) detailing the expenses charged for my care. I was in the hospital for 6 days, and the entire bill came to $104,000.00. Some of the individual items charged by the hospital certainly appear to be conspicuously over-inflated. For example, I was charged nearly $15,000 for "Pharmacy", and over $19,000 for "supplies", and then another $10,200 for "CCU Charges" (whatever the fuck that means, I haven't a clue), and yet another $4,500 for "Respiratory". Some of the other larger items in the bill are $21,000 for "Operating Room", $7.244 for "Laboratory", $4,400 for "Blood", $11,400 for "Cardiology".
I guess the "good news" if you can call it that, is that I have not been personally charged with any of this, so I'm definitely happy about that from a personal standpoint (politics aside); however it is clear from looking at these charges to Medicare that the hospital is inflating charges and attempting to milk as much as they can from Medicare. This kind of practice is what has Medicare "in trouble" -- to the extent that Medicare really is in trouble, which is debatable -- not because the Medicare program itself is "broken". Rather, it is the entire larger health care system that is broken and needs to stop over-charging Medicare and other health insurers too for that matter.
Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal Jul. 5 2011 - 3:09 pm | 7,569 views | 0 recommendations | 6 comments By E.D. KAIN
Drug warriors often contend that drug use would skyrocket if we were to legalize or decriminalize drugs in the United States. Fortunately, we have a real-world example of the actual effects of ending the violent, expensive War on Drugs and replacing it with a system of treatment for problem users and addicts.
Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. One decade after this unprecedented experiment, drug abuse is down by half: Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal’s decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.
guilty of telling the unvarnished truth about the utter insanity that has possessed our elected leaders and is playing out on steroids in DC w/ the haggling over the debt ceiling.
My hat is off to Mr. Krugman. He illumines the debt ceiling situation brilliantly IMHO.
PS - my apologies if this has already been thoroughly hashed over ad nauseum on DU, as it was published July 14. I just discovered it as I've been somewhat preoccupied lately with family issues.
Getting to Crazy By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 14, 2011
There aren’t many positive aspects to the looming possibility of a U.S. debt default. But there has been, I have to admit, an element of comic relief — of the black-humor variety — in the spectacle of so many people who have been in denial suddenly waking up and smelling the crazy.
A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.
Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.
And may I say to those suddenly agonizing over the mental health of one of our two major parties: People like you bear some responsibility for that party’s current state.
Let’s talk for a minute about what Republican leaders are rejecting.
President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!
Yet Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal. And this was entirely predictable.
First of all, the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama took office.
As a result, Republicans are automatically against anything the president wants, even if they have supported similar proposals in the past. Mitt Romney’s health care plan became a tyrannical assault on American freedom when put in place by that man in the White House. And the same logic applies to the proposed debt deals.
Put it this way: If a Republican president had managed to extract the kind of concessions on Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Obama is offering, it would have been considered a conservative triumph. But when those concessions come attached to minor increases in revenue, and more important, when they come from a Democratic president, the proposals become unacceptable plans to tax the life out of the U.S. economy.
Beyond that, voodoo economics has taken over the G.O.P.
For example, it seems many of our founding fathers were more than a little familiar with cannabis, way back before the war on substance-induced altered-consciousness was conceived by a tree-killing timber Mogul who insisted on deforestation dominating the USA's primary raw resource killing policy to feed the Beast the reddist meat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rando...
Help me out here. I think my premise is solid gold, but am short on details, and it's all about the details ... details that all you political history geeks can recite in your sleep. Plz. bring them on.
In other news, I heard Lewis Carol was rather fond of a certain kind of mushroom.
You get the idea by now.
Who else might we never have even heard of if the WOD had "busted" them first? i.e. silenced them.
Tucked inside the National Defense Authorization Act, being marked up by the House Armed Services Committee this week, is a hugely important provision that hasn't been getting a lot of attention — a brand new authorization for a worldwide war.
This stealth provision was added to the bill by the committee's chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), but has a bit of a history. It was first proposed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 after the Bush administration lost the Boumediene v. Bush case, in which the Supreme Court decided that federal courts would subject the administration's asserted law of war basis to hold Guantanamo detainees to searching review. An idea that may have originally been intended to bolster the Bush administration's basis for holding Guantanamo detainees is now being promoted as an authorization of a worldwide war — and could become the single biggest ceding of unchecked war authority to the executive branch in modern American history.
Tucked inside the National Defense Authorization Act, being marked up by the House Armed Services Committee this week, is a hugely important provision that hasn't been getting a lot of attention — a brand new authorization for a worldwide war.
