Degrade This!
We live in an increasingly degraded country.
Our politics are degraded and a laughing stock to the world. Our military is demoralized and degraded with soldiers urinating on dead civilians and awaiting deployment orders for the next illegal intervention.
Our education system has been degraded with standards falling and pervasive defunding. Our transportation system, ditto.
I could go on, but I don’t have to. We are all living the decline with downward mobility, joblessness and foreclosures, to cite a few trends that make life so miserable for so many.
Now, our godlike financial ratings agencies have decided to degrade nine countries struggling to fix their financial crisis. The decision by Standard and Poors (Best renamed, “It is now Standard to Be Poor”) to downgrade credit ratings for France, Italy, Austria and six other European countries signals those nations that Wall Street has them by the cojones. Their costs for borrowing will go up.
They are…
A World In Denial
Donald Rumsfeld
Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes in the New York Times:
Could there be a single phrase that explains the woes of our time, this dismal age of political miscalculations and deceptions, of reckless and disastrous wars, of financial boom and bust and downright criminality? Maybe there is, and we owe it to Fintan O’Toole. That trenchant Irish commentator is a biographer and theater critic, and a critic also of his country’s crimes and follies, as in his gripping if horrifying book, Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger.
He reminds us of the famous if gnomic saying by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the United States secretary of defense, that “There are known knowns… there are known unknowns … there are also unknown unknowns.” But the Irish problem, says Mr. O’Toole, was none of the above. It was “unknown knowns.”
What he means is something different from denial, or evasion, irrational…
It’s Time To Occupy A New Year
"Plunder" Filmmaker Danny Schechter
Out with the old. I would say good riddance to 2011 even as I fear 2012 may be worse, given the financial trends, social chaos and political idiocy that we confront every day.
Every time I think it can’t get worse, it does.
It seems so clear that the political system is moribund and paralyzed and the economic system may be in worse shape.
A tiny sliver of the 1% may be in charge although not in control. Their own short-term greed makes it unlikely that they can stabilize the system or do any longer term planning. Their Titanic has hit its iceberg. Some new technologies may be keeping it afloat for now but for how long?
We lurch from crisis to crisis in an atmosphere of deep denial.
Obama clearly has no new ideas and the Republican candidates for the most part don’t know what an idea is, as they pander…
The Citigroup Plutonomy Memos: Bombshell Documents That Detail the Rule of the 1 Percent
Via Politicalgates:
“Are they real?” That’s the question people usually ask when they hear for the first time of the “Citigroup Plutonomy Memos.” The sad truth is: Yes, they are real, and instead of being discussed on mainstream media outlets all over America and beyond, Citigroup was surprisingly successful so far in suppressing these memos, using their lawyers to issue takedown-notices whenever these memos were being made available for download on the internet.
So what are we talking about? In 2005 and 2006, several analysts at Citigroup took a very, very close look at the economic inequalities within the USA and other countries and wrote two memos which were addressed to their very wealthy customers. If there is one group of people who need to know the truth about what is really going on within the society and the economy, minus the propaganda, then it’s businesspeople who have a lot of money to…
D17: Protests Mark The Third Anniversary of OccupyWallStreet Movement Puts On A “Why I Occupy” Show in Times Square
Saturday marked the third month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. It was also Bradley Manning’s Birthday. It was one of those days that confirmed the validity of the chant: “All Day, All Week, Occupy Wall Street”.
Ok, maybe, it wasn’t a whole week but Saturday felt like a week in one day. The plan for the day, as announced, was to gather at Duarte Park at 6th Avenue and Canal Street to attempt a RE-Occupation of vacant land owned by Trinity Church, more of a real estate company than a house of worship.
For a few weeks, the Occupy Movement had been demanding that the church allow the movement to take “sanctuary” on that land. There were earlier protests and even a hunger strike that made page one of the New York Times. Police in riot gear had ousted the occupiers the last time they tried to take over the space a…
U.S. Ponzi Scheme Targeted Mormons
Reports the AP via Google News:
US financial regulators charged a father and son in Utah state with operating a $220 million property investment Ponzi scheme which targeted fellow members of the Mormon church.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Wendell Jacobson and his son Allen Jacobson, of Fountain Green in central Utah, with selling shares in their purported real estate business and using the funds from some investors to pay returns promised to others.
