We've listened to these voices for as long as they've been listening to theirs.

It's time to think for ones self, consider the way this has unfolded in the past, see those who these very voices have 'disallowed', and allow them.

His voice is continually beating down already beaten down Americans.

Calling diversity of tactics that a community he does NOT understand uses, as wrong....

He does not have the courage to accept those who may finally be over their own intellectual imprisonment.... and have the courage to want to live outside that imprisonment. 

When someone is imprisoning you, starving you, pressing out into the elements... you don't stand there with a cardboard sign and say..

please, stop killing me.

or do you?

CBRE Inc., which manages the office building at 1 E. Wacker Drive, has told tenants their employees should stay away from wearing suits, urging workers to "look like a protester," according to an email sent by one tenant to its employees, which was obtained by Crain's.

Read more: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120508/NEWS07/120509808/what-not-to-wear-during-the-nato-summit#ixzz1uZoAEvmW
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I did what I generally never do this morning, I printed out an article to actually hold it in my hands and read it, after having read it on the screen in front of me. Strange as it may seem (to some) it made all the difference in understanding the article, and also finding how terribly inaccurate the headlines are that draw us toward what we read. It is mighty important, in my opinion, to get this small little detail. The detail is what is stalling us in this mired nation. The detail is how our attention is grabbed with one 'concept' and then derailed with the actual body of the message. I take Chomsky to task in the article posted on the professed Alternative News website.

Do We Have The Makings of A Real Revolution? was the Headline, and in its form, the question. I read the article. And to tell you the truth, I yawned by the second paragraph. It was not something I expected! In the recent past I've read this writer with great relish. I have generally felt inspired by the thrust of his purpose, his understanding of a broad array of readers who need to hear that they are 'known' and included in how he views not only history, but its role in our current situation, and most importantly he seemed to grasp the diversity of that 'situation' for all Americans. Not today.

Now, I have considered the fashion in which 'Alternet' posted this 'article'. In the very last italicized paragraph it is noted who the writer is and that this article is 'excerpted' from a speech given in October. Does He know that this excerpt has been published? Did he know that the headline now places this dated speech in today? And, has it done the 'revolution' any good service? I don't have any answers for these questions, and you know it. Well, except for the last one. And that answer as I present to you is NO. No good service has been done for the people of this country who are taking it in the face as we work, learn, clean, raise kids, care for grandchildren, rescue animals, clean hazardous and contaminated soil and waterways, picnic, visit food pantries, turn soil, read labels, the news, avoid bill collectors, keyword search our rights, make signs, or write articles for our favorite websites... we don't just take to the streets to stop corruption and pray for some measure of fairness for our efforts. We are living our lives as this unfolds. It becomes glaringly apparent to some, that this undertaking as those who write about it, do so with horribly limited approaches. When an editor makes the decision to further that by 'reposting' an exerpt, does anyone take note of its impact?

Chomsky's speech was, and I'm guessing, quite the inspiration in October. Today, in its excerpted form, it did little more then anger this reader as the time has passed for such pondering. If I were the writer I'd be a bit 'put off' by the choice. Given that spring has arrived and various cities across the nation have come out of winter with their intentions intact, and that the struggles of a diverse population coming together on anything is grinding on, its clear that this revolution requires a higher level of rhetoric then a repost can offer. And that is my point.

I printed this out, this article, so I could hold it in my hands. It read very differently when I did that. You'd have to talk to that person who prefers to turn a page as opposed to touching a screen, its again, a diverse nation:) I discovered that there is something to gain from slowing down, finding ease in following a sentence printed before you, rereading one or two of them, and then raising one's eyes to glance out a window or down the block (where ever one might be when reading) as you accept the perspective of another. It helped that I was in no hurry to 'respond' in this new high tech world of ours. I let it stew for a bit. And when I did that, I finally found the fellow American, not the 'famed' speaker, writer, educated MIT professor.... I finally allowed this reader to be as informed and considered as the writer.

So the rhetoric was valuable, and fell away as I allowed myself to fashion my own opinion. But, as you see I had to go through some processes to get to this place where what I know and see is as valuable as what the writer knows and sees. Now you know where I'm going with this don't you? I have to chuckle as I consider just how simple something like this is and yet how often I run across discussions where one can hear the venerated esteem others hold a writer in because they have reached some 'pinnacle' in the published often climb toward that .... what? I often have to ask what the speakers own opinion is in the spray of words used by those esteemed. We have our own most valuable rhetoric, if only we'd ponder that for a bit before adopting that which is presented to us as 'golden' words of knowledge.

As Chomsky's words worked their way into my considerations I picked out a few that I once just flew by. He stated that in Europe a group of people are referred to as Working Class, and that here in America that same group is referred to as Middle Class. I couldn't have disagreed more. I remember hearing that speech once before in print, and passing right by it without a thought.

The revolution has done wonders for my list of definitions.

So, as this revolution picks up again, and revolutions tend to do that, ramp up, slow down, thin out, blow up again.... I will answer Mr. Chomsky's question.

Yes.

FORTUNE -- Versailles -- no, not the one in France but this one in Windermere, Fla. -- is for sale for $65 million, though half completed. Westgate Resorts founder David Siegel halted construction on his 90,000-square-foot dream house after the financial crisis buffeted his time-share biz. The home is the subject of a new documentary: The Queen of Versailles.
--Anne VanderMey

Merrill Edge is Bank of America’s platform for "mass affluent" customers, or those with between $50,000 and $250,000 in investable assets.

Bank spokeswoman Nicole Nastacie said the decision to close the Charlotte location was made after a lengthy review of the bank’s operations and fit with Bank of America’s efforts to “simplify and streamline” the company.

The Charlotte bank is still in the midst of Project New BAC, named after its ticker symbol, which seeks to cut $5 billion in annual costs and is expected to involve cutting 30,000 positions.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/04/06/3153871/bofa-closing-charlotte-investment.html#storylink=cpy

Again, with the impassioned language.  “Unauthorized disclosures are the lifeblood of the republic,” Ellsberg said. “You cannot have a meaningful democracy where the public only has authorized disclosures from the government. If they [officials] get control, if they can prosecute anybody who violates that, you are kidding yourself if you think you have any kind of democratic control over foreign policy, national security and homeland security. We don’t have a democracy now in foreign affairs and national security. We have a monarchy tempered by leaks. Cut off the leaks and we don’t even have that.”  

Thank goodness someone is paying attention. As can be Hedges habit, he gets to the heart of the matter, its just to darn bad he dilutes the exercise with his personal approach to revolution, which recently put the revolution into a tail spin. the American revolution that is. And, with only 90 days of Spring beginning on March 20th, it is more then time that we find our way back toward the unity that Occupy eluded too with the striking of tents in Zuccotti Park.

It is unclear whether our President is experienced enough, being used by the insiders he placed all around himself, or he has through bait and catch, deceived the less jaded among us outright. What is clear is that while he has a list of 'done good' sir items on his campaign horn-tooting credentials, the missing and hurting-us items are laying there with a barrage of voices confusing the reality of them. The Unauthorized Disclosures being a big one. Simple language, yeah, its a big one. Very well could be the nail, and I am probably understating that. But, understatement seems to be a central theme when it comes to the state of our nation in regard to our democracy which holds the elements of the republic in place... or, used to.

We can argue if you like, or we can put away our childish things and acknowledge that its time to grow up. Our differences won't matter one iota if the homogenized manner of our containment is not addressed. Won't matter how many cars you own, what kind of television you watch, or the brand of jeans you slip on on a Saturday, ... it might matter where you live, but only by degree. Eventually even that will become a side dish to the manner in which you are separated from choice.

Even our mainstream access to information, the media, will themselves be stunned by the generic change in their job responsibilities.

Our Spring is upon us. If we neglect to answer these violations, if we stand back with a naive sense of "American freedom is a given" while managing to sleep through these significant warning signals... well, it shall be a long hot summer.  Then, add the drop of 70 billion more in toxic assets. *shudders*

Americas Spring in the us had better reinvent the opening inclusiveness of Occupy, welcome the specialization through affinity groups, shake hands, and come out fighting.

Or, we're done.

P.S. I can forgive you for the tactics issue Hedges.. just try and diversify your understanding next time. Heh.

Severe & Censure

standing like kings and queens

on the dias of power

pronouncing the edicts of value

upon the heads of the

righteous, the chosen,

Severe & Censure while

smiling curled smiles of

pride and pretention.

Wield those demoralized

cliche' privileges with aplomb.

Severe & Censure

wearing hackneyed gloves

covering crusted calluses

from constant use.

Severe & Censure this revolution

my lovelies for rare is the moment,

shine rejuvenated fears of

your fellow man... hold them

scold them, yes, be bold.

Severe & Censure the

the weak, the wicked,

leave your mark in the dark

where no one can see

how mean you can be.

Smile on pleasant people

as you tip toe through and over

the bodies of your dead.

Stir no soup, lay no blanket,

ease yourselves.

Severe & Censure

to your hearts content.

ease yourselves now,

shhhhhhh, all is well.

Written in honor of the young Anonymous persona recently 'outed' by a self styling Occupy in the northwest, predominantly white, most certainly potentially elite, and wanna be elite ... gatekeeping at its best.

It has been a very long four days. What began on Friday at the Occupy general assembly in this little elite conclave i live in, came to its expected end this evening. The Assembly gathered for the first time since Friday, when those who remained to talk about an action taken by an Anonymous revolutionary decided to work in some mediation. That was ignored by those who left on that infamous friday, and a proposal hit  the floor on this fine Tuesday evening calling for the protestor to be 'severed' from Occupy, and that I, be censured.

I sat in the back of the meeting and never said a word. I intended to  be as silent as this conclave wanted me to be. I wanted to stop fighting to be heard. I wanted to know if there was one person in this gathering who could deconstruct... anything at all, fashion an understanding .. of any kind. They can't. Near the end of the meeting one person, who has attacked me with regularity spoke and noted that 'she' has been sitting in the back very respectfully, very quiet, and I think we have to acknowledge that she is in the room. She has shown respect. I'm paraphrasing of course. He was very pleased with my behavior.

These people who one walks into battle with, who one swears a silent oath with to uphold all the bonds of revolution with, these people who did not recognize the vision of a young man who was making a statement on the nature of their oppressive policies an procedures week after week, presented a proposal to 'severe' him. They sent the police to this young anonymous man's house. They bypassed him and his poetic message of their 'control'. This group of grown people violated the very rights they say they are fighting for.... and they did it in the name of Occupy.

I don't understand the dynamic, this group of isolated and privileged people exercise. I don't understand how they can misread a symbolic sacrifice of a persona, say they care when this persona says "you put me in my grave", call the police as a sign of that concern, out him, and then on the very next day.... 'severe' him. What game do they play at. As I sat there in the back listening to these people talk about 'Community Accountability Circles', I felt as if I was eavesdropping on the strategy meeting of the 1%. My skin was crawling. To ease the discomfort I pulled out a notepad and I began to commit small phrases use by these people to the paper.

The college girl who claimed credentials as a professional, working with the Abused, stood at the front and described the value of these accountability circles. She said that there are those who have suffered abuse and use that same example in their own lives. She spoke of how aggressive behavior must be addressed. That this 'community' doesn't haven't to accept this kind of inappropriateness. Or, some such @!$%# like that. She counts herself an anarchist. She might find it interesting to know that I've been a single woman all of my life. That only a year and a half ago did I find love in my life. She might find it equally interesting to know that given that, I have never been physically assaulted by an intimate partner. In fact, I have gathered my anger naturally.... ever since Ronald Reagan called me a welfare queen and consigned me to a labeled life of compliance. I thought Anarchists knew this kind of stuff.

They are going to hold this young man accountable if it kills him.

The most illuminating moment for me was when a man, whom I had spoken with on that Friday, recognized me and walked toward me. He is a Human Being. He has the kind of smile that exudes respect, not for himself, but for who he smiles at. You know that he first, accepts you as an equal, and second, that you don't have to stroke his ego.  You just know it. He put his arm around me, and all of the energy that i was desperately trying to gather to come here, arrived. I was going to be all right. I could do this. My own little action against these cruel and selfish people. I could sit in the back and be as silent as their desires communicated in every way but the words from their mouths.Well, even those mouths made it clear the two of us should shut up.... be gone.

The gravest mistake they made, one which may well be the final blow for me, was simple really. I thought the little abuse counselor would know what she was doing, as she reminds many, an often, that one needs to know what they are doing to participate. As the agenda closed on the 'accountability circle' the facilitator named the next item on the agenda, and at the same time noted the time. A council meeting was about to begin. There would likely be very little time to take up anything serious, and finish it. This gave them away in my eyes, my heart felt their intentions. As the room began to become populated with citizens arriving for the council meeting, they opened the agenda item in which they proposed to severe this young man, and censure me. In this very public place, with non occupy people around, given their total adherence to their reputation (and knowing they were censuring me because of my words in a public forum), they opened the floor and had their way.

This is where the story ends, my friends. As the time clock ticked, an people began to walk around them, they suggested they take it to the atrium. You know the kind. When you open your mouth to speak, it reverberates for 5 or 6 seconds, and anyone up and down the hallways can hear. I knew I was not going to stay for this part. I knew that every time I had come to a general assembly to waylay some procedural policy that I knew would become a filter, I had made a mistake. So, I stood, turned, and left. As I walked to my car I was thinking about the other young man I had met. The young homeless man who told me he was 14 days sober. I think his name was.... wait... I don't want that to follow him. He gets to keep the things he wants private, to stay that way. I hoped he would not come back.. it just wouldn't be safe for him.

I recall now the many times in the last couple of days I've said, "I am what my life has made me"... here is the rest of that statement, "you can not shame me".

As this experience ends it becomes important to me to share my understanding. No amount of politeness has ever been a useful strategy in overcoming the violence of living in poverty. Listening and watching this group of elite gatekeepers visit violence on this young man, and myself, all the while accusing us of 'potential' violence and abusive language... leads me to believe that when they get here, to my neighborhood, they got a rude awakening comin. There is a significant difference between fighting for your life, and being mean. Their meanness just won't work here. I already know they don't know a damn thing about fighting for one's life.

Even Chris Hedges has circled his wagon in the name of all things peace and love. Well, I'm all for peace and love.. just so happens I can't get any of that peace and love to materialize in my unpeopled life. The most recent slant of the Occupy is in trouble voices calling right and left for the 'ousting' of all things 'violent', brings a new brick to the barriers that have kept the unpeople out of it thus far, even with a few of the voices calling to bring in the upeople getting a slight bit of the headlines. These, mostly white privileged once time middle classer, now ask you to believe that we unpeople are 'ruining' it. We're now solely responsible for the float or sink options they say face the 'movement'.

