Senator Elizabeth Warren Speech- fighting for working people

Senator Elizabeth Warren addressed the AFL-CIO National Summit on Raising Wages Jan 7, 2014 in Washington, D.C.

2014 “Noam Chomsky”: Why you can not have a Capitalist Democracy!

70% of Americans have no impact on government and are enslaved by Plutocrats who run our rigged system

Congratulations chumps! You are now on the hook for $303 Trillion in Derivatives

Congratulations chumps! You are now on the hook for $303 Trillion in Derivatives

Daily Kos 12/15/14

Before Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, Wall Street was on the hook for bad bets with derivatives. During the real estate bubble the taxpayer was on the hook for these casino chips.

Then came the 2008 meltdown and Dodd-Frank was pushed through. The taxpayer was off the hook for six years. But now Congress rolled over for Wall Street and the taxpayer is on the hook again…..

Did Wall Street Need to Win the Derivatives Budget Fight to Hedge Against Oil Plunge?

naked capitalism 15 Dec 2014

Conventional wisdom among banking experts is that Wall Street’s successful fight last week to get a pet provision into the must-pass budget bill (or in political junkies’ shorthand, Cromnibus) as more a demonstration of power and a test for gutting Dodd Frank than a fight that mattered to them. But the provision they got in, which was to undo a portion of Dodd Frank that barred them from having taxpayer-backstopped deposits fund derivative positions, may prove to be more important than it seemed as the collateral damage from the 40% fall in oil prices hits investors and intermediaries….

 

Cromnibus Pension Provisions Gut Forty Years of Policy, Allow Existing Pensions to Be Slashed

naked capitalism 15 Dec 2014

The Kline-Miller amendment allows multi-employer pension benefits to be cut. Shouldn’t Warren Democrats be against that? ….

The baleful influence of corporate power

Over 100 years ago, it was a Republican who warned us about the baleful influence of corporate power on representative government.

Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individualities lost. Each man has become a mere cog in one of the wheels of a complicated mechanism. It is the business of the corporations to get money. It exacts but one thing of its employees: Obedience to orders. It cares not about their relations to the community, the church, society, or the family. It wants full hours and faithful service, and when they die, wear out or are discharged, it quickly replaces them with new material. The corporation is a machine for making money, but it reduces men to the insignificance of mere numerical figures, as certainly as the private ranks of the regular army.

from  The Texas Economic Miracle Is Killing People by Charlie Pierce

 

Congressional report: Did Certain Foreign Governments Facilitate 9/11 ?

A Congressional report titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters” … has gotten zip coverage by the media. This report can be read only by heads of Senate and House intelligence committees and, with their permission, by Members of Congress who are carefully guarded and not allowed to take notes.

Friday, August 29, 2014 INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE (ICH)

Did Certain Foreign Governments Facilitate the 9/11 Attacks?

By JUSTIN RAIMONDO
…….”One or more foreign governments,” eh? Who in the Middle East – or anywhere else, for that matter – are among “those whom we thought we could trust”? That doesn’t sound like the Saudis to me. Would anyone really be surprised or “disappointed” to learn that they were playing games behind our back?

[Kentucky’s 4th district] Rep. Thomas Massie’s statement is even more revealing: “I had to stop every two or three pages and rearrange my perception of history. And it’s that fundamental – those 28 pages ….It certainly changes your view of the Middle East.”…

read entire article here

 

 

Tell Congress: no more weapons of war for local police

Sign the petition here to protect Free Speech and De-militarize the Police.

       I suspect even they will appreciate it!

Update:  Police aren’t just using military-issued weapons, they’re LOSING them. Fusion Investigates

The United States Of Cruelty

By Charles P. Pierce,  June 24, 2014    Esquire

……We cheer for cruelty and say that we are asking for personal responsibility among those people who are not us, because the people who are not us do not deserve the same benefits of the political commonwealth that we have. In our politics, we have become masters of camouflage. We practice fiscal cruelty and call it an economy. We practice legal cruelty and call it justice. We practice environmental cruelty and call it opportunity. We practice vicarious cruelty and call it entertainment. We practice rhetorical cruelty and call it debate. We set the best instincts of ourselves in conflict with each other until they tear each other to ribbons, and until they are no longer our best instincts but something dark and bitter and corroborate with itself. And then it fights all the institutions that our best instincts once supported, all the elements of the political commonwealth that we once thought permanent, all the arguments that we once thought settled — until there is a terrible kind of moral self-destruction that touches those institutions and leaves them soft and fragile and, eventually, evanescent. We do all these things, cruelty running through them like hot blood, and we call it our politics…..

read full article here

The Responsibilities of Leadership and Citizenship

 

I posted this on a local community blog- but the community could be yours, anywhere USA. It’s time to stand up, folks!