It said that since 2008 the two had solicited investments into their business of ostensibly buying, rehabilitating and then renting out properties.
They appeared to use the memberships in the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — the Mormon church — “to make connections and win over the trust of prospective investors,” the SEC said.
Securities in their businesses were sold to investors without registering with the SEC as required by law.
Bull Moose or Bull Sh*t: Is Obama Changing His Stance Towards Wall Street?
Is Obama changing?
Many in the Occupy Wall Street Movement are patting their efforts on the back, and even claiming credit for what looks like a shift by President Obama towards a more engaged campaign discussing economic fairness.
The President’s speech in Kansas was modeled on remarks made by the Republican Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt in 1910. There’s nothing like quoting a Republican for credible centrist positioning. (Note: he quotes TR, not FDR.)
Will he embrace GOP Pres Eisenhower’s warning about the Military Industrial Complex next?
Unlikely.
Richard Eskow was quick to salute the new Obama:
“Barack Obama channeled one of American history’s truly transformative figures by visiting the tiny Kansas town where Teddy Roosevelt gave his ‘New Nationalism’ speech over a century ago. It was refreshing to see the President invoke his predecessor, who was a powerful and fearless agent of change both inside and outside the White House.
“For the first time the President directly…
Was Blagojevich Arrested On Corruption Charges After Going Up Against Bank of America?
Site’ editor’s note: Former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years this week after being convicted of a wide range of corruption charges, including the allegation that he tried to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Obama.
You won’t see the talking head presttitutes discussing the fact that former Governor Rob Blagojevich was arrested exactly one day after he announced he was “…asking all Illinois government agencies to suspend business with Bank of America” …
Here’s Rod Blagojevich uncensored on We Are Change Chicago:
Who Is Winning The War on Wall Street? Making It Personal Is One Way To Seize The Initiative
Wall Street has become a battleground, defended by a battalion of New York Cops, and under surveillance around the clock. There’s a war under way after months of protests and assaults by the non-violent warriors of Occupy Wall Street.
So, who’s winning?
On the surface, despite major layoffs and economic setbacks, you would have to say that the epicenter of our financial markets is alive, if not well. The exchanges and banks remain open for business, even if their costs for security are up, and their long-term optimism is way down.
Attempts by occupiers and activists to “shut it down” have so far failed, but they have slowed it down and forced its defenders on the defensive. A sharp critique of out of control capitalism that was barely heard in the media before the movement began. It is now everywhere. The Movement has changed the national conversation.
The gluttons of greed are, at least…
Third World Canada
The Canadian media’s furor and spin on the following story is demonstrable proof that any and all attempts to de-legitimise Indigenous self-government and exploit Aboriginal territories for resources is not only allowed, it is welcomed. These policies are based on historical paternalistic colonialism, which is explicitly intended to systematically disenfranchise Native peoples.
Note as per this story , Canada spends MORE than two times per capita on non-natives for social infrastructure (housing, education, healthcare) than it does on aboriginal people. The amount reported in the Al Jazeera story below, is the entire budget, and does not include any additional civil infrastructure (roads, transport links) funds, which is normally separate from social spending:
Prosecuting Wall Street
With a story about prosecuting Wall Street featured on the most mainstream of TV news shows, CBS’s Sixty Minutes, might there finally be enough momentum for some banking executives go to jail?
In this segment, two high-ranking financial whistleblowers say they tried to warn their superiors about defective and even fraudulent mortgages. Reporter Steve Kroft questions why the companies and their executives haven’t been prosecuted.
Everyone Wants to Know: Where Does the Occupy Movement Go From Here?
Regarding the Occupy movement, the question on everybody’s mind seems to be: well, what the fuck now?
Or, more appropriately, “Where Does the Occupy Movement Go From Here?” I began writing an article on precisely this topic, working myself to the bone and pausing only to get dead stinking drunk for a couple weeks. Upon sobering up I started researching again and realized, to my embarrassment, that I had been beaten to the punch by practically every writer in the US (and some abroad) that follows the movement.
No, really! Type that question into a search engine and you’ll see this.
Well, it is an important question — this isn’t Tunisia or Egypt, one cannot count on the amount of popular support combined with near-suicidal rage necessary for a protest to topple a government. The US is a different animal and this is a different struggle. So what to do?