I recall Mr. Hedges referring to this Occupy, in its first days, as a much needed 'Rebellion'. It sure did scare the @!$%# out of the middle that's for certain. But the minute the truly powerless tried to get involved, having heard directly, or through the 'grapevine' that we unpeople use, another element of the now named 'Movement' became crystal clear. If you can't take your bullets with grace, stay home, or in your cardboard box..whichever the case may be. He fortified that concept with his recent call to vilify vandalism an those who vandalize. So, using the 'hearts and minds' old cliche is useful in whatever point he makes, even when he switches it up against those who have nothing but hope for relief, as the unpeople don't actually get any. We are asked to continue to die. Silently, now. As we may mess up their pretty middle class reputations. uh huh.

Be peacerful as you bleed out. He suggests that there is a 'we' in his use of powerlessness, the word. For those who suffer true powerlessness, as they do not have a nationally sindicated column with which to expose their wounded, they are no longer allowed in front of a livestream camera, Mr. Hedges seems to think he is one of us. I do not disallow anyone who sees the wholesale facist @!$%# coming our way, and has some ideas on how to impede it. I do however, have a problem with some white middle class guy doing an across the board presentation on why those who throw a rock must be thrown from the Occupy Train, when in fact, if its powerlessness that gets a first class ticket.... we've paid to ride... and we've been waiting to board for some time now. When the train called justice continues to pass you on buy, ticket in hand, it stirs the desire to defend oneself. I don't think he gets that about Americans. He gets it about El Salvadoreans, Soviets, Czech's, Spaniards and Greeks.. he seems to think however, that impoverished Americans who have had enough, are about to end his movement with unpoeple behaviors. He wants us to bleed peacefully. I kinda think that is what we've been doing. So, what? He wants more? Silent bleeding that is.

We must live within the truth, as he says, show the truth of the very weakest, whom he identified as the rightfully rebellious not so long ago... and as far as i can tell with this full on attack on Black Bloc and anyone who shows the slightest anger at their enslavement, ...he lives next door to the ugly truth, so to speak. I mean, when was that last time he had to ponder how to steal dinner, what he would say to the cop whose pulling him over in the 'wrong' neighborhood for his skin color, or where to strike his tent for the night. No, you don't have to be any of these things to be legitimate, but, you do have to stand knee deep in tolerance, even reach a hand out, to those who take this @!$%# decade after decade. You DON'T label them the 'problem' of the rebellion when they realize they, these unpeople, no longer wish to bleed for the middle class. Especially given the middle class left them out to dry for their last sacrifice. I remember. Welfare reform was a way to free up some space so the middle would have somewhere to go when the jobs went overseas. You didn't call the holders of this place you now take up fellow soldiers, you didn't apologize for politicians who called us frauds and theives, you didn't even apologize when you found out the truth! No, with the loss of your largess, you simply dislocated the poor who lived in the state of powerless. Yeah, much like the native people were first relocate so long ago. I guess it's in the white DNA.

Occupy would not know the truth, in its entirety, if it hit them in the face. Occupy is busy keeping this thing in some kind of 'deserving' clothing. Trying to keep the elite friendly at the same time they call for 'reforms', reforms that do little to nothing for those who die at the hands of the wealthy. Occupy works desperately to play by the rules set down so long ago. Occupy has hands down made their desires known through action, that the poor, the ticket holders, not only have to survive the elite, they have to navigate the kind liberals for their daily bread. The middle has functioned for years in the good standing of the elite. Silent agreements, unspoken contracts have been signed in the blood of those who live at the bottom. "You don't help them, and we'll help them, just keep them out of this." The middle has vilified the poor with greater success then the elite. An they do this with a hand out holding elite nonprofit funds with which to keep these unpeople mired in the quicksand of poverty. Hell, an entire population of middle classers make their living helping us to stay exactly were we are. Useful.

Our little Occupy exemplifies this condition. Not 48 hours ago, this elite band of middlers turned poor (symbolically in most cases) killed the persona of an anonymous soldier in this 'movement', and narry a head turned. They crucified him on the Occupy cross for all to see, and then called the police in a sham action of 'concern'. This young man was used in the worst possible way imaginable. An no one looked. On the following morning they moved on with a new website, some more humiliation, and started banning anyone who supported this young man. The frightened masses of the middle class have done nothing to bring the voice of the poor to the forefront, nothing to enable this unpeople community to defend themselves. They are to busy 'helping' them.

We have a problem Houston. The problem is ignoring the way the weak and poor are being used. Even by Mr. Hedges.

And now there are casualties, if you care.

We're all gathered in the free meeting space in our local community. The agenda is being written on the wipe off board in the front of the room. The facilitator is handing out the volunteer positions of Stacker, Note-taker and Time-keeper. The room is filled with eager participants, and there are some Don't-come-often-viewers filing in and sitting in the back. The 'Candidate' has set up his camera, the intelligentsia are seated in the rear, along with their professed Anarchist who has just come from the latest proposed and voted/passed 'rule' that anyone identified as impolite, aggressive, or  expressing ill mannered intentions will be put through the community accountability hotseat. By all accounts, and by the end of the evening we will have witnessed an informal example of this 'treatment' dished out to anyone deemed inappropriate. An anarchist came up with this. If you can believe that, then you'll love how this all turns out.

When we get to the part where it is announced that our webmaster, as they refer to him, has 'hijacked' the webpage named in Occupy fashion, and that he has removed one of the 'leaders' of the general assembly as administrator, it becomes clear our facilitator is in no way prepared to deal with the full out attack on this person. We'll call him Anonied. Anonied has been the recipient of (we'll call his co-administrator, Bunny) Bunny's displeasure for weeks now. You see, Bunny has the tendency to publicly call for 'group' think, group consensus, and group accountability... but abides by none of it. She has support, as this is the way most of the assembly, well, the 'non-leaders' behave. If you do not agree with them on the whole, they will bring what they want to every single GA until they get it. In the beginning they used the block quite successfully. But, once they had the things in place that they wanted, they effectively then presented a proposal to end the block once the voiceless began to see its usefulness, and began to use it themselves to block the unending proposals for 'policy and procedure'. When Anonied blocked the block vote, with two other "co-conspirators", he lost favor with bunny.

There is a handful of protestors in this GA who continually work to organize enthusiasm for action. It is Action that has brought the plight of Oaklanites to the front. It is Action that raised the alarm on Brutality at the hands of what many always believed were Peacekeepers, but in reality became thugs of the state. Action is the heart of any revolution in which the elite and their gatekeepers may find themselves challenged. Hearts and Minds, right? Not here. We live among the elite. It is a nice little retirement community for the elite. BP lives here. Hell, some of the brightest oil conglomerates have left behind their finest Dioxin for this community to clean up. We sport some of the highest rent given the median income levels, and have underdeveloped housing, where anyone with need for more the two rooms will find themselves hard pressed to live where they work. We are a nice little microcosm of the nation. Elite divide and all.

So, another interesting moment arrives in GA. the lawyer whose been charging for representation of our brave bahma 12, those arrested in the Solidarity train action, stands to contribute to the discussion about our finances. Yeah. He gets thousands. they are trying to raise the money now. He watches like a hawk. Can you say conflict of interest? I'm thinkin this isn't change, and anyone who brings up the conflict is shushed. Seriously, literally, shushed.

The moment of Who-killed-our-webpage has arrived. Bunny, the errant administrator who has taken it upon herself to decide who is relevant and who isn't, is in full out name calling, let's-make-it-personal attack mode, she has admitted, earlier in the day that she has emailed all her 'friends' and he's dirt. Anonied stands and presents his points, his purpose, and answered several times why he did this. The facilitator at one point derails a discussion that is prompted by a citizen assembled to understand why Anonied has done this act of CENSORSHIP, as pointed out by one of the elite members of the Assembly. No @!$%#. She says we CAN NOT solve this, and so need to just proceed to the proposal to force Anonied to 'give back the page' and then the second proposal to REMOVE him from the body. I recall another member of the elite gatekeeping team stating, and i'm paraphrasing here, that the webpage is more important then this person. Em Hem... they went there.

No change today my friends. The Occupy in this part of our little world has abandoned the 99% in favor of their 'tools' and 'rules'. They prefer to talk about bumper stickers, buttons, and meeting with the Mayor, rather then listen to one of their own desperately working to illuminate the exclusionary form their approach to this revolution has taken. The message he offered was ridiculed, his name battered, and his dedication questioned. He was made to appear an outsider, a divider, called a cop, and stupid. They all sat there an let it happen in spite of their newly minted policy to hold 'meanness' accountable. When I stood to defend him, the room was subject to a reminder of that very policy of safeness. It's hard to hear on the video on ustream, as Bunny was the media person. She didn't let a little de-administration stop her, she just opened a new account, all the while screaming for his ousting. She hates being inconvenienced. By the way, she uses WEPAY for her donations corporation. Gotta admire her moxy don'cha. She left during the great exodus when Anonied stepped up to defend himself and his actions. So, no vid of the real revolutionary words we need to hear.

Anonied stood his space with a great deal of courage, and clarity. He spoke of the way he has been systematically silenced once he found himself changing, his vision opening up  to some of the 'habits' of suppression in those marching next to him, those pictured in his lenses as 'heroes'. He weathered the accusation and condemnation when his 'message', having been put in place of the website was read with derision from an aging peace loving creative woman who just hours ago smiled with him and made his praise. He remained calm, cool and respectful even when he was openly called to be 'booted' from the 'movement' by the self proclaimed 'Ambassador of Occupy'. Grown men four times his age were throwing fists, epitaph's and their weight at him. He sat alone in a chair along the windows that look out on the coveted and elite city of 80,000, waiting.

After the great exodus, the assembled in the name of revolution who remained, did the work that we had hoped would be done when the WHY of it was given the floor. Since the why of it had been circumvented it took those who had the courage to stay three hours to sort it out. It was in that last hour that it happened, that something wonderful i first alluded to in this heart rending confession of ignorance and privilege.

A man rose from his seat with his hand raised. He began with a soft voice. He said to the room that he had changed. The words were taken for granted as soon as they left  his mouth. He called by name the proposer, said he was in agreement with him when the evening began, said he was going to support the proposal to return the website. Then he said he could no longer do that. As he listened to this reasonable young man, witnessed, his unflinching dedication to what he was experiencing, that maybe it was time to take the steps toward mediation. He mentioned the value of people, over the value of a website. He said something about time. I was entranced by it. This man who came in one condition, and now was changed.

It happens. In the hours since then it has been painful and lonely to sit in my room and watch as this convention of privileged souls returns to their unchanged language on a social website continuing their assault on change. These mighty warriors who left when Anonied rose to speak. They continue to laugh at the pain of this young man, this revolutionary thinker. I have contemplated with a heart that has known no relief from a control that has contributed to indifferent status seeking personal gain and reward. I feel  beaten and hopeless for a future, in which, when someone who is unlike them needs help, none will come. The middle class gatekeepers are more dangerous then the enemy who shows themselves. They come dressed as allies with no vision, and no compassion. This body of citizens are caring for their lives as they have come to expect it. They expend their resources on their own behalf and ask you for yours in a show of solidarity for what they do. They look out on a landscape with the eyes that the well heeled elite gave  them.

To the unpeople of this land... gather yourselves... stand together, you are all that you have to wage this battle of survival, as no help will come but from yourselves.

I'm a Blue-collar-middle-class-reared-single-parent-welfare-queen-reform-organizer-adult-student-college-educated-turned-unemployed-crisis-counselor-peace-seeking-protester, who won't hesitate to rise to any occasion that leads me to some peace in my life.

So, Mr. Hedges, you see my dilemma?

I can not support the nature of your wholesale 'rant' against citizens who you've mislabeled.

Oh, I know you have 'good intentions', grand even, I mean, I watched you on that first Sunday as you set out to support the embarkation of the U.S.S. Occupy, into battle against 'a corptocracy' well endowed an working in infested waters. It was all very Hu-Rah!... well, in that intellectual kind of way.

As an observer you make your points. As you apply the book learning to it, a worthwhile and lofty spray of past presidential grandiosity wets the crowd gathered around to ohh and ahh you. Those high ideals sound as good as they did when first uttered by men much like you. 

I hope you don't mind if I pause for a moment and take a gander at what hasn't been said? Don't mind if we ask some relevant questions, do you Mr. Hedges?

For instance, Black Bloc, and your categorization of citizens who are in full-out response mode. What is it that would send these once labeled 'apathetic' folk to their closets for black attire, and then out into a cop infested pepper spraying environment? To play a game of 'mother may I'?  How long have the communities you make editorial fodder of been waiting for some equal treatment, access and pay? How dark is the night that corporate polluters work in to leave behind contamination and decay? You wish to allude to a Black bloc 'lifestyle' but ignore the true nature of life in many neighborhood but your own.

Citizens wearing black each participate in this 'movement', 'revolution', 'rebellion' or plain old war, each for their own reason... lets talk about what motivates citizens. Let's for purposes you will find arguable, ignore the television screen you've been watching and focus for a moment on pain and violence... I mean, you started it.

We share an era, you and I. I mention that as I ask you to please explain the wondrous success of those tactics you find 'acceptable' and 'nonviolent'. Where is the success of these tactics you support, gotten us? After decades and decades many have been exposed to the elite machinations and all of its by products. By products that you allude to only in polite and grand language, things like;

Discrimination of all sorts, is painful and violent to those experiencing it, and have been for a century or more.

Profiling is painful and violent and has been for many decades.

Physical and environmental rape is painful and violent, and has been decade after decade.

Foreclosure by corruption, painful and violent and has been for a while now.

Eating in front of a guest is rude, eating in front of the hungry is painful and violent.

Seeing a 7 million dollar wedding on cable after standing in front of an officer of the court on one's lunch hour can feel painful and cause a violent reaction, just as reading about a presidents heart bypass surgery can feel painful and violent to someone who has lost a wife because the billion dollar insurance company stamped it 'rejected'.

Let's not forget the 40 million other citizens whose personal experience roils inside them in a painful and violent way being blamed for not living more stress free, as they are advised by still more little 'helpers' who make their living serving up this corporate standard of pain and violence and painting it a nice red, white an blue to hide it.

Some of us are quite interested in the translation of 'pain and violence' you have set up. As if to blame those who have had enough for not taking still more on the 'chin' in the name of a nicely wrapped and co-opted 'Occupy', an Occupy you can feel 'good' about. Does it leave your 'lifestyle' unharmed?

Face your privilege sir. Step out from behind it. I once viewed you here on the streets... with us. the picture has changed somewhat now. I can see the marble, and I can smell the ivy.

Fool me once, shame on me.

Fool me twice, .... not on your life.

Leave my rebellion free of your condescending assessment and observations. Get out from behind that 'career' and reach out a hand toward those you so willy nilly malign in the name of something grand and ancient. If you look around, it wasn't that grand was it... after all, we're mired in good intentions the like we may never be free of again.

as always this is my opinion

Occupy the Occupation?

least we forget ...
Clarence Thomas stands 'behind' the money, an Scalia was smart enough to stay out of frame:0

And it's not just poor African carcasses that tempt Singer. Indeed, during my investigation for my new book Vultures' Picnic, I discovered that Singer's first big vulture attack was on American asbestos victims.