Claudia Woodward-Rice  May 30, 2014

The issue of leadership has come up on the Harbor again and again lately. While the people struggle to inform themselves about possible impacts from Crude-by-Rail, and a proposed change of GH Community Hospital structure from non-profit to public- we find that elected leaders (and some hoping to be elected) are uninformed and un-informing.

• Why did Port Commissioners rubber-stamp Crude-by-Rail?

• Why didn’t our state senators and representatives bring the hospital issue to our attention two years ago?

We elect people and pay them to do some of the jobs we don’t have time to do ourselves: fully research issues, and report their findings honestly; and engage public awareness about decisions that need to be made in a timely manner so there is no rush to judgment. At least that is what we should be able to expect from our elected officials.

Too often “leaders” don’t do their homework, and wait until issues are full-blown before they choose a position. Or they choose to ride the coattails of Corporate honchos even when this is detrimental to the communities they represent. This go-along-to-get-along attitude is the norm, but Grays Harbor can no longer afford it.

Citizens have responsibilities too. We elect leaders and sometimes we need to ask why more good people don’t run? We need to hold those in office accountable, and consider replacing them with the community-minded who would truly represent us. We need to go to city and county meetings, engage our neighbors and participate. The sacrifices made over the generations so we can be free citizens should not be taken lightly. They need to be paid for with our active participation: It really is Use-it-or-Lose-it.

Complacency and apathy are signs of defeat. But there is a new energy on the Harbor, people are meeting, researching, speaking out. Those who might not normally travel in the same circles are sharing information and finding common ground. We live here: it is up to us to make the decisions that affect our lives and community.

We don’t have to sit and wait for the powers-that-be to decide the conditions of our lives. Let’s take it into our own hands and be Democracy on the Harbor. It’s the path to success and it comes with a spirit of joy that might amaze you.

Claudia Woodward-Rice lives in Central Park outside of Aberdeen, WA.

 

World Bank and aid donors accused of enabling land grabs

 

by Ellie Violet Bramley    Guardian   May 21, 2014

Aid donors and international institutions including the World Bank and World Economic Forum (WEF) have been accused of promoting an environment that fuels land grabs through policies and initiatives that pave the way for large-scale private investment.

In a report published on Tuesday, the NGO ActionAid says public money and policy incentives such as tax breaks and cut-price loans are facilitating land deals that threaten the lives and livelihoods of small-scale farmers in poor countries.

ActionAid warns that the consequences of such deals, which are too often happening behind closed doors and with little or no consultation with local communities, include “forced evictions, human rights violations, lost livelihoods, divided communities … rising food insecurity and, ultimately, increased poverty”.

A spokesman for the World Bank said it was also concerned about the risks of large-scale land deals and stressed that it did not support investments that took advantage of weak institutions in developing countries.

ActionAid’s report says weak governance and regulation of land use and agricultural investments have left millions of smallholder farmers and indigenous people in vulnerable situations “lack[ing] recognition over their land rights, even if they have resided in or used the area for generations”.

ActionAid’s campaign manager, Antoine Bouhey, said a “nexus of different policies” at the global level, which encourage private investment as a route to development, were also to blame.

“Governments are turning to private capital to fill the massive shortfall in public spending but too often this blind rush for investment is leading to land grabs which are leaving communities landless, homeless and hungry. Growth cannot be achieved at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable,” he said.

“System Change, Not Climate Change” -how to get there from here

Climate change is occurring with extreme rapidity. Recent news headlines warn us: “Earth Could Warm 11 Degrees by 2100,” “Huge Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Collapsing,” and “Climate Change Risks Security and Wars.” — and this is just the beginning.

Had extreme measures been inaugurated worldwide 20 years ago to sharply curtail reliance on fossil fuels, much of what we are now experiencing — unwelcome temperature change, dangerous storms, droughts, floods, etc. — would have been minimized. But to this day Washington is among the tiny minority of countries that have refused to ratify the basic UN document on climate change, the Kyoto Protocol.

The current stage of the climate crisis will afflict our Earth for innumerable generations to come, creating increasing havoc. Stage one will eventually transform to a crueler stage two later this century and other stages eventually unless severe measures are introduced immediately. We know the dire consequences for future generations if we fail to act immediately.

David Suzuki got it right when he said on the Bill Moyers PBS program this month: “Our politicians should be thrown in the slammer for willful blindness…. I think that we are being willfully blind to the consequences for our children and grandchildren. It’s an inter-generational crime.”