Miles Mogulescu, over at the…
The Gift That (We) Keep(s) on Giving: Through January 2013
“Demand a property tax on idle wealth. Demand it NOW.” —Liam McGonagle
“Seriously, do you expect a better opportunity to extract concessions from your enemies than when they lay begging, bleeding at your feet?” —Liam McGonagle
In case you were in the washroom when ‘Jersey Shore’ was interrupted with this late-breaking newstory: Ben Bernancke just committed the U.S. to provide the European Central Bank (”ECB”) with an unlimited line of credit.
That’s right, a brand new bailout. Structurally along the lines that Business Insider had warned us about in September, but much more ambitious; that article had postulated a trifling $1 trillion, not the bottomless pit we’re actually being presented with.
The basic deal is that we hand dollars over to the ECB in exchange for Euros, the value of which, has become highly dubious to say the least. The ECB will in turn invest those dollars in large corporate banks to bolster balance sheets they themselves…
Weeding Out the Psychopathic 1%
Mitchell Anderson writes in the Toronto Star:
Given the state of the global economy, it might not surprise you to learn that psychopaths may be controlling the world. Not violent criminals, but corporate psychopaths who nonetheless have a genetically inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from feeling normal human empathy.
Scientific research is revealing that 21st century financial institutions with a high rate of turnover and expanding global power have become highly attractive to psychopathic individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and the companies they work for.
A peer-reviewed theoretical paper titled “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis” details how highly placed psychopaths in the banking sector may have nearly brought down the world economy through their own inherent inability to care about the consequences of their actions …
Yet One More Way That Money Corrupts Politics…
For some reason, insider trading laws do not apply to members of Congress, whose back-rooms dealings give them special knowledge of how upcoming votes will effect the market. Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes reports:
How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich
An incisive new article by Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone looks back to the ’80s, and describes how Republican Party came to abandon fiscal responsibility in favor of endless tax subsidies for the rich:
The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation’s balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. “We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary — and that’s crazy.”
Preacherlike, the president…
The Story Of Broke (Video)
The United States isn’t broke; we’re the richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. In these and so many other ways, it just isn’t working. But rather than invest in something better, we continue to keep this ‘dinosaur economy’ on life support with hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money. The Story of Broke calls for a shift in government spending toward investments in clean, green solutions—renewable energy, safer chemicals and materials, zero waste and more—that can deliver jobs AND a healthier environment. It’s time to rebuild the American Dream; but this time, let’s build it better.
OccupyWallStreet: The Police May Have Seized The Park But The Movement Moves On
It was strange, after all these weeks, to be on the outside looking in at a new set of occupiers that were there because they have the guns and we don’t.
When Mao said that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun” he most assuredly did not have anything like Occupy Wall Street on his mind, but somehow the insight applies. Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park had now been power cleaned and was pristine. More than 200 had been arrested in the takeover that included selective physical violence against resisters. Soon, all the tents were gone: Medical, Media, The Kitchen and The Library, as well as all the work group locations that I showed in my film a week earlier.
Now there were cops in command, barricades on the outside and contractors employed by Brookfield Properties, the Park’s owner, on the inside, looking all corporate and regimented. Activists with badges calling themselves the “99%” were…
Behind The Scenes At OWS With Danny Schechter
Danny “Media Dissector” Schechter (director of Plunder: The Crime of our Time) says that “Behind the scenes of Occupy Wall Street is an organization that is pretty invisible. It is decentralized, it’s bottom up and it’s organized into working committees.” He’s created a video report about it for PressTV:
President Obama Has Raised More Money From Wall Street Than Any Politician in American History
This opinion piece from Joe Scarborough in the Politico is worth a read:
One of the most famous scenes in movie history comes from “Casablanca,” when a corrupt official shuts down Humphrey Bogart’s cafe. Bogart asks the French captain — who also happens to be a gambling aficionado — why he’s closing the joint down. His response is a classic.
“I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here.”
Political commentators have referred to Capt. Renault’s uproarious line for years when calling out hypocritical politicians. But few political narratives ever fit that scene as tightly as President Barack Obama’s bipolar approach to Wall Street. To fully understand the extent of Obama’s double-speak, it helps to let the “Casablanca” scene play out a bit, because after the corrupt captain makes his self-righteous declaration, a croupier hands him cash and says, “Your winnings, sir.”
Capt. Renault quietly thanks the croupier and then quickly returns…