Background: The executives of a few asbestos companies, WR Grace, USG and Owens-Corning, knew that their asbestos factories were killing their workers. When caught and sued, the companies filed for bankruptcy, agreeing to pay almost all their earnings to those dying and injured by their asbestos.

But Singer had a better idea. These companies, as you can imagine, were worth next to nothing; and Singer bought Owens-Corning for a song.

The director of the vulture fund Donegal International likes to be known as Goldfinger, after the James Bond villain, and has a penchant for expensive Cadillacs.

Donegal owns a $15m (£9.5m) Zambian debt, dating back to 1979, which was originally purchased from Romania in 1999 for $3m. Once in possession of the debt, Donegal began demands from Zambia, which handed over $2.5m before the firm sued them in the UK for defaulting. The high court awarded Donegal $15.5m in 2007 despite the judge's concerns that Sheehan was "cavalier in presenting his evidence". An experienced lawyer, Sheehan has worked at law firms in Washington DC and Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Incongruously, he spent most of the 1990s as a counsel to a debt relief NGO before setting up Debt Advisory International (DAI), a firm that advises vulture funds. DAI was instrumental in brokering the deal between FG Management in the acquisition of Congolese debt from Bosnia.

The strange breed of unpeople can be found everywhere, including the U.S.: in the prisons that are an international scandal, the food kitchens, the decaying slums.

It was September 17th. Not July or August, not some ad by Adbusters. It was September 17th that the hearts and minds of people living with the full frontal corruption of the powerful and their gatekeepers, that took notice of the Occupation that came together in New York City. It was the 'youth' that many say 'started' this movement, this revolution... this rebellion. But it is no longer theirs alone. States and cities all over the this country are now faced with not only the young who saw their futures being sacrificed, but it is now also the young familes that see no home in the near future, lost homes after years of hard work, it is the middle aged who believed their future included  a reward called retirement, it is the near retired who lost that reward, and see no time left recapture dreams that were just out of reach... it is the elderly who scrimped and saved who now fear a meal of want and deprivation.

NO... the rebellion is ours now. This revolution belongs to all of us. There is no room in it for anyone who tries to claim a reward without first asking those who will not be rewarded, mother may I. We all lay claim to the nurture of this and all are now Mother. As New York GA faces its most divisive decision since September 17th, with a decision to send 20 leaders to Egypt with OWS donated money, they are witnessing accountability.  Occupies all across this nation must weight in as they falter.. help them to find they're tired ragged way back to the idea that gave us unity. NO ONE can be allowed to call 'Troll' when occupiers who have been here since day one call 'foul!'.

We have not OCCUPIED WALLSTREET. The street has been protected. We have no will to stand in the face of this UN-achieved goal and give 20 people a pass to Egypt to witness a vote when the vote that won it, is suspect.

If one can not see a doctor, no one should see a doctor, if one is left hungry, then none should eat, if a family loses its home to foreclosure, NO ONE SHOULD BUY IT. Do you understand that the strenght of unity is to stand in unity whether it is comfortable or painful?  Do you refuse to allow balance when we are so unlearned of it? I think so. September 17th happened. Now, let's live it. Let's make it everything it can be, must be, and let's show the elite... the warm, feed, safe, protected, elite.... that we know how to be cold, hungry, vulnerable, and united ....... against them.

GA works. Like nothing has worked for decades, GA works........ get there NY. Go to your GA and bring them back from this mistake. We can make mistakes and elect NOT to pay with the price that the corporate culture has set for far to long. We can openly learn, stumble, and pick each other up....... and go on. fight on.

To the 20 who allowed themselves to be used, allowed this to go forward. Go home. Reexamine your hearts. Reevaluate your motives and recommit to the WHOLE. OR, join those who protect the elite, and their profits, and their warmth, their burdened tables. But, don't ever assume that this is your OCCUPY AGAIN... this movement belongs to us all now. Your leadership has suffered a hit, and it was self-inflicted. The only other option is not something some of us want to consider, as that would mean that you succumbed to the temptation to assume leadership as individuals, to pad your own pockets, to care for you own futures, ... and you did it at the expense of women, children,minorities, low wage workers, the umemployed, the disabled, the elderly... the disempowered and weakened... the way the wealthy do it.

Voices are sounding at this and I watch as a member of a supporting occupy in Washington State.. who fights to keep this from happening here.  I have recommited myself to stop this kind of a mistake, to bring it into the light, put it  before others who cry out at the direction it takes us all, and I Vote NO.

Get to your GA... this is a fight, not a nonprofit where outcomes are for some and not those it serves.

I stand lockkneed on behalf of those who die waiting ...... who suffer at the hands of the few... I ask you to recommit to this Now.

http://www.nycga.net/            help them find their way... voice your solidarity and your assessment of this.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Draft Proposal for Saturday 11/19/2011 General Assembly: Emergency Proposal from Movement Building – Friendly Amendment, Egypt Election Delegation

November 19, 2011 in Assemblies, Future Proposals

November 19, 2011 

WE NEED THE SKILLS OF OUR OCCUPIERS HERE FOR NOW.  WE ARE OPEN TO A DELEGATION IN THE NEAR FUTURE; WE JUST CANNOT COME FOR THE NOVEMBER 28^TH ELECTION. 

WE ARE TAKING THESE STEPS IN ORDER TO OPTIMIZE OUR SOLIDARITY ON THE GROUND WITH YOU.

http://www.nycga.net/category/assemblies/

But only in America is the arrogance of the superrich so perfectly concealed by the pretense of democracy that the 12th richest man in the nation can suppress dissent against corporate rapacity and expect his brutal actions to be viewed not as a means of preserving his own class privilege but as bureaucratically necessary to providing sanitary streets.

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 of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.

Located in an area already plagued by high crime and widespread urban decay, Highland Park has essentially signed a proverbial death warrant by cutting public power. The city has already lost nearly half of its residents over the past two decades and is reportedly $58 million in debt -- but the elimination of its street lights basically ensures its continued downward spiral.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034096_budget_cuts_street_lights.html#ixzz1dcxwCuHg

My son and I had a discussion about this. That alone surprises me as he is an avid football watcher, football fan, and follower of all things football. When the headline about what happened to a 10 year old boy at the hands of football coach broke, I was sure this was not going to be something we could talk about. As usual I underestimated my son when it comes to football. I did not underestimate him in the 'character' arena.  He helped me to understand just how hopeful people are before they live in this world so long, they lose their hope. This is about hope.

I hope those who were the victims, not only of this crime, but of our epic failure as a people, will forgive me for 'using' this moment in their lives to communicate what we've lost, as well as what we've won. And, I want to say right here how sorry I am that this is part of what they give us, part of what their lives have to be about... but they are not alone, and they won't be the last, will they. Finally, I am sorry that an adult violated him (and them) by using what he had been given to take advantage of what they may have never known. Privilege. He used his privilege against powerless children. He controlled the lives of 'at-risk' children, used them, because he could. 

These are not the things AP writers write about. Jim Litke says this;

But it doesn't erase all the things Paterno has done over the course of a lifetime. Just the opposite is true. On balance, all that good should be enough to earn him an opportunity to try and erase the stain — as nauseating and hurtful as a sin of omission can ever be — that has obscured everything else about the man.

And for those of you who've never done anything wrong, go ahead and keep throwing stones.

They did him wrong.

His words echo decades, maybe a century of defending privilege. Privilege is sensitive thing. Men hold it like a woman holds a newborn baby. Men rely on it as a benchmark. It hails the arrival of a man into a club marketed as one of life's achievements. Privilege is as privilege does and this is what privilege has been doing. It has been living at the expense of innocence, and those who practice it are defended at the expense of others. Just as many other elements of life and living, this condition has diversity. That diversity needs consideration today. This AP reporter took the low road and tried to make it the high road. I offer up the image of a new privilege... the privilege I experienced when my son had a discussion with me about the football game he loves, the men who practice it, and how he believes we are a better world.

I listened to him as he espoused the accomplishments and mistakes that our man Paterno has seen in his career and now in his personal choices. We talked about what the legal perspective was and is for this man, and he held that it was wrong for this man to lose his job. Then he listened to my perspective. It was a moment. Because he loves this game, because this game has been a large part of his life, I didn't expect to be able to have a conversation about a coach who did nothing when a graduate student came to him and handed off the knowledge of an OCCURRING crime, a crime against a child. I expected to have to defend this child again, from the position my football loving son holds. Our discussion did get heated. Our voices increased in volume at times. But, he never hung up. He paused at times and that let me know that he was now a man who could listen, despite what he might be 'losing'.

My son understands the meaning of 'at-risk', and i played that card with a vengeance. I had to overcome an American past-time, a game at the very core (unfortunately) of who we are. I also gripped the knowledge that this young man lives among men who understand privilege. It was all there in our conversation. America as I know it was going to get into our relationship and challenge us. My desire of course was to find out if the man I was talking to was going to abandon his understanding of life as he'd known it. He was labeled at risk. It is a label we both understand. The young boy who is the heart of this was labeled 'at-risk', and it was my intention in this conversation to bring him away from football and into the rhelm of our failure as people.

He did not disappoint. He was quiet after we remembered where it is that we come from, how life is for those who are subject to privilege. He took it in and acknowledged the responsibility of people who talk about at risk kids but when the gauntlet is thrown, retreat into their privilege and abandon human beings to the needs of lesser things.... football. He held his love for the game, and then he put this child back in the light all human life must live under if we are to grow and proceed. One man stood. And this is how we do it. One man at a time.

This little boy was seen while an adult visited a horrendous crime upon him. Do not look away from moment as it happened. Sandusky was raping a child, McQueary looked into the eyes of that child as he was being raped. Then he left. He left. It was his privilege to make that choice when he is not held accountable for leaving.

My son could have hung up knowing I was going to strike at his beloved 'football' with a vengeance, he has hung up before on other matters. He faced the accountability about to take place. He defended his position. And then he listened while I told him that he was wrong, I was sorry, but he was wrong, the world isn't a better place as he believed.

McQueary called his father, and then did as he was advised, while a 10 year was being raped, He went home.

Once when my son was a fourth grader he was standing in the lunch line. As kids go he was messing around, and as happens the supervising teacher called out to the offenders to step up to the rules they were breaking in that 'be quiet' lunch line. My son stepped out. He was the only one willing to face his consequences. He was a child exhibiting the characteristics of the man ahead, the man he would be.

Paterno was informed of the crime McQueary had witnessed. The perpetrator has washed away evidence, the child returned to its rightful place, and no one is, in the criminals mind, the wiser.  Paterno is the next privileged and authorized man to fail a child being raped. What does he do with the privilege he is holding like an achievement? The same thing that McQueary did. He passes on the responsibility and hands it to the next privileged man? 

I am well aware that during the pauses in our discussion my son is considering the things he knows, it is entangled with the things he loves and feels passionately about. The pauses are getting longer. He is a good man. I feel it in those contemplative pauses. I would remind the AP writer's approach was without those pauses. He wants football to win. My son wants football to win too, but he won't jump right to a win over the well being of an at risk child to do it. In that moment, in that pause, he makes a decision. NOt one of those privileged men made a decision on behalf of a raped at risk child. They all chose their responsibility to the high powered, high stakes game called football. I am willing to go out on a limp and make an assumption based on my long jaded life's experience and say, they have made a choice. And in defending themselves today, they defend that choice, that privilege. That little boy who is now a man, had no choice, no privilege, and no protection.

Privilege is protected. It continues to be protected today. Mike the AP writer is protecting that privilege. My son, he didn't hang up. He let his tangled heart feel some truth, he remembered the place we come from, the children that must be protected from privilege.

And then I realized that my son is the hope that I talked about. He is the 'better' world that I said did not exist.

Occupy Penn State

I am a birthmother. That is the label given to women who have a baby, place that baby for adoption, and then have a life away from that baby.

That baby, my baby, is 25 today. I love him as much today as i did the day I place him. We bonded for a little shy of 9 months. Then our bonding stopped. Another woman, referred to as the 'adoptive' mother began her bonding. As the birth mother I had to 'let go', some women may or may not be able to understand. It is the greatest motivation for the statements I am about to make. Some will like them, be relieved by them, some will be 'struck' by them, and still others will question my intentions. Go ahead, but its time they get some sunlight. I'm tired of living in the dark on this.

There are so many hallmark cliques to overcome. The most used one of all is the 'I did it out of love'. Love was most certainly present, but so were a great many other 'emotions', and no one addressed them. I often think that no one was capable of addressing them as giving birth is much like dying.. you have to do it alone. Remember, I speak from a large group who are largely ignored in our society. I speak as a woman outside of marriage, the woman no legal commitment was made too. This is very much a part of the birthmother's experience, not the only, but the majority. We are alone in the decision.

Don't confuse alone with neglected. This group of women are not neglected, in fact, are subjected to the most unwanted involvement one can imagine. Everyone seems to think they know what every surprise pregnancy needs... an outside opinion on moral decisionmaking. Not even close. What every woman needs is the knowledge that they have a keen sense, a trustworthy collective, and loving imput (whatever that may be) to make the best possible decision inside them.

My problem was, I was listening to the wrong collective. At the time of my pregnancy there was a vast array of information that had the least amount of 'what's best for me' contained in it. It was filled to the brim with what's best for society, and not my society at that! The 'Look down their nose at me' Society was hard at work undermining my faith in me. This society readily applied the 'your not ready' lotion to every available surface of my being.  The part where my 'collective' asked questions and spent time with me, in order to know me, and the nature of me, ... never happened. I guess many believe that one 'moral' fits all. @!$%# them.

I can say that now. I did not know how then, to say, @!$%# you. That was the mistake i made. Hmmmm. Was it a mistake? Or, is that how our little society works? Women are and always have had to strike their own posts. You know, hammer out space and then protect it. Some women have fewer resources to do this with, some simply do not see it as a choice, and still others are purposefully kept from adopting this perspective. I could go on, but it would really get us off track... wouldn't it.  Should we reexamine how young women are viewed in this society we share? I vote yes.

I placed my son for adoption after having been inundated with outside opinions spoken like facts. I was impacted by this in the most emotionally harmful way imaginable. Eventually I began to believe the horse hockey, and even took it to the advanced postion of 'aren't i wonderful' and sacrificing and doing the best for my baby!  I ventured forward with some high ideals put before me like manna from heaven, straight from the lips of God. I lost faith in myself, condemned myself as incapable, took in the majority's societal condemnation painted to look like 'concern' and made the biggest mistake of my life. For a fact, I was very capable at the time, I was hard working, I was pretty sure that I had a good idea about the reality of life, and that not every child needs to grow up in a suburb with picket fences, soccer games, nintendo, and summer camp. In fact, many children who grow up like that, as I have witnessed, can become the very people who populate board rooms everywhere today. I capitulated. It was the last time I ever did that. I learn.