This stealth provision was added to the bill by the committee's chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), but has a bit of a history. It was first proposed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 after the Bush administration lost the Boumediene v. Bush case, in which the Supreme Court decided that federal courts would subject the administration's asserted law of war basis to hold Guantanamo detainees to searching review. An idea that may have originally been intended to bolster the Bush administration's basis for holding Guantanamo detainees is now being promoted as an authorization of a worldwide war — and could become the single biggest ceding of unchecked war authority to the executive branch in modern American history.
I was just reading it and then it suddenly vanished into thin air. it seemed like quite an important development and so WHY would it get pulled or deleted?
************************ John Yoo Arrested by David Swanson - Op Ed News Former U.S. Official Arrested in Italy By P.V. Maro, Reuters
ROME (Reuters) - John C. Yoo, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States, was arrested on Tuesday in Milan, Italy, and is being held for possible extradition to Spain, where he and five other retired officials who served under former President George W. Bush are expected to be indicted by a Spanish court for violations of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Now I'm really confused. That Cenk video commentary yesterday was saying just the opposite, that some un-named legislators had gutted the pay restrictions Obama wanted out of the Stimulus Bill at the last minute..
So which is it? Now I don't know whether to feel indignant or gleeful.. Someone help me out.
******************************************************** Stimulus Plan Places New Limits on Wall St. Bonuses By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and ERIC DASH Published: February 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — A provision buried deep inside the $787 billion economic stimulus bill would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department.
The provision, inserted by Senate Democrats over the objections of the Obama administration, is aimed at companies that have received financial bailout funds. It would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the five most senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive money under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.
The stimulus package was approved by the House on Friday, then by the Senate in the late evening.
The pay restrictions resemble those that the Treasury Department announced this month, but are likely to ensnare more executives at many more companies and also to cut more deeply into the bonuses that often account for the bulk of annual pay.
The restriction with the most bite would bar top executives from receiving bonuses exceeding one-third of their annual pay. Any bonus would have to be in the form of long-term incentives, like restricted stock, which could not be cashed out until the TARP money was repaid in full.
The provision, written by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, highlighted the growing wrath among lawmakers and voters over the lavish compensation that top Wall Street firms and big banks awarded to senior executives at the same time that many of the companies, teetering on the brink of insolvency, received taxpayer-paid bailouts.
“The decisions of certain Wall Street executives to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers have seriously undermined public confidence,” Mr. Dodd said Friday. “These tough new rules will help ensure that taxpayer dollars no longer effectively subsidize lavish Wall Street bonuses.”
I say USE ANY Bailout as LEVERAGE to REQUIRE*: 1) Federal Audits of bailed out companies, with criminal investigations where warranted, 2) Criminal charges are to be brought, as the evidence may warrant, no matter how up the food chain the crooks are (including complicit Bush Federal employees). 3) Outlawing outlandish CEO compensation packages, golden parachutes, and/or bonuses; and instead all compensation to ALL employees is locked into a Federally mandated floor-to-ceiling ratio of $1 to $10, i.e. for every ONE dollar the janitor gets, the CEO can only earn no more than 10 times that; and everyone else obviously gets something in between.
*If said company doesn't like these terms, then they can opt to be nationalized and turned into a worker-owned/controlled enterprise, with the technical support of Big Labor and hired management.
Fuck these corporate give-aways!!
These rat-bastards won't be happy until they've utterly milked the US taxpayers to death, both figuratively and literally, to the point of bankrupting the nation beyond the point of no return; which effectively puts an ever-tightening noose around the Obama Administration's neck, which achieves several ReThug objectives: 1) These bail-outs are milking us "rubes" for everything, absolutely everything we have, or thought we had, and then some... to line the greedy pockets of the "have-mores" on their way out the door. The worse for the Obama Administration, the better, at least in their view. In other words, "fuck the country". 2) Renders ALL "entitlement programs" (such as Social Security, Medicare, HUD, etc.) as low hanging fruit ripe for the picking for further bail-outs; and don't even ask about Health Care Reform, or middle-class/low-income tax cuts, etc. or you'll be laughed out of the room. 3) Having made a laughing stock of the Obama Administrations "pipe dreams" Health Care reform, "green alternative energy" inititatives, etc., they will try to use this (w/ much help from the M$M) to win back lost seats in Congress in 2010, and then to have a shot at the WH in 2012.
Mark my words. This is the biggest reason in my book that Obama's GOT to "GO BIG", and forcefully demand a halt to this grand-scale heist, because that's really the ONLY way Obama will EVER have a prayer of delivering on his campaign promises. "The people: voted for real change, for change that matters to real people, real people who vote.
Please Barack. GO BIG! at least on this one issue, as it's the linchpin to everything else. ... the sooner the better.
anyone?
