Archive for Corruption
CSI: Wall Street
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Several recent reports worth noting on the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group that President Obama announced in his State of the Union address. Rachel Maddow brought New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman onto her show [timestamp 4:40] to discuss the RMBS Working Group’s charge. Schneiderman and fellow AGs Kamala Harris (CA), Beau Biden (DE), Lisa Madigan (IL), Martha Coakley (MA), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) have bucked the Justice Department and fellow state AGs who worked to cut a deal on limiting bank investigations earlier this year. Schneiderman, et. al. weren’t about to hand out “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. This pressured the Obama Justice Department to get more serious about holding the banks accountable.
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Education “Reform”: Putting Middle Men First
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Last summer, I asked this question:
Why are millionaires and billionaires targeting public education? For the same reason banksters pimped mortgage loans. For the same reason Wall Street wanted to privatize Social Security. For the same reason WillieHortonSutton robbed banks.Answer this question: What is the largest portion of the budget in all 50 states?
A couple of new columns chronicle further moves by what former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch calls “The Billionaire Boys Club” to take their cut of public education tax dollars.
The New York Times has a Sunday piece on billionaires using the “leveraging effect” of philanthropic advocacy to steer public policy. Efforts by the billionaire-funded Gates and the Broad Foundations to promote charter schools resulted in the Obama $4.3 billion “Race to the Top” program which, says the Times , prohibits states from limiting the number of charter schools. According to Ravitch, Obama appointed someone from the NewSchools Venture Fund that promotes charter schools to run “Race to the Top.”
Even The Language Is Corrupt
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OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH
Immediately and Henceforth,
- Naked aggression shall be called “preemptive war”
- Propaganda shall be called “news”
- State kidnapping shall be called “extraordinary rendition”
- Water torture shall be called “enhanced interrogation”
- Arbitrary imprisonment shall be called “extrajudicial detention”
- Kleptocracy shall be called “privatization”
- Securities fraud shall be called “derivatives trading”
- Sitting on the ground shall be called “active resistance”
- Chemical attacks against sitting civilians shall be called “pain compliance.”
That is all.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
(Cross-posted from Dirty Hippies.)
A Generation Indicted
Posted by: | CommentsIn the Washington Post over the weekend, a 31 year-old Penn State graduate’s indictment of the preceding generation:
They have failed us, over and over and over again.
I speak not specifically of our parents — I have two loving ones — but of the public leaders our parents’ generation has produced. With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.”
They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.
The Iraq war veteran is from the generation that turned out in force in 2008 to elect Barack Obama in hopes of ending the misfeasance of the Bush administration and the corrupt system that birthed it. They were hoping, waiting, for something different, better, but naive enough perhaps to believe the people in charge could repair the damage done by other people in charge.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” became somewhat of a cliche during that campaign. Now maybe, we are seeing signs that they finally believe it.
Fox News Launches Proxy War Against Occupy Wall Street
Posted by: | CommentsFox News has launched a proxy war on Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) on the taxpayers’ dime by instigating a federal investigation of New York Communities for Change, part of the team behind the successful Occupy the Boardroom. Politico’s Ben Smith reports tonight on an effort by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-1%; net worth $156 million) “to link the defunct community organizing group ACORN to the Occupy Wall Street movement.”
From NewsCorp (home of ‘Hacking on an industrial scale’) and Fox News comes this:
In a letter dated Monday, Issa, R-Calif., called for U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York to launch a probe into allegations first reported by FoxNews.com that NYCC may have “solicited donations from union members under false pretenses and misappropriated those funds to support the protesters.”
Fox and Fiends’ business model relies on boogie men. So this is the next wave in Fox’s Zombie ACORN narrative that cranked up two weeks ago. They will be, as usual, relentless. NYCC rattled some cages, so Zombie ACORN must die … again.
Michael McAuliff from HuffPost: Read More→
Bank Transfer Day Open Thread
Posted by: | CommentsOkay, today was supposed to be the day to have it done already, not the day to do it because, well, most banks are closed on Saturday, as is the Federal Reserve. There’s always Monday. From American Banker :
An estimated 650,000 consumers have closed their bank accounts and opted for credit union membership over the past four weeks, according to CUNA, bringing the approach to Saturday’s Bank Transfer Day to a crescendo.
Here’s a page where you can record your move.
The 1% – They Always Have Some Mighty Fine Whine
Posted by: | CommentsWith their “We are the 99%” chant, Occupy Wall Street protesters call for and end to the corporate corruption of democracy, to America’s two-tiered system of justice, and to the rigged economics that concentrates the nation’s wealth in the hands of the top 1%. By cheating, says Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, who reminds readers that even as it had its hand out for a taxpayer-funded bailout, Goldman Sachs’ effective tax rate was 1% in 2008, “the same year the bank reported $2.9 billion in profits, and paid out over $10 billion in compensation.” At the time, Texas Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett explained that the problem was larger than Goldman Sachs, “With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.”
The other day, I posted a video from Jared Bernstein critiquing the proposed repatriation tax holiday sponsored by Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Taibbi lists four ways in which Wall Street makes a killing cheating the system, but let’s examine how the 1% whines about it all the way to their own banks.
Letters To Wall Street
Posted by: | CommentsJoshua Holland at AlterNet provides a progress report on the Occupy the Boardroom project, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street protest, including a little logistical background on the letter-writing campaign. Writes Holland,
The project is making Big Finance nervous. A memo drafted by Fay Feeney, a corporate board consultant, and leaked to occupiers in Washington, warns that “the anger, frustration and collective voice is too large to ignore… [Occupy the Boardroom] is personal and targeted to what you earn (along with power and influence) [and] banks are among the first businesses to be called out, occupied and disrupted.” Feeney goes on to urge “board members and corporate counsels [to] prepare themselves for a bumpy ride.”
Since Occupy the Boardroom went live at noon last Saturday, people displaced and upset over the financial meltdown have posted over 6,000 letters to Wall Street’s top executives:
They’re mad. They’re Worldwide.
Posted by: | CommentsRaw Story, Activists launch worldwide protests:
Protesters launched worldwide street demonstrations Saturday against corporate greed and biting cutbacks in a rolling action targetting 951 cities in 82 countries.
CBS News, “Occupy Wall Street” protests go global:
(CBS/AP) NEW YORK — Americans protesting corporate greed and inequality faced down authorities in parks and plazas across the country ahead of what organizers describe as 24 hours of public action planned for Saturday in cities around the world.Groups spanning the globe from Asia to Europe — and in every U.S. state — announced demonstrations and other actions.
Reuters, Wall Street protests go global:
Demonstrators worldwide shouted their rage on Saturday against bankers and politicians they accuse of ruining economies and condemning millions to hardship through greed and bad government.
Galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protests began in New Zealand, rippled round the world to Europe and were expected to return to their starting point in New York.