It is a great responsibility to bring a child into this society, it is an even greater responsibility to be an adult in this society without imposing one's own bull@!$%# on another, but rather, apply yourself to being there for the ones you love, leave the larger segment to the ones who love them, and if they have no one to love them... get some @!$%#ing training before you stick your nose in where it really doesn't belong. 

Placing my son for adoption was a mistake for me. I don't know if it was a mistake for him, i suppose one day, if its any of my business, he'll let me know. Until then... Happy Birthday to my son.

And to women who are making this very sensitive decision, I give you this. A moment that is raped by others with doubt and causes you to feel shame is a moment you can let go of with a resounding '@!$%# you', you don't know me. A moment, without that is something you may regret 25 years later when after years of watching and trying to undo what is done to women, you realize... there really is an environment of negativity against women who are not, do not, or can not or don't want to marry. And society, well, its doing its damnedest to hurt single women, and single mothers.

admit it.

Truthdig Radio airs Wednesdays at 2 p.m. Pacific time on 90.7 KPFK Los Angeles.

Last week on Truthdig Radio, the columnists had an in-depth discussion about the Occupy movement and the ruling class, which Hedges said is “totally divorced from what’s happening.”

Read this thing.

track down the truth that is or isn't here.

and then ask yourself; who am i willing to let down now... by my silence.

"At the urging of the business community, he's moving people out. Shame on him."

1. GENERAL ELECTRIC CEO. : Jeff Immelt
2010 Pay: $15,199,762
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$3.2 billion

2. ALLEGHENY TECHNOLOGIES CEO: Patrick Hassey
2010 Pay: $14,978,587
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$47 million

3. MYLAN LABORATORIES CEO: Robert Coury
2010 Pay: $14,975,235
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$73 million

4. WYNN RESORTS LTD CEO: Steve Wynn
2010 Pay: $14,615,779
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: $0

5. CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CEO: Richard Fairbank
2010 Pay: $14,850,675
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$152 million

6. MARSH & MCLENNAN CEO: Brian Duperreault
2010 Pay: $14,038,187
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$90 million

7. BOEING CEO: Jim McNerney
2010 Pay: $13,768,019
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: $13 million

8. MOTOROLA SYSTEMS CEO: Gregory Q. Brown
2010 Pay: $13,732,802
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: $7 million

9. NABORS INDUSTRIES CEO: Eugene Isenberg
2010 Pay: $13,537,486
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$138 million

10. QWEST COMMUNICATIONS CEO: Edward Mueller
2010 Pay: $13,446,399
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$14 million

11. CABLEVISION SYSTEMS CEO: James Dolan
2010 Pay: $13,320,691
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$3 million

12. MOTOROLA MOBILITY CEO: Sanjay Jha
2010 Pay: $13,016,126
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: $12 million

13. EBAYCEO: John J. Donahoe
2010 Pay: $12,382,486
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$131 million

14. INTERNATIONAL PAPER CEO: John Faraci
2010 Pay: $12,303,423
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$249 million

15. STANLEY BLACK & DECKER CEO: John Lundgren
2010 Pay: $32,570,596
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$183 million

16. FORDCEO: Alan Mulally
2010 Pay: $26,520,515
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$69 million

17. CHESAPEAKE ENERGY CEO: Aubrey McClendon
2010 Pay: $21,044,952
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: $0

18. AON CEO: Gregory Case
2010 Pay: $20,783,301
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: $16 million

19. BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CEO: Robert Kelly
2010 Pay: $19,379,257
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$670 million

20. COCA-COLA ENTERPRISES CEO: John F. Brock
2010 Pay: $19,114,318
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: $8 million

21. VERIZON CEO: Ivan Seidenberg
2010 Pay: $18,126,854
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$705 million

22. DOW CHEMICAL CEO: Andrew Liveris
2010 Pay: $17,739,490
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$576 million

23. PRUDENTIAL FINANCIAL CEO: John Strangfeld
2010 Pay: $17,187,028
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$722 million

24. AMERIPRISE CEO: James Cracchiolo
2010 Pay: $16,252,851
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$224 million

25. HONEYWELL CEO: David Cote
2010 Pay: $15,216,953
U.S. Corporate Income Taxes Paid, 2010: -$471 million

"Government spending on corrections has soared since 1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison industry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest private prison companies—Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group—made over $2.9 billion in revenue." —[source]

"According to JPI, the private prison industry uses three strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and networking. The three main companies have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts. CCA has spent over $900,000 on federal lobbying and GEO spent anywhere from $120,000 to $199,992 in Florida alone during a short three-month span this year. Meanwhile, "the relationship between government officials and private prison companies has been part of the fabric of the industry from the start," notes the report. The co-founder of CCA himself used to be the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party." —[source]

Men in the nice suits and who sit at the head of the table have spent a great deal of time and energy to keep you progressing to their style of work and play. They, the CEO's and their minions have spent good money to invade the middle class mind and make it their tool. Just turn on the television and watch their training videos, they're called 'commercials'. Watch your children become 'glued' to the screen when the music is cued. Ask your teenagers questions and listen to the 'influence' they regurgitate like robots, as sure as i'm sittin here, you are no longer the influence in their lives. And, if you've managed to put a credit card in their name... they will live out their lives by corporate culture's standard, not yours.

For the rest of us, the answer is simple... turn on the live stream of Occupywallstreet, look up the next general assembly, and then write me a report. make it more then three pages please, and site your work. If you can explain what they are doing and how they are doing it, why its important and relates to the original idea of democracy... there is hope for you.

If you can't, then you have some serious brain washing to overcome.

It is clear to anyone who reads the sources available, who have little to gain by spreading the unabashed lies of how wallstreet works and who is working it, that the beneficiaries of profits made on the backs of middle and the working poor of this country have absolutely no idea or concern for how that profit happens, or who it hurts. They confirm this by lobbying for laws that make it certain they will pay no price, face no consequence. And, the proof is in the nationwide impact of their express delivery of those profits out of the country. Don't look and you won't have to face it... yet.

But, as many do their level best to bring the reality of this reality into your living room, it is clear, unless you stop the corporate messege that comes with it from bleeding your brain of critical thought... you will contiue to use your credit cards, hand over your futures, and children's futures willingly, and without any benefit. In fact, the average american can depend on the kindness of strangers very soon.. the ones who know what they are doing, because they tuned in to that General Assembly to learn how to be part of a solution, regardless of how messy it is, and are now reaching out their hands to one another with help in it, instead of a bill.

Good luck.

day 28 of Occupy America:)

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. /quotes/zigman/272085/quotes/nls/jpm JPM -4.79% became the latest too-big-to-fail bank to take advantage of an interesting trade: the bank hedges the spread on its own debt. When investors bid up the yield — an indicator that they think the bank won’t pay — J.P. Morgan makes money. Read full story on J.P. Morgan earnings .
Click to Play
Mixed earnings news for J.P. Morgan

Dow Jones Newswires' Paul Vigna has details on J.P. Morgan's earnings report and other items that will impact markets, including a report on jobless claims. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews

Hey, it doesn’t have to make sense, it’s Wall Street.

The end result was slightly better-than-expected but lackluster profit of $4.26 billion, for the nation’s second-biggest bank by assets. The bank reported $1.9 billion in revenue from the bets against itself — the net income from the move wasn’t immediately available.

But analysts suggest the move goosed earnings by as much as a nickel per share. At minimum the hedge added a penny or two a share to per-share earnings and, thus, helped the bank come closer to the Street’s expectations.

Then there are the poorest of the poor – the unemployed, the foreclosed upon, the chronically homeless. In Los Angeles, traditional residents of Skid Row have begun to join the occupation encampment. When about 150 people met to plan their local occupation in a union hall in Fort Wayne earlier this week, they solicited advice from already-homeless people in the crowd, who had first-hand experience of where the police are most heavy-handed and where you’re most likely to find a nutritious dumpster or a public toilet. For the homeless, joining an occupation brings instant upward mobility: free food -- not entirely vegan, I have been relieved to discover -- and, in some cases, Port-a-potties and the rudiments of medical care.

charts can sometimes say what words can't

I want to give the public an update on how my staff and City departments are working to accommodate the Occupy Seattle protests at Westlake Park.

We understand that Occupy Seattle wishes to have a sustained presence in Westlake Park for the purpose of expressing their views. From the outset we have been trying to work out a solution that meets the city’s needs and Occupy Seattle’s need to protest against wealth inequality in our country.

My staff has been reaching out to and communicating with members of Occupy Seattle. Here’s how we are proceeding:

* We are providing a permit for protest activities at Westlake Park which will allow them to have an organizing tent that can remain overnight. As a condition of the permit, protestors will have to allow for cleaning of the park, protect park property, accommodate the other existing permitted events, and protect access to businesses.
* We are making City Hall Plaza available for those that wish to stay overnight, with reasonable restrictions on the tents so as to allow free use of the plaza during the day. Unlike Westlake, City Hall also has restroom facilities available. Both the permit and the ability to set up tents at City Hall Plaza would last for two weeks, at which point we can assess whether the arrangement is meeting everyone’s needs and should be extended.

These are extraordinary times. We have seen the Occupy Wall Street movement take off in cities across the country, and there’s a reason for it. There is real anger about the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in this country and the inequality it has produced. I share the values and the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement. We want to provide the opportunity for the people of Seattle to express their views. And we are.

As the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by hundreds of protesters enters its third week — and as protests spread to other cities such as Boston and Los Angeles — demonstrators have endorsed a new slogan: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan refers to an economic struggle between 99 percent of Americans and the richest 1 percent of Americans, who are increasingly accumulating a greater share of the national wealth to the detriment of the middle class.

It may shock you to learn exactly how wealthy this top 1 percent of Americans is. ThinkProgress has assembled five facts about this class of super-rich Americans:

1. The Top 1 Percent of Americans Owns 40 Percent of the Nation’s Wealth

Sherry Oncalla (SP) from Philadelphia spoke to the crowd. Sherry stated she works with the homeless, she is teaching them how to 'occupy' their homes. She spoke of her baby sister's lost home last year. The broadside depth of the loss propelled her to launch her effort in Philadelphia to become the People's Sheriff. A Sheriff that will not take people's homes.

She is one of the many people stepping up to the mic, stepping up to the machine and responding to false power. These people come to the mic with intent. This intent is driven by passion. It is a passion for what these people hold in their hearts when they recall what this country claimed it would be.  They agree that the Machine, the 1% and those who keep it strong and impenetrable, will now answer for its construction, for its 'agenda' and it will answer now.

The stage is organized, speakers step to the mic and clearly communicate their purpose, and as Dick Gregory said just minutes ago, the media will not define who we are here today, 'you paid your ticket, you bought your fare, they didn't get you here today.'

The organizers have committed to 'occupying' DC until such time as our leaders acknowledge the transfer of wealth, the control of production, the gap in access to resources... and the list goes on. You can find it at their website. It's there.

The live stream is here.

The website here.

For non-Food deliveries. C/o Brian Best St. Stephen's Church 1525 Newton Street Columbia Heights Washington DC 20010 Non Food deliveries only. And only good till October 14th

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Carrie Stone begins her journey to D.C. from Wallace, West Virginia

“If you are tired of waiting for politicians to fix what’s wrong & if you believe our policies are going in the WRONG direction, here is your chance to join with thousands of other Americans to DO something besides complain,” writes Carrie Stone, a 56-year-old gay grandmother and cancer survivor who has begun a 200-mile trek to D.C.

Stone started her walk from her hometown of Wallace, West Virginia on Sept. 26 and she’s scheduled to arrive in D.C. on Oct. 5. (You can follow her progress along the C&O Trail on Facebook, Twitter @papercrete, and her website.) She explained the significance of the timing of her arrival: “Beginning on Oct. 6, 2011, people are going to start occupying Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC. There we will stay indefinitely until something changes.”

“If I can do this, anybody can get in a car and do this,” Stone said in a phone conversation the day before her departure. “I want to inspire people to get involved. People think they’re too busy. I’m too busy, too… [but] this is so important. It’s more important than anything.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” said Zine, who until recently was a registered Republican. “We could just drive by them, or we could go talk to them.”

Dear Mr. President,

I just got off the phone with my student loan holders, American Education Services.  The representative was very cordial, youthful, and gainfully employed, you must be proud. She said my deferment was denied because I didn't sign the form. And, she told me that the previous holders of my loan, Express, had for the last five years been breaking federal policies by not making me sign theirs. She also said that Express has gone out of business. And last, she told me that 65% of the people she talks to are unemployed, ... and older, Mr. President, like me. I hardly know where to begin Sir. Yet, I'm going to try.

First, I have to tell you that for most of my life it has been said to me, "You need to go to college". That has been the over riding message I have always received from others. Always. So, I went to college when I was 17. It was a small junior college. I had a less then well trained 'advisor' who neglected to arm me with the necessary information needed to return the following year. Needless to say, I was unable to return the following year. I was the first female in my home to go. That $1000 student loan I received went into default after I had a baby and, as you know, my wages couldn't meet the out go of expenses. Long story short, Mr. President, I spent the following 18 years trying to go back to college.

All of the 'assessments' I went through EVERY time I went on and off services to maintain my little family (food stamps, AFDC, Medical) said I would have the most success if I went to college. I agreed.  The only training I was eligible for however, were 'soft skills' training. You know, those little courses that the average politician sells as labor makers?!  I took the 'computer' courses in 94. And never got a job that was high wage enough to get me out of default,.. they kept adding interest until I 'found out' (by accident) that those loan holders were not 'allowed' to harass me, threaten me, and generally make my life miserable... so I got a lawyer from Legal Aid of Wisconsin. She was magnificent. I now had peace from the daily calls. I focused.

She was not able to find me any assistance, there was no way to put me in deferment then, so it was seven more years before the loan folks 'took' enough of my income tax returns to pay off that original $1000 that grew to over $7000. But I did it. I paid it off and applied for college, again, in 2001, I was 40 by now. My gpa was terrible, you see, I had three part time jobs when I went to school for that one year in 1978, i was a freshman. So, they wouldn't accept me at the University of Oklahoma. ( I had to leave Wisconsin to go to school as there were new rules in place that said i wasn't eligible for help to go to college, but i could take some more 'soft skills' training:)

A small two year college accepted me, and to be honest, most of my fellow students were in much the same 'class' as I, so to speak. But, I give them their props. The teachers were wonderful. They knew their students, knew how hard they were trying to make it somewhere. To this day I speak glowingly of Rose State College.. its the only thing about Oklahoma I remember with great warmth, that and Charles, my best friend.

Sidenote: When I went to college in 1978 I had been working my way out of, what some well meaning people called 'Drug Addiction'. Turns out I wasn't drug addicted either... I was the survivor of molestation and needed to work that out. by the time my Mother died in 1991 it was clear that I did not have a drinking problem or a drug problem, I WAS EMOTIONALLY AND SOULFULLY SAD! Suffice it to say, Sir, I went militant on the old 'you don't understand people in poverty or people in crisis', in government, and so you shouldn't be making 'rules' about, nor setting social standards related to, people in crisis. But that's another story. I initiated by how healing 'program' and found life improving. But I also saw how badly people in crisis are treated and the names they are called, and must overcome, to find enough peace to be able to function in the hell hole that is poverty. Again, we'll have to talk about this later.

Anyway, Mr. President, I eventually transferred to University of Oklahoma as I made what is comparable to 'Dean's List' almost every semester I attended Rose State. But, again, that GPA from 1978 'followed' me and even though I held A's for the most part I could never raise that GPA to the necessary levels to receive those 'kudos' that others who do it 'right' from the beginning receive, and become eligible for scholarships and grants. Again, I worked while holding that final 3.3 GPA. The brunt of my effort was the $35,000 debt I held upon graduation from the University of Oklahoma in 2006. I did it. I graduated from college with a 3.3 gpa. ME, Welfare Mom, the one everyone I've ever met saw as 'a burden to the public'. Heh. Take that!

I was flying Mr. President. I was high. My children, the ones who never really ever had the holidays that they saw on television?! the ones who were tagged 'AT RISK', at school... JUST BECAUSE I COULDN'T' AFFORD THE RISING COST OF SINGLE PARENTING and THE LOWER EXPECTATIONS FROM THIEVING CORPORATIONS, (and don't forget the money you give to schools based on head counts of 'poor' children, whether their grades are fine or NOT. There are many a principal out there who sadly took their names off that list when I requested, first, if they were on the list, and second, told them to be removed).. my children were sitting in the athletic center watching me walk with cap and gown. Their patience and belief, their pride and encouragement, was repaid in small part with every step i took across that stage Mr. President. But the best part of this obnoxious story is yet to come.

Sidenote: In 1990 my mother was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer after several misdiagnosis (she was told to stop drinking, and to see a therapist). Her illness was in full gear by the time doctors stopped seeing her as a drunken woman with mental issues. After my father grabbed the doctor and told him he would own the practice before he was through if he told her one more time she was a drinker, the step to 'explore' was taken and the cancer had metastasized. I had been working through a temp agency and after asking for the day off to be at my mother's surgery, was notified that the 'contract' was no longer needed and the job ended. Funny timing. They were in overtime hours pumping out generators and hiring like mad.. through temp agencies:) There was another warm body in my place the next day. No job, mother needed care, dad had to work to keep his insurance. So, I looked for a program that would help me survive while I took care of my mother. You know how that turned out because there wasn't any. I was told to apply for AFDC. We plunged again, and no tax return to keep paying off that student loan.. you're getting the pattern here by now I hope.

As I walked across that stage I walked with a sense of relief. I thought of my mother, the sacrifice my children had made, the long and lonely road of self defense, self motivation, self everything I had to maintain to do what I had just done, and i thought of the life we would have now. I was certain, Mr. President, that we had persevered, that we had finally accomplished what was said to be needed to accomplished, and live 'among' the righteous. FINALLY, the 'welfare' mom was dead and I had arrived.

I had arrived alright. I was about to take the most obnoxious blow of a lifetime. I hope your still listening Mr. President, cause I never, and I mean I never, see people like me standing up in that observation section of the chamber when you give a speech and outright lie to us. That should have been my first clue. I hope, that you finally look to average Amerians for you understanding, instead of those silver spooned insiders you've been talking to... they know nothing about the people you serve. They prefer you serve them. And, Mr. President, so far you've not disappointed them.

I know Mr. President, because we share something in common. I was an organizer too. In 1992, after my mother died, I received a newsletter from that lawyer at Legal Aid that I mentioned earlier. It was from the National Association of Working Women. They had a program designed to recruit women who had no options when a family member got sick, or they themselves got sick and found they couldn't work, had no 'sick days' and thus no income. That was me, so I called the number.

Long story again made short. I became a voice calling for family medical leave this time, which was, as you know eventually signed. The program was to begin the push for PAID family medical leave. The upper middle class women who identified this as a measure that would forestall a families fall into poverty sure didn't know much about poverty, Mr. President. Just like the women who fought for women's liberation didn't know a thing about the lives of minority women, if you know what I mean. Again women who know poverty were used. And used ruthlessly. Our stories were used but we were left to fend for ourselves during welfare reforms. Oh, I have nothing but love for the Joyce Foundation. They gave a core group of women from the PFML project at the NAWW a grant, which I wrote (the director edited it for me) and we went across Wisconsin talking to, recruiting, training, and valuing the women who's lives could exhibit the need to slow down and think about what we were doing, as a nation, to poor women and their children.

When it was reported that Governor Thompson had spoken to the Restaurateurs Association, that he had their labor needs wrapped up in the new reforms of welfare... well, I knew we were headed for deeper trouble. I knew the jobs most of the powerful, educated, monied folk in government who 'had done it right', were eying up the available low wage talent to boost their profits. They weren't thinking about our best interests. And here we are, Mr. President, right were I said we'd be. Those reforms were based on a good economy. It was reported in all of MSM during those days. I wrote to President Clinton, editorialized and spoke of it to any who would listen. And you all did it anyway. We lost. Even tho we came to Washington and 'lobbied' all you important, 'protect and serve' folks. I stood in the back yard of my White House and cried. And about a week after we returned to Wisconsin, land of the soon to be DHS cabinet member, Thompson, the deputy director over at Children and Families who had sat down with all of the PNI women (name of our group, Poverty Network Initiative) resigned her position. She knew what Bill Clinton was signing... it passed without much notice.  So i posit this to you Mr. President. Even then, smart men and women all around DC who have a grasp of how this works, knew that the eventually the weakest of us would suffer. All these insiders who know exactly what impact a program will have, knew that the economy should it take a hit, or even slow, would land many of these women and children, deeper in poverty. Votes trump public need EVERY TIME.  You were all more interested in your careers then the people you serve.

I was forced to step down as the 'coordinator' when it was mentioned to many of the core women, who were living in poverty at the time, that I may not have spent the money 'well' or 'right'... Even your allies must be vetted when your poor, because they know how to keep the message pointed in the direction they deem valuable. I know to this day that the center of the issue was entirely related to my request that 'poor' leaders of the PNI go to the national convention held in DC that year. That fundraising and money be earmarked so that they could be there. I wanted many, and i think the staff wanted token representatives.... I won, poor women went, and the 'bill' was on national when we fell short in our fundraising.  As it should have been. But I'm smarter now. and you know how hindsight is 20/20. The PNI tried to survive, and they did a great job, for awhile, but as you know women in poverty in leadership roles are fast to be 'dismissed', we come with a lot of baggage that no one wants to talk about, fashion an approach to, much less resolve. But, Mr. President, there are far more of us then you may be considering, and we are now coming into fashion.

Back to it Sir, I graduated in 2006. Mr. Bush was the president and he was destroying the economy. Proof of that destruction is in the details. Women with children all across this nation were now unemployed, out of 'time limit' (TANF) and having to work two and three jobs to make the rent (outlandish rent to live in squalor, again another story another time), pay the bills, and try and keep up with the deteriorating way in which they are judged and held down by 'hard working middle class' types, thanks to the way you politicians blame everything on those who are poor and dragging down the nation (no mention of the bailout to bankers and the bonuses). These same women with children I came up with are now ineligible for medical (their children are grown) and you've decided that we can somehow pay for a 'policy'. As the saying goes, I'm dancing as fast as I can.

I have aged, Mr. President. While raising my family, working for the last two decades, getting my degree, wishing and dreaming all the way across that stage, I have been aging. I'm 50. I'm smart, experienced, strong, compassionate, knowledgeable, informed, hold no credit cards and never have, paid one student loan off, made many a boss more successful, raised two wonderful children, one a native American young man of high ideal, and now help raise my African American granddaughter, I have a son that I placed for adoption (yep, sucked into that @!$%#ing lie too) who has been forced by a court to take drugs he doesn't need and whom I can't help, and have no health insurance and a lump in the middle of my chest which goes undiagnosed cause i'm terrified it will put me in 'previous condition' status.... and all now resting on this one fact that was brought home  to my heart this morning, on the phone, with that student loan representative who said... 'I think about 65% of the people I talk to are unemployed, and most of them are older'.

Everybody got paid.. but the last percent... we are not even remembered by the 99%. We are not included in the 'One Demand', we are not homeowners, we are not the holders of community pride, we are the recipients of blame for the budget, we receive nothing but the thanks of those who make their living 'off' of us, our allies who wish to 'train' us, organize us, bring us food, give us their old clothes, and even get paid to encourage us to vote... you know what i'm saying, right? Even Margaret had our 'number'.. these people are multiplying we need to help them... planned parenthood. *chuckles*  Some of us know what's going on Sir. We understand our 'role'. 

I know you'll understand when I say this Sir, I am taking my HOPE back. I misplaced it when i placed it in you. You have not heard me, seen me, addressed the condition of my life and neither have any of your previous predecessors. You did this willfully. You did this with forethought. You did this on the advice of insiders. You did this as a member of the elite as your millions amass and your future is firm. You did this while watching us struggle and die without basic resources to sustain us. You have neglected the weakest members of the nation you claim to be a part of and which you claim to love and lead. You lied Sir. And know that I say this from the bottom of my heart...

You Sir, are a member of the 1%... and I want you fired.

From here on out I'll keep my hope and never put it in the hands of a politician or any of their 'cousins' again.

Every day we learn,... and learn, ........ and learn.

I am the only one who can knows what freedom lost is and how to keep it.......... its the words every American better learn.

Day 17 of the Occupation.. and losing hope that we'll be heard.

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Nicolas Berggruen, a billionaire who has apparently become fascinated with political gridlock and enamored with the smoke-filled room. What makes Berggruen interesting is his ability to summon personalities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Joseph Stiglitz, Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice.

The billionaire social engineer has set his sights on California and Europe, so far.

As the Journal describes it, Berggruen puts bigwigs in a room, thinks through some problems and funds their best ideas, including two initiatives he got passed in California.

Sounds great—until you think of it as further proof that when it comes to our politics, money talks. —PZS

The Wall Street Journal:

A year ago, Berggruen convened a conclave of some of the biggest names in his rolodex, including former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, former governor Gray Davis and the man who ousted him in a recall election, Arnold Schwarzenegger. “You had the recaller and the recalled next to each other and singing the same song,” Berggruen says.

Now that we “know” (what was has been suspected all along) that traders are nuts it’s worth looking at what a textbook definition of a psycho actually is.

1. Considerable superficial charm, verbal facility and average or above average intelligence.

2. Unreliability, disregard for obligations, no sense of responsibility.

3. Untruthfulness and insincerity.

4. Inexplicable impulsiveness.

5. Antisocial behavior.

6. Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience.

7. Total self-contriteness.

8. General poverty of deep and lasting emotions.

9. Lack of any true insight, inability to see oneself as others do.

10. Fantastic and objectionable behavior, after drinking and sometimes even when not drinking--vulgarity, rudeness, quick mood shifts, pranks.

11. An impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated sex life.

There was a point in my life where I thought of myself as a successful trader. A “Master of the Universe”; a “Big swinging dick”. That was 20 years ago. Looking at the above list makes me cringe. To one degree or another all the descriptions fit parts of my life at the time.

Henry Blodget purports to have no idea what the “Occupy Wall Street” protestors in Manhattan’s Liberty Plaza really want. The NYT and other major media outlets are equally baffled, characterizing the movement as rudderless or downright loony. Even Mother Jones, the lefty pub named after a famous 19th century labor organizer, sniffs at what it describes as the demonstrators’ feckless “posturing.”

Do tell. Such critiques say far more about the media’s discomfort with popular dissent than about the dissent itself, let alone the public fury animating it. In fact, there is nothing particularly mysterious about what the protesters are asking for even if their demands aren’t spelled out in ways that newspaper editors tend to like (note to rabble-rousers — try bullet points next time).

Occupy Wall Street declares its mission straight out: to “restore democracy in America.” The group also wants to end “the influence money has over our representatives in Washington.” Presumably, the young women who were pepper-sprayed by a New York City policeman this week want the ability to exercise their constitutional rights without getting temporarily blinded. Other protestors simply want a chance:

“I used to a have great construction job, and (now) I can’t find a job for more than $10 a hour,” said Brandon Szalay, 28, from Boulder, Colo. “I can pay my rent, but I can’t buy my groceries and I can’t pay my electric bill. It’s not good. I’ve got all sorts of skills, but they tell me I’m either overqualified or underqualified.“

Here’s what someone else at the rally wants:

My home has been seized, I’m unemployed, there’s no job prospects on the horizon. I have two children and I don’t see a future for them.

And they smell!

The comically named New York policeman Anthony "Tony" Bologna has now been caught macing #OccupyWallSt protesters without apparent provocation not once, but twice. The Guardian reports that new footage of Officer Bologna macing protesters emerged yesterday, and that the NYPD is launching two separate investigations into the matter.

Oh, and? Score one for Team Bloggers and Activists for getting the NYPD to take Bologna's actions seriously:

The investigations were announced after bloggers and activists drew attention to video posted online which showed that Bologna fired pepper spray on two occasions last Saturday as officers broke up a protest march through Greenwich Village.

The first footage shows him targeting a group of female protesters who were being penned in by officers on East 12th Street. The latest video shows another incident on the same street, shortly after the first, when he fired more pepper spray towards at least one of the same women, after they were recovering from the first incident.

Hm.

What a difference an ideology makes, eh? The "Tea Party" is backed by more than a few of the bricks that make up the foundation of the financial citadel, and so they get lavish coverage...and never mind how embarrassing some of the outfits on the scene may have been. A hat made entirely out of tea bags? Stylish...and completely unremarked upon.

Issues of fashion aside, the Wall Street protests are drawing a certain kind of attention never paid to the "Tea Party" crowds. Jeanne Mansfield, writing for the Boston Review, describes her experience with the NYPD:

As we circle Union Square, about twenty NYPD officers haul out orange plastic nets (the kind used to fence off construction sites) and close off the road, diverting the crowd. But the detour, too, is closed, leaving us only one option: straight down Broadway. The lighthearted carnival air begins to get very heavy as it becomes clear that we are being corralled. The main group, about 150 protesters, keeps on down the street, but the police are running behind with the orange nets, siphoning off groups of fifteen to twenty people at a time, classic crowd control.

A new group of police officers arrives in white shirts, as opposed to dark blue. These guys are completely undiscerning in their aggression. If someone gets in their way, they shove them headfirst into the nearest parked car, at which point the officers are immediately surrounded by camera phones and shouts of "Shame! Shame!" Up until this point, Frank and I have managed to stay ahead of the nets, but as we hit what I think is 12th Street, they've caught up. The blue-shirts aren't being too forceful, so we manage to run free, but stay behind to see what happens. Then things go nuts.

The white-shirted cops are shouting at us to get off the street as they corral us onto the sidewalk. One African American man gets on the curb but refuses to be pushed up against the wall of the building; they throw him into the street, and five cops tackle him. As he's being cuffed, a white kid with a video camera asks him "What's your name?! What's your name?!" One of the blue-shirted cops thinks he's too close and gives him a little shove. A white-shirt sees this, grabs the kid and without hesitation billy-clubs him in the stomach.

A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream "No! Why are you doing that?!" The rest of us in the crowd turn away from the spray, but it's unavoidable. My left eye burns and goes blind and tears start streaming down my face. Frank grabs my arm and shoves us through the small gap between the orange fence and the brick wall while everyone stares in shock and horror at the two girls on the ground and two more doubled over screaming as their eyes ooze.

The heavy-handed police response to peaceful protesters gives lie to the notion that this is all a hapless mess. The folks down on Wall Street are, we are expected to believe, totally disorganized and slightly embarrassing. Nonsense. This is one of the most important actions in modern American history, and it is being undertaken by average citizens who have lost homes, jobs and hope in one of the greatest thefts of all time. For years, a great many people have been screaming for justice to be done, with no tangible results. Now, these protesters have taken that message to the bank's front door, and they are getting maced by the police for their trouble.

Breaking out of the corporate culture is going to be very difficult. But even more important will be to identify just how strong the hold is that the 1% has on the 99%mind, makes this even more difficult. Then include the economic disaster that many elude is coming, and the scarcity of resources among the 99%, and those things alone are indeed a recipe for failure.  A failure that the American citizen, and those who live all around the world can not afford. So, I'm proposing some dialog to go along with the current movement developing in this place called 'home'. You see, I too, am one of the 99%.

What is the corporate culture that I refer too you say? Well, its the one where you have to look a certain way to be 'accepted'. You have to sound a certain way to be accepted. You have to squelch the heart and lead with the mind. You must at all costs put company first over family. Give away skills, gifts and talents for next to nothing to exhibit your worthiness, for a long time. Then be prepared to be 'passed' over and smile about it, when you unknowingly made a mistake in one of the above mentioned areas. And the list goes on. There are corporate expectations of our young, and they don't even get to start if they make a mistake. You get the drift? We can break this out as a nation, together, over a cup of whatever as this thing gets going. For sure it's important, cause the Wallstreet Occupation is still stuck. They asked the nation of 'been-waiting-for-this-for-to-long' folk to order them up some breakfast from Dunkin donuts and are using UPS to get them vital things on which to subsist as they continue to 'occupy'. Gotta rethink that, really.

Oh, I'm not blaming them. Just mentioning that they are lining the pockets of those they claim to abhor. I know, it is gonna take some time to rewire our thinking and our actions. I'm patient, and working hard to do my part.  And I wanted to give a shout out to the Worldwide group, they seem to be thinking about this more then most. I heard a rumor that they wanted to GREEN up the NY folk, and in NY's hurry... most ignored this idea, not to mention they seem to be succumbing to the NO LEADERS mantra we've been hearing. This member of the 99% believes in the rebellion, and I'm hoping that these things get a little attention, and soon.

As for the resources, yeah. The one percent are set. They have what they need and will manage just fine. So, they have the time to sit back and figure out what might work in their favor when the jobs and resources are scarce. And you know they will. They will pit each one against the other, build the competition to such a level that we implode on one another, instead of course, exploding on them. We'll buy their stuff and keep them humming. We'll point fingers at each other and call out the personal deficits, and issues that living in the shadow of the 1% creates. Yes, hold tight folks, cause as the 99% work to get on their proverbial feet and fight back, the 1% are doing the same thing to maintain their power and privilege.

We have an opportunity to take our time and do this right. If we go to fast, in the corporate way.. we'll fail.  And to tell you the truth, I don't think we have another fail in us. At least, some of us don't. It is why I make an attempt to open this dialog and get us talking to each other about how and why the 1% got so small and so powerful, and we got so .... needy. It will be difficult, and it may look like were losing ground once in awhile, but hang out, hang tough, and we'll hang that old corporate culture that got us here. We'll use our minds yes, but we'll start using our hearts again to balance this thing called the Republic out again, make it better, get back on the road to freedom.. you know, its what we're good at.

It's a question we need to answer, together.

A lot of what you've probably seen or read about the #occupywallstreet action is wrong, especially if you're getting it on the Internet. The action started as an idea posted online and word about it then spread and is still spreading, online. But what makes it really matter now is precisely that it is happening offline, in a physical, public space, live and in person. That's where the occupiers are assembling the rudiments of a movement.

Chris Hedges visited the rebellion that brews as American citizens gather in New York, and many other places around this country, referred to as Occupy Wallstreet. In less then a week the perceptions often labeled as 'liberal' as become somewhat more then a political platform for a group of party loyalists, it has become a cry from citizens that we've lost our way in America. Many claim that it is a movement lead by our youth, yet, if you spend even a small amount of time witnessing the unfolding rebellion you can find that it is grandparents, parents, and even some cases if you look closely, great grandparents, who are gathering to a center once misidentified as the 'margin'. Mr. Hedges confirmed for this listener that this action, this growing action, knows no justice if we use the historical 'revolution' tag to name it. We must see it for what it is and can be for every american.. it is a rebellion against corporate culture that works to modify our freedom for themselves, to create a serfdom, as he says, in the continued effort to minimize the foundation of our origin. It is that origin, and its interpretation that they use to enslave us to their way. The corporate culture will end us as a nation, and it is this rebellion that can save us.

I hope the corporate "Elite" are listening. And, I hope they refrain from a fouled interpretation of the overall 'message', as our politicians have conditioned our mainstream media to repeat, instead, may they listen intently for the sound of our resolve. May they also accept that sitting on the balcony with smiles as full as their champagne glasses do nothing to bridge the divide that will rend our republic, and cast her into the status that once existed in a land across the sea... a land that thrust her oppressed people to gather and rebuild a place where their gifts and hopes took flight.  Should this 1% neglect to see this resolve... should the corporate repeaters of this message fail to understand this resolve, this nation of voices now peacefully shouting from New York, Miami, L.A., Seattle, and other corners of this struggling nation will pass on by them, and begin the rebellion against them... Yes, against them.

The words, Justice and Truth, as they came from the man sitting in front of a makeshift 'media' station, erected and protected from NYPD and their white shirts, brought confidence to this listener.  He stated that 'people make a choice about loyalty', and this listener heard him and was revitalized to know that he was right in this observation. We do. We make choices about loyalty. However misguided it can be. And i began to understand why, yesterday and the days leading here, I used the word 'Wanna Be's' to describe those who have been watchers as our nation has been brought to its knees in the pursuit of work and making a living, or those who kiss the policies that maintain their addiction to credit ratings and 401k's, in the name of MORE then making a living.. rather, those who feel there isn't enough, and so their judgements build against those fellow citizens who politicians describe as unworthy with labels and 20 second sound bits that include, lazy, entitled, illegal, leaches, and so many more it becomes distracting. Justice and Truth are not for the 'worthy' as our corrupted American elite body would have us believe. Merriam's Dictionary can help you understand basic definition of these 'words' and who they apply too. Sincerely. I did it, I looked them up,... and it helped.

You see, I call myself a 'listener' for good reason. I think Chris Hedges and those who heard him and understood what he was telling us 'listeners', knows that the gap has draw some very distinct and undervalued lines around the rebellion that begins (and it begins). I can not be there, nor can I be taken seriously by those who i might reach out to here at home. I have been neutralized by the 'powers' he speaks of. I have been rendered unworthy, needy, entitled and therefore powerless. Politicians and corporate whores are pleased with the results of this 'outcome'. The sponsors of this rebellion, those that 'feed' its purpose, are the elite. Their power is substantial and embedded in the minds of those who could make the difference today, the 9th day of our rebellion, those who i used to call 'Wanna Be's'. They are watchers. I am a listener.

It is the watchers I often speak to. It is the watchers, i believe that Mr. Hedge's words (if they reach them) will empower.  If this group of Americans, who are often labeled 'the middle class' begin to understand how their opinion of their citizen brothers and sisters is manipulated to support the goals of the elite, then they will know that what rests in their hearts as dreams, are not dreams a all, they are mirages. The kind of 'security' they aspire too is an illusion. ONe that the middle class will not let go of... one that ferments the injustice and mutes the truth. The truth, as we have been lead to understand as 'one truth'. There again, we fall into the trap that the elite wish us to return to in droves, that there is one truth. Each American has a truth, it is theirs to defend. America was built on a set of ideals, some have born out into our society and created progress, and others have been squashed.

It is those that have been squashed that the elite smile about over their champagne, while they lovingly protect the illusions of the middle class. I ask a simple question and hope for an answer that is offered with the element of critical thought, and not ideological fervor, and it is this.

Do you understand how the elite actions of Wallstreet and the Corporate culture foster the annihilation of the very people who have made them what they are?

If you do, then you know that the distinction between revolution and rebellion is an important one. These brave souls who have elected, chosen, to sacrifice heart and hearth, do so knowing that they may well save us all... even the 'elite'.

http://occupytogether.org/    check this out!

NEWS JUNKIE POST
Sep 22, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Occupy Wall Street Photojournal: Come to Manhattan!

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by Kenneth Lipp

A cross-section of America has gathered in New York City to demand an end to the deference given to corporations and greed over people and needs.

“We are here to kill war.” Bukowsi
Photographs from the first 5 days of Occupy Wall Street.

Thinking about e-mailing your friends and neighbors about the protests against Wall Street happening right now? If you have a Yahoo e-mail account, think again. ThinkProgress has reviewed claims that Yahoo is censoring e-mails relating to the protest and found that after several attempts on multiple accounts, we too were prevented from sending messages about the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations.

Over the weekend, thousands gathered for a “Tahrir Square”-style protest of Wall Street’s domination of American politics. The protesters, organized online and by organizations like Adbusters, have called their effort “Occupy Wall Street” and have set up the website: www.OccupyWallSt.org. However, several YouTube users posted videos of themselves trying to email a message inviting their friends to visit the Occupy Wall St campaign website, only to be blocked repeatedly by Yahoo. View a video of ThinkProgress making the attempt with the same blocked message experienced by others (click full screen for a better view of the text):

Bank of America finally caught a break.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced a surprise $5 billion investment in Bank of America Thursday morning, sending shares of the struggling Dow component surging more than 25% in early trading.

The investment is seen as a major vote of confidence from one of the world's foremost long-term investors.

"Bank of America is a strong, well-led company, and ... I wanted to invest in it," said Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) Chief Executive Warren Buffett, in a statement.

Jamie Leigh Jones says she was gang-raped in Iraq while doing business for KBR, the military contractor formerly known as Halliburton. She was not the only person to make such claims—at least four other women accused KBR employees of rape—yet the corporation tried to suppress her case, at least until the jury ruled against her last month.

But winning wasn't enough. Now absurd, greedy KBR wants to make her pay, literally. The contractor has filed a lawsuit for $2 million against Jones, claiming the suit she pursued was "frivolous, unreasonable, and groundless." Talking Points Memo:

Jones said there is "nothing frivolous" about her claims, according to the Wall Street Journal, pointing out that a judge let the trial proceed and that the jury deliberated for over 10 hours before it reached its verdict.

Jones' lawyer Todd Kelly told WSJ's Law Blog that his client doesn't have the means to cover KBR's fee request. "They have beaten us and now they are attempting to crush us," he added. "This is an attempt by KBR to chill other people from bringing claims against them."

Washington, D.C. — August 12, 2011 — The Communications Workers of America has filed unfair labor practice charges against Verizon Communications for labor law violations in contract negotiations covering Verizon, Verizon Wireless and VCSI workers. The charges, filed with National Labor Relations Board offices in New York and Baltimore, make the case that Verizon has refused to bargain in good faith with CWA.

CWA is urging the NLRB to immediately order Verizon management to drop its refusal to bargain and negotiate in good faith as the law requires.

Some 45,000 workers, members of CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, have been on strike since 12:01 a.m. Aug. 7.

"Since the first day of negotiations, through contract expiration and even today, Verizon management has demanded the same $1 billion in concessions from its 45,000 workers. These demands would cost every family $20,000 a year. This is unacceptable from a company that is among the 10 wealthiest in America, that compensates the top five executives at a level of more than a quarter of a billion dollars over four years, that doesn't pay any federal income tax and still gets a $1.3 billion tax rebate," said CWA Communications Director Candice Johnson.

    Intelligent observers one and all, step right up and sound the call to a truth no one can hide any longer.  To those of  you who held fast to  your principals, your integrity, and paid a high price for it... here's to you. I honor the consequence that others scoff at in the name of corporate worship. May you met the weeping worker who laid bare their soul in the name of 'making a living' and 'providing for my family' as they look about them and see the unintended product of their choices. Let's talk about that product. And forgive them as they lead us deeper and deeper into the citizen abyss. After all, they know where the bodies are buried.

    It isn't difficult to do after all. We know that the jobs numbers are not quite trustworthy. It is the number that the well heeled casino street walkers rely on to revive their wallstreet shenanigans each time a layer of corruption falls away. Who knew that S&P was doing us all a favor. They drew some much needed attention to the 'pay me' system that the credit rating crew depends on. These corporate paid workers who safeguard the elite in their ivory towers. Yes, its you i see and you who need to be held to account for your diligent defense of all things unethical. It turns out the phrase, "I just work here" is not a good attitude to have and indeed allowed America to be plundered. It's you who laid the ground work for that detailed devil. You who know full well, when you come together, just how many Americans are unemployed... and sure as hell isn't 9%, and you know it... deep in that corporate heart of yours.

    Stings doesn't it.  Not as much I imagine as the sting thousands and thousands of others feel each time they find themselves outside the standard labor-market-sucks-looping-conduct because there are SO many more people then jobs now. We've been here before, I remember. It was about who you know, and just how low you'd go in the need for income.  The small ways of making a scathing living disappear. There are no more 'cash' jobs in any great number except in the fields, and the boss won't hire white as quickly as they'll hire low-wage seeking immigrants to do those jobs. Even now that white is willing. This is not spoken of in the white house. At least one can not discern if it is or it isn't, and that is a problem (begs the question is it internalized issues or strategy?) and it is showing up in places like Milwaukee, at the State Fair.

Hunger does amazing things to one's 'choices' when the job slots disappear. And the bosses are desperately hanging on to their own 'living', willing to do you in that effort. They answer to corporate. good little gatekeepers one and all these new breed middle folk. To the gatekeepers I offer this; it is you that are responsible for the way Americans now sacrifice every last golden rule taught to them to maintain shelter, feed the kids, and bow down to those who ask them to be something they loath... dishonest. It is reminiscent of the Director's couch, and all those willing nubile blondes laying down for a small speaking part.

    No one really talks about the little lies that feed the middle lies that keep the big lies healthy and hard at work building profits for the top 1%.  It takes the entire structure in the corporate world to participate and make no waves, at least not the kind that used to make decent people happy to go to work. We're all prepared to screw each other in the manner corporate culture has taught us.

    After decades of this culture... our children have learned well. The latch key, the after school wonderer's, the dance classes, the soccer games, the credit cards, the cars, the summer camps, the privilege.  yes, they have taken up the culture and added their devil may care embellishments to it, these corporate children.  They rarely miss an opportunity to share that with the kids who's parents clean those offices. It's a nasty little game that is represented in the afternoon shows with mouthy privileged actors who portray the culture and this new generation nicely. And you wonder why there is not only a gap in incomes, but a chasm of understanding.  It is beginning to show as the kids who hang out for lack of employment, notice the distinction. Unemployment has far reaching impact on an entire family, an entire community, and when it gets to the next level, and entire state and nation. Hell, we may be there, it just hasn't been reported.

   And there you are. The nightly news and the sweet little pieces Diane Sawyer and the other talking heads deliver, rarely illuminates the condition  of your lives. Rather, it feeds the illusion. The internet sources who still rant and rave about launching a job hunt. The advice is negligible. And you know it. the corporate types are looking for conformists. They don't have to look far. There are many who prefer crawling up on that couch, spreading their 'legs' and murmuring, "I'll do anything for a job Mr. Corporation". In fact, I'm willing to put it out there that they prefer that over taking their disgust and knowledge of this corrupt environment.. to the street. Might as well... we end up there anyway, at least we keep our dignity.

Once that's gone... It's all up for grabs.

Dear Mr. President,

You said,

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

well.................

30. …because while poverty is not an individual choice, not attempting to abolish it is a conscious choice.

The truth is lost in America

truth is that if your sick

don't go to the doctor

if you have no insurance,

die, and then it will stop.

This insipid gross green

fungal growth of fascism,

is spurred on by our refusal

to just die, quietly.

You see the numbers are to high.

The church like need to have enough

gold, silver, brand named status

is your ticket to the material cave.

Work you see for quarters is preferred

to foreclosing, closing before you can

call yourself an owner, of land,

and make rules when you forget

what the rules were when you started

down this road that tolls were built upon.

We're still picking you see... and the bag

its stuffed in is plastic and fits in your wallet.

You will pass on through the door without

craning your neck to see what others

contently deny any who state they have rights,

democracy and republics are for the learned.

The place of higher learning isn't teaching

the deserving how to share. The banks of America

know which day is coming, and prepare for

the chagrin should you bring your glasses.

“The rules will change, we need not notify you

or explain on the phone, and no, there are

no supervisors available. But thank you for

calling we'll send your statement general delivery.”

Fight. Bring the horrors home and sit in the

great outdoors pondering the value of

veterans benefits pulled like the latest

recall of baby cribs out of your grasp.

But please, don't look for truth... its not here.

This is not the end there is simply to much

muck to stuff in this particular news cycle,

so we've decided what you need to know.

ride us till we're all down and dying.

much more then what is posted here... reading it actually gives you an idea of what kind of 'inspiration' is needed to save ourselves.

...

Similarly, no matter how completely sold-out to the Wall Street giants D.C. politicians are, they would start paying attention to their real employers - the American people - if we make enough noise.

If 3 million Americans all peacefully surrounded the White House and Capitol Hill, holding signs saying "We're Not Leaving Until the Too Big to Fails which Caused the Economic Crisis are Reined In", things would change pretty fast.

3 million might sound like a lot of people. But many millions of people read popular alternative financial and economic news sites. You are probably one of millions of people who will read this essay (by the time it is published by some of the larger sites).

In other words, it's not even a question of convincing other people to go. We - those who read alternative financial websites - could do it ourselves.

If millions of us don't go protest in D.C., it's because we are choosing not to sacrifice a tiny bit in order to change things.

The bad guys are only winning because we - the American people - aren't making enough noise.

As one leading hedge fund manager recently stated, "There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner... because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis." The market for derivatives is somewhere in the realm of $600 trillion.

When Greece exchanged its drachma for the euro in 2000, most voters were all for joining the Eurozone. Their hope was that it would ensure stability, and that this would promote rising wages and living standards. Few saw that the stumbling point was tax policy. Greece was excluded from the eurozone the previous year as a result of failing to meet the 1992 Maastricht criteria for EU membership, limiting budget deficits to 3 percent of GDP, and government debt to 60 percent.

Apart from the wealthiest households, there has, thus, been no real sus­tained re­cove­ry of con­sum­er spend­ing in the US economy for the past two years.

Entertainment.

Psychological conditioning.

Behavior modification.

Energy Frenzy.

Contamination.

Starvation.

Disease.

Americans making hundreds of thousands, ... millions, to tell us lies on the nightly news, distract us from that which we should be most concerned about as we walk off to work everyday in the name of 'I want'. Is it the quality of 'I want' that separates us?

Desperation, when paired with 'I want' plays out before us like a rhapsody with no audience. All are playing on stage........no one watches, or listens for anything except their own part, their own noise, those who sit in a chair with 'director' silk screened on the back of the canvas, cross their arms, put up their feet and continue to be fascinated with their successes.

It is not about death. Iraqi's die, Afghan children, Iranian grandmothers, South African school girls, Irish sons, Chinese daughters, Philippine sisters , Turks, Indians, Vietnamese, Palestinians, and Americans. Many other lands that seem far off and which many of us do not even think about know a greater degree of unnecessary suffering then we ever will. What do the suffering have in common. Is the answer in our understanding? Feast or famine, war or peace, in love or hate, on a dark night or in the blazing afternoon, on a tree lined street where school buses come and go, or in a debris ridden walled up refugee camp in a country we don't care about.......... the truth is simple, really. The suffering has an end result. Many of us care little as long as we don't have to look at it, much less experience it. All we've been sold on is salvation through prayer by Christians who now call for the end of compassion. They call it from city councils, court rooms, the Supreme Court, from the squad room ...

There are powerful wealthy individuals who sit down to a table spread with unimaginable delicacy, laid by the hands of another, just after making a deal they know will kill someone, ...many.... leave others destitute, starving, hungry, wounded, crippled and will wonder why the table is bare when they requested, planned, a table perfect for the evening. They can crane their necks in search of the people who feed them, clean them, raise their children... what would they do if we weren't there?

Instead we ask for a strategy when revolution is done, look for a new leader, mark our ballot believing we've just participated in democracy, run for school board, post an article, shout our disdain from a broad banner at public events......... whatever, just don't tell me or anyone else who has been paying attention that it matters anymore. It doesn't. The hour is past.

there is no work to be done.

the time for surviving has returned.

who will you kill ............ to say that you are living.

There are those who will smile at the players on the stage, who are dancing to the rhythm of their want fulfilled.

Tonight, when the hour is late, an individual will be removed from her last warm place to sleep. she will move out into the darkness, and those who made it happen will tell themselves that there were others more deserving who needed that warm dry spot. They will find a way to live with it.

My contribution is to use the space here and ask you to think of her tonight. Think of all of those we pass by daily and find a way to live with it when we lay down to sleep. Until we do it will be a restless sleep. Until we acknowledge how far away from our part in compassion we have moved... we will continue to toward surviving until it is our time to leave that last warm spot we found for ourselves.

they think this is shocking... wait til they see what happens next.

With QE2 scheduled to wind down this summer and millions of American voters still unemployed, it was clear that the Fed was itching to keep the monetary spigot open. But how would that be possible with oil, food, and precious metals at or near historic highs and the dollar at multi-year lows? Clearly, something would have to happen to justify QE3.

Now we know what. On April 27 the Fed confirms that QE2 will end pretty soon, and one week later a slew of bad economic numbers just happen to hit the headlines. First-time jobless claims, productivity, consumer confidence all suddenly appear to contradict the idea that a sustainable recovery is underway. Stocks tank, oil falls, and gold and silver retrace their post-Bernanke press conference parabolic spikes. The economy is suddenly looking double-dipish.

This might be pure coincidence, of course, but the timing is definitely propitious for a government that 1) knows it has to inflate away the dollar if it’s to have any hope of maintaining its global military empire and cradle-to-grave welfare system, and 2) has an election coming up in which a roaring 2012 economy is crucial.

Now get ready for the spread of the 1931 meme, in which the current false spring is compared to the one that preceded the descent into the Great Depression. Talking heads will demand action, government officials will claim to be watching the situation closely, and economists will start debating the form of the next stimulus plan. Then — with plenty of time for the folks in power to claim credit during the election campaign — Washington will announce something that puts QE2 to shame. Shock and awe on a Krugmanesque scale will hit the markets. And the plan to inflate away the dollar will really get going.

Seven publicly traded U.S. corporations represented on President Barack Obama’s advisory council for jobs and competitiveness -- including General Electric Co. (GE) and Intel Corp. (INTC) -- have devoted a growing pool of their non-U.S. earnings to investments in other countries.

As a group, multinational companies with current or former chief executive officers on Obama’s jobs council have, over the past four years, almost doubled the cumulative amounts they’ve reinvested overseas, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

By doing so, companies may be able to take advantage of faster-growing markets or lower production costs, and they can defer U.S. income taxes on profits from overseas sales. Underscoring the difference between corporate interests and the national interest, they’re also investing money elsewhere that could be helping the U.S. economy, said former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

“That’s a signal that they are betting less on America,” Reich said. “We’ve got to understand there’s a fundamental difference between the competitiveness of these companies and the competitiveness of America and American workers.”

Now that I've dispensed with the obvious and obnoxious teaser headline, let's drop the towel and expose Dominique Strauss-Kahn's history of arrogant abuse. The truth is, the grandee of the IMF has molested Africans for years.

On Wednesday, the New York Times ran five – count'em, FIVE – stories on Strauss-Kahn, Director-General of the International Monetary Fund. According to the Paper of Record, the charges against "DSK," as he's known in France, are in "contradiction" to his "charm" and "accomplishments" at the IMF.

Au contraire, mes chers lecteurs.

Director-General DSK's cruelty, arrogance and impunity toward African and other nations as generalissimo of the IMF is right in line with the story told by the poor, African hotel housekeeper in New York City.

Let's consider how the housekeeper from Guinea ended up here in New York. In 2002, this single mother was granted asylum. What drove her here?

The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.

Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.

“I have to take some responsibility,” he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. “I could have been reading into it more than was there.

“I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor,” he says. “But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level.’ And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, ‘I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong.”

West says the betrayal occurred on two levels.

No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.

 

indeed... where i hope many Americans find themselves. Trapped, and considering what needs to be done.

The International Monetary Fund's 24-member executive board will meet Thursday to begin the process of selecting a new leader, said John Lipsky, the IMF's acting managing director.

"We want this to happen as expeditiously as possible," Lipsky said.

His comments came shortly after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged the IMF to quickly select a new chief through an open process.

Lipsky took over this week after former chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. Strauss-Kahn, who is has denied the charges, resigned late Wednesday. That set up a scramble to choose his successor.

Traditionally, the head of the IMF has been a European while an American has run the World Bank. Developing countries have long chafed at that arrangement and are pushing for officials from their countries to be considered this time.

The United States will play a critical role in the selection. The U.S. has the most votes among any individual country, although collectively Europe carries the most weight.

Geithner's statement was ambiguous and leaves open the possibility that the U.S. could support a candidate from either group. Some analysts said the U.S. government will make its preference clearer behind the scenes while keeping a more impartial stance in public.

and betting they are.

With all the doom-and-gloom warnings from the White House about the debt ceiling, it was probably only a matter of time before the cemetery images were invoked. But what were the chances that the White House would use the same idiom Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio) used 24 hours earlier, albeit with much different meaning?

Speaker of the House John Boehner, Sunday: “We all know what the problems are. Why don’t we just deal with them? No more kicking the can down the road, no more whistling past the graveyard. Now is the time to deal with the fiscal problems we have in an adult-like manner.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney, Monday: “It is a reminder that we need to have a vote to lift the debt ceiling because the consequences of not doing so would be quite serious, indeed. And those who suggest otherwise are whistling past the graveyard. It is a foolish thing to suggest that we could somehow as the United States of America default on our obligations and that it would not have seriously negative consequences if we suddenly stop paying our bills on a third of our obligations.”

Mr. Boehner’s point is that the White House can’t expect Congress to raise the debt ceiling unless serious action is taken to reduce growth of the deficit. The White House’s point is that failing to raise the debt ceiling would be a disaster.

It is dated... and it seems to be right on target, why did no one listen?

By Senator Tim Ferguson
The Ferguson Report
6-10-4

I have warned for a long time that the Federal Reserve is planning to destroy the U.S. economy by: printing the U.S. dollar in exponentially riskier quantities until it blows off the charts and crashes, and by easing credit and rates until the average individual and corporate debt loads are so enormous that the resulting massive distortions in the economy suddenly bring on an economic heart attack, leaving no possibility of a short or even medium-term recovery. That day is here!

There is nothing more important in your life right now than the exceedingly dire economic crisis unfolding as I write, and the state of your soul!

In other words, if your spiritual house is not in order, the building financial collapse will be so horrible that you will not be able to emotionally or mentally endure it, and I am addressing the healthy and strong here.

This collapse will knock you out cold, flat on your back, with violence, and most of mankind will never get back up. While the elite are sending signals to their friends that the switch has been thrown, that final preparations for safety are now in order, they are not saying how bad it will be. That is why I began this site, because I could not find anyone, even doomsayers, who spelled out clearly what is at stake here. I believe that even the elite, such as Sir Templeton (more below) do not fully understand the implications of this crash - that this is the end of America as we know it.

That great criminal enterprise - the Federal Reserve - has accomplished step #1, trashing and ending the dollar system, culminating a multi-year, massive, insane inflation of money supply and credit. The Illuminati corporations such as Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Farmer Mac, FHA, GM, Ford, and GE (which are actually banks), worked hand-in-hand with the Bank Cartel on this sickening, twisted game, switching from pumping credit cards and cars (which have gone to zero percent financing 12 months ago) to a last-ditch horrendous push into mortgage lending. This insane lending will destroy the lending institutions themselves, as Ford and GM are well aware, but the elite do not care, as after this collapse, there will only be one corporation in the world, and they are all pulling together to put everyone as deep into debt as possible, to assure than no American state or corporation or region will survive when the debt mountain suffocates all life. This is why so many CEOs are bailing out with insane profits from questionable practices which would normally ruin their career for life, as they have raped their corporation (the latest is Grasso of the New York Stock Exchange); but they know the game is over, and it is now or never - this is their last chance to make millions and move to an island, for insiders are able to see that the economy is literally going to hell, and it will not climb out of hell in their lifetimes. (Some of these characters believe they have a room reserved underground to protect them from what is coming. Some are correct in thinking this, some are not. But many of those underground cities will be death traps, so you had better think twice before paying millions for your reservation. There are earth changes coming that will fundamentally rearrange the crust of the earth, most likely including your future bedroom.)

History, if only it were taught in our schools would show that such manipulation of men and women has been repeated since Time immemorial but this time the plan is so sinister that it will strike the death knell for the freedoms and dreams of all human beings.

To return to my point that America will be no more, I want you to realise that if America stands for liberty and freedom, then in order to remove it as an obstacle to one world government it must first be shown to represent neither, which appears to be what’s happening right now, only then can the safety and security that so many people seem to desire be offered in the form of a one world government.

All we see right now are clear examples of the American administration and their naively obedient military, as opposed to the American people, attacking nation after nation in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and accusing them of harbouring him or being in some way complicit in his misdeeds, none of which is true.

At the same time we are led to believe that America is responsible for the pending collapse of the financial markets which is actually due to the mishandling of the markets by private banks who are the only ones to benefit from this chaos and not the American people who like the rest of us suffer at every turn with the theft of their property and wealth through the bailout fiasco and so called austerity measures imposed all over and a currency designed to fail, since being issued at interest inevitably means someone must fail, default and lose everything or indeed the system itself.

America is being set up as the bad guy, which is actually what wiki leaks was created to achieve, it was not about individuals fighting for truth, but to expose the corruption and abuses being carried out in the name of the American people who again had no control over, or for the most part were even aware of these things, the power is in the hands of only a few with an agenda unrelated to the apparent issues, it’s merely a smoke screen to hide the real crimes.

By Dean Henderson| Left Hook

Original Published on May 2, 2011

The alleged killing of Osama bin Laden next to a Pakistani military training academy could signal the winding down of the biggest psychological warfare operation ever prosecuted by the global oligarchy. In the wake of the 911 terror attacks, Americans everywhere recited the collective mantra, “Things will never be the same”. Actually things had changed very little.

The Patsies

Fifteen of the nineteen alleged hijackers were born in Saudi Arabia, where the House of Saud dictatorship has financed Muslim Brotherhood modern-day Assassins and CIA covert operations since its inception for the benefit of the Eight Families banking cartel and their Four Horsemen – whose ARAMCO oilfields are protected via US military occupation of the Kingdom.

The Assassins this time were members of al Qaeda, the cadre of former Afghan mujahadeen fighters that the CIA trained, then used to carry out proxy wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Indian Kashmir, East Turkistan Province in China, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, Algeria and Uzbekistan. The CIA brought al Qaeda spiritual leader and Anwar Sadat assassin Sheik Abdul Rahman to the US to recruit Islamic fundamentalists willing to fight in these CIA wars. [1]

Al Qaeda was headed by Osama bin Laden, who built the CIA’s mujahadeen training camps in Afghanistan.  Bin Laden was House of Saud point man in recruiting Arab fighters for CIA shenanigans in Central Asia and the Balkans.  Bin Laden’s brother Salem was a business partner and good friend of James Bath.  His father Mohammed provided seed money for Bath’s good buddy George W. Bush’s Arbusto Energy. The bin Laden family fortune was managed by the Carlyle Group where George Bush Sr. advised them.

According to a PBS spokeswomen, within three days of 911 both Vice-President Dick Cheney and Queen Elizabeth II called PBS to request copies of two video documentaries the station had done – one on bin Laden and the other on Islam.  Since US intelligence knew all it needed to know of their foot soldier bin Laden, Cheney and Her Majesty were more concerned with what the US public had already been told of the Saudi paymaster so they could factor this into their forthcoming public relations blitz.

Bin Laden’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri heads Egyptian Islamic Jihad – a Muslim Brotherhood front whose assassins had help from the CIA in escaping justice in Egypt so they could go to Albania to fight with the Kosovo Liberation Army.  Al-Zawahiri’s sidekick Ali Mohammed came to the US in 1984.  He trained terrorists in Brooklyn and Jersey City on weekends and instructed US Special Forces at Fort Bragg. [2]  He was later involved in the US Embassy bombings in Africa.

According to the FBI, five of the nineteen alleged 911 hijackers were trained by the US military – three at Pensacola Naval Air Station and two at other facilities. [3]

 

Photo: ask.us.now.com

The Yes Men and their friends have been stepping up an all-fronts attack on the Koch brothers for their funding of conservative political causes. Among other creative assaults this week, the Yes Men launched a mock website to humiliate Koch-owned Peabody Coal, and, on Wednesday night, a "guerrilla drive-in" movie in New York's esteemed Lincoln Center, where one of the buildings has recently been renamed after David H. Koch.

Here's a public confession from Mark Read of The Other 98% on how that second operation was executed. For a reporter's eye view on these anti-Koch activities, see a post by Allison Burtch here.

“Uh, you’re kidding right?”

“No, really, we’ve gotten away with crazier stuff. You just have to look like you know what you’re doing. Like you belong here.”

We were standing in front of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln center, at about 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday night. My friend Andrew had roped me into helping out with a “Guerilla Drive-In” that he and his cohorts from The Other 98% were coordinating, in partnership with the people at Brave New Foundation. I had volunteered to be part of “The Sticker Team,” meaning I would be one of four people that would put ladders up on the face of the theater building and place a nine-foot-long thought-bubble sticker above David Koch’s name that read “I’m the Tea Party’s Wallet.”

This kind of cronyism and favoritism in government employees and their work needs to become illegal or punishable, or at least enforce a five year waiting period so contacts and friendships can cool and become level.

this has to be wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and there needs to  be consequences.

Comcast customers and Universal users need to exercise a stoppage on bill paying for a month.

The idea that the Bilderberg Group is behind the creation of a mysterious future World Government has been spreading for years. Having had access to the archives of this very secret club, Thierry Meyssan shows that this belief leads in a false direction, serving to mask the true identity and function of the Group. In reality, the Bilderberg Group is a creation of NATO. It aims to influence key leaders on a global scale and, through them, to manipulate public opinion to get it to embrace the ideas and actions of the Northern Atlantic Alliance.

Every year since 1954, over one hundred of the most prominent personalities of Western Europe and North America meet – behind closed doors and under maximum security – within the Bilderberg Group. This exclusive seminar lasts for three days and almost nothing of the debates filters to the outside world.

indeed, not only are they buying gold but Central Banks of the world have become net buyers of gold instead of sellers for the first time in over a decade. These are the insiders of the inner circle who dictate to the world what money is and is not. Will you be led to believe that gold and silver are not money? There are also rumors that the Indian Central Bank has been buying silver. China clearly stated that thy will also be diversifying their currency reserves into silver and in the Middle East it is no secret that they have been minting silver and gold coins.

Now is the time to be vigilant more than ever. When you view the actions of those claiming lordship over us those actions do not mix well with their words. Silver and gold may run down in price further yet but this is a gift to you. You can despair and think we are defeated or you can see through the veil and see that the powers that be are afraid and shaking. They are preparing for major currency dislocations and the best way to protect yourselves from such events is by donning your silver and gold armor. Use this as a buying opportunity to strengthen your family’s positions in these chaotic times. Cast aside your doubts and fears, do what others will not and you will be rewarded.

The U.S. could lose its status as the world’s biggest economic power within five years. The International Monetary Fund predicts China will overtake the U.S. in 2016, which will effectively end the 'Age of America' a decade before most analysts had expected. It means that whoever wins the 2012 presidential election will have the dubious honour of presiding over the fall of the United States.

The body politic was mortally wounded during the long, slow strangulation of ideas and priorities during the Red Scare and the Cold War. Its bastard child, the war on terror, inherited the iconography and language of permanent war and fear. The battle against internal and external enemies became the excuse to funnel trillions in taxpayer funds and government resources to the war industry, curtail civil liberties and abandon social welfare. Skeptics, critics and dissenters were ridiculed and ignored. The FBI, Homeland Security and the CIA enforced ideological conformity. Debate over the expansion of empire became taboo. Secrecy, the anointing of specialized elites to run our affairs and the steady intrusion of the state into the private lives of citizens conditioned us to totalitarian practices. Sheldon Wolin points out in “Democracy Incorporated” that this configuration of corporate power, which he calls “inverted totalitarianism,” is not like “Mein Kampf” or “The Communist Manifesto,” the result of a premeditated plot. It grew, Wolin writes, from “a set of effects produced by actions or practices undertaken in ignorance of their lasting consequences.”

The obvious answer is that rich people have political clout—but can it really be so simple? A growing mound of evidence suggests that while wealthy people’s preferences may not be the only factor in political decision-making, it’s a worrisomely important one. In a recent study, Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels found that senators outright ignored the views of their least advantaged constituents while catering to the preferences of the wealthy. Princeton’s Martin Gilens has also found that policy changes reflect the preferences of the most affluent, while the preferences of poor and middle-income Americans have almost no bearing.

These are remarks Chris Hedges made in Union Square in New York City last Friday during a protest outside a branch office of the Bank of America.

If you didn't watch my video from Sunday on this, you need to. [Bill] Gross is betting that we will not take our foot off the accelerator and accept the necessary contraction we fraudulently "avoided" in 2007, and instead will hit the wall at full speed. When the head of the largest bond fund in the world shorts the US Treasury, Congress and Administration you had damn well better pay attention.
There is no escaping the arithmetic.

In case you missed it, here is the video again…..

* FOMC minutes show a growing divide in the approach for monetary policy
* ECB rate hike leaves the dollar even further back in the yield curve
* The dollar tumbles to 16-month lows against the Euro and breaks serious support along the way

It was already difficult to be a dollar bull – only the most speculative traders and those purely following fundamentals seemed to be left in this quickly dwindling camp. And, with this past week's extraordinary tumble into the drain of liquidity synonymous with the weekend, a concerted effort was made to flush those hold outs by driving the Dollar Index to its lowest level in 17-months. However, traders that see this as a cue to take a new short on the greenback should step back and reconsider the fundamentals behind this move. A review of those factors that have pushed the currency to its current lows and the balance of risks going forward tells us that the risk of a (bullish) reversal is higher than a perfunctory analysis would suggest.

First, it is important to reverse engineer the fundamentals responsible for the dollar's performance to this point to understand what is most important to the market. There are a range of secondary concerns that are either too narrow in scope (high unemployment, the threat of a government shutdown) or distant in quality (the greenback's diminished position as the global reserve currency) to pose an immediate threat to speculative interests. Core to traders' concerns today is the potential for yield balanced against the risks levied against financial stability – an equilibrium that has clearly shifted in favor of returns. On this front the dollar has fall far behind the curve.

In particular, Madoff names Jeffry Picower, Stanley Chais, Carl Shapiro and Norman Levy, his four largest investors.

At the outset, Madoff insists that one of the ground rules for the interview is that "nothing that I say should be taken as an excuse" for his behavior.

Yet later, he paints himself almost as a victim of Picower, Chais, Shapiro and Levy. "I was at their mercy," he says.

Madoff describes how he started managing money for the men in the 1960s. After the 1987 market crash, he says, he found himself locked into investment positions that his four stalwarts refused to close out. In order to keep the business going, they referred other investors to him. Madoff says that by 1992 it had become a Ponzi scheme and his big clients knew.

"They were complicit, all of them," Madoff says.

Richards goes on to tell HuffPo:

"One in five women in America have been to a Planned Parenthood health center for basic health care," and "Ninety-seven percent of our services are basic preventative care that women rely on in communities across this country. Women and men of all parties and all walks of life are concerned about these kinds of efforts to play politics with women's health care access."

Quality, affordable health care is a major concern for those without health insurance and Planned Parenthood provides that type of service to the poor, single mothers and teens in need, it would be a shame to see them go away because of a conservative movement that has focused on one negative aspect of the organization.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein's $19 million compensation for 2010, almost double the prior year, ended two years in which the firm's top executives gave up cash bonuses.

Blankfein's pay included $5.4 million in cash, $12.6 million in restricted stock, a $600,000 salary and about $464,000 in other benefits, a proxy statement from the New York firm showed. Blankfein's $9.8 million pay for 2009 included $9 million in restricted stock plus salary and other compensation.

Cash awards are back at Goldman Sachs, the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, after a 38 percent drop in annual earnings and a year in which the stock price ended close to where it began. While pay is up from 2008, when Blankfein, 56, and six other senior officers got no bonuses, it remains below Blankfein's record-setting $67.9 million award for 2007.

A version of this story was co-published [1] with Fortune.

General Electric's tax department is famous for inventing ways to pay Uncle Sam less. So it should come as no surprise that its CEO, Jeff Immelt, is in the crosshairs as the new chairman of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness [2].
Sidebar

Setting The Record Straight on GE's Taxes

by Allan Sloan, Fortune, and Jeff Gerth, ProPublica
Our Partner

Fortune

The job puts him in the limelight as Washington debates ways to make the tax system fairer, respond to competition from low tax countries and cut the federal deficit -- competing imperatives sure to confound reform efforts. If the debate does get serious, attention is likely to focus on whether to get rid of some of the special tax advantages that benefit GE and other multinational companies.

Still, GE is in a class by itself. Here are five ways the company pares its tax rate well below the top U.S. corporate rate of 35 percent -- sometimes into the single digits.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2.

Revolutions build over long periods — to critical mass, a flash point. Then they ignite suddenly, unpredictably. Like Egypt, started on a young Google executive's Facebook page. Then it goes viral, raging uncontrollably. Can't be stopped. Here in America the set-up is our nation's pervasive "Super-Rich Delusion."

U.K. workers protest turns violent

A splinter group is blamed for smashing windows and attacking police vans as tens of thousands march against government cuts.

We know the Super Rich don't care. Not about you. Nor the American public. They can't see. Can't hear. Stay trapped in their Forbes-400 bubble. An echo chamber that isolates them. They see the public as faceless workers, customers, taxpayers. See GOP power on the ascent. Reaganomics is back. Unions on the run. Clueless masses are easily manipulated.

Even Obama is secretly working with the GOP, will never touch his Super Rich donors. Yes, the Super-Rich Delusion is that powerful, infecting all America.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says the TARP bank bailout is yielding a profit for the federal government. We'll see. The facts will take time to come out, and require the efforts of a decimated press corps. But it's not surprising. The rescue, if it worked half right, was always expected to produce such results.

That's not the problem.

TARP was always seen by its smartest proponents, including candidate Obama, as half the solution to keeping the financial panic from turning into a deep depression. The other half, fundamental reform of the system, never happened, despite all the whining of bankers over the mild Dodd-Frank bill.

The panic and crash were a direct result of the dodgy swindles and high risk undertaken by the banking sector during the housing boom. These highly complex derivatives and other securities, insured with other complex vehicles cooked up by the likes of AIG, sold to investors in a world awash with money (your tax cuts at work), turned out to be the "financial weapons of mass destruction" that Warren Buffett warned against in 2003. Once housing values fell, mortgages went poof and a fire-sale mentality took hold, it turned out that many derivatives were "derived" from nothing.

Not much has changed. The banks are back to high profits, many coming from these "innovations," and . Obama's chief of staff is a former executive from JPMorgan Chase. The regulators are just as whipped and captured as before the crash. The Too-Big-To-Fail banks that posed such systemic risk in 2008 are bigger than ever.

This time Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, report on well-armed television presenters, bankrupt crusaders and a reign of terror in central banking. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Isa Blumi about Yemen, Libya and the militarization of borders.